TIMES 24423 – The year can only get better….

22 comments on “TIMES 24423 – The year can only get better….”

1. 20:05 so not very straightforward here – 28 was last in, and the top left was another slow area. Well spotted at 8 down – ODE has Sally = “Sally Army” but it was news to me.
   1. Yes, it’s in SOED too. I should have checked.
2. You’re not alone in having mush-brain syndrome Jack, there’s a lot of it around at the moment. This took me ages.

   12ac is a bit silly, and I don’t see why “successful” is necessary in 3dn. I thought 13ac was clever though.

   1. I think the idea is the trawlermen have been so successful that they need an extra net but I don’t know whether this stands up to close examination as surely they just empty the net and re-use it.
      1. An extra net full (netful?) of fish?
3. Needed aids to finish this and in the unlikeliest places, eg LEGEND, TURNOUT, SECURED, TYRANNISE, all very difficult to see in my current state of health.
   If UN-AMERICAN has something to do with McCarthyism then it’s a bit of a stretch. Thanks to Jimbo’s prescience for SADLY. Never heard of EXTRANET, NEAR MONEY or BHANG.
4. That mushy brain syndrome obviously spreads via the internet; it’s already made its way to Australia. A very similar experience to yours jackkt, with TYRANNISE and REPETITEUR being the last in and causing the most angst. Coaches were never my strong suit, particularly when they turn out not to be horse-drawn, or drawn at all, except by Toulouse-Lautrec or maybe Degas. All of which means this must have been trickier than 24d, my first in, led me to believe. COD to VICE SQUAD, although I also thought NEAR MONEY was clever and it might have got my vote had I ever heard of such a thing. IMITATES was clever too, among several others now I reflect on it.
5. I think the last two days crosswords have been very high quality, perhaps they save them up specially for public holidays? I have no complaints about today’s, anyway. Happy New Year, all..
6. Bit over the half hour with a few dips into James Ellroy. (Well … Vinyl has his music!) It’s great, sometimes, to be able to get words you don’t know from the cryptic bit of the clue alone: NEAR MONEY, EXTRANET and BHANG in my case. Like Jack, I’m still not sure how the def works in 14ac. But I guess the un-American Hollywood actors were chucked out by McCarthy so quickly that they didn’t make stardom?? Having just finished Inherent Vice and its sad tale of John Garfield … maybe he’s a case in point? Equally unsure of the “its” in 12ac. Surely a bluestocking can’t be pronominalised to “it”? Or maybe there’s a typo in the online version?
   1. The “its” refers to the answer SHEBA rather than to the bluestocking. Seemed perfectly OK to me.
   2. But the thing about music, is that you can listen while you are solving, and it actually helps you to relax if you get stuck.

      Provided, of course, you don’t put on Coltrane or one of the more violent works of Prokofiev.

7. Happy New Year everybody. I seem to be in a minority of solvers who aren’t semi-comatose. 25 minutes for this with no problems.

   How strange to see the Sally A twice in one week – they’ve been playing excellent music outside my local supermarket. I also query “its” at 12A – why not “she’s Queen”? “Unlike Hollywood star” baffles me too. STEVENAGE brings back memories as I had clients there. I think I recall a most horrendous system of interlocking roundabouts apparently designed to cause accidents!

   1. I too hereby apply to join the club of the baffled re “unlike Hollywood star” = “unamerican”. If this is a McCarthyite allusion it is extremely far-fetched and unconvincing or else far too clever for me. As far as SHEBA is concerned, I think the “its” refers to the ancient land of that name mentioned in the Bible, which is also the answer to the clue, the wordplay providing the bluestocking in the form of SHE BA. The question mark after the clue (again, I’m speculating) is because the legendary Queen of Sheba, who paid a call on Solomon, is in some versions given the same name as the land over which she ruled but in others left unnamed and known only by her title.

8. On the morning after the night before, I sat on the carpet next to a coffee table doing the Times and when I solved 16 Across I literally rolled on the floor. “Trouble and strife” for wife … how fitting although SWMBO was not so amused when I showed her the clue. The Cockneys certainly have a keen sense of humour.
   Wishing everybody a happy and entertaining new year ahead.
9. This was quite difficult with some unusual vocabulary as noted above. Booth’s army was a lot friendlier than the SA officer we had the other day. I took semi-&lit bit of un-American to refer to the fact that blacklisted actors were not allowed to work in Hollywood.

   I almost gave up with one to go, assuming that 20 referred to one of the 200 or so words for coach and carriage that I have not learnt yet. I gave myself a final two minutes and out popped répétiteur.

10. 20:01 here. I found this pretty tricky and guessed quite a few before figuring out how they worked later. Never heard of NEAR MONEY, but got it from the anagram when I had the first N, M and Y in place. Also never heard of REPETITEUR, and thought it must be the type of coach with four wheels and a horse to pull it! Nice to see a couple of computer terms in it, although EXTRANET was one of the last ones I got.
11. Defeated by REPETITEUR (unsurprisingly) and TYRANNISE (couldn’t get terrorise out of my head). Baffled by the wordplay for IMITATES – thought it must be some devious corruption of intimidates which I couldn’t see. Liked VETOED and IRRIGATED (having just understood that doctor could be mo/mb or dr I now find that the esoteric language of crosswords has even more hidden depths)
12. Started the year in fine style.. failing to finish. I don’t even have the excuse of a ‘night before’. I managed to write TYRANNIST at 7d and never noticed anything amiss, which made REPETITEUR even harder (I’m not sure I’d have got it anyway).

    I think my confidence in this puzzle had already been dented by a couple of ‘hm’ moments, especially with 3d where I share the reservations voiced above.

    Ah, well. Things can only get better.

13. On reflection I can appreciate that REPETITEUR might be a killer for some. I knew it from my music studies so perhaps I had an advantage.
14. …but that is just a failure to lift and separate ‘small coach’, I really should have seen it.

    I did like the puzzle, the rest of it took me about 50 minutes.

    I don’t know if you posters are reading too much subtlety into 14; the setter may have just meant that a Hollywood actor is an American, however unsatisfactory from the political point of view, and therefore the opposite is ‘un-American’.

    1. I think what you are suggesting would be “non-American” (as supported in SOED). Un-American seems to be defined only as not in accordance with American characteristics or against US interests. Many Hollywood actors and stars are/were not American, as surely the setter would know?
15. I was held up by EXTRANET (which I’d never heard of) and REPETITEUR (which I had heard of but forgotten), but that apart I found this reasonably straightforward. Despite all the proffered explanations above, I remain unconvinced by UNAMERICAN/”unlike Hollywood star” at 14ac. On the whole, a good puzzle.

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