Times Crossword 24394

Author   sabine_tkPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic

Solving time: 12.32.

I found this a middling-difficulty puzzle, but on reflection I could have saved myself a few minutes right away by spotting the hidden word at 6D, which would have immediately given me 6A, which would in turn have sorted out all my problems in that corner. I also spent much too long engaged in a hopeless mental tour of Europe searching for centrally placed birds, as described below.
 

Across
1
   BOTTLE UP – “Don’t show” is the definition, BOTTLE=courage and UP=in court, as in “up before the magistrates..”
6
   MOBILE – which is a city in Alabama, pronounced, as best I can figure, Mo-BEEL.
9
   RESCUE – the ever helpful “regularly” indicating that alternate letters are required, here from “green sack used”.
10
   I,NA(C)TIVE – I is the symbol for electric current, C=Conservative, NATIVE=mother as in mother country, mother tongue.
11
   HEAL, sounding like “heel” – at least I assume so – I didn’t think of a heel as being a tip particularly, the toes being the tip of the feet and the heel being a bend along the way, but Chambers gives it as “the top, bottom or end of a loaf or a cheese”, so that’s OK. (Two minutes after posting I finally realised that “heel” here is the verb meaning to tilt, not a noun. Sorry.)
12
   GO ON RECORD – GO ON = last, RECORD=best ever.
16
   TIME – “bird” in the sense of a prison sentence, which I didn’t see till the end, being initially hopeful, with the T in place, that TERN would turn out to be the middle 4 letters of a European nationality. Even when I had the M to work with as well, I was still mentally pursuing this dead-end line of thinking. In fact, the clue is just a double definition – Central European Time (CET) being the time zone that includes most of Europe.
18
   DALI, being ILIAD (famous poem) reversed (about) and heartless.
19
   NOTICING – (incognit)*.
21
   BIR(K)ENHEAD, an anagram of “Hebridean” containing a K (king).
22
   YOG,A – A GOY reversed (a goy being a Jewish term for a non-Jew, or Gentile).
24
   SQUARE, ST. “Extremely conservative” is the definition, SQUARE=fair (fair and square) and the way is a ST (street).
26
   OOMP(A)H
27
   HE(PT)AD – I was a bit slow with this one, going all round the houses first trying to justify SEPTET and then SEPTAD, which felt like it should have been a word (but isn’t).
28
   REST CURE – CURE=smoke in the sense of “to preserve”.
 
Down
2
   O,BESE – O-OLD, and BESE=bees with one of the E’s lowered. The second time in this puzzle that “Extremely” just meant “very”, rather than “take the first and last letters of”, which was my first thought in both cases.
4
   EM,ER,GENT – “Me” reversed, ‘er = “her” with the H dropped – “cockney” is almost invariably an instruction to drop an H – and GENT=fella.
5
   POISON-PEN LETTER – an anagram of “rotten people sin”. This took me a while because, without going so far as to write it in, I was thinking of 1 ac as “bottle it”, giving me a misleading T at the start.
6
   MEAGRE, hidden in incoME AGREed.
8
   LIVERY, MAN
15
   ODALISQUE – (quailed so)*. An odalisque is a female slave in a harem.
17
   STUD,I(OU)S = “boss” can mean a knob or stud. I was briefly puzzled as to how to parse this, thinking “round=O and University=U”, but of course OU is the Open University, and “round” is what it appears as part of “going round” – simply a containment indicator.
20
   INTEND – “in the end” (finally) with “he” removed.
23
   GLAIR – the clear part of an egg used as a varnish or adhesive. I had never heard of this but the wordplay was fortunately unambiguous.
25
   (w)ANT – “top” here in the sense of “remove the top of”.

30 comments on “Times Crossword 24394”

  1. Hello Sabine, today is the evening of the US Thanksgiving Day, explaining why I missed commmenting on yesterday’s. About 45 minutes for me here, last entry being GLAIR, as a guess about how to spell it (glayr?, glahr?, etc.). Inexplicably, I had great trouble in the NE in getting MOBILE, stuck as I was on the US city being LA, at the end, despite, obviously, being an American, who should have seen the reference right off. Perhaps I ate too much. COD: BIRKENHEAD, despite the fact that I don’t know where it is, recognizing it only from name of the well known Lord Birkenhead (a Canadian, wasn’t he?). Happy Thanksgiving to everyone.
  2. Not much of a port these days; on the opposite bank of the Mersey to Liverpool; known mostly for its shipyards and Lily Savage. The first Earl of Birkenhead was born there. He, as were all subsequent Earls of Birkenhead, was called Fred Smith. As Lily would say: common as muck the lot of them!
  3. Well, Sabine, I’m glad it was your Friday as I took 7 minutes to find my first answer (NOTICING at 19ac) by which time on my blogging day I would have been at full panic stations. After that things improved and I worked steadily but VERY slowly through most of the rest of it. At 60 minutes I had all but five in the SW solved so I decided to use a solver to sort out the anagram at 15dn. Once ODALISQUE was in place the remaining answers came quite easily.
    1. Having now read several comments beneath my original I’m surprised that so many seem to have found this quite easy. For me it was the hardest of the week by far.
  4. OK solve but full of doubt I entered SEPTET at 27ac very early, forgot my doubts, and thus could only put INTEND at 20dn without explanation. I know, should have put at question mark. Never mind as much pleasure derived from LIVERYMAN and the terrific TICKLED PINK. Easy compared to yesterday’s travails, upgrading my Vista machine to Windows 7 in the hope it might solve my scanner problem. After installing, my printer stopped working at all. 90 minutes to get it working again (alas, still no scanner), determined as I was to avoid doing this online.
  5. 8:06 – my usual mixture of quick spots for some and daft delays for others – not helped by writing MEAGER for 6D and wondering what 2,2,6 phrases might end with ENCORE or ESCORT. Also fell into the trap of thinking that “nasty piece of work” had to be a person until the checkers gave the answer away. And at 11 and 27 I shared Sabine’s wrong thoughts.

    Not quite one across rock, but from 12A, today’s disc must be something like The Ying Tong Song!

  6. I made steady progress with this, an enjoyable 25 minute solve. I thought it was a very fair puzzle that rewarded good analysis. My last in was DALI where I couldn’t get “Tati” out of my head and kept thinking “heartless artist” was “at” and failing to parse the clue. Got there in the end, guessing GLAIR and thinking ANT was rather well clued.
  7. At 45 mins, this was my fastest all week and could have been a lot faster but for ANT (which gets my COD), INTEND & HEPTAD. Loud groans when I saw how the first two of these worked (having invented NALEPH and then ANLEPH as the last letter of the Hebrew alphabet). Some extremely witty and smooth clues in this one. I enjoyed it immensely. Well done, that setter.
  8. Easier one today, just a one-cup.. how delightful to see a mention of my old home Birkenhead. Indeed it is less of a port these days but it is one still, and used to be immense as recently as the 1970s
  9. The pattern for the week seems to be a flying start and a hobbling finish. At least I managed to retain my clean sheet for the week Good to see the setters’ two favourite workers in one puzzle, bees and ants and, unusually today, the ant is a colonist. If my memory is correct, this is the third appearance of the city of Mobile in recent weeks, not necessarily all in the daily puzzle.

    I finished with Dali and Glair. It had to be glair on the first run through but, like Kevin I did consider alternatives such as glahr and glayr before going for it.

  10. I did it in 30 mins exactly but got Dali wrong. Went for Tati as I couldn’t find the right answer.

    I liked meagre, a clever hidden word clue, neatly indicated by cuts and well disguised.

    I’d not heard of Odalisque but managed to derive it from the wordplay.

    I can’t recall coming across a take away clue from three words before – 20 down, in t(he) end. Are these common?

    1. I wouldn’t say common simply because it’s harder to organise. The more letters that are being removed and the greater the number of words involved the more difficult and thus the rarer the device. But you’ll certainly meet it again.
  11. In common with others, for me this felt more involved than it actually was, and I finished just past the twenty minute mark.

    I did worse than Jack and had to get to BIRKENHEAD on first scan before writing an answer!

    Liked DALI – economic and elegant. And my last in.

  12. Thanks, Sabine … I did not fully understand 16A until I came here.

    Looks like my time (whenever I care to notice) for solving is always about three times how long it takes Peter B.

  13. I liked this one a lot because I managed to solve most of it in good time without aids. 25 solved within twenty minutes and then had to look up REST CURE, GLAIR, DALI and ODALISQUE. I knew the latter was an anagram but didn’t know the word. First in BAT, last in DALI. Of many nice clues I liked ANT, MOBILE and OOMPAH, but COD to the tickling TICKLED PINK. Thank you setter!
  14. Are you sure there isn’t an artist called FATI? Famous poem = IF, plus heartless a(bou)t. Easy when you know how….
    1. Well, Google finds a couple of people if you search for “fati artist”, but neither is famous enough to have a wikipedia entry (over 400 sculptors and a couple of thousand painters do – and these include hundreds I’d never expect to see in a Times crossword).

      More conclusively (especially if one of these Fatis is known to you) FATI would really be “Famous poem about about heartless artist” – you need one “about” for the reversal of “If”, and one to indicate containment. The Times editor doesn’t quite ban “double duty” of the kind that “about” in the actual clue would have to do, but it’s extremely rare.

  15. 15:17 here, including a couple of minutes at the end trying to figure out why 18A should be DALI. Also struggled a bit with HEPTAD and INTEND (my COD). I remembered GLAIR from a barred-grid puzzle somewhere fairly recently, and ODALISQUE from this month’s CAMRA magazine quiz.
  16. About 23 minutes, but carelessly went for SEPTAD at 27a without bothering to justify it, possibly distracted by having been to watch Anton Kuerti playing Mozart earlier in the evening. Now there’s a pianist (Kuerti, not Mozart, though I gather he was pretty good, too).

    COD 20d INTEND, but I was happy to see a mention for the one-eyed city at 21a

  17. 8.32 Fortunately I was in the Sabine , rather than Sotira, camp in that I first considered SEPTAD but , being aware of Hepta- as a prefix I didn’t jump in. Also lucky that GLAIR offered no alternative so no soul-searching over this unknown word. I wanted 21 to be a Hebridean port so had a little dealy on this one.
    Apart from that it was smooth sailing. 19 and 21 were original clues to me
    1. You surprised me and taught me something – I thought from its appearance that GLAIR had to be a Scots word, but no – it’s from your pals in the Auld alliance.
      1. Peter , you may have been thinking of GLAUR (pronounced GLORR) which is a good old Scots word , still in use, for mud?
        1. I don’t recall it now, but maybe – or gair, glaik, glaum or gley, all Scots according to Chambers and possibly seen in a barred-grid puzzle.
  18. 21 min, so the easiest of the week for me, and the only one not requiring an assist. Originally fell for the septet/intent possibility, but recovered. Didn’t understand ANT until coming here – nice one. COD: TICKLED PINK. One of those clues which could so easily mislead. Thank you setter for a pleasant end to the week.
  19. Perhaps if I had skipped the pre-prandial cocktail I would have done better, but still. I actually had Birkenhead, but gave it up because it’s not in the Hebrides–didn’t think to treat ‘Hebridean’ as an anagram.Couldn’t shake ‘septet’, especially as the first T supported ‘ant’–although I couldn’t figure out why ‘ant’. And there were others.
    I don’t know what the locals say, but I’ve only heard MO-beel.
    And can someone explain ‘tickled pink’ to someone who doesn’t know a thing about snooker? Ironically, it was one of the first I got. Well, I suppose I can’t say I got it, since I didn’t; the first I wrote in.
    1. “Tickle” is to touch lightly and “pink” is just one of the coloured balls used in snooker. It’s not really a snooker expression but if a player makes a fine shot so that one of the balls touches the pink lightly one might say it has tickled the pink.
  20. One wrong – SEPTAD instead of HEPTAD at 27a – and two crossers failed at 28a REST-CURE and 23d GLAIR. I just could not get Rest-Cure from “Easy assignment” – I thought it was time off? Glair was unknown – maybe I’ll try it out if I can find a recipe?

    There are 4 “easies” omitted. One especially has been alluded to above but here they are together:

    14a Not welcoming game when snow may fall? (4,4)
    COLD SNAP. It is terrible playing cards with unfriendly people!

    3d Delighted snooker player’s made fine shot? (7,4)
    TICKLED PINK. I have played a fair bit of snooker over the years – very badly I might add – but I would say that “Tickled” IS a snooker term for a very fine contact.

    7d Pick up bill in club (3)
    BAT. TAB is bill – reverse it to get BAT=CLUB.

    13d Violent onset of cyclone disrupted a city’s calm (11)
    CATACLYSMIC. C = onset of cyclone followed by anagram of (A CITYS CALM). Excellent clue.

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