Times Cryptic No 27022 26th April 2018. Out of Date, Out of Mind?

Author   ZabadakPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Yesterdays was a cracking example of a puzzle in which the difficulty was created not by the arcane vocabulary but by the devilry and misdirection of the cluing. Today’s cluing is a lot more straightforward, with some familiar building blocks (even ‘Er Majesty gets ‘er entry) to ease the seasoned solver into the sunlit uplands of the completed grid. But the vocabulary might well startle some, as there are words in here that I’m obliged to enter into my List of Crossword Answers That Might Just Come Up Again But Probably Won’t. Regular contributors are warmly invited to debate what is, and is not, obsolete in Crosswordland as there is plenty of material. I ran through this in a (mildly prosaic) 21 minutes or so, but then I was making sure that I could parse everything for your benefit, and then present the results with clues, definitions and SOLUTIONS artfully arranged.

ACROSS

1 Holy man, a theologian observed in close briefly (6)
SADDHU A D(octor of) D(ivinity) seen within SHU(t), a short version of close. Saddhus are holy men of the Hindu variety.
4 Fever? Spirit must be knocked back with water (7)
MURRAIN Well may the definition have a ? following. Murrain is more or less obsolete word for a variety of cattle diseases, one of which is Redwater Fever (so that’s alright then). In older versions of the Bible, it’s the fifth plague visited on the unfortunate Egyptians for refusing to deport the Israelites. In our clue the spirit is RUM, reversed and added to RAIN, one of the many forms of water.
9 Partygoer in posh car straddling half of road (5)
RAVER The posh car is a Roller, or RR, which brackets AVE, half of avenue.
10 Directors faced with difficult sort of material (9)
HARDBOARD BOARD is pretty much a given for directors, and it’s not difficult to derive HARD from – um – difficult.
11 Church really gutted about blemish — that’s inevitable (9)
CERTAINTY Church today is CE, and really gutted is RY. Insert TAINT for blemish
12 Plant with interior that’s yellow and off-white (5)
IVORY Your plant is (thank goodness) IVY. OR is heraldic for yellow, though more often in these quarters gold.
13 Heartless biographies — don’t believe them! (4)
LIES LIVES without the middle letter.
14 Making sure priest and soldiers can be accommodated in group (10)
SECUREMENT Looking a lot like one of those words made up to look posher than, say, securing. But it’s in Chambers. And made up of CURÉ for priest, plus MEN for soldiers, both placed within SET for group.
18 Removes message implying workers will go back to work (7,3)
STRIKES OFF A rather terse version of a message terminating Industrial (in)action.
20 Square where two answers start in this puzzle (4)
FOUR Being 2X2 and what it says.
23 Recognised player regularly taking food provided by poulterer (5)
CAPON The renowned lining for the fair round belly of the Justice, created by castrating and fattening a cockerel. The recognised player is a CAP, and regularly taking translates to ON as in he’s on statins, which some of us know about.
24 Special writing with fancy pictures enthralling toddler ultimately (9)
SCRIPTURE Which doesn’t have to be the Bible and can be just handwriting. Here it’s our first anagram (fancy), of PICTURES with an embraced (toddle)R
25 Walk quietly and meanderingly round capital, ending in cafe (9)
PROMENADE Quietly: P, AND meanderingly: NAD, capital ROME, end of (caf)E. Assemble thoughtfully.
26 Man hugging wife somewhere in Wales once (5)
GWENT Your man is a GENT, his W(ife) is hugged. Gwent Police firmly believe it’s still their manor, and s*d this “once“ business
27 Savant troubled about English language that’s passed out of use (7)
AVESTAN Likewise, practising Zoroastrians might want you to know that their sacred language is still in use. Today, it’s constructed from “troubled” SAVANT and E(nglish)
28 Put off when receiving mark of wrong or right (6)
DEXTER Roman for right, preserved in heraldry. DETER is put off, and X is of course the teacher’s equivalent of our pink square.

DOWN

1 Ship leaking a bit apparently? Tools required (9)
STRICKLES Our SS ship has a TRICKLE on board. Strickles are use for levelling measures of grain or shaping a mould or sharpening scythes, which to my mind makes them rather varied tools., though here’s one of them:
2 Be different, putting girl on edge (7)
DIVERGE DI, our random (but frequent) girl, is placed on the VERGE
3 Like some drinks offering cure when brother’s upset inside (6)
HERBAL Just a hint of &lit. Cure is HEAL and BR for brother is inverted within.
4 Join together in old-fashioned expression of surprise (5)
MARRY You can do a pretty good impression of a mediaeval fool by capering a bit and saying things like “prithee” “i’faith” and “marry nuncle” a lot. But I wouldn’t advise it. What we have here is a double definition.
5 Teacher and old-fashioned rocker chatted (8)
RABBITED Your teacher is a RABBI (you don’t have to be Jewish, but…) and your old-fashioned rocker is a TED. I imagine most of us know Teds who might question the “old-fashioned” bit.
6 Rubbish mostly hidden under a sea mollusc (7)
ABALONE You just need the A (the sea belongs to the definition) and rubbish is BALONE(y). Sure, it’s a shellfish, but for me it will always be the town in the rather wonderful little movie “The Seven Faces of Dr Lao”, in which Tony Randall plays just about everyone.
7 Enid’s boy with absence of daddy regularly missing out (5)
NODDY The Enid is Blyton, and her creation the boy hero of Toytown. “Absence of” stands in for NO, and the odd letters of DaDdY provide the rest.
8 Enthusiastic fans, maybe, about to meet Queen in county (8)
CHANTERS I think we must envisage football fans and their cheery singing. About is C(irca), the Queen is of course ER, and the county is HANTS (Hampshire). Assemble judiciously
15 Wearing special clothes not fashionable, lacking shape (8)
UNFORMED If you are wearing special clothes, you are UNIFORMED. Skip the fashionable IN. On edit: I have corrected my formatting error to underline the right part of the clue: thank you Kevin for ensuring I wasn’t uninformed. Other have pointed out the other thing I missed, which is you can’t actually take out IN because it isn’t there. Setter’s mistake? Probably, but I won’t leap to judgement, letting “I dare not” wait upon “I would”, like the poor cat i’ th’ adage.
16 Politician falling short with adviser a cruel person (9)
TORMENTOR Our TOR(y) falls short (insert barbed political quip here) and is accompanied by a MENTOR
17 Without means to pay, is in Paris for medical check (4,4)
SKIN TEST SKINT plus is in French EST. A rather similar clue turned up in 27013, in case you have that déjà vu sensation.
19 Rebuke agent wanting to go hither and thither (7)
REPROVE Agent is REP, and the rest of the clue provides ROVE
21 No let-up working if you want to get rich (7)
OPULENT An anagram (working) of NO LET_UP
22 Furthest point attained by wild animal I caught climbing (6)
APOGEE The wild animal is APE, and I is EGO which is reversed and caught by the ape., not the other way round.
23 Source of oil artist needs to acquire first (5)
COPRA The fons et origo of coconut oil. The artist is a R(oyal) A(cademician) and “acquire” yields COP (as in hold of) to go first
24 Leader of subversives put down, killed (5)
SLAIN I will leave it to others more learned than I to debate whether “put down” yields LAID rather than LAIN. Leader of subversives is unquestionably S.

72 comments on “Times Cryptic No 27022 26th April 2018. Out of Date, Out of Mind?”

  1. Ms. Blyton, GWENT, COPRA, the odd tool at 1 down, or how to parse CAPON. But got there in the end, via wordplay or definition.

    But if you take IN, for “fashionable,” out of “uniformed” (backwards?), you wind up with “uformed,” not UNIFORMED. Seems the clue should have asked us to elide merely the I. Or the setter should have written a clue involving “uninformed.”

    How is BALONE[y] “hidden” under A? It’s right under your nose in broad daylight. The word seems added merely to make you think that you want most of a word meaning “hidden.” “Hidden” is not necessary for either wordplay or definition, merely the surface. (Bah!)

    Edited at 2018-04-26 02:35 am (UTC)

  2. For the last three days I’ve forgotten to go back to and check a word and correct it, and I’ve had one wrong each day. Today I didn’t have that problem; specifically with 12ac, I knew it was IVORY, so I didn’t go back and notice that, ironically, I had typed in ‘irony’. Like Guy, I didn’t know GWENT, or who Enid was, or STRICKLES, which last took me about 5′ of playing with SCR/SPR/STR possibilities. Unlike Guy, I didn’t notice either the BALONEY problem or the UNFORMED problem. In any case, Z, you’ve got the wrong part underlined at 15d.
  3. 36 minutes, with CAPON and the unknown AVESTAN (who sounds strangely like a saint) among the last in, having discarded Capra reluctantly, since he was such a fine director. MURRAIN and STRICKLES other unknowns, with SECUREMENT a never heard of. Looking it up, I found SECERNMENT also exists. Held myself up on the errant 15d by putting STRIKES off instead of OUT.
  4. I liked FOUR and STRICKLES. I think we have had RABBITED before but clued slightly differently. Then, I think there was a reference to Father Ted changing faiths. I think it’s a bit of a stretch to ask us to equate enthusiastic fans with CHANTERS but, as I solved it, I guess the clue worked! Never noticed the issue with UNFORMED and I don’t see the need to get upset about BALONEY. the use of HIDDEN is, to me, an example of part of that Russian ploy of ‘maskirovka’: denial, disinformation,deception. It’s designed to mislead, I believe. 58m 55s
    1. It’s just the merest quibble, not a problem nor a reason to be upset, but I would think “found under” would have been more apt here than “hidden under,” as BALONE[y] is so blazingly obvious, making up 6/7ths of the answer. But this is certainly deceptive, and there is such a thing as hiding in plain sight, as with Poe’s purloined letter.
  5. 35 minutes with a number of unknowns that have been picked up by others already, and similar concerns over the error at 15dn.
  6. 45 mins with half a fat rascal. Hoorah! Delicious.
    And a chunk of that thinking of alternative clues for 15dn (nuff said) and puzzling over why the Curate had doffed his ‘at.
    I thought it a bit mean for 1ac, 1dn and 4ac all to be DNKs. And 27ac. Maybe I am just uninformed.
    Still, all do-able.
    Mostly I liked: The walk to the café, and putting the girl on edge.
    Now off to drive to Bootle and back (from Edinburgh).
    Thanks setter and Z.

    Edited at 2018-04-26 05:41 am (UTC)

  7. 53 minutes here, with toast and whisky marmalade. Somewhat surprised to find I got them all right, with the crossers of 4a MURRAIN and 4d MARRY being my most worrying point.

    FOI 9a RAVER, LOI the aforementioned 4d, WOD STRICKLES. Glad to see I wasn’t alone in a MER (major) at 15d and an MER (minor) at 6d.

  8. My previous avatar gets an airing due to 7d, but also because of the pig’s ear I made of this. It didn’t help having CARDBOARD and STRIKES OUT, which made the whole thing somewhat more difficult than it should, though AVESTAN was an educated correct guess. Marry, as for STRICKLES!
    I could rail at the clue in 15d but I never got that far.
  9. I was unconvinced by my LOI STRICKLES which sounded like a momble to me, so I was pleased when it was correct. I also wasn’t confident about SECUREMENT, being uncertain of cure for priest. However, it has since occurred to me that the priest Monsieur Le Cure from the novel Choclat I read recently doesn’t have a surname of Le Cure. D’oh!
    1. I was careful to put the acute accent on the end of curé, which it should have, and I live in hope that we will one day have a crossword where the accents are counted. It’ll probably have to be a Listener, and may have happened already.
      In Anglican tradition, the cure of souls is still part of the definition of a priests ministry. Quaint (as ever).
      1. I’ve recently picked up learning French after a break of 30 odd years since school and it’s occurred to me that they should just do away with accents to simplify their language. I’m thinking the French might be receptive of this suggestion.
        1. There was a mini campaign here a few years ago to abolish the ‘circonflexe’ in official textbooks, but it was shot down in flames and not a popular idea. Most unlikely the acute and grave will be removed as they are essential to distinguish many words from others spelt otherwise the same. And AZERTY keyboards all have allocated keys for vowels with their accents on.
          If I’m using a UK keyboard to write a long piece in French, I type it without the accents then use Word French spellcheck to add them for me, easier than typing the code e.g. Alt-130 for e acute.

          Edited at 2018-04-26 11:26 am (UTC)

        2. That will never happen, as it would require a total rewrite of the written language
          1. You don’t think my second campaign for the French to do away with masculine and feminine nouns is a goer either then?
            1. Feel free to suggest it, when you are next in Paris .. I will come and visit you, and bring a cake with a file in it ..
            2. Probably not as so many things are female in English (eg ships, old cars etc)
  10. How lovely to see the appearance of Dexter at 28 across. Colin’s memorial service takes place in Oxford today…

    Midas

  11. …Memories of which book title from childhood cracked the NE for me. Marry forsooth! I was toying with “murlake” for MURRAIN until then. I assumed 15d had been misclued, the setter being uncertain whether to use “uninformed” or “uniformed” and the two separate photons of inspiration not being entangled, they were unfortunately collapsed differently. DNK AVESTAN but cryptic clear, as with STRICKLES. The more I say SECUREMENT the more I think I have said it before. Thank you for the heraldic parsing of IVORY: I just put gold in ivy. COD to STRIKES OFF, words to gladden the heart of a commuter. 23 minutes. Thank you Z and setter.
    1. My Noddy books often had the (usually evil) Golliwogs in the story: let’s be charitable and say Blyton was unconsciously racist. We, of course, thought nothing of it. Today the books and multiple spin-offs have been sanitised.
      I was going to tell the joke which goes “Why have the Goblins got big ears? Because Noddy won’t pay the ransom”, but I see in the US Big Ears is now White Beard to avoid offending people with ear sizes on the larger end of the bell curve.
      Noddy and Big Ears no longer cuddle up in the same bed either. Oh dear me no.
      1. I wondered whether Noddy and Big Ears were the source that Eddie Braben used when persuading Morecambe and Wise to lie down together (though not in the biblical sense…..)
        1. Apparently Eddie Braben reminded Eric Morecambe that Laurel and Hardy used to share a bed, which was enough to make him agree to it.
      2. Enid Blyton was not racist at all, by the standards of her age, any more than you are a criminal if you eat meat, as may one day be the case ..

        1. I’m inclined to agree: my mother was not racist either, by the standards of her day, but would be roundly castigated for some of her observations and vocabulary by today’s criteria. I can understand why people find golliwogs offensive, but I regret the loss of innocence that means they are offensive, racist creations that should be banned, except, of course, in Yorkshire.
          I hope to live through to a time when we refrain from judging past normalities by the righteous standards of our present, so correct age. But I fear I won’t.

  12. DNF. Couldn’t get the NE corner. I thought of Murlake but that wouldn’t fit with my boy – as I’d opted for Teddy. Stupidly I couldn’t brink Noddy to mind. If I’d only held on for Noddy the rest would have fallen into place.
  13. Close but got AVESTAN wrong.

    In 20a, why does four = where 2 answers start in this puzzle?

  14. What an erudite puzzle! I impressed myself with half-remembered words and recalling trivia. The Beatles had the song about the Maharishi, calling him Sadie instead of SADDHU. MURRAIN definitely from the depths of memory. Liked FOUR. Dnk AVESTAN, but DEXTER eventually fell. NODDY is a homophone for micturition, in French, for his body language.
  15. Ooops! I mean not a *hard* puzzle, but lots of time wasted on my LOI CHANTERS after careless typing of 10a — glad I’m not the only one. I gnawed for too long on the bone of ‘Anne’ being the queen, because we surely cannot have ER for ‘Queen’ yet again!
    Yes, 15d is a booboo.
    There was definitely a Tudor feel to this puzzle: murrain, the heraldic or and dexter; Marry! and the last time a strickle was in widespread use must have been in the 1590s.
    Loved your blog, Z. Thanks to you and to the setter for a jolly good puzzle. 36 mins.

    Edited at 2018-04-26 09:24 am (UTC)

    1. I’d like to suggest that we campaign for “strickle” making a comeback. I’ve seen plenty of baristas level the ground coffee in their portafilters with an artful sweep of a rod over the last decade. They should know there is a name for that!

      Edited at 2018-04-26 05:09 pm (UTC)

      1. You’re right! The baristas in the proper coffee houses *do* use a little widget to sweep the surplus away when dosing the filter basket — and that must surely be a strickle they’re using. In fact, I have a little rectangular aluminium plate that came with my espresso machine, which has printed on it “The Razor: precision dose trimming tool”. They could have saved themselves some cost in marking the piece of aluminium, by simply labelling it “Strickle”.
  16. Struggled a little today.

    FOI RAVER, but it didn’t give me any help in the NW, which I soon abandoned. Progressed steadily through the other three corners (with the odd potential stumble) in 12:15 before arriving back at square 1 (literally). The vaguely remembered SADDHU unlocked it, and the unknown, but worthy COD STRICKLES was LOI as 17:10 came up on the stopwatch.

    Thanks Z for explaining that one, MURRAIN (DNK), and CAPON, our usual Christmas bird of choice in my childhood. Also PROMENADE which I biffed.

    SECUREMENT was another DNK, but was fairly obvious.

    Wasted a little time trying to start 19D with RAP.

    Thanks to the setter, despite the faux pas at 15D.

  17. 35 minutes, so not so easy, although done with double vision after cataract / implant op, which slows down the typing. Had to use an aid to fill in 1d and thought 15d was a setter’s booboo. Nice blog Z.
  18. 28’12. Surprised at the d added to sadhu. Mildly shocked at the oversight in 15. Edified by strickles. Entertained by memories of Noddy the Raver.
  19. Couldn’t work out UNFORMED so SECUREMENT proved hard to pin down. Lots of new/half known words but fairly clued.
    Given recent discussions, my heart sank when 1a began, ” Holy man, a theologian ….. “.
    COD to SKIN TEST.
  20. I always check my explanations, which this time included UN(IN)FORMED. My guess is that I was caught in two minds between this and UN(I)FORMED. Sincere apologies to all concerned, not least to my editor to whom I have confessed. An alternative clue will appear in due course.
    1. No worries at all, and thank you for your message – and the hard work you all put in.
  21. Having used wordplay to battle my way through the myriad unknowns, I found myself left with S_R_C_L_S at 1d and SE_U_EMENT at 14a. I justified CURE for priest by its similarity to curate, and then noticed that a trickle could easily be coming from a ship. These last two clues accounted for about 8 of my 31:54. 15d had been corrected by the time I tackled the crossword. A pleasing puzzle to have solved correctly. Thanks setter and Z.
  22. 11m 47s, and I was surprised to discover that they were all correct: any one of STRICKLES, SECUREMENT, COPRA & CAPON were entered without any great 11a.
    A shame about the error at 15d, but it couldn’t really have been anything else, and it’s impressive how rarely these things slip through the net.
  23. I arrived after the error at 15dn had been corrected, so my only problems lay in ignorance of the handful of words which troubled others. AVESTAN, of course, is an anagram of a tricky-ish word, which I think we’ve established nobody likes much; however, with checkers in place, you effectively have to pick ASEVTAN or AVESTAN, and the latter looks about a hundred times more likely than the former. I also had a vague idea that AVESTAN was a real word, even if I’d have struggled to define it out of context (and it turns out I’ve written a blog including the word AVESTA, so I have no excuse, really).

    Not sure the same can be said of STRICKLES or MURRAIN, but the wordplay successfully led me there, so no complaints. I even went down a blind alley which was completely of my own making, and nothing to do with the setter, with my initial stab of CHEERERS, which almost works as an alternative, with Cheshire standing in for Hampshire.

    1. “which I think we’ve established nobody likes much” – oh no, not at all. All we have established is that whenever there is one, one or two complain, which is a very different thing. They certainly don’t bother me, and for the record, neither do dodgy homophones or “obscure” words .. all part of the challenge!
  24. 15m. As Z notes, this one was tricky because of the obscure vocab rather than the wordplay, but it’s all fairly clued. This is another I would categorise as rewarding rather than fun, but I thought it was excellent. I didn’t even notice the error at 15dn.
  25. Done in a taxi in half hour trip to my lady dentist bar 1dn STRICKLES my LOI and 11ac CERTAINLY which arrived fairly quickly – once I had incorrectly changed 8dn CHANTERS to CHEERERS and correctly back again to CHANTERS!
    Time roughly forty minutes – good puzzle despite the 15dn UNIFORMED which like keriothe I didn’t notice. Good to see the setter owning up!

    FOI 6dn ABALONE the round the world yachtsman.

    COD 1ac SADDHU

    WOD 28ac NODDY

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UA6VGT8Xe8M

      2. I read horryd’s comment exactly the same way earlier, and it says something about a) my ignorance of China or b) my impression of horryd’s outre lifestyle that I didn’t bat an eyelid
  26. I put in so many “guesses” that one of them was bound to be wrong and so it proved, with MURMAIN being the culprit. Main for water seemed a good shout at the time.

    Ref?

  27. 32:35, which is longer than yesterday’s took entirely due to the vocabulary exceeding mine. After the unknown AVESTAN, SADDHU and STRICKLES can you blame me for having MERGE as an obscure expression of surprise. It was only when I fixed that, that I could get, my LOI, 1aa with any CERTAINTY. I guess I got the corrected version of 15d to solve!
      2. Indeed! Although I was thinking the final letter might have an acute accent on it but didn’t know how to type it. The more familiar French word did cross my mind 🙂
  28. Ground it out, but it took ages – mainly looking for strickles, which I DNK, and trying to sort out 15. Murrain, strickles, copra, abalone and Avestan all in one puzzle – crumbs. Mainly fair clues, though, even for Avestan, where there’s only one viable solution, thus avoiding the old problem of obscure answers having to be derived from anagrams. Shame about the error in 15, but c’est la vie. I think 24 might be out too – lain is (I think) the p.pt. of lie, which is intransitive, whereas put (down) is transitive, ain’t it? Oh well, there it is. Still enjoyed doing it in an odd way! Good blog; thanks.
  29. PS When I posted today, I got a message saying my post had been marked as spam – I deleted it and reposted a couple of times, but the same thing happened. Anyone know why? Thanks.
    1. I unspammed it for you .. the problem was the past participle bit, which it took as a url. It doesn’t like those as a rule. Every full stop must have a space after it, or else…
      1. Thanks Jerry, really kind of you. I would never have figured that out! 🙂
  30. There were some odd words here. I didn’t know STRICKLE – a candidate for the “names of things you didn’t know had names” list. But it was all solveable from the cryptics (apart from 15d which had to be biffed). Very enjoyable. 29 minutes. Ann
  31. I’m not having a great week with these puzzles. Today my unfamiliarity with Blyton left me guessing and I put in NEDDY. Close, but no cigar. I did manage all the other unknowns, however.
    1. Neddy Seagoon (silly-twisted-boy) was a Goon! Enid Blyton’s Noddy (just plain silly) was a taxi driver. I would suggest that our American cousins read up on the English Classics. We’ve all done Doctor Seuss.(Theodor Geisel)
  32. Uniformed does not have an “in” to take out,

    Lain is the pp of lie. Put down cannot mean lie, It usually means lay, a weak verb whose pp is laid. Occasionally put down is an intransitive verb – an aeroplane can put down – but then it means move into a lying position not be in one.

  33. 40:36, probably made a little trickier by the unknown strickles, murrain and Avestan, the double-D sadhu and by putting strikes out rather than off at first crack. The slip up at 15dn reminded me of a previous role summarising cases for court. I would have to print and read everything thoroughly before submission. My fat-fingered typing tomfoolery led to more than a few uninformed police officers, assaults occasioning actual bodily ham, to say nothing of the odd swan-off sh*tgun. A colleague once made a more unfortunate error, the repeated omission of a single letter when recording the outcome of numerous counts on an indictment.
  34. 32 minutes, after thinking I wouldn’t be able to finish it. Wasted too much time trying to make sense of uniformed > unformed. DNK strickles, and that took me 10-12 minutes to force in. Never heard of Avestan, nor its home country Avesta.

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