Solving time 25 minutes
Many happy returns to The Times. This puzzle is not for the young and faint hearted.
The first time I did this puzzle I was 17, two pints and a curry cost ten shillings (50 pence today), Elvis was giving my mother apoplexy and most important of all Ximenes rules had not been adopted. I don’t recall the puzzle and probably didn’t finish it. Today I took about five minutes to get my mind into the correct way of thinking. Once that happened I made steady progress. Once you get used to no anagrinds, no definitions and vague approximations the whole thing sort of flows. Just be very grateful things have improved!
| Across | |
|---|---|
| 1 | INCLUDES 4a; D,YE,KEN,JOHN,PEEL; cryptic definition based upon huntsman’s hunting horn; |
| 4 | SEE 1A; |
| 10 | MARTIAN; MART-IAN; the use of IAN=Scot goes back a long way! |
| 11 | CATNAPS; the “opposite” of “dog” is “cat” and of “watches” is “naps”; |
| 12 | LONDON,WALL; cryptic definition; |
| 13 | BEES; out with the reference books if you don’t know the quotation; |
| 15 | NESTING; take “one sting” and remove “o=nothing”; no definition; |
| 17 | ALYSSUM; ALYSS-UM; “Alyss” is “Alice” in the Looking Glass Wars then add “um”; ALYSSUM is a rockery plant; |
| 19 | SALIENT; S(ALIEN)T; the S and T are unclued!!; a SALIENT is part of a fortification; |
| 21 | ENWINDS; E-N-WINDS; |
| 23 | DARN; “mendicant”=”mend-I-cant” and to darn is to mend, so not “a mend-i-cant”; DARN is a mild expletive; |
| 24 | CHRISTABEL; out with the book of verse again; |
| 27 | JUJITSU; JUJ(ITS)U; |
| 28 | SHELLAC; SHE’LL-AC + SH(ELLA)C; there is no definition!!; |
| 29 | NUMBERED; cryptic definition; |
| 30 | OSTEND; in 1960 OSTEND was a resort. The rabbit reference is possibly to the breed known as the dutch rabbit; |
| Down | |
| 1 | DUMPLINGS; a dump is a refuse heap, so a small one is a dumpling; apple dumplings were a favourite dish; |
| 2 | EARINGS; cryptic definition of a sort (rope is strictly a string of pearls, but you get the idea); |
| 3 | EPITOMIZES; cryptic definition; |
| 5 | OSCILLATE; (stoic ella)*; “shake” is both the anagrind and the definition; |
| 6 | NOTE; two meanings; |
| 7 | ENAMELS; (seal men)*; no anagrind; |
| 8 | LASTS; two meanings; a “last” is a cobbler’s tool; |
| 9 | SNOW; take “it’s now” and remove “it” to give SNOW; no definition; |
| 14 | EYEWITNESS; see=EYE; who gives evidence=WITNESS; no definition; |
| 16 | GATE,HOUSE; the “gate house” stands at the entry to the park; |
| 18 | MISPLACED; DEC-ALPS-IM all reversed; |
| 20 | LORD,JIM; enobled=LORD; reference “Lucky Jim” book by Kingsley Amis; Lord Jim is a book by Joseph Conrad; |
| 22 | NEBULAE; (blue ena)*; no anagrind; |
| 23 | DIJON; (join’d)*; no anagrind; |
| 25 | INST; (isn’t)*; |
| 26 | STYE; cryptic definition; |
You’ve got a minor typo at 10 – IAN=Scot, rather than Scots.
At 30 I’d explained “ostend” as meaning rabbit=speak, thinking of “ostensible” as meaning “stated”, but this doesn’t work. I was about to remind you that Ostend is in Belgium, but then looked up Dutch rabbit and found that this name came from 1830 when these rabbits were imported from Ostend, and Belgium was just in the process of being founded. (I’ve looked for Ostend as “rabbit” and drawn a blank everywhere – I gave up reading the Onelook stuff when I discovered that one Ostend is the red light district of Frankfurt-am-Main)
25’s {date = INST} is the sort of tripe we should be very grateful we no longer see.
I looked up the rabbit as well. I sort of had a memory of Dutch rabbit and couldn’t recall when OSTEND went into Belgium and by then had nearly lost the will to live anyway!
What fascinates me is the possibility that I remembered the answer from 50 years ago. I certainly would have attempted the puzzle and D,YE is an unusual structure. I thought it uncanny the way the answer just came to mind. Nothing else like that occurred during the rest of it – unfortunately!
The first Times cryptic I attempted would have been in 1966, so this one is before my time but probably not that different. It has been a real eye-opener to me, how much they have changed over the years. I couldn’t be doing with puzzles like this one nowadays! Some clues are quite dire.
Now for the 1940s one, see you in a few days!
This was the last of the day’s four puzzles that I tackled, and I made a lot heavier weather of it than I should have done. However, I did finish it correctly in 22:35 despite feeling tired and not terribly well.
I was pretty certain about the Keats quote, and I knew the Coleridge one immediately which helped me go quite briskly through the bottom half; but I took simply ages to get 1A, even though I’m sure I’ve come across the same clue (or a very similar one) before. The worst part of that was that I made the rash assumption that the first word was going to be A, I or O, which screwed up 1D as well. I wonder if it would be enumerated as (3,3,4,4) these days?
Once I’d finally solved 1A (and kicked myself), the rest came out reasonably quickly. In fact the only answer I had slight qualms about was EARINGS, and I was pretty sure I’d come across the word in Patrick O’Brian’s books (or something of the kind) – I seem to remember the phrase “from clew to earing”, meaning something like “from bottom to top”.
I assumed the OSTEND rabbit was a “Belgian hare”.
I almost always enjoy the challenge of period pieces like this and the 1940 puzzle, and am rarely worried by the direness of the clues.