Times 27621 – I needed a wee dram from the closed shop after this

Author   piquetPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
I don’t mind hard puzzles, they can be more satisfying even if you don’t quite finish. But I found this one hard to enjoy, even if I did learn a couple of new words. It had an old fashioned feel to it, and some very convoluted wordplay; e.g. at 19d derive some anagram fodder from Roman numerals and an abbreviation, rearrange and wrap around the code letters for a country. Such stuff encourages one to BIFD. Maybe I was just in a bad mood because our thrice weekly golf has been knocked on the head for the foreseeable just when the weather is great. There’s a limit to how much gardening a man can do and stay sane. Or how many jigsaws and crosswords.

Across
1 Source of flour used to make dough? (4,4)
CASH CROP – A whimsical cryptic definition.
5 Oratory in the case of Churchill hard to copy (6)
CHAPEL – C L (case of Churchill) has H (hard) APE (copy) inserted.
10 Racket payment from mystified non-competitor you returned (10,5)
PROTECTION MONEY – (NON COMPETITOR)* then YE reversed.
11 Like some cakes set before daughter (7)
LAYERED – LAY (set) ERE (before) D (daughter).
12 Island previously to get motorway round it (7)
FORMOSA – FOR (to get, as in go for = go to get), M (motorway) O (round) SA (sex appeal, IT). Taiwan was known as Formosa from about 1650 (when the Portuguese named it) until the 1950s when the Chinese and Japanese name became prevalent.
13 State of old limo confused with cab (8)
COLOMBIA – (O LIMO CAB)*.
15 Long-distance traveller from Maine sleeping like a baby? (5)
COMET – ME for Maine, inside COT where a baby may sleep.
18 Given further term in high school for dances (5)
HAKAS – AKA, short for “also known as”, inside H S = high school.
20 Device containing spring cabbage maybe left around for rabbit to eat (4,4)
YALE LOCK – YAK = rabbit, into that insert L (left) and COLE (cabbage) reversed.
23 Still clutching your right hand or foot (7)
PYRRHIC – a PIC or still picture, has YR (your) RH (right hand) inserted, a pyrrhic foot in poetry has 2 short syllables.
25 Engineering graduate having rung to order (7)
BESPOKE – BE = Bachelor of engineering; SPOKE = rung. I thought an engineering degree was a B.Eng.?
26 Work in China shared between us? (3,6,6)
OUR MUTUAL FRIEND – Cryptic clue, similar to one seen a few days ago if i remember rightly.
27 Change, once, from half marathon, adopting 2000m? (6)
MARKKA – MARA (half marathon) has K K (2000 metres) inserted. I used to go to Finland on business way before 2002 (when the markka was replaced by the euro) so knew what it was, but even so it took me a while to sort out KK for 2000 metres as opposed to MM or KM.
28 Fourth rate stuff’s bound to appear in US bar (8)
DRAMSHOP – I thought this was an very obscure clue, maybe our Transatlantic friends found it less so. I’d never heard of a dram shop (which less often can be one word). It’s a place in America legalised for the sale of liquor. I can see RAM’S for stuff’s is inside D = fourth rate and HOP for bound, but for me it was a case of LOI finding something that fitted the checkers.

Down
1 Round top of trophy, see revolving article (6)
CUPOLA – CUP )trophy), OL = LO (see) reversed, A for article.
2 Unreal level of American reserve (9)
STORYBOOK – Presumably Americans spell storey without an E? and BOOK = reserve as in a table.
3 In Italy, that eastern river is so long! (7)
CHEERIO – So now we have to speak italian too! CHE is Italian for ‘that’. Follow it by E and RIO as in RIO Grande for example, (now we’re speaking Spanish too), and Roberto is your zio or tio. Che sera, sera.
4 Four pairs of volunteers beset by obsessive behaviour (5)
OCTAD – TA the evergreen Territorial Army goes into OCD = obsessive compulsive disorder.
6 Grand, upright character in Catholic circles (7)
HOMERIC – meaning ‘of epic proportions’, so grand. IN = HOME, then RC has I an ‘upright character’ inserted.
7 Mount using clip, closed (5)
PINTO – PIN = clip, as in a badge perhaps; TO = closed, as in a door.
8 Ruin song with a short dance sequence (3,5)
LAY WASTE – LAY = song, W = with, A, STE(P) = short dance sequence.
9 Large party beat up bouncer dispatched by club (4,4)
GOLF BALL – All reversed; L (large) LAB(our), FLOG (beat).
14 This young camper’s pants nothing but cosy (3,5)
BOY SCOUT – (O BUT COSY)*. I thought scouts no longer had a gender attached?
16 Panoramic Rome’s historic housing something very fine (9)
MICROMESH – Hidden word in PANORA(MIC ROME’S H)ISTORIC.
17 Prow’s damaged with him? (8)
SHIPWORM – (PROWS HIM). It looked like an anagram and I saw it was probably a worm of some sort, but I’d never heard of a shipworm. Presumably a woodworm in a wooden ship. Then I read Wiki on the subject so have learnt something today.
19 Idiot diverted us 100km across Switzerland (7)
SCHMUCK – One of the few Yiddish words I know, although I’ve never heard it used. I think you turn 100km into CKM, then make an anagram of that with US, then wrap SMUCK around CH for Switzerland. A bit of a chore.
21 Powerful drive, with spirit: nineteen more needed for century? (7)
LUSTRUM – LUST = powerful drive; RUM a spirit. A LUSTRUM is a five year period, like a Boris government, so you need another nineteen of them to make 100 years.
22 Take off from party chasing old nurse (4,2)
SEND UP – a SEN was a State enrolled nurse; DUP a political party thankfully no longer holding the Tories to ransom. Did they ever get their billions promised by Mrs May? I hope not.
24 Painter stern after spilling a thinner on the ground (5)
RARER – RA = artist, painter, REAR = stern loses A.
25 One makes a packet in one’s field (5)
BALER – cryptic definition, one thinks.

​

60 comments on “Times 27621 – I needed a wee dram from the closed shop after this”

  1. I quite liked this one, once I’d settled in to decode the devious wordplay, and finished in a lower time than yesterday. The setters/editors are clearly trying to occupy us for longer periods during our lock downs. I didn’t find much to biff, so had to work through each clue.

    I liked CUPOLA among many others. LOI was DRAMSHOP, which I’d never heard of.

    Thanks, Pip, for the excellent blog.

  2. Like yesterday’s, this was slow going, and I found myself with 18ac, 23ac, 28ac, and 19d unsolved when I went offline. I printed out a copy and took it with me to lunch and wrote in what I had got so far, but I stupidly wrote in DURER (‘painter’) though I had had RARER. This made 23ac a lot more difficult; it was only when I finally got SCHMUCK (which for me is a bastard not an idiot) that I saw the light. Not that I knew this PYRRHIC, mind you. Yes, we spell ‘storey’ without the E (well, I don’t, but). On the other hand, I’ve never heard of a dramshop. I didn’t think anything of it at the time, but in retrospect 14d is rather unpleasantly suggestive. All in all, I tend to agree with Pip about this one: hard, but not particularly enjoyably hard.
  3. A grim struggle completed in 63 minutes, which matches my age in a few weeks. I don’t think shooting your age quite carries the same cachet in Crosswordland as on the golf course – more like one quarter might be the gold standard.

    Lots of DNKs and as Pip notes some rather clunky wordplay made this a rather an unremitting challenge for me, which perhaps is appropriate at this time. Who said life should be easy? LUSTRUM is a very good Robert Harris novel, so at least that obscurity came to me, unlike DRAMSHOP, PYRRHIC, SHIPWORM, OCTAD and MARKKA. Agree with Kevin about 14D.

    Thanks to setter for the workout, and to Pip for the excellent blog.

    Edited at 2020-03-25 07:51 am (UTC)

  4. DNF. The SE corner did for me. I resorted to aids for __S_RUM to find the unknown LUSTRUM after 34 minutes, which helped me see YALE LOCK. I wondered how I was going to get 9 squared into that answer. I thought I was doing quite well until I got stuck on those 2. NHO DRAMSHOP or SHIPWORM either. A bit too much obscurity for my liking. I did like HAKAS, though.

    Edited at 2020-03-25 08:22 am (UTC)

  5. Seemed a bit of a strange one, like yesterday’s only more so. Some nice clues, the two down the LH side and I liked bespoke, too. Some NHOs like markka, lustrum, pyrrhic as a foot. One that doesn’t work: if 100km is Ckm (which it is) then 2000m is MMm, or kmkm, or IIkm, but certainly never kk. Even if us Strines do occasionally use ‘k’ as slang for kilometres per hour, or kilometres. Or is it an unindicated regionalism? Would a British person say or understand “the pub is a couple of Ks up the road?” Like our blogger I’m a bit dubious about mixing Italian, unindicated Spanish, country codes etc.
    Slow 30 minutes meaningless in the end as one wrong, had no idea what was happening in hakas and biffed HIKES… raises almost means given further? No, not even close.

    Edited at 2020-03-25 08:32 am (UTC)

    1. A ten kilometre run is commonly described as a ’10k’ in the UK, and this meaning has made it into Lexico. 2,000m isn’t written as KK of course but the question mark is there to signal something slightly oblique.
      1. I can, at a real stretch, see kk as 2000. I can’t accept it as 2000m. And as to the matter of the pub being a couple of Ks up the road, yes, I understand that: it’s a nice walk to build up the thirst and a manageable stagger back again with thirst fully or excessively quenched. But it’s 2 Ks, definitely not k Ks. I struggled with most of this puzzle and came here to find out why. What I find is that the puzzle stinks, with this clue being just the stinkiest bit. Well done to those who persevered. I’ll wait for something fairer.
        1. But in the phrase ‘10k fun run’ the k very specifically refers to kilometres.
  6. 58 minutes. SE the problem. LOI DRAMSHOP, just behind LUSTRUM. I knew neither. I also took a long time on BESPOKE, as all the engineering graduates I know are B.Eng. I struggled a bit in the SW with PYRRHIC and MARKKA too. I like my knowledge base expanded and to be apprised of differences between the US and UK is fair enough, but there seems to have been quite a bit of it recently. I did enjoy this puzzle in the main though. Thank you Pip and setter.

    Edited at 2020-03-25 08:31 am (UTC)

  7. Very much a solve of two halves for me with the top half going in quite easily, but the number of unknowns in the south ensured a very long time spent finishing it off: HAKA, PYRRHIC (in the sense required), LUSTRUM, DRAMSHOP and finally MARKKA, my LOI, where I overlooked the enclosure indicator and plumped for MARAKK.

    Edited at 2020-03-25 08:49 am (UTC)

  8. 44:57. That was an absolute beast: the hardest I can remember. The SE was the worst bit but I also struggled a lot with CUPOLA and bunging in CUB SCOUT didn’t help with 13ac.
    I can’t really say I enjoyed this but finishing it was satisfying in a grim sort of way and it was a good workout.
    Edit: I see my personal NITCH is an impressive 356 today so clearly I made extra heavy weather of what was already a difficult puzzle!

    Edited at 2020-03-25 08:58 am (UTC)

  9. After yesterday’s puzzle, I allowed myself more time this morning, and I’m glad I did. One hour and one minute, with 1a and 1d being the last two in, which is something of a clue to how hard I found it to get started!

    Lots of question marks in the margins due to lack of knowledge (and perhaps a bit too much knowledge—YALE LOCKs need springs plural to be any use, really) but all correct in the end, even the odd and unknown MARKKA and that meaning of PYRRHIC. Firm but fair, I suppose.

  10. Oof, that was a hard one; call me a masochist but I really enjoyed it and pleased to finish under half an hour. A SNITCH of 171 at the time of writing, when anything above 138 is ‘very hard’. Shades of Richard Rogan?

    NHO: DRAMSHOP, SHIPWORM, PYRRHIC as a foot, LUSTRUM (I’d vaguely heard of it as a word but didn’t know that’s what it meant, I was trying to think of a word for 81), BE as an engineering graduate
    MER: 3dn Spanish river in Italian clue. I’m OK with 2000m=2k=kk.
    COD: 5ac CHAPEL – wonderful misdirection in the definition; 24dn RARER a close second

    Yesterday’s answer: backwoods, stink, recrystallise, machination, quicksilvered, … could be followed, as keriothe said, by impearled, as they each contain wedding anniversary gifts for every five years. Inspired by PEARL

    Today’s question: how many countries issue their own euro coins?

    Edited at 2020-03-25 09:20 am (UTC)

  11. The gods decided to throw 4 interruptions at me during the first 10 minutes of the solve so I submitted off-leaderboard at 32 minutes, so it probably took about 28.

    Thanks, Pip, for explaining the FOR in Formosa which I just didn’t understand. I knew neither of the crossing lustrum and dram shop so had to trust the wordplay. I also went down a lot of wrong garden paths before nailing storybook.

  12. Rather ran out of steam and interest. Seriously clunky, obscure, Americanisms …… not for me, I’m afraid.
  13. Pretty tough but finally made it after 58 minutes with fingers firmly crossed for my last two in, DRAMSHOP and MARKKA, neither of which I’d heard of.

    It was good to learn some other new words especially the non-victory sense of PYRRHIC which together with trochee and spondee goes to make up a poetic foot trifecta. Great conversation starter.

    I like SCHMUCK as a word (if Seinfeld didn’t use it, he should have) and enjoyed the cryptic def for BALER. I’m still not convinced by FOR = ‘to get’.

    1. I wasn’t very keen on it either, but I had to explain it somehow and that’s the best I could come up with. Better ideas welcome.
    2. Collins has the meaning (‘in order to get or achieve’) and gives the examples:
      I do it for money
      he does it for pleasure
      what did you do that for?
  14. Full marks for trying Pip! FOR=get, forget it. I knew DRAMSHOP from the old temperance laws in the US (they’re all closed at the moment anyway). I’d parsed GOLF BALL with the ball being the large party which put the clue out of sequence – of course Pip has it right. The setter had me duped into trying to squeeze a T (top of trophy)into 1d for far too long. It was lucky we had HAKA not so very long ago or I’d have shoved “hula” in there. Difficult. 30.16 P.S. I hadn’t seen Keriothe’s post when I put in mine. I see it but I don’t really.

    Edited at 2020-03-25 11:17 am (UTC)

  15. I think the lockdown has already made people over-critical. This struck me as difficult, yes, but very good in places. The 100km clue has been criticised; in my opinion it’s excellent. kk for 2000km is perfectly OK by me. And BE is in Collins as an abbreviation for Bachelor of Engineering.

    The only thing I didn’t like was for = get in 12ac.

    Edited at 2020-03-25 12:03 pm (UTC)

  16. Yes well hard needs to be fun, or fantastically revelatory, or it just becomes a slog. This was only occasionally fun (‘2000m’, ‘thinner on the ground’ context), and perhaps not too fantastically revelatory, so felt fairly sloggish.
  17. This was CLUNK Central. But I got through…

    … and on the day I escaped Splendid City, Rainbow Bridge and went out for the first time in eight weeks – to Carrefour (massively empty) to buy a few essentials – Gilbey’s, A4 paper, gorgonzola, marmalade and brawn!!’Er indoors hates shopping – I love it.

    I did not enjoy this ‘Mittwochenstein’ which I started and finished with my excursion twixt and between: let’s not talk of time….

    FOI 22dn SEND UP

    LOI 5dn HOMERIC – more Home Base than IKEA.

    COD 28ac DRAMSHOP

    WOD 19dn SCHMUCK! Sorry Kevin he’s an idiot in Lunnon Tarn. Momzer’s a right bastard. As per 26721!

    The harder they are – the bigger they fall!

    Edited at 2020-03-25 12:22 pm (UTC)

    1. Actually, I don’t have a problem with ‘idiot’, it’s just that ‘bastard’ is my usual meaning. Of course, it’s possible to be both, like the feculent object in the White House. And mazel tov on your release!

      Edited at 2020-03-25 12:32 pm (UTC)

    2. Glad you got out of the house horryd. I like your essentials. Fully understand the Gin then, may I ask, is the Izal A4 in Shanghai?
      1. Mr.Sawbill – bog roll and handwash were the first things to go missing in Shanghai initially, but only for a few days.Even for my well-upholstered frame Izal A4 is a bit much! I use it solely for my 15×15 print outs, no sh*t!

        Kevin – thanks for your good wishes, you’re a mensch! Loved feculent!

        Philip Jordan QC – gin is not much liked in these parts, it’s the tonic water that’s tricky. I insist on Gilbey’s as I used to do their advertising with (Colonel) Glen Baxter.

    4. In proper Yiddish schmuck specifically means ‘dick’, and in the most vulgar sense. ‘Idiot’ is a gentrification, but the word still wouldn’t be used in polite company.
  18. I think that was designed to keep us occupied. As noted already a lot of obscurity and clunkily contrived wordplay. I’d NHO DRAMSHOP, PYRRHIC in that sense or MARKKA, but managed to construct them. OCTAD was my FOI. I got YALE LOCK early on but the rest of the SE took a while. LUSTRUM rang a bell, and MICROMESH was well hidden. Didn’t know CHE for that in Italian, but managed to construct CHEERIO anyway. Hard going! 38:00. Thanks setter and Pip.
    1. According to Wiktionary che is Istrian for that, but Italian for what or why, so a MER there. Andyf
      1. Yes I wondered about that but piped down because my grasp of Italian is limited to opera lyrics and I’m not that much of an opera buff. I do however just about know “Che gelida manina” (what a cold little hand)from La Boheme.
      2. This is the book (that) I bought yesterday. Questo è il libro che ho comprato ieri. Jeffrey
  19. I loved this. But it was a bit like doing Mephisto on a weekday. Lots of words I didn’t know that I had to carefully assemble from the wordplay. LOI was HAKAS when I stopped myself putting in HIKES and wondering what type of dance it was.

    It took me a while to get the first clues to get started, but luckily among those first 3 or 4 were PROTECTION MONEY and OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

  20. ….and especially for parsing GOLF BALL, my only query.

    NHO DRAMSHOP (Chambers hyphenates it, and I’d tend to do likewise, or show two separate words), but the surface was clear enough.

    At my 20 minute target point, I was three short. CASH CROP and STORYBOOK came quickly enough, but HAKAS needed an alpha-trawl (albeit only a short one).

    FOI FORMOSA
    LOI HAKAS
    COD YALE LOCK
    TIME 22:47

    Edited at 2020-03-25 01:17 pm (UTC)

  22. Had trouble with that damn shop and pretty much everything else. It took forever but then I have forever for the moment.
  23. FOI COLOMBIA;LOI OCTAD. Unsolved:most of it.
    Could see this was hard; coming here I now realise how hard.
    Was also supposed to be playing golf today. I share your pain Pip. And my garden is already tidier than normal. David
  24. Liked this (barring ‘for’ as ‘to get’, which while technically OK by the dictionary seems to lie outside the camaraderie of accepted wordplay). About 50 minutes. All clues otherwise entertaining with several neat surfaces. (Though I could wish my attention hadn’t been drawn to a different reading of 14; perhaps a slightly hasty checking there.) Personally rather enjoyed the varied background of schmuck coming together. Good to have a new word for the pub.
  25. I’ll have to go against the trend here, and say I thought it was one of best puzzles of the year, esp with deviously misleading definitions. Hard, yes, but I got there in the end even where the answers were new to me eg DRAMSHOP, SHIPWORM. Thought MICROMESH was a great hidden which I got only near the end. Also esp liked BALER, STORYBOOK, GOLF BALL and some others.
    1. It is odd how some does and others doesn’t! MICROMESH was my SOI (Second One In) as it stood out like a sore thumb. Other ‘hiddens’ take me forever.
      Why don’t you come out of hiding and join us, as you make some fine points? An avatar would suit you!
  26. However I had to do several checks to see that the word meant what I thought it meant, including LUSTRUM which I had read as 2nd of Robert Harris’s Cicero trilogy. ( highly recommended by the way). Unfortunately my go to checker hadn’t heard of DRAMSHOP either, so resorted to Ulu the scrabble checker for the confirmation. Never really considered the HAKA as a dance, but I suppose a war dance is a dance!
  27. Following official advice, I only went out once today, for my permitted daily constitutional, but made it a good long one, taking in Churchill’s grave in the churchyard at Bladon (observing strict social distancing from him and everyone else we met). I tackled this beast once I’d come back, and with one thing and another needed an afternoon nap to recover. Same struggles as other people, getting bogged down in the SE corner and the DRAMSHOP in particular, but I’m in the camp which enjoyed the struggle.
  28. I enjoyed this very much – I’m sorry many in the crew didn’t.

    I particularly liked the clever and cleverly hidden definitions (Cupola, Comet), and also the devious wordplay (pretty much all).

    That did lead to a problem with Hakka, as the clue also gives Frosh – another term for freshmen, and an anagram (dances) of HS (high school) + for. Once you’ve mis-solved a devious clue it’s hard to think about revisiting it. I’ve never heard of Dramshop.

  29. Another tricky one. Almost gave up in exasperation but kept at it and finished in 37.11. Like our solver, I found some of the answers obscure in the extreme- dramshop? Well, at least there was a reference to the US but hardly an everyday word on this side of the Atlantic.

    Markka was another one but I seemed to remember Finland had that coinage, God knows where that came from. Furthest recesses of the trivia cabinet probably. The one I was pleased most to get was lustrum. Recently used as a title by Robert Harris I recall. Thought micromesh was a classic hidden word, virtually my last in. Oh and pyrrhic, I thought that was just about too expensive victories. You live and learn- hopefully.

    Happy lockdown.

  30. A terrible day! I got about half done and abandoned ship. As I said yesterday, I feel like I’m going in reverse at the moment and am not getting a lot of pleasure from the slog.

    This was far too hard for me – too much convoluted cluing for some fairly obscure vocab. I particularly disliked lustrum (sorry setter) – I got the rum part but not the lust (not sure what that signifies) but couldn’t get to the very odd definition. A couple of silly Biffs didn’t help – cub scout put the mockers on the whole of the middle part of the grid.

    Having said that, I got markka, octad and schmuck quite quickly, and micromesh was FOI.

    Thanks to Pip for the hard work – you deserve that snifter 🍻

    Mrs Very Grumpy hoping for something a bit more fun tomorrow!

  31. Crumbs. Did it, but the time was off the scale. Tough crossword. Thanks pip.
  32. I quite pleased to see that I wasn’t the only one to find this very difficult and not particularly enjoyable. Finished eventually in 55 minutes. MARKKA or PYRRHIC in the sense of a foot were unknowns. And I resisted CASH CROP for ages because it didn’t seem cryptic enough to be right. Hope tomorrow’s is more enjoyable. Ann
  33. DNF. Bah! Felt like I was scratching around trying to gain a foothold on this one for most of the solve but in fact I was making reasonable progress. I finished in around 25 mins but unfortunately I got impatient and threw in hikes instead of hakas. Doubly annoying because I’m almost certain that I made the same error the last time hakas appeared in a puzzle and because had I chosen to embark on an alphabet trawl, it would have been first on the list.
  34. “I think you turn 100km into CKM, then make an anagram of that with US, then wrap SMUCK around CH for Switzerland. A bit of a chore”

    Cryptic crosswords, eh?

    The only indirection here is C for 100, which is quite common certainly in the Times. Otherwise the anagrist is altogether

    1. This is the first time I have seen a country code (CH) in a Times crossword, though they’re common elsewhere. Seems the editor is dragging us into the 21st century.
  35. I’m surprised that nobody has commented on “Pinto” – hardly a well known mountain (or am I missing something?).
  36. A Pyrrhic defeat , but at HAKAS, for which we had HIKES, obviously without
    being able to parse it satisfactorily (Ike had a further term as POTUS, perhaps?). Particularly galling as the trouble is a Kiwi. All done in 63mins of effort, painstakingly creating DRAMSHOP from its clued elements without ever having heard the term. MARKKA similarly. An enjoyable slog, happy to finish even with one wrong.

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