Times 24647 – You Know My Name (Look Up My Number)!

Author   vinyl1Posted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Solving time: 30 minutes

Music: Liszt, Operatic Paraphrases, Craig Shepherd

This puzzle would have been somewhat easier if the enumerations at the Crossword Club site had been correct. As it was, I was held up a bit, but not terribly. As an aid to confused solvers, I will precede each answer that is wrongly enumerated at the site with an asterisk.

Overall, I found this puzzle not much to my taste. There are too many cryptic definitions and cliched wordplay in comparison with the usual high standard in the Times, and it seemed like a puzzle from one of the lesser papers. Perhaps my view is influenced somewhat by annoyance with the enumerations.

Beginners are reminded that obvious clues are not blogged. I will, however, include all the clues that were wrongly enumerated at the online site.

Across
1 SPLIT, double definition, and a frequently used one. We are not off to a good start.
4 *TOP DRAWER, POT reversed + REWARD reversed.
9 *NUMBER TEN, cryptic definition of NUMBER + TEN[d]. We could have had some fun if this had been 10 across.
10 BUSHY, BU[t] + SHY. Thanks and a hat tip to jackkt and George. BUSTY, cryptic definition. I am not entirely sure of this, but it seems like the most suitable explanation. ‘Bushy’ is the only other word that fits that might mean ‘thick’, but it doesn’t match the rest of the clue. Comments welcome.
11 LONDON, double definition, Jack London and the Times of London.
12 CORSICAN, anagram of NARCO[t]ICS, leaving off the end of [guil]T.
14 WASSAILING, W + ASSAILING. It took me quite a while to think of this rather obvious wordplay.
16 Omitted, use the crossing letters.
19 ROOK, cryptic definition from the way the rook moves on the chessboard.
20 *LIFE JACKET, LIFE + JACKET, another easy one even with the wrong enumeration.
22 CLERIHEW, CLERI[c] + HEW. I first tried ‘canon’, going for something like ‘canzone’, but saw the correct answer fairly quickly. The only really fine clue in the puzzle, IMHO.
23 *DIM SUM, DIM + SUM. Obvious and well-known, but the enumeration may give pause.
26 Omitted, obvious, used the crossing letters.
27 ALIGNMENT, anagram of LAMENTING. I do not recall this one, but surely it must have come up before.
28 *LOWER DECK. LOWER + DECK, but the wrong enumeration is likely to give great difficulty here. I had not yet realized the problem, and thought this might occur as one word.
29 LIMEY, LIME + [jul]Y. The UK-centric nature of this clue threw me at first. Don’t these setters know they’re up before a global audience now? At least they should consider the Scots and the Welsh.
 
Down
1 SUNFLOWER, double defintion. I couldn’t think of this for the longest times, having haystacks on the brain.
2 LEMON, cryptic definition from metaphorical usages.
3 TEETOTAL, TEE (as in golf tee) + TOTAL. I am a bit surprised this is always spelt with ‘tee’ and not ‘tea’, but so it is….and it is always one word.
4 Omitted, use the crossing letters.
5 PINPOINTED, double definition. I don’t get the second one, but maybe it’s a cricket clue.
6 ROBUST, ROB US + T. One of the wittier clues in this puzzle.
7 WISECRACK, WISE + CRACK in different senses. OK as one word.
8 RAYON, RAY + ON the cricket leg.
13 ILLITERATE, anagram of TRIAL, ELITE, quite easy because the LIT is kept intact.
15 *SCORE DRAW, cryptic definition. I don’t know much about football, but I suppose this means not 0-0, but 1-1 or 2-2.
17 OPTOMETRY, OP + TOME + TRY. Nice, but the literal is still a giveaway.
18 Omitted, a combination of well-know cryptic elements.
21 PILLAR P(ILL)AR. Almost omitted, but I had to think a bit despite trying ‘par’ from the start.
25 Omitted, obvious, the checking letters give it to you.
24 STEAM, S + TEAM. I nearly got in trouble here, confidently writing in MOXIE, MO + XI + E, as some sort of strange &lit, but it doesn’t really work.
25 Omitted, omitted, omitted!

55 comments on “Times 24647 – You Know My Name (Look Up My Number)!”

  1. 12 minutes, also thrown by the enumerations, since most answers went straight in. I have BUSHY for 10 – BUT without T, and then SHY for backwards (confirmed by Bradfords later).

    I did the acrosses first, and had a lot of fun with 26 across, confidently writing in DECKHANDS and wondering why nothing else worked with it.

  3. 40 Minutes but lost at least 5 of them thrown by incorrect enumerations. I first noticed a problem at 9ac, quite early in the proceedings, and I wish I had thought to check all the other clues at that point and noticed that no two word answers were indicated. If the puzzle hadn’t been reasonably easy I would have gone looking for these but I was making good progress so there was no need.

    One minor gripe at 4ac, ‘animal’ is only one type of totem.

  4. 20 minutes, 5 of which spent wrestling with 16A. Good quality, none too taxing puzzle to keep the beginners happy. COD to OINK for entertainment value alone.
  5. Regards all. I was fouled up by the enumerations and took 40 minutes to finish as a result. I kept thinking “do they really spell that as one word over there?”, until I got to the NUMBER TEN/PINPOINTED crossers at the end, and realized they all must be typos. Vinyl, thanks for the blog, and I think the only explanation for the ‘biting’ bit in 5D is that a ‘pointed’ comment can be ‘biting’. If not for the editing lapse, a fine if none too taxing puzzle, where I liked several clues, especially DIM SUM. Best to everyone.
  6. The enumerations didn’t bother me much (apart from the PM’s residence). Held up in the NE, where I had to go to aids for BUSHY, which then enabled the rather clever ROBUST to fall. Also cheated on CLERIHEW, where I had the CLERI—, but after a pretty poor 80 minutes was clearly running out of puff.

    Hats off to the sublime, if frustrating, Berbatov for making sure yesterday’s match against Liverpool did not finish as a score draw.

  7. I’d vaguely heard of CLERIHEW before, but had no idea until now what it meant. Instead I came up with CREVICED (vic inside creed) which is plainly not the intended answer but comes a close second.

    I also threw in the newspaper term FILLER at 21 down, without stopping to look for the ‘standard’ component. Otherwise picked my way through the cliches easily enough in 42 minutes.

  8. Don’t have a time as I did this during several work breaks early this morning. And yeh, the enumerations are frustrating. Anon definitely has it on PIN + POINTED. “Not so nippy on my pins these days”, he said pointedly. And as for vinyl’s remarks on globality: see 11 across!
    Wordsmiths really ought to know the clerihew, I reck. Here’s a fave:

    Hester Prynne
    Though covered in sin
    Was the first American girl to wear a letter
    On her sweater.

  9. done in 40 but spent a long time wondering on enumeration!….Clue of the day might be Bushy or Clerihew
  10. Despite enumerations did most of this fairly quickly but then got hopelessly stuck until, for the first time for a while, I resorted to aids to get CLERIHEW and BUSHY (the latter I doubt I ever would have solved).
    Query. Yesterday’s puzzle had an answer which defied daily puzzle rules. Without giving away the answer can someone tell me if the rules vary between Sunday and the daily puzzles? I have never before come across this difference. Sorry if this is a bit cryptic but I don’t want to commit any solecisms.
      1. Barry, the daily cryptic and the ST cryptic are totally different animals, just don’t get us started.. 🙂
        Under 20 mins for this one, or about average difficulty allowing for a little time cussing over the enumeration. It didn’t affect me much because I quite often disagree with the setters over whether a clue should be 4-5, 4,5 or 9 etc. Barred puzzles normally give no help at all in that way, of course.
        I think some are being a bit hard on this puzzle.. there are a number of nice surfaces and I didn’t notice more than the usual number of cliches. Of course if you solve these grids for long enough, almost everything becomes a cliche..
  11. Another who had creviced instead of clerihew. A waste of a good clue. I was going to say I’d never seen vic for vicar in The Times before. Perhaps I should have listened to my own counsel. I’ll blame the enumerations, although only NUMBER TEN held me up (for a long time, he says wiping foam from corner of mouth). Speaking of which, can someone explain what the “to” is doing in “minister to cut”?

    Some good clues here amongst some gimmes; COD to BUSHY with DECKHANDS a close second… No, wait a minute, that was George’s clue and an excellent one at that.

  12. Fell into the crevice at 22ac. ‘Dim sum’ is clearly better but is ‘dip sum’ an acceptable alternative for 23ac or does ‘from China’ rule it out?
      1. A (maybe very limited) style of American donut: Google brings up three references (not sure how to paste a link into this comment).
        1. Ah well, then yes, I think ‘from China’ would rule it out. Also, (judging by the Google hits) I’m not sure if the phrase would be well-known enough in the UK (or indeed anywhere else) to warrant inclusion. Finally, I’m not sure where the Times stands on using brand names within its clues. I don’t remember ever having seen any, so I suspect they would avoid them for the same reason they avoid referring to living people – to avoid potential litigation.
          1. There isn’t a complete ban on brand names – AA and RAC are the most obvious examples of very well-known commercial names that are permitted. But that’s a very long way from using names like “Dip Sum” that are one (unchecked) letter away from a real word – even if ‘Dip Sum’ were allowed, I think the xwd ed would insist on wordplay that clearly made DIM SUM impossible as an answer.
  13. Argh, I hate it when the number indicators aren’t right! e.g. at 9ac I had NUMBER in my head very early on, but couldn’t think of any 9-letter word that started that way so dismissed it; and 15d looked impossible until I finally twigged the problem, so I wasn’t even sure I’d got the crossing words right….
    After the first 30 minutes most of the left-hand side was still blank. Struggled through to the end in just over an hour, with some aids. Not an enjoyable experience.
  14. This crossword just struck me as very dull – was no fun to solve at all.
    ps I got Busty at 10 as well – glad to find I was wrong 🙂
  15. 9 minutes (!) working in good old fashioned, properly numbered newsprint. Does the US edition have “One of them…” for 29ac? Only hold up was IAGO, with a misreading of “exciting”. Fortunately, I only had to go as far as “I” in the alphabet. I liked the clues for CLERIHEW and LIFE-JACKET, the latter being my CoD.
  17. 6:10 for this, using the online version – maybe worth 5:45 with correct enumerations.

    Not as troubled as some by the style, but maybe that’s the result of Times xwd experience going back to the days when this puzzle would have had fewer cryptic defs than average.

    Anyone else in favour of switching to the kind of system used in puzzles like Mephisto? (i.e. “(9, two words)” rather than “6,3”) and hyphenated answers or part-answers counted as single words.) It would hugely reduce the effect by which clues for answers like MIDDLE OF THE ROAD are turned into doddles by the enumeration.

    1. I don’t think I would be in favour of this change. For someone of my standard (I finish about 3 days out of 5, usually within two or three clues on other days, time spent normally around the 45 min mark) I quite enjoy the way a long multi-word answer can open up part of the grid relatively quickly.

      Naturally this site has a high concentration of ‘expert’ solvers – to whom I’m incredibly grateful for the effort which goes into blogging and general posting to help the rest of us on our way – but I do think I’m reasonably representative of the army of plodders out there who help make the Times Crossword so popular.

      I’d worry that too many puzzles would start to get unapproachable with this type of change. I understand why some would want to make things more challenging – but isn’t this precisely what the likes of Mephisto are for?

      1. OK – you and Jack have convinced me. The way to make things more challenging in the daily puzzle (when desired) will just have to be the avoidance of many multi-word answers and more particularly, using new ones rather than old favourites.
    2. No, they’re quite hard enough for a daily cryptic without that and it would change the nature of the challenge. Those wanting more difficult challenges have Mephisto and Listener and other sources. I think it’s sometimes easy to forget that these puzzles are not intended specifically for the crossword nuts around here, but also for ordinary Times readers who just want something to while away a little time each day over coffee or on the commute.
    3. We could have the best of both worlds, if the Times could be convinced to add a second print option for unenumerated clues.
  18. No problem with enumerations in the paper edition. 21 minutes for this. Standard fare and generally straightforward but I got held up in a few places. CLERIHEW was new and a guess. I got IAGO immediately but for some reason it took me ages to see the wordplay.
  19. 24 minutes here which allowing for some hold-up with the wrong number-signals weren’t too bad, for me. As for clerihews…
    Said Peter Biddlecombe,
    Let any riddle come –
    I’ll solve it a minute
    Before you begin it.
  20. Also put creviced for 22a, and felt less stupid seeing I wasn’t the only one. Robust appeared in last Saturday’s Jumbo, to this beginner it is quite surprising how often that happens.

    Isabel

  21. Just realised I am probably not supposed to give away answers for Saturday puzzles, my apologies.
    Isabel
    1. Don’t worry too much about one answer in 80-odd! There seems to be quite a big effort made to avoid consipicuous repetition in daily puzzles, but I don’t think Jumbos are included in this effort. It doesn’t worry me too much as I quite often don’t get round to Jumbos until a week or three after publication, which can give you a completely different repetition experience. (There’s also the point that in a Jumbo, it must be almost impossible to avoid having a few of those words that keep on cropping up.)
  22. 9 minutes. Fortunately I got TOP DRAWER early in the piece, so was still thinking to myself “Surely that isn’t actually ever written as one word” when I looked at the next clue and realised that NUMBERTEN must be out of the same stable.
  23. Sorry to be off-piste, but could someone here direct folk to a notice on the Crossword Centre Message Board — and maybe alert Fifteensquared folk too. There’s an auction on for an already-paid-for ticket for the Azed lunch in Oxford this Saturday — but you’ll have to hurry! Don Manley
  24. An odd one this. Took an age to get going – my first one in was 12ac, then made very slow progress before I sped along to end up in 30 minutes with only 6d / 10ac left. Made no progress for ages with these, and eventually resorted to the Chambers Word Wizard. Just noticed a mistake at 22ac as well, where I made a bit of a stab in the dark with ‘creviced’. Not the most auspicious start to the week.
  25. Probably about 45 minutes in total. Although resorted to aids for PINPOINTED which just wouldn’t come.

    Was undoubtedly delayed by the enumerations. Once I’d realised the problem, I kept looking for multiple word answers where there were none.

  26. 16 minutes, with the last 8 spent failing to get PINPOINTED (5dn) – I expect I’d have got it if I’d known it was a one-word answer, but robbed of that certainty I was frustrated and not thinking straight.  My only unknown was ‘backward’ meaning SHY (10ac), but three answers were unfamiliar: LOWER DECK (28ac), RAYON (8dn) and SCORE DRAW (15dn).  I’m glad that, after several repetitions, SPLIT (1ac) is now familiar.

    13dn (ILLITERATE) is, ironically, ungrammatical, having two incompatible link phrases: “In [anagrist] turned out to be [definition]”.

    Clue of the Day: 25dn (OINK), which raised a smile.

    On Peter’s enumeration question, incidentally, I’m with Dave and Jack – though I think it would be acceptable for championship puzzles to be made harder in this way.

    1. I wouldn’t mind them doing this in the championship, but they’d be unable to tell us that the puzzles presented were just like those you could find in the Times any day of the week. (Currently a debatable claim but not completely ridiculous.)
  27. 13 minutes, not overly troubled by the dodgy enume rations.

    I nearly fell into the crevice (which I parsed as REV in CICED) but with ciced clearly being a non-word I had a re-think. I found most of this easy with only pinpointed, clerihew and top drawer causing problems.

  28. A rather dull stroll in the park. The puzzle felt as if it had lost all sparkle. By the time I came to do it the presentational problems had been corrected so less than 15 minutes to solve.
  29. 15 minutes. I didn’t lose too much time with the enumerations but did get held up by the NE corner. Getting TOTE got me started then spent the last 2 or 3 minutes considering what B-S-Y. I ended up writing down all the possibilities before the penny finally dropped. Glad I had the W before I looked at 28 or I would probably have had George’s DECKHANDS
  30. 25 minutes-ish.. this was only the second time I had tried solving online and it proved as frustrating as the previous occasion. I just can’t seem to think straight while looking at the screen and things I type keep appearing in unexpected places. Turns out I’m not a paperless office kind of person.

    In fact, I was so frazzled by the end that I have no idea what I thought of this puzzle. Last in BUSHY.

    Congrats and bonus points to richnorth and anyone else who came up with the ingenious CRE(VIC)ED interpretation. I’m filled with admiration.

  31. I thought that this was rather boring: finished in 25 minutes. I think that the only redeeming feature was that there were one or two entertaining moments: OINK and BUSHY as cases in point.

    COD to CLERIHEW but DECKHANDS and CREVICED both come a close joint second!

  32. Felt more like an Everyman today, whch I s’ppose was classically intended for Monday, no? (homage to Rafa Benitez; you don’t know what you’ve got ’til it’s gone…)
    I too had ‘creviced’ albeit an even more tenuous parsing – ‘c’ for verse (chapter and…), ‘rev’ for churchman and ‘iced’ for cut; pas mal, no?
    1. “My exiting comment” = I GO.  (I didn’t understand this while solving because I’d misread “exiting” as “exciting”.)
      1. Thanks Mark. I actually read “exiting” but spent an eternity thinking I needed to get a synonym for “comment” from which the letters MY were to be removed!
  34. Very late comment, but I had a full day yesterday and little time to do most of the puzzle before the eyes drooped too much. So I finished the northeast this morning and finally resorted late in the evening to my electronic Chambers for help with SCOREDRAW and CLERIHEW, which were new to me. COD to ROBUST, which I found quite amusing.

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