Times 28911 – playtime.

Author   piquetPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic

Another Wednesday with nothing to scare even nervous horses. Chestnut time, mostly. One definition was unknown (Karen) but easily gettable from the wordplay. Parsing PICKY took me longer than any of the clues. A 12 minute solve, but enjoyable while it lasted.

Definitions underlined in bold, (ABC)* indicating anagram of ABC, anagrinds in italics, [deleted letters in square brackets].

Across
1 Very old ruined city containing Etruria’s first arena (9)
VELODROME – V[ery], E in (OLD)*, ROME.
6 Bloke coming across mile title holder (5)
CHAMP – M[ile] inside CHAP.
9 Fat misshapen toe’s torn gym clothing (7)
LEOTARD – LARD with (TOE)* inside.
10 Spanish football side, big guns regularly failing, change formation (7)
REALIGN – REAL (as in Real Madrid), [b] I [g] G [u] N [s].
11 Italian banker having billions in bank? (5)
TIBER – TIER with B inside.
12 Tory interrupting judge, extremely unpopular storyteller (9)
RACONTEUR – CON (Tory) inside RATE (judge), U[npopula]R.
13 Be denigrating rugby player, part European (8)
BACKBITE – BACK (rugby player), BIT (part), E[uropean].
14 Second day at the Biergarten, just for men (4)
STAG -S[econd], TAG German for day.
17 Green supporter rejected importing iodine (4)
NAIF – FAN reversed with I for iodine inside. Naïf being the masculine form of naïve.
18 Hag having energy cut off acquires old Scottish kettle (8)
CAULDRON – CRON[E] with AULD (Scottish for old) inside.
21 Switzerland with supplies flown in as aid for people in the mountains (9)
CHAIRLIFT – CH (Switzerland, as country code), AIRLIFT = supplies flown in.
22 Fussy and irritable, looking neither to right nor (later) left (5)
PICKY – I think this is PRICKLY (irritable) with the R and (later on) L removed. Complicated parsing for a guessable answer from P*C*Y.
24 Painter: knighted composer — not a writer from Italy (2,5)
EL GRECO – ELGAR our composer; without A = ELGR, [Umberto] ECO the writer.
25 River sparkled endlessly, with woman taking dip (7)
SHANNON – SHON[E] with ANN a woman inside.
26 Thai people live in the outskirts of Kingston (5)
KAREN – ARE (“live”) inside K[ingsto]N. The Karen people are a persecuted hill tribe in Thailand and Myanmar. I guessed they were.
27 Patriarch of drama school in Yale cast you and me (9)
AESCHYLUS – (YALE)* with SCH inside, US = you and me.
Down
1 Man runs away from rascally fellow (5)
VALET – VARLET, a rascal, loses R. VALET for man was in my mind as it appeared on Sunday last.
2 Barcelona: King OK following surgery drama (4,4,2,5)
LOOK BACK IN ANGER – (BARCELONA KING OK)*. Play by John Osbourne of which even I had heard, but will never see.
3 Awful-sounding clan abuse (8)
DIATRIBE – DIA sounds like DIRE = awful, TRIBE = clan.
4 Stubborn old bishop rude at turns (8)
OBDURATE – O[ld], B[ishop], (RUDE AT)*.
5 Increase the wealth of Henri Charrière, somewhat (6)
ENRICH – hidden, as above.
6 Smuggled in Charlie, New York crack (6)
CRANNY – RAN (smuggled) inside C for Charlie, NY for New York.
7 For engineering, lay a main central Tube (10,5)
ALIMENTARY CANAL – (LAY A MAIN CENTRAL)*.
8 Corral fierce woman, an old warrior chief (9)
PENDRAGON – PEN = corral, DRAGON a fierce woman.
13 Rely on report perhaps of Kent financial officer (4,5)
BANK CLERK – BANK = rely (bank on, rely on); CLERK as in Clerk Kent alias Superman. EDIT apparently, he is spelt CLARK which explains the “on report” i.e. sounds like. I didn’t bother looking him up.
15 Christians of note on street in Rolls (8)
BAPTISTS – BAPS are round bread rolls where I live; insert TI a note and ST[reet].
16 California cops wearing symbol of rank in a casual manner (8)
SLAPDASH – the LA PD being the California cops, inside SASH a symbol of rank.
19 Encourage ship’s doctor, having not succeeded (4,2)
URGE ON – SURGEON loses its S for succeeded.
20 Mum’s drunk the setter’s very large cocktail (6)
MIMOSA – MA (Mum) has I’M (the setter’s), OS (outsize, very large) inserted. Posh name for Buck’s fizz I think.
23 Years and years working in flipping outer space! (5)
YONKS – ON (working) inside SKY reversed. I suppose the sky is ‘outer space’ in a way.

 

75 comments on “Times 28911 – playtime.”

  1. 19d URGE ON is green paint to me.
    22a couldn’t parse P(r)ICK(l)Y.
    3d DIATRIBE; I anticipated the rhotic speakers denying the homophone, but was disappointed.

  2. 12:22

    PB I suspect, so definitely on the wavelength today.

    LOI SHANNON

    Thanks all

  3. 20 mins, but biffing AESCHULUS gave me a rethink at the end. CHAIRLIFT I immediately thought of and then rejected, until I read the clue properly.

  4. A leisurely solve in 30 minutes. It should have been quicker but for a brain fog on 6dn and 26ac, both of which were not really that difficult. It also took me too long to parse some of the answers which I wrote straight in, such as LEOTARD and EL GRECO. But a pleasant exercise overall.
    FOI – CHAMP
    LOI – CRANNY
    COD – BAPTISTS
    Thanks to piquet and other contributors.

  5. Not a hope in hell of seeing DIATRIBE. Non-rhotic “homophones” are a bugbear at the best of times, but when the elision is in the middle of the word I’m simply never going to get it.

  6. c20 mins with interruptions. Nothing too scary, as piquet says, but I’m another who felt he made heavy weather of it all, particularly in the SE where the California police and the Scottish witch with the cauldron held out until the end.

  7. 28:02
    I was pleased to be able to get the NHO KAREN and the only vaguely heard of AESCHYLUS from the wordplay.
    My last three in were YONKS, SHANNON and URGE ON.
    COD to EL GRECO once I had finally parsed it.

    Thanks piquet for the blog

  8. See, this is why my 19 min SNITCH average isn’t representative! V red WITCH for me, nearly but not quite the worst of the day.

    Struggled all over the grid, but just snuck into the top 100, whereas normally I wouldn’t.

    Nothing wrong with the puzzle, either I was not at the races, or I wasn’t on the setter’s wavelength.

    25:43

  9. 18:20

    Short and sweet. Didn’t know the KAREN or the other name for Buck’s Fizz . Shannon has given me an earworm of The Galway Girl by Sharon of that name.

    Thanks to Pip and the setter.

  10. I’ve removed ‘publican’ from my display name. Innkeeping is just one of many things I’m ex at.
    For me this was tougher than yesterday’s puzzle, with three names slowing me to a crawl at the end. I guessed EL GRECO from (2,5) but held back. Then when the ‘G’ appeared I biffed it without any idea how it derived from the clue. Conversely, KAREN was unavoidable from the wordplay, but I had no idea that Karens came from Thailand, so hesitated until the checkers made it inevitable. Finally, I knew there was a Greek fellow who is considered to be the ‘father of tragedy’, but I had no idea what he called himself. Even with the checkers I had a couple of possibilities involving a SCH[OOL], US and an anagram of YALE, but all options seemed possible and none rang a bell. So I googled ‘father of tragedy’ and found AESCHYLUS to finish in a bit over 40 minutes.
    There was nothing to dislike, but this puzzle just didn’t excite me. More like Monday’s please.
    Whilst here, I see you all commenting on SNITCH. What is it? Where can I get one?

    1. There’s a link to it on this page(under Useful Links). Where on the page depends on your device. It’s a statistical analysis of solving performance and stands for Same-day Numeric Index of Times Cryptic Hardness. Developed by one of our Aussie contributors, Starstruck.

  11. I first worked in random order (starting with KAREN) ten answers with no crossers, which placed at least one letter in each word, which made the rest even easier than it would have been, and finished in the SE, with CAULDRON. Nice one, no problems. I often saw the answer before the parsing.

  12. It took me a while to get going on this one, but TIBER set me off, then the RHS provided easier pickings. I was grateful for the wordplay for KAREN and AESCHYLUS. I was held up for a while at the end by BANK CLERK and NAIF. 20:32. Thanks setter and Pip.

  13. As many have said, a bit of a doddle. I’d not heard of the Karen but, as piquet says, easy enough from the wordplay; likewise, I only know of mimosa as a plant but again it couldn’t be anything else from the wordplay. I held myself up slightly by biffing, more or less, and misspelling (!!!) ‘SWANNEE’ for 25ac, but I soon realised from ‘YONKS’ that it had to be wrong and then actually paid some attention to the wordplay and saw that it was ‘SHANNON’.

  14. Two in a row after a disastrous Monday has restored my self belief, to some extent
    Was pleased to remember AESCHYLUS even if I didn’t know anything about him.
    FOI VELODROME
    LOI BAPTISTS
    COD STAG

  15. It’s not very often I’m unhappy with a time of 24.07, which is fairly speedy for me on the 15×15, but as I had only five left to complete in the se corner with only 12 minutes elapsed, doubling my time wasn’t what I had in mind. If I hadn’t spent so long solving CAULDRON it might have been different, and AESCHYLUS which had to be carefully constructed cost me a fair bit of time.

  16. 14:56 today – pleasing. LOI VALET (having no idea VARLET was a word).

  17. I am normally a seaside donkey in this stable of thoroughbreds, nervous or not, but to my astonishment I went straight through that in 13:09. COD to CHAIRLIFT, which got a proper chuckle. Many thanks, PK.

  18. I don’t know what URGEd me ON to try the 15×15 today after my usual QC, but I’m very happy to have done the whole thing, nearly all parsed, without any aids, in just over an hour.

    As usual it’s the Britspeak that introduces uncertainty at best, total ignorance at worst. I won’t say I never heard of YONKS, but certainly not for YONKS. SHANNON was a pure guess. Thank goodness I’d been warned about “banker” as code for river, otherwise I’d never have got there. I’m slowly learning that a back plays rugby. Loved CAULDRON. Don’t care for Mr. ELGaR but at least I can remember his name. AESCHYLUS was a nice piece of misdirection. DIATRIBE had to wait until I experimented with non-rhotic pronunciations. Lucky for me, —- –C- — A-G– somehow was obviously LOOK BACK IN ANGER, though I then had to stare at the clue a bit longer to even see that it was an anagram! I never figured out the Kent thing though.

    Thanks blogger, commenters, and setter!

  19. I wonder if bloggers can stop suggesting that a crossword wouldn’t have scared the horses? They, the bloggers, criticise setters for ‘chestnuts’ in the cluing. Perhaps the bloggers could follow suit and stop using the chestnut of a horse analogy. Whilst not wishing to be too literal, I have never seen a horse that has been scared by any cryptic crossword.

    1. Well, our bloggers didn’t come up with that on their own.
      https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/scare_the_horses
      «
      Etymology
      Probably a variation of frighten the horses [linked] of similar meaning, as in “Does it really matter what these affectionate people do? — so long as they don’t do it in the streets and frighten the horses!”

      Verb
      scare the horses (third-person singular simple present scares the horses, present participle scaring the horses, simple past and past participle scared the horses)
       1. To upset public order, decorum, or conventional values.
      »

        1. I figured you probably did, actually… after I took a moment to look that up on a work day. What I was really expecting to find was a literary source. Well, Oscar Wilde is one of the people it is attributed to, and the previously cited Wiktionary entry mentions a stage actress, Mrs. Patrick Campbell, but there is, it turns out, a host of other suspects:
          https://quoteinvestigator.com/2019/10/08/frighten/

  20. 33.03 Not especially quick but I never felt stuck. I did the hokey-cokey with EL GRECO until the checkers insisted on him. CAULDRON made no sense to me either. CRANNY was LOI. Thanks piquet.

  21. I can’t say I found this easy. The SE was a real struggle. The whole puzzle took me ages. EL GRECO was just a guess. The wordplay defeated me utterly, and I struggle with clues that have unindicated DBE’s. Clark Kent). They seem very common in the Times, and would be rejected elsewhere.

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