Times 27,719: When It Comes To The Crunch, Double Your Unch

Author   verlainePosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
A crossword of middling difficulty, with some fairly easy clues commingling with slightly sneakier offerings – nothing at all wrong with that. My COD for its clever cryptic merging seamlessly into the surface is 11ac, which sadly was thoroughly biffable from a few crossers, which meant I only fully appreciated it later. WOD to murrain which always reminds me of a scary TV play of the same name by Nigel Kneale of Quatermass fame. It really shouldn’t happen to a vet.

LOI 22ac which would surely not have been LOI if enumerated (4-3, 3); but as it was I spent too long wondering if a COCKLED HAT might be a thing. I liked the portaloo, the nudist party and the drug binge in the central column, all hallmarks of a certain risque style of setting that may have some solvers tutting but is fine by me, I can tell you. Thank you setter!

ACROSS
1 Fewer than twenty in foreground (10)
UNDERSCORE – UNDER SCORE [fewer than | twenty]. FOI and straight in.

6 Ceremony in ball cut by a third (4)
POMP – The truncated ball is a POMP{om}.

8 A ruin I’m going to love in US city (8)
AMARILLO – A MAR I’LL O [a | ruin | I’m going to | love]. Don’t mess with Texas.

9 Soup for one on returning (6)
POTAGE – reverse all of E.G. ATOP [for one | on]

10 Like hippy’s jacket without colour (4)
ASHY – AS [like] + H{ipp}Y

11 Sink’s blocked here? He’ll provide a plug? (5,5)
PRESS AGENT – SAG [sink] has blocked PRESENT [here].

12 Suffering, try facial adornment (9)
HEARTACHE – HEAR TACHE [try | facial adornment]

14 Like a recording, almost freely available (2,3)
ON TAP – or very nearly ON TAP{e} [like a recording]

17 Seeker of reduced fare, not one to get put off (5)
DETER – D{i}ETER, losing I = one

19 Fool not wholly benign or amusing (9)
IGNORAMUS – hidden in {ben}IGN OR AMUS{ing}

22 Story which has no beginning: it can go to one’s head (7,3)
PORKPIE HAT – PORKPIE [story, as in “lie”] + {w}HAT [which “has no beginning”]. Controversial implication here that porkpie is all one word, I’d have had it as pork pie or at most pork-pie, myself.

23 Mark has day off cereal product (4)
BRAN – BRAN{d} [mark], losing D = day

24 Put an end to bookish loony dropping round (6)
KIBOSH – (BO{o}KISH*) [“loony”], where the dropped “round” is one of the O’s.

25 Appropriate vehicle parts hired again (8)
RELEVANT – VAN “parts” RE-LET

26 Word from card-playing quartet (4)
NEWS – North, East, West and South, the four players in a game of Bridge.

27 Great friend embracing man and women only? (10)
PHENOMENAL – PAL “embracing” HE [man] + NO MEN [women only]

DOWN
1 A party in nude, terribly brazen! (9)
UNABASHED – A BASH in (NUDE*) [“terribly”]

2 Exciting event, investing Switzerland’s old money (7)
DRACHMA – DRAMA “investing” CH

3 Girl from Llandudno possibly eating a chop from Shrewsbury? (8)
SALOPIAN – SIAN [Welsh girl] “eating” A LOP

4 Superior twice taking tablets, intoxicated by drug (2,4,4,5)
ON ONE’S HIGH HORSE – ON [taking] + ON [taking] + E’S [tablets] + HIGH [intoxicated] + HORSE [drug]

5 Disclosure no longer affected behaviour (6)
EXPOSÉ – EX POSE [no longer | affected behaviour]

6 American region, area thrice opting out (9)
PATAGONIA – (A A A OPTING*) [“out”]

7 Woman with issue dressing a fellow in deep shade (7)
MAGENTA – MA [woman with issue (as in, children)] “dressing” A GENT

13 Free suffering birds: they’re tied (4,5)
REEF KNOTS – (FREE*) [“suffering”] + KNOTS [birds]

15 Pants, a lot exchanged after delivery (9)
POSTNATAL – (PANTS A LOT*) [“exchanged”]

16 Left Indian food for temporary convenience (8)
PORTALOO – PORT [left] + ALOO [Indian food]

18 Book about the writer’s stirring (7)
EMOTIVE – reversed TOME [book] + I’VE [the writer has]

20 Ancient plague of spirit to rise then come down (7)
MURRAIN – reversed RUM [spirit] + RAIN [come down]

21 Bad luck to some extent interrupting plan (6)
MISHAP – ISH [to some extent] “interrupting” MAP [plan]

67 comments on “Times 27,719: When It Comes To The Crunch, Double Your Unch”

  1. Could have been done a few minutes earlier if I’d thought of LOI PORKPIE as one word; I’m glad I have Verlaine’s agreement (ODE has a hyphen). ASHY (POI) also took a while to figure out. Never did parse PRESS AGENT or POMP, and it took me a while to remember TACHE (US stash). I’ve never seen or heard KIBOSH as a verb; always in ‘put the kibosh on’. I liked RELEVANT, MISHAP, POSTNATAL inter alia for their surfaces.
    1. I move that “kibosh” be introduced into the site glossary as a verb meaning “to biff incorrectly”.
  2. Finished in 37 minutes, with the unknown SALOPIAN last in, just doing what I was told to do by the wordplay. Webster’s online gives the non-hyphenated PORKPIE HAT spelling, but I couldn’t find it in dictionaries of UK or Australian English. Favourites were that good old-fashioned word KIBOSH and the surfaces for POSTNATAL and PRESS AGENT.

    No complaints that the ‘American region’ referred to somewhere outside the US of A.

    Ear worm of the day: “Is This The Way to…?” and all those sha la’s.

  3. 1 hr 20 including 2 coffee making trips.

    Dnk salopian.
    LOI murrain, also unknown.
    COD Portaloo or heartache.

    Only parsing query was foreground for underscore, I knew the foreground noun, but presume here it is the verb to make something prominent?

    Thanks

    1. Yes, definitely a verb-al “foreground” here. A bit like how I “foreground” the definition parts of the clues by underlining them!
  4. I could see the Welsh girl, but didn’t know from Shrewsbury.
    1. Salop is another name for Shropshire, the county in which Shrewsbury is located.
      1. Yes, that was in the past tense. I knew that before I came here, having looked it up!
        But thanks.
  5. Well under my target half hour for all but four clues in the SW corner, but sorting them out took my solving time to 40 minutes. The clues were 18 & 21dn and 22 & 24ac. I correctly guessed the unknown MURRAIN from wordplay.

    I agree with others that ‘pork-pie hat’ should take a hyphen whilst the pie itself is two words, but unfortunately Collins, who ought to know better, disagree, not even allowing for alternatives to it being one word, so the setter is off the hook.

    Edited at 2020-07-17 05:28 am (UTC)

  6. Couldn’t see the PORKPIE as a single word, but a most enjoyable puzzle nevertheless.
    A question for all: The blog for 4 down has the tablets as E’S. That’s common enough, but I would write Es to avoid using an apostrophe. Is E’s acceptable as it’s so widespread? Or still the sort of thing superheros with paint rollers should be purging from the land?
    1. Unspammed. LJ doesn’t like links so they have to be checked by one of the bloggers first.
      1. Thank-you.
        Do you ever sleep? You regularly mention that you do the puzzle after it arrives at midnight, and here you are commenting at 6AM (or is it 7AM with summer time?).
        1. The times of my postings are BST, so today 06:26 for my first and 07:13 for the unspam. Since retirement (coming up to 10 years now) I sleep when I’m tired and not necessarily by the clock, usually getting about 4 hours overnight and topping up during the day if I feel like it – particularly if a good lunch has been taken!
    2. An apostrophe after an abbreviation to indicate a plural (LP’s, CD’s MP’s) is fairly standard. I’m not saying I like it!
      However in this case V is I think just following the punctuation of the clue.

      Edited at 2020-07-17 08:28 am (UTC)

      1. I use apostrophes to disambiguate plurals and for things like “the 1990’s” all the time. And you can’t stop me! Moo hoo ha ha.
        1. Yes also common for numbers. I absolutely loathe it but my linguistic training tells me I can’t object. Cognitive dissonance aaaaargh!
  7. At 23 minutes, I’m back to my quicker times after yesterday’s blip. Getting 4d ON ONE’S HIGH HORSE as FOI helped, so I’m glad I took a second to look at the grid rather than starting from 1a as usual. After that the only real hold-ups were the parsing of 6a—I never thought of “pompom”—and coming up with LOI 8a AMARILLO. I even vaguely remembered 20d MURRAIN from an earlier puzzle.

    In an odd quirk of memory, I know that I first came across 3d SALOPIAN when I was in the T’Pau fan club as a child, said band being from Shropshire.

    1. Surely they’re from Yorkshire, otherwise they would have called themselves The Pau?
  8. I took a while to get started today, getting down as far as ON TAP as my FOI, but I had no great holdups from then onwards.

    I liked several of today’s clues. PORKPIE HAT was good if you accept the lack of hyphen, which I can confirm Chambers doesn’t. HEARTACHE was good for its misdirection as I bet I’m not the only one who was looking for an anagram of “try facial”. But my COD goes to IGNORAMUS for being such a well disguised hidden word.

  9. Interesting middle of the road stroll. No problems other than PORKPIE which in true CRS is strictly PORKY PIE and as a hat should be hyphenated, despite Collins
  10. 29 minutes with LOI KIBOSH. I thought for a quarter of an hour or so that I was going to struggle with this, but then it fell into place. COD to PORTALOO for its delightful simplicity. I didn’t really know that use of UNDERSCORE and I’d have PORK PIE as two words too, although I’d eat it in one sitting. Or possibly one standing, outside the pie shop. AMARILLO had me thinking of dwarfs wearing Wanderers shirts and Ronnie Corbett falling off the treadmill in Peter Kay’s classic take of Tony Christie’s song, and there’s no better way of starting the day than that. Thank you V and setter.
  11. Very happy today as I finished in 36mins. LOI MURRAIN, which was a NHO. The wordplay was clear though. I agree with the PORKPIE theorists as it was my POI too. I liked the IKEA-like 4d. COD to 16d though. Today’s ex French word: Potage. Thank you for the explanations V. Setter too.
    1. According to ODE, MURRAIN comes from the Old French ‘morine’.
      1. Interesting, I did not know that. Apparently it’s a yellowy-orange colouring agent (I’ve just looked it up!)Thanks Kevin.
  12. ….. and no difficulties. Elegant crossword ….. MISHAP, POSTNATAL, UNDERSCORE, IGNORAMUS etc. Love the word KIBOSH.
  13. 35 mins pre-brekker.
    A brilliant one IMHO. I have no question marks written down and no less than eleven ticks. This might be a record. Superb. Maybe Press Agent COD.
    Thanks setter and V.
  14. 10:39 with BRAN my LOI after a bit of a ponder. Failed to parse POMP or ASHY. All good fun. I knew SALOPIAN from a few years doing a weekly commute to work in Shropshire, living just up the hill from Ironbridge. A nice part of the country. COD to PORTALOO. Thanks V and setter.

    Edited at 2020-07-17 07:33 am (UTC)

  16. Very nice Xword. Great surface meanings to the clues.

    COD: PRESS AGENT.

  17. I managed to believe UNADORNED was ok for 1d, the party being A DO, NUDE confused about it and the rest smudged in, but that kiboshed HEARTACHE (yes, Pootle, I tried for the anagram) and the hippy thing, so eventually I rethought it. UNDERSCORE went in uneasily: Chambers has it as “orig US; fig” in the required meaning, but I’ve not consciously come across it before.

    PATAGONIA shamelessly biffed, trying before that to take three A’s out of something. POMP also without recognising the OM bit: ball as pompom didn’t really occur.

    Now then, MURRAIN. Anyone who’s been to Passover would know that for the recital of the plagues (if done in English).

    As for time, back to the 16 minute range after yesterday when I had to work everything out properly on the way through.

    1. I knew it from Shakespeare: “And crows are fatted with the murrain flock.”
    2. I don’t have a problem with underscore meaning to emphasize or make prominent, but I am not at all comfortable with the verbification of foreground to give that meaning.
  18. The guy who had the desk before me at my posh school was infatuated with someone called SÎAN and chiselled it into the lid. I was never (then) sure whether the diacritic was there just as a diacritic, or was an affected way of writing STAN, so I couldn’t be sure which side of the road he walked on.
    The strange persistence of memory, jogged by a crossword clue.
  19. Much enjoyed Friday romp!

    FOI 1ac UNDERSCORE

    LOI 22ac PORKPIE HAT memories of Eddie Waring!

    COD 15dn PORTALOO NB SAG (ALOO) in 11ac! But no Naan or Nina! MULLIGATAWNY at 9ac?

    WOD MURRAIN which I was writing about only yesterday (subject bovine anthrax and foot and mouth)

    1. 22ac: Also memories of Joni Mitchell singing “Goodbye Pork Pie Hat”.
    2. ‘Taking an early bath’ and all that! But when it comes to pork-pie hats the only person I think of is Betjeman. I’m not sure how often he wore them irl but he did so in a number of early documentaries about trains and churches and English towns and villages, and the image is stuck indelibly in my mind.
  20. I found myself getting confused between MURRAIN and moraine.
    Thanks, verlaine for the enlightenment in ON ONE’S HIGH HORSE and PRESS AGENT.
    I liked HEARTACHE and NEWS but now that you’ve explained it, PRESS AGENT is my COD, too.

    Edited at 2020-07-17 08:43 am (UTC)

  21. 20:42. Aaaargh! Sometimes when I’m stuck at the end I take a break to check my answers: the break sometimes dislodges something in my brain. I did this today and it worked, but then I managed to type ASLOPIAN, giving me two errors.
    Super puzzle though. Tough without resort to obscurity.
    Being prescriptive about whether a term like PORKPIE HAT should or shouldn’t have a hyphen is frankly a bit silly.

    Edited at 2020-07-17 08:56 am (UTC)

  22. Pleased to finish in 25′, with PORKPIE HAT LOI, for the same reasons as everyone else. In true Cockney, the phrase is ‘telling porkies’. Rather like ‘butchers’ and hook, the pie is never said.

    Liked SALOPIAN. How do you pronounce Shrewsbury? (This is a common English question, I forget which way round it is, but people from there say it one way and others another.)

    Thanks Verlaine and setter.

    1. I’m of the belief that it’s as in “The Taming of the Shrew”, but pronouncing it to rhyme with “dough” is common.
    2. I switched to ‘oo’ from ‘oh’ after being chastised by a Salopian friend. Then I went to see Shrewsbury Town FC play, and the stadium announcer used both variants at different times. Baffling!

      Edited at 2020-07-17 11:59 am (UTC)

    3. If they ever built an underground railway in Shrewsbury, I wonder if it would become known as The Salopian Tube?
  24. Some nice constructions here. I was delayed by the SW corner, as ELATIVE kept insinuating itself until I saw the correct answer, at which point I finally completed the hat. I don’t think the absence of a hyphen or word break can be entirely blamed for me taking so long to see it.
  25. No KIBOSHES fortunately, but several near misses eg MURLAND which was knocked on the head by PHENOMENAL, which was nearly PHENOMINAL until I parsed it. PRESS AGENT had no idea but couldnt have been anything else.
    Nice to have a bit of local geography for a change, I go to Shrewsbury and Llandudno pretty regularly, indeed the latter probably this afternoon.
  26. I managed most of this in 15 minutes, then added another 5 coming up with my LOI, PORKPIE HAT. UNDERSCORE was my FOI. Sadly it was all in vain as I’d been unable to parse AMARILLO, as I’d biffed ACAPULCO. Should’ve known better. Drat! 21:34 WOE. Thanks setter and V.
  27. Sign me up for the LOI PORKPIE HAT club. The rest was fairly steady. Didn’t know MURRAIN but could see it must be right. Very much liked the style of this one.
  28. 5m 31s today, a nice puzzle and the right wavelength for me.

    I agree with Verlaine about 11a – in fact, I entered it without reading the clue at all, only seeing it when I came here, and it really is a delightful bit of trickery. Although possibly a plug is not the best way to fix a blocked sink?

    BRAN was my LOI, having got MURRAIN from wordplay.

  29. ….if some of the horses I back would run better if they were high.

    DNK definition of foreground as UNDERSCORE but it had to be. Parsed PRESS AGENT afterwards.

    I tried to make an anagram of “try facial” at 12A. I suspect I was not alone.

    SALOPIAN are one of my favourite brewers.

    FOI ON TAP
    LOI PORKPIE HAT
    COD DETER
    TIME 9:20

    1. Yes – I was scrambling “Try Facial” – especially since I already had two As and an R as crossers. I was sure it would end in a Y!
  30. I appear to have found this very straightforward (nitch of 63 at the mo). I immediately saw that the wordplay at 1a led to underscore but didn’t understand the definition part but a quick glance at 1d confirmed the U so I bunged both in and worked from there without getting stuck anywhere.

    I completely mis-parsed PRESS AGENT recalling that one meaning of PRESS was something you might have in a kitchen (just a cupboard it turns out) so could be related to blocked sinks, and HE is clearly A GENT, and ‘ll provide a plug is the def. Yeah, I know.

  31. Very late here because our NYC apartment is on the market and our broker keeps having the vapours and calling us at all hours. Slow start so I was glad to finish in 17 and change. The song that AMARILLO conjures up for me is Route 66, written by jazzman Bobby Troup, who appears in several Perry Mason episodes in effect as himself but called things like Bongo White.
  32. Enjoyable outing after a successful round of golf, two better than handicap for a change. All the better too for halfway round munching on a pork pie, which I would always spell as two words. However I can see that as an adjective describing the hat shape, it might well be acceptable as one word. It was my LOI after 25 minutes of pleasant solving.
    Have you noticed pork pies always taste better outdoors? And never eat them straight from the fridge.
  33. I bunged in 1a from the very helpful crypic but still can’t really see the definition. It’s nothing I’ve heard of or could ever imagine myself using in that context. Apart from that obscurity the rest went in fairly smoothly. 23 minutes. Ann
  34. 15:51 pretty swift for a Friday so nothing too fiendish. Murrain was the only unfamiliar bit of vocab. I identified the ball in question at 6ac post solve. All very enjoyable.
  35. Fell asleep in the middle of solving so did it in two sittings. A nice puzzle. LOI was MURRAIN since I’d never heard of it, but it was a plausible non-mephistoish word.
  36. 21.05. For a change I decided to do this online. I used to occasionally complete the paper version and then see how quickly I could fill in the digital option. Got some pretty nifty times but nowhere near the 2.30 result I saw today. How does that work? Must have dozens of fingers and toes.

    Anyway, enjoyed this puzzle a lot especially as I thought after the first ten or so clues it would be a trial. Nothing particularly memorable about the answers but well crafted crossword which rewarded effort . God that sounds pompous- it’s been a long day….

  37. As everyone said, nice puzzle, setter. My hold up was Deter / Defer. I won’t get into the hyphen debate, but I will say that “which has no end” for Hat was my favourite part. I’ll also say Frank Sinatra, Bear Bryant.
  38. Couldn’t get “Kibosh” nor “Mishap” on Friday evening but a good sleep fixed the problem this morning.
    Thanks Verlaine for explaining “Potage” – I couldn’t parse that one.
    Good puzzle.
  39. As a rookie I often come and go and as I say looked at things from the wrong side of the fence, but a fresh face and outlook gave me my PDM, my thanks to the setter and blogger.

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