Times 27463 – If the clue fits….

Author   vinyl1Posted on Categories Daily Cryptic

Time: 27 minutes
Music: Shostakovich, Symphony 15, Ormandy/Philadephia

I didn’t think I would do very well, as I was quite worn out after playing 18 holes of golf for the first time in ten years – it was quite a good fourball match.   And I was indeed very slow to start, and didn’t get the feeling I was making much progress for quite a while.   I kept thinking that I have no idea what’s going on in this clue, and then suddenly seeing it, or just biffing the answer.

When I put in ’emulation’, I couldn’t see how the cryptic worked, so I said to myself I’ll just see what the blogger says…..oops, I am the blogger tonight, I’ll have to think about it.  Later on, I realized I couldn’t parse the clue beccause my answer was wrong.   I also made a number of blunders writing in correct answers with wrong spellings, so I was quite pleased to suddenly see ‘dining car’ and realize I had finished.   I was looking for the UK equivalent of slot car racing, too, so that was quite unexpected.

Across
1 But one may not be at sea in one’s varying choices (8,5)
FLOATING VOTER – Cryptic definition, one I thought was an anagram of ‘But one may not be’….until I got the ‘V’.
8 Sparkling wine son dipped into shortly after midday (4)
ASTI – AT (S) I, a new clue for a populat answer.
9 Club taking responsibility for a ravager of crops? (4,6)
WOOD PIGEON –  WOOD (like my 12-degree senior-flex Ping driver) + PIGEON (as in “that’s not my pigeon”).
10 Beauty in fiction a victim of defamation (8)
LIBELLEE – LI(BELLE)E.
11 Gain enjoyment at first in outing (6)
DERIVE – D(E[njoyment])RIVE, as in derive pleasure from.
13 Remove right from subscribers? It’s not intended (10)
UNDESIGNED – UNDE[r]SIGNED.
16 Noise from Tamworth pub largely repressed by fine? (4)
OINK –  O(IN[n])K
17 Isaacson’s appeal accepted in Brussels? (4)
ESAU – E(S.A.)U, made easy by stock cryptic elements.  There are various people named Isaacson, but that’s not what we’re looking for here.
18 Finally completing duet, he’s in surprisingly good health (10)
GESUNDHEIT – Anagram of [completin]G DUET HE’S IN.   ‘Gesundheit’ does literally mean ‘good health’.
20 Slag off a close relative, an exporter of bananas and pineapples (6)
PANAMA – PAN A MA, and hats too.
22 Contact staff about centre for heart bypass (4,4)
RING ROAD – RING RO([he]A[rt])D.
24 Hopeful fellow is taken in by viewer (10)
OPTIMISTIC – OP(TIM IS)TIC.
26 Rested in country road, when picked up (4)
LAIN – Sounds like LANE.
27 Like certain relations cooking an organic meal? (5-8)
ANGLO-AMERICAN – Anagram of AN ORGANIC MEAL.
Down
1 A dress-conscious trendy has it on as if at random (11)
FASHIONISTA – Anagram of HAS IT ON AS IF.
2 Only initially long to express a view (5)
OPINE – O[nly] + PINE.
3 Got up to lag water source in absorbent material (9)
TOWELLING –  TO(WELL IN)G, where the enclosing letters are GOT up.
4 Granny going round initially in honour of weepy daughter (7)
NIOBEAN – N(I[n] + OBE)AN, a rather tricky one that may stump some solvers.
5 Quick to change right to view leader’s flat? (5)
VAPID – +V[-r]APID, a letter-substitution clue.
6 Insect resorted to this mostly, swallowing bug (5,4)
TIGER MOTH – anagram of  TO THI[s] around GERM, where ‘resorted’ = ‘re-sorted’.
7 Aussie native requiring a lot of space (3)
ROO – ROO[m], one from the Quickie, and my FOI.
12 Defence of very popular article, in a manner of speaking (11)
VINDICATION – V + IN + DIC(A)TION.
14 Copying letter in Greek and Latin, for one outside (9)
EMULATING – E(MU + LATIN)G, i.e. exemplia gratia.
15 In which we may be on track for taking certain courses (6,3)
DINING CAR – Cryptic definition, but not what I thought it was – vide supra.
19 Little boy’s upset stomach leading to bed (7)
STRATUM – ART’S upside-down + TUM.
21 Friend has a turn crossing busy road (5)
AMIGO – A(M1)GO.
23 Souvenir from Long Island found in park (5)
RELIC – RE(L.I.)C
25 Pulse rate finally disturbing old man (3)
PEA – P([rat]E)A, another Quickie escapee.

54 comments on “Times 27463 – If the clue fits….”

  1. I couldn’t believe 8ac was as simple as ASTI, so I skipped it until it was forced on me, then finally parsed it. DNK FLOATING VOTER or WOOD PIGEON, my LOI and POI. Didn’t understand ‘lag’ in 3d, but WELL led to a solution. Shouldn’t 4d be ‘mother’? Niobe was punished for her hubris by having Apollo and Artemis kill her children. She herself was turned into a weeping stone.

    Edited at 2019-09-23 05:21 am (UTC)

  2. A DNF in 39 minutes. Missed PAN A MA which I thought had something to do with all the ‘AN’s’ in ‘bananas’ or ‘pineapples’ (ananas) so I put in ‘nanana’, which still comes up one ‘AN’ short of ‘nanananana’. And so it proved.

    I liked the ‘lift and separate’ in ‘Isaacson’ and was pleased I could remember NIOBEAN from earlier appearances. LIBELLEE sounds like a member of an early 1960’s all-female American pop group.

    Thanks to setter and blogger.

  3. Mostly straightforward and rather fun (Isaacson’s indeed!) but I came a cropper with my LOI at 4dn where I lost patience and bunged in NAOMEAN even though I knew it didn’t fit the wordplay and wasn’t sure that it’s a word anyway.

    NHO LIBELLEE and though there seems to be a logical need for its existence I wonder why there’s apparently no equivalent ‘slanderee’.

    Edited at 2019-09-23 04:24 am (UTC)

  4. I had problems getting started at the top, where my efforts petered out before I could get 1a, so I started again from the bottom and worked upwards. This doesn’t seem to have hindered me much, as I was done in 35 minutes, deploying some quite varied vocab along the way.

    I’m glad to see someone else raising an eyebrow at 4d, where I’d also have thought she was more a weepy mother than a weepy daughter, but then I only know her from crosswords, so it’s not as if I have any more evidence than her Wikipedia entry…

    FOI 5d VAPID, LOI 13a UNDERSIGNED.

    1. and I’M glad someone finally noticed my comment! The daughters couldn’t be weepy, since they had all been killed.
          1. Without wishing to detract in any way from the fatuousness of my comment, it seems from my careful research* that she was notably the daughter of Tantalus, so there is that.

            *quick glance at Wikipedia

            1. Well, there is that, but what a paltry that it is! Seriously, the clue is in error and the error should have been spotted.
              1. I’m not sure. All of the usual dictionaries (Chambers, Lexico, Collins) describe Niobe primarily as ‘daughter of Tantalus’. Perhaps the setter thought ‘mother’ would look odd in conjunction with ‘granny’ and sacrificed fidelity to the story for the surface reading. Or perhaps not.
                1. Perhaps not, indeed. I don’t have any of the usual dictionaries, but I do know that the point of the Niobe story was that her hubris (I’ve got 14 kids, and Leto only has two, nyaa nyaa nyaa) led to the slaughter of her children and her transformation into a weeping rock. Achilles was a heroic son, too, but ‘heroic son’ is hardly a definition of Achilles. Perhaps we should let an expert make the final judgment: “Seriously, the clue is in error and the error should have been spotted.”
                  1. Since she only became a weeping rock AFTER the slaughter of her children, I think daughter is more apt than mother.
                    1. Sorry, but I don’t follow that at all. The point of the Niobe story is that she lost her children through hubris, and wept eternally. The story says nothing about weeping daughters–not to mention that her sons were slaughtered too.
  5. …and whilst they were being killed the daughters might have wept just a teensy bit, don’t you think!? Whatever, NIOBEAN my WOD

    17ac ESAU was write-in of the year

    FOI 1dn FAHIONISTA

    LOI 10ac LIBELLEE after 51 Minutes

    COD 16ac OINK!

    Lots to like and a bit different for a Monday. GESUNDHEIT!

    Edited at 2019-09-23 06:46 am (UTC)

  6. 9:33. No problems other than putting in BUFFET CAR, but 13ac looked very much like it had to end in ED so I reconsidered quite quickly. I didn’t know NIOBEAN but I followed the wordplay and was confident it was right (or at least, would have been annoyed if it wasn’t). I vaguely remember this meaning of PIGEON from a past puzzle but I didn’t need it given checkers and definition.
    1. Brewer’s says the phrase is down to a mispronunciation of pigeon for Pidgin; Pidgin in turn is, well, Pidgin English for ‘business’, Pidgin English having been developed to let Chinese speakers do business with early English speaking traders. So the not my pigeon comes directly from not my business. I’d always wondered where Pidgin came from.
      1. There are lots of varieties of pidgin. Sometimes a pidgin will pass from one generation to another, spontaneously acquiring its own extensive vocabulary and complete system of grammar in the process, becoming a creole.
  7. I did my best to hamper myself today, initially by throwing in ANGLO GERMANIC at the bottom. Then when I got to two left I read ‘defenestration’ instead of ‘defamation’. This led me to think that I was looking for a story about a beauty thrown out of a window. With my other one remaining appearing to concern a mythical daughter it seemed most unfair to me to have two literary answers crossing like this. Thankfully I noticed my misreading before I threw in the towel and so I finished with LIBELLEE and the unknown NIOBEAN.
  8. So dry, that I am now mine own sad tomb.”
    Couldn’t have put it better myself.
    30 mins with MER at Niobean. For the reason given above. And has she really been adjectivised?
    Thanks setter and Vinyl.
  9. I realised quite early that I needed to pay attention on this one. Saw the TUM easily but couldn’t understand why ‘Little boy’s upset’ was ORCS for a while in 19d. COD to UNDESIGNED.
    1. Another example of Gresham’s Law of Crosswords: I could only come up with one word given the checkers, and while I said to myself, “Not in the Times!”, it blocked STRATUM for quite a while.
  10. 27 minutes. LOI PANAMA, as I was looking too hard for the (b)ananas connection. I’ve never heard of LIBELLEE before but that’s because the libeller writes it down rather than saying it to your face. DNK the constructed NIOBEAN. I see from Wiki that she carried on crying even after she was turned to stone. That’s what supporting Wanderers is like this season. And I’m a FLOATING VOTER. I can’t make up my mind between that and ESAU for COD. I’ll sit in the middle of the see-saw. A. good fun puzzle. Thank you V and setter.

    Edited at 2019-09-23 08:14 am (UTC)

  11. We had a reference to Jacob last week, so ESAU had to follow. I have a vague idea that OINK appeared elsewhere recently. GESUNDHEIT and NIOBEAN from wordplay, PANAMA LOI. Do DINING CARs still exist?

    16’40”, thanks vinyl and setter.

    2. As it happens, in the US anyway, Amtrak announced just last week that they were discontinuing dining cars. So no more North by Northwest style scenes going forward.
  13. Ouch. Put in link road without a second thought. Careless. Couldn’t then do 19dn and put in silatum with a shrug. Oh well. Thanks v.
  14. I’m too ignorant to spot any problem with 4D but I had heard of Niobe. I was surprise to find a WOOD PIGEON ravages crops, but I see here that they eat cabbages, sprouts, peas and grain. I liked ESAU and GESUNDHEIT. 17:40.
  16. ….that turned out to be NIOBEAN, and the appearance of “Latin” in both clue and solution at 14D, I didn’t DERIVE much pleasure from this.

    FOI ASTI
    LOI UNDESIGNED
    COD RING ROAD
    TIME 15:56

  17. Nothing too scary here, although NIOBEAN (my LOI) took a bit of getting, and I wasn’t familiar with the use of PIGEON to mean responsibility.

    OINK was lovely, as was the cheeky use of LATIN in EMULATING. My only minor quibble was that BUFFET CAR seems perfectly valid for 15d, and I would have entered it myself if I hadn’t already got an N in it.

    8m 15s.

  18. LOI ESAU bit of a duh moment as I suddenly realised what was going on after much contemplation. Nice to have a bit of German for a change. Good Health to you all from a rainy Somerset caravan.
  20. I did much of this without fully parsing but got a bit distracted at the end, confused by the plural “subscribers” in 13a. Then of course realized you can have more than one person sign a letter. Didn’t stop to ponder the Niobe anomaly. What really got me hung up though was the exporter of tropical fruit in 20a. Bah=slag off seemed quite plausible and “Bahama” seemed plausible too because I think of canals and hats rather than fruit when it comes to PANAMA. After a lot of dithering 18.04
    2. Panama hats actually originate in Ecuador. But I agree that who thinks of Panama when thinking about where pineapples come from?
    3. A gem I gleaned from QI: despite their name, Panama hats have never been made in Panama. They originated in Ecuador where they are made to this day. Jeffrey
    1. Um, do you read the previous comments anonymous? It’s recommended. Also, please append a name – anything will do.
  22. 19:14 so pretty brisk. Nho the expression “that’s my pigeon” – sounds like something Dick Dastardly would say – but with checkers in place 9ac wasn’t too much of a stretch. I knew Niobe was someone tearful because she turns up in one of Hamlet’s soliloquies (surely the most slappable adolescent in literature since Orestes – who hasn’t sat through that play and not thought “get on with it”?) where he has a gripe about the indecent haste with which Gertrude threw off her widow’s weeds and married Claudius after the death of his father. Didn’t know the full story though and having read the wiki entry can see why weepy daughter as opposed to mother raised the odd eyebrow. Very interesting. Those ancient Greeks, firm but fair I’d say.

    Edited at 2019-09-23 07:36 pm (UTC)

  23. Kind of a nice Monday, wasn’t it, with a couple thrown in for entertaining difficulty. Thanks, Vinyl. How did you score?
  24. Vindication is what one might achieve after a successful defence, not the defence itself. Mr Grumpy
  25. I decided to cancel Monday this week and, on balance, I have to say it worked out well. The only downside is that I find myself here a day late. 28 minutes, after a slow start. NIOBEAN stretched the limits of my biblical knowledge (well, to be honest, exceeded those limits), and I spent a while convinced that 1ac had to be something-water. LOI was PANAMA, as I was overthinking the clue.
  27. I’m catching up with crosswords after my trip to a family wedding in Spain. This one is the easiest so far, although PANAMA took a while and was my LOI. OINK cropped up very recently, but still raised a smile. ORCS had me raising my eyebrows until sanity prevailed. I already had GESUNDHEIT, so wasn’t tempted by the Buffet CAR. 22:41. Thanks setter and V.

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