Times 27961 – I’m awight. You awight?

Author   ulacaPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
I struggled with this a bit, much of which I’m putting down to interruptions from the wife and the telephone. To add insult to injury, when we parted on Saturday morning (nothing permanent, hopefully), she took my laptop, which means I have to do this on the iPad, without the computer script that transfers the clues, sort of automatically, to the blog. Which in turn means I will only be able to provide an old-fashioned blog, which suits me (because I’m old fashioned and not because I am glad to deprive you of all the convenience the script brings), especially as I like a bit of nostalgia now and again and retain a residual concern about spoon feeding, which I can probably put down to all those schoolmasters who taught their charges self reliance.

Heavens, I am wittering on! Anyway, back to the puzzle and notwithstanding the interruptions I found this a tad on the trickier side, Monday wise, and full of a lot of nice stuff. 31:36.

ACROSS

1. IMPRESARIO – anagram* of AS PRIME + RIO; showman (a bit of a cryptic answer, as you wouldn’t normally pay money to watch a Bernard Delfont or a Cameron Macintosh, but they do help put on the shows)
7. PICK – double definition (DD)
9. SCREW-TOP – SCREW (fleece) TOP (sweater); closer. Nice one – my last in
10. TALENT – TALE NT
11. FILLIP – sounds like PHILIP
13. STEP ON IT – a bit of a schoolboy humour clue, though none the worse for that; a whimsical DD
14. RAISE THE ROOF – protest; if you raise your roof, you could put in another floor, perhaps
17. TO SOME DEGREE – SO (true) in (overwhelmed by) TOME (book) DEGREE (award); not entirely
20. SUZERAIN (great word!) – SUEZ* RAIN (come down); dominant state
21. WOTCHA – sounds like watcher
22. RIALTO – IR reversed ALTO; in Crosswordland, Venice basically only has one district plus a lido
23. BLOOMING – DD; while blooming is essentially an intensifier, when used with negative prosody it can be rendered as wretched, e.g. ‘blooming mask’
25. SHOT — DD
26. LARGE-SCALE – S in CELLARAGE5

DOWN

2. MICHIGAN – CHI in MIG AN
3. RUE – R[o]UE
4. SET UP – SET UP; found (as in Rome)
5. RIPOSTE – I POST in RE
6. ON THE ROAD – hidden; driving
7. PILLOW FIGHT – LIP reversed LOW (blue) FIGHT (box)
8. CANDID – CAN DID (carried out); open. Economical and cunning
12. LOSE THE PLOT – DD
15. TESLA COIL – OSCILLATE* and semi-all in one; no idea what this is, but fortunately had heard of it as well as the car produced by that rather unpleasant, if highly gifted, individual
16. METHANOL – THE MAN O [al]L*; another sciency thing I’m familiar with
18. MINIBAR – [Yitchak] RABIN IM reversed
19. MUNICH – I in MUNCH
21. WHOLE – sounds like hole (mess); one of those easy ones at the end
24. MAC – Cam (rivulet that runs through Fenland Poly) reversed; ditto

59 comments on “Times 27961 – I’m awight. You awight?”

  1. I started off slow, slow enough to worry me, but things finally picked up. POI WOTCHA–I persisted in thinking ‘word of greeting’ was HI. LOI METHANOL–I persisted in thinking ‘the man’ was HE. Biffed SCREW-TOP; didn’t think that SCREW would appear in the Times.
    1. There’s nothing remotely dodgy about SCREW in the sense intended here:

      SOED: screw – verb trans. Extort, force, or draw (information, money, consent, etc.) out of a person, esp. by psychological pressure. E17.

      SOED: fleece – verb trans. & intrans. Obtain (money etc.) from a person by unfair means. M16.

  2. 8:02 – odd puzzle, I found most of this very easy, but a few that just didn’t seem to make sense until a third or fourth reading. ON THE ROAD was my last in and I’m kicking myself for that.
  3. The ‘wretched’ in 23a I took to be a anagrind and was looking for something garden-related using the ‘being out’ anagrist. BIOGUENT looked likely ,though never heard of, for some time. Until the blooming obvious dawned.
    23’24”
  4. After a reasonably straightforward run I came to grief in the SW corner and ended with a technical DNF.

    NHO SUZERAIN. I had understood the wordplay but was left with a choice of SUZERAIN and ZUSERAIN and jumped the wrong way.

    Inspiration was lacking when it came to thinking of a random artist or a random city at 19dn. I was missing the H checker as I was also stuck on 25ac. I used aids to get the Down answer and was particularly galled as I have spent more time in MUNICH than any other major city outside the UK. SHOT then fell into place.

    Jim would have been pleased that at last I managed to remember TESLA and his COIL!

    Edited at 2021-04-26 04:20 am (UTC)

  5. Wrong call of the coin toss for the S and the Z in SUZERAIN for me too. Failed on the spelling of WOTCHA as well, so a pretty ‘Wretched’ 50 min DNF, even if I was indoors all the time. Still in last position on the Club site, but I live in hope.

    I’ll go with BLOOMING as my pick, mainly because I’ve just realised it can be one of those interesting “auto-antonym” words – well sort of anyway.

  6. 12 minutes with LOI and COD SCREW-TOP. I knew of SUZERAINty so that didn’t require a massive leap of faith. Pleasant Monday offering. Thank you U and setter.

    Edited at 2021-04-26 06:39 am (UTC)

  8. Lodged with me useless…

    25 mins pre-brekker. I liked it. NHO Suzerain but the Zuse… version never occurred to me.
    Thanks setter and U.

  9. I had a similar experience to Jack in the SW corner, though I did know SUZERAIN, if not it’s meaning. MUNICH and SHOT took the majority of my time on this puzzle. The city seemed like the more likely one to get so I did an alphabet trawl of the first letter, an alphabet trawl of the third letter then a trawl of artists which only came up with Durer. Finally on repeating the exercise for the second or third time MUNICH came to me and SHOT then went straight in. Despite feeling like I’d maybe made heavy work off these two it was satisfying to finally crack them.
    1. Fortunately, I didn’t have to trawl the alphabet to come up with a city; ZURICH leaped to mind, and I actually typed it in to see how it looked. It looked pretty bad.
      1. I’m glad it didn’t leap to my mind. I’m sure I could have convinced myself that Zurch was an artist.
  10. On checking, apparently it’s ‘What cheer?’ Which seems a pleasantly positive way of saying ‘How are you?’.
  11. 14:33 SUZERAIN new to me too. I biffed an incorrect ICECUBE for 18D whihc messed things up for a while and took ages to spot ON THE ROAD as a hidden. I liked the egg-cracking method, though I’m not sure it is useful in the kitchen.
  12. 7:34. What George said: mostly very easy, with a few that put up significantly more resistance.
    I was a bit concerned WOTCHA might be WATCHA, and I’m slightly surprised that it isn’t, at least as an option.
    1. I think the only valid alternative would be WOTCHER. I wonder what it actually is short for?
      1. Yes that’s what the dictionaries say. I’m just a bit surprised that such an informal slang word isn’t sometimes written WATCHA, especially given its apparent origin.
      1. It does seem to have been a bit cruel of the setter to leave the O unchecked, particularly in light of the etymology.
    4. Or wotcher even. Which it usually is ‘in ver east en’ wear I cum from’. Mr Grumpy
  13. 13.10 with a couple of holdups. The main one was thinking 17ac was to some extent which messed up three crossers right royally till the light came on. LOI was on the road which I eventually twigged without ever seeing the hidden word. Tesla coil would have been tricky if I hadn’t remembered it was in a puzzle earlier this year.

    FOI Michigan. COD torn between suzerain and minibar.

    Thanks setter and blogger for a good start to the week.

  14. 22:23
    Top half easy; bottom half a bit trickier, esp. SW corner, but all in all a steady solve.
  15. A decent Monday offering with a bit of bite. Time 37 minutes.

    FOI 3dn RUE (de Rivoli)

    LOI 19dn MINIBAR

    COD 14ac RAISE THE ROOF – thanks for the messaging Mr. Setter! A new floor was put in. (Atticus)
    All those D-DAY code words in the Telegraph Crossword (Feb-June 1944) were deliberately injected by Fleming & Co.

    WOD 20ac SUZERAIN – for history scholars only.

    Edited at 2021-04-26 08:32 am (UTC)

  16. Most of this I did feeling I should have been quicker, and took it to 19.16.
    I think part of the resistance came from some rather off-the-wall notions: of course, you can break an egg by stepping on it, but it may not be the most productive way, and it’s also true of a lot of other things that might be fragile underfoot. Something fun for children? Well yes, it is, but so are lots of other things, and not all that many of the Great Pillow Fights in movies are between children, and those grownups seem to be having fun too.
    Jab and bash felt as if they had lot of possibilities: fortunately I’ve just had my second Phizzy jab/shot so that helped.
    You don’t really expect there to be a useful anagram of SUEZ.
    Add me to the number who were quite relieved when WOTCHA didn’t produce a pink.
    Congratulations U on producing any kind of blog under reduced circumstances. Wives, eh?
  17. Nice to have artist cluing something other than RA in MUNICH, though it took a while for the penny to drop. Hadn’t heard of Rabin, so having the B from BLOOMING was crucial to get my biffed MINIBAR. I’m more familiar with RAISE THE ROOF as meaning simply ‘make a lot of noise’ rather than protesting, but the cluing left no alternative. ON THE ROAD was my d’oh moment, as frequently happens with hidden answers, once it finally came to me with all the checkers in place.

    FOI Rue
    LOI On the road
    COD Rialto

  18. Been away and busy with work and children so this was my first go in three weeks. All flowed swiftly enough down the right channels. Liked the deception in carnival showman; narrowly missed putting in Zurich (I bet there is someone called Zurch who once sold a picture or two); distracted by Mandela as Nobel guy; worked out Tesla Coil without knowing what it actually is. Wotcha often followed by cock, no?
    2. Intaglio Enrico Zurch (1593-1641) born Salzburg died Venice. Abstract cubist school,inspiration for Picasso/Modigliani. Only three paintings survive ‘Madonna & Child’, ‘Madonna & Hurdy Gurdy’ and ‘Passion Fruit’. Google Zurch

      Edited at 2021-04-26 11:50 am (UTC)

  19. For some reason the owl was on form and set an equal PB of 12 minutes for this, with hardly a pause and ending with MUNICH and SHOT. Did wonder about WOTCHA or WATCHA for a moment but plumped for the right one.
    1. It only gives it as an alternative in the second sense, a contraction of ‘what are you’. For the greeting it only gives WOTCHA or WOTCHER. This only increases my sense that if you chose to write ‘watcha mate’ it couldn’t really be considered a misspelling.

      Edited at 2021-04-26 11:36 am (UTC)

  21. A gentle enough start to the week. 24 mins and absolutely no complaints about either crossword or the typically excellent blog.
  22. No regrets till the end, when held up for quite some time by the Munich/Shot pair. Otherwise reasonably fast for me. 27’55. Have never seen ‘watcha’ in print. Good to see ‘suzerain’ take a bow.
  23. 12m 22s with the last 4 or 5 minutes spent on SHOT, MUNICH & SUZERAIN, a really tricky corner – particularly if (like me) you’ve never heard of SUZERAIN. Having spent a lot of that time running through European cities and artists and trying to see if I could make them work together, I eventually trawled the alphabet for words that could mean both ‘bash’ and ‘jab’ but weren’t STAB (which, of course, does too).

    ON THE ROAD was my FOI and is a lovely hidden.

  24. Held up for ages at the end by 25a and 19d. Finally saw SHOT and bunged in ZURICH, despite not being convinced by ZURCH as the artist. I’d had enough by then. Those last two stretched me from 32 minutes to 44:52. SUZERAIN rand a bell although I couldn’t have said what it was from the word alone. Had forgotten RABIN until I checked in Google afterwards, but BLOOMING clinched MINIBAR. Wondered about WOTCHA or WATCHA, but seemd more likely to be the former. A tough one for a Monday! Thanks setter and U.

    Edited at 2021-04-26 11:22 am (UTC)

  25. Exactly like Jack, all done fairly rapidly then fell in the SW. Just couldn’t work out SUZE WHOTSIT, so looked it up. Some very clever clueing, which was a pleasure. Shame not to finish. Thanks U and setter.
  26. Sometimes they all just fit nicely into place.

    There’s a pleasant French apéritif called Suze (gentian flavoured apparently, but it’s bitter orange to me). Makes Suzerain a bit more surreal.

    Thanks to Ulaca (first-rate wittering) and setter.

  27. Not really sure why it took quite so long. Only SUZERAIN stood out as summat I didn’t know though I had a vague notion of which order the first four letters went.

    Last two in were CANDID and PICK — again not sure what the hold up was…

    Oh well.

  28. I’m in the shame not to finish category.
    My city was VENICE. BELT instead of SHOT. And despite having seen the word SUZERAIN it didn’t occur to me, even with the SUEZ letters looking like part of the answer.
    BLOOMING good.
    David
  29. ….SUZERAIN in a game of GrabbyWord yesterday, and sent my opponent in Plymouth, MICHIGAN scrambling for her Webster’s.

    Everything else was straightforward enough.

    FOI STEP ON IT
    LOI BLOOMING
    COD RUE
    TIME 8:41

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