Times 27758

Author   jackktPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Times 27758

Solving time: 55 minutes. I made rather heavy weather of this one as there were a few words or meanings unknown to me, but there’s a lot of easy stuff too

As usual definitions are underlined in bold italics, {deletions and substitutions are in curly brackets} and [anagrinds, containment, reversal and other indicators in square ones]. I usually omit all reference to positional indicators unless there is a specific point that requires clarification.

Across
1 England, gutted, regularly mourned old king (6)
EDMUND : E{nglan}D [gutted], M{o}U{r}N{e}D [regularly]. There were three Edmunds, King of England and one of Scotland.
4 A walk in the park — then get on a tree (8)
CINCHONA : CINCH (walk in the park), ON, A. Never ‘eard of it. A search reveals it has appeared once before in the TfTT era but in a Jumbo, and on that occasion it was defined as the medicinal drug that’s obtained from it.
10 Giving up sitting in the auditorium (7)
CESSION : Sounds like [in the auditorium] “session” (sitting). Not a word that I’m familiar with. This was one of two clues that slowed me down considerably.
11 Passionate old woman about to be involved in affair (7)
FLAMING : MA (old woman) reversed [about] contained by [involved in] FLING (affair)
12 Special catering arrangement for assembly (4)
DIET : Two meanings. The 1524 Diet of Worms was the latter rather than the former.
13 Mister, a man surprisingly normal (10)
MAINSTREAM : Anagram [surprisingly] of MISTER A MAN
15 Man entering skilfully and in pugnacious manner (9)
DEFIANTLY : IAN (man) contained by [entering] DEFTLY (skilfully)
16 Disciple‘s transgression, second to be admitted (5)
SIMON : SIN (transgression) with MO (second) contained [admitted]
18 Plant‘s  biological rhythm (5)
PULSE : Two meanings
19 Talks conveying a lot of sound lines (9)
ORDINATES : ORATES (talks) containing [conveying] DIN (a lot of sound)
21 Measure following clean-up operation in American state (10)
WASHINGTON : WASHING (clean-up operation), TON (measure)
23 Female pupil ultimately out of favour (4)
BESS : B{l}ESS (favour) [{pupi}L ultimately out]. My LOI after a tedious alphabet trawl.
26 Like spring baby with a nature that’s wild (7)
TAUREAN : Anagram [wild] of A NATURE. To qualify as this one needs to have been born between 19 April and 20 May.
27 Sarah to become fatigued and cross (7)
SALTIRE : SAL (Sarah), TIRE (become fatigued). An X-shaped cross as on the Scottish flag.
28 This man’s with it — worker maybe destined to lose? (8)
HESITANT : HE‘ S (this man’s), IT, ANT (worker). According to the old saw “He who hesitates is lost”.
29 Absence of d-drink? Or a small amount (6)
NOGGIN : NO G-GIN (absence of d-drink)
Down
1 Line in US pursued by some police hero (2,3)
EL CID : EL (line in US – elevated railway/railroad), CID (some police – Criminal Investigation Department, as opposed to the boys in blue)
2 New smart fuel provided by expert (9)
MASTERFUL : Anagram [new] of SMART FUEL
3 Fix article with nothing to protect it (4)
NAIL : A (article) contained by NIL [with (nothing) to protect it]
5 Early period at home needing love (7)
INFANCY : IN (at home), FANCY (love)
6 Rebuking incompletely pure one with chant (10)
CHASTISING : CHAST{e} (pure) [incompletely], I (one), SING (chant)
7 Think of love and languish (5)
OPINE : 0 (love), PINE (languish)
8 What must make these worse? Anger must (9)
ARGUMENTS : Anagram [make] of ANGER MUST.  &lit.
9 Actually do something with endless knowledge (2,4)
IN FACT : INF{o} (knowledge) [endless],  ACT (do something)
14 Harmful bloke if upset over money (10)
MALEFICENT : MALE (bloke), IF reversed [upset], CENT (money). Another word I’m not particularly familiar with.
15 Computer device emulates barbaric test for evil woman? (3,6)
DIP SWITCH : Alternatively spaced as DIPS WITCH = ’emulates barbaric test for evil woman’. The only dip switch I was aware of is the motor car headlight control but I understand in computer circles it stands for ‘Dual In-line Package’, some sort of widget that makes it all work.
17 Dull group making a difference? (9)
MATTERING : MATTE (dull), RING (group)
19 System of rules abused in Rangoon (7)
ORGANON : Anagram [abused] of RANGOON. SOED has: An instrument of thought or knowledge; a means of reasoning, discovery, etc.; spec. a system of logical rules of demonstration or investigation, esp. the logical treatises of Aristotle. E17. I knew the word but had no idea what it was.
20 Sleepy daughter fights — last thing mummy needs (6)
DROWSY : D (daughter), ROWS (fights), {mumm}Y [last thing]
22 Ship with cargo of sweet vegetables (5)
SPUDS : SS (ship) contains [with cargo of] PUD (sweet – pudding course)
24 Birds flying, seen from hide around edge of lake (5)
SKEIN : SKIN (hide) containing [around] {lak}E [edge]. A flight of wildfowl that once landed reverts to being a flock.
25 Singer frequently getting half confused (4)
ALTO : A LOT (frequently)  [getting half – OT – confused] becomes ALTO (singer)

60 comments on “Times 27758”

  1. Slow and not steady, POI SKEIN and LOI BESS taking a long time. DNK NOGGIN, or DIP SWITCH. ORGANON I knew from Bacon’s ‘New Organon’. DIET for some reason is commonly used to refer to Japan’s Parliament (I suspect Basil Chamberlain, who was responsible for ‘mikado’, a word no one has used since God knows when); the Japanese word (kokkai 国会）denotes any national assembly. I never did get ALTO.
  2. Rather MOR crossword which I idled through.

    FOI 13ac MAINSTREAM

    LOI 23ac BESS – tedious indeed

    COD 4ac CINCHONA is where we get most of our natural quinine from.

    WOD 29ac NOGGIN – has he not reached America yet? As a lad ‘Noggin The Nog’ was compulsory viewing, as we sat by our great log fires. Written and narrated by Oliver Postgate. Pre- Crown of Thorns animation.

      1. Noggin the Nog sounds like one of those old double entendres. Do you like Kipling? I don’t know I’ve never Kippled.
  3. Turnabout being fair play, I got you back, Kevin. (Yes, I’m aware that this “contest” only exists in my head. But it gives me something to strive for!)

    Thank you, jackkt, for parsing EL CID, which went in very quickly, but which I assumed had to be wrong, even though there’s nothing else I could imagine it being. DIET was my last in, with the alphabet trawled and many possibilities written out. I started to get the whiff of the assembly sense, and I had indeed heard of the Diet of Worms from who knows where.

    I had to hit and hope with ORGANON and CINCHONA but they seemed reasonable enough from the wordplay and crossing letters.

    CESSION didn’t seem strange because of ‘concession’ and ‘cede’ and the like.

  4. For reasons that aren’t really clear this puzzle rubbed me up the wrong way. I didn’t enjoy it.
    1. Yes. It’s one of those where 85-90% is a write-in, and the setter has thrown in a couple of obscurities completely out of sync with the rest of it. I just wish these things were more consistent across the whole solve, otherwise it satisfies nobody. Mr Grumpy
  5. Didn’t know CINCHONA, but trusted the wordplay; probably was my POI. Don’t know if I’ve ever seen ORDINATES out without its CO before. MER at seeing OPINE defined without the sense of expressing the opinion held, but I see that dictionaries say it’s okay. This didn’t seem very hard, worked at my usual unhurried pace, and then I did yesterday’s and the past two QCs.
  6. LOI CESSION, where I managed to avoid the temptation to bung in CUSHION on the basis that it had something to do with sitting and I couldn’t see what else fitted. I still wasn’t altogether confident on submitting with the SE corner containing an unparsed ALTO and a Sal in SALTIRE which I’ve only ever thought of as an abbreviation of Sally and never of Sarah.
      2. That would be a very long time ago. Sarah is now shortened to ‘Sare‘ or the awful ‘Saz‘. I know several Sarahs and none of them are called Sal in the familiar. Mr Grumpy
  7. Thirty-four minutes.

    CINCHONA was familiar from its medicinal associations and I remembered ORGANON from previous crosswords. Thanks for explaining the EL bit of 1d which I couldn’t get and I was unsure about NOGGIN which I didn’t associate with being ‘a small amount’. The DIPS WITCH was my favourite.

  8. I’m interested that isla3 didn’t like this one.

    My time being not too bad for me, I quite enjoyed it, trusting the wordplay on CINCHONA and ORGANON. However, maybe it’s just that I easily recalled most of the GK required, including DIP SWITCH, SIMON, Sal=Sarah, SKEIN, MALEFICENT, etc. Without this, I might well have found this quite frustrating.

  9. Needed to check cinchona and organon.

    Obscure words describing birds are worse than obscure birds!

    Slightly mollified by Taurean, although here it’s more astrological than astronomical.

    3. And it doesn’t help when you are, like me, based in the Southern Hemisphere where our spring is still a couple of weeks away.
  10. …as Martin said to Mrs Luther on the crowded Worms tram on their way to the Diet ( a line from my recent novel). 41 minutes on this tricky job. LOI BESS. CINCHONA constructed with fingers crossed. COD to NOGGIN. I only knew DIP SWITCH as the car device. I put CESSION in early and worried about it until I forgot. I did quite enjoy this, but it was frustrating too. Thank you Jack and setter.
  11. < 20′, with the nho DIP SWITCH LOI.

    Got MALEFICENT from somewhere, evil character in book?

    BESS went in with crossed fingers. ALTO unparsed, thanks.

    I knew the difference between a SKEIN and a gaggle, which helped.

    I loved the film EL CID.

    Thanks jack and setter.

  12. 13.43 for this, with fingers crossed on ORGANON, and another day ahead looking for valid alternatives for a random girl’s name here randomly given as BESS. My whimsical crack at REMESCA for REBECCA yesterday turns out to be at least possible, if not in the Chambers set.
    I didn’t know MALEFICENT wasn’t just the Angelina Jolie fey with the impressive black horns.
    I put up with the two word in the grid which normally have a prefix, CESSION and ORDINATES, and appreciated the clue for HESITANT.
    I’m with you, Jack, on DIPSWITCH: if my computer has one it does nothing for the screen brightness. Thanks for elucidation, and thanks too to Horryd for the reminder of NOGGIN the Nog (and his nemesis Nogbad the Bad). Oliver Postgate’s magnificent Welsh lilt is sorely missed.
  13. After 30 mins pre-brekker…
    Having got Organon (OWAA, Obscure Word As Anagram) and Skein and the dodgy Dips Witch…
    Having ignored the tree as probably un-gettable and the female as probably a name but which would need alphabet trawls to decide…
    Having biffed Alto (unparsed)…
    I couldn’t see Noggin, which has left me needing a drink.
    Thanks setter and J.

    Edited at 2020-09-01 07:43 am (UTC)

  14. Around my normal 40 mins, held up, like others, on BESS, CESSION (another convinced it was « cushion » but couldn’t see why) and HESITANT. A diet of worms sounds great if you’re a bird but it’s not for me! Biffed CHINCHONA and kept my fingers crossed. Thank you Jackkt as ever.
  15. …but I lazily biffed CUSHION and didn’t go back to mull it over.
    Another one who used to love Noggin the Nog!
  16. I’ve flipped a few DIP SWITCHes in my time*, and appeared to be on the wavelength for the things I’d not heard of, like CINCHONA and ORGANON, finishing this one in 24 minutes

    * For anyone interested (anyone? hello?) the Dual Inline Package bit is more general and refers to the packaging of anything, especially integrated circuits, into a little casing with two rows of connectors at standard distances. So a DIP SWITCH that looks like this will fit into the same socket as a DIP-packaged integrated circuit chip that looks like this. Fascinating, I know…

  17. Steady progress, hit upon BESS fairly early, luckily. Last ones in ORDINATES/ORGANON.

    COD: DROWSY for some reason clues that take ages to describe a single letter appeal to me.

    Yesterday’s answer: Meadowlark Lemon famously played for the Harlem Globetrotters, featuring in a cartoon series of my youth.

    Today’s question: Washington DC is named after the first US president. What other national capital is named after a US president?

  18. 9:46. I whizzed through about three-quarters of this then slowed down considerably, particularly over the unknown CINCHONA and ORGANON and then for some reason my last in, SPUDS, which took me quite a while to see for some reason.
  19. A write-in if you have ever studied pharmacology however old you are as it has been used in the treatment of malaria for at least 300 years. Eventually the active ingredient was refined as quinine, which also flavours the tonic water you put in your gin, though not in anti-malarial concentrations.
    1. Ah! I had heard of this, then, just not by that name (it’s key to the plot in an episode of Sharpe, but they call it “Jesuit’s bark”.)
  20. Noggin the Nog indeed, I’m waiting for Graculus to bring a message. Slow progress, not quite in tune for me.
  21. No real problems, middle of the road stroll. Like others bored by BESS and unsure of CESSION

    Don’t understand obsession with DIET of Worms. The word is still in current usage in the Bundestag

  22. 15:43. Held up for about 3 minutes by BESS and CESSION, my last two in, and failed to parse ALTO. Good to see the rightful patron saint of England at 1A, who is interred somewhere near here. I liked HESITANT and SPUDS.

    Edited at 2020-09-01 08:02 am (UTC)

  24. 7m 17s and nothing too scary here, even if CINCHONA & ORGANON were unknowns and CESSION (my LOI) didn’t seem familiar.

    Kudos to ORDINATES for ‘a lot of’ not meaning ‘remove the last letter of’. Always nice to be tripped up by only looking for the obvious.

  25. Even in these strange times, the Tuesday after a Bank Holiday still feels like Monday, and this puzzle was mostly Monday-ish as well. Same unknowns as others, same confidence in the wordplay to lead me to them.
  26. Especially as I knew it but it wouldn’t come until I got the I. I highly object to random girls names with -E-S …. just sayin’. HESITANT over DIP SWITCH until it just had to be. I think the ‘evil’ bit is a bit strong. The dip was supposed to find out if they were or not.
    1. Not random though, is it? There is wordplay..
      Nothing wrong with 15dn either.. if you test for something, as the clue says, you are looking to see if it is there or not. And if you are going to drown them, best to assume they are evil .. though since the drowning bit works well only on women who aren’t witches at all, the test has had to be phased out in the end.
      1. With the benefit of hindsight we can probably say with some certainty that none of them were witches…
  27. A good hearty name, as abbreviation or otherwise. Why’s it gone out of fashion? (Black Bess also Dick Turpin’s horse.)
    20.07 here, nothing too okkard. Didn’t know the el or the tree but both lay-downs with the crossers. Neither did I parse alto but ditto. Good to bounce back from a poor time yesterday.

    Edited at 2020-09-01 11:28 am (UTC)

  28. ….DIP SWITCH, but otherwise had a serenely untroubled passage.

    FOI EDMUND
    LOI ALTO
    COD DROWSY
    TIME 8:36

  29. Similar experience to my learned friends; 15 minutes to have almost all done, with ORGANON and CINCHONA put in without knowing them. Never heard of a dip switch in a computer but the witch dipping was clear. Had no idea between MESS, TESS, BESS etc so came here to see which and why. Still not impressed with the clue, bless = favour? But I suppose it’s the only word you can drop an L from and still have a 4 letter word.
  30. CINCHONA – never heard of it – SKEIN/BESS junction held me up the longest. Didn’t know this definition of SKEIN then alphabet trawl with pencilled-in S

    Edited at 2020-09-01 12:47 pm (UTC)

  31. 26.30. Started like a train and then screeched to a halt . I found this pretty taxing and never felt I was really on board, to continue the analogy.

    LOI in fact which I biffed to be honest but it seemed a reasonable choice. Glad to see organon was right even if it smacks of one of those dreadful jargon words. Maleficient struck home only due to the daft film of the same title but I don’t care.

    COD cession. Partly because it took me a dog’s age to work it out .

  32. …even though I did not know CINCHONA or ORGANON. I thought the clues for BESS and ALTO were a little weak but there were plenty of chuckles along the way – FLAMING, NOGGIN and SPUDS to name a few.
    I have heard of a DIP SWITCH but didn’t know what one looked like until I clicked on Matt’s helpful links.
    My COD has to be DROWSY for its simple construction.
    Thanks to the setter for enabling me to finish this in under 25 minutes and to Jackkt for the informative blog.
  33. A proper chastising needed for putting EDMOND in first without checking the parsing accurately! Thanks Jack for parsing IN FACT and ALTO, but I still don’t like the clue for the latter. 37:08 with a pinkie.
  34. Mostly a walk in the park, then two or three difficult words or convoluted clues, hence my error onerous Cushion. I liked Saltire. Thanks, jack
  35. Slow and steady. Nothing completely unknown but some oddities (CESSION, ORDINATES) which I’ve never actually heard in speech. 35 minutes. Ann
  36. 51:34, says the timer. LOI was CINCHONA after finally seeing ARGUMENTS and with the A, realising that 4ac would not be a walk in the park, after all, but rather a tree. Then I saw that it would end in ONA and the CINCH was, well, a cinch.
    Otherwise nothing exceptional, except that BESS was a bit excruciating (there must be tons of 4-letter females, although the E and S did narrow it down somewhat).
  37. 27 minutes, but had a reluctant LESS as LOI – definition ‘out of favour’, from L ‘pupil ultimately’, with -ESS making it female
  38. A pedestrian solve on my part taking me just under half an hour. Delayed by the unknown cinchona and despite enumeration, the E and the C, El Cid, just couldn’t see it for some reason.
  39. Mostly a walk in the park, then two or three difficult words or convoluted clues, hence my error onerous Cushion. I liked Saltire. Thanks, jack

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