Times Cryptic 27554

Author   jackktPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic

Solving time: 54  minutes with major delays towards the end in the NE segment, but most of it had been completed within my half-hour target.

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 Puts rumpled sheets away from mouth (8)
UPSTREAM : Anagram [rumpled] of PUTS, REAM (sheets). The mouth of a river.  A ream of paper used to be 480 sheets but is now 500.
6 Note switches in random mutation? (6)
CHANGE : CHANCE (random) becomes CHANGE (mutation) when C (note) switches to G
9 Force confronted over drink (6)
DECAFF : F (force) + FACED (confronted) reversed [over]
10 Near agreement, backing a last drink (8)
NIGHTCAP : NIGH (near), then PACT (agreement) reversed [backing]
11 Married before once, and no more than (4)
MERE : M (married), ERE (before once). ‘Once’  indicates that ERE is old-fashioned.
12 Caught bird by head, being a chicken? (10)
CRAVENNESS : C (caught), RAVEN (bird), NESS (head). Cowardice.
14 Mexican music from aria: Chinese, partly (8)
MARIACHI : Hidden in [partly] {fro}M ARIA CHI{nese}. It’s both the music and a person who plays it. Somebody quoted a Tom Lehrer lyric on Sunday to illustrate ‘brouhaha’, and now it’s my turn:

When it’s fiesta time in Guadalajara
Then I long to be back once again
In Old Mexico
Where we lived for today, never giving a thought to tomara
To the strumming of guitars
In a hundred grubby bars
I would whisper: “Te amo!”

The mariachis would serenade
And they would not shut up till they were paid
We ate, we drank, and we were merry
And we got typhoid and dysen-tery…
16 One working too hard pulls back (4)
SWOT : TOWS (pulls) reversed [back]. I doubt that swots think they work too hard; it’s more likely to be said of them by envious slackers.
18 Passable old writer (4)
OPEN : O (old), PEN (writer). I think this is ‘passable / open’ in the sense of  ‘accessible’, as a road may be during floods for example.
19 Fun codes perplexed and puzzled (8)
CONFUSED : Anagram [perplexed] of FUN CODES
21 Lace still vino, putting in tons (10)
INTERTWINE : INERT (still) containing [putting in] T (tons), then WINE (vino)
22 Wettish mark in person’s home comes back (4)
DAMP : M (mark) contained by [in] PAD (person’s home) reversed [comes back]
24 Place for first flowers presumably is in March (8)
PARADISE : IS contained by [in] PARADE (march). ‘First’ suggests the Garden of Eden.
26 Chap after small snack (6)
SARNIE : S (small), ARNIE (chap). Slang for ‘sandwich’.
27 View article and be very angry (6)
SEETHE : SEE (view), THE (article)
28 Scrap what could be The Times inside page (8)
ENDPAPER : END (scrap), PAPER (what could be The Times)
Down
2 Bird edges round cake crumb (5)
PIECE : PIE (bird), C{ak}E [edges round]
3 Lead potentially has eider and gannet suffering (11)
TRAGEDIENNE : Anagram [suffering] of EIDER GANNET. Took me forever to unravel this one, and I needed most of the checkers before I eventually teased it out. The definition wasn’t very helpful.
4 Model takes chance regularly for good ability to get results (8)
EFFICACY : EFFIGY (model) becomes EFFICACY when C{h}A{n}C{e} [regularly] takes the place of G (good)
5 Chap taking risks mostly on mountain ridge’s eastern tongue (8,7)
MANDARIN CHINESE : MAN (chap), DARIN{g} (taking risks) [mostly], CHINE (mountain ridge), ‘S, E (eastern)
6 Water-loving youngster — small seal, reportedly (6)
CYGNET : The baby swan sounds [reportedly] like a “signet” (small seal) as may be set in a ring
7 Decree agreement has no power (3)
ACT : {p}ACT (agreement) [has no power]. Weakened a little by having already used ‘pact / agreement’ at 10ac but I’m pleased the setter didn’t use a cross-reference.
8 PM‘s left without fellow ministers’ support, ultimately (9)
GLADSTONE : GONE (left) containing [without] LAD + {minister}S {suppor}T [ultimately]. Gladstone held the office of Prime Minster on four separate occasions.
13 Man resounds with stirring operatic aria (6,5)
NESSUN DORMA : Anagram [stirring] of MAN RESOUNDS. Another fine piece of music done to death by association with something unrelated.
15 Attachment of a sheet enclosing pound note (9)
APPENDAGE : A, PAGE (sheet) containing [enclosing] PEN (pound) + D (note)
17 Not skilled in creation, missing out the third day (8)
UNVERSED : UN{i}VERSE (creation) [‘missing out the third’ letter], D (day)
20 Socialist’s gutted over widespread conflict (6)
STRIFE : S{ocialis}T [‘s gutted], RIFE (widespread)
23 State of Slovenia mired in revolution, somewhat (5)
MAINE : Reversed [in revolution] and hidden [somewhat] in {slov}ENIA M{ired}
25 Suitable   form of high-speed transport (3)
APT : Two meanings, the second being an abbreviation of Advance Passenger Train which I remember as being a pretty disastrous project at least in the attempts made to implement it.

61 comments on “Times Cryptic 27554”

  1. Hard going, as my NITCH shows–the highest as of now, although it’s a bit of a comfort that Verlaine’s is second. I made the going harder by not knowing the high-speed transport, taking forever to recal SARNIE, not thinking of the double F in DECAFF (as UK/US thing), failing to get beyond the ‘adulterate’ and ‘dimity’ meanings of ‘lace’, taking ‘the third day’ to be WED (or maybe TUE), and so on. Demi-biffed 8d–got the MANDARIN, skipped the rest–and biffed GLADSTONE and ENDPAPER. LOI 17d. A REAM was 500 sheets as far back as I can remember; I wonder if this was another UK/US difference. ‘Inside page’ is an odd definition; are there outside pages?
    1. Wikipedia: “This ream of 500 sheets (20 quires of 25 sheets) is also known as a ‘long’ ream, and is gradually replacing the old value of 480 sheets, now known as a ‘short’ ream. Reams of 472 and 516 sheets are still current, but in retail outlets paper is typically sold in reams of 500. As an old UK and US unit, a perfect ream was equal to 516 sheets.”
  2. I was stumped by SARNIE for a while, quaint British term that it is… Likewise SWOT. We had NESSUN DORMA (kind of obscure) and SLIPPERY SLOPE not so long ago.

    Also—as Verlaine reminds me—I had no idea about the acronym APT.

    Edited at 2020-01-07 04:44 am (UTC)

    1. NESSUN DORMA is one of two arias I know of, the other being ‘Un Bel Di’, and I didn’t even know that, since it’s ‘Un Bel Di Vedremo’ as I just found out.
      1. Well, it’s not “Ave Maria” (any of several), but the only reason I added the parenthesis was because I paired it, as one we were recently reminded of, with SLIPPERY SLOPE, which is surely a more common phrase.
      2. The only time that I have written off a car I was listening to Nessun dorma on a cassette …. and, yes, the irony was not lost on me. I do tend to sit up straight when I hear it now.
      1. It was pretty much inescapable that year, even if you don’t follow football, and I’m grateful for that today (and especially grateful that it was an anagram, as while I knew the first word wasn’t actually NISSAN I wasn’t too sure of the exact spelling!)
  3. A similar experience to yesterday, where much of the puzzle went in quickly and then I was left drawing a blank for several minutes over APT (never heard of the acronym), PARADISE and especially SARNIE. Arnie is waaay down the list of any list I could construct of “chaps”!
    1. Why do your posts lately all have the same subject line, referencing a Jumbo from a few weeks ago?
  4. I was happy to finish this in a good time, but had an “assist” from Mrs S on SARNIE, which she tumbled onto well before I would have. It’s not something we use here, where it would be a “sanger”. Also didn’t know APT as a train but was not expecting to.

    Thanks, Jack, for the reminder of the Tom Lehrer song – I used to listen to his full repertoire; he has some fantastic rhymes.

    1. My favorite, from ‘The Vatican Rag’:
      There the man who’s got religon’ll
      Tell you if your sin’s original
      2. There was a recent update to the Periodic Table song to add in some more-recently discovered elements. See here.
  5. Similar experience to Verlaine in that I flew through much of this but then got held up by a few at the end, in particular ENDPAPER, PARADISE and UNVERSED. They were worth the effort though, particularly UNVERSED. COD for me.
  6. The Kev’n’Guy Show is becoming quite a feature, long may this Intro last!

    APT was a write in for one who commuted from Huntingdon to Kings Cross for 15 years. (HST was not an option!) I can still hear John Major braying, ‘Can someone shut the door!’ as we enjoyed British Rail’s ‘Full Monty’, over the Times Crossword. The journey time was 42 minutes and one had to finish on arrival at the KX buffers, unless there was a leopard on the line.

    FOI 14ac MARIARCHI – Archie Andrews?

    LOI 24ac PARADISE – only parsed after.

    COD 13dn NESSUN DORMA – World Cup 1990 – brilliant!

    WOD 3dn TRAGEDIENNE – the lovely Diane Regent sadly remembered.

    Time around 50 minutes with no parses.

  7. 21:05. Held up at the end by UNVERSED, ENDPAPER and, my LOI, which needed an alphabet trawl, SWOT. COD to UNVERSED from me too for the lovely “third day” misdirection.
  8. 8:58. Unlike yesterday, I started slowly on this and thought it was going to be a a toughie, but then I seemed find the setter’s wavelength and I accelerated towards the end.
    DECAFF with two FFs surprised me: I don’t know if it’s a US or UK thing (Collins doesn’t seem to think so) but I can’t remember seeing this form in the wild.
    I was a bit worried about CYGNET: I’m never quite sure whether the baby swan or the little ring posh men wear is the one with the Y in it.
    I am just old enough to remember the APT.
  9. 20:47 … this reminded me of the train journey from England (sic) down to west Cornwall, which races along until just west of Plymouth then slows to the point where you suspect it might be quicker to get off and walk. I see I wasn’t the only one enjoying a leisurely tour of unmanned rural stations today. SWOT and CHANGE were my Lostwithiel and Par, though I’m delighted to say that my final destination was PARADISE
  10. …is sour grapes.
    45 mins and gave up missing: S(Arnie), what a chap; and Paradise, what a definition.
    Thanks setter and J
  11. No time today as I was disturbed several times but super crossword. COD to PARADISE.
  12. Rattled through lots of this but like many others hit the buffers at APT, then SARNIE (I have never encountered any Arnie other than Mr Schwarzenegger) and PARADISE. Is Eden synonymous with paradise? Perhaps a DD would know. A good outcome though at under 40m and just 4V today! Thanks Jack and setter.
  13. 46 minutes, watching cricket for most of the time, with the unknown LOI ENDPAPER and grand old man GLADSTONE biffed. I vaguely knew MARIACHI, and it must have been from Tom Lehrer, Jack, as I’ve never been to Mexico. I’d be disappointed if I was offered a piece of cake and all I got was a crumb. NESSUN DORMA has been a write-in since Italia 90. COD to MANDARIN CHINESE, being learnt by my eldest as his newly acquired fiancée is from Hong Kong. The things you do for love. He was useless at languages at school. Fortunately her first language is English. Tricky puzzle in places. Thank you Jack and setter.
  14. Finished in 39 minutes with a just remembered APT being one of those typical three letter hold-ups. I was also inexplicably confused by CONFUSED. PARADISE was my favourite and last in.

    Thanks for the reminder of Tom Lehrer. I wonder if ‘In Old Mexico’ would get past the censors today. Having just heard him recently, “I am never forget the day” is still going round in my head, complete with authentic Russian accent.

  15. Too tricky for me. Needed lots of help with the word finder. Tom Lehrer was circa 1960. Remember the Alamo.
  16. I remember thinking, “Gosh. I don’t know how I spotted that so quickly, but I’m glad I did” when I bunged 26a SARNIE in on sight, so my commiserations to the people who found that one hard going.

    I found the rest hard enough, mind, limping home at the 49-minute mark, with a raised eyebrow at the reference to the failed APT and crossed fingers on the unknown ENDPAPER, though it turned out I’ve admired them often enough in the past, especially the Everyman’s Library one, which caught my eye in a library book I borrowed last year.

  17. < 20′, but with NESSUM, careless and failing to check the anagram.

    Anyone for a game of ‘name famous Arnies’ ?

    Thanks jack and setter.

      1. Cricket fan, Barmy Arnie.

        And not forgetting legendary Football manager Ron Knee (ex-Private Eye),

        Taxi for one!

        Edited at 2020-01-07 02:41 pm (UTC)

  18. We get MARIACHIs on the subway and you don’t want to catch their eye or they come and sing at you. Speaking of passive/aggressive singing NESSUN DORMA is one of the handful of operatic bits I know and it reminded me of a recent story about two chaps engaging in a “fight at the opera” over one of the expensive seats at Covent Garden. Whatever next, food throwing at Glyndebourne? Thanks for the parse on APT Jack. This was harder than it looked at first and the 2 “pacts” in the same corner CONFUSED me for a while. 18.44

    Edited at 2020-01-07 11:05 am (UTC)

  19. A steady solve of some interesting clues.

    The APT was a very influential piece of pioneering engineering ruined by inept management and political short-term thinking. There certainly used to be one in The Railway Museum at York

    1. Yes. if we hadn’t given up on that, we wouldn’t have had the expense of buying Pendolinos, but instead have got into that market.
  20. Managed two separate typos in my haste to squeeze this in to my day. Nice and challenging. Held up almost a minute by ENDPAPER at the end.
  21. 34 mins. No dramas. The clue to 28ac looks a tad clunky without an apostrophe (I can see that if there were one there the answer would be too long). Although trying the phrase with other papers that don’t end in ‘s’ – the Guardian inside page; the Mirror inside page – it might just about work… I dunno.
    Thanks jack.

    Edited at 2020-01-07 11:27 am (UTC)

  23. Had to engage an extra couple of neurons to deal with this one, but got there in the end. The NW resisted my efforts, so I moved on and got in on the ACT. CYGNET followed and handed me a NIGHTCAP. MANDARIN CHINESE went in from chap and enumeration but was swiftly parsed. NESSUN DORMA was a write in too. After that I got bogged down, although MARIACHI was another piece of low hanging fruit, thanks to previous puzzles. Spent a while trying to parse GLADSTONE, but did get there in the end. UNVERSED and ENDPAPER were eventually followed by CHANGE, which I couldn’t parse and bunged in with crossed fingers. Knew the Pendolino. Nice puzzle. 41:17. Thanks setter and Jack.

    Edited at 2020-01-07 12:00 pm (UTC)

  24. ….it was soon clear to me that my brain hadn’t engaged overdrive today. Thanks to Jack for parsing GLADSTONE. MER at the unnecessary second F of what I’ve only ever seen as DECAF.

    I think PARADISE is a Marmite clue, and I eventually slung it in after a two minute alpha trawl. I didn’t like it at all.

    FOI MARIACHI
    LOI PARADISE
    COD TRAGEDIENNE
    TIME 16:49

  25. I stopped the stopwatch somewhere in the 16th minute, as I was interrupted at work, but by then I’d be staring at the UNVERSED / SARNIE pairing for a good 5 minutes without inspiration. Having dealt with the work matter, I kept thinking for another minute or two and finally got them all.

    Didn’t love the random note in CHANGE – using ‘note’ always seems a bit of a cop-out to me (see also 15d, although better used there) and to say that one switches when everything bar H in CHANCE can be clued by ‘note’ was not my cup of tea.

    There were a few other nit-picks for me today (‘has’ in 3d; multiple pacts, a few awkward surfaces) but possibly I’m just in a bad mood.

  26. A generally agreeable crossword, but I found myself wondering why universe and creation should be synonyms. Equally, is cravenness the correct figure of speech for meaning “being a chicken?“

    Just asking, DFR

  27. Sorry about the strange headline on the previous post, I meant to agree with the previous comment, but my phone decided to take over as it thinks it’s knows best.
  28. 15.33 but not without strife. Took at least a couple of minutes to get my first clue and lumpy thereafter. Last one in was efficacy. Bit of a guess to be honest but made sense when I saw it written down.
  29. Rare day indeed to “beat” both Jason and Verlaine, but this still left me bit on cold side, even if I got Arnie fast (but surely “chap” is insufficient?). Wasn’t sure of how to parse UNVERSED and ENDPAPER (my LOsI) but bunged ’em in hopefully enough to stay Under 10 mins …
  30. Several biffs at the end and was amazed to find they were all correct, as I had no idea what was going on. I’ll include CHANGE, PARADISE, ENDPAPER and UNVERSED in the list. NHO ENDPAPER either. SARNIES are a staple in Scrabble
  31. 35 minutes in a haze of relief after Stokes wrapped up the Test. Last in tragedienne, great anagram. Unclear about ‘ministers’ and that s in Gladstone. Quite a testing puzzle if not for the gurly swots (if the PM can say it…). joekobi
  32. Frustrating! Paradise did for me – I wanted to put it in but couldn’t parse, so abandoned it. Arnie isn’t high on my list of chaps either – I do get a bit fed up with names being clued just as girl or chap. It invites biffing rather than solving, I think. Talking of which, Gladstone and unversed went in unparsed.

    As the mother of a train-mad son, I just went through all the three-letter rail services I could think of until I reached APT. TGV and HST (they weren’t going to work), AVE and ICE for starters!

    No idea of time, as I had to go out after completing about two-thirds of the grid, and came back to attempt the rest.

    FOI Mariachi
    COD Efficacy – I’m finally beginning to recognise the something for something technique
    DNF

        1. Okay, in that case here’s the relevant convention:

          No more than one ‘pure’ hidden word clue per puzzle. (Reversed hidden words aren’t ‘pure’ in this context.)

          MARIACHI is ‘pure’, MAINE is reversed so isn’t.

  34. SWOT and UNVERSED held me up the longest. Once I’d decided that the latter probably ended ED, ENDPAPER jumped out. SWOT required A long trawl. As someone else alluded, a SWOT isn’t necessarily a hard worker – just someone who appears to enjoy working at something perceived to be hard?
      1. Yes. I think many of my cruciverbaphobe friends would agree with that description. I must try that with our “Word Nerds” group on Yammer at work.

        Edited at 2020-01-07 10:02 pm (UTC)

  35. 40:47. A bit of a scratchy solve for me today, less than ideal conditions (a noisy room) and a few tricky ones which needed more concentration than that allowed. Couldn’t get away from N being the note in change so didn’t understand that one. The Defs for paradise and tragedienne were too subtle for me and took ages. Unversed was not my first thought for not skilled. Arnie was low down on my list of chaps, can’t remember seeing him before, I wonder if he’ll be back. I wasn’t sure about endpaper. I liked the pound note.
  36. I thought my longer-than-average time of 39 minutes was down to my brain being on a go-slow, so I am cheered to find that some of you found this tricky too. But, as I have just noticed, I had “nissun” in 13d – shame on me.

    Strangest 14ac experience ever: being serenaded at by a Thai Mariachi band in a Swiss-themed restaurant at a hotel in Malaysia. I kid you not.

  37. LOI TRAGEDIENNE, had to wait for all the checkers, though saw it was an anagram straight away. These are usually the first ones in , not the last. Glad we didn’t stop to parse GLADSTONE and that SARNIE rang a faint bell. We’re with Starstruck on this. 33mins all up.

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