Times 27184 – around the world in 29 clues

Author   glhPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Solving time: 10:20.

I got off to a flyer here, but slowed down in the middle with those long answers taking a while to piece together.

If you didn’t notice in yesterday’s comments, we lost one of the regular Times setters, David Crossland, also Dac in the Independent and Flamande in the Quick Cryptic. There’s a really good interview with him here. Cheers, Dac/Flamande/Smokey, you will be missed.

OK, I’m going to write this up and hit a late round of Halloween parties, so first definitions are underlined in the clues and away we go!

Across
1 Experts taking steps when power is lost (4)
ACES – PACES(steps) missing P(power)
4 Sadder group collecting one prestigious award (4,6)
BLUE RIBAND – the sadder group are the BLUER BAND – put an I in there
9 Hesitation shown by papa in awful divorce requiring much outlay (10)
OVERPRICED – ER(hesistation), P(Papa – NATO alphabet) inside an anagram of DIVORCE
10 Old country fellow travelling round India (4)
SIAM – SAM(fellow) aorund I(India – more NATO alphabet!)
11 Country character of yesteryear in small piece (not leader in Times) (6)
BRUNEI – RUNE(old character) inside BIT(small piece) missing T(imes)
12 Desolate areas sheltering revolutionary types disinclined to act (8)
MOOCHERS – MOORS(desolate areas) containing CHE(revolutionary)
14 What’s said to restrict someone in the Far East (4)
THAI – sounds like TIE(restrict)
15 Get rid of religious type keeping unorthodox rite (10)
OBLITERATE – OBLATE(dedicated religious type) surrounding an anagram of RITE
17 Person at concert receiving good artist, one giving coded messages? (10)
PROGRAMMER – PROMMER(person at concert) containing G(good), RA(artist)
20 Measure brought by Labour leader of yesteryear (4)
FOOT – double definition, the Labour leader is Michael Foot
21 Spooner’s jolly enthusiast who may operate in the underworld? (8)
FERRYMAN – Spoonerism of MERRY FAN
23 Freely moving about, using a minor highway (6)
ABROAD – A B-ROAD(minor highway)
24 Impulse our gentlemen must restrain (4)
URGE – hidden in oUR GEntlemen
25 Sport later modified somewhere in Ireland (4,6)
REAL TENNIS – anagram of LATER, then ENNIS(somewhere in Ireland)
26 Drink with politician, Left philosopher who works willingly with others? (4,6)
TEAM PLAYER – TEA(drink), MP(politician), L(left), then A.J. AYER
27 Triumphs, putting out fine food (4)
EATS – FEATS(triumphs), missing F(fine)
Down
2 Insurance — attack sum added to bill (5,6)
COVER CHARGE – COVER(insurance), CHARGE(attack)
3 Place that’s holy almost has ruler drawing back (9)
SHRINKING – SHRIN(e) (place that’s holy), then KING(ruler)
4 Little donkey fed with Italian or Mexican food (7)
BURRITO – BURRO(little donkey) containing IT(Italian)
5 Somehow doing my nut, complainer being scathing (15)
UNCOMPLIMENTARY – anagram of MY,NUT,COMPLAINER
6 Survive journey away from home (4,3)
RIDE OUT – RIDE(journey), OUT(away from home)
7 Proof of who you are needed in Lincoln to stay (5)
ABIDE – ID(proof of who you are) in ABE Lincoln
8 Approximately five hundred turn up making public protests (5)
DEMOS – SOME(approximately), D(500) all reversed
13 Share of top people who may discount religious claims? (11)
RATIONALIST – RATION(share) and the top people are the A LIST
16 Address about to be given border with neighbour? Engineers brought in (9)
REFERENCE – RE(about) and FENCE(border with neighbour) containing RE(engineers)
18 Endlessly praise a learner, a cadet who really made it? (7)
ADMIRAL – ADMIR(e) (praise), A, L(leaner driver)
19 Chicken maybe turning yellow with boss losing head (7)
ROASTER – OR(yellow) reversed, then MASTER(boss) missing the first letter
21 One desperately wanting knowledge very quick to engage university (5)
FAUST – FAST(very quick) containing U(university)
22 Charity event with endless chat and music (5)
RAGGA – RAG(charity event), and GA(s) (chat)

47 comments on “Times 27184 – around the world in 29 clues”

  1. At 28 minutes I found this only marginally more difficult than today’s QC, but I had struggled a bit with that. Lost time with ROOSTER at 19dn before spotting my error. I’m probably being a bit dim, but how does ‘address’ = REFERENCE?
    1. George here – dont have a login on my phone. The most direct correlation comes from computer programming but you could also think of the phrase “ill address this problem first”
  2. Ooops and ive left the philosopher ayer off one of the answers. Will be fixed when i next meet my laptop
  3. Started off slowly–FOOT my first across–then bogged down; desperation was starting to set in when suddenly everything became clear. I biffed REAL TENNIS from the R and enumeration, solved post hoc. DNK that meaning of ‘mooch’, or PROMMER, so spent some time wondering how to account for MER. Like Jack, I had ROOSTER for a while, and like Jack, wondered at first about REFERENCE, but accepted it. BURRITO is the diminutive in Spanish of ‘burro’; i.e. it literally means ‘little donkey’.
  4. Wasted a bit of time with ‘rooster’ and trying to make an anagram of ‘sport later’, but a healthy dose of biffing enable me to get home in a SNITCH-improving time of 21 mins+.

    Rather fond of the word MOOCHERS – an example of the linguistic equivalent of programme music.

      1. I thought of that too. Minnie hangs around with a bloke named Smokey which was one of David’s Crossland’s pen names.
  5. I didn’t know RAGGA (only raga and reggae) until it came up not so long ago here. I won blue ribbons for 4-H projects (photography) but never a BLUE RIBAND. We had REAL TENNIS not so long ago, no? LOI was BRUNEI.

    I think I liked this even better than yesterday’s. Will Friday live up to its legend?

    Edited at 2018-11-01 05:52 am (UTC)

    2. Brings to mind (perhaps incorrectly) the Titanic/the desire to be the fastest boat across the Atlantic. Then in the 90s I spent some time working in Italy where the beers we drank were “Nasty Blues” aka Nastro Azzurro.

      Edited at 2018-11-01 08:50 am (UTC)

  6. 25 mins with yoghurt, banana, blueberry compote, etc.
    Another confidence booster with no unknowns.
    Like Jack, I felt my eyebrow starting to twitch at address=reference.
    Mostly I liked: Shrinking, Ferryman and COD to Real Tennis for suggesting an anagram of Sport later.
    Thanks setter and G.
  7. Grateful to the setter for this one to build a bit of confidence for Saturday. I was close to giving up!
  9. Heading for all time PB with the top half completed in a Magooish 4 minutes, but slowed down a lot in the bottom right corner for a standard 20 minutes. Didn’t know & couldn’t parse ROASTER, didn’t know Faust was a seeker of knowledge, absolutely no problems with reference = address, ragga appeared a few days ago.

    Edited at 2018-11-01 08:49 am (UTC)

  10. I’m not sure whether a run of easy ones before Saturday is a good thing or not – it could either boost my confidence or leave me inadequately prepared. We shall see. The SNITCH currently rates this as the easiest recorded week by some way, with only tomorrow to possibly change that…
  11. ..oblation and satisfaction for the sins of the whole world. I’ve only ever used ‘oblate’ in a communion service before. My memory hasn’t been OBL(ITER)ATEd by the presence of RATIONALISTs and logical positivists presented as TEAM PL(AYER)s in today’s offering. 19 minutes with last two RAGGA and ROASTER. I’d biffed ‘rooster’ earlier and ABROAD neatly made the necessary change. Enjoyable puzzle in this easyish week. A stinker tomorrow? Thank you George and setter.
  13. My 38 minutes was a minute longer than yesterday’s effort, but given that I woke up with a headache, I’ll forgive myself. Only a few unknowns to slow me down: 25a REAL TENNIS being the main culprit, especially as I fell into the same trap as others and wasted time with (sport later)*, assuming I was looking for a place in Ireland that I probably couldn’t spell.

    FOI 1a ACES, LOI 19d’s ROASTER. Add me to the list of people for whom an address is very obviously a reference, but I struggle to come up with examples outside our field of programming. We do seem to have a lot of programmers here!

    Edited at 2018-11-01 09:41 am (UTC)

  14. Or perhaps not. 13 minutes thinking I should have been quicker – that ROOSTER forced me into thinking of “boss” words that would fit.
    I made do with map REFERENCE for address, but then I’m not burdened with years of programming (beyond Mallard Basic and DR Logo).
  15. 11:53 and no silly mistakes for a change. The editor has been gentle with us since last Thursday’s stinker.
    BRUNEI went straight in from the final ‘I’ having already typed it in once this morning in another place – you would have got good odds from Paddy Power on that coincidence I suspect.
  16. 24 minutes, no issues except the ROOSTER to ROASTER switch once ABROAD was obvious, and RAGGA being an unknown version of the music but it had to be. Very enjoyable, best so far this week.
    As it’s raining and I have time before doing the TLS and the Grauniad, being a curious type I clicked on the above and scrolled through the Wiki article on Reference in C++. Now I know why they call them computer languages, it was gibberish to me. Hats off to you chaps who mastered it. No wonder someone invented Java.
  17. Phew. This was a nineteen-minute sprint for me, though I appreciate that my sprint is probably others’ walk in the park. All straightforward apart from the unknown RAGGA, with BRUNEI my LOI.

    As for C++, don’t get me started. The fact that we need programming languages at all, and have to buy apps in order to actually be able to do anything, is a sure sign that we have yet to invent real computers.

    Edited at 2018-11-01 10:20 am (UTC)

  18. 30 mins, today. I liked the Spoonerism. Otherwise the clueing was unremarkable. LOI was ABROAD because I’d chucked in ‘rooster’ without bothering too much about the headless boss. I didn’t know ‘oblate’, the only recondite vocabulary in the grid. Oh, and there’s raga and ragga — what the hell? It’s all music to me.

    Thanks, George, for your blog.

  19. Thanks for the link…enjoyed reading about David.

    As to the 15×15 I finally think I am getting the hang of it.
    I completed this in just under 32 minutes on the online club. I do on occasion look up on a different tab words in the parsing. Today I had to check on RAGGA, OBLATE and AYER. I did think about putting in Rooster at first but 23a made that impossible. I really enjoyed FERRYMAN.

  20. 25’09. Not as straightforward for me as for many but the old burrito plodded along. I met Ayer once – a genial character. Setter’s keen on ‘yesteryear’ and why not – a word worth keeping.
  21. ….BLUE RIBAND takes the biscuit.

    10:30, held up slightly by enrolling in Ulaca’s “Sport Later Club” (the later the better these days I’m afraid), and wondering about FAUST from the unknown definition before deciding it had to be correct.

    FOI ACES
    LOI RATIONALIST
    COD FERRYMAN

  22. I headed towards PB territory with this one, expecting to come here and find it was the easiest puzzle ever, but was pleasantly surprised to find, that whilst not difficult, it wasn’t a push over either. A biffed ROOSTER morphed into a ROASTER when ABROAD appeared. I managed not to take a late detour around Eire. Liked FERRYMAN. FOI ACES, LOI THAI. 13:57. Thanks setter and George.
  23. And no typos! I’m now checking for these which of course adds a fair few seconds. But if I’m on the cusp of the magic 10 mins I will probably just press submit and hope for the best.

    I biffed Alibi for Abide which slowed me down a bit. I was also one that looked for an anagram of Sport later. LOI was RAGGA which I didn’t know but nothing else seemed likely.

    In 1234 Henry III, who came to the throne in 1216 when aged just 9, began to rule England without regents.

    COD: FERRYMAN which, as pserve_p2 observes, was a nice Spoonerism that stood out from the rest of the clues. I couldn’t have fed Sarah myself.

  24. Very serviceable, if not the most exhilarating solve we’ve had recently. The setter should probably also get a special award for coming up with a Spoonerism which didn’t provoke pitchforks and flaming torches from the solving public.
  26. Didn’t parse ROASTER and didn’t know A.J.Ayer – held up in the SE by REAL TENNIS – like others was looking for the Sport Later anag. All fell into place easily after that.
  27. Hello again. I looked at this puzzle as I started my lunch and finished it over coffee, carefully parsing ROASTER as I wanted to make certain before coming here. So a quick solve for me, over an hour but with interruptions.
    My last two were Brunei and the Roaster.
    I liked BURRITO and MOOCHERS.
    As mentioned the QC is a very good test today for those with some spare time. David

  28. A gentle stroll in 24 mins. As a veggie I think the ROASTER was unfair but it had to be that I guess once I got ABROAD Again would have been quicker had I not nodded off halfway through.
  29. I was quite tired while solving last night, so the prompt that made everyone else who threw in ROOSTER to change it to ROASTER never occurred to me. Aargh. So a DNF as I still had O?R?A? for 23A and left it blank. Oops. Regards.
    1. I usually (try to) solve the Concise and QC just after they appear(at midnight here) but I leave the main cryptic until next morning when I’ve had a slug of torrefied caffeine!
  30. Didn’t know Rag or Riband, but they worked themselves out. I liked Ferryman.

    I’d not heard of the slouchabout use of mooch until last week – in the US it means to cage, to sponge off of, or to otherwise and usually disreputably to get goods or money from someone. Plus, in the US a cadet is exclusively army, no chance of becoming an admiral. The equivalent is midshipman.

  31. 33:42 which is quicker than I thought because I was feeling rather slow today (an insufficiently caffeinated solve to boot). Everything parsed except for roaster and I now realise that I had no idea what reference had to do with address. Thank you for posting the link to the interview with Dac, very interesting.
  32. No problems with this crossword today except – shouldn’t “or” be orange rather yellow? What have I missed?

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