ST 4350 (Sun 11 Oct) – Miseducation

Author   talbinhoPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Solving time: 9 mins

The worst clue this week is probably 7dn, which is either faulty or just awful. There’s also an incorrect enumeration at 1dn.

Actually, I’ve just had a thought. In the same way that Alex Ferguson will moan about anything – the ref, the pitch, the colour of the grass – to take the spotlight off his team when they play badly, perhaps these almost weekly mistakes are intended to distract us from talking about the rest of the crossword, which once again this week was pretty poor.

* = anagram, “X” = sounds like ‘X’.

Across
1 CARAWAY; rev. of RAC[e], + AWAY
5 CORTEGE; rev. of GET in CORE – when solving I thought this was just a strange cryptic definition. In fact ‘of the’ is superfluous linkage, making this a poor clue…
9 SUP + PORTER – …and ‘with’ as a link word is not much better.
10 BLUNT (2 defs) – good clue.
11 ORDERS – 2 definitions, although they’re virtually the same meaning.
12 MARINADE; (RAIN MADE)*
14 FREE FOR ALL (1 straight defn, 1 whimsical reading)
16 BIAS – ‘bias binding’ is ‘material cut slantwise to provide stretch and used for binding in sewing’ (Chambers).
18 DRUM (cryptic definition?) – ‘Usually is beaten’ is a pretty badly-worded definition. At first I thought ‘hollow’ = ‘drum’ was a second definition, but I think the intention is that a drum for beating will have a holow interior.
19 BLANC (= ‘mountain’) + MANGE (= ‘ disease’) – ‘Mouldy’ in the sense of ‘made in a mould’.
22 NICK-NACK; NICK + “KNACK”
23 LIMP + ID
26 MEANS; (NAMES)*
27 OVERTHROW; OVER (= ‘Concluded’) + TH (= ‘most of the’) + ROW (= ‘series’) – initially I suspected a mistake here, thinking that the definition was ’caused discomfiture’ in the wrong tense, but in fact ’caused’ is a link word and ‘discomfiture’ is the nounal definition.
28 CLEANSE; (SEE + L + CAN)* – the jump from ‘student’ to L is questionable crosswordese; then having to anagram it is stretching things.
29 BAR MAID – not very good.

Down
1 CAST-OFF – this should have been given as (4-3), not (7).
2 RAPID; R + (PAID)*
3 WOODRUFF; “WOULD ROUGH” – nice homophone but the cryptic grammar doesn’t work: ‘sound’ is singular so ‘identify’ needs to be ‘identifies’, which would spoil the surface reading.
4 YET + I
5 CURTAILING; TAIL in CURING
6 RABBIT (2 defs) – a ‘rabbit’ is a very poor batsman in cricket. This is worth a watch.
7 EDUCATION; (CAUTION DUE – U)* – hmm. Without ‘Open’ the clue would work if you accept ‘formal’ as an anagram indicator, though I couldn’t hazard a guess as to how this word might have crept in accidentally. The only other reading I can see that ‘Open’ is intended as an anagram indicator, but I can’t see any justification for that.
8 ENTREES (2 defs) – ‘entrée’ is defined as ‘freedom of access’ or ‘admittance’, but can it really be pluralised?
13 FROLICSOME; (FOOLS + CRIME)* – a better clue.
15 ENUNCIATE; E,N + (IN ACUTE)* – I was very slow on this.
17 EMB(IT,T)ER – why ‘Will’?
18 DYNAMIC; rev. of MANY in C.I.D.
20 END + OWED – why ‘to one’?
21 UNISON – one-and-a-half definitions, the half referring to musical pitch.
24 PARMA; PA + (ARM)*
25 HERB (hidden) – decent clue. A ‘simple’ is a medicinal plant.

9 comments on “ST 4350 (Sun 11 Oct) – Miseducation”

  1. 35 minutes. I had the same question marks against DRUM at 19ac and ENTREES at 8dn. I also wondered about ID = fish at 23ac but I’ve just found it in Chambers as an alternative to IDE.
  2. Hmmm – now I got all mad last Sunday because in the printable online version the clue to 28 was…

    Breaking seal can remove dirt (7), but I guess there was a different clue in the live or paper version?

    1. I printed the online ‘Print’ version on Thursday, I think, and the clue to 28ac read:

      See student can cunningly remove dirt (7)

      I wonder when this was changed? Anybody got a paper version?

      1. Yes, I’ve got the paper version and it is just as George says. I got the answer and I’ve only just realised that the anagram does not work. Maybe I should get a job as a ST setter.
        1. Thanks. I don’t suppose you could tell us what the paper clue to 3 down was? (See jerrywh’s comment below.)
          1. It’s bin day today but I’ve just rescued the paper from the bin. The clue says “Would harsh sound heard identify the bird?” It’s funny that none of us noticed that woodruff is not a bird
            1. Bin-raking was above and beyond the call of duty – thank you! What a shocker, again; presumably the setter was misled by ‘ruff’.

              (In my defence, the version I downloaded had ‘plant’, so it must have been corrected by then. In all honesty, though, I can’t be sure I’d have noticed.)

      2. Ditto – like George’s version and lennyco’s. To be honest, I hadn’t noticed the anagram didn’t work, which shows how much attentio I pay to the Sunday puzzle (which is about as much as it currently deserves).
  3. The “Bulletin Board” page of the Times (a place I hardly visit any more, because most of my posts are censored, for reasons I cannot begin to guess) has the following, dated 12 October:
    “There were two errors in the Sunday Times cryptic crossword number 4350. Clue 28 Across now reads ‘See student can cunningly remove dirt (7)’ and 3 Down ‘Would harsh sound heard identify the plant? (8)’. The online version has been corrected.”

    ‘Nuff said…

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