Times Cryptic 27411. We’ll have Manhattan.

Author   oliviarhinebeckPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic

I did this on a Hudson Line train between Yonkers and Ossining which puts my time in the 17- 18 minute range.  The river view hasn’t changed much since Hitchcock’s North By Northwest but I was sitting on the other side which is less distracting.  Pip is moving (as we speak) to a small corner of the English Midlands I happen to know well because my grandparents lived just a few miles away.

Good puzzle this with a slightly old-fashioned flavour.  There are some literary and cinematic references that are definitely retro.  All very straightforward so perhaps Pip will get the controversial Wednesday one next week…..  Definitions in italics underlined.  Answers in bold caps.

Across

1. Leave the last of citrus jam (5)
SCRAM. [citru]S with CRAM=jam.
4. Instrument company flying through sum of money (4,5)
BABY GRAND BA=company flying.  BY=through.GRAND=sum of money.  I still think of the company as BOAC and it took me several beats before I saw the parsing.  If I hadn’t been blogging I just might have skipped it because the answer leapt from the page.
9.  A very boring medic and Christian (9)
ADVENTIST. A DENTIST=medic containing V[ery].  Dentists don’t get no respect.  Proselytizing Adventists can’t get past our doormen in the city.  In Rhinebeck they do occasionally come to the door but they’re very polite and not too persistent.
10.  Adventure tale with record group of followers (5)
SHEEP.  SHE (who must be obeyed) is the classic tale by Rider Haggard, with EP=record.
11.  Perhaps make TV programme presenting no diversion? (6)
DIRECT.  Far from obvious double definition.  I needed all the checking letters before this emerged from the fog.
12.  My gold boxes free in passage (8)
CORRIDOR.  COR=my (which is becoming standard).  OR=gold.  Containing (boxes) RID=free.
14.  Wrong turns in two countries where Americans dwell (6,6)
STATEN ISLAND.  The two countries are STATE and LAND containing SIN=wrong reversed (turns).  One of the 5 boroughs of NYC but not all that many New Yorkers live there and it’s closer to New Jersey.  Still there is always the Rodgers & Hart song with its salute to Manhattan, the Bronx and Staten Island too (and the “balmy breezes” of the subway – especially fragrant in the 100F heat we had this weekend). Here’s the divine Ella’s version.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJsa0OfWcGA
17.  Got in more rubbish in essay subject (12)
TRIGONOMETRY.  Anagram (rubbish) of GOT IN MORE contained in TRY=essay.
20.  Screen rebel’s in post in college (8)
DEANSHIP.  That’s James DEAN’S best known role in the 50s movie Rebel Without A Cause, with HIP=in.  He was also celebrated for his parts in East Of Eden and Giant and then he blew his mind out in a car at the age of 24.
21.  Criminal strategy to get apparently good food.
SCAMPI.  SCAM=criminal strategy with PI=apparently good.
23.  This person likes male and female feet (5)
IAMBI.  A mildly risque clue.  That’s the poetic kind of feet.  And if you like both sexes you might say I am bi.
24.  Boiled food, fish that’s tough (9)
GRUELLING.  GRUEL is a kind of thin porridge thought suitable for invalids in olden times (it was much favoured by Mr. Woodhouse in Jane Austen’s Emma).  LING=the crossword fish.
25. Very sensitive with respect to going wrong (3-6)
TOP SECRET.  That sort of sensitive – i.e what’s exposed by Wikileaks.  Anagram (going wrong) of RESPECT TO.
26. Return from east idly wandering around (5)
YIELD.  Anagram (wandering around) of IDLY with E.

Down

1.  Make-up — very little — applied carelessly (8)
SLAPDASH.  SLAP=slang for make-up.  DASH=very little, as in angostura bitters in a rye old-fashioned.
2.  Case of rickets interrupting show is a setback.
REVERSAL.  R[icket]S contained in REVEAL=show.
3.  Serviceman spied jumping up and down (5-10)
MANIC-DEPRESSIVE.  Anagram (jumping) of SERVICEMAN SPIED.
4. Dairy product‘s not long-lasting, for the most part (4)
BRIE.  BRIE[f].  Shortened.
5.  Will’s character: something he has to say is what matters (6,4)
BOTTOM LINE.  In Midsummer Night’s Dream, Bottom speaks his lines.  Annoying bit of corporate-speak but a very nice clue.
6.  Tail of whiting hugely in fashion for foodies? (15)
GASTRONOMICALLY [Whitin]G with ASTRONOMICALLY=hugely.
7. Plan military commander keeps close (6)
AGENDA.  AGA=military commander containing (keeps) END=close.
8.  Recorded absorbing intro from radio, turning set off (6)
DEPART.  TAPED=recorded containing R[adio] reversed (turning).
13.  The digit between numbers three and five?
RING FINGER.  Fourth finger – of left hand for a wedding ring, but you knew that.
15.  Political writer accepting his own name for putrid substance (8)
PTOMAINE.  Thomas Paine, one of the Founding Fathers of the US (although he didn’t sign the Declaration of Independence).  Author of Common Sense. Here he is shown ingesting his abbreviated first name.
16.  Sprayed your somewhat black clothes (8)
SYRINGED.  SINGED=somewhat black containing YR short for your.  I’d thought of a syringe as a more directed kind of squirt, as in a hypodermic, but on reflection I believe it can also be a sprinkler.
18.  Person using computers etc. after tot (6)
ADDICT.  ADD=tot.  ICT=info and communications technology.
19.  Exercise with body part raised (4,2)
WARM UP.  W[ith] ARM UP=raised.
22.  Not yet settled on time for pair-work?
DUET.  DUE=not yet settled with T.

56 comments on “Times Cryptic 27411. We’ll have Manhattan.”

  1. PTOMAINE did for me; never thought of PT… and never thought of PAINE. As it was, most of my solving took place after a half-hour had passed; I’ve never used the term ‘wavelength’, but I was definitely off something today. Your dentist comment reminded me of Forster’s, from “Where Angels Fear to Tread”:
    Even in England a dentist is a troublesome creature, whom careful people find difficult to class. He hovers between the professions and the trades; he may be only a little lower than the doctors, or he may be down among the chemists, or even beneath them.
    1. My dentist has a sizeable and very beautiful yacht, so it may be time to re-evaluate! (even if that wasn’t quite what Forster was getting at)

      Edited at 2019-07-24 07:18 am (UTC)

      3. My uncle was an auditor for the NHS with particular responsibility for sussing out suspiciously well off dentists. It would be interesting to know whether your dentist acquired his yacht before or after my uncle retired.
        1. This is the man who sticks sharp implements in my mouth at six-monthly intervals. No way am I grassing him up. I’m already regretting mentioning the yacht.
          2. It won’t narrow the field all that much, Sarah, so no worries.. my dentist has moved on from Porsches to a succession of Aston Martins, and expects me to sympathise with him when he complains about their build quality. So of course I do ..
      4. My dentist doesn’t seem to be in the yacht-owning bracket. But he collects studio pottery and has run out of space at home. So he has a special display room at the surgery as well as choice examples in cabinets in the waiting room. Quite classy and far more interesting to look at than the usual waiting-room magazines.
  2. 18:45. I found this pretty tricky. I remembered PTOMAINE coming up before, which was fortunate because I doubt I’d have got it from the wordplay. It isn’t exactly the most likely-looking of words.
    I pretty sure you do need LY on the end of 6dn, if only to get the right number of letters!
  3. Not too many hold-ups and finished in just on the half-hour. Last in was MANIC-DEPRESSIVE, as I was looking for some sort of military gentleman.

    Yes, I still think of British Airways as BOAC (eg Vickers VC-10’s) and even BEA (eg De Havilland Tridents). I remember the planes were once painted with just ‘British’ which looked a bit strange.

    Favourite was PTOMAINE, both for the cleverness of the clue and the echoes of Agatha Christie.

    Thank you to setter and blogger.

  4. North by Northwest is my favourite film and I must have watched it a dozen times. Which bit is filmed in the part of NYC you refer to?
    1. Here you go Ulaca. After the chase through Grand Central Terminal (the phone booths aren’t there any more) Cary Grant jumps on the 20th Century Limited to Chicago (which now leaves, a shadow of its former self, from the hellhole of Penn Station). As the train meanders up the Hudson Grant meets Eva Marie Saint when they share a table in the dining car while the outside scenery shows Bannerman’s Island which is a ruined faux Gothic castle (still there). She neatly seduces him and hides him from the conductor in one of the bunks in her bedroom, and on they go. It’s great isn’t it!
      1. Thanks so much for that, Olivia. It must be on or near this section that Kay Kendall says ‘I’m a big girl’, and Roger O. Thornhill replies, ‘Yes, and in all the right places.’
  5. Pleased to finish this tricky offering, not knowing you can spray with a syringe (I only ever see them being tapped in films), and not remembering the meaning of PTOMAINE. Fortunately, I thought of MILL, then JOHN, so it wasn’t much of a jump to THOS. PAINE.
  6. Just to assure you that I read the blog, Olivia, the word we have today is indeed GASTRONOMICALLY, with the LY.
    It was great to run into Tom Paine here!
    SYRINGED was last, if memory serves (“Sprays? Oh, well, I guess…”).
    “Anti-dentite” was a term coined by Seinfeld…
    An old French expression is “mentir comme un arracheur de dents”—lie like a (bad) dentist (“teeth-puller”).
      1. I don’t know how I missed seeing the last part of James’s reply, above!

        Edited at 2019-07-24 12:07 pm (UTC)

  7. 34 minutes, missing my target half-hour only because of a slight delay in the SE corner with the PTOMAINE, SCAMPI, SYRINGED intersection.

    DNK or had forgotten TOM PAINE but managed to biff PTOMAINE with help from checkers and then reverse-engineered the parsing.

    My father used a garden SYRINGE to protect plants from aphids etc.

    Toyed briefly with BIPED at 23ac.

    ICT seems to have passed me by.

    Edited at 2019-07-24 05:29 am (UTC)

    1. The original ICT was International Computers and Tabulators, an early days British computer manufacturer that became ICL and dominated some markets such as local authorities. It was eventually taken over by Fujitsu.
    2. Forgot to say thanks for posting the link to ‘Manhattan’, Olivia. Ella at her finest in my view with never a hint of scat. I also much prefer Hart to Hammerstein as Richard Rodger’s collaborator – more edge and less schmaltz. Hammerstein’s finest was ‘Showboat’ written with Jerome Kern.
  8. Had to admit defeat on the putrid substance. I guessed I was looking for Tom Someone but Paine never came to mind. I had totally forgotten the word itself.

    Like jackkt, I don’t recall seeing ICT before.

    Around 21 minutes for the rest of this, which I found altogether trickier than Olivia did. Maybe the rhythmic clack of a travelling train is conducive to crossword solving!

    1. Today’s schoolchildren seem to do ICT (Information and Communication Technology) these days rather than my job which is plain old IT.
  9. 23’35”, with PTOMAINE LOI. Delayed by spending far too long on MANIC-DEPRESSIVE.

    ICT was a school subject on which my views are intemperate.

    My favourite Tom Paine quotation: “A share in two revolutions is living to some purpose”.

    Thanks Olivia and setter.

    Edited at 2019-07-24 07:45 am (UTC)

  10. 33 minutes but beaten by Joseph Pujol – I would never have got this. Clever crossword. COD to MANIC D.
  11. I also lost out on PTOMAINE – couldn’t recall the word or the political writer. The rest went in OK. Well blogged Olivia
  12. Thank you for the Ella, a very pleasant way to start the day. Now for the strange change from major to minor. 36 GRUELLING minutes with LOI and COD PTOMAINE, which took several minutes staring at. One Dylan song I still feel I haven’t really got is ‘As I went out one morning’, in which Tom Paine figures. I guess it’s about how freedom can’t follow a revolution. Bob could never quite join the movement. A decent puzzle. Thank you Olivia and setter.
  13. Thanks, Olivia, especially for BABY GRAND and PTOMAINE. I had to use assistance to get the latter.
    COD to STATEN ISLAND.
  14. I’m glad I threw in the towel on the unknown PTOMAINE after staring at it for ten or fifteen minutes, as I doubt I’d’ve come up with it, even though I have Common Sense on the bookshelf somewhere. I’d even spotted the “Tom”. Ah well. “Political writer” isn’t exactly a narrow field…

    ICT is a phrase which is never actually used in the industry it describes, which is interesting. I wonder how many others there are…

  15. A lot of that time was spent waiting for the penny to drop on the political Ptom, as the clue leads to what I also regard as an unlikely looking word. Interesting puzzle.
  16. An odd experience, this, as I put myself under time pressure and resorted to aids when time began to run out, so I suppose I should have posted off board. But I find that when I know I’ve got limited time (a bit like finals day) I can easily fall into the trap of believing it’s much harder than it is, and a full ten minutes passed before I got anything at all. Panic, I think, because these clues were good and fair, even the PTOMAINE one, which was also rather clever.
    Special mention for I AM BI. Both amusing and very much de nos jours.
    Thanks Olivia for a fine piece of commentary.
  17. Thanks for the link to Ella, Olivia. I’m on a roll now, listening to They Can’t Take That Away from Me, with Louis assisting on trumpet and vocals. As far as the crossword goes, I found it quite tricky, but made reasonable progress, starting with SLAPDASH, with occasional stalls sending me scampering around the grid to find a new toehold. BOTTOM LINE made me smile. I raised an eyebrow as SYRINGED hove into view, but (These Foolish Things on now) lowered it after due consideration. It took a while before the dentist appeared as a medic, but that helped with the Bipolar problem. My LOI was PTOMAINE, which I reverse engineered after being open minded about what letters could possibly come before the T during an alphabet trawl. It appeared quite quickly, considering the problems a lot of us had with it! An enjoyable puzzle. 33:09. Thanks setter and Olivia.
    Now it’s The Nearness of You with Ella and Louis… Bliss….

    Edited at 2019-07-24 10:09 am (UTC)

  18. ….a GRUELLING alpha-trawl to get PTOMAINE. I tried S, first, and then the vowels in sequence, and then the “P” dropped ! This took around 20% of my solving time.

    BABY GRAND and MANIC-DEPRESSIVE were both parsed post-solve (those who’ve read my QC post this morning will see that I follow my own advice at least some of the time !)

    I assume the clue for SCRAM is a recommendation to Myrtilus regarding the lemon and lime marmalade alluded to yesterday !

    A very enjoyable puzzle, and thanks to Olivia for her fine blog.

    FOI CORRIDOR
    LOI PTOMAINE
    COD SCRAM
    TIME 12:49

  19. Hmm, well I found this tricky. Got there in the end though – and give myself and everyone else who got it a pat on the back for trawling up ptomaine from the depths, despite not having a clue what the word means and only the very haziest knowledge of Mr Paine. The only thing I thought I knew about ptomaine is that it can poison you – and now I discover that actually, it can’t! It was a mistaken impression, the accompanying bacteria were doing that all the time .. Live & learn, live & learn
  20. Most of it spent asleep but finished in a rush to leave 4 stubborn ones at the end, which lengthened the process somewhat. Most intractable were PTOMAINE, DEANSHIP and WARM UP, the last of which threw me with the W which wasn’t the first time. Had wondered about DRUM UP as well.
  21. 22:20 after a very slow start where I got all the way to 4D to find an answer. ADVENTIST my LOI after SLAPDASH and DIRECT. No wonder I couldn’t find a Christian sect with AV in it – I was parsing it wrong. A bit tricky but all fair and fun.
  22. Plodded along to 32’15. Good to be reminded of his Deanship. Tom Paine deserves more recognition than currently seems to be awarded. Liked the extra hint in the apparently good food (scam/pi) even if inadvertent. And the delightfully simple construction for what may be the word of the month in 23.
  23. I try and avoid political writers and putrid substances in equal measure so I was never going to get 15 in an M of Ss. 15 minutes up to that point and I enjoyed the tussle.

    Keriothe may have come across this as well but when you start to learn about international bond markets you’re taught that the archetypal holder of a (unregistered, untraceable) bearer bond is a (by implication shady, tax-dodging) Belgian dentist.

    1. I expect you will be hearing from the lawyers for the SBDA (shady Belgian dentists association) very shortly ..
      1. To be honest Jerry I think all Belgians are at it. When we were in Bruges in April it was uncanny how many bars and restaurants could only take cash and not cards because “the internet was down” or “the card machine wasn’t working”.
  24. Never heard of Tom Paine or ptomaine, so I was locked out.
    Thanks Olivia.
  25. Nicely challenging, with Ptomaine the LOI and deduced from a clever clue. I can’t be the only one who’d never heard of ICT, but it couldn’t be anything else . COD to Staten Island. Thanks to setter and blogger.
  26. My very first job, as a seventeen-year-old, filling in nine months before going to university in 1966, was as a computer operator on an ICT 1301, state of the art at the time, could only work in an air-conditioned room! Tabulators were even more primitive – working on the basis of plug boards.
    That so many solvers have not heard of ICT makes me feel very old.
    1. Don’t feel old… the ICT solvers have never heard of is “information and computer technology”, not the makers of the ICT 1301.
  27. Well after feeling good about seeing PTOMAINE straight away, it seems I have invented PALM UP as a rather painful-sounding exercise (I know that is a tautology). Better luck tomorrow.
  28. Hello,
    I made this more difficult by preferring fore finger to ring finger … I still think it’s a better answer.
    Peter
    1. You’d have to have something in the clue indicating the homonym – e.g. starting it with ‘Sounds like…’.
  29. Found myself accidentally submitting online with only half done. Consequently my Crossword Club attempt has 15 errors in around 48 mins. Ho ho. Finished the rest in 35ish minutes on the non-club grid.

    Plenty to think about here. Nowt seemed to pop up easily but finished it at least. Tomorrow is another day.

    1. I did that once and submitted a completely blank grid. Bad words were said.

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