Times Cryptic No 27570 – Saturday, 25 January 2020. O, I’ll take the low road …

Author   branchPosted on Categories Weekend Cryptic
A meaty puzzle, this one. Many nice surfaces, and lots to mull over. The only answers that were beyond my general knowledge was helpfully clued.

My clue of the day was 25ac – lucky lass, that Melody. She can take the high road. Honourable mentions go to 19ac, 27ac, and 13dn. 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].

Across
1 Used clever remark when turning in defendant (10)
ACCUSTOMED – a MOT is a clever remark. Turn it backwards and put it in ACCUSED. ‘We were used/accustomed to …’.
6 Put on short, retrospective poetry collection (4)
EDDA – ADDE[d], backwards (retrospective). Old, Icelandic poetry.
8 Artist shouting from the crow’s-nest? (8)
LANDSEER – ‘land ahoy’. Ho ho!
9 Sweet love having answer for Henry! (6)
NOUGAT – that’s NOUGHT with H for Henry replaced by A for answer. A lovely clue.
10 In future stretcher bearer maybe ought initially to provide cover (4)

HOOD – O for ought in HOD (stretcher bearer, where to quote Chambers, ‘stretcher’ here means ‘a brick, stone, sod, sandbag, etc laid horizontally with others in the forming of a wall’). It took me a while to parse this. On edit: thanks to the collective commenters for fully parsing the clue. What is “future” doing in the clue? At one level, it makes the surface of the clue read smoothly. Perhaps, technically the bricks wouldn’t be stretchers until they are laid in the wall? Anyway, don’t forget to separate ‘in’ from ‘future’. ‘In’ is the containment indicator that puts O in HOD.

11 Bar or pub containing welcome touch: satellite! (10)
INHIBITION – INN containing HI, BIT, and IO (welcome, touch, and satellite of Jupiter, respectively). And a while to parse this, too.
12 Matched husband with poet, a religious type (9)
METHODIST – MET, H for husband, and ODIST. I checked the dictionary to see ‘odist’ was there.
14 Coin, old, something you should get from cracker? (5)
OBANG – O for old, BANG. A firecracker might go bang. It’s a Japanese coin, which I didn’t know of.
17 Char’s function to keep cleaning, ultimately (5)
SINGE – G from the end of ‘cleaning’, in SINE. A nice surface!
19 Film, very sad, about English revolutionary, that’s dragged on (9)
CIGARETTE – ET, TRAGIC around E for English, all ‘revolutionary’ or written backwards. Once I thought of an …ETTE that fitted the helpers, the parsing was easy enough, but I’d never have got there via the wordplay. A clever surface.
22 Winter Olympians somehow impress UK judge (3,7)
SKI JUMPERS – (IMPRESS UK J*), ‘somehow’.
23 The case football administrators brought to court (4)
FACT – F.A. for Football Association, CT for court. Postscript: I meant to expand on the definition. I think it’s as in, “that’s the case/fact”.
24 Girl standing for something upright or grand? (6)
JOANNA – Cockney Rhyming Slang for piano.
25 Melody to finish with her Scottish boyfriend? (8)
ALASTAIR – a melody the band finishes with might be A LAST AIR, and Alastair might conceivably be Melody’s Scottish boyfriend.
26 One almighty petition letter after all the others sent back (4)
ZEUS – take SUE (petition) and Z (the letter after all the others), and send it all back.
27 Confidential if not entirely sober sign one’s flipped! (10)
TIDDLYWINK – a WINK might be a sign that one is conveying a confidence. If not quite sober, it might be a TIDDLY WINK.

Down
1 Doctor in lobby from E London — so awkward (3,6)
ALL THUMBS – a hall in East London becomes an ’ALL. SO gives THUS. Insert an MB.
2 Cook up and about mostly once a month (7)
CONCOCT – C, ONC[e], OCT[ober], all from about, once (mostly), month.
3 Film that’s European and British in equal parts? (3,5)
THE BIRDS – the equal parts are THIRDS. Insert E for European and B for British.
4 Island’s dairyman worked with harvest (7,8)
MARTHA’S VINEYARD – (DAIRYMAN HARVEST*), ‘worked’.
5 Flower buried in cobweb unadvisedly picked up (6)
DANUBE – backwards hidden answer. (Buried in, picked up.)
6 Just leave a barrel between tablets (9)
EQUITABLE – QUIT A B[arre]L between two E tablets.
7 Drive past, over railroad (7)
DRAGOON – DR, AGO, ON, from drive, past, over.
13 “School”, Jack means to write, is “tremendous fun” (4,5)
HIGH JINKS – HIGH [school], J[ack], INKS.
15 Farmers’ movement historically target reforms: about a thousand (5,4)
GREAT TREK – (TARGET*) ‘reforms’, RE for about, K for thousand. As the expression suggests, it happened in South Africa.
16 Ruin is going to a man with a plan (8)
MARSHALL – MAR for ruin, SHALL for is going to. The plan to rebuild Europe after WWII.
18 Trying Kansas, visiting one city (7)
IRKSOME – KS visiting I ROME.
20 Asian holding strike gets more than a piece of one’s mind (7)
THALAMI – THAI holding LAM. Since ‘thalamus’ is the singular, ‘thalami’ would be two pieces of the brain.
21 Mutual dealt exceptionally in the German mark (6)
UMLAUT – (MANUAL*), ‘exceptionally’. Two dots above a German vowel to change its pronunciation.

26 comments on “Times Cryptic No 27570 – Saturday, 25 January 2020. O, I’ll take the low road …”

  1. I was tiddli enough to spell it tiddliwink… somehow! Bah humbug!

    Edited at 2020-02-01 12:18 am (UTC)

    1. ….ALL THUMBS, but I’m not “bow legged”, so entering that very early at 1D, and compounding the error by biffing “Whistler” at 8A made a really difficult puzzle all the tougher. I realised I’d got my fingers burned once I got SINGE.

      I didn’t know that “bl” was an acceptable abbreviation for barrel.

      After 27 minutes, I paused with two clues unsolved, and left it for a few hours. That worked, and less than 2 minutes after restarting I remembered the MARSHALL Plan (I haven’t a clue what it involved), and my LOI then jumped out at me.

      A cracker of a puzzle with a good few COD candidates. The bricklaying clue to HOOD, the clever arrangement for CIGARETTE, and ALL THUMBS, which totally fooled me, were all impressive. But in the end….

      FOI EDDA
      LOI CIGARETTE
      COD ALASTAIR
      TIME 28:35

  2. I don’t have a time for this, but it took me a long time. Didn’t understand HOOD, since I didn’t know the relevant meaning of ‘stretcher’, but it had to be. I finally remembered JOANNA, in the course of an alphabet trawl. I have a ! by OBANG, but in retrospect it should have been a !! An obang WAS a Japanese coin, in use from 1588 to maybe the mid-19th century. I’d never heard of it, of course; fortunately the wordplay was kind, although it’s a pretty odd surface. Now it’s back to SNAFU Central, to see if the jumbi are accessible yet.
    1. I wasn’t sure if ABANG wouldn’t have been a reasonable result (just from the cryptic).

      Edited at 2020-02-01 01:48 am (UTC)

      1. Although it would be hard to justify the order ‘coin old’ if ‘old’ were not to be taken as O.
  3. I wrote “Too Hard” on my printout but I find it rather difficult to justify that now. I think the ones I struggled with most were THE BIRDS, EQUITABLE, CIGARETTE and the unknown THALAMI which sounds like cold sausage for somebody with a lisp.

    DK bl = barrel, but decided it would probably be used in the brewing industry along with the more familiar pt = pint and qt = quart. Oil trade too, perhaps.

    I missed the possibility of Melody as a girl’s name which made me doubtful about the presence of ‘her’ in 25ac.

    LANDSEER brought back feelings of indignation during a quiz over Christmas in which I was (from my POV) robbed of a point because I didn’t know the first name of the artist responsible for ‘The Monarch of the Glen’ (it was Edwin). This then led onto a wider discussion as to when in quizzes one might reasonably be required to give the full name of the subject of the question and when the surname might be enough. For example I might argue that knowing Marconi as a pioneer of radio was enough without having to specify his first name as Guglielmo. By what rules do other play, I wonder?

    Edited at 2020-02-01 06:26 am (UTC)

  4. I was the best part of an hour and a half on this, a real stinker but enjoyable for all that. I thought of LANDSEER straightaway, but it needed some crossers before I had the courage of my convictions. My daughter is a JOANNA so that was straight in. I half-knew EDDA but never heard of OBANG, where the cryptic was generous. Some very clever clues such as CIGARETTE which I did parse eventually. LOI HIGH JINKS, an expression from another era. COD to ZEUS. Thank you Bruce and setter.
  5. VG 1 was my note to myself – very good one hour.

    I really enjoyed this one. Kenneth Williams stated an UMLAUT was a North American Indian Teddy Boy. Charming!

    FOI 22ac SKI JUMPERS rather like those awful Christmas sweaters! Destination Room 101.

    LOI 25ac ALASTAIR I know that Aleister Crowley’ parents spelt it differently, but then he was entirely different!

    COD 4dn MARTHA’S VINEYARD – the deaf of that island came up with MVSL

    WOD 27ac TIDDLYWINK – thank goodness the setter opted for
    the word THALAMI (7) at 20dn, and not TRA-LA-LA (3,2,2) MAN UTD (4-2-4)

    14ac numist. the OBANG, like the obols on the original dust jacket of Goldfinger (Richard Chopping), were made of gold.

    Edited at 2020-02-01 08:58 am (UTC)

  6. I looked at this en route to Big Dave’s birthday bash; got started in the SW. FOI was SINGE. Then after solving a few clues I hit a wall and found the rest too difficult. I looked again on the way home and it was just impenetrable to me; and I wasn’t tiddly.
    Still wondering about FUTURE in 10a and that clue as a whole was a bit of a stretch.
    David
  7. 27:58. I have “Beaut!” written at the top of my copy. I had no idea what “In future” was doing in 10A, and I’m still none the wiser. I was puzzled too by “The case” as the definition for FACT. But otherwise all great fun. Too many nice ones to list all my ticks butCOD to my LOI, CIGARETTE. Thanks Bruce and setter.
    1. Good point. I meant to expand on that definition in the blog but forgot.

      You may query it, but yes, that’s the fact/case.

      Edited at 2020-02-01 09:28 am (UTC)

    2. Re. what in future is doing in 10ac, I’m not sure how much sense this will make but I suppose a brick only becomes a stretcher once it is laid with others in a wall. Until that point e.g. when being carried to the prospective wall in a hod it must be just a brick so if you call it a stretcher you have to qualify that in some way to suggest it’s quality of stretcher-hood is at that point just potential – hence future stretcher. That’s my take on it anyway.
  8. OK. Thanks. I’d thought that a case needed more than one fact and I was puzzled by the “The”, but, elaborating on your example, “the fact of the matter” -> “the case” has enlightened me.
  9. I was confident in putting in motto for 14a but sadly the mott is not a coin.
    Apparently re 8a landahoy was not an artist -though there is a Chris Hoy so it seemed plausible.
    1. I got as far as looking up MOTTO to find out if it was. Who knows the names of all old coins?

      Edited at 2020-02-01 11:08 am (UTC)

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  11. It took me 56:01 to battle my way through this one, and I had to look up the TREK bit of 15d. I was unsure about HOOD as I didn’t know the required meaning of stretcher, although I did know a hod was used to carry bricks. Otherwise a lot of neurons chewed through to get to the end. Thanks setter and Bruce.
  12. 45:05. I found this a tough test but satisfyingly chewy. A few like LOI cigarette, Alastair, tiddly wink and dragoon took ages to fathom. I didn’t know of The Great Trek but managed to work it out ok. I have ticks on my paper copy at 19ac, 1dn and 2dn. Good stuff.
  13. too much obscure general knowledge for my liking. dnk Thalami, Marshall, obang and edda.
  14. ain’t obscure. Check out ‘The Marshall Plan’ on Wikipedia. It was like a reverse American Brexit. Others were, but EDDA is a bit of a chestnut.
  15. Aha. Thanks. I never knew a stretcher was a set of bricks in a wall. I should have read Bruce’s blog more carefully!
  16. I think you’ve nailed it. The brick in the hod is a ‘future stretcher’, if it doesn’t become a stretcher until it’s laid.

    You have to lift and separate ‘in’ and ‘future’ BTW, since ‘in’ is the containment indicator telling you to put the O in HOD.

  17. LOI Joanna, after alphabet trawl to get PDM! Should have realised that the obligatory cockney clue was missing. Took us to a total of 38mins, without a particular hold up until then.
    A lot to like in this puzzle, with the stretcher bearer and tiddlywink much appreciated.

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