Saturday Times 26214 (26th Sept)

Author   linxitPosted on Categories Weekend Cryptic
Solving time 17:05, so I found it a bit tricky last week. LOI was 6ac STEP, as I wasn’t happy with my parsing of it and spent ages looking for alternatives. In the end there wasn’t much else it could be. There were a few other clues I had reservations over (see below), but most of it was good. COD to 12ac, great anagram that’s so well mixed it just doesn’t look like it would work!

Across
1 Stage act showing fear when cornered by fellow in pit (4-6)
MIND-READER – DREAD (fear) inside MINER (fellow in pit).
6 Difficult to avoid repeating bit in process (4)
STEP – STEEP (difficult) without one E (avoiding the repeating bit). I can’t parse this without “bit” doing double duty. Any other options?
10 Drum firm? No good by end of cantata (5)
CONGA – CO (firm) + NG (no good) + (cantat)A. I only knew it as a dance.
11 Insubstantial contribution to popular music? (3,6)
AIR GUITAR – cryptic definition. There’s even a World Championship, which was held in Finland this year.
12 Fight adversary, turning out in the dead of night? (9,5)
GRAVEYARD SHIFT – (Fight adversary)*. It could be argued that “turning out” is part of the definition as well as the anagram indicator, but we’ve already had one with “double duty” wordplay!
14 Liberal blocking corrupt change (7)
INFLECT – L(iberal) inside INFECT (corrupt).
15 Delivery expert? In France, he is welcomed by mummy there (7)
MAILMAN – IL (he) inside MAMAN (mummy), all in French. After the first two words I was getting ready to enter “MIDWIFE”, before checking the wordplay!
17 What stand-up comedian may do that’s iconic? (7)
TOTEMIC – “TOTE MIC” (what stand-up comedian may do). When did the abbreviation for microphone stop being “mike”? Does it only apply to comedy clubs which have “Open Mic Nights” where budding comedians come on stage one after the other to be booed by a drunken and hostile audience? Is it pronounced “mick” or “mike”?
19 Purse not opened in time? (7)
INNINGS – WINNINGS (purse), minnus the first letter. Definition as in “time spent in (batting)”.
20 Riviera air promoting the well-being of the people? (2,12)
LA MARSEILLAISE – cryptic definition for the French national anthem, although geographically inaccurate – Marseilles looks a bit to the west of the French Riviera.
23 Nowhere with moat 50% reduced could possibly do for Englishman in castle? (9)
HOMEOWNER – (nowhere, mo)*. From the proverb “an Englishman’s home is his castle”.
24 Year added to time line that’s unfinished? Absolutely (5)
TRULY – Y(ear) after T(ime), RUL(e) (line that’s unfinished).
25 Sample including a quantity of food? (4)
TRAY – TRY (sample) around A.
26 Lake: watch part before taking in top of mountain (10)
WINDERMERE – WINDER (watch part) + ERE (before), around M(ountain).

Down
1 ‘Shamrock’, losing four letters, leaves ‘sham’? (4)
MOCK – SHAMROCK.
2 No fool, involving academic in US charity (3-6)
NON-PROFIT – NO + NIT (fool), around PROF (academic in US). I wasn’t sure whether US was supposed to apply to the professor or the charity, but in the US a professor is any university or college teacher, whereas here it’s only applied to the top grade. I don’t think it would have hurt the clue to leave it out entirely.
3 Assistance for drivers unable to identify the way forward (4-4,6)
REAR-VIEW MIRROR – cryptic definition? Doesn’t make a lot of sense to me this morning (unless it covered the whole windscreen), but was bunged in from the enumeration last week.
4 Person breaking down some stone, finding aluminium within (7)
ANALYST – ANY (some) + ST(one), around AL(uminium).
5 You can’t beat this for audio reception (7)
EARDRUM – cryptic definition.
7 Orchestral passage: it picked up after exasperated comment (5)>
TUTTI – IT reversed after TUT (exasperated comment).
8 Reprobate up in arms about it? (10)
PURITANISM – (up in arms)* around IT, &lit.
9 Working out equations with terms? One expects an answer (8-6)
QUESTION-MASTER – (equations, terms)*.
13 Opening drink set up: excited to get a slug? (6-4)
PISTOL-SHOT – SLOT (opening) + SIP (drink), all reversed, + HOT (excited).
16 A lot of information perhaps about American copper initially looking unimportant (9)
MINUSCULE – MINE (a lot of information perhaps) around US (American), CU (copper), L(ooking).
18 European notes tucking into tea in Indian city (7)
CHENNAI – E(uropean) + NN (notes), inside CHAI (tea). The city formerly known as Madras.
19 I left pound of meat like steak, having no manners (3-4)
ILL-BRED – I + L(eft) + LB (pound) + RED (of meat like steak).
21 Old woman throttling black snake (5)
MAMBA – MAMA (old woman) around B(lack).
22 Trophy perhaps enshrines promotion (4)
HYPE – hidden in “Trophy perhaps”.

14 comments on “Saturday Times 26214 (26th Sept)”

  1. At 6ac I think the definition of STEP can be ‘process’ on its own. It’s in my thesaurus anyway, though that doesn’t necessarily justify it.

    I had similar concerns re “in US” at 2dn and thought I might be missing something, and although I assumed &lit at 8dn I still don’t quite get it.

    This was hard work and I was just pleased to finish it without resorting to aids.

    Edited at 2015-10-03 08:09 am (UTC)

  2. 12:39. A slightly odd feel to some of this. I can’t make 6ac work either, and I didn’t really understand 3dn.
    I took the US in 2dn to refer to the word ‘charity’: ODO calls NON-PROFIT ‘chiefly North American’, and in the UK I’m more used to hearing ‘not-for-profit’. Either way a NON-PROFIT is not necessarily a charity so a question mark would have been in order.
    1. I looked in Chambers, Collins and the Shorter OED and none of them had any mention of US in the definition of non-profit, whereas they did make the distinction between an English professor and an American one. I still think the clue would have been better off without it!
      1. If the setter is using ‘charity’ and NON-PROFIT as nouns, then ODO defines the latter as ‘chiefly North American’, and Chambers and Collins don’t have it at all. I can’t see any reason for qualifying ‘prof’ in this way: it’s a commonplace English abbreviation. I agree that is seems unnecessary though, because NON-PROFIT as an adjective is in all the dictionaries without any mention of North America.
        1. I’m with you on PROF but just confuse things further my Collins (10th edition) does give NONPROFIT as a noun, notes it as US usage but omits the hyphen.
          1. It does actually show the same thing in the online Collins: I think I searched for it with the hyphen, so it didn’t show up. I see that whilst ODO doesn’t show the adjective (unlike the noun) NON-PROFIT as US usage, it does specify that the alternative ‘non-profit-making’ is British.
    2. Along the lines of the old cards that said ‘You do not have to be mad to work here but it helps’ was one that said ‘This is a non-profit organisation. It is not meant to be that way but there it is”.

      On the day I did not see the parsing of TRAY but a week later, it is obvious.

  3. 6a STEEP to avoid repeating (i.e. to avoid repetition) is STEP. “Bit in process” is the definition.

    Edited at 2015-10-03 11:34 am (UTC)

  4. I thought 6a, 17a, 20a, 2d, 3d and 8d were weak clues. I took 3d to be a poor cryptic. COD to 12a.

  5. 4 is way too many cryptic definitions, even if they’re good ones, which these weren’t. I was particularly grumpy because I had no reminder of the gender of allons enfants and got it wrong.

  6. I was wondering about the ‘in US’, and agree that it could have been dispensed with. (In the US, Andy, at least where I came from, a prof isn’t any college teacher but one with the title; the difference is that a department would not have THE professor of X, unless accidentally.) Hadn’t a clue about STEP, BIFD.
  7. I had all the problems discussed above, including particularly cod to GRAVEYARD SHIFT, almost falling into the MIDWIFE trap, did fall into the DEFLECT instead of INFLECT trap, and filling in pretty much all the other problem clues based on crossers and either the definition or the cryptic but not both.
    Perhaps MIC comes from the label on the plug on the side of your electronic device – MIKE takes up too much space. My similar question is when DISK became DISC.

    Edited at 2015-10-04 07:57 pm (UTC)

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