Times 24690

Author   topicaltimPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Timed at 9:59, for a puzzle which was nearly all straightforward. One plant, which, as usual, I hazarded a (confident) guess at from wordplay rather than green-fingered experience, and one use of a less obvious definition which gave me pause for thought. Other than those, nothing excessively fiendish in wordplay or required knowledge (he said, tempting fate and the disagreement of all and sundry)…

Across
1 PALL MALL – ALL in P.M. ALL.
6 FIERCE – I.E. in F(o)RCE.
9 INGRID BERGMAN – (REMINDINGGARBO)*.
10 WARREN – R.E. in WARN.
11 RESOLVED – SOLVE in RED. Nice surface that sums up the occasional trials of the crossword enthusiast…
13 POTENTILLA – POT + (LENTILA)*. The garden remains one of my blind spots, knowledge-wise, so I had never heard of this cinquefoil.
15 SETT – SETTER without the ER gives the paving stone, rather than (to my mind, at any rate) the more obvious badger-related meaning.
16 HA HA – double def. referencing the landscaping feature beloved of Capability Brown, and not actually that funny, especially if you fall into one.
18 MUDSLINGER – the political insult stemming from the original pottery-based meaning. Google reveals that lots of potters have clearly decided to reclaim the word, and are perfectly happy to be known as mudslingers.
21 ABUNDANT – BUN, DAN in A T(ime).
22 ASHRAM – ASH (=wood) + RAM (=stuff).
23 TO SAY THE LEAST – enough said, as it were.
25 PROPER – PROPEL with R(ight) for L(eft).
26 ROTATORY – ROT + A TORY.
 
Down
2 AGITATO – G.I. in A T.A. TO.
3 LEGERDEMAIN – (LEGREMAINED)*.
4 APIAN – A PIAN(o). Nice disguised definition, “a buzzer’s” = “of a bee”.
5 LIBERAL – R.A. in LIBEL.
6 FORESTALL – FOREST, ALL.
7 ELM – (h)ELM.
8 deliberately omitted
12 LOSING HEART – this being how BOY becomes B(O)Y.
14 TOM SAWYER – (MOSTWEARY)*. At time of writing, Radio 4 is broadcasting the words of Mark Twain, which may have helped this leap out at me…
17 ARBITER – R(ight) in A BITER. This made me think of the infamous Mike Tyson / Evander Holyfield incident, which could hardly be described as a nibble…
19 DITCHER – i.e. DITCH E.R.
20 EXALTER – EX + “ALTAR”.
22 ALLOT – ALL OUT without the U(niversity).
24 SAP – (PAS)rev., as in pas de danse.

40 comments on “Times 24690”

  1. Must have been a relatively easy one, as I managed to finish (almost) without aids (I had to check whether it was POTENTILLA or PANENTILLA). Got a bit stuck in NW corner (despite getting LEGERDEMAIN fairly quickly, thanks to Mr Mistoffelees!), and finished with WARREN/APIAN. Didn’t quite understand full wordplay for LOSING HEART (went down the route of if you lost your heart to someone you may end up with a son… oops!), so thanks for that much more reasonable explanation. Janie
  2. More interesting and perhaps a bit more fun than yesterday. Sloppily had Ingmar instead of Ingrid until APIAN, my last in, put me right. Took a while after solving – and some desperately misguided googling of Pinocchio – before the penny finally dropped for 12d. 38 minutes.
  3. 26 min, which for me makes it a straightforward day 🙂 I’m a keen gardener, so 13 ac was easy. Last in was 10 ac, where I kept wanting to fit soldiers into a town.

    Can I suggest that whoever runs this blog, removes the x-ref to Tony’s old RTC site, as it now seems (sadly) to be defunct?

  4. I got off to a flying start solving the first half dozen clues I looked at almost before I had finished reading them but I started to lose confidence when I was unable to fill the unchecked squares at the 4dn / 10ac intersection and these turned out to be my very last in after 40 minutes solving.

    SETT was a lucky guess but my other leap of faith BOXENTILLA was not so successful.

    Tim, I rather like the idea of Tales of Tom Swayer!

  5. A slightly laboured 18 minutes today, with the buzzer at 4 down last in because I couldn’t fit an appropriate word into A-A-N. That’s when I realised that INGMAR was the wrong Bergman in just about every sense. Ingrid I remember from her spectacularly miscast role as Gladys Aylward in “Inn of the Sixth Happiness”.
    Other slow entries were MUDSLINGER (couldn’t get a word beginning MIDDLE… out of mind) and the crossing EXALTER, which makes it as my CoD.
  6. I found this a bit of a struggle yet again, over an hour to finish. If others are finding them easy, I suspect I must be getting a bit dim! Needed a solver to get 18ac, which I just couldn’t get my head around. COD 25ac.
  7. No real hold-ups once I’d worked out how to pronounce FOREST ALL, a moment spent considering the apostrophe in Buzzer’s and after abandoning the idea that POT would surround an anagram of A LENTIL. That answer and SETT from wordplay. Couldn’t quite see MUDSLINGER where mud was my derogatory term and linger was my potter thus leaving a redundant S. Back to back fast finishes by my modest standards but as per yesterday left with a couple of doubts.
  8. Easier than yesterday for me at 6:28, though a bit cross with myself for not getting stock multi-word answer 23 on first look.

    Biting in boxing goes back a long way.

  9. A plodding but safe 26 minutes, last in as with others Warren and Apian. (Had a possible Barrio for some time.) COD 12 for ‘Boy thus made by…’ so simple and I had no idea.
  10. 38 minutes for this enjoyable puzzle. Potentillas still blooming (we last saw them in 24,632).

    INGRID BERGMAN “Of all the gin joints, in all the towns, in all the world, she walks into mine.” We’ve got to have this. “Here’s looking at you, kid.” Sighs……

  11. Very easy one, less than 15 minutes to solve with no real talking points either.

    Good to see Ingrid get a mention. No idea what she was like in real life but as a screen idol for men of a certain age…..

  12. Nothing particularly difficult a slow solve from start to finish for me. If anyone has any tips on how to increase ones knowledge of plants and flowers 500% without too much effort please let me know.
  13. 9:47 today. Thought it was going to be a sub-7 minuter for the first time in years but got stung by 4 dn and in a hole with 10 ac – took me another couple of minutes to dig my way out. I liked this one.
  14. 20 minutes, so about average for me and pretty standard fare all round I thought. Fortunately I remembered POTENTILLA from the last time it appeared.
  15. Arggh! I thought I’d finished in 50 minutes, but unfortunately I never finished correcting my original entry ALARM for 4 dn, so instead of APIAN I had ALIRN, which even I know is not a word. Not sure I would have got APIAN even if I had thought much longer (but also not sure I wouldn’t). How annoying.

    I rather enjoyed 19dn and 12dn, for which I first had LOSING FAITH, then LOSING HEART with the H of ASHRAM plus much reflection to understand the wordplay.

  16. 37 minutes for me too, vinyl; snap again. A likeable puzzle of moderate difficulty. I liked the two revolutionaries (neither of them Che) and the use of nonetheless to indicate subtraction of O. Ticks to TOM SAWYER & FORESTALL but COD to LOSING HEART. Nice one, setter.
  17. 52:28 – Struggled today. Couldn’t seem to get on the setter’s wavelength. I had lots of isolated holes scattered all over which all took a while to fill – 4/10, 12/15/22a, 24/25, 13.
    I didn’t know POTENTILLA, or SETT as a paving stone, and ASHRAM was only vaguely familiar. I had a couple in wrong which took a while to spot and correct, so that also slowed me down. I had AUDITOR instead of ARBITER, and AGITANT for AGITATO. But at least I got there in the end.
  18. 17:14 .. entertaining puzzle, I thought, with a couple of Doh! moments for me.

    Now, I’m not one to quibble over things in books … oh, hang on. Actually, I am. So I picked up a Robert Ludlum thriller yesterday – The Ambler Warning. A few chapters in there’s this genius who works for the CIA…

    “He pulled out a copy of the Financial Times and turned to the crossword puzzle…. Now he went to work. One across. What’s over the facade now that I am reduced? An obstacle … Two down. Authentic British capital…. Soundlessly, his pencil filled in the boxes, seldom pausing for longer than a second or two. Impediment.. Sterling.“

    He finished in less than five minutes, and you can’t argue with that. But, never having solved the FT that I can recall, I’m wondering if there’s any plausible grid where 1a could be IMPEDIMENT and 2d STERLING. Anyone know?

    1. Absolutely imposible. If there’sa 1A, it be in the top row, and it must cross at least two of the downs in any remotely plausible grid. So 1A has to contain the first letter of 2D.
      1. Thanks, Peter. I would write and tell him but, sadly, the creator of Jason Bourne is no longer with us (the current fashion for shaky camera work aside, Jason Bourne is a Good Thing).

        Barry: you’re making mischief, aren’t you.

    3. I can’t parse the answer given to 1 across in said book. I’ve got obstacle as the definition, the word “impede” with “im” (I am reduced) and nt presumably from n[ow] t[hat], but I’m darned* if I can fit it all together.

      *I’m also not very good at cryptic crosswords, though I am slowly improving.

  19. 9 minutes here too, only one I was unsure about was SETT from the wordplay, though that last in was APIAN.
  20. Enjoyed this one even if I didn’t get APIAN and WARREN. Need to think “of” when I see apostrophes in the definition.

    The republican farmhand made me chuckle. Thought that was very good. Got LOSING HEART from the definition – would never have sussed the wordplay.

    13’s lentil was very topical for me. I’m taking Indian cookery evening classes at the moment and in tonight’s lesson we’re making tarka dahl and pakoras.

  21. 6:11. No significant hold ups.

    I have not tested myself on the new Crossword Club timer for a cryptic as I prefer to use paper and pen or pencil. I suspect I would be slower online.

  23. The clue to 19dn seems wrong, or sloppy anyway. If we ditched ER it would be the whole of the UK which became a republic, not just GB.
  24. My lack of gardening knowledge (well, I do live in Hong Kong) did for me on this one, as I put in ‘boxentilla’, which sounds on reflection more like C.S. Lewis juvenilia than a plant. Apart from that, a steady 38-minute solve, finishing in the SE with MUDSLINGER, DITCHER (ho-ho! – or, should I say, ha-ha!) and ROTATORY. Held up for a bit trying to justify ‘psalter’ for the worshipper.
  25. 5:39 online, so pleasingly straightforward. Re sghanson’s comment above, solving online (my only option) must increase solving time by a minute or two. Typing is slower and more error prone than writing and the constant relocation of the cursor means many small time lags. Yet it still feels the way to go – environmentally sound and remarkably cheap. The pity is that the Times online site isn’t what it could be, even The Telegraph’s is better.
    lonny 2
    1. Typing on the current Times site probably is a tad slower. I hope they’ll one day offer at least the option of typing using the former Race The Clock method, where if you had O?A?I and selected that answer’s clue, the cursor jumped to the second letter and you only needed to type KP to get OKAPI. Having to jump across checked letters (or type them again) is a nuisance. I tried the Telegraph’s online solving today, and found it a little bit less easy to use than the Times version. As for the Telegraph site as a whole, its faster than the Times one, but I can’t remember any change in the software for the last 3 years or so, and there’s no discussion forum.
  26. The Times site creaks along, it’s too young to be so arthritic. The Telegraph site is far smoother which makes up for its faults – lack of a members’ board (which is covered by Big Dave’s site) and allowing multiple erroneous submissions without penalty, which is an inducement to hit and hope. It goes without saying that the puzzles are nothing like as good.
  27. Sorry to be late. This took about 30 minutes last night, ending with RESOLVED, LOSING HEART and finally SETT. COD to LOSING HEART for the boy to by bit, very well done, setter. Regards.
  28. A rather miserable 9:33. I felt I was playing for safety after yesterday’s disaster, since all too often I make two mistakes in quick succession – so at the moment I’m waiting for the other shoe to drop.

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