Times 27013 – Peckinpah Meets Coward?

Author   ulacaPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Sorry, owing to a number of unforeseen circumstances that I will not bore you with, I need to do this on the iPad. So, no bells and whistles (or clues), I’m afraid. A little under 25 minutes for this, so hopefully not too much guidance needed.

ACROSS

1 SALAD DAYS – SAYS around ALADD(in); here’s the Python version https://youtu.be/LeYznvQvnsY
6 GABOR – BAG reversed OR
8 LOWERED – (f)LOWERED
10 STAND-UP – STAN PUD reversed
11 TRAIN – RA in TIN
12 SEES SENSE – ESSEN in SE SE
13 SEGMENTS – GMEN in SETS
14 ABLE – (t)ABLE(t)
17 PONG – literal is HUM; P replacing S in SONG
18 SKIN TEST – if you are the skintest bloke in the pub, you will try and get out of buying your round
21 OFF THE MAP – THEM in OFFA P
22 LIKEN – L IKE N
24 TRUCKER – R in TUCKER (FARE = food)
25 LONG ARM – hidden
26 RAT ON – (use)R A TON
27 SATURATED – SAT U-RATED (if a film is U rated, all may watch it)

DOWN

1 SPLIT – L in SPIT (rent)
2 LOW-HANGING FRUIT – L + FIGURING ON WHAT* (anagram)
3 DERANGED – if you delist something, you remove it; if you are a crossword setter, you may derange it
4 ANDESITE – (b)AND + SEE IT*
5 SUSSEX – S US SEX (it); now West Sussex and East Sussex, county wise
6 GLASSY – LASS in G(u)Y
7 BED-AND-BREAKFAST – cryptic definition; I think the idea is that the type of accommodation at these excellent places typically involves sharing – typically the dining room, sometimes the bathroom. OTOH, as brnchn says below, bed and breakfasting is city jargon for selling shares one day and buying them back the next.
8 REPRESENT – REP RESENT
13 SUPPORTER – PORT in SUPER
15 SKY PILOT – SKYP(e) I LOT
16 ONE-LINER – ON (cruis)E LINER
19 SHAKEN – HAKE in SN
20 SMIRKS – IRK in SMS
23 NOMAD – ON reversed MAD

79 comments on “Times 27013 – Peckinpah Meets Coward?”

  2. A large chunk of that time taken up with the NW. I had LOWERED and SEGMENTS early on, but couldn’t parse them until much later. But the real problem was that I’d never heard of the musical; worse, ‘musical’ suggested ‘Cats’ to me. Liked SPLIT.
  3. B&B is also stock market jargon for selling shares and buying them back the next morning
  4. Thanks, ulaca. I come from Sussex (E) but thought it still counted as a region as a whole and not as E and W. LOI: DERANGED. COD: Off the Map. The clue reads so well.
    39m 53s
  5. Twenty-four minutes, which is on the fast side for me. No problem with ANDESITE (thank you, O-level geology), and I was only briefly held up by not knowing that SUSSEX is no longer a county.
  6. Mostly straightforward but held up in the NW corner, like others. I also avoided SUSSEX for a while, thinking it still existed, so thanks for the explanation. ANDESITE also my last in – unknown and I feared the cryptic might be too obvious until I got everything else.

    Thanks, U, for the early blog despite the hurdle of doing it on the iPad.

  7. 29 minutes. SALAD DAYS went straight in, a show from a simpler less cynical era in the UK, post-war and post-rationing when there was at last just a breath of optimism for the future in the air. It opened in the West End in 1954 and ran for 2,283 performancesand making it the longest-running show in musical theatre history until surpassed by ‘My Fair Lady’ on Broadway in 1956 and ‘Oliver!’ here in 1960. So typical of the ham-fisted Python lot to sneer and pour scorn on it. Contrary to the heading in the blog it had no connection with Noel Coward but was written by Julian Slade and Dorothy Reynolds.

    SUSSEX is one of the historic counties of the UK and as such continues to exist as a geographical and cultural region despite the administrative arrangements inflicted by the wretched Heath government of the 1970s. Similarly Yorkshire.

    14ac is a bit feeble as the answer is hidden in a clue that is not intended to be parsed as a hidden answer.

    Edited at 2018-04-16 04:39 am (UTC)

    1. I remember the Python sketch, and just now followed Ulaca’s link, and I was under the impression that it was a send-up of Sam Peckinpah.
    2. Ah! A bit feeble indeed. I just thought “hmm, that hidden answer doesn’t really work” and put it in anyway without ever thinking of TABLETs.

      7m21 in any case. Another LOI 3d here.

    3. Ah, the whole point of the title is that Salad Days wasn’t, despite popular belief to the contrary, by Coward, as much as the sketch wasn’t by Peckinpah. Hence the question mark.

      Edited at 2018-04-16 05:19 am (UTC)

      1. I see, though I’m not aware of any popular belief that Coward wrote Salad Days unless it’s a mistaken one held by younger people who only know of the show’s existence via Python. Coward never wrote anything remotely along those lines in his life.

        Edited at 2018-04-16 05:52 am (UTC)

        1. I only know of Salad Days through Monty Python and did always assume that Noel Coward had written it. Does the sketch suggest that? I can’t remember.
    5. I agree regarding 14A, which I solved as an encapsulation without ever considering “tablet”.
  8. Finished, really wanted to put wessex, but nothing then would fit 1a _A_W.

    Last few were Andesite, sees sense, I was looking for EC not essen, deranged and salad days.

    Didn’t get the bed and breakfast for shares, or why the computer was needed to get the able from portable in 14a.

    COD rat on.

  9. 14:26 … a couple of question marks — SKIN TEST and LONG ARM, where I don’t think “might” quite defines it.

    But a very fine collection of surfaces, so props to the setter for that.

    COD to the ingenious anagram in LOW-HANGING FRUIT

    1. replying to self, for some reason I suggested I had a query against SKIN TEST (which I didn’t). I meant ABLE, of course, but my mind strayed ….
    2. You probably considered this already, but I thought of the expression ‘long arm of the law’ which could be taken as the power or ‘might’ of the law to track down criminals wherever they may hide.

      Edited at 2018-04-16 06:47 am (UTC)

      1. I did think of it, yes. It’s just that a def. for LONG ARM seems to me more about reach than power, as in the Chambers def.: Far-reaching power

        I think this was a case of going with a questionable definition for the sake of a very neat surface, to which I’m not really opposed

  10. Hardly trendy – show or actress – these days, but I liked 1a and 6a. Still, must get with it.

    SKY PILOT also bought back memories from the past. I thought it was a Barry McKenzie-ism, but I see its origins go back further. Thanks for explaining the Stock Exchange connection to 7d which I didn’t parse. Couldn’t suss the ex bit of SUSSEX either.

    All done – ANDESITE guessed – in 48 minutes.

    Thanks to setter and blogger.

  11. Something of an old-fashioned feel to this one, with quite a few things passing me by (SALAD DAYS, the stock market BED AND BREAKFAST (thanks Bruce), the rock and the SKY PILOT to name but a few…)

    Still, 48m, so not as bad as I’d feared before looking at the clock. FOI 10a STAND UP, LOI 4d SUSSEX, once I was convinced it couldn’t be anything else. I wasn’t sure that breaking something into east and west stopped it existing as a whole.

    COD to 16d, which I thought was some nice misdirection with a good surface, WOD PONG.

  12. 27 mins with one typo. SKY PILOT unknown, and a wrong SCANTEST didn’t make it any easier. Bit harder than the usual Monday crossword, but all gettable.
  13. 25 mins with yoghurt, granola, etc. Fried eggs on marmite toast for tea last night and spring has sprung. Hoorah.
    Slightly held up by not being able to spell Aladdin, so spent a few moments imagining Sayal Lads (the Musical). A few lads from Sayal in the big city for one frantic, love filled weekend.
    Mostly I liked a lot: Segments, Skin Test, Liken, U-rated, and (COD) Deranged.
    Thanks setter and Ulaca
  14. Bed and breakfasting of shares often done overnight 5th April, end of tax year, to effectively utilise capital gains allowance.
  15. One of those puzzles where quite a lot of nuance passed me by, without apparently affecting my ability to solve it, which probably wasn’t the intended effect. Thus I joined everyone else who raised an eyebrow at Sussex being “former”, didn’t understand the stockbroking connotation of 7dn, thought the hidden at 14ac was oddly weak (once I’d decided there probably wasn’t such a word as (l)APTO(p), even though it probably would mean “fit” if it existed), and left the unknown ore till last to go in from wordplay. Pleasant enough for all that.
  16. 3dn DERANGED was my LOI.

    In 1996 I saw a revival of 1ac SALAD DAYS – by Ned Sherrin at The Vaudeville – just hilarious! My COD

    2d LOW-HANGING FRUIT is much overused in political chat and advertising tele-conferencing. Americanism?
    5dn SUSSEX at first I thought it had finally been taken by German paratroopers!

    FOI 16dn ONE LINER which I stuck in at 15dn!!(Doh!)

    WOD 4ac ANDESITE (A-level Geologist)

    I agree with Our Jack 14ac ABLE was a quite ridiculous clue.

    34 mins 35 including the parsing of 8ac

    Edited at 2018-04-16 08:09 am (UTC)

    1. Sorry to disappoint, by like many ‘Americanisms’, it probably isn’t:

      “Phrases such as “fruit low hung” and “fruit hanging low” have been part of the English language since the 17th century, but the exact phrase “low-hanging fruit” likely first appeared in print in a 1968 article in the Guardian newspaper, and the phrase referenced something easily attainable.”

      The OED apparently attributes the coinage in The Guardian to the writer and actor P. J. Kavanagh

      It’s a wonderful phrase, just overused, mostly by people with no ear for language

    2. I saw that revival pre-West End at Richmond in 1995. Wonderful stuff featuring Kit and the Widow with the former undertaking no fewer than EIGHT roles! I know there was a prancing bishop in it and there may also have been leap-frogging nuns, or perhaps I’m thinking of Monty Python again (The Meaning of Life).

      Edited at 2018-04-16 08:30 am (UTC)

  18. NW last in, am too young for SALAD DAYS, and wouldn’t have understood the Python. My COD though. Liked SEES SENSE and ONE LINER. 19′, thanks ulaca and setter. Roll on Wednesday.
  19. I saw SALAD DAYS in a seaside version when I was about 7. Early on in the relationship with Mrs Z, we found we shared a mutual nostalgic and detailed memory of the show (though we said we’d never look back), she having seen the West End version. Both of us found it easy to sing a simple song from the show. It isn’t a thing that I do every day, not when look look looking for a P-I-A-N-O but then I never saw such a saucy saucer. I think I need to go and sit in the sun.
    All fabulous, fabulous stuff, impervious to mockery which set the tone for me in this puzzle, which I completed in 14+ minutes in a warm bath of nostalgia.
    I assume ANDESITE is, like so many rocks, just named from its parent range by putting -ITE on the end.
    The stock market variation on B&B went right over my innocent head.
    I thought 25 was just a sort of &lit, and didn’t consider (and wouldn’t therefore worry about) might as a definition. Garments with long arms might need shortening. Well, of course they might, and how clever to hide the answer in the clue.
    As a postscript, Mrs Z and I went to see a new Julian Slade in Bristol in 1975-ish, about a woman who took up burlesque in order to rescue her husband. It was so terrible I can’t even find it in the Wikilist of Slade productions. Nostalgia isn’t what it was.
  20. 12 minutes on this, so third best ever I think. LOI DERANGED. That plus SALAD DAYS prevented a sub-tenner. ANDESITE not known but it did sound right and I put it in confidently. COD to OFF THE MAP, which for once my time wasn’t. I think with answers like SKY PILOTthat this was designed for us geriatrics. My eternal memory of Zsa Zsa Gabor is Peter Cook being incredibly rude to her on The Eamonn Andrews Show. Thank you U and setter.
    2. Well done for both the time, and for your team’s fine comeback at Barnsley on Saturday. I think they’ll dodge relegation on the strength of that.
      1. It’s going to the wire. If we could just have hung on for all three points, I’d have felt better.
        1. I was certainly brought back to earth by Dean’s puzzle on Sunday. My time was over 2 hours and I cheated. I did forget and leave the timer running while I did something else for half an hour though.
          1. It was hard. I managed just under the hour with 13a and 26 last ones in. On the latter I suddenly saw the answer in a light-bulb moment after gawping at the crossers. Otherwise I don’t think I’d have twigged it.
    4. 12 minutes – I couldn’t even write the answers in that fast. VG.
      Richard J
      1. Thank you but it was a statistical fluke that seems to happen once a year. I was just over the hour today. Welcome back to posting.
  21. I knew all of the GK (which is rare) and so this was very quick. I have been responsible for the planning of many ANDESITE quarries over the last 40 years here and abroad. I enjoyed the surfaces throughout. Loved the idea of Offa building a car park.
    1. One of the delights of this select company is the incredible range of experience available. My curiosity was roused by the pronunciation of ANDESITE, only to discover we have an impeccable authority right here. Is it ANDES-ITE (like the range) or (like the dictionary appears to say) with a short indeterminate vowel sound in the middle?
    2. Offa – car park – don’t forget that Richard III was found (dead) in a car park in Leicester.
  22. 34 mins. Hurrah for 11a and the school that isn’t Eton! Boo hiss for the “former” region: surely as a region it is extant, even though as a *county* it might be obsolete. I, too, wasted time trying to wrestle WESSEX out of the clue. I agree that ‘might’ is a poor def for LONG ARM and that the non-hidden ABLE looked like a sloppy hidden. Am I being grouchy in thinking 17a very clumsy? — all that tortuous paraphernalia just to do SONG -> PONG. And 12a seems to have missed a wonderful opportunity to make use of the *four* SEs arranged around a solitary ‘N’.
    Still, I loved OFF THE MAP (my COD) and there were other excellent clues, I thought: 1a, 2d, 3d, 27a.
    Thanks to ulaca for what must be the most concise blog I’ve yet read.
  23. 21 min 16 secs. I didnt spot the anagram fodder for low hanging fruit. I didn’t know andesite. First time I’ve seen Skype used here. I knew the B&B usage in stocks and shares. I liked Skin Test the best.
  24. Delighted to finish in 9:31 but with no less than five biffs. ABLE I’ve mentioned earlier, but the means by which I solved it made me suspect something just could be amiss.

    Parsed LOW-HANGING FRUIT after completion, but needed the blog to settle BED AND BREAKFAST, ONE-LINER, and SMIRKS. Thanks Ulaca and Brnchn for clearing those up.

    FOI SALAD DAYS
    LOI SMIRKS
    COD SKIN TEST
    WOD PONG

    SEES SENSE was a veritable minefield for one so prone to typos !

    Wasn’t keen on fool=pud. A pud, to me, is something served hot, such as spotted dick, or plum duff. Cold “afters” are still desserts in my book. But then I am turning into Angry Septuagenarian….

  25. As I drew blanks all over the NW, I suspected I was in for a slog, but a change of focus brought ABLE into play(not via the tablet method!) and I was off. LOW HANGING FRUIT and TRAIN were eventually the key to finishing in the NW after 21:33. NHO ANDESITE or SKY PILOT as a chaplain, and had an MER at SUSSEX. Nice puzzle. Thanks setter and U.
  26. I just assumed 11a was Eton plus m for money making Monet, an art specialist, so until I saw the error of my ways the anagram at 2d was impossible. Other than that completed in two bursts between walking spaniels.
    Roin
  27. 16 mins. Like others I had the most trouble in the NW and DERANGED was my LOI (until I had all the checkers I couldn’t stop thinking of “demented” even though I knew it wasn’t the correct answer) after the ANDESITE/LOWERED crossers. Like a few others I also didn’t know the financial meaning of B&B.
  28. 16 minutes, with the NW corner holding me up at the end, after the east side ran in almost as fast as I could write. LOI split. I liked the consistent use of humour in this puzzle. A few unknowns (e,g, andesite) but clueing helped completely.
  29. There was a nice sort of continuum to the puzzle with the low-hanging fruit salad in segments for pud and the long arm (which my late mother-in-law called “boarding house reach”), for the marmalade perhaps, at the bed and breakfast table. SALAD DAYS is indeed a trip down memory lane. I was taken to it as a tot by a great aunt and it must have been at the Bristol Old Vic because Julian Slade was at the piano and at intermission she made me take my playbill down the aisle to him for an autograph. I was mortified but he was very nice. I certainly missed the financial nuance of BED-AND-BREAKFAST. 15.19

    Edited at 2018-04-16 11:36 am (UTC)

    1. I believe Julian Slade played one of the two pianos that provided the musical accompaniment to the show throughout its West End run following its opening in Bristol. You can hear his recording of a medley from the show here in which he overdubbed the other piano part: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J8QJ-mvwKMM

      Edited at 2018-04-16 01:14 pm (UTC)

      1. That’s a wonderful recording, jackkt. And thanks to both of you for introducing me to Julian Slade. And, via his Wikipedia page and a reference to a character in Round the Horne, to Polari, which I had also somehow never heard of. Even the basic lexicon on this page https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polari is beguiling.

        You never stop learning here.

        Olivia we’ve definitely had an injection of new blood in recent months. Good to see

      2. Thanks Jack. It could easily have been the London show I went to since that’s where we lived, but my great-aunt lived about 12 miles from Bristol when she wasn’t in London so I’m really not sure (I was very young indeed at the time). The theatre wasn’t all that big which is why I thought it must have been the Old Vic. Now I’ll never know!

        P.S. It may be my imagination but are we getting more comments here than we did a year or two ago? Very nice if we are and I thought it might be the sort of thing you’d notice.

        1. I saw the original in London – it was at the Vaudeville Theatre for those who want to know. Obviously I was very young! I think rather a silly show, but maybe even in the 50s was it being knowingly ironic?
  30. I found plenty of LOW HANGING FRUIT in this one enabling me to finish inside the 10 minute mark. Only unknown was LOI ANDESITE which I thought might be one of those final clues that frustratingly doubles your time but when it came to it the parsing was straightforward.
  31. 12:53 without having heard of ANDESITE and a bit puzzled by 14a (by not seeing the tABLEt). Otherwise nice gentle Monday fare. COD to PONG for the neat surface.
  32. 12:26, all parsed except my LOI Sussex which I eventually bunged in out of desperation on the basis that I knew it was now two distinct counties. I wanted both South American and it to be SA and former could account for EX so I just got horribly confused and gave up trying to figure it out properly.
  33. I’ve always assumed that Julian Slade and Sandy (The Boy Friend) Wilson lent their forenames to the notorious pair from Round the Horne.
  34. 11:42. No real problems today. I didn’t know ANDESITE or SKY PILOT but I did know this meaning of B&B.
    LOW-HANGING FRUIT is a term you hear a lot in business and financial circles, not always with the most pleasant connotations.
  35. Well, I confess to having to look up the musical, so really a DNF. Never heard of it, sounds very whimsical from the comments above. I also didn’t know precisely why BED AND BR… and SKY PILOT were correct, but they clearly had to be so, and in they went. Regards.
  36. 26:17 a nice quick solve. Didn’t know the musical at 1ac and misparsed 14ac as a hidden. Guessed that B&B must have some sort of share-dealing meaning in the city. Only pause for thought was whether 4dn ended -esite or -isete. I thought the former more convincing in the end.
  37. 15 mins. Nice, gentle puzzle with a retro feel. 14 the only glitchy clue. Thanks setter and blogger.
  38. I completed this one, which doesn’t happen very often (I don’t get to the crossword every day). Can someone explain what Sky Pilot means and its connection with “Chaplain”? Best wishes to all.
    1. Welcome, Richard, and good to have you on board. In most cases, a visit to the dictionary will sort these things out 🙂

      In this case, Collins has ‘slang – a chaplain in one of the military services’.

  39. I’m a couple of days behind on this week’s puzzles hence the late post. 36 mins but with smarms instead of smirks, making the classic error of assuming I was missing something in the parsing rather than thinking harder about the answer. Annoying as I knew all the general knowledge.

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