ST 4404 (Sun 24 Oct) – Swede chestnuts

Author   talbinhoPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Solving time: 4:12

There were some good clues this week (such as 21ac, 24ac, 27ac) but much of this was pretty mediocre with lots of extraneous words used to mould the clues’ surface readings. I think 25ac is faulty but would welcome explanations. The hardest answer word was probably APLITIC at 20dn.

* = anagram, “X” = sounds like ‘X’.

Across
1 SPLIT (= ‘broken’) + HAIRS (= ‘locks’)
6 TAIL; T.A. (= Territorial Army = ‘Volunteers’) + IL (= ‘the Italian’)
9 CABER; BE in CAR – ‘could’ is needed for the surface reading but makes a mess of the cryptic reading.
10 OMBUDSMAN; O.M. (= Order of Merit = ‘order’) + (BANS MUD)* – the hyphen of ‘mud-slinging’ needs to be ignored for the anagram indicator to work properly. This is one of very few Swedish words used in English (with the same meaning in both languages), of which one is a relatively new word – after you’ve racked your brains, the answers are below the blog.
12 THE BERLIN WALL – not sure what’s cryptic about this.
14 BERMUDAN; (MB + URBANE)*
15 SEEDED (2 defs)
17 VOTERS; (REST)* after V (= ‘five’) + O (= ‘nil’)
19 ALLOCATE; ALL + O (= ’round’) + C[hef’s] + (EAT)*
21 WASTE DISPOSAL; (DEPOTS AS LAW IS)* – a good clue.
24 TREE STUMP (cryptic definition) – I rather liked this one.
25 ENTRY – presumably ‘attempt’ gives ‘try’, but that leaves ‘way’ = EN. I suspect the clue was supposed to read ‘Ways’, indicating two compass directions (E[ast] and N[orth]).
26 REAR (2 defs) – another decent clue with both words having a different part of speech in the surface reading from that in the cryptic reading (which needs ‘stern’ as a noun rather than an adjective and ‘breed’ as a verb instead of a noun).
27 REPRODUCES; PRO in REDUCES – nothing wrong cryptically with this, but the surface reading is meaningless unless ‘make’ has some intransitive meaning of which I am unaware.

Down
1 SICK; SIC (= ‘Just as it was written’) + K (= 1000 = ‘many’)
2 LOBSTER; LOB (= ‘high shot’) + (REST)*
3 THREE-QUARTERS (2 defs) – the wingers and, I think, the centres in rugby, although this term is rarely heard these days.
4 AS ONE MAN; AS (= ‘When’) + ONE (= ‘single’) + MAN (= ‘chap’)
5 RE(B)EL
7 ARM BAND
8 LANDLADIES; LAND (= ‘Country’) + LADIES (= ‘women’), with some overlap in the definition
11 DANGEROUS BEND (cryptic definition) – a reasonable cryptic definition but this isn’t a dictionary phrase and so shouldn’t really be used as an answer, any more than ‘big house’ or ‘dodgy clue’ would be acceptable.
13 ABOVE WATER (cryptic definition) – a reference to the phrase ‘to keep one’s head above water’.
16 FLY PAPER; FLY (= ‘to take flight’) + PAPER (= ‘daily, perhaps?’) – curious that a crossword with so many foibles should be impeccably accurate in its indication of ‘definition by example’ (because not all papers are dailies). Bravo.
18 TESSERA; TESS (of the D’Urbervilles) + ERA – a tessera is one of the small cubical parts of a mosaic. Whether this makes it interchangeable with ‘die’, I’m not sure.
20 APLITIC; (PICT[or]IAL)* – very difficult answer word (in fact it’s not even in Chambers, although the rock itself, ‘aplite’, is) but the checking letters meant that there was no real alternative for the anagram.
22 INURE; (RUIN)* + E (= ‘some [compass] point’) – strangely worded with the anagram word (‘ruin’) and anagram indicator (‘unfortunately’) split by other wordplay.
23 BYES; “BUYS”

Other than ‘ombudsman’, the only commonish English words taken directly from Swedish and having the same meaning are ‘smörgåsbord’ (apologies if your browser has mangled that), ‘gravlax’ (although ‘gravadlax’ is more common in English and anyway ‘gravlax’ may be of Norwegian origin) and the running term ‘fartlek’ meaning ‘speed-play’ which was invented in the 1930s. ‘Tungsten’ is Swedish for ‘heavy stone’, but means the ore from which the element is extracted (the metal is called ‘wolfram’, hence tungsten having the chemical symbol ‘W’), ‘angstrom’ and ‘sievert’ (physics units) and ‘salchow’ (an ice-skating jump) are names and so don’t really count and ‘glögg’ (a Christmas drink) drops its diacritic mark in English. If you know of any more, please enlighten me.

14 comments on “ST 4404 (Sun 24 Oct) – Swede chestnuts”

  1. (entry posted on Neil’s behalf as he should be somewhere on Dartmoor in the Original Mountain Marathon, and slightly early as I’m away much of tomorrow).

    Agree about APLITIC – shouldn’t really be in the grid but the only possible choice. “die” was apparently a Latin meaning of “tessera”. For me, unless their meaning is well-known, etymological origins aren’t satisfactory definitions.

    Other Swedish words in English from a Chambers CD fulltext search:

    bastnasite, halleflinta (more rocks)
    Landsting, Riksdag (govt)
    torsk (fish)
    dill (in your Gravlax) and elf are spelled the same way but doubtless shared with other Germanic languages
    sloyd/sloid is a Swedish word Anglicised (dexterity training through woodwork – ought to be a product name at IKEA!)
    rutabaga (the US term for a swede (veg.)) is very close to rotabagge, the Swedish for swede.

      1. Only if you expect solvers to speak/know Latin as well as English. Back in the old days when solvers were expected to have classical knowledge, this might have been OK. In an era when people (even Times crossword solvers) generally don’t have that knowledge, it’s surely unfair.

        (I’m halfway between – 2 years of Latin at school, but no O-level. I remember some Latin words, but if I ever knew tessera=die, I forgot it long ago.)

          1. I think you mean tessellated – which also comes from tessera. In general usage, yes, but apart from the spelling difference, there’s no connection with dice in the present day meaning – you can tessellate with dice (squares really), but you can also tessellate with hexagons and triangles, or if your name is Escher, fish, lizards, and men on horseback.
            1. No, I do mean “tesserated” – see various archaeological descriptions of Bath, Maiden Castle et al. (Oh sorry I’ve gone Latin again!) Anyway I don’t think “tessera” is any more arcane than many regularly used Times answers
              1. Whether tesserated or tessellated, I still don’t see how this word helps to strengthen the link between “die” and “tessera”. I’m grumbling about “die” as the def., not the use of TESSERA as an answer.
              2. I’ve come across “tesserated” in the archaeological sense meaning “tiled”, as a mosaic or a floor, and I agree “tessera” can mean one of these tiled pieces, but these pieces aren’t “dies” or “dice” in any sense – they’re (essentially) flat. I’m not saying the word is too obscure for use but I agree with Peter that the definition here is flawed, and the fact that “tessera” meant “die” in Latin doesn’t justify it – “cursor” in Latin meant “runner” or “messenger”, but clearly these would be unacceptable definitions in an English crossword.
  2. hmm, interesting challenge. Aga? Originally an acronym I know, but in general use now. Also, linnaea is a plant named after a Swede.. nobelium the element, is from Nobel. Nothing else springs to mind I confess.
    I thought this one of the better ST cryptics lately, though not difficult
  3. 20 minutes.

    My explanation for 25ac (which also puzzled me) is that EN can spell the letter N, so only one way is needed in the clue.

  4. 10:38 for me. I was in a state of exhaustion when I solved it and my brain simply seized up.

    The answer to 1D is given as SACK. Typical!

  5. Many weeks later, in Toronto.

    The Toronto Star weaseled out of paying the vast $10 prize for the third time in a year. ST sent them the gird with SACK as the answer and, not surprisingly, they got no correct solutions.

    After a frustrating e-mail exchange with an “associate” (whatever that is) who knew nothing about cryptic crosswords, I eventually persuaded her to check with the ST about the incorrect grid. At that stage she admitted that mistake but this was her reply to my suggestion that they should check the accuracy of the ST answers in weeks when they got no correct solutions.

    “Since we receive the content directly from the Times, that is what we use to check against entries.”

    The Toronto Star is right even when it’s wrong.

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