Times 27,635: Be Careful What You Wish For

Author   VerlainePosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Well, fair do’s, I can’t really claim this was anything other than a Friday puzzle, despite the attempted misdirection in 1ac. TRANCHET crossing with CASSIMERE crossing with TWITE though? These are the kind of shenanigans we expect to see in the CMS, not so much in the normal 15×15, and I wonder if a few solvers won’t have thrown in the towel rather than deal with this 22ac of obscurities.

The funny thing about this “hard puzzle” is that the cluing itself is actually rather straight-down-the-line, nothing particularly fancy to report beyond the hard vocab. In fact my favourite clues turned out to be some of the least hippopotomonstrovocabularian: the splendid anagram at 26ac, the very good specimen of the hidden genre at 17ac, and I’ll give COD to 23dn for its neat construction. Thanks to the setter for leaving me quite literally out on a LIMB for longer than the quarter hour I’m comfortable a puzzle taking me. Consider “uncle” well and truly cried!

ACROSS
1 Mainly leading role around Thursday (3,3,4,4)
FOR THE MOST PART – FOREMOST PART around TH

9 Praise cast for acquiring favourite snack (9)
APPETISER – (PRAISE*) “acquiring” PET

10 Best expose cheat (5)
OUTDO – OUT DO [expose | cheat]

11 American sectarians hard on English novelist (5)
AMISH – H on AMIS (Kingsley or Martin)

12 “Great goal” is all you’ll hear a girl raving (4,5)
HOLY GRAIL – homophone of WHOLLY + (A GIRL*)

13 Theft regularly involving farm tool yonks ago (8)
TRANCHET – T{h}E{f}T “involving” RANCH [farm].
A tranchet is a neolithic or mesolithic flint with a chisel-like end, or possibly “a shoemaker’s paring knife”, but that would be less yonks ago.

15 Killer’s headless chickens? (6)
LAYERS – {s}LAYER’S “headless”. LOI: spent way too long wondering if there might have been a murderous individual called RAVENS at any point.

17 US city making contribution to help a soldier (2,4)
EL PASO – hidden in {h}ELP A SO{ldier}

19 Cheat finally producing nothing for drug supplier? (8)
FOXGLOVE – FOX {producin}G LOVE. A foxglove is the source of the drug digitalis.

22 Note glut concerning children (9)
OVERISSUE – OVER ISSUE [concerning | children]. If a bank has overissued currency, this would constitute a note glut.

23 Mount collage, initially with border (5)
CLIMB – C{ollage} + LIMB. I put this in straight away then took it out because I thought “border” was LIMN not LIMB. But apparently a “limb” can be the border of e.g. the sun or a sextant. Who, he asked somewhat rhetorically, knew?

24 Fool European singer (5)
TWITE – TWIT + E. The twite is a mountain linnet, I discovered.

25 Opera‘s wordplay about girl in islands (1,8)
I PURITANI – PUN about RITA in I and I. A work by Bellini, which I’m pretty sure has come up at least once before.

26 Peers interfere improperly in economic system (4,10)
FREE ENTERPRISE – (PEERS INTERFERE*)

DOWN
1 Flip gospeller almost into the sea by public hotel (4,2,3,5)
FOAM AT THE MOUTH – MATTHE{W} “into” FOAM [the sea] by OUT H

2 Copy page in souvenir article (7)
REPLICA – P in RELIC A

3 Strike central heating snag (5)
HITCH – HIT C.H.

4 Mike leads playful disruption (8)
MISCHIEF – M IS CHIEF

5 Keen husband dipped into small brook (6)
SHRILL – H “dipped” into S RILL

6 Capital that is accepted by both sides in promoting Chinese principle (9)
PYONGYANG – YON [that] “is accepted” by P{romotin}G + YANG [Chinese (male) principle]

7 Scramble to get on with artist above suspicion (3,4)
RAT RACE – R.A. above TRACE

8 Duty of the superior toff, being above inferior English press (8,6)
NOBLESSE OBLIGE – NOB, being above LESS E OBLIGE

14 Wrapping a card, crease fancy cloth (9)
CASSIMERE – (CREASE*) “wrapping” SIM [a Subscriber Identity Module card for your phone]

16 Certainly true, cunningly hiding medals (2,2,4)
TO BE SURE – (TRUE*) “hiding” O.B.E.S

18 Voyeur embracing this setter over cardinal (7)
PREMIER – PRIER “embracing” reversed ME

20 In which paperwork is sorted by folders (7)
ORIGAMI – cryptic def, folders as in “people folding”

21 Legendary figure, very large one, in hospital (6)
OSSIAN – OS [very large] + I in SAN

23 Perhaps lag behind on jeep, arriving at bend (5)
CRIMP – CRIM [perhaps lag, as in felon] + {jee}P

71 comments on “Times 27,635: Be Careful What You Wish For”

  1. Tough, but the wordplay is sound throughout so I came in at 16:53, and fortunately no typos today after typos the last two days. Wordplay essential for FOAM AT THE MOUTH, OSSIAN, CRIMP, TWITE and my last in CASSIMERE
  2. I went for RAVENS, thinking of ‘ravening’ and hoping there might be a noun. Biffed a few: FOR THE MOST PART, FOAM AT THE MOUTH (from F_A_), HOLY GRAIL (was barking up the wrong tree looking for an anagram), I PURITANI (from the I _ I), PYONGYANG (from YANG), NOBLESSE OBLIGE (from O /_ B). DNK TWITE, and in fact looked it up to check; DNK TRANCHET. CASSIMERE sounded vaguely familiar.
  3. was my stab at 25ac and ‘heroinic’ failure leaving 23dn as CREEP and not CRIMP, which was beyond me. I PURITANI has passed me by, for obvious reasons. But not I ZINGARI.

    FOI 5dn SHRILL

    LOI 23dn engine CREEP but no bend!

    COD 19ac FOXGLOVE

    WOD MISCHIEF also one of many fine clues

    24ac TWITE rang a bell as did 14dn CASSIMERE

    13ac TRANCHET had to be, and it was good to see 6dn PYONGYANG getting an airing – ‘The Little Rocket Man’ will be delighted.

    Edited at 2020-04-10 07:04 am (UTC)

  4. Thought first of ravens, but managed to avoid it. Only knew craven as an adjective, and didn’t know if ravens killed things or not. It was cassimere that got me – I guessed the card was a six. Oh, well. Should have got it from the similarity to cashmere. Twite also a guess, Pyongyang unparsed, I Puritani a known so must have appeared before.
    Tough. Liked a lot of the clues, COD to crimp.
  5. Had to look up CASSIMERE. Might have been CASSIXERE or CASWITERE for all I knew.
      1. I also considered “caswitere” but decided it looked just a tad too unlikely.
        1. Same here. CASSIMERE has the benefit of being close enough to CASHMERE that it “might be a synonym” though…
  6. A technical DNF for me on this one as eventually I gave up and used aids for the last 3 or 4. I ran out of steam and frankly lost interest when I realised that even if I worked out possible answers I wouldn’t recognise them. I’d already had that disheartening experience in today’s QC so I was in no mood to struggle on regardless.

    Even more depressing was that, just like 6dn in the Quickie, one of the missing answers here was something I had met before on 4 or 5 occasions and each time, on looking back to what I wrote at the time, I claimed never to have met it before. In this puzzle it was the opera ‘I PURITANI’, so possibly I am the solver vinyl1 had in mind when he wrote his comment above.

    One small crumb of comfort is that unlike some other commenters I knew the bird TWITE as there was a boy of that name in my class at school.

    Retires to lick wounds.

    Edited at 2020-04-10 06:33 am (UTC)

  7. Very contrasting difficulty levels over the last few days.

    Today, the SW corner was very hard. TWITE went in on a wing and a prayer, likewise TRANCHET, likewise CASSIMERE. That was after TRANGEET had wasted a lot of time. As, less justifiably, had MONGOOSE over the other side. Now I’m going off to check if its plural is MONGEESE.

  8. I’d actually forgotten it was Friday (all days are the same just now) and thought it was just me finding it hard. DNK I PURITANI or CASSIMERE, both of which I thought quite challenging to the ignorant (guessing it would be RITA or SIM as opposed to other possibilities). My other DNKs were TRANCHET and OVERISSUE, but both of those were easy to get from the wordplay. TWITE are common up here in Scotland – look like drab linnets to me, but are famed for their pink rumps. COD probably CRIMP.
  9. I know it’s Good Friday, but this was one hell of a cross to bear. I’ve been an hour and a half on it, with more biffs than in a Beano cartoon. Only one was wrong. That was PEEPIER for PREMIER. I put it in intending to return to it later but then forgot. CASSIMERE was LOI, when I thought finally of a SIM card and no other arrangement of the letters seemed to work. Words I didn’t know included TWITE and TRANCHET, and who OSSIAN was, but the cryptic worked. I think we must have had I PURITANI somewhere recently as I did half know that. Thank you V and setter.
  10. Not so difficult for me. Mephisto style wordplay right up my street. Only knew the opera from these puzzles and I seem to recall Jack beating himself up over it one time. As soon as I saw “opera” in 1,8 I was pretty sure. Liked the FREE ENTERPRISE anagram.
    1. Whereas as soon as I saw “opera (1, 8)” I was “oh goodness, it’s that answer we’ve definitely had before, what is it now, oh crikey it’s totally gone…”
  11. 30 minutes with a lot of guesswork, and my last two in (apart from LAYERS, which I nearly left blank) CRIMP and CLIMB both went in with trepidation. Limb for border? Really? Needs a fair old squint and a five point turn in a Thesaurus. And while I know metal and such is bent a bit in crimping, my mind was not too happy with the match. Does one bend hair?
    And as for LAYERS: works alright when you realise the definition is chickens, but what a terrifying alphabet trawl prospect. My Electric Chambers lists 149 possibilities for the desperate solver.
    CASSIMERE because it looked like a plausible Mephisto spelling of cashmere, TRANCHET looks more like a weapon than a tool, and wasn’t too impressed by press for OBLIGE, another knight’s move in the dictionary.
    I should have got the homophone in HOLY GRAIL, though wholly and holy aren’t quite there (one’s hole lee the other’s hoe lee) but let that pass. I put it in thinking it was that rare and illegal thing, a scattered letter anagram.
    At least the CD for ORIGAMI floated my boat, but I thought this was a bit over the edge of annoying rather than clever.
      2. It doesn’t work when I say the words but others often have to put up with London homophones that don’t work in their own accents so it would be churlish to object!
    2. Collins, Lexico and Chambers all have separate entries for ‘limb’ meaning an edge so it’s not so much ‘three point turn in a thesaurus’ as ‘looking it up in any dictionary’!

      2. *blushes deeply* So they do, or at least Chambers does. Should have notice the second entry. Good day for sackcloth and ashes, at least.
        On such a simple word, my vocab is expanded: it’s not a connection I would have made before.

  12. Hmmm, I found this something of a curate’s egg – it felt like three-quarters of one fairly tough but enjoyable puzzle, bolted on to a SW quarter which had previously been part of something quite different. Managed, with varying degrees of struggle, to come up with TWITE and TRANCHET and CASSIMERE although all three had to be taken very much on trust. Still, there are more important things to worry about in the world at the best of times, never mind right now.
  13. TRANCHET and CASSIMERE crossing? Just gave up and glad I did.
    Obviously this setter has too much time on his hands. I suppose we all do.
  14. Well, that was interesting. Had to work out the otherwise unknown twite and tranchet, which led to a half-deduced-half-remembered-half-guessed cassimere. (It was a game of several halves.) But even getting to that point was hard work.
  15. DNF. Out-foxed by my LOI FOXGLOVE, which I used an aid for after 45 minutes. But I had CASHIMERE for 14D so had one wrong anyway. NHO TRANCHET, TWITE or CASSIMERE. At least the opera had come up somewhere else over the last few days. Some very nice clues, though. I liked the four long ones around the outside, but CD to MISCHIEF.
  16. As predicted yesterday, it didn’t take long for my P.B. to be overshadowed by a terrible performance, and I finally gave up and came here after an hour and 47 minutes and a pencilled-in TWITE crossing with a still-unknown fabric.

    Ah well. I suppose if I’d thought of SIM for card I might’ve got there, but I was already taking a punt on quite a few unknowns elsewhere, and by that point was just finding the whole puzzle annoying…

  17. I found this tough but enjoyable and I had to come back to look at TRANCHET, FOXGLOVE and CASSIMERE several times before they yielded. I probably came to the latter by a unique route. I had CAS_I_ERE but couldn’t think of anything for card other than six or wit. Then the Sufjan Stevens song Casimir Pulaski Day came to mind, I spotted sim for card and in it went. I’m pretty certain there is no link between Casimir and cassimere except them being homophonic, at least in my mind.
    1. Casimir Pulaski Day is a good song! So I had to look up whether there was a link between cassimere (obviously a variant spelling of Kashmir, the province) and discovered that the name Casimir is of Slavic roots which mean “destroyer of the peace” or “destroyer of the world”. That’s a pretty aggressive thing to call your child/yourself!
  18. 15:43. I seem to have been on the wavelength for this one, but the setter surely gets a yellow card for crossing TRANCHET, CASSIMERE and TWITE. Not to mention OVERISSUE which is a bit arcane. A bit much for a daily puzzle if you ask me.
    I confess I checked CASSIMERE and TWITE before submitting. They were they answers I had landed on (after considering CASSIXERE and CASWITERE) but TWITE in particular just looked so unlikely I couldn’t resist. So I’m awarding myself an all-complete but should probably add a few minutes for the time I would probably have spent in competition conditions worrying that there wasn’t a more likely-looking answer.
    I PURITANI was an immediate write-in based on checkers and its previous appearances here, where it has stumped me in the past.
  19. Hmm, some hard clues for obscure words there. TWITE and TRANCHET rang a bell but CASSIMERE didn’t (although I suspected it was some variant of cashmere) and I PURITANI and I got the former wrong. Also put in RAVENS. Prier is a bit dodge and didn’t really like the ‘a’ before ‘card’ in 14dn.

    COD 12ac HOLY GRAIL, good misdirection and a bit impenetrable but sound

    Yesterday’s answers: Rio band – Duran Duran; Yogi sidekick – Boo Boo; Northants river – Nene; Sheffield Mayor Magid Magid; Madagascan lemur Aye-aye; Kennedy assassin – Sirhan Sirhan; Tanzanian crater – Ngorongoro; Catch-22 character – (Major Major) Major Major; Monday 22ac – Mimi; Today 13dn – Baden-Baden, inspired by the latter two, obvs.

    Today’s question: the longest capital that has no letters in common with its country has ten letters, what is it?

    1. I managed to get all of these with a bit of googling. I was thrown slightly by the fact that MIMI was 22ac in Tuesday’s puzzle.
      Strictly I think it should be (Major) Major (Major) Major. 😉
      1. Funnily enough I was still thinking about it, then saw your comment and it immediately sprang to mind! Thanks for the psychic help.
    3. Unlike isla3, I needed a quick R program for the capital. I saw it in the end though.
    5. Dictionary I check on reflection after week starts with familiarity – I find that capital.

      I’m glad I don’t have to REALLY clue this !

  20. FOI 11 ac AMISH

    LOI 24ac TWITE – a bit of a hit and hope

    COD 1d FOAM AT THE MOUTH helped by listening to St Matthew Passion while solving, it being Good Friday

    Biffed 6d PYONGYANG, and 22ac OVERISSUE, which I could see the reasoning for but NHO.

    Entertaining and diverting nevertheless!

  21. “Jake was close to tears. In that moment he saw the world in its true light, as a place where nothing had ever been any good and nothing of significance done: no art worth a second look, no philosophy of the slightest appositeness, no law but served the state, no history that gave an inkling of how it had been and what had happened. And no love, only egotism, infatuation and lust.”

    I felt a bit like this when I had to give up after an hour and a half. Thanks v.

  22. Done by CASSIMERE in the end, with others like TWITE and TRANCHET only entered courtesy of the wordplay. A couple of naps so no time, but well over an hour. I liked FOXGLOVE and ORIGAMI.

    Not exactly a tourist Mecca, but PYONGYANG sounds like a pretty appealing place at the moment. Number of COVID-19 cases in North Korea. Zero – or so they claim. Maybe one of the very few advantages of totalitarianism.

  23. After an hour of hard work I had it all done EXCEPT 13a T*A***ET and 14d **S*I*E*E, rather than just guess I came here to learn, so DNF today. Never heard of OSSIAN either but guessed that one. Biffed 1a and 1d. I did know twite and the opera (one of a few which fit the Italian “I (something)I” pattern. CoD to FOXGLOVE.
  24. ….difficult for the sake of being difficult.

    I PURITANI rang a distant bell, I knew TWITE (I’ve discomfited a few “Words With Friends” opponents with it), and the only thing I truly didn’t know was this usage of “limb”. I needed Verlaine to parse PYONGYANG.

    At 19 minutes I was down to three linked clues. MISCHIEF took two minutes, and TRANCHET three. A further three minutes plus change (and an alpha-trawl) finally nailed CASSIMERE.

    FOI APPETISER (which I’m always tempted to spell with a Z, due to its use in Tizer’s advertising slogan in my youth)

    LOI CASSIMERE (it had to be a corruption of cashmere)

    COD MISCHIEF (the radio operator in me saw the M immediately, but the rest was rather more tricky)

    TIME 27:19

  25. New member here: does anyone know of a similar site for the mildly cryptic O tempora! O Mores! xword? PS. My username means ‘Hope a well-known bakery re-opens’.
    1. Welcome! I don’t think there is a blog for the latin crossword. TBH, I think vanishingly few even attempt it, here in the C21st.

      As for greggs, the baking equivalent of mcdonalds or kfc, you are surely healthier without it.

      1. Pity. Occasionally the clues and/or answers are opaque. As for Greggs, their sarnies are no more unhealthy than supermarkets’.
        1. I do it from time to time, I’m afraid I can’t claim it’s every week. I believe there was a suggestion of blogging it that came to little – I’d do it, but I fear people are sick of the number of blogs I do already. If there is a call for it, maybe we should though… Vinyl?
  26. Toughie for me. 34.41 but hit a brick wall with foxglove so looked it up! Lots of good clues of which my favourite was pyongyang. Also liked layers, appetiser and holy grail. If only I hadn’t been obsessed by cheat finally in 19 ac making the first letter of the answer T.
    1. Did myself in with MONGOOSE bunged in as LOI after too long pondering. Oddly had got all the tough vocab SW quadrant but then struggled with LAYERS (don’t like the apostrophe) and had myriad doubts about CRIMP/CLIMB crossers …too much for an idle Friday
  28. But a lot of google checking to confirm my answer. The only one which actually changed was I PURITANS which didn’t seem quite right. I didmuch of this this morning, but it needed a fresh head to complete. LOI CRIMP which I had to come here to confirm.
  30. 59:54. I found this tough but am pleased to have persevered and got there in the end. Tranchet, twite, overissue and cassimere were not in my vocabulary so that area of the puzzle was very slow to piece together. I seemed to be overthinking the more straightforward ones like layers and mischief and under thinking the ones like foxglove, foam at the mouth and noblesse oblige that needed more application.
  31. So near yet so far. A mighty struggle to get to my last two: predictably 13a and 14d. Gave up and came here for those.
    One of the few operas I have been to is I PURITANI -a write-in!
    Heroic and uncomprehending guesses to get CLIMB and TWITE.
    There was a lot to like in this puzzle, but rather like today’s QC, some very tough stuff in the mix. David
  32. I also struggled in the SW. I managed to assemble the unknown TWITE, TRANCHET, OSSIAN and I PURITANI, but looked up the first two to confirm. I got as far as CASWITERE and then looked that up and was presented with CASSIMERE on a plate. A lot of this puzzle was of the teeth extracting persuasion, so I was relieved to draw a veil over it after 52:21. I suppose I solved it all apart from the SIM card, but it was definitely a bit of a chore. Thanks setter and V.

    Edited at 2020-04-10 05:00 pm (UTC)

  33. I enjoyed the challenge, though I stopped with unfilled squares in the difficult SW. I still thought the clueing was usually quite clear. I liked Mischief, and all four of the long borders, Foremost fo the clue, Free Enterprise for the anagram, Foam At The Mouth for the thought, and Noblesse Oblige for the Edwardian usages of Nob and Oblige. Nice blog, nice puzzle.
  34. Maybe put a call into Patrick Kidd, the diary editor and self-identifying classicist? And, of course, the PM, although not right now.
  35. Hardly worth commenting at this late hour. My printout is covered with question marks against all the vocab I didn’t know. Anyway, I did actually finish it and just dropped in at this blog to see if these unknown words were correct. 53 minutes. Ann
  36. Just when I thought I was getting the hang of this. Gave up at 2h30m. Unremitting and not much fun though I did enjoy the Japanese paper art being reduced to admin.
  37. This was tough, especially in the bottom half. I’d never heard of TWITE, or CRIM as a criminal, or that sense of LIMB. But I fell on my LOI CASSIMERE since I guessed the wrong meaning of card and put WIT in instead, although it CASSWITERE looked a bit unlikely for a fabric.
  38. I did a special bonus blog of O Tempora! CCXXXVI on Times for the Times just for you! Hope you like it.
  40. Amis has to be Kingsley as Martin is still alive. This was a sly way around the rules.
    1. I considered IRIS (h) for a bit, as in Murdoch, but doubted the PC-ness as well as use of a first name only.
  41. NHO TRANCHET, CASSIMERE, LIMB = border? YANG (though with four of the five checkers, the capital couldn’t have been much else).

    About 7 left with an hour gone. Not the fun that a crossword should be.

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