Sunday Times Cryptic 4949 by Dean Mayer — coir practice

Author   Guy du SablePosted on Categories Weekend Cryptic

As with the last puzzle I blogged, I spotted an easy long one first, 14. But 17, the answer with which it is 23, eluded me for a while, though it now seems pretty obvious. As is so often the case, I didn’t realize it was a cryptic definition. And, tell you the truth, I’m still not sure it’s all that cryptic…

If I’m missing something about 15, I’m sure y’all will let me know.

I indicate (Aran mags)* like this, and italicize anagrinds in the clues.

ACROSS
 1 Capacity of crew seeing across delta (9)
BANDWIDTH — BAND, “crew” + WI(D)TH… Near as I can figure, “seeing” here must mean WITH in the sense of being involved in an affective liaison with someone. “X is with Y,” “X is seeing Y.”
 6 Mendicant king with fine clothing (5)
FAKIR — FA(K)IR
 9 Potentially one’s best friend (5)
CHINA — When entertaining special guests, you might get out the most expensive vitrified ceramic tableware. (And that’s practically the only time you ever hear about it.) CRS, short for “China plate” = “mate,” if there’s anyone here who doesn’t know.
10 Can seek to cut down tree (9)
SATINWOOD — SA(TIN)(WOO)D
11 Poles returned to gather tiny fruit (8)
SWEETSOP — POSTS<=“returned” holding WEE, “tiny”
12 Dad keeps ignoring Mr Martin Sheen (6)
PATINA — Much easier to ignore Charlie. P([-M]a[-r]tin)A My COD.
14 Pregnant a year after life with many changes (2,3,6,3)
IN THE FAMILY WAY — (after life + many)* + A + Y(ear)… Think I became aware of this expression in the mid-sixties when (not-yet-Sir) Paul McCartney did the soundtrack for the movie The Family Way with Hayley Mills. Not that I’ve ever heard that music (or seen the flick).
17 A white band of cloth (8,6)
CLERICAL COLLAR — CD Apparently, there was a time when virtually anyone who wore a uniform for work was considered “of the cloth,” but eventually the term became exclusive to the clergy. The “uniform“ part of their garb nowadays generally consists of no more than the collar. Which is made of cloth, of course. What else could it be? Leather? Coir?
19 Iron, sulphur, copper, oriental grass (6)
FESCUE — FE, “Iron” + S, “sulphur” + CU, “copper” + E(astern), ”oriental” My LOI. I don’t think I’ve come across the word before.
20 After cooking, crash out (2,6)
ON STRIKE — ON, “cooking” + STRIKE, “crash”
23 Woven in coir, items of equal size (9)
ISOMETRIC — (coir items)* My first encounter with “coir”! Hopefully I won’t forget it before I meet up with it again (if that ever happens). It is, says here, “fiber from the outer husk of the coconut, used for making ropes and matting”—you’ve no doubt seen “Welcome” mats made of the stuff.
24 A fighter over 9 (5)
AMIGO — A + MIG + O
25 London suburb — hotel area of course (5)
HAYES — H + A + YES
26 Focus on small vessel coming in (9)
SPOTLIGHT — S(POT)LIGHT

DOWN
 1 Hide family money first (8)
BUCKSKIN — BUCKS, “money” + KIN, “family”
 2 Location of bridge over one sound (5)
NOISE — NO(I)SE
 3 Don’t show supporting members what union leader will do (4,3,8)
WEAR THE TROUSERS — Double CD, if you will, but only the second one provides the idiomatic definition. Seems a somewhat antiquated notion, no matter whose legs are covered.
 4 Poor harmony is leading issue in disco music (10)
DISSONANCE — D(IS)(SON)ANCE
 5 Drinking a Tango he can’t stand (4)
HATE — H(A)(T)E
 6 Fancy version of team-building (7,8)
FANTASY FOOTBALL — CD
 7 Rise to embrace comedian, a wise guy (4-2-3)
KNOW-IT-ALL — KNO(WIT)(A)LL
 8 Spoke right before a call (6)
RADIAL — R + A + DIAL
13 Fagin’s cronies finally go to court? (4,3,3)
BILL AND COO — BILL AND CO + [-g]O “Fagin” is from Oliver Twist, a fence for a gang of thieves, so he surely had “cronies”…
15 Try to accept everyone’s for romance? (4,5)
TALL STORY — T(ALL’S)(TO)RY… I think there’s something a bit off about this. We have TRY (literally) around both ALL[’]S, “everyone’s,” and TO (literally), rather than TRY TO surrounding “ALLS,” which seems the most logical way to read this clue. I wondered for a bit if the “to” literally in the clue is not the TO in the cryptic, somehow…
16 Pirate, before being at sea, regularly lost (8)
FREEBOOT — (before)* + lOsT… “Pirate” as a verb
18 Distant from strange person (6)
OFFISH — OF FISH “Distant” in the emotional sense; “odd FiSH” has dictionary status as “a very strange person” (Merriam-Webster), but the exact definition needed here for FISH tout court was found only in Lexico: “informal with adjective | A person who is strange in a specified way.” (Collins is not quite there, giving for British English “a person of little emotion or intelligence | a poor fish” and for American virtually the same thing, “a person thought of as like a fish in being easily lured by bait, lacking intelligence or emotion, etc.”)
21 Being a killer contributes to panic in general (5)
ICING — Hidden
22 One teacher turned up in place of pupil (4)
IRIS — I, 1 or “One” + SIR<=“turned up”

27 comments on “Sunday Times Cryptic 4949 by Dean Mayer — coir practice”

  1. I didn’t understand 9ac, but friend=CHINA, so wotthehell. LOI SWEETSOP, which I think I thought was a flower. DNK HAYES. We’ve had FESCUE before; golfers may not like it, but ranchers do. The state of Oregon has, or at least had, a Chewings Fescue and Creeping Red Fescue Commission, and which of us can say the same? COD to WEAR THE TROUSERS.
    1. Creeping Red Fescue sounds downright surreal (and un-Amurrican. Ha).
      It took some digging just now (page 15 here: https://acsess.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1002/csc2.20122), but I found this…
      The name Chewings fescue is named after Mr. George Chewings (1855–
      1925), who first cultivated, harvested, and sold this grass called Chewings
      fescue in New Zealand (Ruemmele, Wipff, Brilman, & Hignight, 2003). This
      grass was originally imported from England and sold to the previous New
      Zealand farm’s owner (William Tarlton) as hard fescue (Morgan, 1998). After
      purchasing the farm, Mr. Chewings observed this unique patch of grass and
      began seed production (Morgan, 1998). In literature, the common name is
      sometimes misspelled with an apostrophe (Chewing’s or chewing’s).
      Wondered about that apostrophe!

      Edited at 2021-04-11 05:33 am (UTC)

  2. folks would vary their avatars occasionally – variety is the spice of life – nice new one Guy.

    FOI 9ac PUPPY – CHINA! I don’t think so! But I was made to shoot the puppy!

    LOI 21dn ICING – exactly-

    COD 3dn WEAR THE TROUSERS – no longer – as women do anyway – Hilary Clinton and Angela Merkell.

    WOD 17ac CLERICAL COLLAR
    The Great Storm of 1952 on the East Coast of England – from Chapel-St. Leonards, Lincs (where the man in the clerical collar drowned in his own manse!) to Hemsby, Norfolk and beyond.
    Creeping fescue was used to help restore the lovely dunes and the wild-life.

    I note that my old mate Phil the Greek has died (sorry,’passed-away’). He was just a month short of his ton! I wonder if the cake had been ordered and the extra candle readied? When I was eighteen I went to The Palace and he gave me some Gold. RIP

    Edited at 2021-04-11 04:42 am (UTC)

    1. Thanks. This was just a couple weeks ago. I’m getting used to the long hair again.

      Edited at 2021-04-11 04:43 am (UTC)

  3. Not too hard with only SWEETSOP and FESCUE unknown or forgotten. My first one in was also PUPPY at 9ac, which actually I prefer as an answer to the clue as written. Shame about the checkers spoiling this.
  4. Co-lateral thinking? We’ll soon have a litter of iced-puppies!

    Edited at 2021-04-11 06:22 am (UTC)

  5. 35 minutes. I wasn’t totally convinced of STRIKE for CRASH, but I guess that’s what you do with cymbals. COD to FANTASY FOOTBALL, which my sons both play. I did once have a fantasy that we had Jay Jay Okocha, Youri Djorkaeff and Ivan Campo playing for Bolton, but I just can’t get to dream it again. A terrific puzzle, this. Thank you Guy and Dean.
    Somehow, the Duke’s death signifies the final end of that generation before mine, for which we have so many reasons to be grateful. RIP to all of them.
  6. ….from Dean, and I had no less than eight candidates for COD. It took me a little longer than usual, but, once I eventually started seven clues in, it was time very enjoyably spent.

    FOI IN THE FAMILY WAY
    LOI SWEETSOP
    COD WEAR THE TROUSERS
    TIME 18:13

  7. FOI KNOW-IT-ALL ironically because i didn’t. 49:16 for all but one. I had to look up SWEETSOP, didn’t know it and couldn’t trust anything i could make from the wordplay (including sweetsop). I didn’t understand with = seeing or the order of TALL STORY. But i liked CLERICAL COLLAR. And much else.
    Fescues are part of the mix for re-seeding patchy lawns; the part that gives you a tough lawn, i think
  8. 18 minutes, so a relative breeze with a couple of sticky moments. I made up SWEETSOP from the wordplay, and it looked at least possible.
    I’ve known people whose CLERICAL COLLARs were fashioned from plastic cut from Fairy Liquid bottles, much cheaper than getting them from Watts and Co.
    1. or you can buy a wipe-clean plastic CLERICAL COLLAR from Google. It would still be “a white band of cloth”

      Edited at 2021-04-11 08:15 am (UTC)

  9. I solved six clues in my first 15 minutes; a good start for a Dean puzzle. FOI was IRIS.
    In the end I got stuck on BEARSKIN for 1d. So CHINA was impossible. Anita could be a friend I suppose.
    A lot to like in this puzzle.
    And now back to Masters highlights. I love the the look of the course; an example of international fescue.
    David

  11. 11:01 Not sure how I whizzed through this so fast. FOI PATINA. COD to NOISE. Great fuun. Thanks Dean and Guy.
  12. CHINA and NOISE were my first 2 in, then steady progress with a number of clues resisting to the end. FANTASY FOOTBALL was delayed by a biffed ASKER at 6a, but once the rest of the crossers were in, I realised I needed a FAKIR. SWEETSOP had to be constructed from wordplay. I struggled to see quite how TALL STORY worked. OFFISH was only parsed on the pre-submit proof read. Nice puzzle. 35:29. Thanks Dean and Guy.
  13. The usual nice crossword from Dean, but there did seem to be rather a lot of CDs. I don’t like them because there is only one way to the answer; 9ac was immediately suspected of being a CD, so I confidently entered PUPPY. My dislike of CDs isn’t just the above, but also the fact that they always seem to be half of rather a good clue. What’s wrong with giving a bit of wordplay? In 3dn many setters would have been slack and simply had ‘Don’t show supporting members’. But in this one Dean also gave us some wordplay (which was in fact another CD, so he could have had ‘What union leader will do’). Why then did he decide to stop after ‘A white band of cloth’ in 17ac?

    Edited at 2021-04-11 11:21 am (UTC)

  14. Try to accept everyone’s for romance? (4,5) must be

    T(ALL’S/ TO)RY

    as you suggest. If something is e.g. sent for you I suppose it is sent to you, but not a cert. One of ‘those ones’ maybe.

    1. I think the sense intended is “travelling towards”, in which “Heading to London” and “Heading for London” mean the same.
  15. 13D: As he hasn’t been mentioned yet, Bill Sikes was arguably the most significant of Fagin’s criminal cronies, so “Bill and Co” makes rather more sense than “Artful Dodger and Co”.
  16. ” My dislike of CDs isn’t just the above, but also the fact that they always seem to be half of rather a good clue. What’s wrong with giving a bit of wordplay?”

    Ooh, I couldn’t agree less actually.

    One of my favourite clues, as a matter of fact by this setter,is “Runs out of gas” for VERBAL DIARRHOEA.
    No wordplay required, I think.
    Ok, you could argue (or maybe you still wouldn’t), that that is an exceptionally fine example, which not all CDs are.
    But personally I’d rather have that than a piece of ludicrously complicated wordplay to a familiar answer.
    A nice bit of deceptive writing, with a little lateral thinking needed to decipher it, rather than a lot of juggling, abbreviating, reversing etc.
    Part of the magic of it all for me

  17. Many thanks for the blog Guy, and thought I’d just step in on the subject of CDs. There are actually just two in this puzzle, 17A and 6D, and happily (although it wasn’t planned) they are used for long answers. This is the ideal, since a short(ish) clue for a long answer is likely to indicate absence of wordplay, so the solver is encouraged to look for deceptions such as alternative meanings. Once a few checkers are placed in a long answer a biff becomes easier, at which point – if you’re so inclined – you can have a bit of fun looking for where the deception occurred.
    1. Nice thought about CDs in general, and thanks. I thought 9ac WAS a very clever CD when I had Corgi — one being ER — until the second and third crosser wised me up.
  18. My view, FWIW, is that you can have too much of a good thing but cryptic definitions are an important part of the setter’s armoury and, as anon says above, ‘part of the magic’. A good CD will sucker you into looking for wordplay that isn’t there, which is a unique form of trickery which I wouldn’t want to lose. All a matter of taste of course!

    Edited at 2021-04-11 04:47 pm (UTC)

  19. All correct but since my time is over 24 hours, I must have struggled and come back to it. I was another person who immediately put in PUPPY, which obviously didn’t help.
  20. Thanks Dean and guy
    Just under the hour … and had to really work at it to get it finished with my last one in – ON STRIKE taking as long as the rest of the puzzle. Started off with NOISE, quickly followed by IN THE FAMILY WAY.
    Always like seeing the word FAKIR – a picture of one is firmly entrenched in my mind from reading up on the Zanskar and Ladakh regions in preparation for a hiking / rafting holiday there in the 1980’s. BILL AND COO was my other favourite when I finally twigged to Bill Sykes being a former member of Fagin’s troupe of pickpockets. That was the penultimate clue before the stubborn ON STRIKE.

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