Times 24,504 Send Her Victorious on a Wing and a Prayer

47 comments on “Times 24,504 Send Her Victorious on a Wing and a Prayer”

1. Some good chuckle material in a 14 minute solve this morning: I especially liked AWING when the cluing hit me. I think WINNER is W (compass point) with the INNER. I have no idea what is going on in 1d, and surely “a term in Latin” is absurdly general. Must be right, though.
2. 1D: If you look above the clue for 1D, you’ll see the heading “Down”.
   15D: since = for: bcause … both are synonyms for “because” (not spotted until after solving)
   21D: best I can offer is “winner” as a stroke securing a point in games like tennis, though this would be an adjectival phrase defining a noun.
   1. 21D: Should have checked for cross-postings – z8b8d8k is bang on the money.
      1. Hi Peter: it’s hard to check for cross postings when they’re simultaneous. Vide infra
3. Sorry, it’s just dawned. If you look above 1d, the word is Down. Quite amusing, really
4. Well I did figure out 1d but only after having looked up the Latin, also WINNER but still don’t get INSINCERE (in re as with regards to?). Tough for me and only completed with a lttle help. Thought AWING, REDECORATE and VICTORIOUS terific clues.
   1. in re = with regards to: legal jargon – here’s an OED citation to give you the flavour:

      1972 Times 22 Feb. 14/5 In In re Scarisbrick ([1951] Ch 622) the Court of Appeal held that the distinction between a public or charitable trust and a private trust depended on [etc.].

5. My thanks to Peter and z8b8d8k. A little while back Peter put up a link to a survey (worth doing if you haven’t tried it) and one of the questions related to getting “doh” moments whilst off doing something else. I nearly deposited my toast and coffee all over the floor as the penny dropped on the VIDE SUPRA gag – I like it.
6. Stymied on 1A and 1D for too long. 31 min. Like 1A – COD. But still don’t see how ‘will get you down’ in 1D works – just ‘will enable you to write letters in downwards’?
   1. Definition=a term of Latin (a bit general for some tastes) and VIDE SUPRA means “look above”. If you do just that and “look above” the clue you see the word “down” and hence “do it and it will get you down”
7. No need to feel stupid. The answer is RUNNING UP; operation=RUNNING; mounted=UP; coming after 21=WINNER is the definition.
   1. Many thanks. This was my best guess but I was not convinced that ‘operation’ = ‘running’ (confusion over ‘ion’ and ‘ing’ was confusing).
      1. Watch out for that confusion (which you expressed very well) – there are many something-ING/something-ION pairs that mean the same. In particular, operation and operating (as a gerund or verbal noun – or is it nounal verb?) are synonyms.

         If faced with a word ending -I?? with a possible noun definition, it’s often a good idea to test both N and G (from -ION and -ING) as possibilities in the answer checking the last letter of the word. (The noun def is important – if the def is clearly a verb, the -ION ending is impossible.)

         1. There are many delights in coming to this page. Yes, the obvious: providing the (hopefully, occasional) answer when I’m totally stumped. But, much more, the wit, wisdom, education and intellectual fecundity in the comments (inter alia, vide supra comments on 1D). My thanks to you all.
8. 40 minutes with the last 10 spent on 8ac, 16d and 1dn. I don’t know why the first two held me up but I didn’t know VIDE SUPRA and the wordplay didn’t help. In the end I bunged in the only two Latin words I knew that fitted the checkers.

   I’m familiar with the expression “Coming in on a Wing and a Prayer” but I can’t place the song referred to by Jimbo. I may recognise the tune so I’ll try and find it in a sound file when I get home.

   1. It’s the Song Spinners. 16 minutes here. Little else to say … for a change.
   2. And then Ry Cooder made it part of every guitar player’s repertoire.
      1. I’ve listened to it now in the version by Ambrose and his orchestra with Anne Shelton and am amazed to find I don’t know the song. The tune sounds vaguely familiar (it’s hardly very original) but I don’t know the words at all apart from the title phrase. I’m also rather surprised that according to Brewer’s Adamson originated the expression in this song.
9. 17m but waited to see blog to see why victorious was right – only word to fit and last in after awing, which gave good “aha” moment. 15 & 21 – I saw as jimbo blogged. Toyed with file and drop before considering clues properly.
10. 9:05, with one mistake at 1dn. I hadn’t heard of it (shame on me), and though VIDE was guessable, SUPRA eluded me. Probably sour grapes, but I still think it’s a poor clue
11. 13D: my one blank! ‘Deliberately omitted’ makes me feel really stupid. Help, please with explanation of reference to ‘after 21’.
12. …was spent agonizing over ‘winner’. I thought a point was either ‘n’, or ‘nn’, or ‘inn’, none of which made any sense.

    I didn’t see ‘vide supra’, either, but put it in confidently anyway. Come to think of it, I thought ‘fold’ was just an elaborate cryptic definition.

    At least I understood one across correctly.

13. I found this enjoyable and on the easy side – perfect just after Easter.

    I couldn’t see the explanation for 1dn while solving – nice one!

    Just one query at 13D – I can’t find “RUN UP” as a verb meaning “to come second”.

    1. 13D: no, you can’t – just runner-up as a def for someone who comes second. From my pragmatic point of view, it’s OK to ask the solver to do a bit of back-formation to get “running up”, but others may feel differently.
    2. If I wasn’t doing the blog and trying to be reasonably even handed “the others” might well include me. I think you run flags up flagpoles. I struggle a bit with running up as coming second, partly because I can’t put it into a usable sentence.
    3. Back formations and fanciful creations (like FLOWER for river) are fine in clues where the object is to mislead, but I don’t think I’m being pedantic in thinking that answers should actually be in the dictionary with the intended meaning.
    4. The OED has it:
       f. Sporting. To be runner-up in a race, etc.
       1842 THACKER Courser’s Ann. 10 The winner to receive £220..; the dog running up, a bonus of £50. 1890 Field 8 Nov. 709/3 Mr. Chambers, who ran up, also played an excellent game [of golf]. 1970 Field 16 Apr. 703/1 Stanley and Michael Lunt, father and son who between them won three amateur championships and ran up in a fourth.

       Normally I would argue against using the OED as a reference for justifying crossword answers, but for confirmation that the verb “run up” (from which the far more familiar runner-up must surely have been derived) does or at least did exist, I think an exception could me made.

       1. In a Mephisto I would expect this construction to be sign posted in some way to indicate the usage is no longer current and to be able to find that usage in C. In the daily cryptic I find it unsatisfactory.
          1. But in a Mephisto puzzle, reliance on Chambers is an accepted part of the game, because many of the words you enter as answers will be words that you have never seen before, or haven’t seen since they last cropped up in this kind of puzzle.

             In a daily cryptic the expectation is that the words in the grid will be ones that you know already or can work out with the help of checking letters and the clue. Apart from our anonymous contributor who guessed the right answer but wasn’t sure enough to write it in, everyone seems to have found the solution to 13D, presumably because they thought of “runner-up” and correctly worked out that the required meaning of “running up” is related.

14. This was the easiest for a long time so, naturally, I made a stupid mistake bringing to an end a good run of 16 all-correct solutions. I marked 1D as (5,4) leaving me with an impossible Latin phrase to finish. My best guess was Vadis Apia.
15. I found it difficult to start and finish this after a long day. I couldn’t make any sense of 1d till I came here. Thanks to all for the explanantion. I did like VICTORIOUS, AWING and 1d, now that I get it. Apologies to the setter for being so slow.
16. finished in 35 minutes so was pleased. didnt undertsand Vide Supra until coming here so thanks all! thought 1 across was a very good clue. Solved the charles dickens clue wih one crossing L so was quite pleased with that!

    High quality puzzle i thought!

17. About 20 mins for me. Last one in was 1dn, which I got right but only clicked about how it worked once I checked it in the dictionary.

    I sympathize with anonymous above. Several times I’ve had the same experience of having a blind spot about the last clue, coming here and finding it is considere3d so obvious as not to be worth blogging.

    1. I got around that problem on Monday by being the blogger. My last in was obvious, and I blogged it anyway!
18. 12:20 Mostly straightforward apart from the unknown VIDE SUPRA but once I got all the checkers I couldn’t think of anything better so got it right.
    Noticed 3 rugby players across the 17a row. A Wing and the Fly Halves! (sorry)
19. Excellent blog Jimbo.

    Finished this in two sittings lasting twenty-five minutes. One error (a desperate guess at DROP for TRAP).

    Unfairly, I’m sure, DINOSAUR immediately put into my mind’s eye an image of the setter!

    I wonder how many other (3,6,6) novels there are?

    Got a lot of these from the definitions or intuition (VICTORIOUS, VERANDA, VIDE SUPRA among them) which confirms, as one blogger said yesterday, that you can be right without knowing why you’re right. At the outset it was a hunch that 1D was ???? SUPRA that enabled me to quickly get SAID, PEER GROUP and AWING.

    1. My copy of Chambers Fiction File (out of print) has just over 300 pages devoted to a list of books by title. I found my first alternative (3,6,6) on the fiteenth page (The Aspern Papers, by Henry James, which I suspect may well have appeared in the Times crossword). So I’d hazard a guess at between 10 and 30 (3,6,6) novels in total, mostly with THE as the first word. This may well be the only option with a different first word, and 8A being fairly easy, I suspect anyone who could think of a 3(=??R),6,6 novel thought of the right one.
    2. Are you sure you don’t mean the blogger? (!)
20. Missed yesterday while travelling back from Macau, but used the time profitably to polish off the Saturday puzzle in slightly less time than it took me to do last Friday’s Puzzle of Puzzles.

    Was still in holiday mode for this one, as I knew I should be doing it in half an hour but it took me double that. Not helped by getting Our Mutual Friend more or less immediately but not putting it in, because I’d marked it as 3,5,7.

    COD to the masterly VICTORIOUS.

21. Not much to add. I’m another who put in VIDE SUPRA without seeing the gag, so thanks, and I like it. My last two entries were the WINNER and RUNNING UP, due only to the connection between the two. I also had thought one of the ‘N’s was the ‘point’ and didn’t think of ‘W-INNER’. I believe I have a mental block about INNER in this sense. But I threw it in anyway, as I often do, on the theory that it has to be the correct answer. COD to AWING. regards.
22. Thanks dorsetjimbo. I’ve finally seen how ‘get you down’ works. Taken me a few hours, on and off, mainly off I hope. Strewth, how hard it is to be simple sometimes.
23. fter failing to complete several of the more difficult offerings recently, managed this one in under an hour, on a train trip from San Giorgio di Nogaro to Venice. But with one mistake: FILE instead of FOLD. I should have looked at it again. Glorious weather over the lagoon reinforced the sense of well-being from having finished the puzzle.
24. Would just like to echo Anonymous above about the value of visiting this site, not just to check/understand the answers, but also to read the witty exchanges. It is now a part of my daily crossword routine!
25. Am I the only one who wanted to put in T’Pau for 23A 😉
26. Just did this today.

    You’ve “deliberately omitted” the one answer I wasn’t able to solve or understand. British sports terms are my Achilles Heel. Now that I’ve seen that it’s FLY HALVES, I still need to ask for help (blush). Is it an anagram of LEAVE (ground) + something?

    1. No need to blush. We’re here to help and the daft thing would be not to ask. You’re making it too complicated. It’s: leave the ground=FLY; parts of match=HALVES (before and after half time)
       1. DOH! Thanks very much.

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