Times 27328 – does the setter prefer ODIs or smacky-smacky?

Author   glhPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Solving time: 14:36 – a little slower than usual, and today it was some of the anagrams that held me up the longest. I’m the fourth of the seven times in so far, and the early lightning crew hasn’t shown up yet, but of the names on the list it is ones I am usually a bit quicker than so this could be a puzzle some will find easier, and some will find more tricky.

The first definition in each clue is underlined

Away we go…

Across
1 Upon which, catch cold (11)
STANDOFFISH – the catch would be on a STAND OF FISH
7 Name game (3)
TAG – double definition
9 Secure cages in, for each person controlling hounds (7-2)
WHIPPER-IN – WIN(secure, gain), containing HIP(in), PER(for each)
10 Header missed in tight draw (5)
LOTTO – remove the first letter from BLOTTO (tight, drunk)
11 First of pints gone in seconds, one can’t bend the elbow! (7)
TRICEPS – this is an odd clue and I hope I have parsed it correctly – I think it is the first letter of Pints, “gone in” TRICES(seconds), and the definition refers to that there is no singular to this muscle. Edit: as pointed out by those with a far better grasp of anatomy than I, the triceps straightens the elbow
12 Whistler painting attributed to Turner at first — that’s a bloomer (7)
TREFOIL – REF(whistler, one who blows a whistle), OIL(painting) with the first letter of Turner
13 Bones in line, like back (5)
SACRA – ARC(line), AS(like) all reversed
15 Moreover, nation developed at a slowish pace (9)
ANDANTINO – AND(moreover), then an anagram of NATION
17 Put a lot in a tin for pets (9)
CANOODLES – if you put a lot in a tin you would CAN OODLES
19 Infants pictured playing with umpteen toys, though irascible initially (5)
PUTTI – first letters of Playing, Umpteen, Toys Though Irascible
20 Where brothers are taken care of? (2,5)
IN ORDER – double definition
22 A revolution on the horizon (7)
ARISING – A, RISING(revolution)
24 Card cheat of old (5)
KNAVE – double definition
25 Grease smeared on brown trousers (9)
DUNGAREES – anagram of GREASE after DUN(brown)
27 King wrapped up in short skirt (3)
TUT – shorten TUTU(skirt)
28 She perhaps is in shorter novel about the origins of diverse peoples (5,6)
THIRD PERSON – anagram of IN,SHORTER, containing the first letters of Diverse Peoples

Down
1 Broadcast, like that on the radio? (3)
SOW – sounds like SO(like that)
2 One in England missing out on defence (5)
ALIBI – England is ALBION, remove ON
3 Flies partied, buzzing around (7)
DIPTERA – anagram of PARTIED
4 Anticipate growth of planes etc, the entire fleet? (9)
FORESTALL – FOREST(growth of planes, etc), ALL(the entire fleet)
5 Tavern has appeal, do you agree? (5)
INNIT – INN(Tavern), IT(appeal)
6 Flaw in entertaining British artist (7)
HOLBEIN – HOLE(flaw), IN containing B(British)
7 Rubbish also is written on top of table in permanent marker? (9)
TATTOOIST – TAT(rubbish), TOO(also), IS then the first letter of Table
8 Pretty decent leader in the throne room? (4-7)
GOOD-LOOKING –  GOOD(decent) then the leader in the throne room could be the LOO KING
11 River insect, slow mover to many watching? (4,7)
TEST CRICKET – the river TEST and the insect CRICKET. I disagree with this definition, having spent a great day drinking and watching Australia lose in December.
14 Hypocrisy surrounding working issue in agreement (9)
CONSONANT – CANT(hypocrisy) surrounding ON(working), SON(issue)
16 Jerk inside with dad, getting scorned (9)
DISDAINED – anagram of INSIDE and DAD, and my last in
18 Occasional books inspiring me a bit (7)
ODDMENT – ODD(occasional), NT(New Testament, books), containing ME
19 Archbishop in particular put away (7)
PRIMATE – PRIM(particular), ATE(put away)
21 Run commercial on two lines (5)
RADII – R(run), AD(commercial) on II(two in Roman numerals)
23 Articles in the mess, alternating (5)
ITEMS – hmmm… at the risk of opening Pandora’s can of worms, this clue doesn’t quite work for me. Not all of the letters are alternating… maybe the intent is that they are alternating in the individual words… In, ThE, MeSs
26 Warmer in Skegness, unusually (3)
SUN – hidden in skegnesS UNusually

52 comments on “Times 27328 – does the setter prefer ODIs or smacky-smacky?”

  1. Slowed down at several points, like CANOODLES, WHIPPER-IN (DNK), and LOI TRICEPS. I parsed the last as George did, P in TRICES, and thought that maybe it’s the biceps that flexes the elbow, not the triceps; but my ignorance of anatomy is pretty encyclopedic. (On edit: And ‘triceps’ is singular, as well as plural.) Biffed 1ac and 28ac, solved post-submission. I had the same doubts as George about the ‘alternating’ letters in ITEMS; have we had cases where the alternation respects word boundaries?

    Edited at 2019-04-18 05:26 am (UTC)

  2. I’m with George, a bit on the tricky side and not quick. Held up at the end by Triceps not even seeing a word that would fit. And certainly Kevin’s right – the biceps bends the elbow, the triceps straightens it; muscles can only pull, not push.
    Missed the mis-parsing of 23ac, but was confused by all the extra, unnecesssary word – gone in 11ac, fleet in 4dn, and wrapped up in 27ac which completely went over my head at the time, and I now see was excellent clueing. Also like LOTTO, and TRICEPS.
  3. Test cricket is the real McCoy, of course.

    Perhaps the setter should have put an exclamation mark at the end of 23d as a get-out-of-jail card after using one at 11a?

    Chuckled at TUT and enjoyed the LOO KING.

  4. 17:17 … pretty straightforward apart from that “gone in” bit of TRICEPS, which had my thoughts moving in the wrong direction for a long time at the end.

    COD to what you get if you cross a cane corso with a poodle.

  5. As off the wavelength today as I was on it yesterday. An hour and ten. It didn’t help that I misread “revolution” as “revelation” in 22a and stuck in “INSIGHT”…

    FOI 1d SOW, LOI 11a TRICEPS, not really knowing what they do. DNK HOLBEIN, WHIPPER-IN. Also wasn’t sure about 23d.

    I was close on working several out much earlier than I did; I wonder if I’d’ve been significantly faster in an alternate reality where I’d had some decent sleep and a cup of coffee before I started…

  6. After just writing in most of the answers RH I really struggled with most on the LH side.
  7. A bit anatomical this, what with triceps, sacra, radii .. and 23dn looks rather like an error to me – but clues like TUT and CANOODLE make up for a lot
    I also disagree with 11dn, if only because those deeply misguided souls who think test cricket slow, presumably would not bother watching.

    Edited at 2019-04-18 07:17 am (UTC)

    1. It’s hard to argue that test cricket isn’t slow, relatively speaking. The misguided souls are surely those who think this is a bad thing.
      1. Indeed. Obviously all right-thinking people realise that a good Test match is better than a one-day game for excitement, but the tempo is undeniably slower (which is all part of its charm, of course).
        1. A game whose outcome can be reliably predicted using a mathematical formula isn’t very exciting to watch, who’d have thought it?

          Edited at 2019-04-18 09:36 am (UTC)

  8. Similar to Jack I found the right side pretty straightforward apart from the unknown PUTTI but held by several holes on the left. Once I’d worked out the bones, that gave me TEST CRICKET and then it had to be TRICEPS. I was working on Rider Haggards She for ages before the penny dropped.
  9. 55 mins with yoghurt, granola, etc.
    Sacra bleu, that was tricky, but worth it.
    (Minor) MERs at using ‘with’ among the Putti initials.
    Mostly I liked: Canoodles, throne room king and COD to the classic Stand of fish.
    Thanks setter and G.
  10. … my mother was fortunately a member of that association for ex girl guides ( average age 70), or I’d never have got TREFOIL. 38 minutes with LOI FORESTALL, not seeing the forest for the trees until I’d biffed it from crossers. I shrugged at the spike on the wave form of the alternating ITEMS. ANDANTINO not known but it seemed a fair bet from ‘andante’. TEST CRICKET isn’t ANDANTINO though; it’s the other stuff that’s far too presto. COD to CANOODLES. The wrapped-up King TUT was nice too. The stand of fish was clever, but I’d never have solved it without crossers. Enjoyable. Thank you George and setter.
    1. Alas, your team won’t be seeing Forest next season either. I have serious misgivings about the new owner. As Rush put it in “Red Sector A”, “Are the liberators here ? Do I hope, or do I fear ?”
  11. Around a third of the clues had me struggling, while the rest seemed easy enough. I went andantino to 28.15.
    I completely misplaced the TRICEPS, thinking it vaguely in the shoulder region, so obviously incapable of bending the elbow, if no more so than the gluteus maximus.
    My problem with PRIMATE was that I got the unparseable prelate in mind early on and struggled to shift it: that left ARISING (easy, really) my last in. My experience of chairing meetings suggests matters arising are not at all on the horizon but barrelling in to explode the calm of the meeting’s end. A good chairman (I learned) refuses to allow discussion.
    I think the setters have it in for you, George, slipping in another dodgy clue at ITEMS, which is (though I didn’t spot it) as incorrect as those howlers a fort=night ago. As for TEST CRICKET being slow, surely that’s a not very Timesy misapprehension?
    I did like the monarch as attended by the groom of the stool, and, when I eventually got it, the Billingsgate pitch.
    1. The Items is giving the Grauniad a run for its money

      Edited at 2019-04-18 09:33 am (UTC)

  12. Really good and amusing puzzle. I must be alone in not seeing a problem with 23dn; we regularly ignore punctuation, capitalisation, and indeed the entire superficial meaning of a clue, so why not apply the alternation to a phrase instead of a single word, I say.
    1. I was thinking the same as you until I eventually twigged what others were complaining about – alternating letters in the phrase would be ITEES, so in order for it to work you have to go for each word’s letters alternating separately. A bit of a stretch… but fortunately not one that I noticed at all while solving.
      1. I’m now thinking you were probably way ahead of me and there already… bad day for me being slow on the uptake.
  13. Can’t it be read as In (in alternating), ThE (the alternating), MeSs (mess alternating)? Clumsy, I agree, but seems sound.

    25′, liked CANOODLES and WHIPPER IN.

    Thanks gl and setter.

  14. A bit slow today with same pattern as Jack. Like others didn’t really understand TRICEPS but what else could it be? Also thought 23D was faulty. Liked the LOO KING
  15. 14:12. Once again I whizzed through most of this and then got badly stuck on a few at the end. This seems to be happening an awful lot at the moment, and the ones I get stuck on aren’t even the difficult ones. ARISING today, for some reason.
    Great puzzle, anyway. CANOODLES is a cracker.
  16. Agree with keriothe, 20 minutes. Missed the ITEMS slight problem, just bunged it in
  17. ….is certainly unusual in my experience ! I’ve been there twice in recent years. Admittedly the first was in winter, and it was closed – and bitterly cold. The second was spring last year, when the rain was so heavy that the bus station was flooded.

    A generally enjoyable puzzle, but I hate casual usages INNIT ? I didn’t spot the problem with ITEMS although Rob’s parsing works (much as I dislike it !).

    Thanks to George for parsing THIRD PERSON (which I should have seen), and WHIPPER-IN which really stumped me.

    FOI TAG
    LOI DISDAINED
    COD CANOODLES (also liked the Good Loo King)
    TIME 10:21

    Edited at 2019-04-18 10:16 am (UTC)

    1. As Iam away presently I am unable to use the Jolly Fisherman avatar.
      I will defend Skeggy through rain and shine!! Manly the former..

      Hell of a crossword – a bit like the City Spurs game last night, plenty in the first twenty minutes but a roller coaster after that.

      FOI SUN
      LOI TRICEPS
      COD CANOODLES
      WOD 1ac STANDOFFISH

      Done in no time! with assistance.
      horryd Hampstead

  18. To me it seams unfair to clue obscure words (diptera,andantino) with anagrams as it reduces the puzzle to just guesswork, or am I missing something ?
    1. No, you’re not missing something as yours is a fairly regular complaint around here, but one of the problems is defining what’s obscure and what it’s reasonable to expect a solver to have in their well of General Knowledge.
    2. Sometimes it can be educated guesswork, though. If you assemble DIPTERA you stand some chance of guessing that it’s DI + PTERA, i.e. “two wings”, if you happen to recognise PTER(a) from pterodactyl, helicopter, lepidoptera, so forth.

      But yes, sometimes you just have to take a punt on what looks like the likeliest word you can assemble. Oddly, this does seem to be something that gets better with practice, even if you don’t really know how you’re learning to do it!

  19. 10m 37s here. TRICEPS was also my LOI, and I share others’ concerns about the definition of TEST CRICKET (although I’m a football man myself).

    12a was my favourite – “Whistler painting” for REF+OIL was lovely.

  20. Lovely puzzle – and I would be patting myself on the back, save for the 12 minutes on Triceps at the end! That ‘gone’ in the clue is very misleading. Whistler painting was excellent.
    1. ‘Goes’ would be better. Why do the setters continually make life difficult for themselves? And how does ‘odd’ mean ‘occasional’? Mr Grumpy
  21. About 34m, innit. My goodness, has that really become a word eligible for the Times crossword? Incroyable!
  22. I’m with you on liking 12a. I also liked FORESTALL, GOOD LOOKING and CANOODLES. TRICEPS had to be the answer, but I didn’t understand it. WHIPPER IN my LOI as another DNK. 24:43.
  23. 17:40 and in common with mauefw above I loved REF OIL and finished with TRICEPS.

    The loo king tickled me too.

  24. It’s certainly a defence however. 28’45 here and quite glad to get round in under the half-hour. Liked canoodles. I think 23 is OK if unusual: one says the words as separate, uh, items so they can alternate separately. (If that’s their thing.) I rather like the economical whimsy throughout.
  25. Another TRICEPS LOI here. Needless to say I didn’t notice anything wrong with 23d until George asked me if I had, at which point I exclaimed “Good Lord!”

    Enjoyable overall though.

  26. I don’t really get the bit about a fleet in 4 dn. Error in the clue to 23 dn. 11 ac is odd – gone, or gone in, doesn’t seem to work. In 11 dn the clue seems strange: the bit about slow mover… I think it’s the agent noun that somehow doesn’t fit with the answer, but I can’t put my finger on it. 19 ac – the word ‘with’ seems to break a convention for this type of clue. Patchy sort of puzzle. Great blog, though 🙂

    Edited at 2019-04-18 05:59 pm (UTC)

    1. That wasn’t the definition in the clue, but the last time someone said that, it turned out that the “excuse” definition was in OED, ODE, Collins and Chambers, albeit marked “informal”. And if we can have “innit”, I think that’s a sign informality is allowed!
  28. I agree completely. Also not sure about the “out” in 2ac. I suppose it is ok?
    I didn’t get 11ac Triceps, I fear.
  29. Thanks, Mike. I guess ‘out’ is okay, but the clue could be neater. I didn’t get triceps either 🙂
  30. After multiple interruptions for a haggis breakfast, a trip to see the lock ladder at Fort Augustus and an evening meal al fresco to the delicate strains of a chainsaw and falling trees in the woodland surrounding our cottage, I eventually made some progress with this puzzle. I stared at 23d for a while and came up with ITEMS regardless, although my tired eyesight probably helped me there. STANDOFFISH went in from definition and crossers, as I was too tired to work it out by this stage. PUTTI came from wordplay and the definition only hit me when I read the blog. One of those filed away and forgotten words. Loved TUT and GOOD LOO KING. TRICEPS was my LOI, but I did spot the parsing. I was most surprised to find I was still in the top 100, at 88, when I submitted, quite late in the evening, at 37:33. Thanks setter and George.
  31. 1hr 20 mins. Started this late home and a bit tired after a couple of beers in the pub at a leaving do but was generally just off the wavelength. Got held up at the end for ages by the crossing pairs arising / primate and triceps / test cricket. The blog has helped me appreciate a couple of the finer points which passed me by when solving such as the king wrapped up.
  32. Couldn’t get to grips with this one at all. Working through the solutions I found out why. My first major mistake was thinking 1D was AIR which I think is a possible alternative answer, but of course I then spent far too long trying to make sense of 1A. Other than that, there were quite a few unknown words to me like PUTTI (which I actually solved, but dismissed since I didn’t know it!) and WHIPPER-IN to name two (there were others). Total clues solved: 11. Not quite enough to make critical mass. Very poor. Different wavelengths? You could say that! Still I thought the wordplay was excellent, thanks to the setter. Favourite clue was 25A which I think is a touch of genius as the surface is so good (and I got that one). 8D was genius too (didn’t get that one).

    Day 3 of 3 month challenge – crosswords completed so far: 1. Must try harder!

    WS

    Edited at 2019-04-19 08:28 am (UTC)

  34. Thanks setter and glheard
    Found this very hard … the last two – ALIBI and TRICEPS just wouldn’t fall until I picked this up weeks after I’d left it on a pile of undone puzzles ! (Yep it’s about getting them out eventually !!)
    Lots of clever wordplay here … and was another who didn’t notice the anomaly with the odd letters of ITEMS.
    Had heard of WHIPPER-IN more as the last horse during the running of a race, but from crosswords in the context that it was here. As others, thought that GOOD-LOOKING and STANDOFFISH were excellent.
    It was hard but good !!

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