Times 27339 – East meets west here and there.

Author   piquetPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
I really enjoyed this one. Sadly I don’t have a time for it, as I was interrupted three times by the postman and two phone calls. I’d guess it would be around the half hour on a clean run. I liked the somewhat geographical and river-related theme. 7d seemed an obvious biff but it took me a while to see how it worked, and I’m unconvinced about the definition of 9a. I particularly liked 3d (once I saw it) and had a MER with 6d.

Across
1 Room for messing with Cuban a bit in communist/capitalist divide (6,7)
BAMBOO CURTAIN – (ROOM CUBAN A BIT)*. This smelt of anagram, just a matter of getting the right 13 letters to fiddle with.
8 Dropping head, insignificant English artist (4)
ETTY – PETTY loses its head. William Etty was an English 19c artist.
9 Gas container about right for heavy-duty machine (10)
JAWBREAKER – I don’t understand this definition, although the word play is clear. JAW = gas, chat; BEAKER = container, insert R. I thought a jawbreaker was a hard sweet or a word that’s tough to pronounce.
10 Dissident heading for jail in October, following revolution (8)
OBJECTOR – J inserted into (OCTOBER)*.
11 Take for a ride to see river beyond field (4,2)
LEAD ON – LEA = field, meadow; DON the river in Aberdeenshire, for one.
13 Opener managed to bag hundred initially in draw (4,6)
DOOR HANDLE – RAN = managed, ‘bags’ H, then is inserted into DOODLE = draw.
16 Bear, little one, last of three (4)
TOTE – TOT = little one, E = last of threE.
17 Tease to the right of second slip (4)
SKID – S(econd), KID = tease.
18 Discuss where continents meet? Get serious! (4,6)
TALK TURKEY – Self explanatory, I hope.
20 More than one couple stays (6)
BRACES – Double definition.
22 Producer of Asian music includes piano in strategy (4,4)
GAME PLAN – a GAMELAN I knew was an Asian instrumental band; (well I said instrument but Kevin corrected me below). Insert a P into it.
24 Bring down the sardine to cook (10)
DISHEARTEN – (THE SARDINE)*. Another whiff of anagram, if not fish.
26 On the phone, try to get hold of someone in India? (4)
SIKH – ‘On the phone’ = sounds like; SIKH sounds like SEEK.
27 Innings sees cricket side getting better by miles (5,5,3)
KNOCK SPOTS OFF – KNOCK = innings, SPOTS = sees, OFF = opposite to ON side in cricket.

Down
1 Happen upon label stuck on key drug (4-7)
BETA-BLOCKER – BE = happen, TAB = label, LOCKER = something that locks, a key.
2 West? Northbound via the interior, perhaps (5)
MAYBE – The West referred to is MAE, we insert BY (via) reversed i.e. northbound.
3 Stream bisecting rivers, beautiful thing? (5,4)
OBJET DART – Or objet d’art. My LOI, as I forgot the possibility of an apostrophe being disregarded in an answer. JET = stream, bisects two rivers, the OB (the world’s seventh longest, in Siberia, as you no doubt knew) and the DART, one of the prettiest, in Devon.
4 By the sound of it, poltroon looked fearful (7)
COWERED – sounds like COWARD, which is what poltroon means.
5 Country river, one in Russia (5)
RURAL – R for river, URAL another one in Russia.
6 Smooth and white, a plant undergoing tests? (9)
ALABASTER – I think the plant undergoing tests is an ASTER being tested in a LAB, hence A LAB ASTER.
7 Born in the nude first of all? No! (3)
NEE – Well, NÉE means born in French, if you’re female. The word play, I think, is to take not the first but the last letters of iN thE nudE, which spells NÉE.
12 Riding close behind (2,3,4,2)
ON THE BACK OF – double defintion. At first I had UP the back of … and so an UP in 11a, which was temporarily a problem.
14 Salad ingredient broadcaster eats cold with over half of chips (9)
RADICCHIO – RADIO is the broadcaster; insert a C for cold and CHI being more than half of CHIps. Radicchio is the purple-tinted lettuce I try to leave behind when I am forced to eat salad, which is seldom.
15 Men sit and eat nuts in bistro (9)
ESTAMINET – (MEN SIT EAT)*.
19 Crossword answer done, cheer! (5,2)
LIGHT UP – A LIGHT is a word for a clue, UP = done.
21 Heap — time bagged? (5)
STACK – If T for time is ‘bagged’ it is in a SACK.
23 Ingredient of recipe, stonking Ligurian food (5)
PESTO – Hidden inside RECI(PE STO)NKING.
25 Roof blown from church, upset (3)
IRK – KIRK = church loses its roof i.e. top letter.

52 comments on “Times 27339 – East meets west here and there.”

  1. I indeed biffed 7D but I put NAE. With born being NE and first of all being A and the definition being the No! at the end of the clue. Of course that left the nude bit, but I wasn’t looking that carefully at the wordplay. So DNF
  2. If I’d been a little less obtuse, I could have shaved a few minutes off my time, like figuring out what went before CURTAIN. Or figuring out what to put inside MAE, since ‘west’ is always her. I share Pip’s puzzlement over JAWBREAKER, which I only parsed post-solve. But the J gave me OBJET D’ART. Every schoolchild knows that the OB is a major river; I, on the other hand, am not a schoolchild and had to take it on faith. DNK KNOCK SPOTS OFF. A GAMELAN is a (Javanese) band, not an instrument. COD to 2LOI MAYBE.
    1. JAWBREAKER aka ‘jawcrusher’ according to Collins, a device for crushing rocks and ore.
  3. I too was interrupted by the postman and two telephone calls!

    As per Chambers, 9ac JAWBREAKER is a rock crushing machine, but I would have preferred a gobstopper!

    FOI 6dn ALABASTER
    LOI 8ac ETTY
    COD 2dn MAYBE
    WOD 1ac BAMBOO CURTAIN

    Did not like 7dn NEE nor the IKEAN 1dn BETA-BLOCKER as used by snooker champions the world over.

    Edited at 2019-05-01 05:08 am (UTC)

  4. 20:09 … and very enjoyable.

    I had all but 2 clues done in 11 minutes, then a devil of a time with the MAYBE / ETTY pair, so I’ll have to agree with those who have already nominated MAYBE as clue of the day.

    I needed the anagram fodder for BAMBOO CURTAIN. It’s not quite as forbidding as Iron Curtain, is it? More the kind of thing that would sell really well in Islington. “Ya, it’s so great, all our curtains are recycled bamboo.”

    1. You’ve put me in mind of Harry Enfield’s “I Saw You Coming” antique shop sketch. I could just imagine him selling someone gullible a bamboo curtain!
      1. Possibly my favourite Harry Enfield recurring sketch! I nearly mentioned it myself
  5. Home in just under 50 minutes with MAYBE as my LOI and many clues not yielding their secrets until I had worked steadily away at them and picked up a few extra checkers along the way. Although the answer seemed pretty obvious from the start, I didn’t much care for the clue to NEE with its loose wordplay.
  6. Two of the first answers I got were IRK and STACK giving me K___K for the start of 27A. This led me to think something was wrong as I was convinced there were no words that fit. Thus it seemed funny when it was such an everyday word that went in there eventually.

    I also finished with the unknown ETTY having spent a while getting MAYBE. I was pleased to actually work out what was going on with the clue rather than find a word that fit and work back from there. So I’ll make that my COD.

  7. Bang on thirty minutes. I liked this one, though I had to take a fair bit on trust along the way, like the meaning of JAWBREAKER, and the existence of a gamelan and at least two rivers…

    Enjoyed ALABASTER (“White, like a turkey cooker?”) and the lovely cricketing surface of 17a SKID. Luckily I’d met William ETTY before, possibly in an ESTAMINET.

    FOI 1a BAMBOO CURTAIN (reading those Quiller novels really paid off for crosswords), LOI 25d, but only because it was near the bottom.

  8. 35 mins with yoghurt, granola, etc.
    I seem to have a mental block on remembering Estaminet despite its frequent appearances in crosswords. So, for me, it was an OWAA (Obscure word as anagram) and a vowel juggle ensued.
    Mostly I liked: Knock Spots Off.
    Thanks setter and Pip.
  9. Really short clues – there is plenty of space beneath in my paper copy to work out anagrams of things like BAMBOO CURTAIN. Some really convincing surfaces like DISHEARTEN, GAME PLAN, KNOCK SPOTS OFF and DISHEARTEN (which is my COD).
  10. 16 minutes, which would have been 15 if I hadn’t dithered between NAE and NEE: many thanks Pip, for elucidation.
    Despite the MERs of some, I think ALABASTER is perfectly OK, though I think I’ve seen it in a Christmas cracker. A dog being used for smoking tests would be a lab beagle, no? (It used to happen, bet t doesn’t now!)
    I don’t think I’ve ever found an ESTAMINET even in France, though Crosswordland seems to have one on every corner.
    I used to be able to buy JAWBREAKERS at 2 a penny: the best ones changed colour over the hours of sucking and had an aniseed or some such in the middle. Useless for braking rocks.
    I have owned a BAMBOO CURTAIN. Hasn’t everyone of a certain age?
    1. No .. but when I was a youngster in Liverpool, every Chinese restaurant had one at the back, to hide the gambling/opium room..
  12. Having wound my way through the contorted paths of the inventive wordplay, I fell at the last hurdle with LEAP ON(take your horse for a ride?), having invented that well known river the PON. Drat! A fun puzzle. 33:17 WOE. Thanks setter and Pip.
  13. 16:24. I had lots of fun with this, but with a MER of A LAB for tests in 6D. I liked OBJET D’ART and MAYBE, but my COD is TOTE as this is a Goldilocks puzzle for me…. and with a current SNITCH of 99 for the community as a whole, I guess.

    Edited at 2019-05-01 07:50 am (UTC)

  14. I know Paul Robeson was a big man, but I never could understand how he could carry a boat. 36 minutes. FOI BAMBOO CURTAIN. The CURTAIN not being made of Iron lured me in to solving the anagram, when I normally would have waited for a crosser or two.I didn’t parse NÉE, and was slighty fearful that the answer might have been a Scottish NAE. I’d never heard of a Gamelan, be it an instrument or the whole band. It must be clear to all that it’s a long time since my team had a GAME PLAN on the pitch or in the Boardroom, but it came into my head once the letters of PLAN appeared. COD to KNOCK SPOTS OFF. Thank you Pip and setter.
  15. Tough but fair.

    COD. KNOCK SPOTS OFF.

    First puzzle solved since return from holiday in India where I came across this clue in the Hindustan Times.

    Jet fighters (4)

  16. Twenty-four minutes, assisted by sloe gin. (I should clarify that I did this last night; sloe gin for breakfast simply wouldn’t work.)

    NHO ETTY, and wasn’t confident it was right until I had both checkers. Likewise JAWBREAKER in that sense.

    1. Not breakfast, perhaps, but it’s very good for elevenses, mixed with a little champagne.
        1. You may find you have some leftover champagne. Don’t worry, it will keep perfectly well in the fridge until lunchtime.
          1. Ah, but I’m superstitious about champagne – never leave a bottle half-drunk (which you can interpret in either way).
  17. Unfortunately the artist was too insignificant for me to have heard of him – not surprising as art isn’t my thing – and PETTY never came to mind. Shame as I did this in very good time.
  18. 43 mins. I stupidly biffed ‘on the tail of’ which was fine until it completely stumped me on the person from India at the end. ESTAMINET took me ages, too: weird how one can look at that pile of letters for so long and not see the word. 1a and 1d went in v quickly at the outset, so I was fooled into thinking it might be a nice easy one. I knew ETTY, but not the river Ob. And MAYBE gets my COD, I think, because it just *had* to be Mae but the cleverness of the rest of the wordplay slowed me up for so long.
    Thanks, Pip, for excellent blog.
    Oh, and my gosh! how Saturday evening TV comedy has changed since “Alas Smith and Jones”.
    1. Me too! I dislike the expression ON THE BACK OF, having been subjected for years to an otherwise excellent colleague who used it all the time. I don’t think he ever used the words ‘after’ or ‘because’.
  19. At time of solving, the SNITCH was at 99, and the puzzle turned out to be in the Goldilocks zone which that number suggested, not too hard but not too easy either. I have entered an ESTAMINET many more times in a crossword than I have in real life (which is never), but it’s happily one of those words which has actually lodged in the brain. As per just about everyone else, didn’t know that meaning of JAWBREAKER and concluded in the tricky NW corner.
    1. Are you sure? If you’ve been into any establishment in France that says ‘bar tabac’ on the outside, you’ve been in an ESTAMINET, at least as I understand the word. Perhaps I don’t!
      1. Perhaps what I mean is that I’ve never knowingly walked down a French street and spotted a welcoming sign saying “Estaminet”. This is a technical point, of course, as I’ve crossed the threshold of a lot of pubs, but they tend not to have the actual word “Pub” over the door (unless they are in France and other forn parts, of course, when you often see Le Irish Pub and the like…)
        1. Well exactly. I would never actually use the word (I would call it a bar or a cafe, depending on what I was planning to drink) but I have a pretty precise idea of what one is.

          Edited at 2019-05-01 11:43 am (UTC)

        2. In Paris, of course, such a sign would be “informative” rather than “welcoming”.
  20. ….GAME PLAN B up his sleeve for our opening play off encounter with Blyth Spartans – we only took a single point off them in normal season, and their away form is formidable.

    25% of my solving time was taken up by the 3D/9A junction, and a vain attempt to justify NEE (thanks Pip). I needed to go to Chambers post-solve to justify JAWBREAKER.

    FOI BAMBOO CURTAIN (same as Bolton Wanderer !)
    LOI NEE
    COD OBJET D’ART
    TIME 12:06

  21. Another very slow start and I had trouble with the ON THE BACK OF/SIKH axis. Tried “in the wake of” and “on the tail of” before finally twigging the homophone Indian. Speaking of wigging, I happened to catch a few minutes of last summer’s Trooping the Colour which featured a very impressive be-turbaned guardsman marching with his regiment of bearskins. DNK “innings”=KNOCK (must mug up on cricket stuff). Good puzzle. 20.06
  22. You pipped me at the post with “on the tail of” Pserve! Snap.
  23. 16:13. I thought this was a cracker. I do like puzzles where you have to use the wordplay. Unknowns for me today were BAMBOO CURTAIN, JAWBREAKER in the required sense, and the river OB. I did know the word GAMELAN but also thought it was an instrument.
    I love RADICCHIO in salads, to the irritation of my family, and it also makes a very good and traditional risotto with red wine.
    1. I much enjoyed a risotto with radicchio and lardons in a splendid Ristorante in Munich recently.
  26. 19:01 with the real struggle coming at the end courtesy of ETTY and MAYBE. I also made a bit of a hash of 1a, having to write out the letters of the anagram and then crossing out the wrong ones when I wrote in curtain, leaving me one B short of a bamboo and with a rogue R.

    While I have no doubt that Pip’s parsing of NEE is the correct one, my take on it had a decidedly Yorkshire slant, with “nude first of all? No!” clearly pointing to N{ude}, EE! as in “‘er at number 22 is up the duff again!”, “Ee!” or “No!”

  27. DNF here today, because I can’t remember hearing of ETTY. And if I had thought of PETTY, which certainly fits, I would probably have discounted it since ETTY looks pretty unlikely. But I didn’t think of it in the first place, so a fail for me today. Everything else correct, though KNOCK SPOTS OFF is new to me as well. Odd expression, that. Regards.
  28. Nothing too difficult here. ETTY and MAYBE crossover last to fall.
  29. Getting to the stage where just over 2h is a disappointment so that shows I’m making progress. After an hour got about 90% done then spent the last hour on ETTY, MAYBE, and SKID, BRACES since i had originally put the wrong ingredient in my salad, namely PISTACHIO which was semi-biffed (I noticed it had the word CHIPS in it and that was enough I thought, silly silly me).

    Not only do I know what a GAMELAN Is I’ve actually played in one. You don’t just hit the keys you have to damp them with the other hand as you are playing the next note – this takes quite some skill when going fast!

    I consider myself reasonably knowledgable about the history of art, but often an artist comes along whom I’ve never heard of and ETTY is one such artist.

    All of the rivers in this crossword were DNK, so they will have to be OneNote’d for future reference. Through doing this one, I’ve come to realise the sheer number of three letter words meaning tease – RAG, KID, GUY, RIB, VEX. Probably others…

    FOI was 15
    LOI 8
    COD 2

    3 month challenge: 12/14.

    Thanks Pip & Setter.

    WS

  30. So a light is a clue or hint (Chambers 15th meaning), but the clue reads “Crossword ANSWER” the answer isn’t the light, that’s the clue. Is that wrong or am I missing something?
      1. Perfect, thank you. Answers are themselves clues/lights for other clues… I’d not thought of that, but of course it’s so obvious really. It forms part of the basic advice for beginners – get something in the grid and work from there.

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