Sunday Times 4419 (6 Feb 2011) – How rude!

Author   daveperryPosted on Categories Weekend Cryptic
Well I never did! Farts? In a Times crossword? Whatever is the world coming to? Peter Biddlecombe, I’m shocked at you! What would your mother say?

I enjoyed this one, although I suspect I would have enjoyed it more if I hadn’t been quite so drowsy when I did it. I still had a dozen or so left after my son’s 30 minute swimming lesson, but when I picked it up later, I was feeling more alert and most of them dropped into place in 5 or 10 minutes. The last 4 (14/15/20/21), took a little longer, so I’m guessing about 50 minutes in total.

I believe there was a spelling mistake in one of the clues in the online version (3d if memory serves) although I printed it off, so I never saw it myself. It was the unorthodox spellings of a couple of the answers that caught some people out, though. Neither CARCASE nor LAMBASTE were spelt how I would have expected, but they’re both perfectly acceptable alternatives.

Some quite cunning wordplay going on here. Several went in from the definition alone, and I had to come back afterwards to decipher the wordplay. It took a while for the penny to drop with LADDER, and I think my eyebrows actually left my forehead when I spotted STRAFE.

Across
1 STICK + INSECT
10 tERROR
11 SHE(DATE)AR
12 VIOLATION = VIOLA + (INTO)*
13 LEEDS = “LEADS” – Although I’m not convinced that a lead is really a direction, but it was clear enough
14 LADDER = BLADDERED without the BED – Bladdered is pretty common slang here in the UK, although I don’t know how familiar our overseas brethren will be with it
16 ASSENTED = SENT in (SADE)*, ‘The opposite’ in the clue means that the inclusion implied in the wordplay should be reversed. SENT = ‘in ecstasy’ is quite archaic slang, I would have thought. I got it from the definition, and reverse engineered it
18 LAMBASTE = (BEAT + SLAM)* – An &lit clue, although I’m not sure what purpose the quotation marks are serving. I also didn’t know it could be spelt with a final E.
20 STRAFE = FARTS rev + E – Boring old farts being tedious elderly people. Although, again, how well does this transfer abroad?
23 tAUNTS – Even with a question mark, ‘wedding guests’ seemed rather loose as a definition
24 M + ILL + RACES – A new word for me, but easily built up from the cryptic
26 ELEVENSES – I’m not sure if this classes as a dd or a cd or some sort of strange hybrid of the two
27 ON + I + ON – The on side and the leg side are one and the same on the cricket pitch.
28 LEAD + BALL + O + ON – To ‘go down like a lead balloon’ is to be very poorly received, a phrase which I’ve never been able to fathom. Surely a balloon made of lead would go down extremely well (and very quickly!)
Down
2 TORSO = OS + ROT rev – OS is an abbreviation for outsize, something of an old chestnut
3 C(A + RC)ASE – I was trying to put IRC in something for the longest time, and tried to get some sort of CIRCLE derivative, before the penny finally dropped. The unusual spelling of the answer probably didn’t help.
4 IN + STILl
5 STERNEST = STERN + (SET)*
6 CHAR + LIE
7 HEAVILY LOADED = (HAD LOVELY IDEA)*
8 DEMENTIA = (AND + E + TIME)* – A fiddly little anagram which took me a while to parse
9 CROSS + (Hyphen) + DRESSING – The use of ‘dash’ to represent the hyphen was a little sneaky
15 DOMINEER = (I’M DOREEN)* – I picked up on the wordplay immediately, but I unaccountably needed all the checkers in place before I got it.
17 ITEMISED = IT + IS in E MED
19 AUSTERE = (SUET)* in ARE
21 TURMOIL = “TERM OIL”
22 PL + A + SMAll – A type of TV screen
25 CHINOok – although CHEROKEE was the first native American tribe to spring to my mind, and it took me a while to dislodge them

15 comments on “Sunday Times 4419 (6 Feb 2011) – How rude!”

  1. Good points: 9 down excellent, particularly clueing the hyphen. Also liked LEAD BALLOON, STERNEST and AUSTERE. But always found that term for “boring old men” distasteful, ever since I first heard it during the Oz Trial in 1971; leave that sort of thing to Private Eye. Didn’t know if the typo at 3 down was intentional.
    1. Judging by the forum comments, the typo was not intentional and PB corrected it soon after it was pointed out.
  2. On my print-out I wrote “40 minutes. Slow progress” as if I was dissatisfied with my efforts but since that day I have been struggling to complete puzzles in under an hour even with use of aids, so I now look back on this ST puzzle as my most recent half satisfactory performance.

    I have never spelt CARCASE any other way than was required here and I’m not sure I knew there was any alternative.

    I agree about AUNTS and didn’t care for STRAFE having long since given up doing the PE puzzle because it’s humour is too juvenile for this old fart.

  3. 34 minutes, including 10 seconds or so to wonder at 20ac and think, ‘Can they DO that?’ (‘runs’ in 24ac surprised me as well.) I’ve never come across ‘bladdered’ before, and I imagine few other Americans will have. CARCASS is standard US spelling; the only time I’ve seen ‘carcase’ was in the title of a Dorothy Sayers novel. And conversely, it was only through doing some other Times crosswords that I knew LAMBASTE could be spelled without the E.
    All in all, I thought this was a definite cut above the run of ST puzzles.
  4. Incidentally, it’s OK to say ‘American Indian’, as in the clue; it’s the term used by American Indians, after all. You’d have to look long and hard to find any Indian who referred to himself as a Native American. (Oh, all right, ‘himself or herself’.)
  5. Dave Perry…You and I seem to be playing in the same ballpark (cricket pitch) when it comes to solving times and heretofore unknown words and spellings. I thoroughly enjoy reading your blog posts.
  6. 23 minutes for this one, which is pretty slow for a ST puzzle. Admittedly this is based on a limited sample as I’ve only been doing them since the change in editorship. A cut above I thought, although I’m not at all sure about the flatulence.
    My main difficulty was in the NW, where I struggled to see BLADDERED (a very good clue) and then CARCASE, a spelling I’m pretty sure I’ve never come across before.
    I’ve never come across the Dorothy L Sayers novel: I went through a period of great interest in detective fiction but it was all American. I think when properly done it has real literary merit, but unfortunately for all my efforts I could not find anyone beyond Chandler and (being generous) Hammett who did it properly.
    Thanks as always for the blog Dave.
    1. And for a living author, do add Reginald Hill to the list. ‘On Beulah Height’ is one of those detective novels that entirely transcends the genre, and his latest novel – ‘The Woodcutter’ – is the work of a master.
      1. Thanks again… crikey, I’ve got quite a reading list to be getting on with. Once I’ve finished the Communist Manifesto of course…
  7. Can’t recall the time, but remember enjoying the puzzle. Has PB had an effect already? LAMBASTE and CARCASE are the spellings that I would use. Could be an Old Commonwealth thing. As for the ancient ill winds. Will Carling elevated the concept sufficiently for it now to be just about acceptable.
  8. Coincidentally, the episode of Mythbusters where Adam, Jamie and co constructed a lead balloon has just been shown here on Greek TV.

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