Times 24455 – Why was The Citizen angry at Bloom?

Author   vinyl1Posted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Solving time: 38 minutes

Music: Mahler, Symphony #9, Klemperer/New Philharmonia

I felt confident after solving the first few I looked at, only to get a bit bogged down. The top right went in quickly enough, but the left side proved stubborn. I felt a bit silly after I saw the answer to 3 down, which would have given me the whole thing more quickly.

This was a nice puzzle of medium difficulty, but rather pedestrian in technique and vocabulary. Too many clues could be answered without understanding the cryptic.

Those looking for tougher action should try this month’s Club Special. After an hour’s contemplation, I have three answers plus fragments of others.

Across
1 CLAW HAMMER, a bit of the cat + a slang term for criticise. I tried the imaginary ‘tail hammer’ for a while.
6 GAWP, GA(W)P. I would have omitted this as too easy, only it was my first in, along with ‘portrayal’.
10 ACTINON, ACTI(N)ON, can be gotten from the cryptic, but the question is where exactly to put the knight. This seemed likely enough, and turned out to be correct. It is an isotope of radon, and a breakdown product of both radium and uranium.
11 CHEDDAR, CH + ED[-G+D]AR. This is one of the ones where the answer is obvious, but the cryptic is not. Edgar was a king of Mercia for a only a few years in the tenth century, when the Mercian kingdom was briefly restored, and apparently was not part of any of the previous ruling dynasties.
13 VISOR, VIS[IT]OR.
14 VETCH, VET + C[ompanion of]H[onour]. I saw the ‘ch’ right away, but I keep forgetting ‘surgeon’ = ‘vet’.
15 THROW-AWAY, T(H(ROW)AW)AY. A tricky construction that most solvers will just ignore, since the answer is obvious, and both the Tay and haw are a bit obscure, although this silvr’y river should still be fresh in our minds.
20 LEGAL, LE + GAL, with a mild attempt to conceal the literal by alluding to legal tender.
21 LYING, [F]LYING. Better deception here, puzzled me for a bit.
23 EXTRAVERT, EXTRA + REV backwards + [ho]T. A bit of cricket terminology, not needed by this US solver becase the answer was obvious.
25 ANNETTO, ANNE + O[ver]T[he]T[op] backwards. Never heard of it, could have been annatto, but my answer turned out correct. Actually, my research turned out to be sloppy, it is ANNATTO.
26 OXONIAN, OX + ON + IAN, who is not a boy because this is a full name. Another one where the cryptic is superfluous for most solvers, although ‘neat’ did get me thinking along the right lines.
28 SLATTERNLY, anagram of TALL SENTRY, a good clue and a somewhat unexpected word.
 
Down
1 COACH, CO + AC + H, where ‘understand’ is used to mean stand under, hence the question mark.
2 ANTENATAL, AN + E.T. backwards + NATAL. A return of the setter’s favorite and most convenient film, after a bit of an absence.
3 HENRY THE EIGHTH, cryptic definition. I can hear the voice of Peter Noone mocking me
7 ANDES AND + [fiv]E + [burner]S. Put in without the cryptic, and a bit lame anyway.
8 PORTRAYAL, P(OR TRAY)AL, where ‘china’ is CRS for ‘mate’.
9 LEAVE WELL ALONE, double definition with nursery rhyme allusion.
14 VACILLATE, VAC(ILL)ATE. Simple but effective, but the ‘v’ of ‘vetch gave it away….when I got ‘vetch’.
16 WAGNERIAN, anagram of ‘A NEW RING? A’, with cleverly disguised literal.
18 TREFOIL, T(REF)OIL. Another simple but effective clue, with a hidden literal. I detected the literal, but it still gave a bit of difficulty.
19 DETROIT, TED backwards + anagram of RIOT.
22 IONIC, I[r]ONIC. This is one of the ‘orders’ of Greek architecture, along with Doric and Corinthian.
24 TINNY, TIN + NY.

28 comments on “Times 24455 – Why was The Citizen angry at Bloom?”

  1. Stumbled across the finish line with three wrong: TREFOIL – my lack of botanical knowledge, not to mention, average solving skills, finds me out again – ACTINON (didn’t cotton on to action) and ANNETTO (got OTT, and Anne, for that matter, but failed to reverse the former).
  2. 13:15 .. perhaps not that demanding, but I love puzzles that make the effort with surfaces. This has some really nice ones, with the wife trapped in the hole being the pick of the bunch.

    Very enjoyable. Thanks, setter.

  3. Around the same time as vinyl, 40 minutes, with the last five spent on ACTINON. I was worried at one point by the possibility of two obscure words at 4 and 5dn, but the solutions turned out to be perfectly gettable.

    I had to check a couple of words afterwards, notably 25ac. Interestingly, my Australian (Macquarie) dictionary only lists ANNATTO, raising the possibility of two correct answers. Solvers with access to the official dictionaries will be able to confirm or deny. Enjoyed the neat use of ‘tender lass’ at 20ac and the Wagner anagram.

  4. Done while watching the American football championship, and still got through in 30 minutes, so not very tough. My check on completion finds only ANNATTO as the coloring, but yes, I’ll wait on those with the official dictionaries. The right side went in first; like vinyl, it took a while for 3D to sink in and open up the left. I liked WAGNERIAN, and still don’t understand the ‘five’ in ANDES. I thought the run=extra bit in 23 referred to a newspaper edition, not cricket, but then again I don’t think of cricket too often. I had been unaware of this alternate spelling as well, so EXTRAVERT was one of my last entries. Regards to everybody.
    1. ‘Ultimately’ refers to ‘five’ as well as ‘burners’ giving you the ‘e’ in ANDES.

      On EXTRAVERT, my initial thought was that I’d been spelling EXTROVERT wrongly all my life.

  5. A pleasant puzzle, not too hard and perfect for a Monday.

    Chambers, COED and OED have ANNATTO but not ANNETTO. (They also have several other spellings, but none I think includes a girl’s name.) I fully expect to read shortly that Collins has ANNETTO.

  6. 16 mins, very much helped by the two long downs; and possibly by having just finished the Club Monthly in the hour before this one arrived. Nothing much else to report except for noticing that “escaper” and “escapee” mean the same thing. Glad I didn’t have to learn English as a second language.
  7. No, Collins doesn’t have ANNETTO either.
    I guessed ANNETTO but changed to ANNATTO after post-solve check????
    Correct guesses for ACTINON, TREFOIL, CHEDDAR (didn’t know D for depart) and ANDES (the double ultimate got me).
    Liked LEGAL and HENRY THE EIGHTH (easy but sweet).
  8. 30 minutes dead, but post solve I found a couple of spelling errors.

    I also put ANNETTO and changed it to ANNATTO after looking it up. Others have already checked the official dictionaries and OneLook finds annetto only as an Italian word with no connection to food colouring so I think the blog is incorrect in this case.

    I found this quite a lively puzzle and enjoyed solving it although as pointed out above several clues were much easier to solve than to explain.

  9. This was very easy so I handicapped myself by entering that well-known joiner’s tool Cats-hammer at 1. I was probably thinking of it as the English version of Katzenjammer. I also had concerted at 17. This made Antenatal very difficult to get at 3 before I corrected my errors. Last in was Actinon, which is apparently an isotope of radon. I leave it to others, cleverer than me to judge whether it can accurately be described as a radium product.

    I cheerfully entered Annetto at 25 but a post-completion dictionary check suggests that it cannot be justified.

    1. I guess Vinyl’s blog covers the ACTINON angle.
      And while I’m on: why was The Citizen angry at Bloom? You sent me to the catechism chapter for most of the afternoon — which I enjoyed again. But if you don’t tell me, I’ll put on an eye-patch and chuck a biscuit tin in your general direction!
  11. 5:42 in two parts, interrupted by an annoying call to a support line. You’ve pretty much said it all already, except that:
    (a) Tony Sever will do a bit of a touble take when he sees the stuff about Tommy Stout, mentioned in discussions about the hardest clue to explain in the anniversary 1940 puzzle.
    (b) annatto is the Red in Red Leicester.
  12. I found breaking into the NW corner quite hard, and my time of around 22 minutes for the rest leapt to 35 by the time I’d finished. ANNATTO is so common in crosswords these days that I find it easy to identify.

    I thought there were some good clues (3,4, 16 and 22 all appealed) and some I was less keen on, notably 1a and 1d. I didn’t particularly like “Tom’s part” for CLAW (it doesn’t help the surface at all) nor could I see the reason for a question mark at the end of the clue, unless to placate joiners, since I doubt that any self-respecting joiner would use a claw-hammer. The trouble with clues such as 1d is that it’s very difficult to engineer the clue so that the question mark (or an exclamation mark) appears where it belongs – ie after ‘understand’.

    I think it’s pity that clues such as 9 are re-cycled. We’ve had it before and the answer came instantly. It’s a nice clue, but should remain a one-off in my opinion.

  13. 21:45 – last one in was ACTINON.

    A bit of a lull in the middle but the last ten or so came in a rush after I got OXONIAN.

    As a Scot, I don’t find the Tay to be an obscure river! It’s the longest river in Scotland.

    No clue really stood out for me today, but I quite liked HENRY THE EIGHTH and TREFOIL.

  14. I thought ACTINON would do for me, but in fact it was ANNATTO/ANNETTO. Not a hanging offence, surely, particularly with EXTRAVERT in the same puzzle. Finished in just under 30 minutes. COD to HONEY TRAP amongst a selection of well crafted clues.
  15. 10.48. No problems with ANNATTO which I have seen enough times in various puzzles over the years but I would very probably have had EXTRAVERT with an O if it hadn’t been a checked letter. Most difficulty with 7 where I was looking for a kitchen range along the lines of an Aga type thing. Always happy to see my local river , the Tay, get a(nother) mention. Where would setters be without the handy lexicon of 3 letter British rivers
  16. 23 minutes for me – with two wrong. Sloppy really. Annetto was Agnetha with absolutely no justification. Trefoil was trevail even though I knew the word I wanted was travail, REF is not REV nor does clover = tail. Ah well.

    I didn’t know Actinon, Vetch, Annetto or Muezzin before today.

    1 down. I haven’t seen understand used like this before. COD 11 ac CHEDDAR. I thought departs for good was clever.

  17. Didn’t get to this until the morning, did most of it over coffee before work, then had to take a second sneak peek to get ACTINON, VETCH and VACILLATE (having OSCILLATE with a question mark in there originally).
  18. I think it’s all been said. Quite easy with some solutions so obvious there was no need for the cryptic and some hackneyed stuff as well, Tommy. Pleasant enough 20 minute meander to start the week.
      2. No, although it could be. I was thinking more of Tucker getting the cat out of the well. As somebody else has said, he’s been spotted before!
  19. 17m. And worked out some plays afterwards. An anagram-led solve for me plus the two long downs and then annatto, Detroit; the -ach of 1d in first and the rest when the hammer type slid into the brain.

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