Times 27,821: Exit, Pursued By Friday The 13th

Author   VerlainePosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Some challenging clues in this appropriately Friday-the-thirteenth-ish puzzle which kept me busy for a full quarter hour. FOI 6ac, LOI the simply clued but NHO 21ac.

Lots of great clues but special mention to the concision of 28ac, “piece by queen”, the well-hidden-by-the-surface definition part of 24dn, and possibly my favourite of all, just for the Spooner mislead, 27ac. All good stuff, fine work by the setter.

Are you all going to come to Angus’s latest Lockdown Quiz on Sunday? 7pm UK time, and the perfect warmup exercise for online crossword championship fun the following weekend. I’m sure he’ll tell you all about in the comments if you want to know more…

ACROSS
1 Scottish girl out to lunch with graduate in Asian city (9)
ISLAMABAD – ISLA [Scottish girl] + MAD [out to lunch] with B.A. [graduate] in

6 Cool Italian banker’s thick-skinned customer (5)
HIPPO – HIP PO [cool | Italian banker (= thing with banks = river)]

9 Pink slate (5)
KNOCK – double def: as in, engine detonation sound, and criticise, respectively

10 Survived the heat, presumably weakened (9)
QUALIFIED – double def: if you survive the heat you should qualify for the main event

11 Informally, offering crowd view, after stripping (7)
PRESSIE – PRESS [crowd] + {v}IE{w}

12 Heavy weight transported by our trains once (7)
BOUNCER – OUNCE “transported by” B(ritish) R(ail)

13 Play being about fashion, time to bury old hat! (3,7,4)
THE WINTER’S TALE – T INTER STALE [time | to bury | old hat], “about” HEW [fashion]

17 Battered beef so dodgy — after this? (4-6,4)
BEST-BEFORE DATE – (BATTERED BEEF SO*), semi-&lit

21 Waves approaching one’s teachers, meeting each (4,3)
HEAD SEA – HEADS meeting EA

23 System which pays out with interest, that’s handy for shoppers? (4,3)
TOTE BAG – TOTE [system which pays out] + BAG [interest, as in “not really my bag”]

25 Battle alone to cross Ireland, pursuing female (9)
SOLFERINO – SOLO, to “cross” ERIN pursuing F. 1859 battle in the Second Italian War of Independence

26 Beach where maiden wears nothing, I see! (5)
OMAHA – M(aiden) “wears” O AHA [nothing | I see!]

27 Spooner’s requirement held aloft, reflecting needs (5)
LADLE – hidden reversed in {h}ELD AL{oft}

28 Excessively particular lover of old ham sandwiches (9)
OVEREXACT – EX [lover of old] “sandwiched” by OVERACT [ham (it up)]

DOWN
1 Dark blotches most likely stop skin developing (8)
INKSPOTS – (STOP SKIN*)

2 Lavatory, not for all, in use — then free (5)
LOOSE – LOO + {u}SE. U = “for all (to see)”, in the cinema

3 Work as seamstress, maybe, for a time (9)
MAKESHIFT – or MAKE SHIFT like a seamstress might

4 Live target? We might pass on that! (7)
BEQUEST – BE [live] + QUEST [target]. A bequest is something one might pass on

5 Duke not prepared to stop building tower (7)
DRAWBAR – D RAW BAR [duke | not prepared | to stop] – these parts “build” something that tows.

6 One piece by queen in drag, failing to finish lines (5)
HAIKU – I + K [= king = piece by queen], in HAU{l}

7 Girl, not the first, French teacher quietly upset (9)
PRISCILLA – reverse all of {g}ALLIC SIR P [French | teacher | quietly]

8 Companies sometimes marching, sometimes standing (6)
ORDERS – and you can have MARCHING ORDERS or STANDING ORDERS…

14 Stared at and, yes, cried aloud (9)
EYEBALLED – homophone of AYE, BAWLED

15 Score, and I will secure this game (6-3)
TWENTY-ONE – TWENTY is a score and I is ONE.

16 Pepper for one’s cooking gran set close to stove (8)
SERGEANT – (GRAN SET {stov}E*). As in Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band

18 Maxine wandering round out of her mind (2,5)
EX ANIMO – (MAXINE*) + O [round]

19 Issue uniform in Officer Training Corps Cockney’s in (7)
OUTCOME – U in O.T.C. + ‘OME

20 Carve letters in Greek and English one spelled out (6)
CHISEL – CHIS [letters in Greek] and EL [English letter (L) spelled out]

22 Smooth kid, maybe summoned to court lassie ultimately (5)
SUEDE – SUED [summoned to court] + {lassi}E

24 Virginia with endless high fibre food that’s good for her (5)
BRAVA – VA with BRA{n}. Good for her!

59 comments on “Times 27,821: Exit, Pursued By Friday The 13th”

  1. As it seems is the setter’s or editor’s wont, they sometimes reference a blogger in the clues. Today I’m honoured by 1ac – thank-you.
    As for the puzzle, fantastic. And fantastically hard. Needed to go off and do the shopping with 2 quadrants mostly empty, to reset the brain. Loved the Spooner clue, LOI suede, qualified, bequest, and COD brava. Ex animo and Solferino the only unknown/uncertainty, made harder by first guessing ex manio for the Latin. Solferino rings a bell, has probably appeared before?
    Thanks setter and blogger.

    Edited at 2020-11-13 03:19 am (UTC)

  2. Comforting to see the SNITCH. I went offline at about 40′, twice my average time, and then picked at it from time to time, so I don’t know my real time, but it was long. FOI HIPPO, LOI DRAWBAR (DNK). Biffed HAIKU and PRISCILLA (saw the SIR, never got the ALLIC). Luckily KNOCK was a cinch, as I’d forgotten about ‘pink’ (it’s ping in the US). DNK EX ANIMO, HEAD SEA. Exhausting, but it felt good to come through unscathed.
  3. That was fun. Lots of lovely misleading stuff. The Spooner of course. But I had QUALIFIED for ages before I realized it was a different meaning of “survived the heat” that was required. I got very stuck in the bottom left with nothing in at all for ages. I had to drag SOLFERINO out from somewhere which got me going. I’d never heard of HEAD SEA and at one point I was sure it was DEAD SEA but had no idea why (for obvious reasons). I got KNOCK from the engine pinking and just assumed it was a type of slate too. I had another kick myself moment when I worked out that the anagram gave me SERGEANT but I was sure I was looking for a word like capsicum or pimiento. Then I clicked. As I said, tremendous fun.
  4. Tough indeed. After a fairly bleak first pass I was reduced to pencilling in letters here and there to try and jog further answers (D at the end of 14d, F at the start of 25a but that was incorrect…). Lots of great misdirection, and I appreciated PEPPER FOR ONE to define the sergeant. Also couldn’t figure out the lift and separate for HEAVY/WEIGHT until coming here.

    Edited at 2020-11-13 05:52 am (UTC)

  5. At 50 minutes including all the parsing I expected to be the slowest on the blog at this early stage so I am mildly chuffed to find that I am not! It was a slow and steady solve so that at no time did I feel completely stuck or that I might be unable to complete the grid without resorting to aids.

    As a P.S. to this week’s exhumation of Sir Beerbohm Tree it has just come to my attention that he was the grandfather of the actor Oliver Reed born to his mistress Beatrice Pinney (later ‘Reed’).

    Edited at 2020-11-13 06:59 am (UTC)

    1. Either you’ve skipped a generation in there somehow or that was a very messed up family!
      1. Yes, it was Oliver’s father, Peter Reed, who was born to Sir Beerbohm and Beatrice. Their other progeny was (Sir) Carol Reed, the famous director who later filmed the musical Oliver! co-starring his nephew as Bill Sikes.
  6. Just inside my target time of 86 minutes. I knew this was tough, but then again so was yesterday’s, which I finished in 45 minutes. So at around 30 minutes, at which point I had roughly three-quarters of the grid filled in, I had no idea that I was in store for almost an hour more!

    I have loved the last few tough Fridays. I don’t know how to articulate it, but I wasn’t as much a fan of this one. Perhaps just one too many words I’d not heard of made this more of a “guess and hope” puzzle, than a penny-drop “d’oh!” puzzle. Just my preference. If I was actively using aids and treating it more as a Mephisto or Club Special, I imagine I would have liked it more.

    In any case, I did manage to finish it, though I definitely got in my own way by guessing QUARTERED (if you got to the quarter-finals?), which held up the upper-right corner until HAIKU busted it open.

    Given the kind of puzzle this was, I would not have been surprised if 7 Down had actually involved a French word for teacher. Amazingly, MAÎTRE came to mind, even though I don’t speak French, but of course this didn’t work. I was only able to guess PRISCILLA after getting all the crossers.

    Last one in was DRAWBAR. I probably spent 5 minutes alone figuring out the three-letter word for ‘not prepared’. Perhaps I should have called it quits at midnight!

  7. I was largely on the wavelength for this, finishing in 23 minutes, but having gone for an unparsed DRAGBAR. Frustratingly as soon as I saw the pink square I thought of DRAWBAR though I hadn’t considered it whilst solving.

    Kudos to the setter for not clueing the bra part of BRAVA as supporter or similar and for Spooner appearing without a spoonerism.

  8. Most satisfactory, under half an hour. DRAWBAR LOI also. SERGEANT took a while. SOLFERINO and EX ANIMO constructed, knew neither.

    Had to do my whole Greek alphabet recitation to get CHISEL, the pronunciation of CHI not being relevant. (Talking of Greek, ‘triskaidekaphobia’ just flashed through my brain.)

    COD to HAIKU.

    Thanks verlaine and setter.

  10. For the second day in a row I sneaked in just under the hour and am very pleased as that was tough.
    Thank you, verlaine, for explaining HAIKU, THE WINTER’S TALE and PRISCILLA. Like Kevin, I understood SIR and P but I never did get (g)ALLIC.
    For a while and with the checkers in place for the second word in 13ac, I thought it might be The History Boys and that I had got the wrong answers in 7d and 15d.
    COD to LADLE for leading me up the Spoonerism path.
    I’m fairly sure that SEAT made both a Bravo and a BRAVA at one point.
    PS…I’ve just seen the Snitch so I’m rather chuffed with my time.

    Edited at 2020-11-13 08:15 am (UTC)

  11. 53 minutes. LOI a biffed HEAD SEA, which wasn’t known. I didn’t parse PRISCILLA, surprise surprise. Lots of great clues, with my favourite HAIKU. Thank you V and setter.
  12. …To carry praise or blame too far,
    We may choose something like a star
    To stay our minds on and be staid.

    After 35 mins pre-brekker I was left trying to convince myself that:
    (a) There was a battle of Solferino
    (b) That “Head” Sea is a plausible term
    (c) That somehow El is how you might ‘spell out’ L
    (d) There might be a word that completes Drawb-r

    Thanks setter and V.

    1. b) Well, planes fight against head winds, so…
      c) Just as in emm, enn,–wait a minute; I’ll get back to you.
  13. I’m no QUALIFIED poet, that’s true,
    MAKESHIFT verse is all I can do,
    OVEREXACT ORDERS,
    Of words are just borders,
    My OUTCOME is LOOSE; no HAIKU

    I’ve never met SOLFERINO
    Nor yet the phrase EX ANIMO
    So this solve for me
    Was against a HEAD SEA
    But I really quite liked the HIPPO

  14. 25:34. That was a good workout! Great stuff, I particularly liked the Spooner clue. HEAD SEA was vaguely familiar but EX ANIMO completely unknown. I know this meaning of ‘pink’ from crosswords but have never encountered the word or phenomenon IRL.
  15. 37:29. I wasn’t going to let this beat me and my alphabet trawl for my last 2 rewarded me with the Q for QUALIFIED and BEQUEST. NHO SOLFERINO but the wordplay was clearLots of clever stuff here. I enjoyed the “one piece by queen”, but COD to LADLE. Thanks V and setter.
  16. Much like many above. 52mins which I am very happy with considering the obvious challenge of this crossie. Spent a while trying to figure out the pepper and LOI DRAWBAR took an age. Loved LADLE, and PRISCILLA (without desert), thought the clue was brilliant, once I’d worked it out. A number of clues bunged in without being worked out though and with all fingers crossed, Thank you V for the clarifications. Ta to setter too, very enjoyable.
  17. Just under the half-hour at 29’36”, and when I see the snitch rating I feel that’s pretty good. Only unfamiliar ohrase was head sea, but I guessed right. Solferino familiar to us Parisians, because of the metro stop near the National Assembly. It was a French battle as well as an Italian one – and famously led to the creation of the Red Cross. Loved the Spooner clue – but something told me early on that it was not as it seemed. Probably because at only five letters in length, it would be nigh impossible for it to contain a fully-fledged spoonerism. LOI drawbar
    1. That’s how I knew the battle too and I was pretty sure there was a Napoleon involved although I couldn’t have said which one.
  18. I could construct both EX AMINO and EX ANIMO from the clue (FWCA) and expected to be unlucky with my choice between them. But wasn’t.

    I remember the Inkspots. Into Each Life Some Rain Must Fall, but not in mine today. Not yet anyway.

    1. My grandmother had a 78 of Do I Worry by them – Charles Dance as Sergeant Perron sings it in Jewel In The Crown.
  19. Tough going without a doubt! I had a lot of this done in 30 minutes or so, but was left with several in the NE and SW which dragged out my time to 63:02. HIPPO and PRISCILLA were the keys to the NE which fell first, but much longer was required to see SOLFERINO and CHISEL which opened up the SW. HEAD SEA was my penultimate entry and LADLE brought up the rear. Cunning indeed. Thanks setter and V.
  20. Very satisfying – thanks to setter and blogger.

    FOI OMAHA
    LOI HEAD SEA
    COD LADLE although honorary mention to SERGEANT for penny drop quality.

  21. Good fun, the setter playing games with us all through. I might have been quicker than my 26.47 were it not for a typo messing up the crossers for BOUNCER, my last in, with that definition being perfectly hidden in plain sight.
    “Pepper for one” and “Spooner’s requirement” stood out amongst many misleading but perfectly fair definitions.

    PRESSIE turns up occasionally and usually makes me object quietly that it should be Zs, because that’s how it’s pronounced. But I’m not complaining, not about this one.

  23. 39:14
    Tricky. Qualified and bequest held me up for 10 mins. Okay on everything else. Thanks v.
  24. Great, great crossword. Thank you setter very much, and V of course. Time off the scale really, about 85 mins I think, but no matter. Unfortunately I too but in Dragbar thinking perhaps a ‘rag’ was some kind of musical jam session. Wrong! Should have done an alphabet trawl of course.
  25. Not often you get quite so many well-concealed definitions, but my favourite clue was actually the simplest: “Pink slate” = KNOCK.
  26. 26.50 for me a good time for a tough Friday. Took a while to get going with suede my FOI. LOI overexact and almost messed up by first of all putting ex anima in for 18 dn. Lots to enjoy in this puzzle, in no particular order bouncer, sergeant, loose and best before etc. Thanks setter for explaining 13 across, biffed the answer and confident it was right but nice to know why!
  27. The SW corner was very chewy – I was on about eight and a half minutes before staring at that for some time, falling completely for the Spooner mislead before eventually seeing it. After LADLE, CHISEL & HEAD SEA followed quite quickly, followed by SUEDE… and then SOLHENIRO. Never heard of SOLFERINO, so my breakdown (HEN + IR instead of F + ERIN) seemed plausible – just not a real thing, alas. 13m 33s with that error.
  28. That was a real work-out and it left me no time to do Paul’s in that other paper which also looks very difficult. DNK DRAWBAR but it reminded me sadly of the amazing raw bar for oysters and clams in Grand Central before our lives were upended by the virus. 27.57
  29. I admit that I had to confirm a few of these on google. Somewhat confused by EX ANIMO which google gives as ‘sincerely’ and the meaning in the clue is given as EXANIMO. Since I knew neither it was academic.
    LOI DRAWBAR was desperately trying to put in DRABBER but it didn’t make any sense
    1. I share your puzzlement over the definition of EX ANIMO (18d) as “out of her mind”. The Compact Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary gives the meaning as “heartily, sincerely”. derived from a a literal translation of the Latin as “from the soul”. The setter appears to be asking us to accept “soul” and “mind” as synonyms which doesn’t seem to me to be right. But perhaps we’re both missing something?
      1. I guess if you “speak your mind” you would be doing it “ex animo”, at least. Animus is pretty surely both mind and soul in Latin…
        1. Fair enough. As one who read Modern Languages rather than Classics at university, I am happy to accept your explanation . It certainly was a great, if for most of us non-speed merchants very difficult, puzzle. Many thanks for the blog.
  30. great puzzle, best for ages. 25 minutes to complete, with PRISCILLA my LOI. Like Olivia, the Paris Metro stop was a reminder of the battle, but couldn’t tell you where it was, just a Napoleon job. Loved the misdirection for LADLE.
    1. True it was Napoleon but the third of that ilk. Remember this from O level history and the module on the Risorgimento.
  31. Really had to work hard to piece this together. Several great clues initially misleading one down a blind alley.

    Managed to parse everything but was unfamiliar with SOLFERINO and HEAD SEA.

  32. So far, I get the prize for the longest solve. But I’m very happy that I persevered without aids (especially whilst trying to think of a word for a “building tower”!).
    I think we had Pink/Knock recently. Anyway, I got that one quickly being the former owner of a Vauxhall Viva HB.
    Great puzzle – thanks to Setter and to V.
  33. I checked it before submission, waited for the clock to match my time…..and for the second time this week I managed to miss a typo ! Doubly annoying since my time was better than many rated above me on the SNITCH.

    DNK HEAD SEA, though PRESSIE was ridiculous (I don’t send “pressents”, but “prezzie” would have been acceptable), and only parsed PRISCILLA afterwards.

    FOI KNOCK
    LOI DRAWBAR
    COD SERGEANT
    TIME 12:33

  34. Good stuff in the proper Friday manner, challenging but rewarding. Like everyone else, started out wondering how on earth to fit a Spoonerism into those five letters before enjoying the penny-drop moment, which was one of several.
  35. I managed to complete the puzzle without aids but, unlike almost everyone else, I found it more irritating than enjoyable. I do, however, join in the praise for the clues for ‘knock’ and ‘ladle’, though ‘pinking’ seems to be rather a thing of the past in these days of fuel injection and computerised engine management systems.
  36. 10/10 for the puzzle. Brilliant!

    80 mins with only Priscilla not parsed. Slow but steady and never stuck for too long.

    5/5 for me this week. Well chuffed!

  37. An enjoyable struggle. Lots of delicious misdirection and eureka moments. NHO DRAWBAR or HEAD SEA but got there in the end. 58 minutes. Ann
  38. Just over an hour, but great fun with many subtle clues. LOI was KNOCK because I couldn’t make it fit with either half of the cryptic clue, but nothing else would fit K*O*K. COD perhaps to HAIKU for the “piece by queen”.
  39. Trust me to miss the blog today after verlaine’s intro!

    If you like a quiz with cryptic elements, why not try mine at 7pm on Sunday 15th (GMT)? Free to enter, but donations to the Trussell Trust encouraged.

    To register send a team name to awlockdownquiz@gmail.com

  40. DNF. This took me a little over half an hour and that would’ve been a decent time in view of the snitch but I spoiled it by putting seegrant instead of sergeant. Completely missed the type of pepper needed, thought it might be a botanical word I’d not heard before. Should’ve taken greater pains with that one but unlike most commenters I found I’d been cruising through this pretty comfortably apart from that one.
  41. About an hour and a half, but with a typo, and not submitted because, with nothing but HIPPO in the top half, had to get help.
    A trivia question – two purplish dyes synthesised about the same time were named for battles – rosaniline was called SOLFERINO – so what was fuchsine named ?
      1. Yes – interesting that that became part of the language, but the other is never heard of now.
  42. unfortunately put DRAWBER instead of DRAWBAR as LOI to spoil a battle that took nearly as long as Solferino. 54:10

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