Times Cryptic Jumbo 1724 (Saturday 5th April 2025)

14 comments on “Times Cryptic Jumbo 1724 (Saturday 5th April 2025)”

1. I never figured out how SEMITONE, SHOWER CURTAIN, & GRENADA worked. PORBEAGLE was my LOI; finally remembered it. Which was lucky, since POR could be PUR depending on one’s pronunciation of ‘poor’. I’m almost sure we’ve had ‘id’ for the fish before. The setter is fond of initial/final letters, either deleting them or deleting what’s between them: 6, 58, 14, 27, 49, 50, 52,

   1. I wondered if we’d had ‘id’ before but couldn’t remember seeing it and it’s surely impossible to search in the archive.

      1. I have no specific memories, but (as with ‘ide’) I can’t imagine seeing the word anywhere else but here.

2. Reasonably straightforward but a silly typo: I managed to write SUMERSAULTS.
   Thanks for explaining SEMITONE, I had no idea.
   Your experience with CHESTER/CHELSEA matches mine exactly.
   I don’t think much of DIVISION as an anagram indicator.

   1. I checked a thesaurus re ‘division’ and thought ‘allotment’ and ‘distribution’ had it covered better than many an anagrind we are presented with.

   2. But is it meant to be an anagram? DIVISION OF LABOUR – ie if you divide the word labour – you get LAB OUR. It’s the wrong word order, but it’s still the two words – our lab – that we’re looking for?

      1. That’s an interesting take, but it would be highly unusual for a crossword cue to work that way, so I think the anagram route is the better one. As mentioned in my reply to keriothe I think ‘division’ is fine as an anagrind.

         1. FWIW, I too took the clue for 13A to mean you divide LAB OUR rather than an anagram.

            1. Yes, but given this is a reverse type clue, that gives LAB OUR rather then OUR LAB. If that were the intention I think something else would be needed in the clue to assemble the components in the correct order.

               1. Yes. I thought the clue deficient in that respect, but I’m not convinced by “division of” as an anagram indicator either.

      2. Ah yes, thank you. Personally I prefer this explanation. I take jackkt’s point about the order but if you divide something into two bits, you have two bits. The order doesn’t really matter. And I don’t like ‘division’ as an anagram indicator.

3. About 38 1/2 minutes for me so around or a little faster than average. LOI NECKLACE, which made me smile. I never managed to parse SEMITONE so thanks for that. I had to check ID was a valid variation of IDE, but I think I’ve seen it elsewhere in a Mephisto or MCS. Along with NECKLACE, I liked TABLE SALT, NEUTRAL and SPLASH OUT. I was a bit mystified by the surface meaning of 33D, though. Thanks Jackkt and setter.

4. In 13a, I thought LABOUR referred to childbirth (a method of production).

5. Sorry, late to the party! Looking back at my notes, we also had trouble with Semitone and Hasid. Hated Porbeagle and felt Medicine Hat was stupidly obscure.

   But admiration for Mustang (backward gnats) and smiles for Shower Curtain.

   Back to Semitone … we parsed this as Semi (50/50) To NE (thinking it might be a base in a baseball diamond) which was pretty feeble.

   Your explanation is better … but I’ve never heard of “base e” in all the years I took Maths O-level, two A-levels and a maths degree!

   Natural logs are based on e but I’ve never heard of e described as a base. Maybe an Americanism? Harrumph!

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