Times Cryptic No 27906 – Saturday, 20 February 2021. What mental block?

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I was stuck on this for ages, with three clues unsolved. To clear my mind, I started preparing the blog. Joy – all three jumped out after the break! It’s not an easy puzzle, but all doable except 16dn, which you either know, or you don’t! (Spoiler … I didn’t.)

Thanks to the setter for a very enjoyable puzzle. How did you all get on?

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 struck through.

Across
1 Something injected ruins meat, sadly (9)
ANTISERUM – anagram of RUINS MEAT (‘sadly’).
6 Follow and photograph Queen for publication (5)
PAPER – a PAParrazo follows and photographs the famous, including ER herself.
9 Works in pub with odd people out of clubs (7)
INNARDS – INN=pub. CARDS are odd people, losing C for clubs. The innards of a watch, for example. My LOI.
10 One getting large in stomach, putting on weight? (7)
GLUTTON – L in GUT, then put on a TON of weight.
11 Chap knocking back the French spirit (5)
NIGEL – he knocks back LE GIN, non?
12 Reject skin of rice pudding one had for lunch? (9)
REPUDIATE – RE is the ‘skin’ of RicE, then add the PUD that I ATE at lunch.
14 Heart to heart shows a willingness to listen (3)
EAR – the ‘heart’ of hEARt. Very clever!
15 Heaving from ship in motion ceases — sinks, unfortunately (11)
SEASICKNESS – anagram of CEASES SINKS (‘unfortunately ’).
17 Wishes track to be changed — something very dated on the radio (4,7)
CATS WHISKER – anagram of WISHES TRACK (‘to be changed’). A form of radio receiver (or perhaps a component thereof) a hundred years ago.
19 Pickpocket paid back missing note (3)
DIP – PaID, backwards, without the A=a random musical note.
20 Continual annoyance of girl in navy in freezing surroundings (9)
IRRITANCY – RITA in RN in ICY. Nests within nests!
22 Young lad discarding fish skin (5)
STRIP – the lad is a STRIPLING, the fish is a LING.
24 Commercial jingle in rhyme is preventing success (7)
ADVERSE – AD, VERSE.
26 Learned of European raw hors d’oeuvre that must be peeled (7)
ERUDITE – E=European, then CRUDITÉS are ‘peeled’.
27 Check uranium found in mine passage (5)
AUDIT – U in ADIT.
28 Oxford pursuing heroin? It’s nailed on (9)
HORSESHOE – HORSE=heroin, OXFORD=shoe.

Down
1 Like a tyrant? Roman emperor is this following October (5)
AVIAN – OCTAVIAN was an emperor, so OCTAVIAN is like a (tyrant) bird. I wasn’t sure if the emperor was OCTAVIUS or OCTAVIAN, and had no idea there was a tyrant bird, but what else could the answer be?
2 Bird a long time in top half of tree (7)
TANAGER – AN AGE inside TREE. Another obscure bird, but this one faintly remembered.
3 Cutter wallows and yaws endlessly under southern cape (6,3)
SCROLL SAW – S=southern, C=cape, ROLLS=wallows, then YAWS is ‘endless’. Second to LOI.
4 Doubt the purpose of English Heritage is losing power (11)
RESERVATION – PRESERVATION is the purpose of the charity, English Heritage. Never heard of it, but of course it is! Third to LOI.
5 Stick up this clock (3)
MUG – GUM backwards.
6 Writer of verses for Mass (5)
POUND – Ezra Pound was the poet. Pounds and ounces hang on stubbornly alongside kilograms, apparently, despite metrification.
7 Boy at wedding eating too much soup (7)
POTTAGE – O.T.T. in PAGE.
8 People just missing first smuggler with drink (7-2)
RUNNERS-UP – RUNNER, SUP.
13 Work steadily with papa around haystack and lug fruit (7,4)
PRICKLY PEAR – PLY around RICK, P=papa in the phonetic alphabet, EAR=lug. In Australia, it’s a noxious weed, but yes it does bear fruit.
14 Mexican food left in ruined hacienda (9)
ENCHILADA – L in an anagram of HACIENDA (‘ruined’).
16 Fellow’s reported game he encountered in German city (9)
KARLSRUHE – KARL’S our fellow, RU is the game, meeting HE. As I said at the top, you either know this answer or you don’t!

I didn’t know the city, and thought that ‘reported’ must signal a homophone. So, if the fellow was KURT, the city might be KIRTSRUHE? Bzzz – wrong!

Pity the S was cross-checked – otherwise, I could have tried KURTZRUHE. That sounds like a German name!

And, can anyone see why that ‘reported’ is in the clue?

18 Did well sorting out what comes next, having time for son (7)
THRIVED – I guess we change the S in SHRIVED to a T. Being shriven would get you right with God, so I suppose that gets you ready for what comes next. On edit: thanks to the anonymous comment below for pointing out that this answer, THRIVED, is an anagram of the next answer, DERVISH, if you replace the S with a T. Indeed, as corymbia points out, it’s a WHIRLING DERVISH. Very clever!
19 Like some fuel oil? This one is very poor and might be turning (7)
DERVISH – fuel oil might, whimsically, be DERV-ish. Dervishes profess poverty and austerity, and some (whirling dervishes) dance as a religious ceremony.
21 Courtesan keeping old cards (5)
TAROT – O in TART.
23 Get annoyed with record turning up the day before (5)
PEEVE – E.P. ‘turning up’, then EVE. I think the definition is as a transitive verb: peeve someone = get someone annoyed.
25 Old letter found in secret hideaway (3)
ETH – hidden answer. A letter, Đ or đ, once used to indicate the th sound.

32 comments on “Times Cryptic No 27906 – Saturday, 20 February 2021. What mental block?”

  1. I think for 18d, SHRIVED is an anagram of DERVISH (19d). I tried to make sense of SHRIVED too.
  2. Re Karl I wonder if the setter was allowing for those who might think of ‘Carl’ which I believe is the more usual English spelling of the forename. I changed trains there once so I knew the city.

    A thoroughly inventive and enjoyable puzzle, and quite hard in places. I took forever, long after I’d stopped the clock, to appreciate how 18dn worked which is akin to an indirect cross-reference and they’re often bad enough when they’re direct!

    I had no idea about ‘tyrant’ being a bird, and everywhere I’ve found reference to it it’s actually called a ‘tyrant flycatcher’ which makes me suspect that ‘tyrant’ on its own is unlikely to be used in this sense other than as a sort of shorthand amongst fellow bird-fanciers. I also found that Octavian took the name Augustus when he became Emperor so ‘Roman Emperor’ clueing {Oct}AVIAN seems a bit dodgy too – not that I know anything about that. I’ve already vented my rage elsewhere about another obscure bluddy flycatcher turning up this week.

    The CAT’S WHISKER was one of the main components of crystal set radios which were still popular in my childhood (and I’ve some way to go to reach 100, thank you!) but by then they were mainly sold as kits for those who wanted to experiment with the scientific principles involved. I had one myself but was mostly unsuccessful in getting it to receive anything. I think the only station it picked up was the Light Programme on Long Wave which had a particularly strong signal. I vaguely remember needing an aerial about 20 feet long.

    Edited at 2021-02-27 10:05 am (UTC)

    1. I had one too, and it worked fine on the Home Service (medium wave.) Naturally, living near Droitwich, when I tuned to the Light Program (long wave, 1500 metres) it blew my ears off!
      Dad made it for me in the mid fifties.
      Someone living actually in Droitwich had an aerial which ran his house heating! I gather he was threatened with stealing electricity, and was forced to disassemble it.
      Andyf
      1. Many thanks, Andy. I remember Droitwich as a name on the illuminated dial of the family Bush wireless. All those names sounded so exotic to a child!
  3. Found this hard, taking 38’56” to complete. Thanks to anon for pointing out the connection between 18d & 19d which I missed but can now savour. Thanks Brnchn for the blog and the news that CATS WHISKER is an old radio receiver. I’d just thought the clue was referring to a dated expression, though it didn’t make complete sense that way.
  4. Not sure of the time, as I did most of this over lunch. Am I to take PAP as a verb meaning to do what paparazzi do? And am I to take POUND as a unit of mass? DNK the flycatcher in 1d, or ‘clock’=face. And I never did get THRIVED, so thanks to Anon. Liked SEASICKNESS.
    1. Yes, PAP is in Chambers:

      pap3 /pap/ (slang)
      transitive verb (pappˈing; papped)
      To photograph (a famous person) as, or in the manner of, a paparazzo
      noun
      A paparazzo
      ORIGIN: Short form of paparazzo

      And, don’t you still use pounds and ounces in the USA?

      Edited at 2021-02-27 02:07 am (UTC)

      1. Reminds me of a lovely quote:

        “But whatever his weight in pounds, shillings, and ounces,
        He always seems bigger because of his bounces.”

        ―A. A. Milne, Pooh referring to Tigger in Winnie-the-Pooh

      2. Good old Chambers. We still use pounds, but as units of weight not mass. But I see ‘mass’ is used to mean ‘weight’.
  5. 45 mins for me, so intermediate difficulty. I’ve driven in Germany enough to know KARLSRUHE. If you are anywhere near that part of Germany, it seems compulsory to go through it since all the autobahn interchanges seem to be there, so it is signposted for hundreds of kilometers. Like trying to go anywhere in the southern highlands of Scotland without going through Crianlarich.

    I didn’t get the DERVISH to THRIVED link, but got them both anyway. POUND my LOI

  6. The NW corner was too hard for me so I used aids for TANAGER and NIGEL as well as for 1d which I got wrong anyway as AVIAN never occurred to me. I put ARIAN for want of anything better. Until yesterday I had never heard of a Tyrant Flycatcher.
    I had also never heard of SCROLL SAW.
    I got THRIVED but, until now, I never made the connection to DERVISH.
    Not my most successful solve!
    1. The flycatcher we had in 27911 only 2 days ago was a tyrant, so had you looked it up post solve you would have been “on it.”
      Oh, no you wouldn’t, we are discussing the Xword you struggled with 5 days before! DOH.
      Andyf
  7. 25 minutes, finishing with COD AVIAN. I vaguely knew of KARLSRUHE from football ( they have an R on the end), and we passed close by a couple of years ago on a Rhine cruise in pre-covid freedom. I found one or two of the better clues such as INNARDS and DERVISH a bit clunky, but this was still a decent puzzle. I’ve been meaning to read some Ezra Pound poetry since I first heard him name-checked on Desolation Row in 1963, but still haven’t got round to it. I have read quite a bit of Eliot! Thank you B and setter.
    1. Here’s an easy start, ‘In a Station of the Metro’:

      The apparition of these faces in the crowd:
      Petals on a wet, black bough.

  8. Enjoyed this one, partly because fortunately I did know Karlsruhe. As Jackkt says, the “reported” is there in the clue because in the UK, we would normally spell it Carl. Karl is the German version of Charles.

  9. All finished in just under the hour. Not too testing I thought. Oddly enough, KARLSRUHE went in quite early and I agree with Jack’s take on it. No idea what CATS WHISKER was about. Now I know. Missed the THRIVED/DERVISH trick too. Very devious. Thanks b as ever.
  10. I battled on for almost 43 minutes before giving up on KARLSRUHE and looking it up. I had actual written down RUHE as part of my musings, but dismissed it. Ah well. The rest of it was ok but I didn’t spot the whirling DERVISH either. 42:55. Thanks setter and Bruce.
  11. Some difficulties with this but not Karlsruhe, obvious to me with the initial K.
    I too could not understand CATS WHISKER.
    I did most of this in about 30 minutes but then had a big hold-up in the NW.
    Eventually I plumped for AVIAN. DNK the saw and went with SWALLO SAW following what I thought was the parsing. That just left 9a where I plumped for IONIANS (works =on, pub = inn … and it fitted what I had).
    One person’s Karlsruhe is another’s scroll saw.
    David
  12. ….my biggest expense after renting it was fuel. I once had to explain to a tax inspector what “DERV” stood for in my accounts (he’d worked it that it was fuel from my receipts).

    No problems, apart from the AVIAN description of my LOI. Or, at least, not until I spotted “thrivrd” after I’d submitted..

    FOI RESERVATION
    LOI AVIAN
    COD GLUTTON
    TIME 8:48 (but, alas, in vain)

  13. 16:58. A bit of a curate’s egg, I thought. DNK the flycatcher, nor did I understand “what comes next” as a reference to the next answer. Rather obfuscatory, IMO. And what does the surface mean at 28A. I didn’t much like “Fellow’s reported” for Karl either. I did like GLUTTON and EAR, though. Thanks Bruce and setter.
  14. Medium density puzzle taking me 21 minutes and change. I’m pretty sure I once had a cat’s whisker radio kit as one of those schoolboy experiment things you could buy long after transistor radios made them mere curiosities. Don’t think I ever got mine to work either.
    I’m impressed by Anon for working out the DERVISH/THRIVED connection: our setter was clearly putting in for the Too Clever By Half Award and will probably walk it this year, even with 10 months to go.
  15. A half and half day today, it seems. I was in the half that knew Karlsruhe – went there in 1989 and saw pink flamingos? Yes, says google, seems 30-year-old memories are much more reliable than recent ones. Pap guessable. Remembered DERV from failing on previous puzzles. Completely missed the thrived/dervish connection. No idea about avian tyrants, but knew there was at least one Roman named Octavian so the alphabet trawl sufficed. Enjoyably tricky in places, some nice left-field definitions like innards, but generally a bit too much obscurity (things I don’t know) to make it satisfying.
  16. 23.34. Generally steady solving but the NW was slow to come together and I had a few QMs littered around afterwards. Avian entered from Octavian, had no idea about the tyrant flycatcher, also struggled to find the right type of saw. DNK the cat’s whisker definition. Didn’t pick up on the connection between thrived and dervish so thrived entered without understanding. COD to seasickness.
  17. 44 minutes and beset by some of the usual problems with words (like DERV) used only on one side of the pond. AVIAN understood only because the avian tyrants had cropped up before.

    As I live in Germany, I of course knew Karlsruhe. My sister-in-law, after getting a doctorate in geophysics, had a position there once. She liked the town so much that she took the first opportunity to land a post-doc at Imperial College and when that ran out she just stayed in London (it’s been a third of a century now). So much for Karlsruhe.

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