Times 27447 – Oh the Times, oh the goings on; Cicero had it all right.

Author   piquetPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
I found this a curate’s egg of a puzzle; about half the clues seemed easy and flew in all across the grid, then it took another twenty minutes to polish it off with several not fully understood until I came to write this blog. There was nothing unacceptable in the end, just a few MERs, and a few bits of Latin which I knew, and a Russian writer I’d heard of. I think 4a gets my CoD award, if my explanation is correct!

Now to tackle last Sunday’s ‘replacement’, which at first sight looks a toughie.

Across
1 Revealing blouse might be tough for ladies to get into (3-3)
LOW-CUT –  a LOUT is our tough, into which we put WC for the Ladies loo.
4 All pieces for playing with at five o’clock must go in box (5,3)
CHESS SET – I think SSE here is the direction of the clock hour hand at 5 o’clock; so SSE goes into CHEST = box.
10 Celebrate noisily with band: I arranged backing (5,2,2)
WHOOP IT UP – W (with) HOOP (band) then I then PUT (arranged) reversed.
11 Long forgotten, maybe, or needing no introduction (5)
OLDEN – OR = GOLDEN, as in heraldry; drop the G = no introduction.
12 Quite a posh residence in the East End? (3)
ALL – Another H-less cockneyism I suppose, an ‘ALL being a posh house, and ALL = quite as in “are you quite finished?’
13 See a Greek MP rallying workers on estate (11)
GAMEKEEPERS – (SEE A GREEK MP)*
14 As end of chapter, closed book (6)
QUARTO – QUA = Latin for as, R = end of chapter, TO = closed, as in ‘put the door to’.
16 Solid girl placed in sink to the left (7)
PYRAMID – MARY a random girl is put into DIP = sink, then all reversed.
19 Enough to swap tips with lover of old illustrations (7)
EXEMPLA – EX = lover of old, then the ends of AMPLE (enough) reversed.
20 English town’s fresh flood defence (6)
NEWARK – NEW = fresh, ARK = flood defence, well, flood escape mechanism.
22 In school on Thursday: a dance and whatnot (11)
THINGAMAJIG – TH (Thursday), IN, GAM (word for a school of whales), A JIG = a dance.
25 Who’s reading this letter out loud? (3)
YOU – I see this as a DD, you’re reading it, and you sounds like U.
26 What one can see through stone blocks (5)
VISTA – VIA = through, insert ST.
27 Art master’s responsibility, taking class for one (9)
REMBRANDT – I put him in from checkers and definition, and eventually, at the end of the blog, saw why. REMIT = responsibility, substitute BRAND (= class?) for the I (one).
28 Soldiers needing medic, subject to stress: most faint (8)
REMOTEST – RE = soldiers, MO = medic, TEST = subject (verb) to stress,
29 What you find at bottom of the author’s bunk! (2,4)
MY FOOT – Whimsically cryptic, if you like.
Down
1 Sheriff’s grass keeping mum (6)
LAWMAN – LAWN has MA inserted.
2 Simple creature to pursue revolutionary ancient custom (9)
WOODLOUSE – WOO = pursue, DLO = old reversed = revolutionary ancient, USE = custom. Are woodlouses or woodlice simple? They look quite complicated to me.
3 Out of bed around noon, for one’s release (5)
UNPEG – UP = out of bed, insert N for noon, EG = for one, for example.
5 Athletic event’s hard work: miss start also having entered (3,4,3,4)
HOP SKIP AND JUMP – H (hard), OP (work), SKIP (miss), AND (also) JUMP (start). If I wasn’t obliged herein, I’d just have biffed it.
6 Guards collecting old clubs, lifting one each? (5,4)
SCORE DRAW – Guards = WARDERS, insert OC to get WARDEROCS then reverse it all.
7 Edge of wheel discovered to have shrivelled up (5)
SIDLE – Hidden reversed in WHE(EL DIS)COVERED. Edge as a verb.
8 Deny site could become an urban sprawl (8)
TYNESIDE – (DENY SITE)*. Well, Tyneside is a conurbation, but I doubt the local Councillors would think of it as a sprawl any more than, say, Greater Manchester.
9 Some poem confused with orator Cicero’s observation (1,7,1,5)
O TEMPORA O MORES – (SOME POEM ORATOR)*. Cicero might well have applied it to today’s policital scenario, I think. Nil desperandum. As Cicero also said, salus populi suprema lex esto, Boris.
15 Right to feed English dog bread that’s disgusting (9)
REPUGNANT – RT = right, insert in order, E, PUG, NAN = bread.
17 Join by tying knot (5,4)
MARRY INTO – I can’t see any more in this other than, the surface meaning, marry someone and you become integrated into their family.
18 Scrap involving Labour politicians in the past (8)
LEFTOVER – LEFT = Labour politicians, OVER = in the past.
21 Short skirts getting shorter? Too bad! (3-3)
TUT-TUT – Two TUTUS get shorter.
23 To recap, not always out to be understood? (2,3)
IN SUM – A homophone, I think, IN SOME meaning sometimes in, not always out.
24 Writer going into horrific detail about monk’s end (5)
GORKY – end of monk = K goes into GORY detail. Is gory really a synonym for horrific? I mean, gory can be horrific, but horrific isn’t necessarily gory, is it? I’ve never read Gorky’s stuff but I know they named a Moscow park after him because I’ve read Martin Cruz Smith’s fine novel of that name.

44 comments on “Times 27447 – Oh the Times, oh the goings on; Cicero had it all right.”

  1. No problems for me. I think GORY is all of “going into horrific detail”. That seems close enough I didn’t question it. I had no idea about the 5-o-clock thing, but it couldn’t be anything else.
  2. I read 24 the way Paul, just above, does.
    My COD must be the Latin phrase, with the seamless melding of wordplay and surface in “orator Cicero.” But REMBRANDT seemed pretty daring…
    It’s nice to get one of these finished in time to comment; just did Monday and Tuesday too a bit earlier.

    Edited at 2019-09-04 05:55 am (UTC)

  3. I pushed this to an hour and three and am just happy to have got there in the end. Plenty of cunning on display here, and it was slow going from start to finish.

    FOI 1a LOW CUT, LOsI the combination of 2d WOODLOUSE and 12a ALL, where I had a blind spot on the latter until an alphabet run on the former finally put paid to my conviction that it probably started WHO…

    That was after I finally sorted out the SE, where it took me a while to see 29a MY FOOT. For a while I had a rather different answer in there, but from the moment I put it in I was thinking, “no, a setter who’d clue 9d surely wouldn’t put that in a Times crossword…”

    COD 4a CHESS SET.

    Edited at 2019-09-04 06:51 am (UTC)

  4. 30 minutes for this off-beat example, with that 5 o’clock wheeze being innovatory, I think.
    I struggled with the SW (7.30?) sector, with the REPUGNANT clue both suggesting a mispring (dog breEd, surely?) and inviting UGH in the middle somehow for the disgusting bit.

    A teeny point, Pip, in an excellent and erudite (great Latin!) blog: in 19a, only the tips of AMPLE are reversed.

    This week, the trend seems to be towards increasing knottiness: might need to set more time aside tomorrow.

  5. 45 mins with yoghurt, granola, etc.
    Well I think this one had a record number of MERs; ten in all. I note Pip had a few. I won’t go into them all for fear of being offered a list of tenuous explanations, but come on, this was a bit flaky.
    Thanks setter and Pip.
  6. All done and dusted in 30m; very enjoyable. For a moment, I was thinking that 29ac could be ‘my a*s*’ which would certainly answer the clue but after all this is The Times…
    Sorry Gothic, just spotted your comment…

    Edited at 2019-09-04 07:36 am (UTC)

  7. 35 minutes with LOI SCORE DRAW, despite Bolton’s Under-Elevens managing a one each draw against Bradford City last night. Until I saw OLDEN, I kept thinking it must be ‘scare crow.’ Well, Worzel Gummidge was always my fashion inspiration, wearing his seersucker shirts. I wasn’t keen on TYNESIDE, unless it was a Geordie setting the puzzle, or indeed your potential attribution to Greater Manchester, Pip, much as I wish that institution gone. Yorkist propaganda, clearly. But there is still only one Great Wen, two hunded miles south and east. FOI was THINGAMAJIG so I have to make it COD. I liked CHESS SET too. I assume the Latin, which I did know, is a reference to the present political situation. We’re doomed! Even so, an enjoyable challenge. Thank you Pip and setter.
  8. 28′ but with THINGAMEJIG, gam being unknown. Liked REMBRANDT, CHESS SET with its (to me) innovation. Dnk EXEMPLA, as I use examples or exemplars….

    Thanks pip and setter.

    Edited at 2019-09-04 08:09 am (UTC)

  9. Straightforward top to bottom solve with no queries but quite a bit of biffing. Good to see a mention for the ancient and historic town of NEWARK. Well blogged Pip.
  10. 12:40. I was quite stuck on this from about the half-way point, but then it seemed that every answer I got gave me a letter that unlocked another clue, until I was done. So it felt like a bit of a lucky escape.
    Count me in the ‘surely it can’t be’ club at 29ac.
  11. I agree with our Breakfast correspondent that this was a bit (corn)flaky.

    We had something similar to the SSE idea long ago by which we were required to imagine a line drawn between two places in England and interpret it as a direction of travel in terms of a point on the compass. ‘Daft’ I called it then, as is today’s example in my view.

    ARK = ‘flood defence’? Really?

    I too very nearly wrote MY A*S*E at 29ac and it might have given me satisfaction to do so by that stage of the proceedings!

  12. Beaten by this but really enjoyed it. I’ll even forgive the Latin anagram (because I knew it). Thanks setter (and Pip for filling in the gaps).
  13. A very enjoyable puzzle. The SE has been my problem area lately and held me up again, with the random ‘girl’ at 16a giving me trouble as usual. Once that was in, I could get 17d then 20a as my LOI (seen on the telly not long ago). Finished in just on an hour.

    Lots of things to like, including the SSE for ‘five o’clock’ at 4a and the tricky parsing of REMBRANDT and THINGAMYJIG. Highlight though was the excellent LOW-CUT, topping the tables as my favourite clue of the week so far.

    Thanks to setter and blogger.

  14. I started off with LOW CUT, then biffed UNZIP at 3d which slowed me down until GAMEKEEPERS came along. IT UP went in long before WHOOP, giving me HOP SKIP AND JUMP. The rest of the NW came together once PEG replaced ZIP. I had TUT TUT in before I considered 29a so I wasn’t ar*ed about there. I knew the Latin expression. Liked NEWARK. My LOI was SIDLE, when I eventually realised there hadn’t been a hidden. I was still looking at the wrong end of the clue for the definition though. EXEMPLA from wordplay, although vaguely known. I also struggled to get away from SCARECROW at 6d but then saw the inversion instruction and all became clear. An enjoyable puzzle despite the odd MER. I had a phone call in the middle and forgot to pause, so I can knock off around 3 minutes from my 38:38. Thanks setter and Pip.

    Edited at 2019-09-04 09:23 am (UTC)

  15. Really liked this puzzle.. a bit quirky but absolutely none the worse for that. Liked the SSE and loved the flood defence!
    And some fine surfaces, to boot.
    Top class all round
  16. 44 minutes and unfortunately with thingymajig, taking gym for school. Salus aut vox populi, Pip?
    1. 52 / 48 vox populi over 3 years ago, not representative now, with 3 years of qualified new voters not consulted, and £350 million worth of lies told by Boris and his mate Cummings at the time. Vox pop I accept, if it’s current and based on fair propaganda.
      Sorry to be political but I feel strongly about it.
      1. A supermajority of a certain percentage of all eligible voters should have been required for the vote on such a drastic decision to have been binding.
        Talk about overconfidence… hubris!
  17. ….which is NEWARK-ON-TRENT, while the New Jersey example (and 15 others in the US !) are simply NEWARK.

    I just crept inside my target time, having been stuck with my last two solutions for around five minutes – I spotted OLDEN but wasn’t sufficiently convinced to biff it immediately, and then just didn’t see the reverse “hidden”, biffing it at almost the last second, and parsing it afterwards.

    Thanks to Pip for OLDEN, REMBRANDT, and IN SUM.

    Took very great care of the spelling at 22A, which I would have as “thingummyjig” (lean sticky dance).

    The athletics event would have lured me into entering “step” had I not already got the K from my FOI.

    FOI GAMEKEEPERS
    LOI SIDLE
    COD CHESS SET
    TIME 19:57

  18. 28 mins. Nice puzzle, no dramas, even though the snitch at 134 suggests it’s difficult. Thanks pip.
  19. 35 min, but with a U in the middle of 22ac – not parsed, but ‘Thursday’ seemed to be involved. Having J & Q got me thinking ‘pangram’, which put me on the track to 19ac, but then lost time looking for Z somewhere in the NW. I must confess to looking in the collection of foreign phrases in the back of the BRB to check the vaguely-remembered 9dn before entering, so probably a technical DNF.
  20. I found I’d passed the 20 minute mark and there were still an awful lot of empty squares in the grid. My brain seemed to be stuck making unhelpful suggestions such as reminding me of Richard Nixon’s 5 o’clock shadow (MY FOOT). I should have remembered that there was a NEWARK long before New Jersey came into being, and in fact it was in the bailiwick of the Sheriff of Nottingham. Thanks Pip for parsing all the ones (too many to mention) that got past me. 29.53
  21. 12m 03s with LEFTOVER the last to go. As I look at my newspaper, though, I see that I’ve accidentally written RUPUGNANT, the kind of horror show that would ruin a competition day.

    Quite a few biffs, including CHESS SET, where the SSE = 5 o’clock is very good – even if the clock form of directions seems to be more usually in relation to where someone is facing (e.g. “watch each other’s sixes”) rather than the compass.

    Low-cut blouses and short skirts getting shorter… some solvers will be getting hot under the collar at the breakfast table.

  22. Damn. This one took forever (well, the better part of an hour), during which I managed to convince myself that the school in 22ac must be a gym, giving me ‘thingamYjig’, and hence one annoying pink square.
  23. I thought I was going to finish this quite quickly. I knew the Latin phrase and worked out the required spelling of Thingummyjig for this puzzle. However several clues were deeply resistant: I had a Mouse in 2d and could not see the cockney ‘ome. I had WRING IT UP(?) at 10a and missed SIDLE. I agree with our blogger’s assessment. Sui generis perhaps; happily not sui sidle.
    David
  24. 29:12. DNK the Cicero quote so had to construct it from the wordplay and checkers. There were several I took a while to spot the parsing for, but they didn’t give me cause to raise my eyebrows. I read BRAND for class in 27A as in “brand someone a troublemaker”. Nice puzzle. Thanks Pip and setter.
    1. Strictly speaking, yes, 157.5 degrees while 5.00 is only 150 degrees, each compass point being 1/16 of a circle not 1/12, but I think we can forgive the setter as 5.00 is the closest hour to a SSE bearing.
  26. Over one hour for me. Stuffed myself for a while by having 25a as Eye (as in “I” am reading this). Took a while to come back and go further through the alphabet to find my mistake.
  29. My favourite Cicero quote is “O fortunatam natam me consule Romam!” For a great orator he may not have been much cop as a poet.
  30. Over an hour in about 4 sessions so this did not find favour with me. LOI LEFTOVER still wondering what the politicians were doing there, as I couldn’t find anywhere to put MPs. The Latin quote was my FOI, so I must have learned something at school.
  31. DNF. All done in 44 mins but an inexplicable marry unto rather than marry into. Started briskly but slowed down towards the end with just a few proving highly resistant. Repugnant, score draw, sidle, woodlouse, olden and chess set were, I think, the ones that stretched the grey matter the most.
  32. Because I thought this a pretty decent crossword, despite two errors. Certainly in the top ten this year. I obviously haven’t got a monopoly of grumpiness if the blog is anything to go by! I would question whether ‘quite’ quite means ‘all’ in the example given. And ‘gym’ is also a school, therefore with no crossers to indicate otherwise, I’m claiming ‘thingymajig’ as correct. Mr Grumpy
      1. I don’t know. I was surprised to find it was a real word TBH. I just assumed therefore that ‘anything goes’ really.
  33. NW corner relied on aid for QUARTO. I thought latin was meant to be a dead language. Poor clueing as the latin answer shouldn’t perhaps rely on translation into latin of a random word in the clue. Some of us only did a bit of church latin. This is not ‘O Tempora’….

    The clue for ALL was not great either – ALL = QUITE?

  34. Just over the hour for this, with THINGYMAJIG ; gym for school as mentioned above. Is there a correct spelling for this word?
    Once again a time of 2 Olivias . If only she could get faster!!

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