Times Cryptic 27770

Author   jackktPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic

I felt I did quite well to finish this in 31 minutes as there were several unknown words or meanings along the way, but somehow it all came together reasonably easily.

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 Spades have lodged in the ground (4)
SOWN : S (spades), OWN (have)
3 Being spiteful about bridge couple — charming (10)
BEWITCHING : BITCHING (being spiteful) containing [about] EW (bridge couple)
10 Indistinguishable dialect in broadcast (9)
IDENTICAL : Anagram [broadcast] of DIALECT IN
11 Provider of beer that’s less fattening (5)
LOCAL : LO-CAL (less fattening- allegedly!). A pub in one’s local vicinity.
12 Soviet minister gets second great deal over extracting erbium (7)
MOLOTOV : MO (second), LOT (great deal),  OV{er} [extracting erbium]. Politician and diplomat, his name his remembered widely in connection with a type of improvised incendiary device known as the ‘Molotov cocktail’, a term invented by the Finns.
13 President’s cut, receiving a wound (6)
TRAUMA : TRUMA{n} (president) [cut] containing [receiving] A. The original medical meaning of the term that’s now come to mean ‘shock’.
15 Lavish volume of drink with large kebab, too, ordered (6-5,4)
COFFEE-TABLE BOOK : COFFEE (drink), anagram [ordered] of L (large) KEBAB TOO
18 Unfortunately, we’d Irish setters who control all we do (3,5,7)
THE WEIRD SISTERS : Anagram [unfortunately] of WE’D IRISH SETTERS. I knew these as The Three Witches in Macbeth because they came up recently.  This from Wiki covers the definition here: The Three Witches, also known as the Weird Sisters or Wayward Sisters, are characters in William Shakespeare’s play Macbeth. They hold a striking resemblance to the three Fates of classical mythology, and are perhaps intended as a twisted version of the white-robed incarnations of destiny.
21 Good article about my one hymn (6)
GLORIA : G (good) + A (article) containing [about] LOR (my!) + I (one). ‘Lor!’ as a variation on the more familiar ‘Cor!’ = ‘My!’ is a Bunterism. Gloria in excelsis is a familiar example of a hymn of praise.
23 What holds water in a raised lock, not following English river (7)
AQUIFER : A, QUIF{f} (raised lock – hair) [not following – f], E (English), R (river). A water-bearing stratum of permeable rock. Didn’t know this one.
26 Cosmetic used in Madras nowadays (5)
HENNA : Hidden [used] in {c}HENNA{i} (Madras nowadays). Naughty setter giving us an indirect hidden word!
27 Kicks gin to get going (9)
BOOTSTRAP : BOOTS (kicks), TRAP (gin). Collins advises that if you ‘bootstrap’ an organization or an activity, you set it up or achieve it alone, using very few resources. This was news to me!
28 Have a meal with holiday money (5,5)
BREAK BREAD : BREAK (holiday), BREAD (money)
29 Almost an admission some of us exist for sport (4)
WEAR : WE AR{e} (admission some of us exist) [almost]
Down
1 Earthquake activity exists in half of built-up area (10)
SEISMICITY : IS (exists) contained by [in] SEMI (half), CITY (built-up area). How appropriate, coming one week to the day after my house was shaken to its foundations by the great Leighton Buzzard quake. We had another one early yesterday morning but it was very mild compared with the first. I wondered at the time whether it was an aftershock but it was over in a flash and more like somebody had dropped something heavy nearby so I couldn’t be sure, however it was reported by the BBC later in the day.
2 Roll with end of loaf (5)
WHEEL : W (with), HEEL (end of loaf). SOED advises that ‘heel’ can be the remains or end part of anything, such as the crust of a loaf, the rind of a cheese, etc. More news to me!
4 Miner and former Conservative mostly drinking wine (9)
EXCAVATOR : EX (former) + TOR{y} (Conservative) [mostly] containing [drinking] CAVA (wine)
5 Means of entry during rental period (5)
INLET : IN (during), LET (rental period). Thinking of the coastal feature I wasn’t sure about the definition here, but then thought of plumbing, inlet pipe, inlet valve etc which seems a better fit.
6 Picture educational establishment with convict for member (7)
COLLAGE : COL{leg}E (educational establishment) becomes COLLAGE when LAG (convict) replaces ‘leg’ (member). Replacing three letters in order to change only one of them is a novel idea I think.
7 Trouble means taking in youth with a scooter (9)
INCOMMODE : INCOME (means) containing [taking in] MOD (youth with a scooter). SOED advises:  a mod was a young person, especially in the 1960s, belonging to or associated with a group aiming at stylishness and smart modern dress. Frequently  contrasted with rocker. They rode scooters whilst rockers rode motorbikes.
8 A delay over celebration (4)
GALA : A + LAG (delay) reversed [over]
9 Figure university is in bad condition (6)
STATUE : U (university) contained by [in] STATE (bad condition)
14 New York speciality to grate into curd cheese (10)
SKYSCRAPER : SCRAPE (grate) contained by [into] SKYR (curd cheese – an Icelandic speciality, apparently)
16 100 in clear section of road is perhaps working for many? (9)
FREELANCE : FREE (clear), then C (100) contained by [in] LANE (section of road)
17 Strictly routine is one making others go to work on an egg, severally (5,4)
BOSSA NOVA : BOSS (one making others go to work), AN (a), OVA (egg, severally). The popular TV dancing competition Strictly Come Dancing is often referred to simply as Strictly. Its name is a combination of the film title Strictly Ballroom and the earlier TV ballroom dancing show Come Dancing which ran from 1949 to 1998. ‘Severally’ because ‘ova’ is plural of course.
19 Flag with damage carried by European vessel (7)
EARMARK : MAR (damage) contained [carried] by E (European) + ARK (vessel)
20 Put down   drink (6)
SQUASH : Two meanings
22 Slow walker ignoring learner driver’s signal (5)
AMBER : AMB{l}ER (slow walker) [ignoring learner – l]. The middle signal on traffic lights.
24 Comedy clubs cutting price of going (5)
FARCE : C (clubs) contained by [cutting] FARE (price of going – travelling)
25 Fish young bear has found hard to eat (4)
CHUB : CUB (young bear) contains [to eat] H (hard)

68 comments on “Times Cryptic 27770”

  1. I’m glad I knew AQUIFER, since I’d probably never have come up with QUIF. And I’m glad HENNA was so clearly indicated, as I’d forgotten about Chennai. Biffed SKYSCRAPER, DNK SKYR. My FOI was 24d(!), which boded ill, but things picked up, until I was left with WHEEL (spent too much time trying to get an F (end of loaf)) and finally SOWN.
  2. Skyr? At least the word was easily biffable. Similarly HENNA, an indirect encapsulation but biffable, then work out what the cryptic must be.
    Just over par at 21 minutes, the last few agonising if TRAUMS was a word, or if the clue had an error. (TRUMp‘S receiving an A). I’m another who had Trump and never thought of looking for another pres, though of course he’s still alive.
    Quite enjoyed it, a few hard-to-spot definitions and interesting wordplays.

    Edited at 2020-09-15 01:59 am (UTC)

  3. Nothing too difficult, although the Chennai thing went over my head and I just put it in from the checkers. And I had no idea about SKYR either.
  4. Never thought we’d see Icelandic yoghurt again, after eating a lot of it 6 years ago on a vacation there. Amazing what words come up in these puzzles!
    AQUIFER not a problem, as Perth has built a desalination plant in recent years to supplement its water supply from the Yarragadee aquifer.
    28:43
  5. Literally astounded to have finished at all, without errors, and faster than the likes of Kevin. Having already blundered today after taking 15 minutes on the Quickie, I wasn’t expecting much. And true to my expectations, I stared at a blank screen for what felt like an eternity.

    It was seeing COFFEE-TABLE BOOK that suddenly jolted me awake and gave me the confidence to believe I could finish it.

    I was helped by having seen SKYR recently in one of Mark Goodliffe’s “Cracking the Cryptic” videos on a recent Club Monthly puzzle.

    Like Kevin, I didn’t know QUIFF and hence was lucky to have known AQUIFER. Didn’t know about HENNA/CHENNAI but I used to date a lot of girls who decorated themselves in HENNA, so… there’s that.

    BOSSA NOVA only seemed to fit (and I noticed that OVA made sense as I went to click ‘Submit’), and I couldn’t make heads or tails of MOLOTOV after the MO, assuming there was some reversal involved. I feel very fortunate to have not received pink squares!

    1. Thanks Jack for clearing up TRAUMA. As I was putting in the letters I assumed it was A in TRUM{p} + A (not having checked the wordplay again closely). Seemed too good to be true.

      Edited at 2020-09-15 01:45 am (UTC)

  6. I’ve been eating Siggi’s (vanilla) regularly, which it turns out is skyr. 15 grams of protein! Only 110 calories! Non-fat, but tastes very rich. Highly recommended.
  7. It took me some time to come up with THE WEIRD SISTERS despite having studied Macbeth at school. I never remember them being referred to as such. I was held up slightly at the end by one of my bad habits – I had INE__CAL all ready for “indistinguishable” having convinced myself it would have to begin with IN. I must keep a more open mind!
  8. It occurred to me only afterwards that while the Fates may control all we do, the 3 witches in ‘Macbeth’ don’t; they just prophesy.
      1. So they make up a charm (what for, by the way? I can’t remember); they are, after all, witches.
        1. Let’s just say that while they are subordinate to darker powers even than themselves, they stoke up the fire for human evil. Their prophecies are the hook, sure, yet they are far more than mere word-mongers.

          Edited at 2020-09-15 11:45 am (UTC)

  9. A similar experience to our intrepid blogger, albeit he beat me by a minute. A few things went over my head, but my knowledge of computer terminology—your PC “booting” up is a shortening of “bootstrapping”, where the operating system “pulls itself up by its bootstraps”—made up a bit for my lacking in geography and literature.

    FOI 8d GALA after despairing a bit at the start, LOI 26a HENNA, though when I went to add things to my Big List of Handy Words I found that Chennai and Madras were already both there, so clearly I’ve not been doing my homework.

    Edited at 2020-09-15 06:28 am (UTC)

  10. Cracked most of this fairly fast, well under the half hour, but then hit the buffers with three small ones: WHEEL (NHO heel used like that), SOWN (tried for ages to justify SOIL) and WEAR (flailing about for a sport that fitted; sport = wear often catches me out). Crawled over the line in 42m.

    I am just starting a diet so LOCAL and SKYR were highly relevant!

    Thanks setter and Jack.

  11. The puppy isn’t ready for her walk yet, so I did this first. 32 minutes with LOI WHEEL not understood. I think there was a brand of yoghurt called SKYR which almost justified SKYSCRAPER to me. Otherwise it all added up. COD to TRAUMA. Thank you Jack and setter.
  12. …The clouds in thousand liveries dight.

    30 mins pre-brekker (which won’t be Skyr).
    Nice one. Only eyebrow flicker was ‘egg, severally’. It reminded me of the old joke about the man who was writing to order two mongeese but was unsure this was the correct pluralization. So he wrote: ‘Please send one mongoose. PS Send another one.’

    Thanks setter and J.

    1. Love it. It reminds of a time when I was working away from home and staying at the same hotel every week. Someone told me the staff were playing a game where a WORD OF THE DAY would be chosen and everyone had to try to include the word in a conversation with a guest, the winner being the person who managed to do it most. This particular day I was told the WOD was “Mongoose”. So I went to reception and said.. “I have a problem. I brought my pet snake with me and it has escaped. Is there anything you can do to help?”….

      Edited at 2020-09-15 07:25 pm (UTC)

  13. Well some clues put up a fight
    But i finished in 40, alright
    To Jack I’ll say “Hi”
    “Thanks for parsing Chennai”
    And no feathered fiends were in sight!
    1. I think the birds may be starting to fly South for the winter. You can worry about fish now – wrasse yesterday, now CHUB….
  14. About 40 minutes on another rather pleasingly constructed puzzle. I assume the setter started with 15ac followed by 18ac; then 1dn and 14dn and the rest fell into place.

    My FOI 10ac IDENTICAL

    LOI 12ac TRAUMA and parsed without thinking of Lord K’s ‘The Orange Mussolini’!

    COD 7dn INCOMMODE

    WOD 18ac THE WEIRD SISTERS

    I did not parse 11ac LO-CAL

  15. I thought I was on for a whizz of a time after the first few flowed in easily, but slowed once I got to the long ones: long anagrams I often only work out after checkers and an inspired guess.

    SKYR I’ve seen in my local Tesco’s (and on TV, I think, with an Icelandic messenger boy) and thought it was a brand name. I was relieved that the NY speciality was not some other unspellable comestible.

    My known BOOTSTRAP is a fine charity in Hackney which has assisted much enterprise. Glad to see it still “is”.

    I do indeed Miss the Gloria, a poignant song from Bernstein’s magnificent/awful (delete to taste) Mass. Doesn’t look like we’ll be singing it again any time soon.

    Thanks Jack, especially for EARMARK, which it seems I forgot to parse.

    1. I prefer Van Morrison’s impassioned vocal on “Gloria” by Them, but I’m a Philistine.
        1. The favourite Vivaldi movement of any alto. We don’t often get the chance to kick off a fugue. Can’t wait to get back to choir again.
          1. The tenor line is quite fun too! My choral adventures since lockdown have been cancelled too. I was looking forward to doing Carmina Burana in April and a bienniel choir reunion in August.
  16. Well that went OK, although I didn’t quite understand the definition of THE WEIRD SISTERS. Wondering if ‘talpe’ was a word until I saw INLET.

    COD: COFFEE-TABLE BOOK – nice surface.

    Yesterday’s answer: the most obvious word that goes -.- is kangaroo, there are no doubt others.

    Today’s question: what was the real Lady Macbeth’s name?

      1. I forgot to mention that it’s a brilliant novel about Macbeth. No resemblance to the play and the name Macbeth is hardly mentioned. He’s called Thorfinn throughout. Imo Dunnett is one of the greatest writers of historical fiction. Recommended.
  17. 13:43. Quite a lot of biffing for me today: the tricky thing with a lot of these clues was spotting the definition. Take 15ac for example: with enough checkers I saw what the answer must be, deduced the definition from that and didn’t bother with the wordplay. Similarly I actually knew SKYR but made no use of the knowledge when bunging in SKYSCRAPER. I’m not sure I knew that Madras is now Chennai but again I didn’t need to.
    I also thought of the Orange Mussolini but saw that there was one A too many, then realised this is a daily puzzle so thought again.
  18. I must confess to not knowing the reference for THE WEIRD SISTERS – I only know of them as a popular band in the world of Harry Potter. HENNA was a complete biff, and I didn’t know BOOTSTRAP as a verb, so thanks for the explanations. I though 9d might be “status” until I twigged that the definition wasn’t just “condition”, and that helped get COFFEE-TABLE BOOK.

    FOI Identical
    LOI Trauma
    COD Henna (now that I get it!)

  19. 17:12. I might have seen 18A a lot sooner if I had not wrongly annotated the enumeration on my paper copy (5,3,7) and puzzling over how to get a 3 letter word with R in the middle from the anagrist. Doh! DNK SKYR and didn’t get the indirection at 26A, forgetting CHENNAI, so that one was a biff. WOD to INCOMMODE and COD to SOWN.
  20. Back online after IT trauma, with the BEWITCHING WEIRD SISTERS. Some very nice stuff here, I really enjoyed it.
  21. My last half dozen in took a while to see/work out. EARMARK,(I always forget about ARK for vessel) HENNA (never saw the Chennai bit,) TRAUMA WHEEL AND SOWN all had me sweating. Finished in about 50mins. I think I enjoyed it! Thank you Jack once again for much enlightenment, and setter. COD COFFEE-TABLE BOOK.
  22. Used a fair bit of obscure information today.

    THE WEIRD SISTERS, my thoughts went: Terry Pratchett, Macbeth, Oh yes.

    Robert A. Heinlein wrote a superb novella called ‘By his bootstraps’, in 1941, long before the word started to become common, I wondered if that was the origin of the usage, but it is not so.

    BOSSA NOVA brought back memories of the first few series of Strictly, nice clue.

    Have sung the GLORIA in many forms.

    Nho SKYR, no doubt it’ll come up again.

    16′, thanks jack and setter.

    Edited at 2020-09-15 09:01 am (UTC)

    2. I’ll have to look that Heinlein out; it might be on my bookshelves already. He was a good one for neologisms; “waldo” and “grok” have both made it to the Oxford Dictionary of English, I see. No sign of TANSTAAFL yet…
  23. 23.14 but foolish mistake with the unknown blowstrap substituted for bootstrap. Despite that failure, I really enjoyed the exercise. Some standout clues for me were coffee table book, henna, bossa nova and the weird sisters- a much better than average anagram.

  25. Thanks, Jack for your blog and for explaining THE WEIRD SISTERS, SKYSCRAPERS and BOSSA NOVA.
    I wasn’t aware of the connection between the witches in Macbeth and The Fates. I first became aware of the latter when I read what became my favourite spy novel, “Horse Under Water” by Len Deighton in the mid-60s. One of the characters appeals in vain to Atropos.
    I had never heard of SKYR. As far as I am aware, Icelandic SKYR does not appear in the Monty Python cheese shop sketch.
    I have heard of BOSSA NOVA but have never ever watched Strictly….
  26. 13 Across – so where does the other A get there?
    20 Down – I had Scotch – should I be worried, it’s 11.05 am here?
  27. Snitch gives it 100 (moderate), but for me it felt like more. Must be this lingering non-covid flu. I spent too long finding reasons not to put in the weird sisters before accepting it could only be that. I had no idea of the link with the Fates. Didn’t Polanski have a coven of hundreds? The other long across clue also slowed me down, because of ‘volume of drink’ – but that was just very clever setting.
    1. …with an ‘e’ though. As Fiery Fred would have said, I don’t know what’s going off out there. But then Brian Statham was my hero.
  29. Having recently got a touch-screen laptop from work, I’m really swearing by it – being able to move quickly between clues without needing a mouse, and being able to type answers in, seems to work very well. 5m 25s today.

    A few biffs or semi-biffs today, and like most others I wasn’t aware of SKYR. Unlike several people, I got HENNA from CHENNAI rather than the other way round – I think it came up in a quiz fairly recently.

  30. Any excuse for a line of Owen.
    26’15, plodding along comfortably. Didn’t know skyr. Nothing here to set the table on a roar. The !8 ac. anagram scarcely lightens the soul. In all, somewhat like doing a sudoku. Yet still, job done, the old verbarium has a certain magic.
  32. So annoyed as I had done so well. Came here afterwards for several biffs. Was racking my brain for the new name for Madras and even biffing HENNA didn’t help.
    COD SKYSCRAPER for misdirecting me into bagel equivalents.
  33. Got slightly held up by dreaming up BUCKSTRAP but otherwise happy. LOI was SQUASH which went straight in once I’d convinced myself that THE WEIRD SISTERS was A Thing. Definition seems a stretch to me but it certainly felt right. HENNA raised a smile as did a few of the surfaces. Good stuff.
  35. Enjoyed this a lot. Biffed HENNA but saw why eventually afterwards; didn’t know hidden words in non-present synonyms were allowed. Knew Skyr seen it in Tesco. Knew bootstrap too and Molotov. Didn’t know the Macbeth thing, never seen the play, but unravelled the anagram anyway. 25 minutes no errors.
    1. I certainly thought it unusual which was why I commented, but I don’t think it’s in the same category as indirect anagrams – think of a word and anagram it. We wouldn’t complain if the clue had indicated the modern name of Madras needed to be topped and tailed.
  36. Some unparsed – HENNA and TRAUMA – so obvious when reading here. Steady solve after initial poor first run-through
  37. I know it’s a dance, but as a musician I associate bossa nova with the musical style, first and foremost, in which sense it was never intended as a dance.
  38. ….SKYR as a brand name (made by Arla). Didn’t like the use of Strictly – it’s not even the full name, and therefore absolutely demands parentheses. I assume the 18A were known for their powers of 3A, but I’d never considered them as Fates (Emerson, Lake and Palmer’s “Three Fates” on their debut album are more correctly Clotho, Lachesis and Atropos).

    I had a “double duh” moment over the crossers IDENTICAL and EXCAVATOR having wondered if “trac” was a wine.

    Too many complaints to have enjoyed it much.

    FOI GLORIA (slow start)
    LOI SEISMICITY (really ?!)
    COD HENNA (but then Chennai came to me at once)
    TIME 14:51

  39. Probably on the grumbly side on balance. Just a few too many liberties – surely The Weirdesses def needs a question mark? And Strictly should be italicised or enquotationmarked (is there a proper single word for this?) HENNA was do-able but sets an ugly precedent, open to much abuse (as in advanced cryptics). A little bit bah humbuggy by the end. Time was exacerbated also by pesky client interrupting my flow and me not switching timer off …
  40. Thought I was getting the hang of this game yesterday, when I worked out Wrasse and Litotes without having a clue (apart from the setter’s) what they were, but found this one much harder. I did eventually manage to finish (Mrs I chipped in with heel for crust) – getting 29ac Wear, when I was down to the last few clues, kept me going – but at around 2hrs it was quite a struggle. Invariant
  41. 44 minutes, but THE WEIRD SISTERS was the only thing that gave me a little bit of trouble, though it was the only sensible anagram possible. I remember the days when computers really did “pull themselves up bý their bootstraps” to start. MIT, in the sixties, had a PDP 1 with a punched tape reader, and with a switch you could read one command from the tape into memory and execute it. That command in turn read more of the tape and eventually a very small program that, finally, actually got the computer started. The PDP1 was a large cabinet filling much of a smallish room and contained 8000 18-bit words of memory. Those were the days.
    1. c1976 at CERN the PDP11 (eleven? two?) was the bees knees in local computing and looked like a 5″ thick dinner tray with a row of switches along the front – progress (of a sort).
  42. 29:00. I found this one quite tricky to put away. The two long anagrams were harder than average. In the first instance, the definition of coffee-table book was well hidden. In the second I only knew the weird sisters as the witches in Macbeth and their possible identification with the Fates is not explicit enough for the definition to work for me. However, in Chambers, under weird, it has: the weird sisters: the Fates; applied by some also to the Norns, the fates of Scandinavian mythology; the witches in Shakespeare’s Macbeth. In Aquifer I wasn’t keen on ‘not following’ to indicate the removal of just one F from a word with two Fs. Bewitching brings to mind an obscure, likely apocryphal tale. When they commissioned the theme tune for Blind Date the producers told the composer they wanted something a bit like the tune to the 1960s American sitcom Bewitched. The composer took the score to Bewitched, turned it upside down and played that to them. The rest is TV theme tune history.
  43. I’m really not a fan of foreign phrases in crosswords.
    Bootstrap came easily, after all we all “Boot” up our computers with a bootstrap programme.
    Well over an hour for me … with aids.
  44. No major difficulties except that I did not understand “Henna” until I came here.
    Haven’t been in my local for ages – my current provider of beer is Sainsbury’s!

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