Times 24870: Every 18 has a cloud … 1ac 21 that!

Posted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Solving time: 18 minutes.

By no means difficult this morning; though it was hard to know which answers to omit. Thought there was some complex math(s) going on at 15 but it turns out to be purely to do with the letters in the abbreviation. Doh! This was the only one that gave me pause but. Fast times expected, then, from the speedsters.

 

Across
 1 PITY. PI{e}TY.
 3 DETER,MIN(E)D. The E is the last letter of ‘lifE’.
 9 EVANGEL. Reversal of ‘leg’ and ‘nave’. An archaic word for the christist gospel.
11 CUT,I,CLE. The last bit is ‘clean’ minus ‘an’.
12 E(LECTOR)A,L. ‘Ea’ for ‘each’.
13 O,SAGE.
14 D(IS,PEN)SATI,ON. Don is the academic (as he so often is). Sati is suttee: the former Hindu practice of a widow immolating herself on her husband’s funeral pyre. The def is ‘immunity’.
18 SILVER LINING. The middle letters in ‘wAGe’ give us the symbol for silver.
21 Omitted. The title should give it away but.
22 NOR(MALI)SE.
24 TR{y},OUNCE.
25 D,IS,MISS. Final letter of ‘traineD’.
26 COFFEE SHOP. CO (firm) and HOP (bound), containing F (fine) and FEES.
27 MESS{ages}.
Down
 1 PRE(TEND)S. TEND (nurse) inside PRES{ent} with the otorhinolaryngology department removed.
 2 T(RAVER)SE. The container is an anagram of ‘set’.
 4 E(U)(L)ER. E’er (always).
 5 ESCALATOR. Anagram of ‘stole a car’.
 6 METROPOLITANS. Anagram of ‘Rome’ and ‘Platonist’. NOAD2: “A bishop having authority over the bishops of a province, in particular (in many Orthodox Churches) one ranking above archbishop and below patriarch”.
 7 NEC{k},TAR.
 8 DIES,EL. Last two letters from the even letters of ‘wElL’.
10 GO THE DISTANCE. GOT; HE’D; 1; STANCE. Straight charade.
15 SEVEN SEAS. Cubic centimetres = cc (two Cs). 3.5 times that = seven Cs. And that sounds like Seven Seas.
16 FIL(1,CID)E. FILE (record).
17 OG,{d}RESSES. Reversal of GO (turn).
19 M(ASTI)C. Asti is a favourite wine in these parts (when it’s not tent). MC (master of ceremonies) is the host.
20 Omitted. Don’t do this if your LJ account is playing up!
23 RA,DIO{r}.

 

35 comments on “Times 24870: Every 18 has a cloud … 1ac 21 that!”

  1. Did this in quick breaks during a rehearsal, found biggest hold-up the first three letters to go with -I-ICIDE and searched through the alphabet to find something that worked. METROPOLITANS and MASTIC from wordplay.

    I really liked 15 down, that made me smile.

  2. Terrific puzzle. around 45 minutes. still cant quite see word play of 18 across…can someone help please
    1. As the blog says: what we find in ‘wAGe’ is the letters AG, the chemical symbol for silver. So the word (wage) has silver lining (it).
  3. 35 minutes, so fairly straightforward for me although some of the knowledge required involved dredging up things learnt in past puzzles and then half-forgotten: OSAGE and EULER for example and that words ending -ICIDE can mean the perpetrator as well as the act of killing itself.
  4. A somewhat sluggish 40 minutes. Like George–and, I expect, just about everyone else–I went through the various killers I knew and finally came up with fil- . Fortunately, ‘sati’ had been in a recent cryptic — I had only known the spelling ‘suttee’ — or DISPENSATION might have taken me a lot longer.
    I think I’m with Maestrotempus on 18ac: What we find in ‘wage’ is silver, not silver lining. The word ‘wage’ has ‘WE’ lining it, not silver (it has silver lined, if anything). So what we find in ‘wage’ is WE lining AG, I guess; and that gives us the definition.
    Or something. ‘Hope in depression we found in wage’ would do it, maybe.

    1. The clue seems fine to me, since the lining to, say, a jacket is the special material covering its inside surface.
    2. Earlier I posted a response to maestrotempus’s enquiry but then deleted it because mcctext got there first.

      However, having removed it I realise there is now no reference to the saying “Every cloud has a silver lining” which would have dealt with Kevin’s point. The silver lining is INSIDE the cloud as ‘AG’ is inside “wage”.

      I also intended, but forgot, to make reference to the 1920 song by Jerome Kern and Bud De Sylva: Look for the Silver Lining (whenever clouds appear in the blue).

  5. …and one incorrect (ERECTORAL).

    I found this on the tough side, and several answers went in with queries, so I was glad to find them explained in the blog (SILVER LINING, SEVEN SEAS – doh! – , PRETENDS).

    As others, I had FILICIDE as my LOI.

    COD: ESCALATOR for the well hidden anagram … another doh moment for me!

  6. 52 minutes, with the murderer wrong, shoving in ‘timicide’ [killer of the ambitious?] after five minutes’ struggle. Nice puzzle: COD to MASTIC for the neatly deceptive surface – especially with all those Metropolitans around.
  7. EVANGEL ultimately obvious: new to me but assumed it linked to evangelise, evangelist. Sub 30 minutes for an enjoyable puzzle, helped in many ways by what I have learnt from this site (except FILICIDE – not the first murderer to spring to mind – and I initially chased the red herring of ‘Cain’). Joint CODs: GO THE DISTANCE and SEVEN SEAS.

    Thanks for the blog, mctext, and thank heavens there are too many letters in ‘otorhinolaryngology’ for it ever to appear as an answer. You may, however, have given setters some unwelcome ideas ….

  8. One of those relatively easy but good fun puzzles. 20 minutes to solve with the southern hemisphere giving more trouble than the north.

    Good to see Euler the Swiss mathematician responsible for much of the terminology used in maths. Loved “wage” and SEVEN CC.

    On FILICIDE can I suggest that the word play is particularly clear. “one group of dectives” is surely I-CID which means “record” is the container and “file” is one of the commonest? If you stop trying to guess from the definition and work the clue life gets easier!

  9. I found this tougher than I evidently should have and eventually slapped in VIVICIDE to end my plight. I thought a vive might be some sort of record of one’s life, possibly compiled by a metropolitan or an evangel, reasoning albeit faultily, that if a lector could be a reader (issuing or otherwise), anything might be possible. I did enjoy SILVER LINING and SEVEN SEAS and the rest in general.
  10. Not being 4, I couldn’t work the maths on SEVEN SEAS, but knew it had something to do with being twice 3.5. I ended up assuming the maths was wrong, with 3.5c doubled to 7 cc(s). I’m almost glad to be wrong.
    Otherwise 15 minutes, and good fun.
    At least one version of lining goes on the inside, so I was happy with that, and gave SILVER LINING my CoD for being clever. I also liked “designing Christian” at 23d.
    FILICIDE looks like one of those words which is only ever going to turn up in crosswords – indeed, most google hits seem to be definitions. Perhaps we should offer a prize for the most witty random alternative answer, with extra credit for making it match the wordplay. How about LINICIDE, the termination of an entire aristocratic family (or the destruction of tablecloths), file as in single file = line?
    1. At the risk of being censored, can I suggest COUNTRYSIDE for the murder of a particularly unpleasant person?
      1. Or more specifically Piers Morgan, as in the original of that gag in the “new definitions” section of “I’m Sorry I Haven’t A Clue”.
        My all time favourite of the genre was “lackadaisical: a bicycle made for one”.
      2. The uxbridge english dictionary defines the word as “The murder of Piers Morgan” …
    2. Well, stretching the dictionary def. of ‘wike’ to indicate a temporary record of a boundary delineation ..

      WIKICIDE: deleting one’s own Wikipedia entry

      (or defenestrating Julian Assange – cf. Piers Morgan, above)

  11. About 20 minutes, ending with LOG OFF, which I hope is correct. Enjoyed the SEVEN SEAS and SILVER LINING. Very nice puzzle altogether, enjoyable and fairly easily understood. I hadn’t heard of METROPOLITANS in this meaning before, but the anagram was quite clear. Regards to all.
  12. I was left with ?I?ICIDE after 38 minutes and had to go to aids. I started well but ran out of steam quite early on and finished on a stagger rather than a sprint. I know virtually nothing about mathematics so was pleased with myself for dredging up EULER from the depths. This was a delightful puzzle – quite challenging enough for me and never boring.
  13. 17 minutes in two goes for me. Yet another fairly straightforward – albeit very enjoyable – puzzle. We are due a stinker.
    I started doing an alphabet search for 16dn but decided it was more sensible to think of a suitable word for “record”. By this time I’d got to DILICIDE so in retrospect not the right move.
    METROPOLITAN was new to me and FILICIDE and EVANGEL were unfamiliar. OSAGE is one of those otherwise completely unfamiliar words that has appeared here enough times to be become almost commonplace. I imagine the OSAGE are very keen on NOH.
  14. 26:43, finishing with FILICIDE. Nice to see EULER, arguably the greatest of all mathematicians.
  15. First blog in a while, because a) I was away and b) I couldn’t complete some of the recent puzzles until days after they were published. For today’s, I took as usual just over an hour, but I needed to look up two wrong entries (GOG OFF? CITICIDE?) before being able to hit upon the correct versions and submit my solution. A lot of entries (PRETENDS, CUTICLE, SILVER LINING) went in without the wordplay being entirely understood, but they were clearly right. COD to GO THE DISTANCE and to SEVEN SEAS and ESCALATOR, which were amusing.

    Nice to see any mathematician, but especially EULER. Good mathematicians seem to end up on banknotes with a denomination of 10, such as the (perhaps former) Swiss 10 franc note bearing his effigy.

  16. Thinking of Curriculum Vitae’, which is a sort of record of someones life, I put in ‘viticide’ at 16D, but if ‘viticulture’ is wine production, it follows that viticide would be ‘wine-killing’ (if it existed)- something I’m quite good at.
  17. I’m having difficulty resolving 16 d as the clue reads “MURDERERS’ (plural) as in those committing the act as opposed to MURDER which is the act itself. I had no difficulty in seeing CID in FILE +I but surely one who commits such an act isn’t “a” FILICIDE….or am I missing something?
    1. Actually the clue has: murderer’s, so it’s not plural and the apostrophe ‘s stands for is or has.

      My first comment above (currently second in the thread) deals with your other point and it’s one I keep forgetting but it’s supported in the usual dictionaries. Homicide, suicide and presumably other -icides work in the same way.

      1. How very odd….and awkward. But that’s the English language for you.
        Thanks Jack.
      2. Think of Ko-ko’s song of the tomtit suffering from unrequited love:

        He sobbed and he sighed, and a gurgle he gave
        Then he plunged himself into the billowy wave
        And an echo arose from the suicide’s grave
        “Oh, willow, titwillow, titwillow”

  18. My bad as I understood it to be singular MURDERER but couldn’t (or wouldn’t) grasp the usage you so kindly pointed out.
  19. 8:22 here, with PRETENDS and FILICIDE holding me up slightly at the end. I thought the clue to 15dn (SEVEN SEAS) was a little far-fetched.

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