27418 Thursday, 1 August 2019 ..but his face rings a bell

Author   ZabadakPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
I thought this was an absolute cracker, even though I whizzed through it in 15 and a half minutes, but I’m fully aware that those who are not fans of Rev Spooner or of interdependent clues will be spluttering into their skinny lattes. Something about the style – those two near-identical pairs of clues perhaps – encouraged a scattergun solving technique rather than a prosaic top to bottom solve. Come on, though, there are some excellent surfaces here: I’ll pick out 10, 1d and 17, but you are welcome to nominate others. It may surprise you to discover that I didn’t know where the Hunchback of Notre Dame got his name from (though I do now).
I present my observations below, with clues, definitions and SOLUTIONS distinctively identified.

Across

1 Stores holding over copper taps (4-5)
STOP-COCKS  Stores is/are STOCKS, and here they’re holding O(ver) PC, the Dixon sort of copper. Lose time looking for reversals
6 9 arranged flower (5)
PLATE Doesn’t happen in the Times very often, but here we have an anagram (arranged) of another answer, at 9. Spoiler alert: 9 is PETAL. Here the flower is a river, made famous in its English version by the 1939 victory of the Royal Navy over the pocket battleship Graf Spee. Rather a good movie.
9 6ac arranged flower — just a bit of one (5)
PETAL As it says, an anagram (arranged) of 6ac, the rest of the wording being the definition.
10 Cried out as other half once made demands (9)
EXCLAIMED If your other half is no longer your other half, he/she is your EX. Made demands: CLAIMED. Credible mini story surface
11 Fieldwork concerning question (7)
REDOUBT A military structure sort of fieldwork, an enclosed fortification. Concerning: RE question: DOUBT
12 Prickly sort of letter penned by a dame (7)
ECHIDNA A spiny, egg-laying, toothless mammal that could only come from Australia. The letter is CHI  (I think the “sort” belongs in the definition) and the Dame is EDNA Everage, another mammal that could only come from Australia
13 Wonderful ET (3,2,4,5)
OUT OF THIS WORLD A very kind double definition
17 Parisian refusal put on commune eating aristo food, say (10,4)
COLLECTIVE NOUN Something of the French revolution or The Glums about the surface. Commune supplies the COLLECTIVE, the French refusal is NON, “eating” U for aristo, popularised (but not coined) by Nancy Mitford. “Food” is a random, but rather appropriate, example of the genre.
21 Robin’s temporary accommodation in unassailable fort, according to Spooner (4,3)
NEST BOX Which, when mangled by Speverend Rooner, would be (or sound like, rather) BEST (Fort) KNOX. Goldfinger showed it could be assailed but not conquered.
23 Annual account about chap in Los Angeles (7)
ALMANAC A proper matryoshka: chap: MAN inside Los Angeles: LA inside account AC
25 Novel campanologist the Sunday after Easter (9)
QUASIMODO From the Hunchback of Notre Dame and from Latin of the introit used on the day in question.
26 Number 27 is wrong (5)
THREE Here number means number, as in count. “Wrong” version of the next clue
27 Number 26 is wrong (5)
ETHER Here number means substance that numbs
28 Adherents of cleric, last out of church, first to enter coach (9)
BUDDHISTS The cleric is a D(octor of) D(ivinity), last out of church is H, first gives 1ST, coach is BUS. Assemble dutifully.

Down

1 Half-hearted drinker loves to tour Lima, a lovely place to go? (8)
SUPERLOO A posh –um- bog. A drinker might be a SUPPER, though being half hearted loses his –um- P. Loves provides the two O’s, and Lima in Natospeak provides the L
2 Revealed what solicitor did, blowing cover (5)
OUTED The solicitor TOUTED, but his cover, first letter, is blown
3 Sweary navy, perhaps, drunk in the main (9)
COLOURFUL or sweary language  Navy is  here not to sink anything but just as a representative COLOUR. One informal word for drunk is FULL, “in the main” instructs you not to use all of it
4 Reported crook, well-known speed merchant? (7)
CHEETAH  Sounds like cheater, crook. Clocked at 5.95 seconds for the 100 meters. Here’s me with one.
5 Victory in series when number one over gets dismissal (7)
SUCCESS Timely Ashes themed clue. Series is SUCCESSION, NO1 “over” provides the ION to be dismissed
6 Fruit from Jewish festival left by sons (5)
PEACH One Jewish festival is Passover, more properly PESACH. S(ons) leaves. Those in the know would say the Pesach fruit, haroseth, an apple confection, is far less likely to be left by the younger participants than the maror, or bitter herb usually represented by horseradish.
7 Runs berserk, stabbing a sick old creature (9)
ARMADILLO R(uns) berserk: MAD “stabs” A sick: ILL O(ld)
8 Make attractive, as outerwear and headgear do (6)
ENDEAR I like this sort of clue. Both outerwear and headgear END EAR.
14 PM show including parodies on a regular basis (9)
TAOISEACH currently the very not-Irish-sounding Prime Minister of Ireland Leo Varadkar. I was grateful for the generous cryptic helping to get the vowels in the right order. Show give you TEACH, then include the even letters of pArOdIeS
15 One’s superior throughout marriage (9)
OVERMATCH I wasn’t sure of overmatch as a noun, but it is fully attested in the sources. OVER from through as in throughout the course of, and marriage: MATCH
16 Pants, as footballers maybe around end of run (8)
KNICKERS Footballers are KICKERS, of course, and around end of ruN they produce the required underwear. I leave it to the fans to produce examples of footballers who turned out to be completely pants after a run down the pitch.
18 Vain chap‘s cross, caught in valley (7)
COXCOMB Cross is X, add C(aught) (more cricket) and place both in COOMB for valley
19 To sum up, I go under about hiding answer (2,1,4)
IN A WORD I DROWN (or go under) the latter word inverted (“about”) and A(nswer) hidden therein
20 Sole college question on English (6)
UNIQUE College here is UNI, which you can debate if you wish but I wouldn’t bother. Question provides the QU, and English the E
22 Pipe from India received by brother (5)
BRIER  More Natospeak: India this rime inserted into BRER for brother as in Uncle Remus
24 Spies Poles burying chest (5)
NARKS One of many slang terms. Chest is ARK (Raiders of the Lost) poles provides the N and the S

76 comments on “27418 Thursday, 1 August 2019 ..but his face rings a bell”

  1. Nice blog z, that must have been a fun one to write up. I liked Endear, too.. I’m not usually a big fan of cross reference clues, but today’s four were worth the price of admission.
    If you’d had to, could you have outrun your pal in the picture there?
    1. I believe the correct response to your question is the punchline “no, but I can run faster than you!”
  2. Thanks to Zed for the parsing of 3, 5 and 22 down. Yes, lots to enjoy here.

    It warms my heart to see the Times accepting asylum seekers from the Guardian.

    Edited at 2019-08-01 02:35 am (UTC)

  3. That cheetah’s looking very content. Have you just fed him an Arsenal supporter?
  4. Call me a naysayer, but if I want to do a Guardian crossword I go to the Guardian. Often I don’t; they get a bit twee and over-clever at times, so I prefer the Times. Last week’s wedding crosssword, this one, both very Guardianesque. I hope it’s not the start of a new policy.

    Nice cheetah photo. I hope it’s still alive (isn’t it dangerous?) and not a dead one whose floppy head you’re holding up. And the Spurs shirt – it was thinking of Boca’s bitter rivals River Plate that helped the penny drop for 6 ac.

    Edited at 2019-08-01 03:53 am (UTC)

    1. The cheetah was very much alive, one of a pair of males living freely on an enormous private reserve in South Africa. We came across it on an evening tour of the reserve, and it had (very) recently gorged itself on some unfortunate species of ‘bok. Whether the encounter was serendipitous or stage managed for the benefit of us tourists I don’t know, but the experience was breathtaking.

      1. Yup, thought I recognised the veld in your photo and, of course, one of my country’s most graceful and precious felines. Only an up close and personal encounter with a fully grown male lion is an even more life-changing priviledge.

        Very happy you had the opportunity to actually stroke the cheetah!

        Which game reserve did you visit?

        Edited at 2019-08-01 02:45 pm (UTC)

        1. The cheetahs were in the Tshukudu Game Reserve, a privately owned reserve near Hoedspruit, where the game are clearly more used to humans than in the Kruger, where we also spent several days. I can vouch for the lion experience: Mauritius has a zoo cum nature reserve where, for a small fee they offer you a lion experience. You’re taken to an enormous enclosure, and they give you a little stick which you’re supposed to keep between you and the lion. Then they let you in, and for some considerable glorious time you interact with the male lion, stroking the mane and so on. They also feature a long walk with the lions along the local trails if you’re up for it.
    2. I was thinking pretty much the same thing, isla3, especially with 26 & 27ac: rather cheap, that trick.

      It’s still a rather good Guardian puzzle, however.

    1. We had ABBA a couple of years ago, who are also all alive. It seems that if it is not the name of the actual person (Barry Humphries in this case) but is a sort of non-existent person then it is okay. I think we had Captain KIRK too, and William Shatner is also still alive.

      I raced through this and carelessly typed BRIAR. LOI was CHEETAH that I should have got since it’s a bit of a chestnut.

  6. I’m with isla3. Each clue should be soluble (solvable?) on its own merits.

    It was a bit of a ‘Vinnie’; not as hard as it looked so I was over the line in 37 minutes.

    FOI 13ac OUT OF THIS WORLD

    LOI 2dn OUTED

    COD 17ac COLLECTIVE NOUN, from IKEA with the instructions upside down.

    WOD 25ac QUASIMODO which has been clued as ‘The name rings a bell?’

    ‘Lord Snitch’ is set at 99 – I think it will stay level.

    Edited at 2019-08-01 04:20 am (UTC)

    1. Not name, face: I believe Z is alluding to a joke about a different bell-ringer.
      1. No dear, I am talking about QUASIMODO ‘Sixth Sense’ Crossword December 2013.

        Edited at 2019-08-01 07:28 am (UTC)

  7. Well, there are two defences, I think: a) it’s Barry Humphries who is still alive, while Dame Edna is a fictional character; b) it would be fine in the Guardian, so the ed’s cut the newbie a bit of slack.
    1. Really? It’d be like being told that Father Christmas doesn’t exist! But if I were inclined to cut the setter some slack I’d do so on the grounds that since being made a Dame the good lady has had aspirations to Royal status and views herself in many respects as equal if not superior to Her Maj, so the Times has quite rightly decided to recognise this by granting her eligibility for inclusion in their crosswords whilst she’s still around to enjoy the privilege.

      Edited at 2019-08-01 05:03 am (UTC)

  8. 16:17. Interesting puzzle: a bit of an unfamiliar feel to it somehow.
    I’m with Paul on the cross-references: I’m not normally a fan but these were clever.
    I passed River Plate House on Finsbury Circus regularly on my way to work many years ago. It’s been demolished now, I see.
    Nice picture, Z. When my sister was very little she once insisted on telling a joke she was very proud of to an assembly of older relatives:
    Q: Why don’t they play cards in the jungle?
    A: Because here are too many lions.
    1. That’s very sweet Keriothe. Reminds me of one of my grandson’s favourite ones. What’s the difference between a cheetah and a dandelion? The cheetah can run faster dan de lion.
  9. I’m with the naysayers on this one, and particularly so as I have just this month paid my first subscription raised by 100% + 1p to continue access to The Times (and that extra penny still rankles!). If I want to do a gimmicky puzzle such as appears in the Guardian I can do so for nothing. Let’s hope this was just an aberration.

    1. Me too – having also taken out a subscription to ensure daily access to the crossword. I’ve been struggling with the Times for about a year and just getting to the stage where I feel at home with it and can solve it more often than not – but still not broken the 30min mark:-(
      Having never done the Guardian I simply found this difficult but in frustrating way rather than a challenging one. It was very strange to see a clues linked together as they were here – but once I understood that they were simply anagrams of each other, rather straightforward and quite disappointing. I also found some clues very fiddly in an Ikean way and missed regular features such as hidden words and anagrams. Not my cup of tea.
    2. ‘Knickers’ and ‘Superloo’ in the same crossword: it must be a Grauniad setter.
      I also do the Grauniad puzzles, but prefer the more traditional standards usually maintained by The Times, and I certainly would not put more money into the coffers of Mr Murdoch except for the quality crosswords.
      I am currently working through some older Times puzzles in a book collection, and finding them more pleasurable than many recent offerings.
      Although some of the Grauniad setters’ trademark puzzles rankle with me, I would be the first to admit that several of that paper’s compilers are consistently excellent.
  10. After really struggling to get a foothold in the top-half of the grid, I finally finished in around 22 minutes — but with NARCS. I guess it’s not the ‘arc’ of the covenant!

    I got a lot of smiles out of this, so no complaints here. Put me in the ay camp.

    Lovely photo, Z8. That must have been magical

  11. I managed all bar BRIER today where I plumped for BRIAR. With hindsight maybe I should have got brer through knowing Brer Rabbit, though not knowing what the Brer in his name meant.

    When I initially got PLATE I couldn’t think what it had to do with a river or horticulture but then I remembered there is a football team called River Plate. Being the cultured man that Z is, supporting Spurs, perhaps he is also familiar with River Plate?

    1. Well, yes, Erik Lamela, who scored a fine opener for us against Bayern FC last night in the course of winning the Audi Cup, began his career at Club Atlético River Plate. Curiously, the club adopted the English version of Rio Plata.
      1. Quite a few teams have done that for a variety of reasons, AC Milan and Athletic Bilbao, to name two.
        1. Not mention Newell’s Old Boys, also in Argentina. I love it every time I hear it.
  12. 45 mins with yoghurt, granola and nectarine (well it is August).
    And 10 of that was on LOI Collective Noun. Just didn’t think of Aristo=U or collective. I got the NON bit ok.
    A few question-marks in the margin today: DNK that meaning of Quasimodo, DNK Full=Drunk, DNK that spelling of Briar.
    Mostly I liked: Echidna and the drunken tour of Lima.
    Thanks setter and Z (great blog as always).
    It is amazing what you can do with photoshop to add unexpected elements to photos – I mean, that beard!
  13. An hour and four minutes for this one, mostly because of the abstruseness of obscurities, from the unknown river or the religious reference to “full” meaning “drunk” (I feel that when one gets to the twentieth definition down in Chambers it’s safe to level the obscurity accusation!)

    Mostly I feel pleased with myself for persevering from FOI 1d SUPERLOO to LOI 17a COLLECTIVE NOUN (where the O near the beginning tempted me to keep trying to put “non” in the wrong place) and crossing the finish line at all. I doubt I’d have had a chance of finishing a puzzle like this a year ago.

    (I’m not so put off by Guardianesque tricks as some, possibly because I do the Guardian every day, but yes, at the prices currently being charged—ouch!—the Times must be careful not to compromise its USP. The Guardian’s optional minimum contribution is £5.99 a month, which makes their puzzle a bargain even if you volunteer to pay it…)

    1. I wasn’t aware of the suggested minimum contribution to The Guardian. In that case I’m underpaying them by 99p!
      1. I was only going by a quick glance at the subs page. I’m not actually sure what I’m paying them at the moment!

        In fact, there’s also a Support Us page where you can basically pay them whatever you fancy.

        Edited at 2019-08-01 08:23 am (UTC)

    2. Matt In a written answer to the Rt Hon. Member for Gothicka West – the official collective noun for obscurities is ‘a darkness’.

      fyi for goths it is ‘a grotesque’ and Meldrews ‘a horridness’

  14. … was on the children’s songs cassette we used to have to listen to on family journeys three decades ago, straight after the circular motion of the wheels on the bus was explained to us. 49 minutes with LOI SUPERLOO. Some lovely clues here. I got bogged down thinking 27 referred to in 26 was 3 cubed for a while, which did at least furnish me with the right answer if for the wrong reason, and which then gave the actual 27 answer. I wouldn’t have remembered the QUASIMODO Sunday, but fortunately my knowledge of campanologists in novels is limited. I guess there must have been one in Iris Murdoch’s The Bell, but if so I’ve forgotten. COD to COLLECTIVE NOUN. Hard but enjoyable. Thank you Z and setter.
  15. I strayed over my usual half an hour because I was intrigued by it. A tad gimmicky for me but I’ll give it the benefit of the doubt.
  16. Indeed it’s via the ‘Support Us’ page that I give them £5 a month. I’d happily pay the £5.99 for the app but the crossword interface is inferior to that via a browser.
  17. Not normally a fan of interlinked clues but I will let them off so long as they don’t make a habit of it .. once in a while is OK, and this was a fine crossword..
  18. I don’t think anyone has mentioned the film ‘The Battle of the River Plate’. The only way I knew it.
    1. I did, but perhaps not quite so you’d notice. It’s one of the films I’m happy to watch pretty much whenever it comes on, with the British (and NZ) Navy at its mythic best.
  19. Like everyone else, I was slightly surprised to find a puzzle which had so obviously crossed an inter-dimensional portal from another paper. I’m not going to break out the pitchforks, but on the whole I prefer the Times to be like the Times and the Guardian to be like the Guardian.
  21. Highly confused by the pipe.. My Google of BRIER PIPE produced mostly references to BRIAR, so I just bunged BRIER with a shrug. OUT OF THIS WORLD too obvious for this level of crossword methinks. OUTED also went in without working out which letter was missing. Reminds me of the signs in America advising ‘no Solicitors’.
    1. Yes that’s a good one quartermaine. The “no standing” signs at bus stops also used to confuse me – I mean how else were you to queue for the bus?
        1. Not sure if you meant the solicitors or the standing signs Kevin. I think “solicitors” just means no begging or other nuisance buttonholing. In NYC “no standing” is directed at commercial traffic and tells vans and trucks not to park in the bus lane when loading and unloading. Obvious right? – not. No one pays any attention anyway, any more than they do to the “no spitting” signs – yuk.
          1. It occurred to me, too late, that I might have been ambiguous, but I was wondering about ‘standing’; a term that doesn’t seem to have made it to the West Coast. I think it’s ‘No stopping’ in SF, if I recall. Never seen a ‘No spitting’ sign in SF, but then I’ve never seen spitting there, either. (My Philadelphia Uncle Charlie once explained the NYC traffic rules to me: “They’re not supposed to hit you.”)
  22. I do the Guardian most days and still struggled with this one. Our blogger had a very good time I note. I’d never heard of a SUPERLOO but a recent Country Life featured “Britain’s most beautiful bathroom” – we all agreed it was meh. Our local septic service is called Royal Flush… I got the the Fort Knox thing well in advance of actually solving that clue – the mention of Spooner produces a sort of localized brain fog. 22.48
    1. Superloo is standard nomenclature for any lavatory – usually owned by a railway company – that costs 50p to get in. Most London termini have them
      1. Does Waterloo have a Superloo?
        It’s when they charge to get out that one needs to worry!
  23. Disambiguation.The only perceived weakness is that this style is historically Guardian territory. Not a problem hereabouts, so why not adopt another Guardianism and allow the setter’s to use a ‘nom’?
    It works just fine for the QC as jacktt’s recent stats show and adds interest. Where would monkey-puzzleland be without ‘Araucaria’?

    No need to name on the day, the following day would be fine. It would add a bit of VAR!
    And your setter could not have been wrongly accused of being a ‘newbie’!

    Yours etc.

    horryd Shanghai

  24. Another ‘briar’ for BRIER so a DNF in 57 minutes, with a few others such as COLOURFUL unparsed. No problems for me with the cross-referencing clues, especially the two senses for ‘number’, but seems they’re not to everyone’s taste.

    I liked ECHIDNA, one of my favourite creatures and TAO IS EACH.

    Thank you to setter and blogger

  25. The month of August heralds some puzzling comments 🙂
    It is true that the ETHER and THREE clues are not solvable by themselves, but nor is any clue with a cross reference. And the Times crossword often had such references. It IS true that taken out of the context of the puzzle each is ambiguous, but I don’t see that as a weakness, as you can’t solve one with it the other. But once one is solved then the other “solves” itself. I thought the neatness more than justified the other issues.

    The setter is not a “newbie”

    Dame Edna Everage has appeared several times before. She isn’t a real person 🙂

  26. I only buy the Times for the crossword, and read the Guardian. That said, the G crossword is pants – themes, live people and interdependent clues: ugh. And no, Edna is too marginal for the Times, even if she has appeared before. Not my favourite puzzle. Got through it okay, but no accurate time, as I fell asleep again. Probably around 25 mins of actual solving. Thanks, z; great photo.
  27. …. tripe is KNICKERS to everybody responsible. It simply felt like a chore from start to finish. I cleared the bottom half on autopilot, but the top was a shade harder.

    Thanks to Z for parsing SUCCESS. How can one OVERMATCH something ? You either surpass, fall short, or match. Absolute nonsense.

    FOI OUT OF THIS WORLD
    LOI and COD SUPERLOO, which belonged in a better puzzle than this one.
    TIME 11:32 of my life, which I’ll never get back.

    1. Chambers gives it as mainly US “to be more than a match for; to match with a superior opponent; to defeat, overcome.” It is, at least, a thing.
  28. 26:04 but I caused myself massive problems in the NW corner by drawing a vertical line to split 1a as 5,4 rather than 4,5. I didn’t have either of the checking Cs to help me so was a bit stuck finding something to fit S?O??/???S

    I enjoyed the puzzle so on balance I’m on the “pro” side of the fence.

    Happy Yorkshire Day everyone.

  29. I worked my way through and rather enjoyed myself – but then my ‘standards’ are nowhere near the usual brigade here.
    I did have one puzzle on Buddhists. I’d missed the cleric = DD bit (as usual) so went to to Collins for Budds hoping it equalled coach. It didn’t quite but Collins did come up with a minibus taxi (informal in South Africa – after Zola). Not important unless Buddha can be considered a cleric in which case the clue has another solve.
    What an experience with the wildlife by the way. Added an extra dimension to the blog.

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