Sunday Times 4726 by David McLean

Author   keriothePosted on Categories Weekend Cryptic
I would normally wait a week to post this, but the solution to this puzzle has already been published so I’ll just go ahead, now that I have a little bit of time in which I’m not expected to cook something.

My time for this one was 13:41. We are in Canada for Christmas, so I was able to solve it at a civilised hour on Christmas Eve after a nice dinner and a few glasses of wine, waiting for Santa to turn up. His arrival was noticed extremely early this year, thanks to some over-alert kids, and I am pretty sure presents were opened on the 24th. Heigh ho, as they say, or perhaps that should be heigh ho ho ho.

Anyho, I enjoyed this puzzle enormously. It isn’t difficult, but it is very neatly put together, and the smattering of themed clues adds to the pleasure without being overwhelming, or creating the feeling that they have been forced in. Perhaps I was primed to enjoy it by the champagne and claret festivity of the occasion, but whatever the reasons I found this a real treat to solve.

I don’t normally go in for clue of the day, but I was moved to mention 20dn to my wife – not a crossworder – and not only did she not roll her eyes, she actually chuckled. I don’t think this has ever happened before, so perhaps this is the best crossword clue ever.

So thanks very much to Harry, and my very best wishes to you and everyone else for 2017.

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

Across
1 Work to cross very strong river outside uni
OFF-CAMPUS – O(FF, CAM)PUS, where ‘work’ is OPUS, FF=fortissimo=very strong, and CAM is, coincidentally but fittingly, a river in a not particularly distinguished university town.
6 Kids giving up time for posh birthday boy?
JESUS – JESTS, with the T (time) turned to a U (posh, see Nancy Mitford).
9 Energy shown by a ginger with two listeners
EARED – E, A RED. This one had me wondering if evolution has ever thrown up a creature with another number of ears.
10 Deer roam freely over old landing zone
AERODROME – (DEER ROAM)* containing O.
11 Here‘s something not seen under a tree every day
PRESENT – two definitions, the second very slightly cryptic.
12 Enduring donkey dons get on … nearly
CLASSIC – CL(ASS)ICk.
13 Arch-moralists high on cold December air?
CHRISTMAS CAROL – C, (ARCH MORALISTS)*. A very neat anagram.
17 Mess vandal created around new countdown monitor?
ADVENT CALENDAR – based on the definition and a glance at the anagram fodder I initially bunged in CAROL VORDERMAN here!
21 Tumbler a Slav filled with drop of brandy
ACROBAT – A CRO(Brandy)AT.
23 Illicit trade that’s seen by the roadside?
TRAFFIC – two definitions, one very slightly cryptic
25 Newspaper features linked with furrowed brows?
HEADLINES – a definition, and then some slightly cryptic wording. It’s quite hard to see where one meets the other, and the word ‘features’ is arguably doing a little bit of double duty, but the question mark and the fact that it’s a Sunday mitigate any Ximenean doubts I might otherwise be entertaining.
26 Daughter with garden tool? Duck!
DRAKE – D, RAKE. No reference to Sir Francis on this occasion.
27 Decline when they tell us when to work
ROTAS – ROT, AS.
28 Gloomy match-goer with sore throat apt do this?
CHEERLESS – two definitions, the second cryptic if only in the sense that you won’t find it in the dictionary.

Down
1 Concluded mob put too many pieces in a trunk?
OVERPACK – OVER, PACK. The tricky thing about this clue is the definition: it takes a while to cotton on to the fact that it makes up the vast majority of the clue. Well, it did me, anyway.
2 Conservative in charge? Total shambles!
FARCE – FAR(C)E. Liam Fox, perhaps.
3 Someone we’ve all sent a card to this Christmas?
ADDRESSEE – this clue threw me totally off guard because it isn’t really cryptic at all!
4 Ghost ship finally getting a month at sea
PHANTOM – shiP, (A MONTH)*.
5 Trim small trees sold recently?
SPRUCES – SPRUCE, S. Christmas trees are usually some variety of this, pine or fir, according to Wikipedia. I don’t know what ours is.
6 Area under no good biblical ruler where 6A lived
JUDEA – JUDgE, A.
7 Hoses down pants ready for a Lapland tramp?
SHOWSHOED – (HOSES DOWN)*.
8 Sort of cheeps that Phil’s bird delivers today?
SPEECH – (CHEEPS)*. A bit of lese-majesté in the service of a cryptic reading. I have never watched the Queen’s speech on Christmas day, and probably never will.
14 One tweets “ruddy brute” about Republican leader
REDBREAST – RED B(Republican)EAST.
15 A large old queen drinking with a great man
ALEXANDER – A, L, EX (old), ER containing (drinking) AND (with).
16 Crazy types full of bad jokes at Yuletide?
CRACKERS – two definitions, one a slightly cryptic reference to the terrible jokes you get in Christmas crackers.
18 Colossal jerk seizing sunbed from Apple?
TITANIC – T(ITAN)IC, where ‘iTan’ is what Apple would call a sunbed if it made one. Arf.
19 Some upstart is teasing a public performer …
ARTISTE – contained in ‘upstart is teasing’.
20 … unhappy about this woman who’s pulled Santa?
DASHER – reversal of SAD, HER. Along with Dancer, Prancer, Vixen, Comet, Cupid, Donner and Blitzen. A bunch of cowardly bullies, in my view. Sure, they were nice to Rudolph once weather-related expediency prompted the big man to bring the red-nosed fellow into the team, but that in no way excuses their disgraceful mockery, name-calling and exclusion before then. To be honest I’m not even sure Santa emerges from the whole sorry affair smelling entirely of roses: a bullying culture is after all a failure of leadership.
22 Those ringing in the New Year with a Scotch?
BELLS – DD. Other whiskies are available.
24 Celebrity welcoming Liberal sweetheart
FLAME – F(L)AME.

37 comments on “Sunday Times 4726 by David McLean”

  1. A great puzzle from our Harry … now I’m getting the hang of his style.
    Perhaps a bit on the easier side for him? And what’s going on with 3dn I dunno. Am I (too) missing something subtle?

    Of scotch: there was a great, slightly cryptic, ad for another brand around the festive season some years ago. It read:

    “ingle ells … not quite the same, is it?”

    1. I think 3dn is just a sort of double bluff, sending you (me, anyway) off looking for something cryptic that isn’t there.
      J&B is quite drinkable whisky. Bells is rough, but the best for a whisky mac, perhaps because it’s rough. As I remember, anyway: these days I get punishing hangovers from even small amounts of the stuff so I avoid it, much as I like it.
      1. Never touch the stuff myself, despite the ancestry — which I hope will qualify me for Scottish citizenship … as and when YKW.
        1. I might qualify myself (my mum was née Blair), and I’ll take EU citizenship any way I can get it if this Brexit idiocy runs its course.

          Edited at 2016-12-28 04:54 am (UTC)

      2. I’m partial to Irish whiskey, though Scotch whisky (sans the “e”) is quite palatable if a single malt——just a bit expensive (and it doesn’t go so well in coffee).
  2. I was actually a bit let down by this, although e.g. 6ac and 18d were echt-Harry. My sympathies, K, on your whisky issues; I’m planning on starting the New Year Bowmore-free, and I don’t look forward to it.
    1. I will be starting the new year entirely booze-free, as is my wont. It’s my way of reminding myself every year that I drink too much. And don’t be too sympathetic on my whisky allergy: I find there are always lots of other very nice things to drink.

      Edited at 2016-12-28 04:32 am (UTC)

  3. That’s “lèse-majesté,” with a grave accent on the first “e.” Misspelled otherwise.

    Edited at 2016-12-28 03:45 am (UTC)

    1. Yeah I know but I was writing this on my iPad and I didn’t know how to correct it (it picked up the accute accent in ‘majesté’ for some reason, as did my iPhone just now). Also I checked Chambers, which has it without the accent, and figured that got me off the hook. Honestly, I did. See also yesterday’s discussion on the etymological fallacy. 😉
      1. FYI, FWIW, the grave accent is option ` on a Mac. (On a PC, I guess that would be Alt `.) I missed the discussion you refer to. Does “yesterday’s” mean the previous blog about the regular cryptic? At least there’s no chance of confusion, as there is no French word “lese” sans accent (unlike “à” and “a”).
        1. I think he means the discussion on REFERENDA which was 1ac in the main puzzle blogged by me yesterday.
          1. O I C : “the etymological fallacy: the mistaken notion that modern usage has to conform to the original meanings/forms of words.”
            I’m glad keriothe added the smiley. This is not quite the same thing, is it? (Although l’Académie française has decreed (to the bemused and amused disapproval of Le Canard Enchaîné) that many traditional accents are henceforth optional…) Sorry, I’m a copy editor, I just can’t help it.

            Edited at 2016-12-28 05:45 am (UTC)

            1. It is the same thing. Once a word like this is adopted into English, whether or not it has an accent is a matter of English usage, and the original form is irrelevant. We don’t usually write ‘aperitif’ with an accent in English, for instance, and neither is it normal to write the semi-anglicised form ‘lese-majesty’ with an accent.
              Having said that, I wrote it in italics, which clearly implied the use of a French term, so I admit I should have used the French spelling.
              1. Of course, italics or no, “lese-majesty,” ending in “y,” is different from “lèse-majesté.”

                The only reason people took to using “referenda” instead of “referendums” is because they thought “referenda” was the proper Latin ending.

                I take the general point, though. At The Nation magazine, we still insist that “media” be treated as a plural, although even The New York Times (often, if not always) treats it as singular. It’s also singular in French, which one might imagine is closer to Latin. It’s true that “medium” still exists in English for the singular, while we don’t have “agendum.”

                1. Well as I said Chambers (alone among the usual dictionaries, admittedly) has ‘lese-majesté’, which under my personal style guide would have given me a justification… if I hadn’t used italics.
                  In French ‘les médias’ is standard, and fine of course: the etymological fallacy applies to all languages! Generally these distinctions are just questions of convention and stylistic preference: it’s perfectly natural for a publication to prescribe its own but an error to think that we are dealing in questions of right and wrong.
                  1. Usage always wins in the end, which is why I signed up with the prescriptivists. Usagists don’t need any help. Ha.
                        2. I am referring to aesthetic preferences rather than scientific determinations. A linguist describes language as it exists, whether good, bad or ugly.
                        4. L’Académie française knows that its recommendations are just that, not legal strictures and, though backed up by reasoning, not scientific conclusions. In developing a style, personal or institutional, one must decide what is “right” and “wrong”——for you. When I said I “signed up” in some mythical battle against usagism, this might have been a clue that I was speaking somewhat tongue-in-cheek.

                          Edited at 2016-12-28 05:59 pm (UTC)

                        5. Yes, I gathered that. The Académie Française on the other hand does seem to take itself terribly seriously.
  4. Polished off in 21 minutes, so a bit disappointing for a Sunday and it was just as well that the ST also published three from the archives to keep me occupied.

    I failed fully to understand 18dn where the Apple sunbed ruse can’t work if you’ve parsed it as I did as TI(TANI)C.

  5. My first Sunday Times cryptic, and a decent time of about 90 minutes : I’m a regular on the Times QC, but really struggle with the Times 15×15. This looked much easier than the typical 15×15, is that right?
    1. It was easier than the usual 15×15 in the Sunday Times (and for this setter, by a mile) but the daily Times varies a lot in difficulty and it’s not at all uncommon to have an easy one.
    2. Yes, as jackkt says, this was relatively gentle but the dailies are quite regularly easier than this.
  6. Enjoyable puzzle, and amazement that K has never watched ER doing her stuff on Christmas Day. Next he’ll be telling us he never saw Morecambe and Wise!

    Netflix’s The Crown is a real treat for Roundhead and Cavalier alike.

        1. Funnily enough my dad and dad-in-law were watching (and laughing at) that very sketch on Youtube only yesterday. But funnily enough I don’t find it funny.

          Edited at 2016-12-28 03:14 pm (UTC)

          1. By analogy, the Goons finished the year after I was born – I think the 1971 M&W Previn special was aired shortly just before your arrival – and I find it childish and boring.
            1. I don’t find the Goons funny either.
              I think this is common with great comedy. Part of what makes it funny is the shock of the new. The new is then integrated into subsequent material and becomes commonplace, so those coming later never experience the shock. Even if you can see what is original and good about it (and I can, with both Goons and M&W) it won’t make you laugh.
              My kids think Blackadder is hilarious, so that may be an exception to this rule. Or it might just be the bum jokes.
              1. Your kids have good taste. Blackadder is the product of writers and cast at the top of their game. And lines like “…which is more than you can say for my bottom”, when delivered by Fry, are so awful as to be funny – for different reasons, I’m sure – to almost everyone.

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