Times Cryptic 27536

Author   jackktPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic

Solving time: 48 minutes with one resort to aids.

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]. I usually omit all reference to positional indicators unless there is a specific point that requires clarification.

Across
1 Sleep with old man who dominated Europe (8)
NAPOLEON : NAP (sleep), O (old), LEON (man)
5 Tree where duck engaged by trilling notes? (6)
BAOBAB : 0 (duck) contained [engaged] by BABAB (trilling notes). A ‘trill’ (aka ‘shake’) is a musical ornament consisting mainly of  alternating neighbouring notes within a scale as demonstrated here by BABAB.  The tree has come up a number of times before, even as recently as last month, but on those occasions it was easily derived  from wordplay, unlike today where a certain technical knowledge is required that many solvers won’t possess. Unfortunately the word failed to stick in my brain and I didn’t spot the wordplay despite having the aforementioned technical knowledge, so I ended up resorting to aids for this one.
10 Hurried hospital visitor might make this easy (15)
STRAIGHTFORWARD : Alternatively spaced, the answer could be STRAIGHT FOR WARD to satisfy the cryptic hint in the clue
11 Set out at night — wind diminished in valley (7)
DENTURE : TUR{n} (wind) [diminished] contained by [in] DENE (valley). Not the most common word for a valley perhaps, but -DENE appears as a suffix in many an English place name. A fun clue reminding me of the old chestnut, “Darling, your teeth are like the stars…”
12 Divorcee, one in bed to take advantage of (7)
EXPLOIT : EX (divorcee), I (one) contained by [in] PLOT (bed)
13 Shrub one humped round lake to Iowa’s west (8)
CAMELLIA : CAMEL (one humped) containing [round] L (lake), IA (Iowa). ‘West’ is just a positional indicator here.
15 Precision returns after scrapping vehicle plant (5)
YUCCA : ACCU{rac}Y (precision) reversed (returns) [scrapping vehicle – car]
18 Sound made by euphoric woman — one’s supposed to laugh? (5)
HYENA :  HYE sounds like “high” (euphoric), ENA (woman). ‘Laughing hyena’ is an alteranive name for the spotted hyena (crocuta crocuta).
20 Irishman called out, visibly cold in shade (4,4)
NILE BLUE : NILE sounds like [called out] “Niall” (Irishman), BLUE (visibly cold)
23 Spectral deity visiting London region (7)
RAINBOW : RA (deity), IN  BOW (visiting / London region)
25 Land surrounding area in Pacific seaport (7)
SEATTLE : SETTLE (land) containing [surrounding] A (area)
26 Hitherto elegant, sadly exposed (2,3,10)
IN THE ALTOGETHER : Anagram [sadly] of HITHERTO ELEGANT. I won’t post the Danny Kaye link today.
27 Virtues shown by monarch in swirling mist (6)
MERITS : ER (monarch) contained by [in] anagram [swirling] of MIST
28 Supports present but makes no move (5,3)
STAYS PUT : STAYS  (supports), PUT (present)
Down
1 Team missing whistle at Twickers? (2-4)
NO-SIDE : A straight definition with a cryptic hint. ‘Twickers’ refers to Twickenham, the home of international rugby football, a town to the west of London in my own historic County of Middlesex but now absorbed into the London Borough of Richmond. Collins defines NO-SIDE as: the end of a match, signalled by the referee’s whistle. It can also be spelt without a hyphen.
2 Attendant nurses are not family (9)
PARENTAGE : PAGE (attendant) contains [nurses] AREN’T (are not)
3 One’s dropped into the French river — here’s rest! (7)
LEISURE : I (one) contained by [dropped into] LES (the – French), URE ( river)
4 Does it turn up regularly in earthy clod? (5)
OCHRE :  Reversed[turn up] in E{a}R{t}H{y} C{l}O{d} [regularly]. It consists of silica and clay, hence, ‘earthy clod’.
6 Some silverware for degenerate (7)
ATROPHY : Alternatively spaced, the answer could be A TROPHY to satisfy the cryptic hint in the clue
7 Maybe fail to show support for party (5)
BEANO : Similarly, this could be read as  BE A ‘NO’
8 Free debates initially discussing support for the retired (8)
BEDSTEAD : Anagram [free] of DEBATES, D{iscussing} [ initially]
9 Last   despite expectations (5,3)
AFTER ALL : Two meanings
14 Heard credit issue upset independent type (4,4)
LONE WOLF : LONE sounds like [heard] “loan” (credit), FLOW (issue) reversed [upset]
16 Royal household cool about second romance (9)
COURTSHIP : COURT (royal household) + HIP (cool) containing [about] S (second)
17 Reform movement curtailed Christmas breaks (8)
CHARTISM : Anagram [breaks] of CHRISTMA{s} [curtailed]
19 Shaking tambourine, not our sort of music (7)
AMBIENT : Anagram [shaking] of TAMB{our}INE [not ‘our’]. It’s about creating a relaxing tone and atmosphere.
21 Something with cups most needed for bottle (7)
BRAVERY : BRA (something with cups), VERY (most). Makes a change from ‘supporter’!
22 Capital that is raised comes through British channel (6)
BEIRUT : IE (that is) reversed [raised] and contained by [comes through] B (British) + RUT (channel)
24 Bury‘s season failing to start (5)
INTER : {w}INTER (season) [failing to start]. Escapee from the QC perhaps.
25 Beer makes you rather fat (5)
STOUT : Two meanings

60 comments on “Times Cryptic 27536”

  1. Started off with 1ac, always encouraging, although usually deceptively so. I biffed 10ac from the I_H and definition, and 18ac, parsing both post-submission. BAOBAB (a most unattractive tree) once I had the final B, without which I would have had trouble. LOI DENTURE–tried to make DALE work for too long. I didn’t notice at the time, but in retrospect the singular seems a bit awkward, although I gather from ODE that it’s a possibility. INTER and STOUT both seemed more QC material.
    1. The only reason I knew the singular was okay was because it came up in a puzzle I blogged in August 2016:

      Wreck teeth biting key (8)

      DENATURE – DENTURE (teeth) containing [biting] A (key – music). The singular can cover the plural apparently.

    2. Dentures are unattractive but baobabs are not.. there are plenty around Doha where my daughter lived until recently, and they are lovely trees .. dumpy, a bit like a child’s drawing of a tree.
      they are becoming endangered, so we must be nice to them ..
      1. I assure you that I have never been other than nice to a baobab, aside from my previous comment. Maybe they do them better in Doha, but my memories (becoming distant) of Kenya and Tanzania contain nothing lovely relating to them. (I don’t like palm trees, either, for what that’s worth.)

        Edited at 2019-12-17 10:38 am (UTC)

  2. My only problem was also BAOBAB. I had spelt it BOABAB, which fits the wordplay equally well to the correct spelling. It made getting ATROPHY difficult until I had a suspicion that it might might be spelled BAOBAB, and then ATROPHY dropped immediately, my LOI. I agree that it’s nice to see BRA clued as something other than supporter for a change.

    My physics teacher would fail the setter for considering accuracy and precision to be the same thing!

  3. I’d obviously fail Physics A-level, since the two words seem close enough to me. Then, of course, synonyms are very rarely exact equivalents, else one or other word is likely to die out or perhaps never to have been adopted/borrowed in the first place. Never quite got my head round the tree parsing, inventing BA as a fake synonym for the noise a sheep makes (which is scarcely a synonym of trilling in the first place) followed by B for note (which is scarcely plural – unless I’m missing something mathematical).

    Just snuck under 24 minutes.

    1. Accuracy is whether you have the right number. Precision is how big an error you expect from your measuring instruments. More casually, accuracy is whether the number is correct, and precision is the number of decimal places you think have a hope of being correct.
      1. J.L. Austin once made the distinction between ‘exact’ and ‘precise’ thus: You could measure a banana with a yardstick and find that it’s precisely 6.5 inches long; and you could measure a yardstick with bananas and find that it’s exactly 5 bananas long, but you wouldn’t want to call that measurement precise.
        1. Austin was a bright fellow, but my favourite contributor to the development of pragmatics was Paul Grice, who lay down a number of maxims to follow to achieve successful conversation. The exhortation to ‘Be brief’, which may be found under the maxim of manner, is given the wonderful gloss ‘avoid unnecessary prolixity’.
          1. I wonder if anyone still does Ordinary Language philosophy. I also wonder, for all the good it will do me, what Austin would have done had he lived past 48; he was evidently preparing to have a look at Chomsky’s stuff. Grice is major.
            Strunk & White advise us to “Eschew surplusage”.
  4. I saw 1a and thought “Hang on, that looks VERY familiar” and indeed it was, word for word. Hmm…

    Couldn’t parse BAOBAB or DENTURE – nice def which I think we may have had before. I know there is a difference between ‘precision’ and ‘accuracy’ but I can’t remember what it is. Maybe one is more exact than the other, or something like that. Anyway, a statistician (or perhaps a physics teacher) will set us right.

    I liked STRAIGHT FOR WARD, ‘high Ena’, ‘Ra in Bow’ and ‘Be a no’.

    Thanks to setter and blogger.

  5. was my third one in (TOI)- a write-in for most philatelists as the definitive issues of the Bechuanaland Protectorate 1932-1960 showed, as per Gibbons – ‘Baobab Tree with Cattle drinking’. In fact none of the cattle are actually drinking, but simply standing idly in water. To me Kev, the said Baobab (Adonsonia) is most attractive. There are nine varieties.
    Please do not be dismissive as they are dying off in great numbers, due to global warming.

    FOI 1dn NO SIDE I’m not a real rugger-bugger – only been to ‘Twickers’ once for The Varsity Match. No OK signals in those days!

    LOI 17dn CHARTISM

    COD Many to chose from, but I preferred 23ac RAINBOW

    Time 45 mins

    WOD 5ac BAOBAB

    Edited at 2019-12-17 05:58 am (UTC)

  6. Quite a few went in unparsed or only half parsed today – DENTURE, BAOBAB and LOI NO SIDE to name but a few. I found the reference to Twickenham as Twickers threw me somewhat. Did the abbreviation mean something? Was there such thing as a twicker? But no, it was just the rugby ground.
          2. ‘SW19’ for one who has played there!

            NO SIDE should be remembered with Bill McLaren’s lovely Hawick accent.

            Edited at 2019-12-17 02:04 pm (UTC)

          3. I think we’ll have to call the renamed Reebok/Macron as the Unibollers. Although perhaps the Unibollocks better reflects our position.
  7. 19:07 … I found this really hard and in the end threw several things in with little hope of their being right. They were, but it was an unsatisfying experience.

    Didn’t have the foggiest what NO-SIDE meant, and didn’t know or had forgotten the abbreviation for Iowa (can’t really think why I should know, in truth), among other gaps in my knowledge or failures to see what the setter had in mind.

    It basically left me feeling quite dim, a sense deepened on seeing verlaine’s time of 4:52. Good grief.

  8. 31 minutes, but with one letter wrong. I really should learn to go and double check my question marks; in this case I’d wondered why STAYS PAT sounded wrong and didn’t quite fit with the parsing. I suppose typically one stands pat, now I think about it.

    My only other question mark was 1d NO SIDE, but then I’d even misremembered which sport happens at Twickenham…

  9. …Unweave a Rainbow…
    25 mins with yoghurt, granola, banana, etc.
    Mostly I liked ‘one humped’ and COD to 19dn Ambient.
    NHO No-Side.
    Thanks setter and J.
  10. No problems with this apart from a small delay on the fiendish BAOBAB. Well, 5-minute delay actually, but well worth it. It gave me wood, as the Americans say. Everything else pitched about right for Tuesday I’d reckon.

    I thought the ‘precision-accuracy’ thing above unnecessarily picky: that’s a straight synonym for me.

  11. Very enjoyable steady solve. The BAOBAB tree crops up reasonably often, so worth remembering.

    All mathematicians and scientists will distinguish between accuracy and precision because both are vitally important considerations. If more people understood that we might not hear so much rubbish talked about opinion polls for example

  12. Liked ‘set out at night’, ‘be a no’ and ‘one humped’.

    I remember magical candlelit dinners under baobabs in Mozambique (apart from the bat sh*t raining down).

  13. 24 minutes, so on wavelength. LOI SEATTLE, having slept well last night. COD to STRAIGHTFORWARD. I liked CAMELLIA too. We’ve got several of those. A pleasant puzzle. Thank you Jack and setter.

    Edited at 2019-12-17 09:22 am (UTC)

  14. 18:35. Like Bltetchlyreject I had a Groundhog Day moment with 1A… I too had done yesterday’s Independent. Held up at the end by having written CAMELIAA for 13A and hadn’t noticed until I couldn’t do 14D. I liked BAOBAB (the clue and the tree), BEANO and RAINBOW, but, of course, COD for me has to be 24D. Thanks Jack and setter.
    1. Ah yes, that’s where it was from. I thought it had appeared in yesterday’s QC and wondered why so few people had picked up on it. Presumably the same setter, as I can’t imagine it’s wholly au fait to nick each other’s clues.
      – Rupert
  15. I didn’t know or recall BAOBAB and went with BAOBOB. Just over 25 mins.

    COD: NAPOLEON.

  16. The newspaper didn’t come so I solved what I thought was this puzzle in 14 minutes on the iPad. I’m getting better, I thought, then realised I’d done the quickie.
    Too depressed to try this one as yet.
    Roin
  18. Very pleasant and smooth solve, no hold-ups or quibbles (though in retrospect, I see you might argue for at least one, if you were being precise, or accurate, or whatever). I learned about the BAOBAB and the banyan at school, with no clear explanation why they might be important to me; and when I say “learned about”, obviously I mean “still get the two confused to this day”.
  19. Racing along by my standards and all bar one done in 16 minutes. Then gnash, gnash just could not fathom denture at 11 across. One to commit to the memory for next time.
  21. I had trouble getting started, with only OCHRE and BEDSTEAD revealing themselves in the top half, but the SE was more tractable. I was then able to work steadily back until only B_A_O was outstanding. An alphabet trawl revealed BEANO after I discounted BRADO. Nice puzzle. 34:49. Thanks setter and Jack.

    Edited at 2019-12-17 11:12 am (UTC)

  22. ‘Set out at night’, though maybe the wordplay didn’t quite sparkle as much as the definition. General convention is that trills in Baroque music begin on the upper note, and those in Classical music begin on the lower, though the rule is not hard and fast.

    As a Scot, not happy with ‘Niall’ for ‘Nile’, though that’s the least of my grouses of the last few days.

  23. Aaah childhood memories of the Scots rugby commentator Bill McLaren who always used to end with: “ …and the referee’s whistle goes for NO SIDE.” The game was different too – I spent years at school being told to ‘fall on the ball’ which nowadays is not allowed.

    No time today, as I went to a school carol event after 20 minutes, and finished when I got back home. No trouble with BAOBAB, liked BRAVERY and IN THE ALTOGETHER.

    Thanks jack and setter.

    1. Well I spent years at school trying to avoid the ball at all costs, because the minute you grab hold of it everyone jumps on top of you ..

      At least with tennis there was a net between you and them ..

      1. I chose pole vault at school because it took me 20 minutes to walk to the top of the playing fields where the large sand pit was located (and 20 back) …. no need for a shower. In winter, despite being vertically challenged, I did basketball indoors in the warm.
        At junior school I avoided football and played netball on tarmac with the girls (how they laughed).
  24. If it’s not a deodar it must be a BAOBAB. Didn’t know the musical stuff but thought it would be the sort of noise crooner Bing might make. I didn’t see DENTURE until proofing which saved me from a nasty pink rash in that corner because I’d put it “venture” (set out) with a shrug at 11A and “no-save” at 1D. I thought NO SIDE meant something else and I know zip about rugby. 19.53
  25. ….as Bury’s season in League 1 did indeed fail to start. Where they pop up next season was still undecided last time I heard. Very sad.

    I started really well, and cleared the NW corner quickly, with a clean sweep looking possible. 7D (of which, more later) stopped any ideas in that direction, but I had the whole left side done in a little over 4 minutes.

    NILE BLUE was a DNK (eau de nil is unarguably a shade of green !)

    The last one I actually entered was BAOBAB, but I’d pencilled it in early on with little conviction. Alas, the “support” element of my real LOI had me working with “bra” for far too long.

    FOI NAPOLEON
    LOI BEANO
    COD DENTURE
    TIME 11:20

  26. 13m 04s with the last 3 minutes or so of that spent on DENTURE – not helped by the fact that I’d had a stab at NO-SUIT for 1d, thinking that maybe it was a bridge thing (and whistle = suit). Never heard of NO-SIDE.

    I thought this was a wonderful crossword, with superb clues – BAOBAB, STRAIGHTFORWARD, RAINBOW, IN THE ALTOGETHER, PARENTAGE, BEDSTEAD, CHARTISM, AMBIENT could all have been COD in another puzzle. I think I’ll pick RAINBOW of that lot.

  27. 8:30 so pretty straightforward. It took a while to make a start but then everything flowed quite well.
  28. Happy enough with that. BEANO was LOI for me. Nothing much held me up for too long.

    Has the Club site changed or is it just being glitchy? I couldn’t get to the top 100. Apologies if this is old news.

  29. Held up for ages trying to see the anagram for HURRIED H VISITOR, until the answer became obvious from the revealed letters. LOI DENTURE where like above I was looking for the Dale to appear. COD CHARTISM for the seasonal clue. ATROPHY very useful in Scrabble
  30. Was really enjoying this, and then I to spoil it with a biffed Bravo for Beano. What a fool.
  31. I managed to avoid the Yank Trap at 1d (for horryd, that’s the one the Brothers Jonathan are not meant to twig) but wasn’t so lucky with Hyena where Heeha was all I could think of. I found this difficult to the point of periodic vexation, but then the cleverness of something would keep me going
    thanks jack, and thanks setter
  32. For the first time since I’ve been trying to do these, 1ac and 1d were write-ins. Whether that inspired me or the setter was an unknown relative, I don’t know, but much to my disbelief the answers kept popping into my head. I even surprised myself with some of them – Chartism, Seattle, Beirut and the almost unknown Baobab. This would easily have been a PB {ie measured in minutes, rather than hours and minutes) but of course the last pair (2d/11ac) just wouldn’t come and I resorted to aids for the Dale less Denture (nice clue) to break the deadlock. My thanks to today’s setter for letting me feel borderline adequate. Invariant

    Edited at 2019-12-17 09:06 pm (UTC)

  33. DNF in around 45 mins. I saw support in 7dn, couldn’t see past bra and ended up with bravo. Annoying because I got through the rest of it ok even though it was a bit of a slog at times with quite a few gaps in the middle of the grid. The technical ‘trilling’ bit of baobab was over my head. If I knew no-side at all it was from a previous puzzle.
  34. Not a rugby fan – too much hanging around waiting for something to happen in a corner of the pitch far, far away – so no idea about my LOI NO-SIDE whether or not anyone else has ever heard of it.

    STRAIGHTFORWARD took ages to fall but opened up the last four or five clues.

  35. Ah well. I narrowly avoided a “bravo” at 7d, but had venture at 1d (vee=valley; plus tur[n] and with the n coming from night). This left me with fewer than two options for 1d, including the plausible-at-the-time “no save”.
  36. 20’02. I too like the baobab. If most and very or even present and put can be crossword cousins then so can accuracy and precision. Surprised though by the use of ambient. I tend to ask for the music or volume to be turned down at pubs – but don’t think I’ll have the nerve to try an apparent alternative. All fairly 10 and annoyed not to break 20 (min.). joekobi

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