Times 24581 – And the band played on

Author   kororarekaPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Solving Time: 25 minutes

I would have said this was an absolute doddle, had I not scribbled 11d in so fast that PAINTING came out PIANTING which turned Neville Cardus into Frederick Wildus (not a real person) at 20ac. Apart from that, there were things you just had to know, or make educated guesses at, like Howard Staunton. I tried a symmetric solve (1d, 25d, 6ac, 28ac and so on) rather than the much vaunted bottom up approach, and was amazed how long I was able to keep this up. Pride goeth and all that. And now I see I can’t explain 18ac. To top it off Wiki’s been down all morning. Quel débâcle!

Across
1 CATCH A COLD, double definition, the second of which is in Chambers. I’ve never heard the expression used to mean an unexpected loss, so I was at one until the very end and beyond. I’m presuming the question mark is for the first definition which could be construed as cryptic. Or perhaps it’s just a general WTF?
6 SCAR = SCAR(e)
9 SHALLOT = SHOT for try around ALL for every bit
10 TINFOIL = TIN for can + FOIL for cook one’s goose. My favourite today.
12 LIKE for admire + BILLY for boy + O for band’s shape = LIKE BILLY-O, a quaint old expression roughly equating to “like all get out” in the US. Precisely who William O’Flaherty was, nobody seems to know.
13 Deliberately omitted. Ask if your brain’s working a bit Largo today.
15 L.[I]A. + IS + Eager = LIAISE
16 ONE-LINER = ON for about + E.R. holding, captivating or otherwise entertaining LINE
18 VENDETTA is the answer. I’ve no idea why. I thought it was END for ruin inside VETTA for some city on the Med, but the only Vetta I could google was Portofino Vetta, which appears to be little more than a crossroads. Is it a currency? Is Vendetta a city somewhere near Omerta? Please post your suggestions. OK, the competition’s closed. It’s VALLETTA with END for ALL. Thanks to ulaca, who only just beat my own Largo brain this morning.
20 CARD for eccentric + US = CARDUS, Lancashire boy made good in Australia. He has occurred before on at least one occasion, but I couldn’t remember his name, especially with an I as a second letter prompt, which I didn’t even bother to check for correctness. Let that be a lesson.
23 NUT, double definition, the second cryptic.
24 (COUNT HAD)* + GO for shot = TOUCH AND GO
26 LEVERET = EVER for always in LET for allowed. A leveret being a young hare, hence potentially a tortoise racer.
27 CRIER around ThaT = CRITTER
28 SASH = (S for south + HAS)*. I didn’t even know the Dixie Chicks had broken up.
29 ENDANGERED = END for border + (GRENADE)*

Down
1 CASE = AS for when inside C.E. for Church of England. That’s a double definition (“carefully inspect” as in joints, “suit” as in court) plus wordplay
2 TSARINA = T.A. for Territorial Army around SARIN for nerve gas.
3 Deliberately omitted. Beatles fans can send letters of complaint to the address at the bottom or go back to the top.
4 CUTS IN = CUT SIN
5 LET for rent + ALONE for by itself = LET ALONE; much less in the sense not to mention.
7 CLOCK ON = CLOCK for notice + ON(e)
8 REALLY CROSS without the Exciting = RALLYCROSS.
11 NO OIL PIANTING (sic), double definition, the second cryptic.
14 ELEVEN-PLUS = ELEVEN for test + PLUS for bonus. Formerly a UK wide assessment system, now restricted to parts of Buckinghamshire
17 STAUNTON = S for small + TAUNTON for county town. A guess on my part. Howard Staunton was a 19th century chess master after whom the design of today’s familiar chess pieces was named; the Staunton pattern. The wooden box a chess set comes in is called Howard’s storage.
19 NATIVES = N for name + A + ST IVES
21 DOG STAR, double definition, the first cryptic.
22 energetC + HA HA for laugh around Conga = CHA-CHA
25 GRID = GR for Greek + I for island + mainlanD Thanks to joekobi for correcting my fanciful parsing

43 comments on “Times 24581 – And the band played on”

  2. Thoroughly enjoyable 40 minutes, with only one put in on the first run-through (DOG STAR) and the rest dropping steadily after that. Last in, from a clutch of idiomatic expressions, LIKE BILLY-O, which gets my COD for the elegantly misleading surface. Mentions in dispatches to CLOCK ON (with the idiomatic us of ‘clock’ for ‘notice’) and LET ALONE. (Howard) Staunton was new to me, but then again my knowledge of chess is commensurate with my ability to play the game.
  3. Following Jimbo’s somnambulation through last Tueday’s puzzle participants were looking for something simple yet worthwhile to set before beginners. Well this is it. STAUNTON from wordplay and took a moment to justify VENDETTA but otherwise completed in my usual unhurried way in about 1/3 of normal time.
    It seems the criterion for submission of puzzles to Memories is where experts need something more substantial than an egg-timer as a measuring tool. Might this be added as an example of a beginners’ puzzle, nevertheless full of invention and fun, and likely to turn a dabbler into a NUT (my COD)?
  4. 7:28 and should probably have been quicker – at 1A I overhastily bunged in the rowing expression CATCH A CRAB, so struggled with 5D. Also had a bit of trouble with 10, 7 and 8 in the same corner.
  5. I agree with barrywldm – devious but not devilish. This to me is the true Times in low gear. I think in 25 the I is ‘island’ not ‘one’ which is the grid-unit. 17 minutes, 3 mainly, apt to 1 ac. here and there, the latter my last in.
    1. You’re quite right. Not a good day for me. I wonder what I thought the island was doing there?
  6. 11 m – no quibbles, last in vendetta and liaise, solved top down to begin, then bottom up, cetral finish.
  7. Well glory be! One at my level at last. A leisurely 25 minute solve with no queries or quibbles. Possible hazards for me were the two names but I had heard of the Staunton chess set without knowing exactly who he was and I knew Neville Cardus because in addition to his cricket writings of which I know nothing he also wrote about music, one of my specialist areas of knowledge. As others have said it was a lively and entertaining puzzle, so a good start to my week.

    Has anyone had problems accessing Times On Line? Members of the Crossword Club are entitled to free membership until 31st January next year and one needs to register, which I did some weeks ago. But last week I received an email advising that my 5-week trial period had expired and inviting me to pay for continued access. I am now locked out and although I can get to the front page which recognises me as a registered member (Hello, Jack) everything I then click on takes me to a page demanding payment. Emails to their support people have so far elicited a response confirming that Crossword Club members are entitled to access but nothing to explain why their system isn’t working and what they are doing about it.

    1. Same problem here, slightly different response from The Time – “Known problem third party to resolve”

      B. Spain

    2. I had exactly the same problem with the crossword club itself about a month ago. It recognised me, but kept going to the payment page rather than the content even though I had renewed in March. This happened on a saturday so I waited until monday to call and they were less than helpful. The woman “fixed” the problem whilst I was on the phone but could not tell me why it happened, or offer any guarantees that it might not happen again – it was “one of those things”. The annoying bit for me is that I rarely use the online as a hard copy reader, and have it as back up when I am abroad, away from home etc. Therefore this one weekend perhaps wasted about 10% of the value of my subscription!
    3. As a paid-up member of the Crossword Club, having signed on to the 5-week trial period, I received an e-mail headed “For you, our brand new websites are complimentary” with a button directing me to “Activate now” and giving me an access code. On pressing the button, it took me to a page with my details and gave me one of their “human recognising” texts to enter which I did and it kept saying it did not match and I could not proceed. I eventually e-mailed the help address and they said I had experienced technical difficulties unfortunately beyond their control. I was urged to try again, not using cached pages or favourites to access the site. I have now successfully registered for free access until 31st January 2011.
      1. That’s my experience too. I’m still waiting to see a message from the Times that says the technical difficulties were the fault of someone at the Times. I think I’m also waiting to see any similar website giving out so many instructions not to use favourites, or (the other stock suggestion) to delete cookies.
  8. This is a genuine beginners’ puzzle because, apart from the volunteers at 2D, it is mercifully free of the clichés that experienced solvers get instantly and are so off-putting for beginners. There was some imaginative clueing, particularly of Like-Billy-O and Vendetta. Some of the DDs had a familiar ring to them: No Oil Painting and Dog Star but a good joke sometimes bears repetition.
  9. 17 mins — filed under “nursery slopes”. The SW was the hardest part; appropriate given the mentions there of St Ives and Taunton? I’m with Mr K: a couple of bob on TINFOIL by a short head.
  10. Definitely a PB for me, but not quite a <PB (better than Mr.B!). I have yet to time with a second hand, since I have only ever broken 10 mins four times, so I only know this one to be 8 minutes, [given a variance of rounding it was perhaps as low as 7:30 he says wishfully…even that would not have been good enough.]

    The reason why I suspect this was so accessible was the lack of concealment of straight definitions, such that often the answers were going in, as Peter says, “without immediate understanding of the word play”. There was also no heinous vocabulary, and the small amount of general knowledge, CARDUS, STAUNTON, was very gettable from word play.

    My usual nemesis of a handful at the end doubling the time didnt happen either as I think the clues were of a uniform difficulty throughout the grid. Only things that held me up briefly were pencilling in CATCH A CRAB and LIKE KIDDY-O (assuming boy was a synonym not an example) however LET ALONE quickly changed them. Also was looking for a nerve gas comprising of “monarch-TA” with an A included, but again checkers soon gave the game away.

    All in all a great confidence booster, and nothing unduly crass or clunky.

  11. Lots to thank the blogger for today: I didn’t understand VENDETTA; STAUNTON and CARDUS were guesses; and I didn’t see what SUIT was doing in 1dn. So thank you.
    Otherwise this was a very easy yet enjoyable puzzle. It must have been easy because I did it in 9.06, which is the fastest time I’ve ever recorded by a margin of about 2 minutes, also therefore my first time under 10 minutes. So I’m quite chuffed this morning.
      1. Thanks. 9 obviously!
        It’s a less tangible barrier but what I’d really like is more consistency, i.e. to complete even the harder puzzles reliably, and ideally within say an hour (for starters).
        I’ll keep at it: this blog is undoubtedly helping.
  12. 13 minutes, so a stroll in the park. I didn’t quite understand BILLY-O (the “band’s shape” didn’t work for me) and I toyed with CHECK IN, for no good reason, and SPANISH for type of onion (ditto) which slowed things down a bit. Intrigued to see the verb creation LIAISE take a bow, as MS spelcheck always rejects it, but what do they know? CoD for creating a short chortle to RALLYCROSS.
  13. My usual 26 minutes. A whiff of the 1950s about this, don’t you think: TINFOIL, LIKE BILLY-O, CARDUS, ELEVEN-PLUS, Lassie? I sometimes try to guess the age of the compiler from the film-star references (Clark Gable, Mae West) or the use of the term “ted” to mean a youth. I’ve not heard “Like Billy-O” used in conversation for many a year: it seems to have gone the way of “’Pon my soul” and “By Jove”.
  14. As a teacher, mainly of 11 to 13 year-olds, I have for some time now taken to writing a Times cryptic clue in the corner of the board, to be solved later in the day.

    I am, therefore, always looking for clues that are not only on the easier side but whose content or answer might appeal to younger minds. Today’s offering is unusually rich: REALLY CROSS to RALLY CROSS is perfect, and TINFOIL, SCAR, KEY, even LEVERET would produce the desired effect. We also have the ELEVEN PLUS here in Warwickshire, so that might get an outing as well.

    There’s little chance for me beating the experts, but perhaps one day a future champion might remember groaning at NO OIL PAINTING at the end of a lesson…

    Of course, someone once suggested that the Telegraph had more on offer for the younger solver, but we have to maintain some standards in education!

    1. Perhaps one day … this past champion remembers little puzzles used by one primary school form teacher to fill 5-minute gaps before assembly. Not all word-based and never cryptic xwd clues, but the idea of a puzzle to start the day was planted.
  15. Like most other correspondents commented, a pleasant Monday meander taking 24 mins.

    VENDETTA was very sweet, but COD to RALLYCROSS for its giggleworthiness!

    1. How come I didn’t remember the billy-o’s name then? It appears he has become my nemesis.
      1. If you also find yourself walking into rooms and thinking “Now what did I come in here for?”, welcome to the ‘damnit, but I’m still young!’ club.
        1. I prefer to think my memory has become very selective in its dotage; only keeping things which are essential to my existence, and jettisoning everything else, like pin numbers, dog’s name, address, etc.
  17. I found this even easier than the easy one we had last week, and took only 15 minutes to complete it. It did allow me time to complete the Jumbo, where I still had 7 unsolved clues.
    I missed seeing 1dn as a double definition, so was puzzled by ‘suit’ in the clue
  18. I found this even easier than the easy one we had last week, and took only 15 minutes to complete it. It did allow me time to complete the Jumbo, where I still had 7 unsolved clues.
    I missed seeing 1 dn as a double definition, so was puzzled by ‘suit’ in the clue
      1. I think it was Tuesday’s. It was the one that was criticised by dorsetjimbo for having simple, dull clues.
  19. 11 mins, last in 17D STAUNTON where S=small caught me out. Lots of nice surfaces, though the voluntary nerve gas inhalation in 2D seems rather improbable.

    Tom B.

  20. 11 minutes, pretty breezy solve, remembered CARDUS from before. STAUNTON from wordplay, VENDETTA, NATIVES from the definition. Rather fun puzzle.
  21. 10:30 or thereabouts with probably a minute at the end trying to dredge Cardus up from the cobwebby recesses of what passes for a brain.

    I wonder which piece of knowledge taken for granted I will be surprised to find that Mark doesn’t know today. Probably leveret or rallycross.

  22. An excellent fun puzzle, just right after 18 holes. Interesting words, simply but well clued. 20 minutes of good relaxation.
  23. 5.19 . Helped by getting 1a immediately and knowing CARDUS and STAUNTON. Must be about 2nd or 3rd quickest solve for me so needless to say everything was plain sailing.Last in TSARINA which I had passed over earlier thinking nerve gas might have been the definition.
  24. About 25 minutes for me. Held up by a few bits of UK-centric stuff, i.e. ELEVEN PLUS, LIKE BILLY O, CARDUS, CATCH A COLD, CLOCK as notice, etc.. Beyond that, not too tough, and well done. Regards.
  25. Did this with about half a brain engaged, then found myself seriously stuck. Entering CATCH A CRAB, and ALL ALONE while in a dream state had not been a good idea. Took a 23 min in total where half of that would have been more reasonable. A nice little Monday number.

    Re Crossword Club. Is this still going to be offered? Or am I going to have to choose between paying a full subscription for content which is of no use or interest to me, or passing on the crossword?

    1. Yes, the Crossword Club will still be available. The Times may some things wrong in providing the club service but it is not crass enough to simply remove it in toto because access to the paper is being charged for. Here’s the statement from the club’s Bulletin Board page, which has now been available for about 3 weeks:

      June 15

      Times Online closing

      As from today, the Times Online website, timesonline.co.uk, will no longer be available. It has been replaced by our two new websites: thetimes.co.uk and thesundaytimes.co.uk.

      You do not need to register for these sites to access the Crossword Club. If you already have a bookmark for the club, it will continue to work, as will your existing log-in details. Alternatively, you can use the following link: crosswordclub.co.uk.

      The Crossword Club is also accessible via the Puzzles menu on thetimes.co.uk.

      I don’t know for certain whether this applies to all crossword club members, but at least some of us have been offered free trials of the new websites for something like 6 months.

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