Times 24477 – We’re not who we pretend to be

Author   kororarekaPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
To the great disappointment of you all, who were expecting a witty and cultivated blog from Sabine, you have me instead, or rather mctext and I, who have cobbled something together. Sabine was last seen heading over the fields with a loaded shotgun in search of a covey of parrots (the small green kind often found perched on empty boxes).

McText says: Time spent an hour and gave up with six answers missing. Took a shower, which sometimes helps because it means you tend to only remember the starts and ends of the clues (where the defs usually are). It did this time. Still, I’m classing this one as a fair bit above average difficulty.

Koro syas: I forgot to look at the time, but about an hour seems right. I liked this better than yesterday’s, which is saying quite a deal, possibly because at no time did I think that I couldn’t finish it, as opposed to yesterday.

Across
1 IDENTITY THEFT = I DEN[TIT]Y THE F.T.
9 DU[fulL-Size]E = DULSE. It’s a seaweed and apparently you (not I!) can eat it. Never heard of it.
10 IMPROMPTU = IMP + ROMP + T.U. for Trade Union = workers organised. I couldn’t think of a word ending in tu, so initially dismissed the obvious.
11 ADRIAN MOLE = A.D. R[(MAIN)*]OLE, the secret diarist.
12 PAWN = PA[W for wicket]N
14 EMPEROR = tEMPER + O.R.
16 DIE HARD The die is cast. Demanding = HARD. I suppose, in this case, a boring but dependable actor: like Bruce Willis?
17 EAT LEAD To die, gunslinger style. E (the west/left end of “engagement”) + AT + LEAD (star part). I think that’s the most likely explanation, but what about EAT for “to get at” + LEAD for the rest. It seems like two clues for the price of one.
19 B for book + IO[D.A.]TA = BIODATA or “the facts of (a) life, a neat diversion
20 H + wOOF = HOOF or kick. “Obliterated with” means erase the “w”.
21 (CLEAN)* around (YOUNG)* = AGONY UNCLE. Two anaginds: “fresh” & “transformed”.
24 ylirassecenNU LLI FI ESrow
25 Omitted. Ask if stuck.
26 READY STEADY GO. Fortunately not defined via that great step up from Top of the Pops c1963!

Down
1 INDIAN ELEPHANT = (ANNIHILATED PEN)*
2 Final letters of whereE yoU wilL seE astronmeR = EULER, a mathematician not responsible for discovering planetary orbits were elliptical. That was Kepler, you idiot, as pointed out by alanjc below. I can’t leave you to do anything on your own, can I? I remember now, eipi + 1 = 0.
3 THE FAIR SEX = TH[F for following AIRS for shows]EE + X for kiss
4 TRI[Military Medal]ER = TRIMMER, “one of those who fluctuate between parties, changing their opinions to match their changing loyalties” says Chambers
5 TIP + PLEaD = TIPPLED. I’m thinking past tense of tipple = to drink, but mctext here, is not too sure. He says that’s drank.
6 zEROS
7 TOP BANANA = (POT)rev + BANANAs
8 (AROUND AFTER TEA)* = TURN A DEAF EAR TO, thanks Peter.
13 BELORUSSIA = (AS IS ROUBLE)*
15 POT BOILER = (TOP)rev + BOILER, a work on the cheapo shelves.
18 DIGNITY = DI[(TING)rev]Y
19 BONESET = B for book (again) + ONE + SET. Another word for comfrey or knitbone. I didn’t know that. This stuff actually works; though they took it off the market because of its suspected carcinogenic properties. You have to grow it yourself if you want some.
22 COVEY, chap = cove, as it were! A covey is a small flock of birds, especially partridges, quail or the aforesaid parrots.
23 Omitted. Ask if sunk.

47 comments on “Times 24477 – We’re not who we pretend to be”

  1. Finished with a little help (early dentist appointment) but stuck PATROLLER in for POTBOILER as I couldn’t think of anything else. Seems almost impossible to hide a word like NULLIFIES therefore my COD.
  3. Too tough for me. Cheated outrageously to get within one of a solution in over an hour. Undone by EAT LEAD. On reflection, nothing too obscure except perhaps TRIMMER, just too damned clever by half. I agree with NULLIFIES as COD.
  4. About an hour though I’ve no exact timing as I bunged in a few at bedtime before giving up when I realised it was a hard one. On resuming this morning it was a fairly steady solve but I was hindered by obscurities (or perhaps words I just didn’t know) such as DULSE, BONESET, EULER and BIODATA.
  5. Not a flowing xword. Knew it was Euler but took an age to twig which Tips we were looking for. I think it was Kepler who worked out the elliptical stuff for planetary orbits; Euler’s greatest contribution has to be the fathoming of the Exponential function, e one of Nature’s not so obvious constants.
    1. Of course you’re right about Kepler. My state of mind is obviously very confused at the moment. I have to teach classes invoving log transformations, which invariably involves a short explanation of what logarithms are, since nobody knows these days, and a brief explanantion of why e is the “natural” base to use. Hand gestures feature prominently in the explanation.
      1. I should have added that John Napier, (aka Marvellous Merchiston) the Scottish laird, alleged necromancer and inventor of proof by the method of the black rooster, came very close to getting the right base, in the complete absence of knowledge of the calculus, Newton & Leibniz not yet being born and Archimedes being too long dead.
  6. 15:07 so maybe one notch easier than yesterday. 1, 16, 17, 3 went in without full wordplay understanding and 16 and 17 were the last two entries.

    Minor correction to 8D: you’ve left out the final “TO”.

    5D: strictly McText is right, though “incorrect” uses like “he drunk his tea quickly” may not trouble everyone. (And I can’t justify tippled=inebriated, which occurred to me as a possibility)

      1. I must admit to haziness on some grammar points. But assuming that this wikipedia article is right, there are some English verbs with the same form for both past simple and past participle (e.g. trim => trimmed and trimmed), and some with different forms (e.g. drink => drank and drunk). On this basis, “trimmed” can be legitimately clued by either “drank” or “drunk”.
      2. It isn’t pedantry to demand the right form of a verb. However, there isn’t really a problem here:
        “I drank/I have drunk”
        “I tippled/I have tippled” – it’s the same form in the latter case, going by the “substitution” principle.
        1. Sorry,
          My posting co-incided with Peter’s which explains things rather better!
  7. 25 minutes for me, though it felt like more of an uphill struggle than yesterday’s, with a lot less of the fun. Last three in BIODATA, BONESET and EAT LEAD in that order. I think there are far too many words in 17: either “to get at” is redundant (how about just “for”?) or the west end of engagement is. Has *anyone* heard of DULSE? COD EROS, because it was the one that made me smile, though I’m sure it’s a relatively frequent visitor.
  8. A tough slog this one with hardly any give-away clues and some very difficult wordplays. My only real guess was BONESET which I hadn’t heard of. There are lots of seaweeds and a number of them make occasional appearances. 40 minutes to solve.

    I like the Tweedledum-Tweedledee act. How did you actually organise it. Do you live/work in the same vicinity?

    1. ‘Tis the wonders of the modern age and new fangled electrickery. We do live within 50 km of each other and have a work place in common, although neither of us are found there very often these days.
  9. Well done bloggers, that’s two flops in a week, not getting COVEY and figuring there was one part of the wordplay I couldn’t get, so put CIVVY in based on definition.
  10. My 25:48 is ruined by guessing wrong at 19d (I went for BENISET, hoping that ‘Ben’ was some lost book of the bible – the ‘I’ as ‘one’ never occurred to me).

    I’m afraid I found this very uninspiring after yesterday’s tour de force.

    Thanks to the Flying Blogger Service for today’s entertaining treatment.

  11. Very good puzzle, 49 mins. Did not understand EROS till coming here, that was good, also esp liked ADRIAN MOLE, PAWN, READY STEADY GO (my favourite), TURN A DEAF EAR TO (anagram well hidden), POTBOILER, DIGNITY, SAVER.
  12. 47 mins but with no less than 3 wrong. Put ‘geodata’ in for 19a leaving me with ‘geniset’ for 19d. And failed to correct ‘coven’ at 22 when I got ‘ready steady go’. Yukkers.

    COD, like barry, to 24. I struggled with it and that always impresses me when it’s actually RIGHT THERE IN FRONT OF YOU!

  13. Hardest of the week (so far) thank you fro explaining Z eros which is my favourite. the hidded clue Nullifeis is stupendous… Boneset and Dulse where new words to me!
    excellent!
  14. Except that I spoiled it by using “trimmed” from the next door clue instead of “tippled”!
  15. Many thanks to both of the magnificent stand-in blog duo. By the time I eventually conceded defeat in my battle with the website last night, my brain was too befuddled to work out to go about finding a last-minute sub without risking six or seven people all doing it.

    I haven’t had this 404 error before – if one person gets it does everybody else, or is it user-specific? I did briefly wonder last night whether it was worth posting an appeal here for anyone who could get to the puzzle to email it to me. It would be good to have some sort of plan in place in case this happens again.

    1. As far as I can tell, when one person has the problem, so does everyone else.

      I think the best solution when we need a last-minute sub is for each volunteer to put up a place-holder post as soon as they start work, unless they can see that someone else has already done so. That’s pretty much what happened this morning except that I asked people with regular Times xwd slots to give the subs a couple of hours to get a fairly rare chance to have a go, if one of them was ready at short notice.

    2. It was no trouble at all. As for the 404, we’ve all had it. It’s like measles in reverse. Once you get it, you will get it again and again, and it’s very personal. Your computer remembers what you had last time and considers it its solemn duty to give you another dose, irrespective of the status of the site.

      The trick is to empty your cache of all temporary files, and delete your times cookies (or all your cookies). Accessing the crossword club via the Times home page links rather than any direct link you have stored in favourites may also help after steps 1 and 2. If this doesn’t work, the site could well actually be down; in which case you’re wasting your time and everybody else is too. The trick is being able to tell the difference between the two states; not working for everyone or just not working for you. Kafka has written on the topic, I believe.

      It has something to do with security protocols, the way the site remembers where you were up to last time you played online, pixels and um… I’ll let vinyl explain.

      1. “The trick is being able to tell the difference between the two states; not working for everyone or just not working for you.”

        That’s easy – the 404 that’s “just for you” is a Times-branded page; if the site’s down you won’t see logos or anything to do with the Times anywhere on the page.

        Good advice though. Close ALL browser instances, then re-navigate via the Times home page.

    3. Strangely, switching browsers often sorts it out. Today a change from Firefox to IE did the trick for me.
      1. Seconded, Ross. I’ve had the problem a number of times and recently found that switching from my regular browser Firefox to IE does the trick and so far this has always worked.
      2. If that works – and sometimes it does for me – then it is almost certainly a cookie problem.

        I don’t know about IE, but in Firefox if you right-click on the page and select “view page info” and then “details” and then “view cookies” it will list them for you, and you can delete the lot without harm (you will lose “saved” online crosswords unless you leave cookies with “save” in them) – this worked for me yesterday

  16. Hey kororareka, love yr commentary.
    Enjoyed the crossword too, quite tricky but good fun.
    Well done, anyway k 🙂
  17. Hardest of the week for me, but came through in the end in about an hour. I ran into some UK/US translation problems. We say ‘ready, set, go’, so the STEADY threw me. I don’t know of ADRIAN MOLE at all, nor the AGONY UNCLE(!?!), so I was lucky there was anagram fodder. I finished finally with the crossing trio of IDENTITY THEFT (very clever), EROS, and TRIMMER. COD to PAWN, but I didn’t like the POTBOILER clue, and the ‘ting’ in DIGNITY, I thought, was a bit vague. Nonetheless, happy to have made it through, Regards all.
  18. Long haul for the bottom half, till the 19’s revealed themselves – boneset a guess after biodata came to mind because I knew comfrey had that attribute. I had several punts at 13’s spelling before 26 made it clear – I also remember the programme. Did not really like the die of 16 being in the clue for 17 and 2xB for book. I think dulse is a bit like laver (bread), an acquired taste I have failed to acquire though I have tried. 40 mins and relieved to find I could actually finish it. As often admired the anagrams.
  19. Didn’t time it. Started last night, fell asleep and finished this morning.

    Came here to try and find out why “IO” was a lawyer in 19ac since I’d parsed it as B (boo) IO had to be lawyer and “A TAD” for “tiny bit about”.

    Went for BENISET on the same basis that Benjamin sounded like a reasonable book (in the apochrypha maybe). Oh well.

  20. 19:20 here, pretty tough but easier (in the end) than yesterday’s, in that I didn’t get stuck at the end. Last three in were EAT LEAD, BIODATA and BONESET in that order. Too many great clues here to pick a COD, but 1A, 24A and the long anagrams at 1D and 8D all deserve a mention.
  21. This one suited me and I made a much better fist of it than the last two. Progress through the grid was slow but sure starting in the SE. Needed aids for the last six. Couldn’t get IDENTITY THEFT for the life of me. I like it when slang words/phrases appear so ticks to EAT LEAD and TOP BANANA but COD to NULLIFIES, an ingenious hidden. First in BELORUSSIA, last in EAT LEAD.
  22. I couldn’t finish this one, having problems with EAT LEAD, AGONY UNCLE and several others. DULSE went in qutie quickly, as I often ate this stuff as a boy, it being quite popular with my Belfast relatives. But they pronounced it DULLES, and I didn’t see it written until relatively recently, otherwise I never would have got it. Weird texture and taste, and very salty as you might expect. Haven’t had it now in about 45 years.
    1. “Dulles?” That’s interesting. I only ever heard it pronounced “Dulce”. I have to confess to not really liking the stuff, tho’ it was more edible than its Lammas Fair terrible twin Yellow Man (!)
  23. Cheated after an hour’s work which had yielded a little over half the grid, and got all bar half a dozen, a couple of which I was close to. (I had virtually every other medal in the book between TRI- and -ER but was always up against it not knowing this nominal use of TRIMMER.) Had EYE LEAD for EAT LEAD, which didn’t help.

    Challenging crossword – like some others, I knew 1ac was a type of THEFT. Not not being able to think of the correct answer reminds me how out of touch I am becoming with the modern era … as my teenage daughter keeps telling me!

  24. It was pronounced DULLES for the same reason that FILM was pronounced FILUM: that’s just the way the say it in Belfast.
  25. like everyone else I thought this hard but fair. I put it down a couple of times so don’t have a time but must have been heading towards an hour.

    Just to note, the March Club Monthly is now available online!

    1. The best the Mac OED has is:
      ORIGIN mid 16th cent.: perhaps from Romany kova ‘thing or person’.
    2. “cove” is old public schoolboy slang. Billy Bunter will say “He’s a rum cove” meaning he’s an odd chap where “chap” for person comes from the same Etonesque background

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