Times 27592 – Putin on the 15

Author   glhPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Time taken: 10:32. A deliberate solve – very few fell into place immediately, but I wasn’t really slowed down as I solved, it was just a little bit of thinking was required to piece together all the answers. This puzzle fits into my favorite type where the wordplay is always clear, and a few of the answers I could piece together from the wordplay, including two new terms.

I’m usually one of the first to complete the crossword online (it appears at 7pm in my time zone), and at the time of completing this I see that I’m second on the timer (and Verlaine has halved my time, so maybe this is easier than I made it out to be) but half of the first eight submissions have at least one error. Wonder if there is a trap here somewhere.

Away we go…

Across
1 Musical sergeant returning cap for sprinkler (6,3)
PEPPER POT – Sergeant PEPPER, then TOP(cap) reversed, for something that sprinkles
6 Dumbo: Disney’s brainchild initially bringing in little? (5)
DWEEB – First letters of Disney’s Brainchild containing WEE(little)
9 Phlegmatic type’s standing briefly recognised around India (5)
STOIC – STOCK(standing) missing the last letter around I(India)
10 Plant in holiday venue — ring-shaped, some say (9)
CAMPANULA – this was one I got from wordplay entirely – CAMP(holiday venue), then sounds like ANNULAR(ring-shaped)
11 Distance of seafood outlet to west of loch (15)
STANDOFFISHNESS – the seafood outlet is a STAND OF FISH, then NESS(loch). I thought this rang a bell, I blogged the same wordplay last April in Times 27328
13 Infantile learner withdrawn from cool course (8)
CHILDISH – remove an L(learner) from CHILL(cool), then DISH(course)
14 Part of shopfront, as cased by female spies? (6)
FASCIA – AS inside F(female), CIA(spies)
16 Celebrity from London won Eritreans over (6)
RENOWN – hidden reversed in londoN WON ERitreans
18 Church helper’s fateful day: months in hospital (8)
SIDESMAN – got this one from wordplay alone – IDES(fateful day), M(months) inside SAN(hospital)
21 War zone aid, one with companion picking up litter? (9-6)
STRETCHER-BEARER – cryptic definition
23 Italian beggars left Arizona oddly, touring Zaire’s capital (9)
LAZZARONI – L, then an anagram of ARIZONA surrounding the first letter in Zaire
25 German artist’s way with English sailors (5)
ERNST – ST(way) with E(english), RN(sailors)
26 Slightly burn grouse primarily served during function (5)
SINGE – first letter of Grouse inside SINE(function)
27 Old journalist’s fixed stare always taking in Times (9)
GAZETTEER – GAZE(fixed stare), EER(ever) containing T,T(times)

Down
1 Poles originally transported in river vessel (5)
POSTS – first lettr of Transported in the river PO and SS(vessel)
2 Struggling in art, be poor apprentice (11)
PROBATIONER – anagram of IN,ART,BE,POOR
3 Press chief penning note about poem in cipher (7)
ENCODED – ED(press chief) containing N(note), C(about), ODE(poem)
4 Non-belligerent condition is enshrined in treaty (8)
PACIFIST – IF(condition) and IS inside PACT(treaty)
5 Initiation of this Italian test upset singer (6)
TOMTIT – first letter of This, IT(Italian), MOT(vehicle test), all reversed
6 Ready overseas once to include companion in play (7)
DRACHMA – CH(companion) inside DRAMA(play)
7 Flightless bird originally eliciting letter from abroad (3)
EMU – first letter of Etching, then MU(letter from abroad)
8 Petty officer stole this empty wagon (9)
BOATSWAIN – BOA(stole), then the outer letters in ThiS, WAIN(wagon)
12 Burden in French Canada at first, cooking cream bun (11)
ENCUMBRANCE – EN(in, in French), then the first letter in Canada, then an anagram of CREAM,BUN
13 Future monarch possibly has lyrics revised (9)
CHRYSALIS – anagram of HAS,LYRICS – a butterfly pupa
15 Drinking-place at hotel outside one French resort (8)
BIARRITZ – BAR(drinking place) and the RITZ hotel surrounding I(one)
17 Measure of power and income a non-drinker accepted (7)
WATTAGE – WAGE(income) containing A, TT(non-drinker)
19 Possibly copper’s sphere of operation (7)
ELEMENT – double definition
20 Whip restraining leader of riotous mob (6)
THRONG – THONG(whip) surrounding the first letter of Riotous
22 It goes round and round and up and down (5)
ROTOR – palindrome
24 Extreme character converting daughter to new form of Buddhism (3)
ZEN – ZED(last letter of the alphabet) with D(daughter) changed to N(new)

47 comments on “Times 27592 – Putin on the 15”

  1. Typed in LAZZAROTI, failing to check the anagrist; it looked OK at the time. DNK CAMPANULA or SIDESMAN and like George relied on the wordplay. Biffed STANDOFFISHNESS. George, you’ve got a typo at CHILDISH: it’s CHILL (cool).
  2. Bang on the wavelength for this, coming in just outside Heardy and at only 2 and a bit Verlaines. Most unusual.

    The Italian thing slotted in and the plant I had heard of because, I think, of its bell-shaped flowers.

    That’s enough crowing, but these achievements are rare enough and must be celebrated, you know.

  3. This was a breeze and I was done in just 16 minutes, less than 1K for a change.

    Knew ’em all except LAZZARONI at 23ac my WOD. (goes with I ZINGARI) Didn’t he play right full back for Cagliari in the fifties?

    FOI 1ac PEPPER POT

    LOI 1dn POSTS

    COD 11ac STANDOFFISHNESS

    One for the QC-ers

    Edited at 2020-02-20 04:48 am (UTC)

  4. Quite easy, and got my 50-50 guess correct. Written acrossways chrisalys looks wrong, downwards in the grid not so much. Could that be the heffalump trap?
    Same unknowns, and slight puzzlement at what sort of riverboat a poss might be. No fewer than 7 initial indicators – seemed a lot during the solve. Liked boatswain, if only because it’s rare to see it spelled out.
  5. There were quite a few unknown bits and pieces here, but as George has said, aided by clear wordplay it was perfectly possible to come up with the correct answers despite some gaps in one’s knowledge. My main unknowns were CAMPANULA (forgotten actually, as I note it has caught me out before), LAZZARONI, and GAZETTEER as a journalist.

    I thought for a while there was more to STRETCHER-BEARER than a cryptic definition, involving CH clued by ‘companion’. Solving that one was down to ‘stretcher’ as ‘litter’ having come up within the past couple of weeks.

    Edited at 2020-02-20 05:31 am (UTC)

  6. Had never heard of SIDESMAN; the wordplay was clear, but I still checked to see if it was a word. Guess I must have seen LAZZARONI somewhere before. I worked this slowly but steadily while watching the Democratic debate but ran out of steam at the very end and cheated slightly to fill in CAMPANULA.

    I may have first become aware of CHRYSALIS as Jethro Tull’s record label.

    Edited at 2020-02-20 06:58 am (UTC)

  7. 21 minutes, with LOI TOMTIT. I am SIDESMAN every third Sunday in the month, so that was a write-in. We’re now officially called Stewards in our Church to reflect gender neutrality. DWEEB, a word I’ve only learnt this last few years, still jars on my ears. By the time I attempted LAZZARONI, there was really only one way the letters could go. We have some bluebells at the bottom of the garden, so CAMPANULA was solved readily enough with a couple of crossers. There seem to have been several stretchers borne recently. COD to STANDOFFISHNESS for its 15 letters, with an honourable mention to GAZETTEER. Nice puzzle. Thank you George and setter.
    1. Remember to smile and say hello when you give out the hymn books and eventually you will become Churchwarden, or if really unlucky Treasurer.
  8. 15 and a bit minutes, so either I have suddenly become brilliant or this was on the easy side. I agree with George that we were helped by some very precise cluing, including that “some say” in the CAMPANULA clue to placate those who believe there’s an R in annula.
    After a while I got used to looking for the “first letter of” device, and was only really slowed down by looking for the wordplay element in STRETCHER-BEARER. A fair-enough CD.
  9. 36 minutes of fun for me – bang on my 6V target, and would have been quicker but for the SE corner, which was held up for a time by the fictional but plausible German artist STERN. As others have said, some new vocabulary but fairly clued.

    There are numerous double letters in this, and also in today’s Concise. A coincidence or something Nina-ish going on that’s beyond my powers of deduction?

  10. I had all but two done in less than 10 mins. Took the same amount of time to find TOMTIT and CAMPANULA. I had CRETANULA for a while. Some of us here visited the holiday island of Crete quite recently. 18:33 but One error. I had Lizzaroni.

    COD: STANDOFFISHNESS. Some one should open such a seafood outlet by Loch Ness. Maybe someone has?

    1. Exactly the same experience. Would have been comfortably under ten minutes, otherwise. Could see ANULA and TIT, and took a while to come up with MOT for test, which led to CAMP.

      I don’t do plants, unless it’s something like daisy.

  11. Never really felt this one to be simpatico, possibly because of the unknown Italian word, which had to be carefully worked out (and in fairness, probably couldn’t be anything else). Also an obscure plant (or is it, this is the point, I have no idea when it comes to plants) and began by thinking it was going to be COSTA-something. I enjoyed the STAND OF FISH, though; if it’s a chestnut, it’s not one that’s become so with me.

    (On further checking, I now find I’ve already encountered CAMPANULA and, indeed, added it to a list with the title “Sodding Plants”, so I suppose any problems today lie squarely on this side of the keyboard).

  12. …are all artists called STERN, which fits the clue, but none of them are German. I did not know this, which held me up for a while. STANDOFFISHNESS amusing, if a bit easy.

    Had to guess LAZZARONI, another foreign word clued as an anagram. Liked DWEEB.

    13’32” thanks george and setter.

    1. You missed out Max! I, too, put in STERN based on Max Stern, a German painter and gallery owner who was born in 1872. Jeffrey
  13. I zoomed through this in 20:43 with only LAZZARONI unknown, but by the time I looked at it I had all the crossers and there was only one way to fit the rest in. PD moment when I realised who the Sgt was at 1a. A very enjoyable puzzle. Thanks setter and George.
  14. No real hold-ups but for some reason I couldn’t see DWEEB until I had the checking letters (Bambi kept intruding). PEPPER POT reminded me of a rather fine roof on a building in the Strand that I used to pass every day going to work on the number 9 bus. And then it recalled the era when every restaurant in NY used to deploy a waiter brandishing a giant pepper mill – I think it was an effort to look stylish. 14.34. P.S. Just noticed your heading George – nice one!

    Edited at 2020-02-20 11:15 am (UTC)

    1. There was a running gag in an episode of, I think, Hale and Pace, where an Italian waiter with a giant pepper mill kept popping up whenever there was food around asking the person eating if they wanted black pepper. I think that included a prisoner in a dungeon catching a cockroach.
      1. No time to post a link but if you search “Black Pepper Man Medley- Hale and Pace” on Youtube it comes up.
  15. 11:25 but a careless Lizzaroni (so Kevin isn’t the only one who failed to check the anagrist (more couldn’t be arsed in my case). I pronounce the plant “camper nooler” but that didn’t stop me solving the clue.
  17. An easy one today with a reasonable amount of biffing, 5m 47s here.

    LAZZARONI was unknown to me but the checkers made it very gettable – my LOI was another foreign word with a helping of Z, BIARRITZ.

    I would have put DWEEB down as the opposite of a dumbo – i.e. a nerd, or what in my schooldays was known as a ‘boff’. Still, Chambers backs up that it can be a fool or a nerd.

  18. Being a little dopey, could someone explain the STRETCHER-BEARER wordplay? I biffed it from checkers.
    1. There is none it is a cryptic definition. A sentence that sounds like it means something else but as a whole is a definiton of the answer. They are my least favorute type of clue.
  19. LOI Tomtit. Quite a few zeds in there. Put off on the pepper pot at first by trying to think of that police sergeant in West Side Story – McClowsky? Then it clicked.
  20. Easy enough though had to guess CAMPANULA – only vague knowledge of flowers.

    Not heard DWEEB used for dumbo before. In my teenagers’ world, this is more for socially awkward weeds.

  21. Somewhere in the range of my record time, so must have been fairly easy. DWEEB was my first in, and last was POSTS where I had difficulty lifting and separating. Quite liked the ‘future monarch’ with the letters for Charles mostly in there which had me thinking a moment – CHARLSISY maybe? It’s always nice to come here and discover all the cryptics for the words I biffed – today’s were STANDOFFISHNESS and TOMTIT
  22. Similar progress to yesterday in as much it was the down clues which opened the door. LOI was posts and my favourite clues were 11 across and lazzaroni, mainly because I ‘d never heard the word before. Dweeb could have been troublesome but remembered it from a puzzle some months ago. Finished in 14.58.
  23. ….that this was really easy, even though my time suggests that it was. That’s because I needed George to parse STOIC, and I’d NHO LAZZARONI.

    FOI DWEEB
    LOI POSTS
    COD CHRYSALIS
    TIME 7:26

  25. I must have been on the wavelength this morning. 20 minutes is a good time for me. No problem with CAMPANULA except in my small back garden which is infested with the stuff – on the ground and up the walls. It’s a weed with a gorgeous blue flower. Unfortunately, it chokes everything round it. We have invented the word DECAMPANULATE to describe the process of trying to get rid of it! Ann
  26. A piece of cake, done in 15 minutes with tea and a piece of cake. DK the Napoli beggars but clear from WP. MER at DWEEB meaning dumbo. But Chambers is always right, even when it’s wrong. CoD Sgt Pepper.
  27. 8:23. No real problems today: I even knew the plant! MER at the definition of DWEEB, a bit of hesitation over LAZZARONI (which rang a vague campanula) but my only out-and-out unknown was SIDESMAN.
  28. Forty minutes of steady solving, biffed Standoffishness and Childish but otherwise all parsed. The German artist Stern held things up a bit, until I realised it was our old friend Max!

    No problem with campanula – the spreading one can go a bit mad but I love Canterbury bells – a real cottage garden flower.

    FOI Pepper pot
    LOI Tomtit
    COD Chrysalis

    Favourite London bus – the number 9 of course – one of the nicest ways to see the sights without paying tourist rates 😊 Even better when it started at Hackney Wick!

  29. As a newbie this was hard and I ran out of patience/energy. Can someone tell me why BOA is stole please? Back to the quick one!
    1. ‘Feather boa’ is a type of scarf and ‘stole’ is another name for ‘scarf’ more generally.
  30. Managed this all bar two clues in under an hour before Portillo in Singapore. The last two, SIDESMAN and ELEMENT, emerged as he walked through the botanical gardens.
    Knew Sideman as a session musician but DNK SIDESMAN. A couple of other unknowns and unparsed, but all correct happily.
    David
  31. This is my first evening solve for ages. Perhaps the brisk walk home got some blood flowing, as I managed this in just under 30 minutes, which is, by my standards, pretty quick. It helps that I’d just used a pepper mill and am currently a PROBATIONER at my new employment.

    I didn’t know LAZZARONI, but for some reason thought of La Gazza Ladra, which seemed to help, though on reflection I’m not entirely sure why. I’d also like to add my raised eyebrow to those giving the DWEEB/dumbo equivalence a frown. A weakling, perhaps, a nerd, certainly, but not in my experience a dumbo, though the dictionaries tell a different story, of course…

    Anyway. FOI 1a PEPPER POT LOI 5d TOMTIT, once I finally figured out the test in question, COD 11a STANDOFFISHNESS, WOD CHRYSALIS.

  32. 18:08 not too hard but I found myself drifting a bit in the middle of this solve and needed a conscious effort to refocus and get things back on track. Not getting the long across at 11 until late on didn’t help. I had the same QM as others over the Def of dweeb.NHO sidesman. DNK lazzaroni. Took a while to crack the parsing of posts and a while to alight on the right sort of test in 5dn which I think may have been my LOI after 11ac.
  33. Picked this up after a late dinner, following some hard work with today’s QC. A steady solve, but eventually pulled stumps three short. Wrong end of the clue issues with 1d, where the initial P fooled me (easily done) into thinking it was the Poles originally bit, and 6ac/6d – both gettable on reflection, but not so easy at the end of a long day. I did enjoy the surface of 4d, Pacifist, along the way. Invariant

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