Times 25736 – Picture a card game coming down the path…..

Author   vinyl1Posted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Solving time: 42 minutes

Music: Viotti, Violin Concerto #22, Grumiaux/de Waart/Concertgebouw

This was annoyingly difficult for an 8 PM puzzle, which only happens once on a blogging day this spring. By the time I return, the UK will be on BST. I admit to having only a few answers after 15 minutes, and worrying about whether I could finish. But then instinct took over, and I started solving steadily, only to bog down on a few stubborn ones at the end.

There is a nice mixture of convoluted clues and deceptive literals here, enough to keep one guessing. I was not helped by putting two answers in the wrong place, but fortunately I noticed after a relatively short time. It was actually the easiest clues that gave me the most trouble, as I got the wrong end of the thing only to see the obvious quite a while later.

I am offering a new obscure composer, free to any setter who want to use him – please take note!

Across
1 CABIN CREW, CAB + IN + CREW[e].
9 ANIMATE, A NI MATE, nearly my last in, as I just failed to try that old cliche ‘Ulster’ = ‘NI’.
10 ERRATUM, E R(RAT)UM, where a ‘shopper’ is to be taken in an oblique but legitimate sense…..legitimate if a ‘flower’ can be a river.
11 EXACT, [t]EX(A/C)T.
12 CLEOPATRA, C + LEO + anagram of APART. Definition is ‘film’ = a very clever clue indeed.
13 TRAVAIL, RT backwards + AVAIL.
15 DITCH, D[reams] + ITCH.
17 CLASS, CLAS[he]S, the first of my stray answers.
18 BADDY, B? ADD ‘Y’.
19 SANTA, SAN + TA, the second of my stray answers.
20 REDRAFT, RED RAFT.
23 INTRODUCE, D in an anagram of COUNTRIE[s]. I never saw the cryptic while solving, expecting ‘UN’ for ‘various countries’.
25 EASEL, EASE + L, very cleverly disguised.
27 REALIST, RE A-LIST, with another well-disguised literal that might be hard to spot.
28 EXAMPLE, EX-AMPLE, where the literal seems a bit dubious to me. You may punish someone by making an ‘example’ of him. Comments and explanations invited.
29 DISCERNER, DI(REC’S backwards)NER. I wasted a little time on ‘deli’.
 
Down
1 COERCE, CO[mm]ERCE. Clever and very effective.
2 BORDERLAND, B(ORDER)LAND. I imagined many impossibly baroque cryptics leading to improbable answers, only to put this in from the literal near the end of my solve.
3 NOTEPADS, NO TE[m]P ADS. Of course, a ‘temp’ is not necessarily an office worker, you can order up warehouse men and machinists from the staffing agencies as well.
4 REMIT, R[adio] + EMIT, where ‘remit’ is a noun.
5 WALKATHON, W(A + L + K)ATH, + ON, where WATH is an anagram of WHAT.
6 CINEMA, [a]C[t]I[o]N + E + MA[n]. Somehow, a ‘multiplex’ seems from rather removed from the cinema, but that’s the obvious answer.
7 PARA, PAR[m]A, my first one in.
8 MENTALLY, MEN TALLY, another ‘obvious’ one I couldn’t see for the longest time.
14 ANDALUSIAN, A N (DAL(US)I) A N. Of course, Dali is a Spanish painter, but here he is indicated strictly by ‘painter’, with ‘Spanish’ being the literal.
16 TESTIFIED, TESTI sounds like TESTY + FI[x]ED. This is one of the few you can enter confidently from the literal and figure out later.
17 CARPETED, CAR(PET)ED, the closest thing to a chestnut in this puzzle.
18 BARONAGE, anagram of ON A BARGE.
21 ASLOPE, AS + LOPE, with a ‘say’ that tempts solvers to look for a ‘sounds like’ solution.
22 NECTAR, sounds like NECKED + [b]AR. My last in, and this must be the answer, although ‘necked’= ‘downed’ is rather obscure.
24 TARTS, hidden upside-down in [variou]S TRAT[torias].
26 SNAP, a triple definition. ‘Snap’ is ‘a walk in the park’, to take a picture, and a card game.

51 comments on “Times 25736 – Picture a card game coming down the path…..”

  1. All bar 22 and 26 down in 32 minutes and another 22 for these two. Not helped by not knowing the ‘easy task’ meaning of SNAP (unsurprisingly, given ODO gives it as a N.Am. usage), and not yet having wired the ‘drink’ meaning of NECK into my system.

    I thought RED RAFT was particularly feeble, but the rest was pleasant enough.

  2. Only just under the hour for this one. I agree with your misgivings re EXAMPLE. I also didn’t know the ‘walk in the park’ meaning at 26dn.

    We have SNAFU on the Quickie today. Before midnight the link was to Friday’s puzzle (fine), but shortly after the hour it reverted to Wednesday’s! I suppose we shall have to wait for the facsimile to become available around dawn.

    Edited at 2014-03-17 02:17 am (UTC)

  3. Bit harder than your average Monday, especially in the SW where I only broke through after realising that two answers were in a recent (still blog-embargoed) puzzle. Also had a bit of trouble getting AS out of “say” in 21dn. And wondered about the DBE in 17ac.

    COD to 23ac for the “various countries”.

    Edited at 2014-03-17 04:51 am (UTC)

  4. 31′ and change; I flung in NECTAR mainly because I was over the 30′ and didn’t want to mull over one clue at leisure offline. Same doubts as vinyl, as also with EXAMPLE. I once again mistyped a checker (ERRARUM, if I recall), but at least I got NECTAR right. We just had SNAP, no?
  5. Just found this in the very big OED online:
    “A signal instance of punishment intended to have a deterrent effect”.

    I quite like this, erm, example from Gouverneur Morris (1793):
    “The examples are so striking and terrifying that every individual trembles”.

    Archaic, then I guess. But it does seem that an example can be the punishment itself as well as the person so punished. (Nice use of “signal” to boot.)

    While I’m on … why the question-mark after the “B” in the entry for 18ac? You have me puzzled!

    Edited at 2014-03-17 05:06 am (UTC)

  6. 30 minutes but with a misspelt ANDALUCIAN, having neglected to parse.

    The new crossword has prompted several letters to The Times, mostly positive. However, one on Friday stated “Why dumb down the cryptic crossword? It is already infinitely easier than it used to be 30 or 40 years ago.”

    Has anyone here been solving long enough to confirm or deny this?

    1. I’ve been solving the Times for over 50 years, as have several other regular contibutors.

      The letter writer is not comparing like with like. 40 years ago the puzzle was a rather strange affair aimed at a very different type of solver with no heed paid to Ximenean rules. Today almost nobody would regularly tackle such an offering.

      1. It was not necessarily harder, just different. I am sure that the solvers of 50 years ago would be completely flummoxed by a modern cryptic. I seem to recall that at a suitable anniversary (Puzzle 25,000 ?) The Times published an example of one of each era and it was frightening to see how much things have changed.
    2. I was doing the Times in the early 70’s and regularly completing in 15 minutes or so. If memory serves (which it may not) there would still at that time be the odd “Now is the – of our discontent” clue, but it was at least heading for Ximenean. On average, no harder then than now.
    3. Yes I have been doing the Times crossword (off and on)since 1965. I don’t think it is overall easier or harder than it was then. One good thing is the absence of quotations nowadays, one bad thing is the excessive use of anagrams. But of course it is getting harder for setters to be original or to find new and interesting tricks.

      And I’m not really anonymous but I don’t know how to give myself a name in this system.

  7. 32.28, last in snap by a distance. I don’t recall the cryptic being harder in the sixties when I started doing them regularly. One adapts to what one feeds on of course; but solving-time-wise there’s not much in it. The letter complained I think of a comparative lack now of literary and classical reference, surely a good development (though it’s more my area of GK). I very much doubt the writer can swan through the modern puzzle as he or she airily appears to suggest.
  8. 25 minutes for this curate’s egg. I found the top half quite easy but struggled at times with the southern hemisphere, not helped by some loose cluing.

    I agree 20A is feeble and “new plan” is not a synonym for REDRAFT. Thanks to this blog we now know that the use of EXAMPLE is archaic and this should be signalled “Ancient punishment no longer sufficient”. At 16D “sometimes” is padding and the US usage of SNAP was new to me and I suspect many others.

    1. I took this as fair warning from the setter; the TESTI in TESTIFIED may or may not be pronounced the same as TESTY. And, without a shred of evidence, I suspect, for most speakers, it’s not. (Or maybe I’ve become so Australianised that I can’t imagine “testy-fied” any longer.)
  9. 14m, so I found this pretty straightforward. I didn’t even notice the dodgy definition of EXAMPLE (I just put it in based on the wordplay) and SNAP went in with a shrug: I didn’t know the first definition but I did know the other two.
  10. A smidge over 20 minutes (analogue timing) in a solve characterised by snap entries that felt OK but were wrong:
    COMPEL/COERCE, BORDERLINE/LAND, SLOPED/ASLOPE, ROMEO/REMIT (wrong ones first, in case anyone’s mystified).
    I had no issue with EXAMPLE, as I thought the punishment angle was covered by “made an example of” and moved on.
    B+Y just shades it over INTRODUCE for CoD, for its novelty value, though the latter is very smooth. I also perversely (apparently) liked REDRAFT. For me, “draft” and “plan” are sufficiently close to be more than nodding acquaintances, and pass the Thesaurus test anyway.
    1. They pass the Collins test specifically. Their first definition of “draft” begins “a plan…..” and feebleness is surely a question of taste (I have no strong feelings either way). Collins also approves of example as “a punishment . . ” with no mention of archaism and “snap” as “an easy task . . ” with no indication of Americanism.
      1. Collins, as I said:
        “a punishment or the recipient of a punishment …”.
        The big OED, though, is good enough to give examples. And they do seem rather archaic judging by the dates. So … fair call both ways. Trying to find an example of the straight “a punishment” usage after 1793!

        Edited at 2014-03-17 10:10 am (UTC)

      2. No strong feelings here, either, but if we’re going to need finely honed definitions, wouldn’t we quibble that a redraft is revised, but not new?
        1. Quibble? About crosswords? The very idea! My view is that we are not in the realm of right or wrong here. If I have a plan and change it I may think of it as an old plan and a new plan. Others may think of it as a revised plan or even a redrafted plan. Our choice may depend on the extent of the changes, but redrafting can involve few or many changes.
          Malcj
  11. In addition to some of the above concerns, I wasn’t keen on sufficient = ample in 28ac. I tend to see ample as more than sufficient..

    I have been solving the Times cryptic since 1965 and since I rather dislike the Ximenean straitjacket, I would hardly agree with Jim’s comment above. I do think it has been dumbed down, mainly by requiring a much lower level of general knowledge and literature. 1960s solvers would be thunderstruck at what some these days consider “obscure.” I am happy with the general level of difficulty nowadays, and with the lower percentage of literary clues, but less so with the general “sameness” and limited range of clue types that following Ximenes’ instructions causes. It also leads to an artificial level of clue precision and pedantry that the looser old-style clueing did not. A matter of personal preference, perhaps. Looking at a single example of an old Times cryptic is not really helpful either, since the different style takes some time to adapt to. After a month or two most solvers would get used to it, I feel…

    1. 1960s solvers would be thunderstruck at what some these days consider “obscure”

      I’ve no doubt this is true but I suspect the reason is at least partly that, whether or not they knew more stuff, people tended to know the same stuff to a greater extent than they now do. There was much more of an accepted literary/historical/cultural canon, centred on British history, English literature and the Greats. I’m no sure when this broke down but it certainly wasn’t the case when I was at school.

      1. Your point about (a small subset of similar) people knowing the same stuff is well made.

        Much of the literary stuff has now gone thank goodness but it has been replaced by a much wider field of knowledge. I do not believe that GK has been dubed down – it’s just different and the better for that

        In the final analysis the Times has to be commercial and those pressures required it to change. In my view it still has further to go as the sciences are still under represented

    2. So we want less precision (which I agree with not least because it adds to the fun) but “ample” and “sufficient” are not precise enough synonyms, despite being Chambers Thesaurus bedmates.
      Mind you, I prefer the present day not least because I can’t imagine carrying out this sort of conversation by correspondence.

      Sir,
      Your dissatisfaction with the equivalence of the words “ample”and “sufficient” has been brought to my notice. Please be advised that I consider your concern to be misplaced, having consulted Mr Johnson’s most excellent dictionary of the English language.
      I remain, Sir, your most obedient and humble servant

      Edited at 2014-03-17 10:14 am (UTC)

    3. I have a copy of the first Times puzzle from 1st February 1930. So if anyone wants to do a comparison … PM me with an email address and I’ll send it on. That should prove definitive. No?
      1. When the old crosswords are put up ( usually when the Competition puzzles are running ) I find them more difficult because the clueing is totally different and they are anachronistic.
    4. I’d say the cryptics these days are significantly more ingenious (and incidentally witty) and no less precise (given a slightly different underlying framework) than they were back then. I think the level of GK is less narrow and overall more demanding than it was, reflecting the public’s wider sense of things at large.
      No problem with sufficient = ample.
  12. 12 mins so I must have been on the setter’s wavelength. There were a few too many letter deletion clues for my taste. SNAP was my LOI once I realised it was a triple definition, and NECTAR took a while to unpick. Count me as another who wasn’t overly impressed by the RED RAFT, but that’s a small niggle in a mainly good puzzle.

    I always struggle mightily with the old puzzles that are occasionally reprinted. The different cluing styles throw me a little, but the main reason is my lack of familiarity with a lot of the subject matter.

  13. 15:30 here with a fair bit of dithering over my LOI snap, as I didn’t make the shoot/photo connection and didn’t know the walk in the park usage which just left the game to go on. I half expected the answer to be slam on the basis of a big win having something to do with shooting a game / shooting down the opposition.

    I agree with Jimbo that the top half was easier. That pretty much went in as a clean sweep although I had borderline initially (def close to (a metphorical) frontier and the wordplay suggesting a direction (line) taken though a flat region, like the English/Welsh borders (which probably aren’t flat, but hey ho)).

    Neck is pretty common usage this side of the pond, innit?

  14. Just for fun, I raided the Times archive for a puzzle from 1972, about the time I started solving. My dears, it was no harder than a Quickie! I confess myself a little disappointed.
    Sample clues: [my comments in square brackets]

    Old crocks are often found around his digs (13) [CD]
    One enlisted to study the text (9)
    Cheese for the board – of the Railways, that is (4)
    Complaint of one with mental disorder (7)
    Caterpillar food? (4)
    Avoid being included in the Geneva delegation (5)
    Landfall for a continental pirate (4,2,7) [My CoD]
    Pointing to no-one to cook prison meal (10)
    Storm resulting from rent fuss (7)

    The only ones that might give today’s solvers more trouble:
    “There was a ship” quoth he (7,7) [no wordplay, but you might guess it’s from “The Rime…”]
    Beer for the old Tory club (7) [ans OCTOBER. The checkers give it, but you might need to look up why. The second was named after the first, apparently]
    Pussyfoot consumes one with portions of dainties (7) [You might not know that a pussyfoot was a term for a prohibitionist]
    Form of piped music (7) [Virtually a straight definition, checkers P-B-O-H]

    This may (or may not) be representative. Oh, and you’re right Jim, no science, unless you count
    Wire diagram is under the set, we hear (9) [Francis Ronalds, as I live and breathe]

    1. If you go to the top of the blog and click on Memories and then Miscellaneous entries and then Clue Topics Analysis you’ll see what the situation was only a comparitively short time ago.

      I think things have a bit improved since then.

      Back in the 1950s I doubt even Newton got a look in – after all he didn’t wear a wing collar and a bowler hat

  15. 15:30 for me too with 22 and 26d both holding me up, the former probably because I didn’t know the ‘walk in the park’ connection. I am also a member of the ‘top half easier than the bottom’ club today.
  16. The Times today is far easier AFAIK for two reasons: one, we’re used to the neo-Ximenean style (because it’s really nowhere near the real Ximenes style) and two because the literary refs have been pretty much excised by most (but luckily not all) the compilers. And I like science too, so bring ’em all back! The Black Hole of General Knowledge will sometimes swallow me up when I get what I wish for of course, but that’s what crossing letters are there for. In all I find the current style a little too bland, but the puzzle’s still far better than anything the Guardian pukes out, and most of the Indy’s output.

    Sorry that was REALLY rude, wasn’t it. 36 minutes for today’s puzzle.

    1. As someone who also does the Guardian and Independent puzzles I think you are being a tad harsh on both of them. Yes, they do produce some poor puzzles from time to time, but the general standard is decent and I enjoy doing battle with the more libertarian cluing styles.
  17. I enjoyed this crossword which I found pleasantly difficult, as were the two weekend offerings.

    26d was one of my FOIs, although I’m more familiar with ‘Stroll’ as opposed to ‘Walk’. The latter doesn’t conjure up the same sense of leisure and ease which the expression implies and is rather a neutral word. For example if I (dishonestly) said I strolled through this crossword I think my meaning would be clear, but to say I walked through it really wouldn’t mean anything at all.

    Like Z I also initially led myself astray with BORDERLINE, probably having seen it recently but 17 & 20 got me back on track

  19. All but done in fifteen minutes, stared at 22 dn for an age, no recall of NECK = drink, had stuff to do so read the blog with a DNF. Not the best ever puzzle, even for a Monday.
  20. About 30 minutes or so, ending with NECTAR without really understanding the ‘downed noisily’ part. A SNAP is surely a walk in the park but I didn’t know of the game. Not much else to say, since I have no knowledge of the ‘old’ style of Times puzzles. Regards to all.
  21. Feeling pleased with a time circa 45 minutes. My vocabulary quibble today would be with travail, which I only knew as hard work in either noun or verb form, and not as a setback.

    I was pleased to see snap (cute that one of the defs would be unknown to non-Brits, and one unknown to non-Yanks) (what does that tell us about the setter?) because one of my my first forays onto the site was to ask somewhat fearfully about the game, and I was given a very welcoming and detailed description by Andy.

    1. Paul,

      The definition is Labour. Setback is the reversal indicator for RT so the clue is fine.

      1. No wonder it took me 45 min!!
        (Note to self: think an re-read before posting)
        Thanks for this, P, and thanks for giving me the the chance to also thank Vinyl for the Viotti plug.
  22. Thirty went in within 20 minutes, then got stuck on DISCERNER and NECTAR. Wrote in DISCERNER, but still don’t know why “park’s” = “rec’s”. Never mind. Gave up on NECTAR so a proper DNF!

    Interesting discussion on GK in former and current crosswords. Keriothe’s point is well made, though I for one would welcome the return of the “old” canon of literary/historical GK, and not just in crosswords! (Just yesterday we had cardinal showing total ignorance of the legend of Pandora’s Box and a BBC weatherman talking of the weather being a “curate’s egg” when what he meant was a mixed bag. Indeed, didn’t a Times crossword compiler recently refer to the Shaftesbury Memorial as “Eros”?)

    Shared dorsetjimbo’s view of today’s atypical Monday offering – the north was practically all write-ins, but I found it progressively harder the further south I travelled, derailing me entirely in the SE.

    2. The curate’s egg was ‘some parts good, some parts bad’. Not clear why this is inappropriate here.
  23. A while ago the Times produced a paperback containing roughly one crossword from each of its years (it also included the famous Morse one). Comparing them throughout the years it seemed that they were neither more difficult or easier, just different.
    The crossword has developed over time and I’m sure we shall see it gradually evolve under the aegis of the new editor (actually we probably won’t see it as the change will be too gradual).

    By the way Vinyl, I admit to not knowing Viotti – I’ll give him a try.


  24. … and that one was NECTAR. All others went in pretty quickly for me (about 30 mins or so).
  25. A sluggish 14:18 for me, starting very (very) slowly and finishing nervously, unsure of the “walk in the park” meaning of SNAP, even though it felt vaguely familiar.

    I was glad of the wordplay for ANDALUSIAN. For some reason I’d never spotted (or perhaps had simply forgotten!?) that we spell Andalucía with an S – another one for my list of difficult words.

    Like dorsetjimbo I’ve been solving the Times crossword for over 50 years, and have enjoyed both ancient and modern versions, at least in part because I can make a reasonable stab at all of them (though I sometimes find Times puzzles from the ’30s, ’40s and ’50s quite tricky – though still thoroughly enjoyable). It’s a mystery to me how dj managed to stick the Times puzzles from his first 20 years of solving them. If I’d disliked the non-Ximenean clueing and the copious literary references (including direct quotations) and classical allusions so much, I suspect I’d have gone elsewhere.

  26. I do the Times Cryptic late at night, hence this late post.
    There seems to be a fourth definition in 26D, since “snap” also means (in hunting) “to fire a quick shot without taking aim” (Collins), i.e. “to shoot game”.

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