ST 4362 (Sun 3 Jan) – Power corrupts

Author   talbinhoPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Solving time: 6:12

Not too bad overall but I have doubts over ‘of power’ in 4dn (YIELDING) and ‘documents’ in 5dn (TOTEMS). I think EMOLUMENT caused me the most trouble because of the dodgy use of ‘hidden’ as an anagram indicator. (Please correct this if I’ve missed things, although I’m afraid I won’t be able to reply this week.)

* = anagram, “X” = sounds like ‘X’.

Across
1 RED SKY AT NIGHT – …shepherd’s delight (‘setting’ in the sense of the sun). The wording of this clue suggests that it should be shepherds’ delight (i.e. plural) but Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable has it in the singular, as do various online sources.
10 EMOLUMENT; (MOLE)* + U + “MEANT” – I can’t see how ‘hidden’ works as an anagram indicator.
11 OLIVE; (I LOVE)* – Olive Oyl, Popeye’s inamorata.
12 L + OUSE
13 DAM + NATION
14 NAISSANT – in heraldry this word is used to describe an animal on a coat of arms with only the forepart shown above a horizontal division; cf e.g. rampant, passant.
16 CO(M.B.)AT
19 VENICE; (VINE)* + C.E. – ‘English church’ is unusually specific for CE.
20 CAMSHAFT; (MACH[ine’s] FAST)*
22 ROUGH DEAL; Spoonerism of “DUFF REEL” – this was almost too obvious, I started by thinking of synonyms for ‘duff’ and ‘reel’ before seeing the answer.
24 EPSOM – ‘course’ as in racecourse rather than a course of a meal, for a change.
25 INTER (cryptic definition) – nice wording, though ‘grave’ was a bit of a giveaway.
26 UNCERTAIN; (CAR IN TUNE)* – awful definition (‘Are you sure?’).
27 PENNY-FARTHING

Down
2 ELOCUTION; (COOL TUNE I)*
3 SOUSE; SO + USE
4 YIELDING; (LIED)* in YING? – the only explanation I can see here is that ‘first year’ here gives Y and ‘of power’ = ‘in government’ = IN G, but that’s stretched in the extreme. Perhaps the clue was supposed to read ‘in government’, or perhaps I’m missing something?
5 TOTE + MS – can the plural ‘documents’ give MS (‘manuscript’)? (The plural ‘manuscripts’ is abbreviated to MSS.)
6 ISOLATORS; (TO SAILORS)*
7 H[oliday], + IT in A1 – ‘holiday, start’ is rather botched.
8 WELL I NEVER DID (one def, one literal reading)
9 REIN (= ‘check’) + STATEMENT (= ‘financial summary’)
15 SACCHARIN; (IN CAR CASH)* – another mess, with the a hyphen joining the anagram indicator and wordplay and the indicator itself (‘Trade’) being dubious.
17 BOAT + SWAIN – using ‘boat’ in the wordplay here is very weak.
18 CABLE CAR (cryptic definition) – this works quite well (‘rising’ in the sense of a ski-lift, perhaps).
21 RE-TURF; (FRUIT TREE – TIE)*
23 [a]UNTIE – ‘a loss’ meaning ‘loss of [the letter] a’.
24 EARTH; (HEART)*

14 comments on “ST 4362 (Sun 3 Jan) – Power corrupts”

  1. I seem to recall being faulted, in the clue contest, for requiring HM to be deleted when the H and M were in separate words; is this another daily/Sunday difference?
    I’ve always heard/seen ‘Red sky at night, SAILOR’S delight’.
    1. If you think this is bad, cop this from today’s soi-disant “Sunday Times” (#666) in the Weekend Australian:

      Troublesome guest signs in — inn is dropping hint (7)

      Apparently this stuff is written by the same mob as the UK Sunday Times puzzle; so you can safely assume that standard Times rules are non-applicable.

      1. I suspect the Sunday Times and the Weekend Australian crosswords aren’t the only ones to come up with this sort of thing, as it’s a familiar usage. You can (sort of) justify it by applying “troublesome” to “guest signs in” to give SUGGEST + “inn is”, and then dropping the “inn is”.
        1. Kevin’s point (above) was re the deletion elements being in different words. Hence the example.
          1. Same justification: applying “put out” to “fruit tree” gives RETURF + “tie”; taking “tie off” leaves RETURF (= to grass again). I’ve come across this sort of construction many times in the past and have no problem with it.
          2. With Tony on this one – it’s just a question of understanding what words the anagram and deletion could apply to, and choosing the right ones – i.e. getting your “algebra brackets” in the right place. Without seeing the “HM” clue I can’t say whether the clue judge concerned was imposing different rules.
            1. I’m fine with Tony’s analysis, but what I really wanted to confirm is whether, as a general rule, I can expect a setter NOT to do something like ‘homage after queen departs’ in order to get O,A,G,&E.(Not my clue, mind; it wasn’t quite as bad as that.)
  2. I think I parsed this as Y(ear) IN G(as in G-force, hence power). I don’t like it, but it is a step up from ‘government’.
    8down: I wrote the bulletin board twice, pointing out that this isn’t an 8-letter word. They silently changed the (8) to (13); do they think ‘wellineverdid’ is like ‘sonofagun’? or Mehitabel’s ‘wotthehell wotthehell’?
    1. I had a similar experience with 8dn, which was clued in my edition of the paper as a 13-letter word and in the online version as an 8-letter word (or possibly the other way round, I can’t now remember which). I e-mailed the bulletin board pointing out that both versions were wrong and that (4,1,5,3) was what seemed to be required. About two days later I received a reply thanking me for pointing out the error and assuring me that (8) had now been changed to (13)! I e-mailed again saying that this was still wrong but heard no more.
      1. Frustration understood – I’ve tried passing information about this to a suitable contact at the paper.
        1. Thanks, Peter. To be fair, I think the online version was eventually changed yet again to read correctly. But it remains that the Crossword department is nearly always extraordinarily slow to correct these sorts of errors (a failing which it gives me no pleasure to point out as an old Times man myself). Indeed, it’s astonishing that such mistakes are not detected before they find their way into the paper. I presume that xwords are compiled many days if not weeks in advance of publication, so deadline pressure, the usual excuse for misprints etc., ought not to come into play.

  3. Every week (almost – there are good ones, sometimes) I get irritated by this crossword, but I can’t make it last until the solution appears and I can post here 🙂
    If nothing else, I guess it provides a regular reminder of just how good the daily cryptic is. And today’s is actually not too bad, if on the easy side..
  4. 7:52 for me. I quite liked 1ac until I read your explanation of its flaw. (Actually I still quite like it.)

    I wasn’t too keen on 4D, not only because of “documents” (plural) being used for MS (singular), but also because I don’t like “pole” being used for TOTEM (I can be picky too occasionally :-).

Comments are closed.