Times 24,809

Author   topicaltimPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
11:17 on the Club timer. Given that I spent at least two (inexplicable in hindsight) of those minutes trying to work out why 13 across was what it was, I think we can class this as very much on the straightforward side of things. Being easy, of course, doesn’t have to equate with inelegant, and this had lots of good surfaces.

Across
1 TOSH – (HOST)*.
3 CRABBINESS – Circa RABBI + NESS.
9 AGROUND – A + GROUND.
11 REVISIT – REVerend I + SIT.
12 HUNDREDTH – nice bit of Roman arithmetic: I + XI = XII (12), which is one hundredth of MCC (1200).
13 SHONE – SH (=call for peace) + ONE (=I).
14 SELF PORTRAIT – cryptic def.
18 HEDGE SPARROW – [EDGES + Piano] in HARROW.
21 LOOSE – 0 in LOSE. Ah, if only more people on the internet were aware of the distinction between ‘lose’ and ‘loose’…
22 TACTICIAN – TACT + [CIA in IN].
24 SUMATRA – MA in SUTRA. even those with limited grasp of Sanskrit, or Indian religions, will presumably have heard of the most famous sutra.
25 BEEHIVE – BEE (=”meeting to work”, as in, say, a quilting bee – probably more readily grasped by N American solvers) + Hard + I’VE, which gives a place of being busy, rather than commerce.
26 AUTODIDACT – AUTO + “DID ACT”.
27 RELY – River + ELY. When I started doing crosswords as a boy, I was unaware even of the existence of Ely, but soon realised how large it looms in the cryptic world. I’ve still never been there, so can’t be sure, but the map suggests the cathedral is close enough to the river for this to be an &lit. as well.
 
Down
1 TEA CHEST – TEACHES + Time; gunpowder tea is another crossword staple.
2 STRANGLE – Line in STRANGE.
4 REDID – RED I’D.
5 BAR CHARTS – CHAR in BART’S (formerly St Bartholomew’s, and latterly part of a new-fangled NHS Trust).
6 INVESTIGATIVE – VESTIGe in [1 NATIVE].
7 EUSTON – U.S. in ETON gives the first London inter-city terminus. And we have Eton to match Harrow from 18 across.
8 SITTER – double def.
10 UNREPRESENTED – UN + REPertory + RESENTED.
15 RIGHT HAND – (HARD THING)*.
16 ARTIFICE – heART + IF ICE.
17 SWANNERY – (NEW YARNS)* playing on the dual meaning of “pen” as the female of the species.
19 ALASKA – ASK in A Large Area.
20 COMMIT – COMMIE + Tory.
23 CUBIC – [Bishop + I] in ChUrCh, the bones in question being dice, which are so called in slang because they were originally made of actual bone.

29 comments on “Times 24,809”

  1. Comfortably under 30 minutes; definitely straightforward but nonetheless enjoyable.

    Thanks for the blog, topicaltim, and in particular for the full explanation of the wordplay in BEEHIVE and CUBIC. COD: HUNDREDTH (which I did manage to parse fully).

  2. Yes, definitely more straightforward than yesterday’s. Finished complete and unaided in good time, with only a couple of queries (BEE and bones), nicely explained by Tim, thanks.

    Only other query: isn’t the ‘initial’ in 16dn unnecessary?

    1. It’s certainly not required, any more than the “English” in 7 down.

      As per keriothe’s comment, the latter can, of course, be seen as positively misleading (I also started by thinking that must be what provided the E in EUSTON) whereas “initially” in this one is at least help rather than hindrance, even if it’s not needed.

      1. The “initially” in 16dn is also misleading in a way, because if (as I did) you read “he initially” as H, then you are off in the wrong direction.
  3. Gentle stuff even for me but didn’t understand CUBIC. Took awhile to see the definition for TACTICIAN.
    Thought EUSTON was a bit weak but RELY, though simple, was perfection.
  4. 17 minutes. Fairly straightforward fare but with a few curiosities and a couple that stumped me completely until post-solve analysis.
    25ac BEEHIVE puzzled me for the reason predicted by Tim. Neither “bee” for “meeting” nor BEEHIVE for “place of business” are common usages in the UK at least. The concept of a “spelling bee” was familiar enough but if you’d asked me I’d have said “bee” meant “competition”. It doesn’t though, and Collins also has “a place where busy people are assembled” so there it is.
    I almost slowed myself down by putting in INVESTIGATION for 6dn, but fortunately thought to check it when 25ac proved difficult. And I didn’t understand 7dn EUSTON until after solving, puzzling for ages over how TON could mean “college”!
    The ones that really stumped me were 12ac and 23dn. In the latter the wordplay was clear enough but if I’ve heard “bones” for “dice” before I forgot it long ago. And the Roman arithmetic went straight over my head so thanks for that.
    These days it sometimes seems more people spell “lose” as “loose” than not, and I can assure you it’s not confined to the internet.
    1. I can remember the phrase ‘Roll dem bones’ =shoot craps, usually associated with a pre-civil-rights stereotyped black man in a bad movie. But if you Google ‘roll dem bones’, you can hear Big Bill Broonzy singing.
  5. 30 minutes for this gentle workout. Putting ‘investigation’ at 6dn prevented me going under the half hour mark and meant that BEEHIVE was last in. Enjoyed the two cricketing clues, especially 12 for evoking summer days spent with friends in the Warner stand before my migration onto the Abroad list.
  6. 27/28 without aids, defeated by commie/t – apt given the le Carre heading to 24808.

    Thanks topicaltim for explaining hundredth and beehive – got those from defs and checkers.

  7. 17 minutes, so I guess Tim’s assessment is about right. Pity we didn’t have Van Gogh again at 14ac? Hats off today, but, to HUNDREDTH. I once played for a football team that followed the letter of the rules — each registered player having a unique number. They chucked us out when we refused to budge from Roman numerals. I was MC.
  8. A gentle 15 minute canter that was easier but more enjoyable than yesterday’s offering. A mainly workmanlike puzzle with a couple of inspired moments. HUNDRETH is particularly clever and there are some good surface readings. I think “bee” for meeting has fallen out of use in the UK but like a lot of old usages it crops up here reasonably regularly.

    Just down the coast from us is the remarkable Abbotsbury Swannery, well worth a visit if you’re ever in Dorset

  9. 25 minutes for all but 20dn, 24ac, 16dn and 25ac, then another quarter of an hour to crack the remainder. Most of the delay was due to putting INVESTIGATING at 6dn, then pondering INVESTIGATION before finally settling on the correct answer.

    23dn had to be CUBIC but I couldn’t see why. There is a “cuboid” bone in the foot which I assumed was what the setter had in mind before reading the explanation here which I’m not too happy with as this is a sort of defintion by example – a slang word for something that happens to be cubic – and there’s no indication, so I cry foul!

  10. Held up a touch here and there, 20 minutes, not exactly a brain-scrambler. Seems a bit much to have both Eton and Harrow in, even if balanced by autodidact. Quite liked the general.
  11. 32:01 – Held up for a few minutes by putting INVESTIGATION without checking properly. A walk in the park compared to yesterday. COD to HUNDREDTH.
  12. I was one of the people who had INVESTIGATION. I saw the word “local” and thought IN……….N rather than .N……ATIVE. I then wasted over 5 minutes pondering the SE corner until the penny dropped. Up to then I’d been doing fine. Had another holdup with COMMIT which I inexplicably failed to see. (A shameful thing since my father was a very committed commie) I still have problems with “promise” as the definition – or have I missed something here? Nevertheless, an enjoyable 26 minutes
  13. 13 minutes, with much the same INVESTIGATIVE hold up and admiration for HUNDREDTH
  14. Quicker than yesterday and about average speed for me at 34 mins. Needed the blog for the explanation of CUBIC and HUNDREDTH, for which thank you.
  16. Squeaked in under 24′, helped by a couple of giveaway clues, like 11ac, 8d, 14ac. SHONE took some time, since I didn’t get the wordplay until long after I determined it had to be SHONE–tried to figure out how ‘irene’ could be made to work, until EUSTON finally put paid to that idea. This puzzle was unusual, no? in having two clues (25 and 16) where clue words (IVE; well, ‘I have’, and IF) are part of the solution.
  17. About 15 minutes, even with needing to correct INVESTIGATION to INVESTIGATIVE. Last entry was SHONE, which was clever, as were the Roman numerals. BEE is common over here, so that wasn’t a problem and made me correct the long down. But, I hadn’t heard of a SWANNERY before, and thought it might be a tongue in cheek kind of clue until Jimbo recommended the nearby swannery in his post. I always learn something here. Regards to all.
  18. From the numbers who wrote in INVESTIGATION, rather than the correct answer, I get the impression that many solvers are just rushing to fill in the squares, with an eye on the clock, rather than fully understanding and relishing both the clue and its answer. Probably true for other slightly incorrect answers in other puzzles. More haste, less speed.
    1. It’s a broad church here and all contributors have their own ways of working. I’m not a speed merchant, not do I aspire to be one, but I have only limited time to spend on crossword puzzles on working days, and on other days I set limits because I have other things I ought to be doing, so it’s often not appropriate, whilst solving, to work out every nuance of every clue before pencilling in an answer. I find first thoughts are more often correct than not, so haste usually adds speed. Of course if one is a quick solver anyway or one has limitless time available then it’s probably worth taking longer before committing an answer to the grid.
  19. 8:36 for me, but I should really have been a lot quicker (I expect the fast brigade will have posted some brisk times). For some reason I found it hard to find the setter’s wavelength. Some neat clues, particularly 12ac (HUNDREDTH).
  20. why is there so much emphasis placed on the speed (as recorded on the Club timer) in which the puzzle is sold?
    1. I can do no better than quote from what you might call this blog’s mission statement (see “About This Blog…” above):

      This community is mainly for information about each day’s Times (or Sunday Times) crossword. A solver will state their solving time and explain interesting or difficult clues. Other solvers give their views in comments (possibly disagreeing with or correcting the original report). Sometimes, ‘placeholder’ posts are used to allow early comments on puzzles that will be blogged later. This allows people to leave quick comments about the puzzle or to get help from other commenters on particularly tough clues. The purpose of stating solving times is not to make you depressed because you took much longer (or chuffed because you were quicker), but to give you an idea of the difficulty of the puzzle. Information about typical solving times for each contributor is included in the biographies below.

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