Times 24422: so much for this decade…

Author   glhPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Solving time : 18 minutes with an embarrassingly long 5 of them on 6 down alone. I really enjoyed this crossword – while not too difficult, there was some really nifty wordplay, and a lot of laughs to be had along the way – hopefully a sign of things to come. This crossword is a great place for me to start with my New Year’s resolutions. Last year my resolution was to help as many people as possible break their New Years resolutions. My friend Steven’s resolution is to never leave the house in summer wearing casual knits. Let’s see what inspiration I can get from Times 24422.

Across
1 SUPERSTITION: SUPER (fabulous), then TIT in SION. I was looking for an anagram of PARADISE with a bird added in. New Year’s Resolution #1: to avoid looking for anagrams where there are none
8 REAR-END: EAR in REND. I’ll leave this one alone
9 NEWNESS: I hope I’ve parsed this correctly. Instrucions for drawing a capital A – draw a line N, E, W (running back over the East line), NE, S and S – it looks a little wobbly. Resolve to read maps better?
11 STORAGE: OR in STAGE (=leg). Not sure if I need to store more stuff, I’ll move on
12 TOR,N,ADO: I resolve to spin around more often
14 OVER,SHOOT: I asked Steven (a bona fide Americaner) if he actually says “SHOOT” – he says yes! (but he says “crap” more often)
16 ARROWHEAD: double definition. Maybe I need to go to the reservation more often and gamble!
19 CAPRI: R in CAPI (plural of capo). I’ve almost finished watching “The Sopranos”
21 INSUL(t),IN: do more ‘roids? Maybe not a good resolution
23 SCREECH: CREE in SCH – that reservation is calling
24 ENTREAT: loved this wordplay! ENTRECHAT without the CH
25 OVER AGE: VERA in EGO(=I) reversed. I thought this was a single word
26 FORMALDEHYDE: (HEED,LADY,FROM)* and the definition comes from the answer to 7 down. Another neat clue.
 
Down
1 SHADOWY: AD in SHOWY
2 PRESAGE: gReEnS in PAGE
3 RIDGE POLE: I’D, then PEG reversed in ROLE – I didn’t know this as a term for the centre pole of a tent, in Chambers it is a single word
4 T(h)E NET: is there a hidden agenda behind this clue? Resolve to spend more time online, or less?
6 OREGANO: This took me forever – it’s an &lit, with the wordplay leading to tONy bAGs hERb bOx all reversed. New Year’s resolution: try to be this clever!
7 PRESERVATIVE: P, then VAT,I in RESERVE
15 EDDY’S,TONE: another one from the wordplay – I had never heard of Eddystone Rocks
17 RISOTTO: (IT,ROOTS)* – resolve to learn to cook?
18 WIL(l),HELM: Great clue, I didn’t know that a pickelhaube was a German helmet before figuring it from the definition
19 CARVERY: V in CARE, RY
22 NATAL: NASAL without the S but with a T in the middle

36 comments on “Times 24422: so much for this decade…”

  1. About 50 minutes with a goodly 10 trying to figure out how OREGANO and NEWNESS worked. Incidently my A looks more boxlike than yours, going N then E after W rather than NE. EDDYSTONE Rocks were new to me also, and I didn’t have a clue how WILHELM worked, so ta for the explanation. I may have come across helm meaning helmet before, but I would probably swear I hadn’t. I greatly enjoyed this one; a fitting end to a year of some extremely good puzzles. I’ve only ticked 7d, but that was early on and there were too many good clues after that to nominate COD. Oh, shoot, I’ll give it to NEWNESS. Novel is as novel does.
  2. A neatly resolved puzzle — and blog. Mine is to stop being superstitious (cf 1ac). It only beings you bad luck.

    Now … had Buckley’s of parsing 6dn. Some Tony or other turned up a while ago and I didn’t know him then either! Took ages to find EDDYSTONE as well, even with all the crossing letters. Could only think of ENDOSCOPE with unfortunate shades of 8ac. I reckon NEWNESS is a new (novelty?) kind of clue. So I might venture it as COD. 36 mins.

  3. 50 minutes with fairly steady progress throughout and several clues not fully understood until after completion. I can do without the novelty of clues like 9 thank you, Setter.
  4. I was not as enthusiastic as George about this one so I bunged in newness and oregano without understanding them. I’m full of admiration for George’s parsing but I don’t think newness works because it does not describe an A as printed only a digitally displayed one.
    This was a good crossword for procrustean solvers in the printed version because there was no right-hand boundary to the puzzle, permitting over-length answers to be entered. Unfortunately some of the clues were also procrustean. 2D reads “A sign of greens regularly in lea” so I had to imagine that Page was some sort of field.
    1. Thanks for resolving my mystification over 2dn, Lenny. Althought PRESAGE was pretty clearly the answer, I too was left wondering how PAGE = lea. It certainly makes much more sense if “lea” is read as a misprint for “leaf”! Despite all the explanations above I’m still completely baffled as to how NEWNESS amounts to instructions to draw a capital A. Help anyone? For all that, and despite not fully understanding the ingenious wordplay of several other clues, I found this not too difficult.
  5. 10:25 – fell into the (paradise bird)* / ({bird synomym} in paradise*) trap and couldn’t get any of the crossing downs to confirm or deny it, so a discouraging start, but not too bad after that except for rash punts on -TION at the end of 7 and ROOT as the second part of 16, not knowing/remembering arrowhead as a plant. Sorry jackkt, but I’m voting in favoutr of the novelties like 9 when they can be found. The crossing of this and 6 kept me busy for a few minutes at the end.

    Added later: 26 reminded me of a splendidly silly clue I can’t quite remember, with something like “intended to cure disease of Jekyll’s alter ego” (“for mal de Hyde”)

    Edited at 2009-12-31 10:41 am (UTC)

  6. 18:11 for me, also put in OREGANO without understanding it, but then the same goes for at least three or four others today. I’m sure I’d have worked them all out if I was blogging it, but… I’m also a fan of 9A, although I also got a bit lost thinking NE,W,NE,S,S at first. Doesn’t look much like an A at all!

  7. A case for cheating. Had I not used a machine to get the anagram at 26, which in turn gave me 7d and so on, I may have finished my first year with a virtually empty grid and in some despair. Didn’t know RIDGE POLE and needed blog for explanations of OREGANO, NEWNESS and WILHELM. Having just read the section on novelty clues in Tim Moorey’s book “How to Master the Times Crossword” I knew what to look for but then thought “life’s too short”. An excellent puzzle of even quality and very fair.
    New year greetings to all.

    To newcomers.
    To any newcomers to cryptics Moorey’s book is a good investment at about 8 quid from Amazon, concise, clear and comprehensive. Nothing much new for me having picked up most of the tricks from studying this superb site over about 9 months, so the book is a bit of a kick-start for the absolute beginner.

    1. Here’s the book on Amazon UK. If you stumble upon a site like this and combine it with daily practice, books may not be very necessary, but for people who have been solving entirely on their own wits, a book as informative as this one can make the whole process much more straightforward than it was before.
  8. 25 minutes to finish the puzzle and a further 5 trying to draw A from instructions given after guessing NEWNESS. Unfortunately instructions rival those that accompany self build furniture, a product I long ago resolved to avoid given my considerable lack of ability with a screwdriver.

    I think OREGANO is very clever and I loved WILHELM. Luckily have no idea who Robert Herrick was so went straight for RH without thinking about any poem he might have written. I’m all for scientific clues but FORMALDEHYDE over breakfast is stretching it – once used never forgotten!

  9. 31:45 – I’ve not attempted many over the festive period, and those I have I’ve not done very well at, so I was quite pleased to finish this in a reasonable time. Although I’ve just spotted a mistake – I had RIDGEBONE instead of RIDGEPOLE, Damn!

    Surely 14a parses as OVERS/HOOT rather than OVER/SHOOT. Many deliveries seems like more than 6 to me (although I’m sure we’ve had that particular debate before) and HOOT can mean scornful outburst, but I don’t really see that SHOOT can.

    Thanks for explaining 9, I thought it must be something like that, but hadn’t quite read the map right.

    1. I’m with you in preferring the parsing OVERS/HOOT to George’s OVER/SHOOT at 14ac. That said, in American slang “shoot” is a euphemistic variant of “shit” and used as an exclamation of anger or disgust, which could, I guess, just about equate to “scornful outburst”. The clincher for me is that a single over does not amount to “many deliveries”.

  10. Things went smoothly for a while, but then I had some pauses working out 6, 7, and 10, and then entering PRESERVATION instead of PRESERVATIVE, which made 24 look rather odd. 34 minutes for all but one answer (1d), which I twigged as I got into my car after leaving my solving spot, so I suppose 36 minutes in all.

    I liked 1ac, which fooled me into thinking it was an anagram of PARADISE BIRD at first.

    The blog describes 6 (which I didn’t understand) as &lit. I don’t see how it can be &lit. I don’t think NEWNESS really works, especially with the A as printed in the puzzle

    1. That’s exactly my objection to it. One is expected to visualise the letter differently in order to make sense of it.

      I am reminded of that ridiculous clue a while back where we were expected to work out the position of some town in SE England in relation to London with reference to the points of the compass.

      1. My letter A was formed NE /, then NW (reverse letters and reverse direction), then a crossing E -. I did not worry too much about it and agree fun clue.
    2. My reading of 6 as an &lit is that the definition is the entire clue. Now the wordplay isn’t exactly the entire clue, so maybe the term semi-&lit (or demi-semi-&lit) would be better or worse.
  11. Just over 25 minutes with NEWNESS and OREGANO the last to fall.

    I liked NEWNESS once I had sussed it out. I have no problem with the odd novelty clue. I was initially thinking along the lines of NO CURVES or STRAIGHTS but none of these fitted so I focused on other parts of the puzzle and left the NE corner till last.

    Didn’t see the wordplay in OREGANO until I came here but it had to be right.

    An enjoyable end to the year.

    1. I think you are a victim of the printing problem in today’s Times. The rightmost column of letters is missing on the crossword – the word should be ‘leaf’
  13. 19:29 .. Entertaining challenge, entertaining blog. Thanks, George.

    I couldn’t get 9a to work and still can’t (no jokes about women and map reading), but don’t much care. It’s why God created SatNav.

    For anyone at a loss as to how to survive tonight, some excellent advice from W H Auden:

    The only way to spend New Year’s Eve is either quietly with friends or in a brothel. Otherwise when the evening ends and people pair off, someone is bound to be left in tears.

  14. A big thank you to all bloggers on this site. I stumbled here a couple of months back and now visit daily. Unfortunately only a 10% success rate (including today – so a good way to end the year!)
  15. Happy New Year to everyone. About 40 minutes for me but confess to not understanding OREGANO, NEWNESS and WILHELM til coming here. I saw the possibility of forming an ‘A’, but couldn’t make any sense of it, and still really can’t, a la Sotira. In 18, I also saw the WIL(L) part but couldn’t see any direction to shorten ‘helmet’ to ‘helm’. Is ‘helm’ for ‘helmet’ a common usage? In any event, regards to all.
    1. No Kevin, “helm” is not in common (or indeed any) use. I had to look it up in Chambers to confirm its existence described as “archaic” and “poetic”. Make what you will of that.
      1. Times setters generally expect their solvers to have an intimate knowledge of The Ring. The Tarnhelm is the magic helmet used by Alberich and Siegfried. That’s how I got helm, anyway.
      2. I think “helm” is “helmet” curtailed — hence “introduce pickelhaube”. Otherwise it’s a way to steer a boat.

        Valentine

  16. Thanks for comments on yesterday’s puzzle — I only remembered it was mine when I read the blog! A queue of five people ahead of me at the barber (with four cutters at work) gave me just the right amount of time to grab The Times and cheekily fill in the puzzle before scanning all the New Year’s Honours List (no crossworders this time!). Thanks for all your feedback over the past year and a happy new year to all who take so much care every day to help the crossword community. DFM
    1. Ah, one of the perks of being a setter – you get to ‘solve’ your own puzzle in three minutes flat in the barber’s shop and draw gasps of admiration! Thanks, DFM. Keep up the good work.
  17. Have been lurking in this excellent blog for ages. This is the first one I’ve ever finished and took probably two hours in total. Did thirteen without help but used Chambers for rest. Taken me all year but I’ve finally done one!
  19. I get the puzzle from the club online just after 7 pm twelve hours ahead of you folks and usually
    take care of it that same evening. As I have other things to occupy my time I took it to bed with me and PRESAGE came to me in a wink. The rest followed quite quickly including 7d. I had parsed the clue correctly P-RESERVE-VAT-I but banged in PRESERVATION and held on to that view until I came here and saw my error thus leading me to ENTREAT. DOH. I really liked NEWNESS, SCREECH and RHYME.
    It’s just past 3pm Thursday here in Toronto going on midnight in the UK so Happy New Year to all and congratulations to the newly-converted cryptic nuts.
  20. Well done anon. Now pluck up the courage to join in the fun in 2010. Never feel afraid of making yourself look daft. We’ve all been there and are only too keen to help you to progress.
  21. For 14, this (non-cricketing) American thinks overshoot is made up of hoot (with derision) after “overs.”

    Valentine

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