Times 27759 – nay, Bob’s your rich uncle.

Author   piquetPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
A pleasant romp, nothing too obscure for me, with a couple of homophones that (for once) weren’t dodgy. I nearly went wrong with the unchecked sixth letter of 25a, but plumped for the right spelling in the end. I liked ‘revolutionary poet’s last letters’ and wasn’t very keen on ‘West coast city’ as a definition at 4d. I knew 1a because as a young lad I spent holidays at our caravan at Durdle Door near Lulworth Cove and Pimple Hill; where the ‘pimple’ on top, I was told many times, was one of those. [too much information – Ed.]

Across
1 Barrow, very noisy, that’s not got wheeled out (7)
TUMULUS – Very noisy = TUMULTUOUS; remove the reversed (wheeled) OUT.
5 Trooper occupying the back makes up crew (5)
EIGHT – GI in THE, all reversed.
9 Woman’s old name for tall winger (5)
HERON – HER (woman’s) O, N.
10 Oddly, Spain doesn’t fancy the Rock (9)
SANDSTONE – SpAiN oddly = SAN, (DOESN’T)*.
11 United brought in successful player who cleans up? (7)
SCOURER – SCORER = successful player, insert U(nited).
12 Colonist, a hero, bringing remedy? (7)
ANTACID – ANT (colonist) A CID (El Cid, hero).
13 Factory I came across dealing with small measure (10)
MILLIMETRE – MILL (factory) I MET (I came across) RE (dealing with).
15 Shame city centre’s controlled by party extremists (4)
PITY – IT (centre of cITy) inside PY (extremes of PartY).
18 Curious revolutionary poet’s last letters (4)
NOSY –  end of TennYSON reversed.
20 Last letters by medic are entirely about dairy product (10)
MOZZARELLA – MO (medic) ZZ (last letters) ARE, LLA (all, entirely, reversed).
23 Rear enthusiast to cross river followed by another (7)
NURTURE – NUT (enthusiast) around R, then URE (another river).
24 Common groups of species initially leaving (7)
GENERAL – GENERA (groups of species) L (initially leaving).
25 Instrument from a laboratory upset first cosmonaut? (9)
BALALAIKA – Greek stringed instrument; A LAB reversed, then LAIKA a mongrel street dog in Moscow who became the first animal to orbit the earth. She died in space on 3 November 1957, the 40th Anniversary of the ‘October’ Revolution. I’d have spelt it balaleika if it weren’t for knowing the Russian dog’s name.
26 Left a German claiming one reward for late night? (3-2)
LIE-IN – L EIN (a German) insert I (one).
27 Bowl bishop when batting (5)
BASIN – B(ishop) AS (when) IN (batting).
28 Burnt-out cases end up here, lost around hospital (7)
ASHTRAY – Insert H into ASTRAY = lost.

Down
1 Labour maintaining posh empty room causes unrest (7)
TURMOIL – TOIL = labour, insert U (posh) and R(oo)M.
2 Low bar spans Northern Line (8)
MONORAIL – MOO (low as cow does), RAIL (bar), insert N.
3 Supplier of narrow light dinghy (5)
LASER – double definition.
4 West Coast city teams caught tailing present carrier (5,4)
SANTA CRUZ – Well I see there are 7 places in the USA called Santa Cruz, and well over 100 worldwide; one Santa Cruz is a city and county in California. SANTA is the ‘present carrier’; CRUZ sounds like CREWS = teams.
5 Bogus bunch of bankers at Zurich (6)
ERSATZ – hidden word in BANK(ERS AT Z)URICH.
6 Poor coaching’s put off ace — they may be in the soup (7)
GNOCCHI – (CO CHING)*, where the A (ace) is removed from coaching to get the anagrist. I’ve never had gnocchi in soup, but Mrs K assures me it is acceptable.
7 The way things are going, start regularly then finish (5)
TREND – Even letters of sTaRt, then END = finish.
8 Church Mass arranged in heart of Kent castle for one (8)
CHESSMAN – CH (church) EN (heart of Kent) insert (MASS)*> SSMA.
14 Heather collects a couple of notes for obscure topics (9)
ESOTERICA – ERICA (another name for heather plant) insert SO, TE (two notes).
16 One from Glasgow hosts peer, good runner (8)
YEARLING – YIN (Glaswegian bloke), insert EARL (peer) add G. Racehorse between 1 and 2 years old.
17 Gritty Greek circular lacking a name (8)
GRANULAR – GR (greek), ANNULAR (circular) loses an N.
19 Extra clerical vestment picked up (7)
SURPLUS – Sounds like SURPLICE.
21 Crime nearly sorted out: Charlie’s collared (7)
LARCENY – Insert C for Charlie into (NEARLY)*.
22 Pondering briefly to absorb learner’s fine material (6)
MUSLIN – Insert L into MUSIN(G).
23 Moneybags lifts box office embargo (5)
NABOB – BO BAN (box office embargo) all reversed. A Nabob can mean generally a person of wealth and importance, aside from its specific Indian meaning.
24 Good wood flanks new grate (5)
GNASH – Insert N for new into G, ASH = wood.

​

77 comments on “Times 27759 – nay, Bob’s your rich uncle.”

  1. The Americans have gone to bed, and it is warm and wet here in Shanghai.

    Much in agreement with the Wise Owl- a 30 minute romp.

    FOI 10ac SANDSTONE

    LOI 12ac ANTACID (Eno’s v Andrews?)

    COD 20ac MOZZARELLA

    WOD 6dn GNOCCHI in soup is most acceptable and is often much smaller than the usual. GNOCCHINI also a Montreal model.

    The Croatian name for GNOCCHI is Njoki – njo kidding!

    Edited at 2020-09-02 06:00 am (UTC)

  2. I was a bit wary when submitting, with my last two in, TUMULUS and NOSY having been entered unparsed. My thanks to Pip for sorting those two out. It also took me nearly to the end to confirm that a “player who cleans up” was not a SWEEPER.
  3. This has almost the same SNITCH rating as yesterday’s, but was a good deal easier for me. I biffed BALALAIKA from ‘a laboratory’, and assumed that LAIKA was the dog; the spelling was no problem. TUMULUS came easily; its Japanese counterpart was one of many useless words I had to learn 50+ years ago in a class where I had yet to learn the words for ‘left’ and ‘right’. A traumatizing educational experience. SANTA CRUZ is not far from my home town of San Francisco, and a pleasant place, but what it’s doing here is beyond me. DNK the dinghy. COD TUMULUS, despite its painful associations.
  4. TUMULUS vaguely know as a word, and the only thing that fit that wasn’t a plural, so in with fingers crossed after an alphabet trawl. NOSY I would never have got in a month of Sundays, so thank-you for those two. Liked the “present carrier”, the bogus bankers, and the surface of 10 ac.
  5. Delighted to see Laika! More than made up for the heron.

    The mission on which Laika flew was given the nickname “Muttnik” in the West.

  6. 25 mins pre-brekker.
    Surplice/plus really is a dodgy homophone.
    Mostly I liked: Spain not fancying Gibraltar, Laika and COD to Tumulus.
    Thanks setter and Pip.
    1. I was going to say that surplice/surplus is not a homophone for me, but then since I speak Murcan that’s hardly relevant.
      1. True but I don’t, and it isn’t for me either. I quite like dodgy homophones, fortunately so as this is a fine example of the species
  7. I thought 18a was pretty ordinary. If you have indirect anagrams, then I suppose you can call this an indirect hidden deletion reversal.

    At any rate, a bit too 1960s for me.

  8. Also, ……….a bit of a “last letters” theme. Two consecutive clues include the phrase, and four of the answers end in Y and two in Z.

    Is there anything else going on here?

  9. 21 minutes with LOI MONORAIL following CHESSMAN and HERON. Up till then, I’d been wondering what a moonrail was. COD to ASHTRAY, which was neat. I liked TUMULUS too. SURPLUS and Surplice are not homophones to me, with the vestment ending in pliss, not that it matters. The dodgier, the better. On the easier side, but an enjoyable puzzle. Thank you Pip and setter.

    Edited at 2020-09-02 07:16 am (UTC)

  10. I have been to SANTA CRUZ, from memory it had no pavement, a beach boardwalk and rollercoasters.

    I agree SURPLUS/surplice is just wrong.

    Didn’t parse NOSY.

    Knew TUMULUS from LOTR, I think.

    Completely missed the Gibraltar reference.

    As a young man, was briefly traumatised to discover years after the event that Laika had been sacrificed – at least she’s famous, with a big Wikipedia entry.

    11′ 48″, thanks Pip and setter.

    Edited at 2020-09-02 07:23 am (UTC)

  11. 29 minutes, my third sub-half-hour solve of the week. I’m hoping to get to five of those in a row one of these weeks, but I’m not holding my breath. I’m not sure I’ve ever heard the word “surplice” said out loud, so I can’t join in the debate on that one…

    I don’t think I had any unknowns. I first came across 4d SANTA CRUZ from the famous (in geek circles) SCO UNIX, created by a company called the Santa Cruz Operation, and one of Quiller‘s missions was codenamed BALALAIKA, though I knew the space mongrel anyway. All parsed, including COD 1a TUMULUS.

  12. A banner day, as I finally completed a 15×15 with no aids (not even pen and paper, natch) in a decent time of 81:85.

    LOI was SCOURER, after considering sweeper, shooter and snooker. My GK helped with SANTA CRUZ (used to live near there), although I haven’t seen “caught” as a homophone indicator. Really, another one?

    I did parse NOSY after the checkers were in, but was alarmed that it was non-Ximenean?

    Too many great clues to mention but COD to BALALAIKA, where Laika is memorialised. My daughter has a set of shot glasses commemorating all of the animals so dispatched. Called, of course “Shot into Space”

    1. Congratulations! Hope it’s the first of many, because that frisson of satisfaction when you submit and get a clean green grid diminishes very little over the years and adds to the joy of living.
    3. Well done .. and you will find that they do get easier with time.
      don’t worry too much about Ximenes, even he saw them as guidelines, not rules to be slavishly followed..
    4. Well done on the completion. “Caught” makes sense as a soundalikee indicator if you think of something like “sorry, I didn’t quite catch that..”
  13. I thought this a pleasant easy-ish crossword pretending to be difficult, and finished in 16.22.
    I’ve been campaigning for years to get SURPLICE of Clergy accepted as the collective noun, so I’m not at all unhappy with the homophone.
    I also liked the NOSY clue, once I saw it. I don’t think it quite qualifies as an innovation, but I can’t remember its type turning up before.
    The niceties of TUMULUS passed me by, which is a shame, but thanks Pip for the explanation in this and the all things.
  14. Good progress today, solidly going round the grid clockwise. MER at CID without his EL, but as jackkt says, at least fresh in the mind from yesterday, and NOSY for indirection. Why are four-letter answers generally hard and three-letter ones generally easy?

    COD: ERSATZ, nicely hidden.

    Yesterday’s answer: the only non-US national capital named after a US president is Monrovia, Liberia, after his support for Africa being colonised by freed slaves.

    Today’s question: what two cartoon strips with the same name were coincidentally first published on the same day in 1951 in the UK and the US, and are both still going?

  15. All but three answers in 23 minutes but then I ground to a halt and required another 17 to sort out 1ac, 2dn and 11ac.

    Rather surprised to see CID without EL though he was fresh in my mind after turning up in the puzzle I blogged yesterday also defined as ‘hero’.

  16. Like robrolfe I had no idea that Laika perished in space.
    And like ulaca, I didn’t really like NOSY.
    Thanks, Pip, for explaining SANTA CRUZ.
    In 5d my first thought was to put GNOMES but then I couldn’t get from there to bogus.
    I have no problem with CRUZ/CREWS or SURPLUS/SURPLICE.

    Edited at 2020-09-02 07:25 pm (UTC)

  17. Nice to see Laika, who I have always felt rather sorry for.. though of her doggy generation, she is probably the only one still remembered. Well along with Lassie, I s’pose
    I used to sail, and occasionally capsize, laser dinghies
    Surplus/surplice is one of the dodgiest homophones I’ve ever seen. Loved it!
    The setter is perfectly within their rights to call a castle a chessman but still, a shudder goes through me whenever I see it
    1. I agree on the homophone. It’s not exactly the same but is that really going to stop anyone from getting it?
      2. What Jerry said. Indeed, there have been expressions of outrage on this very blog from, well, the sort of people who get outraged when a rook is called a castle.
        1. Ah, yes, the dear, presumably departed Colonel who always addressed Peter as ‘Biddlecombe’.
    3. Don’t forget Rin Tin Tin and Checkers. One a WWI hero before becoming a movie star, then having a 1950s TV show, the other is not being given back.

      Edited at 2020-09-02 02:16 pm (UTC)

      1. I did think about Rin tin tin but decided he was before Laika’s time .. Checkers I know nothing about
  18. 4d is even harder if you’re solving the paper edition, which has “team” in the clue instead of “teams”. In the end I just bunged in SANTA CRUZ assuming the Z was silent and I’d been mispronouncing it all these years.
  20. 12:05, but with TWO silly typos. I wasted so long worrying about TUMULUS that when I eventually figured it out I submitted in a fit of irritation and forgot to check my answers. The result was GNOCCII and MOZZERELLA. Particularly embarrassing for a foodie like me, although I know perfectly well how to spell both.
    1ac is a poor clue IMO: it’s an obscure word and I don’t think it’s really possible to construct it from the wordplay if you don’t know it. I did, vaguely, but that didn’t make up for my carelessness.
    I thought NOSY was a bit iffy too: very indirect even if not an anagram.

    Edited at 2020-09-02 07:56 am (UTC)

    1. I don’t consider tumulus to be obscure but if you are unfamiliar with it I’m happy to accept it’s not common. I think I know it from OS maps.
      1. I did actually know it, vaguely, but it’s hardly an everyday word so slightly more penetrable wordplay would have been appreciated!
  21. 17:37. NE corner held me up most taking ages to see SCOURER, MONORAIL and, finally, TUMULUS. Mostly I enjoyed seeing LAIKA appear.
  22. Back after a month, pleased to slip quickly back into the harness. Thid
    s all came pretty simply. LOI was one across because I couldn’t get tumbril out of my head – even after getting the Santa cross-check.
  23. I enjoyed this gentle stroll especially for some excellent surfaces. COD to TUMULUS (but then I was born on Salisbury Plain).
  24. 21’07, nice work-out as yesterday. The balalaika reminds of the glorious Dr Zhivago film of the ‘sixties.
  26. This was fun, and my best time for a while. No problem with TUMULUS – having spent the first 10 years of my life in the Berkshire Downs, I thought of it straightaway, but waited until I could parse it before entering. Wayland’s Smithy and White Horse Hill are fantastic places.

    I’m another one who didn’t parse NOSY though – I felt that it was a bit too indirect. I also biffed sweeper before seeing the error of my ways.

    FOI Sandstone
    LOI Granular
    COD Sandstone – very witty
    Time 31 minutes

    Thanks setter for the fun and Pip for the blog

  27. LOI TUMULUS which I didn’t parse till I got here. Some nifty clueing here for what was a pleasant stroll. Liked the extended description of an ASHTRAY which had me perplexed for a while
  28. 11m for this one, with some real struggles over TUMULUS & SURPLUS in particular. Indeed, I didn’t parse TUMULUS, SANTA CRUZ (team not teams in the paper!) or NOSY, which, now that I’ve seen it explained here, I think is rather awful.
  29. A gentle offering. Like Pootle I didn’t parse TUMULUS or NOSY (beyond wondering if James Dyson wrote poems before he got into vacuum cleaners).

    I was pleased to avoid the temptation to biff SWEEPER at 11 (from “player who cleans up”) and YANGTZEE (sic) at 16 when armed with an initial Y and “runner”.

    1. To die in dust, but I shall live by fame:
      My verse, your virtues rare shall eternize,
      And in the heavens write your glorious name.
      Where whenas death shall all the world subdue,
      Hoover shall live, and later eponymize.
  32. Biffed SWEEPER along with others, which led to 2d having to be MONOPOLE, which parsed nicely but didn’t seem to have a sensible definition anywhere in the clue. Surely the setter couldn’t be confusing these entities with magnetic field lines! And he wasn’t, but it took a while to untangle. NOSY was LOI, not entered until Tennyson materialised to parse it. 30:45 with a green grid frisson.
  33. Solved this in just under twenty two minutes but with SERPLUS, probably because I used to have a customer with that surname, and I’m feeling battered after catching up with all the crosswords after being away golfing in Lincolnshire for a couple of days. Drat! Thanks setter and Pip.
  34. but I enjoyed the workout of just over half an hour.
    I did not know BALALAIKA but enjoyed SANDSTONE, MOZZARELLA and MONORAIL which were all clever clues.
    My COD is ESOTERICA although it did take me a while to work out the two notes.
    Thanks to the setter and to Pip for the blog and for stirring up fond memories of Lulworth Cove which I too used to visit as a child.
  35. No problems here. I’m with keriothe that Tumulus made for a scary start at 1ac, but it was a false panic, and everything else went in very directly. I liked Laika, was pleased to skip the too-obvious “sweeper” bif, and came here in expectation of a rousing debate about chessmen and chess moves. I guess we’ve beat that topic into the ground over the years. thanks, pip (ps- Laika will be writing you about the national origin of Balalaika)
  36. I found this to be a great deal more difficult than yesterday, just barely finishing with TUMULUS after getting the idea. I moved to New York from Santa Cruz, CA in 2009, after having gone there for grad school in 2004.
  37. Despite being bought up in north west London, I never heard anyone refer to Primrose Hill as aTumulus! So bunged in Tumbles in desperation . Oh well. Up to then my time was good. The last clue or two seem to be doing for me at the moment. Thanks pip for putting me right and, begrudgingly, setter for beating me again. Liked MOZZARELLA and ASHTRAY.
      1. Apologies for late response, yes they do sound like an attractive couple, don’t they!
  38. 22.11. A good workout for me which I enjoyed. Never felt totally on the wavelength but it all made sense in the end. FOI eight, LOI tumulus which to be honest I biffed, likewise nosy. Some easy peasy, eight, heron , millimetre for example but others not so much.

    Thanks setter and blogger.

  39. I screwed up by entering Millilitre instead of Millimetre – it works, I think, in the sense of lit = lit upon = came across – this then meant that I couldn’t get Esoterica ( and I had forgotten Erica = heather which didn’t help me, either).

    Edited at 2020-09-02 04:39 pm (UTC)

  40. ….and found it a bit of a chore. Not helped by the missing ‘s’ in 4D.

    FOI HERON
    LOI MONORAIL
    COD NURTURE
    TIME 13:03

  41. In the print version, the clue reads: West Coast city team caught, etc. Unsurrpisingly I could not understand how you could get”Cruz” from that.
  42. DNF. I completed this in just under 19 minutes but had an error on submission. Chessmen. I can’t claim it was a typo. I was conscious of typing it in, I saw how the clue worked and threw it in without checking properly. Bah!
  43. Having read Merlin’s comment in the QC blog about finishing the 15×15, I thought I’d have a go at it myself. I’m not quite sure how, as I couldn’t parse or hadn’t heard of about ten of the clues, but I managed to finish too. It’s the third time I’ve finished one and timed it. I had to break off after 46 minutes to put my son to bed (first day back at school tomorrow) and then took another 24 minutes when I came back to it, but I’m claiming that as 70 minutes for a 27 minute pb. Never heard of a surplice or a laser dinghy and only very vaguely of a BALALAIKA and ERSATZ (though I think I’ve seen that before in crossword land). Failed to spot caught = sounds like in 4d and even less forgivably didn’t separate low and bar in 2d. Anyway, FOI 10a, LOI 5d. Thanks all.
    1. It’s a pity your comment is so late because I think you would have got comments of encouragement from some of the regulars. I rarely post a comment because I usually fail to complete the crossword. I didn’t know, and guessed wrongly, 1 across and made a spelling mistake with Mozzarella so a DNF for me.
      I have only been doing the 15×15 seriously from the start of this year and I don’t worry about my time but how much I can complete. I keep some stats to see if I’m improving but they are based on percentage completed not time. If and when I get good enough perhaps I’ll include time taken.

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