Times 27844 – in which we fail miserably

Author   glhPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic

Often I complain about silly typos, but at 17:41, I hit submit expecting that I had at least one of four answers incorrect, but could not think of another option for any of them. Turns out that I did have two of them wrong!  One was a term I knew but couldn’t remember exactly how to spell it (and didn’t look at the wordplay carefullly enough), the other was a total guess, but I think I know what the correct answer is after seeing which letters were correct and a third turned out to be correct but now I have to figure out how the wordplay works.

In other words, I found this one a bit of a beast and was well and truly beaten by the setter! How did you do?

Away we go…

Across
1 Prince a little bit of a pig? (6)
HAMLET – the little piece of a pig could be HAM-LET
4 Where choppers found cutting into the lip or tongue (8)
HELIPORT – hidden inside tHE LIP OR Tongue
10 Cold scrap of food scoffed by Welshman: then seconds (11)
REMORSELESS – MORSEL(scrap of food) inside REES(Welshman) and S(seconds)
11 Typical value, fraction reduced (3)
PAR – PART(fraction) missing the last letter
12 Home game, they said, that’s tasty in Southeast Asia? (3,4)
PAD THAI – PAD(home) then sounds like TIE(game)
14 Source of oil on end of mantelpiece, alongside source of milk (3,4)
TEA TREE – RE(on) and the last letter of mantelpiecE, after TEAT(source of milk)
15 Celebrate getting rid of junk? (4,3,4,3)
PUSH THE BOAT OUT – I was torn between PASS and PUSH for the first word of this phrase, which only seems vaguely familiar. Junk being BOAT here
17 Financial concern — would that discourage one from acting? (8,6)
NEGATIVE EQUITY – This was one of my errors, as I had RELATIVE EQUITY, being sure of the second word, but not sure how the first one worked. I guess if you have a NEGATIVE experience with actors EQUITY you would want to chuck it in
21 Person loved clothing with strip of material (7)
BANDEAU – BEAU(person loved) containing AND(with)
22 Around academic award, drop a controversial strategy (4,3)
ROAD MAP – This was one I got from definition but didn’t see the wordplay at the time – I see it now, the academic award is an MA(Master of Arts) and it is inside an anagram (signaled by controversial) of DROP,A
23 Mourn grouse after odd parts plucked (3)
RUE – alternating letters in gRoUsE
24 Guess appropriate power coming from on high (6,5)
DIVINE RIGHT – DIVINE(guess), RIGHT(appropriate)
26 Go after model, painter backing his ability? (8)
ARTISTRY – TRY(go) after SIT(model) and RA(painter) reversed
27 Eggs — one of three stepped on in car? (6)
CLUTCH – double definition. Been a long time since I have driven a manual transmission car
Down
1 Sing with cape on in dance (8)
HORNPIPE – PIPE(sing) with cape HORN on top
2 Tight-lipped, one raising issue (3)
MUM – double definition
3 Others distressed about a faculty’s range (7)
EARSHOT – anagram of OTHERS containing A
5 Political activity born in abandonment of religion, etc (14)
ELECTIONEERING – NEE(born) in an anagram of RELIGION,ETC
6 Second stone collected by relative cracks it open (7)
INSTANT – a double container! ST(stone) inside NAN(relative) inside IT
7 Taking advantage of the situation, capital invested in rubbishing of poor MP (11)
OPPORTUNISM – TUNIS(capital of Tunisia) inside an anagram of POOR,MP
8 Heartless old jailer producing dead duck (6)
TURKEY – remove the middle letter from TURNKEY(old jailer)
9 Note tremolo after passing note (14)
DEMISEMIQUAVER – QUAVER(tremolo) after DEMISE(passing), MI(musical note). This was my other error, as I had the DEMI and SEMI mixed up trying to biff it
13 Taste set dinner with mustard and cress, primarily, in a salad (11)
DISCERNMENT – anagram of SET,DINNER and the first letters of Mustard and Cress
16 Have masks of course on companion, covering over part of face (8)
EYEPATCH – EAT(have) containing YEP(of course) on top of CH(companion)
18 Denouement in story written up in programmes (7)
AGENDAS – the denoument is the END, inside SAGA(story) reversed
19 Argument that has a point (7)
QUARREL – double definition
20 Huge region needing no introduction, part of SW Europe (6)
IBERIA – SIBERIA(huge region) missing the first letter
25 Natural pull, upwards (3)
GUT – TUG(pull) reversed

55 comments on “Times 27844 – in which we fail miserably”

  1. Off to a smooth start but too many delays along the way. 54 minutes. Loved the dead duck TURKEY.
  2. About 25 mins for me…but with a typo since I mistyped ERR instead of EER in ELECTIONEERING. Rats. The top half was a lot easier than the bottom half. “It was a game of two halves” as the football commentators like to say.
  3. I knew the phrase PUSH THE BOAT OUT, but was surprised to find I had always misunderstood it. I thought it meant taking a risk. I see it means having a party, apparently from the practice of a ship’s crew raving it up before setting sail.
    1. I’m not convinced you have misunderstood it, as, the way it is used, it is almost synonymous with ‘push the envelope’ in some contexts. It is after all a small jump in meaning from throwing a lavish party to taking a risky option.
      1. As we know from many discussions here there’s no accounting for usage changing the meanings of words or expressions, but I’ve never heard PUSH THE BOAT OUT used in any context other than paying for a celebration of some sort. Brewer’s agrees with the explanation Bruce found.

        ‘To push the envelope’ according to Brewer’s means to go beyond normal limits; pioneer. It’s from aviation where ‘the envelope’ is the known limit of the aircraft’s range and powers, so called from their appearance on a graph. This suggests to me that there’s an element of risk involved.

        1. push the boat out (third-person singular simple present pushes the boat out, present participle pushing the boat out, simple past and past participle pushed the boat out)

          (Britain, idiomatic) to do something, especially spend money, more extravagantly than usual, particularly for a celebration.
          See also
          push the envelope
          throw money away

          Andyf

          1. The link to ‘push the envelope’ says: From the boundary line on a graph of an aircraft’s capabilities, especially those of height and speed. Engineering jargon (of the 1950s) popularized in Tom Wolfe’s The Right Stuff (1979).
            1. The Right Stuff – that’s what I thought of Jack after reading Chuck Yeager’s obit yesterday.
          2. > to do something, especially spend money, more extravagantly than usual

            That’s how I use the phrase, e.g. serving champagne instead of (shudder) Prosecco at a party, holidaying in a more upmarket hotel, or having quartz worktops.

        2. To PUSH THE BOAT OUT is also nautical slang for buying a round of drinks, which could easily have morphed into a more general sense of celebration. If you’re pushing the boat out, you are helping your fellow travellers (and getting your feet wet in the process), which might be the origin of the buying a round meaning.
  4. Could have been another 20 minute finish. Oh, to spend 10 minutes on AGENDAS (misparsed) and NEGATIVE EQUITY, only to give up and try RELATIVE EQUITY. The curse of the last two.
  5. I fall into the slow-but-accurate club today. 45 minutes, with a lot of time pondering bestial options at 2d (sow, cow, hen, doe, pen etc) when the bleedin’ obvious was staring me in the face.
  6. Slow but inaccurate here. I have no idea why I assumed 1ac ended in R, but could come up with nothing but HAMMER, which I knew would be wrong, so I went off leaderboard. (Also because I had no idea of my time, having done most of this sitting in a waiting room.) Also had no idea why ROAD MAP. Also SEMIDEMI. I had NEGATIVE REVIEW for a long time, until I finally saw the possibility of EYEPATCH, which gave me QUARREL, which gave me CLUTCH.
  7. I very much enjoyed this offering, finding it challenging without ever feeling completely stumped. It did take me some time to pull out my last three, but once NEGATIVE EQUITY went in QUARREL and ROAD MAP followed. I should be familiar enough with the latter as I hear it used all the time in the context of work projects but I just kept seeing roll mop. I was pleased to parse DEMISEMIQUAVER as I was worried it was going to come down to a 50/50 guess. COD to HELIPORT for the quality of the hidden.
  8. Well, that was more or less on my wavelength.
    I finally realised it couldn’t be RELATIVE EQUITY and DEMISEMIQUAVER only went in after I had all the checkers. I had to come here, though, to parse it.
    COD to HAMLET as it made me smile.
  9. Rather pleased with my time – barely over 2 Jasons! Found this surprisingly straightforward. Not sure why… definitely punched above my weight today.
  10. 25 mins with yoghurt, dates, granola and blueberry compote.
    I liked it: mostly Eyepatch.
    Call out the danglers! Today’s potential dangler is “a” little bit of a pig. (“a” hamlet).
    Thanks setter and G.
    1. I’m allowing some offset today on the grounds that “the” in 4ac looks like a dangling article but isn’t.
  11. at 9dn had to start with demise. innit!? my SOI.

    1ac was so easy would having ‘Small village prince etc….’ helped? My FOI.

    LOI was 17ac NEGATIVE EQUITY I was on NEGATIVE NOTICE until QUARREL tipped-up. Actors get notices in the press – good and bad.

    COD to 15ac PUSH OUT THE BOAT which is in my book is quite a celebration.

    WOD and POI 19dn QUARREL as noted by the name of James Bond’s ‘Man Friday’ in ‘Dr. No’. He is a Cayman Islander. They do not get on with Jamaicans, at all – hence Fleming’s subtle name.

    Time 45 minutes, but much enjoyed puzzlement.

    Edited at 2020-12-10 08:52 am (UTC)

  12. 30 minutes. No problems at all. EYEPATCH was my LOI and I only saw YEP after writing it in.
  13. 65 minutes, with one mistake, biffing a SEMISEMIQUAVER and forgetting to return to it. NEGATIVE EQUITY was the key to solving the bottom half. LOI was EYEPATCH (YEP not YES, George, which no doubt someone else has pointed out and I’m too blind to see). I enjoy Thai food but can never remember what I’m eating. COD to DIVINE RIGHT. I suppose the absence of pedal in the CLUTCH clue is legitimate as it can be understood, but it took me a while to do so! I’ve always used PUSH THE BOAT OUT to mean spend a lot on a celebration. This puzzle was hard work, but thank you George and setter.
    1. Authentic PAD THAI is so delicious with rice or glass noodle – duck! – sweet soy – sesame seeds and oil – garlic – egg – chives – lime. I lived in Bangkok for nearly two years at the turn of the last Century – the food is to die for and the chillies are supreme.
      1. Perhaps some of the excellence has been lost in the M & S Thai green curry that we have occasionally eaten during lockdown. But there is a good Thai restaurant at the southern end of the Isle of Dogs, where two of our three offspring live and which maybe we’ll be able to get to in a few months time.
        1. I’m with horryd on this one. We have some very good Thai restaurants down under. Local Thai food is almost as ubiquitous as the neighbourhood Chinese restaurants I grew up with. And we have some great up-market ones as well. But nothing really compares to any decent restaurant in Bangkok.
          1. My dear Starstruck,

            As Mark Stein observed, it’s the local fish sauce that really makes the difference.

            Whilst you are around – is there any chance of someone constructing a QCSnitch? Even if it based mainly on Jackn’Kevin’s times It would be so useful to stop the present moaning from the QAnon brigade, who believe they are being short-changed.

            Edited at 2020-12-10 11:56 am (UTC)

            1. Thanks for the suggestion – I will put it on the to-do list, but won’t guarantee any quick action. Being busy at work has this strange way of delaying important tasks 🙁
          2. I remember being taken to a huge Thai restaurant in Bangkok – somewhere outdoors by the river – by local business people, and having one of the best meals of my life. The salads were just as hot as everything else. Never had Thai food as good outside Thailand.
  14. 24:58 I found this rather tricky. I was becalmed with about 3/4 done in SE corner where I took ages to get NEGATIVE EQUITY, DIVINE RIGHT and EYEPATCH. LOI 18D. I liked TURKEY. Good stuff. Thank you George and setter.
    1. Indeed: I spent time wondering how to justify SAVING GRACE (power coming from on high) and then DIVINE LIGHT (echoes of Guru Maharaji Ji) before ending up with Charles I.
  15. I’m in the slow but (eventually) accurate camp this morning, thankful to finish in just under 30.
    I couldn’t see the bloomin’ obvious YEP in the EYEPATCH clue, believing that “of course” was covered by PAT and having no idea why EYE meant HAVE. I can only hope that I’d have worked it out if it was my Thursday.

    With AGENDAS I was looking for the inside out version of the clue, a story upside down inside “programmes” (apps?) to mean denouement.

    Should have, but didn’t, get QUARREL quicker, all of which which left me with only Es and Is and an doubtful Y to determine the NEGATIVE EQUITY

    When that dam finally burst, I very nearly submitted with TURKEY incomplete. Let’s just say that it’s a long way down in an alphabet trawl of possible fillers to account for those extra minutes.

    Cheers George for (eventually) sorting it all out.

  16. Got up this morning with a slight non-headache migraine, eased by switching off all the lights and walking in the garden. Obviously that worked, completed this under nineteen minutes, no problems.

    PUSH THE BOAT OUT and NEGATIVE EQUITY are such natural phrases they went nearly straight in.

    Dnk BANDEAU or PAD THAI. Liked HAMLET, COD to DEMISEMIQUAVER.

    Thanks george and setter.

  17. Felt slow – to the point I was surprised when it was actually only 12.34, so was expecting to be quite low down the list.

    Imagine my surprise when……

    PUSH the boat out was ROLL the boat for a while (for reasons known only to the gremlins in my head), and had BANDANA for a bit as well (no, me neither). Oh and BOK CHOI at first as well.

    So a happy nearly-end-of-the-week for me, a week in which I’ve been making them a lot harder for myself than they need be (see above 3, so not entirely cured).

  18. Yes horryd, demisemi whotsit goes in first IF one bothered to parse it, which I didn’t. Damn. So another SEMIDEMI. Shame because I was back to normal time today after a tough week, despite every xword having at least one French word in it! FOI MUM, LOI HORNPIPE. COD PUSH THE BOAT OUT, which I like to do, not at the moment though, of course. Thanks G and setter.
    ,
  19. I’m in the camp that thought PUSH THE BOAT OUT meant going too far. There is some excuse for getting the demi and the semi in the wrong order with the note (even though it doesn’t parse). I just about remember learning in musical theory that there’s something called a “hemisemidemiquaver” which is supposedly a 64th note – which seems a bit far-fetched but I’ll go along with it. Glad to see that others struggled a bit with this. 25.18
      2. iirc they start again after hemi-, so the next shortest note would be a semihemidemisemiquaver
  20. Carelessly had SEMIDEMI… and couldn’t see AGENDAS my LO not IN so had to come here to solve 18d, was stuck looking for a definition meaning denouement. Otherwise a jolly nice puzzle, 30 minutes. For me PTBO definitely means ‘spending extravagantly on a party or celebration’, not ‘taking a risk’.
  21. Delayed by not knowing the Thai food, and thinking it might be NID THAI, which seems to be close to existing, and a nid is a nest in French, well …, also for some reason but not a good one having CAST THE BOAT OUT.
  22. 28:20. I found that an absolute beast, although I did have a sense I was making heavy weather of it as some of the clues seemed very obvious once I’d figured them out.
    Took time to parse 9dn to make sure it wasn’t SEMIDEMI.
    Slowed myself down by bunging in HAMISH (almost parses, could have been a prince by that name…), which caused a lot of problems with 3dn since the anagrist includes an S. SOREHAT? SERAHOT?
    The contained HELIPORT was one of my last in, a very cunning hidden.
    Slight hesitation at 27ac where the wording of the clue suggests strongly to me that a car has three CLUTCHes. You can read it as an indirect reference to pedals, of course.
    I really enjoyed the struggle.

    Edited at 2020-12-10 12:40 pm (UTC)

  23. Held up at the end trying to fit RELATIVE in, but the cryptic didn’t make any sense. Loved the clue when I finally twigged. PAD THAI well loved in our household, surprised so many didn’t know it.
    QUARREL my LOI needed the Q, forgot the ‘if it’s a u, it’s probably a Q’ rule.
    Couldn’t remember if it was HEMI SEMI or DEMI, sure we’ve had it fairly recently? Luckily the cryptic helped.
  24. My average time is DNF or about 60 minutes on the says I actually finish, so this was a walk in the park for me at 30 mins. Wrote in 1a then 1d and just continued in an anti-clockwise fashion until it was done. I really pushed the boat out last night, had way too much wine and got to bed around 2am. I am prepared to do more research in the coming weeks to see if there is a correlation between that and my comparatively good performance. But now I need an afternoon nap…..
  25. another semidemiquaver to add to the band. It’s becoming an error-strewn week. Shouda parsed it! 31’09”
  26. I seem to be having a wavelengthy week this week, with my WITCH for the first three days averaging 79 and today’s being 86 as things stand.

    For some reason I paused to make a careful check of the parsing of a few whereas on other days I’d have biffed away. I’m not sure why that is, but I sure as hell needed to follow the wordplay to get the right combination and order of Donald Duck’s other nephews, HEMI, SEMI AND DEMI.

    I did biff my STLOI, HELIPORT, in an effort not to go too far over 15 minutes. Well-hidden that one.

    Edited at 2020-12-10 02:09 pm (UTC)

  28. MUM was my FOI, followed by HAMLET, which raised a smile. After that a few more went in at random as I struggled to get moving again. REMORESELESS helped, but it was still slow going for a while. Was careful with the parsing to get DEMISEMI… the right way round. QUARREL was a big help, although it took a while to insert NEGATIVE in front of EQUITY. RIGHT also went in long before DIVINE, and so it went on. Eventually I was left with 4a, and after giving up on dentistry, finally saw the very well hidden HELIPORT. Enjoyable puzzle. 37:33. Thanks setter and George.
  29. i thought this was good fun – heliport in particular – even though I crashed and burned biffing 8d in the same way as our blogger
  30. Total stinker. I took a pause after 50 minutes and when I came back polished off the last few – but the ones that had foxed me were not that difficult! The usual mental block, where you think clues are much tougher than they actually are. My LOI was ‘agendas’ which was straightforward – but I had become transfixed by the notion that ‘apps’ featured in it somewhere, and that the whole was some Greek word linked to classical drama. Saw demisemiquaver quite early but couldn’t parse it so didn’t put it in. And it took me far too long to remember that ‘guess’ has a synonym in ‘divine’. All in all a very poor performance – my third this week. Cold is numbing the brain, I fear. By a very weird coincidence, the French word ‘bandeau’ had come across my radar just half an hour before I started the crossword. It can mean an advertising ‘banner’ on the Internet – and for work reasons I’d had to check it in an online dictionary. Spooky.
  31. 54 minutes, but with one VERY silly mistake in my LOI, 20dn. I was sure all along the “region” would be AREA missing the first A, and then I spent ages trying to figure out why IBE could mean “huge”. When I finally realised that the “huge region” was SIBERIA, losing its S, I still had that second E from (A)REA and so my answer was SIBEREA (yuck, that looks really ugly as I write it now, but it didn’t so much in the puzzle). Apart from that a very enjoyable puzzle which included the second most amusing word in the English language (DEMISEMIQUAVER), the most amusing one being HEMIDEMISEMIQUAVER of course (on my original side of the Atlantic, we call them 64th notes, of course, but being rational is hardly British).
  32. 36.45 with a teabreak in between quests. I’ve found this a tough week so far so I almost expect to be working on Friday’s effort into the new week. Very stodgy today. FOI mum, LOI tea tree which I didn’t parse but opted for a reasonable fit.

    Lots of good cluing but really had to grind them out. Remorseless, heliport- duh, that took ages- and instant to name but three.

    Well, at least I finished today so not all bad and 18 holes of golf as a bonus. Hope the freedom lasts…

  33. DNF in 52 minutes with a typo at horrpipe. I found this very tough. The bottom half was a real slow grind. Negative equity, divine right, agendas and eyepatch all held me up for ages. I just didn’t seem able to discard incorrect ideas that weren’t working and generate new and more promising possibilities with any kind of pace or focus. I’ll have to turbocharge tomorrow’s morning coffee.
  34. ….after reaching my 20 minute limit, not seeing either NEGATIVE EQUITY or AGENDAS.

    FOI HELIPORT
    COD PUSH THE BOAT OUT

  35. It wasn’t easy, but I got so far. Actually never thought of PUSH, trying for something with PASS… But I’ve never heard the phrase…
    (which seems more to express toil than exultation)… Very clever, if that phrase is in your wheelhouse.

    Edited at 2020-12-11 07:58 am (UTC)

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