ST 4301 (Sun 2 Nov)

Author   talbinhoPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Solving time: 4:20

Nothing too difficult in this – would have been one of my fastest times but for a struggle with 9ac at the end. Generally accurate clueing, and very concise which must be reassuring for beginners who (if anything like I was) can perhaps be a little outfaced by long clues.

Sorry this is posted late in the day: this is the first time I’ve been able to access a computer today. I’m afraid inspiration as to a suitable title for this post has failed me this week, so I’ll leave that as an exercise to the reader.

* = anagram, “X” = sounds like ‘X’.

Across
1 TH[o]ROUGH + PUT
7 HOP + S
9 GLEAMING; G[a]L + (IN GAME)* – a pretty good clue: ‘running’ as an anagram indicator passed me by until I saw the answer from the definition and the possible GL- start.
10 AMIGOS; (I GO) in (AM. S)
11 DON(G,L)E – marvellous word, but not sure I could distinguish one from a gizmo, doofer or wotsit.
13 SHEE[r] + PISH
14 RE + PERCUSSION – ‘kitchen’ = ‘percussion’ is a well-worn crossword cliché but I missed the ‘RE’ part and had to come back to this.
17 SPOTTED + F + EVER
20 OFF-PISTE; (OF STEP IF) – very well-worded anagram (‘What’s out of step if…’).
21 M(A D.C.)AP
22 PARODY; ROD in PAYS – this took me a long time to understand after solving: ‘pays’ is the French word for ‘country’.
23 ENTR’ACTE; ([u]TTERANCE)*
25 BEE + F
26 DEAD (= ‘Late’) + RINGER
Down
2 H + ALLOWED – nicely worded.
3 OVA (hidden backwards)
4 GUISE; “GUYS”
5 PEGASUS (cryptic definition) – I liked this and was happy to overlook the slightly questionable ‘start’ in the cryptic reading. Pegasus was the winged horse of Greek mythology, and is one of the symbols of The Parachute Regiment.
6 TRADE(WIN)D – I wasn’t sure about the (5-4) enumeration here, but although Chambers has only ‘Trade wind’, TEA has ‘trade-wind’ as well.
7 HAIRPIN BEND – a sort of half-cryptic definition based on ‘Barnet fair’ being the cockney rhyming slang for ‘hair’. Quite an appropriate answer on the day Lewis Hamilton secured the Formula 1 Drivers’ Championship.
8 PROUST; (STUPOR)*
12 GREASEPROOF; (FORGO A SPREE)*
15 CROSS-EYED (cryptic definition) – I think ‘Sort of teacher’ is a nod to the old joke ‘Did you hear about the cross-eyed teacher?’, but it’s a bit of a stretch unless I’m missing something.
16 REPARTEE; RE + (REPEAT)*
18 THERE’S + A
19 OF + LAT + E – ‘Lat.’ for ‘Latin’ is in Chambers, but I can’t remember ever seeing it used before.
21 MOT + O + R
24 AWN (hidden)

4 comments on “ST 4301 (Sun 2 Nov)”

  1. I got a good laugh when DONGLE appeared in here – a few years ago I was installing embroidering software on my mother’s computer, and there was a dongle to take the embroidery data from the sewing machine to the computer and back. She had a really hard time with the instructions telling her where to plug the dongle in to each device and this awkward device that looked kind of like a pawn from an old chess set. For nearly a year every phone conversation included some form of “where’s the dongle”, since there was a driver that needed to be updated with every software update and with every new sewing machine she bought.

    That’s a long story… I thought this was above the usual standard for a Sunday Times and very fun

    1. The percussion section of an orchestra is colloquially known as the ‘kitchen’ because of the wide variety of bangs and clangs it makes. See here for more.
  3. This one was fun – got off to a flying start with 5d PEGASUS without really understanding the clue apart from Pegasus being a flying horse?
    9a GLEAMING was also my LOI as I sussed the GL early but didn’t see the “running” as an anagram indicator until I reverse engineered the clue. I have now done sufficient Times crosswords to know about the “kitchen” in the orchestra. Haven’t seen a dongle lately – a very much outmoded way of licencing software these days?
    Thanks to setter and Talbinho for the blog.

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