Times 24641 – One flower and no insects

Solving Time: 40 minutes

It all began well in the NW, with some well constructed but straightforward clues (“beginner’s delight” I was thinking) but then just as quickly turned into something completely different; requiring my undivided attention. Unfortunately, the latter was split into at least three at the time. There were some novel, clever and witty clues I thought and two which I can’t properly explain.

Across
1 (DEMAND SHOWN)* = HAND-ME-DOWNS, straightforward but well crafted.
7 ASH, a double definition, the day after Mardi Gras being Ash Wednesday, with the question mark alerting the solver to the omission of Wednesday.
9 NONPAREIL = (IRON PANEL)*. Another straightforward but well crafted anagram
10 P[Recite]OEM = PROEM, a preface. Thrown in more in hope than with any degree of certainty; I’ve never come across the term before. It’s from the Old French, via Latin and originally Greek (you can see why I’m at a disadvantage) meaning “before song”, a counting in technique typified by John Lennon at the very beginning of Give Peace a Chance.
11 QUAcKERS = QUAKERS, the Religious Society of Friends founded by George Fox. Write that name down on a piece of paper. For those not immersed in American television, Chandler Bing is a character in the sitcom Friends.
12 SOLIDUS = SOUS (more old coins) if you remove the LID. A nice reverse inclusion device.
13 The resting actor might seek A PART = APART
15 UNDERWEAR = UNDER WEAR, combinations being a combination either of a chemise and drawers (now popularly a teddy) or a vest (singlet) and long johns (now not popular, although see thermal underwear).
17 (SHE DUG THE)* = TED HUGHES, Poet Laureate, author of “Flowers and Insects”. The “she” in question would be Sylvia Plath; some maintain the converse was true.
19 PILOT, a cryptic definition.
20 RICKY, for boy, outside ETon = RICKETY
22 RAFFISH = F for female, (IF)reversed for provided backing all inside RASH for outbreak. One of my favourite words, well constructed.
24 E for English, DI for detective inspector + CT for court = EDICT
25 AFFLICTION = (FACT IF LED)*
27 Deliberately omitted. Asking may reveal the answer.
28 NON-EXISTENT = STEN for gun inside aNON (for soon heading off) next to EXIT (for leave the stage). Except how does “being held,” indicate the required inclusion?

Down
1 Here And Now = HAN. Are the linked HANs a setter’s trademark?
2 NINJA = curtaiN IN JApan. My nephews, not having grown up with Shintaro, insisted on calling them “The Engine Turtles”.
3 MEANEST is the ultimate in shabbiness, yes. I’ve absolutely no idea who Arthur is. It’s also ES for (thou) art in MEANT. I’m still clueless.
4 SPEED inverted + OUT for blooming + H for hot = DEEP SOUTH
5 WALES = W for with + dALES
6 SUPPLER = SUPPLiER
7 A GOOD DEAL = (ADO + AGE-OLD)*. Another cracking anagram, perhaps my favourite clue today.
8 HOME STRETCH, a double definition, the second tongue in cheek.
11 QUARTERDECK, Double definition, the first cryptic, the second a reference to an old sea-going tradition of uncertain origin, at least to the author of this web page.
14 ADDICTION = A [arounD] DICTION
16 DESERT for leave + FOX (see 11ac) = DESERT FOX, Rommel’s nom de guerre
18 trousseaU + NEATEN for groom = UNEATEN
19 PUFFINS = UP reversed + F for fine + FINS for bits of fish. The small miracles of fluid mechanics.
21 YARN for story about lonesomE = YEARN
23 THISTLE without the T and H of “the” = ISTLE, a plant fibre known only to crossword compilers and solvers.
26 Deliberately omitted. This one has been around since the beginning of time.

42 comments on “Times 24641 – One flower and no insects”

  1. I think we’re talking second person singulars at 3dn. Art can also MEAN EST. That’s the best I can come up with.
    1. I didn’t know est was part of the declension of “to be”, except in France? I came across this though: “On rare occasions, Shakespeare omitted thou, leaving just the verb. For example, in Measure for Measure, Lucio asks, “Art going to prison, Pompey?” (3.2.58).” So “Art expressing” could be (thou) meanest if mean=express. dictionary.com equates the two in their thesaurus under signify or convey. ODE seems to think it’s more an intention to express rather than the expression itself.
  2. As everybody else is saying, a game of two halves. Left half easy and quick, right half much trickier. 49 minutes in all. COD to QUAKERS, although it would have been much harder without the extra assistance from 16dn.
  3. ‘Art expressing’ as in ‘What meanest thou, O sleeper? Arise, call upon thy God’ (Jonah 1:6).
  4. A real curate’s egg in terms of difficulty, as indicated by koro, with a third of the answers written in ten 10 minutes, and another 54 minutes required for the rest (last in the RAFFISH PILOT intersection – Biggles, moustache, RAF … jolly good stuff).

    Didn’t need to know Fox to get his clues (but tucked away for later, more fiendish inclusion); ISTLE from the wordplay, generating images of Eeyore. COD to QUARTERDECK for its elegance and for holding me up for some time by derailing me into ‘heart’.

  5. Enjoyable. 24 minutes. Liked the diversions of Quarterdeck (hearts; quarterback). In 28 ‘being held’ surely in itself indicates inclusion in what follows. In 3 the old second person sing. is extant Times-wise; and mean for express is surely OK. Some clever clues; nothing wild.
    1. As to express, I was thinking express as in say, and we don’t always say what we mean; but express as signify works OK.

      As for the grammar of being held, “There was, gun being held, a holster” doesn’t make a lot of sense to me even if “There was a holster, gun being held” might just about survive the omission of “with”. I can’t think of a convincing example which doesn’t require “in” or “by” after “held”. Anybody?

  6. Started this around 1 A.M. and made good progress completing about half of it in 15 minutes but then ground to a halt. After a further 5 minutes I set it aside until this morning and on resumption polished it off in 15, so 35 in all.

    This is what I call a lively puzzle with lots of quirky clues and references. Great fun to solve.

  7. Only slowed by scribbled 3,5 rather than 3,6 for the poet but otherwise steady solve with no significant delays. MEANEST last in for want of anything else that would fit; didn’t know PROEM, that SOLIDUS was a coin or why one should salute the QUARTERDECK. Clever and amusing so my kind of puzzle with COD shared by QUAKERS and QUARTERDECK. Also solved the bonus clues in Koro’s splendid blog.

    Pietersen Surrey saga (for cricket fans only):

    KP now has just one more opportunity to achieve a first-class whole number average for Surrey. I note that the batter left out to accommodate KP scored a century in each innings of the 2nd XI match played simultaneous to that where KP managed 0 and 1. I fear for England down under.

  8. 5:24 – I made the very easy half last most of the way, but slowed down a bit for 11 A & D and 20A, the latter inexcusably, as I must have seen school=Eton in hundreds of clues by now.

    At 28, the answer to kororareka’s question can only be “rather loosely” – If you heard a sentence like “Passport being held, Peter approached the check-in desk”, you would understand it but probably conclude that the speaker’s first language was not English. Unless of course someone can offer a more convincing example.

    Elsewhere there were some very nicely done clues – I liked all od 1A, 17, 24, 4, 19 (which I think qualifies as an &lit/all-in-one), and 26 a 7, so to speak.

    1. I don’t know if there is a category for 19d, where the surface reading serves as an extended definition to a clue which already has a proper definition; it’s almost as clever as the birds themselves. “What’s turning up with etc” would be classed a semi-&lit in some people’s books. The “birds” circumvents any criticism which may be laid at semi-&lits doors.

      I’m more convinced by your passport example than anything I could come up with, but there is a certain clumsiness.

      1. I guess it has to be a semi-&lit strictly, but I only regard “semi-&lit” as an arbitrary category name, not an indication of inferiority to “pure” &lits.
      2. I think with clues one is attuned to the possibility of “containment within” as in one part of the answer lying inside another part or parts. Thus the word “held” can be taken as carrying a certain invitation, as much as if the rest of the sentence clearly implied the containing. As in “The rampaging prisoners now being held, the cell door could be locked.” It can be a touch ungainly but clues often aren’t that gainly.
  9. …I feel I can brag, but I finished this, the Guardian and the Independent by 1am. It can only go downhill for the rest of the week.

    sidey

  10. Just 11 minutes today, with no real hold-ups. I don’t know why, but the being held conundrum didn’t strike me until coming here – it worked for me while solving. WALES will always mean to me the Valleys, as a student preacher visiting some wonderful chapels such as Tirzah, Cwm, and Calvary, Brynmawr.
    CoD to QUARTERDECK, such a neat clue.
  11. Good testing puzzle, 25m. Like others I started quickly (1ac straight in) but soon got bogged down by some good tricky clueing. For once I wasn’t held up an enormous amount by knowledge gaps: SOLIDUS and ISTLE went in from wordplay but otherwise nothing unfamiliar. Enjoyable.
  12. Finished at 7:12 and the puzzle comes in at 7:00, so I guess that’s 12 minutes, including printing time, during which I solved 1 and 7 across.
    A few notes: the SOUS (12ac) are interesting, since “sou” derives from OF “sout” which, itself, derives from “solidus”. And while we’re on the subject, can radio announcers (etc.) please use this word instead of “slash” (which has a very different meaning in my home dialect).
    A pangram minus B, V & Z; for which I have the usual remedy, but won’t bother everyone with it this time. You might have some extra fun working that out. Or maybe not.
  13. 19 min today, although I didn’t understand some of the wordplay until I got here, but all my answers were correct 🙂 Top right was last in, but the SOU dropped in the end.
  14. Completed successfully but without understanding wordplay for 3dn or 8dn. Glad for 3dn suggestions above. However, 8dn ‘stretch’ as a prison sentence/term, yes, but I’ve never encountered any context in which it might mean ‘arrest’ (and can’t find any online).
  15. 7:18, the last in being a hesitant PILOT (19ac).  Unknowns: “combinations” as UNDERWEAR (15ac), saluting the QUARTERDECK (11dn), and George Fox as the founder of the Quakers (16dn DESERT FOX).  ISTLE (23dn) was unfamiliar, as for some reason was RAFFISH (22ac).

    A neat puzzle that would serve beginners well.  The “gun being held” construction almost certainly betrays a classical education.

    Clue of the Day: 21dn (YEARN).

    1. That would also explain my difficulty with it. On the plus side, the box I made in woodworking is still in use.
  16. I found this very smooth and easy (after a frustrating last week in which there were three puzzles I couldn’t even finish). It took me 39 minutes (my fastest ever) to fill in the diagram correctly, despite my printer’s having omitted the last word of the clue for 28A. I then spent a few more minutes understanding the word play for MEANEST, DEEP SOUTH and NONEXISTENT (after retrieving the missing word and resisting the temptation to let “imaginary” indicate the I rather than the meaning of the whole — I-STEN, the imaginary gun, a mathematician’s fantasy, of course). My last in was MEANEST, after cruising the alphabet for the second and fourth letters, the superlative ending being more or less clear.
  17. 17 minutes, though a little distracted by TV and emails coming in, last in SOLIDUS. Didn’t really get MEANEST but it had to be the only thing that would fit the checking letters. NON-EXISTENT went in without looking at the whole wordplay.
  18. All very straightforward, I thought, apart from 10ac and 12ac which completely defeated me. Some nice clues, esp. 11ac / 5d / 14d.
  19. 16 minutes with the last 2 trying to make something of 3d. In the end I just threw in meanest on the basis that it was at least plausible.

    Proem, solidus and istle were all new, I entered raffish, non-existent and addiction without bothering to unravel full wordplay.

  20. 24 minutes. Put in 3 down for totally the wrong reason … thought the art was something to do with Manet and forgot to go back and check; so thanks for putting me right. I like a puzzle such as this where the majority of clues are concise, even when, as in 19 across, they offer only one way in.
  21. 10 minutes but one stupid mistake. I had SOLIDOS for 12. Also couldn’t work out MEANEST and held up on the 11’s by having Rommel as a DESERT RAT!
    Both 11a and 11d get my COD vote.
  22. Finished this puzzle in about 15 minutes, including the last several minutes staring at 3D, knowing it was MEANEST but not knowing why. I then simply wrote it in, put the pen down, sat back, read the clue again, and had the d’oh! moment. There were a few things I didn’t know (UNDERWEAR as ‘combinations’, saluting the QUARTERDECK, TED HUGHES) but it was all readily reached by the wordplay. Regards to all.
  23. 15 mins, felt as if it should have been a bit faster. Very fresh and enjoyable crossword, with some excellent surfaces working in titles/names/phrases such as ‘lonesome pine’. COD to 19A, cryptic defs. aren’t always my cup of tea but I thought this one was excellent.

    Tom B.

  24. 5D solved itself differently for me, SWALES losing its leading S. Always have a blind-spot for ‘with’ clueing W.

    Rob

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