Sunday Times 4335 (28 June 09)

Author   7dpenguinPosted on Categories Weekend Cryptic
Talbinho is unavailable to blog this week so I’m afraid you’ll all just have to put up with me. Worry not, though, normal service will be resumed soon. I don’t usually do the Sunday Times crossword and, if this one is anything to go by, I’m not that impressed. Perhaps all these years of commenting on the daily Times has turned me into a bit of a fusspot. I found it mostly quite easy with 3 relatively simple long anagrams at 6,9 and 20 and the rest of it pretty standard fare. A veritable plethora of anagrams abounded – 8 I reckon. I was held up by the EMOTIVE, COLUMBINE and BEEFSTEAKS threesome in the bottom left. In the end it took 10:35, a time I would have been delighted with on a weekday, but felt I could have done it much quicker. I reckon Tabinho would have knocked this one off in about 3 minutes.

Across
1 CROW – double definition
3 TRANS,PLANT
10 CADGE – first letters of “Cake And Digestives Get Eaten”. The word “first” presumably means take the first letters of…..clever use of “sponge cake” which requires lifting and separating to get to the answer. Nice clue
11 CUSTODIAN – (A DISCOUNT)*
12 NIL DESPERANDUM – single definition, no crypticity – “don’t despair – as Caesar might have said”
14 TYMPANS – (NASTY MP)*
15 LESOTHO – (HE LOOTS)*
17 HOSTILE – HOST + (LIE)*
19 RAINIER – doubly defined with an utterly nonsense surface “Volcano in Washington, with more cats and dogs”
20 CHEST OF DRAWERS – we were due another ‘gram and here it is (DEARTH OF SCREWS)*
23 CO(LU)MBINE – did anybody know that Lutetium is LU? It had to be that or Le. A bit of a tricky one for me until I got a few checkers
24 OUT,DO
25 BEEFSTEAKS – BEEFS around S and TEAK. Never seen Special=S before. Does it really?
26 A(R)ID
 
Down
1 COCONUT SHY – another single def with hardly any cryptic element. “Pitching stall in the fairground?”. I think the setter is trying to make us think of “pitching” as “erecting”, but I didn’t.
2 OLD FLAMES – double def, one slightly whimsical
4 RECIPES – (PRECISE)*
5 NOSTRIL – cryptic definition, but only just
6 PROGNOSTICATOR – (GOT CONSPIRATOR)*
7 ADIEU – using Nice as the French city
8 TUN,A
9 GENERALISSIMOS – (LARGE EMISSIONS)*
13 CORRESPOND – double def
16 TRIMESTER – (TERMITES)* around E
18 E,MOTIVE
19 RED,NECK
21 HELVE – more than half of HELVETIAN
22 SCAB – in the middle of gnawS CABling

4 comments on “Sunday Times 4335 (28 June 09)”

  1. 25 minutes. As someone of my advanced age with a degree in music I am surprised never to have met tympans = drums before. Tympani/Timpani, Timps, yes, but not Tympans. Collins has Timpan as a membrane stetched over a frame and as an alternative to Tympanum with reference to architecture, not to music. COED also has this second meaning. Only Chambers has a direct reference to a musical instrument.

    At 18dn I’m not sure the answer matches the definition part of the clue; I thought EMOTION fitted it better until the checking letter at 25ac came into play.

  2. I do not think this puzzle has the rigour of the daily Times – I often quibble at its clues. I only do it if I run out of other entertainment eg Mephisto yielded too quickly. this one was typicall and dullish.
  3. Belated thanks for blogging this one. I’m afraid I have to disappoint on the time front, it took me 4:16 rather than 3 minutes! Think I needed a couple of goes at the PROGNOSTICATOR anagram and also hesitated over HELVE and RAINIER, if I remember correctly.

    ‘Special’ = S is common in barred puzzles (it’s in listed Chambers) but just at the moment I’m having a mental block and am not sure whether the Times allows it. But probably not, if you haven’t seen it before!

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