ST 4305 (Sun 30 Nov) – Hedda ache

Author   talbinhoPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Solving time: 6:50, one mistake (7dn)

I didn’t know the Ibsen play Hedda Gabler, and guessed wrongly from the anagram at 7dn. One-all, then, with the setter’s / editor’s / printer’s gaffe at 6ac. Elsewhere, there are more good clues than bad this week.

* = anagram, “X” = sounds like ‘X’.

Across
1 MA + LINGER
6 A(?) + SH(R)AM – oh dear, a mistake. This clue should surely have read: “A king…”.
9 AD + VEN + T – I didn’t know the Church had its own seasonal calendar. There’s more here if you’re interested.
10 STAN DREW – carefully scheduled to appear on November 30, hence ‘his time’s come today’.
11 REIN + FORCE
13 [peas]ANTS – ‘Workers’ requires some kind of indication that this is ‘definition by example’ (as not all ants are workers); the question mark isn’t sufficient, being at the other end of the clue.
14 INFO – nicely hidden.
15 TEMPER + A + N + CE – more churchy knowledge needed here, but the answer was fairly clear with the checking letters.
17 ORNAMENTAL; (LATER ON MAN)*
19 LOTI; L (= ‘Library’s original’) + O.T. (= Old Testament, i.e. ‘collection of old books’) + I (= ‘one’) – I dithered for a while between ‘Loti’ and ‘Lota’ here; this wouldn’t have been a problem in the daily Times puzzles, which (I think) doesn’t allow ‘one’ = A. The writer is Pierre Loti.
21 IDLE; L in IDE[A]
22 RADIOGRAM; (OR DIAGRAM)* – a weak anagram, containing the same -GRAM ending as the answer.
24 A + PERT + URE – ‘flower’ as in ‘something that flows’, in this case the River Ure. A bit clichéd but it gives a nice surface reading…
25 RI(PP)LE – …whereas the surface reading in this clue doesn’t really make sense. How can you ‘wave quietly’?
27 ST + ONE + D – I wasted a lot of time here by putting in ‘stinko’ (with ?T?N??) and trying to understand where it came from, instead of looking at 4dn and realising that it was clearly wrong.
28 MESODERM; (ERODES)* in [su]MM[er] – a biological term for a layer of cells.
Down
2 AND + IRON – cunning clue; ‘with’ here masquerades as a link word but actually gives AND.
3 [r]ICE
4 GET OFF THE GROUND – one straight definition (‘Start’) and one cryptic, which I don’t think quite works – you could get off the pitch or out of the ground, but not ‘off the ground’. At least there’s a question mark.
5 RISER (2 defs) – the vertical part of a step.
6 A FAREWELL TO ARMS (2 defs, one cryptic) – very nice. For some strange reason I wrote in ‘A Passage to India’ before realising that this fit neither the clue nor the enumeration.
7 HEDDA GABLER; (LARGE BED HAD)* – a play by Ibsen. I didn’t know this and guessed ‘Hedda Bagler’, the only other viable option from the anagram.
8 A S[c]EPTIC – good clue.
12 ICOSAHEDRON; (SAD NO HEROIC)*
16 ME + T
18 RED SPOT (2 defs, the second being ‘boil?’)
20 T + [h]UMBLER
23 DREAM; RE (= ‘about’) in DAM (= ‘mother’)
26 POD; rev. of DOP[e]

6 comments on “ST 4305 (Sun 30 Nov) – Hedda ache”

  1. Not necessarily a mistake.Compare “His grief is feigned” and “his grief is a sham”.
    1. In another crossword I might be convinced, but not here with the Sunday Times’s track record!
  2. No problem with the ASHRAM and HEDDA GABLER for me but I put in ISOCAHEDRON at 12d because I’m not well versed either in Ancient Greek nor the names of the more complicated shapes it seems. An awfully sad, no heroic, clue that had me foxed. What was that about cluing obscure words with anagrams?

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