Times Cryptic 27764

Author   jackktPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic

Solving time: 53 minutes. My timing confirms that I didn’t find this so easy.

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 Go off melon, maybe, unpleasant at first for the tongue (4)
URDU : {go}URD (melon, maybe) [‘go’ off], U{npleasant} [at first]. I’m not sure I knew that a melon is a gourd but the wordplay led me to the answer.
3 Coach correctly left for the house (5,5)
STAGE RIGHT : STAGE (coach), RIGHT (correctly). Stage directions are given from the actors’ point of view, facing the auditorium.  ‘Stage right’ therefore means the left of the stage as viewed by the audience or ‘house’.
10 Repair resort, half damaged (7)
RESTORE : RES{ort} [half], TORE (damaged). Easily biffed, but the parsing took a little longer than it should.
11 Country road to take, city having been rejected? (7)
ALBANIA : A1 (road) + NAB (take) + LA (city) all reversed [rejected]. There are lots of A1 roads throughout the word but the UK version is the main route between London and Edinburgh, traditionally known as ‘The Great North Road’.
12 A film to blow you away? (4,4,3,4)
GONE WITH THE WIND : Cryptic clue, but I wondered if its grammar quite works. Still not decided.
13 Where pig may go to be cosily warm (6)
TOASTY : TO A STY (where pig may go). Encroachment into QC setter Oink’s territory here!
14 First on stage, not turning to don cloak and topper (8)
CAPSTONE : S{tage} [first] + NOT reversed [turning] contained  by [to don] CAPE (cloak). It’s part of the top of a wall, but also has figurative meanings.
17 Smack round lug and hurry away (5,3)
CLEAR OUT : CLOUT (smack) containing [round] EAR (lug). ‘Pin back your lugholes’ was the catchphrase of comedian Cyril Fletcher. Here’s an example of his work that someone at British Pathe saw fit to record for posterity. It’s not for the faint hearted and somewhat disturbing to think that this passed for humour back in the 1940’s. And he was still at it 50 years later!
18 Fellow translated only the first three in sacred text (6)
MANTRA : MAN (fellow), TRA{nslated} [only the first three]
21 Copy infantry photo: how much one adds to the atmosphere! (6,9)
CARBON FOOTPRINT : CARBON (copy), FOOT (infantry), PRINT (photo). ‘Infantry’ are also called ‘men of foot’.
23 Sort of coffee, say: one loves drinking it (7)
PHILTRE : Sounds like [say] “filter” (sort of coffee). ‘Philtre’ is a love potion.
24 Knocking code supremo? (7)
PINKING : PIN (code), KING (supremo). SOED: Of an internal-combustion engine: emit a series of metallic rattling sounds caused by over-rapid combustion of the mixture in the cylinder. E20. To save money I tried running my first car, a VW Beetle, on two-star petrol because I read somehere it liked it. It didn’t, and I soon became accustomed to the sound of ‘pinking’.
25 Where on the IoW there is a requirement for sewers? (3,7)
THE NEEDLES : Cryptic. To quote Wiki: The Needles are three stacks of chalk that rise about 30m out of the sea off the western extremity of the Isle of Wight in the English Channel.
26 People concealing a purpose (4)
MEAN : MEN (people) containing [concealing] A. I’m having difficulty thinking of a context in which ‘mean’ and ‘purpose’ can be substituted although they’re clearly both in the same area.
Down
1 Just   support for the bar (7)
UPRIGHT : Two meanings. SOED: A post, rod, etc., fixed or standing upright, esp. as a structural support,
2 Before English period, inspectors withdraw (9)
DISENGAGE : DI’S (inspectors), ENG (English), AGE (period)
4 Agreement to pay for a year (6)
TREATY : TREAT (pay for), Y (year)
5 Support actor in eastern town (8)
GRANTHAM : GRANT (support), HAM (actor). Birthplace of Mrs Thatcher.
6 Without thought, approving erasing items before recording receives marks (6-8)
RUBBER-STAMPING : RUBBERS (erasing items), TAPING (recording) contains [receives] M (marks)
7 Spirits: senior officer takes two (5)
GENII : GEN (senior officer), II (two). Plural of GENIE:  A spirit or jinn (in Arabian stories), esp. one trapped in or inhabiting a bottle, lamp, etc., and capable of granting wishes. (SOED).
8 Time to impersonate a duck? Nonsense! (7)
TWADDLE : T (time), WADDLE (impersonate a duck?)
9 Trouble with nerve — in bed this may help (3-5,6)
HOT-WATER BOTTLE : HOT-WATER (trouble), BOTTLE (nerve)
15 About to take the plunge perhaps, mixing nicotine with heroin (2,4,3)
ON THIN ICE : An anagram [mixing] of NICOTINE H (heroin). And at last we have our first anagram of the day!
16 Ploughing futile in regularly cold, distant area of farm (8)
OUTFIELD : Anagram [ploughing] of FUTILE contained by [in] {c}O{l}D [regularly]. And our second and last, though only partial.
17 Get into trouble about check on outside compartment (7)
COCKPIT : COP IT (get into trouble) containing C{hec}K [on outside]
19 Toxin perhaps in plant I generally cut down (7)
ANTIGEN : Hidden [in…cut down] {pl}ANT I GEN{erally}
20 Join one unable to drive alone in car (6)
COUPLE : L (one unable to drive alone – learner driver) contained by [in] COUPÉ (car)
22 Sound beams to erect (5)
RAISE : Sounds like “rays” (beams)

69 comments on “Times Cryptic 27764”

  1. Never got PHILTRE, and I doubt I would have if I’d spent more time. Thought of COCKPIT, indeed that’s all I thought of, but DNK COP IT and couldn’t see a way to make it work. I took ‘purpose’ as a verb, which I think works. Too much anagrist for ON THIN ICE; it’s just H for ‘heroin’.
    2. Thanks, duly amended.

      I knew PHILTRE as a love potion and thought it may have been used by Shakespeare, perhaps in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, but apparently not.

      1. I knew PHILTRE, but never would have thought of it; not drinking coffee probably helped.
  2. I was all done in fifteen minutes bar at 21ac had stuck in MIRROR-FOOTPRINT!?
    It took me another four minutes to crack 17dn COCKPIT and CARBON result 19s 6d result happiness!?
    COP IT is sooo English! Poor Kevin!

    FOI 1dn UPRIGHT (Joanna!?)

    LOI 21ac CARBON – A Dating Agency in India

    COD 24ac PINKING. My first car was a bright yellow Beetle (Bug)

    WOD 5dn GRANTHAM I’ll raise your Thatcher with a Nicholas Parsons. Yellowbellies each!

    This was Monday puzzle and I would recommend to the older newbies.

    Edited at 2020-09-08 02:06 am (UTC)

      1. Umm… I do know all about goalposts- I was a goalie in my youth. I was suggesting to Jack a third meaning of upright – a Joanna – a piano – aka as a ‘Joanna’ darn ‘Lunnon Tarn’
    2. Was your Beetle also from Lincolnshire?

      Mine was bright orange and was nicknamed (not by me) the Clockwork Orange because I acquired it in 1971, the year in which the Kubrick film came out, and its distinctive engine noise (pinking aside).

      1. It wasn’t quite – we lived in Offord D’Arcy, Cambs – once Hunts. Our yellow Beetle did not have a nickname. I also had a blue and white VW Karman Ghia for many years! (‘Sheep in Woolf’s clothing’!) But then came the Volvos!
          1. Then came a Citroen DS 21 with an auto Maserati gearbox and theN as a standard DS 23 what a ride!
            1. My very first car was a Citroen GS. Hydraulic suspension like the DS. Did you ever manage the trick of changing a wheel without using a jack?
              1. I was once flagged down on the A1 by another DS to be informed I was cruising along at about 80 with a puncture – the wheel had just lifted without me knowing! It did warn of this phenomenum in the manual! Scary!
  3. Thought of COCKPIT , but initially rejected it as it didn’t seem to parse…..but then it did when I thought to check on outside.
    GRANTHAM is a town in eastern Australia, in Queensland. I appreciate it when the setter puts in obscure towns in Oz, rather than ones in England. 26:24

    P.S. My first car was a faded green 1962 VW Beetle.

  4. Where else? I very much liked this, it gave me a lot to chew on. Had to guess at THE NEEDLES. PHILTRE was very slow in coming.
  5. No problem with knowledge but took a long time on the COCKPIT PHILTRE and COUPLE PINKING pairs to finish up having raced through most of the rest.
  6. A rapid 15 minutes, the only troubles on PINKING, PHILTRE and URDU. PINKING went straight in but I worried that it meant poking with a sword rather than hitting, completely forgetting engine-knocking. PHILTRE I guessed maybe was French for filter coffee – never heard the word said, I would have pronounced it differently. GRANTHAM never heard of either, but ‘actor’ in the clue is usually Peck or Grant, so it came very quickly – after I figured out Cary wasn’t the actor part.
    COD to TWADDLE.
  7. I was clearly off the wavelength with this one given the SNITCH’s rating. I was quite pleased with myself for finally dragging up my LOI PHILTRE, but then I found my guess at PANNING was wrong. It fitted the definition of knocking and I guessed that maybe Panning was a “code supremo”, perhaps someone akin to Turing. I also thought it might be a nod to Nathan Panning who has recently graced the top of the leaderboard.
    1. Snap! I too created the little-known Turing associate, but now I realise this was a subliminal tip of the hat to Verlaine’s new competitor at the top of our leader board. I compounded that with TANTRA on the basis Nat and Art were involved in a sloppy anagram. Nothing sloppy about this puzzle though. A shame because I had a decent time and lots of fun. Thanks setter and Jack.
  8. I found the wavelength for this one, apparently; at 28m it only took me one minute more than yesterday’s. FOI 1a URDU, LOI 20d COUPLE, more because it was at the bottom of my mostly bottom-to-top solve than because it was tricky.

    Is a MANTRA a sacred “text”? People normally say them out loud… The first word that sprang to my mind was “sutra”, but while those are generally thought of as texts these days I suppose they were all spoken aloud back in the day.

    1. SOED has: A sacred Hindu text or passage, esp. one from the Vedas used as a prayer or incantation; in Hinduism and Buddhism, a holy name or word, for inward meditation; transf. & fig. a repeated phrase or sentence, a formula, a refrain.
  9. 21 minutes with LOI PHILTRE, having exhausted my knowledge of more exotic Starbucks offerings. I had heard of it. I wasn’t sure that GONE WITH THE WIND really worked either. I was also about to protest that GRANTHAM wasn’t quite far enough east to qualify but the Queenland version from Corymbia may do. COD to STAGE RIGHT. Thank you Jack and setter.
  10. 13:02. Tricky in places, this. I did think our American friends might have a bit of trouble with ‘cop it’ but also THE NEEDLES.
    ‘Pink’ has about 17 different meanings according to Chambers, and I’ve been caught out by this one before. A word I’ve never encountered outside crosswords.

    Edited at 2020-09-08 09:03 am (UTC)

  11. One for the Tull lovers.
    30 mins left the Philtre/Cockpit crossers.
    I thought some of the clues needed a bit of tidying up. The ‘to a sty’ could have been better put, the ‘where on the IoW there’ was clunky, the ‘treat a year,’ really gives Treatay.
    Thanks setter and J.
    1. This Tull lover would like to point out it should be ‘skating away on the thin ice of a new day’
        1. Do you ever get the feeling that the play is too damn real and in the present tense? Or that everybody’s on the stage and you’re the only person sitting in the audience?

          For me, the best two lines in rock music.

  14. From phone in bed with flu-like symptoms. Test later. I can’t be that bad though or I wouldn’t have got such a respectable time. V enjoyable. The Spectator had a crossword recently with ‘pink’ as its hidden theme, because it has so many meanings.
  15. Filter in French is the same as in English but with the last two letters reversed. Took me an age to see STAGE RIGHT and GRANTHAM. Many left unparsed so thank you Jackkt for the explanations.
  17. A scattered 17 minutes bumbling around the grid.
    RESTORE took me a fair time because most of the letters are already in resort and I couldn’t work out how to get the extra E
    COCKPIT I forgot to go back and parse, which saved another chunk of time.
    Too many countries fit the A????IA footprint for comfort.
    With CLEAR OUT, I used time wondering if CLOFF was a thing, the result being (in my opinion) rather better foe “hurry away”. Clear out is what we (at last) got round to in our house disposing of 2 1/2 tons of accumulated unnecessaries.
    I quite liked both the verbose COUPLE (5/7 words for one letter!) and the crossing PINKING
  18. Pinking, knocking, and tappets always remind me of Brockbank cartoons in the fifties. Were they in Motor magazine?
  19. Mrs. Thatcher??? True, but GRANTHAM was the birthplace of Isaac Newton.

    PHILTRE took a while. I have visited THE NEEDLES several times. Knew PINKING from learning to drive when eighteen. CAPSTONE LOI.

    22′, thanks jack and setter.

    1. Rob a bit of a mmmm…mer Isaac Newton as per Wikipedia was born in Grantham – but he wasn’t – it was Woolsthorpe near Grantham (about eight miles south – just a mile beyond my alma mater Stoke Rochford.

      Edited at 2020-09-08 04:04 pm (UTC)

  20. 10:26. I sailed through most of this but held up in the end by my last 3 – PINKING (found with an alphabet trawl), COUPLE and PHILTRE.
  21. A pleasant early in the week level of difficulty. I was familiar with Cop It, and both Grantham and The Needles were generously clued (thank you, horryd for yellowbelly). But I’ve never heard plinking, plonking, tinkIng, etc called Pinking. Thanks, jack
  22. I was OK with this one despite the issues others had, for once. MER at MEAN for purpose, but I suppose it’s purpose as a verb, and THE NEEDLES being ‘on’ the IoW.

    COD: PHILTRE, nice surface.

    Yesterday’s answer: the most populous state capital is Phoenix (Arizona).

    Today’s question: Hattie McDaniel was the first African American to win an Oscar for which part?

  23. Thank you Jack for URDU, the FOOT in 21ac, RUBBER STAMPING and COCKPIT. I had trouble parsing those.
    I thought of STAPLE for 20d but could not decide what sort of a car a STAPE was.
    15d reminded me of the Jethro Tull song “Skating Away On The Thin Ice Of A New Day”.
    There is a dentist in a nearby town by the name of TWADDLE. His son was an Olympic medal winner in rowing.
    COD to TOASTY. It may have been QC material but I liked it.

    Edited at 2020-09-08 09:29 am (UTC)

  24. Sailed through this after first pass didn’t reveal too much.

    Reverse solve for URDU which fit the checkers and accordingly parsed.

    Could not parse RESTORE and didn’t bother with RUBBER STAMPING so thanks for that.

    Last in COCKPIT preceded by PHILTRE (knew the word not what it meant).

  25. A moment of incomprehension with ‘stage right’ almost equal to Lady Macbeth’s till I saw it. Irked as always when the film usurps the book in a clue. Unaware of the cosy ‘toasty’. I like the old joanna as an extra support for the bar. (Might it have been accidental?) Interruptions but about 24 minutes in all.
  26. I set off at a gallop with URDU FOI, and soon had the NW completed, but then slowed down considerably, with the treacle getting thicker as I proceeded. I eventually emerged from the goo, with PHILTRE having occupied most of my last 10 minutes. PINKING was no problem as I played with engines a lot in my youngr days. COCKPIT didn’t arrive until my CARBON FOOTPRINT showed me where the outer check went. Enjoyable puzzle. 30:52. Thanks setter and Jack.
  27. ….and was probably still having a grump over the QC. Down to 23A in 12 minutes, gave up quickly. COD COCKPIT.
    1. Your not the only one, Phil. Here in Leighton Buzzard we just had an earthquake and were right at the epicentre!

      Edited at 2020-09-08 11:03 am (UTC)

      1. Hope you had no damage Jack. We once had one in NYC and it was the weirdest sensation. It felt as if a mouse had got into the upholstery of the seat of my chair and was running around in there. I shot up out of it in an instant!
        1. Thanks, Olivia. No damage here or reported, other than to my peace of mind as my home has been a tranquil place of refuge for the past six months of lockdown and it feels as if I’m vulnerable here too now.

          The measurement was 3.3 or 3.9 according to one’s source which is very small on the world scale, but quite large for the UK.

      2. I just rang my brother – he felt the whole house move at around 10.00 (3.6 Richt.) but the Red Cross Parcel and bottled water are on hold. He thought the epicentre was Aylebury.
        1. Things vary according to reports. I’ve heard Aylesbury, just north of LB (which is me), and Pitstone (which is south). Similarly strength, which is mostly reported as 3.3, but 3.8 and 3.9 are in some reports.
  28. Isn’t ‘genii’ for ‘spirits’ more likely to be taken from the plural of the Latin ‘genius’, as in ‘genius loci’, rather than the Arabian djinn?
    1. Chambers doesn’t give GENII as one of the (several) plurals for JINN (itself a plural noun: GINN is given as the plural of GENIE) and says ‘the jinn are often called genii by a confusion and jinns sometimes occurs as a plural in non-standard use.’

      Edited at 2020-09-08 12:43 pm (UTC)

  29. I found this quite accessible. GONE WITH THE WIND FOI gave me plenty to work with.Not everything parsed along the way -URDU and RESTORE for example.
    Being an IOW specialist I was quick to find The Needles but of course they are not strictly on the IOW in my opinion; no matter the clue wouldn’t work otherwise.
    LOI after a long think was 23a. The cryptic and the checkers led me to PHILTRE; I was pleasantly surprised to find it existed and was correct.
    I liked TOASTY and the puzzle as a whole. Less than an hour. David
  30. Thought this was easy, 15 minutes, except for 23a which I didn’t know but guessed from the sounds like filter idea. I hate filter coffee, has to be Nespresso or similar, even if decaf. Clues like 12a and 9d belong in the Quickie.
  31. Last 3 held me up. It was only on coming here that I realised that PHILTRE wasn’t a type of coffee. Or maybe it should be? That left the PINKING COUPLE crossers. My first thought was BONKING as in knocking shop, but that didn’t quite seem Times quality and BON is not a code…
    When I got it, I rather liked the not driving alone idea.
  32. I found this a rather muddling combo of the very easy and the tricky. I was thinking Kevin or Paul would get in ahead of me saying that we don’t think of OUTFIELD as part of a farm but as part of a baseball diamond. I also had CLEAR “off” at first in 17a which didn’t help. 20.06
    1. Actually, Olivia, the outfield is outside of the diamond. But now that you mention it, I don’t think I’ve ever come across the word meaning what it’s supposed to here.
  33. 17.23 which I hope is a decent time today. I liked this cryptic a lot even if it did take me a while to get going. FOI tomorrow is another day….LOI capstone. Some lovely cluing right from the start- urdu one of my favourites as was toasty. COD though was grantham though cockpit came close.

    Vaguely remembered pinking but after the event. Biffed albania .

  34. …although I entered quite a few unparsed so thanks to Jackkt for the helpful blog.
    I had to read the long clue for RUBBER-STAMPING several times and I, too, think that ‘clear off’ is used more often for ‘hurry away’ than ‘clear out’.
    There were some great clues though including TWADDLE, MANTRA and DISENGAGE and my COD has to be TOASTY which made me smile and also reminded me of Oink.
    Thanks to the setter for the entertaining 25 minutes.
  35. Everything fell into place nicely until “Cockpit” and “Philtre” slowed me down at the death.
    I knew all about pinking from owning a Vauxhall Viva back in the 70’s!
  36. Alas, it wasn’t meant to be. I was feeling very strong at 25 minutes. A few more minutes got me the COUPLE/PINKING crossing which I was proud to have worked out from the wordplay.

    Surely the last three words couldn’t give me that much trouble… Except they were CLEAR OUT, COCKPIT, and PHILTRE. I should have gotten CLEAR OUT from the definition but I was focused on the wordplay and simply didn’t know ‘lug’ = EAR and ‘smack’ = CLOUT (though the latter was more reasonably guessed from other definitions I did know).

    Somehow or other I got CLEAR OUT, and then saw COCKPIT from the definition. Didn’t quite know COP IT although I recognized it from other puzzles. Finally I thought the idea for the last one was PHILE (one loves) around IT, which I mistakenly tried as PHITTLE, but while looking that up in the dictionary found PHILTRE and got the idea. Big smack in the head for me because I know PHILTRE from Gilbert and Sullivan.

    Oh well!

    Edited at 2020-09-08 07:02 pm (UTC)

  37. DNF. A 20 minute solve but after gracefully leaping a couple of tricky hurdles like cockpit and philtre and with the finishing line in sight I fell flat on my face in the outfield with a silly error. It was quite noisy where I was solving and my powers of concentration let me down.
  38. Completely messed this up, so lost “Grantham”. I had “city rejected” = Namur (in Belgium) backwards to make “Rumania”.

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