Sunday Times 5140 by Robert Price – if you can keep it

Author   keriothePosted on Categories Weekend Cryptic

8:21. Not a difficult puzzle, but a model of elegance of a type we’re fortunate enough to have come to expect from this setter. Just look at 1ac, for instance, or 11ac: totally seamless. And that’s just a selection from the first four clues! Thanks and bravo to Robert.

The first and last across answers give a punning reference to a seasonally relevant occasion.

Definitions are underlined, anagrams indicated like (TIHS)*, anagram indicators are in italics.

Across
1 Suffer Bible classes with a holy man
ST ANDREW – STAND, RE, W. Lovely!
5 Last staunch supporter
STAY – DD. Or more likely a triple definition – see comments.
10 Search through swamp for an African city
MARRAKESH – MAR(RAKE)SH.
11 What Lady Godiva did with nothing on show
RODEO – RODE, O. The way the various elements in wordplay and surface reading meld here is wonderful.
12 Run on the level
LEGIT – LEG IT.
13 One’s escaped from a naturalist worryingly?
TARANTULA – (A NATURALisT)*. &Lit. Another really neat one.
14 Source of water in Wales later abandoned
ARTESIAN WELL – (IN WALES LATER)*. Another perfect surface. I think I’ll stop now!
18 Where nuns live without means is regularly unsuitable
INCONVENIENT – IN CONV(mEaNsIs)ENT
21 Look around private houses as landlord
INNKEEPER – reversal (around) of PEEK in (housed by) INNER (private).
22 Shot in front of a theatre
DRAMA – DRAM, A.
23 A physicist’s number plate, maybe from the rear
DIRAC – reversal of CAR ID.
24 Quilt colour that is turning blue
EIDERDOWN – reversal of RED, IE, then DOWN (blue).
25 Stops pals taking a half-day off
ENDS – friENDS. This could equally have been ‘day off’, since FRI is a recognised abbreviation for Friday.
26 A month negotiating at the front for Nato
NOVEMBER – Negotiating in the NATO alphabet.
Down
1 East African, hence from Timbuktu?
SOMALIAN – SO, MALIAN.
2 Appropriate hour to leave town on the A59
ARROGATE – hARROGATE.
3 Conscript’s simple clothing beginning to rub
DRAFT – D(Rub)AFT.
4 Girl’s unhealthy love of treacle?
ELECTRA COMPLEX – a reverse cryptic, where ‘treacle’ is an anagram (COMPLEX) of ELECTRA.
6 Time on vehicle heading off boredom
TEDIUM – T, mEDIUM.
7 Landowner from the old country
YEOMAN – YE, OMAN.
8 How Soviet radar misused a broadcast method
SHORTWAVE RADIO – (HOW SOVIET RADAR)*.
9 Canterbury pilgrim open to love on the way north
FRANKLIN – FRANK, reversal of NIL.
15 Words composed to understand one’s life
SENTENCE – two definitions, the second by example.
16 Mass slaughter Macbeth worked to cover over
HECATOMB – (MACBETH)* containing O.
17 Cycling shoes: 19 perhaps
STRAINER – TRAINERS with the S ‘cycling’ back to the beginning. The definition is a reference to 19dn.
19 Puzzle filled throughout, almost
RIDDLE – RIDDLEd.
20 What a bedmate did has no redeeming features
SNORED – contained in ‘has no redeeming’.
22 Lament taking up online crossword?
DIRGE – reversal of E, GRID.

27 comments on “Sunday Times 5140 by Robert Price – if you can keep it”

  1. Agreed, this was an absolute delight. And I appreciate your title, bénissant le nom de Benjamin FRANKLIN (to quote Georges Brassens’s song « L’Orage », about having a one-night stand with a neighbor lady frightened by a storm while her husband is out selling lightning rods), whose remark about what was achieved in 1776 is particularly apt at this fraught time.

  2. I saw 5ac as a triple definition. A delightful puzzle all round, with flawless surfaces.

    3. Hmm I suppose so. I struggle to equate ‘staunch’ (specifically applied to liquids) with STAY (specifically not applied to liquids) but I guess figuratively they might be used in the same way.

  3. 30:46
    What Keriothe said: a model of elegance. I assumed that Harrogate is on the A59–fat chance of me knowing that. I couldn’t figure out RIDDLE; ‘filled throughout’ led me nowhere. I think I’d give the COD to ELECTRA COMPLEX.

    1. There is a logical system for numbering roads in England, Wales and Scotland, which gives you a rough idea of where a place on a particular road is likely to be, although there are plenty of anomalously numbered roads. (Which of course only helps if you know roughly where Harrogate is)

      I wondered just now if this meaning of “riddled” is British, but apparently not. It’s one if those words notmally used negatively — a book could be full of wit or mistakes, but “riddled with” only the mistakes.

      1. Yes, we Americans are quite used to hearing it—most often in the phrase “bullet-riddled” (or, in my profession, perhaps “typo-riddled”).

        1. What I had trouble with, as I said, was ‘filled throughout’: a bullet-riddled corpse may be full of bullets, but not filled with them throughout.

          1. I don’t take “filled throughout” to have such a precise definition. To say some text is “filled throughout” with mistakes could mean that no word in it was correctly spelled or grammatically deployed, so the phrase is in any case a shade hyperbolic.

    2. Re A59 and Harrogate; Google Maps will show two major roads crossing at H, one of which is indeed the A59. I use G maps all the time to check on details such as that.

  4. 57 minutes. No problems other than wavering on DIRAC as I’d remembered him as DURAC but that didn’t fit the wordplay. I always struggle with him despite Dorset Jimbo’s best efforts when many years ago he expressed surprise that I and others around here said we never heard of him.

    I didn’t know the A59 but didn’t need to.

      1. Paul Dirac published a seminal (academic) work on quantum and was very much part of the mathematical modelling of the early theory.

  7. 28.30 with half of one unfinished

    Assumed it was ELECTRA but didn’t know the thing and didn’t twig the reverse cryptic.

    I’m also a massive fan of his puzzles and this – as our esteemed blogger points out – is an absolute cracker.

    Thanks!

  9. Very much enjoyed this and its excellent surfaces. DIRAC NHO – will try and remember for next time! LOI as a consequence. I failed to parse RIDDLE – perhaps I was overthinking it and haven’t seen treacle as an anagram indicator before, so that was a bit of a mystery, although the answer and parsing came with all the crossers. Thanks, Keriothe and Robert.

  10. POI 23a Dirac. Had forgotten about him, but he’s been in the Cheating Machine for ages. I suppose quantum physics was too complex for A-level Phys in 1967, and in a Mech Eng degree there isn’t time to cover subjects unlikely to affect products, machines, commercial processes and so forth in the foreseeable future. I probably cheated to confirm him.
    4d Electra C. Needed lots of crossers! Treacle will forever after be associated with her in my mind.
    9d Franklin, glad I did the Prologue to the C tales in year 8 as it mentions all of the tale tellers, including the Franklin. The occupation is archaic; he is a landowner not of noble birth, but the word lives on as a name.
    16d NHO Hecatomb AFAIK, and I think I cheated. Not a word I’m going to need any time soon, but interesting in its way.

  12. 47 minutes. I agree with all the praise keriothe is heaping on Robert — Sundays generally are always an absolute delight. My favourite clue in this one is actually the hidden-word clue for SNORE for its superb surface reading. ELECTRA COMPLEX would be a close second (it was my LOI).

  13. Ditto the above comment from hydrochoos: had great fun with this, as it was the first Robert Price that I have tackled with a positive outlook, and it paid off!
    Apart from a boo-boo putting STEM in on 5a ( thereby hindering any possibility of solving 7d) all went in smoothly until the physicist reared his (Ugly?) head. My first and only NHO of the puzzle, so hats off to the setter for an enjoyable experience. CODs to ELECTRA and SNORED .

  14. Thanks Robert and keriothe
    Can only endorse the earlier compliments of the puzzle. As per usual started off in a cafe (on the Sunday this time rather than the Saturday) and needed a couple of shortish sittings to finish it off in just over average solve time – 48 mins. A lot of penny-dropping moments in both seeing the answer and / or the word play. Finished in the SW corner with ENDS (so simple in hindsight), DIRAC (who loitered in the back of my brain) and the clever RIDDLE (both this clue and the one that referenced it) as the last one in.

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