Times Cryptic 27272

Author   jackktPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic

49 minutes. Another mix of easy answers and occasional words or meanings bordering on the obscure, but on the whole I found it more straightforward than yesterday’s offering and I have no complaints. I wonder how others fared?

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]

Across
1 Overweight schoolboy without hesitation is hit with head (4)
BUNT – BUNT{er} (overweight schoolboy) [without hesitation – er]. Billy Bunter aka ‘the fat owl of the Remove’ in the stories of Greyfriars School by Charles Hamilton writing as Frank Richards. It was handy that I saw the wordplay immediately as I have never heard of BUNT which apparently is a variation on the better known ‘butt’.
3 Scot gives audible greeting, having come down to meet the Queen (10)
HIGHLANDER – HIGH sounds like [audible] “Hi!” (greeting), LAND (come down), ER (the Queen)
9 Saw male moving to the end, being given a new seat (7)
OTTOMAN – {m}OTTO (saw – saying) becomes OTTOM when the m (male) moves to the end, A, N (new)
11 Traduced maiden being dismissed in a row (7)
ALIGNED – {m}ALIGNED (traduced) [maiden – m – being dismissed]
12 Angel capturing devil — one getting rid of unseen irritation? (13)
BACKSCRATCHER – BACKER (angel – theatre sponsor), containing [capturing} SCRATCH (devil – aka ‘Old Scratch’)
14 Fish getting round in sound deep down (5)
BASSO – BASS (fish), O (round). ‘Basso profundo’ is an especially deep and rich singing voice.
15 The old woman hugging girl, one member of a second group (9)
MAGNESIUM – MUM (the old woman) containing [hugging] AGNES (girl) + I (one). Magnesium is a member of a second group in the periodic table of elements which consists of 18 groups, iirc.
17 Shadows across TV malfunctioning — trouble finally located inside (9)
OVERCASTS – {troubl}E [finally] contained by [located inside] anagram [malfunctioning] of ACROSS TV. I think definition and answer need to be read as verbs for this to work.
19 Self-identification of PM lacking energy and drive (5)
IMPEL – I’M PE{e}L (self-identification of PM) [lacking energy – E]. Sir Robert Peel was Prime Minister for two terms in the first half of the 19th century.
21 I play and miss a bit, getting out — defensive quality needed (13)
IMPASSABILITY – Anagram [getting out] of I PLAY MISS A BIT
24 Warning sign — British not wanted in charge of a country (7)
AMERICA – AM{b}ER (warning sign – in the traffic-lights sequence) [British – b – not wanted], IC (in charge), A
25 Returning priest restricting sound of bells? That’s mean (7)
IGNOBLE – ELI (priest) containing [restricting] BONG (sound of bells) all reversed [returning]
26 Mark and I celebrate the controversial work of Cecil maybe (10)
COLONISING – COLON (mark), I, SING (celebrate). I’m not sure that Cecil Rhodes’s work was considered controversial in his day and in his home country, but there’s been a lot of fuss about him in recent months.
27 Spy bumping off a bloke (4)
GENT – {a}GENT (spy) [bumping off  ‘a’]
Down
1 Disappointment twice overwhelms Times, recounted in detail (4-2-4)
BLOW-BY-BLOW – BLOW BLOW (disappointment twice) contains [overwhelms] BY (times)
2 Discovers opponents of motion twitching inside (7)
NOTICES – TIC (twitching) contained by [inside] NOES (opponents of motion – as heard a lot in broadcasts from parliament in recent weeks)
4 Outsmarting drunk, TT’s left one in a state of bliss? (9)
IGNORAMUS – Anagram [drunk] of OU{t}SMAR{t}ING [TT’s left]. Ignorance is bliss.
5 Skill must follow explosive enthusiasm (5)
HEART – HE (explosive), ART (skill)
6 Tahitian crime out of control — one can work out the figures (13)
ARITHMETICIAN – Anagram [out of control] of TAHITIAN CRIME
7 What LSD offers ultimately? (7)
DENARII – Cryptic. In the former UK currency LSD stood for Librae, Solidi, DENARII aka pounds, shillings and pence.
8 Regret about daughter having no manners? (4)
RUDE – RUE (regret) containing [about] D (daughter). An escapee clue from the QC perhaps?
10 I’m no sceptic, troubled about delusion (13)
MISCONCEPTION – Anagram [troubled] of I’M NO SCEPTIC, ON (about)
13 What’s the use of working? (10)
EMPLOYMENT – A cryptic question based on two meanings of the answer, ‘use’ and ‘working’.
16 Good university post in a faculty of distinction (9)
GUSTATION – G (good), U (university), STATION (post). Not a word in my everyday vocabulary, this means ‘taste’.
18 On the ground below end of lane, swine has food, burying head (7)
EPIGEAL – {lan}E [end], PIG (swine), {m}EAL (food) [burying head]. I never heard of this but was pleased to arrive at it via wordplay.
20 Papa inclined to be accommodating (7)
PLIABLE – P (papa  – NATO alphabet), LIABLE (inclined)
22 Animals spotted on coast? They make an impression (5)
SEALS – Two defintions
23 Refuse to walk endlessly (4)
MARC – MARC{h} (walk) [endlessly]. Left-overs from the wine-making process as met here very recently

65 comments on “Times Cryptic 27272”

  1. I came close to putting in BUNK, as I couldn’t remember the fat boy’s name (I only know of him, of course, from these puzzles); but it came to me finally. If RUDE escaped from the QCs, EPIGEAL may have from the Mephistos, but like Jack I was pleased to get it from the wordplay. MAGNESIUM took a while, partly because of my ignorance of chemistry and partly because I stuck with MA for too long. I’ve forgotten just about everything I once knew about Africa, but I imagine there was controversy over Rhodes even back then, although for the purposes of the clue it doesn’t matter when. Odd him showing up right after WITWATERSRAND.

    Edited at 2019-02-12 03:38 am (UTC)

  2. I too had never heard of EPIGEAL, my LOI. I got confused about Cecil since I mixed him up with Clive (both first names starting with C I guess). But colonising worked anyway, luckily. I, too, found it easier than yesterday. MARC too far too long given that, although obscure, it came up not long ago.

    And yes, Magnesium is in group II (two electrons in the outer shell).

    Edited at 2019-02-12 03:31 am (UTC)

  3. I was stuck in the NE with DENARII and MAGNESIUM before bunging in the unlikely looking EPIGEAL in desperation from the wordplay, fully expecting to be wrong.

    Only knew BUNT as a baseball term.

    Eventually finished in 70 minutes. The misdirection in the surface for 16d was my favourite.

    Thanks to setter and blogger

  4. EPIGRUB, EPIGOOD, EPIGOSH….EPIGEAL just didn’t suggest itself so in the end I looked it up. Never ‘eard of it, guv.
    COLONISING, MAGNESIUM and DENARII were tricky, too. Rhodes didn’t suggest himself at all but William Cecil did. I wondered what Elizabeth I’s adviser had to do with colonising.
    33m 45s but I used a naid to get to EPIGEAL.

    Edited at 2019-02-12 06:02 am (UTC)

    1. Did William Cecil have anything to do with Sir Walter Raleigh’s “lost colony” on Roanoke Island? From the little reading I’ve done, the two men don’t seem to have been great allies.
  5. 23:20. I got completely stuck on this with four unsolved, and I didn’t enter an answer for over ten minutes. Eventually I got EPIGEAL (I had been considering EPIGEAN for ages) which gave me COLONISING (I had assumed ‘Cecil’ was a surname) and then MARC (which I associate more with the brandy so don’t really think of as ‘refuse’).
    Last in though was DENARII, where I had absolutely no idea what the clue was on about, and had to check the spelling. A bit of a daft clue IMO.
    The rest was fairly smooth sailing, even BUNT: like Kevin I only really know of Bunter from these puzzles.

    Edited at 2019-02-12 06:40 am (UTC)

    1. You surprise me on DENARII. I’m sure we’ve had it before; I remember a joking exchange with Z8 in that connection. And I was sure that ‘LSD’ was going to be the money not the drug.
      1. I knew it but wasn’t sure it wasn’t spelled DINARII. I had absolutely no idea what LSD was all about.
      1. Yes I remember it coming up. It’s just not the way I think of it, even if MARC can be pretty rough stuff!
    4. This occurs repeatedly throughout Finnegans Wake—appropriately enough, as far as this old acid head is concerned (my last trip was on the Fourth of July in 1993).
  6. 33 minutes after a number of guesses. Never heard of MARC, EPIGEAL or old SCRATCH. Some unsatisfactory clues I thought – GUSTATION means taste but surely not that meaning of the word implied by ‘distinction’ in the clue. Is OVERCAST a noun here? Is AMERICA a country? And the clue for EMPLOYMENT is pretty terrible. But I liked the IGNORAMUS clue.
    1. GUSTATION is ‘the action or faculty of tasting’ (ODE), by which one distinguishes tastes; hence a faculty of distinction. Misleading? of course. I’d agree with Jack that OVERCASTS and ‘shadows’ are verbs here; misleading? Yep. Yes, AMERICA is a country.
    1. One meaning of ‘saw’ is ‘adage, proverb, saying’ (it has its own entry in ODE, although it’s related to the verb ‘see’. It always seems to be used with ‘old’: as the old saw says, time is money; etc.
  8. Right down to the wire here—my helpful lady-in-a-tube told me I had twenty seconds left of my hour when I put down my pen.

    Things that didn’t help: not being confident about the meaning of “traduce”; only being able to think of Cecil (and Michael, oddly!) Parkinson until the last minute; being hung up on drugs at 7d after yesterday’s MDMA discussion; never having heard of EPIGEAL or BUNT.

    Things that helped: Browsing for an OTTOMAN on web shops just last night; coffee.

    Edited at 2019-02-12 07:40 am (UTC)

    2. I would refer my right-honorable (anon) friend to the answer I gave earlier:

      OTTOMAN – {m}OTTO (saw – saying) becomes OTTOM when the m (male) moves to the end, A, N (new)

  10. ….. with 10 of this on MARC, EPIGEAL and COLONISING. The first two are tough but I should have got Cecil’s activity more quickly which would have given me the ‘C’. Sadly my A level history (when we covered this) was in 1972.
  11. 30 mins became 40, with yoghurt, granola, etc.
    The last 10 were on Marc, Colonising and the NHO Epigeal.
    Nice that the setter is on first name terms with Mr. Rhodes.
    DNK Old Scratch and, IMHO, Overcast is not really a ‘present tense’ sort of verb.
    Thanks setter and J.

    Edited at 2019-02-12 08:32 am (UTC)

    1. SOED has:

      overcast
      3 verb trans. Cover with cloud; overshadow, darken, make dull or gloomy (lit. & fig.)

      E. Waugh: The threat of just such a surrender overcast Guy.
      D. Cecil: Sunshine started to pierce the clouds that had long overcast his days.

        1. The first example works in the present tense with the addition of an S, OVERCASTS which is the word in today’s puzzle clued by ‘shadows’ so I’m not quite sure of the point we’re discussing. Probably me being thick!
    2. My Chambers happily lists OVERCAST as a noun, “a cloudy covering” and doesn’t seem to raise any objection of pluralising.
  12. Easy puzzle this one

    One benefit of being educated in the 1940s and 50s was that one learned what LSD stood for. One of those clues where you either just write in the answer or haven’t a notion what its all about.

    I did think MAGNESIUM might cause some problems. It’s not so long ago we had contributors here who didn’t know what the periodic table is let alone that the elements are located in groups

  13. denarius – denarii a Roman coin of silver – group one?

    FOI 1ac BUNT(being educated in the forties and fifties)

    LOI 22dn MARC (the retsina principle)

    COD 24ac AMERICA but not first

    WOD 12ac BACKSCRATHCHER (her indoors)

    Time 34 minutes decent MOR stuff

    New to me was 18dn EPIGEAL but it was easy if one followed the IKEAN instructions

    Edited at 2019-02-12 09:14 am (UTC)

  14. A game of two halves for me, the top went in easily enough; I still know my periodic table off by heart, as far as element 95 anyway. The bottom was less accessible with EPIGEAL the LOI having to be checked to see if it existed. IGNOBLE took an age too. 45 minutes all told.
  15. Quelch was a beast setting us this. Apart from the Vaughan Williams and Portsmouth in my head, I wasn’t in tune at all, taking over an hour. There were too many tricky anagrams for my GUSTATION. LOI the unknown EPIGEAL after I hit on COLONISING. It was the third time I’d tried Cecil Rhodes, having done the same with Beaton, de Mille and the Cecils in Tudor/Stuart history. COD to DENARII. Thank you Jack for the blog and setter for the challenge.
  16. Very surprised to see I got all of it correct, because there were one or two guesses. Notably Denarii and Epigeal. Bunt too, though what else could it be? Not entirely convinced by the Denarii clue. I got straight away that it might be referring to the D of LSD, but was kind of expecting an extra cryptic element. Spy bumping off a bloke was fortuitous because I literally just put down a book in which a spy bumped off a bloke (Dead Lions by Mick Herron – v. good.) What was that phrase someone brought up recently — German I think — about when you see something once then see it again a short time later?
  17. 29 mins. I am of the generation which learned about LSD as pounds, shilling and pence: so DENARII a write-in, and my COD. (Cripes! I remember breaktimes at school when some classmate or other would pull from his tuckbox an unwanted item, hold it up above his head shouting “Quis?” and another lad would immediately respond “Ego!” and rush over to take it.)
    I had forgotten the ‘refuse’ sense of MARC — only the champagne came to me — but the checkers and wordplay allowed no alternative. OVERCASTS was very reasonably defined as ‘shadows’, I thought: of course, the verb might be used in the present tense only very rarely, if at all, but that observation doesn’t invalidate the definition (especially in a cryptic crossword clue).
    I didn’t know about ‘Old Scratch’. Well, well.
    Many thanks, jackkt, for your blog.
  19. 22:33 Held up mostly by the SW corner. Like others I needed to find COLONISING to get the required ending of the unknown word for growing close to the ground. SEALS my LOI. I liked the BONG in 25A, but COD to IGNORAMUS. Thanks Jack and Setter.
  20. I rattled through the top half of this puzzle but then slowed down, especially in the SW. AMERICA and SEALS were no trouble, but the rest were like extracting teeth. Eventually a guess at (m)EAL for the food gave me EPIGEAL, MARC surrendered and Mark became COLON, which then led to GUSTATION, which I think I’ve seen once before in these puzzles, after which MAGNESIUM hove into view. At that point I was enlightened by my LOI IGNORAMUS. Great puzzle. 32:02. Thanks setter and Jack.
  21. Is sicklied oer with the pale cast of thought. Which is a pretty good description of how I got on in this puzzle. EPIGEAL is one of those words (like semiotic) that I know without having a clue about their meaning. The sacrifice BUNT in baseball is sometimes said to be a lost art. I know the valet from Dorothy Sayers rather better than the fat-shamed owl of Greyfriars. 21.41
  23. 19′ 50”, back in the swing. BUNT went straight in – I read every single book when I was ten, along with Jennings, before I went to boarding school. Reality was somewhat different.

    Oddly, DENARII was last in. Does anyone use the word EPIGEAL?

    Thanks jack and setter.

  24. …. they’ve all come to look for AMERICA. I thought this was a rather loose clue, in a puzzle where things didn’t always land on my wavelength, but which was still enjoyable.

    Biffed EPIGEAL, weirdly knew BUNT only as a wheat disease (too many Mephistos ?), OVERCAST as a verb was a new concept to me, and I’m in agreement with Keriothe regarding DENARII (although if you look after them, the libra will allegedly look after themselves).

    For the second day running, I needed to write down and eliminate an anagrind – this time it was IMPASSABILITY, and if it hadn’t been in a checked square I wonder how many might have made the second A into an I.

    When I watch University Challenge, the words “periodic table” press an off switch in my brain, which comes back on when the magic words “starter for ten” are uttered. Luckily MAGNESIUM could be arrived at without any depth of knowledge.

    FOI BUNT (because it couldn’t be anything else if you knew the Fat Owl of the Remove)
    LOI MARC (once I saw the “mark” in COLONISING)
    COD BACKSCRATCHER
    TIME 14:14

    1. phil – we had very similar results FOI & LOI and both liked BACKSCRATHER – but no collusion, as I liked AMERICA.
      My time however was 20 mins adrift of yours. Different gravy!
  25. One of those which felt more time-consuming than it actually was, stretching to a mere 16.36. EPIGEAL went in on trust, and a smatter of Greek.
    I disclose a slight feeling of unease on my ageing process. For some reason, I misread the first word of 3, but still made sense of the answer with a mental note to check here to see why it worked. I now find I can’t remember (or even hazard a guess at) what my original reading was. My sense of confusion continued here with Kevin’s memory of our witty repartee about DENARII, which I had to look up in order to “remember”. I’ve sent off for a fresh pack of little grey cells from Amazon.
    On the plus side I was pleased to remember that BUNT was a block shot in baseball, probably courtesy of Charlie Brown. It made up for me not knowing that it was also a head-butt. Or did I?
    1. If it’s any comfort, keep in mind that just because I remembered it, that doesn’t mean it happened.
  26. Some tricky parts to an enjoyable puzzle, especially the SW corner…Henry Cecil? C Day-Lewis? And I needed all the checkers in E_I_E_L before I was confident about my answer. Got there in the end, though, obviously.
  27. 30’27, a little trying. Not sure about the use of working, at least in this context. And impassability and epigeal are words, sure, but wordy ones. But I suppose the link between setter and solver whereby if you feel OK about solving it the clue’s OK – the backscratcher entente – keeps it all on the ground and bowling along.
  29. Was it you who recommended the Slow Horses books? I’ve just started the first one and I’m very much enjoying it so far!
    2. Probably me. I do remember enthusing about them here. I’ve got people in my local pub hooked as well. I’ve been thinking they’d make a brilliant TV series if only there was a scriptwriter to do them justice.
      1. Thanks, then! It’s great to get into a new series of books. (Much of my current reading seem to have come to me through crosswords, one way or another. I’m having a go at the Essays of Elia at the moment, too…)
        1. I’m another who gets reading tips from this group. Btw, Elia used to be a crossword regular – though I haven’t seen him for some time. But when I started doing the Times crossword in the ’60s he was almost a cliche. I’ve never read Charles Lamb and am unlikely to start now. I haven’t got the concentration for it any more…
          1. We had a long break from Elia but he turned up as recently as the 7th of last month:

            Lamb primarily associated with priest (4)

            Two old chestnuts for the price of one in that clue!

  30. There were 2 unknowns for me in this puzzle. Unusually, BUNT was my FOI (what else could it be?) and EPIGEAL was my LOI. Some of the answers were write-ins but there were enough chewy clues to make this puzzle very enjoyable. I spent a while on 26a. I thought of C de Mille and C Beaton, among others, before C Rhodes sprang to mind. 27 minutes. Ann
  31. I made heavy weather of the last 3 in the SW, after sailing easily through the likes of EPIGEAL and DENARII. My brain tends to freeze over when there are so many possibilities with S.A.S. I was tempted with SCARS for a while but didn’t make sense. As many of you above, I thought it must CECIL as a surname, and the obscurity of MARC didn’t help. Yet another crossword which left me scratching my head after thinking “ooh this is easy!” Seems to happen every day for me.
    FOI BUNT
    COD MAGNESIUM. just nice to have a bit of science for a change
  32. I really liked SCRATCH in BACKER: just that pesky definition to mess things up (and not the setters fault).
  33. Thirty-three minutes got me through this one without a scratch. Like almost everyone else, I’d never heard of BUNT or EPIGEAL, but the first was inevitable from the wordplay and the second made some sort of sense (though I’d not have been surprised if it were spelled “epigeoal”). DENARII and MAGNESIUM were my LOsI at the end of a very enjoyable half hour.
  34. I tackled this late after work and in a bit of a rush and managed to completely stuff up the SW corner with errors at colonising, marc and epigeal. Oh well.
  35. Got there in the end. No idea about periodic table levels so took a while to think of MAGNESIUM and never heard of EPIGEAL so took a lucky punt.
  36. Thanks setter and jackkt
    Took a bit longer than the hour over a number of sittings, but eventually nutted it out. The SW corner was the second last bunch of clues to be finished. Had to go back up to the top to mop up DENARII and then to the NW to change my BUTT to BUNT (new term for me, but then was able to reacquaint with Billy) and NOTICES as the last few in.
    Saw the EPIG quite quickly with 18d and it did take COLONISING to see what the ending was going to be.

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