ST 4327 (Sun 3 May) – More haste

Author   talbinhoPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Solving time: 2:56, one mistake

A very careless error at 26ac notwithstanding, this was mostly very straightforward although several clues were dubious.

* = anagram, “X” = sounds like ‘X’.

Across
1 DAUGHTERS-IN-LAW; (SUTHERLAND + A WIG)* – ‘broadcast’ is fine as an anagram indicator but I don’t see how ‘during broadcast’ works.
10 EXTRACT (2 defs)
11 G + RIFF + ON – a type of dog as well as a mythical creature.
12 OVERDRAFT; OVER (= ‘about’) + DRAFT (= ‘plan’)
13 DHOTI; HOT in DI
14 SUPPLY (2 defs) – ‘to supply’ and ‘in a supple manner’. A word to watch out for in clues because it can be an anagram indicator in its second sense.
15 MA’S TIFFS – a ‘pet’ as in a sulk.
18 RESEMBLE; (A,S) subtracted from REASSEMBLE
20 CAVIAR; (AVARIC[e])*
23 CRACK (2 defs)
25 [b]RAINSTORM
26 IMPUTES; (I’M UPSET)* – not ‘impetus’! I didn’t read this clue properly, having seen ‘impetus’ from the checking letters before looking at it.
27 OPINION; PI in ONION
28 NORTH-NORTH-EAST; NNE in full – not keen on this: ‘sinner’s heart’ is NN or INNE but not NNE, which is the heart of ‘sinner’s’ but I don’t think you can read it like that.

Down
2 ANTWERP; (PARENT)* around W
3 GRAND SLAM (cryptic definition) – referring to bridge.
4 TITIAN; (TAHITIANS – HAS)* – unusual to see a composite anagram in the Sunday Times (where the anagram (here ‘Tahitians’) consists of the answer word plus another word in the clue), and I don’t think this one is worded very well: ‘portrayed’ should really be something like ‘might portray’, although that wouldn’t fit the surface.
5 REGATTAS; (T[hrow] + TEAR-GAS)* – the online version had ‘teargas’ but surely it should be hyphenated.
6 ILIAD; I LAD around I
7 LEFT OFF; (LEFT)* = ‘felt’ – wordplay in the answer. I originally had ‘left out’ here, but luckily 15ac was straightforward so it didn’t hold me up.
8 WIND INSTRUMENT (cryptic definition)
9 RECONSTRUCTION; (INSTRUCTOR ONCE)* – decent anagram, although ‘-nstruct’ appearing in both anagram and answer is a weakness (both words come from the Latin struere meaning ‘to build’).
16 TRANSPIRE (2 defs)
17 ALFRESCO; ALF + (CORES)* – I can’t see any justification for ‘fruit’ being an anagram indicator.
19 S + CAMPER
21 IVORIES – as in ‘to tickle the ivories’.
22 RIPOST; [lette]R + I + POST
24 KETCH[up] – this is a stretch: the definition is ‘This is a vessel’ and the wordplay (‘…put up for sauce’) has to be written as ‘write UP [next to the answer] for [a word for] sauce’..

10 comments on “ST 4327 (Sun 3 May) – More haste”

  1. 23 minutes. I still don’t understand how 4dn is supposed to work. It’s an anagram of “Tahitians” having removed “has” from the anagrist. Where’s the instruction to exclude these letters?
    1. Composite anagrams are generally worded along the lines of:

      X and this Y could give Z

      where Y is the definition (indicated by “this”) and the letters of X and the required answer together can anagram to Z. In this case (and ignoring the problem of the clue making sense as a sentence), this would be something like:

      This artist and HAS strangely could portray TAHITIANS (9)

      with ‘strangely’ the anagram indicator. In other words, TITIAN and HAS anagrammed could produce TAHITIANS. The ‘could’ is necessary (in my view) because TAHITIANS is only one possible such anagram.

      In the actual clue, the ‘and’ is implicit (so we have ‘This artist has…’ instead of ‘This artist and has’) and ‘could portray’ is just ‘portrayed’. So the cryptic reading is:

      “This artist” and “HAS” strangely portrayed “TAHITIANS”

      To me this is poorly worded, for two reasons: firstly there’s no conditional such as ‘could’ or similar and secondly the past tense of ‘portrayed’ is unjustified (in the cryptic reading it has to be a simple past tense rather than a participle because otherwise there’s nothing to tell you that the anagram ‘equals’ the letters of TAHITIANS).

      I hope that makes some sense – please say if not!

      1. Talbinho, thanks for the full explanation which makes complete sense. I’m not sure I have encountered such clues before, or if I have, perhaps they were more tightly constructed.
        1. From what I understand they’re not allowed in the daily Times, but appear sometimes on Sunday. Occasionally in Mephisto, but pretty regularly in Azed and Listener
  3. About 20 mins here, although with the same mistake at 26 which I hadn’t spotted until coming here. Damn! That would have been a record as well.

    Incidentally, a griffon is a dog, a griffin is a mythological beast.

    1. The following is lifted from Chambers…

      griffin, griffon, gryfon or gryphon

      n an imaginary animal with a lion’s body and an eagle’s beak and wings; a newcomer in India, a novice (); a pony never before entered for a race; a grimly or fiercely watchful guardian, esp over a young woman, a duenna (); a tip, a signal or warning.

      [Fr griffon, from L gryphus, from Gr gryps a bird (probably the lammergeier), also a griffin, from grypos hook-nosed]

      Mike O
      Skiathos

  4. The answer to 22d appears in the published solution as PIGOUT (and not RIPOST). Hard to understand that!
    1. Really? I haven’t seen the solution published in the paper, but the website definitely gives it as RIPOST. Must be a misprint methinks.
  5. I also had IMPETUS at 26a. On the plus side I did understand the derivation of TITIAN from the clue at 4d so I am happy enough.

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