Times 24764

Author   daveperryPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Solving time: 57:07 with 1 wrong.

By and large this was quite straightforward, and I made steady progress, getting all but 3 in about 25 minutes. GLADSOME fell about 10 minutes later, and I resorted to aids to get NOVELESE and VILLETTE in order to get the blog done after another fruitless 20 minutes or so. I think I could have stared at these all night and not got them. After submitting I discovered I had gone wrong at 23. I’d heard of AD INITIUM as a Latin phrase so went with AD INITIO without deciphering the wordplay properly.

I was helped at the start by getting 5d quite quickly, closely followed by 5a, which opened the right hand side up very nicely. I did like the wordplay in 21 so that gets my COD.

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

Across
1 Deliberately omitted
5 IN + F(L)IGHT
9 TABLE(MA)T
10 Executor + STATE
11 NOVELESE – But I can’t work out the wordplay. I’m sure someone will come to my rescue. Apparently it’s NOVEmber + “LEE’S” where November is a poem by Thomas Hood, and Laurie Lee was an author. No wonder I couldn’t work it out. Thanks to NY Kevin & richnorth.
12 GOSSIP = GP about (OS + IS rev) – Os is the Latin name for bone.
13 TRINIDAD = TRIAD about DIN rev
15 hidden word
17 I might as well omit this one as all the letters are checked and the wordplay is pretty clear.
19 TRUST + pIER – I’m not a big fan of end meaning beginning, as in front end, but I’m aware that it crops up from time to time so it didn’t catch me out. Although this is possible, I think richnorth is more likely to be correct that it’s TRUSs + TIER.
20 RUEFUL = RUn + (FUEL)*
21 P(EAR DR.)OP
22 NIACIN = (IN CAN)* about Iron – supply is the anagrind, in the sense of ‘in a supple way’
23 A + B + IN + IT + I + O
24 ATE after EDEN + pesT = EDENTATE, meaning ‘having few or no teeth’, but also a primitive mammal from Latin America
25 NIGHTS = NIGH + ST rev
Down
2 RE(AS + ONE)D – got into debt = in the RED
3 VILLETTE is a novel by Charlotte Brontë. I don’t get the wordplay though. Is it also an old word for a small town? I think it’s just a word that sounds like it should be a little ville or french town, although that seems pretty lame.
4 SOMMELIER = L in (MEMORIES)* – I just finished watching Service, Michel Roux’s apprentice TV show for waiters, so this word was already in the forefront of my mind.
5 IN THE FIRST PLACE = (THIN FRITES)* + “PLAICE” – My first one in.
6 LASS + OED
7 G(LADS)O + ME – It took me an unaccountably long time to see this one.
8 bliTHE SPIrit + A + N
14 A + GI + sTATION
15 IN + FRINGE – These days, the Edinburgh Festival Fringe is the most famous part of the festival, and is the largest arts festival in the world.
16 L + ACE + RATE
17 BRIDLINGton – After my self-acknowledged unfamiliarity with fashion = TON on Sunday was met with gasps of incredulity from the crossword fraternity, I can see that it is going to crop up in every crossword I ever blog from now on, just to deepen my shame. Well it didn’t catch me out this time!
18 ARSONIST = (ASSERTION)* without the judgE
19 TOURIST = TT (races) about OUR IS.

73 comments on “Times 24764”

  1. Always enjoyed crosswords, mostly DT plus occasional Times, but only recently got involved in the Times Club. Inevitably found this site and really enjoy the comments (mostly!)
    Reassured to see that my own failings and weaknesses aren’t always mine alone and that most of you experts also resort to external sources when eventually up against a wall.
    Solving time for me is not the main point since my efforts are often interrupted by a nap.
  2. as a relative beginner i must say i found some of that pretty unfair, but then i suppose i would say that! i got niacin and wondered where the anagram indicator was! so thanks to the blogger for pointing out the subtle (and fair) use of “supply”. will bear that in mind for the future although i suspect i will never see it again.
  3. Chambers’s Cyclopædia seems at first sight to support Sotira’s forthright assessment of Hood: he produced in twenty-four years an amount of prose and verse one-half of which at least the world might willingly let die; but it adds Not only was he the most prolific and successful punster that ever used that form of wit, but he turned it to purposes of which no one had ever supposed it capable. So it is perhaps appropriate that he finds a place in crossword puzzles. (His name appeared recently in 24,710.)

    I suspect that another reason for his inclusion is that compilers might reasonably expect solvers to have a hazy memory of poems met in children’s anthologies; and November, irrespective of its literary merit or lack of it, is certainly memorable. Is it really any more obscure than those herds of arcane antelopes or crews of mysterious matelots?

  4. We all have different blind spots – the answer that I had never heard of (but eventually got)was “pear drop”! John
  5. I had almost exactly the same time as yesterday (8:36 as against yesterday’s 8:34), though I felt I should have been a lot faster, particularly as NOVELESE and VILLETTE both went in first time through. I still find it slightly depressing that so many people object to clues that would have been regarded as trivially easy when I started solving the Times puzzle. By all means bring in a bit of science (NIACIN) but let’s not sacrifice all the literary stuff.
    1. I think the problem today was that they intersected.

      I am prepared to take your word for it but otherwise I would find it hard to believe that either of the clues in question could ever be regarded as ‘trivially easy’.

    2. I had no problem with these clues (stroke of luck), but I’ve been convinced today that objections to 11ac at least are justified. November is a poem that appears to have been forgotten by anyone under the age of, well, I won’t say. I will say that I appear to be under that age, and having read the poem for the first time today I would say that it deserves to be forgotten.
      I tend to be on the other side of this argument: I did not have the benefit of a classical education (no Latin or Greek for me), but I accept that some basic knowledge of latin and classical mythology is required for this crossword. And very glad I am too, because it’s one of the principal reasons I know half this stuff. And what an edentate is. Plants still annoy me a bit I will admit.
      In any event, there comes a time when frankly dreadful poems by (to quote my learned friend) half-remembered poets pass from an acceptable part of what might be considered general knowledge to obscurity.
      Personally I’d put Villette in the same category but I suppose three novelists in one family (and women to boot!) makes for a certain notoriety.
      Incidentally Tony I’m as ever in awe of your time, and I did get a kick out of your “pretty pathetic” comment yesterday!
  6. I’m certainly not complaining about the “literary stuff,” and some of the comments above about 11a (indeed, my last in – but no problem with Villette) are well over the top.

    But I *do* object to the continual failure to include what I think of as half of life, or more, on anything like the same terms. And tossing in an occasional vitamin from a cornflakes packet hardly counts!

    I observe from the biog. on the Crossword Club website that our illustrious Editor has a first in classics, and I suspect that the background of some or all of the setters is similar.. I suppose all the scientists have better things to do with their time 😉

    1. I agree with this general sentiment, I must say. It is accepted that we should know who Sisyphus was, but I can’t remember seeing Gauss in a Times crossword.
  7. I’m surprised that no one (including me) has mentioned C.P. Snow and his famous lecture on ‘the two cultures’. 1959, that was. He sometimes would ask someone if he could explain the 2d law of thermodynamics, and would get a blank stare, although, as he says, it’s the equivalent of asking, ‘Have you read a play of Shakespeare’s?’ (Let me quickly admit that I can’t.)
    Still, I suppose honest ignorance of science is better than the pernicious nonsense perpetrated by the post-modernists; I recommend Sokal & Bricmont’s ‘Intellectual Impostures’ (in the US, ‘Fashionable Nonsense’).
    1. I suspect this book is a bit beyond my pay grade, but I did enjoy the Wiki article so thank you!
      I particularly enjoyed Richard Dawkins’s assessment:
      “a philosopher who is caught equating the erectile organ to the square root of minus one has, for my money, blown his credentials when it comes to things that I don’t know anything about”
  8. Same time, same 2 missing, but did have the “ab” at least. Great blog, thanks.

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