Times 27453 – see how the Fates their gifts allot

Author   piquetPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
If I had to pick one adjective to describe this puzzle, I’d say, straightforward. There is one word at 18a I didn’t know beforehand, but it’s deducible from the anagram fodder and the meaning. The rest is fair wordplay, some of it QC level, and I expect to see some fast times and a low SNITCH. If someone can explain 24a better, please do. But I enjoyed it, while it lasted, which wasn’t very long. My CoD would be 4d for the smooth surface.

Across
1 House publication with colleague’s final tribute (6)
HOMAGE – HO = house, MAG = publication, E = end of colleague.
4 Traveller given licence to go on major road (7)
MIGRANT – GRANT on end of the M1.
9 The old man, looking hot, shaved (5)
PARED – PA is RED hot.
10 Strong suspicion, it’s said, must be dealt with (6,3)
IRONED OUT – IRON = strong, ED OUT sounds like DOUBT = suspicion.
11 Procession of a woman and nasty fellow in church (9)
CAVALCADE – A, VAL (random woman), CAD (nasty fellow) inside CE = Church.
12 Test of political division putting British off (5)
TRIAL – TRIBAL loses its B. Three years ago I’d have queried ‘of political division’ meaning tribal, but now it feels somehow more appropriate.
13 Fox eats a nasty creature (4)
TOAD – TOD is a word for a FOX, insert A. I don’t think toads are nasty creatures, we have a family of them living near our back door in a drain cover thing and they’re quite cuddly.
14 Escape takes all day — it’s nice to get outside (10)
DECAMPMENT – DECENT = nice, insert AM PM i.e. all day.
18 I’m holiest cleric, primarily exercising art of sermonising (10)
HOMILETICS – (IM HOLIEST C)*, the C = cleric primarily. Not a word I’ve ever used, but I guessed it from the HOMILY route / root.
20 Pick up body part by hospital (4)
HEAR – EAR on Hospital.
23 German woman departs to see swindler (5)
FRAUD – FRAU, D(eparts).
24 Caught in a bad act, ensnared by weird sister showing charm (9)
FASCINATE – A SIN = a bad act, insert C for caught > ASCIN, insert that into FATE; I presume here FATE is one of the three sisters / daughters of Ananke, who weaved things like destinies, but why they are weird I don’t know.
25 Storm about proposal at meeting? Order must be kept (9)
COMMOTION – C (about) OM (order) MOTION (proposal at meeting).
26 Dosh foreign character keeps at home (5)
RHINO – Greek letter RHO keeps IN = at home.
27 Daughter is ecstatic making protest (7)
DISSENT – D IS SENT (ecstatic).
28 Farm needing good pasturage (6)
GRANGE – G, RANGE = pasturage.

Down
1 Hard work followed by drink and game (9)
HOPSCOTCH –  H(ard), OP (work), SCOTCH (drink). My FOI.
2 A Gypsy heading north through European region (7)
MORAVIA – A ROM = a gypsy, singular of Roma, heading north = MOR A, VIA = through. It’s the Easternmost province of what is now called Czechia.
3 Tribe sits on smart person seen as a pest (6)
GADFLY – GAD was one of the 12 tribes of Israel. Gad himself was the seventh son of Jacob, by Leah’s handmaiden Zilpah, apparently, so handmaidens must have been fair game in those days.No worse than Anne Boleyn I suppose. FLY = smart. So I think here the definition is being applied to a person rather than just the annoying insect.
4 Animal imitates the noise of another, having minimal energy (5)
MOOSE – Our MOOSE imitates a cow so MOOS, add E = minimal energy.
5 Mammal to worry about fruit? The opposite (5,3)
GREAT APE – the opposite, in that the fruit GRAPE goes around EAT = worry.
6 Surprisingly, age is no worry (7)
AGONISE – (AGE IS NO)*.
7 Youngster, a learner unqualified (5)
TOTAL – TOT, A, L.
8 Wire that’s flimsy insulated by paper wrapping at home (8)
FILAMENT – LAME (flimsy, as in lame excuse) is wrapped by IN = at home, wrapped by FT the newspaper. F(I(LAME)N)T.
15 Blaming statement from book-keeper and swearing? That’s not right (8)
ACCUSING – AC = account, statement from book-keeper; CURSING loses its R for Right.
16 Little maids from school possibly see mother coming out (9)
THREESOME – (SEE MOTHER)*. Reference the song in The Mikado: “Three little maids from school are we / pert as a school-girl well can be / filled to the brim with girlish glee …” to which YUM-YUM says “Everything is a source of fun (chuckle)”. Enough said.
17 Happy boys in game with yours truly (8)
GLADSOME – LADS = boys, inside GO a game, add ME.
19 Bad atmospheres spread about by mass media editor denied (7)
MIASMAS – Anagram of (MASS M(ed) IA)* where the ED is “denied”. The plural of the Greek word miasma should be miasamata, but I expect dictionaries allow a sloppy, Anglicised, miasmas.
21 Joy‘s husband, for example, no Romeo (7)
ELATION – RELATION loses its R for Romeo. Is a husband a relation?
22 Reflect on one bishop being hugged by a thousand soldiers (6)
MIRROR – I (one) RR (bishop) inside M (a thousand) OR (ordinary ranks).
23 Met with coffee maybe when turning up (5)
FACED – DECAF coffee reversed.
24 Misleading action is weak, by the sound of it (5)
FEINT – sounds like FAINT.

58 comments on “Times 27453 – see how the Fates their gifts allot”

  1. I venture 8dn FILAMENT is a ‘Russian Doll’ of a clue with nesting beyond the IKEAN.

    Like the ‘wise owl’ I knew not 18ac HOMILETICS (as per homily) and was rewarded by not to shoving in HOMELITICS My LOI

    FOI 24dn FEINT

    COD 8db FILAMENT

    WOD 11ac CAVALCADE (Cowardly)

    24ac FASCINATE – Weird (wyrd) Sisters = FATE from the Scottish Play.

    Edited at 2019-09-11 05:57 am (UTC)

    1. Merci, horryd. I know a bit of the Bard’s stuff but have never seen or read the Scottish Play. Scared to, I think, it seems to bring bad luck.
  2. 43 minutes, drawn out at the end by 2d and 11a, where I’d managed somehow to construct CAROLLAGE, making the only-vaguely-known MORAVIA much harder to see until I finally saw what the “through” was doing… Didn’t know Rom, tod, Gad, or HOMILETICS, all of which slowed me down.
  3. I remember Bohemia and Moravia (a puppet state set up by Hitler) from my stamp-collecting childhood. Biffed MIASMAS, never bothered to parse it. The theory of miasmas as the cause of disease persisted into the 19th century, and was one reason Europeans bathed so seldom: bathing opens the pores, making one more susceptible to miasmas. (I had no idea what the plural of the Greek word ‘miasma’ is; the plural of the English word ‘miasma’ is ‘miasmas’.) Oddly enough, I didn’t think of ‘Macbeth’ but rather of ‘weird’ as in ‘dree one’s weird’. 26ac: ‘keeps at home’; 8d: ‘wrapping at home’.

    Edited at 2019-09-11 07:35 am (UTC)

  4. 33 minutes with 18ac deduced via ‘homily’ like our blogger. The Weird Sisters are usually the witches in the Scottish play, but perhaps being a Fate is weird enough to qualify too.

    Edit: I’ve found the reference now but our Shanghai correspondent has beaten me to it!

    Edited at 2019-09-11 06:00 am (UTC)

  5. 30 mins with no brekker.
    Very fleeting MER at the choice of ‘husband’ for relation and the reflect ‘on’.
    However, I liked it. Mostly I liked: Dec am pm ent and Great Ape.
    Thanks setter and Pip.

    Edited at 2019-09-11 07:49 am (UTC)

  6. …listen to the HOMILETICS without DISSENT. I did know the sermonising word, but my first bash was THEOLICISM until crossers put me right. No, it doesn’t exist. 28 minutes with LOI DECAMPMENT still unparsed. I like TOADs too, and I guess the ‘nasty’ referred to a human version. COD to GADFLY in this workmanlike puzzle. Thank you Pip and setter.
  7. My miserable run of getting one wrong continued today as I finished with HOMILSTICE, thinking that -stice was a reasonable ending as in justice or armistice and not considering that the word might be plural. With hindsight it feels like a stupid error. Must do better.
  9. All but 17 minutes but with an idiotic “next door key” typo. Like BW, I only know of the appearance of GLADSOME in Hymns A&M. If we can find another who thinks that way, we can make a THREESOME.
      1. May I join you for a quintet? I sang it at morning assembly on my first day at grammar school from a pocket words-only edition of Songs of Praise. I had to carry said volume around with me for the next seven years for fear of falling foul of the random hymn book checks. Failure to produce one merited a detention.
        malcj
  10. bolton wanderer beat me to my headline, knowing GLADSOME from the hymn, and HOMILETICS from doing it. Juxtaposition of GLADSOME/THREESOME seems odd.

    How does one pronounce 1ac? And do the the two pronunciations have different meanings?

    13′, thanks pip and setter.

    1. I don’t know how it is in the UK these days but some annoying people in the US like to demonstrate their erudition by pronouncing it as if speaking in French. They’re the same people who insist on pronouncing “herbs” as “erbs”.
      1. I was in the same boat as you, Olivia, but some time ago I researched ‘herbs’ american-isation and found that it came directly from the French and not the English – so ‘erbs’ and not ‘herbs’ is unspeakably des rigeurs!

        I presume therefore that the Latin ‘urbs’ is ‘hubs’ in modern English!

          1. It’s hardly an affectation if one pronounces a word the way it’s pronounced in one’s speech community. I was in my 30s or 40s before I heard anyone say ‘Herb’.
              1. What about American jazz musician and record label owner Herb Alpert? Is he known locally as ‘Erb?
      2. Don’t all Americans pronounce ‘herbs’ like that? It sounds odd to my ear too but my understanding was that it’s standard.
        1. My earliest recollection of this is when Face said it that way in an episode of The A Team, startling my young brain, so it’s definitely been going on a while!
        2. There seem to be odd regional variations in the US when it comes to pronouncing the H. As we know there is the current “yuge” occupant of the White House. It was only when I pointed out to my husband that he pronounced my last name the same way that POTUS would that I was able, after over 40 years of marriage, to get him to do it right.
          1. After 40 years of marriage, isn’t it time to call you by your first name? (And aren’t there regional variations in the UK when it comes to pronouncing H’s? he asked.)
            No, but seriously, aside from the occasional Mrs Bucket, we talk the way people around us talk.
          2. Merriam-Webster has it sans H but then says “US also and usually British” with H.
            M-W is our guide at The Nation.
          3. Merriam-Webster (our guide at The Nation) gives it first sans H and adds “US also and usually British” with H.
            3. My personal bete noire is the common use in the US of filay for the word filet — a “filay” knife could never be used for its natural purpose of filleting something apparently……………..
  11. 26:11 … with a personal Nitch of 147 it would be fair to say I made hard work of this, though any puzzle that features HOMILETICS and Russian doll wordplay (FILAMENT) does not in my book qualify as ‘straightforward’!

    Major problems with MORAVIA, too, one of those place names I can never remember and routinely confuse with several others. ROM totally forgotten. The THREESOME reference also had to be dredged up rather painfully from somewhere or other — now had it been Gilbert O’Sullivan rather than Gilbert & Sullivan I’d have been laughing.

    I see it’s a fine day for Momble connoisseurs, with THEOLICISM, HOMILSTICE and CAROLLAGE already essayed .. and it’s only just past breakfast time.

  12. Total disaster! Didn’t know the Mikado song and couldn’t tease out the anagram, beaten all ends up by decampment, and didn’t show the same restraint as Horryd, happily bunging in HOMELITICS which looked more likely.
    No troubles with the European region, home of 90s radio and TV star Keith the Moravian Swear Bear.
    Quite like the macabre surface of 20 ac. Also not sure a moose wouldn’t moo?
  13. As my daughter is a member of Teesside G&S Society, Three Little Maids sprang to mind easily. She’s rehearsing for The Gondoliers at the moment, but did The Mikado a couple of years ago. I derived HOMILETICS from Homily. I didn’t fully unwrap FILAMENT, so it was more of a biff. Liked DECAMPMENT. Didn’t know ROM for Gypsy, but it was close enough to ROMA and I knew MORAVIA. HOMAGE was FOI and MOOSE LOI. 28:05. Thanks setter and Pip.
  14. 37 mins for this little pickle. Reminded me of the three fates: Clotho, Lachesis and Atropos (set to music by Keith Emerson in 1970). Filament took ages. Thanks pip.
  15. ….who was one of the most elegant Times setters, and who would frequently throw in some Gilbert & Sullivan. THREESOME therefore gave me a smile.

    I started like a house on fire, and was down to half a dozen clues in around six minutes. I had to grind out the rest.

    TRIAL, FILAMENT, and MIASMAS were all biffed, but parsed post-solve. DNK HOMILETICS but it made perfect sense.

    FOI HOMAGE
    LOI DECAMPMENT
    COD FILAMENT
    TIME 12:02

    1. I must add my heartfelt sympathies to yesterday’s sad announcement. I know exactly where you are at, as I myself have been through the wringer. Take care and God bless your precious family.

      Mood Meldrewvian

      1. Thank you to you both – and to anybody I’ve missed out. It is a comfort to know that so many care.
  16. Straightforward was the word I’d already thought of when solving. Add me to those unfamiliar with HOMILETICS but who fortunately only saw the one likely-looking solution from the anagram fodder.
  17. Sort of middling crossword, middling snitch and a middling time for me. Only problems were the sermonising and LOI FILAMENT where I thought the wire was flimsy rather than lame.
  18. … about you know what, for which I guessed ‘homilstice’ like pootle73, so a DNF in 44 minutes.

    We had an annual G&S performance at school in Grade 6, rotating through 4 different works and the Three Little Maids were so popular that they appeared every year, even somehow being transposed into ‘Trial by Jury’. You might think 12 year old boys would run a mile, but oddly enough we loved it.

    Thanks to setter, blogger and John Milton

  19. I managed 3/4 of this lickety-split but got completely stuck in the NE corner. Which was pretty thick of me considering what’s been going on with MIGRANTs on the Southern border of the US lately, but no I had to trawl the alphabet for MOOSE before I could get there. Pip, I think the OR in 22d is “other” not “ordinary” ranks but that’s an extremely small nit! 20.56
    1. I stand (to attention) corrected, I had always assumed (wrongly and lazily) it was Ordinary, but NATO speak says Other as do you of course. My Dad would have known for sure, he had a Military Bearing like Major Bloodknock. P
  20. Wyrd Anglo-Saxon for fate; uncanny or strange meaning altogether linked to that in Shakespeare’s time. Liked the am/pm of decampment, my last in as I simply couldn’t understand it for a while. 19.47 and slightly amazed to sneak in ahead of the site’s wise sisterhood if sotira and olivia will forgive me. Not that one is given to noticing such things except by the merest accident of course. I was familiar with ‘homiletics’ as it was often the practice to sign off a poem in A/S times with a moralising passage, sometimes possibly an addition by a later writer. I don’t know if anyone saw ‘The Black Mikado’ back in the Seventies, but ‘Three Little Maids’ was something else – a demure line-up who mid-song suddenly let rip, pretty well literally, with the chorus line ‘Three Little Maids from School…’. One meets the “cultured” pronunciation of ‘homage’ over here too, malheureusement.

    Edited at 2019-09-11 02:56 pm (UTC)

  21. 12m 01s, finishing on DECAMPMENT – I liked the AM/PM bit, so I’ll give it my COD.

    I’m trying to work out 22d – the ‘on’ doesn’t seem to serve any purpose in the cryptic, so presumably the definition has to be ‘reflect on’, but I’m struggling to justify that either. Perhaps ‘on one bishop’ is supposed to indicate that RR comes just after I, but using ‘on’ in that sense for down clues is not usually done, is it?

    Possibly I’m over-thinking this one.

  22. I DNFd on this one, plumping for “homilstice” after an age of staring and failing to consider HOMILISTICS. Ah well.

    CoD to DECAMPMENT. I spent a long time looking at D(ay)E….T (est, ‘is’ in Nice), interspersed with musings on CAMP MEN. The “all day” for AMPM was very neat, thought, though alas there must be few opportunities to use it.

  23. 9:57. No problems here. HOMILETICS unknown but derived from homily.
    I always get MORAVIA confused with Genovia.
    1. For me it’s Moravia, Moldovia, Moldova, Moldavia that all blend together. In retrospect I never knew Moravia wasn’t just a made up word.
      1. [guiltily] This was an ironic Princess Diaries reference. I spend too much time with teenage girls. Or more precisely one teenage girl, and one ex-teenage girl.
  24. HOMILETICS derived from ingrained church missal instruction from 40+ years ago ‘Sit for the homily, stand for the creed’.

    FILAMENT a write-in though failed to parse more than FT.

    CAVALCADE popped up quickly following a recent familial discussion on European horse-related words!

    Not sure of TOD, ROM or GAD but checkers generous.

  25. No it didn’t take all day, but I loved the AM PM device in 14a and don’t think I have seen that before?
  26. 50 odd minutes only to DNF. I had heard of Moravia (I might have thought it was the setting for Duck Soup or the Prisoner of Zenda – sorry Moravians – but I had heard of it) so it was annoying to find after submitting that I had actually typed Morrvia. I got a bit stuck in the middle and found it quite hard to polish this one off. I couldn’t work out decampment or filament for ages and initially having closed out instead of ironed out at 10ac didn’t help. I also had about five cracks at the correct arrangement of anagrist in 18ac before getting that one right. COD to 16dn.
  27. I had a brief flirtation with HOMILECTICS by false analogy with DIALECTICS, but that wasn’t working out for me so I left HOMIL- in and came back to it when I had more crossers.
  28. We were with Vinyl’s ‘homilestic’ which stuffed up filament and accusing and decampment , until unscrambled late on as the penny finally dropped that homilestic might not be a kosher word.
    Took 45 mins to iron out. Special mention to the am/pm device. Bravo setter!

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