Times 27,335: You Gotta Run, Run, Run, Run, Run, Solve A Clue Or Two

Author   VerlainePosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
I didn’t find this particularly difficult, though my time wasn’t blazing-Monday-fast either; but I’d certainly rate it on the gentle side, with all the definitions being entirely straightforward and most of the wordplay involving quite basic cryptic operations, a lot of putting X into Y to find Z. There was a hint of the old-fashioned about this too with the vehicular fly, and duffers getting laced, which made me think it might have been the work of an older setter? Perfectly acceptable fare of course, cheers setter!

FOI was 10ac, LOI 19d. My Clue of the Day was probably the comparatively elaborate 2dn, but for once I have an anti-COD, the slur that is the surface of 22ac. The only way I’m going to countenance “light blues good, dark blues bad!” in these parts is if it’s just an Orwellian prelude to “light blues good, dark blues BETTER!” Despite, um, the two most recent boat race results…

ACROSS
1 First stronghold to protect an indefinite number after retreat (8)
FOREMOST – FORT [stronghold] to “protect” reversed SOME [indefinite number].

5 Something surgeon provides for pain (6)
STITCH – double def

10 Artefact of Catholic priest being held? (5)
RELIC – R.C. [Catholic], ELI [priest] being “held”

11 Bound to take chaps into extraterrestrial sort of escape (9)
ELOPEMENT – LOPE [bound] to take MEN [chaps], into E.T. [extraterrestrial]

12 The fellow is entertained by Greek following rationalist philosophy? (9)
ATHEISTIC – HE IS [the fellow | is] “entertained” by ATTIC [Greek]

13 Language of love used by wise man (5)
OSAGE – O [love] used by SAGE [wise man]

14 Stand where gateman has returned (7)
ETAGERE – hidden reversed in {wh}ERE GATE{man}

16 A top man, weak initially, is getting aroused (6)
WAKING – A KING [a | top man], W [weak] initially

18 Old soldiers being gathered came to the same conclusion (6)
AGREED – AGED [old], R.E. [soldiers] being “gathered”

20 Food Rosy brought around as a possible first course? (7)
CHOWDER – CHOW [food] + reversed RED [rosy]. Soup is a good first course

22 Oxford will always be beaten (5)
LACED – double def, Oxford as in a shoe. Outrageous surface

23 Glow of one about to engage in 11? (9)
FIRELIGHT – I RE [one | about] to “engage in” FLIGHT [11 = elopement]

25 Conservative head receiving a guy who lives on an island? (9)
CARIBBEAN – C BEAN [Conservative | head] “receiving” A RIB [a | guy]; guy as in “tease”

26 Part of America with no room for trendy goddess (5)
DIANA – {in}DIANA [part of America, with “no room for” trendy = IN]

27 One going quickly turning miserable, star losing love (6)
DASHER – reversed SAD [miserable] + HER{o} [star, “losing” love = O]

28 Diner travelling in carriage prepared to talk to fellow passengers? (8)
FRIENDLY – (DINER*) [“traveling”] in FLY [carriage]

DOWN
1 Confronts having to collect ash container — they may be very hot (8)
FURNACES – FACES [confronts], having to “collect” URN [ash container]

2 Man perhaps writing half of the letters (5)
RALPH – R [perhaps writing] + ALPH{abet} [“half of” the letters]. Reading, writing and arithmetic are the “three R’s”

3 A line became hard to sort out, as only fit for computer input? (7-8)
MACHINE-READABLE – (A LINE BECAME HARD*) [“to sort out”]

4 Son — little couple’s beloved one (7)
SWEETIE – S WEE TIE [son | little | couple]

6 Mad golfer keen to wed — a temptation that should have been avoided? (4,2,9)
TREE OF KNOWLEDGE – (GOLFER KEEN TO WED*) [“mad”]

7 Parent upset over boy getting cut in the head (9)
TREPANNED – (PARENT*) [“upset”] over NED [boy]

8 Instruction to give girl corporal punishment here? (6)
HITHER – or else, HIT HER! [instruction to give girl corporal punishment]

9 Great big bully pursuing maiden in the capital (6)
MOSCOW – OS COW [great big | bully] pursuing M [maiden]

15 Cigars given out with ale and port (9)
ALGECIRAS – (CIGARS + ALE*) [“given out”]

17 Dry area sinking into sea somewhere across the Channel (8)
BRITTANY – TT A [dry | area] “sinking into” BRINY [sea]

19 Minimal length after incompetent person cut cloth (6)
DUFFEL – L [“minimal” length] after DUFFE{r} [incompetent person “cut”]

20 Investigator given a ring in awkward situation (7)
CORONER – O [a ring] in CORNER [awkward situation]

21 Not half thin, like many a birthday cake cut up (6)
SLICED – SL{im} [“not half” thin] + ICED [like many a birthday cake]

24 Delighted to take in Jehan’s last for organ (5)
GLAND – GLAD [delighted] to “take in” {jeha}N. Just discovered that Jehan Alain was a French composer and organist, which does help appreciate this clue

55 comments on “Times 27,335: You Gotta Run, Run, Run, Run, Run, Solve A Clue Or Two”

  1. Slow today, several clues giving me trouble, like LOI FRIENDLY. I took ‘brought around’ at 20ac as an inclusion indicator, which didn’t help. And I had FACES early on at 1d, but could only think of FABINCES, which really didn’t help. 14ac is a lovely hidden. I’m tempted to give my COD to 22ac, as a Cambridge fellow, but I’ll refrain and choose AGREED.
  2. My only problems were not being sure OSAGE was a language (I thought it was a herb or something). And spelling ALGECIRAS wrong which made that corner a bit tricky until I actually went over the anagrist carefully. I didn’t know DUFFEL was cloth, but it seems reasonable that a duffel bag might be made out of duffel.
  3. Fear not, there is always the chess as consolation (I posted a link to the result in my previous effort, but I believe it has been marked as spam). Oxford aided by fielding the very able Hou Yifan.
  4. Once again I struggled with some of this for far too long but was pleased to finish all correct eventually. One of my problems was thinking MOONLIGHT at 23 which, whilst ignoring some of the wordplay that the correct answer demonstrates, has a much more pleasing and romantic association with ELOPEMENT than does FIRELIGHT.

    Is this the first appearance of DASHER outside a Christmas puzzle, I wonder?

    I still had difficulty placing the E and I correctly in 15dn despite being well aware of the name of the Spanish port from history studies many years ago.

    Edited at 2019-04-26 05:25 am (UTC)

    1. I also gave up MOONLIGHT very reluctantly, being an incurable romantic and forgetting that cryptic clues usually have wordplay somewhere.
      1. That’s the trouble with these feeble CDs that we keep having. One gets so inured to them that with a clue like this the tendency is to shrug the shoulders and say yes it’s another CD and not look for the wordplay. Who said that The Times contained cryptic clues? CDs aren’t proper cryptic clues in my opinion, despite their name.
      2. Only this person thought it was lovelight that got people elevening then……
  5. Haven’t been so soundly beaten by a daily puzzle for ages. After staring at about ten left in the bottom half for the last twenty minutes of my hour, and then ten minutes more, I gave up. It did not help that I’d never heard of ALGECIRAS or OSAGE, and didn’t know the required meanings of “duffel”, “lace” or “fly” (when you’re hitting the thirteenth definition down in Chambers, you know you’re into obscurities!) Other than that I just wasn’t on the wavelength…

    Edited at 2019-04-26 06:48 am (UTC)

  6. I’m not sure if I knew LOI ALGECIRAS or if it just sounded familiar as it sounded like Al Jazeera. Take note setter – there’s a dodgy homophone for a future puzzle!
  7. 11:50. I liked this one a lot. Goldilocks-level difficulty, nothing too obscure but equally not much that was susceptible to biffing.
    I wonder if ALGECIRAS will cause problems. It qualifies for my personal definition of GK but it’s not exactly the best-known port in the world.
  8. 40 mins with yoghurt, banana, granola, blueberry compote.
    I have three MERs:
    1. 16ac. Is W an abbreviation for weak? If not and the ‘initially’ indicates the W, what tells you to put it at the front?
    2. 22ac. I think this needs: ‘always be *this* beaten’ or ‘*As* Oxford will always be..’
    3. 15dn. OWAA! Obscure Word As Anagram.
    Thanks setter and V.
    1. I naturally assumed that W was the heavy charged vector boson that is probably the quantum of the weak interaction; I mean, duh!
    2. W for weak is:
      – in Chambers
      – not in Collins, although the W boson is
      – not in ODO at all
      So setter and editor seem to be relying on Chambers for this one. Having said that I generally don’t like that yesterday, I will defend this instance on the basis that some knowledge (if not necessarily understanding) of the concepts involved in particle physics is a fair expectation in this day and age. It’s also much more interesting than where Goliath came from.

      Edited at 2019-04-26 11:07 am (UTC)

      1. Still harping on my daughter? (I hope it was clear that I didn’t know what I was talking about; I simply quoted from SOED sv W.)
        1. I realised you were quoting from somewhere, but I don’t have SOED. I wonder where it stands in the dictionary hierarchy. You hear the concise referred to a lot, but the shorter is quite a lot longer.
  10. Thank you, Verlaine, for RALPH, SLICED and FIRELIGHT, none of which I could parse.
    My CODs were AGREED and HITHER although the latter would probably anger the politically correct.
  11. Held up by uncertainty over how to spell Algi .. Algei .. the Spanish port. Guessed right in the end, fortunately.
    I thought this a noticeably old-fashioned crossword. Nice to see Eli get his weekly outing. He was the very first crossword cliche I noticed, back in the 1960s, and still going strong today.
  12. 25 minutes with LOI FIRELIGHT when CORONER fell into place. I confidently had ‘Moonlight’ for the elopement before that. As this site’s resident Physicist theist, the MER at ATHEISTIC for ‘rational’ was of major proportions. DNK OSAGE and was uncertain about ETAGERE but I was bold and entered them in firmly. The order of the vowels in ALGERICAS was the only point where my confidence was challenged. I was happy with ALGE but was it CIRAS or CARIS? Fortunately I decided that the AS endind sounded more Spanish. COD to TREPANNED. Thank you V and irrationalist setter.
  13. Very pleasant Friday outing, 22+ minutes of congenial (almost) straight through solving.
    It took me a while to expand Algiers to fit into the space available, thereby moving it to Spain. If I had been asked to point out ALGECIRAS on a map, that’s not where I’d have hazarded. Don’t think I’d have looked for OSAGE speakers in Oklahoma either.
    Thanks to V for the extra tidbits, especially for Jehan Alain. It’s always good to see that the setter has put in that little additional detail to make the clues more aesthetically pleasing.
  14. This was a steady but slow solve: 47 mins. Time lost in entertaining Oguru as a plausible African tribal language and Alcigeras for the Spanish resort (allowing ‘accord’ for agreement, with embedded OR for soldiers!). Archimedes delayed me for a few minutes, too, in 12a. LOI was FIRELIGHT, with a shrug because I couldn’t parse it. Myrtilus is right about the ‘weak initially’ in WAKING — a definite boo-boo, but I didn’t spot it at the time. My COD to CORONER for its sneaky misdirection.
    Thanks for the blog.
  15. I found this extremely difficult and anyway got the vowels wrong in 15d; never heard of the port. I also was convinced ‘moonlight’ was correct so got held up for ages with Duffel and Coroner. Also I am not understanding Waking. Is w an abbreviation for ‘weak’? If so it is a new one on me. Otherwise it would have to be ‘weak initially initially’ or somesuch!
    1. Having two parts of a clue overlap is an acceptable device occasionally used. That would justify the double effect of “initially”.

      I thought Oxford would always be LUCID. How many centuries since “laced” meant “beaten”? I guessed maybe there was Oxford Lace and D (deceased) was “beaten” rather than only D a draw.

      Considered ATONEMENT for 11ac – “a sort of escape” from past misdemeanors? And maybe A TON is not earth-bound?

      from Jeepyjay

  16. ….conducted their ELOPEMENT to the CARIBBEAN by moonlight, and as I couldn’t find a pencil this morning the grid was wrongly entered in ink. I’d already screwed up by trying to enter OSAGE in the wrong light so it was messy and slow (just over 17 minutes, but a DNF).

    That doesn’t in any way excuse my incorrect biff of “wakens” – I’d come here for enlightenment from Verlaine as to why Ken’s a top man. I’m grateful to him for parsing SLICED though.

    As a confirmed atheist, I think I’m perfectly rational.

    I had the same FOI/LOI as Verlaine, but, much as I appreciated RALPH, my COD has to be laced, not least since Oxford colleges have lost five of the last six finals of “University Challenge”, which is a far more pertinent yardstick than a rowing contest.

    I, of course, never went to university at all.

  17. Most of this went in smoothly but the last few took another 10 to 15 minutes, notably DUFFEL which was LOI once I saw CARIBBEAN and stopped trying to end 25a with BRIAN. 45 slow but pleasant mins with a couple of interruptions.
  18. 26:00 … very enjoyable, even though it took me about 10 minutes to spot the hidden ETAGERE. I’m sure I must have seen one but was no doubt happy to call it a shelf thingy.

    I also took ages trying to decide how to spell ALGECIRAS, despite having spent a couple of days there.

    Probably not my best solving day.

    Cheers, all

  19. I was stymied for ages by the SW corner, also missing ETAGERE right until the end, even though I’d looked for a hidden early on. ALGECIRAS came in a sudden inspiration and the spelling seemed to come naturally. I was another MOONLIGHT flit until the CORONER came to my rescue. That helped with DUFFEL. I used to have a duffel coat as a lad. I didn’t notice the WAKING deficiency. FRIENDLY took a while too. An enjoyable puzzle on the whole, but it took me 44:55 to solve it. Spotted the parsing of FIRELIGHT just after submitting. Thanks setter and V.
  20. 40 minutes, but like Phil had 16ac wrong – thought of anagram of WEAK + NS somehow, and than didn’t return to clue, as was alread well past my half-hour target. Grinned at 22ac, but shook head at ‘only’ in 2dn – it is possible to read such a font by eye.
  21. 11m 34s… but it doesn’t count because I took a stab at ALGECARIS. Never heard of the place.
  22. I would be very grateful if someone could explain why ‘w’ is an abbreviation for ‘weak’ (see my comment above). I can find no justification for this. Am I missing something?
    1. The clue isn’t saying W is an abbreviation for weak – ‘initially’ indicates that you just need the first letter of weak
  23. I spent quite some time trying to fathom this at the end and gave up so thanks for the parse V. I’d have had all kinds of trouble spelling ALGECIRAS but for a vague recollection from the history of the Peninsular war. Didn’t know the composer (an early and conspicuously brave casualty of WWII I now see from Wikipedia). The Jehan I remember is from Jack and the Beanstalk where Jack steals the harp which cries out to “Jehan” for help thus WAKING the giant. 21.19
  25. Very slow, in a shade under a hour a half in front of the telly (football, then Michael Portillo in Spain – he went to Barcelona and Valencia but not ALGECIRAS) wth all eventually in correctly.

    I parsed 25a slightly differently with ‘island?’ as def = C [Conservative head] receiving A RIB [a guy] + BE [who lives] on AN [an]. I agree though that ‘Conservative head’ rather than just ‘Conservative’ for C is unusual so I think this parsing doesn’t quite work.

    I liked the simple ‘here’ def for 8d.

    Thanks to setter and blogger

    1. It was pleasing that it had a question mark, though, to assuage the pedants who might say that “here” and “hither” should be more distinct than they often are in modern practice…
  26. 33:25. A rather slow but steady solve with OSAGE, ETAGERE and ALGERICAS all unknown and a MER at ATHEISTIC. I liked lots of the clues, including RALPH, SWEETIE, DUFFEL and FIRELIGHT, but as a Fenland Polytechnic man LACED has to be my COD. Thanks V and setter.

    Edited at 2019-04-26 12:56 pm (UTC)

  27. I never got into any kind or rhythm here and eventually flopped over the line in 20:25.

    I’ve been to Southern Spain often enough to know Algeciras but was left wondering if OMAGE or OSAGE was the language they probably don’t speak there.

    Nothing else to add other than that I didn’t even notice that W for weak might be a bone of contention.

  28. I’m OK with biffing, COD, FOI and LOI, but can someone explain MER please ? Is there a glossary somewhere for new or occasional visitors to the site ?

    Jim R

    1. MER stands for Minor Eyebrow Raise, indicating that the clue looks or feels a bit suspect.
      1. Not to be confused with MER, which is a Major Eyebrow Raise. You don’t get those much in a quality crossword like the Times’ though.
        1. I discussed this with Philjordan the other day and speculated that with Myrtilus’s agreement we could perhaps use mer for minor and MER for Major…
  29. I went through this very quickly, but I didn’t time it. I really never time myself anymore. I had all the needed GK, including ALGECIRAS, from historical accounts of the 1905(?) conference that took place there. And as a result I even know where it is, assuming it’s still in the same place. Regards.

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