Sunday Times 4854 by Robert Price – so much winning

Author   keriothePosted on Categories Weekend Cryptic
10:30. Another excellent puzzle from Bob, which I didn’t find particularly hard but nonetheless managed to stuff up, paying insufficient attention to the wordplay at 13ac and bunging in the wrong vehicle. Drat.

Loads of neat stuff in here: the clever device at 2dn is particularly, well, clever.

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

Across
1 Takes back fruit unopened (2-7)
RE-ENGAGES – gREENGAGES. To take back in the sense of re-employing someone, I think.
6 Remains of old underwear
STAYS – DD. ‘Corsets with bones in them’ (Collins).
9 How you write this answer in wins medals
VICTORIA CROSSES – VICTORI(ACROSS)ES. Very neat!
10 Drink in small local
SHANDY – S, HANDY.
11 Inevitably do without mass and church
PERFORCE – PERFORm, CE.
13 Drag grand star back to an unoccupied carriage
LUGGAGE VAN – not a term I remember coming across before, so I bunged in LUGGAGE CAR without hesitation. If I had paid the slightest attention to the wordplay I’d have realised that CEGA is not the name of a star, whereas VEGA is. Reverse that, add it to LUG, G (grand) at the beginning and AN at the end and you get the right answer. ‘Unoccupied’ looks misleadingly like a wordplay instruction.
14 Police unit following a tart
ACID – A, CID.
16 I popped into friend’s for a beer
PILS – I ‘popped in’ to PALS to replace the A.
17 He attends an opening ceremony, with one who retains the gold
DOORKEEPER – DO (ceremony), OR KEEPER. Nicely disguised definition: lift and separate! OR is a heraldry term.
19 A US city concealing an Athenian element
ANTIMONY – A, N(TIMON)Y. You don’t have to be a Shakespeare expert to know about Timon of Athens.
20 Fight to block the French tariffs
LEVIES – LE(VIE)S. As Donald Trump is discovering, tariffs are a tax on your own consumers and about as effective a way of getting what you want as punching yourself in the face.
23 Totally innocent, listen as each law is broken
CLEAN AS A WHISTLE – (LISTEN AS EACH LAW)*.
24 Afterthought added to artist’s files
RASPS – RA’S, PS.
25 Detectives indict or acquit
DISCHARGE – DIS, CHARGE.

Down
1 Fumes on board endanger a vessel
RAVES – contained in ‘endanger a vessel’.
2 How to make Mo and Damon correspond
EXCHANGE LETTERS – if you exchange the letters in MO AND you get DAMON. Clever!
3 Large number turn to rum and ale unfortunately
GOOD DEAL – GO, ODD, (ALE)*.
4 Carriage crowd in conversation
GAIT – sounds like ‘gate’, the crowd at a concert, football match etc.
5 Cabinet has covert broadcast cut short
SECRETAIRE – SECRET, AIREd.
6 I’m sorry about fatuous, hollow pranks
SPOOFS – reversal (about) of OOPS (I’m sorry), FatuouS.
7 Pollock, perhaps digest rope securing a boat
ABSTRACT PAINTER – ABSTRACT (digest), PAINTER. A PAINTER is ‘a line attached to the bow of a boat for tying it up’ and a very useful word for crossword setters. See also ‘sheet’. The one word for a rope that never seems to be used by sailors is ‘rope’.
8 Hose attachment’s main sales feature in poster
SUSPENDER – S(USP)ENDER. USP stands for ‘unique selling point’.
12 Disco genre newly appreciated
RECOGNISED – (DISCO GENRE)*.
13 Record about a reindeer, one barely performs
LAP DANCER – L(A)P, DANCER.
15 Frantic swimmers lapping incessantly
FEVERISH – F(EVER)ISH. ‘Laps’ in a swimming pool are what North Americans call ‘lengths’.
18 Makes changes to what happens at noon
AMENDS – AM ends and PM begins.
21 Hide from kids influenced to be outspoken
SUEDE – sounds like ‘swayed’.
22 Cries to axe top Members of Parliament
OWLS – hOWLS. ‘Parliament’ being the collective noun for owls, of course.

34 comments on “Sunday Times 4854 by Robert Price – so much winning”

  1. Thanks, keriothe. I had question marks against VICTORIA CROSSES and GOOD DEAL so I’m grateful for your decryption.
    I don’t know if it is an age thing but I remember LUGGAGE VANs. Elsewhere I initially entered GOALKEEPER and FAN DANCER.
    I enjoyed SUSPENDER for Hose Attachment but my favourite was EXCHANGE LETTERS. That was very clever. In fact the whole crossword was enjoyable.
    PS: You are quite right about PAINTER. In sailing there is a different term for everything, including rope.

    Edited at 2019-06-16 04:13 am (UTC)

  2. Terrific puzzle, very satisfying to complete correctly. I liked the many clues that, while not CODworthy, were so elegantly phrased: 6ac, 10ac, 14ac, 16ac, 12d, 15d. (I’ve always called laps laps; not that I’ve done any for years, but.) DNK USP. (Of course in the US, SUSPENDERs are attached to trousers, garters to hose.) I slowed myself down thinking that 23ac was WHITE AS A, until checkers made me see the light. COD to 9ac, with 2d close behind.
  3. 43 minutes, with all parsed, so the instructions were all clear. I was a trainspotter in the fifties and remember it as a LUGGAGE VAN from then. Not only that, I’ve just googled Thomas the Tank Engine in this context. The Rev W Awdry had one called Elsie as Toby’s luggage van, but she was never actually included in any of the stories. My youngest and I are fifty years apart, but we both loved Thomas as children. I’d spend hours with his Brio train track designing a new lay-out for him then to push the trains along. There was much to like in this puzzle. I’ll give COD to VICTORIA CROSSES but it could equally have been DOORKEEPER, SUSPENDER (much more tantalising than tights!) or EXCHANGE LETTERS. Thank you Robert and K.
  4. 40 minutes, no queries. I think I remember LUGGAGE VAN from my childhood when I had a wind-up Hornby train set and was for a while an avid trainspotter, but there was also a ‘guard’s van’ which may or may not have been the same thing. ‘Luggage car’ to me sounds American but I may be imagining that.
    1. I think American trains have (had?) a baggage car. I think in fact that I flung that in at first before reading the clue. VAN suggests ‘truck’ to me, but I went with the wordplay.
      1. From various old songs and films I know American trains have (or had) boxcars and cabooses.
        1. I had thought that the caboose was the equivalent of the guard’s van (and indeed Kenkyuusha’s E-J dictionary gives them as equivalents, although ODE doesn’t refer to caboose sv guard’s van). Boxcars are still around; they’re freight cars with sliding doors. The preferred mode of transport of hobos. On edit: And I finally noticed that it’s ‘guard’s VAN’.)

          Edited at 2019-06-16 05:59 am (UTC)

    2. I think I must just have assumed that since the thing with a buffet in it is called a buffet car, the thing with the luggage in it must be called a luggage car.
  5. Another very good puzzle which took me several rewarding sessions. I could not parse VICTORIA CROSSES but could not see anything else. FEVERISH and DOORKEEPER held me up.
    My big mistake was on the relatively simple PILS which I had written in the margin unparsed. As I ran out of time I went for PALE (ale) -very annoying. Thanks to setter and blogger as always. David
    PS I noticed Islay was in the Mephisto just blogged. I’m going there tomorrow!
  6. I had LUGGAGE CAR initially, but corrected myself on checking the wordplay. As for ‘laps’, they mean going round a circuit to me – I’ve always called going up and down the pool ‘lengths’. I thought this was going to take me a lot longer when my FOI was 14A, but the pennies from heaven came down as steadily as the raindrops outside. I enjoyed the PILS SHANDY, but COD to OWLS. Great stuff! 17:33

    Edited at 2019-06-16 05:42 am (UTC)

  7. A rewarding puzzle that kept giving as the pennies dropped. I was sure 7d was going to end with PAINTER, but I kept an open mind. Eventually I got ABSTRACT as my last entry. I needed PERFORCE before I was able to get SPOOFS. It took me ages to parse SUSPENDER. LUGGAGE VAN came from careful parsing as I was tempted by CAR. 2d needed all the crossers before the penny dropped. 38:59. Thanks Bob and K.
  8. ….bottoms up Bob ! This was an absolute delight, which I rather aptly completed with a pint of Fyne Ales’ Jarl on Friday evening in a fine Glasgow pub, “Babbitty Bowster”. There was a trio (guitar, banjo and fiddle) playing reels, so I didn’t time myself, but it was roughly 25 minutes.

    Bob, your puzzles are exactly what made me fall in love with the genre 60 years or so ago. Clever, witty, and designed to be a stiff, but always fair, challenge.

    EXCHANGE LETTERS was excellent, but SUSPENDER has to be COD for making the barman look bemused as to why I was chuckling on my own in the corner. I need all the entertainment I can get right now. Keep up the good work !

    Incidentally, I had another pint of Jarl in Rebus’s local, the Oxford Bar, in Edinburgh yesterday. Well worth seeking out – only a five minute stroll from Princes Street.

  9. You are too kind. Yesterday I was in Ilkley, but if you are in Edinburgh again, let me know and I’ll buy you a Jarl. We live 10 mins from the Oxford Bar.
  10. I hope you don’t mind, Keriothe, if I feel extra-smug for having written “elephant trap!” in the margin at 13a, but then at 44 minutes, I did take four times as long as you, so had plenty of time for working out all the wordplay…

    Incidentally, is “elephant trap” one for the glossary?

    I liked this a lot, especially 9a VICTORIA CROSSES and COD 18d AMENDS. FOI 1d RAVES, LOI 19a ANTIMONY. Glad Timon’s come up before. I’m currently reading A Classical Education: The Stuff You Wish You’d Been Taught at School, which is hopefully forearming me with a few more Greeks.

    Edited at 2019-06-16 09:15 am (UTC)

    1. I’ll let you off this once 😉
      I don’t think ‘elephant trap’ is really crossword-specific, is it?
      That sounds like a useful book. I just read The Odyssey with a similar end (partially) in mind.
      1. Fair point. And now we’ve got a glossary I suppose it’s for the newcomers asking questions to point us in the right direction (gosh, I suppose that means I don’t feel like a newcomer any more!)

        A Classical Education… is very much a complete novice’s guide—as you’d expect for anything that tries to cram an infinite subject into 192 pages!—but hopefully it’ll familiarise me with a lot of names and provide some jumping-off points for further reading. If you’re already reading The Odyssey for larks then it’s probably a bit on the light side!

        1. My knowledge of these things is derived largely from crosswords so it’s still full of gaps.
          I didn’t learn a huge amount from The Odyssey but the really surprising thing to me was that it’s a real page turner.
          1. Perhaps it should be the first epic poem I have a stab at, then. Can you recommend a translation?
            1. I read a new one by Emily Wilson, which I saw recommended in a few places. I found it very readable and there is an interesting introduction.
              1. I read that version over Christmas – under same general impetus – and liked it so much I dropped Wilson a fan note. She returns her emails.

                Edited at 2019-06-16 05:35 pm (UTC)

  11. 28:36 a fun puzzle. I put ticks against 10ac and 23ac as clues which I particularly enjoyed.
    1. Sorry, bdy thing logged out again. twit twoo. 22d not 22a.

      Edited at 2019-06-16 01:43 pm (UTC)

  14. Memories of Hornby OO and the Rev. Awdry.

    FOI 25ac DISCHARGE

    LOI 6dn SPOOFS!

    COD 9ac VICTORIA CROSSES

    WOD 5db SECRETAIRE

    No mention of Jackson P!?

  15. Another Luggage Car. And I have form: I also banged in Tap Dancer – luckily there the crossers set me straight. I liked the clever devices in Exchange Letters and Victoria Crosses, But what I really liked were the many amusing and/or cryptic definitions.
  16. I know this is a late post, here in Jamaica we don’t get the syndicated puzzle until a week or sometimes two weeks after
    U.K. Thanks to Robert for a really excellent puzzle and Keriothe for the (as usual) blog of quality. This one took about 50m, FOI RASPS, LOI PILS (took forever to see this one but what else could it be?). Favourite clues were Pollock (famous for splashing house paint onto a blank canvas) and my COD OWLS, at which I laughed out loud. What a fantastic clue!
  17. Thanks Bob and keriothe
    Did this one last Saturday (in our week delayed syndicated Australian newspaper) but only got around to checking it off today. Found two errors: SPOOFS (where I had SCOFFS – saw the FS bit and came here before finding that SC OF cannot equate to ‘I’m sorry about’ in any interpretation) and OWLS (where I had AWLS and tried desperately to equate the ‘Alliance for Workers’ Liberty’ to members of parliament’). Also had parsed SUSPENDERS wrongly SU – SPEND – ERS (and not really finding any real equivalence between ‘posters’ and ‘suers’.
    Jackson Pollock became famous / notorious down here when our government of the day (Gough I think) paid something like $5mill for “Blue Poles” – it was one of my first entries.
    As others have said much to like in so many of the clues – finished with GAIT and SECRETAIRE.
    1. And of course that painting is now worth many multiples of that.
      I was told it was in the National Gallery of Victoria but when I went there and asked they told me it was in Canberra! Great collection there though.

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