Sunday Times 4848 by Robert Price

Author   keriothePosted on Categories Weekend Cryptic
9:55. Not too hard a puzzle from Myrtilus this week. Well either that or I’m getting attuned to his ways as a setter, which seems unlikely after such a short time. A really fun one, though, with some very nice touches. I particularly liked 1dn, once I’d figured it out, which took a while.

There’s an Elton John biopic out at the moment: is the top line of this puzzle a suggestion for the sequel?

Definitions are underlined, anagrams indicated like (THIS)*, anagram indicators like this.

Across
1 Supply pot into schools
FURNISH – F(URN)ISH.
5 Rent for one American in Michigan state
MUSICAL – M(US)I, CAL. Rent was a successful musical in the 90s, based on La Bohème, apparently.
9 Bad practice to ignore the doctor
ILL – drILL.
10 Once, tourism involved covering the same area
COTERMINOUS – (ONCE TOURISM)*.
11 By no means how a tap-in is scored?
NOT BY A LONG SHOT – two definitions, one very mildly cryptic.
13 Heaps of ties? About six
LAVISHES – LA(VI)SHES. Heaps is a verb here, as in to heap/lavish praise on someone.
15 Regrettably, sent back motorway food
SALAMI – reversal of ALAS, M1.
17 Drawing device damages iPhone screens
SIPHON – contained in ‘damages iPhone’.
18 Pain like this maybe, Descartes’s son reveals
SORENESS – SO, RENE’S, S.
20 Perhaps like a 1970s filling for spring chicken? No!
LONG IN THE TOOTH – if you still a filling that had been put in in the 1970s, it would be… geddit? I had quite a few fillings in the 70s, but they were all in my baby teeth so they aren’t there any more and I have never had a filling in my adult teeth. True story.
23 Craftsmen’s mothers working in pits
STONEMASONS – STONE(MA’S, ON)S. ‘Pits’ as found in stone fruit.
24 Title taken from orbits regularly rotating
SIR – alternate (regularly) letters of ‘orbits’ backwards (rotating).
25 Politician hiding at a Spanish address
SENATOR – SEN(AT)OR. The word order is back to front but still makes sense. If you were trying to make it comprehensible you’d put a comma after ‘at’, but of course that’s the exact opposite of what the setter’s trying to do.
26 Tomboys study Olympic cyclist’s circuits
HOYDENS – HOY(DEN)S. A reference to Sir Chris Hoy, and a funny word for ‘tomboy’ I don’t think I’ve ever come across outside crosswords.

Down
1 Sat seemingly unreachable and alone
FRIENDLESS – Sat(urday) seems unreachable because Fri(day) is endless. It took me a while to twig what was going on here, and I doubt I was alone in that.
2 Who, say, is lover involved with piano tuner?
RELATIVE PRONOUN – (LOVER PIANO TUNER)*.
3 After the first minute becomes restless
ITCHY – tITCHY. ‘After the first minute’ is a very neat device, particularly as ‘minute’ doesn’t mean what it appears to mean.
4 Innkeeper’s spicy pork pie eaten by Edgar on vacation
HOTELIER – HOT, EdgaR containing LIE.
5 Church members losing heart are fools
MORONS – MORmONS. A word I avoid.
6 Trim fruits covered by mould
SHIPSHAPE – S(HIPS)HAPE. ‘Mould’ here being a verb, of course.
7 It’s terrible, see, cola’s much too sweet
CHOCOLATE MOUSSE – (SEE COLAS MUCH TOO)*.
8 Least likely to survive
LAST – DD.
12 Bishops shifted around before making homes for life
BIOSPHERES – (BISHOPS)* containing ERE.
14 During short nap, smell most like foam rubber
SPONGIEST – S(PONG)IESTa.
16 Slight echo of backing band
POOH-POOH – reversal of HOOP twice (echo). The required meaning of POOH-POOH is explained clearly here.
19 Not just Macron’s a moderate
UNFAIR – UN, FAIR.
21 Cross river close to Romsey
TESTY – TEST, romseY.
22 Pants, no good for snakes
ASPS – gASPS.

28 comments on “Sunday Times 4848 by Robert Price”

  1. Definitely easier than Myrtilus’s previous one, but challenging. I finally figured out FRIENDLESS, but after submitting. I was held up at the POOH-POOH/HOYDENS intersection: I finally remembered ‘hoyden’, although I could make nothing out of HOY, and the H gave me LOI POOH-POOH. I just now noticed that 5ac and 2d use the same device (rent for one; who, say); I might have been quicker to get 2d had I noticed. COD to POOH-POOH.
  2. I thought this was a good test. Thank you, keriothe, for LONG IN THE TOOTH. I solved it but couldn’t parse it.
    Some very good clues such as POOH-POOH, MUSICAL, STONEMASONS and HOTELIER but COD to FRIENDLESS.
  3. 21 minutes. Once I constructed HOYDENS, I knew it was right, so I must have seen it before. The last Olympics did massively expand my range of known cyclists though, with Jason and Laura of course pin-ups in The Bolton News, but Chris Hoy was the solid bet. I didn’t know RENT was a musical, but saw that’s what it had to be. COD to NOT BY A LONG SHOT, although I liked INANE and FRIENDLESS too. LONG IN THE TOOTH is a good clue, but the wrong decade was chosen for me. All my fillings were originally in before the 1970s. Only replacements and repairs have happened since. And my teeth are actually much shorter now than then, worn down by grinding them at troublesome crosswords. Very enjoyable puzzle. Thank you Robert and K.
  4. 45 minutes with time lost constructing the unknown COTERMINOUS from wordplay as my LOI. I knew HOYDEN but nothing of HOY in the wordplay. Since solving the puzzle I noticed HOYDEN used in the script of a TV period drama set in the 1900s.

    Edited at 2019-05-05 01:06 pm (UTC)

  5. Another enjoyable puzzle from Robert Price but I failed to get the unknown HOYDENS.
    My last two were 16d and 26a. BOOM BOOM was my best guess for a long time for 16d but that had to be overwritten once the TOOTH was found.I had toyed with cyclists beginning with M .(Eddie) Merckx was very hard to fit into the grid but I had a go. In the end I got HOY, considered DEN for study but put HOYSERS as it seemed a more likely word. Memo to self:trust the cryptic. It was the Circuits in the clue that I couldn’t quite understand at the time. David
  6. ….NOT BY A LONG SHOT, and on consulting Chambers for my preferred “long chalk” I find I’ve been wrong for years, as that isn’t preceded by “not”. Yet another thing to blame my late parents for !

    I found this tricky, but enjoyed it immensely. Unusually, I had to eliminate letters to crack two of the anagrams (CHOCOLATE MOUSSE, and COTERMINOUS), although the latter was a DNK which probably explains it.

    At 13A I was seduced by “lashings” which we had recently in the weekday puzzle, but luckily didn’t make a rod for my back by entering it.

    FOI SIPHON
    LOI BIOSPHERES
    COD FRIENDLESS (excellent !)
    TIME 16:13

    1. There’s nothing ‘wrong’ with ‘not by a long chalk’. We shouldn’t be slaves to dictionaries but as it happens it’s in Collins.
      1. I’ve never used the expression at all, as it’s UK English, but for what it’s worth I’ve only come across ‘…chalk’ in the negative (ditto for ‘… shot’).
  7. I enjoyed this second offering from our new setter. A slow 74 minutes, but finished with all in correctly. I didn’t know COTERMINOUS, never heard of ‘Rent’ the musical and couldn’t parse FRIENDLESS.

    I liked NOT BY A LONG SHOT but COD was LONG IN THE TOOTH. Both wordplay and definition unfortunately apply to me. Unlike our blogger, I had adult teeth by that time so those old fillings are still in place, along with a few others since.

    Thanks to setter and blogger.

  8. I liked quite a lot of this, especially 12d BIOSPHERES and 14d SPONGIEST, but sadly fell at the very last hurdle, as I’d never heard of either HOYDENS or Chris Hoy. Took me about an hour to fail, too… Ah well.
    1. Crikey not having heard of Chris Hoy is quite an achievement. I mean I like to think of myself as someone who’s not interested in sport but next to you I’m clearly an amateur. 😉
      1. I’ve looked him up now, and he didn’t ring a single bicycle bell for me. The last cyclist that bled through into the mainstream news for me was Bradley Wiggins, but even that apparently took a lot longer than it did for most people…
        1. If I really rack my brains I can come up with the names of three cyclists apart from those two. Quite the expert!
      2. As implied in my earlier posting, I’ve also never heard of him. The only HOY I know is ‘The Old Man of…’ who sadly wasn’t relevant here.
  9. I seem to have this all correct but the Club Site hasn’t updated it properly. It’s still showing as submitted but unrated. It has an option to show the solution but this comes up with a blank grid. It took me 49:51, so no pushover! POH POOH and HOYDENS took a while. I needed a few checkers before I saw RELATIVE PRONOUN. Nice puzzle though. Thanks Bob and K.
  10. 38 mins. I found this tricky, inventive and entertaining. Top notch puzzle.
  11. Very enjoyable. 1d was my LOI but a great clue once I’d parsed it. No one who’s read Dorothy Dunnett can ever forget her heroine “The Hoyden from Hexham” – so that was a write-in. 28 minutes. Ann
    1. Whereas those of us who have never even heard of Dorothy Dunnett have to rely on crosswords!
  12. I knew all the words in the grid, but I’m another who didn’t know Hoy, and I had only ever used Coterminous to mean adjacent to but sharing a border (it is useful for discussing the lower 48 States). I particularly liked the (many) clues which were not just another version of sticking one synonym next to or into another, and I very much liked that (as with our other named setters) the surfaces all could be read as phrases with meaning. Well done, Mr P, and a nice blog and commentary, Mr K
    1. In your case I’m not surprised you hadn’t heard of Hoy. He’s only really famous in the UK (and in the world of cycling I assume).
      1. Sadly, the “made in the USA” excuse won’t wash this time – I really was Paul.in.London in 2012, and even saw some of the cycling. Worse, I at least glance through the sports pages every day.
        1. But why would you care who the British medal winners were? I watched an AFL game in Melbourne last month and it was fun but I can’t name a single player.
          1. British passport, and at that time no intent to leave the UK any time soon.
  13. This took me quite a while… about 50 minutes, I think, but I enjoyed it a lot. NHO RENT the musical. Didn’t get the clever “After the first minute” at 3d, but I knew the cyclist and enjoyed parsing the rest of the lovely wordplay. Last one for me to twig was FRIENDLESS, but I really liked LONG IN THE TOOTH, HOTELIER and SPONGIEST too. Thanks K and Robert… looking forward to the next one.
  14. But unless you feel British i don’t think there’s any reason to remember, particularly. I’m certain some sort of vestigial patriotism is the only reason I know who Chris Hoy is.
    See also Jessica Ennis, Daley Thomson, Steve Cram, Steve Ovett…
  15. Thanks Robert and keriothe
    Sometimes a crossword can just make you feel happy that you’ve done it – this was one of them !
    It wasn’t overly hard but there was interest and satisfaction getting out many of the clues, I particularly liked the long across clues. Was surprised at the number of people (especially the UK ones) who didn’t know of Chris HOY – maybe that is just a part of sports-crazy Melbourne that we tend to know of most sporting notables regardless of the sport or where they come from. Likewise with the musical, ‘Rent’- I can remember it getting a pretty long run down here.
    As others, I thought that FRIENDLESS was probably the pick of a very good bunch for best clue. Finished mainly in the NW corner with FURNISH, COTERMINOUS and ITCHY as the last few in.

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