Times 27019 – The rhythm of fate, or the helpless lion

Author   vinyl1Posted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Time: 24 minutes
Music: Coltrane, Giant Steps

After failing to complete either the Saturday, or the Sunday, or the Guardian Prize, I thought that I was either slipping, or these puzzles were damned hard.   But when I lay down with tonight’s offering, I found that everything was back to normal, as I was able to enter a few obvious answers almost immediately.  Our old friends, the tamarin/tamarind, d/urban, and Rita and her cot offered a quick entrance to this not very difficult offering.   Unfortuntely, overconfidence led to a quick biff where I should have read the clue in its entirety.

More careful solvers will probably do well, as there is not anything terribly difficult here.   I knew that ‘chillax’ is a word without having any idea what it meant, so I was able to construct it from the cryptic without much difficulty.   Non-classicists may have a little trouble with ‘Tyche’, but once the crossers are in place there’s not much else it can be.  However, ‘amphora’ may catch a few solvers out, although I just read ‘old jar’ and biffed it – nothing obscure here.

As an additional puzzle, I have been doing David Stickley’s weekly puzzle, which comes out every Wednesday.  Those who don’t have enough puzzles to solve might want to give it a try; it’s located at http://www.australiancrosswords.com.au/WPblog/category/stickler-weekly-puzzles/

Across
1 Rupees stored to send overseas? (6)
DEPORT – DEPO(R)T, i.e. rupees in a depot.
4 Tropical tree monkey died (8)
TAMARIND – TAMARIN + D, a chestnut.
10 Talk about pound and spend freely (6,3)
SPLASH OUT – SP(LASH)OUT.   ‘Pound’ is not really equivalent to ‘lash’, but it is close enough.
11 Musician with piano appearing in seaside attraction (5)
PIPER – PI(P)ER.
12 Flight having time due to arrive back for point of entry (7)
GATEWAY – G(ETA)WAY with the ETA reversed, which I failed to do.  Maybe I should read more than the first four words of the clue?
13 Girl eating a little cottage cheese (7)
RICOTTA – RI(COT)TA.   At least she’s not clued as an educated girl.
14 Up before court (5)
ERECT –  ERE CT.
15 Piece of software has put up price (8)
APPRAISE – APP + RAISE.
18 Marks article unusually showing poetic quality (8)
METRICAL – M + anagram of ARTICLE
20 Goddess needing something of a reality check (5)
TYCHE – hidden in [reali]TY CHE[ck], the Greek word for chance or luck, or the goddess thereof.
23 Old jar of what could be insect repellent — unopened, note (7)
AMPHORA – [c]AMPHOR + A.
25 Grand sound of cows looking extremely healthy (7)
GLOWING – G + LOWING.
26 Fish consumed after missing meal of steak? (5)
SKATE – S[tea]K  + ATE.
27 One moving into a new position inches higher (9)
INSTALLER – INS. TALLER.
28 What could be lion trapping an ox, perhaps, in endless plain (3-5)
MAN-EATER – M(A NEAT)ER[e], one that is ripe for biffing.
29 A cab caught having lost control of motion (6)
ATAXIC – A + TAXI + C. 

Down
1 Cancer, perhaps, in ruminant — one creating something new? (8)
DESIGNER – DE(SIGN)ER.
2 Range of colourants allowed in meat paste (7)
PALETTE – PA(LET)TE.
3 Scent went up with rate changing (4-5)
ROSE-WATER – ROSE + W + anagram of RATE.
5 One making a defence about name through expert in human affairs (14)
ANTHROPOLOGIST – A(N THRO)POLOGIST.
6 A lot of what might be ginger jelly (5)
ASPIC – A SPIC[e].
7 One problem’s arisen about favourite drive (7)
IMPETUS – I M(PET)US, i.e. SUM upside-down.
8 Departs from the city, one in South Africa (6)
DURBAN – D + URBAN.
9 Copy charladies frantic for carbohydrate (14)
POLYSACCHARIDE – anagram of COPY CHARLADIES, one for the chemistry student – how’s that coming?
16 Job in space needs a mostly robust adult regularly employed (9)
ASTRONAUT – A STRON[g]  + A[d]U[l]T. 
17 Concern mounting in support of mountain region for wine (8)
BERGERAC – BERG + CARE upside-down, presumably the home town of Cyrano.
19 Gloss ruined axle pin (7)
EXPLAIN – anagram of AXLE PIN.
21 Rest times following being unwell during tea (7)
CHILLAX – CH(ILL)A + X.
22 Turning over, leave out a page all the way through (6)
PASSIM – MISS A P upside-down.
24 Mature way of working upset Greek character (5)
OMEGA – AGE M/O upside down.   This concludes the upside-down part of the puzzle…..

72 comments on “Times 27019 – The rhythm of fate, or the helpless lion”

  1. I was a bit surprised to see that word here, but I got it, and most of the others, before POLYSACCHARIDE.
    Hey, Vinyl. I thought this weekend was rough too. I finished Sunday’s puzzle before Sunday’s, which I just completed tonight, after this one (and today’s Quickie).
  2. Following Vinyl’s lead, I biffed ‘getaway’; resolved to check back later, and of course forgot, as I generally do with my resolutions. DNK TYCHE, but for once I actually spotted that it was a hidden, which left little else. Also DNK CHILLAX–still don’t–but it pretty much had to be.
  3. 16 minutes, so nothing to frighten the horses here, apart from the long sciency word. However, when the POLY appeared the rest of the fodder fitted in quite sweetly.

    Paul’s Guardian Prize is a gem, even if when I did it the enumeration of the long one was awry. Corrected now, I see.

  4. 24 minutes on what was a pretty representative Monday puzzle.

    FOI 3dn ROSE WATER
    LOI 14ac ERECT (overlooked it!)
    COD 22dn PASSIM
    WOD quite a few but I’ll plump for 17dn BERGERAC

    Edited at 2018-04-23 03:42 am (UTC)

  5. Didn’t know the goddess, and I also hadn’t come across ‘Gloss’ for EXPLAIN before. Whenever I see/hear CHILLAX it doesn’t chill me out or relax me – quite the reverse.

    COD as instant word association: ANTHROPOLOGIST = Margaret Mead.

    31 minutes with GATEWAY unparsed. As usual, easy when you see it.

    Off to give the Stickley puzzle a go.

    Thanks to setter and blogger.

  6. At 44 minutes this was not quite so easy for me having to rely on wordplay to find the unknown TYCHE, POLYwhatsit and ATAXIC. And the old jar gave me trouble as I knew I knew the word but had difficulty calling it to mind – not helped by thinking that ‘insect repellant unopened, note’ might be clueing {w}ASP—,A. Didn’t know gloss = EXPLAIN.

    Edited at 2018-04-23 04:52 am (UTC)

    1. Unfamiliar usage for me too, but seems that it’s where “glossary” comes from.

      Edited at 2018-04-23 05:26 am (UTC)

      1. Linguists use the word a lot, as the translation of a foreign language sentence or word in the data under discussion. (Not really an explanation, mind you, but.)
  7. 13:30 … quite tricky in places and rather pleasing. I especially liked some of the vocab.

    No one was more CHILLAXed than BERGERAC

    1. Back in the day, if you wanted to reside permanently in Jersey, you had to show considerable wealth (Alan Whicker), a required skill (my uncle, a dentist) or a vaguely ‘has promoted the island’ thing. John Nettles applied for a residence permit but was about to be turned down until it was pointed out that as Bergerac, he had probably done more to promote the island than anyone else. Guernsey is more pragmatic. House prices for incomers are significantly higher than for locals. Same house, two prices.

      Edited at 2018-04-23 03:02 pm (UTC)

      1. The series certainly made me want to live there, though I couldn’t persuade my parents on the subject (I was still at school at the time). Googling Bergerac earlier, I came across an interview with John Nettles in which he reported hostility from some islanders over the series’ characterisation of Jersey’s war, about which he later wrote a book. I guess they forgave him
    2. Bergerac came straight to mind as I’ve just finished watching Shoestring—I hadn’t realised until recent researches that Bergerac was a sort-of continuation/replacement by the same producer after Trevor Eve left to do more theatre work.
        1. There is a film out right now about the war time in Guernsey – the Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society – or some such title – decent reviews, I believe.
        2. Oddly, I’ve had the Bergerac theme in my head all the time I’ve been watching Shoestring…

          While I think the Shoestring theme fits the show very well, I think Bergerac stands the test of time better!

  8. 23 minutes, and as with Vinyl, a very welcome change after the weekend. I finally threw in the towel on Saturday’s puzzle last night, after more than three hours in total, I think.

    Happy to learn about that sense of “gloss” and get a bit of a history of “glossary”. The carbohydrate was virtually a write-in—I thought we’d had “disaccharide” recently, but apparently not: the last time seems to have been in 2016. Perhaps it came up in the Guardian.

    Not too hard, but well-clued, I thought, with the unknowns appearing quite quickly from the wordplay. FOI 1d DESIGNER LOI 22d PASSIM, COD 1a DEPORT, WOD RICOTTA.

  9. Altogether now…. she’s a man-eater.
    Not like me today, a yoghurt, granola and banana eater. Slightly put off by the concept of ginger jelly.
    Strangely my MER was at MER (surrounding a Neat). I guessed it was mere, but it feels awkward.
    Also the almost clever ‘missing meal of steak’ feels awkward too.
    BUT I quite enjoyed it. Mostly I liked: Up before court.
    20 mins.
    Thanks setter and Vinyl

    Edited at 2018-04-23 07:12 am (UTC)

  10. I whizzed through most of this before a flashing amber in the SW corner – not helped by MATRICAL for 19a. I couldn’t see why 27a was what it was, so thanks for enlightening me Vinyl.
    I took 26a to be simply an anagram of STEAK, anagrind: “Meal of”, or is that too simple?
  11. Flight? Ah yes, GETAWAY. That’s the trouble with easy ones, even easy ones with difficult words. You stick in the difficult answers, feel smug, miss the obvious but wrong one, feel stupid. Score one to the setter.
  12. PS: I now wait with trepidation the outcome of Sunday’s puzzle, which I breezed through. Did I miss something? Saturday’s was harder.
  13. Easy, and I did put gateway, though I couldn’t parse it for ages, for wondering what a gway might be… also wondered if Ria was a girl’s name.. oh well, Monday mornings
    1. Ria was the name of Wendy Craig’s character in the excellent “Butterflies”.
      1. Ah yes, right you are and I agree it was indeed excellent. Written by the late and lamented Carla Lane
      3. Indeed excellent… Wendy Craig, Geoffrey Palmer and Nicholas Lyndhurst. Wonder what heppened to the other guy?
      4. I know a couple of women called Ria. But I think it’s a contraction of Maria.
  14. 28 minutes, so maybe a shade over par for a Monday. The football must have got to me. I’ve forgotten how to CHILLAX, if I ever knew. I don’t find an anagram as long as POLYSACCHARIDE any fun, especially when I don’t know the word, although the POLY bit was obvious. COD to ANTHROPOLOGIST. LOI AMPHORA. Thank you V and setter.

    Edited at 2018-04-23 08:59 am (UTC)

  15. Pleased to find myself on the wavelength for this: 1ac and 4ac went straight in, as did every down clue depending from them, and I was able to steam forward from there to a sub-5-minute time, despite the bottom have giving me a few more reasons to pause and think. This is what a Monday puzzle should be, a nice little confidence booster for the rest of the week!

    Chemistry studenting-wise, what quiz question would POLYSACCHARIDE be the correct answer to?

  16. Hungry tigers don’t come out, when it rains at night.
    They’ve no need to whet their appetite.
  17. Delayed today by overthinking. PASSIM in my view and other definitions means in various places rather than all the way through. Tried and failed to parse both GATEWAY and SKATE. There seem only to have been a very small number of leonine man-eaters, usually such large felines are tigers. 20’12”.

    Dnf Saturday either, Sunday was OK.

    Thanks pip and setter.

  18. 8:56. No real problems this morning. I was grateful TYCHE was a hidden, and I thought ‘meal of steak’ rather strange.
    GATEWAY is very clever but I confess I just biffed it.
    The word CHILLAX was notoriously used by David Cameron, so I now associate it with him rather as I associate the word ‘fiddle’ with Nero.

    Edited at 2018-04-23 07:58 am (UTC)

    1. I wondered if it was a typo, for ‘meat of steak’ that being the central letters leaving SK?
      1. I took it that the ‘meal’ of STEAK was what it had eaten, i.e. its contents. I don’t think it quite works, but I am inclined to think that’s what was intended because ‘meat of steak’ spoils the surface reading.
        1. I took the meal to be TEA – what we called the evening meal as kids, 50 years ago in Australia.
          Otherwise mostly easy – couldn’t pass GATEWAY, wondering how GWAY was flight, so avoided the trap. No other problems except ignorance – not knowing BERGERAC except from TV show, what PASSIM actually meant, and forgetfulness since GLOSS last came up.
  19. Equal PB, on form today, 12 minutes, with a few BIFs. Liked AMPHORA and nice to see my local wine region featuring.
    See keriothe my comment above re STEAK 26a.
  20. Like our esteemed blogger, I’d struggled with a couple of the recent puzzles, but fairly flew through this one in a whisker under twelve minutes. All very straightforward.
  21. It appears my word knowledge is ‘good in parts’. I knew all the apparently hard ones, only to finish with -a-s-m and have to parse my way to the answer. PASSIM unknown to me but not mentioned above in the lists of unknowns.
  22. 13 mins. I struggled a bit in the SW until I cracked PASSIM, and BERGERAC was my LOI after I finally corrected “ataxia” to ATAXIC. That’ll teach me to read the clues properly. Except it probably won’t. I must have been on the setter’s wavelength on Saturday because I don’t recall it being particularly difficult.
  23. ….on the thin ice of a new day (as Jethro Tull aptly put it), 9:56 was enough time for this moderately friendly offering.

    Total respect to Vinyl for completing it at all with Coltrane for accompaniment. I would have needed a lie down after three clues. And thanks for sorting out my three biffs (SPLASH OUT, MAN-EATER, and ASTRONAUT).

    FOI PIPER
    LOI ASTRONAUT
    COD SKATE
    WOD AMPHORA

    Wasn’t keen on price = appraise.

    1. Nice to see a clue related lyric title.
      And great choice – brilliant song; the way it builds, adding layers of instruments.
  24. 21:59 a bit of a breeze this one. Glad to see the setter calling out ricotta for the dangerous gateway cheese that it is, it’s always the one the cheesemongers try to get you hooked on, sure it’s soft and creamy and you think you can handle it but before you know it you’re on the hard stuff, stilton, cheddar, parmesan.
  25. so it must be Monday. Lots of biffing, but a perfectly pleasant experience. As part of my resolution to try to learn new and/or tricky vocabulary just the once, I was happy to find that I could remember the difference between TAMARIN and TAMARIND, not to mention TAMARISK. I think the moment when David Cameron used the word CHILLAX was the point where it officially ceased to be in any way cool, though even his intervention obviously failed to kill the word altogether.
  26. 20 minutes, but didn’t parse 12ac properly, so never corrected my biff of GETAWAY. Grr.
    LOI 9dn as needed checkers to see what followed POLY.
  27. I thought I was on for a good time here and submitted my offering after 13 min 52 secs. However I had Getaway for Gateway, Ataxia for Ataxic and had missed out Bergerac altogether. So 3 wrong or missing.
  28. A pleasant start to the week with only the SW causing any real holdups. A biffed EXPORT at 1a led to a delay with 1d, but was corrected once SIGN for cancer became apparent. AMPHORA was remembered, but PASSIM was new to me and had to be constructed as my LOI. MAN EATER was my penultimate with a vague suspicion that OX and NEAT were synonymous, and the same MER over MER as Myrtilus. ERECT was my FOI. Nice puzzle. 25:09. Thanks setter and V.
  29. Like our blogger, I have a recent puzzle hovering over me – in my case, the horror show that was Friday’s – so this was a nice return. 7m 18s in all and I suspect I should have been faster, although there weren’t any particular clues that stole lots of time. I finished on the PASSIM / SKATE corner (not sure what was going on with that SKATE clue).
    I must confess I’m grateful to the setter for giving vowel checkers for TAMARIND, which is a perennial nightmare for me.
  30. My only hold-up was getting the last 10 letters of the carbo in order. TfTT’s Mohn clocked in with a lightning time of 3.26! 14.19 for me
    1. Mohn’s time does seem especially astonishing in a puzzle where you (well, I) had to slow down to consider things like “gateway or getaway?” Kudos indeed.
  33. I found this fairly average and finished in 35:22.

    My Collins Thesaurus has “pound” as the first entry for “lash”, so that seems fair enough. I still can’t see why neat=ox though?

  34. Done correctly in 15 minutes or so, and I realized that I didn’t fully understand the meaning of PASSIM. Or ‘gloss’, for that matter. And I got GATEWAY, although I also was left wondering what a GWAY might be. I thought the answer was clearly correct, so I stopped wondering. Regards.
  35. I wasted ages trying to work out the spelling of the POLY**** I couldn’t work out the last 6 letters which messed up the SW corner. Also I knew there was a Latin type word for 22d but simply couldn’t remember it. I blame old age. And up to then I’d been doing comfortably. Not a good day. 34 minutes. Ann
  36. I was a little under 10 minutes and surprised to find myself top of the leaderboard at the time, with a few regulars having one error listed. POLYSACCHARIDE was a write-in thanks to too much chemistry.
  37. Managed ok today although I had to biff “Man Eater” having no idea why Ox is Neat nor why Mere is Plain ( Mere is a lake?). I knew “Passim” from Eyes Passim – thank you Private Eye (although, until today, I thought it meant past!). Just guessed “Ataxic”.

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