Sunday Times 4462 (4 Dec 2011)

Author   daveperryPosted on Categories Weekend Cryptic
Solving time: 42:35

A tough, but entertaining crossword, but with some fairly obscure words like ASTARTE & BILK made up for by some clever wordplay. Pretty standard Tim Moorey fare, in other words.

cd = cryptic def., dd = double def., rev = reversal, homophones are written in quotes, anagrams as (–)*, and removals like this

Across
1 BILKo – I didn’t know the word BILK, so this was a guess from the checkers. Bilko was the wise-cracking sergeant from The Phil Silvers Show who was always looking for an angle.
3 VISUALISED = (VALID ISSUE)*
10 PARALYSED = (RELAYS)* in PAD
11 CLOSE – dd
12 RE + CAP
13 ONRUSHES = O + N + (H + USER’S)*
15 INGRATE = (TANGIER)*
17 OB + SCENE
19 ASS(EG)AI – Assai is Italian for very, used as a musical term
21 ALOOFLY – I was a bit confused by this one. If the ‘usual offices’ is some kind of slang for toilet, then A LOO FLY makes sense. Although the clue should read ‘swatted’ rather than ‘swotted’, presumably.
22 CRACK / POT
24 CABAL = LAB + AtlantiC all rev
27 ALPHA – I’d say this was a dd – A / letter opener, but it could be considered a triple def. I’m just not sure whether ‘opener’ is quite enough to act as a defintion on its own.
28 STRIP CLUB – cd
29 BED OF ROSES – dd – I was a little puzzled about ‘standards’ at first, but I found a possible definition of ‘standard’ as a plant trained or grafted to have a single, erect, treelike stem
30 BaY tReEs – ‘Neat’ is a fairly archaic word for cattle that crops up quite often, and a byre is a cattle shed, hence neat container
Down
1 BIPARTISAN = BP + ARTISAN all about I
2 LYRIC – hidden, semi-&lit
4 IN-STORE – dd
5 poUND + ERGO
6 LOCUSt
7 STONE-DEAF = (A SOFTENED)* – another semi-&lit
8 DEER = REED rev, well-disguised definition of ‘more than one doe’
9 SLAP-BANG = G + PALS around NAB all rev
14 RECYCLABLE = (BlokE + CLEARLY + C)*
16 GASTROPOD = DO + PORT + SAG all rev
18 SNOWCAPS – I guess this counts as an &lit of SNOW + CAPS (capital letters), but it seems a little weak to me.
20 I’M + PAST + Opposition
21 ASTARTE = (TEA)* about STAR – Astarte was a Semitic fertility goddess
23 C(H)AFF
25 BELatedLY
26 GARB = BRAG rev

5 comments on “Sunday Times 4462 (4 Dec 2011)”

  1. 33 minutes, can’t remember anything of note. We’ve had ASTARTE recently; I remember some solvers not knowing the name. They might know her as Ishtar. ‘Offices’ somehow rang a bell, maybe from Shakespeare, and indeed the OED gives it that meaning, adding ‘freq. “usual office(s)’; they date it to the late 17th century.
  2. Not long ago I wrote we’d be seeing ASSEGAI again and, I believe, this is the second time since then the old chestnut has cropped up. ISHTAR the movie…oh dear. BILK my first in as Sgt. Bilko was a favourite TV show of mine in the 50s now getting to be a long time ago. Had to look up OFFICES so about 40 minutes.
  3. I must have been over-tired when I tackled this before going to sleep as I hit a wall and gave up after 30 minutes with 13 clues unsolved. The following morning I completed those 13 answers in 9 minutes, which is going it a bit for me.

    ASTARTE came up quite recently as Kevin has pointed out and I knew ‘the usual offices’. I imagine “for me” at 7dn is a riddle-type device which refers to the answer regardless of grammar, meaning or context.

  4. 21: “swot” is a convenient variant spelling in Collins.
    7: “me”should have been “person like this” – apologies for not getting this correction into the online version.

    Peter Biddlecombe, Sunday Times Puzzles Editor

  5. I found this very straightforward, and finished it in under ten minutes. When I pressed “submit” I got an error message, so I hurriedly retyped all the answers, hoping still to post a good time. Normally the site keeps the clock running, but not this time, so I inadvertently joined the ranks of the cheating speed typists this week. I can type reasonably quickly, but now I see there is someone out there called heather57 who makes me look like a slowcoach!

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