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. 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
  3. 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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