Times 24,821

Author   topicaltimPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
21:06 on the Club timer. Quite tricky, then, especially in the southern half; 24ac and 20dn were the last to fall, in quick succession. There was a certain amount of guessing / assumption going on, so that if I’d been solving this in a competitive arena I would have had fingers crossed in hope that I had read the wordplay correctly.

Across
1 DOWNING – DOWN (=”blue”) + IN Games.
5 PAPA DOC – Per Annum x 2, (COD)rev.; Francois Duvalier, who was only one example of a President for Life, of course…
9 SKETCHERS – StrucK + ETCHERS.
10 ARROW – hARROW. As a nice change in crossword land, no attempt to suggest that this is ‘ow a Cockney would view that borough.
11 GOLEM – monGOL EMperor; mythical creatures brought back to popular culture in the recent work of Terry Pratchett, amongst others.
12 TRAVERSAL – RAVERS in TALe.
13 PERCUSSION CAP – (CIRCUS OPENS)* + A Penny gives the “banger”. Not sure if the reference was intended to be to real firearms or the toy version I remember as a child, when such things weren’t perceived as psychologically damaging.
17 CONSIDERATION – CON(vict)S + 1 + DE-RATION, i.e remove restrictions from supply. “Consideration” as “payment” takes me back to studying contract law.
21 AVALANCHE – AVA + bLANCHE.
24 AMISH – hAMISH; when I had A_I__ I was trying to make ARIAN fit, as that sect occurs quite frequently, but couldn’t find a suitable Scots name until the penny dropped.
25 ISSUE – double def.
26 PRICELESS – PaiR ICE-LESS; a cheeky way of describing the second part there which provided another penny-drop monent.
27 NIELSEN – (ENLIvENS)* taking away the nabokoV. Nielsen has come up a few times recently.
28 SKYWARD – KentuckY in SWARD. Always harder to spot definitions when they’re a single two-letter word.
 
Down
1 DOSAGE – Died + OSAGE; I didn’t know the native tribe, but it was pretty easy to deduce. We are back in Kentucky, geographically speaking, it seems.
2 WHEELSPIN – (NEWHELPIS)*.
3 INCOMER – IN CrOMER without the Resistance.
4 GREAT OUSE – EAT in GROUSE gives the longest river of that name in England (other Ouses are available).
5 PASHA – PASH + A. Pash=short for passion, and is the sort of word usually heard coming from the mouths of Jilly Cooper heroines (or quite possibly Jilly Cooper herself).
6 PLACEBO – PLACE + BOtanists.
7 DARES – D + ARES, a Greek god who appears regularly round here.
8 COWSLIPS – COW (=animal that lows) + SLIPS.
14 SPARE RIBS – SPARE (=part with) + RIBS (=guys); a lot of different meanings available for both “part” and “guys”, so it took a while to work out which was needed, and decide there definitely wasn’t a food called “SHARE TIES”, for instance.
15 CANTILENA – CAN + (TALEIN)*; my musical knowledge didn’t extend to this, so I had to hope it wasn’t CANNITELA or CANLITENA or the like.
16 OCCASION – double def., short and sweet.
18 IN A MESS – double def.; nothing to do with Tommy Tucker, but requiring the solver to know “tucker”=food and that Tommy is the proverbial British foot soldier, popularised though not, as I would have guessed, invented by Rudyard Kipling.
19 IMAGERY – I’M A GErRY. I didn’t for once fall into the trap of thinking that “the writer’s” must be MY
20 PHASED =”FAZED”.
22 AISLE – A + ISLE. No man is an island, of course, except for Man, which is. Also, for discussion about the difference between an aisle and a nave, see an earlier blog where the same word came up. Coincidentally, I see it’s crossed in the grid by our friend Mr Nielsen as well…
23 CAPON – CAPONe.

44 comments on “Times 24,821”

  1. 29 minutes and quite a relief after yesterday. DNK CANTALINA (15dn) and, like others, I guess, went for CANABILE at first. Obviously wrong but.

    Is DE-RATION (17ac) a word?

    And maybe (24ac) there should be a TV police show featuring horse-drawn carriages chasing around a Scottish Island?

    1. DE-RATION is indeed a word, if not an elegant one. And I like the idea of the TV series; I wonder if Robert Carlyle would be up for making Amish Macbeth?
  2. 25 minutes, held up by 16, where I initially had FUNCTION (as in “function call” and by CANTILENA, which is surely just wrong. I suspect the original entry was what I put down at first shot, which is CANTABILE, which really does mean “smooth flowing”, while CANTILENA simply doesn’t, even if it does fit the wordplay.
    I am inclined to think I’d have done it in a lot less if I’d not been fretting on that one – nothing in the crossing clues in the SE worked. I was also working with SHARE something at 14 for quite a while, thinking a share made a better part.

    A bit miffed. No CoD

  3. A tale of one half and two quarters. Top half went in so easily I thought I was on for a very fast time; SW progressed very slowly; ground to a halt on SE. Spent ages trying to justify CANTABILE for 15dn (my sources suggest that this more appropriately fits ‘smooth flowing style’ than CANTILENA); similarly the multiple permutations for ‘part’ and ‘guys’ took a long time to resolve: SPARE RIBS seemed obvious after I’d cracked it and is my COD. Once these two were in, rest followed quickly.
  5. After the top half had gone in “relatively” quickly, I struggled mightily with the bottom half. Looking for a Scottish name to shorten I reminded myself that I once made the luxuriantly bearded South African batsman Hashim Amla into an instant Scotsman by referring to him as Hamish! Talking of cricket, “my’ county, Sussex, has got off to a terrible start to the season by losing to Lancs in Liverpool by an innings!
    Lots of good clues today; struggled with CANTILENA and SPARE RIBS and OCCASION; and had my “D’oh” moment with PRICELESS. COD to IN A MESS. Had a good smile at that.
  6. Count me in with the “cantabile” sect. In the end guessed CANTILENA from fodder+checkers must be right even if Chambers didn’t support “smooth flowing”. No problem with the rest of it, which I thought was reasonable fare. 25 minutes to solve including some time trying to make sense of 15D.
      1. Chambers defines it as “a ballad or light song; a vocal or instrumental melody; a singing exercise” so nothing overt about “free flowing”. On the other hand it defines cantabile as “flowing and melodious”
      2. Not that it’s the standard work of reference but dictionary.com offers this for CANTILENA:
        “A smooth flowing style in the writing of vocal music”.
      3. The freedictionary.com has “A sustained, smooth-flowing melodic line”, but then it is free.
        1. I’m intrigued to see that Webster’s 1913 dictionary gives: Cantilena (noun, music)): see cantabile. Cantabile it gives as an adjective. Just because a mistake is not noticed over period of time does not make it correct – I’m reminded of the late Carl Sagan’s endearing, but wrong use of careening to describe flying over the canyons of Mars. I’d be even more intrigued to see the references where cantilena is used interchangeably with cantabile.
      4. Home now and I just checked Collins which is one of the official sources for the Times and it has it verbatim “smooth flowing style” so the setter is fully vindicated. Grove’s Dictionary of Music (1954 edition) mentions both “smooth” and “flowing” too, so it’s not a recent change of meaning.

        I still can’t believe I never met the word before but maybe I did and I’m just a bit too senile to remember it.

        1. So obviously I think Collins has it wrong too. Sooner or later, someone’s going to point out to me that the “in” of the clue belongs to the anagrist not the definition, so it should be a noun, but I’m not about to let the facts get in the way of a good grump.
          Salutations in mellifluous style to all
  7. Completely undone by this one. Penned the last one in after 80 minutes and now I find it was wrong; I’m referring to the CAN clue, of course. I spent the whole crossword thinking “What is that word. It’s on the tip of my tongue.” and now I find I’ve never heard of it. My memory’s not so bad after all. I thought the surfaces here were pretty much as good as they get and “Do call” surely has to go into the pantheon. COD to PERCUSSION CAP. It doen’t get much better than this.
  8. Whoa! 2 cerebral 15 rounders on the bounce. Threw in the towel yesterday but staggered to the end of this albeit with a unanimous points verdict to the setter. At least I knew some of the words today.
  9. I’m another CANTABILE person. I spent ages trying to justify it. Have heard of CANTILENA but not as meaning “smooth flowing”. It didn’t mean that when I did my Grade 8 theory exam in the dark ages. I always thought music terms were unchanging but this one seems to have evolved! My other bit of time-wasting was putting AISLE at 23d instead of 22d. I do this sort of thing a lot, courtesy of retinopathy which causes blobby bits before the eyes, but normally spot the mistake quickly. Not today though. It messed up the entire SW corner. 46 minutes in fits and starts – could have done with a touch of CANTILINA here. ( Btw, LJ keeps refusing to recognise my password. It’s getting to be a drag. Does anyone else have this problem?)
      1. Same here. It took 3 goes today. I’m glad I’m not alone. Otherwise I imagine it’s some error on my part.
  10. Excellent puzzle in my opinion. Wasn’t familiar with DOWNING, GOLEM, NIELSEN, OSAGE, CROMER, GREAT OUSE, PASHA, ARES, CANTILENA or CAPON, but still managed a correct solve without aids in 48:30, which suggests that it was harsh but fair.
    Slight quibble over CANTILENA which, as Tim points out, was an anagram with several permutations which were plausible to those of us not familiar with the term. Just happy that I guessed correctly.
  11. Firstly CANTILENA which I’ve never heard of having studied, taught and performed music in an earlier life but I looked it up on dictionary.com which lists it as: smooth flowing style in the writing of vocal music, so one lives and learns.

    I had problems with this puzzle and eventually cracked it just within the hour without aids apart from checking the above. 16 and 25 gave trouble in the SW and 14, 28 and 19 in the SE.

  12. 13 minutes, on a print-out this time. Lots of sighs of relief, since I got PAPA DOC, WHEELSPIN, and CANTLIENA from wordplay and CONSIDERATION from definition. AMISH last one in – rather liked this one.
  14. Much more straightforward than yesterday’s, but not a doddle. Was entirely untroubled by 15d as I didn’t know the meaning of either the correct answer which doesn’t fit the definition (CANTILENA) or the wrong answer which apparently does (CANTABILE). Sometimes you can know too much. 32 mins.
  15. 12m 48s for this, which seemed a little sluggish. As for others, the SE corner was the last to fall, with PHASED my last in. Had dimly heard of CANTILENA, thankfully. Couldn’t really find a COD
  16. Found this pretty tricky coming in over the hour mark. Being an avid pianist, I have always taken cantabile as being a specific reference to bringing out a tune within a multitude of notes and the free dictionary supports this with a reference to being performed in a singing style. Therefore as it didn’t fit any aspect of the clue, I discounted it early. Never heard of cantilena, though, but it seemed the most likely with the crosslights. Dominic
    1. Being an avid singer, I’m used to be asked to sing either legato or cantabile, depending on the mood of the conductor, when something smooth is called for. I can’t imagine being asked to sing cantilena. It’s like being asked to sing tune. Chambers gives flowing and melodious, like singing for cantabile (vide supra). You’re right, it doesn’t fit the cryptic.
  17. Very enjoyable puzzle, with lots of devil and trickery completed in 67 minutes. Last in the artists at 9, after I had guessed right for the musical term, which opened up the ‘Scottish’ sect.
  18. About 40 minutes, with the ‘CANT’ clue as my last entry, like others, a guess from the anagrist and checking letters. I think it’s a good puzzle, because I solved a lot from wordplay alone, and the surfaces were very well done. Unknowns to me were the CANTILENA, the GREAT OUSE (is there a Little Ouse?), PASH, GOLEM, and DOWNING (sorry, I’m an uitlander). I’ll throw a COD nod to PAPA DOC, clever. I haven’t noticed any complaints about PHASED, so it seems we’ve found a homophone that works for everyone. Regards to all.
    1. The “Little Ouse” is actually a tributary of the Great Ouse. I always think it’s a wonderfully onomatopaeic (??spelling??) word for a somewhat sluggish river. Just to confuse matters there’s another Ouse somewhere else in England. Think it’s called the Yorkshire Ouse to distinguish it from the others.
        1. Shows a certain lack of imagination! It’s like all the Avons. I live in Wales and I don’t think we have “Avon” by itself because it simply means “river” in Welsh. We always have it with a qualifying adjective. (I just googled “Ouse” and they say it means “wet” or “Water” which explains why there are so many!)
  19. 23 minutes but with the letters in the wrong place for 15dn. An obscure word clued by an anagram with several possibilities is a little unfair I think.
    Otherwise, unknowns today were PASH and OSAGE. I didn’t understand CONSIDERATION so thanks to Tim for that.
    These days the very considerable therapeutic power of the PLACEBO effect is being fully harnessed by the NHS in “homeopathic” hospitals, including one in Great Ormond Street.
  20. 12:55 for me. I too was caught out by carelessly bunging in CANTABILE, though (as a member of the Musical Mafia) I was able to correct it to CANTILENA as soon as I realised that 26A really had to be PRICELESS. Annoyingly I’d wanted 28A to be SKYWARD from the KY and the definition, but hadn’t bothered to follow it up since the E of CANTABILE was blocking it. Like others I found the bottom half a lot harder than the top half.

  21. Luckily I had the A of SKYWARD in before tackling the CANTILENA anagram. It seems a poor definition to me though.

    Last ones in were PHASED, AMISH and (trickiest of all) IMAGERY. Couldn’t see where MY fitted into it. Of course that’s because it didn’t.

  22. I didn’t really want to blog so late, since it took me nearly two hours to solve this one correctly (only finishing this morning), but the explanations of the clues I filled in right but didn’t understand (PRICELESS, IN A MESS, COWSLIP) were so funny I just had to praise the setter for a very witty puzzle. I also had to guess at the right anagram of TALE IN to use in CANTILENA, but I did make the right choice on general principles (for example, CANTINELA would probably have had two Ls, etc.).

Comments are closed.