Sunday Times 4783 by David McLean

Author   nick_the_novicePosted on Categories Weekend Cryptic
I thought this was good fun and not too tricky – thoroughly enjoyed it. Some nice laconic touches, particularly with the second rate crossword at 9ac and the happy tale of Lucky Les at 13ac. I also greatly enjoyed the surface at 19ac, conjuring up happy memories for me of a bizarre train journey (see below).

My last two in were the 18d / 25ac pairing, with the former throwing me somewhat through the definition, and the latter getting me wrongly fixated on sprites and Shakespeare. Other than that, smooth sailing – leaving me with an uneasy feeling that the next one I have to blog will be a snorter!

Thanks as ever to Harry – look forward to seeing how everyone else got on.

Definitions underlined: DD = double definition: anagrams indicated by *(–): omitted letters indicated by {-}

Across
1 High steward and female keeper of the flame? (6,9)
FLIGHT ATTENDANT – LIGHT (flame) with F (female) and ATTENDANT (keeper) around it
9 Excuse review of second-rate crossword, perhaps
(7)
ABSOLVE – If one was to write a review of a second-rate crossword, one might describe it as A “B” SOLVE
10 Rogue goes off in spin round rally (7)
REGROUP – *(ROGUE) – with “goes off” indicating the anagram – ‘in’ PR reversed (spin round)
11 Offensive, having drunk new or old red wine (4)
TENT – TET (offensive) with N inside (having drunk new). Reference to the Viet Cong offensive launched on the Tet holiday (the name of the Vietnamese New Year).
12 Direct politician on party political broadcast? (10)
ADMINISTER – MINISTER (politician) follows (on) AD (possibly a party political broadcast)
13 Fortunate chap getting seconds in the sack (7)
BLESSED – LES (chap) + S (seconds) inside BED (in the sack)
15 Look at little brother heading to wash sweatband?
(7)
EYEBROW – EYE (look at) + BRO (little brother) + W (first letter – heading – of Wash), giving us the hirsute feature designed by Mother Nature (or whoever is responsible for this stuff) to keep the sweat out of our eyes. I’ve never actually asked a resolute eyebrow-plucker whether they are in fact troubled by sweat in their eyes, and I probably never will.
17 Large wife enthralled by a deer moving downwind
(7)
LEEWARD – L (large) + *(A DEER) – with “moving” signalling the anagram – and W also added to the mix (Wife enthralled by)
19 One likely to talk bull when they talk shop? (7)
MATADOR – Rather nice cryptic definition. Eavesdropping on groups of practitioners of unusual jobs talking shop can be a fascinating experience, as I once discovered when I found myself sitting in a train compartment alongside a bunch of undertakers.
20 Likely where casino-goers might see royal faces
(2,3,5)
ON THE CARDS – DD, the second being mildly cryptic
22 American mobile unit (4)
CELL – DD
25 Ariel’s possibly one (7)
ISRAELI – *(ARIELS) – with “possibly” pointing to the anagram – + I (one), with the whole thing (I believe) being an &Lit since Ariel is indeed a common boy’s name in Israel
26 Was Sikh leader involved in Left? (7)
EXISTED – S (Sikh leader) inside (involved in) EXITED (left)
27 Bird, shark and horse that one must avoid (5,5,5)
GREAT WHITE HERON – GREAT WHITE (shark) + HERO{I}N (horse – slang for the drug) without it’s I (one must avoid)
Down
1 Diet eating up energy? Do this instead? (5)
FEAST – FAST (diet) ‘eats up’ E (energy)
2 Popular nieces upset about Republican leader lying?
(9)
INSINCERE – IN (popular) + *(NIECES) – with “upset” signposting the anagram – and R also in the mix (about Republican leader)
3 50% of all sheds last fine with hard roofing (4)
HALF – H goes in front of (Hard ‘roofing’) AL{L} (all sheds last) + F (abbrev. fine)
4 Deed man, with revision, changed for the better (7)
AMENDED – *(DEED MAN) with “with revision” indicating the anagram
5 Support taking in jolly relations one found in wood? (7)
TERMITE – TEE (support) ‘takes in’ RM (jolly – a term for a Royal Marine) + IT (relations)
6 I left information around man without due diligence (9)
NEGLIGENT – I + L + GEN all reversed (I left information around) + GENT (man)
7 A part of the body in operation (5)
AFOOT – A + FOOT (part of the body)
8 Excellent place to store stuff out of tot’s reach? (3-6)
TOP DRAWER – DD
13 Voting can lead to Gran supporting old-based sort of
party (9)
BALLOTING – TIN + G (can + ‘lead’ to Gran) under (supporting) BALL (sort of party) with O on the end (old-based). Not one of Harry’s most elegant clues, I’d venture to suggest, but it works…
14 Will demoting Town end in irate announcement? (9)
STATEMENT – TESTAMENT (will) with the initial TE moving further down the word (‘demoting’ T – Town – and end in iratE). Had not come across T as an abbreviation for Town before and cannot find it in my reference sources, but I’m sure it’s fine…
16 Dog re-homed initially with my boss and myself? (3,6)
RED SETTER – R (Re-homed initially) + ED + SETTER (my boss and myself – from Harry’s perspective)
18 Drug-fuelled lawyer with mullet maybe rather heedless
(7)
DEAFISH – DA (lawyer) has E inside (drug-fuelled) + FISH (mullet maybe). I wondered a bit about the deaf/heedless equation to start with, but I think the connection is ‘refusing to pay attention to’ – ‘he is deaf to criticism / heedless of criticism, he published it anyway’. Or something like that.
19 Stupid to climb sierra in rainy American region (7)
MIDWEST – DIM reversed (stupid to climb) + S (Sierra – as in the phonetic alphabet) ‘in’ WET (rainy)
21 Some after seafarer of few words? (5)
TERSE – Hidden in (some) afTER SEafarer
23 On port, head of logistics gets loaded (5)
LADEN – L (head of Logistics) goes ‘on’ ADEN (port)
24 Plate of hot stuff? (4)
DISH – Terry Thomas and his ilk would have used ‘dish’ and ‘hot stuff’ interchangeably to describe an attractive gel. The past is a foreign country…

29 comments on “Sunday Times 4783 by David McLean”

  1. Ariel Sharon was prime minister of Israel at the beginning of the century. I found this rather ho-hum, although I did like 26ac.
  4. I would love to see MENACHEM clued in a puzzle. Never much liked ‘dish’ – always preferred ‘bird’. Makes me more Jack Carter than Terry-Thomas, I guess.

    Edited at 2018-02-04 06:07 am (UTC)

    1. In “Four Weddings and a Funeral”, a young woman asks a fellow wedding guest about a good-looking young man, “Who’s the dish?”; so I guess the term has outlasted the T-T generation.
      1. Congratulations! You have won this month’s Israeli leaders clue writing contest.

        Edited at 2018-02-04 02:47 pm (UTC)

    4. In my neck of the woods, all girls were ‘birds’. A dish in this context would have been a ‘fit bird’.
  5. Around 45 minutes for me, so I didn’t find it as easy as others have suggested.

    I wasn’t aware of Ariel as an Isaraeli name, but now Kevin G has mentioned Ariel Sharon I did know at least that one example. Wiki says it’s Hebrew for ‘lion of God’. Incidentaly am I the only one around here who still interprets ‘the beginnning of the century’ as 1900+ ?

    T is not listed as an abbrevaition for ‘town’ in Chambers despite one of our regulars claiming recently that Chambers sanctions any word in the language being abbreviated to its first letter. Okay, I know it was said tongue-in cheek, but that dictionary is very generous in that particular department. Nevertheless the Concise Oxford (but not the two-volume SOED) has T for Town (with a capital T, as in the clue) ‘in the names of sports clubs’. It’d be a dangerous precedent, the start of a slippery slope etc etc if all words represented by individual letters in acronyms were to be permitted as abbreviations in crosswords, so I would assume that this one is allowed and has made it to the COED because it’s common usage in certain scenarios e.g. league tables perhaps, in the same way that we have abbreviations from cricket score-cards. Perhaps somebody who actually knows something about this may care to enlighten us further?

    My memory may be selective and/or playing tricks on me but I don’t recall T-T in character ever being particularly romantically inclined and using terms such as ‘dish’. Much more Leslie Phillips territory. I SAAAAY!!!

    Edited at 2018-02-04 06:49 am (UTC)

      1. I’ve often wondered if this was why the two Jewish guys who invented Superman (Bud Shuster and Larry Siegel) gave the Man of Steel’s birth-family on Krypton the last name El. Superman’s dad was named Jor-El, and his name before he landed on earth and became a Kent was Kal-El. According to Wikipedia, the name was originally spelled simply “L,” but this doesn’t, I think, make the notion any less plausible.

        Edited at 2018-02-04 07:47 am (UTC)

    2. Thanks for the research Jack. The football club name did cross my mind, but as a kid I grew up watching Taunton Town (which may explain a lot about my somewhat fatalistic attitude to life) and I don’t recall the Town ever being abbreviated to T in league tables etc., even by the hard pressed staff of the Somerset County Gazette who I’m sure would have worked on the basis “why type four letters when I can get away with one?” had they believed this would pass muster with the editor!

      Can we look forward to Athletic or Argyle (Wigan or Plymouth) giving us an A, or Thistle (Partick) giving us a T?

  6. …but I’ve just discovered that Holmes actually said, “The game is afoot.” It was afoot for 31 minutes on this relatively easy but pleasant offering. COD to ABSOLVE. LOI MIDWEST. I ‘ve been called a pudding but never a DISH, sadly. Thank you Nick and David.
      1. I remember now. I used to be able the recite “Once more unto the breach… ” off by heart. I can reach “disguise fair nature with hard favoured rage” still before having to move rapidly to “cry God for England, Harry and St George.”
  7. 15:51. No real problems and a fun puzzle. I thought 25ac was excellent: I don’t know how common a name Ariel is in Israel (and it’s a name often given to girls) but I immediately thought of Sharon. I don’t know about Menachem Begin but we’ve had GOLDA MEIR quite recently.
  8. 31 min 59 secs with one wrong and one typo. Tant for Tent. I’d not heard of Tet and went for Tat as offensive. Silly choice as I knew Tent was a wine. Typo was regroop.
  9. 38:14. Not too tricky. I liked 1ac’s high steward, the meta-crosswordy 9ac (probably my COD) and the “in spin round” bit of 10ac to indicate the reverse PR container. I took a while to get 12ac and for some reason, having put dea and fish together at 18dn my brain didn’t initially recognise it as a word so that didn’t go in until late on.
    1. Connecting two seemingly separate words is a very common problem.
      There is an old ruse to ask someone “What does pear ifle spell”. Most often they have no idea, but of course it spells “pea rifle”. Although, on second thoughts, probably anyone under the age of about 50 wouldn’t understand the answer anyhow.
      Auswaz
  10. A very enjoyable puzzle I thought, perfect for a Sunday.
    For 20a my first thought was On The Table which seemed to fit most of the clue. It did cause me problems at the end so I finished with Matador and Midwest once I’d corrected my answer.
    COD to 16d. I like red setters, lovely to look at but,I’m told, very difficult to train. David
  11. Thanks for the blog Nick. I found this fairly straightforward and finished in 33:35.

    Isn’t 1a just F (female) plus LIGHT ATTENDANT (keeper of the flame)?

    1. Yes I think you are quite right – trust me to go and over-complicate the thing unnecessarily! Thanks for pointing that out – much more elegant.
  12. 18:30. An enjoyable puzzle with no significant hold ups. ARIEL known to me as a girl’s name, but with a sample set of only 1. I liked 9a – once I got it and 15a, which provoked a Mild Eyebrow Raise… yes I think we should add that term to our lexicon.
  13. A quick and direct solve for me, too, except where I put in MUDBELT as the rainy US area. I can recommend that as a much more interesting reading of the clue; not my problem that it doesn’t parse.

    Weighing in on the T discussion, Friday’s Los Angeles Times crossword had the clue “A or O”, with the answer being ALER. For non-Americans, that would be American Leaguer. Both the Oakland Athletics (As) and the Baltimore Orioles (Os) are American League baseball clubs. US sportswriters long ago got over typing the “theltics” and “rioles” parts of those names. Think of how much ink they have saved over the years.

    Edited at 2018-02-04 06:01 pm (UTC)

  14. A quickish sole (13 minutes) pretty well top to bottom. FLIGHT ATTENDANT was both amusing and a generous gift for the top line.
  15. I interpreted 13ac as
    LESS (second helping being smaller than original serve) in BED
    and a “fortunate chap” being “someone who is blessed”.

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