ST 4352 (Sun 25 Oct) – Fungus stricken

Author   talbinhoPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic

Solving time: About 6½ minutes until I got horribly stuck on 9ac, which I couldn’t solve until returning to the puzzle some time later.

I thought this puzzle was harder than average, and I nearly got 21dn wrong. A couple of the clues were very good, but there were several I didn’t like too.

Last week Amanda asked what a ‘charade’ was in a cryptic context; I belatedly posted an answer, so please see here if you missed it and were interested, and 15dn in this puzzle for an example.

* = anagram, “X” = sounds like ‘X’.

Across
1 RESIDES; (DESIRES)* – the surface reading uses ‘stays’ in the sense of a corset. ‘Desires new form’ is very awkwardly worded as far as the anagram indication goes.
5 SPANIEL; (NAP LIES)*
9 TOAD + STOOL – oh dear. I had a terrible mental block on this, probably initiated by seeing ‘T-A-S—-‘ and immediately thinking ‘trans-‘. Then I realised ‘Loathsome character’ might give ‘troll’, so looked for answers fitting ‘TRA-S-OLL’ or ‘T-A-SROLL’. I even wondered if ‘seat’ might be ‘arse’, giving ‘trarseoll’ as the unlikely answer. A couple of hours away from the puzzle cleared my head, but what a disaster.
10 HOOPS; rev. of S[outh] (= ‘direction’) + POOH (= ‘bear’) – I was distracted here by knowing of the existence of a horsey word meaning ‘turn to the left’ beginning with H. This turns out to be ‘hie’, as opposed to ‘hup’ (which means to turn right), and I should have realised that this was too obscure for the Sunday Times puzzle.
11 NEEDLE (cryptic definition) – ‘rent’ here being a rip or tear.
12 CORNICHE; (INCH)* in CORE – unless I have midunderstood this, ‘overtaking’ is an anagram indicator here, which is terrible. Using ‘of’ as a link word makes this clue even worse.
14 EMULSIFIER; (LIFE I’M SURE)*
16 PLUS (2 defs)
18 EDAM; (MADE)* – not a bad &lit, although the fact that the anagram is just a reversal detracts slightly.
19 APOTHEOSIS; A + rev. of OP[us] (= ‘work’), + THE (= ‘article’) + (IS SO)* – deification or glorification, from the Greek theos meaning ‘a god’.
22 EMACIATE; rev. of (I CAME), + ATE – the intention here is that ‘I withdrew’ = ‘I came back’ = (I CAME) backwards, but this really needs a question mark or something.
23 FENCER (2 defs) – ‘foil’ as in the fencing sword.
26 ABHOR; AB (= able-seaman = ‘tar’) + H[ot] + O,R (first letters of ‘on road’)
27 IN FORM + ANT – ‘gives us the gen’ is another dreadful definition.
28 LADYBUG; LADY (= ‘female’) + BUG (= ‘spy’)
29 RALEIGH; “RALLY” – Sir Walter. This is a better clue, given the misleading military context of ‘marshal’.

Down
1 RETINUE; R.E. (= ‘Royal Engineers’) + rev. of UNIT + [th]E – ‘the rear’ for E?
2 SPARE (2 defs)
3 DISC + LOSE – I carelessly wrote in ‘discover’ here initially.
4 SCOT – ‘He’ indicating that the answer is a man’s name, and ‘without paying’ as in ‘to get off scot-free’.
5 SILHOUETTE; (HOTEL SUITE)* – very good anagram.
6 ATHENS; A (= ‘article’) + THE + N,S (= ‘poles’)
7 ISOSCELES (cryptic definition) – as a triangle with two sides of equal length. The clue doesn’t really make sense, though; ‘this figure’ suggests that the answer is a noun.
8 LESSEES; LESS + “EASE”
13 OFFPUTTING; N.G. (= ‘no good’) after OFF (= ‘bad’) + PUTTI (= ‘little cherubs’)
15 UNA BASHED – a classic charade.
17 CEREBRAL; C + (BEER)* + R + AL[l] – the ‘for’ in the clue spoils the cryptic reading.
18 EYEBALL (cryptic definition) – my favourite clue in this puzzle.
20 SCRATCH (2 defs) – to play off ‘scratch’ means to have zero handicap in golf.
21 MIDRIB; rev. of BIRD after M1 – I thought ‘something on a leaf’ might be ‘grub’, so had ‘migrub’ in here, hoping it might be a bird I didn’t know. Fortunately I looked for a better answer.
24 COAT + I
25 AFAR; A + rev. of R.A.F. (= ‘force’)

5 comments on “ST 4352 (Sun 25 Oct) – Fungus stricken”

  1. 5:29 for me after a fumbling start. I thought this was rather easier than usual, and can’t see any reason why I wouldn’t have broken 4:00 in my heyday.

    I agree with you about 12ac: “overtaking” as an anagram indicator is a bit much even for me.

    The other clue I wasn’t too keen on was 4dn. I don’t think your explanation holds, since surely the man’s name is always spelled “Scott” (as in Scott Fitzgerald), while a Scot can be either male or female.

    I too put in DISCOVER for 3dn – strange we should both make the same daft mistake.

  2. It’s always comforting when I have the same reaction as the experts do, as with the ‘nich’ in ‘corniche’. The only thing I could think of ex post facto was that overtaking involves moving ahead of, hence i-n becomes n-i; but that would justify ‘cnih’ and ‘hnic’ as well.

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