ST 4402 (Sun 10 Sep) – Man alive

Author   talbinhoPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Solving time: 8 mins

At Cheltenham last weekend we were warned that competitors posting critical or abusive messages on Internet sites could find themselves banned from future Championships. As it’s not clear where the line is, I will leave you to come up with your own description of the latest amateurish cockups at 11ac and especially 13dn.

* = anagram, “X” = sounds like ‘X’.

Across
1 CREEPER (2 defs) – ‘ rambler’ as in a plant. I was hesitant over the the ‘shoe’ definition when solving and spent some time looking for an alternative, especially since I was doubtful over the first letter from 1dn.
5 MAUREEN; (MENU ARE)* – a very nice anagram, but the clue is strangely worded with ‘good’ being superfluous.
9 MAGICALLY; MAGI (= ‘wise men’) + C (= ‘about’) + ALLY (= ‘to join forces’) – decent clue.
10 TERAI (hidden) – sidetracked by ‘topee’ here.
11 APE-MAN; APE (= ‘primate’) + MAN (as in ‘Isle of Man’) – but the Isle of Man isn’t even part of the UK, let alone England.
12 P + LUMBAGO
14 SCANDALISE; SCAN (= ‘Run one’s eyes over’) + (LADIES)*
16 SKYE (hidden)
18 SORE; rev. of EROS
19 COLONNADES; (END AS)* after COLON (= ‘internal piping’, i.e. part of the intestines) – I had a spelling ‘moment’ here and crossed the right answer out at one stage.
22 TOWNSMAN; TOW (= ‘drag’) + N,S (= ‘two poles’) + MAN – Douglas being the capital of the Isle of Man.
23 HECTIC; HE (= ‘fellow’) + CT (= ‘caught’) + IC (= 99) – not easy to break down.
26 OPERA; O (= ‘ring’) before rev. of A REP
27 CANDID ATE – a tired charade.
28 NUDISTS; cryptic definition with homophone in the clue (“BARE SKINS”)
29 GRAMPUS; GRAM + PUS[s] – ‘carried’ doesn’t make much sense. This is the third reference to the Isle of Man (in this case to its tailless cats) in the across clues – maybe this is a deliberate theme.

Down
1 COMPASS (cryptic definition) – I guessed this from ‘Its points…’ but didn’t understand it until I discovered the saying ‘to box the compass’. Chambers says this means ‘to name all 32 compass points in order in either or both directions’, although gives no indication why anyone might wish to do this, and is also an idiom meaning ‘to make a complete changearound in direction’, which confuses me since to box the compass literally would leave you pointing in the same direction you started.
2 [b]EAGLE
3 POCHARDS; P (= ‘quiet’) + O[r]CHARDS – didn’t read this properly and wrote in ‘orchards’ at first.
4 RULE (2 defs) – I think the definitions overlap: ‘Lay down the line’ (i.e. draw a line with a ruler) and ‘line to be followed’ (i.e. a protocol). I suppose you could argue that ‘Lay down’ is sufficient on its own, as in ‘lay down the law’, but then the two definitions would essentially be the same.
5 MAYBLOSSOM – a woolly clue punning on ‘may blossom’ = ‘might flower’. The only support I can find for this being (10) rather than (3-7) comes from Wikipedia.
6 ULTIMO; U + L + rev. of OMIT (= ‘drop out’)
7 EARMARKED (cryptic definition) – because ‘earmark’ literally means to tag an animal’s ear (‘stock’ in the sense of ‘livestock’). Being picky, ‘earmark’ is transitive but the clue’s definition is intransitive (i.e. ‘stock’ ought really to be ‘in brackets’), but it’s a clever idea.
8 NOISOME; rev. of M.O. in NOISE – the usual breakdown, and I used to think it was weak until I learnt that ‘noisome’ is cognate not with ‘noise’ but with the old word ‘noy’ meaning ‘to annoy’
13 ALLOWANCES; ALL + (CAN SEW)* – with a missing ‘O’ in the wordplay. I suppose it’s possible that a word was missed out during typesetting (although I can’t think what it could have been), but this error is typical of those in the ST so I doubt it.
15 ARROWHEAD; (A WAR HEROD)*
17 ANGELICA – sort of two definitions, although the second is more of an allusion (to the plant used in cake decorations) that a definition per se.
18 SET DOWN (one definition, one literal interpretation) – because you can be a ‘set down’ in a tennis match.
20 SUCKERS (2 defs) – a sucker is a new shoot of a plant.
21 ESSAYS (2 defs)
24 TRAMP; M (= ‘1000’) in TRAP – ‘large number’ for a Roman numeral such as C, D or M is tolerable, but I think ‘a lot’ is stretching things.
25 SNUG; rev. of GUNS

12 comments on “ST 4402 (Sun 10 Sep) – Man alive”

  1. Hmm, how very unlike the Sunday Times to commit such an uncharacteristic error as seems to appear in the clue at 11dn. We must pray that its normal tip-top standards are resumed forthwith. Unless we have missed some subtlety in the clue? Surely a more likely explanation? 🙂

    Oh, hang on, I have no intention of entering for the Championship.. so, no need to bow to the censors after all! Shame on the Times for putting the boot into free speech in the first place. You would think the press ought to be defending it not undermining it.

  2. 8:34 for me – about normal for me at the moment.

    For the umpteenth time, the published solution is wrong: AAUREEN for 5A and AYYBLOSSOM for 5D.

    It is a mystery to me why no-one takes the trouble to proof-read ST puzzles and solutions. I’m going to start a “no tolerance” campaign and make a formal complaint every time this happens in future. If enough of us do the same, perhaps whoever is responsible will pull their socks up.

    I’m ashamed to say that I’d no idea the Isle of Man wasn’t English, so I wasn’t put off by the misclue at 11A.

    1. Tony, I have on more than one occasion emailed people at the Times and the Times Crossword Club asking for the contact details of the Sunday Times crossword editor, or (since that post appears to be vacant) the sub-editor in charge of the crossword. I have never received a reply.

      This may be simply rudeness, but I suspect it is because the relevant people are aware how abysmal this crossword is and find it easier to take the ostrich approach than to tackle the problem. Nonetheless, if you can tell me to whom I should write then I will do so in the hope that we might achieve some improvement.

      1. Jo Cogan wrote to me nearly a month ago saying “You’re certainly not alone in your opinions regarding the ST cryptic, in terms of quality and incorrect solutions being posted – the editorial team are aware of this, and I think we will see some improvements here fairly soon.”

        Hopes raised, hopes dashed!?

  3. I stopped doing this puzzle quite a long time ago now because of my belief that it is consistently not up to scratch. Indeed at times “amateurish” would be letting them off lightly.

    I utterly deplore this statement from the Times that anybody expressing an opinion that any customer is entitled to hold will be penalised in future competitions. If that actually happens it must be given the full light of damning publicity.

  4. Like Jimbo, I stopped doing the Sunday some time ago. I found it impossible to enjoy a puzzle where every time I couldn’t understand a clue on first reading I immediately wondered if there was a mistake in it. Occasionally I dip a toe back in the water to see if things have improved. This was one of those occasions. As usual, I lost interest and quit without finishing.

    I’d also add my support to the above condemnation of “that statement” made at the Championships. It was a deeply misguided announcement. If I’d been there, I’d have been sorely tempted to walk out on principle.

    This corner of the solving community (like, I suspect, others) has its own way of moderating the immoderate. A “steady on, old chap” or something like it usually does the trick. A clunking fist does nothing for the reputation of either newspaper or competition.

    All in all, the recent vote to keep Times for the Times fully independent looks like a sound one.

    1. Yes. Like others, I gave up on the ST months ago. I’m only here today, because I’m looking for the Saturday blog.

      As you rightly say, 20d of the above puzzle isn’t really a puzzle at all!!

  6. A creeper is a spiked device that’s attached to a shoe to give grip on ice, not a shoe.

    1. I suspect that you are (as am I) from North America, where a creeper is precisely what you state. However, in the UK, according to Oxford Dictionaries Online, a creeper is a soft-soled suede shoe – more properly (or at least fully) called a brothel creeper. Unfortunately, Oxford does not provide an origin for this meaning.

      Falcon (Ottawa Citizen Cryptic Crossword Forum)

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