I completed this thing in 18′ 19″, only 1.36 Gilhams, and I might have been even closer had I spelled the Mexican food with the right letter at the end making 27ac easy. Here’s how it all works
Across
1 ARAUCARIA The monkey puzzle tree when it isn’t being Rev John. The weird mix of plants – carap is a sort of mahogany –
unlikely to be seen together on any sane planet, signals that they are just there for the letters, in this case the middle
triplets, which helpfully need no rearranging.
6 SCUFF S(on) + CUFF gives you “scrape”. Expect to see this one soon in the Quickie
9 RADAR Equipment is the rather generic definition. RADA is the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (that genus of players).to
which you add R(ight)
10 TOSCANINI The Times has a relatively small pantheon of conductors, and this one appears when the setter needs 9
letters ending I TOSCA the Puccini opera, IN for “popular” wrapped in, N(orthern) I(reland)
11 A MONTH OF SUNDAYS The proverbial unconscionably long period of time. I could’t read this as anything other than a
cryptic definition
13 GRIMSHAW John Atkinson of that ilk. If you run the name through a thesaurus, you might be lucky enough to get “black
wood” from the two syllables. His pictures, all 200 of them, look like this:
14 ANGOLA The country. Place A LOG reversed after A N(ew)
16 NAUTCH Possibly an unfamiliar word to some, it just means “dance” in several North Indian languages, Wiki says, rather
coyly “the Nautch girls performed Nautches for the pleasure of men.” Derive it from NUT – “fanatic” holding A and
followed by the full range of taps, i.e. Hot and Cold. What, no mixer?
18 DICTATOR I did not know the extraordinary Roman magistrate (verbatim from Chambers) definition, but the wordplay
reverses ROT AT CID
21 POLITICAL ASYLUM is precisely protection from harmful state, and CAPITALISM YOU’LL provides the necessary anagram
fodder signalled by he need to reform.
23 APPALLING “Very bad” given by P(age) ALL (entirely) wrapped in APING (copying)
25 AVAIL On line, this clue has a tag after it, viz – bit fairer I think (5), which I would suggest is an undeleted comment from
our esteemed editor: you see he does care about our well-being! The actual clue has “benefit” as the one-word
definition,derived from TRAVAIL (labour) without T(ons) and R(ight)
26 KNOWN A soundalike clue, slightly flawed, I think, as the 3 o’clock (ninth hour) church service is NONES and the S is not
silent. Am I missing something?
27 MANDATORY “Essential” is the adequate definition. Enclose DAT (shortened date) and O(ther) R(anks) “men” in MANY “lots”
Down
1 ATRIA An atrium, of which this is the plural, is the central courtyard in a Roman house. A TRIAL is “terminated” with early
implicit
2 AUDIOVISUAL A rather gimme anagram, both in the odd looking fodder, I AVOID USUAL and the indicator “arrangement”
3 CARITAS is one of the three Christian virtues, in Latin fides, spes, caritas, faith, hope and charity, more commonly
translated these days as “love”. A shortened legal action, CAS(e) encloses the lovely RITA, meter maid
4 RATIONAL Defined as “clearly thinking.”Of a whole age group” gives GENERATIONAL, remove the GEN (info – a neat
abbreviation to match GENeral Information) and the E(cstasy)
5 ASSIST Spot the Roman numerals in CLASSICIST and remove all but one of the I’s. Try not to remember that, in medieval
Roman, S was 7 or 70, A was 50 or 500, and T was 160, or you won’t have anything to go into the grid.
6 SHANNON. The Shan are indigenous to adjacent parts of Burma, China, Laos and Thailand. If I knew this, I had forgotten,
but I know the River Shannon well enough so the guess is a fairly confident one, given the NO N(ame) ending and the
crossing letters. “River” must be separated from “people” before solving. Burma is currently Myanmar. It’ll never catch on.
7 UNI The familiar abbreviation for a place of academic study, and the Student UNION without ON for “working”
8 FAIR’S FAIR “Just” twice as given, with S(erve) in between. “Play the game as a parallel admonition. I say old chap.
12 AMONTILLADO for those who like their sherry dry-ish. Slot the pieces together as given: AM ON (working, again) TILL
(up to) A DO (party)
13 GANGPLANK The Royal Yacht Britannia is currently parked in Edinburgh, so the clue has a certain appositeness. GANG is
Scottish for go or proceed, scheme gives PLAN and add the K(ing) for the means of access
15 MILLIGAN “I told you I was ill” Spike, original Goon. L(ogistics) in an anagram of MAILING
17 CATALAN Genitive of Catalonia formed from CAT(amaran) and our fellow, ALAN
19 TOSTADA Why I originally put TOSTADO I can’t imagine. TOSA is the dog, TAD “a little”, the whole a Mexican word for
toast, available in kit form from your local supermarket .
20 SCHISM Hows your geology? SCHIST is the rock, knock off the T and replace it with M(ountain) for “rift” Most often in use
to describe Church splits.when fides, spes, et caritas go out of the window
22 MOLLY both the Malone who wheeled her wheelbarrow through Dublin selling seafood alive-o and a tropical fish
24 PRO Take the M(inutes) away from a PROM(enade concert)
COD to SCHISM, a word first used by Wyclif in the absence of a suitable English equivalent.
On edit: just found the ODO has “none (also nones)”.
Edited at 2014-04-03 02:49 am (UTC)
Edited at 2014-04-03 06:50 am (UTC)
In 19d, anyone else bothered by “tad” being clued by “a little” rather than just “little”? No? Didn’t think so.
The great irony in this puzzle, surely, was 26ac!
There was far too much obscure GK in this one for my taste and one or two rather loose clues, so in all this was not as enjoyable experience.
The definition of RADAR simply as “equipment” I feel is not fit for purpose, particularly as the last checker is supplied by an obscure word at 3dn.
I never heard of the minor artist at 13ac. I got GRIM from wordplay and guessed SHAW as the most likely fit, though having checked later I remember meeting it as a wood or thicket in a puzzle not that long ago.
NAUTCH was completely unknown as was DICTATOR as ‘magistrate’. 25ac was hampered by what I take to be an error in the production process by which the clue appeared as “Labour giving out tons and right benefit (5) – bit fairer I think (5)”. This meant I needed all the checkers before I could be sure what was going on with it. There are far too many errors appearing in Times puzzles these days – and once again the link to the Quickie was broken with an incorrect url early this morning, though it has since been corrected. And whilst on the subject of Times inefficiency, I am still unable to check what’s in the facsimile version because at nearly 7:30 AM it still hadn’t rolled over from Wednesday’s edition. People have paid good money to read the paper in that format on their way to work and they are not receiving the service they signed up to.
“Nones”, and now its alternative NONE, are words I have only ever met in crossword puzzles and I had always assumed they would be pronounced “non-ay(s)” as I would say the Latin from which they are derived, so it came as something of a revelation to discover they are apparently pronounced to rhyme with “known” as confirmed by my SOED application.
As referred to above, I didn’t know CARITAS at 3dn. SHAN at 6dn and “schist” in the wordplay at 20dn were also unknowns. And at 19dn I knew neither dog nor Mexican dish.
By coincidence MILLIGAN appeared in near-as-dammit the same place in the grid of the ST puzzle on 9th March – a comedian I could never stand at any price.
Feeling grumpy and wondering what’s in store for my blog tomorrow.
Edited at 2014-04-03 06:28 am (UTC)
I learned many things from the puzzle and the blog today. And also, now, that there’s a person who didn’t like Spike!
They do it then, at 3PM
But nuns do nones at nine
Hope (Anon 86.132.108.216) that you’re not suffering from the smog.
Edited at 2014-04-03 07:45 am (UTC)
That alight
On Nelson’s hat
That make it white.
Milligan was a lot funnier than Ricky Gervais will ever be IMO.
I wonder what the bit unfairer clue looked like?
Edited at 2014-04-03 07:42 am (UTC)
Lots of obscure gk, some of which I got, others not. Didn’t know Grimshaw by name, but certainly a very atmospheric painter that I’ll look out for in future.
I can see why people don’t like Spike Milligan, but to me he was one of the 3 great geniuses of the 2nd half of the 20th Century who radically changed the direction of comedy in this country (Cook & Cleese since you ask).
But there again, I can’t appreciate Wodehouse (and God knows I’ve tried often enough)- he’s tiresome in the extreme.
All finished, but in lamentable time, mostly due to the unknowns (GRIMSHAW, CARITAS, SHAN, SCHIST, NAUTCH) or the only-vaguely-familiars (TOSA, none=service MOLLY=fish). Not a terribly satisfying solve.
A little obscurity is fine. A little looseness is forgivable. If I were Crossword Editor I would have simply rejected this offering outright.
ki, didn’t know NUATCH or CARITAS so a DNF in 20 minutes.
COD .. POLITICAL ASYLUM
Edited at 2014-04-03 09:15 am (UTC)
Unexpected difficulty Finally finished joy
I’ve never really got to grips with German but still derive great pleasure from it.
I keep a list of favourite German words, of which Schlimmbesserung is, and will likely always be, top. But I shall add your coinage with an asterisk.
I didn’t help myself by bunging in PAGANINNI in 10ac. My wordplay was PAG (opera – appropriately obscure for this setter), IN (popular), IN (in), NI (Northern Ireland). So my answer managed to ignore the fact that:
> Paganini only has one N
> He wasn’t a conductor
> The answer I put in the grid doesn’t even fit my invented wordplay
All in all quite impressively wrong, I thought.
Me, I rather liked the puzzle.
Today’s is a rare poor Times offering that borders on the unfair and I would have felt obliged, as z8 has done very well, to include a lot of explanation and that would have detracted from the fun.
My thanks by the way for all the kind comments (both on and off blog)
Edited at 2014-04-03 10:12 am (UTC)
Jimbo you b******d! You’ve nearly caused my wife to divorce me.
Its many years since I was caught by an April Fool and I completed the puzzle and read the blog in the smug security of being too wise to be tricked. I saw through Avril, The Red Arrows and laughed at the Pope.
However science is a major weakness for me and your blogs often contain little snippets of scientific facts. So, as both my wife and I love a barbeque and she eats only Flora, I asked her about Flora P-Oil. She had never heard of it but suggested we look in our supermarket during the shop we were about to undertake. Needless to say, no Oil so we went to Customer Services where they looked it up on their database.
No, they didn’t stock it but as luck would have it the Regional Buyer was in the shop – would we like to meet him. Well, why not. So they made us comfortable, gave us a complimentary coffee, and after about 10 minutes the buyer came to see us.
We told him about Flora P-Oil and he smiled.
Do you do the Times Crossword he asked! Yes, I said. Interesting blog today, he said, I expect you read it. Yes, I said beginning to feel the world closing in on me. Ah! He said – perhaps you didn’t notice that Flora P-Oil is an anagram or that dihydrogen monoxide – HOH – is water? My wife is still not speaking to me and I’m even now sticking pins into your effigy
Poor guy: really, who would have thought it possible!
Absolutely excellent blog (not taken in for a minute of course) but admired greatly the impeccable ingenuity.
I suspect that this is because of a virus on my computer and I am arranging for it to be resolved. Nevertheless, it would be helpful to know if anyone has has the same problem.
Thanks
Cozzielex
Other LJ blogs are reporting the same behaviour so I’m sure they’ll address it:
http://www.livejournal.com/support/see_request.bml?id=1741708
I was a bit sensitive to this as a few months ago I had a diversion problem and it WAS a virus.
Anyway thanks a lot.
cozzielex
As far as the extraneous “bit fairer I think” appearing at the end of the clue for 25ac in the paper, this is the second time that something like this has happened recently. When you add this to some incorrect grids/clues over the same period I think it is fair to say that our new editor hasn’t got off to the best of starts.
Edited at 2014-04-03 11:58 am (UTC)
The undeleted comment did add to my confusion, although I eventually saw which part of the clue was the clue, and figured it out.
I can see why some are grumpy about this, but I’m familiar with NAUTCH and CARITAS, and I guessed GRIMSHAW early on, so wasn’t troubled by those; but I agree with the complaints about the vague definition for RADAR. I’m also not convinced that 1a works since there are three hearts; I suppose it can be read as the heart of each one in turn, but I’m not mad about it.
On a positive note I liked the anagram at 21.
Almost didn’t get 6d because I thought they were called the Tai-shan, never heard them called Shan. Also almost didn’t get 16ac because I simply couldn’t believe that this most Indian of words is in the English dictionary. The spelling is also puzzling, it is pronounced natch with no hint of the u.
Nairobi Wallah
Memories of the Raj really fading fast if NAUTCH is thought to be “obscure” GK.
Put this down and wearily took it up too many times to count a timing. Some extraneous junk in the clueing of 25ac. To have one cock-up (down clues a few days ago) is unfortunate, to have two within two days looks like carelessness. Time to have look at the nuts and bolts? Mind you, after yesterday’s scientifically illiterate front page headline, not quite sure what to expect in The Times anymore. It’s not only the Crossword Editor who needs to get a grip.
Edited at 2014-04-03 06:05 pm (UTC)
I agree with most of the pejorative comments about this offering – a poor apology for a Times crossword. I also must confess to being a Spike fan. Hitler, my part in hus downfall is also a classic.
Edited at 2014-04-03 10:18 pm (UTC)
Admittedly I have an advantage with Atkinson Grimshaw as I’d been to the exhibition “Atkinson Grimshaw: Painter of Moonlight” at the Guildhall Art Gallery a couple of years ago; and I was born in Scarborough, which appears in many of his paintings, and where he rented a second home.
My compliments to the setter for an interesting and enjoyable puzzle. I sincerely hope the editor will continue to allow similar crosswords in future.
I emailed The Times about the fiasco on 1April, and included other gripes I have about the cavalier way in which the crossword enthusiast buyers of the paper are treated. Predictably, no response.