Sunday Times 4611 by Dean Mayer – does it hurt? Every time.

Author   keriothePosted on Categories Weekend Cryptic
Nice to put some faces to names at the championship yesterday. Unfortunately I seem to have picked up some sort of bug from my kids so wasn’t really in the mood for the pub, but on the puzzles themselves I did better than in the last couple of years, managing not to make any mistakes and placing well enough to avoid the entry fee for next year. This result is a welcome confidence-booster as I contemplate the solving disaster that was last Sunday’s puzzle.

I had this about two-thirds complete after 25 minutes, and I was finding it an almighty struggle, when it became clear to me that I was never going to figure out what on earth was going on with 16ac. After a bit of experimentation with the wordplay and some googling I worked out what the answer was, and why. I confess I pretty much gave up after that and cheated for a few more answers that were giving me trouble. It’s probably good that I did because there were some I think I may never have got. Looking at them now none of them see particularly unfair, but they were beyond me at the time. I’ll be interested to hear how others got on.

I didn’t have a clue about this when I was solving, but I discovered from the discussion in the forum that there are four hidden names in the grid. These appear to be RAVEN, LOGAN, REMY and VICTOR, which are the names of various characters in the X-Men franchise – Mystique (Raven Darkhölme), Wolverine (Logan), Gambit (Remy Lebeau) and Sabretooth (Victor Creed) – and as Jerry points out below, also presumably the names of Chloe’s ferret’s, which Dean informs us do actually exist.

Across
1,7 Race officials excited by chloesferrets.co.uk
CLERKS OF THE COURSE – (CHLOESFERRETSCOUK)*. What a super anagram: a reference to ferret racing, of course, and also an actual real-life Chloe and her actual real-life ferrets.
4 Miles, after gym, damaged small table.
PEMBROKE – PE, M, BROKE.
10 Body’s tendency to be still after motion – mine moves
MOMENT OF INERTIA – (AFTERMOTIONMINE)*. I had no problem solving this, but is the definition right? Chambers says ‘a quantity representing the resistance of a body to a force that causes it to rotate about its axis’. Is that the same thing? Is there a physicist in the house?
11 Something by Offenbach put one merchant in a stupor
COMIC OPERA – COM(I, COPER)A. I needed all the checkers for this: I was looking for something more specifically by Offenbach. ‘Coper’ is a dialect word for a horse dealer, apparently.
13 Air show possibly not starting
VENT – eVENT.
15 Father’s locked prince in tower
SPIRE – S(P)IRE. Anyone else consider PHALA? It could be a tower of some sort.
16 Black race, and not about to infiltrate corrupt system
MYSTERONS – I figured this must be an anagram of SYSTEM surrounding a reversal of NOT. I had __S___O_S, so it looked like TESMYTONS, MESTYTONS, TYSMETONS or MYSTETONS. None of these looked remotely likely, and there were no bells ringing, so I Googled them in turn and eventually found this. A Captain Black has something to do with them, apparently. Suddenly my complete bafflement at the clue was less of a mysteron.
17 Kojak left 6 in Washington theatre
THE OLD VIC – THEO, L, D(VI)C. This went in from definition. I knew that Kojak was a bald fictional American cop played by Telly Savalas, who sucked lollipops and said ‘who loves ya baby?’ but I didn’t know that his first name was Theo. You live and learn.
20 Light, as in “light orchestra”
TORCH – contained in ‘light orchestra’.
22 Jam fell on child’s head
CLOG – Child, LOG. LOG here is a verb, as in what lumberjacks do.
23 A curious point by academic from NZ?
ANTIPODEAN – A, (POINT)*, DEAN.
25 Single parts of a permanently damaged little household?
ONE-PARENT FAMILY – (OFAPERMANENTLY)* around I. The question mark signifies that a one-parent family need not necessarily be little, but all other things being equal it is littler than its two-parent equivalent.
27 Panel accepting extremely squat Mussolini follower
FASCISTA – FASCI(SquaT)A.
28 Would I protect bears over hibernating?
TORPID – hidden reversed in ‘would I protect’.

Down
1 Pears, soft ones, in lettuce
COMICES – CO(MICE)S. This is one of the ones I don’t think I would have got in a month of Sundays. I had never heard of the pears, and I’m not sure MICE would ever have occurred to me based on ‘soft ones’, even with the checkers.
2 A letter L’s cut in wood
ELM – I got this from the definition, but it’s L in EM (the letter M).
3 Family honour and character – that describes oriental film
KING CREOLE – KIN, GC (George Cross), R(E)OLE. I suppose I might have got this eventually, even though I’ve never heard of the film, but this was post-Mysteron so I cheated.
5 They’ve escaped corrupt regimes
EMIGRES – (REGIMES)*. I think I’ve seen a version of this quite recently somewhere else.
6 Insect on female grouse
BEEF – BEE, F. An apt surface, because ticks are a major scourge of grouse populations. There are other threats to the life of a grouse, of course.
8 Director of public works run in Delaware area?
ERASTUS – E(R)AST US. From the forum discussion this seems to have caused some problems, but it didn’t bother me at all. I had never heard of this fellow but not having heard of people with Latin-sounding names is par for the course for me, and the wordplay was clear.
9 After show, order gun
POM POM – POMP, OM (Order of Merit).
12 Giving nothing away, spells “moo”!
MAIDEN OVERS – A maiden over is a spell in which a bowler gives nothing away. The abbreviation for a maiden over – also called just ‘maiden’ – is M. The abbreviation for an over is O, so OO is ‘overs’. I cheated for this. It’s very clever, but again this was post-Mysteron so I lacked the patience.
14 Perversely fitting angled tank in unfinished room
BEN TROVATO – BENT, RO(VAT)O. Another I would never have got in a month of Sundays.
17 Put mark on carpet
TICK OFF – DD.
18 Opening lines in “speed of light” song
VINCENT – V(IN, C)ENT. Yet another I had to cheat for. It’s a song by Don McLean, apparently. The problem I had was that it never occurred to me that ‘lines’ could be a containment indicator: rather the reverse. I think we need the meaning found in ‘tree-lined avenue’.
19 Start of cryptic clue: an unknown material
CHINTZ – Cryptic, HINT, Z.
21 Sweet high definition screens on view
HONEYED – H(ON, EYE)D.
24 To use apron, test one
TAXI – TAX (test), I. An ‘apron’ is an area in an airport. I’m not sure exactly what area, but planes TAXI on it.
26 Monkey, a little chimpanzee
IMP – contained in chimpanzee.

32 comments on “Sunday Times 4611 by Dean Mayer – does it hurt? Every time.”

  1. Hmm, yes this was a corker, wasn’t it? On the Crossword Club forum, Dean asserts that Chloe and her ferrets are real.. and one assumes that those are their names, hidden in the grid.
    There were some predictably grumpy comments on the forum, but I loved it… it was hard for a Sunday cryptic, but doing all those club monthlies really pays off, when dealing with words you’ve never heard of.
    Good to meet you yesterday Keriothe, well done & hope you are feeling better today.
    1. Thanks Jerry, good to meet you too. Yes of course, the ferrets, presumably named after the X-Men. Chloe must be pleased!
      Did you stay for the final? Was the result as expected?

      Edited at 2014-10-19 08:23 am (UTC)

      1. Yes, I stayed for the final and yes, the results were pretty much as usual; a crushing victory for mr magoo.. thanks to Tony Sever, the full results are here
  2. I had the same experience as keriothe – about half went in at the usual pace, then it got stickier and stickier. The difference was that not having to blog, I just have blanks left.

    Meantime, I went to the Ramsgate about 2pm. Lots of Tetegraphers,Guardianers, plus Big Dave’s group, but none of our lot. I had my avatar for a name tag, and they all thought I was either nuts, or had lost a dog. So I meandered down to the hotel, by which time everyone had either dispersed or perhaps had passed me going the other direction to the pub. I’m sorry not to have had the chance to meet some friends in person.

    Congratulations keriothe on your good finish.

    Edited at 2014-10-19 07:28 am (UTC)

    1. Thanks Paul. I’m surprised there weren’t people at the pub at 2: I left just after 1 and I thought there were a few heading that way. I’m not sure how they manage the final (it’s at 3, by which time I was tucked up in bed) but I know they allow spectators so perhaps everyone was shut up in the competition room when you got back, which might explain why there were no signs of life.
    2. I was in the Town of R pub around 2pm with Penfold_61 and 7dPenguin, but we headed back to the hotel to sit in on the final, so we probably did pass each other by. Sorry to have missed you, Paul. Next year, maybe?
  3. All the clues I cheated on have been mentioned already. The only one I knew that another didn’t was COMICES though it took a while work out that ‘soft ones’ could refer to the saying “quiet as a mouse”.

    Not sure if at 16ac you’re describing your initial thought process, k, or there’s a typo, but it’s NOR that’s reversed, not NOT.

    P for Prince is only in Chambers of the usual sources and it’s not a one-letter abbreviation I can recall coming up before. I’m used to K for King and Q for Queen, but that’s because they’re abbreviations commonly used with reference to card games. I don’t know where I’d expect to see P.

    A coincidental reference amused me at 20. A leading exponent of “light” music in the UK for many years was the conductor, composer and arranger Sidney Torch who made a number of recordings (still available) conducting the Queen’s Hall Light Orchestra.

    Edited at 2014-10-19 08:27 am (UTC)

    1. I was describing my initial thought process, Jack: it helps explain why I couldn’t solve the clue! Of course you have to reverse a word meaning ‘and not’ rather than just NOT, but I only realised this after I’d googled the mysterious aliens.
      1. Thanks for confirming. When solving I saw NOR reversed and the anagram of SYSTEM but as I’d never heard of the answer I still wasn’t able to work it out.
  4. Not really my cup of tea, but appreciated the long horse-racing one to get off the mark, and am currently reading Scott’s ‘Old Mortality’, which has a lot of, typically, anti-Erastianism in it. I thought ‘ben trovato’ was a bridge too far, while my ‘mestyrons’ must have a role in a sci-fi series in the pipeline.

    Talking of which, many people, not excluding me, have formerly been under the misapprehension that a cloud’s silver lining refers to its edges rather than its inner ‘padding’, as it were. Milton, as many may know, made the first known reference in his mask Comus, where the ‘turning forth’ makes it clear that this cannot be the case:

    ‘Was I deceived, or did a sable cloud
    Turn forth her silver lining on the night?
    I did not err; there does a sable cloud
    Turn forth her silver lining on the night,
    And casts a gleam over this tufted grove.’

    Congratulations on placing in the top 50 (or is it 60), K. And…who won?

      1. Thanks – the relevant messages crossed. If the puzzles were easier than normal, as Tony says, I look forward to doing them (especially the final 3) with less trepidation than normal.
  5. Enjoyed this very much. Can’t remember how long it took to solve, but it was more than half an hour, though not that much more.

    Had no trouble with the MYSTERONS: my son, when a small boy, was a fan of Captain Scarlet, and after hours of watching the series with him,
    “This is the voice of the Mysterons ……..” still echoes round by head.

    I also wondered about MOMENT OF INERTIA. I understood it to be the disinclination of a rotating body to change its state of motion; in other words, how difficult it is to get it spinning, and once it’s spinning how difficult it is to stop or twist its axis of rotation. Can’t get that exercised about the exact definition, however: scientists have to use words precisely in particular contexts but the rest of us have some latitude. My moment of inertia came this morning when the alarm went off after a late night.

    The hidden names passed me by and, having had them drawn to my attention, leave me mystified.

    1. I’m not bothered about it either: just curious, and your explanation makes it a bit clearer.
  6. Thanks for the explanation of the hidden names – a piece of popular culture that had escaped me.

    Clueing ERASTUS as “director of public works” is sheer nonsense IMO, when the chap after whom “Erastianism” (as in ulaca’s comment above) is named should at least be familiar to experienced crossword solvers – at any rate anyone who has been solving the daily Times cryptic regularly for ten years will have come across “Rejected religious teaching as originally taught by American theologian (7)” from No. 23,430 (26 February 2006).

    1. As I’ve never heard of either ERASTUS, it made no odds to me, but I’d say that in a competition between the very obscure and the extremely obscure the wordplay is what matters!
      1. On the other hand if (as I would view it) it’s a competition between something that perhaps not everyone attempting the Times or Sunday Times crossword will be familiar with and the extremely obscure, then the case is altered.
        1. It’s hard for me to judge the relative obscurity of two people I’ve never heard of, but if you google ERASTUS (or at least if I do) the director of public works comes before the theologian. Perhaps Dean is more familiar with scripture than he is with sixteenth century theology.
    2. Still, I managed to solve both this clue and the trovato one without any knowledge whatsoever of either of them… so presumably the wordplay sufficed, which I think is really the most important thing here.
    3. My guess, which I hinted at almost to the limit of the house rules on the CC site, was that Dean had originally intended the much better knows Erasmus, but his intruding Mustelidae made it impossible. I’m absolutely with you on the obscurity angle: I haven’t found the NT Erastus designated as “Clerk of Works” (an absurdly anachronistic title) in anything other than the NIV. I wonder if it was just a hasty bit of Googling on Dean’s part?
      1. Very nice to meet you on Saturday, z8.
        I take your point about the obscurity of NIV references, but Dean did say on the club site that he knew all the references he used without having to look them up, so he presumably at least knew of this ERASTUS. He may have googled the ‘director of public works’ definition of course.
        However I find the principle that one obscure person should be excluded because of the existence of a better-known person of the same name a bit odd. No more scriptural references to the Madonna, for a start!
        1. I would happily subscribe to the principle that excludes preference on the basis of familiarity – I was just trying to follow Dean’s thought processes in arriving at ERASTUS. Perhaps that in itself is a futile exercise!
          The mischief maker in me wants to ask where “Madonna” appears in which version of the Bible. Revelation 17.4 perhaps with reference to the meat dress? “And the woman was arrayed in purple and scarlet colour, and bedecked with gold and precious stones and pearls”
  7. PS: I was wondering if you were there yesterday, but the absence of any form of identification on almost everyone (even Jerry had forgotten his this year) meant that I was in the dark, especially as I only know you by your TftT moniker. (Why on earth they don’t provide badges on which people can write names and pseudonyms is a continuing mystery – and annoyance!)

    Bad luck at being struck down with a dose of lurgi and missing the cut for the final – but at least you made the top 25.

    1. Thanks Tony. I understand from your blog that only a slight mix-up on the part of Jason James prevented me from being in the position of being excluded from the final by a single place. Somehow this makes me feel better, although it must be extremely frustrating for Anne Lickert who finished just ahead of me.
  8. I recall thinking as I did this that solvers under a certain age (ie near to mine) would have understandable problems with Captain Scarlet. To me however, it just went straight in.

    Congrats to all who took part yesterday.

  9. I am of similar age to Bigtone and John from Lancs and, like them, had no problem with Mysterons, nor with Vincent, which was difficult to avoid in the late 70s. BEN TROVATO went in from checkers and on looking up the definition I found I had incorrectly assumed a slightly different meaning for many years. As for Erastus, I just guessed he was an unknown Renaissance architect rather than the Swiss gent I knew of. Even had I known the biblical reference it certainly wouldn’t have been via one of the new-fangled translations. So I agree with Tony about the obscurity of the definition and with Keriothe about the simplicity of the wordplay. It was a real pleasure to meet both of you along with several other bloggers and posters yesterday and I am sorry I didn’t encounter Jerry or Paul. I hope to summon up the courage to enter next year.
    1. Nice to meet you too, malcj. I guess you’re right that the use of the New International Version tips this one into the realms of extreme obscurity, even if you’re familiar with the chamberlain (as the King James has it).
  10. Found this a bit of a slog, perhaps because there were rather more unknowns than I’m used to in a Sunday puzzle. Went with ERASTUS because of the wordplay, fluked the correct anagram for MYSTERONS (which I thought was familiar until, post-solve, I realised I was thinking of ? and the Mysterians of “96 tears” fame), and was surprised to find that BEN TROVATO wasn’t just a random collection of letters. It’s possible that people will think the Don Maclean song is called “Starry starry night” (the opening line) rather than “Vincent”.

    Congrats on the top 14 placing!

  11. I enjoyed this, a tester but finished it with perseverance and no aids in an hour and a few minutes. Slightly unhappy with the unscientific definition for MOMENT OF INERTIA but I guess Dean is not a scientist, more of a classicist. ERASTUS the only one I plonked in from wordplay but had never heard of. More like this please, Dean!
    1. Dean is at bottom a bass player.. how he manages to set crosswords at all is a mystery to me, never mind such erudite ones.. misspent youth, no doubt. 🙂

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