Times cryptic 24134

Author   petebiddlecombePosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Solving time 25:08

Really struggled with this one, though partly through my own stupidity. Slowest were parts of the SW and NE corners. SW fell first – order roughly 27, 25, 12, 17, 18, 22. NE was 8, 5A, 6. Main stumbling blocks: couldn’t see WICKLOW from W???L??, which should be a fair bet, and couldn’t see “something that can bounce” as CHEQUE. And SLANDER=mud at 22D would have helped a lot too.

No complaints – it was hard but fair. Having four Q’s, two checked, was an interesting touch – ditto the various footballing surfaces.

Now that I’ve calmed down a bit from about 15 minutes of quite serious panic about whether I’d finish the puzzle, I can appreciate how good it is. This may sound a bit creepy when I’ve said I know who the setter is, so I’m glad others are saying so too. As an example, look at the number of times an apparent phrase in the clue needs to be broken up, either to get the def/wordplay break or to understand the wordplay properly.

Across
1 PI(QUA)NT
5 WICK=strip in light (i.e. candle),LOW=blue. In my relief at solving this at last, I failed to correctly identify the definition. I thought it was “Irish county”, but thanks to a setter tip-off, I see that it’s actually “Irish county team”, and relates to a side representing Wicklow Gaelic Athletic Association.
9 S,WIN(BURN=brand)NE
10 EDGAR – D in rev. of rage
11 B.A.’S,QUE(COUNT=total)RY
13 ANEMONES – “no men” in sea=main, all rev. My first answer
15 F.(RAP),P.E. – frappé, from memory is with crushed ice
17 R.A.F.F,I,A – “defender on high” was very good.
19 SK(YD.)IVED
22 QUEEN(SLANDER)S – the def. here being just “State’s inhabitants”
25 INT(W)O
26 SLEEPOVER = (peer loves)* – my second answer after rejecting ‘oversleep’, which led to a few crossing downs and restored some hope.
27 MID=dim rev.,WE(S)T
28 D.A.,TASET=state*
 
Down
1 POST = three defs
2 QUI,B(i)BLE – “Parisian who” = qui, “good work” = Bible, by way of “(the) good book”
3 ABBES – ‘ebb’ inside SA=sex appeal=”it”, all rev.
4 TO(RT)URED
5 WREN,CH – “prize” needs to be a verb here
6 CHEQUE,RED
7 LIGHT,UP=at college
8 WORRY BEADS – cryptic def.
12 WAR(RE,QU,i.e.)M – QU = “one third quartz” – def. is “Composition” – by Benjamin Britten, most famously
14 ONION DOME – this is ONE “belting round” (mood in)*
16 SKINHEAD = (hid snake)*
18 FRE(T,T)ED – time = T so times = TT
20 VIS-A-VIS(a)
21 C(LOSE)T – secret being an adjective here
23 E(X,P)AT

47 comments on “Times cryptic 24134”

  1. Yet another puzzle of two halves for me. Having completed the whole of the RH in just under 15 minutes I must have spent another 30 minutes struggling through the rest of it. If only I could have spotted BASQUE and QUEENS much sooner to go with the COUNTRY and LANDER I had in place it might have been a different story.
  2. Pleased to see it wasn’t just me who struggled. Started in SE and worked diagonally upwards, assisted by QUEENSLANDERS; a rare example of interstate cooperation. Genuinely surprised and delighted by most clues. Thought some, FRETTED (as in roof tiles) and WORRY BEADS (as in electrician stomping over aforesaid), related directly to my day (must make appointment with psychoanalist).

    Frappe always reminds me of the book Bear Dinkum (From Amazon – Humourous story: bear performs a combination of ballet with true Aussie culture: ballet frappe) which involves a Billy Elliotesque Koala bear and a cricket bat. I didn’t fully appreciate PIQUANT until I arrived here, and I think it gets my COD.

    Is the setter having a go at us with quibbles over War Requiem? I seem to recall some discussion in these pages when Peter Pears appeared not long ago. Could just be my paranoia again.

    1. You have to remember that the puzzles are written a long time before they appear – 3-6 months seems to be typical. So any reaction to comments here would take a long time to appear. And we shouldn’t overestimate our importance – we’re just one group of solvers. Except for the generous tribute in 23,770 when a setter put most of our then bloggers’ names into the grid, I can’t remember any setters talking specifically to us. But now I see “post” and “quibble” and start to wonder a bit!
      2. Just noticed this reference. very cool. I always knew I had a special affinity to Sri Lanka.
  3. 26 mins, I took a long time to get started on this one but enjoyed it greatly and admire it even more in retrospect. Hard to choose a COD from so many good clues, but 18D perhaps just clinches it. I can’t count more than three link-words in the entire crossword, which is a sign of really tight cluing (I take CLOSET in 21D to be a verb) – and one of those is the artfully concealed ‘for’ in 24D. Thank you, setter.

    Tom B.

    1. You can read this as:
      “(In court, (fail to keep)) = secret” – closet = adjective, or
      “(In court, fail) = to keep secret” – closet = verb

      – I reckon both work perfectly well.

  4. Quite the toughest for weeks, and would never have solved it without on-line assistance. Probably 20 min before first answer (sleepover), and contemplating my first ever total blank. Another long hiatus with nothing in the SW, then “closet” pried it open. Probably 90 min in total.
  5. A really first rate puzzle with gem after gem and not even a hint of a questionable reference. By Anax perhaps? There are just too many pieces of excellence to mention them all but I laughed out loud at “no men” in 13A, thought “defender on high” at 17A brilliant, loved “youth unlocked” at 16D and the use of “team” in 5A took me ages to fathom. Thank you setter for 35 minutes of real fun.

    Just a quick note on yesterday’s puzzle. PHI and MIS carried the day. I’m quietly choughed!

      1. Anax has already said “not me” by e-mail from sunny Italy (sunny now that he’s due to come home, wet before that apparently).
  6. I took ages with this (over an hour) and finally resorted to an aid to get 6d, since I could only think of CHERRY RED to fit and wondered if the word division had been omitted. At that point I didn’t know for sure that the second word of 11a was COUNTRY, though I thought it was likely and I wasn’t even sure the C from WICKLOW was correct since I couldn’t work out the wordplay to that answer.
    It was one of those puzzles where I came up with answers long before I was sure they were right.
    1 across is COD for me. It’s by far the neatest of a set of very deceptive clues.
  7. why do we get such a difficult puzzle out of the blue? Trying to solve this was a nightmare and totally dispiriting. I managed less than half of these, and never got going at all. I’m giving up….

    By the way what’s the QUA in 1a?

      1. As in Latin “sine qua non”? Thought that was “which” – but it is a long long time since I did Latin. Haven’t seen QUA in a Times Crossword in 10 years(someone will gainsay me)….
        1. You’re right, it’s basically the same ‘qua’ as in ‘sine qua non’, but used as an adverb rather than a relative pronoun. Old-fashioned/academic these days – but it’s tough to cram 4 Qs into a grid, and there are plenty of compensating modern words in the SE corner. Please don’t be discouraged and come back fighting tomorrow…

          Tom B.

    2. The policy of the Times is supposed to be that you could meet a very easy or very hard puzzle on any day of the week. The disadvantage is that you don’t know when the stinkers or doddles are coming. The advantage is that newer solvers can pick up any Times puzzle and know that they may have a chance of finishing it, and older ones can pick up any puzzle and know that it may challenge them.

      I’d ask you not to feel discouraged by struggling with one of the toughest 5% or so of Times puzzles, but review the answers with the help of the blog, and learn some crafty stuff to watch out for in future.

      QUA in 1A means “in the capacity of”, or in one word, “as”. Here’s the newest OED citation, where you can happily replace qua with as: 1993 Guardian 21 Aug. (Weekend Suppl.) 6/2 Philip Larkin was unquestionably..better loved, qua poet, than John Betjeman, who was loved also for his charm.

      This kind of use of ‘qua’ does seem like intellectual showing-off these days.

      Edited at 2009-01-28 12:54 pm (UTC)

      1. BW: “Spode, qua menace… is it qua?”

        J: “Yes, sir. Quite correct.”

        BW: “I thought so. Well, Spode, qua menace, is a spent egg.”

        (Conversation between Bertie Wooster and Jeeves in The Code of the Woosters by P.G. Wodehouse.)

    3. QUA means “in the capacity of” from the Latin

      This level of difficulty should be the opposite end of a normal distribution to the very easy puzzle that people set their best personal times on. Just as new setters need those easy puzzles so old hands need real testers like this one.

      Whatever you do, don’t give up. Learn from this one by really analysing the clues and answers.

      1. I’m very discouraged… even with the explanations. One last q before I ceremonially shred the paper, jump on it and then BURN it… 5d – I thought prize was spelt PRISE….

        Never again…..

        1. Collins and Concise Oxford give PRIZE as a variant of PRISE. COED says it’s a US spelling, but Collins just says “variant”.
    4. Totally agree. A very dispiriting afternoon,only 7 clues solved. I repeat my request to the Times for an indication of the difficulty of puzzles. To me this was masterclass.
  8. 22:35 .. So many ticks, double-ticks and triple-ticks alongside clues that it would be quicker to mention those not deserving of mention. Which are very few indeed. I had scribbled “3 Qs and no Quibbles” across the top, though it is, of course as Peter says – 4 Qs.

    If you held me down and tickled me with a haddock until I plumped for a clue of the day, I’d pick one that might be overlooked – the ingeniously worked 24d GROT. Really good initial letter clues are rare, doubly so when the last element is half of an idiomatic pairing, the other half of which is the definition, and all in a neat surface. That’s classy.

    Q-0 (or 4), E-9.5, D-9.5 .. COD 24d

  9. Dumb dumb dumb mistake – wrote in LONGISLANDERS for 22 and that was is, completely empty corner. Wondered for a moment if every answer was going to have a Q.

    Must read newly-acquired Tim Moorey’s book more carefully.

      1. I was hoping to get workers comp with this, I’m going to have to resort to oboists vas deferens, trombonist’s glans or flautist’s taint.
  10. Thoroughly enjoyable and a brilliantly clued crossword. I think my brain would melt though if I had to cope with ones this hard on a regular basis. The Jimbo section (SW) had me fairly beaten and I had to resort to Onelook. No complaints though – everything perfectly fair. 5a was my first in and I thought nothing would be able to top it. I’m not so sure now.

    Excellent work setter.

  11. I’m interested to see Peter in his edited commentary talking about his 15 minutes of panic. I’m sure we all get these (made more acute if one is blogging the puzzle) and I wondered if it would help new solvers to know what we do to counteract them.

    Today mine came as I contemplated the SW corner and simply couldn’t make head nor tail of any of it. My technique at this point is to step back, take a complete rest for a couple of moments to clear my head, and then pick a strategic clue. In this case 12D.

    I then list the words of the clue vertically to break up the phrases and consider each word on its own. I decide on a definition to experiment with, in this instance “composition” seems obvious, and then attempt to “translate” the bits. Well, “about”=re; “one third quartz” after “re” is either “qu” or “ar” and “that is” is ie. Ah-“re-qu-ie” must be “requiem” and I have a breakthrough. Try the technique on 24D where it works very well.

    I hope that helps. Any other tips from experienced hands?

    1. Thanks for that, dorsetjimbo. I never thought of writing vertically. Will try it next time I’m stuck.
      ps I only cottoned on late yesterday to you being the blogger under stress. Well trepidated!
    2. Vertical listing sounds like a good trick. There are various bits of advice I dish out to others, but promptly forget when stuck myself. One is that most definitions will be the first or last one or two words in the clue – four possibilities, one or two of which are often clearly not possible. Even in this tough puzzle, 70% of clues matched this. Another is to look for multi-word phrases and deliberately break them up.
      Any kind of short distraction can help to get away from your current wrong ideas – checking the remaining answers, making a fresh cup of tea, whatever.
  12. Usually I set myself a deadline of 30 minutes by which time I hope to be struggling over only 5 clues or less. Today I was looking at 17 unanswered clues after 30 minutes, virtually all on the left hand side.

    However the clues that I had solved had been so well crafted and satisfying that I felt the urge to persevere and finally cracked the whole thing in just over the hour without resorting to any additional solving tools.

    Very enjoyable. I particularly liked 13a, 27a, 3d and 6d.

  13. I’m glad others found this challenging. I failed dismally and gave up after 90 mins. Of the ones I did get I enjoyed 20d the most. I did get stuck on deciding if 26a was sleepover or oversleep.
    Shall now look at the answers and the wordplay above. It will seem so obvious then….
    (Many thanks for the blog – would get nowhere without it)
    Fran L-P
  14. Like (many?) others, I entered answers without understanding the wordplay. It is a miracle that I got them all right apparently. Thanks to Peter and others, I now understand and commend all the clues except one, namely 5 A. I cannot accept that it is reasonable to regard WICK and “strip in light” as synonymous, for, most of the time, the wick is unlit. Am I missing something?
    2. I think if you want to quibble about 5A it would be the obscurity of the team. I had an uncle from Waterford and had a vague memory that Wicklow had played them at rugby so I got the right idea but for the wrong reasons!
    3. I should probably have written more about this one. A “light” is a means of ignition or illumination – such as a candle, and a wick is ‘a strip of porous material up which liquid fuel is drawn by capillary action ….’ in the Concise Oxford.
  15. The Irish county teams in the GAA context are quite similar to county cricket teams in England so the counties would be known as teams to a certain extent anyway. Every county participates in either (Gaelic) football or hurling or both.

    Absolute belter of a puzzle.

  16. Very enjoyable, took about an hour. Congrats to the setter who seemed to craft almost every clue in some devilish way. Non UKers like me probably had the same problem with GROT (never heard of it) and WAR REQUIEM (thinking it had to be DAS, not WAR, because we’re not at all familiar with Mr. Britten) but the wordplay led you to the answers. My last 2 entries, likle others, were in the tough SW area, the crossing RAFFIA and FRETTED. My COD’s were VIS-A-VIS and ONION DOME, but many of the rest are great as well. Thanks. Regards everybody.
  17. Like most, I found this really hard but fair; one of those puzzles that affords more pleasure to the logician than the casual wordsmith. Were those despairing voices in earnest? I felt quite upset!
  19. Even with online help, I only got about a dozen of those, so I suppose I’ll just have to chalk this one down to experience. I’m relieved to hear that the general consensus is that it was a bit of a toughy.

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