Times 27,515: Never Tell Me The 4d!

Author   VerlainePosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Can you see yourself getting three puzzles like this done inside an hour? If you can then there is no reason you shouldn’t be competing in Champs on December 7th, and even if you can’t then this year for the first time ever you might still be in with a chance of some prize money.

This was a brilliant crossword whose extra-imaginative wordplay reminded me of the Club Monthly Special, though of course the words here are a little less obscure (but only a little, in a couple of cases!). My FOI was 11ac, followed by 14ac; but that was it on the first pass of the across clues. My big problem came when I put in WING for 21ac – thinking that “to take” could be WIN, “home” IN, “trap” GIN, and (here’s the weak link) “picked up from” a subtraction indicator, the whole being some kind of synecdoche for a bird. And that slowed me down a lot at the end, but it is a mark of the type of crossword this was that I genuinely thought such a tortuous route was plausible.

So many great clues, the pick of which for me were 17ac (I saw Merry Wives of Windsor at the Globe only last month!) and 18dn (matron!), but there were many others that seemed completely impenetrable until their secrets suddenly swim into focus, and that’s just the way I like it of course. LOI 23ac which is the kind of clue that is really hard to get unless you just biff it from the enumeration and the A, and for some reason I didn’t for a very long time. I’m off the boil! Can I get back on it within about a fortnight? Watch this space!

ACROSS
1 Refusing to give in the end natural (8)
STUBBORN – STUB BORN [the end | natural]

9 Items plucked from French article repeatedly probing transatlantic allies (8)
UKULELES – LE LE [French article, repeatedly] “probing” UK US [translatlantic allies]

10 Person looking round briefly to annul or lower offer (8)
GAZUNDER – GAZER [person looking] “round” UND{o} [“briefly”, to annul]

11 Taxi sent with gear as a favour (2,6)
EX GRATIA – (TAXI + GEAR*) [“sent”]

12 A bit of late drama as pacifist is speaking out? (10)
AFTERPIECE – homophone of AFTER PEACE [as pacifist is].
An afterpiece is a short dramatic entertainment performed after the principal play.

14 Ditch cheeky Dadaist exhibits, upon reflection (4)
DYKE – hidden reversed in {che}EKY D{adaist}

15 Projecting course with appreciative exclamation (7)
CORNICE – double def with COR, NICE! [appreciative exclamation]

17 Quickly, for one round, the three of spades is played (7)
HOSTESS – (O THE S S S) [“played”]. Mistress Quickly from the same Shakespeare plays in which you’ll find Falstaff.

21 Bird to take home picked up from trap? (4)
ERNE – homophone of EARN [to take home]. Trap being a mouth here.

22 Despot employing muscle, hence someone pulling the strings? (10)
ABSOLUTIST – AB SO LUTIST [muscle | hence | someone pulling/plucking the strings]

23 Checking short cuts using vision aid (7,1)
VITAMIN A – TAMIN{g} [checking, “short”] “cuts” VIA [using]

25 Pulled — hard — leg of the setter about taxonomic term (8)
TAUTONYM – TAUT [pulled – hard] + ON [leg] + reversed MY [of the setter]. A tautonym is eg Gorilla gorilla, where genus and species name are the same.

26 Old pantomime actor threatening odd couples in Aladdin (8)
GRIMALDI – GRIM [threatening] + AL{ad}DI{n}. Joseph Grimaldi of Victorian times.

27 Depression and fuss, with men getting in a state (8)
COLORADO – COL [depression] and ADO [fuss], with OR [men] “getting in”

DOWN
2 Ferries go so far and do not interfere with each other (2-3-3)
TO-AND-FRO – (FAR + DO NOT*) [“interfere with each other”]

3 Shift working interrupted by large strike (8)
BLUDGEON – BUDGE ON [shift | working], “interrupted by” L [large]

4 Detective goes after taking too many chances (4)
ODDS – D.S. [detective] goes after O.D. [taking too many]

5 Dancer’s very visual awareness directed upwards (7)
NUREYEV – reverse all of V EYE RUN [very | visual awareness | directed]

6 Psychologist fellow mistreated bird (6,4)
JUNGLE FOWL – JUNG [psychologist] + (FELLOW*) [“mistreated”]

7 Some empty praise offered up for one that’s been let down? (4,4)
FLAT TYRE – take FLATTERY [empty praise] and reverse some of it, the last three letters to be precise.

8 Fugitives better stopping close to trouble spots (8)
ESCAPEES – CAP [better], “stopping” {troubl}E + SEES [spots]

13 Relish film about boxer, badly brought up (10)
PICCALILLI – PIC C ALI [film | about | boxer] + reversed ILL [badly]

15 Visible split in chest, or short split in coop (8)
CLEAVAGE – LEAV{e} [“short” split] in CAGE [coop]

16 Lemur’s call when encountering shadow (8)
RINGTAIL – RING [call], when encountering TAIL [shadow]

18 Needleworker cheers dry reaction to double entendre? (8)
TATTOOER – TA TT OO-ER! [cheers | dry | reaction to double entendre?]

19 Paraded with a Yankee, in a band, all round (8)
SASHAYED – A Y, with SASHED [in a band] all round

20 It is a cat mostly mistaken for a type of lion (7)
ASIATIC – (IT IS A CA{t}*) [“mistaken”]

24 Case for English port (4)
HULL – double def

55 comments on “Times 27,515: Never Tell Me The 4d!”

  1. After 4 Verlaines, I still had a few remaining in the TAUTONYMOUS corner, whereupon I gave up. I thought this was about the standard of the Grand Final puzzles, but maybe that is wishful thinking.

    Good luck to all competing in the champs. I will read the reports on this new, ‘dumbed-down’, one, before deciding whether to apply next time.

    Edited at 2019-11-22 07:09 am (UTC)

  2. A fine puzzle that took me over the hour but I had two wrong!

    10c I fairly confidently had GAZUMPER and far less confidently popping in OGPU at 4dn.

    For most of the time spent I was under the impression that 23ac was EXHIBIT A which finally disfigured my CLEAVAGE at 15dn

    I’m sorry to go against his Lordship, but this was hardly The Club Monthly – as I knew every word even GAZUNDER – as a potty! A contestant who finished TCM last time out (johninterred?) noted he only knew 5 words. And I bet he’s forgotten the rest already!

    Note to Jerry,if The Club Monthly was more like this, I would embrace it wholeheartedly, as would many others.
    But ploughing through Chambers doesn’t float my pinnace.

    FOI 24ac HULL

    LOI 4dn OGPU … I know!

    COD 21ac ERNE

    WOD 26ac GRIMALDI

    Q. Why is HULL CITY unique in the Football League?

    Edited at 2019-11-22 07:40 am (UTC)

  3. Happy to finish, in a slow 40 mins. So no championships for me 😉 Very interesting and innovative clueing e.g. the partial reversal of flattery – not too keen on that one, but the rest good. And precise for the ones you (I) might spell wrongly: pickalilly, ukeleles. One guess needed for HOSTESS where I remembered Mistress Quickly from her previous outing but couldn’t see the anagram instructions at all. Lucky there were only 2 unches. NHO/forgotten gazunder, Grimaldi and tautonym.
  4. Failed on this one in 48 minutes, so you won’t be seeing me at the championships any time soon! I had no idea Quickly was a HOSTESS, and I didn’t spot the wordplay, so I took a chance on her being a POETESS.

    Shame, as I’d pieced together my other unknowns (TAUTONYM, GAZUNDER, AFTERPIECE, GRIMALDI and JUNGLE FOWL) correctly. A bit too much of a reach for me all round, really!

  5. 18.24 with a typo (GAZUUDER). LOI HOSTESS where I had spent too long at the start pondering ALLEGRO on the basis that it was quickish and had ‘for one’ conveniently in the middle. Otherwise much the same experience as Verlaine on the acrosses and building steadily upwards from the more tractable down clues at the bottom. Absolutely agree about the quality of the puzzle – O si sic omnes!
  6. 31:38 but 2 errors. GAZUMPER for 10A and a despairing OOPS at 4D. Rats. I forgot to go back to that to sort it out.I had no idea what was going on at 17A, so thanks for explaining that, V and a couple of others where I could quite untangle the word-play. Yes an excellent puzzle. Thanks setter too!
    1. Same 2 errors as me but I took twice as long to reach that point. However I did recognise Doll Tearsheet (aka Mistress Quickly) as the Hostess with the Mostest at 17a. Ann
  7. 19:26 … oddly enough, I mostly breezed through this. The only clue that really delayed me was GAZUNDER, my last in by several minutes.

    Some of the wordplay was definitely on the imaginative side —I’m not sure a lutist really ‘pulls’ strings — but I’m not going to complain about any puzzle where my WITCH is 72.

    Lots of things made me smile, but VITAMIN A, the double entendre reaction and the appreciative exclamation especially so. Cor, nice!

    1. Strictly speaking, lutes have courses, rather than strings. And if you pull them, you make a horrible twanging sound. If anything, the action of the fingers on strings (and courses) should be described as pushing, rather than pulling.

      If there was a wavelength for this one, I couldn’t find it. Took me more than twice my average time.

  8. Was pleased to get through this all correct even if it did take me a few minutes short of an hour.

    I’m used to Grimaldi being clued as ‘clown’ I so wasn’t aware of his connections with pantomime. I’ve actually bothered to look him up now.

    HOSTESS (biffed from knowing the Mistress Quickly reference) is really an indirect anagram which I thought were not permitted in the Times.

    Edited at 2019-11-22 09:23 am (UTC)

    1. I think anagrams like this, where individual letters in the fodder are clearly and unequivocally indicated, are allowed. At least I’m pretty sure we’ve had similar clues before. It’s not quite an indirect anagram in that you don’t have to come up with a actual word that you then jumble up to find the answer.
      1. You may be right but that’s not my understanding of how things work or the rules of engagement are substantially changed.

        Edited at 2019-11-22 02:13 pm (UTC)

        1. I’m not sure, to be honest. I just think I remember seeing similar in the past. It’s not something that’s very easy to search for!
  9. GAZUNDER and ODDS remaining (although I thought it was ODDS but couldn’t parse it.
    Confidently put in CAPITAL for 15a – it seems to fit both meanings – this held me up especially as it gave me the C of CLEAVAGE. My frustration has rather diminished my appreciation of a good puzzle.
  10. Had to do this on iPad today, so a very precise 41:55
    I’m pleased with that as it was pretty tricky.
    Thanks setter and V.
  11. 85 minutes, which is why I don’t enter the Championships. Three of these in an hour? It’s a biffing miracle I’m here now. The collective unconscious tends to remain that way so theJUNGLE FOWL emerged late. I didn’t succeed in parsing the HOSTESS with the mostest, but I did spot that she was Mistress Quickly. Eventually. I thought GRIMALDI was a clown and not a pantomime artist so, although I could hear voices saying he was behind me, again I didn’t look round for a long time. I actually did put TAUTONYM in early, not that I knew the word, but because I’d constructed it and didn’t like the vast expanse of white squares in front of me. COD to TATTOOER, for the memories of those early Carry On films including Liz Fraser’s CLEAVAGE. Thank you for the elucidation, V, and for the challenge, setter.
  13. 24 minutesa, so comfortably the slowest of the week (fittingly, as it’s Friday).

    HOSTESS was LOI, and even then with a wing and a prayer from the checkers.

    Spent far too long at 11a trying to untangle (“taxi”) SENT and GEAR. Well, it had to be “EN” something surely, didn’t it???

    I’ve only been to a tatooIST rather than a tattooER, but as that didn’t fit either wordplay or the available number of letters it didn’t hold me up too long.

    Don’t think I’ve seem the device ALDI before; but then I sometimes struggle to remember what I had for breakfast by lunchtime so that doesn’t really mean anything.

    All in all a tough but enjoyable workout – too often the really hard ones turn into a slog but this was good fun too.

    I won’t be at the champs this year sadly, the chosen date clashes with my village’s Christmas Fete which we’re on the organising committee for, so I’ll be behind the bar in the village hall instead. Good luck to all TffT-ers who are going.

      1. My preference would be to be in front of the bar at the George, but alas some things are not meant to be.
        1. That’s a shame. I’ll miss catching up with you and sharing a beer.. or two. On today’s form I will be only doing the 3 morning session crosswords
  14. Liked this a lot, with COR! NICE! and OO-ER to spice up proceedings looking sideways at the revealing CLEAVAGE. Particularly pleased to finish within a gnat’s crotchet of Verlaine’s time, though I have to confess to parsing several after the fact and hoping for no pinks. I doubt I’ll matching quite so well in a fortnight’s time.
    GAZUNDER for me is a potty (as for Horryd) though the cut price version – a separate entry in Chambers – was remembered from the days of gazumping, from which it was presumably derived.

    How good is it that the Red JUNGLEFOWL has the TAUTONYM in my headline? Fine setting!

    Speaking of which, COLORADO indelibly reminds me of one of the most wondrous Listener crosswords of all time (4031 “Much ado about nothing” by Shackleton) in which the final phase had you overlaying a passable map of Wyoming with your own faked up Jackson Pollock, coloring (sic) the letters A, D and O red green and blue.

    Many thanks to V for hanging around long enough to parse everything, especially TO AND FRO, which I didn’t.

  16. Just as well I’m not trying to go anywhere this morning because the Guardian is featuring an Enigmatist special which will probably take me even longer than this.

    I wasn’t convinced by the parsing of “after” in AFTERPIECE and spent time trying to make “night” work. I had ODDS early on luckily or I’d have been tempted by “gazumper” which I did know instead of the word I didn’t. It would help if I knew how to spell UKULELE – at first I had an E for the second U and spent a long time at the end wondering if there was such a thing as a “beagle fowl” and what on earth the psychologist was doing. Was the clown related to the royal family of Monaco? 24.24

    1. Yes! NIGHTPIECE also delayed me for a while, in the difficult NW corner. Sadly (although a word) it doesn’t fit definition or wordplay…so close…
    2. I saw it was Mr Henderson and immediately printed out Imogen, AKA Richard Browne, once of this parish, since I was not in masochistic mode.
  17. ….and I biffed SIX answers, so thanks to V for GAZUNDER, HOSTESS, VITAMIN A, TAUTONYM, NUREYEV, and CLEAVAGE. Anyone who didn’t understand my thoughts on aiming for Group B may now be wiser – it weren’t like this when I were a young man !

    I thought of giving up, but I’m extremely 1A (a gene I passed to my sons), and eventually realised I’d spelled PICCALILLI incorrectly. Only when my birthplace finally emerged at 24D did I nail my LOI.

    FOI DYKE
    LOI TAUTONYM
    COD ODDS
    TIME 24:30

  18. 18:26. I seem to have been on the wavelength for this one, so perhaps not surprising that I thought it a cracker.
  19. Took just over the hour, watching NZ v England test match replay. RHS refused to yield without using crosswordsolver.org to find 25a and checking Mistress Q was really a HOSTESS (I had thought she was a landlady, I suppose is the same thing). Great puzzle though. I agree with comments above, Mr Editor: if the Club Monthly was more like this and less like a Mephisto dictionary hunt I’d do it more often and enjoy it more.

    V does your headline refer to 4d not 3d?

    Edited at 2019-11-22 12:13 pm (UTC)

    1. I tackled a Club Monthly for the first time this week and agree with your sentiment. The amount of time I had to spend referring to the dictionary detracted from my enjoyment.

      I don’t mind the obscurities in the Mephisto where the layout means that I can often get enough crossing letters to work them out.

  20. What a fine crossword! Very difficult, and like Verlaine it wasn’t until EX GRATIA that I had anything in. JUNGLE FOWL next, with a question mark in case there exists a strange bird called a JUNGLE WOLF, then nothing till GRIMALDI and gradual progress thereafter.

    But what superb clues! STUBBORN, UKULELES, VITAMIN A, TO-AND-FRO, ODDS, FLAT TYRE, TATTOOER could all be CODs on another day – I think I’ll pick ODDS as my favourite of the bunch.

    17m 10s in the end, finishing on HULL. I’ll take that on finals day.

  21. 19’52”, but I won’t be at the finals. The stress would render me dysfunctional. I went to the very first Sudoku final where I blundered after about ten seconds and never recovered. The following year I was calmer and finished three puzzles in 30′, but was nowhere near the outliers. Have since qualified a couple of times for the crossword finals, but never took it up. Good luck to all those who are attending.

    Liked GAZUNDER, which I worked out from gazumped. The relish is yet another intrusion of a brand name, even if I do like it. SASHAYED and UKULELES excellent. GRIMALDI was a write-in as I’d just read today’s Times notebook. Dnk TAUTONYM.

    Thanks verlaine and setter.

    Edited at 2019-11-22 12:34 pm (UTC)

  22. Oof! That was tough. ODDS was my FOI, followed by FLAT TYRE and ESCAPEES. Most of the NE and SE were processed next, but I hit a brick wall with 18d and 25a, eventually using Crossword Solver.org for both. I’d got as far as TATTLEER(something to do with tatting?)but the skin dauber totally eluded me. I had the MY of 25a but I failed to separate the cricket leg and pulled hard for TAUT just didn’t register. Pulled tight might have worked for me. At this point I was about 40 minutes into the battle. Rudolf appeared earlier with UKULELES(I always try to spell it with E for the second U too!) A posited CLEAVAGE opened up the SW with all of that corner suitably parsed. I then concentrated on the NW and after 70 minutes was left with 11a. I had no idea what was going on here, and as I didn’t know or had forgotten Mistress Quickly, I was left with POETESS or HOSTESS from an alphabet trawl. At this point I used the solver again to see if I’d missed a word that fitted, but I hadn’t. It then boiled down to a coin toss. I thought some arrangement of PRESTO might be involved, which could favour POETESS, or maybe something to do with HASTE with the 3rd of spAdes switched for an O(round) which would favour HOSTESS. Serendipitously I chose HOSTESS. 76:55. Thanks setter and V.
  23. That was tough, needed a full hour thanks to misspelling ukuleles and so failing to spot Jung lurking there. Also a typo to boot!
  24. I don’t remember a puzzle ever taking me this long before, at least not one that I finished. So perhaps it reflects my perseverance today, where I might have given up earlier in the past. Anyway, a really good challenge that I was well pleased to finish. Well done in particular to zabadak and sotira with WITCHes of 60 and 70 respectively – I’m very impressed anyone can do this in about 20 minutes (even if you took twice as long as Magoo who’s clearly warming up nicely for the championship!!!).

    For those who have cited this puzzle as a reason not to attend the championships, based on my debut last year I can assure you the initial puzzles are nothing like as hard as this (at least I hope that’s the case again this year!).

  25. Got through it with everything correct but it took an off-the-scale time. A real Friday zinger. Not going to the championship this time, as on the waiting list for Steve Hackett dining tickets at Trading Boundaries on 7 Dec. I’m only ever an also-ran in any case; I just go for the view from the 17th floor. Thanks v.
    1. My husband saw Steve Hackett in Bath on Wednesday – he says it was really worth the journey from Leicestershire (inc an overnight stop) so hope you have a great time too 😊
  26. I finished in about 30 minutes, but only by liberal biffing all around the grid. LOI was GAZUNDER, from wordplay, which I assumed to be wrong because I remember the odd term of ‘gazump’, but it was correct. I also expected more errors buy they were all correct too. Fiendish wordplay, although my vocab did stretch to include everything except the aforementioned GAZ…
    Regards.
  27. If you search within TfTT for ‘indirect anagram’ it will hit on a number of comments from the past, several from yourself, but mostly related to Sunday Times puzzles but we know that paper marches to a different drummer these days. Re the daily Times there’s one example from 2006 when Magoo was still blogging where H for hydrogen is part of the fodder and another (puzzle 23522) where ER derived from ‘monarch’ is included.

    It’s unusual enough to warrant comment I think, and I don’t recall ever having to explain such a clue in any of the blogs I have written (12 years tomorrow since I posted my very first, I just discovered by chance!)

  28. Ex gratia FOI – probably the only time I’ll ever have anything in commmon with Verlaine!

    Too hard for me. Resorted to aids to find Absolutist after filling about half the grid. That gave me a bit of a leg-up but retired hurt with 10a and 17a undone. Guessed it was Mistress of that ilk (and my home town) but just went blank.

    Still there were some major PDMs – ukuleles, Grimaldi, Jungle fowl and Cleavage.

    FOI Ex gratia
    COD Cornice
    Time Off the scale
    DNF

      1. Oh maybe. I’m not familiar with the history plays. Isn’t she in The Merry Wives of Windsor?
  29. Couldn’t get “Hostess” as don’t know the play in question. Even when I figured that Hostess was the only possible solution, couldn’t see why.
    Also, mistakenly entered Piccadilly, having just walked down it (Piccadilly) this afternoon.

    Edited at 2019-11-22 07:17 pm (UTC)

  30. A DNF for me in a smidge under 45 mins. Managed to tease out most of the answers, nothing was yielding without studious attention to detail, but unfortunately I couldn’t see past gazumper at 10ac and also put in oops at 4dn. Couldn’t fully justify either but it was that sort of puzzle where I was out on a limb with the parsing most of the time anyway. A quality offering but the experience was a little bit spoiled for me because I came so close to solving such a tough puzzle in a reasonable time only to fall at the final hurdle(s).
  31. Oh dear. Five blanks by the time I gave up, so I was relieved to find at least one (GAZUNDER) that I’d never have got. I really ought to have got HULL, and have no plausible excuse for not doing so. BLUDGEON should also have yielded to more persistence, but didn’t. Come to think of it, STUBBORN should also have been gettable, making me wonder if I bailed out too soon at 72 minutes. But no, there’d still have been GAZUNDER.

    Regarding tautonyms, if you go as far as subspecies there are many triple examples. Not only is there a Gorilla gorilla gorilla, but also Lynx lynx lynx, Caracal caracal caracal and Bison bison bison. Pleasingly, the common names of all of these are also, respectively, gorilla, lynx, caracal and bison.

    Edited at 2019-11-23 12:33 am (UTC)

  32. When the SNITCH is in the 150s, you know it’s going to be a grind, no matter how enjoyable some seem to think this was. Not enough time in the world to waste on some of these clues.

    Got about halfway in 45 mins, but too many unusual words (TAUTONYM, GAZUNDER, AFTERPIECE) and overcomplicated clueing – and no idea about Quickly for it to be fun.

  33. Finally got round to this on Monday, having heard on the grapevine it was a toughie. Finished in just under the hour. Looking at other people’s times, I feel I should have done better – but I found it a real challenge. Luckily all my guesses (tautonym, gazunder, afterpiece) turned out ok. Another tautonym is our wren – Troglodytes Troglodytes. Which raises the question – sjnce when did wrens live in caves?

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