Times 28227 – normal service resumed; alors, Milou.

Author   piquetPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Well, after last Wednesday’s SNITCH-bitch, this was a pleasant twenty minute stroll with some clever clueing, I thought. I liked the French island and the Indian mountain, but wasn’t so keen on the Australian cooking prevention surface. 4a was a neat anagram too, and it’s always nice to be reminded of a famous Belgian apart from Poirot and Maigret. Here’s the blog.

Across
1 Like a dunce cap Charlie is given after trick with iodine (5)
CONIC – CON (trick) I (iodine) C for Charlie.
4 A spot to get drunk with grub? (9)
GASTROPUB – (A SPOT GRUB)*.
9 Dashes to represent Tom in this? (5,4)
MORSE CODE – as all boy scouts with the badge know, TOM in Morse is – — –. Kind of guessable, if you didn’t know.
10 Gym class skipped by more irritating sportsperson (5)
SKIER – PESKIER = more irritating, remove the PE for the gym class.
11 Not initially pleasant to fight for refrigerator (6)
ICEBOX – (N)ICE = pleasant not initially, BOX = fight.
12 Leaf pattern in range of colours worn by maiden (8)
PALMETTE – PALETTE has M for maiden inside.
14 Socialist embraces a strange character — The Devil, perhaps (5,4)
TAROT CARD – TROT (socialist) has A in, then CARD is a strange character.
16 United supporters flipped, creating a big mess (5)
SNAFU – U FANS reversed. WWII US acronym for Situation Normal All Fu**ed Up.
17 Ugly cut in garment (5)
TUNIC – *CUT IN)*.
19 Lifts hex mysteriously surrounding European show (3,1-5)
THE X-FILES – (LIFTS HEX)* with E inserted. I don’t think I ever watched any of the 202 episodes, in spite of it featuring Gillian Anderson. In those days I had better things to do; maybe they’ll do a repeats run on a Gold channel. Maybe they already have!
21 Old record label with award for expatriate (8)
EMIGRANT –  EMI (old record label) GRANT (award).
22 Quickly typed a letter for dictator? (6)
PRESTO – sounds like (“for dictator”) PRESSED O.
25 Garden area essential to occupation (5)
PATIO – hidden, not very, as above.
26 Signal heard to unexpectedly attack and gain an unfair advantage (5-4)
QUEUE-JUMP – QUEUE sounds like CUE = signal, JUMP = unexpectedly attack.
27 I’ve returned, following female and male relatives to see mountain (5,4)
NANDA DEVI – NAN, DAD (female and male relatives) I’VE reversed. Very high pointy mountain in India in a National Park.
28 Cyclist‘s condition (5)
RIDER – double definition, RIDER as in a conditional clause in a contract.

Down
1 Emerge and enter golf tournament? (4,4,3,4)
COME INTO THE OPEN – double definition, one flippant.
2 Two possible directions from Trondheim, perhaps (5)
NORSE – North OR South East.
3 Bird grabs the lady’s cigar (7)
CHEROOT – COOT a bird grabs HER = the lady’s.
4 Liquor — almost overindulge when upset (4)
GROG – GORG(E) reversed.
5 Cleared out messy desk to confuse daughter (10)
SKEDADDLED – (DESK)* ADDLE (confuse) D (daughter).
6 After a break, begins summaries (7)
RESUMES – double definition, where resumés has an accent.
7 Drink bottles beginning to affect party game (9)
PAINTBALL – PINT (drink) has A (beginning to affect) inserted, then BALL = party.
8 Hairdresser covers PC’s toupee clumsily — that’s controversial in Sydney! (8,7)
BARBECUE STOPPER – BARBER (hairdresser) has (PCS TOUPEE)* in the middle. An odd definition, I’d have thought ‘unpopular’ rather than controversial.
13 Drink what in Spanish island? (10)
MARTINIQUE – An island in France, made from MARTINI from Italy and QUE = what in Spanish.
15 Dog runs home with animated Belgian (3,3,3)
RIN TIN TIN – R (runs) IN (home) TINTIN (cartoon hero by Hergé who is a famous Belgian.)
18 Brazilian vehicle, one local uncovered (7)
CARIOCA – CAR (vehicle), I (one) (L)OCA(L). Referring to Rio de Janeiro.
20 Refrain from terror when circling globe (7)
FORBEAR – FEAR circles ORB.
23 Animal pound (5)
SQUID – double definition. SQUID is a less common slang than QUID but both mean a pound.
24 At first, Jimi Hendrix regularly shown to be forceful character? (4)
JEDI – J(imi), h E n D r I x.

57 comments on “Times 28227 – normal service resumed; alors, Milou.”

  1. I got off to a flying start in the NW and thought this was going to be easy but I really struggled to complete it. NHO NANDA DEVI, NHO BARBECUE STOPPER. NHO SQUID for ‘pound’ and although the answer came easily enough I assumed an error in the clue and that it should have been ‘Animal’s pound’.

    I’d have got CARIOCA more easily if it had been clued as a dance. It was the first number ever danced together by Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers (Flying Down To Rio, 1933).

    GROG was my LOI.

  2. I found this one easier than the quick cryptic today, but still a few submit and hopes – NANDA DEVI sounded familiar, SQUID from one definition and PALMETTE from wordplay. Been to Brasil so no problem with CARIOCA and I don’t think I’ve heard BARBECUE STOPPER since the early 80s. 9:43.

    Edited at 2022-03-02 01:37 am (UTC)

  3. LHS easy, RHS not so much. Nanda Devi a guess wanting the first word to be same as heard-of Nanga Parbat. Squid, palmette unknown, and never heard of barbecue stopper. Gastropub a fine &lit though almost a chestnut, liked Martinique and the word and clue for skedaddled.
    COD tunic.
  4. Several things I’d never heard of or couldn’t recall. CARIOCA, the BBQ stopper, the Indian mountain, and SQUID as a pound, PALMETTE as a pattern. But I bunged them all in confidently anyway, some more plausibly than others. But then I typed EMEGRANT over the top of RIN TIN TIN and didn’t notice, so I had a typo.
  5. BARBECUE STOPPER not a term I would use, but it definitely refers to controversial topics, not “unpopular”.

    NANDA DEVI was entered on a wing and a prayer, so I was fully expecting a pink-square outcome. Also couldn’t see how SQUID worked, but meh.

    Pretty straightforward otherwise, thanks Pip and setter.

    1. Yes, an online dictionary has interesting or controversial.

      I hadn’t a clue and thought it was a topical reference to Wuhan Flu prevention measures in NSW.

  6. 37 minutes. I must have spent about 20 minutes trying to work out SQUID and ended up submitting without any idea of what the S was doing for the ‘pound’ part of the def. Otherwise, same unknowns as others, which went in more confidently from the wordplay. No problems with ‘controversial’ for BARBECUE STOPPER, though an “attention grabbing” comment is closer to how I see the use of the term.

    Yes, maybe a chestnut but I still liked GASTROPUB and the “pressed o”.

  7. … that were in the Icebox
    and which you were probably saving for breakfast
    Forgive me they were delicious — so sweet and so cold

    25 mins pre-plums. Mostly I liked MartiniQue.
    Thanks setter and Pip.

  9. A couple of the clues that others have reported as NHOs fell nicely for me today. NANDA DEVI appeared in the first of the two championships I have attended. It was unknown to me then, but having managed to parse it from the cryptic it has stuck with me since. I also recall people using SQUID for pound in childhood. I thought they were just playing on quid, which maybe they were, and enough people did so for it to become accepted usage. Never heard of BARBECUE STOPPER though.
  10. Didn’t really enjoy that as I thought it was poor to make two obscure words cross, CARIOCA and NANDA DEVI. But so far, others have not found much difficulty with those two so I guess it’s me.
    I also don’t like 1d. To my mind you just enter a golf tournament, you don’t “come into” one.
    As for 8d, I lived in Sydney for the best part of 20 years and I never once heard that phrase.
    Thanks, Pip, for SQUID and SKIER.
    I liked ‘forceful character’ in 24d but my co-CODs are PRESTO and MORSE CODE.
    Nearly put PALMETTO but that’s the state tree of South Carolina.
    1. Enter = COME INTO
      Golf tournament = THE OPEN
      You don’t have to (indeed you shouldn’t, as you note) read them together.
      2. Then really the question mark at the end is unnecessary. There is nothing questionable about The Open as a golf tournament, so it must refer to the whole phrase.
  11. Orca was swimming along when he met Cephalopod, who was under the weather. They idled together, and were joined by Dolphin. “Hello Dolphin”, said Orca, “here’s that six quid I owe you”.

    This joke is ruined for ever by the nho 23d.

    Same obscurities as noted by everyone else, but finished in 20’03”, thanks pip and setter.

  12. 46 minutes, not finding this at all easy. LOI was the unknown CARIOCA, after I finally assembled NANDA DEVI. I don’t think I’ve heard of BARBECUE STOPPER in the many hours of cricket commentary I’ve listened to. Not the sort of term used by Jack Fingleton, I don’t think. I eventually constructed it from the cryptic plus crossers. I must have lived a sheltered real life too as I’ve lived 76 years in many different parts of this country and have never heard a quid called a squid, which I entered with a shrug. COD to COME INTO THE OPEN. It was good to hear RIN TIN TIN bark again too, and SNAFU summed up my performance on this puzzle nicely. A toughie for me. Thank you Pip and setter.
  13. Well, all was going swimmingly until I got an important phone call I had to deal with. Then I lost the plot. Gave up finally with RESUMES, SKIER, PALMETTE, PAINTBALL, PRESTO, SQUID(?), and, of course, BARBECUE STOPPER, all not solved. With enough crossers I probably would have got the latter but, I have never heard the term despite having family in Sydney and visiting many times. Boo hoo.

    Oh well, here’s to tomorrow. Thanks Pip and setter.

  14. I felt I’d raced through this, but clicked in 16:34 to realise I’d entered an ICEBOK. I’d never heard of the mountain or the Brazilian but the setter was kind with the cryptic side on both. SQUID took a little while to understand, but I knew it from the phrase “Giz a squid”, a polite request to borrow a pound.
  15. Following recent remarks about possible consequences of the Russian connections with LiveJournal, I’ve just followed Gill’s example of a couple of days ago and set up a user name and password on this site. I’ve made very encouraging progress recently in solving the daily 15×15 thanks to all the brilliant contributors here. Many, many thanks to all. Margaret.
  16. Did I finish today? Well I guess…..
    But the vocab was not a success
    CARIOCA a maybe
    And who knew NANDA DEVI
    Was a bliss-giving Indic goddess?
  17. 14:57. LOI the unknown NANDA DEVI. COD to GASTROPUB. Thanks Pip and setter.
  18. I thought that when Ali G used the word squid he’d simply got it wrong, but now I see that the word really does mean pound. But calling a squid an animal seemed unconvincing. And I agree with martinp1 about entering/coming into the Open. 38 minutes, having entered BARBECUE STOPPER and PALMETTE without knowing the words, and guessing on the Morse Code. Didn’t like the inelegance of conic rather than conical, or the dunce cap rather than dunce’s cap. Was trying for quite a while to make FRANCO and then PRONTO work instead of PRESTO.
    1. Nothing inelegant about conic. Never heard of a conic section? Maybe you need a dunce cap…
  19. This went in quite smoothly although I did have to stop and make sure I wasn’t confusing CARIOCA with karaoke (cue the Girl From Ipanema). Same as others, DNK the BARBECUE STOPPER and wondered if he was the local pest who always complains about the smoke/aroma wafting his way. P.S. Pip it’s Simenon who was the Belgian, Maigret was said to come from near Moulins in the Allier. 17.26
  20. Good fun. CARIOCA, NANDA DEVI, BARBECUE STOPPER, PALMETTE and SQUID for pound were all new to me but all gettable.

    Like Pip I’ve never seen THE X Files (or The Wire, or Breaking Bad or The Sopranos). I haven’t read Pride and Prejudice, either. I’m beginning to wonder what I have actually been doing.

    Thanks to Pip and the setter

    1. Whatever you’ve actually been doing, you’ve managed to miss the same rake of stuff as me. I suspect we’re both none the worse for it.
  21. 13:28. Bit of a strange one this: I whizzed through the top half at top speed, but then got severely bogged down in the bottom. No idea about BARBECUE STOPPER, which I constructed from wordplay. Likewise the unknown crossers NANDA DEVI and CARIOCA, and for some reason it took me ages to get the very obvious DAD in the former. MER at SQUID: slightly surprised to find it in all the usual dictionaries.
  22. Certainly hadn’t come across all the words used in today’s puzzle [citation needed] but the wordplay left me pretty confident I’d identified them correctly. I’ve picked up expressions like “mullygrubber” from listening to Australians talk about cricket, but not, as far as I can remember, BARBECUE STOPPER.

    NANDA DEVI comes up in quizzes, where I invariably confuse it with Nanga Parbat (or vice versa), much to my chagrin. No such problems in a crossword, happily.

    1. Wait, there’s another word for mullygrubber?

      Actually haven’t heard that term for a while. It was very much part of my youth, but that says more about the backyard “pitches” we played on.

      I recall Greg Blewett getting one from Curtley at the WACA. Pitched halfway down the track and hit the bottom of middle stump. Try playing that!

      1. “Daisy-cutter” was the term used on my terrible school pitches. Luckily we didn’t have to face Curtley on them.
  23. Like many of us, I had to tease CARIOCA, NANDA DEVI, BARBECUE STOPPER and PALMETTE out of the wordplay. I also thought that the clue for SQUID was missing an ‘S. Heigh ho. Otherwise all went in without a fuss, the NW providing a rapid start, and I was all done in 18:55. Thanks setter and Pip.
    1. Slowly but surely I completed most of it, but the Brazilian, the mountain and the barbecue defeated me. I was chuffed to remember SNAFU from an earlier appearance …! Margaret.
  25. comes the confidence to trust the wordplay.

    Lots of NHOs as per others, relatively confident that they would be correct.

    18:17

  26. With two left, I was wondering where the Z was, but it never appeared. PALMETTE unknown and took ages to get, and I fell into the old trap of ‘if there’s a u it might be a Q’ which left my LOI SQUID a bit tricky.
  27. NHO BARBECUE STOPPER which kind of ruined the fun for me, but when you have nearly all of the checkers, it goes in with a shrug.

    NANDA DEVI and CARIOCA both trusted to cryptic which paid off. PALMETTE an educated guess from three checkers.

    SQUID = pound — I’ve heard this extremely informally — agree that would have been better clued as ‘Animal’s pound’.

  28. ….which I was just glad to finish without running up a typo hat trick.

    FOI CONIC
    LOI GROG
    COD QUEUE-JUMP
    TIME 16:39

  29. Having been to barbecues all over Australia over the past 60 years – but never in Sydney – this was new to me as well. It’s either an obscure phrase, or a very localised one. Guessable.
  30. … but what a struggle. Nearly 50 minutes today after a lot of work to construct all the unknowns. Struggled with PAs as the male relatives in 27ac before seeing the much more likely looking DAD. COD MARTINIQUE, WOD SKEDADDLED
  31. 17:19. NHO of India’s second highest mountain (or its first) but the cryptic was suitably giveaway. Having spent some years in robust Australian society as a lily-livered Pom and never having heard the phrase BARBECUE STOPPER, I can only imagine how outrageous a comment would have to be to have such an effect.
  32. NHO Barbecue stopper, but I have heard of Marmalade dropper, which one sees more and more signifying an alarming or suprising piece of news. English equivalent, I suppose. And I didn’t know Carioca referred to people from Rio. I just bunged it in because I thought I’d heard of it – but it occurs to me now that what I actually had in mind was karaoke. Which raises an interesting possibility – the 1933 song being performed badly on a pub stage in a C.K.
  33. Same NHOs as most, and all eventually attained, but oh-so-much-slower than most! Frustrating that I still miss partial anagrams that in retrospect seem blindingly obvious, eg LOI Skedaddled
  34. Didn’t like BARBECUE STOPPER. No one seems to have heard of it; it’s not in my dictionary and I still have no idea what it means! To be fair the cryptic was kind but even so.

    That and PALMETTE were my last two in

    Hesitated over CARIOCA as wondered whether it could be CARNOCA with the n uncovered from ine

    Imagine my grumbles if I’d got that wrong!

    Thanks Pip and Setter

    1. “One” that should have said

      Now looked up the STOPPER. You live and learn

      Need to get a new dictionary…

  35. I normally do the QC as a warm-up, and my times have been improving pleasingly – but after a dismal effort today, I decided to postpone the 15×15 until after I’d been to the swimming pool.

    Felt to me like 2 different puzzles – started off thinking this was super-easy, and the LHS a good few immediate write-ins – but the RHS required some proper thinking. Ended up in the NE, unlocked by GASTROPUB, with LOI PALMETTE from the wordplay.

    First ever time I’ve done Mon through Wed all error-free, so this is a my best chance so far of achieving my medium-term goal of a full set of weekdays. Excitement mounting…

  36. Defeated by the leaf pattern and the Indian mountain but chapeau to the setter for 4across — best surface I’ve seen in a long time.

    Thanks pip and setter

  37. Worked the west side first, and the east was definitely harder, with the NHO PALMETTE, the NHO slangy SQUID and also NHO, I think, Aussie expression (mercifully, an anagram). LOI QUEUE-JUMP (as I obviously didn’t).

    I (and the woman who used to live with me) have seen all episodes of The X-Files on TV, and a movie. In college, the male star dated the publisher of the magazine I work for. Saw the great Gillian recently in Sex Education.

    Edited at 2022-03-02 03:46 pm (UTC)

  38. A late afternoon solve today which clearly didn’t help things. Same blank spots as everybody, and BBQ CORK took forever to imagine. Wouldn’t it be BARBIE STOPPER in Oz?
    PALMETTE looks more like a miniature miniature computer: apparently it’s more architectural than horticultural.
    Idly looking up CARIOCA classes in my area, confusing it (I think) with capoeira, I discovered that round here its a decent looking motor home: I wonder if they know?
    With any luck, the second highest mountain in India will be a quiz question tonight.
    I entered SQUID with trepidation, thinking (see above) it was only thus in my close family, and in any case dubious as an animal.
    A mildly grumpy 30.48 after a very fast start promised much better.
  39. Yes I have heard of a conic section, but it wasn’t clued as such, which was in my opinion why it was inelegant.
  40. Very easy indeed, except for the last three or four cues, so in the end I did take 42 1/2 minutes, with five of those devoted to the S in SQUID until I gave up wondering about it. That was my LOI, after GROG and PALMETTE. And of course BARBECUE STOPPER just had to be believed, although I could imagine it might be controversial in Sydney.
  41. I’m fairly new to the game of believing it’s possible to solve the 15×15 without any help, so it was a pleasant surprise to finish sans aids in 36:22, even if it didn’t quite crack the ton on the snitchometer. Could have been home in much closer to the half hour if not for the SQUID and RIDER double in the SE. Turns out middle-of-the-road DDs are often harder than precisely clued NHOs. Thanks Pip for the helpful blog.
  42. 15.27. A decent time given that there were a few unfamiliar elements – barbecue stopper, squid and palmette.

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