Times 24752 – Tough stuff

Author   daveperryPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Solving time: Officially 1:26:49, but my computer crashed in the middle which cost me 10 minutes or so. Let’s call it an hour and a quarter.

Quite a tough one today. Still had a dozen left after about 45 minutes. Several common words being used in less common meanings, like gammon, dope, nature, proof and duty. The wrong enumeration at 2d slowed me down a little, but at least the mistake was obvious.

cd = cryptic def., dd = double def., rev = reversal, homophones are written in quotes, anagrams as (–)*, and removals like this

Across
1 NEWSFLASH – cd – ‘Dope’ meaning information
9 A(VOCAtion)DO
10 TOREROS – &lit = (SORE + ROT) rev. A little strained for my taste, but it just about works.
11 AcLaImBrIt
12 RESISTANT = (TESTS IRAN)* – Proof as in Waterproof
13 dd – deliberately omitted
15 DUB + AI
17 BLASÉ = BASEL with the final L moved to the left
18 HOKUM = HUM (be busy) about OK (fine). Chambers defines gammon as nonsense; humbug
19 A + G(GoalkeepeR)O
20 fO(REST)ES – Orestes killed his mother, Clytemnestra, in Greek Mythology
23 Weak dd with both meanings being very similar. Deliberately omitted.
25 TOPER = (RE + POT) rev
27 HAGGARD = LAGGARD with first letter changed. H. Rider Haggard is probably best known for his King Solomon’s Mines and the perennial crossword favourite She
28 BASE + NJ + I
29 EXCISE + MAN – He is given the duty
Down
1 NATURE = TAN rev + URE (a river in Yorkshire). Nature meaning kind or order
2 WORD + SQUARE – The online version certainly had the enumeration wrong here, giving it as (4,5) instead of (4,6). The wordplay is over SQUARE (conservative with a small c) is WORD (promise)
3 FIRES + IDEa
4 dd – Where a packet might be / lost
5 HAM + STRING – As a verb it means to make lame by severing the hamstring tendon – ouch! It’s also a more general term meaning to make powerless.
6 M(OR)ASS
7 PAL + I – China = friend is something of an old chestnut that still catches people out. Pali is an ancient language used in early Buddhist scriptures.
8 COLISEUM = (MUSE + CLIO)*
14 LIKE + A(CHA)RM
16 BRASSERIE = RE rev in BRASSIE – A brassie being a type of golfing wood. Keep it in your bag with your mashie and your niblick.
17 BOOB + TUBE – An American term for the TV.
18 HOSTAGES = GATS rev in HOES
21 THRONE = “THROWN”
22 VERy + DUN – A First World War battle
24 hidden
26 PAST = (SPAT)*

39 comments on “Times 24752 – Tough stuff”

  1. I found this pretty tricky too, 21 minutes, and was relieved to find that PALI was right. Didn’t see all of the wordplay for TOREROS
  2. Also 21 minutes. Always good to keep up with the Georges!
    Some classic stuff here: like 6dn which I thought of as a good example for showing the novice how clues work. And some nice diversions: like 12ac which, perhaps, sends us looking for the wrong kind of proof. Didn’t much like ‘goes to’ as the link in 22dn though.
    The SE was definitely the hardest area unless, like Dave, you guessed SPECTACLE right away. Cf “He used to be an optometrist, but now he just makes a spectacle of himself”.
  3. Glad to see the blog is already up, ’cause I couldn’t parse a few, now I can stop thinking about it. Thanks Dave.
  4. A very scrappy solve taking around an hour with a little help from books in the SW corner when I realised I was going no further without some outside input.

    The problems there were BASENJI (not sure I have met this breed of dog before), BOOB TUBE (this meaning – I know the other one) and ORESTES (I know the name and the myth, however until this morning I never knew that ‘matricide’ can be a person who kills their mother in addition to the act of killing her). BLASE fell into place once I had its first letter checked but it had eluded me before that.

    Elsewhere I didn’t know PALI but guessed it correctly, nor that ‘gammon’ had any meaning outside the worlds of cookery and board-games.

    I ended the puzzle feeling a bit cheated and that some clues were not entirely fair but having now spent some time reviewing them I see that I was wrong about this, but there were just too many that gave me pause for thought so it was never going to be a happy experience for me.

  5. Very slow start and something over an hour in all, attibutable to difficulties with my brain/knowledge rather than the computer! Thanks, Dave, for the early post; it put to rest my uncertainties about various wordplays/answers and corrected my wrong answer of HANI (7dn): I read it as ‘Han’ = ‘China’ + I.
  6. 40 minutes today, which is almost exactly the same as yesterday and Wednesday. More of a grind than yesterday’s but still a very good puzzle.
    I spent at least fifteen minutes on NATURE, WORD SQUARE and TOREROS at the end. The incorrect enumeration (which was in the paper too) didn’t help. I have another post-it today, this time with “SAR_, SCR_…SOR_”. It really shouldn’t have been that hard.
    Recalling a recent discussion about US States (including Rhode Island) I was glad that I had a vague memory of the BASENJI so I didn’t have to pick between that and the BASENEI, BASENVI, BASENHI, BASENMI, BASENYI, BASENCI or BASENDI.
    And relieved to find that PALI exists.
  7. 27 minutes, so a bit sedate. My excuse is that I caught sight of the blog title and approached this as a tough one, and I’m not sure it really is. Not as precise and devious as yesterday’s anyway.
    Slowed by TELEGRAPH for 1ac (I had the H at the end) which struck me at the time as a bit old fashioned but, hey, this is the Times. That in turn mat the wrong numbering of 2d rather more potent, but all’s well in the end.
    I wasn’t too sure about curiosity=SPECTACLE, though I guess it goes back to freak shows, and the like. Difficult to think of a curiosity that is spectacular being in my vocab rather low key affairs.
    Was a dreadful pun opportunity missed with Elizabeth 1 and ETHIC?
    CoD (though no great enthusiasm) to ORESTES
  8. Took for ever and ended up with a couple wrong. Still, mustn’t carp about it: one up to the setter today.

    Had never heard of BOOB TUBE in any sense other than the garment, and convinced myself it must be GOOF TUBE. Also, in all my years of riding I can’t recall ever meeting a dun horse. I’ve seen greys, roans, chestnuts, bays, flea-bitten grey , piebalds, skewbalds and palominos………. but never a dun.

    Always associate dun with cows, possibly because of the memorable chorus We all got blue-blind paralytic drunk when The Old Dun Cow caught fire. So I entered the obscure and long-forgotten battle of GELDIN.

    Thought NATURE had a very neat clue: simple yet deceptive.

  9. I found this a workman like puzzle never rising to the heights but reasonable enoug in the main. Made life difficult for myself by stupidly entering sloughi at 28A without really thinking it through. Once I remembered BOOB TUBE managed to correct that. 25 minutes to solve.

    For all golfers – I had a hole in one yesterday – my second in 34 years playing!

    1. Congratulations Jimbo. You may lag behind me in the crossword prize stakes but you are 2 ahead on holes-in-one. I am reliably informed that Times setters regularly get together (usually the day before it is your turn to blog) to invoke the golfing gods on your behalf.
    2. Well done, jimbo. One every seventeen years – trust you to make it a prime number.

      I believe there’s an old tradition that if you mention it on a blog you have to buy a round for everyone who replies. So next time you, me and Barry are in the same place, mine’s a G&T.

  10. Reasonably swift for me on the right two-thirds but then ran aground: about an hour eventually. COD 1. ac. for making me look the wrong way (shd’ve been in the mirror). I like the approach of today’s and yesterday’s.
  12. After yesterday’s puzzle, this came as quite a shock. Resorted to all sorts of aids to finish the NW corner, and even then didn’t really understand fully many of the answers until reading the blog. Lots and lots of unfamiliar vocab was my problem…can’t remember a puzzle where there’ve been so many unknown meanings! Oh well, I’ve tried to store them all away, as I’m sure they’ll crop up again (…and again…and again…!).

    Have a good weekend everyone, see you next week!

  13. Needed lots of help with this one. Is ‘curiosity’ equivalent to SPECTACLE? Seems a bit of a loose definition.
    Regards
    Andrewjk
    1. I, too, needed to use aids to solve quite a few (too many!) clues and, yes, according to dictionary.com “curiosity” and “spectacle” are synonymous.
  14. Approx 20 minutes for me – luckily no mistakes to hold me up. I thought of TELEGRAPH and OEDIPUS but stayed my hand. The wrong enumeration at 2D slowed me a bit, in fact that entire NW corner was the last to go in after I’d finished everything else.

    Congratulations on your hole-in-one Jim. I had one hit the pin and stay on the lip once, but my luckiest hole had to be a birdie on a par four which involved two massive hooks into the trees which both bounced back onto the fairway, and a chip in from 80 yards!

  15. Forty minutes, so not particularly tough or easy for me. I’d heard of basenji, but didn’t immediately recall it so it was a while before I entered it. The clue I had most difficulty with was 22, which can be parsed in various ways. I didn’t understand the wordplay to BRASSERIE, nor the definition for HOKUM before I visited this site. I agree with the previous comment on the second definition of SPECTACLE. It’s not supported in COD or Chambers; perhaps it is in Collins. The rest of the clues were pleasing enough. I particularly liked 1, 15, 17ac.
    1. It’s in the Shorter Oxford:

      2 A person or thing as an object of public curiosity, contempt, or admiration. Now chiefly in make a spectacle of oneself below. LME.

      AV 1 Cor. 4:9 For wee are made a spectacle vnto the world, and to Angels, and to men.

  16. Around 25 minutes but with the blessed dog wrong – I had the problem outlined by keriothe and I plumped for the wrong state.

    I might have complained about obscurity but reading a little online I realise I must have encountered the name as it’s mentioned by Spike Milligan in the Mussolini volume of his war diaries. And the basenji seems to be a somewhat mysterious breed with some unusual and intriguing characteristics. In fact, I think I want one.

  17. 1:39:05 says the online clock, but correctly finished, about which I am very pleased since I had a kidney stone removed two days ago and am still in the hospital and often somewhat groggy. How wonderful that they now provide a WLAN connection, so I can do crosswords (and read newspapers and watch archived TV programs and whatever).

    My last in was WORD SQUARE, which took ages after I realized that the 4-letter part would be WORD and then started going through the alphabet for the rest: SA…, SB… until I got to SQ. A few unusual and subtle clues (the use of NATURE in 1d, and BLASE) but I found it easier than yesterday’s puzzle, which I filled in mostly by guessing, working out the wordplay slowly and painfully afterwards.

    1. Do get well soon. Delighted that they’ve taken out your kidney stones and installed wi-fi. Good to have you online.
      1. Thank you very much for the get well wishes. Reading the blog does a lot to raise my spirits, and it doesn’t hurt too much when I laugh.
    2. Yes , get well soon . I’m a DNF today so well done . Is Sotira really implying that your kidney stones have been replaced by wi-fi ? Best wishes.
  18. 20:23 online. Can it just be coincidence to see the adjacent 11 and 12 across clues , along with BLASE and HOKUM on the same morning a former UK politician is back in the news regarding one of his more controversial decisions?
  19. 33 minutes, starting off very slowly but picking up speed at the end.Came up with ‘Oedipus’ immediately, patricide though he was, which no doubt helped prevent me from getting 2d until the end. Having the ‘i’ from ‘brasserie’, and feeling confident that there aren’t 3 G’s in ‘corgi’, I got ‘basenji’ early on, but, like some others, thought that ‘base’ was hardly appropriate for ‘pitiful’. But that was my only complaint.
  20. I found this rather tricky particularly the NE corner which was made harder by the wrong letter count referred to above. i also think the clue and the solution is below par (well done Jimbo). I didnt know that matricide could be the killer as well as the act itself…so there you go!
    Toughie!
    90 minutes
  21. I also found this tough, especially in the NW corner. NATURE was the last in, right after WORD SQUARE. The definitions of both misled me, and they are quite clever. It always throws me off when an American phrase appears here, because I’m always expecting some UK-ism I’ve never heard of, so BOOB TUBE took a while. Over here I’ve never heard that refer to a garment, but I can easily picture it. About an hour, all told.

    Congrats to Jimbo; my career total is only 2 behind yours, so look out! And best wishes to Hydrochoos, with hopes that you’re out of there shortly, WLAN notwithstanding. Regards.

  22. Once again, familiarity with Gilbert & Sullivan comes in handy: Think of Ko-ko’s song to Katisha, which includes the line
    And an echo arose from the suicide’s grave:
    ‘O willow, tit-willow, tit-willow!’
  23. One of those puzzles that I was just pleased to finish. The dawg clue was almost reduced to a straight definitional sort, I think I only got it through euphonic consideration.

    Well done on the hole-in-one Jimbo (even if it was only on your local park putting green!)

  25. I’ve been taking over an hour for the last two days so was somewhat relieved to finish this in 24 minutes without aids. I’ve been jaunting round Malta all day and only just got back to read the comments here. I was surprised that people who found the last couple of days easy were thrown by this one, while my experience was the reverse. It just goes to show… The only word I’d not heard of was PALI but it was guessable from the cryptic. I’d forgotten that BOOB TUBE was old US slang for the TV. These days it’s better known as elasticated tubular garment for covering ladies’ boobs
  26. 11:09 for me after a very slow start. Like others, I don’t recall coming across BOOB TUBE with that meaning before, but couldn’t think of any sensible alternative.
  27. My thanks for all the congratulations for the hole in one.

    Hope you are fully fit again soon, Hydrochoos

  28. a promise, an unknown language, newsflash – too uch for me in the NE.

    Well done to those who finished, hope the kidneys are well sorted now, and well done also for a primary at golf!

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