Times 27616 – one for you to 10 before it 15 you

Author   glhPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic

Solving time: 8:54. A little faster than my usual, but I think I might have just been on the wavelength here, as there are some unusual phrases and entries where the wordplay came quickly to me. Maybe it is three days of sober confinement, which I do not recommend.

Hope everyone is staying safe and sane! It is funny, several of my friends have asked me how I am not going insane being home alone. Having a steady stream of crossword puzzles helps a lot – now friends are jealous of my hobby.

Away we go…

Across
1 Store’s premier card for hot goods (4)
SWAG – the first letter of Store, then WAG(card, funny person)
3 Started job regenerating items for connoisseur (6,4)
OBJETS D’ART – anagram of STARTED JOB
10 Deduce why one’s been dismissed? (6,3)
REASON OUT – double definition based on a REASON(why) one could be OUT(dismissed)
11 Automatic runs on winter sports event (5)
LUGER – R(runs) with LUGE(winter sports event) for the automatic pistol
12 Quantity of beer from vat a doctor knocked over (7)
TANKARD – TANK(vat), A, then DR(doctor) reversed
13 Verbal contract wrapped up (6)
PACKED – sounds like PACT(contract)
15 Overcomes bugs richer people finally zapped (4,3,6,2)
GETS THE BETTER OF – GETS(bugs) the THE BETTER OFF(richer people) missing the last letter
18 King collared by parsimonious consort with whom words are often exchanged (8,7)
SPARRING PARTNER – R(rex, king) inside SPARING(parsimonious), PARTNER(consort)
21 Signals you might pick up for lots of people waiting (6)
QUEUES – sounds like CUES(signals)
23 Understand snag in operation (5,2)
CATCH ON – CATCH(snag), ON(in operation)
26 Heath, one Conservative hampered by time (5)
ERICA – I(one), C(conservative) inside ERA(time)
27 Trace of narcotic in Oriental brew, mouthful that’s probably toxic (9)
SNAKEBITE – first letter of Narcotic inside SAKE(Oriental brew), then BITE(mouthful)
28 I’ll represent head of faculty on stage to provide clarity (10)
LEGIBILITY – I replacing the first letter of ABILITY(faculty) with LEG(stage of a journey)
29 Rest going back in custody at station (4)
STAY – hidden reversed in custodY AT Station
Down
1 Republican brought in to enumerate main points for planner (10)
STRATEGIST – R(republican) inside STATE(enumerate) then GIST(main points)
2 Old commander elected for the second time? (5)
AGAIN – AGA(old commander) IN(elected)
4 Pulse from East covered by general embargo (5,4)
BROAD BEAN – E(east) inside BROAD(general) BAN(embargo)
5 Prevent scriptures turning up, in a strange sense (5)
ESTOP – OT(scriptures) reversed inside ESP(a strange sense)
6 Sailor put up valid proposition (7)
SOLICIT – OS(Ordinary Seaman, sailor) reversed, then LICIT(valid). I was a little surprised to see SOLICIT as a noun, but is listed as a Shakespearean noun in Chambers
7 Engineer learning to retain old structural support (5,4)
ANGLE IRON – anagram of LEARNING containing O(old)
8 Against main force becoming split (4)
TORN – TO(against), RN(Royal Navy, main force)
9 Prolific scorer from Down Under in auction? (6)
MOZART – OZ(down under) inside MART(auction)
14 English reformer throttling leading European’s neck (10)
EFFRONTERY – E(english), and the reformer Elizabeth FRY containing FRONT(leading), E(european)
16 Disparaging copper caught up in traffic (9)
TRADUCING – CU(copper) reversed in TRADING(traffic)
17 Muscle in remaining eager (9)
EXPECTANT – PEC(muscle) inside EXTANT(remaining)
19 Unscripted talk in theatre stems from the garden (7)
RHUBARB – double definition.
20 A little sooner (6)
RATHER – another double definition
22 Fibrous plant is invading South American lake (5)
SISAL – IS inside SA (South American), L(lake)
24 Godfearing type losing time in hold-up (5)
HEIST – THEIST(godfearing type) missing a T(time)
25 Meat trade using one percent of its capital (4)
VEAL – DEAL(trade) with the D(500) changing to V(5)

58 comments on “Times 27616 – one for you to 10 before it 15 you”

  2. An agonizingly long time, lengthened by periodic noddings off. I biffed EFFRONTERY, LEGIBILITY, & VEAL, not knowing of FRY and not seeing how VEAL or LEGIBILITY worked. I had FIGURE OUT at 10ac for a long time (1 being a figure, right?), until MOZART forced a re-think. Is EXTRA-sensory perception a sense, even strange? (Rather, would it be a sense if it existed?)
  3. I was another FIGURE OUT (which I actually think fits the clue better than the actual answer). Eventually AGAIN disabused me of that. Unfortunately, I mistyped PACKED with a T on the end (like its homophone maybe) and didn’t spot it during the rest of the solve. The VEAL trick took me a bit to work out. I figured it must be some play on I/C or X/M or V/D as indeed it was.
  4. Morning all. Still think of you guys often, just thought I’d drop in to wish all of you the best for the interesting times ahead. Even Ulaca.
      1. Cheers, starstruck. Yes, very well thank you. Been quite a Summer hasn’t it? Fires, floods and now pestilence. I tell you, if I see one bloody locust….
    2. Thought of you when doing 9d. Prolific scorer from Down Under? There aren’t any, I thought. Then realised the setter meant music not cricket.

      Welcome back (if fleetingly).

      1. I wanted to use one of those new-fangled emoticons that now appear here, but for some reason they don’t have one shaped like a little urn.
      1. Cheers K.

        (Really just wanted to use one of those new emoticons, but the only way to “like” your comment is with a big beating love heart. Seemed a bit OTT, though I was happy to extend one to Sotira below. I know you’ll understand).

  5. My Dear Lord Galspray, why don’t you rejoin ‘the old ship’? Is there still no solution to your principles?

    Please note George that hereabouts at Splendid City the lock-down is in its fiftieth day. At just short of nine minutes you would be advised to slow down a bit. (Philately helps rather more than crosswords).
    This took me an hour and a minute, mainly because I was sure 6dn was SALIENT- it weren’t, as I finally twigged it to be SOLICIT (OS not SALT) and then 13ac PACKED – homophone-phobia – was my LOI.

    FOI 22dn SISAL

    COD 9dn MOZART more OZ and also enjoyed LUGER although I note some Luger’s and Walther PPK’s didn’t fire fast enough.

    WOD OBJETS D’ART but would like better numeration (6,1,3)

    25dn VEAL parsed all understanding.

    Edited at 2020-03-19 04:15 am (UTC)

    1. They almost always flummox me Horryd because the Times never indicates them but for some reason I saw this one right away.
  6. 37 minutes slowed down considerably, like Vinyl1, by putting FIGURE OUT at 10ac which seemed a perfectly reasonable answer so I was reluctant to think about changing it even though it was preventing me solving 1,2 & 9dn. Spotting MOZART at 9dn was the moment of truth.

    I knew of Elizabeth FRY the prison and social reformer because my teacher in my third year at prep school was a Miss Fry who was a distant relative of some sort and was very proud of her ancestry.

    1. She had a similar provenance for me Jack. The dorms in my unlamented prep school were named after famous women and she was one of them. The only others I remember were Florence Nightingale and Edith Cavell.
  7. Not on the setter’s wavelength, unlike glheard, but maybe discombobulated from being cooped up at home with doom all around. Spent too long on TORN.

    COD: 7dn ANGLE IRON, good surface and misdirection.
    LOI: torn

    Has anyone spotted it’s a pangram?

    Yesterday’s answer: the ten parts of the body with three letters are (five above the neck and five below if you ask it of someone and they need a hint): eye, ear, lip, gum, jaw, arm, rib, hip, leg, toe. I will also accept gut but none of the rude/slang ones. Inspired by LEG.

    Today’s question inspired by a clue/answer, a Mindset-type puzzle (not original):
    i) H, He, Li, Be, C, F, Mg, Ar
    ii) I, II, V

    1. When I was 10 my mum told me, “Here little beggar boys catch newts or fish. New nature magnifies all sins.”
      So we have 1 2 3 4 6 9 12.
      In high school chemistry age 16 we came up with, inter alia, “Henry (k)Nees Arthur’s Krotch, eXcrutiation Rendered” for the noble gases He Ne Ar Kr Xe Rn, so the Ar is 18.
      1.2.3.4.6.9.12.18
      1.2.5
      As an engineer into mathematics, nothing suggests itself.
      Yet.
  8. …and Heist my soul can reach
    30 mins pre-brekker.
    Mostly I liked the V/D=1% thing and loved Effrontery. Brilliant.
    Thanks setter and G.
  9. 25 enjoyable minutes, mostly top-to-bottom, with FOI 3a, but after the tricksy and fun 25d VEAL and 28a LEGIBILITY I had to pop back up to the top to finish off with 13a PACKED and finally 6d SOLICIT. Not knowing the reformer didn’t slow me down much, as 14 EFFRONTERY was one of a couple where the answer sprang almost unbidden to my mind as soon as I saw the clue.

    18a SPARRING PARTNER, which Chambers defines as “A friend with whom one enjoys lively arguments” makes me wonder if we’ll ever see the modern “frenemy” in a grid. It has also made it into Chambers…

  10. 19:54. Held up mostly by the NW corner where I had WORKED OUT for 10A for a long time until I got SWAG. I failed to parse VEAL and forgo to go back and work it out. I liked GETS THE BETTER OF best.
  11. 41 minutes. I was another FIGURE OUTer until AGAIN forced REASON on me and then I was able to be a STRATEGIST. COD to SNAKEBITE. LOI VEAL which I biffed, a very clever clue but for me COD has to be something you actually solve. I biffed LEGIBILITY too. Isn’t reading handwriting meant to be a guessing game? I struggled in places with this, but did end up all correct. Thank you George and setter.
    1. I’m glad to see there was someone besides me who thought of Tom Lehrer. Of course Moi was too well bred to make the allusion.
  12. 20:28 for a very rare online solve (I’m “working from home” with my laptop hooked up to a 32″ TV so thought I’d give it a try in gigantic form). I don’t know if I’d have been quicker or slower on paper. I considered FIGURE OUT but a little Columbo voice stopped me putting it in until I understood it fully. Anyway, I found a lot of it tricky. I quickly figured out what was happening with veal (or so I thought) but tried to find something where I could change C to I.

    Edited at 2020-03-19 09:08 am (UTC)

  13. Massive rollercoaster of emotions last few days, just mailed the entire congregation with prayers. Crosswords definitely help!

    About 24′, spent ages staring at RATHER, and had ‘contract’ in my mind as a verb, couldn’t get past ‘pucker’.

    Thanks george and setter.

  14. 13:24. Very good puzzle, I thought. I particularly liked VEAL.
    Like others I had FIGURE OUT for a while and it seemed like a perfectly good answer. AGAIN made me rethink.
    NHO ANGLE IRON.
  15. Good time George – you were only a minute or so behind Magoo. I had several unparsed on submission which I try not to do because it leads to the infamous pink squares, but fortunately not in this case. VEAL was one of them. In 27a I thought “brew” was the anagram indicator and was trying to make N(arcotic) and “oriental” into a drink until the crossing letters made that impossible. 18-08
  16. I thought as I solved it that both were verbs.
    I found this one a stinker; missed Elizabeth Fry 14d, couldn’t work out snakebite 27a. Swag eluded me for ages as well. Missed the joke in 15 with BETTER OFF just not coming to me, so biffed.
    Andyf
  17. Off the wavelength today, top half was quick but in the bottom 3 refused to be solved. So I put it down and went away for a while. Came back and saw rhubarb immediately; legibility biffed, then spent a few minutes working out the parsing. Finally fixed the dyslexic typo in traduced and got LOI sparring partner. I’d had an unsolvable S_E_R_N_ for the first word.
    1% is such a precise and unexpected and impossible-to-be-anything-else fraction that veal was easily solved, with only the E in place.
  18. Lots of thinking to be done this morning, not least in being another solver who had to delete FIGURE OUT and start again. Enjoyed the Roman percentages and the Aussie cricketer who wasn’t either of those things, but it was the comparatively simple PACKED/SOLICIT nexus where I ground to a temporary halt.
  19. I started with SWAG, then saw AGAIN which allowed me to go straight to REASON OUT without passing FIGURE. Steady progress eventually left me chewing over 6d, 11a and 13a. LUGER came first, which seemed to indicate SALT for the sailor, so more delay due to that, until the lack of any sensible word construction caused me to think of an upside down ordinary seaman. PACKED was then a doddle. 25:23. Thanks setter and George.
  20. Unfortunately the oriental brew in my mind was saki (as in HH Munro); I had bite for a mouthful but just couldn’t make it come together. Kicking myself now I have seen it. Two unrelated words without a hyphen or space making another word are tricky for me.
    Richard
  21. Well, if the mighty Galspray is uncloaking I’d better do the same. Nice to see you again, Gallers. And best wishes in troubled times to all the TfTT gang. I’ll try to pop in for a little longer at some point but right now I’m kinda busy. I picked this week of all weeks to move house, because, you know, anything else would have been too easy. I’m currently half-way between houses and neither is remotely sorted out. So if anyone should reply to me I may not be able to reply to your reply in a timely way. Meantime, my best to all
    2. Great to hear from you, S, Let’s have you back for good once you’ve settled. Good luck with the move.
    3. How very nice to see you here Sotira. Good luck, with the move and everything else.
    5. I think you may have misunderstood ‘social distancing’?

      Glad you are alive and well.

  22. With 10 and 15 across done, I was almost confident with WOMBAT, sure that the relevance of WOM would soon appear. Seemingly on my own. COD 25 down, with its Latin arithmetic.
  23. A steady but tough 40 minutes, all correct in the end but with EFFRONTERY, VEAL, LEGIBILITY all unparsed, so thanks George. Mrs Fry was not on my radar. Also put in TRADUCED from word play but had thought it meant something to do with translating or changing lead to gold (Latin Trans Ducere?)
    We’ve seen 3a before I think, it makes it too easy if the setter enumerates as 6,1,3 or 6 1’3 I guess.
  24. Did so well, and then found a rogue AFFRONTERY on submission. Seems a bad week for me. Ah well, I’ll go and walk the dog then. In France you have to fill out a form in triplicate to do that now….
  25. No time as interrupted but slowish. This was one however where the parsing was a real treat on the way, capped finally by the sheer effrontery of veal. Hi Sotira and may the move go well.
  26. ….”figure out” that this was a potential pangram, but in the end that information proved unnecessary. Those who did use that inkling would have eventually spotted the V of VEAL, so it was slightly helpful.

    To me, it simply has to be REASON OUT – it’s the reason why you’re out, and “figure” really doesn’t work at that level.

    EFFRONTERY was parsed post-solve.

    FOI GETS THE BETTER OF
    LOI SWAG
    COD VEAL
    TIME 12:59

    Edited at 2020-03-19 01:09 pm (UTC)

    1. I agree that REASON OUT is a better answer, because for it to be FIGURE OUT the definition has to be ‘deduce why’, which is a bit loose. Or I suppose ‘why’ could be just filler, which would also be a bit sloppy. The wordplay works fine after that though: the definition by example (one for figure) is even indicated by the question mark!
  27. The pangram helped with MOZART and a few others were biffed for a 31 minute solve. BROAD BEAN(s) are a reminder of our likely dietary staple in the next few months – not a very appealing prospect.
  28. I had a look at this on the bus on the way back from the garage. My MOT ran out today.
    I found this very hard. FOI was SISAL and shortly after TORN. I thought my breakthrough was going to be 10a where I too had FIGURE OUT. Didn’t get many more after that.
    I now have a new MOT. Will there be dispensations for such things?
    One face mask on the bus and one person pressing for the bus to stop with a paper tissue; otherwise all seemed eerily normal. David
    1. My MOT runs out on 4th May. I have the car booked in for its annual service and MOT on 21st April. Just hoping I’m not in isolation when I’m due to take it in!
  29. Yet another plod. Took me 34.05 to finish. LOI veal. That SW corner was a real pain. Whinge over, I thought it was a good puzzle with lots of well constructed clues and nothing too esoteric. Certainly need the Times cryptic to keep morale up at the present moment!
  30. Not too difficult, but put VEAL in at first just from definition. Then noticed the pangram which I’d suspected as a possibility from some answers and that just V was missing.

    So very confident after that about VEAL and eventually understood why. Thanks to blogger and setter.

  31. DNF in 28:59. Managed eventually to parse LOI veal but the fingers and brain were not in synch and I ended up typing veel to finish with one pink square. A tiresome way to end what was an enjoyable and engaging puzzle pitched at about the right level of challenge for me.
    1. That came up last year in another crossword (not The Times) so I looked it up. Turns out it is brewed from rice, more akin to rice beer than rice wine. And certainly not distilled.
      1. Thanks, Isla. Amazing. I was convinced otherwise. It made it very hard to see that answer, even after I had all the helpers.
  33. Some stickiness towards the end, mainly in the NE, only cleared up when I realised how the ANGLE IRON anag worked (not one for DIY etc).

    SNAKEBITE took inordinately long considering I had all of the checkers….

  34. Figuring out that the figure had to be out of 10a for a reason took some time. Thanks George for parsing VEAL. The texture of this meat couldn’t be properly savoured until the explanation provided the sauce. Whereupon it became COD. 44mins. Is this a tough week or what?

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