Times 27931 – No, not the Audiophiliac…

Author   vinyl1Posted on Categories Daily Cryptic

Time: 27 minutes
Music: Bach, Goldberg Variations, Glenn Gould

This was a perfectly simple Monday puzzle, and I did most of it very quickly, before slowing down at the end.     There were some rather complex cryptics, and you needed some general knowledge, but there was nothing to slow down really skilled solvers.  I just don’t remember things as quickly as I used to, but my instincts are still pretty good.     I expect some fast times tonight. 

Across
1 Long to return carrying silver dish with piping (6)
HAGGIS – SIGH backwards around AG.   A haggis is traditionally served accompanied by a piper.
5 Charming girl who comes out holding Mike? (8)
DEBONAIR – DEB ON AIR, a chestnut.
9 Some people wait here — others rave about a uniform (10)
RESTAURANT – REST (A,U) RANT, one that should not have held me up as long as it did.
10 Writer, one in ball, pirouetting (4)
BIRO – OR(I)B backwards.
11 Memorable Beagle’s mission? Collecting flora ultimately (8)
HAUNTING – H(A)UNTING, where the beagle really is a dog, misleadingly capitalized.
12 Incorporate space by taking in odd edges (6)
EMBODY –  EM B(O[d]D)Y. 
13 Romeo abandoning trio’s second person once (4)
THEE – TH[r]EE.   The second person dative or accusative, that is.
15 A sturdy husband strays once a week it appears (8)
THURSDAY – Anagram of A STURDY H.
18 Call wife or mistress initially making a complaint (8)
RINGWORM – RING W OR M[istress].
19 Part of film dealing with the Spanish dance (4)
REEL – RE + EL, sandwiched in with two literals for good measure.
21 Characters in good book mixed items for sale (3,3)
JOB LOT –  Two Old Testament characters – I nearly put box lot, but I couldn’t bring to mind that Box fellow.
23 Force units beset with housing projects (3,5)
NEW TOWNS – NEWTO(W)NS.   A clue with lots of possibilities, since housing is often used as a container indicator.
25 Back sport involving driving belt (4)
FLOG – GOLF backwards, a chestnut.
26 Colourless chief scented bottles (10)
ACHROMATIC – A(CH)ROMATIC.
27 Talent’s accompanying hard work: the making of small store? (4,4)
GIFT SHOP – GIFT’S H OP.
28 Run through gardens in series (6)
SKEWER – S(KEW)ER.
Down
2 Lots of seats here are not available (5)
ARENA – ARE N/A.
3 Old printer’s good German book in sickly green (9)
GUTENBERG – GUT + B in anagram of GREEN.  I thought he had two T’s, but that’s another fellow..
4 Dim boss recruits gumshoe (6)
STUPID – STU(P.I.)D, the kind of boss you find on a shield obtaining a private investigator.
5 Skill in visualising successful movement of men on board? (15)
DRAUGHTSMANSHIP – Double definition, one jocular and referring to playing draughts.
6 Wild flower, less cold and flatter (6,2)
BUTTER UP – BUTTER[c]UP.
7 Tycoon, snooty type, entertains one on deck? (5)
NABOB – N(AB)OB, our old friend the able seaman.
8 Irish judge accepts help lifting light up (9)
IRRADIATE –  IR + RA(AID upside-down)TE.
14 Hospital treated polio with oil for masses (3,6)
HOI POLLOI – H + anagram of POLIO + OIL.   A Greek expression meaning the many, often used in Plato’s dialogues.
16 Substitute old piece in county briefly (9)
SURROGATE – SURR(O GAT)E[y]. 
17 Maybe paved way for short op that’s botched (8)
FOOTPATH – Anagram of FO[r] + OP THAT.
20 Small courts absorbing first of police raids (6)
SWOOPS – S WOO(P[olice])S.   Police does a bit of double duty, indicating what sorts of raids are meant.
22 Gentle drunk outside Grand Hotel (5)
LIGHT – LI(G,H)T, one from the Quickie.
24 Top seed’s English racket (5)
NOISE – NO I’S + E.

53 comments on “Times 27931 – No, not the Audiophiliac…”

  1. Slower than I should have been. I took the capital B of Beagle at face value, and wasted time thinking of Darwin and all that. And LOI FOOTPATH took me too long to come up with, and then to justify.

    Edited at 2021-03-22 01:48 am (UTC)

  2. Middle of the road for me, though at the beginning I missed several “chestnuts” and so couldn’t quite be sure if we were in store for something tricky. Once DRAUGHTSMANSHIP went in (different spelling over here, naturally), I knew the rest of the puzzle was soon to fall.

    Thanks for parsing FOOTPATH!

  3. Same experience here of going fast and then a little more to get the last few. I think FOOTPATH actually parses as FO® followed by an anagram of OP THAT, not that it makes much difference.
    1. I guess an R in parenthesis automatically gets changed to a registered trademark symbol, which makes the parsing in my first message look really odd.
  4. Like Kevin, I was on the wrong scent for a while for the [b]eagle.

    Took the bit about the “piping” on faith for my POI HAGGIS. I don’t know if such accompaniment would be any help for me to get that down.

    I read Middlemarch last month and now am perusing André Breton’s Clair de terre via the eponymous Project GUTENBERG, which makes 60,000 books, all now in the public domain, available for free online.

    Edited at 2021-03-22 05:26 pm (UTC)

  5. 30 minutes exactly. I was delayed a while by 5dn having MANSHIP in place long before the first part of the answer came to mind. SURROGATE also delayed me longer than it should have, and 11ac where before I got round to considering Darwin my first thought on seeing ‘memorable Beagle’ was of Snoopy.

    Edited at 2021-03-22 09:05 am (UTC)

  7. No problems here, except I failed to see the anagram in FOOTPATH so, thanks, vinyl1.
    I had never come across the word ACHROMATIC before.
    My COD to HAUNTING for the clever use of Beagle.
  9. …and remember what peace there may be in silence.

    Just over 20 mins with LOI Haunting — which I think is COD too for its misdirection.
    I was bemused by “beset with” to add in a W. Very neat. I don’t think I’ve seen that before and will add it to my toolset.
    Thanks setter and Vinyl.

  10. I thought 5d was puzzling, does ‘chessmanship’ exist?

    As a (former) walker, I can only think of FOOTPATHs as muddy, rutted and/or baked hard.

    Thanks vinyl and setter.

  11. 12:57 Like others slowed down at the end – my last 3 of which were SKEWER, ACHROMATIC and (LOI an COD) HAUNTING, each giving me a bit of head-scratching.
  12. 23 minutes with LOI SKEWER. Lots of very enjoyable clues with JOB LOT pipping DEBONAIR, HAUNTING, NEW TOWNS and NOISE to COD. Thank you V and setter.
  13. 14:38. this felt like two completely separate puzzles: a very easy one – I thought at first that I was on for a very quick time – and a really difficult one, where I felt miles off the wavelength and getting answers was like pulling teeth. LOI SKEWER when I finally realised that the clue said ‘run’ and not ‘runs’, as I had somehow managed to convince myself.
  14. Just under 50 mins today so quite chewy I thought for a Monday. Much the same comments as everybody else so far. LOIs HAUNTING and SKEWER. Some very clever clueing . Thanks v and setter.
  15. Would have been close to a PB at 18m dead — but for careless entering PLUG having got the wrong end of the clue (my most common error) and assumed it was too clever for me to parse. No, I was not clever enough.
  16. Our setters have tricks that they use
    To indicate who wrote the clues
    The schtick of today’s
    Is a word clued three ways
    It’s the shortest of answers they choose
  17. My 12 minute solve doubled to 24.35 by NEW TOWNS, NOISE and (of course) the voyage of the Beagle, presumed hunting snarks. I could not get past an imparsable (have I just invented a great word?) ELITE for the top seed, which left a similarly unlikely NEW HOMES with no force apparent. Even after finally seeing NOISE, I couldn’t work out why NEW TOWNS was right until after submission, when it dawned with a sudden aaarrgh. W(ith)! Again!
    Not a hard puzzle, but my time says otherwise.
  18. Only really held up in the SE corner where I needed all of the checkers for all three across answers, SKEWER being the final one in.

    SER for series? Never heard of that before…

    1. Chambers has serial, series, serine, and sermon under ser. I’m not sure I know what serine is.
  19. 36 minutes here with too much time spent on unpicking the cryptic for the last 3, HAGGIS, HAUNTING and SKEWER. Enjoyable puzzle overall, so thank you, setter and V, for the explanations.
  20. 13.50 with a stutter at the start repeated at the end. FOI Gutenberg, LOI footpath. COD achromatic. Pleasant start to the week. Nothing especially memorable but all well clued.
    Thanks setter and blogger
  21. 31:30. Lots of delightful clues today. FOI and COD HAGGIS. I also liked DEBONAIR, JOB LOT and BIRO. For 11ac I took the Beagle’s mission as the Hunting of the Snark. LOI SKEWER which inexplicably delayed me beyond the half hour (I am even a Friend of Kew)
  22. Straightforward trot through, though I’d have been quicker if hadn’t taken so long on draughtsmanship. I had chess in mind to the exclusion of anything else.
  23. While I didn’t find this difficult (except for HAUNTING which took a bit of thought) I thought it was elegantly put together – an example of settingmanship perhaps. DRAUGHTSMANSHIP reminded me of a baffling movie I saw some years ago and never could figure out – The Draughtsman’s Contract. 12.53
      1. Yes I recall a lot of sinister falsetto. The costumes and the wigs were quite fetching too.
  24. Straightforward but with some lovely clues New Towns Restaurant and Thursday amongst them.

    Mrs inFrance is Scottish, and we usually have haggis on Burns night – normally bought at M&S in Paris, but because of travel restrictions this year we ended up with a tinned version from a local “Irish Shop”. Very odd. The Laphroaig helped it down.

    1. I used to buy tinned haggis at Selfridges about 50 years ago and always preferred it to the real thing.
      1. This stuff was ok. The most disconcerting thing was the look of it as it left the tin. Once heated it was fine but give me McSweens any time.
  25. HAGGIS was my FOI and I made good progress until arriving back at 11a, which took a good 5 minutes of my 23:21. A biffed GESTETNER held me up briefly until RINGWORM and THEE put me right. Thanks setter and Vinyl.
  26. 6m 26s with the last minute and a half on HAUNTING. I also fell for the Beagle capitalisation (once I was fairly sure it wasn’t a Snoopy reference), but after a while realised that, as the surface was about Darwin, the cryptic probably wasn’t.
  27. Around 30 minutes for me, which I am pleased with, after being directed here by our blogger from the QC for an increasingly rare stab at the 15 x 15. I also rarely comment here these days because lack of time pushes me to aids more often than not, but today was a clear unaided solve. LOI was haggis. Thanks setter and Vinyl.
  29. Thx vinyl1 for hinting to the QC brigade that today’s 15×15 was worth a shot. I threw the towel in at the right time, with the capital B of Beagle too much of a misdirection. Annoyed to not see HAGGIS, but when the A of Arena dropped in, I didn’t see how AG would fit with the G I had. Did not see BIRO for writer, went for BARD instead.

    But a pleasing workout. I’m getting closer.

  30. Very nice puzzle but dreaded pink square with two typos. Otherwise nothing to scare the horses -22:24

    Thanks vinyl and setter

  31. held up at the end by SKEWER, GIFT and HAUNTING, none of which were difficult aside from the SER which I’d not seen before. I was also looking for the series as the definition which didnt help.
  32. Quite chewy imho, but the snitch disagrees. No time, as did it in 3 goes. Probably around the half-hour mark. Thanks v.
  33. As per Zed – 12.30 on all but three up in’t’ north west – then another painful 12.30!! 1ac HAGGIS and 2dn ARENA! And my…

    LOI 11ac HAUNTING – most daunting.

    FOI 15ac THURSDAY on a Monday!?

    COD 1ac HAGGIS which I adore. Which I once had piped-in at St. Andrews. Never had or heard of the tinned stuff! ‘Tinned Lettuce’ yes! – from ‘The Theory and Practice of Lunch’ by Keith Waterhouse – hilarious and highly recommended for Fleet Street gastronomes.

    WOD 14dn HOI POLLOI – a Yorkshire writer I once knew, who shall remain nameless, thought the hoi-polloi meant the well-to do! He was befuddled by the ‘hoity-toity’!

    How else could one possibly and fittingly spell DRAUGHTSMANSHIP!?

    Edited at 2021-03-22 03:33 pm (UTC)

  34. Directed here from the QC. FOI thee. Then ringworm. Tried Saturday as some of it fit. Butter up, (which corrected the weekday), hoi polloi and noise followed. Dotted about for a while and filled in the bottom half. I found the rest decidedly tricky and taxing on the grey matter. So I enjoyed it enormously, but it took me a long time, about an hour, I needed to check several words, had immediate instead of irradiate so once that showed up to be incorrect, and was fixed, the rest opened up except for haggis and stupid. I stared at ha*g** for ever, and finally the penny dropped. Stupid fit – but I couldn’t see why. COD ringworm. Lots more to enjoy, though. Thanks, V and setter. GW.
  35. ….during the course of which I considered practically every incorrect definition, used incorrect anagrist, and never quite got going. My NITCH of 170 and WITCH of 217 are by some way the worst on view.

    With SURROGATE I wasted ages trying to use Dorset as the county.

    NHO GUTENBERG, and my German vocabulary didn’t stretch to the word for good.

    FOI THEE
    LOI HAGGIS
    COD SWOOPS
    TIME 16:13

    Edited at 2021-03-22 05:23 pm (UTC)

  36. Found this enjoyable and mostly easy. Even saw what beagles do reasonably quickly. But was defeated by something that nobody else has even mentioned. I still don’t see the short words em or en so couldn’t solve 12 ac embody. Embarrassing, as I had E—OD-. As a result of that I didn’t see Nabob but as that is such an antiquated word I didn’t feel so bad.
    Thanks to the setter and to Vinyl1 for the reference to one of my favourite recordings.
  37. Bit tired to start this after 2 hour brisk stroll round Bath with my daughter: felt more like wading through mud — some v easy ones but struggled with a few others. HAUNTING did come to mind quickly but SKEWER didnt and added a couple of mins at the end.

    Always happy to finish correct under the half an hour even if I’m a bit slower than normal

    Thanks all

  38. 17.41. I found it hard to get started with this one but slowly pulled it together. Momentary panic at the end over LOI haunting where I couldn’t make anything of the clue and the available letters weren’t suggesting anything. Not too long before it yielded though.
  39. A steady, enjoyable solve this evening, apart from loi New Towns, where a careless DraftsmaMship had me puzzling over Mew/Maw until I spotted the error. Lit for drunk was unknown (the word, not the effect) but it had to be. CoD to Job Lot. Invariant

  40. Late to the party as I didn’t get around to looking at this until this morning. However, I had to post as I actually completed this without any aids or errors, which I don’t think has ever happened before. I guess that proves it was at the easy end of the scale, with no unknown words or obscure people. I even parsed them all except REEL. Where does the RE come from?

    1. I’m also a late rare finisher and saw your entry. I think RE comes from “dealing with” in the clue, similar to “REgarding”.

      1. Ah yes, it was the definitions at both start and end that threw me.

        Edited at 2021-03-23 08:14 pm (UTC)

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