Times Crossword 24441

Author   sabine_tkPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic

I didn’t time this one because I was solving it while watching a tennis match, but I was left with the impression it was distinctly tricky, confirmed by the difficulty in finding answers that could easily be left out. There were no simple anagrams or easy long multi-word answers to open the grid up, a lot of crafty disguise, and several examples of wordplay that defeated me at the time and had to be worked out later. Last to go in were the pairs at 1A/4D and 28A/24D.
 

Across
1
   ST,ITCH – a saint may be a martyr, and a stitch in time saves nine – the latter being so obvious once you see it, but I spent a long perplexed time pondering statues of martyrs, and mistreating “in time” to be various kinds of wordplay, mostly involving the letter T.
5
   C,OF,FINE,D – C=large number (100), OF=of, FINE=high quality and D=diamonds. The surface reading of the wordplay is very smooth, and I particularly liked “boxed for dispatch”.
9
   FREE DROP, a ruling enabling a golfer to drop the ball elsewhere without a penalty, and for the sweet shop customer a pear drop or acid drop on the house.
10
   GO BUST – GO=stab (have a stab at something), and “firm” must be separated from “chest” to become part of the definition.
11
   PICK, POCKET – “tea leaf” being rhyming slang for a thief.
13
   ICED – DEC 1 is the beginning of winter, and when turned (reversed) neatly forms ICED.
14
   STYE, alternate letters of SaT bY sEt. Got this from the definition and figured out the wordplay later; as ever, cheers to the setter for avoiding “regularly”.
15
   DE MON,T(F)ORT – DEMON=enthusiast, TORT=wrong and F=following. The reference is to Simon de Montfort.
18
   S(PEA, KILL)OF – the vegetable is a PEA, KILL=end, and the sofa is actually SOFA (though leaving out the “a” as instructed).
20
   COPT – sounds like “copped”. A Copt is a Christian descendant of the ancient Egyptians, which I just about knew though wasn’t immediately certain whether to spell it with a C or a K.
21
   BO(Z)O – I spent ages here toying with various combinations of A, B and O with an X, Y or Z inside, and particularly liked AZBO (a clot too stupid even to know how to spell his own court order)….
23
   GIANT PANDA – an anagram of “adapting” plus AN (African, heartless)
25
   GI,GO(L)O – GI is a US soldier, and therefore “serving American”, while the syrup is GOO.
26
   AC,I,D RAIN – The ACI is I (one) and CA (circa, roughly) all bent back (reversed) before DRAIN (exhaust).
28
   HELL,BE(N)T – “set at any cost” is the definition, and the wordplay is N (new) inside “he’ll bet” – what the punter will do. I was convinced the clue was trying to direct me towards gambling and so became tragically fixated on boats.
29
   KINDER – I needed all the crossing letters to get this, and even when writing it in I vaguely assumed it was some kind of very young Scout, maybe German. But it turns out Kinder Scout is a mountain in the Peak District.
 
Down
2
   T(URN)IP TOP – “cracking” here is in the sense of “very good indeed”, and therefore tip top. I wrote this in (still lacking the T at the start) because it was the only vegetable I could think of that fitted, and happily it turned out well – a turnip top is the green sprout of a turnip in its second year, used as a vegetable.
3
   TRE(KK,I)E – a fan of Star Trek. This was my first answer, solved immediately from “sci-fi fan”.
4
   H,ER – the definition is “girl’s”, H=horse, and “rears” is an instruction to take the last letters of “dressage floor”.
5
   CAPE,K – luckily I knew that Karel Capek first gave us the word “robot” in his play R.U.R. (Rossum’s Universal Robots), though as with “Copt” I was a bit shaky on the use of C’s or K’s in his name. Cape Wrath is the most northwesterly point on the island of Great Britain, and also a TV series.
8
   ENSUE, hidden and reversed (turns and shrinks) inside “givE US NEurotic”
12
   OLD KING COLE, who was a merry old soul, here made up from (liked long)* around CO (county).
16
   M(a)IL, a millimetre.
17
   RAP,I,D (F)IRE – one of many clues where I had to figure out the wordplay afterwards. It’s RAP=blame, I=one, DIRE-dreadful, all around F (loudly).
19
   AXOLOTL (tall ox + o)*. A Mexican salamander.
20
   CHA,GRI,N – short talk is CHA(t), GRI must be King George I, the first of the Hanoverian monarchs, but I’m not sure how that works, because GR isn’t an abbreviation for George, and GRI (George, King and Emperor) surely applies only to Georges V and VI? (Afterthought: I think I just worked it out – it’s a combination of my two theories, GR=George, King, plus I because he was George I.)
22
   O,LIVE
24
   A,BAFT – the “award for playing part, almost” is BAFT(a) – the awards given by the British Academy of Film and Television Arts
27
   sILKs (Correction – this should be bILKs or mILKs as suggested in the comments below – it’s got rather late here so I’ll leave it to others to decide which is better…)

52 comments on “Times Crossword 24441”

    1. I thought (m)ILK(s). That was my second thought. I originally had (s)KIN(s), which didn’t help my solve.
  2. A tip-tip crossword, indeed. Completed in just under the hour, with a goodly 10 minutes trying to get the COFFINED/CAPEK crossing. The unknown CAPEK was my last in; I thought a wrath must be some kind of ecclesiastical garment. (Note to self: make list of all capes, ecclesiastical or otherwise, paying particular attention to those in Great Britain.) Unfortunately or not, the TV series hasn’t made it to Oz, as far as I’m aware. Thanks also for your explanation of KINDER & CHAGRIN. I particularly liked COFFINED and one of my favourite historical figures Simon DE MONTFORT amongst a host of very cunning clues, but COD to TURNIP TOP. Thanks to the setter.
  3. 28:27 .. so definitely on the tricky side. Last in ABAFT, but held up for ages with the BOZO/OLIVE/HELL BENT area.
  4. Well, we’ve been waiting for a tough and tricky one, and I’d say this qualifies. About an hour, also ending on the ABAFT/HELL BENT crossing pair. Nicely blogged Sabine, considering how devious a lot of this was. My surroundings for ILK was ‘silks’, also. The only wordplay I hadn’t unravelled before lighting here were CHAGRIN, KINDER, and ABAFT. Thanks for those. I wasn’t aware of the BAFT awards, nor of Kinder Scout, but I was aware that George I was the original Hanoverian; I just didn’t see it. Very nice puzzle altogether. My COD to COFFINED, but many others could be in the running. Regards.
  5. Oh well, here’s the harder one we’ve been expecting — and hopefully hard enough for Jimbo too! All my problems were in the SE corner for some reason. Would have been helped if I’d seen the “adapting” anagram. (Isn’t it a mark of great setting when a regular anagind gets to be part of the fodder?) Absolutely no complaints here — not even about DEC 1st being the start of winter!
    Time: 1hr and 15m. Darn.
    Brief note to Sabine: ??R?I? will generate GARLIC and, you guessed it, that’s where I was leaning!
  6. 27 mins, which flew by I enjoyed this one so much. 5A COFFINED held me up most, and I’ll make it my COD from a very strong field. I too thought it was (m)ILK(s) in 27A. Thank you, setter.

    Tom B.

  7. Probably 90 mins but half watching the TV. The few clues at the bottom held me up for a long time HELL-BENT, ABAFT, ILK, KINDER and I felt very pleased to manage to finish. Also trouble with CAPEK. I knew he was Czeck or Hungarian or something but couldn’t remember his name but CAPEK didn’t seem eastern european enough for ages.
  8. I think I owe Sabine an apology. When I posted earlier I had literally only a couple of minutes, and it would have been more courteous to use that time to congratulate her on an excellent blog rather than to nit-pick one clue.

    I enjoyed this very much – having realised early on that it was going to be tricky I tried to read the clues accordingly and made steady progress.

    There was a lot of satisfaction in getting all the answers and understanding all the wordplay unaided but for the KINDER SCOUT reference which I had to look up.

    Lots of good clues but I especially liked PICKPOCKET, ICED, TURNIP TOP and HER.

    Thanks to the setter.

    1. No need to apologise – I’d much prefer to make any corrections to the blog before I go to bed – which means in practice during the couple of hours after it’s posted – so it’s all tip top (and cracking) when the British hordes arrive next morning. You’re providing an invaluable service.
  9. An excellent blog, Sabine, and once again I’m glad it was not my turn this Friday.

    I started well enough if a little slowly but ground to a halt with at least one answer in each quarter missing and realised that I was never going to complete them without resorting to aids.

    Amongst those I didn’t know were CAPEK, COPT and AXOLOTL. I solved KINDER but had no idea of the explanation until I looked it up.

    I had always understood that Asimov invented the term “robot” but apparently that was “robotics” which I wouldn’t have thought needed much invention after somebody else had coined the original word.

    By what measure is 1st December the start of winter?

    1. In the online OED, the first citations for robotic and robotics are from Asimov in 1941. But he’d already come up with “roboticist” in 1940. Capek coined “robot” in its modern meaning but it’s really just a Slavonic languages word for “work” and related concepts – Russian work is работа for example.
        1. I did write that, but in response to a comment where you suggested that setters use the meanings of “tent” in the OED to provide some alternatives to ‘wine’ in clues. There’s surely a difference between using the OED to decide what’s allowed in crosswords, and using it as a source for confirming information about the origins of words – information not required for solving the clue.
  10. Just glad to say that I did complete this with 3 or 4 assists in 34 min. An absolute blinder. I am not sure my superannuated brain could cope with too many like this.
  11. 13:04 for this one, with 1, 18 and 27 written in without full wordplay understanding (I too guessed at ‘silks’ as some kind of outer coverings). 5A took a lot of working out even with Capek in place, but 27 and 29 were the last two. Congratulations to all overseas solvers who got through the BAFTA, Cape Wrath and Kinder Scout combination.

    Continuing the “young scout” line, here’s a bit of the kindergarten.

    Edited at 2010-01-22 09:34 am (UTC)

    1. So it is – too sunny for me to recognise. I’ve only been up there in the rain & mist.
  13. Great crossword and just what the doctor ordered. 40 minutes to solve and then to work out the wordplays from the clues solved by checkers + definition, such as RAPID FIRE and to verify AXOLOTL in the dictionary.

    I drooled over some of this, “switching on and off” for example and “boxed for dispatch”. The only thing I have a small reservation over is Hanover=King George the First (GRI). Hanover is the place so he was either “first from Hanover” or a Hanoverian.

    You can’t pick a best clue out of this lot. Its a collection of, to borrow a phrase, high quality diamonds

  14. Tough indeed. Too tough.
    Apart from GIANT PANDA I had nothing in SE corner when I decided life was too short. Of the rest I couldn’t figure out HER, guessed the alternate spelling for STYE (COD) and used a machine to get the anagram to AXOLOTL (difficult if you don’t know the word).
    A grudging well-done to the setter, a less grudging one to Sabine and to all the others who did this while watching TV. Give me another 10 years or so…
    1. My daughter’s primary school class had an axolotl as the class pet and we got to look after it one holiday. It rejoiced in the name of Stir-fry.
  15. 19:02 here, but I found it was one of those puzzles where you couldn’t just stick something in and figure out the wordplay later, so I had to squirrel away at it before putting in the correct answer. 5A is a case in point – my first thought was CARTONED, then I got the F and thought of COFFERED, before seeing the wordplay and the clever definition. Another was 21 – with three blood groups and an unknown my first thought was BOYO. Was this another meaning of the Welsh term of address? I even wrote it in before BOZO came to me while I was looking at another clue. As a diehard SF fan, TREKKIE and CAPEK were my first two in, although I had to go back at the end to get STITCH and TURNIP TOP.
  16. Just what was asked for! And it gave me over half an hour of serious interest with a lot of reading before much writing. Did not get bozo till now – thanks to sabine for great blog. I am of the “bilks” persuasion.
  17. Definitely a stinker for me. Never heard of CAPEK and it wouldnt have rung any bells had anyone told me it, so I cannot have been the only one to leave DALEK there for ages and wonder how DALE=WRATH! DALEK led to FREE BALL (which to be fair is equally plausible with BALLS and DROPS both forms of sweets). I found the difficulty entirely confined to the top third of the grid, however it was enough to hold me up for an age, and I gave up without 5A and with the other two clearly wrong. Disaster all round.
    1. I forgot to mention earlier that FREE DROP isn’t in Collins, COED or SOED. Only Chambers, of the usual sources, has it.
  18. After 90 minutes I admitted defeat. Surprising really since I had only half a dozen clues left and several crossing letters. Key clues I failed on included 5a COFFINED which I thought was excellent – thwarted by putting in ON BRIEF in 7d (after all ON = wearing); and 26a ACID RAIN another very good clue, which I needed to even get a sniff of the tricky ABAFT, CHAGRIN and KINDER. The wordplay for TURNIP TOP and RAPIDFIRE perplexed me. A challenging and enjoyable puzzle.
    1. ON =?= wearing: “with briefs on” = “wearing briefs”, but in the Times xwd at least, that’s not enough. Here, “in briefs” = “wearing pants”. I can’t imagine any situation where “on briefs” would mean the same thing. There’s also the point that “in brief” is a fairly routine expression you can confirm in the dictionary under “brief” – “on brief” is not.
  19. I really enjoyed this. Just over 35 minutes with a steady pace throughout.

    I was trying to get ICE (diamonds) into 5a for some time. I had IN SHORT in 7d for a little while before crossing words forced a change.

    Very good clues throughout. I particularly liked the cryptic definition ‘boxed for dispatch’.

    Last in was ABAFT.

  20. This was quite a tour de force. I particularly liked the effort the setter took to clue familiar letters with a new twist, such as “Martyr, perhaps” for ST or “serving American” for GI. I made steady progress through this and, for once, not having problems with the GK I found it not too difficult. I finished with chagrin which I have had difficulty with before. I don’t think it means embarrassment in French, it seems to be one of those words that has shifted its meaning on its way across the channel.

    No problems with Kinder. We had a family tradition of climbing Kinder Scout every Good Friday when my children were younger. I think I hold the record for the greatest distance travelled up it while pushing a pushchair. Watch out for the hooligan sheep at the top. They snatch the sandwich out of your hand as you go to eat it.

  21. Enjoyed this. About 25 minutes to complete but made a wrong choice of anagram at 19. Having no idea ,I guessed that the likely ending was OLL so I plumped for AXOTOLL over ATOXOLL – so that was a minute of my life wasted contemplating which one was correct – no wonder I wasn’t convinced by either!
    Aside from that COFFINED was my favoutite and last in. Also took a while to get 25 and 27. Also liked 29 although KINDER Scout was familiar as I have walked up it. It is mentioned in the Ewan McColl (Kirsty’s dad) song “Manchester Rambler”.
  22. Excellent crossword. I also had IN SHORT for 7dn, which it could arguably be since US pants are British trousers. But this is a UK-based crossword, so you Americans will just have to cope.

    I was bewildered by 8dn: how does ‘shrinks’ indicate that something has to be found inside?

    1. Hello Wil. It just means “give us neutotic” first turns (reverses) and then shrinks (loses front and back).
      1. Very good Sotira. And when clothes shrink in the wash they just get smaller, while retaining their constituent parts; they don’t lose their outsides. I can’t think of any other similar uses of ‘shrink’. So sorry, Dorsetjimbo, we disagree.
  24. Andrew Kitching

    Didn’t finish it, but delighted to get Axolotl and Coffined!

    I’d like to hera you ‘Galacticos’ of the Times crossword say when an ‘easy’ puzzle is ‘well constructed’ rather than ‘run of the mill’ or a ‘gentle stroll’ i.e. please garde the next easy one as ‘easy, good’ easy, dull’ etc.

    I love this site, but I fear it is goading the setters to make it more difficult for us novices. What I mean is, if there are (I dunno), 15-20 setters in the ‘Times’ group of setters, and you are up once every 15-20 days, and your puzzle gets labelled very easy, and a bit dull, it will spur you on to make the next one fiendish, I would ahve thought. So could you bear this in mind? By all means give a difficulty grading, but don’t forget the quality garding too.

    All the best.

    1. I’m reluctant to ask bloggers to always state the quality of the puzzle – a fair assessment mens extra time when writing up a good report takes time already. The presumption from me is that if people want to spend time writing reports, they must believe that the overall quality of the puzzles is good.

      I’m confident from comments by both the xwd editor and setters that they do not regard the people who write reports and comments here as typical solvers. I don’t think the xwd ed reads the report on every puzzle, and I don’t think all the setters look at reports on theirs.

  26. A cracker of a puzzle and a real challenge. Lost track of time, and had to resort to aids. Was simply pleased to complete with no errors. Some wonderfully ingenious and deceptive wordplay – e.g. SPEAK ILL OF, ACID RAIN and RAPID FIRE. “Boxed for dispatch” was brilliant as def of COFFINED, and “switching on and off”, at 14 ac, a most original and clever variant on the standard devices used to indicate that letters are to be omitted.
  27. Many moons ago 7dPenguin & I were watching Bullseye on the old black and white telly in our student house.

    “For £30, on spelling” says Jim Bowen, “spell axolotl”.

    Needless to say they didn’t win the speedboat.

    Anyway, brilliant, brilliant puzzle, no proper time but 25-30 minutes I’d say, pick of the clues just turnip tops ahead of a strong field.

    1. Amazing! Axolotl went straight in for me too, but I couldn’t think why I knew it. I knew it wasn’t one of those “words I’ve seen before in a crossword” but the reason just wouldn’t come to me. If ever I get famous you can write my memoirs.
      Excellent puzzle but I didn’t get CAPEK or ABAFT
  28. Excellent, i can only echo what’s already been said. Happy just to finish, but needed the benefit of a sleep before HELL BENT dawned on me. Three cheers for the setter and sabine for her explanations.
  29. This was a very good puzzle, extremely hard, COD GIANT PANDA also esp liked COPT, HELL-BENT, FIGHTING FIT and many others.
  30. Somewhere in the dim past I came across the following, and have never forgotten about the axolotl since:

    The axolotl
    Looks a litl
    Like the ozolotl
    It’l

    Drink a greatl
    More that whatl
    Fill the fatl
    Whisky botl

    The food it eatsl
    Be no morsl
    Only meatsl
    Drive its dorsl

    Such an awfl
    Fish to ketl
    You said a mawfl
    Pop’epetl!

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