Times Cryptic No 27094, Thursday, 19 July 2018 Amazon (dis)grace, how is this found?

Author   ZabadakPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
A gentle stroll for a par score of 17.30, skilfully avoiding several spelling disasters and gritting my teeth over one hyphenated word that should have been strangled at birth. Maybe it’s not too late.  There are a couple of high class clues (4 and 18) that manage the distinction of working on multiple, coherent levels of reality and don’t look as if they could only really exist as crossword clues. Unusually, perhaps, a couple of definitions are generously highlighted in inverted commas. My last one in was the innocuous 28 which had me re-checking crossing answers to make sure I hadn’t erred.
You’ll find my reasoning below with clues, definitions and SOLUTIONS

Across

1 A charge for broadcaster’s buttonhole (6)
ACCOST  The first of today’s sounzlikes: indicated by “broadcaster’s”  A charge = A COST
4 Heath wherein weird sister moved involuntarily (8)
TWITCHED Sailor, concert pianist and the man responsible for getting us into the Common Market, Edward  “Grocer TED” Heath (can it really be 46 years ago?). Allow him (in rather atypical fashion) to embrace a weird sister, in the Scottish play a WITCH, who coincidentally met with The Scottish Person on the blasted Heath. Well crafted.
10 Burning ambition of spy, abandoning southern state (9)
PYROMANIA Knock off the S(outhern) of SPY, add the state that used to be run by Ceaușescu
11 Amazon’s business returns left foremost of investors worried (1-4)
E-TAIL To be honest, I only believe this because the cryptic is so explicit: L(eft), I(nvestors) and worried ATE all reversed. Presumably by analogy with retail, but I’d rather not look it up. Barbaric.
12 Several branches of tree put a strain on line (8,6)
EXTENDED FAMILY I think this is put a strain on: EXTENDED (analogy “stretched”) and line: FAMILY. “To you in David’s town this day is born of David’s line”.
14 Benefit from a curtain in auditorium (5)
AVAIL Sounzlike 2 “in auditorium”.  A curtain might be A VEIL
16 Fail to secure degree — Open University course for seamen (9)
LOBSCOUSE A stew with vegetables or ship’s biscuit, and origin of Scouse. Fail is LOSE, insert BSC degree and O(pen) U(niversity).
18 “Red” nation, ultimately lacking energy, invested in fossil fuel (9)
COCHINEAL The nation is CHINA (only coincidentally “red”). It lacks its last letter, adds E(nergy) and buries itself in COAL. Coincidentally (again) China is the world’s heaviest consumer of coal. Clever clue with layers of reality.
20 Making regular appearances, golfer aims to shine (5)
GLEAM Odd letters of GoLfEr AiMs
21  With jibe, spin doctor set out what we can expect in post (3,11)
JOB DESCRIPTION An anagram of JIBE SPIN DOCTOR
25 Fawn was born at the end of April (5)
CAMEL So not Bambi, then. Essentially, this is about colour, and was born: CAME and (Apri)L
26 Amiable clot keeps backing in (9)
CONGENIAL IN backwards is kept by CONGEAL, clot.
27 Artiste in French employment on ecstasy (8)
DANSEUSE Save from spelling error by French for in, DANS plus setter’s drug of choice E(cstasy) and USE, employment
28 Artful Republican entering second year (6)
TRICKY As indeed it turned out to be. Second here is TICK (as in just a…). Republican supplies the R, and Year the Y
Down

1 Faulty clue appears — not right for “purée” (5,5)
APPLE SAUCE An anagram (faulty) of CLUE APPEARS, though you need to remove the R(ight) as instructed
2 Sign of omission pains head of trade (5)
CARET Typically either this ^ or this ⁁ CARE derives from pains as in “take pains”, add head of T(rade)
3 Ground-breaking railway shunned by academy adjoining line (7)
SEMINAL Watch the syntax: this is Academy: SEMINARY shunned by R(ailwa)Y, not the other way round. Add a L(ine)
5 Where to dock horse captured by fighting force? (5)
WHARF H(orse) within fighting: WAR, F(orce)
6 Heat from another microscopic sample (7)
THERMIC Today’s hidden sample in anoTHER MICroscopic. Thermic is adjectival, but we’ll let that pass.
7 Cause of infestation in Spooner’s heavy metal establishment? (4,5)
HEAD LOUSE Which the Speverend Rooner would render as LEAD HOUSE
8 Charlie had an impact after switching ends (4)
DOLT Charlie as in a right Charlie, and not a slur on the heir to the throne, dear me no. Sensible enough to have another engagement when mummy met the tangerine one. Had an impact is TOLD, switch ends.
9 Form the basis of nameless stress? (8)
UNDERLIE Take the (second) N out of….oh come on, you can work it out from there.
13 Partner, at end of session, home at last (10)
TERMINALLY Partner is ALLY, placed after session: TERM and home: IN
15 Presenter‘s awful anachronism is edited out (9)
ANCHORMAN A rather nice anagram (awful) of ANACHRONISM with IS edited out of the final mix.
17 Instruction from Rome to contact Spanish stadium (8)
BULLRING Papal instructions may be BULLs, contact supplies RING. So not the Bernabéu, then.
19 Humour eluding criminal (7)
INDULGE Another rather pretty anagram (criminal), of ELUDING
20 Space age opportunity for school-leavers? (3,4)
GAP YEAR A charade of space and age.
22 Belts as footwear (5)
SOCKS A double definition
23 Hip-related trouble on the rise in current century (5)
ILIAC Either know it or trust the wordplay: trouble: AIL “raised” in (electric) current I and C(entury)
24 Frozen bones heading to the bottom (4)
ICED If you  know bones is another word for DICE, pat yourself on the back and move the D to the bottom.

48 comments on “Times Cryptic No 27094, Thursday, 19 July 2018 Amazon (dis)grace, how is this found?”

  1. I biffed a couple of these on the basis of a couple of checkers–EXTENDED FAMILY, LOBSCOUSE, COCHINEAL, JOB DESCRIPTION–and only then saw how they worked; actually, I didn’t parse 21ac until after submitting. Fortunately CAMEL the color and GAP YEAR had appeared recently; GAP YEAR especially would otherwise have given me a hard time. I’m afraid E-TAIL is a word, Z; stuff happens.
  2. 8:40 … nice stuff, but the long run of easier puzzles continues.

    Nearly everything went straight in apart from LOBSCOUSE, DANSEUSE and ILIAC.

    According to the Snitch*, that’s 11 days in a row of ‘easier’ or ‘very easy’. Come on, ed., I miss the suffering

    * Starstruck’s Crossword Snitch

    1. I think that for many Times readers outside the rarified atmosphere of this message board the puzzles are already quite hard enough. I cannot be the only person who counts anything less than an hour as a good time. I hope the crossword editor will not be too influenced by the views of an unrepresentative albeit exceptionally gifted minority.
      1. Sorry, anon, but you’ve misunderstood. While I’m happy to agree that no Times puzzle is easy (that’s sort of the point) that isn’t what I said.

        There’s a reason why I put ‘very easy’ and ‘easier’ in quotation marks in my comment above. Those are the rating categories used on the Snitch site, though I suppose the creator of the site didn’t feel he needed to spell out ‘very easy relative to other Times puzzles’ etc. for each category.

        The Snitch is an objective measurement of how easy or difficult a given puzzle is relative to other Times puzzles. That the most recent 11 puzzles have all been at the easier end of the spectrum isn’t my opinion. It’s an objective measurement.

        Incidentally, the Snitch tracks performances of a range of solvers, from very speedy to not speedy. Currently one of the tracked solvers has an average time close to the hour mark.

        Read more at: https://xwdsnitch.herokuapp.com/about

        1. Thanks for taking the time to explain in more detail. The point I was trying to make is that Times for the Times and Snitch are not representative of Times solvers as a whole. And it’s confusing when subjective terms like “easy” and “difficult” are used to describe objective measurements. But OK, let’s have a bit more variety.
  3. A technical DNF today as I eventually looked up LOBSCOUSE having almost solved it from wordplay. If I’d realised how near I was with LOB?COUSE I might have persevered and got to it eventually without resorting to aids, but I was missing the L-checker (not haveing solved 9dn at that point) so the possibility of ‘fail’ = LOSE was still only conjecture on my part. LOBSCOUSE came up once before, in July 2015, and I didn’t know it then either, but the wordplay was more helpful on that occasion.

  4. 16ac LOBSCOUSE is an old chestnut from back in the day – The Merseybeat, Jerry Marsden, The Philarmonic, Sergeant Pepper, Z-Cars, Cilla …..

    Georgette Heyer 0 Liverpool 2

    50 mins. FOI 6dn THERMIC

    LOI ICED forgot about DICE!

    COD 18ac COCHINEAL – China also consumes much rice.

    WOD LOBSCOUSE

    The Spoonerism at 7dn was easier then usual and no impediment

    Why do I never think of 22dn socks as footwear? Maybe because I rarely wear them. Pumps, mules and espadrilles came to mind!

    I thought 17dn BULLRING was poorly clued.

  5. 10a PYROMANIA FOI—we’ve had something similar to “burning ambition” for it recently, haven’t we? LOI the unknown 16a LOBSCOUSE where I just had to trust the wordplay once I’d stopped trying to crowbar in “BA” for the degree and finally figured out where the C was coming from.

    Helpfully for 24d, I’m a Cowboy Junkies fan, and their Townes van Zandt tribute Townes’ Blues has the eponymous hero playing craps “…in the back lounge, cursing at them bones.” (Other fans may wish to note that they’ve just had a new album out.)

    Apart from that earworm-inspiring moment, quite enjoyed 5d WHARF with its misleading “fighting force” pairing, and as with Z 4a TWITCHED. Really must get around to actually seeing the play at some point…

    Edited at 2018-07-19 06:33 am (UTC)

    1. Last week: Country that’s had burning desire to depose leading couple (7)
  6. 25 mins with yoghurt and superfoods (not ‘scouse).
    I liked some of the evocative surfaces today, e.g. Fawn born in April, Frozen bones sinking… could be the opening to a Graham Swift novel.
    MER at Underlie being nameless. It isn’t uderlie devoid of Ns.
    Mostly I liked the Fawn and the Bones.
    Thanks setter and Z.
  7. 28 minutes. An early start today as off to Nottingham for the youngest’s graduation, It will be the third time, and the other two speeches by diffferent VCs were almost identical. So it should be on a rite of passage. This was reasonably straightforward with AVAIL last to fall. I had AGAIN for an encore until COCHINEAL dawned. COD to LOBSCOUSE. Thank you Z and setter.

    Edited at 2018-07-19 07:14 am (UTC)

  8. Easier even than yesterday’s. LOI was LOBSCOUSE, which seemed only very, very vaguely familiar.

    Edited at 2018-07-19 07:22 am (UTC)

    1. Yes, and for a word that’s turned up only twice (including 15x15s, Jumbos and Mephistos) in the 12 years since TftT was founded it’s rather strange to see it described then as ‘old Times crossword fare’ and today as an ‘old chestnut’.

      Edited at 2018-07-19 07:50 am (UTC)

      2. Lobscouse was first in The Times 15×15 long before this blog was invested. In 2009 The Hairy Bikers featured this casserole.
      3. Well, not even taking into account Horryd’s recollection, this time would make the third (maybe that is what you meant), as at the bottom of the blog Sotira cites, we find Tony Sever saying, ‘LOBSCOUSE last came up in Times cryptic No. 23,153 (7 December 2005). The word became well-known in the early 1960s with popularity of the Mersey Sound and the word “Scouse”, so it could well have first appeared in a Times cryptic in 1965 and then reappeared regularly every 10 years thereafter.’
    2. Actually 3 years ago, but if you’d asked me when we last saw it I’d have guessed 3 months. Is time really moving that quickly?
      1. I might have mentioned before on this blog that maths isn’t my strong suit. Thank you for the correction
      2. My standard practice for estimating how long ago something happened is to take an initial stab based on gut feeling and then multiply by three.
  10. 23’08 inc. 4 or 5 min. on the last, bullring. Confused by bell/call possibility. Didn’t know e-tail but like it.
  11. Fairly gentle, though I didn’t know about ‘bones’ and DICE.

    I liked the def. for EXTENDED FAMILY and the word of the day LOBSCOUSE – thanks to Patrick O’Brian for almost making this a write in.

    Time flies and done in 36 minutes.

    Thanks to setter and blogger

  12. 21 minutes in taxi, with more taciturn driver than usual, which helped. LOI was LOBSCOUSE relying on the word play. Top class puzzle, best for a while.
    1. Maybe he’s now telling his colleagues on the rank “I had that Pip Kirby in the cab this morning – miserable git never spoke a word !”
  13. ….so 20A was nicely topical.

    13:40 and no real problems, though my thanks to Z for the parsing of SEMINAL, and for confirming the utterly dreadful E-TAIL.

    FOI THERMIC – I must be getting the hang of encapsulations at last. They’ve given me trouble at regular intervals for 50 years !

    LOI DOLT – I needed to accept E-TAIL to get the checked L.

    COD EXTENDED FAMILY

  14. 33 mins, which, in this context, is rather slow. A major hold-up was my conviction that ‘slaps’ is a word for flip-flops-style sandals in 22d: if it’s not it darned well should be — what an excellent word it is. So, LOI CONGENIAL. LOBSCOUSE was new to me, but the wordplay spelled it out. This is surely another word (along with ‘lum’) which exists only for the sake of The Times crossword. My COD nomination would have been for E-TAIL, but out of respect for Z’s sensitivities, I’ll choose the Scottish clue for its literary pretensions and devious use of Heath.

    Thanks for the excellent blog. And thanks to setter for a well crafted puzzle.

  15. As sotira acknowledged another in a run of puzzles on the easier side. Hopefully this means a real demon is round the corner.

    I didn’t know DICE for bones but I do now understand the name of the 1991 album by Rush, ‘Roll the Bones’!

  16. The great mystery, and appeal, of cryptic crosswords is that in a run like the current one, even where the overall difficulty as per the SNITCH is very consistent, an individual solver can still find any given puzzle so much easier or harder than the day before. Anyway, it was the former for me today, so unsurprisingly I feel positive about it.

    Not sure if I’ve seen E-TAIL before but it was clued very clearly; I now await the companion phrase, describing businesses which have a High Street presence to complement their on-line shops, i.e CLICKS AND MORTAR.

  17. Gha! Why do the French insist on mis-spelling “danceuse”? We really ought to straighten out their spelling while we’re still in the EU and have some influence.
    1. Hallelujah I’m not alone! They’re not even consistent as they spell the lullaby BERCEUSE.

      Edited at 2018-07-19 11:33 am (UTC)

      1. This is what happens when you leave the development of a language to people who don’t speak English.
  18. Today’s setters seem to have been passing them around. They gave them to us in 16A and 7D here and also in 1A of Brummie’s puzzle in the other place. In elementary school my children used to sing “Jose can you see any head lice on me etc” to the tune of the star-spangled banner. Did anyone ever refer to Ted as the blasted heath? 14.03
    1. Frequently, Olivia, after the dreadful local government reorganisation, although the adjective was usually somewhat coarser. Named as that, a total pillock becomes Macbeth’s hillock.
  19. Having teased out the stew and colouring from wordplay and completed the puzzle in 28:20, I was undone by a careless DANCEUSE at 27 across. Bah! 1 up to the setter. Thanks z8 for the blog, especially the parsing of SEMINAL. This BERCEUSE calmed me down though…
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FZtBwlxL0Aw

    Edited at 2018-07-19 11:35 am (UTC)

  20. 14:39. Gosh was LOBSCOUSE last here over 3 years ago? I’m surprised I remembered. I liked CAMEL and ICED. LOI TRICKY. As well as PYROMANIA last week, we’ve also had ILIAC recently – 4th May.
  21. 13:07. It’s a sign you’ve been doing these things for too long when funny words like LOBSCOUSE and COCHINEAL spring readily to mind. I must have remembered the stew from the last time it came up last year three years ago.
  22. Not from a rank, such things n’existe pas in this neck of the woods, but my regular lady had to beg another firm to do the job as she and her husband were both overstretched. the subbing lady was pleasant enough but not in chatty mode. Did 3 crosswords (T today and 2 days G) and part of the TLS 1235 on the to and from bordeaux trip today.
  23. Surprised at LOBSCOUSE being so unknown – there again Liverpool is only up the road. I was once in a very remote part of Chile and met a very local looking local, who described in a broad SCOUSE accent the hot spring we were in as ‘the dog’s bollocks’.
  24. Thanks to Sotira’s link I see that 3 years ago I fessed up to not knowing and having to look up LOBSCOUSE. Well, today I still didn’t know it, but as LOI with all the checking letters in place, I used wordplay to deduce the word. But, before I entered it I looked it up again as it appeared quite odd. Those who wish to point out that my memory isn’t very good are free to do so. Regards.
  25. Thought I had done well but bunged in “curst” instead of “caret” – not knowing the latter and lazily assuming that “to cur” meant “to pain”. Otherwise, enjoyed today’s crossword.
  26. I am a little late to the party as my internet here in Mallorca is down. I think I am improving as I only had one reveal 2d CARET a DNK and one wrong 11a E-MAIL! Also correctly biffed from wordplay 16 and 27 across so am feeling rather smug or may be it is just heat stroke. Thank you to all the bloggers.
  27. 21:43 but sacre-bleu! I managed to spell danceuse with a c. I knew there was a reason I could not parse it. That should have given me pause but did not. I see from some comments above that I am in good company.
  28. Liking Zabadak, and his/her telling of answers as they are, rather than the trite and obsequious “well done to the setter ,” when some clues were clearly pants.

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