Times Cryptic (Number 24162)

Author   foggywebPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Solving time: 53 mins

Took a while to get into this and a few clues needed quite a bit of thought. I think there were some really good ones, though, and plenty to smile about.

Across

1 BROW,NOW,L – L=lake
9 A,RABEL(L)A[is] – The French author is François Rabelais – we add an L and lose IS.
10 A,POLL,O – O is the shape of a halo.
11 EXEC,RATION – this was the last one in. As soon as I thought of ‘senior management’ as exec, the rest fell into place.
13 ASTI,GMA(T)IC – thought it would end with an anagram of MAGIC containing T and luckily I just needed to add one of the wines I know about.
16 ANT-LION – anagram of NATIONAL-A. I knew the word from Scrabble, but you don’t see hyphenated words there. I think they are used less in American English.
17 P(OTT)AGE – OTT=over the top.
22 G[u]IDE – André Gide is the second French author of the day.
23 ROY,ALAS,COT
25 ON,H,OLD – ON=working; H=hard; OLD=around for ages!
27 DAYBREAK – twenty-four hours off would be a break of a day.

Down

2 R,I(PARI[s])AN – took me ages to suss this one as I’ve not come across the word before. Riparian means ‘on a riverbank’; R=run,IAN=Scotsman; PARIS is the capital.
3 WELL-HEELED – a hooker is a rugby player who ‘heels’ the ball out of the scrum.
4 OBOE D’AMORE – anagram of EAR+BOOMED+O – a new instrument to me, but quite guessable from the letters.
5 LA(DE)TTE – DE=the outside letters of DATE.
6 PAR,R
7 PLAIN,T – T is the end for defendanT. Presumably a plaint is the charge that a plaintiff brings.
8 BAR(NACL)E – NaCl is the chemical formula for sodium chloride.
14 GHOSTS,TORY – GHOSTS is a play by Henrik Ibsen.
16 ARMS,RACES – ARMS is presumably how a common person says HARMS.
18 GODZILLA – sounds like “God’s iller”.
19 MAT(CH)ED – mate is the decisive move in chess; CH is short for ‘check’, again in chess.
21 D(RY[e])ISH

24 comments on “Times Cryptic (Number 24162)”

  1. I agree with foggyweb. This seemed more like and end-of-week puzzle than the usual gentle Monday stroll. About 40mins here,.

    The French authors and the rugby hooker were pretty much up my street, so nothing particularly hard, but the NW corner in particular took a while and was the last to go.

    All up a pretty good start to the week.

  2. Got off to a flyer with GIDE & GODZILLA (pick the odd one out) and jogged around the bottom half. The top half was taken at a more gentle pace for an all up 55mins. Some clever concise clueing. Liked ROYAL ASCOT for its alas and BARNACLE for its NaCl (and not RN). COD 11.

    Went looking for Oboe D’amore on Wiki to see if it could confirm what I had once read; that its name derived from its shape (as being vaguely a long cylinder with a bulbous end). Found this under the Oboe entry “In comparison to other modern woodwind instruments, the oboe has a clear and penetrating voice which if listend to very closely will sound like a rabid sloth.” I had recently read that vandalism had increased on Wiki in response to some editorial policy changes, and here was an example. I wonder how long it will remain. I thought it a bit unfair. Rabid sloths get a bad enough press as it is.

    Also discovered the Heckelphone, a kind of bass oboe. Were we not discussing the sound of catcalls recently?

    1. “d’amore” is a danger sign for “unnecessary” musical instruments – both the oboe and viola d’amore were pretty much dead for at least a century until composers like orchestral spendthrift Richard Strauss (oboe) and Paul Hindemith (viola) dug them up.

      The oboe d’amore is halfway between oboe and cor anglais which are only a fifth apart, and it’s by no means easy to be sure from the sound that neither of the others is being used instead, as I reckon this Youtube clip including all three shows pretty clearly (instruments change at 3:00 and 7:00). I hadn’t heard the “bulbous end” idea, but oboe smut is nothing new – Peter Cook’s famous parody of the judge in the Norman Scott / Jeremy Thorpe court case included an example (at 2:20).

      Boringly, the heckelphone is named after the inventor/manufacturer, a well-known maker of bassoons to this day.

      1. Yes, these instruments tend to date from eras when there was no consensus about pitch and also when ensembles of same family instruments were popular. Mind you, clarinetists tend to carry two clarinets around which differ in a semi-tone, although this has more to do with the particularly nasty fingering imposed by the instrument’s missing harmonics(due to the clarinet’s closed end cylindrical bore as opposed to the oboe’s closed end conical bore) than anything to do with tone colour. That said, Wiki claims the clarinet in A “has a warmer tone” than that in Bflat (see previous remark about rabid sloths).

        The derivation of the “d’amore” was seriously suggested in a scholarly music reference (whose name now conveniently escapes me). I think the alternatives were along the lines of “flute douce” for the recorder. Maybe the author was an avid Peter Cook fan?

  3. I started this last night when very tired and put in half a dozen answers but it wasn’t making much sense so I slept on it and resumed this morning. I estimate I had about three-quarters completed within 30 minutes but I couldn’t get properly started in the Tyneside area where 6,7,8,11 and 13 eluded me for ages and nearly doubled my solving time.

    I also had a problem at 19 where I had put in MATCHED as the best I could think of, but I didn’t understand the word play so wasn’t sure it was the right answer.

    I had no idea what was going on at 3, though the answer was apparent at first glance. Having read the blog I see my knowledge of hookers let me down.

  4. Fail. About 19 minutes to get all but RIPARIAN, which I slept on and still couldn’t get.

    Some pretty tough clues.

  5. One to chalk up against the idea that Monday puzzles are easy. I finished in 13:10 but had stupidly rushed into DRYEST at 21D, trying to justify it as RYE in most of DUST as in “dustbowl”. Absolute tosh of course, so a big slap on the wrist. Along with the fairly easy bowl=DISH, must remember -EST and -ISH as synonymous alternative endings and hence likely sources of careless errors, like -TION and -TING as in donation/donating. We had HOOKER based on “heel” in a previous Times puzzle – this turns out to be 23931 where it was the one that had me donning the dunce’s cap.
  6. I didn’t get EXECRATION until I got home and used an aid. At one point I thought “senior management” was going to be BOARD. Later I thought the definition might be ‘All’ and lightly entered EVERYTHING. An additional problem was 8 dn, the clue to which printed out with ‘sa t’ (which I took to be ‘sat’), not ‘salt’ so that was another unsolved one.
    On the whole I liked the clues, apart from the otiose ‘sent’ in 23 and the nounal anagram indicator in 16 ac.
  7. Fairly steady progress for most of the puzzle, but left with a sizeable hole in the NE corner after 30 minutes.

    Literature is not a strong point. Gide came to mind a lot quicker than Rabelais, although I should have got him sooner. I was convinced that 11a would have BOARD for ‘senior management’ so that held me up till I though of PLAINT for 7 down and realised that BOARD could no longer fit anywhere.

    I liked the clues for MIDDLE EAST and ROYAL ASCOT.

  8. This was quite hard going, though I staggered in at 40 minutes, albeit with a few mistakes. SNOWY OWL for 1ac and NAPERIAN for 2d. I can just about justify 2d, but don’t ask about 1ac… Lots of nice clues here, 18d my favourite.
  10. About 35 minutes so not an easy one. The bottom went in at a stroll and my extensive knowledge of hookers combined with a memory of RIPARIAN helped with the NW corner but I struggled with the NE. For some reason could not see EXEC at 11A for ages even though I had E?E?. Finally twigged BARNACLE (liked NaCl), and then guessed ARABELLA thinking that Rabelais sounded more French than Nabelais. Congratulations to the setter.
  11. Oddly I had no trouble whatsoever with riparian, which I have come across a number of times, even though sadly I had not the slightest idea what the word actually meant… I did take time to convert from snowy to brown//

    My last in was Parr, my COD is the very slick BARNACLE, one of a rare category of solutions that includes an entire chemical formula…

  12. No problem with RIPARIAN after Boris Johnson demonstrated his common touch following the terrorist attack in Mumbai: “ There is substantial organisation to guard against the possibility of some sort of riparian assault.”
  13. I worked out the anagram at 4 but didn’t click onto the d’a possibility so was left with damore/madore/radome etc as possibilities and invented the OBOE MADORE. Pity as after a rapid solve of the bottom half was forced to think hard to complete the top half and was reasonably pleased to finish in 20 minutes.Pass the dunce’s cap Peter.
  14. No no no. There is NO excuse for this clue/answer. I think there are enough everyday words which could have been used instead. And I still don’t like clues with apostrophes.
  15. Agreed, very tough for a Monday, my holdup being in the NE. EXECRATION and PLAINT were the last two to fall in place. No problem with RIPARIAN, I knew that term. Overall, though, about 50 minutes. I also liked BARNACLE for COD, followed by ARABELLA and PARR, all from the same tough corner. Nice puzzle. Regards from snowy NY.
    1. Glad to see it was not just me that found the NE corner difficult. Before any checking letters went in I was considering MARY at 6 (as in William and Mary of the House of Orange) and this distracted me into thinking 11 might be EVERYTHING (All, being the definition perhaps). Having cracked 9 at last this checked the A in MARY and caused even more confusion. It’s rare for me to find such a concentration of clues where not a single answer leapt out at me.
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  18. No problem with 3d as I started my rugby playing at loose-head prop forward. So I was very well aware of hookers and their heeling.

    These days when the scrum-half feeds the ball into the second row I’m not so sure what hookers do any more? They do throw in at the line-out I suppose.

    I did not find this as hard as some. I am familiar with Riparian vegetation and have heard of the oboe d’amore and Monsieur Gide.

    There are 5 “easies”:

    12a Long backbone, no head (4)
    (S) PINE

    20a Millions suffering deadliest conflict here? (6,4)
    M IDDLE EAST. Anagram of (M DEADLIEST) – an & lit of sorts as well.

    26a Material in cream she sported (8)
    CASHMERE. Anagram of (CREAM SHE). Sounds like another conflict zone.

    15d Singer – sign her up nude in this (10)
    ALTO GET HER

    24d A day in terror (4)
    A WED

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