Sunday Times 4828 by David McLean – physician heal thyself

Author   keriothePosted on Categories Weekend Cryptic
9:54. A very straightforward puzzle from Harry this week, but with some lovely touches. But I’m short of time this week so without further ado…

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

Across
1 Demanding, like the Queen’s partner?
ASKING – AS KING.
5 Attend Congress or get out of town
BEAT IT – BE AT (attend), IT (the other, nudge nudge, wink wink, say no more, congress).
9 Bigoted Illinois artist involved in defamation
ILLIBERAL – IL, LIBE(RA)L.
10 I want attention in the morning, man admitted
AHEM – A(HE)M.
11 Small court writ in article about to go out?
ASWOON – A(S, WOO)N. A lovely definition that fooled me for a while.
12 Tread softly after awful char’s periodic digs
CRASHPAD – (CHARS)*, PAD.
14 OK, let’s get ready to hitchhike!
THUMBS UP – two definitions, one very mildly cryptic.
16 Late president behind on time
TAFT – T, AFT.
18 Ham possibly putting Come Together over the air
MEAT – sounds like ‘meet’. ‘Over the air’ is the homophone indicator.
19 Catch around about so long
TAKE CARE – TAKE (catch), CA (around), RE (about). I’m not sure TAKE CARE and ‘so long’ mean the same thing, but they are both in the general category of things people say when leaving one another.
21 Declining November temperature going beyond 40s?
DECADENT – DECADE (the definition by example – 40s – is indicated by the question mark), N (November), T.
22 You must get out of big tree
POPLAR – POPuLAR. A pop group might be ‘big’ in this sense. The removed U here is text speak, which we are seeing more often, unsurprisingly and without the slightest objection from me.
24 British port and spirit
BRIO – B, RIO.
26 Nettle I chop back on island peninsula
GALLIPOLI – GALL (nettle), reversal of LOP, I.
27 A disposition to pinch soprano, but not there
ABSENT – A, B(S)ENT.
28 Truth drug Bojo has GP give Nigel (at last!)
GOSPEL – last letters of ‘drug Bojo has GP give Nigel’.

Down
2 With a wedge, you’ll get many holes in one!
SWISS CHEESE – CD, because a wedge of this would have lots of holes in it.
3 White House soldier going round facilities
IGLOO – reversal of GI, LOO.
4 Continue to talk French art with East African
GABONESE – GAB ON (continue to talk), ES (French art), E. This ‘French art’ (as in thou art) trick has appeared a few times now and I have become wise to it.
5 Song everyone gets in Michael Jackson album
BALLAD – B(ALL)AD. Bit of a mini-Jacko theme going on here with 5ac, and what a great musician he was. Bad wasn’t his best record by any stretch but most pop artists would give their right arm to have made it. Off the Wall and Thriller are both epoch-defining albums that remain fresh and exciting thirty years after they were made.
6 A miserable cold
APATHETIC – A, PATHETIC.
7 Fish that’s full of bone-strengthening vitamin
IDE – I(D)E. IE is indicated by ‘that’s’, that is, id est. One of my kids is currently getting vitamin D supplements through a spray in the mouth every morning so this sprang to mind readily.
8 Article I type up under pressure, at great speed
PRECIPITATELY – P, (ARTICLE I TYPE)*.
13 Yes I’m fat and I’ve far to travel
AFFIRMATIVE – (IM FAT IVE FAR)*.
15 It might help one to get off horse
METHADONE – CD. ‘Horse’ is slang for heroin, and METHADONE is the replacement drug used to help recovering addicts.
17 Sleeping after bit of strenuous exercise
SKIPPING – Strenuous, KIPPING. ‘Strenuous exercise’ would also have done as a definition. Just ask Rocky Balboa.
20 Peak hot time of the day
HEIGHT – H (as in taps), EIGHT. ‘Time of day’ is imprecise for EIGHT I suppose but there aren’t that many ways of defining a given number that aren’t imprecise, and there aren’t many five-letter numbers.
23 Quiet chap with a salty wife “saint” beds
PLOTS – P, LOT, S. ‘Chap with a salty wife’ was an immediate giveaway for me, and my scripture knowledge is scant. S for saint.
25 Rag and bone
RIB – ‘Rag’ as in ‘tease’. Brilliant.

15 comments on “Sunday Times 4828 by David McLean – physician heal thyself”

  1. Straightforward indeed, so I had to contribute my own difficulties, like taking ‘small court’ to be CT, taking ‘around’ and ‘about’ to be enclosure indicators (or reversal) (you didn’t parse the clue, K, which I took to be TAKE+CA+RE). I also applied ‘at last!’ merely to Nigel, and wondered who the hell Bojo was. I’m not sure why ‘Late’ was included in 16ac; it wasn’t necessary, and the man’s been dead for a century. COD to BEAT IT or RIB or both.
  2. I assume you now know who BoJo is Kevin.. if not, I recommend not bothering to look him up. You will quickly find out more about Brexit than you want. Clever clue though, this one!
  3. Agree with our esteemed blogger, a very pleasant crossword, not too hard.
    Re 20dn and five-letter numbers: there’s three 🙂
  4. Thanks Kevin , and apologies. It’s odd because I remember writing out the parsing for 19ac but it must have got lost somewhere in the process. I will add it.
  5. .. and certainly not mine. I was at the bar, cursing whoever’s daft idea it was to come to a night club. I only know two Michael Jackson albums and Thriller didn’t fit, so BALLAD came in OK. I thought we had gone through every variation of clue for BEAT IT, but isn’t it also an MJ song? I could have liked him though if his voice had broken and if he’d stood still as he sang. I was 37 minutes on this, so not on form. Penultimate was the damned obvious SWISS CHEESE followed by LOI and COD ASWOON. I hate drug clues as I always imagine that other posters are sniggering at my ignorance, but I can’t blame METHADONE which I only took a minute or two to crack. Nice enough puzzle though. Thank you K and David.
      1. So that’s how I knew! There was a pub with log fire that we drove past on the way to the Club. We could have gone there instead, paid a sensible price for the beer, and had a game of dominoes.
  6. Too easy to be much fun, with the seemingly obligatory for this setter reference to hard drugs (yawn).
  7. I found this reasonably straightforward too. Started with ASKING and finished in the AFFIRMATIVE. NHO ASWOON, but the wordplay was obvious. 34:57. Thanks Harry and K.
  9. 17:55 – but one wrong. So actually a DNF. I had pious for plots. The salty wife reference eluded me. Obvious now it’s been explained.

    COD: Methadone.

  10. 21:46 so at the gentler end of the ST spectrum but no less enjoyable for that. FOI 1ac. LOI 22ac. I agree that rag and bone is very good but 13dn is the one that made me chuckle so I’ll call that COD.
  11. I did not find this easy but it was enjoyable.
    I now solve mainly online so I no longer have a paper audit trail.
    One of my first in was 10a AHEM which I liked. The Michael Jackson clues was clever and I was very slow to get this.
    I’m now doing the Private Eye crossword and Bojo is in every other clue so I wasn’t fazed by that. LOI was HEIGHT. GALLIPOLI last but one.Took me ages to get there but a very satisfying solve overall.
    David
  12. Thanks David and keriothe
    From a backlog pile, so even later than the normal Aussie lag. Also found it quite straightforward, taking just over the half hour to get it done.
    With Anzac Day fresh in the mind, GALLIPOLI was a bit of a write-in. On the other hand, SWISS CHEESE took a lot longer than it really needed to after being cleverly sucked into golfing mode. Agree that ‘rag and bone’ was excellent.
    Finished with a couple in the right hand side – CRASHED (which I hadn’t really heard of) and POPLAR (with the tricky definition with ‘popular’ in the word play).

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