Times 27981 – scrumptious clueing this week.

Author   piquetPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
I enjoyed this one, nothing too obscure or contentious but plenty of clever clues, some of which like 6a and 20a had neat surfaces which read well and are relevant to the answer. I thought 23a was the best anagram for a while too. Well done, Mr Setter.

Across
1 Such a mammal’s position on a trail regularly overlooked (9)
PLACENTAL – PLACE (position) then alternate letters of oN a TrAiL.
6 In turn, doctor very brave just opening heart (5)
BOSOM – Reversed (in turn): MO (doctor) SO (very) B (opening of brave).
9 James’s version of the Mona Lisa? (8,2,1,4)
PORTRAIT OF A LADY – cryptic referring to the novel The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James.
10 Family must follow as well understood (4,2)
TOOK IN – TOO (as well) KIN (family).
11 Love alluring woman no end: time for action? (4,4)
ZERO HOUR – ZERO (love in tennis is zero) HOURI alluring woman loses its end.
13 Time away from poor old American native (10)
INDIGENOUS – INDIGENT means poor, delete the T for time, add O for old and US.
14 Ruthless chap avoiding pained expression (4)
FELL – this was my LOI and took a while to get. FELLOW loses its OW! Fell as an adjective can mean cruel or ruthless.
16 Group of countries taking part in a tournament (4)
NATO – hidden as above.
17 Piece of data, a single line added to one paper (10)
STATIONERY – STAT (piece of data) I (a single), ONE, add RY (line as in railway).
19 Rodent leading with its tail, and not very big (8)
ENORMOUS – MOUSE is the rodent in question, move its E to the beginning and add NOR ( = and not).
20 Grab fruit, two packs a penny (6)
SCRUMP – a rugby clue; two packs of forwards can make a scrum, add P for penny. This made me smile.
23 Problematic gift of cocaine polished off (8,7)
POISONED CHALICE – (COCAINE POLISHED)*. An excellent anagram, I thought.
24 Alarm not starting properly (5)
RIGHT – (F)RIGHT doesn’t start.
25 You lovely beaches! So many? (9)
THOUSANDS – THOU (you) SANDS (lovely beaches). I suppose the ‘lovely’ could be intended to refer to the ‘you’ in the familiar sense, or the niceness of sandy beaches, thou may tell me.

Down
1 Apparently good place for orchestra and singer (5)
PIPIT – PI (apparently good) PIT as in orchestra pit, a pipit is a bird like a drab-looking wagtail.
2 State going into broadcasting? I’m cool with that (3-12)
AIR-CONDITIONING – AIRING = broadcasting, insert CONDITION = state.
3 Nostalgic feelings when head lost income (8)
EARNINGS – YEARNINGS loses Y.
4 Double whiskey — canned? (4)
TWIN – W for whiskey in TIN for can.
5 Admired appearance due for revamp: read on! (6,2,2)
LOOKED UP TO – LOOK (apprearance), (DUE)*, PTO = please turn over = read on.
6 Philosopher tours east, warning of danger (6)
BEACON – E for east goes inside BACON, your choice of Francis or Roger.
7 One gives a convict life, as an interim measure (4,2,9)
STAY OF EXECUTION – double definition.
8 Office a Tory left, sacked after a month (9)
MAYORALTY – MAY (a month), (A TORY L)*.
12 Tool order Charlie has left for workers (10)
INSTRUMENT – order = INSTRUCT, swap the C for MEN (workers).
13 In secret, observe landlord (9)
INNKEEPER – INNER = secret, insert KEEP = observe, as in e.g. observe Lent.
15 Disguises trick with performing animals for audience (8)
CONCEALS – CON = trick, CEALS sounds like SEALS which are known to be used as performing animals.
18 One million after tax (6)
IMPOST – I (one) M (million) POST (after).
21 Papers, one of them missing formerly (5)
PRESS – (Daily) EXPRESS loses its EX = formerly.
22 Copy of Henry Green taken round (4)
ECHO – H for Henry goes into ECO for green.

60 comments on “Times 27981 – scrumptious clueing this week.”

  1. I did not know that meaning of FELL but I saw the “fellow” immediately. I had to wait for the checkers and was still pleased not to get a pink square. I think I’d heard of the James’ book, although I couldn’t have told you who wrote it. I got POISONED CHALICE from the enumeration and the first two words of the clue without bothering with the (clever) anagram.
  2. A shade under 20 minutes with not many hold-ups. Good to start off with PIPIT rather than last week’s ‘titlark’ (Grr!). I wouldn’t know one end of a rugby ball from another but enjoyed SCRUMP. Thank goodness the E in STATIONERY was checked – I can never remember which is which.

    Earworm of the day: “Oh, we’m come up from Somerset…”.

    1. E is for envelopes
      A is for at rest.

      Taught at primary school many decades ago and still remembered.

  3. A biff-fest for me at the start made me think I’d be rocketing home. But I slowed down considerably at the end with the likes of unknowns FELL, SCRUMP, and the final crossing of ZERO HOUR and BEACON — the penny-drop for which was immensely satisfying.
  4. fyi – re 1ac – the term “placental mammals” is somewhat of a misnomer because marsupials also have (short-lived) placentae.

    Not terribly challenging – 30 mins: a possible for the QC Foundation?

    FOI 10ac TOOK IN

    LOI 14ac FELL

    COD 20ac SCRUMP

    WOD 8dn MAYORALTY

    1. But monotremes don’t have a placenta. I think they are generally referred to as mammals as I think they provide milk for their young, hence they are mammary.
      Andyf
  5. Spent the last 5 or so minutes trying to make sense out of 20ac; finally came up with SCRUMP, which I only knew, if that’s the word, from a cryptic here some time back; even then I couldn’t parse the clue until after submitting. Getting PORTRAIT and the 2 long downs instantly (the chalice needed working out) helped greatly.
  6. LOI SCRUMP, with no clear idea what the wordplay was about, though SCRUM sounded like rugby. FOI was the James title.
  7. Horryd above might laugh, but I mombled EDORMOUS without thinking – you know, that word that means very small / not very big. Doing it mid-afternoon instead of morning has made my brain hurt, right off the wavelength, but enjoyed it enormously! Didn’t spot keep as observe, wondered if there was a reversal missing from peek.
    Thanks setter and blogger.
  8. Like Jeremy, a fast start made me think this was going to be more straightforward — with STAY OF EXECUTION and PORTRAIT OF A LADY my first two in, I had plenty of crossers. I slowed down considerably though, particularly in the bottom half.

    I often get nervous when I have a four letter answer for which I have little idea and I know I’ll be faced with at the end, and so it was with FELL. I didn’t help myself by doing an alphabet trawl whilst assuming the third letter was either A or E. Finally I had to rely on the parsing, which was satisfying. I didn’t know FELL for “ruthless” but I presume it is as in the expression “in one fell swoop” (I stand ready to be corrected).

      1. McDuff discovering that his family has been murdered. Astronowt would enjoy the metaphor: ‘O hell-kite! All? What, all my pretty chickens and their dam at one fell swoop?’
    2. I too used the ‘swoop’ context to justify FELL. It reminded me of someone who managed to get both ‘one foul swoop’ and ‘a mute point’ into one sentence.
  9. 43 minutes, so clearly I didn’t find this easy and I would not be recommending it to anyone on the nursery slopes of QC solving.

    I gathered that 9ac was probably a reference to something by Henry James but apart from ‘The Turn of the Screw’ I was unable to recall any of his titles. Eventually PORTRAIT OF A LADY came to mind simply as something I’d heard of though I doubt I ever knew it as one of his works. Incidentally I forget, but does it matter for crossword purposes that the first word of the actual title (THE) has been omitted?

    8dn was fresh in my mind. It’s not a word that gets used a lot, possibly because it’s awkward to say, but it must have been spoken a million times on radio and TV a couple of weeks ago when England held local elections and the MAYORALTY was up for grabs in a number of cities and towns. Many reporters and news-readers struggled to say it, with some attempting the modern trend of putting stresses in the wrong places and adding letters that aren’t actually present, and coming up with something that sounded more like ‘morality’. It was quite amusing to hear that the morality of London was being contested.

    Edited at 2021-05-19 01:43 pm (UTC)

  10. As 30 mins approached I needed an alpha-trawl for LOI Fell.
    Some nice stuff, e.g. my penultimate one in, Scrump.
    Zero Hour has prompted today’s earworm, Rocket Man. Altogether now,…And I think it’s going to be a long long time, ’til…..
    Thanks setter and Pip.
  11. 15.20 but! Put my pen down, looked at the blog and saw I’d missed polishing off 14 ac. Then the moral dilemma , do I just forget about it? Would II have got it – it was a bit tricky- and how long would it have taken me?

    No idea so a DNF.

  12. 24 minutes. Like others, I saw FELL(ow) but was unsure until coming here. This puzzle continued to tickle my fancy throughout from FOI PORTRAIT OF A LADY to LOI ZERO HOUR while avoiding the POISONED CHALICE until the STAY OF EXECUTION arrived. COD to THOUSANDS. Thank you Pip, and setter for a great puzzle.
    1. It’s short for ‘pious’ but its abbreviated form ‘pi’ carries with it overtones of hypocrisy, hence ‘apparently good’. People described as ‘pi’ are probably not as holy as they like to make themselves out to be.

      Edited at 2021-05-19 06:39 am (UTC)

  14. Started, but did not continue, with the James book. Rather liked SCRUMP.

    16’38” thanks pip and setter.

  15. 33 mins So on the easier side for me, though, as has been mentioned, some excellent clues. The NE took a little time to finish, and, of course, FELL was my LOI. COD to POISONED CHALICE for the excellent anagram. Liked SCRUMP too. No probs there as I do follow the rugby, and TWIN made me giggle. Thanks Pip and setter.
  16. Some clever stuff. I liked the ‘two packs’ and POISONED CHALICE particularly.
  17. 12:55. I liked this one. ‘Two packs a penny’ is particularly good, as are the long anagram and ‘double whiskey, canned’. An E in ‘whiskey’ is always an indication that it stands for W, but I’m not sure this makes much difference: as a solver you learn to instantly recognise all the NATO alphabet letters irrespective of whether they have a distinctive spelling.
  18. Failed to see SCRUMP. And that, having spent many hours as hooker in its sweaty combat. Doh. Still COD for me. Scrumping now for me is entirely at the bridge table, NV versus V, cheekily invading the opposition’s orchard. Thanks, setter and Pip.
  19. I must try doing these on paper, as a misentry for 3d left INDIGENOUS impossible to see and slowed things down in the bottom half.
    Still, I reckon my 20.13 was pretty good for this challenging number, with SCRUMP (smiley emoji) and then the rather innocuous PRESS resisting to the last.
    Poor old Henry James suffered the ignominy of virtually none of his oeuvres being recognised on Pointless: even The Ambassadors made no impression on the test group. I freely admit I find him heavy going, but even so.
    Please don’t anyone connect POISONED CHALICE to Spurs: it’s tough enough finding a new manager (and even players to stay/join) as it is. But that was a fine anagram.
    Too many goodies to select a COD, but as well as SCRUMP, THOU SANDS and ENORMOUS raised smiles.
  21. Love Henry Green, Henry James not so much.

    Very enjoyable, quite slippery in places. Instrument was COD for me.

    A world in which scrumping actually existed seems light years away now.

    Thanks to Pip and the setter.

      1. Being a city boy, I always imagine it refers to children bunking into walled orchards in the country (Richmal Crompton’s William comes to mind). This may be you, of course, but I suspect there may be a more general meaning that I did not know.
        1. Well, I live in the country and my property is surrounded by orchards. So yes, apart from the wall, that’s me…
          1. One lives and learns. One final comment. Both Chambers and Collins use the word “stealing” in their definition of scrump -and my own understanding is that there is something illicit about it. Would your own apple gathering be regarded as such by orchard owners? (or, If the orchards are your own, is scrumping the correct word?)
            1. It would indeed be regarded as stealing, technically at least, but I have an arrangement with the two nearest landowners for windfalls, of which the orchards here have literally hundreds of tons .. wrong size, wrong shape, wrong colour, any imperfections or blemishes, all lead to perfectly good apples being discarded. 😉

  22. With one typo, despite checking. ZERO HORR. Lead guitarist in a heavy metal band?

    COD: SCRUMP. 😀

  23. Loved 20ac, SCRUMP. Took me back to my youth in the Sussex countryside!
    Thank you, Pip!
    PS…For those who have missed me, I’ve been gallivanting round the South Island of NZ on holiday and since then my MacBook has been in for repair.
    1. Mac book, not surprised. The Fisher-Price of computing. Get a Dell and open windows.
      Envy your holiday.
      1. I’ve been using Macbooks since 2012 and don’t recall ever having had a problem.
        It was selling the house in France that enabled me to afford the holiday. NZ really is a beautiful country.
    2. See on page 1 above this already answered. Short form of pious with an implication that it is false piety.
      Andyf
  25. No problem with scrumping — which was almost obligatory when I were a lad — or the adjectival meaning of FELL. I knew the word PLACENTAL but not that it defined a class of mammal. Not sure where else I would have encountered it though. All done in 16m.
  26. 14:26 Another who DNK that meaning of FELL, so hesitated over that before bunging it in with a shrug. I loved the “two packs a penny”.
  27. Nice puzzle with lots of PDMs. Loved STAY OF EXECUTION. TWIN, then AIR CONDITIONING were my first 2 in. I was held up in the SE by SCRUMP and PRESS. The former was a big PDM, but I never did parse PRESS. Like many I was left with _E_L and a pained expression. Eventually after a fruitless alphabet trawl, OW came to mind and FELL went in with crossed fingers. 24:36. Thanks setter and Pip.
  28. Assigning PORTRAIT OF A LADY as an A level set book to 15/16 year olds was pretty stupid. Not only were his convoluted sentences hard to follow, so were the nuances of the plot. When I re-read it many years later I really enjoyed it, and the “sequel” (Mrs. Osmond) by John Banville was pretty good too. I recalled scrumpy cider so that wasn’t too much of a stretch but it took a while to see the rugby stuff. We are getting our AIR-CONDITIONING out of storage next week. Good one. 18.34
  29. Left hand side went in easily enough, then bottom right, then top right, with FELL LOI, once MAYORALTY gave me an L. I did know the meaning – Tolkein used it quite a lot in LoTR.

    SCRUMP was a lovely clue, as was the anagram and surface for POISONED CHALICE.

    35:07.

  30. Not as easy as horryd suggests. Apart from the NHO PIPIT, my problem was on the RHS with several dependent on STAY OF EXECUTION which I needed all but one checker for. Didn’t help that I’d spelt STATIONERY with two As — duh!

    Didn’t know that FELL meant ruthless though have heard of ‘one fell swoop’.

  31. I’ve just joined as requested after lurking with pleasure for years and marvelling at the speed of some of you. Yesterday I discovered, and today have verified, that if you do the Quick followed by the Cryptic on iPad (my lunchtime delight) the timer adds the two times together in its result for the second one. Did everybody but me know this? I am much faster on the Cryptic than I thought!
    1. Welcome petronella! That’s one of the reasons I switched from the iPad app to the crossword site in Safari.
  32. I’d like to say that Hero Hour was a typo, but having Hero as the alluring lady was so obvious that I didn’t think about the rest. I liked Scrump and Enormous. Thanks, pip
  33. I worked hard to finish this. My main problems were in the NE. LOI BEACON after ZERO HOUR and STAY OF EXECUTION.
    As people have mentioned this was a high quality puzzle and worthy of the time spent. I went for FELL not knowing this meaning. I also followed what I thought were the instructions in 1a and ended up with PLACEATAL.
    That’s three puzzles in a row now with one letter wrong.
    David
  34. ….and smiles were in ready supply. Only parsed INDIGENOUS and LOOKED UP TO afterwards. I agree with Pip regarding POISONED CHALICE, a first rate anagram — but it was “pipped” for COD

    FOI TOOK IN
    LOI ZERO HOUR
    COD SCRUMP
    TIME 8:12

  35. I enjoyed all 47 minutes of this. SCRUMP was my LOI, after vaguely remembering that a SCRUM might be two packs (in American football — I know even less about rugby). NHO of SCRUMP, either, but it did not seem unreasonable as I knew SCRUMPY. COD to ENORMOUS, but THOUSANDS was nice as well.
  36. 13.22. FOI portrait of a lady went in pretty quickly, followed straightaway by air-conditioning. Those two opened up most of the grid allowing me to race through this one. The excellent anagram was wasted on me I threw in poisoned chalice from the definition without pausing to parse it fully. A fun puzzle. Two packs a penny was excellent.
  37. 17:26 today. An enjoyable challenge although my performance was a bit “stop start” solving the NE corner last. Biffed LOI 6 ac “bosom” but should have remembered that “very” and “so” can be interchangeable. Wasn’t sure at first that there was a unique answer to 8d! Particularly liked 20 ac “scrump” and the anagram at 23 ac.
    Thanks to Pip and setter
  38. Chuffed to complete this, and double-chuffed to take under an hour. So excited I can’t remember which was FOI but LOI was 13d INNKEEPER. Got 14ac wrong, plumping for HEEL, which experts will see didn’t quite make sense but to a beginner kind of did! Enjoyable and satisfying, so thanks setter and for the blogger’s explanations.
  39. Is anything ever fell but one swoop, or anything ever doffed but a cap, or anything ever nigh but the end? More importantly, is there a collective noun for words that only survive in one context in the language?
  40. I’m running a day late this week, with not much chance of catching up if they all take as long as this one did. My first pass gave me just three answers (one of which was Fell!), which I normally take as a clear ‘do not continue’ indication, but with a Snitch of 86 it seemed worth persevering… Quite a struggle, but very satisfying to finish with Bosom, Beacon and loi Zero Hour. I even managed to parse (Ex)Press, so there is some hope. Invariant

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