Times Cryptic No 27618 – Saturday, 21 March 2020. Doubling down on definitions.

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I barely finished the horror Friday puzzle by the time Saturday’s reached the web site, so it was a relief this one was solvable! My FIO was 14ac, which was so obviously an anagram. My LOI was 8dn, about which I had no idea; even when I saw the wordplay, the answer seemed implausible. Apart from that, my last few were in the top left, where cracking 9ac unlocked the rest.

There seemed to be more double definitions than usual, and several clues where the definition wasn’t at the start or end. My clue of the day was 9ac. I liked both the definition and the wordplay! Thanks to the setter for a very enjoyable puzzle.

Notes for newcomers: since the Times offers prizes for Saturday Cryptic Crosswords, this blog is posted a week later, after the competition closes. So, please don’t comment here on the current Saturday Cryptic. Clues are blue, with definitions underlined. (ABC*) means ‘anagram of ABC’. Deletions are in [square brackets].

Across
1 Mock? In a second almost comes to like Greek drama (6)
TRAGIC – RAG in TIC[k].
5 In unstable state, I must avoid responsibility (8)
LABILITY – take an I out of LIABILITY, to get this unfamiliar word.
9 Damaging fall in a Jersey ditch? (4,4)
ACID RAIN – A, C.I. (Channel Island), DRAIN. Lovely, well-hidden definition.
10 Look about and pull back (6)
REGARD – RE (about), DRAG (pull) backwards.
11 Girl rejecting dance shows bachelor out (6)
STELLA – [b]ALLETS, backwards.
12 Rail supporter is overwhelmed by jokes (8)
BANISTER – IS ‘overwhelmed’ by BANTER.
14 We barristers’ works bearing fruit (12)
STRAWBERRIES – (WE BARRISTERS*), ‘worked’.
17 With surprising delicacy, open book (12)
ENCYCLOPEDIA – (DELICACY OPEN*), ‘surprisingly’.
20 Weirdly unlucky defendant gets run in (8)
ACCURSED – R in ACCUSED.
22 Ring cleaner (6)
WASHER – double definition.
23 Human being virtuous? About time (6)
MORTAL – MORAL (being virtuous ) ‘about’ T for time.
25 Claire regularly takes foreign language, not the right subject (8)
LIEGEMAN – every second letter of cLaIrE, then GE[r]MAN.
26 Criminal proposal to compass death (8)
OFFENDER – OFFER to ‘compass’ END.
27 First element of telephone number provides lead (6)
TETHER – T[elephone], ETHER (numbing agent=number).

Down
2 Deliver on location, as told (6)
RECITE – RE (on), CITE sounds like (‘as told’) SITE.
3 Buy good new clothes reduced in response to explosion (3,5,3)
GOD BLESS YOU – (BUY GOOD*) ‘new’, ‘clothing’ LESS (reduced).
4 Man arrives at a lake in dense thickets (9)
CHAPARRAL – CHAP (man), ARR. (arrives), A, L (lake).
5 Extended courtesy for killer at Agincourt (7)
LONGBOW – a double definition, the first a touch fanciful.
6 His poetry attributed to Hubbard? (5)
BYRON – L. Ron Hubbard founded Scientology. Was Byron’s poetry BY RON? Puh-lease!
7 Stage set up (3)
LEG – GEL (set), ‘up’.
8 Novelist’s revolutionary opening enthrals press (8)
TURGENEV – URGE (press), inside (‘enthralled by’) TNEV, which is ‘revolutionary’ VENT (opening). I’d never heard of this Russian writer, and felt none the worse for that.
13 One can fill lots of cells — start making a bed? (11)
SPREADSHEET – another double definition, the second a touch fanciful this time.
15 Source of funds to stop a pair of lifts trapping people (9)
ENDOWMENT – END (stop), OWT (TWO, ‘lifting’), ‘trapping’ MEN.
16 Stop work as pirate (5,3)
KNOCK OFF – yet another double definition.
18 Boat’s propeller: one gets feet wet (7)
PADDLER – and yet another.
19 Open taking this seed for a spell (6)
SESAME – a quaint reference to Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves, and its magic spell, ‘Open Sesame’.
21 Firm one enters changed hands (5)
SOLID – I (one) entering SOLD.
24 Almost level in match (3)
TIE – TIE[r] (level), TIE (match).

54 comments on “Times Cryptic No 27618 – Saturday, 21 March 2020. Doubling down on definitions.”

  1. I biffed a couple: TRAGIC, GOD BLESS YOU. LOI 8d. TURGENEV wasn’t a problem–got him with a couple of checkers–but it took time to work out the wordplay. I liked ACID RAIN.
  2. I am unfamiliar with Lability, so stuck Listless in, which held things up.
    I also had Pedaler – think of Freddie Flintoff in his Pedalo – which is a better answer as it is &lit. Howzzat, Mr umpire?

    Edited at 2020-03-28 01:31 am (UTC)

    1. I came across ‘labile’ for the first (maybe only) time in this sentence from the late, lamented Jerry Fodor, and it stuck: ‘Any device whose computational proclivities are labile to its computational history is thereby able to learn, and this truism includes networks and classical machines indiscriminately’.
      1. I did check that due to some uncertainty in using an alternate spelling, and OED accepts both. Some of the US dictionaries do not. OED does not label the one l version as US, so I felt safe.
        1. Hmm, well, I see your OED and raise you a Chambers, which doesn’t even have pedaler, only pedaller.. but says “pedalling, or (US) pedaling.” Also ODO says: “pedaller (US pedaler)” .. who will contact the OED to put them right, you or me? Not as if we have much else to do 🙂
          1. You’ll have to do it, jerry. I naturally accept OED as an authoritative source, and since it supports my case I’m in no hurry to wise them up. I know that they always solicit input, so let me know if you have any luck
            1. I’m sure my English teacher, Mr Miles, taught us to double the closing consonant only if the stress falls on the last syllable. Thus, George pedaled his bicycle. George was a bicycle-pedaler. They both look OK to me, although my spellchecker is finding the past participle objectionable. It’s happy with pedaler though, which feels inconsistent.
            3. Paul: As the actual answer to the clue was PADDLER – I trust you bunged in PADALER? Never mind eh!

              According to on-line sources The Pedaler’s is a pub in Bentonville, AR and The Peddler’s is another pub in St. Pauls, MN

              As you are probably aware Pentonville is a prison in London where Oscar Wilde was once remanded in custody. AS GBS famously noted that we are separated by a common language.

              Re-Americanisms Wilde wrote: To the editor of the Guardian
              “Can you please ask your journalists and feature writers not to use American English in their articles? Whilst I appreciate that many are either American themselves, or have spent a long time in the USA, they are nevertheless writing for a British readership. Recent examples include clatch, rumbunctious, drag (for High Street), dweebish and schlep. I find myself constantly having to reach for the dictionary to find out what your journalists are saying when I am reading the Guardian or Observer because of these ugly and unnecessary Americanisms.”

              Edited at 2020-03-28 04:11 pm (UTC)

              1. I once lived in St Paul (think cold, then add a bit). That didn’t influence my sussing out the answer to this clue, though.
  3. Must have been off the wavelength, couldn’t finish on first attempt. Bottom half OK except liegeman took a while. Lability, Turgenev (heard of), Byron (the poet Elron, anyone? I’ve never seen L. Ron referred to as anything except L. Ron) kept the NE sparse, and most of the NW was empty. Finding it so hard I psyched myself out of the easy tragic, when that fell the rest soon dropped. High Chaparral known from TV as a kid but I couldn’t have defined it.
    1. ELRON was my first thought too! And I was right there with you on High Chaparral.
  4. Boo-boo describes how I felt on seeing the completed grid: God blast you!

    58 minutes for that. Oh dear.

  5. A DNF with 19dn SESAME missing! Just didn’t, wouldn’t, couldn’t see it. Doh!

    FOI 7dn LEG

    COD 17ac ENCYCLOPEDIA

    WOD 8dn TURGENEV

    Today’s Current Cryptic – no comment

    Edited at 2020-03-28 04:41 am (UTC)

  6. I solved only 8 clues at my first sitting because I was too tired to think properly. On resumption the next morning I needed another 34 minutes to complete the grid so over all I’d say this was an average Saturday solve for me.

    The only unfamiliar word was LABILITY which is on its first outing as an answer although it came up in wordplay for ‘liability’ last year. ‘Labile’ doesn’t seem to have come up either.

    LOI: SESAME which came to me just as I was about give up on it and resort to using aids.

    Edited at 2020-03-28 06:49 am (UTC)

  7. 38 minutes. LOI SESAME, a clever clue, but COD to KNOCK OFF. Dylan fan that I’ve been since 1963 and Freewheelin’, I’d briefly biffed ‘Hard Rain’ for 9 across until RECITE and GOD BLESS YOU put me right. What a fantastic surprise it was to find ‘Murder Most Foul’ waiting for me free in Facebook yesterday morning! I would have struggled to define LABILITY, so it was as well the cryptic was generous. A reasonably straightforward but pleasant puzzle. Thank you B and setter.
  8. ….but after 12 minutes I was down to the 5A/8D intersection – and there I stayed. Two revisits hadn’t helped, and on Monday I succumbed to a word search to find LABILITY (DNK). TURGENEV then immediately leapt out of hiding and hit me on the head with a leather-bound copy of “Fathers and Sons”. COD KNOCK OFF.
  9. I needed a couple of good sessions on this but I did finish it correctly. I can see from my paper version that about 6 clues held me up. KNOCK OFF took ages to find as did TRAGIC.
    Having got LABILITY I was sure that 6d was BARDS; BURNS another possible. I was looking in the old mother’s cupboard until L Ron appeared;so a slight worry about that clue but what the L.
    I actually parsed TURGENEV who seems to come up every so often. LOI was BANISTER; I think I’ve been caught out by that before.
    Enjoyed this puzzle.COD to SPREADSHEET.
    I have listened twice to the new Dylan song. I did wonder how many puzzles Verlaine could have solved in that time (i.e. about 33 minutes). David
    1. It’s a bit of a shame that Dylan is still buying into the conspiracy theories about JFK’s assassination. I used to, as well, as a young leftist. After studying the matter more closely, and learning to apply Occam’s razor, I realized that Oswald’s pathology, and his being clued in by Communist newspapers to the fact (unrevealed to the Warren Commission and unknown to the general public until the Church Committee report a decade later) that JFK’s CIA was trying to kill Castro, explains everything. But the song is more about a myth of the ’60s that so many of us grew up with as reality.

      The night before the assassination, Oswald pleaded with his wife to come back to live with him. If she had agreed, he never would have done the deed, regardless of how he justified it to himself. It was his final shot at the notoriety that he craved, as evinced by his self-titled “Historic Diary.”

      2. Saw an interesting new conspiracy theory a few years ago… the Secret Service shot him! After Oswald’s first shot, a Secret Service agent in the lead car grabbed at his rifle and inadvertently discharged it, hitting JFK.
        It can explain:
        – the impossibility of 3 shots in 3(?) seconds with a bolt-action rifle
        – only 2 shell casings found in the book repository
        – the exploding skull. Oswald used hard-cased bullets, make clean holes e.g through shoulder into governor(?). SS used soft bullets, expand and blow out big ugly holes
        – the direction the skull exploded, the back blown out
        – the whiff of cordite amongst spectators at street level.
        Relies on:
        – one Oswald bullet missed completely, still in the tarmacadam in Dealey Plaza?
        – a one-in-a-million stroke of bad luck the accidentally-fired gun hit JFK.

        Who nose? But it was interesting.

  10. 28 minutes. I believe SPREADSHEETS needed all the checkers before the penny dropped: I clearly wasn’t looking in the right direction, since MS Excel is on my limited array of shortcuts on the screen.
    BANISTER looks as if it’s spelt wrong: presumably Roger would agree.
  11. I also took some time convincing myself out of Elron. I blame Elrond from Lord of the Rings. I have also heard of Scientologists being derisively referred to as “the Elronners”.
    1. I have still not quite recovered from discovering that Elrond in the LOTR films is the *same person* as the baddie in the Matrix films..
      1. Yes, he’s quite the actor. I get the same effect from watching Hugh Laurie in back-to-back episodes of House and Jeeves and Wooster.
    2. Nagging thought has resolved itself days later… in the film “Repo Man” there were lots of low-key visual gags, including a rack of books at a supermarket checkout titled “Diuretics”, by Elroy Hubbard.
      1. I have seen Repo Man, but it was a long time ago. Might be time for a re-watch!
  12. My notes say “slow start, slow finish.” Possibly I was faster in the middle, but I wouldn’t put money on it. 51 minutes from FOI 11a to LOI 6d BYRON after LABILITY finally made it blindingly obvious and kicked me out of my Elron fixation.
  13. 24:32. I had a bit of a slow start to this and then a hold up at the end requiring an extended alphabet trawl to come up with TURGENEV. At least the name was vaguely familiar, but I hadn’t a clue what he wrote. “Beautiful!” it says at the top of my copy, with 8 ticks for good clues and 3 exclamation marks for tricky ones. Hard to pick a favourite, but GOD BLESS YOU had the biggest tick.
  14. I buy my Times daily here in France (version printed in Marseille). The last two Saturdays there has been no Prize Crossword on the back page or anywhere inside. Has anyone else come across this? Any info on it? Thanks, François.
    1. It’s on page 77 in the UK printed edition today. It was buried among the births, marriages and deaths last week.
      1. Thanks BW. Unfortunately my paper only goes up to Page 72. Therein lies the problem methinks. Very frustrating, especially in these times.
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  16. 34:26. I found this very hard. If I remember rightly the NE corner was last to fall, with the unknown LABILITY and my last in TURGENEV, which I couldn’t see without the opening T. The name was perfectly familiar but if you had asked me to name one of his novels I think I’d have said And Quiet Flows the Don.
    1. Your comment drove me to look up who wrote that. It was Sholokhov, as no doubt you know. I’d never heard of him, either.

      Edited at 2020-03-28 07:50 pm (UTC)

      1. I do now, yes! I remember that novel on my parents’ bookshelf but not who wrote it. I had also head of TURGENEV’s most famous novel, Fathers and Sons but obviously didn’t put the two together.
      2. I suffered from a lack of books in my early teens and read anything I could get my hands on. That included “And Quiet Flows the Don” and “The Don Flows Home to the Sea”. Family sagas about the early years of the Soviet Union and the war between the “Reds” and the “Whites”. Very enjoyable. The propaganda elements passed over my head. At that age all I wanted was a good story…
  17. This one kept me busy for 46 minutes with the NE bringing up the rear. I did manage to parse TURGENEV, but couldn’t have named any of his works to save my life. I have stumbled across him before in t Crosswordland though. LABILITY rang a very vague bell too, but took an age to see. GOY BLESS OYU and SPREADSHEET took far longer than they should have done. Liked KNOCK OFF. Thanks setter and Bruce.
  19. 26:49 a pleasant solve with a few head scratchers along the way. Liability needed more than one look though I knew the word labile as a description of a subject’s mood presentation in psychological assessments (possibly shortly before they try and attack the assessor). Turgenev took some cracking and I couldn’t see LOI sesame for love nor money until finally the penny dropped. Just reminded myself of the theme tune to The High Chaparral on YouTube. I think it may be even better than the theme tune to Bonanza.
    1. Can anything be better than the theme tune to Bonanza? (Btw A friend of mine used to organise Bonanza conventions in the States for fellow fans. They used to meet at the Ponderosa which, apparently exists in real life. People used to think she was mad – but not me. I knew her through Star Trek fandom. Familiar madness…)

      Edited at 2020-03-28 11:48 pm (UTC)

      1. Well, maybe not even better than. Still pretty good though. How wonderful to think that there were Bonanza conventions at the Ponderosa!
  22. Seems appropriate to be providing the last post on Anzac Day. Like Gallipoli this crossword didn’t end up well. Failed to see SESAME , instead in desperation had AERATE at 19d thinking the definition might be ‘open’ . 50mins with this error. This is definitely a tough week.

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