Times 24,594 – sending the keeper the wrong way

Author   topicaltimPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
I went to check my time and found I hadn’t started the watch, but I’d guess average time +20%, as I made a quick start to this, but found there was more deception than I’d bargained for – several clues where it wasn’t just a question of seeing immediately how the clue hung together and just finding the right word, but it took time even to see what formation was required. All in all, a puzzle requiring full attention.

I don’t think there’s any really arcane knowledge, unless you’re from a non-footballing background (perhaps this should have been published during the World Cup): two interlocking artists, but a smattering of science as well. As far as I was concerned, a very enjoyable workout.

Across
1 HOPPER – (c)HOPPER, most famous for his painting Nighthawks, I would guess.
4 SPONSOR – N(orth) and S(outh), bridge partners, inside SPOOR.
9 RECAP – [PACE + R.]rev. From the Latin pax, pace is “with due respect to”.
10 ADEPTNESS – A DEPT. NESS.
11 AMSTERDAM – M(←A)STER DAM: this was very densely-packed, where “expert, a leading” parses as “find a synonym for ‘expert’, then move the ‘A’ to the start of that word.”
12 IMPLY – (s)IMPLY.
13 IRON – double def.
14 MARBLE ARCH – MARCH around BLEAR.
18 MINERALOGY – (GERMANYOIL)* &lit.
20 BLOC – BLOC(k).
23 LICIT – given a lolly, one would naturally LIC(k) IT.
24 GET-AT-ABLE – GET A TABLE. I paused to consider whether this might be written as (9) rather than (3-2-4), but the latter is indeed as it is given in the OED.
25 CLEARANCE – double def.; as was no doubt intended, I started by trying to find a longer word from which I needed to remove an O.
26 GUANO – [ON AUG(ust)]rev.
27 MISUSED – U (U=Uniform in the NATO alphabet) in MISSED.
28 MASSIF – MASS (service) +IF (provided).
 
Down
1 HERBARIUM – HER BARIUM is the metal she has; “Flora preserved”, making use of the misleading capital at the start of the sentence, is the definition. A herbarium is a collection of dried out plants, which makes it sound rather like my garden.
2 PICASSO – [PICS around gAS] + 0. It took me a while to see that lead-free fuel had nothing to do with the constituent chemicals, but meant fuel without the leading letter. Don’t remember seeing the device before, and it pleased me.
3 ESPIED – (ISDEEP)*. This didn’t spring out as an anagram, which is a victory for the setter to begin with, plus I was convinced the “saw” would be a proverb or tenet.
4 STEAM – A in STEM.
5 OUTSIDER =”OUT CIDER”.
6 SWEEPER – S(treet) + WEEPER, and the simple “back” being the definition; for those who regard football as a foreign language, the sweeper is a defender who plays behind a traditional pair of centre-backs and literally (in the sense in which football commentators use it, i.e. metaphorically) sweeps up anything they miss.
7 RISKY – (f)RISKY; I was pretty sure this would begin with (f)UN, until I realised the U was an unlikely ending for 4 across.
8 LAND RAIL – ornithologists will already know that a land rail looks like this.
15 BEGETTER – E.G. in BETTER.
16 HACKED OFF – HACK + ED + OFF.
17 ARCTURUS – ARC + T(a)URUS. Arcturus is big, and one of the brightest objects in the night sky.
19 NICKELS – NICK + ELS(e); “change in US” = coinage you might receive as change in the US, ‘lift and separate’ required to stop you looking in vain for the involvement of a US prison word such as “can”.
21 LIBYANS – (SLAINBY)*; a second anagram which didn’t leap off the page, thanks to a convincing surface, and the hard-to-avoid tendency to look for MO or DR as soon as one sees “doctor”.
22 STIGMA – T(rouble) in SIGMA.
23 LOCUM – (CO)rev. in LUM. I suppose knowing LUM would depend on whether you’re familiar with Scottish New Year traditions, and sayings such as “Lang may yer lum reek” (Long may your chimney smoke), for which you don’t have to be Scottish, of course.
24 GONAD – recordingG ON A Disc; medically, gonads are part of both male and female reproductive organs, but if you’re lowbrow like me, you’ll have immediately thought of the Viz character Buster Gonad.

21 comments on “Times 24,594 – sending the keeper the wrong way”

  1. This a felt like a long time, but may have totalled around 20 minutes, starting on the Underground and finishing (last two) on the Overground – so tempting to add “wombling free”. Didn’t know HOPPER (shame on me) and “back” as the definition for SWEEPER eluded me for a while. I thought MINERALOGY was really well clued, and NICKELS was one of the best deceptions in a good bunch. The unknown LAND RAIL was last in, as I needed all the crossing letters to make a decent each way bet. LIBYANS looked as if the I and Y were the wrong way round, but I resisted the temptation. CoD to the simple but chuckleworthy LICIT.
  2. 23 minutes here, with a few rationales taken for granted. Sorry to quibble topicaltim, but a footballer doesn’t literally sweep, not the pitch anyway. COD to 3 for a finely veiled anagram.
    1. Ah yes, that was originally going to be a joke at the expense of football commentators, whose inability to use the word “literally” to mean anything but “metaphorically” is one of the reasons I watch games with the sound turned off these days. And then I forgot to put the important bit in.

      I have amended, though after making that error, I literally have egg on my face (actually, on inspection, I don’t).

      See also: saying “to be fair” when what you clearly mean is “to be honest”.

  3. This was a fairly pedestrian puzzle that got a pedestrian solution from me. Stars and birds are two of the many subjects that I knew nothing about so I had to work hard at the wordplay to get them. There are only about 20 stars in the dictionary so I really ought to learn them all. Checking on Land Rail afterwards I find that most dictionaries have it as one word, Collins being the exception. If it had been defined as (8) I would have found it even more difficult.
  4. 8:00 here, which I’d count as 20% less than average. I think I got all but 8 on first look, though some of these were fairly long looks – like finding the science that wasn’t an -ology, which required writing out the letters. Why relatively easy for me? Probably just getting a good start.

    The 7 posers: 4, 14, 25, 1, 6, 17, 19, 22 – of which 17 and 6 (last in) were the trickiest for me. Helped a little by Arcturus being the Listener pseudonym of former ace Listener solver Ross Beresford. Answers written without full wordplay understanding: 11, 14, 2, 22 (though 2 and 22 came through a few seconds later).

    But reading through other comments, I now see that I wrote LYBIANS at 21. Oh dear …

  5. 27 min. Would have been comfortably under 20, but for a most embarrassing error. It is NICKEL knuckelhead! And I majored in chemistry. My attempt at an excuse is that spelling errors in vertical format are much easier to miss. All in all, a most pleasant puzzle. COD to MINERALOGY. Very tidy.
  6. 32 minutes, after being misled by all the compiler’s diversions.
    I can never see a land rail or corncrake without chuckling at Molesworth’s skool botany walk.

    The corncrake is a clever fellow he is a ventriloquist and can thro his voice. Did you sa he could thro it in the dustbin as far as you are concerned, peason? That is not nice. ‘Who were you out with Friday, baby?’ Wot boy said that? The corncrake, molesworth? I saw your lips move I shall report you on return.

  7. Here are the results of a sad bunny full-text search of both Chambers and ODE.

    Numbers quoted are positions on the wikipedia list of brightest stars. Planets masquerading as stars (Venus in particular) are not on that list. Don’t forget that Alpha, Beta, Gamma, etc. can be used for the brightest / second brightest (…) star in a constellation.

    Acrux(23), Achernar(8), Aldebaran(13), Algol(59), Alpha Centauri(4), Altair(12), Antares(16), Arcturus(3), Bellatrix(27), Barnard’s Star, Betelgeuse(9), Canopus(2), Capella(11), Deneb(19), Denebola(61), Fomalhaut(18), Hesper/Hesperus (evening star), Lucifer (can mean Venus as morning star), Mira, Phosphor/Phosphorus (morning star), Procyon(7), Proxima Centauri, Regulus (22), Rigel(6), Rigil, Sirius(1), Spica(15), Sun(0), Vega(5)

    A total of 31 possibilities, at least half of which I’ve seen in puzzles. Usually the wordplay will be fairly helpful, but it’s worth noting the Regulus/Rigel/Rigil group, and that 8 of 31 start with A.

  8. The same 15 minutes as yesterday and about the same level of difficulty. No real talking points.

    The use of “lead” to mean first rather than the metal occurred at 20A in 23,798 on 1st January 2008 where the blog also made reference to the reeking lum!

  9. 21:12 .. a couple of minutes at the end for the light to dawn on ARCTURUS.

    And now the realisation that I, like PB, have the less known LYBIANS at 21d. At least I’m in good company.

  10. An interrupted 45 minutes with two letters missing as I just couldn;t think of anything to fit ?R?TURUS. Didn’t know HOPPER or LAND RAIL but what else could the answers be?. I wasn’t fooled by the soccer stuff or the Scottish chimney. Lang may yer lum reek.
  11. As commented, variously by me and rosselliot, it really doesn’t help that, when put vertically some words just look wrong. Close cousins, the Lydians with their mode, and the Lycians with their league contribute to the confusion by being spelt the other way. I came close to checking the accompanying newsprint for the correct spelling, but ended up just happy that we weren’t required to spell Gaddafi. I’d have put at least one H in there.
  12. 21 minutes here, and I was very pleased with this time because there were a few unknowns for me that required a bit of concentration: HERBARIUM, LAND RAIL, ARCTURUS, LUM.
    From my perspective 17dn is a good example of what you might good/fair obscurity. For this non-scientist luminous discharge = arc had to be dredged up from some very distant recess of memory, and Arcturus itself was completely unknown. However with the help of the bull and checking letters I was able to get there so it felt perfectly fair.
    An enjoyable puzzle.
  13. 15.35 Well fooled by the SWEEPER and IMPLY cross , also if you had asked me to spell 18 I would have offered an OLOGY – probably still will in a few weeks. It just doesn’t look right to me. Got the two artists quickly but everything else took a bit of thought and for a while I thought the SW corner would be a brick wall. COD for 6 although if you’re not into football then it might be a bit of a pig to solve
  14. As last week’s were difficult, so this week’s (so far)are not. 20 minutes for this, but I had several thoughts about 24a: I have never seen GET-AT-ABLE written like this before. COD to AMSTERDAM.
  15. I got through in about 25 minutes, no real problems. I didn’t know the star, my last entry, but got it from the wordplay after being misled throughout thinking I was looking for a def. of ‘luminous discharge’. Certainly didn’t know that a ‘lum’ is a chimney, but I saw through the SWEEPER bit. Regards.

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