Times 27,275: “Transuranic Heavy Elements May Not Be Used Where There Is Life”

Author   VerlainePosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
A complex puzzle very worthy of its Friday slot, I thought: the top half in particular held me up for a long time, until I finally clocked the hard double definition at 1ac and managed to justify 3dn. Both the latter and 22ac had uncommonly hard wordplay, and I won’t be surprised to hear of some Bunging In From Definition going on in the comments.

I do like an atomic symbol clue and 16dn is a very fine specimen of the form, and also Word of the Day to 6dn, but my favourite clue this time around was 17ac. Can he solve it? Yes he can! There’s scarcely a less than excellent clue in the mix here though, with one minor eyebrow raise from me at 5dn and its multiple ONs. Many thanks to the setter; and what did all the rest of you like best, then?

ACROSS
1 Musicians in costume (8)
ENSEMBLE – double def

9 Dark scene as small number go inside church (8)
NOCTURNE – NO [“small” number] + TURN [go] inside CE

10 Insider from Acton wrestling to claim prize (8)
OCCUPANT – (ACTON*) [“wrestling”] to “claim” CUP [prize]

11 Soil fan finds truffle? (8)
EARTHNUT – EARTH [soil] + NUT [fan]

12 Source of naval power in Rome gone after collapse (6,4)
ENGINE ROOM – (IN ROME GONE*) [“after collapse”]

14 River current taking out both banks? (4)
ODER – {m}ODER{n} [current]

15 Wind, destructive at the outset, coming in closer (7)
MEANDER – D{estructive}, “coming in” MEANER [closer]

17 Bob, eg British coin: not good (7)
BUILDER – B [British] + {g}UILDER [coin, not G for good]

21 Information at short notice sent back (4)
DATA – reverse AT AD [at | “short” notice]

22 Appliance, left out in the old days for bathroom cleaner? (10)
TOOTHPASTE – TOO{l} [appliance, L for left “out”] + in THE, PAST [old days]

23 Artist ultimately carried weight, though not initially in poor condition (8)
TATTERED – {artis}T + {m}ATTERED [carried weight, “not initially”]

25 A two-page conclusion with one Times supplement? (8)
APPENDIX – A P-P END [a | two-page | conclusion] with I X [one | times]

26 Element in languages voiced by cardinal (8)
TUNGSTEN – homophone of TONGUES [languages] by TEN [cardinal (number)]

27 Regularly target a certain masterpiece? (8)
TREASURE – T{a}R{g}E{t} + A SURE [a | certain]

DOWN
2 Can he con criminal? Most unlikely! (2,6)
NO CHANCE – (CAN HE CON*) [“criminal”]

3 Outbreak of illness starting with revolting contaminated housing? (8)
ERUPTION – I{llness}, “housed” by reversed [“revolting”] NOT PURE [contaminated]

4 Drop ancient historian from audition (4)
BEAD – homophone of BEDE [ancient historian]

5 Log falling on leg in our canal (7)
ENTERON – ENTER [log] falling on ON [leg]

6 Buffoon Mark rejected old woman — that hurt! (10)
SCARAMOUCH – SCAR [mark] + reversed MA [old woman] + OUCH [that hurt!]

7 Secret society controlling racket from South island (8)
TRINIDAD – TRIAD [secret society] “controlling” reversed [from south to north] DIN [racket]

8 Reprimand right for academic (8)
LECTURER – LECTURE R [reprimand | right]

13 Everyone choosing Princess to accept love note (10)
ELECTORATE – ELECTRA [princess] to “accept” O [love] + TE [(seventh) note]. Electra was the daughter of King Agamemnon, thus Princess of Argos.

15 Think to behave diplomatically? About time! (8)
MEDITATE – MEDIATE [to behave diplomatically] about T [time]

16 At a country home being entertained (8)
ASTATINE – A STATE [a | country], IN [home] being “entertained”. At being the symbol for element 85 on the periodic table.

18 Refuse to provide exits (8)
LEAVINGS – double def

19 Face headless man, drinking port (8)
EXTERIOR – {d}EXTER [“headless” man], “drinking” RIO [port]. Fortunately RIO is a go-to word for a crossword “port”.

20 Sweet and flowing in poetic source (7)
FONDANT – (AND*) [“flowing”] in FONT [“poetic” source]

24 Mistake to ignore leader in church area (4)
APSE – {l}APSE [mistake “to ignore leader”]

72 comments on “Times 27,275: “Transuranic Heavy Elements May Not Be Used Where There Is Life””

  1. I found this very hard and used aids a couple of times when completely stuck, just to get myself going again rather than giving up on it completely. My biggest triumph was working out the almost unknown ASTATINE from wordplay.

    Edited at 2019-02-15 07:27 am (UTC)

    1. It’s worth having both ASTATINE and arsenic (chemical symbol As) in a mental “easily disguised at the front of a clue” list. They’ve both come up before, but I’m gradually getting better at spotting them.
      1. I’m sure very similar clueing has been used before for As

        Other contenders for hard-to-spot elemental definitions include No, I, Am, Al, He, Be, In, Po
        Which almost sounds like a poorly-surfaced clue in itself

        JB

  2. Thanks Verlaine. Worth the Friday candle as you say, and a rigorous work-out. Hard to call it a stinker though, as there are too many nice ideas, misdirections and (consequent) PDMs.

    Most evil clue (MEC) for me probably 19d, favourite 16d among many a good ‘un, it was a wrap for me in about 35 mins. Thanks setter.

  3. Great puzzle! My LOI, and COD (I love the subtle definition), was ASTATINE. BUILDER (“Bob?”) was just a guess. I also had a hard time justifying ERUPTION before I put it in, but the double “on” in the clue for ENTERON was not noted. One of my favorites was “Everyone choosing” for ELECTORATE.

    Edited at 2019-02-15 08:21 am (UTC)

  4. Gosh. An hour and 23 minutes, and like pulling teeth all the way through. Finally shoved in the unknown ENTERON and came here to find I got the rest right, too, which was frankly a surprise.

    Took a long time to get started with 12a ENGINE ROOM, then picked and picked until finishing off with the NW corner. Nearly shot myself in the foot with a biffed TOOTHBRUSH, too.

    PS: V, do you find yourself thinking, “but those two aren’t bloody elements!” during that introduction when you hear it, or are you less pedantic than I?

    Edited at 2019-02-15 07:53 am (UTC)

    2. That always bugged me as I grew up with it but, now that I’m a more mature pedant, I realise that the intro only defined what must *not* be used. This maybe implied that the following substances were elements but did not actually say incontravertibly that they were

      It’s taken 40 years but finally I’ve resolved that one with myself!

      JB

  5. That was a workout; well over an hour, mainly over lunch, so I don’t have an exact time. DNK EARTHNUT, thought SCARAMOUCH had an E at the end and meant something like a rogue or braggart, not a buffoon. Never came close to figuring out ERUPTION. I gathered that Bob the Builder is someone, from a children’s show? Whatever. It took me a long time to get him, since I clung to TAILINGS for so long. LOI 16d only after a lot of alphabet play, when finally I recalled a recent arsenic clue or two. I do believe we’ve had ASTATINE before, too. Terrific puzzle.
    1. I too thought SCARAMOUCH had an E, probably from having first encountered the name in French at school. When I Googled the name, the predictive search term already had the E but apparently either is acceptable. I also thought the Princess of Argos was someone called Tracy. Kind regards, Bob K.
      1. I now recall that I first knew the word from a Rafael Sabatini novel of that title (never read it, but I worked in a public library in high school).
        1. It’s a pity you didn’t read Scaramouche. It’s a brilliant swashbuckling tale. But one to read in your teens – like most of Raphael Sabatini. As good as “Captain Blood” – and that’s high praise.
  6. 22:57 … great test, with the top-left causing all kinds of trouble. ERUPTION is fiendish, and I had no idea what an ENTERON was — it sounds like something from a sci-fi show.

    Talking of which, I had to google your blog title, v. That show somehow passed me by. Was it good?

        1. I did a re-watch last year and was impressed with how well it stood the test of time, but obviously there may have been a nostalgia factor. Bit of the show scared the stuffing out of me when I was a kid—looking at the release dates, I must’ve been in single figures when I watched it.
        2. It’s very, very slowly paced but really quite commendable for how weird it is. I keep hearing rumours that they might be doing a remake at some point…
    2. I didn’t recognise the blog title. It’s been so long. But at the time I loved Sapphire and Steel. Especially the one in the railway station. Besides, it had David McCallum in his droolworthy younger days. What’s not to like? (Plus Joanna Lumley for the blokes)
      1. I was just going to reply to verlaine, saying that I’d watch a reboot, especially if any of the original cast put in an appearance. Joanna could probably still carry it off — not so sure about droolworthy David! (mind you, there is 13 years between them so he’s allowed to look a tad more weathered)
  7. 22:29 and pleased with the sub-100 personal NITCH. Managed to parse all but 3D, my LOI. NHO ENTERON or EARTHNUT but trusted the wordplay. NW corner held me up the most. Loved Bob the BUILDER and ELECTORATE but COD to ASTATINE. Thanks V and setter.
  8. That was grand! A proper Friday puzzle.

    FOI SCARAMOUCH (do you do the fandango?)
    and along with Lord Verlaine WOD.

    LOI 3dn ERUPTION (unparsed)

    COD 7dn TRINIDAD

    Time well over an hour but never a dull moment!

  9. Serious work-out, but what a good puzzle. For me, if it’s tough, there has to be a reward, and there’s plenty to enjoy here.

    Thanks V for the Sapphire and Steel refs above, it’s been a long time, and thanks setter, who might be Dinsdale Piranha.

  10. 47 minutes. LOI ASTATINE. I’ve never heard of ENTERON, so I needed all crossers for that. Fortunately, ENSEMBLE hit me early. It was a bit of a joke with the women in our house as a kid, “What ensemble will you be wearing today?” They didn’t have that much choice. COD to BUILDER. Only my youngest caught Bob the BUILDER. I never thought it was quite as good as Fireman Sam or Postman Pat, but I gather later episodes were spiced up. I usually find FONDANT icing a disappointment. Royal icing with a thick layer of marzipan underneath is more my taste. You don’t really need the fruit cake underneath. Good puzzle. Thank you setter. and V. Still walking the dog?
  11. 14:18. Tricky, but I seem to have been on the wavelength, relatively speaking, and I loved it.
    ‘The top half in particular held me up for a long time, until I finally clocked the hard double definition at 1ac and managed to justify 3dn’ describes my solve with uncanny accuracy.
    I realised ERUPTION was a possibility reasonably quickly but even with the checkers I had a feeling that there could be other possibilities: bunging in a word ending ION when you can’t identify the definition with any certainty is dangerous. In other cases (TOOTHPASTE, ELECTORATE) merrily biffing seemed less chancy so I went for it.
  12. Tough stuff over 37 minutes, and like others, I failed to justify ERUPTION. I got as far as UP being revolting and blurred the rest. Didn’t help that ENSEMBLE was a brute of a DD, that innocuous “in” splitting the two really confusing things, nor that the ancient historian/drop possibilities needed both checkers to resolve.
    Properly difficult, credit to V for full explication
  13. Very good. Tough, but even so I fell into a “this is too hard” mentality and ended up taking longer than I should have. Finally home in a bit over 2 hours.

    I liked the element clues, especially the ‘At’ def – I think about the third time in various places in the last year or so; I suppose a ‘W’ def would be too obvious. ERUPTION was very complicated and I was just itching to put in ‘epidemic’. Favourite though was ‘Bob, eg’ for which I went through my list of coins, undoubtedly as intended.

    A very big thanks to setter and blogger.

  14. ….Dexter, other than my ex-wife’s chocolate labrador. That was stretching random men a little far in my opinion. A small gripe though – this was a generally excellent test of my solving skills, although I biffed my LOI, and only parsed my COD after finishing.

    Like V, I found the top half harder, not helped by DNK ENTERON, and by trying to use “tong” instead of “triad” at 7D. “AT” has been filed for future reference – I hate the science clues with a vengeance.

    FOI DATA
    LOI ERUPTION
    COD TOOTHPASTE
    TIME 18:37

    1. I suppose Dexter sprang to my mind from the TV series of the same name. In the show, pleasingly, Dexter is a psychopath with a strong moral code allowing him only to kill people who are a similar danger to society, thus making him a serial serial killer killer.
  15. Not on the wavelength at all, it seemed, so this was a bit of a wade through treacle. Problems in one area in particular if, like me, you’ve only seen SCARAMOUCH with an extra E, and have never knowingly come across ENTERON or EARTHNUT before (checking to make sure I really hadn’t seen them in another puzzle confirms that they’ve only previously been seen in Mephistos, which says something about the level of difficulty here). I certainly had that Friday feeling…
  16. Never mind a DNF I thought this was going to be a DNS. I doubt if I’d have got ENTERON if APPENDIX hadn’t given me the general idea. Fortunately SCARAMOUCH came to mind fairly readily thanks to a member of the Trump administration named Anthony Scaramucci who came and went in about 10 days a couple of summers ago and was chiefly noted for the aptness of his monicker. I didn’t understand ERUPTION either. 25.10
    1. The Mooch definitely crossed my mind as I was entering that answer. I’m *starting* to think in American but it’s a slow process…
    2. Oddly enough, I seem to have been born and raised outside of the UK. It was interesting to see, not so much the pronunciation differences existing there, but the variety of vocabulary, many examples of which I’ve never seen. It was annoying, though, that so many questions asked how one ‘refers to’ X: I have never referred to my grandmother as my grandma, say, but that’s how I always addressed her.
      1. Never? Not even when talking about her to your own family? I refer to my own mum as ‘Granny’ all the time when talking to my kids!
        1. And you referred to your mother as ‘my own mum’; I would never have referred to mine, here, as ‘my mom’. But you’re right; when talking with my brother, I would certainly use ‘Mom/Dad/Grandma’ in referring to them. But nowhere else. (I do recall cases in 19th-century novels–Austen?–where one young man asks his brother, say, “Where is my father?”)
          1. I’m not sure there’s any context in which I would refer to my parents as my mother and father, but the questionnaire specified ‘how you talk casually with friends‘ so I extended that to close family for things like ‘grandma’.
    3. Wow, that was instructive. It got me right. I grew up near Durham which is in the centre of the area shown!
    4. Mine is both specific and spot on, though I suspect this has a lot to do with calling a bread roll a batch.
      1. My wife is Canadian born and bred (which she specified in the questionnaire) and it located her squarely in the area her mum grew up in, and where much of her extended (English) family still live!

        Edited at 2019-02-15 01:16 pm (UTC)

        1. Witchcraft.

          Edited for the avoidance of doubt: this is a comment on the website, not your wife and her antecedents 🙂

          Edited at 2019-02-15 01:18 pm (UTC)

    6. Bizarre! I was born in Scotland, brought up largely in the North-East of England and now live in Suffolk. I’ve no connection with the West country, Wales, or the Channel Isles at all. And no.. not North Norfolk, please…. aargh! Very entertaining.

      Edited at 2019-02-15 04:38 pm (UTC)

    7. Each time I do this, the NYTsite gets reloaded, just giving me chance to see the pitch map focused on Lancashire before it disappears. The short ‘a’, ‘but’ and ‘put’ rhyming, pants and kecks for trousers, barmcake, pumps and not plimsolls, ‘scone’ rhyming with ‘gone’, wouldn’t leave much room for doubt. Maybe Mum, Grannie and Grandad for relations were more generic.
    8. It correctly identifies me as existing in a stretch of accentland connecting North Wales and Oxford, which is remarkably good really.

      Edited at 2019-02-15 06:01 pm (UTC)

  19. That was tough! ENTERON was LOI for me, partly delayed by the double-on and partly because I don’t know the word.

    17m 46s with a large chunk of that on ENSEMBLE, ERUPTION, BEAD & ENTERON. An excellent puzzle, with only 8d seeming a little unsatisfying. 22a was my COD.

  20. I had a feeling this was going to be a struggle when my FOI was APPENDIX. However I then made reasonable progress in the bottom half and after 30 minutes was left with a very sparsely populated top half. SCARAMOUCH was easy enough as my parents had a book of that name when I was a sprog. 7d and 8d weren’t too difficult, and EARTHNUT eventually erupted, but 1a 3d 4d 5d and 9a resisted my efforts. First of that recalcitrant bunch to crumble was ERUPTION(even spotted the parsing!), which allowed me to get ENSEMBLE, and with a sigh of relief, I guessed ENTERON, from the cricket leg and enteritis being the inflammation of our canal. NOCTURNE then gave me a desultory slap across the face with a wet fish, doh! moment and I was left with B_A_. A short alphabet trawl unearthed the Venerable monk and my travails were done. 61:57. Thanks setter and V.
  21. Incidentally, does anyone have a reference that says truffle and EARTHNUT are equivalents? My ODE and Chambers seem to think they’re different things, and I’m not sure that question-mark is stretchy enough to cover it…

    Edited at 2019-02-15 02:17 pm (UTC)

    1. The second def in Collins is ‘any of various plants having an edible root, tuber, underground pod, or similar part, such as the peanut or truffle’.
      1. Ah! Thanks. Should’ve thought to check Collins. Often skip it when I’m on the the Mac as I don’t have the Collins app there.
  22. I found this very tricky, to the point of wondering if I would complete it. But I took a break for five minutes, and cracked the last few. The At = Astatine never fails to deceive, and that was one of the last two in, along with the cross-checking Tattered.
  23. Another who found this a tough but fair test, took me just under the hour while watching WTA tennis from Qatar. Didn’t parse ERUPTION or FONDANT properly. ASTATINE an early write in. Apart from Dexter as a random chap, an excellent end to a good week. Good blog as usual, V.

    Edited at 2019-02-15 02:21 pm (UTC)

  24. Pleased to be done in 45 mins, although a few breaks did help – I usually find that when I come back to it, the intractable clue that I paused on gets answered almost immediately. Only knew SCARAMOUCH from Bohemian Rhapsody, and Freddie didn’t exactly explain who he was, so now I know. Oh those biffs – ERUPTION, TOOTHPASTE, LEAVINGS.
    COD ASTATINE
  25. To be fair this was well out of my league, and not even remotely entertaining in a joyful ‘light-bulb moment’ way. So my thoughts are somewhat coloured by that. But then those on here that bother to read my rantings know what a stickler I am for precision and optimal surfaces! So reading the blog, I was exasperated by the imprecision on offer in some of the clues. 1a no need for ‘in’. 9a no need for ‘small’. Both clues read perfectly well without them-even to the extent that by including the ‘in’, the definition in 1a might reasonably be thought ‘in costume’. 17a ‘eg’ should precede Bob [comma] to make it fair. 5d, dodgy use of two ‘ons’, and a gobbledegook surface into the bargain, with a redundant ‘falling’, just there it seems to make it read half sensibly. Just another ‘forced’ clue for an obscure word. 16d is clever enough but still not fair because ‘At’ isn’t a word in the context of the definition. I’m not saying it’s an unacceptable definition by any means-it’s rather neat-, but a preceding ‘perhaps’ or ‘maybe’ might have been useful. Or better still in inverted commas. 19d, ‘face’ is a bit loose too. Why not use ‘outside, . . .’ ? It just removes any ambiguity and the surface reads much better as well. So a goodish puzzle, but nothing to gush over. Better than Wednesday’s nonsense though. Mr Grumpy
    1. Hello Mr Grumpy. I’m probably being dim but I don’t see how the surface of 1ac works without ‘in’. In its absence you just have two unconnected words, one the plural of musician and one costume. The surface could work as an apostrophised musician’s costume but then you only have one musician, not an ensemble.
      1. No you’re not being dim. I overlooked that. Thanks. I still worry about words inserted simply to make a surface though (more obviously in 5d). I was taught that every word counts, and in this case the ‘in’ doesn’t. Yes you are quite correct that without it here, the clue wouldn’t be grammatically correct, and I realise I’m being a fastidious so-and-so. ‘Musicians of equal billing?’ would be my admittedly rather lame attempt at it to avoid the unnecessary word. Thanks
        1. I sometimes miss those finer details which you pick up on. It’s good to go back and have a look and ask yourself, hang on, does that actually work? I think fastidiousness and crossword solving go hand in hand. With regard to the “in” I would say it is necessary and does count to both the surface and the cryptic. In the cryptic you are being instructed that “in” a word meaning costume you will find a word meaning musicians. I think there will be plenty of double defs where no connecting word is needed but in my opinion it is needed here.
    2. It’s just my opinion but I think small improves the surface of 9ac and works perfectly to indicate no. an abbreviated or small number. Number on its own is a bit blunt. Small number adds to the story telling for me, conjures more of an image. This small group could be huddling together in the church against the dark night outside, or perhaps it is a dark scene because they are conspiratorially plotting together in their small group. Number on its own wouldn’t give the surface the same associations. I think touches like that and a little of the looseness you find unsatisfying in 19dn (why would you want to remove ambiguity from a cryptic crossword clue?) are an important part of the setter’s art. If you strip away all the misleading bits of artifice in the setter’s armoury to link, embellish and lead you down the garden path I think you’d get some very dull clues. I think in 5dn falling is used because it is a down clue and it is correct to say that the letters of enter are literally falling down as you put them in the grid. I agree with you about the two ‘ons’ though. I always look on punctuation as something else to mislead so was quite happy to ignore the comma in ‘Bob, e.g.’ and didn’t think it unfair of the setter. I’m not sure I understand the issue with At in 16dn, seemed ok to me – Def is At chemical symbol for astatine followed by wordplay. For me inverted commas or a preceding maybe would’ve been too obvious and would’ve taken all the fun out of solving it.
      1. I don’t come here to do a convoluted Concise; the ambiguity, and surfaces as overheard snippets or esoteric synopses are what makes this an artform
        Today’s was an excellent example and I enjoyed finally coming home all correct (with only ERUPTION unparsed – biffing is only “completing”, not “solving”), albeit in well over the hour

        jb

  26. A brute of a puzzle. Bottom half wasn’t too tough, in fact I thought of astatine as soon as I saw the first word of 16dn. Found the top half intractable. Had to put the puzzle away after an hour. Solved a few more later on. In the end was left with 1ac and 4dn. Eventually got them in a moment of inspiration. Pleased to solve all correct and to have worked out the parsing of 22ac and 3dn.
  27. Thanks setter and verlaine
    Was a difficult crossword, probably not helped by only getting to it in little short spurts across the day. Did manage to parse all of the hard ones eventually, but did miss the parsing of FONDANT. Have seen the trick with ‘ASTATINE’ before, usually with arsenic but took until looking up the word to see that it was an element with symbol At in this one.
    Bob the BUILDER brought a wry smile and also liked TOOTHPASTE when I finally changed it from an unparsed TOOTHBRUSH.
    Finished in the north west corner, as it seems most folk here, with ENSEMBLE (when it finally clicked), ERUPTION (which I’d refrained from entering until I saw the upside down NOT PURE) and BEAD (which needed all of the crossers and then a trawling through the bowels of the memory banks to remember the ‘Venerable’ one).
  28. A 72 minute workout, taking most of it for the top half. Took ages to convince ourselves that 3d ERUPTION parsed, and to see the 1a double definition. Embarrassing to admit as doctors that we’d never heard of ENTERON as a word for the digestive tract, so it was put in from parsing and hope. We’ll have to improve for the championship mixed doubles.

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