Times 27889 – PS: Please, Please, Please Stop

Author   ulacaPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
I found this a tad on the trickier side for a Monday but good chance I was being a bit dumb. Not much to say intro-wise, so we’ll get right down to it and let the discussion begin. 26:24

ACROSS

1 Against reactionary work by academic from down under (10)
ANTIPODEAN – ANTI OP reversed (‘reactionary’ – see the Myrtilusian critique below) DEAN
6 Go for Glaswegians, a violent lot (4)
GANG – double definition (DD); the Scots-language part best known from the lines in Burns’s ‘To a Mouse’: ‘The best-laid schemes o’ mice an’ men / Gang aft agley’ [Go oft astray]
9 Well fed agent hired at end of June (7)
REPLETE – REP LET [jun]E
10 Conclude working in retirement is hell (7)
INFERNO – INFER (conclude) ON reversed
12 Enjoyed English cider Jo manufactured at home (8,2)
REJOICED IN – anagram* of E (English) JO CIDER plus IN (at home)
13 Letter spelled out change in direction, largely (3)
VEE – VEE[r]
15 Angry words of one caught in traffic (6)
TIRADE – I in TRADE (as in traffic slaves)
16 Sailors despondent in the shade (4,4)
NAVY BLUE – NAVY BLUE; candidate for clue that is most sheepish about its crypticity
18 Displaying curiosity about royal ornament (4,4)
NOSE RING – ER in NOSING
20 Jack wants something with milk in it — a shake (6)
JUDDER – J UDDER
23 Cry in the Bullring, a mess with husband gone (3)
OLE – [h]OLE; candidate for clue most likely to be entered without anyone reading beyond half way
24 Not a Nepali misbehaving — someone else entirely (10)
NEAPOLITAN – NOT A NEPALI*
26 Examine popular party holding power (7)
INSPECT – P in IN (popular) SECT (party)
27 Gas bubble the retort displays (7)
BLETHER – hidden in bubBLE THE Retort; Scottish variant of blather, I am told
28 Outspoken denial from Berlin cardinal (4)
NINE – sounds like ‘Nein!’ [mein General, etc]
29 Charlie nervously creeps by a world infested by trolls? (10)
CYBERSPACE – C (Charlie) plus CREEPS BY A* (‘nervously’ doing the anagrinding)

DOWN

1 Bald Cockney lacks any manners (4)
AIRS – A non-hirsute Eastender might be described as having no ‘airs
2 Maybe fifth bowler might be thus described? (3,4)
TOP GEAR -a bowler hat might be called top gear and for some cars fifth gear is top. The first car I drove (aged 12 – a Ford Prefect) had three forward gears, while my current gas-guzzling Golf GTI has six.
3 Ascendancy of bent copper near end (13)
PREPONDERANCE – COPPER NEAR END*
4 Doctor finding headless fish in swamp (6)
DRENCH – DR [t]ENCH
5 Gambling occasionally on fall of cards? It’s of some moment (1,3,4)
A BIG DEAL – alternate letters of [g]A[m]B[l]I[n]G DEAL (fall of cards)
7 Emergence of a challenger to dictator (7)
ARRIVAL – sounds like A RIVAL
8 Kind of tart whose company’s not wanted (10)
GOOSEBERRY – two’s company, three’s a blooming nuisance
11 Deception that Charlie Chaplin for one was engaged in? (5,8)
FUNNY BUSINESS – nuff said; I really like Modern Times
14 Burst into tears, nasty head being very loud (10)
STENTORIAN – INTO TEARS* N[asty]; Stentor was the loud fellow in the Greek army before Troy, as I recall
17 Grunts of young one on the line (8)
INFANTRY – INFANT on RY
19 Crushes a relative (7)
STEPSON – DD; STEPS ON / STEPSON
21 Money companion invested in theatre (7)
DRACHMA -CH in DRAMA; old money, really
22 With new leader, man becomes sad (6)
SOMBRE – [h]OMBRE becomes SOMBRE
25 Mere daydream, but vicar’s drifted off (4)
ERIE – [rev]ERIE; a big mere, but a mere nonetheless

92 comments on “Times 27889 – PS: Please, Please, Please Stop”

  1. Definitely felt dumb over here! Of course, anything sub-30 is decent for me, so I can’t complain, but I sure did a lot of head-smacking, especially on clues like AIRS, CYBERSPACE, and INFANTRY. (My last ones in.) My streak of not noticing anagrams continues to plague me.
  2. Also found it on the tricky side, but didn’t feel dumb. Thought there were some well-constructed slightly off-beat clues, made me think much more than usual. The likes of judder, cyberspace, infantry did not come easily, though the last has been seen before, perhaps? Even took a few while to work out LOI airs. Slight MER at mere describing Erie, but liked it nevertheless.
  3. Yes, I was thinking I’d be off the pace (after most of last week off fishing and camping in the Snowy Mountains), but happy to find myself sneaking under ulaca’s time – a rare event.

    I liked AIRS, my LOI, after the penny finally dropped.

  4. At 22 minutes I’m a little surprised to find myself recording the fastest solving time so far! I don’t suppose it will last long. Apart from PREPONDERANCE the top half went in with very little delay. The lower half took me a little longer. Some great clues, and I was particularly taken with 29ac.

    Edited at 2021-02-01 02:43 am (UTC)

  5. 6:58 – maybe I was on the setter’s wavelength, but I breezed through this one except for GOOSEBERRY which went in with a shurg and a hope.
    1. I was helped in that my British friend and game designer has made a party game called Gooseberry, where one player is the odd one out and everyone else has to figure out who is the Gooseberry!

      Edited at 2021-02-01 04:37 am (UTC)

      1. Jeremy – ‘British friend’ is not Anglo-English and sounds odd to my ear. Is that person to whom you refer English, Scottish, Welsh or Northern Irish? We all have British passports but the days of the British bulldog are long gone. Gooseberry sounds like an interesting game. Try and get him/her to send you ‘Scotland Yard’- it sounds similar in that a number of detectives have to chase a villain around London and arrest the suspect. Your older kids would love it! The board is a map of Central London with all the major places of interest,the underground stations, roads and the Thames. It is most exhilarating. Meldrew

        Edited at 2021-02-01 08:57 am (UTC)

  6. I found this very much an even paced solve with my only slight hold up being due to having misspelt NEAPOLITAN at the first pass. The word always puts me in mind of blocks of “Neapolitan Ice Cream”, comprising separate layers of strawberry, chocolate and vanilla flavours which my mum would often buy back in the 70s/80s. I wonder if it’s still a thing.
    1. I have similar memories but my experience was more in the 1950’s/60’s when the combination of flavours varied between brands. Strawberry and Vanilla were constant but our regular brand, Wall’s, came with coffee as the third flavour. I remember having chocolate a few times at friends’ houses but the other regular one was made by Lyon’s and had a pea-green segment which I now think was pistachio. We had that when visiting my grandmother’s. These were all overtaken in popularity in our house by the arrival of Wall’s Raspberry Ripple, which may still survive in some form, and Cherry Pie which didn’t last long, although it was my favourite because it contained whole cherries. Things got really exotic when Wall’s launched their Cassata Siciliana!
      1. Perhaps we could revive them to refer to crosswords that are not “vanilla”, hence “I found this crossword something of a Neapolitan”. Or for that rare gem, “this puzzle was truly a Cassata Siciliana!”
      3. I remember the pistachio version as a child – an occasional Sunday tea treat. I was completely baffled as to the taste and if anyone had told me (or my parents) that it was pistachio, we would have been none the wiser.
  7. I biffed AIRY in 1d. Quite the reverse of what the solver was meant to think.
    FOI was ANTIPODEAN. LOIs were INFANTRY and CYBERSPACE while COD was TOP GEAR.
    I, too, thought the clue to 21d should have had the word ‘old’ in it.
  8. I began with a word for Down Under
    Nearly finished with a small blunder
    CYBERSPACE I guessed true
    Cyberscape could be too
    Did anyone else pause, I wonder?
  9. 19 minutes with LOI NOSE RING, which I do still mainly see as something a bull wears. COD to A BIG DEAL. As a kid, I always found the third flavour of a Neapolitan ice cream a disappointment, wanting just ‘pink and white’. Burns’ best laid plans also gave me GANG. A good start to the week. Thank you U and setter.
  10. 20 mins pre-brekker left the Hombre. And having made several crosses against clues, I almost thought it might be Nobbie getting Sobbie.
    I promised not to mention danglers unless they were egregious, but four here were pretty egregious. And I never understand why ‘reactionary’ gets used as a reversal indicator. And I think ‘nasty head=N’ is lazy. Not to mention the ‘mere’!
    Thanks setter and U.
  11. with an age in CYBERSPACE at 29ac.

    WOD 8dn GOOSEBERRY aka GüZGOGS where I come from – Jack have you tried a Scottish dish ‘crowdie’ – gooseberries- iced cream – toasted oats, cardomoms and a dram! Oh! Joy!
    Gives Raspberry Ripple a run for its money!

    FOI GANG – of the razor variety – Sir Percy Sillitoe’s patch

    LOI 17dn INFANTRY

    COD 27ac BLETHER

    M’Lud Ulaca your 29ac explanation lacks the ‘A’

    Edited at 2021-02-01 08:13 am (UTC)

  12. Yes, it’s perhaps better suited as an anagram indicator in its sense of ‘characterised by a desire to return to a former condition’. Even then, ‘former’ doesn’t quite cut it.
  14. Agreed on reactionary; revolutionary would have worked better and read just as well. But what are danglers? I have re-read all the clues and they seem tightly worded to me with no spare words at all.

    If Windermere qualifies, surely Erie does too?

    Edited at 2021-02-01 08:22 am (UTC)

    1. Dangling articles.
      A violent lot=Agang
      A shake=Ajudder
      A mess with husband gone=Aole

      And I said not to mention the ‘mere’.
      ; )

      Edited at 2021-02-01 08:35 am (UTC)

  15. I enjoyed this a lot. The West capitulated quickly except for LOI AIRY, but the East resisted stubbornly, with the SOMBRE INFANTRY last to surrender. BLETHER is quite familiar up here in Orkney, but not GANG. Thanks setter and Ulaca.
  16. 9:01 but 1 wrong… stuck at the end on 22D I conjured up SOBBIE (changing the first letter of ROBBIE). Nice try… but wrong. No cigar for me. Other than that only ERIE and CYBERSPACE gave me pause for thought as I assumed it must be easy because it’s Monday. COD to AIRS for the surface.
  17. I too had AIRY for a while until the penny dropped. So LOI. I liked JUDDER and CYBERSPACE. I agree that there were some meaty clues here but very enjoyable. 45mins. Thank you U and setter.
  18. Saw the anag for PREPONDERANCE early though initially I spelt with an E instead of an A.

    Finished the LHS in quick time. JUDDER opened up the NE, but was stuck on CYBERSPACE — didn’t see the anag at first and was thinking STATE rather than SPACE — and finally SOMBRE which at 1am stretched the little grey cells perhaps further than it should have.

  19. A fairly quick but extremely slipshod solve today resulting in two mistakes that I don’t want to tell you about because they’re too embarrassing. This brings my total errors for the last month on the leaderboard to 9, an ignominious record. Ah well, tomorrow is another day.
    I don’t think I’ve ever seen a Charlie Chaplin film so have no view on whether Captain Blackadder’s assessment is fair.
    2. I’ve come up with innumerable embarrassing errors before which have sometimes resulted in me not posting at all. More recently I’ve tried to own up to them with the thought that it might help encourage newcomers to know that there is someone on here capable of rank stupidity (I’m currently on 12 errors).
      1. I normally do admit to errors but at least one of today’s was just too stupid, I don’t even want to admit it to myself.
        Do you do the concise and QC? I do them occasionally but always submit off leaderboard because I’m only interested in my stats for the main puzzle. If I submitted the concise properly I would have tons of errors.
        1. I’m on a lean spell for errors which makes a change — now down to just 2 in the last month having previously been around 8 or 9!
        2. I currently do pretty much every puzzle and submit with leaderboard but I am likewise mostly interested in the main puzzle so I might review my actions. There is of course the SNITCH for the main puzzle but I often think it flatters me by taking no account of my errors.
  20. 12.36, with quite a bit at the endcheck on AIRS. I mean, I knew it had to be AIRS/manners. What I couldn’t work out was how “any” meant “les”. Bald cockney obviously was ‘airless, so….

    I agree with BW that a NOSE RING is scarcely an ornament (still less a safeguard), but I think we’re just showing our age, since these days it seems anything human can be pierced and pinned for cosmetic effect and lauded in the influencersphere. I once accidentally pieced my finger with a dart, which put me permanently off the idea of piercing anything else.

    Cheerful, chatty blog, U, many thanks.

  22. I’m just trying to imagine how you got your finger with a dart. Was it the little finger on your dart-throwing hand that you were holding out in a particularly twee way?

    Edited at 2021-02-01 10:02 am (UTC)

    1. No, I was idly playing that ridiculous game where you stab down in the spaces between your fingers and see how fast you can go. I missed. It was my index finger, and I can still find the scar 60 years on.
  23. 19m so I was on the wavelength. Could have been a few minutes quicker had I not managed to put it NEOPOLITAN, making the grunts very hard to spot. I also started with MORASS for the DRENCH, which might have worked, other than being wrong. I enjoyed this, so thank you setter and blogger today.
  24. Two misspellings slowed me down until I spotted them: Ne-o-politan and Ste-r-torian. There is a word stertorous which means snoring, which was the source of my confusion. As for the Italian ice-cream, does anyone remember a particularly daring ISIHAC in which Samantha was found to have been licking the n*ts off a Neapolitan. My aged Dad nearly wet himself laughing.
  26. I found myself completely on the wavelength for this one and scorched through it in 13:49. Sadly, having confidently entered _____SCAPE at 29a, from the angrist and crossing letters, I carelessly didn’t re-appraise when CYBER went in. Drat! Thanks setter and U.
    1. Impressive 👍 You’re always a reference solver for me (hope you din’t mind) as I tend to find you find the same things hard/easy and often solve in exactly the same way. And you always post positive enjoyable posts. But you were 3 times as quick and half the number of errors today. *makes note to up game…*
      1. Kind of you to say so. I first came here about 10 years ago, when I first started doing the Times cryptic, and have always found this forum to be helpful and encouraging. For the first couple of years I used to take anything up to a couple of hours to get through a puzzle!
  27. Gang aft agley. Which I certainly did, coming up with cyberscape, fancy business and none. Dnf in 20 minutes, and a reminder to self to check/think/clear head/give these things up for good. Liked the mere daydream.
  28. Many thanks to setter and blogger for today’s offerings.

    I’m still with Chambers 12th Edition but it’s on its last legs physically. I suppose I should update although I’ve not found words missing – even from the Mephisto. Is the online version the same as the hardback? I assume it is and online is doubtless cheaper but the feel of the book in one’s hands….
    I also ask the question because I’ve often found words missing from Collins online.
    Most grateful for some advice.

    Will there be a blog on Jumbo 1479 or have i missed it?

  29. 15 mins with only a brief dalliance with AIRY slowing things down. A rather bland puzzle, though, to be picky, I thought the Nepali clue a little strained, “someone who isn’t a Nepali” being a studiously unhelpful definition of a Neapolitan.

    Edited at 2021-02-01 11:31 am (UTC)

  30. Pleasant enough Monday solve, left at the end with the vaguely clued gent. Not madly keen on clues which are basically “you need to change the first letter, but we won;t be more precise than that, so you need to come up with some random possible answers to fit half the clue and then see which ones still work with a new letter at the front”. Discarded ROBBIE and other even less likely options (WOMBLE? ZOMBIE?) before hitting on the right one…
  31. Lake Superior putting on AIRS and saying to the others – I’m kind of a BIG DEAL but Huronly a mere. 12.43
  32. I really like the Chambers app. It has a search facility with wildcards and it also does anagrams, both things which I’ll often resort to on the Mephisto.
  33. Anyone under about 40 (is there such a person on this forum?) will find this puzzle difficult – the new phrase for an unwanted third party is “third wheel”. If you don’t believe this, try it on your children!
    1. Here in France the expression is “tenir la chandelle” – “hold the candle” which makes sense I suppose.
  34. Lovely Monday crossword. Very solvable but with plenty to chew on.LOI AIRS, like others I pondered over AIRY but couldn’t use it because it was the opposite of bald. Nice clue.
    COD CYBERSPACE
  35. A bit harder than usual for a Monday, I thought. All done in 25 minutes except the SW corner where I had put in NECK RING so didn’t find STEPSON until I realised I had gone astray; took five more to sort that out. Also wasted time trying to get a cricket type bowler reference into 2d, but for once it’s not.
    I’ve never seen Charlie Chaplin do anything fully, but I haven’t watched The Great Dictator for a long time.

  36. A little sharper than a standard Monday.

    My Coupar Angus-born wife often accuses me of blethering. She may well have a point

  37. saw the F*N*Y checkers and convinced myself that it must be FANCY. Funny that.

    Back in lockdown for 5 days, after 10 months without a covid case! Putting on the mask again.

    22’59” with that error.

  39. I enjoyed this but one error stopped me completing all correctly in 13:47. I had a draw from the pack of cards instead of a deal.

    COD: JUDDER.

      2. I’ve just thought of something that you might find in “a big draw”. A big girl’s blouse.😃
  40. Not too difficult overall. FOI REPLETE. Delayed by AIRS and TOP GEAR and a few in the SW. Had SHOW RING with a query at 18a which nearly caused me to give up.
    LOI of course was 22d. I could not convince myself that SOBBIE -from Robbie -was valid and did extensive alphabet trawls. Once you hit on SOMBRE it’s clear but Hombre wasn’t.
    I enjoyed this. An hour or so.
    David
  41. Pleased with my 15 minutes on this. Last one in was ERIE. What next? Pacific described as a puddle?
  42. As Pootle says, the app is great and I also swear by it, but the free online version of Chambers isn’t the same as the dictionary proper so you are going to have to buy something.
  43. 18.00 but biffed airs – had to be that or airy I thought but neither totally convincing to me. Aside from that minor quibble a good puzzle and a tougher challenge for the start of the week.

    FOI antipodean, LOI airs.

  45. I’d hold fire if were you. I’ve been assured that the long-delayed fourteenth edition should appear this year. Don’t bother with the ill-fated thirteenth – it is littered with omissions and mistakes.

    Midas

    1. Omissions and mistakes in Chambers? Surely not. . .Well, who’d have thought it? (Mr Grumpy)
  46. Really glad to have had a go at this one. We completed most of the grid but struggled with a few of the clues. Have no idea of our time, but happy with our efforts.

    Thanks to setter and blogger

  47. ….but I didn’t really enjoy this. I basically agree with all previous contributors on every clue they’ve complained about.

    FOI GANG
    LOI ERIE (MER at “mere” !)
    COD GOOSEBERRY
    TIME 7:10

    Edited at 2021-02-01 05:51 pm (UTC)

  48. I bunged in AIRY for my LOI without much confidence. Then I was surprised to see an all green grid with the red square where my last character was. But underneath it was pink, and so DNF.
  49. Monday fare, suitably served, without any real hassles. Like others, find “mere” on the small side for Erie but wordplay was fun. COD to JUDDER. Thanks to setter and blogger.

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