Times 26,981: Priests and Cannibals, Prehistoric Animals

Author   VerlainePosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
I’m going to say this *wasn’t* the long-awaited pure stinker, but looking at the current state of the leaderboard, it does appear to have met the requisite level of difficulty for a Friday, and the Snitch confirms that it has pushed most solvers so far over well over their average time. For my part I finished just over the 10 minute park, held up in particular by a couple of clues: 2dn where I hesitated over PIE having anything to do with confusion, and my LOI 19ac where I stared long and hard at _O_R_T drawing a blank before resorting to an alphabet search. Rather embarrassingly as the very first thing I’d thought on my first pass over the clue was “6 letters, solver, could be HOLMES”.

My FOI was 15ac, rather strangely as I couldn’t have told you what the word actually means before today, but having thought of the DG, the answer fell quickly into place. The bottom half of the puzzle was then completed without too many speed bumps, and then I returned to finish off the top, which I have to say would probably have been just as easy if the anagram at 1ac had resolved itself immediately in my mind. As it was, the initial T plus the enumeration was certainly enough to biff the rest in.

I think the vocabulary level of this puzzle is just right for a good Times 15×15, some lovely rare words without resorting to anything dredged up from the lightless depths of the dictionary into which only setters of barred puzzles dare venture. The surfaces are all fine and dandy too without anything jumping out at me particularly. I’ll give my COD to 1dn despite the egregious wrongness in the wordplay: toast is for life not just for myrtilus000‘s breakfast! Thanks to the setter.

ACROSS
1 Only part of the problem is eg the fibre-optic, sadly (3,2,3,7)
TIP OF THE ICEBERG – (IS EG THE FIBRE-OPTIC*) [“sadly”]

9 Act timidly as cat’s-paw (9)
PUSSYFOOT – more or less a double def

10 Lower barrier enclosing empty space (5)
BASER – BAR [barrier] “enclosing” S{pac}E

11 In method of access, university going for good pay back here (6)
AVENGE – AVEN{u->G}E [method of access, mutatis mutandis]

12 Benefit includes free new playing field (8)
GRIDIRON – GIRO [benefit] “includes” RID [free] + N [new]

13 Sound quality of wood finally being turned (6)
TIMBRE – TIMB{E<->R} [wood, mutatis mutandis]

15 Head of BBC wearing curious sleeve that shouldn’t unravel (8)
SELVEDGE – DG [head of BBC] “wearing” (SLEEVE*) [“curious”]. This is a distaff rather than a sword word, so unfamiliar to a macho type like myself, but it is literally the edge on a woven fabric that prevents unravelling.

18 Rabbit’s little problem: caught by predator (8)
CHITCHAT – HITCH [little problem] “caught by” CAT [predator]

19 No time for wildly enjoyable event about to be hosted by prize solver (6)
POIROT – RIO{t} [wildly enjoyable event, m.m.] reversed, “hosted by” POT [cup]

21 Top up, backing partner to drink litre (8)
PULLOVER – UP reversed + LOVER [partner], to “drink” L [litre]

23 With unfulfilled potential, chap starts to question universal education (6)
MANQUE – MAN [chap] + Q{uestion} U{niversal} E{ducation}

26 Report of British members losing way in German League (5)
HANSA – HANSA{rd} [report of British members (of parliament), losing RD = way]

27 A guilty man, I cried uncontrollably after charge withdrawn (9)
PARRICIDE – (I CRIED*) [“uncontrollably”] after RAP [charge] reversed

28 Book on unfinished temple has unusual origin (15)
PARTHENOGENESIS – GENESIS [book] on PARTHENO{n} [“unfinished” temple]

DOWN
1 In part of ship, breakfast food served around wrong time of day? (7)
TOPMAST – TOAST [breakfast food] served around PM [wrong time of day (for breakfast food)]. I must interject here that if you only eat toast for breakfast you are not living live the verlaine way…

2 Type that’s confused about way in mountain track (5)
PISTE – PIE [type that’s confused] about ST [way]. I hesitated over the definition of “pie” here but it can mean “an indiscriminate mixture of printing types”, so there you go. Viz also the Magpie barred puzzle magazine perhaps (in a good way).

3 Be transported by a cigar, strange hallucinogen (3,6)
FLY AGARIC – FLY [be transported] + A + (CIGAR*) [“strange”]

4 Jump round ring; shouldn’t one jump through it? (4)
HOOP – HOP [jump] round O [ring], semi-&lit

5 One seabird in trap where people surf? (8)
INTERNET – I [one] + TERN [seabird] in NET [trap]

6 Fix smart girl and yours truly up (5)
EMBED – DEB + ME [smart girl | yours truly], the whole reversed

7 Is ready to edit royal film (4,5)
EASY RIDER – (IS READY*) [“to edit”] + ER [royal]

8 Wine-producing area has some striking iron deposits (7)
GIRONDE – hidden in {strikin}G IRON DE{posits}

14 Addict under control in a month (9)
MAINLINER – IN LINE [under control] in MAR [a month]

16 Opposed to solitary confinement, ignoring small infringement (9)
VIOLATION – V [opposed to] + I{s}OLATION [solitary confinement, “ignoring” S = small]

17 Pointer the continental snake tailed (5,3)
LASER PEN – LA [the “continental”] + SERPEN{t} [snake “tailed”]. Now that I go to London Saturday crossword meetups once or twice a month I see quite a lot of the setter Serpent, and a good time that always is too.

18 Nick is landed with hard work (3,4)
COP SHOP – COPS H OP [is landed with | hard | work]

20 Greek hero seen oddly in America (7)
THESEUS – S{e}E{n} in THE US [America]

22 Surprised reaction about publication in market town (5)
OMAGH – OH! [surprised reaction] about MAG [publication]. Not sure if the market is the first thing that springs to mind when considering Omagh, but presumably it does have a good one?

24 Throwing game drops ball and walks out (5)
QUITS – QU{o}ITS [throwing game, “dropping” O = ball]

25 Queen boards large sailing ship (4)
BRIG – R [queen] “boards” BIG [large]

65 comments on “Times 26,981: Priests and Cannibals, Prehistoric Animals”

  1. 40 mins of fun with yoghurt, granola, etc.
    1ac reminded me of the snail in the snail race who shed his shell in an attempt to go faster. But it only made him sluggish. The winner received a piece of lettuce, looked disappointed, but was told it was only the tip of the iceberg.
    Two hold ups today: (a) pondering for ages over why Pie was confusing (DNK), and (b)discussing with Mrs M the precise meaning of Selvedge and its non-unravelableness.
    Mostly I liked: Toast!, Pussyfoot, Poirot, Cop Shop and Violation (COD).
    Thanks fun setter and V.

  2. I’d like to think my uninterrupted time would have been in the low 20s, but in the nature of things, with solving speeding up after a break, that may be wishful thinking.
    HANSA in on trust: I knew the Hanseatic League (who doesn’t?) but not the additional versions.
    POIROT my CoD for its tricky definition (solver is usually me) and multilayered wordplay.
    Wiki doesn’t make much of OMAGH as a market town, though it obviously used to be, but fitting in a reference to it as the home of the Western Education and Library Board might have been a step too far for our setter, not to mention us.
    I’m with V on TOAST (hoorah!) as the not-just-for-breakfast food, but none of the other breakfast foods seemed to help.
    1. I always mentally justify HANSA by reference to the airline Lufthansa, which is presumably some kind of… Flying League?
  3. I, too, had to alphabet trawl for POIROT as my LOI and smiled after HOLMES beat me yesterday. COD to HANSA but I liked FLY AGARIC. Lovely crossword to finish the week. I am still smiling at Myrtilus’s sluggish snail.
  4. 18:52 … nice challenge which made me feel cleverer than I am.

    Quite a few clues where I wasn’t sure of my ground (OMAGH, SELVEDGE, HANSA, MANQUE, PARRICIDE) but the wordplay and checkers led inexorably to the answers.

    Like V, yesterday’s Holmes clue caused me to start out considering that for 19a.

    In a crowded field, I’ll give a joint COD nod to the two Grecian clues, THESEUS and PARTHENOGENESIS

    Praise be the setter, and Myrtilus, who continues to take the gentle art of punning to unsuspected depths

  5. Finished only just under an hour but 1ac was a write-in and most of the RH side went in easily enough. I even knew SELVEDGE was a word if not exactly what it is.

    Cracker of cases yesterday and ‘solver’ today. Are we working our way through all the fictional detectives? Actually, come to think of it, ‘solver’ would be a rather good definition of Morse.

    PISTE was my LOI, not helped by not knowing the required definition of PIE and in the end I just assumed that it might have a general meaning of something that’s confused or messy. ‘He made a pie of it’, for example, in the same way as ‘hash’ can be used.

    Edited at 2018-03-09 08:52 am (UTC)

  6. Just in under the proverbial, with occasional pauses to despair of ever finishing. POIROT LOI, after finally figuring out VIOLATION. No idea why PISTE, so thank you, V. DNK GIRO, or at least didn’t know that it was a benefit of some sort; and DNK that FLY AGARIC is hallucenogenic; in fact, I don’t think I could have told you what it is. But of course having the word in one’s head is half the battle. I don’t know how much longer it might have taken me had not COP SHOP been part of a recent clue; it’s not a term I’m familiar with, nor is COP in the relevant sense. COD to POIROT.
    1. FLY AGARIC is easily recognisable visually at least – it’s that red toadstool with white spots that is pretty much the universal mental emoji for poisonous mushrooms.
  7. Oh dear! DNF after getting HOLMES early yesterday, I failed to spot M.POIROT today. Very IKEAN 13 word clue!

    Did the good Lord Verlaine turn up yesterday? That was the stinker.

    FOI 9ac PUSSYFOOT
    COD 18dn COP SHOP
    WOD 26ac PARTHENOGENESIS

    Another double cross grid.

    1. I did do yesterday’s but it was coming home from the pub so I assumed it was me, not it, being stinko. As I recall my time was very similar for that one and this, somewhere between 10 and 11 minutes, and I did this one on a clear head and an unusually good night’s sleep!

      Edited at 2018-03-09 10:03 am (UTC)

  8. 14:10. Super puzzle. I slowed myself down by mis-biffing LIGHT PEN and getting OMAGH mixed up with Armagh. Fingers crossed at the end for the unknown (and to my mind rather Mephistoish) SELVEDGE and a serious lack of confidence that it isn’t ‘Parthanon’.
    I’m a bit surprised at the lack of familiarity with the printer’s PIE. I thought it was a crossword staple.
    Thanks to Myrtilus for the Dad joke. I’m looking forward to inducing some serious eye-roll later.
          1. Oh right. A dad joke is a cheesy joke calculated to induce eyeroll in teenagers.
    2. A man goes to a Halloween party with a woman on his back. The host asks him, “And what are you?” The man says, “I’m a snail.” The host says, “And who’s that on your back?” And the man says, “That’s Michelle!”
  9. Enjoyed this a lot, although there was stuff I didn’t know, such as SELVEDGE and FLY AGARIC. I was very slow onto MAINLINER (maybe because I’ve never done it), while I reckoned PIE must have that mixed meaning in PIEBALD, so PISTE went in with reasonable confidence. 53 minutes.

    COD to POIROT.

    BTW, I first read the breakfast as OATS, for which I’m blaming Myrtilus.

  10. Chewy, but tasty, and nothing hard to get down. I also wanted to find Holmes again, disguised more cleverly. I have been trying to convince an adamant Anonymous all night that the previous, uh, case was at least technically defensible. I didn’t know what was going on with the cryptic of HANSA at all, and I will spare you my outlandish theory, which I am quite relieved to find falsified.
  11. 35 minutes, surprised that all was correct. SELVEDGE unknown, a PARRICIDE has certainly plenty to be guilty about, HANSA was derived from HANSEATIC without checking the entry in Hansard, and the unknown FLY AGARIC slavishly constructed without confidence. The little grey cells worked overtime once POIROT arrived and changed Perseus to THESEUS. I was lost in a maze of my own making at that stage, still 90% submerged despite FOI TIP OF THE ICEBERG. COD to the simply elegant PUSSYFOOT and the complex PARTHENOGENESIS jointly. Good challenge, but never keen on drug clues. A MAINLINER should be a train that a Trainspotting film is made about..Thank you V and setter.

  12. 24′, good for a Friday. DNK SELVEDGE. POIROT LOI. Knew MANQUE from French only. COD PARTHENOGENESIS. Thanks verlaine and setter.
  13. Citizen’s arrest for that. A weekend in the Naughty Chair!
    And why Halloween or am I being sluggish?

    Edited at 2018-03-09 09:43 am (UTC)

  14. I have no idea either. Michelle might know. I’ll have a word in her shell like.
        1. I tried to include some gastropod references in my own answer but I felt “Whelk, I thought the joke was perfectly limpet…” was, well, limp rather than limpid!
  16. held up a few at the end, LOI PISTE a bit embarrassing as I am going skiing tomorrow. However the clue didn’t mention snow… COD for me PULLOVER very elegant.
  17. As the blog suggests, a fine example of a puzzle which turned out to be difficult without being wilfully obscure (I am, of course, only able to say this because I called to mind all the required knowledge, even the SELVEDGE, somewhat to my surprise). The final penny-drop moment for POIROT was particularly satisfying to my leetle grey cells.
    1. POIROT was top of my mind because I watched the recent Kenneth Branagh Murder on the Orient Express film with my kids last weekend. So at least something worthwhile came of the experience.
  18. Nope, I didn’t know “pie” either. Selvedge was close to a write-in thanks to filling in the hours of weekend boredom at boarding school learning how to dress-make. We were a pretty smart (well-turned-out) lot as a result but none of us were debs. Nice puzzle. 18.20
  19. A bit of a stinker where I end up a smidge quicker than both Jason and Verlaine – that’ll do me

    Surprised at the number of people who didn’t know PIE the jumbled pile of printers type turns up on a regular basis in cryptic crosswords, although now I come to think of it, usually always accompanied by a chorus of “I didn’t know that….”

    1. It does feel like it’s come up before, in hindsight…

      Magoo took 7 and a half minutes over this one which is of course slow for Magoo. With the hindsight of having waded through my parsing duties I’m not quite sure why this was a hard puzzle, but it does seem to have been one!

    2. I tried and failed to find a recent occurrence of the printer’s PIE in the daily puzzles, so I wonder if it’s a barred-grid thing. I have a feeling the last time I saw it (which was quite recently) was in an Azed.
      1. I’d better whisper it very quietly but it is definitely a Daily Telegraph thing.
    3. Yes – i thought we had a discussion of it three or four months ago.
  20. Another tough cookie, which I managed to crumble in just under the hour as opposed to yesterday’s just over. 59:45. POIROT was LOI after seeing POT for prize and making the association with yesterday’s detective. HOOP was my FOI but 1a didn’t materialise for some time. Like K I biffed LIGHT PEN originally but changed it before moving on when it didn’t parse. I wondered about PIE too and wondered whether there might be an alternative spelling PYSTE(TYPE)*with S for way in it, but discounted it. Didn’t know SELVEDGE but there weren’t many viable combinations for the last few letters, once the V was in. I needed CHITCHAT before MAINLINER came to mind. An enjoyable puzzle. Thanks setter and V.
  21. Flew through the crossword and came here to find I was 5 mins faster than the blogger and thought something was amiss.Yes I had done the QC by mistake.The fact it seemed unusually easy for a Friday and had fewer clues and a smaller grid all passed me by which is,frankly,a sure sign it is Friday
    1. If you were five minutes faster than me in the QC, I will take my hat off to you!

      I have certainly done the QC in blazingly fast times (by 15×15 standards) with mounting excitement and then been sorely disappointed that it wasn’t the crossword I thought it was, so you are very much not alone…

  22. FOI 13A, by which early stage the chewiness of the puzzle was already all too evident.

    I biffed far more clues than I should have done, and that eventually led to my come-uppance.

    The first biff was GRIDIRON. I long ago gave up trying to understand the game, so didn’t realise the colloquial name came from the shape of the pitch.

    Entered GARONNE at 8D (much prefer real ale to vino) but luckily spotted the encapsulation just in time.

    At 27A I entered the RICIDE part of the solution and only completed the rest once I got BRIG.

    28A was an educated biff, since PARTHENOGENESIS is a particularly long instrumental by Canned Heat, and my misspent youth served me well for once.

    26A was biffed too – a really good clue once V explained it. Alas, the final biff at 17D was my undoing. I was convinced it was some sort of pin, and entered LAPEL PIN more in hope than expectancy.

    So 21.15 DNF. COD 19A, with honourable mentions to 18D and 26A. Thanks to the setter for a very enjoyable offering, and to V for his usual fine blog.

  23. Struggling with the blog a bit. On my smart phone, I am logged on under my gmail name. On my laptop, when I try to create an account, nothing seems to happen. Will keep trying as I love this blog.
    Bit tricky today – I got “Tip of the Iceberg” pleasingly quickly which gave me a head start on the top half of the X-word but – even when I cottoned-on happily to “Parthenogenesis” I still found the bottom half more difficult. I was not helped by thinking Patricide rather than Parricide, which threw me completely off on the Large Sailing Ship! Chitchat was tricky – I imagined that would be two words – nice clue, though. I had to look Manque up in the dictionary. I am pleased to say that I did not know Mainliner was a drug-user – I thought it was the Flying Scotsman.
    Selvedge, I’ve seen before in a crossword but it did not come quickly to mind – one of those words you only see in crosswords! Ah well, good fun and got there eventually. Mike Cowking
  24. Just properly chewy for a Friday. Selvedge and Agaric went in on the “that’s the only possible way the letters could go” principle, and I wasn’t completely sure of Embed = Fix until I got the crossers. As commented above, I know pied type (a grade-school project involved writing, hand setting, and printing a Colonial-era newspaper), and I thought it had come up very recently.
    I’m always surprised when words that I consider arcane Americana are well enough known to go into the puzzle – US States are one example, as I’m pretty sure that most Americans would be stuck for counties after Norfolk, Suffolk, possibly York, and Kent. So I hesitated over today’s Gridiron (it refers to the markings, every five yards, up the field) because in the US it is really only used by aging sports writers when they get to thinking they’ve written “field” one time too many.
  25. I totally ignored the alarm bells going off to tell me that S(outh) didn’t really satisfy “way” and put an anagram of TYPE around it to come up with the rather unlikely alternative spelling PYSTE.

  26. This one kept me amused for half an hour, with HANSA/MAINLINER/PULLOVER/OMAGH forming a resistant little # of difficulty for me. The typesetter’s “pie” was an NHO for me, leaving PISTE unparsed – otherwise all fairly smooth. Very nice puzzle – thanks to the setter.
  27. Yes, once impaled by lapel pin couldn’t get free. One up to the setter. Great puzzle. I hope women don’t feel hard done by in the 27 clue. Maybe 28 restores the balance. For some.
  28. Crumbs, slow on this. 56 mins 🙁
    Good challenge, though, cheers. Great blog too.
  29. Not a breeze by my standards, in the 40-45 minute range. DNK SELVEDGE or the mushroom thing, so they went in from wordplay and checking letters. LOI was POIROT, thanks to yesterday’s HOLMES. Regards.
  30. 47 for me so reasonably pleased as I normally aim for 30 to 45 and this was above average trickiness. Struggled with the Greek clues but once genesis appeared the remaining eight letters revealed themselves and Theseus and Poirot (my LOI) flew in. Nice puzzle thanks to setter and V.
  31. DNF since I biffed LAPEL PIN and hit submit as I wondered what a “pelpine” or “pelping” might be. Of course it came back all pink and then I realized. But a lovely crossword with some inventive cluing not relying on obscurities.
  32. DNF. Bah! Got hung up on 26ac. Was thinking Hon. or honorary somehow just didn’t put the British members and their report all together. Had I done so I’ve no doubt I would have derived the unknown Hansa (I knew of the Hanseatic league but not its alternative name) from Hansard but that’s all coulda woulda shoulda. A bit annoying because I recently watched a documentary on Sky Arts about Hansa Studios where Bowie recorded his Berlin trilogy. I found the rest of the puzzle tricky with Poirot holding me up for ages too.
  33. 37:01 and relieved not to have to resort to aids. SELVEDGE known to me as the surname of an erstwhile work colleague. 20d and 19a my last two in. Like others, the last one had me baffled for ages until I got the final T. Dithered over putting in 26a for a while too, until I got the HANSARD reference. Some very witty clues and nothing unfair. Yes. A great Friday challenge. Thanks setter and thanks, as ever, for the great blog V. I enjoyed the “mutatis mutandis” reference, but I’m afraid I failed to decipher the “m.m.” at 19a… Doh. Just spotted it is an abbreviation of that same latin phrase.

    Edited at 2018-03-10 07:16 am (UTC)

  34. And everything was going so well. I even wondered if I was going to be able to finish in one of my better times. And then a complete blank with these two. I simply couldn’t think of a word that fitted C.I.C…, and was misled because in desperation I looked up snakes and found that there is something called a pine, or possibly a pine snake, so I thought the second word was pin and the first word some European; Greek pin? All really quite simple. Why on earth?
  35. Late to the party here as I finished this one too early for the blog to be up yesterday morning, then went out for some works drinks last night. Am ashamed to say all I’ve done so far today is get up and do the Saturday puzzle, and it’s already half past one…

    Enjoyed this puzzle a lot, so much so that I pushed five minutes over my hour to finish it off. It seems I’m in good company putting in 19a POIROT last; glad I finally thought of “pot”… FOI 1a TIP OF THE ICEBERG, which was a good start, as was biffing 18a PARTHENOGENESIS on the basis of only two crossers about halfway through the struggle.

    Liked 9a PUSSYFOOT, and 4d HOOP, having been helped on the latter by listening to Natalie Merchant’s Ophelia about ten times in a row on Thursday night. (“Ophelia is a circus queen/the female cannonball/projected through five flaming hoops/to wild and shocked applause…”)

    Anyway. Enough of the hungover waffle. Thanks to setter and V, whose detailed parsings I shall now consult for the many question-marks in my margins here, not least of which was the “pie” of 2d PISTE. Coincidentally enough, I did wonder whether it had something to do with “pie-eyed”…

    1. I can never hear the word “parthenogenesis” without being instantly earwormed by this song 🙂
  37. Fought my way through some tricky tries to reach the answer in about 45 minutes. No idea why DEB = smart girl, please someone explain.

    “Report” suggested a pun, and members suggested arms which suggested “hands”. So I provisionally biffed HANSE for a while, and tried to remember a market town called OTESH.

    The clue for POIROT was so long at 13 words I had thought it might be celebrating some solver here for some competition.

    PIE has a sense of harlequin motley, as in “piebald” so that was a confident biff. I’ve wondered if the most common sense of pie connotes such patchwork of pieces of food as a filling.

    Thanks all

    Thanks all.

    1. “Deb” is an abbreviation for “debutante”. I’ve never seen one myself, but I’m given to understand that they are, at the very least, well-dressed.

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