Times Cryptic 27104

Author   jackktPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic

Just like yesterday I needed the best part of an hour to solve this one and took ages to get started –  it was 7 minutes before I managed to write in my first answer (22ac). There are a couple of unknown words here as indicated in the blog but also several meanings that I was unaware of.

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

Across
1 Cut off as required, keeping curled hair (8)
BLOCKADE – BADE (required) containing [keeping] LOCK (curled hair)
9 Root finally cracked Belgian concrete (8)
TANGIBLE –  {roo}T [finally], anagram [cracked] of  BELGIAN
10 Contradiction in terms that’s unacceptable (1,3,4)
A BIT MUCH – A straight definition of a coloquial expression preceded by a cryptic hint with ‘a bit’ and ‘much’ being opposites
11 What an unkind person swallows, being boozer (8)
ALEHOUSE – A LOUSE (an unkind person) contains [swallows] EH (what). Apart from being a habitual drinker, ‘boozer’ is slang for ‘pub’.
12 Gong sounded to an extent intrusive (10)
MEDDLESOME – MEDDLE sounds like [sounded] “medal” (gong – more slang), SOME (to an extent)
14 Whiskey taken before degenerate conduct (4)
WAGE – W (whiskey – NATO alphabet), AGE (degenerate), ass in conduct / wage a war
15 Something deceptive about valley turning a shade of green (7)
CELADON – CON (something deceptive) containing [about] DALE (valley) reversed [turning]. My first unknown word today, this is a greyish shade of green and also a type of porcelain glazed to that colour.
17 Duke socialite introduced in club lost money (3,4)
BAD DEBT – D (duke) + DEB (socialite) contained by [introduced in] BAT (club). Money that cannot be recovered. I remember controversy here long ago about ‘bat’ being clued by ‘club’ and/or vice versa but it passes almlost every week without comment now. I had written that I’m not sure how well known ‘deb’ / ‘debutante’ for ‘socialite’ is beyond these shores, but having checked on Wiki I see that debutante ceremonies featured at one time in the US social calendar too. Formal presentation of  ‘debs’ to the monarch was abandoned here in 1958.
21 Play concert with introduction deferred (4)
ROMP – {p}ROM (concert) + P [introduction deferred]
22 Straight over table (5,5)
ABOVE BOARD – ABOVE (over), BOARD (table). Basic stuff.
23 Fiction that has Scandinavian girl run in undergarments (8)
LINGERIE – INGE (Scandinavian girl) + R (run) contained by [in] LIE (fiction)
25 New article popular — such fine material (8)
NAINSOOK – N (new), A (article), IN (popular), SO (such), OK (fine). I didn’t know this cotton fabric but I followed the assembly instructions in the clue and  arrived at it successfully. This appears to be its first time in a 15×15 since TftT was founded but it was in two Jumbos only a few weeks apart in 2010.
26 Burnt fragments have reddish colour (8)
NUTBROWN – Anagram [fragments] of BURNT, OWN (have). This has had only one previous appearance, in 2007, but then it was alternatively spaced as  NUT BROWN. Collins lists it as one word but Chambers and ODO require a hyphen.
27 Star relinquishing power gives snarl (8)
ENTANGLE – {p}ENTANGLE (star) [relinquishing power]. ‘Snarl’ as in ‘snarl-up’ meaning ‘entanglement’.
Down
2 Syrian neighbour curses in shelter (8)
LEBANESE – BANES (curses) contained by [in] LEE (shelter). According to Collins ‘bane’ can only be singular but as part of the wordplay that doesn’t really matter.
3 Rogue artist defending the episcopal dignity (8)
CATHEDRA – CAD (rogue) containing [defending] THE, RA (artist). In this sense it’s the office or rank of a bishop. I knew the word as in ‘ex cathedra’ but not what it means on its own.
4 Onset overlooked in unspecified health problem (4)
AGUE – {v}AGUE (unspecified) [onset overlooked]
5 Intoxicant more than Olympian consumes (7)
ETHANOL – Hidden in [consumes] {mor}E THAN OL{ympian}
6 Incurable as warhorse cut in middle of winter (10)
INVETERATE – VETERA{n} (warhorse) [cut] contained by [in] {w}INTE{r} [middle]. An informal meaning of ‘warhorse’ here as a person who has been through many battles or struggles.
7 Stubborn alumnus expected to harbour traitor (8)
OBDURATE – OB (alumnus – Old Boy), DUE (expected) containing [to harbour] RAT (traitor)
8 Building workers dividing opinion (8)
TENEMENT – MEN (workers) contained by [dividing] TENET (opinion)
13 Activist in port feeding dreadful race row (3-7)
ECO-WARRIOR – RIO (port) contained by [feeding] anagram [dreadful] RACE ROW
15 She takes wheel in traffic queue (8)
CAROLINE – O (wheel) contained by [in] CAR LINE (traffic queue). I’ve seen O clued by ”round’ and ‘egg’ many a time but I don’t recall it as ‘wheel’.
16 Hard-skinned alien creature coming from below (8)
LAMINATE – ET (alien) + ANIMAL (creature) reversed [coming from below]. I’d have thought ‘hard-skinned’ defined ‘laminated‘ but I may be open to persuasion…
18 See leader once said to be corrupt (8)
DIOCESAN – Anagram [corrupt] of ONCE SAID. More church matters.
19 Disallows screwdriver, say, used by supporter in pub (3,5)
BAR STOOL – BARS (disallows) , TOOL (screwdriver, say). More pub matters.
20 Senior woman settled with money invested (7)
DOYENNE – DONE (settled) containing [with] YEN  (money) [invested]
24 Daughter in torment at last finds means (4)
DINT – D (daughter), IN, {tormen}T [at last]. ‘By dint of ‘ (by means of) is rare or obsolete according to SOED but I knew it well enough.

49 comments on “Times Cryptic 27104”

  1. 10:50 with INVETERATE the last in. I thought the wordplay was particularly strong in this one, with a bunch coming together from wordplay before twigging the meaning (DINT, CELADON, BAD DEBT for example). DEB was a thing in Australia; since I could dance a bit, in the 80s I was partner for a bunch of friends of my sister.
  2. Progressed steadily for most of this, but then I was thrown by LOCK for ‘curled hair’, rather than just ‘hair’ by itself, for 1a, which held me up in the NW. CELADON and NAINSOOK were already in the “Words from cryptic crosswords” file (28 pages so far), but CATHEDRA without the ‘ex’ was new, so in it goes.

    Finished in 57 minutes. No real stand-out clues, but I liked INVETERATE and the surface for LINGERIE.

    Thanks to setter and blogger.

  3. Like Dancing George, I though INVETERATE was particularly good. Unlike Dancing George, I took 78 minutes on this, submitting online in the hope that perhaps I had one wrong so my NITCH would not go further south. But, sadly, like wishing people you really liked at school would ask to be your Facebook friend rather than someone you scarcely knew, this was not to be.

    Finally finished in the NW, changing ‘alienate’ to BLOCKADE after getting CATHEDRA and MEDDLESOME. And the latter being one of CS Lewis’s favourite words too.

    Perhaps it is time for me to take a sabbatical…

  4. This was an an intriguing puzzle with the north-west passage being the tough nut.

    For 10ac I had A BIT RICH which works for me – but 4dn AGUE turned it into A BIT MUCH! So my LOI.

    FOI 9ac TANGIBLE

    COD 27ac ENTANGLE

    WOD 25ac NAINSOOK with easy assembly from IKEA. Nainsook translates from Hindi/Urdu as ‘eye’s delight’. Delightful.

  5. Surprisingly unproblematic. It helped that I knew NAINSOOK, and will never forget CELADON: it was (the translation of) one of countless useless words I had to look up in my Japanese class 50 years ago at Berkeley thanks to the idiot teacher, and for some reason it stuck (the English, not the Japanese). I had BLOCKADE early on but couldn’t parse it, so I dropped it until it seemed inevitable, and then the penny dropped. LOI ROMP.
  6. 20:18 … like George (we all like George) I was impressed with the wordplay, which got me safely through the kind of puzzle I often struggle with.

    A fair bit of lateral thinking needed, as in the LEBANESE, where I had started out looking for a country rather than a native of one.

    I might remember NAINSOOK thanks to Horryd’s mentioning the word’s origins. Nice.

    I really liked a lot of clues but I’ll single out the sweet surface of CAROLINE. All together now: If you want to turn me on to Now anything you really want to …

    1. Thanks for that… Too much watching cricket this summer has embedded Bumble and the other Sweet Caroline (wa’ wa’ wah) in the mind, so it’s nice to have it challenged.
      2. Or:
        Somebody may love you Caroline
        Helplessly
        Somebody may love you Caroline
        You know it won’t be me
        (Jake Thackeray)
  7. A steady enough 18+ minutes mostly following the wordplay to avoid typos, resulting in a field of CELADON and no hint of NUTBROWN (nearest in the puzzle to that particularly unpleasant shade of pink the club site uses).
    Neither CELADON nor NAINSOOK look like what they’re supposed to be, so it’s educational to discover here at least one is from a less-frequently pillaged language: eye’s delight indeed (cheers H). Does anyone know why the other, a character from D’Urfé’s Astrée (sic) should have become attached to a shade of green?
    I can’t be the only one whose entry into this puzzle was delayed by trying to work in an anagram of HAIR at 1ac, or to try working nectar into the Olympian clue.
    1. Well, here’s what Wikipedia says:
      The term “celadon” for the pottery’s pale jade-green glaze was coined by European connoisseurs of the wares. One theory is that the term first appeared in France in the 17th century and that it is named after the shepherd Celadon in Honoré d’Urfé’s French pastoral romance, L’Astrée (1627),[5] who wore pale green ribbons. (D’Urfe, in turn, borrowed his character from Ovid’s Metamorphoses V.210.) Another theory is that the term is a corruption of the name of Saladin (Salah ad-Din), the Ayyubid Sultan, who in 1171 sent forty pieces of the ceramic to Nur ad-Din Zengi, Sultan of Syria.[6] Yet a third theory is that the word derives from the Sanskrit sila and dhara, which mean “green” and “stone” respectively
  8. Curses! Pushed out ten minutes over my hour to get the last few, having been held up mostly by the unknowns, only to find that 15a wasn’t CELAVON after all. Shame, as I pieced all the other ones together correctly. Cruel!
    2. Thank goodness I didn’t think of VALE, or I’d have done exactly the same thing. By good fortune DALE was the only thing that came to mind, as I’d never heard of CELADON either.
  9. 45 mins with yoghurt, granola, etc.
    I see I have been beaten (twice) to the Sweet Carolines – so Elvis will have to do.
    I spent 10 mins at the end on the Alehouse/Inveterate crossers, so COD to Inveterate.
    Otherwise I liked: (P)entangle, bars tool and the Scandinavian girl.
    Thanks setter and J.
  10. A la Horryd,a bit rich but decided to decapitate tacit to accompany the two other DNKs celadon and nainsook.Liked the Northern intersections,a bit much,ethanol,inveterate, alehouse,obdurate,tenement,bad debt.32 mins to fail
  11. 55 mins. A real struggle this morning but I persevered and got there in the end. Some great wordplay revealing a number of unknown words. Similar experience to johninterred – but slower!

    COD: ALEHOUSE. Took me ages to realise that the boozer was a building and not a person.

  12. I really struggled with this one – just one of those days I guess because the clues are of a high standard with some excellent wordplays. Thank you setter and well done Jack
  13. 32:18. I struggle to have faith in my answers when so many are derived from the wordplay highlighting holes in my vocabulary. CATHEDRA on its own, CELADON, NAINSOOK and the meaning of DINT. I had WAVE for 14a for a while, wondering if AVE could mean degenerate, but I found WAGE in the end. Held up mostly (for nearly 10 minutes) by 1a and 3d, looking for an anagram of ‘hair’ in the former and of ‘artist’ in the latter. Lots of nice wordplay, though – hard to pick a COD, but I’ll go for NUTBROWN.
  14. One of those that never really flowed, with each answer a mini victory. Just my sort of puzzle but half a mark docked for another random girl’s name. Several interruptions so no accurate time but about 30 minutes at a guess.
  15. We’re on holiday at our ever-sunny St Annes apartment, overlooking the dunes and beach, I really wanted an easy puzzle today. So I’ll put the 75 minutes taken down to not being properly psyched-up before the game. I guess that, being in the north-west, that part of the puzzle was going to be the problem. Unfortunately, perhaps feeling too good about life, A BIT RICH entered my head before A BIT MUCH, and wouldn’t leave, and with BLOCKADE also seemingly blockaded out of my head, the AGUE avoided me. It was only when that did occur to me that the rest fell into place. I’d seen LEBANESE as FOI too. I did know DINT, bit I din’t know NAINSOOK, so thank you H for the eye’s delight meaning. So, full circle back to gazing at the sea. Thank you Jack for handling this stinker, and setter.
  16. Just for Z.’s benefit, I can confirm that someone else did spend some time trying to work an anagram of HAIR into 1ac. CELADON also rang a bell, though as often happens with these “crosswordy” words, I’d have struggled to define it without any context. That left the obvious final word at 25ac for me to work on, so I went back to basics and followed the wordplay, which seemed to be pretty categorically suggesting I should put N, A, IN, SO and OK together…even if it didn’t really look like a word (I think a young person of today would have said “What even is this?”). As it turns out that it actually is a word, my solving experience was both pleasant and educational today.
  17. NW sector also on the tougher side for me – took a while to resolve CATHEDRA as I was looking for an anagram of ARTIST, perhaps with DD inside, and that helped with BLOCKADE.

    Just also mentioning that it was nice to meet starstruck_au this evening, Mr Snitch himself, in a louche Melbourne bar

    2. Sounds like a crime novel … meeting mr snitch in some lowly dive …

      But thanks, indeed, for taking the time to meet, and for the drinks. It was a pleasure to meet someone so far ahead in word skills and to hear of your many and varied interests.

  18. Satisfying puzzle which proceeded with lento but not maestoso till failed to enter ‘wage’ not seeing why it or anything would work there. Perverse pleasure in being felled by one of the simplest words on the board – that’s crosswordland.
  19. Until I stopped trying to make an anagram of artist with DD inserted at 3d and spotted CATHEDRA, which I also have only come across with its EX, I spent some time as per Z and Tim, trying to fit some jumbled HAIR into 1a. As a tentative DAMASCENE wouldn’t fit at 2d, The Lebanon had already sprung to mind, and BLOCKADE then leapt out at me and I was able to complete the puzzle with AGUE. Previously I’d used the IKEA approach on NAINSOOK and CELADON, the first of which I’d never heard(thanks for the derivation horryd) and the second of which I knew existed but couldn’t have defined. Lots of other enjoyable word building opportunities in this puzzle which took me to 37:49. Thanks setter and Jack.
    PS did anyone else waste time with DOWAGER at 20d?

    Edited at 2018-07-31 11:26 am (UTC)

  20. How dare you Sir! I have never wasted my time with a dowager!

    Lord Nainsook of Belvoir

  21. My son-in-law has a thing for Samuel Smith’s nut brown ale so I keep a supply on hand for him (our local Food Emporium has a specialty beer section) so I was briefly thrown by seeing this all-one-word. Another “hair” anagram person here. Still, this seems to have been reasonably smooth sailing.17.31
  22. Well this took me 1 hr 25 mins. No reveals but technically another DNF as used the check word online option. LOI 6d INVETERATE which was very annoying since I already had IN_E_E_ATE having worked out part of the wordplay and with all the checkers. 21a ROMP was also a late entry. I understood the wordplay but just couldn’t think of a four letter word meaning concert that worked until I had the M from 16d LAMINATE. Biffed correctly CELADON, CATHEDRA and DINT. As always, thank you for the blog.
  23. I found this rather hard and spent ages getting started.I’ve never heard of NAINSOOK but it was gettable from the cryptic. I biffed AGUE but needed to come here for the explanation. 41 minutes. Ann
  24. My BLOCKAGE, which didn’t fit the clue, held me up for ages. A clever and reasonable crossword where the unknown words were easily constructed, but the known ones caused the problems. LOI INVETERATE As above I had the winter bit but couldn’t fill it in, possibly because I didn’t think of that meaning of warhorse. Very enjoyable 48 mins. Thanks setter and blogger
  25. My kind of crossword! Did not know “Nainsook” and not helped by putting in “Dioscean” for “Diocesan”. “Dioscean” sounds right, doesn’t it?
    1. I started off with DIOSCEAN too! The Ikea method of assembling NAINSOOK put me right.
  26. Gave up after an hour and bunged in WANE at 14ac based on ‘degenerate’ in clue but couldn’t see anything related to conduct that might fit. (I had already resorted to aids when stuck after half an hour, to find suggestions that fit checkers, so remembered CELADON from an antique show.)
    1. Commiserations… my initial WAVE at least had the merit of (sort of) describing conducting.
    2. In my opinion – the only one that matters (verbatim quote from a former boss, which I love!) – the pattern _A_E is the hardest solve in crosswords.
  27. 12:06. I didn’t find this hard but I did find it very enjoyable. As others have noted it was a wordplay puzzle and I really like those. Fingers crossed for NAINSOOK: it doesn’t look like a real word but faith in the assembly instructions was rewarded.
  28. 53 mins. A satisfying puzzle to work through because the tricky vocab meant paying close attention to wordplay. Heard of celadon but if asked what it meant I probably would have guessed a small dinosaur. Nainsook unknown and carefully constructed. My last two in were 11ac where unkind person didn’t narrow it down enough for me and 6dn where I was looking for a steed, Marengo or Copenhagen sort rather than the old hand.
  29. As they should all be. But that’s the only way I could have gotten to NAINSOOK, for salient example. I couldn’t tell if this was really a hard one or i was just too tired and worried about other things when I first tackled it. I finished up rapidly enough on the rebound, with BLOCKADE my LOI.
  30. Or maybe not. Eye rhymes have never worked for me. Only got to this at 11pm having been in Yorkshire all day.

    Didn’t much care for DINT, but any puzzle that has both ALEHOUSE and BAR STOOL in it can’t be all bad. Having had 4 DNF’s in a row, including Saturday, I actually had no trouble with this at all, and dispatched it in 16:35

    COD ENTANGLE. I used to have Pentangle’s excellent album “Basket of Light” back in the day.

    1. I still have Basket of Light, as well as Reflection and Solomon’s Seal, but I’ve transferred them from the vinyl to my iphone via the magic of Audacity and a USB turntable. Great music! Jacqui McShee’s voice is just so pure:-)
  31. I had good fun battling through this one. Been doing the Irish Examiner cryptic for some time, and recently the Telegraph cryptic. After a few hints from my cruciverbalist friends, and some reveals from your excellent blog, I got there! New words, artful clueing, thanks to all!

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