Times 24,534

Author   topicaltimPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Around 25 minutes, for a puzzle which I would describe as punching above its weight i.e. with a lot of clues where I could see what I was being asked to do but took a good while to work out the exact terms involved. Throw in two or three solutions that I had to check for blogging accuracy after solving, and this was one of those that turned out to be harder than it looked at first sight. Either that or it was just because it was a late night solve and my brain was slower than it is after a night’s sleep.

Anyway, we shall see which: apart from 10 across, I thought this was a fresh challenge, and enjoyed it.

Across
1 STOCK CAR – (RACK + COTS)rev.
9 ALL CLEAR – LL in A CL(ass) + EAR; the bookend to the air-raid warning.
10 MALAWI – A W(ar) in MALI; have to say this one had a whiff of chestnut about it.
11 NATIONWIDE – (INTOAN)* + WIDE; the almost obligatory cricket allusion – N American solvers, think “ball”.
12 KIWI – Wellington being the NZ capital, and the term applying equally to native man or flightless bird.
13 HOMOGENISE – (ONEGI’S)* in HOME.
16 LEGIBLY – (BIG)rev. in LELY; once I hazarded a guess that it might end -LY, the painter fell into place straightaway.
17 HABITAT – (A BIT) in HAT; the hat meaning of “Derby” is a regular, often in conjunction with a mention of famous Derby-wearers Laurel and/or Hardy.
20 ANAGRAMMED – A,NAG,RAMMED: I always like a self-referential clue.
22 BARB – double def; first one I had to confirm afterwards, as I wasn’t certain of the species of fish; though as I at least knew about their near relatives, the barbels, it wasn’t a huge leap in the dark.
23 FORTEPIANO – next one that I had to check: but if someone could call their invention the PIANO-FORTE, why not the other way round?
25 TRIFLE – T(arget) or (targe)T + RIFLE.
26 ORIGINAL – 1 GIN in ORAL; “novel” had me looking for the anagram, so nice little deception.
27 EULOGIST – (LIE GUSTO)*.
 
Down
2 TRAMLINE – double def. the first one referring to lines in a tennis court.
3 CHASTISING – C(aught) + (IS in HASTING).
4 CHINCHILLA – CHILL in CHINA gives this provider of fur.
5 RAGTIME – RAG + TIME.
6 OLIO – O(ld) + (OIL)rev.;third and final one where I had to check what the wordplay was telling me; apparently derived from the Spanish for stew rather than the Italian for oil, and thus meaning any mixed collection of ingredients, edible or not.
7 GEMINI – GEM IN 1.
8 BRIEFEST – Mmmm…French cheese; I liked the idea of a Brie Fest.
14 GRAND TOTAL – GRAN + D(aughter) + TOT + A L(arge).
15 NAIL BITING – BIT in NAILING.
16 LEAPFROG – cryptic def.
18 AIR MILES – AIR (=publicise) MILES(=a chap); I was looking in vain for MM or some other military award, before realising that “award for being high-flier” was the full definition.
19 AMIABLE – i.e. “AM I ABLE?”.
21 ADROIT – A(ce) + DROIT, i.e French opposite of “gauche”.
24 PUNT – double def; these days I imagine the punt is probably most associated with Oxford and Cambridge; you can tell which is which because Cambridge punters stand at the wrong end of the boat.

36 comments on “Times 24,534”

  1. Also struggled with parts of this – 22/28/25 was the last bit but, plenty of other trouble. OLIO known from barred-grid puzzles along with the fairly similar OLLA.
  2. I enjoyed this one a lot, and finished in 12. Only AIR MILES struck me as slightly duff, mostly because I thought you got air miles for anything other than “being a high flier”, and I’m never really sure about having a name clued solely by “chap”. Otherwise lots of goodies, LEAPFROG and AMIABLE coming close behind BRIEFEST for my CoD.
  3. Straightforward enough but including some very nice stuff. Liked in particular ANAGRAMMED and AIR MILES but COD to the delightful BRIE FEST.
  4. No particular hold-ups with this one, a steady 25 minute average run. ALL CLEAR brought back memories as older solvers will recall the siren testing that used to go on in London and elsewhere for several years after the war. I would add KIWI to the MALAWI list. However, I don’t recall seeing BRIE-FEST before and thought it a delightful clue.
  5. Didn’t manage to finish this, unable to get ALL CLEAR and OLIO in n-w and the 16 dyad, although LEAPFROG was staring me in the face. Particularly disappointed at 6dn, as I turned ‘old’ up, a well as ‘painting’, to give LIOO rather than OLIO. So near …

  6. I had serious doubts that I would finish this one without resorting to aids but just made it having taken exactly an hour. I’ve no idea what took me so long.
  7. Very similar experience to others here – some easy ones but quite a few that I struggled with but then couldn’t really see why once solved. It took me an age to get LEAPFROG which opened up the SW and then for some reason even longer to see AIR MILES, which was last in. A bit less than an hour in all. BRIEFEST is great.
    What’s the word “on” doing in 22ac?
    1. I think it’s fine if you think of the “barb” as being part of a hook rather than the hook itself, a definition which my dictionary certainly supports (OED describes it as a “subordinate” recurved point)…
  8. I struggled with a couple of clues. couldnt see the word play for tram line but can now!
    also had twinge instead of trifle which made air miles an impossible solve. i quite like twinge except on reflection i can see that it isnt the right answer!
    Oh well there is always tomorrow. Liked briefest and anagrammed!

    1. Oh and yeh … why are so few “team” members commenting on a daily basis these days? There are some we never see on the pitch at all unless it’s their own day. If enthusiasm were the decider, Barry would surely be in the team by now!

      1. A lot of gardening needed right now……what I should be doing instead of playing here!
      2. I suspect most just think that apart from chipping in with another time, they don’t have anything to say that hasn’t been said already. There might be lack of enthusiasm on their part, but there might also be more complete reports than we used to have.

        Comments are welcome from anyone, but not compulsory …

        1. Some are never here at all.
          Maybe the selectors should consider turning up for training as part of team selection?
          1. Most daily puzzles get 30-40 comments, from a range of people including a few of the people who write reports. I don’t see what regular comments from say 7 regular commenters instead of 3 or 4 would add to this. My main requirement for “team selection” is that people can supply reports reliably.
            1. I’d love to have the time to comment here more regularly, but at the moment I’m not even managing to solve the puzzle every day. Right now, I’m trying both to identify a time window in which to solve and blog last Sunday’s puzzle and to stay awake, and am about to fail on at least one count.
          2. Just in terms of bloggers of the daily puzzle Peter, Jimbo, George, Kororareka and Vinyl1 are all regular commenters. Five out of eight(?) is pretty good IMHO.

            I’d like to see Sabine and Topical Tim comment regularly – not because I think they should but because I enjoy their witty blogs and I think regular contributions from them would add to the entertainment value of this site.

            1. Eleven regular bloggers if you include Saturday and Sunday – three days have one person, the other four are shared.

              I’m sure we all have favourites among the contributors, but we do need to remember that some people may be just too busy to comment every day or think that their fortnightly contribution is more valuable.

              1. Oops, forgot about Jackkt (no slight intended). In terms of the Monday-Friday crew that’s 6 of 9 bloggers who comment regularly which hardly qualifies as “few”.
            2. Very kind of you to say so, Penfold, old man.

              Obviously I am sorry if it upsets anyone that I’m not here more frequently and/or vociferously. However, Peter is broadly correct in his surmise, in that on days when I’m not blogging, my current preference for the crossword involves tackling it in the evening with the first glass of something reviving to hand. Let us not forget that doing the puzzle is supposed to be a leisure activity and a pleasure, after all.

              Thus, by the time I come here to see what others thought of the puzzle, there is frequently nothing terribly helpful I think I can add, that hasn’t already been said, and generally said very well.

              As I do not delude myself that solvers the world over will not rest easy until they know what time Tim recorded for that day’s puzzle, and whether he has given it his stamp of approval, I usually find that silence is the better course 🙂

              1. Not sure how or why my name arose here but just to say I wouldn’t want to belong to a team that had me as a player.
  10. Thank heavens for Malawi, or I’d never have gotten started. In the end it took about an hour, but many minutes were spent bewildered by AIR MILES/BARB and TRAMLINES/KIWI (I may have to officially hand in my avatar). Many excellent clues in this one, but you can’t go past BRIEFEST for COD. I even liked LEAPFROG and I’m not a big fan of cryptic definitions.
  11. 45 minutes in two sittings to get down to only 16ac unsolved. Doubts over TRAMLINE (I knew it was right but couldn’t see why!) didn’t help, but taking the first L as ‘large’ kept leading me up dead-ends.

    BRIE-FEST for me , too. Would the English version be a Cheddar Gorge?

  12. Darn it, slipped up again. 20:20 but with legible instead of legibly, not being familiar with Lely.

    I enjoyed the way “hearing organ” was woven into 9 but I agree with others that the Wallace and Gromit tinged briefest has to be COD. Had to go through the alphabet (well as far as B, anyway) for that and tramline, my last in despite playing tennis regularly.

  13. 17m. Worked top down; I have an old cook-book called the Olio which was first in. Enjoyed 8, 16, 21, wondered if 26 was a book name, last in 25 & 18.
  14. I don’t often post here because it takes me so long to do the puzzle that everything has been said by the time I look at the blog. I managed to get AIR MILES today, having received an email from BA saying they were reinstating my 42000 air miles which had elapsed. Like some others, I started well with some easy clues, then for a while it was like wading through treacle. I gave up the ghost when I was left with one clue unsolved – LEGIBLY. It seemed so straightforward now I’ve seen the answer. COD to BRIEFEST.
  15. 24 minutes up to an impasse with 2/12 and 23/24. Stared at them for five minutes, gave up, went to work, must have solved them in my head while teaching as when picked it up at day’s end all I had to do was write the answers in. Reminds me of when I used to motorbike to work, would revolve something to do with words (not always a crossword clue) in my head, forget it all once through the school gates, then on the bike on the way out it would all be there and ticking over. Hey, this was a fine grid – with that touch of humour.
  16. I found this on the harder side, getting held up by TRAMLINE/KIWI and AIRMILES/BARB. About 45 minutes or so, although most was filled in after about 20 minutes. I don’t know the tennis court meaning re 2, nor the BARB fish. AIRMILES and KIWI simply succeeded in misleading me for quite a while, so I’ll award them joint COD. Regards.
    1. Kevin,

      The tramlines on a tennis court are what we call what you call (I think) the doubles alley.

      Our terminology is way better than yours.

  17. Excellent puzzle, I thought, 40 mins. Esp liked NATIONWIDE, LEGIBLY, LEAPFROG (my last answer), TRAMLINE, BRIEFEST (my COD), ORIGINAL.
  18. Dash! Thought of BRIEMEET but still couldn’t get 8 down. Also thought 23 across didn’t need “the first being bigger”.

Comments are closed.