Times 27075 – Is it still Monday?

Author   piquetPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
After Monday’s stroll with the SNITCH at only 70, and yesterday’s at 71, you’d think I’d be in for a brain buster. But no, I had all but two of these clues sorted in 14 minutes, and 16a and 22d in another 5 or so. A bit of a skin complaint themed day, with 4d, 6d, and 13a enough to make us 10a.
Not much else to say, I liked 11a best for its ‘not that sort of bookmaker’ definition.
Anagrams are light on the ground again, only two and a half.
EDIT: 09:16 CET Apparently it’s not still Monday, but not yet Friday; the SNITCH is hovering at just above 100.

Across
1 Sacred building, outstanding (8)
HALLOWED – HALL = building, OWED = outstanding, unpaid.
6 Leave cancelled in the wake of report (3,3)
POP OFF – OFF = cancelled, in wake of POP = report.
9 London traders collectively endure visitors on railway (6,7)
LIVERY COMPANY – LIVE = endure, RY = railway, COMPANY = visitors.
10 Sullen guy keeping queen and politician apart (6)
GRUMPY – GUY has R (queen) and MP inserted separately.
11 Deal rigged in game for bookmaker’s enrichment? (4,4)
GOLD LEAF – GOLF = game, insert (DEAL)*.
13 Case of pure Tamiflu primarily imported to quell epidemic (10)
PESTILENCE – SILENCE = quell, insert T (Tamiflu primarily) into that, then insert all into P E being the ‘case’ of PURE.
15 Academy that houses folklore (4)
MYTH – Hidden word in ACADE(MY TH)AT.
16 Feeble bridge pair blocked by opponent leading hearts (4)
NESH – N and S being partners at bridge, have E (one of two opponents) inserted, then H for Hearts. My LOI as a word I’d never heard and had to trust to the wordplay, which is definitive (the only other options being e.g. WSEH or WNEH which are even less like real words).
18 Cash in Brussels, for instance, is principally Euros (10)
CAPITALISE – Brussels is a CAPITAL, then IS E. Once you see the definition, it’s simple enough.
21 To break with boyfriend ultimately is what you’re aiming to do (8)
DISSOLVE – D (end of boyfriend) IS to SOLVE the puzzle.
22 Proceed east of coastal city to find calm water (6)
LAGOON – L os A ngeles, GO ON. A chestnut, in this or similar forms.
23 Some output from sewer on street, a cause of irritation? (7,6)
RUNNING STITCH – RUNNING = on, ST, ITCH a cause of irritation. Sewer being someone who sews stitches, not the drain.
25 He keeps books in cloak (6)
MANTLE – MALE keeps NT = books.
26 Natural sugar almost redundant in potion (8)
DEXTROSE – EXTR(A) = almost redundant, inside DOSE = potion. D-glucose, also known as dextrose, as opposed to its isomer L-glucose, which doesn’t occur in nature.

Down
2 Free comprehensive initially raised cheers (2,5)
AT LARGE – TA = cheers, reversed = AT, LARGE = comprehensive (I suppose).
3 Romantic combinations of complex vocal themes? (4,7)
LOVE MATCHES – (VOCAL THEMES)*
4 Like toad, cautious crossing bottom of culvert (5)
WARTY – WARY = cautious, around T bottom of culvert. We have a family of friendly toads living just by our front door, they don’t seem to have warts. Smooth toads?
5 Angular figure ruined second half of clog dance (7)
DECAGON – (OG DANCE)*, OG being the second half of clog.
6 Most spotted hints provided during training (9)
PIMPLIEST – IMPLIES = hints, inside P T for training.
7 75% of maximum pulse (3)
PEA – three-quarters of PEAK.
8 Background support for cunning aerial display (3-4)
FLY-PAST – FLY = cunning, PAST = background, as in ‘he told me about his background / past’.
12 Old street worker moving less well, masking hardship (11)
LAMPLIGHTER – LAMER = moving less well, outside PLIGHT = hardship.
14 Something unwillingly served by pub, that jetsetters must adjust to? (5,4)
LOCAL TIME – TIME in jail would be unwillingly served, LOCAL = pub.
17 Nation’s technology about to feature in Time (7)
ERITREA – ERA = time, insert IT and RE = about.
19 First couple of players played streaky shots and swore (7)
PLEDGED – PL = first 2 of players, EDGED as in cricket.
20 Width lacking in dimwitted woman’s belts (7)
SLOSHES – SLOW = dimwitted, remove the W(idth), SHE’S = woman’s. Took me a while to see the connection; I think if you slosh whisky into a glass, you’d be having a good belt of it? Or is there another way this is a synonym? Ah yes, as pointed out below by jackkt, you can slosh / belt / punch someone.
22 Careless carrying tea, spilling a milky fluid (5)
LATEX – LAX = careless, insert TE(A).
24 Anything other than weight rising (3)
NOT – TON reversed.

43 comments on “Times 27075 – Is it still Monday?”

  1. This is indeed the only word that can be constructed from the instructions. I wonder if any of our regulars have encountered it before. Wish I could come up with a pun, but it’s been a long day. I didn’t even notice the theme of dermal distress. Though 19 had to be PLEDGED, I had no idea what “streaky serves” were (before checking).

    As for WARTY toads, Wikipedia says “Parotoid glands are sometimes said to be wart-like in appearance, though warts are abnormal growths caused by viral infections while parotoid glands are normal, healthy parts of the animals that bear them. The vague similarity in appearance, however, is the reason behind the mistaken belief that touching a toad causes warts.”

    Edited at 2018-06-27 04:31 am (UTC)

    1. Nesh is Northern dialect for a milksop, eg someone who wears a raincoat just because it’s raining .. my Sheffield granny used it constantly, often in relation to me
    2. First time I worked in Newcastle I complained about the wind cutting me in half and was told I was a nesh southerner
    3. Known to me from my wife.Probably got from her Dad who came from Lancashire as I never heard anyone else use it in the North-East.
    4. I am pretty sure that NESH became known about generally because Mrs Thatcher used it in Parliament to describe Neil Kinnock. I certainly knew it and I am one who gets a nosebleed if I get further north than the Watford Gap.

      Chris (a long-time lurker)

  2. Slosh can mean to hit (I’ll slosh you one in a moment…).

    Agreed this was mostly straightforward but I missed my target half-an-hour by a couple of minutes. This was probably accounted for by NESH, which I never heard of so I had to work through the possible combinations of NSE and W for the first three letters.

    Edited at 2018-06-27 04:27 am (UTC)

  3. 15:09 … again not hard, but inventive and fun, which suits me fine.

    I think of NESH as Yorkshirish, but I could be making that up. I’ve certainly encountered it somewhere or other.

    I’ll join Pip in singling out GOLD LEAF for the bookie misdirection. That, and the nicely hidden MYTH were good, but COD to one of my favourite words, sweetly clued: LAGOON

    1. Mrs K, who hails from Bolton but left for Yorkshire at 10, surprisingly knew it not, but says ‘it sounds like it means MARD’. I am not much the wiser.
      1. I seem to think it’s of Scottish origin, and was certainly in wide usage in Greater Manchester in my youth (usually directed at me by my Dad !)
  4. 35 mins on IPad pre brekker which will include bitter orange jam. Different to marmalade, but maybe even nicer.
    I’m a Yorkshireman so I use nesh a lot.
    Mostly I liked Hallowed.
    Thanks setter and Pip.
  5. 37 minutes, with the top half going in more quickly than the bottom. 2d LOVE MATCHES a longer FOI than I normally manage to find, LOI 20d SLOSHES where I didn’t know the definition. Took me a long time to see 21a DISSOLVE, too.

    NESH seemed familiar, so perhaps it’s come up before, or possibly it’s because my Nan was from Lancashire… I visited a LAGOON on Saturday, too, so that helped.

  6. I missed RUNNING for ‘on’ in 23a and couldn’t work out what was def. v. wordplay. Everything else went in without too much trouble, including the process-of-elimination-couldn’t-be-anything-else (could it?) NESH. Finished in 39 minutes.

    The ‘Something unwillingly served by pub’ wordplay was my favourite bit. The reminder of Bufo marinus, aka the cane toad, (now apparently known as Rhinella marina) and biology dissection classes a long time ago wasn’t quite as appreciated.

    Thanks to setter and blogger.

  7. I struggled with this so was pleased to eventually complete it in 38:01.

    Despite me going on about Gas lighting earlier in the week, I took an age to see through the gloom and spot Lamplighter. I spent a while up a blind ginnel with Templegater.

    L2I: Pimpliest and Pop Off

    COD: Gold Leaf. Clever misdirection.

    As to NESH, my wife is from Sheffield and has used this term for years, to describe someone lacking in backbone. But otherwise I’ve never come across it before – until today. She also calls an alley a GINNEL.

  8. Undone by entering CAPOTE at 25a, using old rather than new testament. Thanks setter and blogger.
  9. Chambers says NESH is from dialect, hence is it fair to clue it without indicating this? Hmm…
  10. Another stroll in the park. Held up a short while by putting “cry off” at 6A before 7D had to be PEA. The LIVERY COMPANY straight from definition and usual flood of memories caused by LAMPLIGHTER. Liked “something unwillingly served”
  11. 18:02. I needed convincing that PAST = background and SLOSHES (my LOI) = belts, otherwise no difficulties. I liked CAPITALISE and DISSOLVE, but COD to PLEDGED for the great surface. Nice puzzle.
  12. 18.32, trying to convince myself that background was enough for PAST, I wasn’t looking for a keeper in 25 and NESH was a thing. I decided it might be, along the lines of niapitz, a word I’ve never seen written down (so spelling is tentative) but which my excellent and perceptive Jewish/Hungarian/Czech Father-in-law used in his initial assessment of me as a potential son-in-law.
    PIMPLIEST raise a smile for no discernible reason.
    Thanks Pip, especially for LAMPLIGHTER, which I forgot to parse, and for making sense of LOCAL TIME, where I couldn’t get away from “time gentlemen please” as mein host’s regretful cry.

    Edited at 2018-06-27 08:26 am (UTC)

  13. Stopped the clock for an interruption and forgot to restart but I reckon about 12 minutes. No problem with nesh, used to hear it a lot when we lived near Manchester, usually in phrases like “don’t be so nesh” when you wanted to put a coat on to go out in the freezing rain. I’m fairly certain it came up in one of these puzzles a few years ago.
  14. 12:57. A slightly curious experience this, full of clues that had me baffled until I had a few checkers, at which point they became obvious biffs. This necessarily resulted in a slow start and a quick finish.
    Some nice stuff though: like others I enjoyed the ‘bookmaker’s enrichment’ and ‘something unwillingly served’.
    I’ve never heard NESH before but the wordplay could hardly have been clearer. If it had been SENH I’d have been cross, mind.
  15. This was all fairly straightforward, keeping me happy for just under half an hour. I’m one of the many who had never encountered NESH – in the end, I decided it looked plausible in Yiddish and put it as my LOI. Having read the comments, I now have a Lancashire/Yorkshire-Yiddish hybrid dialect in my head (“on Ilkley moor, oy vey!”)
  16. Pleasant solve, mostly straightforward but with just enough about it to prevent me biffing on an industrial basis. My lack of Northern credentials made me slightly hesitant about NESH, but it definitely rang a bell – for some reason, I found myself thinking of the word FRIT, which makes me think my brain was striving to remember some previous conversation I’ve had about “words in various English dialects which occasionally come up in crosswords and baffle outsiders”.
  17. I’m another Gold Leaf / Local Time fan. Nothing like a little humour plus misdirection or a cryptic definition.

    This felt more like a SNITCH 100 than a 75 to me; a couple clues in the bottom half (Dissolve, Lamplighter) gave me that awkward thing where the crossers look completely random and unrelated to the wordplay possibilities. Meantime, having had to fix Log/Pop Off and Fly Over/Past kept me from comfortable biffing.

  18. ….I wish ! Completed in 10:05 in the hubbub of a coach station waiting room.

    Slow start (FOI MYTH), but then reasonably plain sailing to LOI SLOSHES, although I didn’t parse AT LARGE or PEA until afterwards.

    COD GOLD LEAF – which I still think of as a tobacco.

  19. Very satisfying, solved with an Eccles cake and green tea. No time, as interrupted occasionally by work, but I did enjoy this. I found the west went in more easily than the east (other than NESH, which is a welcome addition to my vocabulary). SLOSHES was LOI.

    Thanks setter and Pip

  20. Couldn’t entirely convince myself about SLOSHES as a synonym for belting someone – maybe the act of pouring a glass of wine on someone’s head, preferably when slightly drunk – but it had to be. Home in 20m and change.

  21. 26’26. Fairly steady. Not too keen on comprehensive/large. Rather touched by 12 surface, like someone out of Hard Times. Another neshnik here I’m afraid.
  22. Done in about 30 mins but distracted by multiple interruptions. NESH is in regular use in our house (we’re in Chester) not sure what other word covers the same meaning? Maybe southerners are all nesh anyway so they don’t need it
  23. Further comment. Not sure if this is a reflection of how my mind works but it took me a while to register that it wasn’t THAT type of old street worker
  24. I thought this was a notch harder than the last couple of days, taking 11m 57s to get it done, with NESH the last one in. Seemed more likely than SENH.

    For 23a it’s always fun – and a trap for the unwary – when an innocuous word like ‘on’ clues a seven-letter word like ‘running’.

  25. Off the pace for this possibly due to adjusting to 14d in NYC. More likely due to bunging in CAPOTE and clinging to the notion it might be correct for far too long. Same likes as others.
  26. 11:27 – sounds like I had the same experience as most, with NESH and SLOSHES coming from wordplay and LIVERY COMPANY and DEXTROSE without looking at wordplay.
  27. DNK NESH but I found this very, if not a little too, easy. I was one missing those vaguely cryptic definition parts (you know, like ROCK BAND for stratum) you get so, like Pip, I was glad to see the not that sort of bookmaker making an appearance. I just took a gamble on that one, er.

    I predict a stinker very soon.

  29. 46 mins. I made harder work of this than was necessary. Couldn’t find anything to start with until 15ac. Made steady progress but had to revise Capote when I couldn’t justify neo or noo at 24dn. Saw not and shortly corrected capote to mantle. Also briefly had dissever at 21ac. Nesh unknown and I had some reservations about whether blocked limited the options to E being put in the middle of NS or perhaps it could be WE being followed by N or S or perhaps EW being blocked in by S or N. Eventually decided the ending had to be SH and that nesh was most likely. I am in Liverpool at the moment where I am reliably informed by my sister that “proper nesh” is a common expression.

    Edited at 2018-06-27 02:08 pm (UTC)

  30. Have just got back to the crossword after a few days’ interruption by house guests. I was a bit slow on this (35 mins): nothing particularly hard, but I just plodded through. I concur in the general appreciation expressed for the bookmaker’s enrichment, on=running and something unwillingly served by pub. After a lifetime living south of Spaghetti Junction, I was chuffed to have recognised NESH.

    An enjoyable solve, despite the dubious ‘large’ and ‘break with’=DISSOLVE: am I alone in bothering about that one?

    Oh, and I have a sneaky suggestion for the setters: why not use ‘sewer’ to mean a drain — that’ll really catch everybody out, eh?

    Many thanks, Pip, for a very nice blog.

    1. I read it as break / then ‘last of boyfriend’ with ‘I solve’, just with the “with” awkwardly placed for the surface. I was happier with dissolve = break alone.

      Edited at 2018-06-27 04:27 pm (UTC)

  32. A bit harder than earlier ones this week for me. Took me around 30 minutes, held up at various times to rethink CAPOTE, that kind of bookmaker, trying to fit ‘clues’ into what became PIMPLIEST, slosh as belt, and of course, NESH. News to me. I ended with MANTLE after realizing that NOT had to go into it and CAPOTE was thus impossible. Regards.
  33. I found this trickier than the last couple, but had a busy day golfing and carousing before attempting it, which may account for my 41:07. On the other hand I didn’t know NESH and took a while to see through RUNNING STITCH, GOLD LEAF, LOCAL TIME and PIMPLIEST. Sticking an idiomatic OWT at 24d didn’t help. FOI, WARTY, LOI, RUNNING STITCH. SLOSHES no problem once I’d realised dimwitted was SLOW. Thanks setter and Pip.
  34. I can’t believe the quick times and the comment ” not hard”. I couldn’t complete even half of the clues, and I am someone who has been doing the TCC for many years and who finishes it maybe a few times per month. But I don’t look at it every day as I have other lives; maybe followers of this forum, which I always enjoy reading and I have been visiting sporadically for a few years, would tell me that’s my problem. Thanks for the blog and best wishes to all, Richard J

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