Times 24997 – in space, no-one can hear you look things up in dictionaries.

Author   glhPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Solving time : 28 minutes, and then a great deal of looking things up. The setter’s wavelength and mine were a long long long long way from each other here, and I strugged to get a few answers at a time, particularly in the top right, where my last three in lay. I suspect there will be many who fared far better on this than me.

Under a bit of a time rush here, so I probably won’t look in until later, hopefully I’ve got my explanations in order.

Away we go…

Across
1 HORSEBOX: HOARSE without the A and then BOX. BOX in well before the HORSE. I thought it was two words?
5 TEACUP: TEAC(h)(school, almost), UP(done). Great misdirection clue
9 GRISELDA: (EARL,DIGS)* – wonder when someone last named their child GRISELDA?
10 HAMMER: from checking letters – apparently it’s another name for the Volkswagon Beetle
12 JE NE SAIS QUOI: (JOIN,ISSUE,A,QU) around E
15 deliberately omitted
16 TOOTHPICK: cryptic definition
18 CANDLEMAS: C AND L are the ends(vergers) of CATHEDRAL, then SAME reversed
19 MOULT: L in MOUT(h)
20 CURTAIN CALLS: N,CAL in CURTAILS
24 A,RAG,ON
25 AD,OPTION
26 TAYLOR: sounds like TAILOR for the recentishly-departed Liz
27 GREENEST: At least I think so from the definition – is it NES(t) in GREET? Edit: see comments – right components, wrong order – it’s GREE(t) then NEST
 
Down
1 HUG,O: O from the end of EMBARGO
2 RAID: RAPID without the middle (P)
3 ELEMENTAL: LE(The, French),MEN(staff) in LATE reversed
4 let’s omit this from the downs, ask if necessary
5 EVANS: from definition – Welsh name – it’s EVA’S (Extra Vehicular Activities – i.e. space walks) surrounding N (end of Snowdon)
7 COMMUNIQUE: UNIQUE following COMM(ONS)
8 PERNICKETY: NICK in REP reversed, (YET)*
11 JACOB’S LADDER: Not sure if there’s a wordplay here?
13 WITCHCRAFT: ITCH(desire) in W.C.(convenience) then RAFT(host)
14 DINNER LADY: agonized over this for a while – INNER,LA in two D’s (fourth letter in acaDemy), Y
17 HUMBLE PIE: Cryptic definition
21 A,GO,GO: cute clue
22 VIBE: B(ridle) in VIE(Jockey)
23 CNUT: NU(from the N at the start of Naxos) in CT

46 comments on “Times 24997 – in space, no-one can hear you look things up in dictionaries.”

  1. I think that’s GREE (abridged welcome) NEST (fit in a larger one).

    I suppose 15A is IDIOT (dipstick) but I don’t get the clue. Please explain.

    – Vince

  2. 28:07 .. the top-right had me foxed for a good while, too. But no area went in exactly fast.

    Nice to get one of these thoroughly challenging puzzles now and then (except when it’s not). But I enjoyed solving this.

    I had no sweet clue why it was EVANS, so thank you, George.

    JE NE SAIS QUOI is a tour de force. Bravo!

  3. According to Compact OED …

    beetle … a tool with a heavy head and a handle

    It seems I’ve seen that one in the Times before.

  4. I just hope that 24ac doesn’t mean that the inclusion of long-forgotten minor Surrealist poets is becoming a trend.
  5. About half an hour for this. Another toughie.
    I couldn’t parse CANDLEMAS, ELEMENTAL or CNUT, I’ve never heard of ARAGON and I had absolutely no idea about HAMMER or EVANS. So thanks very much George.
    I didn’t really enjoy it but I got up at 5am so it would be unfair to blame the setter.
  6. 55 minutes plus ages trying to parse some of the clues which often seems a bit pointless when the answer has been obvious. I found one error on checking here.

    1ac: Collins has HORSEBOX as one word.

    9ac: Hancock fans will remember Griselda Pugh, his secretary played by Hattie Jacques, in the radio version of ‘Hancock’s Half Hour’.

    10ac: I drove a VW Beetle for many years and never heard it referred to as a “Hammer”. The reference here is to a type of mallet which I’ve also never heard of so for solving purposes I invented the hammer beetle as an alternative name for the deathwatch – the one that makes knocking sounds.

    27ac: I must be a bit dim this morning because I still don’t fully understand the wordplay here despite the explanations given. I get the definition and GREET but not the NES bit. If it’s NES(t) as suggested, where does that come from?

    2dn: I got this one wrong. I could only think of RUIN and then couldn’t explain it.

    3dn: Fortunately ELEMENTAL came up very recently with a similar definition so I wrote the answer in without working out the wordplay. On returning to it I wondered a bit about “men” for “staff” although we often see “staff” clued by “man” as a verb (or vice versa). All such terms are contentious these days anyway.

    6dn: I was chuffed to think of the correct explanation here without looking it up. I think EVA has appeared before and for once I remembered something.

    11dn: Jacob’s ladder is simply a reference to the bible story in Genesis, an early stairway to heaven.

  7. Crikey! Came up 6 short here, 4 in NW mainly because I couldn’t think of HORSE for husky. Oh dear! CNUT and A GOGO the other 2.
    Thus HUMBLE PIE simply has to be my COD (would have been anyway even without the ignominious failure).
  8. 10A HAMMER is just two definitions 1=beetle is a type of hammer and 2=to hammer is to drive (fast). It’s appeared before in various guises and so has EVA

    You’re not the only one not on this setter’s wavelength George. I found this puzzle slightly irritating throughout from the moment “drop your bag in here?” became TEACUP. Another wretched poet – where do these setters dredge them up from? And a couple of very weak cryptic definitions, particularly the biblical one

    25 slightly grumpy minutes to solve

    1. Hammer = drive fast? I was thinking hammering/driving something such as a nail, home or in.
  9. Ouch. Held up by Evans/hammer and witchcraft/idiot (!)/Taylor), ridiculously. Good to get there in the end though. 48 minutes. I like the vergers. But not ‘one’ in 27; and surprised by raft=host. Some very good clues but here and there the sound of a splitting envelope.
  10. 40 minutes, way too long (fuzzy brain syndrome today), with several entered on fantasy and wishful thinking – ARAGON, HAMMER, CNUT, IDIOT, and GREENEST.
    I share Jimbo’s irritation on this one: there was a mix of the trivial – TOOTHPICK, TEABAG and JACOB’S LADDER (which looked cryptic but weren’t really) and the arcane bordering on unfair – ARAGON my particular jamais couché avec, for which I tentatively wanted ABALON (nearly as good) and the hammer. Several required the equivalent of a guess followed by heroic deconstructing of the clue: DINNER LADY, CNUT and WITCHCRAFT for three. Maybe on another day I’d have found them clever or even exciting.
    Perhaps CNUT was made particularly tricky because of the conventional court=ct, so where does the U come from – I know now, by the way.
    I was so blasted by by this one I couldn’t think of a Hollywood actress called TAYLOR. Anyway, our Liz was born in London.
    Grump aside, CoD to COMMUNIQUE: in another crossword I’d have loved it.
    1. “TOOTHPICK, TEABAG and JACOB’S LADDER”
      Not really cryptic? Some mistake surely!
      Wasn’t it TEACUP anyway (??)
      1. “Not really cryptic” – I’ll kind of concede, as these are of the “dodgy definition” variety, rather than definition and wordplay. My concern was that they looked like D+WP but weren’t. On TEACUP, I concede entirely on all points – I *said* I was enduring fuzzy brain syndrome today!
  11. 23 hard-fought minutes, and I enjoyed the originality here. I was delayed by only one of the quibbles expressed above, i.e. M. ARAGON, who I freely admit was unknown in these parts (perhaps some of us should appear in a Bateman cartoon entitled “The crossword solver who’d never heard of Tzara or Aragon”), but was confidently deduced from wordplay, and thus fine in my book. (In the absence of any objective way of determining what knowledge is “fair” or “unfair” – and I’m not convinced “size of wikipedia entry” cuts it for me as a criterion – I think one just has to shrug and move on, or perhaps even be happy that one’s ignorance has been pushed back another notch.)
  12. We will upset poor Tony by not knowing Louis Aragon either. Perhaps we need a list of obscure french poets to memorise 🙂 – I hasten to add that I don’t object to such words being included. Stupid to think you will always know every word. No, what I object to is the total lack of obscure scientists to balance things a little.

    Otherwise I found this puzzle exactly right: interesting and a challenge without overdoing it. 25mins.

    Re 11dn, it is a simple cryptic def. involving attempted misdirection – Genesis is a popular singing combo, apparently

  13. After reading other comments, I realise that ignorance really is bliss. Last night I misread “French poet” as “French port” and thought it was where Catherine came from. Geography never my strong suit!

    BEETLE crops up a lot in the pub name ‘Beetle and Wedge’, though I’m pretty sure it’s mostly favoured by faux olde worlde pubs. Methinks George’s tongue was in his cheek in his blog parsing.

  14. 67 minutes and very surprised to have them all correct. Questions marks all over the place, but mainly in the vicinity of EVANS. Thanks for explaining that and the nuances of many others, George. COD to A GOGO, but there were many other fine and original clues amongst some I didn’t much care for; largely because I had to struggle to get and then comprehend them. I suppose I can’t blame the setter for my idiocy (another one I liked very much).
  15. I found this a bit of a mixture of answers that came easily and others that took ages, particularly in the NE corner, which was mostly empty for a long time. In the end, with only _ _ _ M _ R for 10, I resorted to an aid to check all the possibilities, and even then the answer didn’t jump at me.

    No idea of time because a visitor called and I didn’t note the time not spent on the puzlle.

  16. Lots of problems: I had knut ( (I presume NU is for the Greek letter ‘N’?), ruin (run in), ride (for VIBE) and a blank for the beetle. Of the ones I did get, several were from either def or literal (eg ARAGON, IDIOT, GREENEST, WITCHCRAFT, EVANS), so thanks for all the explanations above, George.

    Oh, also I couldn’t work out CURTAIN CALLS, as I thought the prunes bit was ‘CULLS’.

  17. agree with vinyl that “three steps to heaven” is not a good finish to what would otherwise be a good clue. Perhaps it should have been “stairway to heaven” so you got Genesis and Led Zeppelin in the mind as more closer in rock genre
    1. Isn’t the idea that a ladder is an “extended” form of three steps?
      I quite like the idea of Genesis being associated with Three Steps… Preposterous! Anyone who knows their music won;t be fooled by Genesis doing Stairway to Heaven anyway.
  18. 28 minutes for me too! Thanks for explaining the space walks bit in “Evans”; I didn’t understand that one at the time.
  20. Is anyone else unable to access the Times Crosswords site? I’m getting a half loaded page, and an HTTP 405 error message when submitting log in details. Have just switched to BT broadband and using Windows Vista. Any help much appreciated.
  21. This is another of those puzzles that are nearly a pangram, but not quite, lacking the letter Z. My guess is that the setter originally had GRIZELDA, and then realised that GRISELDA is by far the commoner spelling. Changing VIBE to SIZE would make it a perfect pangram.
    1. Ace=A; bid=GO (twice); “in spades” means to the fullest extent (comes from card game bridge where spades is the highest ranking suit)= A GO-GO
  23. Not on the wavelenght either, spending almost an hour, ending with VIBE, which obviously eluded me for a long time. A tough go, but commenting here the day after, I have to say there’s a lot of cleverness that I didn’t recognize at the time, being cranky like some others that it was taking me too long. Nicely blogged, George. Regards.
  24. …has been playing on the iPod in my mind since 9ac. Happy to have it shift the preachy Three Steps To Heaven, but it’s a hard one to shift itself.
  26. Thank you George and others. I finished this comfortably this morning without full understanding of all the wordplays: I’ve now been put right where necessary. The one advantage I seem to have had is that I’ve actually used a beetle hammer (large wooden head, hooped with iron rings to stop it splitting) to drive in fencing posts: so 10ac was no problem.
  27. I’d no idea about EVAs, but I suppose I would have plumped for EVANS in the end. Despite struggling with EVANS and, inexplicably, VIBE, I thoroughly enjoyed this. ARAGON I take to be the setter’s signature.

    Tom B.

  28. 27:50 for me, with tiredness once again taking its toll. About a third of this was spent agonising over EVANS. I wasn’t helped by taking ages to spot that I’d typed JE NE SAID QUOI (fingers more used to typing “said” than “sais”, I suppose), but I then parsed the clue wrongly, trying to take “space” from “walks”. Eventually I realised that the two words were likely to go together, but it still took another few minutes for “extra-vehicular activity” to bumble its way forward from somewhere at the back of my mind.

    By contrast, ARAGON was (like TZARA) an easy win. I’d hazard a guess that most people either know both or neither, though I think TZARA is probably the better known of the two.

    All in all, a most enjoyable puzzle with some fine clues. My compliments to the setter.

  29. Failed to get 22d, 55′ for the rest. I thought 18 and 20ac and 13d were terrific clues among a bunch of good ones. Does no one remember the tale of Patient Griselda? I had thought she was married to an earl, which would have added something to the clue, but alas, he was a marquis. I tried for a while to get ‘Villon’ to work for 24ac (a far better poet), finally remembered Aragon.
  30. I had no idea about the where the U came from either, but I understand now. I suppose the setter had to abandon any idea of an anagram to this light!
    scorpion.

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