Times Cryptic 27956

Author   jackktPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic

Solving time: 31 minutes with one error which I shall come to in the blog. Other than that complication of my own making this was all pretty straightforward.

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 Jean-Paul Sartre’s deep discomfort? (3,2,3)
MAL DE MER :
Cryptic. Sea sickness. Sartre is just a name chosen at random to indicate a French expression.
6 Group that’s very large including agents abroad (6)
SOCIAL :
SO (very) + L (large) containing [including] CIA (agents abroad)
9 On way back, plans to get something to eat (4)
SPAM :
MAPS (plans) reversed [on way back]. Lovely Spam!
10 Yours truly surrounded by Bolshevik’s dogs (3,7)
RED SETTERS :
SETTER (yours truly) contained [surrounded] by RED (Bolshevik) + S
11 Sound of final bell disturbed one within (10)
INFALLIBLE :
I (one) contained by [within] anagram [disturbed] of FINAL BELL
13 Drink in The Feathers? (4)
DOWN :
Two meanings. For the surface reading one needs to know that The Feathers is a popular pub name in the UK. There’s one in Marylebone that’s reputed to be the smallest pub in central London.
14 Outspoken historian in border city (8)
CARLISLE :
Sounds like [outspoken] “Carlyle” (historian). Thomas Carlyle 1795-1881.
16 Big story about parking cut (6)
SPLASH :
SLASH (cut) containing [about] P (parking)
18 Caretaker‘s relations not looking back (6)
SEXTON :
SEX (relations), then NOT reversed [looking back]. The sexton carries out general duties on church premises, caretaking, tending graves,  perhaps bell-ringing.
20 A case of English idiot interrupting play? (8)
GENITIVE :
E (English) + NIT (idiot) contained by [interrupting] GIVE (play – elasticity, flexibility)
22 Old man‘s  code word for a pee (4)
PAPA :
Two meanings, the second as in the NATO alphabet
24 I set nobles up, it’s pretended (10)
OSTENSIBLE :
Anagram [up] of I SET NOBLES. ‘Up’ as anagrind occurred very recently, maybe in a QC, and gave rise to some objections.
26 Plant’s first appearance enthralling Henry (10)
MAIDENHAIR :
MAIDEN (first – e.g. voyage) + AIR (appearance) containing [enthralling] H (Henry – unit of inductance)
28 Having difficulty deciding end for Trueman? (4)
TORN :
T OR N (end for Trueman?)
29 Chuck out Austen novel (6)
UNSEAT :
Anagram [novel] of AUSTEN
30 Resign, being unhappy at blue-eyed boy’s return? (4,4)
STEP DOWN :
PET’S (blue-eyed boy’s) reversed [return], DOWN (unhappy)
Down
2 Sabotaged agenda about Oxford course — not an essential item (9)
APPENDAGE :
Anagram [sabotaged] of  AGENDA containing [about] PPE (Oxford course – Philosophy, Politics and Economics). PPE courses are available elsewhere but Oxford is credited with inventing them.
3 Pole angry about everything and nothing (4,3)
DAMN ALL :
N (pole) + MAD (angry) reversed [about], then ALL (everything)
4 Honourable man wasting time (5)
MORAL :
MOR{t}AL (man – mankind) [wasting – losing – time – t]
5 Endless fish brought up, caught with this? (3)
ROD :
DOR{y} (fish) [endless] reversed [brought up]
6 Writer of Rocket Man, did you say? (9)
STEVENSON :
Sounds like [did you say?] “Stephenson” (Rocket Man). Robert Louis Stevenson was the author of Treasure Island amongst many other novels, and Robert Stephenson (son of George) was the designer of the early locomotive named ‘Rocket’.
7 Solicit a delegate guarding stronghold (7)
CITADEL :
{soli}CIT A DEL{egate} is hiding [guarding] the answer
8 Quarrel? It’s a right ding-dong! (5)
ARROW :
A, R (right), ROW (ding-dong – fight}. There are other types of arrow so this is a DBE, hence the question mark.
12 Too much ale left undrunk? This suggests not (4,3)
BEER GUT :
Cryptic. Too close to home for comfort, so moving swiftly on…
Edit: I moved on too swiftly here, missing the wordplay:
BEER G{l}UT (too much ale) [left – l – undrunk]
Many thanks to Paul_in_London and others for pointing out my omission.
15 Bet on nuns somehow making baby’s hat (9)
SUNBONNET :
Anagram [somehow] of BET ON NUNS
17 Might this way suit you? (6,3)
SAVILE ROW :
Another cryptic, this time referring to Savile Row as the traditional location of London’s finest tailors. “Suit you, Sir” was a catch phrase on The Fast Show; there’s many a clip easily found on YouTube for those not of too sensitive a disposition.
19 Shuffle along after tango? Rubbish! (7)
TWADDLE :
T (tango – NATO alphabet), WADDLE (shuffle along)
21 Screwed up Dickensian guy (7)
TWISTED :
TWIST (Dickensian character), ED (guy)
23 Cooker successfully installed on second occasion? (5)
AGAIN :
AGA (cooker – kitchen range), IN (successfully installed)
25 New husband coming off heroin? Such language! (5)
NORSE :
N (new) {h}ORSE (heroin) [husband coming off]. I missed the wordplay here completely and thought I was working with an anagram [new] of {h}EROIN  [husband coming off] leading to an obscure language I’ve never heard of. Given the number of times recently we’ve been faced with that sort of thing perhaps I’m now too ready to expect it again and a degree of paranoia is setting in. Anyway I botched up well and truly this time.
27 Imbecile soldiers moving south (3)
ASS :
SAS (soldiers) becomes ASS when the first S (south) has moved

53 comments on “Times Cryptic 27956”

  1. Sartre was rather a good choice, since he wrote “Nausea”. Does ‘sound’ mean INFALLIBLE? I spent too much time taking ‘relations’ to be KIN at 18ac, and ‘idiot’ to be ASS at 20ac. I liked TORN (LOI).
    1. SOED has ‘sound’ as sensible /valid / correct, and ‘infallible’ as not liable to be proved false. I’d say that’s close enough.
      1. This is a slightly odd definition of ‘infallible’ but as the second half (‘that unfailingly holds good’) shows the word ‘liable’ is being used in an absolute sense here, i.e. the thing in question cannot be proved false. To me this is quite different to ‘sound’, which carries a sense of solidity, dependability, freedom from defect, but certainly not perfection.
  2. Tuesday. I didn’t know the plant, and while I know Carlyle I couldn’t think of the obvious city. I parsed 12d as Beer Glut, losing the L (left undrunk), which I liked. Thanks, jack

    Edited at 2021-04-20 01:31 am (UTC)

  3. Not too hard. I also was looking for an anagram of hEROIN for a language like ERSE or something, before I got enough checkers that I saw how it worked. I biffed BEER GUT but assumed that there was some wordplay in there, so it looks like BEER GLUT with no L as Paul noticed. My loi was PAPA once I stopped trying to have a single PA and realized what was going on.
  4. A 26 minute DNF with ‘Savill’ for SAVILE – called the toss of the coin the wrong way before submitting. Payback for a few correct guesses recently.

    I saw a TV program a couple of days ago about the railway line through the Cévennes from Nîmes to Clermont-Ferrand which probably helped with ASS and STEVENSON. Sounds like it’s well worth reading.

    Thanks to Jack and setter

    1. Coincidentally… Robert Louis Stevenson’s path through that area is a famous hiking trail. I once stayed a couple weeks in a charming little gîte in a village in Lozère that it crosses (Prévencheres).

      Edited at 2021-04-20 06:25 am (UTC)

      1. Thanks. I’ve just found the Prévenchères website. A charming looking place as you say. From the TV program, it seems (even without COVID) the area hasn’t become overrun with tourists and has retained at least some of the character that drew RLS there all those years ago.
        1. Would you have the name of the TV programme? I’d like to see if I can track it down. My wife is a Stevenson fan.

          Adam Thorpe’s “Notes From The Cévennes” is an enjoyable read.

          1. Hello, Apologies for the lateness of my reply. The programme is an episode of “The World’s Most Scenic Railway Journeys” series (Season 2), narrated by Bill Nighy, titled “La Ligne De Cévennes”. As the title suggests, the focus is on the railway trip, but RLS is mentioned from time to time and you get a good idea of the country he travelled through. The commentary is a bit fast and loose with the superlatives, but I enjoy the series and particularly liked this episode.

            Good luck in tracking the programme down somewhere on the web and I hope you and your wife enjoy it as well.

            1. Thanks very much and apologies in turn for this late acknowledgement. The series sounds great.
  5. Generally a pleasant solve with an old-fahsioned feel, IMO. I relied on wordplay to work out what OSTENSIBLE meant and to correctly spell GENITIVE. I parsed BEER GUT as Paul did.

    I support keriothe’s upcoming complaint about the double obscurity at 14a (and 6d, though I knew both meanings in that case).

    Thanks, Jack, for the timely and entertaining blog.

    1. We shall find out later, but I’d be very surprised if there are complaints about double obscurities from any UK solvers, and bearing in mind that the Times is a British newspaper.

      Some may not know of the historian but Carlisle is a major English city and one of very few that would be described as a border city – the most famous border crossing of all at Gretna Green is just up the road. Not that many people will know this, but only a few miles further up the same road is the Scottish village of Ecclefechan which was the birthplace of Thomas Carlyle.

      As for RL Stevenson and Stephenson of ‘Rocket’ fame at 6dn, neither could be described as obscure although some may be vague about the spellings and which one belonged to which.

      Edited at 2021-04-20 04:36 am (UTC)

      1. Historical note. It is widely believed that Stephenson’s Rocket hit William Huskisson on the first inter-city train journey between Liverpool and Manchester in 1830. The Rocket sped him to Eccles (of cake fame and allegedly reached 30mph!) where a leg was amputated but he died later that evening. Subsequently there were allegations of medical negligence. The Duke of Wellington was a passenger on this historic journey; his arrival in Liverpool was deeply unpopular.
    2. Sorry Starstruck but to a Brit neither of these can really be described as obscure, certainly not the city. This didn’t stop it being my last in by some distance!
      1. Fair enough – we’ll call it local knowledge rather than obscure, though I notice quite a few people had this entry last. I should be grateful, perhaps, that we can participate from the colonies and I did actually manage to guess it as my LOI 🙂

        I don’t really like clues where both the cryptic and the straight definition rely heavily on two proper nouns. Perhaps there’s some excuse for a clue like 6d, where the surface reading is fairly topical.

  6. Defeated by two….Carlisle and Stevenson. Had enough basic French to guess sea-sickness.
    FOI Sexton
    LOIs Carlisle and Stevenson
    CODs Papa and Beer gut, both of which amused me.

  7. I was pleased with dragging up my LOI, CARLISLE, only to find I’d put in GENETIVE, despite having parsed the answer. Oh well, I’m off to join the Crossword Super League (like Tottenham proving that lack of success is no barrier to joining).
  8. My LOI was STEVENSON, as it took a while to think of the engineer. Had heard of the historian, guessed at the city. MAL DE MER was indeed super, and my FOI.

    Edited at 2021-04-20 06:14 am (UTC)

  9. I have been to CARLISLE. The representative of the city tourist board with a clipboard was not happy when I said I was only changing trains.

    BEER belly is a more common phrase.

    Liked TORN.

    17′ 01″, thanks jack and setter.

    1. Carlisle is famous as a railway junction so if the tourist rep was surprised or unhappy that you were only changing trains he must have been very ill-informed about the city he was promoting.
  10. After 20 mins pre-brekker I was left with the plant, the imbecile and –e-/down for resign.
    And so it remained. I should have got Step, but NHO the plant.
    Thanks setter and J.
  11. … as Ella sang. Who am I kidding? The furthest upmarket I moved was from John Collier to Burton’s. 32 minutes with LOI TORN, wondering what Fiery Fred had to do with it. I liked MAL DE MER, SPLASH and GENITIVE but COD to BEER GUT. Closer to home, I suppose. I needed all crossers for MAIDENHAIR, as I guess most will have done. Mainly enjoyable. Thank you Jack and setter.
  12. INFALLIBLE? Well clearly I’m not
    I write TWADDLE and nonsense and rot
    My initial mishap?
    At six DOWN I wrote scrap
    Which accounts for the pòor time I got
  13. …the 19.48 show. Not a smooth solve at all, answers going in in fairly random order as light took a while to dawn on some of the more oblique clues.
    The plant was last in, possibly because I see “plant” and imagine it might be some obscure collection of letters. Not only was it made up of proper words fairly clued, I knew it, even if I misidentified its actual shape.
    BEER G(L)UT was amusing, though it took a while to work out whether we were looking for evidence of too much or not enough drink.
    I very nearly Pootle’d GENETIVE, saved by paying due credit to the wordplay The lack of space led to my spelling SAVIL(L)E ROW and getting the right STEVENSON.
    I could, but don’t have to, put in a claim for CARLYSLE being correct. It’s at least possible to read it the other way round.
    I quite like the change of blogging style, Jack (if I’ve correctly noticed it) with solutions all on their own. Might try it myself. Looks classy.

    Edited at 2021-04-20 08:18 am (UTC)

    1. Thanks, I saw it elsewhere – I think someone on 15 Squared was using it, and I thought it looked good. At the moment it requires constantly remembering to use the shift key which is a bit of a chore, but if one of our Java experts would care to send me an amended version of the template script to make it automatic I’d be delighted.

      Edited at 2021-04-20 08:37 am (UTC)

  14. Finished in my usual 30 minutes (just). Liked this more in retrospect than during solving. COD to BEER GUT (though mine is more of a Vin Overhang)
  15. I struggled the most with MAL DE MER, and more specifically the first word of it. I didn’t know the term, and even though I figured out Sartre was referring to a French word, and that the ‘deep’ would refer to the sea, it took a while for the penny to drop that it was most likely ‘mal’. Even then I wasn’t sure, so it’s a relief to come here and find I got it right.

    The other word I hadn’t heard of was MAIDENHAIR, which only came once all the checkers were in place. And of all the ‘xxxx all’ expressions that mean nothing, DAMN ALL is not one I’m overly familiar with. Apart from that, this was reasonably straightforward.

    FOI Citadel
    LOI Mal de mer
    COD Beer gut

  16. 14:49. I found this quite tricky in places. The SW and NE corners in particular took some teasing out.
    As mentioned above though CARLISLE was my last in despite knowing of both the historian and the city. Somehow an unhelpful set of checking letters.
    I thought ‘sound’ was a bit odd for INFALLIBLE, and didn’t know the plant of course.
  17. Surprised at the mild expletive in the Times, but I think I have seen worse. If I am allowed to print this, there was a hilarious Twitter exchange yesterday where a gentleman said he was writing to his local bigwig, and wasn’t sure how to spell f*** sake. Did it have an apostrophe or not? The replies were wonderful.
  18. An enjoyable puzzle, although I was held up at the end by CARLISLE, which was doubly frustrating as I drive past both the city and the sign near Ecclefechan on the M74 which trumpets itself as Mr C’s birthplace every time I go to Scotland! ROD was my FOI, rapidly followed by MAL DE MER and DAMN ALL. I had to work out the plant from wordplay, and fortunately also followed the wordplay for GENITIVE. NORSE was a nice PDM. 37:16. Thanks setter and Jack.
  20. Never noticed the cleverness of 12d BEER GlUT, so missed the PDM. Actual LOL at 23d as I entered Aga In. Admired ARROW 6d.
    I agree that 11a INFALLIBLE isn’t really = sound.
    Andyf
  21. Didn’t get a clear run at this enjoyably knotty puzzle, finishing around 45 minutes with interruptions. Given the extent to which the NE corner held me up, though, I am not sure I would have been much faster in ideal conditions.
  22. I had no trouble with this unlike Tesla’s Mr. Starstruck: colonialism is rather out of fashion.
    So I simply plodded through in just 43 mins!

    FOI MAL DE MER as per Guy – with a hint of ‘Nausea’ as per Kevin

    LOI 28ac TORN

    COD PAPA as per Rosie

    WOD 26ac The MAIDENHAIR fern was all the rage when Habitat and Heals were in their pomp. That’s before IKEA arrived and now they are on the decline here with far shorter stock ranges due to the recent Suez Crisis II.

    SAVILE ROW is easy to remember as it has the same spelling as Jimmy Savile who was aptly VILE!

    Old fashioned style – most savoury SPAM SPAM SPAM SPAM!

    Edited at 2021-04-20 01:26 pm (UTC)

  23. Things I know nothing about and if not remembered from previous puzzles have to be guessed include:
    Any “Scottish” word Chambers made up
    Classics
    Oxford/Cambridge colleges and argot
    Composers
    Poets
    Authors
    Plants
    Materials
    Minor UK towns and cities.
    Dickens/Austen/Hardy/Eyre/etc. characters

    And while Carlisle was LOI I had actually heard of it – and Carlyle, from previous puzzles – without knowing it was anywhere near a border. So I’m with starstruck on obscurities.
    Except for once I knew the plant, unexpectedly.
    There’s some puzzles full of random unnatural first names, foreign words clued as anagrams and obscurities clued with obscurities; but I think this puzzle has managed to avoid that. Just. Close-run thing.

    1. My list would be very similar to your list — I would just need to replace Minor UK Towns (with which I am reasonably ok) with Obscure Artists.

      Edited at 2021-04-20 09:34 pm (UTC)

  24. 46 mins, so about normal for today’s offering. Slightly tied up in the NE with STEVENSON, SOCIAL and CITADEL holding out til the last. Managed to to get GENITIVE right and enjoyed MAL DE MER, something I am lucky enough not to suffer with. CARLISLE was also not a problem though I had not heard of the historian and looked him up afterwards. Thought PAPA was a clever clue too.

    I did like Sawbill’s Vin Overhang though. I know the problem! Thanks Jack and setter.

  25. Good fun. I tried for a long time to persuade myself that it was Beer Mat, when the answer was, literally, right there in front of me. I liked Torn and Carlisle in particular, and I’ll never misspell Genitive again thanks to today’s clue.

    Thanks to Jack and Setter.

  26. 23.13. Nice puzzle. LOI Carlisle where I suffered from having heard of too many classical historians and spent some time trying to shoehorn a homophone of Livy into a rim, lip or edge to get a city before thinking of Macaulay and then finally Carlyle. Also spent a while on N as the end letter of Trueman before the penny finally clanged on that one.
  27. I seem to be on a run if good solves with poor spelling or badly remembered GK letting me down. Steady 25 minute solve today but Mal Du Mer and Genutive (which E nut seemed plausible for) caused me a DNF.

    Enjoyable puzzle — lovely surface for torn COD.

    Thanks J and setter

  28. 20.07 with the RHS giving most pause for thought. Wasn’t helped by being convinced fripperie was the answer to 2dn. Totally fixated even when I realised I was spelling the wrong answer wrong.

    Eventually cottoned on and my LOI was the very good Carlisle . The historian was a native of Ecclefechan in case anyone was wondering, only know from seeing the dedication flash by as I zoomed up the A 74 on numerous past occasions.

    Some really good clues today I thought, Carlisle was my pick but sexton, torn and stevenson were honourable mentions.
    Thanks setter and blogger.

  29. Held up momentarily by a German beer hidden in The Feathers (Hefe, short for Hefeweizen, a refreshing wheat beer), but not for anywhere near as long as half a litre of that fine product would take me to drink. Overall straightforward and enjoyable. Thanks to setter and blogger.
    1. I share your liking of the beer-type. It’s readily available in most UK supermarkets and many pubs these days but it never tastes as good as in the beer gardens of Munich – underneath the pagoda in the English Gardens for example, on a boiling hot summer’s day!

      Edited at 2021-04-20 10:13 pm (UTC)

  30. ….DNF. That’s my fifth out of six, including Sunday, and assumes I didn’t stuff up on Saturday. Possibly my worst sequence since the 1980’s.

    Stupidly wrote in SAS so couldn’t see MAIDENHAIR.

    COD SEXTON

  31. 39 minutes, the last few being spent agonizing about which of the two gentlemen referred to in 6 dn is spelled STEVENSON and which is spelled STEVENSEN (because obviously they would be different). So I called up a blank screen and as I was typing “Robert Louis Stevenson” on it to see how that would feel, I realized that the other spelling involved a PH for the V (rather than an E for the O), and so wouldn’t fit in the grid anyway. Nothing else gave me any trouble except the wordplay for TORN, which I couldn’t figure out. So thank you for explaining it.
    Incidentally, for the Weizenbier discussion above, Hefe (for yeast) really has only one F. But I think no one in Germany would use that as a name for the beer; instead you would call it a Weizen.
    1. Thanks for your correction on the spelling which I knew but got confused. I have amended my comment above with apologies to Norm0.
      1. Very much unlike English, German spelling really reflects pronunciation. Hefe has one F because the first vowel is long (pronounced approximately like the English I in “bit” if you are dragging it out: bi-i-i-i-t). If you wrote Heffe instead, the vowel would be short, pronounced like the English E in “bet”, and that is not a German word.
    2. Definitely I wouldn’t call it Hefe, but I saw it immediately in the clue, partly because of spending too long in Munich’s beer gardens when I lived in central Europe. Of course, in Munich it’s usually Weissbier rather than Weizen, but, as my Berlinerin friend always says to me, “What do the Bavarians know about German?”. Not a comment I’d be prepared to repeat over my Mass mit Weisswuerst und Brez’n.
  32. It’s usually the QC that I attempt but as my other half had that section of the paper I had a go at this instead. To my surprise I got on remarkably well. DNF as I forgot that relations=sex but I got all the rest even if I had to use aids and didn’t parse them all. It’s a bit late in the day to tell people on the QC blog that today’s 15X15 is worth trying but I’m feeling very happy.
    Thank you!
    Blue Stocking
  33. Done, after a long long time just staring at blanks, then got in the groove and made it with a little dictionary help. A day late, as usual: I do it next morning over breakfast so that when I’m completely stuck and call it quits – often – I can check this blog to understand and learn. Thank you.

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