Times 24,654

Author   topicaltimPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Solid, mostly straightforward, solve, which was nothing like as testing or (with all due respect to today’s setter) entertaining as yesterday’s offering; though as I try not to damn with faint praise on such occasions, I should emphasise when I refer to a puzzle as a good solid daily offering, I always mean that as a compliment.

I was through this one pretty quickly (sub-15 mins), though I was certainly lucky in that the knowledge required outside wordplay (not too much today) involved a) places and b) sports I know well. Others may not be so fortunate.

Across
1 RICHTER – T(ime) in RICHER gives the earthquake scale.
5 HOTSHOT – (p)HOT(o) + SHOT.
9 BANK MANAGER – BANK + (AGERMAN)*; held myself up by plumping for LINE MANAGER before asking myself why that was specifically financial, and realising it wasn’t.
10 LIP – double def.
11 FLAGON – i.e FLAG ON; significant voyages of discovery and exploration traditionally end with the planting of a flag of some sort, including those of Peary, Amundsen and subsequent Polar explorers. Though if we use Occam’s razor (see mctext, comment #2 below) we could, of course, just take the obvious meaning that it’s a flagpole, and not read any more into it than we need to. Ah well, this is what happens when you do the blog at a time when all good people (on GMT at least) should be tucked up in bed. Move along, nothing to see here…
12 FLAWLESS – F(emale) + LAWLESS.
14 READING MATTER – READING (rather than reading) MATTER=are important.
17 RUGBY FOOTBALL – sporting knowledge required for this cryptic def., in that rugby union (the game) began at Rugby (the old school) when William Webb Ellis allegedly “showed a fine disregard for the rules” – hence non-conformist – in running with the ball. All rather iffy historically, of course, but the story lives on.
21 ANTIBODY – ANT + [D in 1 BOY].
23 OTTAWA – [WATT in A … O]rev.
25 HEW – witH singlE bloW.
26 SERVICE FLAT – SERVICE=army, for example + FLAT=even.
27 ROYALTY – double def.; I can now hear in my head Miranda Richardson in Blackadder asking “Who’s Queen?”. Assuming none of our regular posters are members of the House of Windsor, most of us are mere subjects; your status will, of course, vary if you’re somewhere in the Commonwealth or further afield. You may even be someone whose ancestors fought her Majesty’s great-great-great-grandfather for the right not to be a subject.
28 AUDITOR – frAUD I TORpedo, &lit.
 
Down
1 REBUFF – RE:=”on” BUFF=”expert”.
2 CENTAUR – A in CENTUR(y); going for the Roman army unit rather than the period of 100 years gives this a smooth surface.
3 TEMPORARY – (PARTY MORE)*.
4 RAND – R(ex/egina) AND.
5 HIGHLIGHTS – HIGH + LIGHTS; Oxford Street meaning a street in Oxford on this occasion, rather than the well-known shopping area in London W1; though Oxford has no monopoly on the name, obviously.
6 THREW – R(ight) in THE W(icket); another of our regular cricket-based clues: in the laws of cricket, throwing (i.e an action which involves straightening of the arm) is illegal, i.e. “unfair bowling”.
7 HOLIEST – (THESOIL)*.
8 TAPESTRY – TAPES (=”records”, as in the way we used to kill music before downloads existed) + TRY (=”shot”).
13 DISORDERLY – (DRY SOLDIER)*; being “drunk & disorderly” is an arrestable offence, and a commonly-used phrase in the UK outside the specific sphere of law and order – presumably the concept, if not the same wording, exists everywhere else in the world. Not to be confused with Duncan Disorderly, who played football for Rangers and Everton.
15 APARTHEID – A PART + HE + I’D.
16 BREATHER – double def.
18 GETAWAY – (GATE)* + WAY.
19 LEAFLET – double def., one verb, one botanical noun.
20 FACTOR – F(ellow) ACTOR.
22 BASIL – S(mall) in BAIL.
24 PISA – 1’s in P(er)A(nnum); my recent holiday took me to Italy, and I paid a visit to see, amongst other things, the leaning tower (“listed” building – geddit?). One of those sights where the pictures just can’t prepare you for how odd it looks in real life.

52 comments on “Times 24,654”

  1. I suspect there will be some blinders of times, as it was 11 minutes for me and I very rarely break 10. Some nice clues, particularly liked the ones for OTTAWA and FLAWLESS.
  2. Yep, a nice change from some recent harder puzzles: 18 minutes here.
    Note to Tim: surely the flag (11ac) just goes on a flagpole, regardless of polar explorers?
    1. Noted and amended. Not sure why my brain decided to pick out the unnecessarily complicated connotation of pole, instead of fixing on the blindingly obvious meaning related to flags…
  3. I’m with Vinyl1 with this one. Started off well enough but got completely stuck with about 8 to go. Eventually had to go to the aids to get RUGBY UNION (And me a Kiwi!) then went on to complete in 22 min, so much slower than yesterday’s little masterpiece. Nothing to really catch the eye here.
  4. I did exactly the same as Tim with LINE MANAGER.

    Completed the top half indecently fast, but then took a while to mull over the Florida corner. SERVICE FLAT was an unfamiliar variation of “serviced apartment” and took all the checkers to see.

  5. A little tricky. 30 minutes. I too went for Line not Bank for too long. Looking at the completed grid it seems it should have been considerably easier than it was. For which I would tend to praise the setter rather than castigate myself. A nice example perhaps of ‘simple truth miscall’d simplicity’. COD 27.
  6. Around 65 minutes for me too. I thought it was going to be an easy one because the whole of the top half and BREATHER and AUDITOR and DISORDERLY in the lower half all went in within 20 minutes but then I hit the wall and took another 45 unproductive minutes to claw away at the remaining answers one by one.

    The SE corner eventually gave way and the L from LEAFLET helped me to solve the elusive RUGBY FOOTBALL. Last but one in was HEW and I needed both checking letters to spot it. Missing something as obvious as that after all my years of solving makes me want to give up but no doubt I shall bounce back tomorrow.

  7. Found this much easier than yesterday’s delight and was only really held up in SE corner, whereas Ross and Vinyl1, after being almost embarrassed by their speedy times yesterday, were both troubled by this? The mystery deepens.
    One of the pleasures of being a newer solver is coming across jokes for the first time, eg “listed building”, no doubt yawn-inducing for more experienced solvers.
    Got the Oxford street immediately recalling my outrage the last time it appeared. Nice job setter but you really must get out more.
  8. Initially slow progress, much better when I got going. Anyone who can get 1A on first look and follow it up with 1D to eliminate the LINE (from wordplay) and FUND (from def) manager ideas should do very well.
  9. 45 minutes for me, with a similar pattern to most others, i.e. the top half much easier than the bottom. Enjoyed three of the south downs particularly: DISORDERLY, BREATHER and PISA. Last in FACTOR.
  10. 29 minutes. Almost bought the dummy for RUGBY FOOTBALL; a cleverly misleading clue, I thought.
  11. 35 minutes. Last in (and biggest groan, so obviously I hadn’t come across it before!) was 24d. 17 ac went in as the only phrase that fitted, with absolutely no understanding of the clue whatsoever. Are there ANY female setters out there?
    2. Barring any recent changes, mctext is right – three cheers for Joyce Cansfield. There are a few female setters working for other papers, but not very many. I’d love to be able to say that there was new female setting talent out there, but I can only think of one woman among the “budding setters” known to me, so the trend seems set to continue. Much the same goes for the solvers, at least at the competitive end – about one eighth of competitors at the championship are female. In the US, the ratios seem to be more balanced in both groups.
      1. And isn’t the same true of contributors to this blog? One can’t see past some of the pseudonyms, of course, but it strikes me that I am one of the few women who regularly tune in – and only anonymously at that.
      2. Well, given that females are meant to have (broadly speaking) greater linguistic ability than males, I strongly suspect that the preponderance of clues that assume the kind of knowledge acquired at a British all-male public school, has something to do with the lack of female solvers on this side of the pond. Now if only we had more clues based on childcare, nursing, cooking, knitting ….
        (cue clue challenge for STOCKING STITCH, anyone?)
        1. I’m perfectly happy to see a bit less sport and a bit more of these subjects, but I honestly don’t think you need to have gone to public school (or even be a bloke) to know about the creation myth for Rugby Union.
          1. Maybe not … but you still have to be interested enough to remember it!

            How about: Legwear a very small person made with needles (8,6)?

              1. Yes, that was my own entry for my challenge! – and here’s the alternative version:
                Legwear a very small person made with needles (6,6)
  12. 9min 30sec so pretty good for me. Nice and accessible but well constructed throughout. Thanks, setter, for such a nice start to the day!
  13. A nice, steady canter today, 18 mins but did the top half pretty quick and then took a while to get stuck into the rest. Several witty clues, I particularly liked “personal protection” = antibody. But cod to the slick, elegant 2dn.
  14. 19 minutes today (I blame my aching back). I DID get 1ac, but couldn’t make any sense of 1dn, so it was the LINE variant for me too for 9. Only corrected when nothing fitted R-L-F-, and I got REBUFF from the definition only, not seeing buff as a fan. I see Chambers does.
    I thought the RUGBY clue was really well disguised, got it, feeling slightly peeved, once all the checkers were in. Didn’t see the reason for HEW.
    Some really pleasant clues here though, and I had a three way tie for the top spot with FLAGON, DISORDERLY and ANTIBODY.
  15. Would have been super quick (for me) at sub-20 mins had I not got stupidly wound up with the 22dn/26ac pair, where I kept trying to convince myself that there was such a thing as a WARTIME FLAT, which then had me wondering whether BOWEL could somehow be the answer to 22.

    As is often the case, took a 16dn (well, arrived at work anyway) and saw the light almost straightaway on a second viewing.

  16. Is there some clever facility whereby livejournal picks up words mentioned in the discussion and then selects an appropriate advert to display at the bottom of the page?

    I only ask because I remember a few weeks ago PERGOLA was one of the answers and we had an advert for them on the page. Today I got an advert for a Rugby Skills coaching course. Just coincidence or a whizzy marketing tool?

    1. Having described one of Sabine’s blogs as “warts and all”, an advert for wart-removers appeared in the actual comments, soon edited out, presumably using the product. (Lets see if it happens again).
      1. I can’t remember this one, but if I saw obvious advertising in comments, I’d delete it.
        1. I think the comments above refer to lj’s own streamed ads. And yes, I’ve noticed a couple of coincidences ala Google adverts — which pick up on key phrases in Gmail correspondence. But at least the latter are small and don’t take the form of banners. Maybe you don’t see them, Peter, because you have a paid account? Just a guess.
    2. I think it’s “whizzy marketing” – I’ve seen similar ads elsewhere. The wide range of topics you get in a report here seems to make an obviously relevant ad quite rare.
  17. I didn’t give myself the time to finish the bottom part, but I did get the cricket clue today!
  18. An easy 15 minute canter with only one grimace – Oxford Street for “High” – horrendous definition by obscure example yet at 21A we get “soldier perhaps” so the setter is aware. The rest is reasonable stuff if very straightforward, particularly the definitions (Scale of disaster for example)
    1. “Oxford Street” = HIGH is not definition by example – one of the streets in Oxford is the High Street, informally “The High”, so it’s no different to “horse => BAY”. It’s the “bay => HORSE” ones that you’re supposed to be complaining about.

      Obscure? Well, the informal shortening might be, but as everywhere else has a High Street, it’s not much of a surprise. If it was “Oxford Street => BROAD”, you’d have more of a point.

      1. Just for the record “The High” in Oxford has come up here before and I remember it was the cause some adverse comment (possibly from myself amongst others) so I was ready for it this time.
  19. 33 minutes – my fastest for some time, so I must have been on the setter’s wavelength today. HEW went in without full understanding. It’s nice to get an easier one from time to time – they give me a little morale boost.

    COD 24d.

  20. Very very quick to get the top half of this, say 15 minutes, but swiftly got bogged down for ages down under, not making any progress for a long time. Difficult to work out why now, as all fairly straightforward. Presumably fatigue set in…

    I finished in what for me is a fast 40 minutes, but managed to get both 16d and 20d wrong – went for PREACHER and BATTER, reading both as rather weak CD’s.

    COD 17ac – I got it from the checking letters, and had to have a long hard think about why the rest of the clue fitted!

  21. Demain j’arrête. I get the Twit of the Day award for writing PIZA. It wasn’t a slip of the pen – I actually think it’s spelt like that and have done since junior school. Teach me to look at the wordplay some time.

    I had no idea why ‘Oxford Street’ was ‘high’, despite having lived in Oxford. A device best forgotten.

    Including the mistake, 17:11.04 (timings by Vacheron Constantin).

  22. No problems here, racking up a rare sub-10 minute solve (only just mind – 09:59.6 if the dials on my chronograph are correct). That said, I didn’t fully understand hew and rebuff before coming here. I fleetingly considered line manager for 9 but my suspicions were aroused by the lack of a financial connection and bank as an alternative to line came very quickly.

    COD Pisa, by a country kilometre.

    1. Well said, sidey, although the day rugby league gets a mention in the Times crossword I’ll run down The High wearing just my Bradford Bulls undies.

      Out here in Sydney, league is one of four codes vying for the name ‘football’. But happily it’s the only game in town this week, with two Sydney teams in the grand final on Sunday.

  24. Finished in a tad short of 25 minutes so pleased with that. Didnt see the word play for Rebuff for some time but loved Richter and breather. in fact i am nominating Breather for COD
    well done setter-i think we need the odd simple one every now and then
    BTW anyone cranking through the Jumbo cryptic-its horrendously hard!
    1. I managed about half of the Jumbo Sunday afternoon, haven’t had a chance to look at the rest yet. I won’t feel too distraught now if I don’t get any further (not an uncommon occurrence for me with the Jumbo).
    2. I’m down to blog this one (890) – it took me longer than an average jumbo but I’ve already decided that it’s the kind where a complete report is justified, rather than just a selection of the harder clues – partly because of the difficulty of the clues, but partly becvause of the ingenuity – so I think it’s worth the effort.
  25. 18m, so pretty quick for me and almost very quick, because I had everything but PISA and FACTOR (no I don’t know why either) after 12. When the penny finally dropped PISA raised a chuckle although it occurred to me it might be a chestnut. Is it?
    I thought the rugby clue was a bit obscure but the school reference and “union” were enough once I had enough checkers and I’ll forgive a bit of obscurity in such an original clue.
    I liked ROYALTY too.
    1. PISA: I’d be very surprised if we hadn’t seen “listed building” for the tower, but the “every year” element may be new.
  26. I was going to say that this puzzle was on the easier side (almost EP actually), having completed it in 18 minutes! However, having read the above comments, maybe it wasn’t so easy.

    Anyhow, I had no problem and I enjoyed it. No COD, but some very nice clues.

  27. A bit under 25 minutes today. I am having a lucky week. Re the Jumbo – I finished it on Sunday morning, but there are two I’m really not sure about: 50 down and 55 across. Am I allowed to ask?

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