Times Cryptic No 26946 – Saturday, 27 January 2018. Everything old is new again.

Author   branchPosted on Categories Weekend Cryptic
Well, that was hard. After about two and a half times as long as last week, I finally felt reasonably sure I knew all the answers, but now as I submit the blog five days later I am still be far from sure how to explain all the clues. It feels like we’ve gone back to the olden days, when clues had a more free-wheeling approach!

Mind you, it might just be that I’ve missed the point, and the clues – 25 and 27 ac – are even more clever than usual! We may have to draw on the wisdom of the crowd. If you can add enlightenment in the comments, I’ll update the blog. On edit: in summary, I think the consensus of the wise ones is that 25ac can be parsed as a perhaps slightly awkward and certainly obscure cryptic definition. 27ac seems to be a loose humorous definition with perhaps a gap in the wordplay.

For me, the clue of the day is 12ac, because the answer is so at odds with every part of the clue!! I’ve also seen appreciation expressed for 11dn. Thanks to the setter for a very enjoyable puzzle.

Clues are in blue, with definitions underlined. Anagram indicators are in bold italics. Answers are in BOLD CAPS, followed by the wordplay. (ABC*) means ‘anagram of ABC’, deletions are in {curly brackets}.

Across
1 A sign outside court depicting clown (3,3,4)
ACT THE GOAT: A (the letter “a”), THE GOAT (an astrological sign), all around CT (court).
6 Some requirement for café waitressing (1,3)
A FEW: hidden answer.
9 Some simply dreadful abuses (10)
MISEMPLOYS: (SOME SIMPLY*).
10 Bear does, maybe, crawl (4)
FAWN: to bear does would be to fawn.
12 Headgear which is worn by everyone in English cricket side (3-6,3)
TEN-GALLON HAT: one of those nested “Russian doll” clues. THAT (which), around ENG (English) + ON (cricket side), in turn around ALL (everyone).
15 Medal with a chain on friend in US resort (4,5)
PALM BEACH: PAL (friend), MBE (medal), A, CH (chain).
17 Close to farm, sort of grass ditches (5)
MOATS: M is the close to (last letter of) “farm”, OATS is a sort of grass. Combine.
18 Paintings depicting girl at end of the century (5)
TONDI: a TON is a century, DI is a girl who frequently visits our crosswords. A tondo (pl. tondi) is a circular painting.
19 Wood supplier’s men brought back pine for engineers, European (5,4)
ROWAN TREE: OR (men) backwards, WANT (pine), RE (engineers), E (European).
20 Frantically, I insist gym clubs hold nothing against women (12)
MISOGYNISTIC: (I INSIST GYM C O*), where C is for clubs, and O means nothing. Topical.
24 Fix clock (4)
SPOT: double definition. “I’m in a fix”, or “I clock that person”.
25 What one would give to be involved in the group matches! (5,5)
BLOOD DONOR: the first of the mystery clues. Normally a cryptic definition is a valid but unusual or obscure way of describing the answer. Here obviously a blood donor gives blood, and the blood bank works out its blood group, but is this really meant to be a cryptic definition? If so how does it work? In short, what have I missed??  On edit: I think z8b8d8k and jerrywh have seen through it. Replace “what one” by “who”, which is a plausible change, and get “who would give [blood] to be involved in the [blood] group matches”. So it is indeed a cryptic definition.
26 Deserts partner in the middle — of this? (4)
DUET: I originally classified this as a second mystery clue, although I think I largely unravelled it once I discarded the original idea that “deserts” was the definition, thus giving DUES as the answer – even though none of that seemed to relate to the rest of the clue. On reflection it seems to be the other way round: DUE can be deserts, as in “he got his deserts/due”, although perhaps the two words have slightly different shades of meaning; T is the middle letter of {par}T{ner}. Put them together and get the DUET the two of you are singing, although I’m still puzzled how it can be a duet after you desert partner!
27 What’s played during break time, not during school holidays? (10)
INTERMEZZO: and yet another mystery! If it’s not school holidays, it is of course “IN TERM”, but I have no idea where the “EZZO” comes from. I even wondered for a while when I couldn’t get 23dn, whether this answer might be INTERMEZZI.

Down
1 Confession from doctor that goes in magazine: …? (4)
AMMO: “I am an M.O.” is the hypothetical confession. Bullets are the ammo that goes in the gun magazine.
2 … at first this is in Paris Match (4)
TEST: “at first” T{his} gives T; EST is “is” in Paris.
3 Hard, black earth fills escarpment forming UK landmark (6,6)
HUMBER BRIDGE: UMBER for “earth”, between (“filling”) H for hard and B for black, then RIDGE for escarpment. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humber_Bridge
4 Camp’s untypical after vacation, shrouded in silence (5)
GULAG: UL is U{ntypica}L “after vacation”. Put it inside (“shrouded in”) GAG, as in to gag/silence dissent.
5 DA who only worked casually (3,3,3)
ANY OLD HOW: (DA WHO ONLY*).
7 Streak on badger one likes to show off (5,5)
FLASH HARRY: FLASH (streak), HARRY (badger). Possibly not a term known to all non-UK solvers.
8 Person presented bouquets, perhaps, with one final flower (4,6)
WINE TASTER: W (with), I (one), NET (final), ASTER (flower). Wines have bouquets among many characteristics.
11 Pearls from Rouen, maybe, for old actor (6,6)
NORMAN WISDOM: pearls of wisdom, obviously, in this case from the capital of Normandy. If you don’t remember Norman Wisdom, you may not be alone.
13 In tele-ads, off and on, sanctimonious chap is made an example of (10)
EPITOMISED: “tele-ads off and on” (every second letter) gives EED. Wrap that around PI (sanctimonious), TOM (random chap), and IS.
14 Non-leftist’s dissembling animated Fred (10)
FLINTSTONE: (NON LEFTIST*). If any of our community is young enough not to remember the Flintstones, please don’t tell me!
16 Hormone turning up one way and another in sodium (9)
ADRENALIN: NA is the chemical symbol for sodium. Wrap that around I (one), LANE (way), RD (road, or another way). Then reverse (“turn up”) the whole assemblage!
21 Field needing seconds to get through (5)
SCOPE: S for seconds, COPE to get through.
22 Japanese school: one that’s raised girl (4)
INEZ: ZEN (Japanese school), I (one). Then reverse (“raise”) the whole thing.
23 Writer lowering one’s spirit (4)
BRIO: BIRO (writer), with the I repositioned.

37 comments on “Times Cryptic No 26946 – Saturday, 27 January 2018. Everything old is new again.”

  1. Gave up after I don’t know how long staring at 26ac. DNK 1ac or 7d, or 11d, although I suppose I must have come across it once, here. I do hope someone will come and explain 25ac and 27ac, because I haven’t a clue.
  2. I’m with Bruce and Kevin on not having a clue how to explain 25a and 27a. I did manage to work 26a out eventually and completed the puzzle in 34:12. Like Bruce I was flabbergasted at the answer to 12a when I considered the surface of the clue. An entertaining puzzle for all that. I particularly liked the animated Fred. Thanks setter and Bruce. Hopefully the setter will drop by to explain 25 and 27….
    On edit: I am also lucky enough to know someone called Inez!! And Norman Wisdom raised a guffaw:-)

    Edited at 2018-02-03 01:26 am (UTC)

  3. Another who dropped by to have 25 & 27 explained.
    27 was made doubly-hard because everyone knows that Ines is spelt Ines: I’ve heard of and met multiple Ineses (Ini?) but never a single Inez. Looking at the list of Wikipedia Inezes I don’t recognise a single one. And SEN could easily be an obscure Japanese name for a high-school, no?
    Here’s hoping the setter or editor responds.
    Otherwise I quite liked SPOT and FAWN – one of my last in, even though I saw the parsing as a possibility from the start.
  4. A somewhat eccentric puzzle but nonetheless enjoyable. I begin to wonder if there some sort of Nina going on that nobody has spotted.
  5. Let me join the queue for some explanations. BLOOD DONOR? INTERMEZZO?
    brnchn I think it is MISOGYNISTIC?
  6. Took 62 minutes on this and had a few grouses, but found it very enjoyable. I parsed DUETS as per B once Fred FLINTSTONE emerged from the rubble. I knew Inez from an Erle Stanley Gardner character, whose books I devoured in the early sixties. Incredibly I’ve found her on Google, Inez Kaylor in The Case of the Hesitant Hostess. Later, I couldn’t watch Ironside without wondering why Perry Mason was in a wheelchair. COD to Norman Wisdom, which gave me a bigger belly laugh than any of his films did. By the end of this puzzle, I felt more like the Jerry Desmonde character must have felt. I didn’t understand where the (INTERM)EZZO came from and shrugged my shoulders at the parsing of BLOOD DONOR. My LOI was the simple SCOPE. Thank you for the fun, B and setter.
  7. Apparently I got all these correct, though my notes are at home and I’m in Dunster, so I can’t tell you how long it took me. I quite enjoyed DUET, but I’m glad to come here and find everyone else is baffled by INTERMEZZO and BLOOD DONOR, despite getting them right.
  8. I too don’t get 25ac and 27ac! If they are just poor clues, that’s fine – just want to know if I’m missing something!
  9. I have 24ac reading “What one would give” with the “what” a replacement for the (more grammatical?) “which”. So the (revised) (cryptic) clue reads “which person would give, in order to be involved in (blood) group matches?” Answer: a blood donor would. I think it works though I smudged it a bit when solving.
    I’ve yet to be convinced that the EZZO bit of 27ac is clued by anything.
    That aside, I greatly admired this crossword: I think it’s a cracker. When NORMAN WISDOM emerged from the Rouen pearls, I could scarce forbear to cheer, and I may have heard an echo from his huge Albanian fan base (sic).
  10. Well I think we have DUET sorted ..DUE + parTner. I think the clue works fine since it is perfectly possible to desert a duet half way through.
    I think we have BLOOD DONOR sorted too. It is just a whimsical cryptic def… in order to be involved in matching blood groups, it is necessary to give blood.
    The puzzling one is INTERMEZZO .. my own view is that it is another whimsical def., .. an in-term ezzo and not (eg) an eastermezzo .. with an explanation of the ezzo bit conveniently ignored by the setter. Either that or I’m missing something, which is entirely likely. In its favour, most of us could solve the clue. No doubt strict Ximeneans are having kittens as per usual, but I can’t say it bothered me overmuch.
  11. I’ll just join this queue, then, shall I? No problem with 25ac, it’s certainly a bit roundabout, but that’s in the nature of cryptic definitions, as far as I’m concerned. 27ac, though, just seemed to have a bit missing, so I was hoping to come here and find out what it was; and now I come to think about the overall definition for 26ac, that doesn’t really make sense, either. Obviously, the final test is whether I got everything correct, which I did, so what’s my problem? I suppose it’s that we are used to a particular sort of grammar in puzzles today, but this felt like going back 30 years when it was fine for the parsing of an answer to be “well, it’s not the holidays, so it’s IN TERM, and, er, you don’t need to worry about the EZZO bit”.
    1. Sadly I don’t find going back thirty years at all difficult 🙂
      Now we no longer hear from dear Tony Sever, I am probably the nearest thing you have to someone who actually *prefers* old-style crosswords where a bit of creative licence is needed.. never could see the attraction of the Ximenean straitjacket, once his basic idea of being fair to solvers caught on.
    2. …that there was ever time when we wouldn’t “need to worry about the EZZO bit.”
      I first learned cryptics from Frank W. Lewis’s at The Nation, and he (former OSS cryptographer, Anglophile) had a fairly free style. But I think he would account for everything in a charade clue.
      But maybe that isn’t what the clue for INTERMEZZO is.

      Edited at 2018-02-03 09:20 pm (UTC)

  12. This was fun. It looks like most of us filled in the correct answers without fully understanding the wordplay. I did manage to understand DUE T at 26a but I join everyone else in wondering how the EZZO was included in the school curriculum at 27a.

    I am from the Ines side of the fence at 22d. I don’t know how to do the foreign accent marks in this text box – it should be pronounced In-yes.
    I am familiar with Dona Ines because it is the name of a volcano in Central Chile. I note from Wikipedia though that there is an Ignimbrite formation sourced from that volcano called Chica Inez (daughter of Inez) which is only the second time I have seen the Z form of the name – the previous one being last Saturday in this crossword.

    Thanks to setter and esteemed blogmeister.

  13. Who needs to understand what an EZZO is when you have the pearls from Rouen.

    I used to play cricket against Nick Wisdom, Norman’s lad. He was short, like his Dad, and not especially amusing, like his Dad.

    But I think you have to like this ad from the 80s, mullets and all: https://youtu.be/kPlby5v8KJw

    2. As a boy, I took ‘Don’t laugh at me ‘cos I’m a fool’ as an instruction and didn’t reckon much to the films. In 1961 though, there was an Equity strike and Sunday Night at the London Palladium was thus reduced to a two-man show for the hour, Bruce Forsyth and Norman, both non-union members. It was remarkably good.
  14. Department of sloppy parsing. I hamstrung myself with “blood drive” for a while. And got a twisted “duvet” somehow mixed up with DUET. It does look as if Tim and Jerry are right – that the “ezzo” in INTERMEZZO may be just an old-fashioned loose clue. Still a very enjoyable puzzle (though rather less fun for our blogger perhaps) which took me a while. NORMAN WISDOM was very good although I don’t think I ever knew more about him than the name. 25.58

    Edited at 2018-02-03 12:23 pm (UTC)

  15. 21:40. I didn’t find this too hard, although I had the same puzzlement as others. I took 25a as a whimsical cryptic definition and didn’t worry any further. As for 27a I shrugged at the missing EZZO bit as I assumed the setter thought INTERM was enough to get to the answer. No problem with DUET. A DUET, as a piece of music, is still a DUET even if one of the performers wanders off in the middle of it.
  16. 22:59. I can sort of buy the explanation for 25ac, although I find ‘what one’ for ‘which person’ rather clumsy, but 27ac is a mystery. I’m all for loosening the Ximenean straightjacket but ignoring whole sections of the answer altogether is a step too far IMO. I still wonder if we aren’t all missing something.
  17. Over an hour to DNF this one where I entered “dues” instead of “duet” more in exasperation at being unable to parse it and choosing the wrong one of the two apparent possibilities. 25ac and 27ac only half parsed and entered with fingers crossed. Some very good clues though at 14dn, 12ac and 11dn as others have said.
  18. I enjoyed this and it gave the aspiring solver a chance. Was not sure about Fawn until reading this blog.Enjoyed the ten-gallon hat, no doubt worn by Hopalong Cassidy. Was pleased to remember Tondi, a word learnt from crosswords.
    And like so many I ended up at the bottom. Knew Inez, thought Intermezzo had to be right -a joke-type clue which we all seem to have solved; finally under exam conditions I had Dues at 26a but with enough uncertainty to check it afterwards. David
  19. I didn’t batter much of an eyelid at 27ac, but only because I made up the word “intermisso” – “in term is so” seemed to parse just fine, or as well as 25ac. I was also happily on board with Isla3 re the Japanese school of Sen at 22d – the ethos of living frugally, perhaps. Less good was DIES for “deserts” at 26ac, with the woolly parsing being E (partner) in DIS (this, variant spelling). Tackling this lovely puzzle after a couple of afternoon drinks might have been no bad thing at all.
  20. I also struggled with 27a but decided it’s a kind of triple definition, as intermezzo can mean interlude as well as the piece of music played during one. So “time, not during school” and “holidays” would be examples of intermezzos.

    Still doesn’t seem quite right though.

  21. Finished all except 26a in 55 minutes. I thought both INTERMEZZO and INTERMEZZI were acceptable answers and there was no way of guessing the correct one from the clue. As a result I spent ages on 23d looking for a spirit ending in either I or O. I hate ambiguities. It put me off the whole puzzle. But I did have a great laugh at NORMAN WISDOM – more than I ever did watching him perform. Ann
    1. INTERMEZZI is the plural of INTERMEZZO so wouldn’t the clue have to start with “What are played…” if that were the answer?
      1. Yes, I suppose that’s right. But I was thinking of “What’s played are intermezzi”. There’s a grammar column in the penultimate page of the Times every Saturday. He seems to allow a lot of what we were taught to avoid when we were in school…
  22. 34 mins with two wrong and one typo. Tangi for Tondi and Spoke for Scope. Typo was Any Oll How.

    Agree with others re intermezzo.

  23. I hit the language trap on this, having STOP rather than SPOT and this because: a) I did not know the “watch, notice” meaning of clock, British informal according to the COED and b) in German “stoppen” means to time something with a stopwatch, of course, so I thought maybe it means that in English as well and I have just forgotten it. To fix something in place, you prevent it from moving and so STOP it. It seemed reasonable.

    With all that said, I did get everything else right, despite never having heard of NORMAN WISDOM and also not knowing how EZZO got there.

      1. Well, I am a native English speaker, too, but I have been living in Germany for a while and that sometimes puts me on the wrong track. What is particularly problematical is the spelling of foreign place names, which often differ slightly between German and English, or words like mahogany (in German the second a and the o are switched). The spellings you see in the newspaper just seem like the normal ones, even if the language is wrong.
  24. And I thought this was a great clue!
    Fun puzzling out Britishisms ACT THE GOAT and FLASH HARRY. I’ve encountered Mr. Wisdom here before, but I enjoyed the reference to French geography.
    Looks like 25 and 27 needed a bit more work, honestly.
  25. As a foreign solver,never heard of FLASH HARRY,but got it from BADGER=HARRY.As for INTERMEZZO,mmm…
    Ong’ara,
    Nairobi.
  26. As I had heard that one or two people had queried 25 and 27 in particular
    At 25ac: “What one would give” refers to blood. I don’t think it works any other way. It is blood which is onvolved in “group matches” and not the donor
    At 27ac: when a word has two awkward Zs in it, there is every temptation not to include them in the wordplay :-). I subscribe to the view that you don’t need to cover every last letter of an answer in more than one way, unless that is what you are plainly setting out to do. So, for example, if you embark on a charade-style clue you can’t just break off near the end of course, but this is just a pun on “TERM” and perfectly ok with me.

    RR

Comments are closed.