Times 24,851 Just Like That

Author   dorsetjimboPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Solving time 25 minutes

Reasonably straightforward puzzle that was fun to solve. The odd bit of slang and the reference to Tommy Cooper may prove problematic for overseas (or even some younger) solvers. Other than that there should be no major problems.

Across
1 ATMOSPHERE – (homes apt)*-RE; on=RE;
6 ZING – (do)-ZING; the same=ditto=do;
9 ARCHAIC – ARCH-AI-C(rumble); the A1 is the east coast road London to Scotland;
10 DIGICAM – MA(CIG)ID all reversed;
12 BONE-SETTER – B(ONE’S)ETTER; cardinal (number)=ONE;
13 TOW – TO (the) W;
15 OBEYED – O(BEY)ED; foreign governor=BEY; (Oxford English) Dictionary=OED;
16 ARMOURER – (f)ARM(OUR)ER; the guardian of the (chain) mail;
18 IN,PIECES – I-N(P)IECE’S; P=one penny;
20 CERISE – CE-RISE;
23 OUT – O-(TU=Trade Union reversed); on strike=OUT;
24 IMPERILLED – IMPE(RI)LLED; RI=RHode Island;
26 EXPOSER – EX-POSER;
27 FAIRISH – FA-IRISH; FA=Football Association; the Celtic language of Eire;
28 ARNE – A(r)R(a)N(g)E(d);
29 ADOLESCENT – A(DOLE)SCENT; 3=3 Down; DOLE is slang for unemployment benefit; adolescence these days occurs well before the 6th form;
 
Down
1 AMAH – AM(A)H;
2 MICROBE – MICRO-BE;
3 STATE,BENEFITS – STATE-BE(NE)FITS; say=STATE; Geordie=Tyne and Wear=NE;
4 HOCKEY – cooler=slang for prison=chokey then drop the “c” down to give HOCKEY;
5 REDSTART – RE(D)START; departs=D (timetables);
7 INCITER – INCITE-R(iot); sounds like “in sight”;
8 GAME,WARDEN – G(A-MEW)ARDEN;
11 GIRD,ONES,LOINS – (Oh+riding+lessons without “h”=horse (heroin))*;
14 COMIC,OPERA – CO(MIC)OPER-A; reference Tommy Cooper
17 TEMPERED – TEMP-E-RED;
19 PUT,UPON – PUT-UP-(NO=number reversed);
21 ITEMISE – (qu)ITE MISE(rable);
22 ARTFUL – ART-FUL(l);
25 SHOT – two meanings;

42 comments on “Times 24,851 Just Like That”

  1. Once again, I got them all bar one: this time the sneaky AMAH, for which I had AYAH.

    Unknowns today: BEY, CHOKEY, MEW

    Got without FU: STATE BENEFITS

    All in all a fine start to the day, with good workout for the grey cells!

  2. 36m, with lots of parsing on the scribble pad. Lots and lots! But there’s not a clue to complain about; they’re all good. (With just vaguely possible quibbles about the possessive in 27ac and “virus” –> MICROBE.) Also with Jim on the 6th former. Even in my day we were well and truly beyond any doll-essence by that stage of the game. But, no, I’m really not complaining!
  3. 27 minutes on the club clock, I hope because I tried starting it on my mobile, only to discover I had no means of entry.
    Struggled a bit on much of the right hand side, but for no obvious reason.
    I agree that no VIth Former would accept the designation “adolescent”
    CoD to the short but far from simple TOW: applying the usual “from the east” formula, I spent quite a while wondering how come wot meant “away”.
  4. After a probable pb yesterday thanks largely to the music stuff I really struggled in the top half today and once completed spent 10 minutes looking for SNOO in dictionaries meaning “the same” (SNOOZING). Yes, I thought it brave of z8 to cite C S Lewis to our resdident expert. Happy retirement Jack if that is what it be.
  5. 89 minutes with one wrong, ‘share’ for STATE BENEFITS, where I was unhappy with ‘say’ = ‘share’, as the latter means ‘tell’. (Not to mention, I’d never heard of the phrase I was positing.)

    COD to FAIRISH. Nice puzzle. Thanks to the setter and to Jim for unpacking 6 & 13 ac and 4, 11 & 14 dn.

  6. Jim, did you mean to write G(A MEW)ARDEN, or don’t I understand your shorthand?!
    1. Typo corrected – thanks. One day I’m going to manage to blog a puzzle without making a typing error!
  7. I took ages to get going this morning but eventually found the setter’s wavelength and completed all but three in the NE by the time I reached work having lost out on quality solving time by waking up late and at the station being surrounded by a noisy conversation. Still, it will be my last ever commute on the 19th so I look forward to ideal solving conditions Tuesday- Thursday in future.

    10ac was my downfall. Incidentally DIGICAM is not found by Chambers Word Wizard or Word Matcher. I finally dredged it up myself by following incorrect wordplay which I won’t embarass myself by revealing.

    1. Interesting. I’ve just checked and DIGICAM is in Chambers dictionary (old fashioned printed version)

      Do we take it that you are retiring?

      1. I haven’t access to the usual books at the moment so I wasn’t querying the words existence, but it hasn’t reached the solvers yet.

        Yes, I am retiring 18 months earlier than planned because thanks to the Coalition cuts my employers are offering a redundancy deal which suits me rather well.

    3. I meant to say that I had ‘magicam’ (‘ma’am’ around -‘-gic-‘) for a long time.
  8. A good challenge. Another who opted for AYAH (OK, I couldn’t reconcile ‘ya’ with ‘top-grade’ but otherwise I could make it fit the wordplay). Thanks, jimbo, for the explanations of ZING (I thought it was probably something to do with ‘zizzing’) and STATE BENEFITS (without the ‘dole’ in ADOLESCENT I wouldn’t have got this).

    I’ve always thought of the A1 as the east coast road from Scotland to London. Maybe I’m too influenced by Dr. Johnson: “The noblest prospect which a Scotchman ever sees, is the high road that leads him to England!” Not that it was called the A1 in Johnson’s time.

  9. Oops! two wrong. Had ‘macrobe’. IT and biology are not my strong points. (At least there’s a ‘macrobiote’, according to C.)

    Having read further in C, I note that ‘microbiology’ is defined as ‘the biology of microscopic or ultramicroscopic organisms, such as bacteria, viruses or fungi’, while a ‘microbe’ is defined as ‘a microscopic organism, esp. a bacterium’, so they would seem to be fudging things a bit, or at least hedging. Over to the experts …

    1. “Macrobes” turn up in CS Lewis’ “That Hideous Strength”, where they are “fallen” supernatural beings mucking about on Earth. CS Lewis’ SF trilogy is much underrated, in my opinion.
      1. As someone who’s read just about everything he ever published (apart from his introduction to Layamon’s Brut) that might be what I was thinking of. Yes, much to enjoy in all three of his SF books. ‘Though the first (‘Out of the Silent Planet’) is my favourite, ‘That Hideous Strength’ is CSL ‘off his leash’ and indulging some of his favourite themes, such as the pernicious effects of ‘inner rings’.
        1. Good to find a fellow fan. Do you suppose Disney will film them when they’ve finished messing about with Narnia?
  10. 15:34 here, although I took a long time to get going, and didn’t enter anything for the first couple of minutes. In the end I managed to unpick the anagram for GIRD ONE’S LOINS and I was away. The rest of it fanned out from there fairly smoothly, with very few hold-ups, although I did tentatively write in DOCTOR for the second half of 12ac at first.
  11. 50 minutes. No major problem but a lot of minor ones, apparently. Most time was spent on trying to understand TOW and ZING, emulating zabadak’s WOT conundrum & Barry and Martin’s SNOOZING & ZZZZING. For some reason, ditto=DO always catches me out. I agree this was a fun solve and my COD to COMIC OPERA.
  12. 23:28 here, largely because I was another one who put “ayah” in first, wasn’t happy with it and spent ages pondering until “amah” occurred to me. Also not quite sure what my fellow north east residents will make of 3dn . . .
  13. Normal good, solid, arts-biased Times fare with some neat clues, eg 14dn and the elegant 13ac.
    Science rating only 1/10 (1/2 point each for digicam, microbe)
  14. Kicked myself for not getting “atmosphere” and off it hockey and the unknown amah. No problems with the rest.

    Thought microbe was a cracking clue. Reminds me of my dad’s BBC Micro c1985. To do his home banking he plugged the phone handset into the modem cradle. In those days 128kb RAM, 20MB hard disk and 2MHz CPU was state of the art!

    For a while I was trying to justify rose garden or herb garden for 8.

  15. 48:38 – Rattled through the LHS in about 20 minutes, then took nearly half an hour to knock off the last 9 on the RHS. Nothing particularly difficult, I don’t think, I just ran out of steam.

    I enjoyed the Tommy Cooper reference, and the definition of ARMOURER as old mailman.

  16. 17:06 .. very much enjoyed. Only query was against the definition of ADOLESCENT, but the next time some uppity functionary in their early twenties irritates me I shall cite the Romans and insist on speaking to a grown-up.

    Last in ARMOURER

    COD: STATE BENEFITS (cheeky bit of politics)

  17. Fast out of the blocks and had everything bar the NE corner done in 15 minutes. But then came the customary frozen rabbit moment and I eventually limped home in 49 minutes. In my early haste I was another who went for AYAH. I’m also disappointed that I missed the reference to Tommy Cooper, one of my all-time favourite comedians.
  18. Got half of the puzzle quite easily and then became totally stumped. Struggled on with a few more before coming here for the answers!
    Louise
  19. Flew through the left-hand side, struggled through the right. Ended up cheating to get REDSTART, never heard of it.
    Is 16a legitimate? I assume it is, as no-one else has mentioned it, but I would have thought that OUR intercepts ARMER, not the other way around?
  20. A fast start but ground to the usual crawl. This time it was the SE corner because I didn’t spot ADOLESCENT immediately. Like others, I wasted time with SNOOZING instead of DOZING and wondered if there was such a thing as a SNOO. I also tried to fit DOCTOR into 12a. Eventually finished in 31 minutes. A good fair puzzle, I thought.
  21. 32 minutes. I enjoyed this a lot. There were a couple of clues that I thought were a bit loose, but going through them afterwards I found that I’d just misunderstood them and the looseness was all in my brain.
    COD to the simple yet fiendish WOT backwards… or rather not as it turned out.
  22. About 35 minutes here, and fairly enjoyable as well. Nice puzzle, though as Jimbo points out, I had no idea who the Cooper was in 14. The checking letters quickly got me through that, though, plus the MIC. I was more severley held up by the ‘chokey’, which I didn’t know and didn’t look like a word either, so HOCKEY was my last entry, a stab in the dark, really, but certainly a sport. I’m with others on CODing TOW, which is quite elegant. Regards to all.
  23. This was one of those where I think Alzeheimer’s is finally setting in; I struggled for 43 minutes before dinner, decided to sleep on it, and after breakfast in 7 minutes got ZING, DIGICAM, BONESETTER, REDSTART, ARMOURER, ARTFUL, & FAIRISH. I would have appreciated the clues more if I had been a little sharper, but I can only blame myself. Although I will say that I’m not fond of words that are simply the product of morphological rules (someone who incites is an inciter, someone who exposes is an exposer, someone who dissuades is a dissuader, …) rather than having some non-predictable meaning (armourer, bone-setter–4 agentive nouns in one puzzle). You can add AMAH to the NY Times list of cliches, by the way.
    Delighted to find some fellow Lewis fans (although the ‘science’ in his science fiction leaves rather a lot to be desired). I’ll give the COD to TOW, too; unfortunately I’d thought of ‘tug’, and once something gets into my head, it takes forever for me to see other possibilities, especially when they’re the correct possibilities (I’d put in ‘home-helper’ for some reason, too).
    1. I agree on Lewis’s loose association with the Science bit of SF, though a lot of the space travel stuff seems to be borrowed from HG Wells. But then there’s that magnificent coup de theatre in the first volume when the hero realises while travelling through deep space in his iron sphere that life is outside, waiting to break in. So much for Science!
  24. 13:24 for me. I took ages to find the setter’s wavelength, then had a spurt, but finished up making ridiculously heavy weather of the last few clues.
  25. I’m surprised that nobody has commented on this, in 16ac. If they have and I’ve missed the post, then my apologies. By ‘intercept’ we are supposed to understand ‘surround’. How are they equivalent?
    1. Hadn’t noticed this. The only thing I can think of is that we are to take ‘our’ as subject of ‘intercept’, not object, as in, say, “To conclude, a Strauss waltz”.
    2. SOED has in its first definition as a verb “contain between limits”. The same definition also mentions “include”. The derivation they give is LME, so it’s not a recent meaning.

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