Times Crossword 24190

Author   sabine_tkPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic

Solving time: 22.33.

I struggled dreadfully with this despite being fairly lucky with the vocabulary – I knew the relatively unusual GOPAK, DREYFUS, NAAFI and MENSHEVIST, so I don’t really have much excuse except the old “I wasn’t on the setter’s wavelength”. I drew a total blank for ages on much easier words like MASSACRE and SENTIMENT, and had to battle to understand the wordplay in many clues long after finishing the puzzle. I still wouldn’t be all that surprised to find out I’ve let a mistake slip through.
 

Across
1
   FLU,I,D(O)UNCE
6
   AMOS – SO MA(d) = really crazy, about (reversed) and unfinished.
9
   SET FAIR
10
   EXCISED – EXCUSED with a change of heart, i.e. a different middle letter. For some reason I got EXHUMED into my head for “taken out”, and found it hard to get it out again even though there was obviously no other word that could be paired with it as required here.
12
   GHANA – A NAG reversed about H (hospital).
13
   INVIOLATE – sounds like “in violet”
14
   A FAREWELL TO ARMS – I suspected this answer from a very early stage simply from the word lengths, but had a hard time figuring out the wordplay. It’s A FARE (sounds like “affair”, indicated by “business, say”), WELL = really, and TO ARMS = (a storm)*.
17
   DISPLACED PERSON – an answer that explains the word play, which is to anagram “Peron’s”. Juan Peron did indeed spend many years in exile, so this is quite tidy.
20
   G,RI(EVAN)CE – G=”goes initially”, RICE is “the grain”, with NAVE (body of church) reversed inside (“backs entering it”).
21
   GENII – I think “In the beginning” must be the first book of Genesis, and therefore GEN I, with the other I indicated by “one”. GENII, according to Chambers, is the plural of “genius” in the sense of “a good or evil spirit”, and also, by a confusion, as the plural of “jinn”, a class of spirits in Muslim theology, though “jinn” is actually a plural word, the singular being “jinnee” or “jinni”. “jinn” can also be spelled “djinn” (singular “djinni”) or “ginn” of which the singular is the more familiar “genie”. Whew.
23
   PR(AIR)IE – PRIE(s) = “is endlessly nosy”.
24
   FO(O TAG)E – I was thinking of GAT as being “old gun” which distracted me from the obvious FOE for enemy.
25
   KIT,E
26
   MENSHEVIST = (vets his men)*. I knew the word MENSHEVIK (the eventual minority faction in the Russian revolution, the word deriving from the Russian for “minority”, while BOLSHEVIK derives from “majority”) but had not come across this form before.
 
Down
2
   ULTRA – A double definition. ULTRA was the name used in WW2 for intelligence resulting from decryption of encrypted German radio communications.
3
   DR,AW A VE,IL OVER – DR=Doctor, I LOVER = one partner, and A WAVE is a signal.
4
   UKRAINE, sounds like EWE CRANE
5
   CHERVIL – an anagram of CHIVE + R and L (two hands, left and right)
7
   MASS,ACRES – Massachusetts being a state in New England. This took me a long time.
8
   S,IDLE
11
   COOK, ONES GOOS,E – Cook is the explorer, plus (goes on so)* and the final E is the bearing.
15
   AS(SAI)LANT – ASLANT=leaning over, and SAI is an anagram of “is a”, indicated by “is a criminal”. I grappled for some time with this, trying to make an anagram of “to grab is a”, and hoping that the remainder, “Mugger leaning over” would eventually resolve itself into some kind of definition, possibly involving drinkware.
16
   SENTIMENT – being S=Saint + ENTI(ce)MENT – temptation with the CE (church) abandoned.
18
   CONCEDE, hidden in paniC ONCE Detected
19
   DR(E)Y,FUS: DRY=boring, FUS(s) =spat shortly, and E=English, leaving “French captain” as the definition, a reference to Alfred Dreyfus, whose trial and conviction in 1894 on charges of treason became known as the Dreyfus Affair.
20
   GOP,AK – GOP stands for Grand Old Party, the US Republican party, and AK is the core of “shaken”. The gopak is a folk dance, listed by both Chambers and Wikipedia as Ukrainian, rather than Polish as stated in the clue. This is another of those words I probably wouldn’t know if I hadn’t played the piano a bit.
22
   NAAFI – the organisation that runs canteens, bars and so on for the British armed forces. I got this from “place for force-feeding”. Is “rather downmarket-sounding” supposed to indicate “sounds like naffy”? Can’t think of anything better.

46 comments on “Times Crossword 24190”

  1. 21A I think is “In the beginning, here” since those are the first words of Genesis I (Gen I) rather than just that Genesis is the first book of the bible. Then “one” and the definition.

    I also assumed “naafi” sounded naffy.

  2. 28:27 .. so you weren’t alone in your struggles, Sabine. I was held up in most of the same places, though gave myself an additional obstacle by deciding there was a Polish dance called a Repsk.

    I love the Peron clue. Brevity, wit, and all that.

  3. 33 mins today. I liked this puzzle – good tricky clues and interesting vocabulary. The only guess was GOPAK from the wordplay (I had distant memories of a dance called “trepak” which sounded convincingly similar).

    Plenty of ammunition for homophone discussion I suspect.

    I did consider GINNI at 21 and I didn’t have a dictionary handy to check. I remember that “Djinn” is one of those words with lots of different spellings so it looked plausible. I didn’t realise that “djinn” is plural – thanks to Sabine for the run-down. Kipling obviously got it wrong – in “How the Camel Got its Hump” the Djinn of all Deserts is unmistakeably a singular spirit – see following link:

    http://www.boop.org/jan/justso/camel.htm

    Has anyone else come across the (probably WWII) expression “as dim as a NAAFI candle”.

    1. Haven’t heard this one – my version is ‘as dim as a TOC-H lamp’ – never been quite sure what it meant
      1. My parents were both teachers and used it often to describe children in their class.
  4. 13:18 – feared for a while that I’d be over 15 minutes for this one, but finished with quite a surge. As an area of the grid, the NW corner was hardest, but the last answers were 15 and 22. The Russian dance in Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker Suite is a trepak. (I don’t know any famous gopaks to quote.)

    At 21A, “In the beginning …” is Genesis chapter one, verse one – and therefore “Gen. 1, i” (= GEN,I,I) in the form most commonly used for identifying Bible passages.

  5. 26 minutes for me, and I didn’t hold out much hope of finishing for most of that.

    Never heard of GOPAK, although I managed to avoid inventing a REPSK. It sounds plausible enough, to one whose knowledge of Polish (and Ukrainian!) is sharply limited.

    The INVIOLATE homophone is bang-on to my pronunciation, and goes to show Peter’s point about “only allowing homophones which are exact.” We can’t even agree on those.

    I had SOMETHING PERSON at 17ac from the get-go, but DISPLACED was the last word I put in (after discarding DISGRACED, which never did seem right.) It’s not a phrase I remember having seen, though it makes perfect sense. Overall there were an awful lot of clues here that I couldn’t make anything of until I had enough crossing letters for the definition to click.


  6. 75 minutes with several unexplained.

    At 16d I forgot yet again that “Saint” can be “S” alone rather than “St” so I failed to spot the wordplay in SENTIMENT.

    On ULTRA at 2d I didn’t get the WWII connection but now it has been mentioned here I realise I did know it.

    Having consulted three dictionaries and several very large books on music I can’t find any support whatsoever for GOPAK as a Polish dance. It’s odd that it should be described as such in a puzzle that also contains UKRAINE from where it actually originates.

    I imagine there will be hefty complaints about “In violet” sounding like “Inviolate”. Even to my Home Counties ear it doesn’t work.

    My first thought at 14a, going just by the lengths of the words, was “A Handful of Dust”. I soon dismissed it as unworkable but I couldn’t get it out of my head and this made thinking of an alternative very difficult. I managed it somewhat later, but only after most of the checking letters were in place.

    I’m glad I was not alone in finding this a struggle. In the first 12 minutes I managed only 3 answers. I was pleased at least that I finished it eventually without aids and that I had worked out the reasoning for GENII at 21a before seeing Peter’s explanation.

  7. I think this is a reasonably tough puzzle, very good for the most part but spoilt by some silliness. About 35 minutes to solve.

    The Peron-person device is very good, I liked the construction of COOK…GOOSE, and ASSAILANT took some working out. GOPAK is rather obscure but GOP has cropped up in bar crosswords, which helped me there. It’s a measure of the puzzle that sabine has struggled to leave clues out, the ferry terminal at FISHGUARD being the only omission I can see.

    What a pity then that INVIOLATE is just awful, and I suspect NAFFI is unsound (no pun intended) there not being a word “naffy” only, so far as I’m aware, “naff” and “naffly”.

  8. Enter the careless solver with GINNI, although I did contemplate the Genesis/GENIE connection but couldn’t make it work. Similar experience to most with AMOS & MASSACRES last in. Tried hard to get A something TO MARS for a long time; H.G.Wells perhaps? Did know GOP, thanks to Doonesbury, but the dance was guessed, as was ULTRA. NAAFI I knew from Spike Milligan. Dredged FISHGUARD up from somewhere, possibly my genes, since Pembrokeshire is in my heritage; not so easy for non-residents. I liked ASSAILANT and MASSACRES but the two 15’s get joint COD.

    As for 4d, where exactly is the Yokrane? (see my prescient comment from yesterday)

  9. Menshev-ik OK, -ist in which dictionary? Also gopak as Polish, naffy as a word – do I need to buy another?
    1. MENSHEVIST is in Collins. Gopak as Polish seems like a mistake.

      “naffy” can be seen as a bit of xwd fun in the same style as flower=river, also not in any dictionary except a crossword one. COED on “-y” provides the justification – “having the quality of” (applicable to nouns and adjectives). The clue’s final question mark is presumably a hint at a bit of cheek.

      1. Arresting Wikipedoid: Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin once famously forced his eventual successor Nikita Khrushchev (who had been the communist party chief in Ukraine) to dance the Hopak [gopak].

        The dance does seem to have developed among the Zaporozhian Cossacks, who “were mostly, if tentatively, regarded by the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth as their subjects.” Which may go some way to explain the confusion.

          1. Having visited Zaporizhya and knowing where it is, Those Cossacks were right on the edge of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, which seems to be the biggest-ever version of “Poland”. If that makes the gopak a Polish dance, I’m claiming Bordeaux as English wine on the basis of our control of Aquitaine, 1361-1453.

            Edited at 2009-04-03 12:24 pm (UTC)

  10. In Collins and Chambers, inviolate has two pronunciations – “in+violet” and “in+violate” (COED only has the first). I suspect those in the “what’s the fuss?” corner use the first, and those in the “Just awful!” corner the second.
  11. A just above average 34 minutes here, though there were loads I didn’t understand along the way, with lots of unfamiliar words (GOPAK, MENSHEVIST, etc.) A couple of old favourites (AMOS and DREYFUS) helped things along, together with the long phrases that were pretty much written straight in.

    COD 17ac, which I thought was very clever.

  12. 29 minutes and was not feeling those homophones at all. Last in was NAAFI, I got the wordplay, but was worried it might be a word like NZAQI which sounds exactly like NAFFY in some dialect.
  13. I’ll buy that. I rather like the idea of being able to offer guests a “hearty English Bordeaux” (pronounced Bor-ducks, of course).
  14. Today’s times; 13:18 Peter finishes
    13:27 I get my first answer, Menshevist, not a bad one to start with
    60:33 Big breakthrough with the Hemingway
    70:58 Finish with the French captain

    On reading Sabine’s excellent blog my joy is reconfined as I discover that I am another careless solver who entered Ginni. I don’t think it was carelessness on my part. It’s simply that I assumed that ginni was one of the many variants on jinni, djinni, and jinnee. I suppose I carelessly assumed that jinni etc means spirits and jinn etc means spirit, when, in fact, it is the other way round.

    Thanks also to Sabine for explaining the intelligence meaning of ultra. It’s not in my Chambers and I can’t see it in any online dictionary but it is in Wikipedia.

    Other hold-ups were trying to stretch Uganda to fit the country with the long-necked bird and trying to justify Omaha or Idaho as the state, giving or aano oadi as a feeling of anxiety.

    We probably all have the experience of solving clues by serendipity. I happened to be watching 30 Rock last night in which the Republican Alec Baldwin character kept on banging on about being a member of the GOP so gopak was a gimme for me.

    A wonderful crossword, well worth the time I wasted on it with the Argentinian President being my favourite among many imaginative clues.

    2. > Other hold-ups were trying to stretch Uganda to fit the country with the long-necked bird…

      One of the great “wrong” answers from Family Fortunes:

      Name a bird with a long neck

      Naomi Campbell

      A few more:

      Name a dangerous race

      The Arabs

      Something that floats in the bath

      Water

      A number you have to memorise

      Seven

      Something you do before going to bed

      Sleep

      Something that flies that doesn’t have an engine

      A bicycle with wings

      A non-living object with legs

      A plant

      Something red

      My cardigan

      Something you lose when you get older

      Your purse

      1. I once heard this little gem on The Weakest Link:

        AR: What J is the place where traffic enters or leaves a motroway?

        Hapless contestant: Jewel carriageway.

      2. My favourite from Family Fortunes, back in the Les Dennis era:

        Q: Name a word beginning with Z.
        A: Xylophone.

        You may laugh, but it was the 2nd-top answer.

  15. 41 minutes with online assistance so pretty much the toughest puzzle for some time for me.

    I give 20d a big raspberry on account of obscurity in both the wordplay (GOP) and the answer. Naafi just doesn’t work IMHO.

    I’m surprised Peter found NW the hardest corner. That’s where I started with Fishguard, fluid ounce, set fair, Ghana, draw a veil over and Ukraine all going in quite quickly in that order.

    Q-2, E-5, D-9.5, COD 1a

    2. I quite often find the NW corner is finished last. This is possibly because I spend so little time on the first look at each across clue. This can mean a first solution in the bottom half (20 GRIEVANCE today I think) – and although I then look at intersecting downs, it was too late for these to help much with the NW corner.
      1. When I first started setting for newspapers I was advised that setters should “start with a bang” at 1A – give it a snappy, fairly tough clue with a satisfying answer.

        I don’t know if many setters adhere to that, but it would account for at least some instances of NW Nightmare syndrome.

        For my part, I don’t bother with it, because “That’s just what they’d be expecting me to do” (assumes pose vaguely similar to that of a Bond villain).

        1. I think you should start adhering to it immediately – a fairly tough clue at 1A would make up for the other 29 very tough ones!

          Seriously, I suspect some setters do try for this, given the number of times I have to move on with 1A unfilled.

  16. It`s a good thing I`m not a completist…I found this extremely (insanely) difficult, but was also fairly busy today and just didn`t have the time to wrestle with what seemed like a lot of intricate wordplay and relatively unknown definitions the way I would on a weekend.

    I did actually think 22down was ´naffy` purely on instinct the first time I saw the clue, but it clearly didn`t work with the anagram. Hailing originally from New England, 10 Down made me smirk and I also liked 11 down, simply because it`s one of those silly phrases that no one actually says, but everyone knows.

  17. I got Menshevist and Naffi on the first run through. I probably didn’t realise that the answer “should” have been Menschevic.And that was it. I should have got 18d but the others were just too tough for me. In a few years time maybe.
  18. This felt fairly tough as I was solving it, but I had a few lucky guesses from definitions, confirming the wordplay later, and finished in 14:33. I had GINNI as a hidden inside beGINNIng though, stuck in without really looking at the rest of the clue.
  19. as a relative novice who can only occasionally have a stab at finishing – this puzzle was very dispiriting! Sabine deserves respect for perservering having drawn this one. I have, by the way, no problem whatsoever with inviolate as a homophone, but “very safe”? Surely not.
    1. Actually that’s a very good point and perhaps some of us were too busy with the homophone issue to notice. I can’t find any direct definition that one can mean the other though I can just about see an indirect way of getting there.
      1. I’ve always used, and read, inviolate not to mean “is untouched” but “cannot be touched” .. which would imply total safety. I’m not sure this is justified by the dictionary, though.
          1. Collins has inviolate as a “less common word for inviolable”. But on “very safe”, “free from injury” (adj.), which is part of the defs in both COED and Collins, is good enough for me.
  20. Came home after three guinnesses to find this a tough one. It hadn’t improved after a bottle of aussie red, so a couple of ports for a nightcap, and so to bed. On revisiting with a clearer head, it was still tough, and I needed some assistance. Finally cracked all but 21 (where I had blithely entered ginni). The more I look at it, the more I appreciate that this is a very good puzzle. Displaced person and fluid ounce the best for me, but others close behind.
  21. First time I’ve ever needed to enlist the help of my wife to finish the puzzle. GOPAK she confirms is Ukrainian, not Polish.
  22. Excellent puzzle, thanks to the setter, full of very well-crafted and varied clues. I too found it tough, 43 mins. Favourites, SET FAIR and FOOTAGE.
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  24. Another great example of a cryptic puzzle enabling a vaguely competent solver to derive words they did not know – or unknown spellings of words they did know.

    Just the one omission:

    1d Protection for swimmer where ferries dock (9)
    FISH GUARD. Pretty easy if you happen to have used the ferry.

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