Times 24793: Just like the Tate, a bit of ancient, a bit of modern

Author   glhPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Solving time : Well I submitted it without a lot of confidence in 21:16 online and it came back with two mistakes which means either I’ve made two mistakes or there’s a typo in a checking letter. Let me draw you a map – the wavelength of the setter is here, and I’m somewhere out in orbit of an undiscovered planet. More than half the clues had me scratching my head and it’s going to be a tough one to figure out what to leave off, and hopefully discover my own mistakes along the way. Hardest time I’ve had with a daily in months…

And at the end of writing the blog, I think I have found it… away we go!

Across
1 EXCESS FARE: one I put in without a lot of confidence, but it’s in Chambers and counts as a double definition, one cryptic
6 JAM,B: should have seen this a lot easier, but I had a wrong answer for 8 that kept me stuck in this corner a while
9 RED,CUR,RANT: nice charade, I think this was my favorite clue
10 ACRE: This is my mistake – I wrote in ACME, thinking maybe it was “convert(A/C) me”, but it during the Third Crusade there was a siege there
12 BEFORE CHRIST: BC – shared abbreviation with British Columbia
15 HERBAL TEA: HER then B.A. around ALTE(r)
17 SEE TO: Theres that river TEES again, reversed before I
18 TWEET: a social media aspect I never really got into
19 I’ll omit this one for the sake of my mirror
20 EXPLODED VIEW: a detailed plan, and a concept that has gone bust
24 TOP,1: Aaaah, found one of the typos in my submission. A hat, and hence “that goes ahead”
25 MARGUERITE: ARGUER in MITE – had to write ARGUER in once I had most of the checking letters to see what went around the outside
26 NORN: and there’s be NO R.N. if you’re anti-navy
27 HYPNOTISED: (THE,PONY,IS)*, D
 
Down
1 EZRA: Z(last of the sequence of the alphabet) in ERA
2 CODA: sounds like CODER
3 STUPEFACTION: (CUP,OF,TEA,ISN’T)*
4 FORGO: sounds like FORE then GO – a game played with little black and white stones
5 let’s leave this one out of the downs
7 ARCHMIEDES: got this from the definition – now I see it’s DEMI reversed in ARCHES – court of appeal for the province of Canterbury
8 BRENT GOOSE: BREN, then (GOES,TO) – put the GOOSE part in first, then invented the STENT GOOSE who lingered until I figured out 6
11 CHASTISEMENT: HAST(e),IS in CEMENT
13 CHATTER,TO,N: got this from the wordplay and had to look it up later, had never heard of the book
14 ORDER PAPER: my last in, from the checking letters, and a fingers crossed moment. I think this is right, Wernham Hogg is the paper company from “The Office” (which I never got into), and an ORDER PAPER is an agenda
15 TIPPERARY: TIP then R in PEARY – another one I got from the definition, not being familiar with Robert Peary
21 VEGA,N: technically vegans can use animals, just not put them in their mouths
22 (w)HIPS
23 W,END: the last word of my high school anthem

44 comments on “Times 24793: Just like the Tate, a bit of ancient, a bit of modern”

  1. Finally got a minute to do a puzzle this week: well 18 of them in fact. (And Ta to Dave for filling in yesterday — glad I got out of blogging that one!)

    A very fine piece of work today with a good mix of clue types — almost none of which were obvious; the types that is. I also fell for ACME at first but had that can’t-be! feeling right away. Haven’t seen WEND for a long time; so good to see its face again. Seems archaic; but it’s a verb we use every day, given that ‘to go’ doesn’t have a past tense of its own and has to borrow it from ‘to wend’ — which I shall now do as I’m due in yet another ”workshop”. Grrrrr.

    1. Always associate the word with Peter Cook and Dudley Moore:

      “Now is the time to wend our way
      Until we meet again
      Some sunny day.”

  2. Thought much of this was enjoyably knotty, requiring more in the way of general/obscure knowledge than usual – or at least more than I can call on. As a result, I also plumped for ACME for what doesn’t now look like a very good reason and missed TOPI. Stopped timing myself after an hour and went away to think about the entirely blank NE corner which yielded its secrets painfully slowly.
  3. Went to aids after 70 minutes with 8 unsolved (6, 7,8 & 10, and 20, 21, 22 & 25). Cheated on three of these to polish off the rest, but still managed to get HIPS wrong (a toss-up between that and ‘figs’ and I called wrong). So obvious now.

    I knew ‘brent goose’ but did myself there by anagristing ‘gun’ as well as ‘goes to’ (I had to invent a ‘v’ for seeing – or summat, as David BRENT would say). There’s another Wernham Hogg connection for you – Rioky Gervais’s character’s name, for those who haven’t watched this piece of televisual genius (especially Series 1).

  4. 55 minutes, but put in TOPS, out of desperation, instead of TOPI. (Wouldn’t ‘goes on ahead’ have been a bit less of a strain on one’s tolerance?) I did get ACRE right away, one of my first two in, along with NORN; after that it was slow slogging. Got ARCHIMEDES from the checking letters; didn’t know of the Arches until reading this blog. I was sure ‘arguer’ was in 25, but for some reason could only think of rose as the flower for the longest time. I didn’t know of the ‘steal’ meaning of ‘whip’ either, but I finally remembered that in crossword land, ‘fruit’=’hips’.
  5. I really struggled with this one and eventually got all but a couple unaided though I gave up and used a solver for the first word of EXPLODED VIEW as I have to do some work in a minute. I also checked CHATTERTON and NORN before completing the grid and looked up alternatives at 23 where I had been thinking LEAD or HEAD but not very optimistically.

    I thought for a moment we might have the same answer twice at 8dn and 14dn what with the Brent/Wernham Hogg and goose/down connections but it was obviously not meant to be despite the first R being checked by HERBAL TEA.

    Didn’t understand 11 before coming here. I had the HAST(e),IS bit but took the EM from ‘setter up’ and was left wondering how the container CENT was clued.

    I think this one counts as a beast (for me, anway) so I’m hoping for an easier ride tomorrow.

  6. Had to seek help here; tried the Samaritans.
    Would someone expand on TWEET for this ignoramus. (I know the message bit).
    1. I think it’s just a cryptic definition. I can’t see how “Robin’s” can be interpreted as a second definition, except as “of a Robin”, which would be a bit of a stretch, wouldn’t it?
      2. I read it as a double cryptic definition, where “Robin” is either a bird or a vacuous celebrity.
  7. For about the fifth or sixth time during an on-line solve, I have managed to do something (I don’t know what, or I would stop doing it) which bounces you out of the puzzle, leaving you to restart ever so slowly with a clean grid, but time still ticking. Surely I am not the only one to bung in GREEN PAPER as a stab for 14 dn, and not get around to reconsidering? Over all a bit of a grind but which I warmed to in retrospect. COD to EXCESS FARE. But what is with the VEGGIE/VEGAN thing?
    1. If one substitutes ‘consume’ (as in ‘use drugs’) for ‘use’, then the clue works fine.
      1. Some vegans don’t wear leather or use other animal products as well as not eating animals or anything that is derived from them. My veggie daughter was vegan for a while, but could not manage vegan cheese which she said tasted like putty (though I can’t think how she’d know what putty tastes like).
        1. As a vegan for over thirteen years, I can report that ALL vegans do not eat or wear ANY product or ingredient of animal origin. If they do then they are not vegans – simple as that. I’m surprised that people have difficulty understanding the concept, seeing as it’s been around since 1944.

  8. Far too much unknown vocab/GK (BREN, PEARY, ARCHES, NORN) for this to be in any way accessible to me. A shock after yesterday’s easy-ish puzzle.

    🙁

  9. Only the NORNs and the GOOSE were new to me and ACRE a hazy memory from a past puzzle, so it must have been something else which slowed me down (50 minutes). Can’t think what. Maybe that was my problem. Some novel and surprising clues today, like BC and the anagram for STUPEFACTION; the latter well worth the price of admission alone. COD to WEND; close to perfection.
  10. 39 minutes. Found this quite difficult, but there were some fine anagrams (27, 3, 5).

    We had Chatterton on August 11 last year, and I was looking at Wallis’s painting in the Tate only a couple of weeks ago.

    Never heard of Peary, or Wernham Hogg: I’m all in favour of historical and cultural references as long as I’m familiar with them!

    1. When I went to school, Peary was the first person to reach the North Pole. Now I read he might have stretched the truth a little and done a “This looks like a good spot for a Pole, lads.” stunt, to match his previous “Look, there’s an island over there. I just saw it a moment ago through the fog.” trick. He wasn’t even the first to claim he had reached it, but almost nobody believes the first pretender. If Amundsen had known any of this, he might have gone ahead with his crack at it, instead of diverting to the South Pole and Scott might still be alive today, sipping tea and eating crumpets somewhere in the south of England celebrating his 143rd birthday. History was much simpler back in those days.
  11. Interrupted time somewhere over 30 minutes today: it felt a bit like tackling one of those 50 year old puzzles, with sly references that were fine if you got them and next to impossible if you didn’t. Wernham Hogg is the most obvious example for me (jamais couché avec, as my Mother-in-Law was wont to say) so I hazarded green paper as something where proposed parliamentary business goes down. I already know it’s wrong, but it seemed like the only good idea at the time.
    Didn’t care much for EXCESS FARE either, possibly because I couldn’t get past the “halt, who goes there” sequence. They’re not guards these days anyway, and haven’t been for many a year: currently, they’re “Customer Service Ticket Sales”, which admittedly would make for a less snappy clue.
    It doesn’t help that I can’t spell Tipararee, and apparently neither can half the InterWeb, but that’s no recommendation.
    Feeling grumpy, so no CoD
  12. Too hard for me today. Turned to aids with 19 solved but still couldn’t finish it. Found the NE and SW particularly difficult. Thanks for the masterful explanations George.
  13. I thought this was a complete monster, and struggled home in just under an hour in total in three sessions. Looking on the bright side this would have taken me well over an hour even six months ago and would certainly have defeated me before I discovered this blog. Thanks as ever to all concerned.
    Wernham Hogg was unfamiliar to me even though I’ve watched some of The Office (as much as I can bear: brilliant but excruciating) and is certainly pushing some kind of boundary. NORN, PEARY and ARCHES were unknown. And EXPLODED VIEW and RANGELAND are not exactly everyday vocabulary.
    Perhaps the most difficult thing about this puzzle though was the number of short words where the possibilities were very numerous and the answer ultimately somewhat obscure: EZRA, TOPI, NORN, HIPS, JAMB, ACRE. I spent ages trawling through the alphabet on all of these.
  14. Tough going, almost leading me to claim it was unfair: but, by chance rather than genuine erudition, I did recognise some of the allusions (ACRE, CHATTERTON – memories of A-level English and Keats’s ode, TIPPERARY) and elements in the wordplays (e.g. 7d Court of ‘Arches’). ‘Wernham Hogg’ was unknown; ORDER PAPER emerged from definition. NORN a desperate entry from wordplay. Weariness, and go-ahead TYPEs, led me astray, however on 24 ac.

    Thanks for the blog, George, and for full explanations. In this PC age, is ‘BC’ as ‘Before Christ’ still acceptable. I though we were supposed to use ‘BCE’, ‘Before Common Era’?

  15. Thought this was a brilliant puzzle. I wasn’t too brilliant on it, taking somewhere near an hour; but one can dwell on a liqueur, and hope the memory of it doesn’t fade too soon.
  16. 49:39 – and very pleased with it. A lot of tough clues in there, but I think I was on the same wavelength as the setter for once.

    Some great definitions here, like ‘man of principle’ for Archimedes, and ‘that goes ahead’ for TOPI.

    As a keen player of the Assassin’s Creed videogame, I had no problem with ACRE. It’s set in the Holy Land during the time of the crusades, and Acre is one of the main locations used.

  17. A serious workout that’s made us late for lunch. had to resort to aids as Wernham Hogg was new to us too. Kept looking out for a K to make this a pangram. COD to Went for the simple style or possibly to Brent Goose for the barefaced cheek of a 2nd Office connection. Fun!
  18. Around 40 minutes but with the same mistake as George – ACME. ‘fraid I tended to fall asleep in history class.

    Like Z8, I detected a retro sensibility in this puzzle, but it took me a long, long time to tune into that. I kept looking for highly engineered wordplay that wasn’t there. I did enjoy it a lot once I found the wavelength.

    COD: BEFORE CHRIST

    Last in, after much messin’ about with ‘excuse’ and ‘excise’: EXCESS FARE

  19. This took a fair time to finish but gave me a satisfying sense of achievement when I finally bunged in the last answer – ACRE. A very enjoyable workout. Came in at 44 minutes.
  20. The Hero of Acre was X. Trapnel’s favorite pub in Anthony Powell’s ‘Dance to the Music of Time’, I forget which volume(s). I think that helped me to get ACRE so quickly.
    1. Presumably Books Do Furnish a Room (Marc’s drawing of X. Trapnel appears on the cover of my paperback copy) or Temporary Kings. I’m afraid it’s too long since I read the books, but if I was ever to be cast away on a desert island, they’d be my choice.
  21. Very very difficult, but somewhat spoiled for me by Ezra, who surely wasn’t a prophet???
    1. You’re a step ahead of me! My solving of this clue was based on wordplay, checking letters, and the fact that the name sounded convincingly biblical. As for NORN…
    2. Now I think about it, you’re quite right – at least in the canonical story, where Ezra is the “scribe” who re-established the primacy of Torah in the post-exile Jewish nation. Not in amongst the major/minor prophets.
      Track him in the later apocryphal writings, though, and he’s way up there with Elijah and Moses. I suppose it depends on what you think a prophet is or does, but “Ezra the Prophet” doesn’t sound as right as “Ezra the Scribe” does.
  22. You’re right! I was thinking of the great seige of Acme Canyon which ended when Wily was crushed by a canonball (and a piano).
  23. 9:06 for this one – so I seem to be having a consistent week, with the previous two puzzles taking me 9:05 and 9:23. An interesting and enjoyable puzzle with no particular difficulties, though I didn’t know that Wernham Hogg (vaguely familiar) made paper.
    1. ‘Wernham Hogg, where life is stationery.’ Point of order: as a paper merchant, I believe they only sold the stuff.
      1. You can’t only sell something as a business, can you? Sooner or later you have to buy some, or make it, or steal it? 🙂
      2. Thanks for that correction. I watched a couple of early episodes of The Office, but (like keriothe) found that as much as I could bear. As he says, “brilliant but excruciating”. (I love ‘Wernham Hogg, where life is stationery’ though 🙂
  24. Bit day late and a dollar short” and I’m sure you’ve all moved on to the next cryptic. Thanks to the curvature of the earth, the antics on tghe keyboard of our new kitten and because for me as it was for George Heard, it was the hardest I’ve done, even harder than one I said was the hardest a week or two back! Never heard of Chatterton (though solved the clue) Despite reference to the world of wiki, I failed to come up with ARCHES for 7d. Thought of all sorts of other words for “steal” for 22d. So thanks very much fpor the “exploded view” of the clues and answers! Submitted “without leaderboard” as too much recourse to aids and a couple of times when I had to pause and restart but the clock started again at zero or at other false time.
  25. Did guards ever collect excess fares? I thought that was left to the ticket inspector/collector, conductor etc, while the guard stayed in the van.

    Or am I on the wrong track here, so to speak?

    1. Here on South Eastern they do, they wander up and down the train between stops. Haven’t seen a ticket inspector in years..
  26. Am I the last?

    Didn’t get time to have a proper crack at this yesterday as I was out for most of my lunch hour.

    Started up the online puzzle when I got back to the office, got exactly zero answers on first read-through so printed it off to try later. Did about 1/3rd while grabbing a quick tea last night then finished off over a coffee this morning (“working” from home as one of the kids is off sick). No idea of time but this was tough. I had to cheat to get the flower when I hit a wall but managed to get through it from there.

    It took me ages to recall where I knew Wernham Hogg from.

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