27802 Thursday, 22 October 2020 Nothing Nietzsche couldn’t teach yer..

Author   ZabadakPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
I scattered clues around the grid with compete abandon, ignoring any semblance of systematic solving and rather moving on from clues I couldn’t resolve without the kind of relentless concentration that leads to a proper solve. So it took me some 25 minutes to get to the full grid, some way over the current average time. You need some acquaintance with Edward Lear, The History of Modern Philosophy (or the Australian Philosophers’ Song from Python, whichever is handier), some French and Latin (but not much), and a teeny bit of Eng Lit. My only-vaguely-known word of the day crops up at 26, but the wordplay is reasonable.
I present my explications clues in italics, definitions also underlined, and solutions in BOLD CAPITALS

Across

1 Plums and biscuits (8)
CRACKERS The best I’ve got for this double definition is, well, biscuits (obviously) and then from Chambers entry on cracker “something exceptionally good or fine of its type” which I guess is equivalent to plum as in plum job. I’m open to offers.
6 European province in movement making quick progress (6)
DANISH A good example of where spotting the definition is key: if you thought it was “making quick progress”, you’re sunk. The province is N(orthern) I(reland) which is in DASH for all of the rest of the clue
9 Close pub or inn that’s dodgy — funny thing found in the kitchen? (8,5)
RUNCIBLE SPOON Okay, you spot it’s an anagram straight away (“that’s dodgy”) of CLOSE PUB OR INN. If you’re like me, it takes a while for the solution to emerge. Funny, I think, because it’s a bit of Edward Lear* nonsense, from The Owl and the Pussycat – you use it for dining on mince and slices of quince, and in the kitchen because that’s one place you find spoons. Unless it’s become applied to some arcane percussion instrument.
*Some bits of the internet claim the runcible spoon turns up in Boswell, but that’s not nearly as funny
10 Forceful companion, weak-looking on the outside (6)
PUNCHY Companion in this parish often means a Companion of Honour, hence CH. Weak looking is PUNY. Assemble
11 Book produced by original man, great chronicler (4,4)
ADAM BEDE Beguiled by the B, I was looking for a chronicler whose second name so begins. But the book is by Mary Ann Evans (George Eliot), the original man ADAM, and the great chronicler is the 7th/8thcentury historian the Venerable BEDE
13 Polish soldiers, excellent chaps beginning to train (10)
REFINEMENT Easy stuff: soldiers R(oyal) E(ngineers), excellent FINE and chaps MEN. Get the T from the beginning of Train
15 Gardener about to retreat at back of house (4)
HOER Someone who hoes. About RE reversed (retreat) behind HO(use)
16 Nuts only 40% chewed (4)
MAST Acorns and chestnuts and such. Take (fortunately) the first 4 of the 10 letters of MASTICATED (chewed)
18 Delivery is badly organised, showing contempt (10)
DERISIVELY Does the adverb form quite work? Whatever, it’s an anagram (badly organised) of DELIVERY IS.
21 Notice in quarrels some piercing objects (8)
BRADAWLS Tools for making holes. Notice is AD, placed in BRAWLS for quarrels. Wasted time wondering how to fit arrows in
22 A maiden for speaking without sense of what is right (6)
AMORAL Straight charade: A M(aiden) ORAL for speaking
23 Occurrence at Wimbledon featured in best-seller, unusually stylish writing (6,7)
BELLES LETTRES Your Wimbledon occurrence is a LET, when a serve catches the net on its way through. The rest is a rather decently spotted anagram (unusually) of BEST-SELLER
25 Try to make a date with a spy on the phone (3,3)
ASK OUT If you communicate by phone, it sounds like A SCOUT or spy
26 Key period of abstinence limiting superior food (8)
ESCULENT Constructed from wordplay, a pretentious word for edible, or something that is eatable. The key is ESC (top left on your keyboard, the period of abstinence is LENT, and stick In a U for superior
Down
2 Switch needs hammering in cylinder, briefly (7)
REROUTE A hammering is a ROUT, and brief cylinder is a REE(l). Assemble.
3 Like many a soldier or prisoner given words to say (11)
CONSCRIPTED A prisoner CON given word to say SCRIPTED
4 Girl climbing tree with boy finally following (5)
EMILY It’s the tree that does the “climbing”, reversing LIME. The last letter of boY follows
5 Rescue brute, grabbing tail finally (7)
SALVAGE The brute is SAVAGE, as in the current Sky version of Brave New World. “Grab” an L from the back end of taiL
6 Famous Frenchman showing some maps of his country (9)
DESCARTES Plus de Français, translating “some maps” as DES CARTES. “And Rene Descartes was a drunken f##t, ‘I drink, therefore I am.’”
7 Artificial language of emperor dismissing king (3)
NEO Nothing to do with the Matrix. “An artificial language launched by an Italian, Arturo Alfandari, in 1961” (Chambers) “Progress was cut short by Alfandari’s death in 1969 and the language was mostly forgotten” (Wiki). The emperor we need is NERO, dismiss the R(ex) king
8 Evil girl without a date (4,3)
SINE DIE Latin, this time, for use in committee meetings when you want to kick discussion into the long grass. Evil: SIN, and the girl EDIE, short for Edith, and yes, I know at least one.
12 I have labour reallocated in terms of how folk go about things (11)
BEHAVIOURAL  An anagram (reallocated) of I HAVE LABOUR
14 Bequest now met with excitement after death? (9)
ENDOWMENT An anagram (with excitement) of NOW MET follows on END for death
17 “Bugs” in garment in water rising to the surface (7)
AEROBES I think all there is to this is that ROBE for garment fits inside a reversal (rising to the surface) of SEA for water. Aerobes are creatures that need free oxygen, so it may be there’s more than a hint of water borne ones rising to the surface to breathe
19 Decide to get puzzle out again (7)
RESOLVE What some of us do with the Championship puzzles on later Wednesdays, completely forgetting our work on the day. A double definition, the second whimsical
20 Amelia is one admitting love affair (7)
LIAISON Today’s (neatly) hidden, indicated by “admitting”,  in AmeLIA IS ONe
22 Vehicle in frozen region caught out (5)
ARTIC Short for articulated lorry, the ARCTIC frozen region with the first of its C(aught)s missing
24 Small room for game (3)
LOO Double definition, the second a card game popular in the 18th century

52 comments on “27802 Thursday, 22 October 2020 Nothing Nietzsche couldn’t teach yer..”

  1. Overtyped LETTERS across behavioural – I look at the keyboard when I type. Maybe should check after finishing? Otherwise a few unknowns – esculent, Neo, Runcible spoon, cartes (known from French sayings as card/page: a la carte, carte blanche, etc) and fingers-crossed mast, whose clue I do not like or approve of. Quite liked the rest, no real problems or queries bar not seeing what cylinder REE_ could be. Liked endowment but COD for conscription.
  2. I took 25 minutes. NHO ESCULENT either but, as you say, the wordplay was clear. Didn’t see why CRACKERS were PLUMS and I didn’t know that meaning of MAST. So I wasn’t certain I was all correct. I assumed the girl in SINEDIE was DI (never heard of EDIE) but then I couldn’t get the EEs from anywhere. NEO was dragged up from a deep recess too, but then “emperor” is almost always Nero. But a fun crossword without being fiendish.
  3. About my right time for an enjoyable , middle-of-the-road puzzle. Thanks for the (as always) informative blog, Z. I parsed 1a and 17d as you did and had a similar MER at Edie for a random girl.

    MAST and ESCULENT went in based on wordplay (with fingers crossed). My LOI was AEROBES and I was glad to have remembered LOO (as a game) and ARTIC from previous crosswords. (We call the trucks semi-trailers here in Aus.)

  4. For the second day running I was well off the wavelength. Much of my time was spent puzzling over BRADAWLS and AEROBES – these two alone took about ten minutes to yield. I was not at all confident about MAST having never heard of this meaning so on submitting the absence of pink squares was a pleasant surprise.
    1. Exactly the same last two here, in what was otherwise a very straightforward puzzle for me. I had those two left with over a minute to spare to get under the ten, so ignored Rule Number One – NEVER BIFF – and chucked in AMOEBAS for the down clue, and then ignored Rule Number Two – CHECK THE CHECKERS – for two minutes or so. More haste, less speed, as my mother used to tell me.
  5. 40 minutes. Took forever over DANISH, thinking the definition was at the other end of the clue.

    NHO ESCULENT on its first appearance outside a Mephisto. Wordplay was helpful here.

    DK AEROBES specifically, but AERO was easy to assume which with other checkers in place didn’t leave much to work out.

    I believe we have had MAST as pigfeed before although I didn’t remember it when I first worked out the possibility of MAST{icated} and wasted a lot of time trying to justify DAFT instead.

    SINE DIE came up very recently and caught me out so I was pleased to remember it (eventually) today.

    Knew ADAM BEDE who also came up recently but I wasn’t sure what the ‘great chronicler’ thing was all about.

    Edited at 2020-10-22 05:35 am (UTC)

  6. 44 minutes, a chunk at the end spent on the BRADAWLS/AEROBES crossers. After failing on the first few at the top I thought, “oh, it’s going to be one of those”, and got started with 24d LOO and worked backwards. 1a CRACKERS finally went in with a frowny “well, I suppose…”

    I wondered whether ESCULENT might be related to “esurient”, the Cheese Shop sketch word that’s come up a few times before, speaking of Python, and Chambers tells me they both come from Latin “edere”, to eat, via “esca”, food.

    Edited at 2020-10-22 06:51 am (UTC)

  7. ……at 16a. Alpha trawl revealed MAST, to save pink blushes.
    Loved 6d, which was very clever. I was looking for RENE as the all-purpose cruciverbal Frenchman, but it wasn’t, but then it was after all!
    34:02
  8. I wondered about REED as the cylinder in 2D. A reed is a “rustic pipe” apparently, which does at least sound as if it ought to be cylindrical
  9. 12m on the dot, with over two minutes at the end puzzling over MAST. I considered it as an answer, derived from the wordplay, but the latter just seemed too out-there for what would be an obscure answer. In the end I looked it up. Not a great clue IMO. I thought ‘plums’ for CRACKERS was dodgy too.

    Edited at 2020-10-22 06:55 am (UTC)

    1. I agree – plum = cracker is a stretch, but the plural really doesn’t work for me, since the usage implies an adjective, not a passel of really good things

      Edited at 2020-10-22 11:01 pm (UTC)

  10. Under 10 then stuck on AEROBES (not amoebas) and BRADAWLS. Oxfam shop where I volunteer is stacked with cards and CRACKERS, none sold (yet).
    1. Hi Jonny.

      I , too, am an Oxfam volunteer who revels in the challenges of “The Times” cryptic crossword.. It is a small world!

      Regards. Jovan.

  11. 17:03. LOI REROUTE after finally seeing PUNCHY. I got most of this quite quickly but then got enmired by trying to make 17D AMOEBAS and took a while to see DESCARTES, SINE DIE and RUNCIBLE SPOON. NHO ESCULENT. Nice puzzle… and blog. Thanks, Z and setter.
  12. Ça alors. Needed some French today, DESCARTES, LIAISON and BELLES LETTRES. 47 mins for an enjoyable workout I thought. Same NHOs as others but managed to get them all right for once. I impressed myself with remembering the SPOON which I recall looking up last time it turned up here. Jackkt could no doubt tell us when, exactly. Last pair in, DANISH and SINE DIE. I struggled with the EDIE too. Thank you Z for the blog and setter too.
    1. Always happy to oblige. It’s only appearance seems to have been in a Jumbo in 2016 although it was referred to in a 15×15 blog in August 2019 when the answer was ‘quince’. The search facility is not 100% reliable so other appearances could have slipped through.
  13. …was Frank Muir or Denis Norden’s take on Descartes’ dualism, I can’t remember which. Make up your own story. 29 minutes with LOI NEO. I’d biffed IDO earlier, but once I twigged DANISH, I thought of the fiddler. BRADAWLS was constructed and not known. MAST would have been COD if I’d known the definition as I did like the clue. So, I’ll give it to ADAM BEDE, just ahead of SINE DIE and CRACKERS. Enjoyable. Thank you Z and setter.
  14. 30 mins.
    If you got it, it was a Hoot. Otherwise, Tosh.
    Thanks setter and Z.

    Edited at 2020-10-22 08:14 am (UTC)

  15. DESCARTES is sitting in a bar. The bartender texts: “Would you like another drink, sir?”. Descartes replies: “I think not”, and vanishes.

    Lots of challenging anagrams. Does a RUNCIBLE SPOON exist? Had AMOEBAE at first.

    13′ 42″, thanks z and setter.

    1. My research revealed that Amazon sell RUNCIBLE SPOONS imported from Japan and with Japanese instructions. Antique ones litter the internet, often predating the Lear poem, but whether they were called such when they were made is murky. Lear also used “runcible” attached to goose and wall, so maybe he just liked the word.
      1. wiktionary says: Runcible spoon
        1871, coined by Edward Lear with no definition, but was applied to the following by 1926.
        And “the following” is the spoon-fork thingy. I’ve got one somewhere; used it once.
        Andyf
      2. The OED is firm in its opinion thaat runcible is a nonsense word invented by Edward Lear, and gives no earlier quotes than the owl vs pussycat thing
        1. I’ve been researching the claim that there’s a reference to Runcible spoons in Boswell’s Life of Johnson. Not in the Project Gutenberg version there is: it seems to be purely invention.
  16. Good time for a fairly tricky one (although Snitch is just below 100 at the moment). NHO ESCULENT, and it doesn’t sound like a noun.

    COD: SINE DIE, nice surface.

    Tuesday’s answer (work intervened yesterday): Norwich is on the Wensum.

    Today’s question: which George Eliot novel could be clued by ‘R’?

  17. Didn’t know ESCULENT or MAST and unsure of CRACKERS but all parsed OK.

    Like many I expect, LOI was AEROBES.

  18. DANISH took me a few minutes otherwise a middle of the road crossword. No complaints but no stand out clue either.
  19. Dnf. I thought of Mast but didn’t know its meaning. I didn’t like the 40% of a synonym device much. A bit of a stretch. Keriothe agrees, myrtilus000 appears to agree and BW disagrees. So about 40% acce(ptance). Otherwise a nice crossword.

    21:59 with one wrong, DAFT, and a typo.

    1. I’ll come in on the other side: the clue’s unusual but it works; and if you can have stray punctuation-marks operating as a moving part which sometimes happens why not this?
      (Or indeed an F on its side.)

      Edited at 2020-10-22 12:50 pm (UTC)

  20. For some reason I found that much much easier than yesterday’s offering. I don’t know why folk don’t like the MAST clue – it seems absolutely fine to me and maybe my COD. My only gripe with this puzzle is the awful homophone. In what variety of English does ASK OUT sound anything like A SCOUT? (Answer = none)
    1. I agree on MAST. Beech mast is very familiar to me. I am just relieved that the setter chose ‘masticated’. As to ASK OUT, surely it is not the dialect but the speed??
    2. I think the homophone is just supposed to be ‘scout’, with ‘a’ indicating A directly in the answer.

      Edited at 2020-10-22 04:50 pm (UTC)

  21. Thaw, and resolve itself into a dew…
    Perhaps Hamlet was up against it with the Elsinore daily. I found this one relatively untaxing though briefly held up at the end by mast and aerobes. While it may not be an absolute plum or cracker the 1 ac. offering does rather appeal. 20’52.
  23. About 40% of my time resolving the daft MAST thing. More Sellars & Yeatman with the venomous BEDE. I though ESCULENT meant something else entirely. 16.24
  24. I found this a bit of a slog tbh but persevered and finished in just under 40 minutes – one of my slowest times.
    Quite a few went in unparsed – BRADAWLS, ESCULENT, REROUTE and AEROBES – so many thanks to Z for the detailed blog.
    I was pleased with myself for remembering the ‘ch’ for companion in PUNCHY and I enjoyed sorting out DERISIVELY, BELLES LETTRES and BEHAVIOURAL. My COD goes to LIAISON – I always enjoy hidden word clues.
    Thanks to the setter for the challenge.
  25. Struggled with some of this. Knew Descartes and Belles Lettres and the Latin Sine Die. I had an auntie Edie, which helped. Esculent was a guess and I opted for ESCALENT (A = superior too?) guessed NEO and took too long, for a DNF with one wrong. Have researched Runcible Spoon before but Mrs K solved the anagram first (she likes an occasional anagram).
  26. Two previous appearances of MAST in this context were in 15×15 puzzles on 22/7/2010 and 28/12/2012. I’m surprised I can remember that far back but I certainly recall meeting it before.
  27. I was helped by the fact that a friend of my wife often uses the word “esculent”.
    European = Dane is fine ( common convention) but European = Danish somehow doesn’t sit right to me – even though the logic is similar.
    We had “Adam Bede” recently (I got it wrong last time) and I’m sure we’ve had “Runcible Spoon” in a 15×15 before.
    Good puzzle overall and very pleased to finish without mistakes.
  28. ….my eyebrows were upwardly mobile on more than one occasion, but all the causes have been discussed earlier in the blog.

    Looking at the first three answers, I wondered if one could eat CRACKERS and DANISH with a RUNCIBLE SPOON. Lockdown has obviously addled my brain.

    FOI CRACKERS
    LOI PUNCHY (I struggled with REROUTE)
    COD MAST
    TIME 9:12

  29. 24.30 but a complete guess for neo which took me a fair while to decide was worth a punt. As for the rest of the puzzle, a fair test I thought characterised by esculent. Liked mast, mainly because I guessed it immediately based on recent press reports of this being a record year for mast in the UK!

  30. Same unknowns as many, but worked them out from the instructions. MAST was LOI after I failed to make DAFT work. 29:59. Thanks setter and Z8.
  31. Turned out I had all the required knowledge, but had to think a little bit about some of the trickier clues before I could be sure that I did. Nothing wrong with being made to think occasionally.
  32. After yesterday’s disaster which I was too late to comment on, today came as a welcome relief. FOI MAST even though I had never heard of it. The only hold up was trying to put AMOEBAS in but the BRADAWLS solved that. A fair crossword with the many NHO’s easily gettable.
    COD DESCARTES which although obvious clueing, I enjoyed anyway
  33. Knew Edie from Edie Brickell & the New Bohemians in the eighties, married to Paul Simon. In the song ‘Stranger to Stranger’ he refers to ‘All the carnage
    And the useless detours’ which will chime with anyone who struggled before they found their Ms/Mr Right. Gave up on MAST, thought of it but didn’t think it was compatible with ‘Nuts’
  34. 50 minutes, but today all my guesses (and there were many) were right. MAST didn’t seem reasonable until I thought of it and then MASTicated came to mind immediately, so I was sure it was right. Mast is a word often used for animal food in German (mästen meaning to fatten up animals for slaughter), so I assumed it COULD mean nuts, and my Duden (the standard German dictionary) tells me it actually does have the meaning described here in German as well (one lives and learns, fortunately).
  35. 17:05. I found this a decent challenge and harder going than my time would suggest. A pragmatic approach to crackers, mast and esculent may have helped.
  36. Miles off the wavelength today but at least no errors. Liked Descartes and mast. We have a splendid copper beech so am familiar with the word: 60m

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