Times 27531 – Being furious in Florida

Author   piquetPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
I whipped through this in 20 minutes, parsing some afterwards, coming to a halt with just 9d to finish. Playing around with the seven unchecked letters of the anagram yielded a possible or likely answer as early operas often have Italian names. I was (and still am) wondering if there’s more to 5d than meets the eye. The rest of it was pleasant if not taxing, (unlike yesterday’s, which I failed to finish in the hour), with some nice surfaces e.g. 10a, 28a, 3d. The two homophones are, for once, sans controversy I think! Toodle Pip!

Across
1 Old-fashioned runner going round Government department (6)
DEMODE – Demode, properly spelt démodé, arises when the River Dee ( a runner) goes around the MOD or Ministry of Defence. One of the few UK Government departments not to have had its name changed several times by incoming regimes.
4 Fond memory — larks, no end (8)
ROMANTIC – ROM or read-only memory, ANTIC(S) = larks no end. Seemed a stretch for a synonym to me, but Collins has it.
10 Was a top performer embarrassed to be placed next to bad actors? (2-7)
CO-STARRED – (ACTORS)* + RED = embarrassed.
11 State chief given a hearing (5)
MAINE – sounds like MAIN = chief.
12 Travel, coming to stream, by which sits a wild animal (7)
GORILLA – GO (travel), RILL (stream), A.
13 Positioned across street is what interrupts a journey (7)
ASTRIDE – ST interrupts A RIDE
14 King possibly deprived of honoured companion in French city (5)
ARLES – King CHARLES loses his C.H. Arles is a very pleasant city in Provence.
15 Sailor with ornament was obliged to entertain head of Navy (8)
DECKHAND – DECK = ornament, as a verb; HAD (was obliged) has N inserted.
18 By-products given dubious PR by nobs, heading off (4-4)
SPIN-OFFS – SPIN is dubious PR of a political nature; TOFFS (nobs) loses its heading T.
20 One shifting up after film’s ending (5)
MOVER – M end of film, OVER = up. As in time’s up.
23 Comedian will meet Queen repeatedly, I bet (7)
WAGERER – WAG (comedian), ER, ER. One who wagers. In Collins as a ‘derived form’.
25 Remembers sports grounds accommodating everyone (7)
RECALLS – RECS has ALL inside.
26 Support bridge team for a few years (5)
TEENS – TEE = support, as in golf; N S north-south in bridge. Seven years, precisely.
27 Financially embarrassed? That may be exaggerated (9)
OVERDRAWN – double definition.
28 To limit injuries finally exert no wrenched muscle (8)
EXTENSOR – (EXERT NO)* with S (injuries finally) inserted. Any muscle that flexes or extends a limb.
29 Two-dimensional chart artist turned over (6)
PLANAR – PLAN = chart, RA reversed.
Down
1 A measure of substance in unusual card game (8)
DECAGRAM – (CARD GAME)*. Ten grams of something.
2 Kangaroo court maybe has released one: a blow (7)
MISTRAL – MISTRIAL loses an I. Cold wind in Winter in the Rhône valley.
3 Andy’s idle, wickedly manifesting one? (6,3)
DEADLY SIN – (ANDYS IDLE)*.
5 Designer of maps briefly provided for Ordinary Seaman (8,6)
ORDNANCE SURVEY – Unless I’m missing a subtlety, I think this is simply that OS is an abbreviation for both.
6 Receive commercial institution in America (5)
ADMIT – AD = commercial, MIT = American university. I can’t be bothered to spell out Massachusetts in case I spell it wrongly. Oh, all right then.
7 University training? Feeling not fashionable (7)
TUITION – INTUITION (feeling) loses its IN (fashionable).
8 Having sailors using filthy language audibly maybe? (6)
CREWED – Sounds like CRUDE.
9 Fool in ardour so changeable in opera (7,7)
ORLANDO FURIOSO – Clearly an anagram, play with the letters and checkers, come up with this opera or more correctly dramma per musica by Vivaldi. I’d never heard of it, and I don’t want to hear it; there seem to be four recordings of it, no doubt vinyl1 has more than one.
16 Brutal house — end up with police probing origin of law-breaking (9)
HOMICIDAL – HO (house) AIM reversed (end up) has CID inserted, L first letter of law-breaking.
17

Individual in force runs to get convict (8)
EDITED by the setter later in the day to:
I run after force that’s tailed a convict (8)
PRISONER – PRIS(E) (force tailed) has ONE inserted and R for runs added. See setter’s comment below.
19 Colour of holy chap holding Mass (7)
PIGMENT – Holy chap = PI GENT, insert M for Mass.
21 Brum team at home? One performing may get booed (7)
VILLAIN – Aston VILLA is a Birmingham footie team, they’re IN = at home.
22 Strike by hospital employees at first that covers a wide area (6)
SWATHE – SWAT = strike, H E first letters of hospital employees.
24 Most of Ulster’s soldiers turning up? I may get to bow (5)
ROSIN – NI’S OR would be Northern Ireland’s soldiers; reverse them. Rosin is a solid processed resin obtained from pine trees and used by violinists.

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52 comments on “Times 27531 – Being furious in Florida”

  1. I’ve been absent a bit, and for the sake of candor I’ll admit that I failed at yesterday’s, so this one was a less taxing experience. About 15 minutes to get through, and I didn’t notice the overload on the PRISONER clue. And I even followed the wordplay to ROSIN, and ORLANDO … Regards to all..
  2. I did this puzzle this morning, but didn’t have time to comment, as I was due to meet the Burroughs/Unisys oldies at Slingsby for our Christmas Lunch, which went very well, apart from my getting stuck in traffic at various stages of the journey, behind, a Drain Cleaner, a Speed Camera Van and a Muck Spreader, all on country roads with big queues of traffic behind them. My (ex-)colleagues were all champing at the bit by the time I got to the pub. The journey home was much less stressful. Anyway the puzzle was a straightforward affair apart from PRISONER, which I assumed to be an error. Didn’t know the Opera, so checkers and paper were involved. Started with GORILLA and finished with TEENS. Missed the anagram of ACTORS in CO-STARRED. Luckily, as a fiddler, I’m more familiar with ROSIN than RESIN, but started deriving the answer from OR for soldiers anyway. 29:18. Enjoyed it! Thanks setter and Pip.

    Edited at 2019-12-11 07:14 pm (UTC)

    1. Hi John – Unisys! That’s a blast from the past. I have here in front of me two copies of Unisys News from the late 80s.
      1. 🙂 I just had a clear out and put several issues in the recycling. I started with Burroughs in 1973 and retired from Unisys in 2016 after 42 and a half years. I was a Field Engineer/Customer Service Representative. What was your connection?

        Edited at 2019-12-11 09:00 pm (UTC)

        1. I was consulting editor of said newspaper from 1987 to 1992. I didn’t work in-house, but spent a lot of time at Stonebridge Park as you can imagine. I wonder if I ever did a story about you? I hope you gave those venerable papers a good send-off!
          1. Nice one! It’s possible that I was included in a team that got a mention, but nothing springs readily to mind:-) I am based in the NE but spent time at Milton Keynes(Southend in the old days) and did a course with Victor Se in Holborn once. I never visited Stonebridge Park. If my memory serves me correctly it was abandoned due to subsidence eventually! I’m afraid I didn’t perform any rituals over the disposal. At least they didn’t go in the shredder like the bills, statements and company confidential stuff from the 90s, noughties and teenies that I disposed of at the same time:-)
            1. You didn’t miss much in north London – as I remember, it was a pretty grim location! But all the same, it’s such a small world, isn’t it!
  3. Around 45 mins but shot myself in the foot and used aids to untangle 1ac and 2dn. I saw kangaroo and thought Aus so put austral for the wind at 2dn meaning I couldn’t get 1ac. No problems with the rest of it. I took care to put rosin not resin. I knew of the Italian epic poem from reading The Faerie Queen at university, so the opera wasn’t too much of a stretch. By the time I came to it the clue to prisoner had been amended so no problems there either.
  4. 9:55. Late to this, so the clueing error had been corrected. I don’t know if I knew that ORLANDO FURIOSO was an opera, but I knew the poem, probably for exactly the same reason as special_bitter, so in it went.
    The first few across answers read like a review of a rather seedy movie.

    Edited at 2019-12-11 09:56 pm (UTC)

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