Times 27573 – foiled, chopped, crushed and licked, in a square round hole

Author   piquetPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic

I found this puzzle a game of two halves. The top half went in smoothly, on target for my 20 minute performance. But the LHS and SW corner took me far too long. It would have helped if I had seen 1d earlier, it was a straightforward clue with fair wordplay but I just had a blind spot when it came to separating ‘anti-wrinkle’ from ‘ointment’. Mrs K was even consulted on the matter of such creams, to no avail (the creams were also to no avail).
At the time of writing I don’t know if this was a puzzle set in Heat 2 of the TCC last December; if it was, I’d have failed miserably to finish it and 2 more in the prescribed hour; I found it harder than any of the Heat 1 puzzles.

EDIT it still doesn’t say in the online version but I see from comments below, it was indeed a Heat 2 puzzle.

Across
1 Westward of Scottish isle there’s cold breeze (5)
CINCH – C for cold, INCH a Scottish isle. A breeze, a cinch, an easy task.
4 European comfortable with support in which lives are connected (9)
ECOSYSTEM – E, COSY (comfortable), STEM (support).
9 English building of note needs pounds for new payment (9)
EMOLUMENT – E, MONUMENT (building of note) has its first N (new) changed to an L for pounds.
10 Start with handle for possible conspiracy theorist (5)
CRANK – nice double definition.
11 Foil wrapper for sweet that is filled with the reverse of goodness! (6)
STYMIE – S T (wrapper for sweet), I E (that is), insert MY (exclamation, goodness!) reversed.
12 Front shaved as far as stomach? One meant to get everything done (8)
FACTOTUM – FAC(E) = front shaved, TO TUM (as far as stomach).
14 Border agent consequently impounds rocket (9)
REPRIMAND – REP (agent) AND (consequently) insert RIM (border).
16 At last, AtmosClear! We offer you clean air again (5)
RERUN – using the last letters of atmoscleaR wE offeR yoU cleaN.
17 Son raised to protect younger one’s sweet but thick (5)
SYRUP – S(on), UP (raised), insert YR = younger.
19 Doctor cited case subject to dehydration (9)
DESICCATE – (CITED CASE)*. One of those words which is easy to mis-spell, but I was familiar with it from chemistry days.
21 Hoarder’s small slip turned into short bedcover (8)
SQUIRREL – S (small), QUIL(T) = short bedcover, insert ERR (slip) reversed (turned).
22 Chilled Italian monk with no love for his boss? (6)
FRAPPE – FRA is a title for an Italian monk; his boss, POPE, has its O removed (no love).
25 People avoiding technology roughly before noon? (5)
AMISH – Sort of double definition, where A.M.-ish could be roughly before noon. Took me an age to see, as I don’t know much about the Amish except they dress oddly.
26 A buck might need 100,000 of such a girl (9)
MILLICENT – Another which caused me trouble. Even now I’m struggling to make it work. A buck, a dollar, would need 100 cents. Presumably one is supposed to create / define a milli-cent as a thousandth of a cent, as in millimetre etc., and then see a dollar would need 1000 x 100 of these. And the answer is a random girl’s name. Strike a light, guv.
27 Pet never failing to disrupt walk (9)
TREASURED – SURE (never failing) goes inside TREAD (walk).
28 Inch taken off bird’s rib (5)
CHAFF – A CHAFFINCH has its INCH removed, to give us a word which as a verb means to rib, make fun of. I didn’t know chaff had this meaning but the wordpay is simple

Down
1 Anti-wrinkle ointment mostly succeeded before tins sat abandoned (6-9)
CREASE-RESISTANT – CREA(M) = ointment mostly, S (succeeded), ERE (before) then (TINS SAT)*. As mentioned above, easy but I made it difficult.
2 How’s your father secluded? (5)
NOOKY – Double definition, nooky meaning a bit of the other, and ‘nooky’ from the Uxbridge English Dictionary meaning like a nook.
3 He originally set up popular current double act: breaking free made him famous (7)
HOUDINI – As you probably did, I biffed this and deciphered it later. H (he originally), DUO (set) reversed, IN I (popular, current).
4 Venerable Bede’s lowest is above fair (4)
EVEN – E = end of BEDE, VEN(erable). I put this in although the wordplay looked too obvious and the sysonym of fair being EVEN as opposed to even-handed seemed a stretch.
5 Exotic nuts laid on thus (10)
OUTLANDISH – (LAID ON THUS)*.
6 Boatman heading north, in relation to the shorter Caribbean island (7)
YACHTER – all reversed, RE (in relation to) TH(E) (the shorter) CAY (Caribbean island). An ugly word compared to yachtsman (or now yachtsperson I suppose), but it is in Collins.
7 Display unrestrained creative work over restaurant (9)
TRATTORIA – All reversed, AIR (display), OTT (unrestrained, over the top), ART (creative work).
8 Chop up cane, crush and lick (4,9,2)
MAKE MINCEMEAT OF – Is this a double definition? Cane, crush and lick being one, and chop up being the other? Or is it triple, quadruple, or just &lit? Obvious answer, but it’s not obvious to me exactly how it works.
13 Stargazer adjusted ready-made refractor’s tip (10)
DAYDREAMER – (READY MADE R)*, where R = refractor’s tip.
15 Rodent caught awake within interior to tiny hole (9)
PORCUPINE – Another one I struggled with, as this animal as a rodent didn’t spring to mind; as I knew a hedgehog was a rodent, it should have been more obvious. PORE is a tiny hole. Into that insert (= interior to) C for caught, UP for awake, and IN for within.
18 Royal guardsman taking out the French from parapet openings (7)
PORTHOS – Another slow burner in the SW corner. PORTHOLES loses its LE (the French). I knew he was a musketeer but not that he was a Royal guardsman, I’d thought more of a freelance jack-the-lad at court. Nor did I know that portholes could be the gaps in parapets, so not necessarily round. In all, a labour of ignorance.
20 Acid spattered under wheels of an organ (7)
CARDIAC – CAR (wheels), (ACID)*.
23 Religious image from Mondrian, possibly almost his last (5)
PIETA – I wasn’t too sure exactly what a PIETA is, except it’s something Catholic and religious, but I did know that Mondrian’s first name was PIET. The A at the end comes from MondriAn (almost his last letter).
24 Copper plate oxidised at the edges (4)
PLOD – PL (abbr. for plate), O(xidise)D.

​

52 comments on “Times 27573 – foiled, chopped, crushed and licked, in a square round hole”

  1. Just pleased to finish this at all without resorting to aids, which I nearly did on a number of occasions towards the end when I was well and truly stuck. Eventually I gave up for the night, slept on it and polished it off after rebooting my brain.

    Biffed a good many and worried about the parsing after the event. Thought 8dn may even be a quadruple. Pleased to remember PIETA from a previous encounter but not helped in the parsing by my dictionary advising that Mondrian’s first name was Pieter rather than Piet as stated in the blog.

    Edited at 2020-01-29 06:47 am (UTC)

    1. was the name Mondrian went by – an abbr. much like the English Pete.

      Sorry Kevin, I noted your erudite amendment afterwards. Apologia.

      Edited at 2020-01-29 08:23 am (UTC)

  2. I didn’t find this much easier than I did at the championship. On the day I failed to come up with FRAPPE, PORTHOS and PIETA. Indeed I only came up with PIETA today because Verlaine told me afterwards that it was the answer – I still couldn’t parse it!
  3. I biffed a bunch of these, including 8d, which I can’t figure out either. I doubled the S instead of the C in DESICCATE, but corrected it without too much loss of time. The SW was my problem as well, with SYRUP, SQUIRREL, PORTHOS (POI), & AMISH (LOI) taking a lot of time. AMISH didn’t occur to me until I had the H; I was trying to recall LUDDITE, for all the good that would have done me. Isn’t it Mondriaan, by the way? not that it would make a difference. (ON EDIT: Just looked him up, and it turns out he was born Pieter Cornelis Mondriaan, and changed it in 1906 to Piet Mondrian.) Liked EMOLUMENT.

    Edited at 2020-01-29 07:12 am (UTC)

    1. You’ve reminded me that I spent some time back in December and again today looking for an anagram of NUTS LAID ON. Good deception on the setter’s part.
  5. I thought this a brilliant puzzle, though very challenging. First pass at the clues yielded only SYRUP, but then 8D (surely a quadruple definition) opened things up and progress was slow but steady with many aha moments and tips of the hat to the witty setter. Finished in just under the hour, way behind my 6V target – but then this would be second time around for Verlaine!

    If you drive from Philly to Lancaster, PA and avoid the freeways you go through the lovely Amish countryside and encounter them in their characteristic straw hats (for men and boys) or bonnets (for women and girls) working the corn fields without machinery or riding in their small pony traps. They are descended from Dutch settlers. I believe some of them allow mobile phones now but they are essentially averse to all machinery. The excellent film Witness with Harrison Ford is set in the tightknit Amish community.

    Thanks clever setter and Pip.

    Edited at 2020-01-29 08:52 am (UTC)

  6. This was a cracker much like yesterday’s. Time 55 minutes

    FOI 24dn Mr.PLOD the policeman – from Enid Blyton and The Sweeney

    LOI 16ac RERUN ugh!

    COD 8dn MAKE MINCEMEAT OF – Crusader’s pudding.

    WOD 5dn OUTLANDISH

    Well known Millicents- Millie Martin

    1. I agree this was excellent and am glad I was not attempting this under exam conditions.

      David, may I ask if you, your family and friends are being too disrupted by the situation in China?

      1. Bill thanks for asking.

        We are being disrupted mainly as it is CNY, which has been extended by a few days. Our ai is away so no regular goss. There is no lock-down as such, but I have become ‘him indoors’. Our good friends are away in Sri Lanka presently and it will be interesting to learn of their re-entry next week. News is mainly gained from the radio.
        China has no real 24hr TV news service but CNN International and Deutche Welle do. Fox is useless – just crowing on about the damage to the Chinese economy.

        Masks are not readily available, fortunately ‘her indoors’ has a small stock.

        The supermarkets are short of delivery boys, milk, masks, soda water, dried Japanese seaweed and Shiraz. But in the old days the shops hardly opened at all at CNY. So we did stock up.

        Subway’s deserted, company bosses not happy as no-one’s working.It will get better I am sure but we’re in for two more rough weeks in my estimation. We went through SARS in Singapore which was very scary.

        There are 90 cases in Shanghai but no deaths so far. It is probably safer downtown than in suburbs. We live in Hong Qiao (Rainbow Bridge) which about 15km from ground zero – Shanghai No.1 Hospital, where I am a season ticket holder!

        Fingers crossed.

        2. Thanks for the update. I enjoy hearing directly from the horse’s mouth.

          I know from previous posts over the years that you and I have lived in various ‘interesting’ places.

          I wish you, your family and friends well and a speedy resolution to the whole affair.

          Fortunately, I drink Pouilly Fume so the lack of shiraz would not trouble me (even decanted through a paper mask).

  7. 10:43. I managed to do this whole puzzle without realising that I had done it before. No wonder some of the clues rang a bell: I remembered for instance that I had misspelled DESICCATE the last time it came up, just not when that was.
    To cap it all I may actually have been quicker on the day: I know it took me about 10 minutes.
  8. I agree with Pip that this is much harder than the Heat 1 puzzles. I started this without realising it was Wednesday (my iPad did not say it was a Championship puzzle).

    A bit delayed by banging in the incorrect DESSICATE. Loved FRAPPE once the penny dropped, but COD to MILLICENT.

    EVEN LOI unaccountably.

    About 31′, which puts me way off the pace for Heat 2.

    Thanks pip and setter.

  9. 55 minutes, so definitely not a contender. I’m glad I was at The George and not in the room. I didn’t parse MAKE MINCEMEAT OF either, nor PORCUPINE fully. I knew PIETA from the magnificent Michelangelo sculptures among others, but not the Mondrian connection. PORTHOS was only known as a musketeer. I saw COD MILLICENT straightaway, and immediately was singing the theme tune to TW3. I had a Ford Popular 100E as my first car and it had a crank handle. Very useful it was too. Houdini would have untied the rope and escaped from the barrel in the time taken to read the clue. I found this very tricky. To get a faster time would have required not stopping to parse clues like TRATTORIA, which goes against the grain. Thank you setter and Pip.
  10. Excellent crossword, top notch.
    COD the delightful Milli-cent.
    Pip I think 8dn is a quadruple definition
  12. Pip – I had the OUDINI part as IN-I-DUO (popular-current- double act) all “set up”.
    DavidB
    1. Goodness, I see you’re right, how odd that porcupines and hedgehogs are not related at all. Something I’ve learnt today.
  14. I didn’t realise until reading the comments that this was a Finals puzzle, but it certainly belonged in that sort of company. Chewy (in a good way), and even when I couldn’t see an answer, I was reasonably sure it would turn out to be because I wasn’t looking at the clue the right way, rather than it being a word I simply didn’t know. That being the case, everything fell neatly into place (eventually).
  15. Why ‘possibly’ in the Mondrian clue? a is almost his last, whether Mondrian or Mondriaan. I shouldn’t have thought it was necessary to say ‘possibly’ to avoid the chance that the solver would choose the a.
    1. I believe it’s Piet = “Mondrian, possibly”, which is an appropriate use to avoid definition by example.
  16. Everything else straightforward. Hovered for ages over NOOKY. Knew it was prob right, but couldn’t bring myself to believe setter would include it. I’m apparently becoming a Carry On prude in my old age.
  17. 5m 43s… but this is the second time. I can’t remember what I did on the day but it was a few minutes more than that.

    I’m amazed by how little I remember of this – MAKE MINCEMEAT OF stuck with me, because I couldn’t figure out how it worked on the day, similarly YACHTER and (to a lesser extent) FRAPPE. A lot of them didn’t ring a bell at all, but presumably they were hovering somewhere in the subconscious.

    SQUIRREL was my LOI, as I think it was on the day.

  18. ….this was puzzle 2 in the heat, and I found it the trickiest of the three. No time obviously, but I suspect it was around 17-18 minutes.

    FOI CINCH which the puzzle wasn’t.
    LOI SQUIRREL which I alpha-trawled.
    COD RERUN which was superb !

    1. Ah, if it was puzzle 2 then it took me a lot longer than I said before: around 20m I think. In a funny way this makes me feel better: my subconscious mind at least is still capable of retaining things.
  19. Very slow and 4 or 5 unparsed but at least I made it in the end. I took ages to see AMISH (yes, reminders of “Witness” for me too) and SQUIRREL. I don’t like the word YACHTER much either, but my preference, “yachtie”, is arguably no better.

    My favourite was MAKE MINCEMEAT OF, which I parsed as a quadruple def.

    1. Quadruple def seems like a fine reading! Lovely clue now that I understand what I didn’t quite understand.
  20. This took me 21.58 at home in my dressing-gown so goodness knows how long it would have taken me at the champs. It was so entertaining I didn’t notice it was taking me longer than usual although my cuppa was cold before I finished.

    EMOLUMENT comes up with some regularity in the US news because it’s pretty obvious that the current occupant of the White House is in flagrant violation of that clause in the constitution. I last read the 3 Musketeers in my teens but I did just remember that when they weren’t drinking or wenching they were supposed to be guarding the French royals. The AMISH make the most wonderful quilts so the bedcover in 21a came readily to mind. So this was one of the Finals puzzles then (or one of the ones in heat 2) – it would have been nice to know but thank you to several here for confirming.

    Edited at 2020-01-29 12:32 pm (UTC)

  21. This was not the kind of puzzle to attempt with a headache and on not enough sleep. Consequently, I paused at the end of my first hour with a half-dozen still to get, and finished just now with a ten-minute burst at lunchtime. Very enjoyable, though, and sometimes it’s nice to be faced with a stiff challenge.

    FOI 2d NOOKY, LOI 15d PORCUPINE (not the first rodent that springs to mind!) DNK 9a EMOLUMENT. WOD 12a FACTOTUM, COD 26a MILLICENT, which I saw surprisingly quickly.

  22. 27:34, which made me glad I was in heat 1 on the day. LOI PIETA, completely unparsed. I parsed 8d as a quadruple. I liked CINCH, NOOKY, FRAPPE and PLOD.
  23. I got about half way through this before realising I’d “solved” it before. On the day, with my head being in less than perfect condition, both physically and mentally, I made a hash of the SE corner, going for FRIDGE at 22 (thinking the monk could be a FRI and his boss a Venetian D{o}GE) which made 23 impossible (for the record in desperation I bunged in DUENA, I think.
  24. I’m guessing this was from the second heat as I didn’t recognise it. A good workout and was pleased with my time. As with yesterday, the SW corner held me up most (after a rather slow start – I’d have been panicking on the day!) but once I figured out 1d it all fell in line pretty quickly. Not as quickly as Magoo, mind…
  25. When I was a kid I utterly loathed coconut. My mother used to keep a packet of ‘Whitworth’s Desiccated (sicc) Coconut’ for baking. I always thought it was a spelling mistake, but never wrote to inform them, as I was not a regular partaker. Desickated perhaps!? I did like the coconut from fairgrounds, but not Bounty bars even.
    Now I love coconut, but have not seen this particular variety for years.
  26. I found this tough, but worked my way through in 43:07, but with a biffed PORCHES at 18d, so it was all to no avail. Lots to like in this puzzle, particularly AMISH and SQUIRREL. I didn’t know that a PORCUPINE was a rodent. Thanks setter and Pip.
  27. Around 20-25 minutes to get through, ending with FRAPPE, which I only know as a frosty drink, not as meaning ‘chilled’. And I biffed both HOUDINI and the MINCEMEAT clue, and never fully parsed either. Regards.
  28. Well, I managed to complete this in a reasonably quick time, but I am very glad that I was not taking part in the competition.
    Unlike most other solvers, it seems, I did not enjoy the puzzle, and I found some of the parsing unfathomable, especially 8d.
    I suspect this is the work of one of the setters whose puzzles generally annoy rather than entertain me. I support the policy of The Times in maintaining the anonymity of setters when the puzzles appear, but I wish that they would identify them when the solutions are published so that I could tell whether my guesses as to their identities are correct.
  29. Sorry, I did not notice that I had been logged out: the previous comment was mine, and I do not seek anonymity for myself.
  30. Well, I did finish, which I found surprising enough, but it took me 1 hour 8 minutes (but glad to have finished at all). Very many obscure clues (PORTHOS, SQUIRREL, NOOKY (which I wouldn’t have expected in the Times!)) which were very satisfying to solve. If this was a contest puzzle, then I know why I needn’t be tempted to enter.
  31. Only 3 on the first run through but the RERUN yielded more TREASUREd.

    Fairly plain sailing after that though in my haste to submit on my phone, i whacked the ‘submit without leaderboard’ button by mistake.

    1. Let me clarify. Though I took part in Heat 2, I don’t recall any of this – perhaps this is the grid on which I managed to get only 3 before time up?
  32. I was pleased to finish this tricky puzzle, or so I thought, in a whisker under 34 and a half minutes. But alas on submitting I was hit with a pink square showing a stupid typo in 4dn. I’ll chalk it up as a moral (by which I mean not an actual) victory. Bah! The wordiness of some clues was a bit off-putting to begin with and I went through quite a few before getting a foothold but once I did I settled into a groove and enjoyed the solve with lots of clever stuff to be worked out. I went to a Mondrian exhibition not so long ago. Say what you like about him, he never coloured outside the lines.
  33. Chaff is released by aircraft to confuse radar. Our radar was certainly affected by this offering. Never really on the wavelength. Held up in the NE , not willing to put ‘yachter’ in ( not believing it a real word) until it had to be from the crossers. We knew the puzzle would be no cinch after ‘nooky’ and ‘stymie’ early on.
    All done in 53mins. Is there a C-grade mixed doubles category in the championship?

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