Times Crossword 24178

Author   sabine_tkPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic

Solving time: I was disturbed twice while solving this one and didn’t manage to steer the stopwatch successfully through the stops and starts, but I’d guess it took me around 15 minutes, and that this will turn out not to be a very good time. Struggled for much too long with clues like 23d which were not really that hard. There was no clear easy or hard corner – I seemed to have holes all over the place. The answer at 26a made the puzzle more than worthwhile for me.
 

Across
1
   UMBRELLA – two meanings, the first being “covering or including a wide variety of things”.
6
   SALMON – tickling is a method of catching fish using the hands, and salmon is a shade of pink.
9
   A,GIN – a dialect or facetious way of saying “against”.
10
   N(IN,CO,MP)O,OP, a somewhat bitty construction of 5 2-letter fragments.
11
   AS,S(EVER)ATE. I didn’t know this word but put it together from the wordplay. AS=when, EVER =always, SATE=stuff, in the gluttonous sense.
13
   AID,A. I guess the “grand proportions” arises from the term Grand Opera, a 19th century genre of lavish opera to which this one belongs.
14
   CO(RUN)D,UM – RUN=managed, and UM=”I’m not sure” .
16
   OODLES, being FOODLESS with the borders removed.
18
   VEN(O)US – Took ages to see this one, and in the end got it from the definition “of some vessels” and worked backwards from there.
20
   NOBELIUM – (I’m no blue)* the wordplay being an instruction to remove the t (“without time”) and then anagram the remainder. Nobelium is the element of atomic number 102, and its abbreviation is No. I saw how this worked at once – my first line of scribble by the side of the crossword says “IMNOBLUE” – and then completely failed to solve it right till the end. This is one to add to the mental list of elements (such as He) that can be subtly placed at the start of a clue.
22
   AC(M)E
24
   CRY,P(TOG)RAM – a nice helpful definition but the wordplay took a few moments to see. “received in turn” is TOG (“got” backwards), CRY=call and the Wheeler is a PRAM.
26
   DISEMVOWEL – (Seldom view)*. Thght t frst ths ws sm srt f jk bt n, ts srsly prpr wrd! Brllnt! Y cn rd ll bt t hr.
28
   OV,ID – another one where I suspected the answer without immediately grasping the logic, which is that OV = “Letters at the back of a Russian”, since so many male Russian surnames end in those letters, and passport – I.D.
29
   REEFER – a kind of jacket, and also a joint. Toyed vaguely with PUFFER, but the jacket I was thinking of is spelled PUFFA.
 
Down
3
   ROND(E)AU – E inside “around)*.
4
   LA(N)CE – “spike” here being in the sense of adding something stronger to a drink.
5
   (l)AWN
6
   S,MOKE BOMB – a moke is a donkey.
8
   OVOID – If nothing is void then everything is in effect.
12
   A(L)MONRY – L inside (army on)*, ‘ground’ indicating the anagram. I didn’t know this word specifically, but it’s easy to guess from “almoner”.
15
   D(UST C)OVER, Dover being the port and USTC the first letters of “unfurl several times coming”.
17
   EDUC(A)TION – New Labour promised us that their priorities in government would be: “Education, education, education!”, though these days it feels like “Ruination!” would have been a more prescient slogan. I had no idea until now that the exhaust of an engine is also called an EDUCTION.
19
   ON,ESELF – ON=being shown, + (feels)*.
21
   LEGWORK – K (last letter of “seek”) ROW (dispute) and GEL (stick) all going upwards.
23
   C,HIDE – one of the last clues I solved, somewhat put off by the “Seeing” at the start, and equally put off by the wardrobe which had me thinking clothing must somehow be involved.
25
   TULS,A , “a slut” reversed (brought up).

49 comments on “Times Crossword 24178”

  1. I gave up on this one after messing around with it for an hour and making hardly more progress than I usually do for a Mephisto in the same time.

    I finished the NE corner and most of the NW, had the two along the bottom and a great empty swathe through the middle.

    At 26 I guessed DISEMVOWEL as a joke but rejected it when I couldn’t find it in the OED.

    The New Labour reference at 17 went straight over my head.

    I had TUXEDO at 29 which works perfectly well as a double def – a “smoking” is a dinner jacket or tuxedo. I wonder if anyone had BLAZER?

    At 30 I started with THUMPING, realised that T*T wasn’t going to work at 27 so changed it to WHOPPING, then to WHACKING when I got 21dn (although shouldn’t LEG be “set up” rather than “stick up”?).

    Then I got fed up and threw it in the bin.

    1. In Collins and COED, “smoking jacket” seems to need both words, and is described as a comfortable jacket, usually of velvet – so not quite a Tux. It’s in French that “smoking” is a DJ/Tux. BLAZER is much more convincing.
      1. At work I only have the OED online, which gives “smoking” as “a dinner jacket” .
    2. I had blazer (having toyed with jacket): since I was mentally exhausted after an hour with 6 clues undone it didn’t make that much difference despite the usually effective liberal application of Dubbonet and Gin.
  2. I think 15 minutes might hold up quite well. I also had “holes all over the place” – little answers like 18, 13, 28 which refused to come when all the checkers were in (or refused to make enough sense – for the Russky ending I could only see -OVICH).

    As well as being dense in the NW corner with 1 and 3 taking far too long, I had two really bad ideas – at 6D, S,MOKE+SHIP=packet (maybe by analogy with fire-ship) though at least that never hit the grid. Much worse was a fairly plausible “MUGWORK” (like donkey-work?) at 21D. 17 and 24 had aready taken ages in the same area. 20 was the last answer entered, after pretty much simultaneously deciding that N?B?M?U? was impossible, and seeing Nobelium.

    Too busy with this lot to give my time – limped home in 21:55.

    Edited at 2009-03-20 08:05 am (UTC)

  3. (Anonymous) (82.21.133.172) wrote:

    Mar. 20th, 2009 08:41 am (UTC)
    3d
    where you read burn, I read bum. Would that make more sense?
    Keith.


  4. Apologies for muddling up my turn to blog, and I’m glad Sabine posted before my efforts had attracted too much attention. I note kurihan had a similar experience to mine and I’m not sure I would have persevered to the end had it not been my turn to blog, which it turned out not to be anyway!
    1. It seems we often have similar reports Jack, but I take my hat off to you for persevering late at night.

      I really could not get this setter’s drift at all, and seeing 3 possible answers at 30ac just made me lose interest.

      I agree with Sabine that 26ac is very clever and amusing, but I think it would be improved if the answer was in a dictionary.

    2. Just for completeness I’m adding my general comments to this thread:

      Time taken to solve? Please don’t ask. It was off the scale! There were very few easy clues for me here as I just couldn’t get on the setter’s wavelength. I tackled this after midnight having been up and working since 5 in the morning and just having dealt with an urgent email from work. But I was, I thought, wide awake, so I decided to give it a go. On reflection this may not have been a good idea. If Jimbo says this puzzle was too easy I’m giving up!

  5. A hung-over 35 mins for me today, with one mistake. I couldn’t make anything of 20A, so just stuck in NEBULOUS as the only word I could think of that fit the crossing letters.

    I thought 26A was funny – a play on DISEMBOWEL probably, and I’m not surprised it isn’t in the OED.

  6. This setter may be a wannabe Mephisto setter who lacks the precision required of a bar crossword. Some of it is very good – 20A for example and 12D. Some of it is just awful such as 28A, 29A and 23D. I had to guess DISEMVOWEL and can’t for the moment justify wheeler=pram.

    I can understand people getting frustrated with it and deciding it’s not worth the effort. I finished in 30 minutes and think Sabine’s 15 minutes is excellent. Jack, at our age we know all about senior moments and I feel for you. Don’t you dare give up.

    1. It’s more worrying when, to misquote Rossini, one’s senior moments become quarter hours – just like mine. Worse, I don’t get my bus pass until next week!
      Dafydd.
      1. Yes it is worrying,dafyddpj, and even worse that my senior moment, thinking it was my turn to blog today, seems to have lasted most of this week despite the fact I had made a special note of the date of my previous turn, Friday 13th! I do have my bus pass, but its not much compensation if one becomes too gaga to be allowed out the house.
    2. I have often been frustrated by this site; my grumbles have been sometimes rather smugly (to my mind) brushed aside – so it is very reassuring to have the real experts expressing the views which I, as an amateur, had formed. So while we are all feeling rather raw, may I raise three cheers to this site and apologise for my reservations.
      1. I’m going to say smugly that you seem mellow rather than raw after the Dubonnet and gin! I think JACKET makes as much sense as BLAZER (and therefore REEFER). The only point I can find against it is that the step from ‘smoking’ to ‘(smoking) jacket’ doesn’t feel quite big enough for the present-day Times xwd, but that’s greybeard experience rather than logic.
  7. Nobelium was among the first answers I entered, but you’d need a calendar to measure my solving time had I not cheated a bit with Tea and Chambers CDROM. “As” in two clues provided some of the poison, because I thought 22 and 4 were going to be adjectives. Like Sabine I was put off by “seeing” in 23, particularly as I’d inserted BLAZER at 29. Another red herring, WHOPPING (or even WHAPPING) didn’t help either.

    Some clever stuff, but altogether a rather undisciplined puzzle, I feel.

  8. TURMOIL AT CROZZY BLOG
    – “It’s gridlock,” admits puzzle Tsar.

    The Times for The Times blog was in turmoil today after bungling bloggers covered the same puzzle TWICE.

    “They’re CLUELESS,” said one disappointed solver. “You wait all day for a blog then two come along at once. From now on I’m sticking with the SUN’s Teabreak Quickie and some internet porn.”

    Shocked visitors to the exclusive site couldn’t believe what they were seeing. First they blogged the crossword ONCE. Minutes later they blogged it AGAIN.

    “This is what happens with a target-driven culture,” said an opposition spokeman. “Bloggers are too busy ticking boxes to notice what they’re doing. It’s the solvers I feel sorry for.”

    Pressure is mounting for a public inquiry into the running of the troubled blog, which has been hit by a string of delayed entries and catastrophic typos.

    “It’s a disgrace,” said one heartbroken fan. “I bet they’re all GUZZLING champagne and laughing about it.”

    “My granny could do a better job,” said another. “And she hates crosswords.”

    Crossword supremo Pete Biddlecombe was unavailable for comment.

    1. Marvelous piece! I haven’t stopped laughing yet.
      Thanks for making my day.
      Barbara
  9. I found this tricky in places, though not as tricky as some appear to have found it. The longest to solve were VENOUS, UMBRELLA (not sure why, but I saw it for too long as a container) and NOBELIUM. The rest came fairly easily, even DISEMVOWEL once I had the V, though I couldn’t believe it was a word, and assumed that Waterloo (of Listener fame) had taken over for the day. The clues were a mixed bag. I didn’t think much of the clue to OVID and I don’t think the one to OVOID is all that convincing. I agree that 23 is not very satisfactory either. The definition for 17 is a bit passe now, but it did help me to get the answer without having to think about wordplay. 29 just about works for me. Of the rest I liked 3, 12, 16 the most.
  10. A chateau-bottled stinker. I got there after an eternity, but had to resort to dictionaries and aids for the last half-dozen or so clues, and didn’t fully understand the wordplay for several until coming here. Sabine’s 15 mins time seems to me spectacularly good. I was pleased to get DISEMVOWEL, even though I could find it in none of my dictionaries (I now learn from jackkt that it is, apparently, in Collins). Despite the difficulty, most clues seemed to me fair and some very ingenious. I agree with Jimbo that one or two were absurd (to wit, 28ac). I like the wordplay for OVOID at 8dn now that it’s been explained to me.
  11. So, it wasn’t just me then. I did finish it eventually, after a session or two. I think the word is quirky. But I liked a good deal of it; so many clues like UMBRELLA seemed easy only in hindsight. DISEMVOWEL must surely get some kind of award. Fortunately I had my overactive imagination surgically removed as a student and couldn’t think of anything other than REEFER and WHACKING. I think BLAZER is the superior answer at 29. Perhaps there is a complete parallel solution to this puzzle?

    I also liked 3 (I too have problems with Arial’s rn looking exactly like an m; I think they’ve made it a ligature), 6, 16, 18, 20 & even 8.

    Was Venous Nobelium not an act at Caesar’s Palace?

  12. I coped with the RHS in about 20 minutes, but lost the will to live on the LHS and gave up after another half hour. Seeing the anagram in 26ac, and …..VOWEL, and despite cheating still not being able to get it, just about finished it off for me. In retrospect, I should probably have been a bit more patient as 2d and 5d, which weren’t that bad, would have given me a head start, but there you go.
  13. I must be a little foggy-brained today, because I don’t understand the wordplay for this clue:
    Seeing scold, Conservative has to rush in to the wardrobe? (5)
    Please explain. Barbara
    1. “Seeing” is one of those cheeky “introduce the answer” words or phrases which they sometimes put in. Not my favourite one. Then it’s scold=CHIDE, Conservative=C, and “to rush into the wardrobe” (maybe in Brian Rix style spotty boxers) is HIDE.
  14. What a delightful word!
    There is a discussion of this word in both Wikipedia and Wiktionary on-line.
  15. Odd as it may sound given the number of times I quote dictionaries, I wouldn’t have been bothered if this word had been in none of the reference dictionaries. The clue gave you a clear anagram, the txt stuff indicated a ‘vowel’ link, and the meaning is obvious even if you’ve never seen the answer, as I promise I hadn’t. It’s DISEMVOWEL by cryptic xwd logic, and that should be all you need.

    Same for “wheeler”=pram. Same logic as “flower=river” or maybe the “banker” alternative. No dictionary required.

    No prizes for guessing that if I’m thinking of the right Waterloo puzzle (the “no answers in Chambers” one), I loved it for much the same reason. You had to think to get the answers.

    Edited at 2009-03-20 02:08 pm (UTC)

    1. With you on DISEMVOWEL Peter. I understand it’s in one of the dictionaries and the cryptic allows you to derive it, which is what I did. I counted it a guess because I didn’t know the word.

      Can’t agree with you on wheeler=pram however. A river flows on its own and so flower is fine. A pram doesn’t wheel on its own, it is on wheels and is wheeled by somebody else. Also you can only reverse engineer the connection. Once you have the answer CRYPTOGRAM you can guess that pram=wheeler but going the other way from wheeler to pram is a very tough call.

      1. I should have said more about “banker” – it’s crucial. A river does not bank, but it has banks, and that’s enough for {banker => river} using the meaning of -er seen in newcomer, double-decker, fiver – a person or thing with a particular attribute. It is indeed a very tough call, but the logic is there. You can blame me if you like – since I was gently dissuaded by a setter from saying that {banker => river} was just plain wrong, I’ve said several times that the apparent cryptic xwd norm of using this meaning of -er for banker and no other word, ever, is rather perverse. So a setter (not necessarily the same one) just might have thought “OK Peter, let’s give it a go and see how you like it in the flesh.”

    2. The argument is academic because the word is apparently in Collins, but I’m not sure that I agree with your comments Peter.

      “changes” is the anagram indicator, and the vowel-less words give no indication of what part of speech the answer is meant to be. When I was playing with the letters I wrote down MISVOWELED, DEVOWELISM, DEMIVOWELS, MEDIVOWELS, MISDEVOWEL, DISEMVOWEL. OK, some are pretty improbable, (actually they’re all pretty improbable) but if none were in the dictionary how would you know?

      There has to be a standard. The day we have to start Googling for cant and jargon words which are not in the dictionary is the day I give up the crossword.

      As I say the question is academic – the short-term answer is for me to buy a Collins dictionary.

      1. If you are buying Collins, two points: First, they seem to put out lots of editions without much difference between names – you want “Collins English Dictionary”. Second, they seem to now be on short gaps between editions – 6th was 2003, and 9th was 2007. So it’s quite possible that there will be a new one later this year.
  16. Definitely a struggle which was only finished with help from a couple of aids mentioned in comments above. I had twelve unsolved c lues at 30 minutes.

    I got off to a reasonable start, although having MISVOWELED as the first attempt for 26a didn’t help for the first few minutes.

    I had more success with the bottom half than I did with the top. Like others I had to reverse engineer CRYPTOGRAM to see what the ‘wheeler’ was. I can live with it though. I didn’t like the clue to CHIDE although I guessed it it early on.

    My COD was the one for UMBRELLA.

  17. I enjoyed this, which I also found difficult (48 mins). Last solved, and my favourite, VENOUS.
  18. Horrible puzzle. Too many “obscure” words all joined together in the NW corner (rondeau, corundum, asseverate, almonry) not to mention nobelium. Even oodles and disemvowel weren’t enough in the way of wit the lift the whole.

    I’m afraid I had to use aids to get the last 8 or 10 clues and that shouldn’t be the case for a daily puzzle.

    Bah.

  19. Something seems to be wrong with my Collins. Yesterday I questioned ‘marque’ (in the sense of nameplate) and ‘play out’, and was told that they are in Peter B’s old Collins. Well they’re not in my new Collins (2008), nor are they in the free version of Collins on their website. Today we are told that ‘disemvowel’ is in Collins. Not in mine, nor on the electronic Collins, apparently.

    This is not the first time this has happened. On fifteensquared Eimi has in the past said that some words are in Collins which have not been visible to me.

    24178: 6ac, which is presumably a double definition, I don’t like. The solitary word ‘tickled’ doesn’t define ‘salmon’. Nor do I like 29ac, for the same reason. ‘Smoking’ isn’t a definition of ‘reefer’.

    1. Will,

      I have Collins 9th edition 2007 and can confirm that it has both “marque” meaning “nameplate” and “disemvowel”.

      I’m not over the moon with 6a but I don’t think there is any suggestion that “tickled” defines “salmon”. To “tickle” is a means of catching fish, so “tickled” here suggests the sort of thing we might be looking for, and “pink” nails it.

      Agreed that “smoking” doesn’t mean “reefer”, but I don’t think that has been suggested, has it? “Smoking jacket” = “Reefer” has been a crossword cliche for as long as I can remember. To me, this clue is just an attempt to do something new, if not particularly inspired, with it.

  20. I’m still quite bewildered. My Collins is big and thick and called ‘Collins English Dictionary’. It says ‘This edition 2008’. Yet something seems to be wrong with it.
    1. All I can say is that if you follow the “Collins English Dictionary” link on the books page at the Collins site, it shows you the Amazon listing for the 2007 9th edition.

      I’d expect this link to show the latest edition, but maybe not.

  21. I don’t think anyone’s mentioned AWN = BRISTLE at 5 down so I assume it’s standard crossword fare, but it was new to me.(Any of the bristles growing from the flowering parts of certain grasses or cereals, according to Chambers). At 19 down I thought the definition was “mirror image being” but I can’t quite see how “on” equals either “shown” or “being shown”
  22. If you’re just doing this now (ANZAC Day) in the Oz and grew up in Canada with bad coffee (the chances of the co-occurrence being, I admit, rather slim), the obvious answer to 9ac is CONA.

    Cona the Barbarian

    1. Yes, just doing it on Anzac day, yes grew up (in Australia) with bad Cona coffe, yea, that was my first thought too.

      No-one seems to have picked up for instance on Bob Marley’s or (in Oz for Anzac day) Cheech and Chong’s smoking habit: Reefer.


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  24. I was another who originally had MUGWORK at 21d only to change it to LEGWORK once I (wrongly) entered NEBULOUS at 20a. Doh!

    There are 4 “easies”:

    30a Big hitting (8)
    WHACKING

    2d Some gas to release blocks large outlet (9)
    MEGASTORE. Hidden in first 4 words.

    7d Boy holds map showing Santa’s home(7)
    LA PLAN D

    27d Amazing thing that may rise and fall(3)
    WOW. The rise and fall of the Palindrome Empire.

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