Times Cryptic No 27804 – Saturday, 24 October 2020. Summer’s almost gone.

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Well the clocks went back in the UK overnight, and this was a good puzzle to signal the end of summer on that side of the world. Nothing too testing. A nice bit of tiffin at 1ac to get started. My last three in were 21, 11 and 12 ac, which in retrospect were all simple enough! Thanks to the setter for a very enjoyable puzzle. Let’s take a look.

Notes for newcomers: 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. Deletions are in {curly brackets}.

Across
1 High-flown sort of duck losing tail — it’s flapping about (9)
BOMBASTIC – a tailless BOMBAY{y} duck, then an anagram (flapping) of ITS, and C for about.
6 Witness, at the start, a return of colourful bird (5)
WADER – W for ‘witness, at the start’; A as a literal; DER=RED returning.
9 Continuous period in charge of some letters (5)
RUNIC – RUN, I/C.
10 I manage papers! Wowed? (9)
IMPRESSED – I’M (the) PRESS ED{itor}.
11 Being short of water initially hard for female (7)
ATHIRST – AT FIRST: change F for female to H for hard. A word that’s come up before from time to time.
12 Cut current, restricting theatrical events (7)
TOPSIDE – TIDE restricting OPS. So, a surgical theatre, not a repertory theatre. A delightfully minimalist definition!
13 Go through cases, then happen to find novel (7,3,4)
DECLINE AND FALL – DECLINE your Latin nouns, for example: mensa, mensa, mensam, mensae, mensae, mensa; followed by AND, FALL for ‘then, happen’. The novel is by Evelyn Waugh, published in 1928.
17 Animator has gap to fix in dreamlike sequence (14)
PHANTASMAGORIA – anagram (to fix) ANIMATOR HAS GAP.
21 Letters make opening of conversation academic (7)
POSTDOC – POST for letter, DO for make, C for ‘opening of conversation’.
23 Possibly one who narrowly escapes cold, with radiator (7)
CHEATER – C for cold, HEATER for radiator. The definition is as in ‘cheat death’.
25 Where one bravely takes misfortune, conscious it may provide a service (9)
CHINAWARE – take misfortune on the CHIN; then AWARE for conscious.
26 One takes a bow — girl pretending to be a boy (5)
VIOLA – double definition: a stringed instrument, or a character in Twelfth Night.
27 Figure I had rejected a fool (5)
DIGIT – DI=I’D, reversed. GIT = fool.
28 Requests one to leave a nice, secluded part of garden (9)
PLEASANCE – PLEAS for requests, then take the I out of A NICE.

Down
1 Serving women made from Adam’s rib (8)
BARMAIDS – anagram (made from) ADAMS RIB.
2 Chew lots, swallowing some number (5)
MUNCH – MUCH, swallowing N for number.
3 Unity at home full of love: give me a squeeze! (9)
ACCORDION – ACCORD for unity, I(O)N for ‘at home, full of love’.
4 Order of list corrected in article (7)
THISTLE – anagram (corrected) of LIST inside THE.
5 Turner puts lid on brown (7)
CAPSTAN – CAPS, TAN.
6 Puppy at first washed daily (5)
WHELP – W for washed (at first), HELP for a daily, of the Mrs. Mop kind.
7 Policemen shoot as retort, perhaps (9)
DISTILLER – the police officers could be D.I.S. Apparently a TILLER can be a sapling or shoot. Anything I ever knew about chemistry is long forgotten, but surely you can use a retort as a distiller to produce something or other.
8 Get back and think again (6)
REDEEM – does RE-DEEM mean “think again”? I don’t think so, even though RE captures “again”, and DEEM can certainly mean “think”. I think the clue really deserves a question mark to flag the joke.
14 Helping with party, working out expense of protecting house (9)
COHOSTING – COSTING, protecting HO for house.
15 Encrypting files gave minimum concealment (3,6)
FIG LEAVES – anagram (encrypting) FILES GAVE.
16 Fine description of Quidditch? It can reasonably be attacked (4,4)
FAIR GAME – F for fine, then Quidditch is an AIR GAME, since it’s played on broomsticks.
18 Headings of analyst’s ring binder that should shed some light (3,4)
ARC LAMP – A for analyst and R for ring (headings), then CLAMP.
19 Teach me to develop into a hacker (7)
MACHETE – anagram (‘develop’) of TEACH ME.
20 Was quick to take in a chapter, leaving gaps (6)
SPACED – put A+C for chapter in SPED.
22 Mild curse when having to keep following bank order (5)
DRAFT – put F for following in DRAT.
24 Spine damaged, put in hospital (5)
THORN – put H for hospital in TORN.

27 comments on “Times Cryptic No 27804 – Saturday, 24 October 2020. Summer’s almost gone.”

  1. I didn’t understand 1ac, since I didn’t know of Bombay ducks, but no problem. LOI TOPSIDE, a cut that so far as I know is not so called in the US; not to mention ‘current’ not being I. DNK TILLER. Mark Twain once said he’d rather decline two drinks than one German adjective.

    Edited at 2020-10-31 06:30 am (UTC)

  2. Thanks Bruce, but I think our setter is pushing his/her luck in saying “then happen” equals AND FALL. I solved the clue but put a question mark against it in my notes.
    DMNK TILLER was a shoot. Nor did I know what a PLEASANCE is.
    I thought POSTDOC and CHINAWARE were very good but my COD goes to TOPSIDE for the clever use of “theatrical events”.
  3. 40 minutes with a couple of unknown bits and pieces such as TILLER as ‘shoot’ and PLEASANCE as ‘secluded part of garden.

    I’ve always prided myself on being able to decline certain Latin words as learnt by rote at my prep school, but after solving 13ac with ease (and I knew the book too) I looked at some Latin grammar sites out of interest and noticed all the ones I visited set out declension of nouns in a different order, namely:

    Nominative
    Genitive
    Dative
    Accusative
    Ablative
    Vocative (only some of them didn’t even bother with the Vocative)
    making it more difficult for me to check that what I had remembered (in the order N,V,Ac,G,D,Ab) was correct and possibly rendering my high-speed recitations as party-tricks obsolete.

    Has there been some perverse change of policy in Latin teaching since my day? I wonder what Mr Kennedy of Latin Primer fame would have had to say on the subject!

    A previous shock re my early Latin studies (you can imagine I don’t get many of those!) was after leaving my prep school and resuming them at the next school where I was expected to pronounce V’s as W’s (e.g. ‘Weni, Widi, Wici’ instead of ‘Veni, Vidi, Vici’), or was it wice wersa? I forget after all this time, but not how to decline ‘Mensa’!

    Edited at 2020-10-31 06:57 am (UTC)

    1. I too knew the order as N, V, A, G, D, A.

      More interesting is the V versus W pronunciation. I knew that only from the light-hearted history book “1066 and all that”, which explained along these lines:

      “… the Latin phrase attributed to Julius Caesar was “veni, vidi, vici”. It’s worth noting that the Latin “v” tends to be pronounced as a “w”. So, what Caesar actually said upon seeing the Gauls aka French was “weeny, weedy, weaky”. No wonder they gave up!”

    2. One of the few things I remember from my year of Latin in the early ’80s:

      The nominative case is the subject
      The vocative case is O
      The accusative case is the object
      And don’t you forget it, oh no.

      The genitive means he owns it
      The dative to or for
      The ablative by, with or from
      Thank goodness there aren’t any more.

  4. I took 45 minutes on this and I can’t understand why in retrospect. PLEASANCE was LOI but everything else was known and as per instructions. Jack, at my grammar school we always went Nominative, Vocative; Accusative, Genitive Dative, Ablative up to my 1961 O Level. I wonder too now, when I sing hymns, if the vocative has been abolished. I’m singing Jesu and everyone else Jesus. Good puzzle.Thank you Bruce and setter.
    1. Yes, it doesn’t do much for the case in favour of learning what many regard as a ‘dead’ language that one of the first things one is expected to learn is how to address a table (O, table)!
      1. In the pool of tears, Alice address the mouse as “O, mouse!”, having seen the paradigm in her brother’s Latin textbook.
        1. It sort of makes sense to address a mouse – Robert Burns did it too – and even plants (Prince Charles, ‘O, Tannenbaum’ etc) but talking to a table is a bit odd by any standards.
          1. I remember from my student days reading the debates on the proposed US constitution, where one delegate–I forget which state–fearing the restrictions on liberty, begged his colleagues permission to apostrophise liberty: “O, liberty!” he began. The silly person apparently thought that the President would have too much power.
      2. My mum was taught to decline Regina, so the vocative seems sensible. I however had the table, and my very first Q was “what on earth are we doing here? O Table?”.
        Andyf
        1. I think Winston Churchill in ‘My Early Life’ made just the same point: how silly to say ‘O,table’.
  5. ….as Pauline Collins said in “Shirley Valentine”. If the full lockdown Boris is threatening becomes reality, there’ll be quite a few people reduced to talking to the table.

    Straightforward puzzle generally, though the usage of “tiller” was new to me (checked in Chambers afterwards), and I finally chucked in ATHIRST and parsed it afterwards.

    FOI WADER
    LOI ATHIRST
    COD BOMBASTIC (nice misdirection, but I know my bummalo from my elbow)
    TIME 9:40

    1. I think it was Spike Milligan describing an incompetent skipper – “He doesn’t know Madras from his Elba.”
      Of course it doesn’t work now as Madras has been renamed.
      Andyf
  6. 50mins for this enjoyable but quite testing (I thought) crossword. FOI BARMAIDS, LOI TOPSIDE, which was my COD. Also liked PHANTASMAGORIA, great word. I thought COHOSTING was hyphenated, and my online directory confirms this, but I guess it’s OK. Thank you b for the blog, and setter
  7. tough by my standards at 30.43, but no remembered reason why. I did check that TILLER was a planty sort of thing before submitting – this is a prize crossword.
    I liked the surface and definition for FIG LEAVES
  8. Traditional Latin teaching at my Northern grammar school. I kept going to A level but it’s the early stuff that remains.
    My FOI was MACHETE and LOI POSTDOC with a relieved smile.
    Not too difficult overall although much harder when you have BUMPTIOUS at 1a but the CAPSTAN made me rethink.
    Like others Tiller, Pleasance and Athirst were hopes rather than certainties. All finished by 2pm and not too long overall. David
  9. All but finished in 13 minutes, but then nearly the same time again over my last 5. TOPSIDE and DISTILLER my last two in after checking that “tiller” was a shoot… I see I’m not the only one not to have known that. Several ticks on my copy. BARMAIDS,MACHETE, CHINAWARE and FIG LEAVES all made me smile. FWIW I learnt N,V, Ac, G, D, Ab too.
  10. Another surprised to find that shoot is a definition of TILLER. PLEASANCE was also new to me. However, I managed to come in all correct in 34:34. ATHIRST was my LOI. Thanks setter and Bruce.
  11. I hadn’t heard of the reshuffling till I read this blog. I did a year of Latin, of which I remember the master got the class to proofread the textbook he’d written, and being one of those winning a bag of sweets for finding an error.
    Then was evacuated to school which didn’t include it, until 6th form, when was given crash reminder course, sufficient to pass the mandatory requirement or Cambridge.
  12. 35:20. Mostly straightforward with a bit of a hold up at the end over distiller, the shoot meaning of tiller and the distiller meaning of retort being unfamiliar.
  13. What a pain in the ‘arse dead foreign languages can be – let’s hope Trumpian English ends by the end of next week.
    Five years Latin under Mr. Wortley was horryd.

    FOI 5dn CAPSTAN (full strength)

    LOI 21ac POSTDOC whatever!

    COD 13ac DECLINE AND FALL we did it in the sixth-form – big fan

    WOD 17ac PHANTASMAGORIA (on Halloween)

    Time not recorded but slowish.

    1. Chambers has:

      git /git/ (slang)
      noun
      A person (derogatory)
      A fool
      A bastard. See also under get (n)
      ORIGIN: get offspring, brat

    2. I’m with you, David, and this is one of those cases where I think Chambers is too much of an outlier to rely on. But it’s come up before so I just shrugged my shoulders and moved on.
  15. 11:13. No problems. I never had so much as a minute of Latin instruction, but it didn’t cause me a problem. There’s a little park near us called the Pleasance but it had never occurred to me that the word had a more general meaning.

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