Times 27,503: Divorced, Beheaded, Died, Divorced, Beheaded, Solved

Author   VerlainePosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
A mostly QC-level Friday puzzle, stuffed with chestnuts and sitters, presumably to give people the necessary confidence to sign up for the Champs next month. Which, to be fair, you all should.

Still suffering from post-flu exhaustion I lost a minute or two at the end starting at U_O_I_I_E unable to see the only possible word staring me in the face, but even for a sick man this was largely without speedbumps. COD to 4dn for the clever play on various types of Mass. Thanks setter!

ACROSS
1 Expert about to break best form of digital security (6)
TOECAP – reversed ACE [expert] “to break” TOP [best]

5 Home Office fight to keep Queen’s English trailer (8)
HORSEBOX – H.O. BOX [Home Office | fight] “to keep” R’S E [Queen’s | English]

9 Refuse vessel originally donated in settlement (4,4)
TURN DOWN – URN [vessel] + D{onated}, in TOWN [settlement]

10 Computer fit to be installed in Times (6)
TABLET – ABLE [fit] “to be installed in” T T [(two) times]

11 Berlin agreement to protect tailless wild cat (6)
JAGUAR – JA [Berlin agreement] + GUAR{d} [to protect, “tailless”]

12 Like a hair shirt? Remove yours at the outset (8)
SCRATCHY – SCRATCH [remove] + Y{ours}

14 Old figure? MCC has a few! (5,7)
ROMAN NUMERAL – cryptic def, MCC being a collection of three Roman numerals

17 In which Thor must rend ground? (12)
THUNDERSTORM – (THOR MUST REND*) [“ground”], semi-&lit

20 About to furnish Arab table full of dates (8)
CALENDAR – CA LEND AR [about | to furnish | Arab]

22 Wall in green, at shed (6)
IMMURE – IMM{at}URE [green, “shedding” AT]

23 Graduates gather round old British tree (6)
BAOBAB – BA BA [(two) graduates] “gather round” O [old], + B [British]

25 Show ID to protect old solicitor (5,3)
POINT OUT – PIN [ID] “to protect” O [old], + TOUT [solicitor]

26 Tiny tree, gnarled for yonks (8)
ETERNITY – (TINY TREE*) [“gnarled”]

27 Trainee’s heading off for a profitable job (6)
EARNER – {l}EARNER [trainee, with “heading off”]

DOWN
2 Funny (not the first) thing astronomer looks into (6)
OCULAR – {j}OCULAR [funny, “not the first (letter)”]

3 Church carries on with limited money agreement (11)
CONCURRENCE – CE [church] “carries” ON + CURRENC{y} [“limited” money]

4 Broadcast quiet Mass in appropriate city? (9)
PROGRAMME – P [quiet] + GRAM [mass] in ROME [appropriate city for holding a Mass]

5 Help boy, offering practical experience (5-2)
HANDS-ON – or HAND SON [help | boy]

6 Revolver to go off above soldiers (5)
ROTOR – ROT [to go off] above O.R. [soldiers]

7 Withdraw European books (3)
EBB – E [European] + B B [(two) books]

8 Catch bird interrupting deliveries (8)
OVERHEAR – RHEA [bird] “interrupting” OVER [deliveries]

13 The right doctor assembled emergency room gauge (11)
THERMOMETER – THE R MO MET E.R. [the | right | doctor | assembled | emergency room]

15 Ten men with current force in Brussels turned up, to find eg Henry? (9)
UXORICIDE – X O.R. + I C.I.D. [ten | men (with) current | force] in reversed EU [Brussels]

16 Hotel contributed to rustic game (8)
PHEASANT – H [hotel] “contributed to” PEASANT [rustic]

18 Difficult spot in which to turn left (7)
STROPPY – SPY [spot], in which reversed PORT [left]

19 Actors on tour platoon picked up (6)
TROUPE – homophone of TROOP [platoon]

21 A pal in New York tipping one crude source (5)
DUBAI – reversed A BUD [a | pal in New York] + I [one]. Crude as in oil

24 Drill to polish up (3)
BUR – reversed RUB [polish]

46 comments on “Times 27,503: Divorced, Beheaded, Died, Divorced, Beheaded, Solved”

  1. Yeah, pretty easy. We even had UXORICIDE not so long ago, if memory serves. My LOI was HORSEBOX. Haven’t seen one lately…
  2. Yes, I found this straightforward, coming in ahead of HKM, my personal benchmark (and a rare event).

    I was very glad we had UXORICIDE as part of the clue on 30 October, so it came pretty quickly to mind. My COD was 18d for the nice surface reading. LOI was OCULAR, which conjures up a very old-fashioned telescope (as the normal word these days is eyepiece).

    Thanks, V, for the blog and continued best wishes for your health. Thanks also to the setter.

    1. I noticed that you were on fire today. The mantle hath verily passed from Gallers unto thee, mate.
  3. I didn’t find this easy at all and resorted to aids for the last three by which time I had run out of steam.

    At 15dn I got as far as UXORI?I?E from wordplay and checkers but wasn’t able to fill in the missing bit possibly because I have unconsciously succumbed to the jargon of modern policing in which the boys in blue (or in this instance plain clothes) are no longer allowed to be called a ‘force’ but a ‘service’. This itself may need to be changed (if it hasn’t already) in order to avoid prosecution under the Trades Description Act. Guy is right that UXORICIDE came up recently, but it was in the wording of a clue about Bluebeard and was not itself an answer, so I’d be less likely to remember it.

    I also missed out on BAOBAB. This was last seen in a QC about a year ago when it was constructed from the first letters of words in the clue, so again very easy to forget.

    Finally HORSEBOX where I was convinced Queen’s English was going to be RP. Should have got that one.

  4. I see I still have the highest NITCH of the day, which is how it felt. Feeling under the weather, tonsillitis or somesuch, didn’t help, nor being late for work. But being slow was the main problem. My LOI was 5ac, where, once I got the O from POI 8d, I came up with HORSEROW, which would have worked fine if it had been a word. But I didn’t like it, and finally went to my dictionary, where I found the right word. Oddly enough, where Verlaine had all the checkers and still stalled, I biffed from U_O_I and forgot to go back and parse it.
    2. I also had a HORSEROW, Kevin, and it took me such a long time to find it I was just glad to assemble some letters that looked a bit like a word.
  5. With people often referring to being “on the wavelength” or “off the wavelength” it occurred to me that we can use starstruck’s marvellous SNITCH to see our own wavelength indicators (or WITCH = Wavelength Indicator of Times Crossword Hardness). This is obtained by dividing one’s personal NITCH by that day’s SNITCH. The further below 1, the more the solver was “on the wavelength”, the higher above 1, the more the solver was “off the wavelength”.

    Today this gives me a boringly average 0.98. Yesterday’s gives a better illustration, where my WITCH was 1.5, indicating I found it 50% harder than the average.

    Hopefully some of you fellow stats geeks will find this of interest (normal, well adjusted people please ignore me).

    2. Hmmm, I wonder if it’s well-adjusted to already have a spreadsheet which gives you this information on a daily basis. I shall immediately be renaming it WITCH.xls
      1. I like it. My spreadsheet, unimaginatively named TimesTimes has columns for SNITCH and Personal NITCH. I even calculated my WITCH occasionally… I think it needs to be an extra column now…. (pause in writing this post here)…. which it now is! And I can report that, since the SNITCH began, my PB WITCH is 0.50 and my PW (personal worst) is 2.65. But like the SNITCH I’ve converted these to %ages, giving 50 and 265 respectively. Personally, I’ve viewed this as a measure of performance improvement (or degradation), but I think a measure of synchronicity with the setter is a much better definition. Many thanks Pootle. It will be interesting to see what Starstruck (Mr SNIITCH) thinks of this. Oh, and my WITCH today? A creditable 87.

        Edited at 2019-11-08 08:50 pm (UTC)

  6. 20:11 … easy, apart from the bits that weren’t. I was very close to giving up altogether on one of them, IMMURE, when the figurative meaning of ‘green’ finally crossed my mind. CONCURRENCE, STROPPY and POINT OUT gave me some trouble, too.

    The ‘old figures’ of MCC got a chuckle, so COD to that.

  7. Oddly, I found this one impossibly difficult, and had several answers left over at the end of my hour, at which point I’d been rather looking forward to my bell going off for some time. By far the hardest of the week for me, though I can’t see why in hindsight.
    1. Following on from my comment above I’m relieved to find that at least I wasn’t alone!
  8. 17:15. Held up in the end by the SE corner, taking a while to crack it until I finally spotted POINT OUT. Then it was a case of resisting SCRAPPY for 18D and staring for a while at UXORI_I_E before coming up with the required force remembering the fate of some of the 6. Nice puzzle. I liked THUNDERSTORM and PROGRAMME but COD to THERMOMETER. Thanks V and setter.

    Edited at 2019-11-08 08:22 am (UTC)

  9. …gas in the hall.
    30 mins with yoghurt, granola, etc.
    Only eyebrow flicker was force (on its own) as CID.
    I liked it a lot, mostly Stroppy.
    Thanks setter and V.
  10. 16:42, but with a particularly irritating typo. Particularly irritating in that it was glaringly obvious but I still somehow managed to miss it when I checked my answers. I sometimes wonder why I bother.
    Count me in the ‘this was quite tricky’ camp. I only had three or four answers after my first pass through the acrosses, which is always a sign of trouble.
    DUBAI is not really known as an oil producer: its reserves and output are actually pretty small. Almost all of the reserves in the UAE are in Abu Dhabi: if you count it on its own Dubai ranks somewhere below Angola and Azerbaijan in the world oil league table.

    Edited at 2019-11-08 09:22 am (UTC)

  11. Christmas has started at our M & S. 39 minutes, not an ETERNITY, but I found this harder than most who’ve posted to date. I didn’t parse CALENDAR either. LOI was CONCURRENCE. COD TO ROMAN NUMERAL if it’s not a hoary and old clue. It was a good job we’d had UXORICIDE or similar recently, as it had a convoluted construction where I needed the answer first. A steady puzzle and solve otherwise. Thank you V and setter.
  12. … but became absurdly held up by NW corner. ‘Ocular’ had me baffled for ages, even when I had two letters. The brain is a strange thing. COD 15 dn
  14. I think I might have been quicker than my 20.26 had I not “rested my eyes” occasionally during solving. Reading V’s analysis revealed I had no idea how PROGRAMME was parsed, surprised by Rome turning up. One of those clues both cleverer and more elegant than my cursory attention allowed. I also missed the MCC japery. Perhaps hearing the bizarre theories about the pagan origins of the EU – did you know the original treaty was signed in the Temple of Jupiter? – has blinded me to all things Roman.
    PHEASANT my last in, inevitably looking for the wrong kind of game.
    Best wishes for speedy return to full health, V.
  15. 15 D – as an A level Physics student (in 1973), I was looking for ‘inductance’ — not a bloke who snuffed his missus.

    Edited at 2019-11-08 10:39 am (UTC)

  16. JAGUAR and TOECAP gave me a quick start, but the rest of the NW resisted my efforts, so I moved on. The NE was much more tractable and was soon complete. The bottom half was more resistant, but THUNDERSTORM gave me a boost and soon only 15d and 22a were outstanding, and I returned to the NW where PROGRAMME and TURN DOWN opened things up. This got rid of my mombled OMICAL and OCULAR completed the corner. I then remembered our recent Blubeard and Henry VIII, so only 22a was left. This took a bit longer, but IMMURE looked likely, and the parsing clinched it. Nice puzzle. 32:40. Thanks setter and V.

    Edited at 2019-11-08 11:14 am (UTC)

    1. Thought Berlin must be Irving or Isaiah but couldn’t see a tailless wild cat in affirmative anywhere in either of those (AYLYNE?) but twigged it in the end.
      I parsed Toecap with TOP = Expert and Ace = best break (of serve in tennis).
      NW corner was the difficult part.

      from Jeepyjay

    1. Dictionary definition:
      3.
      a small rotary cutting tool with a shaped end, used chiefly in woodworking and dentistry.

      a small surgical drill for making holes in bone, especially in the skull.

  18. NW took forever, and the old figures almost as long; otherwise ambled through. 38’55. All rather easier than I made it somehow.
  19. Maobab 🙁
    Didn’t know it; it could have been either – I flipped a coin.
    Thanks, v. Hope you’re doing okay.
  20. ….as, before abandoning the NW corner, I wrote “concen” at the start of 3D. I’d thought the currency was “cent” after docking. It didn’t help that in 11A I thought that “ja” would encapsulate a “tailless” synonym for “wild”, and assumed I was looking for yet another obscure lynx.

    I breezed through from the NE, missing only my LOI before getting back to square one (or 2 more accurately) at around 8 minutes. It took half as long again for the required pennies to drop (I’m not sure why I struggled with TURN DOWN and PROGRAMME), and then my LOI jumped out at me. Like McChoc I’d been thinking of science rather than royalty at first.

    DNK the usage of BUR, but it couldn’t be anything else really.

    FOI TOECAP (didn’t enable me to kick on)
    LOI UXORICIDE (which I often idly considered in the case of Dirty Denise, who tended to be….
    COD STROPPY….far too frequently !)
    TIME 12:45

    Actually Denise and I only cohabited. So it would be “partnerocide” I suppose 😂

    Edited at 2019-11-08 12:23 pm (UTC)

  21. As per above, I also ‘rested my eyes’ during this solve. I also find that when I get my wits back together, it falls into place quite nicely. Lots of clues here of the ‘should have got that a bit quicker’ variety. I do find that on a Friday I expect it to be harder, and that makes the clues harder than they are. COD and LOI STROPPY
  22. Like mcchoc, I was led astray thinking of SI units for 15d until a U – O and the faint scent of an X for ten made me rethink and spot Henry VIII. Otherwise a nice steady solve in 35 minutes watching NZ crumble against England’s 241 off 20 overs, a decent score for once.
    Quite a few seen-before type clues, but liked THUNDERSTORM and HORSEBOX best.
    Hope the health is improving, V.
  23. Well, it’s back to normal for me – all done bar two! I just couldn’t find the force to go in uxori…e, and never saw immature for green 😟 So gave up after 40 minutes.

    Quite fun for all that – some witty surfaces. I liked thermometer, stroppy and thunderstorm.

    FOI Jaguar
    LOI Point out (before baling out)
    COD Roman numeral
    DNF

    Thanks setter and V – hope you start to feel better soon

  24. I was clearly on the wavelength aka especially WITCHy today. Didn’t immediately call to mind that definition of BUR or that an eyepiece could be an OCULAR, but neither caused much delay. Very entertaining.
  25. Comfortably over the hurdles in a reasonable time. Last few in were POINT OUT, TROUPE, IMMURE ((DNK), ROMAN NUMERAL, UXORICIDE, PROGRAMME (thought i was looking for a city until last checker was in) and finally after much thought CONCURRENCE (again with all checkers in place).
  26. Not too easy (1 hour 2 minutes), but very enjoyable, and no double entendres like yesterday’s. COD perhaps to UXORICIDE, which strangely enough was not my LOI, since I was looking for EU upside down all the time.
  27. 28:01 I breezed through this pretty comfortably. Minor delays barking up the wrong tree with the MCC in 14ac, looking for turquoise or emerald green rather than ‘my salad days’ green in 22ac, working out the first word of 25ac and finding the force in 15dn. Nothing too troublesome though. I liked the old figures of the MCC and the gnarled tiny tree.
  28. I too breezed through this, but mine was a particularly slow and languid breeze, taking 38 minutes to blow all the way through. It was the south-right corner that held me up. I’m another of those who thought “inductance” for 15d. Add to that the facts that (a) despite its coming up recently, I thought UXORICIDE was killing one’s husband; (b) I failed to appreciate that UXORICIDE can be a person as well as the act; and (c) Henry didn’t make sense because of (a) and (b), and you’ll understand why I only got it after gluing all the pieces of wordplay together. POINT OUT also took a while, but I have no plausible excuse for that one. IMMURE was no problem as, just today, a colleague told me that he was “completely immured” to the endless form-filling that occupies much of his day. TROUPE was my LOI, succumbing only to an alphabet trawl.

    Edited at 2019-11-08 10:11 pm (UTC)

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