Times Cryptic No 26974, Thursday, 1 March 2018 He shoots, he scores again and again!

Author   ZabadakPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
I think I might preface my remarks by suggesting a game of guess who. In at least four rows of the grid there are, in the two answers combined, what appear to be hints to particular individuals. Try the ones starting 13, 18, 25 and (most mysterious of all) 27.
Such musings might add to the enjoyment of an otherwise rather humdrum set which I polished off in a tad over 16 minutes.
I am indebted to the setter for 23, which headed off my normal mis-spelling with a U. I’m also indebted for not producing any words that I don’t either know or can’t make up.
I have provided my reasoning below with my usual clues, definitions and SOLUTIONS.

ACROSS

1 Check track, one going out for two miles east (7)
TRAMMEL Check in the sense of hinder. Track is TRAIL, change the I into 2x M(iles) + E(ast)
5 Woman feels spite, regularly put off (5)
ELSIE My aunt, as it happens, spelled with every other letter of fEeLs SpItE
9 Winner not needing soldiers after end of battle to turn out (5)
EVICT  Our winning VICTOR no longer needs the OR soldiers, not after the end of battlE
10 Hesitation about pretty covering is necessary (9)
REQUISITE Hesitation ER, reversed (about) and followed by QUITE for pretty, containing IS. Pretty good, in case you were wondering
11 Reversals of policy quietly being introduced to bring improvements (7)
UPTURNS U-TURNS are the reversals of policy, P the quiet insertion. I have always thought that a politician who u-turns on realising his/her policy is stupid or demonstrably wrong deserves more credit than ladies who are not for turning. Of course, I could be wrong.
12 Degeneration of a younger wife? (7)
ATROPHY Think the latest Mrs Trump.
13 Fighting group runs volunteers: favoured, assuredly (3,7)
FOR CERTAIN Fighting group: FORCE, R(uns) volunteers T(erritorial) A(rmy), favoured: IN
15 Goat in the French church (4)
LECH French for the: LE, + CH(urch). LECH is derived from lecher, a lewd, “grab ‘em by the p***y”  sort of person. See the husband referenced in my comment on 12, the originator of the quote herein.
18 Dull expert, speaker finally restricted (4)
DRAB A DAB hand of an expert with speakeR “restricted”.
20 Author‘s predicament, having to keep wife in Scottish town (10)
PLAYWRIGHT A matrioshka, W(ife) inside AYR (still Scottish, I believe, if not in Caithness), inside PLIGHT for predicament. No complaints about unknown writers, then.
23 Love being in that place with head of maths — learning this? (7)
THEOREM Love is tennish for 0. Pushed into that place THERE, and with the “head” of Maths
24 Quick swim by jetty is less sensible (7)
DIPPIER DIP for quick swim and PIER for jetty
25 Rotten tree woman stumbles over (4-5)
WORM EATEN Our first anagram (stumbles over) of the day, TREE WOMAN
26 Commander keeping order and making folk laugh? (5)
COMIC Of the possible commanders, this one’s CIC, the Order is of Merit
27 Strip game bishop should abstain from (5)
RIDGE Not the first synonym for strip I thought of, but to get it remove the B(ishop) from BRIDGE.
28 Start to read crime novelist, one with discursive style? (7)
RAMBLER R(ead) plus AMBLER. Eric was more of a thriller/spy story writer, though he also wrote the script for Yangtse Incident: The Story of HMS Amethyst. I suppose spying is still a crime.

DOWN

1 Oliver starts to experience regret as a crook? (7)
TWISTER full marks if you saw Oliver and thought TWIST. Add the first letters of Experience Regret.
2 Vessels in lake — skill’s needed to go round it (8)
ARTERIES The lake in question is ERIE, the rest is ARTS for skills. Ignore the apostrophe.
3 Society weighed down by additional customs (5)
MORES S9ociety) under MORE for additional
4 Use of many words, see, as with large community (9)
LOQUACITY See: LO, as: QUA, large community CITY
5 English difficulty about good person forced to leave? (6)
EMIGRE E(nglish) + difficulty MIRE about G(ood)
6 Pages kept in step, creating a dotty effect (7)
STIPPLE Two P(ages) inside STILE for step.
7 You may get upset about cricket side, producing a lamentation (5)
ELEGY From your glossary of cricket terms extract LEG (aka on) and wrap in YE, for you “upset”
8 Rejected, but shone once more? (8)
REBUFFED Two definitions, buff in the sense of rub to a shine
14 Surveyor’s instrument repositioned in the hollowed out elm tree (9)
TELEMETER ThE is “hollowed out”, followed by an anagram of ELMTREE.
16 That peculiar strain leading to sporting success (3,5)
HAT TRICK As produced (unbelievably) by Fernando Llorente for Spurs against the mighty Rochdale last night. An anagram of THAT followed by RICK for strain.
17 Very hot in April and Oct. unusually (8)
TROPICAL An anagram (“unusually”) of APRIL and OCT, perhaps made more obvious by one of them being an abbreviation.
19 Said to ‘esitate when meeting danger signal (7)
AVERRED The danger signal is RED, and the AVER I think must be (H)AVER, not (W)AVER as indicated by the missing H in ‘esitate.
21 More unhappy maiden covered in dirt (introduction to rugby) (7)
GRIMMER The dirt covering the M(aide) is GRIME, + the first letter of Rugby.
22 Country match, not the first outside city area (6)
GREECE Match gives you AGREE, knock of the first letter, insert EC (post code) for (London) City area
23 Rope perhaps in notorious place of execution? (5)
TOWER A rope might be that which tows. My Grandfather used to delight in singing “With ‘er ‘ead tucked underneath ‘er arm she walked the Bloody Tower” almost certainly because he couldn’t be criticised for using a rude word in front of us impressionable children. See also “On a tree by a river a little tom tit, sang willow, tit willow , tit willow”, from The Mikado, or the Town of Titipu.
24 Material this person’s buried under hideaway (5)
DENIM This person’s I’M under the hideaway DEN

64 comments on “Times Cryptic No 26974, Thursday, 1 March 2018 He shoots, he scores again and again!”

  1. and about damn time, after a series of stupid errors and typos. DNK TWISTER, but just assumed it was that Oliver. Also DNK TELEMETER, but now I do. 19d took me some time, partly because I wasn’t sure how ‘haver’ is pronounced; I think I might have rhymed it with ‘waver’. Z anticipated me in questioning ‘crime novelist’; Ambler’s like Robert Ludlum, except worth reading. Spying a crime? Not when we do it. (I suppose everyone knows Henry Stimson’s comment on shutting down the State Department’s cryptoanalysis section: “Gentlemen don’t read each other’s mail.” That was 1929.)
  2. Thanks, Z, for clarifying what was going on with AVERRED, as I did not know the Anglicism “haver.”
    I have nothing more to say about this one. Fun was had.
    But if you read the first part of DRAB PLAYWRIGHT backward, it could be a reference to a far-from-drab author indeed.

    Edited at 2018-03-01 04:40 am (UTC)

  3. Whenever we get the surveyor, which is about once every 18 months, I am hopeful that the answer will be Theodolite. No particular reason for the hope other than that it is a good instrument and a good word which I happen to know.
    Like Z, Ridge wasn’t the first strip I thought of, nor was Stile the first step, Haver the first hesitation, Trophy the first young wife, Emigre the first forced exile, or hinderance the first kind of check. Well done the setter.
  4. 15ac was new to me! I was brought up nice and only used LECH or PERV! GOAT!?

    FOI 6dn STIPPLE

    LOI 11ac UPTURNS

    COD 20ac PLAYWRIGHT

    WOD 4dn LOQUACITY

    BARD – DRAB – depends which exam board were involved.

    BEN JONSON – BEAUMONT & FLETCHER – G.B. SHAW -ARNOLD WESKER – JOHN OSBORNE were never dull!

    1. I thought of Lloyd George, who was known as the goat for obvious reasons.
      He didn’t know my father, incidentally.
      1. Dear Mr Cassidy, Lloyd George is slightly before my time but he recently has come up a couple of times in my writings – once in Jamaica with his ‘goat’ and once at the Berchtesgaden without!

        Edited at 2018-03-01 02:58 pm (UTC)

  5. 40 minutes, delayed a little by not recognising LECH as ‘goat’ in that sense, and imagining it might be a breed I hadn’t heard of. Also, like others I tried to justify MOTH-EATEN at 25ac before re-thinking and coming up with the correct answer.

    TELEMETER was new to me and I wasted time here trying in vain to think of the name of the surveyor’s tool that I knew I knew but couldn’t bring to mind. Thanks to Paul for mentioning ‘theodolite’ and putting me out of that particular misery.

    I confused the meaning of TRAMMEL, thinking it meant the same as ‘trample’. I don’t think I’ve ever used it but ‘untrammelled’ is more familiar and if I’d thought of that first I’d have realised the meaning without the ‘un-‘ prefix.

  6. 23 minutes. Never heard of WORM-EATEN, and like Paul my heart sank when the surveying equipment wasn’t the only piece I know, but at least the wordplay was on the level.
  7. I’ll add managing to rush on 5a and entering “Elise” rather than ELSIE to my “moth-eaten” biff; at least I’m in good company on the latter. Still, neither took me too long to sort out and I came home in 47 minutes.

    Wasn’t certain what 1a TRAMMEL meant, but it was the first one I pencilled in, and let me pen in 3d MORES more confidently. From there things mostly flowed quite nicely. I don’t think I’ve heard “goat” without the “old” modifier, but at least I thought of it. And my dad had some Eric Ambler on the shelves as I was growing up, so 28 went in quickly… TELEMETER put in confidently after I thought of “telemetry” (and also what the word must basically mean, of course…)

    LOI 2d ARTERIES, which I never seem to think of for “vessels”.

    COD 11a UPTURNS, WOD 6d STIPPLE.

    1. I’m not sure I’ve ever come across just TRAMMEL but I do recall Verlaine using UNTRAMMELED in one of his blogs and I now try and use the word as often as possible.
  8. 4m20, some of which was spent double- and triple-checking TELEMETER which I hadn’t heard of. I guess taking work off yesterday due to snow confused me into thinking it was a Monday!
  9. 9:35 … with a bit of dithering over AVERRED and WORM-EATEN.

    Z8 — the ridge rambler is surely Alfred Wainwright, but we’re spoiled for choice with drab playwrights, worm-eaten comics and certain leches

  10. 35 mins with yoghurt, granola, etc.
    I was sooo pleased with myself for getting TRAMMLE straight away, that that is what I entered. That made 4dn a bit tricky until I fixed it. Which led to LOI Atrophy (nice one).
    Mostly I liked: Author’s predicament, Dippier and Hat Trick (COD).
    I was reminded of an old pub question: ‘Name the four British racecourses which do not include any letters from the word RACE’. A friend of mine immediately suggested ‘Ayr’ – which is almost as wrong as you can be. Maybe Redcar is worse.
    Thanks setter and Z.
    1. Plumpton comes to mind. Huntingdon… must be more. And Aintree as a contender for the Redcar/Ayr stakes, having no less than five forbidden letters

      Edited at 2018-03-01 09:50 am (UTC)

        1. If you cheated and still came up with Wincanton you might want to give up cheating.

          Goodwood.

          1. Yes, will do .. never was much good at cheating. Or betting, come to that 🙂
  12. 24 methodical minutes on this with all solutions provable within crosswordland’s set of rules. LOI EMIGRE once ATROPHY had set in and forced me to abandon a biffed ‘exiled’. I, like others, was discombobulated with a surveyor working without a theodolite, perhaps the one exception to my theorem, but fortunately the meter part of TELEMETER was there to be seen. TRAMMEL is better known to me in its negative past tense. PLAYWRIGHT was tricky to see but I worked on the basis that the Scottish town is frequently Ayr. I guess AUCHTERMUCHTY is not easy to fit into another word. COD to HAT TRICK in a puzzle without any Eureka moments. I think I prefer a bit of incompleteness. Thank you Z and setter.
  13. Twenty-five minutes, which is about my average. LOI EMIGRE because I couldn’t see the parsing of it for ages; and before that, AVERRED – I do ‘ate those mockney clues.

    East Anglia is currently immobile in the arctic conditions, with some snowdrifts up to two inches deep.

  14. 13:10. This was very consistent and even insofar as pretty much every clue was neither a write-in nor a struggle. A few seconds’ thought to establish was was going on inevitably led to the correct answer.

    If you’re out and about and see a surveyor with what you think is a theodolite, it’s probably a tacheometer.

  15. A gentle plod through some mostly average clues. Again, nothing outstanding.

    It’s -3C outside plus a wind chill factor as we await storm Emma. The Met Office has declared us one of these high risk areas. That isn’t supposed to happen for snow in Dorset!

    1. I arrived in Totnes in 1977, welcomed to the Torbay Riviera, palm tree embellished “frost free” zone. My first winter: a foot or more of snow, total freeze, no power in an all electric house (despite being on the same, protected circuit as the local hospital), cooking and sleeping in the one room that had an open fire. 9 bursts in the pipes dicovered as it thawed out. Never happens. All the best when the never happens happens next door in Dorset!
  16. ….. while watching the blizzard outside. Just brought in some logs that were vermilou. COD to ATROPHY.
  17. 15.10 for me today, the last 3 minutes or so stuck on 12A and 5D (trying to fit something round PI didn’t help).

    I found this a little ponderous. Biffed 15A and 14D, and initially discarded LECH, as I expected it to be followed by WALESA.

    COD 12A since it kept me guessing.

      1. I too though of Lech Wałesa (who could forget Solidarność and that magnificent moustache?) and briefly wondered if he ever knew what his given name meant in English.
  18. 8.59 – so a definite return to some semblance of form, although – as others have mentioned – no real standouts, with everything being biffable (except for WORM-EATEN obviously, there was a bit of time spent down the moth-based dead end) or achievable from fair wordplay.

    DNK the surveyor’s device, but not too much of a leap from the telemetry of modern motorsport (give me a mark 2 Escort any day of the week) to at least some kind of instrument.

    I expect normal service to be resumed tomorrow, with a 25-minute slog to at least 3 errors.

    Edited at 2018-03-01 11:31 am (UTC)

  19. About 25 mins, not sure of LECH except as a ski resort I went to in my youth, thought it was spelt LETCH. There again we don’t spell it letcherous, so my wrong. LOI EMIGRE where I had the ‘person’as part of the cryptic.
    Our old lurcher has just turned 15, hope she enjoys the walk I’m about to give her! Not much snow here (Chester) fortunately.
    1. You may be pleased to know that all the usual sources sanction ‘letch’ as an alternative to ‘lech’ and one of them gives it as the principal spelling. The ‘no T’ in ‘lecherous’ reasoning doesn’t always apply, as was pointed out here last week there is no D in ‘refrigerator’ yet it is abbreviated to ‘fridge’.

      Edited at 2018-03-01 11:57 am (UTC)

      1. Well, one couldn’t spell it ‘frige’, could one? On the other hand, for whatever reason tch seems preferable to ch: fetch, fletch, ditch, ketch, kvetch, pitch, retch, stitch, switch, wretch, …
        1. cache, niche, echo, ache, machine, gauche, douche, techno… etc etc etc …
        2. I hate that ‘ditch’ is the only one not in alphabetical order.

          (I’m CDO: It’s just like OCD, except the letters are in alphabetical order. As they should be.)

        3. I came across the spelling “frig” in an Enid Blyton novel once and was rather confused. I wonder if people started putting the “d” in to make sure nobody read out the children’s stories with the wrong pronunciation!
  20. Having finished in under 20 minutes and spent another minute checking for errors, including a second look at TELOMETER (O(u)T hollowed with (ELMTRES)* I was mightily miffed to find I had an error. As a F1 fan I should’ve known better, but it appears that the compound structure at the end of a chromosome led me astray. Otherwise an enjoyable puzzle with nothing to frighten the horses. Thanks setter and Z. 20:39 WOE.
  22. If there was a hidden message here, I thought it might refer to Spurs, Z – as if you might beat Rochdale in the snow with a Llorente HAT-TRICK and “UP TURNS A TROPHY”; and if THEOREM DIPPIER isn’t a veiled reference to Kieran Trippier, then what else can it be, apart from just a very tenuous coincidence, along with the appearance of Jack GRIMMER who scored Coventry’s winner against Stoke in a previous round?

    More straightforwardly, I began with a slightly uncertain REPULSED, also wanted a MOTH instead of a WORM for some time, and wasn’t sure about the surveying tool. However, if it’s an anagram with the checked T_L_M_T_R and the remaining letters EEEE, it’s reasonably easy to assemble correctly.

  23. 52m though with time off that for an unscheduled nap. I blame shovelling the snow off the drive at 7.30 this morning (third day in a row). The pile on the lawn is now some 3 feet high. With more to come. I solved this puzzle in strange bursts of 1 or 2 minutes filling in a quarter of the grid – north east first – and then a 10 m halt, until the next burst of activity. I fell asleep somewhere between the SE and the NW but eventually I was left with the surveyor’s instrument and the writer. Those two held me up for the final 5 or 6 minutes. Overall a pleasant solve with no outstanding clues but I do like the word LOQUACITY so that gets my vote. Thanks to the setter and the blogger today.
  24. I’m advised that shovelling snow can lead to a heart attack. So I leave this to my (trophy) wife. All done and dusted (‘snow joke) in about 40 mins. Some unknown words but very gettable. No doubt V will get a stinker tomorrow after this week’s gettables. Happy St David’s day and Thanks Z.
    2. I have no evidence for this but I suspect a trophy wife is more likely to cause a heart attack than shovelling snow is. Hope so, anyway 🙂
  26. 28 minutes, with 10 spent on LOI Arteries. I thought of containers and ships and was convinced that tarn was the lake. Then *facepalm*.
    1. Yes, I got bogged down in a tarn myself. I think it’s time to start compiling a mental checklist of things to do when the last clue is sitting there unsolved long past the rest. (“Is it a hidden?” “Have you tried a Q if there’s a U?” “Try reading the clue backwards.” “Is one of the crossers wrong?” etc. etc.
      1. I suspect many of us have had similar thoughts. But for me at least it’s always felt like too much like work …
  27. 17’33, straightforward; some of the commentary by various above rather more entertaining. The 18 and 25 lines appear to be insults, maybe by Elsie. Or a new, right-on arts critic known as Loquacity Denim.
  28. Was supposed to be on the golf course today but the SE is under snow and with frozen ground. So even after a decidedly tricky QC, I had time to look at this.
    Denim was first in, then Dippier.Then good progress including a pencilled Moth. I finished by returning to the anagram at 14d where I wasn’t sure of the fodder and that led me to the unknown Telemeter. I was trying to think of theodolyte and am rather pleased I didn’t.
    Newspaper readers and QCers have The Times Daily Quiz to enjoy. Q12 today is about Jacques Ibert. I see a London bus coming!
    Done in under an hour -again. David
  29. Lech was clearly one of those Scottish dialect words for a type of farm animal. But I haven’t got a Scottish dictionary so I couldn’t check.
  30. 38:41. I felt I should have been close to my target 30 mins but got bogged down in the NW corner
  31. 38 minutes and no real problems today. The only ‘esitation was about ‘aver, since I had never heard of HAVER, but if leaving the haitch off is interpreted as leaving the first letter off, then it could have been WAVER instead. So with a question mark, that’s what I assumed. AVERRED was right either way.
  32. 23:41 largely straightforward finishing in the SW corner where I ‘esitated over the Def at 19dn, the strip and the country. I was pretty sure I knew the word trammel from Shakespeare. Having looked it up “trammel up the consequence” does now sound familiar, here it is from Macbeth Act I; scene VII:

    If it were done when ’tis done, then twere well
    It were done quickly: if the assassination
    Could trammel up the consequence, and catch
    With his surcease success; that but this blow
    Might be the be-all and the end-all here,
    But here, upon this bank and shoal of time,
    We’d jump the life to come.

  33. This felt like a struggle for no obvious reason except that I did it over the afternoon rather than the usual morning cuppa and was feeling a bit jaded by that time. TRAMMEL joins “uncouth” “disgruntle” et. al. as one of those words that seems incomplete without its frontal part. And I was another one looking a bit askance at “ridge” = “strip”. Applying it to strip poker and the Gaza Strip, the well known pole dance – hmmm. I once put “frig” in a comment on the Club Forum and was zapped by the automatic censor. 17.04

  34. Completed with the inevitble help of the device in 6 days. Really can’t see why everyone is obsessed by how long it takes to complete. Indeed how do we know how long it took.

    Good fun though.

    1. I think “obsessed” is s bit harsh. This thing is called Times for the Times, after all. It’s not a competition, no-one is crowing, and a 5 minute solve is as celebrated as a couple of hard fought hours. Just comparing notes, really, and revelling in one of Civilisation’s finest achievements!

  35. Completed with the inevitble help of the device in 6 days. Really can’t see why everyone is obsessed by how long it takes to complete. Indeed how do we know how long it took.

    Good fun though.

  36. Completed with the inevitble help of the device in 6 days. Really can’t see why everyone is obsessed by how long it takes to complete. Indeed how do we know how long it took.

    Good fun though.

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