Cryptic No 27334 Thursday, 25 April 2019 This be the verse

Author   ZabadakPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
I made rather a dog’s brexit of this one, badly mis-entering 5d and thus rendering 13ac as vaguely plausible AMNESTY and making 6d impossible.  Dozing off didn’t help this fluffery, so a not-difficult crossword stretched me to 27.31 to reach a satisfactory conclusion. 1ac I parsed post-submission, and would probably have left it to the blogger du jour if it wasn’t me. I was rather blind to the lettuce leaves at 26d and entered with fingers crossed.
It’s notable for some of the more straightforward anagram clues scattered through the grid
Clues are in italics, definitions in underlined italics, and solutions in BOLD CAPITALS.

Across

1 Officer’s co-worker decorated in famous Venetian building at last (6,3)
POLICE DOG Right. Your famous Venetian is (Marco) POLO, insert ICED for decorated and at the last letter of buildinG
9 Secret affair left couple holding a child (7)
LIAISON L(eft) II, Roman for couple, with A held therein and SON for child.
10 Organise AGM, or be subject to ban (7)
EMBARGO “Organise” practically screams “anagram!” Fiddle with the next few letters (AGM OR BE) and get the name of the apocryphal brassiere that was taken off the market when they realised how it read when reflected.
11 Alluring female is short of shilling after time (5)
HOURI  One of the rewards for the faithful in Moslem paradise, IS without S(hilling)  after an HOUR of time.
12 Working girl has an ideal place to live (7-2)
SHANGRI-LA Working suggests (in a barely less stentorian voice) “anagram!”. Muck about with the letters GIRL HAS AN. The earthly paradise imagined by James Hilton in “Lost Horizon”.
13 Humility means transcending yourself, primarily (7)
MODESTY I think MODES just about translates means, ways to an end. Whatever, add TY, the first letters of the next two words.
15 Adjutant returned after month for papers etc (5)
MEDIA The adjutant is an AIDE, reversed after M for Month
17 Sheepish male with drug, pursuing fine physique (5)
FRAME The sheepish male is, of course, a RAM, add today’s drug of choice E, and tack both onto F(fine)
18 Division of gas producer changing hands (5)
SHARE The gas producer is the controversial SHALE, changing hands means the L becomes an R
19 Give birth with anguished cry? (5)
WHELP I thought this was a double definition, but it’s the sneaky W(ith) plus a cry of HELP!
20 Don’t drink tar and varnish! (7)
ABSTAIN AB for tar, both seamen, and STAIN for varnish
23 Most unjust if nature’s destroyed (9)
UNFAIREST “Destroyed” is this clue’s merest hint of anagram, this time of IF NATURE’S
25 Run home with rogue (5)
INCUR I think run as in “run a tab” at the bar, thus incurring costs. At home IN, rogue supplying CUR
27 Turned to use backless cooker, perhaps explosive (7)
APPLIED The backless cooker iis an APPLE without the E, and the explosive an Improvised Explosive Device
28 Develop case of gangrene, say (7)
GESTATE The case of gangrene yields the G and E the rest provided by say: STATE
29 Figure on plane reportedly demolished fish (9)
RECTANGLE Sounds like wrecked plus ANGLE for the verb, fish

Down

1 People, as ever, welcoming polite word (6)
PLEASE Today’s hidden. I’ll leave you to spot it…well done!
2 Larkin and colleagues tease liars in bar (10)
LIBRARIANS “Tease” stage whispers “anagram!” Reorder LIARS IN BAR Philip Larkin (“They f*** you up, your mum and dad) was a custodian of books at the University of Hull
3 Perhaps hare after eccentric old maid? (4,4)
CARD GAME Of which “Old Maid” is an example. A CARD is an eccentric person. And a hare counts amongst GAME for the huntin’ shootin’ set.
4 Policeman seizing stolen loincloth (5)
DHOTI Most famously worn by Gandhi Ji. Today’s policeman is a Detective Inspector, who takes HOT for stolen on board.
5 Feed a friend too much salt (9)
GLUTAMATE Feed too much GLUT, A for a, MATE for friend
6 Hit piece of furniture, gathering dust (6)
BASHED The furniture is a BED, the gathered dust is ASH
7 Rebecca’s son oddly ignoring new status (4)
ESAU Was the hairy one of Jacob’s favourite missus’ twin boys. Ignore the odd letters of nEw StAtUs
8 The setter writes to support worker, contrary sort (8)
ANTITYPE  Translate “the setter writes” to “I TYPE” and tack on the worker ANT
14 Condemned English art, laying it on thick (10)
SLATHERING Not the nasty house in Harry Potter, but an anagram of ENGLISH ART signalled in a meaningful whisper by “condemned”
16 One shunning less stylish nursing sister in Oz? (4,5)
DOWN UNDER Less stylish is DOWDIER, which I (one) shuns and is replaced a little earlier with NUN for sister
17 Wretched old bird (8)
FLAMINGO Wretched is represented by FLAMING, a milder emphatic swear word than others beginning with F. Old just donates the concluding O
18 Leave gym with initially accelerated pulse (5-3)
SPLIT-PEA Oddly enough, my version of Chambers offers only the plural version with no hyphen. Leave is SPLIT (as in the joint), gym is PE and A the first letter of Accelerated
21 Ethereal and extremely attractive hideaway seen from the south (6)
AERIAL The two extremes of AttractivE plus LAIR for hideaway reversed
22 Perhaps Dorothy’s served up heavy food (6)
STODGE Perhaps gives EG, and Dorothy’s short version is DOT’S Reverse all
24 Head of Finance sped about Swiss capital (5)
FRANC Head of Finance F, sped: RAN, about (more often ca) C
26 Leaves hotel for club (4)
COSH Leaves as in lettuce leaves COS plus Nato H(otel)

54 comments on “Cryptic No 27334 Thursday, 25 April 2019 This be the verse”

  1. I did this in a hurry, with a doctor’s appointment waiting, but fortunately it wasn’t too challenging. I did biff POLICE DOG and DOWN UNDER, solving post-submission. The latter was rather clever. For me, ‘flaming’ goes with ‘queen’, and isn’t a substitute for effing, so I was left wondering about 17d. Didn’t get ‘cooker’, thinking only of the stove kind, even when I thought of APPLE, yet. I thought of ‘run’ as in ‘run a risk’.

    Edited at 2019-04-25 05:25 am (UTC)

    1. ‘Run a risk’ is the first example given in Collins under definition 24: ‘to be subjected to, be affected by, or incur’.

      Edited at 2019-04-25 06:50 am (UTC)

      1. Chambers (I’ve only just looked it up) has run as a transitive verb meaning “to incur”, without any qualification. It’s quite a long way down the list, but it seems it doesn’t really matter what you are running.
        1. Chambers has a way of being irritatingly unhelpful like that. I mean it obviously does matter what you are running (you don’t run debts, for example, although you do run them up) so just giving long lists of synonyms without qualification isn’t much of a guide to usage. Collins and more especially ODO and the other Oxford dictionaries tend to be much better on that score.
          1. Indeed. Dictionary publishers have to ‘position’ their products in the market and, for many years, Chambers has been regarded a blunt tool — one used as the go-to reference for Scrabble players and anyone who simply wants to check whether “it’s in the dictionary” or not. Collins trail-blazed a style that reflected usage and provided loads more contextual framing for definitions (and example sentences) in its native-speaker dictionaries. OUP followed Collins’s lead some years later and imported more of Oxford’s EFL-dictionary style (more contextual and grammatical help) into their native-speaker products.
            1. Back in the day, before Collins was the Times dictionary of choice (presumably because it sponsored the Championship for a while) Chambers was the go-to reference dictionary. It still is for the Listener.
              It may be a “blunt instrument” or “just..long lists of synonyms” (debatable, I think) or a poor-relation game players’ tool, but the Crossword is still as much a game with words as anything else. I don’t really see why it shouldn’t be acceptable as a reference to back up the setter’s whims.
              1. It’s also the reference for Mephisto and Azed, where the long lists of often odd meanings, obscure/obsolete/Spenserian/Scottish words and endless abbreviations are part of the point. But mainly because of those features I personally don’t like it much as a last-word reference for the daily puzzles. I prefer Collins and the Oxfords (I particularly like ODO, which is the Oxford Dictionary of English) because they are, IMO, a better reflection of the language as it’s actually spoken.
                But my original point was more about helpfulness. Chambers tells you that run can mean incur (or fuse, or curdle, or traverse, or emit, or pierce…) without any guidance as to how it might be used. This is unhelpful for a learner, of course, but also for me when I’m trying to think of a way in which the two words could be substituted.
          2. I usually agree with you, but one can run a debt-ie service it with the intention of bringing it down. Mr Grumpy
            1. Can you? Not a usage I’ve ever come across. But in any event it isn’t synonymous with ‘incur’!
  2. 15:52 … some ingenious and entertaining clues, methunk, with some extra thinking needed at the end for SHARE and APPLIED before the pennies dropped.

    COD to SHANGRI-LA for that brilliant surface.

  3. Much of this went in quite easily but I struggled with the remainder and eventually ran out of energy and resorted to aids for my LOI, SLATHERING, which to be honest I’m not sure I have ever seen before. Of course if I’d spotted ‘condemned’ as an anagrind I would surely have arrived at it.

    I start to lose interest in a puzzle if I have a trail of unparsed answers in my wake and there were already three today with AERIAL (unknown def needing to be checked) and INCUR and APPLIED (both biffed). Also my solving time for the bulk of the puzzle was well on its way to being doubled by the tailenders.

    Edited at 2019-04-25 04:53 am (UTC)

  4. 28 minutes for moi—it’s not often I come close to a blogger’s time, so thanks for the fluffery, Z!

    FOI 1a POLICE DOG and then fairly straightforward, though I always seem to spend longer on the bottom half than the top, even when I’m on the wavelength. LOI 27a APPLIED, with most of the time spent figuring out its parsing so I could be sure my guess was right. Enjoyed 20a’s surface, 29’s homophone and definition, and the charming 17d FLAMINGO.

  5. I did like the idea of ” cooker, perhaps” being an apple. I also wondered if 18ac might be one of our old friend Val’s double helixes but “division” did seem to be the sought after definition.
    I once stayed at a Swiss-owned hotel in Doha and noticed that the currency board on the reception desk referred to the “Swiss Frank”!
  6. 35 mins. And I Gestate yoghurt and granola.
    I liked it but did have a couple of MERs: Ok, you can run a risk and you can run up debts, but my eyebrow twitched. The other was whether typing is the same as writing. Does an author write a book or the person who types it? As I write this, am I writing it or typing it. Hmmm, I sense a petard hoisting situation.
    Thanks setter and Z.
      1. But is using a computer keyboard ‘typing’ in the sense of typewriter typing? Hmmm, as the man who sprinkled Bisto granules on his allotment said, “The plot thickens.”
  7. 11:20. I had put LAIISON and didn’t notice for a while so wasted a couple of minutes trying to justify BISHED at 6dn.
    A couple of unknowns today and some words I only know from doing these things: HOURI and DHOTI for instance.
  8. Good, solid middle-of-road stuff today, nothing too challenging although I had to solve 27ac without knowing what an IED was – sounds like a contraceptive device – and without managing to equate COS with leaves, salad always a bit of a blind spot for me.
  9. 26 minutes with LOI SLATHERING. FOI was POLICE DOG. I reached APPLIED erroneously, without thinking of using a Bramley Apple. The cooker was an APPL(iance)) to which the improvised explosive device was attached. It was cooking a Baked Alaska Bombe. COD to SHANGRI-LA. I enjoyed the Monosodium GLUTAMATE too. Enjoyable enough.Thank you Z and setter
  10. I wondered what ‘atrial’ had to do with ‘Ethereal’. Nothing at all it seems. Otherwise I spent too long on COSH, getting mentally stuck on ‘cha’ for ‘leaves’ and had no idea how APPLIED worked, trying to fit in ‘appli{ance} somehow.

    Nice to see the (probably unintended) nod to Anzac Day in 16d.

    A DNF in 52 minutes.

    Thanks to setter and blogger

  11. Pleasing and workmanlike puzzle, though with one or two which needed some confirmatory unpicking post-biff, such as APPLIED and POLICE DOG. DHOTI is on my list of Words to Remember, mostly to stop me getting it confused with DHOBI, which has happened before, though happily not possible with this wordplay.
    1. 2,000 years of Indian civilisation has resulted in me knowing dhoti, lathi, amah and bungalow. And I’m not sure about amahs.
  12. A pleasing 25 mins for me. I also had a MER at run=INCUR, but I suppose ‘run a tab’ would just about work. I really liked the surface and the neatness of 9a LIAISON, so it’s my COD. I saw PLEASE as a possibility for the ‘polite word’ but could not for the life of me get the clue to parse, so I left it until the very end — thanks for pointing out the flaming obvious, Z. I found the vocabulary range here very pleasing: I liked the mix of vernacular (SLATHERING, STODGE), learned (GESTATE, AERIAL) and exotic (DHOTI, HOURI).
    I have never heard of James Hilton, nor his ‘Lost Horizon’. But the 23 million house names attached to suburban bungalows meant this paradise home was a write-in.
    Thanks to the setter and to our blogger today.
  13. A rare under 15 minutes for Meldrew.

    FOI 7dn ESAU
    LOI 18ac SHARE
    COD 2dn LIBRARIANS
    WOD 14dn SLATHERING

    Many thanks to Barnes Commoners, Messrs. Holmes & Keeble for their endearing support.

    horryd East Molesey.

  14. Slow on the uptake after playing cards most of night and came to a slathering halt (I think of it as rabidly foaming but I suppose one can slather paint on) with only ‘bashed’ to sort out – fairly convinced it was right but not enough to enter it. Finally did so after 37 min. all told. Never did parse ‘down under’. Sometimes it’s all too much like hard work.
  15. 25 minutes, 21d my LOI, with a MER for aerial equalling ethereal. Also not keen on flaming in that sense but the bird was clear enough. Mrs K says in Lancashire you slather butter on bread.
  16. 16 mins. Quite a lot could go in unparsed, owing to obvious definitions (12 ac, 2 dn, 1 ac, 16 dn). Nice puzzle, though. Thanks, z and setter.
  17. 8m 21s for me. A fun puzzle – SLATHERED held me up with its neat anagram, and ‘English’ for once being used for all its letters.

    Not sure I’ve come across GLUT as a verb before.

  18. ….whatever my doctor says, and as Bolton Beer Festival was cancelled at the last minute I’m doing a short pub crawl in Huddersfield.

    Slow to get going, but picked up speed as I went on.

    Thanks to Z for parsing APPLIED (very clever !) And ANTITYPE (rather less so).

    FOI FRAME
    LOI ANTITYPE
    COD FLAMINGO
    TIME 11:11

  19. I found this one more approachable than the quickie today, and managed to do nearly all of it in a similar time – a bit over half an hour, which would be super-fast for me if I had actually finished it. Unfortunately I got completely stuck on 8d, with only two letters to go, but just couldn’t see what was going on in the latter half of the answer. So obvious when you see the explanation, as always.

    I couldn’t parse 1a or 14d (didn’t see condemned as the anagrind) at all, and only understood half of 27a (the apple part) so they were all biffed.

    So, a DNF but I really enjoyed the journey.

    BTW on the subject of dictionaries, would the Digger’s purchase of Collins in the late 80s have had anything to do with which dictionary become the Times’go to publication?

    I forgot to say: many thanks to Z8 for the highly entertaining and clear explanations 🙂

    Edited at 2019-04-25 12:05 pm (UTC)

    1. Thanks for the nod in the QC. I don’t often get round to the 15×15 online – often printing and solving on and off. However, I really enjoyed this one and went for loi cosh (no other club would come to mind) with held breath at 35 mins. Slathering (slathered in sun cream) was familiar but biffed a couple – including applied which, now I get it, I give cod. Thanks to setter and Z8.
    2. I doubt it .. for the Sunday Murdoch Mephisto, Chambers is specified. For the daily cryptic, it can be any one of the COD, Collins or Chambers, at the Editor’s whim.
  20. A testing QC this morning prepared me for this. MY FOI was LIBRARIANS which gave me a lot of letters and a sense of being on the setter’s wavelength. I needed that for 8d much later on. At the end my gaps were in the NE and SW. ANTITYPE was a big help once I got it. The alluring female was going to be TRUDI ( T= time and Short =Rudish ,then ditch SH). Once BATTED became BASHED I got HOURI. Last two were GESTATE and COSH.
    Enjoyed this puzzle. David

    Edited at 2019-04-25 12:15 pm (UTC)

  21. Couldn’t get airborne with this – my fault not the setter’s. I was completely hung up on getting the Doge to do something while Danny Kaye’s court jester danced in my head. Also failed to parse LIAISON. Our local Panda Palace advertises itself as offering “no MSG” on the menu but it took me a while to see GLUTAMATE – good one that. 17 on the nose.
  22. I’ve had a bad morning, with my laptop causing all sorts of issues running slowly and needing constant use of task manager to kill recalcitrant programs. I’ve also been catching up on the snooker, so I’ve been very distracted. The QC took me over 23 minutes today and this one took 43:47. I’ve just switched to my desktop as the laptop ground to a halt yet again, even though it allows me to use Remote Desktop to access the desktop. Infuriating! I almost suspect that there’s a rogue virus creating bitcoins at times, but Kaspersky assures me there’s not. Anyway I struggled with the puzzle but got there eventually. Never spotted the anagram at 14d, but knew the word. BASHED was my LOI with ASH taking an age to resolve itself as dust. DHOTI was my FOI. A good puzzle which I was not in the mood to enjoy. Thanks setter and Z.
  24. I don’t think the Times has a named ‘go-to’ publication. Generally usages will be in either Collins or ODO (my personal go-to dictionaries) but quite often not both.
  25. There’s a bit of confusion in z’s explanation of 7 down. Esau was the son of Rebecca and Isaac: he was Jacob’s brother.
  26. Not sure about the time as I did this on my computer then went to finish it on the laptop only to find an unfilled grid. In my haste to refill it I typed SHALE so 1 wrong. Completely missed the clever anagram for SLATHERING and APPLIED went in with a shrug, otherwise a satisfying but relatively easy offering today.
  27. Well, either my brain has grown another neuron recently, or this and yesterday’s have been fairly gentle. I suspect the latter. Twenty-three minutes, with my LOsI being SLATHERING (I only spotted the anagram after the event) and SHARE.

    DHOTI would have eluded me, had I not encountered it in the Times previously; as a word, it looks utterly implausible and is reminiscent of ‘ghoti’, which the smarter text-to-speech software knows is pronounced “fish”.

  29. Got through with out any real hold ups, except I didn’t bother to parse the POLICE DOG, and APPLIED took a while as I sought a different kind of cooker for a long time. Regards.
  30. Am an infrequent solver of the 15×15 in the c1 hour I allow myself, so was customarily chuffed to have done this one, only to find I’d been beaten by COSH. I had looked at this, but missed the lettuce, and instead opted for CASH (club = C for = AS hotel = H, for some reason that I was never satisfied with, not in the order printed), thinking leaves might be some sort of slang for notes. Bugger. Thanks setter and blogger for putting me right.

    Mighty

  31. 22:50 I settled comfortably into this puzzle like a favourite armchair, familiar vocab and devices all fitting together nicely. At one point I’m sure a PB was definitely on. But I got hung up on a few in the SW (flamingo, fish and aerial were all a bit tricky) and my mind started to wander a bit towards the end so my time spun out to over 20 mins. A very pleasant way to spend 20 mins.
  32. With this rate of progress (30 mins off yesterday’s), I’ll be doing this sub 5 minutes before you can say “Hey, Ximenes, pour me another!”… NOT! I know from bitter experience how exponentially harder things get the more you go at them. Joking aside, I was really chuffed to have done this so quickly, by my standards. I remember the first Times crossword I did took me about a month on and off, so being able to do it practically in one sitting is a whole new and manageable experience. The next frontier for me is really to put aside the dictionary and try to solve with just my brain. I wonder how far I am away from that; days? months? years? never?

    As I mentioned on the other thread I’ve just got hold of Don Manley’s book and have already read a chunk of it. Really good reading.

    I loved the clues in this crossword, with 26 Leaves=Cos being a classic. 4 was great as it was a word I either DNK or maybe heard once but would never use it, yet the wordplay revealed it. I said yesterday that that was rare, and I believe it is, but there’s that effect that once you mention something you start seeing it everywhere, if you know what I mean – perhaps there’s a word for that?

    Love the way police dogs are regarded as staff – try to give them a medal and all they want is food!

    Thanks to setter and bloggers.

    3 month challenge: 6/8.

    Edited at 2019-04-25 09:46 pm (UTC)

  34. Thanks setter and z
    Got off to a good start with this one after immediately seeing DHOTI at 4d, then EMBARGO and PLEASE. Worked my way through the rest across a number of shortish sessions – often seeing the definition and enjoying the task of seeing why.
    Then came the SLATHERING / APPLIED crossers. They seemed to be the only realistic answers but for the life of me I couldn’t understand why. Finally, this morning, the glaringly obvious anagram fodder emerged at 16d and went down the APPLiance + IED (after checking that it was a bomb) to finish it off.
    Enjoyed the challenge a lot across a number of days and a bit over the hour of solving time.

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