Times Crossword 24429

Author   sabine_tkPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic

Solving time: somewhere around 16 minutes, interrupted by a coughing fit, for I’ve been struck (as happens most Januarys) with one of those nagging coughy snivelly sniffy things that seem to drag on for weeks without ever really getting anywhere. This is my excuse. I needed one.

I actually did quite a lot of this puzzle quickly, and thought I would have an easy ride, before grinding to a total halt on the left hand side, especially 1Ac and 1D, which remained blank at least five minutes after I’d done the rest.

I’m now off to watch the end of the Test match, having recorded it this afternoon and succeeded in avoiding hearing what happened by means of a total news blackout. Anything could have happened today, and I wouldn’t know it. Happy New Year, everyone.

Across
1
   TRAP – the person cut short and rebuffed (reversed) is PARTY, and although I had figured I was looking for a word meaning mouth I was unable to get this until I had 1 down.
3
   ETHIOPIANS – (I hope saint)*.
9
   MA(CHE)TE – the revolutionary being the ever popular Che Guevara.
11
   TOR,ONTO – “winning endlessly” is ON TO(p).
13
   (b)UNION
14
   CHARTERHOUSE, a public school in Surrey. “right for piano” is an instruction to remove the P from CHAPTERHOUSE (part of a cathedral) and replace it with an R.
18
   FOR THE MOMENT, made up from THEM (those folk), O (old) and MEN (guys) inside FORT.
21
   A,WAIT – “In the auditorium” is a soundalike indicator for “weight”. I was toying with this for a while before putting it in, not being sure that “majority” worked as a definition. I think “weight” here is used in the sense of “preponderance”.
24
   STARTER – “scratched” in the clue meaning to withdraw from a contest, which a starter does not do. I avoided this clue for quite a while, half-expecting the answer to be a grafter or a shafter or some other wonderfully obscure thingumabob that would only be known to people who like to fiddle around in engines, which I do not.
25
   PUT DOWN – a double meaning.
26
   NOEL COWARD
27
   BEAD, another soundalike, here indicated by “recited” and referring to the Venerable Bede.
 
Down
1
   TAMAR,ACK – the American or black larch, which I did not know. The “flower” is the river Tamar and “‘orse” is an instruction to drop the “h” from HACK. This clue gave me a great deal of trouble. Missing the T at the top, I was unable at first to see anything at all that fitted except LIMERICK – and a lime is a tree after all – surely I could fashion a RICK and a definition from somewhere? Unsurprisingly, I could not. Then I made myself concentrate on the ‘orse, and saw that it surely must be ACK at the end, and, after what felt like some hours sifting mentally through flowers and rivers I eventually found one that fitted and hoped it was a word.
2
   A(r)CADIAN – Acadia is a former name for part of East Canada including Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. I didn’t know this either.
4
   T(WEE)T -“TT” is the middle of “battle”, and WEE=little.
6
   PERCUSSIONIST, rather a pleasing anagram (of “it’s supersonic”).
7
   A,EN(E)ID
8
   S(LOAN)E, short for “Sloane Ranger”, a wealthy young privileged person of the Lady Diana Spencer type.
10
   ELECTROSTATIC – “of or relating to electricity at rest”. The “still” in the clue had me fooled for a while into thinking this would begin with “Even”.
15
   ROTTEN ROW, a broad riding track to the south of Hyde Park.
16
   ME,GAP,ODE. A mound-bird. Yet another thing I did not know, but I stuck it in early on the grounds that it sounded familiar, and unless it turned out to be a Pokémon (and it does sound disturbingly like a Pokémon) it would almost certainly be right.
17
   S, TRAINED
19
   SAM,SON, the SAM being SCAM (fraud) without the C (“caught out”). I tormented myself for far too long with COUSIN, which looked so promising with the CON on the outside.
20
   GAR(b)AGE
23
   CAPE,R

35 comments on “Times Crossword 24429”

  1. Hello there, Sabine, and Vinyl as well. I didn’t have any real UK-centric trouble with this, though I admit to not being familiar with Charterhouse. The wordplay was pretty specific, however, once I realized I needed to start with chapterhouse. Overall, about 20 minutes, and I think we got a US-centric NW corner. The TAMARACK is the US or Western Hemisphere’s version of the larch, and very familiar. The problem I had with 1D was why (h)ack would be equivalent to (h)orse. And at 2D, most on this side of the occean are very familiar with the Acadians, who were French Canadians evicted from Nova Scotia (by the British!) after the Seven Years (or, the French and Indian) War in c. 1763. They were forcibly removed and resettled in the then-French territory of Louisiana, where they slurred their label of Acadians into the present day Cajuns. And that’s why there are so many French derived surnames down on the Bayou.
  2. Seems things are getting simpler: 17mins. All of this helped by a 13-, a 10-, and two 9-letter anagrams: so 41 squares quickly filled. I had most trouble at the bottom left: guessing SAMSON but not knowing enough OT to know he was a judge. And with Sabine: I wondered if it really could be AWAIT, hesitating to enter it.
    The osbcurity/commonplace thing comes into play again today with MEGAPODE. I only saw/knew it because I proof-read a PhD thesis on the Malleefowl (Leipoa ocellata)!
  3. A most unsatisfactory solve on my part, eventually giving up with Samson undone and too many educated guesses. I also had TAMARACK/TRAP trouble and wasn’t helped by not having much faith in ARCADIAN. Many thanks to Kevin for the historical perspective on the Acadians; an exposition I found far more interesting than the crossword itself. I shall never eat Cajun prawns with the same innocent abandon again; nor listen to zydeco in the same light.

    Didn’t know Sloanes could be sans rangers and couldn’t spell aeneid. But I did know megapode, Australia having its fair share of those that remain off the extinct list. Setter 1, Solver 0.

  4. Found this a good bit easier than the last 2 but still had to guess my way to the finish with TAMARACK, ARCADIAN and MEGAPODE requiring post-solve checks. Couldn’t figure CHARTERHOUSE before coming here (got vows of silence – piano – in a monastery stuck in my head) and was left wondering why the setter can only find ENCHILADAS in restaurants.
    1. Watch out for “that’s A for B” as a letter-swap indicator. The “restaurant” in 22’s clue must be there to make “chain” plausible in the surface meaning. A bit over-specific in the cryptic reading but I don’t think unfairly so.
      1. Just to show your efforts don’t go to waste, see 16 in Saturday’s which I got after recalling your advice on “for”.
  5. 8:58 – very rapid start but held up at the end by the two crossings I guess will be last for many – 1A / 1D and then 21 (mentally pencilled in but not confidently) / 19. Key steps: seeing ‘ACK in 1D, and writing “Biblical” next to “judge” in 19 after looking at REF and the imagined abbreviation J. Got MEGAPODE from the wordplay, but garbled my classical prefixes and imagined it must be some termite/millipede combo (i.e. a polypod).
  6. About 20mins, though almost-done at 10. I rate this crossword as about average difficulty and therefore easier than most recent ones. In fact it would have been easier than average, were it not for some tricky vocab. Not heard of tamarack or megapode before.
  7. A delightful puzzle…i got going quickly with Ethiopians and percussionist…but a heavy night last night meant my time was slow. I thought 1 down was going to be tamarisk which can be a tree but can wee that it is Tamarack. had a lot of trouble seeing Samson which is my COD. I thought make record must start with Cut until i saw the error of my wasys when Caper slotted in. also struggled to see Trap but finally went for it. easier than Thursday and much easier than Wednesday! Megapode! a new one but realtively easy to see from the word play!
  8. Koro’s first two sentences fit my experience exactly. In fact not being able to crack 19dn even with the aid of a solver makes this my first uncompleted puzzle in a very long time which seems unbelievable as I had completed all but 5 clues within 15 minutes and thought I was going for a really quick solve. I missed the “judge” reference completely.

    Others that gave trouble were MEGAPODE, STARTER (is this strictly part of an engine?) and TAMARACK.

    1. I don’t think that there’s any doubt – a starter is not part of an engine. It’s an ancillary device that is used to start an engine. Having rebuilt several engines in my time, this clue took me ages to solve because of its inaccuracy.
  9. A lot less trouble than most for a 25 minute lazy canter.

    I got TRAP straight away (it’s all to do with background) and knew there was a tree TAMAR… but couldn’t remember the ending so derived ‘ACK from ‘orse (same background). Got ARCADIAN from the definition (thanks to Kevin for the interesting history) and derived MEGAPODE from wordplay. Strictly also don’t think a STARTER is part of the engine – why not “part of car that hasn’t been scratched”?

    A decent enough standard daily crossword

    1. I’m delighted to see that my comment has received a measure of support from our resident scientist! Your clue is far better anyway, Jimbo, because cars do get scratched, engines don’t (or if they do it doesn’t matter because nobody sees it).
      1. I agree with you and Jimbo about STARTER at 24ac. I also had a slight (perhaps overly pedantic) quibble about the cryptic parsing of 25ac where PUT DOWN is fine for “make record of”, but, or so it seems to me, the “crushing snub” can only be a noun and therefore should be PUT-DOWN. But otherwise an enjoyable puzzle.
        1. Once said to self by a waiter in a blackboard-menu café: “Sorry, sir, the starter’s been scratched”!
  10. Liked the anagrams to get me going and similar to others megapode and tamarack new but got from wordplay. Last in 1a/1d and Samson; also ummed a bit over await. Still not up to my best thanks to a lot of coughing but happy with a half hour.
  11. 12:33 here. I also had TRAP straight away (first one in), and (oops) TAMARIND next, which held me up a little bit. OK with MEGAPODE, which I’ve come across before, but got stuck for a couple of minutes at the end with SAMSON. I had to step through the alphabet twice before I thought of S(c)AM + SON. I had no idea he was a judge. Biblical stuff is not my forte.
  12. Largely easy, but with tricky bits. ‘Tamarind’ is very familiar, but tamarack is completely unknown to me, so I’m glad my guess was correct. 16 was also unfamiliar, but the wordplay was rather more straightforward. I needed several letters in place before I saw 10 (rather a nice clue, I thought). Finally, I misread ‘mediate’ as ‘meditate’ in 5, so took far longer than I should have to get the answer in spite of the anagram fodder. Most puzzling of all was 19. For a while I thought ‘judge’ would be J, and briefly toyed with JANSEN.
  13. Similar to yesterday, a straightforward puzzle spoiled a few items of wilfully obscure vocabulary. Didn’t know the obvious (tamarack/megapode/acadia). Without the checking letters didn’t get trap and wasn’t sure between arcadian/orcadian both of which seemed to just about fit the definition of country dweller.
  14. Started badly by spelling Ethiopians “Etheopians” and finished badly by plumping for nematode at 16, a worm I’ve heard of that presumably makes worm “mounds”, completely ignoring the fact that NEMAT has sod all to do with writers and openings, although to my eternal credit I did put a question mark against it to remind me to check how the blogger saw it.

    25 minutes in between, with half an eyebrow raised at the restaurant, the rather vague weight/majority link and the “big” bit in percussionist which I guess is just about saved by the question mark. I don’t think Count Basie and his orchestra made a big noise on the triangle in yesterday’s Bonzos interlude.

    Tamarack and Acadian both new, and I learned today that hitherto I had no idea how to spell The Aeneid.

  15. 13:09 .. only really problem came from misspelling Aeneid, as I regularly did while studying it for Latin A’level – some words just get harder to spell and you end up flipping a mental coin. Well, I do. Perhaps it’s just me.

    We still have quite a few Acadians here in Nova Scotia and in neighbouring New Brunswick. Funnily enough, I got chatting to one yesterday – she was working in a coffee shop on the NB border where I stopped on the way home from a road trip. I ordered a coffee and she asked me if I was German, which I found strangely pleasing – but you can see why the British threw them out. For anyone wanting to immerse themselves in the Acadian story, try Longfellow’s Evangeline.

  16. I’d never come across TAMARACK or the Acadians, but they couldn’t reasonably be much else, I thought.

    While on holiday last month I read Terry Pratchett’s latest Discworld novel, in which the wizards of Unseen University enact the traditional Hunting of the Megapode, which was the first time I’d come across such a creature.

  17. 13:20. Had similar experiences to many of you. Didn’t know SAMSON was a judge , TAMARACK and Acadia were new to me. Wrote in AENIED at first. Aside from that the easyish anagrams were a big help and recalled CHARTERHOUSE from a recent puzzle. Took a while to convince myself of the weight=majority definition.
  18. Don’t know how closely it’s connected with the Canadian version, but the far NE of the US has Acadia National Park – the oldest one east of the Mississippi.
  19. Like many others, I had to get Tamarack and Megapode from the wordplay. Samson was not so difficult since the last time we had the Judge trick played on us was only November 24, last year, when the answer was Gideon (found using Peter’s excellent custom search).
  20. Had an experience similar to many others. I had a very good start and had more than half completed after 10 minutes. Then it all went wrong. Really struggled in the SW corner. Should really have got GARAGE much earlier than I did. I was looking at it the wrong way round trying to get rubbish from a side building with a B in it.

    SAMSON was the last in.

  21. I was interested in the comments about ‘starter’. I originally thought of making it part of a car but decided that wasn’t a specific enough definition, even though the surface meaning might have been more obvious. In that a starter atarts an engine and is part of the overall engine machinery, I think my definition can stand, though I’d liked to have found a better one! The setter
    1. Suggestion for the setters who comment: Rather than doing so anonymously, get together and set up a free LiveJournal account using a suitable name and a picture, with the password known to all of you.
    2. First, thanks for taking the trouble to comment – it’s much appreciated. Peter’s idea is surely worth exploring?

      As to “starter” if your garage tells you that a new engine is required they don’t mean or include the starter motor, which is an entirely separate entity like the battery which turns the starter motor over. The fact that it’s under the bonnet/hood does not make it part of the engine. The pragmatists will tell you that it doesn’t matter because they managed to solve the clue. Those of us with a more exact mind set and those with an engineering bent will perhaps crib a little.

      1. Well, if you think about the meanings of words, “motor” and “engine” are pretty hard to distinguish – both use power or energy to do work. So if the starter is a kind of motor, it’s also arguably an engine!
  22. Thank goodness for a crossword we could actually finish after the last three horrors. TRAP and TAMARACK were the major problems.Although easy enough I don’t think 20d is quite right. It should be “dumped from” perhaps.
    Happy New Year
    Mike and Fay
  23. Andrew K:
    yes! An all correct for a change. I was beginning to despair that I wasn’t going to finish a Times again. Doing AZED regularly is perhaps starting to pay dividends.

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