Times 24,887 A Bit of Everything

Author   dorsetjimboPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Solving time 15 minutes

An easy puzzle with at least one example of the mandatory ingredients (poet, cricket, literary knowledge, classical history) plus a scientist under the guise of the unit of measure named after him and a famous crossword compiler. The money dealing term may be unfamiliar to some but the cryptic is very straightforward. I can’t see any major quibbles or particular high spots.

Across
1 CLEMATIS – (slack time without “k”=last bit of wor-K)*; beautiful flowering climber such as travellers joy;
6 CARAFE – CA(RA)FE; RA=Royal Academician=artist; for the vin rouge;
9 WELL-APPOINTED – spring=WELL; given job=APPOINTED;
10 COMFIT – C-(MO reversed)-FIT; MO=Medical Officer;
11 AMAZEDLY – AM(AZED-L)Y; AZED=bar crossword compiled by Jonathan Crowther who took over from Ximenes;
13 KNOCKABOUT – KNOCK(AB)OUT; AB=Able Bodied Seaman;
15 TROY – two references 1=Hardy’s character in Far From Madding Crowd 2=City in which Helen lived;
16 AGIO – A-GI-O; the discount on a bill of exchange and other money dealing;
18 POST-CHAISE – POST CHA(I)SE; a fast carriage for carrying the post!;
21 PRESERVE – P-RESERVE;
22 PLAICE – sounds like “place”;
23 FAIR,AND,SQUARE – old fashioned=SQUARE=old fashioned slang; Soviet discus throwers perhaps;
25 SECOND – S-E(C-ON)D; society=S; journalist=ED; cape=C; tick=tock=second;
26 ROENTGEN – (not green)*; named after Wilhelm who discovered X-rays and won first ever Nobel prize for physics in 1901;
 
Down
2 LOW-DOWN – two references 1=dope=information=the low-down; 2=base=low down;
3 MALEFACTORS – MALE-F-ACTORS; more Larry than John I would guess;
4 TOAST – two meanings;
5 SOPRANO – S-OP(e)RA-NO; my daughter;
6 CLIMACTIC – CLIMA(C)TIC; C=clubs (cards);
7 ROT – (footwea)R (t)O (las)T; cobblers=slang for rubbish=ROT;
8 FIDELIO – FID(ELI)O;
12 EXTRAVAGANT – EXTRA-VAG(r=start of road)ANT; EXTRA=type of run in cricket; has anyone ever met a dog called Fido?;
14 AMPERSAND – (MPs are)*-AND; sign is definition
17 GIRAFFE – G(I-(keepe)R)AFFE; current=I (electrical symbol);
19 SPENDER – reference Stephen 1909-1995 who wrote about the class struggle;
20 SECRETE – S-E(lephant)-CRETE;
22 PIQUE – another two references 1=ill-feeling 2=to score 30 points in one hand without reply at piquet;
24 IBO – hidden (dj)IBO(uti); language of SE Nigeria;

43 comments on “Times 24,887 A Bit of Everything”

  1. Easy enough, if I had done it on paper; but I didn’t have a chance to print it out, so I went online, and didn’t bother to check what I had put in, I was so anxious to have done with it and put my feet up. So I overlooked my spelling of COMFIT as CONFIT, and put in ‘low-born’ (base, yes, but dope?). 25:56, when it should have been 28′ and correct.
    14d: ‘sign’ is the definition, no? (MPs are) changing, + ‘and’, which is what the sign means.
  2. I forgot to mention that AGIO is one more NY Times xword chestnut. (‘Tret’ is another; I always confuse the two, since I can never remember what either means.)
  3. I looked up Ibo on the internet and found Igbo, but not Ibo. Not sure the premise of the clue is correct.
      1. Ah, I see what you’re driving at. These are alternatives for the people; the language itself is listed as ‘Igbo’. Anyway, Chambers has Ibo as an alternative for both.

        Hasn’t this come up before?

        1. This came up in a concise a while ago. It completely stumped me and I went through this very thought and research process. I can save you some googling and confirm that, as Chambers reflects, IBO is sometimes used for the language.
          Unsurprisingly it went straight in today!
          1. I believe the consonant represented is actually one of those clever African combined labial and velar stops (try b and g simultaneously)
  5. Sorry, that anon was me…

    Anyway, I, too had CONFIT, thinking of the 007 film.

    I also had RECORD at 23ac, thinking of buying something ‘on tick’.

    Not such a good day today 🙁

    1. Ah yes. I think you’re right, and the wordplay works either way. Funny how crossword thinking (“doctor” = MO) can blind you to the otherwise obvious!
      I still think COMFIT is a better answer, though, because a COMFIT is always a sweet whilst a CONFIT is very often a duck.
  6. Fell into the ‘confit’ trap at 10ac. Checked in the dictionary and found that this is an obsolete form of COMFIT, but savoury rather than sweet. My ropey F&B knowledge would have been no barrier had I been a bit more attentive to the wordplay.

    65 minutes – I never got out of second gear.

  7. 45 minutes. I think there is a reasonable case to be made for CONFIT as an alternative at 10. If I have understood the entry correctly the ODE has them as alternatives according to the origins of the words although in culinary terminology they may have come to mean different things, one sweet the other savoury.
    2. I wish it were so, Jack, but there’s no accounting for the ‘doctor’ in the clue.
  8. 14 minutes. An enjoyable range of references and no quibbles. A couple of unknowns (AGIO, PIQUE in the card sense) and a few less than familiar things (I’d forgotten about Sergeant TROY, for instance) but all clearly clued. Failure narrowly avoided by correcting the bunged-in POST-CHASSE at the last minute.
    Didn’t understand “tick” = SECOND so thanks for that.
    1. Last time Sergeant Troy came up, to my shame, I thought it was a reference to Midsomer Murders, but this time ‘Hardy’ kept me on the straight and narrow.
      1. I might have made a similar mistake (or Inspector Morse perhaps) without the reference to Hardy. And I spent three years studying English Literature!
  9. 18 minutes — so quick for me. I got lured into “with” = “and” at 14dn and then panicked about “its meaning”. Then I saw the conceit; such that “its” referred to the answer as such.
    Homage to AZED much appreciated at 11 ac.

    Edited at 2011-06-28 10:24 am (UTC)

  10. Dare I say it, first in FIDELIO, last in ROENTGEN. Red rag to our venerable blogger’s bull.
  11. For some reason I couldn’t finish this last night, but in the morning everything fell into place pretty quickly. Strange to see AZED making an appearance as a wordplay element, since he’s very much still alive.
  12. Total disaster, for what should have been a fairly easy one. A few I didn’t know (ROENTGEN, AGIO, CLEMATIS) and a couple I didn’t see (FAIR AND SQUARE, EXTRAVAGANT).
    Blame it on the Bintang, I suppose.
  13. I think the question in the blog at 12dn relates to the previous answer (FIDELIO).

    My mother had a pair of dachshunds named Nobility and Fidelity, but more often known as Nobby and Fido.

  14. Regarding the living person rule, does it apply to just the answer, or to the wordplay as well?
    1. Both I think but isn’t this a reference to the xwd rather than the man himself so there’s no problem?
  15. About 20 minutes, with tennis in the background. Should be cricket, but there’s no roof over the Oval. Comfit from Alice, of course: everyone’s prize in the Caucus race, bar Alice herself.
    In Hackney, most Ibos I met spoke Ibo.
    Otherwise today, 23, decent 13 fun, if nothing 12 or 6d, and no 2 7 like yesterday homoclue. Cod to MALEFACTORS, though I’m sure it’s been worked much this way before.
  16. I enjoyed this very much although AGIO was unknown. A steady solve with no nasty hold-ups. 26 minutes
  17. I was slowish today, about 40 minutes, but came through fine in the end. I agree with Jimbo: nothing really exciting, nor anything that raises any real problems. I got PIQUE from the checking letters, not having heard of the card game, or its scoring terms. COD to TOAST, which had me fooled for a while. Regards.
    1. Piquet has an interesting history – worth a read in Wiki. Played extensively by the nobility and upper classes in France, Spain and England for hundreds of years before being superceded by bridge
  18. I don’t think anyone has pointed out that this puzzle is only a J short of a pangram. Having noticed this I spent a lot of time checking for errors before declaring it solved. I was going to mention this earlier but the discussion about CONFIT/COMFIT distracted me.
  19. 24 minutes with about five of them at the end on Agio, the most likely of the possibilities. Ibo is far more often seen about as the language than Igbo, surely. Nice to see ampersand – one has an affection for the word, don’t ask me why. Time for a real tester, setter!
    1. Not in the world of Google. If you type in “ibo language” you get the message “did you mean: igbo language”. Reminiscent of the message you used to get if you typed in “French military victories”.
  20. 7:25 for me, so better than yesterday at any rate.

    Am I right in thinking that O = “over” in 16ac is an abbreviation of the cricketing term (rather than a shortened form of “on”)? The dictionaries I have immediately to hand don’t include that usage. (Or am I missing something more obvious?)

      1. Thanks. I thought that might be the case.

        I have a copy of the 6th edition of the COD (as it was then) – the first one produced under the editorship of John Sykes – which replaced the 5th edition I had previously, and I’m afraid I haven’t bought one since. That was 1976 so perhaps it’s due for a replacement, though I’ll probably still hang on to it in memory of John, whom I competed against nine times in the Championship, going eight-one down (and he wasn’t well the year I beat him).

    2. The latest version of Chambers gives o = on and of but not over. I assumed cricket but perhaps should have said so
      1. The latest version of Chambers (11th edition) does indeed give ‘over(s)’ for O, as regular Listener solvers will testify. It’s a boon to Listener setters.
        1. Regular Listener solvers who’ve bought the 11th edition, that is. Cheapskates Thrifty Yorkshiremen, like me, who are still using the 2003 edition, can justify O = “over” by O = “o” (or “‘o”) = “on” = “over”. However, while that sort of thing is OK for the Listener puzzle, I wouldn’t expect to find it in the daily Times cryptic.
  21. It may be close, but the world of Google isn’t quite yet the world of people.

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