Times 27475 – A bit on the cool side?

Author   vinyl1Posted on Categories Daily Cryptic

Time: 42 minutes
Music: Don Giovanni Highlights, Klemperer EMI

This one should have been easy, and I definitely made a mess of it.   Besides not being very good with wines, I penciled in several dividing lines in the wrong places, making clues that should have been write-in biffs quite impossible.   It took quite a while to find and correct these errors, too, and the clock was ticking.  There were some nice original clues, as well as some that don’t quite work as well as they should.   Since I’m quite tired tonight, let’s have at it!

Across
1 Yank grabbing Conservative fellow’s mistress? (7)
TEACHER – TEA(C HE)R – is ‘tear’ really a good equivalent for ‘yank’?
5 Group of shadowy figures holding church back (7)
SPECIES – SP(C.E. backwards)IES. 
9 A snowdrop? (9)
AVALANCHE – Cryptic definition, but one I didn’t care for.
10 Geese flying east into cover (5)
SKEIN – SK(E)IN, one of those ornithological collective nouns.   My LOI, as the cryptic offers several possibilities, such as ‘flying’ indicating an anagram.
11 Peasant’s husband seized by large force one heading west (5)
CHURL – C(H)UR + L, where the RUC is our old friend the Royal Ulster Constabulary.
12 Loot needs shifting: all eyes are on it (9)
LODESTONE – Anagram of LOOT NEEDS, where the definition is metaphorical, since a lodestone actually attracts iron filings.
14 Feeble toff somehow led Cornish news (8,6)
CHINLESS WONDER – Anagram of LED CORNISH NEWS. 
17 How one might face grandmaster or general? (6,3,5)
ACROSS THE BOARD – Double definition, one referring to a hypothetical contest with a high-ranking chess player.
21 One crying out from back of court (4,5)
LINE JUDGE – Cryptic definition, and a good one, since a line judge in tennis does cry ‘Out!’
23 Senior man joining up after wife departs (5)
ELDER – [w]ELDER.
24 Put down a cow? (5)
LOWER – Double definition, a chestnut this time.
25 Striking, moving fast after change of leader (9)
WALLOPING – (-g, +W)ALLOPING, a vague letter-substitution clue that won’t give much difficulty.
26 House on square? Let’s get it! (5-2)
TALLY-HO – TALLY, in the sense of ‘match’ or ‘line up’, + HO[use]. 
27 Saw nurses at work — so gifted! (7)
DONATED – D(ON)ATED – we’ve had a lot of ‘see’ = ‘date’ lately.
Down
1 Prime minister cutting Her Majesty’s hair (6)
THATCH – THATCH[er].
2 Martha occasionally accompanying American in pub, if necessary (2,1,4)
AT A PUSH – [m]A[r]T[h]A + P(US)H, the old P.H. = public house.
3 Boss tells a whopper about son’s latest pieces of news (9)
HEADLINES – HEAD LIE([so]N)S.    Rather elaborate, but most solvers will biff it.
4 Reminisced about Bolshevik holding English rally (11)
RECOLLECTED – R(E COLLECT)ED.
5 Brussels upset after Brexiters’ final charge (3)
SUE – [brexiter]S + EU upside-down.   I don’t think ‘charge’ has any sense that works for ‘sue’. 
6 Stops head resigning and relaxes (5)
EASES – [c]EASES.
7 In speech I nag, unfeeling (3-4)
ICE-COLD – sounds like I SCOLD in many, but not all, dialects.
8 Career crazily with son, guzzling new wine (8)
SANCERRE – anagram of CAREER + S + N.
13 Tousled beauty had fun going topless (11)
DISHEVELLED – DISH + [r]EVELLED.
15 Independently working on European broadcast (2,4,3)
ON ONES OWN – ON + ON + E + SOWN, where one ON is indicated by ‘working’, and the other by ‘on’.
16 Founder lacking sparkle after trip (4,4)
FALL FLAT – FALL + FLAT in different senses, which are not very remote from how they are used in the answer.
18 Continuation of American’s truly gripping novel (7)
RENEWAL – RE(NEW)AL. 
19 Some reactionary tweets I’m deranged, anger clouding judgement (3,4)
RED MIST – backwards hidden in [twee]TS I’M DER[anged].
20 Unaffectionate father I like to send up (6)
FRIGID – FR + I + DIG upside-down.
22 Do wrong in Jersey on vacation, procuring pot (5)
JERRY – J(ERR)Y, as in a jerrycan.
25 Try to win women’s love on more than one occasion (3)
WOO – W + O + O, where ‘on more than one occasion’ just indicates two of them.

71 comments on “Times 27475 – A bit on the cool side?”

  1. Should have been more like 17, but I took about 6 minutes to get LOI SKEIN, which I didn’t know in the relevant sense. I had the same doubts as Vinyl about TEAR. I didn’t have any doubts about SUE=charge at the time, but now that V mentions it, I’m having a hard time finding a frame that would accept either word. DNK RED MIST. COD to 27ac. V, you’ve forgotten a couple of underlines: 23ac, 4d, 8d, 19d.
  2. What is “one” doing in that clue? For the surface, the “large force” could be seizing the husband; “one” made me wonder if I was missing something.
    The definition of LODESTONE is metaphorical but also, apparently, an accepted figure of speech, with the same figurative sense as (the much more familiar, I think) “lodestar.”
    I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a bottle of sancerre. (I’m into cognac these days, but also Bob Dylan’s Tennessee bourbon.)
    SKEIN was my LOI too, though I knew the term for the V-formed goose squadron.
    It didn’t occur to me, but I see your point about “tear” and “yank.” “Charge” and “sue” are synonyms in the thesaurus, but we know what that’s worth.

    Edited at 2019-10-07 03:14 am (UTC)

  3. Missed my half-hour target only because of two clues in the NW. I took far too long to spot the Mrs T reference at 1dn and trying to solve 11ac without its initial checker in place proved impossible as in my view it is a very poor clue. Once I had the C from THATCH I came up with CHURL almost immediately and thought I had parsed it, but in retrospect I now realise I missed the RUC element so I don’t know quite what I was thinking at the time.

    I also looked twice at ‘yank/TEAR’ and still have misgivings as one is to pull and the other is to pull apart which is something rather different.

    I thought ‘snowdrop/AVALANCHE’ was rather neat and wondered if it was a chestnut but it doesn’t appear to be. The nearest I have found was a QC clue from 2014: Blooming thing, an avalanche (8).

    Edited at 2019-10-07 05:15 am (UTC)

  4. I’ve been trying to get a better balance between the urge to biff answers and taking time to parse them but I threw in a couple unparsed today – I was confident in DONATED from the definition but not so much with my LOI CHURL. I’m glad I didn’t spend too much time on it as that rogue ‘one’ in the clue may have thrown me.

    Unlike vinyl I very much liked AVALANCHE – COD for me!

  5. ….I’m sure there was a word called ONCE in the clue for 11ac as ulaca has suggested.
    I agree, Vinyl, in querying the use of TEAR for ‘yank’.
    41m 08s

    Edited at 2019-10-07 07:01 am (UTC)

  6. 9:57. There did seem a few slightly loose things in here, but none of them caused me any problems. The word ‘one’ in 11ac looks like a mistake: a hangover from a previous draft of the clue perhaps.
  7. 11:57 … with a bit of mental shrugging over LODESTONE, which didn’t really mean anything to me, and that ‘one’ in 11a, where I just assumed the wordplay was too clever for me. Well done, Ulaca, for working out what was up with that.

    Not all of this was Monday-ish. Both top corners were a bit tricky. COD to THATCH — lovely, surreal image

  8. Hmm, there are several uses of the word “jerry” that I am not too happy about for personal reasons .. 🙂 .. and this is one, though I find from the OED that it is a contraction of jeroboam, which makes me feel a bit better.. though why a chamber pot should be so called I don’t follow.

    I can’t think of a substitution sentence for sue/charge, but Collins has them as synonyms: “Synonyms (of sue): take (someone) to court, prosecute, bring an action against (someone), charge”
    One/once apart I thought the cluing here was pretty solid and have no complaints

  9. Put in FALL DOWN at first which seemed to work at the time. Quite liked THATCH and DISHEVELLED. Thanks all.
  10. 22 minutes with NW last to fall. TEAR for YANK isn’t in my vocabulary, so TEACHER, THATCH and CHURL were LOIs in that order. Didn’r Stavros call her Mrs Thatch? COD to AVALANCHE. I liked ACROSS THE BOARD, FALL FLAT and LINE JUDGE too. I didn’t know that meaning of LODESTONE. Thank you V and setter.
    1. If you’re going all Ole Opry on us, surely it’s Hank Williams: “I’m so Lodestone, I Could Cry”.
  11. My 35 minutes felt like longer, possibly because I had problems getting started and had to work inwards from a couple of different points before my work finally joined up and it all came together.

    I was okay with yank/tear: to tear something from someone’s hands, say, so that didn’t cause me much gyp. I was less sure about the metaphorical LODESTONE and while I was a bit confused by 11a I knew CHURL well enough not to worry much about the “one” bit.

    FOI 5d SUE, LOI 9a AVALANCHE, though mostly because I worked my way back from 25d to the NW corner rather than because it was intrinsically hard.

  12. As Ben Elton used to say (maybe still does). I think I’ll applaud the setter for sneaking in a lot of stuff that *could* be taken as comment on current (and past) affairs, plus the quite blatant 5 down, though I think the more common version of Brexiter has an extra E in it.
    I’m not sure I’ve ever come across LODESTONE as an eye magnet, though the “often fig” comment that Chambers offers gives scope.
    The Times for quite a while hasn’t allowed now-defunct organisations to be referenced without a qualifying “former”, “one time”, so ICI is not just a company, the Territorial Army is a has-been, and the RUC (which so nearly became NIPS) has to have that misprinted “once”.
    1. Isn’t TA quite regularly clued without a ‘former’? I’m sure it’s been discussed here not that long ago.

      Edited at 2019-10-07 01:52 pm (UTC)

      1. I never knew it was no more. A quick search suggests it isn’t commonly clued as such.
  13. I didn’t know skein or churl so I was pleased to find that these were correct.

    Re 7 down. I was speaking to someone recently who visited Alexandria and was unable to find a bar where they served ice cold Carlsberg in the iconic glass!

    1. If your friend goes back next year and does manage to find a bar where they serve it in the iconic glass, I’m sure they’ll find that it will have been…..worth waiting for.
  14. 24 mins. Yep, it should be ‘once’ in that clue. That cost me a lot of time, as I was looking for a word starting with I for ages. Thanks v.
  15. Didn’t finish in my allotted time today, and failed to spot the apostrophe position in Brexiters.
    Incidentally should that have another ‘e’?
    Undone by the wine too.

    Thanks vinyl and setter.

    1. No, I don’t think so, or we’d have to find a source for EE that Brussels doesn’t supply.
  17. 2 mins after posting “see” my monday morning fogginess cleared enough to regret having done so. Thanks for reply though.
  18. Here in Patagonia, Spanish language fans reel at the number of goose-related words we have in English – goose, gander, geese, gosling, skein, gaggle and goslet.
  19. ….that my elder son passed away peacefully just before 7am. Thanks again to all of you who were so kind and sympathetic when I posted a couple of weeks ago. He’s in no pain now, and I’ll take that as consolation.

    I agree that this was a rather loose puzzle, but it all fell into place easily enough. “Saw = dated” didn’t fool me this time, still being fresh in my mind.

    FOI AVALANCHE
    LOI SPECIES
    COD LINE JUDGE
    TIME 9:54

    1. phil. I hadn’t seen your previous posts about this. I don’t know what to say – other than take care of yourselves.
    7. Very sad news Phil. I’m so sorry. We all like seeing you here though that’s poor consolation.
    8. Sorry to hear that, Phil. A reminder that crosswords are just a bit of nonsense, however enjoyable, and there are many more important things in life.
    10. Phil, having been through my version, my thoughts are with you. If I can be banal and use today’s crossword – one is not on ones own and the pain eases but never goes way.
    14. Oh crikey Phil. Just read the comments and seen this. I’m so sorry. All the best. Tom
    15. Oh Phil. That is so sad. Many commiserations. I hope you take heart from the number of messages of sympathy here, and let me add my own.
    16. Terribly sorry to hear this… well, I’m sorry it happened. I’m glad, though, that our puzzle pals can connect on other levels and that we can be there for you, in however limited a capacity. Take good care.
    18. In my family, I know a little of your pain. No-one should have to experience such loss, but life tends not to take much notice of what should be. I will hold you and your family in my prayers.
  20. Yup, I too flagged one/once in 11a. I’ve been reading a lot of Maigret this summer and he’s always dropping into a local Auvergnat bistro for a glass of SANCERRE. What with that and his frequent pastis his blood alcohol level must have been formidable. A rare under 10 for me – 9.48.
  21. I’m another who found the NW corner tricky with TEACHER(tear=yank:-really?) CHURL and THATCH my last 3 in. Liked LINE JUDGE and CHINLESS WONDER. 30:52. Thanks setter and Vinyl.
  22. While as Matt says you can yank or tear something from someone’s hands I think it’s pushing the envelope. Liked ‘line judge’. 28’33.
  23. Slow in places, with a few definitions that didn’t gel/were archaic/were obscure: teacher for mistress, churl as peasant, lodestone as eye-magnet. Aside from that general feeling of looseness there were some nice clues: chinless wonder, the man joining.
  24. Another slightly trickier than usual Monday, with a long delay to come up with THATCH. My brain must be re-wired by years of crosswords as I had a penny drop moment in remembering previous occurrences of “former force” and the like leading to RUC, so when I came here, I thought I must have solved after the obvious misprint had been spotted and corrected; however, it’s still there, so apparently I unconsciously read what was intended anyway…
  25. 9:51, like others I chucked in Lodestone with a mighty shrug, teacher with a MER, and concluded that one should be once in 11.

    So sorry to hear your news Phil.

  26. I am usually a good speller but I was convinced that SKEIN was spelt SKEYN, and nothing, not even the fact that it didn’t parse, was going to stop me putting it in.
    Otherwise a nice gentle Monday completed in 22 minutes. Shame really.
  27. Pretty straightforward though I didn’t ‘get’ LODESTONE and guessed at SKEIN as an alphabet trawl revealed no other coverings.

    Thought AVALANCHE too easy but did like THATCH and LINE JUDGE

  28. I didn’t have any particular concerns about TEAR – to tear something out of someone’s hands, for example – but I didn’t think much of either of the cryptic definitions. ‘A snowdrop?’ felt, again, like it was straight out of the Guardian, and ‘court’ makes me think of tennis anyway so 21a was a bit weak in my opinion.

    No other concerns or hold-ups, and all done in 7m 31s.

  29. This went in bottom to trickier top. It took a while to see Avalanche, due to Alabaster fitting the first several crossers and almost making sense. I’m bummed to hear about Phil J’s son.

    Edited at 2019-10-07 05:39 pm (UTC)

  30. Pretty normal time here. After a few checkers AVALANCHE was fairly obvious, and LINE JUDGE was amusing also. I don’t really equate a CHURL with a peasant, but there was nothing else available. My only unknown was the AT A PUSH term. Regards.
  31. Moonlighting QCer here to say … I finished the Big Boy puzzle! 34 mins. Yay! It must have been an easy one, but still.

    Edited at 2019-10-07 06:15 pm (UTC)

    2. A Very Good Day then. Join us more often! I have a go every day, with very mixed results. More power to the QCers 😊
  32. 16:06 I breezed through this one in fairly short order with no unknowns and nothing that delayed me for too long. Nice to have a gentle start to the week.
  33. For “tear one’s hair” Chambers gives “to pull the hair
    in a frenzy of grief or rage (also fig.)”

    The phrase “to tear one’s hair out” is in common use too.

    mike04

  34. I failed to parse CHURT, and now I see why! And I biffed TALLY HO, DONATED and ON ONES OWN too, so thanks for explaining those. COD to TEACHER as my wife is one. 11:29.
  35. Jerry from jerrycan ? — Don’t think so — jerry was always an alternative word for “po” (without the “t” ) in Sarf London in my yoof ( 1940’s and 50’s )…………………….

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