ST 4348 (Sun 27 Sep) – Bornite entity

Author   talbinhoPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Solving time: 9:21

Not a great puzzle but at least free of mistakes, as far I can see. I wasted two minutes on 20dn (GRACKLE) at the end, and also didn’t know 21dn (BORNITE).

* = anagram, “X” = sounds like ‘X’.

Across
1 B.A. + C.H. – Bachelor of Arts and Companion of Honour.
3 OVERRIDDEN; (OR NEVER DID)* – using ‘over’ in the definition here is somewhat amateurish.
10 IMPUDENCE; (MICE END UP)*
11 SUSAN; rev. of US, + SAN[itorium] – I liked ‘hospital for brief spell’ for ‘san’.
12 GARB + O
13 SWINE ‘FLU; “SWINE FLEW” – rather wordy, but an amusing pun.
15 TENSION; (ONE ISN’T)* – I wasted time with ‘tenison’ here, getting confused with ‘tenson’.
17 HANSARD; (RAN + DASH)* – the parliamentary record.
19 WARTHOG; (A GROWTH)* – a sort of semi-“all-in-one”, and the fifth pure anagram in the last eight clues.
21 BARBEL + L – ‘port’ for ‘left’ would obviously be ok, but the extra jump to ‘L’ is pretty dubious, similar to ‘rex’ giving ‘K’ (via ‘king’) which came up recently.
22 DEBONAIR; (ABODE IN)* + R – one of those cringeworthy post-fodder imperative anagram indicators (‘X Y order’ meaning ‘order X and Y’).
24 OBITS (cryptic definition) – short for ‘obituaries’.
27 ACARI; C[ontralto] in (ARIA)*
28 KNIFE-EDGE – a couple of vague whimsical definitions. I thought this was poor, but perhaps I haven’t fully understood the clue.
29 ENDANGERED; E,N + (DERANGED)*
30 FAST – one defn plus a whimsical allusion.

Down
1 BRIDGETOWN; (I’D GET) in BROWN – decent wordplay which I couldn’t see without several checking letters, distracted by the likes of ‘Barbadian’.
2 CAPER (2 defs) – ‘caper-sauce’ has its own entry in Chambers.
4 [o]VEN IS ON – clues with full stops in the middle almost always look ungainly to me.
5 RHENISH; (HIS + HER + N[ew])* – not sure if ‘tipple’ here is part of the anagram indicator, which wouldn’t make much sense, or part of the definition, which would then be sandwiching the wordplay.
6 ISSUE – this is a ‘matter for contention’, and I think ‘Take way-out’ is intended as another definition in the sense that e.g. water issuing from a spring is taking a way out of the ground, but I could be wrong here.
7 DIS[PL]EASE – I can’t remember seeing ‘patrol-leader’ = PL before; perhaps it’s in Collins or the OED?
8 NUNS (cryptic definition)
9 ADMONISH; (NOMAD)* + (HIS)* – I don’t think I knew this could mean ‘warn’ as well as ‘reprimand’, but it’s from the Latin monere meaning ‘to warn’.
14 A(DOLE)SCENT
16 NURSEMAID (cryptic definition) – a pun on ‘small charge’ but a bizarrely-worded clue which leaves the solver guessing at the part of speech required (‘Providing her services…’).
18 NARROWED; (END)* around ARROW
20 GRACKLE; in (LEG)* – more Latin, this time graculus (‘jackdaw’), which I didn’t know, nor did I know the English (although it rang a bell). I wasted some time looking for alternatives here involving a bird to fit ?A?K, but ‘ghawkle’ and ‘glarkle’ looked unlikely, although the latter has a Carrollian ring to it.
21 BORNITE – a copper ore, new to me.
23 ORION (cryptic definition) – not 2 defs, which was my first reaction, because of course Orion is a constellation and not a star.
25 INDIA; (AID IN)* – again the question mark suggests a semi-all-in-one is intended here.
26 RARE (2 defs)

9 comments on “ST 4348 (Sun 27 Sep) – Bornite entity”

  1. 30 minutes without any major problems.

    At 27ac I needed to check ACARIA after the event but I am not convinced that C = Contralto as I can’t find it listed anywhere. I’m sure most musicians are familiar with S.A.T.B. for Soprano, Alto, Tenor, Bass in choral scores but I don’t ever remember meeting the one required here. Even if it does exist it would be a somewhat rarely used single-letter abbreviation so dodgy on those grounds in the daily Times.

    I agree with talbinho that KNIFE-EDGE at 28ac is feeble unless we are both missing something.

    But it’s good to see an ST puzzle without any howlers, as was this week’s offering unless I am mistaken.

    1. Well, C = contralto is in my old Collins. But I’ve never noticed it in a real-life musical context.
      1. Interesting, as it’s definitely not in my Collins (9th edition). I checked Chambers after reading Jerry’s message below and it IS in there.
  2. c = contralto is in my 10th Ed. Chambers, too. And small typo at 29ac,its endangered not endangerd.

    To be fair, most of the last half dozen ST cryptics have been at about this standard, bar the last one.

    1. Thanks – 29ac corrected.

      I wasn’t sure if your last sentence was in defence of the puzzles or not! I suppose the overall quality of a puzzle tends to be overlooked when there’s an editorial howler in one clue, which was the case in each the four puzzles before last week’s.

      1. It was an attempt to defend the ST cryptic, but my heart wasn’t really in it. I thought that apart from last weeks, they had risen somewhat in quality of late. But your research was more thorough, talbinho 🙂
  3. Ordinary in the extreme! AMBO last week and GARBO here: two missed opportunities for Oz-slang. I had a rude word written against 8dn and 23dn but thought the different uses of “sauce” in the crossing pair at 2dn and 10ac was/were nice. A few quibbles:
    Does RARE have to be especially good?
    The “by it” in 15ac seems to be padding.
    And let’s hope the “article” in 21 isn’t intended in the grammatical sense because “it” isn’t one. Using the commutation test, how can “article” be “it?
  4. I had the same feeling about ‘it’ in 21d; ‘it’ is certainly not a grammatical article. Could it be the (I had thought obsolete) ‘article’ as in ‘the very article’? ‘That is it’=’That is the (very) article’. Grasping at a straw, I grant you.

    And what is the explanation for ‘knife-edge’? I got it, but faute de mieux.

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