Times 25964 – Newbies welcome!

Author   vinyl1Posted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Solving time: 18 minutes or so, with a phone call in the middle

Music: Jon Hassell, Dream Theory in Malaysia

This one was pretty easy, and I was off to a good start when I was interrupted. It took a while to get back into solving mode, so this should have been even quicker. I didn’t bother with many of the cryptics as I solved; the answers flowed right in, and all seemed good. Now I’ll have to figure some of them out as I write up the blog.

Later, having completed the blog, I find this is even easier than I supposed. If they had put this puzzle in for the Quickie, no one would have complained. Just for that, I’ll let Ulaca have the next two!

Across
1 SLIP COVER, SLIP + COVER, two different cricket fielding positions making up what we would call a ‘dust jacket’ in the US, suitable for any book, including famous 18th-century novels.
6 CRAMP, CRAMP[on].
9 TETANUS, anagram of TAUTENS.
10 CLOSE UP, C(LOSE)UP.
11 RIG, [b]RIG.
12 IMAGINATIVE, I’M A GI, NATIVE, as opposed to one who joined the army to get citizenship, I suppose.
14 CURFEW, CUR + FEW.
15 KEEPSAKE, KEEP (a fort) + SAKE (a drink).
17 ALPHABET, ALP + H + A BET.
19 COFFER, C + OFFER.
22 PLACEHOLDER, anagram of CHAPEL + OLDER.
23 AIM, [r]A[c]I[s]M.
25 GLAMOUR, G + L + AMOUR.
27 EVASION, NO, I SAVE backwards. Clever but easy.
28 EVENT, EVEN T.
29 EXTREMELY, the last three letters of [n]EXT [theo]REM [bar]ELY.
 
Down
1 SITAR, anagram of T + SARI. The literal seems a little strange; I wouldn’t expect Scott Joplin here.
2 INTEGER, anagram of GREETIN[g], a cryptic I failed to see while solving.
3 CONSIDERATE, CON + SIDE + RATE. If not a chestnut, it should be.
4 VISUAL, VIS(U)A + L, the UK movie rating again.
5 RECEIVER, R(E[lectri]C)EIVER. Reivers were found along the Scottish border in the 15th and 16th centuries.
6 COO, COO[l], where ‘My!’ is the definition.
7 AMERICA, A + C + IRE + MA upside-down.
8 PUPPETEER, PUP + PET + E + E.R.
13 APPROPRIATE, A P PROP + anagram of I RATE.
14 CHAMPAGNE, CHA + M(P)AGNE[t]. Another one I didn’t bother to parse while solving.
16 RECOURSE RE + COURSE. If you put in ‘resource’, you were solving too quickly and should have considered that ‘source’ cannot be made to mean ‘route’.
18 PLACATE, PLA(CA)TE.
20 FRAGILE, FR + AGILE.
21 ADVENT, AD + VENT.
24 MONEY, M(ONE)Y
26 OUT, [l]OUT.

46 comments on “Times 25964 – Newbies welcome!”

  2. And all the while feeling that I was making this one harder than it needed to be. Similar experience to Ulaca with 1ac. Took ages to get CONSIDERATE, ALPHABET, CHAMPAGNE and RECOURSE, for which I can offer no explanation or excuse.

    Still, a solid start to the week. Thanks setter and blogger.

  3. 1ac probably my LOI, since I couldn’t figure out why SLIP–fielding, but finally assumed it was a cricket thing. Slowed down by misspelling PUPPETEER with 2 Ts and not noticing. 5d was parsed post hoc; I didn’t know what a reiver was. A Mondayish start to the week.
  4. Although, like kevin above, 1ac was my last one in, MY problem was working out what SLIP COVER had to do with books (or was there another, unknown, meaning of ‘Tom Jones’ of which I was unaware?). As far as I’m concerned “dust jacket” is what it’s called in the UK too as that’s what it always was in our house. If I’ve heard of SLIP COVER before, it was in connection with loose coverings for chairs and sofas.

    Another problem was parsing 11ac where I failed to come up with ‘brig’ as a prison and although I understood the principle of the clue, I thought I was looking to use an A in addition to the musical key.

    REIVER was another unknown (or forgotten).

    I’m very used to MY = COR but MY = COO was new to me when it appeared a few days ago and here it is again, so soon!

    RAG is also ‘raga’, a classical Indian style of music, so 1dn is not as odd as it may have appeared. In this context “rags” would be the musical modes or scales that the style employs.

    I achieved my 30 minute target but only just, and I think many regulars in Quickie corner would have struggled with this a bit more than has been suggested.

    Edited at 2014-12-08 05:21 am (UTC)

    1. A slip cover is like a carton that slides over the book, leaving only the spine showing (ie the top, bottom and back of the book are covered) A dust jacket just wraps around the book’s hard cover.
  5. 12m. Pretty straightforward, but not among the easiest. My last in was 1ac too: like Jack I don’t think I’ve ever come across SLIP COVER before and it took me a while to twig the cricketing theme.

  6. All pretty quick until the end, where i struggled with the top left: hadn’t heard of brig for prison (or more likely had come across it, but had forgotten it), and the only Tom Jones I could think of was the Welsh crooner. Dreadful literary admission. SLIP COVER was a lucky guess, thinking it must be something cricket-related (never heard of it used for a book). Nearly went in as spin cover.
  7. 18 min with an error – after hastily entering IMAGINATION at 12, forgot to correct it when I put 8dn in. I think the difference between a SLIP COVER & a DUST JACKET is that the latter comes with the book, whilst the former can be used for protection if the latter has been lost.
  8. Pleasant and quite zippy solve – there wasn’t anything here I wasn’t familiar with from real life or crosswords, except “rags” for “ragas”. I assumed it was a misprint, and even when I had it confirmed that the former is acceptable as a form of the latter, thought that made the clue a bit tough compared to the overall standard – but I imagine the setter liked the way that “rags” ties in with the rest of the clothing based wordplay too much to let it go.
  9. 30 minutes. Mostly very straightforward apart from the unfamiliar 1ac and the odd definition for 1dn. I wondered if there was an A missing from ‘rags’ though that would spoil the surface. I associate the sitar with ragas, not rags. I don’t think Ravi Shankar would have approved.

    Some nice clues, especially 14dn, which earned two ticks from me.

  12. When we get a surfeit of unusual letters – V in this case – is this coincidence or intended as a legitimate additional aid?

    Philip

    1. The frequency of the letter V in English is 0.978%, so in the 162 letters here, one would expect 1.58 examples. The fact that these are dictionary words, rather than written text, probably increases this slightly.The frequency with which a given number of V’s occurs follows a Poisson distribution, which applies to rare instances of something occurring in a large sample. The classic example is the number of deaths from horse-kicks in the Prussian army between 1875 and 1894. The frequency with which 6 V’s occur in 162 letters is exp(-1.58)*(1.58^6)/6!, which is 0.44%. Given that one could choose several letters to analyse in this way, this would not be regarded as statistically significant, so I think we have to ascribe it to chance..

      2. Brilliant, brilliant. Shd. be aboard a space capsule or sent to Greece in exchange for the Elgin Marbles. Will never forget the classic example.
  13. I started off quickly with several going in by definition but the NW held me up, pushing my time out to 28 minutes.

    Like Janie I was thinking Welsh crooner at 1A and toyed with HOME COMER thinking it might be something to do with ‘Green Green Grass of Home’.

  14. A pleasant stroll? In fact I romped home in approx 10 mins!

    Many thanks setter for being on my wavelength, and to Vinyl.

  15. 18.30. Easier than I let it be. In a different sinusoidal envelope from the setter’s. As an old India hand liked 1 dn.
  18. Well thanks for the stringent rebuke, V, that really cheered me up after getting RESOURCE, bringing my error record to 6 in a week, including 3 prize ones. I hardly dare tackle the Jumbo, which still crouches menacingly at the door. Anyway, at least I know what a SLIP COVER is, and I also know my Ravi Shankar from my Scott Joplin. So there.
    I liked odder clues today, particularly IMAGINATIVE and EXTREMELY.
    Thanks for messages of support: my 3 year old grandson is making great progress in recovering from meningitis, and today demolished a full ham sandwich in nothing flat, his first real food in more than a week. Little things matter.
  19. Just under 20 mins so a good day, although I had to dream up 1ac. The V statistical analysis may be slightly distorted by the fact that of necessity, the words intersect (giving double counting of letters) but I do not disagree with the conclusion.
  20. I rather like Rag A, thanks! I expect you’re familiar with Beethoven’s prescient ragtime sonata – about 30 seconds in – but here it is for the musical education of the others. Sorry there’s no sitar.
    1. I see what you mean about “ragtime” – though I’d always simply thought of it as yet another piece of amazing late Beethoven.
  21. No, I guarantee it’s a lot harder than the average Quick Cryptic! I finished the Quick puzzle today in under 30 minutes (slow by your standards but a minor miracle for this novice) but I managed only 8 clues in 30 minutes on this one. One day…
    1. Good advice from vinyl. Also, get a good dictionary (Collins, Chambers, Concise Oxford) and whenever you come across an unfamiliar word, take the trouble to read about it in the dictionary.. fixes it in the memory
  22. Easy one in the end, but having to trust the wordplay for 1A (didn’t know the phrase) wasn’t the kind of start to generate confidence for a quick solve. Liked the constructions of IMAGINATIVE and EVASION.
  23. 21 mins for a puzzle that should have taken me round about 10. My excuse is another busy day, getting to the puzzle late, and nodding off continually during the solve. Since I got back, with one exception, I haven’t been able to start the puzzle until the evening, and I can understand why Tony Sever continually bemoans his late/tired solves. UNIMAGINATIVE was my LOI after PUPPETEER. I didn’t know SLIP COVER as an alternative name for a “dust jacket”, and it took me a while to see it even though I was fairly sure the clue was referring to the book.

    I’m glad your grandson is on the road to recovery Z8.

    1. Nodding off (or nearly nodding off) can be quite disconcerting, so I do sympathise. For me it’s swings and roundabouts: I’d probably do better if I solved earlier, but I’d be more likely to be interrupted.
  24. About 20 minutes, held up only by 1A and the unfamiliar reiver. Not much else to say today. Thanks to vinyl and the setter. Regards.
  25. 8:10 for me. I’m not quite sure where the time went as I thought I’d been faster, but, looking back, I was baulked at odd points – including 1dn, where (without the initial A, or the give-away “raga”) I kept wanting the answer to be ASTIR (because it fitted). I started typing in RESOURCE to fit the definition of 16dn, but realised the answer had to be RECOURSE before I finished typing. (Phew!)

    Some very neatly worded clues. I particularly liked “Something made fortified” for KEEP and “prohibition on going abroad” (with “abroad” not meaning “overseas”) for CURFEW.

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