Times Cryptic 27620

69 comments on “Times Cryptic 27620”

1. ….which is a mighty good thing, as my time was 92 minutes. The only thing I didn’t know was ‘offcut’, but there was nothing else it could be.

   Yes, Kandinsky is a very famous and important artist, if you like that sort of thing; I prefer Klee.

   You can also read the cryptic for 13 as a phrase, as ‘casual ties’ would be both informal and formal attire!

   1. Sorry if I’m being a bit dim but I don’t understand why ‘casual ties’ would be classed as formal attire?
      1. Casual is informal
         ties is formal attire
         1. I guess this is a generation thing because in the world I grew up in there was nothing formal about wearing a tie, it was just what people did. To me a formal tie would be black or white as worn with morning or evening dress etc.
            1. But doesn’t “casual dress” mean “no need for ties” to you Jack? It does to me, in which case ties have to be seen as formal. I confess I have always seen them as such, but I am a child of the sixties, (though born in the fifties)and never wore one unless compelled
2. I don’t remember coming across THROSTLE before, and I had no idea who MAVIS THROSTLE might be. But I couldn’t fit anything else, so I guessed that Mavis would turn out to be the name for a plant or bird, as indeed it was. No problem with the rest, although CASUALTIES took a bit of thought and was my LOI.
3. Failed on the NHO ‘artist’ in 27a so three pink squares in the completed grid after 56 minutes. Some less than obvious definitions in ‘with a pattern of lines’ and ‘Endow with another look’ and tricky wordplay (eg TESTIMONY and POMPIDOU) made this quite difficult. I’m always happy to come across and remember a word that for me only exists in the crossword realm, so THROSTLE almost made up for today’s DNF.
4. Went offline after a half-hour or so with 4 or 5 to do, one to do over: I’d flung in TOBY at 24d, intending to return to it and of course forgetting, which put paid to INDICATOR for a long time. I was pretty sure that a mavis was a thrush, but didn’t know it was a THROSTLE as well. I think things finally started to fall in place when I gave up thinking that ‘in list’ meant ‘included in AT OR’. DNK 8d, 26ac, 22ac. DNL (did not like) EFFACER: I don’t care for what are in effect nonce words, even if rule-generated. A minor gripe, however; I enjoyed struggling with this puzzle.
   It’s been a while since we’ve heard from Dr. Thud, and of course I can imagine why. He’s one of us –are there others?– who doesn’t have the luxury of social isolation. I wish him the best.
   1. Maybe our moderator, Vinyl, could let him know that we have been inquiring after him.
5. at 27ac was one of my subjects at A level Art so he was write in. My others were Paul Klee (I later worked with his son Thomas – a photographer) and Honore Daumier. My WOD just pushing out 5dn OXYMORONIC.

   FOI 1ac OOMPH!

   LOI 24dn EDDY at first I thought he was Toby.

   COD 21ac THROSTLE – take a look at the WBA (West Bromwich Albion FC) club badge which portrays a whistling Throstle. They are known as ‘The Throstles’.

   I thought I was slow at 42 mins – but my GK was up to muster.

6. I spent considerable time at the end trying to come up with THROSTLE which seemed to fit the cryptic but seemed to me a very unlikely word. In the end I bunged it in thinking there was no way it could be correct and read to get egg on my face so finishing all correct came as a pleasant surprise. Nice puzzle.
7. 35 mins pre-brekker and pleased with that.
   A brilliantly clued crossword IMHO. Effacer and Rayed are not great words, but well handled.
   Mavis rang a distant, poetic bell.
   Mostly I liked Testimony and the axe-wielding living dead.
   Thanks setter and J.

   Edited at 2020-03-24 08:37 am (UTC)

8. 25:26. Entertaining puzzle. I was held up for quite a while by having PALES for 10A (anagram of “player’s” without the “yr”), but WELL UPHOLSTERED eventually put paid to that. DNK Mavis = THROSTLE and only eventually got the painter at 27A as my LOI. COD to ASPERSION for the surface, but I rather liked OXYMORONIC too.

   Edited at 2020-03-24 08:51 am (UTC)

   1. Another with PALES.
9. 64 minutes. LOI HOARDINGS. RANCH was constructed and then vaguely remembered as a spread, or at least a dressing. I’ve convinced myself that I have heard of KANDINSKY. I did know that a MAVIS is a thrush which is a THROSTLE. My grandparent’s first home was THROSTLE’S NEST, aka Throttle Neck. COD to WELL-UPHOLSTERED, the phrase Grannie would use to describe someone of matronly proportions. Tough puzzle. Thank you Jack and setter.
   1. I hadn’t thought of ranch dressing, happy that ranch and spread mean the same thing in Texas. Other states are available.
      1. And, fortunately, other dressings.
   2. See Collins, where one of the definitions of ‘spread’ is ‘informal, mainly US and Canadian a ranch or relatively large tract of land’.
   3. Well-upholstered has been bugging me. Is there a famous quote (see 24dn) along the lines of, “Think about it, Eddy, the Throne is much better uphosltered than she is” referencing Wallis Simpson and Edward 8? Sounds kinda Dorothy Parkerish, but I googled and couldn’t find it.
      1. Sorry, I can’t find it either. Great quotation though.
10. Fine crossword which revealed its secrets grudgingly, with some entries – REPAPER, FLOORSHOW, ON THE RIGHT TRACK existing for a long as half blanks until pennies dropped. 30 minutes in all.
    You’d be amazed how many anagrams of PLA(Y)E(R)S there are if you don’t have the P to start with, and how many you can squeeze to mean (make) drops. LAPSE was quite good, I thought.
    Loved the sore bum – a legacy of missing loo paper perhaps – and the not-US-for-once president.
    Last in was CASUALTIES, which I had to write out on real paper to fathom, even then with an alphabet trawl, fortunately finishing at C.
    Thanks for the blog, Jack: the hippopotami army will be wallowing through my brain all day!
11. Yes, lotta chewing on this one. I was too sleepy to finish, woke for a while to do so. Cheated for LOI, Mavis. POI was PEARL. RANCH was a standout from my earlier session. Now back to bed.

    P.S. This isn’t what’s keeping me awake, but I don’t like 7 very much. The ostensibly cryptic definition isn’t very far from the literal, and the trick of adding some wordplay to account for a pluralizing S I tend to find disappointing.

    Edited at 2020-03-24 09:53 am (UTC)

12. 40 mins. Fun puzzle. Thanks Jack.
13. 12:33. Unlike others I didn’t particularly enjoy this puzzle: quite a lot of it felt a bit loose to me.
    Not 8dn though: if you jump (or indeed spring) ‘up’, you jump to your feet.
    1. Not sure what you’re saying. Decrypted, WELL (“spring”) and “to(?) one’s feet,” UP, are separate. There’s no springing up there, only WELL next to UP. Now that Jackkt has mentioned it, it seems there’s something missing or amiss.
       1. Ah, you beat me to it! As you say, ‘spring’ has nothing to do with ‘up’ unless it’s doing double duty which I don’t think is permitted in this sort of clue. It’s cluing ‘well’.

          Edited at 2020-03-24 10:02 am (UTC)

          1. Neither K nor I are saying that you need the SPRING bit to work with up. We’re just saying that UP on its own can mean “to one’s feet”, whether preceded by get, jump or, as parenthesised by K for effect, spring. The first definition in my Chambers app is “in, to or toward a higher place, level or state (my italics).
       2. As Penfold says, there’s no need for the word ‘spring’. If you jump up, you jump to your feet. There’s no double duty and nothing wrong with the clue.

          Edited at 2020-03-24 10:30 am (UTC)

          1. Collins has in or into a standing or upright position; it would be a stretch to try to fit the Chambers definition Penfold mentions. There must be an equivalent in (print) Chambers (which I don’t have).
             1. I don’t need a dictionary to tell me that ‘jump up’ and ‘jump to one’s feet’ mean exactly the same thing. To be honest I am completely mystified by the objection.
                1. Well, now, “jump up” doesn’t necessarily mean “jump to one’s feet,” as you can jump up even if you are already standing. But I just wanted to point out that the definition cited for UP = “to one’s feet” isn’t the right one.

                   The reason there seemed, momentarily, to be ground for objection is that the surface just happens to use a version of the one sort of context in which “up” would mean “to one’s feet,” which you have to discard in prising apart the elements of the surface in decrypting.

                   Edited at 2020-03-24 04:16 pm (UTC)

                   1. Oh right, sorry. The most apposite definition is the one Collins: ‘to an upward, higher, or erect position, esp indicating readiness for an activity.’ But as I said I don’t need a dictionary!
                      I can see you might think at first that there is double duty in the ‘spring’ but there isn’t of course, and I think it helped me to see what sense of ‘to one’s feet’ was required.
                      1. Hmm, I don’t see how that is any more apt than the one I found in Collins online (8, a), previously cited..
                         in or into a standing or upright position. ;-D
                         1. Fair , although that’s from the American Collins so doesn’t really count 😉
14. 24:37 on the club site. Today I tried with the “skip filled squares” option which, in theory at least, means less typing. For me, however, as a non-touch-typist, it meant a lot of virtual crossing out as I was looking at my keyboard rather than the screen and typed letters I already had.

    I know some West Brom fans whom I’ll call Mavis from now on.

    I enjoyed WELL-UPHOLSTERED and I think UP for “to ones” is fine (e.g. get up and get to one’s feet mean the same).

    I was held up for a while trying to justify INTERVIEW at 4a as it fitted the checkers I had and can mean question as a verb.

    Edit to add that the subtleties of 1d passed me by as I just thought of the Ray Charles song which, it turns out, is actually called Get On The Right Track Baby.

    Edited at 2020-03-24 10:04 am (UTC)

15. Just what the doctor ordered. Testing without being tortuous with some good clues and interesting vocab. I know Mavis is a thrush but can never remember THROSTLE for some reason. Had to play with the anagrist to get it. Thanks to setter and well blogged Jack
16. On another planet from the setter, and eventually gave up with 3 empty: flop, which I should have gotten easily, casualties beyond me , and Kandinsky heard of but not known as an artist. Did he paint Red Square? No, that was Kazimir Mal… Well-upholstered known from a famous(?) quote which is eluding me.
    Fine crossword, but not for me.
    1. Jeeves and The Unwanted Guest:

       …a particularly well-upholstered friend of Aunt Agatha

17. A painting by KANDINSKY was the McGuffin in the play Six Degrees Of Separation. I was slow to see CAY=bar and got sidetracked recalling the antiques HYPERmarket in Kensington High Street in days of yore but otherwise no hold-ups. As Myrtilus implies in his heading there’s a hint of Browning in this puzzle. The thrush in Home Thoughts From Abroad and Pippa Passes in which he wrote “morning’s at seven the grass is dew-pearl’d, God’s in his heaven, all’s right with the world”. Which sounds pretty fatuous just at the moment. 20.28
    1. It’s always sounded that way to me.
       1. It’s a dramatic poem, so everything is said by some particular character with a particular point of view. This lets the poet off the hook.
18. Gave up on 44 min. after a mind-jam at 4 ac. and 4 and 5 dn. where I really ought to have seen feast minus east. Had z and y for axes instead of x and y which put me on the wrong track for the living dead. Annoying as the two long down clues went in early and was doing Ok. This lockdown all around is strange n’est-ce pas? I bet some good works of art – plays, music, who knows – come out of it.
    1. I was just on the phone to a colleague who told me a friend of a friend of his is in a shared student house (8 in total) and one of them has tested positive for the virus. So they all have to stay in the house with the infected person. I thought that would make a good situation for a book or play (especially if the identity of the infected person was a secret!)

       Edited at 2020-03-24 11:55 am (UTC)

       1. So if the victim misses his finals but his housemates pass we’ll have Seven Degrees of Separation…..
       2. I would think the infected person’s chances of being seven times a best man have gone right out of the window, unless today’s students are a whole lot more forgiving than my generation was ..
19. Slow for me today, quite hard. All words vaguely heard of, but took a lot of dredging for INAMORATO and THROSTLE.

    Ridiculously couldn’t get 1dn for ages.
    COD 4ac FLOORSHOW, maybe just because I like puzzles so much

    Yesterday’s answer: buckminsterfulleren, inspired by GRAPHITE. The eponymous Buckminster Fuller went to a school near Boston I spent a year at.

    Today’s question: suggest a word that could follow backwoods, stink, recrystallise, machination, quicksilvered, …?

    1. Impearled.
       1. 👍
20. ….. but interrupted by a 25 way test virtual meeting with my work colleagues (all working at home). One of my Directors caught the virus in New York and has been in a bad way but now after 10 days seems OK. I thought this crossword was going to be a nina – I saw CORO … going up the right side and COVID almost appearing around 19 but it is just me seeing the damn thing everywhere I look.
21. ….or has 14A appeared in another puzzle very recently ? I was a victim of it on that occasion, when it led to a DNF as I recall.

    I plugged away at this little beauty, where I was left with 27A and the entire SE quadrant after 15 minutes. I eventually just squeezed inside my 20 minute target after needing two minutes to realise that the painter didn’t begin with “Kin”.

    Thanks to Jack for parsing my two biffs – TESTIMONY and the clever REPAPERED.

    “Near = miserly” is here yet again unfortunately. “Near water” is a phrase I always associate with Watney’s Red Barrel….

    FOI RANCH
    LOI KANDINSKY
    COD WELL-UPHOLSTERED (from one who knows !)
    TIME 19:28

    Edited at 2020-03-24 12:40 pm (UTC)

    1. Hey, fat boy-slim re 14aA Jack dealt with that in his blog.
       The ‘Love in a punt’ gag was always told as Guinness down in Red Barrel Country!

       I still don’t get REPAPER!?

       1. If you REPAPER a room you “endow it with another look”. With my lack of DIY skills that was seldom achieved in a good way. If we calculated that we needed 10 rolls of paper we would buy 15 to allow for multiple cock-ups and subsequent outbursts of foul temper.
22. I will never know if I could have finished this inside an hour in one sitting, as I was at 55 minutes with a few left to get when 9am rolled around and I had to commute to work (i.e. move from the sofa to the bureau approximately three feet away.)

    Picking it back up at lunchtime I almost immedately saw OXYMORON, THROSTLE and CASUALTIES (nice), so a smidge under an hour in two sittings. This one was quite the workout!

23. Fun puzzle, no problems, 35 minutes, thanks jackkt. Ties is formal these days, I only wear one for funerals. More often wear black tie than a suit and tie. good clue IMO.
24. A meaty offering to while away the time! I was slow to add anything to my FOI, MISER, but eventually began to tease occasional answers out, dotted around the grid. ASPERSION opened up a couple of answers. I knew Thrush and THROSTLE, but didn’t know they were also known as Mavis. Took a while to remove the whole of East from Feast, but then saw FLOP easily. Liked OXYMORONIC and WELL UPHOLSTERED, which opened up the way to a sprint finish with KANDINSKI. Lovely puzzle. 46:18. Thanks setter and Jack.
25. Glad I came here as I had PALES (like Johninterred) and at 2d had MEDIC (water abroad =Med;1 and C or circa for near).
    Medics saving lives on the news non-stop. Agree not tightly parsed.
    I found the LHS of this much easier than the RHS; PALES scuppered things.
    Both Heigh Ho and Inamorato were remembered from recent puzzles. David
26. Sad to say i knew this artist from a film called Double Jeopardy, starring Ashley Judd. The artwork was instrumental in tracking down the bad egg.
27. Chewy indeed Jack but beautifully and meticulously unpicked and explained by you. I couldn’t explain the blues and the parsing of flop evaded me too, I was too busy think up synonyms for feast to spot the obvious though I biffed it anyway. Also struggled with the precise parsing of 8 along with others. Where I was brought up in North Yorkshire, throstle was used as often as thrush so was common parlance. There were lots of them about too. I’d forgotten Mavis as a synonym though and the penny only dropped late on. nice puzzle. i still do it on paper so don’t know my time. Ages though
28. Over an hour, probably nearer 70 minutes. This lockdown is hard enough to put up with without being made to feel intellectually inferior!

    Took a pause at 46 minutes and returned fed and refreshed half an hour later. Eventually made sense with the last one in being casualties. Definitely a crossword of two halves for me.RH side pretty much done in under 30 minutes but the left was a struggle. Having said that, some smashing clues. Pompidou, oxymoronic, universal and floorshow to name but four. Can we have an easy one tomorrow? Pretty please…

29. Well I finished it all correct. The 3 hour break in the middle served me well until my LOI FLOP which I couldn’t parse. Also NHO KANDINSKY so that had to be looked up. One of these days I’ll do a crash course in artists, a subject I know nothing about. I get the impression that the editors are trying to prevent us from getting bored this week
30. I was delighted to finish this in a few sittings with no cheating. 4d was biffed without parsing. A cleverly worked puzzle.
31. Forgot to log in. It must be the isolation creeping in.

    Edited at 2020-03-24 05:31 pm (UTC)

32. 44:55. I agree that this was chewy. Floorshow had me stumped for ages. It also took a while before I bowed to the inevitable and entered throstle at 21ac. The president in question at 12ac was far from the first one that came to mind. Flop, repaper and hoardings were other holdouts. COD to well-upholstered. The Wodehouse quote has already been identified. Here’s another one from a review of a couple of books on him in a recent TLS:

    “She fitted into my biggest armchair as if it had been built round her by someone who knew they were wearing armchairs tight about the hips that season”

    My Man Jeeves (1919)

33. No idea of time – it’s taken me all afternoon and early evening with much stopping and starting to finish. But finish I did, and having read the posts of many of the whizzbangers, I feel quite pleased. I found this really hard and I didn’t fully parse a few clues but everything is correct, which is a relief, because I have been really struggling recently! I feel like I’ve gone backwards by about a year most days 😉 Just goes to show that persistence can pay off sometimes.

    Flop was one my earliest entries and no problem with Kandinsky – I’m interested in art so GK came to the rescue there. I also like birds a lot but didn’t know mavis / throstle was a thrush. We have a songthrush near our garden who has been giving it his all over the few days – wonderful.

    I liked floorshow, oxymoronic and oomph.

    FOI. Heigh-ho
    LOI. Throstle
    COD Aspersion – it really made me laugh

    Thanks Jack and tough setter

34. Far too vague and another from this setter trying to show himself off, rather than providing a challenge
    Miser – near
    Repaper – endow

    Try narcissistic

    1. Be sure to let us know when one of your puzzles is going to appear and we’ll see how you compare.
35. Narcissistic from the setter – Miser, repaper.
    Threw it away half way through, not indulging this setters insecurities
    1. harsh, to call a setter insecure when you can’t even be arsed to give your name ..
    2. Hear hear. Perhaps this blog says much about the sycophancy of the bloggers.

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