ST 4329 (Sun 17 May) – Philtre trip

Author   talbinhoPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Solving time: several days.

Most of this fell out quickly but I couldn’t get 27ac (PHILTRE) or 22dn (PROPER) in the solving window available and meant to come back to them later, but forgot. As so often happens I saw them both immediately when I came back to it. If anyone has any good techniques for bypassing the ‘mental block’ stage I’d love to hear them.

Overall I thought this was very accurate with some lovely clues and only one significant query (9dn).

* = anagram, “X” = sounds like ‘X’.

Across
1 AGAINST ALL ODDS (1 straight def, 1 cryptic def) – I initially put ‘against the odds’ in here which held me up on 5dn and 6dn.
10 DEADPAN; (D + PA) in DEAN
11 TANG + E + LO
12 LIGHT MEAL; (I’LL GET HAM)*
13 HAS ID – I think I’ve seen ‘Hasidism’ or the adjective ‘Hasidic’ before but not this word for a member of the sect.
14 H(A ST)EN
15 DEATH ROW; (TWO HEARD)* – very good clue with a nicely misleading homophone indicator (‘heard’).
18 TAHITIAN; I in (A TIN HAT)*
20 A + S[ain]T + RA + L[ook]
23 EXACT (2 defs)
25 CARPACCIO; CARP (= ‘fish’) + A/C (= account, hence ‘bill’) + C[old] + I + O (= ‘love’)
26 TROU[sers o]NCE
27 PHILTRE; “FILTER” – one of the two that stumped me first time round. This was the more excusable stumble as I didn’t know the word. The root is the Greek philein, as with the suffix ‘-phile’.
28 ENFANT TERRIBLE; (LENIENT REF + BRAT)* – another very good anagram.
Down
2 GRANGES; [slithe]R in GANGES
3 IMPATIENT; I in I’M PATENT
4 SONNET; SON + rev. of TEN (= ‘X’)
5 ANT(ILL + E)S
6 LUNCH – clever use of ’12’ as a clue number (referring to LIGHT MEAL) and 12 noon.
7 DRESS E.R. – Hardy Amies, not a name I knew, was the Queen’s dressmaker from 1955 until 1990.
8 SWORD-SWALLOWER – a kind of ‘reverse hidden’, with ‘sword’ being viewed as ‘swallowed’ by ‘crossworder’.
9 ADELPHI THEATRE; (DEAR ATHLETE)* around PHI – I wonder if the word ‘character’ was accidentally omitted here after ‘Greek’, because unless I’ve misinterpreted the clue I can’t see how ‘Greek’ can indicate ‘phi’.
16 TOSCA + NI + NI
17 WAR(CHE’S)T
19 HEAD OF F[rance]
21 RECITAL; (ARTICLE)*
22 PRO[s]PER – I thought this might be an ‘&lit’ with ‘right’ giving the final R, and also considered ‘on’ = RE, so was looking for something like RE in CO[s]MOS + R. This was not a useful line of inquiry. The question mark isn’t really fair because it has no purpose in the cryptic reading, but that’s a pretty lame excuse for my taking so long.
24 TYNAN (hidden backwards) – the second name I didn’t know. Kenneth Tynan was a theatre critic.

5 comments on “ST 4329 (Sun 17 May) – Philtre trip”

  2. Greek character was intended, says setter — accidental omission sorry!
    1. Thanks very much for the clarification. From your comment (which I may have misunderstood, and I apologise if I have) it sounds as though the accidental omission was yours – would it be reasonable to ask how the editor failed to pick this up?
  3. NI is a common abbrev. for Northern Ireland but Northern Ireland is not a province.

    It’s a country which, like Scotland and Wales, is part of the UK.

    It is part of the province of Ulster.

    The only NI province I know of is New Ireland, Papua New Guinea but that seems a bit obscure, even for the ST.

  4. My FOI was also 1a AGAINST THE ODDS where the “THE” was changed to ALL once I managed to see 6d LUNCH. EUNCH did not seem to fit the description of LIGHT MEAL?

    We had CHAIRS of the electric variety in yesterday’s answers and now we have DEATH ROW at 15a. It might be a good clue but enough of this grisly subject matter please.

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