Times 24,833 – it’s not brain surgery

Author   topicaltimPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
24:11 on the Club timer, confirming my feeling that this was the toughest puzzle I’ve had on a blogging day for some time. Lots of good surfaces made it a pleasing challenge, though more than one answer relied on a combination of wordplay and guesswork because my knowledge didn’t cover it. Whether this was just me remains to be seen…

Across
1 MEAGRE – Male + EAGRE; last one in, mainly because I didn’t know EAGRE, though I had correctly guessed what it meant by a wet bore (i.e. the sort of tidal wave you find on the river Severn, rather than the one who corners you at parties) before finding what looked like a likely word to fit the bill.
4 SEARCHER – SomE + ARCHER.
9 REDACTS – RED + ACTS.
11 TAMARIN – TAMAR + IN gives the small primate.
12 ANNIE – A Name + guN + I.E., the Annie in question being the one who was advised to get her gun.
13 ELABORATE – (BALE)rev. + ORATE; I assumed (rightly) that the more common “baleful” must come from a less common noun, and so it does – “old” because it’s an archaic / poetic word.
14 SQUARE MEAL – A REM in SQUEAL.
16 TIER – TIE + Right.
19 RACK – double def. though I only knew the more obvious of the two; the wind-driven clouds are of Scandinavian origin and had passed me by, much as the clouds themselves apparently do.
20 STRABISMUS – (SUMS + 1 BART’S)rev.
22 FLOWERPOT – POT=grass, i.e. marijuana; describing a loud cow as a “Forte LOWER” is whimsical to say the least.
23 OFFER – cOFFER without the Circa.
25 DAHOMEY – HOME in a DAY; former name of the modern day Benin.
26 CHAPATI – CHA=tea + PAT=butter + 1; another good surface.
27 ENDANGER – END + ANGER, one of the Seven Deadly Sins.
28 DECENT – DEsCENT without the Son.
 
Down
1 MERGANSER – (SNAG)rev. in MERE + River gives the bird we’re looking for.
2 ARDEN – HARDEN=set, which becomes, in the version of the East End which is the convention in crosswords, at least, ‘ARDEN.
3 ROCKETRY – Temperature in ROCKERY.
5 EXTRAGALACTIC – GALA in [EXTRACT + 1 Chapter].
6 RAMROD – as the real ramrod is unbending and proverbially straight, so the metaphorical one is a demanding taskmaster.
7 HERBARIUM – HER + BARIUM, to go with the recent Wolfram.
8 RANEE – RAN EmpirE, also known as RANI, a female version of a Raja.
10 SPERMATOPHYTE – (STEPEARTHYMOP)*; I had to wait for a few checking letters to go in, but given the likelihood of the -PHYTE ending, never really doubted my version of the possible anagrams.
15 UNCLOTHED – UN + CLOT + HE’D.
17 RESTRAINT – TRAIN in REST.
18 PILOTAGE – PIous + LOT + AGE.
21 MERMAN – R.M. in MEAN (close, as in tight).
22 FUDGE – nUDGE with a new first letter.
24 FLAME – Fine + LAMÉ; I’m not expert enough on fabrics to be authoritative, but as far as I can tell from brief research, lamé doesn’t have to be silk, but is any material with metallic threads interwoven. Any experts out there?

29 comments on “Times 24,833 – it’s not brain surgery”

  1. 33’ — might have been easier if the two obscurities (SPERMATOPHYTE and STRABISMUS) hadn’t crossed one another.
    If someone can explain ‘That‘s a’ in 27ac, I’d be obliged.

    Note on the LJ site: I got a message from LJ the other day to say that it had been plagued by DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attacks. This may explain the missing/deleted comments of late. Odd that LJ should get such things given that they tend to be used by hackers to cause high-level industrial chaos. Wikileaks revenge, etc. Somehow, I don’t think we quite qualify.

  2. Crashed and burned. Didn’t know EAGRE, REM, RACK (as in wind-driven clouds), STRABISMUS, DAHOMEY, MERGANSER, RANEE or SPERMATOPHYTE. Other than that it was a bit of a doddle!
  3. A bit of a toughie; enough to set one up nicely for going back to work. 32 minutes. Had to dig a few answers out of the dim recesses of the brain. I likle the verbarium overall: maybe there should be such a word.
  4. Ran out of time on the commute with only about a half completed, mostly on the RH side. I was pleased to dig out STRABISMUS from somewhere.

    On arrival at the office I used aids to get me started again by solving the anagram at 10dn (never heard of it) and getting the missing letters from EXTRA????CTIC. There were simply too many obscure words or meanings for me to even hope to have completed without resort to assistance.

    One quibble (when do I not have one?), I don’t like ‘butter’ = PAT and anyway I’d prefer to eat the bread roll I invented for myself, the CHARAMI.

    2. (OK, so I’ll try that gain without the “suspicious” link.) Possibly known from the Beachcomber character? I know that was my source of the term.
    3. I had CHARAMI as well Jack. Much better solution than CHAPATI, just a shame it doesn’t exist!
  5. As with vinyl, I got stuck on FUDGE(derived from Budge?)/MERMAN/DAHOMEY (down in da ‘hood?) for pretty much all of the day thus far. I also had no idea why MEAGRE was. Complete rout. COD to MERGANSER. Compliments to the setter.
  6. This didn’t seem difficult at the time and a time of 25 minutes suggests round about average for me. Helped by knowing what others have found obscure. EAGRE for bore for example has appeared before more than once and the plant is not uncommon with a distinctive letter mix – got it as soon as I wrote the mixed letters down on the page. Nice puzzle.

    The damn site has now started telling me that my password is wrong when it isn’t!!

  7. Just under 3 hours of hard slog and I STILL got one wrong! RACK or RACY and I chose racy for no real reason other than it seemed slightly more likely at the time. Lots of head scratching with SPERMATOPHYTE and STRABISMUS. Didn’t know EAGRE, but I do now, thank you, topicaltim!
    PS…I, too, get my posts rejected initially because of a supposed incorrect password. Type in the same pw and it’s OK.
  8. DNF. Equally stumped by galspray’s long list of unknowns. On the plus side, the definitions within the clues were well signposted – so at least I knew I didn’t know the answers, even with all available checkers!
  9. 12a brought to mind the great Ethel which slotted nicely into 21d. I happened to know about strabismus because my little brother had to have his surgically corrected eons ago, but thank you Kororeka for reminding me of the good doctor – I’d almost forgotten. 10d got dredged up via an unpleasant and ubiquitous old ad on US tv having to do with a remedy for foot fungus. Ugh. I’m off back to the sticks today. Very nice puzzle this.
  10. Hours rather than minutes today, good job it’s a bank holiday here in Australia. Got there in the end; will now take myself off and try to memorise the embarrassingly long list of new words encountered today.
  11. Sooo difficult after yesterday’s offering! Same unknowns as others, same CHARAMI as Galspray and Jack. Nuff said…

    Thanks to Tim for clear explanations.

  12. I made slow but steady progress on this one. It felt longer than it actually was. I finished all but 6d in 37 minutes. Then realised that I had the wrong river in 11a – “Tiber” instead of “Tamar”. Once that was sorted RAMROD fell easily enough. Very enjoyable in spite of having to dredge the memory for some unfamiliar words. Btw, my password has also been rejected by LJ. Am having to resubmit this post.
  13. Congratulations to Tim and Jim and all the other sheep – I was skewered as much by my own limitations as by the scientific bent of the puzzle. I also had ‘charami’ for the longest time, appropriate enough, given my goatish effort.
  14. Happy to trail topicaltim by just 10 minutes on this tough puzzle. I could feel the various obscure words jangling around somewhere in the back of my brain (which uses the “I know I put it here somewhere” filing system) but finding them amidst the clutter was quite a challenge.

    I really like this kind of puzzle…. occasionally! Thanks, setter.

  15. I think we’ve had STRABISMUS a while back, but I had to piece it together from the wordplay – similarly SPERMATOPHYTE, DAHOMEY. RACK in from one definition. Still, couldn’t complete this before bed last night, and needed two breaks this morning to get through it, so I found it a tough one.
  16. Just over an hour for this, which I’m sorry to say I absolutely hated. So much obscurity, and so much of it intersecting. For instance if (like me) you don’t know EAGRE, MERGANSER or RACK (in the clouds sense), you’ve got a real problem in the NW. Likewise STRABISMUS and DAHOMEY intersecting with SPERMATOPHYTE. The only solution is to grind through the possibilities until you find the most likely-looking set of answers. I got there eventually but was surprised to find I hadn’t made any mistakes. RANEE in particular didn’t look like a real word.
    I for one prefer a bit more inspiration and a bit less perspiration.
  17. DNF as well. feel that this was very tough. must remember Merganser! also had charami but ofcourse it is chapati!..Ramrod was a good clue and iliked extragalactic and a square meal!
    Toughie
  18. Ouch. This was one of those overnight solves, but at least when I looked again this morning the rest fell in immediately, as often happens. I was mostly held up in the SE, for some inexplicable reason. I think I’m on the ‘this was harder than it was enjoyable’ side today, although I did like FLOWERPOT. Overall, about an hour or so. Looking back, it seems it shouldn’t have been that tough, but nevertheless, it was. Regards.
  19. There should be a word for what I suppose is the obverse of schadenfreude; the feeling of relief to find that other people had difficulty, too. 47’20”, having slept on it with maybe half done. Fortunately, I knew all the words (‘merganser’, I suspect, from NYT x-words, where they often spell rani ranee, too). We’ve had ‘eagre’ recently, and St. Bart’s–otherwise I would probably not have been able to figure out 20ac, although I got it from the checkers.COD to 20ac and 26ac, although there were a number of good clues.
  20. I’m sure contributors have their reasons for logging in and out but it might be worth mentioning that one doesn’t have to. I have been logged in for months on end and would need to think hard to remember what my password is, though I do have it noted down somewhere in case of emergency.
  21. 11:13 for me. Once again I started horribly slowly, but then finished at a rather more respectable pace. I suppose one of the advantages of being older is that I’ve lived long enough for everything in today’s puzzle to be pretty familiar, even if it took longer to summon up from the back of my mind than it once would have. Nice puzzle.
  22. 19:12 for me. I found this probably harder than I should have, but my long weekend was well-lubricated with alcohol, so that’s my excuse and I’m sticking to it! I can’t use the unfamiliar vocabulary excuse, because there wasn’t anything I didn’t know, although like Sotira and Tony some of it had to be dredged up from a foggy brain. Overall, an enjoyable and testing puzzle.
  23. An overnight solve for me too, and relieved to finish it.. I eventually got strabismus through knowing its Utrecht connection, no problems with rack (I would normally spell it wrack however) or Dahomey, but meagre took a long time as did the plant. But I love a hard one from time to time, thanks setter.

Comments are closed.