Times Cryptic 27326

Author   jackktPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic

Solving time: 55 minutes. All but one answer in the NW went in very easily but I struggled through most of the remainder of the puzzle. There were several unknowns either in answers or wordplay and as with the puzzle I blogged last week I made the wrong choice with one answer when required to assemble an unknown foreign name from wordplay

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 Hear cuckoo and another bird (4)
RHEA – Anagram [cuckoo] of HEAR
4 WASP, say, taking the vote of a Conservative after dockers have struck twice? (10)
POLLINATOR – POLLIN{g} (taking the vote of) + A + TOR{y} (Conservative) [after dockers have struck twice – ‘dock’ as in ‘cut short’]. A well-signalled definition by example and use of capital letters designed to mislead with reference to White Anglo-Saxon Protestants although capitals are no longer strictly necessary for that meaning. Helpful wordplay and placement of a checker prevented misspelling as ‘pollEnator’ which I’d probably have gone for in other circumstances.
9 Go mad with support for musical fiddler after stroke (3,3,4)
HIT THE ROOF – HIT (stroke), THE ROOF (support for musical fiddler). If I Were a Rich Man and all that.
10 Dog runs round large seal (4)
PLUG – PUG (dog) contains [runs round] L (large). We had PUG yesterday as a pugilist.
11 Briefly went in water outside English Channel resort (6)
DIEPPE – DIPPE{d} (went in water) [briefly] contains [outside] E (English)
12 Bearded grain produce Queen is into (8)
WHISKERY – ER (queen) contained by [is into] WHISKY (grain produce), or if you prefer, R (queen) contained by WHISKEY
14 Isaiah represents divinity (4)
ISIS – IS (Isaiah), IS (represents). Perhaps the best known Egyptian goddess.
15 Promise to hide drinks in football kit? (10)
SPORTSWEAR – SWEAR (promise) contains [to hide] PORTS (drinks)
17 Praising European Union planning in detail? (10)
EULOGISTIC – EU (European Union), LOGISTIC (planning in detail). Nobody mention the B word!
20 Adapted for radio a while ago, Mann’s first novel (4)
EMMA – This one baffled me for a while but then I found that for most of the first half of the 20th century (‘a while ago’) the British Army radiotelephony spelling alphabet used the word ‘Emma’ to represent the letter M (clued as  ‘Mann’s first’). During the Great War it was changed to ‘Monkey’ but then reverted to ‘Emma’  and from 1956 to the present day it has been the more familiar, Mike.
21 Given mission to enter cell, avoiding outside guard (8)
SENTINEL – SENT IN (given mission to enter), {c}EL{l} [avoiding outside]
23 A little exhibition is expected to charge (6)
IONISE – Hidden in [a little] {exhibit}ION IS E{xpected}
24 Sleep, and rise finally after twelve? (4)
DOZE – DOZ (twelve – abbreviation of ‘dozen’), {ris}E [finally]
25 Muslim chief in fine family is to have another brood? (5,5)
THINK AGAIN – THIN (fine), AGA (Muslim chief) contained by [in] KIN (family)
26 Plant boy’s brought round moved grandpa (10)
SNAPDRAGON – SON (boy) contains [brought round] anagram [moved] of GRANDPA
27 River central to Chatham dockyards and Rochester (4)
TYNE – Middle letters of [central to] {cha}T{ham}, {dock}Y{ards}, {a}N{d}, {roch}E{ster}
Down
2 Sushi on ice, a strange item of oriental cuisine (6,5)
HOISIN SAUCE – Anagram [strange] of SUSHI ON ICE A. Delish with shredded duck!
3 A new betting hint regarding course leader (9)
ANTIPASTO – A, N (new), TIP (betting hint), AS TO (regarding). The appetiser course or hors d’oeuvre.
4 Move round City in a mass of people (7)
PRECESS – EC (city – of London) contained by [in] PRESS (a mass of people). Unknown to me, but it means to rotate like a spinning body such as a planet or gyroscope.
5 Oh, OK, owl goes round hunting but are you any different? (4,4,7)
LOOK WHO’S TALKING – Anagram [goes round] of OH OK OWL, STALKING (hunting). The first three words just scream ANAGRAM!
6 French police officer cuts interior visit (7)
INFLICT – FLIC (French police officer) contained by [cuts] INT (interior). Another unknown to me, I found that flic is “a mispronounciation of the Yiddish slang Flige (fly) meaning spy then police, incorporated into French by the Yiddish population in Paris”. Nasty things can be visited upon people.
7 Thin material in Cicero cut over English (5)
TULLE – TULL{y} (Cicero) [cut], E (English).  Another item beyond my ken was that Cicero, aka  Marcus Tullius, can be referred to in English as ‘Tully’. Before I discovered that, I was going to query ‘cut’ being used to indicate deletion of three letters.
8 Girl embracing golf as a game (5)
RUGBY – RUBY (girl) containing G (golf – NATO alphabet – the standard one this time!)
13 Understand embassy is allowing visitors back in? (11)
READMISSION – READ (understand), MISSION (embassy)
16 Friday even, for example, could be a little cavalier (9)
WEEKNIGHT – WEE (little), KNIGHT (cavalier). ‘Even’ is sometimes used in poetry to mean the latter part of the day.
18 Cause of blast, perhaps one key US gunpowder ingredient (7)
IGNITER – I (one), G (key), NITER (US gunpowder ingredient – as opposed to ‘nitre’, the UK spelling). Another word for fuse or detonator.
19 Stylish range in yellow (7)
CHICKEN – CHIC (stylish), KEN (range  – of knowledge). Two slang words for ‘cowardly’.
21 Faces second date in Rome (5)
SIDES – S (second),  IDES (date in Rome)
22 Peruvian city’s zoo originally in area to preserve, on reflection (5)
NAZCA – Z{oo} [originally] contained by [in} A (area) + CAN (preserve) reversed [on reflection]. I didn’t know the city and I made the wrong choice by picking TIN for ‘preserve’ to arrive at NIZTA which doesn’t really look any less likely a name than the actual answer.

46 comments on “Times Cryptic 27326”

  1. Sluggish memory slowed me down, as it took me a long time to summon up FLIC, for instance, or TULLY; or to recall ‘pip EMMA’ for p.m. Come to think of it, EMMA was biffed, and parsed post-submission. I flung in CUZCO at 22d, but CUCO/OCUC got me nowhere; and I finally remembered the NAZCA lines, the mysterious giant drawings in the desert. Didn’t know there was a city. POLLINATOR was my LOI; I was sure WASP was the insect, but I never thought of them as pollinators.
  2. Two big guesses for me. The Cicero one where I put TULSE, never having heard of either Cicero’s nickname nor the material. And NAZCA where I got it right between that and the equally unknown (and nonexistent) NIZTA, like our blogger. So DNF for me.

    I lived in France for many years so I know the French police are “les flics” but is that common knowledge. It seems the amount of French we are expected to know keeps increasing (no problem for me) but will we be expected to know a few Chinese words soon. Advance warning: Da is big and Mei is every. Perfect for dropping into a charade.

  3. And “les flics” in Paris last night were very busy with a disaster, along with “les pompiers” (firemen). Let’s see how bad it is now that it will be starting to get light.

    Edited at 2019-04-16 04:03 am (UTC)

  4. No time thanks to technical issues but mostly middling difficulty. I could only biff and hope, however, with both TULLE and EMMA — probably general knowledge for Only Connect contestants (hello, Tim) but not for me.

    I’m still not sure I entirely understand the wording of the EMMA clue. “Adapted” seems an odd way of describing the dropping of one thing and adopting of another.

    1. It should have been ‘adopted’, I suppose, but of course that would have ruined the surface.
      1. I took the view that when EMMA was changed, first to Monkey and later to Mike, it was adapted, and both occasions were ‘a while ago’.
  5. Pleased to have finished, given my embryonic 15×15 status. Lots of hit and hope biffing on some of the more obscure ones, but I did know NAZCA.
    1. Very well done – this was no easy offering, and your persistence deserves the satisfaction of finishing it. You were one up on this old hand as well – NAZCA wasn’t in my range of knowledge.
  6. Finished in 48 minutes, lucky to have them all right. I plumped for NAZCA for no other reason than that it sounded a bit more likely—perhaps Mulder mentioned the NAZCA Lines in passing in an X-File, or something—and I’d heard of TULLE, though I knew not of Cicero’s nickname.

    Along similar lines, “flic” rang the vaguest of bells once I’d biffed INFLICT. I have watched quite a few subtitled French films recently, all of which contain the occasional policeman, so perhaps my subconscious is picking up more than I thought.

    Also have an oddly strong memory of tracking down the meaning of a throwaway line in one of Adam Hall’s earlier novels, a rendezvous made for “nine ack emma mañana”, decades ago.

    Edited at 2019-04-16 07:14 am (UTC)

  7. Early for a change today. Quite a few blasts from the past today – Eric von Daniken’s alien landing strips, a John Travolta movie and a reminder of my beardy days. Having read Robert Harris’s excellent trilogy, should have known TULLY but didn’t, and finally almost defeated by the French police until Topol came to my rescue and allowed me to biff INFLICT as my LOI. All in all, an excellent diversion while waiting for my family to wake up while on my hols. It seems I only need half as much sleep as them these days.
  8. Thanks, Jack for EMMA. Wasn’t “Ack Emma” used as code for AM -morning- in the First World War?
    I enjoyed “have another brood” = THINK AGAIN but my favourite was WEEKNIGHT = “a little cavalier”
    No problems with HOISIN SAUCE. Sue used to use it as she liked cooking Asian dishes.
  9. 40 mins with yoghurt, granola, banana, etc.
    Tulle is tricky if you don’t know Tully, and Emma jars a bit.
    Mostly I liked: dockers striking twice, support for musical fiddler and Grandpa moved by his Snapdragons.
    Thanks setter and J.
  10. Same sticking points as others. Biffed EMMA and then remembered my father going on about “pip emma” for afternoon. Knew Les Flic but not the city which I guessed and then looked up. A bit of a potpourri puzzle. Well blogged Jack
  11. Tulle a guess, my knowledge of cicero being minimal .. but not much else fits. Knew the Nazca Lines and anyway, what with Aztecs, Incas and so forth Nazca would look a lot more promising than Nizta to me
    Spelling alphabets are interesting, if only because it turns out there have been literally hundreds of them. Thank heavens for NATO, I say: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spelling_alphabet
  12. 25:28. I took a while to get going on this, but eventually got on the wavelength. I didn’t know TULL(y) for Cicero or understand EMMA, or les FLICs so thanks for explaining those, Jack.
  13. 46 minutes. LOI INFLICT, the only word I could make fit. Did not know the French police officer. What happened to the beaux gendarmes? I vaguely knew Cicero could be Tully, and thought I had heard of TULLE. I knew that planets PRECESSed around the sun. Took a while to see EMMA, but then understood it straight away. Pip and Ack Emma were very much in use in my childhood. NAZCA constructed but unknown. I liked IONISE, THINK AGAIN and COD ANTIPASTO. A difficult puzzle, and until I saw POLLINATOR, I was going nowhere. Thank you Jack and setter.

    Edited at 2019-04-16 08:47 am (UTC)

  14. Took a while to untangle the tricky elements, so glad it turns out I was far from alone. Tried to make CUZCO work until it became obvious it didn’t; and having decided it must be EMMA, wondered if AM might be described as old-fashioned radio, which still left an E to find somewhere, so in the end I wrote it in, and successfully parsed it by reading it in today’s blog.

    I think I’ve read a discussion of what wasps are good for, and it turned out that as well as eating things which eat our food, they pollinate figs; I like a fig, so since then I’ve felt slightly less antagonistic towards them. This is the sort of specialist knowledge which will take you into a second week of Only Connect 🙂

    1. I read about the fig-pollinating wasps this morning, never having thought of wasps as pollinators. They are a specific species (or group of species) that have co-evolved with the figs, and the two are mutually dependent on one another for reproduction and hence survival. Fascinating.

      Edited at 2019-04-16 10:08 am (UTC)

  15. I read it, eventually, as M adapted for radio, i.e. to avoid misunderstanding say ack emma instead of a m, bit like saying GOGOGO or YESYES in police and customs raids.

    Wasps are indeed pollinators, they get a bad press because of fear of stings and nests in roofs.

    23′, thanks jack and setter.

    1. Yes, yes — I concur with your interpretation of ‘adapted’ in EMMA. It works just fine.
  16. Tricky puzzle, 40 minutes with the Peruvian city looked up at the end. Put in EMMA as a novel, without quite seeing why. Some really good clues here, well blogged by jackkt. Thanks for origin of “les flics” which is often used here but I doubt many know the derivation of it.

    Edited at 2019-04-16 08:59 am (UTC)

  17. 39 mins. An enjoyable puzzle, with a number of solutions hovering just beyond the periphery of my GK and so providing a teasing challenge. I biffed EMMA and simply trusted that the word could be some kind of military radio speak. And I knew TULLE as a fabric, but had only the vaguest inkling that the letters ‘tull’ were associated with Cicero. I get to feel the satisfaction of getting the correct solution and learning something new on the way. NAZCA worked out from wordplay but once solved I realised I did know about the extraterrestrial runways. Bunging in ‘process’=’go’ for 4d slowed me up significantly, until the wonderful Fiddler clue clicked. The verb ‘precess’ unknown to me.
    Excellent blog — many thanks, jackkt.

    1. Rudyard Kipling, the Elephant’s Child.
      “….when there was nothing left of the Equinoxes, because the Precession had preceded according to precedent…..”
  18. I found this difficult and took 51:40 to solve it, but managed to overwrite the Z in DOZE with an S when I entered NASCA, having already used the Z to derive the city. Drat! A quick proof read managed to miss this typo too. RHEA was my LOI after trying for far too long to find a word for cuckoo(bananas) that was also a bird. Doh! Didn’t know TULLY for Cicero, but took it on trust. I knew ACK EMMA and PIP EMMA for AM and PM, so that was no problem. Lots of good stuff in this puzzle. Thanks setter and Jack.

    Edited at 2019-04-16 10:13 am (UTC)

  19. ….DIEPPE doo-doo with this tricky blighter ! DNK PRECESS or NAZCA, but the former was clued in a friendly way, and I chose correctly with the latter. Took half a minute at the end, but parsed EMMA correctly.

    FOI ISIS
    LOI EMMA
    COD LOOK WHO’S TALKING
    TIME 13:12

  20. My second good day in a row. Except I biffed “inflict” without spotting “flic”.
    I am better when doing the puzzle in the morning!
  21. This was the toughest puzzle in a while, for me: 20m 01s in total, and for most of that I was still at single figures for the number of answers entered. After IONISE – having kicked myself for missing the hidden word – the southern half snowballed, but it was still tricky work elsewhere and some lucky guesses.

    TULLE (DNK Tully, and can never quite remember the material) and RHEA (convinced it was a homophone for a word meaning crazy; only found out the true parsing on this page) were the last to fall.

    WEEKNIGHT is probably my favourite of the day, even if the surface reading is a little tortuous.

    1. Shakespeare was fond of reading Cicero, evidently, to the point that his fellow members of the Lord Chamberlain’s Men nicknamed him Tully.
      1. While simultaneously conspiring to cover up the fact that he was really the Earl of Oxford, of course.
  22. 17:47. I really enjoyed this puzzle, but I think at least a couple of the clues are unfair. TULLE is a double obscurity and NAZCA should really be clued with unambiguous wordplay. Expecting us to know ‘flic’ and out-of-date phonetic alphabets also seems a bit much.
    As I say I really enjoyed it because I happened to possess enough of the requisite knowledge, but ‘stuff I know’ is probably not a universally recognised definition of general knowledge.
    Anyway thanks to the setter for making me feel quite erudite for a change.
    1. ‘Stuff I know’ may not be the universally recognised, but is certainly the universally adopted, definition of GK!
      1. Indeed. What I know = GK, what you know = arcane esoterica, what they know = hopeless obscurity.
        1. I agree with those points. However, I would suggest the main prerequisite for completing The Times crossword should not be general knowledge. Common knowledge yes, but the best crosswords have solutions of simple words constructed through ingenious parsing. Crosswords like this may appeal to solvers who want a different challenge, but for the majority of we mere mortals, I would guess it’s a complete waste of time. Three clues made it unfinishable. It seems to me that the setters are increasingly short of new parsing techniques-understandably so, as it is undoubtedly a finite science. But they are resorting to arcane GK as a poor substitute. Please can we have our crossword back? Mr Grumpy
  23. DNF. After over an hour, 17a EULOGISTIC remained unsolved. Not sure why! I came to the blog to understand 20a EMMA and 6d INFLICT, so thank you Jack for the detailed explanation. I’m glad my guess at NAZCA proved correct as I also thought of NiZtA.
  24. One wrong – 7dn Cicero unknown – even vaguely thinking tulle was a material. Though I would have put an extra i in it, tuille. So I guessed I’d wrongly misremembered TULIE and wrote that in. Tulio is obviously a (modern) Latinate name, whereas Tullo/Tulla etc are not, let alone Tully. Otherwise tricky, lots of things on the edge of GK, and emma only crossword knowledge.
  25. A very enjoyable 37 minutes. I got TULLE even though I’d forgotten that Cicero was sometimes called Tully. I remembered Tullius and just thought that more than one letter had been cut. The WEE KNIGHT raised a smile. After toying with CUZCO and failing to parse it, I finally remembered the NAZCA lines. Ann
  26. After reading everyone’s comments and as a member of the 15 x 15 SCC, I’m feeling rather chuffed that I finished this one. It was quite a slog off and on throughout the afternoon and I did wonder if I’d get anywhere after staring at a nearly empty grid for some time. I knew les flics and tulle (and guessed at the Cicero / Tully reference) and vaguely remembered Nazca. FOI Tyne! COD snapdragon. Now off to cook something with hoisin sauce!
  27. Phew. This one took me an age (I’ll admit to 47 minutes), so I’m rather pleased that it caused others some head-scratching.

    Ones that caused me particular problems were:

    RHEA – I missed the anagram indicator, and assumed it had something to do with sounding like “rear” (as the host does to a cuckoo). Even less plausible now that I write it down.

    POLLINATOR – completely unparsed, but was my NTLOI so I had all the checkers.

    EMMA – equally unparsed, though I have encountered “pip emma” for PM. What, I wonder, was AM? Or indeed FM?

    TULLE – good grief! My knowledge of long-dead Romans is slight enough without expecting me to know their English nicknames. Biffed.

    RUGBY – I spent far too long trying to convince myself that MAGRY was a game. I eventually reached the certainty that it was the anglicized name for a French gambling card game, popular during the 1700s. I’d probably have worked out the rules and named a few famous players if POLLINATOR hadn’t scuppered me.

    NAZCA – biffed, since there are no other 5-letter cities with a central Z (except, of course, for the several that some of you will doubtless be able to name).

  28. Precession familiar from teaching rigid body dynamics but POLLINATOR and TULLE held me up for ages so thanks to blogger for clarification. Glad that even the “whizzers” found this a touch tricky.
    Joe the Jazzer.
  29. 50:47. Crikey this was tough! At least I thought so. Got stuck for ages in places, especially on the RHS. Emma eventually went in from the M of Mann and novel, having forgotten pip Emma which I have seen in a previous puzzle. DNK precess. Knew of Marcus Tullius but didn’t know he was referred to as Tully. DNK flic. Knew Herr Flick but he was in the Gestapo not the Gendarmerie. Flew over the Nazca lines in a small aircraft years ago to see the lines from above, so at least that one went in ok. COD hoisin sauce. Yum!
  30. Struggled for 73 minutes to finally complete this. Surely there couldn’t be any other Peruvian cities but Cuzco with a z in the middle? Only after the snapdragon checker went in was Nazca remembered.
    Humiliatingly, the hidden “ionise” was our LOI, despite regular reminders to ourselves to look for the hidden!
    Thanks to blogger for explanation of Emma.

Comments are closed.