Times 24725 – Australians all let us rejoice

Author   kororarekaPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Solving Time: 21 minutes

An early Christmas present for all solvers today with what could be the easiest puzzle this year, if my time is anything to go by. Just as well, as there are only 5 shopping days left and time is of the essence. It was a pleasurable solve for reasons other than ease, as there were some interesting devices employed and excellent surfaces throughout. I’d nominate it for a beginner’s classic. May I take this opportunity to wish all our readers and contributors a merry festive season and I’ll see you all again in the new year.

Across
1 SIDELIGHT = IS reversed + DELIGHT
6 DEMOB = DEMO for protest (next) to B for bishop
9 VISITOR = VISOR around IT
10 COMES TO, a triple definition, makes (as in 2 + 2 comes to 4), wakes as in regains consciousness and the third a nautical expression.
11 YEAr = YEA as in verily, or the dyslexic equivalent of AYE (or is it the other way round?)
12 FULL OF BEANS, a double definition
14 Deliberately omitted, as is the arbiter’s custom.
15 NECK for pet + LACE for beat = NECKLACE. This was my last in, and gave me some pause for thought, possibly because it uses two informal expressions last in vogue in the 60’s. Necking is more commonly referred to as canoodling these days, I believe, and to lace into somebody is to give them a sound thrashing. (Note omission of obvious topical cricket reference.)
17 BY THE WAY, double definition.
19 CaR + readY + OFF for turned (as in milk) = CRY OFF, meaning “to back out”
22 FROGMARCHED = FROG for little creature + MARC for brandy + HE’D for “he had”
23 DIP, double definition
25 GREBE for seabird + CI for islands (as in Channel Islands) or, perhaps more correctly, C for approaching + I for islands (see mctext’s comment below), all reversed = ICEBERG. A grebe can be found at sea, apparently, when on holiday.
27 GAZE + TaTE = GAZETTE
28 GUST for rush + O for round = GUSTO
29 (GIRDLE from 4d + ANN)* = LENINGRAD

Down
1 SAVVY = SAY for “for instance” about VV for 55 (that would be 5 followed by 5)
2 I’D reversed over STAFF for “my employees” = DISTAFF, the feminine side, as opposed to the spear. The “my” would appear to be padding, but who cares? It’s Christmas.
3 LE for “the French” + TOFF’S for aristo’s + TEAM for side = LET OFF STEAM
4 GIRDLE = GLIDER*. As our national anthem (see blog title) proclaims, Australia is girt by sea, all jokes aside.
5 TICK OVER = TICK for moment + OVER for passed. Idle as in what an engine does when completely (as opposed to fully) throttled.
6 Deliberately omitted, to head off rising madness.
7 MA’S CAR for “… her transport” getting A = MASCARA. The ellipsis is a referral to the previous clue, which is a subversion of the dominant paradigm.
8 (OH FOLKS BE)* = BOOKSHELF
13 BAKER’S DOZEN, the ellipsis here is a referral to the clue number, a visual gag clue now seldom seen, alas. My nomination for COD.
14 REBUFFING = E for English + BUFF for expert, all inside RING for ARENA
16 MAD for very keen + (A GIRL)* = MADRIGAL. The girl would be the Singing Nun who famously sang “I’m the song that I sing, it’s a madrigal”.
18 TROWELS = Received inside TOWELS for cloths.
20 OLDSTER, being contained in CotswOLDS TERritories
21 SHOGUN = HOG for control inside SUN for day.
24 PLEAD = P for pressure on LEAD for premier
26 EGO = EG for say + O for nothing

29 comments on “Times 24725 – Australians all let us rejoice”

  1. A nice easy start to Christmas week, with several clues having a suitably seasonal chestnutty flavour. Slight kerfuffle in the NW caused by shoving ‘era’ in at 11ac, resolved when I finally got SIDELIGHT. Last in NECKLACE – I was unfamiliar with ‘lace’ meaning ‘beat’, which I see from Oxford Online is really a phrasal verb, ‘lace into’. Kudos to the blogger for understanding how 13 worked.

    28 minutes.

  2. I read “approaching” in the clew as C (circa, nearing). Suspect CI (for those bits of rock that ought to belong to France) would have to be signalled as such.
    12 whole minutes sitting here in the welcome rain and enjoying the strangeness of 10ac and 13dn — the latter also getting my COD vote.
    (Coda: good job the Test didn’t go into a fifth day, eh?)
    1. That was a stroke of genius by the Australian batsmen getting out quickly in their second innings rather than batting on into the fourth day.
      1. Indeed it was.
        But as for 25ac, I now suspect I’m wrong! The plural “islands” (when “island” singular would do) seems sufficient to give your reading the, um, guernsey.
  3. A very straightforward puzzle. I imagine the fastest will be constrained only by how quickly they can write the answers in. 19 minutes.
  4. My quickest of the year at 9 1/2 min. So an early Christmas present. Quite a lot put in without fully understanding at the time, but all OK. No standouts, no quibbles. Hate to bring this up (cough!) but our hot dry spell has just broken and the temperature has dropped to the low twenties with lots of lovely rain.
  5. 14″, a definite personal best; in fact, given how long it takes me even to focus on the clues and get the letters into the little squares, I can’t imagine topping it. It helped that the clues were generally dialect-neutral; ‘demob’, ‘frogmarch’, ‘tick over’ were, I think, the only terms that a Yank might not be familiar with.
  6. 19 minutes. I think 15 is my PB but has not been achieved for a long time. Might have been quicker but for my habit of looking at any 3-letter clues first and solving only two of the four cold.
  7. 6:40, despite having been fooled by quite a few clues on first look. I spent too long trying to find something with LV in for 1D.

    I agree with blogger that 13 is fun, but my favourite today is le toff’s team at 3D.

    I hope this was set by John Henderson, as the brilliant 26D (I say nothing (3)) is one he has famously used before.

  8. Must be one of my best times ever (under 30 minutes). Did not spot reference to clue number in 13dn (thank you, kororareka): answer derived from ‘volumes … as supplied by shop’. But surely ‘pet’, ‘neck’ and ‘canoodle’ are all of some (and maybe the same) vintage? I can’t speak from experience of what the modern term would be …!
  9. Steady solve here, 16 minutes, some tricky negotiation on the way. 13 interesting; it reminds me of ’26. Halved with superstitious connotations’ from a long time ago.
  10. Yes, a welcome speedy solve for the Christmas week, leaving time to get on with the important tasks of shopping, card writing, decorating etc… LENINGRAD took a surprisingly long time to unravel, and, like others, NECKLACE was last in (not knowing LACE = BEAT). I, too, didn’t spot the ref to 13 at 13dn – very clever, so it gets, with the benefit of the explanation, my COD.
  11. A best-ever time for me too. Made things difficult by rushing in with BY THE BYE at 17, and then followed the same course as many others, finishing with NECKLACE. Glad to see the ellipsis bug has been fixed at last – is that why we’ve got three of them today? A record-breaking 21:33.
  12. 27 minutes. Thought this was going to be very easy, but hubris undid me. Anticipating what I thought was the setter’s thinking, carelessly put in SIBERIA instead of ICEBERG, and so took a while to sort out the bottom left. Thought BAKER’S DOZEN very clever and agree that this puzzle has a touch of the OLDSTER about it, particularly with the inclusion of LENINGRAD and DEMOB. Also liked the concise clue for EGO.
  13. About 8 minutes so my quickest for some time. Good fun but hardly taxing. We are forecast 20cm of snow today on top of what is already lying about. For a place that until last year hadn’t had snow settle for more than an hour for at least 20 years it will be dreadfully disruptive. I must get my mind round this global warming.
  14. Not much of a challenge today, completed in 15 minutes. I quite liked the triple definition in 10, though the surface isn’t particularly good. 26 is neat (possibly an old chestnut, though I don’t recall it). Less keen on the surface decorators in 23a (takes) and 2d (my). The answer to 23 is really DIPS; it’s stretching things to justify ‘takes’ as a link between the two definitions.

  15. Nothing much to add…hadnt noticed the reference to the clue number in 13…which makes it jolly clever…paused for a while over the VV in Savvy but saw through that eventually
    29 minutes
    Merry Christmas and a Happy New year to one and all
  16. Very fast – 4:32 online which is a new best for me, possibly even faster than my best paper solve.

    I agree with Richard that 3D was fun. Not much more to say.

  17. An enjoyable 16 minutes here. Which is as fast as it can ever be for me given the time it takes to actually read the clues. I gather from earlier comments that there’s some sort of cricket match going on. All I know of cricket comes from seeing crickety terms in crosswords. I have no idea what they mean. My son lives in Melbourne near to a cricket ground where there’s something big happening. Btw, the headline to this blog reminds me of the misquote from “Kenny” – “Australians let us all ring Joyce…”
    1. That would be the MCG and the Boxing Day Test, as much a part of an Australian christmas as the roast turkey & plum pudding (some traditions die hard). The almost unsingable national anthem is replete with misquotable phrases, like “our land abounds in nature’s gits” and so forth. Why we didn’t plump for Waltzing Matilda when we had the chance is a mystery to this day. The original words to the Australia Fair one were “Australia’s sons let us rejoice”, which had to be amended when it gained national recognition, although, judging by the behaviour of some of its sons in the crowd at the cricket on the day I attended, Australia’s daughters don’t have much to rejoice about.
  18. Agreed, one of the easiest puzzles in recent months. 22 mins for me, which must be close to a PB. One or two clues/solutions were almost absurdly easy – e.g REFUSE – and others spoilt a nice surface reading and good wordplay by signalling the definition too obviously. An example of this was 3dn where the setter could surely have found a more oblique definition of LET OFF STEAM than “vent their anger”. But some enjoyable stuff – EGO, BAKER’S DOZEN and ICEBERG were all good.
  19. About 18 minutes here, not a PB but this was fairly easy. Held up by FROGMARCHED and NECKLACE. The former is not in my regular vocabulary, but I think I’ve seen it somewhere before. The wordplay for NECKLACE, particularly ‘pet’=’neck’, had me dredging up an old meaning that seems to have gone out of use quite a while ago. COD to EGO, honorable mention to the BAKERS DOZEN. Regards, everyone.
  20. hey! even i managed to finish that one. my first weekday finish – i seem to do better on saturdays and sundays. i’ve learnt more useless words in the last ten weeks or so that i’ve been doing this crossword (marc = brandy; lace = beat – even my dictionary doesn’t have that!) than in the last ten years!

    i presume mr biddlecombe did that in about 30 milliseconds!

    anyway, thanks to all the bloggers and have a very good christmas!

  21. Under 20 minutes then moved back to the Club Monthly. Yoiks…a lot white spaces still and gadzooks who uses these words anyway?
  22. Just wanted to record a personal best of 18 minutes. Thanks for pointing out the key to BAKERS DOZEN.
  23. I agree it was quite easy, my total time (after an interruption to drive my wife through the snow to a doctor’s appointment and completing the puzzle in the waiting room) being 39 minutes, matching my best. FROGMARCHED was the only new expression for me, worked out from the wordplay. COD to BAKER’S DOZEN (I did catch the reference to the clue number) and EGO.
  25. I too loved that clue. Does his team play cricket? Maybe the Poms should be playing them instead of the lousy Aussie team! Well done to the MCC, an emphatic series win to hold the Ashes.

    Also wanted to record my 15 mins of fame!

    Best wishes to all.

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