I felt too tired last night to face the prospect of solving and blogging post-midnight; with hindsight, that was a good decision, as I found this pretty stretching even after a good night’s sleep. On the whole, I wouldn’t go so far as to say I didn’t enjoy it, more that I found it quite heavy going; clock stopped at 18:17, which was well outside my daily target of 2 Magoos, but still well up the leaderboard so far, which suggests I wasn’t alone.
Across |
1 |
NEGATIVE – E.G. (as an illustration), in NATIVE(original). Of course, in these days of megapixels, young people will only know photo negatives as a way cool filter on their Instagram. |
5 |
CLOVER – Left in COVER. Non-cricketers will be pleased that another definition of “cover” was used today, this one being “The amount of ground covered by a vertical projection of the vegetation, usually expressed as a percentage”. |
9 |
BUTTRESS – BUT, TRESS. If you’re not a rugby fan, I imagine the surface may have passed you by entirely (both lock and prop are positions in the scrum). |
10 |
ICARUS – cryptic def. Hmmm. I know some people have been rumbling about the use of cryptic definition clues recently; mainly, they will say, because several of them haven’t been any good. Perhaps this has made me sensitive to them, but this one certainly made me wince a little; if you were describing what happened to Icarus, you’d say his wings were exposed to the sun, never in the sun; obviously the language has to be changed to make the surface look as if it’s about someone being splashed across the pages of a tabloid, but it made the clue sound forced and odd to my ear. Maybe I’m being too picky and just over-analysing because being blogger of the day makes you look more closely than usual… |
12 |
DRESS – double def., as in dressing a wound or dressing an actor, helped by the multiple meanings of “theatre”. |
13 |
TEMPERING – double def. because the word itself is one of those odd ones which can have two completely contradictory meanings, depending on whether you are tempering steel or tempering justice with mercy, for instance. |
14 |
FOURTH ESTATE – THE in FOUR(“crew”), STATE(“say”). In crosswords, the rowing crew is usually the full eight, but rowers operate as fours or pairs as well (though I’m not sure you can call two people a crew). |
18 |
EXACERBATION – EX(“no longer”), ACE(“expert”), Bishop in RATION(“helping”). |
21 |
BARCAROLE – BAR(“piece of music”), CAROL(“something sung”), European and a nice &lit., the whole thing being a traditional Venetian gondoliers’ song. |
23 |
CLEAR – double def. |
24 |
TALLIS – TALL, IS, as in “a tall story”. Composer Thomas Tallis was associated with royalty at the courts of both Mary and Elizabeth. This sprang quickly to mind because Radio 4 recently repeated a play about his associate William Byrd, and the suspicions of him as a covert Catholic traitor, in which Tallis featured. |
25 |
ATLANTIS – AT, Length, ANTIS. |
26 |
MAYHEM – if you MAY HEM, in the sewing sense, you are able to create a border. |
27 |
LETHARGY – Husband in (GREATLY)*. |
|
Down |
1 |
NOBODY – as in a) Diary of a Nobody, and b) the answer to the schoolboy joke “Why didn’t the ghost go to the party?”. |
2 |
GATHER – concealed in toGA THE Romans. |
3 |
TURNSTONE – spelling out that flying directly away from the South-West would mean turning to the North-East. A bird which often features in puzzles, and which gets its name from its habit of looking for food under…well I expect you’ve guessed. |
4 |
VISITORS BOOK – another cryptic def. It’s not awful, but I doubt it’s going to convert anyone to the cause who doesn’t already love them. |
6 |
LUCRE – (CRUEL)*. Is there any sort apart from the filthy? |
7 |
VERTICAL – V, (ARTICLE)*. |
8 |
RESIGNED – double def.; the meanings are made clear if you consider the alternatives as perhaps RESIGNED and RE-SIGNED. |
11 |
AMPHITHEATRE – A MP(“representative”) HIT(“ran into”) HEAT(“criticism”) RE(“about”). |
15 |
SLOWCOACH – LOW(“humble”) inside [Secondary, COACH(“school”)]. |
16 |
VERBATIM – (VIBRATE)*, Mass. |
17 |
FAIR PLAY – FAIR(“blonde”), PLAY(“theatrical performance”). |
19 |
MENTOR – MEN TO Right &lit. |
20 |
FRISKY – Female, RISKY. |
22 |
ALIVE – Answer, LIVE(“as it happens”). I was slightly puzzled here, as I initially took “no longer quick” to mean “dead”, in fact I was 100% wrong, as it seems to mean “alive, but a word which is no longer used to mean that”, which seemed a little odd. Obviously, it depends how well you know “quick” as meaning “alive” – still used in the Church phrase “the quick and the dead”, or in biting one’s nails to the quick” – but I wouldn’t have thought the signal was needed in the way it is in Mephisto-land where obscure Spenserian words are part of the scenery. I was confused, anyway, but maybe that was just me. |
Found it tough today, and had a couple of blanks…
TALLIS (thought about the ‘tall’ bit, but dnk the composer
NEGATIVE (was convinced N-G-T— had to have -GHT- in the middle)
VISTORS BOOK (don’t usually mind cryptics. But that’s when I get them…)
Otherwise, I too was a bit confused by ALIVE, and dnk TURNSTONE. That will hopefully be added to wherever I got BARCAROLE from, having only ever met it in crossword-land.
10A would do as a GK question in a quiz for 15 year olds. Why “home” in 4D – hotel maybe – and anyway just silly. Setters have got to stop using this device if it doesn’t suit their strengths
And this setter can clearly produce good clues. 21A is top class. I don’t like 22D because I don’t think it quite works. 25 minutes to solve a slightly frustrating puzzle
I should think large majority of VISITORS BOOK(s) are in the reception area of businesses and are used to ensure that the fire services know who in addition to the staff are in a building. The remaining ones are in hotels and guest houses. What has that got to do with opposing teams?
Our new editor can keep his stated fondness for CDs. These two are awful.
Vinyl: didn’t know this composer either. Let us be spared. Made the 22/24 intersection very strange, especially when the ancient musician spelled his name with a Y.
COD had to go to the charade at 11dn. Excellent. And a show of what this setter can do when out of CD-dom and into proper clue writing.
(Am I sounding enough like Jimbo yet? — On edit: written before I’d seen his comment!)
Edited at 2014-03-25 09:40 am (UTC)
TALLIS’s 40-part motet, Spem in Alium, (supposedly composed for ER I’s birthday) is a favourite of mine, particularly the David Willcocks version from the early 70s.
No objection to 10: wouldn’t you say someone had spent too long in the sun?
Think I’ll spend a quarter of an hour with Spem in Alium on Spotify; it really is magnificent
Tallis was new to me but clearly correct.
Toyed with SETTER at 19dn – a cd ?!
A most enjoyable puzzle, where I had to adjust ‘tackstone’ to TURNSTONE to get my last in, BUTTRESS. COD to the excellent CD, VISITORS BOOK.
To be fair to the setter at 22, under QUICK Chambers gives “alive (archaic, church, Bible etc)” which puts the dear CofE firmly in its place. You’d have to access a 1662 service to hear it these days.
I can’t remember how it connected, but TURNSTONE was fresh in the mind after checking odd birds for STONECROP a few days ago.
TALLIS was an odd clue I though, with the royal bit not really helping – “stuff for church” might have been better, not using “stuff” would have been much better.
I liked the rugby deception in BUTTRESS. I also liked the &lit for BARCAROLE.
Edited at 2014-03-25 10:18 am (UTC)
I agree about the feebleness of ICARUS – GK rather than a genuinely cryptic clue and absurdly easy GK at that. I’d be prepared to make a case for VISITOR’S BOOK. Some (admittedly rather grand) people do have visitor’s books in their homes in which they invite comments from guests, and the CD seems to me of passable (if no more) quality.
I shared the general puzzlement over ALIVE and, although the solution was pretty obvious, hesitated to put it in as it seemed to make no sense. Which is not surprising as it doesn’t.. “Quick” can mean “living” or “alive”, albeit only in a few rather special contexts. So “no longer” is factually inaccurate. “Seldom quick now …etc” might have worked, but even then it’s difficult to parse “with” satisfactorily.
That said, there were excellent clues elsewhere in this puzzle. BUTTRESS, AMPHITHEATRE and BARCAROLE all took my fancy.
I suspect every Brit, whether they realise it or not, has heard Thomas Tallis, albeit through the filter of Vaughan Williams’ “Fantasia on a Theme by …”. It often pops up in mainstream culture. Top Gear used it for their celebration of the British motor industry, and the Fast Show for a memorable and touching Ted and Ralph sketch (thank you, Wikipedia, for the reminder of both).
My one error was RECTOR at 19d, which I took to be another double def. (-ish) and rather liked!
Agree that BARCAROLE is a peach.
Edited at 2014-03-25 10:51 am (UTC)
If you have on line access you can see the correct grid here: http://feeds.thetimes.co.uk/timescrossword/20140325/112/
Like others I don’t think 22dn works. ‘Quick’ could be ‘no longer alive’ but ALIVE can’t be ‘no longer quick’.
I also thought the non-existence of ATLANTIS should have been signalled in the clue somehow.
The mix in the difficulty of the clues made the puzzle rather exasperating. I was think that the clues I couldn’t get must be easy, but I just couldn’t see it, only to realize eventually that they were not.
I take it all back about PROSPERO-US a few days back. ICARUS takes the palm for the weakest clue ever, anywhere. I remember being told the legend at school at the age of about eight, I even remember drawing a picture!
Plea to setters: If you’re going to have “cryptic” clues at all, please at least make the connections more devious, more “lateral”.
Edited at 2014-03-25 12:22 pm (UTC)
I had squiggly lines under:
– “part of field” as I failed to spot that this wasn’t a cricketing reference afetr all and needn’t be covers. And there was me thinking the setter didn’t know his/her Onions from his/her Panesar.
– “criticism” but nobody else has queried the connection between criticism and heat so… just me then.
– “No longer (quick)” for obvious reasons.
LOI was mentor after an alph trawl (half the alphabet).
Like the turnstone, I wanted to change course away from the SW but persevered to coax out the unknowns BARCAROLE and TALLIS and put in ALIVE despite nagging doubts.
Edited at 2014-03-25 01:18 pm (UTC)
I also put in ‘TALKIE’ at 24a out of desperation, but then parsed it from the second half of the clue, TALL (unbelievable)and IS (exists), but I’ve never heard of T.Tallis.
I was also confused by 22d.
Re dorsetjimbo’s comments about visitors books, I know many people who keep one on their front hall table, as did my parents. I don’t since I don’t have a front hall! However, none of that helped me since 4d was my LOI before 24a as above.
15:17 in all and thoroughly enjoyable.
Wiki says Tallis wrote music for Henry VIII (largely Catholic with some Protestant leanings), Edward VI (very Protestant), Mary (very Catholic) and Elizabeth I (largely Protestant with some Catholic leanings). He therefore wins the prize as the only man in 16th century England to have kept all sides happy and (more importantly) his head on his shoulders.
On another note, I wonder if there is a special word to describe words like temper and cleave which have completely contradictory meanings. Does anyone know?
Nairobi Wallah
Nairobi Wallah
Thanks
Nairobi Wallah
Nairobi Wallah
NW
John Mck
Edited at 2014-03-25 04:25 pm (UTC)
STUFF: Literary or artistic output or material; literary or artistic compositions collectively.
That’s in the Shorter Oxford. I have to say though that I can’t find this meaning in any of the more usual sources for the Times Cryptic and I don’t recall ever meeting it before.
Edited at 2014-03-25 09:18 pm (UTC)
I say this bit from memory so am prepared to be contradicted, but it seemed to me that they used the same grid in a lot of the volumes 1 – 15 (I guess by now), so it must have had a lot of coverage.
Maybe the pros on here have never bothered reading the guides!!
I liked both CDs: although they were easy wins for old hands, they’re both neatly worded to give good surface readings. Anyway there’s nothing wrong with easy wins!
I thought of ALIVE first time through, but didn’t put it in because (like others) I thought it didn’t match the definition. However, when I came to it again with the A and E in place (though no sign of Dr Thud), I reread the clue and realised that ALIVE was quite OK.
I was a bit nervous about “writer of stuff for royalty” as the definition for TALLIS, and “early form of photo” as the definition for NEGATIVE, but with hindsight they’re both fair enough.