Times 27,089: The Wizard of Speed and Time

Author   VerlainePosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
I’ve been a bit distracted from the 15x15s by my duties as a team captain in the Quiz League of London of late, but fortunately for me there was a definite sense of the puzzles not being overly hard this week, and so it proved even with the Friday puzzle, which was all done and dusted on paper in 6 and a half minutes. Most of the clues flew in with Mondayish rapidity, though I did come a cropper by over-slavishly following the wordplay and trying to begin 1D with “METAMP…”; and then later had a bit of difficulty with the obscurer meanings of “eccentric” and “keeper”.

Some of the clues here I thought bordered on too easy, at least for a Friday, with answers that were the thing I immediately thought of upon reading the definition (the first two across clues, just for a start). But I did appreciate some of the slightly trickier pieces of wordplay, for instance at 19ac, 3dn, 7dn. A fun crossword overall, thank you setter!

ACROSS
1 Money-hoarder‘s endless wretchedness (5)
MISER – MISER{y} [“endless” wretchedness]

4 Wakeful type in county recalled famous murderer (9)
INSOMNIAC – IN SOM. + CAIN reversed [in ; county (= Somerset); “recalled”, famous murderer]

9 Old Chinese philosophy briefly followed by every European leader (9)
TAOISEACH – TAOIS{m} followed by EACH [old Chinese philosophy, “briefly”; every]

10 State of small number knocked back by speaker’s gift (5)
GABON – NO. reversed by GAB [small number, “knocked back”; speaker’s gift]

11 Enthusiasm is more exhausting, as Cockneys may say (6)
ARDOUR – homophone of ‘ARDER [more exhausting, with a Cockney dropped aitch]

12 Its occupants may be collared pinching grain (8)
DOVECOTE – I think this is just a cryptic definition. Doves certainly come in a collared variety, but I wasn’t sure if there was anything more to the “pinching grain” part than the literal reading?

14 Fabric man or woman keeps in hotel safe at front (9)
PETERSHAM – SAM keeps in H, with PETER at front [man or woman (= Samuel or Samantha); hotel; safe]

16 Blooming supplier of meat and sauce (5)
OXLIP – OX and LIP [supplier of meat; sauce (= cheek)]. “Blooming” is slightly oblique for “a thing that blooms”.

17 Send Irishman over with key (5)
EMAIL – LIAM with E, all reversed [Irishman; key]

19 Culturally pretentious turn digested by a reveller (9)
PARTYGOER – ARTY GO digested by PER [culturally pretentious; turn; a]. A to mean PER (as in “five pounds a head”) has become very common in crosswords in recent years, hasn’t it? It is certainly a subtle and difficult-to-spot device.

21 Acknowledged being enrolled as member (8)
ADMITTED – double definition

22 Educational establishment’s working agreement (6)
UNISON – UNI’S ON [educational establishment’s | working]

25 Bury doctor in US abandoning Washington finally (5)
INTER – INTER{n} [doctor in US, “abandoning {washingto}N”]

26 Hanger-on in largely civilised old Communist executive (9)
POLITBURO – BUR in POLIT{e} O [hanger-on; “largely”, civilised; old]

27 Bizarre device for converting motion (9)
ECCENTRIC – double definition
If you didn’t know the second definition, as I didn’t, it’s “a disc or wheel mounted eccentrically on a revolving shaft in order to transform rotation into backward-and-forward motion, e.g. a cam in an internal combustion engine”.

28 Spirit revealed albeit briefly in French art (5)
ETHOS – THO in ES [albeit (= though) briefly; French word for art, as in thou art, tu es]

DOWN
1 Drug satisfied a politician and governor in the main resort (15)
METHAMPHETAMINE – MET + A MP and H.E. in (THE MAIN*) [“re-sort”]
HE for governor or ambassador comes up in crosswords an awful lot, and is short for His/Her Excellency.

2 Nagging woman flogged outside clubs (5)
SCOLD – SOLD outside C [flogged; clubs (suit of cards)]

3 Bring up second reminder for a saver (7)
RESCUER – RE{a}R [bring up], with S CUE [second | reminder] in place of [“for”] the “a”. An easy clue to bung in but a harder one to parse correctly!

4 Spiritual leader, one with mother in Newcastle, perhaps (4)
IMAM – I with MAM [one; mother in Newcastle, perhaps]

5 Something fishy originally marking a jolly prim teacher (10)
SCHOOLMARM – SCHOOL M{arking} A RM. Fish come in schools and an RM is a Royal Marine is a jolly, but probably not a Jolly Jack Tar it seems.

6 Generator of glossy, potentially clear source of ointment (7)
MAGNET – MAG NET O [glossy, potentially; clear; O{intment}]

7 Sibling’s declaration soldier left inside entrance to officers’ mess? (9)
IMBROGLIO – I’M BRO [sibling’s declaration] + GI [soldier] (with) L [left] inside + O{fficers}

8 Top men on a course oddly existing at the same time (15)
CONTEMPORANEOUS – (TOP MEN ON A COURSE*) [“oddly”]

13 Give away ring? One might expect to sell it (10)
SHOPKEEPER – SHOP [give away] + KEEPER [ring]
I didn’t know “keeper” as a ring but apparently it can either be a plain ring worn to preserve a hole in a pierced ear lobe, or a ring worn to keep a more valuable one on the finger. Well well!

15 Shocking start for uncle in vehicle — Greek, reportedly (9)
TRAUMATIC – U{ncle} in TRAM [vehicle] + homophone of ATTIC [Greek, “reportedly”]

18 More recent article identifying old Roman palace (7)
LATERAN – LATER AN [more recent | article]. A familiar word to enthusiasts of Rome or Popes.

20 Get kicks with zany foreign banker (7)
YANGTZE – (GET + ZANY*) [“…kicks with…”]. Banker as in “thing with banks”, a time-honoured alternative to “flower” in crossword puzzles.

23 Quiet son taking a couple of horses across America (5)
SHUSH – S taking H H across US [son; a couple of horses (= 2 x H); America]

24 Fellow caught with intoxicating liquor (4)
ALEC – C with ALE [caught; intoxicating liquor]

57 comments on “Times 27,089: The Wizard of Speed and Time”

  1. 30 mins with yoghurt, granola, blueberries, etc.
    DNK Keeper, but otherwise straightforward fun.
    Mostly I liked: ‘Hanger-on’, ‘Sibling’s declaration’ and ‘kicks with’ as an anagram indicator.
    Thanks setter and V.
  2. 12’02” so a fast Friday. RESCUER not parsed properly (recuer with s sort of). Thanks verlaine and setter.
  3. As verlaine I think this has been a comfortable week of solving, and the SNITCH confirms this with a mere 11 point range of difficulty ratings over the week.

    Similar to others my main hold up was my LOI, DOVECOTE. I did wonder if I had something wrong as I half thought it was going to be WORMHOLE, with the band of an earthworm perhaps being known as a collar.

    1. Yes, currently trending for the week with an average difficulty of 83, the easiest week since the week beginning 12 March. And you’re right, P, that this week has been more consistently easy; in that week there was a very easy one and a slightly harder one to get to the average.
  4. Yet another easy one ..
    And Petersham of course a write-in, for Heyer fans 🙂
    1. Not if you’ve got H at the front when it becomes Miss HAVERSHAM hoping she’s a material girl.
    2. After all the hype on here I have finally got round to dipping a toe in the Heyer water: I have nearly finished Frederica. I think she has a new fan… what should I read next?
      1. “Sylvester” and “The Unknown Ajax” both have strong male characters. “The Grand Sophy” is one of the funniest. Loads to chose from…
      2. I like Arabella, the Foundling, the Corinthian .. indeed, there are loads to choose from and apart from the earliest one or two they are well researched and well written. Heyer is not Tolstoy but neither is she Cartland.
        Her best book is often said to be An Infamous Army but that is very different in style, being based on the actual events of Waterloo.
        Welcome aboard!
  5. 41 minutes for all bar 12a, which this vocalophobe had to look up. Pinching grain, indeed.
  6. On wavelength this morning in 17 minutes, with lingering doubts if it was PETERSHAM or PETERSHEM, which also met the cryptic. Fortunately, I picked the place. COD to YANGTZE. My Mum liked Richard Todd, so I remember the incident from the 1957 movie. I think I knew KEEPER but it could be nothing else. I always dislike drug clues as I feel they leave us like infant school children making lavatory jokes, but METHAMPHETAMINE was tricky at least. Definitely easyish overall for Friday. Thank you V and setter.
    1. Does PETERSHEM really satisfy the wordplay? With SHE for “woman” in some way? Just trying to see it.

      Oh goodness, I just had the perverse thought of whether you could use “man or woman” to clue S/HE, citing the alleged “all punctuation can be ignored” rule. Hopefully not…

      1. I wasn’t being that clever. Man was M , woman was SHE, and the hotel was an enclosure indicator. I did go for PETERSHAM, thinking this more than a bit weak. Didn’t Cliff Richard make a terrible song about goodbye Sam, hello Samantha?

        Edited at 2018-07-13 08:59 am (UTC)

      2. I reckon PETERSHEM might well be ruled out, anyway, on the grounds of not being a word.
        1. It could have been the material used on the edge of St Peter’s cloak before the cock crew.
  7. 50 minutes of very enjoyable solving in which I needed to follow wordplay very carefully to arrive at several less than familiar answers.

    I knew ‘keeper’, which helped.

    LOI was DOVECOTE and imagine ‘pinching grain’ is there to give context to ‘collared’ in the surface reading. ‘Collar’ in addition to being a type of dove is also slang for ‘arrest’ following a misdemeanour, in this case ‘pinching grain’.

    1. Well yes, it certainly contributes to the surface reading. I’m just concerned by its, um, pigeonholing of doves as inveterate grain stealers! #NotAllDoves
  8. Puntastic ! This was a little bit of a biff-fest before I sealed it at 11:13

    Thanks V for PETERSHAM and PARTYGOER, both obvious but with surfaces that eluded me. DOVECOTE just doesn’t work properly for me, didn’t know the definition of “keeper”, and knew LATERAN, but not as a palace.

    FOI MISER
    LOI UNISON
    WOD IMBROGLIO
    COD YANGTZE, also liked hanger-on = bur.

  9. So dragged on for 55 mins with 17ac EMAIL LOI – as I wasn’t sure it actually meant send per se!
    18dn LATERAN was unknown although the cluing was ridiculously easy – which made me suspicious.

    FOI 2dn SCOLD

    COD 13dn SHOPKEEPER I knew the ring

    WOD TAOISEACH – good for you Mr. Kirby?

    27ac ECCENTRIC was new to me, who knows little of cam shafts and the like. I thought it simply meant people like us.

    12ac DOVECOTE came to me as in a dream!

  10. Took too long to see that META-wotsit without the early H didn’t fit, which left most of the LHS unsolvable. Took even longer to workout the actual spelling. DOVECOTE was my last in, trying hard to make it more of a wordplay sort of clue involving dogs, vicars and cereal, and it gets a definite bleh from me.
    23 minutes, sadly not much enjoyed. Sorry.
  11. More a spelling test than a cryptic today. TAOISEACH always sends me into a tailspin and METHAMPHETAMINE has the sneaky first H.
    As a fly fisherman, a keeper ring is the one by the rod butt that you hook your fly onto while moving around.
    18:45
  12. Some tricky spelling today what with METHAMPHETAMINE, CONTEMPORANEOUS and TAOISEACH. The last one reminds me of a favourite scene from a favourite sitcom, “Drop The Dead Donkey”. The two newsreaders are discussing an item involving the Taoiseach but Sally, the slightly dilly one, who is spiced up in the later series by giving her a liking for a bit of rough, can’t grasp the meaning and asks: “But why would the Irish Prime Minister open a teashop?”!
    Thanks, Verlaine, for explaining Petersham. I had convinced myself that “man or woman” meant PAT but couldn’t make a word from that and the checkers so settled on what proved to be the correct answer. I was quite pleased with myself for spotting A = PER in 19ac. As Verlaine says it has been used in recent times but I don’t normally spot it.
  13. 9:55 … main holdups comings from the fabric and the temple and the slightly strange SHOPKEEPER.

    A like your idea of pope enthusiasts, Verlaine, which rang a bell. A quick search took me back to a nice leader in The Times by the always funny Henning Vehn on the occasion of Germany’s miserable exit from the World Cup, and the line:

    “One of the happiest days of my life was April 19, 2005 when Germany won Pope.”

    The full article for online subscribers:

    https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/laugh-at-germany-while-you-ve-got-the-chance-england-thlwv2vs6

  14. Yes, there were many that could be confidently biffed today — and I biffed ’em. My recent trip around Gaeltacht south-west Ireland helped with TAOISEACH. I left the 15-letter drug till the end, thinking that a weird pharmaceutical name would be clear once all the checkers were in: and so it proved. I didn’t parse ETHOS — and wasted quite a few of my 27 mins trying to place EN (as French “in”) somewhere and footling with ‘esprit’ and ‘elan’ — but now V has explained it I think this is a really spiffing clue. As for ‘nagging woman’, 5 letters, begins with ‘s’? Obviously ‘shrew’, but only for a short while. DNK ‘keeper’: I call the earring a ‘sleeper’. 5d was a write-in: 32 years married to one.

    Thanks to V, for the enlightening blog post, and to setter for fun Friday puzzle.

  15. 20’53 after staring at the end at the dovecote checkers for a while. Pinching grain in the beak, perhaps, makes it unexpectedly graceful. Fine word anyway. As is the Irish leader, which at last I have a way of remembering how to spell.
  16. Well, that was a pleasant and somewhat whimsical 51 minutes for me. Just as well, given I’ve got my regular monthly hangover to contend with. Came here hoping that I hadn’t missed something less obvious for 24d ALEC, given that I don’t generally think of ale as a liquor, but given the state of my head this morning, some of the stronger American Pale Ales are certainly up there in the percentage stakes, at least…

    FOI 1a MISER followed quickly by 1d METHAMPHETAMINE, which got me off to a good start (thank you, Breaking Bad!) LOI the unknown 14a PETERSHAM, just after SHOPKEEPER, where like V I didn’t know the “keeper” bit.

    Thanks to setter and V. Now, off to put LATERAN and a few others on my Big List of Words and try, yet again, to get the spelling of TAOISEACH in my head.

  17. An enjoyable puzzle that kept me on my toes for 31:46, with MISER opening the bid and PARTYGOER, then SHOPKEEPER closing the deal. Failed to spot the ARTY and A bits of our reveller and raised an eyebrow over the pinching grain bit of 12a. The clear word play helped me to spell the Irish leader correctly. As others, I originally missed the first H in the drug which was cunningly concealed in the wordplay, but at least the shortage of a letter encourage a more careful analysis. Liked YANGTZE and ETHOS. Thanks setter and V.
  18. Times setter Izetti has posted this on today’s QC discussion on the subject of ‘biffing’. I thought I’d copy it here for the wider TftT audience:

    From Izetti
    Thank you for appreciative comments. I fear that ‘biffing’ is often caused by an obsession to finish quickly in order to quote a quick time and impress others.It goes along with the mentality of solvers who don’t like unusual words, because they like to biff from definitions. One purpose of the QC is to encourage learners to work out subsidiary definitions, sometimes even for words with which they are unfamiliar. I fear that biffing is a consequence of the obsession with ‘times’ for The Times. Relax, gentle solvers and enjoy!

    1. The Times crossword is synonymous with speed and all efforts to stop this phenomenon are bound to fail. There’s the time-honoured image (much churned out in film and TV) of the vicar speed-solving the crossword while watching the Test match at Lord’s. There are the championships – historically, both regional and national – whose very raison d’etre is speed. There is this fine blog, whose organisation around the principal of speed provides the superstructure for some of the best banter on the Internet. The final nail in the coffin is the admirable SNITCH, which stops those who submit online from telling porkies about their times and gets the competitive juices running that little bit faster. And there’s always plenty of time to admire the setter’s art after you’ve stopped the stopwatch.
      1. I think Izetti’s comments are particularly aimed at the new QC folks in order to encourage them and stop them feeling overwhelmed. However, I applaud your vigorous defence of the art of speed solving:-)
        1. I really like the way Don Manley comes down and scraps with us at the coal face. More power to his elbow!

          And I like to think you can hardly get a more compelling defence of speed solving than from someone who is as far from it as England are from winning a World Cup.

      2. Your final sentence nails it for me Ulaca.

        Edited at 2018-07-13 12:45 pm (UTC)

      3. I must post a counter argument. While you’re right that The Times is synonymous with speed – championships every year, professors solving it while their egg boiled? – many of us do it for pure enjoyment. I hate putting in words that I can’t justify definition, wordplay, every single word in the clue; and I avoid it where possible. Even obvious ones today like 1ac, 4ac, 1dn where you read the first word or three and immediately know the answer I always* parse completely before entering (*small fib – sometimes I forget). It is the joy of seeing the usually brilliant clue construction that brings me back here every day, not the competitive juices or need for speed. And words like RESCUER today, where I couldn’t see it at all, that really annoy me. Not because they’re bad clues, but because I am sometimes too thick to see them.
    2. I probably ought to stress that I didn’t name this blog “The Wizard of Speed and Time” to brag about my solving times, but because that’s what METHAMPHETAMINE down one side and CONTEMPORANEOUS down the other suggested to my weird allusive brain!
      1. You opened a can of worms there then!

        Bless Izetti, who likes to teach us how to solve. I remain confused as to what constitutes an ideal QC nonetheless. As to this one, a bit easier than I was expecting.

        Thanks for ace blog and to setter. And Izetti.

      2. Your title took me back to the days when Wizard of Space and Time was a standard at SF conventions. (Together with Hardware Wars) But re biffing, I don’t like putting in an answer just from the definition. It takes the fun out of it and I might as well be doing the Concise.
    3. There are lots of cycling enthusiasts (far too many round here if you ask me, but I digress). Some like to pootle along and enjoy the scenery, some like to race others, some to race against the clock. All enjoy their hobby in their own way and having paid their money, it’s their choice.
  19. One day I will learn to spell CONTEMPORANEOUS – it was not to be today. Oh well…
  20. On Friday 13th, I feared an appropriately daunting challenge, but in fact, as has already been observed, the SNITCH tells us this has been about as easy a week as we ever get (not that I found them all like that), and today was another pleasant Mondayish solve.

    Re: the always-live topic of biffing and, by extension, solving styles, I started composing what was intended to be a brief comment, then realised I would need an essay-length post to make my points with the necessary degree of nuance, so I decided life’s too short, and I can trim it down to a) people are complicated and one should probably resist trying to ascribe a single motive to the actions of a large group of them; b) as I get older, I find myself agreeing with Balfour, that nothing matters very much, and few things matter at all, so we should all just enjoy what we enjoy.

    2. Could not agree more Tim. So that is now two of us who try never to make sweeping statements about large groups of people, perhaps it will catch on one day..
      My version of biffing is to write the word straight in and then spend ten minutes working out exactly why it is correct. I find I simply cannot just let the wordplay go hang.
  21. I’m still on the learning curve. 54:08 with 4 reveals so a DNF. The reveals were DOVECOTE, PETERSHAM, POLITBURO and IMBROGLIO. Also tried NEWERAN for the old Roman place before settling on LATERAN as DNK and failed to parse 3dn RESCUER. Room for improvement!
    1. There is always room for improvement. Keep going, and stay with this blog. It should prove rewarding.
  22. 24:04. Well I found this really hard! I did make a number of rather stupid rods for my own back, including a ridiculous failure to spell 1dn even after about three attempts and various other things I won’t bore you with.
    I will blame jet lag and general fatigue: I flew to Canada on a flight that was delayed by 5 hours yesterday, and then drove for two hours. I meant to sleep on the flight but as mentioned above I finally got round to having a pop at a Georgette Heyer and I was hooked.
    DOVECOTE was my last in and unless there is some meaning of ‘pinch’ we’re all missing I think it leaves something to be desired.

  23. Hacked my way through this in about 45 minutes. Being an inveterate biffer, I often find myself cast adrift in a sea of speculative answers, spending an inordinate amount of time rectifying the ensuing chaos. However, as in so many other areas of life, my main aim in doing the Times Crossword is to have fun, so I will never be single-minded enough to achieve a quick solve. I stand in awe of anyone who can complete these suckers in under 15 minutes.

    Thank you to setter and blogger.

    Dave.

  24. Not being an enthusiast of Rome or Popes, LATERAN was new as was KEEPER for ‘ring’; I thought it had something to do with Frodo. The engineering form of ECCENTRIC as a noun seemed, well eccentric.

    41 minutes. OK, I admit, a bit of biffing but I like to smell the roses. My excuse anyway.

    Thank you to setter and blogger.

  25. Completed in the interludes between tie breaks in the tennis. Time on this occasion irrelevant. Like others I stared at the checkers for Dovecote for too long. Mainly because I was trying to find some kind of grain in there. As others, not impressed DNK Petersham, though on reflection we’ve seen it before
  27. 14.09 for me, slowed down by two things. DOVECOT was a knee-jerk reaction to ‘collared’ but I thought the missing letter might have something to do with another collared beast and so passed it by. Then, thinking ‘caught’ denoted ‘heard as’ I confidently put MARC at 24dn. But no typos – hurrah.
  28. Not as easy as some this week, but not too hard at all. Still, it lasted 25 minutes for me due to wondering what was going on with DOVECOTE, which finally occurred to me and which I entered because I hadn’t thought of anything else that fit. Regards.
  29. Having immediately entered the first four across answers, recognized METHAMPHETAMINE and CONTEMPORANEOUS solely from the first two crossers and the definitions, I was well on my way. DNK PETERSHAM but got it from the wordplay, nor the second definition of ECCENTRIC, but that didn’t slow me down. Nor did my inability to correctly parse RESCUER (I thought all of CUER must be “reminder”…). What did hold me up, at the end, was DOVECOTE (though it pretty much had to be a cryptic definition, as I couldn’t prise one out of the beginning or end).

    That said (you knew there’d be at least one quibble), I find the use of “blooming” for “a thing that blooms” a little hard to wrap my head around. Also (come to think of it), “intoxicating liquor” seems like overkill… especially for ALE!

    Edited at 2018-07-13 09:44 pm (UTC)

  30. About half an hour for all but 12ac, 13dn & 14ac. I picked up the puzzle again after work and 13dn & 14ac fell in fairly short order, 12ac required an alphabet trawl to get dove and then I twigged the collared connection. I’m not sure I knew the fabric. I also had a qm at the definition of blooming for oxlip. Seeing drug and then having met as a Pavlovian response to satisfied meant 1dn was a write in, I’ve seen the word enough times in indictments and other court documents over the years.

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