Times 27955 – The gum-chewing dogs, say??

Author   vinyl1Posted on Categories Daily Cryptic

Time: 29 minutes
Music: Bizet, L’Arlesienne Suites, Morel, Royal Opera House Orchestra

Well, I admit, I’m not usually expecting a challenging puzzle on Monday.   But this one had some elusive answers, and perhaps some over-clever wordplay, so I suspect some solvers may struggle.   Unfortunately, the SNITCH is out of operation right at the moment, so I can’t check – I’m sure Starstruck will take care of this shortly.

I was off to a good start by writing in the long answers at both the top and the bottom, which usually gets you going on this grid pattern.   But then I was thoroughly stuck, not being able to use any of the starting letters across the top.   Instead, I had to go chestnut-hunting around the grid, only to come up with a mighty small harvest.   There are some really off-the-wall wordplay tricks here, things that you might expect in Mephisto.

Across
1 Plastic they only peel off (12)
POLYETHYLENE – Anagram of THEY ONLY PEEL, my FOI.
8 Charge for tablet (7)
LOZENGE – I just biffed this while solving, but now I understand – it’s a heraldic charge, a device on a shield.
9 Seek dull job with hospital doing longest possible shift in fabrication (7)
UNTRUTH – HUNT RUT, with H (Hospital) moved the maximum possible distance.
11 Like sandstone doubly covered in basilicas’ bricks (7)
SILICIC – [ba]SILIC[as br]IC[ks], another very tricky cryptic.
12 Going down without right piloting (7)
DRIVING – D(R)IVING, where without might be either an enclosure indicator, or a deletion indicator.
13 Always in poetry that is strange (5)
EERIE – E’ER + I.E., the only simple clue in the puzzle.
14 Cooks fruit in packet, perhaps (9)
STEAMSHIP – STEAMS HIP.
16 Supporters mostly run restaurant (9)
BRASSERIE – BRAS + SERIE[s], not quite a chestnut.
19 Poorer fretted outside society (5)
WORSE – WOR(S)E.
21 Drifting, your setter’s in a bar (7)
AIMLESS – A(I’M)LESS.   Less is the equivalent of bar in the sense of without, except for.
23 Newspapers got round belonging to state (7)
PROFESS – PR(OF)ESS.
24 What canines have lair and can dine without noise? (7)
DENTINE – DEN + TIN + [din}E, with the Mephisto-like letter-removal indicator.
25 Having powerful weapons, some Israel cunningly concealed in turn (7)
NUCLEAR – Backward hidden in [Is]RAEL CUN[ningly].
26 Script producer has to check court document with Her Majesty (12)
SCREENWRITER – SCREEN + WRIT + E.R.
Down
1 Parking car heavy on petrol — gallons gone for you (7)
PUZZLER – P + [g]UZZLER, which for many of us might be puzzled!
2 Oxford college relocated in Clare (7)
LINACRE – Anagram of IN CLARE, simple if you know the college, which is not one of the more famous ones.
3 What could make one sexier? Rec fitness equipment (9)
EXERCISER – Anagram of SEXIER + REC.
4 Harry’s husband, plump, no Romeo (5)
HOUND – H + [r]OUND.
5 Element burning with smell when current is put into it (7)
LITHIUM – LIT + H(I)UM.
6 Promote foreign drama about novelist (7)
NOURISH – NO(URIS)H.   Leon Uris was a big bestseller 60 or 70 years ago, but is probably forgotten today.
7 Bolt rear pads around material applied to walls (12)
PLASTERBOARD – Anagram of BOLT REAR PADS.
10 Drunken bully is very stressing (4-8)
HIGH-PRESSURE –  HIGH + PRESSURE, where bully should be treated as a verb.
15 Something illuminating lid? (3-6)
EYE-OPENER – Double definition.
17 Calendar girl initially nude and clothed (7)
ALMANAC – ALMA + N[ude] A[nd] C[lothed].
18 Unproductive anger after ship’s back without navy (7)
STERILE – STE[rn] + RILE.   I was looking for ire for a long time, and then rage, but rile it is.
19 Picture of timber (7)
WOODCUT – A very terse cryptic definition.
20 Wild animals came by ’orse, reportedly (3,4)
ROE DEER – Sounds like RODE ‘ERE.
22 Mug in set gets smashed (5)
STEIN – Anagram of IN SET.

45 comments on “Times 27955 – The gum-chewing dogs, say??”

  1. I found this surprisingly “Quick Cryptic-like” with the exception of three words, all of which could be guessed:
    Lozenge….”charge” (pill I knew. but not the other meaning)
    Woodcut…..I’m not familiar with the printing technique
    Dentine ….I was at first stuck on “denture,” but eventually “dentine” fell into place.

    Having a relative in the mineral extraction business helped with silicic!

    I’m not yet at the point where I screen out interruptions so that the online-timer gives an accurate read-out, but this was likely a personal record in the ball-park of 25 minutes.

    FOI Polyethylene
    LOI Dentine
    COD Puzzler

  2. I took a very long time to twig to PUZZLER, the Z of which then gave me LOZENGE. And I never did get the ‘doubly covered’. I liked AIMLESS.
  3. You’ve made the same error in the blog as I did solving the puzzle: too many Es

    Edited at 2021-04-19 03:12 am (UTC)

    1. And me too 🙁 A bit frustrating after solving the rest.

      Also frustrating was the error I made in updating the SNITCH over the weekend. Hopefully all the basic functions are working okay. (I have some small issues still to fix.)

      Edited at 2021-04-19 07:21 am (UTC)

  4. Vinyl, I take 19 Down to be ‘timber’ = WOOD, CUT.

    Thanks for clearing up LOZENGE. Last in were NOURISH and LINACRE. Couldn’t see until the very end how we could get a word inside NOH, and I needed all crossing letters to get the school. I actually thought of NOH and URIS right away, but in my mind they didn’t seem to spell out a word. Similarly I thought “rode ‘ere” but couldn’t see how to get a long ‘o’ in R _ E, so I briefly considered RYE DEER but knew that couldn’t be right.

    STERILE also took quite some time, for the same reason as our blogger.

    Edited at 2021-04-19 02:42 am (UTC)

  5. Very Mondayish? Personal best – first time ever under 9 minutes, against the norm of 20. Giant scare though coming here and seeing polyethelene… two Ys and only 3 Es in the fodder, so I spelt it right without checking. Missed the timber = cut wood and the silicic cryptic, and guessed lozenge and linacre, so thank-you for the explanations.
    1. Congratulations. That is a great time.

      I found this an odd mixture of the clever and the clunky.

  6. I struggled a bit in the SE but got there in the end. No problem with LOZENGE since I went to Sidney-Sussex College founded by Lady Francis Sidney, so the college “shield” is a lozenge since she is female, and so not the normal shield-shape at all. On the college theme, I’d never heard of LINACRE but it seemed plausible. I couldn’t work out the wordplay for SILICIC but I work in the semiconductor industry so all things silicon/sand are everyday terms.
  7. I definitely didn’t find this typically Mondayish. Much of my time was spent on my LOI SILICIC, which I didn’t know, and for which I thought the device was an original one. Likewise with UNTRUTH I don’t recall seeing “doing longest possible shift” for moving the first letter to the end before. So hats off to the setter for the originality — it certainly slowed me up today.
  8. A technical DNF although I had solved all but four clues within 25 minutes. At that point only LOZENGE was unparsed but I assumed (rightly as it turned out) that it was a double definition, the second being a meaning I simply didn’t know.

    At 30 minutes I was finding it hard to stay awake so I decided to resort to aids and my first unsuccessful attempt at this was to google a list of Oxford Colleges beginning with L. I found only two, neither of which would fit so I abandoned that and used word searches to come up with the other three answers, SILICIC (NHO), NOURISH and UNTRUTH (both of which on reflection I should have got). The C-checker provided by SILICIC made LINACRE the only real possibility at 2dn so finally I wrote that in to complete the grid.

    This morning I solved the mystery of the college not being listed. The page of the site I had hit upon showed only Oxford colleges accepting undergraduate students whereas LINACRE (which I never even heard of) is only for postgraduates.

    Edited at 2021-04-19 05:01 am (UTC)

  9. …Flutter’d in the besieging wind’s uproar;
    And the long carpets rose along the gusty floor.

    25 mins. Not my cup of tea. Some not fully successful attempts at originality and surfaces that I felt could have been improved.
    Thanks setter and Vinyl.

  11. 34 minutes, with LOI PROFESS. I thought of NOURISH before remembering Leon URIS. I’ve never read Exodus, but I can remember the theme music to the movie. Does that count?LOZENGE was of course only known from the second part of the definition. In my three years at Oxford, I was never quite sure what LINACRE was. I liked AIMLESS, but COD to ROE DEER. Decent enough puzzle. Thank you V and setter.
  12. Is that how it’s pronounced? My clue is less clunky than some today.

    1ac straight in the almost nothing on other across clues, but worked steadily through thereafter.

    SILICIC took a while to parse.

    UNTRUTH LOI, nice device.

    16′ 27″, thanks vinyl and setter.

  13. 10:32 DNK the heraldic meaning of LOZENGE nor the author in NOURISH. Biggest hold up was caused by having EYE-SHADOW for 15D at first. LOI DENTINE. COD to AIMLESS.
  14. A hefty degree of trust in wordplay was required today, not having heard of the charge meaning of LOZENGE, the author Uris in NOURISH, the LINACRE college or the words SILICIC and DENTINE (plus I wasn’t familiar with ‘hip’ as a fruit in STEAMSHIP). Apart from those, however, I found this fairly straightforward. The cluing device in UNTRUTH was new to me too, but I liked it.

    FOI Eerie
    LOI Dentine
    COD Screenwriter

  15. I’m slightly relieved to find I’m not the only one who can’t count Ys and spell POLYETHELENE properly. And I thought I had checked!
    Some clever stuff here: “doubly covered” and “longest possible shift” both took some time to understand.
    On the other hand I had to read 24 several times before the literal made sense (what canines have lair – pardon?) and I could concentrate on the wordplay.
    Should have heard of LINACRE, but didn’t think I had unless Gary’s changed his spelling, but I see they got trashed by the Open University in the protracted recent series of UC.
    I’m with +J on wood, cut, but I guess a straight cryptic definition works just as well, better than the most of the superabundance of them in yesterday’s puzzle.
  16. 15.05 . Struggled with silicic , got the answer had to be from the silic bit of basilicas but couldn’t make my mind up if the end was ic or ac. None too clear even after the explanation provided by Vinyl1- my fault, not his.

    Other than that, enjoyable puzzle with my COD untruth. Honest.

    1. We had an alternate spelling of Noh as No a month or so ago which flummoxed me then, and knowing it was sometimes used didn’t help me push letters with and without the H around this time
  18. 18:08
    Silicic – just threw it in; didn’t see the doubly covered thing.
    Thanks v.
  19. So said Gertrude Stein, who may have steered clear of crosswords, being more than cryptic enough without them. As some others I was held up a bit here and there, finishing in 26’20. Found lozenge a puzzler but now all clear.
  20. 8:54. I didn’t find this hard but I found I needed the wordplay for most of the clues, which generally makes for a more enjoyable solve. I have trained myself to ignore surface readings completely when solving so if some of these were a bit awkward I didn’t notice.
    My last in was NOURISH, where URIS looked very unlikely as a name so I spent a while trying to come up with an alternative.
    1. Amis came to mind so quickly that I took quite a while to get to Uris, whom I know of.
  21. 30m today, with some time spent hesitating over LOZENGE and NOURISH, as others have said. Enjoyable puzzle, with some teasing out required today. Thank you, setter and V, for today’s entertainment.
  22. Didn’t know the heraldic meaning of LOZENGE but it couldn’t be anything else. Quite an uneven puzzle. Some of the clues were immediate write-ins without even parsing, while I couldn’t see how others worked even after getting the answer — e.g. LESS for bar and WORE for fretted. All fair enough on reflection. WOODCUT was clever. 15mins.
  23. I think that’s PB although I don’t record these things. Despite a few, all mentioned above, that had to be bunged in, this was very easy.
    COD ROE DEER, appealed to my sense of humour
      1. Many thanks. Didn’t know where to look. And I remember the accidental neutrino. Hit the wrong button by mistake!
  24. Didn’t know the heraldic meaning of LOZENGE, so struggled with that until I got PUZZLER. NHO SILICIC either. Struggled with PROFESS even though I knew it involved PRESS and O. Took a while to see it was OF. Having ATTIRED for 17d caused a hold up in the SW until DENTINE and AIMLESS put me right. 26:33 with 4 minutes on SILICIC. Never did see quite how it worked. Thanks setter and Vinyl.
  25. I saw how 11ac worked but somehow entered “Silacic” which is a nicer sounding word than “Silicic” but doesn’t exist. Tarnation.
    Enjoyable puzzle nevertheless.
  26. Would have been ahead of a lot of the field here in 15 minutes but I never worked out the doubly covered element of the sandstone clue and biffed salicic. D’oh.

    Nice puzzle I just seemed to be on the wavelength.

    Thanks V and setter

  27. Doing this in 3:10 may not be my PB but I think it must be my WITCH PB (57). What can I say, I must just really like polyethylene.
  28. I liked the new to me double enclosure at Silicic, and the definition as packet at Steamship. Some others I thought were strained.
  29. Wow, not many comments yet. There are some long anagrams here, which always gets me off to a good start. But I hadn’t gotten very far when I decided to surrender to the arms of Morpheus and only attacked this on-and-off this morning, finishing the NW last. There were some chewy entries, for sure. I thought of LOZENGE right away but didn’t know what “charge” was all about—meant to look it up before coming here, but I didn’t, so thanks!
    FOI POLYETHYLENE.
    Guessed at LINACRE.
    My LOI was SILICIC.
    And I appreciated the geopolitical comment in 25. The US administration is still looking the other way…

    Edited at 2021-04-19 05:51 pm (UTC)

  30. My timer says 29:35, so close to my best time, and apart from not knowing the other meaning of LOZENGE (which I thought of as soon as I saw “tablet” and the L and E at the extremities), I had no real problems with this. I had never heard of LINACRE either, but when the checkers were in it was the only sensible anagram of “in Clare”. Many of the clues were quite clever, but I understood the wordplay fairly quickly and was able to solve them without anguish. Very enjoyable puzzle, actually, feeling surprisingly Mondayish to me if not to others.
  31. Needed help with three or four of the possibly more straightforward ones at the end — Untruth, Nourish and Woodcut. Reasonable progress up until that point, including Steamship from just the initial S and a parsed Silicic and Dentine, so still a good feeling overall. Invariant
  32. Biffed “process” at 23A. I can’t remember my last correct completion. At least it wasn’t anything I could blame the setter for this time. COD ROE DEER, which made me chuckle.
  33. 48.28. I struggled to get into this one. The NE corner was like pulling teeth. I just couldn’t see anything at all. Delayed putting in nourish for a long time because I’d NHO Uris.
  34. For once I shared the setter’s wavelength and worked steadily through this, pausing to giggle at 20 across’s ROEDEER on the way. Satisfying to complete this in approx 45 minutes.
  35. FOI 12ac DRIVING

    LOI 23ac PROCESS (Doh!) as per Jordan!
    COD 1dn PUZZLE

    WOD 8as LOZENGE my heraldry is good

    Time 35mins but now I find out it was a DNF

  36. Just wanted to add to feed, just signed up and very new to the big cryptic, I’ve been doing the quick cryptic most days for a year or so and don’t always finish but now braving the “big one” and found today’s really tricky as always but thoroughly enjoyed the setters cunning. I got over half way with no referencing and not as challenging vocabulary wise as normal. My goal is just to complete a 16 x 16 one day. I love all of your comments and the general support you give us newbies!!

Comments are closed.