Times 27219 – TCC Heat 2 second puzzle of three. (Apparently the first in the booklet).

Author   piquetPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
This restored (temporarily) my faint desire to enter the TCC if and when I find myself geographically suited to do so. I polished it off with a reasonable confidence level that it was correct, in 19 minutes, just within the quota. There again, as last week’s was a magnitude tougher, and took an age, maybe I’ll stay away.
I enjoyed it – not just because it went in smoothly, but it raised a smile here and there, having quite a few witty cryptics and not too many anagrams or complex wordplay elements. It also lends itself to BIFFing to get to a faster conclusion, so no doubt we’ll have some fast laps, but I think I have unravelled the mysteries as well. But feel free to sharpen your electronic pencils to point out where I’ve wandered from the true path.

Across
1 Extract of tree sucker pushed back by tongue (3,6)
GUM ARABIC –  Sucker = MUG, reversed (pushed back), ARABIC being a tongue. My FOI.
6 The smallest stick it out to conserve energy (5)
LEAST – LAST has E inserted. My 2OI.
9 Character from Plato’s mostly lame answer (5)
GAMMA – GAMM(Y) = mostly lame, A = answer.
10 Try short rivet that’s penetrating (9)
TRENCHANT – TR(Y) = try short, ENCHANT = rivet, spellbind.
11 Demolish what’s next to apartment No 9? (7)
FLATTEN – FLAT TEN is perhaps next to flat nine.
12 Fruit tree I neglected is about to fall back (7)
RELAPSE – An ESPALIER is a fruit tree trained to a certain shape; reverse it and extract the I. Or extract the I then reverse it, if you prefer.
13 Old statesman will overcome manoeuvring involving right and left (6,8)
OLIVER CROMWELL – Well, he’d be 419 years old by now, so definitely old. Anagram time, (WILL OVERCOME R L)*,
17 One dealing with odds and sods? (4,10)
TURF ACCOUNTANT – Witty-ish cryptic definition. Posh name for a bookie.
21 Deep gesture of respect for weapon (7)
LONGBOW – LONG = deep, as in deep breath perhaps; BOW as rhyming with cow, for the gesture.
23 Name? It’s rejected during recess by bishop (7)
BAPTISE – B for bishop, then IT reversed inside APSE.
25 Swimmer’s revolutionary hairstyle (3,6)
RED MULLET – RED for revolutionary, MULLET = hairstyle. For amusement I can only refer you to this Q & A in the Grauniad on the subject of why it is so called:
https://www.theguardian.com/notesandqueries/query/0,,-6465,00.html.
I don’t read the Guardian, of course, I just do the crossword, which is good, and free.
26 More old paintings recalled (5)
EXTRA – EX = old, ART reversed.
27 Sporting events contribute this little colour (5)
TINGE – Hidden in SPOR(TING E)VENTS.
28 It helps helmsman manage after risks leaving loch (9)
PERISCOPE – PERILS = risks, departs from the L for loch, making PERIS, then COPE for manage.

Down
1 Job a disaster: a measure of PC’s performance? (8)
GIGAFLOP – GIG = job, A FLOP = a disaster.  A gigaflop is of course a unit of computing speed equal to one thousand million floating-point operations per second. Sounds quite fast to me.
2 Two degrees? One might do for you in Africa (5)
MAMBA – MA and MBA being two degrees; a MAMBA being a nasty snake.
3 Pan grouse, Sunday staple? (5,4)
ROAST BEEF – Pan = ROAST, criticise, BEEF = grouse.
4 Nasty whiff of acid from bark reportedly associated with plants (7)
BOTANIC – BO = B.O., body odour; TANIC sounds like tannic, an acid found in tree bark.
5 It’s said on leaving two thirds of Brie, say, and port (7)
CHEERIO – CHEE(SE) = two-thirds of Brie, say; RIO is a port, short for Rio de Janeiro.
6 Neighbourhood watch, roughly fifty (5)
LOCAL – LO = watch, CA = circa, about, L = fifty. Here I think local is an adjective, as the noun would be locale.
7 Fancy paella, top included, with no accompaniment (1,8)
A CAPPELLA – Insert CAP = top, into (PAELLA)*. I thought this was odd as I’d have spelt it A CAPELLA (which didn’t fit or parse) but it can be A CAPPELLA in Italian, or A CAPELLA in Latin, as you prefer.
8 Tie in league, avoiding own goal (6)
TETHER – TOGETHER = in league, loses OG = own goal.
14 Old animal droppings gathered by a single lecturer (9)
IGUANODON – an even older animal than he of 13a. GUANO is placed inside I DON = one lecturer.
15 Secure show that’s ignored by source of 20 (9)
WINEPRESS – WIN = secure, E(X)PRESS loses its X, which = (multiplied) by.
16 Doctor agrees to retain the empty, least costly beds (8)
STEERAGE – THE empty = TE, insert that into (AGREES)*.
18 Plant border of Hereford? (7)
COWSLIP – A COW’S LIP could be the border of a Hereford bovine perhaps.
19 Rankers maybe fly spacecraft (7)
ORBITER – OR = other ranks, rankers; a fly could bite you, so be a BITER.
20 County town primarily in Bordeaux (6)
CLARET – CLARE is a pleasant county in the West of Ireland; T for town primarily; red wine from Bordeaux is informally known as claret, although originally the wines were not red. Rather than attempt a long explanation as to why, I’ll refer you to this: https://www.winespectator.com/drvinny/show/id/46560
22 Without reason, happen to limit excitement leading up to congress? (5)
BRUTE – BE = happen. ‘limits’ RUT = excitement leading up to congress (if you are a deer, at least). I see this meaning as in ‘brute force’.
24 First bars of tango found in ornamental box (5)
INTRO – T for tango is inserted into INRO. an INRO is an ornamental Japanese box or nest of boxes.

64 comments on “Times 27219 – TCC Heat 2 second puzzle of three. (Apparently the first in the booklet).”

  1. I’ve been doing pretty well on these, in the quiet of my home. I would have been faster, if I hadn’t fixated on lambda at 9ac (yes, I know), accepted ‘rivet’ = ENCHANT quicker, and spotted the hidden at 27ac (2d to LOI). Biffed RELAPSE & OLIVER C, solved post-submission; DNK TURF ACCOUNTANT.
  2. I think this was my fastest time on a Championship puzzle this year but at 42 minutes it was more than double the target time for serious competitors.

    DKs were GIGAFLOP, INRO and CAPPELLA with two P’s. Some of my parsing was on the hoof and I didn’t bother to return to 1ac to notice the presence of a reverse indicator; I had been quite happy with GUM as ‘sucker’, imagining a reference to edentates.

  3. Much easier than last week, only held up in the end by BAPTISE, and WINEPRESS where the S had me looking for a plural. Only TETHER & BOTANIC biffed. Luckily knew all the GK except tannic acid in bark – I would have guessed tea leaves – so was pondering if “whiff” of acid was A, you could nick/bark your shin, and bot was some sort of nastiness. Yeah, I know.
    COD to turf accountant, a phrase that appeals.
  4. About 40 mins – twice as long as necessary. Did not manage to fully parse 28ac PERISCOPE but no matter.

    FOI 2dn MAMBA
    LOI 22dn BRUTE
    COD 1ac GUM ARABIC with 16dn STEERAGE in the frame
    WOD 1dn GIGAFLOP

  5. 19 minutes for this session’s easy one. Hopefully, they’ll increase the quota to two next year to help the riff-raff…
  6. …. the majority verdict is that this was easier than last week’s – it was the first one in P2 and the one I missed one answer on which, inexplicably since about 10 seconds after the clock ran out, was BRUTE. Whereas last week’s (#2) I completed on the day.

    That can only mean that next week will bring the car crash that was my attempt at #3 which resulted in 7 answers missed.

    Just under 10 minutes on re-attempt this morning which demonstrates either that it was easier after all, or I just remembered it better.

  7. I certainly recall this being the easiest of the 3 on the day. I think I had all bar BRUTE done in around 10 minutes then moved on.

    As I was writing in IGUANODON I remember thinking “that’s going to catch someone out” (I’m pretty sure I’ve spelled it wrong myself before) and lo and behold that was the clue that Neil Talbott, who was 5th fastest finisher, got wrong. He told me he’d seen “a single lecturer” on an early pass, filled in ADON and then forgot to change the A to an O when he went back and solved the rest of the clue.

    1. I believe it was Neil sat next to me – quite off-putting scratching ones head about 1a on puzzle 1 and hearing nothing but the sound of entries being made 3 feet away. Tried to discount it in my head as “he’s just making notes”. Then he raised his number. I think my next thought was “oh dear”. Or maybe slightly more profane.
  8. It may be the easiest of the three on the day but I wouldn’t class it as an easy puzzle. As ever with these offerings its fair but tricky. Great fun but not under exam conditions. Good blog Pip
  9. 35′ for me, so not nearly fast enough. But 1 wrong, with IGUANADON (although it seems I’m in good company). Nice puzzle. I liked “excitement leading up to congress” but I got BRUTE immediately, which it seems many people had either as their last one in or their last one not quite in.
  10. 13 minutes, with the really odd feeling that I’d done this before pitching in about two thirds of the way through, which is when I remembered that Wednesdays are champ days. The feeling’s all the more odd because I wasn’t there this year and this is definitely my first encounter.
    Perhaps it’s just that the clues had a certain familiarity about them, as if assembled from someone’s collection of standard Times crossword clues.
    Our Chief of Men went in unparsed (statesmen, 6,8, beginning with O), but everything else properly solved, with a smile at poor Theresa’s residence (and current experience), and, for once, the CD for the bookie.
    BAPTISE is that rarity, an -ise that looks as if it really should be an -ize, much the more common usage.
    Pleasant, friendly commentary, for which many thanks, Pip.
  11. Rattled through this in 12 minutes, to my surprise. Inspired by the preamble perhaps I biffed quite a few, unusual for me.
    Thanks for the blog Pip and for the mullet link .. it seems clear that Guardian readers have no clue. The OED says “Origin uncertain. Apparently coined, and certainly popularized, by U.S. hip-hop group the Beastie Boys” .. and Wikipedia can do no better than to quote the same. Good work by the Beastie Boys, to be cited in the OED.
    As far as claret is concerned, its origins are obscure mainly because it is a very old word indeed; the first OED quotations dates from 1396. The latin for “clear” is clarus and as with clairette, is the root source of the word, though the meaning has shifted more than once.

    Edited at 2018-12-12 08:57 am (UTC)

  12. Given I’d seen this at the TCC and still took 17:01 today I’m not filled with confidence! I did spend much of the time today on my LOI BRUTE, which I just couldn’t see the definition for. On the plus side I did manage to spell IGUANODON right, having gone for IGUANADON on the last two occasions I saw it.
  13. 26 minutes, which I think is the closest I’ve ever come to a competition time for a competition puzzle. A good start to the day! Enjoyed a few along the way, 8d TETHER standing out for me.

    No completely unknown vocab, though I only recognised “inro” rather than being able to define it. FOI 1a GUM ARABIC LOI 15d WINEPRESS.

  14. …but even so, 24 minutes, my best on the Championship puzzles, so not a GIGAFLOP. LOI TINGE after BRUTE seen, once RUT dawned on me. That approach was a bit subtle for me. Did not parse WINE PRESS, so fingers remained crossed. COD to TURF ACCOUNTANT, the odds and sods brilliantly pithy. Even at my best, I’m still too slow though. Thank you Pip and setter.
  15. 17:48. Confirmation of my sense after solving last week’s that I was in the right prelim. I found this very hard. Nothing in particular held me up: there were just lots of clues containing pennies that were somehow very reluctant to drop.
    One I struggled with was WINEPRESS: both because I don’t remember seeing it as a single word before (it’s in Collins, I checked), and because it seems odd to describe a tool used in the making of something as its ‘source’. Is a cake tin the source of a cake? I suppose so in so far as the cake comes out of it, but still.
    The origin of the word CLARET is Clairet, a dark-coloured rosé from the Bordeaux area which you can still buy.
  16. 33 mins. Quite a lot of it went in fairly easily. But I got fuddled by the spelling of A CAP(P)ELLA so was loth to write it in, and had WINEPOUND (where imported wine is stored pending payment of excise duty, surely?) for a while. Didn’t know ‘inro’ but biffed anyway. And I biffed TETHER, quite unable to work out what on earth an own goal had to do with it. IGUANODON has cropped up fairly recently in the Times Cryptic and was still available in short-term recall — and droppings=GUANO was immediately apparent. Loved the bookie clue. And I admired the misdirection of an apparent plural solution (‘least costly beds’) for STEERAGE. Lots of good stuff in this one and most enjoyable.
    As, indeed, was the blog: thanks, Pip.
  17. 24:36 A good time ruined by the inordinate amount of time needed to see BRUTE and the 15/23 combo. Much staring at trees hoping to spot wood involved in all three.
  18. ….I ripped through this pretty quickly, but stopped dead at the PERISCOPE/WINEPRESS crosser, and moved on to the next puzzle. On coming back, I picked up PERISCOPE, and biffed WINEPRESS (I yet again failed to spot “by=x”).

    FOI GUM ARABIC
    LOI WINEPRESS
    COD TURF ACCOUNTANT
    TIME N/A

  19. So still in with a chance of finishing the three within the hour, although mikeosborne’s comment about the next one doesn’t inspire much confidence. Found this much more straightforward than last week with more than half the across clues going in on first pass. Same reservation about WINEPRESS (a source of grape juice maybe, but not of wine) and same thought about IGUANODON as I wrote it in.
    1. When making red wine the pressing happens after fermentation so what comes out is wine. I still think it’s odd to call it the source though, particularly as in some cases a press isn’t used at all.
      1. Thanks for that. Clearly I should consult Wikipedia before exposing my ignorance in future. It did cross my mind at the time that they would need to put the skins back in the mix!
        1. Indeed. If you press red grapes and ferment the resulting juice you get white wine. Most champagne is made at least partly like this (from pinot noir and pinot meunier, which are red grapes). Most of the wine in a bottle of red (including CLARET) isn’t pressed at all though: you just turn a tap in the vat and it runs out. The winemaker might press what’s left and add some of that to the wine but not necessarily.

          Edited at 2018-12-12 01:56 pm (UTC)

        1. Et alors? It’s still odd to describe a piece of equipment that a small proportion of the end product goes through as ‘a’ source. If I make a salad with a mixture of whole tomatoes and chopped tomatoes is my knife ‘a’ source of the salad?
          1. Ha ha. Well, it’s a bit hard to imagine the salad “coming out” of the knife…
            Merriam-Webster has “a point of origin or procurement“ (emphasis added); and Cambridge, “something or someone that causes or produces something, or is the origin of it”; which is similar to these entries from Collins: “The source of something is the person, place, or thing which you get it from” and “any person, place, or thing by which something is supplied”; but the specifically British definitions on that Collins page are more insistent that the word indicates primary genesis, as is Chambers: “the place, thing, person, circumstance, etc that something begins or develops from; the origin.”
            But even if all wine is not made with a press, you—who clearly know volumes more about wine making than I do—acknowledge that it is indeed wine that comes out of the press in the making of red wine. And yes, the process would not be complete, but things can have multiple sources.
                1. In the case of red wine (which is what CLARET is) grapes and their juice are fermented, producing wine mixed with the rest of the fruit. Most of the wine is simply drained off (this is called ‘free run wine’), leaving a wet mess of wine and grape residue. Sometimes this mixture is then pressed to get more of the liquid out of it. The resulting liquid (‘press wine’) may or may not then be mixed with the free-run wine, depending on the quality of it and the kind of wine you’re trying to make (the press wine will have quite different characteristics to the free-run wine).
                  Perhaps a closer analogy would be a steak tartare made from a mixture of chopped and minced beef. This is like describing the mincer as the (or a) ‘source’ of your steak tartare. It’s kind of a true in a way (some of the beef came out of the mixture) but it’s odd when the whole dish is made from the same piece of beef.
                  I don’t really mind it, actually: it’s close enough for crossword purposes and I wouldn’t expect setters to think beyond ‘wine comes out of a WINEPRESS’. My excessive wine geekery just meant that it would never occur to me that ‘source of wine’ might indicate WINEPRESS, so I found the clue difficult to solve and then a bit odd once I had.
                  1. Well, I’ve enjoyed the oenological seminar!
                    We are only an hour and a half from the office holiday party here. But I will be knocking back bourbon.
                    Cheers!
                    1. Just to flog this dead horse a little more, it didn’t help that the clue refers to CLARET. What comes out of a WINEPRESS in Bordeaux is wine, but it only becomes CLARET when it is in a bottle and being drunk by an Englishman.
                      Cheers!
  20. I was amazed to complete this in 13:28, which is close to a PB for me. The NW flew in as I read the clues and the NE followed. I slowed down slightly down under, but got moving again with the amusing TURF ACCOUNTANT. CLARET then gave me an entry to the rest of the lower half. Nice puzzle, but an aberration. I won’t be trying for the Championships just yet! Thanks setter and Pip.
  21. I did have a little inner smile when this came up, as I misspelt when it appeared in the daily a few weeks ago and I vowed to remember it. The smile was because, for once, I actually did.

    Edited at 2018-12-12 11:03 am (UTC)

    1. Same here! In fact I’ve spelled it wrong a few times. I still wasn’t sufficiently confident not to check the wordplay though.

      Edited at 2018-12-12 11:07 am (UTC)

        1. For some reason, it’s one of those words where I can remember where I first learned it—the eponymous Dr. No is the operator of a guano mine.
            1. Same experience, made the more embarrassing by making it on a day I was set to blog, so had to own up to it
  22. I’ve certainly had trouble with this in the past but the setter was generous here. The way I remember it (now) is to think of Peter Sellers as Group Captain Mandrake addressing Kennan Wynn as Colonel Bat Guano (if that really is your name). 16.16 along with last week’s 23 and change is unlikely to get me in under the hour if next week’s is the brute as advertised. Good puzzle.
  24. Good to see HEREFORD getting a mention. A Texan once said to me – on seeing the tiny bulls on my HRFC tie – “oh, you have HERFERDS in England too?”
    COD definitely the Odds & Sods bookie at 17a.
    If there was just ONE puzzle to do in 60 minutes I might have a chance.
    Thanks setter & Pip.
  25. This one clearly suited me (with the exception of BRUTE, so I’m glad to see it wasn’t just me – until the penny dropped, there seemed to be far too many words in the clue to create an answer of just 5 letters…)

    IGUANODON could have been a nastier trap if I hadn’t got it wrong on a previous occasion, so it’s one of those words where I now look at the parsing very carefully to make sure I’m remembering the right vowel.

    P.S. Still found time to enjoy some very nice touches here, notably the bookie.

    Edited at 2018-12-12 12:22 pm (UTC)

  26. 17′ 14”, with at least four minutes on B-U-E. Once again I am tempted to try to enter next year, then I remember the stress….. WINEPRESS biffed, liked GIGAFLOP.

    Thanks pip and setter.

  27. For the first time did one of these in less than 20, only to see I miswrote Flatten as Flayten. Still, as I would not have made the mistake with a pen I feel content. LOI Tinge, and tbh it was a bit of a punt, though I now see it of course. Definitely seen that Roast Beef = Pan Grouse one before.
  28. Just solved this again, albeit at a leisurely pace and pausing to spoon soup into my mouth, and took longer than on the day so adrenaline must have played a part then.

    Any road up, in doing so I was reminded what a great clue TURF ACCOUNTANT was and also that my first entry for 16 was ETAGERES, which had all the right letters, is an actual word and could easily mean summat like cheap uncomfortable bench seats on the SNCF.

  29. Speaking of The Guardian, today’s Puck puzzle is a firm-but-fair number that took me an hour and ten, so for anyone with time on their hands after this one…
  30. I was bang on the wavelength here, 8:29 with the last one in (with crossed fingers) being BRUTE.
  31. Completed this, then enjoyed coming to find out the whys and wherefores. Had I but thought a second that Plato’s character was a Greek letter (duh) would have been a mite quicker. Finished in the SE had WINEPRESS and just biffed it in the end without working out why, similarly with PERISCOPE.
  32. I agree with those who found this easier than last week’s. I didn’t time it, but I did generally go straight through, held up only at my LOI, which was BRUTE, because the definition part didn’t exactly mesh right away. The use of ‘express’ for ‘show’ wasn’t the clearest connection either, especially as I was fooled once again by not seeing the significance of ‘by’ in the wordplay. Regards.
  33. 13 mins for me, so 2 mins easier than last week & c1min slower than each of the 3 in the first prelim. Though none of the puzzles felt especially easy whilst solving they’ve all fallen in fairly rapid times for me – presumably the final puzzles will be a significant step up.
  34. DNF. Oh dear! I had most of this done in 45mins but for the life of me couldn’t see the very obvious in retrospect botanic at 4dn, just bamboozled by the clue and couldn’t see the wood for the trees. I got 12ac without appreciating the reverse espalier. I was another whose first effort at 16dn was etageres, I think because someone here mentioned it recently as a regular feature of puzzles past, along with Tiepolo and Beerbohm-Tree. Big ticks at that sort of rivet in 10ac, flat ten, baptise and brute for me. In this context my first thought regarding brute was of the famous 1948 radio debate between Bertrand Russell and Father Frederick Copleston on the existence of god and Russell’s position that the universe is just there, a brute, unintelligible fact. COD 17ac.
  35. At 56 mins and with quite a few corrections before I got the ‘Congratulations’ I think I will stick with the QC. Thanks for the blog pip. I biffed so many I have lost count.

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