Times Cryptic 27572

Author   jackktPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic

Solving time: 55 minutes. One or two tricky bits here and a couple of unknown words but all solvable one way or another.

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 Man’s tucked into meat dish: it may be smoked (7)
HASHISH : HIS (man’s) contained by [tucked into] HASH (meat dish)
5 Sport, and one reason it’s dire (7)
RUINOUS : RU (sport – Rugby Union), I (one), NOUS (reason)
9 Honed fancy phrase with surprising end (9)
SHARPENED : Anagram [fancy] of PHRASE, anagram [surprising] of END
10 Perceive what’s transmitted on the radio (5)
SCENT : Sounds like [on radio] “sent” (transmitted)
11 Ride ship on e.g. ocean wave (6,7)
ROLLER COASTER : ROLLER (eg. ocean wave), COASTER (ship). Another example of A on B = BA in an Across clue.
13 Small number rabble-rousing (8)
SEDITION : S (small), EDITION (number  – e.g. of a magazine). Inciting others to join in is a key part of this activity.
15 Parking Japanese car in complex network (6)
PLEXUS : P (parking), LEXUS (Japanese car).  Defined as a network of nerve fibres or blood vessels, but used more generally now. It’s a shame to have ‘complex’ in the clue as it immediately presents us with  more than half the answer . ‘Interwoven’ or ‘intricate’ could have been substituted, but perhaps the setter intended it a sort of double-bluff.
17 Takes cover from explosive device in high sun (6)
UNCAPS : CAP (explosive device) contained by [in] anagram [high] of SUN. I used to buy reels of percussion caps for toy guns in my childhood but it was more more fun exploding them with a hammer.
19 After run, Peg cuts slim figure (8)
THIRTEEN : R (run) + TEE (peg – golf) is contained by [cuts] THIN (slim)
22 Urging clothing that’s uncomfortable: red pants in bigshot’s style (5,8)
POWER DRESSING : PRESSING (urging) containing [clothing] OW (that’s uncomfortable!) + anagram [pants] of RED
25 Clan member   bound by regulations (2-3)
IN-LAW : Two meanings, although the second one would not take a hyphen
26 See signal that’s clear (9)
VINDICATE : V (see – vide – Latin), INDICATE (signal)
27 Write about hour working filtration device (7)
NEPHRON : PEN (write) reversed [about], HR (hour), ON (working). SOED: Each of the functional units in the kidney, consisting of a glomerulus and its associated tubule, through which the glomerular filtrate passes before emerging as urine. I didn’t really know this but the wordplay led me to NEP HR and I made the connection with ‘nephritis’, inflammation of the kidney as the organ which filters waste products from the blood.
28 Art engaged for a time in subject of bard’s work (7)
TEMPEST : Groan at the cryptic hint here! If thou art engaged to work in an office for a time, it might be said that ‘thou TEMPEST’.
Down
1 Sibilant sound in Spanish is soft (4)
HISS : Hidden [in] {Spanis}H IS S{oft}
2 Pole and Cuban possibly perhaps crossed swords (7)
SPARRED : SPAR (pole), RED (Cuban possibly – communist)
3 Troublemaker content to leave elemental force (5)
IMPEL : IMP (troublemaker), E{lementa}L [content, to leave]
4 Dear houses irritate a follower (6-2)
HANGER-ON : HON (dear – honey) contains [houses] ANGER (irritate)
5 Work on text is traced out (6)
REDACT : Anagram [out] of TRACED. A word learnt during various political scandals of recent years when  many of the juicy details had been redacted before documents were made public.
6 Current teammates bigger and fitter (9)
INSTALLER : I (current), N S (teammates – bridge – North/South), TALLER (bigger)
7 Public vote has introduced a strain (7)
OVERTAX : OVERT (public) + X (vote) contains [has introduced] A (a)
8 Taking off part of the weekend? I protest! (10)
SATIRISING : SAT (part of the weekend), I (I), RISING (protest)
12 Miraculous event which is taken for granted (10)
ASSUMPTION : Two meanings. I wasn’t aware of the first as defined in SOED: Christian Church. The reception of the Virgin Mary bodily into heaven; a feast held annually on 15 August in honour of this.
14 Like posh people, pull lush curtains off (3-6)
TOP-DRAWER : TOPER (lush – drunkard) contains [curtains off] DRAW (pull)
16 Snack food that’s gone stale? (8)
CHESTNUT : A straight definition with a cryptic hint as often referred to around these parts
18 Bully knocked over beer, making a bloomer (7)
COWSLIP : COW (bully), PILS (beer) reversed [knocked over]
20 Make an impression in French accent (7)
ENGRAVE : EN (in – French), GRAVE (accent)
21 Heading for Dubrovnik and Split, having lots of energy (6)
DRIVEN : D{ubrovnik} [heading], RIVEN (split)
23 There’s nothing in one stupid phrase (5)
IDIOM : 0 (nothing) contained by [in] I (one) + DIM (stupid)
24 Fast, but quite the contrary at Le Mans? (4)
LENT : The straight definition is the period of fasting before Easter . There’s also a cryptic hint relying on ‘lent’ meaning ‘slow’ (quite the contrary – of fast)  in French [at Le Mans]

53 comments on “Times Cryptic 27572”

  1. I biffed TEMPEST and couldn’t see how it worked, although I saw TEMP. Unfortunately I biffed my LOI VENTILATE having seen “see” and “clear” and hit submit. I realized it was wrong when I read the rest of the clue carefully while waiting for it to upload and then got back my pink squares. Just under an hour, but with a break for dinner with the clock running, so maybe 30-35 minutes in all.
    1. Top half went in easily enough but I then got bogged down on the lower half.

      Like paulmc I too biffed TEMPEST, mainly on the grounds that it is the title of one of the plays of the Bard of Avon, and I also guessed that TEMP had something to do with the parsing (explained with admirable clarity by our blogger Jack, for which thanks).

      I guess this is one of those clues you either think extraordinarily clever and ingenious or totally absurd. Now that I’ve got over my irritation at failing to work it out, I’m prepared to concede that it is very clever, though I think in fairness the setter might have concluded the clue with a ?.

  2. I worked out NEPRHON strictly from the wordplay, though I should have thought of kidneys a bit sooner… pretty sure I’d never seen it before. It sort of stands out in this puzzle.
  3. Just about nothing came easy to me in this puzzle. FOI 25ac, followed by HISS and REDACT, two atypically easy clues. I didn’t know that the LEXUS was Japanese, making that clue much harder than it should have been. I wouldn’t have thought of CHESTNUTs as a snack food, but then I’ve never eaten a chestnut. And ‘having lots of energy’ wouldn’t have occurred to me as a definition of DRIVEN; still doesn’t.
    1. The ‘hot-chestnut man’ was a familiar figure on British streets at one time, selling little bags of chestnuts cooked on braziers, very much as a snack food. I don’t know whether this still happens but I certainly remember them in Oxford Street in the 1960s and 70s. My ‘local’ in the town has an open fire during winter months and provides raw chestnuts for customers to cook for themselves. There’s even an old-fashioned iron hotplate that can be positioned over the flames for this purpose though I think they cook better when wrapped in foil and placed directly on to glowing embers.

      Edited at 2020-01-28 05:17 am (UTC)

      1. I remember seeing them sold by street vendors in Munich. Heisse Maroni(Hot Chestnuts). A scrumptious winter treat.

        Edited at 2020-01-28 03:23 pm (UTC)

    2. If you haven’t eaten hot chestnuts cooked over an open fire you really must sample them – absolutely delicious. One of the treats of a trip to Brixton market in the 1950s was cooked chestnuts eaten next to the hurdy gurdy man. No doubt health and safety have put them all out of business today
      1. I often still see people selling cooked nuts on the South Bank, though not normally chestnuts.
    3. In NYC around Christmas time Kevin you can’t avoid hearing Nat King Cole serenading chestnuts roasting on an open fire. And if you put them in the Thanksgiving turkey stuffing that’s the first snack that gets raided from the fridge after the dinner.
  4. as at 1ac, with HISS in first. I thought not of herring but haddock, then hickory but it was HASHISH after all. Not until 12dn ASSUMPTION went in was much happening in the west. Then it all simply flew in, well about an hour.

    Unable to go out as ‘The Worry of Wuhan’ is upon us. Shanghai is like a ghost town, as was Singapore back in 2003. Hot roasted chestnuts sold all over Shanghai, last week.

    FOI 1dn Alger HISS – remember him!? Framed by Nixon.

    LOI 26ac VINDICATE

    COD 18ac THIRTEEN – IKEAN fun

    WOD 11ac ROLLER COASTER

    Song of the Day – ‘The Room Where it Happens’ from Hamilton. ‘I know a song about sausages!’

    Edited at 2020-01-28 05:14 am (UTC)

  5. 12:33. A steady solve with no out-and-out unknowns, although I’m not sure I’d have been able to tell you what NEPHRON and PLEXUS meant. I knew the latter from its solar variety, but I didn’t know it referred to a ‘complex of ganglia and radiating nerves’, as Collins has it. I thought it was just a place you don’t want to get punched.
    Like vinyl I had the wrong sort of pole at 2dn for a while so hesitated to put in the obvious answer.
      1. This is a fair point. But my desire not to get punched in the knee, for instance, is definitely less acute.
  6. 11:33. I was off to a racing start with the first 5 acrosses going straight in, but the lower half was less tractable. Like jackkt and others I recognised the root for NEPHRON from kidney disease. I failed to parse TEMPEST. Thanks for that jackkt. Groanworthy, as you say.
  7. I found this tough to get started on, a pass of all the across clues yielding virtually nothing. It was fairly steady once I got going.

    I particularly liked LENT though I suspect that might be a chestnut. But now I’ve seen Jack’s explanation for the unparsed TEMPEST that is my COD for its top drawer groanworthiness.

    1. TEMPEST was one of those that’s so bad it’s good. I was helped by CHESTNUT having recently appeared with a similar kind of cluing, though on that occasion I stared at it for five minutes or so.
  8. Hardest of the year so far for me, taking me an hour and eleven, and I still wasn’t sure about LOI 28 TEMPEST when I decided enough was enough. The bottom half took about twice as long as the top, with the unknown 27a NEPHRON being the least of my problems, really…
  9. Bang on the wavelength today, with the Greek helping with the renal clue (if I may mix my ancient languages – well, television does, and look where that got us) and Lexus fitting better than Nissan, Honda or Toyota. 19 minutes.

    Never bothered to parse TEMPEST, so thanks to Jack for saving me the trouble.

  10. 43 minutes, becalmed for about ten minutes in the middle. As a Maths, Physics, Chemmy scientist, I know no human biology whatsoever, the facts of life as with NEPHRON eventually being constructed from instinct and innuendo. With my first girlfriend, Buddy Holly’s Everyday was ‘our tune’ in those days when things really did seem to be going faster than a roller coaster as we were ‘learning the game’, another Buddy song I still play. Maybe I never did though as I spent a few minutes trying to fit HADDOCK into 1a. COD to ASSUMPTION, another bodily function that takes a bit of getting. On the tough side. Thank you Jack and setter.
    1. I was with you and horryd on haddock, thinking the meat dish to be a hock. I guess calling hock a meat dish would be a bit of a stretch when it is just a cut of meat.
    2. ‘I know no human biology whatsoever.’ So is that why you moved on to ‘second girfriend’. Ignorance is bliss!
  11. Very enjoyable puzzle. I never considered the foods at 1A but went straight for the hash – signs of a misspent youth.

    Didn’t twig the cryptic for TEMPEST – well spotted Jack.

  12. A full half hour for this one, struggled with CHESTNUT and IDIOM in particular before I could get TEMPEST. More brand names creeping in, I also didn’t know LEXUS was Japanese.

    Really liked 24ac.

    Thanks jack and setter.

      1. When I was a boy, I used to wonder why we couldn’t say Merry Christmas to anyone aged over 92. It wasn’t an academic question because our landlady made nearly 106. We ignored Nat King Cole and sent her a Christmas card.
    2. I am astonished – amazed – and inquistive ad to why both Rob & Kevin did not know Lexus was a Japanese Car! Kevin even lives in Osaka- as far as I know!

      More bad news Yoko Ono is bot from Bootle but Japan

  13. Enjoyable and not too difficult, though I couldn’t parse the TEMPEST until I came here, so I am now uttering my groan retrospectively. As always, the poor setter must be thinking “I’m wasted on this lot”. I am indebted to Alan Partridge for my knowledge of the Lexus (plural: Lexi).
    1. I wondered if someone was going to mention Alan Partridge and Lexus in plural! I couldn’t get that scene out of my mind from the moment the answer went in 🙂 – Rupert
  14. Thanks for the parse on LENT Jack – I couldn’t see what on earth Le Mans was doing and it still seems a bit ho hum. Other than that no particular hold-ups but I wasn’t on the wavelength at all. Like others I’d no idea who made the Lexus but it certainly wasn’t going to be “phonda”. I did like TEMPEST. 19.16
  16. Two things strike me:

    The Times doesn’t have references to living people. We are told that this is because people who are well-known now might become unknown later. Why then does it allow references to commercial things like the Lexus? They might equally go out of date. My bet is that Ben Stokes will be known long after the Lexus is forgotten.

    And I thought that The Times crossword didn’t allow advertising.

  17. 41 mins. Quite a toughie. As usual with an ‘art’ clue I started looking for the French ‘es’; having found it in tempest, I still couldn’t parse it! But put it in anyway; it had to be right. And the parsing was right there in front of me; quite obvious. Good setting. They roast sweetcorn on the cob in Larnaca, where I used to live; you buy it on the street and eat it as you stroll along. Magic. Thanks jack.
  18. Stuck at various times and almost gave up before things eventually came together after 85 minutes. I liked the motor racing reference for LENT, the ‘filtration device’ at 27a and the surface for RUINOUS.
  20. Another trying to shoehorn a HADDOCK into 1a, but I soon saw the error of my ways. I also wrestled with ES/ART and TEMPERA with a subsitution, but nothing convinced me, so TEMPEST went in on a wing and a prayer, and I now present my retrospective GROAN. No trouble with NEPHRON as I also associated it with nephritis and the wordplay was kind. HISS was my FOI, and INSTALLER my last. Nice puzzle. 23:27, of which at least 3 minutes were spent on TEMPEST. Thanks setter and Jack.
  21. Another of those curate’s egg crosswords. It took me a while to get going, as many of these need a couple of letters to help you get the answer. COWSLIP was a stumbling block, as I was trying to think of a flower that ended ALEA that fitted. LOI TEMPEST I had no idea…
  22. 9m 19s, with the lower half taking longer than the top. I’ve decided that TEMPEST is glorious, but it could have gone either way. It got the rare ! notation by the clue (usually I only use ? where I’m unsure and X where I don’t like the clue). No ? or X today so I guess that could indicate a good puzzle for me – even if NEPHRON was from wordplay and UNCAPS was unparsed.
  23. ….”ASSUMPTION is the mother of all cock-ups”. I didn’t assume (or biff) anything today, hence no cock-ups. However it was a very uneven solve.

    The top half was done in just over 6 minutes, but I couldn’t get a foothold in the lower half, and I paused for lunch after being becalmed just after the 12 minute mark.

    When I resumed, TOP DRAWER gave me the required breakthrough, and the SW corner was soon despatched. Within a couple of minutes I spotted TEMPEST (luckily I’d failed earlier to justify “Macbeth” when only the E was in place). I thought it was such a bad clue that it was dreadful. Thereafter I mopped up fairly quickly. I’m not sure why I took so long to get VINDICATE.

    FOI SHARPENED (really easy – cue false sense of security)
    LOI LENT (“duh” moment)
    COD ASSUMPTION (simply TOP DRAWER !)
    TIME 17:54

  24. Very quick start but then held up by the SE corner. I got super lucky by thinking about SEDATION when relating to the “number” in 13a and realising I was only one letter off. After that it was relatively plain sailing. Didn’t know NEPHRON but, with the letters I had by then, it seemed clear. Good puzzle.

    Edited at 2020-01-28 01:59 pm (UTC)

  25. Firmly slammed shut here. Much too esoteric for me. Though I’d say perceive means to come to a conclusion based on evidence. Scent is merely a possibility based on intuition. Mr Grumpy
  26. I only had half an hour to spare for the crossword this morning so was pleased to finish in 29 minutes – just under the wire. PLEXUS (which I’d only known when linked with SOLAR)held me up for a while but I knew the posh car and it had to be. I played around a bit with TEMPEST and had a nice LOL moment when the penny dropped. My sort of puzzle. Very enjoyable. Ann
  27. Plexus, nephron, fair enough, but utterly gobsmacked that anyone didn’t know that Lexus is just an upmarket Toyota. Possible, I suppose, if you didn’t drive or have a car, but still ..
    1. I’m puzzled by your and horryd’s surprise. I haven’t owned a car in 40 years, except for 3 sabbatical years when I owned cheap compacts, couldn’t identify the make of any of the dozens of cars I see every day, mute TV commercials, … Why should I know about Lexi?
  28. Forty-seven minutes, so not my nippiest solve. The top half went in fairly speedily, after which I wallowed in the bottom half for quite a while. My inner geek appreciated NEPHRON – thanks, setter.
  29. 26:53. A bit of a distracted solve for me today in a noisy room, so not ideal. I agree with jackkt that having plexus as the solution and complex in the clue was a bit of a shame. I failed to see how lent worked and completely missed the parsing of top drawer. At least I remembered the When Harry met Sally screenwriter at 27ac. I enjoyed a good old groan at 28ac too.
  30. ….I didn’t enjoy much of it. Answers like TEMPEST, I really can not be bothered with working out the cryptic

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