Sunday Times 4563 (10 Nov 2013) by Dean Mayer

31 comments on “Sunday Times 4563 (10 Nov 2013) by Dean Mayer”

1. I left this as unfinished as I simply could not see any rational explanation for 24A. In 15D, is RUN really ‘published’? RAN, as in ‘The paper ran a story’ , I can see. These aside, a cracker of a crossword so I will have to start clearing my Sundays when it is Dean’s turn. COD 8D
2. Held up all last Sunday on DRAG,ON. I know nought of current UK TV series unless the ABC buys in. On the other hand, It’s That Man Again was well remembered. An age thing + the tyranny of spatial and temporal distance.

   Now the confession: I contemplated HOTHAM instead of HITMAN. Like … there may be a hospital with that name and a hot ham could be a radio show’s new offer?

   Hardly recognised the Sinbad allusion at 13ac … but got there in the end.

3. Thank you Dave. That there are over 50 comments in the Forum indicates the level of difficulty and level of polarisation in the Crossword Club camp. There were 5 or 6 clues I couldn’t adequately parse on the day so you have performed a great service. I must have led a sheltered life as I had never heard of a transvestite being called a TV before. I don’t particularly like “lowbrow” culture in the Crossword but it is not unreasonable to expect crosswordistes to have a broad range of knowledge. An “offer” is a hit man?! That is stretching the friendship a bit too far. As is 24ac. That just does not work for me.

   Edited at 2013-11-17 11:38 am (UTC)

4. William Hague was never Prime Minister, just a former leader of the Conservative Party.

   I had some reservations about this as yet again I feel it’s a puzzle in the wrong slot, masquerading as an ST cryptic.

   Alain Menu is surely off most people’s radar. TOLBOOTH and APNEA are alternative US spellings. ‘Boss’ meaning ‘excellent’ is another Americanism which one needs to know to make the connection to STELLAR, another slang term in this context. I’m not really sure how ‘burden’ defines OLD MAN OF THE SEA. 24ac I could take if there was some indication that a dialect might be involved.The 5th letter of 19dn gave me most pause for thought.

   Edited at 2013-11-17 02:06 pm (UTC)

   1. Yes, sorry about that. You’re quite right of course. I think I get him mixed up in my head with John Major. I don’t know why!
   2. Seems OK to me. The OM of the sea is the proverbial burden. Cf Albatross.
5. I just love these puzzles; they are a real treat and this one was no exception.

   My sole problem was 21A where I had to look up a derived ALAIN MENU to see if he really existed. At 24A T for The is standard stuff so T-HICK went straight in. Unusually for me I knew the TV prog reference and again TV for cross dressing is there in Chambers for all to see.

   No quibbles and a delightful 25 minute solve

6. Or indeed The story was run by the papers.
   1. OK (sort of)
      1. OK full stop I’d have said.
7. Loved it, loved it, loved it.. helped, no doubt, by knowing Alain Menu and even Dragon’s Den, though mainly by repute like the appalling armstrad man.

   I agree it was hard, but I prefer them like that. What’s the point of a 10 minute solve?

   You don’t need any criminal cant for 8dn, you can easily polish someone off and see that someone who does so could be described as an offer. This is standard crosswordese, like banker = river.

   1. I don’t think Amstrad man has ever appeared on Dragon’s Den. The Apprentice is his TV show.
      1. Yes, knew that Jack, hence the “like”.. call me extravagant, I was giving two example of programmes I would rather die than watch 🙂
         1. Sorry I misunderstood.
8. This took me ages, and I loved most of it, but the experience was rather spoiled by 8dn. The debate about what does and doesn’t constitute general knowledge will run and run but a 60-year-old radio show is a step too far for me.
   1. ITMA is well before my time too – the only reason I knew it was because my parents have referenced it occasionally, but I don’t think I’ve met it in any other circumstances.

      225 reveals that it was used in the wordplay for HITMAN in an Azed of 2007.

      1. It’s before my parents’ time so I was never likely to encounter it in that context!
   2. ITMA (It’s That Man Again – a reference to Hitler) wasn’t just any old radio show. It holds a unique place in the history of the UK.

      It was designed as a morale booster for the war torn population and featured two very popular performers in Tommy Handley and Jack Train. It specialised in bang up to the minute jokes and a string of regular imaginary characters (including Colonel Chinstrap who subsequently appeared in the Goon Show)

      It spawned many catch phrases including the first use of D’oh! many years before The Simpsons were even thought of!

      1. I’m sure it was a big deal at the time but ultimately it was just a popular radio show. I certainly don’t remember it featuring in any of my history lessons on the period…
9. A tough one, even for Mr Mayer, but it kept me interested right until the end. Seeing previously unknown spellings like TOLBOOTH, even if clear from the wordplay, always puts me on edge for the rest of the puzzle in case others might be lurking. Had to laugh when I saw ALAIN MENU, as I haven’t come across his name for about 20 years and the crossword wasn’t the first place I would have expected to re-encounter him.
10. A wonderfully ingenious and devious puzzle. I got there, all correct, in the end, by dint of returning to the puzzle over several days. The racing driver referred to at 21A was absurdly obscure, but eminently get-able from the cryptic hints. It was then, as Jimbo says, just a matter of checking that such a chap had ever existed. No problem with THICK for me, but I did think that “offer” as the def for HITMAN was ludicrous and should have been strangled at birth by the xword editor! But I accept at once that others will strongly disagree.
11. This rewarded a week of on-and-off attack with some very pleasing moments. Guessed right at HITMAN – not knowing the reference the definition was just iffy enough to leave me with a question. Guessed wrong on fast ALAIN, where I decided a SET was pretty much a crew.

    Jack: Apologies from APNEA; but don’t blame the US for one-L tollbooths. I’m pretty sure all of ours are properly 2-LLed.

12. I was delayed in getting TOLBOOTH precisely because the only spelling American I knew has 2 Ls. But I think I recall seeing it spelled this way somewhere, and anyway that was the least of my worries. Got HITMAN only because I could think of nothing else with those checkers; unfortunately I could with 26ac. It would have been dumb luck if I’d put in the D anyway, as the clue was totally beyond me, as was 8d. DNK the racer, but I felt sure it had to be; and surprisingly, it was. More work than even I expected, but –with some reservations about the 8 and 26– I’ll second Jerry’s opinion.
13. Can’t see the problem with “offer” as someone who “offs”. Isn’t that sort of thing that cryptic puzzles are supposed to be about.
    I’m also amazed that so many have never even heard of ITMA: well before my time also, but surely … 🙂
14. Many thanks for the blog, Dave, and to all for the masses of feedback on this puzzle. Combined with those on the message board there have been around 90 comments, and while I didn’t attempt to make the crossword in any way controversial (apart from the forced inclusion of ALAIN MENU but, then again, give me a sport with 4 wheels and I’m a fan, so this driver’s name was very familiar to me) it seems to have turned out that way; and if the result of that is the best part of 100 comments then it sounds like a good future plan!*
    ‘Offer’ for HITMAN – especially given the added QM – may be new (I haven’t checked) but, as has been pointed out elsewhere, seems more logically sound than the long-established ‘banker’ to indicate a river; in what way does a river ‘bank’? But we have for many years enjoyed the old classics of ‘flower’ for a river and ‘number’ for anaesthetic. If the setter can find similar ‘not the word you think it is’ devices then it’s all intended to add to the fun.
    ITMA was before my time too but, as Jimbo was first to point out, it was a seminal and hugely influential radio show, as ground-breaking as Monty Python would be some years later. Whenever cultural references appear in a crossword we always have to be careful. The only thing a setter can fairly ask is that solvers are aware of these things – it’s extremely dangerous to extend that into ‘knowing about’, and by that I mean characters and plots and the like. So when we include (apparently) lowbrow references we try to make the same call on the solver. Our hope is that ‘heard of it’ should be enough, but whether those cultural nods are high or lowbrow, historical or contemporary, we have no way of knowing who has heard of what. It will always be guesswork on our part, but that’s no reason to say ‘avoid all cultural references’.
    Best wishes all.

    * Just kidding.

    1. Hello Dean

       I must endorse your comments about ITMA. I am old enough to have heard the show but my real knowledge of it comes from the death of Jack Train in 1966. My parents and in-laws were deeply affected by his demise and it was clear from their sharing of memories that ITMA had a huge effect upon them all during the war. Whilst Churchill rightly receives plaudits for his oratory I suspect that ITMA did far more week-in and week-out to keep moral high and the mood positive.

15. Just back from UK (to HK) – wouldn’t normally comment so late in the day but marked this one ‘v. good but hard’ and think it is worth it. Loved TOLBOOTH – despite the dodgy spelling – was happy with HITMAN (though I never ‘got’ it) and also with ALAIN whatsisname. But I was rather less happy about DRAGON, since unlike the two afore-mentioned – where you could get the answer from the checking letters and the wordplay, respectively – with DRAGON – the key initial letter not being checked – the ‘interested generalist’ really has no way in. Not many of that group are into transvestism, and many of that group are not avid pulp TV watchers. Or live abroad.

    In the final analysis, I didn’t mind looking up the word after 2 hours and 23 minutes of mental challenge and fun, but feel that by cluing DRAGON in a different, ‘fairer’ way the puzzle would have been enhanced.

16. I defend the legitimacy of any clue, no matter how low or high brow the reference, as long as I come up with the answer. If I don’t get the answer then it must have been a stupid clue.
    Seriously, though, I love British cryptics. They are horrible charmers, especially to North Americans (Hamilton, Ontario, in this case) who have to piece together the solutions painfully, trying to land on some obscure idiom we have never heard of on this side of the pond. This makes it all the more gratifying. And now I know what it is to be chuffed and have a sprog.

    I especially love this wonderful blog. I got “dragon” by sheer dint of trial and error, filling in letters and hoping that you, like we in Canada, have a show called Dragon’s Den or something like it. But the transvestite reference went right over my head until I read about it here. And I’ve heard TV for transvestite but didn’t make the connection. Thanks all for wonderful comments

17. If an “offer” can be said to be a hitman, are we about to see a whole new generation of synonyms from this setter? Are we witnessing history in the making here?

    If so, I’d like to make a contribution. How about “inner” for commercial traveller, or pub crawler, or perhaps just crawler. The possibilities are endless…

18. Weeks later in Toronto…………

    dorsetjimbo, I think the colonel in The Goons was Bloodknock.

19. С большего, написавший круто написал.

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