Times 24814 – Suitable for beginners?

Author   vinyl1Posted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Solving time:23 minutes

Music: Symphony #4, Horenstein/LSO

This was an unusually easy puzzle that only caused me a little trouble. I couldn’t see a couple of obvious ones in the SE, and got held up a little bit after racing through most of it in under 15 minutes, a good time for me. I mostly didn’t
bother with the cryptics, and may have to figure some of them out as I write the blog.

As indicated, rank beginners might be able to solve a substantial portion of this one, or even finish.

One hour later

After writing the blog, there are two cryptics I am not entirely satisfied with, even thought the answers are absolutely certain. I am not sure if I am obtuse, or the puzzle is not well-clued, or the real clues got mangled in the typesetting. Well, that’s why we have comments here, so go at it.

Across
1 SIGMA, middle letter of Aesop, but not really. His name is spelled alpha, iota, sigma, omega, pi, omicron, sigma, so the middle letter is actually omega. The setter must have thought he was third declension, but he is second.
4 PROTOCOLS, PRO + TO(C)OLS. PRO is indicated by ‘for’, since a drill is not a pro tool, but is used by amateurs everywhere.
8 CROCODILE TEARS. CROCODILE(TEAR)S. I suspect there is an allusion to a children’s game or rhyme that I don’ t know, so I open the floor to our erudite commenters.
10 NUMERICAL, anagram of MAIN LUCRE.
11 DREAR, DR + EAR. The cryptic is a little awkward, with ‘demanding’ not serving much of a function.
12 TROPPO, OP + PORT backwards.
14 FORGIVEN, FORG(IV)E + N[ote]. I never liked N = ‘note’, but there you are.
17 NEONATAL, N(anagram of ONE)ATAL. The answer is telegraphed by the literal, no need for the cryptic.
18 VESSEL, double definition, where a bark is a ship. I was expecting something a little fancier.
20 NURSE, triple definition. I got it from the fish, and only then realized that Florence Nightingale was meant.
22 ECCENTRIC, E(C + CENT)RIC. Another clue where ‘fellow’ can indicate any male name.
24 WESTERNISATION, anagram of STEW IN ORIENT, AS. Why westernisation would improve the cuisine is not clear.
25 PSALTERY, PSALTER + Y. Not the first book you think of, but reasonably fair.
25 DINGY, DING[h]Y.
 
Down
1 Omitted, need I say?
2 GROOM, G[iven} + ROOM.
3 APOCRYPHA, anagram of HAPPY, CORA. One of the most well-known books in that disputed seuuence.
4 PRINCE, PRI(N)CE.
5 OVERLOOK, OVER = deliveries in cricket, LOOK = butcher’s hook in Cockney rhyming slang.
6 OREAD, O + RE + AD. The Royal Engineers, however, do not in themselves constitute a whole army, so a little weak.
7 OURSELVES, anagram of LOVERS SUE, a classic lift and separate, where ‘us, emphatically’ is the literal.
9 TRANSLUCENCY, TRA[i]NS + ???. It ought to be a ‘C’ inside a particular city, but I don’t see it. Suggestions? OK, Sotira has it. The crytic is LUCE inserted into TRA[i]NS, N(C)Y. My problem was taking ‘Filmy quality of fish’ as the literal.
13 ODOURLESS, [p]O[p]S[y] around DOUR LES, another arbitrary man’s name.
15 GREENLAND, GREEN + LA(N)D.
16 CAREFREE, CA (chartered accountant) + REF[e]REE.
19 ACUITY, A(CU)IT + Y.
21 EXTOL, hidden in [middles]EX TO L[ondon]. This meaning of ‘crack up’ is mostly used in negative phrases, e.g. ‘not all he’s cracked up to be’.
23 REIGN, sounds like rain, i.e.CATS AND DOGS!

49 comments on “Times 24814 – Suitable for beginners?”

  1. I think 9d would be something like TRA[I]NS,LUCE,N(C)Y, the LUCE being the fish and the city NY.
  2. 11:23 online, which put me at the top of the leaderboard at the time, probably not by now. Had to get VESSEL from one definition, making it my last in, CROCODILE TEARS also from the definition. I liked the clue for TROPPO
  3. CROCODILE is used in England for a line of children walking in pairs, on a school outing, say.
  4. An hour for this, so back to the remedial class for me. Had all bar three done in 37 minutes, but then needed the rest to get 12, 9 and 18. I see no problem at all with 1ac.

    For having VESSEL as my last in, when I was onto bark meaning a, um, vessel, straight away, I will be spending the rest of the day standing in the corner, wearing a dunce’s hat and writing self-criticisms – detention with Chinese characteristics.

  5. I’m glad to see that I’m not the only one whose LOI was VESSEL, especially as once I twigged, it seemed so obvious. But it cost me 5’40”: I had the rest done in 19′. This was OK for a Monday puzzle, but nothing to etch in one’s memory. Some niggles: 24ac: Why would one assume that Westernisation would be welcome? not to mention what a poor surface it was; 17ac & 13d: I got these instantly, from the definitions; 6d: was ‘natural’ necessary? 21d: Has anyone, anywhere in the known world, used ‘crack up’ to mean ‘extol’? ‘They cracked him up more than he deserved’, ‘It’s a good plan, although I’m not ready to crack it up’. I ask you.
    1. Include me in the VESSEL for LOI crowd. I ask you!

      Overall a bit weak, I thought.

  6. Dificile non trope!
    Agree with all comments
    Not quite a walk in the park
  7. 7:09, achieved by rattling through without worrying about justifying answers. And could have been absurdly fast if I hadn’t put in “transparency” instead of “translucency” first time round.

    I think that 24A makes more sense if you forget that “stew in Orient” seems connected to Asian cuisine and think of it instead as a troublesome situation or an agitated mental state brought about by being in the east.

  8. 13 minutes: so I agree — one for the Nursery. Another one whose last was VESSEL. I have “ugh!” written next to the clue. No other real complaints, but I will say …

    Re 1dn: I’m not the only wun in the universe who doesn’t pronounce NONE as ‘nun’. Yes, I know the RP-ers do. I found that out to my chagrin in my first university phonetics test. The tutor spoke immaculate RP for the purposes of the transcription. But my brain still heard Scouse.

    Edited at 2011-04-04 08:14 am (UTC)

  9. 12:49, with similar feelings to those already expressed. I think the expression that the young people of today would use is “meh”. Not appalling, just not terribly inspired.
  10. VESSEL was my last but one going in a few seconds before NURSE.

    28 minutes for this, which turned out better than I first thought it would as I had needed to read a lot of clues before eventually solving one. Once under way it came together steadily but I don’t think it was all that suitable a puzzle for beginners

    On the quibbles, I’m afraid I don’t even understand the one about SIGMA but then I never studied Greek and have picked up any knowledge of the alphabet through crossword puzzles. EXTOL for ‘crack up’ seems fine to me too and I was happy with ‘demanding’ at 11 as it belongs naturally in usage with both ‘attention’ and EAR. But like others I had been wondering about the assumption behind WESTERNISATION and RE for ‘army’.

    My quibble that hasn’t bothered anyone else so far was ‘followed by’ at 23dn.

    I didn’t understand how the second part of TRANLUCENCY worked until coming here.

  11. Very easy indeed, this one, ten minutes or so. However I didn’t quite understand 9dn til coming here, thanks for that.
    Jack, 23dn is correct if you think of someone saying “it will rain/reign cats and dogs,” in which case the c & d do literally follow the r..
    1. Doh! Of course they do. I hadn’t thought of it as literally as that. Thanks, Jerry.
  12. 14 minutes, with 1ac and down going in with a grin, and the rest, if not exactly 11 and 26, no more than decent standard fare. I too had TRANSPARENCY at first pass, with par being the fish and a stray E drifting in from nowhere in particular – in any case, it took me a while to work out how the nesting worked, since the fish wasn’t in the I-less school. PROTOCOL and OVERLOOK needed extra decrypting too, though both felt right on entry.
    24ac doesn’t seem to make much sense to me either: while the anagram is obvious, why the result should be “welcome” is opaque. I think there’s a decent clue in there somewhere, but it’s not yet reached its final form.
    CoD to 1 down – I can’t resist a really bad pun. Though I’m made curious by mctext as to how Scouse nuns are pronounced that makes them different from Scouse nones?
    1. “Nun” as in “bun”; “none” as in “gone”. And the first pair aren’t schwa-ised as they are in RP. If you can’t pronounce that pair, go here: and check out the vowel in “butter”.

      Edited at 2011-04-04 09:28 am (UTC)

      1. But these aren’t pronounced with a schwa in RP, or Standard British English, for that matter. They are pronounced /bʌn/ and /nʌn/.
  13. Yes, not too bad, but for me VESSEL was not even my LOI, but my one blank for today! Had not heard of the term ‘bark’ used for a ship.

    I also put in TRANSPARENCY first, and didn’t fully understand the correct version until Sotira explained it (LUCE=fish, that’s another new one for me). Welcome back, Sotira!

  14. Much the same as everybody else.

    I, too, wondered about WESTERNISATION and its welcome in the Orient. I assumed that the final question mark in the clue implied that it would NOT be welcome.

  15. Apparently it’s just me, but I think 25 ac is a terrible clue. I can’t be the only person unfamiliar with some vague religious term and an even more vague Hebrew instrument. But without one or the other, the clue is unsolvable.
    Surely any clue for an obscure word like this should be accessible via the wordplay, not by an even more obscure reference?
    Otherwise, a fairly straightforward solve, after changing TRANSPARENCY to TRANSLUCENCY. My last in, with the use of aids, was….well, you can probably guess.
    1. No, it’s not just you – I agree entirely about 25ac.

      I can vouch for it being a ‘beginner’s puzzle’ today on the basis of my relative success. I can’t imagine a set of circumstances where I would ever get PSALTERY though.

      1. >…
        >I can’t imagine a set of circumstances where I would ever get PSALTERY though.

        How about next time it comes up? 😉 Which it does fairly regularly, though next time the wordplay might be an anagram of PLAYERS + T (for time).

    2. I’m going back reading the blog, having been away without proper internet access for a few days: I should get out more I know…
      For what it’s worth, 25ac made me really quite grumpy too for exactly the same reasons as you. However I got it right, simply because parts of it sounded vaguely plausible as matches for parts of the clue, I had all the checking letters, and I couldn’t think of anything better.
      It’s amazing how often this works, and I think you get better at this sort of leap the more you do it. For someone like me, who encounters unknown bits of GK in virtually every puzzle, it’s an essential skill to acquire, and this blog has helped me enormously in acquiring it.
    2. Chambers gives ‘bark’ as an alternative spelling to ‘barque’

      dyste

  17. I thought this was a typical easyish puzzle, though, like others, I was slowed by a premature entry of TRANSPARENCY for 9d, making 22 somewhat difficult to get. 30 minutes in the end. From the ease with which I filled in the upper half I thought it was going to be a lot less.

    The clue for 1ac seems to be of a type that’s quite common now. I don’t think it’s invalidated by the Greek spelling of ‘Aesop’.

    I agree with some that the surface of 25 is unconvincing, but I had no real quibbles overall.

    I do wish Live Journal would not keep rejecting my password.

    Dyste

  18. Sorry to be late, but my office computer has picked a fight with livejournal, or vice versa, and I couldn’t get on this site until now. I didn’t like this, although I agree with the idea that it’s on the easier side. I didn’t know the luce fish, so I was trying to make ‘Iridescence’ fit, but couldn’t remember how to spell it. Didn’t know the CROCODILE UK usage, so I didn’t understand that. EXTOL doesn’t mean that to me. I entered REIGN, PSALTERY, OREAD and VESSEL without conviction, which almost never happens. So I wasn’t really enjoying this. Did it in 30 minutes while watching a television series on the Kennedy’s, which wasn’t very satisfying either. Then I watched a US PBS documentary on Robert E. Lee, which was absolutely awful in its superficiality. No, I’m really not a curmudgeon, though I may sound like one today! My last entry was TROPPO, which I didn’t know either. OURSELVES was good so a COD nod to that. Regards to everyone.
    1. Yes, the LJ site has been down since mid-morning here. I assume this is a repeat of the Denial of Service attack suffered on Friday that LJ kindly emailed about after the problem was solved. It would be nice if they had kept us properly informed about the recurrence.
  19. I’ve been trying all day to access this site with no luck. Just got in but no time to comment since my local pub quiz beckons. 25 minutes Now I’ve discovered I can’t post this without resetting my password. It’ll have to wait till I get back.
  20. I also couldn’t get on this site all day. Solved most fast then got stuck on 9 and 26 and probably about 45 minutes all told. Simply didn’t see dingy for ages (and had translucence). Still don’t like dim for it. Still, got there in the end so the setter didn’t win, in the tournament behind the scenes. The need for natural in the oread clue is queried, but a mountain spirit is a thing of Nature. Not that it matters, the blog should have protocol, no s.
  21. A ridiculous 10:01, much of it down to a) carelessly bunging in FORGIVES for 14ac at a second pass without re-reading the clue, and b) agonising over VESSEL, worried that there might be solution that would justify “water-bowl” better.
  22. Quite a strange puzzle. The clue for VESSEL is a bit of a shocker IMHO, and that for TRANSLUCENCY not great either. Interesting that these seem to have held many up.
  23. As I shall keep on reminding people, this year marks the 400th anniversary of the “King James” Bible, the AV (apparently we’re having a referendum on it in May). It’s only right and proper that its huge depository of obscurities should be regularly reflected in the crossword. Heads up for tacte, onycha, galbanum and many more old favourites.
    Mind you, I’ve been in quite a few places where they sing an enthusiastic version of the 150th psalm “praise him on the trumpet, the psaltery and harp” where the psaltery is adequately represented (apparently) by the guitar.
    1. Don’t tell my vicar, but tacte, onycha and galbanum are all “never heard of it” for me, and only one of them is in COED. Compared to the usual “apparent representation” of the trumpet and harp, representing a psaltery with a guitar seems pretty accurate!
      1. OK, I’ll now admit to having used a sampled psaltery and a multiple drum track to “compose” a piece called “A Psaltery and a Battery”. I won’t, you will be relieved to (not) hear, be posting a link to it!
      2. I’m not sure if I’ve come across galbanum, but I’ve definitely come across onycha, and if z8b8d8k meant stacte rather than tacte, then I’ve come across that as well – but (in each case) only ever in crosswords!
        1. Oops, yes – stacte. Must write a piece on why I would never have made a decent manuscript copyist.
  24. I’ve been trying all day to access this site with no luck. Just got in but no time to comment since my local pub quiz beckons. 25 minutes Now I’ve discovered I can’t post this without resetting my password. It’ll have to wait till I get back.
  25. Belated comment: I think the wordplay for OREAD is OK if you take “RE ad” as an “army advertisement”, where the army is (for example) recruiting for this particular corps.
  26. Had a harder time(without success) trying to put in a new avatar in memory of
    our Maine Coon cat which we had to put down this evening. This amazing feline
    had suffered 4 strokes and kept coming back. He just gave us that look which said “it’s time” …cat lovers will know what we mean. His image can be found on my wife’s quilting blog for which I take the snaps. If you care to look…

    http://quiltobsession.wordpress.com/

    His brother Smudge, pictured in the current avatar, misses him sorely, as do we.

    1. My sympathies, cb. We’ve been there a few times and it’s so hard. He looked great. And he clearly had a super life with you and your wife and his bro. Thoughts with you.
    2. What a very handsome creature. Having had to report the death of our beautiful white cat in my own blog (here) a couple of years ago, I do sympathise. At least you still have Smudge to keep you company.

      We still miss our own cat, but since then we’ve acquired a visiting cat who spends nearly all her time with us. She really only goes back to her “owners” for meals, which seems a bit ungrateful of her, but at least it’s softened the blow for us.

      1. Thanks Tony for your kind remarks. I recall your post of a couple of years back.
        Smudge, Lester’s half-brother is also feeling the loss. They were together for over ten years.

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