Times 27871 – Damme, where’s that clue?

Author   vinyl1Posted on Categories Daily Cryptic

Time: 31 minutes
Music: Beethoven, Piano Sonatas, Wilhelm Backhaus.

This was a bit more difficult for a Monday, although I managed to race through most of it in about 15 minutes before getting stuck.   I was also slowed down when I discovered that my printout was missing the last word and enumeration of 29 across, and had to start up a computer to get the missing bits.   There is a little obscure vocabulary here, as well as a few convoluted cryptics, but the bulk of it is straightfoward enough.   It’s probably about average overall.

Now for some important blog business.   Simon Hanson, a long-time Jumbo blogger, has been forced to resign due ot ill health.   I have gotten a temporary substitute for the next one, but we need a permanent blogger.    I am therefore seeking someone who wants to join our crew of volunteers at Times for the Times, and is willing to blog a Jumbo cryptic about once every five weeks.  You can either just indicate your interest in your comment, or sent me a LiveJournal private message.

Across
1 What is true about English I love, America being flippant? (9)
FACETIOUS – FAC(E)T + I + O + US.
6 Place for Jacob’s ladder, not hotel plant (5)
BETEL –  BET[h]EL, if you have the crossers your weak Biblical knowledge should not matter much.
9 Survive in the open before bad turns (7)
OUTLIVE – OUT + EVIL backwards.
10 A broadcaster in Ireland, female, almost a goddess (7)
ARTEMIS – A + R.T.E. + MIS[s], an obvious biff.
11 Set against warrant officer, everyone appears insignificant? (5)
SMALL – S.M. + ALL, that is Sergeant Major, and not W.O. as you might suppose.
13 Covering church fellows provided with time for memorial slab (9)
HATCHMENT – HAT + CH + MEN + T, a word not everyone will know.
14 Seek changes in accommodation for minister and be reasonable (4,5)
MAKE SENSE – MA(anagram of SEEK)NSE.
16 Holy circle in church a lot (4)
HALO –  Hidden, in [churc]H A LO[t].
18 Continue to be someone foolish (4)
GOON – GO ON, a chestnut.
19 Lousy rent — raise various amounts paid in advance (9)
RETAINERS – Anagram of RENT + RAISE.
22 One making a song and dance, these days, always going on (9)
BALLADEER – BALL + AD + EER.
24 Swimmer finished poetically, clinching races (5)
OTTER – O(TT)ER.
25 Protester did wrong breaking into vehicle behind back of school (7)
LUDDITE – [schoo]L + U(anagram of DID)TE.   There aren’t too many three-letter vehicles starting with a vowel.
26 Flats maybe by trail in Cornish town (7)
PADSTOW –  PADS + TOW.
28 Spaniard to make departure twice? (5)
DIEGO – DIE + GO.
29 Something edgy about sport bringing bit of bad language (9)
SWEARWORD – S(WEAR)WORD, easy enough if you have the whole  clue!
Down
1 Wet rubbish? Female in the morning collects a great deal (7)
FLOTSAM – F (LOTS) AM.
2 Nursery item’s function (3)
COT –  Double definition, a child’s bed and a cotangent.   I initially put COS, thinking of the wrong kind of nursery.
3 Competitor making mistake, not quite among the top people (8)
TRIALIST – TRI[p] + A-LIST, I think.   This was a very hesitant biff, since I couldn’t figure  out what “among” was doing.
4 Honour a husband, showing a sort of charm (5)
OBEAH – OBE + A H.
5 Most hare-brained guy meeting restrictions on entering street (9)
SCATTIEST – S(CAT + TIES)T.
6 Bishop getting uncomfortable becomes spiteful (6)
BITCHY – B + ITCHY.
7 Agency worker taking time signified outspoken attitude (11)
TEMPERAMENT – TEMP + ERA + sounds like MEANT.
8 The foreign boozer, little house in the country (7)
LESOTHO –  LE SOT + HO.
12 Recognise legend, wacko in peculiar guise (11)
ACKNOWLEDGE –  Anagram of LEGEND WACKO, although some solvers may play around with LEGEND + GUISE.
15 Feeble or calm and collected? (9)
NERVELESS – Double definition.
17 Hell, with a group of religious folk creating chaos (8)
DISORDER – DIS + ORDER.
18 Gulped, giving brief account of what happened when tooth came out? (7)
GOBBLED – GOB BLED, not what the turkey said, but what the hungry folks did at the feast.
20 Fixed a strip of wood or metal around front of window (7)
SCREWED –  SCRE(W)ED.   A strip of wood or metal is about the 5th definitin of “screed”.
21 Boy in love is in clover (6)
LADINO –  LAD IN O.   One I didn’t know, but the cryptic hands it to you.
23 Regret when school subject is squeezed — money found (5)
RUPEE – RU(PE)E, when I couldn’t get ruble to work.
27 Number in company excessively audible (3)
TWO – Sound like TOO, a clue escaped from a Quickie.

72 comments on “Times 27871 – Damme, where’s that clue?”

  1. Made easier for me by getting 1A and 6A straightaway, Biblical knowledge helping on the latter. I was glad that my assembly of unknowns LADINO, HATCHMENT and PADSTOW was all correct.

    V, thanks very much for the blog. A minor correction – you have an IO missing in 1A.

  2. Technically DNF, as I looked up PADSTOW. I thought of RUBLE at 23d, even though I knew it would be ‘rouble’ here, and following Gresham’s Law, that managed to block RUPEE until I got the P. Biffed ARTEMIS, LUDDITE, LADINO (DNK). DNK SCREED.
  3. All done in 18 minutes, but for S _ A _ TIEST, and after another 6 minutes of alphabet trawling, I gave up. Don’t think I ever would have gotten SCATTIEST. Of course I know ‘guy’ = CAT but I wouldn’t call it to mind and I don’t know the word SCATTY, although Chambers tells me it possibly comes from ‘scatter-brained’, which I do know.

    Plenty of unknowns, but very approachable wordplay.

      1. Dictionary says ‘British, informal’. Never heard it on the handful of British shows I’ve seen, or from a snooker commentator, or in a puzzle!
        1. Simply a diminutive of scatterbrained. I’ve used scatty to describe my absent-minded partner, but never the comparative forms (but then she is rather unique !)
  4. Just under an hour, hoping at the end that I had opted for the correct parsing for the NHO LADINO. A few others I wasn’t too confident about, but crossers eg BETEL, or wordplay eg HATCHMENT helped.

    Apologies for being picky, but I think ‘bad language’ needs to be underlined as the def for your initially deficient 29a.

    Thanks for the blog and to our setter

    2. I wouldn’t have mentioned it, but since the subject has come up there are several other definitions not underlined – 4 or 5 in total I believe.
  5. 27 minutes, so comfortably within my target half-hour.

    I wasn’t sure about NERVELESS as I didn’t know its ‘feeble’ meaning, something to add to my collection of words like ‘best’ which can mean one thing, but also the direct opposite.

    21dn is an answer one just has to guess if one doesn’t happen to know the word, a somewhat obscure plant variety, so that’s quite likely. I picked LAD correctly but given the vagaries of setters when it comes to given names it might just as easily have been SAMINO or PATINO or several other 3-letter boy’s names that would fit.

  6. Harder than usual for a Monday for sure. Like most, I expect, I nho LADINO or HATCHMENT, and was tentative at NERVELESS, my LOI, since I didn’t know it could mean feeble. I’ve been to PADSTOW hundreds of times since my Dad lives less than 10 miles away, so no problem there.
  7. I find myself with the highest NITCH at time of writing, reflecting the fact I was way off the wavelength with this one. If I’d been more confident of a couple of answers I’d have been quicker but I still had nagging doubts when I submitted. Like vinyl I couldn’t see what the “among” was doing in the clue for TRIALIST. I also would have spelt it triallist. Like jackkt I wondered about boys’ names for LADINO. And similar to the clue for trialist I was unsure about the “in” in this clue – the parsing just didn’t seem quite right. So all in all a pleasant surprise to finish with all correct.
    1. Wiktionary says a single “L” is American only, so would have expected a hint on that.
      Andyf
      1. I would have thought it American but Chambers has both and doesn’t specify single L as US.
  8. 30 mins pre-brekker, held up by not remembering Hatchment which made thinking of ‘cat’ tricky.
    Thanks setter and Vinyl.
  9. …was my cry as I saw the typo GBBBLED exactly as my finger hit submit, ruining a fast 23m solve. A workmanlike test with multiple biffs, some dredging from the depths of my crossword memory (UTE, BET(H)EL, OBEAH) and some unknowns (LADINO, HATCHMENT) and fair cluing throughout.

    Thanks setter and Vinyl.

    1. I reckon I add a minute to my time every day by painstaking double checking I so hate that pink square moment!!
  10. Didn’t submit this, though all but LADINO in 14′. The wordplay does give it to you as noted, but unless you are willing to risk pink squares, to which I am averse, or look things up, which I don’t…..

    Liked BETEL, LUDDITE, and SWEARWORD.

    Thanks vinyl and setter.

  11. There are a lot. Did not like LADINO (although I eventually entered it as it seemed most likely). Other wise enjoyed the puzzle.
  12. Another hit and hope with LADINO here. Not very fairly clued I thought as _A_ for boy could be many things. Pure luck that I ended up with the right one. Like others, same DNKs. All done though in 40 mins. Thanks vinyl and setter.
  13. 16:26 worrying about LADINO and TRIALIST where I couldn’t see what was among what. DNK that defiition of SCREED either. COD to GOBBLED.
  14. 10:29, with several minutes agonising over 21dn at the end. LADINO was clearly the most direct interpretation of the wordplay, but several alternatives seemed more likely candidates based on the ‘does it look like a word’ test. In the end I decided that LADINO would be my answer if this were the championships and then looked it up before submitting. Not a great clue.
  15. A bit odd for a Monday, with several pink square candidates. LADINO, obviously, though at least I knew the word in other meanings. SCREWED which had to be though I couldn’t work out what a thin plaster surface had to do with it, nor yet a lengthy bit of writing. HATCHMENT which, it turns out, is a dead someone’s coat of arms affixed to the front of a house, and not an engraver’s filling in lines. NERVELESS, where I reasoned that the feeble version was a play on not having nerve or courage, whereas apparently it’s the primary meaning.
    But I liked GOBBLED (if somewhat vulgar) and the BITCHY bishop. And I did it in 11.21, with quite a bit of back-checking trying to justify all the entries.

    Edited at 2021-01-11 09:41 am (UTC)

  16. Are there records, does anyone know
    For the most answers ending in O?
    LESOTHO and HALO
    LADINO, DIEGO,
    And TWO doesn’t rhyme, but there’s PADSTOW
  17. Some of the doubles are fun today:
    Are the GOON RETAINERS of the GOP to be held responsible for last Wednesday’s BITCHY DISORDER?
    And why is LESOTHO SCREWED?
  18. Solved either side of dog walk in about 35 minutes. DNK OBEAH, HATCHMENT or LADINO but trusted the cryptic. I’ve never heard NERVELESS said to mean FEEBLE, but it had to be. COD to LUDDITE, with whom I frequently sympathise when faced with apparently insoluble technology issues. SWEARWORDs are not unknown on such occasions. A decent challenge but three unknowns is pushing it a bit. Thank you V and setter.
  19. Jacob’s ladder, church, manse, holy circle, church, bishop, hell, religious folk ….. thought I’d picked up the Church Times by mistake.
  20. 35m here, started off like an express train but halfway through ran out of steam and struggled through the last 3 or 4, with the same reservations about the same clues others have noted. As ever though more my lack of GK than inherent difficulty in the clue. I did spend too much time trying to get Hope into 6 across and was punished for biffing an unthinking Headstone.
  21. FOI 6D: BITCHY
    LOI 21D: LADINO (guessed based on wordplay)

    Also guessed, based on wordplay – 4D: OBEAH

    Thank you vinyl1 and the setter

  22. Held up in the NE by putting BLOUSY instead of BITCHY, until ARTEMIS put me right. Only knew LADINO as the language in the Dolomites but had to be correct. LOI HATCHMENT NHO. And my biblical knowledge was also nonexistent.
  23. 17’01” wrecked by a mistype on Temperament – Temperameet. Toyed with gumbled for quite a long time. I bet there is a word gumble. (I just checked in OED and it’s a horse’s cheekbone – obs)
  24. All but 21d done in twelve minutes, thinking easy Monday, then hesitated over
    _A INO wondering whether LADINO was a thing; in a no aids competition I’d have biffed it and hoped. Instead I went to Wiki to learn it is a white variety of clover.
  25. Lesotto for Lesotho. I didn’t expect Ladino to be correct.

    COD: GOBBLED. Here’s my alternative offering.

    Quickly swallowed what’s mostly nonsense. (7)

  26. 16m with a pause to wonder if GUMBLED was a thing and a happy guess at LADINO, of which I knew neither the horticultural or linguistic meaning.
  27. Wasted 10 minutes trying to think of alternatives to the unknown LADINO, even googling it, only to find it listed as a language and no mention of a plant, so I submitted regardless expecting pink squares and was amazed that I didn’t get them. After the event googling plant AND ladino does show that it’s a white clover. My first entry was the IOUS at 1a, followed by OBEAH and COT. I was held up at 22a by a mombled GUMBLED at 18d, but eventually saw the error of my ways. A biffed HEADSTONE was corrected after LESOTHO went in. MAKE SENSE and NERVELESS were the last 2 before the angst over LADINO. 38:29. Thanks setter(but not for 21d) and Vinyl.
  28. This was right up my street with a distinctly old flavour
    – like Vimto.

    Twenty three minutes and a bit of ‘shrapnel’.

    FOI 2dn COT

    LOI 6ac BETEL even tho’ I’m pretty good on things Biblical

    COD 24ac OTTER – and what a swimmer!

    WOD 25ac LUDDITE – they prevailed 1779-1813 – did Ned Ludd even exist?

    I note that America First (political Ludditism) is not as popular as it once was and that this was a rather English puzzlement. Huzzah!

  30. Another gumble here – it looked just as likely as LADINO – so it took a while to straighten out the mess in that corner. I knew HATCHMENT (I think) from the Maigret books in which it’s the done thing to put it up over the front door in a house of mourning. According to Simenon les Francais also used to hang black draperies with silver tears embroidered on them and put a bowl of holy water with a sprig of boxwood (or was it rosemary) to dip in it at the foot of the deathbed. 19.07
  31. Has anyone explained what ‘among’ is doing (they might have done, but at a first pass of the comments I don’t think I saw anything)? vinyl1 calls it a hesitant biff, and I wasn’t at all sure either, particularly with the trialist/triallist factor.
    1. A-list is an adjective, so I guess you could say that if someone is not A-list they’re not among the top people.
    1. Your suggested alternatives would be valid if solving the clue in isolation but I don’t think it’s unreasonable for compilers to set clues in the context of the crossword as a whole that rely on checked letters to eliminate possibilities. The second letter here, A, is checked which eliminates many 3-letter men’s names from the equation, whilst leaving Pat and Sam as plausible alternatives if one doesn’t know of the plant in question.
      1. Yep, thanks jack, my bad – momentarily forgot about the A, which narrows it down a fair bit. All out of sync today as not at home today – with family support bubble while piano techie is regulating and tuning my pride and joy in lonely lockdown isolation 🙂
      2. Or Dan, Hal, Ian, Nat. And less convincingly but not invalidly Baz, Cal, Gaz, Jay, Mat, Mac, Rab, Val. It was partly the sheer number of possibilities that led me to believe it had to be the generic LAD rather than any one example.
  33. After a slow start, I speeded up on the down clues. I was left at the end with the usual suspects which I eventually just bunged in on a wing and a prayer (just looked up the origin of that expression – fascinating. I always assumed it referred to angels not a line from John Wayne). Agree with all on the NHO LADINO where I plumped for the generic rather than a specific name.
  34. Par for a Monday. Hatchment and Ladino were both fingers-crossed punts.

    Didn’t Diego Ladino play for Real Madrid?

    1. Diego Fernando Ladino never played for Real Madrid – but did turn out twice in the Spanish third tier for Athletico Almeria 1926-1927. An anagram of his name is ‘I noddie goal’ which indicated that he was a centre forward, who usually played for the juniors.
  35. Knew it as a word from Countdown though couldn’t have said what it meant. If those six letters come out with 3 nasty ones it’s quite handy. I agree it’s unfairly clued really as the 3 vowels are the crossers. 28ac is a bit of a nothing clue and by changing that there would have been more options available for 21d. Not heard of UTE though so that went in with a shrug, and can’t see how DIS = hell, though with the crossers it couldn’t be anything else.

    Old Vic

      1. The City of Dis from Dante’s ‘Divine Comedy’. Talking of all hell, should the USA have Trump face Capitol Punishment? Viz have a lovely POTUS 45 Commemorative Plate on offer this week at just £9.99.

  36. Very close but no cigar because of LADINO. I considered Lad, Pat, Sam, Ray and Cam. SAMINO sounded most likely to me.
    How do we know when a random name is preferable? We don’t.
    Otherwise successfully guessed BETEL, OBEAH and HATCHMENT.
    A plant too many for me in this puzzle but some good clues otherwise. An hour or so.
    David
  37. ….I must have had LADINO stored away, because, despite not having a clue what it was, I put it straight in and never considered further. Maybe I was a tad fortunate. I also fell for a lettuce at 2D before OUTLIVE put me right, and, as mentioned earlier, had to amend “gabbled”.

    The BITCHY bishop made me smile.

    FOI FACETIOUS
    LOI RETAINERS
    COD GOBBLED
    TIME 7:31

  38. Like many, got LADINO from wordplay, and a quick search suggests this is the first appearance of the term since a Mephisto seven years ago, so a strange obscurity. Otherwise was very much on to the wordplay and came in at 7:25.
  39. Meh. When there’s more than a few obscurities that you’ve got to guess, and the average word count of the clues is about 9, and there’s random names (in foreign languages)… the sort of crossword that I really dislike.
  40. 24.07 . A bit of a trial really with my FOI being retainers. Not helped by working out the ious of facetious and spending too long trying to front fill instead of actually solving some clues.

    LOI ladino but a complete guess. Bit tougher than the typical Monday but enjoyable. Liked betel, artemis and hatchment in particular but pride of place to lesotho if only because it’s so unusual as a crossword answer.

  41. Hi vinyl1, I would love to do some Jumbo blogging but I don’t think I can currently justify taking on two blogging posts. That may well change in a few months’ time but not immediately. And people now seem to have got to know me in my QC slot and I’ve sort of found my ‘voice’ so I would be loth to trade places.

    If I can help as an occasional blogger though while you sort things out I’d be very happy to do so. I would just ask that any such assignments take place on a different weekend from my QC spot.

    Kind regards

    Don

    1. By the way, is Backhaus your favourite interpreter of Beethoven piano works? I love Emil Gilels personally.

      Kind regards

      Don

  42. ‘Meh’ seems an appropriate comment for a puzzle with too many unknowns and not enough wordplay help to make them a bit less so. DNF, but my mistake was not in OBEAH, LADINO or HATCHMENT where I was expecting it, but in the RUPEE-PADSTOW crossing, since I never doubted RUBLE and BEDSTOW seemed to fit. Not quite sure what obscure British school subject BL might have been, though. COD to GOBBLED.

  44. Took me a long time but got there in the end. I can usually only finish easy ones so happy to see this was at least average difficulty. I read feeble as a cryptic clue for NERVELESS rather than a definition, ie lacking nerve.

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