Times Cryptic No 27390 – Saturday, 29 June 2019. Out of my depth.

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So, this ended the easy run of recent weeks with a vengeance! Lucky for me, I saw that early enough to concede defeat and use reference materials. A shout out to all who did it “bare hands”.

Here’s how I think it all worked. Definitions underlined, (ABC)* indicating anagram of ABC, {} deletions and [] other indicators.

Across
1 Great old bovine pleasure-seeker (8)
EPICURUS – EPIC, URUS. I could see what was going on but didn’t know either the bovine or the philosopher, although the adjectival form of his name is familiar enough.

5 Maybe shanty hasn’t finished in time (6)
SEASON – SEA SON{g}.

9 Phaeton’s alternative for this? (8)
STANHOPE – “alternative” [anagram] of (PHAETONS)*. This answer’s come up before, sometimes clued as an anagram, sometimes not.

10 Keep feature some reporter ruthlessly rejected (6)
TURRET – reverse hidden answer. Nicely disguised definition: a “keep” is a fort here.

12 We’re told to look angrily for egg white (5)
GLAIR – sounds like GLARE. Not a word I knew, though I guessed it from the wordplay, after rejecting STAIR. Again, it’s come up before.

13 Heading for victory, were poor moves to create defeat? (9)
OVERPOWER – “moves” [anagram] (V WERE POOR)*, where V is the heading for V{ictory}. One could perhaps read the whole clue as a literal definition.

14 Planned designs, with atlas showing decorative feature (7,5)
STAINED GLASS – “planned” [anagram] (DESIGNS ATLAS)*.

18 Rot expressed about intriguing people (12)
PUTREFACTION – PUT [expressed, as in “well put”], RE [about], FACTION [intriguing(!) people].

21 Sharp character from abroad, a tradesman (9)
CHISELLER – CHI [character from abroad, as usual meaning from Greece], SELLER [arguably a trades-man, although possibly not a tradesman!].

23 Award frequently picked up (5)
ALLOT – when “picked up” in conversation, sounds like A LOT.

24 Bachelor enters dressed or stripped (6)
ROBBED – B in ROBED.

25 Person in charge locks maiden in gaol (8)
CHAIRMAN – HAIR [locks] M [maiden], all in CAN.

26 Deposing Liberal, exploit trouble for national leader (6)
MIKADO – MI{l}K [exploit], ADO [trouble].

27 Novel‘s plot comprehended by a lady (4,4)
ADAM BEDE – BED [plot] “comprehended” by A DAME. I didn’t know the novel. It was George Eliot’s first, apparently.

Down
1 Kind of dash by recruit or officer (6)
ENSIGN – in typesetting, an EN dash is, as one might suspect, shorter than an EM dash. To SIGN could be to recruit.

2 Book‘s account, one that’s surprising (6)
ISAIAH – ISA [some sort of English savings account], I [one], AH! [that’s surprising!].

3 Guide to form true with these (9)
USHERETTE – “form” [anagram] (TRUE THESE)*.

4 Vain academic welcomed by college board (12)
UNPROFITABLE – UNI welcomes PROF, followed by TABLE. “Vain” seems rather stronger than “unprofitable”, but I suppose the meanings overlap enough.

6 Provide banter for surfers? (5)
EQUIP – internet surfers might try to amuse with an E-QUIP, geddit? Becoming a chestnut.

7 Aunt Sally‘s blemishes brought up by bishop, say (5,3)
STRAW MAN – STRAW=WARTS “brought up”. A bishop, say, is a chess MAN. I blinked a little at the idea that Aunt Sally, bless her, would be a man!

8 Officially attest this implies pay will be no better (8)
NOTARISE – so my new salary package is NOT A RISE?

11 Leave monster concealed in famous mount (6,6)
DESERT ORCHID – DESERT [leave], ORC [monster], HID [concealed]. An English racehorse, apparently. Another unknown to me.

15 Love big and small changes in worldview? (9)
GLOBALISM – “changes” [anagram] (O BIG SMALL)*. [As usual, O=zero=love].

16 Fancy dispensing with US alcohol range (8)
SPECTRUM – S{us}PECT [“fancy”, minus “US”], RUM.

17 American writer with half-hearted work, one ruminates (8)
STEINBOK – STEIN [Gertrude, the author], BO{o}K [“work”, half-hearted!]

I got that it was a bok, and admired the “half-hearted” device, but didn’t know the beast. It seems not to have appeared before in Times for the Times. The only kind thing I can say is that STEINBOK sounds more plausible than TWAINBOK, FROSTBOK or whatever!

19 Burnt meat stored in empty fridge (6)
FLAMBE – LAMB in F{ridg}E.

20 Bearing case, abandoning home (6)
STANCE – the case is an {in}STANCE, and the abandoned home is IN.

22 Note penetrating conclusion is correct (5)
EMEND – ME “penetrating” END.

24 comments on “Times Cryptic No 27390 – Saturday, 29 June 2019. Out of my depth.”

  1. Hard work, all right, as was today’s. I failed to note my LOI, but it may well have been DESERT ORCHID (NHO). Didn’t know URUS, but it couldn’t be anything else (I may have biffed HEDONIST at the beginning). Biffed ADAM BEDE, parsed after submitting. This was a widely-hated book in high school, where it was often assigned (I never read it). Somehow I knew GLAIR, I have no idea why. I looked up ‘Aunt Sally’, as I couldn’t remember what it meant, if I knew.
  2. Not so hard, except the last two. NHO the crossing Desert Orchid nor Adam Bede, so both required alphabet trawls. Didn’t know that meaning of Aunt Sally, but seemed possible. Glair and Stanhope known, and it can only be from crosswords. Likewise steinbok, though it seems to have only appeared as the equivalent(?) steenbok in e.g. 24713 and 25350.
    Quite an enjoyable puzzle, thanks Bruce and setter.
  3. Somehow I knew GLAIR, I sure know from where… Knew not URUS nor “Aunt Sally,” but the clues were clear and fair.

    Very enjoyable, especially because I finished. Saturdays seem consistently hard! Reading Kevin’s comment, I am almost glad that I ran out of ink this afternoon—I may take a puzzle pause…

  4. I have a note on my print-out to the effect that the RH was ‘hard but doable’ but the LH was ‘impossible’. My second comment now seems a bit of an exaggeration but I needed aids to get to STEINBOK and EPICURUS (where Bruce’s comments reflect my experience exactly), STANHOPE (which I knew, as well as what a phaeton is, so I should have got it), CHISELLER (‘tradesman’ defined by Collins as ‘a skilled worker’ seems fine to me) and UNPROFITABLE. Also (to my shame) EMEND and ROBBED which are both straightforward but I was stimied by missing checkers and running out of steam by that stage. GLAIR was completely unknown but I was pleased to get to it via wordplay and relieved to find it was correct.

    I knew AUNT SALLY as a fairground/village fete game but it has now emerged that I have been under a misapprehension all my life thinking of AUNT SALLY as the game where you throw heavy balls at old crockery. A little research reveals that’s called, rather unimaginatively, “Crockery Smash” and I couldn’t swear that I have ever seen a real AUNT SALLY stall.

    Edited at 2019-07-06 04:42 am (UTC)

  5. 53 minutes, ‘bare-handed’. Despite ISAIAH being FOI, the NW was last to fall. But then the inkling I had for ENSIGN became a formulated parsing so it had to be EPICURUS. I assume URUS is LATIN for a bovine, but in which case what is Taurus or ineeed a Brontosaurus? We’d had STANHOPE somewhere quite recently, and GLAIR was the only likely other way to spell ‘Glare’. DESERT ORCHID is one of the few racehorses whose name I know, and ADAM BEDE is one of the Victorian novels I read as a soulful young man. Where did I lose him? COD TO STRAW MAN. A hardish offering, but enjoyable. Thank you B and setter.
    1. It turns out that ‘urus’ is a variant of ‘aurochs’, which went extinct in the 17th century; the word comes from German, and the ‘ochs’ is cognate with ‘ox’.
      1. Indeed. I looked it up post-solve and found the Collins definition (‘another name for the aurochs’) particularly unhelpful!
  6. ….in the “Rebus” novels usually refers to our hero as STRAW MAN. I’ve just finished reading the latest one, and thoroughly enjoyed it.

    Nature notes : a STEINBOK is more commonly a steenbok. The URUS is extinct, but was properly called an aurochs.

    I was fortunate to have heard of everything in this puzzle, and the only hold-up came with ISAIAH, which I parsed post-solve.

    FOI SEASON
    LOI ISAIAH
    COD CHAIRMAN
    TIME 11:54

    1. …. And if there happened to be an American author with surname Steen (there seem to be a few) does that make steenbok an acceptable answer?
      1. Possibly, but probably not. To start with, Author Steen would have to be dead, and also would have to be “distinguished”.
  7. A week is a long time in Crosswordland. It seems ages ago now but the day before this puzzle I was wandering around the natural history museum in Oxford. Lots of dinosaurs and a dodo of course but somehow the urus section was not evident. My attempt at 1a was Dionysus, the word fits and I remembered he is a pleasure seeker. With that cemented in, the NW was intractable and anyway the steinbok proved elusive. Of all the American writers available, Stein would not have reached my top 50.
    I did get Adam Bede which proves the GK rule; it’s fine if I know it; same with Desert Orchid. My crossword jockey pulled me up before the end of the race.
    I liked FLAMBE which I think was my FOI. David
  8. I almost did this one “bare-handed” but confess to confirming that STEINBOK and URUS existed before submitting. GLAIR and ADAM BEDE from wordplay, although the latter did ring a muffled bell when I worked him out. DESERT ORCHID is famous enough over here for me to have heard of him. SPECTRUM took a while to appear. Nice puzzle. 37:48. Thanks setter and Bruce.
  9. 20 minutes suggests I rather breezed through this one, but a little pink square shows I can’t spell NOTARISE. “No to rise” seemed just as good a resolution of the wordplay, so there goes my error-free month.
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  11. Thanks Bruce for URUS, ENSIGN, ISAIAH and NOTARISE. i had to use aids for SPECTRUM, GLAIR and STEINBOK.
    COD to USHERETTE. That made me smile.
    If you’ve done today’s puzzle, 27ac in this one will be familiar!
    Talking of today’s, I had to complete the puzzle in the paper as I’m unable to open the Crossword Club and can only open the ToL in Chrome and not in Safari.

    Edited at 2019-07-06 08:59 am (UTC)

  12. Steinbek for Steinbok. Doh!

    Desert Orchid, “Dessie”, was a fantastic grey National Hunt horse and one of the most popular racehorses to have ever graced the sport of kings. He won the King George VI Boxing Day Chase at Kempton four times and, most notably, won the Cheltenham Gold Cup once, in 1989, on heavy ground that didn’t suit him over a distance that was too far for him. He was the favourite that day at 5/2. I had backed him antepost at 20/1!

    Here are the race’s closing stages with the inimitable, (though much imitated!), Peter O’Sullevan commentating.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GcCuIVn6egM

  13. I am a huge fan of Desert Orchid, my second favourite horse after Red Rum. They shared the characteristic of reacting to things going on around them .. eg in the youtube clip above, notice that once over the last fence, with the two horses side by side and the finishing post in sight, Dessie just was NOT going to let himself be beaten.
    Being both a grey AND with a sheepskin noseband, he was always going to be popular with the punters 🙂

  14. 37:09 with a couple of bumps in the road. Urus was unknown but Epicurus sufficiently well known for 1ac to be solvable. Dnk glair but the homophone was clear. 18ac and 21ac both took ages. Wasn’t entirely confident with the writer part of 17dn, Stein probably not the top of many people’s lists of American writers. Couldn’t help wondering if I was mixing up John Steinbeck with a springbok.
  15. 22:37. I found this hard but not outrageously so. I was a bit worried about EPICURUS (never having heard of the cow and being unfamiliar with this form of ‘Epicure’) and GLAIR (unknown) so was relieved to find they both existed.
    The phaeton-STANHOPE clue is a Georgette Heyer special.
    I’m sure STEINBOK must have come up before. How else would I know it?
    I’ve actually read Adam Bede but I can’t remember a thing about it.

    Edited at 2019-07-06 04:11 pm (UTC)

  16. at 11dn was a write in they should make a film of ‘Dessie’ on the SEA BISCUIT lines. My COD

    FOI 9ac STANHOPE

    LOI 12ac GLAIR rang a bell.

    WOD 27ac the very popular ADAM BEDE!!?

    2dn ISAIAH required careful spelling.

  17. Jackkt says “Left OK, right impossible”. My note said “top done, bottom….”. I knew it was time to quit when I gave up and chucked Traveller in for a sharp character from abroad, who co-spells with a salesman, just in order to see if that gave me any crossers that might provoke ideas. I knew there was no way that first definition was approved for public audiences.
    P_i_L
  18. Thanks setter and Bruce
    One that was solved by grabbing 10-15 min here and there across a couple of days when I could get to it. Did require help along the way to verify the ancient hedonistic philosopher at 1a, the old racehorse at 11d and the antelope / author at 17d. Did know of ADAM BEDE, although having never read it and also knew the Hebrew prophet at 2d.
    Needed the blog to properly parse CHISELLER, initially having it as a double definition with the tradesman being him.
    So plenty to keep one on one’s toes with both definitions and word play. Finished in the NE corner with TURRET, SEASON and EQUIP the last few in.

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