Sunday Times 4416 (16 Jan 2011)

Author   daveperryPosted on Categories Weekend Cryptic
Solving time: About 50 minutes, with 1 wrong and needing aids for two others.

Many apologies for the late blog, but my phone line went down over the weekend and I’m told it will be Thursday at the earliest before it’s fixed. So I’ve had no internet connection with which to post a blog or email for assistance. I have Andy’s phone number now so it shouldn’t happen again. As it is, I’ve had to wait to get to work this morning to connect.

I struggled with this one. My son’s swimming lesson stretched out to 40 minutes this week, but it still wasn’t enough to see me finish. In the end I had to resort to aids later on to untangle 6 & 12. I guessed wrongly for the Australian parakeet in 13, and I still can’t work out the wordplay for 9 after having looked at it several times this week. I didn’t like 12 – I thought the word was too obscure for such convoluted wordplay, I would never have got it without aids.

cd = cryptic def., dd = double def., rev = reversal, homophones are written in quotes, anagrams as (–)*, and removals like this

Across
1 SPAR + dEPARTS
8 O for P in TRIP
10 A + MUFFIN after RAG
11 CAVEll – CAVE is Latin for beware. Edith Cavell was a WWI nurse.
13 SELL in ROAd – A ROSELLA is an Australian parakeet. I didn’t know it and went for RODEALA.
15 LOVE in ConfusioN
16 A(LIEN)S
17 UNDER THE COUNT + EveR – Very saucy!
18 SEE + SAW
20 cd – Refers to the ‘This little piggy went to market’ rhyme played by parents on the toes of their small children.
21 (LOAN)* + NIL rev
22 TIME rev
25 I’ve not come across a BEER CELLAR before, only a wine one. But the cd was quite clear.
26 mAD mEN
27 STEPS + ‘A’ SIDE
Down
2 A for T in PART – making a soldier potentially dropped
3 hidden
4 POMP + ON – Another word I wasn’t famliar with, not as a flower at least. But worked out from the wordplay.
5 cd – although I couldn’t work out why the training was ‘financial’, surely a refresher course could be any type of training.
6 S + CILLA – I had to resort to aids for this one. I didn’t know the lily, and I find arbitrary christian names hard to guess at the best of times.
7 (GROUPS WERE)*
9 The wordplay has me beat here, I’m afraid. I’ve stared at this for hours and just can’t see it. I’m throwing it out to the floor. Anyone? I knew someone would come to my rescue – It’s REAr + LEg + STATEd – see Andy’s comment below.
12 (LIBEl + WORDS + Edition)* – Something of a forced &lit, especially for such an obscure word. I had to resort to aids again.
13 TRIp in REAL
14 ALBUM + IN
15 (A DESPOT CUT)* – Foreign phrases always make the toughest anagrams. It took me an age to untangle this one.
19 WAKE + N/S
20 (BEDSIT)*
23 bILLS
24 another hidden

17 comments on “Sunday Times 4416 (16 Jan 2011)”

  1. This took longer than expected. There were some clever feints that misled me and I was convinced there was an Australian theme (POMPON and ROSELLA which might have been RODEALA) so it took a while to see that 6 was SCILLA and not SHEILA. Agree that REFRESHER COURSE does not have to be financial. Thought PARA very good and BIDET raised a chuckle, but 17 was a bit of a marmalade dropper.

    I couldn’t get the word play for REAL ESTATE (?) and I’ve since thrown out the newspaper. I remember saying the words out loud to try to get “rear” and “less”, but couldn’t justify “state”. Reassuring to know I wasn’t alone.

  2. REAL ESTATE – I didn’t bother at the time, but the best I can do after giving it a few minutes’ thought is a dodgy homophonic reading: sounds like ‘rear [‘back on’] less [‘lacking’] date [‘terms’]. More chance of winning the lottery than being right, though, I fear.
  3. The clue was “Property back on said to be lacking terms (4,6)”

    REA(r) (back) LE(g) (on) STATE(d) (said), all lacking terms (or final letters).

    1. Well done, Andy. I don’t think I’ve seen ‘lacking terms’ for removal of final letter(s) before. Is that terms as in terminuses (termini?)?
  4. Refresher is also the name for additional monies given to a lawyer after the first day of work
  5. This was quite a tough puzzle for me when editing, but I decided it was the kind that would repay solvers who stuck to their task.

    Apologies in advance for 4417 – unfortunately a repeat of a puzzle from August last year (4393), caused at least in part by a change of crossword editor. I’m already checking other “pipeline” puzzles to ensure that this doesn’t happen again.

    term = boundary or limit (archaic) is difficult for this puzzle, but is in Collins.

    2. Peter, should we not bother submitting solutions to this one then?
      And has there been a substitution? I haven’t checked recently.
      1. The weekly draw for 4417 will be held as usual. A different puzzle is being supplied as the syndicated version of 4417, and this will appear later as an extra puzzle on the Times Crossword club site.
  6. 30 minutes, 6 of which were devoted to SCILLA. I agree with Dave about names in clues, especially uncommon ones (like Ina the other day). I wouldn’t have thought that ‘bowdlerise’ was obscure, but ‘cut’ was a bit vague as the definition. I’d flagged PARA and REAL ESTATE as clues to go back to to figure out after entering them; never did get the latter until now. Thanks, linxit.
  7. 62 minutes so a bit of a slog. I prefer something a little easier on a Sunday and there were too many obscurities in this one for my taste. I’ve never met POMPON as opposed the POMPOM dahlias my father used to grow. My spell checker doesn’t like them either!
      1. Yes, I accept it’s valid but I think it was perhaps an obscurity too far in this rather difficult puzzle. ST puzzles have traditionally been on the easier side of the normal Times range and I hope this will not change.
  8. If I may muddy the waters a bit, I (an American) have always seen it spelled ‘pompon’. The only dictionary I normally use (not wishing to cart the shorter OED around; or the longer, for that matter) — actually a Japanese-English/E-J dictionary that uses US English as their standard — gives ‘pompon’ for the cheerleader’s thingy as well as for the dahlia, and ‘pompom’ for a kind of machine gun or antiaircraft gun.
  9. If you have the answers, why don’t you just share them and let us work out the way to get to them. For example 15d ….
    1. I didn’t used to bother quoting the answers for the prize puzzles, as the solution had already been published and therefore the answers were readily available elsewhere. I have since changed my policy on this since various people complained that they didn’t have access to the solution.
      As for letting people work out how to get them for themselves, that would rather defeat the entire purpose of this blog as people come here for enlightenment when they can’t work out how a clue works. If it is just a solution you’re after then you should probably look at the official Times website.

Comments are closed.