Sunday Times 4708 – bleeurgh

Author   keriothePosted on Categories Weekend Cryptic
I normally write this blog during the week, and set the timer so that it will be posted at 1am on Sunday. For one reason or another I have not had time this week, so I find myself posting in real time. Unfortunately this also means that as I write these words I am really quite drunk, so let’s see how that goes.

This was an entertaining puzzle, spoiled for me by 5dn. Obscure words clued with ambiguous wordplay are a particular bugbear of mine, and this was a classic example of the type. On the other hand the Olympic theme was fun, and unlike the football-themed puzzle we had a week or two ago the theme was applied selectively and so didn’t intrude.

Right, I really need to go to bed. Here’s how I think it works.

[Music: Shostakovich string quartets, Schubert piano sonatas, John Denver, Turin Brakes]

Across
1 Why northerner can’t smoke in retirement club?
BATON – reversal of NO TAB. I had no idea that ‘tab’ for a cigarette was a northern term: I used to use it when I smoked, many years ago.
4 Initial advantage of saint visiting madam?
HEADSTART – ‘saint’ can be just S, as well as ST. Here it is surrounded by HEAD TART. I’m glad I changed that sentence from its first version.
9 Fight small publication involved in offence
SCRIMMAGE – S, CRIM(MAG)E.
10 Rock on the radio for a nit?
LARVA – sounds like ‘lava’, rock in its molten form, of course. I thought a nit was just an egg, but it can also be the LARVA of a louse or similar insect, apparently.
11 Individual contracted to separate band in dispute
ROWING – R(OWn)ING.
12 Return no-good rubbish delivered by Spooner
COMEBACK – which Spooner would have delivered as something that sounds like ‘bum cack’. Shall we move on?
14 Labour energy taxes: soft soap and flannel?
TOILETRIES – TOIL, E, TRIES.
16 Half-cut tramp opening for Pete and Dud
FLOP – FLOozy, Pete. At least I think so: FLO is the first half of quite a few words.
19 Steaming after the last of this?
SHOT – thiS, HOT, &Lit. Because you would be steaming drunk after the last SHOT. Admittedly this assumes there were more than (say) two shots to begin with, but you get the idea.
20 One with dog and errant bats as concerns
IN REGARD TO – (I, DOG, ERRANT)*. Often ‘in/with regards to’ these days, which I always find a little grating. It somehow makes me think of Sybil Fawlty.
22 A French nut taking in the French Open?
UNHEALED – UN, HEA(LE)D. Open as in a wound.
23 Note that’s on about my past performance
RECORD – D (note) on RE (about) COR (my).
26 Antidote for non-union employment: liquor
SERUM – uSE (non-union employment), RUM.
27 Fit into a schedule at last!
ABOUT TIME – BOUT (fit) into A, TIME (schedule).
28 Their tone upset East Asia
THE ORIENT – (THEIR TONE)*.
29 Doctors covering the first of 999 calls
RINGS – RIGS containing N (the first letter of nine nine nine). I’m not sure I’ve seen this device before: the first letter of a word that isn’t actually in the clue.

Down
1 When dons scold son for interest levels
BASE RATES – B(AS)ERATES. ‘Dons’ in the wearing sense..
2 In what manner grips run after tense cast
THROW – T (tense), H(R)OW.
3 Those against boxing in explosive runners
NOMINEES – NO(MINE)ES.
4 Level of spice in Goethe: a truckload
HEAT – contained in ‘Goethe a truckload’.
5 Men eat more after playing a wind instrument
ANEMOMETER – (MEN EAT MORE)*. And not AMENOMETER.
6 Grey-haired flake promoting India
SILVER – SLIVER with the I (India) moved up (promoted).
7 Fresh Madeira cakes Illinois sent via Dakota?
AIRMAILED – (MADEIRA)* containing I (Illinois).
8 Having lost heart, con hoovers up a line
TRACK – take the word TRICK (con), take the middle letter out (having lost heart), then add (hoovers up) A. This is really neat.
13 Awfully game red and dominant lady in a field
GRANDE DAME – (GAME RED AND)*.
15 Something that drew loads of people out West?
IRON HORSE – CD.
17 By a loch, an old maid endlessly drinking Old Pride
PROUDNESS – PR(O)UDe, NESS.
18 An insatiable female great-white shark
MAN-EATER – DD.
21 One avoiding more theatrical clobber
HAMMER – HAMMIER.
22 Put out unopened box of matching mugs
UPSET – super-tricky wordplay here: a cUP sET would be matching mugs. Bravo, you bastard!
24 Love sex, but not with you and a veggie
ONION – O (love), uNION. A brilliant clue, this.
25 Leg it and consume apace in bar
BOLT – DD. Edit: or rather a triple (see below). The idea of consuming in bars was perhaps too close to home at the time of writing.

31 comments on “Sunday Times 4708 – bleeurgh”

  1. Well, is anemometer that obscure? (Someone had to say it.)

    My (serious) take on these thing is that the setter has a many-bowed string and that some of his/her arrows will miss our personal targets. Take the three most recent examples: gang agley (relies on knowledge of one of the best known lines of one of our great poets – a line which has entered the mainstream, including literature and cinema: no wordplay); bhindi (easy if you’ve eaten in the last 20 years in a curry house – which is part of our culinary heritage; clued via wordplay which is so impenetrable as to be effectively in the category of gang agley); and anemometer (pretty common word to many educated people, with more than a passing interest in things climatic, just as anemone is pretty common to those with biological interests: clued by an anagram).

    As for the crossword, no idea of my time now, but it wasn’t too difficult. Completely missed the Olympic theme. I’m resistant to all forms of Nina and theme.

    As for your musical taste: starts promisingly, but goes downhill. Turin Brakes sounds suspiciously like something Verlaine might listen to.

    Edited at 2016-08-28 02:16 am (UTC)

    1. Never heard of BHINDI, got it from the wordplay. Dredged AGLEY up from memory, needed wordplay for the spelling. Sadly, there was none. But as you say, just another bow in the setter’s string (wait, what?).

      As for this puzzle, at 17:24 it was a walk in the park. ANEMOMETER was familiar enough, but in general I support Keriothe’s stance against obscurities clued by ambiguous or non-existent wordplay. OREAD, anyone?

      Enjoyed this a lot more than today’s offering. Thanks Harry and K.

      1. Galspray I always enjoy your courtesy, balance and diplomacy. You make Sir Les P seem like a parody.

        I have been solving (failing to) broadsheet cryptics for 48 years. I failed today in direct relationship to the bottle of French wine consumed. Having sobered up, I realise (sadly) that the failure was not wine-related. Today was my worst performance for many a Sunday (year, probably).

      2. Well, you sort of disproved my theory, but then your parsing skills are better than mine!

        Galspray the diplomat? Tell it not in GATH! Preferably on that many-bowed string…

        1. I’ve noticed that Sawbill is one of the wittier commenters on this blog. Turns out he’s also an excellent judge of character!
    2. I imagine it’s quite difficult to judge “obscure”. “Anemometer” is so familiar to me that I’d never think to consider if it was going to be an unknown for people, and I’m no meteorologist. Conversely, I’ve eaten in plenty of curry houses but never noticed “bhindi”, and had to get it from the wordplay… Sadly, I knew “agley” mostly from the spoken word, so I was one of plenty who simply misspelled it.

      Edited at 2016-08-28 07:46 am (UTC)

    3. Is it obscure? Depends whether you’ve heard of it or not. I just prefer cryptic clues to general knowledge tests.
      As for the music, well I was drunk.
  2. The setter was trying a bit too hard for me on this one. The spoonerism was dire.

    I’m with ulaca and vinyl1 on ANEMOMETER which on the Mohs/Beaufort scale of hardness in wind instruments wouldn’t stir up the talc?

  3. Nothing the least obscure about anemometers, that clue was a write-in for me.. sorry Keriothe. You must have seen hundreds over the years.. those little whirly things weather stations have. There was a handheld one on telly the other night, programme about the Forth Bridge.. I found (eg) bhindi far more obscure, which I expect will surprise the currytophiles – the simple fact is that one person’s obscurity is another’s cuddly, familiar word.
    All setters can do is shrug, and all we can do is expect such to occur from time to time and not stress too much, not that I’m suggesting anyone here has, understand..
    Good crossword, btw. And blog, I looked confidently through for a mistake or two given your stated condition, couldn’t find one, dash it
    1. Aside from the “obscure?” shrug: if an “amenometer” was a thing, we’d surely all know about it from jokey xwd clues about talent shows on religious TV channels. I was going to confidently assert that Anemos was the Greek god of the wind, but forgot that each wind had its own god, so the related word was the plural Anemoi, leaving Anemos as a plate-smashing Greek restaurant in Charlotte Street, London – long gone but still mentioned occasionally by food critics. [Known to me as my LSE hall was in the same street.]
    2. “One person’s obscurity is another’s cuddly, familiar word”. Well exactly. Nothing’s obscure if you’ve heard of it. I just prefer it if unusual words are clued with usable wordplay. I’m afraid I find the idea that ANEMOMETER is an everyday word slightly ridiculous.
  4. I don’t appear to have any notes from this one, but I do have a screenshot of a completed grid on my iPad, so I assume I didn’t have too much trouble. Seem to remember enjoying “sent via Dakota” and the “cup set”, and hating “pride” clueing PROUDNESS. 1a went in straight away and took me right back to a Geordie friend of mine baffling me by asking me for a “tab” back in 1991.
  5. I’ve no finishing time so I assume I needed more than one session and forgot to note the fact. I found it mostly straightforward but I was unable to think of a word FLO??? for “tramp”. ANEMOMETER was a write-in for me because although I’d class myself as more of an arty type I did manage to achieve O-level physics at school and this is one of the things that’s stuck with me through the intervening years.
    1. Thanks for the reminder — yes, the whole FLO thing was driving me mad, too, as I recall.
  6. …from my days working in civil aviation. I did like the use of ‘wind instrument’! I did have difficulty with both ONION (UNION?) and SHOT, so thank you, keriothe. ONION is, I believe, what Vallaw would have called a double helix. I agree, that the less said about the Spoonerism in COMEBACK, the better.
    1. Hmm. I’m struggling to see how you get UNION from this clue. ‘Not with you’ is pretty unambiguous, no?
        1. Of course, but I don’t how you can make sense of the clue with that as the definition.
          1. I couldn’t so I had to go back and start again and eventually ended up with the correct solution!

            Edited at 2016-08-28 11:38 am (UTC)

  7. Struggling to see how 15d is a cryptic one not an obscurely worded ‘simple’ clue. Or is that it? Sorry, new to these crosswords!
    2. My take was that the setter was hoping you’d read “drew” in the sense of “attracted” rather than “pulled”, which would then maybe make you think of tourist attractions rather than modes of transport.
  8. A strange mix of the straightforward (relatively speaking…) and the darkly impenetrable for me. Could not parse Flop or Onion at the time (thanks for the elucidation K). Overall an enjoyable puzzle (apart from 15d, 17d and 12ac, all of which seemed very average when set alongside the excellence of the rest of the clues). Hats off to the Cup Set device, which I thought was a terrific clue.

    For probably the first time in my life I’m now very pleased that our Geography master set us the task of designing and building a home-made anemometer when I was a lad. Maybe one day another clue will finally provide a reason to be thankful for having been forced to read not one but two novels by George Eliot.

    1. I was only when I read it recently that I realized that the Floss was a river. I’d always kind of imagined that the mill was somehow connected to candy floss.
  9. I had terrible trouble with this and can’t say I enjoyed it very much. Done in three sessions. 62 minutes. Ann

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