Times 27,257: Burns Notice

Author   VerlainePosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
I couldn’t get anything right in the puzzles earlier this evening, managing to submit a very careless TOTAL ECLIPSE in the QC and a mystifying DEBOUCHER here, even after thinking through how “ban” was a synonym for “debar”. Enjoyable middle of the road solve here though, with some fun-seeming clues, a few bits of mad vocab (Uniat? Aoudad? Sorb?) and my COD at 1d for its nod to the late lamented Pterry. Thanks to the setter; and now I’m afraid I have to go to bed, I’ve left things late enough as it is!

ACROSS
1 In the vicinity of Lourdes he’d hobbled, so appearing to slump? (5-10)
ROUND-SHOULDERED – ROUND [in the vicinity of] + (LOURDES HE’D*) [“hobbled”]

9 Trouble here again in back Street, traffic queues (9)
TAILBACKS – AIL BACK [trouble | here again] in reversed ST [street]

10 One sticky mess has got left in hut (5)
IGLOO – I GOO [one | sticky mess] has got L [left] in

11 Be severely critical of record, maybe, away from home (3,3)
HIT OUT – HIT [record, maybe] + OUT [away from home]

12 Disease in quiet Indian city — measure must be introduced (8)
PELLAGRA – P AGRA [quiet | Indian city] – ELL [measure] must be introduced

13 As rubbish remains, attempt to collect it (6)
TRASHY – ASH [remains], TRY [attempt] to collect it

15 Violent quarrel: some revolutionary squatted? Never! (8)
VENDETTA – hidden reversed in {squ}ATTED? NEV{er!}

18 Engrossed, lying down, eating fruit from tree (8)
ABSORBED – ABED [lying down], “eating” SORB [fruit from tree]

19 A superior old man penning old African sheep (6)
AOUDAD – A U DAD [a | superior | old man] “penning” O [old]

21 Firm into trendy chinaware arriving on the scene (8)
INCOMING – CO [firm] “into” IN MING [trendy | chinaware]

23 Farewell message reported in Times repeatedly (3-3)
BYE-BYE – homophone of BY BY [times (repeatedly)]

26 Tests of ethical standards leader ignored (5)
ORALS – {m}ORALS [ethical standards, “leader ignored”]

27 Potency of prominent Nazi holding a feast (9)
HEADINESS – HESS [prominent Nazi] “holding” A DINE [a | feast]

28 Travelling reps, chiefly on an oceanic group of islands (6,9)
FRENCH POLYNESIA – (REPS CHIEFLY ON AN*) [“travelling”]

DOWN
1 Mechanical device used by fantasy author, not the first or the last (7)
RATCHET – {p}RATCHET{t} [fantasy author Terry, “not the first or the last”]

2 Division sealed by adult member of church (5)
UNIAT – UNIT [division] “sealed by” A [adult]

3 University revolutionary in ban, being a very indulgent type (9)
DEBAUCHER – U CHE [university | revolutionary] in DEBAR [ban]

4 Wine’s unpleasant surprise, when head is gone! (4)
HOCK – {s}HOCK [unpleasant surprise]

5 As lesser player, you finally wanted to pen “Succeeded!” (8)
UNSEEDED – {yo}U + NEEDED [wanted] to “pen” S [succeeded]

6 Practice material (5)
DRILL – double def

7 Looking angry about messenger being banished (9)
RELEGATED – RED [looking angry] about LEGATE [messenger]

8 Scene designer, a graduate of the arts faculty? (7)
DIORAMA – DIOR A M.A. [designer | a | graduate of the arts faculty]

14 Halfwit officer in charge I had as companion (9)
ASSOCIATE – ASS O.C. I ATE [halfway | officer in charge | I | had]

16 Spontaneously sensual and noisy, I will go wild (9)
DIONYSIAN – (AND NOISY I*) [“will go wild”]

17 Cathedral office’s article penned in study with craft (8)
DEANSHIP – A [article] “penned in DEN [study] with SHIP [craft]

18 Rather rude sailor on island meeting posh chap (1,3,3)
A BIT OFF – A.B. [sailor] on I [island] meeting TOFF [posh chap]

20 Well down in a place where water is plentiful (4-3)
DEEP-SEA – cryptic def

22 Greek character thus gets score? (5)
MUSIC – MU SIC [Greek character | thus]

24 Bishop not so much set aside for holy purpose? (5)
BLESS – B LESS [bishop | not so much]

25 Delivery of inflatable bags, half going astray (4)
BALL – BALL{oons} [inflatable bag, “half going astray”]

49 comments on “Times 27,257: Burns Notice”

  1. All tickety-boo hereabouts – Tackled in two parts pre- and post-prandial.

    Upstairs took fifty mins, downstairs surprisingly just 16 minutes – so just over the hour – clickety-click.

    FOI 1ac ROUND SHOULDERED

    LOI 19ac AOUDAD (NHOf)

    COD 28ac FRENCH POLYNESIA however the clue does not require the last two words – of islands – oceanic group is surely sufficient.

    WOD 3dn DEBAUCHER

    Cheerio!

    Edited at 2019-01-25 09:23 am (UTC)

  2. Enjoyable puzzle, but had to look up the sheep!

    Advance notice in case anyone is interested: Tim Moorey is coming to talk to our WI group near Canterbury at 7.30 on March 18th. You are welcome to join us if you fancy meeting him. My contact details can be found on http://www.goodnestone.org. £10, light refreshments included. I can offer B&B if required.

  3. I didn’t spend too much time trying to get UNIAT or AOUDAD and with hindsight I’m glad of that. For the latter I thought a Commanding Officer could be a superior so came up with COODAD. For the former the idea of division as in army division didn’t occur to me. Otherwise enjoyable!
  4. Yes some interesting vocab, which required deep brain trawl. The sheep, the church member and the disease all came out fine in the end – but it could have gone either way. I guess I’ve seen them all before somewhere, but God knows where. The Barbary sheep certainly only in crosswordland. 9 across was a bit confusing with its use of Back in both clue and answer, but it couldn’t be anything else. Many thanks as ever.
  5. Clearly something was clicking today – almost half as long as yesterday’s, indeed only 3 minutes slower than Jason.

    Same head scratchings as everyone else with the sheep (wordplay says it, but that can’t be right, can it???), UNIAT (ditto) and the disease, having got into the habit of looking for EM or EN automatically when I see measurement, ELL hasn’t quite got there yet so took a bit of time to see that one, as the P…AGRA was a write as there aren’t many Indian cities in crosswordland (thankfully).

    12.38, So a happy end to the week for me

  6. … to quote Richie Benaud. 34 minutes, with a couple of constructed answers proving correct. AOUDAD indeed, and PELLAGRA. I think I knew UNIAT, or at least Uniate, but the cryptic and crossers were needed for that too. Terry Pratchett was in the PR department in the golden days of the CEGB. COD to BALL, with a few minutes wasted trying to make MAIL work, despite spending most of the last two days tuned in to Barbados. Give Jimmy his knighthood now! Wouldn’t a DEBAUCHER be somebody who debauched others, rather than necessarily into debauchery himself? Thank you V and setter.
  7. I took so long getting started on these very wordy clues that I thought I was heading for yet another disaster but then surprised myself by completing all but one answer in 30 minutes dead. The outstanding one was 19ac where I took another 10 minutes unravelling wordplay to come up with an unknown word that didn’t even look like a word, AOUDAD, but later found it was correct. Other unknowns were SORB and UNIAT. Wasted time by delaying putting in the obvious answer TAILBACKS at 9ac, thinking it couldn’t be right with ‘back’ already in the clue. Was also briefly disconcerted by IGLOO as ‘hut’ but of course it’s fine. Great to get through this without aids as I had been expecting to find myself stuck.

    Edited at 2019-01-25 09:57 am (UTC)

  8. 20 minutes, not sure whether it was easy or hard, with those weird words. AOUDAD is a standby in Scrabble type games when that’s all you’ve got, UNIAT just looks wrong, FRENCH POLYNESIA one of those places you are surprised still exists, SORB not in my Tesco’s.
    TAILBACKS was a bit confusing with BACK in plain sight in the clue for a different purpose.
    A strange feeling of a crossword rough round the edges. But thanks anyway.
  9. No problems here. Used to deriving unknown words from clue as per Mephisto and clues were very helpful in that respect.
    1. Problems here. Deriving unknown words from clue as per Mephisto, and the clues weren’t very helpful in that respect.
      Sorb and Pratchett (spelling unknown) vaguely heard of, got the unknown aoudad and pellagra, tripped up on uniat. My unit sealed ‘by’ = times = x, giving the adult church member UNIXT. The clue irrefutably doesn’t work otherwise, as everyone has pointed out.
      Otherwise no problems.

      Edited at 2019-01-25 11:46 am (UTC)

  10. Dnk UNIAT, and shouldn’t it be ‘adult sealed by division’? Would have been 20′ otherwise.

    Thanks verlaine and setter.

    1. I’m with you on UNIAT, which was my only DNK. As Jimbo says, the “unknowns” could be fairly worked out, and AOUDAD is a staple AZED word.

      FOI HIT OUT (England’s batsmen were less of the first and more of the last in Bridgetown, alas !)
      LOI ASSOCIATE
      COD DIORAMA
      TIME 10:29

    2. Another one here who thinks UNIAT doesn’t work.

      Started at a great pace, then got bogged down by UNAIT, DEEP SEA and AOUDAD.

    3. I totally agree. I had UNI_T quickly, but couldn’t see how the wording of the clue tells you to stick Adult inside it instead of outside it! I also considered UNIXT.
    4. My take is that a sealant goes inside something – silicone in window frames, little boys fingers in holes in dykes, that sort of thing – so the UNIT could be said to be sealed by the A. I don’t like it but I can make it work – just.
  11. Didn’t get near finishing this one, with AOUDAD, HEADINESS (couldn’t get “heaviness” out of my head), and PELLAGRA all missing. And the last one I put in was wrong, as I’d desperately bunged in UPSTAGED for 5d, which didn’t help with 12a even though I briefly lit on “ell” for the measure at one point.

    Surprised to find UNIAT was right, and I now know what a “sorb” is, though as I don’t know what a service tree is yet, I’m still not that enlightened about the whole shebang…

  12. Unsurprisingly, I found this pleasant and not terribly Friday-ish; apart from the two unknowns which I left to the end, at which point I had to toss a couple of metaphorical coins. UNIXT or UNIAT? Well, the former looks much more like a technological term than a theological one, so reasonably confident there. COODAD or AOUDAD? Well, that, I’d say, is a fifty-fifty ball, and the clue isn’t quite precise enough for what struck me as a very obscure word in a non-Mephisto puzzle. So, minor grumble, as I’m not sure it’s as clear-cut as others found it. Nice to see Terry Ratchet making it into a puzzle (and that I am clearly not the only person who used to hang around alt.fan.pratchett back in the day).
  13. About half an hour of enjoyment this morning. Started with the ICY HUT at 10a and proceeded clockwise with the NE,SE,SW completed before tackling the NW. I was OK with the Arabic sheep at 19a because the wordplay gave an authentic sounding Arabic word. I’m afraid that I did not get UNIAT at 2d because I failed to see “sealed by” as a containment indicator nor adult = A. I recognise the authority of the setter and those in the know on this site but maintain my own inadequacies.
    Many thanks as ever to V and setter.
  14. Hmmm.. well… OK, just about. This I found rather hard and it took me 68 minutes. The LOI, unknown to me, UNIAT, eventually yielded when I fixed on ‘unit’ for ‘division’ as the only viable parse and then tried sticking any old letter in there, after X for ‘adult’ failed. The ‘sealed by’ as a containment indicator just seems wrong to me. The Barbary sheep held me up for a long time: just too much paraphernalia in the clue for only 6 letters! DNK ‘sorb’ but it had to be once I’d seen A-BED for ‘lying down’.
    The tricksy double ‘back’ in TAILBACKS was rather clever, I thought, and made for a nifty surface, so that’s my COD.
    Thanks to our blogger and setter.
  15. I gave up after nearly an hour, much of which was spent staring at 2dn. I agree with the comments above – a poor clue for an obscure word. Where is ‘a’ used as an abbreviation for adult? And doesn’t a sealant go on the outside? At least AOUDAD was gettable from the wordplay. Probably Terry Pratchett’s first appearance in the Times Xword. Mrs Q is a big fan but I couldn’t get past Page 2 when I tried to read one of his books.
    1. I’ve never attempted Pritchett, but my attempt to read Georgette Heyer (much revered by much revered posters on this site) didn’t even get to page 2…
    3. A for adult comes from the world of films. U was suitable for children and A meant adult – subsequently replaced by PG for parental guidance
      1. Ah. Looking at the history, that changed three years before I was born, so I’m not surprised I don’t recognise it from the cinema…

        Edited at 2019-01-25 04:13 pm (UTC)

  16. This took me ages, and I was of two minds whether or not to just dnf the whole thing and get on with my life, never having heard of any XRATCHETX, and never having thought that HIT OUT meant ‘be severely critical of’. DNK TAILBACKS, either, thought ‘hut’ an odd definition for IGLOO. UNIAT was something straight out of a Mephisto: an unusual word spelled in a variant form. Agree with bolton on DEBAUCHER; I started with DEBAUCHEE, until I had to change it. No reason for a debaucher to be at all debauched. At least there were a couple of gimmes like AOUDAD.

    Edited at 2019-01-25 12:40 pm (UTC)

  17. Pleasant for a Friday, but undone at the end by UNIAT which I DK and didn’t look right, and doesn’t really work. Wouldn’t have known what an AOUDAD was without the clue but dredged it up from somewhere. Had DEAD SEA for a while which added time to make me half an hour with one undone.
  18. I spent my last 10 minutes trying to work out how “sealed by” means insert A into unit, rather than insert unit into adult, and failed. A poor clue for a very obscure word IMHO. I managed to derive the unknown AOUDAD, but looked it up to confirm before submitting. Didn’t spot the reverse hidden VENDETTA, but gave up on something beginning with FEUD when I got RELEGATED. Was pleased to get DIONYSIAN. I was getting a bit concerned when my FOI was A BIT OFF! I was enjoying the puzzle until the struggle with my LOI UNIAT, which I also confirmed before submitting. 44:03. Thanks setter and V.
  19. I’m pretty sure this is a first appearance of Terry P in a Times cryptic. Hopefully not the last. A lovely man and a brilliant writer. RATCHET was my FOI. I had problems with UNIAT, which didn’t seem to fit the cryptic, and spent a while pondering AOUDAD, which in retrospect I vaguely knew, but which seems to be an impossible word. Remembering Doctor Dolittle’s parrot was a great help at 26a. 40 minutes. Ann
  20. Another one here who found the clue for UNIAT misleading. And it would have been OK if the clue had said ‘Division sealing adult member of church’, which doesn’t mean much, but then nor does the original clue. At least a difficult word is then clued by easy wordplay, not as here. Jimbo tells us that the instructions are quite straightforward. Really?
    1. “Unless you’re very experienced you are unlikely to solve a Mephisto without using Chambers. The idea is that you use the precise wordplay to derive an answer that you then verify in the dictionary.” I dont think the wordplay was very precise. Got there in the end, thanks blogger and setter.
  21. 22:36 with a disproportionate amount of time spent on the well documented oddities. Luckily SORB caused no bother as we planted a young specimen of Sorbus Domestica not two days ago. I have high hopes for it.
  22. A poor show this, I thought, and I really don’t remember the last time I said that. The clue to 2dn is surely faulty. I also thought the clues generally torturous and the surfaces often unconvincing. Look at 15ac, 21ac, 27ac, 5dn, 17dn, 24dn and tell me they look anything like normal English ..
    Sorry, setter

  23. Another COODAD here but on reflection that would be a Scottish bull rather than an African sheep.

    Nice to see the creator of Discworld getting his first tribute.

    On the UNIAT debate I guess that seal is a bit like stop and you can seal a bottle, say, by putting something in it.

  24. AOUDAD is out there but just about okay in the eye of charity. But 2 down is a shocker of a clue, and it took the shine off the whole thing, really. Good blog, v, thanks.
  25. We had sheep trouble in the QC today and I also had a TOTAL ECLIPSE, perhaps the only occasion when my solving has been on a par with Verlaine. I am making better errors.
    This puzzle seemed reasonably easy for a Friday.I managed to work out the unknown UNIAT because nothing else seemed possible. I had PELLIGOA for the disease.
    And my sheep was the DOLDAD.
    I have read a couple of Terry Pratchett books and saw him speak once; he was a very engaging personality and it’s good to be reminded of him.
    David
  26. Well, where I’m from, anything you’ve forgotten the name is a DOODAD. Given that I’d forgotten the name of the African sheep, I would argue that my answer is correct, even if not actually right. Fortunately, I don’t need to worry because I failed also on UNIAT. I think it was a little mean, clueing an obscure (or is it just me?) word in a slightly contrived manner. I decided it had to be something-IST, and resorted to URIST.
  27. Strange to find such an easy crossword that I found so hard to finish. I couldn’t ‘fathom’ out DEEP SEA and was veering towards OPEN SEA which left me with voodoo, hoodoo or koodoo. after discovering that the last was an African antelope, I had to revise my options. UNIAT had to be checked to see if it existed and LOI was BALL which, as above, I thought might be MAIL. I wouldn’t have minded if the rest wasn’t so straightforward.
  28. Aargh. I looked up both UNIAT and AOUDAD. I admit I’ve never heard of either one, and I just threw in the towel rather than assay a guess from the wordplay and the checking letters. Regards.
  29. Got there in the end with the same trouble as everyone else. I was surprised when I submitted and AOUDAD and UNIAT turned out to be correct. I almost went for UNIXT (which fits the wordplay better, but seemed a less likely word, and using “X” for “by” meant that the definition had to be “adult member of church”). I was okay with “A” meaning adult (I remembered it from movies when I was a kid, but I assumed it might appear in other contexts), but the wordplay is dubious, at best (aka wrong!)
  30. …had HEAVINESS rather than HEADINESS.

    NHO of either UNIAT or AOUDAD and thought DEEP SEA was a bit rubbish but fortumately those were ok.

  31. DNF. Bah! I had two errors: unixt and mail instead of ball. The first seemed unlikely but frankly once ‘sorb’, pellagra and aoudad had gone in, all bets were off, no combination of letters however outrageous was out of bounds. Mail went in from ‘delivery’. I suppose I didn’t really think of balloons as bags or bags as balloons, inflatable or otherwise. I agree with those who felt that the clue for Uniat doesn’t quite work (but then to paraphrase Mandy Rice-D, I would say that wouldn’t I, given that I didn’t get it) and with Jerrywh that some of the surfaces needed a bit of polish or reworking. A bit of a disappointing end to the week.
  32. DNF. Or rather bunged in incorrect answers in despair… UNIAT and AOUDAD? Who has ever heard or used these words? OK for the Mephisto, perhaps, but scarcely General Knowledge. Me Grr! See tomorrow’s Jumbo blog for more about that!
  33. Thanks setter and verlaine
    Only got to this in fits and starts during the day which aggregated in over an hour of solve time – found it quite hard. Knew PELLAGRA and it was an early entry. Didn’t have the same grief as many with UNIAT, a word that was vaguely familiar with and used ‘sealed by’ the same as plugged to put the A (which was used here to classify films) into the ‘division’.
    ORALS was my gimme first in with AOUDAD (which I’d not come across before) and DEEP-SEA (after the crossing letter eliminated OPEN) as the last couple in.

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