Times 24,726

Author   topicaltimPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
19:22 on the Club timer, a disproportionate part of which was spent on one corner: in an echo of the current UK weather, things were very tricky in the SE. Apart from those, it was plain sailing, thanks largely to a grid with four long answers around the outside, all of which went in fairly early.

Across
1 CRADLE SNATCHER – doubled def.: the builder’s cradle is one of those rather perilous looking cages in which you regularly see workers suspended along the side of tall buildings; an obscure def., but the other one is a bit of a giveaway.
9 INSURANCE – IN + SU[RAN +C(lubs)]E.
10 COATI – take vaiN huntinG from COATING to give a sort of raccoon.
11 FEUDS – U in FEDS.
12 SATURNINE – TURN IN in S.A.E., the ‘looking’ is just there for the surface, I guess.
13 OFT TIMES – Old.F.T. + TIMES
15 CAMERA – double def.; legal proceedings that take place away from public view happen “in camera”.
17 SHANDY – Nag in SHADY.
19 ARCHIVES – ARCH + IVES, who regularly crops up here, and less so everywhere else.
22 AUTOCROSS – AU CROSS around (O.T.)rev.
23 BURRO – BURROw; I assumed this was simply Spanish but it seems that the word has become interchangeable in parts of the US where the English and Spanish-speaking worlds meet. For clarification on the subject, I recommend the Spanish language classes of Mr Andrew Sachs.
24 LICIT – Lunch Ideally Consumed + IT(alian), that well-known wine with an aftertaste of chestnut.
25 HUMANKIND – HUM + AN + KIND, lift and separate to find the “people” definition.
26 DEAR JOHN LETTER – cryptic def. referencing brother and sister artists; these days, of course, the equivalent is “dumped by text”.
 
Down
1 CHIEF CONSTABLE – CHIEF=cardinal, CONSTABLE=painting (as one talks of “a Constable” or “a Rembrandt” to mean “a painting by…”.
2 ASSAULT =”A SALT”.
3 LORIS – LORdS with 1 replacing Duke gives the small primate. Although the crucial letter is unchecked, the syntax makes it very clear which one is meant to be the definition, I think.
4 SONGSTER – SONGS(=lays) + TEa with Rabbit instead of A. Somewhat inelegant to have the same device in two consecutive clues?
5 AVESTA – cAVES TAntalisingly, being the sacred writings of Zoroastrianism.
6 COCKROACH – OCKR [ROCK with the R moved to the end] in COACH.
7 EVASIVE – European + [I Videre (“see” in the abbreviation q.v.) in VASE].
8 NINE DAYS WONDER – (INNORWAYSENDED)*.
14 INDICATOR – [A in INDICT] + Other Ranks; again, I guess “fixed” is simply superficial.
16 IRISHMAN – [IS + H.M.] in IRAN. Casement, cunningly placed at the start, so that the capital doesn’t stand out, is, of course Sir Roger, the Irish nationalist who was famously “hanged on a comma”.
18 ATTACHE – AbundanT ‘TACHE.
20 VARMINT – [MI in R.N.] in VAT. Took ages to spot this varmint, dagnabbit.
21 YOO HOO =”YOU WHO”.
23 BINGE – BING (Crosby, a man who sang, especially at this time of year, of course) + Elegies. Took me ages to do a) the lift and separate and b) realise it’s not the adjective, but the noun “blind”, meaning a drinking bout, and from which, presumably, the expression “blind drunk” comes…crafty.

And with that I bid you all compliments of the season and happy solving in 2011. Cheers!

35 comments on “Times 24,726”

  1. I had the same experience, racing along at breakneck speed until hitting the snow and ice in the SE. I don’t really understand DEAR JOHN LETTER – what is the function of “or Gwen” – is it sexual equality gone mad? I’d never heard of the lady so she confused me all ends up. Thought YOO HOO a bit weak and struggled with blind=BINGE. About 5 minutes + a further 10 for the SE corner.
    1. Gwen John was a pretty well-known artist in her own right. I agree that the clue doesn’t strictly need the reference to her, but perhaps the setter thought he was being helpful: solvers toying with JOHN as the “Augustus” alluded to would have their hunch confirmed by “or Gwen”. I rather liked YOO HOO, but I can see it’s the kind of clue that tends to divide opinion. I too struggled with blind=BINGE. I was familiar with “going on a blinder” and “blind drunk” but not with “blind” as a noun in the sense indicated. However, the OECD does offer “a heavy drinking bout” as one definition of “blind”, albeit describing it as “Brit.informal” and “dated”.
  2. A 15-minute solve for me too, although I didn’t have too many problems in the SE. VARMINT took maybe a minute to confirm the wordplay, as did COATI in the NE, but I guessed straight away Casement was Sir Roger. In fact the only thing that really slowed me down was a couple of kids singing nursery rhymes at the top of their voices just down the carriage!
  3. It took me 6 minutes to find my first answer today but after that the LH went in quite quickly as did the remaining long answers at the perimeter.

    Then I hit a fallow period of 15 minutes in which I only managed to add EVASIVE and SATURNINE in the NE. I nearly convinced myself that 6dn had to be CHARABANC despite not being able to make sense of the wordplay, so that wasted more time.

    The key to the RH turned out to be IRISHMAN at 16dn where having abandoned thoughts of windows I dredged up Sir Roger from my O-level history studies. After that it all flowed smoothly and I finished in 50 minutes.

    1. Forgot to add that I didn’t fully understand 26 until after the event having done some Googling. The names John, Gwen and Augustus put me in mind of The Importance of Being Earnest. Of course two of the three don’t match the characters’ names exactly but sometimes it’s hard to put an initial thought out of one’s mind.
  4. 45:48 (with 1 mistake) – I too went through 80% of the grid in a quick time (for me) before getting stuck in the SE corner.

    I think I had 7 left after 30 mins (16/20/21/22d/22a/25/26). Stared blankly at them for about ten minutes before most went in in a rush. I was left with 16 which I couldn’t get. I’ve never heard of Sir Roger Casement, so I came up with PRESSMAN as PRES(ident) + (viet)NAM’S rev. and threw that in in desperation. I wasn’t surprised to see it was wrong.

    I got BINGE from the wordplay, and 26 from the definition, but didn’t fully understand them until coming here.

    The word BURRO just make me think of Basil Fawlty trying to explain to Manuel that he’s putting out too much butter.

  5. Held up unconscionably (if that’s the right use of the word) by ‘binge’; otherwise creaked round OK. Got there in the end. I like the addition of Gwen – expands the meaning of the phrase for this one Alice-in-Wonderland usage. She’s well-enough known – more so I’d say than the occasional composer we meet. Liked the Casement clue – got mixed up by Gregor-something for a bit (Roger held up). Lovely set of words – a Christmas liqueur.
  6. Very much a game of two halves, with some stuff that went in on first glance (e.g. 1ac) and other clues where unfamiliar – mostly zoological – vocabulary required, and rewarded, close attention to the wordplay. Having said which, I took my eye off the ball at 10ac, entering COAPI (influenced by okapi?).

    Held up at 23 dn by not knowing that ‘blind’ can be a noun meaning a heavy drinking bout; the last in was IRISHMAN, wholly from the wordplay, although I was again held up for a tad thinking that the ‘is’ needed to be reversed. 8dn couldn’t be anything else, but I was surprised by the plural (+ apostrophe in the non-cruciverbal world), being familiar with ‘one-day wonder’. 64 minutes.

  7. Well i found this tough…but finished. thought the casement clue was a classic. not sure about Binge but can see why it is the answer. Didnt find this at all easy and struggled to see 2 of the long 14 letter clues which probably explains it. Nice puzzle if infuritating. still not sure about the parsing of Irishman. could someone set it out again please!

    many thanks

    1. Casement possibly = Irishman
      Country = IRAN around IS backwards and HM (Her Majesty) for ruler.
      1. No reversal – the ‘held up’ in ‘is held up by ruler’ means ‘detained’, or plain ‘held’, where the ‘up’ is more intensifier than directional marker (compare ‘penned up’).
        1. I’d taken “held up” to mean “supported”. This would only work on a “down” clue.
  8. Very seasonal, with two familiar elements of Christmas here in NSW: Bing Crosby and cockroaches. Although we also had snow a couple of days ago, which is pretty amazing.

    39 minutes, held up like most people in the SE where I spotted Sir Roger easily enough, but thought the country was going to be Oman and that ‘ruler’ was the definition.

  9. 17:54 .. only real hold-up in a fun puzzle caused by writing in YOU-WHO, which had me trying to justify ‘womankind’ for 25a before having a rethink.

    I did notice that if you take the letters from alternate lights, across and down, superimposepose them onto Benjamin Franklin’s famous 8×8 magic square then resequence the letters in the order of the numbers in the square, it reads: MERRY CHRISTMAS ONE AND ALL. PEACE ON EARTH AND GOOD WILL TO ALL MANKIND.

    (okay, it doesn’t, but I’m getting a seasonal fix of hokum reading Dan Brown’s latest and one does start looking for these things; well, this one does – I’m easily led).

  10. 10:21 online, with one stupid typing mistake (IIDICATOR).

    My angle on Gwen as well as Augustus is that Augustus alone could possibly indicate a range of people. The combination makes it more precise without much damage to the surface.

  12. Trickier than yesterday’s, but finally managed it all bar one (as is so often the case). Stumped by the IRISHMAN, as have not come across Mr Casement. Many went in without full understanding, but for the most part I found it a satisfying solve.
  14. Much the same experience as others. Solutions to three of the long perimeter clues came easily and I was moving along steadily with hopes of almost as quick a time as yesterday’s but then got mired in the SE corner, VARMINT, BINGE and IRISHMAN being the last to fall. As topicaltim says, the placing of the reference to Richard Casement at the beginning of 16dn is very cunning as is the rest of the wordplay.
  15. see = v? is this standard crossword usage because i would never have got that? i actually even thought of evasive but could not justify it! 🙁
  16. PB As typos are nearly as certain as death and taxes, could Times online be tweaked to offer a check facility to submitters of incorrect solutions without indicating where the error/errors lie and allowing only one resubmission? This would remove a major source of frustration for online solvers of all abilities, no-one escapes the deadly curse of the typo as things stand.
    1. People like Tony Sever take care, avoid typos, and deserve the credit. Typos are more common for many people on the website than on paper, but I don’t see that as a reason to water things down.
      1. Just so.

        I always take the time to check through my solution before submitting, which is why I’m higher up the Times Crossword Club’s Cryptic Leaderboard than Peter, or indeed Magoo! Even so, I occasionally make mistakes, but apparently less often than others.

  17. Oh dear, I made a mess of this, over an hour. The last was DEAR JOHN LETTER from the def. and the crossers, not being familiar with the Augustus or Gwen. I saw the IRISHMAN but didn’t understand the wordplay, same for SONGSTER. I was also surprised to see VARMINT and BURRO, especially crossing each other, as I thought they were more peculiarly American. Regards.
  18. This seemed to suit me. 21 minutes. No hold-ups anywhere except some pondering over BINGE – I didn’t know that “Blind” was another name for a bender. I thought Augustus in conjunction with Gwen at 26a was a dead give-away. Interesting that her star has risen as his has faded.
  19. I wonder if there are just two setters, Dr. Jekyll and Mr Hyde. Yesterday was a personal best; today well over an hour, but enjoyable, in a masochistic way. I actually had decided to submit it without solving 23d, but ‘binge’ finally came to me as I was typing. I, too, wasted a good deal of time trying to accommodate ‘charabanc’. ‘Casement’, oddly enough, was my first in; I figured it just had to be Roger.
    1. Agree with everything Kevin said. Yesterday was my fastest ever solve. Today not so great!
      Louise
  20. I didn’t like this clue. It seems to me to verge on the unsound. OK I got the Casement part (and thought at first it was going to be something about Roger, since I had the checking R) but how does the wordplay work? “in country …” so that’s something in Iran, fine. And what’s in Iran is “is HM”, but it says ‘held up’, which seems gratuitously misleading when ‘held’ would work perfectly well and wouldn’t harm the surface, such as it is. And anyway it’s “is, by HM, held up” which is not what “is held up by ruler” says.

    Anyway I’m probably not seeing something quite obvious and I’m just fed up because I couldn’t do it. Like richnorth, I was also looking for something in Oman, never thinking of Iran.

    1. I think you’re complicating things. Simply read “is held up by ruler” as meaning
      “is supported by ruler” – i.e. HM (ruler) comes underneath (is supporting/holding up) IS inside IRAN (country).

      1. Strictly speaking this clue is sound, but it is, like several of the clues here, extremely inelegant. “Casement possibly” would be better as “Casement, for one” or “for example”. I doubt if Roger Casement is the first, or even in the top ten of Irishmen who comes to anyone’s mind – certainy not mine (and he went to my school!) It also seems inelegant to have a reference to another country (IRAN) in the clue, but perhaps that’s just me. The icing on the cake tho is “is held up by ruler” for the rest of it. Horrible!
        Added to which I am not sure if the surface reading of the clue is meant to refer to Roger Casement or a casement. Either way it seems fairly unconvincing
  21. Re The Deadly Typo
    Fair comments of course from a purist, paper-solving standpoint but typing into grids increases the typo rate while making them hard to spot, especially in the Times Jumbo. Offering a recheck function would improve the satisfaction levels of many solvers and have little influence on rankings -time would be taken in finding the non-highlighted typo, unlike on the over-userfriendly Telegraph site. The leaderboards themselves are another kettle of fish, best taken with a barrel of salt.

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