Times 27747 – In 1492, the natives discovered they were Indians; they learnt they lived in America

Author   piquetPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
I enjoyed this, my best Wednesday for a while. Not too tricky, not too obscure, not too easy, and quite witty in places. There were enough easy or chestnut clues to get you some crossers for the harder ones. For a moment I thought we had a mini-theme, Grauniad style, but that would be exaggerating. Twenty-five minutes and nothing too hard to parse. I liked the definition at 2d and the tasty anagram at 13d.

Across
1 Underworld girls in sacks (9)
DISMISSES – DIS (underworld, hell) MISSES (girls).
6 Plant leaf half destroyed by insect (5)
BUGLE – BUG (insect) LE(AF). Common wild flower ajuga reptans.
9 Force one to put in team (7)
MANITOU – Put I and TO into MAN U a football team. Manitou is a spirit or life force, among American native peoples.
10 Native Americans here — gosh, a soldier is retreating! (7)
ARAPAHO – We’re on a theme now: all reversed, OH ! A PARA
11 Small drink, peg, knocked back (3)
NIP – PIN reversed.
12 Actors get twitchy — heavens, there’s a loss of stomach! (11)
GASTRECTOMY – (ACTORS GET)*, MY = Heavens!
14 Hospital department facing rebuke for trick (6)
ENTRAP – ENT then RAP = rebuke.
15 What may return to haunt woman, part of Bible introduced by cleric (8)
REVENANT – REV (cleric) ENA (woman) NT (part of Bible).
17 Repaid and rather embarrassed about it (8)
REQUITED – RED (embarrassed) around QUITE (rather).
19 Like husband with memory going into retreat (6)
ASHRAM – AS, H(usband), RAM = memory.
22 Revealing prominent feature of tough parson being unorthodox (11)
PROGNATHOUS – (TOUGH PARSON)*. It means having a prominent jaw.
23 Man needing a change of heart and belief (3)
ISM – The Isle of Man, known as IOM, changes its A to S.
25 Transport going back a few feet taking time (7)
DRAYAGE – YARD reversed, AGE = time.
27 A very old city friend coming across in conversation? (7)
AURALLY – A, UR (very old city), ALLY (friend).
28 Cut interest you might pick up (5)
STEAK – sounds like STAKE = interest.
29 New form of power then made widely available (5,4)
THREW OPEN – (POWER THEN)*.

Down
1 Fellow‘s love with doom around (5)
DAMON – Insert O into DAMN = doom.
2 Paper’s fund for something relatively dark (7)
SUNSPOT – SUN’S (paper’s) POT (fund).
3 Not “tearing apart”, one’s gathered! (11)
INTEGRATION – (NOT TEARING I)* where I = one’s gathered into the anagrist.
4 Scotch or soft drink? (6)
SQUASH – double definition.
5 Rough leather: can it match calfskin, ultimately? (8)
SHAGREEN – SH ! (can it!) AGREE (match) N (end of calfskin).
6 False god inadequate? Cry (3)
BAA – BAAL is a false God, it loses its L. BAA as in the cry of a sheep, for example.
7 Female relative has nothing with the Continental breakfast cereal (7)
GRANOLA – GRAN (female relative) O (nothing) LA (the, Continental).
8 Ultimately nice and comfortable bit of shrub for biological set-up (9)
ECOSYSTEM – (nic)E, COSY (comfortable) STEM (bit of shrub).
13 Cashew trees supply something to get your teeth into (6,5)
CHEESE STRAW – (CASHEW TREES)*.
14 Conveyor of tragedy in English university with final message before fateful day (9)
EURIPIDES – E(nglish) U(niversity) RIP (final message) IDES (of March for example). Greek chap who wrote tragedies.
16 Feeling ecstatic about money, grabbing fortune finally (8)
SENTIENT – SENT (ecstatic); insert TIN (money) insert E (end of fortune). SEN(TI(E)N)T.
18 What some meetings need to be when Queen gets to speak (7)
QUORATE – QU (queen) ORATE (speak).
20 One mistake at the end of game somewhere in London (7)
RUISLIP – RU (Rugby Union) I SLIP (one mistake). Ruislip used to be in Middlesex until it became part of the London Borough of Hillingdon in 1965. Its MP is Boris Johnson.
21 Shock maybe about old books offering nonsense (3,3)
HOT AIR – HAIR = shock maybe; insert OT (old books).
24 One of the old people with a refusal in the morning to get up (5)
MAYAN – All reversed; NAY (a refusal) AM.
26 Sacred box that housed survivors (3)
ARK – double definition; Ark of the Covenant, and Noah’s Ark.

60 comments on “Times 27747 – In 1492, the natives discovered they were Indians; they learnt they lived in America”

  1. Didn’t enjoy it, way too much obscurity for me, with the usual definition of obscurity. Guessed a few of the NHOs but failed on a few, like MANITOU, SHAGREEN, and even gave up on BAA. Dispiriting when a 3-letter word with two checked letters is so opaque, both definition & wordplay (though Baal rings a bell), that you throw in the towel rather than grind it out.

    Edited at 2020-08-19 06:41 am (UTC)

  2. Gave up after 55 minutes with many left. Seems like the perfect crossword for a long, rainy day; unfortunately I’ve got to get to work!
  3. Quite hard work but I managed to complete in 45 minutes albeit with one error, the unknown ‘rough leather’ at 5dn where I managed to construct the admittedly unlikely SAAGREEN from wordplay in which ‘it’ = SA as it so often does.

    Elsewhere I had better fortune with the unknown PROGNATHOUS and MANITOU which I knew was a word but had no idea what it meant – if pushed I might have gone for some kind of animal.

    I was pleased to remember ASHRAM and got BAA via the title of the Brecht play ‘Baal’ which I’m not sure had any connection with the false god – I think the eponymous character was a drunken dissolute.

    Edited at 2020-08-19 07:44 am (UTC)

  4. …Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying,
    Blow, bugle ; answer, echoes, dying, dying, dying.

    Dreadful crossword. Shagreen, Manitou, Prognathous, Drayage. Good grief, this isn’t the Mephisto.
    Thanks Pip.

    1. Agree, 100%. Plus with all the other Mephisto escapees, Beela – which really is a Oz tree – is every bit as good an answer at 6a as Bugle, if you ignore the bit where it has to cross properly.
  5. Well I enjoyed that. Some rather esoteric vocabulary, but nothing wrong with that for once in a while. I think DRAYAGE was the only word that was actually new to me, although I’d only come across MANITOU as a supplier of forklifts! COD to SHAGREEN – I always forget the “can it” thing then smile to re-discover it – very nifty clueing device if not over-used.
  6. For some reason I threw in THROW OPEN; careless scan of the anagrist, no doubt. Similar carelessness led to YARDAGE, which I finally corrected. PROGNATHOUS & MANITOU were two I actually knew, but couldn’t extricate for the longest time (manitou is not a general Indian concept, it would seem, but more specifically Algonquian. I for some reason would have associated it with the Northwest, Salish or whoever.) SHAGREEN we’ve had, although I think I would have said it was some kind of fabric. All in all, an enjoyably tough puzzle, although as Matt says good for a rainy day; not so good for a room without air-conditioning with the temperature already in the 30s.

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

  7. 53 minutes, but surprisingly all correct. DNK ARAPAHO or MANITOU, and was dubious about DRAYAGE. I also spent a while deciding if the SHAGREEN couldn’t be SEA GREEN. PROGNATHOUS needed all crossers and a confused state of mind between PROBOSCIS and PROGNOSIS. This isn’t my idea of a pleasant start to the day, but thank you to Pip for the explanation and setter for the feeling of relief when I finished.
  8. Loved this .. my favourite crossword for a while.
    No unknowns though I only knew Arapaho from some apalling 1980s pop song involving puppets. Oh, and thought manitou was a form of reindeer, for a while.
    1. Ah yes, The Chicken Song.
      TRIGGER WARNING contains extraordinarily irritating ear-worm.
      Ian Dury and the Blockheads also reference it Hit Me with Your Rhythm Stick, slightly less annoyingly.

      Edited at 2020-08-19 08:51 am (UTC)

      1. Ian Dury was my first and only musical thought, and I’m trying to keep it that way, thank you so very much.
  9. ….but with two errors.
    I managed the difficult clues well but fell over in the SW corner. For 28ac I put SHEAR (cut) on the basis that it was a (poor) homophone for SHARE (interest). That made a mess of 26d for which I put ACR. Those letters are in sACRed so I hoped that it might mean something but it didn’t.
    I thought SHAGREEN was the best clue.
  10. Totally agree with others. Needed my Chambers to solve this Mephisto style, verifying derived answers, so not a suitable puzzle for the daily commute. As much the editor’s fault as the setter. Well done Pip
  11. Eskimo, Arapaho, move their bodies to and fro. Hit me with your rhythm stick, what a tricky one.
  12. 17:33. Mixed feelings about this one. I enjoy working out obscurities from wordplay but you can have too much of a good thing in a daily puzzle. As myrtilus says we have Mephisto for that.
    I also thought cry=BAA and cut=STEAK were were a bit vague. Combined with the (to me) less-than-familiar BAAL this made 6dn a bit of a hit and hope.
  13. I thought this was mostly a tough but fair challenge but some of it was just evil, like the quirky definition and borderline obscure wordplay for BAA, and particularly SENTIENT with the disguised definition and frankly not very helpful checking letters.

    I did enjoy “can it” for SH if that’s any consolation.

    Oh, and can we stop using Man U as team?

    Edit to add that I ninja-turtled ARAPAHO from Ian Dury. I probably wasn’t alone.

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

    1. Objecting to a disguised definition seems a bit unreasonable (I mean isn’t that the whole point?) but this did annoy me because the setter used the archaic use of the word SENT to do the disguising, which seemed not really cricket. Even if you do the lift and separate you’re unlikely get that from the word ‘ecstatic’ unless you’re very fluent in crosswordese. I prefer it when these puzzles retain some connection to yeractual English wot is spoke.

      Edited at 2020-08-19 08:17 am (UTC)

      1. I wasn’t complaining about the disguised definition per se, generally I love that about the Times and always appreciate a good bit of L&S. My beef was that since the checking letters were so unhelpful we could have done with a bit of a leg up as it were, rather than an additional complication.
        1. Yeah fair enough. I think we’re kind of saying the same thing: I wasn’t sent about the clue either.
    2. Borderline obscure? I realize that young folks like Keriothe wouldn’t recognize Baal, but for such as I [old farts familiar with the Bible], ‘false god’ yields ‘Baal’ as quickly as ‘fat pathological liar’ yields ‘Trump’.
      1. It’s the familiarity with the bible that is relevant here, which is indirectly a product of age of course but more specifically to do with cultural and (in the case of the UK at least) educational changes. It just isn’t as significant a part of the general culture as it used to be.

        Edited at 2020-08-19 11:25 am (UTC)

        1. I remember an exchange with Jerrywh a few years ago, where I said that where the Puritans lost in England, they won in America; and we’ve been paying the price since.
      2. Kevin, comments from others suggest I am far from alone in not making the false god / Baal connection in a trice:

        > got BAA via the title of the Brecht play ‘Baal’ which I’m not sure had any connection with the false god

        > Baal rings a bell

        > less-than-familiar BAAL

        > I had no idea what the ‘False god’ was all about

        So I’d venture that on a scale of “everyone knows that” to “bloody obscure” he or she sits somewhere past the half way point.

  14. I’m on the side of those who thought there were too many obscurities here. I managed to finish (time off the scale) but I was very surprised to see that BAA, my last in, turned out to be correct – I had no idea what the ‘False god’ was all about. To each his/her own, but I thought SENTIENT was good and INTEGRATION showed just how clever anagrams can be.

    A few additions to the new words file anyway. And time for a well-earned dinner!

  16. Sent wasn’t archaic in the 50s when Bill Haley burst on the scene and we rocked around the clock, and were “sent” into a state of ecstasy.
    Rich
  17. Defeated by Shagreen, Baa and Arapaho. Plus I also threw in throw open. As others have said, a few too many obscurities for my liking.

    COD: Shagreen. Can it = Sh! 😀

  18. The obscurities fell within my happen-to-know so I quite enjoyed this. MANITOU (pronounced maniTOE) is a stop on the Hudson line of the MetroNorth railroad used by weekend hikers. The juxtaposition of GRANOLA and BAA (recommended for hikers) made me smile. 23.57
  21. When I was being disgruntled about BOTARGO on Monday, I did concede that your view on words being [delightfully arcane / maddeningly obscure] very much depends on whether you’ve heard them before (at least enough to recognise them, if not necessarily say what they mean without a helping hand from the clue). Accordingly, I found this much more congenial, while still quite challenging (and I’d say that MAN U hasn’t become a chestnut for me, as I spent quite a while thinking I must have got 4 down wrong, as there couldn’t poissibly be a four-letter word ending in U that meant “team”, before the penny dropped.
    1. My objection to Man U is not so much that it has become a chestnut as just a general dislike of that particular team / side / club.
  22. ….without stupidly biffing “Eumenides” at 14D, and “Manoa” at 24D. A lot of the rest was Greek to me too. NHO PROGNATHOUS (OWAA), or DRAYAGE (at least that one was workable), and was confused by thinking a MANITOU was a manatee. I was another with cause to thank Ian Dury. Basically, I hated the puzzle.

    FOI DISMISSES (cue false sense of security)
    LOI MANITOU (I was a spent force by then)
    COD (was there one among the dross ?)
    TIME 20:02

    1. Conversation between a Greek tailor and customer. No, I don’t expect you to be amused. But there may be one or two who haven’t heard it. jk
      1. Do you remember the knock knock joke? Euripides, you pay for dem 😅 Made me laugh then and now!

  23. Never really got going properly on this one – a bit like gnawing through wood.

    I knew all the words, but that, unsurprisingly, didn’t help much.

    All correct in just under the hour.

    Thank you to setter and blogger.

    Dave.

  24. Like Kevin and Aston, THREW it away by putting THROW OPEN. After a month with no errors it was annoying to get a pink square for one of the easier answers in this challenging puzzle. Shagreen patches known from tuberous sclerosis, and the other obscurities just within comprehension, with REVENANT ninja-turtled from Leonardo Di Caprio’s dreadful movie of the same name.
    39:41 with one error!
  25. Rather liked this despite not knowing the two Native Indian words. I really don’t think they or any other words here are too obscure though. About 35 minutes even after giving up twice and then being drawn back. The thing with words one doesn’t know is if they strike the faintest note of familiarity as they begin to come clear – thus shagreen with me – and/or if the clueing pretty well writes them out for you after a time. This last sometimes needs a sense of likely word-formation. Isn’t a vocabulary-range part of a crossword’s sly stock-in-trade? All part of the game.
  27. Fell at the last fence putting SEAGREEN for my LOI having missed the “can it” bit and having run out of steam. Everything else, even all the NHOs like everyone else, all correct. But it felt more like doing Mephisto without a dictionary.
  28. I couldn’t get ARAPAHO even with all the checkers in place so sadly a DNF after almost 50 minutes of concentration. DNK PROGNATHOUS but it was relatively easy to biff nor had I heard of ‘sh’ for ‘can it’ but it made me smile and I’ll store it away for future use.
    Some enjoyable clues, especially the easy ones(!) such as AURALLY, GRANOLA and QUORATE and I loved the CHEESE STRAW and INTEGRATION anagrams.
    Thanks to the setter and to Pip for the explanations.

    Edited at 2020-08-19 01:17 pm (UTC)

  29. DNF. A 31 min solve spoiled by a typo in Eurkpides. Very frustrating to work out some of the trickier vocab in this one, was particularly hesitant at the unknown manitou, and then meet my Waterloo by shooting myself in the foot at the final hurdle. Overall I liked the puzzle, most things fell within my GK rather than into my obscurity bin and the wordplay once unravelled felt pretty firm.
  30. 30.15 . I enjoyed this puzzle a lot. Interesting to see two references to native americans, manitou and arapaho but cluing gave everyone a chance. A bit miffed in having to make a use of Man U. Ugh…
    Can’t remember my FOI but it took a while, LOI sunspot. COD dismisses, yes pretty obvious when you work it out but I was a bit slow on the uptake. Also liked the aforesaid manitou, revenant- funnily enough you can watch the film on iPlayer- drayage and prognathous.

    Thanks setter and blogger.

  31. I knew the two AmerInd words (we’ve had Arapaho before, and it’s the first thing I think of when Apache doesn’t quite fit), but not some of the others. That translates to I’m in the camp which thinks this should have been tarted up just a little and sent to the Mephisto editor. Thanks for the very necessary blog, pip
  33. Well, I guessed early on that this was going to be beyond me. Not helped by missing the anagram in 3d and consequently going for InFormation (seemed to fit not tearing apart, and information can be gathered), which delayed Gastrectomy. Managed to get Bugle and Baa, but the SW was still fairly barren when I pulled stumps. Invariant
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