Sunday Times 4924 by David McLean

Author   keriothePosted on Categories Weekend Cryptic
7:43. A pretty easy one from Harry this week, without much by way of talking points. Mostly familiar vocabulary although I don’t remember coming across 8dn before. I’m not entirely sure of my parsing of 16ac so any alternative views welcome.

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

Across
1 No time for food, getting fit
ABLE – tABLE.
4 Hopeful dance with rogue’s lamentable
ENCOURAGED – (DANCE, ROGUE)*.
9 Holidays in Split close to beaches
BREAKS – BREAK, beacheS.
10 One providing relief for engineers upset about employer
EMBOSSER – reversal of REME (engineers) containing BOSS.
11 Mess about with pint to get wasted
MISSPENT – (MESS, PINT)*.
12 South African animal trainer?
REEBOK – I’m going to treat the second part of this clue as very slightly cryptic because while I can imagine someone referring to their REEBOKs I don’t think anyone would ever use it in the singular.
13 I handled orders badly, being chicken
RHODE ISLAND RED – (I HANDLED ORDERS)*. Nice anagram.
16 Fine deceitful European captain of ship
FLYING DUTCHMAN – F, LYING, DUTCHMAN. I’m not sure how to parse this one. The FLYING DUTCHMAN is a legendary ghost ship, and as far as I can tell from looking at Wikipedia extensive research the phrase doesn’t apply to its captain. But if ‘captain’ is not part of the definition it has to be part of the wordplay, so it has to mean ‘man’, leaving ‘European’ to indicate just DUTCH rather than DUTCHMAN. But I can’t find any justification for captain = MAN. Hmm. Edit: see comments below: it’s the captain of the ship, who is also sometimes referred to this way, including in the opera of the same name by Wagner, which I had never heard of.
20 One tip to lure in bloke with a smoke
MANILA – MAN(I, Lure), A. A type of cigar made in the city.
22 Drop swimmer as he’s short and fat?
DUMPLING – DUMP, LING.
24 Where you put flowers around four is disturbing
INVASIVE – IN VAS(IV)E.
25 One dropping a line to get hold of Sturgeon?
ANGLER – CD.
26 Girls, you’ve changed in a severe way
GRIEVOUSLY – (GIRLS YOUVE)*.
27 Part of Dynasty elicits viewer’s complaint
STYE – contained in ‘Dynasty elicits’.

Down
2 Bird dropping head below black fence
BARRIER – B, hARRIER.
3 Old manuscript contains answer for tests
EXAMS – EX(A), MS.
4 Segregate criminal that’s hunted in spring?
EASTER EGG – (SEGREGATE)*.
5 Boxes jammed with European coins
CREATES – CR(E)ATES.
6 Brown horse possibly unseats knight
UMBER – nUMBER. Horse as in heroin, an opiate and hence NUMBER.
7 Star made off with millions in capital
AMSTERDAM – (STAR MADE)* containing M.
8 I announced a little fair
EYESOME – sounds like ‘I’, SOME (a little).
14 Rise and speak at length about one with spirit
ORIGINATE – OR(I, GIN)ATE.
15 Play along with a group who perform acoustically
ACCOMPANY – sounds like ‘a company’.
17 Student leader to land head of house, perhaps
LEARNER – Land, EARNER
18 Strip or uniform associated with northern outfit
UNDRESS – U, N, DRESS.
19 Place for those with habits like The Priory?
NUNNERY – CD. The Priory is a clinic that does rehab (for ‘those with habits’) among other things, just round the corner from me.
21 A motorway turn in China
AMIGO – A, MI, GO. China plate, mate.
23 Port and a shot downed by vacuous lads
LAGOS – LadS containing A, GO.

18 comments on “Sunday Times 4924 by David McLean”

  1. I took ‘captain of ship’ to be the definition, assuming that the Flying Dutchman was a Dutchman. And having now done my own extensive research on the Wiki page for Wagner’s opera, it seems that he was, and was captain of the ghost ship. DNK EYESOME, of course, or MANILA. 13ac is nicely done, all right, but the enumeration made it easily biffable.
    2. Thanks Kevin & Peter. My research failed to uncover the existence of the Wagner opera. It also didn’t occur to me just to look in the dictionaries!

      Edited at 2020-10-18 09:31 am (UTC)

  2. ….the usage of horse at 6D, but biffed UMBER anyway. After about 10 minutes I was left with 20A. I considered “Havana” and scrupulously checked ORIGINATE to make sure it wasn’t wrong. Four minutes later I resignedly biffed MANILA, a place I associate with envelopes rather than cigars.

    COD NUNNERY

  3. Don’t you just love those puzzles when everything has gone in nicely right up until the very last clue? That happened to me for this one with MANILA. I spent ages trying to think what it might be before coming up with ‘naliba’, which sort of works but is obviously wrong.

    EYESOME is a quaint word. I liked one of the quotations (from 1605) for the OED entry: “She was olde, (and therfore not Eiesome).” No comment!

    Thanks to setter and blogger.

  5. …well the spirit’s willing, but the body weak. 29 minutes, about par for the Sunday course, although the animal at 12a is now of course called the UNIBOL. Anybody else ever been disappointed at Covent Garden to find that the FLYING DUTCHMAN wasn’t a wrestler? I think I vaguely must have heard of MANILA as a cigar, as I thought of it once HAVANA wasn’t on. COD to EYESOME. Thank you K and David.
  6. EYESOME sure new to me too (let’s see if anyone at all here has seen it before). MANILA was a guess, too, now that I’m reminded, and I didn’t know about the rehab (“and I said, No, no, no”) place at all.

    Edited at 2020-10-18 06:54 am (UTC)

  7. Pleasant, steady solve.
    Did not know eyesome, nor that heroin is an analgesic. I had been sort of thinking it was more the opposite but then, I know nothing about drug culture. Certainly not as much as our setters seem to.
    I think “captain of ship” is intended as the def. of 16ac. As Kevin says, Wagner saw him that way as well
  8. About 40 mins for me so on the level today. LOI EYESOME which, like others was a NHO. I wasn’t sure either about the captain/ship thing but the answer could only be what it was. Thanks for the blog K.
  9. FOI LAGOS. A few problems mainly in the NE although MANILA was LOI. I could not think of a word for 8d other than EYESORE or Eyehole which did not fit the clue; so DNF.
    David
  10. Another who hadn’t come across EYESOME, or MANILA as a cigar, but it didn’t stop me making good progress with the puzzle. I also hadn’t come across the FLYING DUTCHMAN described as the Captain of the ship. 18:05. Thanks Harry and K.
  11. I’m in the NHO EYESOME column (but I got it without a problem, I don’t think it was even one of my last ones in). I don’t think I’ve heard of MANILA either (except in the context of folders, which didn’t make any sense either so I checked on Wikipedia and they used to be made from Manila hemp, apparently). Anyway, I was all correct in about 30 minutes which is good for me.
  12. 15:54. Didn’t get nUMBER for the horse at 6D and, lie others, NHO EYESOME, but I didn’t tarry over them. LOI MISSPENT. I liked MANILA but COD to INVASIVE for “Where you put flowers.
  13. 21:48. Entertaining but I had quite a few QMs including horse for heroin for number, eyesome, reebok and Manila where I didn’t know the cigar but smoke for city for Manila was a bit too arbitrary. I liked the clue for Rhode Island red.
  14. It seems I whizzed through this one in under 16 minutes, despite the delightful but unlikely looking EYESOME (how do you make plain cakes fancy?).
    Undoubtedly it helped that there aren’t many chickens (5,6,3)

    Edited at 2020-10-18 10:22 pm (UTC)

  15. When I used to travel between Manila and Hong Kong, back in the day, one couldn’t help noticing large stacks of Monica Lewinski Manila Cigars for sale in the Duty Free. I didn’t indulge and stuck to my preferred ‘Partagas’.

    FOI 12ac REEBOK – Darling, I appear to have lost a Reebok!?

    LOI 1ac ABLE

    COD 4dn EASTER EGG

    WOD 21ac MANILA – home of the brown envelope

    F = Fine; LYING = deceitful;DUTCH – EUROPEAN; MAN = to captain – verb

    Time: average

  16. Thanks David and keriothe
    A pretty straightforward puzzle that was able to do in 50 min without aids for a change but did stumble with a dodgy EYESORE at 8d – was like the majority here that did not know of EYESOME.
    The American chicken was an early entry that helped gain entry into all quadrants. Was interesting to get an update on my geography knowledge – was still under the impression that LAGOS was the capital of Nigeria (only some 29 years out of date !)

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