Times Cryptic No 27060 – Saturday, 09 June 2018. Beautiful one day, monsoon the next.

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I am blogging this in beautiful Goa, India. A wonderful place, but since the monsoon arrived yesterday what else to do but crosswords? This was a challenging puzzle, but never impossible. My time was probably about 40 minutes. The last three in were in the SW corner, with LOI my clue of the day 24ac. Thanks to the setter for a very enjoyable puzzle.

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

Across
1 Scot’s pretty heartless, certainly not fed up! (4)
BONY: take the middle “n” out of BONNY.

3 Two boys look embarrassed to get a big hand (5,5)
ROYAL FLUSH: here are ROY and AL again, blushing.

9 Endless fun with French girlfriend in US city (7)
LARAMIE: a LAR{k}, avec ma AMIE.

11 Dramatist, English writer, penning story (7)
MOLIERE: LIE in (Thomas) MORE.

12 Alcohol’s taken in small drops — it’s silky stuff (9)
GROSGRAIN: S in GROG, then RAIN.

13 Med resort’s inspiring hotel in suitable place (5)
NICHE: H in NICE.

14 Backing statute, rulers second support for motion (7,5)
WALKING STICK: LAW backwards, KINGS, TICK.

18 Pub riot, with cokes spilled? It’s young people’s entertainment (7,5)
PICTURE BOOKS: (PUB RIOT COKES*).

21 High official and old men laugh (5)
PASHA: PAS, HA.

22 Building feature: walls in Nevada and Delaware (9)
COLONNADE: the COLON is “:”, NA I guessed is Nevada, DE clearly Delaware. On edit: as john_dun suggests, you can take “walls” as meaning outside letters of Nevada and Delaware, so you don’t need to know the codes, and Nevada is actually NV!

24 Tongue in need of a drink (7)
ARABICA: ARABIC, A. One of my tipples of choice!

25 Take away starter of tempura transported back (7)
DETRACT: T{empura}, CARTED – all reversed. Definition as in “not to detract from …”.

26 Bird‘s places for putting some wool, say (10)
GREENSHANK: by now I should see “putting” and automatically think “golf”. So, they putt on GREENS, and wool can come in a HANK.

27 Runner would briefly lose control in motion (4)
SKID: SKI WOULD briefly is SKI’D.

Down
1 £50 in pocket, have fine attire (8)
BALLGOWN: L for fifty, L for pound. Insert in BAG, and add OWN.

2 Just managed to put up with Lowry novel (8)
NARROWLY: RAN backwards, (LOWRY*). No need to think about who Lowry was, if anyone.

4 Round and large character (5)
OMEGA: O is round, MEGA is big.

5 Saltire bedecked by a church’s patterned covering (9)
AXMINSTER: a saltire is a cross, so X inside A MINSTER.

6 Dossier’s place in affair besetting current politicians (6,7)
FILING CABINET: I for current inside FLING, then the obvious group of politicians.

7 In France, a key old international agency (6)
UNESCO: UN is “a” in French of course, ESC is a computer key, O is old.

8 What about two media bigshots gets noticed (6)
HEEDED: EH backwards, then two ED{itors}.

10 Noticing Mafia criminal blowing things up (13)
MAGNIFICATION: (NOTICING MAFIA*).

15 Barge in front of canal has great horses around (4-5)
GATE-CRASH: (C HAS GREAT*), where the C comes from the front of CANAL.

16 Beastly male with an aggressor’s weapon (8)
TOMAHAWK: TOM, A HAWK.

17 Agreed East End’s in need of renovation (8)
ASSENTED: (EAST ENDS*).

19 Jumped in Sierra before accident (6)
SPRANG: S for Sierra, PRANG.

20 Property to develop? Not at first (6)
ESTATE: {g}ESTATE.

23 Left port carrying cargo (5)
LADEN: L, ADEN.

21 comments on “Times Cryptic No 27060 – Saturday, 09 June 2018. Beautiful one day, monsoon the next.”

  1. I found this quite hard taking 43:49 to complete. I missed the colon in 22a, but now Bruce has enlightened me, I think there’s a bit more than the State abbreviations going on and the walls in Nevada and Delaware are actually the first and last characters in each word. BONY was my FOI and AXMINSTER brought up the rear. GROSGRAIN was constructed from wordplay eventually and then rang a faint bell. Definitely some tricky wordplay and a very enjoyable challenge. Thanks setter and Bruce.
  2. I don’t have my copy to hand, but I now recall giving up and looking up GREENSHANK, so a de facto DNF. As John says, some tricky wordplay. John is correct about the state walls; the postal abbreviation for Nevada is NV.

    Edited at 2018-06-15 11:56 pm (UTC)

  3. Not the most enjoyable puzzle of the month so far, and, of my 26 minutes or so, about a third was spent trying to spot the birdie at 26A.

    FOI ROYAL FLUSH
    LOI GREENSHANK
    COD BONY

    Chambers concurs with my opinion that GATECRASH is a single word, and not hyphenated.

    I’m not sure that Starbuck’s have a drink called ARABICA, though I’m quite partial to a coffee made with the bean of that name. I’m open to persuasion on this one though !

    1. The Shorter Oxford says “coffee” can refer to the bean or the tree as well as the drink. One could also say, “ this is nice coffee. What am I drinking?” “Arabica”.

      So I think the clue is fine.

      I certainly don’t want to venture a comment on Starbucks vis-a-vis coffee!

      Edited at 2018-06-16 02:52 am (UTC)

  4. I’m weak on birds (and plants), so Greenshank was a guess, and with both Axminster and Saltire just past the tip of awareness that was a bigger guess. And, I’m with Philip on Arabica not being the drink itself.

    Otherwise I didn’t find this that tough, but I was sorry the setter didn’t take the opportunity to pair Green and Shank (which, for those not so inclined, is a very poorly hit golf shot).

    Thx, Brnchn

    Edited at 2018-06-16 01:49 am (UTC)

  5. I never thought that it was anything other than the first and last letters of Nevada and Delaware. That was my favourite clue but not because of the states but because of the clever use of :

    I remember enjoying the TV western series LARAMIE in the 60s.

    The use of ‘saltire’ in 5d just reminds me that for the next few weeks we will have to suffer the Celts, the Scots in particular, supporting ABE: Anyone But England. That number includes Nicola Sturgeon. She says she has drawn Iceland in the sweep. She’s welcome. Perhaps she would like to move there.

  6. No solving time to offer for this one but I think it all went in easily enough apart from a slight delay over my LOI, the almost unknown GROSGRAIN – it came up here once before in 2016 but I had forgotten it.

    On GATE-CRASH vs GATECRASH, two of the usual sources have it as one word, but the third (Collins) has it hyphenated. Answers that are listed in any one of these are acceptable.

    Edited at 2018-06-16 04:41 am (UTC)

  7. … the men from Laramie either side of the Atlantic. In the movie, it was Jimmy Stewart but I remember the song better. Another notch on the gun but I doubt I outdrew anyone today, taking 49 minutes on this. DNK LOI GROSGRAIN which took a long time to construct from cryptic and crossers. I then checked it with the puzzle completed rather than wait a week to find out I was wrong. COD to AXMINSTER by a short head from SPRANG. Great word, prang. The first flat I bought came with a beautiful A1 Axminster carpet which now no doubt is out of fashion. I still remember it as luxury. Being ham-fisted, I was always too worried about damaging pop-up PICTURE BOOKS as a child to admire the brilliance of their design. I knew GREENSHANK and spotted the colon of COLONNADE straightaway, perhaps because of the crumbling folly by the pitch and putt course and open air swimming pool in the Southport of my teenage years. Solid puzzle. Thank you B and setter.

    Edited at 2018-06-16 07:53 am (UTC)

  8. Bristol, where I spent student years, sheltered the wonderful Carwadines, which sold and served coffees and teas by name, so dam’ the niceties, ARABICA was (is) a drink. It said so on the menu.
    Otherwise, a pleasantly chewy crossword which I completed in 20.57, two seconds inside Kevin’s time (what took you so long? ;-))
    LARAMIE only from the TV series, though I’m sure it’s a nice enough place.
    GROSGRAIN only came to mind when I discarded GROGRAM, closer to the surface of my pool of odd fabrics, and stared fixedly at the wordplay.
    Nice to see the : device included: always a frisson when you spot it.
    Nice blog, B – enjoy Goa in the rain! Small point: you need more than one PICTURE BOOK to fill up all the spaces and use all the anagram fodder.
    1. Back at Cal, I knew a fellow from Laramie; his father was the editor of the local newspaper. ‘US city’ struck me as a bit inaccurate as a definition: my friend once showed me an article from the front page which I forget, but I do remember that page 2 was the society page, with reports on the doings of e.g. a ladies’ club at whose latest meeting all the members presented something made of felt.
      1. As is my wont, I wandered around LARAMIE on Streetview for a while. Certainly, in British terms, it wouldn’t be any kind of city, but I believe in the US it’s pretty much a city once you can scrape enough people together to elect a mayor and a dogcatcher.
        It does have a treasured heritage area: some of the buildings must be as much as 60 years old!
  9. 49 minutes, so not easy. FOI 1a BONY, LOI 16d TOMAHAWK, which I seem to have trouble with whenever it crops up. Enjoyed 22a COLONNADE (I’m getting better at spotting punctuation taking part in clues!) and 5d AXMINSTER.

    I would have had more trouble with MOLIERE had he not come up in a book I’m reading called How to Make a Home: among other things, he was Louis XIII’s upholsterer!

  10. There is still a cafe in the same spot, but there’s far better coffee to be had in Bristol elsewhere these days. If you’re ever in the area again, I recommend Small Street Espresso, just around the corner.
  11. 31mins. I was pleased to spot the punctuation element of the wordplay at 22a, having been caught out by that before. GROSGRAIN and PASHA unknown. i liked the deceptive ‘places for putting some wool’, taking a while to spot the GREEN…. My COD. Good puzzle and blog. Thanks B and setter.
  12. I found this tricky but enjoyable. FOI was Laramie and then I made reasonable progress. Liked Axminster and got Colonnade without understanding the parsing.
    In the end I was two short: 4d and 12a. Had never heard of Grosgrain but was very close to constructing it from Grain or Grog or Rain.
    I too remember the colonnade at Southport and I played on the pitch and putt. David
  13. 25:20. COD Bony.

    Talking of Scots, how awful that the Glasgow School of Art has gone up in flames again. Reportedly much worse than the last fire.

    Talking of the World Cup, what an amazing match last night between Portugal and Spain! (I’ve had a bet on Spain to win outright). Portugal may have lacked Quaresma in the first half but Ronaldo’s was awesome.

  14. 36:18, nice puzzle. I had a little difficulty summoning grosgrain although I have seen it in a previous puzzle. Saw the first part of 26ac but had to take a punt on the second part not knowing the bird or a hank as some wool. Always love the punctuation device in 22ac. I agree that Portugal Spain was a terrific match breathing life into the World Cup. The first half of France Australia on the other hand….
  15. 22:34. Tricky, with some funny words that had to be constructed painstakingly from wordplay.
  16. 12 Alcohol’s taken in small drops — it’s silky stuff (9)

    I had G _ O _ G _ _ _ _ .

    My wife thought of GEORGETTE, which Chambers defines as “A thin silk fabric”.
    This was obviously right. I mean… How many “G _ O _ G _ _ _ _”s can there be which are silky stuff? But we are never in a hurry to finish these puzzles and eventually my wife recalled a fabric called, she thought, CROSSGRAIN. We eventually got to GROSGRAIN.

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