Times Cryptic No 27438 – Saturday, 24 August 2019. Above my pay grade?

Author   branchPosted on Categories Weekend Cryptic
That was a challenge. It took me a long time to get more than the odd answer here and there around the grid. Then I reflected on what a problem in hierarchies might be, and (aha) got 5dn. From there, the whole RHS fell out quickly. The LHS was still a grind, but it yielded in the end.

Overall, I felt this puzzle required more lateral thinking and less ‘mechanical’ solving than usual. Well done, setter!

There were lots of nice clues, but perhaps my favourite was the elegantly simple 22ac, which I needed helpers to see.

Clues are blue, with definitions underlined. Answers are in BOLD CAPS, then wordplay. (ABC*) means ‘anagram of ABC’. Deletions are in [square brackets]. The blog is in Times New Roman font, as part of a gentle campaign to urge the club site to use a font in which it is easier to tell one’s stem from one’s stern – ref. 10ac.

Across
1 Bill‘s in area by water, and in Rome once or Paris (6)
DOCKET – the DOCK is of course by the water, although that took time to come to me. ET was Latin (in Rome once) for ‘and’, and still is in French (in Paris now). I spent time trying to put AC in something or other, without success.

4 Carol keeps man for breeding (8)
SPAWNING – PAWN in SING. SING came to mind immediately and I had the W, but Will or Walt wouldn’t fit.

10 Stern woman in diverting books (9)
FUNDAMENT – DAME in FUN NT (books).

11 Furnish home needing to be settled (5)
INDUE – IN, DUE. Not a word I would use, and not one whose meaning I was sure of. As it turns out, it can mean ‘furnish’.

12 A little dough in tart, mostly (3)
SOU – ‘tart’ is SOU[r].

13 Lend a hand to turn key, showing distinction (11)
DIACRITICAL – AID ‘turned’, then CRITICAL. Diacritical marks like accents and çedillas distinguish the pronunciation of a letter.

14 Rug welcoming queen’s left in accommodation (6)
WIGWAM – WIG (‘rug’), WA[r]M.

16 Managed to import charming object from Africa (7)
RWANDAN – RAN ‘importing’ WAND. From a specific part of Africa in this case.

19 Pet is something obtained by student body (7)
MASTIFF – M.A. (obtained by student), STIFF (body).

20 Copper’s collected by miners revealing practice (6)
NUDISM – N.U.M. ‘collecting’ DI’S.

22 Rush or twig falling to pieces (3,8)
GET CRACKING – GET (twig), CRACKING (falling to pieces). Obvious once you see it.

25 Building extension in awful place near Bow? (3)
ELL – hell (or ’ell, in the East End) is the awful place in question. An ELL or EL is an L-shaped wing of a house.

26 Remark upon parting with gold-plated cube (5)
ADIEU – DIE plated with AU.

27 Might priest be evil in this city? (9)
ISLAMABAD – is a lama bad? No, surely not!

28 Right back about to stop generating discussion (8)
TRENDING – RT ‘back’, ENDING.

29 Author‘s place for putting in speech (6)
GREENE – golfers putt on the green. ‘In speech’ signals a sounds-like clue.

Down
1 Took in fare rises on buses, losing exterior calm (6)
DEFUSE – FED (took in fare) ‘rises’, giving DEF, then [b]USE[s] loses its exterior.

2 Thinker regularly quick in filling most of puzzle (9)
CONFUCIUS – UCI (even/regular letters of ‘quick in’), ‘filling’ CONFUS[e].

3 African native, one about to quit cold country (5)
ELAND – [ic]ELAND is the country. Not for sale, if anyone asks!

5 Fisherman caught main problem in hierarchy (5,9)
PETER PRINCIPLE – St. PETER was a fisherman. PRINCIPLE sounds like (‘caught’) PRINCIPAL (main). If you don’t know this delightfully cynical proposition, read about it here.

6 Heard rubbish isn’t allowed, or a bit of pants? (9)
WAISTBAND – sounds like (‘heard’) WASTE BANNED. My FOI.

7 Reduced charge for Bengali’s family (5)
INDIC – the Bengali language is one of the Indic family.

8 Grand government’s ousting top troublemakers (8)
GREMLIN – G[rand], [k]REMLIN.

9 Militants prepared dynamite for car (3,4,7)
RED ARMY FACTION – anagram (‘prepared’) of (DYNAMITE FOR CAR*).

15 Bread collection with hot drinks (4-5)
WHIP-ROUND – W[ith], HIP, ROUND. The bread here is money.

17 Pretend to break up, as getting dumped (9)
DISSEMBLE – DISS[as]EMBLE.

18 Old lady broaching issue is a Leaver (8)
EMIGRANT – GRAN ‘broaching’ EMIT.

21 Bob is shilling put on shelf (6)
SLEDGE – S, LEDGE.

23 Experience one drug then another, showing some guts (5)
TRIPE – TRIP (experience one drug), E (another drug).

24 Leg twisted on person playing (5)
GAMER – GAM (leg), RE (on) ‘twisted’.

21 comments on “Times Cryptic No 27438 – Saturday, 24 August 2019. Above my pay grade?”

  1. I didn’t notice at the time, but it’s regularly qUiCk In, to get the I.

    Edited at 2019-08-31 12:32 am (UTC)

  2. I can’t remember what in particular slowed me down; probably everything. LOI DEFUSE: I started with SEDATE (ATE= took in fare–by the way, Bruce, FED needs ‘fare’ underlined, too), leaving SED for later; much later, as it turned out. Got PETER PRINCIPLE fairly early on, while simultaneously thinking to myself, “Surely ‘main’ is ‘principal'”, and “What is ‘caught’ doing here?”
        1. LOL. I was working on my phone, so I couldn’t see comment and clue at the same time, but it was obvious what I’d got wrong!
  3. … I did know from the good old days of the BCP. It was but a small step to INDUE, but one which required a letting-out ot the WAISTBAND first. I was nearly the hour with this one, so it was close to the limit of my competence. LOI was the constructed FUNDAMENT. The ADIEU wasn’t quite as good as the midweek one, and shouldn’t it have been AU REVOIR if we were meeting again so soon? I didn’t know ELL, but the golden rule that mention of Bow signifies the dropping of an aitch held good. COD to the PETER PRINCIPLE. I suppose it could be argued that St Peter was over-promoted. I remember one embittered senior executive saying, when ‘let go’ by his CEO, that if you set up business as a rat race, then you shouldn’t be surprised when the rat wins. Sage advice, and one which seems particularly to apply to world leaders. Tough but fair puzzle. Thank you B and setter.

    Edited at 2019-08-31 06:22 am (UTC)

    1. Surely unfair to rats, BW .. a much misunderstood little animal. I had a member of staff once who kept rats as pets, and exhibited them at the rat equivalent of Crufts. She used to go on at length about what wonderful, affectionate little creatures they are.
      1. I apologise profusely to all non-human rats. We have vegetarian ones round about our house. Last year, I saw a windfall apple walking across the lawn until I saw the tail at the back.
  4. …. Jordan’s Law of Biffs, which clearly states that “Four or more biffs causes any puzzle to be unsatisfactory”. Here I biffed six answers, but was able to parse them all after completing the puzzle, and subsequently marvel at the setter’s sheer artfulness. Those biffs were DIACRITICAL, WIGWAM, MASTIFF, ELL, INDIC, and GAMER.

    My first pass through the clues was frighteningly unenlightening, as will be evidenced by my FOI ! The only DNK was “leg = gam”.

    My time below quite astonished me, but working out those biffs, and admiring once again the sheer brilliance of almost every clue, meant that I actually spent just over half an hour in total.

    When I was a wee boy, and there was a king on the English throne, my father was very fond of TRIPE braised in milk. The smell of it cooking was utterly nauseating, and I would either go outside and play, or go upstairs to my bedroom. I never have overcome that aversion. More than 20 years later, CAMRA bought their own pub, the Whitegates Tavern in Hyde. My only visit lasted less than five minutes, due to the familiar smell from the adjoining factory, Smith Brothers, who processed “animal by-products”. This may have been the principal reason that CAMRA’s initiative was unsuccessful.

    FOI GREMLINS
    LOI CONFUCIUS
    COD WHIP-ROUND
    TIME 16:27

    1. My (Yorkshire) mother loved tripe. The rest of the family however couldn’t stand it, for various reasons including those stated 🙂
  5. So Special that thus far just 5 contributors – Kev, Mr. Notlob, Jerry, Biffo Jordan and Jack – plus Mr. Browndog a-blogging.

    A very special crossword for a very special few.

    Time 87 minutes.

    “Jordan’s Law of Biffs clearly states that “Four or more biffs causes any puzzle to be unsatisfactory”! Hear! Hear!

    Twenty-three down and twenty-six across!

    Edited at 2019-08-31 07:48 am (UTC)

  6. Very heavy-going and resulting in a technical DNF for me.

    I misparsed WAM in WIGWAM by treating ‘welcoming’ as a link word and MAW as a queen who needed to be reversed (indicated by ‘left’). A quick google confirmed there was a ‘Queen Maw’ in a Marvel comic cartoon and a video game in which ‘The Maw’ were aliens who may well have had a Queen for all I know. Both areas of knowledge completely beyond my ken, but I naturally assumed that everybody but me would know of her.

    1. On reflection I’m now pretty sure I talked myself into this by vaguely remembering a Queen MAW, but I was actually thinking of ‘Queen Mab’ who’s mentioned in Romeo & Juliet and various other works of poetry and literature. I think I may have met her in something by Purcell.
  7. Checking back, I see this one took 33.06 to complete, though I can’t see why now as it looks relatively straightforward. Can’t have been because of Dozy Solving Syndrome, because I did the same day’s Jumbo in only 30 seconds more.
    The one I wasn’t sure of was ELL, defined as an extension: I mean, I can remember the L-shaped Room (not seeing it, of course, it was X rated in 1962, and I wouldn’t have dared), and I know the US EL trains, but this spelling was, for me, an elbow to fingertips thing. Chambers gives it (rather grudgingly, I think) as a variant on EL. Anyway, at least one contra-biff clue, depending on the (rather easy) wordplay, not the definition.
  8. I also found this a challenge. It took me 68:25 and I looked up ELL to be sure of it. All in vain as I managed a typo at 28a. TRENDIND. Drat, Drat and Thrice Drat…I was particularly pleased to get DIACRITICAL too…. DEFUSE took me ages to see, and I only saw it after I had the D from DOCKET. Thanks setter and Bruce.
  9. 28:30. I thought this was a cracking puzzle… I have “Lovely” circled at the top of my paper copy. Held up in the end for several minutes by my LOI, the innocuous GREMLINS, which took me an extended alphabet trawl to find. Elsewhere lots of fun. FOI SOU. Faves were FUNDAMENT, WIGWAM, RWANDAN, MASTIFF, NUDISM and CONFUCIUS. Thanks Bruce and setter.
  10. 15:01. A couple of very uncommon words in here: ELL and GAM.
    RED ARMY FACTION was also new to me, although I knew it by its informal name: the Baader-Meinhof Group.

    Edited at 2019-08-31 11:42 am (UTC)

  11. 44:59 just squeaked inside the 45 minute mark. Found this very tricky. Like the blogger said a lot less mechanical solving and more lateral thinking required.

Comments are closed.