Times 24471 – Fwightfully Fwivolous

Author   jackktPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
45 minutes to solve this one though most of it was completed in 30 and I took the other 15 to sort out 18, 24,25 and 26. It was certainly a lively puzzle which I enjoyed thoroughly but once again there’s very little  to be said, though I would mention the LOL moment at 7dn which may not be to all tastes.The top half seemed easier than the bottom and a number of answers went in on definition alone leaving the wordplay to be sorted out later. 

Across
1 GOOD FOR YOU
6 SWOT – S(uccess) W(ith) O(ne-to-one) T(uition)
10 LI(TOT)ES 
11 Deliberately omitted. Please ask if baffled.
12 P(RESENT)ER – PER from REP (rev)
13 Deliberately omitted. Please ask if baffled.
14 P,IOU S – IOUs for pennies.
15 ADD(RE)S,SEE  –  Corps being the Royal Engineers.
17 OFF,E(NB)ACH – “Penned by” as the enclosure indicator yet again.
20 NEUSS – Hidden inside (o)NE USS(r). I’ve travelled quite extensively in Germany but I must admit to not knowing of this city near Dusseldorf.
21 BOG,US – BOG from GOB (rev) and US meaning useless.
23 C,AMBRIDGE – C + (big dream)*. At least we were spared an Archers reference this time.
25 X(IM)E,NEZ – IM inside ZEN, EX (all rev). A reference to the Cardinal of that name in the days of the Spanish Inquisition.
26 RED,POLL
27 SKY(fin)E – The island is now connected to the mainland by a bridge. Sky meaning weather has come up before but may not be familiar to some.
28 PRO,SPEC(TU)S
 
Down
1 GAL,OP – OP from Pilot Officer (rev)
2 ON THE HOOF
3 FATHERS AND SONS – The novel by Turgenev.
4 RO(SET)T,A – Origin of the famous Rosetta Stone. Desperate to work in an old song title somewhere, does anyone remember Georgie Fame’s song from 1971?
5 Deliberately omitted. Please ask if baffled.
7 WHINE – May sound like “Rhine” if one has a certain speech defect. Outrageous!
8 TIGHTNESS – (This gent’s)*
9 MISS JEAN BRODIE – This refers to Muriel Spark’s novel “The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie” and it’s an anagram of (Sir James Bond) + IE (namely). The title song of the film was nominated for Best Music, Original Song at the Oscars but failed to win it, though it did receive the Golden Globe award in the same category for its composer Rod McKuen.
14 POOR BOXES – PO(ORB)O(l) then SEX (rev)
16 SOUND POST – A hidden component of violins etc, the sound post is placed just beneath the bridge to strengthen the body
18 A,L,C(A)ZAR – I didn’t know this word for a Spanish palace.
19 HUM(ER)US
22 GA(MA)Y – Another worked out from wordplay alone. I’d not heard of this wine.
24 (h)ELLIS(h) – The island in NY harbour.

44 comments on “Times 24471 – Fwightfully Fwivolous”

  1. 24: (h)ELLIS(h)?
    This was probably my clue of the day for its misleading surface, needing the dread lift-and-separate between “infernal” and “island”. Note the number of proper names / placenames / titles. I liked that. Had most trouble at the bottom left: but … nobody expects the bubbly liberation movement!
    22 minutes.
  3. This was pretty easy except for 14,25 and 22 in the Kalgoorlie corner. I hadn’t heard of NEUSS but it was hardly a disadvantage.

    As Jack says some of the clues were a bit “out there” – I’m not sure that I like 7dn much.

  5. Add me to the list of those who floundered in the SE corner. Initially writing ON THE NAIL at 2dn didn’t help, and seeing ‘composer’ in a clue always fills me with dread. Got ALCAZAR quickly enough, remembered from a visit to Toledo, but was very slow to see the X in 14dn and 25ac.

    So after all that, an hour. Dismal. And a week ago I thought I was making progress.

  6. MISS JEAN Brodie rather did for me, since, although I saw the film, it was a long time ago and Muriel Spark is virtually unknown to me. Since this serves as a bit of a confessional for me, I need to say I got BOGUS, but thought the surface was ‘useless’.

    If ignorance is bliss …

  7. Got off to a flyer in the NE and then limped down to the SW, finally spelling both XIMENES and CSAR wrong; at least XIMENES was an improvement on EXAMINER, which I somehow manged to fit into the allotted space. I blame the heat. In Australia, useless is R.S. I’m wondering what the U stands for. Unicorn? As for the puzzle, outrageous indeed, but fun. COD to OFFENBACH.
    2. Sorry to be rather literal but I always understood US to stand for “unserviceable”. Happy, as ever, to be wrong about this; but it was in my Dad’s army (!) vocabulary for useless things (inc. moi) along with SNAFU and FUBAR and a host of others too numerous to mention. They must have had a lot of non-functional things in the British army.
  8. Got stuck with Jimenes at 25ac, stubbornly refusing to see the obvious alternative which would have made “poor boxes” a shoo-in instead of thing of bewilderment. Added just enough time to rob me of my first-ever sub-30 mins as well…

  9. A warning to all Club members: Check your bank statements!

    I was refused access to the Club two weeks ago as my subscription had expired (notwithstanding the advertised policy that annual subs are supposed to be renewed automatically), so I paid up without question, to ensure access on my blogging day.

    Yesterday I received a Visa statement and sure enough the Club had charged me twice. I contacted them by email and the money was refunded within hours followed by a message of apology. Top marks for efficiency in that department at least, but it’s a pity I have yet to experience renewal without a hitch.

  10. About 30 mins for me. Got held up on Ximinez wondering whether it should be Niminez (“I’m in” inside “zen” backwards) and not really noticing that it was just “I’m” that was inserted.

    Funnily enough REDPOLL was in Guardian crossword jusst a day or so ago.

  11. What fast and fuwious fun. I really enjoyed this one, 11m as lucky with the gk again; first in 1a, 2d, steady left to right, last in 24. 25 a famous setter, too.
  12. This was a fun puzzle with a sprinkling of unusual words and proper nouns. With one exception they were all well indicated by the wordplay.

    There seem to be a lot of Spanish and Portuguese clerics named Ximenez, Ximenes or Jimenez. Most of them seem to be quite saintly. The setter seems to be indicating Ximenes (or Jimenez) de Cisneros who was Grand Inquisitor. The crossword doyen Ximenes took his name from this historical figure. The only justification I can find for the spelling Ximenez is the Michael Palin character in the Spanish Inquisition sketch. Perhaps this is what the setter had in mind.

    1. This was one where I relied on the wordplay and didn’t bother to research any further at 2:30 AM
  13. I liked this one. It combined cleverness, humour and originality to produce a puzzle of just over average difficulty. 30 minutes to solve.

    Another obscure city, German this time, but easy enough from wordplay. I knew Ximenez immediately, as you might expect. Surprised you hadn’t heard of GAMAY Jack. It’s a grape after which the very drinkable red Beaujolais style wine is named.

  14. 33 mins in one go. Like others held up longest in Cornwall where I wondered for some time how ‘sen’ could be a religious creed. I thought that the only Inquisitor the average solver would be expected to know (apart from Torquemada) would be the setter Ximenes. Took me a while to accept that probably there was a variant, possibly authentic, spelling.

    Pleased to guess ‘redpoll’ right. ‘Old Russian’ was nicely misleading. How times have changed! That might have clued ‘white’ twenty years ago. COD to 7 for its whimsy.

  15. 29 minutes (honest). Hugely enjoyable with some exceptionally convoluted cluing: I’ve never had to write so many down outside the grid to work out how they parse! COD undoubtedly WHINE because it made me laugh out loud: has it turned up like this before?
    Not sure about dummy as a definition of BOGUS: the latter has an air of dishonesty which the former lacks, and it’s a pretty tenuous cross-check in my Chambers.
    Otherwise, a big thank you for an enjoyable and challenging workout.
  16. There was something, I’m not sure what, about the style of clueing here that threw me, eg PROSECTUS, ADDRESSEE that took some unravelling. And some of what were no doubt gimmes for old hands that I hadn’t seen before, eg PO for officer, LIES for romances, ie. for namely. Entered without understanding ROSETTA, GAMAY, SKYE and even the penny took a while to drop in PIOUS. Had to look up ALCAZAR which gave me XIMENEZ. Discovered that I can’t spell SWOT.
    Over 2 hours and I think a class or two above me as yet. Oh well!
    Barry (something odd with log-in today)
  17. I suspect this is a puzzle that is going to divide the troops – I’m with those who found it challengingly devious, witty and amusing. I also belong to the faction that loved the outrageous WHINE at 7dn, definitely my COD. (As Michael Palin’s Pontius Pilate might have said ‘the Whine is a Euwopean wiver of the first wank’. Sorry!) XIMENEZ may have been obvious to Jimbo – by his own admission the modern avatar of said inquisitor – but, like other obscurish bits of GK in the puzzle (e.g LITOTES, ROSETTA, NEUSS, ALCAZAR, GAMAY and SOUND POST), it was perfectly get-able/guessable from the wordplay. Great fun. About 40 mins for me.
  18. 3rd finish on the trot without aids – a definite record. completed in 40mins approx with sound post and rosetta last in. i think gamay would be more accurately clued as a grape than a wine, maybe this is the same setter who clued macon as a red wine. cod 14d “poor boxes” whose parsing had escaped me before coming here.
  19. I didn’t feel this was especially hard, but a number of my entries were initially very tentative, so it was 35 minutes before the last cell was filled. I didn’t immediately see the wordplay to ADDRESSEE, so I didn’t enter it even though I thought it was the answer. NEUSS, GAMAY, and REDPOLL were all unfamiliar and had to wait until checked letters suggested or confirmed them.
    I arrived at HUMERUS by an unintended route; the M of Cambridge suggested UM for ‘er’, so HUMERUS was my first thought, then I saw ‘er’ didn’t need translating.
    Nice clues at 10, 28, and 7 raised a smile.

    Mctext is quite right – U/S means unserviceable, whatever Collins says. I suppose something that is unserviceable is pretty useless, so perhaps it’s ok by extension.

  20. 23:19 .. fine puzzle. Main problem came from confidently writing ‘Alhambra’ at 18d and running out of grid somewhere around the ‘r’. Shame, as there really should be a university of Hambridge.

    COD .. 7d WHINE .. as jackkt says, quite outrageous, and a bweath of fwesh air.

  21. 20 minutes but that’s academic as I followed Koro down the Ximenes/Alcasar route.

    Fun puzzle, the setter put in a lot of work on the surface readings.

  22. I found this a real struggle and gave up with barely 2/3rds completed. All my trouble was in the left half with unknown vocabulary my undoing: GALOP, LITOTES, POOR BOXES, GAMAY, ALCAZAR and the Turkenev novel. Liked GOOD FOR YOU, SWOT and ELLIS.
  23. I must have been on the setters wavelength today as this fell in just over 15 minutes – best time for year to date. This has been a very mixed week for me with two quick, one average and two very slow. Probably learnt more from the slow ones though.

    First in was SWOT and last in was PRESENTER. I tried WINGE for 5d but soon changed it to WHINE. COD for me was MISS JEAN BRODIE with its ‘Sparky character’. Hesitataed a bit over Z or S at the join of 25a and 18d but luckily decided that ZEN was the most likely reversal with CZAR rather than CSAR.

  24. Didn’t get started on this until much later than I’m used to, but really enjoyed it. Suspecting this was a JH creation, and since rhotacism is funny, I’m going for 7 as clue of the week.
  25. Took ages as usual , put in x/j imenez . I wasn’t expecting a clue about inquisitors but then… NOBODY EXPECTS THE INQUISITION 🙂 . Could anyone explain the high=off at 17 a/c . Missing a target is the best that I can come up with but it seems a bit weak.
      1. thanks , that was another possibility that I considered along with high = off (one’s face , the planet etc.) . I am a bit slow though , it took me weeks to realise that Barry’s T-shirt had the sign for ‘old people crossing’ . Thanks to all you guys that make this site such a great learning experience where just seeing the solution never made me any the wiser.
  27. 7:48 for this, with the same initial punt at ON THE NAIL (last word only lightly) and the last thing the S/Z choice – ALCASAR being a dud was the settler without full wordplay understanding.

    Lots of good surface readings and lively wordplay, so overall a big tick from me.

  28. 23 enjoyable minutes, then a long head scratch over Ximines/z before going for the latter. COD a toss-up between 7dn for the laugh and 8dn for simple elegance.
  29. Sorry to be late; I liked this altogether, about 35 minutes. I didn’t understand the wordplay at BOGUS, but it couldn’t have been anything else. I enjoyed the joke at WHINE, and wasn’t misled by the s/z choice, but I took a while to unravel the German city and my last entry, PROSPECTUS. Regards.
  30. Andrew K:
    well, finished but only on Saturday morning, and needed Bradford for about a quarter. SOUND POST last in (I don’t do music).
    Good puzzle

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