Times Cryptic 27140

58 comments on “Times Cryptic 27140”

1. I put in ‘rare’ for 22a, knowing it was wrong. I was too lazy though to do the required alphabet trawl and so was a DNF in 57 minutes. Still, I was no more convinced by AEOLUS, which surprisingly was correct, so you win some, you lose some.

   We’ve had ‘UN for ‘one northern’ a few times before but I missed it and spent a long time trying to parse UNSPOILT. I parsed 6d as a ‘strong desire to be a teetotaller’ but that probably doesn’t quite work either.

   Fooled by 10a which despite initial appearances was not 10a.

   Thanks to setter and blogger

2. AEOLUS was my LOI; I knew him, and was pretty sure of the US, but took a while to think of LO for ‘see’. CASE I got from the second def, which then called up the first; not in my vocabulary, but as Ulaca and Collins say. I didn’t feel any qualms as I put in ATTACHE, but I agree with Jack. SQUEAMISH took me a while, as I was working with SQUASH; finally saw the light.
3. I am currently working my way through the work of the director Anthony Mann, so LARAMIE – though not yet viewed – was a write-in. I share Jack’s reservations about 6 down, which I had to look up. CASE for an eccentric or odd person is pretty common, and not especially dated, I’d say. Collins agrees, I see. 40 minutes before throwing the towel in.
4. I finally just left that one blank and came here. Collins tags the first definition as American but I’m not sure I’ve ever heard it by itself and not as a part of “head case” or “nut case.”
   1. I rate those clues as well guy 😉
5. There were a couple of new ‘uns on me as I solved, U for one and ANA for another. Now I see, so thanks Jack. I’m living and learning.
   1. It’s ‘UN for one as demonstrated in your opening words. I always like cats in userpics. We seem to have lost a few over the years so it’s good to see yours.

      Edited at 2018-09-11 05:48 am (UTC)

      1. Agreed, but when I was solving I thought the U must represent one. Now I’m reading this again I’m wondering what the ‘ stands for. I put the apostrophe in in the morning, in the afternoon I might take it out.
         1. According to Chambers it can be spelt with or without an apostrophe and in any case the apostrophe doesn’t represent a particular missing letter. The pronoun is a variation on “one” (as in the clue) and the spelling “is supposed to reflect dialectal or informal pronunciation”. Logically I’d have thought it ought to be spelt ‘n’ but I’ve only ever seen that as dialect for “and” as in “fish ‘n’ chips”.

            Edited at 2018-09-11 08:40 am (UTC)

            1. OK, thanks. I think I’ll leave it in then.
            2. I imagine the apostrophe may represent the elision of ‘w’. In William Tyndale’s translation of the Bible, for example, he used ‘won’ for ‘one’.
               1. Maybe from littl’uns and big’uns at school, as in ‘Lord of the Flies’ (I think) and when I was at primary school.
6. We’ve come across Aeolian harps before, so I was comfortable to assume Aeolus was the guy who plays them!

   I didn’t much like 7dn. I couldn’t think of anything else, but I hate cryptic definitions where even after you see the answer, you’re not sure it’s right!

   On the other hand, I loved 10ac when I finally got it.

   Edited at 2018-09-11 04:53 am (UTC)

7. Liked the crossword, especially the Tunaware, but CASE for me is way to weakly clued when there are so many options. You think of it, put it in, and then go “probably not”….
8. 26:35 The bottom half went in quite quickly but I got held up by the NW corner, puzzled bu ‘UN initially and I failed to understand the wordplay for 10a, not knowing ANA for stories. I liked UNAWARE.
9. 21:21 with one wrong. Tied for Tier.

   LOI Adulterate. Took me about 5 mins to solve that one. COD Adulterate.

10. 15 minutes + (or minus, I suppose) a typo.
    I rather like the would-be sober diplomat, though I agree you have to invent the first A. CASE I put in slightly defiantly, as in “it might be wrong but I’d put in an appeal to the umpire, and I’ve still got two left”.
    We used to have contentious issues with Greek spellings in the TLS until Peter put a stop to any ambiguity, so the Latin version of the windy god went in happily enough.
    I also had a qualm about GREATNESS and fame being the same thing, as so many famous people on lists A through to Z are more grate than great, but I suppose the crossword solver’s concession applies that if it can mean what it says in some context that that’s OK.
    A delicious irony in cluing the great and famous Miss West in the easily shocked girl clue. “Those who are easily shocked should be shocked more often”. “Between two evils, I always pick the one I never tried before”. And loads more.

    Edited at 2018-09-11 07:42 am (UTC)

11. 45 mins with yoghurt, granola, etc.
    And 35 of these were very enjoyable. I liked: Mini=S.car, killing Dracula, I’ll make porridge.
    But the dodgy ‘un was 1ac.
    And there was a SWAMP (as Sotira brilliantly coined it): Short word allowing multiple possibilities.
    I drowned in the SWAMP.
    Thanks setter and J.

    PS I also put Tied (Tide) for the drop/level homophone.

    Edited at 2018-09-11 07:28 am (UTC)

    1. Glad to see I’m not alone in putting TIED, especially after having correctly solved the CASE… but ‘that would be an ecumenical matter’. Thanks to Jack for a lot of helpful unscrambling. Bob K.
12. Fifteen minutes over my hour, I desperately bunged in “CARE” at 22a, on the grounds that it at least fitted and had something to do with part of the clue. You have my sympathy, Jack! Found the rest quite hard, with the top half the more difficult, in general…
13. I also spent considerable time on CASE. I first tried an alphabet trawl for the first letter, then the third to no avail. Finally I decided I’d have to try running through all 676 possible combinations (minus the obvious non-starters like AA_E). Luckily the answer revealed itself near the start of the alphabet otherwise I might still be going.
14. My feelings about this puzzle mirror those of Jack and others. Somehow little bits of it irritated me. None more so than the SWAMP clue at 22A – life really is too short to devote too much time to such things

    I well remember Jimmy Stewart doing the honourable things as The Man from Laramie. I took a young lady to see it and paid more attention to the film that to her!

15. 22 minutes with LOI CASE, which hit me as I tried to parse ‘care’. COD to ANAGRAMMATICAL. Out of today’s context, I would perhaps have liked OUT FOR THE COUNT more. As a northerner, I would say ‘good ‘un’ and I could find no better explanation. CHORALE and AEOLUS in on a wing and a prayer.
    What with Bolton going into Administration and Lancashire facing relegation, the Lord is testing me more than somewhat at the moment, so it was as well this wasn’t too hard. Bum baller is an anagram of BluMarble. May that be their epitaph. Thank you Jack and setter.
16. 16:34. I found this very straightforward apart from the NW corner, which was completely blank for ages. I hesitated to put in UNSPOILT, thinking there was something missing, and I never really understood it. UN for ‘one’ is very familiar but the idea that it’s specifically northern isn’t. I spent the summer in 3dn so it should have been a write-in but it wasn’t for some reason.
    I seem to have got lucky with 22ac: the first definition is a familiar usage to me and I thought of it immediately once I had the checkers.
17. 27’10 with several mins on the squeamish/adulterate cross and finally case, which I consider a good clue. I do find jimbo’s comment above amusing for some unfathomable reason.
    1. Yes, yes, me too! I chuckled at jimbo’s concern that, as the sands of time are pouring through the glass and life’s opportunities parade past his window, he is forced to sift through the 160 possible solutions to a ‘_A _E’ crossword clue.
18. Lots of this one came to me without much mental effort (Dracula, SQUEAMISH, ATTACHE biffed in an instant, AEOLUS, SCHOLAR biffed, SETTLES, ADJOURNS and so on) but there were a few that really held me up: CASE, my LOI, required several of my 27 minutes solving time. And as I puzzled over it, I kept thinking “Haha! Those TfT commenters will have a right royal moan-fest at this _A_E clue.”
    TRELLIS was a nice cryptic and I liked the deaconess understandably disconcerted by spiritualist practices. But my COD goes to 10a.
    I agree absolutely about greatness and fame, and about the missing ‘a’ in the clue for TT ache.
    Thanks, Jack, for your blog and judicious notes. Thanks, too, to the setter.

    Edited at 2018-09-11 10:15 am (UTC)

19. I finished in 10:24 but was left with the impression that the compiler had probably produced this effort in much the same sort of time. I found a lot of it loose and unsatisfying.

    FOI GRANTS

    Once I’d realised the need to simply accept a lot of the clueing, I took everything at face value.

    LOI CHORALE as soon as I saw CASE. I seem to remember Kenneth Williams and Hugh Paddick’s “Julian and Sandy” characters in “Round the Horne” uttering the phrase “Ooh, he’s a case….”

    The Man from Laramie ! Some wordplay in THAT lyric which would raise eyebrows in a Times puzzle. “Danger was this man’s special tea. There’s no cayoot who could outshoot the man from Laramie” !

    COD SCHOLAR – the question mark made s.car perfectly acceptable. Also rather liked OATMEAL, but there were far more I wasn’t impressed by.

    Thanks for the excellent blog Jack.

    1. The phrase I remember from those characters in RTH was “He’s a caution…”
       1. Ooooh ! Inee BOLD Jules ?
20. I suppose the tricky thing for me about CASE = ‘bizarre character’ is that it wasn’t clued as ‘amusing character’: I’d have saved a few minutes there! Perfectly fair though.

    Got through in about 35 minutes, with some nice diversions on the way. CoDs ANAGRAMMATICAL and UNAWARE, thought the Small CAR clever, didn’t mind AEOLUS being in.

    Re ‘UN, Collins opines that ‘this spelling is intended to reflect a dialectal or informal pronunciation’. Okay, thanks.

21. Agree with jimbo and jack. Nearly a good puzzle with some duff bits. Did all except CASE in 40 minutes, left 22a blank as no sensible possibility seemed right. Still don’t like CASE for bizarre character. Got the GOD from the AEOLIAN harp angle. Liked my FOI, OUT FOR THE COUNT.
22. Very glad not to have been on blog duty for this one. Thanks Jack. Couldn’t parse ATTACHE and TRELLIS but at least they were unambiguous, but *A*E….. In the end it went in with a shrug and fingers crossed. My almost 3 month-old granddaughter is Mae so that was nice but otherwise this felt a bit hollow although there certainly some nice ones. 18.49, a good chunk of it spent on CASE.
23. Fortunately for me, I didn’t spend much time worrying about the bizarre character at 22a, but just accepted the “one receiving treatment” definition and moved on. I remembered AEOLUS as the God of the Wind referenced in another puzzle recently. I also didn’t worry about 6d, as the A was already in from GRANTS. RELEASE, on the other hand exercised me for a while, as I’d miss-typed GREATNESS as GREATENES. The N didn’t help at all! I also had an MER wondering about UN for one at 1a. I liked ANAGRAMMATICAL and OUT FOR THE COUNT. Nice puzzle. 27:36. Thanks setter and Jack.

    Edited at 2018-09-11 12:06 pm (UTC)

24. 28 mins. I thought the question mark in 15ac was swallowed up by ‘mini’ (as opposed to another make of car), and that the S was therefore unaccounted for.
    ‘Look at that S-car go!’ as the snail said to his mate.
25. Did OK with case but flopped on TIED.

    My STLOI was UNAWARE, and I’m not convinced that “(to have) no starter with fish” works like “no starter on/for” would. Indeed, the cryptic grammar points you to “ignorant to have no starter” so for ages I assumed that the definition had to be “dishes?”.

    Some good stuff elsewhere though, including ATTACHE where I’m happy that a TT ache could be a desire to go sober.

    Edited at 2018-09-11 12:07 pm (UTC)

26. The sixties film Morgan, a suitable case for treatment !
    1. Yes, but all patients, whatever their condition, are potential ‘cases’. If one happens to know the protagonist in the film you mention then he may well have been labelled as a ‘bizarre character’, but otherwise he could just have easily have been suffering an ingrowing toenail. I think the problem with this clue (other than those already explored above) is that it’s a double-definition where the two meanings are not sufficiently diverse to make them distinctive.

       Edited at 2018-09-11 01:27 pm (UTC)

       1. Agree completely. The two ‘cases’ mean virtually the same thing in this context (Mr Grumpy)
          1. I’d disagree there, as an amusing person and a sufferer are different things indeed. For me the extra difficulty is created in having a DD for a four letter word with A, E and two unches!
             1. Maybe, but I suspect the amusing or eccentric person is called a ‘case’ because their behaviour or take on life is seen by others as bordering on the ‘mad’ so that they might considered as a suitable case for treatment.
27. As my father, Londoner born and bred, used to say, so, like others, I was a bit bemused by 1ac. Also didn’t parse the mini. CASE came unbidden, fortunately, while I was cursing.

    22’50” thanks jack and setter.

    1. ‘Cockney’ is always used for the dropped aitch, while us northerners have the same propensity to drop it. I guess that this is becoming an entrenched crossword convention. North means ‘un, south a missing aitch.
28. Hi. Could the definition be simply ends with US and JORDAN meeting, scuppered? Awkward grammar, but several other clues are a little awkward to me, including 1d
    1. Definition is “ends”
29. Oh, sorry about all the italics…
30. Ahhh… so the definition is “ends”, US and JORDAN are meeting, and then scuppered. I think that’s better. Never done this before.
31. 45 minutes, but after staring at a blank NW quarter for about ten minutes resorted to aids. Not delayed much by 22ac, while the aeolian harp put me right at 24ac after rejecting Uranus.
32. My hopes of a sub-twenty-minute solve diminished significantly once I’d passed the half-hour mark, and I ended up finishing in almost exactly one hour.

    The north-right corner resisted most of my efforts but eventually succumbed in a flurry, leaving me with 24a and 22a in the lower left. I finally managed to assemble AEOLUS from its component parts and then, like many others here, trawled the alphabet for _A_E at 22a. I settled on CASE with very little confidence; even if one accepts the dated first meaning, the clue as a whole is a little feeble, I think.

    In contrast, I thought 6d was a little gem of a clue. Thanks to setter and blogger.

33. Again I have one unsolved, but this time due to throwing up my hands a la Jimbo when faced with ?A?E at the end. Those crossers don’t narrow anything down in the least, so I threw in RARE as being somewhere in the vicinity of ‘bizarre’, and went back to my book instead. Regards.
34. DNF.

    Couldn’t parse 10a having no idea about Stories = ANA. Was on the right track but for reasons unknown even to myself went with ANAGRAMISTICAL, Well Expressed not suggesting much as i didnt get the ANA bit.

    No idea about AEOLUS either though i had heard of the aeolian harp.

    However I did get CASE from One Receiving Treatment and assuming that a Bizarre Character might be a head CASE.

35. I finished this without too much difficulty in 22 mins but then realised that I had missed out the contentious 22ac. I looked at -a-e and groaned but then saw the “one receiving treatment” definition and immediately thought patient followed straightaway by case. That was strong enough for me not to worry too much about squaring it with the less familiar first definition. The un in 1ac was twigged post solve. I think I used the expression wrong ‘un the other day. I had qms at greatness and trellis but they couldn’t be anything else.
36. A friend assured me that I would walk through his one in record time. No such luck. Judging by the comments of others, my time was not too dusty, but I confess to not parsing quite a lot of the solutions.
37. I don’t usually comment as I rarely finish but read the blog. I made up UEYLES at 24a from the wordplay with the see as Ely but evidently no-one else guessed that….
    Neil C
38. Attache and case in the same puzzle: a conspiracy obviously. I liked both those clues, probably because I got them in pretty quickly. However, if I’d got hung up on -A-E it wouldn’t have been the first time.

    I was around forty mins for this entertaining puzzle, with ticks for ANAGRAMMATICAL and SCHOLAR. Special mention for US and Jordan scuppering things. Wonder who they were stitching up.

39. Very pleased to get it all correct without cheats, but timed with a calendar rather than a clock.
40. 9.5 over a black or two. Guys I think that cheating to solve a puzzle is as pleasurable as cheating at golf.
    1. Exactly what is your point?

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