ST 4406 (Sun 7 Nov) – An ill wind

Author   talbinhoPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Solving time: 4:41

The clues in this puzzle are mostly accurate but some of the definitions are askew, and I’m still wincing over 8dn (WINDSURFER) which is a candidate for the worst clue I’ve seen this year (excluding those with actual mistakes, which admittedly is a long list).

* = anagram, “X” = sounds like ‘X’.

Across
1 POSTMODERN; (STOP DOME)* + R.N. (= Royal Navy = ‘force’) – since ‘postmodern’ (or ‘post-modern’, as my dictionaries have it) is an adjective only, the definition should really be ‘of a style…’ rather than just ‘a style…’, but this is far from the worst offence in this puzzle.
6 AVOW; A + V (= ‘five’) + O (= ‘nil’) + W[inning]
9 SO(L)AR
10 SACCHARIN; (CAR + CASH IN)* – ‘alternative sweetener’ gives few alternatives.
12 SCHOOL (= ‘train’) + PARTIES (= ‘political organisations’) – I started off looking for an anagram of ‘train political’ until I realised it was a letter too many.
14 TRAIN SET; RAIN (= ‘drops’) in (TEST)*
15 VIGOUR; VI (= ‘six’) + G[rand] (= 1000) + OUR
17 A DRIFT – as in a snow-drift.
19 TANGIBLE; (A BELTING)* – another definition in the wrong part of speech.
21 ROTTEN-HEARTED; (THE RATE RODENT)* – this dubious answer apparently appears in Webster’s dictionary, but it should certainly be hyphenated rather than two words.
24 DO + NATIONS
25 CANOE; (ONCE A)*
26 OMEN (hidden) – a decent clue.
27 OSTENSIBLY; O (= ‘nothing’), + SENSIBLY around T (= model, as in the Ford Model T)

Down
1 POSE (2 defs) – I’m not sure whether the two definitions here are ‘strike’ and ‘a questioning attitude’ or ‘strike a questioning’ and ‘attitude’, but I couldn’t find a better answer.
2 SILESIA; (LIES)* + [a]SIA – an area of Europe mostly contained within Poland and the Czech Republic. Apparently this is also (without the capital) a word for a type of cotton made there.
3 MERCHANT FLEET (cryptic defintion) – the intention presumably being that the solver should think of ‘craft’ as in ‘acumen’, but this wasn’t hard to see through.
4 DISCOVER; DISCO (= ‘dance’) + rev. of REV (= ‘vicar’)
5 RECAP; R[ight] + rev. of PACE (= ‘rate’)
7 VERTIGO; GO (= ‘leave’) after (RIVET)*
8 WINDSURFER (cryptic definition) – a nice idea but an absolutely awful clue which goes further than 1ac and 17ac and fails adequately to define any word at all, let alone the correct derivation of ‘windsurfing’. ‘One making progress on board when taking a blow’ or similar was required. (Addendum: on reading the clue again later, I’m now wondering if the word ‘he’ was omitted between ‘board’ and ‘makes’.)
11 HURLING + STICKS – hurling, which is massive in Ireland, is a bit like hockey but with more violence.
13 STEAM RADIO; A.M. in (ASTEROID)* – AM stands for amplitude modulation. I’m not sure why the definition includes the word ‘old’; as far as I’m aware, medium wave radio still uses this method and you still see Radio 5 (for example) advertised as ‘693 and 909 AM’.
16 PAPAL SEE; PA (= ‘father’) + PAL (= ‘friend’) + SEE (= ‘understand’)
18 RETINUE; (TURIN + E,E)*
20 BED KNOB (cryptic definition) – a pun on ‘production’, referring to Bedknobs and Broomsticks.
22 HOODS (2 defs)
23 RELY; RE (= ‘on’) + L[ad]Y

17 comments on “ST 4406 (Sun 7 Nov) – An ill wind”

  2. There has been some discussion about this in the Club Cryptic forum. It’s currently on the second page of threads.

    Off now to solve today’s. I wonder what further delights they have in store for us!

    1. Can you give more information about the “club cryptic forum”? I’ve never heard of it…
      1. This is a reference to the Times Crossword Club to which I imagine most contributors to this forum subscribe in order to obtain their daily fix of crossword puzzles on-line.

        The Club site has recently been revamped which has been the source of much discussion around here, some it unfavourable, but one of the good things to come out ofit is that there are now a number of discussion forums accessible to members of the Club, one of which is devoted specifically to Times cryptic puzzles.

        If you are not already a member you can join the Club via the Times newspaper site on payment of a modest fee or an extortionate one if you want to subscribe to the whole newspaper as well.

  3. I can accept ‘can be felt’ as equivalent to ‘tangible’ (tangible results/results that can be felt), but why plural ‘results’? And ‘cruel’ seems a bit much as an anagram indicator.
    Wouldn’t a question mark on 1d have made it a bit more acceptable? As it is, I can’t make any sense of the clue.
    And from what I’ve seen of pomo piffle, they reject, rather than incorporate, classical features.
  4. Chambers Crossword Dictionary lists ‘cruel’ on page xxi under ‘Summary of common anagram indicators’.
    1. Nonetheless, I agree with Kevin that it’s at best dubious. Describing a person (or, say, a sea or a wind), ‘cruel’ could imply that some kind of damage is expected; but in the cryptic sense, ‘cruel’ is applied directly to the letters so I can’t see how this can meaningfully suggest an anagram.

      Re 3dn, I meant that the setter’s intent was that the solver should be misled into thinking that ‘craft’ was a synonym for ‘acumen’ or ‘ability’.

  5. 1d – “pose” a question = whole clue, “pose” = “attitude”. OK it was a very easy puzzle and a bit sloppy in parts, but it is the Sunday Times!
  6. 8:13 for me – still off the pace.

    I’d assumed that “One” was missing from the start of the clue to 8D, but your suggestion that the missing word might be “he” seems more likely.

    While you’re on duff enumerations like 21A, 20D should at the very least be hyphenated (BED-KNOB), but arguably, as the answer to this particular clue, should be a single unhyphenated word (BEDKNOB).

    And I had 13D (STEAM RADIO) down as iffy.

    Not a bad puzzle, but as usual a bit sloppy.

    1. Thanks Tony, you’re obviously correct about 21dn – and I agree that (given the clue) it should definitely be (7) here rather than (3-4).
  7. Surely in 13D “old” is the definition.”medium wave broadcast” is AM and then the asteroid anagram. So it looks fair to me (unlike 8D which is totally broken)
    1. Ah – is ‘steam radio’ (adj.) slang for ‘old’? If so that would explain it (ignoring that ‘broadcast’ would still be superfluous). I had thought this clue was intended (if poorly written) as an &lit.
  8. It seems like a waste of time to say more about cruel since Chambers accepts it as a common anagram indicator and it has been used previously in ST cryptics. I suppose that ‘cruel’ has been accepted as an anagram indicator because in Australian slang ‘cruel = spoil, destroy’, i.e., it is used as a verb. I don’t know about other cryptic puzzles, but ST cryptics sometimes make use of Australian slang expressions.
  9. A hurling stick looks like a bit like a hockey stick; it has a wider blade and handle.

    Only in the loosest sense could one describe it as a bat.

  10. I had WINDSCREEN for this answer. It still doesn’t exactly fit, but at least a windscreen “takes the blow” and a screen could be considered a board, and when you wind your way, you make progress.
  11. And in this case, the clue would be better saying MAKE progress on the board, takes a blow.

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