ST 4345 (Sun 6 Sep) – Pilgrims ogrish

Author   talbinhoPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Solving time: 6:19

I wonder what merited Plymouth Argyle’s appearance in prime position at 1/6ac? Perhaps the setter is a supporter. Whatever, it’s the last time the Pilgrims, as they are known, will be at the top this season – 2 points from their first 6 games suggests a relegation battle over the coming months.

Some nice clues in this puzzle; a shame about the awful error in the anagram at 19ac.

* = anagram, “X” = sounds like ‘X’.

Across
1/6 PLYMOUTH ARGYLE; (MOTHER + UGLY PLAY)* – ‘Argyll’ is a potential trap here for anyone not familiar with these giants of our national game. For those that are, one point if you can name the only other football league team to have a green first-choice kit (answer below).
9 A + GRA[y] – referring to Thomas Gray’s Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard.
10 PORT + CULL + IS
11 E.T. + CHER – the wordplay here took me a while to grasp.
12/21 TURN OVER (= ‘amount of business’) + A NEW LEAF (= ‘an encouraging sign as spring begins’) – the answer here was clear but the clue took a bit of analysis – at first it seemed like some kind of double or cryptic definition. In fact it’s a striaght charade with the definition being ‘Try to improve’.
14 HEADPIECES; (A CHEESE DIP)* – ‘nut’ is slang for the head. I just couldn’t see this anagram, far too many Es.
16 [sh]INTO
18 IRIS; rev. of SIRI[us]
19 CHORUS GIRL; (OGREISH + CURLS)* [sic] – oh dear, what a shocker. It looks like someone has ‘improved’ the setter’s intended spelling of ‘ogrish’ (which is in Chambers), with the unfortunate side effect that the anagram is ruined. Can anyone confirm whether the paper version was also wrong? Edit: as jackkt points out, ‘curls’ should presumably have been ‘curl’ also, to remove the extra ‘S’.
23 IMPALA; IMPAL[er] + A
25 BRAT + IS + LAVA – the capital of Slovakia.
27 RAIL; rev. of LIAR
28 CHE + RUB
29 DEALINGS; D,S (initial letters) around EALING – possibly an awkward reference for overseas subscribers?

Down
2 LIGHT-YEAR; I in (LETHARGY)*
3 MEAT + H – the county to the north-west of Dublin.
4 UPPER (= ‘More elevated’) + CIRCLE (= ‘circle’) – ‘the Gods’ referring to the gallery in a theatre.
5 HERETIC; HER + rev. of CITE
6 ARC; A[i]R + C – lots of words for such a short answer. The definition is just ‘discharge’.
7 GALL(OP)ING – ‘trying’ in the sense of ‘vexing’.
8 LOIRE; LO + I + R + [win]E, &lit – a reasonable &lit, although ‘ultimately’ doesn’t really fit the definition reading, as with so many clues of this type.
13 RES JUDICATA; (‘ARD JUSTICE)* – literally ‘a thing judged’.
15 DISHWATER; (HE WAS + DIRT)*
17 TH(RILL)ING – the old chestnut, ‘flower’ = ‘something that flows’: a rill is not a flower in the botanical sense but a small stream.
20 OFF + HAND
22 NORTH – the Prime Minister Lord North, and ‘east-west partnership’ as in bridge.
24 PARSI; PARS[on] + I
26 SOB – S.O.B is used as a euphemism for ‘son-of-a-bitch’ in America, I believe.

Answer to football question (highlight to view): Yeovil Town.

12 comments on “ST 4345 (Sun 6 Sep) – Pilgrims ogrish”

  1. I also struggled with the wordplay at 11 for a while. “Monster” was misleading but I accept it’s fair. Does the rule about references to living people (except HMQ) not apply in the ST puzzle?

    “Improving” the anagram at 19 by changing the spelling of “ogrish” wouldn’t also account for the disappearance of the second “S”.

    Today’s ST also has false anagrist at 22 and this is unforgivable when the answer is a difficult word that is not to be found in at least one major on-line resource (Wordmatcher).

    I thought the ST cryptic was attempting to come up to scratch at last but two howlers in two weeks is just not on.

    And in these straightened times what is the point anyway of having a separate crossword operation, setters, editor etc for the Sunday edition?

    1. I’m relieved to see that both last week’s and this week’s false anagrams are as I thought they were. I’d always imagined that crossword setters and the subs who handled them were godlike in their accuracy (though having only recently come to this blog, I have probably missed many more examples of bloopers). I only found today’s 22ac by googling a possible answer and it handing me the right one.

      A mixture of amazingly simple and rather abstruse, in my opinion.

    2. Jack, to answer your question (belatedly): no, the rule about living people doesn’t apply to the Sunday Times which (as you say) has an (almost) entirely separate setting team and editor and makes up its own rules. I don’t know why this is so – probably for historical reasons (the daily and Sunday editions were founded independently) – but it really is about time something was done about the appalling editing of this puzzle.
    1. Hi, Ross, Well yes, that would give us the correct anagrist but then the surface reading would make no sense. “Oil plant” doesn’t look like a typo to me.
  3. At least you don’t have to put up with the “Sunday Times” in The Australian. This weekend’s (649) may have been the worst crossword I’ve done in almost 40 years of solving. Try this for size:
    “The other name for it (8,7)”.
  4. Blame me the setter for the extra S and the ST keyboarder for the extra E. Oh dear, sorry, a rare occurrence of two independent cock-ups in one clue! I’ve notified the crossword editor in case the puzzle gets reprinted.
    1. Thank you for the explanation, though it leaves me wondering where the editor fits into this process, if at all.
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