Times 27,887: Bunfight at the O.K. Tea Rooms

Author   VerlainePosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
This didn’t take long to polish off with a lot of answers being what I expected from a first glance at the clues, although honourable mention to the SW corner for being today’s trickiest, with 17dn and 24ac taking a good deal of time at the end to yield their secrets. Some of the surfaces were blatant crosswordese unlikely ever to crop up in real language, but I did like the literary flavours and the Tombstone clue. Thank you to the setter and apologies that this is a little later than usual. Time for me to get some sleep and hopefully wake up with a better parsing for 23ac in my head!

ACROSS
1 Lanky drunk crossing hotel? That’s unlikely (4,4)
LONG SHOT – LONG SOT “crossing” H

5 Novelist left under blankets (6)
BELLOW – L “blanketed” by BELOW [under]. Saul Bellow, 1915-2005

8 Sell iodine compound that keeps bats in good nick (7,3)
LINSEED OIL – (SELL IODINE*)

9 Leader of orchestra regularly broke wind (4)
OBOE – O{rchestra} B{r}O{k}E

10 NHS says a policy interfered with a shrink’s work (14)
PSYCHOANALYSIS – (NHS SAYS A POLICY*)

11 Saturated Republican put away bottles (7)
DROWNED – R “bottled” by DOWNED [put away]

13 Recoiling, cover heroine’s spot (7)
DILEMMA – reversed LID + EMMA

15 Like controversial verses as written about a function (7)
SATANIC – SIC [as written] about A TAN. Salman Rushdie reference

18 Marshal stealing Doc Holliday’s second adornment (7)
EARDROP – (Wyatt) EARP “stealing” DR {h}O{lliday}

21 Integrate lines mistakenly where colon is found (5,9)
LARGE INTESTINE – (INTEGRATE LINES*)

22 Star making a return appearance in Wigmore Hall (4)
HERO – hidden reversed in {wigm}ORE H{all}

23 Filling dish, not one intended for rabbits (4,6)
MAIN COURSE – I might be missing something here. The most substantial part of a meal, as distinct from the salad?

24 Fancy woman sacrificing main artery to put weight on! (6)
STRESS – {mi}STRESS, “sacrificing” the M1. As in “emphasise”

25 Delivered grass for planting round fields (8)
RELEASED – REED “planted” around LEAS

DOWN
1 Leaf initially changing daily, covering top of pond? (4,3)
LILY PAD – L{eaf} + (DAILY*) “covering” P{ond}, &lit

2 Spoil piece about old Billy’s mate (5,4)
NANNY GOAT – NANNY [spoil] + GAT [piece] “about” O

3 Martyr succeeded after that, retaining record (7)
STEPHEN – S + THEN “retaining” EP. Not just any martyr but the very first

4 Game individual tucks into out-of-date crackers (3,4)
OLD MAID – I “tucked into” OLD MAD [out-of-date | crackers]

5 It’s played first of all in dance at a milk bar regularly (9)
BALALAIKA – A{ll} in BALL + A {m}I{l}K {b}A{r}

6 Butcher’s place to go? Try lifting last of pork (4-3)
LOOK-SEE – LOO [place to got] + SEEK with the {por}K “lifted”

7 Surgery has problem restraining very big animal (7)
OPOSSUM – OP + SUM, “restraining” OS

12 English hairstyle I’d adopted is what protects us? (9)
EPIDERMIS – E PERMI “adopting” I’D, + IS

14 River shown in diagrams disrupted carnival (5,4)
MARDI GRAS – R in (DIAGRAMS*)

16 Complaint the German’s missing problem with train (7)
AILMENT – {der}AILMENT

17 You might pick bird up in this headlight? (7)
AUREOLE – homophone of ORIOLE

18 Medical speciality doubled European understanding (7)
ENTENTE – ENT * 2 + E

19 Bring back Danish bread after nap (7)
RESTORE – ORE [1/100 of a krone] after REST

20 Put on pressure dealing with nurse (7)
PRETEND – P RE TEND [pressure | dealing with | nurse]

73 comments on “Times 27,887: Bunfight at the O.K. Tea Rooms”

  2. Quite easy, I thought, on the whole,
    Except for the clue AUREOLE
    An unusual word
    Sounding like a weird bird
    Is hardly a balm for the soul
  3. I had all but two done in about 9 mins. Stress and Aureole were the last ones to surrender with the latter taking over 3 minutes and entered more in hope than expectation of correctness.

    COD: OBOE.

  4. 45m but another DNF as thwarted by the almost a nipple clue. Doh! And I knew the bird too. No problem with main course or its cryptic meaning. Here in the NE part of the country, ‘rabbits’ are definitely a part of the golf scene, being the section for 18+ handicappers. They have interclub matches and an association — NERGA North East Rabbits Golf Association should you feel the need to look it up — which organises leagues, knockout matches and so on. I think it is also still true that on some ‘prestigious’ courses there are restrictions for high handicap players, though whether that coincides with the ‘rabbit’ definition, I know not. Thank you, setter and V for the explanations.
  5. ….linking this puzzle with the QC today. I was totally unable to parse NANNY GOAT (thanks V) but otherwise it was “just another day at the office”.

    FOI LONG SHOT
    LOI BELLOW
    COD STRESS
    TIME 6:17

  7. Just like Verlaine (but in slow motion) I beetled through this until held up by 17d Aureole and 24ac Stress — but did finish correctly.
    Never did parse “Main Course” or “Nanny Goat” — I’ll have to look up why “Gat” = “piece” — but both clues were shoe-ins.
    Out of interest, there is a Mount Aureol in Freetown, Sierra Leone, where I worked long ago.
    1. Gat/piece are words for guns brandished by gangsters in 1940s noir movies. Or thereabouts.
        1. Thanks, both, for the replies. It’s a little strange that “gat” is slang for a handgun or revolver (hence “piece”) whereas the original Gatling gun was set on a frame or carriage and hardly portable, I would say. Anyway, as ever with the Times crossword, live and learn!
  8. Slightly disappointed that Friday wasn’t as tough as I’ve come to expect. Was this the easiest of the week so far?
    Last to fall were AUREOLE and STRESS, like almost everyone.
    14’29”
  9. Another steady solve, a pleasent crossword in the main but with one or two lacunae like 23ac and a few strange surfaces.
    I read an article only the other day that said that properly, planets have halos and saints have aureolae. Not sure I altogether agree but at least it kept the word in my mind..
  10. Another who would have finished at a canter if it hadn’t been for 17/24.
    Makes a change for the bread to be Danish rather than Bulgarian.

    Thank you setter and blogger.

  11. Reasonable time for me but cannot say I found it straightforward. My struggles in the SW were compounded by having stupidly entered GREAT rather than LARGE. My LOI was AUREOLE. Thanks to V and setter.
  12. 17.53 with a strong start and middle before a struggle with the SW corner. FOI nanny goat LOI aureole. Nothing controversial as far as I’m concerned. A more amenable solve for a Friday than expected.
    Thanks blogger and setter. Enjoy the weekend all!
  13. It amuses me how some people are quite happy to accept a gap in their ‘proper’ general knowledge (a character in a Shakespeare play, for example), but can’t admit to not recognising a sporting term!
  14. 24 minutes including proofreading, so very easy for me. The answers just fell into place as I read through the puzzle (of course not all of them, but many more than usual). Not even AUREOLE was much of a problem, although I also had the salad explanation for MAIN COURSE, rather than the unknown to me golfing one. COD perhaps to STRESS.
  15. 24a, POI and 17d, LOI
    Otherwise, this didn’t seem very hard, though I took a break to sleep.
    Had no idea about the golf term, of course.

    Edited at 2021-01-29 09:04 pm (UTC)

  16. I wonder when was the last time anyone used linseed oil on a cricket bat – I would guess a very long time!

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