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. 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).
  3. 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.

  4. 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.
  5. 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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