Times 24,600 The Forked Zugzwang Gambit

Author   dorsetjimboPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Solving time 25 minutes

A high standard puzzle that required concentrated attention. There are no less than six clues that are double or triple meanings. I think the only real obscurities are the chess term that will have been very easy for those that play but rather difficult for others and the ancient noble. I enjoyed this so my thanks to the setter.

Across
1 PROTOCOL – PRO-TO-COL;
6 PUNISH – two meanings 1=like a pun; 2=to fine is to punish;
9 GNAT – TANG reversed; a “smack” is a TANG;
10 ASPIRATION – (sitar + piano)*;
11 FIANCHETTO – F-(the action)*; in chess to place the bishop on the long diagonal;
13 RANK – three meanings 1=J Arthur Rank; 2=highly offensive; 3=position;
14 DISABLED – DI(SABLE)D;
16 ASLOPE – AS-LOPE;
18 IN,VAIN – IN VA(I)N;
20 EXECRATE – EXEC-RATE;
22 RHEA – two meanings 1=a flightless bird; 2=one of Saturn’s moons;
24 GET,STUCK,IN – GETS-TUCK-IN; Billy Bunter for food=TUCK;
26 IRON,MAIDEN – to do housework=IRON; young woman=MAIDEN; Maggie at school or a box with spikes in it;
28 EMIT – (s)EMIT(e);
29 SETTLE – two meanings 1=a bench; 2=sink to the bottom (as lees in good wine);
30 BANDYING – BAN-DYING;
 
Down
2 RENDITION – two meanings 1=translation 2=reference extraordinary rendition (US torture by proxy);
3 TITANIA – TITAN-(AI reversed); A Midsummer Night’s Dream;
4 CRASH – C-RASH; to meet an emergency as in crash-course;
5 LIP – two meanings 1=impudence; 2=reference to “lip service”;
6 PARSONAGE – P(ARSON)AGE;
7 NATURAL – N-A(T)URAL; name=N; of hearing=AURAL; time=T; a musical note;
8 SHORN – S(ound)-HORN;
12 deliberately omitted – ask if you can’t tidy it up for yourself;
15 LANDGRAVE – LAND-GRAVE; a Count in the Holy Roman Empire who reported direct to Rome;
17 PATRICIAN – (I can’t pair)*;
19 AGAINST – A-GAI(NS)T;
21 ROCKERY – (c)ROCKERY;
23 HORDE – sounds like “whored”;
25 TENON – T-(NONE reversed); in carpentry the projecting part of a mortise and tenon joint;
27 DEB – DEB(t); short for débutante, a young woman making her first appearance in high society;

24 comments on “Times 24,600 The Forked Zugzwang Gambit”

  1. I really struggled with this one. But at the end of the day got it done. will be intersting to see other times. I’m sticking down 90 minutes. thoght 2 down was clever as was 1 across. Hats off to the setter too for a challenging puzzle!
  2. Quelle catastrophe – put knot for gnat (I was going on tonk backwards and a knot of tension – not good enough for a little irritation) and simply failed on rank and shorn, passing the time with a number of solicitors’ firms (Ramp and Storm, Reek and Stole etc.) but not able to, like, think. However the chess term made me remember a verse I wrote at school when I ran the chess club. Why I recall this forty years on is beyond me but it cheers me up to pass it on: Let bishops fianchetto, Send pawn on queenward trek, Applaud me allegretto, For I’ve discovered check! Nice puzzle today though dnf.
  3. 27 minutes, including thinking time between Underground and Overground. Clues that I got stuck on included 24, where for much of the time I was trying to solve “Goes out for takeaway?” as the whole clue: the newsprint version split it over two columns, which I think should be a mortal sin. I wasn’t too thrilled with the clue for DISABLED, the literal being very – um – literal, and it wouldn’t chime with current employment practice of getting “disabled” people working. 6d threw me, as I didn’t lift and separate “house servant” and was looking for something really obscure. BANDYING took me ages (I was looking for the demand “be (something)!”) but makes it as my CoD.
    FIANCHETTO only emerged from the silted up areas of memory with the crossing letters. Thinking it should end in B (“bishop follows”) messed up 6d just that bit more. Decent crossword, needing several devious separations to solve.
      1. I’m happy to agree with both comments – the bit about employment was more mischievous than complaining – but I still think the literal was very weak. either “out of order” or “not functioning” would have been better. As it is, the definition includes half the answer.
    2. In fairness to the setter, disabled just means ‘out of order, not functioning’ here.
  4. for some reason i associate this with the execrable Bohemian Rhapsody by Queen entirely erroneously but know the term only too well from chess so it jumped out with resorting to the anagram. So bad has been my form lately that every clue is accompanied by an internal voice saying ‘What are they on about i’ll never get this’ but it was nice of the brain to keep coming up with the answers for a comfortable 20 min trot. Maybe i’ll get that qualifier in before the deadline after all.
  5. Although I settled for gnat as the more elegant solve, I had a strong case for knot. Last one in bandying.
  6. I could write a short essay about this puzzle which took me just under the hour (58m) — starting with J. Arthur at 13ac whose father built the mill in Birkenhead in 1912 that provided income and premature death to most of my relatives. (Cue: Hovis theme.) So … to mention just one …
    Not happy about Jew = Semite. The latter term is, in itself, racist; but if you insist on using it, it will describe, for example, nearly all Palestinians but by no means all, for example, Israelis (who tend to be Euro-Caucasian), though Jewish by religious choice or background.
    COD to 6dn for sheer mischief.

  7. 100 minutes for this excellent puzzle with COD to NATURAL for the misleading surface. The crossing pair “rendition protocol” raised a smile – not least because, nearly three years after posting a review of The Bourne Ultimatum, that Google search remains one of the most popular ways into my blog.

    Like Joe, I also had tonk instead of GNAT (shouldn’t a gnat be a little irritant?), which I especially enjoyed as it brought back memories of Brian “Tonker” Taylor, the former Essex keeper.

    Was held up in the NW by putting titanic instead of TITANIA, which kept me out of the DISABLED space for while. In the SE, my failure to get the tricky crossing pair DEB and BANDYING was partly due to finding a non-existent hidden clue (“toner”) at 25dn. Also failed at 11 ac, where I plumped for Bianchetto, although I knew it didn’t quite parse.

    Didn’t know Iron Maiden was a form of torture, but it makes sense from what I remember of their music assaulting my senses through a thin study wall at school.

  8. Ran out of time at an hour with four unsolved in the NW. Never heard the chess term (though I played for years as a child and teenager but not to any standard worth mentioning). If I heard of ‘extraordinary rendition’ before I had forgotten it and ‘translation’ on its own was not enough to bring the required answer to mind. Also had KNOT at 9ac and for some reason beyond belief CRASH was my last in! Shame it ended in disaster because the rest of it had gone rather well, if a bit slowly.
  9. Off to a cracking start with the first five across clues solved in about 3 minutes. Signs of an absolute doddle: 20 minutes tops.

    An hour later, I still had three to solve which took another ten minutes. Struggled with IN VAIN and, incredibly, SHORN.

    Too defeated to nominate COD. Going to lie down in…..!

  10. 35:43 .. and I actually gave a small cheer when I discovered I had FIANCHETTO correct. I think I might have encountered the word before but if I were to see it in isolation I would probably guess it was a Sicillian marriage contract or something.

    Last in SHORN.

    Clever puzzle. Maybe a little too clever, damnit.

    I believe Freddie Forsyth’s The Fianchetto Protocol is out next year.

      1. Ah yes, the tale of the little orphan boy who inherits his very own Thames sewage outflow in which he later drowns.

        You’d need a heart of stone …

        1. … which the autopsy revealed he did in fact have, thereby confirming what we had suspected from the second chapter, that he was indeed heir to the fortune of Beryl & Tiger Chert, confectioners to Her Majesty and inventors of Blackpool rock.
  11. Unlike James above I took a while to get going with no acrosses until I got to iron maiden.

    35 minutes but with one wrong – I couldn’t see how 13 worked so I went for RUNG on the flimsy basis that an executive is on a higher rung of the corporate ladder than a (presumably offended) underling and it sounded vaguely plausible as the title of a film I’ve never heard of (maybe a horror about zombie ladders).

    Rendition and fian whatnot were pretty much guesses, 6d came to me quickly as I looked Haworth up yesterday as a possible day out at the weekend.

    In 27 I just viewed Deb as a contraction of Deborah rather than debutante.

  12. Somewhere in the vicinity of an hour with RHEA & FIANCHETTO being inspired guesses and SNIT fortunately corrected to GNAT in the nick of time. Mostly too clever for me. COD to BANDYING.
  13. A very nice puzzle, about 45 minutes worth, but with KNOT at 9A instead of TANG. Didn’t know TANG as a smack. So, I’m 0 for the week so far, but I enjoyed this very much. I knew the chess move, but not Mr. Rank, nor that the Bronte home was a parsonage. COD to BANDYING. I also thought DEB was just a name, not necessarily referring to the debutante, but it doesn’t matter much there. Regards to everyone, setter included.
  14. About 22 minutes at the end of a long day – maybe worth 15 on other days. I think BANDYING was last in.
  15. I don’t think I could have completed this in one sitting. On a busy day I kept on returning to it and finally got Fianchetto and Crash. I see it’s already tomorrow. It’s 40 years since I played chess on the bottom board of the sixth division of the Birmingham chess league (and lost) so fianchetto came back to me through a very thick mist.

Comments are closed.