Times 24,767 All About Strikers

Solving time 20 minutes

A straightforward enough puzzle with some good wordplays but lacking any clever or really misleading definitions. The old sailing ship may not be so well known but other than that it’s common vocabulary.

Across
1 PETER,PAN – safe=PETER; hammer=criticize strongly=PAN (Torres first performance at The Bridge?);
9 AIREDALE – (p)AIRED-sounds like “ail”;
10 GULP – cake (of tobacco)=PLUG then reverse it; reaction to Torres transfer perhaps;
11 ROLLING,STOCK – loaded=drunk=ROLLING; animals=STOCK;
13 PASSED – (spades)*; bridge terminology;
14 INDIAMAN – IN-DIAMAN(te); a merchant ship used on the East Indian trade routes;
15 SECTION – SEC(re)TION;
16 JOINTER – (in jet or)*; a type of woodworking plane;
20 ALHAMBRA – A-L(H)AM-BRA; supporter=BRA; end of match=H; strike=LAM; amazing palace at Granada, Spain;
22 THEBAN – (conten)T-HE-BAN; high explosive=HE;
23 STINKING,RICH – STINKING-RI-CH; high=rotting=STINKING; church=CH; religious instruction=RI; overpaid footballers?
25 IONA – A-NO-I all reversed; number=NO; island=I;
26 OVERSEER – O-(severe)*-R;
27 SET,ASIDE – SET-A-SIDE; ready=SET; 1st XI=A-SIDE;
 
Down
2 EQUIPAGE – E(QU)I-PAGE; that’s=IE; a carriage;
3 EXPRESS,TRAIN – EX(PRESS)TRA-IN; crowd=PRESS; more=EXTRA; popular=IN;
4 PALLADIO – P(ALL)AD-I-O; place to live=PAD; Andrea Palladio 1508-1580 very famous Venecian architect;
5 NAMIBIA – I-MAN reversed-BIA(s);
6 BRIGID – B(RIG)ID; Celtic name;
7 TACO – TA-CO(ok); (territorial) army=TA; Mexican pancake with a meat filling;
8 RECKONER – two meanings; used to add up striker’s wages;
12 TRAINEESHIPS – (in Paris these)*;
15 SNAPSHOT – or SNAP-SHOT; striker=over paid, over valued, footballer employed to score goals and sulk (mentioning no names);
17 OUTRIGHT – sounds like “out write” (you are allowed to groan);
18 EXAMINED – EX-A(MINE)D; old=EX; bill=advertisement=AD;
19 BANGERS – (old) crate=old car=BANGER;
21 BLIMEY – B-LIMEY; book=B; the definition is “my”; corruption of old oath “God blind me”; reaction to Torres transfer down the Old Kent Road;
24 IDEA – hidden (m)-I-(d)-D-(l)-E-(m)-A-(n);

52 comments on “Times 24,767 All About Strikers”

  1. Liked this a fair bit more than Jimbo; though maybe as a ’Pool supporter I was just glad to get rid of said one who occasionally strikes. And, um, who was it exactly who won 1-0??

    Now for the puzzle. 41 minutes and sold the dummy by several very smooth surfaces. Read ’em: only 4dn sounds a bit “crosswordy”. Sabine used to say she could avoid looking at the surfaces altogether. Wish I had that Zen-like capacity and, as one-who-would-dare-to-set, I tend to admire from afar. Model puzzle in that respect.

    Accordingly, the “Palace supporter” (!) — not mentionable re football Jimbo? — gets my COD if only because it’s the first non-muffled-titter rehearsal of “supporter” => BRA I’ve seen recently. (A genuine lift-and-separate!)

    Vocab: there may also be passes on ‘Palladio’ and ‘equipage’ (in this sense). The fact that the latter does in fact have attendants is yet another example of the tip-top surfaces today.

    Edited at 2011-02-08 09:29 am (UTC)

    1. It wasn’t my intention to create the impression that I didn’t like it. I think it’s good value for money without being outstanding. It suited me because it’s very logical in its approach.
  2. Stuck at this one grimly, on the basis that work put in now will pay dividends in terms of quicker times later, finishing in the same time as yesterday (96 minutes). This struck me as Mephisto-lite, but that may be because I haven’t really got the hang of barred-grid puzzles. I needed to check INDIAMAN and EQUIPAGE in Chambers, the latter not immediately yielding even though I knew it must start in ‘equi-’. My lack of DIY skills cost me at 16ac, making what was already the most difficult section for me trickier still. Once that fell, 17, 18 and 22 completed the grid. COD to BLIMEY, in the hope that it just might help me remember not to fall for ‘my’ all the time.
  3. Found this a little tougher than yesterday, coming in at 31 minutes after being becalmed in the SE. Would have preferred a “more” to “most” in 17. Jointer unfamiliar but had to be. Was reminded by 20 of a book I loved as a child, ‘Tales of the Alhambra’, about Moorish Spain. (I think an adaptation for children.)
  4. Liked ths a lot, but had to go look up JOINTER and OUTRIGHT. Should have seen both – didn’t spot the anagram in the first, didn’t parse the latter well enough – and at one point tried wordiest (most prolific, with West as author around something that might mean qualifications, the ever popular ORDI) and Dornier (it’s a plane, there’s “about” “in” and “rod” messing about in it). I couldn’t rid myself of jet=black, or that the down clue had to be a superlative.
    Apart from this, I thought this was a true challenge, and I think Jimbo’s time is impressive – I got to the position above in about 25 minutes. Excellent surfaces and misdirections, lots of the sort of humour that makes the Times a joy, and for me, loaded with PDM’s.
    CoD could go anywhere: PASSED for simplicity, perhaps, but today for me, STINKING RICH for the delicious High Church.
      1. Penny Dropping Moments, usually confined to things like the Listener when it finally dawns on you what the setter is on about. Something goes “ping!” in the brain and the obscure becomes obvious.
  5. 44 minutes.
    This is a puzzle that will sort the sheep from the goats. I found it really difficult.
    INDIAMAN, JOINTER and PALLADIO were unknown to me, but I was slowed down as much by what I thought were some very cunning clues. I don’t tend to notice surfaces as I solve but I got fooled time and again. The NW was last to fall, and although I could see that GULP and SECTION must be the answers I couldn’t for the life of me work out why. I never did see why plug = cake.
    Before that I was held up for ages in the SE trying to find a word meaning “most prolific” or “most prolific writer” ending IEST for 17dn (WORDIEST was an early conjecture) and to fit an O and N (citizen finally) into 22ac.
    I wonder if anyone else did what I did and started confidently writing APPRENTICESHIP in at 12dn after one glance at the anagram fodder.
    Quality stuff, thanks setter.
  6. I was beaten again as I ran out of time on the commute with several still unsolved in the NW and SE corners. Also the long anagram at 12dn eluded me. I finished it on arrival at work with a couple of cheats. EQUIPAGE, JOINTER and INDIAMAN were new to me and if I ever met PALLADIO before I had forgotten him. I’m aware of the style of architecture but not that it takes its name from a particular architect.
  7. DNF: decided I must get on with other (?more important) things. But even if I had persevered I don’t think I would have cracked EQUIPAGE, THEBAN or OUTRIGHT (yes, ‘wordiest’ looked an attractive option – if only it had fitted the wordplay). Brilliant blog, jimbo (many thanks): explains why some of my tentative solutions were, in fact, ‘right’. Well done, setter, for a fair and challenging puzzle: you’ve firmly and properly put me amongst the ‘goats’.
    1. I see I have written something that was supposed to be self-deprecating but looks snide. I must stop doing this.
      What I was trying to say was that this puzzle is very difficult in a way the real sheep (like Jimbo) will not even notice while we goats struggle.
      1. I didn’t know this expression, and I’d rather be a goat than a sheep, goats are a lot smarter. So no reason to worry.
      2. I took is as you intended (as, I think, have others – see comments below). It’s one of the pleasing things about this site that bloggers are willing to own up to their shortcomings: it’s good to see (and learn from) the experts’ work but it’s also reassuring that there are others of us out there who fall short (often in similar sorts of ways). In this context, I’m quite happy to be a goat.
  8. 11 mins, but put DORNIER for 16A as I couldn’t think of anything else. I couldn’t justify the cryptic analysis – RE-IN-ROD doesn’t really cut the bacon – so I should have known better.
  9. Didn’t manage to finish this one, was stumped by OUTRIGHT and THEBAN, and, as others, was convinced 17d should end in -IEST. Several put in without knowing the vocab (I think I’ve got some way to go before JOINTER, eg, becomes common vocab!), and I also had the implausible sounding EQUIMATE as my carriage.

    Challenging, to say the least.

  10. It’s nice to know that quite a few of us were outwitted by JOINTER. Took a while to realize it was an anagram of a word I didn’t know and had to look up. It was only then that I got 17, having first persuaded myself that it ended in IEST (I see I’m not alone there either).

    Mea culpa – in yesterday’s puzzle some incubus made me put an O in reptilian, utterly fail to see it, and compound the error by complaining about the scoring… First grandchild arriving overnight – an excuse with very limited shelf life. Very sorry for the fuss and compliments to the setter – lovely clue. And thanks for the undeserved kind responses.

  11. From a couple of goats….DNF after abut one hour, but enjoyed this puzzle nevertheless. How nice to hear of others being caught by the same misdirections. This blog is a joy. Thanks.
  12. metaphysical goats I’m afraid as the programme has removed the photo for reasons known only to itself
  13. Feel let down by my O-level woodwork: remember jack, smoothing, rabbet and combination, but have no recollection of JOINTER; so couldn’t convince myself I had the right word. (I think it must have been the long, expensive-looking plane in the master’s cupboard, which we weren’t trusted to use.)

    Similarly with SNAPSHOT: I still can’t see why snap should mean striker. So toyed with HEADSHOT and once doubt set in, what began as a very straightforward solve took forever.

    Thanks to Jimbo for the explanation of SECTION: that was another one that gave rise to doubts.

    Quite a few neat, concise clues; particularly liked BLIMEY. So any shortcomings were all mine and I shall dispel my grumpiness by listening to Tarrega’s Recuerdos de la ALHAMBRA.

  14. Happy to admit/claim goat status on this one. DNF after 45 minutes of slowly ploughing into the sands with a series of increasingly wide-of-the-mark guesses. I thought there was quite a bit more obscurity in the vocabulary – in both the clues and the answers – than usual.
  15. Steady solve until I hit what I took to be a ‘known unknown’ at 7d. I stared at _A_O until my eyes glazed over. I was convinced that the wordplay was some slang term for an army cook with an ‘F’ removed. And no foreign food that fit would come to mind.

    My excuse is that I’m not a fan of Mexican food, but I won’t dwell on that just in case the Mexican Ambassador’s reading this.

    So call me a goat (I’ve been called worse). As pointed out above, goats are a whole lot smarter than sheep, even if their likely response to a Times crossword would be to eat it. Come to think of it, that’s a more sensible response that spending half an hour trying to solve it.

    1. I could take you a few places which might change your mind on Mexican food. It gets a lot better the closer you are to Mexico, and the higher the mexican population. Throw in being in a state with relatively stringent (or is that astringent?) health codes and you have a win.

      Sheep or goat, I’m about to admit I was done in by a different clue.

      1. Well, I got taken to what was meant to be one of the best Mexican places in Arizona and wasn’t much impressed. I’m heading back down that way next month and may give it another go.
  16. 42 minutes savouring the experience. Cracking clues throughout, I thought. Thanks to John for Recuerdos de la ALHAMBRA, among my most successful busking tunes back in the day and to keriothe for making my headlong launch into apprenticeship seem forgivable; two solvers can’t be all that wrong. So many good clues, but COD to ROLLING STOCK just ahead of TACO. Simplicity in all things.
  17. Hooray – no typing mistakes today and very happy with my 7:28.

    JOINTER was a not a word I knew, but looked right and I pressed submit before I had worked out the wordplay on SECTION.

  18. Congratulations!
    As my dad is very fond of saying to me, grandchildren are fantastic – kids you can give back!
  19. 29:03 so thankfully better than yesterday. Still a very tricky puzzle mindst.

    Like Sotira I was looking for an F to subtract from something in 7 but only twigged that it was a case of subtracting OK when running through a mental menu of foreign muck. Thankfully taco was in with the starters.

    I liked blimey, rolling stock and Peter Pan. I’m surprised I haven’t come across play safe used like that before

  20. I enjoyed this very much but had to guess the last couple of answers from the definitions. I got held up by SNAPSHOT because I thought the SHOT part was the attempt and was left looking at SNAP as a definition of “striker”. I failed to see the whole word as a footballing term. I also failed to see the cryptic in SECTION. Limped home in 39 minutes.
  21. Very pleased to have finished this without cheating. I had to look up ‘jointer’ in the dictionary. However, it took me at least an hour (the crossword, not the dictionary). COD (and last in) ‘blimey’.
  22. So much for that, deciding that an INDIAMON might be some sort of displaced Raga Rasta who sells fried breadfruit in naan outside catholic churches in Glasgow.
  23. glad to see a few other goats around. isn’t it strange that HE should be “explosive substance” when He is in fact one of the few truly non explosive substances on this planet!
    1. well that’s my excuse for not getting theban and i’m sticking to it! hadn’t come across the abbreviation before.
      1. I’m deeply ashamed to admit that I didn’t even notice this. I just saw an image of the Hindenburg in my mind, blithely and simultaneously confusing helium with hydrogen and flammability with explosivity, and moved on.
        The good news is that in doing penance for this sin of ignorance and sloppiness I discovered some really cool stuff.

  24. COD City: PETER PAN, AIREDALE, SECTION, ALHAMBRA, STINKING RICH, OUTRIGHT,… all with beautifully smooth, misleading surfaces. This was another puzzle where I thought I would get nowhere, getting nothing but RECKONER on the first pass, but somehow managed to finish in 35 minutes. I don’t think I’d ever heard of a jointer, but I couldn’t think of any other anagram ending in R, and it sounded plausible.
  25. Same story as all the other goats – over an hour for me, ending with JOINTER, OUTRIGHT and THEBAN. Yes, I fell for all the misdirection the setter supplied. I didn’t parse SEC(RE)TION while solving so thanks for that Jimbo. ‘Peter’ as ‘safe’ was news to me, as was RECKONER as, apparently, some kind of calculator. COD to OUTRIGHT for fooling me for so long, but as others have said, there are a lot of very good clues. If I had a cap on, I’d tip it to the setter. Regards to all.
  26. As an American I frequently have difficulty with some of the British phrasing. But one thing I know is tacos, and believe me, a taco is NOT fine food. Ever. Or is the ‘fine’ giving me a somewhat unnecessary instruction?
    1. As another American, I agree re the taco, but ‘fine’ is giving a necessary instruction. ‘TA’ is clued as ‘army’, because the UK used to have a Territorial Army abbreviated as T.A. The next word, ‘cook’, needs to drop the ‘OK’, which here means ‘fine’, to be shortened to ‘CO’ that forms the end of TACO, the definition being just ‘foreign food’. Good Luck.
  27. I’m pretty sure we’ve had ‘peter’=safe fairly recently (I can’t imagine getting 1ac otherwise), and ‘ready reckoner’ as well. Tacos are definitely not fine cuisine, but ‘snubs fine’ is an instruction to delete the OK from ‘cook’. Come to think of it, ‘fine’ is a nice touch precisely because tacos aren’t fine; ‘snubs fine’ rather than, say, ‘drops so-so’.
  28. Oops, evidently wasn’t signed in; that (now superfluous, thanks to Kevin) comment on ‘fine’ was me.
  29. 25:05 for me, of which well over half was spent on JOINTER – which I’d desperately wanted to be DORNIER. (I wasn’t helped by some loud humming noise which started up somewhere nearby and seemed to come and go with varying intensity – the sort of thing that I find far more offputting than I ought to.)
  30. Having just gone back to check over the clues thoroughly (as I always do), I’d like to add that I found them almost all of exceptionally high quality.

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