Times Crossword 24274

Author   sabine_tkPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic

Solving time: 13.20

I probably cost myself 3 or 4 minutes by initially writing in a wrong answer at 1 ac, which meant I was staring in puzzlement at the NW corner long after the rest of the grid was filled. I can’t think of anything much to say about the puzzle as a whole – I found it to be of medium difficulty, enjoyable enough and with some very neat touches, but nothing that really dazzled me.
 

Across
1
   RACQUET (soundalike for “racket”.) I screwed up this whole corner for quite some time by writing in RUCTION, an anagram of “in court” that seemed like a reasonable answer and was, rather cruelly, confirmed by both the first two down answers.
5
   PO, TABLE – “table” here being in the sense defined by Chambers as ” a compact scheme of numerical information, words, facts, etc, usually in columns.”
9
   CO,UP D’ETAT. Took a while to decode this one, thinking “ahead” was UP and “date put out” an anagram of DATE, which all worked just fine but left an irritating T unaccounted for. In fact, “out” is the anagram indicator and “date put” its fodder.
10
   BASAL(t)
11
   F(LIE)R – a lie being something you shouldn’t buy. This was the last clue I solved. Obviously “French advertisement” had to be separated, but it took me too long to see that “French” had just to be reduced to FR, rather than applied to something else.
14
   IN LOCO PARENTIS – (oral inspection)*. A very neat anagram indeed, though the clue didn’t hold me up for long as I was almost sure that the wards would not be of the hospital type, and once you realise that, (2,4,8) is extremely helpful.
17
   VALETUDINARI,AN, the first part being an anagram of (a true invalid). This is a nicely constructed clue for a word meaning a person who is sickly, weak, or anxious and fanciful about their health. The word seemed familiar enough but it was hard for me to make sense of the clue, since I thought “valetudinarian” was something to do with leaving college in the US. Turned out I was confusing it with “valedictorian”. Duh.
21
   RACE, HORSE
23
   SIGMA, this being the Greek letter S.
24
   MAJ,OR. MAJ being “predicament backing” (JAM reversed) and OR the military abbreviation for other ranks.
25
   T(AS MAN I)AN – TAN in the sense of to beat.
26
   NEW(S)MAN, a reference to Cardinal John Henry Newman.
 
Down
1
   RECIFE – a city in Brazil. Fell into the lazy trap, especially with an R at the start, of assuming the South American port would inevitably be RIO, and that the whole thing would probably turn out to be the musical term for “fierce” – (razzio? ribato?) – if I could only produce a convincing 3-letter disturbance to fill it. Wrong, all completely wrong. It was simply an anagram of “Fierce”.
2
   CAUTION, a double meaning, the first being that of “an amusing person or thing”.
4
   TITLE-HOLDER – fairly obvious once I’d corrected the wrong answer at 1 ac, but unsurprisingly elusive up to that point.
6
   TI(B)ER. If this were the Listener the position of this answer and the Po in 5 across would probably reflect their actual locations in Italy. I’m taking a break from the Listener this year but sometimes I get nostalgic.
7
   B,ASSIST
8
   EU,L,O,GIST – made up of EU (sounds like YOU, and therefore “you, heard”), the initial letters of “left out”, and GIST (“the main point”). I think “Good speaker” must refer to the nature of the speech, made in praise of another person, rather than to the nature or ability of the speaker.
13
   BRAI(N-TEA)SER – N TEA being “new meal”, inside BRAISER.
15
   ETRUSCANS – back to italy again. “Doctor” is a verb here, indicating an anagram of (acts + nurse).
16
   E(VERY)MAN. “Call-up” is NAME, upwards, around VERY (extremely).
19
   (l)ANGUISH
20
   C,ATNIP – C=Cold, followed by PINTA reversed (milk brought up).
22
   HAREM, a not very difficult hidden word.

36 comments on “Times Crossword 24274”

  1. Yeh, TASMANIAN was neat. But, as per my remark yesterday: which Commonwealth are we talking about? The successor to the defunct Empire or the Commonwealth of Australia? Take your pick.
    The puzzle was quite hard I thought — or maybe because I was doing a bit of biz by e-mail at the same time — giving 32 mins in all. Only helped by the four big anags or part-anags. Didn’t know RECIFE but, having found out, thought PERNAMBUCO would make a good candidate for a cluing competition.
    Some non-poms will scratch their heads over PINTA at 20dn. Did this enter the language from the old milk advertisement, or did it precede it? (Isn’t it nice not to be too old for something?)
    Lastly, should have written in ROSE HIP (two words?) sooner having just dead-headed the roses and pondering how they used to make rose-hip (hyphen?) syrup from them when GB was short of citrus after WWII. Anyone have a recipe?
  2. A finish at least, but not a triumphant one (having guessed RECIFE) and no time recorded (or recordable). Like vinyl I stuggled for reasons I can’t fathom, possibly late night watching Tour de France and Ashes simultaneously, following three day workshop. Fortunately, I didn’t have the presence of mind to think of RUCTION, but did write BASSALT instead of BASSIST at 7, having solved 7 and 10 simultaneously, which rather delayed my embarkation. I thought VALETUDINARIAN was a cracking clue, after I looked it up and found it had the two meanings of actually being sick and thinking you were.

    Being a paid up member of the Pinta Club in my youth, I had no trouble there. Reminds me of the daily milk drinking ritual at school; delivered early and left in the Australian sun without refrigeration until 11am it was usually well on the turn before ingestion. As a nutritional supplement it was an excellent emetic.

  3. I also took a while to get started in the top half apart from 5dn PIT which was my first in, but then, like vinyl1, I got a foothold in the lower half and worked my way up through the NE which also didn’t put up too much resistance. By that time I had been solving for 25 minutes and was left only with 1dn,9ac,11ac and 4dn in the NW, and that’s where I struggled for another 20 minutes. I eventually cracked it having used an atlas to look up RECIFE. 4dn was my last in because I had stupidly pencilled the hyphen in the wrong place and wasted time looking for 4-7.
  4. Early departures for next few days so pleased to get this done in an hour which for me is good. Plumped correctly for RECIFE, so no errors, and but for, appropriately, ANGUISH, I would have finished quicker.
    Confess never knowing the meaning of VALETUDINARIAN until today – if asked would have said someone who is chosen to give an end of term speech. Nice to see Tasmania getting a mention 2 days in a row. Otherwise nothing very interesting here.
  5. I thought this was harder than medium hard…some tricky clues…like you sabine i was thrown by the reference to court in 1 across and in fact racquet was my third last clue in which led to caution and flier…tasmanian was easy after yeterday’s launceston. though COD was Valetudinarian…very neat…somehow feel that coup d’etat isnt really a 4,5 but a 4,1’4 or something like that…do others feel the same
    in loco parentis was neat and not the first time children=wards
    1. 4,1’4 is of course more accurate but I think makes the enumeration too much of a giveaway, so I’m happy with the method which ignores apostrophes.
    2. I agree that 4,5 at 9ac seems wrong, but maybe that’s because it caught me out and I wasted a lot of time over it. If 4,1’4 is too much of a giveaway as Peter says, then I think 4,1,4 would be fairer.
        1. Yes, I think “4,1,4” would be worse – whether or not it could be defended as correct, solvers would take it that the middle letter had to be A, I, or at a pinch O.  Admittedly there’s bound to be a problem somewhere (given that “4,1’4” is too easy), as we’d never think of D’ÉTAT while pondering 5-letter words – I thought of DEPOT myself.  But on balance I’m happier with “4,5”.
  6. 7:56 – helped by remembering what valetudinarians are from previous puzzle experience, and getting the other long anagram instantly. NW corner was the hardest part for me, sharing 11 as last answer with Sabine.

    I’m pretty sure that the advertisement was the origin of “pinta”.

  7. 51:32, with the last 43½ minutes spent on 4 clues in the NW corner.  After 37 minutes I gave up and used an atlas to confirm the existence of RECIFE (1dn).  I then spent ages trying to justify FLYER (11ac) and looking for something to fit ..U.Y.N at 2dn, in ignorance of the variant spelling FLIER; I eventually got there by thinking of “what shouldn’t be bought”.  The other two continued to elude me, and I was cross when I finally realized that 1ac (RACQUET) had one of those idiotic pseudo-definitions typical of crosswords in local papers or trade magazines (“that’s handled in court”); I’d taken it that the definition was “Uproar [in hearing]” or “[handled in] court”, and so was repeatedly drawn to RUCTION and the like.  The last in was CAUTION (2dn), which I didn’t know could mean a “hoot”.  I had no idea what VALETUDINARIAN (17ac) meant either, though the word was familiar enough.

    So I’m taking only 75% of the blame for my slowest solve since I started recording times 3 months or so ago.  Apart from 1ac, though, I liked this puzzle.

    Clues of the Day: 10ac (BASAL), 11ac (FLIER), 17ac (VALETUDINARIAN), 2dn (CAUTION), and, despite the obsolescent reference (which I didn’t get), 20dn (CATNIP).

  8. 19 minutes, but guessed RECEFI for some reason… Some vaguely obscure words – VALETUDINARIAN was a guess from checking letters, despite working out the wordplay very early on.

    Oli

  9. Oh dear – a slow solve for me, coming in at around 20 minutes. It wasn’t that the puzzle was overtly difficult but I spent far too long “knowing” 17A but trying to remember how it’s spelt! It’s one of those odd words where you tend to mentally insert another syllable somewhere.

    I’d heard of RECIFE in the past and, more recently, it was in the news as mentioned anonymously above.

    At first I thought I was in for a shocker, an initial run-through of the Acrosses resulting in (wait for it) no answers at all, but the Downs proved very helpful – in particular 7D (because I am one) and 19 (because my modest clue database has a similar working for the answer LANGUISH).

    I have to disagree with Mark (sorry Mark!) about the def for RACQUET “that’s handled in court”. Grammatically it isn’t spot on but it’s the sort of device which is deemed fair in cryptics – even, perhaps grudgingly at times, the majority of Ximeneans accept it. Without “That’s” it would have been completely unfair, but for our purposes it’s regarded as similar enough in meaning to “this is”.

    On the subject of enumeration of apostrophised words, it’s just convention in most papers to enumerate “1’4” as “5” – I think (not absolutely sure) the Guardian is an exception. I’ll stand corrected but I’m sure there’s one paper which insists on the apostrophe being shown.

    I thought this puzzle was a very good little test for moderately/more experienced solvers. Nothing overly complicated but a fair bit of thought needed.

    Q-0 E-7 D-7 COD 17A VALETUDINARIAN…

    …closely followed by 25D TON which I think is beautifully worded.

  10. Second failure of the week for me. Solved everything in 16 minutes apart from the CAUTION / FLIER combination, which I note is an inverted cross and therefore the devil’s work – insolvable to the pure of heart.

    The ‘hoot’ meaning of the first and the variant spelling of the second were complete unknowns to me.

  11. This answer came to mind straightaway. Recife has been in the news recently as the place where wreckage and bodies from doomed Air France flight 447 have been recovered to.
  12. I’m a bit surprised by the difficulty people had with this. I sailed through it with no hold-ups, which is quite unusual for me. It certainly came as a welcome relief after the last few difficult days. It helped that I got Recife and Racquet straight away, apparently the main hold-ups for some people.

    It’s nice to learn that a valetudinarian is a hypochondriac. Like Sabine I had confused it with valedictorian. I wonder why the Greek word is in common parlance and the Latin is not.

  13. Somewhere around the hour mark for me. The top half went in in about 20 minutes, then I spent half an hour staring at the completely empty bottom half. I finally got 17, and the rest followed in fairly short order.

    I kept seeing ANTEDILUVIAN in the anagram at 17, and really struggled to move away from it.

  14. …given most of the comments above. 10:05 here, and I thought this was a pretty gentle workout. No unknown vocabulary, and no real sticking places. I saw RECIFE and COUP D’ETAT quite early, got the two long acrosses at first look, and the rest went in with almost no bother. Should have been quicker really.
  15. A rather plodding 35 minutes. Unlike others I had the top half finished before the bottom with Harem annoyingly being one of the last I got. How do these blasted setters hide the “hiddens” so well?

    I thought 4-down was a well-observed and satisfyingly concise DD but my COD is 12 across for the interesting construction and utterly convincing surface that disguised the definition superbly.

    1. Found the top half slowish but the bottom half went in almost without pause when I finally got to it. About 25m with recife a guess. We Jane Austen fans know “valetudinarian”, which sticks out like a sore thumb in a description of Miss Woodehouse’s father near the beginning of “Emma”. bc
  16. A bit of a curate’s egg for me. The bottom half and the NE corner came quickly but then, like Sabine, I got bogged down in the NW corner. At 1dn (RECIFE)I toiled up the same garden path as she did before, very belatedly, spotting the anagram. Was glad in the end to complete without aids in around 40 mins. Peter B’s time of 7:56 seems to me astonishingly good.
  17. 10.05 as above. Would have been a good bit better if I hadn’t initially dismissed IN LOCO PARENTIS because it wouldn’t fit the checking letters in 17!
    VALETUDINARIAN came easily but like many others didn’t really know the definition.RECIFE was familiar but 1a, 2 and 11 were the final trio to go in.
    I have 1960’s memories of the sunwarmed third of a pinta. I used to sit and watch it turn from white to yellow before we were forced to drink it. Put me off it for years. Eventually it was stopped by “Thatcher the Milk Snatcher” but too late for me, thanks anyway Maggie.
    1. In my school in the early 60s a 1/3 pint bottle was delivered for every boy but drinking it was not compulsory so those who liked it were allowed to drink milk à gogo. Two of my friends had a bet that they could drink 100 bottles each in a week. They achieved this, averaging 20 bottles each per mid-morning break. 7 pints of milk distends the stomach a lot more than 7 pints of beer. Needless to say, requent trips to the toilet were required during the pre-lunch lessons.
      1. School milk was supplied free while I was at secondary school in NZ. Unfortunately this was interpreted as compulsory by the powers that be. As a consequence I would spent mid mornings throwing up. In the loo only when I was quick enough to get there in time. They got fed up and relented. Just as well since I was missing mathematics which I regarded as a treat. (The maths that is, not the missing of maths!)
  18. About 25 minutes, not much to say except that I didn’t know the other meaning of CAUTION, so it was my last entry, as a guess. Regards.
  19. 1st in 21a ( I really must stop always starting with the across clues) and last in the 2d 9a 11 a set. Not timed but around the half hour. I always get caught out by apostrophes despite Mephisto’s more frequent use of them. Rose hip syrup is a real pain to make, involving a vast quantity of hips, and meticulous straining to get rid of the whiskery bits – which in their raw state are supposed to be a natural itching powder, I have not felt the need to find out for sure……
    1. fmks,
      Thanks for putting me off making my own rose-hip syrup. Since writing, I’ve found that a mob of local magpies (who are currently nesting) appear to like the rose hips — once clipped and discarded. So they can have them for now!
      1. We sold punnets of rose hips to our chef customers in the 80’s when wild food was last all the rage. They used them for ice cream!
  20. After yesterday I was relieved to find that RECIFE is a place, and it wasn’t RICEFE or RECEFI
  21. Rather easy for a Friday I thought.

    My football fanaticism often comes in handy for fairly obscure geography – Recife was just such a case.

    It’s unfortunate that were one to use the word ‘potable’ in earnest this side of the channel, one would probably receive a suspicious look and a punch on the nose.

  22. 24 min here, so probably the easiest of the week for me. Spent most time baffled by the NW, and to elevate the challenge, I had banged in RECEIF as one of my first answers. Had given up and reached for the aids when yet again, just typing the C?U???N string activated a few synapses. Realisation that 1 dn had been misspelled finally saw me home. I expected that non UK solvers would have had trouble with the CAUTION / HOOT synonyms.

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