Sunday Times 4734 by Dean Mayer

Author   keriothePosted on Categories Weekend Cryptic
19.33. Another very fine puzzle from Dean this week. I found it tricky, with numerous clues that had me scratching my head until the penny dropped. Looking at them now, as I write up the blog, everything seems perfectly simple, obvious even, and the explanations are for the most part extremely simple. This is generally the mark of a very high quality puzzle.

So thanks once again to Dean for a very entertaining Sunday morning solve, and here’s how I think it all works.

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

Across
1 Parking in spot by church address
SPEECH – S(P)EE, CH.
5 Complexity of records given to judge
TAPESTRY – TAPES, TRY. You have to stretch the definition a little bit here to get from a complex thing to the state of being complex.
9 Consensus of 26?
POPULAR OPINION – the answer to 26ac (spoiler alert!) being IN STANCE.
10 Sausage roll made at random
MORTADELLA – (ROLL MADE AT)*. I know I shouldn’t be but I’m very partial to MORTADELLA.
12 Swallow, one that stops returning
GULP – reversal of PLUG.
13 Iron rod and spade to cut grass
FESCUE – FE (iron), CUE (rod) ‘cut’ with S (spade). A type of grass I hadn’t come across before and some tricky wordplay, so this was my last in, and induced some finger-crossing.
15 Take or takes steps
PROCEEDS – very cunning, this, and it had me scratching my head for ages. How can the answer be both a singular and a plural? Because the ‘take’ at the gate of a concert, for example, would be the PROCEEDS.
16 Damned useless cue cards
ACCURSED – (CUE CARDS)*.
19 One car is all you have
ESTATE – more commonly all you had, since this word for all one’s possessions is usually used in the context of wills.
21 Got through American education
USED – or US ED.
22 Break away? No
STAYCATION – cryptic definition. A new-fangled word for a holiday of the kind that has become much more popular since we voted to be permanently poorer.
24 Words from mouth?
ESTUARY ENGLISH – another cryptic definition, the mouth in this case being that of the river Thames.
26 Case against ancestor being keeper
INSTANCE – contained in ‘against ancestor’.
27 Bob’s secret — a bad one
SINNER – S (shilling, bob), INNER. One of those clues where the capital B is misleadingly placed at the beginning of the sentence.

Down
2 Show nurses fine needle
PROVOKE – PROV(OK)E.
3 100% up — time to break out
ERUPT – reversal of PURE (100%), T.
4 The man deals with Top Gear items?
HEADDRESSES – or HE ADDRESSES.
5 Piece of bread in cream tart
TROLLOP – T(ROLL)OP.
6 Couple ending up with one letter
PHI – the two letters ending ‘up with’, then I.
7 Dance music, being funky, is cracking hit
SWINGBEAT – SWAT containing (BEING)*.
8 Annoyed with joint, in a way
RANKLED – R(ANKLE)D.
11 Kids like to keep hand on nose
ADOLESCENTS – A(DOLE, SCENT)S.
14 Violent act due to power being seized
COUP D’ETAT – (ACT DUE TO)* containing P (power). Superb &Lit!
17 Tank command is initially tough
CISTERN – Command Is, STERN.
18 A remedy for change that’s unfortunate
DEARY ME – (A REMEDY)*.
20 Foot that is trapped under pipes
TOOTSIE – TOOTS (pipes), I.E.
23 Extremity, but not one on claw
TALON – TAiL, ON.
25 18’s name for bristle
AWN – AW, N. I’m not sure I’d say AW to mean DEARY ME, but I’m not sure I’d say either of them to mean anything so I won’t profess expertise. This rather obscure word is familiar to me from numerous past appearances in crosswords.

21 comments on “Sunday Times 4734 by Dean Mayer”

  1. Took me ages, and I breathed a sigh of relief when I saw that I’d got it all right. DNK MORTADELLA, SWINGBEAT, barely knew STAYCATION, thought TOOTSIE was a toe not a foot, so those slowed me down. I also spent too much time looking for an F (fine) in 2d. I think we’ve had FESCUE before, but I’ve known it for years; the State of Oregon’s Dept. of Agriculture has, or had, a Chewings Fescue and Creeping Red Fescue Board.
  2. 10ac was known in my youth as ‘dead donkey’! All the donkey is included! My COD.

    This also took me an age (over an hour) as 7dn SWINGBEAT did not trip lightly to the page.

    My real nemesis was 22ac STAYCATION which was unknown, as I have never taken one, nor anyone else I know! My LOI.

    I remember 25dn AWNs from my days in Suffolk…

    and 13ac FESCUE common enough to gardeners with lawns.

    24ac ESTUARY ENGLISH I have always referred to as ‘estuarine English’.

    FOI 5ac TAPESTRY WOD TROLLOP

    Fine puzzle and blog.

    Edited at 2017-02-26 06:10 am (UTC)

    1. I find it very hard to believe that you don’t know anyone who has ever had a holiday in their own country!
  3. Hard work, enjoyable but a technical DNF for me. Having REGULAR OPINION at 9ac prevented my solving 3dn so I used aids to find the Down answer and realised my mistake. I also needed aids for FESCUE which has come up in a Jumbo that I didn’t attempt, and also in a couple of comments with reference to grass on golf-courses.

    24dn was a write-in as soon I saw “bristle (3)”. I think although “Aw” and “Deary me” may be interchangeable as vague expressions of sympathy and/or frustration, they possibly don’t mean exactly the same thing. In any case I’d tend to associate them with opposite sides of the Pond.

  4. 18:17 … of great enjoyment, culminating in the week’s best penny-drop moment with POPULAR OPINION, though ESTUARY ENGLISH wasn’t far behind.

    I think I’ve seen TOOTSIE for foot, rather than toe, before but it always feels wrong to me (yes, I know it’s in the dictionaries but what do they know?).

    More great economy from DM. A man of few words ….

    Thanks, k

    1. That’s what I’d popped in to say. Apart from being a first class puzzle anyway the economy of clueing (yet again) was most impressive.
  5. 25 minutes, nice puzzle again, AWN biffed not fully understood, TOOTSIE confirmed by Mrs K as like keriothe I just thought of Dustin. We have often been tempted to have a STAYCATION and not tell friends we are still in residence, but have yet to actually do it!
  6. As others have said, the clueing conciseness is superb and even more remarkable is that the surfaces don’t suffer at all. I particularly liked the randomly made sausage roll. Unfortunately I screwed up my chances of a 10-carat rolled-gold Cross pen by putting in PSI at 6D, the parsing being PS (ending) + I (one), with the “Couple … up with” being instructions to connect the two. Not as elegant as the intended answer but my only qualm when I put it in was the quantity of link words which, given the rest of the puzzle, should perhaps have told me something was awry.
    1. Hmm, I wonder. I can’t really see anything wrong with it. ‘Ending’ suggests something other than an afterthought, so it’s a bit odd but that doesn’t seem enough to disqualify it. Referee?!
      1. I’ve got about 48 hours in which I could change my mind, but I’m not currently convinced – when I test-solved, “PHI or PSI?” was an issue that I thought of, but I didn’t see the possible route to PSI. In the editing process, I don’t think I’d be happy with “ending => PS” in a clue, without something to show what kind of ending it was.
        1. Thanks ref!
          As a submission for the defence I would point out that the definitions for ‘postscript’ in both Collins and ODO refer to something ‘added at the end’. My main doubt about this is that an ‘ending’ is normally more structurally intentional than an afterthought, but of course a postscript can be done very deliberately, in a Columbo ‘just one more thing’ sort of way.
          It’s a tricky one.
  7. As I was doing this one I kept thinking that I was dodging a bullet in terms of the blogging roster! Great puzzle but damned tricky.

    Could not see Staycation (even with all the cross checkers) – never heard the word and would not have occurred to me in a million years, although it’s obvious once explained. I toyed with Fescue based on the wordplay, but then dismissed it on the basis it was too unlikely a word! Ah well.

    Thanks for unravelling it all so elegantly K – great blog.

  8. Thanks keriothe, ditto DM. I took a long time to fix general opinion, and a longer time to discard estuary dialect – both suffered from pencilling in an obvious but wrong word based on one crosser. I liked phi best.

    Edited at 2017-02-26 03:25 pm (UTC)

  9. As a native of Dar’ford, I know all about Estuary English, so no problem there. Staycation is a regular word for not going abroad for a holiday so again,fine. Great puzzle from deano and also blog from K.
  11. Having finally taken out a digital subscription, I had a go at this puzzle. I don’t usually get the Sunday treeware. I found it harder than last Sunday’s which I did first, taking 48:46 with all correct. Fortunately I hadn’t looked at the blog before attempting it. FOI was ERUPT, LOI TAPESTRY. Some clever stuff here and I quite enjoyed the novelty of non pen and ink solving on my laptop, although I did write a few of the anagrams down to assist my brain. Struggled to parse ADOLESCENTS, so thanks to K for that.

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