Times Cryptic 27692

Author   jackktPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic

Solving time: 30 minutes for all but three answers plus another 10 minutes to unravel two of them. I gave up on the third and decided to cheat.

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 Preserved food appropriate after party (6)
CONFIT : CON (party – Conservative),  FIT (appropriate). I’ve heard this word bandied about in cookery programmes over the years – confit of duck springs to mind – but without ever really knowing what it means. Of course now that I’ve thought about it the French word for jam – confiture – is from the same root, and jams are ‘preserves’.
5 A saint corrupted, and saint becoming sinner? (8)
SATANIST : Anagram [corrupted] of A SAINT, then ST (saint)
9 Legitimate target in coconut shy, possibly? (4,4)
FAIR GAME : Two definitions of sorts, the second by example
10 Taper lit up, designed primarily for small explosive (6)
PETARD : Anagram [lit up – i.e. drunk, as discussed here on previous occasions] of TAPER, then D{esigned} [primarily]. I know this word only from the expression ‘hoist with one’s own petard’ and hadn’t realised that explosives were involved. Brewer’s advises: The ‘petard’  was a thick iron engine of war, filled with gunpowder and fastened to gates, barricades and the like to blow them up. The danger was that the engineer who fired the petard might be blown up by the explosion.
11 After tango, miss catching heel of cabaret singer (6)
TOMTIT : T (tango – NATO alphabet), then OMIT (miss) containing [catching] {cabare}T [heel of …]. This was the one I gave up on as I simply couldn’t think of a word to fit TO?T?T. I’m not entirely sure I knew it as a real bird anyway; if I’ve heard it at all it may have been in a nursery story where Tomtit was the name of a character.
12 Ready for a good turn, foul defender (8)
KICKBACK : KICK BACK (foul defender). ‘Ready’ meaning ‘money’ here, passed under the counter in return for a favour.
14 Corn loaf good, far from soft? (3-9)
EAR-SPLITTING : EAR (corn), SPLIT TIN (loaf), G (good). A ‘split tin’ is a loaf of bread split on top to give a greater crust area.
17 Tea in angel’s cup different — though in essence it’s the same (4,2,6)
PLUS ÇA CHANGE : CHA (tea) contained by [in] anagram [different] of ANGELS CUP. The saying is attributed to one Alphonse Karr, at one time editor of Le Figaro. The full quotation is “plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose” usually translated as “the more things change, the more they stay the same”.
20 Fetid coloured liquid entering wound (8)
STINKING : INK (coloured liquid) contained by [entering] STING (wound)
22 So concerned with partner (6)
REALLY : RE (concerned with), ALLY (partner)
23 Greeting cat, who’s barking (6)
WOTCHA : Anagram [barking] of CAT WHO. Also sometimes spelt ‘wotcher’ and ‘watcha’, this is a corruption of  ‘What cheer?’ It survives in the traditional Cockerney greeting “Wotcha, Cock!”
25 Around US state, Marxist stayed (8)
REMAINED : RED (Marxist) containing [around] MAINE (US state)
26 Type of course   where golf played (8)
SANDWICH : Two meanings. In case you were thinking (as I did for a moment) that a sandwich is not usually served as a course during a meal, that’s not what this is about. A ‘sandwich course’ as defined by Collins consists of alternating periods of theoretical instruction in a college etc, and practical experience with a firm etc. Sandwich as a town in Kent came up in the Jumbo blogged last Saturday as a cryptic definition of the word ‘export’ based on the fact that it was once on the coast – a member of the medieval Confederation of Cinque Ports no less – but with the subsequent retreat of the sea it has ended up 2 miles inland and no longer a port. This change in landscape made it a suitable place for development of golf links and it has become an international centre for the sport, boasting two world-class courses, the Royal St George’s and Prince’s.
27 Lighter and firm dip at the end of the day? (6)
SUNSET : SUN (lighter), SET (firm). Great definition! I wonder if I was the only solver who tried to persuade himself that SUNCOP existed, based on SUN (day), CO (firm), {di}P [at the end]? Thoughts of COP standing for ‘Close of play’ (end of the day – in cricket) also confused the issue. Incidentally I learned of this abbreviation not through my enforced encounters with cricket at school (after which I avoided the game like the plague), but from my time in the Civil Service where it was part of the everyday argot.
Down
2 Middle of statue gilded, it’s suggested — Cicero, say? (6)
ORATOR : {st}AT{ue} [middle] contained by OR + OR – gold – and therefore ‘gilded’
3 I,  Adam? (5,6)
FIRST PERSON : Two meanings with grammatical and biblical references respectively
4 Rock found in ideal pudding served up in restaurant (9)
TRATTORIA : TOR (rock) contained by [found in] AI (ideal) + TART (pudding) both reversed [served up]
5 Maximum taken in drink, spit it out! (5,2)
SPEAK UP : PEAK (maximum) contained by [taken in] SUP (drink)
6 Subject almost ripe then? (5)
TOPIC : A definition and a cryptic hint based on alternative spacing and a missing letter: ready TO PIC{k} (ripe) [almost]
7 Fruit lover (3)
NUT : Two meanings
8 Fifteen from London run without clothes (8)
SARACENS : SANS (without) contains [clothes] RACE (run). Saracens F. C. is a Rugby Union club based in Hendon, North London. ‘Sans’ meaning ‘without’ appears at the very end of Shakespeare’s ‘All the world’s a stage’ soliloquy in As You Like It: ‘Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything’. In case anyone’s not familiar with Rugby Union there are 15 players in a team as opposed to 13 in Rugby League.
13 Gift opened by the scoundrel, one for Gordon Bennett (11)
BOTHERATION : BOON (gift) contains [opened by] THE + RAT (scoundrel) + I (one). Collins advises that ‘Gordon Bennett’ is a euphemism for ‘God!’ after James Gordon Bennett (1841–1918), US journalist and sponsor of balloon races. On edit: One slight amendment after consulting Brewer’s is that although still essentially a euphemism for ‘God’ the expression has entered the language via the Cockerney ‘gorblimey’.
15 Dummy run in a mo, using bombing (9)
IGNORAMUS : R (run) contained by [in] anagram [bombing] of A MO USING
16 God inspired by prayer a lot (8)
PLETHORA :THOR (God) contained [inspired by] PLEA (prayer)
18 Swine painting Henry, satirical cartoonist (7)
HOGARTH : HOG (swine), ART (painting), H (Henry – SI unit of inductance). Most famous perhaps for The Rake’s Progress.
19 Screw:   one’s sheared off (6)
FLEECE : Two meanings, the first being to swindle
21 China: a little souvenir, a miniature turned up (5)
IMARI : Hidden [a little] and reversed [turned up] in {souven}IR A MI{niature}. I didn’t know this porcelain but trusted to wordplay.
24 Plastic   fish (3)
COD : Two meanings  parodying/ mock

64 comments on “Times Cryptic 27692”

  1. Figured 24 must be COD, but it seemed a stretch. Left SANDWICH unfinished, no appetite for golf. It took some time to accept WOTCHA, though I must’ve seen it here before. I didn’t know Gordon Bennett from Adam either.

    CONFIT de canard is one of my favorite dishes, have had it many times in Paris, but a time or three in NYC too.

    Edited at 2020-06-16 04:21 am (UTC)

  2. A very perfunctory proofreading failed to spot the Q in SPEQKING; most annoying. I spent too much time taking ‘barking’ as the def in 23ac. Biffed BOTHERATION, inferring that Gordon Bennett was something like W.C. Fields’s Godfrey Daniel. LOI FLEECE, where I needed a (thankfully short) alphabet run; I excluded what turned out to be the required meaning of ‘screw’, thinking it was too near the knuckle for the Times. I had no idea what was going on in 14ac, other than it was EAR-something, and the checkers determined what the something was. Jack, don’t you know Ko-Ko’s song from “The Mikado”? “On a tree by river, a little tomtit/ Sang ‘Willow, tit-willow, tit-willow'” etc.

    Edited at 2020-06-16 02:23 am (UTC)

    1. I’ve certainly heard the song. I’m not keen on G&S generally and this work in particular. I wonder if it’s still acceptable to perform it.
      1. Evidently not. A couple of years ago, in San Francisco, I saw The Lamplighters, the local, very good, G&S troupe, do it, but they’d revised it: located now in Renaissance Milan, characters’ names Italianised, various tweaks of text (not many needed, actually). Pointless, I thought. The then Japanese ambassador to the UK wrote, after seeing the debut performance, that he had come prepared to be offended but found nothing to raise a hackle.
      2. Here in darkest Wales our local G&S society are still using the original words – or,at least, they were before their annual production fell victim to the virus.
    2. Back in university days I once sang in a JCR Smoker “Near a tree by a river I took a tom tit …”, but the remainder of the ditty is mercifully lost in the mists of time.
  3. I wasn’t sure about COD (plastic?) but everything else was fine. I knew Gordon Bennett as a sort of mild expletive, and I had vaguely heard of the rugby team. So all correct in about 40 mins.
  4. Some witty clues. I particularly liked Orator and Saracens (though I was a bit sorry it didn’t turn out to be starkers or streaked).
    GB was a bit more than a journo and balloonist before he became an expression. Among other things he owned tihe NY Herald, funded Stanley’s search for Livingston and attempts on the North Pole, brought lawn tennis to the US, and outraged society.
    1. Thanks for the intriguing info, Paul. The section of his Wikipedia page headed “Scandal” Is disappointingly scanty on details, but it concludes, ‘Bennett’s controversial reputation is thought to have inspired, in Britain, the phrase “Gordon Bennett” as an expression of incredulity.’
      1. I imagine the same process might lead to “Andrew Windsor” or “Dominic Cummings” becoming very British expressions of incredulity
  5. Highlights were the ‘Ready for a good turn’ and ‘dip at the end of the day’ definitions. All parsed except SPLIT TIN for ‘loaf’ and the ‘college course’ sense of SANDWICH. IMARI was new to me too but wasn’t difficult with the crossers.

    Thanks to paul_in_london for the ‘Gordon Bennett’ info. V. interesting.

    Home in 32 minutes.

  6. Easy again, though the SW corner held me up for a while.
    The Gordon Bennett Cup was one of the earliest of all motor races, starting in 1900. It was raced in Ireland and allegedly led to the adoption of British Racing Green by British competitors.
    I have early memories of being sent to the baker’s for a split tin, which cost 10 3/4d. The only use of a farthing I can remember. Because, I am guessing, the price was regulated by government; shopkeepers disliked farthings.

    Edited at 2020-06-16 06:39 am (UTC)

    1. Weren’t there some aniseed flavoured chews that cost a farthing? When it was announced that the farthing was to be withdrawn from circulation, I bought £5 worth from the bank and sold them a couple of years later for 10 bob each. What ever happened to the half p?
      1. They were Blackjacks, which alongside Fruit Salad and Aniseed Balls were a farthing each. You could skip home with a pocketful after spending your 5d pocket money!
  7. 35 minutes that would’ve been thirty if I’d spotted that 23a WOTCHA was an anagram sooner (or been convinced by “COD”!) Helpfully the golf courses at SANDWICH have come up here before, though I’m not sure where I dredged the SARACENS up from…

    FOI 2d ORATOR, LOI 24d COD.

  8. …of that colossal wreck.
    20 mins pre-brekker.
    NHO Imari. Plastic don’t mean Cod.
    Thanks setter and J, great blog.
    1. I can’t find a direct definition in the usual sources but Collins has ‘COD, sham’ and ‘PLASTIC, not real’. Lexico has ‘COD, not authentic, fake’ and ‘PLASTIC, not genuine, artificial, unnatural’. Seems good enough to me.
      1. I gather that people who, like me, have acquired an Irish passport in order not be ejected from the EU come Brexit, are dubbed “plastic Paddies”. Gradese
        1. I’ve heard the term ‘plastic Jock’ referring to people with Scottish surnames who wear kilts on special occasions but who live in Chelsea or Fulham and in all other respects appear to be posh English people.
  9. 35 minutes with LOI WOTCHA, not the traditional greeting at SARACENS I don’t suppose. Or in Lancashire for that matter. COD to KICKBACK, not the usual direction to kick the ball in rugby and of course never a feature of any club’s remuneration policies. I liked the split tin in EAR-SPLITTING too. I didn’t know IMARI.This felt quite a tough puzzle while solving, but it all worked out. Thank you Jack and setter.
  10. A SNITCH of only 90 so far seems low, that felt harder than average to me. Only vaguely heard of IMARI, MER at KICKBACK meaning ready for a good turn, surely it has dodgy connotations, and also the ‘kick back’ part for ‘foul defender’.

    COD: SANDWICH, even though – or because – it was LOI, cunning.

    Yesterday’s answer: only (given the estimates) 57 of the 100 largest Mediterranean islands are Greek, the rest are Croatian (18), Italian (10), Spanish (4), Turkish (4), Tunisian (3), Maltese (2), Cypriot (1) and French (1).

    Today’s question: what is the only Premiership Rugby team not to contain an S? Makes a change from mackerel!

    2. KICKBACK. Definitely dodgy connotations as alluded to in my blog (under the counter) but it’s a good turn as far as the person benefiting is concerned.
  11. 14:37. I thought this was fun with some witty clues, although I had a MER for COD as “plastic”. NHO IMARI but it was clearly hidden (if you’ll pardon the oxymoron). Jack, you’ve got the wrong number in your title – it should be 27692, which means the SNITCH can’t find it. Mostly I liked IGNORAMUS.
  12. I really enjoyed this, and was pleased to finish in twenty minutes.

    Much time spent on LOI SARACENS, as I was looking for an IGNORAMUS. Nho IMARI. Liked the Gordon Bennett clue.

    Nice old geezer with a nasty cough,
    Sees my missus, takes ‘is topper off,
    In a very gentlemanly way.

    Having lived near and worked in the Old Kent Road, WOTCHA was no problem.

    1. robrolfe. I believe that if another clue is referred to in a Times crossword clue, the convention is to reference it by the relevant numeral, eg 15, rather than the written word for the clue number, eg fifteen.
  13. Like this, loved the blog – thanks Jack. I was fortunate in that all the GK was somewhere in my clutter of trivia mostly useful for quizzes and crosswords – even IMARI, which gave me a time of just over 16 minutes. I slowed a lot in the SE corner – IGNORAMUS only emerged when I wrote our the letters, and BOTHERATION when I had most of the crossers. I was trying to squeeze in CAD for scoundrel, which didn’t help. I freely confess to using Gordon Bennett as a minced oath, and WOTCHA as a greeting.

    Jack’s mention of “Wotcha, Cock!” brought back painful memories: it was used by schoolboys as a cod greeting followed buy a kick/lunge to the trouser area.

    As for COD, it wouldn’t have worked for Pete Townsend.

    1. If I want COD and chips from “The Good Catch” I now have to pay with…..plastic ! Which is ironic, since they were strictly “cash only” before the pandemic.
  14. Quick for me. No problems although couldn’t get the ‘plastic’ correlation with COD. I wondered if it was an acronym for some material. Thanks for explaining the link. Probably not my COD but plenty of other good clues.
  16. The infamous Gordon organised balloon races – each balloon carried his name. One such race, apparently in Birmingham UK, had disastrous consequences, when adverse conditions brought down many balloons into the gardens of a ‘Brummie’ suburb. The local paper ran the headline ‘Gordon Bennett!’ with attendant bothersome complaints from irate greenhouse owners. I was told the tale in Solihul in 1973.

    At 26ac Ian Fleming died on ‘the glorious twelfth’ just before becoming club captain at Royal St. George’s in 1964.

    FOI 3dn FIRST PERSON

    LOI 1`9dn FLEECE

    COD 8dn SARACENS

    WOD ‘GORDON BENNETT!’

    Time 30 mins I thought this was an excellent puzzle.

  17. I was defeated by Saracens.

    I thought of Rugby and even thought of rugby teams such as London and Irish. I thought of race and I thought the word could be a plural ending in S. But I couldn’t get the 8 characters to lock together into a recognisable pack.

    COD:SARACENS

  18. 12:03. No dramas. I didn’t know IMARI or ‘split tin’ but for the former I followed the wordplay and I didn’t even notice the latter as I just bunged in the answer based on definition, checkers and corn=EAR.
    I thought of SARACENS immediately but dismissed them because I thought they weren’t a London club. Shows you how much I know about Rugby, although I do quite enjoy watching it from time to time. More so than soccer certainly.
    I think the difficulty with COD/plastic is that they are both usages that are attached to particular words and situations. So a person might wear a plastic smile while putting on a cod French accent, but never the other way round. However the words mean essentially the same thing.
  19. 29’40. Tough here, witty there…liked this. Stretching it for ‘plastic’. A nice theological point in 17. One imagines it could almost have been discussed once.
  20. Quite an easy one held up inexplicably by SUNSET and FLEECE at the end. Yes, I was another SUNCOP for quite a while until it dawned on me (or rather the opposite..) Liked SARACENS, BOTHERATION and WOTCHA. LOI COD which I left because as others above I couldn’t equate plastic with cod.
  21. Enjoyable outing, with a MER at COD which has already been explored. Definitely seems like one of those three-point turns in the thesaurus to me, but obviously didn’t stop me or anyone else getting the right answer. TOMTIT is definitely a strange looking one, as I wrote the opening T in before the checkers were in place; then took it out again as TO_T_T suddenly looked very unlikely. Then put it back.
  22. I was humming along quite nicely until I reached the SW, which slowed me considerably. ORATOR was my FOI, but I was fixated on DO for party at 1a, right to the end, despite having _O_FIT. It was eventually my LOI, just after FLEECE, which needed an aplphabet trawl. Meanwhile, back in the SW, WOTCHA hove into view, along with HOGARTH, PLUS CA CHANGE and PLETHORA. STINKING was an earlier arrival, but SANDWICH held out for a while, and I was reluctant to enter COD for plastic(another MER here), still running through the alphabet to come up with an alternative. Didn’t manage to parse the SPLIT TIN bit of 14a. An enjoyable puzzle. 29:26. Thanks setter and Jack.
  23. As mentioned here before, I have a blind spot for the bits of French that setters sneak in from time to time. However, I spotted 17ac. fairly quickly and was on for a good time until I was left with I-A-I at 21 down and gazed at it, perplexed, for quite a while.
    Eventually the penny dropped…….

    All correct in 22.28.

    Thank you to setter and blogger.

    Dave.

  24. I knew CONFIT but not “split-tin” – thanks for the parse Jack. I spent time at the end trying to see what *l*e*e* could possibly be and went in search of another name for a prison turnkey or screw (since this wasn’t the Guardian). There used to be a posh china shop selling IMARI on Park Avenue in midtown that I used to walk by every day on my way home from work. And I believe there used to be a coaching inn in North London called the Saracen’s Head so it wasn’t too much of a stretch to think the name might be borrowed for a rugby team. Ditto others on COD. 18.11
    1. The Saracen’s Head was a famous starting point for several posting coaches and such. It was in Snow Hill, Holborn, directly underneath where Holborn Viaduct was later built .. WC2, to you and me
      1. I was never quite sure where the Saracen’s Head was Jerry. For some reason I put it further North in my mental geography. My rambles in that area usually took me South towards the river from Lincoln’s Inn. Speaking of which, there is a marvelous collection of HOGARTHs in the Soane Museum in Lincoln’s Inn Fields.
  25. This looked impossible when I first looked at it but after getting FIRST PERSON it all came together in under an hour before lunch. The GK was all known apart from IMARI.
    Sandwich a further reminder of the fate of this year’s Open Golf championship for which I had tickets. Postponed to 2021 at the same venue.
    LOI was FLEECE just as I was starting to despair and trying to fit EWE into the answer.
    Fun puzzle. David
  26. 10:43. I’m on a wavelengthy week so far as my WITCH is 73 to go with yesterday’s 83.

    I was expecting 13 to have some connection to G. Bennett’s career as a publisher etc. I did some rudimentary research into his activities a few years ago when I had some free time in Paris and went to have a nosey at Stade Roland Garros. I was taken aback to find myself standing on Avenue Gordon Bennett and wondered why on earth the good burghers of Paris would want to name a road after him.

    That said the interjection that bears his name is well know to me and many here from the “late arrivals” round of ISIHAC. E.g. from the gardeners’ ball: Please welcome Mr & Mrs Bennettlookatthesizeofthatcucumber, and their son, Gordon.

    1. The Gordon Bennett (aviation) Trophy is the permanent property of the Aéro-Club de France, having been won by them three times in a row. I am a great fan of the French penchant for naming streets after people..

      Edited at 2020-06-16 03:05 pm (UTC)

  27. Very enjoyable, thank you. I occasionally find myself saying “Gordon Bennett”. Part of why it’s endured must be the rhythm of it – it comes easy to the tongue. Re the French connection, he spent much of his life in Paris in a Henry James-ian kind of way, and edited the International Herald Trib. It’s where he died too, and he’s buried in Passy cemetery next to Trocadero.
  28. NHO IMARI but the rest was pretty straightforward even with a few familial interruptions
  29. 25.50 and never felt I was in control. LOI fleece after a bit of bother with botheration and sunset. Knew the reference to petard but bifd the answer without really working it out.

    Still all’s well that ends well.

  31. ….and not so far from me are the SARACEN’S Head and the Golden FLEECE. I could do with a decent pint !

    EAR-SPLITTING was parsed post-solve.

    FOI SATANIST
    LOI TOMTIT
    COD SARACEN’S
    TIME 11:42

  32. One of the enjoyable crosswords where the answers keep coming, and you never feel completely becalmed. Saracens LOI, and I could even cope with the foreign phrase for once!
    Thanks setter and blogger
  33. I found this all very strange (perhaps not if you’re British or even better Cockney), so how did I manage to finish it, in 45 minutes? Actually, everything I didn’t really know, a list too long to repeat, couldn’t really be anything other than what it actually turned out to be. At least the wordplay was quite unambiguous for many of the semantically worst offenders.
  34. I was going along quite nicely with this until I hit the buffers in the SW corner. It took me 13 minutes just to get WOTCHA and SANDWICH. 29 minutes. Ann
  35. … when just about everything went in straightaway and I finished in 18:36, less than half my average time. I’m not kidding myself that my solving has improved but I have at least enjoyed the warm glow of a PB …
  37. As Horryd pointed out, the Gordon Bennett competition is an annual hot-air balloon race in Europe. Knowing this, and seeing 13d began with a B, BALLOONISTS was entered with a certain smugness, though the parsing did seem obscure. Had to be revised later. Botheration! 22’18”
  38. the Gordon Bennett balloon competition starts in a different location each year. Whoever travels the furthest, in any direction, is the winner. Some stay aloft for days, and finishers often end in different countries.
  39. Are we approaching the point where we need separate versions for either side of the Atlantic?
    The British spelling is foetid. Can we look forward to ‘trunk’ for ‘boot’ etc…..was it Churchill who described England and America as two countries divided by a common language?

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