Sunday Times 4764 by Dean Mayer – a monkey without a spatula

Author   keriothePosted on Categories Weekend Cryptic
12:29. A relatively gentle offering from Dean this week, but still of the usual high quality. Nothing very obscure, although the insect noise at 6dn was new to me, and perhaps PICAROON isn’t quite an everyday word. Some nice touches as usual: my favourite clue this week is 14dn. It’s so neat I wonder if it’s been done before.

I don’t really have more to say, you’ll be glad to hear, so here’s how I think it all works. As is now the norm on a Sunday I am not certain all of this is right, but at least I have an explanation for everything.

Across
1 An innocent lawyer’s letter
LAMBDA – LAMB (an innocent), DA (lawyer).
5 Pirate shot, beheaded, put ashore
PICAROON – PIC (shot), mAROON. This clue reminded me of the Pirate Song in which Redbeard, Blackbeard and Bluebeard can’t agree on which colour to paint their boat, and end up… marooned.
9 Toss the nuclear bombs from this
ROCKET LAUNCHER – ROCK (toss), (THE NUCLEAR)*.
10 How a gentleman’s acquired a salary
WAGE – contained in ‘how a gentleman’.
11 Keeping ball with Bill and Gordon Bennett up front
ACCORDANCE – AC (account, bill), COR (Gordon Bennett), Dance (ball). Is the abbreviation AC (or a/c) used for account in this sense? I thought it was just for bank accounts. Not sure though.
12 Throw me around in front of study’s fire
EMBOLDEN – reversal of LOB, ME, then DEN (study).
14 Disease, extremely painful, and fever
PLAGUE – PainfuL, AGUE.
15 Item on display I swear can be heard
CURSOR – sounds like ‘curser’.
16 Sound of hooter about to be carried by judge
RESONATE – reversal of NOSE contained in RATE.
18 Notes on staff not bound to be used
SHEET MUSIC – CD: the ‘staff’ here is a musical staff, and the clue refers to the fact that SHEET MUSIC is not usually bound.
20 Heading off to hunt rabbit
TALK – sTALK.
22 Unremarkable song Tom Petty covers
FAIR TO MIDDLING – AIR, TOM contained in FIDDLING. LEARNING TO FLY didn’t fit.
23 One drives over fields with those following track
SHEEPDOG – SHEEP (those following), DOG (track).
24 Outline of small boat
SKETCH – S, KETCH.

Down
2 A short hearing for courts
ATRIA – A TRIAl.
3 A single addition to the CV?
BACHELORS DEGREE – CD.
4 A drowned youth’s buried by Pope
ALEXANDER – A, LE(X)ANDER. ‘By’ = multiplied by. LEANDER drowned trying to swim across the Hellespont (aka the Dardanelles) for a tryst with Hero.
5 Hefty bill for this road feature?
PELICAN CROSSING – because a pelican has a large (hefty) beak (bill).
6 Sound of insect that’s caught fly, almost
CHURR – C, HURRy. I don’t know if I’ve ever come across this word before but it somehow seemed plausible.
7 A street magician’s mad rush to finish
RACE AGAINST TIME – (A STREET MAGICIAN)*. Nice anagram!
8 It’s hard to return from this public hearing
OPEN COURT – the first meaning here is tennis-related, I think, but I’m not entirely sure (and haven’t been able to find out from googling) exactly what OPEN COURT means in this context, or why it would be particularly hard to return a serve from it. Perhaps someone who knows about tennis can enlighten me.
10 Minute is not quite seven days
WEE – WEEk.
13 Gargle what, so hum is removed?
MOUTHWASH – (WHAT SO HUM)*. A slightly odd structure to this clue: the whole clue is the definition, but in the wordplay the words ‘is removed’ are superfluous. A stickler might object to this but I’m not a stickler and I like it.
14 Letters and numbers of letters
POSTCODES – which are made up of letters and numbers and appear on letters. Lovely!
17 Queen and king informally training RAF member
ERK – ER, K. I have never come across this word outside crosswords, but it has appeared several times in recent months and years and is now entirely familiar.
19 Circling earth, atmosphere was lower
MOOED – MOO(E)D.
21 See rising smoke — reason?
LOGIC – LO, reversal of CIG.

31 comments on “Sunday Times 4764 by Dean Mayer – a monkey without a spatula”

  1. I gather I must have stuck with this to the end, rather than go offline at 30′, showing more stick-to-itiveness than I usually do. I, too, was puzzled by OPEN COURT, but I figured one definition is enough. I’d find it hard to stickle about 13d: for one thing, “Gargle what, so hum (?)” is a pretty odd surface; for another, removing “is removed” loses the point that one gargles MOUTHWASH to remove the hum. No idea who Gordon B was, finally–finally–inferring that it meant something like COR. LOI PICAROON, COD POSTCODES.
  2. ​Did this straight after the Saturday cryptic which was OK (loved the ‘Actress slim, hard to believe’ clue), but not as good as this.

    POSTCODES was my COD, closely followed by FAIR TO MIDDLING and OPEN COURT; playing a shot to an ‘open court’ means your opponent is nowhere near the ball and wouldn’t be able to return it.

    As kevingregg points out, ‘is removed’ is necessary for the def of MOUTHWASH, though not for the wordplay as noted by our blogger, so in my books this wouldn’t qualify as an &lit, but more as an &littish cryptic def. You’re right, I’ve got no idea what I’m talking about.

    AC (a/c) is fine with me for ‘bill’.

    One of the best, in various places, for the last week.

    Thanks to setter and blogger.

  3. Not as hard as Anax can be but still fun.PICAROON reminds me of the Graun setter who l like.
    Ong’ara,
    Nairobi,
    Kenya.
  4. I started well but got stuck in a few places and took 58 minutes. I reached similar conclusions to Bletchley Reject and Jackt on OPEN COURT. I couldn’t see either where the CROSSING that wonderful bird the PELICAN used came from, but there was little doubt given that he can fit more in his beak than his belican, so I didn’t ask how the helican. COD FAIR TO MIDDLING where it was nice to see Tom Petty get sole billing. A special mention to SHEEP DOG as this puzzle appeared 6 months to the day after my beautiful old border collie breathed his last. Thank you K and Dean.
  5. 32 minutes, which may be a PB for a puzzle set by Dean. Like our blogger, I didn’t know CHURR, or if I did I had forgotten it.

    Adding to bletchleyreject’s explanation of hitting a shot into an open court, my understanding is it’s when the opponent has been manoeuvred outside the lines leaving one or other or both parts of his/her side of the court undefended.

    Collins has both ‘a/c’ and ‘ac’ as ‘account’. Also ‘acc’ which may be worth remembering!

    1. The abbreviation isn’t the problem I have with AC. I just think that this abbreviation is only used in the context of bank accounts. By the same token I would never expect to see ‘account’ meaning a description of events abbreviated to AC.
  6. I forget my time for this but I enjoyed it as I usually do with Dean.

    I think that the OPEN COURT is nothing to do with return of service, but rather if you have been driven off to one side to make a return, leaving an open court, then it is going to be hard to return when the other player puts the ball back some distance from you.

    On the MOUTHWASH one, at the time at least, I just took GARGLE to be a noun (I just looked, and Chambers says it means a liquid for gargling), and removed to be the anagrind.

    I liked Tom Petty.

    Edited at 2017-09-24 07:28 am (UTC)

    1. I wasn’t sure whether Tom Petty was another Gordon Bennett, or just a way of getting ‘petty’ into the clue, or an actual person. I just Google/youtubed him, and I was impressed. Certainly more than by Gordon Bennett.
      1. I’m quite impressed that you have managed never to have heard of Tom Petty! ‘Free Falling’ is, IMHO, one of the greatest pop tunes of all time.
        1. Well, living in Japan for 40 years–where the pop scene is pure crap, iMho–combined with a less than febrile interest in pop music to start with … I remember when David Bowie died, and people here were commenting on him, and all I could recall about him was his appearance in a second-rate movie; certainly couldn’t think of a single song of his. But I’ll youtubify Free Falling instanter. On edit: Yes indeed, very good; although it reminded me once again how so few contemporary singers have any concept of diction. (Think of Sinatra, say, or Mabel Mercer.)

          Edited at 2017-09-24 11:59 am (UTC)

          1. Fair enough. If the movie you’re thinking of is Labyrinth then ‘second-rate’ is exceptionally generous.
            1. Never heard of ‘Labyrinth’. I was thinking of ‘Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence’ (1983), which may rise to the level of second-rate. It is important in Japanese film history, in that it is the first Japanese-directed WW2 movie that shows the Japanese army in anything like a bad light.
              1. Oh, OK. I wasn’t aware of that one. If you ever get the opportunity to see Labyrinth, don’t.

                Edited at 2017-09-24 01:56 pm (UTC)

              2. That’s it! Thank you, Kevin. Did you know where to look, or are you just better at google that I am?

                Meantime, that might not stop the Sinatra/Mercer v Jager/Bowie debate,

                1. I looked under ‘Mick Jagger on singing’, and found this almost immediately.

                  Edited at 2017-09-25 12:46 am (UTC)

          2. Didn’t Mick Jagger advise against singing lyrics so that they were able to be clearly understood? I’m sure I read it, but can’t get past ‘lyric to this’ and ‘lyric to that’ when I google for the quotation.

            Edited at 2017-09-24 10:39 pm (UTC)

        2. Tom Petty was still a Sunday Times exception when this was published but I see that sadly he now qualifies for inclusion in the weekday puzzle.
    2. My interpretation of 13d was the same. Gargle as the definition and “is removed” the anagrind.

      Thanks to the blogger for explaining 4d – way too complicated for me and hence DNF.

      Mr Chumley

    3. I suspect you’re right. I didn’t know that ‘gargle’ could be a noun, but it’s in all the usual dictionaries.
  7. 50 mins for me, so probably at the easier end of this setter’s spectrum but no less fun for that. Thanks for explaining sheet music which I bunged in half parsed without full understanding. Churr was an unknown bunged in from wordplay and checkers.
  8. Romped through this in 34:35. Didn’t know CHURR but it was easy to deduce. I liked 14d too. I’m now familiar with the previously unknown ERK. Took a while to see ROCKET LAUNCHER and SHEET MUSIC. Nice puzzle thanks Dean and K.
  9. Okay, but I’m still struggling to see problem. Bills and accounts are interchangeble in expressions like ‘put it on my bill’ / ‘charge it to my account’ and in wordplay it’s standard practice to take individual words out of context in order to misdirect the solver.

    Edited at 2017-09-24 12:32 pm (UTC)

    1. My point is that the abbreviation a/c wouldn’t be used in that context. It’s specifically used for bank accounts, and a bank account is not a bill. Thinking about it a bit more you might use the abbreviation for accounts other than bank accounts but I still don’t think you’d ever use it in a context where the account is a demand for payment.

      Edited at 2017-09-24 01:05 pm (UTC)

  10. 41 minutes for this, so pretty fast for me. (Let’s draw a veil over how I’m doing with today’s…) Perhaps I wasn’t feeling that effusive, as I haven’t noted any clues as particular favourites.

    FOI 1a LAMBDA (as someone whose parents have lived in Greece for a decade the Greek letter clues do mostly spring readily to mind), LOI 5a PICAROON, which definitely didn’t spring readily to mind. I think I got there by randomly remembering Spike Milliagan’s “Puckoon” on the way through…

    Thanks to setter and blogger.

  11. I don’t normally do the Dean puzzles as they are too difficult for me.
    But I solved about 14 clues from this one so progress is being made.
    Struggle to see that Fire = Embolden but I guess that’s the next level. David
  12. How do people retain interest in and knowledge of what they have submitted a whole week earlier under the new Times Crossword Club system? I haven’t found a way to print my submission. Even when I maximise the grid, I’m still one row short; and, of course, no comments are permitted in the Club Forum until the solution is published.
  13. No explanation offered yet I see. If a tennis player runs one way, he leaves an “open court” on the other side of course, into which his opponent can easily hit a winner. But it would be unusual to say the player can’t return that winner. Of course he might not reach it, but I would say “return” is used specifically in reference to returning service, when there is no open court.
  14. ………….commonly used as a noun in Ireland. “I’m going for a few gargles”………a few pints.

    We found this to be one of the more difficult puzzles. Would never have solved it without aids.

    Jan and Tom

    Toronto.

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