ST 4279 (Sun 1 Jun) – A load of rubbish?

Author   talbinhoPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Solving time: lost, but about 7:30 rings a bell.

No, actually – not a bad puzzle this week I thought, by Sunday Times standards. A few of the many cryptic definitions were a bit weak, and there may be a rogue extra word in 15ac, but overall I enjoyed this more than usual.

Sorry this post appears so late in the day. It’s unfortunate that LiveJournal currently has no facility for ‘scheduling’ posts, which would mean that reports could be written in advance and be set to appear automatically, as this would prevent lateness in cases of expected absence.

* = anagram, “X” = sounds like ‘X’.

Across
1 A LOAD OF RUBBISH (cryptic definition) – this may be an old chestnut, but I can’t remember seeing it before and quite liked it.
10 OTTOMAN; (TOMATO)* + N
11 MASS + EUR
12 KITCHEN + E.R. – as in ‘kitchen cabinet’. Herbert Kitchener, 1st Earl Kitchener was the face of the famous ‘Wants You’ recruitment poster.
14 HUSH UP, from PUSH-UP
15 HEAT RASH (cryptic definition) – a well-worn pun on ‘spots’, but why ‘it’? Perhaps this clue should have read ‘Spots in the sun’.
18 ROCKETRY – another cryptic definition, and a fairly weak one, I thought.
20 [man]DRILLS
23 DIRAC; rev. of CAR I’D – Paul Dirac shared the Nobel Prize for Physics with Schr&230dinger for their work on atomic energy.
25 MAN + HAT + TAN – I’ve only ever had one of these and won’t be having a second.
26 LEA(R)NER – better than L + EARNER, I suppose!
27 ‘CELLIST (hidden)
28 SHETLAND PONIES; (DISHONEST PANEL)* – one of those ‘partial definitions’ that crop up all too regularly in this puzzle.

Down
2 LITOTES; (TOILETS)*
3 ALMSHOUSE; (SHOE A SLUM)* – for some strange reason I wrote in ‘Ashmolean’ here, which is not an anagram of ‘SHOE A SLUM’ (or even particularly close) and would be an unlikely residence for an old woman. The surface reading refers to the nursery rhyme about a woman who lived in a shoe.
6 BA(S)IL
7 IKEBANA (cryptic definition) – I always struggle with this word, for some reason.
8 HORSE CHESTNUT – a half-cryptic definition which I thought was pretty poor.
9 YORKSHIRE DALES; (LAD + Y[omp] + SORE HIKERS)* – not a bad anagram, and one which I should have solved much faster.
16 TARPAULIN; (URINAL + TAP)*
17 TRIMARAN; rev. of RAM in (TRAIN)*
19 CAR(NAG)E
21 LATRINE; (ALERT IN)* – ‘office’ is slang for ‘toilet’. ‘Marshal’ is a well-disguised imperative anagram indicator (some people don’t seem to like these, but I think they’re perfectly ok), but I don’t like the word ‘his’ which is superfluous and unfairly suggests that the office in question has some special significance for a marshal.
22 INK-CAP – a better cryptic definition.
24 CAN + AL

4 comments on “ST 4279 (Sun 1 Jun) – A load of rubbish?”


  1. Agreed, a step up from usual. I had exclamation marks against 15a and 21d, but ticks for 11a, 2d, and especially 7d IKEBANA, which is really nice.
    1. Glad to see you back. The blog has been an altogether less civilised place without dorosatt contributions the last week or so. I was a bit irritated by 1ac initially, but the more I look at it the more I think it was me I was irritated at for taking a long time to see it. Projection, or something like that.
  3. I see your Epsom trees and your Marshal’s latrine and raise you a CANAL with the literal “Manmade flower”. Duh. Ain’t much flow in a canal dude.
    Also, cluing “S” as “a little bit of soup” in 6d I thought was a bit slack.

    There are 3 “easies” not in the blog:

    13a Hire vessel – finally relax (5)
    L EASE. Lease a narrowboat on a manmade flower and do a nice relaxing pub-crawl?

    4d Having (gin – now)* drunk (6)
    OWNING

    5d Made comment and looked at exam papers again (8)
    RE-MARKED

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