Sunday Times 4922 by Dean Mayer – One Hand in my Pocket

Author   keriothePosted on Categories Weekend Cryptic
20:41. Brilliant stuff from Dean this week. One of the hallmarks of a really great puzzle for me is that when I go to blog it a few days after solving, a lot of the clues take time to re-reveal their mysteries, and that was the case here. Or maybe it’s just a sign that I’m a bit dim: I’ve been struggling with a real stinker of a cold this week so the old brain cell may not have been firing on all cylinders.

Too many great clues to pick out the best, really, but I will make special mention of 1dn. It’s not spectacular, but Dean has a quite marvellous knack of coming up with clues that have a curious sense of having been discovered, rather than created. This is one of those.

So thank you to Dean for 20 minutes of great entertainment, and here’s how I think it all works…

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

Across
1 Work capacity that masses still have
POTENTIAL ENERGY – CD. ‘the energy of a body or system as a result of its position in an electric, magnetic, or gravitational field.’ ‘Masses still’ to be read here as ‘still masses.’
9 It may look like 5, but it’s a 2-digit figure
PEACE SIGN – because uses two digits (fingers) and it’s a V (five). Who else wondered what this had to do with a LANDING NET?
10 Open and close bass loop
BLINK – B, LINK. ‘Loop’ for LINK struck me as a bit of a stretch when I was solving, but I figured that a link in a chain is kind of a loop: and indeed Collins defines it as ‘any of the separate rings, loops, or pieces that connect or make up a chain.’
11 Join forces again, in fact
REALLY – RE-ALLY.
12 Job description? Great!
BIBLICAL – the book of Job, of course.
14 To hit — heavy or light
LAMP – ‘hit, heavy’ = hit heavily.
15 I’m not playing around with emotions
POIGNANTLY – (NOT PLAYING)*. See below for a discussion of “I’m”, which I had initially included erroneously as part of the anagrist.
18 Was bouncer messaged about bad atmosphere?
PING-PONGED – PING(PONG)ED. ‘Love you darling ping me later mwah mwah ciao.’
19 Give a detailed account
SAGA – SAG, A. I was convinced here that ‘detailed’ was an instruction to take the last letter off something. As Dean no doubt intended.
21 What Manuel said in scene about string
SEQUENCE – (SCENE)* containing QUE. I thought about trying to fit ‘hammer sandwich’ or ‘I speak English well, I learn it from a book’ but they didn’t fit.
22 Master’s membership reminder?
SUBDUE – your sub is due.
24 See commercials a lot
LOADS – lo, ads!
25 Before cooking one, go for a pizza topping
PEPPERONI – PEP (go), PER (for a), ON (cooking), I.
26 A mission for us, but only in capitals
AMERICAN EMBASSY – a nicely original CD playing on the fact that ‘us’ in capitals is US. As a crossword nerd I particularly like this one because it plays with the convention that capitalised terms (proper nouns in particular) aren’t normally supposed to be uncapitalised in clues. Ooh Dean, you are naughty!

Down
1 Sheet anchor?
PAPER CLIP – CD.
2 Site of protest means quarantine is useless
TIANANMEN SQUARE – (MEANS QUARANTINE)*.
3 Require line to drop in bait
NEEDLE – NEED, LinE.
4 Bird is catching bird? No way!
IBIS – I(BIrd)S. Nice clue!
5 New parts tangled in clumsy angler’s gear
LANDING NET – (TANGLED IN)* which N (new) ‘parts’, i.e. is contained in.
6 Slowly eat beef, getting bill first
NIBBLE AT – NIB, BLEAT. NIB can mean ‘beak’ (Collins) or ‘bill’ (Chambers).
7 Pelt of animals kept as pets
RAIN CATS AND DOGS – CD in which the word ‘pelt’ doesn’t mean what it appears to mean.
8 Peasant couple given pound
YOKEL – YOKE, L.
13 Run off opening businesses – very good area for wealth
CORNUCOPIA – CO CO (businesses) containing (RUN)*, PI (word for very good found only in crosswords), A.
16 Once you declare “I love you” by text, it’s 11 12!
YEA VERILY – YE (once you), AVER (declare) ILY (text lingo for ‘I love you’, apparently). The definition is REALLY BIBLICAL (see 11ac & 12ac).
17 In lodge, relaxing mostly, like to drink squash
APRES-SKI – A(PRESS)KIn.
20 Smashing up a Balkan’s fencing
SUPERB – S(UP)ERB.
21 As short girl gets up, dance
SALSA – reversal (up) of AS, LASs.
23 Echo around small part of church
APSE – AP(S)E.

38 comments on “Sunday Times 4922 by Dean Mayer – One Hand in my Pocket”

    1. Oops – how careless of me! I will correct. It’s just referring to the answer, as GdS says, as something like ‘this is’ would do more conventionally. It turns the clue into a version of those questions that go ‘I have four legs and a trunk, what am I?’
      1. I thought of that, but that sort of clue, and there have been many, has a noun as its solution, doesn’t it? ‘I’m “poignantly”‘strikes me as unattractive, especially as, as Guy also says, it’s not necessary.
        1. I don’t see why it should have to. ‘POIGNANTLY is a word with ten letters’ is fine after all.
  2. Something of a struggle for me, albeit an enjoyable one. A couple of DNKs slowed me down: I knew LAM but not LAMP, and spent time trying to account for the P; and not knowing PING helped make PING-PONGED my LOI. I slowed myself down by biffing TRAFALGAR SQUARE, wasting far too much time before actually trying to parse it. And I was definitely one who wondered about 5, until I recalled that this is an ST puzzle. I’ve got ‘COD’ written next to SAGA, YOKEL, and SUPERB, but could have written it a few more times.

    Edited at 2020-10-04 04:43 am (UTC)

  3. Good point! Seems to refer to the answer, and arguably helps the surface, but is quite unnecessary… hence extraneous!
  4. I was very pleased to get the four l5-letter answers first thing, the acrosses before the downs. But that’s about all I can recall about the experience of working this. Maybe other comments will jog my memory.

    Edited at 2020-10-04 03:03 am (UTC)

  5. Dean’s short clues are a joy. Like Keriothe I liked 1d PAPER CLIP. Pity I messed up a longer one, putting PINGPONGER instead of PINGPONGED, not reading the clue vigilantly enough and thinking the bouncer was required.
    30 mins with one pink.
  6. Very enjoyable.

    If the well-established Times convention about capital letters does not apply in the Sunday Times it would be useful if Peter would confirm. I think it always has until 26ac today.

    1. I’ve been working under the assumption that in the ST all bets are off and that none of the daily rules or conventions apply: living persons OK, no distinction between eg ‘five’ and ‘5’, capitals be damned, etc. But it would be a comfort if Peter could let us know.
      1. The rules that I think contribute to clues being fair are enforced. But the rules imposed by various Times editors over the years about points like living people, numbers of clues of particular types, what “on” is allowed to mean in across chaade clues, and so on, have not historically been followed in Sunday Times clue, and when I arrived here I saw no reason to add them. I know I made a list here of the Times crossword conventions, but my view is that solvers should be using their wits to solve clues, not a rulebook. As I think I have mentioned before, a puzzle in the Times Championship once had two plain hidden word clues, Nobody suggested an alternative answer for one of them so that the local rule about only one was preserved, and most solvers, like the crossword editor himself, failed to notice.
        2. Could not agree more Peter. No point in the “rules” being unwritten, if they can’t be ignored as and when desired!
          All Ximenes was trying to do was to make clueing generally fairer to solvers. He wasn’t intending to create some sort of straitjacket..
          1. As far as I know:
            * the rules specific to Times crosswords are nothing to do with Ximenes.
            * My only differences from him are allowing cryptic definitions (like every other broadsheet blocked grid cryptic edior), and not insisting on indication for every def by example.
            1. FWIW, the value of “only the dead” does help in deciding whether its reasonable to know a name or not.
              1. As I’ve no doubt PB would say, it depends. Donald Trump vs. Beerbohm Tree, for instance.
            2. Your approach is always admirably pragmatic, Peter. I’m sure I can speak for others in saying that the ST has become a paragon of crossword excellence under your editorship. Not necessarily better than the daily puzzles, but distinct from them yet of the same extremely high standard.
    2. Since the clue explicitly tells you that you have to capitalise ‘us’ I don’t think the usual rule is even relevant, so hasn’t really been disapplied.
      1. Good point. And now you come to mention it I think we may have had something similar at least once before, maybe even in the Times itself!

        Edited at 2020-10-04 05:52 am (UTC)

  7. Not how I parsed 25 Ac. Before = pre, cooking one, go for = pip. Just me?
    Thanks for the blog – no where near finishing this week but some great clues.
    1. I DNF also, missing poignantly and yea verily, and did get pepperoni but couldn’t parse it.
      Andyf
    2. I don’t see how that works riskyc. Given its position the anagram indicator (cooking) can apply to ‘before’ or to ‘one go for’, but not both. Also your interpretation requires an indirect anagram (of PIP) which is not generally allowed. And I can’t really see how ‘go for’ means PIP anyway. Apart from that Mrs Lincoln…!
  8. As keriothe indicates, another excellent puzzle from Dean. PAPER CLIP is, indeed, superb. I’m still marvelling at Dean clueing CANNIBALISM as ‘Likes Eating’ from his last puzzle.
    My only one I couldn’t parse here was PEPPERONI so, thanks, keriothe.
    So many excellent clues: BIBLICAL, AMERICAN EMBASSY, LANDING NET, PAPER CLIP and YEA VERILY but my COD goes to POIGNANTLY.

    Edited at 2020-10-04 07:12 am (UTC)

  9. 50 minutes converting mgh into 1/2mvsquared. That meaning of LAMP was used more in the past. I think I knew too much to think of BIBLICAL until I had the crossers for my COD YEA VERILY. I loved SUBDUE too. I totally biffed PEPPERONI. Great puzzle. Thank you K and Dean.
  10. I’ve just done this today and loved it. I thought 26a was fine, as the ‘but only in capitals’ acknowledges that the ‘us’ should be in upper case for the clue to obey crossword convention, as well as making the clue close to an &lit.

    Other favourites were PEACE SIGN (yes, spent a few minutes wondering what it had to with LANDING NET), BIBLICAL for ‘Job description’, POTENTIAL ENERGY and working out the parsing for PEPPERONI.

    I spent 2 1/2 hours on one at St. Elsewhere’s yesterday, so the 58 minutes on this was a welcome warm down!

    Thanks to setter and blogger

  11. As often with Dean I found this very difficult but enjoyed the struggle. My notes say four left at 7.58pm.
    In the end I failed to get 10a -could not improve on CHINK. For 15a, I spent ages trying to justify HOMEOPATHY. What else could fit? But Landing Net told me I was wrong. Was nowhere near NIBBLE AT.
    COD to BIBLICAL or PAPER CLIP.
    David
  12. A fine crossword. When Dean is on song, he is hard to beat.. also nice blog so thanks to all 🙂
  13. ….ENERGY, and, as a non-physicist, I didn’t realise my POTENTIAL until later. The same thing happened with EMBASSY, before the sheer brilliance of the clue hit home. Both PEPPERONI and YEA VERILY were only parsed afterwards. A fine puzzle.

    FOI NIBBLE AT (from the N of ENERGY)
    LOI POIGNANTLY (no quibbles)
    COD AMERICAN EMBASSY (Chapeau Dean !)
    TIME 15:55

  14. Just under the hour, but finished at least. Very enjoyable xword, thank you setter. Never did parse PEPPERONI or LAMP (heavy=P?) so thanks for that K and the rest of the blog. I liked the YES VERILY 11 12 trick, once I’d seen it ,of course. COD 26a.
  15. A fine puzzle which kept me busy for 37:17. LOsI BIBLICAL and YEA VERILY. Great clues. PAPER CLIP was also excellent. Thanks Dean and Keriothe.
  16. 38:01. I made hard work of this, but enjoyed it a lot, taking an age to parse PEPPERONI. LOI SUBDUE with a groan when the penny dropped. No less than 9 ticks on my copy for “good clue”. I enjoyed 26A, but COD to PING-PONGED. Thanks Dean and K.
  18. But I wasn’t; I failed at 9ac, left stranded in the landing net!

    FOI 1ac POTENTIAL ENERGY

    LOI 11ac REALLY – really!

    COD 26ac AMERICAN EMBASSY – was reminded of the late sixties cigarette advertising slogan ‘Light-up an Embassy’ to which some bounder had added in black paint, ‘Preferably American’. The strap line was ‘borrowed’ from Reynold’s ‘Kent’ in the US by Wills and their agency. Wills also launched ‘Strand’ – their slogan – ‘You’re never alone with a Strand’ famously killed the brand.

    WOD 18ac PING-PONGED! Shades of dear Leslie Phillips – ‘Ding-dong!’

    Edited at 2020-10-04 02:45 pm (UTC)

  20. Paper Clip sets the tone, all right. I couldn’t parse Pepperoni, and ‘pizza topping’ seemed overly clear, so that didn’t go in until I had all the crossers. Not sure I still see bouncer as ping-pong, and durumg the solve definitely didn’t, so another ping-ponger. Thx k, thx Anax, thx pb
  21. Thanks Dean and keriothe
    Took just under the hour in a longish first session followed by a quicker mop up one … and then some extra to work out some of the trickier word plays. Started with SAGA and finished with the crossing YEA VERILY (that I didn’t know and had to look it up after working out the bits and pieces). Having brought up a daughter as a single parent, seeing ILY at the end of a text message still warms the heart.
    Thought that the excellent PEACE SIGN war the pick of a very good crop, with PAPER CLIP and AMERICAN EMBASSY close up behind.
    Was chuffed to eventually unravel PEPPERONI.

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