Sunday Times 4457 (30 Oct 2011) – A personal milestone

Author   daveperryPosted on Categories Weekend Cryptic
Solving time: 19:06 – A very straightforward solve.

Welcome to my 100th blog on this site. It also happens to be two years to the very day since I posted my first one. I was hoping for something a little more challenging to celebrate, if I’m honest, but this certainly wasn’t that. I don’t know, two weeks ago I was moaning that the standard was getting tougher. Honestly, some people are never satisfied! Well, in the light of the wide variety of puzzles we’ve had over the last few weeks, I take it all back. I think PB probably has it pitched about right. After all, you can’t please all the people all of the time.

Despite its relative simplicity, it was an enjoyable puzzle nevertheless. 12 and 13 both made me smile, particularly the cryptic def at 13. There were a few words I didn’t know – SADDHU, BOWER BIRD & THRENODE, but all were gettable from the wordplay.

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

Across
1 ARREST – dd
5 S + CATTY – although I’m not sure where you would expect to see school abbreviated to just S rather than Sch.
9 BlOWER + BIRD – An Australian bird, similar to the starling. I didn’t know it, but with B-W-R in place, the answer was clear.
10 RING – triple def – Group operating illegally / call / round
11 MInce + GNocchi + ONions
12 UNHINGED – dd
14 SPLENDID = (LENDS DIP)*
16 cREEL
18 parSNIP – Scratch is a golfing term, I believe, for par. A golfer who plays off scratch has no handicap, and therefore plays off par.
19 RUBIDIUM – the centre of ‘turbot’ is Rb, which is the chemical symbol for rubidium
21 CH + ARTIST
22 OR + C + HID – Or is yellow or gold in heraldry. Unusual to see it clued as yellow rather than gold, but both are equally valid
24 DOWN – dd – the second of which was so obvious that it didn’t matter that the first was quite vague
26 D(A + N + DELI)ON
27 ST(dinneR)OVE
28 EX(P)E + R + T – ‘poise’ = P has caught me out before, but I remembered it this time. It’s a (non-SI) unit of viscosity, and p is its symbol.
Down
2 RABBIT + PUNCH
3 rED WINe – King of Northumbria in the 6th century AD
4 THRENODE = (TENOR HE’D)* – I didn’t know the word, but this was the most likely arrangement of the letters, given the checkers.
5 S(A + DD)H + U – again, I wasn’t familiar with the word, but I pieced it together from the wordplay
6 AARONS ROD = (ADORNS OAR)* – I remember trying to read an encyclopedia when I was quite young. I think I tried several times, and probably never got past about page 5, but I remember reading this entry every time. It came right after Aaron’s Beard, another plant, and of course the aardvark and the aardwolf.
7 TUNa
8 MISs + UNDER + STAND
13 EXECUTIONER – cd – Ha!
15 ESPERANTO = (PERSON ATE)* – although ‘artificial tongue’ was a bit of a giveaway
17 OBSOLETE = (OBESE LOT)* – a rather obvious anagram with the first letter and all the consonants in the right order
20 RI(DateD)LE – I’m not convinced that harry is synonymous with rile. Harrying someone might cause them to become riled, but that only makes them cause and effect, and not really the same thing.
23 CR + I + MP
25 lOUT

11 comments on “Sunday Times 4457 (30 Oct 2011) – A personal milestone”

  1. Well done, Dave!
    I knew threnody, so threnode wasn’t too big a stretch. Otherwise quite straightforward.. this weeks is looking more interesting.
    Teeny typo: siddhu for saddhu in the preamble
  2. Many happy blogging returns, Dave. And thanks for all that hard work.

    I spoilt a 10-minutes solve on this by putting ARRON’S ROD… must work on my 3 Rs.

  3. Yes, congratulations, Dave! 100 in two years is going it some. It took me four.

    35 minutes for this one which seemed reasonably straightforward (unlike today’s). S for school is in Collins but not my Chambers nor in SOED. It strikes me that it’s an abbreviation unlikely to appear very often in its own right but more commonly in combination with other letters.

    I don’t understand down = immediately at 24ac if that’s what it’s supposed to be.

      1. Thanks for that, Jerry. Yes it fits, and I’ve found it in Collins now too. I missed it earlier.
    2. Thanks, Jack, although I’m quite surprised that anyone else has even the vaguest idea of how many they’ve actually done. I have a bizarre obsession with numbers and statistics and tend to keep records of all sorts of weird stuff. By my reckoning you’ve blogged 108 puzzles in slightly under 4 years and would be eighth on a leader board if such a thing existed. I, myself, am tenth with my 100, but am closing in on richardvg’s 105!
      1. I hadn’t really thought about it until Jimbo clocked his ton of weekday puzzles recently and I knew we both started in the same week. I wonder if, like me, you still have all your blogs saved on your computer? Unfortunately they’re muddled up with test runs and other crossword stuff I’ve done so it’s not easy for me to count them there.
        1. I do all my blogs in a spreadsheet which generates all the HTML tags for me. Every new blog I do gets created as a new tab, so while I may be missing the odd one, I still have the vast majority. It comes in very useful when someone posts a question on a really old blog. Annoyingly the blog header with the crossword number in it doesn’t appear in the email, but I can search my spreadsheet for one of the answers to find it quickly.
  4. Mazel tov, Dave; I’m looking forward to the next 100. This took me 31′,better than recent times of mine. I didn’t know THRENODE or ‘poise’, but felt safe with both. The BOWER-BIRD is worth watching: it gathers various things to decorate its nest, a veritable bower, in order to attract a mate, preferably one with tacky taste. I felt like Jack about DOWN=immediate, but I thought I had some examples to satisfy my doubt; now I can’t remember any.
  5. Did have to get help with BOWER BIRD and to verify AARON’S ROD which I did not misssspelll so on the whole an enjoyable 30-35 minutes.

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