ST 4359 (Sun 13 Dec) – Doctor No-no

Author   talbinhoPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Solving time: 4:08

Better from me this week after some poor recent efforts, and a better crossword too; 16ac is terrible, 15dn needs some work and 4dn is dubious but otherwise the clues are pretty good.

Not too much else to say, but if the intro is too short the across clues get indented so I’ll fill a bit more space by adding that I hope England hold out for a draw today against South Africa, especially after Stuart Broad’s dismissal on Friday which was a disgrace.

* = anagram, “X” = sounds like ‘X’.

Across
4 MASTODON; O + DON (= ‘professor’) after MAST (= ‘pole’)
8 SERENE; SE[e] + RENE [Magritte]
9 RED PANDA; NAP in ADDER, all reversed – very good, I thought.
10 COMPLAIN[t]
11 LET + HAL – Hal being Henry V, formerly ‘Prince Hal’, a crossword staple.
12 TERRA(P)IN – ‘is good for’ is very wordy as a link phrase between wordplay and definition.
13 GARLAND’S – the diva being Judy Garland, probably most famous for playing Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz.
16 GUJERATI; rev. of JUG, + (IRATE)* – awful. Using ‘doctor’ as an imperative anagram indicator is fine, but not after the word to be anagrammed and certainly not after a linking preposition as well (‘by’ in this case).
19 CARDAMOM; (DRACO M[alfoy])* around A,M[uggle] – pretty good. I’m not really into the boy Potter but I’m sure this reference (which isn’t necessary to solve the clue) would be understood by most, even if it’s not as widely known as, say, the fact that Liverpool play in red. Mind you, after yesterday’s debacle at Portsmouth they must wish they played in those invisible shirts that Man United had a few years ago.
21 LITTLE; LIT (= ‘bed’ in French) + (LET)*
23 NO-FRILLS; (L FLORINS)* – nice anagram.
24 BONA FIDE (cryptic definition) – fairly transparent, and might have benefited from some wordplay to help the misdirection.
25 SILVER – I didn’t understand this when solving and thought it might be a reference to Long John Silver. I now understand that in the ‘centre of cage’ are the letters AG which ‘symbolically’ (as ‘Ag’) indicate the element silver.
26 S(N)APPERS

Down
1 DE(MOT)ED – another decent clue.
2 TEMPERATE; ATE (= ‘irritated’) after TEMPER (= ‘season’)
3 REVAMP; REV + A + M.P.
4 MORNING SICKNESS – I initially thought the online clue to this was mangled and missing the first word (‘I’?). Now I wonder if ‘am’ is supposed to suggest ‘morning’, which just about makes the clue work as a cryptic definition (reading ‘ill’ as a noun meaning ‘illness’), but I’m not sure I like this.
5 SADDLERS; (L + ADDRESS)*
6 OP ART; O + PART (= ‘quit’)
7 OLD MAID (2 defs) – referring to the card game.
14 ARMADILLO; rev. of R.A. + MAD + ILL + O[ld] – reminds me of this advert for Dime Bars.
15 WATER ICE; (WET I CARE)* – a bit of a mess.
17 UNICORN; (COIN)* in URN
18 GOA + LIES
20 REFUSE (2 defs) – every time I see this clue I think of ‘rot’/’rotate’ and have to come back to it.
22 TRAMP; rev. of MART, + P

14 comments on “ST 4359 (Sun 13 Dec) – Doctor No-no”

  1. 7:30 here, and at the time I thought you’d do it in under 5. Thanks for reminding me about the “invisible shirts” story. As a Saints fan that always cheers me up. For some reason I always confuse it with the time we beat them 6-3, but that was the season afterwards (96-97).
  2. Didn’t keep my copy of last week’s crossword so presumably I didn’t think it was too bad.

    Just to note that today’s ST cryptic is a Christmas Jumbo edition…

  3. The ellipsis links to the clue number for morning sickness. So 4…am clues Morning. I probably only got this because I saw Araucaria do something similar a few days earlier.

    Otherwise this was fairly simple and refreshingly free of errors and howlers. I thought Diva’s bloomers was just a feeble CD so thanks to Talbinho for pointing out that it is a reasonable DD although I would balk at describing Judy Garland as a diva.

    There is a mini-theme of foreign words in this puzzle with French word, continental bed and the Roman phrase

  4. 45 minutes with one query against 15 which I solved from the anagrist but couldn’t make sense of and still don’t like it.

    Learning that there was a missing ellipsis at 3dn explains the doubts I had about 4dn.

  5. 7:59 for me. Despite the straightforward wordplay in 9ac, I made heavy weather of RED PANDA, an animal I don’t recall hearing of before.

    I wasn’t nearly as worried by 16ac as you. I don’t understand the objection to “by”, which I took to mean “next to”, and I then just read “doctor” as a parenthetic imperative telling the solver to doctor the preceding word (“irate”) before placing it next to GUJ.

    1. Hi Tony,

      I have no objection to ‘by’ per se (‘Jug knocked over by irate doctored’ would be fine, although the surface reading doesn’t then make sense). It’s just that if the anagram indicator is imperative then the grammar of the clue doesn’t make sense to me; it’s like saying ‘The carrots are chopped beside boil the kettle’ or something. Removing the preposition (‘Jug knocked over irate doctored’) makes more sense with the solver inserting an implicit pause or semi-colon after ‘over’.

      Anyway, very interesting to read your viewpoint – and perhaps an indication of how things have changed over the years. I was recently given, as a very thoughtful ‘thank-you’ present, a book about the history of the Telegraph crossword with a lot of older puzzles – I’ve only looked at a couple so far but it’s fascinating to see the ways in which the style and conventions of clueing have developed.

      Happy Christmas, and all the best for the new year,

      Neil

      1. Having first attempted the Times puzzle back in the 1950s (though I didn’t start doing it in earnest until the early 1960s), I suspect I have a comparatively high tolerance of clues which most people nowadays would consider at best iffy and at worst grossly unfair.

        I almost always enjoy the old crosswords that the Times occasionally republishes. I think there used to be a selection of these available on the Times Crossword Club’s website, but sadly they seem to have vanished.

        A Merry Christmas to you too, and good solving in the new year.

        Tony

  6. I could not find a reference to a GujErati language – only GujArati – in which case doctoring ‘irate’ does not work.
    1. Confusing, yes.
      If this helps it’s from Google webpage even before you get into the article.
      “Gujarati (also having been variously spelled as Gujerati, Gujarathi, Guzratee, Guujaratee, Gujrathi, and Gujerathi) is a modern Indo-Aryan language evolved …”

      Finally had to look it up.

      Bob in T.O.

      1. I don’t know what dictionaries the ST uses, but Chambers gives both spellings, though like you I think ‘Gujarati’ is more common.
  7. I can’t find “ate” for “irritated” anywhere, web or dictionaries.

    Apart from the pp of eat, it’s a Greek goddess (of foolhardiness and confusion), a pudding or an orchid.

    Can anyone explain?

    1. I think ‘eat’ is an Americanism for ‘upset’, ‘trouble’ or ‘irritate’, as in the phrase ‘What’s eating you?’; the Radiohead song Black Star contains the lines

      The troubled words of a troubled mind
      I try to understand what is eating you

      This method of indicating ATE comes up quite a lot and is worth remembering.

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