Times 27909 – we have mad cow disease, but no complaints.

Author   pipkirbyPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
I buzzed through this in twenty minutes or so, going off piste a couple of times at 5d and 8d, having a grumble about 13a and being slightly surprised, but not delayed, at 23a. I liked the homophone clue at 2d (for once!) and raised my hat when I finally saw how my LOI 5d worked. No red text today as no hidden word clue, and no plants or antelopes to worry about.

Across
1 Dropped a stock complaint food shop rejected (8)
ABSEILED – A, BSE (stock complaint, bovine spongiform encephalopathy), DELI reversed.
9 Flyer left in drier houses (8)
AIRLINER – AIRER (drier) has L and IN inserted.
10 Sailor’s beginning with a bucket initially and mop (4)
SWAB – Initial letters of Sailor’s, With A Bucket.
11 Artistic movement wasting time with this case (12)
AESTHETICISM – (TIME THIS CASE)*
13 Star devouring liqueur? It’s a slippery slope (3,3)
SKI RUN – KIR (liqueur?) inside SUN (star). KIR is however definitely not a liqueur, it’s an apéritif cocktail made by mixing white wine with cassis (blackcurrant liqueur) or a similar fruit spirit. Invented by Monsieur Kir, the one time Mayor of Dijon. We’ve had this issue before on my watch.
14 Hawker originally flies a recluse across Cape (8)
FALCONER –  F (originally flies) A, LONER (recluse), insert C for cape.
15 Withdraw Home Counties game against good Roma (7)
GYPSIES – all reversed; SE (home counties) I SPY (verbal game), G(ood). Roma are an itinerant people originally from North India, now almost everywhere, who don’t much like the term gypsies.
16 Waterproof paints with ink ground (7)
OILSKIN – OILS (paints) (INK)*.
20 Tricky meeting involving priest and chapter (8)
DELICATE – DATE (meeting) has ELI the priest and C inserted.
22 Leading European twice acquiring posh rug (6)
TOUPEE – TOP (leading) EE (European twice) insert U for posh.
23 Embrace German repeatedly downing stein in secret (6-6)
HUGGER-MUGGER – HUG (embrace) GER GER insert MUG for stein. I thought hugger-mugger meant in a state of confusion, but it can also mean in secrecy apparently.
25 Spout English with German (4)
EMIT – E for English, MIT being German for with. Second time in three days for ‘mit’ for with.
26 This writer’s wife invested in old money that mustn’t be touched (4,4)
LIVE WIRE – I’VE (this writer’s) W(ife) both inside LIRE for old money.
27 Driver allowed tablets to be hidden in spirit on way back (8)
MULETEER – LET (allowed) E E (tablets of ecstasy) inside RUM (spirit) reversed.

Down
2 Shop ineffectively as stated every fortnight (8)
BIWEEKLY – sounds like “buy weakly”. A witty and accurate homophone, I thought.
3 Awkward Eastern doctor has to tweet under curtain (12)
EMBARRASSING – E (eastern) MB (doctor) ARRAS (curtain) SING (tweet).
4 Lots of Swiss here walk round university hospital (8)
LAUSANNE – Insert U and SAN (university, hospital) into LANE (walk).
5 Split wood: remove to the periphery (4,3)
DASH OFF – I had options for this, initially I thought DEAL for wood and OUT for remove to the periphery. But the checkers soon said it had to be DA*H *F* so a rethink arrived at DASH OFF meaning split, leave quickly. I think it’s ASH (wood) inside DOFF as in doff your hat.
6 Frank‘s very dry with a learner (6)
BRUTAL – BRUT as in dry champagne, A L(earner).
7 Opposed to conservationists blocking artificial insemination (4)
ANTI – NT (National Trust) inside AI.
8 Abridge article about Arabian craft (8)
TRIMARAN – I think this is TRIM (abridge) AN (article) about AR for Arabian, although I don’t recall seeing AR as that abbr. before. I was off on a DHOW at first.
12 Pass over most recent turbulence at sea (12)
CROSSCURRENT – CROSS = pass over, CURRENT = most recent.
15 One who’s sponsored idol given stick crossing line (8)
GODCHILD – GOD (idol) CHID (given stick), insert L for line.
17 Essential current books by big revolutionary (8)
INTEGRAL – I (current) NT (books) LARGE reversed = big revolutionary.
18 Glorify ladies cavorting in middle of audience (8)
IDEALISE – (LADIES)* inside the middle letters of aud IE nce.
19 Wish to avoid second Republican mass for another one (7)
REQUIEM – REQUIRE (wish) loses its second R, then M for mass.
21 Help to finish a French chicken (6)
AFRAID – A, FR(ench), AID (help).
24 Present golf foursome approaching second in Wentworth (4)
GIVE – G for golf, IV for four/some, E the second letter of Wentworth, a posh golf course near London.

​

60 comments on “Times 27909 – we have mad cow disease, but no complaints.”

  2. As the football cliché goes, this was a game of two halves. I got the whole left half pretty easily and then struggled a lot on the right, at least partially because CROSSCURRENT and AESTHETICISM were my last two in. I also was surprised at KIR being clued as liqueur. Last time it was clued as cordial, and it isn’t that either. I guess it would be ok to clue cassis as either, but kir is not cassis. I too spent time trying to fit DHOW into something before seeing TRIM for abridge. But I had a dreaded pink square due to a typo I missed.
  3. I spent almost 10 minutes on my last couple, finally getting AESTHETICISM; I know, of course, the various spelling differences between UK and US English, but still the UK versions don’t always spring to mind, and I played with the alphabet here without trying an E. Biffed EMBARRASSIN, parsed post-submission, biffed GYPSIES, somehow never saw ISPY. I wondered about AR.
  4. AESTHETICISM was one of my first in, helped I now see by the UK English spelling. I presume in the US the first E is dropped. Why do Americans have to be so sensible with their spellings?
    Like Paul I found the right hand side tough, finishing with MULETEER from parsing alone. As such my immediate thought was that it had something to do with a bad hairstyle, and it took me a moment to deduce it meant a mule driver.
      1. Thanks Kevin. I might have guessed that if I hadn’t pronounced aesthete incorrectly until now!
  5. I enjoyed this but, like paulmcl and pootle73 I found the RH side tougher.
    I’m not convinced about AR for Arabian in TRIMARAN either but I guess it had to be that.
    In LAUSANNE, is LANE really synonymous with ‘walk’?
    I liked MULETEER which came to me fairly quickly but my two favourites today were REQUIEM and LIVE WIRE.
    I notice we had double E’s in both 22ac and 27ac but clued differently while we had DELI backwards in 1ac and DELI forwards in 20ac but not clued as such,
    1. I just checked Chambers and Ar. is in there for Arabian. New to me too.

      Edit — see Jack beat me to it below.

      Edited at 2021-02-24 08:15 am (UTC)

  6. 33 minutes with no problems. KIR last appeared on my watch on 26th January clued as ‘wine drink’ which was news to me as I had always assumed it was a liqueur although I have never tasted it. I’m a little concerned that having researched it for the blog and posted that it’s a mixture of wine and cassis I didn’t turn a hair at its being defined as ‘liqueur’ today.

    Ar for Arabia or Arabian is in Collins and Chambers.

    Edited at 2021-02-24 07:27 am (UTC)

  7. 35mins so not too tricky for me today. FOI LAUSANNE, LOI AFRAID. COD HUGGER-MUGGER as it’s such an odd word. Totally agree with the Kir argument. It is my apéritif of preference. Definitely not a liqueur. Thanks Pip and setter.
  8. …The falcon cannot hear the falconer

    It had to be Yeats today. What a great poem.
    Good crossword too. 30 mins left Godchild unfilled. The ‘chid’ undid me.
    Thanks setter and Pip.

  9. 16:03 finishing with GODCHILD, GYPSIES and REQUIEM. FOI SWAB. Like others, I had a questionmark over AR for arab in 8D. I enjoyed “Lots of Swiss here” most.
  10. 10:12. Good one, although I was shocked – shocked I tell you – to see Kir defined as a liqueur after our lengthy and informative discussion on the subject just a few weeks ago. Anyone would think the setters aren’t paying attention to us.
    MULETEER the only unfamiliar word today.
  11. A decent crossword which pushed me to 20.47, with the lower left proving most reluctant. REQUIEM, embarrassing to admit, was my last in: I’ve probably sung most of the available ones.
    I must have missed the Great Kir Controversy, because I dashed it off without giving it a thought, I’m afraid. The Wiki article has the curious comment “Kir allowed one of Dijon’s producers of crème de cassis to use his name, then extended the right to their competitors as well.” Does that suggest some crème de cassis carries the Kir name?
    1. Honestly z8, you should pay better attention in class!
      There is a branded – and trademarked – product called Kir which is the pre-mixed cocktail. So in theory bars selling ‘kir’ are in breach of this trademark, but enforcement would seem to be somewhat non-existent. And why anyone would buy pre-mixed kir is beyond me.
      1. Interesting. I wasn’t aware it was a trademark. Apparently bars can sell their own mixes of Kir as long as they use crème de cassis made by the trademark holder Lejay Lagoute. I suspect the use of the word is now so widespread that it has lost any protection it may have had and has become generic.
        1. I don’t think Lejay Lagoute has the monopoly. A big brand here in France is L’Heritier-Guyot and very good it is too. As I understand it, Kir is a generic term, like Hoover, say, to describe a certain drink, as has been discussed, and should ideally be Crème (as opposed to sirop) de Cassis from Dijon topped up with Bourgogne Aligoté. Of course, in reality, bars here use any brand of cassis and usually a local dry white wine.
          1. There’s no doubt that Lejay Lagoute owns the trademarks Kir and Kir Royale, but it is probably not enforceable. It’s a constant battle against common usage as Google knows only too well and Hoover, as you say, has already found out.
            1. I suspect it’s less a case of being non-enforceable and more one of not being worth enforcing. No-one’s interested in the product itself so as the owner of the trademark the best-case scenario is that people you take action against (at significant expense) shrug, rub out ‘kir’ on their blackboard and replace it with ‘cassis vin blanc’.
          2. With it’s anti-drip top, H-G is definitely the cassis of choice in the Invariant household.
  12. Finished this in half an hour. Had heard of HUGGER-MUGGER without knowing what it meant, didn’t know arras as curtain (though 3d had to be EMBARRASSING), and was none the wiser as to what exactly kir is, but none of that held me up too much. Liked REQUIEM once I’d realised that was the kind of mass the clue was getting at.

    FOI Anti
    LOI Trimaran
    COD Lausanne

  13. One of me fave’s – half a dozen of those and one is truly canapéd!

    FOI 24dn GIVE what a pathetic little clue!

    LOI 1ac ABSEILED from the IKEA Zurich

    COD 11ac AESTHETICISM

    WOD 23ac HUGGER-MUGGER from Steve Martin’s ‘L.A. Story’.

    Time between 39 and 41 mins – due to a call of nature.

    Edited at 2021-02-24 11:24 am (UTC)

  14. BIWEEKLY trickled in first, then a steady ramble around the grid found GODCHILD just popping in as the penultimate entry and ABSEILED following as LOI. 30:38, then went back to bed. Thanks setter and Pip.
  15. 33 minutes, interrupted by dog walk and distracted by the cricket. LOI REQUIEM. Didn’t parse DASH OFF. COD to ABSEILED and LIVE WIRE jointly, and I enjoyed BI-WEEKLY too but it was obvious. Thank you Pip and setter.

    Edited at 2021-02-24 10:50 am (UTC)

  16. Additional resonance for 14a — Harry Hawker was a distinguished early flier test pilot for Sopwith, made a transAtlantic attempt, and his name perpetuated in the Hawker Hurricane etc. Centenary of his death (in an air crash) occurs later this year.
  17. Loved this puzzle. Plenty of well-hidden definitions and different cryptic devices and instances where one’s immediate thought was not the right one, like Arabian not being OMANI, a French not being UN and the flyer not being a bird.
  18. 24.20 with a few stumbles. Biffed gypsies so glad to see the blogger’s explanation. FOI Swab, LOI Dash off.

    Heard of hugger mugger but I hadn’t realised the secret connotation- silly me. NE corner was my hold up with airliner and trimaran arriving late , must have been a traffic jam.

    Thanks setter and blogger.

  19. 40m steady solve with few hold ups but some scratching of head to get the cryptics to work. Definitely a ‘Hamlet’ thing going on here — Polonius was stabbed through the ‘arras’ (a wonderful misspelling by one A level candidate telling me that ‘Hamlet stabbed him through the a..e’) and he was then buried in ‘hugger-mugger’. Thanks for the blog, Pip and the puzzle, setter.
  20. Yes, LOUSANPE didn’t really look right. Ah well.

    Some lovely clues today, and new vocab in MULETEER.

  21. Glad I wasn’t the only one to have trouble seeing DASH OFF. Like Peter Denman, I thought of the Hawker aircraft and the train of thought led me to get too cute with 9a and I went looking for a Berliner. Good puzzle, not too teasing and not too obvious. 21.20
  22. Pleased to have ambled to a steady solve despite listening to another England batting collapse.
    Clever clues, liked 23ac, a bit of a biff because I had heard of it but had the meaning wrong. For some reason found the SW corner hardest, despite AFRAID being in plain sight. I too put SKI RUN , not noticing that kir is to my mind, a cocktail.
    GYPSIES was a clever one too.
    Thanks to blogger and setter.
  23. Very much liked this crossword, particularly the the unexpected lack of ‘un’ as the standard French ‘a’ in 21d, the clever non-appearance of a dhow in 8d, and the flyer not being ornithological.
    Pausing for parsing – 26:03
  24. A jolly, very even crossword, polished off in 24m. Quite a few (incl. MULETEER, ABSEILED) entirely reliant on assembling from the cryptics. The normal mental process seems to be definition and cryptic converging on the solution so this was satisfying.
  25. I thought I would have another go at the 15sq today and quite enjoyed it. I was pleased to be finished in a few minutes over 50 (with only one matter checked from a reference source). As others found, the LHS was much easier than the RHS, indeed there were points when I might have been back doing the QC (not many, mind). There were some fine clues that I will go back over with Pip’s assistance.

    Edited at 2021-02-24 01:20 pm (UTC)

  26. I liked it — just right for mid-week. When I saw Kir and then Pip’s remark, I also though of the comments from one or two of the setters (and maybe the Ed) a month or two ago explaining how the ways different setters put puzzles together can explanation why we sometimes see unusual words popping up in a cluster. I figured the same concept applies to cluing as well as to the words themselves. Thanks Pip, setter.
  27. Or wavelength positive. Either way, no real holdups or problems in completing in 21:23.

    I liked HUGGER MUGGER, never really parsed GYPSIES, though probably would have done if I’d remembered to go back and look! I always think of KIR as being a brand of the liqueur cassis, but of course I am wrong. NHO MULETEER, but enjoyed constructing it.

    As an aside to solving MULETEER, I imagine the (possibly non-existent) society of cryptic crossword setters, were collectively cock-a-hoop when the street name ecstasy, shortened to “E”, became the standard term for MDMA, especially when in pill or tablet form. At a stroke they were provided with a new way of cluing E, ES, or EE (as in this case).

    Edited at 2021-02-24 01:47 pm (UTC)

  28. 16.11. A nice brisk solve. The only delay was wondering what sort of game ispy was. Doh!
  29. ….the brilliance of “stock complaint”, my first entry in the grid was the reversed “deli”, and then I started downwards from there. I’m (as ever) grateful to Pip for explaining my LOI, which I eventually biffed.

    FOI LAUSANNE
    LOI REQUIEM
    COD ABSEILED
    TIME 11:30

  30. Many years ago there was a discussion on this site about saving money on printing by changing the printing to dots or some such. Can someone help me.
    I’ve been using this site fo eons and cannot understand why I am banned from the site. My name is not a secret and I can be reached on brian@mcgahon.plus.com.

    Thank you

    1. When I went to enter a comment I was told I have been banned. However I am allowed to type this and if it appears as a comment it may be just a glitch in the system. I did get a justifiable light slap on the wrist from Vinyl a few weeks ago but I don’t think it was enough to enough to ban me. On edit. It has I’m not.

      Edited at 2021-02-24 04:22 pm (UTC)

    2. Brian, what is your Live Journal username? If you let me know I shall check whether it is on the TfTT banned list. I believe only one bona fide poster has ever been banned so it’s very unlikely.
      1. Jack, I haven’t appeared here for quite a while, also because I’ve been banned. Don’t know why either. Somewhat mysterious.

        kevin_from_ny

        Best regards.

        1. Hi, Kevin, and it’s good to hear from you as I have missed your daily comments on the blog. I can assure you that as far as TfTT is concerned you have not been banned and indeed you are on our Members list with Unmoderated access rights, a level that very few other than our blog-writers have. I can only assume the ban is some sort of glitch at Live Journal admin. I guess you could try contacting them and querying it but a simpler option might be to create a new user-id and use that instead. I hope you can sort something out as you are always welcome here.

          1. Thanks Jack. I certainly can’t explain this situation and as you say a new ID appears the best workaround. I’ll give it a try.
            1. Thanks Kevin. Might I suggest you keep your user-id recognisable e.g. kevin_from_ny_2, so as not to lose associations with the past?
  32. Interrupted by cricket and patio cleaning, this felt hard work but rewarding. Just over an hour (which I try to make my limit).
    FOI biweekly
    LOI Godchild – even with all the crossers I needed an alphabet trawl on the fourth letter before the penny dropped
    Wrestled with aestheticism, requiem, dash off and trimaran. I was desperate to fit a dhow in their somewhere.
  33. Got about two thirds through at a steady pace then really slowed down for no obvious reason since the remaining clues, when I eventually got them, seemed perfectly straightforward. Finished with DELICATE.
  34. I found this quite a bit harder than than yesterday’s, and had to check the unknown Muleteer and Hugger Mugger. Godchild and Requiem both took ages to see, but then Lausanne was a write-in given the number of times I’ve driven through it, so it was swings and roundabouts. CoD to 5d, Dash Off, which was another that I struggled over. Invariant
  35. Not a regular for the 15 x 15 but I do try it occasionally. If only three go in at first pass I tend to leave it. About half of this went in at first, then checkers helped with all but the NE corner. Biffed a few of those and ended up with a close-run thing, setter 2, me 25. In other words, DNF. FOI oilskin, failed on dash off and aestheticism, both of which must be LO’sI and C’sOD. Enjoyed the process and am satisfied with the outcome. What a mix of the sublime and, not the ridiculous, but the rather obscure. Common parlance (rug) and last definition in OED for aestheticism. I learned something today which is one of the main reasons for me to keep at crosswords. Thanks to Pip for many parsings, and to setter for a very enjoyable time exercising my brain. GW
  36. Better effort today; even better if I hadn’t spent 3 minutes on my LOI TOUPEE

    Loved “stock complaint” like others; did know MULETEER though goodness knows from where

    DASH OFF was rather good

    Thanks all

  37. I gave up with 15d missing. ‘GOD’ was obvious and I had the ‘H’ and ‘L’. I knew I needed a four letter word with ‘H’ as the second letter that might be a word for a stick or might be a word meaning ‘told off’ or ‘criticised’, but ‘CHID’ didn’t come for a moment and probably would never have come. I think that the only time I have ever come across it is in Macbeth, when he is pondering Banquo’s murder: “He chid the sisters when first they put the name of king upon me…” (Yes, I’ve read it so many times that I know most of it off by heart).

    And no way is kir a liqueur – I’ve watched my wife drink it often enough to know.

    Edited at 2021-02-24 09:52 pm (UTC)

  38. Managed 58 minutes which is not bad for me, but slipped up by putting in Pigskin at 16a, no doubt channelling pigment in my imagination. Lower left took most of the time, with LOI 15a Gypsies which had to wait for 15d before I had any clue what sort of a word might fit in. Seems so obvious when the penny drops!

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