Times Cryptic No 27582 – Saturday, 08 February 2020. Oom-pah-pah.

Author   brnchnPosted on Categories Weekend Cryptic
An easy solve, finished over lunch. Always nice. I liked the appearance of the brass band instrument, but my clue of the day was the pun at 1dn. 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 Short match (5)
LIGHT – double definition.
4 Policeman I see dresses in fur — that sounds awful! (9)
CACOPHONY – AH (I see) ‘dresses’ COP, then all of that is ‘in’ CONY (fur).
9 French dish: temptress primarily after person in suit (9)
CASSOULET – T[-emptress] after SOUL in CASE.
10 Path with entrance to the rear, remote (5)
OUTER – ROUTE with the R at the rear.
11 In formula I get blunders: little holes in it? (9,4)
MINIATURE GOLF – (IN FORMULA I GET*), ‘blunders’. I suspect the holes are actually pretty much the normal size. The approaches are what’s little.
14 I’m going towards being doubled up, after retirement (2-2)
TA-TA – AT (towards, as in “I’m looking at/towards the end of the road”), repeated and reversed.
15 American brass cleaner welcoming American polish (10)
SOUSAPHONE – SOAP (cleaner) welcoming U.S., then HONE. A redesigned tuba for marching bands.
18 Where soldiers were ordered to go too much (4,3,3)
OVER THE TOP – another double definition.
19 That’s a match, still! (4)
SNAP – and a third DD. The first as in the card game, the second as in photography.
21 US president in dispute, PM joining club (7,6)
WOODROW WILSON – ROW and (Harold) WILSON joining WOOD (golf club).
24 After a review, I declare myself the official physicist (5)
FERMI – I’M REF, reversed (reviewed). Enrico Fermi.
25 Butterfly is full colour (9)
BRIMSTONE – BRIMS (full), TONE (colour).
27 Appellation on envelope erased, send off without name (9)
ADDRESSEE – (ERASED SE-D*), ‘off’, without N for name.
28 Malevolent character, US president once on board? (5)
SIKES – IKE on board SS (ship). Bill Sikes from Oliver Twist, that will be.

Down
1 Ridiculous proposal going forward, perhaps? (10)
LOCOMOTION – indeed, a LOCO MOTION.
2 One way matter may be sorted: action group firstly set up (3)
GAS – first letters of S[-orted] A[-ction] G[-roup]! ‘set up’.
3 Chest: try stuffing instrument briefly inside (6)
THORAX – HOR[-n] inside TAX (try, as in “that would try/tax anyone’s patience”).
4 Terrorist group go down having stolen uranium compound found in plant (9)
CELLULOSE – CELL (terrorist group), LOSE (go down), having ‘stolen’ (i.e. pocketed) U.
5 Shape that is lovely (5)
CUTIE – CUT (cut into a shape), I.E. (that is).
6 Media affairs torrid under head of programming — that was careless! (5,3)
PHOTO OPS – HOT under P[-rogramming], then OOPS.
7 Forbidden, now spring’s gone? (3,2,6)
OUT OF BOUNDS – now the last spring’s gone, we’re OUT OF BOUNDS.
8 House given a choice of sturdy and weak foundations? (4)
YORK – [-sturd]Y OR [-wea]K, I ask you?
12 Aberrant elder thrown in abyss (11)
NETHERWORLD – (ELDER THROWN*), ‘aberrant’.
13 Partners, one’s pals worryingly vulnerable to attack? (10)
WEAPONLESS – W[-est] and E[-ast] are conventionally bridge partners, then (ONES PALL*) is ‘worrying’.
16 These days not much in some vacuous old tale (4,5)
SNOW WHITE – NOW + WHIT inside SE (‘some’, vacuous).
17 Drug in operation worked, though not the first (8)
ATROPINE – (-PERATION*), ‘worked’.
20 Wish we were here for wife (6)
MISSUS – so, do you miss us? Wish we were there, don’t you?
22 Ultimately joyous, supremely uplifting puzzle (5)
REBUS – [-joyou]S, UBER, all ‘uplifting’.
23 Old sovereign tender, by the sound of it? (4)
OFFA – what do you OFFER (tender, by the sound of it)?
26 Not so bad hugging a tree (3)
OAK – OK hugging A.

20 comments on “Times Cryptic No 27582 – Saturday, 08 February 2020. Oom-pah-pah.”

  1. Yes, easy one, nothing wrong with that of course
    Re 11ac, the approaches are small but they are also part of the hole if you think of it as the 5th hole, 6th hole etc.

    Edited at 2020-02-15 12:39 am (UTC)

  2. so not that easy for me. I biffed 15ac, 21ac (easy to do with a W), 16d and 17d, parsing post-submission. Two US presidents, although ‘malevolent’ would apply better to Wilson, a vicious racist. COD to 20d, although I wondered if ‘here’ was a typo for ‘there’.
  3. A nice combination of clues and grid-fodder, I thought. One wrong – I couldn’t figure York out, so put in the only house like thing that fit, a Yurt, and hoped. Thx, Brunch and setter
  4. Another who found it taxing, lots of wordy clues with lots of possible synonyms. Got there in the end with CACOPHONY unparsed… cony NHO, I guessed cop, ho! in cany (fur of a cane toad?) and brimstone bifd at the end being a full, sulfurous yellow colour.
  5. I don’t wish to appear to be sulphurous but this is The London Times.
    Glad you spelled colour correctly! Nicely inconsistent.

    Cum in Roma…

    FOI 26dn OAK

    LOI 3dn THORAX

    COD 15ac SOUSAPHONE

    WOD 12dn NETHERWORLD

    I thought 14ac was a silly little clue.

  6. Another with difficulties here though the lower half was much easier than the top apart from the NHO FERMI. Not being of much of a scientific bent (although I do have O-level physics) I don’t understand the definition at 2dn.
        1. Well, it’s saying that there a number of forms matter can take. One way would be as a gas.
          1. Ah, I see it now! Thanks again. I was looking for something much more involved than that and requiring more scientific understanding.
  7. 51m 45s so no walk in the park for me. I couldn’t get the hang of FERMI at all. I went for another physicist FARHI on the basis that, although I coudln’t realte him to the clue either, FERMI has been an swer so often this one had to be different.

    Thank you Bruce for explaining several solutions: CACOPHONY, CASSOULET, TA-TA and SOUSAPHONE.
    My COD goes to MISSUS

  8. 50 enjoyable minutes for me. I found it tricky but I did always feel I was getting there. You never can tell how many shots it will take to get the ball through the windmill though. An uncertainty principle applies. Even so, COD not to MINIATURE GOLF, a most frustrating game, but to SOUSAPHONE. I also loved how Harold morphed into Woodrow. In fact, nearly all the clues were crackers. Forgetting about the bomb, particular mention has to go to Enrico FERMI who along with Paul Dirac, and following Wolfgang Pauli, started making quantum mechanics intelligible before Werner Heisenberg showed that it wasn’t, to my great joy. Who wants to live in a mechanistic universe? Thank you Bruce and setter.

    Edited at 2020-02-15 07:32 am (UTC)

    1. Is miniature golf necessarily the same as crazy golf? I thought it could just be a scaled down version of the normal game.
      1. I’ve always used the two interchangeably, but maybe the uncertainty principle is involved here too. I would call the game on grass without windmills either putting or pitch and putt depending on scale.
  9. 20:41. My biggest problem was writing the answer to 27A in the space for 25A and taking ages to spot it. I liked YORK and SOUSAPHONE best.
  10. ….or at least I wasn’t on Sunday morning, when I wouldn’t accept “short” as a synonym until the checkers were in. I was 8 clues in before starting, and I never truly got up to speed thereafter.

    I only parsed my LOI later, it having taking me nearly 3 minutes to nail down. I agree with Horryd as regards TA-TA

    FOI OVER THE TOP
    LOI SOUSAPHONE
    COD WOODROW WILSON
    TIME 20:13

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  12. I found this quite difficult. It was 58:54 before I crawled over the line! Just back from a storm swept Cumbria and about to try today’s puzzle.
  14. Three went in unparsed: Cassoulet, Tata and Yurt ( we were with Paul in London for 8d) . Inevitably one was wrong. York! We should have been looking for the obligatory cricket clue, but were bowled by this! 25mins with this mistake.

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