Times 24707 – Quiros was looking for one…..and so was I!

Author   vinyl1Posted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Solving time: 45 minutes

Music: Schubert, Symphony #9, Boult/London Symphony

Another game of two parts. I filled in all but the southwest in fifteen minutes, but the last six really gave me a lot of trouble. I just could not get a grip without any crossing letters, and had wrong theories about how the clues worked.

Since I found three-quarters of it easy, I wouldn’t be surprised if a number of solvers found the whole thing easy. There are many simple starter clues for solvers of moderate ability, and this was certainly nothing like last week’s monster.

I am back to playing records while I solve, which is certainly a relief after a month of CDs. Schubert sounded so confident he knew what to do next, as I floundered for a while.

Across
1 RUSHLIGHT, RUSH + LIGHT. I don’t quite get the cross-reference, and put this in from the literal anyway. Comments welcome.
6 NICHE, NIC(H)E. Not an &lit, just a loose use of ‘and’ to join the cryptic and the literal.
9 BOATMAN, B(O)ATMAN. I thought of this right away because we had ‘batman’ in a different sense in last Sunday’s puzzle, which Neil blogged today.
10 NASTIER, SAN backwards + TIER. Some heavily-used components here.
11 TAPESTRIES, TAPES + TRIES. A chestnut, but I don’t see in what sense ‘scores’ = ‘tries’, unless it refers to games where shots on goal are an official statistic – but even that is not part of the actual score.
12 Omitted, this nation appears at least once a week.
14 PARKA, P(ARK)A. Should be a chestnut, but I don’t recall seeing it before.
15 A BIT THICK, double definition. The last word gave me trouble until I got 8 down.
16 SATELLITE, SA(TELL IT)E, where SAE = ‘self-addressed envelope’. This gave me a lot of difficulty because we use a SASE in the USA, and ‘lackey’ and ‘satellite’, although they have the same meaning, come from completely different sorts of vocabulary.
18 Omitted, obvious, plenty of crossing letters.
20 TEAR, double definition. My original stab could have been right, except for the cross-reference in 1 across.TRAP, double definition. This was a bit of a guess from the first definition, but Google confirms the existence of a ‘trap wrench’, which seems to be widely sold.
21 OSTRACISED, anagram of IS SCARED TO. The sort of clue I put in at a glance, while getting stuck on the easy ones.
25 NAIROBI, IBERIAN backwards with O[ld] substituted for E[nglish]. I had this completely wrong for the longest time, thinking it was ‘suffering’ backwards with the O for E substitution that would give a Spanish provincial capital.
26 LYING-IN. LYING + IN. An archaic term, as is the literal definition.
27 EAGLE, double definition. I was terribly slow to see this, considering I got up at 5:30 AM to watch the finals in Dubai, where all the contenders were trying to make eagle on the last hole.
28 Omitted, easy with these crossing letters.
 
Down
1 Omitted, use the crossing letters.
2 SCAMPER, S + CAMPER. I nearly put in ‘scarper’ without looking at the clue closely, but then I did.
3 LAMB’S TAILS, double definition, one jocular. I had never heard of these, and I had a lot of trouble with this one. I did try ‘formal dress’ = ‘balls’, but rejected it as improbable.
4 GONER, G(ONE)R, where GR = King George. Read ‘I’ as ‘1’, since the other way around is considered fair game.
5 TANGERINE, anagram of AIN’T GREEN. Obvious?
6 NOSE, sounds like KNOWS. ‘Nose’ is a literal translation of the Romany ‘nark’, which is often seen as well.
7 CHIANTI, CHI + ANTI. If you wasted time with ‘asti’, you are not alone.
8 EARMARKED, EAR + RAM backwards + KED. The last element was a vaguely-remembered guess.
13 ATTRACTION, [n]AT(TRACT)ION. Whenever I see ‘pamphlet’, I try ‘tract’ first, and I get many hits.
14 PAST TENSE, anagram of NEAT STEPS. My first in, while the puzzle was printing.
15 AMIDSHIPS, anagram of I HID SPASM. It is plain that this is an anagram, but for a long time I couldn’t make anything of the literal, so hard for me.
17 TRACING, T + RACING. Another one I found very difficult, supposing ‘copy’ was an element in the cryptic and not the literal. These smooth, short clues can be tough or easy.
19 LASAGNA, LA + anagram of A SNAG, put in from the literal and figured out later.
22 RELIC, RE + LIC[k].
23 DANDY, hidden word in [ol]D AND Y[oung], as I discovered after entering it.
24 ROSE, double definition, another obvious one that was hard for me, since I thought it was something backwards.

44 comments on “Times 24707 – Quiros was looking for one…..and so was I!”

  1. I think 20ac is TEAR – a double definition, which means the cross ref in 1ac is to TEAR in its sense of rush.

    I found this relatively easy at 29 minutes, though I entered SATELLITE and DANDY without fully understanding the cryptic until afterwards.

  2. A rather relaxed 21 min with somewhat of a hold up in the SW, and some time before the lights came on in NAIROBI. LAMBS TAILS were new to me in this context. And we have 1100 hazelnut trees! COD? Oh all right, Nairobi.
  4. Come up short on this one, with ‘roselight’ for RUSHLIGHT (‘though I got TEAR), ‘imaging’ for TRACING (dd with ‘time flying’ = ‘I’m aging’ and ‘copy’ = ‘imaging’ – rather ingenious, I thought – can a dd be linked by ‘with’?), and ‘stilllife’ in desperation for SATELLITE.
  5. I plotted a similar course to vinyl, but about 15 minutes behind him. AMIDSHIPS was a tricky anagram, but everything fell into place pretty quickly after that, thanks to that nice friendly I at the end of 25ac.
  6. Is 20ac a legitimate double definition, given that the definitions of of two different words, albeit homonyms? We don’t know which is the answer.

    Normally that wouldn’t matter, but as the answer is used in 1ac it seems a bit unsatisfactory.

    1. Double definitions generally point to a word which has two meanings (as in 24d). So yes, legitimate, I’d say. 1ac just adds a third meaning. If by homonym you mean pronunciation, then that doesn’t come into it, although if you mean spelling, it’s a necessary condition of the dd, I think.
    2. If I could ban one word from discussion here, I think I’d choose “homonym” – which is either “homophone or homograph” or a confusing synonym for one of the two. The definitions are of two homographs, so you don’t know which one is “the answer”, but you do know what letters you must write in the grid, and that’s all you need to know for crossword completion purposes.
  7. About 25 minutes, although that’s imprecise due to interruptions. I ended with the crossing SATELLITE and LAMBS TAILS, the latter from the cryptic only. I also was unfamiliar with a RUSHLIGHT. An easier outing, though, than many recently. Yes, NAIROBI for COD. Regards to all.
  8. My two halves were the right (5 minutes) and the left — except for the obvious 9ac (22 minutes), with a horrible session at the dentist’s in between. The difference in difficulty of the two sets of clues looked intentional. Does anyone know if setters/editors deliberately contrive such things by, as it were, rehearsing the solve? The one ethnography of crossword compiling and solving that I know of would suggest the possibility.
    Agreed on COD: NAIROBI.

    1. Also, note to Vinyl: I think I’d parse 3dn as a (jocular) def + a charade in the form of an instruction.
  9. About 40 minutes (rarely mention my time as seldom break the hour) plus a couple to work out SATELLITE and NAIROBI. KED unknown. Pity I finished in a way as I might have made something of Schubert’s 8th Symphony being more appropriate accompaniment for me.
    Having oft expressed grave doubts about England’s batting later today I have to explain a score of 517 for 1 to fellow cricket fans to which my excuse will be that our problems are at 4 and 5.
  10. A similar tale here in that I completed all but the SW in 30 minutes and spent another 25 sorting that out. At one point I went 15 minutes without entering anything.
  11. 27 minutes but annoyingly didn’t look twice at scarper so wrong there. COD very much 3 – a lovely word and word-picture. Some tricky bumps in a generally smooth ride.
  12. Done whilst watching the cricket end with a whimper. I got mightily stuck on LAMB’S TAILS and SATELLITE, not knowing who Hazel was or the connection with lackeys. Another vote for NAIROBI, which finally did have something to do with Iberia, which was my first thought at least half an hour before I saw the light.
  13. This is one of those annoying posts where I claim a decent time (7:37) and say that it should have been quicker. 16, 20, 25, 14D and 17 put up a bit of combined resistance, with 16 surrendering first.
    1. I’m afraid I’m going to add to the annoyance since I felt that my 6:39 could also have been better. I fairly sizzled through three-quarters of the puzzle, but then became bogged down in the SW corner, with TEAR costing me nearly half a minute at the end as I agonised over it.
  14. A lively and interesting puzzle with some interesting surface readings. 20 minutes to solve with no hold ups. New solvers should remember Hazel, catkins and LAMBS TAILS – you’ll see it again sometime, somewhere.
    1. Lamb’s Tails last in for me too. 35 minutes which I’m very proud of.

      Doesn’t “Mary had a Little Lamb” refer to the pussy willow catkins? (Dragging their tails behind them.)

  15. I found the RHS a lot easier than the other side, having to make a couple of guesses to get myself moving. Unfortunately, two of these proved to be wrong – ROSELIGHT for 1ac, and SCARPER for 2d, so my time of 45 minutes could probably have done with being a little longer!

    COD 23d

  16. Like some others, I thought this was going to be a bit of a doddle, but then got mired for a while in the SW corner. SATELLITE was the last to go in. Personally, I find the satellite/lackey definition a tad strained. It’s true that the dictionaries (e.g. COED) tell us that the word “satellite” first appeared in the 16th century in the sense of “follower” or “obsequious underling”, but it is pretty clearly obsolete in that sense now. At any rate, I can’t think of any sentence in contemporary English in which “satellite” could be idiomatically substituted for “lackey”. The setter could, I would have thought, just as well have used some such term as “subsidiary”, “subordinate”, “junior” etc, or possible made a neat cross-ref to the solution to 28ac (SECONDARY), and the clue would have been equally as good and perhaps fairer. But, as it’s in the dictionary, I guess we just have to take our medecine. That minor gripe aside, an enjoyable puzzle, with some intricate wordplay and deceptive surface readings (e.g.NAIROBI and PAST TENSE).
  17. Defeated by SATELLITE and LAMB’s TAILS. I’d never have got the former, because I’d never have associated it with “lackey”. The best I could do was SATURNINE, which sort of fits the wordplay. I didn’t put it in but still the invisible R exerted enough influence to prevent me seeing that the formal dress was “tails”.
    This continues a miserable run for me that included four failures last week and a still incomplete Saturday puzzle. I’m putting that down to an exceptionally busy weekend and hoping to finish it this evening, but still.
    I had Mozart’s Requiem on last night while doing the washing up. Tonight I will choose something FINISHED.
  19. 31 minutes. Curious mixture of obvious and subtle; just wish I’d gone for the obvious ones first! Got off to a false start by putting in ARGENTINE, which I wrongly assumed to be a silvery-grey colour, instead of TANGERINE. Doh! Also scribbled in LASAGNE, which is the way I usually spell this dish. Must be 15 across today. NAIROBI cleverly clued, not relying on the usual formulae.

    (Apropos my Simpsonian interjection “Doh!”, I just noticed that Libby Purves writes “D’oh!” in her Times column this morning. Going straight to Wikipedia (where else?) I discover that Ms Purves’s spelling is, as usual, correct. So D’oh! it is from now on.)

    1. Kenneth Connor was using this long before Homer, BUT I think the Americans still claim it as their own, as I did read somewhere (sorry, forgotten where) of some American character using “D’oh” before World War 2.
  20. Mostly very straightforward, but the SW corner held me up too, and until I had TEAR I couldn’t get the RUSH of RUSHLGHT (new to me). Some good clues here and there, but 24 is just too obvious and hackneyed for the Times.

    I do wish setters would stop using a past tense to get round the subject-verb problem when ‘I’ is the subject (4dn). Are we supposed to erase the answer because it no longer is ‘a no-hoper’. There are other, cryptically sound ways of tackling the problem.

  21. The whole righthand side came together very quickly. Slowed down with the lefthand side. Hadn’t heard of Rushlight, couldn’t explain Nairobi, had to look up Parka and could have kicked myself for not getting that!
    Louise
  22. 5:56 online – happy with that as I think it is my fastest online completion.

    My last three were 27, 16 and 17 in that order. Most of the others were straighforward as I worked clockwise on clues intersecting with ones I had already solved.

  23. 10 minutes, breezed through this one, though I didn’t know RUSHLIGHT (fortunately got TEAR so that one came from wordplay). Liked NAIROBI and the anagram at 15 (though given away a little if you saw the enumeration at 15 and realised it was most likely an A at the top).
  24. Thanksgiving (which we celebrated with a 33 lb. turkey and 15 people for dinner on Saturday, two days late, since the Thursday is not a holiday here in Germany) is now over and I have time to solve crosswords again. This one I found fairly easy, as shown by my time of just 40 minutes — I usually never beat the hour. Last in were LAMB’S TAILS, where I wasn’t familiar with the connection to hazel (or Hazel the lamb, as I thought?) and before that SATELLITE, where I took a while to realize that TELL IT and not just TELL was the insert. Like almost everyone else, I choose NAIROBI as COD, for its very clever wordplay.
  25. 1:00:54 – The RHS took about 15 minutes, but then spent a long time staring at the mostly empty LHS without getting anywhere. The last three (16/17/27) eventually fell in quick succession at around the hour mark.

    Just over the hour, so I can’t quite call it a win, but no mistakes or use of aids so, like England, I’ll take a draw and a moral victory.

    I particularly liked 14d & 25, but I think 14d just edges it as my COD for the well-disguised definition.

  26. Under twelve minutes, and an enjoyable solve. Two of my comments on the blog (TRIES and LAMBS+TAILS) have been flagged up already; I’d just add that I=ONE in the Royal sense (“One is very pleased that they have finally got engaged”…), rather than I=1.

    Oli

  27. I’m pleased to see that I wasn’t alone in getting stuck in the SW corner. I had everything except 16a and 17d in under 30mins. Spent another 10 puzzling those two before I gave up. Went back to it later and got them straight away. In retrospect I can’t see why that corner was so dificult – clues seem quite straightforward except forn the use of “lackey” as a definition of “satellite”. Somewhat obsolete usage but perfectly fair.
  28. about 30 mins for me, held up in the SW esp a blind spot on TRACING. And “lackey” seemed an unfair definition of SATELLITE

    I thought the at 3D the fact that it was “dependant” not “dependent” was significant, meaning things hanging rather than things reliant on, but apparently they are plain alternative spellings. Helped me get it immediately though.

    1. I also derived help from this spurious significnace – perhaps ‘pendant’ (the piece of jewelry) provided another subliminal prompt?
  29. An easy day for me – 19 min, but caught out like others by SCARPER/SCAMPER. I thought 24 was a kind of double-bluff: because it’s The Times, we were meant to think it must be a river!

    If d’oh has an apostrophe in it, what’s missing?

      1. Makes more sense when you take into account the glottal stop noted in kevin’s post below.
  30. Left the SW for this morning, maybe 45 minutes altogether. NAIROBI took seemingly forever, until I got the first two crossing letters in a sudden burst of satori.
    I think the apostrophe of d’oh is to indicate a bit of glottal stop (as in the correct spelling of Hawai’i, although strictly speaking that diacritic isn’t an apostrophe); Homer doesn’t pronounce “D’oh!” as he would “dough”, for instance.
  31. Not perhaps the last post but a late post
    35 minutes
    found the problems to be south west too
    but finisged in 35 minutes although for a bit thought we were onto PB territory
  33. About 20 minutes for me (can’t be exact as my mobile phone battery was dead), but about half of that time was spent on the last two in – SATELLITE and TRACING.

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