Sunday Times 4720 by David McLean

Author   keriothePosted on Categories Weekend Cryptic
This took me a little over half an hour, which counts as hard for me. I don’t seem to have been alone in finding it tricky, although Magoo and Jason both polished it off in under seven minutes.

I had one error, which based on a discussion on the club forum (including a contribution from Peter Biddlecombe) I think wasn’t really an error. I think the ‘correct’ answer for 25 is BELT, but I had PELT, which works just as well. I thought that BEAT might also be a valid answer, but on reflection I don’t think it quite works as a synonym for ‘speed’, even if the musical meaning is not a million miles away. Of course it may be that PELT was the intended answer and I’ve made a stupid mistake somewhere else!

The other clue that caused me a lot of trouble was 29ac. I could see what it ought to be based on the definition, but couldn’t for the life of me figure out the wordplay, so I hesitated. In the end I just bunged it in, and only worked out how the clue worked when I came to write this blog up today (yesterday to you).

Another quirky but highly enjoyable puzzle from Harry.

Definitions are underlined, anagrams indicated like (THIS)*.

Across
1 Deviant epic-writer smart to charge thus?
PERVERSE – a writer of epics charging on the basis of volume might not be so smart if tempted into writing in a turgid and prolix style, but Dickens got away with it so what the heck.
5 One wearing woven pants for all to see
ON VIEW – (WOVEN)* containing I.
10 Army fixer Spooner delivers at the double
POST HASTE – or ‘host paste’ as the Reverend might have it.
11 Loathsome types spinning drunk around trailer
TOADS – reversal of SOT around AD.
12 One charged with bit of rowdiness in sports club
IRON – ION (one charged) containing Rowdiness
13 Question contest held in tempestuous winter
INTERVIEW – (WINTER)* containing VIE (contest).
15 Contemporary Christmas for materialists?
PRESENT DAY – the second part of this clue could equally have read ‘Christmas for children’.
17 A pound coin and where Bow lass might keep it
ONER – or “on ‘er”. I can’t say I’ve ever heard a pound coin referred to as a ONER, and it’s not in any of the usual dictionaries. It can mean a pound (ODO) or a £1 note (Chambers) though, which is close enough. The Chambers definition is strange, because it’s not marked as no longer in use.
19 Fruit and crackers
NUTS – DD. BANANAS doesn’t fit. A nut is a fruit in the same way a tomato is, i.e. technically.
20 Female running heat over new steel plates
FALSE TEETH – F, (HEAT)* containing (STEEL)*. A term I haven’t come across before.
22 Where a babe might get her food order at West Point
ABOUT FACE – the first part of this clue is very much a definition by example.
24 Submissive lady making duke tense
TAME – DAME (lady) with the D (duke) swapped for a T (tense).
26 Enthusiasm over a crippling speed limit?
OOMPH – O, 0 MPH. The idea of a ‘crippling’ speed limit strikes me as a bit odd, but if such a thing exists this certainly qualifies.
27 A poor place to swap hands in a prosthetic store?
ALMSHOUSE – a prosthetic store might be an ARMS HOUSE: swap the R for an L.
28 Plain fish and a revolutionary way to stuff it
TUNDRA – TUNA containing a reversal of RD.
29 Stroke sexy posterior to drive little soprano wild
DROP SHOT – DR (drive), (SOP)* with HOT (sexy) behind (posterior to) them. I struggled to see the wordplay here, partly because of the indirect anagram: a strict no-no to a Ximenean, and something I don’t think you’d ever see in the daily puzzle. When the instructions are as clear as this I can’t see anything wrong with it, but it’s something I’m not used to looking for.

Down
1 Two secretaries, one’s got kids
PAPA – two personal assistants.
2 Mourners certain to be put out by him?
RESURRECTION MAN – (MOURNERS CERTAIN)*. A comic-book superhero, apparently. Edit: see comments for a more sensible explanation.
3 Sexed-up hen parties dance with abandon
ENHANCED – (HEN)*, (DANCE)*.
4 Current husband suspicious about rice dish
SUSHI – reversal of I (current), H, SUS.
6 Kind adult that’s spent millions supporting knight
NATURE – N (knight), mATURE.
7 It spread via a lout in the Royal Marines
ITALIAN VERMOUTH – (VIA A LOUT IN THE RM)*. Another (partially) indirect anagram.
8 Village harlot moving from NYC to LA?
WESTWARD HO – a HO is a harlot, NYC to LA is of course WESTWARD. A village in Devon.
9 Late sun dancing across river in pale shades?
NEUTRALS – (LATE SUN)* containing R. Colours with names like ‘dimity’ and ‘clunch’.
14 Active union fight to imprison rubbish attorney
UP AND ABOUT – U, BOUT containing PAN (rubbish), DA.
16 A tough career abroad
TEARAWAY – TEAR (career) AWAY (abroad).
18 Frame son and person of small stature at university
STITCH UP – S, TITCH, UP.
21 An artist slicing sweet cherries
ETCHER – contained in ‘sweet cherries’.
23 Wheat always brings in two grand in Rome
EMMER – E(MM)ER. A type of wheat I hadn’t heard of.
25 Smack or speed
BELT/PELT – but not BEAT. DD.

14 comments on “Sunday Times 4720 by David McLean”

  1. I was sure I knew this term, but no: a resurrection man was a man who stole corpses for medical research.
    K, you’ve got a typo at the first clue: PEVERSE.

    Edited at 2016-11-20 06:06 am (UTC)

  2. Burke and Hare were the original RESURRECTION MEN from Edinburgh c.1827. They dug up corpses and murdered folk and sold them to anatomist Dr. Knox for his lectures at seven quid a shot.

    The comic hero Mitch Shelley (Abnett, Lanning and Guice) was somewhat later, 1997.

    45 mins for me COD & WOD 2dn RESURRECTION MAN

    LOI DROP SHOT (Ikea without instructions)

  3. 39 minutes, so not bad for me for an ST puzzle and I probably spent the last 8 or 9 of them considering BEAT with musical associations at 25dn before coming up with the more suitable BELT. I never thought of “pelt”.

    DK HO as “harlot” though I must have heard it said by non-RP speakers and always assumed it was their quirky way of pronouncing “whore”. Is that where it originates from, I now wonder?

    RESURRECTION MAN was unknown too but I assumed it was a film title that everybody knows but me.

    I can’t say that I noticed the indirect anagram but might have spotted and queried it if I’d been in blogging mode. SOP is a standard abbreviation for “soprano” indicated by “little” and it’s visible in the clue so I don’t consider as heretical a breach of the “rules” as if we’d been expected to think of a word and then anagram it.

    Edited at 2016-11-20 06:31 am (UTC)

      1. Thanks. Chambers Dictionary of Slang advises that it is black pronunciation of Standard English ‘whore’ dating from the 1950s although in subsequent decades its meaning has widened somewhat. It’s also spelt: hoe, who and whoe
  4. Enjoyed this crossword, especially the successful attempt at 29ac to escape, however briefly, from the self-imposed Ximenean straitjacket. I look forward to a day when the daily puzzle feels able to be similarly creative
  5. Thanks to Kevin and Horryd for the explanation of RESURRECTION MAN. I looked it up in Collins (which doesn’t have it) and then googled it. I should have persevered, because it’s in both ODO and Chambers, and when I google it now I see there is a wiki article underneath all the stuff about the movie and comic book character. It has to be said that this meaning makes a lot more sense of the clue!

    Edited at 2016-11-20 08:40 am (UTC)

  6. 25D: BELT and PELT will both be accepted in the prize draw. Unfortunately, I saw BEAT as a tempting alternative, ruled it out because beat and tempo are different, and then mistakenly thought my work on that clue was done.
  8. Luckily I knew RESURRECTION MAN from plural cultural references: an Ian Rankin novel, which naturally references the Edinburgh originals, and a Thea Gilmore song.

    This was generally a toughie for me, though, with my notes say “2 hours-ish”. LOI were the unparsed DROP SHOT, and ITALIAN VERMOUTH, which is one of those “crossword-only” things I’ve started to look out for, but didn’t expect to find in that particular format…

    Edited at 2016-11-20 10:38 am (UTC)

  9. Perverse = deviant. OK but how is it derived from the clue. Can someone explain that a little more?
    1. Hi anon. The idea is that the writer would make more money if charging PER VERSE than if paid for the complete work, since an epic has lots of them.

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