Times Crossword 24130

Author   sabine_tkPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic

Solving time: 10.25. I thought this was a fairly average puzzle, with tricky wordplay in quite a few places that I had to go back and figure out later.

I haven’t been posting many times recently because I’ve found I’m enjoying the crossword more if I do it in a leisurely fashion in front of the cricket or tennis (January is such a great month to be nocturnal), rather than sitting down with a stopwatch and giving it my whole attention. Luckily I just about managed to solve this before the tennis got going, and the cricket doesn’t start for hours yet.

Across
1
   (p)ARTY
3
   FLOOR,BOARD
9
   CLIPPER – double meaning, a person who clips tickets and an old sailing vessel that often carried tea.
11
   ARSENIC – (increas)*, with “criminal” indicating the anagram and “not terminated” telling us to lose the last letter of “increase” first.
12
   P(L)AINS,ON,G
13
   DRILL – another double meaning, drill being a twilled linen or cotton cloth.
14
   EMANCIPATION – “Film title returned” is PICNAME backwards, and the ATION is an anagram of “to in a” (indicated by “new”).
18
   ATMOSPHERICS – “his mate’s crop)*. Needed a few crossing letters to get this anagram.
21
   CAPRI(corn).
22
   OPPRESSOR, being PRESS (part of the media) inside poor* (resorted). Does “resort” really work as an anagram indicator though? Not sure… This clue gave me a ridiculous amount of trouble for some reason, I first of all got SUPPRESSOR into my head, then REPRESSOR. Knew I was missing something wildly obvious but didn’t see it till I got the first letter from the crossing clue.
24
   T,WINKLE. “He’s lacking in the” just evaluates to T, and Nathaniel Winkle is a character in The Pickwick Papers.
25
   RUFFIAN, with the females (FF) replacing the sons (SS) in “Russian”.
26
   RE,LENT LESS – fairly easy to work out from its constituent parts. RE = Royal Engineers.
27
   OG,LE – “Return” = “go back” and therefore OG.
 
Down
1
   AC(CEP)TED. Another appearance by one of our most popular crosswording fungi.
2
   TRIM,ARAN. The Aran Islands, not to be confused with the Isle of Arran, are found in Galway Bay, Western Ireland.
5
   ORANGE-TIP, a butterfly (operating*).
6
   BESIDE ONESELF. Happily in this form we aren’t faced with the perennial ONE’S/YOUR dilemma.
7
   A(U)NT,IE
8
   DOC,ILE. And also an appearance by a highly popular crosswording priest, ELI.
10
   PANIC-S(TRICK)EN, and not, as I first toyed with, PANIC STATIONS. I didn’t understand the wordplay without some research, because I did not know that PANIC is a type of grass. The rest of it is TRICK (to con somebody) inside S,E and N (quarters).
15
   PHOTO,CELL
16
   RIESLING, another one where I took a while to figure out the wordplay, thinking at first that “gin preparation” meant an anagram of GIN at the end, with S being “superior”. This left me with an L annoyingly unaccounted for, Eventually I worked out that “gin preparation” is actually a gin SLING. (RIE is of course “Rhine oddly – the odd-numbered letters.)
19
   SCO(o)TER – a Northern sea duck.
20
   UPHILL
23
   PARIS, the son of Priam, King of Troy, is probably best remembered for nicking the wife of King Menelaus of Sparta.

36 comments on “Times Crossword 24130”

  1. 18:10 .. Tricky in parts. Good solid crossword. Liked RELENTLESS and BESIDE ONESELF especially.

    Q-0, E-7, D-7 COD .. 26a RELENTLESS

  2. Regards, a late night entry from me today. Took about an hour and held up mainly in the SW area, failing to see UPHILL, SCOTER, CAPRI until the end. UPHILL is a great clue, very smooth surface, and obviously fooled me for quite a while. Didn’t suss out the wordplay for CAPRI until reading Sabine’s entry above, thanks for that. Other delays I inflicted on myself: first entering ‘repressor’, for some reason at 22, a goof Sabine avoided, and also first entering ‘affected’ at 1D, inexplicably. So it took a while to sort out. Have a great weekend all.
  3. Yes, another good workout for my brain, which shows no sign of improvement for the effort. Too much accumulated flab. Some really good clues mixed with some easy ones (fortunately). I too liked UPHILL & BESIDE ONESELF, but really liked the OG of OGLE.

    I don’t have a problem with resort = to sort again. My trouble was thinking “poor” was the anagrind to “resort”‘s anagrist, and could only fit in repressorist by drawing some extra boxes beside the grid. I thought this was a tribute to the outgoing US president. I just couldn’t see where the extra i came from.

    As I was worrying over PHOTOCELL there was a man stomping about installing the very same thing on my roof. You’d think that would have been a hint. (True paranoia is thinking the clues have been written especially for you.)

    1. >…and could only fit in repressorist by drawing some extra boxes beside the grid. I thought this was a tribute to the outgoing US president.

      Thanks for making me laugh!!

  4. 18 min, making it the easiest of the week, but still enjoyable. Needed assistance for 20 dn, which was embarrassing. No particular COD, but then again, no quibbles.
  5. Solved in 8:00 so also found it the easiest of the week. Good start with 1A & D,2,12 falling quickly, but then saw the BLOCK,BOARD red herring at 3. I must have had some sixth-sense notion that even though it works OK something else was on the cards, as I wrote it very lightly. On reflection, 5’s combination of butterfly/6-3/anag. should really have got me the checking O before I looked. None of the 12/13 letter answers went in first time. 14 and 16 went in without full understanding of wordplay (any understanding in the case of 14!).

    I think getting UPHILL from ?P?I?L is a bit of a checking-letter poser. It may have been my last answer too, as I don’t know Pickwick Papers well, though spotted (the – he = T) from previous appearances of “He’s lacking in the” or similar tricks.

  6. 40 minutes, 10 of which were accounted for by coming to a complete standstill with six unsolved clues on the LH side. Eventually I got myself started by working out TRIMARAN and then ACCEPTED, then ARTY followed to complete the NW corner.

    In the SW at 24 I was torn between TWINKLE and SPARKLE and eventually plumped for the former but without understanding why as I didn’t know the Dicken’s reference and had wrongly assumed the “HE” needed to be removed from a character’s name rather than from “The”. With the “T” in place SCOTER immediately sprang to mind and CAPRI (no idea why I hadn’t spotted that one sooner). Last one in was UPHILL. So once again for me it was a puzzle of two halves, or rather more like three-quarters and one-quarter.

    1. Thought this was going to be tough at first, off to a very slow start but completed without aids in around 25 mins so fell into place nicely and very enjoyable. Scoter, trimaran, twinkle and orange-tip were all got from wordplay. I’ve never read Pickwick Papers, and having read half a dozen or so better-regarded Dickens novels without developing a taste for him it’s unlikely that I ever will. But I suspect this is not so much literary as outdated ppopular culture – I suspect my parents or grandparents would have know the names of the principal characters in PP whether they’d read it or not. In other words, it’s a Times setter characterstically pretending its about 1950. bc
      1. “Characteristically pretending it’s about 1950” seems a bit harsh after yesterday’s puzzle had NARC = drugs officer, for which the earliest OED citation is 1966, UZI (1959), GIGABYTE (1960s for the BYTE part), and in fiction DOCTOR NO (1962) and Victor MELDREW, first seen on TV in 1990. On Wednesday we had FENG SHUI, which has old OED citations, but didn’t reach Chambers until the 1990s.

        So although the Times puzzle changes slowly, it is changing, and I’d say it’s more up-to-date now than 10 years ago.

      2. Rest assured neither my parents nor grandparents would have known about Mr Winkle. Dickens did not feature much in our home outside of A Christmas Carol used as a morality tale.

        A 1950s setter would likely not have been so kind as to give you “Pickwickian” as a clue – far too direct for those days when everybody who did the Times was thought to have swallowed most of particularly English literature. Whatever Winkle did or was friendly with or said would probably have been used as an allusion and the definition “scintillation” would likely have been missed out completely.

        1. Ah, the 1950s – those were the days ;-). I certainly got TWINKLE a lot quicker than MELDREW in Thursday’s puzzle. In fact after an extremely slow start, I mopped up the bottom half of the puzzle quite briskly and finished in a decent 6:36.
  7. We all seem to be troubled by the SW corner. Goat=Capricorn should be automatic but I missed it for ages, didn’t know Mr Winkle, thought of every type of vehicle except a scooter and agree UPHILL is a nice clue. Got there eventually in 30 minutes. At 12A should our liberal be in “troubles”? Not sure. I have no problem with “resort” as an anagrind. I think 14A is an excellent clue – I love pic-name for film title.

    Sabine, taking a more leisurely approach to get better enjoyment of the puzzle shouldn’t stop you from posting. We need every member of the quality before speed club that we can find!

  8. Initially thought this was going to be very tough – I read six or seven clues without solving any. Then saw PANIC-STRICKEN and suddenly accelerated, and was surprised at the end to find it had only taken about six and a half mins – my fastest for weeks. Always glad to see Dickens references – one of my favourite authors. Probably a reflection of my age, having read Anonymous’ comments above.
  9. I found this a lot easier than yesterday’s, even though, objectively, I’m not sure there was really that much difference. That old wavelength factor again, perhaps. About 35 mins while eating breakfast. That said, there were a couple of answers – CAPRI and TWINKLE – that I didn’t full understand until reading Sabine’s explanations. The SW corner gave me most difficulty, and, as for Jimbo, UPHILL was the last to go in. By the way, Jimbo, I think “trouble” rather than “troubles” at 12ac works OK if we take P[L}AINS in the sense it is used in such phrases as “he took great pains to be helpful”.

    Michael H

  10. 21:32 so about 5 minutes slower than yesterday and I’m afraid it all felt a bit of a let-down after yesterday’s cracker. I too had trouble in the wurzel corner which I compounded for myself by putting in sparkle and talentless (as in the uncompromising Sid Little).

    Atmospherics held me up too as I was looking for something meaning interference in the meddling sense.

    Re 22 I think resort works best here if looked upon as a noun rather than a verb (I performed a re-sort) such that poor resort then reads as poor rearrangement.

    Q-0, E-5, D-6

  11. An around average half hour here, with the wordplay to a few (1d / 12ac / 21ac / 24ac / 10d) not understand till I came here to have a look. Lots of nice clear wordplay throughout, a pleasure to solve. COD 5d, because while I could see that it was obviously an anagram, and I’d guessed it was probably a butterfly, for a long time I refused to believe that I was right and that OPERATING was the anagram fodder.
  12. I found this the easiest of the week, though still took 30 minutes. I agree with sabine about the tricky wordplay in some clues – I had 4 question marks against clues at the end. Fortunately I had ORANGE TIP before 3, so BLOCKBOARD was not a possibility for me, but I did consider it and it forced me to check that ORANGE TIP was right.
    ‘Return’ for OG is not on in my book, the thin end of a wedge that could lead to analogous devices such as ‘surrender’ for EVIG in a down clue (there is actually a word with those letters – LEVIGATE).
      1. It’s very simple. It’s a very indirect indication that is doubly cryptic. You first of all have to translate RETURN into GO BACK, rather than GIVE BACK, INTEREST, YIELD, COME BACK or whatever else RETURN might mean. Having arrived at the correct choice you then, and only then, have the cryptic instruction. It’s not an indicator in itself, it’s a clue to an indicator at one remove.

        I know it doesn’t bother some, but I also know that if I submitted such a clue to the Times clue competition it would be criticised (rightly in my view) and if I submitted such a clue to at least three of the publishers of tougher cryptics it would be rejected by the editors. The fact that OGLE was the obvious answer does not, in my view, exonerate the clue.

        1. Thanks for the explanation of your POV which I now understand. But I could have done without “It’s very simple”, because your valid argument is actually not that simple.
      2. You’ve just had the strict Ximenean answer. My more pragmatic one is that return = “go back” is fairly easy to see, but other possibilities might not be. There are various “thin end of the wedge” issues like this where the editor and setters (not just in the Times puzzle) seem to restrict themselves to a small range of possible tricks. Look back at City => EC: if so, why not Paisley => PA or any other of the few dozen postcode possibilities? Or if a “banker” is a river, why do we never get any other “with ….” uses of -er. Someone must be deciding where to draw the line, either by imitating what’s been done before or by discouraging any attempts to extend these devices.
        The effect is to restrict tricks that could make solving very difficult to a few instances which don’t cause too many practical problems.
        1. I accept the point that instances such as this are relatively restricted and that editors who are flexible in this respect are not allowing anything in.
          I don’t want to labour the point, but jackkt asked how there could be a problem, and I don’t think I made my objection very clear, so to amplify what I said: “go back” can be taken to mean ‘return’ on the surface, and to mean, cryptically, “reverse the letters/word GO”. One meaning of ‘return’ is, literally, ‘go back’, but I don’t see how it can possibly be interpreted to mean “reverse the letters/word GO”.
          I’ll shut up now.
    2. Don’t give the setters any more ideas than they already have. Coming soon to a crossword near you LEVIGATED = Lasciate ogne speranza, quella entrate Dead! Died and was ground to dust!
  13. 17 minutes, and this time it was more a case of not seeing wordplay and having to resort to definitions. Last in was the entire Baja Mexico corner, with UPHILL lucky last.

    From wordplay: SCOTER

    From definition: TWINKLE, EMANCIPATION.

    There were some very nice clues – 21 and 25 made me crack a smile in particular.

    Late plug – today is the start of Year 2 of George vs the Listener Crossword, which will be updated in the next half an hour or so.

  14. The Club is to be relaunched next Tuesday 27th January. I wonder who will be doing the blog that day…..?
    1. Yes, I just got the “We are confident…” email, too.

      I wonder if they’ve already drafted the “We’re sorry for..” and the “Every effort is being made to…” emails. Would save time later.

  15. I fear all this relaunch business is nothing but a ruse to get us out actually buying the paper for a week or two. It worked last time.
  16. I am worried that they will close the back door. This will irritate the hell out of me, since I have written a little program which brings up the latest crossword with the push of a button. I have had enough of long-winded sign ons. Now LiveJournal …
  17. Sentiments shared in the main (not THE DRINK, aaargh!).

    Couldn’t get past ‘floorspace’ for ages, trying desperately to equate pace with managers.

    I liked the double angst of ‘panic-stricken’ and ‘beside oneself’.

    I’m not as taken with ‘uphill’ as most – hardly a brilliant polysemy is it?

    Envious of Sabine’s nocturnalism.

    Regards all.

    1. I completely agree with you about the clue for UPHILL. It’s a pseudo double definition. I say ‘pseudo’, because one definition is merely a metaphorical extension of the other. Surely the best double definitions draw on two completely separate meanings or uses of the same word.
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