27700 – hidden in plain course

79 comments on “27700 – hidden in plain course”

1. This was a struggle, and I’m comforted somewhat to see George’s 25′ (I see we have identical NITCHes of 220). I never did figure out GOLF or FUSED. DNK ‘pot’, but no matter once I finally remembered ‘dip’ (part of my epic time was caused by that sort of delay in wresting items from memory). A major head-slapper at 2d, where ‘Great German’ took ages to think of. I’ve got ‘COD’ in the margins by OMERTA and GYRATE. On the other hand, where I come from (and where ODE comes from), to REHASH is precisely NOT to completely alter something, but rather to repeat it essentially unchanged. ON EDIT: I meant to ask, Is there a reason at 5d for ‘Descending onto’ rather than just ‘On’?

   Edited at 2020-06-25 03:10 am (UTC)

2. What a great crossword. Even with many checkers (or all) the answers were rarely write-ins. I even figured out GOLF. My LOI was LIPPIER. NINTH has a lot of superflous words to indicate the containment. I liked “drop a little lower”. I must remember that “dip” is a pickpocket and not always a dent or some such. I also had a mer at REHASHED as “completely altered” instead of “made tiny repetitive changes to”.
   1. Yes and no… partly struck (out) works for me.
3. Very difficult. Some brilliant clues: goblin, slap-bang, calve, Montgomery (I was a expecting a Greek Myrm…), golf, lawnmower and COD omertà, just in front of calve – drop a little lower is superb.
   Struggled to start, but then the bottom half flowed in smoothly – including golf. Finished with omertà, lippier and drainpipes, unknown as pants.
   Two queries, vend as “to be sold”; and ninth as “place”.
   Edit… figured out place: position in a race.

   Edited at 2020-06-25 02:50 am (UTC)

4. pleasing to finish this toughie in 54mins with all correct, only to be given a pink square for LAWNMOWET typo. One sees what one expects to see when proofreading, not necessarily what is there in actuality!
   GOLF LOI -appreciated the well hidden definition when the penny finally dropped
5. I spent much of my time on the NE corner of this puzzle, in particular with LIPPIER, DRAINPIPES, PICKPOCKET and AHEAP. Teasing them out was most satisfying.

   “Descending onto” at 5D seemed OK to me in referring to the direction of the word. However I agree that just “On” would also have worked without detracting from the surface so if brevity is desired that would be preferable.

6. I made steady progress with this tricky puzzle and retired for the night with four answers missing at 13ac and 5,6 and 9dn. This morning I remained at a standstill for a while before coming up with PICKPOCKET and DRAINPIPES, but the other two completely eluded me so I threw in the towel and resorted to aids.

   I’ve never had any interest in the popular Mafia films and books but I knew from previous puzzles that I was looking for a Mafia word at 9dn, however I couldn’t bring it to mind and there was no helpful wordplay to come to my rescue. Only a sudden flash of inspiration could have helped me there.

   At 5dn I was completely bamboozled by ‘descending onto’ which as far as I can see serves no purpose other than to try (not very successfully) to give some sort of meaning to the surface reading. It’s all too easy to bung extraneous words into clues and baffle solvers, but it’s bordering on the unfair in my view.

   Edited at 2020-06-25 05:16 am (UTC)

   1. Yes – I also couldn’t quite see the relevance of “descending” – the clue could have simply read “Upon platform, edge forward, increasingly”. The use of “descending” was confusing and suggests an inversion ( to me, anyway).

      Edited at 2020-06-25 01:13 pm (UTC)

      1. I thought that…then I realized that would have to be “ascending”.
   2. Very much agree with last para. Also did not like ‘rarely’ for the anagrind in 8D. First thought it was just another redundancy.
   3. Any regular user of the London Underground will be familiar with the feeling of, having descended onto the platform, being edged forward by later arrivals. Maybe this is the surface being sought, maybe not.
7. Very hard. I had trouble picking the bones out of many more than a couple of these. When I was a betting man ‘place’ didn’t extend as far down as ninth position in a race. Maybe it does now.
8. …trying to find LIPPIER and FLUTED. Gave up on these two at the hour mark. I might have got them with more time, but unfortunately I’ve got something else to attend to. COD to DRAINPIPES and PICKPOCKET jointly. Thank you George and setter.
9. Gah! Completely undone by a hidden. DNF in 40 minutes after giving up on 22, assuming it was some Biblical reference I wasn’t going to get. Must’ve been feeling quite dopey, as I even looked for a reverse hidden but unaccountably tried every-other-letter rather than looking for a plain one.

   Well done, setter!

10. That was a hard ‘un but with very nice clues. Lots of cryptic definitions.

    COD: a lot to choose from but PICKPOCKET wins for me.

    Previous answer: according to my sources David Copperfield is the longest Dickens novel.

    Today’s question: when I first moved to London I saw road signs to St Giles’s Circus, but it took me ages to work out where that was. Where is it?

    1. Gift question to a cockney. Its above Tottenham Court Underground Station at the junction of Oxford Street, Charing Cross Road and Tottenham Court Road.
    2. I don’t know how you are measuring this Angus, but at a puny 624 pages David Copperfield is highly unlikely to be Dickens’ longest novel. Bleak House is 928 pages and is his longest according to the BBC ..
       1. Maybe Copperfield just felt like the longest? It was my favourite book when I was a lad in short trousers so one does assume that it’s excessively verbose.
          1. As Keriothe said, they all feel like the longest when you are reading them.
             The world is full of would-be quizmasters, it is fun but you do have to be right 🙂
             1. “Would-be quizmaster” is a bit harsh, jerrywh, to give to someone who has posted a crossword linked question every day for the past half year, all of the questions good and some excellent.
11. Thanks to the setter for a marvellous puzzle. COD was GOLF for me.
12. 35 mins and gave up.
    Such a good crossword, spoilt for me by 29ac and 9dn.
    With those two left I thought, if 29ac is Fluted, which doesn’t really work, then 9dn might not either. As it turns out, 9dn is an ok CD….. if you know the word.
    Thanks setter and G.
    1. If you like your clues always to have a separate wordplay and definition then you don’t like the occasional pun and cryptic definition.
       Crosswords in general would be a lot duller without them
       1. It’s a double definition, not a cryptic, and the second definition is sloppy
13. I loved this while solving and achieved a low WITCH by guessing several correctly without knowing why. That didn’t stop me mentally shouting ‘bravo’ several times for brilliant definitions like ‘dropping a little lower’ or the one for the Mafia vow of silence.

    Coming here and reading George’s excellent blog, my appreciation has grown even greater as the biffs were revealed as further jewels of the setter’s art. Like a great wine, this one gets better with time and detailed, unhurried appreciation. Santé, brilliant setter!

14. Toughie today that I laboured over. Like others I’m not keen on the verbiage at 5D LIPPIER but other than that, some superb clues. GOLF is really a splendid construction. Thank you setter and well blogged George.
15. Day 4 of the 5 day Test at Edgbaston (constituency). I was nearly bowled out a couple of times and almost ran out twice before nicking the final boundary (29 across) with my score still intact.

    No pink squares as we draw stumps before the final day. But the pitch is starting to turn. We will see some swing tomorrow.

    COD: CALVE.

16. That was tough. I was defeated with 2 wrong in 32:58 – OMERTA and FLUTED (for which I invented PLATED for spinning up a vinyl on the record player platter). Lots of head-slapping that I didn’t see answers sooner. I got stuck on 28A reading the word as “sternlike”. Grr. A reminder to watch out for the rn/m problem. I failed to parse SOHO, so thanks for that, George. I liked GOLF, GOBLIN and REHASHED best.
17. Fine crossword in which I drew a blank almost everywhere on first reading, often not even seeing what the clue might be about, before returning and repeated uttering aha!

    Drop a little lower was inspired, and GOLF made me feel the setter had unearthed a form of wordplay new to our ken.

    How pleasant to have “pants” in 1d not meaning rubbish but actually pants.

    And brave (or foolhardy) of our setter to include Bernard Montgomery in these sensitive times when he has been “outed” as a racist. What times we live in!

    1. Very much agree about “pants”.
    2. Agreed on all fronts .. not just pants but also trousers correctly deployed.
       I swore at a bus conductor once (remember them?) who happened to be black. I expect to be outed as a racist, any time. Fortunately there are no statues of me, to my knowledge at least..

       1. Well, there is the Statue of Limitations….
          1. Apparently not.. it appears that we expect successful people from 200 years ago or even more to be completely “woke”
             1. There was a good piece about all this in a recent TLS Jerry. https://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/not-all-slopes-are-slippery/ I’d be inclined myself to spare Teddy Roosevelt (he established the national parks and was a progressive in the gilded age). On the other hand his statue outside the Natural History Museum in NYC is a bit much – with subservient and much smaller figures of a Native American and an African accompanying the equestrian Roosevelt.
                1. Theodore R is not so very far from being a proto-Trump. He LOVED killing animals for fun and thought it a mark of a real man. Mark Twain thought he was a shyster, a complete idiot, and I generally rather value Mark Twain’s opinions. In his memoirs he goes on about Theodore quite a bit…
                   1. Well I’m a Twain fan too, which goes to show how hair-splitting this whole thing is.
                      1. They’re both long dead .. both got statues, probably, and welcome

                         folk who think it clever to tear down memorials to successful people should instead examine themselves..

                   2. Yes, which made a remark by the supposedly woke Senator Elizabeth Warren about her admiration for Teddy somewhat disappointing.

                      I hope all the teddy bears are safe, though.

                      1. “Night in the museum” is starting to look dated…
18. 51.23. I found that really tough. Really excellent cluing which was a real test. Lots to choose from but I think my favourite was omerta, took me ages to stop thinking about ma or sh as mum but once I got it, it allowed me to get drainpipes and then finish in a trot though everything before had been less than pacy.
19. Didn’t finish but a really clever crossword that gave me a lot of pleasure. So many clever devices and deceptions. Thanks setter. COD to CALVE. I still am not sure about ‘tunes’ in FLUTED despite George’s blog.
    1. I don’t see a problem with the reference to ‘tunes’ at 29ac.

       SOED: flute, verb trans. Play (a tune etc.) on a flute or pipe. M19.

       So ‘played’ and ‘tunes’ go together with the double meaning of ‘groovy’ to make a rather tidy cryptic clue.

       1. George and jackkt, thank you. You know when you just have a blindness? This was such a wonderful crossword that I have re -visited each clue. With FLUTED I could see the musical sense but, blindly, could not see the general ‘ in a carved stone sense’.

          May I just repeat that I loved this crossword.

20. Phew! Just sneaked in under the hour but without cross-checking my answers so I had to hold my breath that no pink squares appeared.
    Splendid puzzle. Thank you George for a very good blog, especially for Beethoven.
    So many great clues: CALVE, GOLF, FLUTED and OMERTA but I think GOLF has to get the nod for COD.
21. Gordon Bennett, that was tricky. The definition for CALVE was brilliant and there was lots more to admire as well.

    I spent ages trying to see some wordplay in the clue for OMERTA involving MA, MAS or MUM. Sometimes you have to completely re-think the way you’re looking at a clue but it can take a while to get to that point.

    LOI was FLUTED. I’d considered it some time before writing it in but it was only when my mind turned to kitcheny things that the penny dropped.

    Other than THO I had no idea what was going on with BEETHOVEN so thanks for that one George. Good luck with the bunkering. Things here are due to start easing next week (i.e. the pubs are opening).

22. Thanks setter and blogger for brilliant work. One minor quibble my LOI was 8 down as I was thinking it can’t be Gateshead as that’s not a port. I am prepared to be embarrassed when someone puts me right but living in Newcastle I was pretty sure of my ground!

    Tom

    1. Yes I wondered about the port too but concluded it must be a river port on the Tyne, rather like Albany on the Hudson.
       1. From a quick glance at Wiki it has a quayside and a customs house so it must have been a port once.
          1. Maybe we should move “old” from Montgomery, who is one of the newer generals to appear here, over to Port, which Gateshead was.
             1. Quite. They never seem to feel the word ‘old’ (nor indeed the word ‘traitor’) is required when using LEE.

                Edited at 2020-06-25 09:03 pm (UTC)

23. Not entirely my own work, however, as I am not a mafia fan, and OMERTÀ had to be looked up. The 3 obscure clues in the SE had me scratching my head for ages, and I still don’t like the FLUTED clue. COD GASPS for having me bamboozled till the aha moment.
    1. “Played something groovy” would have been fine: it’s not clear to me why they didn’t go that way.
24. Drainpipes, winkles – and Beethoven Ninth in the same column.
25. Nice connection between the DRAINPIPES and the WINKLE-pickers which I believe were the teddy boy mode back in the day (Jimbo will correct me if I’m wrong). Upon submitting I saw that this took Magoo a bit over 8 minutes so my 28 and change don’t look quite so slow. Very hard work but “much delight” and no complaints.
    1. Teddy boy shoes were called “brothel creepers” Olivia. Quite chunky made of suede with large crepe soles. Winkle Pickers were of the same 1950s era but not particularly associated with Teddy Boys. You’re correct about the trousers
       1. The story went that they were very good for water on the knee – a complaint you don’t hear much of these days. (Probably permanently cured by the drainpipe trousers.)
26. 25:10. Phew that was hard! Brilliant though for reasons already covered. ‘Drop a little lower’ is brilliant.
    A teeny bit spoiled for me by my last in FLUTED, which I think is really weak, but after 25 minutes of fun I was in a very forgiving mood.
    Nice to see BEETHOVEN’s NINTH in the downs too.
    Stay safe, George. I worry that we are heading in a similar direction in the UK: I do hope I’m wrong.

    Edited at 2020-06-25 10:51 am (UTC)

    1. Yes indeed, this puzzle was truly an Ode to Joy !
    2. Yes, I don’t think FLUTED quite works either and I put in with great trepidation especially as I wasn’t quite sure about FUSED either. So much good stuff in this crossword though that a few quibbles could be readily forgiven.
27. Something additional after the blink of an eye muscle
    I remembered O level physics looking at the eye and came up with ciliary (the muscle that gives accommodation) which was clearly anciliary having dropped the “an”. It assumed blink as to drop off. Doh. Fused fixed it for me.
    Andyf
28. Phew, that was tricky! The NE held me up longest, although there was plenty of stuff to exercise the extra neuron elsewhere too. Loved CALVE. Was helped to get off the ground by an inspired BEETHOVEN, which I reverse engineered on entry. INNS was my FOI. I almost parsed GOLF. I knew it was NATO aplhabet related, but didn’t spot MGO in filmgoer and considered it might be a little known organisation like MGM. AHEAP was my key to the NE and GATESHEAD, which I also took a while to accept as a port, helped me on my way. DRAINPIPES and OMERTA were my last 2 in that corner, leaving only 22d, which I had been sure was NINTH, but couldn’t parse, to be confirmed. I eventually spotted the reverse hidden among all the verbiage. Tough stuff and a classy puzzle. 40:52. Thanks setter and George.
29. ….soon hopefully ! Superb puzzle where I needed to juggle half a dozen COD candidates. I was delighted to be 67 seconds inside my target.

    I always assumed Marx died in London, so that’s one thing I’ve learned – and that sealed the COD quandary. It was run close by OMERTA though.

    FOI SLAP-BANG
    LOI FLUTED
    COD LOS ANGELES
    TIME 18:53

    1. Marx (Karl) did die in London. It’s Groucho Marx who died in LA.
       1. Likewise Chico and Harpo.
          1. One “fact” unlearned. Marx would have died in Glasgow if he’d ever played the Empire on Saturday night !
30. GOLF was excellent and working out the parsing almost by itself made up for the DNF – another ‘plated’ for FLUTED I’m afraid. I also liked DRAINPIPES, the BEETHOVEN NINTH down the grid and the cryptic def for OMERTA. Very good puzzle – just the sort of challenge I hope for on a Thursday.
31. Banged in NW corner quickly and SW corner fairly quickly – slowed up in SE corner and took ages over NE corner ( despite getting Slap Bang, slap bang).
    Anticlockwise solve of a very nice puzzle.
32. Utterly defeated by this (didn’t get PACIEST, DRAINPIPES, GOLF, TRICEPS, FLUTED, FUSED or PILL), so gave up in the end and came here.

    One question: how does DRAINPIPES = “bags”? Bags are loose-fitting trousers, while drainpipes have narrow legs, don’t they? So they’re not synonyms.

    1. The daily Times uses Collins as the default dictionary, and it lists BAGS: (British informal) any pair of trousers, as well as a synonym for Oxford Bags.
       1. Does it? Pete Biddlecombe is very clear about what references he will and won’t accept but Richard Rogan has never expressed himself fully on the subject as far as I’m aware. I suspect this is a deliberate policy – one that goes along with setter anonymity and never really saying what abbreviations are and aren’t allowed for example – that maintains a bit of mystique around the thing.
          I for one love it both ways. I like the transparency (and huge increase in quality) Peter B has brought to the Sunday puzzles but there is something to be said for the more opaque daily approach. This is the Times Crossword, peasants, we set the rules so pay attention!
33. …and I was delighted with all the clues I could solve before heading toward the land of Nod, which I am glad to say was most of them. Chrislutton’s objection, just above, is the kind of consideration that might have kept DRAINPIPES ever out of reach, though I did think of this British sense of “bags.”

    I was delighted when I figured out GOLF, a rare clue made even rarer by placing the definition right in the middle.

34. A very slow but satisfying solve. Quite a lot of eureka moments. 51 minutes. Ann
35. I reluctantly wrote it in from the word play, but how does “slap-bang” equate to “immediately”? Immediately in the middle, perhaps? I also didn’t like “lippier” (horrible word anyway) as forward increasingly. Surely lippy means insolent? Stephen
    1. Collins: slap-bang

       2. directly or immediately

       ‘slap-bang in the middle’ means directly or immediately in the middle

36. 36:58. I thought this had some high quality stuff in it. Drop a little lower is outstanding. I liked drainpipes, golf, triceps, gasps, pickpocket, omerta and the dizzying gyrate. I finished up in the SE corner trying to convince myself that fluted and fused were correct. Very enjoyable.
37. I’m late to the party today, and ordinarily I wouldn’t bother to post, bit this was such a corker I wanted to thank the setter, and to encourage the editor in more right-thinking. Too many tic marks in my margin for ‘possible c.o.d.’ to choose just one.
38. Pleased to finish – some great clues.
39. What a tremendous crossword! Favourite was CALVE – what a definition!
40. Even later to the party but if the setter is still tuning in I can only doff the cap again to CALVE which was as good a definition as I’ve seen.

    LHS in 20 mins

    SE took another 20 mins with GOLF unparsed

    Problem was NE: actually got AHEAP early doors but the rest took ages not helped by (a) misparsing SLAPBANG and LIPPIER and (b) growing up in Newcastle never for a moment equating GATESHEAD with a port (my LOI)

    So limped home in around 70 mins but enjoyed the ride

    Thanks George and inspired Setter

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