Times 27583 – A game for Captain Jinks?

Author   vinyl1Posted on Categories Daily Cryptic

Music: Mendelssohn, Scotch Symphony, Gibson/ScNO
Time: 29 minutes

I can’t really figure out if this was difficult or easy.   As I solved, I got the impression that some might find the clues difficult, but that I was on the wavelength.   I did get a little stuck after finishing the NW quadrant and having nearly nothing else, but once I got a few crossing letters I advanced very briskly – for me.   Even the UK-centric SE corner didn’t really slow me down, and I finished in a fairly decent time.   Experienced solvers will probably do fairly well.   I did biff a number of answers, and will have to figure out the cryptics as I go along.

Across
1 Posh females and others in pub that serves food (6,3)
BUFFET CAR – B(U FF ETC)AR, my FOI.
6 Reminder about university being complacent (5)
PROUD – PRO(U)D, my LOI.   ‘Complacent’ is not exactly ‘proud’, but close enough.
9 Sick bird sounded wrong (7)
ILLEGAL – Sounds like ‘ill eagle’, a bit of a chestnut.
10 With pride, she loses in brawling (7)
LIONESS – Anagram of LOSES IN.
11 Design on cent’s piece coined for particular occasion (5)
NONCE – hidden in [desig]N ON CE[nt], just biffed by me.
12 Where coals are not hot, mix with others (9)
INTEGRATE – IN T[h]E GRATE
13 Snake in alien surroundings — through water it sped (1-4)
E-BOAT – E(BOA)T.  I hope you didn’t biff U-boat.  Before John Culshaw produced the Solti Ring for Decca, he was in the RAF attempting to blast E-boats out of the water from a Swordfish.
14 Northern location where cool writer joins ship (9)
INVERNESS – IN VERNE SS.
17 Sweetheart given break to find mangetout (5,4)
SUGAR SNAP – SUGAR + SNAP.   I had forgotten what a mangetout is, and had to wait for some crossing letters.
18 Bones in bag next to top drawer? (5)
SACRA – SAC + RA, where our old friend the distinguished artist is rather obliquely clued.
19 Server misses one playing pool game (5,4)
WATER POLO – WA[i]TER + anagram of POOL.   I biffed, and did not even realize ‘pool’ was not part of the definition – which it easily could be.
22 Learner in military group not exactly bright (5)
UNLIT – UN(L)IT, a relief from the usual chestnut.
24 Maybe two for one in Bury (7)
INTEGER – INT(E.G.)ER.
25 Not keen on what some doctors do in delivery method (3-4)
OFF-SPIN – OFF + SPIN, what spin doctors do.  I just knew this would be a cricket clue, but I still needed a few checkers.  We’ll see how the UK solvers do with the baseball clues.
26 Eponymous heroine saves island home for birds (5)
EYRIE – EYR(I)E.
27 Comic, Eagle, keeping one enlightened (5,4)
ERNIE WISE – ERN(I)E + WISE.   After a lttle experience, I am wise to Mr Wise, and can just about biff him.
Down
1 Black knight pens song for Scottish child (5)
BAIRN – B(AIR)N.
2 Smoke keeps breathing organ working in Chinese system (5,4)
FALUN GONG – FA(LUNG ON)G.   If you thought ‘smoke’ was ‘fog’, you lose. 
3 Moth circles round American helicopter (9)
EGGBEATER – EGG(BEAT)ER – I think.   I couldn’t make heads or tails of the cryptic, and just biffed the obvious answer.   However, upon researching the matter, I find that ‘egger’ or ‘eggar’ is a type of moth.   That leaves the explanation of the ‘beat’ element, which I will have to offer up for comments.  For the correct explanation, see the very first comment.
4 In this way, one’s sure to have an impact (9,6)
COLLISION COURSE – A somewhat jocular cryptic definition, I believe.
5 Might it be that sister? Poor nun in trouble! (8,7)
RELATIVE PRONOUN – RELATIVE + anagram of POOR NUN.   The DBE is clearly indicated by the question mark.
6 Verifying which six must leave tip? (5)
PRONG – PRO[vi]NG.
7 Piano used in old time musical presentation (5)
OPERA – O(P)ERA.
8 Tummy trouble in dreadful days without drink (9)
DYSPEPSIA – DYS(PEPSI)A, when the enclosing letters are an anagram of DAYS.
13 Former wife involved in dancing this reel (9)
ERSTWHILE – Anagram of W + THIS REEL.
15 Trouble keeping English quiet in governmental sort-out (9)
RESHUFFLE – R(E SH)UFFLE.   Maybe this should lead to a New Deal!
16 Oil producers lie and cut pay anyhow (9)
EUCALYPTI – anagram of LIE and CUT PAY.
20 Cheap booze, no good, upset teacher (5)
TUTOR – ROT[g]UT upside-down.
21 Rascal having non-British accent (5)
ROGUE – [b]ROGUE.
23 Under emotional pressure in past? (5)
TENSE – double definition, where the DBE of the literal is again indicated by a question mark.

43 comments on “Times 27583 – A game for Captain Jinks?”

  1. First I had NONCE, then BAIRN and then BUFFET CAR, and with that C I was able to get COLLISION COURSE. The whoe left was filled before I had anything on the right, but that’s just because I didn’t get stuck too long on anything. FOI on the right was DYSPEPSIA, and the rest followed easily enough, though I felt I should have gotten RELATIVE PRONOUN sooner.

    Edited at 2020-02-10 04:32 am (UTC)

  2. BEAT is “round.” A cop walks his beat, does his rounds…

    Edited at 2020-02-10 04:16 am (UTC)

  3. Eric Morecambe’s Mike Pence -short, fat, hairy legs – he’s my WOD at 27ac.

    FOI 1dn BAIRN

    LOI 3dn EGGBEATER – a BEAT is a round as per – policemen on the beat methink

    COD ac BUFFET CAR

    3dn FALLON GONG!! you’ll get us all in trouble! The ‘F’ word hereabouts

    Time 35 minutes.

    Edited at 2020-02-10 06:07 am (UTC)

  4. I wasted too much time thinking BAR was the 2d word of 1ac, trying to get EX into 13d, and trying to think of a sweetheart that wasn’t HONEY. DNK E-BOAT, but U was a non-starter. DNK SPIN-OFF, of course. After seeing that ERNIE WISE would work, I finally corrected the S of hastily biffed 16d to an I. I biffed EGGBEATER from the def; looking up EGGER afterwards, I found it wasn’t in ODE (only eggar), but my English-Japanese dictionary cross-refers it. COD to INTEGRATE.
  5. 45 minutes. Several unheard-ofs today including FALUNG GONG, E BOAT (the E stands for nothing more exotic than ‘enemy’ apparently), NONCE (I knew only its less savoury meaning).

    Didn’t recognise the definition of PROUD, nor SUGAR SNAP without the word ‘pea’ attached.

    Like others, I biffed EGGBEATER and didn’t bother myself too much about the parsing once I realised it wasn’t going to come easily.

    TUTOR, EYRIE and ERSTWHILE were my last ones in.

  6. This felt quite un-Mondayish to me, though the SNITCH rates it at the easier end of the scale. ERSTWHILE was one of my last to fall as I was convinced that the “former wife” meant it was going to start in EX. My LOI was EGGBEATER which I only got from definition and I think I’d have struggled with if i hadn’t seen it in a previous puzzle, sometime last year I think.

    COD INTEGRATE. I thought “Where coals are not hot” was excellent.

  7. Mendelssohn, Scotch Symphony, ??

    I know his Symph No. 3 is called the Scottish (sic) but which one is his Scotch?

  8. Like Kevin, I spent a while trying to justify a BUFFET BAR (I was also trying to figure out where the rest of “et al” had gone…) but got there in the end. It was lucky I’d vaguely heard of FALUN GONG, as “fog” was my first thought for smoke, too…

    All done without errors in 28 minutes, though, so not much trouble elsewhere, it seems. FOI 1d BAIRN LOI 27a ERNIE WISE after I finally found my COLLISION COURSE. WOD ERSTWHILE.

  9. 53m with the last ten minutes flailing hopelessly at the two long downs which made no sense at all due to entering SUGAR PEAS for mange tout, which I think is plural as well as singular. I found this tough, mainly due to falling for the setter’s traps in joining the wrong words together (two for one, former wife, old time musical etc). Redoubling my resolve to read each clue as a succession of single words as a result. Every day in every way… the brilliant Herbert Lom as Inspector Dreyfus inevitably comes to mind!

    Thanks setter and Vinyl for the extra large sized excellent blog.

    Edited at 2020-02-10 08:15 am (UTC)

  10. 12:38. I failed to parse EGGBEATER and didn’t know FALUN GONG, but otherwise no real difficulties. I was glad I didn’t fall for biffing GASTRO PUB for 1A. Lots of nice clues – I liked INTEGRATE, WATER POLO, OFF SPIN and, of course, INTEGER. Thanks V and setter.
  11. 32 minutes, with LOI EGG BEATER in with a shrug. If I’d known EGGER I might have seen BEAT, but seeing I didn’t, I didn’t. I suppose a moth does lay eggs. And NONCE went in on the hidden, having vaguely heard of FALUN GONG. I didn’t think COLLISION COURSE quite worked at the surface level, because it’s something you’re on rather than in. Seeing mention of Little Ern always brings me sunshine. COD to RELATIVE PRONOUN. I’m not sure you can expect parity between cricket and baseball clues in a British newspaper, V, but you’re quite right, I’d be useless at the latter. Pleasant enough start to the day. Thank you V and setter.
  12. 10:01. No real problems today, although I had no idea what was going on with EGGBEATER so I’m glad I knew the word (from past crosswords of course).
    I did write in U-BOAT (‘ut’ means something or other in Latin, right, sounds a bit like ‘out’, could mean ‘alien’ in some sense…) but was uneasy about it – if only because of the very obvious alternative for ‘alien’ – so reconsidered quite quickly.
    I hadn’t forgotten what a mangetout is, and it’s not the same as a SUGAR SNAP. However it seems I have to let the setter off and write a stiffly-worded letter to the editors of the ODE.

    Edited at 2020-02-10 09:01 am (UTC)

  13. A very good time for me. Some answers went in with the very first word I thought of e.g. PROUD and INVERNESS.

    Took a while to figure out what type of PRONOUN it was – never was too hot on grammatical terms.

    EGGBEATER – biffed, never heard of the moth and BEAT = round didn’t occur to me.

  15. Slowish start but managed to get going with the LIONESS. Which also suggested PROUD in that corner although it seemed a bit odd. I don’t know my FALUN GONG from my feng shui but both sound familiar. That word for smoke is definitely not used in polite circles around here. Nice puzzle. 15.19
  16. Agree that ‘mangetout’ is not a great clue for ‘sugar snap’ (different types of pea), and ‘complacent’ is a big stretch for ‘proud’. But no real difficulties here.
  17. Somewhat baffled at the end by my EAGLESTAR, which I presumed must be some kind of American helicopter, despite no parsing being apparent. No, Google says it’s just an insurance company. Took about 10 mins on my time to sort that one out… Thanks for the parsing of FALUN GONG, which went in biffed.
  18. Opted for the first of these, on the grounds that it was the closest to the clue.

    A puzzle that was a lot easier than I made it, entering BUFFET BAR instead of CAR, despite parsing it beforehand. Same with 16d, for some unknown reason entering a final A instead of an I. Going by the scores of some of the regulars, I wasted five or six minutes on this.

    Agree with the comments on ‘sugar snap’ and ‘complacent’. Also, it’s not ideal to have INTEGRATE and INTEGER in the same puzzle.

  19. 17’52”, with at least two minutes on EGGBEATER with all the checkers, eventually went in unparsed. We’d already had two eagles (EYRIE and ILLEGAL) so I also nearly went for EAGLESTAR.

    It has passed me by that mangetout and SUGAR SNAP are different, so no problem there.

    Another brand name, how long before the crossword is sponsored by Megaburger-Disney Corp?

    England’s experienced spinners did well yesterday, do we have any South African contributors?

    Thanks vinyl and setter.

  21. 20 min. It helped getting the two long downs early. I wondered about Eaglestar for a moment and spent longer fuming at them. I sued them once over an insurance claim, and won, for peanuts, having risked much more if I lost – a typical case of a massive firm trying to stamp on the under-resourced citizen. Failed to parse the eggbeater. jk
  22. Not the easiest Monday I can recall. Eventually finished in 20.34 slavering over a toastie in M and S. Struggled a long time over eggbeater but eventually remembered seeing this definition of a helicopter in a puzzle a few months ago. LOI was prong.

    COD integrate but only because I could imagine Barry Cryer using this as a new definition to an existing word on Sorry I haven’t a Clue. Where a Yorkshireman keeps his coals…

  23. A pleasant Monday-ish solve from my POV, pausing briefly to remember the American helicopter from previous puzzles, and check that I was satisfied with my spelling of the Chinese group, and had chosen the right smoke from the possibilities.
    1. I also thought FALUN GONG was some sort of group, but turns out it’s a form of exercise. I think it must sound like the name of a group, though I can’t think which one.
      1. Good point. I suspect I must have heard it (presumably as a result of the government trying to suppress it) and simply thought it sounds right as a name for people who practice the system, rather than inquiring more deeply into what the words mean…
  24. 11:38.

    Like others I couldn’t see how eggbeater worked and didn’t know the Chinese thing.

    SACRA was my LOI once I’d twigged that top drawer was more than just A and was therefore able to eliminate the unknown (and indeed non-existent*) sacka.

    *No slight intended to the splendid people who are members of either (or both) of the Slovenská Asociácia Cestovných Kancelárií a Cestovných Agentúr (Slovak Association of Travel Agents) or the The Staffordshire and Cheshire Korfball Association.

  25. But a spelling mistake – Dispepsia!! Aargh. Festina lente!! Otherwise very enjoyable, with a good six or seven minutes wasted on the last pair – eggbeater and nonce. Do the Americans whisk their eggs with a helicopter – or make short journeys by air in an eggbeater? I presume the latter.
  26. I thought this was at a perfect level for those of us making the step up to the 15×15, but then I did benefit from Eggbeater (unparsed) and Sugar Snap being write-ins. Also, a small cheat along the way, in that not knowing the Chinese discipline, I Googled FOlun Gong and so avoided that mistake. Struggled with the parsing of Integer and Off Spin (tied myself in knots with that one) and DNK Nonce, but everything else was fine. Invariant
  27. Got there in 35 minutes, but with a tyop (“ppong” at 6d). I enjoyed the whole thing and, whilst there was no one CoD for me, several made me tip my metaphorical cap to the setter. NONCE sprang to mind because of it’s role in the blockchain calculations for Bitcoin and the like (although I’ve never completely got my head around that stuff).
  28. Like most Mondays , I had a go at this. When I came here with several unsolved I had: BUFFET BAR, FULUN GONG, SUGAR PEAS and EERIE. Could this be a clean sweep of all the errors above – and more?
    David
  29. .. sort of. I did exactly the same as Invariant – when I typed in Folun gong, Google kindly offered me the alternative (correct) spelling. Job done!

    Mostly I got on ok with this. Eggbeater took ages, but I suddenly remembered the type of moth, although I thought they were eggars. Then I wondered if I was getting confused by the 60/70s actress, Samantha of that ilk, but egger for the moth does seem a rare spelling.

    It’s not just Americans who sigh when cricket terminology appears – so do (some) English women. So, yes, baseball would be even tougher. But – you know – as has been said many times before, this is the Times of London.

    Nonce was the one that did for me. It could only be that but I didn’t enter it as I only know the unpleasant meaning and didn’t understand either the clue or the answer. I’ve just looked it up and understand it better now. I won’t be using it though.

    I liked Inverness, Off-spin (even though it’s cricket), Eyrie and Ernie Wise. It makes a nice change to see him here instead of the wonderful Eric.

    FOI I forgot to mark which one it was – it might have been Lioness!
    COD Integrate
    DNF in about 50 minutes

    1. I’ve never heard of this “unpleasant meaning” of NONCE that has been mentioned here. Just lucky, I guess. And now I’ll try to find out what that’s all about.
  30. Somehow – I entered “Dispepsis” which meant that I could not get the bones at 18a. Otherwise OK but I’m a DNF today.
    Time for another cup of tea, Ern.
  31. 15:42 I ran through this rather comfortably in cruise control, brain switched off. I’d heard of Falun Gong and remembered the US chopper from a previous puzzle. I don’t think I’d heard of e-boat before but it wasn’t a great leap. No other unknowns to trip me up or give me pause for thought. A very pleasant solve.
  32. One would hope that Americans, or anyone from across the seas, would be delighted to find British references in a British puzzle (if not THE British puzzle).

    It would be desperately sad if some directive were handed down to ‘internationalise’ our crossword as far as I am concerned, and I suspect foreign folk would not be best pleased either. I doubt they’d bother under such circumstances.

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