Times 27027 – pardon me boy, is that the Chattanooga…

Author   piquetPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
A bit of a curate’s egg for me, this one, some quickie-standard write-ins and a few with devious wordplay, but nothing much to start an argument about. Except the lack of science-y clues, of course. I’m not convinced I ‘get’ 22a, G wise,[see edit] and I can’t see the instruction to ‘rise’ the end of 8d, if there is one.[see edit] Twenty minutes to do and ten more to unscramble the parsing of a few, not bad for a chap with one eye up the chimney and the other in the pot, as the song goes (well I’ve just had my first cataract removed and I saw my face in focus while shaving for the first time ever. Not as blemish-free as I’d hoped). And that other great song is haunting me now about the train to that place in Tennessee… all aboard!

Across
1 Quiet English officer in retro bar (4,2)
BELT UP – E, LT (officer) inside PUB reversed.
5 Cancels fresh order of rolls right away in cheap eatery (5,3)
CALLS OFF – (OLLS)* i.e. Rolls with R away, inside CAFF.
9 Writer of articles about wine — European reds, principally (8)
REPORTER – RE = about, PORT = wine, E, R = first letters of European reds.
10 Devout sort not half bleary after five religious books (6)
VOTARY – V five, OT books, ARY second half of bleARY.
11 Free wild animal man had brought round about (6)
DETACH – TAC = CAT ‘wild’, inside HE’D = man had, reversed. This was my LOI, not a great clue.
12 Verger finally collected money after church service (8)
CEREMONY – CE = church, R = verger finally, (MONEY)*.
14 In courtyard, dislike new display (12)
PRESENTATION – RESENT = dislike (well, sort of), insert into PATIO and add N for new.
17 Mostly the vicar seems distraught when his busy time begins? (9,3)
CHRISTMAS EVE – (TH VICAR SEEMS)*, the TH being ‘mostly the’.
20 One hundred — too old for treatment (8)
COVERAGE – C = 100, OVER AGE. I guess ‘treatment’ as in ‘the BBC treatment of the Trump visit was…’.
22 For instance, award winning item of pottery? (3,3)
EGG CUP – EG = for instance, G because we need one, CUP award. How does G CUP = award winning? Ah, jackkt explained, it’s GC for George Cross, UP for winning. Groan.
23 Ship with loud speaker one disconnected (6)
WHALER – W = with, HAILER is the loudspeaker, disconnect the letter I.
25 City‘s to disappoint fans, are we told? (8)
TOULOUSE – TO, then U LOUSE here sounds like YOU LOSE. Or maybe the whole thing is a homophone TO LOSe would disappoint the fans. Anyway Toulouse is such a fine city, it would disappoint no-one.
26 Classmate? Precisely (8)
FORMALLY – FORM = class, ALLY = mate.
27 Cleric visits cathedral city regularly (6)
EVENLY – VEN (the Venerable) visits ELY small city with a cathedral.

Down
2 City no longer safe when leader is deposed (6)
EXETER – EX = no longer, ETER = PETER (nickname for a safe) with the P deposed.
3 Pamphleteer’s article about a month going round part of Europe (6,5)
THOMAS PAINE – If you didn’t know the answer, being a scientist not a historian, you’d struggle with the convoluted wordplay, but it’s possible. All inside THE, we have A MO reversed then SPAIN. I’d vaguely heard of the chap, but was quite impressed once I’d read him up on Wiki. Managed to stir the pot in the revolting transatlantic colony then in France, then President Monroe got him released from an unpleasant French jail..
4 Tap part of body around start of this medical procedure (5,4)
PATCH TEST – PAT = tap, Insert T (part of This) into CHEST.
5 Officer leading lots of people across lake in small boat (7)
CORACLE – CO (officer), insert L for lake into RACE lots of people.
6 Somewhat uplifted future volleyball fan (5)
LOVER – Hidden reversed in FUTU(RE VOL)LEYBALL.
7 Group siesta every other missed … (3)
SET – Alternate letters of S i E s T a.
8 … because nobody rises in the morning (8)
FORENOON – FOR = because, NO-ONE rises i.e. reversed, not the E rising as I’d thought before jackkt pointed us in the right direction.
13 Pantomime cat showing up thus in tights (6,5)
MOTHER GOOSE – MOT = TOM = cat, reversed, ERGO = thus in Latin, insert into HOSE = tights. MOT H(ERGO)OSE.
15 Familiar melody from opera company, French one (5,4)
THEME TUNE – THE MET opera company in New York, UNE French for one.
16 Repeatedly check gauge of railway for train (4-4)
CHOO-CHOO – CH (check) 00 gauge = what model railways were made to, (Hornby Double-O, remember?). Repeatedly.
18 Plug record on telly, regularly showing proficiency (7)
ADEPTLY – AD = plug, EP = record, T L Y = alternate letters of telly.
19 Seafood and beef, you say? (6)
MUSSEL – sounds like MUSCLE. Well, it does to me, them up north may have to disagree.
21 Girl disconcerted rival (5)
AVRIL – easy anagram of RIVAL.
24 Smoker to think over giving up in the end (3)
LUM – that Scottish word for chimney again, is MULL = think, with the end removed, over = reversed.

67 comments on “Times 27027 – pardon me boy, is that the Chattanooga…”

  1. ….I came upon MOTHER GOOSE, so I turned her loose – she was screaming. (Jethro Tull ride again !)

    12:14 with thanks to Pip for parsing both the above, and THOMAS PAINE, and to Jack for identifying the Maltese element of EGG CUP.

    FOI CALLS OFF
    LOI CORACLE
    COD COVERAGE
    WOD CHOO-CHOO (memories of “Top Cat” !)

    On the subject of That Darn Cat, I totally concur with z8b8d8k.

  2. Once again, a perusal of the clues in the NW yielded absolutely zilch. I started with SET at 7d and filled in most of the NE apart from the unknown VOTARY which surfaced a while later from wordplay. MOTHER GOOSE was biffed from the unaccounted for G in 22a. Thanks to Jack for the explanation of that. On finally returning to the NW, having postulated CHEST as the body part, I gradually constructed DETACH, after dragging both eyebrows back from the ceiling at the wild animal definition, saw the EX part of 1d, for which I’d spotted the (p)ETER part earlier, realised the bar at 1a was PUB, penned in our writer at 9a and concentrated on building our pamphleteer, who was my LOI. A guess at THOMAS from the checkers allowed me to see the light. 30:24. An enjoyable puzzle. Thanks setter and Pip. Glad to hear about the improved optic too.
  4. A very small bit longer than usual. I of course know Tom Paine well, but was surprised to find him here in a UK crossword, and entered him after patching together the wordplay. Which is something I didn’t do for EGG CUP, missing the G explanation altogether, and my LOI, DETACH. That was a simple biff. Too many steps from ‘wild animal’ to an anagram of ‘cat’ for me, so I skipped the parsing and just put it in. Regards.
    1. I’m astonished at the number of folk around here who haven’t heard of Paine. Before today I would have put him firmly in the ‘absolutely everyone’s heard of him’ category. Obviously not!

      Edited at 2018-05-02 08:20 pm (UTC)

  5. 39:46 and somewhat back on terra firma after a couple that I really struggled with earlier this week. Didn’t think too hard about 11ac and glossed over the wild bit of it. Of course I failed to spot the GC and just bunged in egg cup, again glossing over the awkward extra G in my erroneous parsing. Knew of the pamphleteer but still needed the assistance of the wordplay to get there. I think I have seen patch test before but it wasn’t particularly meaningful to me.
  6. All but finished in 15 minutes with just a couple left in the NW corner…. DETACH and THOMAS PAINE my last 2 in… and I had to look him up as I’d never heard of him, so a DNF. I parsed CAT simply as ‘wild animal’. Thanks Jack for solving the EGG CUP mystery I shared with several others here!
  7. … which I don’t always achieve by any means. 26a “Normally” – well, why not?
    Thanks for the blog, best wishes,
    Richard J
  8. I never really got into my stride with this one, and finally limped in just under the hour. It was the northleft corner that held me up for the longest time, though in retrospect I can’t quite see why.

    What I find interesting, though, is that I knew THOMAS PAINE (the answer, not the gentleman), but had no idea I knew it until I had written it in. This leads me to wonder how many other things I know, but don’t know I know. For all I know, I could know all sorts of things without knowing, although I don’t know if that’s of any practical use. Ever since Mr. Rumsfeld’s wise words, I have been particularly on my guard against unknown unknowns, but I now know I need to look out for unknown knowns. There’s no knowing where all this will end.

      1. Thanks. As a youth, I was very nearly on the British olympic five-a-side digression team.
  9. Three dnfs in a row. Come on RR, we don’t all live in Dorset.

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