ST 4361 (Sun 27 Dec) – Sofa so bad

Author   talbinhoPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Solving time: 4:59

Reasonably straightforward this week with accurate clues, although I think there is a mistake at 1dn. The four long (13-letter) answers are all decent anagrams.

* = anagram, “X” = sounds like ‘X’.

Across
1 SEAMSTRESS (cryptic definition)
6 SWAP; rev. of PAWS – a ‘swap’ being an ‘exchanged gift’.
9 FINAL; FINE with ‘A L (= 50)’ replacing E[ssex] – as I’m writing this, Essex’s opener (Alastair Cook) is some way from 50, being on just 8 while his opening partner Andrew Strauss has raced to 50 off 49 balls.
10 TOUCHDOWN; Spoonerism of “DUTCH TOWN” – nice.
12 STATION MASTER; (RATTIEST MAN SO)*
14 ASCRIBED; A + S[on] + CRIB + [th]E [lor]D
15 DEGREE (2 defs) – ‘award from Edinburgh’ referring to the university, and ‘Not much of a turn’ to one of the 360 degrees of a circle.
17 OR + PINE – this.
19 RUMOURED; RUM + OUR ED[itor]
21 ENTERTAINMENT; (TEN NATTIER MEN)*
24 HENRY FORD; HEN (= ‘poultry unit’) + RY (= ‘railway’) + FORD (= ‘railway crossing’) – ‘poultry unit’ seems a strange definition of HEN, and I wonder if ‘unit’ was left over from a previous version of the clue (the henry is the SI unit of inductance).
25 RONDO; RON + DO (= ‘party’) – I didn’t know the actor Ron Moody and to work this out from the rest of the clue.
26 TEAS; “TEASE”
27 FRANCHISEE; (CHIEF EARNS)*

Down
1 SOFA – I can only think that this was intended as a hidden answer and that the clue was supposed to read ‘persons of authority’ instead of ‘person of authority’. Maybe it will have been corrected online by the time you read this. Did anyone get the paper version?
2 AMNESIC; A + M + (SINCE)*
3 SALVATION ARMY; (MAY NO TRAVAILS)*
4 RETAILED – as in the game Pin The Tail On The Donkey.
5 SPURN – from Spurs.
7 WOOSTER; WOO (= ‘court’) + STER[n] – as in Bertie.
8 PEN-FRIENDS; P + (NERDS FINE)* – I initially wrote ‘pen-pushers’ in here, then realised it was wrong and changed it to ‘pen-finders’. Sharp.
11 HEAVEN ON EARTH; (A REV NO HEATHEN)*
13 EAT ONE’S HAT – a pork-pie being a type of hat.
16 TURNED ON; rev. of ‘No’ – wordplay in the answer, hence ‘by implication’ and the exclamation mark.
18 PETUNIA; PET (= ‘favourite’), + I in UNA (= ‘woman’)
20 RATINGS (2 defs)
22 AMOUR; A + M + O.U. + [tuto]R – the second use of ‘maiden’ for M in the down clues.
23 JOKE; JO + KE[en] – Jo of Little Women.

7 comments on “ST 4361 (Sun 27 Dec) – Sofa so bad”

  1. A sluggish 9:09 for me.

    I was slow to spot that 1D was a simple misclue (my assumption is the same as yours), and for some reason made heavy weather of FINAL.

    Worst was 15A, where I got it into my head that this was something to do with the Perrier Comedy Award, and wanted the answer to be something like PERRIE. Since my brother read medicine at Edinburgh, I really should have cottoned on to the university much more quickly!

  2. I was similarly baffled by 1dn.

    Also, note a mistake in today’s (typically bad) ST cryptic – 8dn is not (8) but (4,1,5,3)

  3. Safe as in SAFE SEAT would with a stretch make sense in last week’s.
    Saw the error in !D of today’s after sleeping on it. Chuffed I am.
  6. “Chief earns pots…..”

    Never encountered “pots” as an anagram signal before.

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