Times 24,737

Author   topicaltimPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
13:47 on the Club timer, and given that was my time even after I was distracted mid-solve by the Ginger Wizard rattling Mike Hussey’s bails on the coverage from Sydney, I think we can safely rule this to be on the easy side of things. Possibly the precise idea was that this should be a gentle, Collingwood-style loosener for the benefit of those in the UK who might be solving on their way to work for the first time in nearly a fortnight. Lots of ‘V’s and ‘X’s, but the half-expected pangram never materialised.

Across
1 ABOVE PAR – ABOVE PARagraph.
6 VOTIVE – IV in VOTE; a votive offering is one you make in return for your god answering your prayer.
9 TIER – TIE + Right.
10 PREACHIEST – EACH in PRIEST.
11 TAXI DRIVER – TAX 1 DRIVER.
13 SWAY – Wife in SAY.
14 PIANO BAR – Brahms and Liszt composed for the piano, and are well-known in Cockney rhyming slang.
16 OUTPUT – OUT(=available) PUT(=set).
18 TROPIC – R. in TOPIC.
20 deliberately omitted
22 SPAM – double def.; no longer do you need to be a nerd to be familiar with this computing term.
24 ANTICLIMAX – LIMA in [ANTIC X] (“times” in the arithmetic, multiplying, sense).
26 BOOKKEEPER – BOOK(=arrest), KEEPER(=wearer of 1 in football team).
28 AXIS – double def., viz. the animals, and the original Powers.
29 CYGNET =”SIGNET”; a pen is, amongst other things, an adult swan.
30 THOROUGH – THO’ ROUGH.
 
Down
2 BRIGADIER – (AIRBRIDGE)*.
3 VERSION – obserVERS I ONly.
4 PIPER – P in PIER.
5 ROE =”RHO”, the third letter of the name Marathon in the original Greek.
6 VICARIOUS – VICAR + IOU’S.
7 TWINSET – (ISNTWET)*.
8 VISTA – IS in (A T.V.)rev.
12 VERDICT – VERDI + CourT.
15 BUCHAREST – (ASCHUBERT)*.
17 UNCEASING – (NUISANCE)* + Government.
19 PUMPKIN – PUMP(=grill) + KIN(=family).
21 AGITATO – A GIT + AT 0.
23 PEONY – PEON + assemblY. Even my limited botanical knowledge includes the peony, as a concept at least.
25 CARGO – C (the speed of light) + ARGO, the ship of Jason, and his eponymous Argonauts.
27 PIT – double def.

37 comments on “Times 24,737”

  1. Had to dig in Trott-like to get the final two (AXIS and OUTPUT) after cutting a Johnson-like swathe through the opening deliveries. ‘Peon’ was new to me; 24ac put in on definition + ‘x’ as times. 40 minutes.
  2. About 15min for all except 5 and 10. At 5 I saw the RHO homophone but took a while to work out which one and why. At 10 I got PI for “sanctimonious” fixed in my mind and couldn’t get past it until I had all the checking letters.

    AXIS went in on the second definition alone.

    Chris

  3. Rather feebly in retrospect, was stumped by AXIS, though it came to me later after finishing the rest in around 30 mins. A satisfying solve – not too obscure but with enough keep you from sprinting through (well, me anyway).
  4. One of the easiest Times in a fair while. Just broke the 10 minutes on this one. Agreed that AXIS was probably the hardest to find. Liked the git at the Oval: or maybe it’s just the cricket season!
  5. 29 minutes with nearly a third of that time spent on the last four VICARIOUS, OUTPUT, PREACHIEST and ROE.

    Didn’t know AXIS as a deer, PEON, VOTIVE or ANTIC meaning bizarre.

  6. 28 minutes almost exactly half of which on Axis at the end – didn’t know the animal and thunderingly slow as to the alliance. Didn’t actually know the term Piano bar either. Trott-like for tenacious less apt now ulaca? England still above par.
  7. 15:50 for this rather nice puzzle. Thought piano bar was splendid but reckon spam won’t be available on too many menus these days.
  8. Yes, an easier than usual one, I agree, but I was still stumped on two: AXIS (hadn’t heard of either the animal or the alliance) and ROE (still don’t really understand the ‘swift runner’ bit. Is it Allison Roe, the NZ distance runner? Sport’s never my strong point, didn’t even get the ref to the goalie in 26a!). Also, I mistakenly put in ALIGATO for no other reason than it fitted. All others relatively straightforward, though PREACHIEST took a bit of working out.
        1. I shouldn’t worry about it (I’d bet money that most people here have convinced themselves of something at least that fanciful in order to finish a puzzle…)
  9. Stumped by AXIS (did not know axis = deer), otherwise heading for comfortable sub 30 minutes. Briefly deflected by ‘North America’ reference in 23dn (knew Indian version of ‘peon’ but not Latin American). Overall a pleasant challenge, with CYGNET my COD.
  10. This was mostly a nice easy puzzle for the first commute in nearly two weeks. However after whizzing through about three quarters of it in under ten minutes I got bogged down and took about another ten to get ROE (saw it but thought fish eggs), AXIS (didn’t know the deer) PEONY (didn’t know “peon”) and SPAM (no excuse!).
  11. 15 minutes, marginally above par, I guess. Pretty straightforward, but I wondered what “originally” was doing in 28? Is it just that these are the original Axis powers?
    Of an otherwise standard set of clues, I liked BOOKKEEPER, surely the only word in the English language with three consecutive double letters.
  12. Came out of the blocks like a startled roe deer, staggered over the finishing line like a weary marathon runner. 38 minutes, with the same knowledge gaps as everyone else.
  13. Forgot to say that I had a bit of a tussle with PIT when I was solving, failing to understand the ‘stone’ part. Presumably it refers to stone pit – does that make it an &lit rather than a double def?
      1. That crossed my mind but it doesn’t show up in my Concise OD. Is it in the other dictionaries?
        1. It’s in my Chambers (which, I note, differs from most online sources by not specifying “mainly N.American” or similar).
          1. Ah, of course, that’s why it sounded familiar. My office dictionary (Australian COD) suggests that it’s of Dutch origin.
  14. Couldn’t get AXIS. Did get ROE but didn’t get the deer connection – I thought there must be a Roe River somewhere. And I was working on ANTICLIMAX being an anagram of CAPITAL IN with an appended X when the answer became apparent and I came here still thinking it was an anagram. Oh, and I had no idea about the connection between No. 1 and the keeper. Not a great performance, but then I was watching Australia bat at the time, and then try to bowl. COD to the aforementioned ANTICLIMAX now I know how it really works. Maybe tomorrow it will rain.
  15. Just under 30 minutes, with probably half of that spent on the last 5 or 6 answers. Unknown words were much the same as everyone else – PEON, AXIS deer & VOTIVE. A nice straightforward one to ease us back in gently.
  16. 22:17 with one wrong.

    I was stumped by two. Roe, which I guessed correctly and Axis which I didn’t.

    “Dear,dear”, I hear you say.

  17. Everything was going smoothly until I hit the buffers at the 30 min mark with AXIS and ROE. Never heard of the deer and didn’t think of the alliance. I had ROE because I’d understood the RHO/ROE part of 5d but didn’t get the “swift runner” reference. I was looking for a river and the only other runner I could think of was Erica Roe who once did a famous run at Twickenham. So defeated today by a brace of deer!
    1. The buxom Roe caused great amusement in my family, as, shortly after her streak, she started going out with a cousin who shared the same name as my father. Dad being a rather conservative type, this led to many comments along the lines of “Didn’t know you had it in you, Bill!”
  18. ABout half an hour, apart from axis, so good by our standards. COD to Schubert composition.
  19. Same story, about 25 minutes ending with ROE and AXIS. I thought ROE was clever, but didn’t know the deer/AXIS connection so that went in as a guess from the Germany/Italy part. Regards to all.
  20. 15:25 here, but a couple of minutes at the end spent scratching my head over 5D. In the end I put in ROE (the deer) without seeing the homophone. I knew AXIS deer from somewhere, probably another crossword.
  21. About thirty minutes except for 5 and 10, thinking all the while that the puzzle looked very easy and there was surely going to be something to hold me up at the end. And there was, for the last two words. After a while I put in ROE, since it fit the homonym, assuming there was a famous sportsperson so named, whom I would naturally not have heard of. I still don’t have a vision of roe deer being particularly swift (but I have heard of axis deer, for the other deer clue). For PREACHIEST, I couldn’t think of a fill-in for P.E.C.I.S. to fit the wordplay, so I finally resorted to a lookup in my electronic Chambers (this is really a cheat, since you can search for words fitting any combination of known letters), and of course once I had it, I saw why it was right. Perhaps just having had a tooth pulled is a sufficient excuse (but probably not).

    What a consolation that there is always another try tomorrow.

  22. Solved it much faster than usual today – 15 minutes versus usual 45-60 mins. Like most others, AXIS was the last one solved, even though I did know it was a deer.
  24. 6:06 for me. I’d have broken 6 minutes if I hadn’t stupidly bunged in OUTLAY instead of OUTPUT (and dithered for a few seconds over PIANO BAR).

    I think I may have come across AXIS (as a deer) outside a crossword, but it’s familiar enough from years of solving.

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