Times 27199 – Left luggage?

Author   vinyl1Posted on Categories Daily Cryptic

Time: 20 minutes
Music: Steve Hillage, Fish Rising

This was an easy Monday for experienced solvers.   Most of the clues use stock cryptic elements in very predictable ways, and the definitions are relatively straightforward.   Those who have the basic elements of cryptic construction at their fingertips should post very fast times indeed.  I chugged along at a fairly brisk clip, for me, and came home in a decent time.

Across
1 Live on periphery? (6)
RESIDE – RE SIDE.   A ‘side’ is not really the same thing as a ‘periphery’, but it is close enough.
4 Cherished peregrination in P&O cruise (8)
PRECIOUS – Anagram of P&O CRUISE, which is rather contrived, and a very obvious anagram.
10 Sensible to retain hospital doctor in council (9)
SANHEDRIN – SAN(H)E + DR + IN. 
11 One gets over wearing stupid expression (5)
IDIOM – I + DI(O)M
12 Model wants time with single mother put to work (7)
OPTIMUM – OP + T + I MUM, where one might think that you are being told to remove a ‘t’ from a word meaning ‘model’, and the literal is ‘put to work’.   Not so.
13 Admission of espionage is fix (7)
IMPLANT – I’M PLANT.
14 Returned books are an inspiration (5)
ERATO – OT + ARE backwards, giving the muse of lyric poetry.
15 Instrument to stamp fine material (8)
ORGANDIE – ORGAN + DIE, which is not often seen as a verb.
18 Beauty-lover worried about short woman (8)
AESTHETE – A(ESTHE[r])TE
20 Gym in Parisian street generates money (5)
RUPEE – RU(PE)E.
23 Hopes when religious right embraces void (7)
ASPIRES – AS + PI + R + E[mbrace]S.
25 Flyer sees V1 in two areas approaching hill (7)
AVIATOR – A(VI)A + TOR.
26 US lawyer, target for McCarthy, took risks (5)
DARED – D.A. + RED.
27 Standard credit to extend Jamaican homes (9)
YARDSTICK – YARD’S TICK.   Some knowledge of Jamaican patois is helpful here, perhaps from reggae lyrics.
28 Called into action and driven mad (8)
DERANGED – DE(RANG)ED.
29 Seat wrecked by sailors towards the rear (6)
ASTERN – anagram of SEAT + RN. Not a good clue, because ‘sailors’ brings ‘astern’ to mind.
Down
1 Scarlet grabs mine, but it’s handed back (8)
RESTORED – RE(STORE)D.
2 Entertainer among travellers in a train (7)
SINATRA – Hidden in [traveller]S IN A TRA[in].
3 Decaying or bad meat hunk (9)
DREAMBOAT – anagram of OR BAD MEAT.   We’ve seen ‘hunk’ used this way before, I believe.
5 Management goes for temporary patching up (7,7)
RUNNING REPAIRS – RUNNING + REPAIRS in entirely different senses.
6 Pipe radius used in Shard (5)
CHIRP – CHI(R)P, as in ‘pipe up’.
7 Folding stuff and cheque backing mate in France (7)
ORIGAMI – GIRO backwards + AMI.
8 Heavy fabric just the thing to pack uniform (6)
SAMITE – SAM(IT)E.   Never heard of it, but the cryptic hands it to you.
9 Compress neatly, if perversely, to put limits on freedom (5,4,5)
CRAMP ONES STYLE – anagram of COMPRESS NEATLY.
16 Drug agent is above suspicion in plant (9)
NARCISSUS – NARC + IS + SUS. 
17 Corrupt banker is Busby (8)
BEARSKIN – Anagram of BANKER IN.   I couldn’t remember what a busby is, and had to figure it out.
19 Ruler in mood beheaded soldiers (7)
EMPEROR – [t]EMPER + OR.
21 Lumumba say in power over a very short time (7)
PATRICE – P + A TRICE.   If you don’t know his full name, this may not be easy.
22 Entertaining person news boss booked (6)
CARDED – CARD + ED. 
24 Thinker was his god at Russell’s instigation (5)
RODIN – R[ussell] + ODIN, with a nice surface alluding to the famous philospher.

68 comments on “Times 27199 – Left luggage?”

  1. Slowed down by a few unknowns: SAMITE and ORGANDIE, in particular. On the latter – my last in with fingers crossed – do you need to interpret “die” as a verb? I took the “to” to be a position indicator.

    Thanks, vinyl, for the early blog and to the setter for a good start to the week.

      1. Sure, thanks for the comment. But I thought Vinyl’s parsing required it to be a verb in this sense (i.e. “to stamp” = “to die”), and I’m not sure whether that is in the standard references – it’s not in Chambers, for example. If you interpret the noun “stamp” = “die” (as for manufacturing), there is an extra “to” you need to account for. I took this as a position indicator, i.e. that “die” was next to “organ”.
  2. ….will be familiar to anyone, like me, who loved “….The Holy Grail”, as it appears in the Constitutional Peasants scene.
    Still don’t understand IDIOM though.
    My first thought was ORGANZA. In which work of reference can DIE be a verb as well as a noun meaning stamp?
    An amusing alternative clue to PATRICE might have been: “Used to play for Arsenal and was once Prime Minister of the Congo.”

    Edited at 2018-11-19 02:50 am (UTC)

    1. Couldn’t get the samite, never heard of it and the cryptic didn’t hand it to me ;-(
      Idiom: O (over) is wearing DIM (stupid) all put on I (one).
      Have you got the right team? It was PatricK Viera? The only Patrice I remember was Evra at Monaco, ManU then Juve. Trivia: my pet greyhound’s racing name was Evra, his kennel name was Patty, but they renamed him Paddy when they adopted him out as Patty was considered too effeminate.
          2. Not really. You will know him as the ventriloquist’s dummy who sat beside Wenger before Bould got the job.
  3. Like Martin, sort of, I associate SAMITE with Arthur, although I didn’t recall it from Graham Chapman’s Arthur. DNK YARDS, but it had to be. LOI CHIRP, because for some reason I didn’t see the obvious anagram in 4ac, which was my 2d to LOI. Like Starstruck, I took DIE to be a noun (my Japanese-English dictionary does list it as a verb as well, not that that does much good). It was good to see a reference to Patrice (“Nous ne sommes plus vos macaques”) Lumumba, a name we should remember.

    Edited at 2018-11-19 05:22 am (UTC)

    1. As I remember it, Kevin: “Her arm clad in the purest, shimmering samite…”
      That is a terrific quote from Lumumba.
        1. A shame that it is not true. The record of Belgium and of King Leopold in particular in the Congo is shameful.
          1. Well, we don’t know that he didn’t say it, only that it’s not in the official transcript of his speech; he may have spat it out extemporaneously at Baudoin.
  4. Evidently I don’t have the basic elements of cryptic construction at my fingertips as I needed 6 minutes short of an hour to work my way steadily through this one. Various sticking points were 1dn (where it took several attempts to find what went inside RED to make a word meaning ‘handed back’), SANHEDRIN (only vaguely known and my LOI), SAMITE (unknown), 13ac (definition not very helpful) and CARDED (still unknown as ‘booked’ – is it a football reference?).

    To be absolutely pedantic a BEARSKIN is not a ‘busby’ (and vice versa) but loose usage by people who don’t know that has led to some dictionaries including the error, so it’s fair game for crossword setters now.

    I thought the ORIGAMI clue was brilliant.

    Edited at 2018-11-19 06:20 am (UTC)

    1. Your guess is as good as mine. This was the only one I wasn’t sure of, though the wordplay has one clear answer.
      1. I just found this in Chambers, so my guess was correct:

        Verb 2 sport, especially football (be carded) to be shown a yellow card or red card by the referee, resulting in either a booking or dismissal from the field.

        Edited at 2018-11-19 07:21 am (UTC)

        1. Yeah, I found the same definition in Oxford online, except that it didn’t use the word “booking,” which is also a football term of art, I suppose.
          1. “Booking” for an offence is common enough terminology and not confined to football. Book ’em, Danno.
            1. Of course I immediately thought of the Hawai’i 5-O phrase, just thought there might be a slightly different meaning specific to football. Some online dictionaries give Jack Lord’s meaning as referring only to police actions. Collins has “to record charges against on a police record,” and “to take the name and address of (a person guilty of a minor offence) with a view to bringing a prosecution,” but also “(of a football referee) to take the name of (a player) who grossly infringes the rules while playing, two such acts resulting in the player’s dismissal from the field.” (Odd placement of parentheses in that last one!) So in football, it’s two strikes, you’re out!
              1. I see you can even buy the book, pencil and cards as a set…

                I don’t follow football, but when there’s a World Cup on I’ve learned to bow to the inevitable and watch the matches, otherwise there’s basically an entire month at work where one can’t take part in most of the conversations! Even doing that for a single tournament is enough to see a lot of carding and booking.

  5. 15:12 although SANHEDRIN and SAMITE and PATRICE Lumumba only vaguely remembered, so I looked them up post-solve to find out about them. SINATRA nicely hidden in the crowd, and I liked ORIGAMI (are Giros still used much?) but, same as Vinyl, RODIN my COD. Thanks V and setter.
  6. I found this very hard, and failed on both unknown fabrics, having plumped for “SAMITY”, on the grounds that it might be something like dimity, and that “samy” might be an alternative spelling of “samey”. SAMITE just sounded too much like a mineral rather than a fabric to me. I also, ten minutes over my hour, guessed “ORGANAIR” without much hope. There are a lot of three-letter words with a middle of “i”, and I never seem to think of “die” for “stamp”. It’s been my undoing before.

    Additionally slowed by the completely unknown PATRICE (in my defence, he did die more than a decade before I was born), putting in “BESIDE” at 1a for a while, and not having heard of either SANHEDRIN or the necessary yards.

  7. …Clothed in white samite, mystic, wonderful,
    And caught him by the hilt, and brandish’d him
    Three times, and drew him under in the mere.

    45 mins with yoghurt etc. But the last 10 of those were on the Restored/Sanhedrin pair. Strangely, I couldn’t think of Store and I needed the S to construct the DNK council.
    Thanks setter and Vinyl.

  8. Not that quick at 16.03, but then I started with a plausible BESIDE (live BE + on SIDE, dodgy def periphery) which slowed things down in the opening corner.
    Lucky with SAMITE – it might just as well have been SAMITY (like dimity only softer, perhaps), though come to think of it samey needs an E. Unusually, the Python quote is not in my otherwise complete concordance.
    The footballing PATRICE (Lumumba) thoughts above mombled me into the indelible memory (I was there) of Fabrice Muamba “dying” on the pitch at White Hart Lane. I can assure you he wasn’t CARDED for diving or dissembling. Not that night.
    Until today, I wouldn’t have associated Marley’s “government yard in Trenchtown” with “homes”. My cultural education continues. Thanks V.
  9. 16’31” but with a typo…

    SAMITE, ORGANDIE, had to be constructed. Hadn’t heard of LUMUMBA until I read Day of the Jackal .

    Thanks vinyl and setter.

  10. …whenever I may find her. I would have spelt ORGANDIE with a Y though, as I think Paul Simon did.18 minutes, held up briefly in NE by CHIRP and SAMITE. Otherwise, this was on my wavelength. CARDED is used by Jeff Stelling on Sky Sports most Saturdays. I’m old enough to remember PATRICE Lumumba and his murder. COD to RODIN, and a pose not worn by me today. As Jack says, I remember being told as a young lad that Busbys and BEARSKINs were different and that the Buck House guards wore the latter, but I can’t recall how they were different. Sir Matt wore the former, of course. Thank you V and setter.

    Edited at 2018-11-19 10:15 am (UTC)

    1. S&G were no help to me. I think I’ve always misheard the words as something like “best in Normandy”.
  11. I made hard work of this after a quick start. “xxxxx over style” didn’t help and nor did flagstick.

    COD: IDIOM.

  12. Twenty-two minutes for me, with SAMITE and SANHEDRIN (isn’t that a headache tablet?) both being NHOs.
  13. ….FOI ERATO….but left me after 8 minutes or so as I was becalmed in the NE corner for half as long again.

    IMPLANT was a long time coming, as were IDIOM and CHIRP. I remembered LOI SAMITE but unaccountably took far too long to parse it.

    COD RODIN
    TIME 12:03

  14. For those interested in the life of Patrice Lumumba I can recommend The Catastrophist by Ronan Bennett. He also wrote a rather good book with a chess theme called Zugzwang my memory of which is very slightly serendipitous as I am on the train to London to see game 8 of the Carlsen v Caruana chess world championship. Having paid £60 for the ticket I found out yesterday that I may be limited to 30 mins in the playing hall and it’s therefore quite possible I may not see a move played. And they say premiership football tickets are expensive …

    As for today’s offering, my first in six months, I gave up on Samite my LOI after 45 mins. Was trying to work a u and so into the answer when the more obvious same refused to come to mind

    Ps. Bought my first ever book by Georgette Heyer on Saturday. I hope I’m not disappointed!

  15. I struggled to get a foothold in this one, but eventually after dipping a toe into the SW, I got a start with DARED and RODIN, and then built on that. I became becalmed again until RUNNING REPAIRS came to my rescue and after 32 or so minutes I was left with S_M_E_ which I diagnosed as SAMITE, but managed to type in as SEMITE. Eeejit!! 34:06 WOE is me. Thanks setter and Vinyl.
  16. Nicely accessible for a Monday, with a few pauses to dredge the memory for a couple of things. I was definitely in the group for whom Arthur, King of the Britons (King of the ‘oo?) gave me my only reference point for SAMITE, and I remember QI discussing the difference between a busby and a bearskin, which, of course, hinders rather than helps if the clue wants you to assume they are the same thing. In today’s Baader-Meinhof moment, I was browsing wikipedia only a couple of days ago in an unrelated search, but somehow ended up reading about Lumumba and the history of the Congo; it made me think that Belgium has done well to have a reputation these days for being a rather boring and inoffensive country.
  17. I associate this with what happens to high school students in NYC when they go to a bodega to buy a keg of beer for a party and the proprietor makes them produce ID as proof of age. LUMUMBA’s assassination was one of the items of news I saw as a kid in a newsreel theatre by the Baker St. tube station, and it stayed with me because I was startled that they showed his widow and other female family members ululating loudly having removed their tops which was said to be a sign of mourning in that part of Africa. 14.29

    Edited at 2018-11-19 12:00 pm (UTC)

  18. 23’21 after wasting time by giving origami the boot for some reason or other. Otherwise a gentle plod without speed. One hesitates to comment but an interesting and somehow telling mourning ritual observed above.
  19. Off the wavelength today – I gave up after 15 mins without IMPLANT, CHIRP or ORGANDIE. The first two of these should have gone in without too much difficulty, I’m sure, but having never come across ORGANDIE or DIE in that context, I could have struggled with that one all day (particularly with that misleading “to” in the clue).

    I very much enjoyed the “called into action” bit of 28a, which I’m sure is a chestnut but is very neat.

  20. 14:03, with about five of those struggling with the RESTORED/SANHEDRIN crossing pair.
    SANHEDRIN came up in a puzzle I blogged in 2015 (DT 4670) with a faulty clue that made it impossible to solve if you hadn’t heard of it, which I hadn’t. I didn’t remember it today so I had to construct it from wordplay but it did ring a very faint bell once I had done so.
  22. Like a number of other correspondents I was drawn to Monty Python’s Holy Grail by 8d Samite and not Tennyson’s Morte d’Arthur.
    On the plus side I do join Bolton Wanderer in dreaming of Emily whenever I see 15a Organdie. 21d was unknown to me but gettable from the clue – I have to admit to wondering who he used to play for.

    The most difficult part for me was the NW corner of 1d and 10a. I have quite a problem with MINE = STORE at 1d as they are not the same at all. Someone will probably find a dictionary entry somewhere that justifies this but it is wrong IMHO.

    My LOI 10a SANHEDRIN could be reverse engineered from the clue once the word was identified. My knowledge of ancient Jewish councils has been increased from 0 to 1.

    Thanks to V1 for the blog and to the Setter – beat me again.

    1. This seems OK to me in the figurative sense: a mine of information is the same as a store of knowledge.
      1. Yes – fair enough K. I was just being grumpy because it took me so long to solve 1d. Whinge retracted.
  23. Galloped through the organdies, samites and eratos only to be stumped by carded. It seemed the obvious answer, but I couldn’t see why it would mean booked. Eventually shoved it in and all was well. I know yardie, but didn’t realise yard was the house. Normally in crossword-lands it’s a US garden, and a yardbird is (I think) a chicken.
      1. That too! Plus (according to wiki) a US WW2 army trainee; a child pornography ring. And, of course, Clapton, Beck and Page.
  24. 20-odd minutes for me signals very accessible Monday fare. Some spicy cluing where it was needed in the one direction, and easier constructions where the words were harder (as with SANHEDRIN, ORGANDIE, SAMITE).

    Easy but good.

  25. 11.49 but my 30 seconds of checking failed to reveal that I had typed SANDEDRIN, despite the fact that it had rescued me from REFUNDED at 1d (based on a fund/mine of information and an inability to count the Es)
  27. 45 mins and cheating says to me that this was hard, but most others on here found it easy. But IMO this was yet another crossword with an inconsistent level of difficulty within it. I whizzed through 90% of it in about 5 minutes, but then had to cheat after 45 minutes staring blankly and feeling like an idiot. That can’t be the intention of the setter-or if it is, it shouldn’t be. Maybe its just me and I have to suffer the embarrassment, but it seems unfair that one gets suckered into the type of answers and constructs required in some of the clues, and then have to use different levels altogether to finish it, depending on the whim and eccentricity of the setter. Such as ‘peregrination’ as a (dodgy) anagram indicator in 4a, and making a surface that doesn’t make sense either. And a completely unnecessary ‘if’ at 9d, and similarly ‘extend’ at 27a. Why not just ‘standard credit on Jamaican homes’? I’m told that ‘every word counts’ in The Times crossword. Except in these two clues clearly. And still not convinced by mine=store either. You can only store something you’ve mined after you’ve mined it. (A demoralised Mr extremely Grumpy)
  28. I forgot to mention that SANHEDRIN was well known to me from the Gospel stories heard every year around Easter. I’ve also just arrived back from my travels to find a “Dear John” letter on the mat. It comes with a couple of WH Smith vouchers for being one of the winners of Saturday crossword 27186. Makes up for this morning’s chagrin over SEMITE.
    3. Well done – coincidentally I’ve just been sent a couple for 27192. This seems to be relatively new, as the last tpme I won anything. it took the form of book tokens.
      1. Thanks phmfantom, congrats to you too. At present it seems to be WHS vouchers for the Saturday puzzle, Cross pens for the Sunday puzzle and books for the Jumbos.
  29. I found this quite tricky (when your FOI is the muse of lyric poetry you know you’re up against it) finding some difficult vocab and some getting the wrong end of the wordplay stick. I had most done in 45 mins but the unknown samite at 8dn pushed my time out to an hour. I had it in mind that “just the thing” might be the container and “uniform” the thing packed into it. I took a long time to throw that idea away. Sanhedrin was constructed from the assembly instructions. I remembered organza but organdie and the die / stamp equivalence took a while longer. I took ages to see what was required at 4ac. I suppose it must be “peregrination in” which acts as the anagrind to indicate the strolling about of the letters which follow? I’m not entirely convinced that works the same way as either peregrinatory or peregrinating might have done.
    1. ‘Peregrination in’ I would think, sb. Such indicatorial liberties are common enough in The Times, as with ‘if perversely’ lower down the order.

      Nice challenge for a Monday I thought. LOI SAMITE as for others, but I’ll agree with the blogger on it.

      1. Thanks Denisovan. Sometimes if I squint a bit or say it over a couple of times in my head I can just about get these liberties to work for me, I couldn’t quite get this one to work but I could see what was going on.
  30. Had to leave it and come back. Put 1a in as “Beside”: be=live, side=on. That played merry hell with 1d until the penny dropped.
  31. Officially, because I forgot to pause the timer when I stepped away from the laptop for oh, about 15 hours, I finished with a time of 16 HOURS and 54 seconds. So about an hour on the crossword itself. Didn’t know either of SAMITE, ORGANDIE (LOI) and SANHEDRIN was a distantly-recalled guess, though couldn’t parse it thinking that SAN was the hospital, so what on earth was HE..IN? Hey ho…. onto the next one

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