Times 27,761: I Could Be Bounded In A 15×15 And Count Myself King Of Infinite Space…

Author   VerlainePosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
If this turns out to be the hardest puzzle of the week I think it’ll be mostly accidentally, Monday to Thursday having held nothing TOO strenuous, if memory serves. This had a couple of interesting clues, far and away my favourite being 23ac just for its unusual cryptic device. Writing up the parsings for the down clues just now put me in mind of some of the more straightforward Jumbos I blog though – just enough cryptic to get the job done and not much more, resulting in fairly pedestrian clues like 9ac and 13dn. But feel free to launch into a spirited defence of anything that tickled your own fancy today! Ta setter for Fridaying us up, it’s a tough job but somebody’s got to do it…

ACROSS
1 Room for preparing all we know, longing to intervene (7)
KITCHEN – KEN [all we know], with ITCH [longing] “intervening”

5 Ghastly horse going without its carriage? (7)
MACABRE – MARE “going without (as in outside)” CAB

9 Person running on track’s the one I report to (4,7)
LINE MANAGER – MANAGER [person running] on LINE [track]

10 Solution for washing all dirty people’s backs (3)
LYE – {al}L {dirt}Y {peopl}E – FOI

11 Island’s housing inspector books those behaving stupidly (6)
IDIOTS – I’S “housing” D(etective) I(nspector) O(ld) T(estament)

12 Syndicate with one pound investment maturing (8)
RIPENING – RING [syndicate] “investing” I PEN

14 Kind but uncouth fellows nourish mad dog on the loose (5,8)
ROUGH DIAMONDS – (NOURISH MAD DOG*)

17 Grub favoured by Hell’s Angel? (13)
LEATHERJACKET – a cranefly larva or, differently punctuated, something a Hell’s Angel would wear

21 In army officer’s wake, I join up with good humour (8)
GENIALLY – in the wake of GEN(eral), I ALLY

23 Boat that has fortified wine, heading 90 degrees off course (6)
WHERRY – {s->W}HERRY: take SHERRY [fortified wine], and rotate the initial direction “S” 90 degrees clockwise so that it is now “W”.

25 Regular occurrences of racial trouble (3)
AIL – {r}A{c}I{a}L. Sadly topical, at least where I am.

26 Briefly cavorting in sun at hotspot (2,1,8)
IN A NUTSHELL – (IN SUN AT*) + HELL [hottest of hot spots]

27 Partially divide ten territories, lessening hostility (7)
DETENTE – hidden in {divi}DE TEN TE{rritories}

28 Make case to hold note that’s repeatedly folded (7)
PLEATED – PLEAD to hold TE

DOWN
1 Seaweed that is being found in Scottish waters? (6)
KELPIE – or KELP I.E.

2 Comparatively thin, metallic bar running through deck (7)
TINNIER – INN “running through” TIER

3 Who, ditching wife, dated girl? I’m ashamed to hear it (4,5)
HOME TRUTH – {w}HO MET RUTH

4 What mustn’t be done with two legs elevated (2-2)
NO-NO – the ON side being the leg side in cricket, elevate that twice.

5 Part of Evensong, graduate facing it fearfully (10)
MAGNIFICAT – M.A. + (FACING IT*)

6 Victor in trouble, cut deeply (5)
CARVE – V in CARE

7 Investor number one set up gold reserves, perhaps (7)
BULLION – BULL [investor] + reversed NO.1

8 Motivate last pair of men before besieging foreign fighters (8)
ENERGISE – {m}EN + ERE “besieging” G.I.s

13 Expanse of sand and desert a bonus for sailors? (5,5)
SHORE LEAVE – SHORE [expanse of sand] + LEAVE [desert]

15 Kind son gripped by aversion to speed (4,5)
MAKE HASTE – MAKE [kind] + S “gripped by” HATE

16 Conservative faction left in party raised barrier (3,5)
OLD GUARD – L in reversed DO + GUARD [barrier]

18 Do away with hollow effect round moulding (7)
ANNULET – ANNUL [do away with] + E{ffec}T

19 Troops engaged in uphill jog suffering (7)
TORMENT – MEN “engaged in” reversed TROT

20 Extremely cocky, continental journalist passed through revolution? (6)
CYCLED – C{ock}Y C{ontinenta}L ED

22 Fiction penned by an incomer (5)
ALIEN – LIE “penned by” AN

24 All that’s left of prime steak? (4)
RUMP – double def

69 comments on “Times 27,761: I Could Be Bounded In A 15×15 And Count Myself King Of Infinite Space…”

  1. Not particularly difficult, especially for a Friday, but my POI LINE MANAGER and LOI TINNIER took me a while. DNK the first, and simply didn’t think of the right sense of ‘bar’; although I was pretty sure TRODIER wasn’t a word. Also DNK LEATHERJACKET, but it looked promising. DNK ANNULET. DNK that the Magnificat was part of Evensong. C=continental was new to me. A MER at dated=MET.
  2. Gentler than usual for a Friday, but none the worse for that. Maybe our blogger deserves a bit of respite from his arduous weekly task as well.

    The S to W for WHERRY was my favourite bit too, especially as the surface had me thinking it must have something to do with “port”. I didn’t know the crane-fly larva, so my LEATHERJACKET was of the piscine kind and my 1d went in as an Antipodean canine.

    All present and correct in 23 minutes.

  4. ended in failure as I thought Sherry/Skerry was the play but MAKE HASTE my POI ruined all that. Never considered WHERRY.

    The top half flowed in nicely but all the lower, longer across clues proved tougher.

    FOI 1dn KELPIE

    COD 23ac WHERRY

    WOD 17ac LEATHERJACKET

  5. I liked 3 down too.
    The anagrind in 5d stands out: “fearfully”… all atremble?
    IN A NUTSHELL enjoyed this very much. Finished Wednesday’s first and now I gather Thursdsy’s won’t take long.

    Edited at 2020-09-04 04:43 am (UTC)

  7. 28 minutes. I wasn’t quite sure of ANNULET but trusted the wordplay. Lost a minute making absolutely sure which way the substitution in 23ac was going.

    I can’t see a problem with ‘dated/met in 3dn.

    Edited at 2020-09-04 05:23 am (UTC)

    1. ‘Dated’ implies an ongoing relationship. ‘Went on a date with’ would be closer to ‘met’ but would have made the clue a bit clunky.

      Edited at 2020-09-04 08:54 am (UTC)

          1. It’s very complicated these days. There seem to be various distinct stages of “courting”, including talking to and getting with.
  8. …Small, black, as flies hanging in heat, the Boys,
    Until the distance throws them forth, their hum
    Bulges to thunder held by calf and thigh.

    40 mins of enjoyment pre-brekker.
    Nice to see Kelpie. There are two huge ones in a sculpture near Falkirk.
    Mostly I liked the Hell’s Angels’ grub.
    Thanks setter and V.

    1. Thanks for that Myrtilus; I had not come across Thom Gunn and look forward to reading more. I enjoyed the puzzle today and came in under the magic half hour.
  9. Curses! It was, for me, just that little bit harder than the rest of the week, so at 31 minutes I missed my possibility of an entire sub-half-hour week by a single minute.

    I blame Georgette Hayer; having started The Reluctant Widow this week (thanks for the recommendations, everyone) I already had a surfeit of carriages and horses at the front of my mind to choose from at 5a so it took me a while to see the prosaic “mare” and “cab”. I did wonder how I was going to fit a curricle into a roan…

    Still, thought this was good fun (and I was actually more held up by 17a LEATHERJACKET and 26a IN A NUTSHELL than I should have been, too.) COD to 23a WHERRY; I enjoy making plausible unknowns up from the wordplay when they turn out to be right…

    1. Bad luck on missing the five sub-30s. Oddly I thought today’s was the easiest of the week!
  10. COD to WHERRY, vaguely heard of, used on Thames?

    LINE MANAGERs all the rage now, but, as their first instinct is usually to cover themselves, something doesn’t work.

    16′ 41″ thanks verlaine and setter

    1. You find quite a few of them on the Norfolk Broads or on the Suffolk tidal rivers. Wherry is also a very fine beer from the Norfolk brewer Woodforde’s. Come to think of it, maybe I should have nominated WHERRY my COD.

      Edited at 2020-09-04 07:24 am (UTC)

        1. Same. First encountered it in a marvellous beer garden in Burnham Market (The Hoste Arms) and have been a fan ever since. I occasionally get a minipin of it at Christmas time.

          For anyone who likes Woodforde’s beers, the M&S bottle-conditioned Norfolk Bitter is theirs.

      2. “You find quite a few of them on the Norfolk Broads or on the Suffolk tidal rivers” – for a confusing moment there I thought you meant line managers…
  11. Nothing too tricky today
    Most answers went in right away
    I had a short muse
    On rump, but the clues
    Were genially set, i would say
  12. Once the puppy was asleep, I zipped through this in 17 minutes with LOI ANNULET. I saw WHERRY straightaway, not that I know what sort of boat it is. COD to HOME TRUTH. Very easy for a Friday, but with some nice moments. Thank you V and setter.
  13. 18:33. Well I found this really hard, but I enjoyed it. On my first run through the acrosses I had only LYE and AIL, which didn’t feel like much of a start. The downs were a bit easier but I struggled all the way.
  14. 13:46. No real holdups today, although I took a while to see how TINNIER worked and I had to trust to the wordplay for the unknown ANNULET, my last 2. COD to HOME TRUTH for the surface.

    Edited at 2020-09-04 07:21 am (UTC)

  15. For once, I “got” all the clues.
    I was going to query ANNUL being synonymous with ‘do away with’ but on reflection I can see that they are.
    COD to WHERRY as I do like the 90 degree bit.
    I have a very happy memory of attending choral Evensong at Ely Cathedral 9 years ago and just a plain old Evensong in Burford nearly 30 years ago with a cast of about 9 plus vicar.

    Edited at 2020-09-04 08:19 am (UTC)

  17. Completed in 15 minutes (and 2 seconds, if you insist), so not a particularly stroppy Friday puzzle. I was prepared for a pink square to show up if I had got the W/SHERRY the wrong way round, but I would have appealed.
    Didn’t quite get TINNIEST, failing to split the metallic and the bar, but put it in confident that it was right and V would explain it. Correct.
    I was ok with ANNULET, if a little disconcerted by the “moulding”.
    I struggled to make the connection between kind and MAKE in 15, in the end just shrugging. I suppose it works well enough with cars.
    I am indebted to V for rounding off the edges!
  18. 50 mins for this but I am very happy with it as I finished a Friday xword. All the time thinking how easy V was probably finding this! FOI LYE (NHO), LOI CYCLED. Thanks V for explaining the continental bit, I hadn’t seen that. Liked LEATHERJACKET too though again, never heard of the grub. Thanks setter for a very pleasant offering and V for the explanations.
  19. Looked harder than it was. So a slow start compensated for by a lightning finish. Still not sure I understand the Kelpie clue.
  21. Really enjoyed this. About my level… only holdups were the grub, where I was trying to read too much into the hells angel, and TINNIER, my LOI, where I spent far too long trying to justify it, until I realised that metallic was part of the literal.
    I got the 90 degree bit immediately, just couldn’t think of a fortified wine.. must be because I don’t drink it or any other wine for that matter
  23. I had all the required GK to navigate my way through this in a decent time (although a had to piece together MAGNIFICAT, my LOI, very carefully from its constituent parts).

    Tinniest made we think of Monty Python’s woody / tinny sketch. Caribou.

  24. Really enjoyed this one – took about 25m. Thought ‘wherry’ was a great clue too. Only tiny gripe is in 8d where I thought it a bit mean to call GIs ‘foreign fighters’!
    1. Are Americans less foreign than other nationals due to the “special relationship”? Maybe so. I think the slightly fusty Brit-centricity of the Times puzzle may be one of its selling points.
  25. Nothing too troubling today, except an interrupting phone call. I managed to get a couple of answers while on the phone, is that bad?

    COD: IN A NUTSHELL for hell being a hotspot.

    Yesterday’s answer: apparently skill in billiards is the archetypal sign of a misspent youth.

    Today’s question: adding an O to one of today’s answers gives what soup that has the same etymology?

        1. Much better.

          My other attempt was:
          Stock investor has nothing against me being included (8).

  26. I thought this was the easiest of the week, not very Friday-ish for V to extol. All fell in quickly except TINNIER where I put it in as LOI without conviction but seeing no alternative. LEATHERJACKET was a good DD.
  28. Doesn’t quite work Angus – it requires the fifth letter of the original answer to moved forward two places. Writing a cryptic clue to it is, I’m afraid, beyond me ! Where’s Myrtilus when we need him ?
  30. ….and felt that a sub-10 minute finish shouldn’t have been a problem. Thanks to V for parsing RIPENING, where I had a brainstorm thinking “p = pound” and then couldn’t parse the “en”.

    My LOI looked correct all along, but I had terrible trouble parsing it.

    FOI LYE
    LOI TINNIER
    COD WHERRY (also liked KELPIE)
    TIME 12:38

  32. This revived memories of singing in Bach’s MAGNIFICAT eons ago. Even though I have a bit of “tin ear” I was one of the few 15 year-old altos available. 16.04
  33. Very much alone and palely loitering here but managed to limp home eventually in 48’30. ‘Line manager’ is one of the countless HR-type-newspeak infestations in the language that bode ill for future depths and ambiguities. ‘Saw’ might have been better than ‘dated’ in 3. Enjoyable outing nonetheless.
  34. Nothing too difficult, held up in the NE corner for a while at the end, until ENERGISE sprang into mind, quickly followed by MACABRE and RIPENING either side of the pencilled-in CARVE, and finally MAGNIFICAT realising that there was anagram fodder there – ‘fearfully’ doesn’t really suggest anagram to me…
  35. MAGNIFICAT was my first in – as a church chorister I could have had no excuse. I got TINNIER, but was thrown by the comma and couldn’t figure out how an inn is a metallic bar, so thanks to the blogger for the parsing. Spent a while trying to fit port into 23ac before the Y from CYCLICAL put me straight (I liked the 90° device). Didn’t know LEATHERJACKET but with enough crossers in place it couldn’t be anything else.

    FOI Magnificat
    LOI Annulet
    COD Rough diamonds

  36. I was pleased to finish this in just under 30 minutes although I did have to biff a few – LEATHER JACKET (didn’t know the cranefly larva), OLD GUARD (guessed at ‘guard’ for ‘barrier’) and RIPENING (where I still don’t really understand ‘I pen’ for ‘investing’).
    There were many great clues though including GENIALLY, MAGNIFICAT and IN A NUTSHELL but I have opted for HOME TRUTH as my COD for its clever wordplay.
    Thanks to the setter and to V for the helpful blog.
      1. Oh, yes, of course – ‘pound/pen’ as in an enclosure.
        Thanks for putting me out of my misery!
  37. A reasonable time for me, about 3V and I’m normally 5-7V.

    COD – LEATHERJACKET
    LOI – TINNIER, I too was delayed by that sneaky comma

    H

  38. Golfers will know that when crows peck great chunks of turf out of the fairway, they after are after leatherjacket larvae.
  39. I finished all except TINNIER in under 25 minutes, but that one clue took me up to 28:32 as I failed to lift and separate metallic and bar. A long alphabet trawl was required to put me out of my misery. Had to rely on wordplay for ANNULET and LYE. Had vaguely hear of WHERRY and saw the wordplay fairly quickly. Thanks setter and V.
  40. DNF. A 28 minute solve but didn’t quite get the 90 degrees in 23ac. Cycled through skerry and sherry but didn’t rethink it before submission.
  41. 23.00 . Bit late on reporting as played golf yesterday so only got round to this today (Saturday) . Thought initially it was going to be in the traditional Friday annulet but pleasantly surprised. Not a very rapid solve but steady . FOI lye, LOI shore leave . COD rough diamonds.

  42. … from my more usual habitat of the QC, and delighted to finish. No time, as spread over 2 days (but I suspect at least an hour all in), and help from aids with a few of the clues, but all eventually filled in and parsed as well!

    Very much liked 23A Wherry – a cluing trick I’ve not seen in a QC.

    Is there a reason why setters for the 15×15 are not identified? It is one of the nicer quirks of the QC that they are, and one gets to know and appreciate different setters’ styles and foibles.

    Cedric

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