Times 24984 – A 16’s wife slipped from the garrison…

Author   kororarekaPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Solving Time: 35 minutes

Mctext has blown a gasket today, so at short notice I’m stepping in. I found this to be on a par with Monday’s and Tuesday’s; not too difficult, not overly easy. Just the thing for all the championship competitors, who should be well into their final tapers by now. Without further ado, as time is getting on…

Across
1 DISCORDANT = DISCO + D inside RANT
6 Washington in SAY = SWAY
8 (IN A GLACE)* = ANGELICA, semi-&lit. Angelica is a type of huston.
9 KEN after BRO = BROKEN, the “get” being an auxiliary positioning device.
10 NOVA = CANOVA minus his Carrara Articles. That would be Antonio of the exquisite nudes.
11 CONSENSUAL = (UNLESS A)* post CON, with “criminal” the nounal anagrind
12 SCARLATTI = S for small CAR Left AT TivolI, either father or son
14 MORES = MORE + Staff.
17 E.R. from the eponymous TV series inside SUM = SERUM
19 PHEROMONE = HERO after P for power + MONEy, with definition “what attracts”.
22 MIDDLE AGES = SexAGESima
23 Deliberately omitted, said with sly runcible glance.
24 DIVER + T = DIVERT
25 AUDIENCE, a double definition, the second mischievous
26 WiELD = WELD
27 (DON’T BAN CAR)* = CONTRABAND

Down
1 AID reversed + SONG reversed + IS for exists = DIAGNOSIS, with “to get” in the yielding sense.
2 SEt + GO VIA = SEGOVIA, which is a city as well as a guitarist.
3 O inside INCA inside RAT = RAINCOAT.
4 AGAIN + (STRAIGHTEN)* = AGAINST THE GRAIN
5 Deliberately omitted. I suggest you take one if apoplectic.
6 NOW ensconced in S.S. + TO for before + RM for jolly = SNOWSTORM. Goodness, it’s five to twelve!
7 AVERAGE = AVER + AGE
13 ROUNDHEAD, another double definition, the second two words
15 (PARADES)* around HE = SPEARHEAD
16 CRUSADER = CRUDER about S.A.
18 usED + IF + ICE = EDIFICE. That would be ice as verb.
20 (A CANOE I)* = OCEANIA. A paddle is a stirrer, so I can’t quibble about the anagrind.
21 PEPTIC = PEP + Terrible Internal Colic

30 comments on “Times 24984 – A 16’s wife slipped from the garrison…”

  1. I feel like a speed merchant, if only for a day, knocking this off in 14 minutes, with MORES last in. Strong Mediterranean flavour to this one, with Carrara, Canova, Segovia and Scarlatti, as well as pheromone, peptic, angelica, serum, mores, etc. The only clue requiring post-solve reflection was SNOWSTORM – ‘to’ for ‘before’ catches me out every time.
    1. Thanks for reminding me of the late, great Flanders and Swann. This line from At the Drop of Another Hat is worth quoting in context for those of us who can remmeber as far back as 1963:

      “I mean we know perfectly well that if there’s no newspapers, I mean if there’s a strike or a public holiday or something, nothing happens! It’s marvellous! Oh tempora, oh mores – Oh Times, oh Daily Mirror. As Lord Denning said in his report, he said ‘none of this going around saying no smoke without fire – nil combustibus pro fumo’.”

  2. 17 minutes, which might be in the region of my PB for a weekday puzzle if I could remember exactly what it is. I think I may have broken the 15 minute barrier once or twice, but I am not absolutely sure; it was certainly a long time ago so today is a welcome fillip. For the most part my solve was not so different from other ‘easy’ days of late, but what singled it out was that I was able complete the grid without getting stuck for ages on the last two or three clues.

    At least 10 of the answers went in on definition alone and I ignored the wordplay until after the event.

    I didn’t know CANOVA.

  3. 17 minutes but with an inadvertent mis-spelling, pheremone. Canova seems a mite arcane. Well done above two.
  4. A comfortable 25 minutes with COD to the enjoyable 5dn (with MIDDLE AGES a close second). Did not previously know ‘jolly’ as a nickname for Royal Marines: another bit of random information to add to my crossword collection.
  5. After yesterday’s wooly performance I approached this refreshed but wary and proceeded to rip through it in just over 10 minutes – good for restoring the confidence. As Jack says much from definition alone but where the cryptic was needed I found it fair and precise, unlike one or two yesterday.
  6. 12:09 here, which again felt a bit sluggish, but I was on the early train this morning and hadn’r properly woekn up (that’s my excuse anyway). Took me far too long to see 4D, but once I had it I sped up a bit – I reckon 8 mins for the first half, 4 for the second.

    Thanks to koro for stepping in at short notice while we were all asleep. I got an email from mctext at 1:30am, which I saw when I got up at 6:30, by which time the blog was already done.

  7. Pfft, I say. Another who carelessly put in PHEREMONE for no good reason, which means I have managed to slip an error into every puzzle this week. Last in was WELD; if I were to have a crossword-based nightmare it would probably involve a puzzle full of four-letter words, with checking letters which permit dozens of plausible answers…
  8. Looks as though my 44 minutes isn’t going to trouble the scorers today, but I enjoyed it nevertheless. Add me to the list of those who hadn’t encountered the jolly RM before.
  9. 24:12 but with one careless mistake. I misspelled PHEROMONE as PHEREMONE and didn’t bother to check the wordplay properly which would have highlighted the error.
    Still an enjoyable run through.
  10. I thought this fairly easy but not a gimme, and some quite slick cluing. Some lovely surfaces, eg 27ac, to pick one of many

    I have met jolly = RM enough times now that it should be much easier to remember than it is! ditto for to = before.
    For those who claim it is new to them, it appeared in March this year (7dn) and only last year we were complaining it was a cliche.. 🙂

    1. Thanks for referring us back to that one, jerry. I see I laboured over it for 70 minutes while our Mr Barraclough knocked it off in 6. Jolly = very in that puzzle; the remarks about the RM must have gone straight over my head.
      1. Oops, my memory is less than formidable. Biddlecombe, not Barraclough. Apologies Peter!
    2. I stand duly reprimanded! In my defence, I hadn’t become a regular of this site when last year’s complaint appeared (March 2010) and, apologies to Saturday and Sunday bloggers, I rarely look at Saturday/Sunday blogs in detail because I’ve usually disposed of the relevant crossword by the time they appear.

      But thanks, jerrywh, for the links. It is one of the great delights of this site that there are those of you who have these formidable memories (and systems of cross-referencing) from which we humble mortals can, and do, learn so much. More power to you all.

  11. I found this mostly fairly easy, but was slow to get 16, 22, 25 (the last entry), 26 until I had sufficient letters in place.I even shied at 21, where initially all I could think of for effervescence was GAS giving GASTIC rather than GASTRIC. What should have taken me about 25 minutes extended to 35.

    COD to 19 for the good surface.

    CANOVA is knew to me, but at least the answer was obvious from the initial N alone.

  12. 12:13, so on the easy side again, especially for old salts.

    There seems to have been an abundance of SCARLATTIs of late.

  13. All done in no time….but for “weld”…which I could not get. Thought of all possible weapons, no help there. So look at “joint”…cuts of meat, wood joints, nightclubs, spliffs, hinges, bends, ownership, body parts…et al. No joy….am I the only muppet who couldn’t get this?
  14. 38 mins, so a pleasantly untesting puzzle.

    But, please, can we have a moratorium on that horrible chestnut “it” for “S. A.” as in CRUSADER? This only exists in crosswordland. Wikipedia gives 43 possible meanings of “S. A.”, none of which is “Sex Appeal”.

    1. I’m with you on this. It manages to be both obscure and a chestnut at the same time.
  15. 8:29, last in CONSENSUAL (11ac).  Also caught up with yesterday’s, so (at the end of a lunch break) no time to comment.  Oh, except that I’ve just noticed that I omitted 26ac (WELD).  Wake up, Thakkar!
  16. …since I put in NOVA with a ? (hadn’t heard of CANOVA), and then hadn’t heard of SEGOVIA, which was clearly gettable.

    Don’t remember coming across jolly=RM, nor SCARLATTI. I think I must have a very short memory (or just haven’t been doing these things long enough…)

  17. Did this kind of late last night and struggled in to a 21-minute finish, last in CONSENSUAL (from CON?E?S?A? and going through the alphabet.

    SEGOVIA from wordplay, NOVA from definition

  18. Smoothish solve with no major hold-ups. 23 minutes. Was the guitarist named after the city? I once sat at the feet of Segovia ( when,as a student, all I could afford was the front row) Also visited the place when my son was working in Madrid. A great city with an amazing Roman aqueduct. More Spanish flavour for me tonight – Welsh National Opera’s “Don Giovanni”. All those bass voices in the last act – can’t wait!
  19. On the easier side, 14 minutes, many going in at first read. Held up only briefly by the long 4D and CONSENSUAL, my last entry. I was also a bit befuddled by the -TORM part of SNOWSTORM, although I don’t doubt it’s appeared before. It went in because it couldn’t be anything else. COD to WELD, and regards to all.
  20. Like yesterday, a very late solve and post after a long day. Unlike yesterday, all correct in 12 minutes. A relief after yesterday’s disaster.
  21. 9:02 here, with WELD holding me up at the end. (I have the same nightmare as topicaltim, though with ‑A‑E answers predominating.)
  22. RM = jolly is new to me as well. Two mental connexions needed to get there. The arts book I read recently is proving very useful for recent crosswords; I delighted in getting (ca)NOVA as my second answer in.
  23. 18 minutes, I think a PB,or as near as dammit. I didn’t help my speed by not noticing that 22ac was two words (I go through the clues first and draw lines where appropriate in the grid, but forgot this one). Had no idea about 10ac, but it had to be NOVA. A nice confidence-booster in preparation for the weekend.

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