Times 27627 – “the first thing I do of a morning is brush my teeth and sharpen my tongue”.

Author   piquetPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Well, this is a fine puzzle, and I suspect not as far up the SNITCH as last Wednesday’s stinker; it took me about half an hour, plus a few diversions into Wikipedia and elsewhere for enlightenment and amusement while writing the blog. Difficulty seems to vary between the quickie-level 12d and 16d, to the devilish 26a and clever 5d. Of course, if you had 21d in, the first letter of 26a gave you an easier task. But I didn’t see 21d first.
The setter has taken a bit of geographical licence with 20d, as pointed out below, but the factually correct answer doesn’t parse. And of course, I spent a few minutes refreshing my memory with quotes from 11a; I wish she was alive today to comment on The Orange One and other contemporary goings-on (she’d be 126 now).

Across
1 Half of flipping idle workers getting stick (7)
DISTAFF – ID(LE) reversed = DI, STAFF = workers. I relied on the wordplay here. A distaff is a stick used in weaving, and separately means relating to the female side of things (the meaning I knew from weddings in church).
5 Polish hero the limit for Caesar? (7)
RUBICON – RUB for polish, ICON for hero.
9 Where set of keys may be found by relative opening grave (4,5)
BABY GRAND – Grave = BAD, into that put BY GRAN. Took me too long to see you needed the BY as well as the relative.
10 Slam meat in oven (5)
ROAST – Double definition, slam meaning criticise.
11 Oscar, trophy unusually bagged by more sinister wit (7,6)
DOROTHY PARKER – DARKER = more sinister, into that put (O TROPHY)*, the O for Oscar. I like many of her alleged quotes, although in her day many of them must have been regarded as pretty risqué. So here’s another one: “Q. What’s the difference between an enzyme and a hormone? A. You can’t hear an enzyme.”
13 Rascally plot — assign book to top shelf? (3-2,3)
PUT-UP JOB – double definition, one putting JOB the book up on a top shelf.
15 Last of water filling pinkish kettle (6)
CORRAL – (WATE)R inside CORAL = pinkish. Kettle as in confine, like the police do to deomonstrators.
17 Muppet, classic character ends in film clip: Kermit say? (6)
NUMPTY – NU (Greek letter), M P T Y = ends in filM cliP KermiT saY.
19 Inattentive member briefly getting in touch (8)
CARELESS – CARESS = touch, insert LE(G).
22 Hearts directly affected with core of flower power (13)
HYDROELECTRIC – (H DIRECTLY CORE)*.
25 Odds cut on fairy, I feel, spirit creating storm? (5)
ARIEL – Alternate letters of f A i R y I f E e L. As in The Tempest.
26 Bright blue rings stolen ultimately, sucker! (9)
QUICKSAND – I went round the houses, determined to fit in SKY when I saw the K from 23d, before having a reboot and thinking of another meaning of blue. QUICK = bright, SAD = blue, insert N from stoleN.
27 Official taken in by centre forward, in short (7)
REFEREE – I scratched my head for a while trying to explain this. I think it’s simply that REF, short for referee, occurs hidden in centRE Forward.
28 Daisy exhausted, riding bicycle initially in wrong gear (7)
GERBERA – Take E R B (exhausted riding bicycle initially) insert into (GEAR)*. I knew this daisy; there must be as many types of daisy as there are daisy clues in crosswords.

Down
1 First time out, useless opener dismissed — a liability? (4)
DEBT – DEBUT loses the U = useless opener dismissed.
2 Ready for the press, businessman’s banking foundation (7)
SUBEDIT – SUIT = businessman, insert BED = foundation.
3 Boring thing, a pistol taking head off (5)
AUGER – A LUGER loses its L.
4 Party hosts ending on floor, one over the eight perhaps? (8)
FRACTION – FACTION (party) has R (end of floor) inserted.
5 Still spoiler on rear of vehicle painted with coloured substance (3-3)
RED-EYE – RE (on) DYE (coloured substance) has E (end of vehicle) inserted.
6 Song in simple Venetian tune (9)
BARCAROLE – insert CAROL into BARE for simple.
7 Lovely thing, solver? (7)
CRACKER – double definition.
8 Turn tail as troubled student of life (10)
NATURALIST – (TURN TAIL AS)*.
12 Undecided where rocket should go (2,2,3,3)
UP IN THE AIR – double definition, one prosaic, and dead easy.
14 Reader mightn’t stand this heat in the kitchen, perhaps? (9)
POTBOILER – A pot boiler could be heat in the kitchen, and a potboiler is an often sub-standard novel churned out quickly for money. I was astounded to see recently on Richard Osman’s House of Games that Barbara Cartland wrote 723 books in her lifetime. How many were potboilers?
16 Fielder’s skill easily picked up (8)
CATCHING – double definition, one like a virus.
18 Stomach provided here? (7)
MIDRIFF – Apart from the definition, I think this is about IF (provided) being hidden in the word midrIFf. EDiT it’s slightly cleverer than that, as our gothic friend points out below; IF is in the ‘mid’ of RIFF.
20 Cockney’s thus entertaining ladies, maybe, in Kaliningrad, say (7)
ENCLAVE – I knew Kaliningrad, once known as Köningsberg, was a part of Russia separate from the main motherland, but I was taught (and Wiki agrees) it’s an exclave not an enclave. It’s surrounded by both Poland and Lithuania, so isn’t an enclave in either. However, this pedantry aside, the answer required for the clue is ENCLAVE, where LAV (the Ladies) goes inside ‘ENCE a cockney version of hence meaning thus.
21 On-set film panel marking celebrity (6)
PLAQUE – Double definition. I think the on-set film part refers to dental plaque on your set of teeth.
23 One collecting things up, philanderer beginning to repent (5)
RAKER – RAKE = philanderer, R = beginning to repent.
24 Was summing up abridged old poetry collection (4)
EDDA – ADDED = was summing, up, drop the final D (abridged).

​

54 comments on “Times 27627 – “the first thing I do of a morning is brush my teeth and sharpen my tongue”.”

  1. This was a struggle, and I never did parse BABY GRAND (d’oh!) or REFEREE (d’oh!). 11ac and 22ac somehow each came to me suddenly on the basis of a couple of checkers, and both took me a while to parse them. I don’t recall ARIEL creating any storms; that was Prospero’s department.
  2. I found lots to like in this in terms of devious definitions – “Still spoiler”, “On-set film” and “one over the eight perhaps” to name but a few. This led to many clues having to be teased out via their parsing which made them all the more satisfying. Nice work setter!
  3. ‘If all the secretaries at J Walter Thompson were laid end to end, I wouldn’t be at all surprised.’ takes the 7dn for me. (JWT was the great American Ad Agency).
    Today is the 60th birthday of the greatest English Ad Agency – Collett, Dickenson & Pearce. Cheers guys! What fun we had, reaching the parts others only dreamed of: cue music: Bach’s Air on a G string.

    Yes, a struggle but a very pleasant one, as was 27627.

    FOI 5ac RUBICON no not Y&R (that’s Young & Rubicam.)

    LOI 5dn RED-EYE from Saatchi & Saatchi

    COD 9ac BABY GRAND (Loussier?)

    WOD 7dn CRACKER Robbie Coltrane (The Tartan Pimpernel!)

    Pip it’s Barbara Cartland – ‘Her Pinkness’ would be mortified!

    Edited at 2020-04-01 07:15 am (UTC)

    1. Deliberate typo? Seeing if anyone’s paying attention. My mum was a Barbara so I did know how to spell it. Corrected. Thanks for the CDP memory, a world I remember well from Cadburys Smash “Martians” days. Fun with BMP and Y&R.
      1. Great respect for BMP esp. Stanley Pollitt and John Webster.
        My mother was a Dorothy
  4. I enjoyed a lot of this, especially the run of answers toward the end of my 43 minutes, which provided a lot of penny-drop moments. (I think IF is literally mid-rIFf, speaking of the cleverness.)

    I was also held up by needing to get 26a QUICKSAND before its Q got me the 21d PLAQUE, both smart clues, but it was 1a DISTAFF, where I didn’t know that it was also literally a stick as well as an adjective, and 4d FRACTION that were my last in.

    COD 21d PLAQUE, on reflection, as I spent far too long trying to fit in GEL or CELL or something similar for the on-set film bit…

  5. An hour+ over two sessions, before and after sleep. Top half easier than below mainly because in the lower half there were several such as MIDRIFF, REFEREE and POTBOILER where I wasn’t entirely sure what was going on and perhaps I had missed something.

    Very pleased to have entered BARCAROLE from the definition ‘Venetian tune’ with no checkers to jog my memory.

  6. Took a long time but pretty satisfying. I agree that Kaliningrad is an exclave and not an enclave (although all enclaves are also exclaves, you can get lost in Wikipedia if you start looking that up), but luckily Cockneys don’t say ‘exce.

    Some tricky words in there such as BARCAROLE, the gondoliers’ song, and EDDA, the Norse tales. I think kettle to mean CORRAL is a pretty new coinage.

    FOI UP IN THE AIR, multi-word answers often a way in.
    COD and LOI PLAQUE, quite a groan for ‘on-set film’.

    Yesterday’s answer: Lough Neagh is the largest UK lake by surface area and Loch Ness the largest by volume, containing more fresh water than the whole of England and Wales, not bad. Inspired by MERE.

    Today’s question: the city of Königsberg (now Kaliningrad) is famous to mathematicians for its seven bridges that can’t be crossed once each (I went there a couple of years ago but not all of them remain unfortunately), but what famous person allegedly never left Königsberg in his life?

      1. Hmm … according to our authoritative source on such things (Wikipedia):

        “A common myth is that Kant never traveled more than 16 kilometres (9.9 mi) from Königsberg his whole life. In fact, between 1750 and 1754 he worked as a tutor (Hauslehrer) in Judtschen (now Veselovka, Russia, approximately 20 km) and in Groß-Arnsdorf (now Jarnołtowo near Morąg (German: Mohrungen), Poland, approximately 145 km).”

        Is that close enough to have “never left”?

      2. I read that they voted to name an airport in Kaliningrad after Kant but the authorities vetoed it because he wasn’t Russian enough. Btw, I was reading about the place because it turns out that my Russian pen-friend was born there before the war. We’ve been writing since 1988 and for most of that time she lived in Petersburg (and Leningrad!) She only told me about her Kaliningrad years fairly recently. Her father was an engineer building dock facilities for the Russian navy. She writes excellent English – learned from books because she’s never had the opportunity to actually speak it.
  7. I pressed submit just short of 27 minutes with my eyes on the bottom half, expecting to see a sea of pink. I only sort of understood MIDRIFF (IF’s in there somewhere), REFEREE (much easier than that, of course), GERBERA (couldn’t see where the E and R came from,or which E and R it was) and even HYDROELECTRIC, (because the core of flower is OW, isn’t it?).
    Instead my eyes were stabbed by the flash of a neon light pink with a confidently (but stupidly entered) RED-DYE, even though I knew everything about the clue.
    Good challenge, that lower half requiring much brain strain, for which assistance many thanks to Pip.
    1. Yes I had that too for a while thinking that perhaps an “eddy” would be a still-spoiler but it looked wobbly and the rest of it didn’t work so I did a re-think. As for neon pink, I understand that red dye#40 used to be added to commercially sold strawberry milk until the practice was stopped because the dye was thought to be toxic. Strawberry milk would be toxic to me whatever was in it.
  8. I thought this was going to be really hard after a couple of minutes, but it took off. BARCAROLE came quickly, but I never did parse REFEREE or QUICKSAND, thanks Pip. DOROTHY PARKER almost a write-in once definition deduced.

    COD to RED-EYE, although enumeration made it easier. NHO GERBERA, had to be built up from wordplay.

    Really liked RUBICON too, would have been harder by using triumvir or such rather than Caesar.

    17′ 18″, thanks Pip and setter.

  9. Then the substanceless blue…
    30 mins to leave the last two, then gave up on the On-set film and Sucker. Pah!
    Thanks setter and Pip.
  10. 42 minutes, so slower than most others. Nothing unusual there. To solve the top, I needed DOROTHY PARKER to come to my aid, and she was a long time coming. I only knew DISTAFF from being an usher at weddings, but it fitted. In the end, I biffed QUICKSAND which led to LOI PLAQUE. COD to FRACTION. An enjoyable puzzle. Thank you Pip and setter.
  11. Including interruptions from my nearly-three year-old. Very much enjoyed the challenge of this. The Quicksand-Plaque combo had me fuming for 10 minutes, and was all the more satisfying when it fell. Note to self: when nothing else seems to fit, remember the possibilities of the letter Q. Corral for kettle was inspired. And I am very glad I didn’t enter Red-Dye, because I nearly did.
  12. 19:15. What fun! Some sneaky definitions and great clever wordplay that took some teasing apart, but my LOI was the relatively simple CATCHING. DNK anything about KALININGRAD so trusted to the wordplay. I liked MIDRIFF best for the wordplay and FRACTION for the neat surface. Thanks Pip and setter.
  14. Really enjoyed this. Thanks setter. I initially put DUCK in 1d. First time out = duck (obviously). Liability = dead duck. Dismiss the useless ‘dead’ well, it made sense to me.
    I have taken 10, 20 and now 30 minutes this week so I would be concerned about tomorrow (if I had paid attention in my Maths lessons).
  15. As Z above, I put RED DYE which should have been pencilled in as I was very doubtful, but forgot about on completion. Otherwise a very pleasant 32 mins. Tx for all the info about Kaliningrad I almost biffed EXCLAVE as well. MIDRIFF is either a poor clue or a clever one. Can’t make up my mind.
  16. Excellent puzzle, which took just over 13 minutes. Some cracking surfaces and definitions, my favourite of which being ‘one over the eight perhaps’ for FRACTION. But the misleading definition for SUBEDIT was also superb, and the ‘On-set film’, and… well, it was great.

    I didn’t love the clue for REFEREE, but otherwise spotless.

  17. I thought this was a 7 dn of a puzzle. Lots of great clues and a bit of intended? humour. 16 dn being a good example for the times we live in. I washed my hands immediately after getting that one

    Referee was my last one in , mainly because it seemed too literal. Plaque was COTD but others I liked were numpty, quicksand and fraction.

    Finished in 35 minutes but didn’t feel disappointed.

  18. ….so I kouldn’t get involved in any arguments about its “clave” (or “klave”) status.

    First I must thank Pip for clearing up my biffs (DEBT and SUBEDIT) which slowed me down in the NW corner until DISTAFF revealed the probabilities, and opened up my LOI. I parsed MIDRIFF afterwards – not quite COD, but close, as was NUMPTY.

    FOI RUBICON
    LOI FRACTION
    COD PLAQUE
    TIME 12:23

  19. A terrific puzzle I thought which I failed in the end with a red-dye. Only knew red-eye as a plane from a Dylan or Baez song (or medical condition maybe). I loved ‘catching’, so easy, and my last in; also plaque, several others, and I shall always love Dorothy Parker, possibly the wittiest since Wilde. Failed to parse referee which again couldn’t be more straightforward. Brilliant stuff setter and thankyou pip.
  20. 13:43. A 7dn of a puzzle as others have noted.
    There seems to be some disagreement about what exactly an ENCLAVE is and how it differs from an EXCLAVE but none of the usual dictionaries (Collins, Lexico, Chambers) require the distinction described by wikipedia. The Collins position is intriguing: it defines ENCLAVE and EXCLAVE as being the same thing viewed from different perspectives.
    16dn struck me as a bit insensitive just now!

    Edited at 2020-04-01 11:07 am (UTC)

  21. CATCHING was certainly wince-inducing. Georgette Heyer (who did not write POTBOILERs) wanted to sue Barbara Cartland for plagiarism but was talked out of it by her publisher. She called Cartland “common-minded, salacious and illiterate” and her work “offal”. Re DOROTHY PARKER and POTUS Parker said, if you want to know what God thinks of money just look at the people he gives it to. Good puzzle. 24.22
    1. Georgette Heyer’s son was (or at least grew up to be) a terrifyingly irascible High Court Judge called Mr Justice Rougier. I’ve often wondered how a romance novelist could have produced someone with such a temperament. It sounds like she was more than capable of giving short shrift when required. Those comments could have been lifted from one of his scathing judgements. I had to take some late papers for court down to his room the evening before a hearing once. It was not a pleasant experience!
      1. Heyer’s husband, Ronald Rougier, was an engineer who changed his career for the bar. She supported his rise to QC by her writing. A formidable woman. Wikki details her frequent disputes with the taxman. Her books conceal their erudition with a light touch and I find it difficult to reconcile the fierceness of her personality with the humour of her writing.
        1. I should really try one of her novels. I grew up in a house that had dozens of them on the shelves (my mother clearly enjoyed them) but I never picked one up.
          1. I’d suggest The Unknown Ajax, Sylvester or Cotillion as the most likely to appeal to men. They have more interesting heroes than the tall,dark, handsome and rich stereotype of Regency romance.
      2. Interesting Special_bitter. You’re right, I gather Georgette could be pretty fearsome herself, especially when confronted with a witless fan. Rougier J sounds as if he had what John Mortimer (using Rumpole as his mouthpiece) would call “judgeitis”, as exemplified by Mr Justice (the mad bull) Bullingham. My brief time in practice was confined to the Chancery division which was pretty civilized by comparison.
  22. I struggled mightily with this one, and eventually had to look up BARCAROLE as I couldn’t see the wordplay and was convinced that Baccarole was the song, so that first R tripped me up. I was also held up by PLAQUE, QUICKSAND, ENCLAVE, DISTAFF, SUBEDIT and FRACTION. A bad day. My mind appeared to be elsewhere, and constant interruptions from a messenger group didn’t help. So 60:52 with 1 lookup. Thanks setter and Pip.
  24. Took a while for all those pennies to drop but they all did eventually, with a most satisfying noise. I was asking myself all the appropriate questions about exclaves and enclaves, and concluded that in this instance, it didn’t really matter. The word NUMPTY should get more regular outings, possibly for the people I encountered on today’s outing to the shops, for whom the messages about social distancing have clearly failed to hit home.
    1. The ones I met on my outing yesterday Tim seemed never to have set foot in a supermarket before. Even before corona the etiquette in NYC markets (they have very narrow check-out aisles) was to move your cart out of the way once you’d unloaded it but the pair in front of me got all stroppy when I politely asked them to move theirs so I could unload mine. They evidently expected me to do it! Their maid probably does the shopping usually and I said to myself – I bet they aren’t paying her either.
      1. I suspect the people I came across were also the ones who had little or no concept of personal space / how to behave in public spaces before this crisis, and haven’t acquired any since…
      2. Olivia! ‘cart’! How quaint!

        Even in wide-aisled Shanghai ‘supermarket etiquette’ can be horrible and the ‘toblerones’ mean nothing. Personal space is even worse – maybe that will improve henceforth.

        I’ve been off my trolley recently.

      3. No problems like that in Waitrose Olivia, the other shoppers are one of the reasons we go there. Alan Coren famously said that the best thing about Sainsburys was that it kept the riff-raff out of Waitrose ..
  25. I liked this a lot, especially Numpty. One error, where I mis-biffed Clique based on celebrity after I got the Q. Thanks pip, and especially setter
  26. Apparently I was well on the wavelength for this – lots of things in it I liked such as classical rivers, gondola songs, Icelandic sagas and groan-inducing definition parts. Solid puzzle!
  28. Like last Wednesday’s puzzle, this felt like one I could really do (almost all of) it by putting pencil to paper for 45 minutes. Maybe a sign my brain is starting to work gooder?

    Couldn’t see past RED-DYE and CLIQUE, both of which had question marks in the margin. Much thanks to Pirrip for the explanations! (Also for the explanation of MIDRIFF!)

  31. 27:15. I enjoyed this. Lots of bits that required considerable thought and some excellent cryptic definitions leading to several satisfying pdms. 13ac made me laugh.
  33. I was stumped by 24 down as I thought ‘was summing’ must be ‘adding’ not ‘added’. Could anyone enlighten me?
    1. ‘Was summing’ is in the past tense, giving ‘added’, hence EDDA once you‘ve followed the instructions.
  34. Someone emailed me about this:

    From eg Collins:
    ENCLAVE: a part of a country entirely surrounded by foreign territory:
    viewed from the perspective of the surrounding territories.

    EXCLAVE: a part of a country entirely surrounded by foreign territory:
    viewed from the perspective of the home country.

    So it’s entirely a question of perspective, and given we aren’t in Russia (easy to forgwt perhaps on this website) then arguable ENCLAVE is more correct.

  35. Another sadistic effort to baffle, rather than entertain.
    Yes, many clues were simple, but the blogger had to struggle to justify many of the other solutions. As disappointing as the crossword were the remarks of the masochistic sycophants.

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