ST 4274 (Sun 27 Apr) – Burnt at the Stoke

Author   talbinhoPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Solving time: 5:34

Today has been a very bad day. It turns out that Leicester City are not (as the terrace chant would claim) by far the greatest team the world has ever seen, but rather a load of absolute rubbish, having suffered the ignominy of relegation to the third division, or whatever it’s called these days. In contrast, this crossword seemed positively mediocre.

I’m afraid I don’t have any dictionaries to hand, so if anyone could clarify 2dn and 4dn I would be grateful.

* = anagram, “X” = sounds like ‘X’.

Across
1 ADAM’S APPLE
7 CO + SH
9 MAN + DRILL
10 HILARY (triple definition) – I believe the Dark Blues call the spring term ‘Hilary Term’.
11 FR[e]IGHT
13 CHARISMA; (A MARCH IS)*
14 IMPERSONATOR; (IN SOME PART OR)* – ‘other’ as an anagram indicator is about as bad as it gets…
17 SHETLAND PONY; (SHY AND PELT ON)* – …and this makes no cryptic sense either.
21 MAYHEM; rev. of YAM, + HEM
22 FOR(IN)T – the currency of Hungary.
23 ACROSTIC; A + “CROSS TICK” – I quite liked this one.
25 GRIT (double definition)
26 RHYTHMICAL; (H.R. + MYTHICAL)*

Down
2 DIAGRAMS; AGRA in (DIM + S) – ‘bibulous’ seems to mean ‘fond of drinking’, which I can’t really equate to ‘dim’. Am I missing something here?
3 MUD – as in ‘his name is mud’.
4 A TILT – does ‘hut’ = ’tilt’? Probably, but not in any online dictionary I can find. Or perhaps the answer is something different?
5 PELICAN (cryptic definition)
6 EN + HEAR + TEN – ‘in French’ = EN, and a score is twenty.
7 CALLIGRAPHY; (GRAPHICALLY)* – more of a Spoonerism than an anagram, but I’ve never noticed this before.
8 SCRI(M)P
12 GREASEPAINT; (AGREES)* + PAIN + [mus]T
16 ANGELICA – I believe this is put on top of trifles, but I’m not really sure what it is.
18 LULLABY – a much better cryptic definition.
19 C.O. + LOUR
21 MARS + H
24 SKI (cryptic definition)

7 comments on “ST 4274 (Sun 27 Apr) – Burnt at the Stoke”

  1. I have the Shorter Oxford here which gives tilt as “In Newfoundland and Labrador: a fisherman’s or woodcutter’s hut”, which I imagine not a lot of people knew (except woodcutters and fishermen in eastern Canada, many of whom are avid crossword solvers.
  2. Meant to add that I can’t shed any light on ‘dim/bibulous’. It puzzled me, too, but I can’t see any other solution.

    And commiserations for those Foxes.

  3. Well, “nebulous” might pass muster as “dim”. Can one trust ST setters to know the difference between nebulous and bibulous?
    1. If so, it’s only two letters out; maybe it’s down to the type setter rather than the compiler. It’s clear from the errors that appear almost daily now, at least in the on-line version of the puzzle, that nobody proof-reads anything before publication.
  4. Once upon a time, long, long ago, subeditors prepared and sent copy (manuscript or typescript) to the typesetting department (first in Linotype days and later also in photocomposing days); the set matter, in the form of a galley proof or printout, was sent to the proofreading department where one “held” and read the copy while another corrected it.

    All that is gone now: the sub gets copy on computer screen, looks at it, oh so nice, presses Enter and proceeds to lay it out.

    The other day a newspaper here in Madras had three different spellings for the same, none-too-difficult word in a small item of three grafs. I cancelled my subscription for the paper.

  6. Well at least Leicester City will go on to win League One in season 2008-9 and then win the Premiership Title in 2016!

    Hereford United will be relegated from League One in the same season having been beaten home and away by LCFC. Then, following HUFC being kicked out of the Football Conference in 2014, the new Hereford Football Club will also be busy winning a Premiership in 2016 – the Midland League Premiership – a mere 9 tiers below Leicester.

    So Mr Talbinho – don’t get so despondent when your on-the-pitch heroes don’t come up to expectations. It could be worse – believe me!

    Just the 2 omissions from the blog:

    20a (Pilot has)* collapsed? Take him here (8)
    HOSPITAL

    15d (Pots react)* badly to the watcher (9)
    SPECTATOR

    OK – pretty easy anagram clues.

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