Times 27061 – Eternal summer gilds them yet

Author   ulacaPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
By the time you read this (or not), I will be on the first leg of my Greek tour, which starts in the Ionian island of Lefkada before moving to the Aegean island of Chios, with a stopover in Athens to see how much of the city they’ve finished since my last stay there as a callow undergraduate 40 years ago. Yes, I am older than I look. Anyway, this was your typical Monday fare, not meze at all, in fact, ouzing with class, putting the world to retsina manner of speaking. 20 minutes.

Ας αρχίσουμε…

ACROSS

1 Novel, impenetrable, given to us (4,5)
HARD TIMES – HARD TIMES (us)
6 Drunk unwilling to buy a round of drinks? (5)
TIGHT – double definition
9 Weak local network? Good north of the border (7)
LANGUID -LAN GUID
10 Ruler in mood executed soldiers (7)
EMPEROR – [t]EMPER OR
11 A second class property (5)
ASSET – A S SET
12 Complaint among posh-sounding group? (9)
INFECTION – if you were a posh bloke or gel, one might say ‘Which fection is Cressida in?’
13 University dress mostly rejected in holiday island (5)
CORFU – U FROC[k] reversed
14 Check on English artist beginning to rummage amongst his blessed rulers (9)
HIERARCHS – HIS contains E RA R (first letter of rummage) CH (check)
17 Quickly peruse half of screed filling two pages (5-4)
SPEED-READ – [scr]EED in SPREAD
18 Trouble repulsed in Lyon, naturally (5)
ANNOY – reverse hidden
19 Golfing tournament participant is out (2,3,4)
IN THE OPEN – If you qualify for the Open Championship, you are indeed ‘in the Open’
22 Key European state (5)
MAINE – MAIN E
24 Number one drink in West (7)
IMAGINE – I GIN in MAE gives us the world’s worst song, just edging out ‘My way’
25 Splitting pieces of granite (7)
TEARING – anagram* of GRANITE
26 Family member, German one, returning from Cologne after vacation (5)
NIECE – EIN reversed C[ologn]E
27 Completely ignored single store in back rooms (9)
SIDELINED – I DELI in DENS reversed

DOWN

1 Husband with a meal ticket to get a sweetmeat (5)
HALVA – H A LV A; oh, for the good old days when LV stood for luncheon voucher and not an overpriced handbag
2 Tigers run wild? Sounds about right (5,4)
RINGS TRUE – TIGERS RUN*
3 Investment secured, we hear, and set up with zero loss (5,4)
TRUST FUND – ‘TRUSSED’ F[o]UND
4 Film depicting new detective’s rise in force, say (8,7)
MIDNIGHT EXPRESS – N DI reversed in MIGHT (force) EXPRESS (say) for the film that did quite a bit for the Greek tourism trade, I would 24
5 He tunes fiddle, if discordant, for players (9,6)
SHEFFIELD UNITED – HE TUNES FIDDLE IF* for the team that once boasted Tony Currie. Keep an eye out for the goalie with concussion.
6 Head in charge of subject (5)
TOPIC – TOP IC
7 Author‘s work right superior to “King and I” (5)
GORKI – GO R over K I
8 Truants wandering round New York initially become unpleasant (4,5)
TURN NASTY – N Y in TRUANTS*
13 Spanish performers I catch doing cartwheel (9)
CASTILIAN – CAST I NAIL (as in ‘the cops caught/nailed the crook’) reversed
15 Large weapon beneath a cover, we’re told, is part of early warning system? (5,4)
ALARM CALL – A L ARM sounds CAUL (a portion of the amniotic sac sometimes covering a child’s head at birth); not sure why ‘part’
16 Rider‘s state of health (9)
CONDITION – DD
20 Guy the man sees from time to time (5)
TEASE – alternate letters in T[h]E[m]A[n]S[e]E[s]
21 Cream topping for eclair with few calories (5)
ELITE – E[clair] LITE
23 Guardian leader penned by journalists was slightly moving? (5)
EDGED – G in ED ED

77 comments on “Times 27061 – Eternal summer gilds them yet”

  1. Biffed MIDNIGHT EXPRESS and EMPEROR. LOI HALVA, as I had no idea where the LV came from. Liked EMPEROR, once I figured out how it worked.
  2. Just me being thick but why does “Given to us” = TIMES? Is ‘given’ American for ‘times’?
    1. I was wondering about that myself; but Ulaca has TIMES=us, I think, leaving ‘given to’ as connecting matter with no function in the wordplay.
      2. It just means “linked with,” ie HARD + TIMES .. Times of course, being The Times. a neat clue
  3. I was just 45 minutes, except excluding Halva – not knowing either LV or Halva itself.
    I’m betting this group can suggest a worse song than either Imagine or My Way, even if we restrict ourselves to non-bubble-gum popular music after, say, 1960. Joy To The World comes to my mind.
    1. ‘My Way’ has a special circle in my musical inferno, as I was always being asked to sing it in karaoke bars (always refused, I’m proud to say). But my nominee is “We’re So Sorry, Uncle Albert”, if that is in fact its title.

      Edited at 2018-06-11 03:32 am (UTC)

      1. Uncle Albert /Admiral Halsey from McCartney’s album “Ram” is probably the one you mean. My vote for the World’s Worst Song goes to “The Lonely Goatherd” from “The Sound of Music”.
        2. I loathe “Shaddap you face” by Joe Dolce, partly because it is a truly crap song but mainly because it had the effrontery to keep “Vienna2 by U2 off the no. 1 spot, thus making it surely the best no. 2 record in history ..
      2. Never been tempted to wheel out the Sid Vicious version?
        www. youtube. com/watch?v=rDyb_alTkMQ
    2. I always appreciated the irony of the words “Imagine no possessions
      I wonder if you can” being sung by someone with such a vast amount of them

      Edited at 2018-06-11 06:37 am (UTC)

  4. I figured it must be HALVA, but Googled to find LV before writing it in as my last one. Got everything else unaided, but another UK thing, SHEFFIELD UNITED, came very near the end. “Alarm call” isn’t in Merriam-Webster as a separate entry, but it is in Collins, marked as “British”—while Cambridge has it as both UK and US. We’ve had Scottish for “good” not so long ago, and likewise the Russian author. I was happy to get MIDNIGHT EXPRESS early on, and with only the M already in place.
  5. 31 minutes, so a little less dithering over INFECTION would have enabled me to hit my half-an-hour target. I was thrown by the ‘posh’ reference, thinking it might indicate the presence of a ‘U’ and was also distracted wondering if ‘infaction’ might be a medical condition as it sounded vaguely familiar, but eventually realised I was thinking of ‘infarcation’.

    LOI was HIERARCHS where I needed the wordplay to arrive at a hitherto unknown word and meaning.’Hierarchy’ of course is not far away but its original association with the priesthood had escaped me.

    It was handy that GUID as the Scottish ‘good’ came up only a couple of days ago, making 9ac a write-in.

    ALARM CALL (aka ‘wake-up call’) is standard parlance in the UK for a call that’s prebooked with a telephone service or a hotel switchboard. I also wondered why ‘part of’ and could only think that in the case of a heavy sleeper it may be necessary to book one as back-up in case watches, clocks and other alarm devices have failed to have the desired effect.

    Edited at 2018-06-11 03:54 am (UTC)

  6. Around 20 interrupted minutes but with a dimwitted IN THE SPIN for the golfers. I’m not sure what I thought it meant.

    Otherwise, quite tricky but I found it very rewarding, and I did laugh at INFECTION once the penny dropped.

  7. On the wavelength today at 32 minutes. Found it a bit hard to penetrate at first, but FOI 6a TIGHT let me get started in the NE corner, and then getting 5d and the first word of 4d quite quickly saw everything coming together quite quickly. LOI IMAGINE, where it took me a while to work out the def. wasn’t “number one” once I’d guessed the answer…

    WOD 9a LANGUID, which sums up exactly how I prefer my mornings. Shame this “work” thing keeps on getting in the way.

  8. Easy Monday offering .. Livejournal tells me today is Thud ‘n Blunder’s birthday, so many happy returns, Thud
  9. 30 mins with halv a Fat Rascal (hoorah)
    Last in was ‘call’ without twigging ‘caul’. A bit of an MER at this.
    Mostly I liked: Imagine, Elite and COD to Midnight Express.
    Thanks setter and Ulaca.
  10. A couple of unknowns in HALVA and HIERARCHS and took a while to see how IMAGINE worked (I quite like the number in question), before coming in at 47 minutes.

    I couldn’t quite get it at the time but thinking about it now, I wonder if our setter would have been better to refer to Antipodeans living in a land of two halves in 12a.

    Thanks to setter and blogger

  11. Hurrah! A kindred spirit in one who dislikes “Imagine”. Despite it topping polls of most liked song of the last umpteen years, I find it dirgeful, the words trite, the singing lack-lustre, the playing “unimaginative” and the sentiment naive. Apart from that, it’s OK.
    Didn’t cotton on to why it was “number”, and didn’t know “caul”(despite my daughter being a midwife), but great fun all the same.
    1. “For our next number we’d like to play….”

      PS: I fully agree with your sentiments about that dirge which was further ruined by the presence of Yoko in the video.

      Edited at 2018-06-11 09:19 am (UTC)

    2. Perhaps “Imagine” is a number because that’s its function, anaesthetic for the senses.
  12. Deja vu today, what with GORKI and GUID, as others have noted, occurring recently, and the two EDs seeming familiar. I cannot remember the ending of HARD TIMES, but may not have finished it. I do remember the description of Coketown, however. MIDNIGHT EXPRESS is a truly terrifying film. COD to HALVA for its use of the (now redundant?) coupons. 11′ 58”, most pleasing, particularly following yesterday’s 10′ 53”. Thanks ulaca and setter.

    Edited at 2018-06-11 08:15 am (UTC)

  13. Zipped through this in 14 minutes, with HALVA constructed rather than known. The movie and the football team fell easily. I always worked in places with a staff canteen so never had luncheon vouchers. They were traded by many recipients as I remember it. Back in the sixties, I found steak pie, chips and peas with an egg on top, followed by apple crumble, custard and ice cream, superior to the lunchtime special in the Chinese Restaurant, so I’m not complaining. We knew how to live. It wasn’t HARD TIMES. I would have spelt it as GORKY without the cryptic. COD to IN THE OPEN. Nice start to the week. Thank you U and setter.

    Edited at 2018-06-11 08:31 am (UTC)

    1. I don’t think ‘In the open’ works as ‘participant’ is a noun.
  14. 14:25 without understanding IMAGINE or CALL. Interesting to see “The Blades” at 5d after their appearance in the QC just last Monday. Chrisw91 will be pleased again.
  15. 12:12 and might have been quicker if I’d spelt niece correctly first time.

    COD: Castilian.

  16. A 15 minute breeze, though I didn’t work out how MIDNIGHT EXPRESS worked: I stopped after vaguely thinking express might mean force. It did when I worked in British Lead Mills cutting off lengths of lead pipe as they emerged from a hydraulic gizmo, possibly the world’s most dangerous job.
    My list of the world’s worst songs is somewhat governed by what I get to play through the sound system at funerals: My Way (a rather foolhardy boast if you’re on your way to meet your maker?) is very close to the top, but I have a terrible, terrible feeling that it’ll soon be replaced as No 1 choice by Father Ray Kelly’s rendition of “Go Rest High on the Mountain” (as seen on BGT). I would include a link (there are several), but even I’m not that cruel.
      1. Well, I have, many moons ago, exercised a priest-like function, but my current involvement is limited to nursing the church’s byzantine sound system to provide music and sound amplification as needed. The music I have played for weddings and funerals is itself a whole garden of delights, laced with many, many weeds.
  17. Pretty straightforward except for 20d and 24ac. Clever use of the words ‘guy’ and ‘number’. I thought of substances that render you numb before ‘song’ came to mind, and also of ‘tent rope’ before tease presented itself.
    Never did like Lennon. Sneering, sarcastic sxd and, as ‘deezzas’ has said, the song was/is a dirge. It was made worse by the presence of Yoko in the video.

    Edited at 2018-06-11 09:25 am (UTC)

    1. You’re not by any chance Michael Chapman living on parole under an assumed name? Your secret is safe with us.
    2. Anything whatever is made worse by the presence of Yoko, but what is sxd?
      1. The actual word would probably be rejected by the system but replace the x with an o
        1. Sod? I’m sure the old club forum would asterisk this, but here? (We’ll soon find out.) In any case, thxnks to both of you.
      3. ‘sod’. Didn’t really want to use the full expletive.
        PS….I now see that Bigtone53 and Pip have got there ahead of me.
        Lennon also admitted to being violent and hitting “his” women. Not a nice man.

        Edited at 2018-06-11 11:44 pm (UTC)

  18. 19 minutes for this pleasant offering, Orl Korrect but with no idea why Midnight Express (guessed) was an answer or indeed a movie. I nearly put in M Cowboy, a fillum I did know of.

    I would like to add MAMMA MIA to the list of nominees for worst song ever. I quite liked IMAGINE. My next door neighbour, aged 93, plays a very limited repertoire of ‘numbers’ in the garden on his trumpet most days, badly (well, not badly for a man of his years), one of which is MY WAY.

    Have a fine time in Greece, ulaca; if you need to know about anything bureaucratic, just ask me, we lived there for 4 years to 2007 and I never did quite understand the system; it makes France seem streamlined.

  19. ….to see what CONDITION my condition was in.

    16:40 for this, which I didn’t much enjoy. INFECTION is beyond reasonable argument the most rubbish clue of the year so far.

    FOI HARD TIMES
    LOI IMAGINE (number as in something that deadens the senses ?)
    COD TIGHT

  20. This felt mostly like a normal Monday; well, apart from the bits which didn’t. Both the long downs would have been useful in opening up across clues, had I not needed to solve most of those acrosses first in order to get them; not helped by the suspicion that at 5dn I was looking for an orchestra or band, then for an acting company, and only third for something sporting. When left with I_A_I_E, I was inexplicably at a loss for several minutes, again creating my own roadblock by wondering if it was an obscure anaesthetic, having noted that IOCAINE wouldn’t fit (and being fictional, probably wouldn’t be allowed by the editor anyway). All in all, I congratulate the setter for sending me down most of the dead ends I could create for myself.
  21. I was amused by the pronunciation type clue at 12a where “posh-sounding” persons might say IN FECTION instead of IN FACTION. The suggestion that New Zealanders might be used would, to my ear, result in IN FICTION so another thing entirely.

    I was wondering whether this “Posh-speak” is disappearing? Do many people speak like this any more? I associate it with the BBC of the 1950s and, of course, Her Majesty the Queen who was brought up to speak like that as it was considered to be “the Queen’s English”.

    Will “Sithe-Effrika” and “Trizers” become things of the past?

    I know that many on this site like to discuss pronunciation. Am I really raising an “RP” issue? Crikey.

    1. The U pronunciation reference had me trying to squeeze in Affectation – which I think could be a more apt answer, even if it is a bit pointedly cruel for the Times.
    2. Once the DofE passes away, I guess we’ll lose ‘trite’ off the fish menu!
  22. I’ve just had two gentlemen visiting – they say they’re from the Royal Society of Pun Writers, and do I know where they can find Ulaca as they’d like a word. They were muttering something about unions and standards, but it was all Greek to me.

    This wasn’t completely Mondayish for me, taking me just a whisker under the half hour to complete. Overall, quite enjoyable although I winced at INFECTION (and where is the “in” supposed to come from?), and failed to notice Ms. West in the parsing of 24ac. MIDNIGHT EXPRESS went in unparsed, but it seems to be one of those clues that is only parseable post-biff.

  23. The LHS eluded me for quite a while, so I concentrated on the NE and SE and then teased out the LHS clue by clue. TIGHT was my FOI. I entered INFECTION, idly wondering how FECTION was a posh SECTION. D’oh! I didn’t know what a CAUL was, but it seemed a likely homophone. Having seen both GORKI and the Scottish GUID very recently was a big help with 7d and 9a. 4d came together all of a sudden as my postulated MIGHT for power merged with EXPRESS for state. Liked IN THE OPEN. IMAGINE went in after CASTILIAN, and then my LOI HALVA, was constructed from wordplay. 28:57. Thanks setter and U.

    Edited at 2018-06-11 11:02 am (UTC)

  24. 9 mins, so I was definitely on the setter’s wavelength judging from the above. ALARM CALL was my LOI after SIDELINED, although CASTILIAN took a while too. Like others I enjoyed the clue for INFECTION.
  25. A biff-fest from me with a few things (ALARM CALL, MIDNIGHT EXPRESS, SIDELINED etc) completely unparsed. But I did work out that LV must be Luncheon Vouchers, which made me happy.

    I did this after an exploratory 30 minute run (well, it was more like a long walk intermittently spoiled) and my time doesn’t seem to have suffered on account of exhaustion, so I’m going to give a cautious thumbs up to the alleged benefits of exercise.

    1. Sadly, it turns out you have to do it more than once though, V .. there are those who say 3-4 times a week is needed 😉
  26. So far I seem to be the only person who toyed with “castanets” for the Spanish performers. In fact I did an awful lot of dithering throughout so was quite pleased to find I’d come home in 15.22 anyway. I only twigged INFECTION post-submit. It reminded me that I read somewhere once that in old movies American actors playing British parts were trained phonetically to read “actually” as “ectually” etc. After a nasty outbreak of typos I’m hoping for a better week.
    1. That was my first thought but I already had the final checker in place (the N of NIECE) so immmediately discarded it.
  28. 10:03, dragged over the 10-minute mark by fretting about why CALL was the correct second bit for 15.

    I rather liked the INFECTION clue, quite ISIHAC-y, like SEX being what the queen has her coal delivered in.

    I sold all my John Lennon memorabilia on Ebay at the weekend. Imagine all the PayPal.

  29. I had this almost all done in about 40 minutes. 24a held me up.I finally decided that it must be an anaesthetic having thought of Imagine and failed to parse it properly or think of the song. A word of defence for Imagine – a great song and even Joan Baez agrees with me as she included it in her encore on 29 May.
    And 14a where I unaccountably ended up with Hierarcts.
    So two mistakes but all the practice over the weekend helped. David
  30. Neat and a few nice touches. No real hold-ups, but one real error: The lesser-known medieval Italian author GORRI at 7dn. Gorky well-known a la BoltonWanderer, but Gorki never seen. I didn’t do the recent puzzle everyone is referrring to where it appeared. Oh, well.
  31. Always happy to see my home town get a mention.

    When I was a lot younger it could be quite dangerous to reveal your allegiance to either of the two Sheffield teams without first establishing whether you were in enemy territory. Nowadays the performances of the two teams are generally so languid (good word) that most Sheffielders would settle for either team doing something unusual – e.g. actually winning something.

    Time: all correct in 37 minutes.

    Thank you to setter and blogger.

    Edited at 2018-06-11 02:41 pm (UTC)

    1. My mother’s boss, before she was married, was a director of Sheffield United .. so I support Liverpool

  32. Good choice, Jerry.

    Both Wednesday and United made the occasional foray into the old Division One but neither could make it stick.

    My favourite all-time game was a friendly at Hillsborough back in the sixties between Wednesday and Santos. Pele sent poor old Ron Springett about five different ways before tapping in a penalty.

    Needless to say, Santos won 5-2 and I think they only allowed Wednesday to score a couple out of politeness. Happy days!

    Regards, Dave.

  33. Another with castanets. Also a biffed influenza didn’t help either. That left the NE a little difficult to finish until Turn Nasty revealed my error. Surprised so many didn’t know Halva almost pure sugar with flavouring.
  34. Around 20 minutes, but I didn’t see HALVA at first pass, so decided to come back to it. I didn’t remember to do that though, and just as well, since even now I wouldn’t have thought of it, and probably would have spelled it HALVAH. And the ‘LV’ bit isn’t within my experience. So really a DNF. Regards.
  35. 22:41 so fairly quick especially since I found my mind wandering a bit during the solve (my fault nothing to do with the puzzle which I found very enjoyable). Slight pause to recall LV and halva and trying to recall the caul at 15dn where I think I was thinking of cowl which might be a cover but is certainly not a homophone for call (in my accent at least).
  36. 13:57. Mostly straightforward but with a few tricky words.
    I thought ‘weak’ was a bit, well, weak for LANGUID.
    I am very much in the ‘unutterably dreadful dirge-doggerel’ camp when it comes to 24ac. Has there ever been a greater qualitative contrast between the collaborative and solo efforts of a pair of songwriters?

    Edited at 2018-06-11 05:51 pm (UTC)

  37. Google “Cynthia Payne” for an imaginative use for luncheon vouchers,

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