Sunday Times 4422 (27 Feb 2011)

Author   daveperryPosted on Categories Weekend Cryptic
Solving time: Best part of an hour all told. I still had 12 left after my first half-hour stint. Tried again a bit later on and got one more. Picked it up again the following day in a better frame of mind, and all but one fell pretty quickly. The last one was 12a which I eventually gave up on and resorted to aids for.

I got off to a completely false start by inventing a HOST MACRO as a plausible-sounding internet facility, which completely blocked up the NW corner for quite a while. It was only when I got 14 that I revisited it, and realised there was a far better known answer.

I didn’t like 12 – I didn’t like the definition at the time, although looking at it now, I suppose it is quite clever. What threw me the most, I think, was the use of ‘hot’ as an anagrind. I can’t really see how it’s justifiable as such.

A few other dubious definitions this week – 1, 6d & 19 all seemed a stretch to me. And the wordplay for 27 was weak. There were some good clues in there as well – 24 made me smile, and 23 had a nice misleading surface but good solid wordplay so I’ll give it my COD.

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

Across
1 S (CAB) + BARD – Something of a dubious definition here, as well. Surely a scabbard isn’t there for protection, unless it’s to protect the wearer from cutting themselves on their own sword!
6 LOCAL + E
9 CAPS – dd – Nothing to do with George Bernard Shaw, just that his name (or at least his initials) was written in capitals.
10 CHAR + DON + NAY
11 OR + WELL – British is a bit of a red herring here. I tried to begin the answer with B for long time. As soon as I realised that it was part of the definition, the rest was obvious.
12 SERGEANT = SET about (RANGE)* – A reference to the Beatles creation. A lot of lateral thinking was required to get this from the definition alone, and to get it from the wordplay meant realising that ‘hot’ was an anagrind. I could make neither of these leaps and had to resort to aids.
14 FOR CERTAIN – It took me a while to spot the wordplay here – it’s FORCE + TRAIN with the R moved.
16 SOS + O
18 AS + BOy
19 NEAR + MISSES – Although I can’t see how NEAR = mean.
21 MADE ROOM = MOORED A.M. all rev
23 SUP(Pub)ER – A neat little clue. I liked the use of sandwiches as a verb – very misleading.
25 GA + RAGES + ALE
27 NEver let ON – Disheartened generally implies removing the middle letter (or two) from a word or phrase. To use it to indicate removing the central 5 letters from a phrase of 9 seems a little arbitrary.
28 SEVER + nosE
29 DISASTER = (ASTERoIDS)*
Down
2 CHAT ROOMS = (MACHO SORT)*
3 BASTE = “BASED”
4 ACCELERANDO = (CLEARANCE)* + DO – A musical term
5 DEAD SEA – cd
6 LADy – A highly dubious definition. Shaver implies post-pubescence, whereas LAD certainly does not.
7 CANOEISTS = (ASCENT IS + O)*
8 L + EARN
13 RING + MASTERS
15 CO(OPERA)TE – Shelter = COVE was my first thought, but it was close enough to make the right answer obvious.
17 STEVEDORE = (DOVER + TEES)*
20 A + RM + BAND
22 APACE = rev hidden
24 PANTS – dd
26 stEWEd

6 comments on “Sunday Times 4422 (27 Feb 2011)”

  1. Good blog Dave. Couple of small things.. near does = mean, tightfisted.. though Chambers has it as “archaic.” But it was common at one time.
    Also I don’t think calling someone a shaver carries any implication that they actually shave, quite the opposite. Chambers says shaver = “a young lad.” The etymology seems unclear, but there may be an ironic element to it as in “shorty” for a tall person..
    I liked this crossword, but it took me ages to get 9ac. I found sergeant much more easily, but only then twigged the link with pepper..
    Pants = bad (or as an anagrind) is now a regular crossword feature, and may even become a cliche at this rate..
  2. 32 minutes, but I never got 9ac, at least not until a day or so after submitting, so perhaps I should say 48 hours, 32 minutes. If I recall, I put in ‘lays’ (= is better) in desperation. I might point out that ‘asbo’ and ‘pants’ are a) very recent b) UK terms.(Incidentally, is it pronounced ‘azbo’ or ‘assbo’?) I only knew ‘asbo’ because it had appeared a while back (I failed to get it at the time). Here, ‘pants’=’rubbish’; recently,’pants’ was the anagrind.
  3. 45 minutes before going to bed at 2:30 AM. Might have been a bit quicker if I’d waited until the morning. I enjoyed it and had no misgivings about any of it. Today’s is a real doddle.
  4. I found this an absolute doddle and breezed through it in 7:49, which included about a minute at the end puzzling over 9ac. I also considered LAYS, but wasn’t happy with it so kept thinking and quickly got CAPS when I started going through the alphabet. Unlike jackkt I found this week’s much harder, about 20 mins.

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