Times 27753 – a tail of Peter Rabbit.

Author   piquetPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
A bit of a Curate’s Egg for me, this one. Almost all of it went in and was understood in 15 minutes, but a few stubborn clues had to be biffed and deciphered (or possibly not, at 11a) at the end. I liked the double meanings of ‘sinks’ in the surface at 28a, and ‘back’ in 15d.

Across
1 One canon I’d recalled for festival (6)
DIWALI – All reversed: I LAW I’D.
4 More genial Liberal let down by the Speaker (8)
MELLOWER – ME (the Speaker) L (liberal) LOWER (let down).
10 Song and dance among endless Christmas turns (7)
LULLABY – All reversed: BALL (dance) inside YUL(E).
11 Non-English issue about to be packed for delivery (7)
DICTION – DI(RE)CTION loses its RE, where RE means ‘issue about’, literally ‘the thing’, in Latin not English. At least, that’s my guess, I await a better solution from someone wiser. EDIT better solution, EDITION = issue loses E and has C inserted. Credit Guy de Sable, first to comment.
12 Discover limits of executives’ pay (4)
ESPY – First and last letters of ExecutiveS PaY.
13 Escape, pinching fanciful tree decoration? (5,5)
FAIRY LIGHT – FLIGHT (escape) insert AIRY (fanciful).
15 Replace budgie food picked up after half-hearted late feed (9)
SUPERSEDE – SUPPER loses a P, then SEDE sounds like SEED that budgies eat. Go to the naughty step if you put in SUPERCEDE, which ought to be right, given that CEDE means yield, but isn’t.
16 Go for higher denomination cash in recession (3,2)
SET ON – SET on as in beat up. NOTES reversed.
18 A bible in US city for bookworm, perhaps (5)
LARVA – A Revised Version in Los Angeles. L A RV A.
19 Stray owls seen heading for recreation ground (9)
OWNERLESS – (OWLS SEEN R)*, the R from recreation.
21 Old Spanish silver, gallery’s property (4,6)
REAL ESTATE – REALES (old Spanish silver) TATE (gallery).
23 Present society leading the way (4)
SHOW – S (society) HOW (the way).
26 Discharge PM with large following in home counties (7)
SPITTLE – Pitt (ex PM or two) L (large) inside SE (home counties).
27 Donor somehow keeps workers’ group booming (7)
OROTUND – TU (workers’ group) put into (DONOR)*.
28 Rower hitting front of yacht sinks here, maybe (8)
SCULLERY – SCULLER + Y(acht).
29 Recording equipment orbiting globe for space intruder (6)
METEOR – O (globe) in METER = recording equipment.

Down
1 Luscious currants primarily filling bun with sweetness (5)
DOLCE – L C (initial letters of luscious currants) inside DOE = BUN. BUN originally meant a rabbit’s tail then broadened to BUN and BUNNY = DOE a female rabbit.
2 Background of PC that’s prepared for hanging? (9)
WALLPAPER – double definition.
3 Stuff youngster carries round (4)
LOAD – LAD has O (round) inserted.
5 What’s found inside vendor sent back (7)
ENDORSE – hidden word in V(ENDOR SE)NT.
6 Flat shortage with curious result (10)
LACKLUSTRE – LACK (shortage) (RESULT)*.
7 Screw, prison’s second in annexe (5)
WRING – R (second letter of prison) in WING (annexe).
8 Musical excerpts for which versatile singer not required? (9)
RINGTONES – (SINGER NOT)*.
9 Line up in entry to perform pirouette (6)
GYRATE – RY (line, railway) reversed inside GATE (entry).
14 Attractive Exmoor heroine heading off, crazed (10)
ORNAMENTAL – (L)ORNA (DOONE, eponymous heroine) MENTAL (crazed).
15 Sister nursing case of cruel, painful back condition (9)
SCLEROSIS – SIS(ter) has CL (case of cruel) then SORE reversed (painful back) inserted.
17 Injured bird leaves stormy Outer Hebrides for shelter in wood (4,5)
TREE HOUSE – (OUTER HE ES)* where HE(BRID)ES loses the letters of bird.
19 Last longer than exhausted enemy leader in conflict (7)
OUTWEAR – OUT (exhausted) then E (enemy leader) in WAR.
20 Fancy sex turning up in middle of day! (6)
NOTION – IT (sex) reversed inside NOON.
22 Vale in Provence long swathed in gold (5)
ADIEU – Vale is Latin for goodbye, Adieu is French. DIE (die for = long for) inside AU (gold).
24 Leggy bird, one proceeding with difficulty? (5)
WADER – double definition, someone wading through something may be proceeding with difficulty.
25 Put up with drill (4)
BORE – double definition: put up with in past tense. We had this not long ago.

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63 comments on “Times 27753 – a tail of Peter Rabbit.”

  1. This took me a while to see.
    [-e]DI(C)TION
    “issue” = eDITION, and “about” being C
  2. I parsed DICTION as does Guy, although not until submitting. TREE HOUSE another biff solved post-submission. I wasted some time taking ‘stray’ as the anagrind and ‘ground’ as the definition. Exmoor meant nothing to me, and it was only after getting ORNAMENTAL that I thought of Ms. Doone. LOI FAIRY LIGHT, DNK. I liked SCLEROSIS. ON EDIT: I just looked at the SNITCH, which shows 13 solvers’ times, plus 12 reference solvers with an error or two: lots of ‘supercede’s, one suspects. I see that ODE notes that the C spelling is starting to appear in dictionaries, without comment, yet.

    Edited at 2020-08-26 06:31 am (UTC)

    1. Supercede has occurred as a spelling variant of supersede since the 17th century, and it is common in current published writing. It continues, however, to be widely regarded as an error. Miriam/Webster
  3. I know I can spell SUPERSEDE; the one that was worrying me was 1d, as I know very little Italian (and probably more Latin.) Despite the fact that the Damned’s In Dulce Decorum was playing in my head I did manage finally to work out what was going on with the bun…

    I was also confused between my moor-based heroines, wondering how to put ATHY in 14d before I realised we were talking about Lorna. I’d put them both on my reading list if they weren’t already there!

    Anyway, got through unscathed in 36 minutes, which I think is pretty good for this one. Quite the range of knowledge tested, which meant I was sometimes looking for the esoteric where I should have been looking for the down-to-earth. Did anyone else try to come up with an Italian term ending with an “i” when they were looking for 8d RINGTONES?

    1. Well done spotting the ‘bun’ reference which was more than I managed, but the answer DOLCE was a write-in for me, and I suspect for many others, as it’s used a lot as a direction in music. Other than musical stuff I know no Italian whatsoever.
  4. Find me on the naughty step. Though SUPERCEDE is in both on-line Lexico and Collins, plus my Australian Oxford. Otherwise no drama, liked SCULLERY and RINGTONES, and SCLEROSIS after the fact – reading the blog I realised I’d forgotten to parse it. Didn’t know the BUN, but did know DOLCE, so 1dn was easily gettable.
  5. The question of supersede/supercede is interesting: when does an “incorrect” spelling become an authorised alternative? It’s actually been seen spelled wrongly in the columns of the Times itself, so is it now acknowledged? I asked the great Oliver Kamm, aka “The Pedant”, one-time columnist of the Times on matters grammatical. He replied that in fact historically “supercede” is the more correct, coming as it does from Old French (and not from the Latin “supercedo” as commonly thought) and only later changed to the more acknowledged spelling. So I would humbly submit that either spelling is correct.
    1. It really doesn’t matter what Oliver Kamm says, or what the historical derivation of the word is; what matters is which spelling is used more widely in the general population. If neither is, both spellings are correct; that C is starting to appear unmarked in some dictionaries (and that half of us seem to have used C) suggests that things are moving in that direction.
      1. Usage notes
        The form supercede is commonly considered a misspelling of supersede, since it results from confusion between Latin cedere (“give up, yield”) and sedere (“to sit”). The original Latin word was supersedere (“to sit above”), which continued in Italian as soprassedere, but the ‘c’ spelling began to be used in Middle French, appeared in English as early as the 1400s, and is still sometimes found. The fact that ‘supersede’ is the only English word ending in -sede, while several end in -cede, also encourages confusion.
        Most dictionaries do not include this spelling; a few list it as a variant, sometimes identified as a misspelling. A search of general dictionaries at Onelook All Dictionaries finds 4 instances of “supercede” excluding this one (with one flagged as misspelling), and 24 of “supersede”.
        Andyf
          1. He writes for the Times, often on matters of language and grammar, although The Pedant column was discontinued some time ago. He has also written a book (Accidence Will Happen) on the subject that is an excellent introduction to the subject.
        2. I absolutely agree. Oliver Kamm would be the very first to say that it doesn’t matter a jot whether what he says is right or not, it’s how it’s used in common usage – unlike the Pedants who he constantly attacks. And as far as this debate is concerned, his point is that pendants would say “supercede” is wrong, wrong, wrong, but in fact either is perfectly acceptable.
          PS before anyone comments, the “who” above is correct.
          1. Good-oh. But are the pendants? 😉

            Ps I do wish the answer had been supercede, if only to see Kevin and Keriothe step fearlessly into the fray again. These debates are such fun: the referenda/um pile-on was a doozy.
            – Rupert

            1. At least supersede/supercede is merely a question of spelling. Some contributors on here mistakenly tried to reference the referenda/um issue in the same terms, but the latter goes deeper than that. Referenda and referendums mean different things. And the former is Latin, while the latter is English. Mr Grumpy

  6. Agree re DICTION from edition.

    Knew how to spell SUPERSEDE, was it deliberately unchecked? Currently 18/33 reference solver submissions incorrect.

    ‘bun’ parsed after submission. Was pleased to be right here, DOLCE in Italian, ‘dulce’ (as in ‘et decorum est’) in Latin.

    Rather liked LACKLUSTRE.

    15’45” thanks pip and setter.

    Edited at 2020-08-26 07:14 am (UTC)

  7. Pip you have a typo at 15ac, SUPPER loses a P not an S.

    I found some of this really hard going but worked steadily thorough it, completing in 40 minutes. Some of the delay was working out parsing to make absolutely sure of my answers, so if I’d been content to biff I think I might have knocked 10 minutes off my time. I failed to parse DOLCE, so thanks for that.

    Edited at 2020-08-26 06:23 am (UTC)

  8. If so, as Deezzaa attests, then maybe I shouldn’t be on the naughty step! 24:49, with a pink square on appeal to the high court.

    Edited at 2020-08-26 07:19 am (UTC)

  9. The ornithologists thought they’d won it, but the astrophysicists equalised with the last kick of the game!
  10. 29 minutes with LOI SET ON, which was clever. I solved the LHS and then the right today, not by intention. COD to OWNERLESS for the challenge in differentiating anagram indicator from definition. Earlier, I remembered Wilfred Owen but fortunately couldn’t parse Dulce so settled for la DOLCE vita rather than the trenches. FAIRY LIGHTs, designed to fail on Christmas Eve, when it’s too late to source a replacement set. A solid puzzle. Thank you Pip and setter.
  11. 30 mins pre-brekker, the last 5 thinking of a short word for ‘globe’.
    Globe=’O’ – Pah.
    And Bun=Doe is nonsense.
    But, apart from that, mostly I liked: ‘…recreation ground’ and ‘…painful back’.
    Thanks setter and Pip.
    1. If you don’t like ‘Globe = O’, how do you feel about ‘Egg = O’ which has come up many a time?
      1. I wouldn’t use them.
        I’m not even very keen on ’round’ or even ‘ring’.
        2. I’m pleased to encounter someone equally as nitpicky as myself, but even I accept the aforesaid roundy thingys clueings.

          I’d be less keen on ‘espy’= discover.

          And yes I know the rules, but the old capitalisation issue rears it’s ugly head again in 4a. If you capitalise ‘Speaker’, it has no relation with the first person. None whatsoever. I can see how it has to work within the political surface of the clue, but I would rather the setter left it uncapitalised and grammatically incorrect (in that context), but parsing precisely and correctly in crossword terms. But then I suppose other pedants would equally moan that it should be capitalised.

  12. Another one in the naughty corner. And I thought I was being so clever! Found this quite tricky taking over 50mins, with still nothing written in after the first ten. FOI SUPER(C)ÉDE LOI GYRATE. Don’t know why but I took an age to see it. Overall a very good work out with some nice surfaces. Liked SCLEROSIS and SKULLERY in particular. Didn’t understand DOLCE but bunged it In anyway so thanks pip for the explanation.
  13. Found that very hard, but at least I got it right. Was totally fooled by ADIEU for ages, and the whole right-hand side was a struggle. Snitch is only 107, but more reference solvers got it wrong than right so far.

    COD: OWNERLESS – was it stray or ground that was the definition?

    Yesterday’s answer: an ollie is a move in skateboarding, which is adjudged to be a sport.

    Today’s question: what is a meteor that is brighter than any of the planets called?

  15. Turns out I am in good company on the naughty step. In my defense (sorry, defence), it’s obviously a thorny issue, and I suspect that you’d get away with this on appeal on Finals Day, as the “wrong” version now appears, as already noted, in various reputable sources. That apart, testing puzzle, which led me down a number of blind alleys before I got there.
  16. Slow but satisfying anticlockwise stroll round the grid. Missed the bunny, but got the word.
  17. We had that SUPERSEDE/cede business a while ago – I can’t remember when but at least I recalled it in time. I had to hack this out of the coalface, not a whiff of a wavelength but I got it all parsed in the end. Glad to see my hunch about the bunny was correct. 27.08
  18. I enjoyed this puzzle, especially as I had learned my lesson on SUPERSEDE, having got it wrong in several previous puzzles. ESPY was my FOI, which led to WALLPAPER and a fairly quick completion of the NW, although DOLCE took a while. I mombled AYENU at 22d until SPITTLE ruled it out, and moved back to the NE which kept me busy for quite a while, before moving back to 22d, where the light bulb finally turned on. Liked SCHLEROSIS. 27:40. Thanks setter and Pip.
  20. ….failed reference solvers (again) despite SUPERSEDE being correctly entered. I was down to my last clue in 13 minutes, but a 5 minute alpha-trawl of “-e-e-r” resolutely failed to suggest METEOR. I’m absolutely with Myrtilus on “globe = o”.

    COD SCULLERY

  21. I always thought supersede came from supersedeo, sitting on top. I have a vision of the historical layers of Troy or of the geological eras, each new layer sitting on top of the previous.
  22. And I thought I was doing so well. 15:06 and everything parsed despite slight biff of DOLCE.
  23. 26’47 but with cope not bore as didn’t see the past tense and just hoped, losing out. Surprised by bun for bunny, more so that supercede is more or less accepted it seems. While I regularly groan at sunk for sank etc. I hadn’t seen that one in the noble Times. A rather fine word, lacklustre, seen on its own as it were. joekobi
  24. I put DULCE instead of DOLCE for 1d, thinking bun = bun in the oven = due. Oops. Annoying as this was the first crossword in a while I thought I’d completed. Put me down as another who fell into the stray/ground trap for 19a before seeing how it worked once all the checkers were in place. An enjoyable workout.

    FOI Espy
    LOI Meteor
    COD Sclerosis/Ownerless

  26. I believe that SUPERCEDE should SUPERSEDE, SUPERSEDE. And to be precise, budgies eat ‘millet’ rather than seed -over to our Bolton correspondent.

    FOI 12ac ESPY then 1dn DOLCE then 1ac DIWALI where I first entered DIVALI, as I know it better as ‘DEEPAVALI’
    NB hintergrund is pronounced VALLPAPER in Low German.

    LOI 22dn ADIEU Doh! (I wondered about ANJOU!)

    COD 25dn COPE as in robotic coping saw/drill

    WOD 13ac FAIRY LIGHT – ‘one black one, one white one and one with a fairy light on!’ a decent alternative methink. (The Mayor of Bayswater, Trad.)

    Naughty chair!?

    1. I’ve never actually had a budgie, H, but isn’t millet seed? I’ve a new book out now with a crow on the front. They’ll eat anything.
  27. I avoided the naughty step, but only just. I put in the C version and later changed it to S. I think given the ambiguity in spelling, and the fact that as a homophone either work, that letter really should have been checked. Anyway, I managed to be all correct despite not knowing why bun=doe. I had to reverse engineer the Exmoor heroine from the answer…I was trying to fit tESS in but I guess she was somewhere in Dorset. Then I was trying to remember the heroine in Jamaica Inn…but that’s Bodmin moor.
  29. I wrote “Dulce” in too quickly – reading “with bun” rather than “bun with” and assuming that that was intended to lead to “DUE”. I thought it was a bit risqué.
  30. 17:24. I thought I was an idiot for misspelling you-know-what but having read the comments, checked dictionaries and consulted the oracle (Oliver Kamm) I’ve decided that I was right all along.
    An interesting and challenging puzzle.
    Does anyone read Lorna Doone any more? I don’t think I’ve heard mention of it for at least a decade.
    2. Not heard of… other than her appearing periodically in clues, that is. I recall a couple instances. (Helps that in the US there is a cookie/biscuit called Lorna Doone) (with a hideous jingle: I’d fly to the moon, for a…)
  31. Quite a few went in unparsed – LULLABY, DICTION, DOLCE, GYRATE and SCLEROSIS – so thanks to Pip for the explanations.
    I, too, had forgotten all about Lorna Doone and honestly can’t remember whether I ever actually read it.
    I thought OWNERLESS, RINGTONES and TREE HOUSE were all great clues and my COD goes to LACKLUSTRE for its clever construction.
    Thanks also to today’s setter for my 40-minute workout.

  32. Mostly this went easily – where the parsings were tough the biffing was easy, and vice versa. Getting from bun to bunny, then bunny to doe required two pieces of GK I didn’t have. Thanks, pip
  34. I thought this was a great puzzle with some excellent clues. I particularly liked the hidden at 6dn where the use of sent as part of the enclosure fodder totally fooled me. Not quick at 44mins but a better day than yesterday when I had to throw in the towel with the NW corner incomplete. Thanks setter and Pip. Ps. Surprised that supercede is getting into the dictionaries. Thanks to those who have contributed to the interesting debate.
  35. DNF in around half an hour. I generally found this quite hard with the RHS taking much longer than the LHS but diction was the only one I couldn’t eventually parse. All to no avail though, I’m another one on the naughty step because I can’t spell supersede.
  36. Well, I feel much better now after coming here (about SUPERCEDE, of course). Otherwise a wonderful puzzle, which took me 55 minutes to complete. COD to ADIEU, with the Vale of Provence and DIE for “long”. I also hesitated between DOLCE and DULCE, but settled for the former because although I didn’t know the required meaning of “bun”, DOE seemed likelier than DUE.
  37. Only got round to doing this today-27th- 25.50 but undone by dolce . Went for dulce on the basis the primarily related only to currants and in the hope that a dule was some kind of obscure pastry from somewhere. Toughest of the four this week so far for me. Looking forward to what Friday brings.

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