Times 27685 – ‘Oly Anna!

Author   ulacaPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
A puzzle with enough trickiness to keep you on your toes, I thought. Not difficult, especially in the anagrams department, but with clues such as 6 and 25a, and 15 and 17d that demand the application of the little grey cells. All in all, a nice pick-me-up in a Hong Kong still reeling from the Chinese Communist Party’s decision to introduce ‘security’ legislation for its autonomous region by fiat. 18 minutes-ish.

A prize to anyone who can decipher my fiendishly cryptic heading.

ACROSS

1 Starter that’s Spain to a T, somehow (9)
ANTIPASTO – anagram* of SPAIN TO A T
6 Name of commoner quietly erased by church (5)
CELEB – [p]LEB follows CE
9 The Speaker’s dogged disquisition? (5)
TRACT – sounds like tracked
10 Called into London park with a climber (9)
HYDRANGEA – RANG in HYDE; yes, beside being a shrub (and a tree), a hydrangea is quite the Sherpa Tenzing
11 Die, as one might in a casino? (4,2,4,5)
CASH IN ONES CHIPS – two definitional elements – one subsidiary and whimsical
13 Spooked, began to bury first of loot (8)
STARTLED – L[oot] in STARTED
14 One criticising alternative to Thatcher? (6)
SLATER – ordinary folk slate their roofs; gentrified folk thatch them
16 Content to be a flirt? (2,4)
AT EASE – with different enumeration A TEASE; we had something like this recently
18 Friendliness of retired toff, one in institution (8)
BONHOMIE – NOB reversed I in HOME
21 Writer repeatedly dismissing hesitation in masterful manner (15)
AUTHORITATIVELY – AUTHOR IT[er]ATIVELY
23 Spicy food pioneer cooked, keeping very quiet (9)
PEPPERONI – PP in PIONEER*
25 Hold forth with enough people there, no question (5)
ORATE – [qu]ORATE
26 Dictator’s sinister observation post? (5)
EYRIE – sounds like eerie
27 Budget problem proves Ned wrong (9)
OVERSPEND – PROVES NED*

DOWN

1 Old Greek goat tickling nurses (5)
ATTIC – hidden in goAT TICkling
2 Clear running water outside flowed by spring (11)
TRANSPARENT – RAN (flowed) SPA (spring) in TRENT (running water)
3 Country fan’s simplistic rubbish drawing one in (7)
PATRIOT – PAT (simplistic) I in ROT
4 Big glass boat (8)
SCHOONER – double definition
5 Loads of drawings daughter chucked out (6)
OODLES – [d]OODLES
6 Gamble large choir will sing here (7)
CHANCEL – CHANCE L
7 Bit of lamb maybe setter served up (3)
LEG – GEL reversed
8 Item of clothing I put down in restaurant (9)
BRASSERIE – BRASSIERE with I sent down
12 Meet painter, horribly self-indulgent (11)
INTEMPERATE – MEET PAINTER*
13 Lapps tear apart this fruit (4-5)
STAR-APPLE – LAPPS TEAR*
15 Case that would be haunting under English (8)
VOCATIVE – EVOCATIVE without its ‘e’, as it were
17 Nothing new in extremes of Sartre’s language (7)
SLOVENE – LOVE N in S[artr]E
19 Contemptible chap in love with States (7)
HEINOUS – HE (chap) IN (in) O (love) US (Uncle Sam, or Brother Jonathan, for horryd’s benefit)
20 Escort impressed American, old record being brought up (6)
GIGOLO – GI (impressed American – rather good, to describe a drafted serviceman) reversal of O LOG
22 Area needing new leader to make a profit (5)
YIELD – FIELD with Y for F
24 On reflection, fast talking is normal (3)
PAR – reversal of RAP – one of my pet hates

63 comments on “Times 27685 – ‘Oly Anna!”

  1. I had the opposite experience. Filled in lots quickly but then got stuck on a few (CELEB, BRASSERIE, and BONHOMIE) that suddenly all collapsed once I saw one of them. I wasted some time early wondering if CHAEL was a word I didn’t know for a commoner (CHAPEL without quietly).
  2. I carelessly went for EERIE; it didn’t help that I don’t pronounce the words the same, but it was still a stupid error. DNK QUORATE, but assumed it existed (evidently it’s UK). Biffed BONHOMIE, AUTHORITATIVELY, PATRIOT. A couple of MERs: RAP music, which I enjoy as much as Ulaca, is not necessarily–or even, to judge from the bits I’ve heard–fast; and even allowing the synonymy of impressment and drafting, a GI is a (US) soldier, drafted or no; the US Army hasn’t drafted a soldier in years.
    1. Yep, and that’s why we can continue to wage endless wars with vague and ever-retreating goals in the Middle East, as those placed in harm’s way are not the sons and daughters of the privileged classes.
    2. ‘Quorum’ appears in the US Constitution so I am surprised if quorate was not used there. What other adjective could be used?
  3. Just about snagged at the last with ‘Caleb’ for 6a, before the penny dropped for ‘commoner’. SLOVENE is a new crossword land language for me – sounds better than ‘snonene’ anyway. Us ordinary folk here corrugate our roofs – slate is very up-market. Finished in 27 minutes.

    I’ll have a stab at your ‘fiendishly cryptic heading’, almost certainly wildly off the mark, and put my shekels on it referring to the wordplay for PATRIOT:
    ‘In Oleanna land is free, the wheat and corn just plant themselves,
    Then grow four feet a day while on your bed you rest yourself’ etc etc
    More money for the bookies.

    1. Ingenious, and a nod of appreciation for introducing me to the zany world of Ole Bull. But, sadly, wrong.
  4. Never heard of QUORATE, but what else could it be?
    Nice one, overall.
  5. The sons of the privileged classes by and large avoid getting placed in harm’s way anyway. The boys I saw at the Oakland Induction Center (3 times; my lottery number was 5) were anything but privileged. Eliminating the draft eliminated one motivation for protesting government’s policies.
      1. no need to invent bone spurs, they are very common, and almost always incidental and of no clinical significance.
    2. I think the threshold of “privileged” that I was working with was lower than yours.
  6. Most of this went in fairly quickly but I was held up at the end by SLOVENE and VOCATIVE. It took me quite a while to work out what was going on with the latter and I hadn’t heard of the word so had to put faith in the parsing. Like bletchleyreject I risked coming a cropper at 6A where I had the C and worked out LEB from pleb and immediately thought CALEB is a name so that must be the answer. Fortunately I paused for long enough thinking that I’d never seen CA for church before.
  7. I remember being urged to attend an NUS meeting while I was in the student union bar at Warwick in 1991 as they were only a few people away from being quorate, and the urger then had to explain to me what “quorate” meant, so I was okay on 25a.

    The rest wasn’t too bad, either. 33 minutes, or thereabouts, starting at 1a ANTIPASTO, finishing with a hard time seeing the last half of AUTHORITATIVELY and finally 22d YIELD.

  8. 27 minutes. NHO QUORATE but the definition was clearly some sort of reference to a quorum, which I did know, so it wasn’t much of a stretch. STAR-APPLE was another unknown, or something forgotten. 1ac and 1dn went straight in, so I got off to a flying start.

    [Edit: A little research reveals that QUORATE appeared once before, on a Saturday in May 2016; 22 people contributed to the discussion of the puzzle but nobody (including myself) made any reference to the word. STAR-APPLE has appeared on numerous occasions both with and without a hyphen.]

    Edited at 2020-06-08 05:20 am (UTC)

  9. A bit of mind wandering when doing this. Nearly fell into the EERIE trap while wondering if EARY was a word and if so could it be a homophone indicator and if so what could this clue then possibly be? Then, did 14a reference the notorious old asset stripper Jim Slater, or was he before her time?

    I guess your heading refers to ‘Holyanna’ off one of my (and presumably your) Toto albums ISOLATION, which is what we’re all suffering now. Nice one.

    1. Um, no, never heard of Toto, I’m afraid. More of a Brahms and Schubert man myself.
      1. So you won’t be blessing the rains down in Africa ! I’m more of a Brahms and Liszt man myself.
        1. I thought the name of the band was familiar, Philip. My whizz over their Wikipedia page persuaded me that I’d never heard of them.
          1. Aw crap, I always thought it was “rises like a Memphis”.

            Anyway, Hold the Line is a better song and Hackney Colliery Band’s version of Africa is better than the original.

    2. I was hit by EERIE, and failed totally to find anything wrong with it. Doh.

      Slater Walker collapsed a bit before Margaret T got to power. Walker (Peter) had sold out so he could be a politician. He had only gone into business to get rich because Harold MacMillan (PM and publisher) had impressed upon the young Peter that independent means were REALLY IMPORTANT in a successful political life.
      Slater ended up a “minus millionaire” when the wheels fell off, while Peter W had already escaped with the loot. Sadly Peter Walker was in the right place at the wrong time and only ever got junior jobs as MT branded him a WET, which he didn’t deny, although he must have resented it.
      Andyf

      1. I did work for Slater Walker – one of the strangest organisations I was ever associated with. He had some very peculiar habits such as holding meetings standing up and refusing to talk to anybody with garlic on their breath.

        He was very lucky to avoid prison over the Spydar affair in Singapore, a fate reserved for Richard Tarling. I felt lucky to escape in one piece!

  10. 23 minutes. LOI was actually TRANSPARENT which couldn’t have been any clearer. I thought “a HYDRANGEA isn’t a climber” until I remembered the H. Petulans growing up our north-facing terrace wall. For some strange reason I also called to mind Joe Lampton getting confused between brazier and brassiere in Room at the Top, the memory of which brought in COD BRASSERIE. I’d have struggled with CELEB otherwise. “Are we QUORATE?” is a question I’ve heard at institutions as different as a FTSE company Board and the local Church Council sub-committee, so maybe us Brits are all pseuds. A nice Monday puzzle, tricky enough to satisfy. Thank you to U and setter.

    Edited at 2020-06-08 06:54 am (UTC)

  11. 20 mins pre-brekker, which would have been 15 if I could have worked out sooner why 15dn was Vocative.
    A confidence booster with a sting in the tail.
    Thanks setter and U.
  12. Great start to the week, nothing held me up unduly; my mind will no doubt crash a bit later following the high of last night’s quiz. Nearly put Caleb instead of CELEB, NHO STAR-APPLE. Setters do have to be careful with sounds like clues where both versions could fit, as you can sometimes read it either way round. It amuses me that one can move a letter in each of Bar-Brasserie to get Bra-Brassiere.

    COD: SLATER (Thatcher: ‘there is no alternative’)

    Friday’s answer: Common People by Pulp is allegedly about Danae Stratou, married to former Greek treasury minister Yanis Varoufakis.

    Today’s question: what European countries in their own languages are Slovensko, Lietuva and Crna Gora?

  14. Easy peasy today. My parish council occasionally struggles to be quorate.. on one occasion, it was inquorate
  15. 12:46. A bit slow getting started – FOI STARTLED, but then things flowed reasonably. DNK what a STAR APPLE is and I’m not sure I’ve ever seen one, but I did know quorate. LOI CELEB, my COD.
  16. The starter at 1a got me off to a tasty start, and the rest of the NW followed, apart from TRACT and PATRIOT which I came back to later. I struggled with CELEB until BRASSERIE arrived. I then plugged away until I was left with 21a and 17d, which took several minutes between them. AUTHORITATIVELY came first and then I had to write S_O_E_E down and do a couple of alphabet trawls before seeing how it worked. 28:08. Thanks setter and U.
  17. Perfect Monday fare. Confidently put in BAG at 24d. Not my bag etc. and gab for fast talking. PEPPERONI put paid to that (that’s easy for you to say).
  18. Spot on with the analysis, U, a puzzle with enough trickiness to keep you on your toes. 16.42 included an alphabet trawl as far as S for SLATER, and a while wondering how you could get quietly out of LOE so you could have CHLOE. OODLES my last in, but only because I almost forgot it.
    I’m sure my suggestion for ‘Oly Anna is incorrect, though it does remove quietly from a name. Did anyone else read those indefatigably cheerful survival guides?
  19. Bah. My occasional inability to remember which eerie is which cost me here – EERIE instead of EYRIE (Chambers tells me that eery, eyry, aerie, aery & ayrie are all acceptable alternatives, and that’s before you get to the lake). 5m 02s with that annoying error.
  20. I’m off to write out 100 times “If you can’t parse it, it probably isn’t right”. CALEB, I thought, that’s odd, definitely the only name I can see, but CA isn’t church, is it? Despite having this conversation with myself, I left it in, so that’s a bad start to the week…
  21. 14.38. LOI celeb, though that was a guess choosing between Caleb and the correct answer. Now I’ve seen Ulaca’s solve it makes sense but I got bogged down in trying to find a name for a commoner. Oh well.

    Thought chancel was a good clue as was slater. Pleasant start to the week.

  22. 12 mins so happy with my time. I puzzled over ‘Oly Anna! and immediately saw the anagram Only Anal. It is not… not quite. Sad – that could have raised some interesting questions… but I suspect seeing this almost-anagram says more about how my mind works than Ulaca’s!
    2. Were you thinking of HEINOUS? I think that’s how a working class proctologist pronounces it?
  23. But I was a locative not a vocative man. And I mistyped oodles. Not a good start to the week!
  24. 19 min, but having misread 9ac as ‘disposition’, got TRAIT – thinking of dog Tray from King Lear.
  25. ….but unfortunately I didn’t go back and check, hence –

    DNF in 30.14.

    Thank you to setter and blogger.

    Dave.

  27. ….not ! That of course is Pepperami as Davidivad will concur. As I already had PEPPERONI, I wasn’t tempted by “star-anise” at 13D.

    I parsed AUTHORITATIVELY afterwards.

    FOI HYDRANGEA
    LOI TRACT
    COD VOCATIVE
    TIME 7:47

  29. Nice and easy, but LOI TRACT. Am I the only who has NHO a disquisition? Confess I had to look it up before being confident of my answer, my first and wrong answer being TOAST.
    COD VOCATIVE.
    I think one of the clues is CHANCEL but I can’t find the other. Are we referring to Duck Face?
  30. 6:43. Easy today, and fortunately CALEB didn’t occur to me.
    I hear the word QUORATE all the time, usually in a context where it just means that everyone who’s expected to dial in has done so.
    Collins has ‘voluble talk’ as a definition of RAP, but it seems likely that the setter has the music in mind: both Collins and Lexico define it as ‘fast’ or ‘rapid’, which is a bit surprising because it’s wrong.
    1. I think they mean it’s fast enough not to understand what the chap is saying…
  31. Managed to finish this just after lunch. An hour or so with much time on my last four. 6a might have been Colin, Celia, Cilla or Caleb (as 8d was outstanding).Fortunately I read the clue for the umpteenth time and Prole produced Pleb and I was home. Brasserie then obvious. Last two PATRIOT (not Peruist) and TRACT.
    It’s funny, you wait ages for a Pepperoni then two turn up in short order. In fact I may have to buy a peperami (I’ve just checked the spelling),five for £2.75 at Tesco, just to remind myself what they were like. David
  32. Another who had never heard of a disquisition. If a requisition is a demand, an inquisition an enqiry, an opposition a naysaying, then clearly a disquisition is a ….? How does it get to be a lengthy diatribe? Once I had consulted the dictionary, 9a followed by 3d fell into place. No other problems. How often have we heard, “Are we quorate? No? Oh good, then we can all go home”.
    Richard
  33. Very gentle at 8:36, no problem with the well-known (qu)orate, or anything else for that matter. Unlike TT I did listen to the voice in my head saying “it can’t be Caleb as CA isn’t church”. /smug mode
  34. a phrase used to make something vulgar sound better, a euphemism of sorts. A substitution for holy sh** or similar. Used by Hulaca. A pleasant Monday 15’19”
  35. 10’36 but with Caleb. Going for a fast time guessed vocative over locative and didn’t re-think the name, one right, one wrong. However goodhumour restored by memory of plebgate cyclist Andrew Mitchell denying he used such a word. Speaking strictly as a casino poker player, when will one be able to 11? Another of those narrowing-down clues at 22 that do no more than point you in the general direction of the target – easy enough but not exactly beady-eyed.
    1. That’s a bit harsh. I’m no fan of Mitchell and his ilk but he was clearly stitched up.
      1. Not my take on it. And I vote with Mitchell’s ilk. Doesn’t stop me finding the whole sideshow gloriously ridiculous.
        1. The coppers fabricated evidence so I’m personally strongly inclined to believe they made the whole thing up. We’ll never know for sure of course!
          1. I know nothing about it, but I instinctively mistrust the [expletive deleted] cops.
  36. Easy one today. Clearly a lot of our contributors have never been Chairman or Secretary of a committee – particularly in the voluntary sector. Making sure the meeting is QUORATE is an obsession in the run up to the event.
  37. All pretty straight forward I thought except for Vocative which I got but didn’t parse.

    COD: TRANSPARENT.

  38. Adland eschewed such things as committees and the like. So it was new to me.

    I was desperately slow at 39 minutes as 11ac did not come quickly either as I am no gambler.

    FOI 4dn SCHOONER – old school

    LOI 6ac CELEB

    COD 8dn BRASSERIE well I never!

    WOD 10ac HYDRANGEA my old mate Calvert’s dad was manager of Hyde Rangers back in day!

  39. A dozy DNF for me in just under 16 and three quarter minutes. I was pretty confident that the only word that would fit the checkers at 6ac was Caleb. My confidence was sadly misplaced. I could see the chequered flag approaching, accelerated and drove off the track and into the tyres.
  40. I enjoyed all 35 minutes of this (all except the last 5 of them, alphabet trawling to make sure there was no better alternative than SLATER). Of course I especially enjoyed the tricky bits like CELEB (for which I first had CHLOE, then CALEB, which were names but otherwise didn’t quite parse) and (E)VOCATIVE.

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