Times Crossword 24609

Author   sabine_tkPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic

A puzzle that seemed heavy with Scots, drunkenness and fish. I wasn’t able to time it properly due to various interruptions – a newly-arrived guest needing bedlinen, the way guests do, and the visiting cat and resident kitten rampaging around in wild excitement leaving chaos and destruction in their wake. I did the top half quickly, but took much longer over the bottom, in part due to a misreading of my own writing (described below). Luckily, as is often the way, I found that every time I sat down again I spotted something I hadn’t seen before. Last to go in were the AQUILA/LEISTER duo.

Across
1
   DE(N)MARK
4
   PRECEDES – an anagram of (decrees + p)
10
   LAYETTE – a set of clothes for a baby, with a layette being a little song in the same way as a palette is a small friend.
11
   SALT,IRE, with salt meaning bite in the sense of pungency.
12
   S,ELF – the definition is “I”.
13
   PAGE-TURNER – As I have seen a film called the Page-Turner, I was distracted into pondering whether there was also novel of this name, before it dawned on me that a page-turner is of course any book you can’t put down.
15
   NE(W FORE)ST – W=wife, FORE=what golfers shout by way of warning when they’ve hot a ball, all inside NEST (home).
16
   LATH,I – this heavy Indian stick is familiar to all puzzlers because of its useful letter set (according to Chambers, the only other way to fill L_T_I is LITAI, the plural form of the currency of Lithuania.
18
   MO,RAY – I made a real mess of this, misreading the hastily scribbled Y at the end as a T, and therefore trying SPRAT, which gave me no end of problems trying to work out how 15D could possibly be NOSE DROPS. The cross reference at 28Ac forced me to rethink and eventually I sorted it all out.
19
   TEAM S,PORT – an anagram of “mates” followed by the drink, PORT. Nearly messed this up too by putting in TEST SPORT; luckily stopped myself in time.
23
   FILM, hidden, reversed, in rooM LIFted.
26
   OUTLINE – OUT=forbidden in the sense of debarred, not to be considered.
27
   L(E)ISTER – a Scottish salmon spear. I needed every single crossing letter to get this, the last clue I solved. The middle of “freezer” is the E, inside the surgeon Joseph Lister.
28
   S(C)OTTISH – someone who is sottish is a habitual drunkard, and “catching cold” is an instruction to put a C inside. Moray is an area of NE Scotland, hence the reference to 18 that saved me from being sprattish.
29
   DOODAH – DO=party, ODA=fuss, around (ADO, reversed) and H=house. The definition is “Object, when someone forgets” (its name).
 
Down
1
   DEL,OS. DEL is LED going upwards “guided to the top”, and OS=huge (outsize).
2
   M(A)Y, FLOWER – the cry of surprise is “My!” – “about a” tells us to put the A inside, and a river here is a thing that flows. I might have got trapped into trying to put a river inside a cry of surprise, if I hadn’t solved 1 and 4 across very quickly, which gave me enough to solve the clue from the definition.
3
   (t)RUTH
5
   RA(SHES)T
6
   CO,LOURLESS – “lour” means to scowl.
7
   D(E)IG,N – DIG=work in garden, outside E (energy) and “end in pain” is the N.
8
   SPEARMINT, an anagram of (m in repast).
9
   HECAT,E, a Tom being a male cat.
14
   POLYTHEIST, an anagram of (holiest typ), the loss of the final E indicated by “almost”.
15
   NAME DROPS – to change BAND into BAD, you drop the N (abbreviation for “name”)
17
   TW(O,F)ISTED -O=old, F=female, inside TWISTED (deviant). I wasn’t familiar with this term. Chambers defines it as “clumsy; capable of fighting with both fists; holding the racket with both hands (tennis).”, which doesn’t really seem right for “vigorous”, but I found this online: “Characterized by great vigor, energy, or enthusiasm” – so that’s OK.
19
   TENNERS, sounding like “tenors”. A bit of an old chestnut, this.
20
   AQUILA, a constellation and also a town in Italy. I hummed and hawed over this a bit, being pretty sure of the constellation but not at all sure of the town, but could think of nothing better.
22
   (b)LOTTO
24
   MARCH, a reference to the March family in Little Women, one of whom is Jo.
25
   LIN,O, LIN being nil reversed (nothing, picked up).

31 comments on “Times Crossword 24609”

  1. Oh my Lord. About 90 minutes, ending as Sabine did, with the AQUILA/LEISTER pair. Tough as nails puzzle, so nice blog Sabine. For those hoping for a more challenging end to the week, this is certainly the answer. Wow! Very well done to the setter and to Sabine for getting through this barn-burner. For a COD I’ll nominate TWO-FISTED, although it could be any of the above. Regards to all in advance. My brain feels well stretched.
  2. At 20, I too thought of the Italian region of Apulia first, before realising the setter must be referring to L’Aquila, best known for its earthquakes, which is a bit of a cheat, as the city is typically listed under ‘L’. Even with the initial ‘l’, failed on LEISTER, which might in turn have opened up TWO-FISTED, which, like Sabine, I’d never heard of and hardly would have guessed. I didn’t help myself either by putting ‘limbi’ in at 16, one of Vinyl’s list of ‘ridiculously easy clues’, most of which I actually found pretty tough, the others being MARCH – I’ve never read the book and ‘month’ was an alternative – and HECATE, for which I had to dredge my Classical Upper Sixth days.

    [B]LOTTO and DOODAH took me back to my childhood, as they were favourite words of my father and mother respectively (although my mother preferred ‘doodacky’). COD to SCOTTISH for the cheeky use of the Caledonian stereotype.

    1. I agree it is tempting but in 28 “like a perpetual drunk” is not the definition, actually.
      1. I wasn’t defeated by this one! I need hardly add that the definition is ‘from 18, say’.
        1. The reference to the “Caledonian stereotype” reminded me of one of Prince Phillip’s gaffes when he asked a Scottish driving instructor how his pupils managed to stay sober long enough to take their tests.
  3. As suspected, a heavy gauge number for the end of the week. Took me 1:05 with much head-scratching in the whole SE (and not just the 20/27 pair). Not helped by “knowing” that the Little Women family was Marsh and so not venturing that answer. Woud also award the COD to The Scottish Clue — does that mean we can’t mention its name?
  4. A couple of hours on and off. Got there in the end, although I did need the dictionary for confirmation on a couple of occasions. And for the second time this week I was held up in the Greek islands; looks as though I need to do some homework there.

    Finished up, like everyone else, in the SE corner. MARCH was last in, and until I was enlightened by sabine I assumed that the Ides must be the family and that young Jo Ide was the unknown reference.

  5. 20 minutes solving before bed produced only 7 answers, 5 in the NE plus MARCH and RUTH.

    Progress upon resumption this morning was very slow but I completed the remainder of the NE and most of the SW before grinding to a complete standstill. At that point I had only used a thesaurus to find a fish and something Scottish to fit M???Y at 18ac, but after another 15 minutes with no progress whatsoever I resorted to a solver to get AQUILA and DOODAH in the SE (should have got DOODAH but I could only think of HOWDAH). LEISTER then became obvious at 27ac though I didn’t remember the word and its meaning.

    At that stage most of the NW was still blank so rather tiring of the puzzle I used a solver to get MAYFLOWER which kick-started my brain and the remaining answers came quite quickly.

    So an end of week disaster which could only have been worse if it had been my Friday to write the blog.

  6. Dnf – defeated by 20 (which should have got) and 27. The more annoying since was rattling merrily along – did the rest in about twenty minutes. Then after another, gulp, thirty or so decided might have better things to do with life. Looking it up, I find l’Aquila for the city but no doubt they’re both used. So infuriating – going along like Hamilton then hit the wall.
  7. I did this in 15 minutes without much enthusiasm, perhaps spoiled by yesterday’s delights. Quite a few clues, for me, read like clues, having dodgy surface readings and paint-by-numbers directions: 1a and d, 15, 16, 29, 7,8 as examples. However, 15d was a better clue than I thought it was: when I put it in, I thought it was just a clumsy double definition: thanks to Sabine for putting me straight on that. Maybe I was just in a grumpy mood!
    My last in was SELF, which I only got after surmising DELOS. I expected to be in more trouble at the AQUILA/LEISTER crossing, with any one of loads of Italian cities and a probable unknown conspiring, but with A_U as a start I remembered both the golden rule about probable Q’s and the Berlusconi/earthquake location. At least LIESTER had only one possible solution.
    CoD (and I have read the comments above) to the mildly offensive SCOTTISH
  8. Despite RUTH going in instantly the NW corner was too much for me in my allotted time, not helped by being unshakeably convinced that 2 must start with an O.
    Relieved to find that AQUILA, SCOTTISH and LEISTER were correct and also relieved that the blog contains no references to leafy perambulations.
  9. I made a good start, deciding that I might get 1A from a checking letter, and working back from Gk island = ???OS to get it from 1D. Trusted my instincts about likely constellation names at 20, knowing LEISTER from barred grid puzzles. So all done in about 10 minutes, except that pesky little 4-letter poser at 12. Not seeing the trouble maker, it took another couple of minutes to see SELF = I and then elf as a synonym for sprite = mischievous spirit.

    Similarly puzzled at first by “two-fisted” but the meaning seemed plausible.

  10. 20:11 here, stumbled along without ever getting totally stuck, but kept going back over the same harder clues instead of reading new ones. For example, FILM was one of my last ones in, but only because I read it for the first time at the end! LEISTER came up in the Jumbo a few weeks ago, otherwise I would never have heard of it. That gave me AQUILA (knew the constellation, not the Italian town).
  11. I gave up after 50 minutes, reasonably convinced I’d never get 20d, which turned out to be an accurate assessment, since I had MEISTER at 27 (That would be the salmon-sticking-meister. Don’t surgeons call themselves mister?). Not that it mattered, even with an L I’d never have got Aquila. I’ve seen leister often enough before but not in its specific salmon spearing context. I also wondered what 15d was about, so ta for the explanantion, Sabine. On the plus side, DELPHINIUM is the only plant related clue I’ve ever got at first sight. I liked TWO-FISTED but COD to NAME-DROPS now that I get it.
  12. I found this relatively hard, but finished in about 17 mins in the end, having put in AQUILA in the hope it would turn out to be an Italian town. Pleasantly surprised to hear that it is.
  13. 45 minutes. Not many laughs in this, were there? Still, I suppose I shouldn’t expect any from someone whose idea of fun is poking salmon with a stick: leister? Quite liked 29 across, but now I can’t get the tune out of my head. Oh doo-dah-day!
  14. Interrupted for an hour or more half way through this, which is always a little frustrating. It has the feel of a 25 minute puzzle being a mixture of the very easy (e.g PAGE TURNER), some obscurities (such as LEISTER if you don’t do bar crosswords) and a couple of clever constructions (I liked DOODAH). Misled like others by AQUILA which I think of as L’AQUILA but knew the constellation. All in all a middle of the road rather than a particularly difficult puzzle.
  15. Defeated by AQUILA/LEISTER today. I didn’t know Aquila was a constellation and had heard of neither leister nor Lister, which made 27 more or less impossible.
    Otherwise, as others have said, a mix of the very easy and the very difficult. Even before admitting defeat I’d spent a long time on this one, struggling with DOODAH, DELOS, TWO-FISTED among others. And I made life difficult for myself by hurriedly writing PRECEEDS in 4ac, which I didn’t spot for some time.
    A tricky end to the week.
  16. I would get annoyed about the renaming of the Italian city to Aquila (which seems to have ceased to exist in 1861 or 1939, depending on your point of view) but if constellations weren’t such a black hole in my general knowledge I’d probably have been okay.

    Around twenty-five minutes to establish that I was properly stuck with the same pair that kiboshed a few others.

  17. 20 minutes here, found this one tricky. Fortunately AQUILA was in a Listener a few weeks ago (the one I’m going to write about this morning) and LEISTER was a complete guess from checking letters. Also didn’t quite understand MARCH but nothing else would fit. So Florida took a while, but sighs of relief, particularly compared to yesterday.
  18. This was nowhere as good as yesterday’s.
    Much more of an uphill slog, which took me about 50 minutes. Looking back, this week’s puzzles have all been on the tough side.

    No troubles with NAME-DROPS or AQUILA, worked out LEISTER and the unmentionable 28a. Last in, incredibly, RUTH! COD to FILM as the cleverest hidden word I have seen for some time!

  19. Too difficult for me! Failed in the NW corner, having over-confidently entered ORDERS, which makes no sense in retrospect. Kind of finished off 1d and 2d. 10ac I’ve never heard of either sense of the word before, and 12ac I really should have got…
  20. Defeated by 27ac, which felt a bit much, especially crossing with Aquila without the L’.
    Initially very easy, as others have said, but I also went up a few blind alleys, notably (f)ACTS instead of (t)RUTH.
  21. Nice to see I was not alone. Managed Aquila/Leister but 1d became Delhi even though it’s not defined!
  22. DNF, what tripped me up were 25 and 27 as I had never heard of LEISTER; for 25 I had ZERO having convinced myself that REZ (as in rez de chaussée) could be an obscure English word meaning floor or storey. So my reading was O+REZ = “nothing that’s on the floor” being picked up, that is reversed, to yield ZERO.

    Everything else was right although SALTIRE and LATHI were just hopeful guesses based on wordplay, and my reasoning for SELF was entirely wrong, having found it by thinking of SELF MADE MAN as being the one who succeeded and MADE MAN as being some kind of Mafia crony (hence trouble maker) put in a lucrative position by the boss; SELF is what is ahead of this. Oh dear, I guess I need more practice.

    The town Aquila is indeed l’Aquila (the eagle); I’ve actually been there, long before the earthquake.

    1. Welcome, if I’m right in guessing that this is your first comment.

      Don’t worry too much about getting SELF the wrong way – as long as you make sure that the definition is sound, you can usually get away with this once or twice in a puzzle – provided you have enough checking letters, which means both of them for a 4-letter answer. (If you’d had ?I?O for 25, you’d probably have found LINO.)

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