Sunday Times 4448 (28 Aug 2011)

Author   daveperryPosted on Categories Weekend Cryptic
Solving time: 32:45 – pushed over the half-hour by 8d.

There were a few new words for me – OVENBIRD, RANCHI, TURKISTAN, WHEELER (as a horse) and POISE (as a unit), but all were deducible from the rest of the clue.

Not much to say about it, though. It seemed pretty run-of-the-mill to me. Nothing really stood out to be worthy of special mention.

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

Across
1 STATE OF THE ART – dd, the second of which is ‘Modern’
10 OVERSLEEP = PEEL’S rev after OVER (balls, a cricket reference)
11 TA + BOO
12 SU(CR)E
13 NEFERTITI = (FREE)* + TIT all in NI
14 HEAR + TIES
16 HAR(ExclusivE)M
19 CATERS = (CRATES)*
20 SVENGALI = Southwark + (LEAVING)*
22 TURKISTAN = (NATURIST + Kit)* – I’d not heard of Turkistan before, but I assumed it was another name for Turkmenistan. It isn’t, in fact it’s not a country at all, but the general region where the Turkish people come from.
24 PRIOR – dd
25 SENNA = S + ANNE rev – Ayrton of course.
26 BRILLIANT = BRILL + (AIN’T)*
27 WHEELER + DEALER – I wasn’t aware that a Wheeler was a draft horse, but with most of the checkers in place, the answer was pretty clear.
Down
2 TR + ENCHANT
3 TASTE – dd
4 O(LEAN)DE + R
5 T(I + P)OFF – I wasn’t sure about P for poise until I looked it up. Poise can be a unit of viscosity, and p is the standard symbol for it.
6 ENTERTAIN – dd
7 RABBIt
8 RORSCHACH TEST = (THATCHER CROSS)* – My last one in as I couldn’t understand the definition (and still don’t). What does a psychological inkblot test have to do with a trick cyclist? I assume I’m not thinking laterally enough, but I just can’t see it. See vinyl1’s comment below. Thanks to him.
9 Shunt + ODIUM + NIT + RATE
15 TERMI(NA)TE – Na being the chemical symbol for sodium (first bit of 9 to the chemists)
17 ERA + DICtATE
18 OVENBIRD – cd – I hadn’t heard of this N. American songbird, but with the V in place, it could only be this.
21 S + TABLE
23 RANCHi – Ranchi was another place I hadn’t heard of, but again the answer was clear from the definition & checkers.
24 POLKA = LOP rev + K + A

13 comments on “Sunday Times 4448 (28 Aug 2011)”

  1. I seem to have had my posting deleted. Anyway, 44′, with much time spent on 8d and 25ac, my LOIs. As Vinyl explains–and as I never knew– ‘trick cyclist’ is a derogatory slang term for a psychiatrist; are there any that aren’t derogatory? The test, I might point out, has been shown to be useless as a diagnostic tool, although the pictures can be fun. Never heard of Senna, never heard of the other one who I think is still under embargo in a recent Jumbo; but then I’ve never had any interest in any kind of racing, from greyhounds to automobiles. Also never heard of Ranchi, but no problem there. I still don’t really get 27ac: is DEALER supposed to mean ‘illegal drug dealer’? Are no other bargainers besides wheeler-dealers selfish? ‘Unselfish dealer’ strikes me as an oxymoron,
    1. I think you mean “tautology” rather than “oxymoron”. I’m happy from the dictionary definitions that “wheeler-dealer” involves more selfishness than average. The drug-dealing aspect is in the wordplay for DEALER, but that doesn’t imply that “wheeler-dealer” is anything to do with drug dealing.
  2. 40 minutes ending with a lucky guess at the arrangement of unchecked anagrist at 8dn which I never heard of although I got the trick-cyclist reference immediately.

    I also never heard of SUCRE, RANCHI or OVENBIRD, but P for Poise, a unit of viscosity, I learned only this week from listening to Round Britain Quiz on Radio 4.

    I had the same misgivings as Kevin over 27ac

  3. “trick cyclist” is simple cockney rhyming slang. It is *not* derogatory, any more than, say, duchess would be (duchess of fife, wife) nor does Chambers list it as such.

    Not that the pseudo-science of psychiatry does not deserve derogation, mind..

    1. My sister is a psychiatrist. I don’t think she’d appreciate the seven years she spent at medical school reduced to pseudo-science! Psychology is certainly a pseudo-science, as it can be practised by anyone, but a psychiatrist must be a fully qualified medical practitioner, so I think it’s a little more than that.
      1. This reminds me of a dinner party where the subject of homeopathy came up. I’d possibly had a little too much to drink and expressed my view of its validity rather robustly (I may have described the homeopathic hospital in Great Ormond Street as the National Centre for the Placebo Effect) and then learned that my hostess’s sister was a homeopathist. The rest of the evening was a little awkward.
        Homeopathy and psychiatry are of course not in the same category.
      2. For the record, I wasn’t making any derogatory comments on psychiatry, simply noting that slang terms for psychiatrists are, almost by definition, derogatory. Not that the science of psychiatry doesn’t have much to answer for, mind you: the lobotomy, shock treatment, the ‘refrigerator mother’ explanation of autism. But of course the same can be said for the history of medicine in general. I strongly recommend ‘Bad Medicine’, by Thing.
    1. He was on “unselfish dealer” – I missed the “un…”.

      But I still think the definition was perfectly reasonable.

  5. 20 minutes for this, but I had to cheat for 8dn because I’ve never heard “trick cyclist” before so it never occurred to me that I was looking for somethign relating to psychiatry. Annoying because I’ve heard of the Rorschach test (although I wouldn’t have known how to spell it).
  6. Weeks later in Toronto……….

    Was surprised at HAREEM, couldn’t find that spelling in any dictionary.

  7. Also syndicated, from Vancouver Island.

    hareem – alt. spelling in Chambers.

    15D – disagree with “9 to chemists”. That is the atomic no. for fluorine. Sodium (Na) is 11.

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