Sunday Times 4758 by Dean Mayer

Author   keriothePosted on Categories Weekend Cryptic
10:53. The new Puzzle Club doesn’t give scores or leaderboard positions for competition puzzles until the solution is published, so I don’t know whether my time for this puzzle is relatively fast or slow, or indeed whether all my answers are correct. It didn’t seem very hard for a Dean Mayer puzzle though, and I seem to have a workable solution and wordplay for every clue, so fingers crossed.

I don’t know about you but I’m getting used to the new club site. It’s a little bit more awkward to navigate than the old version (and the ability to tab backwards between clues would really help) but the difference isn’t huge.

[Sorry this posted a little bit late. I’m still on holiday in Canada and I’m never really sure how time zones work in the ‘scheduled entries’ function on LJ so I err on the side of caution]

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

Across
1 Need sleep (surprised?)
AMBUSHED – or AM BUSHED. I saw quite quickly how the wordplay might work on this one, but then thought for a while that it was going to start BE. The right idea, I just needed to switch to the first person.
6 A piggy back across wicket is amazing
WOWS – reversal of SOW containing W.
9 Watch Derek put together summerhouse
GAZEBO – GAZE, BO. I wonder what the age cut-off for having heard of BO Derek is. She was still a byword for attractiveness when I was a kid but I suspect she may be unfamiliar to millennials.
10 Stir fried, too hot
TO DIE FOR – (FRIED TOO)*. Bo Derek, for instance.
11 One sent home bound to return there, oddly
DEPORTEE – reversal of ROPED (bound), ThErE.
12 Mature wife snatched by gang
GROW UP – GRO(W)UP.
13 Enthusiastic person who demands backing
AVID – reversal of DIVA.
15 Twig below trees
UNDERSTAND – a STAND is a group of trees, preceded by UNDER (below).
16 A fashionable toy
PLASTICINE – CD. I don’t know whether this stuff is known outside the UK: the answer isn’t really gettable if you haven’t heard of it.
19 Check over reject
VETO – VET, O.
20 One holds nothing back where it’s easy to be anonymous
ONLINE – ONE containing a reversal of NIL.
21 Fill up surgery, returning after hours
POPULATE – reversal of UP, OP (surgery), then LATE (after hours).
23 Desert — that is, leave — US city
SAN DIEGO – SAND, IE, GO.
25 Way to become friends again?
REALLY – RE-ALLY. This synonym for REALLY is way cool!
26 Kind words
TYPE – DD. I was a bit worried about this because to me TYPE refers more to letters than words, but I figured what are letters for?
27 All night — about to embrace that
EVERYONE – EVE, RE containing YON (that).

Down
2 Well I never oiled knots in spinal cord
MYELOID – MY (well I never), (OILED)*. Not sure where I knew this word from – House perhaps – but know it I did.
3 Modest victory, cutting out subroutine
UNOBTRUSIVE – (SUBROUTINE)* containing V.
4 Needed to admit love, the maniac
HOTHEAD – H(O, THE)AD.
5 Old man a little kid adopted
DAD – contained in ‘kid adopted’.
6 Remove a little problem, say?
WEED OUT – sounds like ‘wee doubt’.
7 In which I hunt down criminal?
WHODUNNIT – (I HUNT DOWN)*. &Lit. Nice!
8 Unfinished “ship” arrived
CAME – CAMEl. Ship of the desert.
12 Thrash out?
GARDEN PARTY – CD.
14 Willing disciple carrying organ — not good
VOLUNTARY – VO(LUNg)TARY.
17 Rod Stewart’s first LP in Ed’s new collection
SPINDLE – Stewart, (LP IN ED)*.
18 Train troublemaker to stray
IMPROVE – IMP, ROVE.
19 He may rob you of house and home
VILLAIN – VILLA, IN.
22 High point, ultimately the lot
TALL – poinT, ALL.
25 Look both ways
EYE – a palindrome.

12 comments on “Sunday Times 4758 by Dean Mayer”

  1. 50 minutes on this. I had similar doubts to our esteemed blogger but more slowly. TYPE was entered hesitantly. with the T and P clearly written in much less boldly as I view the torn-out puzzle now. MYELOID has an arrow into it saying ‘constructed unknown’. PLASTICINE has COD written by it, although in retrospect I could have gone for TO DIE FOR. We bought a GAZEBO last year for our outside thrashes. Another folly, it remains unused this year. The only week we would have needed it we were away. Enjoyable puzzle. Thank you K and Dean.
  2. Worth the price of admission — in my case, a stronger set of lenses. But this would still have been up to Dean’s high standards without it.

    Just starting to get used to the on-line version, now that my toner cartridge has run out. Possibly an effect of black-only grids?

    Edited at 2017-08-13 06:21 am (UTC)

  3. Excellent one by Anax,re Bo Derek,l remember seeing her pic in a certain film in 1980.Yes Keriothe,as a non-UK resident,l’ve heard of PLASTICINE,seen them used in nursery schools here in Kenya.
    Ong’ara,
    Nairobi.
  4. 1hr 14mins 44secs for a very good puzzle. FOI 12ac after which progress was slow until finding the wavelength and I then made steady progress to my LOI 16ac. As so often with a Dean Mayer puzzle the surfaces seemed so smooth as to be impenetrable, almost uniformly so in this one. Looking back, it’s not until “oddly” in 11ac that anything like a clear crossword “instruction” appears to me, then maybe “wife” in 12ac, then maybe “over” in 19ac, though again it’s pretty well hidden in a smooth surface. Familiar points of reference like that were few and far between. My solving experience was that each clue just seemed to have no entry point or word to attack until eventually the wavelength was found and answers began magically appearing out of thin air. Very satisfying. Thanks for clarification re. “stand” in 15ac, I thought it must have that meaning but did not know for sure. Lots of good clues, 11ac, 21ac, 4dn, 7dn but COD 16ac.
  5. I’ve just brought up my review of this puzzle on the site and although the grid is blank, it tells me I completed it correctly in 27:31. Still plenty of hiccups on the new site! Being unable to see the completed grid makes it difficult to comment, as I can’t visualise the order I solved it in. I remember liking MYELOID and AMBUSHED. I think AMBUSHED was my FOI and PLASTICINE my LOI. Nice puzzle. Thanks K and Dean.
  6. This may be completely fanciful, but I parsed the definition at 25ac as the question mark, with RE-ALLY coming from the wordplay ‘way to become friends again’. Anyway, only 35 minutes for one of Dean’s offerings ranks as a pretty good effort chez jackkt.
    1. I think my explanation is more likely: this meaning of ‘way’ is in all the usual sources (Collins, ODO, Chambers) and ‘become friends again’ seems a better definition of RE-ALLY, since both are verbs.
      1. You may well be right. I didn’t give it too much thought but just annotated it as I saw it at the time.
        1. I was in Bill & Ted (or is it Wayne’s World?) mode and saw way = really as a “way!” response to “no way!”
          1. I don’t know if it’s right but that’s definitely my favourite interpretation.
  7. This puzzle is fresh in my mind as I only got round to solving it yesterday. Top notch stuff, up there with Dean’s best. Gazebo was brilliant, but “thrash out?” is just genius, so thanks for that one Dean.
  8. “She may be unfamiliar to millennials?” I think that she helped to produce most millennials!

    Dean/Anax is in a league of his own.

    “Easier” by his standards but a lesson in surfaces and economy of clues.

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