Times 28021 – The cold in the cooler will get hotter as a rule-r

Author   ulacaPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
I enjoyed this puzzle immensely, referencing as it did two of my favourite songs, one of which did double duty by prompting me to get the sciency clue without having to bother about what it all meant.

We also have a largely unread English poet, who I knew through my CS Lewis studies, a 70s sitcom that has lasted the course of time pretty well and possibly the best known work by Gilbert and Sullivan. Pompedy-pompedy pom! No Princess Ida to trip me up here. A self-confessed flat-track bully, I wonder if I might sneak under the WITCH again this Monday with my 24:10…

ACROSS

1 Mine closes branch that’s a bad place to be (6)
ARMPIT – PIT (mine) on (closes) ARM (branch); as in ‘Weston-super-Mare is the armpit of Somerset.’ Apologies to my sister and anyone else who live there.
5 Home before time, wound up fiancé (8)
INTENDED – IN (home) T (time) ENDED (wound up)
9 Player against work with piano nonet being composed (8)
OPPONENT – OP (work) anagram* of P NONET
10 Maroon thread (6)
STRAND – double definition (DD); my daughter put me on to Maroon 5 (the band whose lead singer cannot look at a camera without ripping his shirt off and showing his tattoos); I must confess to liking their 2019 number ‘Memories’, a riff on Pachelbel’s canon. ‘Memories bring back, memories bring back – yo’
11 Just the same as Ernie, perhaps (8)
LIKEWISE – LIKE [Ernie] WISE (of Morecambe and Wise fame)
12 A home to weep over in Balkan country (6)
BOSNIA -reversal of A IN SOB
13 Note a carrier with more than one iron canister of gunpowder? (3,5)
TEA CADDY – TE A CADDY (carrier with more than one iron – ho! ho! Fanny Sunesson and Steve Williams might be the most famous members of the breed of golf-club carriers cum psychologists); gunpowder is a type of green tea
15 Attempt to introduce the second of horses here? (4)
TROY – [h]O[rses] in TRY; so far as I know, there was only one attempt at equine deception in Asia Minor, so I am not sure the clue is entirely felicitous
17 Depend — only without me (4)
RELY – [me]RELY
19 Roll in once drunk for work (8)
NOCTURNE – TURN in ONCE*; Chopin’s nocturne in C-sharp minor (posthumous) was brought to a larger audience by the film The Pianist
20 Prohibit going either way in crossing (6)
FORBID – BI in FORD
21 Swap over shillings or sixpences, say (8)
EXCHANGE – DD
22 Mostly ill-tempered English poet (6)
CRABBE – CRABB[y] E; George Crabbe (1754-1832) was a poet, surgeon and clergyman. Byron described him as ‘nature’s sternest painter, yet the best’, so he obviously preferred him to Robert Southey.
23 Exhaust patent anger (8)
OVERTIRE – OVERT IRE
24 Not all there is to see in fourth rate feature (8)
DISTRAIT – IS in D TRAIT (aka ‘fourth feature’); absent-minded, as I am on occasion, especially with reference to almost anything told me by the wife
25 Origins of Pooh, Owl, Roo, Kanga, Eeyore, Rabbit and Piglet (6)
PORKER – the initial letters of all those AA Milne characters

DOWN

2 One who makes good dryer introduced by salesman (8)
REPAIRER – AIRER after REP
3 Things appropriate to youth at the outset (8)
PROPERTY – PROPER (appropriate) T[o] Y[outh]
4 Kid at home prepared for light work (3,6)
THE MIKADO – KID AT HOME*
5 Finally visiting the town we holidayed in most recently? (2,3,4,6)
IN THE LAST RESORT – hearing Don Henley sing anything is a delight, but I know every word of his Last Resort and have been known to sing along to it with a passion almost approaching that of the Texarkanan. ‘Call some place paradise, kiss it goodbye!’ They can put that on my gravestone.
6 Physical amount of energy left over in New York (7)
ENTROPY – reversal of PORT (left) in E (energy) NY; in simple terms, entropy is a thermodynamic quantity; or, as Michael Flanders puts is, ‘that’s entropy man!’
7 Note downpour develop over time and where it ends up (8)
DRAINAGE – D (note) RAIN AGE
8 Classic TV series — key dramas broadcast over years (4,4)
DADS ARMY – D (key this time) DRAMAS* Y – as you should jolly well know, Wilson…
14 A lot discounted spiteful gossip over Charlie and Rick (4-5)
DIRT-CHEAP – DIRT (spiteful gossip) C (Charlie) RICK (heap – as of hay)
15 Devious few do act false (3-5)
TWO-FACED – FEW DO ACT*
16 What elevates the way religious festival gets swapped around (8)
OVERPASS – PASSOVER becomes OVERPASS; simple as
17 Editor is embarrassed luvvy? (8)
REDACTOR – RED ACTOR
18 Lake supporting fish which may be close to the bottom? (8)
LINGERIE – LING on ERIE; a slightly Paul-in-the Guradianesque definition; what are times coming to?
19 Establishment making good bed covers? (4,3)
NAIL BAR – cryptic definition; the bed of the nail is the vascular epidermis upon which most of it rests. A nail bar is another formulation for a nail salon.

61 comments on “Times 28021 – The cold in the cooler will get hotter as a rule-r”

  1. Struggled woefully with an unknown loi in the QC earlier today, so came to the 15×15 for a different sort of challenge, only to repeat the process with Distract. Never heard of Distrait, so that was always going to be a stretch. I did however get Crabbe… probably because it’s quite close to my current mood. Likewise and Exchange were my two favourites today. Invariant
  2. Last Friday felt properly Fridayish and this was properly Mondayish. Only vaguely remembered CRABBE, but once the checkers were in, the bell rang a little louder. Some nice touches elsewhere with interesting surfaces (this sounds like an estate agent’s verdict).
  3. Being pedantic, Weston-super-Mare is no longer in Somerset as it’s now the Last Resort going south in that made-up county of North Somerset instead, as I’m sure your sister will inform you. Mind you, most people there say they still live in Somerset.
    31 minutes and glad not to fall into the DISTRACT pit.

    As a claim to fame, my great grandfather married the widow of Richard Temple who played the original Mikado.

    Edited at 2021-07-05 02:47 pm (UTC)

  4. but I liked this. Did half on the brink of sleep and finished in the clear light of day. LOI NAIL BAR. DISTRAIT came late, too, for someone who has often said, “Je suis trop distrait !” Focus…
  5. ….by forgetting to press submit. My time on the leaderboard is 8:36, but I was quicker than that (see below). I biffed my LOI (thanks Ulaca), and around here we usually say AS A LAST RESORT. Poet vaguely recalled from somewhere but I know nothing of his oeuvre.

    FOI INTENDED
    LOI DISTRAIT
    COD LINGERIE (a few “Private Eye” moments here !)
    TIME 7:12

    1. George Crabbe is probably best known today for his work The Borough, one section of which was the inspiration for Britten’s opera Peter Grimes. He was from Aldeburgh, in Suffolk, where it is set.
      Gill D
  6. 17:06. I enjoyed this puzzle a lot, plenty of witty clues and for me a little more difficult than the normal Monday fare.
    FOI 2 d “Repairer” and then a fairly brisk completion of the RHS before more of a struggle with the LHS.
    LOI 3d “Property” with a Biff for 19 d “Nail Bar” (thanks Ulaca for explanation)
    11 ac “Likewise” became easier when I stopped thinking about Premium Bonds.
    13 ac “Tea Caddy” helped by having heard of Gunpowder tea, although too nervous to have tried it!!
    Thanks to setter and Ulaca for an entertaining blog
  7. Re: Distrait

    The other day my wife said “You’re not listening to me”.
    I thought that was a strange way to start a conversation.

  8. 48 minutes with a few clues that required dusting out the mustier corners of my mind (CRABBE, DISTRAIT for which I wondered if it really was an English word as well as a French one), but also a few brilliant ones like TEA CADDY (which earned a guffaw when I realized what kind of gunpowder was being referred to) and NAIL BAR, which only went in after NOCTURNE told me it would not start with C. I took forever to parse or solve OVERPASS, LIKEWISE, even THE MIKADO, although parts of them were clear from the beginning.
  9. 22.35. Breezed through most of this rather Monday-ishly but ran aground in the SW and made no progress for ages until overpass (which was under-parsed), nail bar, forbid, Crabbe and distrait very slowly came together.
  10. Like many others, rattled through this until slowed down significantly in the SW corner. In the end, defeated by “Distrait” which is a new word to me. I should have figured it out from the word play but was distracted by “Distract”.
    Ah well.
  11. Whizzed through with biffing aplenty. I found that several clues were, while brilliant and witty, also very easy. eg Bosnia, Porker. Many thanks.
  12. Troy was famed for much more than the Hollow Horse.
    THE HIPPOI TROIADES (Trojan Horses) were twelve immortal horses possessed by the kings of Troy. According to some, they were sired by the North-Wind upon the mares of the Trojan King Erichthonius. According to others Zeus gave them to King Laomedon as compensation for the theft of Ganymedes.

    Perhaps the definition could be “horses here”.

  13. I’m surprised that nobody has mentioned Peter Grimes. My guess, although I know nothing really about this, is that Crabbe’s name lives on mainly because Benjamin Britten composed an opera based on Crabbe’s poem.
  15. Agree — or alternatively “Not all there is to be seen in fourth rate feature”

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