Times Cryptic No 27576 – Saturday, 01 February 2020. A sadder and a wiser man ….

Author   brnchnPosted on Categories Weekend Cryptic
I think this puzzle was easier than recent Saturdays. I started easily, but then I struggled with 13dn and its crossers – why are foreign language anagram answers so much harder to see? And as usual, I completely missed the point of the ellipses at 14/15 across. FOI was 2dn, LOI was 6dn. Obscure word of the day was 19ac, my clue of the day was 5dn. Thanks to the setter for a very enjoyable puzzle.

Clues are blue, with definitions underlined. (ABC*) means ‘anagram of ABC’. Deletions are in [square brackets].

Across
1 To ‘ell with American fellow! (5)
ANGUS – ’ANG the US.
4 A song about knight and goddess out of love? (9)
ALIENATED – A LIED around N and Greek goddess ATE.
9 Magazine board establishing schedule for publication? (9)
TIMETABLE – TIME was the magazine, the table might be the BOARD.
10 Finally eat what’s left over in club maybe (5)
TRUMP – T from [ea]T finally, RUMP is what’s left over. Clubs, or any other suit, might be trumps.
11 Soldiers yielded to enemy, as reported in summary (13)
RECAPITULATED – the R.E. allegedly CAPITULATED. Surely not!
14 Wild animal reportedly … (4)

LYNX – sounds like LINKS. Hence the ellipses linking this clue to the next one. On edit, thanks to paul_in_london for seeing what’s going on here. An ellipsis “…” is a link, so links end this clue and start the next one. Truly wonderful!!
15 … in this sporting venue that’s suffering closure with fog (4,6)
GOLF COURSE – (CLOSURE, FOG*) ‘suffering’.
18 People with ideas shoot up, surrounded by others getting excited (10)
THEORISERS – ‘shoot up’ gives RISE, surrounded by ( OTHERS*), ‘getting excited’.
19 Superior group set about providing something fragrant (4)
TOLU – set the U LOT about, to give a balsam I didn’t know. Just lucky it wasn’t BOMU!
21 New waste-disposer not operated completely manually (5-8)
POWER-ASSISTED – (WASTE DISPOSER*), ‘new’.
24 Pin back a plant (5)
LIANA – NAIL ‘back’, then A.
25 After six soldier has time in road for one keeping watch (9)
VIGILANTE – six is VI, soldier is GI, road is LANE, holding T for time.
27 Quietly retreat with holy books — a pattern already established (9)
PRECEDENT – P, RECEDE, NT.
28 One perhaps giving advice to gardener with hard ground (5)
DIGIT – tell the gardener, ‘DIG IT’!

Down
1 What’s on church minister’s table? That collar, taken out (5,5)
ALTAR CLOTH – (THAT COLLAR*), ‘taken out’.
2 School sport never ending (3)
GAM – GAM[e].
3 Configurations of sheep in Sussex, say? (3-3)
SET-UPS – S.E. TUPS.
4 A type turning up in clerical garments, one bringing sense of guilt? (9)
ALBATROSS – A + TROS = SORT ‘turning up’, in ALBS.
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner: A sadder and a wiser man, He rose the morrow morn.
5 Perfection to be seen in bride always (5)
IDEAL – hidden answer.
6 Code number on establishment initially obscured (8)
NOTATION – NO. on [-s]TATION.
7 Thor blunted? Then that’s tricky! (11)
THUNDERBOLT – (THOR BLUNTED*), ‘tricky’. Not quite sure how to categorise this clue!
8 Perform exercises — will this improve performance unfairly? (4)
DOPE – DO P.E.
12 Consider scorn English displayed about the French (11)
CONTEMPLATE – COMTEMPT, E[-nglish], all about LA.
13 Eight nudes cavorting around in good health! (10)
GESUNDHEIT – (EIGHT NUDES*), ‘cavorting about’.
16 Spooner’s angry quarrel that may come with a premonition (9)
FORESIGHT – SORE FIGHT, with the Spooner treatment.
17 Something to mop overturned spirit or beer (5,3)
BROWN ALE – BROW (to be mopped). NALE = ELAN (spirit) ‘overturned’.
20 Having account put up, we hear (6)
BILLED – sounds like BUILD, ‘we hear’.
22 Entertainment always set up outside university (5)
REVUE – REVE = EVER ‘set up’, outside U.
23 Failure of a dandy, about fifty (4)
FLOP – FOP around L=50.
26 Horse that can barely win giving trouble? (3)
NAG – double definition.

44 comments on “Times Cryptic No 27576 – Saturday, 01 February 2020. A sadder and a wiser man ….”

  1. ….drink it down. It was certainly better than the crime against humanity that they called Red Barrel !

    TOLU was new to me too, but otherwise this was enjoyable and fell into place nicely.

    FOI TIMETABLE
    LOI TOLU
    COD BROWN ALE
    TIME 11:52

  2. I didn’t know Tolu either (I’m betting few did) and so had to trust the cryptic; I also didn’t twig the elipses for Lynx and Links, so thanks for that Brnchn. I liked Angus.
  3. Screwed up with LUNY instead of LYNX(which I thought of but couldn’t explain). Missed the ellipsis. Went for sounds like mad and a bit like a loon, which is a bird if not an animal. So a wasted effort. 33:59 WOE. Thanks setter and Bruce.
  4. Knowing toluene was an aromatic chemical did for me: it’s word-root couldn’t possibly be tolu (it is!), and aromatic in that sense means benzene-based. So it would be way too much of a coincidence for tolu to be aromatic. BOMU it had to be. Oh, well.
    Otherwise found it very easy except albatross, not knowing albs (i.e. forgotten since last time) and seeing ambitious immediately making it almost impossible to mentally erase the M.
    3. Whereas I’d never heard of tolu, so just assumed it was an abbreviation of toluene, which I vaguely knew as an aromatic hydrocarbon and that was good enough for me! Sometimes a lack of knowledge is handy in crosswordland.
  5. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a homephone stretched across 2 clues. Spent a while wondering if L_N_ meant wild, sounded like an animal. Saw it immediately when I solved golf course – been chased off links by fog before.
    1. Occasionally I’ve seen two clues actually work together, not necessarily here. I think they might have been in our home town paper.
      1. Is your hometown the same as mine – Perth? Are you referring to the West Australian?
    2. Ignore my erroneous comment starting the thread, written before paul_in_london explained how it worked.
  6. It’s not surprising that no one (so far) noticed the ellipses in 14/15; so far as I can recall, this is the first time suspension dots have actually functioned to connect two clues. DNK TOLU, of course. Bruce, two errata: 1) RECAPITULATED: the def is ‘reported in summary’, so the underline should be extended; 2) ALBATROSS: It’s A + TROS in ALBS.
    2. The clues are adjacent, but I think that each clue would work just as well if they were completely independent. In both cases, just read “…” as ‘links’, which is one good reading of the meaning of an (singular) ellipsis. The fact that the same trick is used in both clues is really (really) cute, but not necessary to solve either one in my mind.
  7. I noticed the ellipsis. We’ve had quite a few of these recently where the punctuation is part of the clue so this time I wasn’t fooled. All correct but no time. I think I did it over several sessions while changing the filters on my reverse osmosis unit.
  8. I meant to note that the definition is a bit weak: vigilantes were self-appointed law enforcers. San Francisco’s Committees of Vigilance of the 1850’s, for instance, arrested, and often hanged or deported, putative law-breakers, as well as acting as watchmen.
  9. I have never heard of GAM before so put GYM.
    Thanks for the explanation of LYNX…..GOLF COURSE, Bruce. Also for BILLED and NOTATION.
    2. In the championship in 2013 the following two clues intersected:

      – Celtic characters of old school, hard to penetrate (5)
      – Chinese leader calls in doctor, a voodoo woman (5)

      Many of us entered OPHOD [O(H),POD] and MADRO [MA(DR)O], but the correct answers were OGHAM [O,G(H)AM] and MAMBO [MA(MB)O]. GAM for ‘school’ has been an instinctive reaction for me ever since.

      1. Thanks keriothe. Jack and Kevin mentioned it as well. I will add GAM to my crossword lexicon!
  10. Like others, I didn’t know TOLU so trusted to wordplay.

    I suppose the THUNDER BOLT clue has to be &lit but still am not too keen on it.

    Reading all the comments here about LYNX I convinced myself I had missed the ellipses too, but then on looking at my print-out I was pleased to note I have written ‘LINKS’ at the side of the clue with an arrow pointing to 15ac.

    Edited at 2020-02-08 06:54 am (UTC)

  11. 36 minutes. The only unknown was LOI TOLU, which took five minutes to construct. I did then wonder if it had anything to do with Toluene. Joint COD to LYNX and GOLF COURSE, which I did see the link to the links as I biffed the wild cat. There must have been a hell of a wind behind the setter as he played his round though for him to have clued ALBATROSS. Maybe he was POWER-ASSISTED. Enjoyable apart from the fragrance. Thank you Bruce and setter.

    Edited at 2020-02-08 07:15 am (UTC)

  12. I didn’t notice the dots so lynx went in with a shrug.
    The thing is, most of the time dots like that don’t really mean anything do they? It isn’t something I can search for but it must be quite rare that the actual wordplay stretches over two clues, as opposed to the two just having something in common.
    OK with gam, gesundheit a write-in but nho tolu
    1. As I said above, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a case like this; I’ve long since become accustomed to ignoring the dots, but this time I couldn’t do anything with 14 by itself. Now I’ll have to start paying more attention to ellipses.
      1. I can’t remember seeing a case where ellipses have actually had a function either, something I’ve always found weird. In this case I happened to notice it, which helped.
        1. I’m pretty sure the word ellipsis was clued once, the definition part of the clue being … at the end. One giveaway was a lack of … at the start of the next clue.
  13. 14:47. Yes. I thought this was the easiest Saturday for a while too. LOI TOLU which I checked before submission, but thought must be linked to the aromatic chemical… bad luck isla in making the opposite deduction. I thought 7D a bit strange. What’s “then” doing in there and what’s the definition? I enjoyed the dotty linked clues, the 8 nudes cavorting at 13D and the advice to the gardener at 28A. Thanks Bruce and setter.

    Edited at 2020-02-08 07:36 am (UTC)

    1. Doh. I think I’ve spotted it belatedly. If Thor is blunted then he might find making thunderbolts tricky.
  14. 12:16. No real problems. NHO TOLU but deduced it from wordplay and assumed (correctly as it turns out) it was related to TOLUENE.
    It seems clear to me that 7dn is &Lit but the use of ‘blunted’ is a bit odd.
    1. Yes, it is a bit odd but it’s needed as part of the anagrist. It does make the clue a bit clunky, though.
  17. 47:01. I spent ages on my LOI the unknown Tolu where I was never really confident enough from the wp to enter the NHO answer.
  18. This wasn’t the usual Saturday fare and I was over the line in 37 minutes.

    FOI 2dn GAM (and Grampus)

    LOI 19ac TOLU fyi The Ormonde Jayne Perfumery launched its oriental perfume Tolu in 2002 from tolu balsam ex-Myroxylon balsamum

    COD 7dn THUDERBOLT

    WOD 13dn GESUNDHEIT! No problems hereabouts.

    Cheers!

    Edited at 2020-02-08 04:48 pm (UTC)

  19. Have been to Cambridge today so a bit late coming here; the trains were on time and the sun shone. Excellent.
    As was last Saturday’s puzzle in the main. Much easier to me than the previous week. FOI was 1a, a rare event.
    As an aficionado of links golf courses I should have got LYNX sooner. It was one of my last three. LOI was the unknown TOLU; I had noted BOMU as a possible.
    I had put a shaky ALTAR PLATE at 1d and went back to parse it before submitting. Thanks goodness I did. Finished at 2.25pm -early for me.
    Joint COD to the lynx group and GESUNDHEIT. David

  20. Was the juxtaposition of 10a & 8d a coincidence?
    Four long anagrams was a bit much IMHO! The lynx link was good, when we appreciated it after reading the blog. 32mins

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