Times 24,444 Why is it always Liverpool?

Author   dorsetjimboPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Solving time 25 minutes

This is mainly good sound stuff, an average Times puzzle even down to the author and obscure poet. I worked steadily through it without too much trouble except for my last two in – 28A, which I got eventually from checking letters and a posteriori reasoning. I think non-sports and non-UK solvers may have trouble understanding that one. And 8D, my last in, for which I used a priori logic.

Across
1 FACET – F(ACE)T; FT=Financial Times;
4 SICK,LEAVE – weak cryptic definition;
9 ESPIONAGE – ESP-I(r)ON-AGE; a Cambridge speciality;
10 MOOSE – wee sleekit couring timorous beastie=mouse then change “u” to “o”;
11 CHAMP,AT,THE,BIT – (pitt-chatham)* surrounds BE reversed;
14 LOAF – two meanings 1=be idle 2=loaf (of bread)=head=brains/common sense;
15 ILL-STARRED – I(LL)STARRED; L=line;
18 APOPLECTIC – (police act)* surrounds p=power;
19 TOFU – hidden (sor)T OF U(nusual); indescribably awful vegetarian substitute for meat;
21 SQUARE-BASHING – SQUARE-BASH-(r)ING; conservative=SQUARE; party=BASH; faction=ring; get your shoulders back you ‘orrible little man;
24 PSEUD – P-(used)*; why woman?;
25 BARRICADE – BARRI(CAD)E; reference J M “Peter Pan” Barrie 1860-1937; why can’t setters resist these authors?;
27 ENDURANCE – (nun a creed)*; insurance salesman’s prime asset;
28 EVERT – EVERT(on); Everton is the other Liverpool based football team; Old Trafford is a cricket ground where “on” is a side of the pitch (opposite to off); goodness knows what Kevin will make of that;
 
Down
1 FLEA,COLLAR – FLEA sounds like flee=escape; COLLAR=arrest;
2 COP – C-OP; C=speed of light=constant; a busy is slang for a policeman;
3 TROPPO – T(ake)-R(isks)-OPPO; one for Jack, a musical term meaning “too much”;
4 SMART,ALEC – CRAMS reversed around TALE=report;
5 CZECH – – sounds like “check”;
6 LIMA,BEAN – (animal)* surrounds BE; more tofu, perhaps;
7 A,POSTERIORI – A(POSTE-RIO-R)I; bill=POSTER; port=RIO; capital!!=A1; reasoning from effect back to cause;
8 EXEC – C-EX-E all reversed; church=CE; without=EX; suit is slang for an executive;
12 AT,A,LOOSE,END – (desolate on a)*;
13 ADJUDGMENT – AD-JU(D)G-MENT; notice=AD; prison=JUG; MENT sounds like “meant”;
16 SWINBURNE – SWIN(BURN)E; smart=BURN; reference Algernon Swinburne 1837-1919 – who?;
17 FLOUNDER – F(L)OUNDER;
20 ASSIZE – AS-SIZE; more usually used in the plural “assizes”;
22 ROBIN – (p)ROBIN(g);
23 deliberately omitted – ask if puzzled
26 deliberately omitted – ask if puzzled;

41 comments on “Times 24,444 Why is it always Liverpool?”

  1. Amazing that my work PC remembers me after 5 days out but I still have to log in at home every time I come here.

    I polished this off in exactly 30 minutes over two sessions, one at home and one on the move, but I now find I have an error at 26ac where I wrote EJECT without much confidence, intending to return to it later and give it more thought.

    Isn’t the faction in 21 “wing”.

    I’m not sure I see a dfirect link between “loaf” and “sense” at 14ac but I don’t have the usual sources to hand.

    2. Well, a “ring” is certainly a faction (which the dictionaries support) but certainly “wing” would do as well. I stopped thinking once I got to “r” and it worked!

      We now use “loaf” to mean the physical head but it was originally meant to convey “common sense” or “brains” and again the dictionary supports that.

      1. Thanks (and to Mike O). I knew the CRS saying but couldn’t check that the dictionary supported the direct link. Now you have confirmed this I have no problem with it.
  2. Hard work for me and failed to finish with 8dn outstanding. (Jimbo – used the invaluable parsing tip you gave me just after I started to figure out BARRICADE).
    Quite a bit of UK slang (informal at least) with SUIT, PSEUD, LOAF and BUSY (also Scouse?). Makes up somewhat for UH UH yesterday.
    I suppose setter used “woman” in 24 to carry on with the Penny deception. It certainly had me fooled for a while.
    1. I guess that ‘busy’ is Cockney rhyming slang. Busy bee = PC. Haven’t got a dictionary at hand to check it though.
      1. Can’t say I have heard busy bee in rhyming slang. I was thinking of bizzies, and I assumed was the setter, much used in Liverpool but always in the plural.
      2. Chambers Slang Dictionary suggests it’s from busybody, rushing around unlike a uniformed officer who plods along a set beat. So a CID officer or detective, though it can also cover police officers in general.
      3. I’m with barry. Just for a change, it’s not rhyming slang – it would be too close to busybody to be proper CRS – baffling matches like {Barnet (fair) = hair} are the real deal. (And although the dictionaries don’t give it any region, it sounds more Brookside than EastEnders)
        1. Yes, it’s as well to remember the original purpose of rhyming slang – to converse in say a pub without informers being able to understand what is being said. So the more obscure the rhyme the better.
          1. I bow before the weight of evidence, m’lud. And ‘bizzies’ does have a Liverpudlian ring to it, even from my limited knowledge of Brookside. I shall add it to my crossword vocabulary.
        2. I was intrigued to see that ‘busy’ in the police sense was used in the first clue in the first Times puzzle in 1930. Find it hard to believe that the setter in those days would have dropped in any Liverpool street slang – perhaps it does have East End origins after all!
  3. Jimbo…
    I initially thought the same as you about “woman”.
    “Penny used originally to be a pretentious woman” can be rephrased to “Once upon a time Penny was a pretentious woman” which validates the usage.

    Jack…
    “loaf” as in “use your loaf”.

    Mike O
    Skiathos

  4. 18 mins. Also of the school (perhaps that which flounders) of thinking the Tory faction is a [w]ing. But it matters little. Also of the faction that thinks the pseud need not be feminine in the case of this clue, or in any other. Have found “evert” (and “eversion”) in many a literary-critical text, so no problems there: though I wonder if we shall ever have its near synonym, borrowed from biology: “invaginate”. Either of the two might make an interesting indicator advising the solver to move the outsides (of a word) in. Thought it was a pity that Bill Pitt-C wasn’t a composer: but then I guess he did a lot of other stuff and met a sticky end for it. Also suspect the near-ever-presence of poets is due to the fact that, like crossword setters, they enjoy playing with words: a strict no-no in scientific reportage. Finally, for personal reasons, I disliked 4dn. Obviously the work of some Clever Dick!
  7. Like Barry I found this tough, and like him I was defeated by 8dn where I was hopeful that eyes might be turned up in church. But by then I was unhappy with so many of my answers that I’d lost patience.
    As it turns out all the others were right, but I’ve never heard ‘busy’ as slang for a COP, was unfamiliar with TROPPO as a musical term, wasn’t sure about LOAF, and didn’t know EVERT outside the tennis court and the lurid coverage down here of Greg Norman’s love life. COD to SQUARE BASHING, which also opened up a lot of other words in the square.
    1. More as a qualifier of a musical term. Commonly “allegro (or andante) ma non troppo” = “briskly (or sedately), but not too much so”
  8. Chugged through this in about 30 mins before being left with 8D. Realised it was a pangram, so figured letter two must be X, and still got it wrong, plumping for EXED!! I think I did that out of frustration, as I had been fiddling with CH and CE for ages previously, but when scrolling through potential ending letters, somehow didnt think of EXEC as a word. For the literati, a truly horrendous way of solving clues no doubt.

    Only other oddity was why OPPO = friend. I can only see the slang for opponent, but no doubt if i had a dictionary handy it would be in their somewhere! I did also think why woman was used in 24A before realising that by removing “a” and “woman” the parts of speech would be wrong, and we would be all on here quibbling about that. I suppose it could have been “person”, but that would still be the extra word we are bemoaning.

    1. Oppo is reputedly short for “Opposite number” and was originally naval slang. The explanation I’ve seen is that your opposite number was the sailor on another watch who did the same job as you: it was worth your while being friendly with him so you could make one another’s lives easier, hence “friend”. Also used in the other services.
  9. I’m afraid 8dn and 28ac were just too much on a beer-sodden Australia Day. (Any clue requiring knowledge of a UK football team leaves me out in the cold anyway.)

    FatHippy – “OPPO” is forces (particularly WWII I think) slang for “opposite number”, being the person with whom a recruit was paired for various exercises, and thus a friend (or perhaps rather a chum or a pal).

  10. 12 mins to do most of the puzzle and another 5 to do 8D, which like others I thought very tricky: even after figuring out the wordplay, it was a while before I saw how this could relate to “suit”. Nearly settled for EYES instead but it clearly wasn’t right.
  11. Also completely baffled by 8(D). Even after coming here and seeing jimbo’s excellent blog I doubt that I would ever have got it.
    Note for Jimbo and any other Mephisto addicts the missing clue for 28(d) is…28 Look into publicity for old estate (4). THanks to Mike Laws for his prompt reply to my email
    WF
  12. 11:30 just before the tennis started – well done Andy!

    8D last in, spending maybe 1:30 to fight against the “vocalophobia”, ask “what can fit E?E?”, and then look at the wordplay. Didn’t think of the pangram check.

    For “who?” on 16D, I suspect I’m not the only one to have heard of him outside xwds, but not the recent Beddoes. 25: the setter didn’t resist Barrie because it produces a good clue. There are animals and foodstuffs to balance the poet and author.

    And at 28 we’re just required to know that (a) Everton are a football team (in the top division for more than a century) and (b) Old Trafford is a cricket ground – a common venue for test matches. UK solvers would have to be determinedly “non-sport” not to know these. Must send Jimbo one of those US puzzles where “Heisman Trophy winner 1975” and “Home of the Trojans” are routine types of clue …

    2. I’d never heard of Everton, or Old Trafford (nor, by the way, do I know the name of any Heisman winner, and I hate those clues), but with e_e_t, I figured it’s either ‘eject’ or ‘evert’, and ‘evert’ means to turn something inside out, so…
  14. An improvement on yesterday at 35 minutes. I think that was more to do with me than the respective crosswords. Needless to say I enjoyed this one more. Last in was ASSIZE, but not much after EVERT & EXEC. The latter gets my COD but I also liked ESPIONAGE. I found the 4 letter clues most troublesome, and was held up for some time having penned MESO (as an anagram of some, it had to be an alternative spelling of miso didn’t it?) instead of TOFU. Speaking of which, tofu isn’t a substitute for anything. It is itself, and when cooked appropriately is quite delicious; but I guess that’s a matter of taste.
  15. In the car so not timed, have to keep looking up or get queasy. Did not like female pseuds & exec (ugh!), believe flounder bottom-feeder so eats either dead stuff or other creatures, enjoyed the anagrams and 7d, but felt slowish.
  16. Just under the half-hour with the 4 letter words causing most of the problems.

    Last in LOAF, just after EXEC. Even TOFU was quite late in. Remembered SWINBURNE from a recent crossword.

    Liked ESPIONAGE and LIMA BEAN

  17. No problem with EXEC, but, Jimbo, I was completely undone by 28. I was tossing up amongst EVERT, ELECT, EJECT, but finally went with EVENT, on the theory that the football team was ‘eleven’, losing half (side), and EVENT did have ‘eve’ in it. No clue re: on/off, or the rest of the cricket stuff. Also frazzled by ‘oppo’, COP, PSEUD, Barrie, and SQUARE BASHING, but they all eventually came together. Overall, about 45 minutes. COD’s to EXEC and the admirably deceptive ROBIN. Regards to everyone.
  18. about 50 minutes early this morning…nice puzzle. dont see what the female gets you in 24 across.
  19. 13.42 of the last 3 minutes or so were spent on 7.I had AC for bill firmly in my mind and took much too long to work out the wordplay. I did like EXEC which was another devious little four letter one like UH UH yesterday.
    Don’t think inclusion of Barrie is questionable , nor Swinburne. Decent puzzle. Also good to see busy=policeman get an airing.
  20. About 30 mins until I ground to a halt on 8dn. It was late at night so I went to sleep. Usually a clue like that is obvious in the morning but not today. Also carelessly wrote in SWINBORNE. I managed to get EVERT despite thinking that Old Trafford was where Manchester United played and wondering why it was tacked on the end of a perfectly complete clue (side=on seemed enough). Also tentatively went for the MESO soup for a time.
    1. Old Trafford is indeed where MU play. It’s also the location of a famous cricket ground. Tricky, and for some obscure, stuff.
    2. I don’t think we see side=on without some reference to cricket. Without that, I can’t see how it works, and that’s what reminded me that there are two Old Traffords.

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