Times 27159 – more Double Definitions than a topless beach …

Author   piquetPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
A jolly romp of a puzzle with lots of DDs and anagrams to get your teeth into. All but a couple were done in 20 minutes, then the correct guess for 13a across had to be checked, and 19a took a bit of an effort to find an obscure kind of farm worker.

Across
1 Record suspicion about the man that’s ruined city (7)
EPHESUS – EP = record, HE = the man, SUS = suspicion.
5 Leave without right coat (7)
VARNISH – VANISH = leave, insert R for right.
9 Army rations needing certain self-control (9)
COMPOSURE – COMPO were / are army rations, SURE = certain.
10 Musician needing support to carry piano (5)
PIPER – PIER = support, insert P for piano.
11 Present is the concern of those who are very small? (2-2-3-6)
UP-TO-THE–MINUTE – Double definition, one relying on a different pronunciation of MINUTE.
13 Urge page to wind turban (8)
PUGGAREE – (URGE PAGE)*. If you don’t know the word, you can probably guess how the anagram letters fit. A Sikh’s turban, or a wound hat band.
15 Finish something designed to provoke (4-2)
WIND-UP – Another double definition relying on differing pronunciations. As in wind = gale, and wind = turn.
17 Science of drinks dispensers (6)
OPTICS – Yet another DD, very neat, like I like my malts dispensed.
19 Farm worker currently present for time in season (8)
WINNOWER – Took a while to see this one. WINTER = season, has its T replaced by NOW = currently. Do farm workers winnow nowadays?
22 How Cotswolds are claimed by farmers is long-standing (4-2-3-4)
DYED-IN-THE-WOOL – Presumably if a Cotswold sheep is dyed at some point in its wool, you can tell it from someone else’s sheep. The origins of the phrase – 16C – relate to colours applied to the wool before it was spun being more colour-fast hence resistant to change.
25 Perfect sound from space (5)
WHOLE – Sounds like HOLE, I suppose, a hole is a space.
26 Change of opinion on boat race (5-4)
ABOUT-FACE – ON = about, BOAT RACE being CRS for face.
27 Abruptly soon (7)
SHORTLY – Yet another neat DD.
28 Chap keeping a jolly item of clothing (7)
GARMENT – A Jolly is slang for a Royal Marine or RM, insert him into GENT = chap.

Down
1 Topless bathing area for every single (4)
EACH – BEACH, a bathing area, loses its top B.
2 Hat Mr Bough’s seen out in? (7)
HOMBURG – (MR BOUGH)*.
3 Beer this thirst finally quenched (5)
STOUT – S T = final letters of this thirst, OUT = quenched.
4 Illegal resident is comparatively thick (8)
SQUATTER – Another DD.
5 Spectator we found absorbed by a German quartet (6)
VIEWER – WE goes inside VIER = German for four.
6 Monitor, perhaps, triplane I rebuilt (9)
REPTILIAN – (TRIPLANE I)*. Monitor as in a type of lizard.
7 Appropriate admission by poet? (7)
IMPOUND – The poet says: “I’M (EZRA) POUND”.
8 Western shire perhaps taking over for each area (5,5)
HORSE OPERA – A shire perhaps = HORSE, O = over, PER = for each, A = area. A horse opera is a formulaic Western movie or TV series, akin to a soap opera but with cowboys, who sometimes were seen singing to their horses. Not my cup of.
12 Race course owns mopeds for scrambling (5,5)
EPSOM DOWNS – (OWNS MOPEDS)*.
14 Skill securing constant success with City planner (9)
ARCHITECT – ART = skill, then insert C = constant, HIT = success, EC – City (of London).
16 Long-standing criminal gatecrashing free party (8)
LIFELONG – FELON = criminal, to be incarcerated in LIG. To LIG is to take advantage of freebies, as one used to do; the supply seems to have dried up. An odd clue where LONG is in the clue and the answer.
18 Vibrating noise in shaky Metro line that’s old (7)
TREMOLO – (METRO)*, L(ine), O(ld). Remember Brian Poole and the Tremeloes (why spelt differently? Tremelo is a place in Belgium) ; I recall having one on my pocket-money-depleting £12 guitar in the days of our Shadows-inspired shambles of a band, or ‘group’ as it was then. Before your time, V, I was there being Jet Harris.
20 Benefit of warning about magical being (7)
WELFARE – WARE = warning, as in beware; ELF is the magical being inserted.
21 Like a sauna group found in outskirts of Shrewsbury (6)
STEAMY – TEAM inside S Y which are the ‘outskirts’ of Shrewsbury.
23 Power tool’s not starting outside (5)
OUTER – A ROUTER is a power tool, it makes grooves and such, it loses its R. Another one with same part word in clue and answer.
24 Amphibian’s leg removed by famous scientist (4)
NEWT – Sir Isaac NEWTON loses his leg or ON side in cricket.

78 comments on “Times 27159 – more Double Definitions than a topless beach …”

  1. Lots of DNKs, but none of them time-consuming: COMPO, PUGGAREE of course, Cotswold sheep, CRS BOAT RACE, LIG. I did consume some time looking for EIN at 5 down, ‘a German’. LOI was 23d; I couldn’t believe it would be OUTER with ‘outside’ in the clue (didn’t we have one like this a couple of days ago?).
  2. Really, “outside” for OUTER…?! (16 also gets a dishonourable mention.)
    Otherwise, I liked this puzzle. Learned a couple new words, COMPO and, especially, PUGGAREE. I thank Jackkt for verifying that the latter has never appeared here before.
    And i learned “lig” only from coming here (forgot to parse that one). Nor did I have any idea what was going on with “boat race,” though the answer seemed obvious.

    Edited at 2018-10-03 05:28 am (UTC)

    1. An outer is something that is not a bull, as every rifle shooter knows. Inner & outer in relation to shooting targets turn up here regularly enough
  3. 17 minutes for all but two answers is going it some for me, but I felt cheated and let down at the end by one feeble clue and yet another example of an obscure foreign word being clued as an anagram.

    At 23dn after much deliberation whilst I looked for something better, I settled for OUTER defined as ‘outside’ but only on the basis that if we could have SHELDUCK defined as ‘duck’ a few days ago, then we might expect the occasional rotten clue as a result of a setter being lazy and an editor letting him get away with it. I’d not heard of ‘router’ as a power tool so the wordplay was of no help whatsoever in confirming my suspicions.

    PUGGAREE has never appeared since TftT began, not even in a Mephisto, and I’ve reached the point now with clues of this type that if I don’t know the answer I’m not going to bother to guess at it. I’d rather record a technical DNF.

    Edited at 2018-10-03 05:05 am (UTC)

  4. 35 minutes here, with the same unknown vocab as most others, though I knew “lig”, and put together LOI 13a PUGGAREE successfully.

    Top half wasn’t too hard, though the top corner starting with the unknown EPHESUS took longest, but then I slowed down for the bottom half, with WINNOWER and the aforementioned turban the hardest.

    Another MER at the odd outside/OUTER and long/LIFELONG combinations, but my reasoning was as Jackkt’s: they weren’t the worst shelducks I’ve seen…

    Edited at 2018-10-03 06:49 am (UTC)

  6. 25 mins with yoghurt, granola, etc.
    I enjoyed most of this but was let down at the end. Not by Puggaree, which was gettable (it couldn’t really be Pugragee, could it?) and I’ve learned something new.
    No – by Outside=Outer and by Long-standing=Lifelong.
    Also we had already had Long-standing to define 22ac.
    Lig rings a very faint bell from meeting it here before (?) but that is the only place I have seen it.
    Thanks setter and Pip.

    PS Nice to see (in 6dn) the spotted monitor in a downward movement like in 8dn yesterday.

    Edited at 2018-10-03 07:26 am (UTC)

  7. I share the views expressed about 16d and 23d which I could scarcely believe. I thought ‘puggaree’ was totally unfair though maybe I should have thought of ‘thuggee’ to help a bit. Ended up with ‘peggareu’ though. French connection? I was another ‘deep in the soil’ candidate but the correct answer was clearly not this! I feel a bit let down, overall, but in the great scheme of things I mustn’t grumble. Thanks Pip for the clarifications.
  8. Weird. 13 minutes wondering if I needed to count the number of squares to verify this wasn’t mildly obese quickie. LIFELONG was nearly LIVELONG, with evil “criminal”, long as itself, one of them “standing”. Perhaps a free party continues all the livelong day. But (not much) better counsel prevailed and I back-formed LIG from ligger, a freeloader and shrugged.
    Staggeringly, I found I knew PUGGAREE (Kipling, perhaps?) once the checkers were in.
    R(OUTER) outside? Would struggle to gain admission to the Evening Standard. I say, chaps….
    My friend from way back, the Cotswold shepherd, would unashamedly talk about the dyestick strapped to the ram which would mark the ewes he had serviced. I guess a different colour would suggest some adulterous connexion, but if you ever wondered, dear children, why sheep carried that dye spot on their backs, it’s not really about the shepherd claiming them for his own. When a daddy sheep and a mummy sheep love each other very much…
    1. Now you mention it, I remember Farmer Adam on Countryfile banging on about copulating sheep and the dyeing ram…
  9. 17:18 of steady stuff, but held up for a while by scribbling in VOLTE FACE. I am not sure that 15a requires two separate pronounciations for WIND. If you WIND (as in turn) something up, you finish it and as you say, a WIND up (as in turn) is designed to provoke.
    Anyway, thanks for explaining the rest, pip
  10. This puzzle gives the impression of being put together in a rush at the last minute. It’s very easy, lacking subtlety. 16D and 23D clearly require a bit more thought to bring them up to scratch. 13A is a copout. As Jack rightly says, one grows tired of pointless guessing games.
    1. I agree, Jimbo, but have been told off before for denigrating a puzzle when blogging, I have to “accentuate the positive…” where was our Ed?
      1. No problem Pip. I don’t do political correctness or accentuating positives. Too used to the harsh world of peer review!
  11. Spent ages on 23D because I just could not believe that the setter or editor would accept outside/outer. Sloppy.

    Edited at 2018-10-03 08:19 am (UTC)

  12. VOLTE FACE until I solved some other clues. As I live in the Cotswolds, I took too long to twig (then again, I was staring at a poinsettia when that cropped up recently).
  13. I finished with a biff-fest in irritation, to find that LIFELONG, OUTER (lousy clue) and GARMENT were all right. I was 45 minutes on this. Jet Harris and not Hank B Marvin, Pip? The bass guitarist never makes the grade. Ask that other fella, I think his name was McCartney. I spent ages before seeing DYED-IN-THE-WOOL, partly as I see sheep roaming wild with markings more as a northern phenomenon, and partly because the expression means unshiftable as well as long-standing to me. EPHESUS is beautiful and well worth a visit. They could name the road from the old port St Paul’s passage. COD to WHOLE. Thank you Pip and setter.
    1. I wanted to be Hank Marvin, but the chap who owned the amp bagged it. Bass guitar is kinder to the fingers, at least it was until I bought a 12 string to be part of “Peter Paul and Mary”.
        1. Gorgeous-er. And she could sing, which I can’t. A joyful year of discovery and cherry-losing, then we went to separate unis and she married a bloke with a Rolls Royce.
  14. 24 mins; all done bar 13 in around 17 or 18, then relaxed and took as long as needed to figure out puggaree. I’ve expressed my views on this type of clue many times. ‘Nuff said. Outer was a touch of the shelducks, I’m afraid. Otherwise an okay sort of puzzle, I suppose.
    Early Genesis week this week: The Musical Box in Leicester tonight; Steve Hackett in Birmingham Friday. Into the time machine once again…
    Great blog, Pip, thanks.
  15. Oh dear! The poor old setter has really taken a beating for this one.

    It has often been pointed out in these pages that obscure words are simply the ones you don’t happen to know. Myrtilus notes that the given letters, and some regard to the likely linguistic origin of a word meaning ‘turban’, make PUGGAREE quite plausible.

    I have no serious complaints and enjoyed it: the topless bathing area made me chuckle, “I’m Pound” was rather good, the misdirection of ‘ruined’ in 1a, and several neat surfaces. It was certainly quite easy, so I completed in 21 minutes (and I very very rarely manage sub-20mins).

    Our blogger’s assessment (“a jolly romp of a puzzle”) is about right, I think. Thanks, Pip, for your clear exposition.

  16. ….the brilliant Indian spin bowler, Bishen Bedi, was a Sikh, and would wear a different colour of PUGGAREE on each day of a test match. For me, it was a shoo-in.

    FOI COMPOSURE

    In my misspent youth (I’d do it all again, but with a totally different set of mistakes !) a LIGGER was somebody who would manage to somehow get into a party uninvited, and enjoy free food and drink. I’ve never heard of LIG as a word though, and I’m not convinced that the surface really works, even though I spotted it quickly.

    LOI OUTER – “Fatter ? No way ! He’s going to spill the beans”. I came up with that almost on autopilot, so the compiler has no real excuse for his feeble attempt.

    COD DYED-IN-THE-WOOL – the only one I biffed, so thanks to Pip for clarifying it.

    7:58 to finish this off – I suspect Magoo would be through it in around half that time.

    1. He was the original bass guitarist of the Shadows. He and drummer Tony Meehan quit the group, and had chart topping instrumentals with “Diamonds” and “Scarlett O’Hara”.
        1. Bruce Welch wanted to buy my last house. He put his business card through the letterbox in case I was selling.

          You never know who is going to come out of the shadows?

    2. That was the first record I bought. Jet Harris and Tony Meehan if I remember correctly. Can’t remember the title
    3. That was the first record I bought. Jet Harris and Tony Meehan if I remember correctly. Can’t remember the title
  18. “And this is my pet amphibian, Tiny.”
    “Why’s he called Tiny?”
    “Because he’s my newt.”

    Fourteen minutes, making this one pretty easy. COMPO was unknown (apart from the character in Last of the Summer Wine), and PUGGAREE was one of those words that sounded so plausible that I must have known it once. Ditto EPHESUS.

  19. Pretty easy, but as with others I just can’t be bothered to guess anagrams where the checkers are unfair. Good to know a new word but, to me, that ain’t the point. So a DNF in just over 30 mins. Thanks all
  20. 29’33 after too long at the end on the poor 16 and 23. Unlike some others I don’t mind puggaree as one’s GK sense of the likely shape of such a word given the checkers is called into play. Now for the May speech…
  21. 20 minutes, with 26ac LOI, as hadn’t come across that CRS, so after giving up on finding an anagram of ‘boat’ + something, stayed with originally biffed answer, which turned out to be OK. At 16ac, Cotswolds tempted me to biff Stow-in-the-Wold from the enumeration, which clearly wouldn’t work, while at 16dn LIG was easy enough to guess as back-formed from ‘ligger’. 13ac was known to me as a variant of PAGRI which I probably found once in a barred puzzle.
  24. Oh rats I had “livelong”. DNK “lig” and same double exposure effect as others with that one and with OUTER.

    EACH went in right away because some of the NYC chapter of TFTT/Crossword Club are meeting this evening at the Beach Cafe which is our neighbourhood watering hole. Paul-in-London, Guy du Sable, Jon88 and me plus visiting dignitary Keriothe. I hope this is a bit less eventful than the last two. In March some of us ended up in the Bellevue ER and in June, when my husband and I hosted, just minutes before everyone arrived, we learned that our younger daughter had given birth 10 days earlier than expected and that there were “complications”. The show had to go on and all was ok in the end. 14.21 with a pink square.

  25. <15′ but w/o PUGGAREE, knew what it was but never knew how to spell it. I thought the point of the dye on the sheep nowadays was to check if they’d mated. I thought the power tool was GROUTER, but maybe that does the reverse.

    Thanks pip and setter.

    1. You are correct (see my comment above): if there’s a mark of ownership anywhere on a sheep it’s an ear tag. The setter is either being naive or coy, misinterpreting those ubiquitous smudges on the sheep’s back.
      I did manage to resist a deeply offensive comment about Welsh shepherds, for which I request commendation.
      2. OTOH, from a real live farmer on the web:

        You will also see sheep with a coloured mark somewhere on their bodies, this is a mark of ownership, each farm will have it’s own unique mark. Ours is a red dot on the offside rump. This doesn’t replace tagging which is a legal requirement, but if you have extra sheep in your field, you can easily see by the coloured mark that they aren’t yours.

        More here – it’s fascinating: https://uk.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20090723152742AAlsqHT&guccounter=1

        1. Thanks for that: my shepherd didn’t do that, but as I said it was a while back. I think he would have claimed to know each of his sheep by name, from which you may conclude it was not an enormous flock. Any extra sheep straying in (not impossible) might well have found themselves “adopted”.

  26. Another who put in LIVE-LONG, not quite understanding it, and thinking I should come back for another look at a later point, which I then forgot to do. Now I see what the right answer is, it’s not the most impressive clue, so I suppose that compounds my failure to get it right. DNK PUGGAREE, but agree it was quite gettable from anagram fodder and comparison with words I do know, like dungarees and thuggee, and kedgeree. Mmmm…kedgeree.

    Also, I see the Club site has had an update, and brought back the TAB function from the old site, long after my brain has adapted to using the ENTER key instead. One of those things which needs to be corrected quickly, otherwise you might as well not bother, I think. Also, it’s changed the way it skips letters which are already entered, which is annoying, though I can’t blame it for my failings today. Anybody else have the same trouble?

    1. Yes Tim, same here with the skipping/not skipping which meant I kept having to go back and re-type. I thought it was just me having somehow changed my options by mistake and had made a note to try to remember to go back in and correct the configuration. Oh well.
      1. The Puzzles Editor has posted about it on the forum, and describes it as “correcting various bugs”; unfortunately, of course, your brain gets used to one way of working, whether it’s a bug or not, so correcting it isn’t necessarily helpful…
        1. Thanks, I just read it. As you say, one got used to skipping to the first unfilled light of the next clue and I never realized that was regarded as a “bug”. No wonder my grid looked like gibberish this morning. I’ll get the old brain to re-learn in due course.
          1. Hi Olivia,
            I’m in the process of updating an on-line crossword solver down here in Oz. I’d be interested in your thoughts, if you could spare a minute or two, I am no longer a crossword club member so can’t see the changes.
            1. TAB/SHIFT TAB: do they take you to the next word/previous word in the grid? In the old days they did, then with the new software (2017?) I vaguely remember they were gone. Are they back? Do you like them, I used to.
            2. ENTER: does it still take you to the next word? My vague memory is that SHIFT ENTER didn’t take you backwards, do you think that would be worthwhile?
            3. ENTER vs TAB: my thoughts were to have both with a minor difference: say ENTER takes you to the next word in clue order, TAB takes you to the next word in the grid in that direction. So same behaviour on across clues, different on downs. For instance in this puzzle ENTER takes you from 1 dn EACH to 3 dn HOMBURG, while TAB takes you from 1 dn to 12 dn EPSOM DOWNS, directly below it. Would you find that worthwhile?
            4. Where does it place the cursor if you have the SKIP option set? At the start of the word, even if it’s already entered? Where did it take you previously, to the first empty light? Which works better? For me it would be the first empty light.
            5. What other changes or features would you suggest?

            If you can reply a personal message would be better, to not clutter up the blog.
            Thanks,
            Rob

            1. Hi Isla: I attempted to email a reply to you via LiveJournal but it didn’t work. I’ve now “friended” you here so maybe that way you can email me directly with your own address although I’m not sure if that works. If not I’ll just post what I wrote you here. I’m busyish and away for the weekend as of early tomorrow NY time so it’s possible you may not hear from me until next week. You may hear from Tim sooner.
        2. Hi Tim,
          I’m in the process of updating an on-line crossword solver down here in Oz. I’d be interested in your thoughts, if you could spare a minute or two, I am no longer a crossword club member so can’t see the changes.
          1. TAB/SHIFT TAB: do they take you to the next word/previous word in the grid? In the old days they did, then with the new software (2017?) I vaguely remember they were gone. Are they back? Do you like them, I used to.
          2. ENTER: does it still take you to the next word? My vague memory is that SHIFT ENTER didn’t take you backwards, do you think that would be worthwhile?
          3. ENTER vs TAB: my thoughts were to have both with a minor difference: say ENTER takes you to the next word in clue order, TAB takes you to the next word in the grid in that direction. So same behaviour on across clues, different on downs. For instance in this puzzle ENTER takes you from 1 dn EACH to 3 dn HOMBURG, while TAB takes you from 1 dn to 12 dn EPSOM DOWNS, directly below it. Would you find that worthwhile?
          4. Where does it place the cursor if you have the SKIP option set? At the start of the word, even if it’s already entered? Where did it take you previously, to the first empty light? Which works better? For me it would be the first empty light.
          5. What other changes or features would you suggest?

          If you can reply a personal message would be better, to not clutter up the blog.
          Thanks,
          Rob

          Edited at 2018-10-04 02:13 am (UTC)

  27. 26:33 but with a careless DIED IN THE WOOL. Drat! PUGGAREE from a catch the letters as they fall juggle. WINNOWER and WELFARE were last 2 in. EPHESUS FOI. Same disbelief as others with (r)OUTER. Didn’t know LIG, but spotted the FELON. I thought this was going to be a flyer when the NW tripped off the fingers, but was ground down to a slower pace as I progressed. Thanks setter and Pip.
  28. It looks like everyone has made the same comments I was going to make about OUTER, LIFELONG & PUGGAREE. The last of these I got lucky on – a vague notion that words ending in EE were not uncommon in this neck of the woods.
    My other complaint is the unnecessary ‘a’ in 5d, which doesn’t add to the surface and is cryptically redundant.
    6m 59s in total, the bottom half taking rather longer than the top.
  29. Just over 31 minutes which is probably in my top ten. PUGGAREE was an educated guess and like most I found 16d and 23d a bit unsatisfying. Here are my offerings:

    Criminal gatecrashing free party is here to stay.

    Power tool not right for coating.

    Never mind, it passed the time while I had new wheels put on the car.

  30. because your overcoat is too long.
    Thank you for getting that running around in my head, approximately 50 years since I last heard it.
    Also, the heading here has the wrong puzzle number.
    1. Not now. Somehow it auto-filled the blog heading from 4 weeks ago when I started and I was so chuffed with my headline I forgot to change it. Thanks for the pointer.
    1. Well spotted: just goes to show we all skip the first bit of the headline in our enthusiasm for the witty tagline. Today’s I thought was excellent, if a little Carry On Blogging – well played, Pip
  32. 9:11, and whilst I somehow managed to get the letters of the turban in the right order I have sympathy for anyone who didn’t.
  33. 9:11, and whilst I somehow managed to get the letters of the turban in the right order I have sympathy for anyone who didn’t.
    1. Optics are used to dispense spirits etc in pubs and Optics is also a subject in physics, ie the properties of light, lenses etc.
      1. oh ok I get -thanks for that

        I didn’t notice the dictionary definition of Optics with a capital which wasa above optics with a small o.

        Optics are apparently the valve thing on upturned spirit bottles to dispense measures

        thank you

  35. Invented the word TIMELONG for a while, but didn’t parse so eventually got it. Couldn’t have been OUTER could it?
  36. Looking back, I’m surprised it took me as long as it did – work etc – 60+ mins – Grr.

    I also thought STOW-IN-THE-WOLD but quickly found that it could not be, EPSOM DOWNS dispelling that thought.

    PUGGAREE and WINNOWER required aids. Liked the idea of a HORSE OPERA – singing horses? LOI SQUATTER for no other reason than I kept on thinking SCUTTLER even though I knew it could not be.

  37. 8:46, but another over-hasty LIVELONG. I just looked up the turban. What a ridiculous clue.
    Look forward to seeing some of you later. As Olivia says I hope it’s less eventful than my last visit!
  38. I don’t often attempt the 15squared but i had over an hour to wait in a Car Servicing Waiting Area. Just finished it before my iPad battery expired. I had to biff a few (successfully as it turned out) so the blog was very helpful. Some thought-provoking clues (that is a nice term for what I felt at the time). Never heard of Puggaree but it was all I could fit around the checkers. I know my time is light years slower than the regulars but I was left with a certain satisfaction. John M.
  39. 28:49 as with others held up by wondering if outer could really be the answer at 23dn. Knew ligger so lig wasn’t far behind in 16dn. Puggaree looked like the best arrangement of the anagrist at 13ac for some Indian sounding headgear but entered with fingers crossed. Nothing too strenuous.
  40. Stop putting the same word in the answer as featured in the clue. Twice today!!!!!
  41. Lots of unknowns, but being tired helped (because it made me stop worrying too much about all my more or less educated guesses and biffs, and they all turned out to be correct). PUGGAREE was the most educated guess, I suppose, but I thought any language that had dungaree was likely to have this particular anagram of URGE PAGE.
  43. More than an hour first time through on paper, 34 months ago.

    Much better this time online!

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