ST 4376 (Sun 11 Apr) – Cholo victory

Author   talbinhoPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic

Solving time: a very tired 13 mins, one mistake (8dn)

There were some excruciating clues in this puzzle, as well as several difficult answers such as BARATHEA and CHOLO (which I managed to work out) and DAGUERROTYPES (which I didn’t).

* = anagram, “X” = sounds like ‘X’.

Across
1 BACCALAUREATE; (CABLE A CURATE)* around A
10 AFTERDAMP; AFTER + D + A M.P. – how does ‘death’ = D? Possibly via confusion with ‘died’.
11 PABLO (cryptic definition) – presumably intending the solver to read ‘address’ as ‘speech’.
12 UPPED (hidden)
13 SHIPYARDS; S + HIP + YARDS – my best suggestion here is that ‘British queens’ is an allusion to ships such as the QE2, but I think ‘queens’ would need a capital for that.
14 RELEARNS; (REAR LENS)*
16 GEYSER (2 defs) – my last solve, as I didn’t know the second definition (‘an apparatus that heats domestic water as the tap is turned on’).
19 OTTERS; (SET TO)* rev. of (SET TO) around R [corrected] – awfully worded with two clashing verbs (‘are’ and ‘return’). There was also a rogue full stop in the online version.
20 BARATHEA; (ARAB)* + THE + A (= ‘best’) – a soft fabric. Using ‘best’ for ‘A’ isn’t really cricket – it needs to be ‘best grade’ or something.
22 YUGOSLAVS; Y[o]U + GO (= ‘turn’) + SLAV[e]S – bizarre punctuation: the question mark at the end has no useful purpose that I can see but there should be one after Serbs (since not all Yugoslavs are Serbs) instead of the exclamation mark, for which again I can’t see a reason.
24 CHOLO (hidden) – not a word I’ve seen before. It seems to be a general term of abuse in Latin America.
25 ENEMA; (MEAN)* after E (= ‘drug’) – ‘going’ in the sense of ‘when you’ve got to go’.
26 TOOLMAKER; rev. of LOOT + MAKER (= ‘producer’) – using ‘maker’ in the wordplay here is very poor.
27 ASCENSIONTIDE; (SADIE’S NOT NICE)* – this took me a few checking letters to unravel.

Down
2 AUTOPILOT; AUTO (= ‘car’) + PI (= ‘very good’) + LOT (= ‘parking space’) – the ‘George’ on an aircraft is its autopilot. Whether this term is still in use, I’m not sure.
3 CURED; (CRUDE)*
4 LIAISING; (SAILING)* around I
5 UNPAID (cryptic definition) – this doesn’t work, it needs to say ‘Like bill…’ or similar.
6 EMPHYSEMA; E,M,P,H (initials) + (YES)* + MA
7 TI(B)ER – a flower being something that flows.
8 DAGUERROTYPES; (RAY’S GROUP TEED)* – not a word I knew, and I guessed ‘raguerdotypes’.
9 CONSERVATOIRE: (ERIN’S OVERCOAT)*
15 AEROSPACE; APACE around EROS – one of the better clues. Eros is the statuein Piccadilly Circus.
17 SCHOOLKID – another weak breakdown with ‘school’ used in virtually the same sense in the wordplay as in the answer, albeit as a verb rather than a noun.
18 MAESTOSO; MAE’S TO[r]SO
21 MANTIS; MAN + rev. of SIT – shockingly lose definition (‘when praying’).
23 GUESS – sort of two definitions but I thought this was poor.
24 COME + T

10 comments on “ST 4376 (Sun 11 Apr) – Cholo victory”

  1. As nearly as I can tell, there is no word ‘daguerrotype’, only ‘daguerrEotype’.
    1. The Concise Oxford has ‘also daguerrotype’. Chambers and Collins just have the daguerrEotype spelling.
  2. Thanx petebiddlecombe: Just my luck! I checked 7 dictionaries (including 2 Oxfords) and 2 thesauri with no ‘daguerrotype’ to be found. I was too lazy to fire up a computer which has the OED (from a ROM) on it. I should have, for there it was! Thanx again.
    1. This one got me too as the original French (from which we get the term) not only has another “e”, it’s acutely accentuated.
  3. 35 minutes. Never heard of CHOLO and I agree the clue to GUESS was weak. I’m afraid, apart from putting ? against 10ac I didn’t concern myself much about d=death. This is the Sunday Times after all and they have been guilty of far worse in the recent past.

    On 15, I understand that the Shaftesbury Memorial Fountain in Piccadilly Circus actually features a statue of Anteros, a much worthier character in legend than Eros his twin brother, and more suited to the commemoration of the noble efforts of the Earl.

    1. I agree on GUESS; the Americans say ‘guess’, they don’t necessarily believe guesses. ‘guess’ is one of the chestnuts of introductory linguistics texts, an example of a word that disappeared from British English but survived in the colonies. 19th-century British novelists and playwrights, whenever they had an American character, inevitably had him use ‘guess’, often unnaturally. Even Anthony Powell wasn’t above it. Do you folks still not use it as a verb?
      And surely ‘address’ in 11ac is not speech, but the intimate form of address; which is why I didn’t care much for the clue.
      1. OED citation, 1340: Fra þe poynt of þe erthe tille Saturnus Þe heghest planete may be gesced þus.

        So we’ve been using guess as a verb for a long time, just not using “I guess” as a common expression. But COED now just labels “I guess” as ‘informal’ rather than ‘US informal’, recording the fact that ‘I guess’ is no longer disctinctively American.

  4. Thank you – it is very helpful. Question – in 19 ac the symbol * for anagram was used for SET TO, but it is a straight reversal OTTES around R. Do you not distinguish between anagram and letters backwards, as in ‘return’?
    1. Sorry, this was a mistake – thanks very much for pointing it out, I’ve now corrected it in the blog.
  5. I found the superfluous ‘s in Arab’s very irritating.

    “Arab weaving the best cloth ” would have read much better.

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