Times Cryptic 27020

Author   jackktPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic

I needed 46 minutes to complete the grid. Much of it was straightforward enough but there were a few unknowns along the way and these slowed me down.

As usual definitions are underlined in bold italics, {deletions are in curly brackets} and [anagrinds, containment, reversal and other indicators in square ones]

Across
1 Determining age of a metal key found by 007 beside vehicle (6,6)
CARBON DATING – CAR (vehicle), BOND (007), A, TIN (metal), G (key)
9 Labour leader takes direction — the bare minimum!(5)
LEAST –  L{abour} [leader], EAST (direction)
10 Building material this person included in first catalogue (9)
LIMESTONE – ME (this person) contained by [included in] LIST ONE (first catalogue)
11 Carrier having legal proceedings connected to diamonds, perhaps (8)
SUITCASE – SUIT (diamonds, perhaps), CASE (legal proceedings)
12 Backslapping woman with little bottle (6)
JOVIAL – JO (woman), VIAL (little bottle). I wonder if the setter was tempted by:  Backslapping little woman with little bottle.
13 Like Virgil’s works, say, noble and detailed (8)
AUGUSTAN – AUGUST (noble), AN{d} [de-tailed]. My classical literary knowledge is not sufficient explain this further so I take the definition on trust.
15 Shame about limits of grass in animal enclosure (6)
PIGSTY – PITY (shame) contains [about] G{ras}S [limits]
17 Pulverised earth (6)
GROUND – Two meanings
18 Charming lass’s last gains (8)
WINNINGS – WINNING (charming), {las}S [last]
20 Released at one, reversing it in the centre (6)
UNTIED – UNitED (at one) becomes UNTIED when its central letters are reversed
21 Sphere of activity of one dipping into a French poem? (8)
UNIVERSE – I (one) contained by [dipping into] UN (a, French) + VERSE (poem)
24 Greek character curiously cites it as over-godly (9)
PIETISTIC – PI (Greek character), anagram [curiously] of CITES IT. Not a word I knew and as far as I can gather it’s just a long-winded version of ‘pious’ aka ‘pi’ around the ‘ere parts. ‘Pietistical’ is also available if one wants to go the whole hog.
25 Fish one consumed as main ingredient (5)
BASIS –   I (one) is contained [consumed] by BASS (fish)
26 Like Tyneside woman uncompromising about article? (5-7)
NORTH-EASTERN – NORA [woman] + STERN (uncompromising) contains [about] THE (article)
Down
1 Instrument identified by man in Church Army (7)
CELESTA – CE (church), LES (man), TA (army). It’s the small keyboard instrument perhaps best known for its part in ‘Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy’ from Tchaikovsky’s ‘The Nutcracker’.
2 Clamouring for ropes in stormy ocean tracts (7,7)
ROARING FORTIES – ROARING (clamouring), FOR, TIES (ropes). Strong winds around the 40th Parallel South that were an aid to shipping in the days of sail.
3 Surgical procedure overcoming twitching of the eye (5)
OPTIC – OP (surgical procedure), TIC (twitching)
4 Yorkshire fellow originally delivering drinks to crew (8)
DALESMAN – D{elivering} [originally], ALES (drinks), MEN (crew)
5 Part of system protecting casual worker (4)
TEMP – Hidden in [part of] {sys}TEM P{rotecting} casual worker
6 Early Christian confusing to a sinner (9)
NESTORIAN – Anagram [confusing] of TO A SINNER. Another unknown to me but SOED defines this as: A follower or adherent of Nestorius, patriarch of Constantinople (appointed in 428), who asserted that Christ had distinct human and divine persons.
7 Flyer exulted so vocally, welcoming young male castaway (8,6)
ROBINSON CRUSOE – ROBIN (flyer), SON (young male), CRUSOE sounds like [vocally] “crew so” (exulted so)
8 Distribute notes on drama, turning out article for nothing (6)
DEPLOY – D E (notes – music), PLaY (drama) from which A (article) is removed and replaced by [turning out for] 0 (nothing)
14 Violently beat son in heretic’s garment (9)
SANBENITO – Anagram [violently] of BEAT SON IN. And yet again I have to rely on a dictionary to explain this one: In the Spanish Inquisition, a yellow scapular-shaped garment, with a red St Andrew’s cross before and behind, worn by a confessed and penitent heretic. Also, a similar black garment with flames, devils, and other devices, worn by an impenitent confessed heretic at an auto-da-fé.
16 Walk round pub hosting end of international summit (8)
PINNACLE – PACE (walk) contains [round] INN (pub) and then secondly {internationa}L [end]
17 Petulant medic imbibing spirit before close of party (6)
GRUMPY – GP (medic) containing [imbibing] RUM (spirit), {part}Y [close]
19 Way informer turned up, trapping quiet family member (7)
STEPSON – ST (way  -street), then NOSE (informer) reversed [turned up] containing [trapping] P (quiet)
22 Instinctive feelings exist between woman and son (5)
VIBES – VI (woman), BE (exist), S (son)
23 Bovine creature young kids raised (4)
STOT – TOTS (young kids) reversed [raised]. It’s a young bull or heifer.

71 comments on “Times Cryptic 27020”

  1. ROARING FORTIES, SANBENITO and NESTORIAN came from recent memory, it was STOT that was the one I was hoping was correct going in from wordplay. Came in a shade under 9 minutes
  2. But unaccountably entered SANBETINO even after verifying via google that my san Benito hunch was correct
    I hate my brain sometimes
  3. 30 minutes, being held up by ROARING FORTIES, where it took me ages to get past ‘reading’ something for tracts. Only unknowns for me were SANBENITO and STOT, so might have done better.

    13 across references the role of Publius Virgilius Maro as ‘poet laureate’ of the emperor Augustus (Octavian).

  4. For the second day in a row I forgot to go back and check a solution I had doubts about: 8d today, where I flung in ‘replay’ while thinking, “Wait, RE is just one note”, not to mention not accounting for the 2d half of the clue. And I was close to getting in under 7 minutes; working out SANBENITO took extra time, since my B looked like an R when I wrote down the anagrist. PIETISTIC isn’t the same as ‘pious’; as the clue indicates, it can mean overly pious, or pious only in form, or it can refer to a movement within Lutheranism. CELESTA reminds me of Meade “Lux” Lewis.
    1. I think it has been discussed here before that the abbreviation ‘pi’ which appears regularly in crosswords carries with it overtones of ‘overly pious, or pious only in form’, so perhaps it ought to be considered as an abbreviation of ‘pietistic’. Not so according to the dictionaries though, it stands for ‘pious’. On checking this I just noticed that ‘pi’ in this sense can also be spelt ‘pie’ – something which has yet to turn up in a Times crossword clue, I believe.

      Edited at 2018-04-24 06:33 am (UTC)

  5. Same time, to the second, as the HKM. I feel this is a good result, especially after his blistering time yesterday.

    And with the same unknowns – SANBENITO went in with some trepidation. The ROARING FORTIES are familiar to Australian school children, so not too hard.

    Thanks, Jack, for the blog.

  6. Done in 55 minutes, with 5 unknowns solved by either guessing or helpful wordplay. I was surprised I hadn’t heard of STOT before, which according to the OED can also mean an (inferior) sort of horse, a term of contempt for a woman, or a clumsy person. Well, now I know.

    I liked the ROARING FORTIES clue and the ‘Petulant medic’.

    Thanks to setter and blogger.

  7. …So my last one in was SANBENITO. Never heard of it. (If memory serves…)
    The first references I found to STOT all had to do with a particular way an animal like an antelope sometimes leaps.
    I worked this in bits and pieces,fits and starts on the first day of a month-long vacation during which I had intended to go to France…
    1. Sorry to hear that you’re not fully recovered from your fall, if I’m correct in my reading of the above.
      1. Yes, that’s the sad truth. My flight would have been today, and my ear is making a lot of noise. Maybe this is the day it will finally clear up. Which would be a dirty trick of fate.

        Edited at 2018-04-24 02:30 pm (UTC)

          1. Thanks, James. In any case, I’ve got great insurance and am fairly confident none of the damage is permanent.
    2. Sorry to hear you’re missing out on your vacances but I hope you’re feeling better. When (if) our weather ever gets warmer I’m planning to re-convene our group for a get-together on our roof garden. Stay tuned.
  8. I clearly just wasn’t in the mood for this one today. Most of it went in pretty quickly, but after half an hour staring at the unknowns—ROARING FORTIES, AUGUSTAN, PIETISTIC, SANBENITO—I just lost the will.

    If I’d managed to get them I’d probably have sorted out my wrong answer for the unknown NESTORIAN and put in the easy-if-you-haven’t-got-a-letter-wrong 18a, too…

  9. Well, around 12 minutes for all but the heretic’s garment, quickly deciding that I didn’t know or care whether it was a SANBENITO or a SANTEBINO (or even a SANNEBITO). I suppose the overlap with PIETISTIC (or pietistical — thanks, jackkt) is nice, if you’re into the finer details of elaborately cruel Medieval ritual
    1. I guess Benito Mussolini doesn’t come readily to mind as a saint. A quick Google search reveals that he had what is actually a Spanish name, being named after the long-serving Mexican president Benito Juárez.
  10. 1ac CARBON DATING was FOI and 14dn SANBENITO was my LOI which I remembered as a restaurant off the Brompton Road.

    17dn GRUMPY was my MOI

    COD 18ac WINNINGS
    WOD 1dn CELESTA with 15ac PIGSTY close.

    29 minutes with 13ac AUGUSTAN doing the holding up.

  11. 30 mins with yoghurt, granola, etc.
    And I was joined by 3 random ‘women’ and a ‘man’. I’m surprised the clue to 12ac wasn’t “Backslapping woman and two other random people.”
    Informer=nose is a new one on me. I don’t remember that in The Sweeney.
    Mostly I liked: List-one, pub hosting summit and COD to the limited grass in the Pigsty.
    Thanks setter and Jack.
    1. In “The Sweeney” they would be informed by a SNOUT – same derivation ? I had seen NOSE in this context before, but it is uncommon.
  12. Easy puzzle but yet again obscure words clued as anagrams – lazy setting

    Well blogged Jack

  13. SANTEBINO for me, alas.
    Other than that – and the random guys and gals – nicely straightforward.
  14. 28 min 03 secs with one wrong. Santebino. I struggled to get the two long down clues despite having nearly all the checkers. I also couldn’t get past Reading when I should have been Roaring.
  15. for the second time in a few weeks I spoiled a PB with a stupid typo. Perhaps we should cut the setter a little slack on the anagram/obscurity issue given that if it has to begin SAN it’s clear the second bit is probably a name. Still managed to start it SNN though. But if you are going to define (8,6) as ‘castaway’ it’s hardly worth inventing any wordplay.
  16. 23.48, slowed by the same ones as everyone else, including way too long on 2d trying to work out anagrams involving ocean tracts and anything else culled from the clue. For a fair while, I assumed we were looking for “tracts” and the first bit was READING.
    SANBENITO is a new one on me, and I was struggling to remember the word (probably bastinado) which means beating and might have fitted.
    Should have remembered AUGUSTAN quicker, but was stuck trying AS (say) word for “noble” AN(d). Three dead ends which I persisted with too long. I may never learn.
  17. As others, 25 minutes with no idea where to put the anagram letters of 14d, the rest okay.
  19. 38 minutes with the SANBENITO/ AUGUSTAN crosser last to fall. I dislike anagrams clueing unknown words. We did Virgil Book Two for our Latin O Level set text , but I didn’t know it was Augustan literature. Perhaps he was still Emperor then. COD to NESTORIAN, perhaps because I’ve always thought Nestorius right and Cyril of Alexandria wrong on the nature of Christ ever since my studies. It came up a lot in either Physics or Divinity papers, I can’t remember which. Thank you Jack and setter.
  20. 16’4”, held up by the JOVIAL/DEPLOY crossing. Dnk SANBENITO or STOT, but they seemed right. ‘Name a famous castaway’ sounds like a question on Family Fortunes. Thanks jack and setter.

    Edited at 2018-04-24 09:06 am (UTC)

  21. 16.43 but a heretical spelling of the garment, though on reflection sanbenito was odds-on. Slightly strange mixture of clues – bit of a 13 15. Or come to that a 12 11, or 20 21. Enough with the 6 22.
  22. Hopefully we have used up our quota of tedious religious references for the rest of 2018.
  23. Count me in the camp who would prefer to see obscure* religious terms clued in some way other than anagrams. As others have pointed out, if you don’t know the word to begin with, who is to say that NOSTERIAN or SANTEBINO are any less obvious answers? I didn’t know STOT, either, but the wordplay there made it seem pretty likely that I’d found the correct unknown.

    *obviously, I am using the word “obscure” in its quite strict meaning of “referring to things I don’t happen to know”, using which standard I pronounce all the other clues to be perfectly fair.

    1. I think once you’ve twigged that SANBENITO is Saint Benedict it’s pretty clear what the answer is. The problem is that to get to that point you have to actually chance on the right combination of letters first, and until you do that there is no way of knowing that there even is such a combination. In these circumstances it’s quite hard not to give up. I think I just got lucky in that it was a combination I hit on relatively early.
      I got NESTORIAN from a vague idea that Nestor was a person of some kind. Pretty flimsy, particularly as that’s the wrong person.

      Edited at 2018-04-24 12:55 pm (UTC)

      1. I never twigged that even with the answer in front of me, and “Benedict” is literally (one of) my middle name(s)…
      2. I’m not about to defend the clue, or the term itself–which belongs in a Mephisto–but: it’s pretty clear that the def is ‘heretic’s garment’ and that it’s an anagram of BEAT SON IN. That’s insoluble. But having got the checkers, I had S_N_E_I_O, with ABNT to distribute to best effect. (Well, I had ARNT because of the way I wrote B, and thought of SANTERINO first, but.) The heresy had to be Christian, so SANBENITO seemed a natural. I’m with you 100% in principle, mind you, about clueing words no one knows with an anagram.
        And it shouldn’t be necessary to have all the checkers before an attempt at solving is possible.
        1. I sort of agree in so far as I think SANBENITO looks likely once you have it in front of you. But how are you supposed to know that one of the 24 possibilities is going to have this ‘looks most like a word’ quality? If you come up with SANBETINO and SANTEBINO, you would be entirely justified in concluding that there’s no reliable way of solving the damned thing and giving up. I’m sure I would have done exactly that if SANBENITO hadn’t occurred to me quickly, and I ascribe that purely to luck.
      3. Not sure I agree. As Kevin points out, if you have ABNT to distribute in S_N_E_I_O, with the A a bit of a no-brainer, then BENITO doesn’t need to be derived from BENEDICT per se, as it is a well known forename courtesy of MUSSOLINI. I don’t see there being too much chance involved. I never thought of St Benedict, but I was still 95% confident of the answer. These things are meant to be cryptic and this is hardly a fill-in-the-gap Shakespeare quotation clue. The ‘prescription’ against clueing difficult words with an anagram across the board is unlikely to catch on, and I think rightly so. The setter/editor’s range of weapons needs protecting.

        I think that sometimes the dash to get across the line within a given time means that speed solvers are unwilling to spend two or three minutes gusting a clue out. 29 clues in 10 minutes and one clue in three minutes may be unpalatable, but that’s life.

        Edited at 2018-04-24 02:33 pm (UTC)

        1. I feel like all this is backfilling from a known or fortuitously guessed solution.

          In my thought processes, SANT- (as in Sant-iago) was just as likely as SAN- as the first bit (as in Santiago — Saint James), and that’s just if one assumed that we were in the world of European Christianity, which isn’t a given. I also felt that -BINO was a plausible ending, after the Spanish / Portuguese diminutive — I honestly considered a word meaning ‘little saint’ or some such, as SANTEBINO.

          It all rather depended on where you started

          1. Yes I agree. If I had thought of SANTEBINO first, would I have thought:
            a) this is obviously going to be a word I don’t know, and SANTEBINO looks pretty feasible, in it goes, or
            b) whilst this obviously going to be a word I don’t know, and whilst SANTEBINO looks pretty feasible, I think I will continue thinking about it just in case there is another combination of these letters creating a word I also don’t know, but which perhaps looks just that little bit more feasible.
            My objection to this clue is that it is unreasonable to expect the solver to go through thought process in b.
          2. I take your point. I think your learning may have been part of your undoing, as most people with a cursory knowledge of Spanish/Galician/Portuguese would probably think that Santiago was formed etymologically from San and Tiago. Like Ann below, I am still inclined to think that this clue rates quite high on the guessability scale!

            For some, though, such as yourself, it is the equivalent of a false discriminator in testing. While this is bad in testing (the clever get the item wrong, the dumb get it right), in crosswords, based as they are on cunning and deception, I think it’s legitimate.

            1. Based on the empirical evidence of the comments here, this clue is clearly not high on the guessability scale.
        2. I don’t see why a garment should have anything to do with a saint, regardless of who is wearing it.

          Anyway, wasn’t there a Saint Toby?

          1. Probably. The number of saints appears to be basically limitless, so anything is credible. If the answer had been Saint Betino (by analogy with Betina), shortened to SANBETINO, I would have been in no way surprised, and equally unimpressed
  24. 12m. The crossword club site has stopped working on my iPad, so I will be solving offline for the foreseeable future. Grr.
    I was all ready to complain about 14dn but then after playing around with the letters a bit I came up with SANBENITO, and it seemed immediately obvious that it was the right answer. Similar experience with NESTORIAN. Having said there are other ways of clueing this kind of obscurity so I’d prefer it if anagrams were avoided.
    Fingers crossed for STOT.

    Edited at 2018-04-24 09:19 am (UTC)

  25. This one was either within my ken or reasonable guessing range so it slid in painlessly. Annoyingly in these parts OPTICs has come to be journalistic shorthand for (usually unfortunate) unintended visual effects or juxtapositions in the world of politics – such as a president apparently blithely playing golf while something dreadful happens. I don’t know if it has crossed the pond. 14.18
  26. Well, I got of to a great start, with AUGUSTAN my NTLOI. That left me with 14d, and a one in six chance of getting it right. I plumped for “santebino”.
  27. ….despite the presence of Robinson Crusoe. I found this fairly friendly, and 8:54 saw me through successfully (a minute of that was spent unscrambling 14D).

    FOI CARBON DATING

    Held up by SUITCASE, where I saw the SUIT as “legal proceedings”, so changed corners. I then ended up losing any thoughts of a structured solve, and moved randomly all over the square.

    DNK AUGUSTAN (thanks Ulaca), NESTORIAN, or SANBENITO (thanks Jack). All of which made me feel a tad GRUMPY.

    LOI SANBENITO
    COD ROARING FORTIES
    WOD CELESTA

    Perhaps we should all try to clue SANBENITO without resorting to an anagram. I tried in my untutored way, but couldn’t, so I forgive the compiler.

  28. Oh dear. I gave up somewhere in my 13th minute, having spent several minutes trying and failing to get anything plausible for 2d (and it took me long enough to put AUGUSTAN in before that). I didn’t even consider that ‘stormy ocean tracts’ might be the definition, and have never heard of the ROARING FORTIES in a non-decadal form.
    Anyway, it wouldn’t have mattered too much as I plumped for SANBETINO at 14d… insert usual gripes about anagrams for foreign words. Although I must admit that SANBENITO is more plausible.
  29. If Keriothe is going to resist dissing the clue for SANBENITO I’ll bloody do it. What an awful, awful clue. The surface reading is unnecessarily graphic for starters but how many times do we have to complain about “obscure” “foreign” words being clued by anagrams? If you’re watching, RR, please stop the setters doing this.

    For the record I was a santebino.

    1. I got it right, so obviously I think the clue is fine.
      No but seriously folks, I agree. As I said above, I think it’s reasonably clear what the right answer is once you chance on the right combination of letters, and I just got lucky. However expecting solvers to go through all 24 possible combinations in the hope that one of them might look more likely than the others is not cricket.
        1. Yes, point taken, it’s not going to start STN is it?
          However judging by the number of good solvers this clue tripped up I would say it’s far from obvious how to resolve the anagram fodder.
    2. I was expecting keriothe to join in as well, Penfold, but I’d forgotten his inviolable rule that if he knows it it’s fine.

      It is a terrible clue, and it says something about how irritating the vocab. item and the path to it are that I didn’t even notice the surface, unusually for me.

      The only days I seriously question my continuing subscription to The Times are when we get these clutches of ecclesiastical clues. I’d vote for the editor giving the setter concerned his own Churchy Puzzle (there’s a Fashion Crossword, so why not?) so the rest of us can opt out.

      1. As is obvious from my posts, I usually enjoy the odd theological clue, alongside an occasional one from my other formal disciplines of Physics and business. A churchy background is not exclusive to the chapels of major public schools. It was a massive part of my modest Lancashire youth, as it was for most in those post-war years, many of whom are still living however much they/ we have over-indulged in the years since! The antagonism towards religion behind some comments here is not shared in many parts of society and not by many physicists who know their equations can never fully solve. Indeed, I was thinking of making a joke about the similarities between the Copenhagen Interpretation and the Chalcedonian definition in my first post today!
    3. In case the more dissenters on here makes it likely we will see less such clues then I’ll add my agreement that it was below the usually lofty standard should of The Times’ setters.
  30. I whizzed through most of this in under 15 minutes, but then found myself stymied for a while by 14d, 23d and 24a. I came up with STOT and PIETISTIC reasonably quickly, but faced with SAN_E_I_O and 3 random consonants giving words I’d never heard of in whichever combination I tried, I gave up and resorted to Google. I’ll add my dislike of unusual foreign words being clued by anagrams to the clamour. 21:20 with 1 cheat. Thanks Jack.
  31. 31 and all correct. Looks to be a good time for me compared to others who are usually much faster. Perhaps living in the northeast and studying Virgil helped …
    1. Conticuere omnes intentique ora tenebant and all that. In my day, if you wanted to go to Oxbridge, you needed a Latin O-level.
      Nice puzzle although agree with all about anagrams of unknown words
  32. Apart from the unknown SANBENITO, which I thought was vaguely guessable from the checkers, I had no problems with this. 20 minutes. Ann
  33. I looked up SANBENITO even though I had all the checkers. Life’s too short to worry about such things, and the answer really could have been anything. So I agree with some of the unhappiness expressed above. But I did learn that Aeneid can be referred to as an AUGUSTAN. News to me, and I appreciate that lesson. Regards.
  34. 25:06 so mostly plain sailing, and pretty enjoyable too I thought with a good mix of vocab and gk. FOI 1dn. LOI 14dn. With checkers in place I concluded that it had to be san-e-i-o into which I had to deploy B, N and T. Of the six possibles I was sure it wasn’t sannetibo, sannebito or santenibo. I didn’t find sanbetino or santebino persuasive either and so plumped for the correct answer. I find it difficult to articulate why it is I felt on firmer ground with the “saint Benito” answer (recognising it as saint Benito certainly had a strong pull) but I don’t share the misgivings of others.

    Edited at 2018-04-24 08:11 pm (UTC)

  35. Book 2 was on my GCSE Latin syllabus. I remember an epic simile about wolves, some poor attempts at scansion – didn’t know my spondees from my dactyls – and otherwise generally enjoying it.
    1. “And Pyrrhus presses on with the force of his father. Neither the doors nor the guards themselves can sustain his onset.” I’m not sure if this proves the virtue of rote learning or the opposite.
      1. I passed Latin O-Level and studied(learned by rote) the Aeneid, but I can’t remember any of it now!

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