Sunday Times 4431 (1 May 2011)

Posted on Categories Weekend Cryptic
Solving time: About 40 minutes again this week. I still had several left after 30 minutes.

This is probably my least favourite grid. I don’t like the way the four corners don’t intersect with each other, and I find it too easy to get stuck.

There were a couple of words I didn’t know – DACOIT & SKAT, but I got both from the wordplay. I didn’t fully understand 3 & 15a until afterwards, but both went in from the definitions.

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

Across
1 GUAR(AN + TEE)D – There was an error in this clue in the morning when I printed it off, which was fixed in the afternoon. The clue read ‘Ensure’ instead of ‘Ensured’
8 IS + LEt
10 ALTARPIECE = “ALTER PEACE”
11 BORE – dd
13 FAN + TAIL – a breed of pigeon
15 TIM + ELY – Tiny Tim from A Christmas Carol closed the book with the line ‘God bless us, every one!’, and Ely should be familiar to regular solvers as a see, or bishopric, in Cambridgeshire
16 T(I + D)IER
17 ONE OVER THE EIGHT – dd
18 SLIP-UP – another dd
20 AUGU(R)St – R = castle (or rook) in chess notation
21 RE + ‘A’ LIST
22 hidden
25 RAM + SHACKLE
26 NO TEa
27 DESOLATION = (ISOLATED)* + ON
Down
2 U + Treat Academics Humanely
3 RATE – the wordplay had me puzzled for a bit, but it’s CRATE (old car) with the C removed. C being the symbol for the speed of light (the maximum speed)
4 NORWAY = RON rev + WAY
5 EXISTENTIALISTS = (LATIN IT’S SEXIEST)*
6 DACOIT = O + CAD rev + IT – A dacoit is an Indian bandit
7 DESECRATES = (SEEDS)* about CRATE
9 SMOKING GUN – cd
12 I + MP + EDI(MEN)T
13 F(L)AVOUR
14 LINE-OUT – A reversed clue where the solution contains the wordplay, so ‘Neil’ = (LINE)* or LINE OUT where OUT is an anagrind.
15 TROUSERING = (RIOTER + GUN’S)*
19 PETARD = (DEPART)* – A petard was a small bomb used to breach fortifications. Of course, if your fuse wasn’t long enough, you would be ‘hoisted by your own petard’.
20 ASS + AI + L
23 SKATe – An early trick-taking German card game
24 VET + O

11 comments on “Sunday Times 4431 (1 May 2011)”

  1. I kept this crossword but wrote nothing on it apart from circling dacoit.. so at least I could find nothing to query or complain about, which is becoming the Sunday norm nowadays.
    I was interested to learn that dacoits are engaging in dacoity. I had heard the term before, but only in connection with Burma, not India. The link provides a useful list of recent exponents..
  2. Not at all fond of R for “castle” which seems at one remove. And, as for petards:
    1. Hamlet says:
    ’tis the sport to have the engineer
    Hoist with his own petard

    2. The word for the small explosive is from the French verb peter.

    1. R is standard chess notation for a rook, aka a castle. So technically correct I suppose. However, castle is a word reserved purely for non-chessplayers; all proper players (who would know the notation), always use rook, so to that extent I agree with you MC.
  3. DACOIT is a very popular Countdown word so it caused me no problems. Finsihed in 30 minutes but had to look up SKAT.

    If I remember correctly Castle = R was the cause of some upset here many years ago during a short visit from a very argumentative contributor. I tried to find it but without success.

    1. ..posting Anon but signing as a retired colonel, he claimed to be responsible for eradicating Castle = Rook from Times puzzles but apparently his argument does not hold sway with our current illustrious ST editor. I wonder if this recurrence will return the dear Colonel to us after his long silence or perhaps he has long ago succumbed to the effects of his incandescent rages.

      http://times-xwd-times.livejournal.com/140612.html

      1. I can certainly see why you remembered him, Jack.. but he did not sound very convincing to me. Surely just a troll, as someone pointed out the following day.
        1. No doubt, but it livened things up. I browsed through the following few days for further contributions from the Colonel but only found one on 5th November 2007.

          I also found, much to my chagrin, that on 9th November that year I claimed never to have met the word SKAT before and Peter B kindly responded with additional information about it!

          1. Yes, he certainly livened up the day you linked to. I meant to add how much I agreed with some of the other comments made there, especially Anax (why doesn’t he post here these days?). The more I think about it, the more I think some of the older crosswords had a variety and freshness that todays disciplined, strait-jacketed Ximenean versions find hard to equal. And we sometimes don’t help by criticising clues that in point of fact everyone solved without much difficulty.. in summary I don’t agree with the colonel!
            1. I agree about older crosswords. That was why I enjoyed last Wednesday’s so much which came in for some criticism from other quarters.
  4. Not being a chess player, I had no problem with castle=rook. I always thought they were interchangeable. But I’ve just read the Colonel’s diatribe kindly provided by Jack and see now that I’ve been unpardonably naive. I agree he (the Colonel, not Jack) has probably succumbed to apoplexy by now. Back to the crossword: I kept it till this morning to accompany my usual first cuppa. Pretty ordinary fare. A very unexciting 20 minutes.
  5. A remarkable ST, in that there was nothing remarkable about it. I just now realized that ‘slip’=’fielder’ has been used twice recently, and that I didn’t learn from the first time to solve the second; but knowing the meaning wasn’t necessary in either case. I didn’t know TROUSERING, but I had all the checkers. 21’30”.

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