Times Cryptic No 27462 – Saturday, 21 September 2019.

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I was still in China when this puzzle appeared, so I enjoyed the local colour of 21ac. The puzzle seemed to have an unusually high proportion of clues simply requiring us to assemble (or disassemble) the pieces, and I finished rather quickly. I felt enlightened by 17ac and 25ac, and baffled by 23ac.

How did others find it? Thanks to the setter for a very enjoyable puzzle.

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.

Across
1 Put plan into action (8)
DEPLOYED – PLOY in DEED, giving a past tense verb.

9 Subtle meaning from obvious figure (8)
OVERTONE – OVERT, ONE.

10 Dance enthusiast circling with energy (8)
FANDANGO – F(AND)AN (FAN=enthusiast ‘circling’ AND=with), GO.

11 Country-lover dismantled rails blocking track (8)
RURALIST – (RAILS*), ‘dismantled’, in RUT.

12 Not mad about silver? It’s really popular! (3,3,4)
ALL THE RAGE – ALL THERE about AG.

14 Distinguished singer keen to make comeback (4)
DIVA – AVID ‘making comeback’.

15 East German prosperous one refusing to see truth (7)
OSTRICH – OST is German for ‘east’, RICH.

17 Wisecrack hit hard in EU perhaps (7)
DIGRAPH – EU as in ‘euphony’ is a digraph: two letters representing a single sound. Made up as: DIG, RAP, H (hard).

21 Asian rhino has cat leave Mexican state (4)
YUAN – take the CAT out of YU[cat]AN to get the money (rhino) we used in Wuhan.

22 Tricky losing ground in New York location (4,6)
LONG ISLAND – (LOSING*) ‘tricky’, then LAND (ground). The setter’s cunning is to make ‘ground’ look like the anagram indicator!

23 Column places upright character in smear (8)
PILASTER – I in PLASTER. I only suspected there might be such a word, and had no idea how to spell it. Luckily the wordplay is generous! LOI.

25 French symbol originally Armenian (8)
MARIANNE – (ARMENIAN*) ‘originally’. Didn’t know of her, but she is indeed an important French symbol!

26 Political opponent disappeared in tragedy (8)
ANTIGONE – ANTI, GONE.

27 Performer pleads to return in Hamlet? (8)
DANSEUSE – SUES ‘returning’ inside DANE.

Down
2 Initially poor lawyer enjoys success after test cases (8)
EXAMPLES – EXAM (test), then the first letters of Poor Lawyer Enjoys Success.

3 Heavenly guide in oceans called on sailor (8)
LODESTAR – LODES sounds like ‘loads’ (oceans), TAR (sailor).

4 Himalayan beast devours North American (4)
YANK – YAK ‘devours’ N.

5 Commissionaire almost asleep — nothing coming in (7)
DOORMAN – DORMAN[t] with O ‘coming in’.

6 Order for the match to be abandoned (6,4)
DECREE NISI – cryptic definition. A marriage, not a cricket match in sunny England!

7 Accomplish little around Caribbean republic (8)
DOMINICA – DO MINI, CA (around).

8 Eruption from explosive with a wreck below (4,4)
HEAT RASH – H.E. (high explosive), A, TRASH.

13 Rapid rise battered a coastline (10)
ESCALATION – (A COASTLINE*) ‘battered’.

15 Athlete soft spoken old Scotsman entertains (8)
OLYMPIAN – LYMP sounds like LIMP ‘spoken’, ‘entertained by’ O[ld] IAN (the usual Scotsman!).

16 An idiot in the cast — one dries up regularly (3,5)
TEA CLOTH – A CLOT in (THE*) ‘cast’.

18 Lower rank includes English cricket side (8)
RELEGATE – RATE (rank) ‘includes’ E LEG. The answer is a verb.

19 Animal with rising sun seen in tropical tree (8)
PANDANUS – PANDA, then SUN ‘rising’.

20 Defenceless but intact in Albert Square? (7)
UNARMED – UN[h]ARMED, with the usual device about Cockney speech.

24 See female leaving opera gives smile (4)
GRIN – the opera is [Lohen]GRIN. Remove LO and HEN.

19 comments on “Times Cryptic No 27462 – Saturday, 21 September 2019.”

  1. ….MARIANNE. A nice puzzle where my only problems were the NHO PANDANUS, a brief fruitless attempt to anagrind “rapid rise a” at 13D, and the need to parse PILASTER afterwards.

    Thanks Bruce and setter.

    FOI OVERTONE
    LOI DIGRAPH
    COD DECREE NISI
    TIME 11:28

  2. Biffed a couple, and threw in TEA TOWEL, although that didn’t last long. DIGRAPH was my LOI, too; I’d somehow thought that the word referred specifically to conjoined letters, like œ or æ. I think COD to OLYMPIAN. Bruce, at 10ac you’ve got F(AND)AN, correctly, but it’s ‘with’ that’s being circled in the clue.
  3. 29 minutes. LOI HEAT RASH. I tend to wash up with a dish cloth and dry with a tea towel, so the amalgam of the two functions was temporarily confusing. PANDANUS unknown but solved from cryptic plus crossers. Enjoyable puzzle, but with no clue demanding to be COD. Thank you B and setter.

    Edited at 2019-09-28 06:13 am (UTC)

  4. Well, I thought I’d done this last week in about an hour, but my grid unaccountably has DOORWAY in 5d rather than DOORMAN, and I have no idea why, as the definition is pretty clear! D’oh. I was more worried about MARIANNE, PANDANUS and GRIN at the time… Sometimes the fingers just type something other than what the brain was thinking!
  5. I was on a train to Preston last Saturday so I had plenty of time to look at this. FOI was OSTRICH. I had a few left for the return journey but three clues resisted all the way back to Euston. I did put the puzzle down and finish the novel I was reading as well.
    The problems were DIGRAPH (I never learnt phonics),PANDANUS and HEAT RASH – all difficult clues I think. Wanting to fit TNT into 8d was a mistake and HEAT WAVE was my pencilled in final go. If I had been able to get DIGRAPH, I might have got the others.
    Ah well, onto today’s puzzle.
    David
      1. I had a quick look before taking the dog out -and didn’t get very far. Thanks for the warning.D
      2. In that case I shall leave it until I’ve driven back to Middlesbrough from Northampton. Might give the Concise a go to kick my brain into gear after the hiatus.
  6. 30 minutes for all but 21ac which I eventually abandoned and reached for aids, so I was very depressed shortly afterwards when reading Kitty’s blog of Jumbo 1400 to realise that I had looked up all the requisite knowledge during the previous week in order to solve this clue: Mexican state feline found in many fens? (7), but hadn’t managed to retain either part of it. But for the sieve-like quality of my brain, YUAN should have been a write-in.

    Edited at 2019-09-28 06:19 am (UTC)

  7. Steadily in and finished after 56 minutes. I’d never heard of a DIGRAPH but it made sense as a word and from the wordplay. I could remember MARIANNE from reading something a few years ago about Catherine Deneuve being the current personification (probably not the correct term).

    Worth doing for my last in (LO HEN) GRIN. I enjoyed the clue far more than I ever would the opera.

    Thanks to setter and blogger

  8. I hesitate to mention it after last Monday, but this blog also appears in A HUGE font compared with the norm. Is it my device/browser that’s causing it?
    1. I just looked at last Saturday’s blog, and as I thought, it appears to be the same size font as today’s.
      This is maybe the 5th time today that I’ve been logged out by LJ; rather annoying.
    2. Viewing the page source HTML, the text is specified to display in 14pt font. The usual font size appears to be 10pt. Bruce, did you mean it to display bigger and not just in Times Roman font?
      2. Times Roman is always smaller than other fonts, so deserves a bigger font size. On my iPad, 14 pt is perfect! I’ve just looked at it on a laptop and can see it could be 12pt there!!
  9. 16:25. I enjoyed this, holding myself up mostly by bunging in TEA TOWEL at first for 16D. I have ticks against DEPLOYED, EXAMPLES, ALL THE RAGE and GRIN. I took a while to see DIGRAPH but the unknown PANDANUS was my LOI, and I had to check it was right before submitting. Thanks Bruce and Setter.
  10. 23:46 so I found this pretty straightforward. DNK Marianne but it wasn’t too hard to work out. I attended a week’s worth of lessons at a cookery school in Thailand many years ago. One of the dishes we cooked was chicken wrapped in pandanus leaves. The leaves themselves aren’t edible. I have never cooked it since (one never seems to have any pandanus leaves to hand when the mood takes one) but at least the knowledge has finally come in useful for something.

    From the recipe book accompanying the course:

    Cut 200g of chicken breast into about 20 pieces. Put the chicken in a bowl. Add 1tbsp of light soy sauce, 1tbsp of sesame oil and 1tbsp of tapioca flour. Mix well. Leave to marinate for at least 10 mins. Add 4tbsp of roasted sesame seeds and 1tbsp of ground black pepper. Mix well. Wrap each piece of chicken in a pandanus leaf (cut the ends off if they are too long). You can store the chicken in the fridge like this until ready to fry. Put 250ml of oil into a wok and place on a medium heat. When the oil is hot add the chicken pieces and fry for about 5mins until cooked. Drain on some kitchen paper. Serve immediately with some sweet chilli dipping sauce.

    Special_bitter – logged out for some reason.

  11. Took 38:57 for this with PANDANUS and DIGRAPH taking up a lot of that time. Wasn’t aware of MARIANNE’s significance but worked her out eventually. UNARMED took me forever too. goodness knows why. Thanks setter and Bruce.

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