27862 Thursday, 31 December 2020 And so, the end is near…

Author   ZabadakPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
I went to 18.27 with this one, hampered at the last by a misplaced letter in a crossing clue which made the author at 10 cross impossible to work out. Once sorted, the guy was familiar enough. There’s a decent balance of lightweight arts and sciences stuff, though some of the geography might give pause for solvers.
We’re gearing up to celebrate the passing of the old year embraced in a version of tier 4 that has got some extra bits included, such that locally kids will not be returning to school next week. Epping Forest district rarely manages to be top of anyone’s league, but apart from Basildon it has achieved that unwanted greatness, and the stay indoors advice does at least seem to be both necessary and heeded. From behind closed doors I wish you as fine a hogmanay as can be managed, and the very sincere wish that 2021 will bring early liberation and wellbeing.
Meanwhile, here’s my analysis of a decent enough gentle stroll of a puzzle, with clues, definitions and SOLUTIONS

Across

1 Can’t hope to change something in Whitehall (8)
CENOTAPH The Whitehall example of an “empty tomb” is the focus for the annual Remembrance Parade, with wreath laying by the great, good and ordinary.  It was briefly under threat of vandalism by the iconoclasts of anti-slavery and anti-empire movements. It’s designed by Edward Lutyens and built of Portland stone, but for our purposes the setter asks us to construct one by change-ing CAN’T HOPE
9 Naive, taking no coin to pub (8)
INNOCENT The pub is an INN, to which you take 0 (no) CENT (coin).
10 Author’s appeal to remain (8)
SALINGER JD of that family, responsible for Catcher in the Rye. Appeal is S(ex) A(ppeal) and remain LINGER
11 Stop-go manoeuvre in snow (4,4)
STEM TURN “A turn performed by stemming one ski and bringing the other ski down parallel with it”. Obviously. Anyway, stop gives STEM , and go gives TURN, as in it’s your go to roll the dice.
12 St Paul’s type, perhaps, man racked with tension (10)
MINNESOTAN It helps if you know where St Paul is (it’s actually the capital of Minnesota), and ignore the apparent reference to the “least of the Apostles”. Take racked as the anagram indicator, and apply to the letters of MAN and TENSION.
14 Passing mention had effect on nothing (4)
OBIT Cute definition. Had effect BIT attached to 0 (nothing) in the appropriate order
15 Plainly written name in iced cake (2,5)
EN CLAIR N(ame) turns up in the confectionary fashioned from choux pastry, cream and a (usually) chocolate flavoured icing. That’ll be an ECLAIR
17 Poet in turn welcomed by fat cat (7)
LEOPARD The poet you need is Edgar Allen POE, “quoth the raven” and all that. Turn (reverse) him and smother him in LARD for fat.
21 Verse with a line to alter (4)
VARY Simple. Just V(erse) with A R(ailwa)Y line
22 Innovators recycling DNA at grave (5-5)
AVANT GARDE recycling prompts an anagram effort, this time using the letters of DNA AT GRAVE
23 Member of drug squad? No, another branch (5,3)
SPEED COP Well I suppose a policeman detecting drugs might be a speed cop, but a traffic policeman going after motorists going a mile or more PH over the limit certainly would be.
25 Behind this door, books are essential (8)
INHERENT If you are behind this door, you are IN HERE. NT for New Testament is common in these parts for “books”.
26 Shape up to buy a suitcase (3,1,4)
GET A GRIP Wondering if “get a (6?) pack” might be a thing slowed me at this point, but while the GET A is right for “buy a” the suitcase is a GRIP.
27 Avoided players given cards at ground (8)
ESCHEWED Players for our purposes are opponents at bridge, E(ast) and S(outh), then ground provides CHEWED

Down

2 Forcing payment without a fight (8)
EXACTION I think this is the version of EX that means without (as in ex dividend) plus ACTION for fight
3 Unusual exam conceals one trap (8)
ORIGINAL  An exam might be an ORAL, here “concealing” I (one) GIN (trap)
4 Old ship’s slow movement leaving loch (4)
ARGO We had L for Loch a couple of days ago, and here it I again instead of the more common Lake. It leaves LARGO, a musical slow movement to leave Jason’s ship in Greek myth. The golden fleece gig.
5 Woman’s clothes said to be shaggy (7)
HIRSUTE  Sounds very much like HER SUIT and means hairy.
6 Detention of gunman finally in act of disposing of body (10)
INTERNMENT Just take the last letter of gunman, and introduce it to INTERMENT for burial, disposing (neatly) of a body
7 In shadow, exercise without feeling the power in the sun? (8)
PENUMBRA You could pass Geography exams by drawing an illustration of the moon producing a partial eclipse shadow, which is what this is. PE is execise, NUMB is without feeling, and the (Egyptian) power in the sun is RA.
8 Off on holiday here, stuck originally between two short men? (8)
STANSTED For the benefit of those unfamiliar with the M11, in Essex (UK) Stansted is London’s third, fourth or possibly 5th airport mostly used by such as Ryanair, Easyjet and such on holiday flights. S(tuck) (originally) is caught between two random men STAN and TED, both (short) abbreviations.
13 Part of vital passage where island crop is transported (6,4)
SPINAL CORD “Transported” signals an anagram, here of ISLAND CROP. Not wholly convinced by the “vital passage” definition, which is more suggestive of the spinal canal through which the cord passes, but it will have to do. Took ages to stop looking for a trachea or windpipe.
15 Imagine no end of malice against one guru (8)
ENVISAGE Just realised I biffed this. The malice in question is ENVY with no Y end, and one guru is I SAGE
16 Brother briefly security-checked in ship (8)
CORVETTE Setters  take a bit of a liberty in their selection fo exclamations to lead to COR. Here its (o) brother. Sevcurity checked is VETTED, again without its end (briefly)
18 Possible source of Conference’s sparkling repartee (4,4)
PEAR TREE It helps if you know that a Conference (with capital) is a type of pear. Then the sparkling (anagram) of REPARTEE is easy to work out.
19 At a certain angle, church is gleaming (8)
RADIANCE It helped me to remember that a RADIAN is pretty much the same as a degree when measuring angles. Add C(hurch of) E(ngland).
20 Record one bogey at the start holding golfers up — in play, one’s squeezed (7)
BAGPIPE. So, record is EP (extended play), one is I and bogey at the start is B. The golfers are the P(rofessional) G(olfers’) Association. Assemble as instructed and turn the whole lot upside down (“up”)
24 Sweet, part of lunch occasionally? (4)
CHOC Today’s hidden (part of) is in the last clue. Not hard to spot.

60 comments on “27862 Thursday, 31 December 2020 And so, the end is near…”

  1. The last 20 minutes of this puzzle were pure torture for me, figuring out EXACTION, CORVETTE, and SPEED COP. But I was determined not to give up!

    It should be added that CENOTAPH and STEM TURN were unknown to me and felt extremely risky. I got lucky.

    Edited at 2020-12-31 02:28 am (UTC)

  2. A radian isn’t the same as a degree! There are 360 degrees in a circle, but only 6-and-change radians! A radian is about 57 degrees.

    Unless I’ve misunderstood…

    1. Hm. I should have written “a radian is the derived SI unit of plane angle (symbol rad), equal to the angle between two lines which, when drawn from the centre of a circle, divide off on its circumference an arc equal to its radius, nearly 57.3°”. But a vague association with degree was as close as my maths would take me. I DID get Maths A level, at A grade, but it was the “with Statistics” variety which taught me mostly how to fudge numbers.
      1. Well I don’t know about all that! I was just responding to: “It helped me to remember that a RADIAN is pretty much the same as a degree when measuring angles”.
        1. I couldn’t have put it more long-windedly myself, with respect to our esteemed blogger. In short, 2-pi radians are equal to 360 degrees.
  3. Ending the year on a low note, instead of NHO STEM TURN I put in NHO STEP TURN, which apparently is also some sort of ski move. Not that it fits the clue, but. LOI MINNESOTAN. I liked ‘power in the sun’. Happy New Year all; let’s hope for the best.
    1. I nearly submitted STEP TURN but I forced myself to try to do something with the cryptic. Of course, STEP could be ‘stop’, in retrospect.
    2. I’ll join you with the STEP TURN which I had vaguely heard of and kind of fitted the cryptic, as opposed to STEM turn which fitted the cryptic better but as I’d never heard of it didn’t even get considered.
      Shame really, 13 minutes apart from that
  4. As I am ski-phobic – just the once to Cormayeur – never again – therefore I did not know my passo giro from my giro dello stelo. So 11ac rendered me one pink square – applied with a fluorescent ‘Highliter’. Basta!

    FOI 24dn CHOC now you’re talkin’

    LOI 12ac MINNESOTAN – is St. Paul’s Epistle to the Minnesotans in the Apochrypha? Good anagaram.

    COD 1ac CENOTAPH another good un’!

    WOD 15 EN CLAIR – which I read only yesterday in David Irving’s ‘Mare’s Nest’.

    Chronicles of Wasted Time – 50 minutes.

    Edited at 2020-12-31 03:59 am (UTC)

  5. I spent a long time at the end since I couldn’t see any word other than EXCEEDED that fitted 27A, and that didn’t seem right. It took me a long time to decide the second letter might not be “X”, just like it took me some time to realize I was looking for an anagram of a foreign phrase at AVANT GARDE. RADIAN and DEGREE are both angular measures, which I assume is what Z meant in the blog.
  6. Very enjoyable. LOI STEM TURN—a guess, but so were CENOTAPH and STANSTED (though I must’ve heard of the airport).
  7. Some head scratching at the end with MINNESOTAN took my time out to 46 minutes. Thanks for explaining ENVISAGE; I didn’t know ENVY as a sort of ‘malice’ and couldn’t get the parsing to work with V for ‘against’.

    I didn’t like SPINAL CORD for ‘Part of vital passage’ either, but no complaints otherwise for what was a pretty gentle end to the year.

    Thanks to setter and blogger and happy New Year to all.

  8. 30 minutes but with a one-letter error paying the price for biffing my LOI at 11ac. It was obviously going to be something I never heard of and STEP for ‘manoeuvre’ seemed perfectly reasonable, especially to someone who knows a lot more about dance than winter sports, so I bunged it in. Then having completed the grid I looked it up and found it exists as a skiing manoeuvre so I didn’t think any more about it until I noticed the “error” in the blog. That’ll teach me!

    Edited at 2020-12-31 06:15 am (UTC)

  9. …is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like…
    After 30 mins pre-brekker I had the Minnesotan anagram to complete. Took another few mins for the penny to drop. Good one.
    Thanks setter and Z.
  10. 34 minutes but with a STEP TURN. LOI MINNESOTAN, with my knowledge that St Paul was a tentmaker something of a distraction. Mention of Duluth or Hibbing and it would have been a write-in. COD to SPEED-COP. A decent challenge, leaving me irritated at the mistake. Thank you Z and setter.
  11. I have skied all my life but never heard of a stem turn. Doesn’t sound elegant so perhaps for the best.
    1. I have never tried skiing, so being a responsible blogger, I looked it up. Here’s a fine article which explains what it is and how to do it, which may well show you’ve been doing it all along. It lost me pretty early in the piece.
  12. Another STEP TURN here which, as a skier (once!) I know is a lot more common the STEM TURN. Oh well. I found this a bit odd. Almost quickie in parts, PEAR TREE, ARGO, CENOTAPH et al yet tricky in other parts. Took a while to see CORVETTE and LOI ESCHEWED. Don’t North an West get cards too? I suppose that’s not the point.

    I for one, will be very happy to see the end of this year. The final straw was when my wife drove her car into a ditch yesterday. Luckily unharmed, just chastened. Thank you z for the blog and setter. Happy New Year to everyone.

  13. After two good efforts in the last two days, back to earth, only really got half a dozen.
  14. My sympathies to all of you who put in step: I might well have joined you if I’d thought of it. Curiously, STEM TURN came to mind from one of those persistent and mostly irrelevant memories not of skiing, but of someone complaining about a space ship doing one (it might have been in Disney’s The Black Hole) which apparently violates the laws of physics. Seasoned skiers might well suggest it does the same in skiing.
  15. I found this tricky. 34.13 but not being a skier, put in step for stem turn. Corvette was my last one . For a long time, I thought the answer referred to a monastic which was a complete cul de sac.

    Enjoyed the challenge and at least I’ll know stem turn when next it appears as I’m sure it will.

  16. My time was incredibly slow
    Why my brain wouldn’t work i dunno
    It’s the end of the year
    To all solvers, good cheer
    And off to the new one we go
  18. I had another go today but this time with Steed providing assistance. Not quite as successful as yesterday but we managed to solve all but a few clues. At this stage our goal is to solve the clues and not to worry about the time it’s taking us. Really enjoyed the challenge though – hopefully it bodes well for next year.

    FOI: innocent
    LOI: DNF
    COD: inherent

    Thanks to the blogger and setter.

  19. I romped through most of this with great enjoyment and a good head of steam, until hitting the buffers at 11 and 12 across. I finally trusted the cryptic on the former and struck lucky. On the latter, I was derailed completely for ages by having typed in HIRSUIT, making the only possible answer PARNASSIANS which made no cryptic sense at all. As an Old Pauline myself, I even tried connecting it with something to do with public schools, but to no avail. Finally the typo revealed itself and a new dimension of Paulinism opened up. Top clue.

    Thanks for the excellent and entertaining blog, Z, and to the setter for a lot of fun in this one.

  20. Good fun with some enjoyable little twists and turns. I no noffink about raidans, but it had to be that. Ditto stem turn (who could be a Scandinavian actor). Stansted and Obit both held me up and both made me smile. Best of luck to anyone at Stansted today or tomorrow.

    Thanks to the blogger and setter.

  21. I dodged a bullet today, being torn between STEP TURN and STEM TURN but plumping for the latter on the basis that I couldn’t think of any way in which step was synonymous with stop. I’m glad I didn’t actually know step turn was a thing as if I did I would undoubtedly gone for it.

    Edited at 2020-12-31 10:33 am (UTC)

  22. DNF. NHO the skiing term as I don’t ski. Guessed STEM JUMP but then needed aids to find 8D was STANSTED. Furthermore all the anagrams took me ages; a rather an unsatisfactory solving conclusion to an unsatisfactory year, but the puzzle was good. I liked “Brother” for “COR” in CORVETTE. Roll on 2021… See you all next year.
  23. Off the wavelength today, being slow on the anagrams, taking ages on PENUMBRA (which was a lovely clue) and, like others, failing on STEM TURN (which wasn’t). I considered it, but it seemed so unlikely a concept that I went for the cryptically less likely STEP TURN, which at least sounded like something.

    Not a fan of clues where you have to remove the hyphen in the cryptic to get the answer.

  24. My grip on this was never firm. Avoided STEP narrowly, and took too long over LOI SPEED COP, wondering if a SWEET CAP could be a drug and whether ‘branch’ could be the definition. The latter led to a long detour through the trees before seeing the forest ranger. Got there in 32’58”.
    Liked MINNESOTAN, and the series ‘Fargo’, much of which is set there.
    Thanks setter and blogger
  25. FOI: 1A … breezed through half the clues in 20 minutes, and then ground to an almighty halt, waylaid on the road to Damascus, despite having visited St Paul twice.

    Obit: get a grip!

  26. Not as zippy as earlier puzzles this week, but entertaining. Lateral thinking required before I twigged the right St. Paul and Conference, which made them especially so.
  27. Finished feeling chuffed in 20 minutes, then came here to find I was not alone in having STEP not STEM. Over 50 years since I strapped on a ski and broke something on day one, so almost excusable.
    Otherwise a pleasant workout with ESCHEWED my LOI.
    Tomorrow is another year, let’s hope we escape from limbo soon.
  28. Guessed STEM TURN and nearly threw in the towel over the very gettable ESCHEWED. Bit of mental inflexibility this morning. 34 mins.
  29. No idea how I knew STEM TURN. Must have been from when someone in the family insisted on watching a winter Olympics. I found this a bit of a struggle, not helped by putting “get a life” in 26a. DNK “radian”. Let’s all make it to VDay, whenever that is. You’ll probably get the vax before we do thanks to the chronic and epic bungling by the usual suspects. In the meantime HNY to all. 22.31
  30. Funny how some had MINNESOTAN as their last one in, while it was my second one in (after CENOTAPH, also difficult for some others).

    Yet I failed to get VARY. I had the V, but couldn’t see the rest of it.

  31. Just scraped in under 30 mins.

    Not sure I’ve heard of a STEM TURN even though I was quite an avid skier in the last millennium.

    SPEED COP was also an oddity – maybe that’s what they’re called in the USA?

    PENUMBRA – vaguely heard of but no idea what it meant.

    ESCHEWED took a while to fall.

  32. ….even thinking about skiing is dangerous, and I was not alone in not knowing STEM TURN. I do, however, seem to be in splendid isolation in my invention of a “slew turn”. At least it didn’t destroy a reasonably good time, since it took me almost twice as long as yesterday.

    Didn’t like “brother” at 16D, and only parsed BAGPIPE afterwards.

    COD SPEED COP, also enjoyed STANSTED. Must avoid an unwanted hat trick tomorrow !

  34. 17:48. I found this quite tricky, with particular problems on:
    > ESCHEWED (wanted the second letter to X)
    > STEM TURN: never heard of it, and I considered the more likely-looking STEP TURN. In the end I decided to go with the wordplay and was ready to complain about the expected pink square.
    > SPEED COP: not an expression I’m familiar with. Collins says it’s American, Lexico doesn’t have it at all.
    No problem with MINNESOTAN though: I’ve been to Minneapolis-St Paul, home of the excellent Manny’s Steakhouse.
    Happy New Year everyone!

    Edited at 2020-12-31 01:38 pm (UTC)

    1. I’ve never heard or seen SPEED COP, nor does it sound like a real category; there are traffic cops, but they’re not likely to go after speeders.
      1. Strange, as SPEED COP is certainly within my knowledge of US slang that could only have been gathered from American TV shows & films and I don’t follow either avidly, though I watched more US TV in my childhood than ever since. Chambers Dictionary of Slang says it’s from the 1920’s and they were specifically charged with enforcing speed limits.

        Edited at 2020-12-31 02:05 pm (UTC)

      2. Maybe in the country Kevin. When you go North out of Rhinebeck and get past the houses the old post road becomes straight right by the hospital and the local police lie in wait there because there’s no sign to say it’s still 30mph. The locals all know not to go even so much as 35mph there because it’s a nice little earner for the town. SPEED COPs is all they do, there’s not much else except the occasional DUI.
        1. It occurred to me after posting that of course there are cops hiding behind billboards and such, or indeed just patrolling the roads, and that there are ‘speed traps’ such as Olivia mentions. But I repeat that I’ve never come across the term SPEED COP.
    2. The only time I was caught for speeding (hell, that’s tempting providence) was in 1969 at 7am on a beautifully sunny Saturday morning on a dead straight road with nobody about apart from this speed cop who leapt out from behind a hedge. To add insult to the injury, I was going to work to conduct a stock check for which I was not being paid. But at every telling of this story at the time and since, I have called him a speed cop. I wonder if it was more a phrase in currency then than later, perhaps courtesy of Highway Patrol, a big show from the US in the early years of ITV.
      1. I remember some years ago that I was thrashing my taxi along the A56 through Sale to reach a booking we were late on. I saw the blue light in my mirror, and looked at the speedo. 48 in a 30 zone. Bang to rights. The motorcycle cop pulled alongside at the traffic lights, and I dropped the window, expecting I would be asked to pull over once we’d gone through.

        He glared at me, and said “I’m on my to another call. I haven’t seen you. But I f******g well will next time !” and then roared away.

  35. Just over the hour today for this enjoyable challenge, particularly the curiously knotty anagrams, usually the clues I manage to solve quickly. I have been, to quote an end of term report comment made about one of my school fellows, ‘pleasingly absent’ from the TFTT blog in 2020 so I will hope to do better next year. But I have lurked regularly so thank you to all our bloggers who have shed light where only darkness prevailed. I hope all setters, bloggers and solvers have a pleasant New Year celebration and are soon celebrating Vday in 2021.
  36. I was off to the races with the first two across clues going in immediately, then slowed down dramatically trying to think of St Paul’s epistles.
    If I remember correctly from my skiing days, there was a turn called a “Stem Christie” – or am I making that up?
    (Just checked on Wikipedia – Stem Christie from “Christiania” in Norway, apparently).
    Good puzzle to finish the year and many thanks to all the bloggers for this website which has helped keep me mostly Compos Mentis (remember that?) in 2020.

    Edited at 2020-12-31 02:48 pm (UTC)

  37. Held up by my more exciting KICK TURN for a while. I used to like doing those down the black runs, not sure I’ll ever go again…
    Only DNK EN CLAIR, but easy from cryptic. I liked Olivia’s description, seems to describe the whole of the local North Wales police. Be warned if you travel hereabouts
  38. 15A reminded me that Chambers has a delightfully quirky definition of “éclair” as “a cake, long in shape but short in duration”.
    1. I just confirmed that in my Chambers. I didn’t know dictionaries were allowed to be humorous!
      1. Dr. Johnson’s definition of ‘oat’: ‘a grain, which in England is generally given to horses, but in Scotland supports the people.’
      2. They have a few: MIDDLE-AGED is another. Amusing, as long as the joke doesn’t obscure the meaning to some extent, the search for which, I guess, is the reason for looking in a dictionary.
  39. I found this hard going and had to grind the first dozen or so clues out one by one, without getting much help from the crossing letters provided. Eventually LEOPARD and PEAR TREE got me into a sort of rhythm, and II started to make progress. STEM TURN and ESCHEWED held me up at the end. 44:43, but at least no pink squares. Thanks setter and Z. Happy New Year to all.

  40. That makes three on the trot where I’ve been a couple short of a finish – consistent, but no cigar. Today, having successfully negotiated the unknown Stem Turn, Exaction (who/what/where?) was a step too far, even after looking up Minnesotan. Invariant
  41. DNF with 12a 27a & 2d all proving too much for my addled brain. I was also yet another non-skiing STEP-TURNer.

    Z thanks for the v helpful blog. BTW my newsprint-version gives the X-word number as 27,862 not 27,682.

  42. Under half an hour, but hastily fixing 11ac at last before submitting gave SREM TURN. Grr.

Comments are closed.