Sunday Times 4912 by David McLean – advance, police cars!

Author   keriothePosted on Categories Weekend Cryptic
11:57. Nothing too difficult in this one. The unknown coins at 26ac looked very unlikely, even with such crystal-clear wordplay, but more or less everything else was familiar to me.

So without further ado…

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

Across
1 Supporting charges in attack
FORWARDS – FOR (pro, supporting), WARDS (charges, as in wards of court). Football players, presumably.
5 Endangered animals face ruin without end
PANDAS – PAN (face), DASh.
9 After explosion, note ears ring long and loud
RESONATE – (NOTE EARS)*.
10 You could go for a walk on this plain
COMMON – DD. I do go for a walk on one of these several times a week. In fact I often go for a walk on two of them because Barnes and Putney commons are next to one another and in fact I don’t really know where the boundary is.
12 Game‘s tasty without starter on bit of rocket
RUMMY – Rocket, yUMMY.
13 Ship that’s passed cape makes major turn
HEADLINER – HEAD (cape), LINER (ship). Cunning definition. There was a rogue question mark in the online version of this clue.
14 Somehow nice and confined behind closed doors
IN CONFIDENCE – (NICE CONFINED)*.
18 Criminal a hero rebukes?
HOUSEBREAKER – (A HERO REBUKES)*. I would classify this as an &Lit since the whole thing is wordplay, and you can also consider it all to be the definition, even if everything apart from the word ‘criminal’ is unnecessary.
21 Homesick cast and I long to have parts elsewhere!
NOSTALGIC – (CAST I LONG)*. I think of nostalgia as a longing for the past rather than home but this meaning is there in Collins.
23 Duck at the source of river’s finally quacked
DOUSE – quackeD, OUSE.
24 Get a picture of one escort cuddling English leader
IDEATE – I, D(English)ATE.
25 Flipping chaos involved in island build
ASSEMBLE – reversal of ELB(MESS)A.
26 Divide up grand to be given back in old coins
GERAHS – reversal of SHARE, G. I confess I looked this up before submitting but it’s definitely what I would have put in under competition conditions so I’m giving it to myself.
27 Explain hint of sedition in Tory faithful
CONSTRUE – CON(Sedition), TRUE.

Down
1 Coat men put over head to endure storm
FURORE – FUR, OR, Endure.
2 One thinking up final part of scene for Carry On
RESUME – reversal of MUSER, scenE.
3 Getting out of hand, can anyone bother?
ANNOYANCE – (CAN ANYONE)*.
4 Bottle of juice
DUTCH COURAGE – a cryptic definition: bottle is courage of course and juice is apparently a word for alcoholic drink.
6 Island everyone goes round first, not last
ATOLL – A(TOp)LL.
7 Party sweet stuffed with bits of aniseed and nuts on top
DOMINANT – DO, MIN(Aniseed, Nuts)T
8 Soldiers stationed at front by access points?
SENTRIES – Stationed, ENTRIES.
11 City abroad Corsican fans trashed
SAN FRANCISCO – (CORSICAN FANS)*.
15 Daughter cut down on study at uni without fear
DREADLESS – D, READ (study at uni), LESS (cut down).
16 Conservative that’s suspended is turning red, perhaps
CHANGING – C, HANGING.
17 Upset doctor kidnaps posh pilot … fake news?
BUM STEER – reversal of MB (doctor) containing U (posh), STEER (pilot).
19 Boozer after a half of Dunkel and port
DUNBAR – DUNkel, BAR.
20 Hard to endure split, having touch of enmity
SEVERE – SEVER, Enmity.
22 A tickly sensation that starts hurting
AITCH – A, ITCH. Because H is the first letter of ‘hurting’.

22 comments on “Sunday Times 4912 by David McLean – advance, police cars!”

  1. Had to do this one online, so I don’t have any notes.

    Had to check for GERAHS too. I wonder how many of us didn’t!

    I don’t know if I would call HOUSEBREAKER a full-fledged &lit, K, for the very reason you mention, but I’m sure not going to argue about it.

    I’ve pretty much caught up on this week’s puzzles (Wednesday’s was a gas), as well as the one I’ll blog next week, working them online, which I haven’t felt much like doing after a weekday slaving over a hot computer on Nation articles. I seem to get done somewhat more quickly online, but new ink will arrive Monday and I’ll have a choice again.

    (P.S. On behalf of the protesters in Portland and elsewhere around my country, I’d like to tell the bloody police cars to MOVE BACK.)

    Edited at 2020-07-26 02:25 am (UTC)

    1. Have you thought of using a notepad when solving online so you have something to refer to a week later?!
      1. I could get into the habit of making notes in a word processing app if I’m working online. That’s what I’ve used to deal with some anagrams and other parsing.
    2. The thing is, if it’s not &Lit then ‘criminal’ is doing double duty as definition and part of wordplay, which wouldn’t normally be allowed. It probably doesn’t do to overthink it though.
  2. realised as soon as submitted that it should have been BUM STEER rather than MUG STEER. Bummer! 25’42”
  3. I noted this as a ‘good test’ so I’m obviously more League Two than keriothe’s Premier League effort!
    I’m afraid I don’t see the connection between PAN and ‘face’ in 5ac. I must be missing something.
    I also agree with Guy that I don’t see 18ac HOUSEBREAKER as an &lit.
    I liked COMMON, FURORE, ATOLL and DOMINANT but my COD to AITCH.
      1. Thanks! That is really taking obscurity to the outer limits in my view. Your link refers to ‘American slang’ and I’ve since found it in Lexico listed under ‘US Informal’ which, IMHO means it should have no place here unless the American connection is specifically referred to.
        1. Looking more closely at Collins, I find this listed as a British usage:
          11. a slang word for face (sense 1a)
          1. Well done you for digging! There should be a special layer of Hell reserved for setters who plumb to the depths of Meaning 11!!
            1. There is. They just don’t know it yet. But all will become clear in the end.
    2. PAN for face is in all the usual dictionaries, and I’m pretty sure I’ve seen it before in crosswords.
      1. I only have access to online dictionaries. Lexico lists it as “US informal”, I can’t find it in Chambers Online and Collins Online lists it as meaning 11.
        That makes it extremely obscure in my book.
        But as ever Sloggers and Betters can always find a way out. 😀
  4. ….since that was my ill-considered FOI, and only came back to bite me 16 minutes later when I couldn’t break into the NE corner. I then needed to alpha-trawl 20D to get to 23A. Not my finest hour (or about a third of one !)

    FOI “steppe”, but then RUMMY
    LOI DOUSE
    COD BUM STEER (quite apt in the circumstances)
    TIME 20:10

  5. …or as common as muck. I took about 50 minutes in two sessions, never feeling on top of this one. LOI was a biffed COMMON. I too walk across one every day for my constitutional, so I assumed it was right, but I don’t think I’d have got it otherwise. POI was IDEATE, an obscure word to me. I liked AITCH and loved COD BUM STEER. I was pretty confident of GERAHS when they fell out of the mix. Like Phil, I also thought of ‘deadpan’ in justification of PANdas. Thank you K and David.
  6. FOI was San Francisco, then In Confidence, both of which gave me a lot of letters and I solved eight clues very quickly but then ground to a halt.
    A second session over lunch got me through finishing at 1.49pm with , inevitably, GERAHS (I thought the parsing was clear).
    I had struggled to parse PANDAS; was fairly happy about COMMON.
    The SE was a struggle. Dunbar has a golf course I want to play but I did not think of it as a port; and I have walked round the town.
    I’ve always liked the word CONSTRUE so I’ll make that COD just for that reason.
    David
  7. I had to exercise the neuron a bit more than usual for this puzzle, but got there eventually, looking up the odd looking GERAHS to confirm. PANDAS was one of my later entries after much cogitation, as was AITCH which came with a sudden ncrease in ambient lighting. Liked BUM STEER. 43:25. Thanks Harry and Keriothe.
  8. 31:36 nice puzzle. I hesitated at pan for face but I think I have seen it in a puzzle before. I liked headliner, the Carry On clue and the ‘first not last’ bit of atoll.
  10. Thanks keriothe. I held Headliner for my LOI due to the misprint ?; my real LOI was Ideate. While solving I thought that there were a lot of anagrams. Nice puzzle, DMcC, but really. Girths or Girthy, Gurkha Next time, OK?
  11. Thanks David and keriothe
    Nice puzzle that I got to across a number of shortish sessions with only the unknown currency and Scottish port to add to my vocabulary learning.
    Started off with IDEATE and basically hopped around the grid filling in the clues that popped up without getting much connection until later in the solve. A number of clues in which the parsing took a little longer – PANDAS (until twigging to DASh = ruin), ATOLL (until twigging to TOp = first – then thought it a very clever clue) and the tricky construction of BUM STEER.
    Finished up in the NE corner with SENTRIES (not sure why that took so long – have seen that so many times), that PANDAS and the cleverly clued COMMON with its well-disguised second definition as the last one in.

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