ST 4356 (Sun 22 Nov) – Chapel of discord

Author   talbinhoPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Solving time: about 10-15 mins with distractions.

A strange puzzle with some terrible clues (e.g. CHAPEL at 5ac) and some excellent ones, of which my favourite was (appropriately) the one to ROLE MODEL at 15dn.

I don’t fully understand either 23ac (MANGO?) or 19dn (ENGINE?) and would welcome explanations.

* = anagram, “X” = sounds like ‘X’.

Across
1 ROSE + BUSH
5 CHAPEL; CHAP (= ‘man’) + rev. of LE – awful clue. ‘Churchman’ has to be split, ‘turn’ is either the wrong part of speech or (if intended as a verb) plural instead of singular and ‘to’ is redundant.
9 BUTTONED; BUT + (NOTED)* – another grating nounal anagram indicator.
10 S(AMOS)A
12 LORDS (2 defs)
13 MADDENING; M + ADD + rev. of NINE + G[rand] – a nice breakdown, although ‘thousand’ for ‘G’ is a bit tenuous; ‘G’ for ‘Grand’ usually means $1000, I think, which is a bit of an indirect step from just ‘thousand’.
14 HEXAMETRICAL; HEX (= ‘curse’) + R in (A CLIMATE)*
18 HAIR FOLLICLE (cryptic definition)
21 CALIBRATE; (BACTERIAL)* – marvellous anagram, new to me.
23 MANGO; N.G. (= ‘no good’) in [Chairman] MAO – is this correct? And if so, why is ‘product’ the definition? The answer may be wrong, but if it’s right then I wonder if either there’s a word missing or the clue was supposed to say ‘produce’ (although that would still be pretty vague).
24 IONIAN; I[nformation] + ON + IAN (= ‘Scotsman’)
25 L + AND + MINE – why ‘behind’?
26 GASKET; [b]ASKET after G [force] – ‘a layer of packing material’, hence ‘sandwich filling’.
27 BELL TENT; BET around (LL + rev. of TEN)

Down
1 R.I. + BALD – ‘unlocked’ as in ‘having no locks of hair’.
2 S(AT)IRE
3 BOOK + SH + ELF
4 STEAM RAILWAY; (MAY SAIL WATER)*
6 HEAVE; HE + AVE[nue]
7 PRO + VIN + CE
8 LEAF GOLD; (GOLF LEAD)* – ‘lead’ here seems to be doing double duty as both part of the anagram and the anagram indicator.
11 ADHESIVE TAPE; T.A. (= ‘soldiers’) + P.E. (= ‘exercise’) + (SIDE HAVE)* – all the bits are there but the clue doesn’t make much sense.
15 ROLE MODEL; ROLE (= ‘part played’) + M (= 1000 = many) + (DOLE)* – probably the best clue in the puzzle, with an accurate cryptic indication and beautifully misleading definition (‘[For] example’), where the initial ‘For’ is a link word meaning ‘For the answer’.
16 SHOCKING (2 defs)
17 AIRLINES (2 defs)
19 ENGINE (cryptic definition) – like 23ac I am entirely unsure about this answer. The clue is ‘A driver of seventeen (6)’, which I presume read ‘A driver of 17 (6)’ in the paper version, and clue 17 has the answer AIRLINES. I suppose the surface reading is supposed to suggest the age of the driver, but I don’t think you could really say that an engine drives an airline in any sense; an airliner, yes.
20 FOREST (hidden) – I can’t say I’m a massive fan of extra words in ‘hidden’-style clues, such as ‘autumn’ and ‘damage’ here, but the cryptic indication is certainly accurate so I don’t hate them as much as some.
22 BRACE; B[a]R + ACE

9 comments on “ST 4356 (Sun 22 Nov) – Chapel of discord”

  1. Well, it was a pretty standard ST cryptic this one, wasn’t it? Not uninteresting but no obvious signs of editorial standards or values, and a good sprinkling of truly bizarre clues..
    I had the same answers – MANGO and ENGINE – as you did. My hypotheses are that the mango clue has been edited or misprinted and is not what was intended, and that indeed engine, as in jet engine perhaps, is meant to be defined as what drives airlines. This is just barely defensible in the sense that airlines do own (or rather, lease 🙂 jet engines as components of their planes..
  2. I think the anagram indicator is “playing”. As far as I can see “leaf gold” does not exist. It’s “gold leaf”.
  3. There is a perfectly logical explanation for all this. Rupert Murdoch has personally taken upon himself the responsibility of setting the ST crossword and no-one dares to tell him that his crosswords are rubbish.

    I only started to do the ST puzzle to practice speed-solving. When the answers bear little logical relationship to the clues it becomes more difficult to solve quickly. Several of my answers this week were on the basis that it couldn’t be anything else.

    In the mango clue, I think product is a misprint for produce but, as Talbinho says, that scarcely improves the clue.

    As Jack says, there does not seem to be any dictionary justification for the phrase “leaf gold”. If you Google leaf gold, it does not come up with any sentence where it is used.

    Sandwich filling for gasket and covered quarter for bell tent are pretty tenuous. Also I think airlines are a method of inflation not of inflation control. In answer to Talbinho’s question, the printed clue to engine is the same as online “A driver of seventeen?” The clue to chapel is just awful.

  5. I’m glad, as always, when what puzzled me puzzled the pros; my guess as to MANGO was that it’s NG (useless) inside MAO (the Marxist). But mango=product?
  6. I somehow managed to miss the very explanation that I uselessly just submitted; this day is not starting well. Please disregard my previous message, and probably my next few for good measure.
  7. Typical shoddy ST though I did think that “Churchman” and “Sandwich filling” had an element of cleverness about them in a crossword that totally disregards the rules of cryptics. A gasket is a sandwich filling of sorts, more so in the last forty years with the invention of anaerobic sealants. The parts are coated with a paste which then hardens in the absence of air.

    I find it frustrating that such loose clue setting makes it impossible to introduce newcomers to the pastime.

  8. one of the worst x-words, in my opinion. Was the editor fast asleep? GIve me the D Telegraph…..
  9. This puzzle has not improved after 10 years. I had the same problems with the clues as above with my last two the inexplicable MANGO at 23a and ENGINE at 19d but I am comforted that I guessed the same answers as everyone else.

    I did get one wrong at 14a where I had METAHEXRICAL instead of HEXAMETRICAL. I have to admit that the latter even sounds more like a word than my attempt but I was convinced from the clue that the CLIMATE anagram was at the extremes of the answer. It turns out that the CURSE = HEX precedes the CLIMATE anagram with the R inside.
    Curses! Or is that Hexes?

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