Times 27643 – The world turned upside down

Author   vinyl1Posted on Categories Daily Cryptic

Time: 23 minutes
Music: Brahms, Piano Concerto #1, Bohm/Pollini/VPO

This seemed like a pretty easy puzzle when I started, but there were a couple of tough areas that slowed me down a bit.  There’s a little more unusual vocabulary, and there are some things the you may or may not know.   If you get stuck, you may not manage to finish at all.   There was only one answer I didn’t know, but the cryptic is pretty generous. 

Across
1 Butterfly with legs on top? The ultimate in ‘strange’ (8,5)
INVERTED COMMA – A COMMA butterfly that is INVERTED.  Where’s the definition?   Look at what I underlined!  Great clue.
8 Go round quickly and tack, going to south (4)
SPIN – S + PIN. 
9 Fortuitous to get Oscar for a Western (10)
OCCIDENTAL – (-a,+O)CCIDENTAL, with Oscar from the NATO alphabet.
10 Member on board gives in, then oddly persists (8)
BOWSPRIT – BOWS + P[e]R[s]I[s]T, where ‘on board’ refers to the ship.
11 Tons in arrears regularly — affording such jewellery? (6)
TIARAS – T + I[n] A[r]R[e]A[r]S.
13 Lack of harmony is very new in music for disco (10)
DISSONANCE – D(IS SO N)ANCE.
16 Magistrate’s heartless act that is dishonest (4)
DOGE – DO[d]GE, a bit of slang that has fallen out of use.
17 Reject some love tokens (4)
VETO – Hidden in [lo]VE TO[kens].
18 Changing euro next, as foreign (10)
EXTRANEOUS – anagram of EURO NEXT, AS.
20 Rank suspicion about cheap stuff (6)
STATUS – S(TAT)US.  
22 An enhancing drug for heavenly body (8)
ASTEROID – A STEROID, a bit of an &lit, although not for long.
24 Machine for turning cast figure on coin (10)
CENTRIFUGE – CENT + anagram of FIGURE.
26 Treat prince having swallowed ecstasy (4)
HEAL – H(E)AL.   The literal is not quite synonymous, but it’s close enough.
27 Replenish beer that’s drunk? Disgraceful (13)
REPREHENSIBLE – anagram of REPLENISH BEER. 
Down
1 Driven to shaking after naughty child’s thoughtless (11)
IMPROVIDENT – IMP + anagram of DRIVEN TO.
2 See eastern star rising — or planet (5)
VENUS – V + E + SUN upside-down, where V = ‘vide’.
3 Film old relative during journey on horseback (3,6)
RIO GRANDE –  RI(O GRAN)DE.   The similarity to the song makes the answer a little obvious. 
4 Around x-ray, notice strange energy concentration (7)
EXCITON – Anagram of NOTICE around X, another NATO alphabet bit.  This is the word I didn’t know.
5 Police student about reported money owed (5)
CADET – CA + sounds like DEBT.
6 Crew name tug crudely? (9)
MANHANDLE – MAN + HANDLE.
7 Chap’s dropping masculine woman (3)
ADA – ADA[m].   I had to think a little, as a number of female names would fit.
12 Stick together stuff in cutting semi-precious stone (11)
AGGLUTINATE – AG(GLUT, IN)ATE, where both ‘glut’ and ‘stuff’ must be verbs.  
14 Baseball player’s casual two-piece outfit? (9)
SHORTSTOP – SHORTS + TOP.  
15 Attention to detail of former head about individual performance (9)
EXACTNESS – EX(ACT)NESS, as in ‘you’d better clean up your act!’.  
19 Slander a duke during armistice (7)
TRADUCE – TR(A D)UCE.
21 Gooey stuff coming from small tree (5)
SLIME – S + LIME, not the first tree you think of, but the obvious answer.
23 Swimmer wasting time over process of getting better (5)
REHAB – BA[t]HER upside-down.
25 Organ is present from Cockney, we’re told (3)
EAR – Sounds like ‘ERE, which is how the Cockney responds to the roll call.

62 comments on “Times 27643 – The world turned upside down”

  1. Didn’t know EXCITON, which really stood out in this collection of fairly common words.
    COD INVERTED COMMA. Though BATHER was nice too.
    Vinyl, I don’t think I know the song you are thinking of, with a “similarity to” RIO GRANDE.

    Edited at 2020-04-20 01:42 am (UTC)

  2. What Guy said, all of it. I didn’t actually see the wordplay (punctuation play?) in 1ac until I’d biffed it from the V & R; we’ve had a number of clues like this, and I still get tricked by them. POI CADET, LOI TIARAS; somehow I just couldn’t see where the first letter would be until I got the T (I don’t think I’ve seen two every-other-letter clues in a row before.
  3. You’ll never hear anything but compliments from me about a grid which has a baseball reference in it, so brilliantly done, setter. Elsewhere, when the “R” appeared (FOI) I thought the film would be Rio Bravo, which also stars John wayne, and in my view is a much better film. I liked Inverted Comma. Thx, vinyl
  4. As quick as I can go, but none the worse for that, enjoyable puzzle. Only missed the butterfly and Ada, wrote in all the others on reading the clue, even the unknown exciton. Nearly misspelled agglutenate, but my habit of parsing each clue as I go saved me.
    COD centrifuge.
  5. Technical DNF as I didn’t know 4dn and looked it up. I’d more or less worked out it was to be an anagram of X NOTICE and I had all the checkers so I suppose I should have just plumped for EXCITON or EXCOTIN, either being possible having suspected a science reference, but I didn’t go for it. I thought it slightly odd having X clued by X-ray until I realised (after completion) that it’s from the NATO alphabet.

    Struggled also with the unknown AGGLUTINATE and the baseball player.

    Not a very good start to the week.

    Edited at 2020-04-20 05:49 am (UTC)

    1. I don’t think I even saw the possibility of EXCOTIN, lucky for me; I may have been unconsciously influenced by electron/proton/neutron etc. It’s one of those words that doesn’t seem to have a natural-sounding pronunciation, like ‘otiose’.
      1. A lot of chemical substances end with -IN, hence my dilemma as I had no idea what area of science it would be associated with.
        1. It seems unlikely that a chemical substance could be defined as an ‘energy concentration’. It sounded distinctly physics-y to me so I was quite confident putting it in.
          In case you were wondering what an EXCITON is, it’s a mobile neutral entity in a crystalline solid consisting of an excited electron bound to the hole produced by its excitation. So now you know.
          1. Afraid I don’t think about scientific matters in that sort of detail. What knowledge I had of such things was acquired at school and most of it has been forgotten over the intervening 55 years.

            Edited at 2020-04-20 10:43 am (UTC)

  6. Easy start to the week. Had heard of EXCITON if not entirely sure what it is – something to do with electrons I think. Guessed the baseball player from cryptic and checkers.

    If you’re casting around for something to do, yesterday’s Mephisto was at the easy end of the scale. An ideal time to have a go if you’ve never tried one

  7. 18 minutes. Paul will be disappointed to know that my LOI was SHORTSTOP, with me first thinking of ‘sports top’. Is he the man behind the wicket-keeper on a small ground? EXCITON was a blast from the past, not that I paid much attention to solid state physics. It seemed boring compared with relativity and quantum mechanics, but those who realised the potential are Californian billionaires now. One of many wrong turnings in life! COD to INVERTED COMMA. Enjoyable and mainly straightforward, but with a couple of tricky ones. Thank you V and setter.
  8. A cheery encounter for me with two new words guessed correctly (4d and 12d) and very few chicanes in the circuit. FOI SPIN, with the excellent punctuation clue yielding very late as I know even less about butterflies than I do about flowers and shrubs; thank goodness they come up less often.

    I played the 1812 finale through decent sound systems to end numerous school firework displays in Sheen and Richmond around twenty years ago. Always a thrilling finale. Guy Fawkes night should be one tradition that will survive the world being turned upside down, unless a second surge squashes that too.

  9. Good start to the week, some nice clues in there. Vinyl, I think you’ve got your explanation of BOWSPRIT a bit mixed up.

    NHO EXCITON
    COD 2d VENUS, very nice semi &lit. Liked ASTEROID and INVERTED COMMA too.

    If you are looking for something to do on Sunday evening, I am hosting a second quiz with cryptic elements in it at 7pm. The first one was won by a ‘Cracking the Cryptic’ team but I’m determined to outwit them this time! To register, send an email with a team name to awlockdownquiz at gmail dot com.

    Friday’s answer: the only element without any of the letters of mackerel is tin.

    Today’s question: which two NATO alphabet words hide a third one in between them?

    2. Papa John’s Quebec (LAVAL) opening soon!

      Re-Friday – it would appear somewhat ironic that mackerel are often to be found in a tin!
      Can someone please advise on this anomaly?

      Edited at 2020-04-20 09:48 pm (UTC)

  10. WITCH of 129 today. Here’s what held me up: I didn’t know the baseball player, though I suppose it should have been obvious from ‘longstop’ (not sure which sport that is). Also, why is a bowsprit a ‘member’ on board – I thought it was part of the rigging? I guessed the exciton – don’t all subatomic particles end on ‘-on’? Finally, I didn’t know to ‘glut’ could mean to ‘stuff’, if that’s how the clue works. COD was the butterfly – I never spot the references to punctuation.
    1. Essentially it is a horizontal mast, attached to the front of the foremast and carrying a spritsail… I recommend the Hornblower books 🙂

      Edited at 2020-04-20 08:16 am (UTC)

      1. I thought it was attached to the ship’s bow , not the foremast.
        1. Well that’s all very interesting but why is it a ‘member’ on board?
          1. I think it’s in the sense ‘a constituent piece of a complex structure, especially a component of a load-bearing structure’ (Lexico). Seems a little bit loose to me but it’s the closest equivalent I can see.

            Edited at 2020-04-20 10:29 am (UTC)

  11. 24 minutes, starting off with the short 8a SPIN and working my way around to 24a CENTRIFUGE without too much trouble, though I didn’t know 3d EXCITON and took the “glut” of AGGLUTINATE on a certain amount of trust… COD 1a INVERTED COMMA.

    10a helped by knowing of a boat that regularly removes it BOWSPRIT because Portsmouth Harbour charges pilot fees based on the overall length of the vessel…

  12. 9:44. I breezed through this. Nearest to a crash came from trying to fit DENOMINATION in for 24A from the wrong definition. NHO EXCITON, but it seemed a reasonable name related to things like photons and electrons etc. I’ve looked it up now. “An exciton is a bound state of an electron and an electron hole which are attracted to each other by the electrostatic Coulomb force.”. So now we know. Vinyl you are missing the “TO” in the anagrist for 1D. COD to the butterfly doing the loop the loop, but I also liked the allusion to Boaty McBoatface in MANHANDLE, my LOI.

    Edited at 2020-04-20 07:37 am (UTC)

  13. 30 mins pre-brekker.
    Took a while over Exciton and Agglutinate.
    Mostly I liked Manhandle.
    Thanks setter and Vinyl.
  14. Ah, indeed, one of the all-time great moments in film history, Uma Thurman in the role to the approval of John Neville’s Munchausen and Oliver Reed’s Vulcan. Breathtaking!
  15. Easy but enjoyable, a nice start to the week … nho exciton but the only plausible option, really. Liked 1ac.
    I took the trouble to look up the Wiki entry for exciton, to assist with remembering it for the future, but sadly failed to understand a single word it said

    Edited at 2020-04-20 08:21 am (UTC)

  16. Juicy for Monday, taking me 17.13 on the clock. My rather less scientifically based discipline invented the word EXONTIC, which might mean unreal, outside of physical existence, and so some concentration of bizarre energy. And why not? Along with EXTONIC, it’s every bit as likely as EXCITON. Obviously, my invention didn’t survive the crossing letters, so all it did was slow me down a bit.

    Anyone else try to workout why GLOMER meant stuff (in) (cutting)? I know I did.

    Very much appreciated the mischief in this puzzle, especially the ‘. I shall be on the lookout today for butterflies doing aerobatics.

  17. Extended completion time thanks to ADA, STEROID and AGGLUTINATE. Fortunately I hit on the correct spelling of EXCITON. SPINE suggested itself first in 21d but nothing gooey about that.
  18. The dangers of rushing to finish a crossword when you think you’re on for a quick solve: I put INVERTED CAMEL for 1a, even though there are plenty of reasons why it clearly couldn’t be right, and then thought LIA would be the woman in 7d, as in Liam without in M. Oh dear. I really must review my “Always ignore punctuation” policy.

    Otherwise this was enjoyable – MANHANDLE was a clever clue with the misdirection of crudely suggesting an anagram which couldn’t possible be, and REHAB was nice too.

    FOI Veto
    LOI Bowsprit
    COD Inverted comma (now that I see it!)

    1. I feel your pain. I had INVERTED CRAWL, which is a thing it turns out. Also relates to butterfly. I couldn’t work out the word play, and it messed up the 6d and 7d. I got MANHANDLE eventually, which put me on the right track.
  20. As has been said above.

    SHORTSTOP would be the length of any visit to a baseball match for me (just winding up Paul).

  21. 8:37. Gentle start to the week, but a fun one. I didn’t know EXCITON but it seemed much the most likely option. I almost came a cropper on 22ac by thinking it would start AN but fortunately I managed not to get too stuck in the resulting rut.
    I think we’ve had the COMMA butterfly here a few times.
    1. Please read the preceding comments first. Johninterred already covered that.
  24. 12:19. I found this mostly very straightforward but there were stings in the tail in the form of BOWSPRIT, EXCITON and AGGLUTINATE. The last of these was trickiest as I can’t recall encountering glut as a verb before.

    EXCITON sounds like a slightly less powerful prototype of Woody Allen’s Orgasmatron.

  25. Yay! Beat the ten minute mark. No real problem here. Plenty of biffing when I saw I could be heading for a very quick time (for me). But they all turned out alright. Nearly had Agglomerate, but happily concluded there was no such thing as a glomer.
  26. Experience as others; mostly straightforward, if with some words I’d never knowingly encountered, but where in each case the wordplay led to one very obvious solution which a) looked right and b) was right.
  27. A bit delayed by happily putting in SHE for 7dn. It works perfectly well.

    Another one who tried to justify ‘glomer’ as ‘stuff’ at 12dn. I thought it might well be, just my ignorance.

  28. Off the wavelength today, taking 11m 54s and struggling to get AGGLUTINATE, ASTEROID and BOWSPRIT. Nice use of ‘figure’ in CENTRIFUGE.
  29. Took me a while to get going today , tiaras being my first in . After that made good progress apart from a slight stickiness due to agglutinate and doge which I biffed. Another new word in exciton . Finished in 15.05 doge being LOI. My COD was inverted comma with honourable mentions for occidental and heal.
  30. ….I thought that it was thoroughly REPREHENSIBLE of the setter to spoil a perfectly good set of clues with the awfulness of 7D. Once I had that one in, I was stuck for over two minutes at the junction of 6D/16A. It really shouldn’t have been a problem if I’m honest.

    NHO EXCITON but an educated biff did the trick. Thanks to Vinyl for parsing DISSONANCE.

    FOI SPIN
    LOI MANHANDLE (duh !)
    COD INVERTED COMMA
    TIME 11:41

  31. was my FOI – I was quick to see the def. so hardly up for COD! Commas were very common and first to show in Lincs. back in the day.

    LOI 4dn EXCITON but I could not get excited about it and was not sure- so like Jack a TKO.

    COD 24ac CENTRIFUGE go figure out!

    WOD 9ac OCCIDENTAL

    I thought 2dn VENUS was a poorly clued

    Memories of Red Grant on the RIO GRANDE Portland Jamaica at 3dn

    Edited at 2020-04-20 11:39 am (UTC)

  32. NHO EXCITON or AGGLUTINATE though checkers were enough to get them over the line – EXCITON just seemed a little more likely than EXCOTIN
  33. 21:47. Couldn’t find a foothold to begin with but eventually got FOI bowsprit and after that the bottom half filled up pretty quickly. The top half was fiddlier. Had no idea what was going on with the butterfly clue until the very last moment, very good. Also had a little trouble with Rio Grande, manhandle, Occidental and the unknown LOI exciton.
  34. Another who’d never heard of EXCITON or AGGLUTINATE, but the wordplay and checkers got me to the answers. MANHANDLE and TIARAS were my last 2 in. Liked INVERTED COMMA, even if I didn’t stop to spot the clever wordplay. An enjoyable puzzle which I polished off in 20:46, only to find myself in a laggardly 115th position on the Leaderboard. Thanks setter and Vinyl.
  35. Readers of the newspaper may have noticed the insert on 11 April 2020, a “pull out and keep” guide to butterflies which of course includes the comma. When its wings are shut, the comma butterfly looks like a fallen leaf, allowing hibernating adults to hide in the winter.
    As for the puzzle I solved the bottom half quite quickly including SHORTSTOP, one of my first in. But with bases loaded I couldn’t make much progress with the top half so came here.
    David
  36. Eventually ground my way through this in 42:39.

    BOWSPRIT was LOI, after a bit of a 2 speed solve, rushing through the bottom half, then coming to a juddering halt, and having to prise out RIO GRANDE, OCCIDENTAL, MANHANDLE and EXCITON.

    It’s all good experience.

  37. A very enjoyable outing. I don’t often try the 15squared but was a bit bored with all this indolence (and the garden is pretty well under control). I was pleased to finish well within my target. Too many nice clues to list. I cannot compete with the speed merchants but was pleased to finish and parse it all without aids. Thanks to setter and blogger. John M.

    Edited at 2020-04-21 07:19 am (UTC)

  38. 10:48 – I knew EXCITON but had to piece together AGGLUTINATE at the end.
  39. There I went, making up English words and their meanings again: AGGLUMINATE anybody? or GLUM (meaning stuff, as in, “just glum that in there”)? Even if I had thought of GLUT (which I didn’t), I wouldn’t have read it as the verbal meaning it obviously does have. But the rest was easy (and my COD would also be the ‘INVERTED COMMA’).

    Edited at 2020-04-20 05:40 pm (UTC)

  41. Only took me two days. Generally don’t finish. 6d and 10ac last to finish. Surely dishonest is dodgy not dodge so just had to enter doge as only possible answer.
  42. Can’t make you head or tail of 1a – doesn’t make any sense to me. I guess I’m just not up to this crossword. Final week for me.

Comments are closed.