Times 27,569: Hit Me With Your Tickling Stick

Author   VerlainePosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
I found this a little bitty, with some quite easy numbers intermingled with strange foreign-isms, including 3dn which is one of the most wilfully obscure clues in recent memory. I did very much enjoy the penny-drop moment of the cryptic def at 11dn and the cameo by Mussolini, who I learned in a quiz I was hosting only last night, tried to get Italians to switch from pasta to rice, to stop importation of expensive foreign semolina flour. The monster. Where else but crosswords would Il Duce rub shoulders with Doddy, too?

Just booked my tickets for the 43rd Annual American Crossword Puzzle Tournament in Stamford CT at the end of March. If you’re on that side of the USA around then, you should definitely drop by?

ACROSS
1 Just when pearl of wisdom can be testing? (8)
ASSAYING – AS SAYING [just when | pearl of wisdom]

6 Seabird leaving home has little hesitation to get fish (6)
PUFFER – PUFF{in} has ER

9 Attack from the rear to capture a Pacific island (4)
GUAM – reversed MUG to “capture” A

10 Shout with pain, with heart maybe leading to caution in game (6,4)
YELLOW CARD – YELL OW [shout with pain], with CARD [heart maybe]

11 Superior one joining up with four others (5,5)
GREAT LAKES – cryptic def, the four others being Michigan, Huron, Erie and Ontario.

13 Mood of small son confronting ’umungous lout? (4)
SULK – S confronting ‘ULK. My FOI.

14 Turn of old French actor performing after end of war (8)
ROTATION – O TATI ON [old | French actor (Jacques) | performing], after {wa}R

16 Something very cold about lord close to you, dictator (2,4)
IL DUCE – ICE [something very cold] about LD + {yo}U

18 Once in a blue moon, old master goes wrong, turning out bad art (6)
SELDOM – (OLD MASTER*) [“goes wrong”], evicting (ART*) [“bad”]

20 Light piece of verse that facilitates communication (8)
LANDLINE – LAND LINE [light | piece of verse]

22 Acknowledge hospital is having trouble (4)
HAIL – H + AIL [trouble]

24 One addict, I fancy, could show this (10)
DEDICATION – (ONE ADDICT I*) [“fancy’], semi-&lit

26 Have nothing to do with hermit-style holiday? (5,5)
LEAVE ALONE – or, if you take your LEAVE ALONE, you are doing it hermit-style.

28 Abdomen, soft little protuberance (4)
TUMP – TUM + P

29 Load of church silver, holy books missing (6)
CHARGE – CH ARGE{nt}

30 The old man’s entertaining celebrity baddies (8)
DASTARDS – DAD’s “entertaining” STAR

DOWN
2 Starting point for endeavour in which maybe four succeeded, reportedly? (6,3)
SQUARE ONE – a square obviously has four sides but beyond that I don’t really see how it’s “maybe four”. ONE though it certainly a homophone for WON.

3 Game leader departing with a word of appreciation in Asian city, once (4-3)
ALMA-ATA – {h}ALMA + A TA. This is the former name for Almaty, the largest city in Kazakhstan. A defunct name for an obscure (apologies Kazakhs) foreign place being clued with reference to an obscure old game? Almost needless to say, my LOI.

4 Group of jolly dimwits set up a happy scene (5)
IDYLL – hidden reversed in {jo}LLY DI{mwits}

5 Superior-sounding female set (3)
GEL – double def, of two homographs that are by no means homophones.

6 Put on airs ridiculously, like a French author (9)
PROUSTIAN – (PUT ON AIRS*) [“ridiculously”]

7 United around military leader and single-minded (7)
FOCUSED – FUSED around OC [Officer Commanding/Officer in Charge]

8 Register of leaderless soldiers with inadequate function (5)
ENROL – {m}EN + ROL{e}

12 Fired-up type, source of illumination (7)
KINDLED – KIND + L.E.D.

15 This writer’s means of communicating with article heartlessly direct (9)
IMMEDIATE – I’M [this writer’s] + MEDIA [means of communicating] + T{h}E [article, “heartlessly”]

17 Criminal, in my opinion, had finally obeyed the law? (9)
CONFORMED – CON, FOR ME, {ha}D

19 Heading north, attacked to achieve rescue (7)
DELIVER – upside down REVILED [attacked]

21 Girl seeing bird, one in meadow (7)
LETITIA – TIT, I in LEA

23 Leading character abroad captured by female photographer (5)
ALEPH – hidden in {fem}ALE PH{otographer}

25 Game with boxes, present finally emerging (5)
CHESS – CHES{t}S, removing the last letter of {presen}T

27 Funny comedian ignoring the first of three daughters (3)
ODD – Ken {d}ODD, minus the first of his 3 D’s. Was Doddy funny or odd? Feel free to debate below the line.

90 comments on “Times 27,569: Hit Me With Your Tickling Stick”

      1. A question that’s been asked before: Why (for that matter, how) is the subject heading for all your replies the same? (A friend of mine used the same title–‘Rope of Sand’–for every single paper he wrote in his 4 years at (a very good) college. No one ever asked him about it. I told this story to a grad student friend at Berkeley, who used the title for her primatology seminar paper the next day (baboon behavior). At the end of the presentation, another student congratulated her, adding, “Great title! I know exactly what you mean!” But I digress.)
      2. Use whatever subject headings you prefer, V, but this one is (a) not really relevant to today’s blog, and (b) totally opaque, even the first time you used it!
        1. I can’t get LiveJournal (or is it my browser?) to stop caching it… unless I remember to manually delete it every time.

          Maybe I’ll try a different browser…

  2. I knew ALMA-ATA, so I was able to biff from the hyphen and a couple of checkers, but halma? HALMA? Biffed a couple of others: POI FOCUSED and YELLOW CARD, both parsed post-submission, and SELDOM. Trying to parse it afterwards, I thought of (ART)*, but I didn’t think that was allowed. NHO Dodd. Is the ‘small’ necessary in 13ac? Is ‘Just’ necessary in 1ac? LOI PUFFER; I twigged the wordplay early on, but could only think of PENGU for the longest time.

    Edited at 2020-01-24 06:13 am (UTC)

    1. I’ve never forgotten a clue from many years ago: Harold gets a degree for the game.
  3. Gave up with A_M_ – ATA, and I’m damned glad I did, as I never would have gotten there. It must be a chestnut, but I’d never seen the clever Delivered/reviled reversal, so I liked that.

    Completely counter to the great TftT tradition of last-minute-ism, we have two months to prep for some kind of meeting around the March NYT event. I know the locals (vinyl, Kevin, Olivia, Jon, gheard, Guy dS, plusjeremy) but if others are thinking about this drop any or all of the above an in mail so we can put you on the inevitable emails.

    I will point out two things – 1. if you decide to enter, Remember that for the NYT puzzles you only have to answer half the clues; 2. while the weather in NYC in late March can stink, a visit to the city is always a great time.

    Edited at 2020-01-24 03:48 am (UTC)

  4. Hard work but rewarding apart from the double obscurities at 3dn which also put me off my stride at the intersecting 11ac so that I failed to crack the latter without resorting to aids. From “Superior for one” it should have been a write-in even without any checkers at all. Not sure I have met TUMP before but had no problems arriving at it.
    1. I retrieved this from the memory bank, deposited a number of years ago, and modern reference confirms: “Uley Long Barrow, also known locally as Hetty Pegler’s Tump, is a Neolithic burial mound, near the village of Uley, Gloucestershire”. Perhaps the derivation has something to do with ‘tumulus’. Additionally, I find this one is named after Hester Pegler who owned the land in the 17th century. References: Wiki and English Heritage.
      Kind regards, Bob K
  5. A I went for ALMA AHA at 2dn. HALMA was OK – we used to have a set when I was in short trews. But AHA or A HA were incorrect, even though they parsed. My LOI
    The North West was the difficult passage for me.

    FOI 16ac IL DUCE

    COD 11ac GREAT LAKES

    WOD KEN DODD on TV he was so-so. Live – he was utterly brilliant. I saw him at Blackpool c.1963 the audience was in pieces – he stayed on and on and on. The tears ran down our legs!

    2dn SQUARE ONE derives from radio football commentary in the thirties, when listeners were given a grid in the ‘Radio Times’. The pitch was divided into 8 squares.Thus one would know when it was a goal kick to the home side, as the ball ‘went back to square one’. Those were the days: Arsenal 4 Manchester United 5, jumpers for goal posts, Nat Lofthouse, Tom Finney and home at six for beans on toast.

    Edited at 2020-01-24 06:06 am (UTC)

    1. Here’s Nat above and left.There was the occasion at Blackpool Winter Gardens when Ken was playing the Opera House and the Stones the Ballroom. Keith Richards provoked a fight and all hell broke loose. While the bouncers cleared the Ballroom out, Ken was passed a note on stage asking him to stay on, so that his audience didn’t get caught up in it. He was still on two hours later.
    2. I saw him a year before he died. Started off by warning the audience that by the time he finished his act, they’d know what it felt like to be hostages! Four hours later, everyone was still laughing like drains.
    3. Back to Square One surely comes from Snakes and Ladders, long before broadcast football. I remembered playing Halma (a precursor of “Chinese Checkers”) and also recalled Alma-Ata from somewhere.

      From Jeepyjay.

  6. An interesting word which also means a cook in high office.

    Edited at 2020-01-24 06:03 am (UTC)

  7. DNF. I got bored trying to think of a game that would fit at 3dn and gave up after a few minutes. I’m glad I did: the nicest thing I can think of to say about this clue is that it is execrable.
  8. Didn’t know the place. Didn’t know the game. Wish I hadn’t wasted 10 minutes on it.
  9. No hope for the ‘Asian city, once’ or the ‘Game’ at 3d and I ended up as a DNF in about 80 minutes. Still, some good clues as recompense, especially ‘Superior one’ at 11a. TUMP is also an interesting new word.

    I’d argue a LANDLINE doesn’t always ‘facilitate communication’, especially if it’s plugged in to your modem and at the mercy of a dodgy Internet connection. FOCUSED is one of those words I associate with those ‘in-depth’, earnest interviews given by our sporting heroes. To be avoided unless absolutely necessary.

    1. In my case a LANDLINE doesn’t facilitate communication because I don’t usually answer it!
        1. These days I feel quite old-fashioned even having a landline: many don’t bother any more.
          1. I need to retain mine because my parents live in Greece and find the old-fashioned landline the cheapest and easiest way to get hold of me. (They tried a Skype phone for a while but it didn’t stick.)

            Sadly all the other calls I get are from scammers trying to steal various account details or tell me my (non-existent) Windows PC has a virus, or lawyers specialising in fraudulent claims, or, oddly, a particularly persistent firm who want to clean my oven. (The ICO nuisance-call reporting website actually has “oven cleaning” in the pre-prepared list of types of annoying call, which presumably means it’s not just me that gets that last one!)

            I can see why people don’t bother with them any more.

            1. What you want Matt is to get trueCall call blocker either as a plug-in gadget or built-in to a new telephone handset for your landline. Pre-authorised caller numbers get put straight through to you but any unrecognised (or withheld) numbers force the caller to navigate trueCall’s call-screening / announced-call filter. You’ll find your nuisance calls fall by 100%.
              1. I have one—sadly I’ve unplugged it for the duration as I’m looking for jobs at the moment. Unfortunately, the recruitment agents calling up are indistinguishable from the scammers (technologically speaking, anyway, and I’m not so sure about morally with some of them!)

                (It also doesn’t work quite so well with my parents: their number comes through as “withheld” when they call from Crete and they can never remember how to bypass the check with the “friendly caller” code…)

                Edited at 2020-01-24 10:56 pm (UTC)

                1. I have never heard of this “friendly caller” code. How would I get information about it? Sounds a useful tool to have.
                  Gill Darvill
      2. Nearly 20 years ago on September 11 in NYC when the World Trade Center went down so did all cell phone service in a wide area. Our landline was unaffected as was our internet connection which came through our phone service and we were glad to have both.
  10. 19:28 with the last 5 on my last 2 – ALMA ATA and ASSAYING. NHO the place, but at least knew halma, which I played as a boy. 2D has surely escaped from a Mephisto or the Club Monthly… obscurity clued by another obscurity, as you say, V. Otherwise there was lot to enjoy. I had NUMBER ONE at first for 1D until I thought of GUAM and then saw “maybe 4” was referring to a square number. I liked the GREAT LAKES and the DASTARDS. Thanks V and setter.

    Edited at 2020-01-24 08:01 am (UTC)

  11. Another DNF here; 36 minutes for all but ALMA-ATA, where of course I’d never heard of either it or HALMA.
  12. 13:52 … I correctly guessed at the city, which doesn’t make me any more kindly disposed towards it than keriothe. If you haven’t heard of the game, guessing is all you can do. I did actually watch something from ALMATY the other night (finally catching up with Long Way Round, 16 years after it was made, and watching Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman getting beaten to a pulp by terrifying masseurs in a Kazak spa), but I can’t say it helped.

    Otherwise some nice stuff. Pick of the bunch for me the neatly formed CONFORMED

  13. Another good time for me though shamelessly having looked up 3D so technically DNF. That is a ridiculous clue. Surely a fairer route to this obscure and defunct name would have been something like “sounds like former college has lost maternal leader”? At least it would have been more widely accessible than halma, whatever that is.
  14. PS Tump was a favourite word of my mother, and I haven’t heard it since, so it made me smile to see it here.
  15. 29 minutes, with LOI SELDOM. I knew ALMA ATA as a place on the map of the USSR in days gone by, so I put it in with the crossers without knowing the game or the letter I’d knocked off. I hadn’t clocked that ALMATY was the same place. I saw SQUARE ONE and the square integer series once I had the S and the U, but it was clever, so I’ll make it COD. DNK TUMP but what else could it be? I quite enjoyed this. Thank youV and setter.
  16. Another whose LOI was 3d and unhappy with the clue. I see our Japanese resident kevin knew it, so I can’t complain as much as I’d like; I vaguely knew Almaty was a city in mid Asia but didn’t make the connection. I had HALMA in mind – a game my mother used to like – but no certainty I had the answer correct.
    Otherwise, never heard of a TUMP but word play is clear enough, liked the 5 lakes clue once the penny dropped.
    Good luck in CT Verlaine, you must have a few airmiles (or whatever they offer now) in the bank.
    Anyway Serena is out, Osaka is out, and the cricket is rained off. Not all bad then.
  17. anyone know what’s happened to the quickie blog for today Friday?

    Edited at 2020-01-24 10:00 am (UTC)

  18. I thought this was below the belt – a game invented in 1883?

    And I thought it was a song by Randy Crawford anyway?

    2. Would that be better or worse than Settlers of Catan showing up in the 15×15? I don’t think anyone really plays Halma any more, though, prove me wrong…
  19. ALMA ATA LOI, had heard of HALMA but wondered if that was the Turkish nougat (?), crossed fingers as have had too much pink recently.

    Knew ALEPH from the maths song about infinity: ALEPH NULL green bottles hanging on a wall….., which goes on a bit.

    <16′, thanks verlaine and setter.

  20. Thanks v, great blog. Sorry setter, but I’m furious about 3dn. And here’s why: as well as the other issues that have already been raised, including the clueing of an obscurity with another obscurity, there is a solution that the wordplay leads you to with cast-iron certainty if you’re relying on it as you don’t know the name of the old city: AMMY-ATA. Game = gammy, as in ‘a game leg’ / ‘a gammy leg’. This checks out in all the dictionaries, and came straight to mind when I saw the clue. Even if you do know halma, you’re still stuck with a coin toss. Just about the worst clue of all time; sorry.
      1. Ah, maybe not in the book version, didn’t consider that, my bad. It does seem to be there in the online Chambers

        game2 adj, old use lame. See also gammy.
        ETYMOLOGY: 18c: perhaps from Irish Gaelic cam crooked.

  22. Strangely ALMA ATA went straight in without parsing. No idea how I knew it…. however got stuck with the last 2 in the NW. as usual it’s the easy ones that get me. Couldn’t think of anything but ERROR which didn’t help with SULK. I’d have thought he’d be HINCREDIBLE but there you go.
    1. It sounded… familiar to me, as did Halma as a game… without full confidence in either.
  23. Very similar experience for me – 26 minutes with last 5 on NE corner, trying to think of soldiers to fit ?E.R.. (so SULK was LOI). I remember playing HALMA (it’s similar to Chinese Checkers) and the town did ring a faint bell (I don’t know why), so no problem at 2dn..
  24. About 9 minutes on the rest of the puzzle, and 3 minutes spent coming up with ARMA-ATA. Like most others, I’d never heard of the game or the place. Not sure how that clue got in.

    Otherwise a decent puzzle, although I think ‘dedication’ perhaps isn’t the most appropriate word to associate with addiction.

    From a South American capital, one’s dropped at a city in Asia once (4-3)

    Not brilliant, but at least I’d have stood a chance.

    Edited at 2020-01-24 12:44 pm (UTC)

  25. Just on 13 minutes, so no cigar today. Guessed tump but seemed a reasonable assumption based on the clue. Ditto for Alma Ata , knew of the place so didn’t spend too long trying to work out the old game. Been a decent week for me, finished all the puzzles in reasonable times and my team won last night . Come on you SWA!
  27. I had all bar 1a and 3d completed in 30 minutes. After another couple of minutes, I came up with ASSAYED, but the double obscurities at 3d stymied me. I had -ATA from wordplay, and I considered (g)AMMY and (?)ALMA, but could confirm neither off my own bat, so Googled old Asian cities. Cr*p clue! 40:40 with a look up. Enjoyed the rest of the puzzle, but why spoil it with that? Thanks for the blog V.
  28. ….so had no trouble parsing the NHO ALMA ATA. Indeed the same applied to TUMP.

    FOI PUFFER
    LOI GREAT LAKES (a “duh” moment)
    COD SELDOM
    TIME 9:29

  29. Got a wee bit stuck in the NE trying to sort the PUFFER/ENROL/SULK threesome.

    Needed help for ALMA ATA. Have played HALMA many times – more or less chinese checkers – your men have to get to the opposite point of the star before your opponents do. Easy when there are only two playing but much more interesting with six players trying to jump thei men across a grossly congested middle.

  30. I came late to this for reasons too boring to mention. Nothing particular to add although I’ve no idea how I knew that old city (makes a change from Ur) but I did. Much better outing than last Friday’s debacle. If you google TUMP in the US (which I did post submit) you get a loud large protuberance. 15.04
  31. LOI, along with many, was ALMA ATA. Wasn’t all that confident. Not sure I’ve come across TUMP before, either, but that seemed clear-cut. Apart from that it was relatively steady and smooth for me. Nice mix of words, I thought.
  32. 12:57 with a lucky guess for ALMA whatsit. I had no idea what game was involved but the city must have rung the faintest of teeny-weeny bells.

    Must go, got to sand my halma bat to get rid of the tump.

  33. No problems with halma or with Alma Ata, which however I discover from Wikipedia is now called Almaty and also has been replaced as capital of Khazakstan by Almata “Known as Nur-Sultan.” .. memorise now guys 🙂
    No memory of tump though
    1. You are not. The good news is that you don’t have to worry about which is right since both are generally accepted. The bad news in my case is that I generally forget that both are accepted and worry about which is right. Word count to the rescue today.

      Edited at 2020-01-24 05:07 pm (UTC)

  35. Back in the UK I was in the strange position of always having a landline – because apparently you needed one to get an internet package? – but never having anything plugged into it. Certainly seems an inefficient state of affairs.
    2. Here in the US I used to have a “landline” phone since it was cheaper to get cable/internet/phone than just cable/internet (despite the fact it was all on one coax cable)
  36. Started off thinking I had no chance. Got started in the SW corner and solved it clockwise, ending with 3d. Quite liked this one, but it felt a bit of a slog, with no ‘aha’ moments (except 3d!)
    26 minutes.
  37. I found this very easy (are you sure it’s Friday?), with nothing obscure or even vaguely troubling, solved in one of my best times ever (which, of course, for most of you would have been one of your worst: 27 minutes). No problem at all with ALMA-ATA, but I wouldn’t have been able to come up with the current name of the place.

    Edited at 2020-01-24 06:46 pm (UTC)

    1. I have enough troubkle keeping up with the name of the Kazakh capital! (Which I believe was Astana but is now Nur-Sultan?)

      Edited at 2020-01-24 07:03 pm (UTC)

  38. For once, I am an outlier, as I had no problem either with ALMA-ATA or the constituent parts (in Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, the shipboard computer attempts to play electronic halma with the crew, and gets a predictable response). I suspect it comes from long exposure to quizzes, where I have an uncanny ability to confuse the -stans, their capitals, flags, currencies, and position on a map, even before they start moving and/or renaming things.
    1. I wish we had more -stan questions in these parts… at this very moment I am listening to Billboard high-selling songs of the year from the past decade, as they are what’s “on the syllabus” in all local quizzes. It’s mostly very painful :-/
      1. Ha! Filling in the most egregious knowledge gaps exposed by recent quizzes, I’ve also done some listening to recent charts, and obviously spent a lot of time muttering “well this all sounds the same…call this music…” etc. etc. On the plus side, I can be even more righteous in slapping down youngsters who complain about things being “before their time”.
      2. At last week’s quiz we got ‘How many -stans border China?’ and actually managed to get it right,
  39. All but two done in 23:25. But I spelled SQUARE as SQAURE making GUAM inaccessible – and with Guam I would have gone with the unknown ALMA-ATA.

    COD: GREAT LAKES.

    Edited at 2020-01-24 07:53 pm (UTC)

  40. Not too tough except for the obscurity at 3D, which I had a vague memory of, from where I don’t recall. Maybe an old map. But I couldn’t have said where it was (is?) within 1000 miles. And the game? No clue. But it went in correctly as a guess, and LOI. Regards.
  41. I think ‘maybe four’ refers to four being two squared, thus one of the many squares in existence
  42. DNF. Gave up without getting 3dn. Didn’t know the game or the old city. Spoiled the puzzle for me.
  43. I was highly inconfident of ALMA ATA, and wasn’t even sure that ‘halma’ was a real thing, so I was relieved to get that one right. I also fluffed the parsing of SELDOM, somehow. WoD goes to TUMP for being somehow visually onomatopoeic, if there is such thing.

    Thirty-eight minutes, meaning that I found this tougher going than average.

  45. I went for AMMA ATA after an alphabet trawl had come up with nothing. Otherwise it was a fair and fun crossword.
  46. Bit of a late comment, but a ‘hidden’ and ‘reversed hidden’ in the same puzzle? Unusual for The Times?
  47. Knowing neither the game nor the city, DNF. Everything else was a breeze. Thank you for enlightening me!
  48. Ken Dodd told the Inland Revenue that he did not need to complete a Tax Return because he lived by the seaside.

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