Sunday Times 4617 by Dean Mayer

Author   keriothePosted on Categories Weekend Cryptic
33.26. I found this very tough at the time, but going through it nearly a week later I can’t really see why. The unknown Indonesian city and a couple of the clues crossing it caused me some trouble but otherwise it all seems quite straightforward. This sort of thing is the mark of a high quality puzzle, which is what this is. A very enjoyable challenge.

Across
1 Do hatchet job on popular composer
CHOPIN – CHOP, IN. ‘Dean has decided to go easy on us this week’, I thought. Not for long.
5 Distant relative‘s boring record on the radio?
GREAT APE – sounds like ‘grey tape’.
9 A little malformation on leg, almost crooked?
NON-LEGAL – contained in malformation on leg almost.
10 A symbol of England includes British name for Britain
ALBION – A L(B)ION. The lion being a symbol of England, along with the flag of St George, the white van, and the disgraced MP.
11 Split the work in gloomy panto
MOTHER GOOSE – MO(THE)R(GO)OSE. THE and [not OP this time but] GO (work) are contained, split, in MOROSE. This one caused me a lot of trouble, partly because the panto is only very vaguely familiar to me, and partly because of 3dn.
13 Live TV audience intially testing stage
BETA – BE, Tv Audience. I remember the first time I encountered this concept was a beta release of Windows 95, which shows how old/young I am [delete as appropriate].
14 Hand over all evidence that monarch occupied the throne?
ROYAL FLUSH – double definition, the first referring to the best possible hand in poker (I assume – I don’t really know anything about card games), the second a whimsical reference to what you might hear after a king or queen has been to the loo. A first-class clue, and amusing to boot. What more can you ask for?
16 Check back support – that’s esoteric
DIAGNOSTIC – reversal of AID followed by GNOSTIC (esoteric). DIAGNOSTIC is a noun here. Another where 3dn caused me problems.
18 Yet “top” to THEM is “bottom” to US
BUTT – BUT, Them. THEM is them, but US is not us. A clever device, if not terribly difficult to see.
19 Wise men wasted energy with a PC game
MINESWEEPER – (WISEMEN)*, E (energy), PER (a). I am sure am not alone in having wasted a significant portion of my life playing this rather addictive little game. A precurser to Angry Birds and Candy Crush.
23 Learner on Italian road in the country
LATVIA – L, AT, VIA.
24 The old lady does appeal
CHARISMA – or ‘char is ma’. Geddit?
25 Have good intentions from unpleasant source
MEAN WELL – needs no explanation. Why did I find this puzzle difficult?
26 Give a little left over by start of year
LEEWAY – reversal of A,WEE, L, then Year.

Down
2 Bag waved in the air without opening
HOOK – sHOOK. It seems odd to use ‘bag’ as a synonym for ‘hook’, because the literal meanings are so different, but used figuratively they mean the same thing, of course.
3 Light on motorway leads to collision in Indonesian city
PALEMBANG – PALE, M, BANG. This clue caused me a lot of trouble, because I had never heard of the city, and the answer didn’t look very likely. This in turn caused problems with 11ac and 16ac. Curiously, considering that the last letter might be a G wasn’t enough for me to get 16ac from -I—O-T-C, but once I decided to assume it was definitely a G and put it in I saw the answer almost immediately. The mind is a strange thing at times.
4 Darkness is at hand – terror’s beginning
NIGHT – NIGH (at hand) Terror
5 River boat’s carrying spectators
GALLERY – GALLE(R)Y.
6 Army leaders stopping for one priest – Catholic or a sort of Protestant
EVANGELIC – VAN (army leaders) inside EG (for one), then ELI (the most common priest in Crosswordland) and C for Catholic.
7 Check rings out?
TABOO – TAB (check, as in bill), OO (rings).
8 Bent nose about to undo model
PROPENSITY – PR(OPEN, SIT)Y.
12 TV possibly unusual but not well done
MEDIUM RARE – MEDIUM (TV possibly), RARE (unusual).
14 So, for getting dizzy head for view over buildings
ROOFSCAPE – (SOFOR)*, CAPE. I’m not sure if I’ve come across this word before, and it took me quite a long time to solve the clue.
15 One man enthralled by skirt?
LIBERTINE – L(I, BERT)INE. &Lit. Great clue.
17 It flies by, leaving celebrity confused
TIERCEL – (CELEbRITy)*. A TIERCEL (or tercel, or tarsel, or tarcel, or tarsal, or tassell, or tassel) is a male hawk. According to Chambers the word may come from a belief that the male hawk hatches from the last egg of three. Fortunately the word rang a bell, or I’m not sure how I’d have picked it over TREECIL or TREICEL. None of them looks particularly likely.
20 Actor I’ve seen in news
NIVEN – N(IVE)N. David of that ilk.
21 Drop spike into place
PEARL – one meaning of ‘spike’ is an EAR of corn. Put that inside PL.
22 She‘s in Bethlehem – Mary
EMMA – contained in Bethlehem – Mary.

9 comments on “Sunday Times 4617 by Dean Mayer”

  1. It took heaps and gobs of time, but by God I finished. 3d was of course my LOI, although given that I had–finally–decided on M BANG, I don’t see why it took so much longer to come up with PALE. Being dim helps, I suppose. Knew TIERCEL, but under its alias without the I, which was enough to slow me down there.I’ve never played a computer game, barely heard of MINESWEEPER. 11ac, 14ac, and 24ac are all especially lovely, but I think I’d give the COD to 14, because it made me laugh out loud.
  2. Minor correction to 11. Work has changed from GO to OP between answer and explanation.
  3. A very fine crossword, this.. I did like 14ac but there are a lot of slick clues, starting with 1ac..
  6. Very enjoyable puzzle, for some reason I was on good form and finished in 20 minutes with much pleasure. The Indonesian city name was vaguely remembered from looking at maps when I was visiting that part of the world 20 years ago, but I did check it in Wiki afterwards, to be sure. ROOFSCAPE was the only slightly unusual word but the anagram was clear enough.
  7. Looking back at what I did, I see that I did not understand 21d but wrote it in. Coming back a week later, it seems obvious so I have clearly got better during the week. A fine puzzle.
  8. Fun puzzle, though disappointed that PALEMBANG doesn’t merit an entry in my Rough Guide to Southeast Asia, despite being a sister city of Venice.

    Re your comments about the G in PALEMBANG, one thing I find with solving online is that I’m quite happy to put in speculative letters because I know I can easily erase them. With pen and paper, however, I tend to be much more conservative with inserting letters or answers (despite having a correction pen) because of the resulting mess if I’m wrong.

    1. I see your point but I’m always reluctant to put them in, because once I do I find I get fixated on them and find it hard to consider other possibilities. And sometimes I forget altogether that I wasn’t sure about the answer!
      On reflection I don’t know why I didn’t conclude earlier that BANG was probably the right ending, because words like Rendang and Padang are familiar to me from South-East Asian cooking.

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