Sunday Times 5024 by David McLean – blue-shade clues

44 comments on “Sunday Times 5024 by David McLean – blue-shade clues”

1. 27:10
   I didn’t care much for this one. Some QC-level clues, like 1ac and 16ac, and some to me iffy definitions: ‘wet blanket’ as K mentions, ‘off in America’ (I still can’t see ‘get-go’=off). I put in HOARSE at 17d, don’t know how I missed COARSE.
   This was the third time this week that I was logged out and had to log back in (and check ‘remember me’, for all the good that did).

   1. ‘From the off’ means ‘from the beginning’ (of a race, used literally), as does ‘from the get-go’.

      1. NHO it; my problem, of course.

2. 53 minutes. Fortunately I saw GORY for 20a before “blue” occurred to me. I didn’t know what DOG IN THE MANGER meant, but looking it up later, it doesn’t appear to refer to a ‘wet blanket?’ as you say. I didn’t know a CLAYMORE as a ‘mine’ and I couldn’t really work out GET-GO.

   Yes, very corny, but DEPART MENTALLY was still my favourite.

3. 42m 38s
   My only noted comment was “SE corner very tricky.”
   I agree with Keriothe that DOG-IN-THE-MANGER and WET BLANKET are different concepts.
   I also think 5ac is a dodgy homophone. One other slight mer: 16ac SUMO WRESTLER is scarcely cryptic for me.
   Thanks you, K, for GORY (fortunately I never thought of BLUE), VERY, LETTER and GET-GO.
   FOI: THUG
   LOI: GET-GO
   COD: DEPARTMENTALLY with an honourable mention for BELLHOPS.
   Thank you, keriothe!

4. I found GORY weak as a DD, as it means “explicit” really only in the sense of “bloody”; it’s not a synonym of “explicit” in any other sense. I finally called it a CD, playing on the double sense of “bloody” (as a swearword intensifier as well as the literal).

   “The off” is definitely not American, and this was one of my last (with the aforementioned).

   I never got around to checking the nearness of LEER to “sneer,” but had intended to…

   I, too, must echo K’s misgivings as to the equivalency of DOG IN THE MANGER and “wet blanket.”

   1. I think the idea is that GET-GO is American, which it may be originally but it’s also quite common here too.

      1. Correct – Collins says nothing about get-go being American, but ODE and Chambers both have “US” or “North American”, one with “mainly”.

         1. Thanks Peter. Unfortunately I don’t have access to ODE any more since they discontinued Lexico (and in fact ODE: I don’t think there will be any more editions). Dictionary.com doesn’t say anything about it being North American.

            1. FWIW I learnt ‘from the get-go’ from an American friend who uses is often. She’s resident in NYC.

            2. Hi k, just on the Lexico thing … If you have a UK library card you can use it to log in to oed dot com for free 🙂

               1. Yes I do that, but the full OED isn’t one of the normal sources for the ST crosswords. Like Chambers it’s generally considered too all-inclusive: editors (I’m pretty sure this is true of PB at least) prefer words that appear in one of the abridged dictionaries (Collins, Lexico as was, the Concise Oxford), since they can be more reasonably considered ‘everyday’.

                  1. K, you’re right. I do editing, and Lexico was a whole lot easier than OED, where you have to wade through all the history and obscure variants.

               2. Replying to harmonic_row:

                  Sadly not so. Only if your local authority has subscribed. I’m in Central Bedfordshire and had access for years but then they opted out and I lost it. I was told by somebody here that there may be a way around this by joining a library in a different area and gaining access but after going through the preliminaries I found I was required to attend in person to pick up a membership card and prove my entitlement to their services. The best replacement for Lexico is to buy a hard copy of the Concise Oxford or the Oxford Dictionary of English. (ODE being a one volume job, not the multi-volume OED I was referring to above).

                  1. Fortunately for me Wandsworth still participate. I solve these things all over the place so practically speaking the only dictionaries I can consult regularly are online ones, or my Chambers app. I really liked Lexico, I think it’s a great shame it’s gone.

                     1. Presumably you visit home occasionally though, so you could have printed dictionary available there? 🙂

                        1. If I have a query about a word when I’m doing a puzzle on the train in the morning, the chances that I will remember and be bothered to look it up in the evening are basically nil!

                           1. Ah, then there’s hope for you! Clearly not as obsessed as some of us old hacks around here, even when on bloggng duty.

                  2. Ah, sorry about that, Jack – I’m kinda next door to you in Northampton; I imagined it would work anywhere. Maybe a family member elsewhere with a card …
                     Lexico is/was difficult to beat for editing (which I do). Shame it’s gone. You’re right about the hard copies 🙂

      2. I got that idea. And that “the off” is not American!

   2. As I discovered from looking up “gory” in editing, both ODE and Collins have “covered in blood” as a meaning, so “bloody” is being used in a different sense to “explicit”. If they had only recorded one meaning, I don’t think I would have allowed a double definition clue.

      1. I don’t see “explicit” given as a definition for GORY in any dictionary available to me. It’s clear how that might be assumed, but in the expression “gory details,” seems it’s the “details” that says one is being “explicit.”

         1. I’m not aware of any requirement that a definition used in a cryptic clue has to be a dictionary definition for the word involved. The question is whether it’s a fair synonym. Something that’s gory without being covered in blood must surely show you the blood or similar and therefore be “explicit” in the sense of showing you something that could be offensive or disturbing. That aspect isn’t mentioned in dictionaries, but a film that showed you landscapes or pussycats in the direct way that someone like “Bloody Sam” Peckinpah might depict a battle scene seems unlikely to be called “explicit”.

            1. Well, a more apt example than either “landscapes” or “pussycats” (ha!) of non-GORY explicitness is the depiction of sexual acts. I’d guess that’s even the more common application.

            2. The Concise Oxford and ODE both have ‘the gory details’ humorous – the explicit details of something. This finally puts to bed any suggestion that dictionary.com can be relied on as a replacement for the defunct Lexico.

               1. Does the definition of “the gory details” really repeat the word “details,” or are you paraphrasing?
                  The dictionary citations of that phrase I found defined “gory” as “Unpleasant or disagreeable.” It’s the “details” that make an account “explicit.”
                  But enough bloody hairsplitting! Ha ha

                  1. I’ve quoted verbatim a phrase given as an example in the ODE and the given explanation of that phrase. The Concise Oxford version is slightly shorter: ‘the gory details’ humorous – explicit details.

                     You said you couldn’t find the definition relied on by the setter in any dictionary and I’ve provided this from dictionaries we know are used by Times setters so I really don’t know what hairs remain to be split. But as you’ve already said “enough”, let’s leave it at that.

                     1. I was just wondering about the precise wording, as there were no quotation marks around the citation. I check things like this all day long on weekdays.
                        It would be splitting hairs if I were to say that the equivalence of the idiom “gory details” to “explicit details” did not seem to imply that “explicit” itself, in isolation from that idiom, can be taken to mean GORY.
                        So I won’t!
                        I wouldn’t use GORY to refer to a detailed (blow-by-blow) account of an orgy—unless, I guess, BDSM were involved.
                        Which is to say, the “bloody” and the “explicit” definitions seemed to have but a cigarette paper’s width between them, as bloodiness could be what made something explicit… But I’m happy to know that some dictionaries do define the idiom as meaning “explicit details” whereas all I’d found was “unpleasant,” etc

   3. I thought the same as Guy du Sable about GORY, but then I thought of “gory details” which doesn’t necessarily mean bloody.

      1. I don’t find a definition for GORY as “explicit” in any dictionary online. Dictionary.com has “gory details”—as does Britannica—but the definition is “unpleasant or disagreeable.”

         1. It was a bit of a stretch admittedly. Interestingly, when I type “gory details” into Google, it suggests “explicit” as an alternative search at the bottom of the page – maybe because so many people have been trying to make the connection!

5. 35 minutes but failed to solve 22ac, LETTER. After using aids I queried LEER for ‘sneer’ but like our blogger found it was okay. I also started with BLUE rather than GORY and had no doubts until it disrupted my solving the clues around it. I also noted ‘barely cryptic’ on my print-out against SUMO WRESTLER.

   I find the clue to SPEECH WRITER rather strange.

   No problems with “tie D” sounding like TIDY as pronounced by some, though not by me.

6. Usual very uneven quality from Mr McL. 12ac, 16ac really from the GK crossword, aren’t they?
   I did put blue, but it wasn’t there for long as DERRIERE was unequivocal.

7. I solved this mainly online. I know from my paper copy that FOI was ARROW.
   And I remember mainly enjoying this.
   I did not know the second meaning of Claymore, and still don’t, so I will now look that up. It was one of several which went in with a ?
   David

8. I had question marks at the same clues as everyone else, including LEER for SNEER. (You all often use Collins as your reference; I thought Chambers was the crossword gold standard. No?) Completed in just over the hour, so average for me. Found it tricky, with clues that, to me, sometimes didn’t lead seamlessly to the answers. That’s one of the many values of this blog: the explanations and the shared whinges, all very reassuring. Thanks to all, and setter, of course.

   1. Chambers is the gold standard for barred-grid crosswords, certainly. But that’s because it contains many exotic words that help to fill the grids and challenge the solvers of those puzzles, as well as some meanings of ordinary words that most people don’t know about. That content simply isn’t suitable for daily paper cryptics. [There is plenty of difficult material in Collins and ODE, but not as much. ]

9. Apologies for the dog-in-the manger / wet blanket difference. The fact that “dog in the manger” has a such a specific meaning is my first new fact of today, and I should really remember to check any expression like this.

   On “blue” meaning “bloody”, it does so in a steak context, but neither Collins nor ODE has this meaning for “blue”, presumably because it’s only used (AFAIK) for one meat.

   1. I’m quite surprised this isn’t in Collins but I guess it’s a French term that has only migrated to English relatively recently. Thinking about it, ‘bloody’ isn’t quite accurate, either: you have to cook a steak a bit more than BLUE to start getting blood out of it!

10. Apart from the already-mentioned 5a and 3d (and hats off to the editor for the apology), I’m not sure I like 7d. Surely something influenced by a region of France would just be DEPARTMENTAL? How can the answer be an adverb?

    1. Yes you may have a point here. I can construct sentences in which it’s an adverb meaning ‘influenced by regions’ (matters were arranged DEPARTMENTALLY) but not a region. Hmm.

11. A DNF for me LETTER and that was only from the checking letters not from the WP or definition
    although I had written it in the margins I couldn’t parse it so left it out.

12. I thought GORY was bloody awful, and it seems I wasn’t alone. I found this a tough puzzle, taking over 40mins, and failing on LOI where I got my homophones mixed, having COURSE instead of COARSE of course. Gory hell!

13. Found this less chewy than the usual Sunday fare (better-cooked?); and was proceeding at a reasonable clip, only to be undone by DEPARTMENTALLY and my not seeing the definition in LETTER ( I take issue with LEER and SNEER being in any way synonymous!). To cap it all off, my problems in the SW corner were compounded by 20d missing a clue! – there often are slip-ups in the Australian newspaper rendition of the cryptic: possibly the editors just don’t “give a damn”?)

14. Thanks David and keriothe
    Actually did this one last weekend whilst on holidays in the South Australia wine country – it must have been inspiring because it was finished in 26 minutes – as quick as it gets for me. Or maybe I was on his cd wavelength.
    No new terms but did take time to firstly find the clue – The Australian missed the clue for it in its printed edition and had to find it on the online version – and then to understand how GET-GO worked with the similar verbal meanings of GET and GO to be told to be off.
    Thought that DEPARTMENTALLY was brilliant. Pleased to remember both meanings of CLAYMORE.
    Finished in the NW corner with BROADWAY (arghh it had nothing to do with RUE), OWING (neat definition with ‘unsettled’) and FLYING the last one in.

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