ST 4302 (Sun 9 Nov) – Red noes day

Solving time: 8:35, two mistakes (20ac, 21ac)

I enjoyed several clues in this puzzle and it was going swimmingly until I got to the bottom left corner, which went rather badly, especially 20ac which got the dreaded red pen. Even worse was realising post-solve that I’d got 21ac wrong too.

* = anagram, “X” = sounds like ‘X’.

Across
1	HAR(ASS)ES – nice breakdown.
5	IMPELS; MP in (LIES)* – they don’t need much forcing if you ask me.
9	DRAM + A + TIC
10	STUD + I + O
12	NOODLE (2 defs) – ‘goose’ and ‘noodle’ are both synonyms for a stupid person.
13	DEN + OUNCE
15	IN + VERSE – I liked this a lot.
16	MERE (2 defs)
20	NOES (cryptic defn) – with N?E? this had to have a vowel second and probably an ‘S’ last, so there’s really no excuse for my failing to spot the pun on ‘passing’ (as in a motion), but unfortunately ‘nées’ seemed a plausible alternative, in that it might have meant women of the form ‘Mrs X née Y’, i.e. women who are married, and so are not simply experiencing a passing fancy.
21	BAN(G)K + OK (= ‘in order’) – with ?A?G?O? and ‘capital’ clearly the definition, this could only be ‘Rangoon’. Except it couldn’t. I wonder if this was a deliberate trap?
25	BARNACLE; (CABLE RAN)*
26	IN + FIRM
28	TRYING (1 straight, 1 cryptic definition) – ‘on the bench’ in the sense of being a magistrate who might ‘try’ a defendant.
29	EMPHATIC; (CHAP + TIME)*
30	DEDUC[e] + T – this is a bit naughty as ‘take off’ rather than ‘takeoff’ is required, and in any case shouldn’t ‘takeoff’ have a hyphen?
31	S(KIPPER)S – decent semi-&lit.

Down
1	HIDING (1½ defs)
2	REASON; (SO NEAR)*
3	STARLING (2 defs) – according to Chambers, “piling protecting a bridge pier” which was new to me.
4	ERIE; “EERIE”
6	MUTTON – I thought I might have made another mistake here, as I couldn’t see why ‘Dead, we are told’ should give this answer. I even wondered if ‘Dead’ should read ‘Deaf’, as I think ‘mutton’ is Cockney rhyming slang for ‘deaf’ (from ‘Mutt and Jeff’), but eventually I came across the phrase “Dead as mutton”, which is in both Chambers and Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable.
7	END ANGER
8	SLOE-EYED – meaning dark-eyed or slant-eyed.
11	MESS + AGE
14	LEG + ALLY
17	UNA + BATED (= “BAITED”) – very slow on this.
18	DEFRAYED; FRAY in DEED – ‘Put paid to it’ is a bit loose; this word means ‘paid’.
19	TOW + N,S + HIP
22	TANNIC; (TIN CAN)* – nice anagram, shame I wrote in ‘nactin’. I must have had a mixture of niacin, actin and pectin in mind.
23	BIG TOE; (I BEG TO)*
24	S + MOCKS
27	AM OK – a nice telegram-style clue to finish.

3 comments on “ST 4302 (Sun 9 Nov) – Red noes day”

Besides being in a race with a thug to a capital, I had another interesting wrong answer.

For 3 down I had ‘seaplane’, as a ‘bird’ you might see docked at a pier.

I knew ‘Rangoon’ was probably wrong, but coulnd’t think of anything else. However, my wrong answer for 3 actually makes sense as a cryptic definition.

I took 56 minutes to complete this one, which is bad for me for an ST puzzle. 4303 is much easier and I achieved a PB of 12 minutes.

I did toy with both those answers at 3d and 21a but managed to get the apparently correct STARLING at 3d ( I still don’t understand the clue but STARLING seems like a better “bird” than a seaplane) and BANGKOK at 21 from:
21a Bank not retained in order to build capital (7)
BAN G K OK. The note is G and in order = OK.

I also managed to get NOES correctly at 20a. This is where my success story ends as I had DOWNTOWN at 19d and had to resort to aids to get 29a EMPHATIC 31a SKIPPERS and then the correct TOWNSHIP at 19d as my LOI.

So more fails for me than above – just different ones.

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