Times 27829 – Epic Fail

Author   ulacaPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Not me on this, but the stillborn championship on Saturday night. One wonders why they don’t do a dry run, especially given the history of the site. Not a free site, either. Okay, gripe over…

This was somewhat harder than the average Monday, for which I am predicting a SNITCH in the 75-80 range. Lots of nice, almost comforting vocabulary (shades of Hattie Jacques) with enough about it to hold up ditherers like me for 37 minutes.

ACROSS

1 Effect of current conductor having left in minutes (9)
MAELSTROM – L in MAESTRO M; the use of this word is a particular bugbear of mine, since every Tom, Dick and Harry that steps in to conduct the HK Phil is automatically called a ‘maestro’
6 Something added to letter gets animated backing (5)
SERIF – FIRES reversed
9 Hand over whelp and dogs, lacking time on return (5,2)
STUMP UP – PUP and MUT[t]S reversed
10 Beats leg side with a 90-degree turn? (7)
TOPSPIN – TOPS PIN (leg); not sure how the cryptic works. Is it a reference to imparting side on a ball in snooker or ten-pin bowling perhaps?
11 By now cryptid must be finally dismissed (3)
YET – a CRYPTID is basically an invented word for an invented entity: ‘an animal whose existence or survival is disputed or unsubstantiated, such as the yeti’ (Oxford). So, just take the final letter off YET[i]
12 Tory confused with Italian logic (11)
RATIONALITY – anagram* of TORY ITALIAN
14 Beginning to regret filling pink pen (6)
CORRAL – R[egret] in CORAL
15 Leaving no room for doubt following every sign it’s OK (3,5)
ALL CLEAR – CLEAR after ALL
17 Mindless television, like The Hulk? (8)
THICKSET – THICK before SET
19 Sailor during offensive is likely to survive (6)
VIABLE – AB in VILE
22 Vegan dish Lauretta mixed with oil (11)
RATATOUILLE – LAURETTA OIL*
23 Don’t start to poke with a finger or stick (3)
ROD – [p]ROD
25 Butterfly is someone looked up to by Lieutenant Pinkerton? (7)
ADMIRAL – a reference to Puccini’s opera Madam Butterfly, where the American sailor fancies the eponymous heroine, fused with the red admiral butterfly
27 With it around about, regularly all over the shop (7)
CHAOTIC – A[b]O[u]T in CHIC
28 Thread holding large key (5)
LISLE – L ISLE (as in Florida keys); ‘holding’ used in the sense of ‘having’, as in ‘He holds strong opinions’
29 Part of plant or insect or bird (9)
CORMORANT – CORM (‘an organ of vegetative reproduction in plants such as the crocus, consisting of a globular stem base swollen with food and surrounded by papery scale leaves’ Collins) OR ANT

DOWN

1 Expression of surprise about river smelling strongly (5)
MUSKY – USK in MY
2 Meeting of two halves is unusually quorate (7)
EQUATOR – QUORATE*
3 Shop rump steak badly stuffed by English, right? (11)
SUPERMARKET -E R in RUMP STEAK*
4 Concerned with place with European name (6)
REPUTE – RE PUT E
5 Rather fat runner, say, runs — just (8)
MATRONLY – MAT (‘a narrow rug or carpet, as for a passage’ – right down in 16th place in Collins) R ONLY; well, it’s not all bad. Here’s the definition in full from Collins: ‘of, characteristic of, or suitable for a matron; staid and dignified in a manner associated with a middle-aged, usually plump, woman’
6 Old soak needs small operation (3)
SOP – S OP; an old word for soak, as in ‘dunk’, more or less
7 Salesman given more money for repeated performance (7)
REPRISE – REP RISE
8 Busy? Not busy? Avoiding engagements (5-4)
FANCY-FREE – FANCY/busy (as in overcrowded with detail, of a web page, say) FREE
13 Bow before cool wind getting up round islands (11)
ARCHIPELAGO – ARC HIP GALE reversed O (round)
14 Screech of curlew at a cuckoo (9)
CATERWAUL – CURLEW AT A*
16 Old object when bar is introduced in country, perhaps (8)
REPUBLIC – PUB in RELIC
18 Island nearly is so invaded by millions (7)
ISTHMUS – IS M in THUS
20 What could be held up by hatter, I bet (7)
BIRETTA – hidden reverse (‘held up by’) in teB I RETTAh; the squarish hat, often with a bobble, worn by RC priests
21 Kitchen implement is more efficient when cutting end of pork (6)
SLICER – SLIC[k]ER
24 Coin a word that means teach without peripheral notes (5)
DUCAT – [e]DUCAT[e]
26 Regret sounding like an Australian native (3)
RUE – sounds like ‘roo’, mate

76 comments on “Times 27829 – Epic Fail”

  1. Clearly not too sleepy from Saturday and Sunday’s early wake-up! Finally a time that I think more accurately reflects my abilities these days, for a puzzle of this difficulty. A lot of longish anagrams that I’m happy to say I’ve been able to do lately in my head, after many years of writing out the letters.

    Finished with a bit of a tussle in the north over MAELSTROM, TOPSPIN, MATRONLY. (Incidentally, many will call a “mere” pianist a maestro as well!)

    Thanks for clarifying ‘cryptid’, CORM, and the wordplay of CHAOTIC, which I couldn’t get even once I had the answer in place.

  2. Just SLICER & LOI CHAOTIC left at 15′, and I expected them to take some time, but they both popped into my head quickly enough. SLICK=efficient caused a MER, and CHAOTIC took a few seconds to reveal the parsing. DNK CORM, DNK cryptid but inferred YET-I post hoc. ‘unusually quorate’ is about the most blatant anagram clue I can remember.
  3. Whenever I hear MAESTRO I think of the character in Seinfeld, so I agree with your “particular bugbear”.

    I parsed TOPSPIN as a ball in cricket bowled by a leg-spinner (usually) which goes straight on, that is ‘with a 90-degree turn’ to the ‘leg side’, but that means ‘leg’ would be part of both def and wordplay, something which I doubt would have got past the crossword editor. Maybe though the crossword editor is Mr M. Gatting and the setter a certain S. K. Warne; that would explain it.

    A leisurely and enjoyable 43 minutes.

    Thanks to setter and ulaca.

  4. So excited was I to hit “play now” and actually see a crossword, I didn’t check well at the end and had FANCY FRRE in there.
  5. Becoming a habit if I can’t sleep to do the crossie . Wondered what a cryptid was until it became incontrovertibly synonmous with a yeti.I thought that Topspin was when you give the cue ball extra spin on the top so the ball follows through after impact. A cricket ball going sideways when it lands in the crease is something I’d like to see.
    In the lead up to chmpnshp I’ve been pushing myself to cope with the speed typing aspect and not be intimidated by the clock ticking away so natural to do the jumbo in one sitting (only achievable and desirable in recent years) as it roughly 3 cryptics in one but being a ‘prize’ xword one doesn’t know if one is correct until the following week . I hate that ; i always forget to look.
  6. 46 minutes of very untidy solving with answers and bits of answers scattered around the grid for far too long before I was able to establish a more steady flow.

    MAELSTROM was my last one in and its absence at 1ac throughout the proceedings gave me a lot of problems. I had no idea what was going on in the cryptic definition at 10ac but the answer was pretty obvious.

  7. I was delayed in finishing by having got 26D the wrong way round and entering ROO. I was then half tempted to throw in lasso, with the loose connection of thread and rope but thankfully paused long enough to see my error. I was still unsure about LISLE given that “holding” seems to be redundant in the clue and had me trying to get an L or OS into the middle of the word.
      1. It’s a containment indicator masquerading – entirely unconvincingly – as connective tissue!
        1. I thought it was quite original and convincing connective tissue! What does the solution do if not “hold” the parts of the charade…?
          1. It consists of them.
            I am completely baffled by the fact that people seem to think that ‘the word syllable holds three syllables’ is English. We seem to be speaking different languages.

            Edited at 2020-11-23 06:00 pm (UTC)

  8. I note The Times Championship is over for another year. Utterly shameful. Breweries and ‘piss-ups’ come to mind. Doubtless Rudy Giuliani will explain.

    From Lord U. I note Hattie Jacques name mentioned in conjunction with 5dn. Spot on, Matron! For the under-thirties Mrs. Doubtfire should suffice. My LOI.

    FOI 2dn EQUATOR – as per Kevin.

    COD 29ac CORMORANT but ‘or bird’ or ‘for bird’?

    WOD 14dn CATERWAUL

    A Red Letter day in America – will Murphy’s Law still prevail?

    About fifty minutes with interruptions from ‘er indoors.

    Edited at 2020-11-23 06:47 am (UTC)

  9. For CORMORANT there’s no excuse
    It’s our setters just being obtuse
    They’re such a THICKSET
    But I’m not quitting YET
    Maybe one day they’ll RUE this abuse
  10. …but with two errors. I read 26d the wrong way round and put ROO iso RUE. That made a mess of 28ac. The only thing I could think of was LASSO. I still wonder what the word ‘holding’ is doing in the clue.
  11. Struggled through this in an hour, or thereabouts. A few things unknown, like Lieutenant Pinkerton, but mostly just cunning wordplay, I think.

    I just read 10a as TOPSPIN being what you’d get if you turned sidespin (sometimes known just as “side”) by 90 degrees.

    1. I think you’re right about 10ac. It works best in snooker or billiards. Not a great clue, imo
  12. 23′, cathartic as noted. Still can’t parse TOPSPIN, but ‘side’ is something in snooker, or maybe a top spinning, or maybe 90 degrees would be a top spin, i.e. very big?

    Thanks ulaca and setter.

  14. …Lays eggs inside a paper bag,
    You follow the idea, no doubt?
    It’s to keep the lightning out.

    Just under 30 mins pre-brekker.
    On 10ac (like gothic Matt above), I took ‘side’ to mean side-spin and gave it a 90 degree turn into topspin.

    Thanks setter and U.

    Edited at 2020-11-23 08:49 am (UTC)

    1. But what these unobservant birds
      Have never noticed is that herds
      Of wandering bears may come with buns
      And steal the bags to hold the crumbs
      …
      Christopher Isherwood

      Edited at 2020-11-23 09:42 am (UTC)

  15. DNF. I considered LISLE for 28ac, but couldn’t make any sense of the wordplay, which turns out to be because the wordplay doesn’t make any sense.
      1. For the clue to make sense ‘holding’ has to mean something akin to ‘consisting of’, which it doesn’t. If X holds Y then X cannot be part of Y.

        Edited at 2020-11-23 11:59 am (UTC)

        1. I guess the solver has to mentally insert a comma after ‘large’,indicating an inversion in the wordplay. I don’t like it as it’s very clumsy, but it will wok for some.
          2. That would indicate L contained in ISLE.

            Edited at 2020-11-23 01:22 pm (UTC)

            1. Yes. Sorry, I wasn’t concentrating, distrcated by the internal L. Your original criticism stands. I don’t think any of the meanings of ‘hold’ support its use as a link here.
      1. I don’t think they’re substitutable here. You might say ‘this clue has three nouns’, and if the clue were ‘thread, having large key’ it would be using ‘have’ in that sense. You couldn’t say ‘this clue holds three nouns’.

        Edited at 2020-11-23 04:00 pm (UTC)

  16. DNF. All but done in about 17 minutes, after being held up by SLICER and CHAOTIC for a while, but then resorted to aids some 3 minutes later to find my LOI MATRONLY. Grr.
  17. 50 mins here with the same probs, MERs and DNKs as others. Never did figure out the side/topspin issue. Luckily got RUE right. Didn’t parse LISLE either. Thanks U for the enlightenment. FOI EQUATOR, LOI SERIF. COD CATERWAUL.
  18. Felt harder than the time turned out. Nice to get back into crosswords (or the site) after a disappointing weekend.

    COD: THICKSET, nice surface.

    Today’s question: where is the world’s longest-lasting republic?

  19. 29.30. Felt I was really slow today primarily due to the NE corner. Matronly and topspin were late appearances, in fact so late they almost never arrived. Not helped by being unconvinced that sop could be that easy.

    Maybe it was just the hangover of disappointment from the weekend events, well not really but sometimes it’s necessary to clutch at straws to excuse your own failings!

    Glad to finish in the end and will be interested to see how everyone else performed.

    Anyone remember the Guardian April Fool travelogue on the island of San Serif? Not quite in the spaghetti harvest class but prettu good. ( thought I’d pay homage to the Guardian with a typo).

    1. Yes I recall that – there you could buy a Guinness where the bottom 5/6 was light-coloured, and the top was the dark stuff.
    2. We were in on it – as a few clients/ad agencies were asked to contribute attendant advertising.
    3. I thought the SE corner was hardest today, IIRC. DUCAT, CHAOTIC and SLICER all requiring a bit of mental gymnastics to negotiate…
  20. OK, so let’s get a bit fanciful. Apply a 90 degree turn to the S of SIDE and you get WIDE. According to Chambers, TOPSPIN is press slang for “not always reliable or well-attested, information”, so wide of the mark or fake news in contemporary terms.
    Also fancyful, Detective Constable George Fancy was a short lived character in the MORSE series. He was a busy, no?
    You can tell I spent a lot of my nearly 20 minutes in the top right, MATRONLY being my last in once I’d sorted out the improbable ??P?P?N.
    I concur that LISLE at 28 seems to have a stray “holding” in the clue, which had me wondering how LISE was a thread and LISLE a key.
    I’m glad my list of rivers didn’t include the UST, or 1d would have been wrong.
    Thanks U for a quality blog on a Monday Slightly Tricky.
      1. BARLOW’S ALIVE!

        (Hard to remember him doing actual acting, as he now seems to have a perfectly viable career just being Brian Blessed, and nothing wrong with that)

    2. I had last week off. Spent it catching up on episodes of Endeavour. Any scene with Roger Allam or Anton Lesser in it is just such a pleasure to watch.
    3. I’ve not checked the other replies but if apply a 90 degree axis turn to topside spin you get sidespin
  21. Easy today. Did not like 28ac and only wrote lisle because nothing else fitted.
    Birettas always make me think of James Bond. I do know they shouldn’t..
    1. Dave Allen for me – all his Cardinal jokes. It’s from him I learnt birettas must be worn so they look asymmetrical: two of the vanes fore-and-aft, the third on the right hand side as a handle for removing the hat. The things you remember from TV ca 1970.

      Edited at 2020-11-23 10:51 am (UTC)

  23. Just right for a Monday, a good work out but nothing too tricky. I enjoyed seeing the CORMORANT deep dive.
  24. I parsed 15a as ‘leaving no room for doubt’ as the definition with ‘sign it’s ok’ as CLEAR followed by ALL ‘every’.
    No idea about ‘holding’ in LISLE.
  25. I thought that possibly the ‘holding’ was part of the definition. So far as I can see lisle is strong, so if it’s stong it holds. Yes, weak, but I thought it was probably that in the absence of any other explanation.
  26. 42 minutes. YET was an abominable biff, and CHAOTIC a normal one. COD to ISTHMUS. I suppose RATATOUILLE is vegan, but never thought of it that way. I played a lot of top spin at table-tennis and, yep, it is at right angles to the side spin. I never could master mixing one in with my leg spinners at cricket, although if the batsmen has shown the manners to let the ball bounce, who knows? Quite tough for a Monday. Thank you U and setter.
  27. As have indicated somewhere above and without doubt countless solvers saw at once, ‘holding’ here means ‘containing’…
    Though I do have an eyebrow twitch over the mat/runner set-up, a bit of a stare over busy/fancy and a helpless shrug at present over the side with a 90-degree turn. I’ve played a fair bit of snooker and suspected the ‘side’ might hail from there but the precision of the 90-degree turn suggests a letter on its side. Maybe z is closest so far but unless there’s something literally bindingly obvious… shomething wrong shurely?
    All that said, an enjoyable work-out though ‘matronly’ took the final eight or so minutes of 33’31.
    And have now read boltonwanderer and all makes sense.

    Edited at 2020-11-23 11:14 am (UTC)

    1. Are you sure that works?

      If the L for large is being “contained” then a “lise” would need to be a key of some sort, and I don’t think that’s the case.

      1. ‘Contain’ can mean ‘consist of’, so a word can be said to contain three syllables, for instance. So in Collins it is defined as ‘to consist of, comprise’, in Lexico as ‘be made up of’, in Chambers as ‘to comprise, include’.
        ‘Hold’ does not have this meaning.
        1. The overall word, ‘thread’, holds (or has within it as its separate and combining parts) (a) l for large and (b) key for isle. I can hardly imagine a more precisely fitting cryptic clue.

          Edited at 2020-11-23 04:37 pm (UTC)

          1. This just isn’t what hold means. ‘Have within it as its separate and combining parts’ doesn’t even make internal sense (if X is ‘within’ Y then X and Y are necessarily not contiguous) but if it’s a way of saying ‘consists of’ then it’s not synonymous with ‘holds’.
            No-one would say a word holds three syllables.

            Edited at 2020-11-23 05:23 pm (UTC)

            1. A sentence might well hold three clauses, separated by commas, which combined to create a self-contained unit of meaning. One can’t help suspecting it’s the clue’s red herring of holding large somewhere within the answer rather than parked on its edge that’s led to the fuss.
                1. This sure looked like a mistake to me. I am glad to find that you were on the case, James.
                  1. ‘On the case’ here being perhaps synonymous with ‘pedantic beyond the call of duty’.
                    But thank you – I felt in this discussion that I was going mad!

                    Edited at 2020-11-26 11:34 pm (UTC)

  28. I’m another who struggled to make sense of TOPSPIN, but shrugged and moved on. Nice to see my assumption re YET(i) was correct. Took me a while to see the parsing of CHAOTIC and I was also puzzled by holding in 28a. Otherwise all understood, and completed in 26:05. Thanks setter and U.
  29. One of those puzzles where 90% went in very smoothly, and a small handful took a disproportionate amount of time, especially the nexus of ISTHMUS and LISLE. TOPSPIN is puzzling if you carry the cricketing surface into the analysis, but makes perfect sense to me if you picture the target ball in snooker or billiards. Visualise it as having compass points on it as you look down the cue, and hitting the W or E would impart side, hitting S would give backspin, and hitting the N would impart topspin.
    1. This clue was clearly much less puzzling to me, who could simply assume that it was one of those things to do with sports that I just don’t have time to understand, and move straight on!
  30. So annoyed after a quick solve to discover that I didn’t know how to spell BIRETTA, and had I taken the time to parse it, would have been obvious.
    Went out for the day yesterday so quite pleased that I didn’t miss it!
  31. The embarrassing weekend for TTC organisers. What a shambles.
    Good Monday work out, a bit harder than usual I thought, with a few shrugs as not quite understanding the exact parsing; LISLE as noted above, TOPSPIN (all a bit convoluted) and FANCY for busy. Surely not relying on us remembering a policeman from a TV series? And I don’t much buy into fancy = busy design or web page.
    But an enjoyable effort, hope the week goes on like this and harder.
  32. 9m 56s, finishing on LISLE where the clue must be an error – the ‘holding’ just doesn’t make sense. Slowed a little by biffing ERRATIC at 27a, and unable to parse CHAOTIC because I convinced myself that IT< was part of the cryptic.
  33. No problem with TOPSPIN because I don’t understand cricket. Same as almost everyone else with “holding” in 28a but I’ll give the editors some slack, they had a rough weekend. Speaking of which, there is a rather good poem by Pterodactyl on the Club forum (general thread – championship take 2) if you have access to it. 18.56
  34. Stuck down the LHS for a while, before THICKSET gave REPUBLIC, ISTHMUS and LISLE, then in the top half MAELSTROM (having finally spotted the maestro) gave MATRONLY, MUSKY and YET.

    TOPSPIN – didn’t quite understand.

    ADMIRAL – didn’t get the Pinkerton bit, but Red Admiral came to mind with the word Butterfly, so pencilled that in early.

  35. So, today begins the training for the 2021 Times Crossword Championship. I always start with good intentions on the first Monday after each year’s championship.(I know this year’s didn’t happen but let’s move on from that).

    100% record so far!

    COD: Thickset.

  36. ….to the Times IT “experts” (5,3).

    NHO cryptid, and only parsed MAELSTROM and STUMP UP later (I went to the SW corner for a change when I couldn’t prise open the NW – it worked).

    FOI RUE
    LOI YET
    COD THICKSET
    TIME 9:51

  37. Fully two minute of which was spent simultaneously staring at 1 across and trying to dredge up a definition of “runner” to match MAT. A pretty tough workout for a Monday.
  38. I think the snooker and cricket references are overthinking this. Isn’t it just that if you spin a box, say, through 90 degrees then the top becomes one of the sides?
  39. With Mohn coming in at a blistering 4:18 on this one, I think he may well be feeling well robbed of the change to impress at the online championship this weekend!
  40. 54 minutes, says the clock, but I still don’t understand why I put in LISLE as I had never heard of it (except in the name of the composer of the Marseillaise) and didn’t understand the cryptic either (L in LISE?). But I couldn’t think of anything else, so I simply guessed and guessed correctly, as it turned out to my greatest surprise. The rest was not too easy, but manageable. The CORM in CORMORANT was also a problem, but at least I’d heard of the bird.
  41. 25.35. A bit stickier than the usual Monday puzzle. I didn’t quite understand topspin while solving but the snooker example works for me. Dnk the corm bit of cormorant. Delayed for a long time at the end over lisle where I couldn’t find the right key. I liked the clue for caterwaul.

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