Sunday Times 4686 by Dean Mayer – lasciate ogni speranza, voi ch’entrate

27:44. Another tricky one from Dean, and highly enjoyable as always. He has a knack for writing clues that I at least find completely baffling until the penny drops. Bog-standard cryptic crossword setting this ain’t.

There were some grumbles on the club forum about a couple of the clues this week. 2dn, for instance, which is undoubtedly a very obscure reference: I wonder if anyone had actually heard of this chap. However I also wonder if Dean didn’t include him just as a trap for the unwary (myself included) who will have bunged in the much more likely-looking LORD READING. Devious.

However much the most controversial clue was 12ac: the dreaded foreign term clued with an anagram. I generally have a strong aversion to obscure terms that are clued in such a way that you can’t be sure of the answer, but I don’t think that is the case here. I think this one is solvable with a reasonably high degree of certainty even if you don’t know the word or speak Italian. In fact I’m certain it is, because I did so, as explained below. Of course this may just have been a stroke of luck on my part, so I suppose the question is whether the solver can reasonably be expected to find the answer on the basis of the information in the clue. You need to deploy your ‘that looks sort of like a word meaning X’ skills, but this is a regular occurrence for me at least so it doesn’t bother me. Admittedly the requirement for this particular skill is usually restricted to English, and I think it would be fair to say that this linguistic innovation on the part of Dean has not met with universal acclaim. Personally I thought it was tough but fair, but then I would say that wouldn’t I? I’d be very interested to hear the thoughts of our esteemed setter and editor. And of course this community in general: what did you think?

And in the meantime, happy Easter!

Across
1 Being stupid, hum?
HALFWIT – if I’m interpreting this right then the definition is easier to understand if you insert a comma: ‘being, stupid’. If WIT is ‘humour’ then half of it is of course HUMour. A neat and devious clue that sets the tone for the rest of the puzzle.
5 Heart races, locked in trunk
BOTTLE – heart = courage = BOTTLE. A BOLE is the trunk of a tree: insert TT, the Tourist Trophy, annual races held in the crossword setter’s favourite island.
8 Odd cure ending love for excess
OVERINDULGENCE – (CURE ENDING LOVE)*. Super anagram.
9 Acid on screws of electrode
ANODIC – (ACID ON)*. A straightforward clue made more difficult for me by the presence of the wrong lord at 2dn.
10 Part of tree with variable roughness
ACERBITY – an ACER is a tree (or shrub), so part of one is an ACER BIT. Add Y (variable).
12 In rewrite of Avatar, omit Italian verse
OTTAVA RIMA – (AVATAR OMIT)*. I may have come across this term studying Don Juan (which is written in it) years ago, but I didn’t remember it and puzzled over where to put the letters for ages. The key to solving the clue for me was letting go of the idea that the second word was going to be VITA and trying other things. This led to the realisation that RIMA must be a good bet for ‘Italian verse’. OTTAVA is then the only feasible-looking arrangement of the remaining three letters from the anagrist, and the whole thing looked pretty convincing to me as the name of an Italian verse form involving eight of something or other. I confess I submitted with my fingers crossed but I have been less sure about many an English word.
14 We must leave most recent hideout
NEST – NEweST.
15 At airport, guide one on duty
TAXI – TAX (duty), I. A pilot taxiing a plane would be guiding it.
17 14 pin on scholar
RABBIT HOLE – or RABBI (scholar), THOLE (pin). A NEST for rabbits.
20 Found about four men finally pardoned
FORGIVEN – FORG(IV)E, meN.
22 The morning crossword in The Observer was stunning
AMAZED – AM, AZED. Reference to the barred grid puzzle in the Observer.
23 In which sewer’s cover should be found?
HUNT THE THIMBLE – I have come across this game before, but not for a very long time and it took me a while to remember it.
25 Move right — not right, left
PROPEL – PROPEr, L. This was one of my last in. So obvious once you see it. Until then, not so much.
26 Pirate ship gutted by missile
SPARROW – ShiP, ARROW. Jack of that ilk, a character based on Keith Richards.

Down
1 Pauper’s refuge (Old Testament)
HAVE-NOT – HAVEN, OT. The opposite of a ‘have’, of course.
2 Dancing in drag, older Post Office boss
LORD DEARING – (IN DRAG OLDER)*. And not, as I had for a while, LORD READING. This chap was the Chairman and Chief Executive of Post Office Ltd, apparently.
3 Get shock installing decoration for seat
WING CHAIR – WIN (get), HAIR (shock) containing GC, George Cross (decoration).
4 Big wave from guy turning up in pants suit
TSUNAMI – reversal of MAN inside (SUIT)*. ‘Pants’ is the anagrind.
5 Part of brass tap extremely loose
BUGLE – BUG, LoosE. I couldn’t see for a while how ‘tap’ could mean BUG, but then I thought of ‘wiretap’.
6 Bottomless container’s function
TAN – TANk. I had SINk in here for a while, which made 5ac a bit harder.
7 Father of Odysseus given genuine upset
LAERTES – reversal of SET (given, as in homework), REAL. I only knew the one in Hamlet, but the wordplay was pretty clear.
11 Mountain goat’s week in reserve
BENCH WARMER – BEN, CH(W)ARMER. I struggled with this one: the expression is not familiar to me, and I’d have said that a defining characteristic of a ‘goat’ in this sense is that he is not charming.
13 A border area, the area where Joseph came from
ARIMATHEA – A, RIM, A, THE, A. The wordplay was very helpful for the spelling here.
16 Someone else answer him!
ANOTHER – A, NOT HER.
18 Turning handle, monarch’s out to lunch
BONKERS – reversal of KNOB, then ER’S.
19 In fabrication, measured holes up
LIES LOW – LIE, SLOW.
21 Russian guy, not quite alive
VITAL – VITALi.
24 Feeling cold draught
NIP – DD, one as in ‘there’s a nip in the air’, the other a reference to whisky or similar.

30 comments on “Sunday Times 4686 by Dean Mayer – lasciate ogni speranza, voi ch’entrate”

  1. A most irritating experience. I finally came up with the possibly non-existent Lord Reading–which certainly seemed plausible, anyway–and that of course made 9ac impossible to solve. Then I discovered the game, Hide the Thimble–which seems to exist, at least in some dictionaries–which of course made 24d impossible. I suppose that I should take comfort in–unlike numbers of folk on the club forum–knowing OTTAVA RIMA. Like K, I was helped by the wordplay in spelling Joseph’s name. I’ve never complained about a Dean puzzle before, and I’m not going to now, but: wasn’t 2d a bit too, too? Still, I did like 17ac (although the surface doesn’t make that much sense).

    Edited at 2016-03-27 05:39 pm (UTC)

  2. Not as difficult as this setter can sometimes be, but challenging enough. I missed out on my guess for 12a (fell for the ‘vita’ trick) and only picked the correct answer to 2d from the crossers. Favourites were HALFWIT and BENCH WARMER. Thanks for explaining LAERTES. I couldn’t find the reversal indicator for ‘real’, but missed the less obvious part of the wordplay for ‘set’.

    Thank you to setter and blogger.

  3. Mostly enjoyable enough but spoiled for me by the niggles that have already been mentioned. Maybe if 2dn and 12ac hadn’t intersected it would have seemed fairer.

    I also wasn’t over-enamoured with 15ac Although I wouldn’t deny that guiding is implicit it’s the slow speed that’s the key factor and there’s no indication of this in the clue; missiles are guided but don’t taxi. However the wordplay was crystal clear here and the answer was easy to get from that so this is only a passing thought.

    Along with others in the Club I had SIN{k} for ages at 6dn which didn’t help things in that quarter.

    Edited at 2016-03-27 06:31 am (UTC)

  4. Like jackkt I’m not convinced that guide and TAXI are synonymous except in the loosest of ways, so unless we’re missing something…, and at RABBIT HOLE the wordplay is clever but the definition is either very poor or has depths hidden from me. The rest is up to the usual high standard and made for a happy Sunday morning.
    1. I agree that ‘guide’ for TAXI would be loose, but ‘at airport, guide’ is surely as precise a definition as you could wish for… once you’ve spotted it!
      1. It’s not precise at all. We say the pilot taxis to the runway. Nobody says the pilot guides to the runway and only in unusual circumstances would we say the pilot guides the plane to the runway. Normally she, I dunno, drives it.
        1. I would say that a pilot taxiing a plane is guiding it to or from the runway, with ‘guide’ synonymous with ‘steer’.
          1. Before I was shot down in flames elsewhere I wondered if ‘guide’ was a misprint for ‘glide’ which would have made more sense to me.
            1. I’d have thought that being on the ground is a necessary condition for taxiing!
  5. I thought there was some lazy setting and editing in this puzzle at 2D and 12A

    I’m old enough to remember LORD DEARING but he is to say the least obscure and should not be clued by anagram in my opinion

    As to 12A much the same applies. The phrase is in Chambers and therefore, as a Mephisto solver, is fair game from my viewpoint. However, it is also very obscure making the use of the anagram weak as a setting device.

    The fact that the answers intersect serves to compound these weaknesses. All in all a poor show.

  6. The crossing anagrams may be a sin, but there was other information to help – if 9A is an anagram of “acid on”, “Lord Reading” is impossible. And seeing RIMA as Italian “rhyme” is a great help for 12A, which is in Collins and ODE as well as Chambers. Relying on solving order may not be ideal, but I think I’ve seen a fair number of puzzles where many people had the same last clue or last pair.

    Picky point: the report title needs “ogni” and “entrate”.

    1. Thanks. I’m not sure how that happened as I’m pretty sure I copied and pasted it! As I said I don’t speak Italian.
      9ac is an easy clue, and was instrumental for me in sorting out LORD DEARING. I don’t have any problem at all with relying on solving order: using crossing letters to help solve clues is an integral part of the process and we all do it all the time.
      As you say, if you spot that RIMA is the second word for 12ac, you’ve cracked it, and personally I don’t see that as an unreasonable thing to expect the solver to spot. For sure it’s a difficult clue, but for my money it’s not in the same category as Club Monthly or Mephisto clues, which are often unsolvable (for me at least) without reference to Chambers.

      Edited at 2016-03-27 12:18 pm (UTC)

  7. I will not repeat my comments on 12a from last week other than to say that Dean is my favourite setter.

    However, jackkt raises another key point – the number of crossers and their configuration. Dean’s crosswords are hard enough without him forcing me to solve in a particular sequence. Most great clues can be solved from their devious wordplay without or with only a few crossers. This clue, for me, required all of the crossers and then it was still a gamble.

  8. I didn’t see 12ac as difficult at all, given that the clue is so easy to parse – it can’t be anything other than an anagram of “avatar omit” which limits the available options nicely. 13dn is easy so, what else can it be? I wasn’t familiar with the answer sought, but so what.. perhaps I am just inured to such clues through doing the club monthly.

    I had much more trouble parsing 1ac.

    I agree with Jim that there is no cause for folk as obscure as Dearing to be given the accolade of a crossword clue. No complaint about Jack Sparrow though 🙂

    1. An interesting question Jerry – the extent to which a setter should be mindful of the target audience?

      You had no problem with 12A and nor did I but as solvers of Club Monthly/Mephisto (and thus used to deriving such phrases) we aren’t the prime target audience, so far as I’m aware. The moment I saw the clue I thought more mainstream solvers were likely to have considerable difficulty with it

      1. It seems fairly obvious to me that setters need to be, and are, mindful of the target audience: how else could you explain the very clear difference between Mephisto clues and those in the daily puzzle? As I said above, I don’t think 12ac is in the same category, since you don’t need to know the obscure vocab, or refer to Chambers, to solve the clue. It’s just difficult!
    2. I’ll beg to differ.

      If the verse is not Italian – and there may well be some obscure works of Hindu poetry that like these letters – then ‘omit’ may be asking for a three letter word, followed by I for Italian. Indeed, the comma after Avatar in the clue makes this the most likely parsing, although obviously using punctuation to mislead is fair game. For this clue, though, I thought that was a step too far.

      1. That reading would be possible, but as you say it’s a bad idea to rely on punctuation for parsing these things, so an anagram of AVATAR OMIT is clearly a strong possibility. I can’t actually think of a three-letter word with an I in the middle meaning ‘omit’, so if I had gone down this route (and fortunately I didn’t!) I think I’d have reconsidered quite quickly.
    3. Not being fans of Hollywood blockbusters, Sparrow was as obscure as Dearing for us.

      Jan & Tom Toronto

      1. Fair enough. The key thing as always is that if you don’t know the answer you have another chance to get it through the wordplay.
      2. I’m not a fan of Hollywood either but surely Johnny Depp and his films cannot entirely have escaped your notice?
        General knowledge, is all it is.. 😉
  9. I did this in bits and pieces over the week but still failed to finish. Unusually had no trouble with the Italian verse but never got near 1a,2d and 9a. Like others was simply baffled by definition of TAXI and RABBIT HOLE. Some excellent clues on the other hand with 16d my personal pick.
  10. I always enjoy puzzles from this setter and this one was no exception. A slowish but satisfying solve. No problems with anything except 1a which I biffed once I had the checkers. I could see how the clue worked but couldn’t think of the word HUMOUR to explain HUM. I saw RIMA straight away at 12a – I’d heard ofsomething called TERZA RIMA – and the rest fell into place. 42 minutes. Ann
  11. Some great stuff (as usual) from Dean – 1a being a standout in my opinion. I found the debate above re. 12a and 2d interesting, having started squarely in the Jimbo / Sawbill camp, but then finding the case for the defence as mounted by PB and keriothe quite persuasive.

    Net result – I was just very glad to have been able to complete it (albeit with guesswork around 12a as LOI) and, given the number of times I submit an unknown on a wing and a prayer derived from wordplay and crosscheckers, I’d be struggling to explain why these controversial clues are (to me) any different to those other frequent instances. (Sorry that was somewhat clumsily written, but hopefully you get my drift…)

    Who’d be an editor, eh?

    Edited at 2016-03-27 03:08 pm (UTC)

    1. I thought it was a really nice puzzle, which needed a bit more thought than usual. I don’t speak Italian either (so I don’t copy and paste it) but I worked out RIMA was probably rhyme, once I’d tried VITA, and OTTAVA seemed good for eight-related. Fair clue.

      As for Lord Dearing, I had vague memory of a toff of that name although the PO aspect was news to me. But READING seemed less likely.

      And there were IMO some especially good clues – 3d, 11d, 18d and more.

  12. I don’t speak Italian so Amorta Vita sounded likely, probably as a title rather than as a verse form. Unfortunately it has enough crossers in the right places to be a nuisance.
    Anyone else with BUSTLE at 5ac? races and encloses the torso – a couple un-Dean-like extra words and weak syntax made it seem unlikely, but the ideas were there, and crossed with SIN(k). That would be 2-0 to the setter.
    I never considered airplane taxi-ing — I was thinking of the signs in all black cabs sitting at the airport saying “No Smoking. Credit Cards In Advance. City Tours and Sightseeing Available”. And the less genteel solicitations from cabbies in Athens, Valencia, etc etc. 2.5-0 to the setter – as I did have the answer on this one..
    Thanks, Keriothe, both for some needed explication and for moderating the discussion.
  13. I’m still such a long way from thinking like this, but I’m persisting and I’m very grateful for the leadership and lessons from everyone else.
    1. Thanks, anon. It’s nice to know that our efforts are worthwhile!
      It takes years to acquire this slightly warped way of thinking, but the quickest way to do so is undoubtedly to check in here and check your understanding of all the clues. When I was trying to learn I didn’t have this resource, so there were tons of things I just never understood. If you don’t understand it you can’t really learn it.
      1. We’d like to second Novice’s post. Our marks……..X X ;>)

        Jan & Tom Toronto

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