Times 24860 – A dreadful end to a dreadful week

Author   daveperryPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Solving time: 1:22:27 – Another shocking time to add to my collection. I don’t think I’ve been under an hour all week. Not the fault of the crosswords, I hasten to add, just me.

Very tired tonight, and fighting drowsiness all the way through which undoubtedly added to my time, but I’ve been off my game all week so it wasn’t really any surprise. Maybe I’ll be back on form a bit next week.

A few unknown words for me which took a bit of working out – STOA, THOREAU, ORIOLES, FICHU & COADJUTOR. Some nice clues today – I think 6a & 2d were probably the best for my money, and I liked the cunningly hidden word at 9a.

cd = cryptic def., dd = double def., rev = reversal, homophones are written in quotes, anagrams as (–)*, and removals like this

Across
1 FRAUDSTER = (US REDRAFT)* – to ‘do’ someone is to con them, so ‘One who does’ is the definition
6 VISOR = Racket Or Swindle In Village rev – ‘heads must roll’ is a neat instruction to reverse the initials which I’ve not seen before
9 omitted – very neatly disguised reverse hidden
10 WAXINGS – It took me a moment to parse this one. S (Small) follows (dogs) WAXING (apparently getting more substantial, as in the opposite of waning)
11 deliberately omitted
12 CASt + SO WARY
13 CAGE BIRD = CA + (BRIDGE)*
14 STOA = A pOeTeSs rev – I didn’t know the word, but the wordplay was clear enough
17 hANDY
18 JOHN PEEL – dd – ‘Someone who was hunting’ is a reference to the subject of D’ye ken John Peel, while ‘Auntie’s old record player’ refers to the late BBC DJ. Auntie Beeb is commonly used affectionate name for the BBC.
21 JOYSTICKS = STICKS (bears) on JOY (transport) – a bit weak, I thought, but given away by the checkers.
22 C(HAS)M – to ‘have’ someone is another euphemism for duping them
24 THO(RE + A)U – Henry David Thoreau was a writer & transcendental philosopher.
25 O + RI(O)LES
26 RATTY = RAT + YeT rev
27 FLY AGARIC = (FAIR CLAY + G)*
Down
1 FICHU – a type of shawl. I can see the ‘shoe’ = “CHU”, but I don’t see how ‘Price’ = Fi, or is it “fish”? It looks like it’s “FEE + SHOE” – thanks to the anonymous blogger.
2 ACT THE GIDDY GOAT = (HAT ETC)* + GIDDY (anagrind) + (TOGA)* – The anagrind here is in the solution rather than the clue, for a change.
3 DIATRIBE = “DYE A TRIBE”
4 TAKE CAR + troublE
5 deliberately omitted
6 VOX POP = V (very small) + POP (drink) about OX (neat)
7 SIN/BAD (twin evils) + TAILOR (fashion) about HE’S (fellow’s)
8 RUSTY + NAIL – A cocktail of Scotch & Drambuie – here’s how to make one
13 COADJUTOR = (A COURT + J + DO)* – I’ve not seen this word before and it took me a while to come up with the most likely arrangement of the letters.
15 SO(Borne)S + TORY
16 KNOCKING = KING (valuable diamond perhaps) after CONK rev
19 ST(EEL)Y – A Tamworth is a breed of pig. The breed became famous in the UK after a pair of them, nicknamed the Tamworth Two, escaped from an abattoir and went on the run for a week before recaptured. The story captured the public interest back in 1998, and the pair were named Butch and Sundance.
20 SC + RUFF – although I don’t know where the SC comes from. No doubt someone will enlighten me. SC is from the Latin silicet meaning ‘that is’ – thanks to rosselliot.
23 MU + SIC – SIC is from the Latin for ‘such’ and is used when a word or phrase is printed deliberately oddly because it is being reproduced verbatim from another source.

57 comments on “Times 24860 – A dreadful end to a dreadful week”

  1. This was a toughie – 35 minutes, though a lot of that was trying to get KNOCKING and JOHN PEEL from the wordplay. SINBAD THE SAILOR from definition, STEELY from wordplay, JOHN PEEL from checking letters after convincing myself KNOCKING must be right (then seeing the wordplay).
  2. 20 dn sc = silicet = that is (to say). Sneaky!!! Stumbled through this online with a modicum of assistance (Was never going to get fichu) in a bit under 40 min, and of course the one obligatory mistyped keyed letter for two wrong.
  3. A fun puzzle.

    I think 1dn is meant to be a homophone of FEE + SHOE.

    AT 12ac it seems odd to describe a flightless bird as a “winger”!

  4. Dave, rather you than me
    Out of five days of Times, Thursday was about the only ‘easy’ day and I got that yesterday 🙂 Today, I struggled and took nearly an hour and even then have to come here to understand FICHU (sounds like fee shoe) and John Peel, which I got very quickly without understanding the Auntie connection. I think this has to do with my radio habits when I was a student in UK in the 70’s … I was more a morning radio listener and would be more familiar with the likes of Noel Edmunds (my favourite), Dave Lee Travis, Tony Blackburn, Terry Wogan and even sometimes, Jimmy Young. Whatever happened to them?
  5. To paraphrase the air traffic controller in Airplane! Rather than feel sorry for myself, I extend my sympathy to those who decided to get cracking on the Times crossword this week. I thought I was doing rather well for an hour until I fell apart on the left-hand side, failing to get CAGE BIRD, even after considering it, being my biggest “facer”. Not that the right was a lot better: CASSOWARY, JOHN PEEL and RUSTY NAIL all defeated me, the last just the day after I confessed to knowing nothing about cocktails.

    I must give my COD to ACT THE GIDDY GOAT for sheer bravado. ‘Act the Roman fool’ waw about as close as I got, although I did flirt with the goat.

    My compliments to the setter and the much put-upon blogger.

  6. 47’ this morning: so, yeh, a difficult week all round. (Though I’m going to claim Wednesday’s as the toughest!) Several DNKs: fichu, coadjutor and fly agaric. Though the clues made them fairly obvious. Hence the left side was quick(ish) while the right was a bit of a bugger.

    My main contender for 7dn (which would have helped the right side no end), with the S in place, was ‘slings and arrows’. But, when I finally got it, RUSTY NAIL had an interesting construction and will find favour with those who like a bit of science GK.

    Sadly, my last was JOHN PEEL. Now there was someone who really knew his music!

    Cassowaries: they have wings but they don’t wing!

  7. Seeing the term ‘dreadful’ in the heading may at first sight suggest that the puzzle is dreadful rather than a slow time for the solver (the two could coincide, but given the consistent high standard of the puzzles that seems unlikely!). One could wish that the main focus at the start of each blog was on the particular features of the puzzle, rather than time taken — although the level of difficulty is obviously a very important feature to talk about. But I suppose that the very title of the blog and the fact that the annual championship is to do with speed solving will always push the emphasis towards personal performances.
    1. Well, if you read past the headline the very first sentence of the blogger’s comment makes it perfectly clear what he means and no blame is attached to the setter so I don’t see what your problem is.

      Actually there is far less emphasis on speed around here than there used to be and several of the regular blogging team including myself often turn in times greater than 30 minutes and sometimes more than 60, which is hardly speed solving.

  8. Lordy, what a week! Luckily, I got this one printed out–I can’t imagine trying to do it online. 68 minutes, and it could have been a lot longer if I hadn’t finally decided that 2d must be ‘act the giddy goat’, even though I’d never heard the expression, and couldn’t find it in my often dependable dictionary. Nor did I know that ‘conk’ meant ‘nose’, and I had to look up Tamworth to find out that they are pigs. (Ah, those innocent days, when 2 runaway pigs could make the news.) On the other hand, I somehow got ‘Sinbad the Sailor’ on the basis of, I think, one checker; as with several others, I figured out the solution only after getting the solution. I knew ‘John Peel’, but only the tune, from playing it in the band in junior high school.
    Great blog, Dave; but 1) STOA is yet another NY Times chestnut; 2) not know Thoreau? He who said, “Some circumstantial evidence is very strong; as when one finds a trout in the milk.”
  9. “Act the giddy goat” is in Collins. I know because I had to look it up whilst solving as I never heard of it either. The only “giddy” I’m familiar with is “my giddy aunt”.

    “Wing” can be a verb meaning “to move swiftly on, or as if on, wings” (Collins) so I think that excuses “winger” meaning something that flies.

    I agree it has been a bad week for solvers such as myself whose confidence is easily knocked back and I would certainly be thinking ‘dreadful’ rather than ‘bad’ if it had ended up being my turn to blog the Friday puzzle and I had been faced with this one.

    I was never going to solve it unaided because it became obvious quite early that there were words I simply didn’t know. I think these have all been covered above so I won’t go through them again.

  10. ..but the point is that cassowaries don’t fly. They crash through undergrowth (which is why they wear a little crash helmet) so they don’t “wing” in either the literal or figurative sense.
    1. Ah, I get the point! I should have looked it up first. I will add it to my (short) list of flightless birds.
  11. …and some, make that several, aids in 1hr 33mins. Had to be CASSOWARY but even I, a Sydney urbanite, know that they don’t fly!
    10AC dogs = waxing? Sorry, no understand.
    Similarly, I don’t understand the parsing of THOREAU. RE and A, yes, but the rest, no. Await the parsing of “price” in 1d with interest. Thanks for the blog, Dave Perry, especially parsing CATWALK! Not that I will ever rise to the heights of being a blogger on this site, but rather you than me today!! Several words I had never heard of either. COD to JOHN PEEL.
    1. 10a – ‘dogs’ here is in the sense of ‘follows’ and is merely an instruction to place the S after WAXING.

      1d – I’ve amended the blog to cover this now. ‘Price’ is a synonym for ‘fee’ which is a homophone for ‘fi’.

      I used to think I could never be a blogger, but it’s not as hard as you might think. It doesn’t matter if you don’t always understand everything (as I didn’t today), you don’t normally have to wait long before someone points out your shortcomings!

      1. My apologies to keriothe. In correcting my own comment, I inadvertently seem to have deleted his. He wrote –

        WAXINGS: S (small) follows (dogs) WAXING (apparently getting more substantial).
        THOREAU: RE (touching) A (article) in (that bores) THOU (you).
        Price: see above. FI sounds like “fee”. Although in this case it doesn’t really!

        2. Thanks Dave, and no need to apologise: I deleted it myself because I was going to add something, but then you posted so I didn’t bother.
  12. Forty minutes, with a lot of time trying to work out what letters to put where in C_A_J_T_R, possibly the most unpromising set I have ever seen, and not helped by failing to work out the anagrist, or even if it was an anagram. Otherwise a set of clues stretching the further reaches of memory, which inevitably takes time these days.
    My thick question of the day: does rusty=copper through colour association, or am I missing a “bit of science”?
    CoD for both cunning concealment and smile-raising definition to CATWALK, though I think the scale by which the CoD might be measured today is Mohs rather than brilliance.
    1. I certainly interpreted it in the colour sense. I’m not sure what science it is that mctext is referring to. So far as I’m aware, there’s no chemical connection between copper and iron oxide.
  13. A very enjoyable puzzle although for me “winger” to describe a CASSOWARY must be a mistake. It certainly held me up. There aren’t many flightless birds after auk, emu, kiwi, penguine, rhea and ostrich so I found this clue rather confusing but trusted the wordplay.

    I don’t think the puzzle quite as difficult as is being portrayed here. The wordplays are sound and if followed give unequivocal solutions. I would expect solvers who have honed their skills on Mephisto to make steady progress. 20 minutes for me today.

    1. What makes this site interesting is that measures of difficulty do vary between solvers: measured in time alone, this one took me almost half as long again as yesterday’s. I think, like you, that today’s clues were entirely fair (pace CASSOWARY), but were harder to untangle than most. Indeed (for me at least) most of this week’s have had clues where resolving the wordplay has been more of a confirming exercise following an educated or intuitive guess at the answer. I also thought today’s were less scintillating than is often the case, so hard but not brilliant.
      I entirely concur that Mephisto helps mightily both with stretching the vocab and deconstructing tortuous wordplay, but I sometimes find that I’m slower on “normal” cryptics after concentrating on Mephisto or Listener.
    2. Practice and not taking short cuts and working out the wordplay for each clue every time (not something I’m claiming always to do) certainly help an intermediate solver such as myself. BUT, I’d still say that aptitude for the special demands of the cryptic crossword is what ultimately sorts out the sheep from the goats, the swallows from the cassowaries. I may be wrong, but I feel that the mathematical brain (with half decent general knowledge – we mustn’t be too demanding!) has a head start on the rest of the field. This is by no means meant as a complaint – merely an observation on the possession of computing skills that make easy for him or her what is a struggle for the likes of me.

      Top time, by the way.

  14. 23:52 for me so yes, I found it hard too. I took “copper” = “rusty” as applying to redheads – often referred to as “copperknobs” or “Rusty”. My unfavourite today was “joysticks” – “bears” = “sticks” is more than a bit loose!
    1. It’s not loose in this sense is it?
      (tr) Slang chiefly Brit to tolerate; abide I can’t stick that man

        1. Yes I suppose that’s probably right.
          Perhaps in future we should be on the look out for couth, sipid, gruntled, sheveled, and chalant…
  15. Have puzzles this week been designed to prepare the challengers for the final Championship qualifier? It’s been tough going throughout and fully demonstrates why I should only attempt them from the comfort of my armchair (with a few references to hand, as needed).

    This was an excellent challenge (thanks, setter) and I got there in the end (over an hour). I knew THOREAU, COADJUTOR (from where??) and CASSOWARY (from earlier crosswords): otherwise I was with others on the unknowns and relied upon wordplay (I was particularly surprised to find that FLY AGARIC was indeed a toadstool). COD to JOHN PEEL: a real feeling of pleasure when the penny dropped.

    Congratulations, Dave, on the blog: I would have been far too weary, having completed the crossword, to write something so full and helpful. Thank you.

  16. 36 minutes – exactly the same as yesterday. Another tough but fair puzzle. I thought this was a real cracker, with almost as much cunning as Wednesday’s. The last few days have been an enjoyable challenge but I feel ready for an easy one!
    A few unknowns today (STOA, FICHU, ACT THE GIDDY GOAT, COADJUTOR) and several words that are not exactly in everyday use (ORIOLES, FLY AGARIC, RUSTY NAIL). But clear wordplay all round. The homophone is a bit dodgy but I don’t mind that.
    Nice to see JOHN PEEL make an appearance, albeit not for the first time.
    1. That’ll be the qualifying grid next Wednesday, then: the three predecessors have been the easiest of the year so far.
  17. No surprise to find that I had far more than my usual “just one” wrong today! Not helped by parsing 2 correctly, but getting the literal wrong: I had FISHU and PLAY THE SILLY GOAT. this led to several blanks on the LHS. On the other side, I discounted two (RUSTY NAIL, as I’d not come across this cocktail, and the DJ as, shame on me, I thought he was still alive, and knew that therefore it wouldn’t be him!

    However, still really enjoyed it, and thought there were some great clues.

    Re the comment way up the board regarding times, I never post my time, not (entirely) because I’d be far too embarrassed, but because it’s just not at all important to me. I just really enjoy the satisfaction of working it all out, and seeing everyone else’s comments, regardless of the time it takes.

    1. Well said Janie – for me personal satisfaction and a sense of achievement are much more important than time taken. For years I never bothered to time myself and only started when I was asked to write some of the blogs as there are quite a few solvers who do think that time is important. I still don’t do it to the precise minute and second.
    2. I saw how it worked too – well, sort of, at first – hazarding ‘fitou’ – because it sounded right – before plumping for ‘fishu’. Handy Andy also defeated me – the ‘h’ for horse had a whiff of Mephisto about it, and I’m not very good at Mephisto.
  18. Glad to read the blogger’s and others’ comments on the difficulty of this week’s puzzles, all of which have taken me much longer than usual to complete (where I have been able to finish at all). The main reason I read this blog is that so many people post their times here – there may be, as mentioned above, other ways of rating a crossword but I can’t think of any other way of rating your performance in completing it. 49 minutes.
  20. I’m not so sure about that. ‘I can stick it if I know it won’t last long’ (of pain) is attested and would not be that uncommon.
    1. Yep, fair enough. Yours is much more wieldy than any example I could think of.
        1. at my old firm we used to be three colleagues I called couth, ruly and scrutable; then we got a fourth called Ruth …
  21. as a relative beginner i don’t know what i would have done without the blogs this week. having read the above comments i am actually quite proud that i only fell short by two today – john peel and rusty nail (never drink anything but red wine, even with fish, so my knowledge of cocktails is strictly limited).

    had to google “act the giddy goat” to satisfy myself it was a genuine phrase, but still don’t really understand the answer.

    anyway, thanks to the blogger. as someone else remarked earlier, it’s not a job i ever envision myself doing.

    best wishes
    ak

    1. The definition is “clown”

      Funny “hat etc” gives anagram of ACT THE

      GIDDY GOAT indicates anagram of GOAT = “toga”

  22. Good blog Dave. Got waxings but needed explanation. I have completed all this week….and enjoyed it more because they were challenging and took me longer. Strange, but longer is more enjoyable. So to speak!
  24. this was definitely a tough week, although strangely this may not even have been the worst. It actually went in steadily but very slowly, although I admit to giving up without 18 done and whacking in HORN BELL for the heck of it – something combining the diving bell of the hunter with the horn on a gramophone I assume. I was adamant that Auntie was BBC related without knowing how it could fit in.

    Was fairly confident that 27A was FAY GARLIC for a while. It seemed very plausible, and even left me questioning KNOCKING for a bit, and trying to find alternatives. Something like that underlines the value of a depth of general knowledge when it comes to speed solving. Getting SINBAD forced the only other combination of letters that made sense.

    The trouble with a homophone/obscure GK combo as in 1D is that you are slightly at the mercy of the guess you make. I had FISHU for a while until getting CATWALK, and had it not been a checker it would have remained so!

  25. My run of lucky gets had to end sometime, and I fell at the first hurdle today with FECHU. Not so far off the mark. I thought this was the best in a string of extremely fine (and difficult) puzzles this week. COD to ACT THE GIDDY GOAT. Well done, setters all; I was well done.
  26. I’m a bit relieved that others found this tough. At one point I almost gave up, with many gaps in the lower half, particularly on the left. However, once I got 17 and realized 13d was pure anagram I worked out a likely arrangement of letters that I didn’t recognize but that helped me to finish (in an hour).

    There were some giveaways, but many clues were tricky to unpick because the surface would often distract from the wordplay (the mark of a good clue). In others the synonym required was not the obvious, though perfectly valid (transport-joy; Copper-rusty).

    A very minor criticism of 3d: I always prefer the operator to go with its operand, which is not the case here since the only element that is homophonic is DI (dye). Otherwise a very fine set of clues.

  27. I’m relieved that others found this rather difficult. I began to think it was just me being stupid. The top half went in very quickly. FICHU was my first in – thanks largely to an early addiction to the works of Georgette Heyer, an invaluable source of arcane information on regency dress. Nearly all her heroines wear fichus at some point. I was stuck for ages on ACT THE ?????? GOAT. Couldn’t think of CAGE for 13a so couldn’t see GIDDY. Toyed with SONG and MINA to go with the BIRD. Had nearly all in 35 minutes then got completely stuck for another 20 minutes in the SW corner until I saw JOYSTICK. Still needed aids for COADJUTOR which I’d never heard of. An hour in total. A sorry performance.
  28. If rusty = copper then how can you explain ‘to arrest one’? I saw this as {t}rusty.
    1. How about “to arrest” = NAIL, and “one drunk at cocktail party” = RUSTY NAIL.
  29. 12:50 for me – so, like z8b8d8k, I took almost exactly half as long again as I did with yesterday’s. An interesting and enjoyable puzzle, with the half-familiar COADJUTOR costing me a little time at the end.

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