ST 4354 (Sun 8 Nov) – Glitter bug

Author   talbinhoPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Solving time: 4:14, one mistake (‘flitter’ for GLITTER at 18dn).

Another reasonable puzzle – not totally accurate but mostly explainable to beginners without requiring too many apologies for ‘crosswordese’ or poor clues. Just a little general knowledge added to the difficulty slightly, and I thought the SCOWLING/CHOCTAW combination in the top left was probably the hardest bit. My silly error at 18dn was ironic given that a similar word, ‘twitter’, was my downfall at the recent Times Crossword Championship.

* = anagram, “X” = sounds like ‘X’.

Across
4 NEGATIVE; E.G. in NATIVE – a ‘native’ can mean a native oyster.
8 SHELVE; (HE’S) + LV (= 55) + E (= ‘note’)
9 INSCRIBE; IN (= ‘fashionable’) + SCRIBE (= ‘writer’)
10 SCOWLING; SCOW (= ‘boat’) + LING (= ‘fish’)
11 AVOWAL; A VOW + AL[l]
12 CATACOMB; A COMB (= ‘A thorough search’) after CAT (= ‘Tom’)
13 OPERETTA; (A TREETOP)*
16 BACHELOR; (HOLE CRAB)* – a poor clue with no real definition.
19 LEADENLY; LELY around A DEN – Peter Lely was a 17th-century portrait painter.
21 [blue]BOTTLE
23 NUMERATE; (RUN TEAM)* around E (= ‘[compass] point’) – ‘without’ meaning ‘around’. The definition here is dubious (‘can reckon’ is not the same as ‘able to reckon’) and the ‘to’ necessary for the surface reading is superfluous to the cryptic reading.
24 NAVIGATE; (GAIT)* in NAVE
25 TANDEM (cryptic definition)
26 FOULNESS (2 defs) – the MOD-owned island off the coast of Essex; probably tricky for overseas solvers, but at least the first definition is straightforward.

Down
1 CHOCTAW; CHOW around (CAT)* – good clue, but not easy. I first came across this word as the ice-skating jump rather than the American tribe.
2 SLOW MARCH; MARCH (= ‘several weeks’) after (OWLS)*
3 MERINO (hidden) – nice surface.
4 NEIGHBOURLINESS; (HUGE BIN LINERS SO)*
5 GOSSAMER; (SOME RAGS)*
6 TORSO – I think this clue is just saying that the answer is a meaning of the word ‘trunk’ other than that sported by an elephant, but I may be missing something.
7 VIBRANT; rev. of TV around (BRAIN)*
14 ENDEARING; (GRENADE IN)*
15 ALIENATE; (IN TEA)* in ALE – ‘beer’s held’ has to be read as ‘beer has held’ for this clue to make any sense. Even then the definition is clumsily worded, with the final ‘it’ being superfluous.
17 AVOCADO; [h]AVOC + ADO – I liked this breakdown which I can’t recall seeing before.
18 G + LITTER – dunce’s cap donned for this, where I entered ‘flitter’. Using ‘force’ for G (as in G-force) is iffy, but I can’t really complain because if I’d seen the answer I’d have known it was right (although thinking about it, can ‘glare’ and ‘glitter’ really mean quite the same thing?). Instead I spent a while looking for alternatives for ‘progeny’.
20 ADMITS; (AMID)* + T.S.
22 TWILL; T (= ‘time’) + WILL (= ‘is certain to’) – another clue where the wording isn’t quite right, with ‘be’ being there just to fit the surface reading.

5 comments on “ST 4354 (Sun 8 Nov) – Glitter bug”

  1. Apologies – the lateness of this is my fault – I was sent a version to post on Sunday and clean forgot.
    1. No problem, Peter, but thanks anyway! It’s really LiveJournal’s fault for lacking a ‘Schedule Post’ facility, but hopefully this will change at some point.
  2. Quite straightforward. The only problem for me was 1D. I did not know the Native American or the skating movement. Fortunately though, I had heard the Ballad of Billie Joe and Choctaw Ridge was where Billy Joe MacAllister jumped off the Tallahatchee Bridge.
  3. Re 18d:

    Glitter: To sparkle with light; to shine with a brilliant and broken light or showy luster; to gleam; as, a glittering sword.
    Glare: To shine with a bright, dazzling light.

    Both from Webster’s 1913 edition via onelook.com

    1. I appreciate that these are similar, but can they really be equivalent? A ‘glare’ is a continuous light which might blind or dazzle and has negative connotations, while ‘glitter’ is used in a positive sense and means a sparkly (not continuous) light.

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