Times 27643 – The world turned upside down

Author   vinyl1Posted on Categories Daily Cryptic

Time: 23 minutes
Music: Brahms, Piano Concerto #1, Bohm/Pollini/VPO

This seemed like a pretty easy puzzle when I started, but there were a couple of tough areas that slowed me down a bit.  There’s a little more unusual vocabulary, and there are some things the you may or may not know.   If you get stuck, you may not manage to finish at all.   There was only one answer I didn’t know, but the cryptic is pretty generous. 

Across
1 Butterfly with legs on top? The ultimate in ‘strange’ (8,5)
INVERTED COMMA – A COMMA butterfly that is INVERTED.  Where’s the definition?   Look at what I underlined!  Great clue.
8 Go round quickly and tack, going to south (4)
SPIN – S + PIN. 
9 Fortuitous to get Oscar for a Western (10)
OCCIDENTAL – (-a,+O)CCIDENTAL, with Oscar from the NATO alphabet.
10 Member on board gives in, then oddly persists (8)
BOWSPRIT – BOWS + P[e]R[s]I[s]T, where ‘on board’ refers to the ship.
11 Tons in arrears regularly — affording such jewellery? (6)
TIARAS – T + I[n] A[r]R[e]A[r]S.
13 Lack of harmony is very new in music for disco (10)
DISSONANCE – D(IS SO N)ANCE.
16 Magistrate’s heartless act that is dishonest (4)
DOGE – DO[d]GE, a bit of slang that has fallen out of use.
17 Reject some love tokens (4)
VETO – Hidden in [lo]VE TO[kens].
18 Changing euro next, as foreign (10)
EXTRANEOUS – anagram of EURO NEXT, AS.
20 Rank suspicion about cheap stuff (6)
STATUS – S(TAT)US.  
22 An enhancing drug for heavenly body (8)
ASTEROID – A STEROID, a bit of an &lit, although not for long.
24 Machine for turning cast figure on coin (10)
CENTRIFUGE – CENT + anagram of FIGURE.
26 Treat prince having swallowed ecstasy (4)
HEAL – H(E)AL.   The literal is not quite synonymous, but it’s close enough.
27 Replenish beer that’s drunk? Disgraceful (13)
REPREHENSIBLE – anagram of REPLENISH BEER. 
Down
1 Driven to shaking after naughty child’s thoughtless (11)
IMPROVIDENT – IMP + anagram of DRIVEN TO.
2 See eastern star rising — or planet (5)
VENUS – V + E + SUN upside-down, where V = ‘vide’.
3 Film old relative during journey on horseback (3,6)
RIO GRANDE –  RI(O GRAN)DE.   The similarity to the song makes the answer a little obvious. 
4 Around x-ray, notice strange energy concentration (7)
EXCITON – Anagram of NOTICE around X, another NATO alphabet bit.  This is the word I didn’t know.
5 Police student about reported money owed (5)
CADET – CA + sounds like DEBT.
6 Crew name tug crudely? (9)
MANHANDLE – MAN + HANDLE.
7 Chap’s dropping masculine woman (3)
ADA – ADA[m].   I had to think a little, as a number of female names would fit.
12 Stick together stuff in cutting semi-precious stone (11)
AGGLUTINATE – AG(GLUT, IN)ATE, where both ‘glut’ and ‘stuff’ must be verbs.  
14 Baseball player’s casual two-piece outfit? (9)
SHORTSTOP – SHORTS + TOP.  
15 Attention to detail of former head about individual performance (9)
EXACTNESS – EX(ACT)NESS, as in ‘you’d better clean up your act!’.  
19 Slander a duke during armistice (7)
TRADUCE – TR(A D)UCE.
21 Gooey stuff coming from small tree (5)
SLIME – S + LIME, not the first tree you think of, but the obvious answer.
23 Swimmer wasting time over process of getting better (5)
REHAB – BA[t]HER upside-down.
25 Organ is present from Cockney, we’re told (3)
EAR – Sounds like ‘ERE, which is how the Cockney responds to the roll call.

62 comments on “Times 27643 – The world turned upside down”

  1. was my FOI – I was quick to see the def. so hardly up for COD! Commas were very common and first to show in Lincs. back in the day.

    LOI 4dn EXCITON but I could not get excited about it and was not sure- so like Jack a TKO.

    COD 24ac CENTRIFUGE go figure out!

    WOD 9ac OCCIDENTAL

    I thought 2dn VENUS was a poorly clued

    Memories of Red Grant on the RIO GRANDE Portland Jamaica at 3dn

    Edited at 2020-04-20 11:39 am (UTC)

  2. NHO EXCITON or AGGLUTINATE though checkers were enough to get them over the line – EXCITON just seemed a little more likely than EXCOTIN
  3. 21:47. Couldn’t find a foothold to begin with but eventually got FOI bowsprit and after that the bottom half filled up pretty quickly. The top half was fiddlier. Had no idea what was going on with the butterfly clue until the very last moment, very good. Also had a little trouble with Rio Grande, manhandle, Occidental and the unknown LOI exciton.
  4. Another who’d never heard of EXCITON or AGGLUTINATE, but the wordplay and checkers got me to the answers. MANHANDLE and TIARAS were my last 2 in. Liked INVERTED COMMA, even if I didn’t stop to spot the clever wordplay. An enjoyable puzzle which I polished off in 20:46, only to find myself in a laggardly 115th position on the Leaderboard. Thanks setter and Vinyl.
  5. Readers of the newspaper may have noticed the insert on 11 April 2020, a “pull out and keep” guide to butterflies which of course includes the comma. When its wings are shut, the comma butterfly looks like a fallen leaf, allowing hibernating adults to hide in the winter.
    As for the puzzle I solved the bottom half quite quickly including SHORTSTOP, one of my first in. But with bases loaded I couldn’t make much progress with the top half so came here.
    David
  6. Eventually ground my way through this in 42:39.

    BOWSPRIT was LOI, after a bit of a 2 speed solve, rushing through the bottom half, then coming to a juddering halt, and having to prise out RIO GRANDE, OCCIDENTAL, MANHANDLE and EXCITON.

    It’s all good experience.

  7. A very enjoyable outing. I don’t often try the 15squared but was a bit bored with all this indolence (and the garden is pretty well under control). I was pleased to finish well within my target. Too many nice clues to list. I cannot compete with the speed merchants but was pleased to finish and parse it all without aids. Thanks to setter and blogger. John M.

    Edited at 2020-04-21 07:19 am (UTC)

  9. There I went, making up English words and their meanings again: AGGLUMINATE anybody? or GLUM (meaning stuff, as in, “just glum that in there”)? Even if I had thought of GLUT (which I didn’t), I wouldn’t have read it as the verbal meaning it obviously does have. But the rest was easy (and my COD would also be the ‘INVERTED COMMA’).

    Edited at 2020-04-20 05:40 pm (UTC)

  11. Only took me two days. Generally don’t finish. 6d and 10ac last to finish. Surely dishonest is dodgy not dodge so just had to enter doge as only possible answer.
  12. Can’t make you head or tail of 1a – doesn’t make any sense to me. I guess I’m just not up to this crossword. Final week for me.

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