Times 27,035: The River Horse In The Room

Author   VerlainePosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
I thought this was good and commendably Friday-hard, with the tough combination of (a) very few definition parts that immediately suggest their answers and (b) very few completely straightforward wordplay parts. It may turn out to have been a wavelength puzzle and if so it’s one that I surely wasn’t on – I still don’t understand 1ac, for starters, which I stared at for long minutes before submitting last night. Someone put me out of my misery on that one please…

FOIs 18ac and 24ac probably, 15ac might have been pretty quick to arrive too but I can’t remember for sure. LOI (apart from the hippo drop) the unfamiliar archaic term at 27ac. I really liked the straightforward elegance of 21ac; Agatha Christie made a guest appearance in Doctor Who about a decade ago, but I must point out that hardcore Doctor Who fans will get miffed if you call it Dr Who, as 25ac comes perilously close to doing!

The surfaces all hold up in the cold morning light and there is definitely some inventive stuff going on with the multiple cryptic definitions and &lits. 12dn is my Clue of the Day for being a really clever re-interpretation of a cliched phrase that we all take for granted, pointing our poor brains off in the wrong direction entirely. Very glad not to have any ambiguity at all about the spelling of 1dn: I like to think of myself as a very good speller, but HOUYHNHNM lies outside even my confidence zone. Imagine how many “scare the horses” comments it could have generated as an anagram! Thanks to the setter for generally not sparing the horses though, 1-0 to you this Friday I’d say, sir or possibly madam. Grr!

ACROSS
1 What township police would need? (5)
HIPPO – hidden quite obviously inside {towns}HIP PO{lice}, but I still don’t get it. Hippos are just the ponderous semiaquatic African mammals, and township police and just township police, aren’t they? I never thought the twain would meet. ETA: a Hippo is an Armoured Personnel Carrier used by South African police. Which I guess it probably had to be really. But I did like the idea of them needing an actual hippo. Another &lit eh!

4 Vessel’s very unusual coupling hooks (6,3)
LOVING CUP – V, “hooked” by (COUPLING*) [“unusual”]

9 North Eastern hotel, full up, sadly offering no accommodation (9)
UNHELPFUL – (NE H FULL UP*) [“sadly”]

10 Absurd sentimentality about distant land (5)
GONZO – GOO [sentimentality] about NZ [= New Zealand = distant land]

11 In private, I agree to receive Republican minister (4,9)
HOME SECRETARY – HOME [in] + SECRET [private] + AY [I agree] “to receive” R [Republican]

14 Large piece of skin ought to be put back evenly (4)
HUNK – the even letters of {s}K{i}N {o}U{g}H{t}, reversed

15 Company department whose business is first to pick up? (4,6)
CALL CENTRE – cryptic def, the call centre being the part of the business that fields incoming phone calls

18 Flowers a symbol some mostly abandoned (3,7)
MAY BLOSSOM – (A SYMBOL SOM{e}*) [“abandoned”]

19 Place such as Washington wouldn’t do for everyone (4)
LIEU – LIE [such as (George) “I cannot tell a lie” Washington wouldn’t do] + U [for everyone]

21 Position, say, in which murder committed (6,7)
ORIENT EXPRESS – ORIENT [position] + EXPRESS [say]

24 Demanding return of books: we’re disgusted (5)
TOUGH – OT [books] reversed + UGH! [we’re disgusted]

25 Who, perhaps, uses it’s elaborately turned out? (5,4)
DRESS SUIT – DR [Who, perhaps] + (USES IT’S*) [“elaborately turned out”], &lit.

27 One that can suddenly drop a clanger, speaking in cheap theatre (5,4)
PENNY GAFF – PENNY [one that can suddenly drop] + homophone of GAFFE [a clanger, “speaking”]

28 Ship touring Caribbean’s in race (5)
SWISS – SS [ship] “touring” WI’S [Caribbean’s]

DOWN
1 Cases of hitherto ugly, half-forgotten Hanoverian mares appearing in fabulous horse race (10)
HOUYHNHNMS – H{ithert}O U{gl}Y H{alf-forgotte}N H{anoveria}N M{are}S. The civilised talking horses from Swift’s Gulliverian fable.

2 Old man’s audible exclamation of contempt (3)
PAH – homophone of PA [old man “is audible”]

3 Russian department closing after student departed (6)
OBLAST – LAST [closing] after OB [= old boy, student departed]

4 Body drawing from biography about girl (4,5)
LIFE CLASS – LIFE C LASS [biography | about | girl]

5 Brussels throne room turned up treasure (5)
VALUE – EU LAV [Brussels | throne room] reversed

6 Row when entering eg on a fancy here? (2-2,4)
NO-GO AREA – OAR [row], when entering (EG ON A*) [“fancy”], semi-&lit.

7 Civil engineer incorporating fellow’s jolly design (5,6)
CANDY STRIPE – CE [civil engineer] “incorporating” ANDY’S TRIP [fellow’s | jolly]

8 One holding chair for piano opposite (4)
PROF – FOR P [for | piano] reversed. ETA: Anonymous’s parsing is even better! PRO [for] + F [= forte = piano’s opposite]. Thanks anon!

12 Reserve ready for the match? (5,2,4)
MONEY TO BURN – cryptic def, money to burn being money you have in “reserve”, that theoretically you could happily take a “match” to…

13 Needs about a pound when daughter’s going places (10)
REQUISITES – RE [about] + QUI{d} [a pound, “when (D for) daughter’s going”] + SITES [places]

16 Behold ring being used to bind each type of folder (5-4)
LOOSE-LEAF – LO [behold] + O [ring] + SELF [being] used “to bind” EA [each]

17 Whacking small boy could end in outcry (8)
ALMIGHTY – AL [small boy] + MIGHT [could] + {outcr}Y

20 The works of O Henry missing from promotions? (6)
OPUSES – O + PUS{h}ES [“(H for) Henry missing from” promotions]

22 Girl climbing a mountain finally needing a hand up (5)
NADIA – A {mountai}N reversed [“climbing”], + AID [a hand] reversed [“up”]

23 Over from a spinner (4)
ATOP – A TOP [a | spinner]

26 Reading maybe for which one has no time (3)
UNI – UNI{t} [one “has no (T for) time”]

84 comments on “Times 27,035: The River Horse In The Room”

  1. The sheer unlikeliness of 1d caused me to pause, even though the apparent crossers all seemed to fit. I still screwed up though, by taking half of half-hearted in the mix and putting an F where I should have put an N. Bah! It was, however, of no consequence in the final reckoning, as I had SITU for LIEU. Double Bah! and Humbug! My justification for 1a was that if a Town’s hip it might need a HIP P(olice) (O)fficer. Knew gaff as a place of abode, quite commonly used in these parts, so once the penny had dropped it was a fair bet. I had OOLUE for a while until LOVING CUP put me right. Despite the 77:50 this took, I quite enjoyed it, with lots of Aha moments: too many to list, although MONEY TO BURN was high on the posited list. ALMIGHTY took an almighty length of time to fathom. Thanks setter and V.
  2. Guardian 25887 by Crucible was a themed puzzle based on Gullivers Travels. 13a. Such are the houyhnhnms, in the author’s estimation (6).
  3. After around 30 minutes I threw in the T with OBLAST and the GAFF part of the theatre missing and George W not sitting.

    John Henderson behind this one?

  4. I needed an hour for most of this and then about 10 minutes after work to get a handful in the SE corner (lieu, dress suit, uni and requisites). Tough all over this one and I was pleasantly surprised to find all my unknowns correct. Didn’t know that type of hippo but was confident from word play, oblast and the gaff bit of penny gaff entered with fingers crossed, knew what I was looking for at 1dn grateful for the clue’s assistance with the spelling though.
  5. Happy to have crept in under 20 minutes for this. Struck lucky with NADIA which I arrived at from A = (Mount) IDA reversed and the N from ‘needing’ blissfully unaware that it was at the wrong end. Left the horses as LOI because although HOUY was a giveaway if you already knew the word I realised that getting the rest of it right would require a bit of parsing.
  6. Fine clue! Wasn’t a problem for me.

    Edited at 2018-05-12 02:48 am (UTC)

    1. I was a bit surprised by the sense of humour failure over this one too. Surely it’s funny just imagining the setter wondering “how the heck do I even clue this”?
    2. Did you know the word? I’ve never actually read Gulliver’s Travels, so whilst I’m aware of the Lilliputians, Brobdingnagians, Wottingers and so forth I had never heard of these horses. Without that knowledge it didn’t look anything like a possible word.
      1. Yeah, I knew the word, or the basic shape of it, although the precise spelling is wild enough to give one pause, but that is where the wordplay was explicit.
  7. The only thing I had to cheat for was PENNY GAFF (though I must have seen that here several years ago…) There was some hesitation at 1d: “Wow, is it really spelled like that?” But it looked right once I simply followed directions and wrote it in. I had put two word-breaks in the wrong places in the bleary hours of the night and that slowed me down today when I tackled this again. This was a fine puzzle, but I was glad to see here that it was difficult in spots for other folks too.
  8. Messed this one up. Never heard of the 1d horse, but I had heard of longchamp. And the wordplay gave me HOUGHCHAMP which seemed maybe a horserace. Like everyone else, I had HIPPO immediately but wasn’t 100% sure it was right, so maybe it didn’t even start with H.

    And I put MAIL-CENTRE which first the cryptic definition in the sense of picking up the mail before delivering it.

  9. I had a completely different SE corner. 26 down: OWN (Reading Town without the T). Hence 25 across DREAM BOAT (seems reasonable). But then the best I could do for 28 ac was SINDS (people from SIND) and 20 down OPIMES (small opuses, since O. Henry was known for his short stories) but I feared this might be a made-up word since it was not in my dictionaries.

    from Jeepyjay

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