Times Cryptic 27338

Author   jackktPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic

I completed all but 6 answers within 27 minutes, but needed as long again to finish off the remainder, all of them originating in the NE corner.

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 Convey Duke’s challenge (5)
BEARD – BEAR (convey), D (duke). As in the saying ‘beard the lion in his den’.
4 Baffles with method that produces performance (5,4)
FLOOR SHOW – FLOORS (baffles), HOW (method). This was one of the clues that gave me a lot of trouble as my first thought was ‘freak show’ and I took a while to get past that.
9 Guy with treated rash is getting purification (9)
CATHARSIS – CAT (guy) anagram [treated] of RASH, IS. Yoof-speak from a bygone age!
10 Customs network, though diminished, will impound gold (5)
MORES – MES{h} (network) [diminished] contains [will impound] OR (gold)
11 Nearly all of soccer team is accepting new sport (6)
TENNIS – TEN (nearly all of soccer team – eleven) + IS, containing [accepting] N (new)
12 Temperature attracting cheers in the sea in part of France (8)
BRITTANY – T (temperature) + TA (cheers) contained by [in] BRINY (the sea). Cf (from last Friday): Dry (TT) area (A) sinking into the sea (BRINY) somewhere across the Channel.
14 A little error linked to steerage system, we hear (9)
SCINTILLA – Sounds like [we hear] “sin” (error) + “tiller” (steerage system)
16 A lot of bad weather has European country recalled in poem (5)
HAIKU – HAI{l} (bad weather) [a lot], UK ((European country) reversed [recalled]
17 Sea vessel about to have components switched (1-4)
U-BOAT – ‘about’ becomes U BOAT when two of its components (A and U) are switched
19 Satisfied after start of last month regarding length (9)
DECIMETRE – DEC 1 (start of last month), MET (satisfied), RE (regarding)
21 The others tie up, reversing for convenience? (4,4)
REST ROOM – REST (the others), MOOR (tie up) [reversing]
22 Drinks in middle of week? Pass (6)
ELAPSE – LAPS (drinks) contained by [in] {w}EE{k} [middle]
25 Call attracting attention about bone — antelope (5)
ORIBI – OI (call attracting attention) containing [about] RIB (bone)
26 Sue’s dull discourse, clever (9)
PROSECUTE – PROSE (dull discourse), CUTE (clever). PROSE gets a bad time in crosswordland, but ‘dull’ is in the dictionaries as a figurative meaning of the word.
27 Recording border line involves a long time? Not very long (9)
EPHEMERAL – EP (recording), HEM (border), ERA (a long time), L (line)
28 Getting naked around end of evening is a suggestive move (5)
NUDGE – NUDE (naked) containing [around] {evenin}G [end]
Down
1 Comment on resuming entering this answer? (4,2,6,3)
BACK TO SQUARE ONE – If tackling the clues in order the solver has already visited ‘square one’ of the grid for 1ac and has now gone back to it for this clue.
2 Respond to a study about time (3,2)
ACT ON – A, CON (study) containing [about] T (time)
3 Detective happens to interrupt cunning chronicler (7)
DIARIST – DI (detective  – inspector), IS (happens) contained by [to interrupt] ART (cunning)
4 Writing one’s found in newspaper (4)
FIST – I’S (one’s) contained by [found in] FT (newspaper)
5 Book raves about engaging in one time ritual (10)
OBSERVANCE – B (book) + anagram [about] of RAVES contained by [engaging in] ONCE (one time)
6 Further encounter not so exciting after overthrowing chief (7)
REMATCH – TAMER (not so exciting) reversed [after overthrowing], CH (chief)
7 Medical supplier, graduate, included in that woman’s itinerary (9)
HERBALIST – BA (graduate) contained by [included in] HER (that woman’s) + LIST (itinerary)
8 Regular comment on a break in communications (4,3,4,4)
WISH YOU WERE HERE – Cryptic definition. ‘Break’ in the sense of ‘holiday’.
13 Lout, behold, and daughter boarding helicopter (10)
CLODHOPPER – LO (behold) + D (daughter) contained by [boarding] CHOPPER (helicopter). I didn’t know this meaning of the answer as to me a ‘clodhopper’ has always been a heavy boot or shoe.
15 One who may be responsible for this minor smelting? (9)
IRONSMITH – Anagram [smelting] of THIS MINOR. &lit.
18 Right thinking is captured in my nonsense, on reflection (7)
TORYISM – IS contained by [captured in] MY + ROT (nonsense) reversed [on reflection]
20 Chap leading sailors round very rural town (7)
MALVERN – MALE (chap) + RN (sailors) containing [round] V (very)
23 Some ready for place of confinement (5)
POUND – Two definitions, the first with reference to money
24 Liberals work for upset in election (4)
POLL – LL (liberals) + OP (work) reversed [upset]

63 comments on “Times Cryptic 27338”

  1. Finished in 45 minutes with REMATCH holding out the longest. I didn’t know that PROSE could refer specifically to dull speaking or writing, nor that it could be an adjective (or verb for that matter).

    I liked the IRONSMITH &lit and SCINTILLA.

    My query is with CLODHOPPER. Maybe clumsy, slow, unexciting and a bit thick, but a ‘lout’? Not how I see myself anyway.

    Thanks to setter and blogger

  2. Same query re CLODHOPPER; rather a snobbish definition at best. I had the four E’s in 8d, which puzzled me at first but then hit me. Biffed BRITTANY & REMATCH, solved post-submission. Some nice surfaces, like 10ac and 22ac.
  3. Like Jack I was badly delayed by 4ac entering FREAK SHOW -so my North East Passage was scuppered!

    12ac BRITTANY again and 16ac HAIKU ever present.

    FOI 4dn FIST
    LOI 6dn REMATCH
    COD 8dn WISH YOU WERE HERE (Fond memories of Peter Cetera’s dreamy song – Wishing You Were Here.)
    WOD 13dn CLODHOPPER (Carthorse in footy!)

    1dn BACK TO SQUARE ONE derives from football on the radio! A grid was provided to listeners to indicate where the ball was.

    DNK 1ac BEARD as ‘challenge’.

    Time one hour and three minutes.

    Edited at 2019-04-30 04:31 am (UTC)

    1. NHO Peter Cetera but “Wish you were here” is a favourite Pink Floyd song. Very wistful. Apparently its about the late lamented Syd Barrett
      1. “Shine On You Crazy Diamond” is about Syd Barrett. Apparently, after not having been seen for about 5 years, he turned up randomly and unannounced at the studio just at the exact moment when the ‘Floyd were recording that very song. Uncanny. Mr Grumpy (me, not Roger Waters)
    2. I racked my brains for about 1/2 hour trying to think of Peter Cetera’s one UK hit but eventually gave in and Googled it – Glory of Love in 1986. I never knew he was in Chicago (the band, not the musical or the city, as far as I know).
      1. Chicago had two singers, Cetera lasted longer and became the sound of Chicago, as well as all that brass.

        Twenty-five or Six to Four? Oddest song title ever!?

        1. Weirdly evocative 1970s video of Wishing you were Here on Youtube, with the Beach Boys in sailor garb doing the ooh-ooh-ooohs.
        2. He said it was about writing a song in the middle of the night, at 25 or (twenty) 6 to 4am.
        3. I think the other singer was Terry Kath who shot himself after assuring everybody “don’t worry it’s not loa. . .” Mr Grumpy
    1. As hinted in my blog, ‘cat’ is a word from a bygone era used by young(ish) people to refer to themselves if they thought they were ‘cool’ – jazz-enthusiasts and the like. Ever heard of ‘Cool for Cats’? I don’t think they were exclusively male but I’d guess the majority were.

      Edited at 2019-04-30 04:37 am (UTC)

  5. For the record, Colins has clodhopper as:
    1) a clumsy person; lout
    2) a large heavy shoe

    The ODO/ODE and Chambers have no truck with ‘lout’ but SOED has ‘clodhopping’ as ‘loutish’.

    1. Bizarrely Chambers has ‘boorish’ for clodhopping, which bears no resemblance to any of its definitions for clodhopper!
    2. But both Chambers and OED give a less thuggish definition to lout than what I think of as current usage – awkward, clumsy, and only later in Chambers aggressive.
  6. Last night I dreamt that I was at the crossword championship and couldn’t get a single answer. When I’d read through half the clues of this mornings puzzle without writing anything in I thought maybe it had been a premonition but once I got going I didn’t find this too taxing.

    LOI ORIBI where I’d thought of rib earlier but left it in case I thought of another bone that would fit. However ORIBI did ring a vague bell so I do wonder if we’ve seen it before at some time.

    1. We had ORIBI last August – see here, and it has appeared a few other times too. It’s a word I remember from visiting the stunning Oribi Gorge as a child and nearly falling into it.

      Edited at 2019-04-30 07:30 am (UTC)

    2. That made me smile Pootle. I’ve had one of those “Manderley” dreams about the crossword championship but not last night. Otherwise I had the same experience as you and Keriothe with this puzzle and got all the way to REST ROOM before anything registered. When I first came to NY years ago I was charmed by that way of referring to a public convenience. 20.29
  7. Nothing to frighten the horses here. Steady top to bottom solve.

    Malvern is a beautiful place in Worcestershire at the foot of the Malvern Hills, much loved by Elgar

  8. 35 mins with yoghurt, granola, etc.
    I’m still a bit confused about clodhopper. Is Collins telling me a clumsy person can be called a lout or that an ill-mannered person can be called a clodhopper?
    Writing=Fist might be a chestnut, but it was new to me.
    Thanks setter and J.
  9. The left half went in relatively quickly. Enjoyed WISH YOU WERE HERE and even the dreaded antelope was known and fairly clued. I realise that I didn’t fully parse REMATCH so thanks jackkt.
  10. 18:24. I liked BACK TO SQUARE ONE, SCINTILLA and IRONSMITH, but wasn’t too impressed with LIST for itinerary at 7D – an unflagged DBE, no? Finished with 26A then 24D.
  11. …the traditional postcard sent to an ex from holiday when a new relationship isn’t working out. 31 minutes with REMATCH unparsed and with some uncertainty about BEARD. LOI was OBSERVANCE, after FLOOR SHOW was seen and the freak show called off. ORIBI only remembered when the Okapi couldn’t accommodate IRONSMITH. I know, an Okapi isn’t an antelope anyway. COD to BACK TO SQUARE ONE. I never quite felt confident on this one, but in retrospect it was a decent puzzle. Thank you Jack and setter.
  12. 15:58. Like pootle (but without the premonition) I started very slowly on this, and felt like I was making heavy weather of it. Perhaps I shouldn’t have attempted it after midnight.
    I didn’t know BEARD, in a lion’s den context or otherwise, but it seemed the only possibility.
    Always nice to see an obscure antelope in its native habitat.
  13. 18.52, with the NE corner resisting longest.
    With tonight’s match very much in mind, I was unhelpfully rushed to SPURNS at 11ac: doesn’t really fit anything in the clue, though Tottenham at the present without many of their front line players could possibly be described as “nearly all of soccer team”.
  14. Very much enjoyed one down – retrospectively, because when I put it in I didn’t get it. I remember as a child being puzzled by a Ladybird history book describing how Drake seized — or was it singed? — the King of Spain’s beard. When he burned the fleet in Cadiz. Didn’t we have a variant of that Brittany clue recently?
  15. I started this with a Pepys show, but the FLOOR SHOW took a bit longer. TENNIS was an early entry and BRITTANY was still fresh in my mind. Once I had a few checkers 1d and 8d were very helpful and the rest of the grid filled rapidly. The only one I didn’t manage to parse was REMATCH, so thanks to Jack for that. OBSERVANCE was my LOI and 21:18 had elapsed. Nice puzzle. Thanks setter and Jack. I’m going to replace the hard drive in my laptop now. I may be away for some time…..
  16. Is there a word for being able to remember where one first came across a word or phrase? For me, this time it was Asterix the Gaul, where our heroes have just tricked a Roman encampment into drinking a magic potion that makes their hair grow uncontrollably and are now making hairy puns left, right an centre…

    01_Asterix_the_Gaul_pdf.jpg

    Edited at 2019-04-30 11:04 am (UTC)

      1. I’d prefer not to know. I can’t read The Telegraph blog, dazzled by all the embedded images.
        1. Ah, I see what you mean. I never “do” the Telegraph so hardly ever go near Big Dave’s site.
      2. Given Jackkt’s reminder of the potential descent into madness that awaits, I may be better off not answering that, lest I be blamed for corrupting the purity of the blog comments. But also, it’s complicated to explain in a comment and involves the use of LJ’s Scrapbook feature and good old-fashioned HTML, so I’ll take any excuse for not trying.
  17. 21’55, a steadyish stumbling-along. An eyebrow-lift at list for itinerary. A slightly rough-and-ready word-landscape in which Malvern, at least, lies untouched by the fray.
    1. “It’s on my itinerary for today” ie it’s a list of tasks to be addressed. Mr Grumpy
  18. Felt slow today, like jack struggled in NE, was convinced the first word was FOOLS. BRITTANY LOI.

    31’44” thanks jack and setter.

  19. I fell asleep solving this. I had great dificulty getting started, but eventually it all fell into place. I had OKAPI for a time too, wondering what bone a KAP was, before the penny dropped. My heart always drops when I see “antelope” in the clue because there seem to be so many of them, and I’ve not heard of most of them.
  20. All done in just under an hour of steady solving. I didn’t have a problem with list-itinerary, and I was surprised when I looked lout up in OED and Chambers to find more emphasis on clumsiness and awkwardness, and less on thuggish anti socialism. I kind of liked Ironsmith.
  21. All pretty straightforward at 11:52.

    Has that meaning of beard come up before? I have a hunch it has as I didn’t dally too much over that one. I certainly recall gazing through the bars of the oribi enclosure in previous puzzles.

  22. ….as previous posters, particularly with regard to CLODHOPPER. I found this quite average once I got going nine clues in, and had a mini-battle in the NE corner before cracking the chestnut with a sigh.

    FOI U-BOAT
    LOI HAIKU
    COD POLL (this and 18D….but nothing Socialist)
    TIME 12:28

  23. Quite hard today, why does writing = fist.
    My online dictionary has some unusual meanings but none relating to writing.
    1. I remember an expression from schooldays about presenting work ‘in your own fist’, meaning hand-written.
  24. So it must be a Tuesdayish one. Quite enjoyed this though I thought I should have been quicker than 33 mins. Main problem was I thought the first word of 1d was DOWN as it’s a down clue until the penny dropped, once the if it’s a u it must be a q rule had been applied. In the mean time my NW corner was seized up.
  25. Late in the day, snooker on, 15 minutes, including antelope. As Jimbo says, horses not frightened, but pleasant job.
  26. I thought my time of 34min (longer than even my slow average) wasn’t great, so I’m relieved to see that some others found this tricky too. I was another one who started slowly.

    I’m going to have add “antelopes” to my list of “categories with unlimited obscure members”, along with “cricket positions” and “juvenile stages of salmon”. No doubt there is some African veldt that is overrun with herds of ohipi, which seems the only other plausible answer, unless you allow for some medical shorthand and consider “ofibi” and “otibi”.

  27. Got there in the end finally guessing the unknown ORIBI (cudve bin OHIPI for all I know). Not sure about FIST = Writing. FLOOR SHOW, REMATCH and HAIKU only became clear after WISH YOU WERE HERE.

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