Times Cryptic 27278

63 comments on “Times Cryptic 27278”

1. …and finished in exactly 60 minutes. However, I did spend about ten minutes searching for a new paper inner sleeve for a record, which seemed to scramble my brain sufficiently to attack the puzzle with renewed vigor. ‘Sans culotte’ and ‘lily-livered’ became obvious, while before I was not seeing them at all. The ‘prime’/’abstain’/’in bad part’ section was my last in.

   I was under the impression that the clue (and answer) for ‘brains trust’ was one I had seen in a nearly identical form before, but now I’m not so sure. Can anyone remember the clue I’m thinking of?

   The crossword is the only place where Erica is a bush and Eric is a fine!

   Edited at 2019-02-19 04:47 am (UTC)

2. No clue what was going on in 9a or with the ERIC in 26a, so thanks for that. I enjoyed this a lot – all the variety and stretching of vocabulary, and the simplicity of ‘keep manager’ – and took 51 minutes.
3. I found this tricky, with some non-obvious phrases like LOSE CASTE.

   At 19a, I wondered if there was one of those double-bluffs going on with the compiler, and all you had to do was take the E off the last word of the clue (RAGE) to get RAG, meaning a garment. It even had a ? that might indicated somethign odd going on. But eventually I got a crosser and then realized the true answer.

   Some clever definitions like “keep manager”. It always takes me too long to realize something is not quite right, when an answer is in French, or contains a Roman numeral (like VATICAN II).

   My Mazda Miata had a tonneau, but it wasn’t on the back, it covered the whole cockpit if the roof was down. But it meant the word was very familiar.

4. Like U, I had no idea about the son in 9ac or ERIC in 26ac–rather Mephistoish, that one–but fortunately they weren’t necessary. I would have saved myself a couple of minutes if I hadn’t bunged in ARABIAN at 26ac. (Lawrence of Arabia again, another Arabian? It works if you don’t think about it at all.) This gave me N_A for my LOI 25d, and after trying in vain to think how the clue could produce NIA or NOA etc., I finally decided that something needed to be done about 24. The rest was pretty unproblematic, although BRAINS TRUST took some time (I would say BRAIN TRUST, for one thing).
   1. ‘The Brains Trust’ was a radio programme in Britain a few decades ago, Kevin.
      1. And if it had been an American program, it would have been called “The Brain Trust”. The term itself is especially connected with FDR, although it evidently originated (in the US) in the late 19th century.

         Edited at 2019-02-19 06:17 am (UTC)

         1. But ‘The Brains Trust’, like this crossword, is/was not American! So get used to it!
      2. That was in the 40s and then 50s, Martin, by which time it was also on TV. It was revived for a while on Radio 3 around the millennium, chaired by Joan Bakewell.

         Edited at 2019-02-19 06:00 am (UTC)

   2. Mephistoish indeed. I remembered from one in July last year where someone anonymous was rather rude about our Mephisto bloggers… and was seemingly unable to use a dictionary to find out what ERIC meant.
5. Thank you, Jack, for FRISSON and ERIC.
   I nearly put ‘floosie’ and struggled with BRAINS TRUST for a while as I was thinking of refuse = ban.
   My favourite today was Vatican II. That was clever.
6. I had no idea about the ‘Loving and giving boy’ or the ‘fine’, the answers for both having to go in from the def.

   I enjoyed some of the wordplay including the ‘Intriguing team’ and the ‘Keep manager’ def. Always good when you can recognise a ‘crossword word’ like ATTAINDER which comes along just often enough to stick in the memory.

   Finished in 56 minutes with (I’m a bit embarrassed to admit) TEA not only my last in, but unparsed until the penny dropped.

   Thanks to setter and blogger.

7. Didn’t know soignee, don’t speak French, and couldn’t fathom the cryptic. Could only think of science which I knew was wrong, so looked it up. Another with no idea about Fri’s son, but what else could the answer be? Castellan NHO but helpful crossers; Sans Culotte & Eric have both appeared recently (last year or so) otherwise they would have been NHOs as well. Lose Caste sounds like 2 words that might be written together, rather than a dictionary phrase, so that with all the unknown downs & 9ac meant the NW was last to (not quite) fall.
   Found it very hard, right off the wavelength.
   1. I’m glad I wasn’t alone in not being able to get a possible SCIENCE out of my head. Another minute and I’d’ve given up, too… Mind you, the rest of the puzzle made it pretty clear that the sciences aren’t dear to this setter’s heart!

      Edited at 2019-02-19 08:21 am (UTC)

      1. Gosh that was hard. Dedicated just over 2 hours to it (including train up to town and back) and pleased to get all bar ARABIST which was ironic as I had been with a part Syrian friend who had told me about a visit to the Ashmolean Museum where she had seen some of T. E. Lawrence’s possessions. This special kind of crossword synchronicity should have a name.
         1. 
            it’s called the Baader-Meinhof Effect (see earlier posts)
            ironically, it’s cropped up a lot recently

            jb

8. This should be familiar to Americans who remember studying the Constitution in high school, where we all learned the word: Article 1, sect. 9, “No bill of attainder or ex-post facto law shall be passed.” Both were possibilities in England at the time.
   1. These pesky legal terms crop up a lot & I can never remember them. They all seem to involve the mangling of a familiar word (ATTAINMENT in this case) with the meaning completely changed in the process. I suspect most of them are of French origin – not sure why this would be.
      1. The Norman Conquest played its part.
9. 21:42 … and a few things entered “without full understanding”.

   Quite pleased with myself for actually working out the Byzantine wordplay of VATICAN II. I’ll give it Clue of the Day, even though I don’t want to encourage too much of that kind of thing!

10. It seems I have a lot in common with others here, in that I found it hard and finished in exactly an hour! There was a lot of vocab I didn’t know in this one, which started with the first word of the clue for 1a and went downhill from there.

    Unusually, low culture didn’t help me much; The Janitor’s cabal in Scrubs, it being an American show, is the singular Brain Trust, but at least having heard that phrase did let me get 17a.

    Other completely unknown or only-vaguely-known things included VATICAN II, eric, ARABIST, CABALLERO, SANS CULOTTE, ATTAINDER, IN BAD PART, tonneau, OPEN ORDER, and my LOI SOIGNEÉ…

11. 29:55 with the last 5 trying to find the word that wasn’t SCIENCE in 2D. Lots of clever stuff going on. COD to DROOL.
12. 21.34 but with a typo (UPRIGGT) that evaded proof reading. FRISSON is very neat – thank you for the parsing Jack.
13. This was a good’un!

    FOI 23dn DECOR

    LOI 16dn VATICAN II

    COD 4dn SANS-CULOTTE Silver to 10ac FOOTSIE

    WOD 2dn SOIGNEE

    Time here 17.05

    Edited at 2019-02-19 09:07 am (UTC)

14. I’ve been used to it for a dozen years now.
    1. William and the Brains Trust was one of Richmal Crompton’s excellent books, if I remember rightly.
15. Tricky stuff, and made me think in interesting ways (I always find it intriguing that there is a grammar for crosswords which everyone adheres to, and yet one setter’s style can be recognisably different to another’s). Also, right on the edge of my vocabulary in several clues, and, in the case of ERIC, past the edge. Testing, but everything there in the end.
    1. I found the use of ERIC extremely irritating (I mean whatever the dictionaries might say it’s not a proper word) but I did actually remember it from somewhere, which can only mean one of these puzzles. I don’t offer this as a defence: I’m not going into bat for a setter who chooses LOSE CASTE for 1ac.
       1. I agree. “Lose Caste” is a pretty random phrase, as far as I know.
          1. It appears in a couple of the dictionaries as it happens, but that doesn’t justify it for me. Where snobbery meets obscurity wouldn’t be my choice for a starter.
             1. Thanks for the clarification. I stand corrected but not mollified!
16. Liked this. It looked difficult to start with and I was slow to get going but managed to work steadily through.
    I swear I have seen the identical clue for 1dn somewhere recently .. last few days .. yes, it was in the last cryptic jumbo
    1. So it was – or rather, no it wasn’t, dear me no, that one’s still embargoed.
       1. Oi! No spoilers for my blog of the aforementioned crossword, please. (Not that I’ve written it yet… so thanks for some content).
17. What with a trip to the theatre to see Arthur Miller’s The Price last night and a visit to the dentist this morning, I didn’t feel at my confident best for this one, which was as well because I had nothing to be confident about. 56 minutes on this. Like Paul, I hit on TONNEAU from my years of owning an MX5, which is what the Miata is called in the UK. VATICAN II was not fully parsed, so thank you Jack and well done Sotira. LOI was TEA , after ARABIST eventually hit me. I didn’t know that Eric was a fine, but fortunately GENERIC was biffable. COD to FOOTSIE, my first reason to laugh since yesterday tea time. Thank you Jack and setter.
    1. I had more root canal treatment yesterday and took 55:35 for this puzzle. There must be a correlation between dentistry and solving times!

       Edited at 2019-02-19 12:56 pm (UTC)

18. 27.52, requiring a few self-administered shin-kickings, and one well-I-never, the last being Friday’s child, which I simply could not see.
    Why I took so long to recognise the word DROOL when I had already twigged the required meaning of slaver and the wordplay is a mystery, as is FOOTSIE. Still don’t know why I tried to spell CABALLERO with a V.
    I don’t think there’s any single/plural conflict in the closed ranks clue: from my (too many) hours on the parade ground, the two settings for drill are etched into memory, open order and close(d) ranks are what they are.
    The complex VATICAN II threw me until I finally thought in Roman (what else?) numerals.
    A crossword demanding close attention and openness to odd words drifting in from the fringe of memory.
    Congratulations on sorting it all, Jack: allow yourself a frisson of deserved pride.
19. Like Kevin I had Lawrence as an Arabian until that left N*A for the bush. My late mother-in-law was a wonderful source of malapropisms and after seeing the movie she used to call TE “Lawrence of Olivier”. I seem to recall seeing something to do with sesame as a clue for OPEN ORDER. 21.08
    1. Wonderful. A member of my family used to refer to the “abdominal snowman”.
       1. Love it:-)
20. My heart sank when I looked at the grid and saw half a dozen entries as the clock passed the 30 minute mark, but I struggled on, and at about the 45 minute mark, answers started to come. then in a rush it was complete at 55:35. I was another ARABIAN until ATTAINDER allowed me to see our shrunken duck. I also failed to spot the Friday’s Child reference, thus not entering FRISSON, for ages despite being convinced it was the answer. SOIGNEE was my LOI as I finally spotted the anagrist. ICE was my FOI. Didn’t know ERIC as a fine. Took me ages to get past “slaver” as a vessel of the damned! Great puzzle though. Thanks setter and Jack.

    Edited at 2019-02-19 01:05 pm (UTC)

21. Goodness me, that was difficult. I finished on SOIGNEE (having tried and failed to get SCIENCE to fit) after 22m 10s.

    There were some where I was definitely slower than I should have been, but also a lot of tricky vocabulary. Words and phrases I either didn’t know or had forgotten included: lose caste, eric, tonneau, soignee, primer, Vatican II, open order. Sans-culotte took some time to come to mind and I’ve only heard of it because of our European neighbours in their yellow vests.

    Nothing dodgy in the puzzle, though; just a tough work-out. The fact that my first entry was, er, ERASMUS at 7d gives you an idea of how it went.

    1. I spotted that solution to the anagram too. I also had ASSUMER, which I wrote in and then had to overwrite when I got the right answer. Don’t assume… that makes an ASS out of U and ME.
    2. 
       I wrote it in as far as ERAS… when I realised (from the old palindrome) that it would have been a straight reversal, which *surely* would have merited a better clue than a mere anagram
       – think I must be getting some kind of solvers’ instinct

       great puzzle, once again (1A excepted)
       the jewel for me being 19A – I love a good &lit (but only the good ones)

       jb

22. 17:55 but if I said I fully understood what was going on with all of the clues I’d be lying.
23. A tricky and testing, but ultimately solvable, puzzle. Thanks to the setter for the mental work-out and to Jack for his excellent blog to which I am indebted for the cryptic parsing of FRISSON, VATICAN II and ERIC. I’ve been doing the Times xword long enough to be familiar with “erica” meaning heather or some similar plant, but “eric” in the sense used here was previously completely unknown to me.
24. 29’10. Liked Friday’s son. (Also mauefw’s Erasmus above.) Never thought before about that use of ‘bolt’: somehow enriching. A truism but I’ve no doubt one does a crossword, at least the Times, in part for the taste of words.
25. With usual pauses in between. FRI’S SON totally passed me by. It looked a bit like an Only Connect question, and would never have got it without googling. Fortunately I biffed it anyway.
    LOI VATICAN II which didn’t look right but obviously was. That I did have to google afterwards!
26. Spent a while trying to justify my hunch that Eric was some Aussie slang for ok. Thank you for the explanation. Hope you’re all feeling eric
27. One of the most enjoyable puzzles I’ve done for a long time. I was not particularly fast, finishing in 35 minutes, but a lot of the answers give a satisfying eureka moment. I got the top half very quickly and thought I was in for a superfast time but then I hit the buffers. My only unknown was ERIC but it had to be. Thanks to setter and blogger. Ann
28. Me too!
29. Excellent blog with, much appreciated, very full explanations.
30. Me too!
31. Quite a struggle – well over an hour if I’d finished – but finally stumped by ARABIST and consequently TEA. NHO BIS = again. Another latin thing? I liked DROOL.
32. Great puzzle – solved it in a leisurely fashion, savouring each clue, so no time to record. Liked the French feel (being a French teacher I guess I would say that). I vaguely remember reading somewhere that SOIGNEE appeared years ago in the champs and that Magoo really liked the clue, which was something to do with a signee, I think. Nice blog, jack.

    Edited at 2019-02-19 09:30 pm (UTC)

33. 1 hr 2 mins here. Felt well off the pace. Lose caste not known as a phrase, couldn’t parse the Fridays child bit of 9ac. Dnk or had forgotten Eric and tonneau. Slow to see how soignee worked, another unfamiliar word there too. Castellan and sans-culotte also a bit off-piste for me. As for Vatican II, I haven’t even seen the first film let alone the sequel. What was the tagline? ….this time it’s pastoral? FOI 10ac. Spent ages over Arabist hence LOI 25dn. A stretching puzzle and enjoyable in that way.
34. Sorry the anon above was me. Forgot to login.
    1. You’d have struggled to see Vatican I, it was a bit early for movies: The First Vatican Council (Latin: Concilium Vaticanum Primum) was convoked by Pope Pius IX on 29 June 1868, after a period of planning and preparation that began on 6 December 1864:-)
       1. It took Pope Pius IX three and a half years to organise a meeting? Well I suppose no one’s infallible. : – D
          1. Well he didn’t have Whatsapp or Facebook! 🙂
35. I gave up on this. I don’t mind obscurity but I like to have some fun. VATICAN II? My response is unprintable.

    Edited at 2019-02-19 10:13 pm (UTC)

36. There used to be (maybe still is) a Spanish liqueur called Ponce Caballero which I never had the courage to order.
    Toughie today with some new words to instantly forget.

    Edited at 2019-02-19 10:47 pm (UTC)

37. Beaten by ARABIST and PRIME. Oh, and also by VATICAN II; the closest I got was “vatican pi”, on the vague grounds that a value of pi=3 might be some sort of papal declaration.

    Edited at 2019-02-20 12:13 am (UTC)

38. A special thank you to the setter. I found word play and answers a delight.

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