Times 27052 – two pangrams in a row!

Author   glhPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Solving time: 14:07, and since about two minutes of that was on 8 down, which I feel is a term at the forefront of many Times solvers’ minds, I am kicking myself. My 14:07 is the slowest of the three times currently on the Times leaderboard, so this was probably easier than I was making it out to be.

It has been a while since we had two pangrams in a row, but with an Z, Q and J in some of the first clues I solved, I was on the lookout, and it was knowing that there was an X missing that caused the penny to drop at 8 down.

First definition is underlined in each clue… away we go!

Across
1 A diary I found among presents expresses regret (10)
APOLOGISES – A then LOG(diary) inside POSES(presents)
7 Very small book-lined alcove (4)
BABY – B(book) with BAY(alcove) outside
9 Leaving word out of essay on arachnophobia? (8)
SAYONARA –  hidden in esSAY ON ARAchnophobia
10 Bloke entering shelter returned protective coat (6)
ENAMEL – MAN(bloke) inside LEE(shelter) all reversed
11 First couple in queue to board empty vessel (6)
BARQUE – first two letters in QUeue inside BARE(empty)
13 Boss on panel maybe, one proverbially late (8)
DOORNAIL –  I think this is NAIL(boss, stud) with DOOR(panel across an entrance). Funny thing is the wordplay seemed better suit DOORKNOB which would be the US version of this answer
14 Editor with paper backing quite superb writer (5,7)
EDGAR WALLACE – ED(editor), then W(with), RAG(paper) both reversed, then ALL(quite) ACE(superb)
17 Stranger roaming Ross to the west is a wayward type (12)
TRANSGRESSOR – anagram of STRANGER then ROSS reversed
20 Prime time dancing therein? (8)
THIRTEEN – T, then an anagram of THEREIN – THIRTEEN is a prime number
21 Let me introduce Yankee’s contrary belief (6)
HERESY – or HERE’S Y
22 Look wonderingly, bowled over here in the garden? (6)
GAZEBO – GAZE(look wonderingly), B(bowled), O(over)
23 An oblique sign of approval aired for puzzle (8)
ACROSTIC – sounds like A CROSS TICK
25 A little extra for each kilo (4)
PERK – PER(for each), K(kilo)
26 Monoglot dabbling in every vacuous scientific field (10)
ENTOMOLOGY – anagram of MONOGLOT inside E(ver)Y

Down
2 What dealers and others do round table, clearing year’s bills? (8)
PLACARDS – dealers and others PLAY CARDS – remove Y
3 Game ladies, or gents (3)
LOO – double definition, a card game I’ve only found in crosswords
4 Critical party supporting gutless leader (5)
GRAVE – RAVE(party) under G(utless)
5 Survey youngster mounted causes outrage (7)
SCANDAL – SCAN(survey) then LAD(youngster) reversed
6 Lost vegetarian goats sure to stray (9)
STEGOSAUR – anagram of GOATS,SURE
7 Problem isn’t still occupying bishops (5-6)
BRAIN-TEASER – AIN’T(isn’t) EASE(still) inside B and RR(both bishops)
8 Country’s withdrawal was effective, king admitted (6)
BREXIT – BIT(was effective) with REX(king) inside
12 A place for naval ceremonial suit, possibly (11)
QUARTERDECK – a suit would be a QUARTER of a DECK (well except for the joker)
15 How baleen is re-used? (9)
WHALEBONE – anagram of HOW,BALEEN
16 Judge joins son in exposing historic encounter (8)
JOUSTING – J(judge) then S in OUTING(exposing)
18 Sprinter initially slow, apparently unlikely to fade (7)
SUNFAST – S(printer), then UNFAST(slow, apparently)
19 Expression starts to lose its integrity when uttered (6)
PHRASE – sounds like FRAYS
21 Women’s rooms provided by one fleet-of-foot male (5)
HAREM – HARE(one fleet of foot), M(male)
24 Medicinal compound usually taken regularly (3)
SAL – alternating letters in uSuAlLy

58 comments on “Times 27052 – two pangrams in a row!”

  1. I went offline after a half-hour, with BABY, SAYONARA, and BREXIT yet to do. Coming here to see if the Quicky blog had been posted, I unfortunately saw your headline, went back to see that an X was needed, and that gave me BREXIT (I had been working on ‘country’ as the def, with withdrawal indicating reversal); so technically a DNF. SAYONARA my LOI, as I was even more obtuse than usual in spotting a hidden. I’ve never been to your neck of the US woods, George, but I’ve never heard anything other than ‘dead as a doornail’.
  2. …as I finished it before dinner, so I could focus on my (late-arriving) Canard enchaîné.

    I’ve lived in the USofA all my life, George, and I think I’ve only heard “dead as a DOORNAIL.”

    Déjà Vu Department: We had STEGOSAURUS just Tuesday, and today we get the shorter form. Today one of the answers here is also an answer in the QC (I won’t say what).

    Edited at 2018-05-31 02:59 am (UTC)

  3. Kicking myself in the shins for not seeing BREXIT! Dummkopf! Only ever heard ‘dead as a doornail’. Or if you are a fan of old Elton John/Bernie Taupin songs you may be familiar with: “There are two men lying dead as nails on an East Virginia farm….” (“Son of Your Father”)

    Edited at 2018-05-31 03:22 am (UTC)

    1. When an action or policy begins to bite, it begins to have a serious or harmful effect. Collins. ‘Bit’ is just the past tense.

      We hear a lot these days about sanctions on North Korea beginning to bite.

      46 minutes for this one, which is getting quite good for me at the moment. Are the puzzles getting harder?

      Edited at 2018-05-31 05:12 am (UTC)

  5. Sadly, even though I spotted the potential pangram and painstakingly worked out I might be missing an X, I missed both 8d BREXIT and 13a DOORNAIL (I couldn’t get “dodo” out of my head…) Enjoyed the rest, though, especially the rather oblique definitions that made it rather biff-resistant. Took me a while to convince myself that I knew it was EDGAR WALLACE even though the wordplay initially seemed to point to Well-ace…

    Perhaps my established attitude to 8d—burying my head in the sand and hoping it all goes away—has introduced a linguistic blind spot!

    Edited at 2018-05-31 06:40 am (UTC)

  6. 30 mins of fun with yoghurt, granola, compote
    Unlike others it seems, I was left with Acrostic and Phrase to do at the end and they took a while partly because I thought the Pangram only had a ‘V’ missing (having forgotten Grave).
    Mostly I liked: ‘Let me introduce’, Quarterdeck and COD to 1ac for the enigmatic drama of the surface. Why was the diary among the presents? Why did you read it? What was the rueful story between its tear-stained pages? Tell me more.
    Thanks setter and George.
  7. 23.30 with much time spent on
    JOUSTING not separating the Judge and his Son
    GRAVE: rave never springs to my mind as a party, but apparently our setters are rarely anywhere else
    BABY{ the Book was already there, didn’t twig I needed another one
    and BREXIT which achieves the distinction of being a truly horrible word and an even worse concept (“an undertaking of great advantage, but nobody to know what it is”), and which I reluctantly accepted when I realised the pangram needed an X.
    I think that’s the first time BREXIT has appeared as a solution here (or anywhere, come to that).
    Even as I wrote in EDGAR WALLACE, I realised I could not cite a single one of his oeuvre. Is that shameful?
    1. I’ve just completed watching the entire series of 47 Edgar Wallace Mysteries, films made for cinema at Merton Park studios between 1960 and 1965. They are currently being rerun on Talking Pictures TV (the best small independent TV channel by far) but there was a month’s break in their transmission for some reason so I became impatient and borrowed the remaining episodes on DVD from a friend.

      They’re brilliant for their plots, the quality of direction, locations mainly in and around London many of which have been destroyed or changed out of recognition, and casts full of stars or well-known faces of today before they were famous.

      Edited at 2018-05-31 10:20 am (UTC)

      1. Thanks for that: I’ll try it out today (I remain practically immobile) and see how it goes, at least in the absence of GK Chesterton’s Father Brown.

  8. Not much to say about this – just a steady top to bottom solve. Liked 9A.
  9. Thanks for the blog.

    1a needs an “I”.

    why does oblique = cross?
    Also ease for still?

    1. The third definition of ‘cross’ as an adjective in my Chambers is ‘oblique’, lying there between ‘transverse’ and ‘adverse’, although I can’t easily bring to mind an illustrative use case.

      Ease for still is easier, as in ‘still my beating heart’

  10. With Waterloo fast approaching I bunged in BASQUE and on submission almost immediately realised it should have been BARQUE. I was torn between two for my COD – I thought SAYONARA particularly well hidden but I’ll give it to WHALEBONE for the excellence of the surface.

    I’m a big fan of Edgar Wallace – the pub just off Fleet Street that is.

    1. I know the Edgar Wallace well and used to frequent it whilst working at the Strand campus. Now I am at the Waterloo campus, it’s a bit of a hike.
  11. 34 minutes with LOI BREXIT, would you believe? My attempts to ignore everything about it are beginning to work. I can’t say I knew SAYONOARA, or SUNFAST for that matter. I can say dead as a DOORNAIL, Doorknob or even Dormouse when mixing metaphors. COD to EDGAR WALLACE for the surprised look on my face when I realised I’d hit on the answer. A bit easier today. Thank your George and setter.
  12. Like others I reckon I have an aversion to the word, hence it was my LOI. Did not fully parse EDGAR WALLACE. Rather liked BRAIN TEASER, thought of it early but could not at first parse it. Lots of very nice wordplay. 17′ 40”, thanks gl and setter.
  13. About 45 minutes for me, which, as for Jackkt, is pretty good these days. Having blogged the QC last night, I was able to concentrate on this on the rattler this morning, which made a nice change.

    I was left with two to get when we arrived at Waterloo, and these quickly revealed themselves over a coffee at my desk. (1a and 2d if you are interested). In the case of 1a I spotted the log very early, but was torn between APOLOGISTS and APOLOGISES (POSTS or POSES for presents?). Luckily, I chose the right one.

    What is a ‘momble’ – see Vinyl1’s post above. I don’t think I have seen that before, and can’t find it in any of the usual sources.

    1. I forget who coined the term–Sotira?–but a momble is a plausible but non-existent word that a solver throws in *faute de mieux*, like Vinyl’s ‘vaquin’, which I assume was his original candidate for 11ac.
      4. It appears to have been mctext, formerly of this parish. A very convincing alternative for the real answer, which turned out to be SOMBRE.
  14. 54 minutes of travail, but today at least finishing, probably with BREXIT. I was in Cornwall when the vote took place, and the majority of the denizens of that county at least will be pleased with the outcome. Me? I was against entry in 1973 and against exit in 2016. Secretly pleased it happened, mind, given the behemoth that is the largely unaccountable EU and the chance it offers to revert – eventually – to all that is good about our indigenous lego-judicial system.
  15. I’ve been dragged back into the daily solve by the combined efforts of boltonwanderer and Penfold, and I’m resuming where I left off, with a fail. I tentatively put WEAK at 25a, and really did mean to go back and check it. Needless to say, I didn’t.

    I also spent some time trying to shoehorn DORMOUSE into 13a. I once spent 6 months surveying dormouse numbers in Gloucestershire woodland, putting milk cartons seeded with hazelnuts in trees, coming back the next day to check for telltale dormouse nibbling patterns. I loved that job, even though I never actually saw a dormouse. It was like counting wraiths.

    Just under 20 mins, with the mistake

    1. Welcome back! Good to see you.

      Surveying Cotswold dormouse numbers sounds more interesting that surveying Cotswold door house numbers. Which is how I processed your comment at first glance.

      1. Well, of course, these days house in the Cotswolds don’t have numbers. They all have names like Weaver’s Cottage, which will be the one with a Jag and a 4×4 in the driveway
        1. Welcome back sotira.
          In my part of the world, houses are typically called The Old Post Office, The Old Police Station, The Old Rectory etc.
          1. There was an ex-pub up for sale round my way a few years ago – the New Inn. I really hope the people that bought it called it “The Old New Inn”.
  16. 22:51

    LOI. Sayonara. I was trying to put Tara round “a go” for a spider aversion word.

    COD. Brexit. I was wondering when this might appear but took a while to get it.

  17. ….and that was the case here, despite having spotted the pangram.

    FOI BARQUE

    Didn’t like DOORNAIL, ACROSTIC, or PHRASE, the last of which was one of the last pair of missing answers just inside ten minutes. It fell about three minutes later, leaving me seven minutes of sheer frustration before biffing BREXIT just over the 20 minute mark.

    COD BRAIN-TEASER

    Didn’t much enjoy this one, but at least it spared me the indignity of a hat trick of DNF’s.

    Does anybody else find that they slow down/fail to finish more frequently as summer approaches ? It’s been a recurring problem for me over the last 4-5 years.

  18. Reminded me of Shakespeare’s marriage of true minds. Looked it up and saw that in both my editions he spells it as in “woof”. Glad to get home in one piece with this one after 2 recent typos. I liked the book-lined alcove and I certainly remember the Edgar Wallace from my Lincoln’s Inn days, his books not so much. 21.11

  19. Spotted BREXIT just as I was about to throw in the towel, having ummed, but surprisingly not erred, over the tentatively pencilled BABY. 29 mins.

  20. I had CASQUE at 11a, hoping that it might be an alternative spelling of cask, and the ‘case the joint’ might in some way mean empty it. Having quickly run through the alphabet – and even considered BARQUE before rejecting it, having not thought of Old Mother Hubbard and her bare cupboards – it was the best fit I could think of. A little over 8m with that error.

    My COD goes to SAYONARA at 9a, which I thought was a very well-hidden word and a nice definition.

  21. One of those puzzles where progress followed a strong downward curve, and PHRASE, SAYONARA and SUNFAST all took a long time to find at the end. Particular praise due to SAYONARA, as is always the case when a humble hidden word takes that long to figure out. Add me to those who were picturing a VAQUIN as some French man o’ war.
  22. Easier than so far this week I thought. After 25 minutes I had all but 3 clues done (7a, 8d, 19d) then was interrupted by a meter reader and a repair man. It then took me too long to see BREXIT even though I suspected the pangram was on. And BABY was hardly difficult. Didn’t see the FRAYS idea for 19 either, thought it was something derived from PHASE as in he was phased by that. Good puzzle though, we are on a roll of good ones this week.
  23. A welcome return to sub 35 minute territory after a spell of over 45s and 50s, and one well over the hour. LOO went in first, but then I had an arid spell which lasted until I hopped down the grid to the SE and got a foothold. The SW remained incomplete with THIRTEEN, SUNFAST and PHRASE resisting to the bitter end. The NW also put up a valiant fight, with SAYONARA keeping a very low profile. Some great clues and a most enjoyable puzzle. 34:19. Thanks setter and George.

    Edited at 2018-05-31 11:35 am (UTC)

  24. I think BREXIT is an awful word, but I liked the clue which was my last in at 24 minutes. Otherwise nothing too difficult although I haven’t come across SUNFAST before. I enjoyed the ‘Lost vegetarian’ for STEGOSAURUS which has also appeared elsewhere within the last week or so.

    Annoyed to have missed the pangram yet again.

    Thanks to setter and blogger.

  25. Not knowing the word sunfast, though should’ve got it, finally threw in syntact, though there could scarcely be a less likely sprinter (a horse with spectacles maybe?) So dnf in 37’20. Seem to be finding them tough these days; hope it’s them not me.
    1. A friend of mine used to own a share of a race horse called Scenic Flight, but its performance was so bad, we renamed it Scenic Route!
  26. 18:49, with nearly half of that staring in increasing desperation at 8dn. An immense waste of time, diverting my attention from more valuable activity and with nothing much to show for it in the end.
    1. I remember reading a thriller many years ago in which the central conceit was that British intelligence had built a device which they wanted the KGB to acquire, in the mistaken belief they’d got hold of some important secret. In fact, the object had no practical use whatsoever, but the plan was that it perform the task which the Times crossword achieved every morning across the British establishment, and tie up the best brains in the country when they could be doing far more useful things…
      1. ‘Running Blind’, by Desmond Bagley? Sounds like the right plot, the novel involved a chase around Iceland, doing one full lap from memory.

        Edited at 2018-06-01 03:43 am (UTC)

  27. 20 minutes – with an early Q and Z, started looking for pangram – then getting the J from JOUSTING meant that the X gave me BREXIT straightaway. So NE corner was last (with the V helping me to GRAVE) – LOI SAYONARA although it was hidden in plain sight. (Only seen after giving up trying to make something of PANORAMA.)
  28. Flashman can’t see the “I”. Neither could I for a moment. It is cunningly hidden in plain sight: a [(diary = log) I] found among po…ses.
  29. “Dead as a doorknob” is listed (by Wiktionary) as “possibly … a misinterpretation or misunderstanding” of “dead as a doornail.” Not sure why you are claiming that to be an Americanism, but then, Chambers blames us for a lot of things, so why shouldn’t you? 😉
  30. Just under thirty minutes, no major problems, not much to say except welcome back, Sotira.

    THIRTEEN was my penultimate entry, although I knew it would turn out to be a prime number (NINETEEN also a possibility). It took me a while to see that it was “therein” that would be dancing and was not just an adverb in the clue. Reading “country’s withdrawal”, BREXIT was very easy. GIT didn’t make sense, so it couldn’t be GREXIT, after all.

    Edited at 2018-05-31 06:10 pm (UTC)

  31. Nice puzzle, which wasn’t too taxing, although my last two were really just biffed in, BREXIT and BABY. I confess I didn’t see the wordplay for either, though they’re not really hard to see. Now, that is. Maybe I was tired by then. Regards.
  32. DNF. Bah! I had all but 18dn done in about 40 mins. Despite staring at the grid for another 20 mins nothing sensible came to mind. I’m not altogether sure now whether I know the word or not. Like others knew Edgar Wallace from the pub which is near my office.
  33. Twenty minutes from soup to nuts – this one felt more like a Monday. I’m glad to see the little dabble into mathematics is still ongoing, and STEGOSAURs seem to be thriving of late.

    No CoD for me, but I liked SAYONARA and DOORNAIL.

Comments are closed.