27922 Thursday, 11 March 2021 In which Eve gets the blame (again).

Author   ZabadakPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
How about if I say I found this slightly easier than my average, clocking in at 17.53? It does contain a few community pet peeves, with race and nation regarded as equivalents (though it does clue an appropriate word), the assumption that cockneys are not aspirational, a rather unusual word which may be new to some, and an item of priests’ attire that the laity get confused about and, of course, a couple of birds just to annoy limerick writers.
But there’s some decent clues in the thing, including a good scattering of anagrams, the one for the first clue being particularly useful for making sure you can spell it. No hidden today, no homophone (dodgy or otherwise) and no every other letter clue, just to prove it can be done.
I have italicised the clues, underlined the definitions, and BOLDLY CAPITALISED the solutions.

Across

1 Groups at sea moving cargo ship alee (13)
ARCHIPELAGOES An anagram (moving) to start with, using CARGO SHIPS ALEE. Perhaps the slightly odd “alee” is a bit of a giveaway.
8 Short trip — female’s eaten cheesy food (4)
TOFU Since it’s made from bean curd, I would say only the appearance is cheesy. Shorten your trip: TOUr, and make it eat F(emale).
9 Man’s symbol is such rubbish — painter lacking skill primarily involved (10)
TRIPARTITE The technical term is a triskelion, dis – um – armingly defined by Chambers as  “a figure consisting of three radiating curves or legs, as in the arms of the Isle of Man”. No matter, it’s got three parts, and the wordplay gives rubbish: TRIPE with painter: ARTIST minus S(kill) primarily involved, ie included.
10 Make slight adjustments to great piece of music (4-4)
FINE TUNE  A great piece of music might be a fine tune. Please note the setter avoided the stray A that I’ve just put in. Credit where due.
11 Cast to include unusual material (poor stuff) (6)
SHODDY Cast is SHY, include ODD for unusual, for our answer. As well as being an adjective, shoddy is a noun for poor quality material or cloth.
13 Vulgarity of Eastender’s jollity outside hotel (10)
EARTHINESS All Eastenders drop their haitches in popular myth, so their jollity, or HEARTINESS is unaspirated but includes H(otel)
16 Bad folk not half getting the bird (4)
RUFF I assume the bad people are RUFFIANS, so cut them down to half their size. The one we’re looking for to accommodate 21d is the (infamous ruff cockney) sandpiper
17 Wartime colonel no leader, ineffective (4)
LIMP Colonel Blimp first emerged in the inter war years in a David Lowe cartoon, but took on a life of his own as a reactionary establishment figure making often preposterous statements. Today’s (or is it already yesterday’s) Gammon characters are pretty much direct descendants. The Powell and Pressburger version, in The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp is a rather more sympathetic figure, embodying (un)common decency. All we need to do is the remove name’s leader, the B.
18 In a language accessible to a few — hence pride may be hurt (10)
ENCIPHERED The Colonel Blimp in me still thinks it looks better taking a Y, but since it’s an anagram (may be hurt) of HENCE PRIDE it can’t (and Chambers agrees)
20 Stage in development of some workers at home getting sign of approval (6)
INSTAR So “the form of an insect between moult and moult” or more precisely of an insect (such as an ant) larva. You may not know this, so rely on the wordplay, where at home gives IN and a sign of approval is a STAR (because tick doesn’t work).
22 University given commendation, put at a higher level (8)
UPRAISE U(niversity) and PRAISE for commendation
24 Had a pork-pie reluctantly? (3,4,3)
ATE ONE’S HAT A cryptic suggestion, pork pie being (as well as a CRS lie) a smallish hat. Reluctantly because a) you promised to do so if you were proved wrong and b) they usually taste horrible and are hard to chew.
26 Nibblers taking bit from the front of clerical garment (4)
MICE The bit you take from the AMICE – a strip of linen or a furry hood or a cloak or wrap (ask your local priest) – is the front A.
27 Fails to hold secret, separate, social occasions (6,7)
DINNER PARTIES This is constructed from fails: DIES, secret: INNER and separate PART. The first “holds” the other two. I spent time working that out because dinner and parties are also separate social occasions and I wanted the clue to make sense.

Down

1 Revolutionary crowd, one interrupting a race, creating outrage (11)
ABOMINATION You should know by now that “revolutionary” means reversed. So your crowd is MOB/BOM, your one is I, and both “interrupt” A NATION. Nation and race are not the same thing, discuss. Unblimpishly, please.
2 Reason radioactive substance is boxed (5)
CAUSE Even I know that a radioactive substance might well be Uranium. Put its symbolic U in a box or CASE.
3 Meddling, confusing virtue with sin (9)
INTRUSIVE I like this as an anagram (confusing). It uses VIRTUE and SIN.
4 Onset of enmity has you, red-hot, turning up making wicked stare (4,3)
EVIL EYE So the onset of envy is E, you is/are YE, and red-hot produces LIVE, all of which gets “turned up”. Chambers lists burning and other hot things under live
5 One President or another turning crazy in a second (5)
ADAMS John was the 2nd and his son John Quincy the 6th POTUS. Turn (reverse) MAD for crazy in A and S(econd)
6 Contract somehow exposes our national church (9)
OUTSOURCE That sort of contract. Exposes gives OUTS, and the rest is OUR C(hurch of) E(ngland)
7 Rested part of the weekend (3)
SAT -urday
12 Disagreements in terrible residence, very loud inside (11)
DIFFERENCES Surprisingly (it looks too long) an anagram (terrible) of RESIDENCE and FF for very loud (music).
14 I had to bypass hole in urban area in rain (3,2,4)
TIP IT DOWN  A matryoshka. I (ha)D bypasses (goes round, I suppose) PIT for hole. both enclosed in TOWN for urban area.
15 Opera star being tricky — one creates divisions (9)
SEPARATOR Another anagram (being tricky) of OPERA STAR
19 Pay that is horrible — there’s mutinous activity about that (5,2)
COUGH UP That is horrible translates to UGH, and COUP for mutinous activity is placed about it.
21 Hesitation about temptress as partner for 16? (5)
REEVE Mrs Ruff (see 16a). Hesitation, when it’s not um, is ER. Reverse (about) it, and add, EVE once again calumniated as a temptress. I cherish a commentry on Geneis which avers that Eve should have rebuffed the snake using “the sacred and imperishable words of Scripture”. Pity the Gideons hadn’t got round to palcing a copy in her bedside table.
23 Confession of one fancying men and women in poetic pieces (5)
IAMBI The Times gets a bit woke with the confession I AM BI from the person doubling their chances of a date on a Friday night. I will resist the temptation to write up the blog in iambic pentameters.
25 A bit of a creature with egg hatching out (3)
TAD Well, it had to be once the T and D were in place, and I used time wondering whether we had to find a way of removing “pole”. Instead, let the taddie reach its adult form as a TOAD and remove the egg shaped letter, exercise for the student to guess which one.

50 comments on “27922 Thursday, 11 March 2021 In which Eve gets the blame (again).”

  1. I couldn’t think of STAR, so finally used aids to get INSTAR; a word I knew, even. (Well, knew in the sense of knowing it was a word having to do with insects, not in the sense of knowing what it meant.) That enabled me to–finally–figure out TIP IT DOWN, a phrase I’ve never come across. The N gave me DINNER PARTIES, the D TAD. And those four took around 10 minutes. I liked the combination of virtue and sin.
  2. Off to a blistering start and thought this would possibly be very easy. But about halfway through I ground to a halt and had to work to get the rest of the answers. In retrospect I see there was just a lot I didn’t know.
  3. 33 minutes.

    I got the IOM reference at 9ac right away but couldn’t think what the word for the emblem was other than it stared with TRI, so I wrote that in to be going on with. I was surprised that with the arrival of other checkers and the wordplay falling into place the answer had to be TRIPARTITE as I knew that wasn’t the word I had been trying to think of.

    Other unknowns were INSTAR and {a}MICE but they didn’t delay me.

    It’s worth remembering that the colonel referred to at 17ac gave his name to a type of anti-aircraft barrage balloon. I believe it has turned up here in that context at least once.

    It’s tipping it down with rain here right now, and has been all night.

    Edited at 2021-03-11 05:12 am (UTC)

  4. I was pleased to be all correct. I wondered for a time which of RIFF or RAFF was a bird before I thought of RUFFians. Didn’t know AMICE. Didn’t know INSTAR. Wasn’t sure about REEVE. I knew the IOM had a three-legged thingy but not what it was called. TIP IT DOWN sounded plausible but not a phrase I can remember hearing. Definitely a day where I had to trust the wordplay.
  5. …I put RIFF (raff) for 16ac. Couldn’t make any connection to the obviously correct REEVE in 21d but left it for want of anything better. Never did think of ruffians. I only knew of a REEVE as an old magistrate.
    NHO INSTAR or of an amice.
    I used to live in Sicily so knew the symbol for the island is a Trinacria so 9ac wasn’t difficult.
    Thanks for EVIL EYE and TAD, Z.
    Favourites today” ATE ONES HAT and CAUSE

    Edited at 2021-03-11 07:10 am (UTC)

  6. As jack says, it’s tipping it down here, with distubing winds (if a fence panel goes, several follow). Nho INSTAR, and was confused about TOFU being cheesy, which would disquiet vegans. Dnk AMICE.

    I liked IAMBI and TAD.

    I’m a Cockney, but not an Eastender, which we could debate. I can do RP too.

    13′ 50″, thanks z and setter.

  7. 30 mins.
    No ticks. Eight big crosses.
    Not my cup of tea at all.
    Thanks setter and Z.
  8. I assumed it was riff raff (which my wife says I am)… and plomped for a raff. For me, this was not a great crossword because of the wide mix of clue difficulty… very inconsistent
  9. It took me two goes to finish today, with EARTHINESS and INSTAR not yielding at the first pass. Elsewhere the amice was unknown, but the definition was clear and ARCHIPELAGOES took a long time to reveal itself. I should get into the habit of having a pen and paper at the ready for anagrams, particularly now I solve at home rather than on the train, as they are considerably harder done solely in my head. It didn’t help that I thought the “Groups at sea” was going to be some class of sea creature.
  10. 18:12 LOI the unknown INSTAR with fingers crossed as I hadn’t remembered REEVE as the female bird so relied on wordplay for that too. Like Jack I got stuck on the three-legged symbol thinking TRIPED… something. Was puzzled how TADpole worked until set straight here. SHODDY work on my part in places.Thanks Z and setter.
  11. 11:37. Quite tricky, with some decidedly odd stuff. TOFU = cheesy food? No. Some obscure words and a bit of misogyny just in time to miss International Women’s Day.
    I was fortunate with 20ac in knowing the French expression à l’instar de, meaning more or less ‘in the image of’, or ‘like’. This gave me the confidence that INSTAR might at least be a word.

    Edited at 2021-03-11 08:56 am (UTC)

  12. FOI: 12D DIFFERENCES
    LOI: 25D TAD

    A terribly slow start set the trend. Held up, fixated on TRISKELION, and didn’t fully parse DINNER PARTIES, but very enjoyable.

    Thank you to z8b8d8k and the setter.

    Edited at 2021-03-11 03:30 pm (UTC)

  13. It was the westmost-third that had me scratching, eventually solving the bottom section. The top part was slower having to contend with a hastily bunged-in BRIE(F) where TOFU should have been.

    As for the cockerney, I was trying to find a word with an H inside it, which sounded like the word without the H inside it, so can’t say that EARTHINESS was my favourite answer today.

    INSTAR — LOI — NHO — SHRUG — HIT AND HOPE

  14. Enjoyed the blog more than the crossword. Steady solve. Only relevant garment I thought of was surplice which led to lice until the churchmice turned up.
  15. Didn’t know INSTAR, so relied on the wordplay with not much confidence. Also wasn’t sure what the first letter being removed was for MICE.

    Otherwise this didn’t present too many problems, though I would have struggled with IAMBI had it not been clued relatively generously and I missed the Isle of Man reference in TRIPARTITE and just constructed it from the wordplay.

    FOI Archipelagoes
    LOI Instar
    COD Ate one’s hat

  16. Strange crossword, this, didn’t much like it. Just a wavelength thing maybe.
    Cheesy can mean inferior, tasteless, poor .. in that sense I would expect tofu qualifies 🙂

    RACE: An ethnic group, regarded as showing a common origin and descent; a tribe, nation, or people, regarded as of common stock (from the OED)

    1. On that basis it’s a definition by example, which I know you will be very bothered about…
  17. 45m struggle, various unknowns with a few blind guesses. Not very enjoyable for me today, but a most entertaining blog. Thank you, Z
  18. 44 minutes after a bad start, having to walk down to the newspaper shop in a howling gale as the paperboy had mistakenly delivered the Telegraph. And it was TIPPLING DOWN, the expression I’ve usually used. TIP IT DOWN was known though. Maybe I should have stuck with the Telegraph, as I didn’t get on that well with this puzzle. I’d have spelt ARCHIPELAGOES without the second E if I hadn’t another space to fill. I biffed TRIPARTITE, irritated that TRISKELION, which I did know, wasn’t correct. I’d no idea about INSTAR but it was nice to be back at infant school and get a star for good work. I’m a churchgoer used to many traditions but the amice has passed me by. MICE was easily biffed though. COD to COUGH UP. Thank you Z, and setter for the challenge.

    Edited at 2021-03-11 09:56 am (UTC)

    1. Yesterday our daily paper newspaper did not appear, and they sent the Daily Mail instead, which went straight into the recycling.
  20. Tripartite to me is a triple amen beloved of the choirmaster at school, a bit like Browning’s thrush, that sings each song twice over, lest you should think he never could recapture, the first fine careless rapture. Memo to self: whenever you see the word “Man” at the start a clue, think island as well as crew.
  21. Found this a bit of a slog and couldn’t get on the setter’s wavelength at all. A fair bit of biffing required. The word Outsourcing is always vaguely depressing.
    1. The word does have negative connotations, always justifiably so in my experience.
  22. Pretty much bang on my average time. I struggled to get a foothold in the top half so had to build from the bottom. One consequence of that was that I arrived at REEVE before RUFF. I bunged in REEVE from wordplay and then forgot to check the cross-references but that wouldn’t have helped me one bit. For all I knew Reeve & Ruff could have been the undertakers in The Pickwick Expectations.

    Like others NHO INSTAR or AMICE so wasn’t entirely confident of being all correct. COD to COUGH UP but I got more entertainment from Z’s blog than the puzzle so thanks.

    Tipping it down here too.

  23. Slightly bumpy road to the solution today. Paused for thought at TOFU being cheesy…I suppose it looks a bit like feta, though not as nice to eat. Didn’t know why RUFF and REEVE were a pair; as per above, they could have been Dickens characters, or a music-hall act. Still, got everything with no pink squares, so there you go.
  24. Saw TRIPARTITE but thought it must mean the actual name of the thing, and not a description of it, which held me up at the end. TIPPING IT DOWN must be a UK phrase, probably due to the fact that it’s usually drizzling and heavy rain is more unusual in these parts. As a veggie, I eat a lot of TOFU, which is supposed to be tasteless until you add your own flavours. Personally I prefer the smoky variety, fried like bacon.
  25. 32m, so apparently off the wavelength somewhat. RUFF, REEVE and INSTAR went in with fingers crossed. Most of the others had to be painstakingly pieced together. Word of the day: definitely MATRYOSHKA.
  26. Nowhere near a wavelength with this and same DNKs as others. I’d forgotten about the colonel and associated Blimp with the Goodyear dirigible that floats above major sports events in the US. There was one memorable time when it must have been returning to its base in Akron Ohio from the army/navy football game at Westpoint when it flew low over our meadow in the dark. It looked like Close Encounters. 20.43
    1. Remember going to the golf once in Houston – they had a small blimp tethered to the ground, not a free-flying one. All the golfers were continually looking up at it, and I finally figured out why: they were sheltered by trees, their shots went way above the tree-line, the blimp gave them an excellent indication of the wind direction.
  27. Like a football team that can win without playing well, I got through this in a good time for me with only one mistake without ever feeling I was on top of it. Did not know instar or amice, ruff or reeve as birds. Thought of riff-raff so was annoyed that it wasn’t clear which to pick. That should have given pause for thought but it didn’t so I chose riff.
    The phrase I grew up with was ‘tipping down’. Never heard it with the added ‘it’.
    ‘Race’ is not ‘nation’. Tofu is not cheesy. IMHO
    Liked ‘boxed’ for ‘in case’.
    Thanks to setter and blogger.
  28. 24.25 with instar at the last causing most of the problems. Eventually reckoned on star being a sign of approval, a highlight of early education was getting a gold star. Everything after was an anticlimax!

    Tripartite was tricky. Knew the three legs of Man bit but when all the checkers were in took a punt on tripartite. Thanks blogger for explaining.

    FOI Abomination and LOI Instar. Liked earthiness, ate ones hat and instar but COD was the deceptively simple ruff.

    Thanks setter and blogger.

  29. Lovely puzzle today. NHO instar but the flying was generous so no problem. Held up a long time in SW not helped by putting eat ones hat so tad could not reveal itself for the longest time.

    34:18 but a pink square because of a typo that has plagued me since junior school. Why do i never spell separate correctly even when there’s an anagram? Stupid boy as my senior school latin teacher would have said😂
    COD to the mtrusive for the elegant surface.
    Thanks Zabadak and setter.

    1. We must have boarded at the same school, where stupid boy was accompnied by a clip round the ear’ole. But perhaps all schoolmasters said “stupid boy”.
      Rich
    2. There’s “a rat” in “separate”, don’t you agree? I believe that was the mnemonic we were taught in school.
  30. Normal service resumed today at 42 mins. So a medium difficult crossie in my terms. Another who bunged in INSTAR known from the French so guessed it might be right. NHO AMICE but nibblers had to be mice. UPRAISED is a weird word insomuch as UP has to be raised, and RAISED has to be up. No? Liked COUGH UP and ENCIPHERED. Nice blog Z, thank you. Setter too.
  31. FOI Archipelagoes, LOI Tad. Biffed away like mad. Forty minutes, but pleased to complete. Husband focused on t*i*a*t*t* and came up with tripartite with no idea why other than it fit, and I could not supply the reason but stuck it in anyway. Only got tad because of dinner parties. Only six on first pass but then got on a bit of a roll. Cough up gave me hat and solved the pork pie for me. COD fine tune. When it rains where I come from it can tip or even sile it down. Thanks Z and setter for the enjoyable entertainment. GW.
  34. Didn’t enjoy this, DK AMICE, didn’t like tripartite for triskelion (having previously lived in IOM for 18 years), DK INSTAR, and a few more where I was raising an eyebrow. The anagrams were good.
  35. ….I entered “triskelion” and then had to faff around deleting it, and when I entered TRIPARTITE I wasn’t convinced and backed it out again. Although it was eventually LOI that was only due to me wanting all the checkers in place — so false LOI I suppose. I only parsed it later.

    All of which, at least partly, explains why my personal NITCH of 134 is the second highest among those who average 15 minutes or less. I was further hindered by 1A, where I spent too long thinking about families of fish.

    FOI TOFU *
    LOI (really) OUTSOURCE
    COD ARCHIPELAGOES (which I would have spelled incorrectly with the (for me) unexpected penultimate E)
    TIME 12:51

    * Did you see the story this week about the woman who complained that KFC discriminated against her by failing to provide a non-meat alternative ? I wonder if Kentucky Fried Tofu might ever catch on ?

  36. This seems to be par for the week: I would have had one pink square if the Times site hadn’t crashed the minute I submitted my solution (almost an hour after starting). And that would have been unavoidable since I simply didn’t know what version of R?FF was a bird, so I settled on RIFF. No idea what it might have had to do with REEVE, so what I made up for myself was that the SHERIFF was originally the SHIRE REEVE. This made about as much sense to me as the wordplay for MICE or the definition of INSTAR or the correct parsing of TAD, which of course I also didn’t see. As you might guess, I didn’t much like this puzzle, even though I solved all the rest correctly.
  37. DNF a 22-ish minute solve but had no idea about reeve and ruff. I managed to get the former from word play but decided the latter was a toss up between riff and raff, I thought raff more plausible. So one pink square there and another one for a common or garden typo elsewhere. Instar and A-mice were unknowns but gettable. Enciphered took forever to work out I saw it was an anagram but thought I was looking for something like Esperanto.
  38. I hesitate to disagree with the ever readable and enjoyable Myrtilus but I quite enjoyed this. RUFF and REEVE from wordplay ditto INSTAR (LOI) but what else could it be once the temptress was revealed? Embarrassingly the Man reference passed me by, and NHO the “correct” description but we deal with lots of TRIPARTITE docs in my line of work so the word was (too) familiar.

    SHODDY was the word of most interest. My Grandfather and his brothers ran a shoddy making factory in West Yorkshire in the early part of last century. They were interesting times

    Thanks Z and setter

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