Times 24699 – HEAVY WEATHER

Author   jackktPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Time taken to solve:70 minutes. I got off to a very slow start with this one and early in the proceedings I had serious doubts if I would be able to crack it. Eventually I got going and managed about three-quarters of it in the first hour. I then resorted to aids as I needed to get on with the blog. I think it was a trickier puzzle than most we’ve had on weekdays recently but I shall be interested to read what others think.

Across
1 HELIPAD – HEL(1)P,AD – a ‘flier’ or more usually ‘flyer’ is a small handbill advertising something.
5 SKINFUL – S(K)INFUL – ‘grand’ and ‘K’ (for Kilo) are both colloquial for 1000.
9 INCOME TAX – I(NCO,MET,Anarchy)X. This came easily from the definition but proved not so easy to parse. The Roman square of III is IX.
10 LYING – Double definition, one with reference to Cockney Rhyming Slang where ‘pork pies’ = ‘lies’.
11 JUST SO STORIES – JUST, S.O.S, TORIES – Stories for Little Children by Rudyard Kipling.
13 NO WONDER – NO(With)ON then RED reversed.
15 AMEN-RA – I had to look this one up as I’d never heard of this deity. AMEN is obvious as one prayer’s ending, the other is prayeR with the A in the clue to follow.
17 COHEIR – It was obvious from first reading that this should be an anagram of ‘heroic’ but I didn’t manage to work it out until I had all the checkers in place.
19 GRENOBLE – oGRE,NOBLE – More French geography but unlike yesterday’s ‘Vendee’ I had heard of this city.
22 KIDDERMINSTER – KID, MINDERS*, TERm – This English town is midway between Worcester and Birmingham. I’m not sure that its name is well-known overseas so it’s a potential problem for some solvers perhaps.
25 ERATO – ‘Orate’ reversed. ERATO was the muse of love poetry. On edit: Thanks to Vallaw for pointing out my error, it’s ORATE with its ends swapped. There was so much else to think about today this one didn’t receive my full attention once I’d written in the obvious answer.
26 ROUND TRIP – A ROUND of sandwiches is traditionally made from two whole slices of bread with filling. TRIP can be a switch to set something off.
27 Here’s the across I’m leaving out.
28 SCRUMMY – M replaces P in ‘scrumpy’, a strong often rough type of cider best avoided if one has far to walk home.
 
Down
1 And here’s the Down I’m leaving out.
2 LOCKJAW – LOCK,JAW is the disease otherwise known as ‘tetanus’. ‘Jaw’ and ‘rabbit’ are both slang words meaning to talk a lot.
3 PUMPS – UP reversed then MPS.
4 DETESTED – DE(TEST)ED
5 SEXIST – Reversed and hidden.
6 ISLE OF MAN – (SOME FINAL)*
7 FRISIAN – (IS IN RAF)* – Since this refers to an inhabitant of Friesland I would expect it to be spelt ‘Friesian’ but apparently the ‘E’ can be omitted.
8 LEGISLATED – LEG,ISoLATED – I can’t see how ‘cater’ means ‘legislate’ and I’ve not found a direct link in any of the usual books but no doubt someone will come up with a context in which they can be substituted. On edit: Thanks to David_ch for his example. I see it now.
12 KNOCK-KNEED – KNOCK,”KNEAD”
14 NOISES OFF – This is a stage direction which became the title of a play by Michael Frayn reputed to be one of the funniest farces ever written.
16 WRONG UNS – SWORN* with GUN inserted.
18 HYDRATE – HYD(RAT)E – It’s not long since Mr Hyde’s alter ego showed up in these parts.
20 BERTRAM – Book, Maths with ART,RE reversed and inserted.
21 SMARMY – RAMS reversed, MY(!)
23 TUDOR – sTUDy,wORk
24 SPRY – Starting Price, on-aiR,comedY

53 comments on “Times 24699 – HEAVY WEATHER”

  1. I agree this was tougher than most this week, with some very neat clues. Presumably anyone who objected to APOTHECARIES yesterday will have the same misgiving about AD doing double duty in 1ac. (I can’t really see it as an issue but I may have misunderstood).

    LEGISLATED does get used in the sense of catering for or making allowances for, as in “There’s no legislating for what might happen”.

    The archipelago off the Dutch coast generally appears, on English language maps at least, as the Frisian Islands. I think, but don’t know, this is part of Friesland but perhaps it is all the same thing. Wouldn’t an inhabitant of Friesland be a Frieslander? 50 minutes.

    1. It is a ‘Fries’ in the Dutch language.

      Those islands are called the Wadden Islands, and four of them are part of Friesland.

    2. I think the answer to both objections is the same – APOTHECARIES and HELIPAD are both &lits, so no double duty
  2. DNF (WRONG ‘UNS – what sort of clue is that – literal in the middle?) and 2 wrong: HELIPED (knew HELIPAD of course but thought HEL(1)PED must be some multi-legged flying insect); BARTRAM although I doubted that the legendary Charlton Athletic goalkeeper would ever make it to the Times crossword. As well as WRONG ‘UNS not sure what kind of clue HELIPAD is?
    1. Both of these are &lits as mentioned below.

      There are ways of getting the definition to be in the middle of the clue, and I like to see it, because to me “the definition is always at the beginning or the end” is the kind of tip that solvers shouldn’t be relying on. Solving should reflect ingenuity and clear thinking, not knowledge of “cryptic crossword rules”.

  3. ‘Successfully’ completed in under an hour but needed jackkt’s comments to appreciate the full subtlety of the wordplay in 1ac and 9ac (especially ‘the Roman square of III is IX’). Thank you.

    ‘Frisian’ presented no problems although, unprompted, I would have spelt it ‘Friesian’: perhaps I’m more familiar with cows than people!

  6. Definitely harder than recent ones.. almost 30mins by the time I finally got the SE corner sorted out. cod Kidderminster – lovely surface.

    I would have expected a Frisian to be a German, (Riddle of the Sands, again 🙂 but they could be Dutch (or Danish), so I guess Dutchman = Frisian is technically OK?

  7. Well can I buck the trend? I found this a lot easier than several of late, but then again I must admit I don’t always get the cryptic def (NO WONDER, INCOME TAX, eg). Managed it all but one without aids (except I did look up ERATO and AMEN-RA to reassure myself), and was so convinced that 8d must be a word I’d never heard of that I gave up, and found it on here. COD today to COHEIR, which I thought was clever (tried to find a way to explain it as CHERIO for a bit…). Thanks, Jack, for clear explanations. J
  8. About 23 minutes (station break towards the end) but a lovely set of clues – I thought so, anyway. The only one I wasn’t clear on was AMEN-RA, which I remembered as AMUN-, but that aside, I particularly liked the two all-in-ones HELIPAD and WRONG ‘UNs, and still do despite comments entered above. FRISIAN seems to be the preferred spelling in BRB.
    No CoD today, as too many of these raised a smile or an approving grimace. Let’s give it Crossword of the Week instead.
  9. 17 minutes. Unlike some others I actually found this the easiest of the week by a narrow margin and I really enjoyed it.
    1ac and 16dn are &lits aren’t they?
  10. 75 minutes for this thing of some beauty. Had about 10 or 12 left to solve after 45 minutes, when I got my second wind with GRENOBLE – retrieved early from my mental roll call of French cities owing to its having been used fairly recently. Finished anti-clockwise from SE to SW, with a few question marks against clues wordplay-wise. Educated guess for the god – or goddess, as it turned out. Last in HYDRATE and COHEIR, but COD to PUMPS for its deadly misdirection.
  11. I thought this on the difficult side of the normal distribution – about 30 minutes to solve with a number of penny-dropping moments. I particularly liked HELIPAD and WRONG UNS where the realisation that the whole clue is the definition was slow to dawn. I didn’t like the definition by example of “count”=”noble”at 19A but saw (o)GRE straight away and so wasn’t held up by it. Good blog Jack.
  12. Didn’t get a clear run at this, but it certainly took more than an hour all up. I seem to remember there was a discussion not so long about about the use of “square” to indicate a number. I wonder if the setter was tempted to make use of the 9 (across) when he was writing the clue – although perhaps that would be too Guardian-esque.

    Haven’t yet had a chance to do yesterday’s puzzle, but I’ve already got two answers from the comments above. Sod’s Law.

  13. Well, it’s only taken about an hour and a half, and I still managed to get 1ac and 15ac wrong (guesses at HELIPOD and AMON RA), despite lack of support from the wordplay, so I don’t expect much sympathy!

    Lots went in with no or partial understanding of the wordplay, in particular 13ac, 15ac and 14d. So as far as I’m concerned, the week’s stinker, though it did keep me duly entertained!

    For once, I thought, the hidden word was obvious, flagged up fairly early by the easy 9ac, though I’m not complaining considering how hard some of the rest was.

    COD for me 23d – the surface felt a little clunky, but it took an age and forever to get an answer that was literally in front of my eyes.

    Oh – was I the only person to be fairly confident that 26ac was ROLLS AWAY? ROLLS = sandwiches, AWAY = whole journey? A little tenuous, I know!

  14. Solved in 12:50 – so far, the quickest believable score on the club site’s new daily leaderboard. Last in was ERATO, which must count as some kind of feather in the setter’s cap. Plenty of stuff first understood on reading the report.

    Back at the leaderboards, for this one we haven’t yet got any of those 2-3 minute times that must be type-ups from paper copies, but we have got someone shown as finishing all-correct in 0 seconds, and getting a score that seems impossibly high. I don’t know how this happened so I’m not assuming that it was deliberate on the part of the solver.

    1. I wouldn’t read too much into these times. Mine fall into two categories:
      1. Saturday puzzles I complete online after doing them on paper just to submit them (unsuccessfully to date) for the draw. Unrealistically quick.
      2. Puzzles the site seems to think I’ve started and is still timing. Unrealistically slow: I’m not the fastest but I’m usually finished within the first couple of weeks!
      1. The unrealistically quick times should no longer affect the leaderboards – for prize puzzles (and for dailies) you now get an appropriate choice on pressing Submit – recording your time for the leaderboards or not.

        If you finish a puzzle slowly and correctly, you will still get more leaderboard points than anyone with a mistake. Your time may be unrealistically slow, but you will get a reasonable points score. This may be subject to submitting before the solution is available – as far as I can tell, only “live” puzzles contribute to the leaderboards.

        1. Peter, is there a way to submit a non-leaderboard entry and still find out if you had made any errors? I can’t see one at present, and this may tempt me to submit a ‘silly’ time in future, just to find out if the solution was correct.

          John

          1. When the solution is available, you can use the list of recent puzzles on the home page or the list of your recent puzzles on the My Profile page. Both have “Solution” links which are underlined and active when the solution is available.
            1. Thanks, but if you submit a ‘leaderboard’ solution it appears that you can check straight away whether it is correct, even for the Saturday puzzle. I was looking for something similar for a non-leaderboard submission.

              John

              1. Various pages of the site include a panel on the right where you can search for a puzzle by date or number. If you do, the search results will also show a “solution” link.
    2. Could they not consider using the regular setters for something like an ‘online only’ puzzle – say at midday on a Sunday – which closes for timed entries after half an hour? A sort of mini-Cheltenham? Or is there something like that already? I would have thought it would be rather popular and would greatly reduce, if not entirely eradicate, dubious times.
      1. An ingenious idea but if they’re trying to cater for an international audience it’s hard to find the perfect time of day. I hope the dubious times will go away in the same way they did for the Times 2 Race The Clock – early on there were silly times, and 2 people putting these up were quite persistent, but gave up in the end.
      2. There was such a competition in 2000, when the Times Crossword championship was sponsored by a crossword website. Basically, an online competition ran concurrently with the real thing. There were even cash prizes, although mine never materialised and neither, so far as I am aware, did anyone else’s…
        But that aside it was excellent.
        1. I remember this happening – the online version was won by Tim Smith, who was second to Mark Goodliffe in the Championship 3 years ago. I think Helen Ougham was second – were you 3rd?
  15. Erato isn’t orate reversed, it’s first and last letters swapped. I enjoyed this puzzle and completed in a semi-respectable time of 20 minutes but for the first time ever I got the “Invalid status 500” error when I tried to submit. This cunningly clears the grid but keeps the clock running. My current time is something above 50 minutes and my puzzle still hasn’t been submitted. That’s my average scuppered if I ever do manage to submit!
  16. Finished, but no time as I kept dozing off. 13, as I had a 5 across of 28 real ale from hand 3 last night. So not so 24 and a bit de18d this morning. Excellent crossword, though; just wish I had been in a better state to appreciate it.
  17. About 49 mins without aids or mistakes, so I’m happy with that on what, by all accounts, was a tricky one. No exact time as my Submit button just throws an error today for some reason.

    It was definitely a puzzle of two halves for me, with the top half going in in about 15 mins. This gave me two checkers in each of 13 & 19, and then I hit a wall and stared at an empty bottom half for about 20 mins. Then 28 clicked and the rest followed.

    More than usual went in without full understanding – 5,9,11,13,23,25 & 26. But I worked out the wordplay after I finished for all except 9, which had me wondering why X was a Roman square. Thanks to Jack for enlightening me.

    Some good clues today. I liked the &lits at 1a & 16, and the wonderfully simple 27, but I think 18 gets my COD for the misdirection of HYDE.

    1. I remember seeing the Michael Frayn play, many years ago in the West End. It starred Patricia Routledge and the late Paul Eddington and it had me crying with laughter. I don’t know if it’s the funniest farce ever written, but it’s certainly the funniest I’ve ever seen.
      1. I saw that production where it originated, at the Lyric in Hammersmith, before it transferred to the WE. Marvellous stuff!
  18. 24:24 .. really good, elegant stuff. SKINFUL, SMARMY SCRUMMY – vocab. to savour. And I loved the &lits.

    Loads of clever clues, but COD to TUDOR – just so damned clever, the mechanics and the surface. Compliments to the setter again (blimey, that’s twice this week!).

  19. 8:32 online.

    For HELIPAD my justification for AD was “to” as in “ad infinitum”, which on review does not work, but with all the checking letters in place it could not be anything else!

    The SE corner took some sorting out. I had twigged (o)GRE in 19A but was trying to fit it in at the end as I had the checking E. Also the U at the beginning of the second word of 16D (my last one in) worried me.

  20. 57 min for this one, with hel(i)p needed for LEGISLATED and HELIPAD. And I put in SCRUMPY instead of SCRUMMY – grrr. Nice puzzle though, as everyone says.
  21. 25 minutes, but a bunch of guessing – INCOME TAX, JUST SO STORIES, AMEN-RA, LEGISLATED and WRONG-UNS from the definitions or checking letters alone and FRISIAN from the wordplay.
  22. 15:20 Took a while to get on the setter’s wavelength and really enjoyed it once I did. Some brilliant cluing and some,like 13, only appreciated once I came here. Some simple like 27 and some complicated and/or devious but a lot of gems.
    Should 1a not have a ? like 16?
  23. Shouldn’t co-heir be hyphenated? It is, in my dictionary. I had lots of trouble with that one, in fact the whole of that corner. Managed to finish without aids, eventually, but it must have taken nearly an hour.
    Pete, please don’t encourage the setters to put the definition in the middle of the clue – life is hard enough already.
    1. I thought so too but Collins and Chambers both have it without the hyphen. My COED doesn’t list it but it’s in the Shorter Oxford, again with no hyphen.
  24. I’m with Dave. Top half completed reasonably quickly, bottom half empty for the next 10 minutes or so until I spotted ERATO(!), then slow progress. Many cracking clues, but my COD to AMEN-RA.

    No problems with Kidderminster, Jack; as a child we learnt the industries of the UK (much easier now) and I always remember the carpets. I’m not sure why it was thought a thorough knowledge of what went on in Kidderminster was of any import to a young Australian lad, but it has finally proven very useful. We did Australian industries too, but with wheat, sheep and digging stuff up being pretty much it, we quickly moved on to the UK. Now we’re down to just digging stuff up. Luckily, we’ve got lots of stuff.

    1. I spent a month working in Melbourne in 1987 and during that time failed to find anything made in Australia to take home as a memento. Finally just as my flight was called I spied a set of golf club covers made out of kangaroo skin and grabbed them eagerly. When I got home I removed the packaging only to discover a small label sewn into them “Made in Japan”
      1. They wouldn’t get away with that now. It would have to be “Made in Japan from Australian produce”.
        1. But possibly it was made from Japanese kangaroos? All those zoos… on the subject of proper Australian manufacture, I bought my daughter some beautiful Mortels genuine Uggs, in protest at the truly awful behaviour of the American company “Australian Uggs” which has perverted the name with cheap Chinese tat and used lawsuits to back it up.
          1. Indeed, there are elements within the farming community who would be very pleased if all our kangaroos were shipped to Japan, or anywhere else that might take them, saying we’d be well rid of them (see aforementioned wheat and pasture, partaking thereof). Oh, and congratulations on supporting an Australian industry beset by global tyranny.
  25. Sorry to butt into the infinitely more interesting conversation on Japanese kangaroos. I took an age to finish this after a goodish first three-quarters; and still like miselda had scrumpy not scrummy (which I don’t really recognise as a word. But should have given the directions.)I think 16 is brilliant – I was virtually convinced there was a mistake with the second word till I saw it. Very fine wordplay in some of these – a real pleasure.
  26. I think this was a very good puzzle but I had to claw my way through UK-US translations that were utterly unfamiliar. It took me well over an hour. I didn’t know: SKINFUL, KIDDERMINSTER, WRONG UNS, LEGISLATED as ‘catered’, SCRUMMY or scrumpy, ‘SP’ as odds, ROUND as sandwiches (thought it should be ’rounds’), had forgotten this meaning of ‘rabbit’, and I know NOISES OFF as a play but not as a direction. I didn’t see the ‘IX’ as Roman square till reading the blog, either, thanks for that Jack. Overall, though, this was much more clever and devious than usual, so another nod to the setter. COD to HYDRATE, for the ‘person doctor turned to’ bit. Regards to everyone.
    1. This is also a cricketing term for a type of spinning or turning slow ball (or, more accurately delivery of the ball). Also called a googly (and indeed bosie (or bosey) in Australia – though that’s unlikely to come up).
  27. This was not the puzzle to face with a thumping hangover. Decided early on that I would never finish without assistance, so 47 minutes is rather meaningless. I was surprised that all of those I slapped in without trying to understand were OK.

    As far as a timed puzzle goes, it should be possible for the Times to record the time a puzzle is first displayed for an account an use this as a the start time.

  28. More than ages to finish, but a very nice puzzle with some very witty definitions (and some horrible ones). At the end, two entries wrong (or should I say two WRONGUNS?) SMARTY for SMARMY (NOWONDER I didn’t understand the wordplay) and SCRUMPY rather than SCRUMMY (since I thought I was looking for a variant of SCRUMPTIOUS, although I do know what scrumpy is). COD to INCOME TAX. By the way, what’s the Starting Price doing in 24 dn, or am I missing something having only German television to watch?
    1. Not sure what your last comment means but the explanation as it affects the clue is that the Starting Price(SP) represents the latest odds available at the start of a race.
      1. Ah so, I was wondering what the odds were doing in all this, but thank you very much for explaining. I of course have never bet on a race, and I thought there might be a famous television comedy series called Starting Price — just a silly idea.

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