Times 27,779: Fyodor Trotsky

Author   VerlainePosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
A little disappointing difficulty-wise at the end of an above-averagely easy week, but I found much in here to enjoy, with some really exceptional surfaces. 17dn was very jolly but I think I’ll give COD to 21dn as it’s very neat despite being about the mystifying pastime of cricketball. I also very much liked the “unarmed patrol”. I don’t have too much to say beyond that, it was good, thanks setter.

If anyone wants to look at a lot of my alarming face, I can be seen hosting an OQL quiz at the end of this link; it’s not all horror and despair though, the whole thing is much redeemed by regular appearances by topicaltim putting in a typical tour de force performance in seat 4B. Yay!

ACROSS
1 In school, used to be provided with juice (7)
POWERED – in POD [school (of whales)], WERE [used to be]

5 Foreign orchestra given something to play by network (7)
GAMELAN – GAME [something to play] by LAN [(Local Area) Network]

9 Crazy, dropping head to the back (3)
AFT – {d}AFT, FOI

10 Lady not running freely sent in for surgery (11)
VISCOUNTESS – VISCOUS [not running freely], with (SENT*) in. Reader, I cannot tell a lie, I biffed it.

11 Make a friend with ceremony (8)
FORMALLY – or FORM ALLY

12 California police try to return pampered pet (6)
LAPDOG – L.A.P.D + reversed GO

15 Christmas returns in part of Spain (4)
LEON – reversed NOEL

16 Party votes to change very high limit for author (10)
DOSTOEVSKY – DO [party] + (VOTES*) + SKY [as in “the sky’s the limit!”]

18 Record how long left in permit (3,4,3)
ALL TIME LOW – TIME [how long] + L(eft) in ALLOW [permit]. I was looking for a popular song, most likely All Time High, but I think this is just a record-breakingly bad statistic. Unless there exists a setter who was a really big fan of The Wanted.

19 Lightly hit cold cheek (4)
CLIP – C(old) LIP

22 Run before notice to pick Emma up again? (6)
REREAD – R ERE AD. Good choice of reading material

23 Stung by these perhaps, destroy a nest beside tree (4,4)
FIRE ANTS – (A NEST*) beside FIR, semi-&lit. Painful little stingers

25 Prudent course resulting from successful seance? (5,6)
HAPPY MEDIUM – double defined with a psychic medium who is chuffed after a good communion with the nether realms.

27 One nailed to back of house (3)
TOE – TO + {hous}E. “One nailed” as in, a thing that has a nail

28 Cracking effort: girl hides processor (7)
TANNERY – ANNE, “cracking” TRY. A tannery is in the business of processing animal hides

29 Rolled pastry, extremely short, ruled revolting (7)
STRUDEL – S{hor}T + (RULED*)

DOWN
1 Jesting, pull a fairy’s wings off (7)
PLAYFUL – (PULL A F{air}Y*). Great/horrible surface!

2 One may be in the office, given this advice if beach too hot? (5-6)
WATER-COOLER – if the beach is too hot, try the water, which is cooler, instead.

3 Have great delight taking in a show (6)
REVEAL – REVEL “taking in” A

4 Failed to fence wood that’s prohibited (10)
DISALLOWED – DIED “to fence” SALLOW, which is like a willow

5 Continue as thug (4)
GOON – or GO ON

6 Possibly tiger mother doing more tidying? (3-5)
MAN-EATER – or MA, NEATER

7 Position of railway not new (3)
LIE – LI{n}E

8 Bunch for one inhibited by lack of authority (7)
NOSEGAY – E.G. “inhibited” by NO SAY

13 Made fresh deal in juggling with dates (11)
DESALINATED – (DEAL IN + DATES*) [“juggling”]

14 Unarmed, patrol population centres for serious crimes (10)
ATROCITIES – {p}ATRO{l} loses its left and right “arms”, plus CITIES

17 Lots of data as Times breaks US military scandal? (8)
GIGABYTE – BY [times] “breaks” G.I.-GATE. I caused problems for myself by initially bunging in MEGABYTE. Obviously it’s hard to tell me apart from a GI, I mean which one would win in a fight, it could definitely go either way, right?

18 Pretentiousness by extremely attractive miss (3,4)
AIR SHOT – AIRS by HOT

20 In old-fashioned uniform, line dance (3,4)
PAS SEUL – PASSÉ U L. LOI, partly because I was trying hard to put something “in” something else

21 Cricketer’s entry in Anglo-French dictionary? (6)
SEAMER – if you look up “sea” in a very basic A-F dictionary, you might see SEA: MER

24 Raise up pretty velvet covers (4)
LEVY – covered by {prett}Y VEL{vet}, in an “up” direction

26 God is hurt, abandoned by one (3)
PAN – PA{i}N

46 comments on “Times 27,779: Fyodor Trotsky”

  1. Great puzzle, really enjoyed it, even with a failure at pas seul where I eventually looked it up. Some interesting off-beat definitions, COD to tannery.
    I discovered I can’t spell Dostoyevsky (sic), though that transliteration seems to be optional.

    Edited at 2020-09-25 01:51 am (UTC)

  2. Not a crime against spelling after all, but I still had to take my punishment, being held up for some time by the Y-less DOSTOEVSKY.

    I thought the 18a/4d ALLOW crossing was a bit clumsy. Still, I did enjoy this with SEAMER being a little gem of a clue. I was pleased to remember GAMELAN from previous outings.

    Eventually all in after 51 minutes.

  3. I felt like I was on the wavelength for the first time this week, thinking that several clues were clever as I solved them but never being held up by them for too long. I finished with SEAMER, which I particularly liked. I also thought LAPD appearing in LAPDOG was very good. There were a lot of great surfaces today – “pull a fairy’s wings off” is about as smooth as they come.

    At one point I thought 18A might be a religious cover of the well known Free song – All Rite Now. I had heard of ALL TIME LOW though I couldn’t have told you who sung it. @verlaine – I hope you had to look that up!

    Edited at 2020-09-25 07:01 am (UTC)

  4. Feeling quite pleased to have negotiated my way through a rather difficult puzzle with several unknowns in 79 minutes it was a bit disconcerting to find it described as ‘a little disappointing difficulty-wise’, but at least it gives me insight as to how many of our QC solvers feel when we bloggers rate Quick Cryptic puzzles as ‘easy’ or even ‘very easy’.

    The two not unknown answers that gave me most trouble were my last ones in, VISCOUNTESS and DISALLOWED, and like Vinyl1 I had considered the latter as a strong contender for ‘prohibited’ but was unable to parse it so it didn’t go in until the final checker (the S) arrived and clinched it. One consideration was that the setter had already used ALLOW at 18ac so it had seemed unlikely that he would repeat himself. Complete nonsense of course, because setters often do, possibly unintentionally, if their mind is still in the same groove.

    Edited at 2020-09-25 05:53 am (UTC)

    1. The perils of solving and blogging it in the hour after publication – if it takes me a shortish time then I have to guess if I was just particularly on the wavelength for once! Looks like that was the case, on this occasion.
  5. Currently playing: The Rolling Stones’ It’s All Over Now, which is what I couldn’t get out of my head at 18a. Still, figured it out in the end. The whole shebang only took me 33 minutes, and it was a pleasant way to end to the week.

    It took me a while to choose between KILOBYTE, MEGABYTE, GIGABYTE, TERABYTE and PETABYTE at 17d—all of which have variously seemed like a lot of data during my lifetime, I think. Still, at least I didn’t biff my first thought of PHOTO COPIER at 2d…

    FOI 3d REVEAL, LOI 10a VISCOUNTESS, COD 21d SEAMER.

  6. 49 minute with LOI and COD SEAMER, a great clue that this cricket fan needed the crossers before he could see. GIGABYTE and HAPPY MEDIUM were vying for COD until then. I constucted GAMELAN which we may well have had before and I’d forgotten. I also constructed PAS SEUL. I never could get anyone to dance with me. I did parse VISCOUNTESS but needed all crossers first before overcoming the viscous drag, including GOON where the US meaning took a while to come in. A tough but fair puzzle. Thank you V and setter.
  7. Two seconds over 60 minutes for me with much enjoyment, brow furrowing and forehead slapping along the way. As for others, my LOI and COD were both SEAMER. My delaying obsession was long minutes spent trying to justify WHITE COLLAR for 2d as protection from a sunburnt neck…

    Tough enough for me for a Friday for sure! Thank you setter and V for explaining the biffs including the illegal tree.

  8. Pleased to finish in just under 30 minutes. The only word I hadn’t heard of was PAS SEUL, but with the checkers in the place the wordplay became clear. The misleading “extremely attractive” in 18d had me looking for a word with “ae” for a while before realising what kind of miss was intended. Once the penny dropped, I thought SEAMER was a great clue, and ALL TIME LOW was a nice way to finish.

    FOI Lie
    LOI All time low
    COD Seamer/Atrocities

  9. O forester divine!
    35 mins while eating a Fat Rascal, hoorah.
    Excellent crossword. Mostly I liked: Powered, Playful, GIgate and Seamer.
    NHO Gamelan.
    Thanks setter and V.
  10. Found that pretty hard, seemed stuck half way through, but go there in the end. Are you saying it was easy, Verlaine? GAMELAN and PAS SEUL could have gone wrong.

    COD: a few candidates but I’m going for NOSEGAY – very difficult to parse but satisfying.

    Yesterday’s answer: Asquith’s seat was East Fife, rather randomly. Sorry for getting his title wrong, thanks for the correction, keriothe.

    Today’s question: which Bond movie had the theme tune All Time High?

  11. “Difficulty-wise”, I thought it was plenty difficult enough, thank you!
    I didn’t know PAS SEUL nor that meaning of diSALLOWed but I did manage to solve it all without using aids so I’m pleased.
    ALL TIME LOW was my LOI.
    I liked WATER COOLER and PLAYFUL but my COD was TANNERY.
    If reports are correct our blogger may be about to be re-interred with his mate Rimbaud in the Panthéon.
  13. 31.00 , longer than all the others this week but more satisfying. NW corner gave me the most trouble despite aft being my FOI. LOI was disallowed, never heard of a sallow apart from complexion context.

    Pas seul was a good guess but the cluing was pretty precise, Lots to like I thought, viscountess, lapdog, formally, reread and seamer was my COD.

  14. Finished but I did not find this easy. Quite liked the stodgy VISCOUNTESS, ALL TIME LOW and, of course, the SEAMER.
  15. Very enjoyable puzzle, so I made it last as long as possible.

    Edited at 2020-09-25 09:20 am (UTC)

  16. Very much off the wavelength, taking 15m 52s for this – much of the top half took a long time to fall, but snowballed once it did, partly thanks to an unparsed VICOUNTESS.

    COD to LAPDOG, as I’d never spotted the LAPD that it begins with – nice work.

    What with this and a typo in the QC, it’s not my day.

  17. … and my God, deservedly, after getting all those right. 43’10, an excellent and entertaining challenge. Many thanks setter, as to our insufficiently-challenged Anglo-French informateur.

    Edited at 2020-09-25 10:30 am (UTC)

  18. Got in under the hour, despite a twenty minute phone call and a discussion re keys, pleased to be all-correct. GAMELAN FOI, friends play in such an orchestra. Many candidates for COD, but SEAMER wins. PAS SEUL LOI.

    Thanks verlaine and setter.

  19. Seeing the answer to 17d reminded me of the beautiful haunting piece by Soft Machine (it’s less than 2 minutes long).
  20. I made a reasonable start to this puzzle with FOI, REVEAL, but came becalmed about a third of the way through. Application of the spare neuron eventually got me moving again with a postulated DISALLOWED giving me some momentum(I eventually parsed it, guessing that SALLOW was a wood, just before submitting). A biffed AIR HEAD at 18d held me up until I saw HAPPY at 25a and finished off at a trot. My LOI was SEAMER. 39:50. Thanks setter and V.
  21. Best of the week, about half an hour to get all except DESALINATED (was missing seeing the fresh bit for the definition) and the SEUL bit of PAS SEUL which was unknown and didn’t twig the wordplay so had to look it up. Some very good stuff including 21d and 2d, thanks V for blogging.
  22. 24:01. Well I certainly didn’t find this ‘disappointing difficulty-wise’! I actually started reasonably quickly but then got completely stuck with about half the grid filled. I didn’t put an answer in for somewhere between five and ten minutes, and then somehow they just started coming steadily. Weird.
    An excellent puzzle, anyway.
  23. Thank you setter for making it clear what spelling was called for with Fyodor. Some very good stuff here and I didn’t find it at all easy. 2d conjured up a picture of all those lonely WATER COOLERs glugging away in empty offices. 26.19
  25. Happy to finish in 33:16. NOSEGAY went in unparsed with fingers crossed, so thank you V for explaining it. SEAMER was particularly good. Thought of it early, as only ‘seamer’ and ‘beamer’ seemed to be cricketing terms which would fit. Nice PDM when the parsing dawned.
  26. Tough for me too with the decidedly tricky DOSTOEVSKY eventually completing the grid when I stopped trying to begin it with CON.

    Didn’t know SALLOW as a tree or GAMELAN as anything specific other than a word I knew existed. PAS SEUL constructed from knowing a fair bit of French and just enough about ballet.

    Good puzzle, thanks setter and Bamber.

  27. Not too hard for a Friday. Seamer unparsed; I now see how good it was.
    Misspelled STRUDEL which ruined the dance. David
  28. A very good puzzle which took me just over the hour.

    FOI 2dn WATER COOLER

    LOI 28ac TANNERY

    COD 21dn SEAMER – which reminds me – where’s Our Kevin today?
    The ‘A list’:- Willis, Anderson, Trueman, Statham, Tyson, Hall, Griffiths, Bothan, Lillee, Ambrose, McGrath and not forgetting Wasim Akram.

    WOD 16 ac DOSTOEVSKY a spinner!

    Edited at 2020-09-25 02:00 pm (UTC)

  29. The curious sensation of a puzzle that was actually easier than it looked, felt or delayed me for – 23.14 on a Friday afternoon solve.
    SEA:MER was very pretty and had an innovatory touch to it, just when you thought there couldn’t be any more legitimate ploys.
    I assumed SALLOW was (perhaps a rather pale) tree, and I suppose the saix/willow connection is significant.
    Lucky not to spell GAMELAN with a middle A (thank you setter) and DOSTOEVSKY still doesn’t look how I’ve always pronounced him.
  30. After 1hr15mins still had 4 clues unanswered. Just couldn’t see it. HAPPY MEDIUM, SEAMER, NOSEGAY and VISCOUNTESS all beat me. Resorted to aids so a very disappointing (non-) finish. NHO PAS SEUL, GAMELAN or SALLOW, but bunged them In anyway. I feel I should have enjoyed this puzzle but somehow I didn’t. Thanks V as ever. (Liked the link, tricky questions eh?)
  31. ….as Hall and Oates sang on “MANEATER” (sans hyphen).

    I took far too long to sniff out NOSEGAY. A friend of mine used to drive an Optare MetroCity bus on airport work. He always referred to it as an AtroCity.

    FOI AFT
    LOI REVEAL (duh !)
    COD GIGABYTE
    TIME 15:11

  32. A bit trudgy – got stuck in the NE for what seemed an age plus the odd unfinished clue dotted about.

    PAS SEUL unheard of.

    1. I think it’s always good to have the occasional obscure answer that is hard to biff, but needs careful engagement with the wordplay. Keeps us on our toes.

      Speaking of which, whyever did they call it a PAS SEUL when they could have gone with “ballet no mates”?

      1. Oddly, in common parlance en France today, « pas seul » would actually mean « not alone », on the basis that the « ne » part in general conversation has almost disappeared.
  33. Late solve with pre-dinner drink, which may explain why I am 178 of 179 solvers, after writing in DISALOWEDD, crossing with DWSTOEVSKY, both of which look rather Welsh, and obviously left a lot of pink on my grid. Still, enjoyed the struggle all the same.
  34. 29:11. I found this tricky and was scratching around the grid a bit so feel pleased to have finished inside half an hour. It definitely helped that I’ve been munching my way through a packet of Viscount chocolate biscuits this week, I saw the Viscountess sooner rather than later and worked backwards to derive her parsing. I shall resolve from now on to make eating chocolate biscuits a cornerstone of my disciplined, Spartan, crossword solving regime. Happy medium made me laugh. Knew gamelan but a mistyped gamelab delayed nosegay for a while. Dnk the sallow wood so disallowed a hesitant LOI. A very rewarding solving experience.
  35. Off topic, but could I recommend this week’s Listener, especially if you’ve never taken the plunge before. The clues are Times level, the obscure word count is very low, the “gimmicks” in the clues are easy to spot (especially given the title) and the endgame is a simple one-line wordsearch. Enjoyable but not brainfrying.
  36. Found this disconcertingly difficult today, but then I did keep falling asleep.
    Thought a gamelan was a musical instrument which held me up. The strangest thing about this was that I kept getting the right answer and then rejected it.
    Never seen that spelling of DOSTOYEVSKY

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