Sunday Times 4633 by Tim Moorey

Author   nick_the_novicePosted on Categories Weekend Cryptic
Eric caused trouble today. In one instance he was clearly present, but I could not quite understand how he had got there. In the other, it turned out he was there, but I struggled to recognise him.

An enjoyable puzzle, with several fairly straightforward anagrams to help you on your way and a few clues that were quite tricky (at least as far as I was concerned). One unknown (25a) that triggered research leading to my being introduced to the Australian linguistic phenomenon of the Tumbarumba, for which I am most grateful!

Some neat clues (8d pick of the bunch for me) and a pleasingly awful pun. Thanks to Mr Moorey for a fun time.

Definitions underlined, anagrams indicated by *(–)

Across
1 A piece about fine 17 member? (8)
AMERICAN – A MAN (piece – as in chess piece) around ERIC (fine). The first of two troublesome Erics in this offering. Whilst the answer was a write in once 17d and a couple of cross checkers were in place, I was struggling to justify the presence of Eric which had to be somehow linked to “fine”. Was there an Eric Fine of whom I should have heard? Was “copping an Eric” a turn of phrase amongst the criminal classes that I had somehow missed in my time spent hacking around the magistrates courts of London? As it turns out, it is a blood-fine paid under old Irish law. I suspect this may be an old chestnut in Crosswordland, but it was new to me – one for the memory bank…
6 No good justification for regular calls (6)
ROUNDS – GROUNDS. GROUNDS (justification) loses G (no good)
9 Bidding system in pub briefly making a comeback (4)
ACOL – LOCAL (pub briefly) reversed (making a comeback)
10 Pale pink kerosene coming out of Shell with more crackers (4,6)
ROSE MADDER – KEROSENE + MADDER (more crackers) gives us the pink dye. Enjoyed the “coming out of Shell” device for the hidden. Was not overly familiar with this thing, so further research was required in the interests of validation. Intriguingly, this revealed that “Irish sheep farmers still feed their sheep Rose Madder plant to tint the wool”. There must be a potential gag somewhere in there about the pink pound…
11 Shout about new post eg for a fervent preacher (3-9)
HOT-GOSPELLER – HOLLER (shout) around *(POST EG)
14 Credit squeezes create a stir in boozer (8)
CAROUSER – C(AROUSE)R. Fairly straightforward but elegant, I thought
15 What shoe repairers do about list (6)
REHEEL – RE (about) + HEEL (list – usage of heel meaning to lean to one side)
16 Jumper is indeed on back to front after a whiff of joint (6)
JERSEY – J (whiff of joint) with YES + RE (indeed + on) reversed. Took me a while to parse this one
18 Anger about broadcasting battles – it’s strong stuff (8)
IRONWARE – IRE (anger) goes about ON (broadcasting) + WAR (battles)
20 Tries again with treaties gone wrong? (12)
RENEGOTIATES – *(TREATIES GONE) [On edit – thanks to jackkt and Keriothe – the whole clue gives us the answer rather than just the “tries again” bit – see comments below]
22 Disgruntled Labour scoffed about Ambassador East (7,3)
CHEESED OFF – *(SCOFFED) around HE (Ambassador) + E (East). Labour is the anagrind. One of those expressions that somehow epitomises 1950’s Britain
24 Leave miserable places, no end of trouble (4)
HOLS – HOLES (last letter of trouble removed from the unpleasant locations)
25 One discounted broadsheet is separating word parts (6)
TMESIS – TIMES (on edit – one discounted from broadsheet – although as jackkt points out, The Times is no longer a broadsheet) + IS. New word to me, though guessable thanks to the cross checkers and wordplay elements of the clue. Anyone wishing to discover more about this abso-blo*dy-lutely fascinating linguistic phenomenon can check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tmesis . Here in the colonies we also, so I learned, have the word Tumbarumba as a synonym for Tmesis, thanks to a Tmesis-riddled poem about goings on in this small town in New South Wales by one John O’Grady. Strewth!
26 Secretary mostly working for food suppliers (8)
CATERERS – *(SECRETARY)
Down
2 Note bird sizzles right away in ovens (10)
MICROWAVES – MI (note) + CROW (bird) + RAVES (sizzles minus the R – “right away”)
3 Rigorous elder is involved in one of these groups? (9,6)
RELIGIOUS ORDERS – *(RIGOROUS ELDER IS)
4 Process engineering remains (7)
CORPSES – *(PROCESS)
5 Food hospital put out gets rejections (3)
NOS – NOSH
6 Rover car about to drop off British author (7)
RAMBLER – CAR (car with CA – about – dropping off) + AMBLER (British author Eric Ambler). The second troublesome Eric of the day. Ashamed to say I had not heard of this chap, although he seems to be pretty well known. I found this to be one of those clues (similar to the other troublesome Eric at 1a) where the answer was a fairly safe bet from definition and cross checkers, but the parsing was tricky. I went down several blind alleys, becoming particularly hung up on car giving us the R and R (Rolls Royce) and then trying to tie in amble somehow
7 Two separate articles in lingerie the worse for wear (5,3,7)
UNDER THE WEATHER – UNDERWEAR (lingerie) with two instances of THE added
8 Does perhaps rush around… (4)
DEER – Female deer which also gives REED (rush) backwards (around). Well disguised and neat, I thought – my COTD
12 … making grannie uneasy (7)
EARNING – *(GRANNIE)
13 Heard publican’s role in basement bar (4,6)
BEER CELLAR – Groanworthy homophonic pun. Love it!
17 Code words on the radio for US baseball team (7)
YANKEES – Double definition – the first one being the first of two references to the Alpha Bravo Charlie phonetic alphabet
19 Oscar’s involved in business concern? The opposite (3,2,2)
OUT OF IT – OUT[O]FIT (business concern) with another O involved (from Oscar – our second Alpha Bravo reference), segmented to give the opposite of “involved in”
21 Fancy wife overlooking that man! (4)
WHIM – W + HIM
23 Ugly creature appearing in exorcism (3)
ORC – EXORCISM hides the sea monster that seems to be a frequent visitor to Crosswordland

16 comments on “Sunday Times 4633 by Tim Moorey”

  1. Done in by HOLS, a word I knew, no less, as opposed to, say ACOL, or ERIC the first–which, now that I see Nick’s explanation, strikes me as a rather mephistophelean clue. As for Eric the Second, Nick, he’s the founder, to all practical purposes of the thriller novel, and for my money the best. Literate, for one thing, and economical; none of that turgid, paid-by-the-page prose one seems to find in everyone since. DNK TMESIS, which I gather is different from, or includes?, infixation, of which Nick’s example is the only one in English, aside from the other, less printable variant. Philippine languages do it a lot. Liked JERSEY.
    1. Thanks for the low down on Eric the Second, Kevin. I’ll definitely give him a go.
      1. I should have explicitly excluded LeCarré from my general anathema of thriller-writers, but still. I also always liked Ambler because some of his stories have communists for heroes. And by the way Nick, it really is time to drop the ‘novice’ part, what?
          1. Thanks for the sentiment guys, which a few people have been kind enough to express recently. There seems to be a practical problem with a name change wiping out all previous blogs etc. but I will investigate further…

            Edited at 2015-03-22 08:49 am (UTC)

  2. i’ll join the club on the first eric. one of my grandfathers was an eric but i bet he didn’t know about the fine. i know ambler quite well (coffin for dimitrios) and i mostly agree with kevin, but len deighton has some quite good stuff (funeral in berlin). nick the wordsmith?
  3. I got there in around 45 minutes but not without a lot of problems along the way.

    I also didn’t know ERIC as a fine. I never heard of ACOL. ROSE MADDER rang a faint bell in that it has come up before and gave me a lot of grief, but I still had to dredge it up from the depths.

    I think the definition at 20ac is the whole clue as “tries again” doesn’t seem specific enough for RENEGOTIATES.

    In the UK the Times is no longer a broadsheet newspaper (25ac).

    I’m still not sure about (r)AVES for “sizzles” at 2dn, but it’s the best I came up with too.

    The plural of “no” in my book is spelt “noes” so I learnt something at 5dn.

    Congrats on your second main blog, Nick. It’s time to remove the “novice” handle methinks, but if you can find out how to do it on LJ without messing up your links to everything you’ve posted in the past I’d be interested to know how. [Edit: you posted a comment about this at 8:48 whilst I was writing it, but I’ll let it stand]

    One tiny point, you’ve underlined too much definition at 19dn though it’s clear from your explanation that’s just a slip. It’s only the last three words.

    Edited at 2015-03-22 09:04 am (UTC)

    1. Thanks for the feedback jack – much appreciated.

      Raves for sizzles also concerned me. I checked afterwards and Chambers has as its second def. of SIZZLES “to be in a state of intense emotion esp. anger or excitement” – which seemed to me broadly in line with “what are you raving on about?”

      Re. 19dn, yes, whilst I got the answer and saw how it all fitted together quite quickly, I struggled somewhat to work out how to present it in the blog. My thinking was that the answer flowed from the lack of involvement in the business (as opposed to purely lack of concern). I may well be wrong here – probably am! – but if I was Brendon McCullum I’d be respectfully sending this one upstairs under DRS…

      1. I think this another semi-&lit where you need the wordplay element of the clue to make sense of the definition.
    2. The distinction between ‘broadsheet’ and ‘tabloid’ has survived the gradual abandonment of the broadsheet format as a reference to quality, and in that sense the Times is still a broadsheet. Whether it still deserves the label is another question…
  4. 15:20. A smattering of unknowns in this for me: ACOL, HOT GOSPELLER, TMESIS. I knew eric the fine: I’ve seen it several times, although some of that might be in Mephisto. I sometimes think that Tim Moorey’s vocabulary has expanded to the point where he has lost his sense of which words mere mortals might have heard of. 😉
    I remembered the other Eric and ROSE MADDER from past crosswords.
    I agree with Jack on 20ac and I’d call this a semi-&lit. I also wondered about ‘sizzles’ for RAVES, but by the time I did the answer was long BIFD.
    Thanks for the blog, Nick. Small point on 25ac: ‘one discounted broadsheet’ is telling you specifically to remove (discount) one (I) from TIMES.

  6. I found this really tough. I took about 25 minutes and ended up with a silly typo, which tends to happen when a setter has successfully scrambled my brains.

    Took ages to see HOT-GOSPELLER. I have a feeling it caused me problems the last time it came up, so I’ll try to file that one away. ROSE MADDER, ACOL and MICROWAVE all had me frowning a bit, too.

    I don’t think you should change your handle, Nick. The better you get, the more deliciously ironic it becomes, like one of those 250-pound no-neck mob enforcers who like to be known as Smiley Pete or Sweetie-Pie Cimoli.

  7. ………….those of us who lived off the grid remember that Shell paraffin oil (kerosene) was in fact pink. Esso was blue. Wonder if paraffin is still sold.

    Enjoyable puzzle.

    Jan and Tom

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