Times Cryptic from June 1973 – those were the days, my friends

Author   piquetPosted on Categories Other Crosswords
After yesterday’s stinker, I was hoping for a testing but solvable ‘normal’ puzzle to demonstrate my blogging skills (or lack of), so my hopes were dashed when I saw I’d landed another vintage jobbie as an online sub while the second Championship qualifier appears. In June 1973, Wizzard, Suzi Quattro and Slade topped the charts and Mrs K and I tied the knot. As she arrives 42 years later with the tea and toast (Wednesdays are her turn) I read 1a out loud and she says ‘Wimbledon, of course.’ This is a lady who likes Codeword and the Concise. So, I thought, maybe it’s not so bad. DYB.
About 45 minutes later, I’d finished. Seemed to me a cross between a TLS and a Club Monthly. I might have eventually finished without aids and much guesswork, but I resorted to Mr Google and Mr Wiki to be sure I was giving you no duff guff, even now there’s one or two you might shed more light on.

EDIT It seems this is not on The Times puzzles site, they are still linking to yesterday’s puzzle, so here’s a PDF link: http://www.harrystottle.com/1973.pdf

Across
1 WIMBLE – WIMBLE(DON), and a wimble is a tool for boring.
5 THOROUGH – Well a THOROUGHFARE is a through road.
9 SELL A PUP – To ‘gull’ is to fool someone, and ‘canis minor’ = small dog = pup. No stars involved.
10 EPOPEE – POPE (Alexander the poet) inside E E = Asian, eastern; def. poetry. My LOI, I didn’t know the word but derived it from wordplay and looked it up to check.
11 HANDCUFF – HAND = manual worker, CUFF = strike, def. to restrict use of arms. A fine, normal clue at last, my second one in after 1a.
12 SAURIA – I knew ‘The Lizard’ is a headland in Cornwall, but resisted the temptation to put this in; when I had all the checkers I realised we needed the Latin name for the order of lizards, the derivation of words like ‘dinosaur’ of course.
13 GADSHILL – G.K. needed here. Dickens lived at Gad’s Hill, and Gadshill was the spot for the ambush in Henry IV part II.
15 IDES – Apart from ‘The Ides of March’ I don’t quite understand why. Well, I can see how it relates to Caesar being stabbed, as Jackkt kindly points out below, so hence ‘bloody’ and ‘rent’ I suppose.
17 UTAH – Admitted as 45th state in 1896, so not that young, even in 1973. But before then Brigham Young had settled there and established the Mormon sect in what became Salt Lake City. So, the ‘Young’ state.
19 EDOMITES – (DOE)*, MITES = little ones; a tribe from Edom, south of Judah, in biblical times.
20 STRODE – ST = best man, saint, RODE = got a lift; def. footslogged.
21 ROCK-FALL – When the cradle rocks, the baby falls; stuff found at the cliff bottom.
22 JINGLE – Double definition; chap rescued by Mr Pickwick, and ‘clink’. I spent a while playing around with JAIL before realising clink was a noise.
23 IAMBUSES – 1 a.m. buses = past midnight public transport; poetic feet, remember ‘iambic pentameters’? Witty, indeed.
24 GREENING – This may be a literary reference, but I know it not. I can’t see another relevant word that fits.
25 ROTATE – ROT = nonsense, ATE so was not an empty stomach; def. waltz. Ugh.

Down
2 ITERATED – (TIE TRADE)*, def. repeated. A normal, easy one.
3 BULLDOGS – I well remember avoiding these chaps in bowler hats, but didn’t know they existed in the other place (that fenland village) as well; apparently they were abolished in 2003. Double definition, four legged animals but also the private University Police in Oxford and Cambridge for 174 years.
4 EXPOUNDED – EX ED = a former editor, ‘without’ POUND = note (in those days); def. explained.
5 TOP OF THE MORNING – Cryptic definition?
6 RAPHAEL – Double definition. Raphael was or is an Archangel, and another Raphael was a Renaissance painter, Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino.
7 UPPER-CUT – If the upper of your shoe were cut, it could leak; def. blow.
8 HIERARCH – HIER = French for yesterday, ARCH = bend over; def. the ruler.
14 LATE-COMER – Well if you come as a ghost, you’d be a ‘late’ comer I suppose. &lit.
15 IRISH JIG – Definition dance; an Irish jig would be found in a Belfast machine shop.
16 ENTRANCE – ‘IN’ = sign for an entrance, and synonym for spell; double definition.
17 USUFRUCT or USUFRUIT – In English, usufruct, in French, usufruit; a legal right to use something without destroying it. I don’t know which is the required answer here, I like ‘fruit’ better because it relates more to orchards, but ‘fruct’ is the Latin root.
18 AFFLUENT – AF = sporting body, turned up; FLUENT = ‘speak easy’, def. rich.
19 EIDOLON – Hidden in Jun(E I DO LON)don; def. spirit. One of those Greek ones.

Comments, no doubt!

23 comments on “Times Cryptic from June 1973 – those were the days, my friends”

  1. Nice blog , pip. I thought 24ac referred to vert(igo) + bud(dy) as in greening , describing what happens in spring!
    1. yes I thought vert = green buds = greening, didn’t spell it out enough perhaps, but still felt there must be more to it.
  2. Well, I did not notice that this was a 1973 puzzle until I read the blog but I thought it a bit strange while solving. Back in 1973 I was a second year student and would not have known what a usufruct was but I sure do now, having spent most of the 90s arguing with the French Tax Authorities (and subsequently the Courts) over whether one ‘worked’ taxwise. USUFRUCT appears to be the accepted answer on iPad, although as pip says, the concept indeed derives from owning a tree but allowing someone else to pick the fruit.
  3. 15ac Bloody rent due as result of stabbing.

    Too many unknowns or obscurities to be an enjoyable solve but there were one or two clues I thought were really good, like IDES and IAMBUSES which would not be out of place in a modern puzzle. Didn’t get SAURIA or understand GREENING.

    Edited at 2015-05-20 08:34 am (UTC)

  4. The link from the paper on line still takes you to yesterdays crossword – where did you access this?
  5. Weird!

    I normally take around 30-40 mins but this one went in in under ten minutes.

    Was it because it was more to my taste – the old literary style that doesn’t utilise all the labyrinthine trickery that is employed by today’s setters.

    Or perhaps because I must have done this one back in 1973 and it just seemed I knew it! I usually can’t even remember my kids names or what I had for …..

  6. I may well have done this one back in 1973, but I don’t remember USUFRUCT, and on this occasion overlooked the past tense of 20 and put STRIDE – ok with the cryptic, wrong with the definition and in the greater scheme of things.
    With GREENING, I satisfied myself (almost) that vertigo also causes greening, as in about the gills, but “vert I go” is much cleverer and probably righter.
    A pleasant and rather nostalgic diversion.
  7. I’m fairly sure I didn’t tackle this one back in 1973 given that I wasn’t around until 6 months afterwards!

    I enjoyed it more than I expected for an old puzzle, but when I got to a point with 6 left at the top I didn’t persevere knowing that I would never complete it without the GK. I’d worked out that 12A referred to The Lizard but didn’t know SAURIA. I didn’t know GADSHILL in either sense.

    It does make me thankful that today’s puzzles are not part crossword, part GK quiz.

  8. Help! Can’t remember how to access the qualifier puzzle. Which buttons do I press?
  9. Looks as if there is a link to a pdf version under Latest News on the Crossword Club site…
  10. As Pip suggests, once you see the date of these puzzles, it seems to work best if you tell yourself it’s a TLS puzzle, and just accept that you may well not understand half of what’s going on. Very hard to enjoy these if you’re a solver who is irretrievably accustomed to the modern style; which I suppose must include me, since I was 6 when this was first published, and not enough of a child prodigy to be having a crack at the Times before heading off to school.

    Still, alia tempora alii mores (the sort of phrase which every Times solver would doubtless have been expected to use regularly when they weren’t otherwise occupied dealing with puzzles like this). Always fascinating to see these reminders of a different age.

  11. As it has such a TLS feel, is this a reference to the Will Wimble in Addison’s Sir Roger de Coverley essays?
  12. I rather enjoyed this, doing what I coukd an then filling in the blanks with a healthy dose of internet. The Latter Day Saint clue was very ecomically done, I thought.
  13. I solved about 10 of these and then threw in the towel. Too ephemeral for me, I suppose. Regards to all.
  14. Gave up with about half completed as not really in the mood after a busy day trying to erect various IKEA items. USUFRUCT came readily from my 1960’s legal studies, soon to be abandoned. I believe it was around 1973 that I completed my first Times Cryptic so Father Time is clearly taking his toll on my brain. I do recall escaping from an Oxford pub via a window in the Gents when the Bulldogs came calling ( I was somewhat slimmer in the late 60’s).

    Edited at 2015-05-20 04:29 pm (UTC)

  15. 1973 is before I was born but I quite enjoyed this, around 20 minutes with a bit of checking stuff up on Google.

    “Look, in this place ran Cassius’ dagger through.
    See what a rent the envious Casca made…”

    I think “the bloody rent was due” was my favourite joke in this quite witty antiquity.

    Edited at 2015-05-20 06:18 pm (UTC)

  16. 6:46 for me after a slow start – failing to solve any of the first six clues at a first reading! I eventually got going, but for some reason missed the easy AFFLUENT first time through (despite considering AF as a possible start), which would have prevented me from stupidly bunging in ROCK-FACE at 21ac because at the time it was the only thing I could think of that fitted.

    I must have solved it back in 1973; but I don’t think that gave me too much of an advantage, and it’s nice to finish in < 1/2 x Magoo :-).

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