Sunday Times 4694 by Jeff Pearce

Author   keriothePosted on Categories Weekend Cryptic
13:06. A reasonably gentle puzzle from Jeff this week. There were a couple of unknowns for me (GYRFALCON, WINGDING), an unusual abbreviation for a rather obscure unit of length, and one slightly questionable definition, but none of that caused me undue problems. It did take me a while to see 17dn the right way: I was thinking of Jackie O and the grassy knoll, which didn’t really get me very far as you can imagine.

20ac elicited a bit of grumbling on the club forum, but it seems fine to me.

I’m not much of an old movie buff so I’m often caught out by my ignorance of past actors and actresses, but for this puzzle Jeff chose a couple of extremely well-known ones, for which I was grateful.

Across
1 Arrange most of great Mongolian assemblage
AGGLOMERATION – (GREAt MONGOLIAN)*.
10 Warning there’s a lot of suffering about Rod’s heavy drinking
HARBINGER – HARm (a lot of suffering) containing R, BINGE. A rod is a unit of length, abbreviated to R. This struck me as a bit Mephistoish at the time but the abbreviation is in Collins so it isn’t just one of the funny ones in Chambers so beloved of barred grid setters.
11 Last in the opening race
EVENT – thE, VENT.
12 Succeed in getting to open water
REACH – DD.
13 After strong drink Queen gets seized by wind — weaker one required!
GINGER ALE – GIN, G(ER)ALE.
14 What a dance
EXCUSE ME – DD. An EXCUSE ME is a dance in which you can take another person’s partner. Presumably the music would be swing.
16 Big box? Not in this Japanese practice
BONSAI – because the tree in BONSAI is small, and might be a box.
19 Money prize is worthless
TINPOT – TIN (money), POT (prize).
20 Turn round German party in Chicago, perhaps
WINGDING – WIN(G)DING. WINDING here is a gerund. The answer is an American (hence ‘in Chicago’) word for a party, which was news to me. I only knew it as the font with all the funny symbols.
22 Country club bordering Iowa entertaining academic
MACEDONIA – MACE (club), IA (Iowa) containing DON (academic). If you were Greek you might object to the definition here, since the country’s use of the name (which is also the name of a region in Greece) is disputed.
24 Mug on hot rag
CLOTH – CLOT (mug), H.
25 Endlessly using toy store?
LAY IN – pLAYINg. ‘Endlessly’ often indicates the removal of just one end of the word, but here and in 3dn it’s both.
26 Steps taken to avoid drought?
RAIN DANCE – cryptic definition.
27 Censor the hot stuff to pass inspection
CUT THE MUSTARD – because to censor is to CUT. The answer is a curious expression of obscure origin.

Down
2 Large bird making most of flock angry when flying
GYRFALCON – (FLOCk ANGRY)*. I didn’t remember having come across this bird before, and then one appeared the very next day in Game of Thrones, as I’m sure you all noticed.
3 Actress shows endless skill
LEIGH – sLEIGHt. Vivien, an old-timey actress so famous that even I have heard of her.
4 Rob’s up for Trivial Pursuit?
MUG’S GAME – MUG (rob), S, GAME (up for). A MUG’S GAME is an activity that is thankless or bound to fail, not a trivial one, so this definition seems a bit dodgy to me.
5 Impatient artist gets on phone
RARING – RA (artist), RING. The phrase ‘raring to go’ will for me always be associated with Tutter, the mouse character in Bear in the Big Blue House. My kids have a lot to answer for.
6 Signature tune — one’s own?
THEME SONG – or THE ME SONG.
7 Leaders of Oval mourn England’s ghastly Ashes — the last in a series
OMEGA – first letters of Oval mourn England’s ghastly Ashes.
8 Novel about Irish lake and church captivates unknown actress
SHIRLEY TEMPLE – tricky wordplay here: SHE (novel) surrounding IR, L, then TEMPLE (church), all containing Y (unknown). Another old-timey actress so famous that I have heard of her. In this case a child star who later became the US Ambassador to Czechoslovakia.
9 Means to turn and flee when tigers head off crazily
STEERING WHEEL – (fLEE WHEN TIGERS)*.
15 Horrible person squeezes Pledge on King’s ornamental tassel
SWORD KNOT – S(WORD, K)NOT. Not the most familiar term in the world but I did remember it from somewhere. Lovely surface.
17 Sniper who shot Onassis?
SHIPOWNER – (SNIPER WHO)*. Aristotle, not Jackie. Neat clue.
18 Oddly this butter is used primarily for a dessert
TIRAMISU – odd letters in ‘this’, RAM, IS, Used.
21 One escapes from whole sheep’s heart as a dish
ENTREE – ENTiRE, shEep. In Europe, a starter. In North America, a main course.
23 Company well-informed about fur
COYPU – COY (company), reversal of UP (well-informed). COY is a military abbreviation for ‘company’ which is less common in crosswords than CO.
24 Greek characters leave wine for novice
CADET – musCADET.

15 comments on “Sunday Times 4694 by Jeff Pearce”

  1. Unfortunately, the only -donia I could come up with at the time was Snowdonia, which I duly (or dully) flung in, making 8d impossible for the longest time. Finally cleared that up, and overcame my fixation with ‘Charles’ and thought of Shirley, but vast swatches of time had passed by then. Never parsed WINGDING, but it pretty much had to be; thanks, k, for the explanation. (I didn’t realize it was an Americanism; it’s certainly not a meism.)
  2. Thanks for the blog. I was also wondering about R for rod.
    I thought that the removal of F from flee was indicated in a rather unusual way, i.e. “head off” was three words further along in the clue. You would normally expect the instruction to be next to the victim word, no?
    1. You would, normally, but here the head is the head of fleewhentigers (and it is leewhentigers to which ‘crazily’ applies), so the setter has covered his proverbial.
    2. As Kevin says, the ‘head off’ would usually apply to a single word but in the cryptic grammar there’s no reason it can’t apply to any number of words.
  3. I thought THE ME SONG was the pick of the bunch, though for much of the time I had it as “theme tune”, ignoring the convention that one usually changes the clue word into a different one. Made BONSAI a much trickier solve than it needed to be, and contributed mightily to my 18.58 solve.

    Edited at 2016-05-22 06:55 am (UTC)

  4. There seems to be a pattern emerging with Jeff these days that he’s on a mission to bung in a couple of utterly obscure words or meanings per puzzle in order to beef things up a bit. Not a complaint really, just an observation.
    1. I see what you mean. I’m all for it personally, as long as the clues are fair. There’s something satisfying about deriving an unlikely-looking word like WINGDING from the wordplay.
  5. Not sure of my time, but I need to note that in many parts of that part of Europe which will still be a part of Europe regardless of what happens on 23 June an entree is a main course.
    1. Which part would that be? If I saw it I would consider it an Americanism, and probably tut.
      1. Growing up in the south of England, entree was common in restaurants for a main course. Not sure about now – left in ’87!
        1. Interesting. You don’t really see it any more. A rare example where French culture has displaced American, rather then the other way round, perhaps. Although I suppose the usage was probably as English as it was American. According to the dictionaries and it used to be a course that came between the first and main courses in a formal dinner.

          Edited at 2016-05-24 09:05 am (UTC)

  7. Hope this is not too late for you to see. As a paper based user in The Australian we are a week or so behind with this but about four weeks on the daily.
    As a relative novice at these I would like to sincerely thank everyone associated with this site for assisting me to improve my skills.
    Without that help I would never have been able to successfully complete this one, even if it took a few hours on and off over a couple of days.
    Thanks again.
    Barry M
    1. Thanks very much Barry. I will always see a comment on one of my blogs, because I get an email via Livejournal. It’s nice to hear that our efforts are useful, and appreciated.
  8. ……….We’d like to second all the sentiments in Barry M’s post.

    Jan and Tom, Toronto.

Comments are closed.