Times 27277 – Perverse and foolish once I strayed

Posted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Most unusually I snuck under 18 minutes for this one, which furriners might find a bit tricky with a fairly recondite Scotch county popping up. There’s also a fairly obscure word for genie, which might bother those who do not waste fantastic amounts of time, as I do, playing Scrabble. I think my last in was probably 1 down, as it is a word I’m not sure I’ve ever heard of. Well, that isn’t quite true, as I have heard of it (of which more below), but have never seen this orthographic varietal. I’m not sure if the Chinese tea will catch anyone out – it’s certainly not one of the commoner ones, of which my favourite, in case any of you will shout me yum cha one day, is bo lei (pu’er in Mandarin).

ACROSS

1 Prevent Chopin initially plugging one of his compositions? (8)
PRECLUDE – C in PRELUDE. Here’s one that was so nice that Mangy Benditoy nicked it.
5 Fluid movement popular woman talked of (6)
INFLOW – IN FLO. Who, but who, is called Flo these days, pray?
10 Terribly sad, to marry and scorn an old county (4,3,8)
ROSS AND CROMARTY – anagram* of SAD TO MARRY SCORN. Terrific name for a region that has had more identities than Alec Guinness in Kind Hearts and Coronets.
11 Former writer’s ultimately excessive outlay (7)
EXPENSE – EX PENS E
12 Accountant keeping a set of books at work (7)
CANTATA – A NT AT in CA. Here’s a nice one from Johann Sibelius Bach.
13 Convenient-sounding cover for the Grand National for example (8)
HANDICAP – sounds like HANDY CAP
15 Source of light say backing sort of shelf (5)
LEDGE – LED EG reversed
18 Verse from sacred song mostly used in school class (5)
RHYME – HYM[n] in RE (Religious Education, bless it). Did you know that John Steinbeck always spelled this ‘ryme’? I know this and many other useless facts about the man those who knew how to criticise but didn’t know how to write something people wanted to read hated, and fully intend to spend a holiday in Salinas and the surrounding area boring the pants off fellow Steinbeck aficionadi, as we argue about all manner of things, not least whether aficionadi is a real word resulting from a genius for coinage (the Master was very keen on this) or just a silly affectation by those with more enthusiasm than learning.
20 Character by river absorbing current source of nourishment (8)
NUTRIENT – NU I in TRENT (river somewhere in the centre of England)
23 Learner kept by Aussie mate, one getting down to work at last? (7)
COBBLER – I liked this. L in COBBER. G’day to all the Bruces and Sheilahs out there! Oh, yes, in case you were wondering a shoemaker (Schumann was his name) works at a last.
25 Get boat refurbished in part of workshop (7)
BOTTEGA – GET BOAT*
26 Do what’s required, as distributors should (7,3,5)
DELIVER THE GOODS – Boom! Boom!
27 Spirit served by club employee in part of UK (6)
DJINNI – DJ IN NI (Nr’n Ir’n – capital Belfast)
28 Fish is available outside entrance to regimental HQ (8)
GARRISON – R in GAR IS ON

DOWN

1 Stitch finally made runner fall (6)
PURLER – PURL (knitting thingie) [mad]E R. I’ve heard of come a cropper, but not come (or make) a purler. Maybe it’s a northern thing. Talking of which, here’s Giggsie scoring an absolute pearler. And what a rug!
2 Docile pet initially not minding a walk in the park (4-5)
EASY-PEASY – EASY (as in ‘easy to control’) P EASY (as in ‘I’m easy’)
3 Erudite king with study facing north (7)
LEARNED – LEAR DEN reversed
4 Daughter feeding magistrate’s duck (5)
DODGE – D in DOGE (the head honcho in Venice)
6 Trivial old bird in northern lake (7)
NOMINAL – O MINA in N L
7 Female councilLOR NAttering in the centre (5)
LORNA – hidden in the chirpy councillor
8 Foot-traveller means to get on river (8)
WAYFARER – WAY FARE (‘how did you fare, my doge?’) R
9 Eccentric person’s first-class pool (8)
CRACKPOT – CRACK POT (as in a lottery)
14 Perverse artist in land without university (8)
CONTRARY – RA in CO[u]NTRY. ‘Perverse and foolish oft I strayed, but yet in love he sought me; and on his shoulder gently laid, and home, rejoicing, brought me.’ Now there’s poetry!
16 Day a surgeon flapped, posing risk (9)
DANGEROUS – D + A SURGEON*
17 Richly woven cloak originally worn by Catholic press chief (8)
BROCADED – C in BROAD ED
19 Wake up in French quarter — outside as it happens (7)
ENLIVEN – LIVE in EN (‘in’ in French) N (quarter)
21 Number in which vocalist misses start, holding note (7)
INTEGER – TE in [s]INGER
22 Strong man’s woman, possibly, and male issue (6)
SAMSON – SAM (as in the great Sam[antha] Stosur) SON
24 Spicy dish from US port? No more (5)
BALTI – BALTI[more]. I got to series 3 of The Wire before giving up. Not sure the prog did a lot of good for Maryland tourism.
25 Sound sort of tie a chap assumed at first for tea (5)
BOHEA – sounds like BOW HE (a chap) A[ssumed]

76 comments on “Times 27277 – Perverse and foolish once I strayed”

  1. Cracking time, U – well done! I was glad to finish without errors at under 33 minutes.

    I was quite nervous about 10a, and was grimly checking variants of substituting C,O,A and T into the last word to see what sounded best. BTW, I think it’s actually an anagram of “SAD TO MARRY SCORN”.

    Was also happy that the BOHEA and BOTTEGA pair were correct, as I wasn’t sure of either.

      1. I think it’s ‘perverse and foolish oft I strayed,’ U, if you want to make another surreptitious change. Nobody will notice, it’s only in the title! Or maybe there are two versions.
        1. I’m not quite sure how this happened. Most probably, when I copy and pasted the line from the Internet, it somehow auto-corrected and then, when I came to write my heading, I switched from my internal oft to the new, apparently correct once.

          Anyway, in deference to the author’s original verse, I have emended the quotation; while, in deference to my growing dementia, I have kept the heading as the revised version.

          Edited at 2019-02-19 05:19 am (UTC)

  2. Thanks for an entertaining blog on an entertaining puzzle, ulaca. I have to ask: Mangy Benditoy?? Who/what is? Alan Rusbridger, former editor of the Grauniad wrote a whole book about learning to play a complex piece of Chopin. We used to live not far from his country cottage in the Cotswolds where he has a special music room in his garden.
    I didn’t know PURL was spelled that way. I always assumed it was ‘pearl’.
    Ah, Lorna! Teenage grammar school crush!
    I give COD to BALTI on the grounds that I am getting better at spotting that sort of clue (‘no more’).
    PS….Similar to the way no self-respecting Aussie (certainly of my acquaintance and experience) will drink Fosters, no Aussie I know of ever says ‘cobber’.
    1. That’s because they’re all drinking XXXX.

      Mangy Benditoy is Terry Wigan’s version of the big-nosed piano playing one. Was it him or Ray Moore who dubbed one act Captain and Toenail?

      Edited at 2019-02-18 03:34 am (UTC)

      1. Tee hee!
        In Sydney when I lived there it was either VB or Tooheys. I liked Tooheys New.
        The sailing club I belonged to used to give prizes for the Friday evening twilight series of races. One year third place getters received a six-pack of Fosters. They would invariably take it back to the bar to swap for something else.
        1. These days it’s all about the craft beers – even your Tooheys New might be taken home. You’ll need 4 Pines (brewed in Manly) or perhaps Bent Spoke (brewed in Canberra), etc. Though you might need to be quick to be trendy – new ones seem to come up all the time, so it’s hard to keep track.
          1. Since growing a beard, I am regularly mistaken for a CAMRA member and asked my opinion of all sorts of ales, porters, IPAs etc in English hostelries. I tell my interlocutors that I cannot possibly render a judgment until I have tasted each one in turn. With a finger of rum in between to cleanse the palate, of course.
      1. Another example, Jerry: I used to run with the Hash House Harriers in Sydney and woe betide you if it was your turn to provide the post-run beers in the ‘bucket and you supplied Fosters!
    2. Alan Rusbridger is an indifferent pianist with such a monumental ego that he felt that learning to play a standard bit of repertoire merited a book (and film, if I remember correctly) all about him. I would say he should have stuck to his day job but he was even worse at that.
  3. Not sure how ‘broad’ means ‘catholic’ in 17dn, and google’s not helping…are Catholics particularly fat, or cheeky in the UK?

    Confused antipodean

    Edited at 2019-02-18 03:58 am (UTC)

    1. Collins has:
      broad in sympathies, tastes, or understanding; liberal

      Edited at 2019-02-18 04:03 am (UTC)

        1. Don’t think you’re alone in misconstruing Catholic: I suspect many of those reciting the creed in a non-Roman church make a mental reservation at the “one, holy, catholic and apostolic church”.
    2. I think I can best answer this by saying that “having catholic tastes” doesn’t mean that you like the flavour of communion wafers.
  4. 33 minutes having had a mental block on ‘strong man’ = ???SON. I only brought it to mind eventually when I finally worked out the unknown BOTTEGA at 22dn giving me the missing checker. Up to that point it had all gone very smoothly and I had been well on target for a sub-30 minute solve.

    No problems with DJINNI which I remembered from previous appearances. The latest I can find here was last October but I thought I had seen it more recently than that.

  5. Seemed easy… until I got to the tea (which I eventually remembered), took the only logical guess at PURLER, both eyebrows raised, and had to cheat to check the county that I, of course, had never heard of!
  6. Just under 45 min, which surprised me because i thought I was going more slowly due tricky clues and definitional misdirection. Like others I was chuffed to get Ross and Cromarty and Bohea from crossers and a good guess, and I took a chance on the only word I could make out of the clue with Purler.

    In the last week or so we had too many Easys today, too many Ons Friday, and too many
    blows with the Blow-by-Blow last Monday, too many graduates in Mahatma, and I think I also recall a double do Dodo.

    Edited at 2019-02-18 04:42 am (UTC)

  7. I had everything but 1d, froze it and went off to the hospital, came back with some glossy photos of my esophagus and stomach, and decided to have another go. I had no idea what a PURLER was–other than someone who purls–but I gave it a try. DNK BOTTEGA, but assumed it was a variant (Italian?) of ‘bodega’. SAMSON also entered with some trepidation, as I couldn’t think of how to deal with SAM. I’m not sure how, or if, I knew the county, but there was a very popular American player in Japanese pro baseball named Cromarty. Didn’t know the hymn: a lovely image that, of Jesus hauling the erring believer off on his shoulder like a sack of potatoes.
      1. I’m sorry, I should have either said nothing or gone on to say that the endoscopy showed absolutely nothing out of the ordinary anywhere. The doctor didn’t even suggest cutting down on my Bowmore consumption (well, he is a Japanese doctor, after all). Thank you, though, for your concern.
  8. That’s good news. I’m drinking some Redbreast myself right now, Irish. I sometimes wonder if there are any TTs among the cryptic crowd.
  9. 12:47 … whipped through most of this then dithered a good deal over PURLER. It seems to be one of those words which only means anything within a set phrase – Chambers gives ‘go or come a purler’, the sort of thing that might well have cropped up in the now much missed Ripper Street.

    COD to ENLIVEN — very neatly done

  10. 19.37, feeling I might have been quicker if I hadn’t been typing on a dimly lit keyboard (or could touch-type). Checking the grid revealed 6 typos, mostly next door key ones, plus an E in the middle of Cromarty for which (for once) I checked the anagram fodder.
    Didn’t know BOTTEGA as a workshop: wine shop, yes, and Chambers tells me it’s also an artist’s studio. Speaking of which, Chambers has four entries for PURL, potentially giving setters an unfair advantage.
    Thanks for the “perverse” verse: a superior rendition of the 23rd Psalm (if occasionally a bit Yodaish: “thy rod and staff me comfort still”) and inspiration for Flanders and Swann’s “transport of delight”.

    Edited at 2019-02-18 07:51 am (UTC)

  11. All straightforward here.

    COD. A photo finish – as it should be with a HANDICAP. And PRECLUDE.

  12. All done in 32 mins in a cab going from HONG QIAO to the lovely Peace Hotel down on the Bund (Wai-Tan) for brekker. Yum Cha and coffee!

    My favourite tea is Lapsang Suchong.

    FOI 11ac EXPENSE

    I did freeze in the headlights of 1dn PURLER, my LOI

    COD 24dn BALTI

    WOD 10ac ROSS AND CROMARTY (Shipping Forecast, what a treat!)

  13. Not much to say except I misread ‘country’ for ‘county’ on first pass which led me to a trawl of Turks and Caicos, Trinidad and Tobago etc.
  14. 13:55 so it seemed pretty easy today. Had to gamble on bottega but it couldn’t really be anything else. A nice steady start to the day. Thanks setter and U.
  15. Finished on Glasgow train. NHO PURLER nor BOHEA so both guessed. Took a while to see LORNA too. Otherwise fine.
  16. …another unnecessary earworm, but it’s a long time sine I thought of Tim Hardin, who I always liked. 17 minutes. DODGE at 4d is in answer to the Court Jester Olivia’s riddle yesterday, what does the Doge do? I did know how PURLER was spelt, and it is an expression my Dad would use, so it may have Northern origins, but I don’t think so as most people here seem aware of it. I actually constructed it from the knitting pattern before the penny dropped. COD to PRECLUDE. A pleasant start to the week. Thank you U and setter.
    1. Thanks BW – it was a bit of a coincidence but I’ll defer to Kevin as the jester. He’s wearing the bells and motley after all.
  17. I got stuck in the top right corner. 8dn didn’t seem right with WAY (singular) clued as MEANS. Or am I missing something? And I didn’t think a clue with FLUID would have FLOW in the solution.
  18. 14:43. Vaguely remembered PURLER (Ulaca, you neglected to explain the wordplay, but’s obvious enough if you know the stitch). Like Z, I knew of BOTTEGA only as a wine-shop. COD to INTEGER, which had me searching for an anaesthetic at first. With the C in PRELUDE at 1A, I thought I’d check which of the preludes are in C – Op28 No 1 is ion C major and Op28 no 20 in C Minor. I can play the second, but not the first.
    1. I haven’t learned any of the Preludes but I can do a couple of the Waltzes, Nocturnes and Mazurkas. I love Chopin’s music!
  19. 57 minutes to get one letter wrong! I think I must’ve been suffering from Unknown Fatigue after BOHEA, PURLER and BOTTEGA, but I foolishly skipped right past NI for the part of the UK and went for the NE instead to come up with DJINNE, which seemed quite a likely transliteration. NHO DJINNI.

    (I see now that “bodega”, BOTTEGA and, more obviously, “apothecary” all come from the Greek apothēkē, a storehouse. I suppose it’s fairly stereotypical of artists to hang out wherever there’s booze and drugs :D)

    I seem to be on a bit of a bad patch when it comes to finishing puzzles at the moment.

    Edited at 2019-02-18 09:59 am (UTC)

  20. Enjoyable today if on the easier side. No problem with bohea for any Heyer fans, they drank it all the time, at least when they aren’t drinking ratafia instead..
    Mention of the Grand National must lead to mention of Red Rum, the greatest steeplechaser of all time
  21. Entertaining for a Monday puzzle. I don’t recall coming across DJINNI before, but I thought to myself “I bet this is one of those words which has a different spelling for every day of the week” (Collins suggests I wasn’t far wrong there), and the wordplay was very clear. Likewise, I’ve never knowingly come across BOTTEGA (I eventually realised that the reason it rang a bell was because I was thinking of former Juventus striker Roberto Bettega), but with checkers in place, the anagram couldn’t really be anything else.
  22. The Bottega Veneto has its Madison Avenue flagship shop not far from here and just a block or two up from Hermes, each with a window display of a single handbag for the price of a fully equipped yacht. No one actually goes into these places, they’re just for show. I knew the county thanks to a couple of enormous Scottish bullies who lived up the road when I was little – I can’t remember their names but my father called them R&C. 15.04
  23. Half an hour for all except the unknown BOHEA for which I came here to taste. BOTTEGA also dk but had to be. And the DJINNI as knew djinn without the I and wordplay obvious.
    Nice bit of Chopin, U, I clicked through, just to see which one you liked.
  24. A rare foray into sub 15 minute territory for me today, with PRECLUDE flying in, once I’d discounted NOCCTURNE. Coming a PURLER followed, being as common an expression as “coming a cropper” to me. As Horryd points out, anyone who has heard the Shipping Forecast will be familiar with CROMARTY, and as a regular visitor to the northern side of Hadrian’s wall, the county was no problem to me. The top half was completed in about 7 minutes and the bottom half took only slightly longer with BOTTEGA and BOHEA giving me slight pause for thought. DJINNI in at least one of its forms was remembered from previous puzzles, and the wordplay was very clear for this version. Nice puzzle for a gentle start to the week. 14:44. Thanks setter and U.
  25. ….EASY-PEASY, and I just couldn’t get on the compiler’s wavelength. Not helped by carelessly entering “clobber” despite correctly parsing the clue, and by needing a three minute alpha trawl to finish off. DNK BOTTEGA, but couldn’t be anything else once the checkers were in.

    FOI ROSS AND CROMARTY – I was quite amused to discover last night that this season’s Scottish football cup final for non-Premiership clubs will see Ross County take on….errm….Connahs Quay Nomads ! Interesting concept to enter a Welsh club in Scottish competition.

    LOI PURLER – knew the expression “come a PURLER” from my Northern childhood, but more often came a cropper.

    COD BALTI

    TIME 17:09

  26. 16’30, all decently straightforward. Climbed the Cobbler once and marooned on it in mist coming down. Unaware of the i tagged onto djinn but clear enough. Also had to guess bottega as part of workshop but not hard to do so. One of those puzzles where one has to deliver the goods rather than appreciate them.
  27. Pleasant puzzle. Didn’t time it, as I was watching the news while solving it. Good blog, u.
  28. I’m disappointed to see that I’m the only one to have mombled WAYSAGER at 8d (means = WAYS, to get on = AGE, river = R). It ought to be a real word, perhaps to describe someone knowledgeable about a particular walking area, like Wainwright of Lake District fame.

    No problem with BOHEA which is straight out of Wodehouse. I once (for fun and friends) set a tea-themed puzzle with bohea clued as “some mumbo-jumbo health drink”.

    1. Don’t worry I had WAYSAGER for a while too. Some kind of wandering wise man I assumed.
      1. Perhaps we should start to compile a TimesForTheTimes neo-English dictionary. That would make an excellent entry!
        1. Great idea ….. and with dubious etymologies?

          I think Waysager comes from the old french word Paysager?

  29. 33.23 but one error as I had BOHIA -in my defence I had only just about heard of it and thought that the HE bit was a sounds-like too. As a scrabble player myself I knew DJINNI but thought it was the plural of DJINN so was a bit confused. DJINNE also allowed in Scrabble, but fortunately Northern Ireland came to my rescue.
    When I was but a lad, we visited Woburn, where there were signs saying ‘These animals are dangerous’. I then asked my Mum “What are dangerou’s?”
    1. Which reminds me, what’s the difference between a kangaroo and a kangaroot?

      One’s an Australian marsupial and the other is a Geordie stuck in a lift.

  30. Pleased to finish in just under 50 mins so beginning to crack the hour barrier. Then noticed I’d put HANDYCAP. BOHEA, BOTTEGA and DJINNI were unknown. Actually, I’ve taught two Flos. I think there’s something of a return of old-fashioned names.
    1. My granddaughter is Florence, but that usually becomes Flossie (or sometimes “That *??!!* girl” .. Flo is Andy Capp’s wife
  31. I found the NHO “PURLER” very hard to locate as my LOI. On the other hand, it’s exactly the kind of word I want to see more of in Times Crossword Puzzles, so it gets my firm seal of approval.
  32. 31:32 felt myself increasingly out on a limb as I kept encountering increasingly unlikely bits of vocab, purler unfamiliar as a fall (heard it before in its other sense of something outstandingly good to describe a goal), bottega (though I knew bodega), djinni (though I knew djinn) and bohea (I’ll leave it to others to go into bohea-mian rhapsodies over the tea, I’m more of a coffee man). In the end I just trusted the instructions given and managed to derive everything correctly if not entirely confidently. A good workout with the bottom half harder than the top.
  33. 19:32. I didn’t actually find this particularly hard, but I tackled it after a long day of skiing, a number of drinks and a large meal, so I feel justified in taking it at a leisurely pace. Particularly if you consider that the last time I skied it was as a guest of Lehman Brothers.
    I’m not sure I’ve come across BOTTEGA as a word before, but I recognise it from the posh Italian brand, and it’s similar to bottaga, so.
    Your Steinbeck gathering sounds fascinating, U. I think I share your view of him as a writer, although it’s been a long time since I read all the books. I only know of Salinas because it features in Me and Bobby McGee, a song written by an alumnus of our common almer mata.

    Edited at 2019-02-18 09:18 pm (UTC)

    1. I’d forgotten that KK is an alumnus of my old college. You did well well to pick the word ‘Salinas’ up from listening to the song. I just listened to it for the first time and it nearly went right past me even though I was listening out for it. I note, however, that Janis Joplin recorded her version just before she died, so enunciation was probably not at its best then.

      My Steinbeck gathering is a phantasma (I would avoid such thing like the plague). KK is very much in the Steinbeck mould – excoriated by the critics but typically embraced by those who know best, the punters. Heaven’s Gate is one of my favourite films.

      Edited at 2019-02-19 03:02 am (UTC)

      1. I didn’t actually think you were going to Salinas, U. Irony can be hard to communicate online, in both directions perhaps.
        I learned the words to that song. It requires a very limited range so is in my small repertoire of songs to embarrass the kids with. Waltzing Matilda is another, so I’m well up on billies, jumbucks, squatters in the same way.
  34. Thanks setter and ulaca
    Happily did this one over brekkie on the weekend and was able to get it finished in 38 min – unfortunately with an error with my DJINNY (and North Yorkshire) rather than DJINNI (and Northern Ireland). Not sure why I wouldn’t have picked that up in my last sweep before coming here.
    Obviously had no issues with the COBBLER (as one of the Bruces!) and it was an early entry. Did like BALTI and BROCADED (when I figured out the lower case ‘catholic’). PURLER was the only new learning – had heard of the former Scottish county, although I had to look it up again here.
    Finished in the NE corner with INFLOW and NOMINAL the last couple in.
  35. Thanks setter, blogger and TFTT contributors. Reading your comments is as good as doing the crossword. The biggest market for Fosters is the UK where it is brewed in Manchester. It is relatively unpopular here in Oz. We’ve been trying Wilson’s from a brewery in Albany, but not with the coffee and granola for brekkie.
    27 mins this morning. Off to build a flying-fox!

    Edited at 2019-11-30 01:55 am (UTC)

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