Sunday Times 4794 by Dean Mayer

Author   keriothePosted on Categories Weekend Cryptic
14:51. I didn’t find this particularly difficult but I enjoyed it immensely. Lots of witty and consummately elegant clues, as we have come to expect from Dean. It’s always hard to pick a favourite, which is why I don’t usually try, but I did particularly love 5dn.

A significant proportion of my time was spent agonising over 12ac. I could see what the answer ought to be but couldn’t figure out why. There was a big penny-dropping and self-kicking moment when I finally figured it out.

Unfortunately I have the blogger’s nightmare this week: a clue (8 across) that I can’t explain. No doubt there’s another penny-dropping and self-kicking moment coming when someone points out what I’m missing in the comments.

In the meantime, thanks to Dean for a lovely puzzle and here’s how I think it all (well most of it) works…

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

Across
1 Monitor who comes in to seek coolness? (6,6)
LOUNGE LIZARD – CD. The monitor being a type of lizard. I put this straight in but it raised a smile
8 Yesterday’s meanings of “present”
HERE AND NOW – this is the answer as far as I can tell, if only because it’s the only phrase I can see that fits the checkers. ‘Here’ and ‘now’ are meanings of ‘present’ but I’ve no idea what ‘yesterday’ has to do with it.
9 Best shot last one of break
PICK – PIC, breaK.
10 Revolting man, inventor, bank has to back
WAT TYLER – WATT, reversal of RELY. Leader of the Peasants’ Revolt in 1381 and early anti-Thatcherite.
12 Supply lines effective in expedition
PROMPT – two definitions. I saw what the answer must be fairly early on, but it took me forever to see how ‘supply lines’ means PROMPT. I was completely fooled by the fact that it looks like a noun, when in fact it’s a verb phrase relating to the theatre.
13 Past caring?
PHYSIC – CD. Nice.
14 Unopened beer and glass smashed for charity
LARGESSE – (bEER, GLASS)*. I wouldn’t say LARGESSE is necessarily charity, more just generosity, but it’s close enough.
16 Undertaker is featured in advert, right?
PROMISOR – PROM(IS)O, R. In this case just someone who undertakes to do something, rather than the usual more specific meaning.
18 Purse returned for a hat
TOPPER – reversal of POT, PER (for a, as in ‘two for a pound’).
20 Old magical character I found east of Black Country
BRUNEI – B, RUNE (old magical character), I.
22 Car maker designing software I call revolutionary
CADILLAC – CAD (computer-aided design software), I, reversal of CALL.
23 Grave robber’s concealed state
AVER – hidden in ‘grave robber’.
24 Perfect material – do weaving
TAILOR-MADE – (MATERIAL DO)*.
26 For kind of club outing, look over ground
TRIPLE-DECKER – TRIP, LE(DECK)ER. I think this is a reference to a kind of sandwich. A club sandwich is usually made up of a number of layers. Not sure though.

Down
1 Put right over Greek king
LAERTES – reversal of SET, REAL. ‘Right’ is synonymous with REAL in phrases ‘you are a right plonker, Rodney’. This LAERTES was the father of Odysseus, not to be confused with the character in Hamlet.
2 Sound of rake in large pot
URN – sounds like ‘earn’ (rake in).
3 What some doctors do in a convention
GENERAL PRACTICE – DD.
4 Weird pilot’s shot down
LOW-SPIRITED – (WEIRD PILOT’S)*.
5 Concluding part of Gettysburg address?
ZIP CODE – CD. Some people don’t like cryptic definitions but I defy anyone not to like this one. Brilliant.
6 About to interrupt theatre review
RECAP – REP is theatre, CA is about, one contains (is interrupted by) the other.
7 A figure of speech matched a figure of speech
METAPHOR – MET (matched), homophone (of speech) of ‘a four’ (figure).
11 Hanger-on goes for wee, initially confused
LICKSPITTLE – a Spoonerism (one that doesn’t mention Spooner for a change) of ‘picks little’.
15 Officials worry while crossing road
STEWARDS – STEW (worry), A(RD)S.
17 Words repeated on top of Petri dish?
MANTRAP – MANTRA (words repeated), Petri. ‘Dish’ in the sense of an alluring person, in this case a woman.
19 River supports employ synthetic compound
POLYMER – (EMPLOY)*, R.
21 Run across a pirate
ROVER – R, OVER.
25 Wood area, cutting permitted
OAK – O(A)K.

18 comments on “Sunday Times 4794 by Dean Mayer”

  1. I was fooled by ‘supply’ too, but in my case I cleverly thought it was an anagrind (supple); too clever by half. Wondered about LARGESSE, and wondered more about ‘yesterday’s’, for which I have no explanation either. Liked ZIP CODE, but COD to PHYSIC.
  2. Not difficult, but fun apart from 8 across. My best attempt at a take on this is that yesterday’s here and now would be the present, while both here and now are meanings of present. Particularly enjoyed the urinary diversion at 11 down.

    Just checked my time online, and it was an hour, so not as easy as I recalled.

    Edited at 2018-04-23 01:29 am (UTC)

  3. Scrambled eggs for breakfast?
    8ac HERE AND NOW – agree a strange clue as was 17dn MANTRA IMO

    FOI 2dn URN
    LOI 9ac PICK
    COD 5dn ZIP CODE with 13ac PHYSIC runner-up
    WOD 1ac LOUNGE LIZARD with 11dn LICKSPITTLE in second place.

    Edited at 2018-04-22 02:39 am (UTC)

  4. I struggled to understand 8a too. My reading of it is that if something was pre-sent yesterday (by first class mail) it would be here now. Nice puzzle, which I found a bit tricky, taking some 37 minutes. PROMPT my ironic last one in having the same temporary blindness to the 2nd definition as our blogger. MANTRAP my favourite. Thanks Dean and K.
  5. Could it be that “here and now” is an older phrase, i.e. of yesteryear/day? Thus a CD?

    Many thanks to setter and blogger.

  6. Hard work, and I gave up overnight with less than a quarter of it completed. On resumption I completed the grid in a further 25 minutes although parsing some of the clues required additional time and like others I failed to come up with an explanation of “yesterday’s”. I’m not convinced by any of the suggestions above.

    I agree that 26ac is about club sandwiches.

    Edited at 2018-04-22 05:02 am (UTC)

  7. A diffident suggestion: if somebody yesterday said “present”, he might have meant he was there, or she might have meant it was then. So s/he could have said “here” or “now” as the case may be?
  8. Seem to have found this harder than posters to date at 58 minutes. I took 8 across to be suggesting that viewing events from yesterday and today is identifying two separate frames of reference, with different views of what is ‘here and now’. That’s a very special form of relativity. My last two in were COD PHYSIC and TRIPLE-DECKER, both brilliant clues. I forgot that my subject in the singular was once used by the medics and I’ve never had a club sandwich without it falling apart. I wrote LOUNGE LIZARD straight in but I’ve always thought the term to be pejorative, with hints of creepiness rather than coolness. Who led the pedants’ revolt? Which Tyler. Thank you K and Dean.

    Edited at 2018-04-22 08:26 am (UTC)

  9. Yesterday = “here and now”, as in “he wants it yesterday”. Which seemed OK from colloquial speech, but apparently needs a dictionary as big as the Shorter Oxford for print confirmation. I agreed to give it a try …
    1. Seems fair enough to me, I didn’t dwell on it too long. 25 minutes. Thanks PB and keriothe.
    2. Ah, thanks Peter. Not sure I’d ever have thought of that. ‘I want it yesterday’ is a way of emphasising the urgency of a task that is not yet completed, so it really means ‘as soon as possible’. But I guess you might well use HERE AND NOW in the same way.
      I’m reminded of this (warning: very sweary).

      Edited at 2018-04-22 08:56 am (UTC)

    3. So I suppose
      Yesterday’s meaning of “now” (11)
      would be OK for IMMEDIATELY, but it seems sort of, well…
    4. Thanks. I see the SOED seems to support it (‘immediately’, so ‘here and now’) but still think the interpretion is dodgy.
  10. A time which suggests I found this well up to Dean’s usual level of difficulty. I had to come here to understand the nuances of HERE AND NOW, but agree that 5dn was a real stand-out; even if I joined the “too clever by half club” by initially putting in NEW YORK, which would have been a perfectly valid alternative answer…apart from the small detail that Gettysburg is in Pennsylvania.
  11. My time for this was off the scale, 2:29:05, but I did get up to do something or other and forgot to pause the puzzle for about 45 minutes. Still a puzzle to forget. I needed some assistance in the NW before I could finish too. I pondered for ages as to whether 8a could be THEN AND NOW or HERE AND NOW. Thanks to PB for putting me out of my misery. Liked ZIP CODE, which I saw quickly. LICKSPITTLE raised a smile when it eventually surfaced. Thanks Dean and K.
  12. 49:45. Usual super stuff, if on the gentler side for one from this setter. FOI 5dn. LOI 12ac (spent too long looking for non-existent wordplay). Biffed 8ac with no idea what that was about, so glad to hear the explanation, not sure I would’ve parsed it in a month of Sundays. Glad to see the Undertaker cutting a promo the weekend after…..(stands in centre of ring with meaningful expression on face, stares and points protractedly at Wrestlemania banner).
  13. I had a titanic struggle with this which ended like the Lusitania. After a slow start I broke through and solved the RHS. Returning through the week I managed to get a few on the left. Was defeated by the club sandwich. With no checkers could not get past Double or Single Decker. Bomani[?] at 20a. Physic eluded me and as usual missed the hidden. Got Here and Now without full understanding.
    Still it was better than the last Dean I attempted.
    Just back from a sweltering London after watching a bit of the marathon. David
  14. Wondered if yesterday’s meanings inferred sounds like – heri, hodie et cras.

Comments are closed.