Times 27375 – Am I on the yellow brick road?

Author   piquetPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic

When I’d finished this, a really fun puzzle I thought, it felt like I’d been given one of those exercises where you have to write a short story using as many of the answer words as you can; there was a sort of theme, but I can’t put my finger on exactly what it is. Something about a 11a in Australia sending me as the 28a to a 22a?

Anyway, maybe I’ll win the 10a or become a 1a now I’ve had my 18d replaced and am ready to do the discos in 8d again. Which reminds me, my fav clue was 8d once I saw why! And I’ve learned the plural as in 15a has an E, or can have.

More like this please, Mr Setter!

1 In time, gastarbeiter’s a household name! (8)
MEGASTAR – Hidden word in TI(ME GASTAR)BEITER.
5 Didn’t manage everything, finishing early delivery (6)
RANSOM – RAN SOM(E), delivery as in rescue, paying the ransom, I assume.
10 Raving intolerantly to a sponsor of good causes (8,7)
NATIONAL LOTTERY – (INTOLERANTLY TO A)*.
11 Nothing sailor can do ultimately stops preparation for it (4,6)
LOVE POTION – LOVE = nothing, PO = Petty Officer, can = TIN has O (last letter of DO) inserted. ‘it’ as in sex.
13 Girl who’s got people gunning for me? (4)
MYRA – MY RA (Royal Artillery).
15 Tries, in the front row, for Australian pack (7)
DINGOES – GOES = tries after DIN = row. I’d have spelt dingos without an E, but either way is OK apparently.
17 Surgeon grabs tip of nice long pointed object (7)
LEISTER – LISTER has E the end of nicE inserted. Joseph Lister was a British surgeon and a pioneer of antiseptic surgery. A leister is a type of spear for fishing.
18 This used to set Raleigh off on travels (4,3)
HAIR GEL – (RALEIGH)*. A preparation of no use to me.
19 Buy bigger piano as addition to jazz and country club? (5,2)
TRADE UP – TRAD = jazz, EU = “country club” (!), P = piano.
21 Wife who survived a year with bishop (4)
PARR – P.A. = a year, per year; RR = Right Reverend. As in Catherine Parr, last of the six.
22 Pressure put on US mobile psychiatric unit facility (6,4)
PADDED CELL – P(ressure), ADDED = put on, CELL what Americans call a mobile phone, goodness knows why they don’t call it a mobile, as it’s mobile.
25 Perversely, went for another ending to latest film (2,3,10)
ON THE WATERFRONT – (WENT FOR ANOTHER)*, T end of latest.
27 Partner once having had a vacation cut short is free (6)
EXEMPT – EX = partner once, EMPT(Y) = a vacation cut short.
28 Most idiotic time to take short bow, on reflection (8)
CRAZIEST – All reversed: T, SEIZ(E) = take, short, ARC = bow.

Down
1 Monsieur did fish, and so did butcher (7)
MANGLED – M = Monsieur, ANGLED = did fish.
2 Acquired grand place for Ruth and Samuel (3)
GOT – G(rand), OT where these people appear.
3 After interference, fail in move to stop slide? (10)
SNOWPLOUGH – SNOW the white flecks on your TV screen when no signal; PLOUGH can mean to fail.
4 Expect answers when buttonholing head of intelligence (5)
AWAIT – Not quite sure exactly how this works. The head of intelligence = I, goes into A and AT = when. But the W? Or A, A has I inserted, but whence the W T? I’ll think on. I’ll probably need a 22a when someone tells us below. EDIT the ever early and reliable jackkt has an explanation in the first comment below. I don’t much like WIT for intelligence, but I think we’ve seen that before and it works.
6 Maybe old Bill’s John’s successor (4)
ACTS – Book after John in the NT. When a Bill before Parliament is passed, it becomes an ACT, so an old Bill.
7 Be as one initially scared by series of echoes — then you kick yourself? (3,3,2,3)
SEE EYE TO EYE – S(cared), EE = echoes as in NATO alphabet, YE TOE YE = you kick yourself.
8 Go immediately after this long-range spring forecast (7)
MAYFAIR – Well a forecast for May 2020 would be long range for Spring, and if you’ve played Monopoly as many times as I have you’ll know that GO comes after MAYFAIR. Both parts brilliant, IMO.
9 Line in cookery books, maybe, was intensely illuminating (8)
FLOODLIT – FOOD LIT(erature) could be cookery books: insert an L.
12 Vintage rite involved sharp dressing (11)
VINAIGRETTE – (VINTAGE RITE)*.
14 Musical, variable one, about Perth hospital area nurses (6,2,2)
WIZARD OF OZ – Z I = variable, one; reversed = IZ, insert into WARD OF OZ. A rather awkward surface, but amusing; I hate all musicals and thought the WOOZ was just a film, or two. But I see on WIKI nearly everything you can think of has been turned into a musical now, some not in the best possible taste.
16 Stash stuff in cellar, above a street (4,4)
SALT AWAY – SALT goes in a salt cellar, and A WAY = a street.
18 Welcome athletic achievement by one showing a bit of a leg (7)
HIPBONE – HI = welcome, PB = personal best, ONE. My new hip is just perfect, after 3 months, thanks for asking.
20 Coat with a small amount of white spirit? (7)
PALETOT – A PALE TOT is a small amount of a white spirit. I got this from checkers and wordplay, it’s a bit of a Mephisto type word.
23 Departs stern and miserable (5)
DREAR – D = departs, REAR = stern.
24 Algae from half of lake unexplored up in the middle (4)
KELP – la KE, unex PL ored, reverse the PL (up).
26 I might be carried off when picked up (3)
ONE – sounds like WON. I = 1.

55 comments on “Times 27375 – Am I on the yellow brick road?”

  1. I had as many biffed and unparsed clues as Jack, and still took almost a half-hour; but I figured most of them out, if post-hoc. But not LOVE POTION (forgot about PO), or MAYFAIR–there is no MAYFAIR, of course, in an American Monopoly game, all the streets being in Atlantic City, I believe, so I had the checkers and the forecast–and I didn’t get the Perth thing.
  2. 24:49 … I was just in the mood for a chewy puzzle and certainly got one. But a brilliant crossword, with things to admire all over the place and a few chuckles (“preparation for it”, indeed!).

    For me, AWAIT is a Clue of the Year contender. Ingenious combination of a clever device and fantastic surface.

    Compliments to the setter

  3. A hard but enjoyable slog. Missed on PALETOT which I’m surprised I’ve probably seen if it was here before. I thought the white spirit must be IT and coat with A was PELAT (PELT with A in). But it was not to be. So DNF.

    But some very clever clues and some real penny drop moments.

    Edited at 2019-06-12 06:03 am (UTC)

  4. I think it’s WIT (intelligence) with A A (answers) containing [buttonholing] its (wit’s) first letter [head].

    Edited at 2019-06-12 05:32 am (UTC)

  5. Excellent puzzle, loved the wordplay: WIZARD OF OZ, LOVE POTION, MAYFAIR, ACTS.

    31′, thanks pip and setter.

    Edited at 2019-06-12 06:36 am (UTC)

  6. Phew! What an ordeal, though mostly a worthwhile one, but after completing the grid in a biff-fest I still had at least 6 clues where I didn’t understand the wordplay, so I put my head down for the night and returned to the scene of battle this morning when everything eventually seemed to become clear. My only misgiving is that I’m not sure that’s how cryptic puzzles are supposed to work!

    I had an error however as one of the clues in which I didn’t understand the wordplay was 20dn where I biffed a half-remembered word, PELATOT, only to find out later that it doesnt exist and I must have been thinking of PALETOT which appeared here only last July when I claimed not to know it.

    A point of pedantry re 14dn, there is no musical called WIZARD OF OZ but there have been a number of musical versions dating back to 1902 called ‘The Wizard of Oz’. The most famous made for screen was released in 1939 and was most definitely a musical. OVER THE RAINBOW was its most famous song written by Harold Arlen and Yip Harburg, and performed by Judy Garland.

    Edited at 2019-06-12 07:27 am (UTC)

    1. That reminds me of the old joke (as told to me by mctext) “If you weigh a whale at a whale weigh station, where do you weigh a pie? Cue music… Somewhere, over the rainbow…

      I just popped in to see if others found this as challenging as I, and to check some of my parsings. Somewhat relieved to find I wasn’t alone in my befuddlement. Kudos to setter. COD to LOVE POTION among a host of memorable alternatives.

    2. Hold on there was a film called TWOO which was a musical but there is no musical called TWOO? I don’t follow.
      Edit: oh right sorry I get it now.

      Edited at 2019-06-12 08:31 am (UTC)

  7. Too hard. 60 mins to fail at the last: Snow Plough.

    Edited at 2019-06-12 07:02 am (UTC)

    1. Thanks for reminding me, I forgot to say I never heard of PLOUGH meaning ‘fail’ despite failing many an exam in my time!
  8. Really liked it – all the hard to spot cryptic definitions. 23 minutes, a tad over average. 5 unparsed: await, Wizard of Oz (and I live in Perth, OZ, so was immediately looking for a Scottish reference), the IT in love potion, ACT which I’d assumed was an old abbreviation for account=bill, and snowplough, with plough unknown and snow forgotten, not seen in about 10 or 15 years. Now when there’s no signal the screen spells it out: “No signal”. Didn’t know the (ie forgotten since last time) PALETOT and LEISTER, but wordplay was sufficient.
    Thank-you, Blogger and Setter.

    Edited at 2019-06-12 07:11 am (UTC)

  9. 32 minutes.LOI MAYFAIR, after I decided that 5 across couldn’t be MISSAL, which did kind of work, and reverted to the traditional RAN fot managed, adding SOM(e). Good stuff here. I particularly liked PARR. I’d biffed AWAIT, thinking it might have something to do with ‘wit’ but wasn’t sure about putting the answers in separately. I didn’t know LEISTER, but knew the antiseptic Joseph well enough to bring him to mind. I have to express my usual bitch that WON and ONE are not homophones north of the funny/fanny line but this was great puzzle. Thank you Pip and setter.
  10. Not so keen on this as others. A lot of biffing and reverse engineering – not my style

    Didn’t understand MAYFAIR – don’t play Monopoly. Like Jack knew there is no such musical as WIZARD OF OZ and the HIP BONE (coxa bone) isn’t part of the leg

  11. Absolute cracker of a puzzle – thank you setter! 32m but couldn’t parse ‘await’ so thanks jackkt for the interpretation. Some of the clues were just great.
  12. Excellent crossword and I continued a couple of minutes over my usual half hour to finish it. PALETOT and LEISTER on trust and OT and ACTS ‘got’ from the secular half of the clues. There were a dozen witty and clever clues.
  13. 56 minutes, and not very on-the-wavelength. Happily I knew Joseph Lister and the PALETOT from previous outings (the latter in July last year.) I even have some Listerine in the medicine cabinet.

    FOI 1a MEGASTAR, and I thought I was off to a fine start, but I was slowed down by the biblical references, my lack of memory of Monopoly boards, the fact that 23’s “stern” looks more like “stem” on my printout, and my failure completely to get my head around my LOI, 3d SNOWPLOUGH.

    I have seen “snow” on a TV screen, but I’d be willing to bet that there are people old enough to vote who haven’t, it being generally an analogue phenomenon. I recall a discussion on the internet about this cultural change, sparked off by William Gibson’s opening line to his cyberspace-defining Neuromancer: “The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.”

    Edited at 2019-06-12 08:36 am (UTC)

  14. That was brilliant in my view. So much to enjoy. My ‘podium finishers’ for COD were LOVE POTION, PARR and MAYFAIR.
  15. I found that hard going with the last half dozen clues taking me around 25 minutes. The NE corner and PALETOT being the culprits. I worked out LEISTER and PALETOT, but checked them before submitting as I’d never heard of them. MYRA eventually led to MAYFAIR(clever stuff!) and then RANSOM and ACTS. 49:45. Thanks setter and Pip.
    On edit: I’d found the puzzle quite enjoyable up to the point where I got stuck, but the slog to get to the end sort of took the shine off it. LOVE POTION was particularly good.

    Edited at 2019-06-12 08:51 am (UTC)

  16. 9 Down: Shouldn’t it have been ‘illuminated’ not ‘ing’? Perhaps pedantic along with he missing The for the musical.
  17. DNF. I was never going to get ACTS, now, was I?
    Lots of very inventive and witty stuff here but as DJ says you have to start from the answer and then reverse-engineer the wordplay which is not my favourite way to do it.
    1. I quite like it, to think of a possible answer then work out why it’s right, or wrong, rather than just biff and have fingers crossed. Putting answers from wordplay only (as in PALETOT) is tedious.
      1. If it’s obvious what the answer is from definition and checkers, I tend to just bung it in. So for a clue like 7dn for instance I wouldn’t even know what the wordplay was unless I checked afterwards, which I don’t always do.
        My favourite clues are those where you can’t work out what the definition is, so you are forced to start from some part of the wordplay. Unknown words constructed entirely from wordplay are a subset of those, and I find them particularly satisfying to solve.
        Different strokes!
  18. Hmm, curate’s egg .. some inventive clueing but also some quite loose stuff. Hipbones are part of the pelvic girdle, I should know as I broke one last year. Did like Mayfair though.
      1. Ha .. I nearly put “one of mine,” and then I thought oh no, who would think I go around breaking other peoples ..
  19. It took me abut 50 mins to slay this particular dragon.

    Our American friends were catered for with 25ac ON THE WATERFRONT, 18ac HAIR GEL, 1ac MEGASTAR and 11ac LOVE POTION had it been at 9 ac.!?

    Australians had 14dn WIZARD OF OZ and 15ac DINGOES.

    Us Brits had 21ac PARR, 8dn Mayfair and the 10ac MATIONAL LOTTERY a write in anagram.

    FOI 1ac MEGASTAR (dear me, gastabeiter!)

    LOI 6dn ACTS

    COD 8dn MAYFAIR I collect Monopoly Boards from the world over.

    WOD 12dn VINAIGRETTE (Piaf?) also liked 9dn FLOODLIT

  20. I was also happy to find that today’s was a nice chewy one to be tackled while watching the cricket; and I struggled with it like an Australian batsman trying to play Mohammed Amir (in fairness, the struggle at the other end is even more one-sided, and the other way round).

    Seeing how many times LEISTER has come up in previous puzzles, this almost certainly isn’t the first time I’ve never seen it; and I remembered PALETOT, but couldn’t have defined it in isolation (a horse maybe?). However, most of the difficulty came from setter’s sleight of hand rather than obscurity. Now I see them raised, I can see where others have quibbles, but none of them spoiled my enjoyment at the time.

  21. Cooer – that was hard, not a contenda me. 25.04 and even then I hadn’t parsed POTION and AWAIT (thanks Pip and Jack). Not helped by my forgetting about the UK spelling for PLOUGH. Some winters we get a hefty bill for “plowing” our drive (not this year).

    This was a real diet of earworms. BW’s love potion #9, all the stuff from the W of O. Not to mention The Wiz from the 70s which was billed as a “soul musical” and of course MAYFAIR lady. And then: Zekiel’s connected dem dry bones. Hipbone connected to the backbone etc etc, now hear the word of the lord. I need a little lie-down now.

    Edited at 2019-06-12 11:13 am (UTC)

  22. Just over the hour, admittedly with AWAIT, MAYFAIR and SNOWPLOUGH unparsed. A 1a of 25a appeared elsewhere today which helped. Glad I’m not the only one who has never seen LEISTER a few times before, but PALETOT really was new.

    I wonder how ‘psychiatric unit(s)’ have that old B-movie standby, the PADDED CELL these days? Possibly as many as have men in long white coats to take you away. Sadly though, in these days of violent drug-induced psychosis, I could be wrong.

    I liked the def. and ‘country club’ wordplay for TRADE UP and the def. for LOVE POTION.

    Thank you to setter and blogger

  23. Didn’t manage everything finishing early to look up the answer to 5a -and a few others.
    Some very tough stuff here but I got quite a lot of it.
    Was annoyed not to get Mayfair and Wizard of Oz. David
  24. 15:47. Loved this, more of the same please RR.

    I biffed a few, but was able to admire the smart wordplay post-solve (e.g. SEE EYE TO EYE).

  25. 38 mins of teeth-pulling, and still managed to enter GET for 2 dn, as I can’t read the clue straight 🙁
    Thanks pip.
  26. All correct after 83 minutes, but a real struggle. I was wondering whether there was something called a LOVE BUTTON that I hadn’t discovered.
    Pip, you need another E in 7d. Hence a series of echoes.
    For some weird reason, a mobile phone is known as a Handy in Germany.
  27. Some very clever wordplay and some maybe a bit clunky. Was undone by 6D, not looking for a plural and would still quibble with one bill leading to multiple acts?

    Thanks blogger and setter.

      1. I get that, but that is a tad unfair in my experience or perhaps naivety.

        Thanks.

      2. Or even just ‘old bill’ clueing ACT and S indicating… S.
        I’ve just noticed that Pip’s underlining is in the wrong place: the definition is the pesky book of the bible.
        1. I think it’s a double definition, OLD BILL’s = ACT’s, either one or both could be underlined. But I take your point so have changed it. Thanks for giving it such scrutiny.
          1. I just don’t think a possessive like ACT’S would be a valid crossword answer: I certainly don’t remember seeing it before.
  28. For some inexplicable reason I couldn’t get SNOWPLOUGH despite having all the letters. LOI PALETOT which I must have missed last time round. Confess to biffing AWAIT thereby missing an excellent clue. COD HAIR GEL spent a long time thinking what I knew about Sir Walter and nothing came…
  29. Thanks, Pip, for the blog. I was defeated by PALETOT after managing the rest in 75 minutes.

    For a bit of telecom trivia, there were mobile (car) phones that weren’t cell phones, but you have to go back to the early 80s. Without radio cells, you couldn’t reuse the same frequency for carrying the phone signal anywhere nearby. This limited the number of mobile phones within any city. In Sydney the limit was a few thousand and the cost of a phone was around $5000.

  30. Great fun even if THE’s missing from WofOz, the hip is (probably) not part of the leg, etc etc as already stated by many. But overall the crackers far outweighed the rest. Some long straightforward anagrams and a gimme at 1ac sent one flying and then one had to fight to fill in the rest and understand the clues … Thanks!
  31. PALETOT and LEISTER were the last two in once all checkers in place. Lots of enjoyable clues – my favourite was PARR – but several unparsed, the clunkiest of which was SEE EYE TO EYE which I thankfully biffed having gotten the second EYE and thinking the first was something to do with the multiple echoes.
  32. About 20 mins slower than my recent moving average, due to difficulty level I think. MAYFAIR was downright obscure really, although I can see how some consider that as clever.

    9d was my COD, but very tricksy at the solving stage.

    Thanks to all.

    My 3-month challenge stands at 42/44 with recent solving times around 30′ (with help).

    WS

  33. 43:40. Very good! Lots of wit and invention to blow the cobwebs away. Didn’t know the long pointy thing at 17ac but knew the surgeon. Snowplough entered pretty much from checkers and a vague sense that it was the sort of answer I’d find in this puzzle, didn’t know that sense of plough. Wizard of Oz not fully parsed and paletot entered with fingers crossed.
  34. I thought, so no problem for me… But I looked it up anyway, and found this at the top of the Google page: “A paletot is a French topcoat etymologically derived from the Middle English word paltok, meaning a kind of jacket.” No, no, no, the word is so derived, the topcoat isn’t! Ha.

    But I didn’t know why “Go” would follow “Mayfair,” while writing it in nonetheless. And had never heard that “plough” could mean “fail” (think I’ll look that up now…)

    I guess the point with 6 is that “old [b]ill’s,” possessive, would look like ACTS when written as the answer, as we can’t include apostrophes, not that the answer really is a possessive, which would indeed be passing strange.

    Add my quibble to the stack about HIPBONE, and my kudos to the sack of them awaiting the setter.

  35. DNF sadly. Kicking myself on a few. Had PARR from “wife who survived”, but being on a plane and lacking reference material didn’t have RR for Bishop (only B).

    I now know a new definition of RANSOM, so I’m grateful for my ongoing education at the hand of this crossword!

  36. Well, here I am a day late. I struggled with this one, finally beating it into submission in three quarters of an hour. PALETOT was an NHO, as was LEISTER (no problems with Lister, though).
  38. I wonder if there is some leg-pulling or braggadocio here!
    Though maybe the on-line players can check and iterate until thy get there.
    I would like an explanation of the cryptic TLAs.
    Cheers, John of Oz
  39. Thanks setter and pip
    Just by looking at all of the overwritten letters in my finished grid, gives an indication of the challenges that were faced in getting this puzzle completed. So it was with some satisfaction that a single parsing error with PARR (actually found Richard Parr, a 17th century English bishop as my double definition – which obviously didn’t account for ‘a year’).
    Some excellent deception with the definitions required numerous double takes on how a clue was to be interpreted and some of the word play constructions were exquisite – 11a, 21a (after the blog explanation), 28a, 7d, 9d and 14d. Thought that MAYFAIR was a stand out clue of the day after the penny dropped with the clever definition and its ingenuous ‘long-range spring forecast’ which was nearly lost on me with the northern hemisphere seasons and the actual timing of the puzzle when done so out of synch.
    The tricky ACTS was the last one in on a crossword that was one of the best for a while.

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