Times 27567 – TCC Heat 1 #3 – nothing to scare the mokes.

Author   piquetPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
I found this third of the set just about the same in difficulty as the first two, with plenty of scope for biffing on the day I’d imagine, even if the parsing was a bit tricky at times. I see half the field completed it correctly.

I’m not sure I have quite explained 16d. I’ll also pose you all a challenge for setting a second clue for the answer to 15a; this one is good but it can’t be the easiest word to set for.

My LOI 4d raised an eyebrow, not expecting to see a Procter & Gamble brand name in a Times puzzle.

Across
1 Current parliament returns early work (5)
ILIAD –  I (current) then DAIL (parliament) reversed. My FOI.
4 Disastrously dropped litre drinks in school (9)
COLLAPSED – COED = school, insert L and LAPS.
9 Master divisor, ignoring two quarters (9)
DOMINATOR – divisor = DENOMINATOR, remove E and N two quarters.
10 Armstrong’s heard of what prayers do (5)
KNEEL – sounds like NEIL as in Neil Armstrong, astronaut.
11 Resorts employing treatment, having nothing for drug at intervals (13)
SPASMODICALLY – SPAS (resorts) then MEDICALLY (employing treatment) has its E (drug) replaced by an O (nothing).
14 Unpleasant, and very cold, outside King’s Head (4)
ICKY – ICY very cold, insert K King’s head.
15 Republic disperses beatniks pursuing sawn-off gun (10)
UZBEKISTAN – UZ(I) = sawn-off gun, (BEATNIKS)*.
18 Give up introducing complex rating scale (10)
CENTIGRADE – CEDE = give up, insert (RATING)*. Old name for temperature scale Celsius.
19 Still, one that’s never been authenticated (4)
YETI – YET (still) I (one).
21 Cruisers might lie along this front, playing cards (9,4)
PROMENADE DECK – PROMENADE = front, as in a seaside resort; DECK = playing cards. Cruisers here means people on a cruise.
24 In which the beast of Siberia is caught? (5)
TAIGA – Sounds like TIGER, the beast found in the Siberian Taiga or snow forest. Wiki tells me the biome taiga is the largest in area, it covers 11.5% of the world’s land surface.
25 Screen producer’s turkey chasing small donkey (5,4)
SMOKE BOMB – Amongst other things, a MOKE can mean a donkey; so we have S(mall) MOKE, BOMB = turkey.
27 Stars dealing with a disease hooked by drugs (5,4)
GREAT BEAR – Drugs = GEAR, insert RE (dealing with) A, TB (disease). No doubt biffed by most.
28 Toy with no head found in sack (5)
RIFLE – TRIFLE (toy) loses its head.

Down
1 Obscure country’s losing a contest finally in court (10)
INDISTINCT – INDIA’S loses its A > INDIS, T (contest finally) IN CT (court).
2 This author’s taking in singular theory (3)
ISM – I’M (this author) insert S for singular.
3 Current producer withdraws a good deal in style (6)
DYNAMO – MANY reversed inside DO.
4 In place of holiday, English cleaner in criminal court! (4,5)
COTE DAZUR – My LOI, as i stared at D*Z*R thinking can this be right? Then I remembered apostrophes are not enumerated, and pennies fell. E DAZ (washing powder) goes inside (COURT)*.
5 Some delightfully rich little poem (5)
LYRIC – barely hidden in DELIGHTFUL(LY RIC)H.
6 Take a look into a large juvenile compound (8)
ALKALOID – A LO (a look) goes inside A L(arge) KID (juvenile).
7 Three views about to be one (3,3,2,3)
SEE EYE TO EYE – SEE, EYE, EYE = three views, about TO.
8 Fool jolly officer (4)
DOLT – DO = jolly, party; LT = officer. I wanted to put DORM at first, but a dorm isn’t an officer.
12 Like grass family doctor brought in, it’s negotiable (6,5)
ASKING PRICE – AS RICE = like grass, insert KIN and GP.
13 As was Molly Brown, tanning in bleak sun (10)
UNSINKABLE – (IN BLEAK SUN)*. Have we seen ‘tanning’ as an anagrind before? Mrs Margaret Brown a.k.a. Molly was an American socialite so known, she survived the sinking of the Titanic, and acted heroically, see her Wiki entry.
16 Try nut and bolt to secure area (9)
ENDEAVOUR – Well, DEVOUR can mean bolt, eat quickly, so insert A for area into that, leaves you with EN to mean nut. An en is a short space in typography, perhaps printer’s slang for it is a nut?
17 Skirt round old temple displaying measure of power (8)
KILOWATT – KILT (skirt) goes around O, WAT as in Angor Wat.
20 Fighter once assembled eastern troops (6)
METEOR – MET (assembled) E (Eastern) OR (troops. The Gloster Meteor was the first British jet fighter, I remember making my Airfix model.
22 Poles in Brussels start to examine result (5)
ENSUE – N S (poles) inside EU (Brussels), E (start to Examine).
23 Cut theatre for men only (4)
STAG – STAGE (theatre) gets cut.
26 Away side at Old Trafford (3)
OFF – Double def., Old Trafford having a cricket ground as well as Manchester United’s stadium. As we know, even if cricket is a mystery to you, there are two sides to a cricket pitch, ON (leg) and OFF.

​

62 comments on “Times 27567 – TCC Heat 1 #3 – nothing to scare the mokes.”

  1. Yes, printer’s slang for ‘en’ is ‘nut’ and ’em’ is ‘mutton. It has come up here previously.

    48 minutes with TAIGA as my LOI after much bafflement. Failed to parse DYNAMO having seen MANY reversed but didn’t understand DO as ‘style’ and not sure that I do now.

    Edited at 2020-01-22 06:54 am (UTC)

    1. I think “hairdo” and “hairstyle” can both drop their “hair” in informal speech.
  2. 27 minutes. As you say, GREAT BEAR biffed. TAIGA was in a General Knowledge crossword recently, which was more than helpful. COD to DOMINATOR with a special mention to UZBEKISTAN. Pleased to see the reference to the real Old Trafford. Nice puzzle. Thank you Pip and setter.
  3. I had a similar experience to Pip’s with 4d, only I didn’t have the R, so I wondered about X DOZEN for a while, until the light dawned. (I didn’t know DAZ, but guessed it was a detergent.) I couldn’t remember what ‘jolly’ meant–thought it was a Marine–and finally just went for DOLT. I biffed ENDEAVOUR, but did have a faint memory of ‘nut’ coming up a while back. ‘The Unsinkable Molly Brown’ was a musical, which is how I got the solution, parsing it afterwards; had no idea why she was unsinkable, just knew the title.
  4. I’m surprised at how little I remember this from last month. It was vaguely familiar in parts, but I didn’t find it substantially easier today.

    TAIGA my LOI today as I suspect it was on the day. Looking through the answers it was the only semi-obscurity for me. Hopefully it’s committed to memory now having seen it twice!

    Edit: I now see this was supposedly heat 1 puzzle 3 so it shouldn’t be even vaguely familiar as I competed in heat 2 and I didn’t take the heat 1 puzzles away with me! Was this definitely from heat 1?

    Edited at 2020-01-22 11:00 am (UTC)

      1. Hmm, not sure why some of it felt familiar then. Possibly I’ve solved enough crosswords now to see certain things come round again. Indeed TAIGA appeared as recently as December 26.

        Anyhow, presuming I’ve not seen it before I’m well pleased with a combined time of 49 minutes for the heat 1 puzzles.

  5. 33 minutes, which for me is definitely a good time for a Championship puzzle. Never quite got stuck anywhere, and went top to bottom from 2d ISM to 24a TAIGA.

    Well, I suppose TAIGA was technically my last in, but I burned through another minute or so working out the parsing for ENDEAVOUR, just in case. Glad UNSINKABLE was an anagram, as NHO Molly Brown, who did presumably spend some time on a PROMENADE DECK…

  6. 21:04 … harder than the previous ones for me. Not helped by some gaps in knowledge and a couple of bad guesses early on.

    My last in was INDISTINCT, which it would have been distinctly useful to solve at the outset. On the other hand, I happened to hear a Russian talking about the TAIGA on a documentary last night, so that went straight in.

    1. And I saw “Beria” – a beast of Russia, immediately caught in Siberia. Took forever to unwind.
  7. Not heard of Molly Brown, but wordplay clear. TAIGA came up recently somewhere.

    I knew METEOR because there is an airman on our war memorial who ‘died serving his country in 1953’. On investigating he died when his Gloster Meteor crashed. Although the crash made the papers, it was not mentioned at the time that he was practising for the Coronation flypast, a fact which might have been a bit of a downer on the celebrations.

    Astonishingly, to me, I did this puzzle in under thirteen minutes, which makes my total time for the first three championship puzzles 47′, which means…..no, no, common sense will prevail.

    Thanks Pip and setter.

  8. 9:43. Back to plain sailing after a difficult time with the last of these.
    The ‘Taiga sounds like tiger’ clue caught me out badly the first time I came across it several years ago but I have been wise to it on the numerous occasions it’s appeared since.
    ‘Nut’ for EN is really ridiculously obscure but it’s become familiar to me from multiple appearances here and you don’t really need it to solve the clue (and it’s in Collins, in case you were wondering).
  9. As Pip has mentioned a puzzle that has two faces. Relax and solve it in your own time and its a steady testing but fair offering. Try to speed solve and you’re pushed towards biffing because some of the wordplay is quite tricky. Good Championship offering that I took my time over!
  10. 30 mins with yoghurt, granola, blueberries, etc.
    I’ve never liked Sack=Rifle. We’ve seen it before, but it jars.
    Thanks setter and Pip.
    1. It was a write-in for me only because I’ve seen it in a puzzle within the past couple of days, possibly one that’s still under wraps.
  11. I took my time! Lots of it.

    But finished with all correct and only 16dn biffed.

    FOI 26ac OFF

    LOI 2dn ISM

    COD 12ac UZBEKISTAN a UZI is a bit more than just a gun!

    WOD 14ac ICKY

    My METEOR was a ‘Dinky Toy’. TAIGA and TUNDRA O-Level Geog.
    Harder than the others IMO.

    Edited at 2020-01-22 09:20 am (UTC)

      1. Depends if you accept that ‘associating’ with people is ‘mixing’ with them.
        But the editor might stick an ‘odd’ on the front to be safe.
  13. Yours is much better:

    “Land element get pecked, maybe, one in element.”

    Edited at 2020-01-22 09:44 am (UTC)

    1. fy for an anagrist? Don’t quite get this one, but nice try. Myrtilus has the edge, but he is a professional.
  15. No use.
    Got stuck on taiga and that was the end of me.
    Did all the rest pretty quickly, though.
    Thanks pip.
  16. I would like to thank Chief Justice John Roberts for reminding us of the word PETTIFOGGING.

    Edited at 2020-01-22 10:40 am (UTC)

  17. I biffed INDISTINCT and DYNAMO without going back to them, but managed to parse the rest of the clues, even ENDEAVOUR(after submission). The Unsinkable Molly Brown struck a chord somehow. Liked UZBEKISTAN and COTE D’AZUR. Messed around with ECHAR for quite a while. Nice puzzle. 24:52. Thanks setter and Pip.
  18. As I couldn’t go to the champs last year, I decided to hold off on doing Wednesday puzzles for the last couple of weeks, so I could tackle all 3 together today, complete with an hour countdown.

    Pleased to say I got all 3 done in 52 minutes, and all correct, which looks to me as though it would have stolen the last spot in Group B for the semi. I’ll take that, having only finished 1 out of 6 in my 2 previous visits to London Bridge.

    Of course, exam conditions may have made it trickier.

    LOI here was TAIGA, and was a wing and a prayer, so basically would have made the difference between group B and group C.

    The first one (27555) I did straight off in about 12 minutes, this one I found easier than 27561, harder to tell times with these as spent a bit of time going backwards and forwards, but I would say about 16 minutes for this one and 24 for 27561

    Lost a bit of time here not spotting the “UZ” for 15a, so trying to add “GU” (sawn off GU(n)) to the anagram fodder. It didn’t get me very far. Didn’t know Molly Brown, so needed all checkers to realise that it was probably an anagram. Like many others, GREAT BEAR was biffed.

    A fun workout for a Wednesday morning all in all, let’s see what happens in 3 weeks’ time….

    1. That would have been about 30 seconds behind me and I was 24th, so you could have been as high as 25th.
  19. I wouldn’t say I had perfect recall of this one, but it did seem at least vaguely familiar, which is an improvement on the previous two. Mostly, I had sudden flashes of inspiration as regards clues which proved tricky first time round, so I solved in about 5 minutes today as opposed to maybe 10 or 12 on the day. As per other people’s experience, I mostly felt pleased to have remembered previous discussions here regarding ‘mutton’ and ‘nut’, meaning I didn’t get hung up on a difficult parsing.
    1. SETI is the search, which has been widely documented, so authenticated. It’s found nothing, but the search has happened. SETI gets a thumbs down from me; but I’m not the final arbiter.
  21. That apostrophe business still gets me every time. Glad the setter provided the fodder for the correct spelling of UZBEKISTAN. 18.31 after a very slow start.
  22. ….in sorting out my biffs (SPASMODICALLY, INDISTINCT, COTE D’AZUR, and SEE EYE TO EYE). I’m not sold on “Daz = cleaner”.

    As previously noted, I wouldn’t have made it through this heat, due to an error in puzzle 1.

    FOI ILIAD
    LOI DOMINATOR
    COD TAIGA
    TIME 10:03

  23. I found this much harder than the other two in heat 1, and indeed couldn’t get TAIGA – after about 13 minutes, having stared at it for 2 of those, I went for TAIKA with little hope.

    Looking forward to see if I remember anything from the heat 2 puzzles.

  24. 12:42 today, but probably about 18:30 on the day. Yes I biffed GREAT BEAR and didn’t know who Molly Brown was. I remember enjoying PROMENADE DECK and SMOKE BOMB.
  25. 11:29 so an aggregate 38:30 for the three. Add on 1:30 for checking and I’d have been 4 minutes faster on these than I was in heat 2, although I had errors, on which more in the coming weeks.

    Had no idea who Molly Brown was but the answer was clear enough so I just assumed it was a ship.

  26. After initial readthrough produced only three answers, built out from NW. Everything seemed to fall quickly once I’d got going. Only hiccup was METEOR guessing it was probably some sort of war plane.
  27. Very enjoyable. I was slowed down at the end because I kept thinking it was Taigu not Taiga. Don’t know why. Also on the Promenade deck, I had neck in my mind because of front (= effrontery, cheek). Again, stupid. But got there in the end – and not too far off the 20 mark.
  28. I also think Dorsetjim described this very well. I found it easy at first, but the last ones I got were filled in more like a non-cryptic puzzle (biffed, that is) from the crossers and def, with the wordplay coming clear only while writing them in. Wish I had time for the UZBEKISTAN challenge today.
  29. Only needed to check spelling of TAIGA. Biffed ENDEAVOUR. Finished reasonably quickly but I didn’t like it much.
  30. Definitely harder for me today. Hit the stop button at 19.05. Took a while to get started and a couple of guesses- endeavour and great bear but they fitted so in they went. Enjoyable quiz, I think taiga has been used recently?
  31. My time for this was too dreadful to reveal, although partly accounted for by distractions and interruptions. ENDEAVOUR went in unparsed, and DOLT was my LOI.
  32. Dodgy capitalisation but never mind:

    Buzz off shortly before president returns with Laurel for former union member (10)

    (Buzz)* -Z + IKE reversed + STAN

  33. I found this much easier than the other competition puzzles, but unfortunately I was in such a hurry to submit in under a (for me very rare) half-hour that I had one error and so a DNF: AZBEKISTAN rather than UZBEKISTAN. And this was neither a typo nor geographical ignorance, just sloppy checking. This clue didn’t come together until I had the Z, and then I immediately thought “AZerbaidjan!” for the start (I’m not so good on guns, sawn-off or whole), and of course “uzBEKISTAN!”, not incorrectly, for the end, but despite proofreading I didn’t catch the mismatch. But it would have been under the half-hour, if only …

    Edited at 2020-01-22 07:08 pm (UTC)

  34. On the day I was all correct in about 24 mins. Today I finished in 10:34 – but went for Teiga instead of Tiger!

    Uzbekistan:

    Suzi taken travelling around Britain’s nation (10)

    1. Nice. But would ‘Black Country’ rather than ‘Britain’s nation’ smooth the surface? – Rupert
      1. Yes. A great improvement! Thanks.

        I thought of using Black for B and Country for Uzbekistan but failed to put them together. Doh!

  35. About 35 minutes, with Meteor not coming to mine immediately, even though I’d known it from the days when it was just the F9/40. I remember Zurakowski our crazy Polish test pilot’s invention of a manoeuvre (the ‘fin sling’) which we’d never imagined in the design office, so we had to do some urgent calculations to check that it wouldn’t break the plane. With engines mounted under the wings, it was also an ideal test-bed for Rolls Royce, so that we had enormously overpowered versions, culminating in the Trent Meteor where each engine had a thrust greater than the combined power of the original pair, and again needed us to check that the airframe was up to it.
  36. 26:49. Entertaining Goldilocks puzzle not too hard not too easy, just about right. My solving time was also about half way between the first puzzle which I solved in 11 mins and the second which I solved in 39 mins. I dithered a little and couldn’t seem to find the relatively straightforward dominator and indistinct for a while which might have held up a few others. I didn’t know the fighter but there were no other unknowns. I liked the screen producer definition.
  37. Not too bad but still I went beyond the 20 minute mark. Held up in the middle somewhat, plowed through, and further delayed by INDISTINCT, and my LOI, ENDEAVOUR. For that last I waited to enter until I finally saw that bolt=devour, leaving ‘en’ for nut, which I didn’t remember precisely. Thought it was the term for any piece of typeface in old style printing. Congrats to those who did well on the actual day of the competition. Regards.
  38. Oh, and just to lower the tone, my effort is:

    Cockney’s haziest recollection, having bunk up somewhere on the Silk Road.

  39. Easy: Country has shaky biz stake in UN
    Trickier: One US tank explosive about to fall on unknown land

    Thought this puzzle was tricker than the previous two Wednesdays, took ~18m

    Lou

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