Times 24716 – In The Hot Seat

Author   yfyapPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
What a challenging puzzle this is. The variety and sheer complexity of the cryptic devices used almost overwhelmed me and I felt I was in the hot seat, both metaphorically and physically. Yes, I have returned to 30 degree Celcius Malaysia after more than a fortnight of sub-zero temperatures in London, complete with snow and all. It will be a long time before I consider going back to Brrritain, especially in winter.

ACROSS
1 JACKAL JACK (fellow in suit) A L (large) What a delightfully outrageous way of calling Jack a fellow in suit!
4 PRESS-UP Cha of PRE (before) S (second) SUP (drink)
9 ha deliberately omitted
10 IRON OXIDE Ins of ON OX (steer as in bovine) in I RIDE (travel) for what is commonly called RUST, which makes this almost an &lit
11 WOODEN LEG WOODEN (lacking expression) LEG (stage) Another splendid def, walk-on part indeed!
12 MAFIA Rev of AIFAM, ins of FA (Football Association or footballers) in AIM (goal)
13 RUFF Sounds like ROUGH (not even)
14 MONEY TALKS *(YET MAN’S OK Left) Ironic sounding clue
18 HEAVEN-SENT Ins of N (northern) in HEAVES (lifts) ENT (ear, nose and throat, hospital department)
20 WHEN The last letters of noW thougH onE caN
23 CANOE Ins of O (over) in CANE (stick)
24 SOBRIQUET SO (rev of OS, Ordinary Seaman or sailor) BRIQUET (brick-shaped block made of compressed coal dust, charcoal, etc) for a nickname; an assumed name.
25 JUXTAPOSE *(Jack Old US EXPAT)
26 QUITO capital of Ecuador. Thanks to paulmcl, sounds like key toe (crucial kick)
27 NUDGERS Ins of E (ecstasy) in *(New DRUGS)
28 BELIZE Ins of LIZ (familiar form of Elizabeth) in BEE (worker) (formerly British Honduras) a democratic constitutional monarchy, and the northernmost Central American nation. I love this setter’s description of Elizabeth Regina II as female leading us! Priceless!

DOWN for a
1 JOBSWORTH A minor official who regards the rigid enforcement of petty rules as more important than providing a service to the public. Thanks to paulmcl, J (judge) BOSWORTH (a battle ground) with letter B pushed to second
2 CRY WOLF Cha of CRY (keen as in lamentation) WOLF (bolt as in food)
3 AMULET Ins of MULE (slipper) in AT (rev of TA, cheers) Thanks to paulmcl of California for a charm worn to ward off evil
4 PRONG PRONE (lying) minus E + G (good)
5 ENORMITY *(mine Tory)
6 SKILFUL SKIPFUL (pile of building waste) with L substituted for P, the middle letter
7 PIETA PIE (shepherd’s pie, geddit?) TA (rev of AT) The Pietà is a subject in Christian art depicting the Virgin Mary cradling the dead body of Jesus, most often found in sculpture like the masterpiece of Renaissance sculpture by the renowned artist Michelangelo Buonarroti, housed in St. Peter’s Basilica in Vatican City.
8 ZILLIONS ZIL (rev of LIZ, an informal handle for Elizabeth) LIONS (common name for rugby team)
15 ENNOBLED ENNOB (rev of BONNET, hood minus T) LED (light-emitting diode) and what a cheeky def, got up to peer !
16 SUNSTROKE SUN (Sunday, regarded as first day of the week) STROKE (the leading member of a crew of 8 oarsmen)
17 BEVERAGE BE + AVERAGE (mean) minus first A
19 ANNEXED AN (indefinite article) + ins of X (symbol for times or multiplication in arithmetics) in NEED (poverty) Yet another fantastic def, did appropriate!
21 HOUDINI HOUR (time) minus R DIN (racket) I, the escape artist so audaciously defined as tie-break ace! Bravo!
22 RISQUE R (resistance) IS QUE (that in French, clued as coming from De Gaulle)
23 CAJUN CA (rev of AC, account or bill) JUN (June with 30 days) descendant of the French-speaking Acadians deported from Canada to Louisiana in 1755; often associated with settling in marshy places like the answer in 9 Across
24 SCOTS Rev of SeT fOr CaSt

Key to abbreviations
dd = double definition
dud = duplicate definition
tichy = tongue-in-cheek type
cd = cryptic definition
rev = reversed or reversal
ins = insertion
cha = charade
ha = hidden answer
*(fodder) = anagram

48 comments on “Times 24716 – In The Hot Seat”

  1. QUITO is “key toe” (crucial kick)
    AMULET is “MULE” (slipper) in TA (cheers) up
    JOBSWORTH is J (judge) and BOSWORTH with the B lowered (head down). Battle of Bosworth Field.

    What a splendid puzzle. Over an hour I think for me. Took me ages to get BELIZE even with all the checkers

  2. Gave up timing this and was just glad to finish. Annoyingly put MILLIONS in as a placeholder before getting BELIZE and didn’t recheck at the end. Very nice blog and ta for parsing of AMULET which had also eluded me. I think the online version of 14a may be missing something at the beginning.
  3. Brilliant. The time became irrelevant as the clock ticked on, and I was simply happy to finish under my own steam (with IRON OXIDE last in). Memorable clues all over the place. If PB finishes this in 8 minutes I’m giving up and going over to Sudoku.
  4. OK, I’ll own up to the time, which I challenge anyone to beat: 3 hours and 10 minutes. Really should have given up and done something more useful but I sensed this was not just a pangram but a thing of beauty. Not knowing/remembering that ‘mule’ means slipper cost me 3dn (‘amuser’ was the best I could manage), but I don’t mind too much as I feel this was a victory for the setter and indeed the genre. The standout for me was ANNEXED. Magnificent.
  5. This was like someone with a sweet tooth swimming in treacle. Lots of reward, but oh, the effort. Two left after about 40 min. 8 dn (obviously b/millions … damn) and 28 ac. Was doing dishes when ZILLIONS jumped up, but still had to use aids for BELIZE. To me a state and a country are not the same thing, and only the country carries the name.
  6. Ran out of time on the commute so after an hour I was left with nine unsolved, all in the SE.

    On arrival at the office I used a solver to unravel 14ac where I was (and still am) convinced there is something wrong with the clue. The absence of a capital letter on its first word suggests that another word is missing and there’s no definition (as far as I can see) so I assume one explains the other.

    I’m not clear how 20 works either if the definition is “on all the time”.

    Isn’t “coming from de Gaulle” a tautology?

    I was surprised to read that so many people found yesterday’s puzzle difficult. I thought it was a stroll in the park compared to this.

    1. P.S. I forgot to say congrats on a valiant effort on the blog, yfyap. I’m very glad it wasn’t my day.
    2. I didn’t understand why 14A started without a capital letter, but I think it works as an &lit, where a little licence is often allowed in the definition.

      At 20A I took the definition as “all the time”, which means “while”, which means WHEN. And they can be substituted in “I chew my pencil all the time I am solving”.

      1. I was thinking along similar lines but wasn’t convinced that either “while” or “when” necessarily mean the same as “all the time”. “I chew my pencil when I’m solving but not all the time”.

        Perhaps someone can confirm how the clue to 14ac appears in the newspaper?

      2. I parsed this slightly differently: ‘keep terminals on all’ of ‘now though one can’ to give ‘the time’ (definition), as in ‘I got so angry the time I missed the last train’.
    3. Doesn’t ‘coming from de Gaulle’ simply mean ‘in French’ (as spoken by de Gaulle)?
  7. 17:04 with one wrong. I stuck in a couple that I was reasonably confident of but couldn’t explain, and one – SKIPFUL at 6D – turned out to be wrong.

    Brilliant puzzle though. Excellent clues, and a double pangram too. Difficult to choose a COD, but I did stop to admire JOBSWORTH at 1D despite the ticking clock..

  8. Hadn’t realised it was a double pangram – pangram plus using all the high-scoring Scrabble letters at least twice (4 K’s) was god enough for me. 13:35, so richnorth is saved from 9×9 number puzzles.

    Great stuff, with the exception of 6D which I thought was too easily readable Richard’s way. I went for SKILFUL on the grounds that SKIPFUL probably wasn’t in Collins or COD (true unless Collins have added it since 1991), but that’s the kind of knowledge I don’t think you should need to use.

    1. What a delightful Freudian! A double pangram is god enough for me too! Please don’t change it!
      1. Don’t worry – on LJ blogs, once a comment has been replied to, the only way you can change it is to delete it.
  9. Didn’t get BELIZE so didn’t get ZILLIONS but otherwise left half went in pretty quickly. Right half left me bothered and bewildered but a tad less than bewitched. Spent so much time worrying about the lower case start to 14 (another “red herring”?) and not sure about FA for footballers. However, tie-break ace for HOUDINI worth the price of the paper, had I bought it.
    To much for me and I guess many others who look but don’t contribute to this site? I am seriously thinking of joining you.
  12. Loved it! So much better in every department from yesterdays (you see, I wasn’t just being grumpy!) A double pangram with loveable clues all over the place. And I got 1a and 1d straight off. Still took around 25 minutes.
    I also toyed with SKIPFUL, and I would have argued that was a proper answer if my Championship depended on it.
    Was this perhaps one crossword where seeing the probable pangram was of help? For those (like me) who struggled with the frabjous BELIZE (and hence ZILLIONS) the absence otherwise of Z’s could have been a pointer.
    Forget yesterday’s: surely this one has a real chance of CoY.
  13. managed to limp home in just over the hour but very pleased with finishing at all. quite brilliant…what is the newspaper clue to 14across?

  15. Newspaper has: … yet man’s OK left broke?

    Not sure I sent this properly first attempt

  16. Very very difficult. Just under the hour for me, and let down right at the end by poor knowledge of the world’s capitals. The best I could do for 26ac was QUIGO.
    As well as the devilish clues I was slowed down by confidently putting in FELINE for 28ac. A cat is a familiar, it begins with F (female), that must be it, move on… This left me a problem for 8dn, which opened up the whole NE when I eventually saw the mistake.
    In the paper 14ac appears like this:
    …yet man’s OK left broke? (5,5)

  17. 35 mins for me on the train this morning. When I got off to a slow start I thought my brain was still foggy after too much vodka last night, but I quickly realised it wasn’t the vodka but the brilliance of the clues. I wasn’t 100% sure of 6D, but went with SKILFUL in the end as the way the clue was written just favoured changing the P rather than the L. Too many good clues to single out a COD.
  18. Sorry didn’t see Anonymous’s posts before posting myself.
    Having checked online I see they missed off the dots, which certainly makes things less clear.
  19. If there is an error, might it be that the dots were left off from the end of 13, which would create a credible follow on?
    1. I read it that the dots indicate the answer and the clue follows on from it. Money talks, yet…
  20. 1h 20min Very clever stuff, if a bit out of my league. Particularly liked the “walk-on part”, the “shepherd’s maybe” and the mild lèse majesté at 28.
  21. I almost gave up on this after an hour. I felt guilty with chores waiting and a Xmas tree to decorate. But stuck with it and came in at 75 minutes with 1 wrong – I had SKIPFUL. A silly error. For me this is the hardest puzzle in ages. After PRESS UP and PIETA it was a full 5 minutes before anything else went in! I feel a warm glow of satisfaction simply in finishing!
  22. Plodded through this in about the same time as yesterday (a bit over an hour) but without the same sense of enjoyment, challenge and satisfaction. Why not? I don’t know (superficially I can’t see significant differences in style between the two crosswords). But I was conscious today that I was merely mechanically applying a lot of the tips I have picked up here to resolve wordplay etc … Maybe it’s just a different day!
  23. I really enjoyed this. 24mins, which is not much more than half the time I took yesterday. I found todays’s clues more amenable all round and intend to give up worrying about times altogether now, since there is clearly no logic in it. Hard to pick a cod, but I did like 28ac. though I don’t think of her leading me particularly, more as a well paid figurehead..
  24. 33:10.. Glad to see I’m in the good company of richardvg with SKIPFUL.

    This was a real exercise in opening up little seams and chipping away at them until others began to emerge. There weren’t too many clues here I could have solved cold.

    We’re being spoilt – two really fine crosswords on consecutive days. Seems ages since we had a pangram, let alone a double. Bravo the setter all round (apart from 6d!).


  25. Spent an inordinate amount of time on this one, but was determined to complete at least half before giving up…so the top half it was (+ one or two others). However, even got some of those wrong (MILLIONS, SKIPFUL…). And didn’t really understand why some of the others were (IRON OXIDE, JOBSWORTH…).

    Massive respect to all you guys who managed to finish it, note to self: ‘Must try harder…’. Honestly, after yesterday’s I really thought I was getting somewhere!

    🙁

  26. Completed two thirds of the puzzle really quickly and then ground to a halt. I couldn’t figure out 6 down or 7 down and the south east was pretty much blank with doubts over the ones I did get.
    Louise
  27. About an hour, over half in SE. Rest not too bad. But (like ulaca) put amuser in though uneasily, not seeing amulet, which is annoying as ‘The Story of the Amulet’ by E. Nesbit was a favourite childhood book and with the checkers it should have gone straight in. Some puzzle.
  28. All pretty easy, complete in 20 minutes… apart from two in the NE, and the usual suspects in the SE corner that took me a further hour and a half… MAFIA and SKILFUL were my last two in, for reasons that elude me now, as in retrospect they don’t look that difficult.

    COD 22d.

  29. An excellent puzzle, quite a strain after 18 holes on ice. 35 minutes to solve. Some of the definitions are a real delight. Congratulations setter.
  30. Wow that was a tricky one – needed to put it down for a while, eat and do other things and come back to it just before sleep to finish off, SKILFUL last one in.

    A lot I wanted to pull the trigger on way too early (like JILLIONS), getting BELIZE as one of the first few in the second session really helped

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