Times 24536 – Short Simple & Sweet

Author   yfyapPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Coming back from a week of no crossword while visiting Shanghai, it took me quite a while (nearly an hour) to get into the groove. Nevertheless, it was quite fun especially the superb 3S (short, simple and sweet) double definition in 5Down.

ACROSS
1 PRESTO Ins of REST (balance) in PO (Post Office)
5 PERFORCE Cha of PER (rev of REP, representative or agent or salesman) FOR + CE (empty CasE)
9 APHORIST Ins of PH (first and last letter of ParisH) in AORIST (a tense, esp in Greek, expressing simple past time) I was stuck here for a while and on a hunch decided to punch in AORIST in Chambers and what a relief … phew !
10 WRECKS Sounds like REX (a type of cat of either of two varieties, Devon Rex or Cornish Rex, with a curly but thin coat)
11 COME UPON Ins of ME (writer) in COUPON (voucher)
12 PENNON Cha of PEN (writer) + NO N (name)
13 SULPHIDE *(is held up)
15 ha deliberately omitted
17 I SEE I (symbol for current in physics) SEE (bishop’s office) I hope this is clear. Oh! I see ! (cue for a wry smile)
19 DEEP DOWN DEEP (intense) DOWN (blue)
20 CAIMAN Ins of AIM (object) in CAN (receptacle) ) any of the Central and S American crocodilian animals of the genus Caiman and related genera, similar to alligators.
21 CREATION REACTION (response) with C (Conservative) moved to the front like David Cameron
22 OTIOSE Ins of TI (it back) in GOOSE (bird) minus G (no good)
 adj (of a word, expression, etc in a particular context) superfluous, redundant; unoccupied; indolent; functionless; futile.
23 URBANITY Ins of R (middle letter of CambRidge) BA (Bachelor of Arts, degree) in UNITY (one)
24 ENTRANCE Ins of R (right) in *(canteen)
25 TRENDY Ins of END (tip) in TRY (essay)

DOWN
2 REPROVAL Ins of PRO (for as in pro’s and con’s) + V (versus or against) in REAL (unfeigned)
3 SMOLENSK Ins of MOLE (spy) in SN (south and north poles) + SK (first and last letters of SicK)
4 ON IMPULSE *(smile upon)
5 PUT IN THE PICTURE What an excellent dd
6 FAROESE FARO (game of chance played by betting on the order of appearance of certain cards) ESE *(SEE)
7 RACINESS RACINE’S (French tragedian’s) S (singular)
8 ELSINORE *(relies on) for the scene of Shakespeare’s Hamlet
14 DO ONE’S BIT Doones (From Lorna Doone, a novel by Richard Doddridge Blackmore) Bit (minimal amount of information)
15 FRUCTOSE *(Sucre oft) a water-soluble simple sugar found in honey and fruit.
16 ALPINIST Ins of PIN (tack) in A LIST (lean)
17 INSTANCE Lady Chatterley was CONSTANCE. Substitute I (one) for CO (company) This brings back memories of the early 60’s when I was a schoolboy and how we wrapped the infamous Penguin in plain paper and passed the book round. What an innocent world then
18 ESCORTED E (last letter of sidE) + ins of T (time) in SCORED (put ball in net)
19 DEAD SEA Ins of AD’S (notices) in DEE (river) + A . Nice def
 
Key to abbreviations
dd = double definition
tichy = tongue-in-cheek type
cd = cryptic definition
rev = reversed or reversal
ins = insertion
cha = charade
ha = hidden answer
*(fodder) = anagram

24 comments on “Times 24536 – Short Simple & Sweet”

  1. An hour for me, after racing through most of the puzzle in 20 minutes. Held up by two in the west, COME UPON and CAIMAN (I knew only the ‘y’ spelling), and also by the NE corner, where PERFORCE was considered quite early on but shelved. I’ve always taken ‘willy-nilly’ to mean ‘in an unplanned manner’ (‘there were plants willy-nilly about the room’), not knowing its more literal meaning, ‘with or without the will of the person concerned’, derived I now see from a contraction of either ‘will I, nill I’, ‘will he, nill he’, or ‘will ye, nill ye’.

    In the end, I was only able to see the cryptic after getting FAROESE at 5dn, my COD for its well camouflaged anagrind ‘bats’. Coming here, I see I failed at 10ac, my last in, where I wrote ‘cracks’, without too much confidence, but on the basis of the sound a cat o’ nine tails makes.

  2. Sorry – the (immediately? – 23/7 comment) above is me. I’ll take the opportunity to apologise for the scruffy picture – it was a snap of a six-year-old’s “portrait” of me that if I have a soul may get somewhere near it.
  3. I too was held up by Cayman/caiman with the islands in the way. 28 minutes. Also by wrecks as discarded it ignorantly at first as a dog’s name. Not sure of the dd of 5 down myself. A flavour of 23 rather than 7 today perhaps.
      1. Thanks ulaca for ‘cast’ explanation. It is amazing what one doesn’t see sometimes. Neat.
  4. 50 minutes on the move with lots of interruptions.

    I started well and solved all of the top half with some ease, but in the SW I had gaps at 20ac and 22ac and indeed OTIOSE and CAIMAN were my last in.

    Completion of the SE corner was delayed by my inability to spot the long word in 5dn but once I had worked it out 21ac and 23ac followed on immediately.

    At 3dn my usual source of names of lesser known Russian cities, Tom Lehrer’s “Lobachevsky”, let me down for once, but fortunately the checking letters helped and I was not delayed for long.

    I have a friend in Minsk,
    Who has a friend in Pinsk,
    Whose friend in Omsk
    Has friend in Tomsk
    With friend in Akmolinsk.
    His friend in Alexandrovsk
    Has friend in Petropavlovsk,
    Whose friend somehow
    Is solving now
    The problem in Dnepropetrovsk.

  5. 11:40 for this one, and I suspect others may be quicker – it took me a distressing amount of time to think of CAIMAN, and 17/18/25 were another stumbling block, with 17’s wordplay a mystery until I read the report. Poor work, as I’d wondered whether the STAN in the middle was the gamekeeper’s first name.
  6. My heart momentarily sank when I read Uncle Yap’s heading Short, Simple & Sweet as I had decided this was tough. Left half in OK with guesses at CAIMAN and APHORIST (aorist-ouch!) but only a few solved on right half before resorting to aids to finish. I too thought PERFORCE was opposite of Willy Nilly and that rex was a dog. The feverishly thumbed copy of Lady Chatterly at school passed me by so did not know she was a Constance, an ironic name if ever I heard one.
  7. 8:35 for this, so Peter’s suspicion was correct. Took far too long to see the elegant PUT IN THE PICTURE, though, ran through plenty of four letter games before alighting on FARO, and decided ‘piquancy’ was an obscure anagrind for ‘singular’ to give my French tragedian before the crossing C appeared, so could certainly have been a minute quicker.
  8. Quick till long ponder over 17/18/21 – 19 m in all. Top half helped by the cat, the playwright and the compound, then 5 & 8d led into the rest. Enjoyed it again.
  9. For the third time this week I have been undone by one clue, giving up with 20ac unsolved after about half an hour. Today I did kick myself when I checked here because it’s perfectly gettable from wordplay. Mind you I struggled for a while with 15dn so I’m clearly not on form today.
    Otherwise a sense of relief because APHORIST, WRECKS and FAROESE all went in without full understanding.
    Am I right in thinking the FOR in PERFORCE is indicated by “to”? I got this answer quickly but couldn’t see the wordplay for ages.
    1. Perforce
      I read it as “…..coming back to get” as in “coming back for (something)”.
      1. Thanks – that makes sense. Coming back refers to the rep obviously but “for” = “to get” works, particularly in the context.
        I was thinking of “the train for London” = “the train to London”.
  10. I enjoyed this one even though I didn’t know the alligator, the cat, the French playwright or the card game.

    My eye was caught by the two groupings of blank squares in the grid making symmetrical Es. I think Peter has told us before that this is one of Edmund Akenhead’s grids and dates back to the early days of the Times crossword?

    I recalled SMOLENSK with sadness because it was the site of last month’s plane crash that killed the Polish president and many other dignitaries.

    Blue meaning low/down seems to have cropped up a lot recently and Lorna (Doone) made up part of an answer a couple of weeks ago.

    1. … is an Akenhead one which I think is retained for sentimental reasons – no other Times grid has any fully-checked answers. “Early days” is a bit of an exaggeration – Akenhead took over as xwd ed in 1965 when the puzzle had been going for 35 years, but made various changes. A new set of grids, including this one, is just the easiest improvement of his to identify – if you ever find a Penguin book of 1940s Times puzzles, you’ll see some terrible grids by modern standards, with triple unches among the faults. I believe he also at least encouraged setters to reduce the frequency of old-style clues which could lack a definition or complete wordplay, for instance.
  11. Made steady progress until I hit the NE corner and then stopped, looking at PER—CE, —-ESE, —-NESS and what was to become ELSINORE & WRECKS for longer than I care to say. Eventually decided if it was PERFORCE then it had to be FAROESE etc etc, although for more than a moment I couldn’t connect racINEess with RACY at all. Oh, well. COD to ELSINORE for making me think “not Danish ports, now!” and then turning out to be a nod to the bard. But there were many other fine clues here.

    As for aorist the less said the better. And I’m with Barry again; Felix is the cat, Rex the dog, as in all those I-don’t-think-he-saw-us-Rex dinosaur jokes.

  12. Fell asleep last night with 7 and 10 empty, then got them at a fresh morning reading, so about 6 hours all up. APHORIST from definition without seeing wordplay, but a few from wordplay alone – CAIMAN, OTIOSE, FAROESE.

    Smolensk reminds me of Mr Pither’s Cycling Tour

  13. Whizzed through 90% of this in about 15 minutes and then ground to a halt. thought of perforce but like many above thought willy nilly meany haphazard…struggled to find Caiman but did eventually and also Faroese and Raciness which was almost my COD..

    is it my imagination but are these getiing harder by the week?

  14. I thought this was an excellent puzzle with short, succinct, clues and no ambiguities in wordplay. I may have been lucky to have known pretty much all the references, including CAIMAN, so had a fast time for me, 20 mins. Favourite clues, PRESTO, DEEP DOWN, CREATION, PUT IN THE PICTURE.
  15. 9.40 Didn’t get CAIMAN until 16d was solved as I also only knew the Y version. I had stupidly put in PRONTO at 1 which only caused a little bit of delay. Last in was the pair REPROVAL and COME UPON mainly due to not fathoming the wordplay for the former.
    Helped by knowing Lady C’s first name.
    Good puzzle
  16. 13:03 here, another fairly straightforward one for me, where I knew all the trickier words but was a bit slow to see some of the easier ones. Literary GK is one of my better subjects (hence my TLS blogs), so this one suited me fine with Hamlet, Lady Chatterley and Lorna Doone all appearing.
  17. This was short and sweet for me for the most part, but I screeched to a halt in the NE, where I had the same – “no, it can’t be…” – reaction to PERFORCE as some others, which held me up, along with not knowing M. Racine, nor Rex as cats, and having trouble recalling 4-letter words for games. So about 10 minutes for most of it, but 35 minutes altogether, last entry WRECKS. Regards all..
  18. Funnily enough our well-thumbed copy of Lady C went round in brown paper, labelled “Lorna Doone” which was our English set book at that time (early ’60s)!

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