Sunday Times 4636 by Tim Moorey

Author   keriothePosted on Categories Weekend Cryptic
24:06 for this, ending in failure at 27ac, which contains a usage I have never encountered before. Judging by comments on the club forum I am not alone in this. There were a number of clues where I bunged the answer in and parsed them afterwards, and in some cases this proved quite tricky. Indeed in one case it proved impossible for me: I am indebted to ulaca of this parish for his help. Overall I found this slightly odd solving experience, but it all seems to hang together.

No doubt the most controversial clue in this puzzle will be 4dn, confirmation after the use of EL a couple of weeks ago that indirect anagrams – considered un-Ximenean and unfair by many – are allowed in the ST under the current editor. In my view these setting ‘rules’ should always be subordinate to questions of practical solvability, and here is Ximenes himself on the subject:

My real point is that the secondary part of the clue – other than the definition – is meant to help the solver. The indirect anagram, unless there are virtually no alternatives, hardly ever does. He only sees it after he has got his answer by other means.

On this basis it seems to me that Ximenes himself would not object to this indirect anagram, since there really is only one possible answer to ‘fifteenth letter from Greece’. I don’t know about you but I for one am not inclined to be plus royaliste que le roi on this point.

Of course I didn’t actually know that this particular letter was the fifteenth of the Greek alphabet, which didn’t help, but the real problem I had with this clue was that I’m not used to looking for indirect anagrams, so even after bunging in the answer on the basis of definition and checkers it took me a long time to figure out what was going on. Now that I know what to expect I should be able to avoid this problem in future.

Music: Haydn, Symphony #103 “Drumroll”, Davis/Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra.

Across
1 Record is broken by policeman? On the contrary
DISC – DC (Detective Constable) containing (broken by) IS, and not the other way round.
4 Willy’s aware of latest trends in participation
MEMBERSHIP – or MEMBER’S HIP. Fnarr fnarr.
9 Gas is essential before the balloon goes up
HOT AIR – not strictly accurate if you’re talking about a helium balloon, but you get the idea.
10 Spirit shown in amusing Haydn symphony
DRUMROLL – D(RUM)ROLL. As music students will know, Haydn wrote approximately a bazillion symphonies, and his 103rd goes by this name. Inspired by its appearance here, I’m listening to it as I type this. I do like Haydn.
11 Private parking close to New Orleans
PERSONAL – P (parking), (ORLEANS)*. The ‘New Orleans’ trick is neat, but Tim Moorey has used it before.
13 Bird strike upon rear end of helicopter
RAPTOR – RAP (strike), TO (upon: think ears and ground), helictopteR.
14 Father awkward initially in church house is this?
REFRACTORY – RE(FR, Awkward)CTORY. A semi-&lit where the definition is just ‘this’ but the rest of the clue serves double duty by giving it some context and sense.
16 The said pan for a sort of pancake …
WRAP – sounds like ‘rap’, in the sense ‘criticize sharply’. This is a strange definition, but I think Mr Moorey must be thinking of the wrap as a tortilla, which Collins defines as ‘a kind of thin pancake’. A tortilla isn’t a pancake, but send your letters of objection to Collins rather than the setter.
17 … and others in say, copper (avoiding lead)
ET AL – mETAL.
18 Go after fine score that’s awarded officially
PENALTY TRY – PENALTY (fine), TRY (go). I believe this is when the referee in a game of rugby gives one team however many points you get for a try as a punishment for some sort of infraction on the part of the other team, such as a handball or LBW.
20 Possible instruction from ticket reseller’s boss dismissed
GOT OUT – or ‘go tout!’
21 Unbacked weird gang out to get better operation
WAGERING – (WEIRd GANG)*.
23 City assistant brought about New Deal
ADELAIDE – AIDE surrounding an anagram of DEAL.
24 One running away from work for day in a tree!
ELOPER – replace D (day) with OP (work) in ELDER.
26 Talked about one associated with Observer and Spectator
EYE WITNESS – I think ‘talked about one’ gives EYE here, which works if you imagine the queen saying it.
27 Dog many recalled
SNOT – the one I couldn’t get. A SNOT is a ‘contemptible person’, apparently, and so is a dog. I didn’t know this, so I couldn’t decide between this answer and STOP. At least I managed to rule out STOL.

Down
2 Response ministers usually get in artificial language
IDO – the JPF of constructed languages to Esperanto’s PFJ. Not to be confused with IBO, which is a real language. When ministers get a response other than ‘I do’, it must be awkward.
3 Guy’s providing leather bags from US
CHAPS – or CHAP’S.
4 Fifteenth letter from Greece lost? That’s stupid
MORONIC – (OMICRON)*. I think I’ve done this one to death.
5 Small hospital found in a remote place
MIDDLE OF NOWHERE – the idea being that the middle of NOWHERE is H, which is an abbreviation for ‘hospital’. I’m not sure this quite works.
6 First in Establishment to ask about Queen?
EQUERRY – Establishment, QUE(R)RY. &Lit. You wait ages for an equerry and then two come along at once.
7 Two ways to restrain unruly pair in Remove
STRIP AWAY – ST, WAY (two ways) surrounding (to restrain) an anagram of PAIR. The Remove is the Lower Fourth form of Greyfriars School, where Billy Bunter is the Fat Owl.
8 Crude oil earns pots by a great deal in part of Scotland
ISLE OF ARRAN – tricksy one this, so pay attention. An anagram of OIL EARNS contains (‘pots’) FAR (by a great deal) to give the Scottish island.
12 This could uncover a Tory decline right away
ELECTION DAY – (A TOrY DECLINE)*. Another semi-&Lit, this one topical.
15 A court must measure fault? Nothing in it
RULE OF LAW – RULE (measure), FLAW (fault) containing O (nothing). I’m indebted to ulaca for identifying the definition, which requires ‘must’ to be a noun.
18 Tell perhaps three to get in touch
PATRIOT – PA(TRIO)T. ‘Along with Arnold von Winkelried, [William] Tell is a central figure in Swiss patriotism as it was constructed during the Restoration of the Confederacy after the Napoleonic era’.
19 Such a person cannot stand Brahms and Liszt
LEGLESS – DD, one Cockney rhyming slang. I prefer Haydn.
22 England batsman’s origins
ROOTS – DD. Ref. Joe.
25 Green novelist?
ECO – DD. Ref. Umberto.

23 comments on “Sunday Times 4636 by Tim Moorey”

  1. Must admit I was – utterly ungraciously – quite relieved this one came through on your watch rather than mine! Several I was struggling to parse, and I fell into the STOP trap at 27a (knowing I couldn’t justify it, but it seemed as likely as SNOT and somewhat less unpleasant). Thanks for unravelling it all in a great blog.

    MIDDLE OF NOWHERE went straight in, but I didn’t get it – I actually think its quite good now you have explained it. 4d went in on the basis it had to be, and I assumed it was somehow connected with IONIC and I’d justify it later – which of course I couldn’t…

    Favourites were PENALTY TRY and GOT OUT.

    Edited at 2015-04-12 02:12 am (UTC)

    1. Thanks Nick. Yes, I assumed it must have something to do with IONIC, but I couldn’t work it out. I gave up in the end and googled the Greek alphabet post-solve!

      Edited at 2015-04-12 08:51 am (UTC)

  2. Yes, a couple of strange ones here, MORONIC and MIDDLE OF NOWHERE, but all good just the same. I think the indirect anagram is fine, given such a clear indication of the letters to be unscrambled, and I quite liked the remote place clue. If I remember correctly, I went to the word wizard for SNOT. Forced to pick, I’d make 7dn the COD. Thanks for the blog.
  3. One error, 20ac, where I put in ‘top out’, probably thinking ‘boss’=top, and missing ‘tout’. Or something. I forgot to go through this post-solve, so I have no notes in the margins. So I don’t know now whether, e.g., I parsed 5d or biffed it. I know I didn’t parse MORONIC. I knew SNOT as meaning a contemptible person, and it made more sense anyway than STOL (never thought of ‘pots’). This was a ST, of course, but still I was a bit surprised to see this, and reluctant to solve it. I simply loath the word ‘snot’; I can’t use it, which is certainly not true of most of the common 4-letter words.

    Edited at 2015-04-12 06:55 am (UTC)

  4. Sometimes I think a few folk like to object to anything that is unexpected. It is as if they think they are the ones setting the “rules,” and not the crossword editor.. I believe Ximenes would be aghast at having his principles used as some sort of creative straitjacket, and I agree with you Keriothe that he probably would have been perfectly happy with 4dn. Sadly we shall never know!
    Nice crossword, nice blog..
    1. I can understand people being a little bit miffed if 1) there are specific rules that apply to a given crossword (living people in the daily puzzles, for instance) and 2) a violation of those rules prevents them from getting an answer. I don’t think either condition applies here, but as I said in the blog the fact that I wasn’t expecting an indirect anagram meant that it took me a while to see how the clue worked. However it certainly didn’t take me long to figure out what the answer was when the last word in the clue was ‘stupid’ and the checkers gave me M_R_N_C.
      1. Um, well, hang on a bit. What does 2) mean? If it means the clue is somehow unsolvable then any clue that applies to is obviously wrong. If however it means the solver’s brain is not elastic enough to encompass the idea that the “rules” might have changed, I wouldn’t agree. I haven’t ever seen the crossword editor of the Times publish that particular rule in writing (anyone know different?) and I would not personally want to rely on it. I have in fact seen at least two living persons clued as answers in the Times. Valentina Tereshkova appeared only a year or two back. Might have been an error but whatever, the clue still needs solving!
        1. I suppose that theoretically a solver could waste time or fail to solve a clue by not considering what turns out to be the right way into it because it’s ‘banned’. But I do struggle a bit to imagine it happening, particularly if the definition is readily identifiable.
          1. Must put in a word for the purists around here. At my father’s knee (and various other low joints) I learned that the concealed anagram, no matter how gettable, was the last refuge of a poor setter and a breach of good manners, if not “rules” — Ximenes was a stranger to us all. I think he (my father) said it was rather like a very small fart in a lift. Impolite for all that.

            Trevor Salisbury, a great setter of cryptics in the LIverpool Echo in the 60s, had a slightly more caustic attitude. And I won’t repeat what he had to say on the subject over a glass or two in The Boot Inn in Wallasey at the time.

            So it’s always seemed to me that the taboo is just part of the culture of cryptic writing — a culture I would not wish to see diminished. One wonders what Tim’s comment might be if such a thing turned up in the Club Clue Challenge.

            Edited at 2015-04-12 08:58 am (UTC)

            1. But I can’t see why it should be considered ‘impolite’, other than as a matter of pure – and arbitrary – convention. As long as the indirect anagram is a clear and unambiguous indication of the answer what grounds are there are for complaint?
              In this puzzle I have more of a problem with 5dn, which perhaps doesn’t break any ‘rules’ but contains a subsidiary indication that can’t possibly get you to the answer. But even there you can argue that it is enough that the wordplay confirms clearly an answer you can get from the definition. It’s just a matter of taste.
            2. I started to reply to this mc, but cannot find a polite response so wotthehell, let it pass, let it pass.. perhaps over a glass or two one day I can be as caustic as I would wish to be

            3. Actually Alec there are contributors to this blog who both corresponded with and met Ximenes

              I remember him as a smallish man and a classics don to boot but your father’s description is somewhat wide of the mark

              1. Description of what/whom? Not sure what you’re reading into this, Jim. As I said Ximenes (and his work) were completely unknown to us.

                The etiquette re anagrams — there has to be an indicator, and there has to be what is now called “fodder” — was simply something I learned in the way I learned multiplication tables. So when I see a “concealed”, it leaps out like “2 x 2 = 5”.

                Edited at 2015-04-13 06:32 am (UTC)

              2. I know next to nothing of Ximenes, which is probably the easiest position to be in.

                So I looked him up and was very interested to note that “Well-known Ximeneans include Stephen Sondheim … and Leonard Bernstein”. For some reason I’m not entirely surprised that composers of music might have a taste for cryptic puzzles.

                Following up that revelation, I learned that Sondheim has himself compiled and published crosswords. There’s a barred example of his work here:

                http://nymag.com/docs/08/03/nymag-sondheim01.pdf

                Any other crosswordy composers/musicians, I wonder?

                Edited at 2015-04-13 07:41 am (UTC)

  5. An hour for this with ‘spot’ (as in, ‘I have a dog whose name is Spot, and he’s sometimes white and he’s sometimes not’) at 27a. Looking at my notes, I see I considered ‘tons’, but SNOT just seemed unfeasible. Like Nick, the public schoolboy in me liked 7d. Unlike a public schoolboy, I’m ashamed to say I never got the todge joke.
    1. Mm, I have little recollection of this one a week one but it looks as though I put in SPOT as well. Out, out, damn snot! as Macbeth probably said when he had a cold.
  6. Wasted far too much time on this unsatisfying solve so I don’t propose to spend much more other than to say I got one wrong at 20ac where I had NOT OUT, and I did a general google search (not within LJ) on “Dog many recalled” only to find that Tim Moorey used the clue before in Mephisto 2531 in March 2009.

    Edited at 2015-04-12 08:02 am (UTC)

  7. Found this a ‘different’ but enjoyable puzzle, a mix of easy and no so easy, and it took me longer than usual – about 40 minutes I think – to get all done except 27a. I stared at S-O- for an age, then used crosswordsolver dot org to check all 34 possible words, but the SNOT = DOG definition did not appear, so I resigned and did something else. I know my Greek alphabet so had no argument with the indirect anagram; some rules are merely guidelines IMO.
    Well done Mr Moorey for making us think ‘outside the box’.
  8. After looking at this repeatedly, I eventually chose Spot the dog, on the basis that many would recall him from their first reader (“see Spot run”).

    No real problem with 4dn, as the anagrist was unambiguous

  9. I thought that this was one of the easiest clues – 15th letter in the Greek Alphabet croniom and stupid. 27ac was the one that I still don’t quite get.
    1. ‘Croniom’?!
      Not sure what the problem with SNOT is but the word itself means ‘contemptible person’ according to all the ‘standard’ dictionaries (Collins, Oxford, Chambers). This is the meaning I and many others didn’t know. ‘Dog’ has the same meaning. It’s also a reversal (‘recalled’) of TONS (‘many’).
      1. I still believe that STOP is the more satisfactory answer. “Dog” and “snot” are related by convergence on a similar concept, but a dog *is* a mechanical stop. (Of course, if you are talking about breaking rules, the one broken here is more egregious than the one about indirect anagrams: “The answer shall not be ambiguous or equivocal!”)
  10. could have been worse, ‘pick it,lick it,roll it flick it’ and I would have got it straight away. As that’s where I recall the word from school.
    That said, my Grandfather had a term learned from his youth – so circa early last century- of Eisnoj gartons that he said was used to remind him and other children to use a handkerchief. You need to read it in reverse, so the term has been in formal use quite a while.

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