Times 26991 – familiarity breeds chickens

Author   piquetPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
I’m not sure how easy or hard this puzzle will prove to be on the snitchometer, but I found it mostly straightforward; it seemed that many of the clues I’d either seen the likes of before, or were kind of obvious even if the parsing wasn’t. I take issue with the definition for 13a, and was pleased to see my nickname exhibited in 22a. Around 20 minutes working steadily from NW to SW to SE to NE in an anticlockwise manner. I think 12d gets my CoD vote even if it’s not original.

Across
1 Amusing drama cut to allow bathos? (8)
COMEDOWN – COMED(Y) followed by OWN = allow; a BATHOS being an anticlimax.
5 Make time for old European statesman (6)
BRANDT – BRAND = make (as in ‘that make of kettle’), T(ime). Willy Brandt, Chancellor of West Germany 1969 – 74. His birth name was actually Herbert Ernst Carl Frahm and he used the pseudonym WB to escape detection by the Nazis then later adopted it formally.
8 Fire fan of unknown international team arrested by policeman (10)
PYROMANIAC – Y = unknown, ROMANIA, all inserted into PC for policeman.
9 Maximum fantasy author not reaching conclusion (4)
PEAK – Mervyn PEAKE doesn’t get his final E.
10 Maoist occasionally involved with Morning Star’s rebirth (14)
TRANSMIGRATION – Anagram of A I T (alternate letters of Maoist) and MORNING STAR. Something to do with souls being reincarnated, if you believe in that sort of tosh.
11 Get urge to hold small reserve fund (4-3)
NEST-EGG – NET = get, insert S(mall), EGG = urge, as in ‘egg on’.
13 Body found in squat surrounded by refuse (7)
DENSITY – SIT = squat, surrounded by DENY = refuse. I’m trying, as a scientist, to reconcile DENSITY with BODY, but can’t really. Density is a measure of how much ‘denseness’ or mass per unti volume something has, not necessarily implying a body is dense rather than not dense; but I can see how it could perhaps be misused to mean BODY without a qualifying adjective such as ‘high’ or ‘great.’ I guess that’s what the unscientific setter intended.
15 Man with money recited poem (7)
RONDEAU – RON = our man, DEAU sounds like DOUGH = money. I probably wouldn’t have got this quickly except for the fact that I’d seen the word quite recently in another puzzle.
18 Olympian at home cleared out to accommodate tenancy (7)
ATHLETE – AT, H(OM)E, insert LET = tenancy.
21 Chicken order is handled poorly (5,6,3)
RHODE ISLAND RED – (ORDER IS HANDLED)*. A chicken I’d also seen before.
22 Pip and this girl dated in the afternoon (4)
EMMA – Pip Emma is WW1 phonetic alphabet for P.M. as opposed to ack Emma being A.M.
23 This writer’s style to consider extravagant? (10)
IMMODERATE – I’M, MODE = style, RATE = consider.
24 Popular sort of tea one kept in jug (6)
INMATE – IN = popular, MATÉ being a type of tea. Chap in jail, or jug.
25 Poem by American about Yankee ship’s hero (8)
ODYSSEUS – Insert Y, SS into ODE, add US.

Down
1 One used to wind and sunburn after eclipses (7)
CAPSTAN – CAPS = eclipses, TAN = sunburn (well, sun changed but not burned?).
2 Human beings in graceless state (6,3)
MORTAL SIN – MORTALS = humans, IN. According to Wiki, “A sin is considered to be “mortal” when its quality is such that it leads to a separation of that person from God‘s saving grace. This type of sin should be distinguished from a venial sin that simply leads to a weakening of a person’s relationship with God.” Put me down for all of the above, in case there is a God after all and my chum Mr Dawkins and I are wrong.
3 Land ownership seemed suspect with new resident (7)
DEMESNE – (SEEMED N)*. YouTube says you can say ‘demain’ or ‘demean’; I’ve never been sure so I avoided saying it altogether.
4 Short worker brought into section (7)
WANTING – Insert ANT into WING.
5 Posh daily located in most suitable capital (9)
BUCHAREST – U(posh), CHAR (daily), inside BEST.
6 Iodine found in fruit becomes relevant (7)
APPLIES – I(odine) inside APPLES.
7 Move slowly north and in Rouen hunt for suspect (7)
DRAGNET – DRAG = move slowly, N(orth), ET = and in France, where Rouen is.
12 Go to press with items from this news source? (9)
GRAPEVINE – Amusing &lit.
14 Upstanding character, anti-beer, corrupted? (9)
INEBRIATE – I think this is ‘I’ an upstanding vertical character, then (ANTI BEER)* ‘corrupted’, the whole meaning an anti-beer person who became the opposite. Or something along those lines.
16 Blade-wielder beheaded sailors held in sultanate (7)
OARSMAN – (T)ARS inserted into OMAN.
17 Moon appearing in play’s miniature scene (7)
DIORAMA – IO our usual crossword moon of Jupiter, inserted into DRAMA.
18 In total area length and line related (3,4)
ALL TOLD – A(rea), L(ength), L(ine), TOLD = related.
19 Delays as Sheridan actor’s first out in shake-up (7)
HINDERS – (SHERID N)*.
20 Such unhappiness coming to miser? (7)
ENDLESS – A bit vague on this one; I’ll try MISERABLE is becoming endless to leave MISER. Or as kevin g says, MISERY without its Y.

57 comments on “Times 26991 – familiarity breeds chickens”

  1. @ 21ac was my COD

    WOD 5ac PYROMANIAC

    FOI 1dn CAPSTAN

    LOI 24ac INMATE

    Took me 58 mins

    PS Pip, I think you mean 12d not 12a GRAPEVINE

  3. A few I didn’t know here (mate for tea, emma for meridiem), but the sciency clue suited me since it was so dull and basic. But enough about Dawkins… 39 minutes.
  4. Spent a good deal of time grabbing wrong ends of sticks and failing to remember things, such as that apples are fruits (making 6d my 3d to LOI), or who the fantasist was (LOI). HINDERS & ENDLESS biffed, solved only post hoc. Didn’t feel any problem with body/density, but then I’m not a scientist. (There was a local brewery in the US some time back with the slogan, “The beer with body”, which became something of a problem when the corpse of an employee was found in one of the vats. But I digress.)
    1. Was he the one that took a while to drown as he got out twice to go to the toilet?
  5. 17:51 … with about 8 minutes spent on BRANDT and GRAPEVINE before respective pennies dropped.

    I like the ENDLESS MISERy thing, one of a number of smiles in this.

    What with a chicken and a nest-egg and TRANSMIGRATION I’m assuming the setter has nina’d the meaning of life in here somewhere — I just hope it isn’t bad news for our sinful blogger.

    Cheers, Pip

  6. 45 minutes needed for this one and failed to parse EMMA (understandable) and IMMODERATE (no excuse). At 10ac I worked out TRANS- and -ATION early on but then needed to pick through the anagrist to find out what was left over to fill the gaps. Previously I had no idea about its meaning and if pushed, I’d have had said it was to do with the behaviour of birds. A good puzzle though, with just enough chew to keep it interesting.

    Edited at 2018-03-21 07:06 am (UTC)

  7. 23 min 13 with one typo. Grapebine for Grapevine. Done on Iphone again – while standing on railway platform as I just missed the train.

    I thought 1 ac was well disguised.

  8. I wasn’t happy to see ‘bathos’ in 1a as I can never remember what the word means, but thankfully the wordplay was helpful. Went in steadily after that and finished in just on 45 minutes.

    Guessed EMMA without any idea what it all meant (though did pick the unconventional placement of the def) and had to rely on the crossers and wordplay to be able to spell ODYSSEUS.

    I’ll go for the &littish INEBRIATE as my pick of the day and I also liked the ENDLESS ‘miser’.

    Thanks to setter and blogger.

  9. 40 mins of fun with half a Fat Rascal (hoorah!)
    Some time spent on the last two in: Rondeau and Emma (applause for anyone who parsed that one, blimey).
    Mostly I liked: the ‘upstanding character’ to make the &Lit work, the mention of Mervyn Peake and the original Endless Miser(y).
    Thanks setter and Pip.
    1. I’m a cadet gunner who trained on the 5.5 inch gun howitzer, which was already way out of date. I have vague memories of the continued use of Ack Emma and Pip Emma for morning and afternoon: vague but strong enough to parse 22ac. Merci pour les applaudissements.
      1. Me too. Basic RAF training in 1950s meant PIP EMMA came immediately to mind. I preferred the Bren Gun personally.
  10. 23.53, a good bit of which trying to parse the otherwise only possible entry ENDLESS: obvious when someone else tells you, so thanks Kevin and Pip.
    Those of us with a taste for real ale immediately identify density and body: happy memories of Wadsworth Farmer’s Pride you could stand a spoon in. Not scientific, really, more aesthetic.
    Was that the sciency clue, by the way? Couldn’t see any other candidates.
    If transmigration turns out to be true, I can’t imagine what Dawkins will come back as, but I’ll bet he’ll be wearing a rather surprised expression.
  11. I was glad to finish today after getting stuck with one left on Monday and two yesterday. I thought I was going to suffer the same fate today until I saw INEBRIATE and then my LOI IMMODERATE.

    COD to BRANDT as I think that the cryptic part of the definition, ‘Make time’ was so well hidden. My immediate thoughts were that I wanted a word for make time followed by an O or I was swapping a T and an O in a synonym for make. It was only much later I came up with BRANDT and I only parsed it retrospectively.

  12. Still a few to do as well as EMMA and ENDLESS unparsed. Good to see ATHLETE which together with WEMBLEY has gained an extra syllable recently. If I transmigrate I want to come back as Richard Dawkins.
  13. 21 minutes with NE last to fall and DRAGNET my penultimate, a TV programme in the early days of ITV I couldn’t watch until we had the converter box fitted to our 12″ Pye TV bought for the Coronation. I couldn’t really make sense of LOI DENSITY either. FOI PYROMANIAC. As we’ve heard it through the GRAPEVINE before, I’ll make MORTAL SIN COD, however theologically dodgy the concept is. I’m betting with Pascal rather than Dawkins, but If it’s to be TRANSMIGRATION, I’d like to come back as a dog to find out what a dog’s life is really like. Enjoyable puzzle. Thank you Pip and setter.

    Edited at 2018-03-21 09:21 am (UTC)

  14. One of those puzzles where I kept having to grope for some subtlety of meaning that I could tell was just eluding me, hence a lot of internal dialogue along the lines of “It’s clearly BRANDT, but why?” and “It’s clearly ENDLESS, but why?”. This after discarding TOLK and PRAT as unsuitable answers, and thinking I didn’t know any more fantasy authors, though it turned out I did.
  15. Good challenging puzzle with some well disguised definitions (apart from the chicken which as 5,6,3 is a write in)

    Scientific terms such as density often take on less exact meanings in general conversation so no problem there. This sinful blogger also liked GRAPEVINE

    1. I’d say rather that terms in general conversation — words in English, in short — take on more precise meanings in science: force, mass, energy, fruit, metal, voice, murmur, strident, … but the point’s the same.
  16. Great puzzle, took me around 22 mins which to me suggests about right for a Wednesday. There were a number of smiles for me today, PYROMANIAC, TRANSMIGRATION, INEBRIATE, ENDLESS, and the excellent GRAPEVINE (my CoD) among them.

    A really refreshing solve with many nice ideas, all brutally executed in The Times’s strict stylee. Many thanks Pip and setter.

    Edited at 2018-03-21 10:13 am (UTC)

  17. Never did get to handle the bren, and our rounds were a bit heavier (!). I still get a buzz from handling the Lee Enfield .303 mind.

  18. Three quarters of an hour for this, which is slow even by my standards. It was an excellent puzzle, though, full of clues which I thought I’d never get until each one led to an “aha” moment.

    I was glad to have encountered DEMESNE before (probably here) – it’s gettable from the wordplay and checkers, but looks so implausible that I’d have dithered over it. ENDLESS went in unparsed with a shrug, as did PEAK since I’ve never heard of Mr. Peake.

  19. More like it for me… only a handful of clues after 30 minutes (yesterday’s time) and then they started going in 10 minutes at a time. Seemingly the gears just weren’t turning right.

    Nothing was particularly hard in the end but a few unknowns throughout (ROMANIA, PEAKE, etc) kept me from confidently entering anything that would really open up the grid.

    Also I was misled and had some wrong ideas about word play. Thought the policeman was DIC and so was looking for some chemical that fuels fires ending in -IC. Similarly I thought ‘upstanding’ was going to be some synonym of ‘bipedal’ and kept trying to scrounge up some word like VERTEBRATE as the answer.

    In short, just never settled in.

    Thanks for the blog!

  20. A trip down memory lane here. Marvin Gaye’s “heard it through the GRAPEVINE” was THE song of my student days and I read Peake at the same time (but haven’t wanted to revisit Gormenghast since). Before I came along my husband’s family tuned in to DRAGNET, first on radio and then on tv, and “just the facts ma’am” was the catchphrase. And then there was the strange girl in my class at prep school who was a PYROMANIAC and set fire to the art room. She went on to try to burn down Benenden, or so I heard. The international team was certainly unknown to me. Good puzzle. 20.52
      1. Romania the team, as I remember it, came to the world’s notice when they beat England 2-1 in the group stage of the 1998 World Cup. Not as bad as losing to Iceland in the Euros, perhaps, but the chill blast of reality nonetheless. England just aren’t very good.
        1. .. at men’s association football, perhaps, yes. I have long since transferred my national pride (so far as I have any) to the womens’ cricket team, which bestrides the globe. We are also consistently world-beating at real tennis. Take that, Johnny Foreigner!
        2. Romania 3-2 Argentina in 1994 is still the best World Cup game I’ve ever seen. Argentina were in their pomp (albeit with Maradona already sent home for drugs) but Gheorghe Hagi was also in his pomp. Fantastic.
          Romania were also indirectly responsible for Andres Escobar being shot, when they knocked out the highly-fancied Colombians.
    2. At my school we did not have a PYROMANIAC (although perhaps a latent one) but we did have a bomber who blew things up, including the favourite loo of one of my mates. We also had a strange guy who collected knives (ie cutlery) and then went to the Police Station in town (Epsom) to hand himself in. Knifer Lloyd – I wonder what happened to him?
      1. He was probably trying to produce latent heat. I am also a bit worried that you had a mate ‘who had a favourite loo’.
      2. I went to that sort of school too, but have managed to get over it by now. More or less..
  21. Wrestled with this one for almost an hour — with quite a lot of that time spent trying to parse several clues post-biff (EMMA, ENDLESS, INEBRIATE). Had to google ‘Pip Emma’ to work out why. Really liked the GRAPEVINE glue — I do like a proper discursive cryptic like that, and they usually cost me several minutes till the pfennig pfalls.
    Like jimbo, saw the chicken immediately from the 5,6,3, and like jimbo agree that ‘density’ = ‘body’ is quite acceptable, notwithstanding ‘mass per unit volume’ or some such science tosh.
    Enjoyed this puzzle. And thanks to pip for the precision and clarity of analysis in the blog!

    Edited at 2018-03-21 11:23 am (UTC)

  22. 23 min: I agree with z8b8d8k that 13ac wasn’t really a sciency clue – I’d thought of a bold typeface.
    It was good to be reminded of Gormenghast by 9ac.
  23. 21:10. I found this a bit of a struggle. It had a slightly old-fashioned feel to it: Willy BRANDT, Mervin Peake, Pip EMMA, even DRAGNET are all familiar to me, but I feel would come more readily to mind to a slightly more seasoned solver. Anyway the element of struggle made it all the more enjoyable, and I enjoyed this enormously.
    No problem with ‘body’ for DENSITY. I thought of wine (Collins: ‘the characteristic full quality of certain wines, determined by the density and the content of alcohol or tannin’) but it also applies to hair, for instance.
    EMMA was clued as ‘novel where Pip leaves in the afternoon’ in puzzle 24612, August 2010. PIP EMMA also came up as an answer in 2013 and has appeared in a recent Mephisto. I’m not sure when it stuck with me but it obviously did because I had no problem with the clue.

    Edited at 2018-03-21 03:08 pm (UTC)

  24. Tried to fit ESTELLA into 22ac, wrong novel. Knew TRANSMIGRATION, but COD nonetheless. No time as went to church halfway through. Thanks pip and setter.
  25. Slow, slow, and then more slow! I didn’t help myself by entering ALL SAID at 18d, which made the SE corner even harder, although it parsed well whilst being wrong – so I didn’t re-examine it when I couldn’t get IMMODERATE (I was trying to mnake IMMATERIAL work!)

    In the end I BIF’d ENDLESS and EMMA, not having a clue what was going on.

    Very satisfying puzzle though, and excellent blog.

  26. I found this hard-going at first, getting down to RHODE ISLAND RED before entering an answer (a lovely semi-topical clue), but the bottom half fell relatively quickly. 11m 15s in total.

    MATE was unknown to me, although once I Googled it I discovered I’d actually drunk some once, thanks to my cousin’s Paraguayan husband. It is very unpleasant.

  27. “This is the city, I’m a cop. The name’s Friday, Joe Friday”. DRAGNET was one of my dad’s favourites back in the late 50’s when the advent of ITV finally persuaded him to get a television.

    I did this in my local Wetherspoon’s accompanied by eggs Benedict and an excellent pint of Sixpoint Lo-res. Hence I too had no difficulties with DENSITY.

    I had another slow start, FOI was EMMA which I thought a little trite. That led me to OARSMAN followed by RHODE ISLAND RED, which might have been FOI had I noted the (5,6,3).

    I progressed reasonably well thereafter, though I had to think hard about Mervyn Peake, whom I’ve never read, BRANDT held me up awhile, and I biffed both COMEDOWN and PYROMANIAC (thanks to Pip for parsing those).

    LOI 15A which accounted for the last 2 minutes of my 14 (by the pub clock, since I’d left my phone at home).

    COD equally 14D (a fine “&lit”), and 20D (very clever). Thanks to the setter for a good challenge.

    1. I’ve got a thirst on since Googling Sixpoint Lo-res. Fortunately I’m off to slake that thirst shortly, though probably not with Lo-res as I’m not going to Wetherspoons. I’ll look out for it though – I do enjoy a good American Pale Ale.
  28. Thanks to 1a, I now know the meaning of BATHOS, a word I’d heard but never really thought about. Makes sense now. EMMA took a while before dropping her penny, but I was well aware of Ack Emma and Pip Emma, so it should’ve popped in earlier. CAPSTAN was my FOI. DEMESNE known from previous puzzles. MATE as tea rang a faint bell. ENDLESS was parsed just after pressing submit. The NE took the longest to sort out with PEAK my LOI. Enjoyable puzzle. 33:59. Thanks setter and Pip.
  29. Each clue was work, but enjoyable work, across a long hour. Emma went in as a ‘couldn’t be anything else’, and I mis-parsed Inmate (couldn’t figure the M). What I liked about this puzzle was that, without resorting to real exotica, it was an interesting vocabulary set. (I do take that some of the clueing was exotic).
  30. Surely if you believe that you’ve already attained the state of water at 3.98°.
    1. I am still not convinced DENSITY can mean body, although I accept body can mean high density or thickness as in hair. Density has no implication of heaviness, any more than humidity has an implication of high humidity or low humidity, or ‘length’ means something must be long. If density means dense, what’s the opposite? He said, banging on.
      1. Following on from the hair analogy, low density hair would have a lack of body. Any heaviness would come from the amount of hair involved, not just its density. It may not be a scientifically robust theory, but it got me to the answer, and at least it was a less esoteric concept than yesterday’s enthalpy! 🙂
  32. As yesterday, it took a while to get going, however RHODE ISLAND RED was a nice long word to start with. There did seem to be themes going on here – BUCHAREST and ROMANIA, plus those mentioned above. I struggled with 12d for ages – couldn’t get past Graveside and totally missed the alternative way of going to press. COD
  33. Yes, I thought that could be seen as a “Two meanings” clue with the split at this/news. And it all reads very well as a unit.
  34. I thought this was quite a difficult crossword, but I really enjoyed it. A bit like Gormenghast, in other words.
    I trust our esteemed blogger is suitably appreciative of being immortalised in print, in 22ac
  35. Inadequately caffeinated and interrupted by colleagues at lunch, this solve turned into a real slog. In the end I was just glad to limp over the finish line all correct. Nothing unknown apart from pip Emma but that one went in from girl and checkers.
  36. I had it in mind that DENSITY was like the wine definition of ‘body’ i.e. full-bodied wines are denser

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