Sunday Times 4894 by David McLean

Author   keriothePosted on Categories Weekend Cryptic
9:40. Greetings from a quarantined household. One of my kids developed a persistent dry cough a little under a week ago (he’s fine – the cough disappeared without any other symptoms) so we’ve been confined to quarters since then. Given the developments in the interim we will have to get used to it: complete lockdown in the style of Italy, France and Spain is inevitable now. At least we are all well and reasonably well-stocked with food and, more importantly, wine.

As for the puzzle, no problems as far as I was concerned. Nothing unfamiliar apart from the mine at 3dn but I knew it as a sword so it made a grim sort of sense as a name for a mine. I also think of the MANSION HOUSE as a place chancellors make speeches in posh clothes rather than a court, but with a few checkers it was the obvious answer.

I don’t usually name a COD but 10ac deserves special mention. Brilliant.

I hope you and yours are all well in this extraordinary time of crisis. At least we have crosswords to keep us amused, and this most civilised of forums to maintain our connection with one another.

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

Across
1 I’ve no idea if cashmere runs
SEARCH ME – (CASHMERE)*.
5 Stuff is ace with money to burn mostly
FABRIC – FAB (ace), RICh (with money to burn = RICH).
9 Death cover’s pointless in the end
CURTAINS – CURTAIN, pointlesS.
10 Oh, I’d deny penning this type of clue
HIDDEN – contained in ‘oh, I’d deny’. Nicely self-referential!
12 River near tree bordering a field
REALM – R, E(A)LM. As in ‘field of activity’.
13 Very soon squeal meeting old lover boy
INAMORATO – IN A MO, RAT (tell on, squeal), O.
14 Royal creep renting Rolls
PRINCE REGENT – (CREEP RENTING)*.
18 Top lawyer? Sign one’s luck changed?
KINGS COUNSEL – (SIGN ONES LUCK)*. I was just a little bit miffed by this because at the moment there is of course no such thing (they are Queen’s Counsels), which I felt the clue should have acknowledged in some way.
21 We often criticise European films
POLEMISTS – POLE, MISTS.
23 Article about initially exciting male topic
THEME – TH(Excercising, M)E.
24 Man, that sounds serious!
ERNEST – sounds like ‘earnest’.
25 Giant deficit breaks firm associated with America
COLOSSUS – CO(LOSS), US.
26 Beach kiosk stuffed with rubbish primarily (6)
STRAND – ST(Rubbish)AND.
27 Outing-organiser always knocked back beer and drop of red
REVEALER – reversal of EVER, ALE, Red. ‘Outing’ in the sense of revealing that someone is gay.

Down
1 Spot in which dog’s unlikely to get loose?
SECURE – SE(CUR)E.
2 A body of water in a foreign country
ABROAD – A, BROAD. As in Norfolk.
3 Mines may close up around October’s end
CLAYMORES – (MAY CLOSE)* containing octobeR.
4 Court shames Ohio union criminal
MANSION HOUSE – (SHAMES, O, UNION)*.
6 A warplane over China
AMIGO – A, MIG, O.
7 Distress irate dad showed to a great degree
RADIATED – (IRATE DAD)*. As in to radiate happiness, for instance.
8 Associates of Johnson, Gove and Hunt?
CONSORTS – or CON SORTS. There weren’t enough letters for my initial thought.
11 Go for it and push the Queen?
MAKE ONES MOVE – the second part of the clue being a reference to chess, of course. Do you push the pieces or lift them? I suppose you might do either.
15 Choose Wagner’s last lyrical work for conductor
ELECTRODE – ELECT, wagneR, ODE.
16 Those at helm of fish-catching ship
SKIPPERS – S(KIPPER)S.
17 Crack in a vessel
ONE-LINER – or ONE (a), LINER (vessel).
19 Creature comfort wife left outside
WEASEL – W(EASE)L.
20 Race around Kent area presents problem
TEASER – TEA(SE)R.
22 One employed to style The Stones?
MASON – CD.

33 comments on “Sunday Times 4894 by David McLean”

  1. LOI 8d evidently took me a lot of time. I didn’t know Hunt, and wasn’t sure ‘hunt’ wasn’t the definition. Also DNK POLEMISTS; polemicists yes, but. 10ac is a lovely clue, but if I, who am abysmal at hidden-spotting, could spot the hidden immediately, it wasn’t very well hidden. I liked ELECTRODE; perfect surface.
    1. I was another who DNK POLEMISTS, being used to the additional “ic”.

      Also DNK CLAYMORES in that sense, or that MANSION HOUSE was a court.

      I gave up after 13 minutes and used a word search tool for INAMORATO, only then seeing the chess clue (I am to chess what you are to cricket Kevin !)

      FOI SEARCH ME (rather apt)
      LOI MAKE ONES MOVE (I was, alas, checkmated)
      COD HIDDEN (it wasn’t for long though)

  2. 18:31. NHO POLEMIST and didn’t know my LOI CLAYMORE could be a mine. I’m another fan of HIDDEN, which has a double tick on my paper copy. As for the chess move, it is pawns that are more commonly pushed as the can only move one square, but no reason why you cant push a queen, I guess.
  3. Thanks, keriothe.
    I have double ticks against “Outing organiser” in 27ac and 17d ONE LINER. very nice, both of them.
    But I am very dubious about “up” as an anagram indicator in 3d.
    1. up = in rebellion, or amiss

      But apart from appearing in phrases like “something’s up”, it seems that these are Chambers-only meanings. So I will try to remember to have a careful look at “up” and decide whether it joins “on” as a drunkenness anag indicator and “take” indicating R as Mephisto content that shouldn’t stray into the ST crossword.

      1. Blogging a Mephisto on April 26, 2009, you wrote, “If take=R is a new trick for you, read mark and learn from the “r.” entry in C.

        Alas, I could not find it by searching Chambers online. Wracking my brain…!

        1. The online version of Chambers is their “21st Century Dictionary”, which is not the same as “The Chambers Dictionary”. In that one (which is the Mephisto reference), r is recorded as an abbreviation for “recipe”, the Latin word for “take”. [I believe this comes from ancient prescriptions.]
          1. As someone in the medical insurance industry in the UK until recently, I’ll observe that “Rx” is still in use in the UK. You see it fairly regularly in notes written by medical staff. (Presumably, this evolved from “℞” for easier typing…)

            I don’t believe I’ve ever seen just “R” on its own in the wild, though.

            Edited at 2020-03-22 04:56 pm (UTC)

  4. 44 minutes. LOI CURTAINS after I solved the CLAYMORES anagram. I only knew it as a weapon of war at Culloden and I don’t think they had mines by then. I also only knew MANSION HOUSE as the home of London’s Lord Mayor and as a wax polish. Do they still make it? In keeping with my venerable status, I use Antiquax. COD to HIDDEN. Self-referential clues always produce a smile. I didn’t raise an eyebrow at POLEMISTS so I might have seen it before. Good puzzle. Thank you K and David.
  5. I have a note that I finished this before lunchtime; so it must have been a quick solve.
    However I had two errors on my paper version: LOI CONTACTS at 8d and INAMORATA at 13a. I did have a big question mark against 8d so I checked before submission.
    I liked HIDDEN very much. FOI was SEARCH ME. DNK Claymores or Polemists in required meaning/spelling but no problem overall.
    Just the sort of Sunday challenge I enjoy. David
  6. Most of the points I was going to make have already been covered so I won’t detail the problems I had with CLAYMORES as mines, and the abbreviated POLEMISTS.

    At 11ac the best I could come up with to fill the unchecked squares was HAVE or possibly MAKE ONE’S HOME but couldn’t justify either so eventually searched the whole clue on-line to arrive at what perhaps should have been a fairly obvious answer.

    I think 27’s a bit feeble unless there’s an explanation a little less specific than the suggestion in the blog.

    Edited at 2020-03-22 08:51 am (UTC)

    1. I don’t think “outing” is restricted to gayness. Following that meaning, Collins has:
      to expose something secret, embarrassing, or unknown about (a person)
      she was outed as a drugs cheat
      1. Indeed: my explanation was only intended as an example. I don’t really see these as separate meanings.
  7. Very much enjoyed and no problems. Like martinp1 above I was not sure about ‘up’ at the time of solving but am now wondering if it was meant to be ‘up around’ as in MAY CLOSE up in the air around R??
  8. I should have listened closer to Flanders and Swann. At 13ac I carelessly lobbed in INAMORATA forcing 8dn to be CONTACTS – 38 minutes crashed and burned!

    FOI 1ac SEARCH ME

    LOI 11dn MAKE ONES MOVE at a push!

    COD 2dn ABROAD – repeated in this week’s QC

    WOD 13ac INAMORATO and INAMORATA

    I agree with Lord Keriothe on the KC comment.

  9. An hour and eight for this one, so I must’ve been feeling quite slow last weekend. Apparently I enjoyed 9a CURTAINS, 13a INAMORATO and 27a REVEALER, with COD going to 10a HIDDEN.

    I didn’t note my FOI, but LOI was 4d MANSION HOUSE, where I still can’t really see the definition.

    1. Yes, I meant to pick up on that too. Googling ‘Mansion House court’ drew all sorts of blanks before I finally found this on the City Of London website: The cellars have storage space and once held prisoners’ cells, reflecting the former use of the Mansion House as the Lord Mayor’s Court.

      Very obscure I’d say, and at least merited ‘former court’ as definition to indicate that it’s not the building’s current use.

      1. I didn’t bother looking this up when solving: I just assumed it was a usage I wasn’t aware of. However I see that one of the meanings of ‘court’ in Collins is ‘a mansion or country house’, so I assume that’s the intended meaning. The equivalent meaning of MANSION HOUSE is in the definition of ‘mansion’.

        Edited at 2020-03-22 01:07 pm (UTC)

        1. Marked for checking when I test-solved. I found the same justification.
  10. Glad you’re doing ok Keriothe. I seem to have picked up a sore throat from one of my daughters. They both came over last weekend and fell sick the next day so I’ve been waiting for the other shoe to drop. Of course none of us can get tested. I wasn’t bothered by KINGS COUNSEL. There’s a King’s Bench Walk in the Inner Temple (it’s used for street locations in innumerable period movies) and that doesn’t change. Glad to see others were flummoxed by MAKE ONES MOVE. It took a second cuppa before I saw it. Now I’m going back to bed.
    2. Damn. Take care, and report back soon!
      Especially if you don’t have a fever, it’s probably something else.
  11. I was all over the place with this one and ended up taking way over an hour. I was convinced 3dn was going to be coal-something for far too long. I mis-biffed inamoratA leading to a mis-biffed contacts. I knew contacts didn’t quite fit so persevered but those errors took some considerable time to tidy up. The whole NE quadrant was a mess really. I had trouble pinning down abroad at 2dn where I was searching for specific bodies of water and specific foreign countries. Also had a major delay at the end on 11dn where the phrase just wouldn’t come to mind. A rather ragged solve for a rather elegant puzzle.
  12. I had to slog away at this one for 54:54 before I was ready to submit, and was pleased to find I had no errors. I was surprised by POLEMISTS without the CI in too. CLAYMORE was vaguely familiar in that sense. I think it has cropped up in another puzzle. I was also surprised by MANSION HOUSE as a court. MAKE ONES MOVE was my LOI and took ages to see. A tough workout! Thanks Harry and K.
  13. I liked the puzzle, and like others appreciated Hidden. I know Claymore as a mine, and only vaguely and secondarily as an early modern weapon, though I probably should do better there. The last part of my family to come to the North American colonies did so having been captured at Culloden and then, as a gentleman, being released on his own recognizance to not fight again / emigrate.

    Edited at 2020-03-22 04:30 pm (UTC)

  14. Nothing to add about the puzzle at this point (the only note on my copy is a quizzical insertion of the missing IC in POLEMISTS), but you may be lucky to have taken shelter so soon. I see the pubs over there are closing tonight. At the magazine, we “experimented” last Friday with everyone working from home (as I always do on that day anyway), and I also got set up with new software so I could work on the print edition as well as the web stories. By Monday, the office was closed. There was a virtual staff meeting Thursday, and later that day, a virtual happy hour…
    Stay safe!

    Edited at 2020-03-22 04:51 pm (UTC)

      1. It was great, and we all want to keep doing it regularly. Ours was set up as a Google Hangout, but I’ve also videochatted with a friend in France via a free app called Zoom, and of course there are other ways. Some of us should agree on a platform and set a time convenient for folks on both sides of the pond.
  15. Thanks David and keriothe
    Did this across a number of short sessions that tallied up to 46 minutes. SEARCH ME was a gimme starter.
    18a caused me to wonder what all the wigs with QC after their name will have when Charles takes over at some point. Recognised the mine meaning of CLAYMORE post unravelling, although the big sword was the more common definition. Hadn’t heard of MANSION HOUSE at all before and after looking it up on Wiki, see that the former Swordbearer’s Room was converted into the Justice Room, effectively the magistrates’ court of the City from 1849 -1999.
    Thought that INAMORATO was an excellent clue and very well spelled out so was surprised at the number of folks who got the wrong sex of it.
    Finished in the NW corner with CURTAINS and ABROAD (where had never heard of that definition of BROAD).

Comments are closed.