ST 4405 (Sun 31 Oct) – Winston vogue art

Author   talbinhoPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic

Solving time: 5:49

Despite one or two cringes (e.g. 17dn) I thought lots of the clues in this puzzle were pretty good, although I can’t explain 9ac at all.

(Yes, I know it’s really pronounced “Bo-harder” or something along those lines.)

* = anagram, “X” = sounds like ‘X’.

Across
1 BELLYFUL – the pun is on ‘corporation’, which here means ‘stomach’ as opposed to ‘company’, but the answer doesn’t really fit the clue’s wording which seems to require an adjective as the answer. My first thought was ‘overweight’.
6 CO-STAR; (ACTOR’S)* – a well-known anagram.
9 AS IS – I’m afraid I don’t understand the wordplay here. The clue is: Express poll, support unchanged (2,2).
10 LIGHTER AGE – a lighter was a large boat used in the loading and unloading of ships.
11 OBITER; O (= ’round’) + B[ook] + I + TEAR without A[nswer] – obiter is Latin and means something like ‘by the way’.
12 ALL-IN-ONE; A + L[iberal] + LINE (= ‘row’) around O[ld] and N[ew]
14 HUNTING DON – I don’t feel ‘place’ is a sufficient definition for a place name, especially somewhere as small as Huntingdon. Why not ‘Cambridgeshire town’ or ‘racecourse’?
16 [w]EDGE – this one amused me.
18 ADZE; “ADDS” – ‘summer’ as in ‘one who sums’.
19 ILL-ADVISED; (DAVID ELLIS)*
21 MASSAGED; MASS + AGED – ‘massage’ = ‘cook’ in the metaphorical sense of ‘to manipulate’ (e.g. accounts), I think, but I had some doubts over this.
23 ASSE[n]TS – my last entry. Is ‘capital’ a fair definition for this?
25 DECREE NISI; (I + RESIDENCE)* – a decent semi-&lit.
27 UTAH (hidden)
28 CLARET; (REAL)* in C[lub] + T[ime] – I’m pretty sure ‘club’ = C isn’t permitted in daily Times puzzles (it has to be ‘clubs’) and also isn’t in Chambers so is invalid in the Listener etc, but it seems reasonable to me (in the sporting sense of ‘football club’ or ‘cricket club’ rather than the card-playing context).
29 EGG-TIMER; EGG (= ‘prompt’) + TIER (= ‘row’) around M[ale]

Down
2 EASTBOUND; (TO DANUBE)* + S[trasbourg] – almost another clever clue, but the cryptic instruction doesn’t make sense because of the imperative anagram indicator ‘Trip’ used in conjuction with the link word ‘is’. ‘Travelling’ instead of ‘Trip’ would have worked.
3 LISZT; “LIST”
4 FELL RUNNING – this answer lit up the puzzle for me. Ironically, given the definition (‘Northern sport’), I was legging it around Dartmoor on the day of publication!
5 LAGGARD; rev. of DRAG GAL
6 CUT; CUTIE – IE (= ‘That is’)
7 SERENGETI; (TIGER SEEN)*
8 ARGON; [ma]N after A + R[ight] + GO (= ‘turn’)
13 LINE DRAWING; LED (= ‘What Churchill did’) around IN (= ‘fashionable’) + R.A. (= ‘artist’) + WING (= ‘quarter’) – not line dancing, which was a marvellous image but I couldn’t get it out of my head and struggled on this until I forced myself to try ‘artist’ = RA. I wondered if the Churchill in the definition reading was a different person, but a little research (here) suggests that Sir Winston did some painting in between smoking cigars and making speeches.
15 TREASURER; T[ycoon] + REAR (= ‘behind’) around SURE (= ‘firm’) – excellent wordplay.
17 GREAT DANE; (TEA-GARDEN)* – one of those awful partial definitions (‘Could be barking’).
20 LUDDITE; (DILUTED)* – not convinced by the anagram indication here.
22 AREAL; A + REAL – the ‘old coin’ is the Spanish real which was worth one quarter of a peseta, but actually ‘old’ is superfluous because the real is still the currency of Brazil.
24 SAUDI; (US AID)*
26 EAT; AT behind the fourth letter of ST LEGER

4 comments on “ST 4405 (Sun 31 Oct) – Winston vogue art”

    1. Thanks jerry. I suspected this puzzle might have been by Tim Moorey and this seems to confirm it. The ‘basis’ idea looks likely although I don’t really understand the wording.
  2. I found it hard to get into the swing of this puzzle and struggled to a miserable 11:29.

    I eventually worked out “basis” being polled for AS IS in 9A, but didn’t like the clue.

    I also wasn’t taken with the rather forced “& lit” at 13D, and actually preferred 17D, which sort of works if you take it as an “& lit” as well. BTW, Peter Sellers used to do a routine in which he impersonated a German soldier comparing Hitler’s talent at painting with Churchill’s, which you can find here thanks to the wonders of YouTube. (I’m not sure I’d bother with anything beyond the first half-minute or so, unless you’re a dedicated Sellers fan.)

    Like you, I found the wordplay at 20D very unconvincing, and I felt the wordplay at 4D would have led to FALLEN RUNNING.

    There was some good stuff in there, particularly 15D, but overall I found this puzzle a bit unsatisfactory.

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