Sunday Times 5194 by David McLean – childhood memories

Author   keriothePosted on Categories Weekend Cryptic

7:24. Not a very difficult puzzle from Harry this week but a very enjoyable one, with some lovely clues.

If you haven’t had a look at the puzzle mentioned by my Sunday oppo last week, I thoroughly recommend you do so. It’s a delightful puzzle and marks a significant occasion! The link is now in last week’s blog.

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

Across
1 Agent that calms closers of serious crime case
SEDATIVE – seriouS, crimE, DATIVE.
5 Small sounds of the enemy advancing for supplies
STOCKS – S, TOCKS. The enemy here is time, and the sounds are those alternating with ticks on a clock.
10 Person who runs an addict about to get drug
CANDIDATE – (AN ADDICT)*, E.
11 One scaled girder to secure rivets at the top
BREAM – B(Rivets)EAM.
12 European flower on display in Wayne Manor
NEMAN – contained in ‘Wayne Manor’. A river which ‘rises in central Belarus and flows through Lithuania then forms the northern border of Kaliningrad Oblast’ (Wikipedia).
13 Room (executive) for a high-flyer’s bodyguard?
SPACESUIT – SPACE (room), SUIT (executive).
14 Show about the Spanish is in poor taste
INDELICATE – IND(EL)ICATE.
17 National fruit
KIWI – DD. Or arguably not, since the meaning is the same in both contexts.
19 What you’ll hear announced in auction room
CELL – sounds like ‘sell’. The word ‘an’ is omitted because this isn’t a reference to something you’d actually hear in an auction: ‘auction’ here is just a synonym for ‘sell’.
20 Old man moving in can and did upset German
DAD DANCING – (CAN AND DID)*, G.
22 Two thousand seats supply seating for attraction
MAGNETISM – MM containing (SEATING)*.
24 Proportion of allowance patron finally cut
RATIO – RATION with patroN removed.
26 Russian co-op using some cellular telephones
ARTEL – contained in ‘cellular telephones’. Unknown to me, or more likely forgotten.
27 He travelled in company car east of ruin
MARCO POLO – MAR left (west) of CO, POLO.
28 Wife in party hooked up with fellow cheat
DO DOWN – DO, DO(W)N. The term ‘hooked up’ has a more precise meaning among my kids’ generation than mine. Take care how you use it.
29 Conservative is defeated with popular approaches
CLOSES IN – C, LOSES, IN.
Down
1 Perhaps David Lammy danced in Commons for Reform
SECOND IN COMMAND – (DANCED IN COMMONS)*. David Lammy is the current Deputy Prime Minister. The surface reading of the clue is extremely unlikely.
2 Head of demolitions returned explosive material
DENIM – Demolitions, reversal of MINE.
3 Piece from Louvre in chiselled granite frame
TRIANGLE – (GRANITE)* containing Louvre. The only context I can think of where a TRIANGLE is a frame is snooker or pool.
4 Bottles short serf brought up filled with Iodine
VIALS – reversal of SLA(I)Ve. You could have changed a letter and removed the word ‘short’ in this clue although it would have been a definition by example.
6 Boards son put down in Hackney home?
TABLES – sTABLES. The hackney here being a horse.
7 He composed “Sweet Child” during lunchtime
CHERUBINI – CHERUB, IN, I (one, lunchtime). Again unknown, or more likely forgotten.
8 Lead can?
SOMETHING TO GO ON – a definition and a naughty cryptic hint.
9 Uninspiring role featuring in performance
DEPARTED – DE(PART)ED. Inspiring here meaning breathing.
15 Elated is how one could be after uninstalling Windows!
DELIGHTED – another definition with a cryptic hit. Lights are windows, most likely to be of the sky variety these days.
16 It taps in the morning around hill mostly close to Tulsa
CHARISMA – CH (taps), A(RISe)M, tulsA.
18 Huge moon sure to be seen in a different light
ENORMOUS – (MOON SURE)*.
21 Chilled medium-sized chicken doesn’t need starter
MELLOW – M, yELLOW.
23 Maxim: married men should get a medal in the end
MORAL – M, OR, A, medaL.
25 Flipping lucre and ultimately godless vices?
TOOLS – reversal of LOOT, godlesS. Definition by example indicated by the question mark.

26 comments on “Sunday Times 5194 by David McLean – childhood memories”

  1. Thanks, K. Here’s the link to Joshua & Henri’s puzzle.
    Your note to the clue for CELL is typical of the fineness of your analysis.

    1. That link is broken. Somehow the www at the start of the URL has become wwrecw (works fine once you fix that).

  2. DNF
    NHO DAD DANCING. I biffed CHARISMA because I could think of nothing else that fit the checkers; I would never have discovered the parsing. NHO NEMAN. 25d wouldn’t have worked in a US puzzle, since we distinguish ‘vice’ sin from ‘vise’ tool; I just noticed the spelling now.

    1. There was a British drama series 1954-1961 called The Vise, presumably made with at least half an eye on the American market, hence the (to us) odd spelling of the title. It’s currently rerunning now on Talking Pictures TV.

  4. 17A – I think you mean word origin rather than meaning. I once allowed “Trouser pocket” for something like APPROPRIATE, and was rightly reminded that there were other words with the same length and meaning. I can’t think of any other 4-letter word meaning “national” and “fruit”. Setters are sometimes advised that using meanings in separate dictionary entries avoids the mistake I made, but I don’t think it’s the only way.

    8D: I don’t understand why using slang makes a definition a “cryptic hint”, unkess that’s a term with multiple meanings.

    1. I think I may have been the blogger responsible for the widespread use of ‘cryptic hint’ around here purely as a cop out to avoid committing myself to a second definition when I wasn’t sure. Others bloggers may use it more discriminately, but I don’t think I’d have needed to deploy it at 8dn.

    2. I meant meaning: in both contexts the word means ‘from New Zealand’.
      SOMETHING TO GO ON is a recognised (dictionary-defined) term meaning ‘lead’, it is not a recognised term meaning ‘loo’. So as I think of these things ‘can’ is not a straight definition.

      1. Sorry to disagree again, but if a clue is called “double definition” and has two words, each word needs to be a one-word “definition” in the sense that applies to crossword definitions. So “national”, which can’t be a complete dictionary definition for “kiwi”, indicates that you need a word meaning a national of some country, and “fruit” tells you that the same answer also means a kind of fruit. In addition, if you think that “National fruit” is a n accurate definition too, the clue is a double definition version of an &lit. That third meaning would be based on cultural association rather than anything official like US state national trees, and a bit strange, historically, as “Chinese gooseberry” was the usual name (despite NZ cultivation) unitil “Chinese” was seen as politically incorrect in the 1950s.

        1. I’m not sure I understand what the disagreement is here. A kiwi is a person from New Zealand, and a fruit from New Zealand. In both cases the word ‘kiwi’ denotes ‘from New Zealand’. That’s all I’m saying.

    3. I remember thinking when solving the clue (to ‘kiwi’) that I didn’t like it because I felt it wasn’t leading to the answer from two distinct angles. But the fruit itself apparently actually originated in China and is certainly widely grown elsewhere so the sense of identity does seem to be more to do with word etymology than meaning.

      1. The name ‘kiwifruit’ was explicitly intended as a reference to New Zealand, as an alternative to ‘Chinese gooseberry’.

  5. I’m clearly an exception as I didn’t find this at all easy.CHERUBINI eluded me and although I normally appreciate two word clues, I did find 8d a bit silly, probably because it took me an age to unravel it.

  6. It took me an age to twig CH=taps. And now it seems so obvious.

    The composer was well known to me but IN I for lunchtime seemed a bit iffy especially as I take lunch at noon 🙂

      1. Are you asking about how INI works in CHRRUBINI?

        In 1 I think you have to separate as IN = DURING and 1pm as a time which will encompass lunchtime.

        Not sure I can pin it done more precisely

  7. 26.11

    Some superb clues here – DAD DANCING was the pick of the bunch for me.

    Excellent puzzle; excellent blog as always

    Ps As a new blogger I find Jackkt’s “cryptic hint” phrase rather helpful so don’t apologise!

  8. My thanks to David McLean and keriothe.
    I struggled a bit but all became clear with plenty of PDMs.
    COD 20a Dad Dancing. I was sure I was looking for an actual German person for a while.
    26a NHO Artel, and had to look it up. Surprised it predated the Revolution.
    7d NHO Cherubini AFAIK.
    16d Charisma biffed; didn’t connect C&H with taps.

  9. A maxim and a moral aren’t the same, but close enough perhaps. The hidden involving Wayne Manor seemed utterly feeble until I found out that WM really was a thing. Had NHO it.

  10. 20 minutes, but not all understood.

    – Trusted the wordplay for NEMAN, where I had no idea if it was a river or a plant
    – Also NHO ARTEL
    – More familiar with DO DOWN meaning to criticise someone or make them feel bad than I am with its cheat meaning
    – Got DEPARTED from the wordplay without seeing what ‘uninspiring’ was getting at
    – Don’t remember parsing CHARISMA

    Thanks keriothe and David.

    FOI Tools
    LOI Departed
    COD Dad dancing

  11. I enjoyed this one, even though NEMAN and ARTEL were conjecture. At least I was familiar with the composer name CHERUBINI, if not so much his operas. Beethoven was a fan, apparently.

  12. Thanks David and keriothe
    Completed this in a single sitting of just over an hour which is about average for this setter. A number of new terms in DO DOWN, ARTEL (maybe I’ve seen it in a crossword before but too long ago to be sure), the river NEMAN, the Deputy Prime Minister Lammy and the composer CHERUBINI. Lots of neat clues – was pleased to have finally seen the working of CHARISMA and liked the surface / word play of MARCO POLO.
    China is still the main producer of the KIWI fruit according to Wiki with 55% of world production, surely making it a true double definition.
    Finished in the NE corner with BREAM, STOCKS and TABLES – not quite sure why they held out for that long.

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