Times 24479 – Gotcha!

Author   vinyl1Posted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Solving time: 39 minutes

Music: Strauss, Don Quixote, Karajan/Fournier/BPO

I was a bit worried about this one for a while. The bottom was not too difficult, but the top offered a lot of resistance. I spent my last twelve minutes on five clues, cracking them one by one. I am still a little dubious about 7, but it can’t really be anything else. Like most homophone clues, it seems a bit of a stretch to me.

There is nothing particularly esoteric here, although I must admit that pennisula in Wales was previously unknown to me. Same name as the famous poet, right? But I suspect many solvers will not be on the setter’s wavelength, and have to struggle over some of the clues.

Newcomers are reminded that obvious answers are not blogged, so don’t be afraid to ask.

Across
1 SANCTION, double definition, somewhat elusive for me.
5 GO WEST, GOWE[r] + ST. A phrase that can also mean fail or collapse, which for me is the more usual meaning.
9 AQUA, part of AQUA[tint], a clever clue, and one that fooled me for a long time. Seeing it gave me my last three in almost instantly.
10 ATTRACTIVE, anagram of TART + ACTIVE. The temptation to try ‘art’ when you see ‘drawing’ is strong.
11 HIT THE ROAD, anagram of IT HAD OTHER.
13 HINT, H[ugs] + IN + T[ime]. The well-concealed literal kept me guessing.
14 O SOLE MIO, O[val] SOLE MI O[ffice].
16 UNRIPE, anagram of [j]UNIPER. I feared an obscure bush with a first letter removed giving ‘to turn green’, but not so.
18 JEEVES, JE + EVE’S. Good surface, but easy.
20 FIELDING, double definition. Easy if you think of cricket, but I worked along the lines of ‘striding’ for quite a while before seeing it. All I could come up with were 19th-century novelists, too.
24 HERETOFORE, HERET[ic] + OF + ORE. Quite obvious from the literal for most solvers.
26 EFFORTLESS, anagram of SERF FELT SO. This one took a bit of letter-juggling.
30 REYNOLDS, RE(anagram of ONLY)DS. The temptation to put ‘R.A.’ at the beginning is strong, but that’s the literal.
 
Down
2 ACQUIESCE. ACQUI[r]E + SC + E. I am in some doubt about the wordplay, although the answer is obvious enough. The possible meanings of ‘scilicet’ do not seem to support this, so maybe I’ve got the wrong end of the stick somehow. It turns out I have got it wrong. The correct understanding of the cryptic is to substitute ‘ESC’ for ‘R’ in ACQUIRE. Thanks, McText
3 CHATTEL, CHAT + LET backwards.
4 INANE, N[onsensical] + AN inside IE. Put in without parsing the cryptic, which is a bit overelaborate.
6 GRAND DUKE, GRAND [piano] + D[u](UK)E[t]. Question: is a grand duke always a prince?.
7 WATCHER, sounds like WHAT’J’ER, or something of the sort. Big Brother’s cameras are everywhere, so the literal is good, but I don’t care for the homonym. Since no other English word fits, I am pretty sure this is the correct answer.
12 ON OFFER, ON/OFF E[lizabeth]R[egina]. I just put this in from the literal, but had to analyse the cryptic for the blog. Surface is a bit awkward.
15 MOSCHATEL, anagram of HOLMES ACT. After placing all the consonants, I was left with O, A, and E. I put them in logical spots, made a likely-sounding plant, and it turned out correct. This process is a fine art, one that I suspect Peter is very skilled at. Knowledge of the usual sort of words formed in various European languages is definitely helpful.
21 VARIOUS, VA + [wate]R + IOUS. Spelling ‘diverse’ as ‘divers’ is common in older British English, but not in American.
21 DE FACTO, FED backwards plus anagram of COAT. The only problem is that while ‘de facto’ literally means ‘really’, that is not how it is ordinarily used.
23 WIFIE, [glasgo]W + IF + IE. This one’s easy if you just follow the cryptic.
25 TESTY, TEST + Y[es]. In England, ‘Test’ is an act of parliament, a major cricket match, and a river!

41 comments on “Times 24479 – Gotcha!”

  1. I think the “key” in ACQUIESCE is the Esc(ape) key. It goes in where the R would be in ACQUIRE. 18 minutes here. Only held up in the top right. Note to self re “sanction”: make a list of words in English that can flip over semantically.
  2. 11 minutes, similar experience with the bottom coming together first, then working up. I think 7 down is meant to sound like WOTCHER (check through those old Viz comics). Breathed a sigh of relief to find MOSCHATEL was actually a plant – my last in and I went for it fully expecting to find there’s a MASCHETOL plant somewhere.
  3. Having reached the cut-off hour mark with five to go, had to cheat for the final putsch. Googled “list of artists” for REYNOLDS (although didn’t get the cryptic till coming here) and that kick-started those left unsolved in the SE. In the NW, I wasn’t helped by missing the anagram in 11ac and writing FOR THE ROAD. Close, given the ‘fluid’ connection!

    I am reliably informed by my chavvish friend that the slang term derived from “What are you up to?” is most commonly rendered as ‘wotcha’.

    1. I’ve also heard it’s older and an abbrev. of “What cheer?” Whatever … there’s lots of it in Harry Potter. The character Tonks, I think.
  4. … and pleased to see Virginia Water came up just a week after I plugged the bakery shop in Station Approach.
    1. Do you mean ‘Wotcher’ for ‘Watcher’ (as listed by Chambers)?! Just to clear this up for our American cousins.
      1. 5 minutes but used the dictionary to look up the various possibilities at 15dn and found the correct one last of all. At 7dn Chambers Slang Dictionary offers: Wotcher! (also wotcha!)[elision of 16C+ Standard English “what cheer!”; the traditional response to the extended “wotcher cock!” is “How’s yer mother off for dripping?”] [mid19C+] a stereotypical Cockney greeting.

        (thanks, Ulaca, I have amended and deleted the original comment)

  5. Hell and damnation – or words to that effect – I have just spilt a glass of perfectly good South Australian Merlot all over my keyboard, and the solution to the puzzle. I shall now regroup. Actually a nice Monday challenge. Had to take a punt on 15 dn, but obviously a reshaped MUSCATEL. Happy to finish in 18 min without resort to aids. Glad to say that the watcher/wotcher homophone came leaping out of nowhere, and opened up the NE.
  6. Started in the SW and for a brief moment thought this was going to be a doddle, but it soon developed into a challenge. Finally stopped the clock at 35 minutes, but it somehow felt longer than that. Guessed wrongly at 16. I liked O SOLE MIO, ACQUIESCE, SEVEN & HERETOFORE amongst some inventive clues, but COD to FIELDING.
  7. Didn’t understand ACQUIESCE even though ESC for key has entered my mental cruciverbal dictionary. Pleasant, not too demanding, Monday morning fare.
  8. This was fairly 26 for me with some friendly anagrams and only one unfriendly anagram. I fixed two of the vowels in Moschatel by analogy with Muscatel so the O had to be the first vowel.
  9. 9:09, so not as easy for me a Barry might have expected. Causes of slowness:
    * Thing of wrong bits of Wales for 6A, despite having been to the Gower on holiday a long time ago – I think we had a bad day for a hay-fever suffering family on a walk to the aptly named Tears Point.
    * Hastily putting ACTING for “busy” at 10A – good thing S?N?N at 8 made me rethink
    * Not getting any of 11 14 18 22 on first look – a largeish hole on the left.
    * Not knowing that “wifie” is Scots at 23 and looking for something like “frae” as a Glasgow version of “from”.

    For 7D, ODE lists both “wotcha/wotcher” as a greeting derived from “wat cheer”, and “wotcha/watcha” as a form of “what are you …” both sound like “watcher” in non-rhotic dialects of English.

  10. Not too hard today, 16mins or about average, nice to see the return of the dodgy homonym. COD the nicely surfaced 3dn, (but is “piece of” redundant?)
    1. 3D: For ‘property’, COED has “a thing or things belonging to someone”, so you could equate chattel and property, but the “things” meaning seems the dominant one and corresponds to chattels, so I’d count “piece of” as a helpful addition.
  11. A respectable 16 m, thanks to anagrams coming quickly; last in 13, having left it to inner brain to solve while rest got on with bottom half. Same mental queries as vinyl re 6 & 21.
    1. 6: Collins and Oxford both have “prince or nobleman” in their defs, Chambers says it’s a “title of sovereignty” over a Grand Duchy, which was originally created by the Pope for rulers of Florence and Tuscany, later assumed by certain German and Russian imperial princes. Far more at Wikipedia. On balance, “prince” seems OK as a one-word def.

      21: COED has “in fact, whether by right or not”. This is also pretty easy to get from the Latin, so again, “really” seems OK to me.

  12. Standing in the corner wearing my dunce’s hat wondering what the answer is to 17d…could someone please put me out of my misery, before I return to the norty step? Many thanks.
  13. Virginia Water brought back a lot of fond memories when one summer in the early 70’s, as a student on holiday, I worked in the laundry of a sanatorium (euphemism for a lunatic asylum) there. They told me that Spike Milligan was a regular there and that Elton John lived down the road.
    Gosh, nostalgia isn’t what it used to be (sigh)

    BTW, a grand duke is usually a second son of a second son; so not being in the succession line, he is, nevertheless, a prince since his grandfather or great-grandfather was the king.

    1. Perhaps you met Bill Bryson, Uncle Yap. He also had a stint as a casual labourer at Holloway Sanatorium (or the loony bin as we kids used to call it), as mentioned in his best-selling book. Even met his wife-to-be there, I believe.
  14. 15D: Just noticed the compliment about vowel order. This time, I didn’t need it, as I benefitted from one of the following:

    * the pattern of wine terms muscat and muscatel, assuming that they’re connected – and they are, all going back, ultimately to “musk”
    * possible recognition even more directly, from wines like Moscatel de Setúbal – a Portuguese sweet white which I have consumed

    1. I forgot about Moscatel de Valencia, which you can get in pretty much any UK supermarket. If buying Sauternes to drink with Roquefort is too expensive, this and Saint Agur achieve much the same effect for a fraction of the price.
    2. I once spent an entire evening consuming Moscatel de Setúbal – in Setúbal, where I was giving an extended lesson by a barman in the pronunciation of the name of the place. As I recall, in keeping with the Portuguese habit of strangling the life out of anything resembling a vowel and slurring their consonants with gleeful abandon, it comes out something like “shtubl”. Unfortunately, it was only towards the end of the evening that I was told I’d cracked it (by George, I think she’s got it!) by which time I was, of course, too drunk to remember anything I’d learned. I supect that foreigners can only correctly pronounce the name of the wine after consuming a couple of bottles of it.
  15. 15½ minutes, most of it rather good fun.

    The other week I whinged about unusual “foreign” words clued by anagrams where the poor setter has no real way of knowing in what order to place the unchecked letters. On that occasion I guessed wrong. I guessed right today with moschatel but just to show that it wasn’t sour grapes last time I still think it’s unfair.

  16. Clearly something to do with the Quaker William Penn. But can’t for the life of me see how the parsing works here. I’m no doubt I’m missing something obvious.
    1. Quaker colonist ultimately wanting = PEN(n)
      Quaker = FRIEND – Quakers being the Religious Society of Friends – as in Friends Meeting House
      correspondent = {definition}
  17. 24:40 .. elegant and very enjoyable puzzle. The contranym at 1a had me foxed until all the checkers were in place. Lots of strong clues but I’ll give a nod to the Quakers at 17d , which I thought was rather sweet.
  18. I was enjoying this crossword very much so decided to persevere past the usual drawbridge of 60 minutes. Some of the simpler clues/answers eluded me quite cleverly I thought HIT THE ROAD and ERR. Thought for a moment I was doing the Times 2 crossword by mistake as I entered VESSEL. Enjoyed DE FACTO and PENFRIEND.
  19. Wotcha! Quite nice to have a silly homophone to bellyache about. The rest of it was fine – an entertaining 25 minutes. I’m surprised none of the overseas solvers have asked about Dolly=the first cloned sheep or was she famous world wide? Nothing really outstanding but a good all round puzzle.
  20. Made a similar blunder to Peter in the NE corner. Put in 10 ATTRACTION not ATTRACTIVE so was looking at 8 S?O?N and after trying all the letters of the alphabet plumped for SWOON! Next time when pencilling in an obviously wrong answer I hope I have the wherewithal to check the checking letters! That was a pity because I found the rest of this straightforward and solved it in 15 minutes. COD to DE FACTO for the penny drop moment that followed the blankness of looking at a two-letter D word.
    1. The thing to check here is parts of speech – the “busy” in the clue is an adjective (unless it’s slang for a policeman), so it cannot indicate ACTION (noun or verb).
  21. Regards everyone. A pleasant and enjoyable puzzle. Like vinyl I got WATCHER from the Big Brother reference alone, having never heard of ‘wotcha’. And, Jimbo, Dolly’s 15 minutes of fame were apparently worldwide, since the sheep=Dolly thought came immediately to mind. About 25 minutes all told, finishing with the ACQUIESCE/AQUA crossing. Best to all.
  22. 35 minutes, a good time for me but would have been a lot quicker if I’d realised that Dolly wasn’t just a sheep but a ewe. In an episode of the TV quiz show “A Question of Sport”, former England cricketer David Gower’s leg was pulled by someone reading a passage apparently praising his elegance, which was then revealed as a description of the peninsula.
  23. Guessed right at 15. 19 mins overall. COD to 12 as it made me chuckle. Regards all and bring on tomorrow!
  24. Beginner here, slightly demoralised by the fact that of the three clues I couldn’t get, two were considered “obvious” and so not provided. Can someone please put me out of my misery on 28? I’m completely stumped.
      1. Fair enough, Cox and Co should probably have been enough, but ’emulate cocks’ threw me. I’m still not sure how to make the leap from CROW to CREW.
        1. In the on-line version it’s “emulateD cocks” so CREW (past tense) rather than CROW applies.
  25. Unfamiliar with GO WEST but managed to eke it out. If I’m not getting
    some it’s due to my own ignorance or lunkheadedness or it’s something to do with
    cricket, Cockney or an obscure Welsh river but I am now armed with a number of sources to go look them up. Surprisingly got the WATCHER right off and loved the ‘Dolly’ clue. Hung up like some others by having banged in ‘ATTRACTING’ until I reasoned the down clue answer as SEVEN.

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