Times 24603 – Nice time in the park, Jimbo?

Author   jackktPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
After 30 minutes I was left with 20,21,24 and 25 outstanding and took another 10 to crack these. For some reason I had a blind-spot at 21 and this led to my very few problems including the cross-reference to 25. Apart from difficulties of my own making this was nearly all straightforward stuff and I doubt that anything will have delayed the speed merchants.

Across
1 BOWSPRIT – ‘Bends’= BOWS then trip*. A bowsprit is ‘a spar on a ship to which the forestays are fastened’. Everyone clear on that?
5 KOWTOW – KOW,TO,W(ife) – The upset frying pan is ‘wok’ reversed. I’m never very happy with W for wife and H for husband but they are in Collins so I suppose I have to accept them though I can’t think of a context in which they might be used. Oddly enough Chambers has W but not H.
9 BURGUNDY – BUR(GUN,smeareD)Y
10 MIRROR – M1,eRROR
12 CONCERT GRAND – A review from the music critic who wastes no words. Why do I imagine he would come from Yorkshire?
15 LATER – L,cATER
16 RIGMAROLE – RIG,M(ark),A,ROLE
18 Deliberately omitted. Please ask if baffled.
19 VOTER – RE,TO,V(ide) reversed.
20 BIRD WATCHING – ‘ Word-botching’ as said by the Rev. W.A. Spooner. This has come up before and possibly more than once.
24 ANNUAL – ANN(U)AL – a double definition, both a plant and a book.
25 SPOUTING – S(POUT)ING – My last in because I was waiting for 21dn to give context and I had a blind spot on that clue. As I had such difficulty I’d better not complain that it was a bit lazy of the setter not to use an alternative to ‘sing’ in the wording of the clue. I’m sure I must have met POUT as a type of fish before but I wasn’t completely sure of it.
26 DRYDEN – DRY, DENy – After last week I briefly considered CORPSE.
27 TYPEFACE – TYPE,FACE
 
Down
1 BABY – BA,BY – I wondered about ‘youngest’ here but Collins justifies it.
2 WARD – WA(R)D – A ward is an administrative division of a town or city represented by councillors. Not sure if this one will work for our overseas contributors. ‘Wad’ in this sense reminds me of Harry Enfield’s ghastly Loadsamoney character.
3 PLUTOCRAT – Pl followed by (at court)*
4 INDOCTRINATE – IN(DOCToR,I)NATE
6 OWING – bOWING – I think this needed a question mark as ‘playing on violin’ is only one possibility amongst many and even then one can play it pizzicato without using a  bow.
7 TERRACOTTA – T(ERR)ACO,T(ee)T(otal),A – I wasted time here looking for anagram material.
8 WORLD WEARY – (Lad we worry)* – A little known Noel Coward song from the 1920s. Sarah Walker revived some interest in it when she recorded it for her Cabaret Songs album back in the 80s..
11 TRIGGER HAPPY – T,RIGGER,HAPPY
13 Deliberately omitted. Please ask if baffled.
14 ITINERANCY – Anagram of ‘inner city’ and ‘a’ for ‘area’.
17 ADVENTURE – (Under a vet)*
21 WHALE – The first letters of What Has A Large Existence. I couldn’t see it for looking.
22 VISA – VI,S,A
23 OGRE – Hidden

46 comments on “Times 24603 – Nice time in the park, Jimbo?”

  1. In fact from Manchester. It’s a Guardian headline! No time for a fuller report today. Just a time 28 mins.

    But … technically “baby” can be read as a member of the device “family” (which it is here) or as of the device “stage of life” (which it isn’t). See Harvey Sacks, Lectures on Conversation. So that clears that up, eh?

    1. Anyone who can co-author an article called “A simplest systematics for the organization of turn taking for conversation” can scarcely be trusted!
      1. This is the foundational document of conversation analysis and should not be scoffed at.
        Even if it did make Pseud’s Corner once in the dim and darkest 70s.
        1. Indeed, my PhD thesis critiquing critical discourse analysis necessarily touched on CA in the early sections.
  2. 21 mins for me but not happy with 25 ac: don’t get the use of participle. Help!
    1. If you’re referring to the -ing at the end of SPOUTING, I agree that the more natural answer would be just SPOUT – that’s what whales do. But I think it just becomes a gerund or verbal noun, the whale’s activity.
  3. At last a puzzle I could complete without aids; I took 37 minutes but I anticipate some very fast times from the experts. This did not have the sparkle of some of the recent puzzles nor did I find much to complain about. I rather liked 11D.
  4. Haven’t commented for a while but have enjoyed reading this blog each day. Thanks to all the contributors.

    21 minutes here including time to look up the two that defeated me – ITINERANCY and CONCERT GRAND. Straightforward definitions helped. “Cross writer” for VOTER raised a smile. V for “see” seems to have come up a lot recently – maybe because I’m doing two or three puzzles a day as I work my way through the Times Cryptic Crossword 14 book.

    After not spotting CHOPIN the other day today’s hidden word (OGRE) was one of my last in.

  5. Fun puzzle, which held me up a little longer than it ought, but was finally completed in 73 minutes. The NW corner was last to fall, when I homed in on ‘red’ as a possible definition for 9. No unknown vocabulary, ’though BOWSPRIT had to be dredged up. COD to TYPEFACE for the elegantly misleading surface.

    Baby of the family as youngest sprang to mind, so no problem there.

  6. I thought this was a breeze in just on 10 minutes – but today I’m not distracted by the Tube journey. I like Spooner clues anyway, even if they are old friends – this one wasn’t to me. Last in ITINERANCY, because I didn’t believe it could be an anagram of inner city a(rea) and wanted it to begin with S until it couldn’t. CoD to the long drawn out TERRACOTTA.
  7. I don’t have a copy handy, but I expect that H(husband) W (wife) S (son) and D (daughter) are used in reference books like Who’s Who, or possibly Debrett’s or Burke’s Peerage (neither of which I have ever needed to consult!)

  8. 14 minutes. Straightforward, but with quite a few witty clues to brighten up this gloomy Lancashire morning. I particularly liked BIRD WATCHING, VOTER and CONCERT GRAND; and in view of the trouble round here with traveller sites, the clue for ITINERANCY raised a wry smile. Delayed for a while when I hastily put in ergo instead of OGRE, but thought it were a reet grand puzzle!
  9. Seemed easy and lagged in on 21 minutes. Don’t understand 12 – is a concert grand (also) a term for a very short review? Something staring me in the face here and for the life of me – . Liked the Spoonerism.
        1. I’m sure the review is as imaginary as stuff like flower=river, but it seems easy enough to recognise, possibly with checking letter help.
  10. At 22 minutes, an easy end to the week for me, for which much tahnks. As Daniel (welcome back) has pointed out, helped greatly by the straightforward definitions. Word botching did sound like one I’d heard before, but it’s a good one. COD to ITINERANCY. Another one for the good beginner’s puzzle section?
  11. Fine time thanks Jack and despite wild life distractions (wasp attacking marmalade) finished in 15 minutes.

    Although easy and at times corny consider how much better this puzzle is than yesterday’s offering. It was fun and never dragged.

    Let’s hope for a more difficult one tomorrow. Off now to finish the Mephisto blog for last Sunday’s excellent puzzle.

  12. Anyone else unhappy with the clue for 23, where ‘me’ seems to be the defintion part for ‘ogre’? Am I missing something? This combined with the already-commented-on use of sing=sing in 25 had me hesitating for all the wrong reasons in the SE corner of an otherwise enjoyable puzzle.

    (PS – always enjoy reading this blog but first time commenting so thanks to all contributors. Will try and register myself before next comment!)

    1. I don’t have any problem with the definition in 23dn. I see it as a sort of riddle clue and there is a reference to size which might point one in the right direction.

      John_from_Lancs, I also put ERGO first. Not having read the clue properly I thought of ‘So’ as the definition and ‘about’ as the reverse indicator. Fortunately 27ac was easy and I soon realised my mistake.

  13. The first since Monday that I have been happy with (23 min unaided). The only one entered without understanding was CONCERT GRAND, and on being enlightened, this is my choice for COD. Brings to mind Walter Kerr’s review of the play “I am a Camera” – ME NO LEICA.
  14. 9:58 .. last in CONCERT GRAND, which only occurred once the ‘G’ of OWING was in place.

    As others have suggested, a breezy, fun puzzle.

  15. Mostly very easy, but what should have been a 20-minute solve for me turned into 25 because I was held up in the SE corner. Like a few others I’d entered ERGO (though very lightly) for 23, thinking it was a faulty clue, didn’t realise that a synonym for ‘sing’ was not needed in 25, and fooled by the deceptive definition in 27 for a while (nice piece of deception). Otherwise all pretty straightforward.

    My initial entry for 20 was ‘word-botching’, but the easy clue to whale soon exposed the error.

  16. Felt this was quite easy, until I came badly unstuck with 12ac / 25ac / 27ac / 22d blank, and an incorrect ERGO for 23d… Never mind!
  17. 15:44 so agree this was easier than is customary for a Friday.

    Odd that Jack thought 27 easy – this was my last in and took about a minute at the end. My arial wasn’t tuned in to the right wavelength, obviously.

    1. Yes, I should have said ‘easy for me’. I do a lot of technical writing so I’m familiar with all the most usual font styles.

  18. Also with ref to TYPEFACE comments above.

    Ah, well! One person’s easy is another person’s blind-spot. WHALE was my last but one in. Only when that was solved was I able to confirm SPOUTING at 25ac.

  19. 35 minutes here, an ideal puzzle for the time I had available. COD to 27. Ogre was the last in, again validating the advice that if a clue seems to make no sense then look for a hidden word!
  20. 8:49 here, so very easy as I don’t often dip below 10 minutes. Not much to add, nothing held me up for long.
  22. I have been reading this blog for months to learn how to do better with the Times cryptic. At the start I was pleased to do a quarter of the clues myself. Today for the first time ever I finished it without help; such a relief after yesterday’s which really had me depressed. Thanks so much to everyone who blogs regularly – fun and information in one place
  23. Under 15 minutes today, so on the easier side, as others have said already. Nothing really new to add. This was one of those fun enough that I was disappointed to finish, since I was enjoying it very much. I thought TERRACOTTA was good. Regards to everyone.
  24. it was lovely to cruise through this puzzle although there were some tricky areas as others have commented. took me ages to see the hidden word Ogre…and i was going to put Avis rather than Visa for a while…anyway a good puzzle and well blogged and commented upon. lets hope Jimbo isnt correct and that tomorrow’s is merely hard rather than fiendish!

  25. I have had an odd commute for the last few days, so this one took me from Crystal City station to the end of a delay just outside of Rosslyn. Didn’t get a time, but reminded me of days past trying to do the Melbourne Age crossword on a tram
  26. About a half hour picking it up off an on during the day. Last in VISA.
    Today’s is fiendish.
    1. Have you got Word on your computer? If so, open it then click Format on the menu bar and select Font. This will show you a list of font names available one of which should be Courier or possibly New Courier.
    1. I don’t know about ‘pouting’ but ‘pout’ IS a type of fish and that’s what’s required here for the clue to work.
  29. Having only just started to attempt Times crosswords your blogg is proving an invaluable resource as I strive for that first completion with out help. The insight into how the answers are deciphered is proving very useful.

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