Times Cryptic 27374

Author   jackktPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic

I needed only 28 minutes for this so I’d rate it as quite easy and would expect much faster times from our regular speed-merchants.

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 Sonata, perhaps, large in sound — one of the later movements? (9,4)
MOONLIGHT FLIT – MOONLIGHT (sonata, perhaps), then L (large) contained by [in] FIT. A definition so cryptic I doubt the answer could possibly be deduced without reference to the wordplay. Beethoven’s Sonata in C# minor takes its nickname from the first movement which has been likened to the effect of moonlight shining upon a lake. That movement is on my (fairly short) list of pieces of  ‘classical’ music that I would be happy never to hear again.
8 Very good to avoid moronic boss (4)
STUD – STU{pi}D (moronic) [very good – pi – to avoid]. As all regular cryptic solvers know this refers to knobbly protruberances, often decorative, such as one might find on a shield for example.
9 Sailor chasing duck, suggesting absence of duties (4-6)
ZERO-RATING – ZERO (duck), RATING (sailor). A technical term for the absence of tax liabilities (duties) on certain goods or services.
10 Nice line taken by one beginning on astronomy in Oxford college (8)
LIKEABLE – L (line), I (one), then A{stronomy} [beginning] contained by [in] KEBLE (Oxford college). I’m not sure if this college is particularly well-known beyond these shores, but for me it was more accessible than the obscure Homerton College Cambridge which featured here very recently, because KEBLE was a regular competitor on University Challenge in the days when I followed it closely.
11 Curtailed complex argument in school (6)
HARROW – HAR{d}(complex) [curtailed], ROW (argument). Yet another educational establishment but somewhat nearer my own Alma Mater which was a  separate day school but on the same hill and run by the same board of governors so that we shared a number of their facilities.
13 High, high point? It gives a buzz in recreation (7,3)
HUMMING TOP – HUMMING (high – on a high, full of activity), TOP (high point)
16 Keen on India article being dumped by international body (4)
INTO –  I (India), N{a}TO (international body) [article  – A – being dumped]
17 A duck eating a catch (4)
NAIL – NIL (a duck) containing [eating] A. The police might nail or catch a killer, for example.
18 One adding sentence in Gershwin number (10)
SUMMERTIME – SUMMER (one adding), TIME (sentence – as  received after being nailed for a crime). Gershwin came up in the QC blogged by me yesterday, along with Oscar Peterson. I nearly put up a link to his performance of this piece but I didn’t like his interpretation. Here’s a simple yet brilliant version by Jascha Heifetz.
20 Unreliable character’s beginning on witness stand (6)
WEASEL – W{itness} [beginning], EASEL (stand)
22 Control, say, brought into sport recently (8)
REGULATE – EG (say) contained by [brought into] RU (sport – Rugby Union), LATE (recently)
24 China’s upset after Russia’s leader tucked into their Chairman’s liqueur (10)
MARASCHINO – R{ussia} [leader] + anagram [upset] of CHINA’S contained by [tucked into] MAO (their – China’s – Chairman)
26 Listening, means to check for bad weather (4)
RAIN – Sounds like [listening] “rein” (means to check). Rain gets a bad press.
27 Insurance details, perhaps for specific little picture? (3,5,5)
THE SMALL PRINT – THE (specific – definite article), SMALL (little), PRINT (picture). ‘Terms and conditions apply’.
Down
1 Pass entrance exam in unusual show of actual merit (11)
MATRICULATE – Anagram [unusual show of] ACTUAL MERIT
2 Love story about Democrat — it’s a classic? (5)
OLDIE – 0 (love), LIE (story) containing [about] D (Democrat)
3 Dog swallowing unknown quantities? One’s an idle creature (9)
LAZYBONES – LAB (dog – labrador) containing [swallowing] Z Y (unknown quantities), then ONE’S. Here’s a link to ‘Lazybones’, a song by Hoagy Carmichael and Johnny Mercer.
4 Covering man carrying weapon (7)
GARMENT – GENT (man) containing [carrying] ARM (weapon)
5 Light rent reduced with support of church (5)
TORCH – TOR{e} (rent) [reduced], CH (church)
6 Schedule includes a lot from bombastic leader of service (9)
LITURGIST – LIST (schedule) contains [includes] TURGI{d} (bombastic) [a lot from…]
7 Ready in less than minute? (3)
TIN – TIN{y} (minute) [less than…]. ‘Tin’ and ‘ready’ are slang terms for money.
12 Harry Potter most about one person displaying spectacles? (11)
OPTOMETRIST – Anagram [harry] of POTTER MOST containing [about] I (one). I feel a discussion coming on about the different roles of those who work in eye-care, but I plan not to go there.
14 Exploits fish to make dairy drink (4-5)
MILK-SHAKE – MILKS (exploits), HAKE (fish). Currently in the UK the political protester’s fashionable weapon of choice.
15 People like you to look adult, not callow again, ultimately (4,5)
PEER GROUP – PEER (look),  GRO{wn}-UP (adult) [not callow again, ultimately]
19 Following marriage, one moved elsewhere — being inclined to fight? (7)
MARTIAL – MARITAL (marriage) becomes the answer when I (one) is  moved elsewhere
21 Powerless mass accepting military leader’s stand-in (5)
LOCUM – LUM{p} (mass) [powerless] containing OC (military leader)
23 Labouring under really grim illness at the outset — this one? (5)
LURGI – L{abouring}, U{nder}, R{eally}, G{rim}, I{llness} [at the outset]. Chambers debunks the theory that this word for an undefined illness was invented by Spike Milligan and his fellow-writers on The Goon Show, and also sanctions spelling it with an I instead of a Y, something I have never seen before.
25 Diplomatic behaviour, heading off legislation (3)
ACT – {t}ACT (diplomatic behaviour) [heading off]

74 comments on “Times Cryptic 27374”

  1. I finished in 47 minutes, having developed a blind spot for THE SMALL PRINT and spending time trying unsuccessfully to parse LOCUM. I liked TIN and the reminder of a HUMMING TOP, something I haven’t seen for ages.

    We’ve just had a “100 Greatest Composers” poll on our classical music station here. Surprise, surprise, Beethoven was voted as #1 and the MOONLIGHT Sonata was one of the early pieces played after the announcement. Maybe a classical music standard, but I still like it, including the first movement and look forward to hearing it again.

    My two bob’s worth for SUMMERTIME – the Sarah Vaughan version.

    Thank you to setter and blogger (thanks for the links).

  2. Started off seriously slow, FOI being MILK-SHAKE. Things picked up a bit, but a couple of clues, GARMENT and LOI LITURGIST inter alia, were recalcitrant. I thought of GARMENT, but also thought that GAT was the weapon, leading to a lot of time-wasting. Similarly, I thought of LOCUM early on, but took M to be ‘military leader’, so of course couldn’t parse it. DNK 9ac or 13ac. Knew LURGY, but not with that spelling. ‘duck’=ZERO and NIL in the same puzzle. Liked 15d.
  3. I think I knew of Keble College before, but it has stuck in my memory because of the Python travel agency sketch, where Eric Idle can’t pronounce the letter C.
  4. MOONLIGHT FLIT, eh? And I couldn’t parse LIKEABLE. I also found it hard to believe LURGI, though it may have appeared here before (spelled with a Y?). Enjoyed the rest, though.
  5. 19:58 … tricky for me, too — I think this was just on your wavelength, jackkt.

    I had absolutely no idea what a HUMMING TOP was, so that was a real hit-and-hope.

    SUMMERTIME? Louis and Ella, obviously.

    On the advice of the Dalai Lama, I’m treating the presence of both a public school and an Oxbridge college not as an irritant but as a welcome opportunity to practise loving kindness and tolerance.

    1. Probably told this story before, but my mum uses to teach a rather cerebrally challenged Brazilian boy, whose tycoon father was determined that he should get into Eton. When my mother told him that this would really not be possible, he replied: ‘If not Eton, Harrods!’
  6. 0n wavelength today, finishing in 14 minutes. LOI was the dreaded LURGI. I thought of LITURGIST straightaway but needed crossers to accept ‘bombastic’ to mean ‘turgid’. I don’t know that many sonatas, so MOONLIGHT FLIT was first in. I used to walk past HMP Keble three days a week on my way to the Clarendon, so LIKEABLE was tailored for me too. On the other hand, I wouldn’t know a HUMMING TOP if I fell over one, so that had to be constructed. COD to THE SMALL PRINT. Thank you Jack and setter.
    1. I served 3 years at HMP Keble in the 1960’s. Definitely not hard labour – hence my gentleman’s degree.
  7. America has ‘gaslighting’ (polit.) and we Brits have ‘moonlighting’ as 1ac MOONLIGHT FLIT – divided by a common language etc. my COD.

    FOI 1dn METRICULATE just to check the starter was ‘M’ for 1ac.

    LOI 6dn LITURGIST as I did not equate bombastic with turgid per se.

    WOD 23dn LURGI – ‘Lurgi Strikes Britain’. Series 5, Episode 7. First broadcast on November 9, 1954. Script by Spike Milligan and Eric Sykes. Not seen ‘lurgy’ in use.

    Interrupted by a trip to the 12dn! Time about 37 mins.

    1. Does “moonlighting” really mean the same in the UK as “gaslighting” in the US Horryd? I hadn’t heard that before.
      1. Sorry, Olivia I was actually looking for the meaning of ‘gaslighting’ in reference to GuydS and not equating the two.
  8. I have a feeling that someone suggests a MOONLIGHT FLIT towards the end of Little Dorrit, or at least they do in the BBC production (thanks again to Ann for suggesting it after the Marshalsea came up back in April.) Either way it went in immediately, which was helpful.

    The rest was fairly plain sailing except for LOI 6d LITURGIST, where I couldn’t see how the wordplay worked, and when I finally did I still wasn’t too sure that “turgid” meant “bombastic” or even that a LITURGIST led services, but bunging it in and hoping for the best worked out well enough… 49 minutes all told.

    I think I have the Moonlight Sonata around here on vinyl, inherited from my mum. Must have a look later.

  9. I’m firmly in the camp who didn’t find this easy, taking me three times as long as yesterday. Much of that was spent on LOI LITURGIST where I spent considerable time trying to fit something into L_____IST instead of into LI___ST.

  10. 10:48. I solved this very quickly with a spell of a few minutes in the middle where I didn’t.
    ODO says of LURGI: ‘used in the British radio series The Goon Show and probably invented by its writers, though possibly from an English dialect term.’
    The definitive version of SUMMERTIME is of course by DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince.
      1. Oh I don’t know Gettin Jiggy Wit It is pretty awesome, although it owes a large debt to Greatest Dancer of course.

        Edited at 2019-06-11 05:11 pm (UTC)

    2. I always thought it was a translation by the Goons of “Allergy” – A Lurgi/y
  11. Another easy one I thought..
    Much enjoying the Summertimefest .. did not like the Haifetz version at all. Sarah and Billie truer to the subject matter but I’m with Sotira, this must surely be the definitive version ..
    I didn’t know turgid could mean bombastic and I will hazard a guess our esteemed setter didn’t either, until he looked it up in ODO..

    1. Music of the heavens. It’s 1958, Sunday lunchtime, Two-Way Family Favourites with Bill Crozier and Jean Metcalfe is on the radio, and all the family is at home.
  12. 45 mins with yoghurt, banana, etc.
    Good time Jack – I found this much trickier. NHO my LOI, Humming Top – although I had many a spinning top as a child, and whips-and-tops. We used to use the tops of Ben Shaws pop bottles as tops.
    Thanks setter and J.
  13. Steady unspectacular top to bottom solve with no major hold ups.

    HUMMING TOP reminds me of time once spent trying to understand the physics behind tops and gyroscopes. Don’t want to go there again!

  14. As usual when a fast time on a seemingly hard* puzzle is in reach, got held up on a simple answer – this time LIKEABLE despite spotting Keble very early.

    Ended up on a cricketer’s ominous 11.11

    * seemingly hard = verlaine takes over 10 minutes.

  15. A steady solve for me.

    Last two in were Likeable and Humming Top.

    COD: LAZYBONES.

  16. 23:21. Slow to start – 18A my FOI and held up at the end by my LOI, LITURGIST. Failed to parse STUD, so thanks for that Jack.
  17. Delighted with my 48 minutes today. Can I tempt anyone withe the Fun Boy Three’s 1982 version of Summertime? My personal favourite version. Not expecting many to concur.
    1. I prefer Billy Stewart’s take on it some years earlier.

      Struggled today (Scotrail’s automatic announcements didn’t help) and I gave up after about 20 minutes, without LIKEABLE, HUMMING TOP, and LITURGIST.

      COD MOONLIGHT FLIT

  18. Realised it must mean a protuberance of some sort, but couldn’t see the root. ‘pi’ – as in slang for ‘pious’ – I’ve not heard anybody say for something like 30 years.
    1. Particularly modern, then. The one blogged on Saturday was considered to be straight out of the 1950s.
  19. Top half went in fairly smoothly, the rest seemed much harder with the result that finally confronted with -a-l for ‘catch’ I threw in haul so a dnf in 25’10. However, comforted by a reminder of my earliest remembered toy, a humming-top which even now I can almost physically set in motion and be captured by that strange whine.
    2. It’s another way of getting there but we shan’t know what the setter had in mind unless he pops in and tells us.

      That meaning of ‘high’ would give a whole new meaning to the opening of the aforementioned Gershwin song!

      Summertime, and the livin’ is easy
      Fish are jumpin’ and the cotton is high…

      Edited at 2019-06-11 09:53 am (UTC)

  21. Not massively difficult but quite interesting. I don’t have any recollection of such a thing as a humming top from my childhood, but it was a few years ago now.
    1. I did have a top that hummed, I remember it well .. though it was just called a top, I think, cos that was what they all did ..
  22. I’ve never come across a HUMMING TOP or, as far as I can recall, a MOONLIGHT FLIT. LOI was LITURGIST after 10m 12s. For some reason, in my mind, turgid means dull (like a dirge, perhaps), which doesn’t seem to be true at all.

    Milk-shake was a strange one, in that I would write it as one word with no hyphen, here it’s hyphenated, and in Chambers it’s two words.

  23. I had a HUMMING TOP as a child, the faster you made it go, the louder it got. I got MOONLIGHT straight away, but FLIT took a little longer. LITURGIST was the key to FLIT and TIN. LIKEABLE was my penultimate. I thought it was my last, but then noticed I hadn’t completed NAIL. I vaguely knew of KEBLE College, but thought it had two Bs. Didn’t fully parse LAZYBONES, but spent a little while at the end and came up with the correct parsing for LOCUM and MARTIAL. Enjoyable puzzle. 22:19. Thanks setter and Jack.
  24. I’m with Vinyl on the Holiday version of SUMMERTIME. I think that sonata plus Fur Elise from the same source must be the bane of piano teachers everywhere. Same as others with doubts about turgid=bombastic and then recalled General Turgidson from Dr. Strangelove and it made sense. Oddish-looking juxtaposition of LITURGIST on top of LURGI in column 12. In the days before we all had word-processors the typo MARTIAL for “marital” used to come back regularly from the steno pool in law offices and provoke a wry smile at its aptness.

    Must have been an ultra-wavelengthy one because I usually take 2 to 3 times as long as Verlaine. 12.23

      1. I reckon George C Scott does a pretty good bombastic Kevin – he did it pretty well in Patton!
    2. This was the title for a dispatch from the British ambassador to The Philippines when the odious tyrant President General Marcos declared martial law. It was a typo of course but it raised an indulgent smile in Whitehall because the power behind the throne was the even more odious wife of the general.

  25. myself by finishing this in 12 or 13 minutes, with 6d holding me up for the last minute or two. The long clues flew in and the rest just followed without pause. Must be the double coffee this morning.
    Re Summertime, I like several versions of this great tune, Miles Davis, and Janis Joplin (with big brother and the holding company) being two of the less ‘normal’ ones, give them a go.
  27. I put in TEACH before TORCH so a bit delayed. TURGID also held me up. Otherwise all good. I prefer the Mungo Jerry version (yes, I know).
      1. Am I missing something, Z? I can see how wordplay might lead to TEACH but how does TEACH = ‘light’?
        1. I figured it was a stretch, but I took it as a form of “enlighten”, possibly to be found somewhere in poetry. It felt convincing enough until it failed the “fitting in with everything else” test. Don’t think I want to sustain a defence.
          1. Ah, I wondered about ‘enlighten’ but couldn’t make it work. Thanks for confirming!
  28. A rather slow 37 mins held up by LITURGIST. Don’t really know what a liturgist does, nor the strange alternative meaning of bombastic so I was on a hiding to nothing. MILK SHAKE popular alternative to rotten tomatoes these days, it appears. Maybe the movie website should change its name…
  29. …incredibly did not see TIN completely forgetting that meaning of Ready.

    SUMMERTIME is a dreary dirge in my opinion.

  30. 14.40. Deffo a wavelength puzzle and it took me a while to tune in. I only had about 6 answers after 9 minutes then suddenly it all seemed to click.

    Re Summertime I’ll throw Sam and Dave and Joanne Shaw Taylor into the mix.

    Edited at 2019-06-11 12:14 pm (UTC)

  31. Well it doesn’t feel too much like Summertime today, but I feel like being a bit of a lazybones this afternoon while the rain falls outside. So here is a suitably laid-back live performance of that by Chris Ingham.
  32. Strange puzzle: mostly easy , but difficult to finish, so a slow time. It was the flit part of 1 ac, liturgist, tin (of all things) and the unknown zero-rating that held me up at the end. Keble a bit of a guess, but I think I once googled all the Oxbridge colleges (and Homerton wasn’t amongst them?). My Chambers app (12th ed, 2011) says lurgi is probably from the Goons.
  33. My father (born 1920 and brought up in Cornwall) was evidence that the word pre-dated the Goons by at least a few decades: in his schooldays they would use it if, for example, someone was absent with an unknown illness (“he’s got the lurgy”).

    Jim R

  34. Not quite sure why I was quite so far off the wavelength for this one, but I ended up staring at an empty top half of the grid with the bottom completed, for such a long time. I think it’s because HUMMING TOP and ZERO RATING don’t particularly mean anything to me, but I probably should have turned “sonata” into MOONLIGHT a lot faster than I actually did.
  35. 36:24. I found this tricky. Hard to get started and then a struggle to get my LOI liturgist (efforts to summon synonyms for bombastic resulted in no synonyms for bombastic, just the first couple of lines of the Shaggy song on repeat in my head). NHO humming top.
  36. Not too tough except for having to construct the HUMMING TOP and the FLIT aspect of MOONLIGHT. The MOONLIGHT part was readily apparent, but while FLIT nailed the wordplay, it went in with an exasperated shrug. Both of those unknown to me, though the rest was all understood. Regards.
  37. Why does the setter clutter up the clue by saying ‘Sonata, perhaps’? If it was the other way round and ‘sonata’ was being clued then it would be correct to say ‘Moonlight, perhaps’, so as to avoid a definition by example. But in this case it’s quite straightforward: the Moonlight is an example of a sonata, just as Dee is an example of a river. We don’t get ‘River, perhaps’.
  38. Mr. Wilransome – If the Americans who do this very English crossword and don’t know a particular word or expression, they then like to write reams of complaint about it! Just saying.

  39. Thanks setter and jack
    Needed to go to 25d ACT for my start and then working mainly around the bottom and left hand side for the first half of the solve. Was eventually able to get it all completed and fully parsed in the end.
    Thought that MOONLIGHT FLIT was one of the better clues when the absconding without paying the rent bit finally dawned. Thought that the word play of several of the clues was very good, especially STUD, PEER GROUP, LAZYBONES and MARASCHINO. Took a while to see how LOCUM worked.
    Finished, like many, with LITURGIST (another tricky parse) and LIKEABLE (where needed to go searching for the Oxford college).

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