Times 27231 – TCC Final, puzzle 1. Knocked out on Boxing Day.

Author   piquetPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Well, what a fine test, even if it required some obscure general knowledge or inspired guesswork if that knowledge was lacking; in my case, it was, at 12a. I knocked out the left hand side in a half-respectable twenty minutes or so, but floundered to a finish in something nearer fifty. I then had to check 12a to see if it was a word and also go to Wiki to bone up on the tax-resenters at 21a. I’d heard of these people – the term has arisen again in the context of the gilets jaunes carry-on currently besieging our roundabouts here – but I needed to be sure.
I see that on the day 17 of 24 clever people finished this correctly; impressive, and clearly this wasn’t going to be the hardest offering in the final. Well done to all who polished it off. I suffered a technical knockout by using an aid for 12a.
Some great clues here, I think 25a gets my CoD vote. Or maybe 15d. Happy St. Stephen’s Day!

Across
1 Book a restaurant within reach (3-2-4)
GET-AT-ABLE – when you book a resto, you GET A TABLE.
6 Gets less energy to contribute to enthusiasms (5)
FADES – FADS are enthusiasms, insert E.
9 Lighter verse included after a discussion (7)
PALAVER – PALER = lighter, introduce A V(erse). I thought a palaver was just a fuss, but the dictionary says “prolonged and tedious fuss or discussion.”
10 Man had to welcome relative that’s regularly visited (7)
HAUNTED – HE’D = man had, introduce your AUNT.
11 Con man’s very fine, getting rid of policeman (5)
DUPER – Very fine would be super duper, kill off the Super(intendent).
12 A feature on plain canopy (9)
BALDACHIN – BALD = plain, A CHIN = a feature. The sort of ornate canopy apparently that sits over a Papal throne or an altar, unknown territory to a chap like me.
13 Dictionaries include papyrus here, at a premium (5,3)
ABOVE PAR – I biffed then stared at this for too long before seeing the obvious parsing. Dictionaries are alphabetical and papyrus comes just before par. Doh!
14 Russian family always is accommodating (4)
ILYA – Name for a Russian chap, hidden in FAM(ILY A)LWAYS. Made famous in the sixties by the character ILYA KURYAKIN, the sidekick to Robert Vaughn played by David McCallum in The Man from U.N.C.L.E. In the day, around 1968, I was said to closely resemble this Ilya, who was also a babe magnet. Signed photos on request.
17 For audience interpret oboe part (4)
REED – Sounds like READ = interpret.
18 Dad and when he’s remunerated: not a charitable occasion (5,3)
POPPY DAY – I like these clues where the definition is actually the opposite of what the surface suggests. POP = Dad, then PAY DAY loses its A (when he’s remunerated, not A).
21 Resenter of taxes paid nothing, just furious (9)
POUJADIST – I realised this was an anagram, (PAID O JUST)* when I saw ‘furious’. The term surfaced again recently in the context of the current protest movement sweeping through France, so was easier to hit upon; I’m not going to explain it but can direct you here if you’re curious.
22 Sounding affected by cold, maybe left a clinic from the back (5)
NASAL – Reverse all of: L A SAN.
24 Tried to influence lout, one not up yet? (7)
LOBBIED – LOB is an archaic word for a lazy lout. Then I is in BED so not up yet.
25 Nothing but a drop of the hard stuff that may greet one (3,4)
ALL HAIL – No rain, only the harder stuff i.e. hail. Very droll.
26 Peacock’s extremely short mating period (5)
STRUT – ST = extremes of ShorT, RUT = mating period.
27 Notice about temperature in ship dangerous to hands? (9)
SPLINTERY – A double wrap-around job. T goes into LINER then LINTER goes into SPY = notice.

Down
1 Looked stunned as thong finally taken off (5)
GAPED – G = thong finally, APED = imitated, taken off.
2 A personal detail another used to get you to pick up? (9,6)
TELEPHONE NUMBER – Seems to me this is just a cryptic definition, although it took me a while to accept there wasn’t something else going on. Perhaps there is.
3 Landlord about to declare payment going up (8)
TAVERNER – Payment = RENT, going up = TNER, insert AVER = declare.
4 Robber’s group imprisoned? (8)
BARABBAS – I thought Barabbas was more guilty of murder and insurrection than robbery, and sources suggest probably a parable figure invented by Mark when writing his Gospel, as it seems unlikely Pilate would have released such an infamous anti-Roman criminal on the crowd’s whim without risking his own skin. However; the clue has ABBA the Swedish group inserted into BARS hence imprisoned.
5 Puff perhaps, now apparently unhealthy? (6)
EXHALE – HALE = healthy, so if you’re EX HALE you might now be unhealthy.
6 Like some of Bach’s music including runs, no way extravagant (6)
FRUGAL – As I write this I’m listening to JSB’s Musical Offering, much of which is FUGAL, so include R for runs to get the answer.
7 Killer of wife smiled wickedly in repose (5,3,7)
DUTCH ELM DISEASE – This took me an age to see until I had all the checkers for the third word and DISEASE came to mind; DUTCH = wife, (SMILED)* then EASE = in repose. I kept trying anagrams of W SMILED to insert into a longer word for repose.
8 A little light covering garden may in the end become inactive (9)
SEDENTARY – STAR = a little light, Y = end of MAY, insert the garden of EDEN.
13 Car pool is relocated in classical site (9)
ACROPOLIS – (CAR POOL IS)*. My FOI, and I think seen before somewhere.
15 Skyline against one lake (8)
CONTRAIL – CONTRA = against, one = I, L(ake). Nice definition.
16 Sort of prison, basic, not one without walls (4-4)
OPEN-PLAN – OPEN is a sort of prison; PLAIN would be basic, loses its I = not one.
19 Cowcatcher in car, not the front, in the flipping rear! (6)
LARIAT – (C)AR goes inside TAIL reversed.
20 Curly marks, first piece of decoration in mosaic (6)
TILDES – TILES = mosaic, insert D(ecoration). The curly line placed over an N in Spanish.
23 Composer tending to relax you? (5)
LULLY – Could be a new entry into the ISIHAC Uxbridge Dictionary. Tending to lull you = lully. Jean-Baptiste Lully was a 17C Italian-born French composer who hung around the court of Louis XIV for a long time; his music isn’t bad at all.

48 comments on “Times 27231 – TCC Final, puzzle 1. Knocked out on Boxing Day.”

  1. After a half-hour, I gave up; couldn’t for the life of me figure out what to do with 13ac, and playing with the alphabet, as usual, failed to give me a clue, even though ABOVE A should have been helpful. Other than that, not too problematic. I had always thought PALAVER meant ‘parley’, although it’s not been used that way here so far as I can recall, so this time it was easy. DUTCH ELM DISEASE from the T_H and enumeration, then parsed. POUJADIST, which I somehow knew, from P IST. DNK OPEN (I gather this is what in the US we call a minimum security prison). LULLY took a while, as I couldn’t get past Liszt and Lehar; finally getting 27 did it. (We have another composer at 3d.) COD to any of 7d, 25ac, or of course 13ac. Do send me a picture of David McCullum, Pip.
  2. Slowish and steady through most of this and I was very pleased to work out the unknown POUJADIST from wordplay, but in the end I was unable to complete the LH quarter without one resort to aids by looking up synonyms for ‘plain’ to fit in front of -A,CHIN already in place at 12ac. The B checker then unlocked 4dn for me, and the other missing answers TAVERNER and PALAVER then fell into place to round things off.

    I’m not convinced that ‘discussion’ is sufficient definition of PALAVER to be entirely fair as it’s the long and tedious process that’s the salient point, and ‘discussion’ is just one example of what may be involved. It’s still perfectly possible for a palaver to take place without any discussion whatsoever.

    Also not entirely convinced by the wordplay at 4dn as to be imprisoned ABBA would need to be ‘behind BARS’ not within them.

    Edited at 2018-12-26 06:18 am (UTC)

    1. ODE has ‘(in Africa) a parley or improvised conference between two sides’ and gives as its original sense ‘a talk between tribespeople and traders’; the New Oxford American Dict. gives the same def, without ‘(in Africa)’, but marks it as dated. This is the sense I grew up with (having learned the word from a comic book, yet); I only learned the ‘tedious’ part when I first encountered it in a cryptic a while back.
  3. That was hard. I thought I’d managed it though, but I guessed where the letters of the tax-haters went wrong, never having heard of the word. I’d never heard of BALDACHIN either, nor LULLY, but those ones worked out.

    No problem with ABOVE PAR once I’d disabused myself of it being AFTER MNO or similar before I had many crossers. I was already on the right track.

    I didn’t know LOB (in that sense) either, but YOBBIED didn’t sound likely. The problem when you know the puzzle contains obscure words is you start to suspect obvious answers may be wrong. I don’t know if the compilers deliberately set traps for biffing over-hastily n the championships, but it wouldn’t surprise me at all.

  4. A handful of answers I saw before fathoming how to parse the clue… especially the one with the ancient parchment.
    A shame about the Barabbas mistake. I wasn’t sure who was meant until I thought of Abba.
  5. This took me just under a shambolic 90 minutes.

    23ac LOLLI was originally Italian I believe, but later in life Frenched-up his name damn him! (I used to be horrid)

    FOI 13dn ACROPOLIS

    LOI 6dn FRUGAL

    COD 7dn DUTCH ELM DISEASE

    WOD 21ac POUJADIST – Pierre Poujade was born in 1920 and died 2003 – une taxe reprobate who wanted une rebate (not sure about the m/f bits).

    Teensiest quibble – Ilya Kuryakin was played by David McCallum.

    Edited at 2018-12-26 07:23 am (UTC)

      1. It says McCullum above, not McCallum. But a bigger quibble is that he played ILLYA KURYAKIN so not spelt the same as in the crossword.

        My name gets spelt wrong as often as right. In France, it was usually impossible to get them not to put an “a” in. I’d say “M” “C” and they’d write “Mac” and I’d say there’s no “A” and they’d say “c’est pas possible” and I’d point out there’s no “A” in “McDonalds” (of which there are a lot in France).

        McGhee was even worse. “M” “C” “G” “H” “c’est pas du tout possible”.

        Edited at 2018-12-26 08:08 am (UTC)

        1. Apologies to H and all, I did indeed spell the actor McCallum not McCallum.

          As far as Ilya v Illya goes, this seems debatable. The Russian Илия́ transliterates as Ilya. In Ukrainian, it would be the same in Cyrillic but apparently translits. as Illya. Apparently the character Kuryakin was a polymath, with an undergraduate degree from a university in Tbilisi, Georgia, which he said on screen was in the Ukraine! And then a Masters from the Sorbonne and a Ph.D. from Cambridge in quantum mechanics! If we assume he was a Ukrainian Georgian then I can go along with Illya, although Wiki says both are acceptable forms of Илия́.

          As far as Mc v Mac goes, I agree with you Paul, the French can’t hack this, I have friends here in the golf club called McKellar and also O’Brien, who appear on the FFG database as Mackellar and Obrien every time.

            3. and if you want to have fun, try and get a Frenchman to pronounce Chicken McNugget. Chez McDo they would just say “une boite de neuf” and avoid the problem.
          3. Another oddity was that they consider Mc (or Mac) to e a prefix like de. So just as De Havilland is listed under H in lists of names (like on Minitel, which was the phone book during the years I lived in France) and so, say, McDonald was listed under Donald, so nobody could ever find it. In the days of printed phone booksi in the UK, all the Mcs and Macs were listed as if they were Mac, which was sensible.
        2. I also have a surname that is spelled wrong more often than not. I once arrived for a meeting and told the receptionist my name: DavISS, D-A-V-I-S. She picked up the phone and said ‘mr DavEEEZ is here’.
  6. So no finals for me. J & D wrong way round in Poujadist, never heard of. Snap with Paul above on most other NHOs: Lully, baldachin, lob, taverner but managed to get them from the cyrptics, so kudos to the setter. Palaver was fine for me, Barabbas also – vaguely remembered as a robber, and ‘confined by’ bars is close enough.
  7. An interesting point about the BARABBAS clue because I think one of my vetters made the same point about “behind bars”. However, one may just as surely be imprisoned “within” bars (eg of a cage) , the expression “behind bars” notwithstanding.

    All our main dictionaries give “discussion” or “conference” as a definition for PALAVER

  8. After a pint or three at The George, I sat at the back and had a go at this and the other 2 while our super-solvers did them for real, and finished them later on the train home. Doing this again, I remembered I had to check on POUJADIST afterwards and hadn’t come across LOB for lout before. Rather oddly, GET-AT-ABLE came up in the Saturday Cryptic on the day of the final. I wonder how many of the Grand Finalists had done that puzzle as part of their warm-up on the day?
  9. An hour and thirteen, but I got there in the end, long after I’d finished the morning’s Christmassy cherry and amaretto jam on toast. I did indeed have to take some inspired guesses for BALDACHIN, (the apparently-maligned “bandit”) BARABBAS and LOI POUJADIST. Very much enjoyed WOD 27a SPLINTERY and the “skyline” definition for 15d, among other high points.

    Anyway. Is it too early to see if yesterday’s leftover roast potatoes are still crispy?

  10. 70 minutes plus after the unexpected arrival of papers and with the rest of the family still not surfaced. Several biffs including the unknown BALDACHIN, CONTRAIL and LULLY. I thought Putin’s early KGB photo on display recently made him look just like Ilya Kuryakin, Pip. Is there something we should be told? COD to GET-AT-ABLE as it was one of the few clues that was. Have a bash at Aston Villa’s political crossword billed separately by Keriothe on LJ. It’s great fun. Thank you Pip and setter.
  11. ….the setter won the war. Actually all three of them did. My failure to pick up on Abba left BARABBAS unentered on the day. It was the only miss on this puzzle.

    DNK CONTRAIL or POUJADIST, and also the usage of “lob” was new to me, but was happy to get all three of those clues correct.

    FOI GET-AT-ABLE (and I hadn’t seen the day’s paper)
    LOI N/A
    COD ABOVE PAR

    If you think THIS was tough, the other two are worse….

  12. Similar experience to Pip – a bit of a struggle at times but got there eventually

    POUJADIST would have presented problems but for recent French fracas. BARABBAS a Pavlovian reaction to robber which enabled BALDACHIN to be biffed. LULLY dredged from memory banks

    Not my favourite puzzle

  13. Rather a musical one with Lully, Taverner and Bach (Barabbas comes in one of his oratorios) not to mention Kern (I’ve told every little star) and the oboe. I just about remembered Poujadism from some reference to Trump and his fans in the NYTimes back when we still thought he was a very long shot. I haven’t really been following the gilets jaunes, we’ve got enough trouble here. Yes, I thought of you as Ilya Pip. A very unchampionly 32.08
  14. The record states that I had 5 missing or wrong in this puzzle on the day but I can’t remember which they were. Poujadist and baldachin are likely candidates.
    1. Gave up on this after a fair start – too much like hard work , at least for Boxing Day. But thought I’d mention an experience of ‘palaver’ opposite to Pip’s: teaching T.S.Eliot’s ‘Cape Ann’ to sixth-formers some years ago, we were at odds over the last line, ‘The palaver is finished’. They had no idea of Eliot’s meaning, I none of theirs, ‘fuss’, ‘ado’. Lovely poem by the way.
  15. Got BALDACHIN, but not LULLY or POUJADIST. Stopped after 45′, now completely convinced the Championship would not be for me. Liked BARABBAS, despite the inaccuracy. And there is indeed no other record of such a pardoning custom.

    Thanks pip and setter.

  16. I thought I recognized it, and sure enough, in Midsummer Night’s Dream a fairy says to Puck, “Farewell, thou lob of spirits …”
  17. I took over an hour to DNF, my errors being poudajist, splinters and lulls. I was quite pleased to have worked out as much of this as I did. It certainly felt like a puzzle designed to distinguish solvers at the very elite level.
  18. Well over championship time at 26 minutes, with unknown POUJADIST entered as best guess. With LOB for lout also unknown, I was seriously questioning NUMBER for 2d, though what else is a mystery.
    Though BARABBAS took a while to emerge from the holding cell, his definition as robber is impeccably drawn from John’s gospel, given the most conventional meaning of the koine ληστης. Of course, it’s possible to debate the accuracy or reliability of the account, but for our purposes, it matters only that it’s in the story.
  19. No official time recorded, as I initially did these at the back of the room on the day (full disclosure, the word “did” is doing a lot of heavy lifting there) and filled in the blanks after getting home later that weekend. Though I can’t now remember every detail, if I’d been at the front of the room, I’d have been among the 7 who didn’t finish this one, as I know I didn’t get the well-concealed wife-killer inside the hour, and I’d never knowingly encountered the resentful Frenchman, so I suspect that also only went in post-dated.

    1ac would have been trickier if it hadn’t coincidentally appeared in the puzzle in the paper on the day of the championships. I wonder how many of the top contenders, who thought they were already likely to tackle six puzzles in the next few hours, also did that one as a warm-up?

  20. Three hours and a bit in front of the telly – Poirot, Bargain Hunt, Antiques, Top Gear and a few other bits and bobs. Ended up only failing on POUJADIST which I’d never heard of, so I just bunged in ‘pluralist’ as a personal protest at the two anagram possibilities, neither of which seemed to make any sense.

    ILYA Nutcrackin – two L’s or one, I remember him well.

    Thanks to blogger and setter

  21. I wouldn’t have survived the competition with BALDACHIN, POUJADIST & LULLY requiring reference/confirmation. Quite a tough nut which took almost an hour.
  22. I didn’t finish this on the day but with 28 correct answers I got significantly closer than either of the other two puzzles.
    I solved this online yesterday, and whilst I didn’t consciously remember much of it I finished it in under 11 minutes. So clearly the unconscious mind remembers a lot of the solving process, but somehow the two I couldn’t crack on the day (I can’t remember which) caused me no problems at all this time round. Make of that what you will.
    Oh, and apologies for registering an artificial neutrino time. I should have submitted without leaderboard, but, well, I didn’t.
  23. No championships for me. Never heard of POUJADIST and looked it up. Clearly I had most of the checking letters in already, but it was to be a dead guess as to where the rest went, especially that pesky ‘J’, so I threw in the towel. Everything else still took around 35 minutes. Regards.
  24. I was feeling at less than my brightest when I started this puzzle after arriving home from the Christmas festivities, but ploughed on until the anagramatical possibilities of (paid o just)* told me that I would need a miracle. I rearranged the letters until they formed PAJOUDIST and looked that up. Google then informed me that I meant POUJADIST. Apart from that, I managed to solve the puzzle in 71:34, my LOI being ABOVE PAR, which, as I was feeling BELOW PAR, cheered me up immensely, when it turned out I’d parsed it correctly. ILYA was my FOI, followed by REED, so it was a very slow start. I did manage an inspired guess at BARABBAS, which I then promptly parsed. That allowed me to guess BALD for plain and the canopy was unfurled. THE SE succumbed first, and the NW held out the longest. Tough stuff. Thanks setter and Pip.
  25. Harder than hard, but I suppose it’s a puzzle designed to find the champion solver, so few grumps from me-although I would be rather dismayed if puzzles like this turned up on a regular basis. I did find myself getting a little irritated regarding contrail. Did the setter mean ‘sky line’-ie a ‘line in the sky’-as opposed to ‘skyline’? The latter clearly has a completely different meaning, which I don’t think relates to the solution? Or am I missing something? (Mr Grumpy)
    1. I think you have it exactly right Mr Grumpy: I wouldn’t expect to see a clue like that for POUJADIST in the daily puzzle but at this level it seems fair enough.
      I take your point about ‘skyline’. As I hadn’t the faintest idea what a CONTRAIL was I followed the wordplay and it didn’t bother me in the slightest.
  26. DNF. But it was a tough puzzle – Lully and Poujadist indeed! I do remember Ilya Kuryakin though.
  27. Can someone explain why it’s Above Par? If dictionaries include papyrus here, then surely this is Below Par! What am I missing? TIA
  28. Thank you, Pip. I came to your blog a day late. I had 8 queries that needed answering which you have done succesfully!
    Are you a ‘gilet-jaun-iste’?! I think I would be hacked off, too, if I were still there and paying a much higher price for diesel for our Peugeot 308SW.
  29. No chance. Failed on POUJADIST, having rejected all conceivable anagrams as ludicrous; I plumped for “pluralist” for want of anything plausible. BALDACHIN and BARABBAS – nope.
  30. My best on a competition puzzle. Would have been 20, but for Above Par. Lovely deceptive clue
  31. Inconvenienced for long enough to comment this late, but I found it very hard to go past BLISS for 23d!

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