Times 24617 – Oh, say can you see…

Author   kororarekaPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Solving Time: 36 minutes

I solved this in a hotch-potch fashion, never really being able to establish a coal face to work at and several times thought I’d be left with embarrassing gaps; but it all turned out well in the end. I didn’t think it was easy, by any means. Certainly a work-out for me early on a Monday morning, either because of brain fog or some cunning misdirection by the setter. I’ll plump for the latter. No need for Wiki today, to explain any possibly obscure general knowledge, so some fast times may be recorded.

Across
1 GOLD* + LORY for bird = OLD GLORY, the flag kind of standard. I should have pursued my original OLD G???? thought. I just thought it a bit obvious.
5 LO reversed for look back + DISH for beauty = OLDISH. I was misdirected by the “rather”, thinking it might start ABIT??.
9 TAR, a double definition, black and jack separately. For DIY COW readers, maybe I should have allowed newcomer = ECROM.
10 COME TO for stop sleeping + AHEAD for in the future = COME TO A HEAD
12 MO for Medical Officer + NUts + MENTAL for nuts = MONUMENTAL. Why did I want the second nuts to be an anagram indicator, particularly in the absence of any obvious fodder?
13 SIGN sounds like the mathematical sine function.
15 BEAT IT = crumB + EAT IT, the second half a reference to the surface of the first.
16 IGUANAS = a reversal of SAN for sickbay (short for sanatorium) + AUG 1.
18 A LOG for a bit of wood + REP for salesman, all reversed = PERGOLA, which I would have said was a bit more than lattice, but that could be Australian misusage of the term.
20 TILLER, a double definition
23 IDLE, sounds like idol.
24 AIDE-DE-CAMP = AID for to help + privatE + DECAMP for depart secretly.
26 IMPECUNIOUS = (INCOME IS UP yoU)* indicated by “could appear otherwise” rather than “broke?”
27 Deliberately omitted. I’ll grant you it wasn’t as easy as it could have been.
28 TWENTY, a double definition, the second a reference to Scrabble; Q is worth 10 points and if placed on a light blue square its face value is doubled. I guessed as much when solving; I haven’t played Scrabble since the great yale fracas of Christmas 97.
29 REINVEST = VEST for underwear together with REIN for strap, not necessarily in that order.

Down
1 TIM for tiny lad inside ONE for I = ON TIME, which doesn’t quite equate to promptly in my book (The Boys Omnibus), which in turn may be why I couldn’t let AT ONCE go, unlikely a prospect as it was.
2 DERANGE is to be found in guiDE and RANGEr concatenated. Crikey, are we expected to do some work to find the hidden words now?
3 LOCOMOTION sounds like “low commotion”. And so it does.
4 (MOTORS AREN’T IN)* = REMONSTRATION, no not demonstration; that would require a “d” in the fodder, wouldn’t it, not to mention making 1ac much more difficult than it need be.
6 Pub’s exterior is PB,(sorry, Pb, thanks to Tom B for pointing out the setter’s meticulous attention to detail) otherwise the chemical symbol for LEAD, also spelling “in the front”.
7 I for one + BRIAN for King of Ireland, all around E for English = IBERIAN, one from the Iberian peninsular, including Spain and Portugal. What about the Andorrans?
8 HEDONIST = DON for member of teaching staff inside HEIST for crime.
11 (HEAD INTO HOTEL)* = TOAD-IN-THE-HOLE, I presume, although “something to eat” is a bit of a stretch. I thought it was only used for ammunition in food fights.
14 FULL for stuffed + NELSON for naval officer = FULL NELSON, the wrestling hold. No, Monty was an army officer.
17 (I STOP + TIM, remember him from 1d?)* = OPTIMIST
19 ESPALIER for trellis, reversed and with the I tossed out = RELAPSE.
21 ERASURE = ERA for time + SURE for Yes!
22 UPSHOT = PUSHTO*
25 Deliberately omitted. I don’t think it will overly tax you.

32 comments on “Times 24617 – Oh, say can you see…”

  1. Interestingly, while reading vinyl’s comment the livejournal site had an advertisement splashed across the bottom of this page offering a prefabricated pergola. Honest. With a photo, so it couldn’t be missed. So, vinyl, as you might check back in during the day, scroll down and see if it reappears. As for the puzzle, 15 minutes ( I didn’t start until golf had ended, so no distractions.) My last entry is my nomination for COD, TWENTY. Regards to all.
  2. A nice easy start to the week. It’s very odd but despite being a keen Scrabble player I simply did not see the cryptic in 28ac and just went with the definition “score” alone. I think it’s because I am so used to ignoring surface meanings that I fail to spot the obvious!
  3. 11 min while nursing a hangover, so easy in my book. That said, a lot went in on auto-pilot without trying to unravel the mechanics. Fortunately all correct.COD? I rather liked TAR. They don’t have to be difficult.
  4. Ashamed to say I fell into the trap of putting in ‘demonstration’, despite having no ‘d’ in the anagrist, which resulted in the invention of a new species of bird at 1 ac: ‘old glode’. Oh well, there’s one born every minute, and today it was me. Also got 23 wrong (‘isle’ for IDLE) to complete a hapless start to the week. Just on an hour for all this.
    1. That makes at least two of us who fail to check our grists when the answer is “obvious”. As for the bird, you might have been thinking of the Glodean White, but that’s a butterfly.
  5. A minute over the half hour and not really getting the hang of 28ac. My Scrabble tiles only get used for the odd foray into compiling, so I don’t look at the numbers. Good enough for John Galbraith Graham, good enough for me! Talking of which, I once worked a whole bunch of Nelson themes (111, 55.5, etc) into a puzzle so very pleased to see 14dn in there today.
    1. Yes MC, your excellent Nelson puzzle came to mind.

      Further indication of my progress is the disappointment of finishing this under the half-hour, perhaps spoiled by the wonderfully inventive Paul at the weekend. I would call it a “stroll in the park” but “pride before the fall” comes to mind.

      1. A bit off-topic, but that Paul really was a delight. Well worth a look for any non-regulars.
        1. Did as suggested – great fun! Is there a name for that type of clue? Would it have been as much fun if there were only one or two such in the crossword (and would it be “fair?”)
            1. A pseudonym of John Halpern for crosswords in the Guardian. If you Google for “Guardian crossword” you should be able to find the puzzle concerned.
  6. 40 minutes. Got held up briefly in the NW (where I too wrote in DEMONSTRATION before getting stuck and realising something was wrong) and for longer in the NE where 5,6,8 and 13 put up quite a lot of resistance.

    I was also a little surprised by the interrupted hidden word at 2dn.

  7. I wonder if anyone else made the monumental error of monomaniac. There should be a word for this kind of slip, that I am all too prone to. 25 minutes with that blemish. I can’t help feeling blackjack as a whole should mean tar as well as its parts. Liked the pub exterior.
  8. Followed the same course as jackkt, although it took me an extra ten minutes. Quite enjoyed the Doh! moment at 6dn, pb being converted to LEAD.
  9. 24 minutes. ā€œIā€™d rather have a frog in the throat than a toad in the hole.ā€ (Diz Disley)
  10. Didn’t record a time but this was easy, well under 20 mins. Though I did spend a minute or two wondering what an “old glark” was..
  11. 9:40, with a couple of minutes at the end to get 17D and 23A (love those pesky four-letter words …).

    Awaiting complaints from people as bad at gardening as me, on the intersection of PERGOLA and a reversed ESPAL(i)ER.

    9A a bit cheeky, but with only one word in the clue, breaking it up must be on the cards.

  12. 11 minutes, and some cheerful appreciation for the setter with some interesting constructions requiring extra steps in LEAD and DERANGE, and no less than two full reverses at 16 and 18. I thought TWENTY was a good example of failing to recognise the familiar when out of context. Scrabble’s the wrong word game here, and I was trying to work out something with Cambridge quadrangles, slowed up by inadvertently reversing the S and E of relapse. CoD to LEAD.
  13. finished clean in about 30 mins, about as fast as i get, even for once understanding all the wordplay. joint cod to 6d and 19d. i too mentally queried lattice = pergola.
  14. 12:22 here, also nursing a bit of a hangover šŸ™‚ Along with Anonymous, I also didn’t see how 28 worked until coming here, putting it in from the definition. I also enjoyed Paul’s Guardian prize puzzle over the weekend. It’s here if anyone wants a go.
    1. Did it last night while the wife was watching Godfather II. It took me pretty much the first disc. Must be 25 years since I attempted a Guardian crossword. Good fun. Ta for the link.
  15. 11:52 .. another one where a glance at the clue and a couple of checking letters were often enough, so some nice wordplay and clever ideas rather passed me by. But then, a lot of things pass me by.

    Last in LEAD, which is very clever.

  16. 13 mins, despite a very slow start, my first in being the erroneous AT ONCE for 1D: TON(Y) inside ACE. Enjoyable crossword, my COD being 6D LEAD, where starting with ‘Pub’ cleverly allowed the correct symbol Pb to be the ‘exterior’.

    Tom B.

  17. A pretty swift 35-40 minutes here, with the NW corner putting up the most resistance. Didn’t understand 1ac / 3d / 6d until I read the blog. COD 9ac.
  18. 25 minutes, but I’m in the company of those who carelessly put DEMONSTRATION, seeing enough of it at a glance at the anagram fodder. I never did go back to query it, so entered the rather odd-sounding OLD GLADY for 1ac just to complete the grid.
  19. Good to see many of you are hung over on a Monday morning, as I solved this on Sunday night on the way to achieving the Monday hangover. 14 minutes, though it felt like I was slogging through because it was filling in bits and pieces all over the place rather than a run of solves. RELAPSE from definition, but I figured the wordplay out later. Got half-way through writing the HALF NELSON in at 14, then stopped myself.
  20. Just under an hour (which is very quick for me), but with one mistake: FULL SEASON at 14, for some reason, with visions of theatrical productions being “held” over for more than a few showings if they draw an audience — amazing what one can think up if one needs an explanation. A few others with the wrong understanding but the right answer, but I did surmise the right explanation for 28, though with some delay. I last played scrabble about 40 years ago, and it may have been in French. I also thought 9A was a bit cheeky.
  21. Just under 20 minutes for an entertaining if straightforward puzzle. Didn’t understand the Scrabble reference – goodness are we now going to have to learn all those letter values? Otherwise no problems.

  22. I enjoyed this easyish puzzle: completed in 25 minutes. The Scrabble reference was way over my head but had no trouble with the rest.

    CODs to LEAD and TAR.

  23. 50 minutes after a 600 k drive across France and a bottle of Carillon de l’Angelus. Only error was monomaniacal. So feel OK for a beginner. In awe of those of you who complete in less than 15 minutes.

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