Times 27,803: Bonkbusted

Author   VerlainePosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Some really good clues in this medium-strength puzzle – I liked 1dn, 2dn and 5dn, all of which withheld their shiny pennies from me for a good while, very much, for instance. But none of it really makes up for the atrocious 4dn I’m afraid, where a less obscure word for strike (BONK) can be reversed to make a less obscure word for boss (KNOB), and this is somehow not the answer.
At time of blogging there are 29 submissions with “errors” on the club compared to 3 without, and I don’t honestly know how those 3 managed to stumble upon the right answer; though I guess it may be a regional thing. If this clue was test-solved by multiple people prior to publication without this issue coming up, though, I will eat my very capacious hat.

Thank you to the setter for the good parts of this curate’s 5dn!

ACROSS
1 It’s well known: new lockdown meme no good (6,9)
COMMON KNOWLEDGE – (LOCKDOWN MEME NO G*)

9 Prod men to interrupt offensive opera (9)
RUDDIGORE – DIG O.R. to interrupt RUDE

10 About to stop low-down tree-hugger? (5)
GREEN – RE [about] to “stop” GEN [low-down]

11 Metal shaving twisted internally (6)
SILVER – S{L<->I}VER

12 Embarrassing mistake about dull, back-pedalling, perennial protesters? (4-1-3)
RENT-A-MOB – BONER about MAT, all reversed

13 They send up runners to welcome leading lady (6)
SKIERS – SKIS to “welcome” E.R. “To sky” means “to send up” (in the air)

15 Inspection kit is redundant, but not one containing catch (8)
OTOSCOPE – OT{i}OSE [redundant, minus I] “containing” COP

18 One unique barrier broken down at first (4,4)
RARE BIRD – (BARRIER*) + D{own}

19 Small bird seen by old man over the hill (4,2)
PAST IT – S TIT seen by PA

21 Penny-pincher demanding full roll (8)
TIGHTWAD – TIGHT [demanding] + WAD [full roll]

23 Intermediate puzzle with intro replaced (6)
MIDDLE – {r->M}IDDLE

26 Fake news: pleas FA regularly rejected (5)
FALSE – {n}E{w}S {p}L{e}A{s} F{a}, reversed

27 Projectile, originally lost, is in the sea (9)
BALLISTIC – L{ost} IS, in BALTIC

28 First on display to arrange big noise for military (3,5,7)
AIR CHIEF MARSHAL – CHIEF [first] on AIR [display], plus MARSHAL [arrange]

DOWN
1 Bending process cracks up on the boards? (7)
CORPSES – (PROCESS*) – as in what an actor who can’t stop laughing does

2 Barbie perhaps receiving doll’s first award (5)
MEDAL – MEAL [barbie, as in barbecue] “receives” D{oll}

3 Dull colour of old poet, ill, withdrawn (5,4)
OLIVE DRAB – O(ld) + reversed BARD, EVIL

4 Coming up, strike boss (4)
KNOT – reversed TONK.

5 One’s constituents beaten over race amidst scuffle (8)
OMELETTE – O(ver) + T.T. amidst MELEE. “One’s constituents beaten” as in, “one has beaten ingredients”

6 Not demanding rest (5)
LIGHT – double def

7 Hunk of bread and peeled tomato mashed together (9)
DREAMBOAT – (BREAD {t}OMAT{o}*)

8 Honour covered up by genteel bonnets (7)
ENNOBLE – hidden reversed in {gente}EL BONNE{ts}

14 Disorderly Irish customer, a familiar one (9)
IRREGULAR – IR + REGULAR [a familiar customer]

16 Harsh critic cries “fair!” unexpectedly (9)
SCARIFIER – (CRIES FAIR*)

17 Pressure to witter on about English introduction (8)
PREAMBLE – P + RAMBLE [to witter on] “about” E

18 Coming up: excellent, fine salt absorbing a liqueur (7)
RATAFIA – reversed A1 F TAR, absorbing A

20 Hawk left after row over church (7)
TIERCEL – L after TIER over C.E.

22 Force needing support on “towpath case” (5)
TEETH – TEE on T{owpat}H

24 Wife departs with face of tough guy scratched (5)
DUTCH – D + {b}UTCH

25 Sheer endless choice (4)
PLUM – PLUM{b}.

108 comments on “Times 27,803: Bonkbusted”

  1. Well, count me as a bonker. Grr. 35 minutes aside from that. I think I have heard “tonk” before, but only here rather than in the real world. Not only that, but it caught a blogger out the last time it was ambiguously clued, by the looks of things, though perhaps not as ambiguously as today’s example.

    Edited at 2020-10-23 06:18 am (UTC)

  2. Knob seemed perfect for a bonk up. Didn’t think twice about entering it. Liked the rest. NHO tiercel but went with the parsing. One debatable pink square in 33:24
  3. I did this desultorily, a bit at home, then in a hospital waiting room, and finally in my office, and have no idea of what the solving time was, so I submitted off leaderboard; and a good thing, too. After seeing the pink B, I did an alphabet trawl and inferred that there must be a verb TONK. Ah, well, one more Anglicism to remember, I thought, until I went to the leaderboard. Anyway, POI OTOSCOPE–I thought of it once I thought of SCOPE, but couldn’t figure out the wordplay–LOI OMELETTE. CODs to both. Anti-COD to KNOT.
  4. I was greatly surprised to find myself in the rare position of 2nd on the leaderboard this morning. It didn’t take me long to guess why. I had gone the “right” way with KNOT on the basis that strike and tonk both suggested to me a harder hit than a bonk. Chambers didn’t bear out my view so I just got lucky.

    I really liked this puzzle, finding it just tough enough to slow me down to the point I enjoyed the scenery without ever feeling bogged down. I held myself up for a bit by putting ELBONNE at 8D, thinking it was a word I didn’t know rather than one I’d failed to reverse. I wasn’t confident on submitting as I hadn’t parsed OTOSCOPE at all so thanks to V for sorting that one out. It’s hard to tell just how hard this puzzle is from the SNITCH yet as there were very few correct solvers on there when I checked!

    1. A bit longer than that here, but I never even considered BONK, not sure why. Like you I failed to parse OTOSCOPE at 15a. As others, at 12a RENT A MOB I took a while to get BONER to be an error.
      Andyf
  5. Insomnia, 6 am solve, BONK. Was 5/34 at 7am, having been error-free for weeks. Editor!

    Thanks for explaining OTOSCOPE, I now realise I have spent all my life without knowing the meaning of OTIOSE.

    22.50 otherwise

    *growls*

    Edited at 2020-10-23 06:29 am (UTC)

  6. Yes, a rare error, remarkable with knobs on. Surely. I look forward to seeing our amended scores in due course.
    1. Look if you wish, but it’s not going to happen; they’ve never, to my knowledge, acknowledged two correct answers, and they’re not going to deprive the tonkers of a correct solve.
        1. It used to happen occasionally with the TLS, back in the day when it was in the club and endearingly often open to alternatives.
          1. So they can mark two answers as correct? Today is definitely the day to use that ability if so!
            1. I seem to recall David Parfitt, on the club forum, explicitly saying that they can’t acknowledge two correct solutions.
              1. I expect they could probably amend the solution so that the old wrong answer becomes correct and the old correct answer becomes wrong. Bit means to throw the TONKERS to the wolves like that of course 🙂
  7. And me. Recount please Ed! Two in one day with the Concise also falling foul of a clear and justifiable ambiguity.

    The rest of it was quite good, though MER at skiers defined as ‘they send up’. Surely people (mainly batsmen) send up skiers, so they themselves are sent up in the passive tense?

    About half an hour for me so no Friday beast this. As others have said, grrrr.

    Edited at 2020-10-23 06:47 am (UTC)

  8. TONK for me, and luckily the alternative didn’t come to mind. I note that Chambers actually lists BOSS as one of the definitions of KNOT, but not for KNOB (though yes, I agree they are both good enough).

    I thought the OMELETTE clue may have been referring to the then-unsolved 1d, which resisted for a while – a well-disguised answer.

    1. The first words in the definition of BOSS in both Chambers and Collins are ‘a knob’.

      Edited at 2020-10-23 07:29 am (UTC)

    2. My dictionary gives TONK as meaning various things in Australian slang that it doesn’t in the UK – I’m going to give Antipodeans and very old solvers a pass on thinking of TONK before BONK, but nobody else 😉
  9. I went BALLISTIC when I saw that pink square for 4d. Still, a moral victory and a variation on the “technical DNF” theme. Hope the powers that be will allow both answers (though not yet, having just looked again).

    The definition for OMELETTE fooled me as intended and was my favourite bit. Had to dredge up RATAFIA and TIERCEL.

    It is The Times, so probably serendipitous, but interesting to see the SILVER MEDAL, GREEN LIGHT, FALSE TEETH and maybe MIDDLE DUTCH crossing word pairs located at symmetrical places around the grid.

  10. Somewhat telling I think that my 11:40 with one wrong (guess which one) is still enough for a top 10 spot (at the time of writing). And 25 minutes with all correct is 3rd.

    I think there would definitely be whatever passes for rioting amidst a crossword crowd if this were to come up at a championship weekend.

    1. They would actually adjudge the alternative answer correct at a live championship weekend, pretty sure. One hopes there are no ambiguities in the forthcoming online championship though, for the sake of everybody’s blood pressure.
  11. More bonking here! It would have been my first one in but I wasn’t sure of it so I waited to test the checkers and then wrote it in with confidence. ‘Bonking heads’ or ‘bonking into something’ were common enough expressions in my childhood before the first word acquired another meaning.

    And speaking of which I’m afraid I was only aware of the less savoury meaning of the reversed word at 12ac so I looked twice at that one although I was in no doubt about the answer to the clue.

    It’s a shame about 4dn because until I read the blog I was of the opinion it was a rather fine if somewhat tricky puzzle, and now I feel cheated by a setter not playing fair.

    Edited at 2020-10-23 06:30 am (UTC)

  12. Another BONKer. I was going to ask where KNOT is defined as BOSS but aphis99 says it’s in Chambers. It must be in a hard copy version as I can’t see it in Chambers Online.

    COD to OMELETTE.

    1. Collins has the following definitions:
      > KNOT: a protuberance or lump of plant tissues, such as that occurring on the trunks of certain trees
      > BOSS: any of various protuberances or swellings in plants and animals
      Based on this a KNOT seems (biologically speaking) to be an example of a BOSS.

      Edited at 2020-10-23 07:34 am (UTC)

      1. Thanks, keriothe, but, like many I suspect, I’m not impressed with our setter over this.
        1. The thing is, KNOT is a boss amongst many other things (I believe it was the 16th given definition in my dictionary). KNOB is pretty much just a boss.
        1. That’s Chambers, which often has rather odd definitions that aren’t reflected in the more ‘normal’ dictionaries. For that reason my personal view is that inclusion in the BRB alone shouldn’t always be considered sufficient to justify a particular definition.
  13. …Upsoars, and darts into the eastern Light
    25 mins, plus 5 for the LOIs: Omelette/Otoscope.
    Quizzical MER at Boner so close to what is clearly Knob.
    Thanks setter and V.
  14. …and right next door is KNOB in my Chambers (12 ed. defs 17 & 18 of KNOT are KNOB and BOSS).

    1a 1d straight in, but at the end in a bit of a hurry I looked up omelette, just couldn’t see it. Good clue, just me being thick. Overeats, operetta? No. Don’t feel so bad having one other wrong. Didn’t know of a scarifier except to dig up lawns or roads, Ruddigore & tiercel remembered from previous puzzles, only other problem was writing in Air-Vice Marshal and having an empty square at the end. And the definition of teeth… this law has teeth, or in the teeth of the gale?

    Edited at 2020-10-23 07:39 am (UTC)

    1. From an online dictionary: “9. teeth, effective power, esp. to enforce or accomplish something: to put teeth into a law.”
  15. Verlaine, I think you have a nerror in your decrypt of COMMON KNOWLEDGE. It’s an anagram of LOCKDOWN MEME NO G(ood). NEW is the anagram indicator and not part of the anagram.
    1. Thanks for the spot! It is indeed common knowledge that common knowledge should have a G in i somewhere.

      Must’ve had other things on my mind as I was writing up the blog, or something 😉

      2. I was wondering where I’d come across it recently. Now it occurs to me that it was probably in The Reluctant Widow…
      3. Yes, Heyer ladies were often partial to a drop of ratafia. I don’t know what it is but suspect it’s something vile because you never get the men drinking it. It’s probably the Regency equivalent of Babycham.
  17. 16:21 …but another bonker. Couldn’t parse OTOSCOPE, my LOI. Apart from the bonkers mistake a really nice puzzle. I enjoyed the lockdown meme at 1A, MEDAL and DREAMBOAT most. Thanks V and, a little grudgingly, setter.
  18. 26 minutes but with KNOB written in while thinking of the suggestive remarks possible for this entry. Hopefully VAR will have to give it as a goal. My LOI was OTOSCOPE. RATAFIA and TIERCEL caused some head scratching but the cryptic led to words I had heard of. I have seen TIGHTWAD before, but I defy anyone to say it when another second syllable is in such common currency. Good puzzle otherwise. Thank you V and setter.

    Edited at 2020-10-23 08:07 am (UTC)

    1. In the States, at least, the two words have different enough connotations that Tightwad is often used.
  20. TONK is a common word in club cricket parlance e.g. he’s tonked him for six!!

    Clive James referred to his um, er, KNOB as his TONK, being an Aussie and all that….

    NE corner held up the longest with OTOSCOPE last in – spent several minutes dredging the memory banks for something that vaguely fitted the checkers.

  21. 10:23, but with KNOB of course. It’s clearly the better answer: you need a biological three-point turn in a thesaurus to get to KNOT.
    Nice puzzle other than that.
  22. Well that crossword accidentally slipped through vetting with a clearly acceptable alternative. A reasonably hard but not super-hard Friday puzzle otherwise; last pair in OMELETTE and OTOSCOPE. Embarrassing mistake isn’t the first thing that comes to mind with ‘boner’. I note that the snitch has 6 correct and 37 incorrect at the time of writing!

    COD: COMMON KNOWLEDGE for topicality.

    Yesterday’s answer: Middlemarch could be clued cryptically by ‘R’.

    Today’s question: can you think of a chemical element of eight letters that has a one-word anagram?

    5. Antinomy and semilune would also like a word. Can you think of a chemical element of 8 letters that DOESN’T have a one-word anagram?
      2. As would Muscadin
        and the twins Sanitate and Tánaiste

        Glad to see the Editor finally saw sense over his knob fiasco
        Not sure bletchleyreject’s word pairs count as a nina or just a bit of setter’s whimsy

        Still enjoyable despite any gripes; it merely highlights the high standards to which we’ve become accustomed

        jb

        Edited at 2021-02-03 12:23 pm (UTC)

  23. Chambers – Knot. Definition 18 – A boss.

    Just below definition 17, which is ‘A knob’, funnily enough.

    mw7000

  24. Even if Ed succumbs to the righteous anger on display here, I’ll still have an error, having missed a typo. OTOSCOPE and OMELETTE between them in any case doubled my time to 20 minutes. RENT-A-MOB also took a while: I refused to believe the more common, not to say vulgar meaning of the “mistake” would appear in this genteel organ.
    Not a great start to the day, let’s hope the Listener’s a good one.
  25. That’s how I saw 1ac Martin, as one needs 3 Os. Another Bonker here. Last 2 in OMELETTE and OTOSCOPE, though I had no idea about the wordplay. Thank you V.
    1. I think it’s PLUM (as in plum/plumb line) =perpendicular=sheer. That’s how I saw it anyway.
    3. Yes, you’re dead right. In the solving I thought “PLUM doesn’t mean sheer!”; I did see how it worked during blogging, but then managed to underline the wrong word anyway after several tries…
  27. Knob works 100%.
    Editor needs to do the right thing, get on here and accept it as a viable answer – no excuses.
    Thanks v.
  28. Well fancy that, a BONER is a mistake. That’s a stiff one. No difficulty with KNOT not knob. All a bit like one of Paul’s in the Guardian.
  29. If want to meet a RARE BIRD
    Then the Times has the perfect crossword
    It’s TIERCEL today,
    But they’re never far away
    Cos the setter’s a massive great ornithologist
  30. I’m confident that the same knob-detecting software that’s removed several comments from the club website must have auto-corrected the puzzle itself, changing the obvious to the obscure… surely a human being—assuming The Times employ still employ such obsolete technology anymore—will be along soon to correct this glitch

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