Times Crossword 24214

Author   sabine_tkPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic

Solving time: 23.53

I thought this was very difficult and very clever, with lots of devilish disguises and traps, verbs craftily disguised as nouns, and some very complex wordplay to decipher. At one point I really doubted that I would finish the puzzle in time to write this blog without resorting to solving aids, but I stuck with it and felt quite a sense of achievement when I wrote the last answer in despite the slow time. I finished the right hand side first, the top-left corner being last to go in – I suspect I would have been considerably faster had I seen the hidden word in 1 across. Altogether a gruelling but satisfying workout.

Across
1
   CEDILLA, hidden in DisgraCED ILL-Advised. I didn’t see this until I got the A at the end, having, until then, rather lazily assumed the definition would be “disgraced”.
5
   REBECCA, made up from RE=touching, and BECA (“because” minus USE) with a C in it (“without chapter”).
9
   TELL APART – PALLET reversed, followed by ART. I got the APART bit right away but was defeated almost to the end in my efforts to reverse a paint-board into something that made sense. PALLET is an alternative spelling for “palette”.
10
   GHOST – a double meaning, first in the sense of a faint appearance, then that of writing a book for which another person will be credited as the author.
11
   O,O(H)ED – Hydrogen (H) is the first element, and “old dictionary” has to be separated to give O and OED.
12
   RED SPID,ER – RED=embarrassed, SPID = drops back (DIPS reversed).
14
   ONE-DIME,NSIONAL – One dime is the American money, followed by (in loans)*. I got it into my head that the tiny amount of American money was sure to be a CENT, and therefore wasted a lot of time trying to get this to end with CENTIONAL.
17
   PAN,TO,M(IME H)ORSE – I thought this bordered on fiendish. The Punch here is the Suffolk Punch horse, leading to the definition “Punch made by couple”, a pantomime horse containing two performers, one at each end. The wordplay took me a while to work out. It’s PAN=bowl, TO=TO, MORSE = detective, with IM EH (“Eh? = “What?”) inside (carried in). I spotted MORSE as a possible detective long before solving the rest of the clue, and once briefly thought the answer might be INSPECTOR MORSE (very briefly, since I had two crossing letters in the first word to immediately disprove it.)
21
   ACTS OF GOD, being (coast fog)* around D (departs).
23
   AG(A)IN – “agin” being a dialect or facetious way of saying “against”.
24
   KO,RAN – K.O – “knock out”
25
   BAR,TENDER – the definition is “One handling counter measures”.
26
   T,REASON
27
   Y(AS,HM)AK – a comparative rarity in this puzzle, being a clue that was guessable from the definition. The wordplay is AS=when, HM= headmaster, all inside YAK – “jaw” in the sense of to talk at length.
 
Down
1
   C(OTT)ON – This must be a reference to the British golfer Henry Cotton, of whom I hadn’t heard. “no pro” = CON, and OTT = “to excess”.
2
   DOLP,HI,N – DOLP is PLOD reversed, and therefore “walk slowly up”, HI is the greeting, and N=new. The definition is “member in school”, here a shoal of swimming animals.
3
   LLAN(DU(D)N)O – another very complex construction. “Clothes” here is a verb indicating containment, so we have LLANO (a South American plain), around – clothing – (DUN (dingy) with a D in it (indicated by “detective’s heading into”)). It took an awful lot of brackets to explain that.
4
   A,NAG,RAMMING – because “parts” and strap” are anagrams of each other. Even when I had figured out RAMMING at the end I was trying to make this into DIAGRAMMING so that 1 ac could end in “ED”.
6
   BIG UP – the first letters of “be imparted, giving universal praise”.
8
   AFT,ER A,LL – the phrase “at the end of the day” is the definition, and the wordplay, which I have only now worked out after writing the rest of the blog, is AFT-behind, ERA=time, LL=”left at the double”. I was seeing behind as AFTER, and wondering how on earth to get an A out of “time”.
13
   DON,KEY, DERBY a race at a fete or fair, and therefore a “fair contest”.
15
   IDOLATERS, “I do later” being the procrastinator’s claim.
16
   U(PM,A,R)K,ET – UK=Britain, ET is French for “and”.
18
  

NUT-TREE – more fiendishness. The clue is a reference to this nursery rhyme:

I had a little nut tree,
Nothing would it bear
But a silver nutmeg
And a golden pear;

The King of Spain’s daughter
Came to visit me,
And all for the sake
Of my little nut tree.

So “bore” is a verb, referring to the nut tree’s failure to bear anything much, though the King of Spain’s daughter (the infanta) clearly thought it was worth a look.
19
   ST(A RD)OM – A RD = a way (road) and STOM is (most)*.
20
   ANORAK – which can mean both a coat and someone with a strong interest in figures and statistics.
22
   O(IN)KS
25
   BU(r)N

50 comments on “Times Crossword 24214”

  1. A whole hour. After getting OOHED, OINKS and BIG UP(???) early on I knew I was going to be out of my depth, and need assistance. SW corner nearly beat me, but finally got there. COD? You pays yer money, and takes yer choice!
  2. 23:44 .. I can die happy – I finally solved one faster than Sabine! I put it down to just having returned from an evening of Tchaikovsky in our cultured little corner of the world, watching James Ehnes practically setting his Stradivarius ablaze with the violin concerto. Electrifying stuff. Actually, he really was fiddling while the city burned – there’s a major forest fire on the edge of the town and we could see the flames as we left the concert hall. What a strange evening.

    And what a virtuoso puzzle. All kinds of cleverness – the PANTOMIME HORSE is ridiculously cunning and funny, but I’ll single out TREASON as my COD. Bravo!

  3. About 50 mins for me, done in two halves (top then bottom) with long pause in between while I struggled to tune back into the wavelength. Thanks to the setter for a quick reply to my question earlier this week on what other punctuation (apart from a comma) was allowed in an inclusion. If 1ac is anything to go by, anything is fair game. Oh, and thanks to Peter for pointing out on Wednesday that a derby was a bowler.

    A very enjoyable solve with much frivolity, particularly PANTOMIME HORSE, IDOLATERS, OOHED, OINKS and ANORAK. It took me a while to see that TREASON was T + REASON and not a homophone without indicator (When was the last time you saw trees on a cricket ground?). COD for me was NUT-TREE (the rhyme is a reference to Henry VIII isn’t it?)

    And no, vinyl, a puzzle such as this would never appear on a Monday. (Exits to find a piece of wood to touch.)

      1. I note that they’ve shelved their multi-million pound redevelopment scheme, possibly in favour of a few quid scheme to plant a new tree. Cue the Kinks “We are the village green preservation society…”
        1. I forgot that these days every memory can be relived on youtube (for better or worse). Take it away Ray.
  4. 17:52, with the hidden word nearly last, but not quite. Also conned by cent at 14, specifically “red cent” which looked a possible start of the phrase. 26 was a good bit of disguise. Managed to think of the rhyme at 18 but didn’t know it well enough to avoid concluding that bore=tree (maybe from a dim misspelled memory of “bole”?). Worst problem was confusing the order of H and He at 11, and then writing “OHOED”. So DOLPHIN was last in.

    Very good puzzle for the old hands, though I wonder what some of the beginners will make of it.

    1. Really enjoyed the little mental tussles with this one, quite quick (just over 20 minutes though I don’t time too rigorously), loved 17 ac and lots of others. Nut tree was favourite nursery rhyme.
    2. I also put in OHOED. That and not getting NUT-TREE pushed me over my 30 mins cut-off. Brilliant puzzle, however, a thoroughly enjoyable failure.

      Tom B.

    3. New boy (alias beginner – 2 week anniversary coming up).
      Yes, gave up after 2 1/2 hours with 3 remaining in SW corner (some aides), mainly because thought 18D could only be nut-case. Shouldn’t Koran be words of “prophet” rather than “words to prophet”? Ashamed not to get oinks. Also, was convinced that 11AC was oared ie Ar(gon) as element in OED for sounds like thrilled (awed), so couldn’t get dolphin as a consequence. Never heard of big-up. Llandudno had to be but reasoning way beyond me. The interesting thing in terms of Peter’s question is that as with Condor yesterday, Cedilla was my first in, probably because as a beginner I go looking for any hidden word to get me going. Budget allows for purchase of 11th Ed COED as currently using 7th.
      1. The Koran was originally spoken to Mohammed by Gabriel, so “words to the prophet” is okay.

        Agree with all the other comments. I wonder what made CEDILLA so difficult to spot – it was the penultimate clue I solved as well, followed by COTTON, as I needed the C to remember him.

        Pleased to finish in 19 mins.

      2. Looking for the hidden word is a sound tactic. I say “the” because there’s supposed to be only one pure hidden word (i.e. consecutive letters running left to right) in each puzzle. You may also get a reversed one or the similar clues based on initial, last or other letters of words. I once used to hunt for anything anagrammable, for similar reasons. Harder work, but as they’re allowed up to five pure anags a puzzle, possibly more productive.

        Don’t chuck that 7th ed – the editor, J.B. Sykes, is a crossword hero – the John Sykes who won the Times Crossword Championship ten times and could have won another five or so if he’d always entered. A shy man but apparently very generous as well as terrifyingly sharp – my Championship involvement was in time to be in the finals audience for his last two wins, but I never met him or competed against him.

  5. 64 minutes. I really began to doubt I would finish this without resorting to aids but I held on and got there eventually. I’m glad it wasn’t my Friday to write the blog, though I have had at least one that I found more difficult.

    An excellent puzzle, but it’s all been said already.

    Two possible quibbles: I’m not sure how we arrive at “burn” in the present tense in 25, but probably I’m not reading it right.

    The second definition at 20 escaped me until I came here. Neither Collins nor COD supports it and one has to look to Chambers for a reference to “statistics”. Didn’t someone write here in the past day or two that if this happens it is a failure on the crossword editor’s part?

    1. I said:

      The “official” dictionaries for the Times are the Concise Oxford and Collins – if a word is in one of the two, it’s fair game. If only in Chambers, I think the setter has to convince the editor that it should be in COED/Collins. The vast majority of the points that puzzle solvers, including me, can be settled with the trusty old Concise Oxford.

      I should maybe have said explicitly that I was only addressing the Q of whether words are allowed in the grid. Deciding the valid definition is a much trickier issue, but in this case, I think the setter might succeed in convincing the editor that the “stats” side of anorak is not too difficult as an extension of “one with solitary/obsessive interests”.

      Edited at 2009-05-01 06:51 am (UTC)

      1. The trouble is that your average anorak isn’t good on most figures – he’s good on some figures, viz. those pertaining to his solitary/obsessive interests.  Changing “most” to “some” would have improved the definition without harming the surface reading.
    2. I think the idea is that “to be overcooked” is “to burn”.
      1. Hm. Still not sure I quite see it, but whatever, as the saying goes.
        1. I think it’s meant to be intransitive, as in “Don’t leave the chicken in the oven too long – it’ll burn.”
  6. well i feel better having read the blog. this was a stinker but huegly enjoyable. a really cleverly hidden opener at 1 across. not sure i have ever heard the phrase Big Up…Thought that there were several clever clever clues. like the blogger i spent ages trying to find a word around cents..thought 4 down was a contender for clue of the month but was defeated if i am honest by 18 down which is incredibly crytic,
    Bravo maestro for the setter though!
  7. i managed about two thirds without aids but that did include the rather pleasing pantomime horse. as a matter of interest i could not find paint-board in my dictionaries, is that a reflection on them or can you have made up words in clues if the meaning is obvious?
    1. “Paint-board” isn’t in any dictionaries, but yes, in clues (as in English more generally) you can combine words with a hyphen – you won’t find “pumpkin-eater” in dictionaries either, but Jethro Tull got away with it!  Such things wouldn’t be allowed as crossword answers, though.
  8. As Peter has already said, a great puzzle for old hands but I suspect a devil for newer solvers. This is one to learn from now and to come back to in six months time and have another go using sabine’s excellent blog to help you.

    I was off to a good start solving COTTON on screen before printing the puzzle. CEDILLA came immediately to mind for an accent then TELL APART and OOHED both solved from definition. The rest of the NW corner was then reasonably straightforward.

    With ?N?/D?M at 14A saw ONE DIME and solved the clue. Struggled a bit then but UPMARKET is my sort of clue and that opened up the comparatively easier SW corner. Finally saw bowler = derby and so got DONKEY DERBY which led to the SE corner.

    Laboured over the NE corner partly through not knowing BIG UP as a phrase partly not parsing 8D properly. Had the aaah! moment as I realised why REBECCA was the correct answer and was home in 35 minutes.

    An inventive first class puzzle so thank you setter.

  9. 17:00.  A wonderful puzzle.

    After staring at 18dn (N.T-.R.E) for two minutes at the end, despite correctly parsing “bore” as the past tense of “bear”, I decided that it was a historical reference that I didn’t know, and plumped for NUT-TREE.  The nursery rhyme is new to me.

    Other hold-ups from ignorance: “(Suffolk) punch” in 17ac (PANTOMIME HORSE); YASHMAK (27ac), whose meaning I think I confuse with that of “yarmulke”; Henry COTTON (1dn), who was thankfully clued with “Old”, thereby absolving me of the need to rack my brains; and DONKEY DERBY (13dn), of which my childhood seems to have been deprived.

    Like Peter and Tom, I was slowed down by putting OHOED instead of OOHED at 11ac – this would be a valid answer if “oho” were defined as a verb, but it isn’t.

    Clues of the Day: 25ac (BARTENDER), for its definition; 3dn (LLANDUDNO), where the genius of “Plain clothes” outweighs my usual grammatical grumble; 18dn (NUT-TREE), although I’d have preferred “visit of infanta” for the surface reading; and 25dn (BUN), which is a lovely reference to King Alfred.

  10. Peter and Jimbo want to know how the less-experienced solvers got on with this. Well, I sweated blood to reach the end, triumphantly writing in the final answer which, unfortunately, was Uni-dimensional. I suppose I was so punch–drunk (or pantomime horse drunk) by then that I just lost concentration.

    Like Sabine, I spotted Morse quite early and I was struggling to remember his first name. It’s a good job I didn’t remember it was Endeavour or I might have pencilled it in.

    Of a whole series of brilliant and fiendish clues, Nut tree is my favourite. I do have a quibble about anorak. It doesn’t really work as either a CD or a DD. I think it’s meant to be a DD but “good on most figures” is an adjectival phrase defining a noun.

  11. 20D: I’d classify it as a CD. ‘coat’ is a def, but the rest helps you towards the answer without being wordplay or another def. When that’s true, I use CD as a catch-all category. What are the rules to say what works as a CD? There aren’t any! Your how-to-solve book just has a description with words like misleading, whimsy, pun and joke. You can see a typical “multi-pun” style of modern Times xwd CD by observation, but not quite all Times CDs are of that style.

    If you read cryptic xwd history, you’ll see that CDs were the main kind of cryptic clue in the days when only some clues were cryptic and there was no recognised set of clue types. The 1949 Afrit book I mentioned a while back has the earliest list of clue-types I’ve seen, but only lists five – anagrams, hidden words, charades and misspellings. I was pleased to see that his notion of “charade” matches my mental scheme: “It boils down to a + b = x; = the Word, and if a + b + c = x then x = (a + c) about b, or b in (a + c)“. Did I miscount there? No – the fifth type is unnamed but recognised implicitly when he says “some of his best clues will be made without employing any of these devices”. That must be CDs, plus novelty clues if you use Tim Moorey’s set of types. [AFAIK all Afrit’s clues are cryptic rather than plain defs.]

    What kind of descriptions can serve as defs? I think “He’s got an obsessive interest in something” would be OK by anyone for anorak, even though you could not find it under “anorak” in a dictionary, nor use it to replace “anorak” in a sentence. Current chief Ximenean Azed allows verb phrases as clues to “nouns that could stand as their subjects” – “is obsessed with something” in this case, but not adjectival descriptions like “obsessed with something”. If I’ve understood this right, 20D would not get any credit in an Azed comp (where CDs are banned and it would have to be tested as a double def). Clues with “obsessed with statistics” or “good on most figures?” as the only def probably wouldn’t get past the Times xwd ed, though most setters wouldn’t write them in the first place.

    Edited at 2009-05-01 12:33 pm (UTC)

  12. About 1hr 40m after resorting to aids on a couple towards the end. I saw 26 quite early on but it was ages before I understood it enough to put it in! Last in was 18 after having looked at it for ages and eventually pattern-matched it with OneLook to get it in. Still didn’t understand it before coming here though.

    Having reads the other comments here, I think my time stacks up better than I expected.

    COD either 4 or 14.

  13. Enjoyed this thoroughly and was delighted to stop the clock at 26 minutes. The derby/bowler connection from earlier in the week helped me too.

    Treason and Llandudno went in without understading the wordplay.

    Oinks is topical given the current swine flu mularkey. I tried ringing the NHS for advice on the virus but all I got was crackling on the line.

  14. Started last night, finished this morning (do you think they’ll let people who are used to this sleep for six hours in the middle of the championship?).

    OK, I’ll take a swing – I got NUT-TREE solely from the checking letters and seeing it (probably in a Mephisto). Never heard of the rhyme, and unless you do there’s nothing there in the clue. I enjoyed the rest of this very much, but for all the acclaim it’s getting, you’re welcome to 18.

    17 on the other hand still has me smiling.

    1. Try listening to Radio 1 for five minutes or so and you’ll probably hear it (I wouldn’t recommend any longer, your ears might start bleeding).
    2. I think sometimes you have allow leeway to get a genuinely cryptic clue – “diacritical mark” would be a giveaway. Apart from using puns like “dire critical” or “undersea” (no longer acceptable), “accent” seems the only way out, and the “simple when recognised” wordplay compensates for the flaky def.
  15. One of the few times when a Times daily puzzle took me more than an hour. Phew! What a glorious hour of bewilderment … I wonder who is the compiler?

    Sabine, an excellent blog

  16. Took nearly the whole hour of my train journey this morning, although I have an excuse. Right next to me were two marketing droids discussing possible names for a new airport restaurant chain. Here’s a brief example of what I had to put up with…

    “How about Latitude?”
    “Yeah, I like it! It’s got attitude in it, and it’s about travel around the world.”
    “Yeah, and it’s also about doing what you want when you want. I think we’re onto something now…”

    About half an hour later they’d dropped that idea and were talking about calling it Diners’ Republic. “It mentions the food and it’s multi-national!” Sheesh, how was I supposed to concentrate???

  17. What an excellent puzzle.Really struggled early and wondered if it was just me but by the end I realised this would be tough for everyone. 17 provoked a chuckle and would never have got REBECCA without checking letters-and still didn’t understand the wordplay after solving.1d and 3 were both answers I guessed early but couldn’t put in until I had most of the checking letters. New cockney rhyming slang Pantomime Horse=Endeavour Morse! Thanks to the setter
    Time 21.10 which I was pleased with.
  18. Great blog Sabine.

    Defeated by the Scouse corner; like others, I was bamboozled by the hidden word and I’m too young for Cotton to register as a canonical sporting figure.
    I thought ‘Llandudno’ and ‘Pantomime Horse’ were both classic cases of ‘nothing else fits so it must be’ even if the parsing wasn’t obvious.

  19. I had to resort to the aids finally, after about an hour. There’s a number of things I’m not familiar with here (DONKEY DERBY, BIG UP, YASHMAK, the nursery rhyme, Mr. Cotton) but the main holdup was the very clever and misleading wordplay. ANAGRAMMING is a classic; if there’s a Clue Hall of Fame, it should inducted. I also think 18 and 26 are very, very good. Many of the group seem to enjoy 17, but with 3 distinct UK-isms in it (Morse, punch=horse, and the answer itself) it doesn’t rise to the top for this out-of-towner, and I got it only with all the checkers in place. A very brain-shaking start to my Friday. Tip of the cap to the setter. Regards to all.
  20. As a relative beginner, i was very chuffed to get all bar three in roughly an hour, before pusillanimously giving in and reading on here.

    I thought the NW corner was the hardest part – had llandudno only because “it had to be” – never heard of cotton so both the 1s were unfinished, and even after yesterday reading that “if it doesnt quite scan right it is probably a hidden word” i still missed cedilla.

    Finally I had a total toss up between nut tree and not-true (I guess which shouldnt be hyphened) so called that one a miss also.

  21. 18d How did anyone manage to connect infanta with the King of Spain and the nursery rhyme. It has taken more than 15 minutes to work my way through the answers!
    1. 1. Solve the other clues and decide that NUT-TREE looked plausible from checking letters.
      2. Remember the nursery rhyme as something that mentions a nut-tree.
      3. Remember “king of Spain’s daughter” and match this against “infanta”.
      4. Stare blankly at the rest for a moment & then decide I’d got enough.
    2. What do I know about “infanta”? Spanish princess? Spanish royalty? Wait a minute I’ve seen something like this before haven’t I? Got it – King of Spain’s daughter and a NUT-TREE in a nursery rhyme.

      Next time it crops up – and it will – you may go through the same process. You can’t short cut experience.

  22. New boy (I will drop this name soon I promise)

    Extraordinary Coincidence

    Having blogged earlier, in common with others, on unfamiliarity with big up (having very recently retired and taken up xwds in the hope that might be good for the brain, by the same token I don’t listen to Radio 1 – sorry, that’s pompous) this very afternoon reading Christopher Brookmyre’s Attack of the Unsinkable Rubber Ducks (it’s a hard life) I came across the following:-
    “An’ I wanna give a big shout to all my bruvs at Kelvin University what bigged me up for this award”.

    I presume this is the Respect context.

  23. Solved this in 20+ minutes with a friend at work – he suggested NUT-TREE immediately from the “infanta” part; eventually I worked out the “that little bore” half.
    There were several clues where we came up with an answer, then spent some time working out how on earth the wordplay worked.
  24. Agree with all the comments — a marvellous puzzle. Except for one clue, about which I have two quibbles/questions: 15dn: “Claim made by procrastinator’s admirers”: a) isn’t this the chestnut of all chestnuts, clueing ‘idolater’ in this way? and b) where does the plural come from? Is it meant to be ‘idolater + the ‘s that is in the clue’?
    1. I think, precisely so – this is a little bit of sneakiness with punctuation.

      “Claim made by procrastinator” is I DO LATER; “‘s” is the S; ergo a plural. A strict Ximenean would probably reject this clue, but I don’t have a problem with it.

      And, yes, clueing “IDOLATER” as something said by a procrastinator is a bit of a cliche.

      1. I’d count myself as a pretty strict Ximenean, and I can’t see anything wrong with it.  As far as the wordplay is concerned, the ‘S’ is not a plural but a possessive or a contraction of ‘is’ (both being viable interpretations).
        1. I could be wrong. I thought Ximenean rules didn’t allow for linking things together like that when they were not similarly linked in the answer.
  25. Having just returned from collecting partner’s father from Manchester Airport, I came back to this page to see what extra comments have been added since I completed the puzzle and posted my own report. Only after looking in bewilderment at the blog entry, did I suddenly remember that I haven’t actually done it yet – and now, I know most of the answers. I wouldn’t mind missing the occasional grid by an act of idiocy, but it looks like I missed a doozy here. I would’ve loved to have a fair crack at a puzzle that takes even Peter more than fifteen minutes, and see how I stacked up against it.

    I suppose I’ll just have to copy down the answers, fill in the grid in 4:35 and then come and laugh at you all for having so many problems…. 😉

  28. I was pleased to complete most of this in a late night sitting.
    This morning I was left with 16d UPMARKET, 24a KORAN and 18d NUT-TREE in the SW – they fell in that order. Even though I realised that it was a reference to the nursery rhyme (King of Spain’s daughter = infanta)I’m afraid that I did not understand the “little bore” until enlightened by Sabine. My LOI was 10a GHOST. This had been sitting as an ugly gap in an otherwise completed 2/3 of a crossword since early in the process as my FOI and SOI were RAT and REBECCA. Alphabet trawling for the spaces finally gave up the GHOST! Doh!

    There are 2 omitted “easies”:

    5d Grass from pitch lifted (3)
    RAT. TAR upside-down.

    7d Do corny cracks for London borough (7)
    CROYDON. Anagram of (do corny).

    Top effort Setter & Sabine. Please allow me to big you both up.

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