Times Cryptic 27470

Author   jackktPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic

Solving time: 30 minutes for all but 10ac as explained in the blog.

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 A range of binoculars? (5,2,6)
FIELD OF VISION : A cryptic definition. My first in, but initially I had it as ‘depth of vision’ which presented problems when I came to 1dn and 2dn.
8 Two metals forming hook (4)
SNAG : SN (metal #1 – tin), AG (metal #2 – silver). Hook or some other type of projection was an original meaning of SNAG but these days it is mostly an unexpected obstacle or drawback.
9 Couple to keep port clear? It has strings attached (10)
MARIONETTE : MATE (couple) containing [to keep] RIO (port) + NET (clear). For a while I had only the O and T checkers in place and I wasted time trying to justify PIANOFORTE.
10 Object, on reflection, when woman’s injected white compound (8)
MAGNESIA : AIM (object) reversed [on reflection], containing AGNES (woman) [when…injected]. My knowledge of science let me down here because I came up with M(ANNE’S)IA from wordplay without realising how close I was to the correct answer. As I had already finished the rest of the puzzle I cheated to check for its existence and the on-line dictionary was too helpful in presenting me with the correct answer before I was actually ready for it.
11 Get some wine, or lose it (3,3)
SEE RED : SEE (get), RED (some wine). ‘It’ being one’s temper.
13 Very neat, original music outlet dismissing tango (10)
METICULOUS : Anagram [original] of MUSIC OUTLE{t} [dismissing tango]
16 Faculty‘s revolutionary strategy half abandoned (4)
ARTS : STRA{tegy} reversed [revolutionary] [half abandoned]
17 Companion for dam built at last in south of France (4)
STUD : {buil}T [at last] contained by [in] SUD (south  – of France)
18 Initiation here by holding wild parties? About time! (10)
BAPTISTERY : BY (containing) [holding] anagram [wild] of PARTIES itself containing [about] T (time). I arrived at the correct spelling via wordplay and enumeration;  if left to my own devices I would have omitted the second E as that’s how I pronounce the word.
20 It finishes on landing, in different ways (6)
FLIGHT : Double cryptic with reference to air journeys and stairs
22 Get outside by drilling nonstop (8)
EXTERNAL : X (by – multiplied by) is contained by [drilling] ETERNAL (nonstop)
24 Extra habit, not cape, a learner put on (10)
ADDITIONAL : ADDI{c}TION (habit) [not cape], A, L (learner)
26 Perhaps Sally‘s East End stamping ground? (4)
AUNT : {h}AUNT (stamping ground) [East End]. The definition is a reference to ‘Aunt Sally’, the fairground game as discussed here quite recently.
27 Call cameraman out of house, one in Bletchley Park? (13)
CRYPTOGRAPHER : CRY (call), P{ho}TOGRAPHER (cameraman) [out of house – ho]. To my shame I have lived only 7 miles from Bletchley Park for the past 36 years but have never set foot there.
Down
1 Sponsor a mad cardinal (11)
FUNDAMENTAL : FUND (sponsor),  A, MENTAL (mad)
2 Drive, say, almost disappeared (3,2)
EGG ON : EG (say), GON{e} (disappeared) [almost]
3 Dud PMQs disputed in assembly of Dubai (4,5)
DAMP SQUIB : Anagram [disputed] of PMQs contained by [in] anagram [assembly] of DUBAI. Often misquoted as ‘damp squid’.
4 Mess made by gunmen in US bank? Not half! (7)
FARRAGO : RA (gunmen) contained by [in] {Wells} FARGO (US bank) [not half]. Many a happy childhood memory here…
5 Most of what’s in golf bag is decreasing? (5)
IRONS : Two definitions of sorts. Most golf clubs are called IRONS but a set can also contain ‘woods’. We had the ‘de-creasing’ device very recently.
6 Clumsy modern European stage worker (9)
INELEGANT : IN (modern  – in fashion), E (European), LEG (stage), ANT (worker). So simple to assemble from the kit supplied.
7 Lousy egg container upended (3)
NIT : TIN (container) reversed [upended]
12 Internet era transformed famous part of Olivier (11)
ENTERTAINER : Anagram [transformed] of INTERNET ERA. Laurence Olivier created the role of Archie Rice aka THE ENTERTAINER in John Osborne’s 1957 stage work and also played him in the 1960 film adaptation.
14 Shame to trigger cut in car racing (9)
INDIGNITY : IGNIT{e} (trigger) [cut] contained by [in] INDY (car racing)
15 Trace son about to obtain fashionable work (9)
SCINTILLA : S (son), CA (about) containing [to obtain] IN (fashionable) + TILL (work). I preferred yesterday’s soundalike of ‘One cultivating wickedness’.
19 Mark’s part of following into writing that’s put out one November (7)
PFENNIG : F (following) is contained by [into] PENNI{n}G (writing) [put out one November – N]. One-hundreth of a German mark before the arrival of the euro.
21 Blight? It isn’t heard of in parts of the country (5)
TAINT : Sounds like “‘t’ain’t” a version of ‘it isn’t’ as it may be said in some parts of the country
23 Come to pass (5)
REACH : Two meanings
25 Maybe vet fish hauled up (3)
DOC : COD (fish) reversed [hauled up]

60 comments on “Times Cryptic 27470”

  1. This didn’t start well: no acrosses on the first pass, FOI 7d, followed by 25d. DNK 3d, but it made sense. (Also didn’t know PMQ.) ‘decreasing’ took a long time to sink in. I put in CRYPTOGRAPHER early on from the C, but couldn’t for the longest time see how it worked, and the N_G of 19d looked unlikely, so I took it out. As it was, I had to do an alphabet run to think of PFENNIG. POI 22ac, LOI 23d. Milk of MAGNESIA, a laxative, was a standard item in medicine chests when I was a child; may still be, for all I know.
    1. Right Kevin, in the little blue bottle. We had that in the UK as well and an early nanny used it instead of toothpaste.
  2. Not too difficult, although the last few minutes doing an alphabet trawl to get TAINT took me over the half hour. I was unsure of BAPTISTERY too, although the number of letters (and the wordplay) meant that the unlikely E had to be there. Chambers has both spellings.
    1. Thanks for confirming my preferred spelling, Paul. On further investigation I find it’s listed in all the usual sources, sometimes first and sometimes second.
  3. Seemed maybe easier than yesterday’s, but so much depends on my mood…!
    It was with some reluctance that I finally put in EXTERNAL, as I don’t like the “instruction” kind of clue (so non-Ximenean!). But honestly, having “Get” at the start is the only thing that makes thr clue not screamingly obvious.
    Right after that came my LOI, MAGNESIA.
    That E in BAPTISTERY gave me pause, too,
    … ——but guess what? As I tapped this out just now on my iPhone, the word automatically suggested after BAP was spelled just like that!

    Edited at 2019-10-01 03:20 am (UTC)

  4. Like vinyl, I thought this a clever puzzle with lots to like, including some cunning definitions – “Mark’s part”, “decreasing” and “Companion for dam” to name but a few.

    COD for me was FLIGHT. Having solved it, the flight-landing link seems too obvious not to have appeared before, but I’d either not seen it or not remembered it (no doubt a search of TfTT would see me previously having commented similarly!).

    1. You didn’t comment that day, pootle, but we had this on 11th July as blogged by Verlaine:

      7dn What comes at end of different flights (7)
      LANDING – cryptic def. Flights as in stairs, or voyages by plane: both end in landings!

      I’ve an idea I’ve seen it even more recently but it’s possibly in a competition puzzle that’s still under wraps.

        1. It’s a real chestnut. Sorry, pootle – its been appearing in one form or another for years
          2. When I blogged it, above, I remember being quite taken by it. It’s only a chestnut the second and subsequent times a person sees it I suppose!
  5. 15 mins ( super quick for me – must be a wavelength thing).
    MER at ‘Get’ in 22ac. Instructions are ok, but to be an instruction this needed the ‘by’ to be part of the instruction – which it wasn’t, it was crucial to the wordplay.
    Strangely, I think I would be ok with: How to get outside? By drilling nonstop! (8)
    And MER at pass=reach, unless it is from the inelegant phrase, “Could you reach me the brown sauce?”
    Mostly I liked: Damp Squib.
    Thanks setter and J

    Edited at 2019-10-01 07:00 am (UTC)

    1. Darn. EXTERNAL was the one clue I really liked and now you’ve gone and ruined it 🙂 My ignorance was bliss.
    2. Reach/Pass

      SOED is happy with it:

      Reach

      5 Pass (a thing) to a person by extending a hand or arm to get it (freq. foll. by pers. indirect obj.)

      Also Collins:

      Reach

      5 (transitive) informal
      to pass or give (something to a person) with the outstretched hand
      (to reach someone a book)

      1. Probably erroneously I thought I remembered encountering Reach as a noun in old westerns, something like “Elmer said he was going to ride out to Devil’s Reach to shoot Coyotes. That was a few hours back”. On that basis I assumed it was a pass between mountains.

        Maybe I’m confusing it with the upper reaches of the Amazon or some such.

        Edited at 2019-10-01 01:24 pm (UTC)

        1. I felt something similar, to the point when I wondered if a cowboy could say, “We’ll cut them off at the reach,” when I gave up on the idea.

          Edited at 2019-10-01 02:15 pm (UTC)

  6. 17 minutes but with PHENNIG, the sort of phonetic (pfonetic?) interference I often get during puzzles where I’m off the wavelength, which was certainly the case here.

    Quite a few ‘huh?’ moments for me, but maybe that’s just a matter of personal preference.

    1. Fortunately GCSE German got me past PFENNIG. PF is fairly common in German, pfeffer for pepper being the other one that springs to mind.
  7. 23 minutes. LOI SEE RED surprisingly, given that Rioja is my tipple of choice. COD to an anagram, also unusual for me, BAPTISTERY. I visualised the one in Florence but I guess they’re usually somewhat more modest. Theologically speaking, a washing-up bowl will do. I wasn’t sure that the reference to binoculars was helpful in FIELD OF VISION, although I put it straight in. Wiki has the phrase as more of a psycholgical concept with either Field of View or Visual Field the one for optometry. A clever but reasonably benign puzzle. Thank you Jack and setter.

    Edited at 2019-10-01 07:54 am (UTC)

  8. Average difficulty for me. The four outside long clues were write-ins so this gave me a framework on which to hang everything else.
  9. I enjoyed this one over my 46 minutes, especially 17’s “companion for dam” with its misdirecting “built”, the FLIGHT of fancy at 20, and 22 EXTERNAL (apparently I’m okay if things stray a little from the Ximenean track.) On that last I was properly misdirected by “get outside…” into thinking it started “eat”, from Bertie Wooster’s frequent desire to get himself outside of some eggs and bacon.

    FOI 1a FIELD OF VISION got me off to a good start, perhaps helped by FIELD GLASSES appearing recently, LOI 19d PFENNIG where the tricksy definition and sheer number of words confused me.

    My sympathies for any MANNESIAs out there (or indeed MANNISIAs; I considered both.) I may have been saved by watching a couple of episodes of the Good Omens telly adaptation last night; it features a witch called Agnes Nutter.

    Edited at 2019-10-01 08:23 am (UTC)

  10. Loved PFENNIG, but SCINTILLA was too easy after yesterday.

    I am not convinced that ‘East End’ should just take the H off the front – the pronunciation of the remainder is completely different to AUNT in London.

    18’33”

    While I’m here, I’ve read the Club site, but is the expected time for a puzzle, which affects the scoring, guessed beforehand?

    Thanks jack and setter.

    1. I think that AUNT is OK as there’s no indication that it’s meant to be a homonym.
    2. I wrote quite a long screed on that when preparing the blog but wasn’t satisfied with it so decided to dodge the issue.

      We’re in the realms of the homograph here and I don’t think there are any established crossword indicators for those so I’m reasonably happy to go along with it. It’s not as if there’s a direct ‘sound-alike’ indicator in the clue, only an instruction to remove an H.

  11. … 8ac was ‘barb’, which is also two metallic elements and which I was convinced had to be right. D’oh.
  12. This was a mixed bag. I really liked the EXTERNAL clue, though now I’ve read the comments about its construction I see that it may not please the most meticulous. The surface of 19d was awful. It was my LOI and the checkers had me pfuddled for a while until the pfennig dropped. It’s a shame that CRYPTOGRAPHER was so instantly biffable: the wordplay was jolly clever, but few would actually use it. Reusing SCINTILLA so soon was a bit ‘Duh!’ I hadn’t seen the FLIGHT trick before, so I appreciated that one. And the phonetically twisted TAINT and AUNT were fun. An entertaining 28 mins.
    Thanks for your blog, jackkt.
  13. Reasonably difficult in parts, this required hard work at times to solve.

    A quick tip to newer solvers. Beware clues like 1A and 8A which can clearly give rise to more than one answer. Get some checkers in place before committing yourself. Here, the relatively straightforward 1D, 2D and 7D tie in the correct solutions.

  14. Twenty-seven minutes, close to my average. All parsed apart from IRONS, and thanks to Jack for the explanation. I particularly enjoyed CRYPTOGRAPHER, (even though it was let down a bit by its biffability), but that’s partly because I’m a great fan of Bletchley Park, Turing and the like. I also liked 1d, simple though it was, because it reminded me of my old department’s regular Christmas bash which was advertised as the “Arrive sane, departmental party”.
  15. 13:38. A bit like Kevin I got very few answers from my initial stab at the acrosses but then the downs proved a lot easier and I made steady progress.
    I put in MANNESIA from the wordplay initially but fortunately I reconsidered when checking my answers. I’m not sure what made we think again so this counts as a lucky escape.
    I was saved any doubts about the spelling of BAPTISTERY by never having come across the word in either incarnation.
  16. ….BAPTISTERY, but ‘TAIN’T no big deal. I enjoyed this after yesterday’s grind, so thanks to the setter, and to Jack for his blog. I’d have broken 10 minutes but for the NW corner – I’m not sure what held me up to be honest.

    FOI FIELD OF VISION (I was another to remember the recent appearance of Field Glasses)

    LOI EGG ON (my face ?)

    COD SEE RED (Malbec for me please !)

    TIME 11:42

  17. 24’48. Re 26, as jackkt says, in the realms of the homograph. But it seems dodgy. Writing down what’s heard carries the heard sound; this doesn’t. An inauthentically correct clue then.
    Good to be reminded of the Entertainer role.
    Not enamoured of reach as pass.
  18. With one typo.

    I have to embarrassingly confess I bunged in damp squid – even though I knew full well the correct answer. (Great episode of the IT crowd which features this). Imagine my consternation when I saw the error of my ways. It was like being slapped in the face with a wet cephalopod and considerably delayed my journey to the Baptistery. LOI Aunt.

  19. I found this quite tricky with PFENNIG my LOI. I started fairly quickly with the top row of downs soon giving me a wide FIELD OF VISION, but soon ground to a crawl. I’ve been to Bletchley Park several times so CRYPTOGRAPHER was a write in. If you haven’t been, it’s well worth a visit. Your entry fee is basically a season ticket valid for a year. I was also surprised by the extra E in BAPTISTERY. Like Jack, I came up with MANNESIA/MANNISIA at 10a so checked to see if either of them existed and was presented with MAGNESIA. Doh! I thought REACH was a bit of a stretch. 44:34. Thanks setter and Jack.
  20. Must have been on form, because I found this one a non stop solve in 14 minutes, with just a MER at the spelling of BAPTIST(E)RY. 14 was a biff. Being a chemist (once) and a golfer helped with 10a, 8a and 6d.
  21. So that’s why BAPTISTERY looked funny. Speaking of pfunny, I was thinking it must be Bertie Wooster who had a friend with a pfishy spelling for his last name but now I think it must be a different lit. character. Slow start like others but smoothish finish. 17.32
  22. I found this tricky as well. As was doubtless intended, I spent a long time certain that 3dn was going to be some terribly obscure Arabic phrase ending in Q. One of those puzzles which ends up being tough without appearing to be at first look.
  23. I just stared at yesterday’s puzzle and had hardly anything entered by bedtime, so today, although a DNF, was a much happier experience!

    Mostly I found this quite challenging, but enjoyable. I could see the workings of many of the clues, even when the answers didn’t jump out at me, eg 1a (had a blind spot there!) and 18a, so I’ve got a new scoring system where I give myself half a point for nearly getting it right 😉 On that basis, I got 26 out of 28! I was stumped by pfennig, although even there, I knew pen had to go somewhere. I was being particularly dense there, considering my name!

    FOI Aunt
    LOI Stud
    WOD Farrago
    COD Snag – simple but effective
    Time – just under an hour

  24. 13:24. LOI PFENNIG after EXTERNAL. Like Sotira I liked that and never spotted the clue was a bit dodgy. And count me as another surprised to see BATISTERY spelt with an E. COD to ADDITIONAL.
  25. 18.10, delayed long over BAPTISTERY because I had an inexplicable DAMP SQUIP to throw me off the track. There does seem to be a difference in the spelling, at least in Google, where with an E it’s the building, without it’s the pool. I was much impressed by this baptistry in Avdat in the Negev desert dating from around the 6th century, the cruciform shape (coincidentally?) permitting full adult immersion with minimal use of water.
    I managed a typo to bring colour to my grid. Pity.
    Is 1ac actually cryptic?

    Edited at 2019-10-01 01:09 pm (UTC)

  26. Some good words / terms such as DAMP SQUIB, FARRAGO (nice YouTube clip – memories of student days for me) and BAPTISTERY made this very enjoyable. I also liked the ‘Mark’s part’ and ‘famous part of Olivier’ definitions, the latter helped by John Osborne turning up elsewhere recently. MAGNESIA was my LOI, entered by the association with ‘milk of…’ as others have pointed out.

    Home in 25 minutes.

    Thank you to setter and blogger.

  27. 11:06 so no dramas here. I quite enjoyed the likes of Pfennig and External, but missed the subtleties of the several clues I just biffed.
    1. Being a dinky-di Aussie about the only thing I know about Boris Johnson is that he has a strange (to me) name:
      Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson

      And he starred in a great youtube video

  29. 30 mins. Pleasant puzzle. Scintillas everywhere at the minute. ‘By’ in 22 is carrying two roles, and is overloaded. Thanks jack.

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