Times 27147 – `Have some wine,’ the March Hare said in an encouraging tone.

Author   piquetPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic

I am a Lewis Carroll enthusiast. An Aliceophile. So, just about on topic; when I saw the answer to 28a, it prompted me to read once more (although I could nearly recite it from memory) the Tea Party chapter; one of the most silly, but at the same time intelligently sensible, pieces of prose around. Give it a go.

I enjoyed this puzzle almost as much; the best on a Wednesday for a while. Not too challenging, but witty and with a couple of bits of lateral thinking required. The long anagrams at 5d and 9d will get you started, twenty minutes saw me completed except for 1a and 4a; the spelling of 4a surprised me but Collins gives it as an alternative. 19d is an open wound asking for your insightful treatment.

Just a reminder as I haven’t added it for a while; definitions underlined, anagrinds italic, (anagram fodder)*.

Across
1 Hobo needs a large drink (6)
BUMPER – Easy to write in, but trickier to explain in detail. Hobo = bum, no problem. A bumper is a large tankard or drinking glass, or a large drink in one. And bumper means large, as in ‘bumper harvest’. The PER could be clued by the ‘a’, as in ‘five a year / five per year’. So we have a definition, clued by Hobo and A.
4 Woman shows anger about nothing — she’s one of these? (8)
VIRAGOES – VI the woman, RAGES, about O. I had expected the plural to be VIRAGOS but the OES is equally valid.
10 Clued-up company worker is about to celebrate retiring (9)
COGNISANT – CO = company, ANT = worker, surround SING reversed.
11 Spray water on a book (5)
HOSEA – HOSE = spray water on, A. Book of OT.
12 Note about film actors (7)
PLAYERS – P.S. = note, around LAYER = film.
13 Notice one in angry discourse exuding heat? (7)
RADIANT – RANT = angry discourse has AD and I inserted.
14 Fiddle about, in need of passion (5)
CHEAT – C = about, HEAT = passion.
15 Greek statesman has page and two men following (8)
PERICLES – P = page, ERIC and LES are the chaps.
18 Most stylish sixties film? There’s something wet about it (8)
SLEEKEST – SLEET is something wet (and nasty), around KES a 1969 Ken Loach movie about a boy and a Kestrel.
20 Game backed by man of nonsense, not a leader (5)
RULER – The answer is a leader, not ‘not a leader’; RU is a game, rugby, then LEAR loses his A (‘not a’).
23 Chief’s tucked into eggs and lettuce (7)
ROMAINE – MAIN inside ROE. I hate lettuce, rabbit food.
25 Article, coloured on the outside with a stain (7)
TAINTED – TINTED with A inserted.
26 Cook, enthusiast for sweet American cake (5)
DONUT – DO = cook, as in ‘do me a fried egg’ perhaps; NUT = enthusiast; how Americans wrongly spell doughnut, which is made of Dough not Do.
27 Remain close when protecting old group hiding away (9)
CLOSETING – CLING = remain close, has O SET inserted. Odd to have CLOSE in the clue and the answer, but that’s what it is.
28 Sleepy type beginning to moan when instruction to wake up comes round (8)
DORMOUSE – DO ROUSE = instruction to wake up, insert M = beginning to moan. https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~rgs/alice-VII.html
29 NI party holds bizarre rally (4,2)
DRUM UP – the DUP holds RUM = bizarre.

Down
1 Support Wolves? This might be checked at entrance to ground (8)
BACKPACK – BACK = support, PACK could be of wolves. I like this one, and I hope they do inspect the backpacks at Molineux.
2 Tycoon featured in publication, “name” getting worried (7)
MAGNATE – MAG = publication, N = name, ATE = worried.
3 Grand hospital department needing engineers in situation where things fall apart (9)
EPICENTRE – EPIC = grand, ENT the usual ear, nose, throat department, RE the engineers. Nice definition.
5 Reading petition, ranter becomes unsettled (14)
INTERPRETATION – (PETITION RANTER)*.
6 Pest upset Parliament, probing charity (5)
APHID – HP = Parliament, reversed inside AID = charity.
7 Male at party entertained by individual performing live (7)
ONSTAGE – STAG = man at party, inside ONE.
8 Aim to preserve a set of books in cabin (6)
SHANTY – SHY = aim, as in shy at a coconut; inset A, NT.
9 Phony presence felt as deception (5,9)
FALSE PRETENCES – (PRESENCE FELT AS)*
16 Supply of wine drunk by long-term professional soldier (9)
CARBINEER – A carbineer, or carabineer, or carabiner, is a soldier armed with a carbine. I didn’t know this spelling but the word play is clear; CAREER = long term (as in ‘a career philanderer’ perhaps), insert BIN where wine is stored.
17 Old revolutionary caught by trick, a financial problem (5,3)
TRADE GAP – AGED is reversed inside TRAP = trick.
19 Halt, stopping short, with awful rain in sheets (7)
LAMINAR – Well, (RAIN)* is at the end, and LAM must be a shortened word from LAM* or LAM** but as yet in Collins I can’t find a meaning of LAMP or LAMB or any other possible word meaning ‘halt’. Or even one *LAM. Can you?
21 Element of humility not unknown after thrashing (7)
LITHIUM – (HUMILIT)*, the Y = unknown is omitted. Third element of the periodic table, of which there will be a serious world shortage soon as the demand for batteries increases. Although I read recently an aluminium based version is not too far away.
22 Journalist, having travelled in, is worn out (6)
ERODED – ED the journalist has RODE inserted.
24 Keen on including composer’s last piece of music (5)
INTRO – INTO = keen on, insert R being the end letter of composer.

54 comments on “Times 27147 – `Have some wine,’ the March Hare said in an encouraging tone.”

  1. Lame. Halt, gammy, limping.
    Didn’t know viragos, might have heard of Kes, so two fingers-crossed guesses but otherwise interesting and entertaining but not too onerous. 25 minutes.
  2. Slowed down in part by my dimness: thinking of PERICLES immediately but not seeing how it could work, for instance, or trying to make ‘lean-to’ fit 8d. It also took a while for the penny to drop at 1ac, even with the BUM, and 1d, even with the BACK. But SLEEKEST was my LOI, where it took forever for KES to come back to me; never saw the movie, only learned of it here some time ago.
  3. I struggled to finish (as is so common these days) but got there in the end despite not knowing LAMINAR (although I knew associated words so it was a fair guess when arrived at via wordplay) or VIRAGOES with an E. The ones that gave most trouble were BUMPER as I didn’t know it as a drink, and until that answer gave me the first E checker I couldn’t work out the answer to 3dn. I trusted the wordplay for CARBINEER.
  4. Interesting puzzle. Enjoyed the Dan Quayle moment at 4 across.

    Edited at 2018-09-19 05:38 am (UTC)

  5. 40 mins in bed in Carcassonne pre breakfast (Croissant peut etre?)
    Some tricky vocabulary. LOI was carbineer.
    Halt is very archaic.
    Mostly I liked: back pack, Kes and the neatness of Drum Up.
    But COD to the funny surface in 22dn.
    Thanks setter and Pip.

    Edited at 2018-09-19 06:40 am (UTC)

  6. ….watch the DONUT, not the hole.

    I had terrible trouble starting this, getting all the way down to 28A for FOI DORMOUSE. That woke me from my hibernation, and I was practically untroubled to come home in 12:40 without a single biff.

    LOI VIRAGOES, the second spelling eye-opener of the morning. As a boyhood trainspotter I remember Royal Scot class loco 46125 “3rd Carabinier” which adds a fourth alternative to those supplied by Pip.

    Very enjoyable, and plenty of COD candidates. I eventually settled for BACKPACK.

  7. Found this straightforward but pleasant with some nice neat clues such as 9dn, 24dn.
    You will be relieved to know that we will not be running short of lithium any time soon Pip, it can be extracted from seawater. Dilithium crystals are quite another matter 😉
  8. A meat and two veg Times puzzle, makes you think, gives you a smile or two, but is never going to defeat you

    Dorset boasts a council in Christchurch that relives the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party at regular intervals. It’s just spent over £100,000 of taxpayer’s money on a court case to have a judge say it’s not been acting in the public interest! If only we had somebody like Lewis Carroll to do it justice.

    1. A useless bit of information. Lewis Carroll never described the Hatter specifically as mad, although the Cheshire Cat does tell Alice ‘We are all mad here’.
      1. Yes it’s a bit unfair for the Hatter to be described as mad. (But a lot of them were considered to be deranged as a result of the toxic chemicals used in the hat manufacturing process.) It’s my favorite bit of the book.
    2. Aaargh! Why do people insist on calling it the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party? It’s not the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party, it’s the Hare’s party, the name of which is “The Mad Party”.
  9. 45 minutes. Couldn’t be sure if 1 across was BUMMER or BUMPER as I didn’t know the glass. Fortunately the a/per connection was seen to save me from decoherence, and the wave function collapsed. LOI was VIRAGOES, as I assumed it had no E, but I could find nothing else. CARBINEER did seem to be missing an A, but makes better sense with this spelling. COD to LITHIUM for a good surface reading. I remember Kes well, particularly the school register reading…Fisher – German Bight. Hard puzzle but satisfying. Thank you Pip and setter.

    Edited at 2018-09-19 08:51 am (UTC)

    1. Werner Heisenberg is a particular hero of mine. He was of the Copenhagen group, but I don’t believe the equally heroic and legendary Schroedinger was? The collapsing wave function not from Copenhagen?
      1. I think by 1927 Heisenberg had the wave function collapse by observation, Isla. I can vaguely remember deriving the Uncertainty Principle from Schrödinger’s equation when I could still do the Maths. Sadly, that was 1967, before quantum decoherence concepts had been developed, if they work. I’ve never been up to understanding David Bohm’s pilot wave theories, and Occam’s razor cuts out all multiverse suggestions for me. I envisaged back then that quantum uncertainty is passed on in the system each time a wave collapses, until the big observer outside the system collapses some sort of composite wave at the end of time, which would also be the beginning. The thought has never left me. As I’ve said here before, I’m this site’s resident theist physicist. Unless you’re volunteering.
        1. I’ll take your word for it, I’d fail as both resident theist and resident physicist. As electronics engineers we learnt just enough quantum physics to understand how silicon worked, nowhere near enough to solve collapsing wave equations. I struggled a bit with the concepts so read outside books to try to get to grips with it, including Heisenberg’s book “Physics and Philosophy” which I loved.
          Then some bastard filched it from me, back in about 1995.
  10. About an hour and five here, with the last ten minutes spent on the unknown 16d CARBINEER and its 15a crosser PERICLES. All fair enough once I’d got through the wordplay, but I was definitely not on the wavelength. As with other commenters, didn’t know that spelling of VIRAGOES, wasn’t sure about BUMPER. Luckily we read A Kestrel for a Knave at school, and watching the film interpretation was part of the study.

    Personally, I had “soldier” as the definition in 16d with “career” as “long-term professional”, e.g. a career politician, but it seems to work fine both ways.

    Next time I see two long anagrams I’ll try Pip’s approach of trying to get started with those from cold, rather than leaving them until I’ve got a few crossers…

    Edited at 2018-09-19 09:05 am (UTC)

  12. Though a wizard is, of course, never too late, earthling Isla of this fellowship has already come to our blogger’s aid.
  13. 25:17, but with BUMMER. Bummer! Off for an Old Boys lunch so have to dash. Thanks Setter and Pip
  14. I really don’t like crosswords where 90% is dirt easy but then there are one or two very opaque. Very unsatisfying.
    1. Easy or opaque is a subjective issue, depending on whether one knows something or not. Someone’s unsatisfying is often another person’s pleasure; don’t blame the puzzle!
    3. Completely agree and It’s something that’s made me increasingly grumpy for quite a while. Consistency is the word. My satisfaction often comes from struggling with it, but with a sort-of-knowing that you might get there in the end because the clues are consistent from the start. I also completed 90% unaided correctly, but never had a hope of getting 1a because it’s a complete outlier compared to the other clues (and it’s still a terrible clue). Sure, ‘Laminar’ is biffable but biblical uses for ‘halt’ are well out of my league I’m afraid. Biffs are ok up to a point, but when you see the explanations and you’re still not convinced, it does frustrate. (Mr Grumpy)
  15. 21:06. If found this really hard. Obviously way off the wavelength.
    I didn’t know BUMPER as a drink, but I would have spelled VIRAGOES like that so no problem there. I first learned the word from the publisher.
    I’m not sure if I’ve come across HOSEA before but I was grateful for the wordplay.
  16. Knew about carbines but not the CARBINEER, and viragos, but not VIRAGOES, so two small leaps of logic required, but they both seemed convincing enough when written down. Ran through several films with short enough names to be potentially useful – Alfie? Help? Zulu? – before memories of Brian Glover came to mind.
    1. Thank you for reminding me of him Tim. It’s so long since I saw Kes I’d forgotten he was in it. I think of him as Bottom from the Helen Mirren MSND (the one where she’s Titania) – good one that.

      Edited at 2018-09-19 05:27 pm (UTC)

      1. Interesting. I just googled “Helen Mirren’s Bottom” but not one search result referenced Brian Glover.
          1. And Geoffrey Palmer as Quince – what fun! I can’t quite picture Phil Daniels as Puck though.
  17. 22 minutes, which the SNITCH claims is my average time. In the interests of avoiding a red square, I checked CARBINEER after solving to make sure I wasn’t hallucinating. APHID went in with trepidation (though I couldn’t think of any other pests to fit) as HP is not the most common abbreviation for Parliament in my lexicon.
    I tried FALSE IMPRESSION at 9, thinking it a poor sort of cryptic definition, and not noticing it didn’t fit.
    Some very elastic definitions in this one: just as well “book” usually means “of the Bible” to cut the possibilities down a bit. I don’t think I would have thought of Kes as “sixties film” before thinking of SLEEKEST: I suppose while there are lots of 60’s films, not many have few enough letters. “Something wet” was also a bit vague.
    Decent crossword. Has anybody mentioned that halt means lame yet? 😉
  19. 32 minutes – FOI 5dn, then 9dn: then bottom half done before anything else at top – 1dn seemed to be BACKSIDE, which gave an unlikely picture, while at 13ac I spent far too long trying to see how to get DIA to insert, or even something else. Also at 4ac first thought of W + IRE which led nowhere.
  20. A truly excellent film, and the book is a bit more hopeful.

    Just about to start a book on HOSEA.

    <20′, thanks pip and setter.

  21. I was another slow starter. Not helped by getting a couple of those annoying “you’re not supposed to be here” messages from the Club upon opening. I didn’t know HP as parliament although I now see that the sauce is named after it – at first I went looking for a diet of some sort. I agree with Gothic Matt’s reading of 16d that groups “long-term” with “professional”, as in the “career diplomat” who gets the North Korea charge d’affaires slot whereas the big party donor gets London or Paris. Nice puzzle. 20.51
  22. A bit bogged down at the end with SHANTY was thinking of songs rather than cabins so didn’t quite get the clue, and SLEEKEST – a clue which needed the answer before working out the cryptic.
  24. A great story but with innumerable passages of truly tedious description, e.g. about the planks of a classroom floor, sentence after sentence… I had to teach it often a while back. As wearying a memory as any of my career. 27’04 after a slight confusion over carboneer, and initially rejecting closeting for the double close (fair enough though). Nice Quayle ref., u.
    1. I’ve had to teach it as well. I agree with you about the long descriptions. My class amused themselves by looking for double-entendres. They found so many (they were at THAT age) that, to avoid an epidemic of giggling, I had to abandon chunks of the book to move the story along. But a couple of them did become interested in birds of prey because of the book. I introduced them to T.E. White’s “The Goshawk” which they loved. So a success of sorts.
  25. 18:04 but with one wrong. Bummer for Bumper.

    I got Sleekest from Sleet – but in my mind’s eye I was left with the unknown 60s film, “Eke” or even “Eek!” I knew KES but didn’t spot it.

    COD: Epicentre.

  26. I got seriously bogged down on EPICENTRE. Pondered it for over 5 minutes. My LOI. Otherwise slowish but smooth solve. 34 minutes. Ann
  27. The first seven went in with no trouble, then was uninspired for a while before spotting ROMAINE and RADIANT. Got stuck a bit with HOSEA/ONSTAGE crossing and though I thought of LAMINAR my LOI, did not know the LAM(e) bit – took ages to think of KES (brilliant film and book – David Bradley, who played Billy in the film (no, not the GOT actor) said he can no longer watch the ending) to confirm the L in 19d. Was fortunate with BUMPER as could not quite see why – large, yes, but large drink? No idea.
  28. With an hour on the clock I still had 1dn and 14ac missing. Just a bit of a brain freeze on “pack” I’m afraid. I finally saw it after work and cheat then went in almost immediately. Sleekest also took the longest time, “something wet” and “sixties film” both seemed a bit vague. Bumper from wp. Hesitant at the close echo in clue and solution at 27ac and a bit so with rant in the solution at 13ac and ranter in the clue at 5dn. FOI Pericles. LOI Cheat.
    1. Oh dear. Please read the preceding comments starting from the top. And identify yourself.
  30. 34 months later, completed this online in nearly a third of the time.

    I have clearly learned something!

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