Times Crossword June 11 2014 – Vintage Edition 30385

Solving Time: About 25 minutes, plus extra time puzzling over 29ac.

Overall I think this crossword could pass as today’s, if you see what I mean. I would have solved it the first time round, though no memories surfaced, and there will be others no doubt who can say the same. I thought it on the harder side of average, with some reasonably demanding GK and vocab. requirements,  and there are a couple of clues I’m still a bit unsure about.

I have tried to fit in with the modern vogue for giving the clue as well as the answer and analysis. It has taken me a fair bit longer to do the blog as a result, as it wouldn’t fit the template I use.. but no doubt that can be corrected. Do folks prefer seeing it this way?

cd = cryptic definition, dd = double definition, rev = reversed, anagrams are *(–), homophones indicated in “”

ODO means the Oxford Dictionaries Online

Across
1. Perhaps carpet worker’s collective has the right answer (6)
Turkey –  TU + R(ight) + KEY
4. Halt, a jam involving Marble Arch in a big way (3-5)
Taj Mahal – *(halt a jam)
10. Reject sport in key vote to show religious respect (9)
genuflect –  sport = FUN rev. in key (of) G + vote = ELECT
11. Grow this plant in the tropics – the Scots cannot (5)
canna – a dd, one being a pretty herb of tropical origin, which I was unfamiliar with but that goes for most plants I’m afraid
12. These bets are pitched a bit high (7)
trebles –  a cd, trebles being schoolboy voices and also a type of bet. Not to mention a type of drink, too..
13. Noted factor in chemical test substance (7)
reagent –  a note, RE as in doh, mi etc + AGENT, a factor.
14. American cigarette end with prime tar rating (5)
abuse –  prime tar = AB (able-bodied seaman) + US + (cigarett)E. Rating someone, in the sense of ranting at or abusing, is a meaning I knew though it feels rather antique
15. Jobs for the boys, to stop mine running wild (8)
nepotism –  *(TO STOP MINE)
18. All told, twice (3,5)
sum total –  three times, really, since each component as well as the whole means the same
20. Expletive as heard before 9’s last part in opera (5)
ruddy –  a reference to the Gilbert & Sullivan opera Ruddigore, meant as a homophone but in fact the original title was Ruddygore
23. Sort of broker with an evil appearance (7)
unclean –  the broker is a pawnbroker, ie UNCLE, + AN. Is the def. a bit loose, perhaps?
25. Tooth powder manufacturer (7)
grinder –  a dd
26. Some climb Eiger to get a tan (5)
beige –  hidden in climb eiger
27. Sob brokenly – the city within a city is in darkness (9)
obscurity –  *(SOB) + city = UR in CITY. Also a bit loose, since the Ur presumably referred to no longer exists.. old should be in there somewhere
28. When the heat’s on – in tennis set, that is (8)
nineties –  IE in *(TENNIS). A reference to a hot day, as described using a former temperature scale named after a Mr Fahrenheit, m’Lud..
29. Scowling schoolboy (6)
beetle –  I struggled with this. Beetle-browed scowling I can follow but I still don’t understand the schoolboy bit. I wrote it in with some trepidation but it seems to be correct. on edit: a reference to one of the “& co” in Kipling’s “Stalky & Co.” Thanks to bigtone53. The character of Beetle is said to be partly based on Kipling himself.

Down
1. Pickled stuff for a miser (8)
tightwad –  pickled = drunk = TIGHT + WAD. Wad can be a verb, you couldn’t fire a musket without doing it… or it could be a noun here too I suppose, slang for money
2. Poem composed around Elizabeth the First (7)
rondeau –  *(AROUND + E). A poetic form I know nothing whatsoever about, even after reading the Wiki entry..
3. Splendid eastern sail to windward coming up, man (9)
effulgent –  E + LUFF rev., + GENT. To luff is to sail to windward, as all Hornblower fans will know. Effulgent is itself not a common word, so there may be some mutterings about that
5. Nothing improper about his subject, decreed Pope (14)
anthropologist –  I wrote this in happily enough, assuming it must some sort of literary reference involving Alexander Pope. But I haven’t found one yet.. on edit: bigtone53 is on fire in a literary sense, and points out that Pope’s poem Essay on Man says that.. sort of
6. Doctor the tea and get coffee? (5)
mocha –  doctor = MO + CHA = tea
7. Hams squatters live on (7)
hunkers –  hams = hunkers (apparently!) and one hunkers down on them, does one not? Slightly odd clue
8. Penthouse for thin couple, say (4-2)
lean-to –  sounds like “lean two.” Those of us that thought a penthouse was anything but, will be surprised to note (from Collins): “a shed built against a building, esp one that has a sloping roof”
9. Result of severing London borough’s traffic artery? (10,4)
Kensington Gore –  a jocular cd, referring to the two London streets of that name, formerly part of the Gore estate.
16. Depravity no bar to 22’s sanctimonious duet, somehow (9)
turpitude –  TUR(ban) + sanctimonious = PI + *(DUET). It’s always moral turpitude, for some reason..
17. Poet’s boast, heard in blank verse presumably (3-5)
eye-rhyme –  sounds like “I rhyme.” Words that look as if they should rhyme but in fact don’t, hence the need for it to be blank verse.. It turns up quite often – a search of TfTT found 60 responses.
19. You’ve got oil on tunic, clumsy! (7)
unction –  *(ON TUNIC). Unction is usually extreme… extreme unction being what you get when they don’t expect you to last the day out
21. “Yes, yes” say the Russians, “It’s awful – shocking artist!” (7)
Dadaist –  DA + DA + *(IT’S). One theory is that the term originates from da, da, which is yes, yes in the Romanian language as well as in Russian
22. Origin of the town hat (6)
turban –  T(he) + URBAN. Not sure I would equate turban and hat myself, but Collins says it’s OK
24. Bring into play, as river king, leading Thespian (5)
exert  –  river = EXE + R(ex) + T(hespian)

Author: JerryW

I love The Times crosswords..

48 comments on “Times Crossword June 11 2014 – Vintage Edition 30385”

          1. Just discovered that if you go to Club News on the Club site and scroll down to the 5th item – the 3rd qualifier is there in printable pdf format. Bit obscure if you ask me but then we’re all supposed to be so ingenious. Sooo – no need to answer my email Z but many thanks for the offer.
            1. I sent it anyway – didn’t read here first. The Times crossword championship: “to carry on an enterprise of great advantage, but no-one to know what it is”.
                  1. Alas that still doesn’t help those of us who can still access the club but not the newspaper.
  1. Beetle is one of the 3 schoolboy ‘heroes’ in Kipling’s Stalky and Co. Alexander Pope wrote ‘An Essay on Man’ which sums up Anthropology (sort of)

    Edited at 2014-06-11 07:31 am (UTC)

    1. thanks, bigtone.. I’m sure you are right in both cases. I’ll update the blog
    2. I thought there must me something specific and now you mention this I remember it, but ‘beetle’ and ‘bug’ were both general slang for schoolboy in my day.

      Spent far too long on this to go though it all in detail again now but it was only just about do-able as far as I was concerned. Didn’t get the Pope ref either and still can’t find TURKEY as a carpet though it’s not much of a stretch from ‘Turkish’ which is familiar. I think we need a mention of “KENSINGTON GORE” as stage-speak for fake blood in order to fully understand 9 and 20.

      On blog format, I think we reached a consensus that putting clues in the daily 15×15 blog is not worth the trouble, but it’s useful for the weekend prize puzzles when solvers have long forgotten the details and may not have a printout to refer to.

      Edited at 2014-06-11 07:42 am (UTC)

        1. In Hard Times Mr Bounderby tells us:

          ‘Now, you have heard a lot of talk about the work in our mills, no doubt. You have? Very good. I’ll state the fact of it to you. It’s the pleasantest work there is, and it’s the lightest work there is, and it’s the best- paid work there is. More than that, we couldn’t improve the mills themselves, unless we laid down Turkey carpets on the floors. Which we’re not a-going to do.’

          Funny how the image of the Victorian mills covered with Turkey carpet has stuck, so that was an easy clue for me.

          1. Thanks for that – interesting. The character I remember best from Bleak House is Phil Squod, on account of the way Dickens describes him as sidling diagonally across rooms.
  2. I always approach these old(ish) puzzles with some level of trepidation but this one was quite enjoyable. BEETLE went in because of the beetle-browed connection but I didn’t know the Kipling work (or the Pope one). Spent a while wondering if there was a town called Rilby for 22D. Didn’t know TURKEY/LEAN-TO/HUNKERS in all the senses required and was slightly confused by TAJ-MAHAL (both the hyphen and the arch reference). Couldn’t solve ABUSE before my time ran out, with the hold-up being trying to make sense of “prime”, which of course ended up being the least important word in the clue.
    1. I think the “prime” had its use in telling you to put the A(ble) S(eaman) at the front, rather than being the top rating for a sailor (which it may or may not be). I spent ages trying to work out where to put my butt. Suggestions on a postcard, please.
  3. What with Turkey (rather than Turkish) and beetle, and a bit of double duty thrown in at unclean. Not a lot to luff.

    To expand on Bigtone’s comment, in his Essay on Man, Pope wrote ‘The proper study of Mankind is Man’.

  4. This was an interesting experience. I found it very difficult, and couldn’t quite finish (four unsolved) despite spending nearly an hour on it. However it’s quite hard to put a finger on why this is. There are certainly some references I didn’t get (BEETLE and Ruddigore, for instance) but these didn’t actually prevent me from getting the answers. Some of the clues are a bit loose in a way you don’t tend to see in today’s puzzles, but the difference isn’t huge.
    I suspect I’m just very attuned to the modern Times style, and the only other puzzles I do regularly are Mephisto and Azed, which are also very Ximenean. It seems that even a slight variation throws me off dramatically. I should probably make a point of doing the Guardian a bit more regularly.
    I thought 5dn might be a reference to something Pope John Paul II said about anthropology in the 70s or 80s. Just from a quick google it seems he took a certain interest in the subject but it seems clear that I was barking up the wrong pope.

    Edited at 2014-06-11 08:12 am (UTC)

    1. I’ve been doing the Guardian fairly regularly for about a year now but my Ximenean upbringing still leaves me floundering at times. A baffling example recently was the use of “gobstopper” in the wordplay to indicate the letter g, which the solver was supposed to read as “gob’s topper”, i.e. the first letter in gob.
    2. I think simply knowing that the usual “rules” may not apply makes solving more difficult.
      1. I think you might be partly right. There were some clues that gave me a lot of trouble but turned out to be quite straightforward and not really any different to today’s clues.
        On the other hand there were clues like 4ac: it’s very simple but you wouldn’t see ‘involving’ used like this these days and that threw me off completely for a while. The definition is also rather loose.

        Edited at 2014-06-11 08:47 am (UTC)

      2. I think you’re exactly right, Jack. When that happens, you don’t trust your readings / interpretation / knowledge and even vocabulary enough to jump from one idea to another. I think that is the reason the solvers with non-Brit English backgrounds (excepting Kevin, who slways seems to get it) a tough go sometimes: not completely enough sure if its unknown slang or just a tricky cryptic to build something.
  5. I wouldn’t have guessed GORE in 1985 and I didn’t today. Just a little too local for this ‘Antipodean’. Still an enjoyable crossword. For what it’s worth, I think Jackkt has it right re the blog format.
    rednim

    1. I believe Kensington Gore is also luvvie slang for stage blood, though obviously taken from the street(s) of the same name.
  6. Do I take it that these old puzzles are only available on line to subscribers, or is it another example of the Irish edition not being the ‘proper’ Times? Could do with another puzzle now that I have finished the ridiculously easy Qualifier – completed in under ten minutes, first time I’ve ever managed that I think. A further gripe – I’m told there’s no room in the Irish edition for the daily Quick Cryptic, yet every day this week they’ve found space for the qualifying Sudoku puzzles. Irish people like crosswords too!
    1. The main Times site has the 1985 puzzle listed, as today’s cryptic. Can you get to that?
      On the Qualifier, I believe we are supposed to remain shtum on the time it takes us on the grounds that (especially with your time!) it might discourage slower solvers form entering, thus depriving the Times of several £15 entry fees. I take it you solved on paper – as you’ll see from local correspondence, access is by an arcane method that the Times wants to hide. Perhaps you have to know a special handshake.
    2. And as a postscript, the extra crossword doesn’t appear in the British version of the treeware Times either.
      1. Thanks for that. Unfortunately I can’t afford a subscription to the online paper. I apologise for saying how long I took on the Qualifier – I realised that I shouldn’t hint at any of the answers, but didn’t think the time would put anyone off! I’m not a particularly fast solver (about 40 minutes average) and surely anyone interested in entering the Championship would be a regular solver and a heck of a lot quicker than I am!
  7. I enjoyed this today, though I bet I didn’t feel the same way back in 1985, when I would have been very pleased just to get anywhere near completing the daily puzzle at all, never mind doing it quickly or with complete understanding. This feels like at least a two pint puzzle for my younger self.

    As far as the obscure bits go, I think that by the mid-80s the style had reached a point where the language of the clues isn’t that different to one you might see today, but the expected knowledge of solvers remained rooted in an earlier age (I can’t find a citation right now, but I think an early crossword editor summed it up by saying the Times puzzle should be easily accessible to a senior civil servant i.e. a man who’d been to public school and studied an arts degree at an appropriate university; I don’t think “diversity” was a word much used in his circles). I got 29ac fairly quickly, but there again, I went to a school where Stalky & Co. was less a historical curiosity and more a manual for contemporary living.

    P.S. My 2d is that I don’t think we need the clues reproduced for daily puzzles. I’d have thought most people come here soon after solving, when the puzzle is still fresh in the mind or physically available, and personally I find this format much harder to read.

    1. Nearly every knows Diversity these days as they won Britain’s Got Talent.

      Ulaca

    2. As I mentioned earlier, I don’t think the level of obscurity in this puzzle was much greater than today’s (névé anyone?). I did think that it was quite noticeably looser than today’s puzzles, which threw me a few times. As Jack points out though, I may have been more troubled by the fact that I expected it to be difficult than anything else.
  8. As it happens, the third member of the Stalky & Co team was M’Turk, always referred to amongst themselves as Turkey. Given the positioning of Beetle and Turkey in the grid, are we in NINA country? I will look at this again now!
  9. … to finish this in the short time I allowed myself between blogging 68 and cutting the grass before visitors turn up. After 30 minutes I had all but HUNKERS (still don’t quite see that), GENUFLECT and EFFULGENT, having just twigged TIGHTWAD. Quite a tricky puzzle, with some rather loose definitions (TAJ MAHAL?) and some splendid clues. Well blogged Jerry, glad I was off senior duty today.
  10. I normally have problems with these vintage crosswords but this one was the exception. I must have done it before but, like Jerry, have no recollection of doing so. Smooth going from start to finish – mainly because I knew all the literary references. I’ve reread Stalky quite recently, having come across a nice second-hand copy in my local charity shop. 22 minutes. Ann
  11. Well, I couldn’t finish this, lacking the requisite knowledge of BEETLE, TURKEY, HUNKERS, and ABUSE. I also have RONDEAU incomplete, but I don’t lack that knowledge, I just missed that one. Otherwise this one was much different and far more familiar than the older ones they’ve thrown in here, where I was entirely at sea. Thanks for posting the qualifier mohn2, I appreciate it, and I’ll give it a whirl. Regards.
  12. This one beat me. TURKEY and BEETLE I would never have got in a million years (I put in TUFTED for 1ac, but didn’t hold out much hope). Likewise HUNKERS.

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