27622, Thursday, 26 March 2020 Having nothing else to do…

Author   ZabadakPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Thursday, 26 March 2020
I’ll tell you what, I haven’t done this in a mort of years, but I went straight through the clues in presented order and emerged breathless in 9.24, which included my mandatory check for typos, which others might wish to emulate given the majority in the current rankings who have at least one error. It did mean that some of the down clues went in with scant regard for the clues, so I had do them properly while preparing my elucidations, but they weren’t difficult.
I’m still enjoying the business of having nothing much else to do at the insistence of Her Majesty’s Government. Guilt free b*ggerallery is a fine gift to be savoured, at least until it becomes a dam’ nuisance, and I have a plentiful supply of crosswords to fill any number of the unusually forgiving minutes with sixty seconds worth of simple fun. Most of them will be harder than I found this one.
Stay well everybody.
Clues, definitions and SOLUTIONS are thus presented.

ACROSS
1 Family member’s containers taken across lake by crew (8)
CLANSMAN Containers are CANS, which you then take “across” L(ake) and add the verbal version of crew, MAN
9 Swedish physicist’s torment, having reduced capital (8)
ÅNGSTRÖM The apostrophe s on physicist means you’re looking for who it is, and fortunately I’m familiar with this one. Torment becomes ANGST, and the capital, ROME, is reduced by one letter. Anders gave his name to a unit of measurement equal to one ten-billionth of a metre. For the time being, please keep at least 20,000,000,000Å away from anyone else.
I was helped in solving this by Anders turning up in a very recent crossword, but I can’t for the life of me say where.
10 German fellow, abstemious type, wearing pair of spectacles (4)
OTTO Not all Ottos are German, and not all Germans are called OTTO, but quite a few are. Von Bismarck for one. Our abstemious Tee Totaller, or TT, wears a representation of spectacles formed by two Os 
11 Arrive with a harvester — and have a terrible fall! (4,1,7)
COME A CROPPER A simple charade, assuming a harvester is represented by someone who crops.
13 Old way to introduce a popular decree (6)
ORDAIN O(ld) R(oa)D introduces A and IN (popular). Introduce here Is not an inclusion indicator
14 Avoidance of champ inspired by eastern girl (8)
ESCHEWAL Our random E(astern) girl is SAL. Insert CHEW for champ
15 Abandon doctor, sheltering horse he lost (7)
FORSAKE Let’s say doctor (the verb) translates to FAKE, then we can insert HORSE but without its H and E
16 Princes, for example, demanding author’s share of profits (7)
ROYALTY Are authors expecting a share of the profits necessarily demanding? Just their right, I would think. Anyway, there it is
20 Female spy taking in new peer (8)
VISCOUNT The only one which took a while to twig, because the female is not she, her, hen or anything of the sort, but the random one named VI. Followed by SCOUT for spy, with N(ew) inserted
22 Old maid of diminutive size swigging whiskey (6)
TWEENY Of a lower degree of domestic service, a between-maid. Of diminutive size TEENY taking in NATO Whiskey
23 Proper setting for further allotment (12)
REALLOCATION REAL for proper, LOCATION for setting
25 High-flyer in Navy plugging point repeatedly (4)
ERNE An eagle whose natural habitat is the crossword. The repeated point is E(ast) and the NAVY intervening (plugging) is RN
26 Demanding old flame once treading the boards (8)
EXACTING Old flame (once, if you like) is EX, trading the boards ACTING
27 Old Italian’s endless faith in English jail (8)
ETRUSCAN Endless faith is TRUS(t) , placed in an E(nglish) CAN, slang for jail

DOWN
2 Libertine reluctant to go on a Spanish river (8)
LOTHARIO Reluctant is LOTH, add A (in plain sight) and Spanish for river, RIO
3 Like some of Stravinsky’s music — so nice, Callas recollected (12)
NEOCLASSICAL “Recollected” commends you to the anagram form, for which you use the letters of SO NICE CALLAS. Igor’s neoclassical phase began in around 1920, but I can’t find a single instance of Callas singing his music. Someone will prove me wrong, but not I think Maria herself: “I’m not very keen on Stravinsky. I don’t really like modern music. … I don’t really even approve of Puccini. Mine is the nineteenth century.”
4 Russian port’s odd, turning fellow sailors back ultimately (8)
MURMANSK You get MUR from turning RUM, or odd, around, MAN from fellow, and the S and K from  the ultimate letters of both sailors and back
5 Representation of an elf initially said to evoke water nymphs (7)
NAIADES A composite anagram (representation) where you have to work out that the letters are AN, E(lf) and SAID before throwing them up in the air and hoping they land in the right order
6 A niece regularly eating fish — and mushroom for example (6)
AGARIC The one I know is the fly agaric, the archetypal red mushroom with white spots, but it is a generic term for (among other things) fungi with gills. Take the odd letters of A nIeCe and insert a fish, in this case a GAR
7 Control farm animal upset about start of rainstorm (4)
GRIP Upset your PIG and stick in the front end of Rainstorm
8 A second gathering assembled unethically (8)
AMORALLY A in plain sight, second MO, and gathering RALLY
12 Inclination of a revolutionary head to support homework (12)
PREPAREDNESS Maybe a slightly loose definition, but it works. Homework, and any fule kno, is PREP, here supported by A in plain sight, revolutionary: RED, and head: NESS
15 Perennial plant not many associated with disease (8)
FEVERFEW A plant I happen to know. Not many: FEW and disease: FEVER
17 Part of target, securing free escort (8)
OUTRIDER In archery, for example, the concentric coloured rings are each divided into inner and outer. We have the OUTER, and shove in RID for free.
18 German dance craze abandoned by head of major African state? (8)
TANZANIA A German dance craze might be TANZ MANIA, drop te head of Major
19 Funny way Guyanese extremists managed to get caught (7)
STRANGE Way is ST(reet) this time, with the first and last letters of GuyanesE, and RAN for managed trapped inside
21 Posh sun-hat adapted principally for an idyllic place (6)
UTOPIA U for posh (Mitford) TOPI for sun-hat, and A from the front of Adapted. From Thomas More book, no a generic ideal but unlikely place
24 The first person a state prosecutor married (4)
ADAM Of course. A in plain sight, DA for your state prosecutor, and M(arried)

69 comments on “27622, Thursday, 26 March 2020 Having nothing else to do…”

  1. Yesterday’s puzzle was very tough – today’s was rather easy and occupied 17 minutes and 30 seconds of Meldrew’s morning.

    FOI 10ac OTTO

    LOI 5dn NAIADES just waiting for Mr. ANGSTROM to get settled at 9ac.

    COD 14ac ESCHEWAL

    WOD 22ac TWEENY

    As for the QCers there are one or two nasties, but do have a bash!

    Tomorrow’s Biggun bodes dodgy!

    Edited at 2020-03-26 02:58 am (UTC)

  2. Where were you, Z, when I needed you to remind me to check my answers? I put in CLANSMEN, ignoring the apostrophe. Biffed 5d. DNK TWEENY, or maybe saw it once here–can’t imagine where else I would have seen it; I was thinking pre-adolescent until I looked it up later. Puzzled by the ‘once’.
    Having finished so quickly, I spent a few minutes watching a video a friend sent me, a doctor showing me how to disinfect my groceries. Apparently coronaviruses do quite well in the freezer.
  3. I never heard of TWEENY either (except, as Kevin says, maybe here on some forgotten occasion). LOI was PREPAREDNESS. FOI was COME A CROPPER, which augured a fairly smooth ride.
  4. Finished in just over an hour.

    Didn’t know what to do with the extra E in 5d, Naiads.

    Also dnk agaric, feverfew, tweeny, or Tanz, so pleased to see all green squares.

    COD exacting.

  5. I didn’t spot the anagram, so was relieved to see that my uncertainly entered last in, NAIADES, was correct. Otherwise everything came together without too much trouble in 18 minutes on the dot.

    A pleasant wind-down after yesterday’s toughie, with the surfaces for TANZANIA and TWEENY being my favourite bits.

  6. Easy puzzle, eh? With a massive potential bear-trap at 1ac, which of course I fell straight into. The position of the the apostrophe is all-important of course, but the second part of the bear-trap is that if, like me, one was considering -MAN or -MEN as the ending the most natural thing is to look at the word play that’s cluing that bit of the answer, see ‘crew’ and immediately think of the plural noun MEN and then take that as the deciding factor.

    Not sure I have seen NAIADES with an E before and I was unable to decipher the wordplay, so I bunged that one in hoping for the best.

    I couldn’t think how TWEENY fitted its definition, but on reflection I have heard of the maid.

    1. The bear trap may explain why, as I write, there have been 25 successful reference solvers and 19 unsuccessful ones……
  7. Thank goodness for that! After two hard days, it was pleasant to come in at a tad over 4 x Verlaine.
    I missed the apostrophe but took ‘crew’ as a verb so ‘MAN’ it was.
    I don’t think I’ve ever come across TANZ before in a Times cryptic.
    Clues like ERNE, ADAM and OTTO were just begging to be hit out of the park.
    I’m sure there must have been a TWEENY in “Upstairs, Downstairs” because I knew the word.

    Edited at 2020-03-26 07:37 am (UTC)

  8. …although I don’t think Mr Young was thinking of a TWEENY when he wrote that. I was helped on this one by a ferocious and rather frightening waste disposal unit my mother had under our sink with that name. It made a deeply disturbing din as it ground pretty much anything into a pulp, and gave rise to a common family suggestion to ‘put it down the Tweeny’.

    Thanks for the very entertaining blog Zabadak, and thanks setter for the happy memories and a fun solve in 23 minutes, almost a PB for me.

    Edited at 2020-03-26 07:45 am (UTC)

  9. There I was being all happy that I’d got TANZANIA despite not knowing why there was a question mark at the end or knowing any German, and then Jack points out the massive bear trap that we’d both fallen into together. Curses! 25 minutes wasn’t bad, apart from getting the very first answer wrong…
  10. 11:53. Held up at the end by NAIADES never having seen the E in the word before, but I figured out the wrodplay eventually. Like others, DNK TWEENY in that sense. COD to AMORALLY for aptness in these days of social distancing and self-isolation.
  11. 18 minutes. LOI FEVERFEW, which I did know. I biffed TWEENY, and I know no German so had to assume that the tanz of TANZANIA meant dance. After the multiple prefixes to metre yesterday, it’s a pity there isn’t one for ten to the minus ten, as far as I know, but forever etched on my memory is that the sodium D lines have wavelengths of 5890 and 5896 angstroms respectively, because I measured them in the Clarendon in 1965. So COD to ANGSTROM, even though he did also appear in another place a few days ago. Easyish but enjoyable. Thank you Z and setter.
  12. …”I love thee true”
    Under 20 mins pre-brekker.
    NHO that def for Tweeny, and the eyebrow did well not to twitch far at doctor=fake.
    A much needed confidence booster.
    Thanks setter and Z.
  13. 7:05. I whizzed through this and would have dipped under 5 minutes if 5dn had been a write-in. The obvious NAIADS didn’t fit though, and the wordplay seemed to be asking for something involving an anagram of AN ELF, plus an S (initially said)… but that left me with a crossing A unaccounted for. Sorting that out and then checking my answers (which I wouldn’t have bothered with if a sub-5 had been on the cards) seems to have taken me two minutes.
    I knew TWEENY as a sub-teen, but not as a maid. The wordplay was pretty kind though.
    Ironically I avoided the bear-trap at 1ac by sloppy speed-solving of the kind that usually lands me in them: I saw CAN as the outside of the word, containing L and then oh never mind the answer’s obviously CLANSMAN bung it in and move on. Looking at it now this required me to see the apostrophe after ‘member’ and somehow see one in ‘containters’ that wasn’t there. Pure dumb luck, in other words.

    Edited at 2020-03-26 08:58 am (UTC)

  14. Rather faster than yesterday. Was trying to get Doctor Foster in 15ac; yesterday’s out of place RIO finds its proper place in 2dn. Wasn’t aware that plural of Naiad is NAIADES.

    MER at the use of ‘once’ in 26ac, seems redundant
    COD 22ac, didn’t occur to me that it would be an old word for maid

    Yesterday’s answer: 23 countries issue their own euro coins, even though four of them (Andorra, San Marino, Vatican City and Monaco) aren’t even in the EU. Inspired by MARKKA

    Today’s question: there are 15 countries with a Z in their name (you can try and think of them if you like), but two years ago there were 16. Why?

    2. Research tells me that NAIADES is the plural in Greek, whereas it’s NAIADS in English.
  15. ANGSTROM was, I think, in a Guardian puzzle recently. Is that your reference z? FEVERFEW I have in my garden, never found a use for it though. NAIADES was a painful construction. Name a Russian port, ending in K. Knew ETRUSCAN from Horatius on the bridge. Didn’t know the derivation of TWEENY, which was put in from the wordplay.

    12’48”, my first finish for a couple of days due to virus angst.

    Thanks z and setter.

    1. Had he been in the Guardian, I would have been at liberty to say. He may well have been, but where I saw him I am not at liberty to say. Probably said too much already.
  16. Pleasant crossword. I dithered over the spelling of the nymphs and wondered about ‘inclination’.
  17. 12:01 and still getting to grips with this online solving malarkey.

    I could see that CLANSMAN/MEN would both fit at 1a so had a close look at the clue before noting that the apostrophe meant we needed the singular.

    Like others I wasn’t keen on the misleading use of both old and once to describe the flame.

    Wasn’t 100% on TWEENY. My girls watched The Tweenies on CBeebies when they were little and the characters in that (the never to be forgotten Milo, Bella, Jake and er, the other one) were pre-school children.

    1. Weren’t the grown-up ones also Tweenies? Maybe even the dog for all I know. It was one of the most irritating kids’ shows out there as I remember, and I was fortunate in that none of my kids ever really got into it. Alas I didn’t dodge the equivalent bullet with Lazy Town. My favourite was always Octonauts.
        1. That one passed me by completely. I can see how the cheery songs would appeal though.
  19. Entertaining, if not for very long (but let’s face it, we don’t want a puzzle like yesterday’s every day, even in time of lockdown). Looking at the elephant trap full of solvers, I feel smug at having carefully parsed everything for once, especially 1ac; and obviously the clue which punched most above its weight was 5dn, but the extra E revealed itself quickly enough.
  20. As others a relief after yesterday. CLANSMAN by accident – missed the subtlety completely. Good to see ANGSTROM – its not so long ago the blog would have been full of people telling us they’d never heard of him. Progress!
  21. A little surprised by that e, as by the extra-definite inclination. Unaware of the old maid but good to know. A gentle canter after yesterday’s wild ride. 18.42.
  22. Much better than yesterday, by which I mean much easier. Romped through in 12’03”.
  23. What next? Rhinocerotes?
    My OED has 7 references to naiades, from Gower in 1390 until Shelley in 1820, but I guess it’s only classicists nowadays thinking ναΐαδες.
    Πετρός
  24. I romped through this in 10 minutes or so until I came to my LOI, NAIADES, where I missed the wordplay and agonised over the construction until I gave up and submitted at 16:02. All in vain though. I’d missed the apostrophe in 1a and put in CLANSMEN:( 16:02 WOE. Thanks setter and Z.
  25. It’s an awful long time since Greek O level but NAIADES didn’t cause me any ANGST. If you can have Pleiades it follows. I looked for some sort of uncle in 1a, perhaps because CLANSMAN suggested Klansman which is quite another thing. 12.06
    1. In a past life the Scottish division of Subsea built an underwater robot they christened the Clansman. Had to rename it quick-smart when they took it to America.
  26. I don’t think we got the Tweenies in the US. The one that drove me right out of my mind was Jem and the Holograms. If you didn’t get that one you were fortunate.
  27. Much the same as you all, whizzed through in 12 minutes until left with 5d and 14a, wanted NAIADS but it needed an E, had to convince myself we were talking Greek here not the English plural. Seems to be a good few puzzles around with same answers, at the moment – Angstrom, Our Mutual Friend, and others I can’t actually recall at this moment; must be different editors.

    Swaziland became Eswatini one less Z. Or has someone already answered it?

  28. Never even thought of CLANSMEN. Just lucky I guess.
    Had to look up TWEENY to be sure. WOD FEVERFEW used to sell it when I had a health shop. Good for migraines, not sure it’d be much use for Corvid19, or the Wuhan virus as some would have it.
  29. As for TWEENY – both the maids – abigail and tweeny appeared regularly in ‘The Daily Telegraph Crossword’ when I was a lad in the sixties.That was before I moved on to ‘The Times’ c.1967, which was available to students at a nice discount. ‘The Telegraph’ didn’t do deals which is why I switched. In those days a maid’s first duty was to iron the newspaper!

    ‘That’ll be the day! Jackie Onassis can be the tweeny and get her orders from Elizabeth.’ Richard Burton Diaries, 9 August 1969.

  30. I’m here before lunch and with a relieved smile after one error in the QC. I got to my last two in just 23 minutes. I needed a long look at 1a and decided it had to be CLANSMAN. So then it was over to the water nymphs. A couple of years ago I wrote them down in my big list (then a much shorter list) and was fairly confident about NAIAD but couldn’t parse the rest. I plumped for Naiades without fully parsing so my luck was in. As Horryd mentioned elsewhere, this was not much harder than the QC; easier in places.
    DNK TWEENY or AGARIC. David
  31. For that relief much thanks. 8.24 with never a stumble, stark contrast with the previous three days. Nice to get a bit of momentum. LOI exacting. FOI Lothario. COTD eschewal, just sounds so lovely., I await the day when mellifluous makes a guest appearance!
  32. 16.10 – but another with a Clansmen error.

    My first respectable, almost all correct, solving time in ages. Covid-19 Related Apprehension Problem describes the quality of my recent solving. Initially, anyway. Seems to have caused Crossword Brain Fog.

    1. Forgot to sign in. Another C.RA.P. symptom.

      Edited at 2020-03-26 02:11 pm (UTC)

  33. Pleased to have skipped the bear trap.

    DNK FEVERFEW, TWEENY, ANGSTROM nor AGARIC though the last is presumably related to the mould used in chemistry labs?

  34. ….COME A CROPPER straight away by missing the damned apostrophe in 1A. Massively annoying, as my time of 6:16 was my best for some time.

    ANGSTROM was fresh in my mind as I only did the puzzle in question on Tuesday, and it was a write-in even then.

    I can count to ten in German, but after that it’s auf weidersehen from me – it could only be TANZANIA though.

    COD reluctantly goes to CLANSMAN for its bear trap, talking of which, there’s one to avoid in the following clue. I’m delighted to say that I’ve won the Sunday Times Clue Writing Competition !

    Begin game – as fielders on the leg side do (4-3)

    4. Well done!
      I wanted one of us (clansmen/women) to win.
      For which clue? Durham? Face-off?
      1. That’ll be Fissure then?
        I will finish my bottle of white in the sunshine and rue self-isolation.
      2. I didn’t submit an entry for Durham, but I’ve had a crack at “fissure” this week.
        1. That will be good craic.
          I was trying to find an outrageous homophone for a king fissure clue.
    6. Yes congratulations! Lovely clue – I would definitely have walked into if the kick-off bear trap if today’s effort was anything to go by (I was yet another CLANSMEN, but I also managed CAME A CROPPER for, well, no good reason whatsoever).
  35. Erne, which I bunged in instead if ‘tern’ was part of my downfall yesterday, so how odd that it should ‘turn’ up today 😉

    But snap! I too fell into the trap at 1a – most frustrating as I was much happier today. It is an easy puzzle – I took almost as long doing the quickie today – but I enjoyed it and it was a real confidence booster after my recent struggles.

    I didn’t fully parse Murmansk – it just threw itself into the spaces! A few years ago I was on holiday in Finnish Lapland, and the few road signs thereabouts pointed to Murmansk which was the nearest big town – Helsinki is three times as far! It felt really odd to see that.

    FOI Agaric (just caught my eye – I didn’t have to trawl all the way there before starting!)
    LOI Naiades
    COD Tweeny – an amusing image. I knew the term tweeny from Upstairs Downstairs, I think
    Time 25 mins but DNF because of that cursed apostrophe

    Thanks to friendly setter and to Z8 for your interesting and witty blog. Right, off to face some more gardening now 😥

  36. When I can finish a 15×15 in 20 minutes without even reading or parsing many of the clues, you know it has to be an easier day. (Usually I can’t finish the whole puzzle, or struggle with it up to an hour or more.)

    Accidentally typed UTOPIO instead of UTOPIA, I was going so fast. Excited to try the quickie, which sounds like it was a challenge!

  37. Utterly confused by the wordplay for NAIADES, I just banged that in and hit “submit”, fully expecting to have an error, which of course I did: CLANSMEN. Oh well. This is the first one I’ve actually managed to finish for a few days, and fairly quickly, so a stupid but insubstantial mistake is not too bad.
  38. 17:37 I breezed through this fairly comfortably. Managed not to come a cropper with the clansmen. Dnk the old maid. Didn’t work out the parsing of Naiades. Dnk feverfew. Dnk the Teutonic tango. But nothing held me up for too long.
  39. A slow but steady solve, with the left side (including Clansman) going in without too much difficulty. Sloi Etruscan took what seemed like ages, but In reality a brief instance compared with loi Eschewal, for which aids were eventually required. I did know the word, but it’s not one that I use. Invariant
  40. We gave it a go and managed to get about 90% of it – with a few biffs. So thanks for the blog – it does really help.
  41. LOI NAIADES , like so many other solvers. After wondering whether a niaidem might be a ‘representation of an elf’ , until the ‘doh’ moment when the realisation hit that the clue was anagramatic. 22mins.

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