Times 28261 – I coulda been a contender

Author   ulacaPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
A pretty typical Monday offering, with not too much to scare the equines, or indeed ships of the desert. The winner of Most Bizarre Vocab Item was very generously clued and the winner of Old-fashioned Word That No One Ever Uses was something of a gimme too, so this is one that members of the Slow Coach Club might like to assay.

Only no blaming me if a cropper ye do come!

23 minutes for me, so a NITCH reducer, as a Monday ought to be.

ACROSS

1 Humped beast city attorney found in arid surroundings (9)
DROMEDARY – ROME DA in DRY
6 Emotional disturbance produced by second white wine (5)
SHOCK – S HOCK
9 Country-lover’s predicament at first, caught up in civil unrest (7)
PATRIOT – P (initial letter of predicament) AT (caught up in, as in ‘at work’ or ‘at play’) RIOT (civil unrest); a whole rash of patriots have sprung up in Hong Kong recently, like Cadmean warriors growing from planted dragons’ teeth
10 Sparkle, giving low-down about border (7)
GLISTEN – LIST (‘border or edging strip, esp of cloth’ [Collins]) in GEN (low-down)
11 What Tom possibly recalled, short hirsute growth (5)
TACHE – reversal of EH (what?) CAT (Tom); not sure why ‘short’, unless we are talking of a Hitler style. But of course we are not; thanks to curryowen for pointing out that ‘tache’ is short for, um, ‘moustache.’
12 Further damage a length of metamorphic rock (9)
MARMOREAL – if you further damage a length in Crosswordland, you may very well be said to MAR (damage) MORE (further) A (a) L (length)
13 Speed reached by the Spanish in very old metropolis (8)
VELOCITY – EL in C O CITY
14 Stick with fellow unknown to go missing (4)
WAND – W (with) AND[y] (random chap missing his scientific unknown Y)
17 Unoccupied daughter replacing son in Skye, perhaps (4)
IDLE – D for S in ISLE
18 Bad taste he exhibited initially? Surely not! (8)
AESTHETE – anagram* of TASTE HE E[xhibited]; I always think of Oscar Wilde, though there have been plenty of others
21 Issue overshadowing sport scholarship (9)
ERUDITION – RU (rugby union) in EDITION (issue)
22 Advert judge viewed with hesitation (5)
REFER – REF ER
24 One flies aircraft primarily by way of rocky peak (7)
AVIATOR – A (initial letter of Aircraft) VIA (by way of) TOR (rocky peak)
25 Ache to join key troops in the near future (7)
ERELONG – E (key) RE (troops) LONG (ache)
26 Solitary individual in outskirts of Leicester (5)
LONER – ONE in L[eiceste]R
27 Eccentric French composer wrapping clear thin fabric (9)
SATINETTE – NETT (clear) in SATIE; was Satie more eccentric than your average composer? Probably, if Ken Russell got hold of him, I suppose. Hang on – this from the Naxos website: ‘As eccentric in his way of life as in his music, Satie exercised considerable influence over some of his more distinguished contemporaries, including Debussy, Ravel and Poulenc.’

DOWN

1 Leading journalist going over regimental HQ (5)
DEPOT – reversal of TOP (leading) and ED (journalist); DEPOT can mean just about anything in a military context. Here’s Wikipedia’s initial take on the matter: ‘The regimental depot of a regiment is its home base for recruiting and training. It is also where soldiers and officers awaiting discharge or postings are based and where injured soldiers return to full fitness after discharge from hospital before returning to full duty. Normally, a variety of regimental stores will also be kept at the depot. The regimental depot is not the same as the regimental headquarters (where the main officers’ mess and certain central functions are based), though in practice the two will often be co-located in the same place.’
2 It gives a false impression to one’s pupils (7,8)
OPTICAL ILLUSION – simple enough, but a nice little story
3 Testimony of French accepted by English fellow (8)
EVIDENCE – DE (‘of’ in French) in E VINCE (a rather rare random chap)
4 Robots created by a university man at Aston originally (8)
AUTOMATA – A U TOM AT A; Lego for beginners?
5 Turn up in Mongolian hut, finding dairy product (6)
YOGURT – reversal of GO (turn in Monopoly, say) in YURT
6 It may stop habitual drunkard touring Tamworth, perhaps (6)
SPIGOT – PIG (of which Tamworth is a breed) in SOT (Crosswordland’s merry drunkard)
7 Off the alcohol, perhaps? Act as anchor in film (2,3,10)
ON THE WATERFRONT – ON THE WATER (off the booze) FRONT (act as anchor, as in a TV chat show)
8 County council’s final advantage, supplying ballast (9)
KENTLEDGE – KENT (county) [counci]L EDGE (advantage)
13 Flaw restricting ring, Irishman set up telephone facility (9)
VOICEMAIL – O (ring) in VICE (flaw) LIAM (random Oirishman, to be sure, begorrah) reversed
15 Devise new version of control outlet (8)
REINVENT – REIN (control) VENT (outlet)
16 Way to spur fish (8)
STURGEON – ST URGE ON
19 Knight leaves wading bird to get a drink (6)
BITTER – BITTER[n]; Knight is abbreviated as N in chess
20 Producer of fruit: pulpy drink mostly contains it (6)
CITRUS – IT in CRUS[h]
23 Rascal cutting top off sturdy walking shoe (5)
ROGUE – [b]ROGUE

54 comments on “Times 28261 – I coulda been a contender”

  1. 4:51. First time under 5 minutes in quite a while. Mostly I biffed away merrily, but I had to construct MARMOREAL and KENTLEDGE entirely from wordplay. Fortunately it was kind.
  2. But not an enjoyable puzzle for me. I’ve no idea how a noun like ‘advert’ can be a satisfactory definition of REFER but no-one else has mentioned this so I guess I’m missing something. The clue for WAND is just awful – I hate these ‘pick a name at random’ formulations – and is CITRUS really a producer of fruit? Not as I’ve ever heard the word used anyway. 6/10 and a ‘could do better’ for our setter today.
    1. verb: advert; 3rd person present: adverts; past tense: adverted; past participle: adverted; gerund or present participle: adverting

      refer to in speaking or writing.
      “I have already adverted to the solar revolution”

      1. Thanks for the definition. No need for the conjugation, which, for regular verbs, I can manage unaided, but thanks for the thought even so. I did look it up after posting in fact and I see that it’s of Middle English origin. My dictionary cites the same example of usage as you, but gives no date for the example nor indication of frequency of usage in modern day English. Suffice it to say that I’ve not contributed to its modern usage figures at all in the last 60 years.
  3. I paused at CITRUS too as ” producer “of fruit , thinking wait, isn’t citrus the fruit? However looking up “citrus” it is a class of plants, therefore the producer of the fruit. I think because we usually only hear of “citrus fruit” in ordinary discourse we can’t help but be diverted to that first meaning.
  4. 22.32. I ran through most of this puzzle pretty quickly but was sorely delayed by a few stragglers, the crossing kentledge and marmoreal in the north east, then aesthete which simply wouldn’t unravel itself from the anagrist, erelong and LOI satinette where I spent too long trying to lift and separate the eccentric from the french composer.
  5. 50 minutes, and like vinyl somewhat annoyed by getting off to a roaring start on the top left only to bog down entirely at the bottom right. I should have expected ERELONG to be two words, but apparently not, and KENTLEDGE, my LOI, is so obscure that my online Oxford English dictionary, to which I have just renewed my premium subscription, has no entry for it in the English dictionary, although the Italian one is happy enough to supply a translation. Not the most enjoyable of puzzles, and somewhat unbalanced, though I did enjoy STURGEON.

    Edited at 2022-04-11 05:27 pm (UTC)

  6. ON THE WAGONFRONT (don’t ask) delayed my LOI AESTHETE

    Also had MOREMAREAL until I moved out of Muppet-mode

    Miracle I finished it all correct tbh!

    Thanks Ulaca and setter

  7. Only got around to this on Wednesday as have been dahn saaf looking after my Dad who has been in hospital.

    Found it pretty breezy though had to (pretty easily) build KENTLEDGE and MARMOREAL from cryptic, and did not know those meanings of LIST and REFER.

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