Times 27033 – no eventers were scared in the making of this puzzle

Author   piquetPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
A more straightforward offering today than I’ve had for a while on a Wednesday, no doubt a respite for me before next week’s ‘golden oldie’ arriving alongside another TCC qualifier. One slight bear trap at 18a if you were too hasty to press the ‘submit’ button, otherwise just the usual mix with poets, painters and rare animals here and there. Around 20 minutes all done with no cheating or looking up.

Across
1 Instrument in vessel about to go on fire (7)
SACKBUT – SACK = fire, TUB reversed goes on it.
5 Dance classes for poet and priest (7)
HOPKINS – HOP = dance, KINS = classes, KIN usually means ‘of family’ but also can mean ‘of the same kind’. Gerard Manley Hopkins was both a poet and a Jesuit priest, so not my ideal dinner guest I feel.
9 Escape, having left before noon (3)
LAM – L = left, AM = before noon. A word of American origin meaning flight or escape, as in ‘on the lam from the police’.
10 Number joining party for Africans in US state care (11)
MAINTENANCE – TEN (number) and ANC (party Africans) goes inside MAINE.
11 Refuse a course of action after shock (4,4)
TURN AWAY – TURN = shock (‘he had a bit of a turn’) A WAY.
12 Cold criminal heading off to be a fellow down under (6)
COBBER – Aussie for mate. C = cold, (R)OBBER = criminal heading off.
15 What was busted in war with power — having a bit of water! (4)
DAMP – The DAM was busted, add P for power.
16 Element of clue, one I’d fit in deviously (10)
DEFINITION – (ONE ID FIT IN)*.
18 Players are outside entrance getting rebukes (10)
CASTIGATES – GATE = entrance, inside CAST IS = players are. Go down a long snake if you put CASTIGATED.
19 Last one of the tribe to give utterance of surprise (4)
EGAD – E = last one of THE, GAD = one of the 12 tribes of Israel. EGAD a mild oath originally from YE GODS.
22 Wrongly gaoled when one could be in a home? (3,3)
OLD AGE – (GAOLED)*. I am feeling that way, having three parallel medical processes going on with me at once. Hopefully I shall emerge bionic and revitalised.
23 A knight leaving birthplace somewhere in France (8)
PROVENCE – PROVENANCE loses its A, N.
25 PM put down by house of legislature (11)
CHAMBERLAIN – CHAMBER = house of legislature, LAIN = put down.
27 Extract sulphur out of earth (3)
OIL – SOIL loses its S. N.B. setter, SULFUR is now the official spelling.
28 Artists taken aback by male painter noted for portraits (7)
SARGENT – RAS = artists, reverse and add GENT = male. John Singer Sargent was an American painter (born in Italy and died in London though) who painted Edwardian toffs.
29 Horse has calm expression after losing its tail (7)
EVENTER – EVEN = calm, TER(M) = expression losing tail. As in ‘three day eventer’.

Down
1 Formally acknowledged something played entering grave (7)
SALUTED – LUTE, something played, inside SAD.
2 Made a deal and embraced, having taken up little time (11)
COMPROMISED – COMPRISED = embraced, insert MO = little time.
3 Renamed city business qualification lad possesses (6)
BOMBAY – MBA = business qualification, inside BOY. Now renamed MUMBAI officially since 1995.
4 Having several sides subsequently participating in test (10)
TRILATERAL – LATER inside TRIAL.
5 African university given superior temporary accommodation (4)
HUTU – HUT = temporary accommodation, is superior to, above, U = university. The Hutu live mainly in Burundi and Rwanda.
6 Attack malevolent little creature that’s got rid of black mammal (8)
PANGOLIN – PAN = criticise, attack; GO(B)LIN = malevolent little creature with B for black removed. The pangolin is also called the scaly anteater and often found in crosswords.
7 Boozer liked being heard (3)
INN – Sounds like ‘IN’ = popular, liked.
8 What could be nastier component of fat (7)
STEARIN – (NASTIER)*. Glyceryl tristearate, main component of animal fat, used to make candles, soap and other stuff.
13 Encouraging action at end of round in fight (8,3)
BRINGING OUT – clever, this, all about boxing. RINGING (a bell) = action at the end of round, it goes inside BOUT = fight.
14 Roughly what we do as presents are handed out? (4,2,4)
GIVE OR TAKE – Double definition, one literal.
17 Like many a tune coming from evil Hollywood star (8)
SINGABLE – SIN = evil, Clark GABLE Hollywood star of old.
18 Picks confectionery treats: second about to go (7)
CHOICES – CHOC ICES are those treats, drop the C being the second ‘about’.
20 Resident embarrassed, upset about non-mains water supply (7)
DWELLER – WELL inside RED reversed.
21 Approach a planet without second source of energy (6)
AVENUE – A, VENU(S), E.
24 Cricketer accumulating runs, a spoilt youngster? (4)
BRAT – BAT accumulates R. We had this discussion recently about BAT / BATTER / BATSMAN so I won’t re-open it.
26 Beautiful female lacking expression (3)
AIR – FAIR = beautiful, loses its F.

61 comments on “Times 27033 – no eventers were scared in the making of this puzzle”

  1. 53 minutes, and a smidge surprised to find all my answers were right. NHO HOPKINS or SARGENT, not too hot on Hebrew tribes, so forth… Still, got there in the end.

    FOI 9a LAM after I started knocking off the smaller ones to find a way in, LOI 5a HOPKINS following close on the heels of 5d HUTU. WOD (and animal of the day) PANGOLIN, a creature I’ll never think of without picturing this popular GIF.

    Thanks to setter and Pip. Hope the TRILATERAL medical processes work out okay.

  2. Moderately hard I thought, another of the puzzles I was carping about last week where it’s all teasing out wordplay with little in the way of colour or humour to latch onto. I was a bit lucky to get all correct, having failed fully to understand any of HOPKINS, EGAD or BRINGING OUT. Not a bad puzzle by any means! But not one of my personal favourites.

    Edited at 2018-05-09 06:38 am (UTC)

  3. Not easy for me with a number of ‘didn’t knows/ had forgettens’ holding me up, including HOPKINS, HUTU, STEARIN, GAD and LAM.

    The intersection of two of these at 5a/5d presented a particular problem, notably at 5dn where with only one checker in place (the T) I was confused by having both ‘university’ and ‘superior’ possibly indicating ‘U’. As it turned out I needed two U’s but ‘superior’ was there to indicate position of one part of the answer in relation to the other.

    Very pleased to dredge up PANGOLIN from somewhere. Quite by chance, since solving the puzzle I have just seen a picture of one this morning in next week’s edition of Radio Times.

    The anniversary of the dam raids (Operation Chastise) is coming up on 16/17th May and has already been marked by a special supplement in one of the weekend papers.

    Edited at 2018-05-09 06:38 am (UTC)

  4. Mistyping my SACKBUT kept me off the board but around 21 minutes for this.

    I suspect Hopkins would have been a fascinating dinner guest, Pip, especially if you could get some booze into him (big if). It’s widely thought his asceticism was a way of smothering a more, um, flamboyant nature. Regardless, he was a truly dazzling poet. For lovers of words, of language, his work is just a joy.

    Richard Burton reading one of Hopkin’s most scintillating poems (if you’ve never heard this before, fasten your seat belt):
    https://youtu.be/WhQwFf6Qb9U

    2. Why is it always “Margaret, are you grieving” that gets anthologized? This was an eye-opener; thank you for the link.
    3. Brilliant, S. I love it when words spill out. I read it as text afterwards and then listened again.
    4. I’ve never mistyped my sackbut – sounds jolly painful though.
    6. Thanks for this. Hadn’t heard it before. I did some simpler poems like “The Windhover” for O Level but this is truly amazing. And wonderfully read by our local boyo. Ann
  5. Or was that a different Hopkin?
    55 mins on the wrong wavelength – but then… “the achieve of, the mastery of the thing!”
    Took ages trying to parse Chooses – then remembered Abraham Lincoln’s famous last words: “If there are no tubs, I’ll have a choc ice.”
    Thanks setter and Pip.
  6. Nice steady top to bottom solve with no real hold ups or queries.

    I suspect the nod to the Dam Busters and next week’s anniversary is accidental. I’ve been in a Lanc and how those guys did what they did is nothing short of miraculous

  7. I found this quite hard going, finally finishing with CHOICES which I’d thought of earlier but couldn’t parse. I only saw choc ices post solve, but having done so I thought it a good clue. I also liked the simplicity of GIVE OR TAKE despite cryptic definitions not normally being my favourite so I give this cryptic definition a rare COD.
  8. A steady solve, like Jimbo.
    Hope the medical issues resolve themselves Pip. a bionic Pip would be a force to be reckoned with indeed..
  9. Steadyish here, too. I wondered about KINS, but ‘poet and priest’ was reassuring–at least once I dropped the idea of BARDELI. PANGOLIN leaped to mind from the checkers, then I parsed. It also took me a while to remember that a boozer could be a place as well as a person; I started with SOT (homophone for ‘sought’=liked?). Didn’t we just have ‘The Dam Busters’? That’s what enable me to solve 15ac quickly. Best of luck, Pip, on the medical front.

    Edited at 2018-05-09 08:08 am (UTC)

    1. Well remembered, Kevin. It was an answer in the QC set by Corelli on 1st May.
  10. I once ate pangolin in Canton province, and very tasty it was too. 31 minutes for this enjoyable offering (we’ll forgive the sciency clue since the letters sort of fell into place once you had the checkers). I had forgotten that Hopkins was a priest, so was looking for another one, discounting Anthony, though he did like a drink.
  11. EGAD, tough one for me, taking 45 minutes, not helped by thinking the fat was Seratin until MAINTENANCE revealed STEARIN. Took me ages to parse CASTIGATES too, with the switch from plural to singular throwing me. I think I had heard of SARGENT but would have known the conductor better. COD to the convoluted BRINGING OUT. I misbiffed CHOICES as CHOOSES too before seeing CHAMBERLAIN with his piece of paper. And, thinking of choc ices, is it too early for a coconut Magnum? A better choice than invading Poland, I think. Thank you Pip and setter.
  12. Agree somewhat joyless, but a good solvers’ workout too. I don’t suppose every crossword has to be all frilly and frivolous anyway.

    Nice to see old Gerard Manley, to see him nice, as it reminded me of my undergrad days whereof I was into his ‘Wreck’ in a big way. Splendid pome that.

  13. Pretty straightforward for me. Watched EVENTERS all Saturday at Badminton which is a couple of miles away from me. Had a mint ice cream with chocolate chips. No real COD today.
    1. Where are you Sawbill? I used to stay with a great-aunt in Horton for Badminton for several years in a row. It used to coincide with the Easter school holidays back then.
      1. I live in Brokenborough next to the river. My house is very popular with friends during Badminton.
        1. I have it, thank you. That same great-aunt moved to Grittleton after Horton, my parents lived at Ashton Keynes and I went to school near Tisbury so I know that whole area well!
  14. Held up by a confused MUMBAI until the impossibility of a sackmut changed my mind. Had to look up PROVENANCE as I didn’t know that meaning – or at least I did but had forgotten it. Nice to have a steady-solve crossword where the unknowns were easily gettable.
  15. A few I didn’t know, including the tribe of Israel and STEARIN, but otherwise not too bad. Took 33 minutes with the ‘Dance classes’ being my last in. I liked PANGOLIN – good to meet old friends again – and the ‘Dam busters’ clue.

    Thanks to setter and blogger

  16. If you hit the ‘Show more’ like under the video, the full text of the poem is there, which does help when listening to it
    1. Thank you again, Sotira. I couldn’t find the “Show more like” button but I did find a button which enable me to show what was labelled as a transcript but was only an approximation of Burton’s reading. Thanks to you, I’ve now shared it on my Facebook page.
  17. 14m. Steady enough, but I got held up at the end thinking the poet and priest was going to be someone I hadn’t heard of ending IUS. Eventually the dappled things advocate sprang to mind.
    All the best for the various medical things, Pip.
  18. Gave it a try, but somehow the words come too fast. Seat belt was unnecessary. Will try reading it. I do like Richard Burton though and am forever listening to Under Milk Wood 1963 version in the car. And the best poem is Jabberwocky. Poetry otherwise is not my thing, as you can gather.
    Gorecki playing now on Classic FM – now that’s more like it.
    1. Glad I’m not alone, Pip. Delivery far too fast to take in the meaning. Maybe it’s better if one is already familiar with the poem. It sort of sounds nice but I gave up after the first minute as nothing was going in.
  19. Not too swift on this, coming in bang on the half-hour. ‘Kins’ seems a trifle forced. Hopkins might well have been very good company. His letter to Robert Bridges (May 13th 1878), on the latter refusing to re-read the ‘Deutschland’ poem after finding it obscure, is hilarious. ‘…Now they say that vessels sailing from the port of London will take Thames water for the voyage: it was foul and stunk at first as the ship worked but by degrees casting its filth was in a few days very pure and sweet and wholesomer and better than any water in the world. … The Deutschland on her first run worked very much and unsettled you, thickening and clouding your mind with vulgar mud-bottom and sewage (I see I am going it with the image) and just then you drew off your criticisms all stinking (a necessity now of the image) and bilgy, whereas if you had let your thoughts cast themselves they would have been clearer in themselves … I did not heed them therefore, perceiving they were a first drawing-off.’ On second thoughts maybe not for the dinner table however.
  21. ….what’s wrong with me ? The answer is, like Pip, TRILATERAL. Anticoagulants for one problem, statins for another, and this morning I’ve tweaked a hamstring 5 minutes into my walking football session. We soldier on.

    Found the bottom half easy enough after FOI DEFINITION, but laboured a little in the upper section. DNK definition for LAM (usually a verb for a heavy assault whenever seen before), and biffed both that and COMPROMISED which, thanks to Pip, is now a duh !

    LOI HOPKINS which took 3 minutes of my total 15:59 despite me seeing HOP almost immediately.

    COD has to be OLD AGE, since I’m rather feeling it today alas. I’ll get back to being a vibrant young septuagenarian soon enough !

  22. As seems to be general, a straightforward solve with just two minor delays, one where my first thought was “Well if it’s not Zumba, I’m fresh out of dance classes”, and then finding a plausible tribe, which also wasn’t actually too much of a stretch, despite my rather sparse OT knowledge.
  23. I did like CHOICES… and I do like choc ices. One of my favourite Joni Mitchell songs is “Song for Sharon”. The opening line goes “I went to Staten Island, Sharon, to buy myself a mandolin….” After this puzzle I think it’s more fun if you substitute 6d for ‘mandolin’! 51m 44s
  24. After a tough recent run, I was pleased to get back more or less on form with this one done in 11m 49s, especially after a very tough first few minutes. Somehow I seemed to avoid looking at the easier ones (e.g. 14d, 17d) until relatively late on.

    I failed to parse EGAD, and wouldn’t have staked my reputation on HOPKINS, but otherwise it was largely a case of grinding out answers, with CHOICES my LOI.

    26d seemed rather awkwardly written to me – “Beautiful female lacking” to mean FAIR without F is a little tenuous.

    1. “Beautiful, female lacking” would be perfectly sensical wouldn’t it? Can’t get too stressed about a comma here or there.
          1. Not comma related, but in a similar vein there was a good piece on syntactic ambiguity or amphiboly in The Times on Saturday. It mentioned an apocryphal headline from the First World War, “French push bottles up German rear”.
          2. A local sandwich shop was advertising a panini as “Italian, salami and cheese”, which I believe should be referred to as a ‘cannibalism comma’.
  25. Nice offering today. Dnk LAM. HOPKINS from school. Stopped myself submitting CASTIGATED just in time. Have heard of SARGENT but do not know his work. Have only heard of HUTU because of the genocide. COD 14d, needed most of the checkers and a long think. 22′, thanks pip and setter.
  26. This went in smoothly until I froze staring vacantly at the axis of GIVE OR TAKE and EVENTER with absolutely nothing suggesting itself for either. I think of the latter as the rider rather than the horse. As an English assignment when we were about 13 we had to compose a poem in the manner of Pied Beauty so no trouble with Hopkins, and the Jesuits I’ve met would be excellent dinner companions. And I had another slight hiccup with DEFINITIONs with PROVENCE because I always connect “provenance” with the pedigree of art or antiques rather than a birthplace. The DAM busters theme was a staple of Family Favourites radio when I was a mite. 23.29

    Edited at 2018-05-09 10:57 am (UTC)

    1. Yes, the Dam Busters march was a part of my childhood too and I was given a 78 of it played by the Central Band of the RAF. Its composer, Eric Coates, was a master of ‘light’ music and many of his compositions were used as signature tunes for radio and TV programmes (e.g. The Knightsbridge March – In Town Tonight; Calling All Workers – Music While You Work; By The Sleepy Lagoon – Desert Island Discs). Sadly he’s rather neglected now although some of his music turns up from time to time on Classic FM radio. ‘The Dam Busters’ was not written for the film but Coates happened to have it on the shelf when he was asked to provide something suitable.

      Edited at 2018-05-09 09:25 pm (UTC)

  27. My contempory and studymate at school was Gerrard M Ferguson (Hi, Gerry if you are reading) and he always liked the idea of the M being Manly (no e). 16:18
  28. Depressing to find I’m the only snake rider so far today:-( Otherwise 29:54 (WOE), with HOPKINS and SARGENT from the wordplay. Read 18a too quickly taking “getting rebukes” as the definition. PANGOLIN and HOPKINS were my last two in. I enjoyed this puzzle. Thanks setter and Pip and good luck with the ongoing repairs. Try not to get assimilated!
  29. Has Anthony Hopkins played a poet and a priest?

    60 bloody minutes bottom up.

    FOI 27ac OIL
    LOI 10ac MAINTENANCE I always think MAINTAINANCE!
    COD 23ac PROVENCE
    WOD 24dn BRAT

    1. He has, I believe. Father Lucas in The Rite, C S Lewis in Shadowlands. That’s one way to cannibalise the clue, H. The Hannibal Lecter solution?

      Edited at 2018-05-09 12:57 pm (UTC)

  30. Failed. I guessed HOPKINS correctly, but made a complete dog’s dinner of the bottom-west corner. I had “ace” (face, minus a female -yes, I know it doesn’t work) for 26d, which caused 28ac to implode. In the end I bunged in “Sievert” in a fit of grumpth, despite the fact that Sievert was a physicist and it didn’t parse. Ah well.
  31. Took a bit of a while sso not a really fast solve here. STEARIN was really a guess, I confess, another example of sticking the missing letters in where they appeared to suggest something that might mean a fat. Not very keen on ‘kins’, but there wasn’t much else it could be. Regards.
  32. Please could someone explain why, in 18d, the ‘second about’ has gone? I would have thought that if the original word was indeed ‘chocices’ then the ‘second about to go’ (ie removing the second ‘c’), would leave ‘chocies’. I was thinking perhaps of choccies…
    but then that doesn’t really help.
    1. I believe you may have missed the “c” at the beginning of the word 😀
    1. Ah! Sorry, I missed your reply by dint of clicking on “reply” in my email notification rather than coming here and double-checking all the comments.
  34. 40:23 so nothing too tricky. The unknown fat component went in on the basis of the most likely looking arrangement of unchecked anagrist. Everything else known including the poet and the painter (surely he’s liable under the Trades Descriptions Act for false advertising being neither a singer nor a sergeant) who nicely bookend the puzzle NE to SW.
  35. Can anyone explain why succeeded is the cryptic abbreviation for s please?
    1. Actually, S is the abbreviation for ‘succeeded’; as in Elizabeth succeeded George.
  36. “Put down” is a transitive verb. A possible synonym is “lay” whose past participle is “laid.” “Lain” is the past participle of “lie” which is intransitive. Compare German liegen lag gelegen vs legen legte gelegt.

    25 across is therefore invalid.

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