Times 27585 – Second TCC heat, third puzzle I assume.

Author   pipkirbyPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic

Penfold_61 in last Wednesday’s blog comments told us that puzzle 27579 was the third in the booklet, so presumably this was the second, but the last in the heats to be blogged. I wish the editors would tell us in the headers, as was previously the case, so we know if this was a TCC puzzle or a regular ‘new’ offering.
I found it much easier than last week’s, more on a par with the heat 1 puzzles, if not easier. I completed it with no complaints in well under 20 minutes. The longer clues went in early on, making the shorter ones easier to get.

Presumably we’ll need our ’28 acrosses’ next week, when we get into the semi-finals puzzles, where just 33 of the qualifying 82 contestants managed to complete all three error-free.

Across
1 Animal bound to go after some chips (8)
ANTELOPE – Well, after six years of banging on about whether or not a puzzle contains an obscure even-toed ungulate, here we are with the actual animal family as the answer. ANTE is your pre-play bet using the chips, and to LOPE is to bound.
5 This person talks a long time: flipping endlessly (6)
GASBAG – GABS = talks AG(E) = a long time endlessly, reverse all (flipping).
9 Beam that’s almost three feet round (3)
RAY – YAR(D) reversed.
10 Grounded because of dodgy heart (4-2-5)
DOWN-TO-EARTH – because of = DOWN TO, (HEART)*.
12 Appropriate opening of zoo with Mr Durrell, a writer (10)
FITZGERALD – FIT = appropriate, Z = opening of zoo, Gerald Durrell (author of My Family and Other Animals), answer e.g. F Scott Fitzgerald another writer.
13 You will quaintly call out (4)
YELL – YE being old fashioned for YOU, YE’LL = you will.
15 Comparatively mean returns in restructured insurance (6)
SNIDER – Well, if snide means mean (as in a snide remark), i suppose SNIDER means meaner. It’s hidden reversed in RESTRUCTU(RED INS)URANCE.
16 Coppers accepting an act of contrition (7)
PENANCE – AN inside PENCE. Chestnut time.
18 Partial duplication of travel document is concerning (3-1-3)
VIS-A-VIS – VISA VIS(A). Another chestnut.
20 Unusual urge to put iron back inside safe place (6)
REFUGE – Insert FE (Fe, iron) reversed into (URGE)*.
23 Informal jumper: knitter’s first piece (4)
ROOK – ROO (informal kangaroo) + K(nitter).
24 Charlie and I get a rest arranged — we’re puffed! (10)
CIGARETTES – C I (GET A REST)*.
26 High flyer? (11)
HUMMINGBIRD – Cryptic defintion, a humming, or high, as in smelly, bird.
27 Board amidships with this? (3)
OAR – Seems to be as simple as the middle of B(OAR)D.
28 Dye covering half of hair in helmet (3,3)
TIN HAT – HA(IR) inside TINT.
29 Noble, like the News at Ten broadcast? (8)
KNIGHTLY – homophone of NIGHTLY as the News is.

Down
1 Purposeless commercial break (6)
ADRIFT – AD (commercial), RIFT (break).
2 Fishy character suppressing yen to attempt scam (3,2,2)
TRY IT ON – TRITON a fishy character has Y for yen inserted. A triton was a Greek sea god.
3 Female rider that jockeys avidly goad (4,6)
LADY GODIVA – (AVIDLY GOAD)*.
4 Current fashion? (5,8)
POWER DRESSING – Cryptic definition.
6 Answer recognised when heard again (4)
ANEW – A for answer, NEW sounds like KNEW = recognised.
7 Caterpillar turning an age to undergo rapid development (7)
BURGEON – GRUB (caterpillar) turns > BURG, EON = an age.
8 Poorly made glove has split down the middle (2,6)
GO HALVES – (GLOVE HAS)*.
11 Pseudoscientific movement to interpolate blunders (13)
TELEPORTATION – (TO INTERPOLATE)*.
14 Police assistant has possible cold case to pursue (7,3)
SNIFFER DOG – A sniffer might be someone with a cold, to DOG = to pursue.
17 At least a dozen deliveries, stolen or missed (8)
OVERSHOT – Two overs = 12 balls in cricket, so OVERS, HOT = stolen.
19 Winter figure, small currently, lots having been cut (7)
SNOWMAN – S (small) NOW (currently) MAN(Y) = lots cut.
21 Have problems navigating on your bike! (3,4)
GET LOST – double definition.
22 Bird like this turned up by quarry (6)
OSPREY – SO (like this) reversed, PREY = quarry.
25 European city is area under pressure (4)
PISA – P (pressure), IS, A (area).

​

72 comments on “Times 27585 – Second TCC heat, third puzzle I assume.”

  1. Yes, it would be nice and quite simple for the editor would indicate the Championship Puzzles etc.

    This was a tad on the easy side. 19 minutes for Meldrew and I would reckon plenty of under tens for our beloved Time Lords.

    FOI 3dn LADY GODIVA

    LOI 6dn ANEW

    COD 14dn SNIFFER DOG

    WOD 12ac FITZGERALD – the Oggsford man. (Gatsby)

    4dn ‘SALAD’ DRESSING was in the frame after yesterday’s SALAD CREAM!

    on edit I simply saw 27ac OAR as naughtical.

    Edited at 2020-02-12 05:25 pm (UTC)

  2. I liked this well enough, but 27 is quite odd.
    I don’t understand Pip’s comment about ANTELOPE either; must have missed something…

    Edited at 2020-02-12 07:00 am (UTC)

    1. I took him to mean that we’ve had all kinds of antelopes as the solution, and now we have ANTELOPE as the solution.

      Edited at 2020-02-12 07:20 am (UTC)

      1. Oh, sure, all right. I think I worked a puzzle recently with ANTELOPE as the solution, but it must not have been here. It’s clearly time for me to hit the hay.
  3. I’d forgotten that this would be a TCC puzzle, which was probably just as well; I might not have done so well had I known. I biffed 3d and 8d, not bothering with the rather obvious wordplay until after submitting. (I wouldn’t have done that on the day.) DNK 17d, but then I wouldn’t.
  4. 21 minutes is about as good as things get for me on a 15×15. And I could have knocked off a couple of minutes from that if I hadn’t stopped to work out the wordplay at 5ac (at which I failed anyway, even after extra time) and allowing myself to be marginally distracted at 27ac which still seems a little odd.
  5. 19 minutes. I did it! I solved a Championship Puzzle in under 20 minutes. LOI ANEW. The Physicist in me of course would say on 4d that POWER and current aren’t quite the same thing but I’m feeling too generous to linger on that. Ive encountered TELETRANSPORTATION in philosophical thought experiments rather than actual science so I’m not sure it’s pseudo, but again what the heck! COD to FITZGERALD. Thank you Pip and setter.
    1. An online U of Edinburgh philosophy course I did a few years ago reckoned time travel was theoretically possible but you couldn’t alter anything. A quoted example involved Hitler. You couldn’t kill him when he was an impoverished painter in Vienna but you could save him from being run down by a tram!
  6. As I recall I found this puzzle to be of average difficulty, but the consensus from the SNITCH is that it’s very easy. It was nice to have time to appreciate it today as compared to solving it at the championships. I particularly liked the high quality surface of GO HALVES.

  7. If I’d known it was a Champs puzzle I might’ve been more intimidated. Instead, I just got blindly stuck in and finished in 23 minutes. Not a personal best per se, but probably the closest I’ve come to finishing any TCC puzzle in the target 20 minutes.

    FOI 9a RAY LOI (by a long stretch) 6d ANEW. If I’d seen that one sooner I might’ve managed to scramble across the line in 20m. WOD and COD 11d TELEPORTATION, because of (a) its strong Blake’s 7 connection and (b) its tricksy definition.

  8. I’d have liked this one in the Champs: it would give extra time for the other two. Rather easier than any of the three in the morning session, knocked off comfortably in 14 minutes or so.
    I was going to query SNOWMAN as a writer figure until checking here and discovering I can’t read. I also wondered whether TRITON was really fishy apart fro m being a denizen of the deep. Google says its a car.
    The simple but elusive ANEW was my last in.
  9. 20 mins with yoghurt, granola, blueberries, etc.
    Mostly I liked: High flyer, Knightly, Sniffer and COD to the poorly made glove.
    These Osprey(s) get everywhere.
    Thanks setter and P.

    PS The Wordsworth I quote is worth a quick read. It seems to speak to our modern concerns, as it did to his.

    Edited at 2020-02-12 08:25 am (UTC)

    2. I have that sonnet printed out in front of my desk…reassuring to look at as I lay waste my powers.
  10. I was on course for a lifetime PB, under nine minutes, before being delayed by GASBAG/BURGEON, and eventually finishing in 11’12”. That makes under an hour for the second three, despite the beast that was the first one in the set.

    Again, didn’t know it was a championship puzzle until afterwards. May I add my name to the petition to the editor?

    As noted, spent time thinking of obscure caterpillars, and trying balloon, blossom, explode etc.

    I read ‘My Family and Other Animals’ when younger, didn’t understand it at all, probably because to me it was a fantasy world. Anyone try to fit in Lawrence?

    Is a knight noble?

    Thanks pip and setter

    1. By definition, knights are not nobleS, but for all I know some of them at least might be noble. To act as a knight is supposed to act is to act nobly.
  11. …have of course, seen this before. Having said that I still managed to get a pink typo (Grr)

    Just for clarification, this was the first puzzle in Heat 2.

  12. I’m catching up and did Monday’s, yesterdays and now todays, thankfully an easy one. I was interested to see some discussion about brand names.
    This is becoming a regular topic – a search on TfTT for “brand names” gives 44 hits – and in every case, someone claims it is a new thing… but it really isn’t. They have appeared on and off for as long as I can remember. You can do a search yourself, if interested, or look (for example) at 23818 (jan 2008) 25172 (25 May 2012) 26254 (12 Nov 2015) or as a more recent example, 2195 (14 Nov 2018, also a championship puzzle, and also blogged by Pip) which had both FERRARI and CAMPARI in it ..
  13. I was worried about fishy, but he is now generally rendered in sculpture as a merman, i.e. his lower half is a fish.
    Andyf
  14. Roared through this and stuck in AMEN for ANEW so as to get a very quick time. Oh dear.
  15. 18 mins, but that was writing it out on the newspaper. Takes me longer than typing. Thanks pip.
  16. Still getting two copies of the paper (despite informing the newsagent) so another chance to try my hand at the 15×15. And another finish! In 25 minutes too, by far my fastest ever so I can understand comments that it was not a hard one.

    The paper edition does mention that it was a Competition puzzle, with 59 (out of 90) completing it correctly.

    Many thanks to Pip for blog. Extremely helpful for a visitor from QC-land – it is excellent to see how some of my biffs are correctly parsed.

    Cedric

  17. Definitely out of step with the other five puzzles from the heats as far as my solving experience went, being the quickest by some margin. No delays other than coming up with TRY IT OUT for 2dn before realising it didn’t fit either the wordplay or the definition, or the enumeration (otherwise perfect); that meant I suffered a temporary mental block on parsing the fishy element, though obviously not for very long.
  18. and i thought that was slow. if they’re all like this i might enter this year… The only slight hold up was thinking that a slight cold was a sniffle, but I haven’t heard of a policeman with a sniffle bag. CIGARETTES
  20. I did this in about 6 minutes, which is a bit quicker than I did it on the day but not much. The easiest of the three by miles. I did actually remember some of the clues, which is encouraging.

    Edited at 2020-02-12 12:00 pm (UTC)

    1. I can’t remember any at all. It’s only your comment that has convinced me I’ve solved it before.
      1. Well I say ‘remember’ but it would be more accurate to say that they rang a faint bell, and it wasn’t many of them at that. Clearly though I did remember the puzzle at a subconscious level because I solved it more quickly than the first time.

        Edited at 2020-02-12 04:20 pm (UTC)

        1. I can’t remember at all if I did this one on the day or not? Which, if I did, isn’t a ringing endorsement of it as a puzzle, IMHO.
          1. It’s not the best puzzle I’ve ever solved but a couple of them were slightly memorable: VIS-A-VIS, SNIFFER DOG,
  21. I was heading for a 12 -13 minute solve until I hit the wall with my LOI, ANEW, which took me to 16:46. An alphabet trawl eventually got me there. RAY was my FOI and the LHS flew in. The SE followed but the NE slowed me down quite a bit, with BURGEON, GASBAG and GO HALVES requiring employment of the reserve neuron. A very enjoyable puzzle, and the first ever competition puzzle I’ve done within 20 minutes. HUMMINGBIRDS was a LOL moment. OSPREY two days running! Thanks setter and Pip.
  22. Is an odd word. There was a famous center fielder for the Brooklyn Dodgers called Duke Snider and it’s an old-fashioned, slightly derogatory, term for a tailor (also spelled snyder) but I think one would be unlikely to meet it in it’s present form here. This was identified as one of the puzzles in heat2 on the Club website and I see from Cedric supra that that heading was in the paper version, so I put a request on the Club forum general comments that the heading be restored to the online newspaper. We’ll see if it happens. 11.37
    1. I thought of Dee Snider, singer with the American hard rock band Twisted Sister who were (relatively) prominent in the 80s.
  23. 6:42 totally oblivious to the fact that I’ve solved it before. Not a single clue rang even the faintest of Bs. Yikes.

    If this is indeed a champs puzzle then it was certainly the first one in heat 2. I solved that all in one go in about 8 or 9 minutes I think.

  24. That’s got to be at the very easy end of competition puzzles. I’m not letting myself be fooled that I’m getting faster! Triton is French for newt, by the way.
  26. ….the regional qualifiers of days gone by. It lulled me into a slightly false sense of security on the day, as I put it to the sword in just under 7 minutes. It was heavier going thereafter…..

    FOI ANTELOPE
    LOI SNIFFER DOG
    COD HUMMINGBIRD

  27. 10.57. Yes an easy one but still a bit of a thrill for me personally to knock another few seconds off my PB and dip under 11 mins. Particularly given the fact that despite the quick time I feel I was still bogged down in parsing a few unnecessarily when they could have just been biffed or I could’ve spent far less time on them. This suggests there is still room for improvement!
  29. 9:41, so the easiest of the 6 qualifiers. After 27 1/2 minutes 2 weeks ago, I ended up finishing all 3 in 47:05 with 1 error, so I think I would have squeaked into the semi-final and finished faster than I did in the morning.
  30. Forty minutes, though this was (I felt) quite a gentle one and I should have been quicker. My only quibble would be over describing TELEPORTATION as pseudoscientific. Just because nobody’s figured out how to do it yet doesn’t put it in the same basket as telepathy or homeopathy.

    Is it just me, or have sightings of OSPREYs here increased markedly of late?

    1. I thought it was rather nice misdirection, myself. Technically I suppose all science fiction is pseudoscience!
    2. I agree, but better Ospreys than Nyalas or Bushbacks, eh?
      (My suspicion is that setters come across a good word – Finzi comes to mind – and then have several ideas for cluing it and they can’t resist using several of them; then their pals see the word and have an idea or two they riff off of).
  31. Like Pip I smiled at the setter’s clever response to the Ed’s (presumed) dictat “you’ve got to include at least one antelope”. I’m not sure I trust SNITCH completely on the re-printed championship puzzles, but no question this was a well-below-100 rating. So why did it take me minutes to fill in Anew?
    1. Could I ask what SNITCH means please? Is it one of the codes this excellent site uses?

      Thank you
      Cedric

      1. If you click the link at the top right you will find out all about Aussie Starstruck’s brilliant creation.
        1. Thank you! All understood – and what a labour of love to produce it.
  32. The QC blog said this was not too difficult. I agree and got to my LOI 6d in under an hour. I then spent a long time looking at alternatives and found AMEN, so joining Sawbill, and possibly others, in the One Wrong Club.
    BTW Wordsworth was on Radio 4 this morning -not live obviously.
    David
  34. I’ve been dabbling in cryptics for a year or so, mainly the QCs, but this was my first full solve. Took 89 mins but I’m very pleased. I’m still learning all the abbreviations and indicators.

    I am 35 and fairly well read but I find some clues tough/impossible due to archaic language or obscure (read ancient) cultural references. The puzzles certainly broaden the mind as they have resulted in multiple Googles and Wikipedia rabbitholes.

    1. You are approaching the challenge in exactly the right way. It’s not unlike learning to speak a foreign language, and once you’re fluent you’ll have a better chance of solving unknown words from the surface of the clue.
  35. 6:50 for me without having seen it before, as I didn’t manage to get a copy of the Heat 2 puzzles this year. Definitely the easiest Championship puzzle I’ve come across. BTW, there’s a header on the Times site to tell us this was a Championship puzzle now.
  36. I’ve seen harder quick cryptics.
    Top-down solve, although LOI snider.
    16 minutes.
  37. RAY was my FOI, and given that it wasn’t a total gimme I thought we were in for a tough puzzle… but then I finished in 26 mins
  38. Managed over half of the clues – very new to all this. It’s becoming clear to me that I need to gen up on cricket. A sport I have absolutely zero interest in! Really enjoy all your comments. If it wasn’t for this blog there is no way I would be learning as fast as I am!
  39. Foolish fellow me. All done in 23 minutes but a mistake at 6 down. Wish I’d known it was anew. Rest of the puzzle went OK but top right- including anew – probably added five minutes to what would have been a decent time for me. Wasn’t osprey an answer earlier this week?

    COD burgeon. FOI try it on. Hope for no silly mistakes tomorrow.

  40. Only ever finished about 10 puzzles over c.3 years and time I’ve ever finished in less than 4 hours over a few sessions and at 16mins in a single sitting that was quite a feat – so wasn’t exactly surprised to see “easy” comments on here but can’t pretend I wasnt a bit deflated by them! COD 26a HUMMINGBIRD and LOI 6d ANEW….
  41. Very easy for a championship puzzle, so what more to say. I took 40 leisurely minutes, but no real problems anywhere (although I did try to insert ADRUPT in 1dnk, hoping it would be a word, before I saw FITZGERALD and then ADRIFT, which really is a word).
  42. Drat (definitely with a capital D). I really thought I was on for a third straight 15×15 solve (and probably the easiest one at that), but then ground to a halt with just three left in the NE corner (5ac, 6d and 7d). After a long pause I worked out Burgeon, and that suggested Gasbag for 5ac, but I couldn’t parse it. That left A*e* for 6d. Nothing came to mind that seemed to fit the clue and, since I wasn’t even sure about the first letter, I pulled stumps and read Pip’s blog. So near, but no prize. CoD to 14d, Sniffer Dog – nice clue. Invariant
  43. Even if it was a qualifier it seems a bit odd to have 21d yesterday followed by 22d today.
  44. Crikey, that was just a giant QC. 21 mins here, Championship here I come!! (Ahem)
    1. Keep going ! I’ll buy you a pint in the George after session 1 if you give it a try.
      1. Ha ha – not in my wildest dreams would I enter that exalted company! Might come and watch maybe, in which case you’re on.

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