Times 27511 – A loud and heated discussion!

Author   vinyl1Posted on Categories Daily Cryptic

Time: 23 minutes
Music: Aretha Franklin, Aretha Gold

We are back to easy Monday, albeit with a couple of amusing potential headlines.   The best one was the ‘Digress Debate’ at the ‘Noisy Parthenon’, but I also liked ‘Ignominy Bureau Taming Maverick!’     I suppose a ‘Smart Encounter’ at the ‘Adonis Embassy’ might also have some political potential, but the royals will have to deny any involvement.

I spent the day as a vendor at a record fair, with rather mediocre results, and tonight’s musical selection was my sole purchase.  Those were the days, fifty years ago, when exciting new music came out nearly every week – they really had talent to burn.   Well, on to the blog…..

Across
1 Go off at a tangent regarding son in lodgings (7)
DIGRESS – DIG(RE S.)S
5 Key points involving cricketer in discussion (6)
DEBATE – D E(BAT)E, our old friend D major (or minor) and East and East.
8 Poverty unfortunately sees dinner reduced (9)
NEEDINESS – Anagram of SEES DINNER.
9 Head abandons lecture about a Cuban leader, sad to say (5)
ALACK – [t]AL(A C[uban])K, one most solvers will biff.
11 Loud like Parker, initially ignored in the centre (5)
NOISY – NO(I[gnored]SY, from Nosy Parker, who has never been successfully tracked down by language sleuths.
12 Equality acceptable about that time in Greek temple (9)
PARTHENON – PAR (THEN) ON.
13 No one in gym is jumping? Shame (8)
IGNOMINY – Anagram of NO 1 IN GYM.
15 Office sweetheart seen around outskirts of Uttoxeter (6)
BUREAU -B(U[ttoxete[R)EAU, another one most solvers will biff.
17 What Kate went through, thanks to Mike in Gateshead? (6)
TAMING – TA + M IN G.   I had always been hold that words like ‘Gateshead’ could not be used to clue G in the Times puzzle, but apparently they can.
19 Nonconformist fellow touring state (8)
MAVERICK – M(AVER)ICK, our random fellow.
22 Assault prompting inapt reaction in old northern street (9)
ONSLAUGHT –  O N S(LAUGH)T….well, not if we laugh at your feeble assault.
23 Pleasant-tasting juice this writer had (5)
SAPID – SAP I’D.
24 Ingenious sting! (5)
SMART – Double definition.
25 Confrontation Descartes maybe recalled, involving European noble (9)
ENCOUNTER – EN(COUNT)ER, where the enclosing letters are RENE backwards.
26 Comely youth, one entering quarters after a party (6)
ADONIS – A DO N(I)S.
27 English male singer with yen for diplomatic office (7)
EMBASSY – E + M + BASS + Y
Down
1 Acted in unison adapting obloquies (13)
DENUNCIATIONS – anagram of ACTED IN UNISON.   I unfortunately confused ‘obloquies’ with ‘obsequies’ while solving, so I needed all the crossing letters.
2 Style of architecture old lady found around Clerkenwell area? (7)
GRECIAN – GR(EC 1)AN.
3 Fruit raised by unknown woman (5)
EMILY – LIME upside-down + Y, today’s random woman.  Emily, meet Mick!
4 Wide-ranging task for the cleaners (8)
SWEEPING – Double definition.
5 Aspiration of Parisian father (6)
DESIRE – DE + SIRE.
6 Where outrigger principally is kept in city on river? (9)
BOATHOUSE – B(O[utrigger]ATH + OUSE, a fine &lit.
7 Student artist at home, protected by support on course (7)
TRAINEE – T(RA IN)EE, a compendium of cryptic cliches.
10 Race established by understanding friar with Yankee hat (8,5)
KENTUCKY DERBY – KEN +| TUCK + Y + DERBY.   We’ve got a Friar Tuck around here somewhere….
14 Island fellow with headgear of yellowish-brown colour (9)
MANHATTAN – MAN + HAT + TAN.
16 Imitative work made of shining glass — German I gathered (8)
PASTICHE – PAST(ICH)E, my LOI, as I was sure it must end in -icle.
18 Hot stuff assembled for the audience? (7)
MUSTARD – Sounds like MUSTERED.
20 Drive shown by one politician in France and America (7)
IMPETUS – I MP + ET + US, don’t let the word order fool you, it’s in France, ‘and’.
21 Going out for example on ship (6)
EGRESS – EG + RE + SS.
23 Firework son left briefly on top of bonfire (5)
SQUIB – S + QUI[t] + B[onfire], my FOI, surprisingly.

74 comments on “Times 27511 – A loud and heated discussion!”

  1. Monday with knobs on. Didn’t biff a one, either. I was slowed down only by thinking 6d would end in URE, irrelevantly wondering how I actually pronounce IGNOMINY, and trying to remember what OBLOQUY means. I also wondered about Gateshead after the fact, and tried to remember a similar case; I have the feeling that we have had one or two.
  2. 14 minutes, so pretty much as quick as it gets for me. I once brought the house down with a gag about Parker of Thunderbirds fame. A comedy lesson – go for the lowest common denominator.
  3. 17 minutes and thirty seconds for this glorified QC. So things are on the up in Meldrwevia. 27ac EMBASSY was timely and is my WOWTW (Word of the Week That Was – Millicent Martin et al).

    I imagine that Kev & Co at 10dn initially went for KENTUCKY DURBY but then realising (realizing!) this was English Territory went for KENTUCKY DARBY. I popped in KENTUCKY DERBY just to be on the safe side.

    FOI 11ac NOISY

    LOI 19ac MAVERICK – more Americana

    COD 10ac KENTUCKY DERBY – whatever

    WOD 14dn MANHATTAN – but where’s Batman?

    To quote ‘The Lad Himself’, this all bodes dodgy for the rest of week!

    Edited at 2019-11-18 05:52 am (UTC)

  4. Finished with 2 typos, manhaatan and ignomany!

    2hrs 14 on the clock but actual solving time 1.25 hours excluding work and breakfast.

    COD kentucky derby.

  5. About 35 minutes, slowed by not knowing (or perhaps remembering) what ‘obloquies’ are, which meant I was missing first letters for some of the across answers in that half for a while.
  6. Good one. I now (and probably only for now) know what an obloquy is and how to pronounce mustard. Really enjoy the snitch – why isn’t there one at weekends or is there one and I haven’t found it yet?
  7. if Vinyl’s surmise is correct about BUREAU and ALACK. I didn’t biff any of these, although the parsing sometimes was virtually simultaneous with the writing them in. Easy Street.

    Edited at 2019-11-18 06:33 am (UTC)

  8. 6:58. Pretty straightforward stuff this morning. I bunged KENTUCKY DERBY in based on the checkers: never mind biffing, I didn’t even need the clue.
    Vinyl you have an extraneous R in the anagram fodder for 8ac.
    You may be right about ‘gateshead’. I wonder if this is a change in policy.
  9. There used to be a pub outside Peterborough named The Paul Pry with a haunting sign of Paul prying – there was no such person – it was a popular nomination, much in the style of Ben Johnson’s ‘Bartholomew Fair’.

    I would consider there was no actual ‘Nosey Parker’ as such. He was simply a man or woman of the people. Possibly Paul Pry’s sista!

    1. MATTHEW PARKER. One of Elizabeth Tudor’s Archbishops of Canterbury. Pried into people’s affairs and got the nickname “Nosey Parker”.
      1. Recently cropping up in Christopher de Hamel’s wonderful Meeting with Remarkable Manuscripts
  10. I might have to start checking before submitting if this continues, as I found I had ADINOS for ADONIS. Annoyingly this was my quickest for a while in 8:48, though the Crossword Club won’t record it as such. Grrrr!

    On Saturday I found my new favourite place to solve. I had an hour to kill whilst waiting to pick my son up so went into a pub which I found had an armchair by an open fire, where I sat and did the Times and Guardian puzzles from Saturday. Blissful. Beats the commute!

  11. No idea looking back why it took so long. Probably lack of desire and impetus but I digress.
  12. Under 4 minutes; a rare day when it seemed as though the QC might take longer than the main course!
  13. Under 20mins pre brekker.
    Very neat, clean and do-able. A good one for a QC-er to attempt.
    I liked: the &Lit Boathouse and COD to Neediness.
    Thanks setter an Vinyl.
  15. 18 minutes, with LOI PASTICHE, a biff with me not remembering that meaning of ‘paste’. Otherwise very straightforward. COD to ONSLAUGHT. I think of Simon and Garfunkel whenever I find Emily, today in the frosted fields of juniper and lamplight of Clerkenwell. Incidentally, I’ve been in and around London long enough to know where Clerkenwell is and think that its district is probably EC1, but is that general knowledge, do you think? A pleasant start to the week. Thank you V and setter.

    Edited at 2019-11-18 08:49 am (UTC)

    1. Did you know that this is where the John Bull Printing Kits were made? During WWII they were engaged on secret work for SOE. They also had premises in Post Office Square in Leicester not so far from Tempsford.
  16. Easy? Monday? Pah! Hold my beer … there’s no puzzle I can’t screw up. May I introduce … SIPID, biffed with some part of my brain doing a three-point turn through juice/drink/sip and a certainty that if something can be insipid then it can otherwise just as surely be sipid. That is how English works, right?

    I didn’t find this especially easy, in any case. No clue what an obloquy was, no real idea how to spell IGNOMINY, and I struggled with some of the wordplay. Roll on Tuesday.

      1. Rob & Sarah – it makes me wonder if insipid and sapid have the same root? Or am I being stupid?
        1. Yes, according to Chambers they do, the Latin sapere, to taste. So we got it right. It’s English wot’s wrong.
  17. As still a relative 15×15 newbie, I can usually get about 70% of the clues. Sometimes though even the answer leaves me stumped! A case in point is 16d- could some kind soul explain the “shining glass” part of the clue?
    Thanks vinyl1 for blog, Cheers
            1. The old ones are the best. Anyway, I’m off to play bridge with another poor misguided fan of the Maryhill Magyars.
  18. One of my fastest, done in 19 mins. I didn’t really know what obloquies are, but the anagram was clear, so now I do. Biffed ADONIS, PARTHENON, PASTICHE and MAVERICK for speed with barely a few seconds spent to check the wordplay and, like keriothe, wrote in KENTUCKY DERBY from the checkers alone. I don’t have a problem at all with Gateshead — seems a rather good clueing trick to me.
    Thanks for your blog, vinyl. And thanks to the setter for a bright start to the week.
  19. Easy top to bottom solve. No objection to the Gateshead device – seems fair enough to me
    1. Indeed, it’s a device I’ve used in my admittedly amateurish attempts at compiling. Maidenhead, Birkenhead, Peterhead…..the possibilities aren’t quite endless, but you can see where I’m coming from.
  20. I had SAPID for SIPID. I didn’t know obloquies and bunged in DUNANTICTIONS in the vain hope of pulling off a fast time. 12:12 but two errors.

    COD: BOATHOUSE.

  21. Thought I had a lifetime PB or near enough with 8’47”, only to find I’d invented the word SIPID, opposite of insipid. Dnk SAPID.

    Thanks vinyl and setter.

  22. Come to think of it, I can report as a technical assistant at many funerals, a trend towards the obsequies becoming more like obloquies as reminiscences of the dearly departed contain amusing/slanderous episodes. Doesn’t excuse the fact that I too confused the two words and got the solution more by luck than proper solving.
    As Vinyl predicts, I did indeed biff ALACK wondering in passing whether Obama was referenced somehow but neglecting to check.
    11.40 on the clock accurately defines the “easy” nature of this grid – I can’t type much faster. But it was entertaining and a credit to the setter. As a fan of happenstance, I share Vinyl’s delight in the “headlines”. I’m off through my sweeping egress to try to find some Grecian mustard. Our NY friends can advise if Emily, Manhattan (sic – its in West Village) serves it.
  23. It seems from the comments that I might have been quite well off not knowing what an obloquy was on the way into this one. Certainly I only needed a couple of crossers for the anagram fodder to rearrange itself into the right word, anyway. I shall now add it to my vocab list, where SAPID happily already lies, otherwise I might’ve been another “sipid”.

    All in all a quick 23 minutes for me, even though I was aiming for quite a leisurely pace to allow a coat of paint to dry while I solved. I’ll need to do the Guardian before I can do the second coat… FOI 1a DIGRESS LOI 18d MUSTARD WOD 19a MAVERICK COD 22a ONSLAUGHT.

  24. But with SIPID. Thought it might be the opposite of insipid, but of course I was going too fast and didn’t read the clue properly. Come to think of it, maybe SIPID should be revived? ‘My coffee this morning was very SIPID’?
  25. ALACK, where are the MAVERICKs of yesteryear? They seem to have vanished from the halls of Congress where we have NOISY SWEEPING DENUNCIATIONS instead of DEBATE and IGNOMINious ENCOUNTERs in EMBASSies while the BUREAU listens in. But I DIGRESS. I think this was my fastest time all year and I certainly won’t match it until 2020, if then. 8.28
      1. Thanks Sotira! I was about to add a P.S. to say that I think I remember the “in Gateshead” device being used to clue ING from old puzzles of the 1970s and 80s. My late father used to leave them behind after his visits at that time and that’s how I got started on these crosswords after I found a stash of them some years later and, with great difficulty, managed to complete his unfinished grids.
  26. Certainly the level of difficulty was more line with what would normally be expected from a Quick Cryptic, enabling me to achieve a (for me) unusually fast time of about 25 minutes. But entertaining all the same.

    I agree with those who found nothing wrong with the “Gateshead” device at 17A. Indeed, I was rather taken with it.

    Many thanks to blogger and setter.

  27. ….or, at least, not while I’m solving ! I like to listen to something from the 60’s beforehand though, and this morning it was Ten Years After’s superb live album “Undead”. I don’t think any guitarist of that period other than Alvin Lee could ever have attempted Woody Herman’s “At the Woodchopper’s Ball” ! You’ll enjoy that Aretha album Vinyl – she was truly the Queen of Soul.

    Bolton Wanderer selected Simon & Garfunkel’s EMILY (and it’s a truly beautiful song) but I was immediately drawn to thoughts of Pink Floyd’s heroine who was “always inclined to borrow somebody’s dreams till tomorrow”.

    As for tomorrow, I can only dream of emulating today’s time, where the last minute was spent on a little knot of clues in the SW corner.

    FOI DIGRESS (which I appear to have done)
    LOI TAMING (couldn’t see Kate – I’ve commented on the device already)
    COD BOATHOUSE (I really must visit Bath !)
    TIME 6:50

  28. I don’t mind clues taking some liberties with punctuation and capitalization, but Gateshead does not mean Gate’s head. The Times usually finds other ways of clueing such things without cheating this way.
  29. A gentle start to the week, which I enjoyed a lot, starting with DIGRESS and finishing with PASTICHE when the PASTE meaning of “shining” glass finally hit me. Liked TAMING, and GRECIAN. I couldn’t have said where in London Clerkenwell is, but EC1 is a London postcode, so in it went. I was another who couldn’t remember what obloquies are, but it was obvious once I had enough checkers. 19:31. Thanks setter and Vinyl.
  30. Today’s QC took me 26:16; this took me 22:28 including correcting a mistype.
    LOI was SAPID where I also thought for a time SIPID might be the right word. FOI DEBATE. I’m sure I’ve seen the Gateshead device frequently in the Evening Standard.
    An early punt on DAISY meant I only came to EMILY late on. I like both the songs mentioned.
    I remember having a conversation in a pub about guitarists. A friend had just been to see Albert Lee whom I confused with Alvin Lee and then thought one had been the guitarist in Love -Arthur Lee. Moral -only discuss such matters with a clear head.
    David

  33. A breeze today, albeit I didn’t have the timer going – instead, I tried to solve it while my spreadsheet was calculating. All done by 64%, if that tells anyone anything.

    I even had time to get confused at PASTICHE by trying to fit JA in there somewhere. Wrong German word.

    13a is my COD. Ignominy, ignominy, they’ve all got it ig… no, wait.

    1. The sign only points one way. He’s no choice to make, no free will to exercise. And she’s not to blame.
  36. Mostly but not all easy. Unlike everyone (?) else I was outside my average time, held up by the NW corner. Not least by needing all the crossers for denunciation, thinking an obloquy was something quite different.
    I’m quite interested by the Gateshead debate: my guess is it was shunned and banned a dozen years ago when I started doing the Times as being “Guardianesque”, but clue standards are certainly loosening up these past few years. e.g. brand names.
    Time to consult Ximenes: he says cylinder-head is ok to clue C, and masthead is ok to clue M, but redhead is not ok to clue R because red is not a noun. Since gates are nouns, Gateshead is ok? Question mark intentional; I say that with great uncertainty.
    1. I don’t follow the logic imputed to Ximenes here, as the sense of the cryptic would be the “head” of a word, and an adjective is as good a word as any.

      But I am interested in this issue. Of course, I’d especially need to know the rule on this effective on Sundays.

  37. 15 minutes, easy job, with tea and cake after golf on a sunny chilly day. Nothing to add. Liked the Taming of the Shrew one.
  38. A pretty straightforward outing today, around 15 minutes to solve. Nothing more to say about it, really. So, regards to all.
  39. 24 minutes plus 11 seconds to scan the answers for typos — this is probably my fastest time. Only one or two unknowns this time, SQUIB and SAPID (originally I thought it might be VAPID, but SIPID certainly wouldn’t have looked right to me). Otherwise a quite uneventful puzzle, entering clues almost as fast as I could type.
  40. We QCers do love an easier puzzle; thank you Spirit of Monday! All done and dusted in 28 thoroughly enjoyable minutes. Loved TAMING, Gateshead included. Thanks setter and vinyl.

    Templar

  42. 18:58 so at the easier end of the spectrum. Can’t help feeling I was being a bit dozy though and that I should have run through this a bit quicker.
  43. Just under 21 minutes, so a definite PB! Yes, it was easy but enjoyable, with a good mix of clue types.

    FOI Impetus
    LOI Maverick
    COD Boathouse
    Earworm See Emily Play

  45. On a rare(ish) visit. 23:58. A few mins off a PB, but it’s late(ish), and my wife was nattering. LOI was smart, which really was a QC level clue. I really should have a bash at the 15×15 more often.
  46. Got there (eventually), which I suppose proves that this was on the easy side. DNK Sapid, nor the meaning of obloquies, and took ages over loi Maverick – the nonconformist card sharp. Invariant
  48. 16 mins was close to a PB, but still 2 Olivias as usual. If only she would get quicker!

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