Times 24,785

Author   topicaltimPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
9:02 on the Club timer. I hope the setter will understand it’s not a criticism if I describe this as a straightforward and workmanlike daily puzzle which probably won’t live long in the memory. Not utterly simplistic, but no tricky devices that aren’t well signposted, or easily spotted by anyone who does the Times regularly. This is not a problem, of course: as has been discussed here at length, the paper needs to vary the level of difficulty across the week in order to appeal to all its solvers, even if that means printing the occasional puzzle which doesn’t detain the sprinters for long ( I can easily imagine the likes of magoo being in soft-boiled egg territory today).

Across
1 ARTICLE – as “the” is the definite article which might appear in the journalist’s article.
5 PERSEUS – (SUES REP)rev.
9 SNOWBOUND – South NOW + BOUND.
10 VOILA – OIL in VirginiA.
11 NOBEL – Bishop in NOEL.
12 deliberately omitted – exactly a month early…
14 HEREDITARY PEER – cryptic def.
17 ROMEO AND JULIET – the first letters of Rock and Jazz would be Romeo and Juliet in the radio (NATO) alphabet, a happy coincidence for crossword setters.
21 DIGITALIS – DIGITALISE.
23 ORIEL – instructOR, IE Lecturer. The Oxford college, whose name comes, in a roundabout way, from the window of the same name.
24 GENOA – (A ONE)rev. + Good
25 ASININITY – (IN + IN + IT) in (SAY)*.
26 LEARNED – R in LEANED. As a precocious and annoying child I remember pointing out the idiocy of talking about three ‘R’s, when it was quite clear that only one began with an ‘R’, or two at a pinch if you allowed homophones. At any rate, anybody who thought “arithmetic” began with an “R” had no business trying to lecture me about basic literacy.
27 GAGSTER – GANGSTER without the Name. One of those words you often read in newspaper reports (or crosswords) but nobody uses in real life. See also: “romp”, “crimper”, “boffin” etc. etc.
 
Down
1 ABSENT – A.B. SENT.
2 TROUBLE – diplomaT + ROUBLE.
3 CABALLERO – European in (LOCAL BAR)*.
4 EDUCATIONAL – (CAUTIONEDA)* + Learner.
5 POD – uP tO speeD, as in a school of whales or dolphins.
6 RAVEL – TRAVEL without Time.
7 EPITOME – English + P1 + TOME.
8 SMALL FRY – MALL in (Sons + FRY).
13 READJUSTING – JUST in READING.
15 YELLOWING – Old Wife in YELLING.
16 PRODIGAL – I (=electrical current in scientific notation) in PROD GAL.
18 MAGENTA – M + AGENT + A. Ian Fleming picked “M” to mirror the real-life MI6 chief “C”.
19 ELITIST – IS in (TITLE)*.
20 PLAYER – Piano + LAYER.
22 TWAIN – a)=two, b)= the pen-name of Samuel Langhorne Clemens.
25 ADD – a thousand in Roman numerals = M; divide that into 2 x 500s and (for crossword purposes at least) it becomes DD.

43 comments on “Times 24,785”

  1. Very much agree with Tim’s comments. Not just easy but so far as I can see devoid of talking points – real vanilla flavour. 15 uneventful minutes.
  2. What’s happened to the comments? I took only 15 minutes on this which is probably my best time since my eyesight faded. Very straightforward and, as Tim says, unmemorable.
  3. 30 minutes. I thought 25dn was a pretty good clue for a 3-letter word. We had SUES REP (rev) only last Friday in the puzzle I blogged. And I remember explaining the three Rs thing maybe only a few weeks ago.
  4. All correct in 52 minutes, so yeah, pretty easy I guess. Which is fine by me.
  5. I like vanilla.
    Yes, straightforward, even for this plodder, but had EPISODE (abstract) at 7 inventing a book called Standard Oxford Dictionary of English.
  6. One man’s workmanlike is another man’s hour or so of enjoyment. I liked it! Lots of clues that made me smile. Would have helped had I not got my 4s and my 5s mixed up and initially put Aunt Sally in for 12ac. And why “deliberately omitted”? If the implication is that it’s too obvious, why does this blog exist at all? People who are not 5-minute (or better) wonders want to know how answers are arrived at. I think you are guilty of being 19ac.
    The puzzle was only spoilt for me by 27ac. Quite right, people don’t use the word in real life. It’s so ugly.
      1. The convention that bloggers deliberately omit one or more solutions is given in “About this blog…” as linked to at the top of the page. This also explains why we give solving times (and that it certainly isn’t to show off).

        I’m afraid I take exception to the suggestion that I am being elitist. If my preamble had described this puzzle as “insultingly easy” or “dumbed down”, that would be a fair criticism. As it is, I stated that experienced / fast solvers would probably not be detained for long by this puzzle (something which is borne out by solving times on the club site and comments here), but that I was not criticising it for this.

        It is regularly pointed out by contributors to this blog that everybody here, regardless of how quickly they now solve the daily puzzle, started out as clueless newbies in crossword terms, none more so than myself. This is supposed to be a resource for everyone who enjoys the Times crossword, and thus nobody is ever criticised or made to feel stupid for asking for explanations of a particular clue, especially if it has been omitted from the original post. It has, in fact, become something of a recurring theme that it doesn’t matter which answer is left out, there is always someone who thought that clue was the trickiest thing in the grid and asks the question.

        In the same vein, it is regularly acknowledged that for some people the enjoyment comes in testing their speed, while others see cryptic crosswords as a pleasure to be savoured, and judge a day’s puzzle purely on aesthetic grounds. Both are valid points of view, and I don’t think I have ever suggested otherwise.

        1. Point taken and apologies for any offence caused. Like many men, I tend not to read instructions but proceed on the basis that if I hit enough buttons something will happen. I enjoy this blog and the efforts made to explain clues. I only started doing The Times crossword 9 years ago and only the Saturday edition as it used to take me all week to complete it. Even then I sometimes failed in that task. Now I can generally finish the crossword in inder 2 hours. This one was completed in a good time for me of 71mins plus some seconds. My come uppance is that I only just squeeze onto The Times CC Leaderboard in 99th place!
          1. Thank you. No offence taken. And it is of course one of the joys of the crossword that great speed (and for that matter completing the thing at all) is not always necessary to enjoy it…
    2. Perhaps you would care to read ‘About this blog’ via the link at the top of the page.
      1. Apologies rendered to topicalTim. See the blog. Like many men, I suspect, the idea of actually reading instructions is a strange one. Hit enough buttons and something will happen!
  8. Good heavens! I matched dorsetjimbo’s time: this must have been straightforward. Thanks for the blog, topicaltim, and very fair comments.
  9. Just under twelve minutes here. The scramble almost delayed by its easiness – kept wanting to put my foot on a higher shelf, so to speak. Not altogether with those who like a large spread of difficulty – there are other newspapers to offer the one-two-clunking clues such as this puzzle is composed of. People are not offering CODs and it’s not surprising.
  10. Subjected myself to the club timer today. 33 minutes, but it felt uncomfortably like an exam. I still prefer the intimacy of pen and paper.
  11. 26 minutes, feeling very pleased with myself until coming here. It wasn’t that bad, was it? COD to CABALLERO for taking me back to my developmentally delayed youth. If that phonograph and original Decca recording aren’t the very ones my parents allowed me to play with they must be very good replicas.
  12. 14m. Agree with the comments above: another gentle stroll with some very easy clues. 14ac for instance is cryptic but only just.
    Today’s only unknown was DIGITALIS. I’ve probably come across it as a flower before but certainly not the associated drug.
    MAGENTA was familiar to me from the Paris RER station and from there it was a short hop to a battle. A little online rummaging reveals that this instinct was even more appropriate than I thought: Métro stations named after battles include Stalingrad, Austerlitz, Wagram, Alésia, Solférino, Alma-Marceau, Iéna, Rivoli, Trocadéro, Bir Hakeim, Pyramides and Tolbiac. Fancy that.
  13. 13 minutes, slowed down by trying to go too fast. 21a therefore started as LOGO-something, 7d as EPISODE. I hadn’t come across digitalise in computerspeak before, though without the -al- it’s perfectly familiar. I wonder when it was last used outside this crossword?
    Otherwise, good, absolutely standard clues I thought, and none the worse for that.
    CoD (I’ll nominate one!) to ARTICLE – I agree with A Nonymous that it’s a neat double definition, and I liked “definitely it’s the” as the first one. It raised an early smile. TWAIN, while probably species aesculus hippocastanum, was also fun.
    1. I did the same thing, and was toying with LOGOPOLIS, which was somewhere at the back of my mind (until I remembered it was a Doctor Who story rather than an obscure drug)…
  14. 11:27 .. might have been quicker but after making a blistering start I was trying to emulate Tony’s ‘clean sweep’ of the other day, something I don’t think I’ve ever managed. Still haven’t! I came unstuck at PRODIGAL.

    It occurred to me while solving that this was exactly the kind of puzzle I found most helpful while teaching myself how to do these things, and there are some neatly constructed clues, so no complaints at all.

    Last in: ASININITY

    1. You clearly made a much better start than I did as I failed to get either ARTICLE or ABSENT first time through, though things did improve a little after that. Getting as far as PRODIGAL is pretty good going, I’d say, and 11:27 a very respectable time since attempting a “clean sweep” is bound to slow you down.
  15. 20:46 which is my best for a daily on the club timer. This equates to just 2.1 Biddlecombes which is definitely a record! I do enjoy the straightforward ones that come along from time to time – they definitely give the ego a boost. I just wish they’d appear when it was my turn to blog!
  16. 24 minutes. Puzzles don’t have to be desperately difficult to have a distinctive Times flavour and be enjoyable, do they? I particularly liked TWAIN, ARTICLE and DIGITALIS (nice to see a drug that isn’t e or pot).

    Thanks to Kororareka for the Andrews Sisters link; the CABALLERO I know came from the pen of Frank Crumit and today might be considered insulting to Argentinians.

    I wonder why caballeros were always gay?

    1. Thanks once again for an entertaining link! I particularly enjoyed yesterday’s as well but was here so late that I did not add my appreciation.
  17. I never time myself because I am fairly slow and generally just pleased to complete the puzzle. But I would say this was one of my fastest times.
    Louise
  18. 14:52 on the club timer so that’s sub 15-minutes for 2 days running. Would have been quicker but for the stupid online whatsit periodically refusing to accept keystrokes so I had to click off onto another clue and then back on again. Does anybody else get that?

    The SW corner slowed me up for a bit, not least because I originally had ALL at 25dn. Unlike I, C, V, X, C and M I’m never sure which of L and D are 50 and 500 without stopping to think about it. I usually have to recite the date from the end of BBC programmes although I’m at a loss to explain why MCMLXXXVIII still rolls off the tongue so easily.

    I probably only know Caballeros from going to the loo in tapas bars where I’m pretty sure I don’t want to go in the senoritas, and caballeros doesn’t look like it’s likely to be “disabled”, “kitchen” or “staff only”. I’m slightly worried about using these facilities in future mindst having read John’s comment above.

    There may not have been any standout clues but like others I liked “definitely it’s the” at 1ac.

    1. I get problems entering on-line when using a wireless mouse. For some reason, the on-line s/w seems very sensitive to what I assume in RF interference.
  19. I enjoyed this puzzle and didn’t think it was nearly as bland as others make out. In particular I thought GAGSTER was a terrific clue.

    Had most trouble in the northwest corner with CABALLERO, ARTICLE, ABSENT and NOBEL my last four in.

    Seeing TWAIN in the grid brought his “golf is a good walk spoiled” quote to mind. I couldn’t disagree more. If I didn’t have to be at work on this beautiful spring afternoon I’d be teeing it up…

  20. Count me among those who really liked this crossword. It wasn’t hard but it was indeed entertaining. I am a sucker for a slick surface reading and this effort had lots of them. 1dn, 2dn for example. Have another look at them.. pretty, aren’t they? Clever, don’t you think?

    I think half the problem might be that some of the faster and more experienced solvers never really notice the surface reading at all, they only ever see an individual clue as a set of component parts, and thus give no credit to this (rather central, to the rest of us) aspect of things.

  21. If I were regularly solving in under 20 minutes (this one was 19’30”), I might have been disappointed by the blandness of this puzzle, I suppose; and it’s true there weren’t any real brow-furlers (1ac and d were my last in). But, like Jerrywh, I’m a sucker for smooth surfaces, and there were a bunch (1d, 2d, 7d, 16d, 10ac). What I didn’t like was the appearance of words that had been in very recent puzzles: pod, Perseus,course (20d), radio code letters.
  22. Having been away for a week, I was pleased with this gentle one…

    Jerry’s comment about component parts and surfaces struck a chord, as I know I often don’t appreciate the cleverness of the clue, as I’m taking each individual bit in turn and almost out of context to work out the clue. (Not that I would ever claim to be a fast or experienced solver – far from it!)

    One wrong: like Barry (not the first time!) I had EPISODE; one without full understanding of WP: ADD – great clue.

    Good blog, thanks, Tim. Just want to say that ‘Boffin’ is often used in real life …noticeably in schools by bullies as a term of abuse…

    BTW, I did pay for temporary subscription of the TCC while I was away, and then found I couldn’t enter the letters in the grid on my iPhone! Doh – should have checked the FAQs before I bought it.

    1. i have the same issue when i try to do it on my i pad…whats the solution?
      1. Actually, it wasn’t in the FAQs, I found this from ‘Times admin’ as a response to a Forum post:

        It’s not currently possible to use the Crossword Club on iPhones and other mobile devices, though this is something we’d like to introduce in the future

  23. Glad for a simple one here as I didn’t have much time, though I printed it off on the way in to work. Didn’t time myself, but one quick session, only one I needed to piece together from wordplay was ORIEL.
    For some reason I so wanted 11 to be BOOBY
  24. About 20 minutes for this, pretty much left to right, top to bottom, so I ended in the SE, with ASININITY. I agree it wasn’t tough, and I also agree the surfaces were very well done. ADD, TWAIN, and ABSENT were all very nicely put together. Regards.
  25. I was very pleased with my 35 minutes, but upon the reading the blog I found I had one entry wrong — not only that, but the mistake was very evident, NEBEL (whatever that may mean) for 11ac. It seems I originally put in REBEL (thinking of privateers and their prizes, and REEL seemed all right as a festival) and at that time I hadn’t done 1dn yet. When I filled in ABSENT, REBEL mutated to NEBEL and I never noticed.

    Despite the puzzle’s being very easy, there were some rather nice clues (“Definitely the” for ARTICLE, ASININITY, to name two). I nearly was stumped by GENOA, as I couln’t remember whether in English it’s spelt with an O or a U as in German.

    So now I can only hope for another easy puzzle — perhaps I’m more accurate on the harder ones, as there’s no point in rushing to complete them.

  26. A slow 8:36 for me, including a minute or two spent agonising over GENOA – I was spooked by noting that the first four letters were an anagram of GONE (= left), failed to spot the obvious wordplay, and then wasted time checking to see if there was some other port that would fit.

    That said, I enjoyed this puzzle and thought it contained some interesting clues.

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