ST 4377 (Sun 19 Apr) – Return of the deadeye

[posted slightly early (by PB on Neil’s behalf) as I’m away for much of tomorrow and don’t want to rely on remembering to post in the morning]

Solving time: 5:51

A good puzzle with a sound grid, no major difficulties or obscurities, a couple of nice ‘&lits’ and plenty of ‘starter’ clues, e.g. obvious anagrams. 2dn caused me a lot more trouble than it should have.

* = anagram, “X” = sounds like ‘X’.

Across
1	SIDE TABLE; STABLE around (I’D + [wedg]E)
6	CADET; CAD + E.T. – ET for ‘extra-terrestrial’.
9	ADAGE; AD (= ‘notice’) + AGE[nda]
10	TURBULENT; UR (= ‘Old city’) + BUL[l] (= ‘beast cut short’) in TENT (= ‘temporary accommodation’)
11	ABERDEEN ANGUS; (DUNG AREA’S BEEN)* – very nice anagram.
14	SHE + RIFF
16	TIT RATE – titration is, I think, a method of determining the concentration of a solution by reacting it with another substance whose quantity and concentration is known, with some pH indicator used to show when the reaction is complete. The definition here (‘Use indicator maybe’) seems quite woolly, but perhaps a chemist reading this can clarify?
17	IN STORE; (TO RINSE)*
19	EMERALD; E.R. around ME (= ‘this person’) + A + L[or]D (= ‘lord heartless’)
21	CASH DISPENSER; (SHE’S SCARED PIN)* – another decent anagram.
24	RAIN DANCE; (INDRA CAN + [chang]E)*; &lit – not a bad ‘double-whammy’ clue, but the ‘ultimately’ is a bit forced. Indra is the Hindu god of rainfall.
26	TEMPO; rev. of (OP + MET)
27	MANES; MAN[ag]ES – a Latin word meaning the souls of dead loved ones (literally ‘the good men’, or something like that).
28	DISC + RED + IT

Down
1	SEAMANSHIP; (HE IS + SAMPAN)*, &lit – good clue. A sampan is one of these.
2	DEAD EYE (1 def, 1 literal def) – this took me a couple of minutes at the end; I spent too long thinking it was a double definition clue, but in fact the answer is DEADEYE (‘a top marksman’) whereas the wordplay leads to DEAD EYE (‘One cannot see’) which isn’t a ‘dictionary’ phrase or meaning so this is a simple charade rather than a true double definition.
3	T + READ
4	BUTTERFIELD; B[uild] + UTTER (= ‘say’) + FIELD – William Butterfield, who seems to have mostly designed churches but also Keble College (Oxford) and Exeter School.
5	EAR (2 defs)
6	COURGETTE; GET in COURT, + [jun]E
7	DEEP-SEA; DEE + P.S. (= ‘note’) + EA[ch]
8	TOTE[m]
12	ARTLESSNESS, referring to the centre (‘core’) of PARTY – rather cleverly worded, I thought.
13	TENDERFOOT; (NEED FOR TOT)*
15	IRONSIDES; I + RON’S + IDES – a nickname variously applied, including to Oliver Cromwell.
18	SECTION; SECT, + IN (= ‘home’) around (= ‘without’) O (= ‘love’)
20	ASSUMED; (SUE’S MAD)*
22	ESTER (hidden)
23	PRIM[ates]
25	NOD; rev. of DON – ‘to make a careless mistake through inattention’ (Chambers).

4 comments on “ST 4377 (Sun 19 Apr) – Return of the deadeye”

A slightly more respectable 6:25 for me for an enjoyable puzzle. I thought TITRATE was pretty much OK if you take “indicator” to mean the titre.

I suppose the sort of people who whinged about the inclusion of BURNE-JONES in a Times cryptic will whinge about the inclusion of BUTTERFIELD here, but as far as I’m concerned he’s fair game. I suspect All Saints, Margaret Street is the nearest of his churches to where I live in Ealing, at any rate it’s the one that springs immediately to mind (it’s not far from the West End Blood Donor Centre, so anyone interested could combine a visit to the church with giving blood :-).

Butterfield was new to me, but I certainly have no intention of whingeing (of course, as a Murcan, I don’t whinge anyway, although I may, on a bad day, whine). But by the same token, I’d second the complaint about the lack of scientists in these puzzles. If Butterfield, why not, say, Curie, or Dirac, or Faraday, or Rumford, or Tesla, or…?
I imagine at least some US solvers had a bit of trouble with ‘courgette’, a word I only know by chance; chez nous, it’s zucchini.
On NOD: ‘Even Homer nods’ should be fairly well-known (the Japanese equivalent is ‘Monkeys sometimes fall from trees’).

30 minutes. I didn’t know BUTTERFIELD but wouldn’t complain as he was easy to get from the wordplay. NOD meaning a careless mistake was new to me.

MANES was a strange one. I had been discussing the word MANEGES with someone only the day before and had looked it up in several dictionaries where MANES (with the meaning required here) was the word next door, so it was fresh in my mind but I don’t think I knew it previously.

I thought the clue to ARTLESSNESS was brilliant.

I thought 16 was a pretty good definition. To titrate is to determine the number of moles of one substance (the aliquot) by accurately measuring the quantity of another substance (the titre) needed to completely react. In order to know when the reaction is complete, you can either hook it up to a pH recorder (for acid/base titrations) or use a compound that changes colour at the end of reactions. You typically use an indicator for acid/base titrations (phenolphthalein, methyl red), and for precipitation titrations (potassium chromate). In redox titrations usually the final product is a different colour, so no indicator is needed.

I’ll shut up now, but nice definition, setter.

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