Times 27220 – advantage setter

Author   glhPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Time: 20:34, but with two whopping errors, one was a guess that came to me just as I hit submit, so I knew it wasn’t going to be correct, the other was a word I had heard of but not seen spelled, and it of course was clued as an anagram so I went for the wrong one. I don’t know why, but I was so far from the setter’s wavelength that even the easier ones took far longer than usual today.

I suspect I won’t be the only person getting the wrong spelling on 14 down, it just doesn’t look right. The puzzle is also a Z away from being a pangram.

So much as I can explain these, the first definition in each clue is underlined.

Away we go…

Across
1 Old US soldier sees little point apprehending old woman (9)
MINUTEMAN – MINUTE(little), N(point on a compass), surrounding MA(old woman, appropriate for an American clue). Soldier from the US war of Independence
6 Fluff caught in back of the hoover, first of all (5)
BOTCH – C(caught) in the first letters of Back Of The Hoover
9 Theologian seeing beyond a child of five (7)
AQUINAS – AS(seeing) after A, QUIN(one of five children)
10 Not quite sufficient grounds for consuming dull, starchy food (7)
BASMATI – BASI(s) (sufficient grounds for) containing MAT(dull)
11 For Kaiser Wilhelm I, men bringing fabulous flower (5)
ICHOR – ICH(I in German), OR(men) and the flower is the blood of the Gods
12 Fair point! (9)
OBJECTIVE – double definition
14 What’s the most common feature of selfless relative? (3)
SIS – What’s the most common letter in SELFLESS? S IS! I agonized over this one forever
15 See red and green lasso flying around ring (4,4,3)
LOSE ONES RAG – anagram of GREEN,LASSO surrounding O(ring)
17 Producing pants soldiers must wear having just finished washing? (3,2,6)
OUT OF BREATH – RE(soldiers) inside OUT OF BATH(just finished washing). Producing pants as in panting
19 Result of being not prepared to back away? (3)
WAR – RAW(not being prepared) reversed
20 Warning to post-holder sporting odd bonnet (2,3,4)
DO NOT BEND – anagram of ODD,BONNET
22 Irish county taking odd returnees from Sligo jail (5)
LAOIS – alternating letters reversed from SlIgO jAiL – don’t think I’ve seen this county in a crossword before, usually it is Cork, Kerry or Sligo
24 Cricketer’s support to decline (3,4)
LEG SLIP – LEG(support) next to SLIP(decline). Not really a cricketer, but a rarely-used fielding position in cricket.
26 Light blue trousers to wear away (7)
SKETCHY – SKY blue surrounding ETCH(wear away). Light as in slight, flimsy
27 Copy of Times — I hesitate to say old Times (5)
XEROX – X(times, multiplied by), ER(I hesitate to say), O(old), X(another times)
28 One pondering wet-rot a tidemark shows having returned (9)
MEDITATOR – hidden reversed in wet-ROT A TIDEMark

Down
1 Seriously wound up one in US resort (5)
MIAMI – MAIM(seriously wound), I(one) all reversed
2 Ducks gunshot fired (7)
NOUGHTS – anagram of GUNSHOT – a duck is a score of zero in cricket (I think it is my List B average)
3 Sign for the staff meaning rent has been reduced (5,4)
TENOR CLEF – TENOR(meaning) and CLEFT(rent) shortened
4 Wrongly interpret notes: study’s genuine (11)
MISCONSTRUE – MIS(musical notes), CON’S(study’s), TRUE(genuine)
5 Pick up new rating (3)
NAB – N(new), AB(rating, sailor)
6 Vanilla ice, shrinking by degrees (5)
BASIC – IC(e) after BAS (Bachelor of Arts degrees)
7 Watering more seeds planted in a row (7)
TEARIER – EAR(seeds of corn) in a TIER, it is eyes that are watering more
8 Freudian concept, as espoused by fellow German philosopher (9)
HEIDEGGER – the Freudian concept is the ID, then EG(as), all inside HE(fellow), GER(German)
13 After broadcast, see radio DJ quietly threatened (11)
JEOPARDISED – anagram of SEE,RADIO,DJ,P(quietly)
14 Six pound fifty in change? (9)
SPONDULIX – this was the one I couldn’t spell. Anagram of SIX,POUND,L(50). American slang for money, and I now know it isn’t spelled SPONDILUX
16 Ancient character tipped three times to become king (9)
ETHELBERT – ETH(ancient character) then TREBLE(three times) reversed. Names of kings of Kent and Wessex.
18 Beat time in the end for American singer (7)
TANAGER – TAN(beat), AGE(time) and then the last letter of foR
19 Print taken from court by policeman on duty — case dismissed (7)
WOODCUT – WOO(court), DC(Detective Constable, policeman) then the inside of dUTy
21 Message to divulge verbally sometime (5)
TELEX – sounds like TELL(divulge), EX-(former, sometime)
23 Pitcher: you must stop second home run (5)
SHYER – YE(you) inside S(second), HR(home run) – pitcher being thrower here
25 Female head vacating unpopular post? (3)
PAM – remove the top from a SPAM posting

59 comments on “Times 27220 – advantage setter”

  1. Wow, that was tough and this puzzle took forever, LOI finally being SHYER, which had occurred to me far earlier, but the form of the word looks just too unusual to be convincing until the end. And I also thought SPONDULIX ended in -icks, a word my father often used, but no one else as far as I recall. Time off the charts. Regards.
  2. I needed about an hour for this. Tough but enjoyable.1ac was unfamiliar and not helped by having minor clef in at 3dn for a while. Plenty of originality and invention. I liked the S is device at 14ac, the producing pants at 17ac, 27ac but COD to the spondulix at 14dn, super clue.
  3. A bit like pulling teeth, and unnecessarily hard, but at least it was more up to standard. Apart from a completely unnecessary and misleading ‘a’ in 7d. And still don’t get the parsing for 18d- what are we supposed to do with the ‘in the end’ bit? The ‘r’ isn’t ‘in’ anything, and nor is it precisely indicated as an ‘end’ in the clue.
    1. Beat = TAN
      Time = AGE
      In the end for = R (last letter of for)

      Not straightforward, but then neither was the rest of the puzzle.

  5. I don’t know how I managed to finish this, since my correct guesses were all for the wrong reasons (well, no, LAOIS was for the right reason). It took an hour and a half. I preferred SPONDULIX over spondilux because I thought Latin would be likely to. I didn’t really parse TENOR CLEF and HR for home runs is nothing compared to LEG SLIP for us Yanks. But many other clues were fair and very clever.
  6. Finishing this has been my only triumph in a day that, otherwise, makes the Brexit negotiations look like a raging success. LEG SLIP, TANAGER and ETHELBERT came from the old coffee jar of spare words that I keep in case they come in handy. For HEIDEGGER, I am once again indebted to Monty Python’s Philosophers’ Song, which seems to contain everything one needs to know about philosophy. SPONDULIX was no real problem since no other arrangement of letters makes the right sound. Several went in unparsed (“home run” – seriously?), or only vaguely parsed.

    Phew. I feel as if I have indeed filled the unforgiving hour with sixty seconds worth of distance run.

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