Times Championship 2015: Prelim one, puzzle one… a gentle enough beginning

Author   piquetPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic

I tackled this on a sunny afternoon under “exam conditions” and was surprised to find I had finished it just with the 20 minutes, with all parsed, although 4d and 6d were from wordplay alone until I checked them afterwards. The long clues at 1a and 28a went in quickly, making the rest easier. No doubt you brave contestants in London were lulled into a sense of unwarranted optimism; I suspect the next few are not so gentle. It seems they’re coming along every Wednesday so I have the short straw. Apologies to those who already sat the exam.

Across
1 DO ONES LEVEL BEST – DOONE’S = Lorna’s, LEVEL = flat, BEST = second to none; D make the maximum effort.
9 LETTING ON – DD.
10 CLUNG – C(ONSERVATIVE), LUNG = organ; D held on.
11 AGORAS – AGO = previously, RAS(H) = reckless, curtailed; D Greek markets. I’d have thought the plural of agora should be agorae, it’s a feminine noun, but apparently not in English.
12 MATERIEL – MATE = ally, R = end of war, I E – that is, L = left; D military stuff. A French word adopted into English for this meaning only.
13 DIETER – DETER = put off, stuff in I (end of salami); D &lit.
15 TOUCHING – DD; moving as in emotional, on as in ‘in contact with’.
18 BROUHAHA – BROU sounds like BREW = plan, cook up. HAHA = laughter. D uproar. Curious, I looked up the etymology, which is doubtful, beyond the French; possibly from Hebrew words to do with noisy welcomes.
19 STONED – I see this as STD for standard, insert ONE for joke, as in ‘you are a one’; D wasted.
21 SPINSTER – PINS for skittles, inside STER(N) for endlessly demanding; D she’s unmatched.
23 DARKEN – (N)ARK = nameless informer, inside DEN = retreat; D dim.
26 IVORY – OR = gold, inside IVY = climber; D tooth.
27 DUNSTABLE – D for DUKE, UNSTABLE = not firmly settled, D English town. In my haste I first put in D ON CASTER thinking on a caster would be unsettled, but the checker from 24d made me think again; the right answer is better.
28 TOSSING THE CABER – (SCOTS HATE BEING)*, R = introduction of Rare; D Highland fling. Nice and easy.

 

Down
1 DULLARD – LUD = lord, as in M’Lud; sent up = reversed; LARD = fat; D stupid.
2 OUTDO – OUT = available, DO = make; D best, as in beat.
3 ELIZABETH – Port Elizabeth in South Africa; Elizabeth David, superb cookery writer (French Provincial Cooking remains a classic); DD.
4 LOGE – LOG = tree trunk, E = eucalyptus primarily; D box, a loge is a private box e.g. in a theatre.
5 VINDALOO – VINO for wine, insert O LAD (old boy) reversed; D hot dish.
6 LUCRE – Insert R (last for eveR) into LUCE (alternative name for a pike); D tin, money.
7 ERUDITION – Insert RU (game) into EDITION (version); D learning.
8 TAGALOG – TAG (label) A, LOG (record); D Asian language. I spent a week diving in the Philippines once, and never understood a word of Tagalog, but it sounded nice.
14 EMOTICONS – (ECONOMIST)*; D smileys, for example; ☺ ☺ ☺
16 CATHARTIC – CATH is the lady, ARTIC(ULATED) lorry, D effecting release.
17 SHEEPDOG – (SPEED HOG)*’ D one could redirect.
18 BASSIST – B(ook); ASSIST = second; D musician.
20 DANSEUR – (SUNDAE)*, R for right; D Pavlova’s partner.
22 STYLI – STYLIST is the hairdresser; remove the second ST; D needles, e.g. once used in record players.
24 KEBAB – BABE = gorgeous girl, add K for king; flip to reverse; D dish.
25 INCH – Hidden word in plaIN CHocolate; D small amount.

46 comments on “Times Championship 2015: Prelim one, puzzle one… a gentle enough beginning”

  1. Great minds think alike; fools seldom differ. I wasted a good precious 5 minutes being stuck in the south-east corner until KEBAB came to my rescue. Great puzzle. Thank you, setter and blogger.
  2. Under 20 minutes, which is fast for me. I’m sure each Wednesday is going to get slower and lower as we work our way to the grand finals.

    Wasted a bit of time trying putting DEFIER in at 13a, and when I got EMOTICONS wondering if DIEFER could really be a word before seeing the light. TOUCHING was LOI.

  3. Pretty straightforward, though I only knew TAGALOG, AGORAS and DANSEUR from crosswords. And Port Elizabeth from cricket. And LOGE from…well, I didn’t know LOGE, but I do now.

    Thanks setter and Pip.

  4. 23 minutes, with a careless ‘shhepdog’, on which I can console myself that it’s not a mistake you can make with pencil and paper.
    1. SHHEPDOG: it certainly can happen on paper, especially in a down answer. I was checking answers this year, and had to confirm this kind of error to one person who would have qualified had they not made it. Back in the old days, championship organiser Mike Rich would often talk about “the dreaded double letter” when encouraging us to be sure that we had written what we intended to write.

      Edited at 2015-11-04 03:15 pm (UTC)

      1. I can see what you mean, but this was a case of fat fingers, which, thankfully – as yet – I don’t suffer with pen and paper.
  5. Most of this was done in 25 minutes but I needed another 12 to sort out the unknowns MATERIEL and TAGALOG and also to spot ERUDITION having been focussed forever on EDUCATION or EDUCATING. But even then I managed to write BROOHAHA instead of the correct spelling which I knew only too well. Was pleased I knew LOGE and LUCE.

    Is DUNSTABLE really a town? I went through it the other day on a bus (I’ve lived on its doorstep for the past 33 years and have never set foot there) and it seemed like a long parade of run-down shops alongside a traffic jam. Its picture on Wiki looks quite nice but I didn’t see that bit.

    I printed this puzzle off the newspaper Puzzles page (where the Quickie lives) and was pleased to note that it formatted properly with the introduction spread across the width of the page, but I note in the Club it is still scrunched up to the left pushing the grid and clues onto a second page unless one adjusts the zoom. How many years has this been a problem waiting to be sorted out?

    Edited at 2015-11-04 07:32 am (UTC)

    1. I’ve also never visited Dunstable but have driven past it on M1 many times. One of those names on a motorway sign that never become reality. Sad to hear its run down but so were nearby Bedford and Luton last time I was up there
      1. I have the impression Dunstable and Luton have more or less merged into one now, but that’s another town I’ve never set foot in despite sharing their postcode at a cost to my insurance premiums.
  6. As is I think usual with these qualifiers, I get the first one or two fairly easily, suckering me into thinking that I might actually be able to compete. I left the final square in 11ac blank for some time, until I finally parsed the clue. The one thing I know about Tagalog–actually it’s true of a number of Philippine languages–is that it has infixes as well as prefixes and suffixes. (English has one, but it’s unprintable.) Had no idea what David was doing in 3d. STONED took me forever, and I finally came to a fairly Pip-like conclusion, viz. that ‘one’ was as in ‘I heard a good one yesterday’. That, and nothing else seemed to work. Hello to Uncle Yap!
  7. I did this straight off the red-eye in 8:33, which makes me wonder if I was in the wrong heat for the champs. No doubt some of the others will prove more challenging.
    It helped that I knew a number of the less usual words from doing these puzzles: AGORAS, MATERIEL, TAGALOG.

  8. Nothing too stressful and all done in 28 minutes.

    1 ac was too teasy for my tastes a was 3dn

    However, I’m not too fluent in TAGALOG.

    So bring it on!

    horryd Shanghai

  9. 35mins, but with ‘agorae’ (unparsed, natch) … dnk LUCE or MATERIEL. I too had Doncaster for some time at 27ac.
  10. 20 minutes including an interruption, so for me that’s pretty good going.
    Good to see some new neologisms (EMOTICONS). Not only do is the vocabulary expanding in crossword-land, we also cling onto archaisms that are no longer found anywhere else except in the confines of dictionaries and history books.
  11. Yes, quite a gentle start Pip.. my impression was that the second heat crosswords were noticeably harder than the first, and the finals harder than both heats
  12. 12 minutes for me with unknown but fairly clued loge, tagalog going in after working them through. I’m sure there are harder to follow…
  15. Around 11 minutes. Yes, definitely a “loosener” to start things off. I doubt any competitors in this heat were unwise enough to think they would all be like this.

    Not much to say really, other than that I was briefly tempted, like jackkt, to write BROOHAHA. If anyone fell into that trap on the day I would guess they’ll still be kicking themselves.

    1. Ken (7dPenguin) fell into exactly that trap, as he’d always spelled it that way. As that part of the clue was a homophone there was no way of deducing the correct spelling. Tough break but that and Sue’s “material” error allowed me to sneak 25th spot so I’m not too upset about it!
      1. I certainly hope you bought Ken the first beer, on two grounds!

        I did have access to the Champ puzzles after the fact and solved these under test conditions. BROUHAHA made me raise an eyebrow because I honestly thought broo- was a valid alternative spelling, so I sympathise with Ken.

        Re schoolboy/girl errors generally … I’ve come to the conclusion that the only errors I ever see when checking are typos, when solving online, and daft things like leaving an empty unchecked light at the end of a word. Misspellings, ‘good faith’ ones or silly ones I would never make outside a puzzle, usually pass me by on a check-through.

        btw, I still flinch every time I come across STRANRAER or DALMATIAN (or Stranraar and Dalmation as I had them last year), both of which I definitely ‘checked’! Don’t think I’ll ever forget.

  16. Found this the easiest one of the three, solving it in something like 7m 25s on the day. Didn’t know the cookery writer but the rest of the clue and the checkers didn’t really allow for anything else. Like paulmcl, wondered about DEFIER or DEIFER for 13A, not least because my brain reads DIETER as a German name rather than someone on a diet.
  17. 25 gentle minutes with more than the usual number of Yes Dear interruptions. Nothing really stood out although not for the first time, I wondered if anyone had ever come across Clean Lucre. Wrestled with the 17dn anagram for a bit too long bearing in mind that I was being licked by my avatar.
    1. Come to Macau if you want to see Clean Lucre. The casinos provide an excellent dry-cleaning service. It’s amazing what you can get an avatar to do these days.
  18. Nice puzzle. Unfortunately, I carelessly spelt Elizabeth with an “s” at 3D, which would have done for me under exam conditions, even if I’d been able to complete the puzzle in anything remotely resembling a competitive time, which I wasn’t.
  19. Interested to see this again, having tackled it on finals day. I had tried to replicate “exam” conditions beforehand but was still a bit fazed by the unfamiliar surroundings, not to mention 90+ other people in the room, so it took a while to warm up. Once I picked up the wavelength, it went at a fair clip and all but 11ac and 4dn were finished in 15 minutes. Went back later in the hour and polished them off. A very fair test, I felt.
  20. It was good to see Elizabeth David get a crossword mention – a first I think. To paraphrase E.B. White, she was a true writer and a wonderful cook. When I got my first flat my father gave me a set of her books in paperback and I only threw them out years later when they were so food-stained and decrepit they were unreadable. Very good clues, as one would expect on the occasion. 11.12 and I agree with Pip about the lullaby effect of this puzzle.
  21. Just over 25 minutes. I wasted a couple wondering if MATERIEL could really be a word, and trying to think of other possibilities. Fairly straightforward on the whole.
  22. This was indeed the easiest of the three on the day which is probably what lulled me into making my schoolgirl error, turning me from someone with a good solving time to an ‘also-ran’. I was in good company with people who couldn’t spell brouhaha and one who just put in a random letter in one word! At least my word made sense.

    However- Penfold and Penguin please note: I was very disappointed and cross with myself for over a week until I solved the three Grand Final puzzles under “test” conditions. On balance, I believe it is far better (and less embarrassing) to make one error in a preliminary than get to the end of an hour’s ‘final’ with a fair number of clues still missing in the middle puzzle.

    I hope to have another go next year – when I’ll be even older than the age at which our Champion’s brain power is supposed to be fading and may well offer that up as a defence for stupidity in due course.

    2. Noted. I’m pleased that you eventually stopped being cross but I’m not sure I agree with your logic.
  23. I can’t recall how long this took on the day but I think I moved on to puzzle 2 with Tagalog, materiel and touching missing. When I came back they went in fairly quickly, although I panicked a bit when I couldn’t get touching for a while.

    I had my fingers crossed that loge, Tagalog and materiel were correct.

  24. I was surprised after finishing it to see the listing as only 30 of the 90 competitors finished it. I wonder if that means many solvers didn’t finish at all in the 60 minutes? Anyway, only unknown was MATERIEL which went in from wordplay, whole thing about 8 minutes.
    1. Hi George,

      As usual the “preamble” wording is nicely misleading. Only 30 of 90 competitors got all 3 puzzles correct but looking at the full results 51 were all correct on this particular puzzle.

  25. Certainly a gentle beginning to the competition. I thought it was a qualifier, not a competition puzzle, until after I reread the heading when complete. That was, amazingly, in under 10 minutes, ending with TOUCHING. I’m sure I’ll be done in on our next succeeding Wednesdays, since my usual times are nowhere near those of our colleagues who went off to compete. Regards.
  26. Nice puzzle, defeated only by 15a; knew Tagalog from mistakenly finding myself in a subtitled screening of ‘Gravity’ (mistake being the subtitled screening, not the film..) and reading that the radio snippets were in Tagalog.
  27. … I am not in the championship.

    Twenty-six minutes on this one, for no good reason, other than my being awake this morning at the ungodly hour of 7am. Not helped by my spending a two minutes trying to work out who this German guy “Dieter” was, and why he would be avoiding salami – but I see I am not alone in this.

    DANSEUR came up recently, did it not? I’m always surprised when this sort of thing happens, since you’d think setters would avoid this reuse of unusual words.

    Strange to see BASSIST so defined. I was always told that bassists and drummers were people who hang out with musicians.

  28. 33m here with a number of guesses proving to be right : LOGE and TAGALOG for example. I had no problem with BROUHAHA but struggled for what felt like 5 or 6 minutes with TOUCHING, my LOI.
    Enjoyable puzzle and good blog, Pip.
  29. 10 mins. I obviously have no idea how I would have done under exam conditions but I found it gentle enough after coming home from a day’s work. LUCRE was my LOI after MATERIEL.
  30. Did not know ‘materiel’ and bunged in ‘material’ without concentrating sufficiently on the wordplay.
    For what it’s worth, 19m 31s with the mistake.
  31. I got off to a brisk start, and although I slowed towards the end, I think my time can’t have been too disastrous.

    Luckily checked letters prevented me from chasing after red herrings. Someone on the TCC forum pointed out that BRASS would be an alternative answer for 6dn (rather more obvious than LUCRE, I reckon); and (as a Yorkshireman) I’d have bunged in DONCASTER if I hadn’t been so sure of DANSEUR.

  32. 19:14. Most went in quite quickly but I struggled to remember AGORAS and spot VINDALOO. TOUCHING my last one in. I didn’t know LOGE. 5d my favourite after I’d worked it out.

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