Times 24,845 – in which I fail

Author   topicaltimPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
18:38, which I thought was a good time for a tough puzzle, until it turned out it was so tough I hadn’t actually solved it correctly. So, with two mistakes, not such a good time after all. Had I an avatar with a dunce’s cap, I would be wearing it as I type. I should also admit I didn’t really enjoy this puzzle, mistakes notwithstanding, which suggests it was just one of those days where I was generally on a different wavelength to the setter, and was doing a lot of guessing.

Across
1 SITTING PRETTY – SITTING (what judges do in court) + PRETTY (=fairly).
8 AMEN – Answer + MEN &lit.
9 TOOTHPASTE – TOO + (PAST in THE).
10 TROCHAIC – (ConfinedTOCHAIR)*; a trochee is the reverse of an iamb.
11 BATTUE – BAT (=”have innings”) + TrUE without Run; the obligatory cricket reference to puzzle North Americans, and a word which I deduced entirely from wordplay. It turns out to be “driving” as in the case of beaters driving game birds towards the guns, hence the well-concealed definition in “driving with deadly effect”.
13 STOCKSTILL – i.e STOCKS TILL, and thus provides the sort of float that comes from filling the cash register with change. I was put off by expecting this to be hyphenated, which is what my OED and Chambers also suggest. Presumably there is authority for the single word version.
16 RAIL – afraid I found it a little weak to effectively define RAIL as “a word which once prominently had British in front of it in the name of a transport operator”.
17 BRIO – Bishop + RIO.
18 TOPOGRAPHY – TOP + (GO)rev. + [A Piano Hour in RailwaY].
20 ADDLED – ADD + L.E.D.
22 RENMINBI – (IMINBERN). Not RENMIMBI, as I ended up with, which doesn’t even use the anagram fodder correctly, and is indicative of my ignorance of Chinese currency (which I thought was the yuan, but turns out to be more complicated than that…)
24 TANGANYIKA – ANY in (TAKINGA)*.
26 SITE =”SIGHT”. I began by writing in that other old chestnut “STYE” without really thinking it through.
27 SECRETARY BIRD – SECRET RoaD enclosing (BYAIR)*.
 
Down
1 SEMI RETIRED – SEMI + RE: (TRIED)*.
2 TUNIC – N.I. in T.U.C.
3 IN TRANSIT – INTRANSITive.
4 GNOCCHI – NO C.C. Hard in G.I.
5 REHAB – (HE in BAR)all rev.
6 TRATTORIA – (TART)rev. + TORI + A.
7 YET – YE + Trouble.
12 UNINHIBITED – UNIoN (minus the 0) + [BITE in HID].
14 CHOP LOGIC – [OP + LOG] in CHIC, though “something mathematical” as a definition of LOG struck me as another slightly weak definition.
15 LEGENDARY – (ENERGYLAD)*.
19 PARTITA – ARTIsT, without Succeeded, in P.A.
21 DANTE – Name in DATE. Unfortunately I had become fixated on DONNE, even though DONE makes no sense as “partner”.
23 IMSHI – denIM SHIrt. Deduced from wordplay without any conviction. Had I done national service in Port Said, I might have had less trouble with this one…
25 ADS – barely cryptic, really.

37 comments on “Times 24,845 – in which I fail”

  1. I found this straightforward and enjoyable, and I like it even more now that everyone else seems to be finding it hard!
    I knew imshi from spike Milligan’s books and a battue is a type of clay pigeon so no problem there either.. I have never seen stock-still as a single word and neither has the OED. However it is actually a rather elegant clue otherwise, so I forgive it.
  2. 26 minutes (twice yesterday) and with RENMINBI being entered as one of the other half dozen possible anagrams. This felt like the same setter that provided us with a sheep and goats moment a few days ago – easy if you hit the wavelength, next to impossible if you didn’t.
    My quibble with this one is that, of the two most likely inconnus in the grid, BATTUE was possible from the cryptic without ambiguity, RENthingy was most definitely not, which seems a bit mean given that the N is so unlikely in any normal word before the B. My take was RENNIMBI, the currency of China in an alternative universe on the interweb – I looked it up!)
    CoD to the simple and economic AMEN
  3. What a wonderful world is crossword land! Extraordinary range of knowledge needed yet again. After yesterday’s failure of courage with gutta-percha, entered BATTUE, CHOP LOGIC and IMSHI with ‘confidence’ based on the wordplay only, surprised to find that they were right. Handwriting deliberately bad, allowing me to claim that I also got RENMINBI right (quite easy to blur upper case ‘m’ and ‘n’).

    Thanks for the blog, topicaltim; as almost always there was more to the wordplay than I saw.

  4. Count me amongst those tuned to the wrong bandwidth. It more resembled my attempts at the T2 Concise crossword, with answers half entered without conviction until cross checkers became available. I thought BATTUE could possibly be a fencing term, and CHOP LOGIC was new to me. As for the Chinese currency, I gave up trying to anagram IM IN BERN and tried IM in (BERN TO)*, which gave me the more plausible RENTIMBO. Is the clue for ADS simply trying to say it’s short for advertisements? It was my second last in. COD to ADDLED, very much the mot juste.
  5. Where topicaltim leads, I follow (or trail by 6 minutes, to be more precise) with two mistakes. I too found problems tuning into this puzzle’s wavelength.

    I’m a careless solver at the best of times and duly fell into both of the spelling traps noted by keriothe – RENMIMBE and TANGANAIKA in my case.

    If only these foreigners would use proper money and give their lakes sensible names like Bassenthwaite or Crummock Water.

  6. 30 minutes for this, and I’m with Tim in not having enjoyed it much. I thought some of the definitions were a bit loose and some of the wordplay a little convoluted. And there were two clues (RENMIMBI and TANGANYIKA) where the anagram fodder left you in a risky position if you didn’t know the word. I work in finance so the currency was no problem for me, but I didn’t know the lake and changed my mind from KANGANYITA only at the last minute.
    STOCKSTILL is a very good clue but surely would have been better with a hyphen, even if the absence of one is justified somwhere in dictionaryland. Completely failed to parse CHOP LOGIC, so thanks for the explanation.
  7. 17:45 today and a lucky clear round – renminbi is totally unknown to me and a complete guess. Battue also unknown but get-at-able from the wordplay. Favourite clue 3dn.
  8. 15 mins, with the crossing unknowns RENMINBI and PARTITA last in. BATTUE also inconnu to me. Liked IN TRANSIT, but not ADS.
  9. Not my favourite type of puzzle, I’m afraid. Largely easy (most of the top half completed in 5 minutes) then made far more difficult by the inclusion of some obscure words (BATTUE, IMSHI,,RENMINBI), the last of which cannot be got from the wordplay alone. In a daily cryptic, which solvers generally like to complete without recourse to aids, I cannot see the point of an anagram clue for an obscure word. On this occasion I did resort to an aid to get me going again.

    I could scarcely believe I had the right answer for 25 until crossing letters were confirmed. One of the weakest clues I’ve seen in a long time. However, I did like the very neat clue to 24.

    Sorry to be a Mr Grouch.

    1. I very much agree with all your points, and it’s clear that most people here at least haven’t heard of the RENMINBI, which is good enough for me as a qualification for obscurity.
      However there is something a little bit odd about describing the currency of the most populous country in the world as obscure. It’s also a word that’s been in the news an awful lot recently, mostly in the context of American politicians complaining that it’s pegged too low against the dollar, thereby stealing American jobs and eating American babies. I guess not many here read the FT!
      1. As suggested above, I’d always had it in my head that the yuan was the currency, so it seems I have been under a misapprehension. In my defence, I get the feeling I’m not alone, as the wikipedia entry feels it necessary to clarify the situation thus:

        “The distinction between yuan and Renminbi (RMB) is analogous to that between the pound and sterling; the pound (yuan) is the unit of account while sterling (renminbi) is the actual currency.”

        1. No need to defend it – as I said I regard the number of people here (vocabulary universally larger than mine) who aren’t familiar with the word qualification enough. I’m bound to have heard it given my job (which I ought to get back to…).
          In any event, I very much doubt it will qualify as obscure anywhere 20 years from now!
  10. A slowish solve but at least all my guesses were correct. Never heard of BATTUE or IMSHI which went in from cryptic alone, and RENMINBI was only a vague recollection. A steady, and not particularly enjoyable, slog. 39 minutes
  11. 35 minutes for most of it and nearly as long again on the last 5. Count me in for RENNIMBI too and I failed at 14dn because I put STANDSTILL at 13ac.Went for NOON LOGIC for no reason other than it fitted. Didn’t know BATTUE or IMSHI but what else could they have been to fit the wordplay.
  12. This one didn’t last me the whole of lunch-time. I knew renminbi, believe it or not.
  13. Rennimbi and Donne, unfortunately, and 31 minutes of which about ten glaring at BAT-U-. Toughie. Proceeded to school and no doubt exhausted by the cruciverbals went and lost several hours’ work on a school magazine, now unfindably pored over by a higgs boson in the computer there. It’s going to be a long night.
    1. Just realised I got DONNE for DANTE so another one wrong. I missed that this morning.
  14. Three wrong and one cheat (onto an accounting term at 12ac, with the cricketing bit safely tucked away, but couldn’t think of ‘true’), but I found this very enjoyable nonetheless.

    Like Joe Casey, the ‘citizens’ currency’ wasn’t a problem for one living in China, and my COD Tanganyika was another that failed to meet with universal approval. Nice surface(!) and kudos to the setter for getting it in at all.

    As often, I went wrong along similar paths as Jack (writer/editor/non-geek?), sticking in ‘standstill’ and consequently ‘noon logic’. My third wrong may be ascribed to my inability to spot both a cricketing clue and a hidden clue in the same puzzle, inventing ‘insui’ for the denim shirt.

  15. Same gaps as others today (BATTUE, IMSHI, CHOP LOGIC etc) so a lot to stash away for future use…

    Cod: TOOTHPASTE (needed all the checkers before this one fell!), but thought there were several imaginative clues.

  16. Bit surprised how many of us don’t know what the worlds largest economy uses for currency! I didn’t even bother mentioning it in my comment above. Mind you I confess I thought there were 100 renminbi to a yuan, whereas it appears 100 Fen = 1 yuan = 1 renminbi. No doubt fen will be along shortly! (“Chinese currency, prevalent in East Anglia?”)
  17. I appear to be the only person who doesn’t know his Bach well enough. Renminbi? Love ’em, eat ’em all the time! And my father fought with the 8th Army in North Africa so imshi held no terrors for me.
  18. 26′. I thought at first I might get a PB, I was entering them so fast, largely without thinking–as z8 said, it was a wavelength sort of thing, and this time for some reason I was on it. For a while, anyway; 13, 11, 14, 23 slowed me down plenty. Like others, I’m surprised that RENMINBI and TANGANYIKA were unfamiliar to so many; but then, I didn’t understand STOCKSTILL–that is, the ‘float’ part. 14 was late coming in because for me, chopping logic is not arguing falsely (affirming the consequent, that sort of thing) but hairsplittingly.
  19. A long time and a whole lot that I didn’t know today. Needed aids for CHOP LOGIC and to confirm the out-of-left field IMSHI. I also didn’t know how ‘house’ gets you SEMI, what a torus is, BATTUE, the RENMINBI or TROCHAIC. AT 2D I was looking for a policeman, not what he was in, and I didn’t see that until, well, now. Over an hour to navigate through all that. On the other hand, I liked TANGANYIKA, TOOTHPASTE and AMEN, but COD to the concise ADDLED. A win for the setter today. Regards to all.
  20. Have now checked all the usual sources and none of them supports it without a hyphen. Some on-line dictionaries have it but if as a Times answer it’s supposed to be in COED/SOED, Collins or just possibly Chambers, it isn’t.
    1. I agree, Jack. I would normally think of this as two words, but the hyphenated wersion seems most common from a google search of “stockstill definition”. I flipped through the first 5 pages and found not one entry supporting the single word version. Methinks it a numeration oversight.
  21. I had ‘bedlam’ for a while until I got 1d then banged in DANTE. I knew RENMINBI and guessed correctly at IMSHI. Did not know BATTUE. Enjoyable.
    IMSHI? …man you learn a lot here. Whilst looking it up in the Urban dictionary I discovered a few entries down the Scots term DIPPIT GONK …a normally intelligent person who has momentarily decided to become an imbecile…d’accord.
  22. Aargh! My second mistake of the year (RENNIMBI), but my first in the daily Times Cryptic since December 2007 that’s down to ignorance rather than carelessness. Or rather down to forgetfulness, since looking back I see that the clue “Prime piece of mutton in brine, cooked for change in China (8)” came up in Jumbo 694 (21 April 2007), and (faced with -E-M-N-I), I bunged in BERMINNI. (Deep sigh!)
  23. RENMINBI took less than five seconds, but CHOP LOGIC took most of the evening (on and off), a sleep, and finally an admission of failure this morning.

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