Times 27877 – QAnon anyone?

Author   ulacaPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
I have just completed the move to my retirement home (not a retirement home as such – I still have some marbles) in the picturesque island of Cheung Chau. Certainly a change of pace, but I have brought a portable oven, so I will be looking to churn out killer banana bread, carrot cake and various other delights, which I will be looking to prevail upon the local independent eateries to flog. Does that make any sense?

Not assuredly as much as this puzzle, which kept me entertained for the best part of 24 minutes. A nice mix of topics, I thought (easy on the sciency stuff, which is always a plus in my book), and some smooth surfaces. Just the thing to start the week with.

ACROSS

1 Company receives order beginning to march with soldier (8)
COMMANDO – OM (Order of Merit) M[arch] AND (with) in CO
5 Refuse amorous advance at university (4,2)
PASS UP – PASS UP
10 Time with dad on settee taking in English sitcom (5,2,1,7)
BIRDS OF A FEATHER – BIRD (time, as in time in jail) SOFA (settee) E in FATHER; a British TV show with 129 episodes – all of which I missed
11 Among cunning old people there’s one mathematician (10)
ARCHIMEDES – I in ARCH (cunning) MEDES (rarely seen without their mates the Persians, together they were big into legislation) for the bloke in the bath
13 Hawk comes from lake shrouded in mist (4)
FLOG – L in FOG; ‘hawk’ as in shift dodgy gear
15 Greed seen when fresh caviare’s presented (7)
AVARICE – anagram* of CAVIARE; never seen it spelt like this. One of a number of delicacies (also oysters and abalone) I’m happy to let others eat. Give me a cheese and marmite sandwich any day.
17 Hampshire river flow trial (4,3)
TEST RUN -TEST (river that flows through Soton) RUN (flow)
18 Botched rescue involves knight in condemnation (7)
CENSURE – N in RESCUE*
19 Greek bread once provided by church, intervening in crisis? (7)
DRACHMA – CH in DRAMA; the insurance company’s whose tagline was ‘We don’t make a drama out of a crisis’ might baulk at the definition
21 Sloth maybe stopping halfway across garden (4)
EDEN – EDEN[tate], which literally means toothless (‘a mammal of an order distinguished by the lack of incisor and canine teeth, including the anteaters, sloths, and armadillos, all of which are native to Central and South America’). Who needs teeth when you’ve got a tongue like that, anyway?
22 Bloomingdale’s gets one out to a shopper (10)
APOSTROPHE – TO A SHOPPER*; took me a while to see this, and even then I missed the anagram
25 Collection of native gods here? (8,7)
NATIONAL GALLERY – I reckon this is a cryptic definition, with the ‘collection’ pointing you towards the paintings and the ‘gods’ directing you to the gallery, as in the cheap seats in a theatre. But, as always, I am open to offers.
27 Wayward monarch right to be seen by social worker (6)
ERRANT – ER R ANT
28 Like Arctic fish that wriggles in lock (8)
TREELESS – EEL (fish that wriggles) in TRESS

DOWN

1 Taxi by Welsh lake seen in esoteric lore (7)
CABBALA – CAB BALA (Bala Lake is the largest lake in Wales, I believe); secret this-and-that (together with its bedfellow, loony conspiracies) is like caviar to me. Can’t be bothered with it.
2 Old woman on run causes harm (3)
MAR – MA R
3 Promising a fishy with head removed (10)
AUSPICIOUS – A [s]USPICIOUS
4 One who wrote in defence of editorial sent up (5)
DEFOE – reverse hidden in words 5-7
6 Sadly Liberal brought into sober group ultimately drinks (4)
ALAS – L in AA [drink]S
7 Grant for student beginning to rake in counterfeit Polish cash (11)
SCHOLARSHIP – R[ake] in POLISH CASH*
8 Soldier likely to drop — almost dead — reveals pattern (7)
PARAGON – PARA (soldier likely to drop) GON[e]
9 Moved camp? (8)
AFFECTED – double definition, and a rather good one
12 Fraudulent scheme placing restraint on tenant (5,6)
CHAIN LETTER – CHAIN (restraint) LETTER (tenant)
14 European detective crossing stream in canvas shoe (10)
ESPADRILLE – E RILL in SPADE (as in Sam Spade, Dashiell Hammett’s fictional dick)
16 Former barrister killing time sees model (8)
EXEMPLAR – EX [t]EMPLAR; ‘Templar’, as in a member of the lego-judicial industry who works in one of the so-called temples in London – not Simon or the ruffians who went crusading
18 Remove sin from learner Seneca corrupted (7)
CLEANSE – L SENECA*
20 Animals in rainforest or at sea, understood, succeeded (3-4)
AYE-AYES – AYE-AYE (at sea, understood) S (succeeded); lemurs
23 Tease American over sweetheart (5)
SUGAR – reversal of RAG (tease) US (a country much in the news of late)
24 Might this be secured without partner given mention? (4)
LOAN – sounds like LONE (without partner given mention, i.e. sounds like)
26 Farm female uses pitcher, avoiding river (3)
EWE – EWE(r)

66 comments on “Times 27877 – QAnon anyone?”

  1. A good time for me, so I’m ready for more comments about performance-enhancing drugs. In this case, the drug in question was watching Magoo solve December’s Club Special. That always gives me such a boost of confidence!

    I couldn’t remember EDENTATE but that didn’t slow me down, as the garden was easy to figure.

    The clue that took me the longest was surely ESPADRILLE, where I had to dredge up SPADE.

    Incidentally, I think you have NATIONAL GALLERY just about right. It’s an &-lit, as I see it. The literal is where you’d find a collection of statues and some-such; the wordplay refers to ‘gods’ as being those seated in the GALLERY of a theater, and if those gods happen to be native, then they’re NATIONAL.

    EDIT: I think the definition is just ‘collection’, and the wordplay is ‘native’ = NATIONAL + ‘gods here?’ = GALLERY.

    Edited at 2021-01-18 01:19 am (UTC)

  2. I was on track for a pretty fast time (though not up to Jeremy’s recent standards) but slowed down considerably by APOSTROPHE, TREELESS, AYE-AYES and LOAN. I spent too long wondering what Bloomingdale’s was.

    I parsed NATIONAL GALLERY with “here” as the definition (semi-&lit) and the “collection” being the direction to put the other two items together. I notice that Chambers has gods as “(occupants of the) gallery” as the relevant definition, so Jeremy’s parsing might well be better.

  3. It was CABBALA that had me head-scratching at the end, but fortunately it was correct and I’m done at 7:25
  5. When I got to NATIONAL GALLERY I had no checkers in the second word, so I filled in NATIONAL THEATRE on the basis of the “gods” stuff. That made the SE corner a bit tricky until I got ESPADRILLE and realised I’d overwritten a wrong letter. A nice gentle start to the week (except I typed CHIAN LETTER so technically DNF).
  6. Hamlet speaks, at least in some versions, of ‘caviare to the general’. (‘caviary’ in the 2d quarto, ‘caviarie’ in the 1st folio.)

    Edited at 2021-01-18 05:09 am (UTC)

  7. Rather like Paul, I saw ‘gods’ and put in THEATRE, which slowed me down a bunch. Biffed a half-dozen or so, starting with BIRDS OF ETC., which I’d never heard of; parsed the lot of them post-submission.
  8. 33 minutes with 1dn and 20dn accounting for just missing my half-hour target. I can never remember AYE-AYE, thinking it’s ‘aya-aya’ for some reason, so I had to work it out laboriously from wordplay. NHO CABBALA and couldn’t think of a Welsh lake, so that one was a bit of a stab in the dark which fortunately paid off.
    1. I think I’ve only seen it spelled Kabbala/Kabbalah, although ODE gives a few C variants as well. I’d never heard of the lake, until it showed up in a Mephisto a couple of weeks ago.
      1. Madonna and a number of high profile media personalities professed a few years ago that they benefited from studying Kabbalah. A short lived vogue for them I think.

        Edited at 2021-01-18 12:15 pm (UTC)

  9. Undone by a typo. Grrr! Otherwise I found this typically Mondayish, with the exception of one or two answers, though they were generously clued. I was convinced I’ve previously seen ai-ai for the lemurs though I can’t find anything to back me up on this so I don’t know what gave me that notion. I would guess CABBALA might cause difficulty for some non-natives, being an unusual word and referring to a lake that I presume is not well known outside Britain. I’m not sure I could have told you it was in Wales before solving although the name was familiar enough.
  10. Time Lord Ulaca: I know Cheung Chow rather well, as before ‘The Handover’ we would often take visitors there for lunch, via the old ferry. What a lovely spot and such great sea food (razor clams etc). Enjoy your retirement.

    30 minutes but with one wrong, my LOI at 24dn I entered DOWN – a down is ‘secured’ in American ‘Football’. Partner W (wife) around (with) anag.ind.(out) NOD (a mention) = DOWN. QED? OK! LOAN it is!

    FOI 10ac BIRDS OF A FEATHER all of which I saw.

    COD 20dn AYE-AYES – Daubentonia madagascariensis

    WOD 1dn CABBALA – fortunately I knew the Lynn

    Edited at 2021-01-18 07:11 am (UTC)

  11. ALAS, I am wondering whether
    To CENSURE the BIRDS OF A FEATHER
    It is ERRANT, of course
    To FLOG a dead horse
    An EXEMPLAR of typical blether
  12. Fingers crossed for the ‘Welsh lake’ contributing to the only vaguely heard of ‘esoteric lore’ and eyes shut to the subtleties of NATIONAL GALLERY, but still managed to finish in 28 minutes. I was glad to have remembered AYE-AYES which appeared here or elsewhere only in the last few weeks and to have recognised a sloth as an EDEN(tate).

    Challenging enough to be a satisfying solve. I like those punctuation mark related defs, so APOSTROPHE was my pick today.

    Thanks to setter and blogger

  13. Record time for me I think. It may have been easy but a good puzzle with some nice surfaces. Is a CHAIN LETTER necessarily fraudulent?
    1. I rather think CHAIN LETTERS have all but disappeared, replaced by those FB entries that threaten all kinds of ill fortune/opprobrium if you don’t repost. I do remember the kind that exhorted you to send money to the six or so people on a list, replacing one with your own and forwarding to six or so friends. I’m still waiting for the bulk of my 50 grand.
      1. Then there were the Nigerian princes who needed all your banking info in order to get access to their zillions locked in a Swiss account.
  14. Stormed through the top half, except CABBALA (LOI), à pure guess, but ground to a halt in the lower section. 20d had me completely at sea. Never understood the clue, and therefore did not succeed in answering it. Ended up with APE-EYES. I realise that there were several clues I did not actually parse, including EDEN, ESPADRILLE and took an age to see the APOSTROPHE too. Thanks U as ever and setter.
  15. Good fun for a Monday with some interesting words in grid, all clued fairly and succinctly. Particularly enjoyed the Bloomingdale’s and the its appropriate anagram fodder. Thanx all round.
  16. …And ears like Errant wings,
    The devil’s walking parody
    On all four-footed things.

    20 mins with yoghurt, granola, banana, blueberry compote.
    I liked it, mostly B ov a F and Treeless.
    Spent a while trying and failing to parse the Sloth as an Edentate.
    Thanks setter and U.

  17. Flying this morning, a very rare sub-10′.

    LOAN LOI after an alphabet trawl.

    Those who don’t know Sharon and Tracy and Dorien have missed something.

    Thanks ulaca and setter.

  18. 6:42. Plain sailing this morning. The particular brand of mumbo-jumbo at 1dn was made famous by Madonna some years ago, although I would have spelled it with a K.
    If pushed to decide I would parse NATIONAL GALLERY like Jeremy.

    Edited at 2021-01-18 09:07 am (UTC)

      1. No problem, no harm in reinforcing such culturally valuable information. My sympathies on the pink square: I am currently showing an impressive 7 errors on the leaderboard so I know how you feel.
  19. The trouble with crosswords like this is the likelihood of finishing in a fast time increases the probability of missing a typo in the check phase, and promotes entry without appreciating the carefully wrought wordplay.
    So I’m happy with my sub 10 time, but not with my pink square, nor with my realisation from reading ulaca’s excellent exposition that I hadn’t a clue what was really going on in half a dozen or more clues.

    I believe it was Madonna (along with Roseanne Barr, Liz Taylor, Britney Spears and Gwyneth Paltrow) who made the Kabbalah trendy (however spelt), “elevating” it from an arcane study of interest only to a minority of yeshivah buchers to a multi-million dollar industry. Not-for-profit, of course, lest the IRS get interested.

  20. 15:41 after being all but finished for sub-10 but had a careless AYE-AYED which got me stuck on TREELESS until I spotted it and then a long alphabet trawl to find LOAN. I liked APOSTROPHE when I saw it.
  21. Pretty quick today. Birds of a feather a write-in, I remember the series well as it was set in Liverpool and I was living in the Wirral at the time..
      1. Oh you are quite right… and there I was, so pleased to have remembered something from the 1960s 🙂
        It was still a write-in though!
  22. Off to a scorching start, finishing most of the top and right hand diagonal in record time, but then slowed to a grinding halt.

    Took ages even to see the CLEANSE and CENSURE anagrams as well as NATIONAL GALLERY for which I initially had biffed NATIONAL THEATRE.

    NHO MEDES which meant I needed all of the checkers, had thought that might be an anag of O PEOPLE with ACE somewhere, until I finally thought of the Welsh lake.

  23. Post dog walk solve in 28 minutes. LOI and COD to TREELESS. ARCHIMEDES was solved in a Eureka moment of course. I was a while on APOSTROPHE. My wife did drag me round Bloomingdale’s once. There’s an afternoon of my life I won’t get back. I got my revenge the next day with MOMA. I enjoyed this. Thank you U and setter, and best of luck, U, in your new life.

    Edited at 2021-01-18 09:59 am (UTC)

  24. Can’t believe how quickly I whizzed through this. Pretty much every clue solved on first reading. Only started doing The Times cryptic in December, yet finished today’s in under 10 minutes. Thought APOSTROPHE was really good clue. No doubt will come unstuck or bogged down tomorrow!
  25. FOI 1D: CABBALA
    LOI 20D: AYE-AYES

    I made heavy weather of this – unnecessarily faltering too long over my first instincts for several clues – and taking over 4 minutes on my LOI, which answer I knew I had locked away in my head, but had stored so long ago that I struggled to remember where I had put it (or that’s how it felt).

    Thank you, ulaca and the setter.

  26. Definitely at the easy end, as snitch confirms. Like several others, I was left with loan at the end, which took an aggravating couple of minutes and a letter trawl. At what point does a TV show become sufficiently part of the canon to be in a clue? I don’t think I ever watched B of a F, but in my mind’s eye I can picture the two actresses who starred. Can’t remember their names.
  27. Hesitated to press submit at the end, initially not seeing how EDEN worked, and wanting to protect my wicket ( not out to the crossword spinners in 2021). PDM with edentate… maybe prompted by the Tate via the National Gallery at 25a just below it.
    14’21” The Green Streak lives on.

    Edited at 2021-01-18 10:38 am (UTC)

  28. 25m today but half of that spent in the SE corner. Chipping away at those clues for 10m or so, they all came with a rush, as they so often do and I was expecting the ‘completed’ message. Then I noticed the incomplete ‘loan’, which only fell when I forced myself to read the clue properly. This brought back memories of Dorset Jimbo’s guidance ‘Lift and separate!’. Thank you, Jimbo and of course setter and blogger. May you have a long and fulfilling retirement, U.
  29. So pleased to drag up espadrille (14d) that I totally forgot to parse it. Ominously I find often that a familiar word has gone AWOL. Would I have remembered Spade?
    Also not certain I saw the anagram at 22a Bloomingdale’s.
    Andyf
  30. After 12 minutes I was on for a PB so kept bashing in the answers. But sadly I ground to a halt and ended up stopping the clock at 25 minutes with incorrect guesses for CABBALA and AYE AYES. Wales is not my specialist subject, just haven’t spent much time there and have never heard of the lake. I did watch an excellent documentary last night (ITV) about the Pembroke murders which has not put me off wanting to visit when we can.
    I spent a long time on the Bloomingdales clue; I too have been there which got me thinking of all the wrong things for the clue.
    A fun puzzle. David
  31. Having more or less given these things up every now and then I’m drawn in. A slowish 27.57. Don’t really like a lessee being called a letter. On the other hand am glad I tuned in to see vinyl’s excellent outline of the online courtesies.
    1. Frustrating. I had Cabbara for Cabbala. Otherwise would have been all correct in 12:28.

      COD: AUSPICIOUS.

    2. Hi Joe, good to hear you’re still solving. I’ve just returned to the TFTT fold after after a few years away. I too was delighted by Vinyl’s reminder of the courtesies.

      Edited at 2021-01-18 11:56 am (UTC)

  32. COMMANDO was my FOI followed by DEFOE, MAR and CAB____, the rest of which went in much later after AVARICE put in an appearance. The Chigwell girls arrived after a few NE downs allowed me to spot FEATHER. I remembered EDEN(tate) and even the AYE AYES didn’t hold me up for long, having thrown me in previous puzzles, but not this time. GALLERY was a while coming although NATIONAL preceded it somewhat. TREELESS was dragged out of the wordplay without too much delay, and the vaguely familiar ESPADRILLES was my LOI. An enjoyable puzzle. 23:25. Thanks setter and U and may all your loaves rise to the occasion.
  33. No doubt the National Gallery clue has been dissected properly. If it was just a CD it would be very clumsy, because the National Portrait Gallery, just around the corner, is the one that could really be described as a collection of native gods.
  34. I had the same thought as Wil, above, about the Nat. Portrait Gallery. 11.57 for me so a quickie and would have been faster except that just as I was about to hit submit I realized I hadn’t solved 24d. Luckily LOAN popped up quickly or it could easily have been several more minutes.
  35. Whenever I’m giving examples of words I only know from crosswords, EWER & ESPADRILLE are the first two I think of: another one is EDENTATE. And that’s just the Es. All in play today, but the one I spent longest on was CABBALA – my LOI – where I was sure I didn’t know any Welsh lakes, until realising I did know one. 5m 45s.
  36. On track for a near record time until comprehensively tripped up by my LOI, AYE-AYES. No other cause for hesitation apart from some wobbling over the configuration of Bs and Ls in CABBALA until ARCHIMEDES stepped in to help. (Never really thought of the latter as primarily a mathematician – more of a general purpose polymath in the da Vinci mould). 19m.
  37. A game of two halves here, particularly as I had CABALLA, and couldnt get the ALLA bit, which was a bit embarrassing because Bala lake is only down the road and I go there a lot! I thought the SE was a lot harder than the rest – it took me most of my 26 mins.
  38. A PB I think. A pleasant start to the week. LOI was LOAN, which stumped me on the first pass but mercifully yielded quickly at the close. I liked TREELESS, and I realised I had promised myself I’d go back and checked the BIFFed AYE-AYES. Got away with it this time…
  39. ….I confidently wrote in “theatre” after the more obvious NATIONAL, and it was ESPADRILLE (I remember Dashiel Hammett’s “Sam Spade” from “The Maltese Falcon”) that revealed that my SE struggle was down to four resultant wrong letters. I’d almost certainly have broken 6 minutes but for that. Of course, theatrically “gods = GALLERY”, so I felt rather stupid.

    Best wishes to you Ulaca – may retirement and your new abode be everything you would wish for.

    FOI PASS UP
    LOI AYE-AYES
    COD LOAN
    TIMR 6:51

  40. 17.26 so not that straightforward for me. LOI auspicious but only got there having belatedly remembered an old clue which referenced suspicious. Similarly with apostrophe. Just goes to show the benefit of keeping a mental log of tricky clues for future use.

    Liked the hidden word Defoe. But shouldn’t that have been kept back for Friday?

    Liked loan, treeless, espadrille and my favourite eden.

  43. Several biffs for me. I didn’t parse EDEN and could only think of sedentary for the wordplay (which I guess isn’t that far off), I completely missed the anagram in APOSTROPHE and only got it from the checkers and the apostrophe there, and up in the gods = gallery passed me by for NATIONAL GALLERY. Being interested in railways helped with CABBALA, as the Bala Lake Railway is a preserved operation there, and I wasn’t at all confident about AYE-AYES, never having heard of them.

    FOI MAR
    LOI Auspicious
    COD Espadrille

  44. Cheung Chau is an island I visit almost whenever I am in Hong Kong, a pleasant ferry ride from the bustle of Central with some enjoyable countryside and some nice eateries. Somehow the seafood always tastes nicer there than in the city. Enjoy your retirement!
  45. Sadly for my time, Censure and Rescue + n are also anagrams for Encurse, which seemed a plausible kind of condemnation as I zipped past.
    Congrats on the new home, Ulaca, and good luck with the baking.
  46. This was my first ever real attempt at the 15×15 having spent the past two years working on the QC from scratch. Of course I didn’t finish it but I was really happy with what I managed to do and will continue to apply myself with your help every day. Thanks to the bloggers.
  47. …… so must have been fairly easy. Biffed a few including LOI LOAN. Solved a little later than usual as I thought I had better submit my 2019/2020 self-assessment tax return (which was considerably more difficult to complete than the puzzle) before the deadline.
  48. A time of 41:23 is a good result for me. And a surprising one given the number of fingers I had crossed especially for CABBALA since i DNK the lake and only dimly thought I knew a word a bit like that, and even EDEN where garden was the only word in the clue that meant anything to me. An enjoyable session. Many thanks to ulaca for the much-needed blog.
  49. After struggling with today’s apparently easy QC, I drifted across to the 15×15 more in hope than expectation. A glutton for punishment, I am at least stubborn and managed to battle my way through to the end. Of course I had no idea what was going on with Eden and a few of my other parsings were a bit off as well, but the answers were right. Pleased to get the unknown Cabbala and Aye-Ayes. Invariant

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