Times 24621

Author   sotiraPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
37:27 .. Apologies if this blog is a little less sophisticated than the puzzle deserves. I’m stepping in last minute and late at night after Sabine’s computer declared war on her. I think we’ve all been there.

If I’d seen the puzzle before Sabine’s SOS, I would probably have pretended not to have seen her email. It’s a toughie. There are a couple of question marks for me, notably in 1 across, where I’m not even certain I have the answer right. You might say I’m a couple of elements short of a parsing, but I’ve been called worse.

Due to time differences I’ll be late on parade Friday, but regular bloggers will no doubt answer queries and finesse my poor efforts.

Across
1   LEILA – reversal of A,LIE+L .. I don’t know the explanation for ‘letter on plate’, other than guessing at a printer’s abbreviation. Thank you to mctext who points out that the plate in question is an apprentice driver’s L-plate. Easy once you know.
4   A LA,BASTER – à la for ‘in the style of’ plus one who bastes
9   QUARTER TO – ‘quarter’ is ‘put up’, followed by OT (Old Testament) reversed.. The literal is the time, as in “It’s a quarter to twelve” (which it is, actually). I didn’t come close to understanding this while solving.
10 T,ROOP – reverse POOR+T (end of gadgeT)
11 IN TURN – sounds like ‘intern’, as in internment
12 SHIFT KEY – bloomin’ obvious once you see it, which I eventually did, after exhausting my stock of national capital cities
14 LIVE IN (C)LOVER – a Constant within a live-in lover
17 deliberately omitted. It’s an anagram. Work it out.
20 PIACENZA – NE+CA inside ZIP, all reversed, + A
21 BE(LIZ)E – I only call her Liz when I want to annoy her. Then she calls me ‘Sot’, the cheeky thing.
23 INDIC(ate) – ie. not the ‘swallowed’ bit of INDICATE – to be showing
24 deliberately omitted. It’s an anagram including a Latin numeral. Work it out.
25 X,Y,LOP,HONE – stupendously clever wordplay in an altogether ingenious clue. The axes are the X and Y bits of a graph, nothing to do with axemen (who play a very different instrument)
26 TIT,HE – it’s helium and a bird, leading to something once paid to gentlemen of the cloth, along with due respect

DOWN
1   LI(QUID)LY
2   IN ACT IV,E – Act 4 would be late in most plays. The ‘e’ is the centre of ‘leEds’
3   A STORM IN A TEACUP – thank heavens for this straightforward cryptic without which I might still be solving
4   AWRY – move the ‘a’ up in ‘wary’
5   APOTHEOSIS – A,(HOPES TO)*,IS – “the elevation or exaltation of a person to the rank of a god”
6   ACT OF SETTLEMENT – double def.
7   TROIKA – hidden and reversed in ‘breAK I OR Trainer’ – a team of three horses harnessed abreast
8   R(EP)AYS
13 SCHERZANDO – Z, an unknown, inside an anagram of (cash on red). Musical term. Here, for example, is Hadyn’s Allegro Scherzando being played by an embryo – link
15  MINIM,ART – palindromic musical note + craft
16  ATTENDEE – END (ambition) usurps the ‘L’ of Attlee
18  SPH,IN,X – HoPeS reversed + IN + X (times). The sphinx bemused travellers with the old ‘What goes on four legs in the morning, on two legs at noon, and on three legs in the evening?’ gag until Oedipus, who knew a thing or two about complex relationships, cracked it.
19  V,AND,A,L – V(erse)+AND (with)+A+L(ine). My last in.
22 (p)URGE

30 comments on “Times 24621”

  1. The first L in 1ac is the L from L-plate.
    A minute short of 3/4 of and hour here. And interested to note the pangram-minus-J. That could be rectified in at least two ways I can see. (1) JEWISE (Chaucerian for “justice”) at 21ac. (2) JANDAL (aka flip-flop or thong) at 19dn. Spent far too long finding Her Maj in 21ac: though there’s at least one good reason why I should have seen that name. Hats off to the setter for the clue to 25ac: this must have been hell to clue.
  2. I count it as a moral victory, due to the degree of difficulty of the puzzle and my level of competence, but in fact I failed to finish (19 and 23 unfilled) and got 4 wrong (‘china’ for LEILA at 1ac leading to some bizarre stabs at 1dn, and ‘saxophone’ for XYLOPHONE at 25 leading me down the garden path to ‘epochs’). Despite all that, enjoyed this a lot, taking ‘only’ an hour and three quarters, keeping a steady, if stately, rhythm, and looking for a word with ‘j’ towards the end, although it would turn out to be not much help, as other letters were wrong. Joint CODS to SHIFT KEY and QUARTER TO.
  3. Once again I needed aids to finish off the last two or three, this time in the SW corner. I’ve never heard of the Italian town (some sources call it a city) and I couldn’t quite get to it through the wordplay though I had ACENZ as definites.

    At 18, with only the X in place I feared I might be looking for someone in the crossword setter’s Hall of Fame that I’d never heard of and missed the obvious solution. Similarly I was unable crack VANDAL and INDIC.

    Like a puzzle earlier in the week I was pleased to get as far as I did and that I resisted resorting to aids until 70 minutes had passed.

  4. Thanks to sotira for standing in promptly and ably.

    13:37 here, also struggling in the SW corner until SCHERZANDO made the Italian place suddenly easy, then the 15/28 crossing. 9 and 20 entered without full wordplay understanding. Also noticed the pangram as a looming possibility towards the end, but stopped worrying about it when there was no obvious place for the J in the few remaining answers.

  5. Well Vinyl,I am not the sort of solver being looked for clearly. Initially I put ACT OF TESTATIONS but then was forced to changed to ACT OF BESTOWMENT (both something to do with wills). This meant a second DNF on the bounce as BELIZE and TITHE became impossible. Didn’t understand the L in LEILA and used a solver to get PIACENZA. Put in IODIC despairingly for INDIC and had ACRE (CARE with A moved up)in the hope it had something to do with course. But for SPHINX I might have gone for SAXOPHONE and I suppose because I parsed it XYLOPHONE gets my COD.
    Like Ulaca I was quite pleased despite failure. 6 months ago, having only got LAKE DISTRICT on my first read through, I might not have bothered.
    Thanks to setter (I think) and of course to Sotira who always makes me laugh.
    1. Egad! Not know the Act of Settlement! I’m not sure they’ll let you into the revamped crossword club site.

      [I flirted with ‘Inheritance’ and ‘Testament’, so at least your ideas had the correct number of letters.)

  6. Definitely a three pipe problem, and in my case the notional pipes would each have lasted 40 minutes. Made an early error by inventing the ACT OF SUCCESSION, although the relatively easy LAKE DISTRICT – my former home – made me realise I’d gone astray. Ended up with lots of exclamation marks next to the across clues, so congratulations to the setter for his/her inventiveness.

    MINIMART and TITHE were last in, although by this stage I too was looking for the missing J. No shortage of COD contenders, but I particularly liked INACTIVE.

  7. 58 minutes. Clever stuff; ranging over history, geography, music, classics, science, politics and other mental lumber. Time seemed to fly by.
  8. What a great start to the day! Tough (maybe it took me four pipes) but I always thought I would get there (there was something about the clues which suggested that if I persevered and stretched my brain further, I could work them out). And, having been a daily visitor to the site for some time, it’s made me come off the fence and sign up (a promise I made myself in the event I solved a crossword such as this).
  9. It’s about time we had a really testing puzzle and this one fits the bill. 30 minutes zipped by whilst wrestling with cunning wordplay, clever definitions and a whole raft of GK. I don’t think there’s anything but first class clues here so excellent setter, thank you, and well done Sotira.

    I’m genuinely shocked that folk haven’t heard of the Act of Settlement – it’s such a fundamental piece of legislation that has had such huge ramifications.

  10. I’m very glad others found this difficult because I was starting to think my brain was on the blink after a difficult week and an absolutely catastrophic attempt at Mephisto 2606 when it finally appeared (I don’t want to talk about it).
    I too finished this in 58 minutes, which in the circumstances feels like a victory. I struggled more or less everywhere, and people around me must have been put off by the audible clunking sound as the answers went in.
    So a bit of a struggle, but bravo to the setter.
    I did chuckle at 4ac.
  11. Thank you for a really beautiful solving experience. I enjoyed the diversity of clues and the range of gk in the answers. Thank you sotira for a lovely blog too. First in 3d and 11a, last in the Italian city and 5d, no exact time, about half an hour.
  12. 30 minutes. Did quite well on a difficult and enjoyable puzzle getting all but two in about 10 minutes. I had a total blank on MINIMART (which has come up before in the past year I think?) and TITHE. I just couldn’t find the definitions although the devious structure of some of the other clues should have made me a bit sharper. I was reduced to looking for a J in 15 having noticed the near pangram.
    Thanks to the setter – some excellent stuff – XYLOPHONE and QUARTER TO were brilliant
  13. A particularly challenging forty-five minutes, with some slightly frustrating definitions – is “Her small charge” strictly speaking a definition of 24? Nor is it an &lit, which might have worked. I’m just sulking really because all corners were hard, but the SE, especially MINIMART and TITHE, was torture. Also “Given maximum promotion” doesn’t quite stand as a def. of APOTHEOSIS – it would surely be a def. of “APOTHEOSIZED”.

    All this is really just to say, grudgingly, wow, excellent, a doozy of a quiz.

  14. I got stuck on 4ac and 5dn for ages, till I realised 4dn was AWRY not WARY. But never having heard of a BUSBAR I had BUSMAN for 1dn, with ‘conductor’ as the def, and I guessed maybe a busman was a grown-up’ busboy who’s therefore allowed to serve drinks as well as clear tables! Quite hard in the end.
    1. I’m confused – can’t see BUS-anything! Have you mixed in comments on another puzzle?
  15. First-class puzzle, as all have said. A real Friday morning work-out for the little grey cells. V pleased to finish correctly in 45 mins – tho had to check my Times Atlas to be sure that PIACENZA existed. A fair amount of GK required but nothing outrageously obscure. Some wonderfully ingenious wordplay – XYLOPHONE gets my COD vote. Brilliant blogging effort by Sotira stepping into the breach at short notice.

  16. OK, that was pretty tough! Two I couldn’t get – 23ac and 19d, and one I didn’t understand – 24ac. And the ones I did get have taken me a couple of hours! COD 15d.
  17. got there with no aids in just over the hour. Once you had Sphinx what else could the penultimate across clue be?
    happened to be driving near verona recently so Piacenza kind of hit me and with a Z scherzando flitted into place

    Nice puzzle-good blog…thank you all

  18. Thank you so much for stepping in, sotira, and thanks to vinyl1 who also volunteered. Much appreciated. Today has so far gone better than yesterday, though my printer is making noises that sound ominously like a death rattle, and insists on printing everything in blue.
  19. It is ones like these that are a great yardstick for progress. Times can be a bit misleading as it is all about getting on a wavelength and hazarding guesses, however getting through some of these clues without giving up or cheating is a good feeling. Having read the comments I was pretty chuffed with beating 30mins, however then I realised I had bunged in FREE for 22D as a weak double-def, and even though I was looking for the word minus the P, I had succumbed to shoe-horning a monopoly style FREE for “without parking”.

    Other than that was mainly stuck in the NE corner, did the rest (albeit with the wrongun) in about 20 mins before I fell asleep on the tube with the paper on my lap (long night). When I got home I struggled to do the last four or five over 10 mins, not helped by putting LAW of settlement first and then trying to justify ASPHALTER for the “one pouring hot juice” having twigged the ACT. It was actually the P that gave PROTHEOSIS, which became APOTHEOSIS when I re-read that clue, upon which ALABASTER became clear. A bit of involved reverse engineering there.

  20. Wow. That was tough. Two sessions, overall about 90 minutes. Very clever and a load of great d’oh moments, especially the crossing pair of SPHINX/XYLOPHONE. Hat’s off to the setter, and to Sotira as well. To volunteer to stand in and find this thrown at you, well, would cause a great gulp for anyone. Regards.
  21. Sorry Peter – clearly I did confuse two puzzles. Must stick to one a day as the doctor ordered!
  22. Ah, a fine hard crossword at last, after a long spell of medium ones. well done to setter, and well done Sotira, by golly.
    No problem with the act of settlement, but had to guess somewhat at scherzando and piacenza. Last in were minimart and tithe. Sadly it never occurred to me to look for a j, even after seeing the x and z..
  23. 4 ac and dn, 5, 7 and 17 went straight in. After that it was a struggle that took me the best part of an hour during my afternoon snack. At one point I thought I wouldn’t finish without aids, but SCHERZANDO led me to the Italian town (totally unfamiliar) and 24, which in turn helped me finish the SE corner.

    Excellent clues, though I had a very minor query about the equivalence of POOR and BROKE. Surely one can be poor without being broke.

    In answer to the anonymous criticism above regarding the definition for APOTHEOSIS, I took “Given” as a surface embellishment that is a sort of link between definition and wordplay. Given answer X, the following breakdown can be seen. It’s not uncommon in Times clues.

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