Times 27247 – “…and you’ve been caught!”

Author   vinyl1Posted on Categories Daily Cryptic

Time: 27 minutes
Music: The Royal Ballet, Gala Performances, Ansermet

I don’t like to be too critical, but this was a rather unsatisfactory puzzle.   Some of the clues were a bit on the forced side, and while it was not particulary hard, a solver won’t have the confidence that the answer is right that would characterize a really good cryptic.  Instead, you’re left pondering whether there’s something wrong with the clue, or you just don’t get it.  In the blog, I’m going to have to speak frankly and point out the clues that just don’t work.

Tonight’s music is one of the most famous audiophile recordings of all time, a masterpiece from the Decca recording team.   Clean originals sell for thousands of dollars, but I am playing the 180-gram reissue that anyone can buy.

Across
1 Singer to sing endlessly, entertaining you and me (6)
CARUSO – CAR(US)O[l].   I very nearly biffed ‘thrush’, which does have ‘us’ in it but is otherwise impossible.
4 Large number with time to get therapeutic treatment (7)
MASSAGE – MASS + AGE, I see we’re keeping it clean here…
9 Animal gripped by hunger ate lots (5)
RATEL –  hidden in [hunge]R ATE L[ots], an animal whose native habitat is US crosswords.
10 Member of guild, fellow suffering a hangover? (9)
LIVERYMAN – LIVER-Y MAN, geddit?
11 A monarch heard one making accusation (9)
ARRAIGNER – sounds like A REIGNER, a rather forced word.
12 Group with holy books, including cardinal (5)
NONET – N(ONE)T, where the cardinal is a cardinal number, and probably the firsr one you think of.
13 Sort to get words on to paper? (4)
TYPE – double definition, neither particularly cryptic.
14 Contracted publicity person being engaged impressed again? (10)
REPRODUCED – RE(PRO)DUCED.  If this is the correct parsing, a problematic clue.   A ‘publicity person’ brings to mind a PR man, but apparently ‘pro’ is required.   Or is this a PR O – in which case how is O a person? Yes, a P.R.O. is a Public Relations Officer – I once knew this, but evidently I have forgotten is again.  The literal evidently alludes to the reprinting of a book, but even the first printing involves reproduction.
18 The old man, deserter, is within month wanting secession (10)
SEPARATIST – SE(PA RAT IS)T.   Well, that’s the best I could do.   The month should probably be SEPT, but the ‘P’ is already taken.   As far as I know, SET is not a valid abbvreviation for September or any other month.
20 Female attached to Henry — one of six better ones for him? (4)
HALF – HAL + F.   The literal is highly allusive, and evidently refers to ‘six of one, half a dozen of the other’, but how so is not quite evident.
23 Very brief unnamed communications — MPs will have got them (5)
VOTES – V + [n] OTES.
24 One may need skill to interrupt excessive drinking session (9)
BARTENDER – B(ART)ENDER, an &lit, and a really top-quality clue.
25 Feature of many a wedding vehicle followed by people (9)
CARNATION –  CAR + NATION, a cleverly disguised chestnut.
26 Times man, one who could produce lyrical lines (5)
BYRON – BY + RON, our man of the day.
27 During breaks office assistant’s provided meals (7)
REPASTS – RE(PA)STS, where, unforunately PA is the abbreviation for Personal Assistant, part of which appears in the clue.
28 Deny access to Tyneside region? (6)
NEGATE – N.E. GATE, which should let you into the Northeast, if you wish to go there.
Down
1 Foreign author’s verse can’t, if translated (9)
CERVANTES – Anagram of VERSE CAN’T.
2 Some black liquid knocked over — one’s foot may get stuck in it (3-4)
RAT-TRAP – PART TAR upside down.
3 Plant needs fluid, one sinking slightly (6)
SALVIA – SALIVA with the I moved down.
4 Leader of meeting regarding someone who brings forward proposal (5)
MOVER – M[eeting] + OVER
5 Piece of music composed enthrals a daughter (8)
SERENADE – SEREN(A D)E.
6 Gangster and idiot — one’s not kept a diary (7)
ALMANAC – AL + MAN[i]AC, where an idiot is a maniac and an almanac is a diary only in very loose senses.
7 Artist presenting birds, first of them diving to the bottom (5)
ERNST – TERNS, with the T falling to the end.
8 Noisy fellow supporting scheme (8)
PLANGENT – PLAN + GENT, simple enough, but a word I knew without knowing its meaning.
15 Maybe like a fresh racket sounded after others (8)
RESTRUNG – REST + RUNG.
16 Respect source of information — Democrat not right (9)
DEFERENCE – (+D -r)EFERNCE.
17 Sin of fool turning up in something hairy (8)
TRESPASS –  TRES(SAP upside-down)S.
19 Support for underground workers (7)
PITPROP – A cryptic definition, not very cryptic.
21 A new winding road bridging river in country (7)
ANDORRA – A + N + anagram of ROAD around R.
22 Weak insect caught by mischievous child jumping up (6)
FEEBLE – EL(BEE)F, all upside down.  I must say, the surface is far from smooth.
23 Minister in charge involved in endless change (5)
VICAR – V(IC)AR[y].
24 Bishop pays attention — how many commandments omitted “Paradise”? (5)
BLISS – B + LIS(ten)S, another rather far-fetched surface.

48 comments on “Times 27247 – “…and you’ve been caught!””

  2. I wonder if Dean Mayer compiled this puzzle as well as Sunday’s cryptic. 19d here has one searching for a cryptic solution when a straightforward one is required. The same happened with one of the across clues in yesteday’s Cryptic.
    I take vinyl’s point about both REPRODUCED and SEPARATIST, particularly the latter, as I toyed with SEPARATISM partly because I couldn’t see SEP.
    On reflection I don’t think Dean would have put his name to this one.
    2. Yes, it was six, Kevin. We used to live not far from Sudely Castle in Gloucestershire, once the home of Wife #6, Catherine Parr. The guides there had a mnemonic to describe their respective fates: Divorced, Beheaded, Died, Divorced, Beheaded, Survived. The problem then became remembering which wife matched which fate.
  5. Surely not from Dean, not with clues like 24d or 4d, 14ac or 18ac. Fortunately, I didn’t know SALVIA, so I had ample grounds for not submitting even though I did decide on SEPARATIST. Is an elf a mischievous child? A changeling, maybe, but. What Vinyl says re ALMANAC. Monday cryptics are supposed to be the easiest of the week, not the sloppiest.
  6. Kevin beat me to it, about “better half”… Yes, PITPROP isn’t cryptic at all, just slightly oblique… I’ll check back to see if anyone has an explanation for the “month” in SEPARATIST (or if the editor apologizes)… What’s a nice clue like the one for BARTENDER doing in a place like this? But the clue for ERNST is pretty cool, too, since Max E. had a special relationship to avian creatures.

    Edited at 2019-01-14 05:47 am (UTC)

  7. I’d never heard of SALVIA and didn’t think of “saliva”. I’d never heard of SALNIE either, but I did think of “saline”. So DNF.

    There’s a very minor typo in the blog at 16D where you have ERERENCE instead of EFERENCE.

    1. I very nearly put in SALNIE but fortunately something made me hesitate and keep trawling the alphabet.
  8. Maybe one views things differently on blogging days (I’m sure I pick holes myself if I have doubts about a clue), but apart from the evident error at 18ac I didn’t experience even the mildest raise of an eyebrow over anything here, and some of the clues were inventive and amusing (to BARTENDER and HALF, for example). 40 minutes which I’m claiming as 35 for the time lost trying to account for the extra P in the wordplay at 18ac.
  9. 13:06, but with SEPARATISM. I considered SEPARATIST but thought ISM fitted the definition a bit better (it doesn’t, on reflection) and didn’t spot the possibility that the setter had intended SEPT and just lot count of the Ps.
    Otherwise I did think some of this was a little bit weak (PITPROP particularly) but there were also some nice clues, particularly HALF and BARTENDER.
  10. 13:08, with a bit of a shrug about the clue for SEPARATIST appearing to be an error that slipped through. Otherwise I thought this was fine with some nice clues, including CARNATION and BARTENDER. SALVIA LOI. COD to HALF.
  11. 33 mins but used an aid for the plant. Had thought of Salnie but didn’t ring any bells. Same thoughts as others over SEPARATIST.
  14. The old man, deserter, is in group wanting secesssion — my original clue, as submitted
  15. Thanks Mr Setter for setting the record right, a pity someone edited it so it would have too many Ps with month in place of group.

    21 minutes for a steady solve, didn’t find fault with it as much as some above did. Ending with SALVIA which I knew was sage, and then 11a. Some nice clues and some less brilliant, but OK for a Monday job.

  16. Apart from SEPARATIST, I was happier than others with the clueing in this puzzle, with no real hold-ups and a 25 minute finish..Like others I decided the month must be SEPT and the P of PA was superfluous. I saw REPRODUCED, as in ” Pogba REPRODUCED his good form of his last game.” COD to CARNATION. I wore a red rose, but then I would. Thank you V and setter.
  17. SALNIE 🙁
    …and I knew salvia. Shame about 18ac.
    Long John Saliva, as Count Arthur memorably said.
  18. Lacking SALVIA. Agree with vinyl, kevin et al re SEPARATIST. And ELF as a child??

    Not a good start to the week…

    Thanks blogger and setter

  19. I have to admit to dozing off during this one, a rough night perhaps. And I managed RESTRING with no real conviction, because RESTRUNG didn’t occur to me.
    Who is SALVIA? What is she?
    And struggled with TRESPASS despite sins and trespasses being interchangeable depending on which version of the Lord’s Prayer is in use. Couldn’t get away from the fool being an ass.
    So not happy, not so much with the crossword’s peccadilloes but with my own incompetence. Better luck tomorrow.
  20. I think vinyl1 is being a little too harsh in finding fault with clues for ARRAIGNER, REPASTS and REPRODUCED, but certainly there were a few for me to grump about, apart from the editorial error in SEPARATIST. I share kevingregg’s unease at elf=mischievous child; the PITPROP clue was lame; the ‘some tar’ ->PART TAR seemed weak to me and the surface at 24a was ghastly. A slightly dissatisfying 37-minute experience for me.
    Thanks nonetheless to our blogger for wrestling with these knotty issues for our benefit.
  21. ….and I’ve been caught.

    Didn’t much enjoy this. Biffed SEPARATIST whilst wondering if Set was a month in some foreign calendar. Thanks to the setter for pointing out the error.

    Alas, having got to the last point in around nine minutes, I was a “salnie” after a three minute alpha trawl failed to shine the required light on SALIVA. It’s enough to make you spit….

    FOI RATEL
    LOI N/A
    COD BARTENDER – also like LIVERYMAN
    TIME N/A

  22. There’s a very similar clue in today’s Guardian (by Brendan) so I wonder if it was the same setter. CARUSO and CERVANTES went in right off the bat so I thought this was going to be one of my speedier ones, but the setter had other ideas. A good whack of my 20 minutes was spent dithering over the SEPARATIST RAT-TRAP and I almost convinced myself that it was an M as in “semester” for month, even though it didn’t make any more sense than the other. P.S. I was wrong, the setter was Don Manley who recently posted a comment on the Club Forum re the correction for 18A.

    Edited at 2019-01-14 02:12 pm (UTC)

  24. As has been pointed out here and many times before, crosswords are as much a matter of taste as music, so it’s no surprise that everyone’s mileage varies. For myself, I found this perfectly good, without being either exceptional or very difficult, so a pretty typical Monday, really; certainly no clues where I felt I had to cross my fingers when submitting – I seem to have been lucky in coming late to the party, so the unfortunate editing at 18ac had already been undone in the Club version. I even knew the plant, which was nice (I regularly trip up when the crossword leads us into the flower bed).
  25. I was fortunate in that the clue for 18a had been corrected when I did the puzzle, so I didn’t have the problem faced by our earlybirds(being a retired night owl has some advantages). I didn’t know the plant, but saliva was the only fluid that came to mind, so I tend to regard the puzzle in a benevolent frame of mind. Liked BARTENDER and CARNATION. CARUSO was my FOI, and SERENADE my swansong. 25:38. Thanks setter and Vinyl.
  26. Put me with the crowd who kind of liked this. In particular, it was nice that the singer wasn’t another bird, and very clever at Half and Bartender. I did’t have a problem with elf as as child, or Repressed as defined, particularly in crossword land.

    I had wondered if the setter had started with two different thoughts at Separatist, kind of the way a solver tries first this then that before the penny drops, and then not remembered to go back and clean up the thought fragment that didn’t get into the clue – but turns out it was the editing which added a random thought. Who’d a thunk.

    Edited at 2019-01-14 02:47 pm (UTC)

  27. This was rather Mondayish for Meldrew. No particular hassles and all over in 35 mins with a break for luncheon.

    FOI 2dn RAT TRAP

    LOI 22ac FEEBLE

    COD 20ac HALF

    WOD 3dn SALVIA even have ’em in the gardens hereabouts in HONG QIAO – reds in the bed!

  28. All but one done in the time.

    I couldn’t think of Trespass – but it has made me think of Winnie the Pooh. Piglet lived next to a sign which said “Trespassers W” and claimed that it was short for “Trespassers Will which is short for Tresspassers William”, which was the name of his grandfather.

  29. I really enjoyed this puzzle as I was able to complete it without using any aids, a rare occurrence. Thanks to everyone for the entertaining and informative blog – maybe one day I will be able to put my crossword dictionary in the bucket.
  30. 39.59 including a fairly lengthy snooze. On re-awaking, it all fell out fairly easily, and I was left with 2 posers. SALVIA was known, but the saliva didn’t appear readily in my mind. That left BLISS, where for some reason I invented 2 further commandments, and couldn’t find where TWELVE fitted in. Must have been a dream..
  31. Good grief. I zipped through most of this, ending up with 17d, which I stared and stared at. I was fixated on the fool being an ass, which clearly was not helpful. Embarrassing DNF on what should have been an easy one.
  32. By some miracle, Ernst came to me immediately. Struggled with Salvia which I had to look up but otherwise OK.
  33. 40:40. I had most of this done comfortably within 30 mins but I was looking for an ass not a sap in 17dn and could not remember the ‘forgive us our trespasses’ bit from the Lord’s prayer. I solved this in the newspaper print edition which reproduced the error at 18ac so that was annoying but the answer was pretty clear. Salvia rang a bell as featuring in newspaper reports from a couple of years ago about legal highs which it seemed kept evolving to stay ahead of the Misuse of Drugs Act, every time one substance was banned another, not yet illegal popped up in its place, until I think a blanket ban came in (well those blankets can be very dangerous).
  34. No problems with Salvia as I have plenty of Sage growing in my garden. I did however biff it and came to the blog for an explanation. DNK PITPROP but guessed it from the checkers and I’m another who is not keen on the clue. SEPARATIST cluing was correct online so no hold ups there. I think 8d PLANGENT was my final guess and LOI.
  36. Thank God you explained the sap in trespass. There’s another — schoolboy offensive — word that also works inside the clue, and I couldn’t believe that was the actual explanation! LOI Salvia
  37. First post on a Times crossword – it arrives about a month later down here in our Australian newspaper. It’s good to be able to see a blogged solution to the puzzle. Interesting to see the focus on time to solve on this thread – I’m obviously a bit slower than the average here at around the 43 minute mark – maybe that’s just getting into the swing of things – usually do the Financial Times puzzle. Had the same issue with 18a as the rest – you’d have thought that they could have at least produce the edited version down here a month later ! Didn’t properly parse REPRODUCED (didn’t know the PRO term), HALF (although I recognised King Henry’s 6 wives) and RAT TRAP (just through oversight). First in was MOVER with PITPROP (which I didn’t much like either) as the last one in.

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