Times 24,546 – Whan that Aprille…

Author   topicaltimPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
A sprightly 11:55, so not the stiffest challenge, but a puzzle with several entertaining features which I liked.

(Apologies for late arrival, technical difficulties, at my end rather than The Crossword Club, just for a bit of variety.)

Across
1 WRAP – W(ife) + RAP.
4 MY FAIR LADY – (FAMILY READY)*; lift and separate the musical family to reveal the definition.
9 JAMES JOYCE – JAMES + JOY C.E. – I began by looking for a David, or other kingly name from the Bible, rather than one who published a version.
10 TREK – TRE(e) + K; I guess some people will not like tree clued as “plane”.
11 STUPOR – STUP (=PUTS back=”replaces”) + O.R. Clever wordplay.
12 FRANKLIN – FRANKL(y) + IN, one of Chaucer’s Canterbury-bound tale-tellers.
14 SOUP – SO + UP.
15 AUTODIDACT – AUTO DID ACT, one who is self-taught, and who can be deduced not to have been formally educated.
17 HAIRSTREAK – H(ot) AIR + STREAK; another nice bit of clueing with “barely to move” giving us “streak”. If you see one in the UK it’s most likely to be a purple one.
20 CALF – double def.
21 HYSTERIA – (THISYEAR)*.
23 STROBE – S(hor)T + ROBE.
24 CODA – COD + A.
25 UNDERSTOOD – UNDER + STOOD, i.e “got”; deftly economical clueing.
26 SQUARE MEAL – A R.E.M.E. in SQUAL(l).
27 RUDE =”ROOD”; are cross people always rude when they speak? Not sure that they are, myself.
 
Down
2 REACTIONARY – (ANYRACERIOT)*; lots of dicussion on the radio right now debating the Queen’s Speech, which seems to claim her Parliament is no longer Left vs Right but Progressives vs Reactionaries.
3 PIED PIPER – nice cryptic def. hinging on the possible meanings of “blow”.
4 MAJORCA – (JAM)rev + ORCA.
5 FLY OFF THE HANDLE – more cryptic def.
6 IRELAND – 1 + RE-LAND.
7 APRIL – A P(ower) RIL(l) for the proverbially showery time of year.
8 YUKON =”YOU CON”.
13 IN COLD BLOOD – another (barely) cryptic def.
16 DECORATOR – in other words, a DEC(ember) ORATOR.
18 TORTURE – (RUT)rev in TORE.
19 KESTREL – ST. R. in KEEL; another definition which is subtle / unsatisfactory depending on your view of definition by example, and how far it should be allowed to stretch.
21 HOCUS – C in HOUS(e); more usually seen as part of HOCUS-POCUS; from the same root as HOAX.
22 SADHU – (HADUS)*.

35 comments on “Times 24,546 – Whan that Aprille…”

  1. Long time lurker responds, given that I appear to be fairly early today! Found the top half extremely easy, managed in record time, but got bogged down in the bottom half, especially on 17ac and 25ac. I could see HAIR…E.. and UNDER.T.O., but just couldn’t get the rest. Cheated on 17ac, and the rest swiftly fell into place. In retrospect, my own dimness at fault and I should have just come back to this later and enjoyed the satisfaction of finishing with resorting to ‘aids’.
  2. One of the benefits of being an autodidact is/was that I was able to skip Chaucer so I had to guess the tale teller. Couldn’t figure the STUP bit of STUPOR and got HOCUS from WP. Flew through this until meeting the wall in SW corner eventually plumping for HAIRSTREAK which gave me KESTREL, those 2 taking as long as the rest put together.
    All newcomers are most welcome.
  3. 12:08 here, so a fairly quick solve for me. I took a while to come up with HAIRSTREAK at the end, but the rest of it I found pretty straightforward.
  5. 8:50 today. Pretty much plain sailing with the unknown HAIRSTREAK giving the only real delay , this was second last in , TORTURE was last. Also must confess to not knowing HOCUS other than with POCUS.
    I didn’t notice the wordplay for 4 until coming here. That would be my COD.
  6. 9:56 .. Dash it! If I’d known I was that close to Peter I’d have written faster!
  7. Quite an easy puzzle, with some nice touches, 21 mins. Favourite AUTODIDACT.
  8. First time ever (probably last) to get an = pb and beat PB – 8 m. It all suited my gk and I felt in tune with the setter. Liked 5d and the fact that it was possible to work out the clues afterwards – I wondered about kestrel too, but it could only be that from the crossers, it was my last in after 17 and 25.
  9. A nice steady solve for the first 29 minutes by which time I had completed all but 15ac (second half), 20ac, 23ac, 13dn and 16dn and then I ground to a halt and spent as long again trying to polish them off before arriving at work and using a solver to find AUTODIDACT, a word I didn’t know though I have heard of “didactic”.

    Once this was in the others followed quickly. I was particularly annoyed with myself for not thinking of CALF or DECORATOR having previously considered both DEC and ORATOR separately at various stages of the thought process but didn’t spot that the two components might fit together. If only I’d had the D in place sooner.

    HOCUS (own its own)and HAIRSTREAK were new to me.

  10. Didn’t get a time down, solved during breaks in rehearsal but it all came together pretty quickly. HAIRSTREAK and KESTREL from wordplay.
  11. Stumped by HAIRSTREAK, which I’d never heard of, but nice to see JAMES JOYCE crop up again, after my encounter with him in Trieste last week.
  12. All but 17 done in 30 minutes, but that one defeated me. Never heard of it, but I appreciate the punning “seen barely to move” in the wordplay, which I didn’t see at the time.
    I definitely do not appreciate ‘replaces’ to indicate the reversal of PUTS.
  13. Just 41 minutes for this one, a veritable walk in the park for me. Last in the 10-letter across pair of 15 & 17, the latter from wordplay only. COD to STUPOR for managing to render convoluted wordplay redundant by an easy definition.
  14. On course for a really fast time today when I hit the last in HAIRSTREAK which I was determined to work out without recourse to aids, taking too long. Sometimes in these things you come across a word you know you’ve never seen before, and this was one. I felt like I’d slipped into one of those parallel universes where only minute things are different.
    I liked the punning DECORATOR and CALF today, and replaces=STUP is fine by me.
    1. Indeed, but it’s the &lit. element of the clue I was questioning rather than the definition.
  16. When the blog didn’t appear by 10 am I suddenly thought “Is it me today?” and had a funny five minutes whilst I established that it wasn’t. One of my nightmares is just forgetting to do it!

    This was straightforward in the event with some interesting turns of phrase to add spice to a pleasant 20 minute solve. My last in was KESTREL as I struggled a bit with the definition. I associate owls with catching field mice and am not aware that falcon have a particular liking for them. Defining something by a subset of what it eats opens up quite a wide field of possibilities!

    1. I often have the same feeling in alternate weeks…unsettling, isn’t it?
  17. 15 minutes while eating a pasta salad so probably equivalent to 12 minutes flat out.

    I thought “barely to move” was very clever so that gets my COD. I underlined plane crossly/rudely as unqualified D by E.

  18. Similar story to you all. I enjoyed it, wasn’t held up overly, thought James was David for a bit, last in HAIRSTREAK after the “barely to move” penny droppped. Replaces = puts back is the thin edge of a very long wedge, but fortunately seems to be reserved for occasions where the answer is pretty obvious and you are thus in a position to enjoy the joke.

  19. This was another routine affair with only a slight smile raised for autodidact. The definitions seemed harder than the cryptics today with Pied Piper, April, Franklin and, particularly, Kestrel being defined wackily.

    My grumpiness yesterday about misleading link words continues. At 18 “In agony …” makes the solver look for an adjective rather than a noun. I don’t know if this is deliberate misdirection or elegant variation. I finished with Torture and Hairstreak, having toyed with Hairstweak. Hocus was also a new word for me today. Chambers suggests that hocus and hoax are both derived from the sham Latin hocus-pocus.

  20. Usual rate for me apart from 17, 18, 19 which took nearly twice as long again and ended with 40 minutes. I like the clues today though unsure about the anagram indicator in 4 ac. The sly ‘it takes mice’ seems alright somehow – ultimately I suppose with these riskily suggestive clues it’s how neat one feels the whole equation is – an appeal to the subjective. Or something. Never heard of hairstreak but loved the clue.
  21. Stumped at the end and resorted to aids for the 2nd day in a row for HAIRSTREAK. Butterflies, especially UK butterflies, are not my specialty. If we have HAIRSTREAKS over here, I wouldn’t know about them. Everything else went in relatively easily, and I liked KESTREL, even if there’s some quibble about ‘keel’=’ship’. Better luck to me tomorrow, and regards to everyone.
    1. I don’t think there’s a problem with ‘keel’ as it’s in Collins as a poetic word for ‘ship’.
      1. Well spotted – I didn’t look in Collins, but the etymology seen in COED (for keel = a particular type of boat) suggests there might be some terrible Dutch/N German jokes about the Kiel canal.
    2. I recall from college being given ‘keel’ for ‘ship’ as an example of metonymy, or synecdoche. Or something like that. Where’s vinyl1 when we need him?
  22. 16 mins, last in by far (inexplicably) was 18D TORTURE – self-exemplifying, for me. Kestrels tend to eat small mammals, sparrowhawks small birds. My COD would be 25A UNDERSTOOD.

    Tom B.

  23. Took ages to find a footing (HYSTERIA), then a nice steady solve until 17 ac left. Hairstreak? No – ridiculous. Parrotbeak? No – a flower. What then? Gave up after 5 min and went for assistance. Grrrr. So 24 minutes. COD: UNDERSTOOD, but would have been HAIRSTREAK if they had managed to get to NZ.
  24. Nice clue, if one could stomach the blatant d by e. I was surprised that dorsetjimbo didn’t draw attention to this.
    1. If it hadn’t been mentioned in the blog I would have done. Unfortunately rather like estate and car, plane and tree are so frequently used they’ve become accepted but like you I still don’t like them.

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