Times 27423 – all kinds of everything remind me of something

Author   piquetPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
I enjoyed this one, it has a few chestnuts like 16d and 24a (apart from 10d) and is pleasantly witty in places. The chap at 27a did ring a faint bell, once I had the options before me, and 18d made me think about my first bike, which I used to call a RAAH-LEIGH so definitely not a homophone. A middle of the road 25 minutes before looking up the German guy.

Across
1 Have old German force backing law-enforcers (7)
POSSESS –  SS, the Schutzstaffel, follows POSSE a bunch of law-enforcers.
5 Appointment involves carrying one very small case (6)
DATIVE – DATE has I and V inserted.
8 Rescinds remaining acts (9)
OVERTURNS – OVER = remaining, TURNS = acts.
9 Island‘s cry for help going round in the morning (5)
SAMOS – There are some 227 inhabited islands in Greece, yet we find SAMOS turning up for the second time this week. Coincidence or the same setter? SOS = cry for help, around AM = in the morning.
11 Bread stick goes into this (5)
LOLLY – Double definition, lollies have sticks in.
12 One beset by dreadful sorrow, the first person to be causing concern (9)
WORRISOME – I goes into (SORROW)* then add ME.
13 Streaks of butter round black fish (8)
MARBLING – RAM = butter, reverse it = MAR, B(lack), LING a fish.
15 Footballing cheat — start to think “transfer”? (6)
DIVERT – A footballer who cheats is a DIVER looking for a penalty; add T(hink).
17 Feature at extremity of garment is a surprise (4-2)
TURN-UP – Double definition, some trousers have turn-ups.
19 Rude learner is in place of worship, about to be ejected (8)
CHURLISH – Place of worship = CHURCH, eject the C (about), insert L and IS.
22 In a row, army officer left home: one needed to listen (9)
COLLINEAR – join together COL (army officer), L(eft), IN, EAR = one needed to listen. Why isn’t it just spelt CO-LINEAR? Strange language, English.
23 Directors on the side of money? (5)
HEADS – Double definition, bosses and heads or tails.
24 Old Italian bread around duck in river (5)
LOIRE – LIRE was Italian money, insert O(ld).
25 Writer in Holy Land situation producing an enormous amount (9)
SQUILLION – QUILL, an old writer, inserted into SION. Etymology of squillion is said to be ‘fanciful, 1940s’.
26 Drink makes one get shaken up before the end of day (6)
WHISKY – A WHISK could shake up a drink, I suppose, and adding Y the end of day does the trick.
27 German mathematician, curiously blithe about arithmetic? (7)
HILBERT – R for arithmetic, one of the three R’s, inserted into (BLITHE)*. If you hadn’t heard of David Hilbert, 1862 – 1943, you’d have to fiddle around with the anagram letters, R and the checkers until it looked likely.

Down
1 Blast a compiler, not having succeeded — terrible puzzle is that! (13)
PROBLEMATICAL – (BLA T A COMPILER)*, the S being removed = not having succeeded.
2 Excellent room for wine, not cold, below street level (7)
STELLAR – ST = street, (C)ELLAR = room for wine, not cold. LEVEL seems superfluous except for the sense of the surface.
3 Guard heading off — leaving this exposed? (5)
ENTRY – SENTRY loses its S.
4 Celebrate, having caught gang cheating (8)
SCREWING – SING = celebrate has CREW = gang inserted.
5 Hot feeling? Gentleman plunges into river (6)
DESIRE – SIR goes plunging into the river DEE.
6 Witness has ordeal, I note, losing heart (9)
TESTIFIER – TEST = ordeal, I, FI(V)ER = note losing heart.
7 Escape with a move so disorderly? (7)
VAMOOSE – (A MOVE SO)*. Derived from Spanish vamos, let’s go. For me it means to leave in a hurry, escape is a bit of a stretch.
10 Wood cut, the wetness proving tricky (5,8)
SWEET CHESTNUT – (CUT THE WETNESS)*.
14 Incompetence, a condition that brings out the nit-picker? (9)
LOUSINESS – Well, if you had nits, you’d maybe pick at them, and nits are the eggs of lice.
16 All-embracing love, during hugging (8)
THOROUGH – THROUGH (during) hugs O.
18 Explorer who is audible in mass meeting (7)
RALEIGH – Today’s debatable homophone; does Sir Walter really sound like RALLY? How was he pronounced in 1600?
20 Picture in one publication with extreme characters being carted off (7)
IMAGINE – I = one, MAG(AZ)INE; the A and Z “extreme characters” are removed.
21 Lively female that is upset over squalid accommodation (6)
FEISTY – F(emale), IE (that is) reversed, STY = squalid accommodation.
23 Onset of hunger with everyone needing to eat a type of meat (5)
HALAL – H(unger), ALL swallows A.

74 comments on “Times 27423 – all kinds of everything remind me of something”

  1. Pleased to finish this as I came to a grinding halt with about 10 left.

    Screwing (the word) was the catalyst to get the rest in a time of 13V or 80 mins including a break for breakfast.

    FOI divert.
    Last 4 were marbling, sweet chestnut, lousiness, and LOI Hilbert, where I waited until I had all the checkers.

    Took a while to parse possess and turn up.

    Liked Loire and desire, but COD to marbling.

    Edited at 2019-08-07 05:48 am (UTC)

  2. No problems or unknowns, know David Hilbert and that he was German, and pronounce Raleigh like rally. Though I live in Western Australia not far from Berwick (Burr-wick) Street, which includes towns Derby (rhymes with kerb-y not Barbie) and Albany (whose first syllable is not all, but gangster Al). Like Flashman I liked marbling, also squillion which held me up a few seconds thinking Zion meant a bazillion or a gazillion.
  3. aplenty as per Pip – the Rutland Owl? And the same MER at 22ac COLLINEAR – my LOI.

    Time 27 minutes so this week has gone peach, train-crash, Dame Edna.

    FOI 9ac SAMOS

    COD 10dn SWEET CHESTNUT

    WOD 25ac SQUILLION which is far more common in the plural.

    27ac HILBERT has been seen a few times recently. Jack?

    Edited at 2019-08-07 12:40 pm (UTC)

  4. Like Pip HILBERT rang a vague bell for me, despite in my case having studied maths. Still, that was a long time ago and there was little studying involved.
    RALEIGH definitely worked as a homophone for me, taking me back to the days of my Raleigh Strika and my Raleigh Night Burner. To suggest it be pronounced RAAH-LEIGH makes it sound like how the queen would say it!
    1. Seems I am out on a limb with RAAH-LEIGH, the consensus says it does work. But I’m sure that’s how we said it in my youf down in Bournemuff. And The Queen is always correct!
  5. 28 minutes. LOI LOUSINESS. I’ll be itching all day now. Raleigh/ Rally are definitely homophones in Nottingham, where the bikes were made and the northern short ‘a’ is the norm, but how the Elizabethan gentleman pronounced his own name I have no idea. COD to COLLINEAR. With HILBERT too, it’s nice to see some Maths get a look-in. Middle-of-the-road puzzle, but none the worse for that. Thank you Pip and setter.
  6. No problems with this one – relatively easy top to bottom solve

    HILBERT a write-in. One of the most influential mathematicians of his time he helped develop mathematical logic.

  7. 35 mins with yoghurt, granola, etc.
    No dramas. Nice to see David Hilbert.
    But what is going on with the wording in Whisky? “one get shaken up”=whisk?
    Thanks shaken-up setter and Pip.

    Edited at 2019-08-07 07:41 am (UTC)

    1. I’m glad it’s not just me. I spent a good 5 of my 19 minutes trying to make sense of that ‘whisk’ bit. I can sort of see it, but it does feel like the setter took a definition of ‘whisk’ and translated it in and out of Japanese with Google Translate.

      Edited at 2019-08-07 07:43 am (UTC)

    2. Count me as another who was doubtful about whisky. Dare I say I found it rather non-Ximinean?
    3. I agree it’s clumsy, shades of the Uxbridge English dictionary, ‘like a whisk’.

      Edited at 2019-08-07 07:45 am (UTC)

    4. I found it very strange too. Sotira’s comment about Google translate sums it up.
  8. No solving time to offer as I fell asleep with less than half done but on resumption most of the remaining answers came easily enough.

    NHO HILBERT and only checked whether he’d appeared before when prompted by our Shanghai correspondent, thinking that perhaps I’d met him before and forgotten, but anyway according to Google this is his first outing.

    MER at COLLINEAR, wondering like Pip why it would take two Ls.

    MER at LOUSINESS for ‘incompetence’.

    Failed to parse 13 correctly, thinking MARLING (fish) containing [round] B (black), but now realise the fish is MARLIN and anyway it would have left ‘butter’ unaccounted for.

    Incorrectly biffed OVERRULES at 8dn and took ages to get past that and the incorrect checkers preventing me from solving 3 & 4 Down.

    1. The two l’s come because the Latin origin of the word is the prefix “com” added to “linear”. For purposes of pronunciation, the prefix “com” turns into “col” when the combined-with word begins with an L. So one L for com -> col, and the second L directly from Linear.

      The same kind of pronunciation change happens with the prefix com becoming cor when the combined-with word begins with r. An example is correspondent, who is actually a com-respondent, not a co-respondent.

      1. Is the prefix perhaps “con”? Concatenate, conflation, contumely… but combustion, commotion, collateral, correction. Euphony is all…
      2. Thanks! I hesitated forever to put that in with a double L.

        Edited at 2019-08-08 01:19 am (UTC)

  9. Steady solve today with no hold-ups or turn-ups .. agree, nice to see David Hilbert.
    I would pronounce the explorer Rawleigh, and only the bicycle Rally, thus not a homophone for me. Not that I care, so long as it is for someone 🙂
    I would not equate testifier with witness. It is quite normal to testify that you witnessed nothing ..
  10. I did not know HILBERT but did vaguely think that he had appeared somewhere recently. No limit to Walter’s talents, eh? Fags, bikes … COD to MARBLING
  11. It was only when I thought of Co-LINEAR that I was able to piece together COLLINEAR from the wordplay. Odd word indeed! My LOI. That corrected my FIESTY too, which had held up COLLINEAR as I was trying to fit in something you need to listen, with TIER as ROW. I had AMPLIFIER at one stage too. Only briefly as it made no sense. Hadn’t heard of HILBERT but he was fairly easy to construct. RALLY worked for me. I was rewarded with a Raleigh Blue Streak racing bike for passing my 11 plus. It had 5 speed Sturmey Archer gears with a tendency to disengage when selecting the lowest gear, with painful results. An enjoyable puzzle. 35:17. Thanks setter and Pip.
    1. My Dad broke the bank when I passed the 11 plus. I got an Armstrong Consort, the most expensive bike in the shop, with 27 x 1 1/4 inch wheels, Reynolds 531 tubing, drop handlebars and a 5 speed Derailleur. I was freewheelin’ six years before Dylan.
      1. 🙂 I had mine until I went to Uni. Someone nicked it from outside the Halls of Residence:-(
        1. Mine lasted through University to the bedsit years, when I left it at home, and my Mum got rid of it. I wasn’t happy!
          1. A posh mate of mine, now a Barnes Commoner, had an Elswick Hopper – with – wait for it – leather-clad brake blocks!
            My bikes were mongrels with ‘drops’.
            1. Was it the Lincoln Imp, H? I seem to remember that was Elswick Hopper’s equivalent to my Consort.
  12. Thanks, Pip. How are you settling back in?
    I was sailing along towards a sub-20 minute time when I encountered leaves on the line in the SW corner. I also had problems with SQUILLION and originally put GAZILLION thinking Gaza had to play a part there some where.
    You mentioned chestnuts but didn’t include what i always think of as one of the oldest, the river Dee.
    Can’t remember what my childhood bike was. I do remember it had Sturmey-Archer gears.
    1. We seem to be doing OK, overcoming the bureaucratic issues one by one. Didn’t realise how much hard-earned could be expended on things like
      curtains though. And we’ve got too much stuff, and more pictures than wall spaces.
  13. 48 minutes without ever really getting into the flow of things. I did not help that I had OVERRULES in 8a for a while. Another MER at the English language rather than the setter for the extraneous L in COLLINEAR.

    FOI 2d STELLAR LOI the odd 26a WHISKY.

    HILBERT remembered for brain-benders such as his hotel back when I was learning that there were different cardinalities of infinity.

    I also pronounce the explorer as RAAH-leigh in my head; I’m assuming that’s because he was so pronounced in the excellent Blackadder episode Potato. I’d pronounce the bike brand “rally” despite the fact they’re named after him (in a slightly roundabout way). Brains are odd.

    Edited at 2019-08-07 09:51 am (UTC)

    1. Thanks for the link; this is a new world to me. Sounds like the Hotel California? You can check out but never leave (just move to the next room). Oh, and hope that a ferry full of coaches doesn’t turn up.
      1. Just read a bit about this Hotel on Wiki. It seemed bleedin’ obvious to me that you could always add more rooms if the number was infinite, but apparently it isn’t so obvious after all. I gave up before the headache started, when the coaches began filling the infinitely large car park.
    2. I often cite cardinalities of infinity to explain why I didn’t enjoy my maths degree, the large majority of it being practically useless to me!
      1. I sometimes cite them as to why I did enjoy mine – the more useless the better, I always thought.
  14. SAMOS easy after Monday. Wasn’t sure about COLLINEAR, but had to be. Main hold up was LOUSINESS which wouldn’t come for some reason. Once I got that, everything fell into place very rapidly. TURN turns up twice!
  15. 18 minutes. Yet another that I thought I wouldn’t finish until I got ‘tuned in’ to the setter. Slow start, but had a few laughs at lolly, imagine, squillion. LOI desire, COD ‘imagine’. Couldn’t parse churlish.
  16. For reasons I can’t remember I had looked up COLLINEAR earlier this week, and I was surprised by the double L then – but it made it easy to enter today. Possibly I was looking for words that feature my name (Colin) and had hoped that would be one of them.

    I remembered Hilbert’s Hotel from my days as a maths undergraduate, and like others found WHISKY a bit nonsensical (problematical?) – my LOI.

    Quite an easy one, all in all, with my only stumble coming when I couldn’t think of the note that would be FI?ER, weirdly. Still, it was clearly the right answer. 7m 12s.

  17. ….(H)ALBEIT I didn’t know the German, and tried “a=arithmetic” in my anagrind.

    There’s always tomorrow. COD DIVERT, DNF just over 11 minutes, but irrelevant.

  18. Fantastic to see some mathematics, as boltonwanderer says. HILBERT was a write-in given the wordplay, I can do a good hour on Hilbert’s hotel, up to and including the infinity of infinitely large coaches – and it’s all free! PROBLEMATICAL, COLLINEAR, SQUILLION and even HEADS, which put me in mind of the binomial theorem.

    I thought it was a pub quiz answer that it’s pronounced RAWLEY, as jerry says.

    17’13” thanks pip and setter.

  19. To provide karmic balance to yesterday, this always felt like a struggle, though a perfectly pleasant one. I had the usual struggles with COLLINEAR and had never come across the mathematician, though the wordplay allowed for nothing else. I remember when growing up that the bikes were always Raleighs as in rallys; though the explorer’s name seems to have drifted from that, and when I listen to David Sedaris on the radio, his home town in North Carolina is a different beast again (and if you believe the theory that modern American English is the closest to how Shakespeare would have sounded, perhaps that’s how Sir Walter would have pronounced his own name).
  20. Had to biff 6d because I just wasn’t seeing the dodgy fiver.
    Thanks for the explanation. 17m 09s
  21. I read somewhere that Sir Walter spoke with a Devon accent (though that may be as apocryphal as him laying his cloak over a puddle so QEI wouldn’t get her feet wet) but how that would cause him to pronounce his name I don’t know. I’d say Rawleigh but I think the North Carolinians would say Rahleigh. Our blogger George could tell us. Other than a pause with the whisk in hand and a bit of a double-take with the spelling of COLLINEAR this was a smooth ride. With the mathematician I was thinking of the rhyming “filbert” being another name for a SWEET CHESTNUT but I now recall it’s a hazelnut. 16.26
  22. I had louseness for lousiness so collinear wouldn’t drop.

    For anyone concerned about my recent absence from here, the reports of my death are greatly exaggerated. In other words I’ve been on holiday.

    I’m sure this question has been asked a squillion times already but can anyone enlighten me as to what is happening with this year’s Times Crossword Championship? Dates and qualifying process?

    1. The answer appears to be that nobody knows.

      I raised this again about a week ago on the Crossword Club forum, and David Parfitt (Puzzles Editor) said that the Events Team are still finalising things and he will report back when there is something to report. The most he would be drawn on is that Finals Day will most likely be towards the end of November rather than the beginning, as has been the case in recent years.

      I was prompted to ask because someone (completely unrelated to crosswords) wanted to know what my plans were for the first weekend in November, and I’m sure I can’t be the only person who is already filling in their diary that far ahead? This is before you consider that people will want to book accommodation and travel, of course. All in all, I’m not tremendously impressed with the Events Team…

      2. Yep. The closer it gets, the more expensive it is to book travel and especially London accommodation, which may be the difference between going and not going for some of us.
    2. I actually asked this very question of the crossword championship mailbox yesterday, having half-assumed that I’d entered and forgotten.

      Their answer:

      “The Crossword Championship will run this year in a new and expanded format. We will be running promotional material regarding this year’s event in the paper and online in due course when the event date has been confirmed.”

    3. This was the latest from David Parfitt on 25 July, in response to a forum post from Topical Tim:

      “I’ve chased the Events team on this and will let you know as soon as we can give you something solid. What I can say, though, is that the Championship is more likely to take place towards the end of November than the beginning.”

    4. The latest exchange on the Club Forum had David Parfitt, on the 25th July, saying he was still chasing after the “events team” at the Times to get the thing sorted. Perhaps the top seeds have been given word privately but certainly no one else seems to know anything ….. Hope your holiday was good. On edit. Sorry all – this was superfluous.

      Edited at 2019-08-07 12:34 pm (UTC)

  23. 18:31. There was some clever misdirection going on here. The setter had me looking at the wrong end of the clue for the definitions for POSSESS (“law enforcers” rather than “have”), MARBLING (“fish” rather than “streaks”) and COLLINEAR (“one needed to listen” rather than “in a row”).

    THOROUGH may have been a chestnut but it was my LOI and only then once I’d concluded that HILBERT was the most likely collection of letters for the German.

    Re Sir Walter, I’ve always pronounced him to rhyme with barley but my mates’ choppers rhymed with rally.

    Edited at 2019-08-07 12:25 pm (UTC)

  24. Okay puzzle; it was just sort of there. Plodding 30-minute solve. The whisk clue is all over the place, really. Didn’t know Hilbert, but it couldn’t be anything else. Thanks pip.

    Edited at 2019-08-07 01:59 pm (UTC)

  25. I have just checked into Hilbert’s Hotel for a night and will let you know what happened tomorrow (I’m now in room 14).

    Edited at 2019-08-07 02:38 pm (UTC)

  26. Commentators on the QC blog were saying that this was easier than today’s QC; I think there’s a grain of truth in that as here I am with a completion in just over an hour.
    LOI was WHISKY. I had SHANDY there for a long time but knew it required a second look. I’d never heard of the German; I consider myself good on Germans and poor on mathematicians and he slipped through the gap. I wasn’t sure about R for mathematics. I had GAZILLION at 25a for a while; isn’t Gaza in the holy land? I liked MARBLING which also held me up till the end.
    David
  27. No problems today, finished rather quickly, ending with LOUSINESS. Over here the city in NC is pronounced RAHLEE, doesn’t rhyme with rally, but the clue wasn’t too tough anyway. COLLINEAR looked weird to me also. But these didn’t delay matters. Regards.
  29. 15:52 I must have had my Weetabix this morning because that’s a good time for me. Apart from the weirdly constructed 26ac which I just glossed over, I found everything straightforward. I have come across Hilbert and his hotel before and his 10 problems, though I did have to stop and remember that Dilbert was the cartoon and Hilbert was the mathematician. Like Mauefw I recently looked up collinear when reading the instructions to this week’s Listener puzzle, so 22ac went straight in. I was fascinated to read what Paul_in_London had to say about the double L. This blog is such a mine of interesting information.
  30. I’m here a day late again. Can anyone tell me what the “small” is doing in 5ac?
    1. Presumably meaning that “v.” is a small “very”, though I’d agree that it isn’t actually needed.
  31. No probs with COLLINEAR – don’t know why but didn’t even think that this might be spelt any other way.

    NHO HILBERT but educated guess with all checkers in place.

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