Times 27,365: Candy Is Dandy But Knickers Are Quicker

Author   VerlainePosted on Categories Quick Cryptic
I made a bit of a hash of this tough puzzle (my stamp of Friday approval is ungrudgingly bestowed) by bunging UNDERWEAR in optimistically for 7dn and then not being able to make much more progress in that corner until I’d revisited my assumptions. But this was far from the only clue that was cleverer than it looked at first, with misleading definitions, unconventional cluing word orders, and parts of the answer clued by semi-invisible particles up the wazoo.

Great work by the setter in other words. With blowhards, porn, textspeak, pregnancy, beatniks and the aforementioned undercrackers all making an appearance, this had a punk rock air to it, so almost inevitably it will prove to be the work of a venerable pre-war setter with an excellent sense of humour. Hard to choose a Clue of the Day really but let’s plump for 1dn, combining madcap wordplay with a splendidly evocative surface. A1!

ACROSS
1 Writer penning line badly who’s a show-off (8)
BLOWHARD – BARD [writer], penning L [line] + WHO [“badly…”]. I took a while to agonise over whether BOW was any kind of writer, taking something HARD clearly being taking it “badly”…

5 Concealed attack in case of antebellum President (6)
AMBUSH – A{ntebellu}M + BUSH [President]. FOI

10 Part of insect rolling on stomach (5)
NOTUM – reversed ON, plus TUM [stomach]. I’m not much of an entomologist but I assumed a notum was something related to backs, and so it proved.

11 Steps across theme park’s greatest attractions? (9)
BESTRIDES – or a theme park’s BEST RIDES.

12 A lot of extra troops by port reversing tank? (9)
RESERVOIR – RESERV{e} [“a lot of” extra troops] by reversed RIO [port]. What percentage of the time is “port” RIO at this stage, I wonder?

13 Number one’s appeal (5)
ISSUE – I’S SUE [one’s | appeal]

14 Rogue cop wearing blue material flicks food (7)
POPCORN – (COP*) [“rogue…”] “wearing” PORN [blue material]. Flicks as in “the movies”.

16 On TV outfit’s regressive look (6)
REGARD – RE [on] + reversed DRAG [TV (as in transvestite) outfit]

18 Much of fast car could be used for scrap (6)
FRACAS – (FAS{t} CAR*) [“could be used for…”]

20 Tinker with tailless shrimp filled by wife (7)
TWIDDLE – TIDDLE{r} [“tailless” shrimp] “filled by” W [wife]

22 Means of transport to get case of merchandise through part of America (5)
CAMEL – M{erchandis}E “through” CAL [California, part of America]

23 Repression having Sally in poor spirits (9)
CRACKDOWN – a “sally” is a CRACK and “in poor spirits” is DOWN.

25 Attached to main character in little US novel (2,3,4)
ON THE ROAD – ON [attached to], plus HERO [main character] in TAD [little]. Bunged in unparsed once the D appeared, during the home straight.

26 School’s picked up, as courses enjoyed? (5)
EATEN – homophone of ETON [school]. Good use of the ambiguous meaning of “courses”.

27 Guard losing November and December’s fare (6)
TURKEY – TUR{n}KEY [guard, “losing November = N”]

28 Careless king dropping a line, one dispatched officially (8)
EMISSARY – {r}EMISS [careless, “king (= R) dropping”] + A RY [a | line]

DOWN
1 Clean out rank stews in hostelry over time (8)
BANKRUPT – (RANK*) [“stews”], in reversed PUB [hostelry] + T [time]

2 Ring a determined, revolutionary plotter (5)
OATES – O [ring] + A + reversed SET [determined]. Titus Oates, the fabricator of the Popish Plot.

3 Place to study epic writer, and pass on cracking style (8,7)
HOMERTON COLLEGE – HOMER [epic writer], and COL LEG [pass | on] “cracking” TONE [style]

4 Problem with drink? This helps you get dry (7)
RUBDOWN – RUB [problem] with DOWN [drink, as a verb]

6 Expecting trouble and scorn, kissing men abroad (7,8)
MORNING SICKNESS – (SCORN KISSING MEN*) [“abroad”]. Expecting as in “pregnant”. I was fooled by the clever definition into thinking the first word would be MARKING. Somehow.

7 Lingerie one’s lowered with colour that’s not popular (9)
UNDESIRED – take UNDIES [lingerie], lower the I [one] to the bottom, and add RED [colour].

8 Equipment for anglers I see brought up to speed (6)
HASTEN – NETS AH [equipment for anglers | I see!], all reversed

9 One taking interest in the solver’s texting, indeed! (6)
USURER – in UR [txtspeak for you’re], SURE [indeed!]

15 Safe old poem’s cutting edge (9)
PERIMETER – PETER [safe] that RIME [old poem] is cutting.

17 Rule of Republican, for one French city (8)
REGNANCY – R EG NANCY [Republican | for one | French city]

19 Area with dry, rocky peak (6)
SECTOR – SEC TOR [dry | rocky peak]

20 Leading couple in Fame turning up in Russia once? (7)
TSARDOM – take STARDOM [fame] and reverse its first couple of leters only. Close to LOI as TSARDOM is a very hard word to see in crossers!

21 A fee quoted for what solicitors do (6)
ACCOST – homophone of A COST [a fee]

24 East German capital erected in Roman port (5)
OSTIA – OST [east (German)] + reversed A1 [capital]. I thought OSTI was the East German but of course that’s an Ossi, so I’d have been very baffled indeed had I not known my Roman ports well enough to happily biff them in. Very nice to see foreign languages utitlised in the wordplay beyond the standard “the French”.

59 comments on “Times 27,365: Candy Is Dandy But Knickers Are Quicker”

  1. Three or four minutes spent on LOI 3d–NHO the college. NHO NOTUM, either. Biffed several from defs–the setter has a knack for them, like ‘flicks food’, ‘courses enjoyed’, ‘expecting trouble’. I knew OSTIA and OST, but failed to see how IA worked. The setter uses the same device to get first and last letters, at 5ac and 22ac. I liked a number of the clues, like USURER, RUBDOWN, MORNING SICKNESS.
  2. After a trying week having to solve on an iPad in foreign parts my persistence was rewarded this morning. It took me a little over 30 minutes, every one of them well spent. Thank you setter and V.

  3. Over an hour, with enough penny drop moments to fund the national deficit. I especially liked Bestrides and Popcorn. One error, with Homeroom for the unfamiliar Homerton. US high school grads will understand how I got there. Thank you setter, you too Verlaine
  4. As someone who usually takes 2 or 3 hours, I was staggered, and not a little pleased, to whip through this in just under 22 minutes. A bit like when Greece won the European Championships, Leicester City won the League, or when Foinavon won the Grand National.
      1. Or “Champions’ League”, or whatever it’s called now – not sure where to put the apostrophe, or leave it out altogether.
        Not impossible, but Liverpool are scarily better, a class above. Though anything can happen in football – the best team don’t always win, see: Liverpool in 2005, for instance.
          1. 1999? Manu? Bayern were probably the better team, but United had the never-say-die attitude to score multiple goals in injury time. And now winning-goal-scorer Ole-GS is manager… good or not?
            There’s someone on here who’s massive a Spurs supporter – Zabadak? Jackkt? Someone? From your post two above I thought it was you, but obviously not.
            1. That’s Zed, a diehard Lilywhite. I got up in the middle of the night to watch the 99 match and United didn’t have a kick till time added on. The United hierarchy (come back, David Gill) appointed Solskjaer temporarily to be reviewed at season end; then after he had overcome very ordinary opposition (+ Spurs!), they apponted him full-time after he had started losing matches against proper teams. Brewery and cock-up come to mind.
  5. has the most students of any other Cambridge College. I used to drive past most Saturdays back in the seventies.

    44 minutes for a reasonable Friday puzzle.

    FOI 24dn OSTIA

    LOI 8dn HASTEN

    COD 14ac POCORN!

    WOD 25ac ON THE ROAD Kerouac!

    Did we not have 14ac BESTRIDES with a similar clue, quite recently?

    1. I was surprised by today’s SNITCH being at 146.

      I felt yesterday’s at 112, should have been in that area,

      Today’s was more 112 than 146!

      Is SNITCH being being hacked by them Ruskies?

  6. This seemed just hard enough, though I did put it aside at dinner and only finished while in the bath… LOI was the unknown college, worked out from wordplay, as also was the insect part. Last one parsed, however, was REGARD. BANKRUPT certainly came near the end. I was also sure it had to be UNDERWEAR at first, but I never inked that in…

    Devilishly devious clues and daily additions (hopefully) to my vocabulary seemed to be the rule of the week. I exercised patience throughout, never resorted to aids, and managed to get everything right. Of course, I did not time myself! And I fell out of step with the blog schedule so didn’t get around to reading the perspicacious observations here until it was way too late to add anything.

    Edited at 2019-05-31 05:02 am (UTC)

  7. Really difficult, almost 45 minutes, but really loved it. So many great clues and little cryptic bits here and there. All understood except last two in: On The Road and Tsardom. Both biffable from the definitions but too worn out to parse them.
    Thank-you setter, and blogger.
  8. I eventually got everything, but couldn’t parse 16ac till I looked here. I’ve been stumped by this meaning of TV before!
  9. 50 minutes including 10 minutes at the end struggling with the unknown Cambridge College. My knowledge of college names comes mainly from watching ‘University Challenge’ on TV in the days of Bamber Gascoigne so I was mildly relieved to find that the said HOMERTON never appeared in the original run of the series 1962-1987. It has taken part only 4 times in the modern version (1994- ) hosted by Paxman, but I watch that very rarely and they mostly went out in the first round anyway. I was pleased to work it out from wordplay eventually.

    I enjoyed the clues to TURKEY and TWIDDLE.

    1. Homerton was not part of the university in that era, so wouldn’t have been on university challenge. It was a separate teacher training college. No problem for me since my ex-wife went there.
  10. 30 minutes but undone by the college, making the same mistake as Paul in deducing that a homeroom college was a thing. By that stage I was worn out untangling the wordplay in this puzzle so I just biffed it and hoped. I enjoy finding Oxbridge colleges in crosswords almost as much as I do public schools …

    Very impressive cluing, though in truth a bit too Byzantine for me to enjoy in a weekday puzzle. Tip of the hat to the setter and to anyone solving this in a competitive time.

  11. Was fortunate to have had a boss who went to HOMERTON COLLEGE, and there is also a Homerton in east London. Did not parse REGARD, really liked the parsing of said college, BLOWHARD (nhoi), and ON THE ROAD.

    31’41” thanks verlaine and setter.

    1. According to Wiki the Cambridge college was founded in Homerton (East London) in 1768.

      Edited at 2019-05-31 07:16 am (UTC)

  12. About 40 mins split pre taxi and then at Edinburgh airport. On route to Oxford Eights, staying at Jesus. NHO Homerton, (nor Notum) but doable.
    Mostly I liked the Rubdown.
    Thanks setter and V.
  13. … the best ride at Blackpool Plesaure Beach and Aintree. 53 minutes with LOI HASTEN . Slowed down by wanting it to be a braggart rather than a BLOWHARD, not a word I use. JOINT COD to BEST RIDES and POPCORN. DNK NOTUM but, once Titus OATES’ cover was blown, it could be nothing else. Hard but fair puzzle.Thank you Verlaine and setter.
      1. Sadly, it closed in 2017. I remember it being pretty hard on the back.
  14. 23:34. Cracking puzzle, I thought. Fingers crossed for NOTUM and BLOWHARD, where I couldn’t figure out how a BOW was a writer. Otherwise I had mostly understood the wordplay, because it was the kind of puzzle where you had to.
    Thanks setter and v.
    1. sotira plc.Inc. wishes it to be known that she has no connection to Solihull Plumbing and Drainage, even though they nicked her words.
      1. We used to get quite a few of these entries, usually from Australian artisans of one kind or another, presumably with the intention of getting their logo to a wider (and in our case, highly discerning) readership.
        1. That’s right. Then I moved to Joe’s Tool and Instrument Works, but I got tired of the jokes
  16. I looked up BLOWHARD and finished in 30 minutes. Without the H I would never have got the unheard of college. Clever crossword but not wholly to my taste.
    1. I was reminded of Dean Mayer’s excellent clue: One complaint after the other.
  17. Too hard for me to cope with today, especially as I started off trying this one at 4:30am during a bout of insomnia. OATES, HOMERTON COLLEGE, OSTIA, NOTUM all unknown, though I managed to crack a couple of them. In the end, I went back to bed after an hour and tried to get the last half of the grid filled just now, but dejectedly threw in the towel with many left to go. Not my finest hour(-and-a-half!)
  18. Hard but fair, and thanks V for the parsing of Regard which I couldn’t fathom. I went to Homerton College for two years 1991-3 to do a Maths PGCE.
    It then was affiliated with the university but has subsequently become a proper Cambridge college in its own right whereas in my time it was the centre for teacher training. Lovely setting and very happy days.
  19. Having been forewarned elsewhere, I approached this puzzle with trepidation, and found that it was indeed a tough challenge. I was pleasantly surprised, however, to find that I was on the wavelength for the offbeat cluing, so that I finished only 8 minutes or so above my personal NITCH rating. I had to trust to wordplay for NOTUM and ON THE ROAD, but was fortunate that we have a HOMERTON ROAD here in Middlesbrough, so the college posed no problem. My antenna immediately pointed me in the direction of hyperemesis gravidarum at 6d, but I needed a few crossers before the simple definition swam before my eyes. OATES, AMBUSH, USURER and SECTOR were among the few clues that were obvious at first reading. I was another UNDERWEAR at 7d until I was forced to revise, by the TV gear, which made me laugh out loud. As Keriothe says, if you get the answer, you’ve almost certainly understood the wordplay in this puzzle, which I thought made it really enjoyable. Bravo setter. 42:10. Thanks to V for the blog too.

    Edited at 2019-05-31 09:23 am (UTC)

  20. This was a 30 minute puzzle for me, in the tough but fair and engaging category.
    HOMERTON COLLEGE led me into a sustained trawl trough the internet to discover stuff I should have known, since I am familiar with Homerton and Cambridge but not (really) with either of the College’s incarnations. I’m relieved, in a way, that the original much expanded home in Homerton High Street, Hackney was lost to bomb damage so I wouldn’t have known the building, but I still feel it’s history I should have known.
    REGNANCY I made up from the wordplay (it’s not in Chambers, as it turns out). The setter is to be congratulated on not connecting it to 6d.
    USURER and ON THE ROAD, on the other hand, went in unparsed (thanks, V), the first because the horrid UR was already in the middle of the word.
    CoD to MORNING SICKNESS for the swine of a definition.
  21. Forty-two minutes, meaning that I found this one fairly tough, and I managed one careless typo (usurur) – argh! Held up along the way by trying to put “af” into 20d, and by trying to parse “braggart” at 1ac. Failed to parse ON THE ROAD or HOMERTON COLLEGE.

    CoD MORNING SICKNESS.

  22. Enjoyed this. Sister did a Dip.Ed at Homerton so no problem there.. not heard of notum though. If it is to do with backs, there must be a little joke in there somewhere..
  23. 30 minutes for this fun puzzle. My brother (whose life sometimes appears to be one conspiracy/fad following another – Vitamin B17/apricot kernels, the Illuminati/Bildeberger Group, Y2K, anti-climate-change-conspirator conspirator) has recently thrown in his lot with a woman who rejoices in the name of Mad Alice or some such, whose particular beef is with feminists who dilute/pollute the core messages of the cause by insisting on rights for every kind of sexual (and, I gather, asexual) orientation/alignment, so my COD must go to the transvestite clue.
    1. Seems like I concur entirely with your brother…., aside from the choice of female companion that is.
  24. ….my pieces don’t fit. An incorrect choice of the letters gave me a non-existent “fracts”. I thought they might be scraps, as in “bits broken off”. And I’d just crept inside my 20 minute target – damn !

    Like Verlaine, I was tempted by the underwear, but faintly pencilled in just the “under”, so only had one letter to amend once ISSUE shone the required light.

    I didn’t care for HOMERTON COLLEGE. I wasn’t helped by thinking “style” was only the first 75% of tone.

    FOI AMBUSH
    COD TSARDOM

  26. Tuff stuff, 37’55, didn’t know notum or the TV usage, didn’t see one or two parsings. Very good puzzle. ‘On the Road’ a significant step on the way to a blowhard literary style finding favour with the establishment. Liked ‘usurer’ for the wince effect.
  27. Toughie, and another one where I spent a long time on the SE corner, although it was ON THE ROAD – which I wasn’t able to parse – that was my LOI, following an alphabet trawl. 18m 21s.

    For USURER it does feel like ‘indeed’ to ‘sure’ is a bit of a leap. I guess the idea is they can both be expressions to mean ‘yes’, but I’m not entirely convinced.

    COD for me is MORNING SICKNESS for the lovely definition.

    Edited at 2019-05-31 12:20 pm (UTC)

  28. 20:36 and yup, a tricky one for sure.

    1a was my LOI as I didn’t know the expression and needed to unravel the wordplay to choose between the right answer and the no less likely (IMHO) BLOWHORN.

    POPCORN was a cracker, thanks to S & B.

  29. A few such eg ‘Place to study’ and ‘Part of insect’ bunged in from wordplay and others eg REGARD, ON THE ROAD and TSARDOM (should have seen it) entered unparsed from the def, but finally made it in about 95 minutes over a few sessions. Definitely worth the effort.

    I think 17d subliminally helped with MORNING SICKNESS, my pick of the day.

    Thanks to setter and blogger

  30. Rattled through this until I seized up, and decided that a break would finish it, which it almost did on resumption. However the relatively easy HASTEN had me stumped me at the end. Probably because I know nothing about fishing and thought it must be some term I hadn’t heard of. Particularly liked BANKRUPT and MORNING SICKNESS.
  31. A tough offering yes, which I think took me about 45 minutes. Happy to see that HOMERTON COLLEGE actually exists, as I constructed it myself. I didn’t know of NOTUM, and I didn’t figure out the TV parsing at REGARD. Not easy at all. But REGARDS to all.
  32. Slogged through this with quite a lot of biffs. Pretty hard with some nice cryptic definitions. I thought for a while I might not finish this today – pretty hard going. Also solved each corner pretty much independently, so lights were not a bright as usual.

    I read On The Road as a teenager, that was a long time ago! Perhaps I should read it again. That’s my C and WOD.

    Thanks for the exegetical blogging which I sorely needed today – quite utterly lost without!

    I’m trying to do with Quickie without any aids but even that is tough. I need to improve my brain.

    Total 34/36

    Thanks
    WS

  33. 43:52 only to find typo on submission: sicknees instead of sickness at 6dn. Let down once again by my sausage-fingered shenanigans. Thought this was tough but enjoyable. Liked flicks food and expecting trouble. The RHS resisted for some time but once I (nearly) had 6dn, they all started to yield. LOI was 8dn which I felt sure was going to be a bit of fisherman’s kit that I’d never heard of.
  34. I had PARAMETER for 15d = cutting edge (limit). PAR = safe? A METER = poem?
    Don’t like the clue for EMISSARY because of two uses for R (king and railway),
    but nothing else would fit in. Otherwise all correct, mostly parsed.

    from Jeepyjay

  35. Random college and ages working out MORNING SICKNESS thpugh could see it was an amagram possibly involving pregnancy. The rest fell into place once these were solved.
  36. Thanks setter and verlaine
    Spilt over numerous sessions and a couple of days in my anachronistic way of doing the Times puzzles. It was an unusual puzzle In as much as the majority of answers were constructed and then the definitions either seen for the first time or validated. An exception to that was ON THE ROAD where I guessed it early but just couldn’t see how it worked – later confirmed with enough crossers and then finally saw the tricky parsing. BLOWHARD was commonly used down here, is although it was pretty late in the solve, once there were enough crossers, it was very gettable.
    Finished after more than 2 hours in the NE corner with REGARD (where it took longer than it should have to see the TV trick), ISSUE (which was a real devil to parse) and HASTEN (which was even harder to).

Comments are closed.