Sunday Times 4952 by Dean Mayer

Author   keriothePosted on Categories Weekend Cryptic
17:23. Dean is on top form this week, producing a really superb puzzle. There are lots of good clues in this but I particularly liked 14ac. 10dn also deserves a mention just because it’s such an apposite anagram, as does 20dn just for being extremely neat.

Following the theme of recent discussions, there are quite a few cryptic definitions in here. But Dean is particularly good at this type of clue, so if they were banned (as some people would like) I would miss them in his puzzles.

Brilliant stuff, thank you very much Dean.

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

Across
1 Faith in me shown by artistic lady
MADAME – M(ADAM)E. The Faith here is Adam of that ilk, a pop star of the 1960s only vaguely familiar to me. I was puzzled by the definition too, but Lexico says that MADAME is ‘used as a title for women in artistic or exotic occupations, such as musicians or fortune-tellers’. My last in.
4 One understanding one’s time as a dreamer
IDEALIST – I, DEAL (agreement, understanding), I’S, T.
9 End of census possibly not declared
UNCONFESSED – (END OF CENSUS)*.
11 “Gratis” not right if this applies
FEE – FrEE.
12 Travel partners occupying property
TRANSIT – TRA(NS)IT. North and South are partners in bridge.
13 One cowardly old man nicking lead?
DASTARD – DA(STAR)D. My personal definition of this word has always been ‘like Dick Dastardly from Dastardly and Muttley’, which turns out to have been inadequate.
14 For feigned affection, press 0
CUPBOARD LOVE – a press is a kind of cupboard (we have one that was sold as a ‘linen press’), and 0 is of course LOVE in tennis. A brilliant clue with a slightly surreal but amusing surface reading.
18 Liking and understanding growth
APPRECIATION – triple definition.
21 Intolerable as order to cut finger
TOO MUCH – TO(OM)UCH. OM is the Order of Merit.
23 Thought caller might be talking
GUESSED – sounds like ‘guest’.
24 Rubbish skin pic
TAT – DD. ‘Tat’ is short for ‘tattoo’.
25 One providing evidence in drive-by shooting
SPEED CAMERA – CD, and a fine one, although I wonder if this idea has been used before. I got caught by one of these on a ‘smart’ motorway recently, having set the cruise control to 60mph and failed to notice when the limit reduced to 50. Annoying, but fortunately they let me take a course instead of the points, so now I know that swans often land on motorways because they mistake them for rivers.
26 Deliberate tackle initially accepted by referee
MEDITATE – MEDI(Tackle)ATE.
27 Shutter protecting lens
EYELID – CD. Again, this is neat but I wonder if it’s been done before.
Down
1 Sheds demolished, most of slum too
MOULTS – (SLUM TOo)*.
2 Stop scratching, as a rule, around Christmas?
DECLAW – or DEC LAW, geddit?! A horribly cruel thing to do to a cat.
3 Little less difficult clue
MINUSCULE – MINUS (less), (CLUE)*.
5 Such people have little in common
DISADVANTAGED – and another CD. I think the idea is that if you are DISADVANTAGED you have little, so (the possession of) little is what DISADVANTAGED people have in common with each other.
6 Mountainous area of Libyan Desert
ANDES – contained in ‘Libyan Desert’. I was a bit puzzled by the capitalisation of ‘desert’ here but it’s a reference to an actual desert I hadn’t heard of, rather than just a generic desert in Libya as I had assumed.
7 If puncture occurs, men will find air pump
INFLATOR – IN [case of] FLAT, OR (men).
8 More in band about to split
TRENDIER – T(REND)IER. You might select a band/tier of membership, for instance, or be in an income band/tier.
10 Governing body that puts out NHS timetables
ESTABLISHMENT – (NHS TIMETABLES)*. Amazing anagram!
15 Being sick, end our day by 12
DUODENARY – (END OUR DAY)*. Not a word I knew so I needed all the checkers.
16 Handyman in particular old corporation
FACTOTUM – FACT (particular), O, TUM (corporation).
17 Without energy, dropout somehow got out of bed
UPROOTED – (DROPOUT)* containing E. Not that kind of bed!
19 On top of a mushroom?
AS WELL – A, SWELL.
20 King Lear
EDWARD – King EDWARD, and EDWARD Lear.
22 Delivery company starts to examine this complaint
UPSET – UPS, Examine, This.

40 comments on “Sunday Times 4952 by Dean Mayer”

  1. Please tell me I’m not the only one who tried to justify DROMEDARY at 15d, with some sort of link to transit as transport at 12a!

    Two other sticking points for me: didn’t easily see ADAM Faith at 1a, and I doubt I’d have seen it any quicker with ‘perhaps’ added. No complaints; apart from Faith Brown he’s the only really well known one. With MOULTS I fixated on ‘most of slum too’ as indicating SLU(M) TOO. Oh well.

    Plenty of excellent clues as always. I particularly liked two sandwich clues, DASTARD and TRENDIER – ace disguised definition in the latter.

    – Blorenge

  2. NHO ADAM Faith (and I’m a contemporary of Boltonwanderer), but sort of assumed, or hoped, there was one. Like Blorenge, I thought of DROMEDARY and took 12 to be 12ac, but finally saw the anagrist as such. A nice clue, one of many. LOI (took me 6′) DASTARD, where I failed to link it with ‘cowardly’, as I thought the word meant, as ODE has it, ‘a dishonorable or despicable man’. I should have remembered Lochinvar’s rival, “a laggard in love and a dastard in war”, where he’s pretty clearly a coward. Definitely COD to CUPBOARD LOVE.

    Edited at 2021-05-02 07:33 am (UTC)

  3. Dammit! Mispelt MINUSCULE as MINISCULE. I think I’d have noticed it didn’t look right had it been an across clue, but as a down clue the radar missed it. 26’20” with the pink square of doom.
    Another very enjoyable puzzle from Dean. Great surface for CUPBOARD LOVE.
      1. To an assiduous copy editor (comme moi), it most certainly is.
        1. Doesn’t seem so to me. Perhaps it’s a Canadian thing.

          So “Minis” = less (like the skirt) and different clues?

          Edited at 2021-05-02 03:26 pm (UTC)

          1. It’s a variant, so generally frowned upon by those who maintain a house style for a reputable publication. We get enough raised eyebrows at The Nation without letting Elizabethan spelling rules (ha) prevail.

            Edited at 2021-05-02 03:28 pm (UTC)

            1. Fair enough, however, “it now occurs commonly in published writing…”
              1. Alack and alas! I also see “flaunt” for “flout” a lot in published writing. That doesn’t make it right.

                Edited at 2021-05-02 03:33 pm (UTC)

                1. True story. I guess it’s like Americans omitting the “u” in words like colour and favour, and mispronouncing zebra and aluminium.
                  1. It’s not the same thing at all. The difference in spelling is because the standard spelling differs in American and UK contexts; neither would be regarded as a “variant” of the other on their proper shore—that is, even the laziest writer or editor would generally take care to use the word correct for their continent. (Brits started inserting the U, by the way, only after they were conquered by the Norman French.) The American name for the metal is “aluminum,” which is pronounced just as it looks; no American would use the English word as a “variant” of the American. Variations in pronunciation are a different topic.

                    The confusion of “flout” and “flaunt” could lead to the eventual erasure of the distinction between the two words, which properly have two almost exactly opposite meanings. Sometimes when it appears in published writing, I write to the perpetrator (I won’t name any names) and they are quite contrite. Yet now that their mistake is in print, some will conclude it’s all right. But you have to draw the line somewhere, no?

                    Edited at 2021-05-02 03:56 pm (UTC)

                    1. Point taken, I guess I feel that Miniscule also fits for the answer. I’ve been wrong before and probably will be again, often!
                      Sorry for hijacking this thread.
                      1. Well, now that you mention it… MINUS means “less” and MINIS does not.
                        Variants are acceptable in crosswords, of course, but they have to fit the wordplay.
                    2. On the U in “colour”, the information in the OED strongly suggests that Brits only started using the word after they were invaded by the Norman French, barring whatever small percentage were already familiar with “color” in Latin. And it indicates that even the French sometimes spelled it without a U. “The form colour has been the most common spelling in British English since the 14th cent.; but color has also been in use continually, chiefly under Latin influence, since the 15th cent., and is now the prevalent spelling in the United States.”
  4. Very enjoyable and not particularly difficult generally, but I failed at 15dn and eventually resorted to aids. I noticed DROMEDARY would have fitted the checkers but I could see the answer was going to be an anagram. I sort of knew the word DUODENARY but not well enough to think of it; and in any case I was fixated on the answer being something to do with TRANSIT.

    No problem with MADAME as an artistic or exotic lady. In my days as a student of music I met many of them. Adam Faith was unavoidable during my early teenage years with his pizzicato string backings and his ‘By-bee’ (baby) catchword. He later diversified into acting and wasn’t bad at it. He could be quite menacing in the right role.

    Edited at 2021-05-02 05:07 am (UTC)

  6. ….for having a hit later in his singing career with a version of “Message to Martha (Kentucky Bluebird)” which was vastly inferior to Lou Johnson’s US original. One of Bacharach/David’s best songs in my opinion. Perhaps that’s why I couldn’t parse the clue for quite some time after completion.

    “You little reprobate Budgie !”

    FOI UNCONFESSED
    LOI MADAME
    COD SPEED CAMERA
    TIME 14:12

  7. This was enjoyable. I remember Adam Faith as a singer(just about) who turned to acting and business- with some success.
    I have to confess to a lack of success in this puzzle as I could not get beyond DROMEDARY at 15d: have NHO DUODENARY although I might have constructed it, had I got the clue.
    Then at 17d I had SPROUTED which almost fits the parsing.
    Lots to like in here including another appearance for DECLAW which I think was in the Saturday before this.
    David

    b

    Edited at 2021-05-02 09:14 am (UTC)

  8. Cryptic definitions: when people talk about favourite clues, they often turn out to be CDs. As one example, In the “75 Years of the Times Crossword” book, 11 of the 27 favourite clues suggested by readers of the paper are CDs by my reckoning, including the one for which I suggested (possibly not uniquely). So for me, the idea of not allowing cryptic definitions is as absurd as allowing the setters (in the unlikely event that any of them wanted to) to revert to the bad old days of cryptic clues with no definition or partial wordplay.
    1. Well quite. CDs can be a bit clunky when they don’t come off, but the good ‘uns more than make up for that IMO. The other point about them that I’ve made here recently is that they fool you into looking for wordplay that isn’t there. In that sense they’re a valuable addition to the setters’ deceptive toolkit it would be silly to deprive them of.

      Edited at 2021-05-02 09:25 am (UTC)

  9. I don’t usually comment on the weekend crossies, though I do read the blogs, but I really enjoyed this one. So many great clues. I loved MADAME, (Faith was so well hidden in plain view, SPEED CAMERA, INFLATOR, ESTABLISHMENT and EDWARD for King Lear. Very clever.

    Normal time for me of about an hour. The only one unparsed was TAT. Thank you Keriothe for the blog and Mr Mayer.

  10. A very fine crossword this one, right up there with Dean’s best, which is saying something.
    The idea of banning CDs is plain daft, who would even suggest that I wonder?
    The more latitude you allow a setter, the better the final result is likely to be.. as long as a clue is fair to the solver, that is all that matters.
  12. For once, I remembered to spell MINUSCULE properly, taking careful note of the wordplay. Took ages to see DISADVANTAGED and MADAME. DUODENARY took a while too. Nice puzzle. 46:56. Thanks Dean and K.
  13. Appalled to see the natural word, duodecimal, marked as obsolete.
    Wiktionary:
    Adjective
    duodenary (not comparable)
    1) Twelvefold.
    2) Of the twelfth order.
    3) (obsolete) duodecimal.

    Humph, Andyf

    1. I wouldn’t take Wiktionary as a particularly authoritative source, but even here I don’t think it’s saying duodecimal is obsolete, just that it’s an obsolete meaning of DUODENARY. Collins disagrees here: it gives duodecimal as a definition of DUODENARY. And duodecimal isn’t marked as obsolete in any of the usual sources (Collins, Oxford, Chambers).
  14. Help me out please. I very often see Chambers as a reference on this forum, so I invested in it. However, I cannot find the word “declaw” in it. Almost like it’s not a real word.
    1. It’s not under CLAW either – very strange. It’s in Collins and Oxford, and used commonly enough. As David pointed out a few comments ago, it was in the Saturday puzzle the day before this one.

      – Blorenge

      1. Guess my reading skill leave a bit to be desired as I missed that. Thanks.
    2. Collins and Lexico are the standard references for the Sunday puzzles. I’m not sure there is such a thing for the daily puzzles. Chambers is the reference for barred-grid puzzles including Mephisto but is not necessarily the best guide for the others.
  15. 36.26 I agree that this was a very high quality puzzle which I very much enjoyed.
  16. TRENDIER was my LOI. I wondered about “artistic” too; it’s legitimate to add that, of course, but unnecessary really, so rather deceptive!

    Edited at 2021-05-03 01:08 am (UTC)

  17. I know how MINUSCULE is spelt, but my fingers didn’t and I put MINISCULE (which doesn’t fit the wordplay even being flexible). LOI was TRENDIEST. I needed all the checkers before I spotted the well-hidden definition and had a PDM.
  18. Well, ok, I took 21.41 minutes on this one, probably because I got cheesed off with the CDs (sorry Peter!) after the previous week’s extraordinary glut of them. These were, admittedly, rather better examples, but I reserve judgement on DISADVANTAGED, where I needed crossers to eliminate a lot of other possible answers, there obviously being no wordplay to help out. That also meant the temptation to start DASTARD with a B was real and hard to get round
    Did Dean deliberately pair the two in the 11th row (21, 23) as a protest against biffing? I think we should be told.
    And lastly, product placement is here again at 22: I’m sure Fedex, DHL and a host of competitors will be looking for equal exposure.
  19. Too tough for me today. I knew what I was looking for in 5d but DISADVANTAGED wasn’t the most obvious synonym and as our blogger says, no help on the w/p

    Unfortunately I failed to think “verb” for thought in 23a which would have given me the crossing g. The other two I failed on were DASTARD and TRENDIER. Too many different possibilities for the w/p on the former and beaten fair and square by failing to add “in” to “more” for the latter. That was very nicely done

    So 45 mins or so for all but those and another 15 minutes failing to come up with anything else

    Maybe the bottle of red at lunchtime didn’t help!

    Thanks Messrs Mayer and Keriothe

  20. FOI 6dn ANDES

    LOI 19dn AS WELL

    COD Nice to see ‘Budgie’ getting an outing at 1ac.

    WOD 3dn MINUSCULE the world’s most mispelt word!

    I thought the cluing 14ac CUPBOARD LOVE was utter pants! Hello!

    Edited at 2021-05-03 09:39 am (UTC)

  21. Thanks Dean and keriothe
    Really entertaining puzzle, as has been referenced numerous times above. Finished in just under the 100 minutes and didn’t help matters by writing in APPRECIATING initially at 18a. Didn’t pick it up until the end after finally using all sorts of help to land DUODENARY.
    Hadn’t come across the term CUPBOARD LOVE before, so it was another stumbling block en route. Was another who initially had written in MINISCULE which was only picked up in the last sweeping parsing check (and it didn’t).
    EDWARD was probably my pick of a very good bunch of clues.
  22. Irish playwright Brendan Behan disapproved of calling someone a bastard.

    He believed dastard was the appropriate word.

    A bastard is a bastard through no fault of his own, a dastard has to work at it.

    Great puzzle.

    As always, thanks to all the setters and bloggers, you are greatly appreciated.

    Tom and Jan. Toronto.

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