Times 27160 – Not Live From New York

Author   glhPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Solving time: 15:03, with one rather thick-headed error. While I write this up there is a small gathering of blog regulars in New York City, unfortunately just a little too far away for me to make on a weeknight. Sounds like everyone is having a good time, so raise one for me!

I’ve had a pretty insane couple of weeks here to the point that this is the first daily puzzle I have solved in nearly two weeks. Wonder how long it takes to get rusty? Two weeks should do it – I took a bit longer than usual, and made a particularly careless mistake. Oh well… better get back in the game eh?

First definitions are underlined.

Away we go…

Across
1 Disproof in due course turning round objection (8)
REBUTTAL – LATER(in due course) reversed around BUT(objection)
5 Cavalryman, one acting as surgeon? (6)
LANCER –  double definition
9 Panellist following trick: his? (8)
CONJUROR – JUROR(panellist) after CON(trick)
10 I regret returning a mobster’s first greeting (6)
SALAAM – ALAS(I regret) reversed, then A, M(obster)
12 Reluctant to punch hole in strip of wood (5)
LOATH – O is the hole in a LATH(strip of wood)
13 Ancient creature’s droppings covered by one lecturer (9)
IGUANODON – GUANO(droppings) surrounded by I(one), DON(lecturer). This was my undoing as without thinking I put in IGUANADON
14 Spotted pieces undergoing chain reaction (6,6)
DOMINO EFFECT – mostly a cryptic definition
18 Excessively disobediently scuttling boat (12)
INORDINATELY – INSUBORDINATELY(disobediently) with SUB(boat) removed
21 Try tiny portion, admitting it hurts not to be used (2,2,5)
GO TO WASTE – GO(try) and TASTE(tiny portion) containing OW(it hurts)
23 They are expecting one to open what is not his? (5)
HEIRS – I inside HERS(not his)
24 Artillery piece shooting from side to side (6)
RAKING – RA(artillery), KING(piece in chess)
25 Leave a key in flat, half inside self-contained unit (8)
MODULATE – half of flAT inside MODULE(self-contained unit). This is the musical use of the term
26 Day to depose a not entirely horrible ruler (6)
DYNAST – DAY missing A, then NAST(y(not quite horrible)
27 Move slowly by high ground for battle (8)
EDGEHILL – EDGE(move slowly), HILL(high ground)

Down
1 Playground and dinner room, not hard to bring to mind (6)
RECALL – REC(playground) and HALL(dinner room) missing H
2 Stop eating all types of fig (6)
BANYAN – BAN(stop) containing ANY(all types)
3 Suppressing that hurt, couple make up, if they’re lucky (5,4)
TOUCH WOOD – OUCH(that hurt – this is a puzzle filled with pain), inside TWO(couple) and DO(make) reversed
4 Model mobilisation against slavery movement (12)
ABOLITIONISM – anagram of MOBILISATION
6 A trap pinches area on the other hand (5)
AGAIN – A, GIN(trap) containing A(area)
7 Dealer held new car after ordering (8)
CHANDLER – anagram of HELD,N,CAR
8 Consider carefully, hearing of space in boat (8)
RUMINATE – sounds like ROOM IN EIGHT(a boat with eight oars)
11 Beer may be safe (3,2,3,4)
OUT OF THE WOOD – double definition – beer could come from a wooden cask or firkin
15 Capacity audience gives good hand (4,5)
FULL HOUSE – double definition, the hand being in poker
16 Toyed with splendid diamonds, holding up plate (8)
FINGERED – FINE(splendid), D(diamonds) with REG(registration plate) reversed inside
17 Asking to change wine container (8)
GOATSKIN – anagram of ASKING,TO
19 One rule I would have lifted for festival (6)
DIWALI – I, LAW(rule), I’D(I would have) all reversed
20 Like a bone from very large duck? (6)
OSTEAL – OS(very large), TEAL(duck)
22 What pilot earns proceeds from bet, leaving pub (5)
WINGS – WINNINGS(proceeds from bet) missing INN(pub)

55 comments on “Times 27160 – Not Live From New York”

  1. I was glad for the droppings in 13ac, as I probably would have made George’s mistake otherwise. DNK the musical MODULATE, and DNK the battle; I toyed with INCH for a short while, with Inchon in mind. And DNK the plate in 16d. Biffed 18ac; I suspect it would have taken me ages to get the wordplay. Two ‘that hurts’ clues in one puzzle seems like one too many; at least today’s duck wasn’t DUCK. (Saturday has virtually the identical clue cluing the identical word in the two cryptic puzzles.)
  2. All bar the SW in about 15 minutes and then struggled mightily, especially with 18a, where I was flummoxed by the ship.

    I thought of FINGERED early at 16d, but rejected it for reasons that I am too red-faced to talk about.

    Edited at 2018-10-04 06:38 am (UTC)

  3. I’d be grateful for an explanation of how his is a definition of conjuror. I’m probably being thick but I don’t geddit.
    1. ‘his?’ at the end of the clue refers back to ‘trick’, so we’re looking for someone who performs tricks.
  4. 37 minutes but like our blogger I slipped on the GUANO.

    Also like our blogger I know OUT OF THE WOODS as the expression meaning ‘safe,’ and Brewer’s agrees with us. It’s also the title of a rather good musical by Stephen Sondheim that’s more accessible than some of his stuff.

    Once again we have a setter repeating himself with WOOD appearing twice in the same grid.

    Who could have failed at 14ac after all the discussion about DOMINOES and DOMINO EFFECT only two days ago?

    I didn’t manage to spot the boat reference at 18ac.

    I think REG for ‘plate’ cropped up very recently as I missed the reference last time but today I spotted it immediately. (22nd June 2018 ‘something on plate’, but I think I’ve seen it even more recently than that).

    Edited at 2018-10-04 05:16 am (UTC)

    1. Actually, it’s ‘Into the Woods’. As I recall–it’s been ages–the various characters start off separately singing about going into the woods, and then go. I remember feeling that it sort of slowed down in the second half.

      Edited at 2018-10-04 05:28 am (UTC)

      1. Thanks, of course it’s ‘into’! But it’s still relevant to the clue because ‘the woods’ in folk-tales (the subject of the musical, for those who don’t know of it) are always associated with danger. Being ‘safe’, perhaps at the end of the story, the heroes would be ‘out of the woods’.

        Edited at 2018-10-04 06:15 am (UTC)

    2. A week ago we had:
      Marketing ploy of a number that’s taken in wrong spirit (9)
      Which was Bad Gin in a ‘Reg’

      Edited at 2018-10-04 07:29 am (UTC)

  5. The dominoes didn’t cause a problem for me this time round, which is just as well as I took 55 minutes for this one, so they could have toppled me over my hour. I did think that the dinosaur might be a bit of a trap as I wrote it in, so my commiserations to those who fell into it.

    I echo the call for a plural in 11d, which confused me, but mostly it was the SW corner that I’m fingering as the problem area. INORDINATELY needed all the crossers, plus RAKING and DYNAST were rather kickself-y, taking ages to see. I didn’t know the battle*, nor that a BANYAN was a fig, but at least the wordplay was clear.

    * I’m trying to fill in some of my history gaps by ploughing through John Hirst’s excellent The Shortest History of Europe at the moment, but as one might expect, he doesn’t go into that much detail in 240 pages. I have spotted plenty of other crosswordy words on the way through, though, so hopefully it’ll come in handy in the end!

  6. 40 mins with yoghurt etc
    Mostly gentle, but with some really chewy bits to slow us down, e.g. taking sub out of insubordinatey.
    Spotted pieces had to be Dominoes (not Monitors, this time).
    I’ve only ever heard ‘out of the woods’.
    Mostly I liked: I Guano Don, Touch Wood (COD).
    Thanks setter and G.

  7. Much the same observations as others – like George I went for IGUANADON, I was surprised to see the domino return so soon and I’ve never heard the singular OUT OF THE WOOD. I also didn’t much like it being clued as ‘Beer may be’ – seems a bit loose to my mind.
  8. I think IGUANADON was my undoing in a Times puzzle once so I’m quite sensitive to its spelling now – much sympathy on that score therefore.

    8 minutes something for this slightly tricksy puzzle that often left me pausing to wonder if I wasn’t being led cleverly astray. But I managed to navigate the wood successfully in the end.

  9. I’ve seen BANYAN trees in Mauritius (lucky me) but would never have thought to look for figs on them: how would you get past all those dangling root-branches? So almost settled for BANJAX (wordplay obscure) for stop.
    GOATSKIN (a brilliantly hidden anagram, despite “change”) held me up a while as I scoured the memory for exotic bottles. MODULATE had too many crossword trigger words in it for easy solving: I wanted to start with GO leave plus a random A-G.
    At least beer wouldn’t be OUT OF THE WOODS, so the more whimsical end of the clue worked sufficiently well to shrug at the unexpected singular. Chamber(s) has both.
    All in all an easy-ish solve stretched to 22 minutes.
    And make me another one unusually happy to drop in the GUANO.
  10. …and my daughter’s. We’re 100 today. 18 minutes on this, helped by REBUTTAL and DOMINO EFFECT being carbon copies of recent clues. LOI RUMINATE. The pun is truly groan-worthy and thus worth the COD I award it, but I had to get the answer from all crossers first. SALAAM clinched it. INORDINATELY was good too, again not seen until already solved from crossers. I could have put the wrong vowel in IGUANODON, but remembered the excremental O. I was pleased to get MODULATE, only half-knowing what the musical term meant. Nice friendly puzzle. Thank you George and setter.

    Edited at 2018-10-04 08:46 am (UTC)

    2. Not much to add on the crossword. Put in NOSEHILL at first before the real ale began to flow out of the wood.
      1. And there was me proud of what I was capable of aged seventy-nine and a quarter.
    3. Happy birthday to you and your daughter. Funnily enough my elder daughter was born on my 27th birthday!! But we were 107 last time round.
  11. Hardest of the week so far for me – had to work at this one.

    Completely thrown by the setter not realising that not all dominoes have spots as several dozens of people informed me on Tuesday

    1. O, mea culpa! I do beg your pardon — I really didn’t believe that a completely blank domino piece existed.
  12. 32′ today, much delayed like others in the SW. As jack notes, DOMINO EFFECT was a write-in after recent discussion. DYNAST took careful parsing. Really liked INORDINATELY. LOI, surprisingly, was MODULATE. Woods are scary, a wood is just a lot of trees, I agree with jack’s analysis.

    Thanks george and setter.

  13. My hearty congratulations to the setter for managing to work in ‘room in eight’ without provoking even a murmur of discontented grumblings about dodgy homophones — wonderful! I guess even Mercans, Yorkshiremen, the Irish and our antipodean friends pronounce ‘eight’ in the same way as ‘ate’… Er… I mean — well… I pronounce it ‘et’ to rhyme with ‘set’, of course, but not in ruminate which is different.

    36 mins. Got held up by MODULATE, and agree with z8b8d8k that the clue was fiendish in packing in so many misleading crossword trigger words. My COD. I liked the GOATSKIN anagram; I too was hunting for alternatives to jeraboam, decanter, carafe, etc.

    The clues were very ‘honest’, I thought — with a nice balance of DDs, anagrams, assemble-the-pieces (IGUANODON), reversals, homophony, cryptic def, etc. But no hidden! Thanks, setter.

    And thanks to George for a fine blog.

      1. By the same token (though I might cite Brummies as well as Cockerneys) would they not also pronounce it roo-min-ite (or perhaps room-in-i’) but still spell it with an A?
        1. Wouldn’t the brummies be more ‘rumimoyte’? I would have written it ‘ruminoit’ but was scared that French pronunciation might triumph here.

          Edited at 2018-10-04 10:50 am (UTC)

        2. Come come, I can’t imagine many Cockerneys would have reason to utter the word ‘ruminate’!

          🙂

  14. Same old same old. Held up at the end doing the alphabet trawl which revealed MODULATE, though, at the risk of being indelicate, alphabetical order meant that once I’d seen it, I couldn’t get COPULATE out of my head. Also raised an eyebrow quite high at the singular WOOD.

    These didn’t detract from my satisfaction at paying enough attention to a) spell the dinosaur correctly, as my instinct would also have been IGUANADON, and b) double-check it was ABOLITIONISM, and not ABOLITIONIST, as that’s the sort of mistake I have been known to make. Nice challenge.

  15. ….caused by totally failing to either parse or even consider MODULATE, which would have been LOI if I hadn’t given up when I’d spent 20 minutes over it (the rest of the puzzle as a whole took only around half that time).

    FOI REBUTTAL (What Jeeves might do the second time ?)

    Fellow CAMRA members will agree that real ale comes FROM not OUT OF (THE WOOD).

    Biffed INORDINATELY ( thanks George, now COD).

    “Don’t set your dreams up there above you
    Where they’ll fall like a row of dominoes” (Joe Ely, a guilty pleasure of mine). Grievously underappreciated in the UK, and surely the only Country singer to have supported the Clash ! I heartily recommend his album “Love and Danger”.

    Edited at 2018-10-04 09:55 am (UTC)

      1. Perhaps we could ask Jeeves to pour us a beer out of the wood. He might raise a mildly disapproving eyebrow at the solecism, but he’d still hand over a decent pint of the brown stuff, surely?
  16. Very sorry you couldn’t join us George – next time perhaps (if there is one). I made the “iguana” mistake once upon a time and it annoyed me very much as it seems quite logical. As an aide memoire I use Colonel Bat Guano (if that really is your name) from Dr. Strangelove. I got hung up at the intersection of WOOD and MODULATE because I’ve only ever heard the former in the plural on either side of the Atlantic. 20.21
    1. Well, I sure hope there’s another one, Olivia!
      And I rather liked your local. Glad I tried the garlic bread with the melted gorgonzola.
      I didn’t get to the puzzle until today, at work (my mail-order ink hasn’t arrived yet), and too late to add anything here. I was glad to remember DIWALI, embarrassed to have put in (trop distrait) OUT OF THE COLD, and to have misspelled the dinosaur in the apparently common way.
  17. I made a complete pig’s ear of this one with two stupid mistakes and one proper error. Despite analysing 2d as ANY in BAN, I typed in BANYAM. Then at 4d I started typing ABOLISH…. and noticed there wasn’t an H in the fodder, so worked it out as ABOLITIONISM on paper, then corrected it so as to leave ABOLISIONISM. Eejit! To make a bad job worse I put OSSEAL at 20d with a thought process going along the lines of OSSA, Ossial, must be OSSEAL as I have an E from MODULATE, perhaps there’s a Seal Duck. Woe Woe and thrice woe! 3 wrong in 24:17. I was also flying until I hit the SW corner, but by then the struggle was already in vain. I’m beginning to dread pink squares. Thanks setter and George.
  19. 20:50, with around half that on my last two in, MODULATE and OUT OF THE WOOD. Credit to the setter for the first, a cunning definition, but the second is strange. I considered what turned out to be the correct answer almost immediately but couldn’t believe it was right. I eventually gave up and put it in when I couldn’t think of anything better. Not very satisfying.
    I put in IGUANADON but fortunately my ‘remember you can’t spell’ alarm went off and I considered the wordplay.
    Nice to see some of the NYC contingent yesterday evening.
  20. For some reason, blog would not accept my comments on last two attempts – switched my smart phone off and on – now I am anonymous!!
    Very strange.
    Good crossword today but I did write “abolitionist”!
    Mike Cowking
  21. Somewhere in the region of. But got them all right in the end.

    I’d say OUT OF THE WOODS Is the commonly accepted phrase these days. The version here was my LOI.

    Torturously slow. Did not understand INORDINATELY before coming here.

    MODULATE wasn’t easy either, definition well disguised.

    Pleased with DIWALI (sometime around now?) SALAAM which had me baffled for ages as convinced that the mobster woul be AL or the reverse.

    Nice clueing. A meaty solve.

    1. How old are you, Mike? Despite Taylor Swift, I’d still say ‘Out of the wood’. But then I am a year older today than yesterday and was conceived, if not born, during the war.
  22. Quite surprising to see that OSTEAL is an answer in today’s Daily Telegraph puzzle (22a) as well as in today’s Times puzzle. Not a word that I knew before today!
  23. Oh dear. It seems that my brain cells have made their annual migration to sunnier climes, leaving me short of a few. I failed to finish thricely, lacking FINGERED, RAKING and GOATSKIN.
  24. I went through this very well, until I stopped doing very well, having to pause for thought for INORDINATELY, and a lot more thought on LOI, MODULATE. Everything else went in pretty much right off the bat, and yes, I think it’s OUT OF THE WOODS, while today’s singular version wouldn’t mean anything to me. Glad the NYC event came off well, sorry but these days a trek into Manhattan from 90 miles away on a weeknight is beyond my stamina level. Regards.
  25. Always good to compound one’s epic solving failure by forgetting to log in. Sorry.
  26. I was tiresomely busy all day today and so came to this late, not starting it until my commute home. I came up with a bonear fig at 2dn, I couldn’t get modulate and although I knew the pluralized expression at 11dn, the singular was less familiar. I did not know that meaning of wood either so didn’t see much connection with beer. At least I managed to spot the domino effect and even that one took far longer than it should.

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