Times 27361 – Cock-up on the coding front

Author   ulacaPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
A rare sub-16 for me, so we can expect some serious times from the Bay Area and Barnes. I thought this was a most enjoyable stroll, with just a clue or two to keep the solver honest (solvent?). The old Ottoman was a rely-on-the-wordplay clue for those who didn’t know him, 1 across is a nice word we don’t seem to see enough of, and the breakwater is not at the top of my littoral lexical set, but for all that this is a very amiable opening to the week. 

Post-it note: I’m afraid I had a bit of a cock-up on the not-being-able-to-find-the-Undo-button-and-hitting-the-Go-back-button-instead-front, so the setting half is a bit of a mess. It’s late and I was just coming to an end of this masterpiece, so I fear it will stay like this for the foreseeable future. Hopefully, everything I meant to say can be deduced by the cunning cruciverbal codebreaker. Then, of course, there is always the peanut gallery…

ACROSS
1 Improvise service following rabble (8)
RIFFRAFF – RIFF (improvise) RAF (service) F (following)
6 Forest, last of it burning (6)
ARDENT – ARDEN (Shakespeare’s go-to forest) [i]T
9 Go round country denying article (4)
SPIN – SP[a[IN
10 Intuition perhaps at the heart of Shakespeare? (5,5)
SIXTH SENSE – AKA ESP, which are the central letters of shakESPeare
11 Having nothing on, Keats drank bubbly (5,5)
STARK NAKED – anagram* of KEATS DRANK
13 How many adverbs finish couple? (4)
ALLY – actuALLY, reALLY, he’s right! ‘Couple’ in its verbal sense, as uniting or allying with another
14 Our lot’ll visit Tyneside thoroughly prepared (4,4)
WELL DONE – WE’LL (our lot will) DO (visit) NE (land of Lawrie McMenemy and alcohol-free lager: it’s great, man! [or not – Ed])
16 Cost of swapping equal parts of design (6)
OUTLAY – LAYOUT with its two, equal, 3-letter parts swapped
18 Cultural technicality — first half needs sorting (6)
ETHNIC – TECHNI* (‘-cality’ is otiose)
20 Elected authority inspires egg mania (8)
INSANITY – NIT (egg) in IN (elected) AY (authority)
22 Boozer‘s chic without curtains (4)
WINO – IN (chic) in WO (wihtout). Hands up all those who tried to find a 6-letter word of the form *WINO*?
24 Relax with posh lodger and officer (10)
LIEUTENANT – LIE U TENANT
26 A Balkan drinking book is about constant pursuit of tumblers (10)
ACROBATICS – A B in CROAT followed by C in IS
28 Put cover around area (4)
LAID – A in LID
29 Greek unit guards Yankee breakwater (6)
GROYNE – GR Y in ONE
30 Keen, perversely, to hoard pink fuel (8)
KEROSENE – ROSE in KEEN*

DOWN
2 Snappy declaration by doctor’s client? (9)
IMPATIENT – if you were a particularly terse customer (do they still call them that in the NHS?) given to quirky aphorising, then it altogether possible that you will tell the recpetionist (and do they still call them that, I wonder? sounds far too normal and unaggrandised) , you might swing into the surgery and announce ‘I’M PATIENT’. 
3 Nice individual embroiled in wild ceremony (7)
FUNERAL – UN (French, here Niçois, one or individual) in FERAL (wild)
4 Like broadcasting about Republican crime (5)
ARSON – R in AS ON
5 Sly type following steer (3)
FOX – F OX
6 Your hands should be massaged without water (9)
ANHYDROUS -YOUR HANDS*
7 Stop working with actors from The Matrix? (3-4)
DIE-CAST – DIE (stop working) CAST (actors). I am totally clueless about such things, but note from Collins that a matrix is a metal mould for casting type, even if ‘die-cast’ is, it appears, typically a verb, with ‘die-casting’ the noun. ‘Tis but a small step to chop off the ‘ing’, though…ON EDIT: see Kevin’s explanation below
8 Rocket launchers start to leak through the nose (5)
NASAL – NASA (either a very important programme or a colossal waste of time, life and money, depending on your viewpoint)  L[eak]; ‘of or relating to the nose’ is closer to the meaning, but I guess there are contexts where ‘through the nose’ would be fine
12 Old Ottoman boss man breaks front of knee joint (7)
KHEDIVE – HE in K[nee] DIVE (<a href=https://youtu.be/kAS4o51tPzA>joint</a>); the khedive was the viceroy of Egypt under the Ottomans from 1867-1914
15 Black, maybe, note, after very big swing (9)
OSCILLATE – OS (outsize, or very big) CILLA (our Cilla of ‘Step inside love’ fame) TE (note – a drink with bread and jam, no less)
17 Keen students pay this order to stand still (9)
ATTENTION – Oi! You at the back there! Nose out of your i Phone XS Max!
19 Raised cash to preserve old record for new term (7)
NEOLOGY – O LOG in YEN reversed
21 Number with advantage set about new puzzle (7)
NONPLUS – N (new) in NO (number) PLUS (advantage)
23 Attract resistance pursuing popular copper (5)
INCUR – IN (popular) CU (copper) R (resistance)
25

A stunner, she loses her heart in sailor’s embrace (5)

TASER – S[h]E in TAR
27 QC, beginning to go off class (3)
ILK – [s]ILK; a Queen’s Counsel is a particularly smart barrister, oymoronic as that may sound

47 comments on “Times 27361 – Cock-up on the coding front”

  1. Somewhere between 20-25 mins for me (I clicked on the wrong crossword, and then did the Quickie, so the timer was running for somewhere around my Quickie time of 6:20). Of that, the last few minutes were spent on the unknown Viceroy (and not a very likely looking word either, so I definitely clicked submit with my fingers crossed).
  2. Isn’t it ‘from the matrix’? DIE-CAST then is, rightly, the past participle of the verb.
  3. Biffed KHEDIVE from the K, although I did parse it once typed. On the other hand, I took some time to figure out the parsing of NEOLOGY, a word neither I nor ODE knew–we say ‘neologism’. And yes, I tried to think of a 6-letter word XWINOX. following=f used twice, 1ac & 5d.
  4. I stared at the checked letters in Die Cast, Khedive, and Nonplus for a substantial portion of my 35 min time. My slow up with Wino was not being able to think of any four letter words for sot, tippler, bar, pub, joint, etc other than dive, which didn’t work. Nice blog in spite of any IT problems, thanks.
  5. As per Paul 22ac WINO was my undoing too!

    I rattled through most of this butthen slowed dreadfully to 33 minutes.

    FOI 2dn IMPATIENT

    LOI 22ac WINO

    COD 12dn KHEDIVE

    WOD 1ac RIFFRAFF

    The NHS (Medicare for all) has patients not customers per se! Awkward customers, with no patience, aplenty. Because of Saatchi & Saatchi, British Rail and British Airways used to have customers at one time. How we passengers laughed!?

    You say NEOLOGISM we say NEOLOGY

    You say BURGLARIZED we say BURGLED

    Let’s work the whole thing out?

  6. 32 minutes for all but two letters at 12 which I eventually looked up. I’d worked out K, HE in the wordplay but never thought of DIVE for ‘joint’. If I ever knew the answer I had forgotten it. On checking, it has turned up here once before, in 2011, when I also didn’t know it but was saved by slightly easier wordplay on that occasion.

    R Cilla appeared in a puzzle I blogged last week, but the reference is more appropriate today as this would have been her 76th bithday.

    ODO has RIFF as: Perform a monologue or spoken improvisation on a particular subject.

    Edited at 2019-05-27 05:34 am (UTC)

  7. Spectacular fail on the KHEDIVE front, having decided at first glance that the man was ED, or possibly ERIC, or some other arbitrary fella and, a la ulaca, not being able to find the undo button for that misconception.

    Top marks for the naked Keats clue. Love it

  8. Would have been ten minutes, but for the unknown, and eventually unsolved, KHEDIVE. Liked ARDENT, helped by the Shakespeare reference. Also STARK NAKED.

    Thanks ulaca and setter.

  9. I knew that KHESIDE was likely wrong, but I couldn’t think of anything better, and it vaguely fit the wordplay (as in “side of beef”, perhaps), so after ten minutes of trying to find something else I gave up.

    Shame, as the rest only took me 30 minutes.

    Edited at 2019-05-27 05:52 am (UTC)

  10. 1 hour and defeated by the 2 unknowns khedive and groyne.

    Layout/outlay was clued similarly in puzzle 26269 which I did yesterday so that helped.

    Cod stark naked.

    Edited at 2019-05-27 06:32 am (UTC)

  11. 12.37, indeed with time spent trying to work out how WINO worked, not going easily from chic to IN.
    As for NASA, if the US of A is going to spend its billions on anything, I’d far rather it was in the pursuit of the secrets of the universe than on blowing the sh*t out of other nations or on ludicrous walls. Currently NASA costs less than half of 1% of America’s total spending, worth it not least for all those silent upon a peak in Darien moments when a new planet swims into our ken. There’s pure, naked Keats for you.
  12. 8:15. A slight holdup over KHEDIVE, which I didn’t know, so I spent a bit of time checking that I couldn’t come up with something more likely-looking. I couldn’t, so I crossed my fingers and submitted.
    NEOLOGY was new to me, too: like Kevin I’ve only come across NEOLOGISM.
    NONPLUSsed is often (mis?)used to mean ‘unfazed’. Barack Obama did it on one occasion.
        1. I’ll admit I thought it meant “bemused” until a few years ago. One of those words where it’s easy to believe one’s gleaned the meaning from seeing it in use, and be ignorant about the reality for a long time.
          1. But it does mean bemused, more or less. Now I’m totally nonplussed. Or plussed.
            1. D’oh. That’s because I wasn’t fully awake when I wrote that! What I *thought* it meant was displeased or disappointed.
  13. ….at 10D in my opinion.

    A lot of thing that are “in” are far from chic, but I suppose the clue for WINO works at a stretch.

    FOI STARK NAKED
    LOI ALLY – almost COD
    COD SIXTH SENSE
    TIME 8:34

  14. 30 mins with yoghurt, granola, etc.
    I liked it a lot and I managed to get (DNK) Khedive.
    Mostly I liked Keats drinking bubbly.
    Thanks setter and U.
  15. Away on holiday, so a little late starting, 38 minutes with DIE-CAST unparsed, and the unknown LOI KHEDIVE finally constructed. Isn’t your explanation for INSANITY missing an S, U? I assumed that authority was SAY, as in “on whose say”. I don’t think I’ve ever said STARK NAKED without putting another word in between. Cilla’s getting plenty of bookings. When I was on a vacation job at Bibby’s in Liverpool, in the morning radio music was piped out, and the sound of all the girls on the lard plant joining in with ‘You’re my world’ was truly unforgettable. And believe me, I’ve tried! Thank you U and setter.
  16. 16’48. ‘chic’ for ‘in’ seems a bit of a stretch, hauled khedive out of somewhere, that’s alorra Cilla lately, agree that 11’s a great clue but alas all too persuasive for the second stanza of the Nightingale ode. I shall have to hope, crosswords being the literally ephemeral things they are, for its memory to fade away into the forest dim.
  17. I worked steadily through this until I was left with KHE_I_E, at which point I became 2d and looked up the NHO boss, as I’m in a hurry to get back to the GNFF. Nice puzzle. Thanks setter and U.
  18. A careful spellcheck failed to spot that what should have been the H in ETHNIC was in fact another N. Classic eye test error – roll on the cataract op.
  19. I knew all of the vocabularly and did it in about 30 minutes or a bit less ( I am well into the wine while cooking). COD to SIXTH SENSE but, then, you knew that?
  20. A gentle start to the week – 7m 01s with KHEDIVE the LOI, entered with fingers crossed. I didn’t love 10a but otherwise all very reasonable.
  21. 35 mins. I thought this was an awkward so-and-so; I recognise I’m out on a limb with this assessment. Never heard of Khedive, but wp was fair enough. Thanks u and setter.
  22. Shoved in wino, groyne and die-cast and luckily they all came up trumps. And yes I was one of those looking for a six letter *wino*. Particularly liked the notion of a naked drunken Keats.
  23. 27:02 for this clever, entertaining puzzle. A cut above for a Monday as expected for the bank holiday. I completely failed to see how 10ac worked, got as far as identifying S as the sixth letter, missed that it was actually the middle three letters that were needed. My hand is one of those up at 22ac. Liked the Keats clue. I thought groyne was an architectural feature of a church but it seems that is one of the other meanings of groin. The khedive rang a faint bell when my alphabet trawl got me to di*e.
  24. Only nonplussed (in the sense of perplexed etc) by 12d! Same as many others, it would seem. Otherwise i enjoyed this – 11a was FOI and made me chuckle, but I really liked 10a. Oh dear, it’s raining again * – perhaps it’s time for the jumbo 😊

    * Today’s earworm – Supertramp

  25. No problem with any of the vocab in this. I remembered KHEDIVE from my childhood reading of the Arabian Nights. Baghdad had one. I didn’t see the parsing of SiXTH SENSE until I read Ulaca’s blog. It’s a brilliant clue. 25 minutes. Ann
  26. For this clue to work, it must surely refer to adding the suffix -ally to adjectives ending in -ic to make the adverbial form, e.g. magic – magically.
    2. is that really actually factually correct?

      he said tautologically (ooh, there’s one!)

  27. Twenty-six minutes from soup to nuts for this one, which puts it bang on the curve of my solving time v. drinks plot. KHEDIVE was my only NHO, and I wasn’t at all convinced it was the right answer. For GROYNE I have to thank my geography teacher of many, many years ago. Well, that and the adolescent sense of humour that made the word stick in my memory.

    For the parsing of SIXTH SENSE I have to thank ulaca, as I had no idea at the time. By way of returning the favour, I can answer ulaca’s question as to whether NHS patients are called “customers”. There was at one point a drive to “empower” patients, and they therefore officially became customers, clients, stakeholders and all manner of things. Fortunately, most doctors understand that the last thing you want is an empowered patient, any more than you want a passenger making suggestions on the best way to land the plane. This is, in fact, the main reason we use general anaesthesia wherever possible.

    2. I’ve always felt vets have it easier, since the stakeholders with whom they have to deal are mute.

      If I am in search of a little fun at my annual check-up, I will tell the bossy Hong Kong medic (there exists no other type) that my blood pressure has always been low. Even such a modest self-diagnosis elicits a grunt and a frown each time it is made.

  28. Oddly , KHEDIVE was a write-in for me .Remember him from A level history back in 83-84. COD ARDENT.
    ONG’ARA,
    KENYA.
  29. You try sticking a thermometer up my cat’s bottom and tell me vets have it easy, U .. my cat has never understood he is supposed to be mute, or should keep his claws in
  30. …. I hadn’t somehow put SPAN instead of SPIN.

    KHEDIVE ok but did not parse.

  31. KHEDIVE was the main holdup here which I DNK and also had to really think hard about Joint=Dive even after reading it in the blog. Lots of good entries for my OneNote archive such as Big=OS (known but forgotten!) and nit=egg which again was someone deep in the neurons, but wayyy too deep.

    I liked 10a and 8d.

    Total 30/32

    Thanks to blogger and setter.

    WS

  32. Thanks setter and ulaca
    Was surprised that WINO caused so much grief to so many over there – it was an immediate write-in. Needed all of the help in the world to enter KHEDIVE though.
    Live just up from a beach with 3 or 4 GROYNES that have been built over the last few years to stop the loss of sand, so that was pretty straightforward as well.
    Found the rest of the puzzle very enjoyable with a lot of interesting devices employed. Was able to find the ESP at 10a and thought that it was the best of a good lot.
    First one in was SPIN with that KHEDIVE the last to go.

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