Times 24,731 Get the proper clue here

Author   dorsetjimboPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Solving time 25 minutes

I think this is an excellent puzzle with some first class clue construction. I found the western side a little easier than the eastern but that was because once 1A and 1D are in place they open up those quarters. There are no obscure poets or musicians. A little science with FRACTAL but other than that the difficulty lies in the first class application of the setter’s art. In the on-line version the clue to 19A is a printers pie so I have derived the clue as well as the answer.

Across
1 PORTLAND,STONE – (old transept + no)*; limestone from Isle of Portland in Dorset used to build for example the Cenotaph in Whitehall;
9 VISOR – (ad)-VISOR;
10 HOPSCOTCH – HOP-SCOTCH; hopping mad=very annoyed; put an end to=SCOTCH (a rumour);
11 MASTER,PLAN – M(ASTER-PL)AN; (michaelmas) daisy=ASTER; place=PL;
12 SMEW – S(tonewall)-M(anfully)-(los)E-W=wicket (cricket); a feathered duck (not cricket);
14 NASTIER – N-A-S-TIER; a=A; second=S; row=TIER; name=N moved forward;
16 OUTWORN – (m)OU-(TWO)-RN;
17 ABUTTED – A-BUTTED;
19 FAIREST – FA(IRE)ST; the clue in the on-line version is a complete printing mess. I deduce it should read “Very lovely emotion quickly suppressed”.
20 TEEM – MEET reversed;
21 INFALLIBLE – I-N(FALL)IB(b)LE; eat a little=NIBBLE then lose one “b”=half heartedly; save=contain within;
24 SENTIMENT – SEN(IT reversed-MEN)T; elated=SENT; feeling is the definition;
25 GRILL – G-RILL; channel=RILL (more commonly a small stream or a feature of the moon);
26 SIDE-SPLITTING – SIDE-SP(L=back of “goal”)ITTING; players=SIDE;
 
Down
1 PAVEMENT,ARTIST – (attentive + prams)*; try these
2 RUSES – RU(S)ES;
3 LARCENISTS – (sister clan)*;
4 NO-HOPER – NOH-OPER(a); drama (Japenese)=NOH (also “no”);
5 SOPRANO – SO-PIANO=quiet then change I=one into R=run:
6 OUCH – (p)OUCH; coin=penny=P;
7 EXTEMPORE – (mere poet + x=vote)*;
8 SHOWING,THE,FLAG – SHO(WING)T-HE-FLAG; wounded man =SHOT HE; slab=FLAG (stone); limb=WING;
13 STRIP,LIGHT – S(TRIP)LIGHT; love the definition “Tube for the office”;
15 SAUTERNES – SAUTE-R-N-E-S; cook in fat=SAUTE; then regularly (f)R(a)N(c)E(i)S; the definition is “wine”;
18 DONKEYS – DON(KEY)S;
19 FRACTAL – F(righten)-RAC-TAL(k); drivers=RAC=Royal Automobile Club; mathematically generated shape used in computer graphics;
22 BLINI – B(L)IN-I;
23 MIND – sounds like “mined”;

26 comments on “Times 24,731 Get the proper clue here”

  1. The left side of this puzzle went in very easily but I had problems getting things moving on the right side and spent for ever on the last three (both 19s and 21ac). 55 minutes was the final count.

    Never heard of FRACTAL. 19ac is simply the same clue printed twice, joined together with the first letter omitted the second time round, so it didn’t put me off but it was still my last one solved.

  2. About 30 minutes, the last ten annoyingly on Sauternes and Teem. I rather like the sign of madness. A good workaday puzzle I’d say with not that much of a tang to it. Except that I always seem to warm to a perimetric, to coin a term.
  3. I thought this was going to be a doddle, and did the four perimeter clues first just to make it a challenge. “Showing” for 8d took a while to materialise, with flying and waving not being long enough. Top half then went in with no hesitations, but the bottom half suddenly turned into a passable imitation of a brick wall. 29 minutes total with way too much time spent on TEEM and MIND. With the latter, it was the “I” that threw me, as I couldn’t think of a word or acronym for bombs to put round it (WMD?) nor what the “say” was doing in the clue. Once I realised that it was the “I” was pretty well superfluous, it made sense.
    Not getting TEEM straight away now looks like an aberration – nothing wrong with the clue, but it took me a good 5 minutes going through the alphabet.
    The whole thing left me feeling a bit grumpy, in a “should have done better” way, and nothing stood out as a CoD.
  5. A little over an hour with one missed, very good for me and much enjoyed (probably these two are connected!). Thanks for the blog and to the setter.

    The forum has been a boon to me but I rarely comment as I print the crosswords out and solve them weeks after publication. Many thanks to all and Happy New Year!

  6. 26 minutes for me. Got stuck on donkeys.

    I recently purchased Ximenes “On The Art Of The Crossword”. In Colin Dexter’s foreword he quotes this Ximenes clue:

    Sausages show no decline in price: get a bird instead, and there’s some wine (9)

    1. You’ll drive some folk nuts if you put things like that up without explanation. It’s SAU(SAG)ES and replace SAG by TERN!
  7. I think this is probably the first time I’ve taken less time than dorsetjimbo to solve the daily cryptic (20 minutes). I found it pretty easy, partly because of the many anagrams that I sorted out very quickly. Only 7 evaded quick capture because I rather unthinkingly wrote V for ‘vote’ when I jotted down the anagram fodder . I also found the left-hand side filled more quickly than the right.
  8. How are things today in NY – we’ve now got fog as the melting snow meets the warmer air – and the golf course is still closed. Can’t win.
  9. I ended up with a very messy grid after jumping to the wrong conclusion and trying to write FLYING THE FLAG at 8dn. 43 minutes to finish, which maybe should have been quicker because the four long clues around the perimeter were reasonably easy.
  11. Amused to learn of the perimetric-obsessives. My own distraction is to try for a link left-to-right and top-to-bottom with the fewest possible answers. No luck today.
  12. Lots of anagrams in this which made it simpler for me. Lost a couple of minutes hunting for a pen when mine ran out mid-solve but managed to finish in 30 minutes. TEEM was last in – it took ages for that particular penny to drop. I have noticed here that a lot of people seem to have a pattern to their solving. That’s probably why they have such fast times. I never really notice the grid (but I’m always happy if 1 across and 1 down go in quickly)
  14. About 25 min (forgot to note start time). Spotted 1 ac straight off, and thought I was onto a winner … not to be. Ended up stranded and going for assistance on 19 ac. Distracted by the printers pie, and deflected by the iffy handling of the superlative. Surely it should be “Most lovely …”? Got to get a grumble in somehow in what was otherwise a pleasant solve. COD? Liked 1 dn, but TEEM.
  15. Managed most of the LHS ok (inc TEEM and MIND), but was stumped by a couple on the RHS, namely 13d, 21a, 18d amongst others. Always glad to check up on here to find explanations for ones I didn’t fully understand (4d, eg). Sometimes it really seems a very steep learning curve…

    Thanks for clear blog, and best wishes to all!

    1. Yes, it is a long learning curve but something worthwhile is surely worth working at. Don’t forget some of us have been doing these puzzles for decades but we all started off unable to complete a single puzzle, then getting 1 in 4 and so on. We didn’t have the benefit of these blogs, which significantly reduce the learning period. Keep going – you’ll get there and will have notched up an achievement.
  16. I took a while with this, about 40 minutes, ending with TEEM, which is very clever. I also fell in the SMET duck trap at first, and took a while to sort it out to get the long 8D. I liked the ‘hit from the head’ wordplay for ‘butted’, and ‘the tube for the office’ def. I haven’t checked the dictionaries, but I believe we over here more often render 22D as ‘BLINY’. Regards to all.
  17. Solved this online (correctly, bar one, but slowly – I will revert to pen and paper when back at the office next week, as the anagrams are beyond me if not spelt out) after return from holiday. Took Chambers Crossword Manual with me – despite this, still failed to get BLINI, but at least thought of it before toying with ROTLI, which I rejected as not satisfying the ‘container’ part of the clue. On the other two Mephisto style clues, FRACTAL and SMEW, I fared slightly better: getting the first and putting ‘smet’ for the latter, which was automatically changed to SMEW when I finally got 8dn.

    So, as one who started taking this seriously a year ago, when I could scarcely finish any, I can offer both hope and a target to quickly pass!

    A Happy New Year to Jim and all!

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