Times 27099 – Doh, it’s not Scottish, for once.

Author   piquetPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Never a dull moment in this cracking puzzle, I thought, the best I’ve had to grapple with on a Wednesday for a while. Nothing too obscure, and some smiles here and there. It took me half an hour plus a wasted 5 minutes or so trying to explain 19d to myself, q.v., I was making it unnecessarily complicated. I liked 23d, a possible entry for the Uxbridge Dictionary, and the correct and wrong genres in 18d were both new to me but no doubt not to M. Verlaine, our musical genre professor.

As always, definitions underlined, anagrind in italics, (anagrams)*.

Across
1 Tax advice about squalid dwelling (7)
CESSPIT – CESS = tax, TIP reversed.
5 Olympic venue’s head rejected Frenchman’s late welcome? (7)
BONSOIR – All reversed, RIO’S NOB.
9 NUT leader at sea, the same as before (9)
UNALTERED – (NUT LEADER)*.
10 The best comics needing no tips (5)
CREAM – comics are SCREAMS, they lose their ‘tips’ i.e. first and last letters.
11 Apartment, not opening at the front? Check security device (5)
LATCH – (F)LAT, CH = check.
12 Handmade herbal tea, briefly dipped in some salt water (9)
ARTISANAL – TISAN(E) = herbal tea briefly, inside the ARAL sea.
13 Series about queen perhaps visiting a certain country (13)
CONCATENATION – ON CATE = about queen, inside C NATION. Doh! As jackkt points out, it’s better parsed as CAT for queen inside ONE = a certain, inside C for about, NATION.
17 Female enters cafe in Totnes after ordering drink (7,6)
INSTANT COFFEE – (CAFE IN TOTNES F)*, F for female in the anagram fodder.
21 List of office employees, perhaps, likely to obey siren? (9)
TEMPTABLE – A TEMP TABLE could be a list of office employees.
24 Britain remains bold (5)
BRASH – BR = British, ASH = remains.
25 Slow-witted type ultimately exasperated boss (5)
DUMBO – D = end of exasperated, UMBO is the boss on a shield.
26 Trail round English forest leading to open-air eatery (3,6)
TEA GARDEN – TAG = trail, insert E for English, ARDEN as in the Forest of, near Birmingham airport, now largely tree-less except for the golf course.
27 Lively scout crosses lake on sailing vessel (7)
SPARKLY – SPY = scout, insert ARK and L for lake.
28 I’ll guarantee critic has ignored opening chapter (7)
ENSURER – Critic = censurer, lose his initial C.

Down
1 Item left in car (6)
COUPLE – L inside COUPE kind of car.
2 Film — Fight Club — regularly shown during flipping day off? (9)
SPARTACUS – SPAR = fight, SAT = day off, flipped = TAS, insert CU being alternate letters of CLUB.
3 Help with venue for match at home (5,2)
PITCH IN – PITCH = venue for match, IN = at home.
4 Rent new flats, half of them at bottom of hill (4,5)
TORN APART – TOR = hill then N = new, APART(MENTS) = half of flats.
5 Oddly build seat on which to squat? (5)
BIDET – alternate letters of B u I l D s E a T.
6 Collection of coins I found near a Mediterranean capital (7)
NICOSIA – (COINS I)* then A.
7 Where to see films on demand, except occasional Netflix premieres (5)
ODEON – premieres = initial letters of On Demand Except Occasional Netflix.
8 Fingering curious jewellery (8)
RUMBLING – RUM = curious, BLING = jewellery. Or jewelry for our Transatlantic friends.
14 Clear directions to enter old address (9)
EXONERATE – EX = old, ORATE = address, insert N and E directions.
15 North Country inhabitant I badmouth audibly? (9)
ICELANDER – Allegedly sounds like “I SLANDER”. Of course I were loooking fer ut Yorkshire person or owt at first.
16 Spirited swimming in turbulent waters (8)
RIPTIDES – (SPIRITED)*. Not hyphenated, although I thought it might be.
18 First half of long track playing different genre of music? (3-4)
ALT-ROCK – Anagram of LO(NG) with TRACK, and not a genre I knew; at first I had ART ROCK which is apparently also a music genre, but I couldn’t see how it parsed so dumped it for another one. How many sub-genres of ROCK can there be? Can I just invent one?
19 Socialists, fine Scottish lads? (7)
FABIANS – Doh. I wrote in F for fine, and invented a Scottish-ism a bit like BAIRNS, but a BIAN hasn’t yet made it into the Scottish dialect dictionary. Then I realised, FAB = fine, Scottish lads are just IANS, I play golf with two such Caledonian bandits.
20 Sun has new leader, one complains (6)
WHINER – the sun is a SHINER, changes its S for a W.
22 Dangerous creature, black, captured by degrees (5)
MAMBA – B for black goes into MA MA degrees.
23 Purchase includes dry sandwich (5)
BUTTY – Insert TT for dry into BUY. Barry Cryer says BUTTY means like a bottom in America.

55 comments on “Times 27099 – Doh, it’s not Scottish, for once.”

  1. 13ac C (about), CAT (queen perhaps) contained by [visiting] ONE (a certain), COUNTRY (nation). Actually this clue resulted in a technical DNF for me as somewhere along the way when trying to work it out I put a vertical line immediately before NATION (so obviously ‘country’ as I had all the checkers) after which I got it into my head that the answer was two words, and spent ages looking for a first one to fit C?NCAT? | NATION. It was doubly maddening because I knew the actual answer well as ‘concatenate’ is a function within Excel I used all the time when writing scripts for macros in the course of my work prior to retirement.

    Edited at 2018-07-25 05:38 am (UTC)

  2. Why in heaven’s name did I stick BONJOUR in at 6ac.
    when the Brexitty BONSOIR was required.It parseth all understanding!

    I have a dreadful loathing of 17ac.

    FOI 19dn FABIANS

    COD 16dn RIPTIDES

    WOD 25ac DUMBO – Bonsoir!

    1. I unspammed your comment, horryd. You omitted the space before “It” and LJ perceived a URL
      1. Yep. We have a Lavazza machine but two cups of that and I have a headache. Also, the capsules can’t be recycled. I used to like my old percolator best, a refugee from my sixties bedsit years, which created a lovely smell as it bubbled away all day. Sadly, marriage saw that confined to the dustbin over thirty years ago. I still mourn it. Mrs BW favoured filter coffee then but now modishly won’t drink any at all. So I often sneak a cup of instant.
        1. Oh yes! I mourn two percolators, now long gone. I have a fancy bean-to-cup jobbie now, but you can easily make nice coffee with a funnel and a coffee paper and a spoonful of ground coffee. Pour boiling water over, wait 5, and drink .. or buy one of those small one-cup cafetieres .. *anything* but instant crap! If you are going to sneak a forbidden treat it may as well be a quality one
      2. Our Nespresso machine goes everywhere with us, but Mrs K makes exceeding good (coffee flavoured) cakes and buns with the instant freeze dried stuff. Occasionally I like a mug-full as a change from tea although it bear little resemblance to coffee.
        1. My red Lavazza machine was a gift from sig oth that wouldn’t stop leaking water everywhere. We said ‘can we get a replacement?’ and they said, ‘no, but here’s your money back’. Then it stopped leaking.
        2. I think you were in advertising weren’t you, Pip? There are still adverts for Moccona instant coffee on NZ TV and when was it the series of adverts for Gold Blend that captivated the UK were on TV there?
  3. 41 minutes, and I’m glad to see I’m not the only one who had problems parsing my LOI, 13a CONCATENATION! I’d got everything but the “one” bit until Jack’s comment…

    Started with 9a and it was a difficult and piecemeal solve after that, with the bottom half the harder. I also went for ART ROCK at first, at least mentally, but then as an alt-country fan (Cowboy Junkies, anyone?) I quickly reapplied the prefix to rock and figured things out.

    Didn’t help that I’d assumed 21a would end up being TEMPTRESS for far too long.

    Just the right kind of challenge for a mid-week, I thought, and not much in the way of obscure vocab. Helpfully I was only thinking about umbos just yesterday; I imagine whiling away one’s time thinking about odd words is a side-effect of this cruciverbal malarkey…

  4. Lost track typing CONCATENATION and made a typo, but 22 minutes for a really nice puzzle, definitely a bit chewier than we’ve had for a while. A few things not, um, fully parsed while solving.

    I suppose ALT- anything is always going to be defined more by what it isn’t that what it is. The ALT-ROCK Wiki page gives it a good go but inevitably ends up just listing a bunch of disparate bands that sort of qualify. Maybe a case of ‘if you have to ask what it is, you’re not going to understand the answer’.

  5. Zipped through this, on the wavelength, though failed to parse CONCATENATION. Had both “about” and “visiting” used to include the cat, and wondered how CONE was certain. D’oh. Here in Oz “One Nation” has bad connotations, it’s the Trumpian political party.
    Minor eyebrow raises at: ARAL sea as salt, flat clueing apartment and apartment clueing flat in the same puzzle, and cafe in the coffee clue.
    Otherwise a pleasnt, quirky offering.
    On Edit: MER for Aral sea as water, almost?

    Edited at 2018-07-25 06:36 am (UTC)

  6. 23 minutes of steady solving, with a few queries along the way.
    The biggest was equating RUMBLING (obvious-ish from the wordplay) and fingering: the nearest I can get is from some 1960s police drama in which some grass fingers chummy (identifies him as a criminal), whereupon Sergeant Dixon rumbles the cove, but they’re not quite the same action. Or are they?
    Then it was the Aral Sea being salt, but that’s ignorance on my part. I knew it was (used to be) a vast inland sea somewhere in Russia, but omitted to recognise it as endorheic – as in the Dead Sea, even more salty than the ocean. I gather it no longer exists, and part of it is now the Aralkum desert. Sad.
    I’m not all that enthusiastic about 20d, change the first letter of a slightly odd word for the Sun to another random letter, and we had random directions in 14d too.
    I did know ALT ROCK (in the same way that I recognise ALT anything as a genre).
    All the above notwithstanding, this was a satisfying solve. And I did parse CONCATENATION.
  7. I forgot to mention the personally spooky resonance of 17a. Way back in the day, the United Free Church, halfway up Totnes High Street on the left, served teas and coffees to the grockles on Elizabethan Tuesdays from the forecourt. The coffee was pretty awful stuff, instant in every way including milk, but alleviated by yours truly in full 16th century Protestant pastor’s rig dishing it out. There were more, and more spectacular Elizabethan outfits in Totnes on Tuesdays than ever seen in Elizabeth’s court, but it was great fun. How did the setter know?
  8. I pulled a horryd and flung in BONJOUR, but then looked at the clue–always useful–and noticed the ‘late’. I came to FABIANS the Pip route, but didn’t think that ‘fab’ is merely ‘fine’–the Fine Four? I never did notice the ARAL; ’tisan’ was enough.
  9. 45 mins with a croissant (hoorah) and the scrumptious G&Lime marmalade.
    Ugh! Three things you don’t want reminding of at breakfast: Cesspits, Bidets, Instant Coffee.
    I couldn’t parse 13ac and originally put in A Nation which meant I spent ages on 14dn looking for an old address beginning with A. Abodenage, perhaps? Then realised it was a word for Clear beginning with E. Doh!
    Like Z above – my MER was Rumbling=Fingering. Not the same thing.
    Mostly I liked: Couple and Butty.
    Thanks setter and Pip.
  10. I did the same but neglected to read the clue and moved on, only to get the dreaded error message of doom on submission. It ruined a very respectable time.
  11. ….Nick O’Seer.

    12:36 with three biffs and two gripes.

    FOI LATCH

    Biffed BONSOIR, CONCATENATION, and TORN APART. Could almost parse the first pair, and did so on completion, but needed Pip’s ministrations with the last one.

    I would say you finger a suspect on turning them in, after you’ve rumbled them. RUMBLING can be kept to one’s self.

    Saturday was my busiest day of the week !

    LOI SPARKLY

    1. Finger (from Collins): to identify as a criminal or suspect
      Rumble (from Collins): to find out about (someone or something); discover (something) “the police rumbled their plans”

      Near enough for clue-solving purposes, I would say

      1. Respectfully disagree; I’m with Zabadak. Finger is what a bad guy does to one of his fellow bad-guys – shops him to the busies. As Collins says.
        Rumble is what the police do, when they finally solve the case and figure out whodunnit. As Collins says.
        Very different senses of largely dissimilar meanings albeit with the same outcomes. Not near enough for serious i.e. Times crosswords.
  12. 23’13”. CONCATENATION LOI after parsing. Nice puzzle, thanks pip and setter.
  13. 43 minutes. First biffed BONJOUR, but couldn’t let the ‘late’ go unused and made it BONSOIR as LOI. CONCATENATION was penultimate, parsed as per Jack. I also spent time between DUMBO and DIMBO before seeing an elephant fly and remembering the shield bit. COD has to be ARTISANAL in these days of the hand-made hipster. I don’t think I’m allowed to join as I still drink INSTANT COFFEE when nobody’s looking. And that’s despite putting ALT-ROCK straight in. I think it must mean Little Richard or Jerry Lee Lewis as alternatives to Elvis. Quite a hard puzzle but enjoyable. Thank you Pip and setter.
  14. A fraction over the half hour, but with a stupid, unthought “timetable” for 21ac.
  15. Totally out tune for this one and the undoubted winner of the 25a award.Flummoxed for ages by 13 and 14.Don’t think I’ve come across 13 before but no doubt those who know how to search the site will tell me when it last appeared.
    1. July 19th, 2014, as far as I can see (though that was a Saturday puzzle, so not everyone may have solved it).
  16. #MeToo: I biffed BONJOUR before seeing the ‘late’ late. Then, trying to parse it, I wondered whether BONS=head (alternative spelling for bonce?). My LOI.

    As a southern RP speaker, I must have a moan about the dodgy homophone in ICELANDER.

    COD for me would be 14d: a nicely knotty clue that had me puzzled for a long while. Therefore a lethargic 42min solving time.
    [ON EDIT: Aaaaargh! I seem to have linked myself to the global backlash against sleazy Lotharios. That’s not what I meant at all!]
    [ON 2nd EDIT: Well… of course, I share the general opprobrium of all sleazy Lotharios, obviously. I didn’t mean that I didn’t.]

    Edited at 2018-07-25 09:45 am (UTC)

  17. Thank you Pip, for CONCATENATION and ARTISANAL. Never did spot the Aral Sea.
    There was a nice cartoon in the New Yorker fairly recently mocking the trendy liking for anything that is labelled ‘artisanal’.
    When I saw ‘collection of coins’ with N as the first letter, I did wonder if ‘numisma’ might be a word but it’s certainly not a capital of anywhere so I dropped that idea.
    I also wondered if Fenians might have been socialists as I had an F at the beginning.
    Never spotted alt-rock. I stuck to Art Rock as that was the label attached to one of my favourite bands, 10cc.
    Also fell into the BONJOUR bear trap.
  18. Rare enough morning solve, wrapped up in 37 minutes, but with another BONJOUR – I did read the clue though, I just stuck it in and hoped there was an obscure Olympic sport played in/on/at an “Abonjour” or something.

    I was also sidetracked by the possibility of a subversively named coffeeshop in an art gallery (selling instant coffee) called The Artisanal (And The Coffee’s Even Worse). Yes, all very enjoyable – thanks Pip and setter.

  19. Just under 21 minutes but with a careless torE apart which I forgot (or couldn’t be bothered, not sure which) to proof read.

    We do have instant coffee in the house, but it’s probably out of date. As the only coffee drinker in the house I prefer bags.

  20. Did this in the middle of the night because I was woke. A slow start but picked up steam after a jolt from INSTANT COFFEE. It’s a lot better than the camp coffee my mother used to have in the larder. In fact it’s quite ok so long as you think “it is what it is” (just like Helman’s “real” mayo) and it does wonders for brownies and chocolate cake. I’m sure I’ve seen ARTISANAL clued rather differently in the Guardian. I was another “art rock” briefly but if you can have alt-right and alt-facts it follows. 16.32
    1. I guess you can have alt-rock, Olivia…as long as it’s not Steve Bannon on lead guitar!
  21. I’m another who bunged BONJOUR in, but didn’t go back to parse – time actually under half an hour, but logged as 39 min on site, as it didn’t respond to ‘submit’ so went for a cuppa (tea, not 17).
    At 18dn tried ART-SONG, which made 27ac impossible, so went back and painstakingly constructed it from wordplay, rejecting ART LOCK on the way to get something plausible. (I’m long past the age at which any variety of rock is of interest.)
  22. Slightly trickier today, but the obscure vocab was definitely “crossword lingo”, so no problems with the likes of CESS and UMBO. Despite those words, this felt like a very modern puzzle, and not just because of the appearance of Netflix (first time? Anyway, once a thing is in the Times crossword, it’s officially now a part of everyday modern life; see also ALT-ROCK). Eyebrow raised at RUMBLING and not necessarily lowered yet.
  23. I think my brain went on vacation and left me behind today. I certainly qualify for the 25a award for ART LOCK, and also fell into the bear trap at 5a with a half (p)arsed BONJOUR. Otherwise a valiant effort with CESS and UMBO dragged from the cruciverbal depths, and CONCATENATION, my LOI, actually parsed correctly. Liked ARTISANAL, where I spotted the sea. Like others I had a MER at RUMBLING, but shrugged and moved on. FOI was BIDET, which I hoped wasn’t going to set the tone, but the arrival of the CESSPIT dashed my hopes. 33:30 with 2 errors. Thanks setter and Pip.
  24. I just couldn’t get going on the 15×15 yesterday and gave up so was determined to persevere today. Nearly 1 hour and 15 minutes later I have finished with one reveal 13a CONCATENATION and one wrong 5a unparsed BONjOuR. I biffed two correctly 1a CESSPIT (DNK cess as tax) and 12a ARTISANAL. Still looking to complete my first 15×15 without a reveal and judging my somewhat limited vocabulary it may be some time yet.
  25. Another ‘timetable’ for 21, so a DNF in 49 minutes. Had forgotten about CESS and couldn’t quite nail the parsing of CONCATENATION.

    There’s ‘salt’ but is there any ‘water’ left in the ARAL Sea?

    INSTANT COFFEE? Luxury.

    Thanks to setter and blogger

  26. I wrong with TORE APART well rent could mean either and I didn’t bother to parse it. Done in 2 sessions. As an adopted northerner I’m not sure how I say SLANDER. Apparently I still say BARTH
  27. 15:03 with RIPTIDES and SPARKLY holding me up very muchly at the end.

    I didn’t / couldn’t parse CONCATENATION, SPARTACUS AND BONSOIR… in the case of the latter I took “head rejected” to be an instruction to remove the first letter from an Olympic venue.

    “Coming up we have live short track speed skating, but first we go over to David Coleman with news from the biathlon at Abonsoir in the French Alps.”

  28. Thought it was all over in 30 mins before I discovered timetable was wrong. Frankly the correct answer is poor as far as I’m concerned. Prefer alt-country (a proper genre) to alt-rock (shouldn’t be allowed). Anyone for Sparklehorse and the sadly missed Mark Linkus? Thanks blogger
  30. Oops. So a DNF. I figured the clue meant that the French don’t say ‘bonjour’ any more, having replaced it with ‘Yo!’, or something along those lines. But very nice puzzle nonetheless, LOI CESSPIT after remembering the ‘cess’ from earlier puzzles. Regards.
  31. I didn’t know CESS as tax (but put in CESSPIT anyway) and I wasn’t sure about RUMBLING, but the wordplay convinced me. But I did not fall into the BONJOUR/BONSOIR trap, as I took the “late” seriously — it just took me ages to parse it. About 38 minutes and everything right (unlike many recent puzzles where I had silly mistakes).
  33. This is why I’m not buying The Times any more. So many recent clues have been unacceptable, but this puzzle is simply not on, even if dedicated crosswords lovers can crack it Cesspit is not a squalid dwelling. Comics is screams???? The Aral sea? Really? A temp table, please? Umbo?! 28 across – what? I down. Half of flats? Orate equals address? No. 18 down? 20 down? The list goes on These clues are lazy and squalid, and I’m not wasting £1.60 any more. I’ve been tempted to give up on this crossword repeatedly,even though I finish it perhaps once a week. But I think they’ve lost perspective.
    1. I don’t think an Anonymouse in his/her hidey hole will necessarily see a reply, but… CESSPIT is defined thusly in dictionaries; it’s a figurative sense, of course. If were limited to the literal sense of every word, there would be no crossword puzzles of any kind. You, Mr/Ms Anon, are a scream. What’s wrong with using the Aral sea? You totally lost me there. OK, cryptic definitions are not always as funny as the setter seems to think, which I guess is your beef with “temp table.” UMBO is part of a shield; slightly exotic terms are one thing that makes a puzzle like this interesting. “Ensurer” is a perfectly good word, so I don’t know what you’re on about there.

      I actually think you have a point about ORATE and “address.” The latter verb is transitive, and ORATE ain’t.

      Still, all in all, you leave me wondering if there are any cryptic crosswords that you do like.

  34. 34:23 and very much enjoyed. Pondered a bit over the parsing of concatenation my LBOI – I knew the word but wasn’t entirely sure what it meant. My LOI was 5ac I threw in bonjour early on but wasn’t satisfied with it, I then changed it to bonnoir, which was frankly even worse, before finally trying to crack the wordplay in full and arriving at bonsoir.
  35. From what I have read he has been in Europe recently speaking in favour of the far-right wing Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, aka ‘Tommy Robinson’ on LBC the London radio station.

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