Times 24908 – Late again!

Author   daveperryPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Solving time: None recorded, the website got all confused on me and I had to submit several times before it accepted. I reckon just short of an hour but with two wrong.

You have my apologies for my tardiness in getting the blog posted. I meant to do it last night but got absorbed in Hitchcock’s Notorious and entirely forgot about it. Still, not as late as I was on Tuesday, though!

In my haste to complete it knowing I needed to get the blog up asap, I went a bit wrong in the NW corner, throwing in WEDGWOOD and WISDOM. I thought WEDGWOOD was a place in Birmingham (it isn’t) and a man of reading might be a man of wisdom, and that was about it. I’m still not sure about 1d.

Some good stuff in here, and had I not been so hurried due to my own forgetfulness, I’m sure I would have enjoyed it much more than I did.

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

Across
1 LADY WOOD – dd – Ladywood is an area of Birmingham, and Sir Henry Wood’s partner would presumably be Lady Wood.
5 PASCAL – the SI unit of pressure. The H of Holiday is removed from PASCHAL. I knew the unit, but not the word for Easter.
9 SARDONYX = DON in (X-RAYS)*
10 P + ROUST
12 O + WING
13 P(A + RAM)ETER
14 CON + CUP + I + SCENT – Another new word for me, but I pieced it together from the wordplay
18 RIDER + HAGGARD
21 TRUNCHEON = LUNCHEON with Turkey Roast replacing L (fifty) – I wasn’t sure about ‘starts with‘ to indicate the initials of.
23 POINT – dd – Today’s cricket clue. Point is a fielding position on the leg side. Or there’s Silly Point when the fielder gets really close in. Oops, that’s the off side, not the leg side of course. Glad to see Jimbo’s paying attention.
24 HE(AT)ED – ‘The opposite’ implies that it’s actually notice receiving at.
25 PI + RATING – Is ‘purportedly’ really needed here?
26 hidden – deliberately omitted
27 AT TOuRNEY – U for ‘top people’
Down
1 LESSOn + Rambling – I just worked this out while writing the blog!
2 D(ER)AIL – DAIL being the lower house in the Irish Parliament
3 WRONGDOER – One of those reversed clues where the wordplay is contained within the solution, i.e. ‘rode’ = (DOER)* with WRONG acting as an anagrind.
4 OLYMPIC GAMES = (COME + A GYMSLIP)* – A very neat anagrist
6 ABRAM = AB + MAR rev
7 COUR(Theatre)IER
8 Learner + ITERATE
11 PROPAGANDIST = PRO + PAGAN + I’D rev + ST
15 S(TRAP)PA + DO – I’m sure I’ve seen this word before in another puzzle. It was new to me then, but I remembered it this time.
16 CRO(alTar)CHET
17 ADJUsT + ANT
19 MINI ON – This made me chuckle.
20 ST(AGE)Y – This confused me at first as I was assuming that time was T. What’s a SAGEY? I thought.
22 deliberately omitted

26 comments on “Times 24908 – Late again!”

  1. Thanks dave. Rather liked this, challenging without yesterday’s zinging quality. Lovely first four words across. Couldn’t get up any speed but ambled in at 36 min. I too like the twist on an old line in 19.
  2. Dave, you have a typo at 23A – POINT is on the off side not the leg side

    A good puzzle although not quite in yesterday’s league (a puzzle I only got round to doing this morning). I marked the same minor queries as you – but none of them held me up. 20 enjoyable minutes

    1. Well of course it is. Otherwise it would be a square leg! I shall amend the blog immediately.
  3. Enjoyable puzzle completed in about 40 minutes. Needed wordplay for SARDONYX and STRAPPADO. COD to (for me) the fiendishly constructed HEATED.

    Why have pigs gained this bad press? A STY is not necessarily a ‘squalid place’ (pigs by nature are cleaner than many other animals). And, while I’m ranting, why do badgers enjoy such an unjustified good press …?

  4. Oh dear, another toughie for me. I was so confident about CONCUPSCIENT, that gave me a C for the starter letter of 15dn, which of course made me think the ‘spring’ in the clue was COIL, and then I had that thing when something seems so right you are prevented from thinking of anything else …

    Lots of unknown GK (the writer, the mineral, the B’ham area), most of which I got from the cryptic, also held me up.

    Not a very good week for me at all.

    Best wishes to all for a good weekend!

  5. Oh s**t! I took 48 minutes with some terrible agonising for 20 of them over the the 1ac/1dn pair. Never having heard of LADYWOOD, I was assuming WEDGWOOD (obscure music history known only to Vinyls); matched by WISDOM (reading? well-read?) for 1dn. Of course, neither fitted the clues. So, substituted LESSON for WISDOM. Then checked (via Google) whether Sir H. performed (musically) with the Mrs. Turned out he did. So LESSON? OK? But not so even then. Then the big PDM with the parsing: Reading short | intro to “Rambling” | letter [def].

    Hope no one else was so perplexed! Really … I do!

  6. 23 minutes.
    I started incredibly slowly on this: my first in was 26ac. The pace picked up after about 5 minutes, but I was heavily reliant on checkers all the way through. I almost gave up on 1ac at the end, because I didn’t know either the area of Birmingham or (rather disgracefully) the conductor. Fortunately inspiration struck.
    Funny to see SARDONYX again so soon after its last outing.
    Like Dave I wondered about “with” in 21ac but overall I thought this was a solid typical Times offering.
  7. A toughie for me and once again I was pleased it’s not my Friday. I got really bogged down in the SE where I was fixated on BASTINADO for 15 down and later COVER at 23ac. When I eventually got to the SW it was so easy I wish I had tried there first as RIDER HAGGARD would have ruled out my error at 15.

    Didn’t understand 1dn where I bunged in LESSON in desperation to finish. 80 minutes with a couple of lookups along the way.

  8. No idea of a time as work interrupted play! The bottom half was much trickier than the top for me. Today’s setter is the second one recently to be confused by crochet – in this case, I certainly wouldn’t describe it as embroidery!
  9. Second exhausting session in the cerebral gymnasium on the bounce but whereas yesterday’s left me invigorated this left me knackered (haggard indeed). SARDONYX and STRAPPADO from wordplay, PASCAL from definition.
    Must make a list of people who have guaranteed their immortality regardless of merit because their names present cryptic compilers with lots to work on. After all, who would remember Concupiscence in Croydon by Roger M Daley were it not for crosswords.

  10. I was in for a 20 minute finish but got stuck staring at _I_I_R because I can’t spell ATTOURNY even when the wordplay makes it obvious. Dazed and confused, it still took me ages to get MINION when I learned how to spell. On any other day it would have been a merry enough CoD, but it just annoyed me.
    Otherwise one of those wavelength days when it all seemed sort of easy while expecting that others would struggle. I did, however, essay LARKWOOD for 1ac having knocked off LESSOR, reading = lesson being indelibly imprinted following a schooldays punishment.
    CRO(T)CHET = embroidery is, of course, wrong unless you allow it in the “added decoration” sense, when it’s still wrong. Doesn’t matter for those of us that routinely confuse knitting and sewing anyway, when anything vaguely stitchy will do.
    CoD to 21: decent surface, clever play.
  11. Did anybody notice that the grid today is identical to the grid used by Bonxie in the Guardian? Freakish ya?
  12. As so few have heard of the place it might help for the future to know that Ladywood is the very centre of Birmingham. It includes the downtown areas as well as Aston (where the Villa play) and Birmingham City football club. Like a lot of city centres parts of it were very run down last time I was there although the area around the canal had been turned into a pedestrian walking area complete with a lot of restaurants etc.
    1. It’s one of those places that I only know from nights when I’ve sat up watching General Elections. It was Clare Short’s constituency from 1983-2010. Interestingly, when it was first formed back in 1918, it was Neville Chamberlain’s seat.
  13. Ouch! I essayed WEDGWOOD and WISDOM, a la Dave’s blog, so down the tubes I go, but in exalted company. Of course I have no idea about Birmingham neighborhoods, and unfortunately I hadn’t heard of Sir Henry either. The rest was fun, but to me difficult, and I agree it was a step or two below yesterday’s, which may still make it a pretty good offering. Never heard of STRAPPADO, though. I liked WRONGDOER, TRUNCHEON and ATTORNEY, all clever. Regards.
  14. Fortunately, I would have spelled it WedgEwood, so I couldn’t make that mistake, and was quite chuffed to discover that there was a Sir Henry Wood. Rather de-chuffed to find that failing to think 1d through made me miss a truly fine clue. 63′ in all.
  15. I refused at first to accept “crochet” as “embroidery” and only put it in when it became obvious from the checkers. I notice the setters never make simple mistakes with cricketing terms! T enjoyed this puzzle in spite of a slow start. Once SARDONYX and LADYWOOD went in, the rest followed smoothly enough except for my inability to spell attorney. I also thought it already had a U in it which made MINION hard to get. 36 minutes
  16. 11:25 here, with the last 2-3 minutes spent trying to justify LESSON for 1dn (before light eventually dawned). Nice puzzle, with MINION my COD.
  17. A superb puzzle. I got caught out by 1 down, putting LESSON instead of LESSOR – rank carelessness.
  18. LOI 1d LESSON , which was wrong of course, but didn’t see any alternative until reading the blog!
    43mins, liked the subtlety of 24a HEATED.

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