Times 27,845: AA Antipolitics

Author   VerlainePosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Right up my street, this puzzle, with a very high classics (9ac, 25ac, 20dn) and quizzy GK content, plus plenty of expostulations (6ac, 8dn, 12dn) that I yell out all the time in the process of solving. Some great words with Z’s in them and multiple delightfully smutty surfaces rounded out the package, as it were. COD to the vainglorious 7dn, but tbh so many of these clues could have taken the prize. Great work, setter, and thanks!

ACROSS
1 The Dutch? How differently they live! (5,4)
OTHER HALF – slang term for wife, or a ref to “how the other half live”

6 I dislike that arch heretic’s introduction (5)
HUMPH – HUMP [arch] + H{eretic}

9 Old king cheers queen undoing trousers (7)
TARQUIN – TA [cheers] + Q(ueen) “trousered” by RUIN [undoing]. King of Rome in the 6th century BC.

10 African native everyone Irish and Australian backs (7)
ZORILLA – ALL IR OZ, reversed. Nothing like a gorilla, a lot like a skunk.

11 Don’t bother with consumption in general (3,2)
LET BE – T.B. in (Robert E) LEE

13 Reprobate’s drunk treble in one (9)
LIBERTINE – (TREBLE IN I*)

14 Law that ex bent to get money from estate? (6,3)
WEALTH TAX – (LAW THAT EX*)

16 Some dropshot I sliced, regretting miss (4)
OTIS – hidden in {dropsh}OT I S{lice}. Ref Miss Otis Regrets by Cole Porter, sung by Ella.

18 Curious figures — and one unknown (4)
NOSY – NOS. (as in, numbers) + Y

19. Special team’s request in English court overturned (4,5)
TASK FORCE – ASK FOR in reversed E(nglish) C(ourt)

22 Seek private place, largely at first for one’s replacement PIN (6,3)
WOODEN LEG – WOO [seek] + DEN [private place] + L{argely} + E.G. [for one]. Highly misleading, but perfectly legit, capitalisation

24 Those playing rugby leap, but only the backs land (5)
EGYPT – {thos}E {playin}G {rugb}Y {lea}P {bu}T

25 One digging verse by a wise old female (7)
MINERVA – MINER [one digging] + V(erse) + A

26 Democrats broaching alternative to Thatcher? There’s just a small catch (7)
TIDDLER – D D [(two) Democrats] “broaching” TILER (who will tile, not thatch, your roof for you)

28 Was Observer’s fashion to retreat before its boss? (5)
NOTED – reversed TON before ED [(the Observer’s) boss]

29 Duty that requires clubs to go for forward’s skill (9)
EXPERTISE – EX{c->PERT}ISE

DOWN
1 Did better than in plane, with fuel to spare (7)
OUTFLEW – (W FUEL TO*), going “spare”

2 The girl’s originally employed in personnel (3)
HER – E{mployed} in H.R.

3 Be unhappy, perhaps, as tenant’s picked up small revolver (8)
ROULETTE – homophone of RUE LET [be unhappy as tenant]

4 Set aside article out of book (5)
ANNUL – ANNU{a}L

5 Axemen have these fights with police (9)
FUZZBOXES – BOXES [fights] with the FUZZ [police]. Axemen as in electric guitarists

6 Capital that’s unlimited, then hard to come by (6)
HARARE – {t}HA{t} (shorn of its limits) + RARE

7 I’m so utterly fantastic on many levels! (11)
MULTISTOREY – (I’M SO UTTERLY*)

8 Gracious ladies crossing wide street (7)
HEAVENS – HENS “crossing” AVE(nue)

12 Tears accompanying this rueful exclamation? (5,4,2)
THAT’S TORN IT – cryptic def, that works whichever way you pronounce “tears”

15 Stimulate sensually, keeping it up well into the night (9)
TITILLATE – reversed IT + ‘TIL LATE

17 Malefactor’s death in hand (8)
OFFENDER – END [death] in OFFER [hand, as in “proffer” I expect]

18 Cardinal grabbing small journalist (7)
NEWSMAN – (John Henry) NEWMAN “grabbing” S

20 Inspiring female, unnamed, having no sex before gym (7)
EUTERPE – {n}EUTER, before PE. The muse of lyric poetry.

21 Last letter in full from Brezhnev communist backed? The opposite (6)
VEERED – take the last letter of {brezhne}V, spell it out as VEE, then add RED [communist]. To “veer” and “back” are indeed opposites when referring to the direction of wind, which veers clockwise and backs counterclockwise…

23 First thing to do in the morning is dress (3-2)
GET-UP – double def with GET UP, the first thing you do in the morning, ideally

27 Every second in Algeria you might have spent in Romania (3)
LEI – {a}L{g}E{r}I{a} – Romanian currency, in the plural: the singular is “leu” and means “lion”

88 comments on “Times 27,845: AA Antipolitics”

  1. Absolutely furious watching a 20 minute solve turn into 32 minutes, staring at A _ N _ L, trying to decide between ANNUL (set aside?) and ANNAL (book), but not being able to understand the wordplay for either. Inserting Bs every which way, inserting THEs, etc. My problem most likely is that ANNAL and ANNUAL are so close in meaning, I never even considered ANNUAL.

    Anyway, after the same thing happened yesterday, I’m a bit miffed. Hate not being able to finish off the last one or two clues.

    Thanks, V, for explaining the VEER/BACK definition!

    1. I like your passion Jeremy. Not just me who can get so worked up by something so trivial then 😉
      1. 12 minutes just sitting there over two letters feels terrible. It would be different, too, if that 12 minutes led to some sort of major breakthrough, but it’s not like this clue was among the best in the puzzle. I would have just guessed ANNUL, too, but I would be even more livid if it’d been wrong and gotten no points.
  2. Like Jeremy, I dithered between ANNAL & ANNUL, and never did parse the clue. DNK ZORILLA, and wasted time trying to see how GORILLA might work; it didn’t help that I didn’t know FUZZBOXES. I wasted more time trying to make something of ZED at 21d. Lots of COD-worthy clues: MULTISTOREY, EXPERTISE, EGYPT, LET BE, but I’ll give it to TARQUIN, which I had long before I could make any sense of it.
  3. Excellent crossword, joyous clues throughout. Annul went in early unparsed, forgot to go back to it. It was Euterpe that held me up for 5 minutes at the end before I saw neuter, knowing nothing of the classics except what I’ve learnt here: Erato is the muse! I really liked 1 dn, difficult to see then obvious once solved.
    1. It’s worth memorising all 9 muses, as they do pop up from time to time. I think Calliope was here fairly recently, and Clio appears in anagram fodder occasionally.
      1. Yes and no. Someone ?Matt? has a big list of crossword words to study. Me, no – I rely on general knowledge, increasingly failing memory, and of course general ignorance in fields like: artists, composers, poets, classics, French words, German words, names of foreigners including but not limited to: continental Europeans, Jocks, Micks and Taffies (Rhys spelled wrongly yesterday!), plus various other fields I know nothing about. Sometimes, like today, the wordplay will get me to the unknown. Often it won’t. That’s life, I’m not overly worried by it.
        1. I broadly concur (I could only remember 6 of the 9 muses, and it would have been 5 before EUTERPE came out of hiding !). None of us (except maybe Verlaine) can hope to remember everything. At 73, I’m beginning to find things that used to come to me as second nature now take longer, or need to be looked up. As long as I continue to outscore 80% of the “Mastermind” contestants on their general knowledge rounds I shan’t lose too much sleep.
          1. Quizzing is a rascally pursuit by and large but I’d be surprised now to see a bit of GK in the crossword I hadn’t run into in a quiz first. Though quiz is infuriating in that it keeps having live people who aren’t the Queen in it – so declasse!
  4. Not quite up my avenue.

    9ac was my Waterloo as I had TURNUPS for trousers! Anyone called TARQUIN is trouble in my book.

    4dn was beyond my ken. I imagined the Book of ANSEL was from The Apochrypha – sadly not.

    Other than that a most enjoyable hour of puzzlement.

    FOI 1ac OTHER HALF – ‘er indoors

    (LOI) 10ac ZORILLA once The Fuzz arrived!

    COD 8dn By HEAVENS methink it were an easy leap to pluck bright honour from the pale-faced moon!

    WOD 5dn FUZZBOXES – that sort of axeman – of the Frampton School

  5. I enjoyed this and had it fully parsed for once. I didn’t know TARQUIN or ZORILLA but was fairly confident from the cryptic. I also wavered for a while over VEERED, not knowing the wind reference – so thanks, V, for the explanation (and, indeed, the blog).
  6. I was quite pleased to complete this complex and very enjoyable puzzle correctly in 39 minutes, fully parsed, and even more so as only two clues were responsible for me missing my half-hour target.

    It didn’t delay me unduly but I never heard of ZORILLA, nor FUZZBOXES really although once I had thought of the guitar connection with ‘axe’ I remembered I had vaguely heard of such a device.

    I’d think of Marlene before Ella when it comes to ‘Miss Otis regrets’, not technically such an accomplished vocalist (of course) but a great interpreter of song, and just what’s needed to perform this classic number with its dark lyric. The song was developed by Porter on his cocktail circuit and was first performed outside that on Broadway by the English comedian Douglas Byng, a female impersonator who specialised in risqué songs overladen with innuendo.

    Edited at 2020-12-11 06:21 am (UTC)

    1. There’s an interesting version of the song on YouTube by Kirsty McColl accompanied by a pipe band.
  8. Thanks, verlaine for explaining EXPERTISE, OUTFLEW and ROULETTE as well as for “undoing trousers” in 9ac.
    LOI was VEERED while COD to FUZZBOXES.
  9. …Moves like a ghost.
    25 mins with yoghurt, granola, etc.
    A brilliant one in my humble opinion. Very witty.
    NHO Zorilla, nor Veered=opposite of Backed.
    Call out the danglers! Today’s example is “a” small catch = “atiddler”
    Thanks setter and V.
    1. In general, I feel that dangling “a”s should be avoided, but I don’t consider “a” as a dangler when it is part of the definition, as it would be in a dictionary.
  10. In truth my time was a lot longer as I paused with VEERED unsolved then thought about it on my “commute” – the 15 minute circular walk I take each morning before hitting my study. I was well stumped with this clue, thinking that the last letter in full is L, take that from Leonid and you get eonid, then what am I supposed to do with it? I did also think of zed as the last letter in full but it was some time before I sort of put the two together.

    Fuzzbox reminds me of the 80s band We’ve Got A Fuzzbox And We’re Going To Use It. Their name is more memorable than their songs, of which I couldn’t name one.

  11. 31.00. Not a stroll but certainly a more comfortable amble than my previous efforts this week. FOI her, LOI wooden leg which was also my COD. NHO zorilla but well clued, Struggled at 15 dn with an obsession for a mis spelled titivate until the light eventually turned on and titillate presented.

    A wide ranging collection of clues which was stimulating and enjoyable. Thanks setter and , of course, blogger.

  12. My OTHER HALF’s met a gorilla,
    But I TITILLATE HER with ZORILLA
    We GET UP EXPERTISE
    Wide vocabularies
    So to learn a new word is a thriller

    Almost a pangram today, except for J. Could have been one if VEERED had been JEERED instead.

  13. 14:21 Lots of fun and a steady solve. LOI EXPERTISE. DNK the skunk. I liked WOODEN LEG, but COD to FUZZBOXES for the high scrabble score. Thanks V and setter.
  14. 42 minutes with LOI VEERED, which was a truly horrible clue. COD shared between TIDDLER and FUZZBOXES. I also liked Miss OTIS. She wouldn’t have been able to lunch today with a non-household member anyway. Never heard of a ZORILLA and needed the guitarist’s equipment to believe it. Excellent puzzle. Thank you V and setter.
    1. I also think “Veered” was a horrible clue. In fact, I gave up on it and came here. I spent ages trying to squeeze versions of Leoni, Dinoe and etc. into it with Red and Der and V and Z. Saw Veered as a possibility but couldn’t think why it might be correct for the life of me!
      Shame – because otherwise an enjoyable puzzle.
      1. You could’ve said “well, it’s a pangram if there’s a J, so it must be JEERED”… imagine how angry you’d have been then!
        1. Another instance of the “false pangram” that is there to lead us down a blind alley. At least one setter seems to set out to work in a pangram, but then gives up two or three letters short.

          However, I’ve posited previously that there is a setter’s trick of luring the solver into believing there is going to be a pangram, when there actually isn’t – and this puzzle is prime example of the genre. I don’t believe that, if the setter had intended a pangram, he wouldn’t have put “jeered” into that space !

          The trick is put into action by having Q or Z (or both) very early in the answers. The solver is then looking for J, K, and X. If two of them turn up, the illusion is firmly in place !

          I no longer fall for it !

          1. I’ve reached the stage where, if there are sufficient X’s Q’s J’s and Z’s in a 15×15, I’m pretty sure the setter is one of the two people who write the Club Monthly Special, as they’re trained for this sort of thing. And I was right on this occasion!
  15. I am annoyed with myself because I was almost all done with this tricky one (in my view) in 50 odd mins when I got stuck on 20 down. I gave up after 15 more mins. Never did see the « neuter » bit. Well beyond my ken. FUZZBOXES also took more time than necessary as, like Matt, I own a couple. COD begrudgingly then to EUTERPE. Thanks V and clever setter.
  16. After a week of struggle, quick starts then grinding to a halt, this was a joy, steady throughout with many a “that’s nice”. COD has to be 15d. Thanks V for the excellent blog and setter for the best of the week. I can now face the rain with a spring in my step. DNK EUTERPE although I feel I should and DNK ZORILLA and don’t why I would.
  17. Really enjoyable puzzle, lots of wonderful clues. My opinion is helped by the fact that I finished all correct, and reasonably confident.

    Knew ZORILLA from a very frustrating picture quiz I did decades ago. I have Kirsty McColl singing Miss OTIS.

    TARQUIN was around at the same time as Horatius Cocles, I think, ‘O’ level Latin once more a help. Worked out EUTERPRE, referencing Terpsichore when constructing.

    Liked OTHER HALF, THAT’S TORN IT, but COD to HUMPH after the clump/chump debacle during the week.

    Annuals used to be on one’s Christmas list – Beano, Dandy, Thunderbirds etc. (only one, of course).

    16′ 50″, thanks verlaine and setter.

  18. Really enjoyed this, a fine, inventive crossword.
    21dn took me a few minutes to parse, I know little of sailing when it does not involve a quarterdeck and a gin & tonic.
    The reference at 3dn is not to the gambling game I suspect, but to the perforator: “a toothed wheel for making a line of perforations; a tiny slit made by such a wheel on a sheet of stamps as an aid to tearing it apart”
  19. I enjoyed this but I found it a bit slack in places. In 1a the second part refers to THE OTHER HALF. I disliked hump for arch. The ‘one’ in 18a and the ‘a’ in 26a are superfluous or dangling to use the word adopted by Myrtilus.
    1. From Collins: to form or become a hump; hunch; arch
      from Lexico: SYNONYMS arch, curve, hunch, bend, bow, curl, crook … so I am afraid it’s just you 🙂

      The one and the a are there for a very useful purpose, ie to make the surface more natural and convincing. I don’t see that as a fault myself, feeling as I do that the setter’s job is hard enough as it is, without us inventing new faults..

  20. For the second day running, my time was pushed to just under 30 minutes, with 5+ spent trying to disentangle the VEERED clue. It really didn’t help knowing that Brezhnev’s name was Leonid (though I believe it did once when referencing meteors in a clue), nor did my lack of knowledge of what the wind does in clock terms. My sailing experience is limited to falling in on West Reservoir in Hackney, when I don’t think the wind did anything.
    That aside, this was a fun and challenging crossword with plenty of nudge nudge bits (especially 15), and the no sex please we’re a muse 20. I also liked the surreal image of rugby forwards staying airborne in 24.
    Glad you liked it, V: so did I.
  21. [Alan, I removed the extended link that sent your message to spam as it looked a bit of a dodgy one]

    Alan J Cannon
    Dec. 11th, 2020 09:41 am (local)

    rouletta

    having navigated the various traps managed to invent one of my own by convincing myself that ‘picked up’ in 3d was a homophone indicator giving ROULETTA a small revolver . Indeed such a thing exists be it a proper noun Revolver seems adequate.

    Edited at 2020-12-11 10:01 am (UTC)

  23. Up with this sort of thing! Lots of fumbling in the dark and dusty recesses of my memory.

    FOI ZORILLA, despite being NHO.

    COD WOODEN LEG for the misdirection.

    Bravo setter and V!

  24. After a couple of disastrous outings this week, happy to feel back-on-form(-ish). A zorilla would make an interesting ‘cross’ – but between a gorilla and what? A zebu?
      1. A zo is itself a cross, so probably infertile though I would not swear to it .. looking at Wikipedia, the males (zho/zo) are infertile but the females (dzomo/zhom) are fertile. So now we know!
      2. My Scrabble scores have improved remarkably since I discovered ZO(s) and also JO(s) and JOE(s) as discussed here this week. QI(s) too. They’re very useful for getting rid high-scoring letters that might count against you at the end of play.
  25. Easier than a usual Friday, but liked the many distractions, especially the axeman, the non-gorilla and at the last my vain attempt to make a pangram with JEERED. Spent a while wondering what the name for a Russian L was and whether we’re supposed to know the names of letters in the Cyrillic alphabet.
    Apparently the ZORILLA is also called a ZORIL, which is well known in Scrabble circles.
  26. 32 minutes, TARQUIN my LOI once I saw the U, think Q. Vaguely knew EUTERPE and ZORILLA and MINERVA a write-in. Not keen on HUMPH but it had to be. Thanks for explaining 1d V.
  28. A very jolly romp with question marks on zorilla and veered, but no real doubts as to the answers. Knew Mrs Memory’s daughter Euterpe but not sure from where (is it an episode in Joyce’s Ulysses?) A change from the crossword staple Erato anyway.
  29. DNK ZORILLA but the setter was generous. Definitely not a creature you’d want at your picnic. The composer referenced ties in nicely with today’s Guardian by Brummie. I was on wavelength until VEERED which took several tries. My maternal grandfather had a saying “too late she cried and waved her WOODEN LEG” and he never would (or could) tell me what it meant. 19.21
    2. Found this on t’internet. It’s not an answer though.
      “The origin of this is unknown and many people are interested in where it came from, one day it will show up. To me, at hazarding a guess, it is most likely from an old play, song or poem. My guess is that it may have stemmed from the saying “pull your leg”, or “pull the other one”, then a reply to that may be? Too late (you can’t pull my leg) someone’s already done it! (waving the wooden leg that’s been pulled). That’s just my guess though.”
  30. DNF. No idea about 21dn. I considered VEERED but couldn’t see any reason for it, not knowing the sailing term and failing to read ‘last letter in full from Brezhnev’ as ‘last letter from Brezhnev in full’.
    I also own a fuzzbox: a Boss Blues Driver, since you ask. Nice to see one of my kids in the grid.
            1. I thought you were such an “axeman” that you were referring to your effects pedals as your beloved children…
  31. Spent more than 5 minutes looking at the Brezhnev clue, trying to put thoughts of Alexandra Pigg out of my mind, and eventually guessed JEERED. Wrongly, as it turns out.
  32. Top half not so bad, though pencilled in TARQUIN and ANNUL.

    Bottom half trickier – finally stuck on EUTERPE (I was wondering whether EXTIRPE was a possibility) until I saw NEUTER; and the MINERVA/VEERED crossing. Thought RED would go in somehow, forward or backward, and eventually hit on the right configuration, though I had no idea about being the opposite of ‘backed’.

  33. Lovely crossword. Never heard of OTIS (she makes lifts, right?), ZORILLA, FUZZBOXES,TARQUIN, VEERED (in that sense) or EUTERPE, but all very gettable. 7m 25s with EUTERPE / ENTERPRISE taking a bit of time at the end.

    Anyone ever heard the word ‘outflew’ used in the wild? Maybe it’s in Top Gun.

    2. I much prefer Schindler as a lift maker myself. It never ceases to amuse me when I get in one and it makes me think of Spielberg making a film about elevators.
    3. Definitely not in Top Gun. In 1988 I spent 5 weeks offshore on a semisub which had only 2 VHS videos on board. Watched Top Gun at least once a day for more than 30 days in a row; knew the dialogue down pat, and there’s no outflew. It’s now one of my favourite movies of all time, best comedy ever, like Flying High as a total piss-taking satire of all the cliches in Hollywood films, with the added very obvious, un-Hollywood homosexual element.
    4. They’ve just built a new university campus in Swansea and installed lots of Schindlers lifts. The assorted academics I was with couldn’t see the joke. I despair…
  34. ….for his explanation of VEERED, which I happily solved at first sight, but queried as the reverse of “backed”. My nautical experience is limited to being rowed by my Dad on the lake at Peasholm Park in Scarborough.

    This puzzle was one of the most enjoyable of the year for me so far – I do like a setter with a comedic gift, and I smiled all the way through – although the loss of my partner’s debit card on Wednesday caused a LOL moment when my COD popped up.

    My first encounter with a fuzzbox was seeing the Spencer Davis Group at the Stamford Hall in Altrincham on the very day that “Keep on Running” was released. Magic !

    FOI ZORILLA
    LOI VEERED
    COD WOODEN LEG
    TIME 9:53

  35. Yes, very good and so disappointing to be tripped up by a ‘rouletta’ for 3d, with everything else in and mostly parsed. Still some good comes out of the ruins – from my error, I’ve learnt the name of a new flower which, you never know, might pop up in crossword land some day.

    A worthy Friday challenge.

  36. A lovely puzzle. Fingers crossed as I biffed Veered.

    I’ve always liked the word Titillate. When I was much younger a girl-friend said she wanted me to scintillate. I asked her if that was one word or three. We lost touch shortly afterwards.

  37. VEERED LOI. Saw how to put it together, but couldn’t see how it fitted the definition , so thanks to Verlaine for the nautical education. Many of the other surfaces were quite naughtycal too
  38. Having solved my LOI, VEERED, and submitted at 32:34, I was almost as annoyed as Jeremy, when I saw I had typed ANULL at 4d, despite knowing that I needed to remove A from ANNUAL. Drat and double drat! WOE is me. Thanks setter and V.
  39. I had a couple left and went to bed. Filled them in immediately this morning. VEERED was LOI, and I kicked myself since I did know the wind reference from sea kayaking days. I’m not sure why a roulette wheel is small…the ones in Vegas seem pretty big. Maybe a hint to the “ette” ending. Never heard of a ZORILLA and was obviously tempted by GORILLA but the wordplay was very clear. And with the Z, FUZZBOXES was suddenly obvious. I had no idea how EXPERTISE worked but it fitted the literal and it was the only thing that fitted the crossers.
  40. Just under an hour today, but at least no silly mistakes. LOI was VEERED after thinking all the time about LEONID and how to make it fit. At 10 ac I had GORILLA for ages, never having heard of ZORILLAs, but of course I had no idea what GO was going to have to do with Australia and eventually FUZZBOX saved the day with its crossing letter (although I had never heard of that either). A pleasant and fair puzzle, since the wordplay helped a lot with the unknowns. COD to LET BE (and its consumption).
  42. I was listening to My Bloody Valentine as I filled in FUZZBOXES.
    LOI VEERED. I didn’t know that about the wind directions.
    Best puzzle of the week, I thought.
  43. First time for a while that I’ve completed the crossword all in one sitting.
    Had to check afterwards what Zorilla and Fuzzboxes were.
    Pity about the absent J.

    from Jeepyjay

  44. I’d always wondered about the “backing” bit in the shipping forecast, so now I know. But I don’t recall any veering – I’ll have to pay closer attention. Nice puzzle. thank setter and v
  45. DNF in 20 mins with another infuriating typo this time at haavens. A shame because this puzzle was a delight to solve.
  46. My 11:56 in the QC this morning encouraged me to make one of my occasional trips to the 15×15 this evening. A nice one. Good fun and just accessible enough (in the sense of hanging on by my fingernails) to keep me going. Just over an hour, in the newspaper, to finish all but one. DNK and could not parse EUTERPE. Otherwise all the same issues as others. It is great to have the blog and see how much I hadn’t seen. Thanks. I still feel quite pleased with myself. kap
  47. I’m surprised to read so many positive reviews of this puzzle. Any puzzle which includes HUMPH as if it were a word rather than a mere animalistic grunt is not worthy of the name, in my opinion. I threw the towel in once I’d worked that rubbish out.
    2. It’s in the dictionary, which means it’s fair game, dontcha know?
      Better study the rules, O Hidden One.

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