Times 27571 – Pillage, then sprenge!

Author   vinyl1Posted on Categories Daily Cryptic

Time: 25 minutes
Music: Smetana, Symphonic Poems, Kubelik/Bavarian Radio Symphony

While I completed this puzzle with decent speed, it really is a minefield full of traps for the unwary.   I would not be a bit surprised to hear a series of lamentations about ill-advised biffs that the solver never revisited, but certainly should have.  A large vocabulary will certainly not come amiss, along with a thorough knowledge of the possible obscure meanings of common words.   However, if you manage to chose the right path, the cryptics are most helpful, and experienced solvers should be able to finish correctly.

A side note on tonight’s music; I am surprised Smetena’s Richard III, Wallenstein’s Camp, Hakon Jarl, and Carnival in Prague are not programmed and recorded more often, they are really quite high-quality orchestal pieces.   Recommended for those who like Liszt, Dvorak, and Tchaikovsky.

Across
1 Almost broke, English woman welcoming offspring’s building skill (12)
STONEMASONRY – STON[y} E MA(SON)RY.   I wasted some time thinking this would start with SKIN[t], with a trick in the literal.  Skingrafting?  Fortunately, I didn’t biff.
8 Cut down staff, getting sack (7)
POLEAXE – POLE + AXE, quite obvious once you realize that ‘poleaxe’ can be a verb as well as a noun.
9 They enjoy inflicting pain, like retired detectives way back (7)
SADISTS – AS backwards, + DIS [Detective Inspectors} + ST backwards.   Here, many will biff the obvious correct answer.
11 Getting rid of doughy pudding left abandoned (7)
DUMPING – DUMP[l]ING.
12 Bloomer made by union leader in stiffly formal city (7)
PRIMULA – PRIM(U[nion])L.A.   A flower I had never heard of, but if there is a primrose there is likely to be a primula.
13 Lightly wash back of cooker in quarters (5)
RINSE – [cooke]R IN S.E, another easily biffable answer.
14 Extremely ironic, my terms badly affecting both sides (9)
SYMMETRIC – anagram of I[roni}C + MY TERMS.
16 Accomplished youth takes directions, having too much to carry (9)
OVERLADEN – OVER + LAD + E + N.
19 French composer right to abandon burlesque (5)
SATIE – SATI[r]E, one of the few chestnuts in this puzzle.
21 Mostly benevolent sergeant-major, a new member of the clan (7)
KINSMAN – KIN[d] + SM + A + N.
23 Casual greeting from old sailors in China (7)
MORNING – M(O R.N.)ING, where for once ‘China’ is not CRS.
24 Loutishness of baddy finally replacing initiator of heist (7)
YOBBERY – +Y[-r]OBBERY, a simple letter-substitution clue.
25 Figure a small number continue to badger (7)
NONAGON – NO + NAG ON, a form of pestereing that is not uncommon in these shapes.
26 Calm air disorientated true provider of courses (12)
RESTAURATEUR – REST + AURA + anagram of TRUE.   If you think the word is ‘restauranteur’, then you might run into difficulties – I just trusted the cryptic.
Down
1 Unaccompanied male operating, a wise man (7)
SOLOMON – SOLO M ON, not a Scotsman this time.
2 Hold forth about gang leader, getting shot (7)
OPALINE –  OP(AL)INE, very tricky, as ‘gang leader’ is not G, and a very specific sense of ‘shot’ is needed.
3 Fresh greens I’d eat at first, given vitality (9)
ENERGISED – anagram of GREENS I’D E[at].
4 Fabulous writer thus breaking a record (5)
AESOP – A E(SO)P.
5 Former lord crushed by one’s first spell in jail (3-4)
OLD-TIME – O[ne] LD + TIME.
6 One who regrets hiding key for person delivering (7)
RESCUER – R(ESC)UER, the well-known computer key, that is.
7 Primate reportedly observed a Scotsman of great importance (6,6)
SPIDER MONKEY – sounds like SPIED A + MON + KEY.
10 Exceptionally, change Ernie’s software (6,6)
SEARCH ENGINE – anagram of CHANGE ERNIE’S.
15 Single-minded obsession of woman nursing Arab (9)
MONOMANIA – MON(OMANI)A.   It’s almost always Oman or Omani, they are very versatile.
17 Honour rise of the Spanish maid in Paris (7)
ENNOBLE – EL + BONNE upside down.
18 Glowing article by doctor breaking fast (7)
LAMBENT – L(A + MB)ENT.
19 Spray shrub briefly with last of insecticide (7)
SYRINGE – SYRING[a] + [insecticid]E.
20 Start delivering goods in German city (7)
TRIGGER – TRI(GG)ER, a German city that doesn’t appear much, since it’s not as useful as Essen, which is often essential.
22 Liqueur no one young at university initially identifies (5)
NOYAU – N[o] O[ne] Y]oung] A[t] U[niversity].   Never heard of it, but the cryptic hands it to you.

68 comments on “Times 27571 – Pillage, then sprenge!”

  1. I managed this in 16 minutes, which is fast for me. My only biff that went wrong was ISOMETRIC but MONOMANIA couldn’t be anything else, so that didn’t survive long. A few words like NOYOAU and LAMBENT that needed digging up from the cobwebs. I wasn’t sure about a couple of definitions. “shot” for OPALINE as you pointed out, I’d better go and look it up. Also “spray” for SYRINGE (btw you missed underlining the literal in that one).
  2. I followed just about all of Vinyl’s suggestions, wasting time with SKIN, biffing SADISTS (but verifying immediately), taking ‘gang leader’ to be G, taking ‘China’ to be MATE/PAL… I also biffed 15d and 17d, parsing post-submission. And I thought ‘initiator of heist’ would be H. 4d was QC material. Vinyl, you’ve seen NOYAU here before.
  3. I’d been on target for a sub-30 minute solve until I found myself with only 1ac and 2dn to fill in but they stretched my time to 35 minutes.

    Like others, I had been considering SKIN{t} for ‘almost broke’ but eventually I spotted SON inside MARY and the correct opening of the word came to me. Even with the O-checker in place the last answer remained a mystery until I thought of ‘shot silk’ and a clue met in a puzzle I blogged previously (in August 2018 as it turned out):

    Express view about gangster being shot? (7)
    OPALINE – OPINE (express view) contains [about] AL (gangster).

    I never found out then whether ‘opaline’ actually defines the ‘shot’ in ‘shot silk’ and I am none the wiser now, but it was a convenient memory-jogger anyway. I think AL clued as ‘gang leader’ as opposed to the more familiar ‘gangster’ has come up even more recently, and perhaps within the past week or two.

    I knew PRIMULA from my parents’ back-garden but there’s also a brand of cheese spread of that name that features the flower on its packaging.

    Edited at 2020-01-27 06:05 am (UTC)

    1. OPALINE is a shot in the sense of a photograph, on glass. I think the “shot” in shot silk is a weaving term.
      1. Thanks for the explanation. I’m afraid it’s probably too late now to dissociate the two meanings in my mind but that’s okay as long as it helps me to solve similar clues when they occur in the future.
  4. All done in 1hr 20, including work interruptions, but I had oralite, even though I couldn’t parse, I had the AL and some form of orate.

    I always thought the word was restauranteur.

    Liked morning, COD to stonemasonry.

  5. 10:15 but.. PILLAGE for 8A as a LOI. Grr. Serves me right for biffing. I liked SPIDER MONKEY.
  6. I didn’t think this the easiest of Mondays with a few words that were semi-obscure to me. I finished hesitantly with SYRINGE not really thinking of a syringe as a spray and not knowing the shrub.
  7. As with pootle, my problem was not knowing the shrub for 19d and also thinking that if a SYRINGE was spraying then you were probably doing it wrong… I took about half an hour to come up with the rest, then spent until minute 43 trying to think of anything better than SYRINGE before finally giving up and writing it in with a shrug of desperation. Not a very satisfying end to a puzzle.
  8. A good time for me just over 30m and a very enjoyable solve spoilt by renaming the biblical sage SOLEMON. I knew something looked wrong but for some reason the word solo temporarily absconded from my vocabulary. Strange how that happens.

    I wonder why the n resigned from restaurateur?

  9. DNF. I did most of this in just over 5 minutes but gave up on 19dn. I considered SYRINGE but rejected it on the basis that it doesn’t mean ‘spray’. No idea about the shrub obviously. 🙁

    Edited at 2020-01-27 08:53 am (UTC)

  10. There are no such words as restauranteur or restranteur!! Never have been and never will be, in my book: the number of foodie TV shows (particularly American but not Bourdain.) who misuse this puts my teeth on edge as do sports writers who cannot distinguish demise from downfall. As per Bill Brcye demise = death!

    ‘A quick Google search for ‘restaurateur’ yields nearly 13 million results, whereas a search for ‘restauranteur’ comes back with about 800,000 results. That’s a ratio of over 16-to-1. Unsurprisingly, popularity of the latter spelling stems mostly from the United States, going as far back as the mid-1800s.’
    Collins and Webster give restauranteur, but they should know better.
    Escoffier & Co would rotisserate in their gravy!

    I was very sorry to hear of Kobe Bryant’s demise.

    FOI 13ac RINSE

    LOI 5dn OLD TIME

    COD 1ac STONEMASONRY

    WOD 26ac RESTAURATEUR

    2dn I originally took this to be ORALISE – Hold forth- but when push came to parse, it was OPALINE

    Time just on half an hour – a pleasure

    1. I also get the heebie-jeebies about restauraNteur, having had the distinction drummed into me by my mum. She was a proof-reader, and also a secretary, which is why I can still sometimes be found shouting “sec-RET-ary, not se-KERT-ary, damn it!” at unsuspecting offenders on the telly.

      (I’m by no means a perfect speller, and I imagine I mispronounce words all the time, but that doesn’t necessarily stop me being TRIGGERed by other people’s transgressions. The human condition, I suppose…)

      1. It is kilOmeter that always gets me, when so obviously it should be kILOmeter, as in kilowatt, kilogram, or kilo-anything else… I am now the only person left in the world that pronounces it correctly, or so it sometimes seems.
          1. I expect we all have words whose modern pronunciation seems wrong (mine particularly is REsearch as a noun: I’ve always pronounced both the noun and the verb as reSEARCH) but I suppose we just have to put up with it. Things change and American influence is widespread.

            Edited at 2020-01-27 12:00 pm (UTC)

            1. Or we could embrace and enjoy the variety and fluidity of the spoken word, and the fact that there is no such thing as ‘correct’.
              1. Yes, I’m sure you’re right, at least in theory, but cereMONY? Sorry, but I’ll never get used to it.
  11. Yep, we have a syringa. 31 minutes with LOI TRIGGER, so it didn’t act as one. I’d never heard of NOYAU so it was as well it was clued generously. A lunch time mugging in the park? Daylight Yobbery. COD to SPIDER MONKEY in this sometimes tricky offering. Thank you V and setter.
    1. Shades of Ivor Novello and Victor Hervey, the Marquess of Bristol (The original Pink Panther)! ‘Ever-so-slightly-lilac and ‘Snobbery with Violence’ (Ronnie Barker)

      Edited at 2020-01-27 10:00 am (UTC)

    2. It has come up before .. the last time, I said:
      “I have a bottle of noyau. It is about 20 years old and the bottle is nearly full, which is all you need to know about noyau.”
  12. Very enjoyable 17m solve. MER at the spare ‘a’ in the answer to 18d (or its non-appearance in the clue itself).
  16. 18’20 but last in pillage, unfortunately, so dnf. No doubt the setter will be pleased to have caught a heffalump. jk
  17. ….where I parsed OPALINE without much conviction, and couldn’t work out what sort of MONKEY it was.

    FOI SADISTS
    LOI SPIDER MONKEY
    COD DUMPING
    TIME 10:21

  18. I’m a bit surprised that that many people didn’t know that lilac and syringa are one and the same. There’s a well-known poem by Alfred Noyes about going to Kew in lilac time – perhaps he took a bottle of NOYAU with him. A disproportionate wodge of my 17.03 was spent sorting out the axis of O*A*I*E and P*L*A*E – for some reason it was quite resistant.
  19. Staggered to find I’d absorbed an Americanism in RESTAURATEUR. Had vaguely heard of SYRINGEA. Like jack, I first knew of PRIMULA through the cheese spread, but now have some in the garden. Did put in pillage but thought twice.

    14′, thanks vinyl and setter.

    1. Restaurateur is French. Misspelling it is (according to horrid) American .. and the shrub is syringa .. sorry!
      1. I hope you are not apologising for calling me horrid, I’ve endured that since before I can remember. As a twin during school I was horryd and my brother horryp.

        Like restauranteur, syringa has a common misspelling, syringea (on Google some 872,000 instances): my dear late mother always called it thus. Ann Dunsdon, Nancy Mitford and Ivor Novello would have had a fit!

        I quote from Lord Keriothe just today, ‘we could embrace and enjoy the variety and fluidity of the spoken word, and the fact that there is no such thing as ‘correct’.. …sorry!

  20. Like others I found the LHS more resistant. I did like the SPIED A MON KEY when I eventually got it. Got OPALINE and SYRINGE but very reluctant to put either of them in. 25 mins
  21. 8m 30s, so not too tricky today, although I did my best to make it hard for myself by misreading ‘vitality’ as ‘viability’ and ‘formal’ as ‘former’. Surely LA still exists, I thought to myself…

    Nice crossword. And two random women today – I wonder if MARY and MONA know each other.

  22. 13:50 with a handful of biffs (fortunately I didn’t follow that tactic with pillage). I wasn’t overly confident about syringe, opaline and noyau.
  23. A 39 minute solve. I found SYRINGE and OPALINE hard work for the befogged Monday brain. I now know what you correctly call someone who runs a restaurant anyway.

    I like POLEAXE as a word. Noun or verb – I’m not fussy.

  24. 10.45 however…fell into one of the traps identified by today’s guide. Put in pillage instead of poleaxe at 8 ac. A good lesson in finding what fits the clue rather than assuming an answer must be right without thinking it through. Patience as a virtue passed me by….
  25. A good start to the week for me – finished and parsed in about 50 minutes.

    Lots of nice vocab and some clever misdirection. Skin(t), restauranteur (sorry) and opaline all took their toll, and, for a while, the only monkey I could think of to fit the checkers was of the Powder sort! There are a few French composers with five letter surnames and I got stuck on Bizet and Ravel. I didn’t know of burlesque as satire – I thought it was just a politer way of describing something more raunchy! But after a bit of mental gymnastics, I got Satie.

    FOI Energised
    LOI Opaline
    COD None really stood out today, but I liked Dumping, Rescuer and Ennoble

    By the way, Vinyl, I went to an amateur recital last week of a Danzi quintet. Another under-rated and under-played composer who we didn’t know, but it was really lovely music. My son and his colleagues are doing their best …

  26. “Stony” means “broke”? How? I don’t find it in Collins. I know, of course, the expression “stone broke.” LOI.
    1. I only knew the expression stony-broke and don’t remember hearing stony on its own before. Just checked the online Collins via the link in the sidebar on tfTT though and that has as the fourth meaning of stony: short for stony-broke.
  27. SOLOMON and RINSE were my first 2 in, then the SPIDER MONKEY diverted me to the SW which filled rapidly, the unknown(or unremembered) NOYAU going in from the generous wordplay. Having been interrupted by some messages, I then had to pause the puzzle and pop out to catch the bus to Guisborough where I had left my car in order to partake of a convivial Burns Night at the Folk Club. On my return, the rest of the puzzle went in easily enough until I was left with 1a, 8a and 2d. POLEAXE went in first, then STONEMASONRY, but OPALINE held out for quite a while until I spotted AL for gang leader. Nice puzzle. 26:16. Thanks setter and V.

    Edited at 2020-01-27 04:07 pm (UTC)

  28. Get this. Instead of AESOP, I entered ALSOP. With confidence, and never had a second thought. Dopey. There is (or was) a journalist Alsop here in the US, but fabulous he is not. Oops. Regards.
  29. Had the same struggle as others with NOYAU (couldn’t really be anything else, in fairness) and OPALINE (could, at least in theory, have been ORALITE, but the former looked far more likely, especially when I finally came up with a satisfactory sort of “shot”). Tough for a Monday, and quite satisfying.
  30. 26:18 I found this testing in parts but satisfying. I got hung up on trying to start 1ac with skin(t), and trying to crowbar a G into 2dn. Took a while to crack restaurateur too. Didn’t know Noyau but wp was clear enough to put it straight in with no qualms. Struggled also to remember the shrub and to equate syringe with spray. The Parisian maid was unfamiliar but the honour wasn’t.
  31. Like johninterred I was in the 10 minute zone but got tripped up by PILLAGE. I didn’t know that the Restaurant man never had an N to his name.

    COD: MORNING.

  32. 49 minutes, but actually it would have been just over 30 minutes if I hadn’t been so fascinated with PILLAGE (which fortunately I couldn’t quite explain, PILLA(R) and GE for getting?) that it took me ages to nudge myself away and with an alphabet trawl finally hit upon POLEAXE, which I hesitantly entered, followed by a sigh of relief when I saw my score. Before that OPALINE took a few minutes as well, once I realised that ORATE and G were not going to lead anywhere. Very enjoyable puzzle, keeping us all on our toes.
  33. Saw some Primulas in bloom today in a churchyard – bit early, isn’t it?

    Edited at 2020-01-27 10:45 pm (UTC)

  34. Almost bang on the half hour for this. Never heard of NOYAU, obviously. A little Wikipediaing tells me that aged bottles of Nayau[x] can accumulate enough hydrogen cyanide (from the peach seeds that flavour the drink) to be hazardous.

    My main hold-up was in the south-right, with TRIGGER, SYRINGE and SATIE my LTI. Somehow I can never think of Satie as being French, and I always assume he must be Belgian or Dutch.

Comments are closed.