Sunday Times 4470 (29 Jan 2012)

Author   daveperryPosted on Categories Weekend Cryptic
Solving time: 35:28

A lot of really good wordplay this week. Much of it extremely well-disguised. The containment indicators in 4 & 16, for example, were both hard to spot. Also 14, 15 & 18 were all very neat. I enjoyed this one a great deal and it’s hard to pick out a favourite, but I think the neatness of the wordplay in 14 just shades it for me.

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

Across
1 W AND E + RING
6 ELBOW = WOBbLE rev
9 ROWER = RE rev after ROW
10 TREADMILL = (DREAMT)* + ILL
11 SPONSORED WALK = (SNOW LEOPARDS)* + K
14 OS + jeT + RICH
16 TH(OR)E + Anything Used – Henry David Thoreau was an American author whose book Civil Disobedience has been said to have inspired many civil rights activists including Martin Luther King.
17 TOPSPIN = NIP + SPOT all rev
19 PER + I + GEE – An astronomical term that the describes the point at which an orbiting body most closely approaches the body it orbits. The opposite of an APOGEE.
21 NERVE-WRACKING = (CREW GIVEN RANK)*
24 MAGNUSSON = (SAMSUNG)* + ON – Magnus Magnusson hosted the TV quiz show</i>Mastermind</i> for 25 years
26 V + OD + KA – although no need to read beyond ‘Russian tipple’, surely?
27 DENSE – hidden
28 ABHORRENT = A + (BROTHER)* about N
Down
1 WORD’S WORTH
2 NE(W + P + OR)T
3 EUROS = SO + RUE all rev
4 INTERCHANGE = I + (RECENT)* about HANG
5 GEE – hidden – ‘My’ is the definition
6 ENDEAVOUR = END + “EVER” – The christian name of Colin Dexter’s fictional detective.
7 B + RICK + IE
8 WOLF = F + LOW all rev
12 DOTS PER INCH = (DOC HE PRINTS)*
13 SUPERGIANT = UP in (INERT GAS)*
15 IMPORT + UNE – ‘Badger’ is the definition, ‘weight’ = IMPORT, and ‘Nice’ refers to the French town, hence ‘one’ in Nice would be UNE
18 PINK GIN = PIN (stick) + KG / IN, abbreviations for a unit of weight and a unit of length.
20 G + RIDDLE
22 C + OVER
23 AM + ID
25 S + PA

7 comments on “Sunday Times 4470 (29 Jan 2012)”

  1. 49′, with a large number of items I’d never heard of: ELBOW, RICKIE (or BRICKIE, for that matter), SPONSORED WALK, MAGNUSSON, ENDEAVOUR (never seen Morse), NEWPORT. I wasted various amounts of time worrying that ‘net’ in britspeak is ‘nett’ (2d), trying to force ‘Cain’ into 28ac, and refusing to believe that 26ac could be so easy (it didn’t help that I didn’t know of Ka). COD to 16ac, even though he does show up an awful lot in these cryptics.
  2. 50 minutes. I don’t like the setter being attributed up front as some names, such as Dean’s, make me very wary before I even start solving and I know this affects my results. I have the same problem with some setters at the Guardian.

    This was an excellent puzzle.

  3. Another fine effort from Dean.
    Thoreau was a very interesting man. I much enjoyed reading Walden, Civil Disobedience not so much. It was probably better in its historical context than nowadays, though it contains some good thoughts..
    1. You’re no doubt familiar with the story of Thoreau going to jail rather than paying a tax that would have gone to support the war against Mexico. Emerson, visiting him, said, “What are you doing in there?” To which Thoreau replied, “What are YOU doing out there?” D.H. Lawrence didn’t care much for him, although I can’t remember why. I remember at Cal in a philosophy class, a student trying to make a point about Thoreau and Walden, only to be interrupted by the professor with “Thoreau was a fraud!” Professor Joseph Tussman, author of “Obligation and the Body Politic”, and probably the only pedestrian in Berkeley to wait at a red light even when there were no cars in sight.
  4. This is the kind of entertaining puzzle I’ve come to expect from this setter. Very enjoyable but not particularly easy for me. I wasted an embarrassingly long time on NEWPORT, considering that I used to live there! I couldn’t see where the word “lines” fitted into the clue. 45 minutes.
  5. I don’t understand 6 across. I get the cryptic part but don’t see the connection between sack and elbow.

    Judy from Vancouver

    1. ‘to get the sack’ and ‘to get the elbow’ are both euphemisms meaning to get fired from ones job, so the words are synonymous in that sense.

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