ST 4381 (Sun 16 May) – Foot loose

Author   talbinhoPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Solving time: 6:30

This was a bit of a curate’s egg: some of the clues (e.g. 10ac, 28ac) were really good, most were fine but some were a mess. A couple of the solutions were curious: I’m not sure NEW IDEAS at 18ac and PEPPER AND SALT at 7dn are really valid answer phrases, though please correct me if they are). I also can’t explain the FOOT part of 12ac.

* = anagram, “X” = sounds like ‘X’.

Across
1 CONCENTRATE; (ON CENT) in CRATE (= ‘case’) – good clue, with ‘on’ cunningly used in the wordplay.
10 [carp]ENTER – excellent clue. ‘Chips’ or ‘chippy’ is slang for a carpenter.
11 CLOSE DOWN; CLOSE (= ‘neighbouring’) + DOWN (= ‘county’)
12 PUSSYFOOT; PUSSY (= ‘pet’) + FOOT? – I can’t explain why ‘dish out’ gives FOOT.
13 [p]ODIUM
14 REDONE; RED (= ’embarrassed’) + ONE (= ‘individual’)
16 PROFOUND; PRO (= prostitute = ‘hooker’) + FOUND (= ‘discovered’)
18 NEW IDEAS; WIDE in NE[braska] + AS (= ‘for instance’) – the wordplay and crossing letters make this answer clear; perhaps it appears in some dictionaries, but none that I own.
20 MEDDLE; “MEDAL”
23 SA + RAH – the linking word ‘with’ spoils this clue. I suppose you could interpret it as ‘with sex appeal, [one – i.e. the solver] gets cheer’ but that’s rather stretched.
24 STOPCOCKS; STOPS (= ‘Checks’) around COCK (= ‘hot-air’, as in ‘cock-and-bull story’) – but used as a noun, ‘hot air’ shouldn’t be hyphenated.
26 LEITMOTIF; (TIM TO LIFE)*
27 APPRO; P.R. (= Public Relations) in A P.O.
28 SYCOPHANTIC; (CITY CHAPS ON)* – nice anagram.

Down
2 OATHS (hidden)
3 CARRY ON; CARRY-ON (= ‘song and dance’)
4 NACHOS; rev. of (SO + H[ot] + CAN)
5 ROOSTERS; O[utrage] in ROSTERS
6 TEES OFF; ([C]OFFEE ST[all])*
7 PEPPER AND SALT; (SPEED-TRAP PLAN)* – another decent anagram but the answer is very strange. I’ve never heard anyone say this instead of ‘salt and pepper’. There is a hyphenated word ‘pepper-and-salt’ meaning ‘mingled black and white’, but that’s not the same thing.
8 MORIBUND; RIB (= ‘guy’, in the sense of ‘tease’) in MOUND (= ‘bank’)
9 ANIMADVERSION; ANIMA[l] (= ‘Tiger perhaps endlessly’) + D[i]VERSION – this is cringeworthy (‘I suspend’ meaning ‘remove an I’).
15 DAWN RAID; RAID (= ‘Sally’) after DAWN – a pity that ‘raid’ is defined in the cryptic reading in the same context as it functions in the answer phrase.
17 FALSETTO; SET in F[ine] ALTO
19 DAHOMEY; HOME (= ‘House’) in D[ec]AY – complicated: ‘City’ gives EC (the post code for the City of London) while Dahomey is the former name of Benin, hence its car code DY. The obsolete name should really have been flagged as such.
21 ENCHAIN; [b]ENCH + [g]AIN – I saw ‘magistrates’, thought ‘bar’ and wrote in ‘bargain’ here.
22 LOOFAH; LOO (= ‘John’) + FAH (= ‘note’, an alternative to ‘fa’ in sol-fa notation) – the plant from which the bathroom sponges are made.
25 CAPRI; C + APR[il] + I[sland]

7 comments on “ST 4381 (Sun 16 May) – Foot loose”

  1. 12a could only think of dish out = spend = foot the bill. Didn’t relly like it though.
  2. I agree with Anon’s take on foot = dish out and with your apprehension about the validity of NEW IDEAS and PEPPER AND SALT. I don’t think the absence of hyphens rules out the latter but the correct definition is obviously missing.

    This one took me 40 minutes plus extra time to work out the wordplay at 10ac which is certainly an excellent clue.

  3. 10:06 for me – I seem to be generally off the pace at the moment.

    I came to the same conclusion as everyone else about FOOT – not very satisfactory if we’re right. I suspect 9D should have read “I suspended” rather than “I suspend”.

    The online answer to 22D is given as NOOFAH. (Doh!)

    I liked 10A (ENTER) as well, but since I solved it on sight, I suspect I’ve met something similar before – though perhaps not as neatly couched.

  4. On foot=dish out: when I was solving this one, I made a flash connection between dish out and foot (as in) the bill. I fully accept that it doesn’t look so plausible in the cold light of day.
    I used to have a PEPPER-AND-SALT beard, now mostly salt, but that’s where I associate the word order (and as noted it’s usually hyphenated in this context too).
    With SQUASH LADDER a couple of days ago in the Times,I thought we were seeing something of a novelty in the modern era, a phrase that made sense but which wasn’t anywhere as a dictionary entry, and NEW IDEA also seems to fit that style. Could this be the start of a trend towards the good old days when any old phrase would do if it fitted?
    For those of you that didn’t know, a NOOFAH is what you get when your old one’s worn out. Oddly I put in LOOFAH – have I lost my chance of a win?
    14 minutes, CoD to SYCOPHANTIC
    1. Just for the record SQUASH LADDER is in Collins, one of the two references for the Times daily puzzle.

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