Times 24587 – Otter chaos!

Author   vinyl1Posted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Solving time: 39 minutes

Music: Beethoven, Piano Sonatas, Backhaus

This puzzle shows that you should not imagine you can finish quickly until you actually do so. Although I had all but the southeast corner done in 15 minutes, there were several things in that part of the puzzle that I had not heard of, which led to considerable difficulties. I had to use the cryptics alone to get those answers, and even then had to choose between a number of possible options.

The easier parts of this puzzle were for the most part straightforward, although I didn’t understand some of the cryptics as I solved, and am still wondering about a few of them. But I’m the sort of solver who scribbles in ‘Menshevik’ and ‘maelstrom’ at sight, and then can’t understand the cryptic for ‘calm’.

Beginners are reminded that obvious clues are not blogged. Since I often get stuck on the obvious ones, I am omitting very few.

Across
1 SOFIA, SOF(I)A. A bit obvious, with a very explicit cryptic.
4 MARTINMAS, MAR + TIN + MA’S.
9 OVERSLEEP, OVER + PEEL’S backwards. It is ‘past’ that clues ‘over’, so we must lift and separate.
10 IDIOM, I[sle]O[f](DI)M[an]. I put this in from the definition, and only just say the cryptic.
11 JUST SO STORIES, JUST SOS TORIES. More commentary on the recent election, especially if you expand the abbreviation.
14 M(E)AN. I am only including this one to pedantically point out that Ecstasy is not a hallucinogen, but an amphetamine. I don’t think the constructors are a reliable source of information on this subject.
15 DRAMATURGE, anagram of M[ino]R + GRADUATE. Once you pick out the ‘drama’ part, the rest should snap into place.
18 Deliberately omitted
19 CALM, CAL + M. Ridiculously simple, but I erased this because I couldn’t see the cryptic. The three- and four-letter state abbreviations were never standardized, but some are still used.
21 TARKA THE OTTER, T(ARK + A + THE)OTTER. This UK-centric critter I had never heard of, and had to get the hard way. He could have been Turna, too, but this seemed the more likely.
24 MERLE, [sum]MER LE[aves]. .
25 LIVERYMAN. LI(VERY)MA + [gai]N. A very convoluted cryptic which I have only just cracked, where ‘real’ = ‘very’ as in ‘the very thing’, and the ‘capital’ and ‘gain finally’ have to be taken together, and then do the securing.
27 Deliberately omitted.
28 ENTER. Seems right from the literal, but I don’t see the cryptic at all. Probably a subtraction clue, always difficult for me.
 
Down
1 SHOWJUMPER, double definition, one jocular, an old chestnut we haven’t had for a while.
2 Deliberately omitted.
3 ASSIST, sounds like A CYST, an odious clue but a good homonym.
4 MAELSTROM, MAE(L)STRO + M. I was looking for the name of a musician for just a bit, then saw it.
5 REPRO, R[oyal]E[ngineers]PRO. Presumably, ‘army’ is adjectival, since the Royal Engineers do not constitute an army.
6 INITIATE, I(NIT + I)ATE. Not one of the more convoluted clues.
7 MAIDSERVANT, anagram of DIVERTS A MAN. I just wrote this in from the literal. ‘Abigail’ is mostly 18th- and early 19th-century slang.
8 Deliberately omitted.
12 SLAUGHTERER, S(LAUGHTER) + ER. I puzzled for a bit trying to place a ‘terer’ before realizing that ‘laughter’, and not ‘laugh’, is clued by ‘mirth’.
13 WEIMARANER, anagram of AWARE MINER. Another unknown for me. Given all the dog breed names constructed from Germanic elements, I decided that ‘weimar’ was a likely start, and put the remaining letters in a reasonable order. Bingo!
16 MENSHEVIK, MEN + SH + anagram of KIEV. The literal hands it to you on a platter.
17 AGGRIEVE, A + G + GRIEVE. I did not know this Scottish dialect word, but I suppose our barred-grid solvers will have seen it.
20 COURSE, double definition. If you are ‘on course’, you are ‘aimed in the right direction’. My last in; I always struggle with this sort of clue.
22 ALLOA, A + L + LOA[d]. Another place I had never heard of; I needed all the crossing letters before I felt confident.
23 AMAH, A + MA + H[ired]. Very easy for American crossword solvers, since ‘amah’ and ‘ayah’ are staples over here.
26 Deliberately omitted.

30 comments on “Times 24587 – Otter chaos!”

  1. “Chips” is colloquial for a carpENTER. So, your intuition about subtraction was right.
  2. 14 min here, which is greased lightning for this aging bonce. ENTER went in without understanding and a lot of hope. NO stand out clues and (thankfully) nothing unknown. You don’t necessarily gain wisdom, but you sure accumulate facts.
  3. Regards to everyone. Same experience as reported by vinyl: Who is this Otter? Wordplay only there. I knew the dog at 13D, but was surprised by the anagram fodder since I didn’t recall how to spell it. Two ‘A’s’? Where do they go? The DRAMATURGE was a guess also from the fodder, not a word I’ve seen used very often if at all. Also didn’t know the ‘chip’ for carpenter bit, just went with ENTER from definition. Other than that, no problems, but due to the above-mentioned problems, about 40 minutes all told. Best to everyone.
  4. About 25 minutes, not counting the 10 I spent wondering how ENTER worked; enterides? enterlings? Also had trouble with MARTINMAS & ALLOA (in the never heard of it category) and LIVERYMAN (couldn’t see how it worked category). I thought real=live, which made Ryma the capital and I’d never heard of that either. TARKA THE OTTER should bring a smile to the face of all DIY COW enthusiasts, but it’s an in joke not worthy of repetition. An enjoyable puzzle on the easy side; perfect for a Monday.
  5. 18 minutes and quite straightforward. So there will be fast times all round I guess. Agree with mmagus about INITIATE and COURSE.
    On another matter re 1dn:
    > an old chestnut we haven’t had for a while.
    Guess vinyl didn’t do one of the weekend puzzles?
  6. A rare excursion into sub 30 minute territory for me. 29 to be exact so only just made it.

    Chaos might well describe my solving pattern today as I started by writing in odd words in all quarters and was some way into it before things started to join up and flow along nicely.

    Like Vinyl1 many of my answers went in without fully understanding why and a number of words were unknown to me WEIMARANER, MERLE, DRAMATURGE (I knew ‘dramaturgist’ so I bunged in what fitted and hoped for the best) and AMAH, though I’ve surely met it before.

    I’ve never heard of ‘chips’ for ‘carpenter’ nor have COED or Collins but Chambers has it.

    SHOWJUMPER turned up in the plural and with a hyphen in yesterday’s ST puzzle.

  7. Whole of left side in less than 20 minutes with MERLE from cryptic. Right hand side a different kettle of fish. IDIOM (didn’t see the island), ENTER (chippy yes, chips no) and MAIDSERVANT from cryptic, and had to use a solver for MARTINMAS (the TIN bit), to unravel the anagram for WEIMARANER and LIVERYMAN (had pencilled in LIVEROMAN, ROMA being my capital).
    Vaguely recall TARKA THE OTTER mystifying our friends across the pond on a previous occasion. A pretty popular movie was made of the story by Henry Wiliamson whose novel The Power of the Dead (from his huge A Chronicle of Ancient Sunlight) figured among my all time favourite novels list when I did such things. What’s more he was a local boy being born in Brockley in SE London, just around the corner from my own place of birth. Couldn’t find the novel on Wiki so all a bit disappointing. Well worth investigating.
  8. This was all done very quickly. Liveryman and Enter went in without understanding. Dogs are one of my blind spots but, like Vinyl, after I had guessed at Weimar there were not many letters left to juggle.
  9. 7:25 – got the easy words easily enough to find the trickier ones. 16D helped by re-reading Orlando Figes’s “A People’s Tragedy”.
  10. Very similar experience to vinyl1’s, in my case 20, 22 and 25 providing the interminable roadblock. 31 minutes eventually. Good to see ‘Tarka the Otter’ recognised as something worth reading (as it were) – it certainly is. One of the quiet lakes of my boyhood reading.
  11. 25 minutes. Thanks for the explanation of LIVERYMAN; I just couldn’t see that. I liked one of the easier clues, 27 across; the reference to Angels on Horseback has left me quite peckish.
  12. I probably need to do a study on the merits and demerits of solving on the tube. Around 22 minutes today, but misspelled WEIMARANER (I can’t count the a’s in the anagram fodder) and couldn’t understand the wordplay in LVERYMAN, probably because I got hooked on real=LIVE followed by a serious misspelling of ROMA. Didn’t know GRIEVE in this meaning, but no other gk issues. I did wonder if TIN = “source of provisions” was satisfactory. Last in (goodbye Mr Chips, though that was sort for Chipping, I think) ENTER, when I suddenly recalled the carp motif from earlier puzzles. CoD to the simple CALM.
  13. finished in just under 30 mins, which is as fast as i get. nothing actually unknown but several took a bit of remembering. left side went in quickly, however like others cryptic for 25ac and 28ac not understood til coming here.
  14. The humorist Frank Muir broadcast a version of Wind in the Willows, a line from which might appeal to people who enjoy homonyms. “Suddenly there appeared this old geezer. Well, it’s probably unfair call him an old geezer: he was more of an ancient water otter!”
  15. 21m and a pretty standard experience here, with a smattering of unknowns (Alloa, Angels/Devils on Horseback, grieve) and a couple of failures of understanding (IOM and chips), so thanks as ever for enlightening me.
  16. I found this pretty easy on the whole(very easy to begin with), but was slowed up working out the possible permutations for 13, finally settling on WEIMARANER from WEIMAR (of the Weimar Republic fame) at the end of 25 minutes. It was also a while before I saw TARKA, etc, which only came to me when I had the A from 22.

    I failed to work out the wordplay for 25, seeing ‘real’ as ‘LIVE’, not VERY.

  17. This felt very hard along the way, so I was surprised after (a quick for me) 30 minutes to only be stuck on 1d / 9ac / 27ac / 4ac. The first 3 fell in the next five minutes, and I ended up resorting to a solver to get 4ac. COD 12d.
  18. Speaking of homophones, they seem to be on the increase and can be aesthetically displeasing (as 3 today if not 8). There’ve been one or two gross ones recently. It’s not that they don’t work, and they can be quite clever in their way; but one hopes the setters remember that they can also be a trifle boorish.
    1. Do I detect an ally? They can also be down right irritating when they assume that everybody comes from the Home Counties.
  19. 17:55, a few things from wordplay only, aggrieve from def, checkers and partial wordplay, enter entered on a wing and a prayer.

    For the benefit of Vinyl1 and John from Lancs:

    homonym: n. a word with the same sound and spelling as another, but with a different meaning, eg kind (helpful) and kind (sort).

    homophone: n. a word which sounds the same as another word but is different in spelling and/or meaning, eg bear and bare.

    Seeing the ark in 21 and the invisible carp in 28 reminds me of Noah and the multi-storey carp ark.

    Oh and Koro, yes, Tarka raised a smile. Mind you, COW DIY was good back then.

    1. Chambers, Collins and Concise Oxford all agree that homonyms can have the same spelling and different meanings, and/or the same sound and different meanings.

      The words that distinguish between the two possibilities most clearly are homograph (same spelling) and homophone.

    2. For the benefit of penfold_61:

      Homophone, homonym and homograph can all be used interchangably. Dictionaries can’t agree on what they mean.

      1. No they cannot. I defy you to find any reputable English dictionary whose definitions would allow you to call (bow = shoe-tying knot and bow = bodily gesture) a “homophone”, or to call (bow = bodily gesture and bough = tree branch) a “homograph”.
  20. An easy 15 minutes but had to check WEIMARANER. Reasonable enough stroll in the park.

    Vinyl, I’ve seen a 14 year old hallucinate after taking E and Chambers defines it as both a stimulant and an hallucinogenic.

  21. Yes, a nice gentle intro to the week, especially after the challenges of last week, including Saturday. I had even heard of the dog!.

    Regarding homophones, joekobi’s trifle makes a sweet point. Seldom does the pronunciation of (say) Scousers, Geordies or mid-Atlanticists agree and I think tht this is very dangerous territory. It is not only booring, but boring as well!

  22. As far as the accuracy of homophones goes, this puzzle seems a bad choice of target. Can anyone suggest a variety of English where “a cyst” does not sound like “assist” or “sum” does not sound like “some”?
    1. As a paid up member of the homophone liberation front, I am not sure that the grumblers have valid cause for concern. I agree that regional pronunciation is great for variety and adding colour, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that one needs to ignore what may (or may not) be generally accepted as the default sound of a given word. Phonetic additions to dictionaries would not exist if they felt that they offended certain groups of people, or were overly discriminatory, however there is nothing wrong with offering a basic template upon which to homophonically doodle.

      If we were to stick to this politically correct notion of pleasing all-comers then surely spelling would be next on the agenda. I am sure that there are many words whose common misspelling or variation outnumbers its correct one and names are a case in point. Do we grumble if the setter uses Dennis in a clue, when it could be spelt Denis, or Denys, or to take an extreme example Sidney when some avant garde Jeremy Kyle reject may choose Cydnie…..

      I rest my case.

  23. 8.18. Read TARKA THE OTTER at school but might have struggled with the wordplay otherwise. Everything came fairly quickly except COURSE which was last in and took a bit of time. The IOM = Man trick might have caused a problem but I have encountered a similar clue before

Comments are closed.