Times 24,702 – Aloha Aloha Aloha, what’s all this then?

Author   topicaltimPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
16:12, so a much more straightforward challenge than yesterday’s; though I’ll concede some might find this one requires more knowledge, even without the devious wordplay, making it no easier overall. As well as my solving time, the Club website reveals I had an error, but on further investigation this turns out to have been due to sausage-fingered typing rather than any failure of interpretation.

On the subject of the Club site, I’m feeling somewhat more sympathetic to the online puzzle just recently, as they appear to have been making genuine efforts to respond to the wishes of Club members as regards the features offered (not to mention that the software appears much more stable, at least as far as I can tell). I’ve been ready to point out their failings in the past, so in the interests of fairness, I will publicly commend this improvement and hope it persists.

Meanwhile I also wonder if they / we will see an upsurge in solving / blogging at this time of night from people who are sitting up to watch the Ashes? At every Test match I’ve been to there’s been a much higher than average number of crossword enthusiasts visible in the crowd.

Across
1 HELLENIST – ELLEN in HIST. I vaguely recalled “Hist!” as a Shakespearean exclamation and thought it was more like “Oi!” but it turns out it can equally mean you want someone’s attention or their silence.
6 TAWSE – (SWEAT)*, presumably suggesting you might well sweat in anticipation if you were the unfortunate on the receiving end of it.
9 LIGHTEN – LIGHTE(r) + N.
10 IDOLISE =”IDLE EYES”.
11 deliberately omitted
13 CALLAGHAN – CALL A G(ood) HAN(d), 48th PM of Britain.
14 THRONGING – THING around (w)RONG without its W(eight).
16 URAL – (r)URAL; I’d guess the river is considerably less well-known than the mountains.
18 RUDE =”RUED”.
19 COTYLEDON – T(echnology) in CO(mpan)Y + LED ON. I dragged this word up from hazy memories of biology lessons in which I learned all about monocotyledonous plants (knowledge which lasted as long as it took to get that glorious O-level, and is all but gone now).
22 POSSESSED – double def.
24 ABEAM – A BEAM, which can be contrasted with abaft.
25 AMERICA – (MA)rev + ERICA.
26 MAUDLIN – MAUD + LI(o)N lacking 0; this is Tennyson’s Maud, who was famously invited to come into the garden.
28 ESTER – (w)ESTER(n).
29 TABLE WINE – TAB + [(WE)rev in LINE].
 
Down
1 HELLCAT – HE’LL + (ACT)*.
2 deliberately omitted
3 ENTICING – (k)ENT + ICING.
4 IONIC – I(r)ONIC; Ionic, Doric and Corinthian are the three Classical Greek styles of architecture.
5 TAIL LIGHT – A ILL in TIGHT.
6 THORAX – THOR + A X (which marks the treasure). A nice lift and separate.
7 WEIGHBRIDGE =”WAY” BRIDGE.
8 ETERNAL – E(x)TERNAL, i.e. external without the kiss X.
12 VIRIDESCENT – V(ery) IRIDESCENT.
15 INCESSANT – CESS in IN + ANT, another l&s with one of those words that occur far more often in crosswords than real life. I thought it seemed familiar, and Google confirms we had cess=tax in a Jumbo last month.
17 PLEASURE – LEAS in PURE.
18 REPLACE – REP + LACE, one rough fabric, one fine one.
20 NOMINEE – MINE in (ONE)* gives one who runs for office.
21 DENIER – double def. Not the most obvious secondary definition, of course; in an easier puzzle, something to do with stockings would presumably have done. This denier, the French descendant of the Roman denarius, is the one which gives us the ‘d’ in £sd, being the original equivalent of the old penny.
23 DEMOB – DEMO + B(leed), being the transitive verb version of the word here.
27 LEI – hidden in sociabLE Islanders + &lit. the garland given to tourists on arrival in Hawaii.

53 comments on “Times 24,702 – Aloha Aloha Aloha, what’s all this then?”

  1. I’d go along with Tim that this was a tad easier than yesterday’s wordplay wise. Sadly, though, the cumulative effects of three hours pounding on my brain (today’s effort took me 87 minutes) caused me to come up short on this one, resorting to aids on 14 (d’oh) and 28, even though I had all the checkers in place. Otherwise, no mistakes, which was pleasing, with guesses at TAWSE (when I finally realised it was an anagram) and ABEAM. COD to THORAX – the fact that I didn’t know they were related, though I knew they were in the same ball park, made this tougher for me than it will be for many others.
  3. 25 minutes for me, and might have been a bit quicker if I hadn’t taken a few moments to gaze at the gorgeous sunset. ‘cotyledon’ came to my mind, too, but I couldn’t associate it with new growth, and didn’t enter it until I had no choice. And I never did, until I read the blog, understand why it was the answer.(Ditto for ‘enticing’.)
    18ac: What is ‘here’ doing here?
  4. I put this comment on the Times site as well – the clue at 10ac could lead to either IDOLISE or IDOLIZE (I chose the latter, but it’s a shame there was an ambiguity)
      1. Yes, the online Times style guide says:

        -ise, -isation avoid the z construction in almost all cases, eg, apologise, organise, emphasise, televise. But note capsize, synthesizer.

        So I guess you could expect the setter to follow the times house style.

  5. Of the Club site: strangely the “Today’s Crosswords” section was blank at about 12:30 GMT. Had to type 24702 in to the search box to get today’s puzzle. So don’t expect great improvements!
    Wish I could just switch off the “Leaderboards”, “Recent Crosswords” and “My recent games”: they interest me not at all.

    Of vocab: my cotyledons’ thoraces have never been so viridescent! A couple for the bio-freaks.

    Of time: 34 minutes. Nothing upsetting here except perhaps the syntax in 6ac.

    1. I have argued (unsuccessfully so far) for people having the option to never see the leaderboards. But “Recent Crosswords” and “My recent games” seem perfectly reasonable as information for any solver: lists of puzzles that have appeared recently, and puzzles that you have solved online or printed recently.

      I’d like a different title for “My recent games”, but only because I like to maintain the myth that crosswords are more than mere “games”.

      1. saying, in relation to any sport, “It’s only a game” is often one of the surest ways of inducing apoplexy, or at least fury. I am a chessplayer, and I know 🙂
    1. That makes sense, but I think the intended reading of “make one sweat” is similar to “make one crumpets for tea” – i.e. “tawse” when “flailed” makes “sweat” for the reader.
  7. Spent 30 minutes on this after printing off last night and cracked all but half a dozen, but the last 10 of these produced no answers at all so I turned in.

    On resumption this morning I needed a further 10 minutes but I was unable to get past COT?LEDON without reference to a dictionary. It’s surely impossible that I have never met COY as an abbreviation for ‘company’ before but I don’t recollect doing so. My dictionary says it’s a military thing. I never heard of COTYLEDON.

    I assume both -ISE and -IZE would be accepted at 10ac but it’s a bad clue that leaves room for doubt.

    I had difficulty choosing between RUED and RUDE at 18ac until the second checker went in. I suppose it’s ‘here’ that fixes it.

    ‘Sunny Jim’ Callaghan doesn’t come up very often so I was amused that we almost had one of his old sparring partners at 26ac in (Reggie) MAUDLIN(g). They preceded or succeeded each other as Chancellor in the 60s and as Home Secretary in the 70s.

  8. 9:54, guessing right at 10A (-ISE) but seeing the doubt. I’m sure either version would be accepted in competitive circumstances, so now that there’s some kind of competition every day, there should really be a way to deal with ones like this (or clues that leave no doubt).
    1. Didn’t that Times crossword aficionado Inspector Morse always insist on IZE, presumably because of his Oxford background?
      1. I can’t remember whether he insisted on it, but I do recall a storyline where he decided that some Oxford don couldn’t possibly have written some document, because an -ise spelling was used. The implied notion that Oxford dons never make mistakes seemed a classic bit of fictional detective’s logic.

        -ize is the house style of Oxford University Press, and Robert Burchfield’s version of Fowler (1996) says that “until recently” it was also standard in The Times. He also says that other publishing houses (including Cambridge UP) use “-ise”.

        He lists about 27 words that must be spelled with -ise, including yesterday’s ‘excise’.

        1. … about as factual as the old joke about an Oxford dictionary giving a definition for ‘illitterate’. When asked if this wasn’t an occasion for tremendous gloating from their counterparts at Cambridge, the lexicographer replied, ‘Not really. They had an entry for mispell’.
        2. I still have a copy of the house Style Book of my old employer, The Times, dating from 1970. It devotes half a page to the “-ise” v “-ize” question, decreeing magisterially:

          Where the termination of a verb has been formed directly or by analogy from Greek “-izein”, or its Latin adaptation “-izare”, “z” is usually right in English. But similar terminations not so derived must be distinguished, where “s” is etymologically necessary; and literary usage has in certain cases made “s” the best style where “z” is possible in accordance with etymological propriety.

          Well, I trust that’s all clear now! Even in the days when the ancient Greek and Latin tongues were more widely taught in in schools than they are today, this was surely a counsel of perfection. To insist on it now would be absurd. I note that the latest edition of The Times Style Book takes a rather more sensible line, dealing with the whole issue in the following brief entry:

          -ISE,-ISATION: avoid the”z” construction in almost all cases, eg apologise, organise, televise. But note capsize, synthesizer.

          Kingsley Amis, in his entertaining The King’s English, blithely recommends: “Nowadays you may use “-ise” … everywhere without a second thought”.

          It would seem that nearly everyone, outside the OUP and of course the United States, now agrees with Kent in “King Lear”: “Thou whoreson zed! Thou unnecessary letter!”.

      1. Me too on “rued” at 18. I switched to RUDE only when it began to emerge that VIRIDESCENT was the only possible solution for the intersecting 12. There seems to be a genuine ambiguity – not resolved for me by the final “here” as others seem to feel – in the way the clue is worded: that is, it can be read as asking you to find a word meaning “terse” that rhymes with another word meaning”regretted” or vice versa, thereby introducing an extra layer of deception.

        Easier than yesterday’s but still pretty tough, I thought, combining tricky wordplay with some obscurity (e.g. COTYLEDON at 19).

      2. I wonder if that didn’t slip through the net as well. I thought the policy was that in homonym clues it should be clear what part of the clue is the answer and what is the homonym. It is very easy for the clue to be ambiguous. Judging by the confusion of solvers in this blog maybe this clue could have been clearer.
        1. I guess it could, though in this case the crossing down clue seems to have pushed everyone into the right answer in the end. Although I like the clarity of cryptic clues compared to non-cryptic ones, I don’t mind a bit of resolvable ambiguity. After all, ambiguity in things like word meanings is a big part of the game.
  9. 25 minutes with two mistakes. A hastily bunged-in AHELM (hmm…) and CITOLEDON. I don’t remember ever coming across COY as an abbreviation for “company”. I plumped for Chief Information Technology Officer as the head of technology in a company: a variant of the more common CTO. Ingenious, but wrong.
  10. 27 minutes. Ought to have been faster but put RUED instead of RUDE, thinking that 12 down must be an anagram and had no D; should have counted the letters. Still, finished in under half an hour so have a spring in my step this morning. Liked ESTER; have I seen it before, I wonder?
  11. Yes, I thought ester was very good too – must be the chemist in me.

    Found this one as difficult as yesterday’s but persevered and finished in an hour. I’m definitely getting better at constructing unknown-to-me words from wordplay (e.g. VIRIDESCENT and TAWSE) which in earlier days would have defeated me.

    One error today and I’m not alone… COTILEDON. My first attempt at the spelling was COTELYDON so I almost got there. COY for company was new. I thought it was TI for the first letters of… Technology in.

    Was going to ask what the ruling would be at Cheltenham re IDOLISE/IDOLIZE but that’s been covered above. Commonsense suggests to me that both spellings are acceptable given the clue.

    LEI is cropping up every few days at the moment!!

  12. Yes, I agree, much easier than yesterday’s (though I did need to look up some unfamiliar words: CESS, TAWSE, ESTER, HIST…), and didn’t fully understand the wordplay for others (IDOLISE, COTYLEDON…). Convinced myself that an axe was the map sign for treasure, doh!, and, like others, had RUED in for a while. I too, remember COTYLEDON from O-level biology…wonder if it’s in the GCSE syllabus, I’ll have to check with my son!

    Thanks for clear explanations, makes it all so much more satisfying to know why they are what they are. J

  13. Decent enough puzzle of around average difficulty – about 25 minutes to solve. Held up a little by entering “rued” rather than RUDE – these little words are a nightmare!

    COY was a common abbreviation for company (quite often seen above shop fronts) but has been largely superseded by “co”.

  14. 18 minutes, but COTYLEDON defeated me without aids – A for Y from wordplay. Initially fell into the trap at RUDE until 12d made it impossible. CoD to THORAX for decent surface.
  15. Was happy to complete without aids is 20 min. Much easier than yesterday. ISE v IZE seems to be a work in progress. I prefer the former, and always assumed (wrongly) that the latter was an Americanization. No particular favourites, but the chemist in me might just have sniffed the ESTER.
  16. Determined to finish after yesterday’s failure but still had to cheat for COTYLEDON (most obscure answer with trickiest cryptic?). Vocab inadequate here so much post-solve dictionary work. 3 strokes of the TAWSE for having fallen into the RUED trap and for thinking setter had misspelt HIST.
  17. 19:39 today, also held up by “rued”. Took ages to realise that “X marks the spot” in 6dn. Also dim remembrance of study of the broad bean in O level biology paid off for “cotyledon”. We had a teacher who couldn’t pronounce the word so I’m surprised I can spell it!
  18. What a difference a day (and a sleepless night) makes! Made very little headway with yesterday’s monster (for me); late at night, I was relieved to come here and find others had found it difficult. But, for some reason, I was, more or less, on the setter’s wavelength today despite the lack of sleep (and effect of painkillers). As a non-biofreak, I had to cheat for ‘cotyledon’ – could only get as far as ‘cot?ledon’. But otherwise an enjoyable, surprising and successful completion in something less than an hour. Great blog and comments have pointed out subtleties I’d missed: e.g. ‘lin’ for ‘loveless hero’ (26ac).
  19. This was far easier than yesterday’s, though 19ac floored me in the end and I had to consult a dictionary. A completely unfamiliar word to me. 25 minutes for all but that.

    I thought there were some nice clues, even if the wordplay was straightforward. The only one I didn’t particularly care for was 9; there are many ways in which something may become lighter without becoming blonde.

  20. e-mail just received, confirming that the intention in Times xwds is to avoid the kind of ambiguity in 10A – this one slipped through the net.
  21. Couldn’t remember the spelling of COTYLEDON from schooldays and didn’t know the ‘coy -> company’ abbreviation so was, to use the technical term, stuffed.

    Guessed at COTALEDON, deriving the ‘a’ from ‘at first’.

  22. 7:02, but with one typing error. Today a missed letter, yesterday a wrong letter.

    More haste, less speed…..The ticking timer and the submit button does tend to make me want to miss out on thorough checking.

    I was pretty sure about COTYLEDON as I have been reading up about seed-sowing recently.

  23. I actually found this harder than yesterday’s, clocking in at 28:07. Must be a wavelength thing.

    I was put off by the car reference at 7 – aren’t weighbridges used for commercial vehicles rather than cars?

    1. I think weigh bridges were first used on the railways to facilitate charging by weight carried on rail cars (wagons)
  24. Gah, after struggling through the rest in three quarters of an hour, was defeated in the NE corner by 6ac, 7d and 19ac. Just couldn’t get 7d, so cheated there, waited for a bit and cheated on the others too in despair. In my defence, I’ve not seen COY = Company before, and find 6ac somewhat dubious – doesn’t the wordplay indicate an anagram of ‘one sweat’ and not ‘sweat’?
    1. See reply to ulaca, near the top. (And it’s hard to resist pointing out that the wordplay would indicate an anagram of ‘one sweat’ perfectly well, if there were 8 letters in the answer.)
      1. I think I get it, just about. Still seems dubious though. 🙂 The 8 letter thing was what led me to completely discount the possibility of an anagram and reach for the Chambers Word Wizard…
  25. I found this much easier than yesterday’s, finishing in 32 minutes, albeit not knowing who Maud was, what a tawse was (as opposed to a tizzwaz) and thinking the western was Destery (an alternative spelling, obviously). And count me amongst those whose solve was ruedly interrupted. Cotyledon, on the other hand, went straight in; it’s spring here and there’s a lot of them about. My COD to THORAX too.
  26. Have been lurking on this site for nearly 2 years! Never able to comment because I couldn’t get the paper until late afternoon and have got into the habit of doing the crossword in bed with my first cup of tea the following morning – by which time it’s too late to join the forum. In the past I’ve been too stingy to pay for the online version on top of my Times subscription. But poor eyesight has made reading the clues in the paper increasingly difficult. I joined the Club yesterday and printed out my first puzzle this morning. Lovely big print and no grey on the grid. Should have done it ages ago! This morning I did yesterday’s and today’s in succession. 40 minutes and 32 minutes respectively. (I never timed myself until I found this blog) I’d like to thank all the bloggers who have kept me entertained and informed during my lurking years.
    1. Thanks – nicely secretive avatar there.

      Glad to see that the new club site does a good job for you.

  28. Yes, a breather after yesterday’s but a DNF for me. About 20 minutes for everything save COTYLEDON, where I threw in a guess based on CO, T, LIED as the deception, and IN from the clue. Well, that looked really wrong, so I went to aids and found the real answer. Nevertheless, good puzzle, and regards to all.
  29. Done on the ferry, watching the white cliffs receding on the way to Calais. Rude & viridescent last in, for the same reason as several others above.. I also had to solve the last two or three left over from yesterday, which I found quite tricky!
  30. Found the last few of this considerably harder than anything of yesterday’s. Got there in the end but must’ve been an hour all told. It was the weighbridge/cotyledon/abeam/nominee dogleg that did for me. Nice words though.
    1. The same dogleg did for me, plus tawse as well. Lack of knowledge.
      Whereas yesterday’s I found challenging but do-able. Wavelength.

      Today huge gaps in GK:
      Hist = keep quiet
      Tawse = strap
      Denier = coin
      Cess = tax
      Viridescent = greenish
      Cotyledon = new growth
      Maud = in poem

      Normally at most only two or three like this I don’t know, so I thought this crossword was unfairly obscure.

      I was also worried about what the sailor is doing in 24a. Across ship is abeam, a smile is a beam. Is the sailor an AB with some sort of 3rd definition? Or is “The way sailor goes” unnecessary padding to improve the surface?

      Rob

      1. Have only just received your comment a month or so later and don’t have the clue now for Abeam. But I’d say the surface is very much improved by the sailor’s inclusion – it would have been a bit rough otherwise wouldn’t it?
        1. Seems you are notified of a reply by email, even months later. I was actually not directing my comment to you, but to any other Aussies – the puzzle appeared today in Murdoch(=enemy of the government)’s Australian newspaper.

          The clue was:
          “The way sailor goes across ship brings a smile” Answer ABEAM

          I couldn’t see any justification for the first 4 words, but no-one else mentioned it, so I suspect I’m missing something obvious.

          Cheers from downunder,
          Rob

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