Times Crossword 24286

Author   sabine_tkPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic

Solving time: 14.50.

I thought this was a good mixture of tricky clues and more straightforward ones. Had some problems with the wordplay in a few places but the definition and/or crossing letters were usually helpful, and where the definition wasn’t immediately familiar (e.g. 5d) the answer was gettable from the wordplay.

There were some very neat clues – I liked 3D, 10A and 23A in particular. Left myself at the end with 4 symmetrically placed empty spaces, 1A/1D in the NW corner and 21D/25A in the SE, spending an inordinate amount of time on the not particularly difficult 25A.

Across
1
   DUMP TRUCK – I’ve agonised for a while over how this one works. DUMP=ditch is easy enough – can the rest really be the end bits of “traffic is stuck”? Surely not. Is DUMP=ditch a red herring? Help.
9
   BINOMIAL THEOREM – an anagram of “mobile home grant”, with the G replaced by an I, indicated by “one’s given for good”. I got the theorem bit right away, but had to subtract, replace and contemplate the results for a few moments before seeing “Binomial”. I have heard of it but have absolutely no idea what it is.
10
   SINGLE – a double meaning.
11
   W,HA(LE O)IL – after trying with some bafflement to figure out how HAL or AL fitted into this poignant shower scene, I realised the man in question was LEO.
13
   BE(H IN)D, HAND – the H IN (hour at home) manage their lie-in by being in BED.
14
   STAG – “game” here is in the sense of a wild animal hunted for sport, though my first thought was that STAG would be a poker variant (probably I was thinking of STUD, though the picture of a group of guys sitting down for a game of Stag is awfully convincing.).
16
   FA,TE, both being notes in the do re mi scale.
17
   I,N,TERN,MENT – here the note is N, an abbreviation for the word “note” rather than an actual note. It always seems a bit unstylish to repeat a significant word in consecutive clues, though my approach to clue-solving is so haphazard that unless actually blogging I doubt that I’d ever notice.
19
   ESCAPIST, being C (about) inside (pasties)*.
20
   DE NOVO, Latin term meaning “anew”, hidden, reversed, in “ChekhOV ONE Discovered”. The words “back” and “fragment” in the clue gave this device away to me at once.
23
   CHAPTER AND VERSE – “given cryptically in code” because CODE breaks down to C=chapter and ODE=verse. I thought this was quite clever.
24
   (t)RUSTY
25
   DEPOR,TEES – DEPOR being ROPED backwards (bound, returning) and the river obviously TEES. I can’t remember a clue for which I came up with so many wrong answers along the way, starting off with DESERTERS, then, after the P fell into place, trying DEPARTERS before moving onto DEPARTEES, which at least had a river, though unfortunately isn’t a word. The key was to realise that “land” belonged to the definition, not the wordplay.
 
Down
1
   D(EB)US – EB (BE, up) inside DUS(k) – the half-light, shortly. DEBUS works like DEPLANE or DETRAIN.
2
   MEN IN WHITE COATS – (a chemist in town)*, with an E (the drug) stored inside.
3
   TUM,BLING, an admirably succinct description of a navel piercing.
5
   KITCHEN TEA, an anagram of “a ticket” plus “hen”. A kitchen tea apparently is the OZ/NZ version of a bridal shower.
6
   P(A)E,LL,A – “A” is the top grade, PE=exercises, LL=learners and A=a.
7
   PAR FOR THE COURSE – PAR is “blow up” (RAP, upwards), stronghold is FORT, HE= high explosive.
8
   LIMELIGHT, a 1952 Charlie Chaplin film.
12
   CHINESE RED, a colour I didn’t recognise, but the wordplay is very helpful.
13
   B(U FF ETC)AR
14
   ONCE OVER – “Head ignores bad start” is BONCE (slang term for the head) with the B removed.
18
   S,POTTY
21
   OW(E)NS, a reference to Jesse Owens, star of the 1936 Olympics. Not sure I’ve understood this correctly as the word “has” in the clue seems to be required both as a definition for OWNS and as part of the instruction to put E inside it.
22
   SNAP, being a shot in the sense of a photo, and I guess firstly in the sense of to break, though snapping and collapsing don’t actually seem very similar.

47 comments on “Times Crossword 24286”

  1. 25 mins here. Re 21dn, I’d say “in reserve” is the inclusive indicator + “has” = OWNS. Good to see “bonce” making an appearance. Haven’t heard the word for decades.
    Koro will like 9ac I suspect and will enlighten us all as to what it actually is. COD has to go to 3dn — TUM-BLING — wonderful!
    Did the adjectival in 6ac worry anyone?
    10ac was nice for ex-scousers — though I’m not too sure about “hit”.
  2. Had all but 20 & 21 in 24 min, then total bafflement. Came back an hour later to use the cheats to get OWEN S and DE NOVO. The last was new to me , and even though I looked both ways for a hidden answer, it still eluded me! As for OWENS, I always get grumpy about the use of proper names, and get particularly grumpy when I am defeated by one. I will admit he is one of the more famous, and since they have to be dead to be allowable, the field is considerably narrowed. Who else thought of (Tamara) Press when ??e?s appeared?
    1. I too was fooled by W HAL in 11 ac. COD: 3 dn TUM BLING, Made me giggle in an unmanly way
  3. 20:46 .. very smart puzzle – CHAPTER AND VERSE and the tum bling are both peachy. Main delay was at the end where I wavered a long time over OWENS and the DEPORTEES.
  4. Regards. About 25-30 minutes all told. Most of this went in straightaway, but I then became stymied by the DEPORTEES/OWENS crossing clues. OWENS caught me up short because I was trying to remember any UK based Olympian, feeling that due to 25A it had to end in ‘s’, and thus must be a name. Surprised to find Jesse Owens. Then in 25 it took a further while to remember there is a River TEES. I had thought DEE was the river, and perhaps ‘land’ indicated ‘trap’ reversed inside, making me lean toward ‘departers’ or the not particularly real ‘departees’, but I finally came round. COD: TUMBLING, no doubt, although CHAPTER AND VERSE also very clever. Nice smooth surfaces again today, for the most part. I cannot see any better explanation for TRUCK in 1A than yours, Sabine. Best to all.
    1. > I cannot see any better explanation for TRUCK in 1A than yours.
      Yes, sadly, it has to be TR[affic is st]UCK. Strict Ximeneans beware!
      1. That would indeed be the thin edge of the wedge. Collins has truck = traffic, commerce, trade etc, as in “have no truck with”. The “stuck at the side” is just an instruction as to where to put it.
  5. Up with the larks this morning (and with the foreigners by the look of it) as trying day ahead.

    Bizarrely, Sabine’s marvellous blog was like reliving the entire experience (albeit in slow motion). I too was left unconvinced by DUMP TRUCK and OWENS, same problem with LEO (is hail a shower?), and so on. And yes MCText, I thought PRESS after discarding OVETT as extant.

    A little help to get going but otherwise a very satisfactory performance for me of just over the hour (perhaps I should get up at this ungodly hour every day) but needed blog for explanation of CHAPTER AND VERSE which is way too clever for me.

    Looks like a consensus on TUMBLING. First in for me and immediately marked COD.

  7. Koro: sounds OK to me. {Bashes forehead for not seeing it}. Now let’s get the dope on the binomial theorem??
  8. About 50 mins, I’d say, as I forgot to check when exactly I finished. As Barry aptly puts it, Sabine in slow motion. Some great clues here. Thanks to Sabine for explaining CHAPTER AND VERSE, which gets my COD. Wasted on the likes of me. Many other clues ticked for their succinct trickery.

    I took SNAP to mean a nervous collapse, though I’m not sure that helps.

    As for the binomial theorem, I’m presuming it’s the one that gives the expansion of (x + y)n in terms of Pascal’s (for one) co-efficients, but I’ve never thought of that as a theorem. Newton’s extension of this to non-integer n’s is actually worthy of the title, and a very useful thing it is too. Actually, now that I think about it, I used the result just the other day when I attempted to calculate the probability of getting a match in two crosswords, since 1 – (1 – 30/n,000)30 is approximately 900/n,000 or roughly 1/n. The Babylonians could probably have done that calculation, although as far as I know, no cuneiform crossword has yet been found (some examples in The Listener aside).

    1. The “little help” I enlisted this morning was a wiki search for BINOMIAL (theorem), so, er, thanks Koro for the elucidation.

    2. koro: I thought you’d have something to say on the binomial. Not that I understand it! The Listener is, however, written in Etruscan.
    3. On the issue of how it qualifies as a “theorem”, I think it’s to do with the non-integer version that you mentioned. When n is not an integer, the expansion is an infinite sequence, so it needs a “theorem” to say that this infinite sequence converges to the limit (1+x)^n, provided the magnitude of x is less than 1.
  9. I took “traffic with” and “truck with” to be synonyms of “dealing with”, but was then left with the problem of “is stuck on the side”, which seemed a ridiculously roundabout way of saying that truck was beside dump. So I guess Sabine’s right, unless the setter is having it both ways.

    I also found this puzzle oddly like yesterday’s–obvious answers (if one had some crossing letters), but hard to justify with the wordplay. Unless I’m missing something, the definition at 11ac seems obscure: whale oil was, apparently, used long ago in the manufacture of detergents, but “typical ingredient of soaps”?–I don’t get it, unless “whale oil” is recent British slang for something that happens in soap operas.

    1. Soap, the one you wash with, was traditionally (typically?) made from whale oil.
      1. Until it was realised palm oil would be more appropriate, at least for washing hands; an idea which precipitated the destruction of Indonesia’s rainforests. Does keeping clean necessarily have to involve the cessation of some or all lifeforms on the planet, I wonder?
    2. kororareka and I posted in the same minute, making the same point… Sorry.
  10. Not working today but a busy morning ahead of me so after 35 minutes with 22 and 25 still unfinished I decided to abandon ship and come here. I also had several other clues not fully understood and I thought I would let myself off lightly as it’s not my Friday to write the blog.

    As others have already pointed out the problem at 25 was that there are several words that might have fitted the definition “people leaving” and three of them would have worked with the checking letter “P” which I didn’t have anyway, so DESERTERS was also still a possibility. But unfortunately I never even thought of DEPORTEES otherwise I might have spotted that it is defined precisely as “people leaving land” and the first part is ROPED backwards.

    I also wasted time considering OVETT at 21dn. Never heard of KITCHEN TEA, BINOMIAL THEOREM nor of CHINESE RED but these were easily solved by other means.

  11. Having finished this at about 7.00 UK time I thought “Wonder if the blog’s up yet?”. Not only was it there, but with 17 comments!

    TUM BLING had me laughing out loud, but also liked ESCAPIST for it’s excellent surface.

    Paul S.

  12. 9:45 for this one – a puzzle worth more careful reading than it got from me while solving – 9A came to me pretty quickly with the help of “8, 7” and this led to several of the downs. 23A was an instant write-i9n from def, word-lengths and checkers, so the very clever C+ODE went begging, though 3’s gag was fortunately unmissable. About one minute at the end to find OWENS, just by trying each letter of the alphabet in turn as a candidate for the second letter. Before that I dallied briefly with DEPARTEES at 25, but having guessed at the right wordplay, RAPED clearly didn’t fit as the reversed word.

    I think 10 is a triple definition – a single is a one-run hit in cricket (or a one-base hit in baseball).

    Edited at 2009-07-24 07:53 am (UTC)

  13. Nice standard fare for a friday – about 30 mins – again, much taken up by the SE corner. I was annoyed that the larger reversal of TRESSED (bound) to DESSERT(ee?) was not the source of the answer, and got me wondering what the longest known perfect reversal has been (without replacing letters or splicing, or even hiding it across several words) PB – any memories?

    total agreement on 3D – a rare laugh out loud clue, although had spent a time expecting it to end -RING.

    Also wasted some time with BEHINDTIME, with the lie in being BEDTIME rather than just BED, but soon realised that the K-T-H-M set up was unlikely.

  14. After three weeks solving these puzzles with the Moray Firth and Fortrose links as a back drop it’s back to the more mundane surroundings of home. I managed to do the puzzle each day and as usual had fun trying to guess which trait (or should that be tray) might give rise to comment on the site.

    I worked my way through this one steadily enough in 25 minutes. I nearly felt the Chinese red mist descend over DUMP TRUCK until I realised that “stuck at the side” was a long winded instruction. I agree SINGLE is a triple definition with “hit” being a bit of obscure cricket jargon. I thought CHAPTER AND VERSE was very clever and a better clue that the rather obvious TUM-BLING

  15. 17:25 for me, held up in the NW corner for about 5 minutes at the end. Got off to a good start with 2½ of the 15-letter entries going straight in, but I had total word-blindness over BINOMIAL for some reason, even though I know what it is! I also struggled with DUMP TRUCK, DEBUS, SINGLE and TUMBLING (mainly because I thought it would end in RING and stuck the unhelpful R in. I finally worked out DEBUS and everything fell out in a matter of seconds. I was going to give COD to TUMBLING, until I saw the explanation for CHAPTER AND VERSE, which went right by me before.
  16. 19m, enjoyed the wordplays I got, and even more the ones sabine filled in for me. Giggled like everyone at 3d, actually my last in as I solved this scatter-fashion, 23d first (my cod, so clever, now I’ve seen the blog) 7d then all over the place. That theorem was the wall of maths I never quite cleared unlike brighter friends.
  17. Pascal’s triangle is an neat way of getting the coefficients of the binomial expansion of (a+b) to the nth power. The horizontal lines of the triangle represent the coefficient for the expansion when n= 1,2,3 etc. Each line is created from the one above by adding pairs of coefficients and putting the sum in between them on the line below.

    1
    1 1
    1 2 1
    1 3 3 1
    1 4 6 4 1
    1 5 10 10 5 1

    Beautiful, isn’t it? Well, certainly better than my grid in today’s crossword.

    Anonymous Nick

  18. Actually, it doesn’t look as beautiful as I expected because the system has removed my leading spaces! The triangle should be equilateral and symmetrical for best effect.

    N

    1. If you use HTML’s ‘center’ tag, you can make it look pretty close to what you want (once you’ve added enough lines to get the whole triangle below your picture) …

      1
      1 1
      1 2 1
      1 3 3 1
      1 4 6 4 1
      1 5 10 10 5 1

      Edited at 2009-07-24 12:15 pm (UTC)

        1. Pete never ceases to amaze. The binomial theorem is pretty useful if you’re a gambler. I’m not.
  19. I found this quite enjoyable, although I still had half-a-dozen left after an hour. TUMBLING was excellent, but 23 (which I didn’t understand before coming here) gets my COD.

    I tackled the long ones first, so 2d was my first in. I spotted that 9 was something THEOREM, but it took me far too long to extract the first word from the anagram (especially for a maths graduate!).

    There were numerous mistakes in my reasoning that delayed me. I convinced myself that the worker in 13a was going to be a BEE around the outside, so I struggled with BEHIND—E for ages. I too had to go through DESERTERS & DEPARTERS for 25 before settling on the right answer.

  20. 29:25 – tricky but more enjoyable than yesterday’s rather dry puzzle.

    At 9 I spotted binomial quickly but had to do lots of scribbling and striking out to find theorem.

    Not happy with shower = hail and and marked single as suspect (not necessarily a hit) until seeing the comments on the triple def.

    Can any of our anipodean contributors shed some light on kitchen tea?

    Put me down as another simple soul who liked 3d more than 23a.

    1. Not that I’m any expert on prenuptial ceremonies, but I think the idea is to hold a party where you get lots of presents before you get actual wedding presents. Typically these would be useful things for the kitchen, like toasters, egg whisks and angle grinders.
    2. You can have a hail of other things than little icy balls – a hail of arrows in that film of Henry V comes to mind. I have also heard of a hail of invective….
  21. Like one of those films where you see something new every time you watch, is 23a also an &lit? Having missed the clever part when doing it and assuming a double def, it later dawned on me that the whole is a complete definition for what some people including me had erroneously picked up on as the second def – ie the well known method of hiding messages in the bible or a well known publication, which are then referenced “cryptically in code”, so you have def 1, clever wordplay 2, and &lit definition 3 as the whole.
    1. Quite aside from the debatable significance of the “hidden messages” in books, holy or otherwise, I don’t think they or the practice would be called “chapter and verse”, so I can’t see that the whole clue really defines the answer. The 1/2/3 combo you describe, is usually called a “semi-&lit”. For a true &lit, the whole clue must be both def and wordplay simultaneously.
  22. My first chance to solve a crossword in a few days, and I took a while, not helped out at all by inventing MOBILIAN THEOREM and thinking that the olympian was OATES. Eventually the error of my ways was seen but it wasn’t all in one sitting.
  23. 12.05 Should have been a minute or two quicker but stupidly wrote in BUFFET BAR which didn’t cause a problem until I came to solve 23 and realised something had to be wrong.Last pair were OWENS and DE NOVO , the latter a new term for me
  24. I was held up by putting in ‘burger bar’ for 13D! Not a good fit.

    ‘Ruck’ in 1A can mean wrinkle or draw together – I remember this from learning to use a sewing machine -‘Look, it’s all rucked up at the back.’ So, I suppose it could be T(ransport)+RUCK.

    In the study of discourse analysis, binomials are pairs of words such as ‘spic and span’, so when my cheating machine suggested it, I decided ‘eunomian’ must be the answer. Consequently, I didn’t get ‘debus’ or ‘single’ (which was clever).

    I didn’t mind, because TUM BLING was so excellent. I love this non-stuffy 21st century kind of clue. I doubt if my dad does, though.

  25. I didn’t understand it either, but thanks all the same, koro. I know of the theorem only via G&S’s The Pirates of Penzance where it is one of the subjects the “very modern” Major-General Stanley boasts of being well boned up on:

    “I’m very well acquainted too with matters mathematical,
    I understand equations, both the simple and quadratical,
    About binomial theorem I’m teeming with a lot ‘o news
    –
    With many cheerful facts about the square of the hypotenuse”.

    Incidentally, the Major-General also claims that he “can write a washing bill in Babylonic cuneiform,/And tell you every detail of Caractacus’s uniform”.

  26. Found this moderate in difficulty & finished in around 30mins. Thought there were too many clues where the wordplay was rather contrived, making it an unusually inelegant puzzle for The Times, but it was although almost entirely redeemed by the superb “tum bling”. bc
  27. I did this over my breakfast cornflakes, all except 21. It was not until nine hours later, as I was driving home that Owens popped into my head. It was a phantom lift and separate. It took me 9 hours to realise that a clue starting “Olympic athlete…” could actually refer to an Olympic athlete. Interesting to see that it took Peter one minute to reach the same conclusion. Loved Tum bling.
  28. As a mathematician I positively leapt on binomial theorem! I have yet to complete an entire Times puzzle – today I had everything except BEHINDHAND, which I’ve never ever heard. I just wanted to say a) a big thank you to everyone who contributes here, and b) the setter might have been thinking of Professor Moriarty; according to Holmes,

    “…the age of twenty-one he wrote A Treatise on the Binomial Theorem, which has had a European vogue. On the strength of it he won the mathematical chair at one of our smaller universities, and had, to all appearances, a most brilliant career before him.”

    1. Yes, I was like you; BINOMIAL THEOREM was first in for me. I never have much of a clue about the literary or historical references, but I like to think I know a bit about maths!

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