Sunday Times 4856 by David McLean

45 comments on “Sunday Times 4856 by David McLean”

1. Nice, but not that easy for me, judging from the time (I can’t find my copy). I took 15ac as a DD, with ‘but one’ distinguishing the CAREER meaning from the (I believe) earlier ‘piece of work’ meaning; not, of course, that it matters. NHO 11d, and NHO the Cowichan; I imagine this was my LOI.
2. I was held up by 15ac as I had the answer as THATCH, a rush job. Turned out to be CAREER!!

   FOI 1dn IRAN first!

   LOI 15ac CAREER

   COD 12ac SIEGFRIED LINE with IKEA getting a special mention. The Maginot Line was developed by French War Minister André Maginot. The English War Minister had given his name to the ‘Belisha beacon’.

   WOD COWICHAN Did they sport their jumpers during an Indian Summer?

   Edited at 2019-06-30 03:25 am (UTC)

   1. You reminded me that I started with THATCH too. Fortunately, I tried to parse it fairly quickly and of course failed.
      1. I managed to parse it!
3. Hard work but with INDIAN SWEATER as the only unknown. I agonised forever over my LOI (1d) wondering IMAM, IRAQ or IRAN and eventually for some reason which escapes me now, settling on IRAQ. I think RAN in the sense of running a story actually refers to printed media rather than broadcast journalism but no doubt the original meaning was lost long ago and no distinction is made these days.
   1. It didn’t even occur to me that this might be problematic, but I see that the dictionaries generally refer only to print media. However I think this is a case where they are behind the times: to me ‘television news ran the story’ is a perfectly natural usage and a quick google shows that it is reasonably common. See here (‘Today ran the item’), here (‘BBC ran the story all day’) or here (‘BBC… insisted it had run a public interest story’) for instance.

      Edited at 2019-06-30 09:28 am (UTC)

4. ….an INDIAN SWEATER might be a particularly virulent type of curry. It was the only unknown, but easy enough to nail down.

   I, like Keriothe, wondered whether “held” was the correct tense in the MAE WEST clue. “Holds” makes more sense, and doesn’t diminish the surface.

   FOI INTROSPECT
   LOI CERTIFIED
   COD DENTAL HYGIENE
   TIME 8:43 – a while since I’ve been inside 10 minutes on a Sunday !

5. 31 minutes with the NE last to fall, including COD CERTIFIED. DENTAL HYGIENE was quite good too. Has anyone else noticed the increase in the number of dental hygienists since the Stasi was wound up? Like others, I didn’t know INDIAN SEATER, and assumed it was something Mr Kohli won’t need to wear at Edgbaston today. Perhaps David was being topical. I was also a bit discombobulated by MAE WEST. And, having referenced George Formby’s Fanlight Fanny during the week, I give you his version of the life jacket. “When she’s dressed, she’s like Mae West. She wears two saucepan lids upon her chest. Fanlight Fanny, the frowsy nightclub queen.” Thank you K and David.

   Edited at 2019-06-30 09:38 am (UTC)

6. I think HELD is quite natural here given the past time established by EX-player. Pretty easy, but none the worse for that.

   1. It works fine in the surface reading, but it is at least highly unusual for a wordplay element. I can’t remember ever seeing it before.
      1. One to look out for…
         1. I don’t anticipate seeing it again because I don’t (on further reflection) think it works. The clue needs to describe the answer we see in front of us now, not a putative answer that may have existed at some point in the past. TEAM may well have held in SEW at some point in the past but I am trying to solve the clue now!
7. But with 3 mistakes. I remember being totally bamboozled by 1D, 11D and 15AC.
   Thanks, keriothe, for sorting those out for me. Like others I started with THATCH for 15ac
8. I spent at least 10 minutes trying to make sense of 1d, agonising like Jack over IRAQ, IRAN or IMAM. I couldn’t make sense of RAN as broadcast, discounted IRAQ and settled for IMAM with I’M AM(radio broadcast) as the parsing. I still struggle to see RAN as broadcast. That struggle took the shine off the rest of the puzzle. 47:57. Thanks Harry and K.

   Edited at 2019-06-30 08:57 am (UTC)

   1. See my reply to jackkt above. To ‘run a story’ is used fairly commonly in reference to broadcast media. But the dictionaries don’t seem to have caught up yet!
      1. It’s in Collins, albeit as meaning no. 30. In ODO it is meaning no. 10

         Edited at 2019-06-30 10:58 am (UTC)

         1. Both of those definitions refer explicitly to print media. That’s the point!
            1. True.. but I’m still uneasy about this. Surely you can run a programme or a series of programmes? I resort to Chambers, which has, under run: “to show a film, video or TV programme.” Also, “of a play or a film, to be to be staged or screened regularly over a period of time.”

               1. It seems clear to me that in the sense of ‘running a story’ the dictionaries are just a bit behind the times. But yes, I would say that you can run – and indeed rerun – a series.
                  1. Since I was the one who started this I’d like to clarify that I was not suggesting there is anything wrong with the clue. I was only seeking to explain that I was unable to justify IRAN in preference to the alternatives I mentioned because the required meaning of RAN had simply not occurred to me as a synonym for ‘broadcast’. It was only after reading the blog that I realised what the setter was up to.
                     1. Fair enough! You triggered an interesting discussion, anyway. At least I thought it was interesting, but I am admittedly a bit odd in that regard.
                        1. 🙂
9. It really is time that setters stopped referring to mental illness using terms such as bananas
   1. I take your point, but I’m not sure the best way to treat [of] depression and other problems related to our most complex organ is not to laugh at them.
   2. No. Such words are in common usage and so setters have every right to treat them as such. Not their job to lead the public. You may as well tell dictionaries not to include them ..
      1. Such words as ‘nigger’, ‘faggot’, and ‘bitch’, not to mention several 4-letter items, are in common usage; do setters have every right to treat them as such? I have no intention of being led by a setter; I do expect them to follow certain norms of linguistic behavior.
         1. Well, that’s a fair point. Let me try again: if a word is listed in dictionaries as “offensive,” setters are right not to use it. All the words you quote are. If a word is not listed as offensive, like bananas (in that meaning), setters are right not to to shield us from it. How’s that?
            1. These are matters of personal taste, so I don’t see why we should follow dictionaries slavishly. You often express a dislike for drug terminology, for instance, which is never described as offensive in the dictionaries.
               1. I demand the right to be inconsistent!
                  Was only trying to say that setters have a difficult enough job without us trying to limit the number of words they have available to use. On reflection, that would seem to include drug cant and I will try harder to ignore it… indeed it is a matter of personal taste
                  1. I reckon there are more than enough words in the language not to need the offensive ones. Whatever the dictionaries say, the trivialisation of mental illness (and today’s clue is I think unambiguously guilty of that) is potentially hurtful, and to be avoided in polite society.
                     1. I don’t think that laughing at something is the same thing as trivialising it. The one thing dictators hate more than any other is to be laughed at, because you have stopped to consider how serious the situation is, and treated it accordingly. In a thinking way – always a good thing in the modern world where the drive for linguistic hygiene tends towards the abolition of thinking.
                        1. Laughing at dictators and laughing at vulnerable people with debilitating illnesses is not the same thing.
                           1. I shouldn’t have allowed this clue as it stood – I failed to remember (or more importantly, check dictionaries to discover) that “certified” doesn’t share the meanings of words like “bananas” which don’t imply mental illness.
                              1. ‘Bananas’ doesn’t necessarily imply mental illness. It certainly can though, which is why I think it and similar words should be avoided.
                                 1. I’m sure we must have used “bananas” several times without producing the same kind of discussion. There are some taboo words that we don’t use, even though they have non-taboo meanings, but if we start excluding words just because they have a meaning that we want to avoid, I think we make too big a hole in the English language.
                                 2. There are often complaints about derogatory words for ‘mad’. I don’t often comment just because I’ve given up! As I’ve said my preference would be to avoid such words because I regard their use as insensitive but I recognise that it’s not entirely clear cut.
                        2. I’ve a feeling that the media making us laugh at putative dictators (Donald Trump) and other little demagogues (Rob Ford, the recent drug addled Mayor of Toronto) often does more harm than good. I paints them as buffoons rather than the dangerous individuals they really are.
   3. I tend to agree with you, anon. The language of madness is very commonly used in contexts where no reference to actual mental illness is intended (to describe irrational behaviour of any sort). I do it myself, I think most people do. But the crossword is a place for more careful and sensitive language, in my view. For the same reason, as I’ve said in the past, I’d prefer not to see words like ‘moron’ or ‘slut’.
10. 52:50 I seem to have been way off the pace with this one. A spot of vocalophobia at 15ac meant career, my LOI, took ages. Dnk Indian sweater.
11. I managed to complete this eventually over 2 or 3 sessions. At 19a I tried NOBLEMEN to begin with. This troubled the design of my Indian Sweater, the only thing to fit the anagram. Last in were RED HERRING and CAREER.
    There was a lot of chess in this puzzle. Or was that a red herring? David
12. If bird should not be used for young woman, then one might have to argue (if one bothered to try to be consistent – hardly a human trait, whether you are bananas or not) that hunk and beefcake should not be used for young man.
    1. These just aren’t in any way demeaning terms. By the same token I wouldn’t object to ‘beauty’.
13. Thanks David and keriothe
    Took a number of sittings to get this one out after starting it in the early hours of yesterday morning and finishing it in the early hours of today along with a couple of cracks in the daylight hours.
    Made the error with IRAN and had gone with IMAM using the exact same logic as john_dun (and quite pleased with it when I had got it). Just had H=horse (as in the racehorse description of an entire, compared with G (gelding), M (mare), etc.) without having to go down the heroin path.
    HOIST was the one that jumped out from the high level scan to get started and I finished with APART (strangely enough) and FAIR (a tricky homophone).
    Did like the CORGI clue.

    Edited at 2019-07-10 11:39 am (UTC)

    1. I actually checked whether H was an abbreviation for ‘horse’ before plumping for the drug-related interpretation. However I only checked in Collins, which doesn’t have it, and I see now that ODO does.
14. People (journalists or not) do all sorts of things when they are one-eyed.

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