Times 29317 – Just not baseball

Author   ulacaPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic

A Snitch (see glossary if you don’t know what that is) of 63 early in the day, but I think it’s a bit more challenging than that.

Lots to like here: a bit of geography, a bit of botany, a bit of geography-cum-botany.

12:06

Across
1 Alaskan city’s branch or agency downsized (9)
ANCHORAGE – hidden; largest city in Alaska by far. Juneau, the state capital, occasional pops up, and Fairbanks offers the setter swashbuckling opportunities.
6 Some soldiers almost laugh involuntarily (5)
CORPS – CORPSe; to corpse is to laugh (occasionally, to make someone laugh) at the wrong time on stage
9 Animated character with goal to serve drinks (7)
BARTEND -BART [Simpson] END (goal); Bart Simpson is actually voiced by a woman. D’oh!
10 Priest protecting poor moves out of Brazil (7)
LAMBADA – BAD in LAMA; moves, as in dance
11 Largely subdued spy drinks martini finally — it’s shaken not stirred (10)
TAMBOURINE – TAMe martinI in [Jason] BOURNE; got to love the Bourne films, about a bloke who doesn’t know who he is
12 Unenthusiastic response crushes small network (4)
MESH – S in MEH
14 Plant 41 stops work (5)
OXLIP -XLI in OP
15 Quest — pick outrageous dance (9)
QUICKSTEP – anagram* of QUEST PICK
16 Antique unit to get angry about state museum’s leader (5,4)
ROMAN MILE – OMAN (state) Museum in RILE (to get, i.e., make angry); a Roman mile (mille passuum or milia passuum – a thousand paces – from which ‘mile’ is derived) was somewhat shorter than a modern mile, standardised in 29BC by Agrippa at around 1620 modern yards. Well, you know, nutrition being what it was, those legionaries would have had shorter legs.
18 English city is a close match? (5)
DERBY – beloved home of Brian Clough; a derby is a game between local rivals. The latter owes its provenance (unsurprisingly) to the boisterous Shrove Tuesday football games of the 18th century. The most famous took place in Derby, where the parish of All Saints squared off against St Peter’s, the aim being to force the ball into the other’s parish.
20 Leave South American capital briefly (4)
QUIT – QUITo; Quito shares the podium with Bolivia’s two capitals in the list of world’s highest capitals
21 Artist’s editor wise to pull back (5,5)
EDGAR DEGAS – ED followed by reversal (back) of SAGE (wise) DRAG (to pull)
25 Save king’s boring quotation? (7)
EXCERPT – R (king) in EXCEPT (save – ‘all countries, save France, agreed’); ‘boring’ is frequently found as an insertion indicator
26 It’s played by chamber musician (7)
CELLIST – CELL (room, chamber) ITS*
27 Card deck returned to snitch (5)
TAROT – reversal of TO RAT (snitch)
28 Man to deal with topping for loaf (9)
HEADDRESS – HE (man) ADDRESS (to deal with); whimsical definition
Down
1 Religious leader and a bishop on program (5)
ABBOT – A B BOT
2 Sweet creature eats dairy periodically (7)
CARAMEL – dAiRy in CAMEL
3 Bananas gone on ripe tree (6,4)
OREGON PINE – GONE ON RIPE*; never heard of these, specifically, but a lot of trees – and a lot of rain – feature in the 2018 film Leave No Trace, a poignant movie, set in Oregon, which deals with post-traumatic stress disorder
4 Leader leaves more nuts for summer? (5)
ADDER – mADDER; as, in Crosswordland, a winger is a bird and a runner is a river, so an adder (someone who adds) is a summer (someone who does their sums)
5 Plant, say, on road plating metal (9)
EGLANTINE – EG (say, for example) followed by (on) TIN in LANE
6 It can make parting company bearable at first (4)
COMB – COM (internet domain name for a commercial company) B~
7 Period covered by cost of living? That should get a reaction (7)
REAGENT – AGE in RENT (cost of living, whimsically)
8 Grumpy companion follows friends the wrong way — reckless! (4-5)
SLAP-HAPPY – PALS reversed HAPPY (one of the Seven Dwarfs)
13 Abruptly left desk, dazed and confused (10)
SKEDADDLED – DESK* ADDLED (confused, as in, ‘Keir’s brain was addled’); ‘skedaddled’ was a common word growing up, along with its synonym, ‘buggered off’
14 Sort queen out if one asks for it (2,7)
ON REQUEST – SORT QUEEN*
15 Coin toss for fantasy sport (9)
QUIDDITCH – QUID (a one pound coin equates to a quid) DITCH (‘the horse ditched/tossed its rider’); I’ve never read a Potter book, but we took our kid to see the first two films, and this game featured in one of them. Pretty boring, but I forgive JK Rowling, since she talks so much sense about issues which wouldn’t have been issues when she and I were young.
17 Part of US train disturbed calm air (7)
MAILCAR – CALM AIR*
19 Kind of music paper publishing rubbish magazine (7)
RAGTIME – RAG (newspaper publishing rubbish – take your pick of quite a few in the UK; those in Hong Kong have been closed down for not toeing the CCP line) TIME (magazine)
22 Fancy cereal seen regularly in African city (5)
ACCRA – fAnCy CeReAl; at only 98 metres, the Ghanaian metropolis comes in pretty low in the highest capitals list
23 In speech, refers to locations (5)
SITES – sounds like ‘cites’ (refers to)
24 Rising late, nearly curses (4)
DRAT – TARDy reversed

67 comments on “Times 29317 – Just not baseball”

  1. 17:54 which I am quite happy with.

    Could have been sub-15 minutes but I forgot that both TAMBOURINE and BOURNE had Us in them despite it being an early thought. Where is the children’s crossword on the site?

    EGLANTINE LOI and NHO. Wanted all the checking letters before picking my road and metal.

    Didn’t know DEGAS first name and both Edwar and Edgar worked with the clue. Thankfully opted for the correct one.

    COD SKEDADDLED which I have not heard used for quite some time. Liked BARTEND as well being a huge Simpsons fan.

    Thanks blogger and setter.

  2. An enjoyable 20-min solve – sitting in the sun, on what appears to be the last day of summer here in Wales – though CORPS went in with a shrug as I’d NHO that meaning of ‘corpse’.
    Thanks setter and ulaca

  3. Thanks to ulaca and setter.
    1a Anchorage. Obv I thought of this immediately, ignored that and tried to do something with Nome, then took a while to see the hidden.
    9a COD Bart End.
    11a Tambourine NHO Jason Bourne so biffed.
    3d NHO Oregon Pine, but quite guessable.
    17d Mailcar. I got lazy and biffed railcar which delayed the Roman Mile a good bit. DOH!

  4. Having b_r___d for 9 ac and seeing “serve drinks” I lazily biffed BARMAID, but fortunately Oregon pine put me right. Stress-free start to the week.

  5. Nice, gentle Monday offering, all done in about 10 minutes.

    However, I have a slight issue with 4 down, ADDER. There seems to be an assumption in Times crossword land that you can make an agent noun from any verb by suffixing it with ‘er’ and it’s a valid word, but is it really? I guess that theoretically you could refer to somebody who is in the process of adding something up as an “adder”, but I can’t envisage any situation in which anybody would do so.

    We had “rebuker” a few days ago (in the QC I think) and that annoyed me as well.

    It strikes me that “adder” is a word that could be clued many ways, so why take this clunky option?

    Just to be clear, it didn’t detract too much from what was an enjoyable crossword on the whole.

    1. I’ve come across adders (and summers) in terms of electronic components designed to output the sum of their inputs, both analogue and digital, and Chambers supports it. I’d agree with you on people, but I’ve definitely heard it in the real world for devices.

  6. 20 minutes, of which 5 spent on LOI Mesh.
    My COD to Tambourine, for its reference to Jason Bourne – the clue cleverly made one think of Bond but I was pleased to realise that it was, in fact, Bourne – I enjoyed those films, especially the showdown at Waterloo railway station.

  7. 27:40. A gentle start to the week. I would have saved myself a few minutes if I had typed OREGON correctly the first time … I liked ABBOT – I was trying to make APP fit at the end of this for a while until the checkers came in. Must add BOT to the lexicon of short synonyms…

  8. I’ve still not completed a QC but I am pleased to have parsed five of these and got two “halves”.

    Give me a year or two….

  9. 7:40. My main problem here was mistyping EGLANTIND, and then failing to spot it for far too long.
    We’re supposed to have a rule here that we avoid controversial political issues but some people just can’t help themselves. I won’t rise to the bait on this occasion but it’s frankly a bit tedious.

    2. Less “controversial” with each passing day… if your reference is to the recent appearance of Anchorage in the news. Oh, wait. It isn’t. I see now. Well, I shall refrain too. But damn…!

    3. I was puzzled and had to trawl through all the posts to find a “controversial political issue”, but couldn’t find one. Was it the reference to Michelle Shocked making an “anti-gay” comment? That’s not a political question, it’s just about treating people with respect; I’m not aware that being “anti gay” is a stated policy of any of our political parties – not even Reform.

      1. That’s definitely not what K’s talking about. He’s referring to the blog, not the comments.

  10. Took me 30 mins because i wrote Abbot in at 6ac. Doing this sort of thing a lot lately. Nice crossword thanks

  11. I put SKIDADDLED for some stupid reason which spoilt what was otherwise an enjoyable crossword.
    FOI QUICKSTEP
    LOI ADDER
    COD SLAP-HAPPY

  12. A nice gentle Monday puzzle to help the Bank Holiday go by. All done in 21 minutes. No issues.
    FOI – ANCHORAGE
    LOI – OREGON PINE
    COD – SLAP-HAPPY
    Thanks to ulaca and other contributors.

  13. Agree with Dr Shred that having REAGENT as the answer to a clue built around REACTION is a bit limp. All was going amazingly until the old unit clue. Took a while to spot that I’d mistakenly put in RAILCAR. As a result I missed a good under-10 minute opportunity. 12’14”.

  14. Great fun although I was stumped by TAMBOURINE. Some clever clues – liked LAMBADA and QUIDDITCH!

    Thanks as ever to setter and blogger.

  16. Thanks to the setter and ulaca
    This one was a relief after the last three puzzles (my first three back from a long absence), but still it took just under 3/4 of an hour to complete. Lots of charades to negotiate throughout and some lovely and misleading definitions (10a, 11a, 28a and 8d) to add to the challenge.
    Just recently visited the French Impressionist exhibition at the Melbourne Art Gallery, so M. DEGAS was front and centre of thinking here.
    Started with ABBOT and finished with EGLANTINE and ROMAN MILE (the only new term for me).

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