Times Cryptic 27248

Author   jackktPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic

Solving time: 33 minutes. I found this easy but there are a couple of moderately obscure bits of knowledge required which I happened to know without giving them much thought. Others may not be so lucky.

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 Language once right to be used in hospital burlesque? (8)
SANSKRIT – SAN (hospital),  R (right) contained by [used in] SKIT (burlesque)
9 Mimic — one getting duty list backed by Cambridge college (8)
IMITATOR – I (one), MIT (Cambridge college), ROTA (duty list) reversed [backed]. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology is a research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
10 Quiet English male lacking funds in Welsh town (8)
PEMBROKE – P (quiet), E (English), M (male), BROKE (lacking funds). Very popular all of a sudden, and there’s a castle there too!
11 South American girl within borders of Bahrain (8)
BOLIVIAN – OLIVIA (girl) contained by [within] B{ahrai}N [borders of…]
12 Image-breaker’s current scam finally taking in old clubs (10)
ICONOCLAST – I (current), CON (scam) + LAST (finally) containing [taking in] O (old) + C (clubs)
14 A day to be overcome with wonder! (4)
AWED – A, WED (day)
15 Felons surprisingly collecting drug personally (7)
ONESELF – Anagram [surprisingly] of FELONS containing [collecting] E (drug)
17 Flush individual received by brother and journalist (7)
MONEYED – ONE (individual) contained [received] by MY (brother!), ED (journalist). ‘Flush’ can indicate having an abundant supply of something, especially money. “Brother” for “my!” makes a nice change from the more usual “cor!”
21 Buy it, trying at first to control weight (4)
DIET – DIE (buy it), T{rying} [at first]. More usually used in the past tense, ‘bought it’ means to have died, often as the result of an accident or in battle.
22 Kinsman keeping US chopper for leisure (10)
RELAXATION – RELATION (kinsman) containing AX (US chopper)
23 Advocate a change of course for speakers extremely eagerly (8)
ATTORNEY – A, TTORN pronounced [for speakers] in this word as “turn” (change of course), E{agerl}Y [extremely]
25 Like some philosophy a politician initially imparted in bar (8)
BACONIAN – A + CON (politician) + I{mparted} [initially] all conatined by [in] BAN (bar)
26 In small shelter rent out old historical wind instrument (8)
CORNETTO – Anagram [out] of RENT contained by [in] COT[small shelter], O (old). It’s a woodwind instrument from the Renaissance era and not to be confused with the brass cornett/cornet, the ice cream or the Italian pastry.
27 Vocalist’s slangy greeting to famous countertenor (8)
YODELLER – YO (slangy greeting – as in “Yo, Blair!), DELLER (famous countertenor). There aren’t many famous countertenors to choose from and the only two I could name off the top of my head are both called Deller (Alfred, and his son Mark) so I was okay on this one! Solvers lacking that somewhat obscure piece of musical knowledge have my sympathy.
Down
2 Heather’s personal introduction to New Statesman? (8)
AMERICAN – AM ERICA (Heather’s personal introduction), N (new). Erica being another name for heather. I think a ‘personal introduction’ needs to start with a personal pronoun  so I’m not convinced the wordplay actually works.
3 Adults may have them, not only children (8)
SIBLINGS – Two defintions of sorts, the second being the stronger with reference to ‘only children’ not having brothers or sisters and therefore themselves being siblings.
4 Reportedly regretted being cross (4)
ROOD – Sounds like [reportedly] “rued” (regretted). A crossword favourite.
5 Structural member that is black, secured by gang (3,4)
TIE BEAM – IE (that is) + B (black) contained [secured] by TEAM (gang). It’s a horizontal beam acting as a tie in a building etc. I only knew this because it came up once before and caught me out.
6 Love letter in post before announcement of party? (6-4)
BILLET-DOUX – BILLET (post – position / job), DOUX sounds like [announcement of] “do” (party)
7 Good person going over route for flight (8)
STAIRWAY – ST (good person), AIRWAY (route)
8 Splendid publicity inspiring duke’s older relative (8)
GRANDDAD – GRAND (splendid) + AD (publicity) containing [inspiring] D (duke)
13 Messy train woman brought round to disinfect (10)
CHLORINATE – CHLOE (wonan) contains [brought round] anagram [messy] of TRAIN
15 Big guns knight invited into ranker’s function (8)
ORDNANCE – N (knight – chess) contained by [invited into] OR DANCE (ranker’s function). Splitting a hair, we have OR for ‘Other Ranks’ every week, often clued as ‘men’, so we know it’s plural whereas ‘ranker’ is singular, so I think we have a misplaced apostrophe here and it should read: rankers’ function, or rankers’s function (if that’s your bag). 
16 They choose English readers in foreign universities (8)
ELECTORS – E (English), LECTORS (readers in foreign universities). SOED explains the significance of ‘foreign’ here although ‘lector’ also has a more general meaning that doesn’t preclude the non-foreign: a reader or lecturer in a college or university, now esp. one in a European country, as Germany or France, or in a foreign country teaching his or her native language.
18 Old bird and bloke outside (8)
EXTERNAL – EX (old), TERN (bird), AL (bloke)
19 Stretch limo originally acceptable in key northern street (8)
ELONGATE – L{imo} [originally] + ON (acceptable – more usually in the negative as in ‘that’s not on’), contained by [in] E (key) + GATE (northern street). Many northern towns and cities have roads called ‘gates’. We have them ‘dahn  Sahf’ too, e.g. in London. And Milton Keynes is full of them.
20 Man about town — Ronnie Winslow, for example? (7)
PLAYBOY – Two meanings, the second mildly cryptic and requiring alternative spacing: PLAY BOY. Ronnie Winslow was the eponymous hero of Terence Rattigan’s play, The Winslow Boy, in which he was accused of stealing a 5/- postal order. It was a huge success on stage, made twice into a feature film, the first of which was a classic, and has also been adapted for TV and radio.
24 Sharp girl about to go climbing (4)
ACID – DI (girl) + CA (about) reversed [climbing]

63 comments on “Times Cryptic 27248”

  1. Very surprised at my time, as it felt difficult at the time. Yet again MIT is reduced to college status; ah, well, it’s not my alma mater, anyway. Biffed 12ac (gimme) and 15d, parsed post hoc. Biffed 6d and didn’t parse; the other BILLET never occurred to me. And biffed 20d, since I had no idea who Ronnie Winslow was. I was surprised at MY in 17ac, although happy to see no ‘cor’ connection; for me anyway, ‘brother’ is an exclamation of irritation or resignation not surprise. But then, I don’t use the word. I had the same reaction as Jack to 2d.
    1. All the dictionaries I’ve looked in cover the same ground for both words to include variously surprise, irritation, annoyance, disbelief – and then throw in ‘etc’ for good measure.
  2. I found this one a little harder going, coming in at 12:39. YODELLER went in from definition (and the Y being in place, spent a while looking for HI…).
  3. Nice to see ‘our’ Olivia get a clue to herself even if she had to go to South America via Bahrain to get it.

    Edited at 2019-01-15 03:57 am (UTC)

  4. I prefer my 8dn spelt GRANDAD – but the answer was rather obvious.

    I agree that the personal pronoun is missing from the clue in 2dn AMERICAN

    Shamefully I have never seen the Winslow Boy but 20dn was a no-brainer.

    Time 43 mins

    FOI 10ac PEMBROKE (again!)

    LOI 3dn SIBLINGS – not terribly cryptic

    COD 1ac SANSKRIT

    WOD 25ac BILLET-DOUX

    I totally misread the clue for 27ac YODELLER and thought I was in search of a counterfeiter! Turner Prize winner Jeremy Deller (The Brixton Pound) came to mind so in he went! I’m conversant with Irving Berlin but not with his brother Oscar.

    Edited at 2019-01-15 06:59 am (UTC)

    1. I always sign with a single D in the middle because I never hear DD even when the word is elongated in exasperation.
  5. I messed up by putting BELIZIAN, not noticing that it doesn’t quite contain ELIZA. Oh well, two days in a row I made a stupid mistake.

    I saw the Winslow Boy on stage in London with Kenneth More as the barrister. I’d never seen the movie at the time. The famous extended scene where he accuses the boy and pretty much reduces him to tears was brilliantly done. It ends the first act when he suddenly says “The boy is plainly innocent, I’ll take the case” and the curtain comes down.

    1. 14:01 but… Snap. And Belize is in Central rather than South America, so we were both doubly wrong. SANSKRIT LOI looking for an anagram of R HOSPITAL for ages even though that is too many letters. Doh. Lots of nice clues. No problem with the musical ones at the bottom as I’ve done lots of early music; my favourite countertenors are Andreas Scholl and James Bowman. As for favourite clue today – I liked DIET but COD to STAIRWAY.

      Edited at 2019-01-15 08:07 am (UTC)

      1. I put BELIZIAN first too. We’ve had a Central American state clued as ‘South American’ in the past so I wouldn’t necessarily have ruled it out completely on those grounds, however the name ELIZIA did for it.

        1. …Although Elizia is, apparently a legitimate girl’s name and Belizian is an acceptable variation of Belizean…

        1. Yes, quite right .. my jaundiced view of the legal system proved obviously wrong, in this case at least 🙂
  6. 24 mins for me so not too hard. I thought this was a good puzzle with some nice surfaces and only one anagram. Is it a sign of a skilful setter not to over-rely on anagrams? The clue for SIBLINGS is very clever. Never heard of the Winslow Boy, CORNETTO (thought that was an ice-cream)or the countertenor but all these were easily gettable given checkers.
  7. 36 minutes. I lacked a lot of the more out-of-the-way-of-a-science-grad knowledge, including the countertenor, the musical instrument and Ronnie Winslow (and, at first, how to spell “BILLET-DOUX”. D’eux!)

    However, the puzzle was generous in not cluing obscurity by obscurity, at least, it all flowed quite nicely for me, albeit with the odd question mark in the margin.

    My biggest problem was trying desperately to remember what the little country between Guyana and French Guyana was called before realising I’d missed out a somewhat larger one in my search for a BOLIVIAN. Oops.

    Edited at 2019-01-15 07:39 am (UTC)

  9. Straightforward today, which suited me as I hoped to get this out the way and get on with revision for sailing exams I have this weekend.

    I feel decidedly lowbrow after solving as the only CORNETTO I know is an ice cream and the only DELLER I know is Keith Deller the darts player.

  10. I thought I was on for a sub-ten but then the SW and BACONIAN slowed me up a bit, so 12 minutes overall. I didn’t know Deller but I do remember Frank Ifield and Del Shannon, so YODELLER quickly seen. DNK CORNETTO as an instrument either, but the wretched ice cream advert sang it out. COD to PLAYBOY. Rattigan’s well-formed plays had a re-run a few years ago at the National. They were quite enjoyable, but you could sense why the world was ready for John Osborne. I prefer to spell GRANDDAD as in the clue, so I was pleased to see it. Thank you Jack and setter.

    Edited at 2019-01-15 09:31 am (UTC)

  11. For me there is no such thing as a famous countertenor, but somewhere in the deep recesses of what passes for a memory these days I remembered him, even if I did embarrassingly have him down as Keith .. but that is a dart player it seems. No problems with the Winslow boy, a moving play.
    Google Doodle today is celebrating the life of Sake Dean Mahomed, who opened the first Indian restaurant in England. Have been trying to decide if that was a good thing or a bad thing .. plumped for good, on the whole

    1. I did not know that, Jerry. Thank-you. I saw it first thing this this morning and it did make me ponder. I love a good curry especially in England. So no bad thing.
  12. Half an hour while watching tennis in oz. Had RUDE at first, and took too long to see iconoclast. Also had a BROWNIAN philosopher for a while. Only half on the job.
  13. 17 mins. Pleasant puzzle. ICONOCLAST straight in on reading ‘image-breaker’ – easy start for a Tarkus scholar 🙂 LOI MONEYED. The homophone component of 6dn relies on anglicised pronunciation (billy-doo), which seems fair enough.
    1. I don’t think it does — the ‘doux’ rhymes with ‘do’=party in most pronunciations, doesn’t it? And ‘billet’=post, as in a military placement.
  14. I was held up by a few including CORNETTO and CHLORINATE. Finished with SIBLINGS, which I bunged in on a prayer, not appreciating the clever ‘only children’ bit. Took about an hour in a couple of goes.

    My favourite was the reference to ‘The Winslow Boy’, which I remember doing at school. Brilliant play and (the Robert Donat version anyway) film.

    Thanks to setter and blogger.

    1. Yes, I thought SIBLINGS was a very clever clue which I found quite hard to do justice to in the blog (hope I succeeded!) so I was a bit surpised to see a negative reponse to it in another comment.
      1. If it was indeed my comment to which you were making reference – I was not being negative, more neutral, as it was more in the realms of a Parkathian logic test and not so very ‘crosswordy’.
  15. 11′ 28”, so better than yesterday. SANSKRIT/SIBLINGS LOsI, didn’t parse SIBLING, thanks jack. NHO DELLER, knew the play as a phrase but not seen it.

    Thanks jack and setter.

  16. 31 mins, and a steady straightforward solve for me. NHO Deller, but YO- and ‘vocalist’ made it pretty easy to guess. James Bowman is the only counter tenor I could name. SANSKRIT was an easy FOI, I knew the Rattigan play, stumbled over the entirely logical GRANDDAD spelling, made the RUDE error for a few seconds until PEMBROKE obviously sorted it, and rolled my eyes at PEMBROKE (again already!).
    Apropos the ‘ranker’s function’ of 15d: surely a rank-and-file soldier might well attend a social event for “Other Ranks”? And one could certainly call that event an “OR dance”, I think. Just as an individual officer might relax in the Officers Mess.
    Thanks, Jack, for the detailed, explanatory blog.
  17. DNK the Dellers (Della Street is more my level) but got the general idea and now I’ve got that wretched song from the Sound Of Music in my head. Saw The Winslow Boy with Jeremy Northam on a plane once upon a time. My only hold-up was self-inflicted having mistyped a D on the end of STAIRWAY and then trying to put a B for brother at the front of MONEYED. 14.01
    1. Della Street was my instant thought too, from 9 inch BW TV days. Don’t think I ever heard her sing, though no doubt Perry could have suggested it to clinch yet another improbable case.
  18. I really think it should not be necessary to use the pre-qualifier “famous” when referring to a celebrity.
  19. Made reasonably light work of this considering the number of things I had to take on trust / reach by a series of random stabs. I recognised Master Winslow, having seen both films, but missed the mark because I was looking for something more literal like ACCUSED, so that took a while. Keith the dartist is definitely the only DELLER I know, and the Cambridge college had me looking in completely the wrong country, as intended; and like half the solving population, it seems, went with RUDE until I had cause to rethink it, and realised that the nagging doubt in my mind was my suspicion all along that cross people are regularly rude, but not all rude people are cross.
  20. I’m fine with the billet bit; it’s the doux = do homophone I was talking about. If you say doux in French it doesn’t really sound like do in English. I’m a French teacher, btw. But I fully accept that billet-doux is sometimes anglicised in everyday English to sound like billy-doo.
    1. Ah! Whenever a homophone clue appears, there is very likely to be a protest that the homophony doesn’t work for some people, and I have been particularly interested over the last year or two in the perceptions of solvers on this blog about pronunciation and homophony. You point out that “in French” ‘doux’ does not sound like the English ‘do’ and I’m sure that is true. But similarly, I don’t think a Mancunian pronounces ‘do’ in the same way as a Londoner, nor an Aberdonian,… and so on. The actual sounds produced by individuals and speech communities will vary and so we base our notions of rhyme and “sameness” in vowel sounds on a set of idealised — and simplified — vowel phonemes.
      Your insistence that French ‘doux’ doesn’t rhyme with English ‘do’ pretty much repudiates the concept of homophony.
      1. I don’t think it does that at all. At the very most, it asks fervent homophonophobes to lighten up a bit and allow the setter some slack…
      2. But I never had a problem with doux/do. I said in my original comment “The homophone component of 6dn relies on anglicised pronunciation (billy-doo), which seems fair enough.” I understood “anglicised” to include all pronunciation variants in English. And in my reply to you I just meant that do doesn’t sound like doux as pronounced by a French person, but since most English speakers say billy-doo or billay-doo it doesn’t matter; that being the case, I’m perfectly satisfied with doux being construed as a homophone of do. I wasn’t complaining; I merely mentioned it out of interest en passant, so to speak 🙂
    2. When this term is used by an English speaker the pronunciation is anglicised, like any foreign term that has entered the language. However the ‘billet’ bit is pronounced (I would say ‘billay’), the ‘doux’ bit will always sound like ‘do’. How the French pronounce it is irrelevant.
      1. I know, k, that’s what I’ve been saying from the start! I said the homophone is fair enough, as it relies on anglicised pronunciation – which is of course what we all use for this expression. Not quite sure how all this kicked off…
          1. No problem at all, k. I love this blog because we all care about stuff like homophones!
        2. It all kicked off because I wanted to sound out the perception of those who, on the TftT blog, assert that such-and-such a word ‘isn’t pronounced the same as’ or ‘doesn’t rhyme with’ some-other word when a clue uses homophony in the wordplay. So it’s all my fault and I take full responsibility for winding you guys up.
          I accept your argument entirely — I am not at all saying you are wrong, and yet I am still confused about how a setter could possibly use homophony in the clueing without provoking such comments from solvers.
          Let’s wait and see what happens the next time a homophone crops up, shall we?
          1. No worries, ps; happy to help with your research! You’re right; homophones are often contentious.
  21. In under 15 minutes, despite being able to count the number of known countertenors called Deller on the fingers of one foot. There’s two of them?
    My only hold up (YO something singer was not difficult) was the STAIRWAY/MONEYED crossing, where I was toying with BONERED (BRother being more convincing than MY) along the lines of a “bone-red city half as old as time” despite bones being customarily white. But it might mean “flush” in some universe.
    No less than four random names today, five if you count Erica. Could they be siblings? The only connection a brief Google came up with is that Olivia Neutron Bomb’s daughter is called Chloe.
  22. …. couldn’t drag me away from this puzzle, even though it came on to play in the station bar at Manchester Victoria while I killed time before my train to Liverpool. It’s my earworm for the moment – luckily it’s one of my favourite Stones tracks.

    DNK any countertenors, but Del Shannon and his Swiss Maid did the trick for YODELLER.

    Post-solve parsing quite copious today, with ICONOCLAST, ATTORNEY, and ELONGATE all being biffed, none of them with real trepidation.

    Thought BACONIAN was clumsy, and had already had to concentrate on spelling the philosophical adjective in the QC.

    FOI BOLIVIAN
    LOI and COD SIBLINGS
    TIME 7:34

  23. I am sure I have met an Elizia somewhere, and maybe a Belizian as well. Ok I see I am wrong, but a forgivable mistake I hope. Why oh why did I go Brazil … Belize! Instead of Brazil … Bolivia! Oh well. Otherwise I completed what seemed to me a very tricky puzzle in 33 minutes – and that with a befuddled brain due to poor sleep.
  24. 10:43. No real problems with this, but it was an enjoyable puzzle.
    No idea about countertenors but ‘vocalist’ beginning with Y wasn’t difficult.
    Also no idea who Ronnie Winslow was but the definition was kind.
    Where London streets are called ‘gate’ they are typically named after actual gates. In York and other northern towns it is usually the influence of the Vikings, and in that context ‘gate’ is cognate with modern Scandinavian words for street: gade, gata, gate in Danish, Swedish and Norwegian respectively.

    Edited at 2019-01-15 12:05 pm (UTC)

  25. 17’00. Straightforward enough. I was a Winslow boy myself once (only as a resident of a small town in Buckinghamshire). No problem with Heather’s somewhat robotic self-introduction – a literalist grammatical tic that’s something of a crossword staple I’d have thought. Reading across, the middle rank catches the eye.
  26. Was off to a flying start with SANSKRIT and made steady progress throughout, eventually finishing with the BEAM of 5d, which eluded me until I unraveled ICONOCLAST. I knew of the Rattigan play but haven’t actually seen it. I had COTE as the small shelter until PLAYBOY corrected me. 28:48. Thanks setter and Jack.
  27. Held up at the end by AIRINGS which seemed reasonable but the ending of EGED looked unlikely, so having abandoned that I spotted MONEYED and it all fell into place. BUY IT seemed a bit odd, usually seen in the past tense but no complaints. As usual I missed the subtleties of many of these clues till coming here. Can I at this point express my appreciation of all the bloggers and commentators here. It makes every day’s crossword a joy.
  28. No real problems with this although for a while I was misdirected by RUDE instead of ROOD. I was held up a bit at the end by the BACONIAN/ACID crossing – I didn’t think of BACON as having a philosophic system named after him. 18 minutes. Ann
  29. 35:47. I raced through the top half but made a real pig’s ear of the bottom half and had to revise a couple of incorrect entries (clubber instead of playboy and relaxative instead of relaxation. Got there in the end. Made an educated guess at the countertenor once I had the yo, the dartplayer and his famous 138 checkout being the only Deller on my radar.

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