Times Crossword 24202

Author   sabine_tkPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic

Solving time: 15.22.

I finished most of the puzzle within 10 minutes but then ground to a halt in the top left, where a combination of interlocking blind spots left me unable to break either DOMESTIC at 1 across or most of the down clues descending from it. I think I’d have been a bit faster if I hadn’t got out of the habit of timing myself lately – I kept forgetting that when you’re certain of an answer it’s OK to work out the wordplay after stopping the clock. Overall a puzzle of average difficulty where I should definitely have been faster, although I thought there were a few places where the setter may have sacrificed some accuracy for the sake of the surface reading.

I still have doubts about the working of a couple of clues, mentioned in my comments below.

Across
1
   DOME,STIC – a term for an incident involving people living together. This was the last clue I solved, due to a failure to spot the not very difficult STIC for “severe criticism reportedly” (sounds like “stick”) and a conviction that “Family quarrel” needed to be separated.
9
   SPECIAL BRANCH – the British police department that deals with political security.
10
   TURTLE – (utterl)*. The anagram is indicated by “unusual” and “not unknown” is an instruction to remove the “y”, a symbol for an unknown value in algebra (possibly it has wider use that that, I’m not certain. Also not certain exactly which letters can be defined in this way in the Times – x and y for sure, but what about z? or n? )
11
   IR(ON WAR)E – not exactly sure how you get “on” from “running” – I guess it’s in the sense of a program that’s currently running on TV, or something that’s currently happening.
13
   RE,N(O V)ATION
15
   SITE – “suite” (rooms) with the U (university) removed.
16
   ECRU – an off-white or light brown colour. The clue explains that SO + the answer reversed makes SOURCE (a spring).
18
   COM(PROM IS)E, obtained by placing COME (arrive) around PROM (always one to look out for if you see “concert”) and IS (“it’s” with the T removed, indicated by “time to go”).
21
   GENETICS – (eg incest)*. Neat.
23
   TEMPERA,MENTA,L – at first I thought this would involve an anagram of “paint meant”, but the paint is TEMPERA, a kind of emulsion, followed by (meant)* and L (line).
25
   CR(ED)IT – CRIT is short for “criticism”.
26
   D,I(STRAC)T
 
Down
2
   OBS,CURE – this clue defeated me for far too long. Despite the obvious CURE (“remedy”) at the end, my brain simply wasn’t willing to process something as simple as OBS for “observation”.
3
   ELECT,R,O,CUTE. Chambers includes “astute” as a definition for “cute”, though doesn’t specify it as an American usage.
4
   T,WINE – “tent” is a red Spanish wine.
5
   CELLI,NI – I struggled with this one, thinking that “later pieces of Botticelli and Reni” must indicate an equal number of letters from each, which gave me LINI, and that a 3-letter word for “drawing” must precede them. Unless I’ve misunderstood the clue we’re just required to take different length chunks from the end of the two names.
6
   PAR(T OWN)ER – at least I assume so, though I haven’t been able to figure how the definition works, beyond some vague ideas about possession being nine-tenths of the law.
7
   TINTIN – the young Belgian reporter in the comic strips created by Hergé. It has been said that Belgium has produced so few people of any significance that naming famous Belgians is a terrible struggle. Outraged Belgians claim that the problem lies with the rest of us perceiving all the famous Belgians as either French or Dutch. Happily, the Famous Belgians website now lists detailed information on no fewer than 259 famous Belgians! Excellent work.
8
   INHERIT – “mine where pits” with the first and last letter removed from each word. I wrote this in from the definition “come into” and worried about the wordplay later.
14
   AR(C HIT EC)T – ART=skill, C-clubs, HiT=had an impact on, and EC=city. The London postal area EC includes almost all of the area of one square mile or so known as the City of London.
17
   CHESTER – a swindler is a CHEATER, and “answer’s succeeded” tells us that the A should become an S.
19
   MU(STAR)D. I didn’t know Brassica, which I thought of as mostly cabbagey things, was a genus of the mustard family.
20
   S(HE)LLAC – another one I got from the definition. The wordplay is EH (what?) reversed (put up) inside CALLS (cries), also reversed (mounting).
22
   DRESS – “address” with the “ad” (notice) removed.

49 comments on “Times Crossword 24202”

  1. 18:20 .. pretty identical experience to Sabine’s (just slower, as usual). It was the DOMESTIC / OBSCURE pair that really held me up, for much the same reasons. ‘Obs’ for ‘observation’ somehow feels like cheating! I can’t explain the PART-OWNER any further, though it has to be that. I’m sure our resident legal fraternity will have cleared that up by morning (if not, they’re fired).

    On the plus side, the city swindler was very neat. And you can’t beat a good Special Branch gag (I remember a fine one on the Young Ones).

  2. 30mins here. It took a while to get going, and I thought it was going to be another tough day, but eventually the answers started to flow.

    The only (tentative) explanation I could think of for 6dn relates to penalty points on your driving licence for an offence if you’re speeding in a built-up area (do you get 6 points for speeding in the UK?). It doesn’t make sense because it’s the driver, not the owner (or part-owner) of the car who gets the points, but that’s all I could dream up.

    I wondered about ELECT=chosen in 3dn, but suppose it is in the sense of “President-elect” (ie chosen but not yet appointed).

    1. Religously speaking, the “elect” are those chosen for salvation not damnation. Nice half hour or so.
  3. 11:38, with the last minute or so finding DON+KEY at 22A.

    1A is interesting after yesterday’s “Rhodes” debate – the STIC in domestic sounds like “stick”, but if you use the Roger Phillips approach mentioned by Heyesey in comments, “stic” is not a word and therefore its pronunciation is indeterminate. To me, “stic” (and indeed “irkz”) only suggest one possible pronunciation, whereas BERSER=”bursar” (in the ‘berserk’ example discussed by Roger) is questionable.

    10A: the Times rule is that the algebra unknown is X, Y or Z. I think this goes all the way back to Hall and Knight for those old enough to remember them.

    5D: CELLI and NI are different lengths, but they’re both exactly half of the word they come from, so there’s consistency of a sort.

    6D: If “Possession is nine points of the law”, part-ownership must be fewer points, e.g. three. I’m sure that’s all there is to it.

    1. 6D That would never have ocurred to me, if only because (legally at least) “possession” and “ownership” are entirely different concepts. That is the point of the saying, and why I don’t think the clue makes sense.
  4. 45 minutes with two guesses pencilled in (SITE and ECRU). They fitted and seemed vaguely right but I wasn’t able to justify them until later. I’m not impressed with 6d so far, but maybe I’m missing something.
  5. Isn’t a CEL a single frame from a cartoon film? i.e. a drawing. Then followed by LI and NI.
    Mike O.
    1. Two small reservations: Strictly, cel seems to be the sheet of celluloid, though an extension to the drawing on it is pretty obvious. Drawing=CEL seems like virgin territory for the Times.

      Neither rules out CEL+LI+NI, but I’d still have CELLI+NI as a slight favourite for the intended wordplay.

      1. I assumed CEL was ‘drawing’ when I was establishing the wordplay. If not, doesn’t that make ‘drawing on’ rather superfluous?
        1. To “draw on” is to use or exploit, so it makes sense when you get past the surface meaning’s idea that this artist might be defacing the other two’s works.

          It doesn’t need to be there if you’re happy with a clue that reads “Italian artist later pieces of ….”, but then we’d be in “This can only be a cryptic crossword clue” territory.

  6. Nothing particularly held me up in this one which was a 25 minute jog. However I was left feeling somehow unsatisfied by it and that’s probably because I don’t understand SPECIAL BRANCH (solved from the definition – what’s all this stuff about apples?) or PART OWNER (solved from wordplay and checking letters – what’s all this stuff about legal points?). ECRU is a bit obscure but turned up in a bar crossword not so long ago clued as “fawn” I seem to recall. The puzzle needed some really good stuff to balance it up but for me at least, didn’t have it.
    1. I read it as a branch being special if it could bear no poor fruit. Although that was in hindsight since I solved from checkers as well.
      1. Thanks for the thought. This is probably too much information but my apples don’t rot on the branch. They fall under Newtonian influence and then rot on the ground if my dogs don’t eat them quickly enough. Sometimes an insect will lay eggs in the apple whilst still on the branch but that’s nothing to do with the branch, if you see what I mean. I’m guessing this setter doesn’t grow apples.
  7. Did all bar these two in double-quick time, and seeing the answers I still would NEVER have got them in a lifetime. I suppose I now have to remember ECRU=FAWN and vice versa till the end of time. I don’t like CHEATER – far too U.S for me…..
  8. DOMESTIC was also my last in. I agree with most comments above, except that I liked CHESTER. I knew ECRU was fawn but didn’t understand the construction. As for fractions and Hall & Knight, I’ll let them have the final word

    “Ratio is the relation which one quantity bears to another of the same kind, the comparison being made by considering what multiple part, or parts, one quantity is of the other.

    The ratio of A to B is usually written A:B. The quantities A and B are called the terms of the ratio. The first term is called the antecedent, the second term the consequent.”

    I hope that clears the matter up.

  9. I’m sure Peter’s right that the significance of CELLI and NI is that they are, respectively, the latter halves (‘later pieces’) of ‘Botticelli’ and ‘Reni’. This didn’t occur to me while solving, I just thought it was a bit sloppy. On a similar theme, I wonder whether ‘three’ was chosen in 6D as the only factor of nine, ie the only integral ‘part’. I found this one very tough and had to look up ECRU. Lots of very good clues, my favourite’s 22D.

    Tom B.

    1. I hope Jimbo’s joy over a scientific reference wouldn’t divert him from scientific clue analysis. The Times puzzle may have nonsense sometimes, but I don’t think it makes absurd claims like {“3rd law” = the third letter (or any other part) of “law”}. If I had my way this setter would right now be writing out “The nth something is a complete something” for n=1 to 100 – n=1 being the most common version of this absurdity.
      2. Peter’s use of “nth” here seems to make this as good a place as any to point out that, in mathematics, X,Y and Z are the usual markers for “unknown number:” if an equation has more than three unknowns, the remainder could be just about any available letter that’s not being used for something else at the time. Often the next three are “a,b,c,” followed by “p,q,r” .. if you’ve got more than nine unknown quantities, you probably need to clean up your equations before even attempting to solve anything.

        “N” refers to “any number” in a formula that could apply for any number, not for some specific unknown one – just as Peter has used it here.

  10. An old crossword cliché, so I’m surprised people (especially old hands) had so much trouble with it. At Rex Parker’s NYT xwd blog it’s a candidate for the Pantheon of words whose conspicuous xwd usage most exceeds their real-world usage. And it’s in this spoof dialog dating from the early days of crosswords in the US:

    Vocabulary Enrichment in the Suburbs due to the Crossword Puzzle influence
    Mrs. Wordsworth. What is that you are working at, my dear?
    Mrs. Frazee. I’m tatting Joe’s initials on his moreen vest. Are you making that ebon garment for yourself?
    Mrs. W. Yea. Just a black dress for every day. Henry says I look rather naif in black.
    Mrs. F. Well, perhaps; but it’s a bit too anile for me. Give me something in indigo or, say, ecru.
    (And so on.)

    It’s not used much at the Times these days, probably because of its clichéd past – our only sighting seems to be in 23900 about a year ago.

  11. 14 minutes here, with no real hold-ups. Last in was ECRU, because I didn’t understand the wordplay and don’t actually know what type of colour it is – I only know it as being a colour. DITSRACT was a minor problem but I spotted it soon enough.

    I can’t see any explanation for 6dn other than “possession is nine points of the law” meaning a part-owner might have only three points of the law. If possession and ownership are two different legal concepts (I wouldn’t have the faintest idea), then it’s not that great a clue.

    I liked the anagrams for GENETICS and WESTMINSTER, which raised a smile even though both were fairly easy to get. It seemed obvious to me that “later pieces” of Botticelli and Reni referred to the latter halves, but then, things often seem obvious to me and turn out to be wrong.

  12. I did this after midnight so may not have been in best brain mode, but I found this one tough and limped home in 37 minutes, not entirely sure about ECRU but remembering it having a few definitions. I had thought of 5 down as CEL,LI,NI (I had written in the LINI part and was waiting to get 1 across, which took a while). I liked the wordplay in IRONWARE, CHESTER and MUSTARD
  13. About 50mins here. And anything less than an hour is pretty good for me. Interestingly, DOMESTIC & OBSCURE were my first two to go in, but then I guess we’re all different. I made pretty steady progress all the way through without really getting held up anywhere for long. Last one in was TWINE. I’ve never come across tent as a Spanish wine, and indeed I’ve struggled to find it defined as such in an online dictionary (Wiktionary is the only one I’ve found it in). I couldn’t decide between that and TWIRE, which is probably more thread-like, but I couldn’t justify wire being tent either.
    1. Wines, like winds, are something you have to learn. Tent is reasonably common and comes from a family that includes blush, canary, graves, hock, house, port, red, rose, sack, table and white that are capable of two meanings.
  14. I was pleased to see reports on the slow food movement in this weeks Times. I have long been an exponent of the slow crossword movement and I enjoyed this, chewing each clue at least 30 times.

    In chewing the brassica, I was not surprised that the answer is mustard. Brassica cropped up a few weeks ago and I noticed what a weird genus it is. It not only includes cabbage and cauliflower but also mustard, turnip and rape. So watch out for those last two in future.

    One person’s difficult clue is another’s crossword cliché, so I had no trouble with ecru and domestic having met them in crosswords before. My last in was the comparatively innocuous architect.

    Knowledge of clichés may or may not be helpful. I was not fooled by tent for wine at 4 but I was convinced that the shock at 3 was indicating a haircut. And I had to restrain myself from writing Tiepolo at 5, just from force of habit.

    We seem to have sussed the meaning of 6 down. I think a better clue would have ended “…perhaps four and a half legal points”.

    Can anyone explain “for weapons” in 11? It seems to be redundant to me. Is it just to improve the surface?

    1. Strictly speaking you’re right. The clue works without these two words. However, the surface reading is improved and key for me they don’t alter the sense of the thing or mislead you in any way so it’s not padding I personally would get too worked up about.
    2. It improved the surface for me, but I also noticed an allusion to the biblical reference of “turn your weapons into ploughshares” (ploughshears if you prefer). Although reversed.
    3. I took it to be a reference to the Iron Age and what weapons were made from at that time.
  15. 11 across reminded me of WW2 images. I didn’t know you could take time out for working out the wordplay – who makes the rules, and what are they? Anyway, that’s what I come to this website for!
    25 mins, and I like all the ones I can finish. Women solvers should know ecru – it’s the colour of toile, of course.
    1. I don’t think it’s so much “taking time out” as, if you can guess the answer without understanding the wordplay, just bung it in, get on and finish the crossword, stop the clock and THEN go and figure out how the wordplay works.

      This is relevant for the bloggers, who might know an answer but not understand it in order to explain the clue here, and if they waste ten minutes figuring out the wordplay it’ll leave them posting an embarassingly poor time. For us mere ordinary mortals, it’s enough to be able to finish the thing at all, whether we understand it or not!

      1. Thanks, Heyesey, but didn’t you get it in 14 mins? I wouldn’t be able to copy the answers in that quickly.
        1. Crossword mystery: why do so many people say “I just couldn’t fill in the grid that fast” when informed about a remotely quick time? You only have to write about 150 letters! I just took fresh prints of today’s grid and copied the answers into them. Once I went slowly and carefully. Time taken: 2:47 (just over 1 second per letter). Second time I went hell for leather and wrote as quickly as I could while still expecting the answer to be readable enough for competition purposes. Time taken: 1:45. (Both times include a check to make sure the answers were what I intended.)

          Edited at 2009-04-17 05:03 pm (UTC)

          1. I was being a little ironic, in trying to compliment Heyesey on his/her speed, and possible immortality.
            It’s good to know that the bunny rabbit is really another girl, not just a beribboned impostor. Toile is what they used to give you to make clothes out of in sewing at school when they didn’t trust you with proper material. It’s cheap, smells funny – and it’s ecru.
            1. I have been on a roll for the last few weeks or so – at the start of this year I still would have been happy if I finished the grid. Since regularly checking up on this site, I’ve either improved a hell of a lot, or been very lucky with the bits of knowledge required.

              I still sometimes flounder hopelessly with a grid and don’t get anywhere remotely near finishing it. It seems to me that progress on crossword-solving skills does tend to come as a series of “quantum leaps” rather than just gradually improving from month to month over the years.

              1. A new source of good information after a long struggle can certainly produce a quantum leap. That’s what happened to me when I read the first edition of Don Manley’s book after about 10 years with no books.
    2. There are no rules – certainly none that can be enforced. You can use any timing system you like, including timing yourself against musical masterpieces or allowing aids like reference books while solving. The only significant expectation is that you’ll do so consistently, or say when aids have been used if that’s some of the time but not always. Then your timings will say something useful about the difficulty of the puzzle, which is the best excuse for quoting them.

      Those who regularly claim times under about 15 minutes are expected to be using their brain and pencil only (other assistance would usually make very little difference), and are probably timing themselves as if competing in the championship. Those thinking “he’s on about the championship AGAIN” can stop reading now.

      There, you have to decide when to stop the clock by putting your hand up and having your finishing position recorded & puzzles taken away for marking. You’ll have made decisions along the way about whether to work out the entire def. and wordplay for an answer, or just enough to be reasonably certain that you’ve got the right answer, and whether you check answers between completing the grid and putting your hand up. Because “all correct but too slow” and “quick enough but one answer missing or wrong” are equally bad results, the right tactics may be as important as your ability to solve the clues. No solver is too good to worry about this – even John Sykes once put his hand up with an incomplete grid.

    3. >Women solvers should know ecru – it’s the colour of toile, of course.

      So what’s taupe the colour of then?

      2. and the chessboards favoured by a famous blindfold player apparently. I kid you not. Xwd anorak knowledge: Taupi in the Grauniad takes his pseudonym from the French for “moley” – a nickname given to him when working there. His FT pseudonym Satori is both Basque for mole and Japanese for sudden enlightenment.
    4. I have always assumed that it is not necessary to count time spent working out wordplay etc because in a competition all that matters is finishing a puzzle correctly as quickly as possible. But sometimes not taking the time can lead to careless mistakes which delay matters, so there is a trade off if one decides just to race through it.

      On heyesey’s point below, as a blogger my solving times are usually quite embarrassing enough without spending time working out all the reasoning.

  16. Speaking as a ‘woman solver’ (or is that someone who solves women?!) I wouldn’t know toile if I fell over it.
    1. A frustrating one for me in that I managed to cope with the clues most people found tricky but came a cropper in what should have been the more benign SW corner. For some reason “shellac”, “dress” and “distract” just wouldn’t come and I lost patience. bc
    2. “Speaking as a ‘woman solver’ (or is that someone who solves women?!)”

      I’ve always considered women to be completely unsolvable. 😛

  17. About 35 minutes, and my route through the puzzle was the same as Sabine’s (and Sotira’s), finishing with OBSCURE and DOMESTIC. I also had the same observation about ‘obs’=observation: ‘that can’t be right, it’s too simple’. It also took me far too long to see PUTRID, for some brain freeze reason. I like DONKEY: nice surface, funny answer. My take on 5 was CELLI,NI. I didn’t get the wordplay for ECRU til reading the blog, so thanks Sabine. Regards for the weekend.
  18. 22 min with no cheats. Agonised over PART OWNER for some time. The weakest clue this year? Got CHESTER quickly, but didn’t understand it until coming here. Ditto INHERIT.
  19. I was unsure of why 6d was PART-OWNER but did enter it correctly.

    There are 4 “easies” left out of the blog. One of these was my LOI:

    6a Rotten move into place that’s free (6)
    PUT RID. Where move into place = PUT and free = RID. Not sure about the “that’s”.

    22a Fool shows lecturer a set of answers to problems (6)
    DON KEY

    12d Parliament sits with new term after reform (11)
    WESTMINSTER. Anagram of (SITS NEW TERM). After reform is the anagram indicator.

    24d Girl I left very angry (3)
    MAD. Where I have left the MAID to make her MAD. Do you think she’s being a bit unreasonable?

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