Times Crossword 24453

Author   sabine_tkPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic

Solving time: 11.53

This was one of those maddening puzzles where I solved all but one clue (3 ac, in this case) quickly and was left gazing at that one blankly for what seemed like a very long time, only to find out it wasn’t so very hard after all. It only takes a single blind spot to ruin a good time. Overall I’d rate this as easy-to-medium, with a few anagrams and useful definitions to get going with, and no wildly obscure vocabulary.
 

Across
1
   SEMI – “Times” reversed, losing the T (last part of report).
3
   FLY-POSTING – FLY=smart, POS=officers (Petty or Pilot Officers), TIN=can and G=”lead to grudge”. This caused me no end of misery even after I had the wordplay method figured, because I couldn’t make the leap from smart to fly, and was sorely tempted for a while by ILL-POSTING (you might smart a bit if you were ill, and a misjudged promotion would surely result in a bad posting…)
4
   CH,R(IS)OM – a baptismal cloth or robe. The first church is CH, the Catholic one (mostly) is ROM(e).
11
   SLAP,PER – slap here in the sense of make-up, and the ever useful PER=for every.
14
   ACUTE – like grave, a French accent, and the two words share a similar meaning, particularly, I think, in the sense of being gravely, or acutely ill.
15
   IMPACT,S ON – The instance of naughtiness is an IMP ACT.
17
   CAT,CH(I)EST
19
   BADE,R – a reference to Douglas Bader, WW2 fighter ace with two prosthetic legs, played in the film “Reach for the Sky” by Kenneth More.
21
   WELL ORGANISED – an anagram of (Lies on ward) + leg. This all seems to follow on rather neatly from Bader in the previous clue; I wonder if the setter intended at one point to link them? You could poach the S from “Lie” to pluralise the leg – or maybe work a double amputation into the wordplay…
24
   C,HE,MIST
26
   MAD,A,GAS CAN – With the leading M in place I got the rest more or less straight away from “petrol”, though was initially expecting some kind of containment device in the word play, not an actual gas can.
27
   ZEST – a fairly straightforward double meaning.
 
Down
1
   SYCOPHANCY – – an anagram of “an”, “Psycho” and “CY” (extremely creepy).
2
   MAR,CEAU – definitions don’t come any more helpful than this. The wordplay is RAM reversed (brought up memory) and CEAU sounds like SO (“Thus”, for a listener).
5
   POS(i)ES
6
   SH(AD)OW CABINET – wrote this one in without immediately seeing the wordplay, which is AD(bill) inside SHOW CABINET – the speaker in the clue being the kind attached to musical equipment.
7
   I,M,PRESS
8
   GARD, hidden in CrossinG ARDennes. Gard is a département in Southern France.
10
   S(PINE C)HILLING – PINE=wooden, C=coffin lid, and Bob is what we used to call a shilling. My first thought here was SPINE-TINGLING, with the bob being just plain S, but I managed to remember to stop and check the wordplay before writing it in.
13
   INGREDIENT – (eg dinner it)*.
16
   P(A TAG ON)I, A – I put this in from the definition. “Holy area” has to be split into PI=holy and A=area.
18
   TOW-H(E)AD – I saw the HEAD bit first and wondered if this could possibly be AIR-HEAD – a bit harsh to have that and a slapper in one grid. But no amount of ingenuity could make Yank=air, although I didn’t get the right answer till I had the W from 21a.
20
   DISEASE – with “resort” being an anagram indicator (re-sort).
22
   O(ATE)S, OS=outsize, ATE=worried, and our explorer is of course Captain Lawrence Oates.
23
   S(C)UM, the dirty film being of the foamy frothy kind. There is actually a film called “Scum” but it seems to be brutal rather than dirty.

49 comments on “Times Crossword 24453”

  1. My solving time about the same. I loved the smooth &lit of CHEMIST, and the misleading ‘dirty film’ for SCUM. However, the homophone in 2d seems a bit dodgy.
    1. It is a bit dodgy, but perhaps we can allow the setter to get away with a crummy French accent, especially in view of the linguistic (in)competence of the average Brit, though I’m sure no solvers here fall into that category.
  2. What has happened to live journal and the London cityscape???

    23 min, but realised later that I had one wrong. Had bunged in ILL FEELING at 3 ac, which was changed during the solve to ILL POSTING. Annoyed with myself when the FLY popped up on a later review. Not too shabby a puzzle even if mostly easyish. COD has to be (damn) FLY POSTING. I will leave the discontent on religious frippery to the Dorset area.

    1. London cityscape: I’m not sure what you’re seeing. I restored the London skyline about 10 days ago and since then I haven’t noticed any problem with it.
  3. I look forward to the day when I can spend a very long time on one clue and still finish in under 12 minutes.

    Like two-thirds of the contributors so far, I also considered ILL-POSTING for 3ac, and liked it so much that I stuck with it. I reckoned it must be a new bit of street slang (a play on bill-posting, obviously) that hadn’t yet made its way south. I also realise now that I had another invented word, CERISOM, at 9ac, after choosing CE instead of CH for ‘church’.

  4. This comment is an ill posting, to report I was done in by 3A, but at least so far I’m in the majority. After reading Sabine’s explanation I looked it up and find it to be the same as what we US-ians call ‘snipe signs’. Everything else was on the faster side today, about 15 minutes, except for what I believe to be the UK- centric references to ‘slap’ for cosmetics and SLAPPER as a wild woman, both in the same clue. That was my last entry, from vaguely recognizing the SLAPPER label from somewhere. CHRISOM came from deep RC altar boy memory. Regards to all.
  5. I didn’t look at the clock but it must have been under half an hour, apart from the extra half hour it took me to realise it wasn’t SLY-POSTING (yes, I had considered ILL as well) but in fact FLY. CHRISOM was also another which could have either way, but it sounded more reasonable than richnorth’s alternative (although who can tell?). I thought this was extremely well crafted with some flawless surfaces; maybe the odd obvious definition (like Marcel), but hey, who’s complaining. I liked the ACUTE/GRAVE connection, the GAS CAN, CHEMIST but COD to SHADOW CABINET. That’s put a spring in my step.
  6. i started with ill-posting but realised my error. but i got the 2:1 bet wrong on cerisom
  8. Time: forever; and in about three different locales. Like most, I spent far too long in the NE corner. This had a bit to do with being a bit too nice about the difference between a region and a department — and so thinking it couldn’t be GARD.
    Nous enlevons nos chapeaux to the two great &lits.
  9. I’d have been well under 30 minute but for 3ac. It wasn’t helped by thinking “promoting” = PUSHING.

    But apart from that it was fairly straightforward and the only answer I had to check on completion was CHRISOM. I knew “Chrism”, the oil used in the Christening ceremony, but this one was new to me. I also missed the &lit nature of 24ac and wasted time trying to explain “early sign” as the definition.

  10. Getting MADAGASCAN in the SW corner really sparked my effort. Never got FLY-POSTING, which buggered me up for POSES. Apart from that, managed to get TOW-HEAD from the cryptic, but that didn’t do me much good as far as 24 ac went, where I ended up inserting CHEVIOT, even if, on retrospect, MIST has a bit more to do with ‘spray’ than VIOT does. Time deliberately suppressed, as this was my first go as a paid-up online solver.
    1. The musicians among you might be interested in the famous Madagascan, Rakotozafy http://www.artistdirect.com/artist/rakotozafy/482573, who played the national instrument called the valiha. He had an interesting life and an interesting life after death as well. I heard him on John Peel’s show 20 years ago and bought the album. It’s really wonderful, much recommended.
    2. Welcome, Ulaca! I’m glad the link I sent you the other day tempted you to join us in “real” time instead having to wait two months for the puzzle to appear in the Hong Kong press. I hope you like it here and decide to stick around.

      jackt

  11. Anyone else having a problem with logging on to the website for today’s crossword? Please help, someone!
    1. Had loads of trouble this morning. Had to chuck everything (cookies, etc) out of the browser. If you happen to use Safari, this is easy. Safari Menu > Reset.
      Hope this helps.
    2. Also had trouble about an hour ago and ditched some Times-related cookies (not too hard in Firefox either). But that wasn’t enough on its own, and simply waiting played a part. For some attempts, I got a “temporarily unavailable” message instead of the bird-on-box 404 message.
    3. I use Firefox as my default browser and have increasing difficulty accessing the site. I suspect it’s down to cookies because when Firefox fails I can invariably open the site using IE. I wish the Times would get to the bottom of this as it shouldn’t be necessary to keep deleting cookies.
      1. There’s certainly something about the Times site which makes it more prone to this kind of problem than others. Not totally apropos, but I enjoyed the latest comment on the bulletin board:

        Alan Cannon wrote:

        Interested by the archived letters which led to the birth of the Times Crossword. Hmm responding to customer feedback what an old-fashioned concept. Much better to ignore the customer altogether.

        February 3, 2010 7:20 PM GMT

      2. For any Firefox user, there is a wonderful extension called Toolbar Buttons.. it provides lots of useful buttons, one of which when pressed, reloads the page you are looking at without using cache. So no need to delete anything any more..

        But I think today’s problem was quite short lived. I just wish they would do updates at 2am and not 8.30am.. it is a national newspaper after all, they must have IT staff on site at that time

        1. That link didn’t work, jerry, so I can’t follow up your suggestion. What’s the difference between the button you’re talking about and the standard “refresh” button that I’m using?
  12. Similar experience with 3A, but focusing on the -POSTING part somehow reminded me of FLY-. Probably 90 secs of my 8:08. Nice idea about Bader & the broken legs. Here’s one reason for remembering that the Gard is a river – and if it’s a French river, it’s very probably a department name too. 11A reminded me of a former MD’s description of our local equivalent of “Essex girls” – the “Aylesbury slapper”
  13. By the way, this posting appeared at the perfect time for me (just around lunchtime in Melbourne). Hoping for more of the same!
  14. c14mins today so not a hard one. I also had a hesitation over 3ac but couldn’t persuade myself “ill posting” meant anything, so persevered. COD 20dn, very elegant surface.

    Alan Cannon did well to get his comment above published at all. Perhaps his point was put slightly more obliquely than mine are, that never seem to elude the censors. That bulletin board is a complete scandal.

  15. I thought this puzzle neatly fitted the old standard description “to be done by the well educated whilst travelling to work on the Clapham omnibus”. There are no obscurities, the clues are fair, clever and at times original. 20 enjoyable minutes.

    I had no problem with FLY POSTING. Smart=FLY is a common substitution; “can lead to grudge”=TIN-G is completely logical; that only leaves 3 letters for officers in FLY ???TING. I thought both INGREDIENT and SHADOW CABINET excellent clues.

  16. This was both ingenious and irritating. I mislead myself many times including all the All-Pushing, Ill-Pasting combinations. I even took a long time to get our favourite Antarctic explorer, trying to convince myself that the answer was (G)Ross. At 20, I knew I was looking for a disease because of the complaint definition but took ages to twig that the answer was disease.

    I run a mile at the mention of French mime artists so 2D was also tricky. It could have been Morseau or various other permutaions until I decided that Marceau was the most plausible

    Like Kevin, I used my altar-boy experience of Chrism to get Chrisom. Having sorted out all these, I failed on 1A where the only match I could think of was Sumo. Grrr.

  17. No obscurities? If CHRISOM isn’t obscure then I’m a Dutchman. And since it appears to be one of those clues where you can only figure the wordplay once you have guessed the correct answer I wasn’t impressed. Did work out the wordplay for FLY POSTING but reason has only come to me as I type, so COD for me also.
    (Late entry because of site access problem this morning, given the amount of trouble perhaps The Times might consider extending subscriptions?)
  18. I took slightly longer than yesterday – 25 minutes. Some of that extra time was working out 9 from various possibilities, but only one fitted the wordplay, so I managed to get that right even though the word was unfamiliar. The other delayer was 3, and like others I plumped for ‘ill-posting’. Why I missed ‘fly’ I don’t know – it’s the obvious companion to ‘posting’, but I get these blind spots. I didn’t really want to spend more time pondering, which might have produced the right answer eventually.

    A minor quibble about 18. There’s a distinct difference between ‘tow’ and ‘yank’ (a sudden pull or jerk), which is reflected in Oxford and Chambers. I don’t really see them as even loosely synonymous.

  19. sabine, you are good! I took more than double the time you took … and all because I thought 3Across should be ILL-something so the North-East let me down today altho I got there in the end
  20. Then it came to me almost straightaway after I’d had a chance to de-rut my mind . Didn’t understand the wordplay though till coming here – kept asking myself how ‘sting’ could mean ‘grudge’ thinking that ‘PO’ meant ‘post office’ and thus, by loose extension, ‘officers’. Yes, as I say, I didn’t understand the wordplay…that sort of messy thinking is why I have the ‘fuddle’ in my moniker 🙂

    COD to 24. &lits are very satisfying are they not?

    1. &lits: yes, but far better when (like this one) they don’t use tricks like initially/essentially/finally for squeezing in an extra letter, which create fairly obvious extra stuff in the def.
  21. When I went to stop the clock I noticed that I’d forgotten to start it. Under interrogation I’d probably say it took about 20 minutes.

    3 was my last in as I didn’t want to put in ill-posting because it didn’t feel right. The penny eventually dropped on fly. I’d considered Gard early on (based on supermarket plonk vin de pays du Gard) but only at the end did I see the letters staring back at me. Reading it quickly I don’t think the g in crossing registers.

    I enjoyed imp act but my COD is Madagascan.

    I can’t see where the “on” comes from in Patagonia. Anyone care to put me out of my m?

    The Uxbridge defines nutcase as “a hat”. That was the only one I could find, but looking up disease I chanced upon: disarray – to give directions in China.

  22. After yesterday’s post about mis-enumeration I found I’d marked up 12 as (5,8) not (8,5) and was looking to fit the anagram fodder to ??E?I ?U?STONE !! Had thought of PRECIOUS STONE straightaway when I saw the anagram fodder but that didn’t fit the enumeration!

    23 of 28 solved. No time to complete with aids so came straight here for the missing answers. Thanks for the blog sabine. Liked SLAPPER and INGREDIENT (that’s the amateur chef in me) but never heard of CHRISOM.

  23. 13.35. Similar experience to many. Took a 50:50 on CHRISOM over Cerisom as it sounded more plausible. Also though ILL POSTING as I had also misinterpreted the definition but got there eventually. COD was 6 although I liked ‘Seaside resort’ but can’t think this hasn’t been used before – although it didn’t ring any bells with me
  24. And easy-ish puzzle apart from 3 across FLYPOSTING where I had an obsession with ILL. Several clues I found cover & interesting 14 across ACUTE 24 across CHEMIST 4 down LIMOUSINE and 10 down SPINE CHILLING. Could someone enlighten me as to why bill = ad?(6d); and enjoyed = had (18 down). I also thought 25 across had 2 realistic answers – NUTCASE or NUTBAKE
    2. As in the sign BILL STICKERS WILL BE PROSECUTED which is usually followed by the graffito BILL STICKERS IS INNOCENT OK
  25. Couldn’t get the crossword last night, had to do it in fits and breaks this morning, but fell for the ILL trap. Oh well…
  26. unlike most i found this very difficult missing lots of wordplay before coming here, and am i the only person who has never heard of tow-head? cod 14ac lovely clue
    1. No – I had never heard of TOW HEAD either, but the checkers left little alternative.
    2. TOW is flax prepared for spinning, so “tow-headed” is a rather less poetic version of “flaxen-haired”
  27. Thanks, I’ve installed it successfully now. I meant to say the original link timed out before connecting.
  28. Like almost everyone else except Jimbo, I too was undone by 3 ac. Otherwise no great problems. Jimbo’s right that this clue wasn’t really that difficult – unless, of course, you became convinced early on that the answer had to begin ILL-, as I did. I wasted much time trying to justify first ILL-FEELING and then, following in Sabine’s footsteps, albeit at a more plodding rate, ILL-POSTING. Some very good and clever clues – e.g INGREDIENT, SHADOW CABINET, ACUTE, CHEMIST, LIMOUSINE and SPINECHILLING. I also liked the artfully disguised use of “resort” as an anagrind in 20 dn (DISEASE). A good puzzle with which to round off a good week.

  29. Region=departement – not sure about that, but saw it anyway. Done watching TV, no time. Enjoyed steady progress, appreciated 2 (saw him live once, brilliant), 6, 10, 18. Brain turned down all options bar fly- to go before posting (in long before) so last in without working out why – excellent blog and must be top clue. Good mix of clue types, chrisom nice old word.

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