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. Well, I did eventually manage to finish, but it was a close run thing, with my last five in the SW corner nearly forcing a DNF. Tesla Coil, Shot, Munich, Rialto and the unknown Suzerain fell in that order, with more than a touch of luck about the last one. However, just to show that these things always balance out in the end, I had Watcha at 21ac — I don’t think I’ve ever used the word let alone written it, so just went with what seemed the most plausible spelling. Invariant
  2. 24 minute DNF. My pink square was of course the first A in WATCHA and I am not pleased. How does an obviously slang word acquire a standard spelling anyway? Otherwise, nothing really worth commenting on, either way.
    1. Commiserations, and this was the sense I have been trying to express less successfully above. It’s a bit like having a ‘standard’ spelling for ‘eurggh’.
  3. 28.59. A swift start derailed by the Munich Shot crossers. I don’t know why Munch and Munich took so long to come to mind. The only artists and cities that I could think of were Italian.
  4. Knew SUZERAIN; biffed MINIBAR from the MI; and whilst objections noted, I’ve only ever pronounced WOTCHA with an O 😀

    I also wrote in ZURICH but persuaded myself Zurch was a momble too far, even for me

    Nice start to the week — thanks setter and Ulaca

  5. A lot of very generous cryptic cluing coupled with very much less than precise definitions. When I thought that 7a “Best digger” was meant to be BEAT (Beatnik for the youngsters) I thought it was the only really good clue.
  6. …had nothing to do with cars, you know. That jerk Elon Musk, who is unaccountably going to host Saturday Night Live, simply took the name of the great inventor.

    Edited at 2021-04-27 01:47 am (UTC)

  7. Found this tres oblique and well nigh impossible. Pretty discouraging for a Monday which I can usually approach quite optimistically. I don’t hold out much hope for the rest of the week. Chapeaux to you chaps who can airily claim to finish it in 12 minutes while eating toast.

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