Times Cryptic No 27882 – Saturday, 23 January 2021. Crosswords in the mist?

There were at least five clues here where I thought, well that must be the answer, although I can’t explain it! I’ll put it in and look up how, who or why before I write the blog. Despite that, it was all solvable (bar the explanations) in reasonable time. Lots of fun, and expansion of my general knowledge. Thanks to the setter for a very enjoyable puzzle.

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 Damage resistant couch — one may be on it (7,7)
SCATTER CUSHION – anagram (‘damage’) of RESISTANT COUCH. Apparently you can put scatter cushions anywhere, not just on couches.
9 Picture wins international prize finally (9)
LANDSCAPE – LANDS=wins, CAP=international (representative), E=(priz)E ultimately.
10 Beg to avoid two directions in wood (5)
BEECH – BE(SE)ECH=beg.
11 Excellent hairstyle returns to a region of Africa (5)
NUBIA – an A1 BUN, ‘returning’. I didn’t know where Nubia is/was – it’s along part of the Nile river – but vaguely remembered Mandrake the Magician, comic strips that included Lothar the Nubian.
12 Doesn’t accept condensation corrodes (9)
MISTRUSTS – MIST=condensation, RUSTS=corrodes.
13 By end of term I will make rapid progress in the fast stream (8)
MILLRACE – M=end of (ter)M, I’LL, RACE.
15 Most casual officer arresting fellers (6)
LAXEST – LT=lieutenant, ‘arresting’ AXES=fellers of trees.
17 At leisure, one’s put together lecture about India, great stuff to begin with (6)
JIGSAW – JAW=lecture, ‘about’ the first letters of I(ndia) G(reat) S(tuff). Jigsaws are definitely great stuff for surviving lockdowns.
19 A few accepting guidance for solemn oath (2,4,2)
SO HELP ME – SOME=a few, ‘accepting’ HELP=guidance.

Doesn’t the solemn oath need to say, so help me, God? To my ear, ‘so help me’ sounds more like an angry parent’s threat.

22 Pope’s emissary embraced by cardinal and sent down (9)
RELEGATED – LEGATE ‘embraced’ by RED.
23 Matting material covers hard area in cathedral (5)
CHOIR – COIR covers H=hard.
24 A disreputable girl back in OK place (5)
TULSA – A SLUT, ‘back’. An immediate write in for me, since Tulsa is just about the only place I know in Oklahoma.
25 Discharging manager, jolly, but losing head (9)
EXECUTING – EXEC=manager, (o)UTING=jolly. One of the obvious answers where I needed help for the blog. This meaning of ‘jolly’ escaped me!
26 Painter’s remarkably warm bond with Oxford (4,5,5)
FORD MADOX BROWN – anagram (remarkably) of WARM BOND OXFORD. Once the helpers suggested ‘Brown’, I guessed the rest, since I vaguely knew the name of Ford Madox Ford, the writer. I had no idea Ford Madox Brown, the painter, was his grandfather!

Down
1 Unheard of numbers in units briefly given officer rank (6,8)
SILENT MAJORITY – S.I.=(the modern international system of) units, LENT=given, MAJORITY=rank.
2 Miss Lee, aspiring starlet, losing head and gaining pounds (7)
ANNABEL – the aspirant is a (w)ANNABE. Add L=pounds (sterling). I’ve since discovered that Annabel Lee is the subject of a poem by Edgar Allen Poe.
3 Scientist almost entirely fixed up (5)
TESLA – AL=‘almost’ AL(L)=entirely; SET=fixed: all ‘up’=backwards.
4 Get more weapons, to kill? That’s bats (8)
REARMICE – REARM=get more weapons, ICE=to kill. I’d never heard of ‘rearmice’, but it is indeed an archaic name for bats.
5 Difficulty presumably felt by crowned head? (6)
UNEASEuneasy lies the head that wears a crown. Henry IV, Part II. I read the clue carefully to convince myself the answer should be a noun: so, unease, not uneasy.
6 Pass winter quietly, ordering herb tea in (9)
HIBERNATE – anagram (ordering) of HERB TEA IN.
7 Manage to get eyestrain? (7)
OVERSEE – nice pun. Use your eyes too much and look out!
8 Take heroin, Charlie and ecstasy, and (magically) Puff! (5,3,6)
CHASE THE DRAGON – in my innocence, I didn’t know this expression. CHAS=abbreviation for Charles, E=ecstasy, Puff=THE (magic) DRAGON. Puff the Magic Dragon was sung by Peter, Paul and Mary. Peter wrote the song.
14 Right muff of a military formation? (9)
REARGUARD – R=right, EARGUARD=muff.
16 Who mixed colour to make trouble? (3-3-2)
HOW-D’YE-DO – HOW = anagram (mixed) of WHO, DYE=colour, DO=make.
18 Ship leaving the north carrying one scientist (7)
GALILEO – GALLEO(n) ‘carrying’ I.
20 Old bombs in possibly poor condition (7)
PROVISO – V1 was the old (WWII) bomb. So, two VIS in an anagram (possibly) of POOR.
21 Successive top marks for Olympian (6)
ATHENA – a goddess, not an athlete. Her marks were A, THEN A.
23 A bit of bread is not much comfort? (5)
CRUMB – a crumb of comfort, as the saying goes.

25 comments on “Times Cryptic No 27882 – Saturday, 23 January 2021. Crosswords in the mist?”

  1. No idea of the time, as I discovered, when I went to check my answers just now, that I’d forgotten to fill in some words; but it was a long time. Didn’t understand CAP in LANDSCAPE; actually, I still don’t. Also DNK ‘jolly’ or CHASE THE DRAGON. I knew REARMICE, although I’ve only seen ‘reremice’–in ‘Midsummer Night’s Dream’, I think. ANNABEL struck me as a bit TLS-y and arcane for a cryptic.
    1. If you represent your country at say cricket or football, you get a cap (headgear) with your national crest. Thus, you are a Cap.
      1. Ah; thanks. I was about to ask how one gets to CAP from ‘international’, but I now see from ODE that ‘international’ can be a player.
  2. Also found it tricky, with a few of the answers obvious but hard to parse, as our blogger says. NHO rearmice, Ford Madox Brown (FMFord known) or Annabel Lee, did know chase the dragon which I associate with GIs in Vietnam.
    I think it was the slightly unusual (in a good way) style of clueing that held me up most.
  3. I didn’t remember the variant of “rearmice” from Shakespeare, so that was a surprise.
    “Annabel Lee” was Poe’s last poem and has been oft anthologized and sometimes included as well, I’d guess, in textbooks. Wikipedia notes that it was an inspiration for Nabokov, especially in Lolita, and the list of adaptations there is quite extensive.
  4. The previous week Vinyl had said “today’s is pretty hard” thus putting me off as Vinyl is a quicker solver than me. Fortunately this proved to be not as difficult as all that. Had it been I would have taken well over an hour.

    Thanks, Bruce for the blog and for explaining ‘jolly’ in 25ac. I thought, first, of ‘jolly’ referring to the Royal Marines and wondered how that fitted in.
    I agree that the phrase in 19ac should be ‘so help me God’.
    Didn’t know that about FORD MADOX BROWN!
    NUBIA in 11ac puts me in mind of Alan Coren’s “Bulletins of Idi Amin” wherein he sometimes referred to “de damn’d Nubians”.
    Plenty of ear worms in TULSA in 24ac: Eric Clapton’s version of “Tulsa Time”, “Tulsa Queen” by Emmylou Harris and the ridiculously titled “24hrs from Tulsa by Gene Pitney. Even in in the early to mid 60s you could be just about anywhere in the world and still be only 24hrs from Tulsa.
    Another ear worm in CHASE THE DRAGON. I know the phrase from the Steely Dan song “Time out of Mind”.
    In 22ac I spent too long wanting the emissary to be nuncio.
    In this puzzle we had WHOOPEE CUSHION. The previous week we had SCATTER CUSHION.
    FOI HIBERNATE; LOI PROVISO; COD SILENT MAJORITY
    Nice surfaces and a good puzzle overall.

    1. He must have been driving to Tulsa, and he was planning to stop the night in a motel, which indeed he did! So 24 hours was possible. And air travel was high risk, see Buddy Holly, Big Bopper, Ritchie Valens. Mind you, Eddie Cochran bought it on the A4 at Chippenham. There were no easy options.
      1. Didn’t know that about Eddie Cochran. I do remember Marc Bolan “buying the farm” in a Mini in Barnes, however.
        1. Gene Vincent was also severely injured in the same accident that killed Cochran
      1. Oh, don’t know that one! Must look it up on YouTube.
        What is it about Tulsa?

        Edited at 2021-01-30 07:32 pm (UTC)

  5. …Gene Pitney, one of the greats of my youth. I was 40 minutes on this while watching the cricket. I’d never heard that term for BATS, and you can’t put linseed oil on them, but the cryptic was kind. I had heard of ANNABEL LEE but couldn’t remember who she was. I was confident enough with crossers to biff her. LOI was HOW D’YE DO as it’s not the way I say it. FORD MADOX BROWN was a great anagram but I think CHASE THE DRAGON wins COD. Enjoyable, as was the cricket. Thank you B and setter.

    Edited at 2021-01-30 08:07 am (UTC)

  6. Just about an hour for this but all finished. B, I think in 1d it is “the rank of officer” that is the MAJORITY. Just rank would be MAJOR, no? Anyway, I realized I had not parsed one or two including EXECUTIVE, so thanks for the explanations B, as ever. Thanks to the setter too.
  7. 96 minutes to finish so yes I remember struggling with this one, coming to a complete stop several times before finding a way back in to keep me going for a while.

    I went the wrong way with 1dn, taking “in units” to be inside two 1s=Is giving ILENT MAJORI with apparently part of the clue (all in pigs place) missing. An example of why it’s so great to have the blog to come to. Many thanks.

    I did know FORD MADOX BROWN, but not strongly enough to stop myself rejecting it at first on the basis that there can’t possibly be two people called FORD MADOX SOMETHING. I wasn’t helped by having, for too long, the T from CRUST instead of the B from CRUMB.

    And REARMICE, for heaven’s sake! At least the wordplay delivered it. COD PROVISO, not difficult but somehow satisfying. An enjoyable workout.

  8. I was another who had encountered “reremice” so it didn’t need a massive leap of faith to accept the phonetic alternative. I DNK Miss ANNABEL Lee from Poe, but I’m vaguely reminded that Stevie Nicks did a song based on “an old poem” which was probably this.

    FOI LANDSCAPE
    LOI ATHENA
    COD JIGSAW
    TIME 10:44

  9. My FOI was CHASE THE DRAGON and then I solved a further 7 clues all on the RHS.
    This needed several sessions and a lot of hard work but I got there eventually. Not sure what was last in as I went online halfway through.
    DNK ANNABEL. I think HOW D’YE DO was last in needing all the checkers. UNEASE and REARMICE depended on the cryptic and guesswork.
    I liked this as the unknowns to me were indicated by the cryptics, in other words, as it should be. And liked the JIGSAW clue.
    David
  10. Quite a few unknowns to work out from wordplay in this one. REARMICE being the most obscure one, to me at least. CHASE THE DRAGON was vaguely familiar as was FORD MADOX BROWN, although the latter was only familiar because of FORD MADOX FORD coming up in a previous puzzle. An enjoyable 43:52. Thanks setter and Bruce.
  11. It seems this was a more straightforward one for me than for others, as I recorded a time of 17.41. It helped, no doubt, that I knew the REARMICE, at least in their singular form, and when you try it, rearmouses sounds suitably wrong.
    Chambers lists SO HELP ME as a variant on the version with God on the end, and it didn’t worry me. So help me, I’ll stick to that opinion whatever you may say!
    I don’t think I know ANNABEL LEE as a poe/m, but the name was nonetheless familiar. Wife/sister of Laurie? One of Betjemen’s fancies? Some folk song? Unresolved while solving, as the wordplay was neat.
    CHASING THE DRAGON is also the title of an unusually inspiring book about one woman’s faith inspired crusade against drug addiction in Hong Kong, which is where I think I knew the phrase and what it meant.
    Thanks B for a thorough blog with some apposite added extra details.

    Edited at 2021-01-30 12:50 pm (UTC)

  12. late and only a dozen respondents thus far! No Jack I know from my brother that vaxxing is underway in Leighton Buzzard.
    What’s wrong with Saturdays? At least it only took me a few minutes to absorb all the comments, and 50 on the puzzle. Mainly of interest was Gene Pitney, who didn’t do it for me, as my Dad liked him!Teenagers!

    Mr. Browndog seems to be out of sorts.

    FOI 23dn CRUMB

    LOI 15ac LAXEST

    COD 25ac FORD MADOX BROWN who was known.

    WOD 24ac TULSA – I liked the way it was 24 – nice one Setta!

    Edited at 2021-01-30 06:11 pm (UTC)

  13. Knew all the gk here except REARMICE. I started very slowly and was surprised when I checked out that my time was only 31 minutes. I couldn’t parse the UTING bit of 25a before coming here. I was trying to fit the Royal Marines in somewhere.
  14. 27.21. I didn’t find this too hard for a Saturday. NHO of Miss Lee or the rearmice but managed to derive them ok from the word play. I liked the clue for scatter cushion but COD to jigsaw which had me scratching my head for ages.
  15. Same here as most others — I either knew it or found the cluing more than adequate. I liked Athena (and not only because that would be her father on the right in the avatar). Thx brnchn

    Edited at 2021-01-30 07:28 pm (UTC)

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