Times 27745 – Feeling Selby’s Pain

Author   ulacaPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
I reached new lows on this puzzle. After I’d finished it (12 minutes), I turned to myself and asked, ‘What do you call it when you have a magnificent chance to make a name for yourself, and you foul up?’ ‘Life,’ I replied to myself. And I think I was right.

Having painfully, and rather brilliantly, I thought, constructed the unknown relish (from Arabic via obsolete Italian, no less) from the wordplay, like Mark Selby I fluffed the easy pot. How a ‘disrespectful’ Ronnie O’Sullivan can get away with whacking the balls as hard as he can to get out of snookers, while I can bang in ‘cafetaria’ and get punished for it is something I don’t think I’ll be able to comprehend, however long I mull it over.

ACROSS

1 University cleaner in most superior European capital (9)
BUCHAREST – U CHAR in BEST
6 He explored old towns initially by hired car (5)
CABOT – CAB O[ld] T[own]
9 Calm a couple of sons united by length of life (7)
ASSUAGE – A S S U AGE
10 Eg seafood dish and coffee served in Puerto Rico (7)
PLATTER – LATTE in PR
11 Prone, possibly, to be retailing pork pies? (5)
LYING – double definition (DD)
12 Protected sheepdog, not one of bright colour (9)
SHELTERED – SHELT[i]E RED; a SHELTIE is a Shetland Terrier (clearly, whoever came up with the abbreviation was dyslectic), often seen overweight and panting in Hong Kong
14 Vehicle a motoring organisation brought from east (3)
CAR – RAC reversed
15 African country’s one mistake in first auction? (6,5)
SIERRA LEONE – I ERR in SALE ONE
17 Flyer’s downfall, circling oil installation ahead of time (7,4)
FRIGATE BIRD – RIG in FATE (downfall) BIRD (time)
19 Second-class American form of transport (3)
BUS – B US
20 One who speculates over blocking specific part of stair? (9)
THEORISER – O in THE RISER
22 Quick-witted Republican leaving for bay (5)
BIGHT – B[r]IGHT
24 Spoken part doctor originally played? Something fishy here (7)
ROLLMOP – sounds like ROLE MO P[layed]
26 Middle-Easterner lives with painter and priest (7)
ISRAELI – IS RA ELI
27 Gulf State’s leader covered by a Times supplement at first (5)
ABYSS – S[tate] in A BY (times) S[upplement)
28 Hospital doctor injecting point right in centre of back (9)
REGISTRAR – GIST R in REAR

DOWN

1 Cry lustily about onset of rough altercation (5)
BRAWL – R in BAWL
2 Charlie, a comparatively mousy employee in bank (7)
CASHIER – C A SHIER
3 As in a leg, a curious absence of pain (9)
ANALGESIA – anagram* of AS IN A LEG A
4 Flat Robert Louis misses out on, having no advantage (4-7)
EVEN-STEVENS – EVEN (flat) STEVENS[on] (misses out ‘on’); nice phrase, also found in even-steven
5 Place set up for male sheep (3)
TUP – PUT reversed
6 Trickery getting airmen in court (5)
CRAFT – RAF in CT
7 Relish being on top initially in pub game (7)
BOTARGO – O[n] T[op] in BAR GO (Japanese game) – ‘being’ is the link word; a weird fishy thing to add to something that, presumably, needs it
8 Oddly this sign of embarrassment reveals fatigue (9)
TIREDNESS – T[h]I[s] REDNESS
13 Like the shriek if this cosmetic procedure goes wrong? (3-8)
EAR-PIERCING – easy, but nice
14 Accountant at fair gets wind up, needing place to eat (9)
CAFETERIA – CA FETE AIR reversed
16 Young male Yankee offers to trap first of rare beetles (9)
LADYBIRDS – LAD Y R in BIDS
18 English friend the writer would put first, in theory (7)
IDEALLY – I’D before E ALLY
19 Concealed mike at Paddington, provoking great annoyance? (7)
BUGBEAR – BUG BEAR
21 Harris’s uncle, a twin (5)
REMUS – DD; Uncle Remus (as played by James Baskett in the fine film Song of the South, where he introduces the world to ‘Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah’ – which I always thought was introduced by Butlin’s), plus the ill-fated brother of the founder of Rome
23 German city individual making all-out effort (5)
TRIER – another DD
25 After rise, censure share value (3)
PAR – RAP reversed for something financial that eludes me

64 comments on “Times 27745 – Feeling Selby’s Pain”

  1. 28 minutes. NHO BOTARGO or FRIGATE BIRD so relied on wordplay. Both items are on their first outing in the main puzzle apparently, although BOTARGO appeared in a Club Monthly in 2014 blogged by Jerry, so that may have given him an advantage over the rest of us, depending on his memory 🙂

    Edited at 2020-08-17 05:01 am (UTC)

    1. These days I can’t remember what was in yesterday’s crossword .. but I did guess botargo and it looked vaguely familiar. Just another of that large and increasing number of words that I know well, right up to the point where someone says “So, what does it mean then?”
  2. I had everything but BOTARGO in a wee bit over 8′. NHO, of course. And I confused matters by taking ‘being on top initially’ as BOT. I don’t think I’ve ever come across EVEN-STEVENS. Biffed left and right: 15ac from the enumeration, FRIGATE BIRD, ROLLMOP, ABYSS, REGISTRAR, LADYBIRDS, CAFETERIA. I’ll be curious to see how many of us knew BOTARGO.
  3. 7d LOI, never heard of the fish sauce, and was bemoaning a lack of knowledge of English pub games until the construction of BOTARGO made it a ‘must be’.
    By the way, frigate birds are common on Christmas Island in the Indian Ocean, where there are still no cases of C-19, so it’s part of our bubble.
    13:39
  4. Same unknowns as Jackkt: BOTARGO (LOI) and FRIGATE BIRD (POI). ROLLMOP also gave me pause. Most of it went in pretty fast. Except for these household words.
  5. I was so sure I was going to finish this in under 20! Alas, I got BOTARGOed. Figured it out, though, in the end.

    An amazing few days of snooker, I’d say. My heart was in my throat for most of it.

  6. I’m familiar with Bottarga, but didn’t know the Botargo variant. Didn’t know the Frigate Bird, either. Why can’t we stick to robins and pigeons and the occasional starling?
    Thanks Ulaca (BTW – Collies all over the world are thinking of chomping at your ankles in retaliation for confusing them with Terriers). (And vice versa, I’d imagine).
  7. NHO BOTARGO here for anyone keeping count (although I did manage to construct it from the wordplay and was pleased when it turned out to be correct). Also held up with SHELTERED since I couldn’t think of any sheepdogs other than collies. Is a sheltie really a sheepdog? The rest went in fairly easily.
    1. Yes a Shetland sheepdog is known as a Sheltie. Gorgeous little dogs they are. I don’t know if they originated in Shetland but they are small versions of long haired collies (usually brown and white) like Shetland ponies are small horses.
  8. A few unknowns here, but what really slowed me down was my inability to let go of the first thing I think of, despite it being more or less obviously wrong. It’s harder to see 1a BUCHAREST when you can’t get Budapest out of your brain, for example, plus “knowing” that the friend in 18d IDEALLY is going to be “pal”, or it being obvious that 14d CAFETERIA contains an anagram of “at fair”…

    Submitted with crossed fingers at 24 minutes, not being sure of LOI 7d BOTARGO.

  9. I’m another who stared at B-T-R-O for ages before biffing it and hoping I was right. Very obscure word IMHO. So 40 mins again, around my usual time. Didn’t parse CAFÉTÉRIA either so thanks ulaca for that and the blog.
  10. Nho BOTARGO, liked ROLLMOP, EVEN-STEVENS, spent time imagining a procedure called ear splitting.

    13’05” thanks ulaca and setter.

  11. 18 minutes, held up constructing the unknown BOTARGO. I had vaguely heard of FRIGATE BIRDs but I needed all crossers to spot them. Otherwise straightforward. COD to THEORISER. Thank you U and setter.
  12. Boringly familiar story. Relatively easy apart from the unknown BOTARGO derived from wordplay and checkers.
  13. 20 mins with yoghurt, granola, banana, blueberry compote.
    NHO Botargo, but do-able.
    Thanks setter and U.
    1. Great to have the poem remembered. (Maybe DT was also a cruciverbalist.) joekobi
  14. “Your entry in the obscure vocabulary competition may be unusual, BOTARGO is virtually unheard of.”
  15. Sub 10, by 12 seconds, which curiously is the foundation year claimed by my Alma Mater.
    If I say I knew BOTARGO without having a clue what it was does that ruin a perfect NHO score on this board?
    I confidently identified FRIGATE BIRDS cruising around the ship I was on in the Caribbean, and comparing my pictures with online ones shows I might even have been right. Certainly not an unknown.
    I took the share of share value for PAR to be a verb rather than a noun, which worked for me at the time but is probably a smudge.
    The CABOT tower in Bristol is a favourite landmark from which I have flown paper planes. I think it’s safe enough, as John Cabot is free of association with slavery (I believe).
    1. Cabot’s only known connection to slavery is that he sold and owned one slave, Marina, in Crete in 1483.

      I hope this doesn’t topple his tower

  16. Heading for a quick time but slowed down at the end, despite knowing all the words.
  17. Very easy indeed, apart from the obscurities.
    I looked up bottarga/botargo in wikipedia. It sounds disgusting..
    1. Not as disgusting as the smell of a Pachinko Salon in downtown Kyoto. But at least it is an acquirable taste.
  18. 8:34. Like others I had NHO BOTARGO and hesitated for a while wondering if it could possibly be a word before bunging it in with a shrug to finish the puzzle. Otherwise all plain sailing LYING in a SHELTERED BIGHT. Or should that be plain driving, given we had CAB, CAR and BUS in the acrosses? I’ll get my coat…
  19. Surprised and delighted that my hopeful BOTARGO turned out to be right. Like others I didn’t get the wordplay for CAFETERIA at all, so thanks to the blogger for the parsing. I hadn’t heard of CABOT or FRIGATE BIRD, but they couldn’t have been anything else really given the cluing, and I didn’t know the Harris reference for REMUS, so I relied on the checkers for that.

    FOI Bucharest
    LOI Botargo
    COD Abyss/Bugbear

  20. most welcome in Scorchio Downtown Shanghai. 19 minutes with one minor interruption from ‘er indoors, on the subject of our grocery deliveries from Fast Hippo (盒马鲜生)! (Oxymoronic Mandarin)

    Philatelists have the advantage of knowing all about 17ac, FRIGATE BIRDS – as they abound of the the stamps issued by the (British) Solomon Islands. My COD

    Japanese stamps however, do not feature 7dn BOTARGO – my LOI. Does it taste like PACHINKO?

    FOI 1ac BUCHAREST meant to be very nice – but not on my bouquet-list.

    WOD 5dn EVEN STEVENS very (fifty-)fifties English household, will keep Mr.Grumpy happy! You old oxy-moron!

  21. NHO. It struck me that it could be BOTAREO, but I went with the G on the grounds that EO was too obscure, and the G sounded right.
      1. Yes, I know GO: should have been clearer that EO was the more obscure of the two.
  22. Well. I hope it will be seen as constructive criticism and not just grumpiness at not knowing a word, but my pet hate is a crossword bolted together with one or more components from a completely different – and very much harder – puzzle. I like a well-constructed easy puzzle, I like a challenging difficult puzzle, but I like them to be different things.

    From comments up above, it seems that BOTARGO has only appeared in the Monthly puzzle, and frankly I think that’s where it belongs. It certainly shouldn’t be put in as a final obstacle in what was otherwise a nice Mondayish puzzle. All a matter of perspective, perhaps: like distinguishing terrorists and freedom fighters, it’s sometimes hard to tell pleasing arcana from wilful obscurity.

  23. 17:55
    I though botargo was taking the mick; I only know about ketchup.
  24. 15.34. Thought I was on for a really fast time but got bogged down in the SW corner. FOI Bucharest, LOI ideally. COD abyss, took me ages before I twigged the answer was not some really obscure gulf state.
    NHO botargo but generously clued.
  25. 16’05. Don’t relish the relish. Joel Chandler Harris might be mentioned as the writer who introduced Uncle Remus to the multitudes (rather than a film doing so). joekobi
  26. 7m 28s with the last minute and a half spent on BOTARGO. NHO that, obviously, or FRIGATE BIRD or sheltie. Otherwise, nothing too tricky, other than going for EAR-SPLITTING and considering NAB for PAR. Censure & censor… not the same thing.
  27. 8:05. I’d very much echo topicaltim’s sentiments: there were two puzzles here. One that I finished in under five minutes, and another consisting entirely of 7dn that took another three. I constructed it eventually and figured it might be an alternative spelling of bottarga.
    Bottarga is absolutely delicious, grated into pasta with butter and maybe a bit of garlic and (for an authentically Sicilian touch) some toasted breadcrumbs.
  28. I thought I was on for a PB but held up by BOTARGO, which many others seemed not to have heard of, and REMUS. Didn’t know the connection to Song of the South. The rest of the clues were very easy IMHO.
  29. I flew through the top half, apart from the unknown relish, but got bogged down, down below, eventually getting back on track when I discarded the EAR SPITTING procedure. This was helped by the FRIGATE BIRD which turned up late in the proceedings, and also by the ISRAELI. Having sorted the lower extremities out, I returned to 7d and constructed the unlikely looking BOTARGO. 23:22. Thanks setter and U.
  30. One more vote in line with keriothe’s and topicaltim’s sentiments. Makes an otherwise good puzzle annoying.

  31. Same as everybody else. NHO BOTARGO so DNF in 28.47.

    Thank you to setter and blogger.

    Dave.

  32. ….to be a relish. The NHO fish “delicacy” sounds rather more like something that might be eaten on toast, but you can count me out. Fortunately I parsed it, shrugged, and moved on, Googling it later.

    Apart from parsing my LOI post-solve, this was a breeze.

    FOI BUCHAREST
    LOI CAFETERIA
    COD FRIGATE BIRD
    TIME 5:00

  33. Good time despite the hold-up over BOTARGO. Are err and mistake interchangeable for SIERRA LEONE?

    COD: ABYSS, nice join between def and wordplay Gulf/State.

    Friday’s answer: the highest-numbered pope was the twentieth century John XXIII; the numbering of Johns was a bit dodgy, it seems.

    Today’s question: Israeli is one of several nationalities that ends in -i – but which one ends in -que?

      1. You’re about to have your phone hacked by a National Government using an Israeliesque piece of software, Kevin. Basque, indeed!
      2. So….if I resembled a native of said Principality, would I be Monégasquesque ?
  34. Enjoyable and pretty easy – even for me. All solved and parsed in under half an hour – just! No problem with any of the GK – I got BOTARGO from the wordplay and realised that I vaguely knew the word, but not exactly what it is. Probably saw it on one of those cookery programmes with Rick Stein or the Hairy Bikers.

    FOI Bucharest
    LOI Theoriser
    COD Ear piercing
    Time 29 mins

    Thanks setter and Ulaca

  35. A rather sluggish 38 mins. Held up by putting in even Stephen which made the flyer and speculator tricky. Also had teg which I discover is a type of sheep without looking closely enough at the wordplay. Botargo also caused a delay but once I realised the initials needed were just O and T the answer fell into place.

    Nice to see Cabot get a mention in my adopted home city of Bristol.

    Thanks setter and blogger

  36. …… Trier.

    Botargo is one of those words I shall instantly forget.

  37. 13:49, off to a flier but hopes of a sub-10 dashed by slowing up in the bottom half, nothing difficult just a couple where I got a little entangled and of course a pause at the end before submitting the constructed from wp botargo with fingers crossed.
  38. Around the hour mark, which sadly equates to blistering for me using the 15×15 scale. Pleased to have worked out Botargo, though I wasn’t confident enough to move on without a quick check. NHO Sheltie for the dog, but it seemed reasonable, and gave up trying to parse Cafeteria. Loi by a long way was Abyss, which I didn’t think I was going to get right up until I did. Invariant
  39. Did all this in 15 minutes EXCEPT 7d which a word searcher couldn’t find either. Apparently BOTARGO is some preparation from mullet roe, which one can relish, a bit like taramasalata, but I’d never heard of it. Nor the Japanese game necessary to deduce the answer from the wordplay.
    The rest was write-in Monday fare. Quite liked EVEN STEVENS.
  40. Some very straightforward clues but lots of biffing needed for others – SHELTERED, SIERRA LEONE, FRIGATE BIRD, ABYSS, TUP, REMUS and, of course, BOTARGO which has been mentioned so many times here that I’m sure none of us will forget it in a hurry.
    I finished in just over 25 minutes and along the way I enjoyed BUCHAREST, CASHIER and TIREDNESS with my COD going to BUGBEAR for its humour.
    Thanks to the setter and to Ulaca.
  41. NHO Bar Go as a pub game…
    Could it be pub = bar and game = Go…??

    Barry.

    1. Yes, that’s what he meant (the Japanese game is just GO, and actually it was originally Chinese, I believe).
  42. 46:50 to solve what was actually a very easy puzzle except for two clues (one of them shared with everyone else: BOTARGO, my LOI, when I finally saw how the wordplay worked). The other, in my case, was SHELTERED, which I had to biff, never having heard of SHELTIE. But many other, even longish entries, were very easy to biff and work out the wordplay afterwards, including BUCHAREST and SIERRA LEONE. I agree that a more even level of difficulty would have been more satisfying.
  43. All virtual write-ins except for BOTARGO which took a minute or two to parse. Still one of my fastest times ever at 14 minutes. Ann
  44. Hoped for a good solution in about 15 minutes, but being unsure of 14d’s spelling had another look at clue, saw likely anagram of CA AT FAIR, bunged in CAFATARIA without noticing how wrong it looks, or that I was short of a letter.
  45. Doesn’t 14d work better, at least to the Northern ear, without “at”?
    And perhaps our Bristol commentator can say if a statue of Cabot is in the river.
    1. No statue of John Cabot. He has a tower on Brandon Hill, an excellent lookout point for seeing ships arrive. There is also a replica in the docks of his tiny little ship the Matthew that sailed all the way to Newfoundland in Canada. Those early explorers were very brave – I don’t mind going in it up the river but wouldn’t go on the sea although I believe they do short trips.
  46. BOTARGO and the construction of CAFETERIA lost on me. Otherwise pretty easy.
  47. Enjoy your comments folks but for new boys could someone explain the acronyms? NHO etc
    1. If you look at the top right of this page, you’ll see a link to the Glossary, which has been lovingly prepared to answer this and many other questions. HTH 🙂
  48. No such thing as as ‘Shetland terrier’, though you might get one from a dodgy bloke in a car park from the back of a van. ‘Shetland Sheepdog’ is the correct appellation, though in Scotland you might hear of a ‘Shetland Collie’. They are much smaller than the normal ‘Border collie’.
  49. Sam Pepys one hot night wrote something like “up on the leads with xyz eating botargo and bread and butter with great draughts of claret”. He had a sore head the next morning

Comments are closed.