Times Cryptic (Number 24156)

37 comments on “Times Cryptic (Number 24156)”

1. 35 minutes when I gave up on the 1s. Despite having all but the first checking letters of each and SUCKER as the second part of 1d I wasn’t able to guess. Never heard of GOATSUCKER, GOBY or GO-BY. Also never heard of SCORPION GRASS at 10d, ANA = stories at 4d or “vizsla” (a Hungarian hunting dog)at 24d but this didn’t stop me solving those clues.

   On 13, I imagine “a second Best” would be a great footballer whilst “second best” is something not as good as it might be.

   1. My brother has a Vizsla – so that one was a free answer for me. Needed it, in this one.
2. 14:59 which should have been about 9:59 – but carelessly filled in ‘AMNNESA’ when completing 9A from some checking letters, and gave myself a lot of trouble with 10D, trying to find a word to fit E?O?P?O? GRASS. The epiphany came after writing down ETOOPSON next to the clue.

   4D: the best-known Anastasia was a daughter of Tsar Nicholas II, who was rumoured to have somehow survived the killing of the rest of her family in Yekaterinburg.

   Edited at 2009-02-23 08:28 am (UTC)

3. Breed of Hungarian dog
4. Could someone please illuminate me on why TUMS is ‘corporations briefly’? Also, any idea about 23D? Thanks.
   1. corporation is (humorous, dated), “a paunch”, and tum=tummy. 23 is WHIP, 2 defs – a political party Whip, and “cat” = cat of nine tails.
5. tums is short for tummies which can equated with corporations in the Crossworld. 23d Cat as in cat o’ nine tails a whip which is your parlyman.
   15d can be supersede or supercede so how would one decide in a comp/champ situation?
   1. I have always understood that “supersede” is correct, and “supercede” a solecism. “Supersede” is from “super” (above) and “sedere” (to sit) conveying the sense of superiority. I have always assumed that “supercede” probably originated from confusion with “cede”=give way, ie the notion that one thing is giving way to another, but that doesn’t make any sense when you add the “super” part.

      COED mentions “supercede” as an alternative spelling “often regarded as incorrect”. Chambers doesn’t mention it at all.

      Stick to “supersede” and you can’t go wrong.

      ,

      1. Do the references show a preference for banshee over banshie?
         1. It’s in dictionary.com as an alternative but I can’t find BANSHIE in Collins, COED or Chambers so I should think -EE version is the one expected here.

            Tum/Corporation turned up in the ST puzzle only yesterday.

            1. Average time for me of around 25m but with goatsucker remaining unsolved (despite getting as far as g-a-sucker). I remember when I worked in an office people would scrawl “s/s” on a schedule to indicate that it was superseded but still regularly (mis)spell it “superceded” when writing the word in full. bc
            2. Thanks
   2. As SUPERCEDE gets grudging support from COED, I guess it would be accepted in a competition situation. But I’d also guess that for a competition puzzle, they’d use a clue with a clear indication of -sede rather than -cede.
6. I thought this was going to be a quick solve with most of the grid filled in 20 minutes, just missing 1ac, 1dn, and 2dn. I did think of BANSHEE for 2dn early on, but didn’t enter it because SHE was in the clue. My tentative entry for 1dn was SLAPSUCKER for want of anything better, leading me to wonder if 1 ac was SOLE. I gave up after 30 minutes and referred to a dictionary, which gave GOATSUCKER (it’s probably appeared before but I don’t remember it). I then realised BANSHEE was right and got GOBY without help.
7. Went to sleep with neither of the 1s filled in and just could not get anything that made sense even this morning. Found both in a scan of Braffords, so this one was 7 hours and 15 minutes, with aids.
8. Something like 40 minutes while watching the Oscars. A few slightly odd clues and not the most satisfying solving experience, but maybe that was the distraction of trying to solve while wearing a Versace frock and half a ton of borrowed jewellery. I imagine you were all doing the same.
9. This turned into a just above average 35 minutes, but it felt like hard going along the way. It took a good five minutes of that, I think, before I got a single clue!
   I’ve never come across ANA = story before, but luckily the definition + STASI were enough to confirm 4d. 5d took far too long to get, even with the obvious ‘leaders’, after I spent too long fretting about what I was supposed to do with ‘touring’.

   In other words, lots of nice misdirection along the way!

   COD for me 8d, with 6d a close second.

10. Just over 35 minutes including a couple of (correct) guesses where I couldn’t establish the wordplay immediately. NW corner was the trickiest for me.

    I had the SUCKER part of 1d in mind for a long time before I got ‘GO AT’ for the first bit.

11. I didn’t have a thing to wear so passed on the Oscars but didn’t find this a terribly entertaining puzzle either. 30 minutes or so with 1½ mistakes with recall of words I know being a problem today – I knew about wailing banshees and Anastasia the Russian royal but couldn’t bring either to mind until several checkers were in place.

    New to me were ana and goatsucker. Due to lack of interest I failed to look at 8d properly and went with eden, and even though I know full well it’s supersede I went with the cede spelling. I didn’t like that clue anyway.

    Q-0, E-4, D-8, COD acronym, 1 across rock: Reggae singer Goby Trample

    1. Well spotted. I forgot to mention Balsall Heath punk legend, the late Goby Smut, lead singer of The Goatsucker Banshees.
12. 35 minutes here as well and a struggle with the NW corner. As others have said there’s something vaguely unsatisfactory about this puzzle. I don’t know if it’s the corny homophones, the obscurities (vizsla for heavens sake, whatever happened to goulash?) or the weak stuff like SECOND BEST (how appropriate). Had to take my spangles off before playing golf – strict dress code and all that.
    1. The homophones may have been corny, but they were free of any troublesome features like silent Rs. What happened to goulash? I guess the setter intended “secure” to mean “restrain”, which applies far more appropriately to a dog than a goulash, rather than “obtain” which could apply to a wide range of nouns. The name was new to me (I wrongly guessed it might be some part of a forint), but surely a word with “sz” in it is a fairly strong nudge towards some part of Eastern Europe?

       Edited at 2009-02-23 05:47 pm (UTC)

       1. My “sz” should be “zs” – it’s also Peter Proves How Carelessly He Can Type day.
13. 22 minutes. Long time getting top half especially 1a but that gave me 1d and everything else followed until I spent about 5 minutes getting the CAMOUFLAGE/EVEN pair to finish it off. Didn’t help myself by writing in ‘grapher’ for second part of 12 at first
    Also must confess that I have today learned the correct spelling of SUPERCEDE (sic)
14. I second that emotion from johnp, re the spelling of supercede (sic), thanks to kurihan for the etymological tour de force. As for the puzzle, about 40 minutes, and actually got everything correct save SUPERS(C)EDE. I hadn’t understood the wordplay for EVEN or CHEEP until reading here. I still don’t get how ‘si’ in 10D is a note. GOBY was a flat out guess, since I didn’t know that people ‘sent to Coventry’ are ignored, and my fish knowledge is less than top grade. I could go on (PREVISION’s a word? GOATSUCKER?) but I’ll stop now, before I get too tiresome. I did like much of the puzzle, especially ANASTASIA and ACRONYM. Regards.
    1. si is the same as ti, the seventh note, in a scale.
    2. SI = note: si is given in dictionaries as an alternative to te/ti in sol-fa names for notes of the scale. It’s presumably the original name, as SI apparently comes from the initials for “Sancte Iohannes”, in the seventh line (well half-line really) of the verse:

       Ut queant laxis
       resonare fibris,
       Mira gestorum
       famuli tuorum,
       Solve polluti
       labii reatum,
       Sancte Ioannes.

       This was the plainsong chant from which the original note names – ut, re, mi, etc. – were derived by good old Guido of Arrezo. The significance of the chant was that the first six of the note-name syllables were sung to the notes in the scale which they represented (the first syllable of Sancte Iohannes is sung to soh, so ‘si’ is a bit of a fudge). For the tune, and points like why ut and si became do and te, see the linked wiki article. This also explains why the French call C major “ut majeur” rather than “do majeur”.

       SI and UT are probably about the limit of note-name obscurity. Names like DA for “doh sharp” were apparently proposed for the accidentals required to make up the full chromatic scale, but these don’t seem to have become standardised enough to be listed in dictionaries. (Maybe because they require arbitrary decisions like whether a C-sharp=D-flat in a scale of C is doh sharp or re flat, or alternative names for the same note.)

       Edited at 2009-02-23 05:22 pm (UTC)

       1. Holy Toledo! Obviously, my knowledge of musical note origins is worse even than my poor knowledge of fish. And to think, I thought Guido of Arrezo was merely a member of one of Sotira’s pop groups. Who knew? Thanks very much Peter, for this great explanation (but now I will feel extra silly if I ever again screw up a clue involving these alternate note names).
          1. No problem – but my spelling was dodgy – it’s Arezzo, not Arrezo.
       2. I knew SI for te/ti. But the rest of this is completely new to me. However did I manage to obtain a degree in music 40 years ago?
15. In the French (?) version of the musical scale we have do-re-mi-fa-so-la-ti-do but ‘ti’ is also written and pronounced ‘si’. That’s the same as B in the English version of A,B,C, etc.

    Can anyone enlighten me as to how ‘ana’ equates to ‘story’?

    tx

    1. ana = stories: this seems to be back-formation from terms like Victoriana.
       1. ‘Ana’ makes regular appearances in the NY Times crossword, usually as a ‘collection of stories’ or ‘anthology’. I had thought the word had the same derivation as ‘anthology’, but PB has the correct explanation, and again I am incorrect. Today is evidently ‘Kevin Proves How Little He Knows Day’; everybody go celebrate! Regards, all.
16. 29 min, with 1 wrong. Cruised through the first 90%, then became mired. Eventually put “anastasia” in without understanding the “ana”. The 1s went in when “goatsucker” came to mind (It has been in a crossword somewhere somewhen before). Didn’t cotton on to the “asperse” word play for ages, and put “eden” in for 8 Dn. Bit of the iron fist in the velvet glove trick. A good Monday workout.
17. Didn’t quite make it through today. GOATSUCKER and SCORPION GRASS were new to me, along with all the necessary wordplay references in ANASTASIA. There were, however, some other clues which I really should have got. Oh well, I’ll be back!

    Regarding foggyweb’s comment on 13d, presumably for the ‘Great footballer’ bit, we should be reading SECOND as ‘another’.

18. At least in Australia our sports-mad newspapers are continually making comparisons of current sportsmen with the greats of the past. A cricketer, for example, might be described as the “new Bradman”, a “second Bradman”, the “next Bradman” and so on. Thus saying someone is a “second Best” is labelling that that player as a “great footballer” since Best was a great footballer.
19. I agree with the final comment – this is how I read it too. A second (another) Best would be so called because he would have to be a great footballer as the first one (George) was but would not sound like one. That is how the clue works.

    There are 8 “easies”:

    11a Right about having sufficient tread underfoot … (7)
    TR AMPLE

    12a … mark my words, this person did! (13)
    SCHOOLTEACHER. I have no idea what all the … business is about here?

    19a She inspired Cowper at Olney, to some extent (5)
    ERATO. The Muse of crosswordland hidden in Cowper at Olney. Now the Muse of Pancake Racing! Still no sign of Terpsichore or Polyhymnia round these parts yet.

    21a Inclined to steal things with illuminated digits? (5-8)
    LIGHT FINGERED

    26a Frenchwoman taking improper snap in Eire (10)
    PARISIENNE. Anagram of (snap in Eire).

    5d Leaders of our state touring in an ancient city (5)
    OSTIA. First letters of words 3-7 in clue. OSTIA is the ancient port now forming a district of modern Rome.

    22d Herb your present compiler (5)
    THY ME. I’m not sure about the function of “present” in this clue?

    23d Party disciplinarian’s cat (4)
    WHIP. Double definition of cat o’ nine tails and the person who keeps the party’s MPs in line. I like to think that some of them DO get a thwack or two occasionally.

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