Times 27,611: Roll Over Rawlplugs, We’ve Got Wealthier Sponsors Now

Author   VerlainePosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Much of the wordplay in this was just brilliant, I thought, and every surface reading a belter. MER at product placements for both Apple and Nintendo but my house is full of their tech so it would be hypocritical to make a fuss.

I’m very glad that we are moving out of the part of the calendar dominated by Championship puzzles into one where we can get completely new crosswords as good as these. In a week that saw the cancellation of the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament cancelled due to COVID-19 (alright, virus, you just made this personal) getting such a splendid grid to blog was some much-needed cheer.

8 minutes on my clock, so medium-hard, but never a chore. But enough about me, I’ll let the quality of this one speak for itself. Thanks so much setter!

ACROSS
1 Rail is straddled by kid (8)
BANISTER – IS “straddled” by BANTER [kid (as in “kid around”)

9 Notice books, bagging present that’s tacky (8)
ADHERENT – AD N.T. [notice | (Biblical) books] “bagging” HERE [present]. This particular word clued in this particular way is starting to seem rather familiar, and as such, it was my FOI.

10 Pickle lids turned the wrong way (4)
SPOT – reversed TOPS

11 Newly share out wine getting one’s praise (12)
REDISTRIBUTE – RED [wine] getting I’S TRIBUTE

13 Standard sports news being shown (6)
PENNON – P.E. [sports] + N N [(two) news] + ON [being shown]. LOI

14 Clergyman‘s a boring Charlie? (8)
CHAPLAIN – A “boring” CHAPLIN. Took me an embarrassingly long time to realise how this worked, and that “boring” wasn’t actually cluing PLAIN…

15 Walk out, perhaps, then run forward (7)
STRIKER – STRIKE [walk out, perhaps] + R [run]. Forward as in a sportsball player: we had “back” cluing SWEEPER not so very long ago, didn’t we? Nice to complete the set.

16 Boater, say, welcoming some home (7)
HABITAT – HAT [boater, say] “welcoming” A BIT [some]

20 Spreading manure? It’s what some on farm do (8)
RUMINATE – (MANURE IT*)

22 Funny fellow fed on guava’s skin (6)
GAGMAN – G-MAN [fed(eral agent)] on GA. Very very nice deployment of “fed” here, well done setter.

23 Bold to participate in revolt, seizing power (12)
ENTERPRISING – ENTER RISING [to participate in | revolt], “seizing” P

25 A schoolkid’s problem covered by Isaac Newton (4)
ACNE – hidden in {isa}AC NE{wton}

26 See you at that party hosting stars (6-2)
TOODLE-OO – TOO DO [at that | party] “hosting” LEO [stars]. TOO for “at that” is another piece of really brilliant cluing.

27 Chic nurse no hugs console (8)
NINTENDO – IN TEND [chic | nurse] “hugged” by NO. I own a Nintendo Switch, and very nice it is too, as is this clue.

DOWN
2 Progenitors going up and down plain (8)
APPARENT – The two progenitors are PA and PARENT, one going up, one going down.

3 The writer’s after moving type of verb (12)
INTRANSITIVE – I’VE [the writer’s], after IN TRANSIT [moving]

4 Perform just right, spinning around in Hamlet? (3-5)
TAP-DANCE – reversed PAT [just right, “spinning”] + C [around] in DANE [Hamlet?]

5 Hastened to fire rifle (7)
RANSACK – RAN SACK [hastened | to fire]. Another word we see clued in exactly this way quite a lot.

6 That lady in the bath is a high-up leader (6)
SHERPA – HER [that lady] in SPA [the bath]. Leader as in guide, not politician.

7 List from the two of us, very informally (4)
MENU – or ME ‘N’ U, the two of us, *very* informally indeed. Quite brilliant!

8 IT system with two numbers, the second raised (8)
ETHERNET – ETHER is a number as in a thing that numbs, plus the cardinal number TEN, reversed.

12 The scandal of fees charged in this capital market? (12)
BILLINGSGATE – BILLINGS are fees charged, and make a scandal of it by appending -GATE, Watergate-wise. Billingsgate is a fish market in the capital of the UK. Yet another super clue!

15 Resort on rocks, one in Italy (8)
SORRENTO – (RESORT ON*) [“rocks”], and Sorrento, overlooking the Bay of Naples, is indeed a resort on rocks.

17 Old English walls cold in one church (8)
ANGLICAN – ANGLIAN [old English] “walls in” C

18 Maybe a mite cheeky, keeping a rumpus up (8)
ARACHNID – ARCH [cheeky] “keeping” A, plus reversed DIN [rumpus]

19 Vocabulary of large person who used to be revered? (7)
LEXICON – L + EX-ICON [person who used to be revered?] I’ve run out of ways to say how much I like all these clues…

21 Tech company needs time to make program (6)
APPLET – APPLE [tech company] needs T

24 Maybe saw money getting raised (4)
TOOL – reversed LOOT

61 comments on “Times 27,611: Roll Over Rawlplugs, We’ve Got Wealthier Sponsors Now”

  1. Only 57 minutes behind V’s solving time here, but that’s 57 minutes more enjoyment as far as I’m concerned. I was pleased to get through it without resorting to aids.

    Some people do actually use the term ME’N’U!

  2. I don’t know why I put in STRIDER when I was aware of the ‘strike’ meaning of ‘walk out’ and was even vaguely aware that STRIKER is a soccer or is it rugby? position. Very annoying. Also annoyed by the product placements. Still, as V says there were lots of good clues. But ‘fed’ is normally capitalized, although no doubt Chambers allows lower case.
    1. Oddly, over here “fed” has become a slang term for the police among “the youth”. The OED notes this usage as British and Australian, and the examples show that it may or may not come along with a capital letter. I wonder if we also use “G-man” for the same meaning, but I’m running out of time for dictionary browsing at the moment!

      Edited at 2020-03-13 07:58 am (UTC)

      1. I don’t think anyone in the UK says ‘G-man’. Collins has ‘fed’ without a capital letter. ODO has it capitalised in the definition but then one of the examples has it all lower-case.
  3. Struggled in the NW corner, and wasn’t quite sure how the wordplay worked for a few answers even when I’d finished. But I got there in the end. I wonder whether non-techy people know what Ethernet is? It is a word I use pretty much every day but even once it was obviously ending NET it still took me longer than it should have done to think of it. Of course, the setter fooled me and I was looking for another number like TEN not an anesthetic.
  4. I woke up half an hour early this morning and thought I’d take a chance on cramming a puzzle into the extra pre-commute time. Glad I did, because this was great fun, and also because I finished in a smidge under 24 minutes, even though I did it on the website rather than printing it out.

    Very happy with my time given the tricksy cluing here and there. I echo V’s admiration for the deployment of “too” and “fed” and 7d’s ME’N’U. FOI 10a SPOT LOI 27a NINTENDO, though I think it was probably the GAGMAN and the ARACHNID that caused me the most gyp.

  5. Kevin – striker is a football position – we don’t use ‘soccer’ -the genuine number nine – Harry Kane et al.
    And why should the 15×15 not carry advertising? Maybe you will be able to opt out one day, but it looks very much as though it’s here to stay. As a veteran ‘madman’ my position is clear.

    I think Mr. Riddlecombe should make a statement – sponsored by Toys’R’Us, World of Leather or Trump University.

    This was over an hour of fun!

    FOI 9ac ADHERENT

    LOI 27ac NINTENDO

    COD 4dn TAP DANCE

    WOD APPLE-T

    Nice to see Lord Verlaine happy with his lot. 8 minutes of Air on the G String (Jacques Loussier).

    Today’s headline sponsor is ORBEX along with ‘Truthfinder Global’ and Couchbase (No Equal) and of course ‘The Times of London’.

    Edited at 2020-03-13 08:06 am (UTC)

  6. Mitey struggle in the SE until Super Mario came to my rescue. I had thought there might be a misprint in 27a because the surface didn’t seem to make sense.

      1. Thank you. Yes I had very eventually come round to that after thinking for a long time that the chic nurse was the one doing the consoling. Without a hug. By no means the only time I was confused by a clue today.
  8. 17:14. What a delight! I have no less than 10 ticks for “good clue” on my copy. LOI APPARENT after PENNON. Hard to pick a favourite, but TAP DANCE has the biggest tick. As for the football side, we’ve had wingers and the goalie recently too. Now all we need is some mid-fielders and a big centre-back.
  9. 30 minutes on this, so certainly meaty. Like mrkgrnao, I struggled to make sense out of the surface of 27 across, which rather slowed my solving as I tried to work out what was missing. And GAGMAN went in with fingers crossed, unable to “feed” anything sensible with G(uav)A. Ok, so it’s Fed not fed. B*****d setter (meant in a grudgingly admiring way!)
    Did anyone else waste time trying to “resort” ON ROCKS I while thinking Italians don’t do much with K?
    Thanks V for resolving all the issues with aplomb. Other consoles, smartphones and Italian holiday spots are available.
  10. Not a good end to the week, slow and typed PEENON. I suppose I wouldn’t have done that on a hard copy.

    APPLET, ETHERNET, NINTENDO – quite a tech crossword.

    COD: 26ac (TOODLE-OO), very smooth; 12dn (BILLINGSGATE) a close second
    MER: does banter really mean kid?

    Yesterday’s answer (inspired by MERCURIAL): the solar system object next in size after Mars is Ganymede (a moon of Jupiter), and you also have Titan before you get to Mercury.

    Today’s question inspired by an answer: how long did Roger Bannister’s sub-four minute mile record last?

  11. 42 minutes, with LOI PENNON. I did know the word. I never think of G-Man for Fed so GAGMAN was biffed well before being parsed. (The release of Misbehaviour about the 1970 Miss World contest isn’t doing much for Bob Hope’s reputation at the moment. I’ll remember him instead for the Road films and Morocco-bound.) COD to BILLINGSGATE. Very enjoyable puzzle. Thank you V and setter.
  13. SOED has:

    banter
    1 verb trans. Make fun of (a person), tease good-humouredly. L17.

    I think that covers ‘kid’.

  14. I suppose so, although banter is almost exclusively used as a noun these days.
    1. Not so sure, people talk about ‘bantering’. But anyway it doesn’t invalidate the clue.
  15. Had a stupid time with the Club site this morning. I might have known what was coming when I got that 403 message 4 times in a row. And when I did finally get in and started up the puzzle it kept sticking on one letter and not advancing and then if I advanced manually it erased the previous letter. I hope it’s not just me. Anyway after 5 minutes of this I gave up and printed. Put me in a bad mood which was a shame because this was a really good’un.

    Slow start but I found the wavelength reasonably quickly. Luckily NINTENDO, APPLET and ETHERNET were within my very limited range. Lots to like but BILLINGSGATE and GAGMAN were particularly good. 19 and change according to the clock on the computer.

    Edited at 2020-03-13 11:39 am (UTC)

  16. Wrecked by Toodle-do not -oo, and a typo on Nintendo. Sloppy, sloppy, sloppy. However I have to say I very much enjoyed this, despite the multitude of techy-terms. COD definitely goes to Billingsgate which I am going to store up for the next time there’s a financial scandal.
    1. I have a feeling that’s exactly what tripped me up the last time TOODLE-OO appeared in a puzzle. Are you also an erstwhile user of the online “getting things done” app Toodle-Do, by any chance?
  17. Very interesting puzzle. PENNON unknown but had to be what it is, really, based on the wordplay and the existence of pennants. Looked at 27ac and thought “that looks like NINTENDO but obviously it can’t be that…oh wait, it is”. It seemed a bit odd, but I guess that’s just (comparative) newness – presumably in time it won’t seem any stranger than Hoover. It’s certainly a word I’m more likely to actually use than PENNON, or, for that matter, GAGMAN.

    Wasted a little time wondering if there was a more senior version of a CHERUB called a THERUB.

  18. All but two done in reasonable time (for me, not for Verlaine — how anyone does such a thing in under ten minutes is beyond me) and I was left with 17dn and 22ac, which eventually defeated me. Should have got ANGLICAN although Anglian wasn’t a word that really came easily to mind: Angle, yes, but Anglian? The windows company? If 22ac had been clued in such a way that Fed (so avoiding fed/Fed) had been the first word of the clue would it have been easier? Probably not.
    1. East Anglia – the folks from Norfolk and Suffolk are East Anglians, unless there has been a change in my absence!

      My grandfather drove a Ford Anglia in the late fifties and that was the nearest he got to being an Anglican.

  19. 42 mins – a good challenge. LOI gagman – had to stare at it for a while before I saw G-man. Thanks v.
  20. Struggled with this at the end with a final STRIDER entered without much hope. Must have Aragorn on my mind.
    Agree some excellent clueing, most of which passed me by till I got here, having merrily biffed TOODLE-OO and GAGMAN. I don’t like ANGLIAN either, the clue says old English, and those old English they are referring to were called ANGLES. Major Eyebrow Raise.
  21. 64:37 of hard grind with GAGMAN last in and not parsed fully. Saw GMAN, but didn’t equate it to fed. Fooled by the non-capitalisation. ‘Twas all to no avail though, as I failed to go back to TEA DANCE which I had only partially parsed too. Drat and double drat! Thanks setter and V.
  23. Would it be too nitpicking to point out that Ethernet is not an IT system but a local area network, in other words a means of connecting computers together. If the setter was as sloppy with a classical allusion, imagine the outrage!

    Chris – a long and grateful lurker

    1. My Chambers app has but the one definition of ETHERNET:
      A system for networking computers.

      Admittedly that’s system in a general, rather than specific, sense but as is so often the case any complaint should be taken up with the dictionary compilers rather than the setter and crossword ed.

      That said, as this is a hotbed of pedants (hoorah for that), I don’t think it’s possible to overstep the nitpicking mark.

      Edited at 2020-03-13 01:47 pm (UTC)

      1. Lexico also defines it as a ‘system’ so it’s not just funny old Chambers.
      2. The one I had a problem with is Applet, which is pretty much an obsolete term. From a Q&A site last year… “There may still be a few left over on old Web sites, but applets won’t work on modern Web browsers, have been deprecated by Oracle since Java 9, and are not recommended due to security issues. There are better alternatives, such as Javascript and various Javascript tools and frameworks.”
        1. I fail to see how that invalidates the clue. That’s like saying you can’t clue mead as”drink” on the basis that hardly anyone drinks it nowadays.

          My dictionary says an applet is a program so for crosswording purposes it’s a program.

          1. So you would be happy to clue Anglia as a car without prefixing it with “old” as there are still one or too on the road?
            Oh never mind. I was just rising to the bait by the suggestion of nit-picking. Its in the dictionary, so fair enough. I guess we’ll have to wait for the dictionary compilers to catch up with technology. It moves so fast these days. I don’t expect to see microservices and cloud-native in a crossword any time soon.
        2. It is still used as a term for a small, limited-use application outside the Java world, however. For example, the popular and modern If This Then That service lets you write noddy little programs using a mostly drag-and-drop interface to wire together different APIs in interesting ways, and it calls those programs applets.
    2. Welcome.. as Penfold says, it is virtually impossible to be too nitpicking at TfTt.
      I am pleased though that (so far) nobody has complained about not knowing the word. It is such a fundamental part of the computer world that everyone totally depends on, there is really no excuse..
    3. You’re being too picky IMO. Information Technology includes all tech that handles the information.
      Ethernet was most definitely part of IT at my daughter’s school.
  24. 15:13.

    I’ll add my praise to this. One thing I admired was the concision of the clues – all 9 letters or fewer and only a couple running on to a second line to accommodate the enumeration.

    Thanks for explaining Toodle-oo and Gagman V, I didn’t understand the TOO and FED elements.

  25. Got about half of this before coming here for enlightenment.
    I want to watch the racing at Cheltenham. The sun is shining and everyone seems to be enjoying themselves.
    I got Ethernet (and I’ve just used a cable to fire up a disc which will improve my internet-according to BT).
    Liked BILLINGSGATE very much.
    David
  26. After being stuck for 4 minutes, and being over 20 minutes by then, I hopefully biffed “strider”. Roll on tomorrow.

    COD TAP DANCE

      1. Most of our goals come from the wings, the midfield, and our centre backs at set pieces.
  27. similar experience to topicaltim. Toyed with a THERUB. Biffed GAGMAN, TOODLE-OO and the unknown PENNON so thanks for the explication. Some great stuff here. 40 minutes in 2 goes. Spent too long making an anagram out of SHARE OUT WINE at 11a.
  28. A toughie for me, finished in 45.50 and cheated to get the LOI nintendo- shock horror. My only excuse is no kids or grandchildren and too old to have played with the darn thing myself. Liked 12 dn and 11 across but there wasn’t a duff clue in the entire puzzle. Take a bow setter.
  29. Can somebody give me an example where “too” = “at that”? Thanks Stephen
    1. When “at that” means “also”—or, as the top of the Google results for “‘at that’ definition” has it…
      in addition; furthermore.
      “it was not fog but smoke, and very thick at that”
    1. Et tu Pootle – it’s nice to have company! I just went back to the main Times website and re-checked all the log-in steps for the paper and the club and then it let me back in and didn’t give me any more 403 rubbish or monkey about with my grid any more. Don’t ask me to explain why…..
      1. Thanks for your quick reply Olivia. I actually tried your suggestion of clearing cookies and it’s OK for me now.
  32. 54:56. Oh dear, very slow today. There were certainly some tricky bits that held me up (pennon, gagman, toodle-oo and tap-dance) but a good ten minutes worth of word-blindness on LOI apparent really did for me. Lots to enjoy in this one, Billingsgate my personal favourite I think.
  33. I was very pleased to finish this, not only because I enjoyed all the clues, but finishing without aids felt like a real achievement – one that certainly wouldn’t have been possible 6 months ago. OK, it still took hours, but all the better to appreciate the setter’s art. Invariant
    PS My thanks to John Dun for the timely Wodehouse primer over on the QC blog at the beginning of the week, otherwise I would have been stumped by Toodle-oo

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