Times Cryptic 27872

71 comments on “Times Cryptic 27872”

1. 25 minutes for me, with a good bit spent on my LOI BRIGHT SPARK (Title was too tempting and I was looking for something more like “bleak house”). But I got there in the end!
2. ….and took 34 minutes. I finished most of it quickly, but was stuck in both the NW and the SE. Then I saw verify, and quickly put the missing five answers up there. But I had a hard time with bright spark, as she didn’t pop up in my mental list of 5-letter authors starting with S, even though I’ve read a dozen of the novels. I couldn’t make anything of beaker, but put it in as the only possible answer.

   I parsed fair copies as just that, not-so-accurate illegal knock-offs, and didn’t see the anagram possibility at all. Maybe the setter is cleverly providing two cryptics in one?

3. another technical DNF: I didn’t know BRIGHT SPARK, and I was getting nowhere looking for an author named S_A__, so I looked up BRIGHT S. That gave me the K, which gave me BEAKER. Biffed STIFF UPPER & AU GRATIN, parsed post-submission. I had the same MER with WISE=experienced. I took ‘wrong side’ to be the wrong side of “fist”, which seemed fine. (Does a fist have a side?)

   Edited at 2021-01-12 02:40 am (UTC)

4. Oh, and 19D I read as extremity=tail with anagram of one (one struggles) cutting it (ie inside it). Plus &lit.
   1. Yes, that works too and may have been what the setter had in mind, so I have added it to my comment in the blog. Thanks Paul.
5. Enjoyable stuff. I took ‘wrong’ in 18d in the ‘not wanted’ sense: ‘We took the wrong route’.

   Edited at 2021-01-12 02:53 am (UTC)

6. A good workout for me without being overly hard. I parsed 19D TOENAIL as Paul did.

   Thanks, Jack, for the explanations. I had no idea of SPARK as an author.

7. A fastish time for me, which does not at all reveal that much of this puzzle was lost on me: SPARK, SCRUMPY, the parsing of FLUNKY, FURLONG, TOENAIL, STIFF UPPER LIP, etc. But all could be reasonably figured out. I was too tired to care about proofreading and deliberating, and today I was rewarded rather than punished.

   Edited at 2021-01-12 04:34 am (UTC)

   1. I came up with SCRUMPY early on–it had been in a cryptic a while back–but I thought no, that was the thing one gathers one’s hair in; I’d also learned ‘scrunchy’ here, and clearly hadn’t learned them that well.
8. I had BALANCES at 16D, carelessly thinking that bale could be a penalty. It’s not even spelt right, as I was thinking of bail. I then ended up with AT THE SAME PORT as my LOI, disregarding the thought that “in the same boat” seemed to work as I didn’t bother to question BALANCES. Very poor showing 🙁
9. 18 minutes with LOI CLOCKWISE, the NW returned to after the rest completed with the VATICAN previously standing in the way of progress. COD to BRIGHT SPARK. I suppose struggling to reach your TOENAILs could form the subject of this post as well as perhaps Muriel Spark’s best book. Easyish but very pleasant puzzle. Thank you Jack and setter.

   Edited at 2021-01-12 07:48 am (UTC)

10. 20 mins pre-brekker. No ticks, no crosses. My eyebrow started limbering up for some exercise, but never truly raised at: tiff, very and wise.
    Tiff is a minor argument usually, but can be a fit of ill-humour.
    Mostly I liked the ‘run with golf shot’.
    Thanks setter and J
11. Saw a play of the Muriel Spark at Ipswich Rep at age 16, still memorable for a (back) naked view of the artist’s model. But BRIGHT SPARK went in without parsing, confirmed by the clever BEAKER.

    Really liked EXORCISED, we all need to work on our inner demons.

    FAIR COPIES is excellent, since a fair copy is the absolute opposite of inaccurate, ‘fair’ not being used in the sense of not very good. I love the English language.

    < 14′, thanks jack and setter.

12. Just over the half hour for this. I liked AU GRATIN and , like others, a number went in unparsed. Thanks Jack for the explanations.
13. 16:38
    Nice straightforward puzzle.
    Thanks jack.
14. No problems. COD to FAIR COPIES.
15. 7:38. Lots of biffing today.
    I shared your reservations about tiff/pet, jackkt, but as myrtilus points out Collins has ‘a fit of ill humour’ as one of the definitions of ‘tiff’. News to me.
    I’m not sure why the question of whether experience and wisdom are the same thing is a question for me, but in my experience one is generally a necessary but not sufficient condition for the other.
    I wonder if Muriel Spark is known among kids these days. She was very prominent when I was a kid – we even did TPOMJB at school – but I haven’t heard mention of her for years.
    1. Only that we has ‘wisdom’ in two puzzles last week and you queried both definitions. I just wanted your take on this one.
       1. Hang on, it might have been Kevin. I’ll have to check. Just checked, yes it was! Apologies, but thanks for your view on it anyway.

          Edited at 2021-01-12 09:32 am (UTC)

          1. Aha – I confess I was a bit confused by your reply!
    2. I was about to say that kids these days do know Spark because my older daughter played Sandy as the grown-up nun in high school. Then I realized that was more than 20 years ago. Yikes. I saw it on stage with Maggie Smith when I was in high school. Yikes again.
16. Completely failed to parse BEAKER – I was thinking of worker as in bee, then the K could be the dough (?!), before getting stuck but bunging it in anyway. So thanks to the blogger for setting me straight.

    Also hadn’t heard of Muriel Spark, but the clue left little alternative.

    FOI Vatican
    LOI Tighter
    COD Fair copies

17. 12.03. FOI clockwise, LOI au gratin. Along the say not too much to report. Recognised furlong as 220 yards but never worked out why, so thanks setter for putting me right.

    Nice bit of mental exercise before my physical in the park, again. I have a horrible feeling this lockdown is going to be really tedious.

    Can we have two crosswords a day to ensure fragile mental health doesn’t disintegrate completely?!

    Stay safe out there all.

    1. Try the Club Monthly. You have a month so only have to do a clue or two per day 🙂
       1. I’ll take a look.. Thanks.
    2. You can get the Guardian and the FT puzzles at no cost. The FT surprises me, since they are so big on having a paywall to keep you from getting any stock tips without paying.
       1. Probably just not worth the bother. I suspect the only paper that can get people to buy a subscription just for the crossword is the Times.
          Other than the Times crossword the FT is the last subscription I would give up. The best English language newspaper in the world, IMO.
18. 11:19 Like Jackkt I failed to parse TOENAIL, thinking it just a CD. LOI CLOCKWISE as NW was my last corner. COD to FURLONG reminding me of walking on one of the gallops in Newmarket, passing the 8 furlong marker and finding out that none of my fellow walkers knew what a furlong was. So they challenged me to think of a crossword clue…. “Hankers after coat, seen on boat at a distance, worth 1000 guineas, perhaps? (5, 8)”, was my answer after a bit of thought.

    Edited at 2021-01-12 09:35 am (UTC)

19. Sailed through this today for one of my fastest times – don’t think I’ve broken 15 mins before – NW corner took the longest to crack.

    Plenty went in not fully parsed though:

    RESTORATIVE – biffed with the last four checkers in place
    FLUNKY – didn’t see either of the parsing pieces
    STIFF UPPER LIP – no parsing at all
    AU GRATIN – saw the definition and went for it
    SCHEME – had CH as church and wondered whether there was some mysterious printing thing called an EME
    BRIGHT SPARK – with four checkers in place, saw the SPARK only and biffed
    VERIFY – didn’t bother parsing
    TOENAIL – didn’t quite get this

    Obviously much quicker if not spending too much time breaking the clue down, so my question is, do the speedsters at the top of the leaderboard merely look for the definition and only parse if it’s not obvious?

20. 30m today, but struggled with the menial and the moving hands at the end, for no particular reason. Enjoyable puzzle, thank you, setter and Jack.
21. Pretty straightforward with perhaps too many clues where one could just biff the answer from the def (yes, indeed, the true speedsters do this all the time. I try; but often then worry, and so go back and verify the wordplay. That’s why I’m not further up the leaderboard! At least, I’m sticking with that excuse for the mo…) TOENAIL was neat &Lit even if it was in before one realised …
22. In under 15 minutes, but VERIFY only sorted out post solve (I put it in and erased it twice) and Muriel likewise. I did wonder if there was a British (or otherwise) author called PARK, because title might just be RIGHTS.

    The cleverness of the TOENAIL clue passed me by, mostly because by coincidence I indeed struggled with the occasional chore of trimming mine not 10 minutes before starting the crossword. Jung would be pleased.

    1. Park was my guess for the author – I’m gunna say “Tim” Park who wrote about Italian football, either Verona or Castel di Sangro. In my ignorance I’ve never heard of Muriel.
23. There’s a digital image file format TIFF that might make for a cool modern DD.
    Figured we must’ve had SCRUMPY before, since I got it.
    Forgot to parse VERIFY.
    “Does experience bring wisdom?” is essentially the essay question on one of the last exams I took in high school. (There’s only one answer, and it’s obvious.) I wrote about my racist granddad.
24. Time about 40 minutes – with a shower in the middle.

    TOENAIL at 19dn was a very smart clue IMHO – they get harder as one ages, as do most other things.

    FOI 1ac VATICAN

    LOI 8dn GREAT APE

    COD 14ac STIFF UPPER LIP – rather jolly good, what!?

    WOD 11ac FLUNKY – a favourite word of my father’s – used pejoratively at The Palace.

    Muriel Camberg remembered after she lost her Spark in 1940.

    Edited at 2021-01-12 10:42 am (UTC)

25. OK so I was torn here and thought in the same zone across and eyeball (a ball difficult to cut in cricket….might work equally well..?
26. FOI 7D: OIL WELL
    LOI 2D: TOSS-UPS

    Error: MEDDLAR – rushing unnecessarily, confusing answer with the soundalike; producing rotten hybrid.

    Thank you, jackkt and the setter

27. Much biffing (in the Marsh). On the subject of classic radio comedy, 24dn ensured that today’s earworm is not music but a memorable exhange from Round the Horne, where Kenneth Williams’ mad scientist has imprisoned Betty Marsden in his lair…

    “You fiend, why have you strapped me to this operating table?”
    “Call it an old man’s whim”
    “Alright, why have you strapped me to this old man’s whim?”

28. A bit slow considering the lack of any holdup clues at the end unusually for me. LOI LIE as I was looking for the wrong pork pie.
    COD TOENAIL brilliant in my book
29. Despite checking I missed Affabiliyy.

    COD: Toenail. I also thought it was just a cryptic definition. It was only after reading this blog I saw it was an &lit. Elation erupted.

30. Felt like a brisk, no-nonsense sort of workout. Liked the wrong side of “fist” device in TIGHTER. I suppose e-content must be a thing, but I can’t see the need for it any more than e-word or e-sentence – unless of course it is used ironically to mean the sort of click-bait bilge masquerading as meaningful content which seems to fill ever greater areas of the internet. 22 mins.
31. Not being a member of the Crossword Club (which seems to be an uphill battle judging by the number of grumbles I see) but doing the crossword after simple subscribing to The Times and going to its mindgames I haven’t been able to see today’s yet, as they’ve given yesterday’s. Apparently I shall have to wait until 5.00, even though I told them before the midday update and the person I talked to told the IT people at 11.50.
    1. I see the right puzzle whichever way I approach it (Club or via the newspaper), but this link should take you to it: https://feeds.thetimes.co.uk/puzzles/crossword/20210112/47672/crossword-20210112-47672.pdf
    2. Thinking further on this, I wasn’t aware it was possible to subscribe to the Times without having access to the Crossword Club. It used to work the other way round in that we could subscribe to the Club for a knockdown price around £8 a year but then they forced us to take the newspaper as well if we wanted to continue with our hobby. Would you care to give details of your subscription package?
       1. I’m using (tablet) a basic Samsung Galaxy, not sure what browser it uses but Firefox I think. On my desktop (where I am at the moment) I use Windows 10 and Firefox is my browser.

          Goodness knows what my subscription package is. All I know is that when I first got my tablet I went to the Times site on my desktop and subscribed. I have an icon on the front page of my tablet which I click on and up come the last seven days’ papers.

          Occasionally there are problems and I use Chrome and all is well. Quite different, but it has everything that the Firefox experience gives me (and I use it on Sundays sometimes as it actually says who set the ST crossword, something I don’t get in Firefox).

          1. I can’t advise you on the tablet situation I’m afraid, but on your desktop I think you need to clear your Firefox browser cache and then follow the link I sent previously.

             To clear the Firefox cache:

             Click the menu button – that’s the 3 horizontal lines icon at the top right of your screen.

             Select Options.

             Select the Privacy & Security panel.

             In the Cookies and Site Data section, click the Clear Data button.

             Here are two items both with check marks against them:

             Remove the check mark in front of Cookies and Site Data.

             Leave the check mark in front of Cached Web Content.

             Click the Clear button.

             Then back out, closing the preferences page and try the link to the puzzle again.

             Hope this helps.

             1. Well this is very helpful of you Jack but I can’t see what the problem is: on my desktop I can get the puzzle you sent me as a link in your post above. I can’t solve it interactively but I can print it out and that’ll be good enough. Why do I need to clear my Firefox browser cache?

                What’s going to happen tomorrow though is anyone’s guess.

                1. I thought you had said you were still getting yesterday’s puzzle when clicking on my link on your desktop running Firefox, and clearing the Firefox cache would be a good place to start in trying to resolve that issue. Apologies if I misunderstood. Anyway you seem to have access to today’s puzzle now, and that’s the main thing. I hope you enjoy it!
                2. That was very misleading of me. I should have made it clearer what was happening.
                   1. Nothing to apologise for, Wil.
32. As I understand it, au gratin doesn’t specigically mean ‘with cheese’, rather it means ‘with scrapings’, such as breadcrumbs etc. Can be cheese of course, but I would suggest at the end of the clue, an added ‘for example’ would be a useful addition.
    Great crossword though; about 15m.
    1. Your point is supported in some of the usual sources but if I ordered ‘au gratin’ in a restaurant and there was no cheese involved I would feel very disappointed. Cheese or cheesy breadcrumbs, fine.
    2. ‘Gratin’ really refers to the production of a browned surface. Cheese isn’t necessarily involved (classic gratin dauphinois for instance doesn’t always contain cheese) but I’d say that’s the exception.

       Edited at 2021-01-12 10:28 pm (UTC)

33. The top half went in apace with VATICAN leading the field for the first FURLONG, then it was a TOSS-UP whether I was near enough to VERIFY if I was proceeding in a CLOCKWISE direction. I kept a STIFF UPPER LIP until some BRIGHT SPARK put SCRUMPY in a BEAKER as a RESTORATIVE. I then spent a couple of minutes attempting to parse BEAKER, before EXORCISING my fear of pink squares and submitting regardless. OIL’s WELL that ends well! 19:30. Thanks setter and Jack.
34. A reasonably gentle canter which turned out to take longer than I’d expected. I liked Flunky and Toe-nail. Does the queen use one to deal with the other?
35. ….. which is pretty quick for me. The QC today took me over 10 mins for the first time this year, so I approached this with some trepidation. I solve on an IPad, so anagrams are often a problem and I seemed to spend an inordinate amount of time on my LOI which was FAIR COPIES.
36. Can’t understand why some solvers don’t bother to fully parse the clues, seemingly rushing to just complete the grid. Surely it’s fully understanding how the clue works is what makes it more enjoyable, and perhaps makes future clues easier/quicker to solve. Or is that naive? Just saying …
    1. Not at all, and it’s a fair point, but some solvers are competitive and prefer to go for speed. Each to their own , and all that…
    2. A lot of the TfTT bloggers and commenters are regular participants in the annual Times Crossword Championships where there are prizes for being accurate and quick but not for proving you’ve understood the clues. The regular crossword year is a constant training exercise / practice drill for that.

       And who knows, maybe “fully understanding how the clue works” to make “future clues easier/quicker to solve” can even be done after the puzzle has been completed.

       Just saying…

       1. It was the original focus of the blog – solving times as a kind of weekly competition. Since this was before the Crossword Club with a timer, we all self-reported times.
37. Very good of you Jack. Most odd, because I still get the Monday crossword. It’s obviously in the memory and I can’t (or at any rate don’t know how to) refresh.

    I’ll wait until 5.00 and if necessary print out today’s from the link you gave.

    1. We crossed. What device are you using and what browser? Can you try my link in another browser?
38. Started the puzzle with a headache, which is never a good idea. Finished the puzzle with same headache but all correct. Off for a restorative lie-down!
39. ….unhealthily large corporation, I seldom cut more than one TOENAIL at any given time. The joys of age !

    I needed Jack to parse FURLONG for me, and now I don’t know why I couldn’t see it. VERIFY was parsed afterwards. A decent puzzle, which I enjoyed after the overly “smart alec” QC I did before it.

    FOI VATICAN
    LOI SCRUMPY
    COD TOENAIL
    TIME 7:12

40. Late on parade as ever, as the present Mrs Shabbo and I save the delights of the Times Crossword for our evening meal. I guess it saves talking to each other!
    A very pleasant solve, with one truly outstanding clue in 19d. What a delight! Hats off to the setter.
41. Arrggghhh, sped through it, then… Au… Gratis… arrrggh!
42. Not sure what I thought of this puzzle, struggled in the NW but all slotted in when I came back to it. Liked the golf run as a clever anagram, also I think I could run 220 yards faster than I could move a golf ball in a straight line!
43. A steady (ie slow) pre and post dinner, confidence boosting, solve after today’s rather unusual QC. Lots to enjoy, with Toenail a particular favourite. Still needed Jackkt’s blog for a couple of parsings, but now feel in a much better frame of mind re crosswords. Invariant
44. 18.40. Took a while before I found anywhere to get started. Filled the bottom half of the grid first. Found the NW tricky at the end.
45. Not on my wavelength, as it took me nearly an hour to complete correctly. But I did understand pretty much all of the wordplay. I had a slow start and then the NE and SW corners filled in, but not the other two. For 24 dn I had WILE for a while until I realised that this is not the English spelling of what Man is, and finally WHIM got me BRIGHT S????, BEAKER the K at the end and TOENAIL (and the realisation that title would be just RIGHT and not RIGHTS justified BRIGHT SPARK.
46. TOENAIL last one in, and a clear clue of the day.
    Doing this one a day late. It’s amazing how little time one has when semi-retired.
    The green streak continues ( a cross between the Flash and the Green Lantern).
    15’08”

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