Times 27,317: I Want My Mummy!

Author   VerlainePosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Woof, this one felt proper Friday hard, and this coming after a week of pretty hard puzzles. To qualify that, about half of it was rather straightforward, but then you’ve got the explosion in a dictionary factory that are 1ac, 8ac, 25ac, 1dn, 7dn, 20dn. I am used to this kind of thing due to manfully tacking the Monthly Club Special 12 times a year but I won’t be surprised if some people are completely stopped in their tracks. I got CONGERIES rather quickly due to dear old HP’s memorable description of a Shoggoth as “a shapeless congeries of protoplasmic bubbles”, but I took forever on the rest of the top half, not getting anywhere at all with 1ac (having no real inkling about a Lincoln being a car), biffing in a foolish placeholder TONICS for 9ac and not being able to see REAL tonic, in the unusual word at 8ac, for many tumbling thoughts of NEOTERIC, NEOGENIC, NEOLOGIC, etc etc. 2dn was my last one in, in the event, and becomes my clue of the day just because I was so well and truly suckered by the “currency” definition; without the crossing W I was convinced it had to be something like NICKELS or NICKERS or whatnot.

So well played setter, you win this round of the game and I tip my hat to you! Close to a Championship Finals level puzzle, to judge by the bruising I took…

ACROSS
1 Organ case of tin work one judge installed in Lincoln, perhaps (7,3)
CANOPIC JAR – CAN OP I [tin | work | one] + J [judge] “installed” in CAR [Lincoln, perhaps]

6 Water-carrier — originally plain Aquarius in Latin (4)
PAIL – P{lain} A{quarius} I{n} L{atin}

8 Recent spirit raiser using scientific principles (8)
NEWTONIC – NEW TONIC [recent | spirit raiser]

9 Musical sounds mostly performed by skaters in seconds? (6)
SONICS – ON IC{e} [“mostly”, performed by skaters] in S S [(two) seconds]

10 Former city business manager (4)
EXEC – EX EC [former | city]

11 Oddball tennis hero, one not really brilliant? (10)
RHINESTONE – (TENNIS HERO*)

12 Some slips of actors through that act (4,5)
IPSO FACTO – hidden in {sl}IPS OF ACTO{rs}

14 Michael’s ascended, reportedly in confusion (3-2)
MIX-UP – homophone of MICK’S UP [Michael’s | ascended]

17 Son put bracelets on, and drag, while walking (5)
SCUFF – S CUFF [son | put bracelets on]

19 Workers mature cheese out of British live collection (9)
MENAGERIE – MEN AGE {b}RIE [workers | mature | cheese, minus B = British]

22 Refuse building permission for concrete shelter (10)
BLOCKHOUSE – BLOCK HOUSE [refuse | building permission]

23 Mirror either side of small recess (4)
APSE – APE [mirror] either side of S [small]

24 Like “Samson’” English choir arranged (6)
HEROIC – (E CHOIR*)

25 Curtain‘s level in opening (8)
PORTIERE – TIER [level] in PORE [opening]

26 Unknown vehicle’s back for service (4)
NAVY – reversed Y VAN [unknown | vehicle]

27 Excited stir after early Christian city sacrifices old religious foe (10)
ANTICHRIST – (STIR*) after ANTI{o}CH [early Christian city, minus O = old]

DOWN
1 Disorderly collections of eels, that is admitted (9)
CONGERIES – CONGERS [eels] with I.E. [that is] “admitted”

2 Currency to have when splitting bill? (7)
NOWNESS – OWN [to have] when “splitting” NESS [bill, as in “Portland Bill”]

3 Auditor’s part behind with payments, reportedly, shillings down (5,3)
INNER EAR – a homophone of IN ARREARS [behind with payments], minus S = shillings

4 Lords and ladies give up preaching? (4-2-3-6)
JACK-IN-THE-PULPIT – the flower, or, unhyphenated, to JACK IN [give up] THE PULPIT [preaching]

5 More wildly adventurous food (6)
RASHER – double def

6 Cut up rubbish material (9)
PINSTRIPE – reversed SNIP [cut] + TRIPE [rubbish]

7 Fish caught round north and centre of Greenland, eaten by half Inuits (7)
INCONNU – C O N {gree}N{land}, “eaten” by INU{its}

13 Dealing with smells outside of offal plant (9)
OLFACTORY – O{ffa}L + FACTORY [plant]

15 Go back into press’s first books for a previous case (9)
PRECEDENT – RECEDE [go back] into P{ress} + NT [books]

16 Beer in cantina and island clubs of holiday isles (8)
BALEARIC – ALE [beer] in BAR [cantina] + I C [island | clubs]

18 A glowing hot lake across channel rises in crater (7)
CALDERA – reverse all of A RED LAC [a | glowing hot | lake across channel, ie in France]

20 Accompanying groups dancing around pier in India (7)
RIPIENI – (PIER IN I*) [“dancing around”]

21 Church starting a tea dance (3-3)
CHA-CHA – CH [church] + A CHA [a | tea]

79 comments on “Times 27,317: I Want My Mummy!”

  1. I got this done in 52 minutes, but even as I hit the button my eye caught the entry at 2 down and I knew in an instant that my Newness should have been Nowness. Plus I confess to looking up portiere and ripieni. So no glory today. In fact a pretty poor week, all told. But thank you setter for posing such a poser.
  2. Another NEWNESS here but the cryptic didn’t work so NOWNESS it was. Google and checkers took heavy duty otherwise I would never have got through this. FOI PAIL which was so easy thought this would be a doddle. Er, no
    1. Nowness is obviously right but I’m not sure ‘Newness’ is wrong. It fits the straight and what would one have if one were to split a headland? Presumably a “new ness”?
      1. Arguably so! I’m not sure that fully justifies “to have” – maybe “Currency you’d get after splitting bill” though?

        Edited at 2019-04-05 04:46 pm (UTC)

          1. Surely you’d have two nesses if you split one, and would consequently be even in less need of a new one 🙂
  3. I am somewhat relieved that my 56 minutes solve is in the right ballpark. I crossed my fingers with CONGERIES, JACK-IN-THE-PULPIT, RIPIENI and LOI INCONNU but also confess that I really enjoyed the moments when the definition and parsing came together.
  4. Tough couple of days in puzzleland. Another DNF due to the unknowns CANOPIC JAR and RIPIENI. I didn’t know PORTIERE either but I thought it looked more likely than POREVENE, which I thought of first. And I would have spelled BALEARIC wrong except for the helpful wordplay. About an hour all told. Regards.
  5. Well, I’m not feeling quite so dim now! DNF obvs, but only six unanswered, which isn’t bad for me, and those were mostly the same as you’re all commenting on. Count me in as another who so wanted ‘porevene’ to exist and fell for the going Dutch ruse! I liked ‘ipso facto’ – a nice Penny-drop moment.
  6. I already had EXEC, so I couldn’t make Guilder fit at all, much as I wanted to.
  7. Another “Ooof” day. Like Jimbo, after teasing out some totally unknown words from the wordplay, I decided that treating this as a Mephisto(not that I’ve ever done one) was the way to go. When POREVENE didn’t compute I was more fortunate than Jack, in that I wasn’t immediately shown the answer but lived to think again and came up with the correct PORTIERE. I remembered JACK IN THE PULPIT from a previous puzzle and that allowed me to construct(and check) the unknown organ container. CONGERIES then materialised and I didn’t bother to check that. INCONNU was laboriously constructed and checked and SONICS was my LOI. Not what I needed after a tiring day on the grass face wielding my woods and irons. 59:18. Thanks setter(I think) and V.

    Edited at 2019-04-05 08:14 pm (UTC)

  8. ….of leaving this until I returned from Oldham Beer Festival, and then trying to do it at the same time as watching a documentary about rock bands on BBC4.

    I won’t bore you with the details, but I gave up with six empty lights after about 75 minutes. Quite simply too clever for an uneducated man like what I am.

  9. Bringing my wits to this puzzle was like turning up to the gunfight at the O.K. Corral with a pea shooter. Needless to say a DNF. I did get as far as canopic jar and guessed ripieni but Newtonic and nowness were beyond me and I had also put in porevene. Lots of nice clues amongst those I was able to get but overall this was just too fiendish for me.

    Newtonic sonics in row three a new field of study?

  10. Failed. Even though I had to spread this over two days, I still fluffed the south-right corner. PORTIERE was probably sitting around somewhere in my head (probably in the box marked ‘French revision’), but in the end I plumped for ‘porfaire’. That made ‘ripeini’ the only option for 20d.

    Even so, I was quite chuffed to have finished the rest of what I thought was a very tough one. INCONNU was, of course, unknown and several went in on the basis of incomplete or dodgy parsing. NEWTONIC is a new one on me, and I shall look out for “Einsteinic” and “Darwinic” in future puzzles.

  11. After reading the above comments, a time of 56 mins with only 1 wrong changed from feeling a disappointing failure to creditable pass. NHO 1a canopic jar so mombled canofit jar as plausible answer. This despite using the star Canopus for telescope alignment last night. Liked ‘inner ear’ and ‘nowness’ , both giving a small endorphin burst as the pennies dropped. NHO portiere either, but seemed more likely than portevene.
  12. Thanks setter and verlaine
    Took numerous sessions to finally not this one over (do it on a paper copy out here, so no on-line time measurer to worry about). Found myself having to check on many words that had been conjured up from the word play to see if they were a) really a word and b) that it meant something similar to the given definition – both NEWTONIC and NOWNESS were classic examples
    Hadn’t heard of the words in 1a, 8a, 22a, 2d, 4d, 7d and 20d.
    Finished by correcting EXEC from something that I can’t decipher now after finally determining that 2d could be nothing but NOWNESS.

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