Sunday Times 4599 (20 July) by Dean Mayer

Author   keriothePosted on Categories Weekend Cryptic
Greetings from Canada. Actually as I write this I am sitting at home in London, but by the time I post it I will be sitting beside a lake in Muskoka nursing a Caesar, or possibly a Creemore, listening to the call of the loons and saying ‘eh’ at every available opportunity.

The last time I blogged an Anax puzzle it was a rather gentle affair. My time for this one of 23:43 includes both solving the puzzle and dealing with a child who had managed to wee on his own shorts (sorry I don’t have an acronym for that), so it’s hard to be sure but I think this was a notch trickier, even if it’s clearly not up there with the toughest of Dean’s creations. There are some nice clues in here, as you’d expect, but also a generous helping of simple clues that are nonetheless models of elegance and efficiency. All in all an enjoyable solve.

Across
1 Bitter cold – needs help dressing
ACID – C (cold)in AID. Simple but elegant.
4 Ornament with cross given to a torturer
TORQUEMADA – According to Chambers, a TORQUE is a ‘necklace or armband in the form of a twisted metal band’. I didn’t know that, but you don’t really have to. It’s followed by MAD (‘cross’) and then A to get to the pseudonym of the renowned crossword setter Edward Powys Mathers, who set advanced cryptics in the Observer from 1926 until his death in 1939. He was succeeded by Derek McNutt, who set puzzles under the pseudonym ‘Ximenes’ and gave his (pseudo)name to an entire school of thought in crossword setting. In 1972 Ximenes was succeeded by Jonathan Crowther, who under the alias ‘Azed’ still sets barred grid puzzles to an incredibly high and consistent standard in the Observer, along with a clue competition in which my occasional entries have achieved a consistent standard of abject failure. TORQUEMADA, Ximenes and Deza were all notable figures in the Spanish Inquisition.
9 Run around academy and trace compound
WOLFRAMITE – FLOW (run) is reversed, then followed by the Royal Academy (RA) and MITE to give ‘an iron manganese tungstate mineral that is the intermediate between ferberite (Fe2+ rich) and huebernite (Mn2+ rich)’, obvs. To me it sounds like a term for an evil lawyer.
10 What’s left behind
RUMP – DD. Simple but elegant.
11 Doctor is taken across river in part of Eastern Cape
TRANSKEI – an anagram of IS TAKEN around R for ‘river’. This region in South Africa rang a bell, but only faintly. I didn’t know the volcano that crosses it at 5dn so in the end these two answers went in as a bit of a combined leap of faith, but the wordplay was sufficiently clear for me to feel reasonably confident.
12 Rather nice
PRETTY – DD: simple but elegant.
13 Warships, those pounding Jersey and Guernsey after initial exchanges
BATTLECRUISERS – Jerseys and Guernseys are cows, so someone pounding them would be a CATTLEBRUISER. Cheeky.
15 Celebration put on ice?
DIAMOND JUBILEE – not sure about this. Is it an &lit with ‘celebration’ for JUBILEE added to ‘ice’ for DIAMOND, and the whole thing alluding to a celebration that has been ‘put on ice’ for the foreseeable future (it certainly seems unlikely that Charles will celebrate his)? Or is it just a cryptic definition? Either way the answer’s pretty clear so I don’t think we need the Spanish Inquisition.
18 Said condition’s beginning to deteriorate
STATED – STATE (condition), DETERIORATE. Simple but elegant.
19 Job – I refuse it – is work in retirement
POSITION – reversal (‘in retirement’) of NO (I refuse), IT, IS, OP (work).
21 Sound made by worn-out reptile
CROC – Sounds like ‘crock’. A ‘crock’ is a ‘person or thing, such as a car, that is old or decrepit’, according to Collins, but I can’t find any support for its use as an adjective, which seems to be required. It wasn’t a meaning I knew anyway so it didn’t bother me while solving.
22 I’m turned into coal once fluid is cheap.
ECONOMICAL – I’M reversed into an anagram of COAL ONCE.
23 Winner’s characteristic in opposition
FACE-TO-FACE – or FACET OF ACE. A devilishly clever clue, which I confess I didn’t understand when I put the answer in: it just seemed like the only possibility. The penny only dropped an hour or two later when I went back to it. For a while I thought that this would have something to do with cards: a reference to the way the king/queen/jack face on the, er, face of the card, perhaps. It turns out to be a clue about tennis, where an ACE is a ‘winner’.
24 Dislike adult being in the wrong
HATE – A (adult) in an anagram of THE. Simple but elegant.

Down
2 Short piece of work introducing one set of singers
CHOIR – I in CHORE. Elegant but simple.
3 The intricate cracks in soil
DEFINITE ARTICLE – anagram of INTRICATE in DEFILE. Simple, but… enough of that, eh? Nice clue.
4 Background music as listed item to put on tape
TRACK RECORD – TRACK here is ‘music as listed item’ because it would be part of the track listing on an album (remember those?), then ‘put on tape’ (remember those?) is RECORD.
5 This is more likely to pour down volcano
RAINIER – DD. The weather-related part of this was sufficiently obvious that I didn’t need to know that Mount RAINIER is ‘a massive stratovolcano located 54 miles southeast of Seattle in the state of Washington, United States’. I also didn’t need to know that a stratovolcano is ‘a volcano consisting of alternating layers of ash and lava’. One does learn things from doing these puzzles, doesn’t one?
6 Exploit university place without it
USE – U, SITE. I promise this is the last time I will say ‘simple but elegant’.
7 Real men fancy slim, wealthy actress
MARLENE DIETRICH – an anagram of REAL MEN, then DIET (slim), RICH (wealthy).
8 Coffee taken up, in the end
DEMITASSE – SAT (‘taken’, as in an exam) reversed inside DEMISE.
11 Short hose leading to barrel
TUB – TUBE. I promised, so I won’t say it again.
12 A small range of camping gear
PRIMUS STOVE – just a CD, I think. The first pressurised paraffin stove, a design based on the hand-held blowtorch and developed in 1892 by Frans Wilhelm Lindqvist, a factory mechanic in Stockholm. I vaguely remember these things from miserable childhood trips, but since I would rather poke my eyes out with a spoon than go camping ever again, I have not had much exposure to them recently and it took me a long time to remember the term.
14 Houses bombed out with short air raid
AUDITORIA – an anagram of OUT and AIR RAID. This wordplay could also lead to an anagram of OUT and AIR RAID, but in this case it doesn’t.
16 Go down and see graduate’s certificate
DIPLOMA – or DIP, LO, MA.
17 In space one thousand million years
EON – hidden in ‘space one’. Did you know that an EON is a thousand million years? I didn’t. It is defined thus in Chambers, Collins and ODO: quite why the word ‘billion’ is shunned in this context I can’t tell you. The dictionaries all have AEON as the primary spelling, which doesn’t chime with my experience. Perhaps I’m unduly influenced by the name of a certain German energy company.
20 Created illusions from circle section
OP ART – or O (circle), PART. OP ART is a style of visual art that involves optical illusions.
22 Lyrical piece about old Tokyo
EDO – ODE reversed gives the old name for Japan’s capital.

18 comments on “Sunday Times 4599 (20 July) by Dean Mayer”

  1. 56 mins, also finishing at the top. Re adjectival crock, I wondered whether Dean was conjuring up a meaning by analogy with crook, used by Antipodeans, which means ill or bad.
    1. I think a badly remembered Aussie “crook” was the reason why the editor failed to intervene.
  2. A very fine crossword. I did wonder a little about 15ac, which I still don’t quite follow
    1. This is probably ice follies and I didn’t stop to parse it and can’t now, but I thought of cherries jubilee which are served on vanilla ice cream. Wolframite/tungsten turned up in a recent puzzle but I can’t remember where (may have been the Guardian) – at least it came freshly to mind.
  3. Simply couldn’t get WOLFRAMITE, not even close. I knew Mt. Rainier, but had forgotten that it’s a volcano. I’d thought of FACE-TO-FACE, of course, but couldn’t see how it worked; until I did, and laughed out loud, raising a few eyebrows in the coffee shop.
  4. Several unknowns words or shades of meaning made this a bit tricky but I was all correct in 50 minutes which is not too bad for this solver vs this setter. I think there’s a danger trying to over- analyse 15ac; I bunged in the answer and moved on.

    Edited at 2014-07-27 07:37 am (UTC)

  5. My apologies for 21a – the clue was actually changed on editing and should have read “…made by one worn-out…”. The clue-writing pane in Crossword Compiler has ‘OK’ and ‘cancel’ buttons next to each other and I’ve evidently hit the wrong one by mistake.
    Thanks Keriothe for a highly entertaining blog and to all for your comments.
  6. Not quite enough praise for 3D – exquisitely disguised drop volley! Held me up for ages.
    12D I initially had PICNIC STOVE but then remebered the old damper cooker’s real name.

    horryd

  7. Nice blog, Keriothe. Enjoy your local beverages, and I hope the black flies are under control. Nice puzzle Anax. I had difficulty all up and down the left hand side, and spent who knows how long trying to figure out how back-to-back could possibly work.
  8. I gave up on WOLFRAMITE after 45 minutes and resorted to help. I’ve never heard of the stuff. So technically a DNF. A very enjoyable puzzle, as always from this setter. I have come to the conclusion that a steady slog is ultimately more satisfying than a quick finish. Ann
  9. I expect ‘billion’ wasn’t used to avoid ambiguity between 10^9 (US, and more often elsewhere) and 10^12 (originally, but now mainly for pedants)
    1. I thought of that but as 10^12 has now completely disappeared I thought it was a bit unnecessary. But perhaps the definition of ‘eon’ dates from before the disappearance: I suppose there would be no pressing reason to change it.
  10. Hope you got a chance to try one of Fraser Simpson’s puzzles in our weekend Globe and Mail newspaper while you were in Canada.
  11. The alteration of a billion from 10^12 to 10^9 really pisses me off for its lack of logic.

    Ten tens are 100

    One hundred hundreds are 1000

    One thousand thousands are 1,000,000

    One million million is 1,000,000,000,000 or one billion.

    1. No problem: no-one’s reading this any more anyway. 😉
      It’s always seemed much more sensible to me to have 1,000 million as a billion. Billions come up quite a lot these days and having to say or write ‘a thousand million’ every time would be a bit annoying.

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