Sunday Times 4810 by David McLean – intensive purposes

Author   keriothePosted on Categories Weekend Cryptic
14:10. Nothing too difficult this week, and fair number of very easy clues (13ac, for instance, or 24dn). However there are also a few slightly trickier ones that slowed me down at least, including an unfamiliar term at 15ac. Homophones are always good for generating a bit of controversy and I anticipate a bit of discussion on the perfectly good one at 19ac.

Overall a fun puzzle, I thought. How did you get on?

[Late edit: I now find that I can’t access any of the puzzles on the puzzle club site. I know that my fellow Sunday blogger is having the same problem. Anyone else?]

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

Across
1 Hack can barely trip up right-wing group
REPUBLICAN PARTY – (CAN BARELY TRIP UP)*.
9 Heaven-sent supply of gas medic opens, perhaps, at the front (7)
AIRDROP – AIR (gas), DR, Opens Perhaps.
10 Angle to trap old and stiff examiner
CORONER – COR(O)NER.
11 Pay attention to editor, the guy’s head here
HEED – ED with HE (the guy) at the head or in front of it.
12 Eschew one’s bloomers and possibly start over
GO COMMANDO – I think the idea here is that ‘start’ is an example of a GO COMMAND. Add O for over.
13 Hurtful rhyme that commercial starts off
ADVERSE – AD, VERSE. A write-in.
15 Shrimp old writer caught in South Africa
SQUILLA – S(QUILL)A. I didn’t know this word for a type of mantis shrimp but the wordplay could hardly have been kinder.
17 Soprano’s happy after performer arrives
TURNS UP – TURN (performer), S (soprano), UP (happy).
19 Stated where one sees circus performers of extreme strength
INTENSE – sounds like ‘in tents’. Yes it does.
20 Might I remove coach overturned by farm vehicle
SUBTRACTOR – reversal of BUS, TRACTOR. This clue seems to be missing a question mark.
22 I very much doubt it is receding in a female
AS IF – A, F containing a reversal of IS. Chinny reckon, as we used to say.
25 A good parting farewell for 18 slow songs
ADAGIOS – ADIOS (farewell for PICASSO) containing (being parted by) A, G.
26 Worry consumed a contemptible type initially
AGITATE – ATE preceded by A GIT.
27 Begin to dig footwear you bought for Bolt?
TAKE TO ONES HEELS – two definitions, one whimsical. I wasn’t sure of the exact form of words here. This sort of answer invariably uses ONES rather than YOUR, but the clue strongly suggests the latter here. And then I wasn’t sure of the expression, putting TURN ON YOUR HEELS initially. I sorted it out eventually.

Down
1 Get to do a sermon after priest does one
REACH – pREACH. To ‘do one’ in this instance meaning to do a runner, leg it, scram, scarper, vamoose, skedaddle, make oneself scarce, TAKE TO ONES HEELS, or show a clean pair of same.
2 One who sees new reprieve will protect Conservative
PERCEIVER – (REPRIEVE)* containing C.
3 Prison? That could be a lark!
BIRD – two definitions, one by example.
4 Beg for tales of mischievous sprites?
IMPLORE – or IMP LORE, tee hee.
5 A northern choir shunning university hosts
ANCHORS – A, N, CHORuS. The host here is a news ANCHOR.
6 Film studio stage on which a charge is set up
PARAMOUNT – reversal of A RAP, MOUNT (stage).
7 Bit of bother with work round North Island
RUN-IN – RU(N, I)N.
8 Long drink for a lady dancing with energy
YARD OF ALE – (FOR A LADY)*, E.
13 Witness a time trial getting on top of soldier
ATTESTANT – A, T, TEST, ANT. ‘Soldier’ is an unindicated definition by example (*clutches pearls*).
14 Moderation and discipline seen in others
RESTRAINT – RES(TRAIN)T.
16 Exotic lap dances could create a scene
LANDSCAPE – (LAP DANCES)*.
18 Artist holding dope is very good company
PICASSO – PI (very good), CO containing ASS (dope).
19 Quarantine one very out of breath?
ISOLATE – I, SO LATE. SO LATE in the slightly whimsical sense ‘very dead’.
21 Hopeless chess player
BLACK – DD. I wondered initially if there was a famous chess player called BLEAK but once I had the checking A from ADAGIOS it became clear that something more straightforward was required.
23 They’re little nippers, but sound 27-ish essentially!
FLEAS – I don’t really understand this one. FLEAS sounds like ‘flees’, and the answer to 27ac means to flee, but I’m not sure how the wording of the clue gets us from one to the other. Edit: see comment from malcj below: ‘ish essentially’ indicates S. Too clever for me!
24 Almost dark soon
NIGH – NIGHt.

35 comments on “Sunday Times 4810 by David McLean – intensive purposes”

  1. DNK SQUILLA, GO COMMANDO, and I suppose I must have come across YARD OF ALE here, once, as it looked vaguely familiar once I put it in. I didn’t give any thought to the flee/fleas issue, but I suppose the ‘essentially’ could be taken as a call to ignore person differences between the two answers. Or maybe not. It hadn’t occurred to me that the homophony of intense/in tents (or mince/mints, sense/cents, …) would be questioned, but no doubt we’ll see.
  2. was writ large across the top of last Sunday’s puzzle (4810)!
    Mr. Mueller might be encouraged to look into this, as we do have a few distinguished American guests who may have ‘democratic’leanings and homophonic diversity. Is the Times Crossword being infiltrated by foreign entities? And what ever happened to Lord Galspray and his professorial friend?
    DEMOCRATIC would have fitted just as well! Fair and balanced!?

    FOI 24dn NIGH (as it came out of the printer!)
    and about an hour later LOI 23dn FLEAS.(lousy clue!)

    COD 10ac CORONER

    WOD 15ac SQUILLA

    Itense intercity!

    Victor Meldrew is on holiday for a fortnight.

    Edited at 2018-08-12 01:12 am (UTC)

  3. My experience of homophone debates here and elsewhere is that there is often a significant difference between the way people pronounce words and the way they think they pronounce words. As you say, we’ll see!
    1. My take on 23ac is that it’s not the plural form of the verb but the singular with the final ‘s’ coming from ‘ISH essentially’. No problems with the homophone and no time to report because my paper has gone for recycling.
  4. So far as I know, no one has access to the puzzles from the Club site, thanks to yet another snafu–see David Parfitt’s messages on the forum–but I’m able to access via the Times site. I even managed to submit today’s ST, although the timer won’t stop. Hopefully, he said hopefully, they’ll fix things tomorrow; certainly no sooner.
    1. I can access today’s puzzles on the Club site except the ST 15×15 won’t display for solving on-line, however it comes up for printing when I select Print on the Club Home Page.

      There’s a mysterious message on the print-out: After completing the crossword, if the Submit button is inactive please refress the page (eg by pressing F5 on your keyboard) and try again. Smells of SNAFU to me!

      1. One of David Parfitt’s messages was that one could access the Crossword Club and the puzzles therein by clicking on “Crossword Club” at the bottom of the Times newspaper website page. That worked for me this morning, my time, with the Concise, but not with today’s Cryptic. I also got the same message at one point about pressing F5. I’m hoping that, come Monday, or maybe Tuesday at least some of the gremlins will be sorted out. But why is it that every time there is an ‘upgrade’ things go haywire?

        Edited at 2018-08-12 05:17 am (UTC)

        1. I tried going to the bottom of the Times page, and got the same ‘sorry’ message (and a sorry message it is).
          And what is the upgrade? Aside from the snafu with the puzzles, which I’m charitably going to assume was an unwanted by-product, the new forum now 1) lets you arrange postings by ‘newest’ and ‘oldest’ first, as before, plus ‘best’! and 2) makes it impossible for me, and no doubt others, to submit a message.

          Edited at 2018-08-12 06:21 am (UTC)

          1. The glitch might also explain why the weekly ST clue writing report hasn’t been posted yet.
            – Nila Palin
            1. Er, very indirectly. Discussion about some of the IT hassles on Friday seems to have distracted me from completing the final step to make the report available. Now done.
              1. Thanks, Peter. I was just speculating in the light of other things that weren’t appearing.
                – Nila Palin
  5. I also enjoyed this one. I still don’t understand “Begin to dig” in 27ac, though. Never heard of SQUILLA and I must have led a sheltered life in that I had never heard the term GO COMMANDO. And I do wish setters would stick to the standard NATO alphabet when cluing individual letters!! S= SIERRA not SOPRANO!
    Two candidates for COD: 10ac with “stiff examiner” and 19d with “very out of breath” = ISOLATE. My casting vote goes to the latter.

    I’m hoping the weekday crew sorts out the glitches with this so-called upgrade or enhancement. David Parfitt has made several useful and helpful comments in the General Forum on the Club site but, like Jack, I still can’t access today’s Cryptic via that site.

    Edited at 2018-08-12 05:27 am (UTC)

    1. I think the idea at 27a is if you begin to dig something you start to like it or TAKE TO it.

      S for Soprano will be well-known to choral singers (SATB = Soprano Alto Tenor Bass) but I agree it’s another single-letter abbreviation that is otherwise not all that common.

      Edited at 2018-08-12 06:04 am (UTC)

  6. Straightforward with SQUILLA unknown and MERs at P for priest* and the clues to ISOLATE and FLEAS.

    *it’s in some of the usual sources but so are thousands of other single-letter abbreviations and one can’t be expected to know them all.

    1. Peter Biddlecombe has said in the past that he will accept any abbreviation that’s in Collins or ODO, but not necessarily Chambers. P for ‘priest’ is in Collins, but only in the American edition, and it isn’t in ODO. So it seems borderline. Having said that I am used to assuming that any word can be abbreviated to its first letter when solving barred-grid puzzles so it doesn’t bother me.
      1. The US content on the Collins pages is not supposed to be used – for one thing, the small print indicates that it’s from Webster’s New World College Dictionary. Will remind my setters …
      1. Local jargon for finding something in a clue that the poster considers to be slightly questionable but not enough to make a fuss about. It stands for ‘Minor Eyebrow Raise(d)’ but is now a word in its own right with back-formation possibilities. Another one is BIFD (Bunged In From Definition) which through usage here has become the verb ‘to biff’.

        Edited at 2018-08-13 06:09 am (UTC)

  7. Did this in two sittings, one in the morning in St Annes waiting to set off back and the other in the evening on return to London. I guess it took not far off the hour. On the homophone, I clearly sound the T with my tongue between my teeth on IN TENTS, and withdrawn and sybillating (?) on INTENSE, yet again demonstrating RP as a slovenly dialect? DNK SQUILLA but readily constructed. Not all REPUBLICAN PARTIES are right wing: such views are more on the left in UK. I guess ADVERSE criticism is hurtful, but doesn’t that derive from the noun and not the adjective? I had to doublethink about heels constituting shoes in TAKE TO ONES HEELS, but then I could hear Mrs BW complaining when she has to wear her ‘heels’. LOI was ATTESTANT, needing the final T before the penny dropped. One of my first memories in life is hearing about the Berlin airlift on the News and imagining a big chair-lift taking food over. So I Liked AIRDROP but COD goes to the innocent-looking CORONER. Thank you K and David.
    1. I’ve tried saying it with my tongue between my teeth and it comes out as TENTHS! I guess my estuarine must be as slovenly as RP.
    2. As I’ve said many times before, if the test for homophones was that they have to work in the local accent of every solver then we’d never have them, which would be a shame. Even if it means using slovenly RP!
      On the left/right thing, I think there’s little doubt the modern REPUBLICAN PARTY is right-wing, but it has certainly, um, evolved from the party of Lincoln.
  8. I managed to finish this in a couple of sessions. Yard of Ale went in quickly as did a couple of others so I was off and running. I was very slow to see the clever anagram at 1a but had Republican Party pencilled in anyway. Another new to Squilla but clearly clued.
    Another enjoyable puzzle from DM. David
  9. 18:45 with only ATTESTANT unknown. I was a bit unsure of the parsing of GO COMMANDO, but I see our blogger has it how I thought worked too. I read “-ish essentially” at 23d as meaning take the essence, i.e. centre letter of ish…. which is I think what malcj said too.

    I have successfully accessed today’s on the Times site. A slightly wacky font, but I was able to submit after doing F5, as suggested. This worked for yesterday’s competition crosswords too.

    Edited at 2018-08-12 08:15 am (UTC)

  10. DNF. Bah! I managed to skilfully transpose letters 2 and 4 in 25ac to produce something which clearly wasn’t a word. Oh dear. Oh dear, oh dear. The rest was mostly straightforward all done in 27 mins. I thought hack an unusual anagrind in 1ac, I’m struggling to see a sense in which it means to rearrange rather than just cut or chop. I didn’t fully parse go commando and didn’t know squilla but they were both easy enough.
  11. 27:26 for me. Didn’t know SQUILLA, but it was easy enough to get from wordplay. Can’t remember much else about the puzzle. Still can’t access yesterday’s puzzle, or today’s. Thanks Harry and K.
  12. I’d never heard the idiom “does one” for lamming it, but a p(riest)’s departure was clearly implied. Didn’t know SQUILLA either, until I worked the clue.
  13. It’s noon Sunday on the US West Coast, and I was just able to print today’s puzzle, so perhaps the upgrade has gone through.

    Regarding last weeks offering, I alway enjoy David’s puzzles. I found this one easy, except that I needed Keriothe’s comments above to understand Go Commando. I liked the little nippers and taking to one’s heels.

  14. Interesting. It’s quite familiar to me, living in London: I associate it with Cockney and had always assumed that’s where it came from.

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