Times 24,468 No Need of Harry Houdini Today

33 comments on “Times 24,468 No Need of Harry Houdini Today”

1. I felt this particular clue was a little trickier as I was not aware of the alternative spelling, having grown up with the spelling associated with various horse related events.
2. They must have been putting extra grumpwater in the Badgers last night. By contrast (after a couple of cleanising bottles of Coopers Stout at this end), I enjoyed this one. No unknown words in the answers, but a few neat disguises in the clues. Just enough, I thought, to balance the “wills” (dead-giveaways). Maybe though, there should be a ban on cross-references to crossing answers (2 and 8) — which, inter alia, made the top left harder than the rest. I’m going to give COD to FOR THE PRESENT which was among the neat disguises. Just under the 30 minutes.

   1. Oh yeh … forgot … TORSO: isn’t the def “this is unfinished”? Has to be nominal surely?
   2. Ah, Badgers… Coopers Stout… you’re making me homesick! I’m not keen on cross-references, either, unless they’re compellingly well done. This wasn’t.
3. Nice to be able to finish one …

   41 mins, of which last 12 were spent on TORSO, which I got right without fully understanding the wordplay, by assuming that ‘unfinished’ (or, indeed, ‘this is unfinished’) would most probably be the definition.

   Parsed ‘present’ as ‘show’ in 1dn, which didn’t do me any harm in the end.

4. Solved a la the Jerry method, so this is a guilt-free post. Phew!
   Hadn’t parsed FOR THE PRESENT (thought Jack might come up with an old Noel Coward play or something). Didn’t know the “unfinished” definition of TORSO and thought for a while that HARDY might be a triple definition (Flag). Guessed that TAU was a letter. Happy that I am now automatically appending exclamation marks to words such as Dickens! and My!
   Jerry of course is right that the kneejerk use of aids can hinder progress, a bit like weather forecasters continuing to translate temperatures into old money, but, say 6 months ago, I would often have ¾ of a grid blank and using an aid just to get one answer would open up the rest of the grid, hence more practice gained bringing forward the day when no aids are required. But a dilemma, I agree. I do however imagine that even those who have been doing these things for decades used aids, albeit not electronic, once upon a time.
   1. Of course we did Barry. Every help we could lay our hands on from a thesaurus to the English master. I see nothing wrong with aids and your use of them seems to have been very sensible.
5. I found this quite hard to get started. My first one solved (as things turned out) was AGHAST but I didn’t know the alternative spelling of AGA so I didn’t write it in until much later when I had the checkers.I also didn’t know the required meaning of TORSO but there was little doubt that it was the answer.

   I finished all but the 23s in 34 minutes and took another 10 to work them out.

   Yes, Barry, I was hoping 1dn would be the title of a play and was disappointed when it turned out not to be. Noel Coward wrote Present Laughter but sadly there was no reference to it here.

   I thought the puzzle was enjoyable enough and the setter doesn’t deserve the brickbats apart from 10dn being a bit lame.

   1. I think it’s worse than “a bit lame” Jack. “Creature randomly chooses her bra” – my test is would I feel I’d earned my corn if I submitted that as a clue I was paid to produce? Sadly, no I wouldn’t.

      My setting days are long behind me but as a more interesting but not difficult alternative how about “Foot protection covers fretful (but not close) nipper on the beach”. I’m sure others more skilled than I could come up with better offerings.

6. Ah Barry, I was fortunate indeed to grow up in a world without aids.. 😉 in extremis, I might once have resorted to Roget on occasion..

   I did quite enjoy today’s little romp. I concede that one or two clues are a bit dodgy but there are some good ones too and I have never minded a bit of unevenness.. just proves it’s hand made.

   About 20mins, because I was slow with the NE corner for some reason. I liked the hidden clue at 6dn and much of the SW corner is neatly clued.

7. Four well-telegraphed anagrams and some easy wordplay made this a doddle. I finished with Hardy, which I justified with the novel “Mr Midshipman Hardy”. The fact that I made it up turned out not to matter.

   I know that the dictionary justifies calling peanuts fruit but I still do not put them in my fruitbowl.

8. Around 17 minutes for me this morning, last in being 24 because I didn’t know the unfinished definition until, so entered from wordplay only. I agree with comments on 10, though I suppose that a clue that included “beaches” or “shore” might have led us too directly to the creature’s habitat. Why does a creature need a bra?
   I’m with lennyco on fruit and nuts: Cadbury would never have got away with a fruit and fruit bar, whatever the dictionary says!
   Loved the misdirection in 6d, got thrown on 8 because for me a number of carriages is a rake, COD probably 23.
9. When I glanced at the grid and clues as one does and solved 13a as I reached for the pencil it seemed worth looking at the clock. It may not be the fastest way to solve, but the next in were 11, 12, 15, 3 – and so to finally 5 and 23, some 18m later. But no sense of satisfaction came. I agree peanut dubiously fruit in the commonest sense though |I suppose fruiting body.
10. I had a lot to do last night, and didn’t want to get hung up on a difficult puzzle. I just banged the answers in, in many cases without bothering with the cryptic. Probably just as well….
11. A 20-minuter today. I quite liked the cryptic constructions in 1D and the use of ‘shop’ for ‘betray’ in 5D, but there were a few clues I felt were dubious, even sloppy. The comma after ’round’ in 1A ruins the cryptic instruction. This is not just a case of misleading punctuation; it’s cryptically inaccurate and cannot lead to FATHER placed round R.
    15A: ‘averse’ means ‘opposed’, not ‘opposed to’. If, to avoid this, ‘to’ is attached to ‘aver’ (meaning ‘to state’) the apostrophe is complete nonsense. Apostrophe s can be read only as ‘is’ or ‘has’, not as a possessive, since ‘aver’ is a verb, so the clue appears to lead to AVERE – [AVER has E(conomics)]
    The surface of 10D is awful
    And, finally, I’m not convinced that 7D can be interpreted as, ‘Take just the opening letters of the preceding words’. At best it’s tortuous.
    1. I take the point about the apostrophe in 15 and had marked it out myself for comment but when the time came I didn’t feel strongly enough to raise the issue.

       I’m probably missing something but I’m afraid I can see no problem at all with 7dn.

       1. You’ll have guessed there were several things in this puzzle that I wasn’t keen on. As I hoped, others are exposing them for me. I thought this use of “opened” was certainly questionable.

          “Flier…..at first” works technically but produces a nonsense surface. The same can be said of “Flier opens….” The question is how does “opened” at the very end of the clue translate into “take the leading letters of the preceding words”. I agree with dyste, at best it’s tortuous.

    2. 23 mins for me but with one wrong! Oh no. Put ‘reinsert’ in at 4. Well known river that the ert.

       Regards to all.

       1. Not really, because then ‘to’ is completely superfluous or has to be seen as the link between definition and wordplay, which would be very unsatisfactory. An alternative reading could see it as an inverted form of “E (economics initially) (is added) to states'” but then the apostrophe is still wrong.
12. 35 minutes. A good enjoyable puzzle for people of lesser ability like myself. Although, I can see that it would leave the stronger solvers unfulfilled.

    Put in 1d, 11 & 24 without full understanding. I actually got 8 from 2 rather than the other way around. Finished with 5a & 5d.

13. I meant to write above, “‘state’ is a verb” in this context, not “‘aver’ is a verb”. It doesn’t alter the point about the apostrophe.
14. 16:13 .. I’m pretty much in Jimbo’s camp on 10d – a strong candidate already for worst clue of 2010.

    And a nice catch by dyste of the grocer’s apostrophe in 15a. Still, beggar’s can’t be chooser’s.

    Otherwise, so-so. Last in: PEANUT

15. At fractionally over 16 minutes this equalled my best time of the year, so a puzzle at the easier end of the spectrum in my book. I am quite happy to have a range of difficulties. There will always be one or two puzzles that seem a lot easier than most. I guess that this was my one for the month. I felt it was going quite well when I got 11 entries on my initial cold solving run through. Usually its about 5 or 6. I know I’m in trouble when I only get 1 or 2 at that stage.

    I try not to criticise setters too often as I know I can’t write decent clues myself, but I’m not a fan of any clue where the definition is referred to as ‘this’ (SLAUGHTER today).

    There were a couple of clues that I thought were rather good. I liked DEUCE and BETRAY.

16. I ripped through this and thought we had more obvious anagrams than usual today, but look on the bright side – I thought 23 was clever, 20 was nifty wordplay, and there was a nine-letter hidden word (across three words).
17. 12:58 here. I have to agree with Jimbo and others about the daft surface reading in 10D, and a couple of others that were a bit contrived (e.g. 7D). However, there was some good stuff in here too. I thought 1D and 23A were probably the best.
18. 6:35 for this one. 10D was certainly easy to solve backwards from “what kind of crab”. I didn’t mind crossing cross-refs given that book=reserve is very straightforward.
19. Hi friends.
    This FREE page might help you solve crosswords or construct them:
    http://www.mylanguagenotebook.com/mlnwordtoolsenglish.aspx
20. Agree with much of what has been said, particularly the feebleness of 10dn and the greengrocer’s apostrophe in 15ac. But I did think that 12ac was a good clue: to say that if the definition is ‘this’ then it’s a poor clue, as Duncan does, may be true of most clues, but when it’s an &lit. as here then surely it’s quite OK.
21. About 20 minutes here, last entry was DEUCE. I found it on the easier side also, but it doesn’t raise the hackles. Like vinyl, I wasn’t in the mood to labor over a tough one last night, so I just wrote in the answers. Some fun stuff also, such as BEGGAR, and ALMA MATER. Regards to everyone.
22. 40 minutes, which seems a bit below par. Aids: one regular cappuccino, no sugar; one ricotta cake. Must have been slowed down by dealing with the latter, I think.
23. This was a quickie for me, which is to say maybe 25 minutes over tea, but certainly not a satisfying puzzle. I got Hardy without remembering who he was (and knew nothing of the flag part, anyway), and didn’t know why 1dn was what it was until seeing this blog.
    Was anyone else dissatisfied with aghast=startled?
24. I found puzzle 24,468 in The Times Cryptic Crossword Puzzle Book 18 and have been using this site to check my solutions, or lack of same.

    I was having difficulty with the “unfinished” references to 24 Ac. (Torso) and it became clear that the version in the book is different from the published puzzle that you all have completed. I have:

    This part of Spanish bull pierced by tip of sword? (5) TORO with an S(word) insertion.

    I wonder how much effort is spent editing the puzzles before putting them into book form. And what could be the rationale for this? Pretty pointless, it seems to me, at the very least. Bit of a swiz too, I can’t help feeling.

    First time I’ve noticed this sort of thing but – unless I’ve just not managed to get on the setter’s wavelength – I don’t usually pay that much attention to answers where the wordplay is clear. The multiple references to “unfinished” made this stand out a bit.

    Any one listening? It was current about 7 years ago, so I doubt it.

    Kevin Walsh

    1. I’m doing book 18 too!

Comments are closed.