ST 4371 (Sun 7 Mar) – Tung tied

Author   talbinhoPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Solving time: 4:06

This puzzle would have been improved if the setter/editor had consulted the periodic table (for WOLFRAM at 15dn). The definition of ODIN at 11ac is also extremely dubious.

This blog would have been improved if it had been posted earlier – sorry it’s a bit late.

* = anagram, “X” = sounds like ‘X’.

Across
1 ALTON TOWERS; (LOOTERS WANT)* – a theme park in Staffordshire. The anagram indicator doesn’t really work because ‘destroy’ is cannot be an instransitive verb.
9 FOOL (2 defs)
10 NASTURTIUMS; (AUTUMN STIRS)* – like 1ac, a strangely worded anagram but hey, at least the letters are correct.
11 ODIN; rev. of DO (= ‘party’), + IN (= ‘home’) – but Odin was mythological, and no more an ‘old Scandinavian’ than Bugs Bunny was an old American.
14 MATTHEW (cryptic definition) – referring to the Bible.
16 ANCHOR; AN + CHOR[e] – ‘earth’ = E as in plug wiring, I think. It’s in Chambers, anyway.
17 LOUNGE – the definition appears to be ‘relax’, and I think the rest of the clue is a reference to the phrase ‘lounge room’.
18 BULLETPROOF VEST (cryptic definition) – a pun on ‘shell’ as in ‘explosive’.
19 OYSTER; (STORY)* around E
21 CAN,CAN – ‘Tintin’ needs a question mark really.
22 DECORUM; [polic]E + CO, all in DRUM – apparently ‘drum’ is slang for ‘house’, which I didn’t know.
23 S(L)AP
26 HIGHFALUTIN; (LATIN IF HUGH)*
27 LIED (2 defs) – a German word for a song.
28 CHARLEMAGNE; (HEN + CARAMEL)*

Down
2 LEAD (2 defs)
3 OTTO; OTT (= ‘extravagant’) + O[il] – an attempted &lit, but is this oil extravagant?
4 TAR,TAR – the American spelling of the sauce, though this ought to be indicated.
5 WHISTLER’S MOTHER; (L + E.R.) in WHIST, + SMOTHER – the wordplay is good but I can make no sense of the surface reading.
6 ROMMEL (hidden)
7 GOLDEN PERCH; (RED CHOP GLEN) – bizarre punctuation, with a dash where a comma (or nothing) would suffice.
8 CLANDESTINE; CLAN, + EST in DINE – decent clue.
12 CAR BOOT SALE (cryptic definition) – also good.
13 ECCLES CAKES – Spike Milligan played Eccles in The Goons.
14 MONEYED; MO (= ‘A short time’) + (NEEDY)*
15 WOLFRAM – the wordplay seems to suggest that Tn (TIN minus ‘I’) is the chemical symbol for Wolfram. It isn’t, and never has been, despite wolfram being generally known as tungsten. (‘Tungsten’ means ‘heavy stone’ in Swedish but is the word for scheelite, a mineral yielding tungsten; the element itself is ‘wolfram’ in Swedish.)
20 RELISH (2 defs)
21 CU + RATE
24 PUMA; PUM[p] + A
25 FINN (2 defs) – Twain’s hero being Huckleberry Finn.

5 comments on “ST 4371 (Sun 7 Mar) – Tung tied”

  1. 8:54 for me, for a pleasant-enough puzzle (bar the apparent misclue for WOLFRAM).

    The clue to LOUNGE makes use of an obscure meaning of “venue”: “a hit or thrust in fencing (obs.)” (to quote Chambers (2003)) = LUNGE. I expect I’ve come across it in a Listener puzzle, but I don’t think it’s entirely fair in a run-of-the-mill puzzle as the ST is presumably supposed to be.

  2. A pleasant enough solve, but as the son of a scheelite miner and a major in chemistry was utterly gob-smacked by the Tn = tungsten howler. How did that get past the editor?
  3. It is good to see a metallic element in the crossword – despite the Mendeleevian mistake. Despite its Swedish roots in nomenclature it can be found associated with Tin – (Sn) another metal with a symbol that does not match it’s English name – in the mines of Cornwall. Helpfully, the mineral containing the Tungsten is called Wolframite – the other main source of W other than the Scheelite mentioned by our esteemed blogmeister.

    Thanks to Tony for Venue = Lunge from Fencing – I had no idea. Well done to Vinyl1 for Alton Towers. I took the kids there once but these sort of places are known as “Theme Parks” so the literal “funfair” was not so obvious .

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