Times 27345 – that’s more like it.

Author   piquetPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
This was the kind of puzzle we might use as a perfect example of The Times genre, having an antelope, a plant, a mineral, a couple of literary references, and some wit. Hats off to the setter for this one. It took me about twenty minutes; I’m not 100% sure I have the correct interpretation for “plan shortly” in 11a, but the rest of it makes sense. I think 5d gets my CoD vote for its witty surface, even if it was one of the easier clues.

Across
1 Nothing gripped in newspaper article (4)
OBIT – O = nothing, BIT = gripped.
4 Bring in expert to cement new value (10)
IMPORTANCE -IMPORT = bring in, ACE = expert, insert N for new.
9 Villain’s billions have no protection (10)
BLACKGUARD – B(illions) LACK GUARD = have no protection.
10 Unusual to go back around a stretch of wall (4)
DADO – ODD reversed around A.
11 Plan shortly to restrain noise in holy city (6)
MEDINA – MEA(NS) = PLAN shortly, around DIN = noise. EDIT it’s pointed out below that the convention for ‘shortly’ doesn’t allow 2 letters to be dropped, so it is MEA(N) and PLAN is a verb not a noun.
12 Confirm answer in very remarkable detail (8)
VALIDATE – V = very, A inserted into (DETAIL)*.
14 Circumnavigator failing at the end after bad weather (4)
FOGG – FOG, (FAILIN)G. Phileas Fogg as in Around the World in Eighty Days.
15 Correction: no dementia suffered (10)
EMENDATION – (NO DEMENTIA)*.
17 Not agreeing to run fast with saw (10)
GAINSAYING – GAIN = run fast (as in a clock perhaps), SAYING = saw, proverb.
20 Stone that killed an assassin (4)
RUBY – Double definition; a jewel, and Jack RUBY who killed the chap who killed JFK.
21 Attractive office work typist finally secured (8)
TEMPTING – TEMPING secures a T from the end of typist.
23 After an honour, you had toed the line (6)
OBEYED – OBE an honour, YE’D = you had.
24 Little girl, not the first that’s into cannelloni (4)
NELL – I think this is indicating ANN or ANNE are the first girl’s names to be found in CANNELLONI, and NELL is after them; Little Nell being the heroine of The Old Curiosity Shop.
25 A country swallowing fake news: that is the effect of Brecht (10)
ALIENATION – A NATION swallows a LIE = fake news. Apparently Brecht created the ‘verfremdungseffekt’ concept in his plays, translated as ‘Alienation’ or ‘Distancing’. I won’t pretend to understand it.
26 As driver, manoeuvre creating rage? (6,4)
CHANGE GEAR – Change (anagram) GEAR into RAGE.
27 One of the veggies getting boat to turn back (4)
LEEK – KEEL reversed. KEEL is a poetic name for a boat, which we’ve seen before.

Down
2 Notable male distraught, being wild about Giselle? (11)
BALLETOMANE – (NOTABLE MALE)*. Giselle being a popular ballet by Adolphe Adam, so a fan of Giselle is a balletomane, or one smitten with balletomania.
3 Enjoying a snack, perhaps, and settling for the night (7,2)
TUCKING IN – nice double definition.
4 Does one not appreciate a fire here? (7)
INGRATE – Double definition, one requiring separation of IN and GRATE.
5 Now enjoy mountain panorama, or join most people round the box? (4,7,4)
PEAK VIEWING TIME – Another witty cryptic double definition.
6 Annoyed about doctor having spoken obscurely (7)
RIDDLED – RILED about DD = Doctor of Divinity. “Why is a raven like a writing desk?’ asked the Hatter. Alice didn’t know. Neither did the Hatter. Carroll himself came up with an answer in the later 1897 edition of his work. (Sorry, any excuse to rabbit on about Lewis Carroll and I’m off).
7 Ruminant’s area linking places on opposite coasts (5)
NYALA – Today’s antelope. NY and LA in America are linked by A(rea).
8 Bring out woman to receive sanction (5)
EVOKE – EVE has OK inserted.
13 Hiding banknotes in book is irritating (11)
TROUBLESOME – TOME = book, insert ROUBLES.
16 Agony and misfortune almost perennial (9)
TORMENTIL – TORMENT = agony, IL(L) = misfortune, almost. Today’s obscure plant, it’s a herb.
18 Keep moving marble, holding it (7)
AGITATE – AGATE has IT inserted. IMO agate is not the same as marble, although you can make a set of marbles (the playing game sort) from agate. https://wikidiff.com/agate/marble
19 One reacting to pun perhaps with anger, or otherwise (7)
GROANER – (ANGER OR)*.
21 Jacket king of England picked up to tour island (5)
TUNIC – CNUT, a variant spelling of Canute, is reversed and has I for island inserted.
22 Barley sprouted on a small island (5)
MALTA – MALT = barley sprouted, add A. Malta isn’t really a small island, compared, say, to Gozo, but the clue wouldn’t work if it just read “… on an island”.

59 comments on “Times 27345 – that’s more like it.”

  1. 21:11 … totally agree, Pip. Very classy offering. Took me ages to get started at all but loved it once I got going.

    BALLETOMANE very solvable once the checkers were in pace.

    Nice of the setter to indicate the correct reaction to PEAK VIEWING TIME with GROANER!

    Among a lot of witty clues, NELL stands out for me. Nice idea. Thanks setter and Pip

  2. I noticed, of course just as I pressed the ‘submit’ button, that I hadn’t done 5d (I had P_A_ VIEWING TIME). So, after taking a second or two to scream an obscenity, I belatedly thought of PEAK. I’m sure the scorers at the club will understand. Aside from that, I enjoyed the puzzle (aside from that, Mrs. Lincoln, …). I agree with Bruce about MEAN. No problem here with AGATE; although I never played with marbles, I knew that one kind was called aggies. I thought of ANNE first, but ‘little’ dissuaded me. NELL, of course, is the heroine of whom Oscar Wilde said one would need a heart of stone not to laugh at her death scene. COD to BALLETOMANE.
  3. Hi Pip, I think “plan” is just MEA(N) rather than MEA(NS), consistent with the “rule” that wordplay only takes one letter off the end when shortening.
  4. 45 minutes. I didn’t get the Dickens reference at 24 if it was what the setter intended, and just assumed that ‘little’ referred to the abbreviated name. But now I’m not sure of that as neither Ann nor Anne is an abbreviation as one of them would need to be for the clue to work. Took a number of other answers on trust e.g. TORMENTIL, AGATE as marble, ALIENATION as something to do with Brecht, GAIN as run fast, etc.
  5. Very enjoyable puzzle. Had vague memory of Brecht Alienation Effect. Relied on wordplay for the plant. Thank you setter and well blogged Pip
  6. 45 mins with yoghurt, banana, blueberries, granola.
    I lost most time finding a veggie to finish the never-heard-of plant. I’m counting the Leek as one of my five a day. Nice to see Nyala in its natural habitat, a crossword.
    I enjoyed it. Mostly I liked: the girl-filled cannelloni and COD to Validate.
    Thanks setter and Pip.
  7. “I knew that one day I could become perhaps a famous writer or a famous whore. It was my spelling let me down.”

    Great crossword. I even smiled at the antelope (I must be in a good mood). Usual 30 minutes.

  8. Struggled today, taking 55 minutes with distractions, and with one wrong, BALLETONAME. I guess I’m not a BALLETOMANE. I always say ballet is better with your eyes shut. Didn’t know TORMENTIL either, but the cryptic gave that. I’d biffed LLAMA for 7d before IMPORTANCE dawned, and NYALA remembered/constructed. LOI EVOKE. COD to PEAK VIEWING TIME, which seems to mean: “There’s nothing you’ll want to watch apart from perhaps the archaeology on BBC4.” Thank God for Alice Roberts, even if she is an atheist. Thank you Pip and setter.
  9. Nice crossword, this, exactly the right distance short of hard.
    Tormentil is one of a large class of words that I know perfectly well but have absolutely no idea what they mean..
    I parsed 24ac as “Little Nell, but not the little, is in cannelloni” .. I don’t think setter meant to include Ann(e) at all
    1. I don’t agree, on balance, although I see your thinking. In your parsing, either the definition is just ‘girl’, which seems weak, or Little has to do double duty. Anyway i don’t suppose the setter will tell us.
        1. But you are wrong, Pip.. I have no quarrel with double duty myself, it is what I would call “Efficient.” But actually it is not required here. Think of it as a DD: “Little Nell, not the first” = NELL. “That’s into cannelloni” = canNELLoni .. simples!
          1. I don’t see it as a right or wrong issue, I see it as two more or less equally plausible alternatives. I am sure you can feel the same way, or ask the setter ! In fact a clue which works in two ways is even smarter.
          2. But the clue says ‘little girl’, which I read as ‘girl who is little’. The girl who is little is Nell. So I read it like Pip, although it’s not obvious which the setter intended.
            1. Damn those clues, that can be read more than one way!
              .. each to their own, as Pip says. Though being pedantic it is not little girl, it is Little girl. Still feeling confident 🙂
              1. That makes no difference in any event!
                Perhaps we’ll never know. We’ll just have to find some way of coping I guess.
            2. But then why the ‘not the first in cannelloni bit’-which also doesn’t work. If the setter means not the first name present in cannelloni, that takes out Ann. Therefore the answer must be Anne. Of course it isn’t, but it’s yet another mistake in the clue isn’t it?
              2. There are two girls in CANNELLONI. One is little, the other isn’t. The little one is not the first one.
                The ANN/ANNE thing does muddy the waters a bit but I think we’re only supposed to count one of them.

                Edited at 2019-05-08 06:41 pm (UTC)

  10. Slowed down and in one case (TORMENTIL) stymied by the obscurities, it was actually some of the prosaic answers I had unfilled at the end. I think by the time I got there I was trying to be too clever for the “import” of 4a and the “country” of 25a and overlooked the obvious, but it didn’t help that I’d NHO PEAK VIEWING TIME, either, so only had the middle word written in. I suppose not even knowing that Brecht was a playwright, let alone not knowing his effects, was also not helpful.

    Shame, as I’d guessed BALLETOMANE correctly, corrected my odd MURA at 10a (well, it’s A RUM backwards, and it seems a bit wall-ish!) once I’d come up with the unknown NYALA, and made up the only-slightly-familiar MEDINA from the wordplay.

    Just too tough for me today!

    Edited at 2019-05-08 08:47 am (UTC)

    1. MURA immediately popped into my head as well, but was nearly as quickly rejected as DADO sprung up.
      Brecht, for me, most notably known from Nick Cave songs: He wrote The Threepenny Opera, somehow Kurt Weill was involved – wrote the music, Wikipedia tells me – and Nick Cave covered songs like Mack The Knife. My favourite Swiss band(!) Young Gods also covered Weill extensively, as did The Doors with such German classics as “Alabama Song”. Nina Simone, too: Pirate Jenny.
      Off the wavelength for this, but got there in the end. Tormentil seen before in crosswords, BALLETOMANE with a shrug, not being exactly sure who or what Giselle was.
      1. Ah, yes, I think that’s why I thought of him as a composer but not a playwright. Thanks for the background info!
  11. 9:52. Very interesting puzzle.
    I somehow recognised TORMENTIL, although it seems the last time it came up was in 2013. I can’t believe I remember it from then, but I don’t know where else I’d have come across it.
    I can’t quite believe BALLETOMANE is an English word.
  12. A toughie, for me, taking 56 mins and some clues remaining unparsed. I had a vague idea that the RUBY clue might be playing with a proper name — someone who famously killed someone famous — but I just didn’t get it. I saw little NELL immediately (a familiar Dickens character), but forbore to enter it because I couldn’t satisfy myself that the wordplay worked. CHANGE GEAR biffed, but the clue was intractable for me. And GAINSAYING seemed like the correct solution, but I baulked at gain=run fast. PEAK VIEWING TIME irritated me somewhat: is it really a dictionary phrase? any more fixed than, say, a ‘cut-glass tumbler’? And agate=marble? Bah!

    The antelope was my FOI, and my COD. It was all downhill from then on.

    Many thanks for the helpful blog, Pip.

  13. Are roubles only produced in banknote form? Never as coins? If there are coin denominations of roubles then I think ‘banknotes’ in TROUBLESOME is naughty.
    2. Only in banknote form these days. I think you have to go back to pre-revolutionary times to find roubles as coins. Mike Cowking (not sure why I am anonymous)
  14. Certainly not gin and lime marmalade, and whatever they do eat was what I made of this, having to sort out two over-optimistic biffs before finishing.

    I wondered if there was a verb “to mule” leading to being annoyed, so entered “mumbled” at 6D, and saw LA and unhesitatingly slapped in “llama” at 7D. You can therefore understand why it took ages to see the IMPORTANCE of having the correct crossers at 4A.

    Slightly held up by incorrectly surmising that “plan = map” at 11A, but parsed it correctly once I realised it had to be MEDINA.

    Thanks to Pip and others for NELL – I’m still not sure which explanation I prefer though !

    FOI MEDINA
    LOI NYALA
    COD CHANGE GEAR (near Miss PEAK VIEWING TIME)
    TIME 11:28

  15. I had a feeling this might be tricky when my FOI was TUNIC, and for a while that impression stayed with me. However I began to make progress in the bottom half and eventually teased out the more obscure(to me) answers. I had to assemble the plant from wordplay and the dance enthusiast from a likely assembly of the anagrist. FOGG and OBIT were my last 2 in. I found the short clues very hard today. A biffed OKAPI was corrected by IMPORTANCE and VALIDATE. A good workout. 34:22. Thanks setter and Pip.

    Edited at 2019-05-08 11:26 am (UTC)

    1. Tunic was my second last in (Nell was the last). I had a hang up there, embarrassingly. Mike C
  16. Never got on the right wavelength, and doggedly followed all the setter’s misdirections to their logical conclusion (or lack of it). Not so much changing gear as grinding gears this morning.
  17. The IMPORTANCE of being VALIDATEd. Some nice misdirection by the setter. Was I the only one trying for the FT in 1a? Did the same as Phil with “mumbled”. I knew BALLETOMANE from the very (very) brief time I thought I might make a good dancer. 19.07

    Edited at 2019-05-08 11:01 am (UTC)

  18. Not really up for it today, taking the best part of an hour whilst watching the Liverpool v Barcelona second leg on replay. Dear me – what a Messi business!

    FOI 10ac DADO
    LOI 26ac CHANGING GEAR – an anti-climax!
    COD 20ac Jack RUBY
    WOD Phineas FOGG

    Klippety-Klopp!

    Edited at 2019-05-08 12:06 pm (UTC)

    1. Just something to keep in the back of your mind Horryd: It’s PhiLeas not PhiNeas (when it’s not David Niven). That caught out quite of few of us sometime in the last couple of years – can’t remember exactly when.
  19. I’m with Tim on this (perhaps even more so, as I couldn’t even muster the energy to fight to a finish, with OBIT and BALLETOMANE (the famous dancing Irish lion tamer) missing).

    For me there were two many instances of definitions and wordplay elements being right on the edge of everyday equivalence, e.g.:
    PLAN / MEAN
    RUN FAST / GAIN
    FAKE NEWS / LIE
    MANOEUVRE / CHANGE GEAR
    DOCTOR / DD
    MISFORTUNE / ILL

    1. I didn’t have a problem with run fast for gain once I thought of clocks.
      PLAN = MEAN is a bit of a stretch
      The def for 26a is not just manoeuvre, it’s AS DRIVER, MANOEUVRE, the driver moves his arm to change gear. Not the car.
      The others are not unreasonable. DD is a regular.
      1. I’m not suggesting they’re wrong (expect change gear, more of which below), just a bit oblique and there are a lot of them.

        Saying that the driver moving his arm counts as a manoeuvre is very flaky. If the Pointless producers gave 100 people 100 seconds to name as many driver manoeuvres as they could I reckon you get loads of U-turns, reversing, overtaking etc but practically nothing in the way of changing gear, adjusting the mirror, retuning the radio or whatever.

        Edited at 2019-05-08 12:59 pm (UTC)

        1. I agree with you. Although having watched Pointless numerous times, it still amazes me how 10 or 20% of people fail to know anything about anything.
          Someone should do a Ph.D on why a blogger instinctively or subconsciously sets out to defend the setter’s material, more than is objectively warranted.
  20. Ruby killed Lee Harvey Oswald, but there’s some conjecture whether or not he killed the chap who killed JFK?
    Struggled a bit on this, didn’t see what the canneloni clue was all about and always though CNUT was Danish, but limped over the line in the end.

    Edited at 2019-05-08 01:41 pm (UTC)

    1. It doesn’t say ‘English king’, but ‘king of England’. George I was K of E, although German. On the other hand, Cnut wasn’t king of England.
      I was going to say the same thing about Ruby and Oswald.
      1. *Of course* Cnut was king of England, Kevin .. Wikipedia: “As a Danish prince, Cnut won the throne of England in 1016” … Collins: “Danish king of England (1016–35)” .. Encyclopaedia Britannica: “Canute the Great,(died Nov. 12, 1035), Danish king of England (1016–35). And it was OUR sea he used to demonstrate that kings cannot control the tides.

        1. Thought he was king of Northumbria, but I was confusing him with another Cnut.
    2. I did consider opening a can of worms by discussing whether LHO was guilty, but decided it was a can too far for TFTT! I had an Irish friend who devoted years to the JFK mystery and wrote a book on it (not sure if published?). Bottom line was LHO did the deed but whether alone or as a conspirator is another matter.
  22. For the second day running a solve so marred by somnolence and stupidity I submitted without leaderboard. Just as well: I still had LLAMA and IMPORTABLE (which changed LLAMA to BLAMA). Rubbish.
    Don’t think I’d better venture opinion on today’s talking points, as I’m likely to appear lunatic. Goodness knows how I’ll cope tonight, especially after Tottenham have triumphed/crashed and burned in Amsterdam. Wish me luck.
    1. I feel sympathy for Spurs, in that the bar for what would constitute “a good performance from the English team” has been raised somewhat in the last 24 hours…
        1. Well, if the final doesn’t now finish with someone winning 5-4 in the 8th minute of extra time after being 4-0 down at half-time, I think it will rightly be described as an anti-climax…
  23. Finished in about 1h15m.

    Main hold up was on the LHS with 1 which like others I was parsing as putting O in FT and clearly getting nowhere. MEDINA followed by FOG came, then the unusual BALLETOMANE then LOI OBIT. My COD was 24 which I think is v clever clueing.

    Thanks to blogger for explanations which were required in various places including RUBY.

    I completed the two weekend xwords and Monday and Tuesday’s which brings my challenge total up to 18/20.

    Thanks to all.

    WS

  24. All VGF and finished in 30 minutes. BALLETOMANE and TORMENTIL were, obvs, NHOs, but at least by now I’ve learned to identify a NYALA on sight.
  25. As alluded to in the blog, there is no need for a ‘small’ as a descriptor in 22d. As for Ruby, it has never been conclusively proved that LHO shot Kennedy. He always denied it-for two days anyway. Mr Grumpy
  27. This one took a little over an hour but in fairness I was somewhat distracted, solving whilst watching Spurs v Ajax tonight. FOI the funky, cold, holy city at 11ac. LOI tormentil which did ring a bell once I’d cracked the wordplay. On a separate note I was sad to see that the “dinner tonight” recipe in yesterday’s Times was Lindsey Bareham’s last (torn chicken and chorizo with peas fwiw). I’ve used the recipes pretty often over the years and enjoyed the results immensely. After the crossword puzzle it’s the second thing I look for when I pick up the paper. I do hope they replace it with something decent.
  28. Thanks setter and pip
    Took a while to get started with this one (in both minutes and months). Thoroughly enjoyed the puzzle after getting away with its clever clue constructions and overall general knowledge expansion.
    Was in the ‘Little Nell’ camp for what I thought was the clue of the day at 24a. All of the four-letter clues were excellent.
    Finished in the NE corner with the new term for me BALLETOMANE, the tricky OBIT (where also went down the FT track) and FOGG (haven’t read the Jules Verne book so had to work it out and check up after).

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