Times 26955 – Italians, and not the Trump White House (although it’s a idea!)

Author   piquetPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Another cracking Wednesday puzzle to blog; unravelling some of the parsing took a bit of the old
lateral thinking, although there was plenty of scope for BIFD. [I once heard speak the good Dr de Bono, he is still with us, aged 84, one of two candidates I can come up with when I’m asked to name a famous Maltese person. The other one is a snooker player.]
I confess to having to look up 12a for confirmation and enlightenment at the end, although he was guessable, and also to check the real connection between GLEE and the answer to 8d my LOI. My CoD is 13a because I stared it for ages wondering how the SCREAM came into it, then a Doh! moment arrived and it was obvious. 25 minutes and a few more to do the post mortem.
I hope you enjoyed this as much as I did, thank you Mr Setter.

Across
1 Help for viewer turning over colossal gypsum exhibits (8)
SPYGLASS – Well hidden reversed in COLO(SSAL GYPS)UM.
5 A great success, not using public house as place for reception (6)
ATRIUM – A TRIUMPH loses its pub i.e. PH as on OS maps.
10 Am endlessly pressed — ideally making this comment? (2,4,3,6)
MY LIPS ARE SEALED – Bun in the answer then work out the fodder, (AM PRESSE IDEALLY)* drop the D as ‘endlessly pressed’.
11 Double whiskey formerly had after last of port (7)
TWOFOLD – T (last of port), W (whiskey), OF OLD (formerly).
12 Italian dramatist performing one at the end of The Archers? (7)
GOLDONI – ON = performing, I = one, after GOLD I can only see as the bullseye on the target therefore the ‘end’ archers are aiming for. There’s no-one in Ambridge of that name, as far as I know, and I know them all, as Mrs K is addicted. Apparently GOLDONI was a noted Italian playwright.
13 A consequence of murders: scream (8)
OFFSHOOT – Doh! OFFS = murders, HOOT = scream, as in ‘she’s a hoot / a scream’.
15 Bones bend when put back (5)
SACRA – Reverse of ARC AS = bend when. The sacrum is a triangular bone at the base of the spine.
18 Grey governess of Acton (5)
AGNES – Agnes Grey the first novel written by Anne Brontë under the pen name Acton Bell. Agnes was a governess, obviously.
20 Men after sailor’s rum (8)
ABNORMAL – AB = sailor, then two blokes, NORM and AL.
23 Italy’s star man left goalie floundering (7)
GALILEO – (L GOALIE)*.
25 Grab boy’s pants, infant’s costume (7)
BABYGRO – (GRAB BOY)*. Babygro is a Trademark, but now seems to have crept into dictionaries as a generic.
26 Frequently banged up, I’m finally free at the eleventh hour (2,3,4,2,4)
IN THE NICK OF TIME – If I were IN THE NICK OFT, I’d be frequently in jail. Add IM and (FRE)E.
27 Wicket will accommodate your spin (6)
GYRATE – YR = your, insert into GATE = wicket.
28 Reacted angrily, being stood up (8)
BRISTLED – Double definition.

Down
1 Arab, maybe, taking up our online edition? (6)
SEMITE – Reverse E-Times being the online edition of our paper.
2 React to pain, perhaps, failing to complete delicate catch (9)
YELLOWFIN – YELL OW! = react to pain, perhaps; add FIN(E). Catch as in yellowfin tuna.
3 Computers from China, on reflection, best (7)
LAPTOPS – PAL = China, mate, reverse it add TOPS = best.
4 The way a hand becomes steady (5)
STAID – ST(reet), AID = a hand.
6 Runs to stop rat on one’s garden frame (7)
TRELLIS – TELL = rat on, insert R, add IS (one’s). Derived from the Latin TRILIX, not named after Mrs Trellis of North Wales, our frequent correspondent to ISIHAC.
7 Current, unending depression round White House (5)
IGLOO – I = current, GLOO(M) = unending depression,There’s a topical Trump joke here, waiting to be cracked, but I can’t just put it together.
8 Something akin to glee, seeing red port, large (8)
MADRIGAL – MAD = seeing red, RIGA a Baltic port, L(arge). GLEE, aside from the usual meaning, also can refer to part song and be a synonym for madrigal singing.
9 Build up layer, inserting cube (8)
HEIGHTEN – Insert EIGHT, two cubed, into HEN, a layer.
14 Passion, maybe, from speaker, over the moon (8)
ORATORIO – ORATOR = speaker, IO = a moon of Jupiter. Passion as in e.g. Bach’s works.
16 Barbecue daily, with quiz (9)
CHARGRILL – CHAR = daily, cleaner, GRILL = quiz.
17 Raising racket sport with judge (8)
JANGLING – J for judge, ANGLING a sport.
19 With no financial problems? That’s not to be sniffed at! (7)
SOLVENT – Double definition, the second one whimsical, or advisory.
21 Turns away from experts in bible study? (7)
REBUFFS –  R.E. BUFFS wold be those experts.
22 Harry to close what’s left of joint? (3-3)
DOG-END – DOG = harry, pursue; END = close.
24 After selling up I should leave (5)
LATER – RETAIL = selling, reverse and remove the I.
25 Odd bits of blackberry one found in tub in nursery? (5)
BAKER – Take the alternate letters of B l A c K b E r R y and get one of the three men in a tub, the butcher, the baker and the candlestick maker.

56 comments on “Times 26955 – Italians, and not the Trump White House (although it’s a idea!)”

  1. 59 minutes, and I was frankly stunned to come here and find that the apparently-random letters that seemed to feel most right got me both 12a GOLDONI and LOI 18a AGNES. I’ve never read any Brontë, had no idea what Acton had to do with anything, and the Italian only rang the vaguest of bells, presumably from a previous puzzle…

    Thanks for the explanations, Pip, of which I needed many! Enjoyed 5a and 9d. FOI SPYGLASS but it all got a bit harder after that!

    Edited at 2018-02-07 07:37 am (UTC)

  2. 22:00 … not helped by the hidden SPYGLASS being one of my last in.

    Brilliant stuff, and very satisfying, apart from the few things where my lack of GK (MADRIGAL) or brains (BAKER) forced me to rely on guesswork until coming here.

    Thanks, Pip, and setter

    The “round White House” (I think that’s the def., Pip) has to be COD

  3. A bit of unparsed guesswork for GOLDONI and AGNES for me as well and I couldn’t work out BAKER either. Eventually home in around 37 minutes. Thought that ‘glee’ would turn out to be à la ‘village glee club’ without knowing exactly what it meant. I liked IGLOO, for which I had ’round White House’ as the def. too and BRISTLED, one of those words I like.

    Just finished in time before heading off to work, so a good way to start the day.

    Thanks to setter and blogger.

  4. 33 mins (except for the GOLD)- DNF.
    All while enjoying a home made Fat Rascal. I know, fantastic isn’t it. Mrs M has reverse engineered the recipe to a tee.
    I really enjoyed this – with some brilliant surfaces and clever wordplay. I could even forgive the two random men in 20ac.
    I smiled at the completely TLS quality of 18ac.
    And then a hint that things might not be perfect – with the awkward 17dn – and my undoing: Goldoni. No way was I going to invent GOLD from the end of The Archers and I am ashamed to say I don’t know the chap.
    Otherwise an exemplary puzzle IMHO.
    Thanks setter and Pip.
  5. No solving time as I struggled with it and gave up before retiring for the night and then completed it without too much difficulty this morning when my mind was refreshed. I failed to parse BAKER though.

    His name didn’t leap out at me until I had some checkers but I knew of the prolific Italian playwright and librettist, Carlo Goldoni (1767-1793) having seen two productions of his perhaps most famous play which in translation is known as ‘The Servant of Two Masters’. More recently it was revived and adapted by the RNT as ‘One Man, Two Guvnors’ which was a massive hit on the Southbank, on transfer to the West End and then on Broadway.

    Edited at 2018-02-07 08:37 am (UTC)

    1. I was surprised to get AGNES right as I had no idea about the clue but I couldn’t see anything else that fitted. However, I failed on GOLDONI wrongly presuming the “end of the Archers” was going to be an unknown term for an arrow tip.

  6. This was completed in a thirty minute car ride into Shanghai Centre. A slow start ended in a gallop.
    I really enjoyed this one.

    FOI 3dn LAPTOPS

    LOI 25dn BAKER – unparsed – obscure or what!

    COD 5ac ATRIUM also enjoyed 2dn YELLOWFIN

    WOD 25ac BABYGRO

    For 11ac I was keen on DUOPOLY! but the SEMITE at 1dn ruled that out.

    Breakfast – almond croissant and a Starbucks Frothaccino.

    Edited at 2018-02-07 09:05 am (UTC)

  7. DNF in 35 mins. Two short. Jangling, which I should have got but I had little faith in Agnes, and Semite.
  8. That’s two toughies in a row. At least 1d brought back memories. In the early 80s when I worked in Riyadh, I bought a Concise OED from the English-language section of a book store. I discovered that the word ‘arab’ had been carefully obscured by a piece of white paper but by holding it up to the light, the reason for (self?) censorship became clear. Included in the definition was the phrase ‘one of the semitic peoples’. You can’t go round saying Arabs & Jews are racially similar!!
  9. 62 minutes, and pleased to get my unknowns GOLDONI, AGNES and BABYGRO, parsing all bar the second. JANGLING was very cunning, I thought, and the whole experience the cruciverbal equivalent of hot yoga.
  10. Early times on the blog and already a steady pattern. Good chewy puzzle, lots of fun, who was GOLDONI, why AGNES and what has BAKER got to do with a nursery?

    I guessed GOLDONI, had a vague memory of AGNES from somewhere and just relied on the easy cryptic for BAKER. Well blogged Pip

  11. Did not know GOLDONI which was LOI. YELLOWFIN also unknown. Did this while watching England collapse in the twenty over match against Australia, so no time to offer, but it felt like a forty or more minute job. I always used to confuse a BABYGRO with a Growbag when the kids were young. We didn’t get that many tomatoes. COD to GALILEO. I received a nice ‘share’ on Facebook yesterday, purporting to be from The Flat Earth Society and claiming it would be read all around the globe. A tricky puzzle I didn’t feel confident with.Thank you Pip and setter.
    1. To confuse matters further you can now get ‘grobags’, which are a kind of sleeping bag for little ones.

      Edited at 2018-02-07 11:01 am (UTC)

  12. Lots of entertaining stuff here, and my general knowledge proved just about up to snuff, if not exact – for instance, I sort of knew the playwright, but thought he was called GOLBONI, so needed to examine the wordplay to set myself right there; and I knew there was an Agnes Grey, but couldn’t quite put my finger on who she was (a mediaeval witch? Earl Grey’s authoress sister?). We probably have enough solving-related acronyms, but I would say this was JOE, just obscure enough.
    1. Well, I hope the acronym doesn’t take. 32’15 but an unthinking Samite. Unaware of Babygro, alas not now. Liked the twist in ‘over the moon’, and a touch of edge here and there – a thin smile to be sensed at 10 ac.
  13. 10:12. I would have been under 8 minutes if it hadn’t been for 4dn, so I was obviously very much on the wavelength for this. Perhaps not surprisingly I enjoyed it immensely: as topicaltim says, exactly the right level of obscurity*, but also some nice original touches and lots of wordplay-based solving.

    *i.e. stuff I happen to know

  14. 27 min, with 20ac LOI, but 14dn was what held me up till I got which moon was referred to. The play wright’s name rang a faint bell, while Grey immediately made me think AGNES – however couldn’t see how to parse either clue.
    1dn was a salutary reminder that for the pedantic the term ‘anti-Semite’ is universally misused.

    Edited at 2018-02-07 11:31 am (UTC)

      1. Yes. I would say, rather, that it is a misnomer. Many such are thriving and widespread.
        1. Whereas I would say it is a perfectly well-understood term, and pedantic objection to it is a variant of the etymological fallacy.
          1. I am not objecting to it at all. Live and let live, I say. I am merely classifying it.

            Edited at 2018-02-07 09:52 pm (UTC)

            1. Sorry, I didn’t mean to target you with the accusation of pedantry. I do disagree with the classification though: word is just words, they mean what they mean and a generally accepted meaning cannot be a misnomer.
              1. According to Wikipedia: “Misnomer” does not mean “misunderstanding” or “popular misconception”, and many misnomers remain in legitimate use (that is, being a misnomer does not always make a name incorrect).

                This is an interesting entry. The list of “Sources of misnomers” covers a lot of ground.

                1. It is an interesting entry, and certainly under this broad definition ‘anti-Semite’ qualifies. Most definitions (and my understanding) of the word ‘misnomer’ involve the concept of error, though.
                  1. It is an interesting entry, and now, should I want to be pedantic, I can say that “laser” is more than a bog-standard acronym… it’s an “anacronym” (not to be confused with “anachronym”, you understand). Another example would be “ok”, but what does that make “okay”? An ananacronym, I’m going for.

                    Edited at 2018-02-08 12:30 am (UTC)

  15. Defeated by GOLDONI, partly because I was trying to match G_L_ to “The Archers” rather than “the end of The Archers”. I didn’t think to make “at” on its own to indicate putting ON+I at the end and avoid “the end” having double duty. I correctly guessed AGNES, without knowing the book. Otherwise it was a great puzzle, full of some very clever clues. Thanks, Pip, for the full decoding.
  16. 11.26 – vaguely knew AGNES Grey from somewhere (no idea where, never have, or intend to, read any of the Brontës), and GOLDONI from wordplay.

    Also enjoyed the round house, also the painful fish, both good picks among a large number of excellent clues, that would appear (given that it’s nearly 1pm and I’m 18th on the leaderboard) to be right up my street. More like this in November that’s what I say – thanks to the setter and to Pip for explaining the bits I didn’t know.


  17. As Myrtilus points out the clue to AGNES at 18a requires some TLS type knowledge of Anne Bronte and her nom de plume.

    This was only a write-in for me because I just happened to have completed a Times Cryptic back number last night from 28/12/2007:

    14d Acton governess wastes energy (gas) (5,4)
    AGNES GREY

    At least that one gave us some anagram fodder and the components of the name are not obscure ones.

    The Times crossword does assume some level of education in literature, the arts and sciences. Now – thanks to the Times Crossword past and present – I am a bit better educated on the subject of the Bronte Sisters.

    1. The clue is undoubtedly a bit TLSish but I don’t think this knowledge is required. I had completely forgotten about Anne Brontë’s nom de plume, and I wouldn’t even have been able to tell you which of the sisters wrote Agnes Grey. However just knowing that it was the name of a novel and the checking letters got me to the answer without much difficulty.
  18. I have seen Anne Bronte’s grave, in Scarborough, which gives her age at death as 28, although she was 29 – this was an error which survived correction by Charlotte, there originally being five errors on the stone. Brilliant clue, not seen before, so definitely my COD. 27′, thanks Pip and setter.

    Edited at 2018-02-07 01:41 pm (UTC)

  19. I only complete about 40% of Times puzzles yet I found this all fell into place easily in about 30 minutes. Lucky guess with the Italian dramatist but Agnes known. So it’s satisfying to complete what you experts rate as reasonably chewy. I was going to think about a joke involving The Donald and something with only one big exit but frankly couldn’t be a@@ed. Great blog and thanks setter.
  20. As others have noted – this one had a TLS flavour. It took me far too long to sort out BABYGRO and I went smartly onto the wrong track with ORATORIO, looking for “rhapsodic” or “ecstatic” and it took a while to fix the switches. At least there was nothing coming the other direction. Came to this late because the Club site was buggy this morning – at least I hope it was that and not my computer. 23.08
  21. I found this tough going and was mightily miffed that after 47:03 of careful analysis of the clues and working out(ie guessing) of the unknown AGNES, I ruined it with a typo at 1d: SIMITE, despite telling myself it was ETIMES up. Botheration! Mind you I needed confirmation of GOLDONI anyway, so I suppose it’s karma. Thanks setter and Pip.
  22. Struggled, but got through in 45 mins. Had carelessly biffed Twosome at 11 ac, and had to sort that out before I could get STAID, so unpicking that wasted about 10 mins. In a convoluted bit of thinking, and given the presence of the question mark, I construed Archers as rainbows, with gold at the end of them. Wide of the mark there, but still ended up with the right answer. Nice blog, thanks!
  23. About 12 minutes here, seems I had the same experiences as most with a BABYGRO from wordplay, AGNES and GOLDONI in as guesses (though the playwright was familiar, since I was just in a show that made fun of commedia dell’arte)
  25. Felt reasonably happy at pressing submit after 11.38 but had failed to enter 17d. Makes a change from a typo. Just my cup of tea overall though I did think AGNES a bit unfair on those without the required literary knowledge, unlike GOLDONI which could at least be assembled from the parts.
    1. It’s a common abbreviation in electronics/physics, possibly most famously in Ohm’s Law, where V = IR (voltage = current * resistance).
  27. No problems with the GK here. I knew the Bronte, the playwright and the butcher, baker and candlestick-maker. Clocked out at 33 minutes. Re BABYGRO: I was TV catching-up with “Spiral” last night and reached the episode where Laure was chasing round Paris trying to buy a Babygro for her newborn. The French word, which I can’t remember, was translated as “crossover” but it was basically the same thing. No BABYGROs in France then?
    1. I love that show. (Its French name makes a lot more sense than “Spiral”). Thanks for alerting me that the sixth season has begun airing! I will probably have to order discs. When I looked for a French word for an infant’s PJs, I came up with “grenouillère,” which derives from a word meaning to splash around in the water like a frog, the English equivalent of which is given as “onesie.” BABYGRO was one of a few unknowns for me in this puzzle (mainly in the clues, not the answers).

      Edited at 2018-02-08 04:14 am (UTC)

      1. Yes,it’s a great show. I agree that the English title doesn’t make sense. The situation is more like gears and cogs turning than a spiral. It’s been on BBC 4 for the past 6 weeks and is now finished and available for catch-up or as a boxed set. 12 episodes in all. No falling off of standards from previous series (as often happens).
  28. A late addition to the comments – about 40 mins of enjoyable slog. My BULLONI was met with a smirk by Google and somehow didn’t think of gold till the extra letter became available. Ditto to the AGNES comment above. We scientists can’t all be Bronte experts as well…
  29. Playing guess the setter is probably a mug’s game, I once convinced myself midway through a Jumbo that the solution just entered, Lucia Di Lammermoor, meant the setter had to be a certain person – even though that would preclude all other setters from ever using perfectly serviceable Donizetti operas in their solutions – and that I was therefore going to find it a much harder undertaking. However, in this one we have the TLS flavour of 18ac and 12ac, the wry political humour of 7dn (a notable feature of some Sunday puzzles) and to cap it all, a name in 22dn. Hmmm, I’m probably completely wrong but I wonder…. I did most of this in 35 mins but an incorrect “twosome” at 11ac meant I couldn’t get 4dn. I went back to the puzzle after work, identified the error, corrected it and got 4dn. I thought the end of the Archers was very good.
  30. Beaten by the Italians, which must be one of the few times that phrase has seen service. NHO GOLDONI.

    AGNES was also a no-hoper, not helped by my failing to consider J as an abbreviation for judge, which put paid to JANGLING. Less excusable was my failure to get STAID, despite having all the checkers, but I put that down to a case of what-the-pointitis caused by my other three failures.

  31. Late to the party again, having had a day trip to York yesterday. I’d just like to add my appreciation for this fine puzzle and entertaining blog. Like others, I had to trust to the wordplay for GOLDONI and AGNES just vaguely rang a bell.. but what other name could it be anyway? Loved OFFSHOOT and BABYGRO. 16:22

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