Sunday Times 4886 by Dean Mayer – same number same hood

Author   keriothePosted on Categories Weekend Cryptic
15:03. A puzzle of medium difficulty, I thought, and of the usual high quality. Quite a high cryptic definition count, at four. This sort of clue isn’t universally liked, so this will not please everyone but 4dn at least is excellent and I liked 2dn too. Actually 12dn isn’t bad now that I think about it… in short it’s all good.

Anyway thanks to Dean and here’s how I think it all works…

Definitions are underlined, anagrams indicated like (TIHS)*, anagram indicators are in italics.

Across
1 Left because of snake’s rattling
FORSAKEN – FOR, (SNAKE)*.
6 Scientist turned in after book
BOFFIN – B (book), OFF (turned, as in rotten), IN.
9 Ask for custody
CHARGE – DD. ‘Ask for’ as in a certain amount for a 50-inch screen or a leather sofa, for instance.
10 Writer takes drink, having trapped wind
TROLLOPE – T(ROLL)OPE. Champagne when you’re thirsty, perhaps.
11 Modern art gallery enthralled by plastic bottle
STATE-OF-THE-ART – S(TATE)OFT, HEART.
14 Got tip of foot in door at first
FATHOMED – Foot, AT HOME, Door. This threw me a little because ‘in’ is usually just HOME (or vice versa). AT HOME is also a term posh people use for parties, of course. I once went to an AT HOME that wasn’t at the hostess’s home: make of that what you will.
15 German city using Enigma regularly during combat
WEIMAR – W(EnIgMa)AR.
17 It’s universal, and not about “The Lord of the Rings”
SAURON – SA, U, reversal of NOR. I have expressed my opinion of SA for ‘it’ before and the setters don’t seem to be listening (baffling, I know) so perhaps I’ll stop going on about it. Until the next time, at least. I’ve never been able to get beyond about the second page with anything written by Tolkein but what with all the interminably tedious movies there have been in recent(ish) years the name SAURON has pierced my consciousness.
18 Each stupid recipe in The Listener?
EARPIECE – EA, (RECIPE)*.
19 Useful device in a jar?
SHOCK ABSORBER – CD.
22 Bosom I’d removed from cow
INTIMATE – INTIMidATE. ‘Bosom’ here being an adjective.
24 Died too soon with great suffering
DEARLY – D, EARLY. Indeed.
25 My house almost needs a guide
CRIKEY – CRIb, KEY. CRIB is a slang term for one’s place of abode that features prominently in hip-hop and similar styles of music. And if you don’t know, now you know.
26 Old film set destroyed — object about it
THE STING – THING surrounding (SET)*.

Down
2 A line of people with arrows
OCHE – another (very good) CD. The OCHE is the line you stand at to throw darts, aka arrows, or more correctly arras.
3 One spreading litter
STRETCHER -D. This seemed a little loose to me while solving but I guess if you stretch/spread your arms out it’s the same thing.
4 A thing for lifting
KLEPTOMANIA – reference to a common thief: another CD, and an excellent one.
5 Server error, and so on, in north of Paris
NET CORD – N(ETC)ORD. The definition is a tennis reference, of course.
6 Ball-point pen’s run out producing short life story
BIO – BIrO.
7 Take up English as a French girl
FILLE – FILL (take up, as in space), E.
8 One politician lost race, not standing
IMPORTANCE – I, MP, (RACE NOT)*.
12 An adjustable spanner found near City Hall
TOWER BRIDGE – and another one!
13 Runner hurt another when running
MARATHONER – MAR, (ANOTHER)*.
16 One can shout about English traveller
ITINERANT – I, TIN(E), RANT.
18 Most basic spices oddly found in the Orient
EASIEST – EA(SpIcEs)ST.
20 Get together after cold porridge
CLINK – C, LINK.
21 Incomplete factory blueprint
PLAN – PLANt.
23 One in a US city
ANY – A, NY. It’s the Brooklyn way.

22 comments on “Sunday Times 4886 by Dean Mayer – same number same hood”

  1. A great crossword. It took me a long time to see KLEPTOMANIA even with all the checkers. Like all good cds, its so obvious once you know the answer, but there are plenty of dead ends to explore when you don’t.
  2. Nice blog, keriothe. Necessary in too many places, so nice puzzle DM and ed , I guess.

    I am only familiar with porridge as the sentence or time served, and clink as the place where it’s served, so I see the connection but not sure I’m on board with 20d.

    2. I’m with you on 20D. One would DO porridge IN CLINK, but my real problems will be revealed shortly !
  3. I didn’t know about CRIB, but I’ll add it to my information about hip-hop, which now amounts to knowing about ‘crib’. Also DNK NET CORD, but no problem there. CLINK went in without the slightest eyebrow movement, but now I see Paul’s point. And I object to defining ‘The Sting’ as an old movie; an old movie was one made before the war (and don’t ask “Which war?”), preferably before sound. COD to KLEPTOMANIA, with FATHOMED as no. 2.
    1. I think of an “old” film as something in black and white. THE STING, one of my all-time favourites, is a “classic”.
    2. THE STING was made in 1973. I was born in 1972 and I’m reliably informed by my kids that I’m old, so it seems fair.
  4. Very enjoyable but took forever, not helped by having SCATTERER at 3dn for much of the time. I had been thinking it was another cryptic definition, having forgotten that ‘litter’ is a word for ‘stretcher’.

    I agree with others re 20dn; one can be ‘in clink’ ‘doing porridge’ but that doesn’t make the words synonymous.

    NHO CRIB as ‘house’ though in the game of cribbage it can be ‘box’.

  5. ….to hip-hop, which is rather like (c)rap to my ears, so CRIKEY went unparsed, along with SAURON (Tolkein is a foreign land to me).

    I did this in three separate sessions, finishing all but six clues in 10 minutes, four of those in just over 8 minutes more, and my last pair in a minute two days later. My last but one, STRETCHER, wasn’t helped by me not being fully convinced that my FOI was actually correct, even though my parsing was flawless !

    In 11A I didn’t see the need for “art” in the clue when it was also in the answer. Tate Modern surely stands alone to define “gallery”, n’est ce pas ?

    FOI CHARGE
    LOI FATHOMED
    COD KLEPTOMANIA
    TIME 19:29

  6. Top class stuff as always.
    Re 20dn, it seems to be a fair cop guv’nor .. we have caught Dean bang to rights and I can only hope he comes quietly.

  7. I don’t seem to have written a time on my torn-out copy, only that like a football match it was a game of two halves. I think I was 35 to 40 minutes. RHS easy, LHS tricky. There were many good clues with the brilliant KLEPTOMANIA my favourite. One slight ER (even less than mild), on 13a ART appeared in the clue and the answer, which jarred a little. And it wasn’t necessary, as the Tate could just be clued as a gallery. But I’m happy with CLINK. Is it a metonymy when an attribute can be used for the thing itself? Ok, I might just have looked that up. Terrific stuff. Thank you K and Dean.
    PS I think of an old film as anything prior to Alfie, the Michael Caine version.

    Edited at 2020-01-26 07:46 am (UTC)

  8. I spent a lot of time on this but got there, nearly, in the end. FOI was FILLE. The final five were all in the NW and I finished with FATHOMED and,knowing hardly anything about LOTR, NAPRON at 17a parsed thus: It’s universal =PAN plus NOR all reversed.
    However I was sufficiently unconfident to check that answer before submitting.
    So one wrong but overall a really good puzzle I thought.
    COD to KLEPTOMANIA. David

    Edited at 2020-01-26 08:02 am (UTC)

  9. 28:52. This gave rise to plenty of head-scratching. DNK CRIB for house at 25A, so that one remained unparsed. LOI CHARGE where ‘ask for’ seemed a bit of a stretch. I liked the cryptic definitions, especially OCHE and also enjoyed FATHOMED, which took me a while to, er, fathom. Thanks Dean and K.
  10. THE STING is still on my list of films to see, but at least famous enough to be biffable. At the moment I’m on older fare, as the Bristol Slapstick Festival is on, so the last ones I saw were Buster Keaton’s One Week, The Boat and Hard Luck. A hundred years old and they can still have a packed cinema in fits of giggles…

    As for the crossword, I found it hard, especially the west side, struggling over the finish line in an hour and six. The crossers of 2d OCHE and 9a CHARGE were my last couple in. Helpfully, I’d watched an episode of Shakespeare and Hathaway featuring a kleptomaniac the night before, otherwise 3d would’ve taken me a lot longer!

  11. The NW went in without much trouble. It helped that OCHE is very familiar and I saw both STRETCHER and KLEPTOMANIA quickly. I then ploughed through the rest of the puzzle until I was left with _A_RON, which not being into the Tolkien stuff, was a closed book to me. I knew I was looking for the name of a character but SA for IT didn’t occur to me and I googled the character. CRIKEY went in on a wing and a prayer and I now count myself with Kevin as knowing something about Hip-Hop! Nice workout. 43:17. Thanks Dean and Keriothe.
  12. Cryptic defs are frustrating when you can’t see them but the best are very satisfying to solve. I thought KLEPTOMANIA was a beauty and SHOCK ABSORBER and OCHE weren’t far behind.

    I like to think the first word for the clue for 26a was superfluous. Why, 1974 (when I saw it) seems like only yesterday and those Scott Joplin tunes seem as fresh as when I first heard them.

    Thanks to our blogger & to Dean for 55 minutes of enjoyment – I look forward to the next one in three weeks.

    1. Those Joplin tunes were 30 years old when ‘The Sting’ is supposed to take place.
  13. 55:41 I found the LHS decidedly tougher than the RHS. Stretcher, charge and fathomed all delayed me at the end. I probably found it more difficult because of the high number of CDs but they were excellent especially the adjustable spanner and the thing for lifting.
  14. Thought I’d commented yesterday, to say:

    * That Dean and his accomplice are guilty about clink and porridge – I fairly confidently expected to find one dict def that equated the two, but didn’t.

    * The Sting as an old film: looking at another example, would Brief Encounter have counted as an old film in 1992, 47 years after it was first released? I’d say so …

  15. Thanks Dean and keriothe
    45 min (quickish for me) until I spent probably another 15-20 trying to unsuccessfully parse PATRON and finally accepting that it wasn’t right, looking for something else to find and see the word play for SAURON. Although it isn’t out of my sphere of reading, have never seriously attempted to read his work.
    The NW corner was mid solve for me with the SW being the last bastion to fall – had written in CRIKEY – happy with KEY but struggled with the CRI part until looking up CRIB and finding the hovel definition rather than the slang term. CLINK then became the last in with the same reservation with ‘porridge’.
    Nice puzzle !!

Comments are closed.