Times 24446: A quid for your Turkish port

Author   glhPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Solving time : 20 minutes, looked like I was in for a pretty slick solve and then crawled to a halt with three to go – 13, and 15 down and 25 across. All of those had to be figured out by going through the alphabet to get a start on the word, I should probably have gone backwards through the alphabet, needing a Z and a W to get there. Thought this could have been heading towards a pangram but there’s no J. 22 brings back many memories, particularly of when I first moved to Canada and was regularly asked if I could be called Bruce. And away we go…

Across
1 BURNOUT: URN in BOUT
5 WRESTED: REST (forty winks) in WED(nesday)
9 ANTITHEFT: AN(article), FT(newspaper) about TITHE(tax) – nice to see TAX not be VAT
10 PIPPA: I in P,P,P, A – and along with a the last two Granudias a trifecta of names that only appear in crosswords
12 ROAST BEEF: anagram of BEFORE SAT, nicely concealed anagram
14 TREAD THE BOARDS: (RATED,THES)* about BOARD
17 DOUBLE-CROSSING: double definition, one being SELLING (as in SELLING OUT)
21 MIRABELLE: I in RM(rev), then BELLE – a fruit that I needed the wordplay to obtain
23 QUIT,O
24 ADIEU: D.I. (detective inspector) in A, E.U.
25 TREBIZOND: (TRIBE) then ZON(e)D – needed the wordplay to get this, haven’t heard of it, according to Wikipedia (I’m a lazy researcher) it’s more commonly known as Trabzon
26 EVEREST: Paul (r)EVERE’S, then T. Edit: had mistyped this originally – thanks mctext
27 SUSPECT: US,P in SECT
 
Down
1 BRAN,DY
2 RATTIER: Interest RAT(e) followed by TIER
4 THEORETICAL: CITE reversed in THE ORAL. Nice wordplay
5 WE(s)T
6 EXPAT: half of EXPATIATED
7 TOP GEAR: E.G. reversed in (A,PORT)*, and an opportunity to remind all fans of Jeremy Clarkson to enjoy this mash up
8 DWARFISH: definition is SMALL, wordplay is RAW,D reversed followed by FISH. Though it’s tempting to think of a salmon as a WAR FISH and wonder who would win in a battle with a flounder
13 AWESOMENESS: SO(=this is how), MEN(people) in A WEE SS – tricky, but a word I overuse
15 OBSEQUIES: O.B. then QUI(d) in SEES. Medieval funeral rites
16 ADAMS ALE: AD, then S in A MALE
20 HOLD IT: OLD in HIT
22 BRUCE: alternate letters in BAR LURCHES. Do you mind if we call you Bruce?
25 TUT: double meaning, TUT being short for TUTENKHAMEN or however you spell him

32 comments on “Times 24446: A quid for your Turkish port”

  1. About the same: 19 mins on the Mac clock which only shows minutes. I liked this a great deal and learned MIRABELLE and TREBIZOND. For obvious reasons, I didn’t think much of “Aussie” = BRUCE. The only one I’ve ever met in Australia was, in fact, Canadian. COD to DWARFISH for the neat surface.
    And, hence the change of Userpic: the great PIPPA is here again. Hooray!
    Short note to George: you need to delete the P in “thesp”.

      1. George, I was going to make a similar pun myself: “taking the P”; “with a silent P as in swimming pool”, etc. etc. Only refrained lest we should appear to continue the myths propounded in your YouTube clip.
  2. Another enjoyable tussle, which I was pretty pleased to finish in 32 minutes. I’m sorry if the piano trio is a cliche to some, but it was my first encounter with PIPPA and I rather liked her.
    I’m not familiar with ON THE NAIL as an expression meaning without delay, and needed all the checking letters before I worked out MIRABELLE. Last in was RATTIER, even with the tier in place.
    And to complete a hat trick of bizzies, for the third day running we’ve got a cop in the puzzle, this time a DI at 24ac.
  3. 50 minutes with a little help. My slowest solve of the week so far partly because I hit a wall with less than a third completed and lost 10 minutes recovering from that, and partly because I was at a disadvantage in the SE corner never having heard of the Turkish port and having forgotten the SA city if ever I knew of it. Rather than waste more time on them I looked them up.

    That’s twice this week we’ve had a pangram minus one letter.

  4. > EVEREST: Paul (r) EVERE, then ST

    Sorry to be pedantic George, but shouldn’t this be:

    Paul (r)EVERE’S, then T (time) ??

  5. Never heard of ADAM’S ALE (am rather too familiar with Adnams Ale however). Needed help with TRIBIZOND but otherwise much easier than yesterday, so a bit more cheerful. Al very strange.
    Peter – Re Times freebies, yesterday’s was a T2 xwd book, not the Moorey.
  6. I thought this was an interesting and enjoyable puzzle of medium difficulty. I got the top half completed quite quickly but took a little longer to finish the SW corner.

    At 9ac I initially thought of THE (article) + FT which suggested ANTITHEFT – I then realised I had just got the right answer by the wrong route.

    I remembered TREBIZOND from “The Towers of Trebizond” although I’d forgotten exactly where it was.

    25dn reminded me of one of the maxims of archy:

    time time said old king tut
    is something i ain t
    got anything but

  7. 9:41, ending up with the mirabelle plum, cursing myself for being fooled here by the old a=A trick. With mctext on 28A, and apologies to Barry – it looks as if the Times are varying the Sainsbury’s freebies.
      1. Sorry, don’t know how I missed that – the slip-up you identified (yesterday’s puzzle no.) is now fixed.
  8. 17 minutes. I remembered Trabzonspor as one of those football teams who regularly crop up in the early stages of European club competitions, but the football team follows a different spelling of their home town to the one used here, so I wasted time trying to justify a version of the answer ending in ZON(e).
  9. Put in 3d = ON THE SPOT as my very first answer, and was completely convinced that it was right (why would one put varnish on a nail?). Thus the obvious TREAD THE BOARDS didn’t go in,and I ground to halt half way through.

    Live and learn, eh? ANTITHEFT and THEORETICAL both very nice.

    1. 3D: I had a similar thought when “nail” came through as the last word, followed by “Oh, that kind of nail.”
  10. I made a slow start with this, but found I made quicker progress by focusing on the down clues, which then enabled me to complete the top half in about 15 minutes. Then I had two major hold-ups. The first was the result of entering ON THE SPOT for 3d, though I was puzzled about the varnish reference. I eventually sorted out the anagram fodder in 14 and saw my error. At the end I took ages to get 13 and 25. I didn’t know the port but did eventually work it out from the wordplay, then stared at the checked letters of 13 for some time looking for some creatures that inspire fear, before making something out of WEE, SS, MEN, etc.
    40 minutes in the end.
  11. 16:02 .. last in RATTIER.

    COD 17a DOUBLE-CROSSING – probably not entirely original but still a gem.

  12. Another incomplete after 75 minutes. Just a couple defeated me with AWESOMENESS not springing to mind from either the definition or the wordplay. Guessed at 8 down by inserting DAALFISH (salad finally served up?) ADNAM ALE looked likely for a while at 16. Still don’t see why 1 down “Marc say” bears any resemblance to BRANDY. A very enjoyable puzzle.
    1. Marc is being a type of brandy – see the wiki article for details. There’s a bit of scope for debate about what counts, witnessed by the contradictory statements: There are three main types of brandy. The term “brandy” denotes grape brandy [one of the three] if the type is not otherwise specified.
  13. 23 minutes and had to look up the port.

    Agree with Sotira on double-crossing as COD, a lovely cd after the less satisfactory offerings yesterday. Awesomeness a close second. Also enjoyed the well hidden definition at 8.

    For a while I wanted to shoehorn Bahrain into 18d.

    Good puzzle, thanks to the setter.

  14. 33 minutes with TREBIZOND the last one in (from the wordplay). Glad to see it was right.

    I enjoyed this. Some clever clues. Particularly liked ROAST BEEF and DOUBLE-CROSSING.

    I thought the setter might have linked 1d and 16d to build something around ‘Brandy and water’. However, I’m not a keen spirits drinker and people will probably tell me that ‘Brandy and water’ isn’t a common drink.

    3. Brandy and bubbly water (soda) is or was a frequent tipple, but never common. Oh no. Too officers or gentlemans club for that. The only alchoholic potion I allowed myself while flying. One after a meal – very relaxing.
  15. I made good progress after a slow start – I only had one answer entered after five minutes and was beginning to panic. Around 35 mins in the end. You can add my vote to those of Penfold and Sotira on DOUBLE-CROSSING for COD. Lots of other ingenious stuff – e.g 4 dn (THEORETICAL) and 13 dn, where the wordplay was, well, awesome. I was among those who took a fancy to PIPPA, having not met the girl before, at least not in this guise.
  16. 30 minutes and found the top easier than the bottom with the unknown port and vaguely remembered fruit. From the comments the phrase ADAMS ALE must have fallen out of usage, was quite common at one time. ON THE NAIL my last in – took far too long to see the nail connection.
  17. I was quite chuffed to remember QUITO and to find there was actually a port called TREBIZOND. Like Penfold I tried valiantly to fit Bahrain in at 18, but was reasonably convinced it wasn’t spelt with a final “e” (I did check the arrivals board at the airport lounge I was sitting in at the time but Dubai was as close as I could get). Very pleased also to see my favourite plum making an appearance. I didn’t fully appreciate 17, so can’t give that COD, but did like DWARFISH, HOLD IT for its buffet, PIPPA for its piano trio, THEORETICAL and much else besides.
  18. About 30 minutes, finishing with ON THE NAIL. Not a familiar phrase here, so a toss-up among a lot of other ?A?L possibilities. COD’s to AWESOMENESS and ROAST BEEF. The Turkish port was new to me also, but the wordplay was rather clear. Regards.
  19. Never really got going on this, ended up taking around 25 mins – despite having fortuitously read ‘The Towers of Trebizond’ about 3 weeks ago. Some very ingenious clues, probably my favourite is 9A ANTITHEFT which works very smoothly (I spent a while thinking it must be ANTITRUST).

    Tom B.

  20. Suprised that noone mentioned Rose Macaulay’s Towers of Trebizond with its remarkable opening sentence:

    Take my camel, dear”, said my Aunt Dot, as she climbed down from this animal on her return from High Mass.

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