Sunday Times 4311

Author   petebiddlecombePosted on Categories Weekend Cryptic
Solving time 8:22

I grabbed the chance to fill in a gap for tallbinho as I do very few ST puzzles, and having been informed recently about the current composition of the team, thought I should give it a go. If I remember rightly, there are four current setters – Don Manley, Tim Moorey, Jeff Caper Pearce and Barbara Hall.

Don Manley should need no introduction – if you’re new to this caper (ho ho!), any setter pseudonym which can be hooked up to “Don” is probably his – Quixote in the Independent on Sunday, Bradman in the FT, and you can guess the rest. Tim Moorey is a long-standing successful competitor in the Azed clue-writing contests, author of an excellent recent guide to solving Times puzzles, and a setter of puzzles in various other places. Jeff Caper Pearce is from memory a setter for the FT and possibly another paper or two, and someone I remember from long-ago “Gruntling lunches” where Azed contestants living close to London would meet up to compare clues (after the closing date!), and try to guess which ones would do best. I think the lunches still happen though Grunts Pizza House is long gone. Barbara Hall has been setting crosswords for many decades and is the overall editor of the puzzle. I believe she contributed a higher proportion of the ST puzzles until the fairly recent past. As a more old-fashioned setter, I think she does some things in clues that irritate solvers like me. Based on limited experience of such irritation, mostly a long time ago (and just getting one newspaper on a Sunday, the Observer for Azed), I don’t do many ST puzzles, but apart from some contribution from Barbara, I don’t know who the setters were back then.

My guess is that this puzzle is from one of the younger three, possibly with some tewaks from Barabara – I could only find six things to quibble about, mostly fairly minor style issues (in 26, 27, 4, 9, 12, 15D). The grid looks a bit quaint and old-fashioned, with the 2×2 clusters of white squares and the black L shapes near the corners, but on closer inspection it’s pretty good – 7 rather than 8 checked letters in the 15-letter answers is a very minor misdemeanour.

Overall conclusion is that this is a pleasantly entertaining fairly easy puzzle, slightly marred by a few issues, especially at 15D.

Across
1 PLURALISED – a CD which needed a couple of checking letters to see.
8 DAD,O – you may know dado from “dado rail” which is a rail on a wall that can now appear on its own. But it used to be positioned at the top of the wood-panelling which was the actual “dado”. That’s enough domestic architecture.
10 DETERMINED = (MEND,DIETER=answer to 6)*
11 TART – 3 def’s, with tom=prostitute=tart the trickiest
13 CAST(L)ES – first of three quite easy clues which might have been the first answers to go in for some solvers.
15 B,RIGHT
16 ROTTER – 2 def’s, one using the {-er = invented agent noun} trick
17 CLERMONT FERRAND = anag. of (can’t lend, former, R=head of recruitment) – this Massif Central industrial centre is the less obvious of two crossing 15-letter cities.
18 GO(l)FERS – another fairly easy clue, though to a more exotic answer
20 ONE,D.G.,E – had to remember D.G. = Director-General from Terry Wogan’s imaginings of BBC management luxury.
21 ATISHOO = “a tissue” – a pretty obvious gag which we don’t see as often as we might.
22 M(AU)L with the small volumes being millilitres
25 RE,PUBLICAN – simple stucture but a nice change from a landlord being a “letter”.
26 O,PEN – my slight quibble is “to” as a def./wordplay link which doesn’t work for me (unless to pen someone is to write to them, but it’s not as far as I know)
27 MAGISTRATE = (game, artist) – this time the quibble is “play {anag. fodder}” as an anagram indicator
 
Down
2 LID=cover,O – A lido is a swimming pool, usually of 1930s art deco style and lucky to still be in good nick these days.
3 RAT,E – fairly easy but those druggy puns never fail.
4 LARIAT – hidden. Quibble 3 is “with” as a def/wordplay link
5 SAINT PETERSBURG = (I ban gutter press)* – maybe it would have been nice to have only one anag. clue between the two 15s, but both are entertaining so never mind!
6 D(I)ETER
7 FOOTBRIDGE – “pedestrian crossing” seems a really easy CD, but the other meaning does just enough to make you think.
9 A,VAN,TGARDE = G in trade*, quibble 4 being the hoary old question of G=Gateshead and whether ‘Gateshead” means the head of a gate. Not for me, but it’s arguably no worse than the universally accepted flower=river.
12 LIVE=evil rev.,RFLUKE=(elk fur)*. A novel answer and a good cryptic construction, but “displaying” can’t be an anagram indicator for me – Quibble 5.
13 CH.,IMERA=Marie* – easy for old hands but perfectly sound.
14 S(OP.,RAN)O – {so=well} is the outside, and the def. refers to the magnificent Jessye Norman. Here she is on a recording I’d have on my desert island, singing the last of Strauss’s four last songs. Back in crosswordland she’s magnificent because of her surname that looks like a man’s first name.
15 I think this is BACK,GAM,M,ON but this is quibble 6, as I can’t make the clue work. It’s “Game is again in favour after school gets Master”. Game has to be the def., and ‘is’ is presumably a def/wordplay link. If “again in favour” is BACK ON, then we need a container indicator for the (GAM=school (of fish),M=Master), which isn’t there. If not, then BACK could maybe be ‘AGAIN’ and ‘in favour’ could be ‘ON’, but these both seem pretty weak. I’m also struggling to justify M=Master. (I tried looking up MON but came up with nothing helpful). Maybe the web version is a bit garbled, or maybe I’m being dense. Any other offers?
19 ST(R)EAM – easy enough when you realise that the R=runs is inside the water vapour and not the flower.
20 (p)OODLES – first of a trio of easy ones to finish off
23 S,CAR
24 GNAT = rev. of tang=taste=smack

9 comments on “Sunday Times 4311”

  1. 15d I think your second explanation is correct. One of the definitions for ‘back’ in Chambers is ‘again’ and ‘M’ is given as an abbreviation for ‘Master’ in both Chambers and Collins. COED gives it indirectly in MA (Master of Arts).

    Chambers defines ‘on’ as ‘agreed upon’ and ‘acceptable’ which are close to ‘in favour’ (defined as ‘approved’).

    GRM

    1. I was a bit careless last night and I looked up M in an old version of Chambers, assuming that newer ones would say the same, but M=Master has been added. It seems a bit odd that in a puzzle where most clues are based on straightforward material, we have a clue using back=again and on=agreed on, which as far as I can tell are “Chambers-only” meanings.
  2. 40 mins, good for me.

    11a last to go in, and didn’t see the cities until near the end.

    Liked 20d.

    1. Of course – I was remembering ‘caperjeff’ as a name in some other discussion forum.
  4. Thanks for blogging this one, Peter. I’ve managed to lose my copy but if I remember correctly I spent 10 minutes of a weekend’s emotional train travel on this, the last 4 or so of which on 12dn (LIVER FLUKE): ‘displaying’ seems so bad as an anagram indicator that I thought the indicator must be ‘dark’, so needed ‘Returned’ = ?I?E, for which my best guess was ‘rive’ to give ‘river fluke’. Also struggled to pin down CLERMONT-FERRAND. Agreed that 7dn is not as easy as it seems it should be – I rather liked it – and I also agree with your quibbles (except number 6).
  6. I was listening to the Mozart Requiem whilst finishing this so my vote for 14d is Wilma Lipp under the baton of Herbert Von Karajan.

    I was confused by 15d BACKGAMMON as I could not parse the clue. It was a relief that it was one of PB’s quibbles. I also agree with TS that 7d FOOTBRIDGE was weak – hardly cryptic at all?

    My LOI was TART at 11a as I was confused by Tom’s in the triple def. It was obviously TART from sour and type of pie but my sheltered upbringing did not include that definition for a Lady of the Night. How did that happen?

    Overall, though, it was fun. Thanks to setter and PB for the comprehensive blog.

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