Times 24,462

Author   topicaltimPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
12:26 here, which felt as if it should have been quicker (I suspect some sprinters will clock in at half that time), with not too much specialist knowledge or deep analysis required. Still, the daily puzzle should be all about variety, and I’m not going to complain that I drew a puzzle on the easy side when it’s my turn to blog, and not just solve…

Across
1 LABS – LAB(rador)S.
4 BROWN BREAD – (BARBER DOWN)*.
9 DRAGS UP – DRAG + SUP; as in the colloquial phrase, dragged up rather than brought up.
11 ISRAELI – IS. + [I LEAR(n)]rev.
12 MANHANDLE – [N(ew) HAND] in MALE.
13 STYLE – [ELY + T(eenager)S]rev. The episcopal see of Ely is an old, old friend to the crossword setter.
14 CROWD PLEASER – (REPLACESWORD)*.
18 INTEREST FREE – double def. &lit.
21 AGOGO – ChicAGO GOld.
22 NEW FOREST – (FREETOWNS)*.
24 GRANDMA – RAN + DM in GA.
25 CAPITAL – C(hartered)A(ccountant) + IT in PAL (rhyming slang – China plate = “mate”).
26 PERORATION – RATIO in PERON.
27 ALAS – rAiLwAyS.
 
Down
1 LADY MUCK – LAD + [M(aiden) in YUCK]. Possibly an unfamiliar expression overseas? A woman who has pretensions to which she is not entitled.
2 BRAINBOX – B(e) + R(ight) + A(nswer) + IN BOX = “a mastermind”. The surface (for those outside the UK who may never have caught it) refers to this programme.
4 RAPID – P(ort) in RAID.
5 WHITE SALE – (WITHLEASE)*; I didn’t know the marketing term, but once it became likely that it was a SALE of some sort, it couldn’t be much else…
6 BIRDS NEST SOUP – S(on) in (BISTROENDSUP)*.
7 EVELYN – [N.Y. LEVE(rage)]rev. Evelyn Waugh proved the asexuality of his Christian name by marrying a woman called Evelyn, which sounds as if it should have had the scope to provide Hilarious Consequences.
8 DE-ICER – [1 in DEC] + E(ngine) + R(un).
10 STANDING ORDER – double def.
15 LIE IN WAIT – L(egions) + I.E. + IN W(est) + AIT. There are lots of aits / eyots in the Thames, and anyone who’s watched the Boat Race wil have come across the exotic sounding Chiswick Eyot.
16 ORIENTAL – I + E(astern) N.T. in ORAL; was it not possible to have an alternative for “eastern” in the clue, given that it duplicates the definition? Not incorrect as such, but it strikes me as inelegant…
17 REPTILES – REP + TILES.
19 BANG UP – (PUG + NAB)rev., a phrase beloved of all classic TV coppers.
20 HOT AIR – The Sirocco is just one of several winds to have been immortalised as VW cars.
23 WACKO – WACK + 0. This little bit of PR from Liverpool’s airport confirms the local meaning of the word, as well as offering “Scuffer” as an alternative to “bizzie”, which I know has been a source of some bafflement to overseas solvers in the past.

31 comments on “Times 24,462”

  1. This might be the first Times cryptic I’ve ever solved in one sitting and is the first one I’ve completed without aids since 25 January. 20 enjoyable minutes. Thank you setter, particularly for the lack of general knowledge required!

    I liked CROWD PLEASER, INTEREST FREE, HOT AIR and NEW FOREST but my COD goes to DE-ICER. Hadn’t heard of WHITE SALE or “WACK.” CAPITAL appeared in a DT puzzle last week clued as “Brilliant money.”

    First in LABS, last in BRAINBOX (for which I couldn’t think beyond BRAINIAC until I’d got the O).

    1. Correction…first completed without aids since 9 February. I did that puzzle (24456) just now in about 25 minutes. Interestingly all the letters in EPEE and DEAR were completely checked. This is only the second or third time in my 13 months of solving the Times cryptic that I’ve seen words with all their letters checked.
      1. Only one of the grids has any fully-checked words – the one with the black E for Edmund (Akenhead, former xwd ed who designed it).

        My wordplay-biased first stab at 2 was B,R,A,IN,SET – then the light dawned.

  2. I didn’t time this as I did bits of it in different locations. It felt like a fairly standard time for me though.

    Got the NW corner first and finished mainly in the NE corner, although the last to go in was PERORATION.

    WHITE SALE was a new term to me but it couldn’t rea;;y be anything else.

    Definite financial theme on the day that Barclay’s announce bumper profits with INTEREST FREE, STANDING ORDER, CAPITAL and gold, old money and reduced-price appearing in the clues.

  3. A straightforward amble today at just under the hour. A very enjoyable. Just the one mistake – put in TRIENTAL without thinking. New words today included WHITE SALE. Thought that CROWDPLEASER and BRAINBOX were cleverly constructed. Took ages to decipher ISRAELI. Thanks for explaining the construction of PERORATION and STYLE. Thrown off the scent by the inclusion of “mosaic” in 17 down.
  4. My best time in quite some while, I am not a regular complete solver (yet(hopefully)) so probably quite easy for others.

    PERORATION was the last in, despite then fact I had identified Peron early on.

    Nothing stands out as a ‘smiler’ clue, but nice to feel clever once in a while.

    W

  5. The second puzzle recently on a commuting day that failed to last me on to the train (which was on time). 25 minutes in two sessions, the only hold-up being at 12ac where I worked out part of the wordplay (something inside MALE) and promply wrote in MISHANDLE.
  6. 10:40 for me, but it felt quicker and I was surprised I went over 10 minutes. I’d also never heard of a white sale, and slowed myself up a bit by deciding 14A had to start with CROSS, with WORD replaced by something else. Then I got STANDING ORDER and saw the anagram. No other hold-ups at all. Last one in ALAS, but only because I solved it more or less top-left to bottom-right.
  7. 14:00 .. made the same careless slip as Jackkt by writing ‘mishandle’ for 2d. Another enjoyable easier puzzle for me. COD 24a GRANDMA – one of many neat surfaces.

    Thanks for the ‘scuffer’ reference, Tim, which sent me on a whirlwind web tour. The entertaining and slightly shocking Urban Dictionary brillinatly defines the word as “an hegemonic power tool of the state”. Though the word apparently got another tool of the state into trouble last year – link

    1. you mean 12ac maybe. Thank you so much for alerting me to the existence of the Urban Dictionary, which looks set to enlarge my vocabulary considerably..
      1. You’re right – I did mean 12ac, which caused me problems with 2d, hence my confusion. The Urban Dictionary is great fun, highly profane and occasionally inspired – it can also be jaw-droppingly educative, including slang terms for things where I didn’t even know there were things, let alone terms.
  9. Pretty straightforward, but the NE corner corner held me up a bit, notably 3, 5, 8 and 11. 25 minutes in all.

    I liked 4 with the deceptive use of ‘fleet’ as a definition.

    Strictly speaking, ‘briefly’ is in the wrong place in 11 since it qualifies ‘discover’, not ‘returned’. I suppose the clue can be made to work by regarding I LEARN as a unit, but I’m not particularly keen on the clue’s cryptic construction.

  10. 9 minutes, which may well be a PB, I don’t keep records..

    Pretty much solved in clue order, top right to bottom left, with a few to mop up in the NE corner. This is the easiest puzzle I can remember for quite some time, not that I’m complaining, we can all pretend to be Peter for a day… what does he do in the afternoons, I wonder?

  11. Oh dear! Stuck in NE corner for an age with W???E SALE which surely could only be WHOLESALE (no idea why and I know it’s one word), which had me looking for a foreigner starting with O. Eventually saw the anagrind/grist or whatever the word is? The maligned setter will be pleased that at least this solver was often deceived where intended. Generally found the grist/grind hard to detect. Forgot the scouse for mate and thought A GOGO was something to do with pole dancers (but they are often abundant I suppose).
    If there’s one consolation I get better value for my £25 sub than the rest of you.
  12. On the final day of the Chinese New Year holiday here in HK and failed to get BIRDS NEST SOUP, which was enough to scupper the Manchurian corner for me. My COD must be LADY MUCK, as my mum used to favour this expression.
  13. 17 minutes for me. My first respectable time for a while. But I got one wrong. You can draw on a cigarette as well as drag on one, I would have thought? But the cryptic definition nails it for Drags up. I also got stuck with Whole Sale for a bit.
  14. i also put in draws up which i think is a valid answer though maybe not as accurate as drags up, but once you have thought of the former you are not going to bother with anything else. cod 21ac.
  15. I solved most of this at first glance either from the definition or the easy wordplay. Perhaps I was too fast because I just noticed, reading Astonvilla’s comment that I too had draws up.

    In view of the colloquial nature of some of the answers, I was tempted for a time by Sod All at 20. I finished with Israeli. As fmks has already mentioned, it only means foreigner if you are not yourself Israeli. Still, I don’t want to reopen the discussion as to whether the Times crossword is UK-centric.

    1. > … whether the Times crossword is UK-centric.

      I’ve always just assumed it is since it’s a British paper. If it were truly universal, the word “foreigner” could never be used except, possibly, to mean an unofficial job with shades of tax evasion.

  16. Didn’t time myself, watching the Olympics last night and breezed through this. WHITE SALE from wordplay, EVELYN and GRANDMA from definition – which was lucky, I was thinking between GRANDMA and GRANDPA and figured with the money there had to be an M in there, always forget DM as a possibility.
  17. Far too long on this one: 26 minutes because I had inexplicable problems with the INTEREST-FREE / ORIENTAL intersection. Couple of questions re the blog: 14 (REPLACES WORD)*, and the IS (island) in 11 isn’t part of the reversal.
  18. About 20 minutes, no great thoughts to add to what’s already been said. I had problems with BIRDS NEST SOUP and ISRAELI at the end. Never heard of Mastermind, LADY MUCK, the scouser’s mate, etc., so I did get the benefit of some education today. Regards.
  20. A pleasant lunchtime puzzle, 42 minutes. Just for once there was no need to refer to the dictionary afterwards, and the only bit of wordplay that escaped me was the smuggler who ran DMs. Last full word in was ISRAELI, although I did change DRAWS UP to DRAGS UP at the last minute.

    I’m looking forward to some lively banter about the Saturday puzzle, which I finally got round to finishing last night after two or three sittings.

  21. Re 20dn. As Tim says, several VW cars are named after winds and currents – Golf (from Gulf Stream) Passat, Jetta (from jetstream), Bora and Scirocco.

    They don’t quite match Maserati in that respect though, who have had Bora, Mistral, Khamsin, Karif, Shamal, Chubasco and Ghibli.

    Let’s hope the setters don’t get ideas.

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