27538 Thursday, 19 December 2019 Il Grillo Parlante

Author   johninterredPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
With a variety of additional commitments, I’ve missed out on a lot of puzzles since the Champs, so approached this one without being in finely honed practice, but fortunately it didn’t matter too much, as I trundled through without too many alarums if in a rather piecemeal fashion and in around 28 minutes. The only real holdup was the mineral at 11. As far as I can make out, there’s only one full anagram to be unravelled.
I have provided you with clues, definitions and SOLUTIONS, plus commentary.
ACROSS
1 Credit claimed by bowler for sensational headline (8)
SCREAMER “Seam bowling is a bowling technique in cricket whereby the ball is deliberately bowled on to its seam, to cause a random deviation. Practitioners are known as seam bowlers or seamers.” So it’s a bowler of balls, no a hat, into which you insert CR for credit
6 Request individual gets on your bike (6)
BEGONE You get BEG from request, and ONE from individual. The definition is a rather more modern version of an antique expression
9 Warm pieces turned over (4)
SNUG Pieces are GUNS, which you “turn over”
10 A British politician joining party, US-style: reaction tested here? (10)
LABORATORY You might be tempted to mess about with BR and MP, or scratch around for a named, deceased politician, but the British politician is only A TORY, tacked on to LABOR, of a certain party the American spelling which eschews the U.
11 See Portland and Augusta possibly consuming large mineral (10)
TOURMALINE If you know not the mineral, and in which state the two named places find themselves, you’re in trouble. But take it from me, if you see Portland and Augusta, then you TOUR MAINE. Chuck in a L(arge). Didn’t help that I knew Portland as stone, and Augusta as a golf course
13 Frank thus unable to provide signature? (4)
OPEN If you have 0 PEN, you can’t provide a signature. You’ll just have to make do with a squiggle on a touch screen.
14 Records perhaps concerned with contracts (8)
RELEASES Concerned: RE and LEASES are, after all, a form of contract
16 Go-getter getting back out of dreary country in recession (6)
DYNAMO Back out of dreary is Y, right? So whence the D? Ah indeed, but here the back is REAR, which you  remove from dreary before adding the reversed (“in recession” OMAN. The country
18 At the outset, telephone number secure (6)
TETHER Telephone at the outset is T, ad ETHER as that which numbs.
20 Superior instrument that’s moved right to the front in craft (8)
ARROGANT The instrument is an ORGAN. Move the R(ight) to the front and stick the construction in ART for skill
22 Test spirit of optimism when case dismissed (4)
ORAL One of those clues where you have to work out what first and last letters are removed. Turns out it’s M and E respectively.
24 Big-hitter, banker after a lot of money heading for disaster (10)
PILEDRIVER The banker is a non-specific RIVER, added to PILE for a lot of money and D, heading for Disaster
26 Dishonest, unlike Pinocchio’s conscience? (3,7)
NOT CRICKET Pinocchio (which I can spell, thank you Stanley) had Jiminy Cricket as his mentor and conscience. Friendly and smile raising clue
28 Old German forgoing introduction: some nerve! (4)
AXON “An extension of a nerve cell or neuron which transmits impulses away from the cell”. Just in case you wanted to know. The old German is a SAXON. Remove his “introduction”.
29 Stud’s home? Scold the crawler (6)
EARWIG A (decorative) stud find a home in an EAR (though not mine, dear me’ no). I‘m told other locations are used. Scold translates to WIG
30 See description in code as cryptic (8)
DIOCESAN The first, late anagram (“cryptic”) in this piece, of IN CODE AS. See as in a bishop’s preserve

DOWN

2 Staff enlisting characters from the Far East (9)
CANTONESE Staff is CANE, and TONES for characters is/are inserted
3 In conclusion, newspaper upping ante finally — prepare for attack (2,5)
EN GARDE The (disreputable) newspaper is a RAG, which is reversed (“upping) and placed in END, conclusion. Add the E from the end of antE
4 Scot’s shot over a small republic (5)
MALTA Scot’s shot as in a wee dram, here of MALT whiskey. Place it over A
5 Smooth heads seen in reflection, umpteen baldies (3)
RUB the heads of the last three words in the clue. No reversal/reflection needed.
6 Rod, youthful server (9)
BARTENDER Rod give BAR, and youthful TENDER
7 Enjoy oneself, or be sad (3,4)
GET DOWN A double definition (and a contronym, to boot)
8 Language comprehended by Armenian or Serbian (5)
NORSE Todays hidden, in ArmeniaN OR SErbian
12 Oddly, isn’t entirely put in (7)
INSTALL an anagram (oddly) of ISNT plus ALL, entirely
15 Strong fastening (9)
STRAPPING  Another double definition
17 Broken nose requires completely new bandaging, a state (9)
MINNESOTA An anagram (broken) of NOSE set in MINT for completely new plus A
19 What beef is to Hindu, I say (4,3)
HOLY COW Two ways to the same phrase, the former alluding to the sacredness of cows in Hindu religion.
21 Face, horrid one (7)
GRIMACE a charade of GRIM, horrid plus ACE, one. A tinge of &littishness
23 Wine and one soft drink in Ronda, lacking body (5)
RIOJA One gives I, soft drink is OJ, and Ronda without body presents the R and A|
25 As before dark, in twilit thicket observation starts (5)
DITTO The first letters (starts) of Dark In Twilight Thicket Observation
27 Have on a type of leather (3)
KID Yet another double definition

78 comments on “27538 Thursday, 19 December 2019 Il Grillo Parlante”

  1. Early on I’d convinced myself a planer was a woodworker’s instrument, so AIRPLANE parsed perfectly, making 21dn impossible. Otherwise a slowish trundle as well, due to some tiredness and fuzziness. Oh, well.
  2. Happy to finish this in under 39 mins, with a few of those staring at 11a until I dredged the mineral from somewhere. Not my favourite clue, as it depends on two bits of obscure (because I don’t know them 🙂 GK.

    But on the rest I agree with Vinyl that there were many fine examples of the cluing art. I liked RIOJA, EARWIG and NOT CRICKET among many.

    Thanks, Z, for the excellent blog. I was wondering where the extra D in 16a came from, so thanks for the explanation.

  3. When 10a resorted to “party, US-style”, I wondered whether there was actually a US Labor Party. It turns out that there was, briefly, in the 1970s, but it didn’t last long.

    Despite “labour” being the normally accepted Australian spelling of the word, the Australian Labor Party has dropped the “u” officially since 1918. So we do, in fact, have an extant and active Labor Party. They haven’t fared well in recent elections, although not quite as badly as the last Labour Party showing in the UK.

  4. A decent start, and a decent finish, separated by a long uproductive period spent looking hopelessly at clues and thinking I should pause and put on a sweater, as it’s freezing in this room. I too toyed with AIRPLANE, but fortunately could make nothing of it. The ‘nose’ at 17d suggested INDONESIA to me, which neatly left INDIA, and it took me a while to give that up. Somehow I thought of TOURMALINE–for some reason I thought it was a gemstone–and then saw how it worked. (It took me a while to realize that it wasn’t Portland OR and Augusta GA.) I got NOT CRICKET from the K, T and enumeration; then I remembered Jiminy–I’d totally forgotten that he was in the Disney cartoon; in fact I’d totally forgotten the cartoon. Biffed EARWIG, DYNAMO (when did we stop using that word?), parsed post-submission.

    Edited at 2019-12-19 06:40 am (UTC)

    1. AIRPLANE and INDONESIA occurred to me, too, Kevin. Yes, I also noticed the neatness of being left with INDIA!
  5. Ran out of time and patience re the last two or three so a technical DNF here, the absolute killer being the mineral at 11ac.

    So GET DOWN = ‘enjoy yourself’ does it? I suppose that’s as in the expression ‘get down with the kids’ although in that sense it would be a long way from my idea of enjoying myself! More a case of cringing embarrassment, I’d have thought.

    I don’t think you meant to underline “Stud’s home” in 29ac, Z.

    1. Indeed. -I was wondering where I’d put my usual “spot the deliberate mistake” entry. Thanks for finding it!
      1. If we are going for spotting the deliberate mistake, 2A has to have “from” as part of the definition. Otherwise it would just be CANTON.

        And by the way, since these days it is called Guangzhou, it is fun that the 3-letter airport code is still CAN (Beijing is still PEK too, although they have a new airport too, that I’ve never been through, and I have no idea of the code).

        I’m no good at clues, but since Cantonese is a tonal language, there could have been something even cleverer.

        Edited at 2019-12-19 08:38 am (UTC)

        1. “Caught pitch inflections in an Eastern language (9)”
          That was my attempt about 7 or 8 years ago.

        2. I’m sure you’re right: I was probably too relaxed to notice having spotted that see description was the full definition at 30, or the adjective didn’t work.

        2. Oops – not sure how I did that but I meant to link to Sex Machine by James Brown (‘get up’).
      2. I was hoping your link was going to take me to Jungle Boogie and I wasn’t disappointed 🙂
          2. Ah yes, now you mention it, I know that one too. Not one of his best. I like his really weird songs such as ‘Mr Moody’s Garden’.
  6. Defeated by two. For the mineral I had COURSALITE, with Augusta as the Golf COURSE. I also caught the AIRPLANE and couldn’t set it down. But with a GRIMACE I finally crash landed into AEROGANT.

    COD: ARROGANT.

    Edited at 2019-12-19 07:29 am (UTC)

    1. I did the same thing. I had AIRPLANE, and when I realized the right answer, I didn’t fix up the I.

      COD: AIROGANT

  7. At least half my time today was spent on four answers – MINNESOTA, AXON, DYNAMO and my LOI TOURMALINE. The latter caused me the most difficulty as I managed to find some nice dead ends to go down. I knew Augusta as a golf course so thought maybe Portland was too giving me COURS_A_I_E. I also thought that perhaps the answer began with COURT for ‘See’. But finally I dragged up TOURMALINE from somewhere and worked the parsing back to stumble over the line.
    1. Was good to meet you at TCC ’19 and help complete the ‘Jumbo’ crossword. Hope to meet up again next time with drinks in The George afterwards a distinct possibility. Been out of sorts for months but bounced back today. 12′ 02″. Squally
  8. Portland is in Oregon, and Augusta in Georgia, as any fule kno, which made 11ac difficult.. but got there in the end, fingers crossed. Nho AXON.
  9. Finished in 27 minutes but used an aid for the unknown TOURMALINE. If Portland doesn’t come with Bill then it’s in Oregon with Rod McKuen, and Augusta is always in Georgia wearing a green jacket. COD to GRIMACE. I would have gone for NOT CRICKET, but as Bumble Lloyd says, he’s known methodist ministers pick the seam. Which brings us nicely in a circle to 1a. Good puzzle with one dodgy clue. Thank you Z and setter.
  10. Got held up by spending too much time with “Augusta mabye” being COURSE (the masters is ther after all). And I put AIRPLANE in early, even though I had a suspicion that although a PLANER is a piece of equipment for planing wood, “instrument” seemed a bit of a stretch. Also was convinced that 20A (ARROGANT) started AI. In fact so convinced that when I saw it, I forgot to change the I so I had a technical DNF due to a typo.
  11. Gave up on the mineral, though I did hazard a mental guess at ‘tourmalite’ at one point, from checkers and a hazy memory (it came up in 2009, it seems). That’s just an awful clue, given that there are at least 20 Augustas in the USA and at least as many Portlands. That would never have made the cut for the legendary Christmas Turkey.

    I enjoyed the rest of it, though made a couple of careless mistakes, which I didn’t spot as I was too annoyed by the mineral to bother checking the rest.

    I’m off to write a 6-page stream-of-consciousness letter to the editor.

    1. I miss that turkey, and I suspect I’m not alone. I’m sure the editor would be intrigued by your 6 page Rorschach test though.
  12. Likewise was good to meet you too. I hope they have the Super Jumbo again next year as it was a great way of getting people talking to one another. Great time today!
  14. 15:41. Another where a couple of clues took up a disproportionate amount of my time.
    Like others I was scrabbling around in the wrong states for 11ac, until I eventually remembered that MAINE has a Portland too. I didn’t know it had an Augusta, but as is usual with US states the one you haven’t heard of is actually the capital. See also Albany, Sacramento, Tallahassee… and Portland isn’t the capital of Oregon either.
    I’m also in the AIRPLANE club: it seemed perfectly plausible but fortunately it occurred to me that ‘instrument’ for PLANER was a bit dodgy so I thought again.
  16. Not caught out by the tricky mineral (quizzing has taught me that Portland, Or. is named after Portland, Me., and that Augusta is the capital of Maine, but not of Georgia), but stumbled over pretty much everything in the SE corner. I, too, came up with AIRPLANE and INDONESIA, even though they obviously couldn’t both be right simultaneously, and I wasn’t really convinced enough to write in either – unfortunately, once you’ve seen a wrong answer, it’s hard to unsee it. Testing.
  17. The mineral clue was pants. Sorry, but it just was. The rest of the puzzle was fine. Thanks z.
  19. I was doing fine until I was left with A_O_ and _O_R_A_I_E. I managed to drag up AXON after an alphabet trawl, but knowing Portland was in Oregon or a Bill in Cornwall, and that Augusta was in Georgia was very unhelpful. I did eventually work out that _O_RMALINE was a very possible answer, but not knowing how MAINE was involved, or the mineral, induced me to throw the towel in and use Crossword Solver to come up with TOUR. A bit of an obscurity methinks. 5 or 10 minutes wasted on that brought me to 39:32 at submission. Thanks setter and Z.
  20. ….to GET DOWN. I’m going to buck the trend here. One of the setter’s key tools is the ability to misdirect the solver until the truth emerges – hence my COD !

    First, I must thank Z for his usual excellent blog, which I needed to parse DYNAMO (now only common in the names of Eastern European soccer teams).

    I’d never encountered SCREAMER in the given sense, and had to alpha-trawl my LOI. I must have come across AXON previously, though I know not where !

    FOI LABORATORY
    LOI CANTONESE
    COD TOURMALINE
    TIME 12:20

  21. 56 minutes, with the last five trying to figure out what was going on with 11a. I did know there were at least two Portlands, but I could only remember the Oregon one (possibly from Portlandia) and you could write what I know about Augusta on the back of a postage stamp. Still, I finally saw that “go” might involve a tour and knew TOURMALINE from somewhere, so I got lucky.

    Quite a challenge, this one, with a couple of clever devices. I particularly enjoyed the 21d GRIMACE and “getting back out of dreary” at 16.

  22. TOURMALINE well known to me but for some reason my brain didn’t want to engage second gear today so made heavy going of some other answers and ran out of time.
  23. Gave up in the fifteenth minute with nothing entered for 11a, having spent about a third of that time trying to figure it out (with AXON being the only other significant delay). Never heard of TOURMALINE, and like others I knew Portland, Oregon & Augusta, Georgia. Tough clue. Unreasonably so? Maybe.
  24. Another one in the flying club with “airplane” and I thought it was perfectly airworthy given that (a) it parsed and (b) several other clues had an American bent. But it left an unpromising L*I*A*E for 21D so it had to go. I did wonder if there was some sort of golf tour going on in 11A but then painfully recalled having to drill both my children in state capitals years ago for a school test and anyway I knew the mineral. 14.34 so a respectable time after all.
  25. Really got bogged down with this, after a fast start which had me thinking that it might be a very easy one, in fact I had the NE done in 3 mins. LOI TOURMALINE frustrating as I have a Black Tourmaline pendulum right in front of me, yet I couldn’t see it from the available letters, and had to use aids.
    Black Tourmaline is reputed to help protection against EMF’s for those who are sensitive, but it’s not as good a shungite. There’s one for another crossword….
  26. Like others I looked to Oregon and Georgia and maybe something to do with a golf course. Particularly irritating as I have visited both places in Maine (Portland only a few weeks ago). Never heard of tourmaline so DNF!
  27. But I too was defeated by Tourmaline and used an aid. Got stuck on Oregon and Georgia. Also slowed down by the Airplane red herring, which was clever because a planer is the sort of word you could tell yourself was an instrument. And A1 = superior. Very American this, but fair enough.
  28. Happy enough with that. Major hold ups were TOURMALINE (didn’t know the mineral; couldn’t convince myself Augusta was in Maine) and for some reason not seeing the wordplay in CANTONESE which was my LOI as a result. A good workout.
  29. Knew Maine was common ground for Portland and Augusta (possibly thanks to Stephen King literature), but never heard of the mineral and therefore the clue was impossible for me. Thanks Blogger and Setter.
  30. In the Dorothy Sayers’s mystery The Documents In The Case (not one of her better ones) the murderer is exposed in the end with the help of a polariscope and a thin TOURMALINE plate. Don’t ask me to explain it but that’s what it sez in the book.
  31. Mostly the same problems and mis-directions as others, but with the advantage of knowing Tourmaline. Like vinyl, I thought there was rather a lot of (low) cunning in the cluing, so much so that I got tired of putting little checks by clues I thought were especially elegant.
  32. 21:24. Tourmaline was my LOI. Lawd knows where I dredged it up from, but it was in my head somewhere and although I couldn’t parse it (despite seeing TOUR MAINE I associated the TOUR bit with the PGA tour and just shrugged at the Maine bit) I bunged it in in hope.

    I think I already had GRIMACE before I got to 20a so didn’t consider AIRPLANE.

  33. Being obsessed with lists such as US state capitals, TOURMALINE fell reasonably quickly, putting the contradictory Portland Oregon to one side. How about Springfield? – I heard that there is one in every US state.

    26’04”, late today.

    Thanks z and setter.

    1. Wikipedia gives examples in 30 states. There may, of course, be tiny settlements in other states, but I’d be amazed if there were one in Hawaii.

      Edited at 2019-12-19 07:10 pm (UTC)

  34. 49:42. This was mostly straightforward but then I got held up for ages on a few at the end. Having entered airplane it took a long time to realise the error and correct to arrogant. That then eventually got me grimace and axon. Finally left with tourmaline which I got from having vaguely heard of it then reverse engineering the parsing and taking it on trust that the two places fixed in my GK as Oregon and Georgia based must have Maine based equivalents.
  35. Got off to a screamer then settled into puzzlement. Fortunately got a second wind and finished in 14 minutes. Last one in was dynamo. Never did work out why but go getter definition was good enough for me. Thanks to the setter for ending my bemusement.

    Best clue was tourmaline. My first thought was to think of Augusta Georgia.

  36. Terrible clues for get down and tourmaline. Not cricket. (Got the former with a sniff, threw in coprealite for the latter.) Disgruntled. I tend to defend clues but ‘get down’ does not mean ‘enjoy oneself’ though the idea of enjoyment may be there; it’s more like ‘engage [with]’. And the cryptic GK for the mineral is US-esoteric in a UK puzzle. While I’m at it, that extra l on ‘instal’ continues to irritate though it’s been around for ever. On top of all that forgot to return to A-O- for the nerve. Not my day. joekobi
    1. For ‘get down’ Chambers has ‘3. To disport oneself with abandon (slang)’.
      1. And yet ‘abandon’ here is not quite ‘enjoyment’: as in ‘…with the young’ it’s more like the idea of letting go (no doubt with the hope of enjoyment but that’s secondary). jk
  37. I got off to a good start but ground to a halt after 25 minutes. I hesitated to enter CANTONESE because I couldn’t (and still can’t)see TONES as “characters”. Maybe someone here will explain. That made TOURMALINE rather difficult because I didn’t have the O. I finally decided to go for CANTONESE and saw TOURMALINE straight away, although I couldn’t parse it. One of those days… 45 minutes
  38. I raced through this but then caught the AIRPLANE from Jefferson. DNF in a taxi into town.

    FOI 1ac SCREAMER – ‘Fleet Street’ special/IMPEACHED NYT

    LOI 20ac AIRPLANE

    COD 26ac NOT CRICKET By Jiminy!

    WOD 11ac TOURMALINE A-level Geology quickly got me past the tour round Maine

    So ended without a GRIMACE

    Edited at 2019-12-19 04:21 pm (UTC)

  39. For what it’s worth, tourmaline is the gift of choice for a 38th wedding anniversary though more usually in its beryl configuration. Ask one who knows this stuff!

  40. An advantage today for the US based group among us, as I knew pretty quickly that the two place names in TOURMALINE were in Maine, despite the names also appearing elsewhere. And I knew of TOURMALINE, though would have said it’s a gemstone. About 25 minutes, ending with ARROGANR where I had to eventually abandon my thoughts that the craft was an AIR-something. Regards.
  41. Tour and Maine! Come on.
    And 20 ac is ‘airplane’ (a1 + planer – r to the front)
    So no thanks for that.
    The actual answer for 20 ac is what you are
  42. Same thoughts as others about the misleading Portland and Augusta. A slow but enjoyable romp where the final half dozen suddenly came to me one by one. Most pleased with TOURMALINE, where on earth did I dredge thst from?
  43. Finished for the second day running! I sat down after supper and worked steadily through this, and finished in just under an hour. Quite a few baffled me at first, but eventually everything fell into place, including tourmaline. I saw the checkers, knew the semi-precious stone and then parsed it! I could see that diocesan was an anagram right from scratch but was heading towards any numbers of mombles until the penny dropped!

    This was my sort of puzzle: I’m not a speed merchant and like a realistic challenge! It took a little while to get going, but a few kinder clues helped me on the way, and all the vocab was known to me – maybe subconsciously in the case of axon, but the wordplay was fine. Hard to choose COD – Not cricket and Malta both raised a smile.

    FOI En Garde
    LOI Diocesan
    COD Holy cow

    Thanks setter and Z8 – a merry Christmas to you.

  44. no true Scot puts anything in a malt whisky, especially not an ‘e’

    Edited at 2019-12-19 10:51 pm (UTC)

  45. 20A caused me to ink in AIRPLANE being AI (superior) + PLANER (instrument) with R moved up, thus AI R PLANE defined by craft. Only later, with crossing letters from other clues, did I consider ARROGANT, also legitimate with the wordplay. Has the setter unwittingly stumbled on a stand-alone clue that yielded two equally valid answers?
  46. 22:04. Done on the train home after a boozy work’s Christmas lunch in Cambridge, I was maybe not at my sharpest, but at least I completed the trio of concise, quick and this in the time it took to get to Bury St. Edmunds. Like others, I knew there was a Portland in Oregon, and Augusta in Georgia, but I took it on trust that there places of the same names in MAINE. LOI AXON. Maybe not surprisingly, I liked BARFTENDER and RIOJA.
  48. The first word in 28a (old) is redundant and, arguably, misleading: Germany still has a state called Sachsen (Saxony), and the inhabitants refer to themselves as Sachsen (Saxons).

    Cardorojo

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