Times 27,443: Time For A Holiday?

Author   VerlainePosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
I think the setter may be trying to suggest we all take a hopefully well-deserved vacation in this one: 11ac, 12ac, 17ac, 25ac, 13dn, 18dn and more put that idea into MY head, anyway. Just as well I’m heading off to catch a plane to Portland, the City of Roses, in a couple of hours then.

This felt pretty straightforward, taking me 6 minutes on the dot, but there were certainly a few very cute clues in the mix. I very much liked 10ac, my COD, and 26ac was a model of how to conceal a definition part. 1dn was pretty devious (or perhaps it was just me being too fixated on HOLLANDAISE?) and I’m sure people will have plenty of opinions on 22dn. I’d be surprised if many people knew the name Jill Masterson straightaway, but hopefully, like me, you worked out what was going on pretty quickly. Bonus points because I’m enjoying reading Goldfinger quotes on the internet now. “Bond always mistrusted short men. They grew up from childhood with an inferiority complex. All their lives they would strive to be big – bigger than the others who had teased them as a child. Napoleon had been short, and Hitler. It was the short men that caused all the trouble in the world.”

So true! Thanks for this one to the no-doubt tall and strapping setter. And have a nice weekend everybody…

ACROSS
1 Cold suddenly affected pert young woman (4)
CHIT – C HIT [cold | suddenly affected]

4 Saw what might be easily done (4,4,2)
LAID EYES ON – (EASILY DONE*) [“what might be…”]

9 Business of bandits dressing to conceal equipment (10)
BRIGANDAGE – BANDAGE [dressing] to “conceal” RIG [equipment]

10 Employed engineers initially in Bucks? (4)
USED – E{ngineers} in USD, ie American dollars, the currency also known as “bucks”

11 Coastal road announced for port (6)
BEIRUT – homophone of BAY ROUTE [coastal | road]

12 Bag sent back — ecstasy widespread in island (8)
TENERIFE – reversed NET [bag] + E RIFE [ecstasy | widespread]

14 Just one dropped round for gambling game (4)
FARO – FA{i}R [just, with I “dropped”] + O [round]

15 Try to stop Southern Ocean bird (10)
SHEARWATER – HEAR [try] to “stop” S WATER [southern | ocean]

17 Serving flyer has sorties to rearrange (3,7)
AIR HOSTESS – (HAS SORTIES*) [“to rearrange”]

20 Virtuoso on piano to establish tempo (4)
PACE – ACE [virtuouso] on P

21 Dealer caught by dogged police officer? (8)
CHANDLER – C [caught] by HANDLER [police offer with a dog]

23 Wholesome? Worth buying? Credit refused! (6)
EDIBLE – {cr}EDIBLE [worth buying, where buy = believe, minus CR = credit]

24 Military detachment to come together shortly (4)
UNIT – UNIT{e} [to come together, “shortly”]

25 Mole finally quits a Baltic base, prepared for leave (10)
SABBATICAL – (A BALTIC BAS{e}) [“prepared”]

26 Handle we use to split explosive open? (10)
TOURNAMENT – OUR NAME [handle we use] to “split” TNT [explosive]

27 Desire to handle dough is expressed (4)
NEED – homophone of KNEAD [to handle dough]

DOWN
2 Almost set to tuck into chestnuts maybe with hot sauce? (11)
HORSERADISH – RADI{o} [“almost” set] to “tuck” into HORSES [chestnuts maybe] + H [hot]

3 Chap briefly shown round German plane (5,4)
TIGER MOTH – TIMOTH{y} [chap “briefly”] shown “round” GER [German]

4 Special formulation was our bond they say (7)
LINCTUS – homophone of LINKED US [was our bond]

5 One with rather evil bent cast as tyrant (4,3,8)
IVAN THE TERRIBLE – I [one] + (RATHER EVIL BENT*) [“cast”]

6 Woman beginning to encourage and tend soldiers (7)
ELEANOR – E{ncourage} + LEAN OR [tend | soldiers]

7 American in boat that’s cut fare from Japan (5)
SUSHI – US [American] in SHI{p} [boat “that’s cut”]

8 Going in starkers is good way to attract attention (5)
NUDGE – going in NUDE [starkers] is G [good]

13 Protecting name, reveal chef sacked for unauthorised absence (6,5)
FRENCH LEAVE – “protecting” N [name], (REVEAL CHEF*) [“sacked”]

16 Swimmer able to do the crawl? (9)
AMPHIBIAN – cryptic definition for a creature that can swim in water, and crawl on land.

18 Region in small French islands excellent for climbing (7)
SILESIA – S ILES [small | French islands] + reversed A1 [excellent]

19 Scottish clan with the skills to produce great gumbo? (7)
STEWART – or STEW ART [gumbo-making skills!]

21 Limerick perhaps shortened to make an impression (5)
COUNT – Limerick is an Irish county; shorten to COUNT{y}.

22 Share Jill Masterson’s fate? Cheerio! (5)
ADIEU – a cheeky little clue this one. Jill Masterson is the girl (played by Shirley Eaton) who memorably dies in the James Bond film Goldfinger, from being painted gold. So her fate is to DIE in AU [gold].

76 comments on “Times 27,443: Time For A Holiday?”

  1. Biffed a whole bunch of these, parsing post-submission; pre-eminently ADIEU–had no idea who the hell Jill Masterson was, and I can’t see why I should be expected to. Clever clue otherwise.
  2. I knew Jill, and thought the clue was wicked clever. Well done, setter. Ivan should have been easy, but I saw the V in the fodder and couldn’t get good old Vlad The Impaler out of my mind.
    Have a good time in Portland, V, and remember to turn your baseball cap back around front-ways when you return after the weekend.
    1. Personally?
      I wouldn’t put it past you…

      I had to look her up. Brilliant clue, regardless.
      (People used to actually believe that would kill you…!)

  3. I enjoyed this one and was happy to finish in under my average time. In addition to your list, V, I liked the “dogged police officer” (21a) and the edible/credible (23a) definitions. So many thanks to the setter.

    I managed to get the SNITCH working again on my local machine last night. (It needed a “brain transplant” for new login to the Times website.) So I’m hoping to have service restored soon.

    Thanks for the blog, V, and have a good trip.

    1. Out of interest, was there a particular new brain you chose? Their terrifying new Angular-based login pages also stymied my automatic login-and-print system; I’ve just started playing around with alternative solutions, mostly symphony/panther. You’d think for the price we pay for a sub these days we’d get access to a crossword API!

      No worries if you don’t have time to share (but if you do, and don’t want to bore the non-technical I’m g*t*i*k@g*t*i*k.org.uk!)

        1. Thanks! (Not seen anything come through yet. I’ll go and see if I can unclog a pipe or two…)
          1. OK – just re-sent it. The email bounced as I had some JS attachments. I’ve now made them a link.
    2. I still reckon you should open source the snitch so we can submit pull requests ideas to it on Github! 😀
      1. Thanks, V. Yes, I’d be happy to do this, but don’t have a lot of time to learn how to properly run a GitHub repo that would easily allow others to contribute. I did upload it to GitHub a couple of years ago (when you last asked 🙂 but didn’t take it further. I build from my local git instance, and this got out of sync with the GitHub version, so I haven’t maintained the latter. If there’s active interest from other technical folk on this site, I’ll give it another go.
  4. 24 mins, with the last 5 stuck on AMPHIBIAN. Frogs & toads hop not crawl don’t they? Still, this was one of many clever clues with neat surfaces. I also had no idea who J Masterson was.
  5. All straightforward today with the only lesser known words being crossword staples, i.e. FARO and SHEARWATER. Thanks for explaining ADIEU Verlaine – a great clue except for the fact that Jill Masterson seems too obscure to me. Less knocking of short people though please!
    1. Yes! We short people should stand up and … er… well, stand up to this denigration.
  6. 36 minutes, but with IVAN THE TERRIBLE at 5dn as my first one in, so you might gather that I had a problem geting started. Things improved after that though, the only other major hold-up resulting from biffing REPTILIAN at 16dn and not taking time to think of alternatives.

    I also couldn’t think who Jill Masterson was and I was torn between ADIEU and ADIOS for ‘Cheerio!’ until the U from TOURNAMENT presented itself. Once that was decided I spotted the ‘die in gold’ device and there was only one candidate for that. Almost any Brit of my generation who saw the film ‘Goldfinger’ would remember the scenes with Shirley Eaton who was very famous here – not so much abroad perhaps – and very glamourous of course, but I doubt so many knew (or cared) that her character’s name was ‘Jill Masterson’, especially when there was also the more memorable character name ‘Pussy Galore’ to distract us. It’s the only Bond film I ever really enjoyed (I gave up on them decades ago) and the only Bond book I ever read.

    Happily Shirley is still with us although she retired from acting as long ago as 1969.

    Edited at 2019-08-30 05:04 am (UTC)

    1. I’d never heard of Shirley Eaton, but wouldn’t have complained if she’d been in a clue, as she was evidently quite well-known in the UK at least. But I’ve seen “Goldfinger” more times than I care to admit to, and her character’s name has never registered with me; only the way she dies. Getting ADIEU from checkers and def got me no closer to an understanding of the clue, and I don’t see how it could have without my knowing who ‘Jill Masterson’ was.
    2. I see Wikipedia gives her occupations as “Actress, author, sex symbol”!
      Glad she is still with us!
  7. 16:27 … a lot of fun, especially the bay route, the Bond girl and the art of gumbo. No problems working out who Jill Masterson was, perhaps already primed for that thoroughly non-PC world by the chit of a girl and the definitely not gender-neutral AIR HOSTESS.

    COD to the one I had to stare at for quite a while before the penny dropped, AMPHIBIAN. Excellent clue.

  8. 35 mins with yoghurt, granola, blueberries, etc.
    I was held up by the excellent “dogged” policeman and crossing Silesia.
    Some really top notch clues today. Mostly I liked: 4ac, 26ac, Adieu and COD to Nudge.
    Altogether now, “Do you expect me to talk?” “No Mr Bond, I expect…
    Was there ever a better example of ‘short man syndrome’ than John Bercow?
    Thanks excellent setter and V,

    Edited at 2019-08-30 07:35 am (UTC)

  9. Enjoyed this, though more Monday than Friday!

    No probs with Jill M, or in fact with her sister Tilly M. A fine clue, that.
    FARO turns up on every other page of Ms Heyer’s works. It is another holiday destination, V, as well as a card game. Shearwater is a pleasant town in Tasmania, though not sure how touristy it is.

  10. 15.28 for this one, which I think makes it my “easiest” of the week. But almost throughout, the wordplay was tricky and took some working out (which I did, thankfully, or I’d have had SHEERWATER). The exception was ADIEU, where I’d worked out the “die in gold” device but got stuck as to how someone called Jill Masterson could get involved with Midas. Now you mention it…
    AMPHIBIAN would have been my last in – it gets my tick as a decent CD – but I spotted on run-through that I had missed BEIRUT, which fortunately fell in. I had been trying to thing of the seaside road the wasn’t a corniche and left it for that part of my brain that quietly gets on with sorting through the musty card files while the conscious bit is doing more exciting things.

    If it’s possible, have fun in Portland, V. How you do this blogging stuff bare minutes away from departing for the airport beats me. Oh to be just entering middle age again!

    1. I think it was Shirley Eaton who was left with a bit unpainted so she didn’t die in the making of the film which might have been taking method acting a stage too far!

      I wasted time considering STRAND as the coastal road.

  11. .. and retirement continues. 34 minutes. ADIEU was biffed, and then I remembered why I knew the name Jill Masterson. My COD goes to AMPHIBIAN though. I liked the dogged police officer too. I didn’t know FARO as a card (?) game, and I’ve no doubt wrongly always pronounced it as ‘bear route’. No wonder it took so long to find Terry Waite and John McCarthy. Enjoyable puzzle. Thank you V and setter.

    Edited at 2019-08-30 08:00 am (UTC)

  12. 53 minutes, and happy enough to be within 10 Verlaines today. Very slow start, but I finally bunged in 8d NUDGE and worked backwards, getting properly off the marks with the excellent anagram 4a LAID EYES ON and then biffing 5d IVAN THE TERRIBLE.

    A lovely puzzle, with plenty of misdirections that worked beautifully on me. (On the plus side, at least this time around I didn’t spend twenty minutes trying to remember “corniche” before I worked out it wasn’t relevant to 11a…) Enjoyed “handle we use” and “serving flyer”.

    Finished off with the unknown 15a SHEARWATER followed by 16d AMPHIBIAN, which I was expecting to be some kind of unknown fish, having crawled up the wrong garden path.

  13. Rather you than me, Verlaine, taking a holiday in the coal mines of Silesia. I’ll settle for FARO, or rather, fly there and drive west to Albufeira where another spy novel and my very favourite one, was set: “Horse Under Water” by Len Deighton.
    Thank you for explaining HORSERADISH. I think ADIEU has to be COD.
    One of my favourite movie lines comes from “Goldfinger”. With Bond strapped to a table and the laser getting ever closer to his groin, he says to Goldfinger who is disappearing out the door with the Chinese scientists: “Do you expect me to talk?”
    “No Mr Bond, I expect you to die!”
    Jill Masterson’s sister also appears in the film, aiming to kill Goldfinger but I can’t remember her first name.
    1. Tilly, if I recall correctly. Great crossword, thanks setter, no problems but thoroughly enjoyable.
          1. I do….but if you’re referring to Myrtle’s reference to the famous line from “Goldfinger”, I missed that bit.
  14. A very enjoyable puzzle. My only biff was ADIEU, but on starting to read V’s blog I revisited it and the doubloon dropped. I didn’t know the character name though. All good fun. I liked TOURNAMENT and AIR HOSTESS. 22:03. Thanks setter and V.
  15. ….at FARO allow an AIR HOSTESS to land a TIGER MOTH in an emergency ?

    An absolutely bostin’ puzzle (see QC blog) which was completed with a smile on my face throughout. Thanks to V for explaining USED and ADIEU. I successfully biffed HORSERADISH, and parsed it afterwards.

    I unsuccessfully biffed “Vlad the Impaler”, but escaped, and considered “air marshal” but it didn’t fit the anagrist.

    FOI CHIT
    LOI ADIEU
    COD SHEARWATER
    TIME 9:54

  16. I’m another who had REPTILIAN for 16. HORSERADISH and ADIEU both stand-out clues for me.
  17. Another one trying for “hollandaise” here. Silesia was one of those areas that kept changing hands through school history lessons. It reminded me of an old groanworthy joke of my father’s – if this is Upper Silesia what on earth can Lower Silesia be like. On the holiday theme there’s the Caribbean AMPHIBIAN from Sesame Street https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CxKArhySbko 15.33
      1. I think the clue is just for the sauce: “hot” gives the final H in horseradish. Jeffrey
  19. 9:38. Fun puzzle. No problems today, including 22d where I didn’t know who Jill Masterson was but figured she was probably that Bond girl.
    Donald Trump is 6’2’’.
  20. 22 is brilliant. And if the QC can employ Steve Austin, the daily can have Jill for sure.

    Great puzzle.

  21. 10m 52s – like others I enjoyed ADIEU a lot; Jill Masterson rang a bell but it wasn’t till I had the U that I twigged the answer and then remembered who she was.

    COD for me is TOURNAMENT, though, a masterful piece of clueing.

    There were a couple of clues I was dreading coming back to, as I thought 11a would be connected to the word I can never remember for a road round a cliff (corniche! I can never remember it when I need it), and that 19d would need some tricky Scottish, but both proved easy enough in the end – and were my last two.

  22. With a misspelled shearwater – aargh. Thanks for the explanation of adieu – brilliant.
  23. 18’46”, with amphibian LOI. Couldn’t remember Jill, though it all comes flooding back.

    Thanks verlaine and setter.

  24. A very enjoyable 43 minutes spent doing this, though ADIEU went way over my head and I couldn’t parse the ‘almost set’ bit of HORSERADISH.

    I also liked TOURNAMENT, but I wondered if ‘open’ should have been capitalised. Maybe not as I suppose ‘open’ is a generic term and doesn’t just refer to The (British golf) Open.

    Thank you to setter and blogger.

  25. Hadn’t heard of “Faro” so had to look that one up. I simply assumed that Jill Masterson was someone who died in Australia! Otherwise ok – brigandage is a nice word that I shall try to use more often.
  26. I thought you might have taken it out on your creation after events in Leeds earlier in the week. 24 minutes for this.

    Still call them air hostesses myself…

    Edited at 2019-08-30 01:22 pm (UTC)

    1. Best delete that last comment, Ulaca, or one day they will come for you .. gender neutrality is the way it has to be, henceforth.
      Still I fondly remember Shirley Eaton as a fine .. actress ..
    2. Clearly a wasted opportunity – that would have been a much better reason than the boring, actual one. These days I barely get time to finish the crossword, let alone find something even vaguely interesting to say about it. And the SNITCH has generally looked after itself until last week.

      Leeds sounds like it was a great match. It might revive interest in cricket for the non-rusted-on supporters of the Aussie team. The ball-tampering crisis took the shine off it for those of us who aren’t cricket tragics.

      Good to see that you’re continuing the fight against political correctness. I can only assume you’re out leading the HK marches in the streets. I trust you’ve got a tank-proof vest.

      1. I auditioned for a leading role but didn’t get a call-back. They said I wasn’t photogenic enough in my mask, helmet and black gear for the international press.
      2. I auditioned for a leading role but didn’t get a call-back. They said I wasn’t photogenic enough in my mask, helmet and black gear for the international press.
  27. Yes.. quite right! But you must admit, horseradish is a more satisfying answer even so 🙂
  28. Nice puzzle, completed in normal time. No idea re Jill Masterson, that was just a biff from the checkers and definition, and CHIT must be a IK-ism, since I’ve never heard it before. So the pretty simple wordplay led me to it without any other help. No problems otherwise. Regards.
  29. By remarkable coincidence, I too find myself unexpectedly on holiday. Technically not quite unexpected, since I booked it, but it seems to have gone from being on the distant horizon to starting at 5am today-right-now very abruptly. I shall need the rest of the holiday to recover from getting here.

    In any event, this one was done and dusted in a shade under twenty minutes, which is about 5th gear for my old brain; or maybe it was just quite easy. HORSERADISH never got parsed, and the Goldfinger reference passed me by completely. Quite why anyone imagined that covering someone in gold paint would kill them I don’t know (I’ve seen people covered in worse), but then again Fleming did have quite a few odd ideas. In any event, I am now inspired to re-read some of the Bond novels while I’m out here, in an attempt to stave off brain-rot. Mrs. Thud has suggested that this holiday will be an opportunity to switch off, relax and find ourselves, which frankly scares the hell out of me.

    Edited at 2019-08-30 04:51 pm (UTC)

    1. DON’T start mucking things up by providing facts, Thud. we don’t need those here. If that nice Mr Fleming says gold paint kills, that’s good enough for me.
      Have a nice holiday .. though staving off brain-rot by reading James Bond sounds a dodgy plan to me, by your own admission 🙂
      1. Well, clearly the young lady suffered an allergic reaction to gold – perhaps her death was masterminded by the Greek agent, Anna Phylaxis.
    2. My favorite odd idea was an Agatha Christie villain who dropped two aspirin in all the coffees after dinner in order to knock everyone out cold. It worked in the book.
  30. 38 minutes, with some answers appearing out of nowhere after staring at the page. Different wavelength, I think. LOI was Stewart, which is a bit funny, really, given my name. I was put off by not considering gumbo to be a stew. COD Tiger Moth.

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