Times 26907 – TCC heat 2 puzzle 3 – no slowing down please.

Author   piquetPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Some time ago I suggested, when the answers to a particular puzzle prompted the idea, that we had a little competition to see who could create a short but readable story using all the words in the grid. I had one entry that was so good, it obviously put others off having a go!
The answers to this puzzle seem like another interesting set of words to go into a short story, so entries are invited! There might even be a prize.

This one seemed to me to be the easiest of the three in the second heat, it took me just on the 20 minutes and had no obscure Shakespearean prostitutes (after last week’s Doll Tearsheet stumped me). Nevertheless had I been in London and entered the competition I think I’d have preferred to have been in heat 1. Next week we’ll be into the deeper end of things with the final three.

Across
1 People left child generous little gift (6,4)
WIDOWS MITE – WIDOWS are people left (by bereavement) and a MITE is a child. My FOI.
6 Vestment returned by bishop let out (4)
BLAB – ALB = vestment, reverse and add B for bishop.
10 Pardon felon, finally turning to stand (7)
WHATNOT – WHAT? = pardon? N = felon finally, TO reversed. A whatnot being a ‘stand’ usually with shelves, like a French étagère.
11 Voluntarily exposed no end of bosom (7)
UNASKED – UNMASKED = exposed, remove the end of bosoM.
12 Inspector polishes up English speech (9)
DISCOURSE – DI = inspector, SCOURS = polishes up, E(nglish).
13 Sweet tin disappointingly empty (5)
CANDY – CAN = tin, D Y = disappointingly, empty.
14 Small amount of money that’s found in the sea (5)
SQUID – S = small, QUID = amount of money, a chestnut clue.
15 Criminal cut and ran, say, for refuge (9)
SANCTUARY – (CUT RAN SAY)*
17 Virgin for one seized by less intelligent dealer (9)
DISPENSER – DENSER = less intelligent; insert ISP = internet service provider of which Virgin may well be one in UK.
20 As a precaution, not taking all native people (5)
INCAS – IN CASE = as a precaution.
21 Bugle call outside a sort of bar (5)
TAPAS – TAPS is the last bugle call of the day, meaning lights out; insert another A.
23 Around noon, a son late rising again (9)
RENASCENT – Noon a son = N A S , insert into RECENT = late.
25 Penalty is roughly presented in numbers (7)
APLENTY – (PENALTY)*. So easy it was easy to miss it.
26 Principal begging head to leave (7)
LEADING – PLEADING loses its P.
27 Hawk that is blown by the wind (4)
KITE – Cryptic double definition.
28 It’s worse if anything, they say, to be wiser (4,6)
KNOW BETTER – sounds like ‘no better’.

Down
1 Amazed wife married without love (5)
WOWED – Insert O into W(ife) WED.
2 Imaginary people in book: loads used in new edition (4,5)
DEAD SOULS –  (LOADS USED)*.
3 Light morning activity creating favourable impression (6-8)
WINDOW-DRESSING – WINDOW = light, DRESSING a morning activity.
4 Heard legends about one god or another (7)
MITHRAS – MITHS sounds like MYTHS, insert RA an Egyptian God, to get a Roman / Iranian one.
5 May child perhaps cross? Near disastrous (7)
TAUREAN – TAU being a form of T-shaped cross, then (NEAR)*. The zodiac sign Taurus being April 19 – May 20.
7 Compare what one-kilogram bags brought over (5)
LIKEN – Hidden reversed in O(NE KIL)OGRAM.
8 Extras including current bit of breakfast and child’s cot (5-4)
BEDDY-BYES – BYES being extras in cricket; EDDY being current, B being a bit of breakfast. Assemble.
9 See what I can do; room for more later (5,4,5)
WATCH THIS SPACE – Cryptic definition. But see Verlaine’s alternative view below as to the definition. Either seems to work.
14 Two features of old record are misleading (9)
SIDETRACK – SIDE and TRACK being things an old record had.
16 Fancy his metal changed (lead only)? (9)
ALCHEMIST – (HIS METAL C)*, the C from changed; Definition &lit.
18 Keep remarking about pair coming out in mist (5-2)
SPRAY-ON – SAY = keep remarking, about = ON, insert PR = pair.
19 Starts to become exhausted and lose time (4,3)
RUNS LOW – or RUN SLOW = lose time.
22 Guide one through area of ground (5)
PILOT – Insert I into PLOT.
24 Energetic person say caught by slowing up (5)
TIGER –  Insert E.G. = say, into RIT.  short for ritardando meaning slowing down in musical terms; reverse all ‘up’.

69 comments on “Times 26907 – TCC heat 2 puzzle 3 – no slowing down please.”

  1. I managed to take 12 and a half minutes for this just now, solving steadily but then getting a bit bogged down in the SW corner at the end. Well, it *is* before 7am still, cut me a break.

    I think in 9dn: WATCH THIS is “see what I can do”, + SPACE = room; “more later” being the definition.

  2. I am glad I finished this, especially since Pip found it so easy! Ha. Well, I earlier worked two puzzles that will one day appear in The Nation, one of which was uncommonly difficult, and during dinner I was distracted by the vote counting in Alabama (whew!) and with composing a birthday acrostic for a friend and I got stuck on this and resorted to the Quickie instead. After the election results were in and I had copy-edited two stories about it on our website, I got into a warm bath with this and it wasn’t so difficult then. I didn’t know the brand name in 8D, but that made sense. It was weird to finally find DEAD SOULS after repeatedly hallucinating “GOGOL” for 24D. I wasn’t sure about WINDOW for “light” until I had the W checker. I think my LOI was WHATNOT (looking for that “felon” first). Glad to see MITHRAS, so unjustly elipsed by a later fable.

    Edited at 2017-12-13 07:02 am (UTC)

    1. Guy, did you see Charles Sykes in today’s Times Op-ed? Rather good I thought. I’d love to see your Nation puzzles but I’m not a subscriber so I suppose it would be difficult.
      1. They used to be available only to subscribers, but I am glad to be able to tell you, Olivia, that Nation puzzles are now free (at least until you’ve read five other stories on the site within a certain period).
        I just looked up the Sykes piece. Thanks!
  3. Finished in about 40 minutes, or would have done if I’d not spent another 10 or so considering alternatives to DISPENSER until finally I managed to parse it.

    Still not all correct however as I carelessly wrote MYTHRAS at 4dn even though my brain had registered ‘heard legends’ as indicating a homophone.

    Not sure about the brand name at 8dn as mentioned by Guy. If there is one called BEDDY-BYES it’s because it’s childspeak for bed, or cot as the clue has it.

    LIGHT for window was common enough at one time and survives in words such as skylight – a window set in a roof or ceiling. Some may remember the law of Ancient Lights which made it illegal for developers to block existing property owners’ access to illumination via their windows.

    Some really good clues today.

    Edited at 2017-12-13 07:52 am (UTC)

  4. On the day this former TLS blogger managed not to get DEAD SOULS. I was mistakenly convinced that things like this and last week’s Doll Tearsheet, which I also didn’t get, were off the menu for Championship puzzles. Note made to self for next year!

    I did get BEDDY-BYES on the ‘What else?’ basis but found it puzzling, and still do. I see Chambers defines it as ‘a place to sleep’, but I had always thought it was conceptual, for the act of sleeping. Well, it was to me and I was an actual child once.

    There were some nice penny-drop moments in this, like SIDETRACK, TAUREAN and WATCH THIS SPACE (which I parsed a la Verlaine).

    1. I too agree with Verlaine’s parsing of WATCH THIS SPACE, and, also like you, Sotira, I always thought “beddy-byes” was a child’s term for the action of going to one’s bed or cot – as in “time for beddy-byes” – rather than the thing itself. We live and learn.

      Edited at 2017-12-13 09:37 am (UTC)

  5. several people tried emailing me without success to volunteer for the Christmas Turkey. jackkt spotted that I had given the wrong TLD for the email address in the announcement post. This has now been corrected.

    Me screwing up is one of those Christmas traditions, like forgetting to cook the sprouts.

  6. BEDDY BYES just didn’t seem right but it had to be. LOI TAUREAN which is surprising given my birthday. COD to 11a.
  7. Gave up after 60 mins with a few left. The good news is I had a croissant (hoorah) and Gin&Lime marmalade to console me.

    If I am ever going to be able to hold my head up in these circles, I will need to swot up and practice more.
    Today, mostly I didn’t know: Widow’s Mite (I know), Dead Souls (I know, I know), ALB, TAPS – and although I do know ISP, I would never have thought of it as a synonym for Virgin.

    Mostly I liked: Alchemist and the very devious hidden word.

    Thanks setter and Pip for unravelling it all.

    Edited at 2017-12-13 08:53 am (UTC)

  8. I thought this was easily the hardest of the day, failing by a distance to finish and taking an embarrassingly long time to solve it today. The lower half was the quagmire of uncertainty that slowed me on both occasions.
    Perhaps in the first instance it was just solving fatigue, and in the second just remembering that I found it impossible the first time so perceived greater difficulty.
  9. My obsession today was thinking of Virgin in terms of ‘airline’. No wonder it took me ages to complete this.
  10. Glad I was in the morning session! Took a solid 33 mins for this, puzzled by but now understanding the ISP bit,
    and a bit slow in the SW.
  11. 45:19. I said last week that I might have been in the wrong heat: this puzzle put paid to that idea! Never mind the hardest of the three, this is the hardest puzzle I can remember. Some of these clues do seem more Grand Final (or Mephisto) material than standard fare (Alb? Taps?) but there are plenty of others where I think I was just being dim.
    1. I thought TAPS was scary too, though I know ALB (maybe because my grandad was a priest). However I would just like to congratulate you on today’s NITCH of 313 which is impressive, to say the least!
        1. You’d have to ask Starstruck exactly why it’s called a Nitch but it’s his measure of the fact it took you 3.13 times your normal average to complete this puzzle…
    2. I struggled to get started on this and, after my 1hr clock for this and the two others ran out, I still had about 10 to do. So, likewise, I was better off in the first prelim. I’d never heard of WIDOWS MITE – that and MITHRAS my last 2 in. Not helped by BELT initially for 6a and RUNS OUT for 19d until I saw 29a. 38:39
  12. If they allowed Fergie time in the championships I might have just snuck in, but as it is I missed my 60 minute target to the tune of 2:12, taking 7 minutes longer for this one than for the first two combined. Never mind, we’ve had six weeks of cracking Wednesday puzzles and more to come.
  13. Excellent puzzle except for BEDDY BYES which I don’t understand. These heat two puzzles seem harder than heat one. A puzzle to relish the clues, not tear through as fast as one can. Nice blog Pip
  14. I particularly enjoyed this puzzle with its combination of smooth surfaces and hidden definitions, e.g. “People left”, “May child perhaps”. No unknowns either, which I expect is the case for the majority of solvers today.
  15. Similar thoughts on BEDDY-BYES, but overall a challenging puzzle. Usually when I do one of these championship puzzles my mood either goes right up or right down, but this was satisfying just to finish. COD SIDETRACK, definitely favours older solvers. Thanks pip and setter.
  16. I’ve always used “off to BEDDY-BYES” to mean the act of sleeping too. They’ll be telling me that you really do walk up the stairs to Bedfordshire next. Took 70 minutes on this, but perseverance is paying off this week. I was much too dense at first, going down far too many SIDETRACKs and not seeing that DEAD SOULS was an anagram for an hour. Of course I tried to fit ‘airline’ in for Virgin, though as I’ve said before I never have been keen on flying one that didn’t go the whole way. It also took a long time for the WIDOWS MITE to drop. LOI was SPRAY-ON, as I prefer carbolic to deodorant. I’ll make COD KNOW BETTER, not that I did at any stage. Thank you Pip and setter.

    Edited at 2017-12-13 10:17 am (UTC)

    1. I’m sure I’ve thought along similar lines, but, analysing it, beddy-byes in “go to beddy-byes” must mean either “bed” or “the land of nod”. A place, anyway.
      1. The land of Nod must be a pun on the place, east of Eden, where Cain was exiled to for his deadly deed. According to Wiki, Nod is the Hebrew root for ‘wandering’ and has connotations of restlessness and trembling. All those bearing the mark of Wanderer will recognise how this myth translates into actuality most Saturday afternoons. I suspect my confusion on BEDDY-BYES being a concept also comes from the expression “going bos”or “bobos” which Wiki suggests is rhyming slang using Little Bo Peep for sleep. I think we could also say “BEDDY-BOS” when children but that may be a false memory.
  17. I suppose if you’d heard of some of the obscure stuff here it might be easier, but the widow and the whatnot and the squid and the vestment and the hawk and that’s just the across clues

    rip

    Edited at 2017-12-13 10:36 am (UTC)

    1. I struggle a bit with this one too. BEDDY-BYES is only ever (as far as I’m aware) used in the sense of ‘going to bed’, and you would never say ‘it’s time to go to cot’. By the same token you would never say ‘I bought you a new BEDDY-BYES’, just as you would never say ‘there were bedbugs in the sack’. Just because X is synonymous with Y and Y is synonymous with Z doesn’t mean that X is synonymous with Z.
      1. I take your point, but I see it as just another arrow in the setter’s quiver. A slightly bent arrow, perhaps, but serviceable enough.

        I just liked seeing beddy-byes in a grid, I have to say.

  19. I was firmly in the Keriothe camp, breaking all-time records for the SNITCH, with a score of 271. That’s one hour and fifty minutes in old money. The irony is, that it’s seldom these days that I am well inside 3 Ks.

    Congrats to V on what I think is the correct parsing of WTS, though I had Pip’s too.

    * Plus I probably wouldn’t qualify.

    Edited at 2017-12-13 11:12 am (UTC)

  20. All done correctly in 37 mins. Happy enough with that given how others have fared. Tough but not as tough as yesterday – for me anyway.
  21. Pip certainly made good time on this, but perhaps I was sluggish having stayed up past my BEDDY BYES to watch the Alabama result, like Guy. And after all that I had a pesky typo – “should of knew better”. I was another who didn’t connect Virgin with ISP – I’ve flown them, once. 25.18
  22. Def not on the wavelength. Held up by too many cryptic bits that I didn’t know – TAPS, RIT, ALB. Saw BEDDY BYES and rejected it as not meaning a cot. When I only had 2 answers after 18 mins I knew this would be a pulling-teeth effort. However all was fair in the end and the eureka moments very enjoyable.
  23. BEDDY-BYES equalled Sleepo-Weepo in our house until the children objected. I still say this to the dog though at his bedtime. How sad! Snitch thinks this a very hard puzzle and I am not going to argue, having taking well over the 20 min mark.
    1. Brilliant stuff. Dogs are just so much more accepting – and indeed encouraging – of their master’s humour than his children are.
  24. I don’t really remember how I found this on the day, other than the fact that it took me too long to become confident on DISPENSER, and that I was very glad MITHRAS didn’t have any other plausible homophones. Oh, and that I was glad I’d seen the Tom Cruise / Sean Penn film TAPS, otherwise 21a would have been a mystery.
  25. For millennia man has worshiped many gods. It’s probably fair to say that at least some of them have never actually existed. So whilst in real life it’s OK to make up a god and invent a name for him/her/it the same can’t be said for crossword competitions and my made up MOTIRAS was marked incorrect. I was fooled by the “one” in “one god” (cf yesterday’s comment on an extra “a” in a clue) so was convinced the “filling” in the clue was IRA. That left me hoping beyond hope that MOTS (from the French, naturellement) were “heard legends” and that MOTIRAS was the god of football commentators. MYTHS just never occurred to me.

    That apart, as this and puzzle two took 41 minutes of flitting I’d say this took about 20 minutes on the day.

  26. I felt quite pleased to complete yesterday’s by lunchtime with no aids. Brought crashing down to earth today; although I can’t say I managed to give it the same attention, I got a grand total of two (2) clues before coming here.
  27. My initial thought was that I’d dodged a bullet by avoiding this one on the day, so I’m glad to find it wasn’t just me who found it tough (there again, if I add up my time for the last three weeks, it’s about the same as I clocked for the first three, just more unevenly distributed, so from that perspective the editor got it right). If I want a positive, at least I avoided the temptation to bung in SOUND at 14ac because a SOU is a small amount of money, and a SOUND is part of the sea, and shut up about the unexplained ND, I’m not listening; so perhaps I have acquired some good habits, like refusing to submit answers I can’t explain. Otherwise, one of those puzzles which required lots of thinking through, which is great when you’re sitting at the kitchen table with a cup of tea, but is a bit less pleasant when you’re solving in competition.
  28. For me this was the hardest puzzle for ages, taking 55 minutes. But I got there in the end. Top left went in quickly but the rest was a struggle in spite of the fact that there were no actual unknowns. MITHRAS reminded me that I used to live opposite the chap who discovered the Mithraic temple in London and who led the excavation. Called Peter Grimes, he died about 30 years ago. I’m friendly with his widow who is still alive. I still can’t see why I found this puzzle so difficult. Ann
  29. I know it is late in the day – but someone has to rise to Pip’s challenge.

    CANDY KITE should KNOW BETTER than to have SQUID TAPAS and TIGER beer APLENTY with a TAUREAN PILOT. She was not WOWED. Later, she would LIKEN the bar to a SANCTUARY for DEAD SOULS.
    UNASKED he tried to SIDETRACK her with DISCOURSE and WHATNOT about how his SPRAY-ON DISPENSER always RUNS LOW of his LEADING deodorant, ‘MITHRAS’, made by a RENASCENT ALCHEMIST.
    “The WINDOW DRESSING features INCAS!” he said, “And don’t BLAB, but it only costs a WIDOW’S MITE.”
    “I need my BEDDY-BYES,” she thought. “WATCH THIS SPACE for me?” she asked – and snuck off.

  30. I scraped in under the hour at 57:23. I found this tough but enjoyable. I had a lot of “when am I going to get another answer?” moments, but something kept turning up. I knew ALB, WHATNOT and WIDOW’S MITE, but TAPAS was a biff. BLAB was my FOI. BEDDY BYES didn’t cause any lifted eyebrows as it seemed reasonable enough. RENASCENT was my LOI. DISPENSER took some parsing but I did get there after dismissing DUSHEMBER, with SHE as the virgin. Couldn’t fit vestal in. SIDETRACK eventually opened up the SW. Nice puzzle. Just glad to be doing it in a relaxing environment. Thanks setter and Pip.

  31. Was never going to finish this one, as I had (b)races for INCAS, thinking ‘belt and braces’ for ‘as a precaution’. Oops!

  32. I rattled off most of this in 22 mins on the morning commute before work rather tiresomely intervened. With just a couple in the SE and a few more in the SW left to go, I wrapped it all up in 10 mins at lunchtime. I felt like I was going through this one like a hot knife through butter so was a bit surprised so many found it of above average difficulty. I had most of the GK apart from the stand meaning of whatnot and the taps/bugle connection. Held up by thinking virgin at 17ac might mean island and reading “around noon a son” at 23ac as “re” “n” “a” “s” so wondering how cent meant late. Also held up at 24dn even though t-g-r left little room for doubt the parsing itself was quite tricky. I bunged in 8dn on the basis of solid wordplay and a vague sense of it being in the area of children, cots and bedtime but did not spend any time thinking too hard on it. A very enjoyable puzzle – just the right level of challenge for me, with clever wordplay, nicely constructed cluing and PDMs. I feel some trepidation at the prospect of the next three Wednesday puzzles though.
  33. CLOCK THIS SPACE, then CHECK THIS SPACE, and only eventually the correct answer, when I was told electronically that there was no fill-in for U.L.K.D, nor for U.H.K.D. So it took ages. Also I never knew of the taps.
  34. Well, I almost finished, by the usual strategy of taking a break in the middle and then discovering that my brain can see things like the WINDOW in 3dn where there was absolutely nothing before; the DRESSING of course was easy then. But it took nearly an hour and a half, after which I was so frustrated that I didn’t check anything, so I had one wrong: BLOB instead of BLAB, which makes far more sense. Never heard of the vestment, though.
  35. I seem to have been in the zone for this puzzle, considering other contributors comments. Still not Championship material I admit, but satisfied to continue my ‘all correct’ record on the ones published so far.
  36. Well, given that so many have pointed out how easy this one was, I now find myself even grumpier than usual (which is, in any case, deeply grumpy), having hacked my way through this one with slow persistence. Solving time was off the scale, and it would be quicker to list the few I found easy than the ones I didn’t. Not helped by WIDOW’S MITE and DEAD SOULS both being NHOs.
  37. I seem to have been in the zone for this puzzle, considering other contributors comments. Still not Championship material I admit, but satisfied to continue my ‘all correct’ record on the ones published so far.
  38. I didn’t start this until midnight and finally curled up after 90 mins!

    Then forget to submit, but for the record…

    FOI 10ac WHATNOT

    LOI 6ac BLAB! I had BELT.

    COD 25ac APLENTY

    WOD BEDDY-BYES g’night!

  39. A couple of days late and several hours spent, but I did eventually finish this one, and to my surprise got it all correct, too.

    I didn’t know WIDOW’S MITE, WHATNOT or DEAD SOULS, so I think I did pretty well to finish off that NW corner, and I do feel something of a sense of achievement for having completed this puzzle. Now all I need to do is get faster by a factor of ten or so, and I can join in the championships!

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