Times Cryptic No 27678 – Saturday, 30 May 2020. Sunshine and sweet treats.

Author   brnchnPosted on Categories Weekend Cryptic
This was fairly easy for a Saturday; two weeks in a row. Even so, my first one in was wrong and had to be fixed later!

I also had a few general knowledge gaps. I’d never heard of the confectionery, at least by that name, and found it hard to believe it was real.  Augustan drama was also new to me.

Thanks to the setter for a very enjoyable puzzle.

Notes for newcomers: The Times offers prizes for Saturday Cryptic Crosswords. This blog is posted a week later, after the competition closes. So, please don’t comment here on the current Saturday Cryptic.

Clues are blue, with definitions underlined. Deletions are in [square brackets].

Across
1 Fail to answer question but get through (4)
PASS – double definition. Pass a quiz question (although there, passing is more a matter of choice than a failure to answer, perhaps), or pass an exam.
4 Stay in Bordeaux for example? Capital! (5,5)
BATON ROUGE – to BAT ON is to stay in at cricket. Bordeaux wine is red, or ROUGE. The answer is the capital of Louisiana.
9 Mouth that is opened by monarch reveals dry area (4,6)
GOBI DESERT – GOB | ID EST, opened by ER. It still always come as a surprise to see id est written in full. Only in the crossword!
10 City move I keenly backed, after downsizing (4)
KIEV – backwards hidden answer (‘backed’, ‘after downsizing’).
11 Reconciled in agreement with daughter (6)
ATONED – AT ONE (in agreement), D. An obsolete usage, according to Chambers.
12 Proceeds north within each circle, and back to Dundas (8)
EARNINGS – N in EA | RING, then [Dunda]S.
14 Dullard one battered in chippy outside Lima (4)
CLOD – L (Lima, in the NATO alphabet), in COD. It took me a while to realise a ‘chippy’ would be a fish-and-chip shop. British usage, no doubt.
15 Scots soldier bombed spacecraft (10)
HIGHLANDER – HIGH (bombed, on alcohol or drugs), LANDER (of the lunar kind). I assume you can be a highlander without being a soldier, but the Highlanders are a Scottish battalion, and were previously a regiment.
17 Some housing benefit? And soup? (4,6)
DAMP COURSE – two rather off-beat definitions, although certainly it’s a good idea to have damp courses in a house.
20 Where machine-gun might be placed in safe retreat (4)
NEST – another double definition.
21 Prepare to fire at two ducks or another bird (8)
COCKATOO – COCK | AT | O-O.
23 Blame accepted by doctor given a drink (6)
GRAPPA – RAP accepted by GP, then given an A.
24 Heard solvers grow together as fighting force (4)
UNIT – ‘heard’ as YOU KNIT.
25 Bloom shows full desire uncontrollably (5-2-3)
FLEUR-DE-LIS – anagram (‘uncontrollably’) of (FULL DESIRE*).
26 Guard on landing party backing commerce across pond (10)
BALUSTRADE – BAL from LAB[our] ‘backing’, U.S. (across pond), TRADE.
27 One made to pluck hot stuff from mouth? (4)
LUTE – sounds like LOOT (‘hot’ stuff). (Could ‘hot stuff from mouth’ be FOUL language, I wondered? Silly idea!)

Down
2 Drink bringing trouble after morning at checkout (11)
AMONTILLADO – AM | ON TILL | ADO: morning | at checkout | trouble.
3 Spare sauce but no dressing for this (6-3)
SKINNY-DIP – SKINNY | DIP: spare | sauce.
4 Wide measurement being diameter in pants? (7)
BREADTH – D in BREATH.
5 Slammed sheer garbage: top Augustan drama (3,7,5)
THE BEGGAR’S OPERA – anagram (‘slammed’) of (SHEER GARBAGE TOP*). Apparently, King George I was so full of himself he called himself “Augustus”. Unknown to me, but thence “Augustan drama”.
6 Unrefined person sure to succeed (7)
NATURAL – double definition. Natural sugar, or natural sportswoman.
7 Something nasty afoot has leader deserting alliance (5)
UNION – BUNION without its leader.
8 Rocker frame attached to legs cut from piano (5)
ELVIS – PELVIS, again without its leader. A jailhouse rocker, needing to be lifted and separated from the osseous frame.
13 Slap in theatre repeating as arranged (11)
GREASEPAINT – anagram (‘arranged’) of (REPEATING AS*). Ah, the roar of the greasepaint, the smell of the crowd!
16 Confectionery modelled on praline (9)
NONPAREIL – anagram (‘modelled’) of (ON PRALINE*). With the helpers what else could it be? I DNK the confectionery by this name at all, but know it well by the name of “hundreds and thousands”.
18 Excluded group admits nothing (3,2,2)
OUT OF IT – O in OUTFIT.
19 Be ready with foil, perhaps, having nearly finished wrapping cloth up (2,5)
EN GARDE – ENDE[d] ‘wrapping’ GAR (RAG, up).
21 Endless goodness in cake fragment? (5)
CRUMB – take CRUMBS (goodness!) and dock its tail. (It took some time to realise that I needed a virtual exclamation mark in the wordplay!)
22 What central heating problem might bring? (5)
CHILL – C.H. (central heating), ILL (problem).

31 comments on “Times Cryptic No 27678 – Saturday, 30 May 2020. Sunshine and sweet treats.”

  1. ….GREASEPAINT, the smell of success, as I fairly ripped my way unhindered through this fairly straightforward offering. Like Bruce, I didn’t know this meaning of NONPAREIL, but the anagrist didn’t leave much scope for doubt.

    FOI PASS
    LOI ATONED
    COD DAMP COURSE (especially if you slop it down your shirt !)
    TIME 8:38

  2. I don’t remember much about this one. It took me some time to recall DAMP COURSE. It’s apparently now de rigueur to spell KIEV Kyiv. I very much doubt the George story of ‘Augustan’, all the more as the Augustan age goes back as far as Anne.
    1. Nho Augustan Drama .. the OED says “designating a period of English literature, generally understood as extending from the late 17th century to the mid 18th century, when some writers consciously sought to emulate the style, esp. the refinement and elegance, of the Augustan period of Roman literature, and made wide use of its characteristic literary forms; designating the writers of this period or their work; relating to or characteristic of the literature of this period.Originally with reference to the literature of the reign of Charles II, e.g. the works of Dryden, Marvell, and Edmund Waller. Later most commonly associated with writers from the 1690s to the 1740s, e.g. Pope, Swift, Addison, and Steele, although writers from the earlier period are often still included under the description.”
      So you are quite right, except it goes even further back, to Charles II
      1. My favourite Augustan drama is the exile by the emperor of the poet Ovid to the remote and uncouth Black Sea port of Tomsis after, the author of Amores and Ars Amatoria said cryptically, a ‘poem and a mistake’.
  3. I had a couple of nhos but they didn’t interfere with this relatively easy solve.
    I would not call Elvis a rocker, myself. He was more Perry Como than Little Richard. Or Chuck Berry. Or Buddy Holly. Or Jerry Lee Lewis. Or Eddie Cochran …
  4. “When I first met Elvis he had a million dollars worth of talent. Well, now he has a million dollars.”- Colonel Tom Parker. Or John Lennon – “Elvis died when he went into the army.” But rock wouldn’t have happened without him. And what a voice! So COD to him. About 40 minutes on this, with LUTE plucked but not stolen until later. I did wonder if NEST was also an anagram of STEN but can see no indication of that. Pleasant puzzle. Thank you Bruce and setter.
  5. Finally a prize crossword that I really managed to get to grips with. All done in less than 30 mins with no resorting to aids. Plenty of booze for a Saturday morning and several French words to keep me cosy. I always thought Baton Rouge was Russian Maestro’s stick! COD to SKINNY-DIP. LOI Elvis, rock on. Thank you, as ever to brnchn for the elucidations and to the setter.
  6. This did seem easier than some Saturdays but I still needed a couple of good sessions to do it. FOI was PASS and getting 1a quickly always inspires confidence.
    I have been to Baton Rouge and knew it to be a capital; that helped. I wanted to put UNITED at 11a which did not help; Amontillado, which used to be a family favourite, solved the problem.
    I noted that I had 9 left at 1.30pm including NONPAREIL,BALUSTRADE and FLEUR DE LIS.
    LOI at about 2pm was 27a when I finally saw the unparsed LUTE at the end of the tunnel.
    I also thought NEST was derived from STEN. David
  7. Gobi deserts a gogo. Here and 1a in the ST published a day later. Probably best not to mention another cryptic coincidence though, as a certain PB might take umbrage.
        1. I believe John Halpern sets the ST. Was this one set by him?

          Edited at 2020-06-06 02:26 pm (UTC)

          1. The name given is Robert Price but I believe setters often use noms de plume.
            1. Oh that’ll be Sunday Times then. Apologies: for some reason I’d assumed you meant Sunday Telegraph. So it’s just that the same answer appeared in successive grids?

              Next question: who or what is PB?

              1. Yes and not for the first time. PB is Peter Bidders Biddlecombe, ST puzzles editor-in-chief, Grand Master of Cruciverbalists and Lord Cypher of Crypto, the parallel universe where crossword-setters live.
                1. Ah yes I think I’ve heard of him, one of the great solvers.

                  Well I guess he won’t care too much if the clues are different. I haven’t seen that Robert Price puzzle.

            2. He’s not this dude Halpern. A lot of us know who he is. I could tell you, but it might be more fun to sleuth it out (i.e.,Google the blog).

              Yeah, I mentioned the reappearance of the Gobi in my blog for Sunday, but I would not have mentioned it here.

                1. That depends. Some of us knew the guy’s clever comments before he became one of our setters. But I meant to reply to the person who was asking about it, sorry.
  8. 13:20, so yes, quite easy, although I didn’t know what an Augustan drama was or the confectionery. LOI ELVIS. I liked BATON ROUGE, DAMP COURSE and AMONTILLADO. Thanks setter and Bruce.
  9. 15m. Despite reading English at university I have never heard the term ‘Augustan drama’, but the answer was obvious. Also NHO NONPAREIL.
    1. You read English at university and never heard of nonpareil? And admit it?
      1. More to the point I also went to school in France and am bilingual, so I have of course heard of NONPAREIL. Just not in this sense.
          1. By that point in the meal we were usually too full of swan.
  10. I also found this relatively easy, although you can count me in the “Augustan Drama???” group. LOI was CRUMB. 20:55. Thanks setter and Bruce.
  11. A 20 minute straightforward solve spoiled by yet another in a long line of typos – greasepaiit instead of greasepaint. How irritating. I would’ve solved this before last week’s TLS 1328 by Talos which had an Augustan satirist in one of the clues. Didn’t stop me from harking back to ancient Rome though before the penny finally dropped on that one.
  12. Splendid Saturday fare that had me grinning muchly. Not overly taxing, but bravo nonetheless.
  13. The crossword was perfectly average but I look forward to seeing the socially distanced conga line of those who knew the confectionery meaning and the augustan reference.

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