Sunday Times 4421 (20 Feb 2011)

Author   daveperryPosted on Categories Weekend Cryptic
Solving time: About 35-40 minutes, with one wrong. I had 6 left after 25 minutes, which I took another 10-15 minutes to pick off a bit later on.

I did myself no favours by throwing in DECAGON at 10a without considering that there may be another possibility. It was only when I had all but one of the other checkers in place for 9d that the penny finally dropped. 2 & 18 then followed straight away, which just left guesses for 15 & 22, one of which was right and one was wrong.

Pretty standard stuff overall for a Sunday. Just one minor issue at 20a, in that the ‘s’ in ‘things’ seemed superfluous and a little misleading. I didn’t like the cd for 8d as the second word seemed largely unclued.

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

Across
1 LAUREL AND HARDY = UR in (HEAR LANDLADY)*
10 OCT + AGONy – I went for DECAGON at first, which fits the cryptic just as well, but not the checking letters.
11 CITADEL = (DIALECT)*
12 MARE’S NEST = MA + (RESENTS)*
13 PILAU = LIP rev + AU – That’s ‘sauce’ as in backchat.
14 recORDERS
15 R(ESP)IG + HI – An Italian composer that I didn’t know. I had to come up with a three letter synonym for tackle, ending in G, and could only think of MUG instead of RIG, giving me MESPUGHI.
18 DR + A + GRACE – I was considering ROAD RACE for a while but couldn’t justify it. Grace is presumably W.G., but it could equally be either of his two brothers E.M. or G.F. who both played for England, indeed they all played on the same team together, the first time this has happened.
20 STAPLE – dd – although surely ‘things’ implies ‘STAPLES’
23 CO + N + CH – Conch shells just make me think of Lord of the Flies.
25 LONG + HORNS
26 UP + START
27 sTRUMPET, although I wrote CRUMPET first, but quickly changed it.
28 SCATTERBRAINED = (ABSTRACTED ERIN)* – I’m not sure why she could be described as scatterbrained. Just because she’s abstracted, I guess. Seems a little weak, though.
Down
2 ALT + ERE + D – The ALT key on a keyboard is rapidly becoming a new chestnut, if there is such a thing.
3 RE(GIST + R)AR
4 L + IN + DEN
5 A snappy dresser might have some NICE TIES
6 HET UP – I’m not certain of this wordplay. I guess it’s HE for ‘male’, plus PUT up for ‘present’ as in present a defence. Sometimes you look at these sort of clues and think how clever they are. This one just seems dodgy to me.
7 RED + FLAG
8 YALE UNIVERSITY – A cd based around the well-known lock manufacturer. This would be fine if the answer was simply YALE, but I don’t think it really works very well for YALE UNIVERSITY. The second word just seems to have been ignored in the wordplay.
9 WORMWOOD + SCRUBS – the drink Absinthe is extracted from the Wormwood plant, and the word can also refer to the plant itself.
16 PATCHOULI = (TOUCH LIP + A)* – I didn’t know the word, but it seemed the only viable arrangement of the letters.
17 SCULPTOR = (CURLS POT)* – The only Epstein I knew was Brian, the Beatles manager, but this refers to Sir Jacob the pioneering Anglo-American modern sculptor.
19 AMNESIA – cd – a bit of an old chestnut
21 PORK PIE – rhyming slang for lie, as in ‘telling porkies’
22 INSTAR = (TRAINS)* – another unknown word that needed to be guessed. An instar is a developmental stage of an arthropod, so ‘small creature’s changing’ is the definition, and ‘when lost’ is the anagrind. I saw some comments on the forum about unnecessary words in the clue, but it seems fine to me.
24 HEAR + Tinnie

7 comments on “Sunday Times 4421 (20 Feb 2011)”

  1. Yes, I think we got there eventually either here or on the CC forum. As the word was unknown it needed reference books to confirm its exact meaning and decide what was the definition and what was the anagrind. Prior to that it appeared that ‘when lost’ was superfluous.

    Not sure I like the new regime at the ST, having puzzles that are strictly accurate! It was easier in the old days to bung in the answers and if they didn’t quite seem to fit the clue, to assume the setter, editor or printers had botched things yet again – and one was usually right about this. Now I spend ages trying to work out what I have not understood.

    1. “It was easier in the old days to bung in the answers and if they didn’t quite seem to fit the clue, to assume the setter, editor or printers had botched things yet again”

      Yes, but that approach seems to have transferred itself quite successfully to the new website 😉

  2. 22 minutes, with 9d being my last in, I believe. Non-UK solvers might not know (I somehow at last remembered) that Wormwood Scrubs is a prison (hence ‘can’; is it a small prison?). I actually ‘knew’ INSTAR, but thought it was a stage (like ‘imago’) and hence thought the clue was wordy. It was only when reading the blog that I realized I had never figured out HET UP; I briefly considered ‘tup’=’present’ in the sexual sense, but it’s the male (ram) that tups and the sexually receptive female that presents; then I just went on to other clues. I would imagine that no one who went through the hippy 60s would forget the repellent odor of patchouli.
  3. “Angry male present?” in the Toronto Star (a month later).

    There is nothing in the clue to suggest that put should be reversed.

    1. The way I interpreted this was that ‘present’ = ‘put up’ = TUP. I agree that it’s weak, like I said in the blog, but nobody has come up with a better suggestion.

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