Times Cryptic (Number 24150)

Author   foggywebPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Time: 31 minutes
An enjoyable puzzle with some fun clues. There were a few words that I wasn’t familiar with: LEVY,JIM-JAMS,TULLE.

Across

9 W(HEAT)EAR – this was the last answer in for me, I couldn’t see how it worked.
10 DIM[e],SUM
11 FACET,OF,ACE – I didn’t spot the wordplay at first. I was chatting to my four-year-old nephew about Batman yesterday. He told me that his favourite baddie was Toothpaste – it took me a while to realise he meant Two-Face.
13 ALTO – hidden word.
14 LEVY – to levy is to conscript troops for service (I didn’t know this meaning).
15 SIN(KORSW)IM – MINIS reversed round anagram of WORKS.
21 STAB = BATS reversed.
23 A,TT,HE,READY
25 B,LOTTO
28 P(EERGYN)T – anagram of ENERGY in PT (physical training).
29 ER(RAT)A

Down

2 YO-HEAVE-HO – anagram of HOOEY+HAVE.
3 TR(AGED)Y
5 SY,RIA – reverse of AIR,YS (sounds like wise).
7 JIM-JAMS – I didn’t know the state of excitement meaning of jim-jams.
8 COUNT – CUT (chop) containing ON regularly. To cut no ice means to count for nothing. Odd to have CUT in the clue and in the answer.
12 OBSERVATORY – anagram of BOY+OVER+STAR.
19 LO,BST,E,R – BST=British Summer Time.
20 W,H(THE)ER – W=with,HER=the woman.
22 T(ULL)E – (H)ULL inside T(H)E – this took a fair amount of head-scratching. Tulle is a net fabric of silk.
24 TAC(1)T

32 comments on “Times Cryptic (Number 24150)”

  1. 26 Min. Still not sure about 8 Dn. AHA yes I have spotted it: “on” distributed in “cut”. And 22 Dn “tulle” being a net fabric. Somehow derived from Thule?
  2. It’s (H)ULL inside T(H)E – last in for me. 16 mins, much earlier in the morning than usual.

    Tom B.

  3. This was a lively one and I started off really well but, to pinch Ross’s comment, then the wheels came off. I became bogged down with odd missing words in every quarter and struggled to finish it without recourse to aids. Eventually I completed it in 56 minutes but still have three not fully explained. I’ll hold fire on those for the moment as they’ll probably come to me if I go away and come back to them later.
    1. Right, I’ve worked them all out now. FTR the ones in question were 11,26 and 20d. At 20d I couldn’t see the definition.

      like Peter, JIM-JAMS was new to me as “state of excitement”, also LEVY as “enlisted troops”. I can’t make up my mind whether 5d is very clever or a bit naughty.

  4. 9:09 – not a trivial Monday puzzle by any means. Jim-jams = state of excitement was new to me, but couldn’t really be anything else.
    1. And you told me Mondays werent easier!
      i agree not trivial by any means
      an enjoyable test!
  5. A similar experience for me. Blanks all over the place. Some easy clues and some which only seemed so in hindsight. Had to go through the comedy routine at 5D “Why is YS wise?” before I got it. The other levy was also new to me. COD 11A.
  6. About 25 minutes on the train to London (still on it). Tulle as well as the other senses of levy and jimjams new to me. Some interesting touches here and there, a nice Monday puzzle.
  7. One or two curious clues but I really liked this puzzle which I found creative, interesting, & a good start to the week..
  8. 17:04 .. Thoroughly enjoyed this. And I now have ‘Into the Mystic’ stuck in my head.

    Q-0, E-8.5, D-7 .. COD 1a MYSTIC (quality corn)

    1. Quirky but enjoyable I thought. A few difficult ones, but I got there in the end without aids so it can’t have been too tough. About 35 minutes.bc
  9. People seem to have found this straightforward. Not me. It took me an hour and ten minutes to finish, the NW corner being the most recalcitrant. I was convinced 9 was a double definition with the answer ending in COAT. TULLE, BLOTTO and JIM-JAMS also took me a long time to get.
    In the end it was a very satisfying puzzle to finish, with some excellent clues throughout. Only a few comments above on the quality of the clues. I feel the compiler deserves more than this. 1,9, 11, 18, 23, 26, 2d, 4, 6, 7, 19, 22 were all very well crafted. and there’s not a weak clue anywhere. Too many good’uns to pick a COD.
    1. You’re right about the quality of the clues. The wordplay for 9 has been used before but I think it allows for enough wordings to keep on entertaining and puzzling.
  10. At around 30 minutes, this was on the easyish side for me, apart from 8d / 22d which gave me no end of grief. 21 across I didn’t get until I’d solved 3d, which is probably arse-backwards, but worked fine for me! Lots of good clues, I thought (2d, 13ac, 9ac, 17d, 18ac), plus some that felt a little tried and tested (24d, for example, though I shouldn’t complain as they gave me a way into this!) For COD I’ll go with 13ac, which I thought was a lovely hidden word clue, with 18ac a close runner up.
  11. Completed in just under 30 minutes, but one wrong at 8d – COURT for COUNT. I thought ‘to court’ might be construed as ‘to carry on’, but, not surprisingly, I couldn’t see the wordplay.

    Like others, specific meanings of LEVY and JIMJAMS were new to me, but entered them anyway on the basis of the other meanings.. I got 3 down before 21 across and the extra meaning of ‘try’ helped me get STAB and finish of the SW corner.

    Well crafted clues – I particularly liked 15a, 18a, 19d.

  13. I cut my teeth on the “Telegraph”, and out of habit still do it after the “Times”; today the answer PEER GYNT appears in both crosswords in exactly the same squares. Impossible to say what the odds of it happening are, I suppose. Just to clarify it, the DT one is in the “new” cryptic series, not published in print, but solvable on line for weekly cash prizes.

    Harry Shipley

  14. 10.05. This was the first puzzle I’ve actually timed for weeks. I wasn’t sure about LEVY, and as for TULLE, it was only some hours later that I managed to figure out the somewhat convoluted wordplay.
  15. I join the list of those unfamiliar with the second senses of JIM-JAMS and LEVY – and also INSIDE OUT to mean thoroughly. I suppose the first is a variant of the (screaming) ab-dabs. Surprised more people didn’t know TULLE – isn’t it what tutus are made of?

    CoD: 11ac. Smooth surface meaning and join between the two parts of the clue.

  16. The late (and great) Archbishop Lefebvre who caused a great stir in the Catholic church was at one stage in his career the Bishop of TULLE…..
  17. 15 minutes. Testing start to the week. Jim-Jams took a while , even after the first J went in – I could only see Jam-Jars as a legitimate entry. Didn’t spot too many “gimme” clues although got the 2 long anagrams pretty quickly which helped a bit. 11 was last to go in.Took me a while to work out how TULLE worked – even after Foggyweb’s explanation
  18. A strange mix of a puzzle. Some very easy stuff. Some really quite difficult. Some unusual meanings to common words. I think 22D is very hard combining as it does a complex construction and an unusual word. The unusual meanings to both LEVY and JIM JAMS were new to me. About 25 minutes to solve.
  19. I didn’t time this, but I solved it while I was cooking dinner, so probably 15-20 minutes. Felt a little uneasy about the guesses at the end (TULLE, JIM-JAMS, LEVY – seems these are the usual culprits).

    Staggeringly beautiful wordplay for SINK OR SWIM and FACE TO FACE.

  20. I really thought this an elegant abnd beautiful puzzle. i just loved the interplay of Stab and tragedy!

    And count was somehting i could count on to get right whereas Syria interfaced so nicely with Wise

    Excellent-really loved it!

  21. Was beaten by Tulle – not helped by the initial scatological entry of ‘knob’ for 21 ac.

    COD: 11.

  23. Reasons for not giving all the answers every day are explained under “About this blog…”, linked at the top of each page.
  24. Late in the day now to make a comment, but in South Wales we used to use “getting the jim jams” in the sense of being nervous about something-like exams.

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