Times 27979 – It’s no secret, but you may not know it!

Author   vinyl1Posted on Categories Daily Cryptic

Time: 30 minutes
Music: Paul Simon, Rhythm of the Saints

This one proved tougher than usual for a Monday – a lot of knowledge required.     If you are an experienced solver, you will just follow the cryptics and see what you get – surprise!   There were a few tough ones that stretched my knowledge, but I came though in the end.   But if you are missing a crucial piece of knowledge, you may not be so lucky.

I would like to thank everyone who got LiveJournal IDs and clicked “Join This Community” – it makes it easier for the administrators, even if it doesn’t fix all our problems.   As you know, running a large online discussion group is not easy.   I have tried to keep things pretty liberal here, with just a few gentle nudges when things get a little out of line.   I would also like to thank Jackkt and Jerry for their work in controlling spam and ejecting undesireables.

Across
1 Having tantrums on retreat, one in flight (4)
STEP – PETS backwards, my FOI.
4 One responsible for standards in cabbage and beer (4,6)
COLE PORTER – COLE + PORTER, different sorts of cabbage and beer.   A great literal!
9 Note covering wraps round nuts and washer (10)
LAUNDROMAT – LA (anagram of ROUND) MAT.
10 Son an amusing character spoils (4)
SWAG – S + WAG.
11 Political assistant has quiet time seizing power (6)
SHERPA – SH + ER(P)A.
12 Everything from Gatti at last seen in a French poem (8)
UNIVERSE – UN([gatt]I)VERSE.
14 Almost eat too much, coming back for drink (4)
GROG – GORG[e] backwards.
15 This thing shattered reveller finally wears? (10)
NIGHTSHIRT – Anagram of THIS THING + [revelle]R.
17 Old submarine docks at eastern island — almost everyone knows it (4,6)
OPEN SECRET – O PENS + E + CRET[e].
20 Case having been dismissed, criminals cheat at cards (4)
ROOK – [c]ROOK[s].
21 Photographic solution in second best city (4,4)
STOP BATH – S + TOP + BATH.
23 Leave vehicle burning (6)
ALIGHT – Double definition.
24 Short bloke has drug habit (4)
ROBE – ROB + E.
25 Rumble from ocean was disturbing to the ear (3,7)
SEE THROUGH – Sounds like SEA THREW, with rumble as a verb.
26 Tale recounting Catherine’s demise? (7,3)
HOWARDS END – A novel by E.M. Forster, with the cryptic referring to Catherine Howard.
27 Rest in peace as everlasting (4)
EASE – Hidden in [peac]E AS E[verlasting].
Down
2 In-form favourite confuses respect with hate (8,3)
TEACHER’S PET – Anagram of RESPECT and HATE.
3 Arthur’s dad shut up having become tedious (9)
PENDRAGON – PEN + DRAG ON.
4 Drape with the end cut short? (7)
CURTAIN – CURTAIN[s].
5 Member has desire: see her excited about cold dairy product (9,6)
LIMBURGER CHEESE – LIMB + URGE + anagram of SEE HER around C.
6 Nationalist group getting in touch (7)
PATRIOT – PA(TRIO)T.
7 Rise of drag performer? (5)
TOWER – Double definition, one jocular.
8 Villain shows vigour heading north in Parisian street (5)
ROGUE – R(GO upside-down)UE.
13 Archaeological find: group with cash prepared to support it (11)
SARCOPHAGUS – SA (sex appeal, which = it) + anagram of GROUP and CASH.
16 Leaves one’s food? (9)
HERBIVORE – Cryptic definition.
18 Went by valley keeping especially to the north (7)
ELAPSED – D(ESP)ALE upside-down.
19 Elevated works building maliciously ruined (7)
TRASHED – ART upside-down + SHED.
21 Revolutionary nearly put frighteners on Mrs Siddons? (5)
SARAH – HARAS[s] upside-down.
22 Steer then give way finding large bend (5)
OXBOW – OX + BOW, as in bow out.

70 comments on “Times 27979 – It’s no secret, but you may not know it!”

  1. Hard for a Monday; in any case I was dim for a Monday. FOI was 1ac, which gave false hopes, but it was slow going after that. Thought of SWIT at 10ac, gave it up but didn’t think of SWAG until much later. Tried to make ‘leveller’+s the anagrist, didn’t think of (This thing) until much later. That sort of day. DNK ‘pen’ and biffed OPEN SECRET (Vinyl, you need an E (‘eastern’)). DNK SHERPA, but it was easy to infer. COD to COLE PORTER.
  2. Bombed out in 52 minutes. Pretty hard and not the expected relief from Dean Mayer’s toughie yesterday.

    Did COLE PORTER write TEACHER’S PET? I don’t think so. I liked the HERBIVORE cryptic def.

  3. My fifth DNF in a row. I was all finished in about 18 minutes but the COLE PORTER / PATRIOT crossing was terribly elusive. Five minutes later I finally saw PORTER, then COLE, then PATRIOT, only to find that the city was not WASH, but BATH. Of course it was.
  4. One snippet of information re 26ac, the title is HOWARDS END with no apostrophe. It’s the name of a house.

    Only 36 minutes, but I felt I was struggling at times.

    I knew SHERPA as a native of a region of Nepal, as in Sherpa Tenzing, who accompanied Sir Edmund Hillary to the top of Everest in 1953; I’d not heard of its political usage, but it’s noted in Collins.

    I didn’t know that ROOK relates specifically to cheating at cards, and it doesn’t, although Collins mentions ‘esp…at cards’.

    NHO STOP BATH which I now learn is used in a stage of the developing process before the medium is immersed in fixer.

    Lost time at 4dn dithering between CURTAIN and CURTAIL. I thought it was a replacement clue until ‘end / curtains’ came to mind.

    The definition at 4ac was alone worth the price of admission!

    Edited at 2021-05-17 04:39 am (UTC)

    1. Only ‘The Grauniad’ is recorded as slipping in the possessive apostrophe.
  5. No big problems, even the things I didn’t know, except I had no idea who Mrs Siddons was, and it took me ages to see she must be SARAH (my LOI).
  7. Here to commiserate with anyone else who raced through this (16m) only to find that their STOP WASH was wrong.

    As I’ve heard the photographic bath called a “stop wash” and “Wash.” is apparently a valid abbreviation for Washington it seems a bit harsh; on the other hand I’m only about twelve miles away from Bath so I should probably have thought of it first…

    1. I think if the reference was to an abbreviation for a US city,that would need to be indicated in some way
  8. They pass’d, like figures on a marble urn,

    After 20 mins I needed -TO-/Bath and Mrs Siddons.
    Needed an alphabet trawl for S,Top and that gave Sarah (NHO).
    I liked it, mostly Cole Porter.
    Thanks setter and Vinyl.

  9. 29 minutes, with LOI SEE THROUGH only half-parsed. Otherwise, I felt on wavelength with this on the general knowledge requirements, STOP BATH dredged up from days in the Clarendon. Excellent puzzle, only just falling short of a trip to the moon on gossamer wings. COD to COLE PORTER. Thank you V and setter.
  10. I thought this brilliant, helped by the satisfaction of being on wavelength and coming in under the half hour. Some superb surfaces and definitions, especially (as others have noted) the literals in COLE PORTER and HERBIVORE, and for me also the lovely surface of 3D. I was thrown for ages by the cunning coupling in ROBE. Thank you clever setter and Vinyl.

    I guessed yesterday’s advanced examination was a Meyer from the short clues. Neither of the online versions (club and paper) show authorship which is a shame.

    Edited at 2021-05-17 06:57 am (UTC)

  11. 52 minutes for a good but chewy Monday puzzle.

    FOI 8dn ROGUE

    LOI 9ac LAUNDROMAT – that took me back to my college days.

    COD 4ac COLE PORTER b. in Peru! 1891 – (Indiana)

    WOD 3dn ‘The Perils of PENDRAGON’ a great show – a sort of Welsh ‘Clochemerle’ from addled memory!

    21ac the smell of STOP BATH put me right off the dark room at college – I would trade (writing copy) with another student, who spent all day in ‘The Red Light District.’

    20ac ROOK there is some evidence that ‘rookie’ comes directly from ROOK – to cheat at cards. Tyros were ever considered fair game by the Sgt. Ernie Bilkos of the 19th Century. Phil Silvers, gawd-luv’im!

  12. I could SEE THROUGH the UNIVERSE, that STEP was quick
    But for most of the others, i missed the trick
    Perhaps i was GROGgy, perhaps i am sick
    But if Mondays are easier, I’m getting thick
  13. Once I got going I was on the right wavelength for this.

    COD: Herbivore.

  14. Biffed a-plenty and a couple of bits of knowledge I was short of.

    Knowledge shortage:

    COLE = Cabbage
    SHERPA = didn’t know that meaning
    STOP BATH = dredged up from a short period spent in the school dark room
    SARAH = never heard of Mrs Siddons and wasn’t entirely convinced by HARASS backwards
    PENDRAGON = came to me in a flash of inspiration — heard the name somewhere before – but don’t really know who he is
    LIMBURGER = got the cheese bit early, but this stumped me for a while

    Unparsed:

    LAUNDROMAT — didn’t see it at all but guessable with all of the checkers
    CURTAIN — didn’t think this was a particularly great clue — saw the answer early but didn’t understand the cryptic
    SARCOPHAGUS — didn’t see the anag but had most of checkers
    ELAPSED — no idea what was going in — bunged in with all of the checkers present

  15. 42 mins but quite tricky I thought. FOI STEP, LOI PATRIOT. Some very clever clueing here. I loved the « leaves » clue and the very deceptive definitions in 4ac, 26ac, and especially in-form favourite. Took a while for the PDM at LAUNDROMAT too. Very enjoyable. Thank you v and setter.
  16. …one of which was right, by chance, and the other of which had to be corrected. I got BATH as the most likely city in the photographic workshop, though not a familiar thing. My cheese was initially LEICESTER, which I nearly always have in the fridge, until I realised is had no connection with the wordplay.
    My last in was inevitably HERBIVORE, looking for the wordplay it didn’t have. But a decent CD.
    COLE PORTER a stand out amid many clever clues for a quality Monday. 16.35.
  17. 12:02 DNK Mrs Siddons, my LOI, got from wordplay. Tried unsuccessfully to make to make 9A LAUNDRETTE, but the cheese disabused me of that. COD to HERBIVORE.
    1. I started with LAUNDRETTE, too, thinking of the movie (it’s not a US term). The cheese was a long time coming; I think it’s not one of the ones John Cleese asks for in vain.
  18. An enjoyable crossword, with SARAH being my last one in – eventually the name Sarah Siddons occurred to me, though I must confess it was the electric locomotive used on the Metropolitan Railway that rang a bell, rather than knowing who she was. Didn’t fully parse LAUNDROMAT, CURTAIN or OPEN SECRET and constructed LIMBURGER CHEESE from the wordplay.

    FOI Rogue
    LOI Sarah
    COD Cole Porter

    1. Likewise. Grew up on the Metropolitan line. I believe Sarah Siddons – electric loco no 12 – is still in existence.

      Jim R

  19. OK so it’s a differently spelt Sara, but gives me the opportunity to mention that it’s Bob’s 80th birthday upcoming.

    LAUNDROMAT LOI, having tried laundryman and variants of launderette. Knew Mrs. Siddons, but unsure of the spelling of harass. Two ‘pets’ and two ‘pens’ cames up early, wondered if there was a theme. Have always thought ‘Uther’ to be a strange name, has anyone else famous had it? COD to COLE PORTER.

    16′ 02″, thanks vinyl and setter.

  21. I was on the wavelength today, which I couldn’t say yesterday, where my NITCH would have been about 400 if we rated the Sunday puzzle. My only confusion today was with CURTAIN where I thought the wordplay referred to “curtail” and so I couldn’t make sense of the parsing. Bunged it in anyway as it couldn’t be anything else.
  22. 45m held up by the cheese and the herbivore. Liked the Porter clue and the nightshirt but all of it was above average fare for a Monday. Thank you, setter and blogger today.
  23. My FOI was SLAG, which made it rather hard to finish off. Even when I realised my mistake, it took a moment to workout why it was TOWER.
    Nice for a Monday
    1. Jerry I trust I’m not being badly-behaved by saying that when doing the ST crossword the setter shows in Chrome but evidently nothing else. Since I don’t use Chrome but can easily do so I go to it just to see who the setter is, which is rather a fiddle but seems the only way.
      1. Bless you no, Will. I was replying to someone who was talking about the crossword itself. I don’t like to be told a crossword is easy, or hard, before I have had a chance to find out for myself.
        Things like the setter are fine and I don’t understand how everyone doesn’t see who the setter is, as I do when I download it. And I don’t use chrome, I use firefox. Whatever the problem is, i doubt if it is anything to do with the browser
        1. Very odd. I use Firefox but it never shows apparently. Perhaps I’m not looking in the right place.
          1. Still a lot of options though .. I have firefox set to download the crossword into a .pdf reader. But if instead I look at it for online solving, it still says “by Dean Mayer” underneath the title.
    2. With respect Jerry, I think if you know it’s by Dean Meyer you know the standard to expect. I really don’t think my comment let any cats out of bags. However I will take extra care in future to respect the one week embargo.
  25. STEPped straight into this, then biffed LAUNDRETTE, which helped with Uther, but not PATRIOT or the cheese. I needed NIGHTSHIRT to decide between CURTAIN and CURTAIL. Eventually all became clear in the top half, after I got the cheese, and I was then held up by HERBIVORE, which was my antipenultimate entry. That left me with the unknown Mrs Siddons and the drug user. I guessed SARAH from the S and H and then reverse engineered it, after which ROBE emerged from the fug. Nice puzzle. 27:28. Thanks setter and Vinyl.
  27. The crossword club shows authorship. Perhaps it depends on what device you’re using (it doesn’t show up on my phone).
  28. A very pleasing 28:22. They all went in very nicely until a slowdown at the end in the NE corner including COLE PORTER (COD of course) and PATRIOT. Lots of good clues, although I didn’t really like CURTAIN or SEE THROUGH (sea threw?). HERBIVORE is neat. My WOD is OXBOW

    Edited at 2021-05-17 10:32 am (UTC)

  29. 14:48. My highly original and controversial opinion is that this was really good, especially COLE PORTER and HERBIVORE.
    1. I liked it a lot too! Finally got around to working it this evening, right before today’s (Tuesday).

      Edited at 2021-05-18 05:23 am (UTC)

  30. A small omission in the parsing of 5D — the other elements need to be ‘about’ C for cold.
  31. ….not helped by NHO STOP BATH, the unknown usage of SHERPA, thinking that CURTAIN was a play on “curtail” (thanks Vinyl1), and, above all, by biffing “laundryman” which added 3 minutes to my time because I obviously couldn’t crack my LOI.

    FOI STEP
    LOI PATRIOT
    COD HERBIVORE (but COLE PORTER was excellent)
    TIME 12:32

  32. 15 minutes, typed painfully and with much correcting, into an iphone. Pleased with the time given the circumstances and other comments.
  33. Time to brush up your American songbook. Same hesitations as others on curtail/curtain and what ending to tack on to LAUND. In the magnificent old movies department the opening scene in All About Eve features the unscrupulous Anne Baxter being presented with the Sarah Siddons Award by George Sanders while Bette Davis et al look on with sarcastic smirks. On wavelength at 16.42. Nice. On edit – oops, sorry, it’s the closing scene in All About Eve. I shouldn’t rely on my memory these days…

    Edited at 2021-05-17 03:23 pm (UTC)

  34. Couldn’t get past FLAG BEARER at 4ac for quite some time. Then it was COLD BITTER until the other meaning of standard hit me like a wet haddock.

    COD 26ac even though I suspect everyone thought of a slightly ruder surface almost immediately 🙂

  35. Two pink squares for one mistype always seems harsh, but such is life.

    I thought this was very good with some classy cluing- COLE PORTER, SARCOPHAGUS, HOWARDS END and COD the pesky HERBIVORE.

    Thanks to vinyl and the setter.

  36. Flying start, and all looking good after about 15 mins, as I worked the four corners anticlockwise … and then came 4A which (like skua_74) I thought I had cracked but without parsing immediately. Then only ROGUE worked! By the time, LIMBURGER (it’s URGE – not HUNGER – for desire!) forced me to abandon FLAG BEARER, I had already been interrupted twice and forgotten to use the pause button. CURTAIN took too long (“How had CURTAIL been curtailed and then acquired an ‘N’?” I wondered). The clock was now showing an hour, so I decided to proceed at leisure and try again later. I finally submitted what I thought was complete – only to discover I had mistyped OOBOW and overlooked SARAH – so three pinks. All in all, a small disaster for my start to the week on the 15 x 15.

    Thank you to vinyl1 and the setter.

  37. with ROBE (I even thought of a monk’s habit) and SARAH not solved and 5 minutes spent staring at them, and I had to get back to work.

    I’d like to think that if I’d got ROBE, then SARAH would have followed, but I’m not 100% sure!

    Edited at 2021-05-17 12:40 pm (UTC)

  38. Pleased with that time but was seat-of-the-pants stuff for some of it. NHO of Sarah Siddons and (having just looked her up) I’m not sure why I’d be expected to have. NHO of STOP BATH either but both answers felt right from the wordplay. Loved COLE PORTER!
  39. Starting the week on the wavelength, it seems, so fully prepared to drift off beam as we move forward. The only sort-of-unknown was that specific meaning of SHERPA, but as the alternative term “bagman” gets used a lot for that sort of politico, not hard to see how it would be so.
  40. …. as a BS (barely started) for me. Managed four clues in about 15 minutes and even then had no idea how tantrums fitted in 1A. Life’s just too short to keep banging the head against a brick wall, and that’s what our setter had built against me today. Can’t remember when I’ve had quite such a total block as with this one.
  41. I had all the GK excepting only Mrs Siddons, who was clear from the cryptic. I liked Herbivore, and spent too much time not remembering the well-known It = SA.
  42. School memories for me: listening to Rory Gallagher’s Laundromat while working in the school dark-room developing arty pictures of Bristol in the stop bath. Probably read Howard’s End around that time too. The patriot-nationalist equivalence is an interesting one. Nationalists have a bad press, patriots don’t.
  43. It’s a rule, but no rule
    Where you find the darkest avenue,
    You’ll find the brightest jewel

    Agree with Vinyl and others that this was quite tough for a Monday, but very enjoyable.
    Convinced myself for a while that the bend was an “Elbow” and was trying to justify “Step Bath”. Eventually saw “Oxbow” and “Stop Bath”.

    1. Cooksferry Queen. Classic. Are you suggesting Catherine Howard was Mock Tudor?
  44. The QC blog gave me the impression this was easy. It wasn’t. But it was a great puzzle which I have just finished.
    LOI was SEE THROUGH which took ages to unravel.
    Lots of great clues but I’ll give COD to COLE PORTER.
    Solved after a lunch in a restaurant-how nice to get back to that.
    David

  45. A steady 25 minutes to do this, after a better than usual game of golf and only one torrential shower (but enough to get very wet). No real hold-ups, with STEP and PENDRAGON last ones in. Sherpa as political was new to me.
  46. For me, this was a return to more typical Monday fare (12:20) and an enjoyable, steady solve.
    NHO “Pens” in the context of submarines in 17 ac nor “Mrs Siddons” in 21 d but in both cases I felt the clueing allowed for no other options really.
    Over the piece, some very neat surfaces, particularly 4 ac “Cole Porter” and the 25 ac homophones for “See through”.
    Thanks to Vinyl for his blog and to setter.
  47. Excellent puzzle. I like it when I feel like I’m flailing (as today) but it all suddenly comes together. Not a great time but better than I was expecting after a slow start

    I also wanted flag bearer, and liked the pdm all the more for it

    Nho STOP BATH but as a resident of the latter that bit was my first few letters in

    Thanks all

  48. 30.58. I found this tricky and ended up looking at more than a few clues the wrong way round before finding my feet. Cole Porter and Herbivore the stand out clues.
  49. Enjoyed this one and happy to be educated about Mrs Siddons and Limburger Cheese because the clues gave us the answers anyway. All nicely done except I can’t decide if the double use of “wears” in 15a is clever or cheating. I guess, given the question mark, the setter couldn’t either?
  50. Way beyond this beginner, which made for a disappointing Monday. Sadly didn’t even understand some of the explanations, eg in LAUNDROMAT, does MAT = covering? Not sure I’ll ever see something like that for myself. Serious question: I usually find the quick cryptic fairly easy, and this cryptic too often too oblique for me – is there crossword anyone can recommend as a stepping stone between them?

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