Times Crossword 24537

Author   sabine_tkPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic

Solving time: 9.02

Nothing too difficult here, with the wordplay being pretty much conclusive where I wasn’t certain of the definition. There were lots of very accessible multi-word answers and several anagrams too. I lost some time by miscounting letters in 9A, believing almost till the end that the O in the third word was the its fourth letter, not its third. Looking at the grid now, I’d barred off the words in all the clues of this type except this one – perhaps I should be more rigorous about this (I’m wildly inconsistent at present). Last to go in was 21 ac, which I was very relieved to see resolve itself into a place I recognised because of the dog that bears its name.

Across
1
   F,ARM,HAND – this must be the f that means loud (forte) in music – the primary definition of the word in Italian seems actually to be “strong”, not “loud”.
6
   EXHUME – the old (ex) philosopher being of course David Hume.
9
   TELL ME ABOUT IT – one of several multi-word double meaning type clues in today’s puzzle. Here the first is the literal request for information, and the second means, roughly, “I’ve had the same (negative) experience myself…”
10
   COR(VI)D. With all crossing letters in place I got this from the definition, not being terribly well-informed about missiles, though I knew a V-1 was a bomb or a fighter plane or something like that. It turns out to be the thing also called a buzz bomb or doodlebug.
11
   EDGEHILL – a battle in the English Civil War.
13
   SHALLOWEST – (those walls)*
15
   A,FAR – FAR being the service (RAF) returned.
16
   TWIN(e) – “twine” here is a verb, meaning to wind or twist, and the last letter is removed (“no end of”) to provide the family member.
18
   THAT DOES IT – a phrase that has two contrasting meanings, one of triumph, the other of terminal exasperation.
21
   AI,RED,ALE – the beer was quite easy to spot, and would obviously be preceded by a D, but there are a lot of dales in Yorkshire and I was seriously worried for a while that I would be doubly stumped by an unfamiliar place name and a fine wine that went _I__D. Fortunately daylight dawned quite quickly: fine is A1, and the wine a nice plain red.
22
   ACK-ACK – more missiles already. Ack-ack was anti-aircraft fire, the name deriving from “AA” in the WW1 phonetic alphabet. The wordplay is LACK (don’t have) with its head taken off, twice. My first thought when I saw this clue was dum-dum, which is indeed a kind of bullet, so perhaps I know more about missiles than I thought I did.
23
   LOST IN THE POST – another of those multi-word double meanings.
25
   SWATHE – (the saw)* “Swathe” here is a noun meaning a bandage or wrapping, not the verb meaning to bind.
26
   C,RE,SS(ID)A, made up from C=about, RE=religious instruction, and SSA=fool, about (ass, reversed) with ID (I’d) inside. I didn’t know a thing about Troilus and Cressida, except that Will S. wrote a play about them, but apparently Cressida has been portrayed by most tellers of this tale from the Trojan Wars as a paragon of female inconstancy.
 
Down
2
   ANTIOCH – (China to)*
3
   MALEVOLENCE – “male violence” with the I removed (“without one”).
4
   ARMED – as is often the case, “Cockney” here is an instruction to drop a leading ‘h’.
5
   DEADEYE, with “I say” indicating the I=EYE soundalike. I was happy to stick this in from the wordplay, assuming vaguely that the deadeye would turn out to be some kind of device used to tie up a shroud to prevent the corpse from falling out. But it’s nothing like that at all: it’s nautical, the deadeye is a disc with holes in it, and the shrouds are pieces of rigging that hold the mast up. I’m so glad this turned up on my blogging day, because otherwise I would never have googled “deadeye shroud”, which after some fascinating dips into the world of model shipmaking, led me to the wonderful sentence: “The shroud is measured round the dead eye and marked where a throat-seizing is hove on”.
7
   H(e)AT
8
   MATILDA- made up of AD=notice, LIT=fired and AM=in the morning, all reversed.
12
   HEAVEN KNOWS. See 23A.
14
   OSTRACISE – (escort as I)*
17
   WHIT,LOW, a nasty inflammation of a finger or toe, and therefore a problem to hand.
19
   A,S(C)EPTIC
20
   INCITED – INCISED with the S (second) replaced ny T (time).
22
   ARETE – I was wondering which synonym for “veteran” I would have to find, trim and reverse, and was much relieved to discover it was actually the word “veteran” itself. An arête is a steep mountain ridge.
24
   SET – I once read that SET is the word that has the most different meanings in the English language, and here are two of them.

35 comments on “Times Crossword 24537”

  1. About 40 minutes here, having fouled myself up by trying the US variant of ‘lost in the mail’. It took quite a while to figure out that ‘post’ works better, and that they probably say LOST IN THE POST in the UK. Also had to look up WHITLOW after solving to see if such a word exists, and the actual DEADEYE definition is a revelation, as it probably will be to everyone. Thanks for the blog, Sabine, and the 9 minute time is quite remarkable. Regards.
  2. One hour for me, but I failed on the ones Vinyl struggled over, which just goes to show the value of perseverance, ending up by shoving in DIAMEDE and WHIMLOW. Never seemed to be on the setter’s wavelength today, as I also wrestled with the relatively innocuous 1, 11, 13, 18 and 19. EDGEHILL sums up my day, where I thought of ‘fell’ and ‘dale’ for ‘rise’, but not the obvious ‘hill’.
  3. I found this quite straightforward. When I was a kid I had an encyclopedia which had a page of drawings of various nautical things and I remembered DEADEYE from the picture of a wooden block with various ropes attached. Funny how those distant memories can be recalled after so long.

    At 26 I toyed briefly with Nellie Gray, but that was never going to work any better than ICBM in 10ac!

  4. About 40 minutes for me too, finally held up by putting EXCITED at 20d and then wondering what Latin phrase fitted into T-A- D-E- E- at 18ac; I’m sure there must be one. I also had no idea what a DEADEYE might be other than the cognomen of Dick. Otherwise a nice gentle puzzle for the end of the week.

    A had occasion to look up set whilst attempting this week’s DIY COW (clueing SEAT) and was amazed at the length of the entry.

  5. 20 minutes including two at the end to get Airedale so the most straightforward for some time from where I was. I rather like the familiar exclamations at 9, 12 and 18: I suspect the setter was recording an argument between his/her children – ? Maybe 22 ac. came from there as well.
  6. Expecting to crow about this but undone by CORVID despite having the checkers and reckoning V1 was the missile. The TWIN, WHITLOW, AIREDALE pattern slowed me at the end. Still, being able now to see quickly clues like 19 (remove C) and 20 (T for S) was encouraging to this slowcoach.
  7. 40 minutes with the last 10 spent on 1ac, 5dn and 10ac. I was convinced 1ac would end with an S and it was only after I abandoned this idea that I spotted the possibility of DEADEYE at 5dn though I had never heard of it in the context required. This made the answer to 1ac obvious but still left me struggling with 10ac where I had all the checking letters and the I (from V1)but couldn’t think of any words that fitted. In the end I looked up “crow” in Collins hoping for a further clue and found a reference to the family “corvidae”. CORVID itself is not in Collins so I don’t feel too bad about not knowing it. I’m also encouraged as I type them here, to see red wavy lines under the answers that gave me so much grief.
  8. 14:05, without the excuses of late-night solving or the curse of the blogger – I must be in a bad patch of form at the moment. Failed to get 1A for ages, despite jotting down ____HAND/HAND____ next to it. Top left was my worst part, with 21, 16, 1, 3, 5, 10 the last batch of answers.
  9. … are covered by Captain George Biddlecombe, my earliest famous namesake, on page 84 of his ‘Art of Rigging’ – plenty more poetic sailor-speak.
  10. An enjoyable one-hour puzzle for me. I got led down the garden path a couple of times, looking for a philosopher ending in O and a dale beginning with F. Being a native of Yorkshire, AIREDALE duly gets my COD award.

    Somebody else has already said it, but sabine’s 9 minutes seems pretty impressive, and congratulations as well for such a thorough blog.

  11. Another pleasant 20 minute puzzle that was fun to do without being unduly taxing.

    I didn’t know about the nautical definition of DEADEYE, my last in, and entered on the wordplay alone. I sort of had recollections of CORVID but the wordplay is straightforward. A VI destroyed a group of houses just down the road from where I lived during the war and as a boy I played on the bomb site. I think a VI was regarded as a flying bomb whereas its stable-mate the V2 was the missile.

    1. Agree re V1. Given corvid had to be correct I then decided I had to accept a wider def. of missile to be any projectile weapon and I think V1’s were launched as well as having an engine.
    2. I think we’re getting into fine-tuned meanings here – in COED a missile is either an object forcibly propelled at a target, or a weapon that is self-propelled or directed by remote control.
  12. 20m – lucky with the gk bits but slowed by the need to see all the wordplay to be certain of some answers. Brain stuck on things that fitted but were wrong – “that does me” and “last in line” (thinking wedding receptions!), so last in 20,12 and 26. Agree farm-hand or two words more “dic-correct” but that did not delay me.
  13. The only dictionary that I have to “hand” is Chambers and it shows FARM HAND as two words which is how I always thought it to be.
    Mike O
    Skiathos
    Current temperature: 25C
    Current mood: contented
    Current music: Lapping of the sea
    1. Collins: 2 words, Concise Oxford: 1. As said many times, your memory (and anyone else’s!) of word splits isn’t worth much – the dictionaries differ and it’s anyone’s guess which dictionary (of the official two) will get followed. The best we can hope for is that if they follow COED for this word, they don’t switch to Collins for others which are given differently in the same puzzle.

      Mood: jealous!

  14. I found this extraordinarily difficult and eventually gave up with fully 8 unsolved – my worst showing for as long as I can remember. CORVID, DEADEYE, WHITLOW are all about as obscure as it gets from my perspective, but I have less of an excuse for some of the others, even if the wordplay was tricky I thought in say 21 and 3.
    So a little discouraging.
    Sabine’s time of 9m is extraordinary!
  15. About thirty minutes for me today with the only hold up CORVID which I hadn’t come cross before. WHITLOW was straight in as I suffered with one about twenty five years ago!
  16. 21 minutes at an odd hour of the night: can I claim that as an excuse? Didn’t take well to the multi-word colloquials, and struggled with AIREDALE despite having the DALE bit. “Fine” just didn’t lead straight to A1 on this occasion, and struggled for too long to find a wine that satisfied (F)I?ED. There’s some weird wine names out there. No problem with the “obscure” words, only wondering if that’s where Dick DEADEYE got his name?
  17. I found it a little easier than average perhaps, 26 mins. Favourite clue MALEVOLENCE, last answer AIREDALE, was thinking for a while it might start with F = fine.
  18. COED’s middle section, which I was just looking at, has the three words with most meanings in OED: set/156, stand/104, fall/101
  19. Sorry, I don’t have a little picture to go with the comment (I’m not sure how to do them). The puzzle took me about 30 mins, including time at the bar getting a beer. Amongst the comments I read that there are some late night solvers. Which leads me to ask: at what time does the crossword become available online to club members?
    1. Midnight UK time for most puzzles. Listener is usually up by 5pm on Friday, and Mephisto by 9pm Saturday.

      You have to sign up for a LiveJournal account to use a name and picture – you can choose any image file on your PC subject to a size limit something like 110 pixels square – you’d be pretty unlucky not to have access to an image-editing app that can save a picture of the right size and format.

  21. Looks as if my time today was a case of SWS (Setter’s Wavelength Syndrome) – though I usually have some sense of it when this is the case, and with this one I didn’t. I do occasionally beat Peter B’s time, but rarely by more than a minute or two.
    1. Or possibly “fairly easy first clue not seen on first look” syndrome on my part. I forgot to confirm forte = strong – I once had “spaghetti fortebraccio” = strong-arm pasta – i.e. served with Popeye-style spinach sauce. And some friends with a property in a hill village in northern Tuscany report being advised to walk back home with the shopping “piano, piano” = “take it gently”.
  22. I didn’t too well today, getting stuck on AIREDALE, WHITLOW, ARETE and DEADEYE. A propos SET and the number of meanings it has: in a previous life I was a lexicographer, and was asked on one occasion to deal with the “heavy-duty verbs” in the dictionary. That means writing the entries for BE, DO, HAVE, MAKE, SET, etc. It was an enjoyable task, but the satisfaction was muted somewhat by my conviction that hardly anyone ever looks up meanings of such common verbs. Or am I wrong?
    1. I’m sure the crossword setters look them up quite frequently!
    2. I once spent a year writing a couple of learners’ English dictionaries for an educational publisher, and then found myself out of work. At that time, if you signed on for the dole you had to take any job reasonably appropriate to your skills or lose the dole. When I signed on I put “lexicographer” as my line of work – unsurprisingly they never found me a job.
      1. it’s surprising how few even relatively educated people know what a lexicographer is. Or can guess what it is from the etymology
  23. Didn’t get a time, solved it nervously watching the cricket (not looking good for Australia right now). Nothing too out there though my last in was TWIN. WHITLOW, DEADEYE and AIREDALE all from wordplay.
  24. Thanks for a very enjoyable blog. I echo the admiration for a 9min time especially if it included time to insert bars in the multi-word answers. Is there any particular reason why these bars couldn’t be already supplied?
    1. If you’re solving at the speed required to finish this one in 9 minutes, you only bother to mark word breaks when they might help you see the answer – if you see the answer on first look, you don’t bother.

      I guess the reason for not supplying the bars is that without them, the grid for a Times cryptic is just one of the 70-odd different grids which are currently used.

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