Times Crossword 24250

Author   sabine_tkPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic

Solving time: 8.07

This was a straightforward and relatively easy end to the week and I expect there will be some fast times. There was quite a lot of wordplay of the “remove a letter from one end” or “stick a letter in the middle” type, and generally the devices used were comparatively uncomplicated. The blog has therefore turned out rather briefer than usual, so I shall use up a bit of space by wishing everyone a pleasant weekend.
 

Across
1
   SP,ARKLE,R. SP=starting price, the odds on a horse when the race begins, and Arkle was a very famous racehorse in the 1960’s.
6
   DIWALI, (I LAW ID) all reversed. Diwali is the festival of light in several Eastern religions.
9
   LO(N)G
11
   RE(PUBLIC)AN – The public are people generally, and “near-anarchy” indicates the anagram of “near” around the outside.
13
   OAHU, the central letters of “storm bears the brunt”.
14
   ALASTAIR, or “a last air”…
16
   IN,F,AMY. “Little woman” often refers to one of the sisters in Louisa M. Alcott’s “Little Women” – on this occasion we have Amy. The “following” in the clue needs to be abbreviated to F, and “arrested” is an indication that that F appears between the other two elements.
20
   OPEN FIRE – a double meaning.
22
   SPAR(e)
24
   VOLUM,I,NOUS – “Huge book” has to be separated to give the definition, huge, and the book, VOLUM(e). “Nous” means common sense.
26
   GAIN, SAYING. To “gainsay” is to contradict or dispute, with the “gain” bit being derived from “against”.
28
   A,KIN(g)
29
   IN CASE
30
   NOT AT ALL, which can be respaced to “Not a tall”, and therefore, perhaps, a short.
 
Down
2
   PRO, PE(LL)ER, with PRO being “for” and the member of the upper house, of course, a PEER. I expect the peer in question wasted no time in claiming the missing pounds back in expenses.
3
   RIG,OURS
4
   LEVEL, which, being a palindrome, remains unchanged when raised.
5
   ROC(k), the roc being an enormous bird in Arabian legend.
7
   WAR,DO,F,F, with “make” being DO . Both “fine” and “force” can be abbreviated to F, and I’m not completely sure which of the two the “beginning” should be applied to – either way the “in” doesn’t seem quite right.
8
   (s)LOUGH – the Irish word for a loch.
12
   CAR,ROLL – the Lewis of the clue. I was briefly but not fatally tempted by CARPOOL.
15
   A,L(LEVI)ATE – Levi was a founder of one of the tribes of Israel. The word “case” in the clue just means that LEVI is encased by “a recent” – A LATE.
17
   MERC(UR)IA,L. UR is always the first thing to try for “old city”, and the Midlands kingdom is the Anglo-Saxon Mercia.
21
   FI(NE AR)T – NEAR here is “mean” in the sense of “stingy”, and “suitable” = FIT.
23
   PLA(I)N
25
   MIGHT – sounds like “mite”.

37 comments on “Times Crossword 24250”

  1. 45mins. I fell at the last hurdle in a reasonably tough week, with WARN OFF and ALISTAIR, neither of which I could adequately justify, but I was obviously past caring. I thought “make” could be number = no., as in make and model, but this seemed contentious. Let that be a lesson. Didn’t know DIWALI & OAHU, but the cryptic got me there, and ARKLE is not exactly a household name in Oz (unlike Pharlap). Some concise clueing here in VOLUMINOUS, VOCIFEROUS & GAINSAYING, for example, but COD to NOT AT ALL, for the smile it raised. Setter 1, Idiot 0.
  2. Can’t give a time here as I had a long commute between the first and second halves. Probably about the usual 40-45 minutes. I really liked “a last air” — but don’t quite know why. Is there a theme going here: a tickler, a trickler and now a sparkler? Pity Mark Ella was a (if not the) five-eighth and not a prop!
  3. 12:05 – well done Sabine. Putting DILAWI initially did not help, nor missing some fairly routine stuff on first couple of goes, like Scotsman=Alastair. Some sympathy with overseas solvers about Arkle, but he is one of only two horses mentioned in my UK references crib. Named after a mountain in Scotland, as was another horse – Foinaven. If anyone’s still looking at clue length, these may be shorter than yesterday – only two wrapped onto a second line (6 yesterday).
  4. 35 minutes, my best time since Monday and I have to look back to Wednesday of last week to find a solving time that beats it. I didn’t find it a comfortable journey as I took ages getting started and had two lulls of about 5 minutes in which I solved nothing at all. 27dn is so feeble I couldn’t believe the answer and didn’t write it in until I had both checking letters in place.
  5. Standard fare with not a great deal to comment on. 25 minutes to solve. Is there a little bit of padding (“roofed” in 19D, “only” in 27D)? I liked 10A VOCIFEROUS.
  6. Finished, a bit laboriously, and then spent forever wondering if one of Ms Walcott’s little women was called Famy. Also wondering how to justify WARD OFF. Setters seem to allow DO to mean whatever is convenient. (Not sure about OURS fo US?)
    1. DO is one of those common little words whose wide applicability led to the coining of the linguistic term “polysemy“.  I reckon “make” is as good a one-word definition as various others, like “perform”.  Think of how you were taught to translate faire in French (or, if you did Latin, facere).  Or think of doing a sketch, a photocopy, or a meal.

      OURS (3dn) is from “for us”.  Again, “of us” or “by us” would be equally acceptable for a word like this.

  7. 11:27.  Thought I was in for a blinder at first, but slowed down and ground to a halt with OAHU (13ac) and LOUGH (8dn), neither of which I knew.  The only other unknowns were ARKLE (1ac) and, despite my girlfriend’s best efforts, Little Women‘s AMY (16ac).

    The wordplay for OAHU is dubious: what the solver needs is surely not “centre of STORM BEARS THE BRUNT”, but the centres of those words.  Notice that similar reasoning wouldn’t invalidate e.g. the wonderful clue “Foremost of those shot after revolution (4)”, because “foremost” is an adjective and can therefore apply to several different objects.

    Clue of the Day: 20ac (OPEN FIRE), for the shockingly stark contrast.

  8. 12 mins, would have been quicker but for OAHU. I’d never heard of this place and found the wordplay inexact. I’m maybe being picky as no-one else has commented, but O/H/A/U are surely the centres of “storm bears the brunt”, not the centre?
  9. Sorry, didn’t see Mark’s comment when I posted mine, so the point’s already been made.
  10. No need to apologize – we must have been making the same point at the same time as each other.
  11. Like Mark I made rapid early progress but spoiled things by unthinkingly putting TENET at 4D. The OAHU wordplay is worth a quibble tick although the smooth surfaces of nearly all clues more than made up for it.

    Jimbo is spot on with the padding “only” in 27D – I’d considered INN as the obvious answer but “only” made me wonder if I was missing something. But “roofed” in 19D seems OK – VERANDA = part of house roofed.

    Overall a very satisfying set of clues, nothing spectacular but offering a handful of pleasurable Doh! moments.

    Q-1 E-7 D-7 COD 14A ALASTAIR (perfection).

  12. Thanks Mark (and Anon)for the FOR US explanation. I have already made a mental note that whenever DO remains to be justified a bit of lateral thinking is required. I think we have recently had: to make, to cook, to beat, to con.
    Alas having enjoyed no education of consequence (failed mock “O” Level French due to being at the time much occupied with sports and puberty, and Latin having survived no longer on the syllabus of my south London Comprehensive than did the Henry Moore in the playground) having now taken up cryptics I am beginning to understand what I missed.
    1. Don’t worry too much about what you missed – you missed some dull rote-learning as well! – Which nouns are male & female, which Latin declension or conjugation words belong to, and others I’ve managed to forget. Just grab the fun version – the snippets you pick up from crosswords, and books like Guy Deutscher’s “Unfolding of Language” which I’m reading for the second time – hence the mention of Grimm’s Law a while back. Fascinating stuff about how the complexities of languages like Latin can both develop and fall apart.
      1. Thanks for that book recommendation, Peter. I’ve just ordered myself a copy. I’ll reciprocate with a recommendation of my own in similar vein. If you’ve never read it, try to score a copy of the late Anthony Burgess’ A Mouthful of Air (I think it’s out of print, but available) – a provocative, bombastic and downright brilliant series of essays on language. I think many contributors here would enjoy it.
        1. That’s another one on the language-related shelf downstairs, awaiting a second read – along with Umberto Eco’s one on the various attempts at artificial languages, and … several others!

          Edited at 2009-06-12 12:48 pm (UTC)

          1. I should have known. I think Burgess is particularly good on Joyce (actually made sense of Finnegan’s Wake for me) and on the language of the Authorized Version. Funnily enough, Burgess once said of Eco “no man should know that much”. I would say the same of Burgess.
    2. I generally think people who couldn’t do Latin at school did miss out, as it happens, but this isn’t such a case.  All you’re missing here is the knee-jerk translation “facere = make, do” that you learn as soon as you get on to verbs.  Like the French faire, the Latin facere stands out like a sore thumb for meriting a double translation in even the most basic vocab list.
      1. Of course you are right re vocab and my apologies for my denseness. However, my lack of education also condemns me to utter “Oh no, not another Morse clue!” at 12dn, Lewis being the hapless sidekick of Inspector Morse, now in his own TV series, failing as dismally as his former boss to stem the carnage beneath the gleaming spires.
  13. An easy romp for a change on Friday after a few stinkers in recent weeks. Rather liked Voluminous and Republican… was surprised to write Diwali and sparkled in almost straight away

  14. 10:24 .. Mostly straightforward, the only delay being with RIGOURS, where I was looking for an adj.

    COD 14d ALASTAIR

  15. Rather easier than the last 3 days, taking me 30 minutes. Not mad about the clues in general, though I did like the indication of the palindrome in 4, and 30. ‘Near-anarchy’ to indicate an anagram of NEAR is a no-no for me (it wouldn’t be much better without the hyphen)and ‘extra-short’ when what is wanted is ‘extra short’ is just as bad; the hyphen makes nonsense of the clue. I largely agree with markthakkar about the singular ‘centre’ in 13.
  16. 18 minutes – agree with Sabine “relatively easy” , unfortunately I got the R-G in 3 and just thought Austere conditions = REGIMEN, write it in and move on. It made 11 and 14 pretty difficult! Also to compound I had a typo with ALLEIVATE which made 24 even more difficult!! Anyway got there eventually. As Sabine says , Little woman is almost always Jo, Beth, Amy or Meg so a good tip to remember these…. and also not just to write in any answer that fits!
    Have a good weekend everyone
  17. I didn’t find this particularly easy, although did get there eventually & without aids – a similar story to the rest of the week, where I generally seem to have found puzzles harder than most posters but got there in the end. Diwali and oahu were new to me. Not very keen on Scotsman as a definition for Alastair, a name with a Scottish flavour but neither hugely popular in Scotland nor restricted to it (an analogy might be Englishman as a definition for Nigel, which I imagine would provoke some objections). I’d heard of Arkle, but thought it would seem very obscure to younger solvers. bc
    1. It seems Alastair is actually an Anglicised version of the Scottish name Alasdair, which in turn is a Scottish version of Alexander. So perhaps the defining of an English version of the name as a Scottish one isn’t quite right, but in fairness I think that on hearing the name most would see its Scottish connotations.
  18. If you are quoting a ‘classic’ clue would you also mind giving the answer…I guess the one today re; foremost of those shot at revolution (4) is Tsar. However I am still puzzling over one from the other day. Three couples get together for sex (5),union, mates, pairs?
    I expect I am on the wrong track because why three? Help!
    1. Sorry, yes, I thought people would get the answer to this one because of the context.  I think the other clue you mention is more like “In which three couples get together for sex” – the answer is LATIN, in which sex means six.
  20. Count me in on the “not finding this so easy” clan, took me 38 minutes and was staring at hippy corner forever, not seeing SPARKLER, RIGOURS or REPUBLICAN for far too long.
  21. I seem to recall rules of punctuation are allowed to be extremely flexible – presence, absence, position.

    … centre of storm(,) bear(,) the (and) brunt would work, wouldn’t it?

    1. Well if it would, why don’t they use (e.g.) “leader of” for first letter clues – as far as I can recall, they don’t – they use an adjective like “initially”, or a description in the plural. (Awaits proof by example to show that he’s wrong…)
    2. I don’t think it would, no.  Your punctuation point is a good one, and explains how “Foremost of those shot after revolution (4)” manages to indicate more than just T.  But my point about “centre” being a noun (like Peter’s “leader”) remains valid.  To take a non-cruciverbal example: “father of Joe and Fred” can’t refer to two fathers, one of Joe and one of Fred.
  22. About 30 minutes for all but the crossing LOUGH and DIWALI, then got those quickly after thinking DIWALI must be it from wordplay alone, then remembering the Irish LOUGH. I also thought it not very tough. As an American OAHU came straightaway upon seeing the wordplay. ( I agree Mark is correct, technically, but I thought it clever nonetheless.) The island of OAHU is the metropolitan center of Hawaii, home to Honolulu and the US naval and air bases at Pearl Harbor, so in a military history sense it’s certainly not obscure. In another sense, of course, it is implausible to expect the names of the individual Hawaiian Islands to be common knowledge to the average UK resident. Just as it is implausible to expect the average American to have heard of ARKLE, which I hadn’t.
  23. Just back from day in France, fitted it into 23 mins watching TV waiting for 8.30 programme. Giggled at 30a, pleased to spot oahu and again happy with good mix of knowledge.

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