Times 24527 – Stand and Deliver!

Author   vinyl1Posted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Solving time: 30 minutes

Music: Van Morrison, Astral Weeks

Another two-parter. About 15 minutes for most of it, and then 15 minutes for the last three, and I didn’t make it easy for myself either. A wrong spelling for ‘ukulele’ and an ‘O’ that looked like a ‘P’ really killed my time. However, I was able to put my anagram theory for place-names to good use, even though it would have been a lot faster to have heard of that football team.

The easy part consisted mostly of putting multi-word answers in from the definitions, without bothering with the cryptics. This will cut your time tremendously if you can do it. Unfortunately, I got stuck a bit on ‘to say the least’, and had to work out the anagram.

You are reminded that easy answers are not blogged, but I will be kind tonight and give all but the easiest ones. If you can’t get those, just ask.

Across
1 KILMARNOCK, anagram of NORMAL inside KICK. This was an unknown target for me, so I had to solve it blind. I could see how the cryptic worked, and I had the crossing letters. Since many Celtic place names start with ‘Kil’, putting the ‘I’ at the beginning seemed right. That left only one place for the ‘O’, leaving ‘M’ and ‘R’. Now if it had been KILRAMNOCK, the ‘M’ would have become ‘N’ by assimilation, so it must be KILMARNOCK. Bingo!
9 NIGHTIE, NIGH + TIE. Elusive because of the order, otherwise not difficult.
10 METHANE, anagram of THE NAME.
12 PANELLISTS, PA(NELL IS)T’S. I was fearing something dreadfully topical that would require knowledge of UK game shows, so this came as a relief.
13 DOT, double definition, both a bit old-fashioned and out of use.
15 OLD HAT, double defintion. Since ‘Dolly Varden’ can refer to a railroad, a mountain range, a trout, or a Dickens character, there are plenty of possibilties here. I rather suspect the setter only knew the hat. I was trying to solve P _ D _ A _ for quite a while before I saw my error.
16 CLAYMORE. C(LAY M)ORE. Just banged in from the literal by me, so I had to examine the cryptic for the blog.
18 UMBRELLA. UMBR(ELL)[i]A. Another easy one.
20 CHIDER. C(H)IDER. Spotted early from the literal, which has been used before.
24 IN THE BLACK, double definition. Yes, this undertaking is profitable.
26 UKULELE. UK + U + LE + LE. I carelessly put in ‘ukelele’, a spelling that does seem to have gained a foothold, even though etymologically incorrect. I had to fix this to get ‘banquet’, of course.
27 ADAMANT, A + DAM + ANT, a legendary rock whose name has become a generalized adjective.
29 DEPORTMENT, DE(PORT)(ME)NT.
 
Down
2 LAGGARD, DRAG GAL backwards. ‘Drag’ and ‘draw’ are the first words you should try for something like this.
3 AT THE SAME TIME, anagram of SHE AND I MET MET. Obvious from the enumeration.
4 NEEDLE, NEED + LE. A bit tough for me, I was looking for a word that meant either swindle or party for the first element. Literal is the full phrase, ‘to be irritating’.
5 CAMISOLE, CAM + I + SOLE. Literal again is inadequately concealed.
8 SWEETHEART. S(W)EE THE ART. Used before, and not so long ago, I recall.
11 TO SAY THE LEAST, anagram of [w]E STAY AT HOTELS. I don’t like the literal in this one, but the idea is clear enough.
14 NO SUCH LUCK, anagram of COUCH, SLUNK. The juxtaposition of the anagram words is a bit too obvious to fool most solvers.
19 BANQUET, sounds like BANG + QUIT. I got this despite a wrong crossing letter, which I then corrected.
21 DICTATE, CID backwards + TATE. Two of the most frequently-used elements in cryptic construction.
22 PEDALO, P(ED)(AL)O. We have had this word recently as well. In order for the two boys to fit into the river, the river must have two letters, and there is only one such river!
25 STET. S + TET. ‘Tet’ is another essential bit of construction material that all solvers should know

33 comments on “Times 24527 – Stand and Deliver!”

  1. A somewhat lackadaisical 20 min here. Seemed like a case of deja vu all over again. Nothing stood out.
  2. Just a little additional idea:
    Adam Ant is a rock entertainer. Not so sure how legendary he is.
    Barbara
  3. Double the time of Vinyl, split in much the same way for much the same reasons. Getting 11dn kickstarted my effort and then the rest slowly fell into place, CLAYMORE being recalled from the Blackadder II episode with MacAdder, the other Scottish word being no problem to one brought up on James Alexander Gordon. PANELLISTS held me up because I didn’t realise Nell was a short form of Helen. PEDALO last in.

    Re TO SAY THE LEAST, I can accept this as a paraphrase of ‘to moderate terms’, but wonder what others feel about the use of ‘with’?

    To Vinyl – you might want to fix the typo in 27ac.

  4. A lightning fast (by my standards) 26 minutes here, which means it must be very easy. The real experts will probably finish in less than five minutes without breaking sweat.

    I’d like to think the Adam Ant joke was intentional. I had a friend a few years back who knew Adam before he achieved his 15 minutes. I think his real name was Stuart. As a consequence, i still have a copy of Antmusic in my record collection.

  5. 20 minutes, the last couple brainlessly waiting for ‘chider’. I’m sorry for the natives of Kilmarnock who don’t like football. I think ‘with’ in 11 is OK; the three-word phrase can mean the answer, if a touch awkwardly. Don’t much like ‘quet’ for ‘quit’ though in 19.
  6. 7:32 with one crass mistake – a bit easier than I was expecting for a Bank Holiday. Also wrote the duff version of the uke first, but had doubts, so reviewed it when 19 just felt too difficult.

    The mistake – inventing LUGGARD for 2D and justifying it as LUG=pull,rev. of DRAG=dressed as a female so must match “girl” somehow.


  7. Off to a bad start writing my first answer, IN THE BLACK, at 14dn. Both answers end with K so solving 28ac next did not draw attention to my error and it took me a while to realise why I was having problems continuing on that side of the puzzle.

    I also spelled UKULELE wrong despite noticing that the first of the three Es in UKELELE was not accounted for in the clue so BANQUET remained unsolved for most of the session.

    I also had problems in the NW until I thought of KIND at 1dn, then the football club came to mind and everything in that corner fell suddenly into place.

    The final struggle was the 22dn/27ac intersection in the SE. I didn’t know the “legendary rock” reference so I wrote ADAMANT in without any degree of certainty.

    45 minutes, but it felt like longer because I had three or four spells of about 5 minutes when nothing at all went in.

    I’m not usually bothered by dodgy homophones but “bang quit” sounding like BANQUET is awful.

    1. But that’s how the vast majority of the British population pronounce it, Jack. Rather liked it myself.
  8. Post-solve checks for Dolly Varden as an OLD HAT and for DOT as a dowry. Yes, and stuck UKELELE in early thinking I’d worry about the E later, then struggled with BANQUET as a result. (Funny how so many of us seem to think the E version of UKULELE is current when COED disagrees). Found this quite a struggle and put it down to being a Bank Holiday toughie. Pleased to finish thinking this indicated progress only to come here to find that contributors found it easy. Must be irritating to live in a place nobody has heard of other than those who do the football pools.
  9. A rather boring 15 minute stroll in the park with a strong feeling of deja vu

    I can’t understand the problem with UKULELE – the word play could hardly be more laboured and obvious. KILMARNOCK the place has little to recommend it. Set in SW Scotland it is a product of the industrial revolution and has that appearance.

  10. I’m delighted at least that Chambers recognises UKELELE as a common spelling (not misspelling). Here’s the amazing Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain’s home page, which includes the legendary version of Ode to Joy written “by Beethoven for 1008 ukuleles” at the proms. 18 minutes (again) today, with no stand out clue (except the give away for spelling UKULELE that I too didn’t see). Sadly, HEN made me chuckle.
  11. 13m. Still can’t break the 10m barrier, even on a basic puzzle like this one. No such luck! Nothing much to report except that I was driving a one-legged 80+ year-old ex-Channel-Islands butcher to hospital this morning and he asked what I did while waiting around. I told him and he said “The Times cryptic is [expletive deleted] hard isn’t it?” When I showed him today’s completed puzzle, he parsed half of it on the drive home: about 30 minutes, Fremantle to Armadale. And he hadn’t seen one for about 40 years!
    1. Oh yeh … and to Vinyl … your best choice of music by far in … um … weeks!
  12. Things that I learned today: (1) I have been mispronouncing banquet all my life as bank’wet instead of bangk’wit. It’s a good job I don’t have many. (2) Adamant is a legendary rock and the unyielding meaning is metaphorical.

    Things that I knew: (1) There are several spellings of ukulele so be careful; (2) Dolly Varden is a ladies’ accessory. Unfortunately that knowledge was insufficient as it caused me to bung in Old Bag.

    1. About 15 m but not trying for speed. No hold-ups but wondered if the homophone police would worry about banquet though natural for me to say “quit”.
  13. Could you please reconsider your policy that ‘easy answers are not blogged’? ‘Easy’ is very much a subjective, rather than an objective, test.

    Today’s crossword is a good example. For me, ‘Kilmarnock’ was straightforward and ‘obvious’, first in (I’m neither Scottish nor a football freak). Certainly didn’t need the tortuous exercise reflected above. However entering 6ac as ‘a son’ caused some problems; and the blog leaves out 7dn which links with 6ac.

    I enjoy coming to this site, fortunately usually to check that I’ve got things right for the right reasons. Sometimes because I’m stumped and would like to be enlightened/educated (as well as entertained by the often witty comments). I’m old enough to remember the ‘Thet (sic) Offensive’ and its impact; I’m not sure that comments such as ‘Tet is another essential bit of construction material that all solvers should know’ are really helpful to those in my position.

    1. I think you have to take the rap for 6A. (2,2) is there in black and white. Given ?? ?S from the supplied answer to 8D, what other ?? AS, ?? IS or ?? US phrases could possibly fit? Likewise ??-A?D-?O for 7D from the supplied answers – is there any other (2-3-2) as opposed to (2,3,2) phrase?

      I don’t always agree with the clues other people classify as easy, but in the context of a grid filled with the answers supplied in this report, today’s selection really are easy. And if like vinyl1 you’re a non-British solver, you have to work out Kilmarnock. The points about how it was worked out are the kind of things to think about when faced with an anagram for an unknown answer, so good advice.

      If you’re old enough to remember the “tet offensive” (as spelled by ODE) then you don’t need to be told about it. But the blogger can’t guess your age and knowledge – for solvers under 30, it’s worth knowing that this snippet is one worth remembering.

    2. “Easy answers” are not blogged for reasons explained in “About this blog”.

      If you have a question with an omitted clue, just ask. I am not sure if you are asking about 6ac and 7dn, but just in case…

      6ac AS IS – A SIS(ter)
      7dn SO AND SO (could be SO-SO ie indifferent)

  14. I have decided to try the Times as often as possible rather than hop between the Telegraph, FT & Indie. (Don’t like the Grauniad because it has so many themed puzzels).As a novice, the problem I have is time -it’s fine for those who can sit down and 30 mins later have either finished or be stuck on one or two but chances are than after 30 mins I’ll only have about 10-15 out. I know it is down to practice.
    I had “as on” for 6a which didn’t help. I’m with lennyco on the pronunciation of banquet.
    15a Dolly Varden-This meant nothing to me. Should it have done?
    1d I assume is kind -but in what sense does kind =character? It was a kind of meat? He was one of a kind?. Doesn’t quite fit.
    1. 1D: “character or nature” is a def. for kind in COED, with the example: the trials were different in kind from any that preceded them. Dolly Varden was a Dickens character (Barnaby Rudge) who seems to have inspired a whole look. The hat is the usage you’re most likely to come across in puzzles. I had to look her up the first time I saw this phrase.

      Best offer on saving some time: split your available time into a couple of equal chunks a few hours apart. Forgetting ideas that led nowhere and just having a break can help a lot.

      For “as on”, I’d emphasise the importance of being able to find a convincing def for a familiar phrase. I can’t see anything in the clue to define “as on” (nor a meaning for the phrase without something like “TV”). If you’ve got an idea based just on possible wordplay, it’s best kept as an idea only – if the checking letters match, then it’s worth a punt.

    2. With limited time the decision to raise your skills level by concentrating on just one puzzle is sensible. Each offering has its own style (the Gruaniad is obvious but it’s also true of the others). Once you have improved on the Times alone you’ll find you can then switch around a bit.
  15. 13 minutes, had KILNARMOCK originally, but then saw NEEDLE and hoped that was enough to get the place name. Raised an eyebrow at the wordplay (I’m going to coin a term, if I don’t agree with a homophone clue I’m going to call it whirredploy) at 19. A lot of little phrases today. I liked the clue at 8 down a lot.
  16. 9:28 here, with a silly minute wasted on the wrong spelling on UKULELE. Ridiculous, for as dorsetjimbo says, the wordplay couldn’t be clearer. CHIDER also gave pause, but pretty straightforward for a Bank Holiday, and for me, rather dull.
  17. I had a bit of a time with this one. I believe SHE I MET MET AT A is the fodder.
    1. Good call, though it’s 3 down! I think it may be the kind of anagram where there’s enough to get the phrase without checking thoroughly, and there’s then a strong temptation not to check but to move on. It actually also makes better sense of the word play: the anagrind is not “at a roundabout” which I thought dubious but didn’t check, but just “roundabout”.
  18. Sorry to be late. About 30 minutes, ending with CLAYMORE after correcting the misspelled UKULELE to enter BANQUET, like many others. I only knew the CLAYMORE as a mine, so that was a guess. Mirrored vinyl1’s parsing of the unheard of KILMARNOCK. It sounded Irish to me, so I’m surprised to learn it’s in Scotland. Also had the same sense of relief at PANELLISTS. I liked 8D, clever. Regards. Happy Bank Holiday, if somewhat late in the day.
  19. It’s also a type of hat, so worth remembering along with Dolly Varden.

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