Times 24,893

Author   topicaltimPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Timed at 16:33, and very much enjoyed, though, as usual, I was nearly tripped up by assorted stray plants. I am a hopeless gardener, so this happens to me in both real life and in crosswords.

Across
1 EMPHASIS – [MP HAS 1] in ElectionS.
9 HAIRBALL – BALL at end of HAIR. “Queen” as female cat is always one to look out for.
10 UNFAIR – tUrN oFf + AIR.
11 READERSHIP – (PRAISEDHER)*.
12 MARS – double def., Mars as the god of war can stand in for the thing itself by metonymy.
13 ASSISTANCE – ASS + 1 + STANCE.
16 GELATIN – (E.G.)rev. + LATIN; lovely misdirection which had me thinking setter must suggest “I” or “me” or something similar.
17 CARVERY – CAR + VERY; I’d have said a carvery was a restaurant rather than a cafe, but the definitions for eating establishments aren’t strict enough for this to be a quibble.
20 DIRECTOIRE – (OCTober)* in DIRE IRE. Excellent revolutionary surface.
22 CHAR – CHARt.
23 BONESHAKER – [ONE (HAS)*] in (KERB)*. I only thought of this as referring to early bicycles, but it would seem it can apply to other vehicles?
25 ALICIA – gALICIA.
26 UNICYCLE – ICY in UNCLE; exactly why the pawnbroker became known as Uncle seems to have been lost down the ages.
27 RETINUES – IN inside (i.e. stayed by) RE:(“on”) TUES. Very elegant.
 
Down
2 MANDRAKE – i.e. MAN (crew) + DRAKE.
3 HEARTSEASE – HE + ART + [A Small in SEE].
4 SURREALIST – SURREy + ‘A’ LIST.
5 SHIATSU – Surgeon + HIATUS with the U/S (useless) turned upside down.
6 FINE – stufF IN Expensive.
7 FAT HEN – FATHEr + gardeN. I was well beyond my comfort zone with this weed.
8 SLIPPERY – Mules (the animal) are stubborn, of course, but mules (the footwear) are slippers, so this is the adjective for them. Boom boom! (I heard this clue in the voice of Barry Cryer, who often does this sort of thing while offering new definitions for the Uxbridge English Dictonary on I’m Sorry I Haven’t A Clue. “Sticky: a bit like a stick”, that sort of thing.)
14 STAGECRAFT – (FARCE + GATS)rev. + Time. I got the answer long before I worked out how the comedy and the “pieces” fitted together…
15 ADVOCATION – i.e. an ADvert VOCATION.
16 GADABOUT – A (BAD)rev. in GOUT.
18 ROADSIDE – Old AD’S in RIDE.
19 DINKIER – KIn in DINER.
21 RUNCIE – I in RUN C(of)E, &lit. referring to the 102nd Archbishop of Canterbury.
24 HACK – double def.

29 comments on “Times 24,893”

  1. Good news: I finished this one! Bad news: hardly anything in the SE after the hour. I’m blaming the ultra-cold mornings.
    A FINE puzzle I thought. (Though I’d forgotten the “posh brandy” meaning of that word.) What else to like?: finding the FARCE and the GATS in 14dn after the fact, as per Tim. Realising that it was GOUT that was needed in 16dn and not “a bout”. All of 16ac. But COD to RUNCIE for this &lit-sucker.
    On edit: just found this in Chambers for BONESHAKER: “any uncertainly reliable, crazy vehicle”.

    Edited at 2011-07-05 02:23 am (UTC)

  2. Needed to resort to aids in the NW after an hour to finish this one. My complete indifference to spirits – not to mention, a tendency not to spot hidden clues – meant that 6ac was always going to be tough (I put ‘wine’). Ian Fleming was clearly a bit of a brandy snob, as he has 007 pooh-pooh his host’s offering in Goldfinger with the words, ’30 year-old fine, indifferently blended … with an overdose of bon bois’.

    Ah, Robert Runcie … Whisper this quietly, but I was confirmed by him when he was Bishop of St Alban’s.

  3. Agreed, a good puzzle that doesn’t give much away. 71 minutes for me. My stumbling block was the SW corner, which only fell into place when GADABOUT gave up some helpful first letters. GELATIN was last in, once I’d ruled out the I/me/dog options. And another COD vote for RUNCIE – very neat.

  4. Needed a bit of help and a lot of time today. Good job I am an early riser as I see Jack is despite his recent retirement. 3 plants is 3 too many for me but I did think of FAT HEN straightaway but discarded as improbable until I had worked out the excellent HAIRBALL which I liked almost as much as my COD RUNCIE.
    1. … I felt a bit of a Herbert when I needed to cheat on the Surrey clue, having attempted to fashion ‘Shrop—–‘ into an avant-garde artist.

      And I lived there for 13 years!

  5. Too difficult for me to finish without resort to aids after an hour. I was done in by two of the three plants (I knew HEARTSEASE)and the governing body amongst others. I also thought BONESHAKER was a bicycle but I’m happy to learn it has a wider meaning. I can’t find any justification for cafe/CARVERY and would dispute either as a definition of the other.
  6. Yeah, well despite being a resident I got it from the group of celebs which has quickly become something of a chestnut. Setters must leap for joy when neologisms form neat parts of other words.
  7. Managed all bar one… thought it had to be O(AT)+HE+N! Given that I’d heard of neither HEN, OAT nor FAT, I won’t beat myself up too much.

    GELATIN gets my COD today.

  8. 29 mins for this quality puzzle. Took a while to sort out Directoire and Stagecraft, and Alicia was a bit of a guess. Never heard of Fat Hen! Liked 8D,23A, 6D particularly.
  9. Cracking crossword, and a cracking time, Tim! I was pleased with 23 minutes, and thought it was longer, pausing all the time for gasps and giggles.
    I would have defined BONESHAKER as an early bicycle, and had I been setting, the proximity of the UNICYCLE would have been irresistible. I guess the reason why it was called a boneshaker makes the word fair game for anything without decent suspension.
    CoD’s nominations today: RUNCIE for sheer, stunning &literacy; SLIPPERY for awful punnery; GELATIN for misdirection of the week (“setter for example” – dog? me? complier?); ROADSIDE for the Most Imaginative Use of “Old Bill” award; DIRECTOIRE for not cluing with knickers; MARS for economy. And the winner is…
  10. I’ll join in the all round praise for a good puzzle. I didn’t find it as difficult as some – about 20 minutes to solve.

    We have the Beaulieu Car Museum not so far from us so a regular outing for the grandchildren which meant BONESHAKER applied to old cars was no surprise. The clue to RUNCIE is excellent. Only one blip – a CARVERY, whatever else it might be, certainly isn’t a cafe.

  11. 20 minutes today. This struck me as a fairly typical (and typically 6dn) Times puzzle, but looking back I can see that I caught some lucky breaks with the (as ever) unknown plants. The wordplay just came to me for some reason.
    Thanks for the blog: I thought FINE was just a cryptic definition, and I missed GATS.
    I would hesitate to accept either “café” or “restaurant” as a definition of CARVERY. “Culinary horror” would be closer to the mark.
  12. Another enthusiast for today’s puzzle (and blog – thank you, topicaltim). Took me well over the hour but it was one of those excellent challenges where giving up never entered my mind: it was a real pleasure teasing out the wordplay. I was a little hampered by my insular insistence on thinking of DIRECTOIRE as ‘Directory’ until the penny (or should it be sou?) dropped. RUNCIE was one of my first in; otherwise I could support all other recommended CODs.
  13. As I always say, if 1ac beith a lay up then the rest of them shalt have thee stymied over an hour. Archbishops of Canterbury? Please. Can we relegate that stuff to oblivion, along with bridge terminology?
    1. Let’s see. You don’t like bridge and archbishops and “stuff”. I’m not fond of plants, American State capitals, scientists other than the ones I’ve heard of and most birds. Others can add their own lists.
      The reason I like the Times is because it flatters me that I’m an intelligent polymath – completely wrong, of course, probably in both particulars, but it makes me feel good even if I have to look stuff up on occasions, almost always with the TLS or the Club monthly. Then I learn stuff.
      A person’s reach must exceed his grasp or what’s a heaven (afterlife, utopia, Elysium, elysian fields, happy hunting-ground, New Jerusalem, promised land, Zion, nirvana, Valhalla, Swarga, Land o’ the Leal, Asgard, Olympus, amend as appropriate) for?
      1. Nicely put. Your second paragraph reflects my feelings exactly. (My bête noire is foodie clues, but I’m working on them.)
    2. PS. Beith is a town in Scotland, third person singular of shall in AV English is…shall.
  14. Struggled with this late last night and finally limped in at 26 minutes. A lot of answers put in with crossed fingers… ALICIA, STAGECRAFT and SLIPPERY from definition alone, HEARTSEASE and RUNCIE from wordplay alone.
  15. I know it makes no difference to the wordplay in a fine clue (9ac), but the usual spelling is ‘hippie’ not ‘hippy’, which means ‘having large hips’. I pass this on on behalf of all solvers who once had such aspirations.
  16. I, too, look on Times crosswords as a way of increasing one’s knowledge and vocabulary although I normally only resort to aids when all else has failed. So I struggled with Directoire today but managed Fat Hen using wordplay alone. I also struggled with Alicia because I thought of just about every other Spanish province but not the correct one. 8d was definitely my COD. 1hr 55mins. Oh, topicaltim’s mention of the Uxbridge English Dictionary reminds of Stepehn Fry’s definition of “countryside”: the murder of Piers Morgan.
    1. I think I’ve mentioned it before here but it bears repeating. The best ever New Definition was “lackadaisical”: a bicycle made for one.
  17. This was a wonderfully entertaining puzzle. I think everything I wanted to say has already been said. I was also one who always thinks of the French regime as the “Directory” not DIRECTOIRE which, as was said above, is more usually associated with knickers. Loved GELATIN, which took me ages to spot because I was looking for dogs, and SLIPPERY because I forgot about the shoes, in spite of having worn them often. Great stuff. A fun 33 minutes.
  18. Struggled with this before dinner, and lost track of the time after; then, after breakfast, finished the remaining 9 clues in 13 minutes, for a total of I haven’t the foggiest. LOI was FINE, of all things; finally spotted the hidden just in time not to put in ‘wine’ out of desperation. Like many, I held off putting in STAGECRAFT until the end; I’d never have parsed it on my own. I don’t think anyone mentioned that ‘dinky’ in the US means ‘small’ (pejoratively), not ‘dainty’; I thought of ‘pickier’ before somehow getting it right.
  19. 12:26 for me. I shot through the top half and had hopes of a fast time, but then slowed dramatically. Like others I thought of STAGECRAFT fairly early on but took a ridiculously long time to justify it, making it my LOI. Lots of candidates for COD, but RUNCIE gets my vote. A most enjoyable puzzle.
  20. I mostly do the Torygraph but, occasionally The Times. Today was one such occasion and I came to TftT for the final answer. Thanks. However, Big Dave’s crossword blog for the DT is SO much better than this. Answers given hidden in brackets if you want to go that far, nice hints given and no bragging about solving times permitted. All in all a superior product.
    1. Ooh, look, a troll! Not very spohisticated, but a nice try all the same. You go back under your bridge now, there’s a good lad.
      1. Oh well, at least I can spell. Are you one of the gutter types who spoil ‘crossword solver’ too? Perhaps you’d like to defend the website instead of merely moving straight to the insulting stage. I so love you cowardly types sitting behind the defensive barriers that are your computer screens. You must feel so brave. So I tell you what, I’ll get back under the bridge and you can continue cowering under the duvet. I expect you’ve got lovely yellow bedding to match the streak running up your back. Typical bully!
        1. Let’s start by agreeing that criticising typographical errors is lame.

          Then let’s assess our roles in this exchange. I wrote a blog in the house style, you made an a) anonymous and b) deliberately inflammatory attack on it. By that token, you fit the definition of a troll pretty snugly. To respond to you as you deserve is not cowardly or bullying; you trolled, I responded appropriately.

          I have no idea what you mean by ‘crossword solver’. I’m also not sure in what sort of world it’s considered polite to insult a complete stranger anonymously (P.S. you posted an anonymous complaint about “cowardly types sitting behind the defensive barriers that are your computer screens”, so perhaps you are simply a professional ironist rather than a troll) then pretend to be surprised when they don’t react by engaging in reasoned debate, and act as if it’s peculiar for a person take offence at such behaviour. Finally, if you want to meet face-to-face, I’m happy to oblige, but I don’t imagine you actually want that (please feel free to suggest a time and place if you do).

          As for defending the site, I think it speaks for itself. You seem to think it is a bespoke commercial service supplied as some sort of contractual obligation to you, and you alone, so I am sorry to have to break the news that it’s not. If you can spare a few minutes to read the information linked from “About this blog…” at the top of the page, you will find an explanation for the citing of solving times which irks you so (clue: the blog is called “Times for the Times”).

          A little further reading would also have demonstrated that this blog is on the whole an amiable place, populated by a wide mix of people who are united in their enjoyment of the Times crossword. At present, only one person is spoiling the atmosphere, and I am obviously breaking all the rules by feeding the troll, so I think it might be better if this correspondence was declared closed.

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