Times Cryptic No 27492 – Saturday, 26 October 2019. Not rare, but well done.

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A typical Saturday I thought. I didn’t know the answer at 10ac, but I got it from the wordplay. The answer at 9dn was obvious from the crossing letters, but I still can’t altogether explain the wordplay. 1ac was my first in, but I think I like it enough to call it the clue of the day! Thanks to the setter for a very enjoyable puzzle.

Clues are blue, with definitions underlined. (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 One way to serve meat, keeping it within fine margins (6)
FLAMBE – LAMB (‘it’, referring to ‘meat’), in F[in]E.

4 After promotion, my French is hard to reproach (8)
ADMONISH – AD, MON (“my”, in French), IS, H[ard].

10 Run out to vault containing your print (11)
ROTOGRAVURE – RO (run out, today’s cricketing reference), TO, GRAVE containing UR (your, when texting).

11 Hug monarch offering little resistance (3)
OHM – O (hug, as in OXOX=hugs and kisses), HM (Her Majesty). I’d have suggested ‘some’ rather than ‘little’ resistance. If you said ‘little’, my accounting lecturer would have asked, ‘compared to what’?

12 Exactly right to tuck into tea and bread (7)
CHAPATI – PAT (exactly right), tucked into CHAI.

14 One who used to dispatch game (7)
HANGMAN – double definition. Do some newspapers still headline Births, Deaths and Marriages as Hatched, Matched & Dispatched.

15 Hunting dogs we’d trained coerced union (7,7)
SHOTGUN WEDDING – (HUNTING DOGS WED*) ‘trained’.

17 Exemplary way with fish knives and forks? (9,5)
STAINLESS STEEL – STAINLESS as in ‘saintly’, perhaps, ST, EEL.

21 Gull goes around to crush piece of toast (7)
CROUTON – CON around ROUT. Cunning definition, I thought.

22 Arch rival of Tyneside canteen, I gathered (7)
NEMESIS – NE (northeast/Tyneside), MESS (canteen) ‘gathering’ I.

23 Spots leader leaving wood (3)
ASH – [r]ASH.

24 A foreign heath crossed with lily in harmful way (11)
UNHEALTHILY – UN (foreign, specifically French, word for ‘a’), then HEATH overlapping LILY.

26 Most here not in good shape? (4,4)
REST HOME – (MOST HERE*), ‘not in good shape’ implying anagram, and a very apt &lit. definition. (Are you talkin’ to me??)

27 Sweet drink invading nearly all of France once (6)
GATEAU – TEA invading GAU[l].

Down
1 Divine round playground secured by firm (8)
FORECAST – O, REC secured by FAST.

2 A pink organ towards the rear (3)
AFT – the Financial Times, or FT, is presumably on pink paper.

3 Singer accepts this country artist’s first original idea? (3,4)
BIG BANG – GB, A accepted by BING (Crosby).

5 A girl was hunted, possibly becoming one of these? (9-2-3)
DAUGHTERS-IN-LAW – (A GIRL WAS HUNTED*).

6 Old fox maybe grabs Echo, a nymph (7)
OCEANID – O, CANID grabs E[cho]. Dogs, foxes and wolves are canids. I didn’t know this nymph, although I see she appeared in 2013.

7 Distribute no more rings for their suppliers? (11)
IRONMONGERS – (NO MORE RINGS*).

8 Kind chap put in the shade (6)
HUMANE – MAN in HUE.

9 Race soldier to border? Not everyone stands for it (8,6)
NATIONAL ANTHEM – I didn’t altogether get this, but with guidance from paul_in_london, I now think it’s like so: NATIONAL (race, as in Grand National; and not, as I thought, NATION), ANT (soldier), and HEM (border). Presumably the word ‘Not’ is part of the definition, as a reference to the American protesters who kneel for their anthem. Does that happen during God Save the Queen? Surely not!

13 A job with strings attached gains Henry marks (11)
APOSTROPHES – A, POST, ROPES (strings) ‘gaining’ H (Henry). Another cunning definition.

16 Reply to outburst by Open University bringing in a smaller amount? (5,3)
BLESS YOU – BY, OU (Open University) ‘bringing in’ LESS. The outburst would be a sneeze.

18 Property guardians fill one book actually (2,5)
IN TRUTH – NT (National Trust) fills I, RUTH.

19 Island‘s old rules about rudiments of martial arts (7)
SUMATRA – SUTRA about M[artial] A[rts].

20 Cereal covers a large upside-down cake (6)
ECLAIR – RICE covers A L, all upside-down.

25 What’s crossed by Arctic explorers? (3)
ICE – hidden answer, and an &lit. definition (see glossary).

26 comments on “Times Cryptic No 27492 – Saturday, 26 October 2019. Not rare, but well done.”

  1. I had trouble parsing 9d too – I decided that the race was national, and that sometimes protesters don’t stand for it. I toyed with the ‘al’ being a truncation of ‘all’ – not everyone, but I couldn’t get ‘al’ bit back into the middle of the word, plus it left the definition as just ‘stands for it’ unless everyone did double duty.
    Otherwise I liked the long anagram at Shotgun Wedding.
      1. I’m not sure that is much better than where you got to. It’s always a problem for me when there are two bits in a clue that I need to squint at, so the tricky definition plus the al part got me
  2. Pretty straightforward, although I didn’t understand OHM–I knew X for kisses, didn’t know O for hugs. Biffed ROTOGRAVURE, parsed post-submission (I could do without textspeak). LOI OCEANID; all I could think of was vulpine and Oread until finally ‘canid’ hit me. Nice that Echo herself was a nymph, although not of the Oceanid variety.
  3. A technical DNF as I gave up and resorted to aids for ROTOGRAVURE (NHO) and OCEANID (double NHO, the nymph and the fox). OHM from definition, as NHO the hugs thing which doesn’t appear to be documented in any reputable source, just in assorted answers to people’s queries on-line.

    “Not every one stands for it” (i.e. NATIONAL ANTHEM) reminds me of the days when the tune was played in cinemas at the end of performances and it was customary for a large section of the audience to run for the doors in an attempt to get out before it started, leaving those of a more patriotic or royalist persuasion to stand dutifully by their seats until it was ended. I was always amused by those who didn’t quite make it out before the drum-roll at the start and then felt guilty enough to stop in their tracks in the gangways and wait like they were frozen in time until the music was over. Eventually the anthem was truncated to finish at the third line, by which time it all seemed pretty pointless and soon the whole practice was abandoned.

    Edited at 2019-11-02 06:46 am (UTC)

  4. 37 minutes, using an aid for ROTOGRAVURE, at the same time checking OCEANID. COD to BIG BANG. Is it really 13.8 billion years since Paul Whiteman created Bing Crosby? Mind you, runaway inflation was soon to follow. Apparently, ROTOGRAVURE figured in the lyrics of Easter Parade with Judy Garland and Fred Astaire, two more life forms earlier than homo boltonus, but a completely different bridge involving Rotten Row was dubbed for the British audience, and that was the one I was to hear some years later. I hadn’t heard of the Ringo album either. Enjoyable and informative puzzle. Thank you B and setter.
    1. “On the avenue,
      Fifth Avenue,
      The photographers will snap us,
      And you’ll find that you’re
      In the rotogravure.”

      “To the Park we’ll go
      Round Rotten Row
      The photographers will snap us
      And then you’ll be seen
      In the smart magazine”

      Interesting. I don’t think I ever heard the UK alternative but the strange word in the US version hadn’t registered in my brain. I probably assumed it was the name of a magazine, which as a sort of newspaper supplement was not far from the truth.

      1. I can remember hearing the British version as “And we will be seen in the Strand Magazine.” Sounds better than “smart magazine” I think.
  5. Strolled through this in 17.32, so there can,t have been many hold-ups. I remember a similar double squint at NATIONAL ANTHEM, but not so I couldn’t shrug and move on. Liked the long anagrams.
    I really can’t see the point of UR textspeak these days, when predictive texting writes most of your stuff for you, with the occasional entertaining malapropism.
  6. I don’t have my time written down for this one, possibly done in more than one sitting as I was at a convention last Saturday. What little notes I have tell me: FOI 4a ADMONISH, LOI the unknown 10a ROTOGRAVURE, and that I didn’t know OCEANID, either.

    I apparently skipped over the parsing of 9d, and thanks also for telling me how 11a OHM works; XOXO for “hugs and kisses” passed me by culturally, even though I remember looking up how the XOXO festival got its name at some point in the past.

  7. Due to VPN problems last week I have no paper record of my effort.

    10ac Philatelists know all about ROTOGRAVURE as it was the South African method of stamp production in Pretoria from 1936 – It made their stamps rather rough and unattractive. In 1948 SG 126 was the exception (typography) so my WOD.

    I wonder if our esteemed setter considered GIRL WAS HAUNTED at 5dn
    in order to avoid repetition with my COD 15ac SHOTGUN WEDDING.

  9. This was an enjoyable puzzle which I was eventually able to finish without aids. LOI was SUMATRA but prior to that I had found ROTOGRAVURE which somehow seemed vaguely familiar and then remembered CANID from previous crosswords to get the unknown nymph.
    DNK that HUG = O, but didn’t need to in this case.
    David
  10. Did most of this in half an hour or so, but ROTOGRAVURE and OCEANID took a bit longer. In fact I had to look up ROTOGRAVURE and confirm OCEANID was a thing, so 44:31 with a little help. Thanks setter and Bruce.
  11. I raced through this, shrugging at O for hug, trusting to the wordplay for OCEANID and failing to parse CROUTON. I liked BLESS YOU. Thanks Bruce and setter. 13:44.
  12. I was increasingly struck by how unknown ROTOGRAVURE seemed to be (aside from Horryd), so I finally looked it up in ODE and find that–in the sense I knew–it’s ‘chiefly North American’: the color supplement of the Sunday paper.
  13. 21:06. No problems with ROTOGRAVURE but I had to cheat to get OCEANID. I’m not sure if I knew ‘canid’ or not but I didn’t think of it.
  14. It took me about 30 mins to DNF this one. The NHO “hug” didn’t stand in my way nor the constructed rotogravure. No, it was 6dn I should have been thinking of nereids but having heard of naiads, dryads and the infamous oreads, I went for oceanad. I think my fox my have been a cad, not quite sure how I justified the rest of it but certainly never thought of canid. Bah!
  15. sadly, yes, on the congratulations. Do we have any South Africans among the usual participants?

  16. ….of a SHOTGUN WEDDING (Roy C, 1965, covered much later by Rod Stewart).

    I wasn’t a victim of anything here, although I’m sending a metaphorical hug to Bruce for the only explanation I needed.

    FOI FLAMBE
    LOI GATEAU
    COD ICE
    TIME 9:54

  17. I worked it out as Race Soldier Border being Nation Ant and Hem.
    The AL of National being Not Everybody ie Not All so AL.
    So “Everyone stands for it” being National Anthem.
  19. Oceanid last in, after considering oceanod and oceanad as possible nymphs. Didn’t see canid, as we were trying to shoehorn an N into cod for fox. Done in 45mins, a very quick time in comparison with that elapsed since the Big Bang.
    We happen to be doing the crossword just after the UK election, and saw the Nina across the middle. A reference to Boris “ tsar GB “ ?

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