Times 27459 – Banzai ! *rty-**rty sun-kist hedonists – that’s the stuff! More or less.

Author   pipkirbyPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
I needed cheering up after a disappointing (well, bad) round of golf in the rain. This puzzle cheered me up no end! It took 25 minutes, around my usual leisurely speed, with quite a few smiles. I did have to check 13a at the end, having got him from wordplay, and wasted too long at 25a trying to justify BANZAI or even BONSAI before seeing dog was the definition, not the shouting out bit. 19d put me in mind of Sunday’s miraculous and superb Solheim Cup victory by Europe’s lady golfers, watching the glamorous Morgan PRESSEL missing a few putts, and gobsmacked, bizarrely clad Americans having to un-gloat when they looked odds on to win. And City lost to Norwich! The Aussies lost the test but keep the Ashes… Bournemouth and Southampton both won… time to open a decent bottle of red, like the 5a I am; not kist off any more.

Across
1 Ukrainian port where poetic works have a certain appeal (6)
ODESSA – ODES have SA = sex appeal. A nice place, I believe, but still on my bucket list.
5 Sensualist’s place accommodating Yankee pub (8)
SYBARITE – SITE = place, accommodates Y and BAR. Sybaris was a port city in ancient Greek times, in what is now Italy; the wealthy inhabitants knew how to party, laze about and spoil themselves rotten.
9 Old countryman, chap with ship in Scottish port (8)
ASSYRIAN – AYR has SS for ship inside, then IAN is our chap.
10 Furious, receiving French wine in cheap paper (6)
RAVING – the cheap RAG has VIN inserted.
11 Think it out — and return to captivity, as it were? (10)
DELIBERATE – well, if you DE-LIBERATE someone, it could mean sending them back to jail, I suppose.
13 First work by English portrait and historical painter? (4)
OPIE – OPus 1 = first work, E for English; John Opie was an English painter known for portraits and historical works.
14 Large chest son included in equipment (4)
KIST – KIT has S included. KIST is an old Scottish word for a coffer or cist / chest.
15 Sounding good in Brussels, report of bogus old American (10)
EUPHONIOUS – EU (in Brussels), PHONI sounds like phoney, bogus; O(ld), US.
18 Daunting, action on green being imminent? (3-7)
OFF-PUTTING – I’ve just been OFF PUTTING at the golf club, even three-putting, and getting wet to boot.
20 Culturally pretentious leader dismissed by political group (4)
ARTY – PARTY loses its P.
21 Precious box, say, Republican set aside for wife (4)
TWEE – a box TREE has its R replaced by a W.
23 Fickle bloke in fashionable Tory district at last (10)
INCONSTANT – STAN, our bloke, goes inside IN, CON, and T = district at last.
25 Dog unknown man recalled with peremptory cry (6)
BORZOI – Z ROB = unknown, man, reversed = BORZ, OI a peremptory cry as in OI watchit mate. A borzoi is a kind of elegant, hairy, greyhound-type dog of Russian origin.
26 Husband in public transport area welcoming black primate (8)
BUSHBABY – BUS = public transport, BAY = area, as in loading bay; insert H and then B for black. Bush babies, not always hyphenated, are small nocturnal primates with big eyes.
28 Woman, heading off to visit sickly chapelgoer (8)
WESLEYAN –  LESLEY, our woman, loses her L then goes inside WAN meaning sickly.
29 Spirited girl’s hide-out on sloop-rigged vessel (6)
HOYDEN – a HOY is the vessel so rigged, DEN is the hide-out. I only knew what a hoyden is because she has appeared not long ago in a crossword.

Down
2 Doubt detectives contradict sheriff, ultimately (9)
DISBELIEF – DI’S, BELIE, F the end of sheriff.
3 Designer’s catalogue of animal accommodation (7)
STYLIST – a STY LIST being a catalogue of porcine residences.
4 Fine setting for Labrador primarily — and boxer (3)
ALI – A1 = fine, insert L = first letter of Labrador. Boxer as in Muhammad Ali.
5 A woman’s set up supplying laxative (5)
SENNA – Reverse of ANNE’S. For avoidance of doubt over senna’s use, I can only quote the NHS UK website entry: “Senna is a natural laxative made from the leaves and fruit of the senna plant. It is used to treat constipation (difficulty pooing).”      Lots of random people today; that’s IAN, STAN, ROB, LESLEY and ANNE so far
6 Farm building housing damaged regal or other instrument (6,5)
BARREL ORGAN – (REGAL OR)* inside BARN.
7 Pasta Victor served in bar finally with garlic mayonnaise (7)
RAVIOLI – R end of baR, AIOLI = garlic mayo has V inserted.
8 Circular paintings yours truly wouldn’t put up! (5)
TONDI – I’D NOT (yours truly wouldn’t) reversed. A TONDO is a round painting or sculpture, derived from Italian rotondo.
12 Choose right urban area to secure one form of energy (11)
ELECTRICITY – ELECT, R, CITY, insert I.
16 Character recently abandoning collector’s hobby (3)
PHI – Greek letter. PHILATELY loses LATELY = recently.
17 Powerless to protect a cardinal? That’s insupportable! (9)
UNTENABLE – UNABLE has the cardinal number TEN inserted.
19 Nancy’s ready by fire, wanting a savoury biscuit (7)
PRETZEL – PRET = French for ready; ZEAL = fire, loses its A. Nancy isn’t a random woman here, it’s a city in France.
20 Bill gets embraced by a model? That’s the stuff! (7)
ATTABOY – A TOY has the TAB = bill inserted.
22 Complete dump, by the sound of it (5)
WHOLE – sounds like HOLE = dump.
24 Murderer concealing first of bodies in shack (5)
CABIN – CAIN our murderer has B first of bodies inserted.
27 Note sending up prophet’s book (3)
SOH – HOSEA is an OT prophet and book, often abbr. to HOS.

​

54 comments on “Times 27459 – Banzai ! *rty-**rty sun-kist hedonists – that’s the stuff! More or less.”

  1. I was on the road today so somewhat handicapped by the fine but blustery weather.
    I note the Wild Colonial Boy has arrived to replace Lord Galspray at long last.

    I unhappily shoved in an ENEMA in at 6dn and sort of gave up!

    FOI 14ac KIST

    COD 15ac EUPHONIOUS

    WOD 20ac ATTABOY!

    Norwich won courtesy of the unspeakable OTAMENDI and United won as ‘Poggs’ didn’t take the penalty.

    Didn’t we have RAVIOLI recently with almost the same clue?

    Edited at 2019-09-18 05:59 am (UTC)

  2. Zipping along nicely, then once again stopped by two clues, 27d and 29ac, at 14′ or so. Somehow I could only think of SOL, although I entertained DOH for a moment; took all that time to come up with SOH, and then the H gave me HOYDEN, which I just couldn’t remember (and DNK HOY). Biffed WESLEYAN. DNK OPIE. KIST only because it came up recently. Difficulty pooing? Does bladder trouble cause difficulty going wee-wee?
  3. This felt tougher than yesterday’s, but at 31 minutes only took me a teensy bit longer to complete.

    I was lucky with my GK, especially for HOYDEN, but the wordplay must have been kind elsewhere, as I didn’t know OPIE, KIST or TONDO. Knew BORZOI from the webcomic Questionable Content, which features a magnificent example called Cosmo, so that might count as a bit of Ninja Turtling…

    FOI 1a ODESSA, LOI SOH as I was waiting for 26a BUSHBABY to confirm that Hod hadn’t written any books, as I know he’s in the Bible, too. COD 11a DE-LIBERATE.

    1. I’m not sure I’ve actually come across a borzoi, but there’s the Knopf colophon, and the dog in Saki’s “Cousin Teresa”: Cousin Teresa takes out Caesar,
      Fido, Jock, and the big borzoi.
      1. I don’t think I’ve ever seen the Knopf colophon (presumably a bit more common stateside?) Cousin Teresa is at least in the book of Saki stories that’s on the more aspirational of my reading lists, but it’ll be quite a while before I get there…
  4. Around 30 minutes. I thought the same as our Shanghai correspondent about RAVIOLI, and also ODESSA. I’m sure our local bus stations have BUS BAYS so I’d have parsed ‘public transport area’ as a single entity, but having checked the dictionaries I can’t find it listed. NHO OPIE. KIST dredged from the depths of memory.

    Edited at 2019-09-18 06:29 am (UTC)

    1. As a bus enthusiast, a “bus bay” is a concept that I’ve never encountered. It’s a usually a stand, other than North of the Border, where it’s a stance.
      1. A little surprised at that, Phil. The bus staton I use most frequently is in Aylesbury where they have something like a dozen bus stands around a central waiting room and they are identified as Bay 1, Bay 2 etc (and on Traveline when you look up routes), so I just sort of assumed that ‘bus bay’ would be a recognised term.
        1. I have to confess that Aylesbury bus station is not one with which I’m very familiar. Maybe the terminology changes as one heads northwards.
  5. Found that crossword a bit mixed. All seemed easy but there was no way to figure out BORZOI unless you had heard of the dog (you guessed it – I am a cat lover). And the combined checker for SOH and HOYDEN beat me as the latter was unknown. But hey ho. I need to improve my GK!
  6. I failed with HOYDEN, not knowing either the spirited girl or the vessel. I plumped for HAYDEN, with the Australian cricketer Matthew Hayden in mind, so not only do I have the disappointment of failure, I’m now thinking about Aussie cricketers as well. Harrumph!
    1. I seem to remember that’s exactly how I failed on HOYDEN the first time it came up for me, back in a May Sunday Times puzzle. Back then I hadn’t heard of Chris Hoy; today I didn’t know the vessel, but at least I’d remembered the spirited girl!
  7. It occurred to me yesterday that I hadn’t seen any qualifying puzzles yet this year. A quick web search found mention of the qualifying format changing this year but I couldn’t find any detail. Anyone got any info on this?
    1. Most recent post by David Parfitt on the matter (10th September):

      Hi all. The plan is still to launch in September, so I hope to be able to finally confirm full details here very shortly. We should still be able to give you more notice than we used to for contestants entering the Sudoku Championship (we used to confirm qualifiers in mid-July and Finals Day took place in mid-September), so there should be a reasonable amount of time to arrange your visit to London.

        2. Pootle, you should also know that qualification is unnecessary. It seems they’ll be “selling” tickets on a first come F S basis.
          1. Hopefully in practice that won’t work out much different to normal. Qualifying puzzles were not verified so anyone could have cheated on the puzzle and made up a time, but also I doubt there are many people who now think they’ll give it a go just because they don’t have to complete a qualifier.
  8. Lots to cope with today. Unknowns sprinkled throughout; a wider than welcome choice between MOTZOI, YORZOI, BOBZOI (amusing misdirection?), NOJZOI, BORZOI etc without a pin handy to help; and then a mysterious rogue blog. However, cope I did.
  9. Fun puzzle. Like others found most of it straightforward but had to look up OPIE to verify wordplay and BORZOI to check the spelling.

    I’ve given up playing golf in the rain in favour of a G&T in the clubhouse

  10. 19 minutes, with LOI SOH, despite Hosea 6:6 being one of my favourite verses to quote, even if ‘hesed’ is untranslatable. Apart from KIST, which I guessed right, all the vocabulary and general knowledge required today was within my range, even OPIE, so I can declare this crossword a good thing. COD to the STYLIST. Thank you Pip and setter.
  11. I plodded through this never confident that I wouldn’t be tripped up by the setter. NHO KIST, Hos or OPIE. RAVIOLI again as Horryd points out (and ANECDOTAL twice yesterday).
  12. As well as the roll call in the answers (not forgetting CAIN), we had Nancy, Victor, Bill…

    Had to work out (nho) TONDI and KIST. Did not parse WESLEYAN. Am reading a book about HOSEA at the moment. Delayed by thinking the Scottish port must be OBAN. Liked ATTABOY and HOYDEN.

    17’52”, thanks pip and setter.

  13. 13:02. I was slightly surprised to come through this unscathed, given the number of funny words. I thought HOYDEN was a bit mean, but the spirited girl meaning has become familiar to me over the years of doing these things.
  14. A few unknowns were derived from wordplay with fingers crossed; TONDI, KIST, OPIE. HOYDEN was vaguely remembered from a previous puzzle. Otherwise a steady enjoyable solve. I biffed YOICKS at 25a, but couldn’t parse it, then ELECTRICITY gave me the final I, and the penny dropped. 23:36. Thanks setter and Pip.
  15. Half the clues slipped in very quickly, the other half took some pleasurable rumination. Good to see words like Hoyden and Attaboy. It had to be Wesleyan, but I couldn’t see why – so thanks for explaining.
  16. A very ‘crosswordy’ crossword i.e. the words I’d call obscure are ones which I’ve previously put on my Big List of Words (HOYDEN, KIST and TONDI), and, rather more miraculously, remembered from that list. Nice penny-drop moment for my LOI when I twigged that the definition at 20dn wasn’t just ‘stuff’. Enjoyable.
  17. In his poem The Destruction Of SENNAcherib Byron has the ASSYRIAN coming down like a wolf on the fold. With that and HOSEA we had rather an OT flavour to this one. I seem to remember that Hezekiah built some sort of protective wall around Jerusalem to ward of the Assyrian attack. This one slid in smoothly for me. 12.28
    1. And his cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold. I used to wonder what a cohort was, and where you wore one.
      1. Our whole English class was completely baffled by the thing Kevin. We were made to read the original story in the KJ bible and it was pretty far-fetched all round what with Sennacherib climbing up on a pile of cushions to peek over the city wall and declaring it a dump, and then the angel of death killing off his entire army overnight.
  18. ….and a puzzle where I knew everything on offer, so blasted through it without biffing anything. I appreciate, however, that if one didn’t know everything, it was quite another ball game.

    FOI ODESSA
    LOI WESLEYAN
    COD DELIBERATE
    TIME 7:43

    1. Etymology 1865, from French philatélie was ‘coined'(numistamised!) by French stamp collector Georges Herpin (in Le Collectionneur de Timbres-poste, Nov. 15, 1864) from Ancient Greek φιλέω (philéō, “I love”) + ἀτέλεια (atéleia), the closest word he could find in Ancient Greek to the concept of “postage stamp”, from ἀ- (a-, “without”) + τέλος (télos, “tax”). This word serves as a reminder of the original function of postage stamps, now often forgotten: the cost of letter-carrying formerly was paid by the recipient; stamps indicated it had been pre-paid by the sender, thus the letters were ‘carriage-free’.
      I thank-yew!
  19. I got most of this but decided to come here early as my wife and I are doing a tour of Buckingham Palace this afternoon (open to the public whilst the Queen is at Balmoral).
    I got BORZOI and the unknown KIST ; was nowhere near EUPHONIUS; and I am annoyed to be defeated once again by HOYDEN and TONDI both of which I have seen recently (as noted by others). WESLEYAN also unsolved.
    Ravioli was in the QC, maybe yesterday -the same clue as Horryd mentions.
    David
  20. Very surprised to come here and discover I’d not made any errors, as I had my fingers firmly crossed for OPIE and BORZOI in particular. Also DNK SYBARITE or SENNA.

    11m 18s.

  21. Almost exactly on the hour with this one. I was happy to be able to remember TONDI and HOYDEN from previous appearances, but hadn’t heard of the ‘primate’ at 26a, the ‘painter’ at 13a or the ‘prophet’s book’ at 27d, all of which had to go in from the wordplay.

    I liked the PUTT in the OFFING for ‘action on green being imminent’ at 18a, ARTY followed by TWEE and my favourite, the onomatopoeic EUPHONIOUS.

    Thanks to setter and blogger

  22. 10:31 so not too taxing, despite not knowing the painter and not being quite sure which of HOY and HOYDEN was the vessel and which the lass.

    Slight pause too at 24d to consider ABBEL as I can never remember who killed whom.

    1. From my schooldays, ‘Killer Cain killed Abel, and Abel was able to please God.’

      The palindrome ‘Able was I ere I saw Elba.’ may be more helpful! Did Napoleon speak much English? Apparently!

  23. … because I think of ‘box’ as a bush or hedge, not a tree. Sure I’m not alone.
  24. I was a bit doubtful about OPIE so I googled it and all I could find was an alive pop artist called Julian Opie, which didn’t seem right. After submission I found our John halfway down page 2 of google, so somewhat obscure for this art philistine.
    Otherwise nice and simple. WOD def ATTABOY.
    And our ONZE didn’t fare so well last night in Napoli, unfortunately…
    1. Maybe not, but Allison made one of the saves of the season. Not bad for a Brazilian. And a girl…
      1. Isn’t Alisson injured and wasn’t it Adrian making the save? Pity it’s a male name.
  25. Found this very difficult and had to cheat after 42 minutes to get HOYDEN and ATTABOY.

    The riots (oops, protests) must have gone to my head.

  26. DNF due to writing in SOL for 27d: given that “The Book of Los” by Blake is a book featuring prophecies given by the titular Los, it seems to fit the clue 100% and DNK Hoyden
  27. DNF. Bah! And it all started so well. I got off to a flyer and thought I could be on for a PB but tarried in the bottom half out to a time of around 20 mins. Perhaps because I had been trying to go quickly I lost patience when I couldn’t see 20dn and 29ac straight away. I ended up throwing in a couple of wrong answers in haste.
  28. Once again, I find myself deeply worried by the number of things I know, but didn’t know I knew. TONDI, HOYDEN and KIST all leapt out from behind the bookshelves of my brain, almost before I’d finished reading the clues. I have worried on previous occasions about this sort of knowing-without-knowing-I-know, but now another dreadful thought occurs to me: are there things that I don’t know and yet think I know? Symmetry would suggest so, but how can I be sure? This is the sort of thing that makes me drink.

    Howevertheless, I did enjoy this puzzle. It took me 34 minutes, which means I must have been held up somewhere, but I can’t remember where. I think BUSHBABY was almost my LoI, after I’d spent a while stuck on “bonobobo”. SOH must have been my actual LoI; I’d previously wondered if there was a Book of Hod, which apparently there isn’t yet.

    BORZOI made me wonder if we had a pangram (do I mean “pangram”? perhaps that’s a thing I thought I knew but don’t), but apparently not. A quick Google shows me that a BORZOI is quite a leggy animal, which perhaps explains why the Russians named their ballet company after it.

  29. Used aids for HOYDEN and TONDI. Never heard of a girl referred to as such in 54 years.

    OPIE, KIST and WESLEYAN all biffs.

Comments are closed.