Sunday Times 4954 by David McLean – something like a phenomenon

Posted on Categories Weekend Cryptic
6:33. A very gentle puzzle from Harry this week, but none the worse for that. The goddess at 9ac might cause some problems, but she was vaguely familiar to me for some reason. 7dn must seem a bit odd if you don’t happen to know about Billy Connelly’s musical skills, but it’s perfectly solvable without that knowledge.

Thanks to Harry for a fun one, particularly the naughty but brilliant 24ac.

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

Across
1 Cursed bedlamp’s alive, man held
BLASPHEMED – (BEDLAMPS)* containing HE.
7 Fire assault rifle with live round
BAKE – B(AK)E. The AK-47 is the most famous of these weapons but others are available.
9 One’s husband volunteers to meet Republican goddess
ISHTAR – I’S, H, TA, R. A Mesopotamian goddess I had vaguely heard of.
10 Inability to hear case of defence? A fine point …
DEAFNESS – DefencE, A, F, NESS (point).
11 … in upholding the employee’s originally overturned case
ETUI – first letters of ‘in upholding the employee’, reversed.
12 Woman pawns bloomers
HOLLYHOCKS – or, er, HOLLY HOCKS.
14 Hewn tree in Glencoe with iodine on the stump?
ELECTIONEERING – (TREE IN GLENCOE, I)*.
16 Where products might be displayed in disarray
ALL OVER THE SHOP – two definitions, one very slightly whimsical.
19 A tie is an accessory
ATTACHMENT – DD. Very simple, not at all hard to solve, but really neat. Kind of sums up this puzzle.
21 Spots of corrosion finally found in service
ACNE – AC(corrosioN)E. Service in the tennis sense.
22 Reddish-orange ruddy duck
FLAMINGO – FLAMING (ruddy, as in ‘this ruddy clue!’), O. I was confused here for a while because I saw from the checkers that FLAMINGO must be the answer but ‘duck’ seemed a strange definition.
24 Result of donning Wonderbra? Ding-dong!
BUST-UP – naughty in the best traditions of Sunday Times cryptic puzzles and brilliant.
25 Old writer yawning
OPEN – O, PEN.
26 Needle girl repurposed as item of angling gear
LEDGER LINE – (NEEDLE GIRL)*. I didn’t know this term, but having looked it up I think I’ve actually used one of these.
Down
2 Go wild and gamble it all away without bit of prudence
LOSE THE PLOT – LOSE THE (Prudence)LOT. Nice surface.
3 Light passion? That’s what row is about!
SET FIRE TO – SET TO (row) containing FIRE (passion).
4 Hurt was a chart success around end of October
HARD-HIT – HA(octobeR)D HIT.
5 Music genre in which White Lines might sit?
MIDDLE-OF-THE-ROAD – two definitions, one mildly cryptic in that it appears to refer to the seminal hip-hop song by Melle Mel. Is MIDDLE-OF-THE-ROAD a genre though? I thought it just referred to bland and unadventurous music of any genre, and the dictionaries seem to think so too.
6 Excessive yen to sit on short guys? That’s awful!
DEARY ME – DEAR, Y, MEn. ‘Excessive’ for DEAR strikes me as a bit loose (if you’re saying that something is expensive you’d normally if not always say that the price is excessive, not the thing itself) but it didn’t cause me a problem.
7 One Billy Connolly might pick on at a gig?
BANJO – a slightly odd clue, which won’t make much sense to anyone who doesn’t know that Billy Connolly is (or was, not sure if he still plays) a noted BANJOist.
8 Island raising fine crops at its eastern tip
KOS – reversal (raising) of OK, cropS.
13 Beastly sort plastered in pink gunge
KING PENGUIN – (IN PINK GUNGE)*.
15 In which cast hears Lear, perhaps
REHEARSAL – (HEARS LEAR)*. I think ‘cast’ is the anagram indicator here and the clue is Semi-&Lit (the definition being technically just ‘in which’), but I’m not sure. In this reading the word ‘perhaps’ isn’t doing anything, so that might be the anagrind and the definition ‘in which cast’. Probably advisable not to think about it too much.
17 Elizabethan old-timer bottles alcohol
ETHANOL – contained in ‘Elizabethan old-timer’. There’s a rule in containment clues that the answer must be part of all the words used for the containment, but hyphenated words count as one. So ‘Elizabethan old-timer’ is fine but ‘Elizabethan old timer’ would not be allowed.
18 Key-opened European desk okay to be put away?
EATABLE – E(A), TABLE. The key of A ‘opens’ (separates) E and TABLE (desk).
20 Promoters of commercial port to secure millions
ADMEN – AD(M)EN. I’m not sure if ‘commercial’ is part of the definition or the indication for Aden here. It doesn’t really matter.
23 Cheek is a part of the face
LIP – DD.

22 comments on “Sunday Times 4954 by David McLean – something like a phenomenon”

  1. Raced through but once I’d popped in PUSH-UP at 24ac, 18dn was undo-able, the word EATABLE never came to mind as it means palatable and not edible as such.

    “I thought only edible was correct, even Google suggested edible when I did a search to see which one was more popular on the internet:
    Edible: 17.2 million: Eatable: 2.2 million” English Language & Usage, 2011

    FOI 23dn LIP

    (LOI) 17dn ETHANOL – Ethel & Ollie

    COD 22ac FLAMINGO – currently ‘er indoor’s favourite bird, thanks to James Audubon – they enjoy a 99% divorce rate (Croke, NYT 2014). Get over it!

    WOD 12ac HOLLYHOCKS – we have a small and faithful oriental group in the garden – keep the bees busy.

  2. Easy but fun, as Keriothe says. Some DNKs–LEDGER LINE, MIDDLE-OF-THE-ROAD if it is indeed a music genre, and Billy Connolly–but they posed no problem. ISHTAR (Astarte) has surely appeared here before, hasn’t it? It’s also the title of a legendary Hollywood flop. I liked BAKE (P/LOI; I finally remembered KOS with a K not a C), but COD to BUST-UP.
  3. was the black-hole of all the music genres around it – a pseudo-genre. Jimmy Young was its King – Engelbert the Prince and Ken Dodd the Fool.
    1. Ken Dodd was nobody’s fool — as the Inland Revenue found to their cost.
  4. 27 minutes. DNK ISHTAR but the wordplay was kind.

    I knew of ledger, ledger bait and ledger tackle in connection with fishing but not LEDGER LINE which for me was only a feature of musical notation.

    Well done setter, getting away from George Formby references re BANJO and avoiding the need for pedants such as myself to point out that George actually played a banjolele. Oh dear, I seem to have done it anyway!

  5. Unlike others, I struggled a bit, taking 38 minutes, with LOI HARD-HIT. I can’t now see why. Perhaps it’s because I’ve never heard of Melle Mel, although MIDDLE-OF-THE-ROAD was a write-in. COD to BUST-UP of course. Thank you David and K.
  6. ….and only SET FIRE TO was parsed after completion.

    FOI ISHTAR
    LOI BAKE
    COD BUST-UP
    TIME 8:32

  7. On the two main quibbles:

    5D: both Collins and the Oxford Dictionary of English have “category” of music, art etc as a definition of “genre”.

    18D: both references have “eatable” meaning the same as “edible”

    1. The question is not what ‘genre’ means, but whether ‘middle-of-the-road’ is the name of a genre.
        1. ‘Middle-of-the-road’ is an adjective, and as such it’s applied to some objects and not to others. So is e.g. ‘bad’. ‘bad’ is a name applied to some music or performers and not to others; is there a genre of ‘bad music’? The definition in the clue is ‘music genre’, and the question–my question–is whether there is a genre so called of ‘middle-of-the-road music’. Your wiki list suggests that there is, which would save the setter’s proverbial.
          1. There’s a lot of consensus about what music qualifies as MOR; you can take the common qualities of such music and objectively define a common sound. Good luck doing that with “bad” music.
            1. My suspicion is that this term once had a reasonably definable meaning, but then got appropriated as a derogatory term for any bland music, which is the version I knew. Hence my confusion.
              1. Well, you’re right, it *is* bland music – it’s the blandness that defines the genre. But blandness isn’t necessarily a bad thing, not if you’re an elevator operator
  8. This was enjoyable and I was quite quick to finish -35 to 40 minutes. FOI LIP. LEDGER LINE unknown. COD to BUST UP which it took me a long time to decode.
    MIDDLE OF THE ROAD no problem, although it did remind me instantly of Chirpy Chirpy Cheep Cheep.
    I knew from a recent documentary that Billy Connolly can still play the banjo.
    David
  9. No problems with this enjoyable puzzle. I knew LEDGER LINE from a youth spent on the banks of the Wear. 22:25. Thanks Harry and K.
  10. 31:45. I’m pleased with that. DNK ETUI. Easy to see, but I put it in thinking it must be some sort of legal case. Liked ALL OVER THE SHOP
  11. 14.31 for a fairly gentle Sunday outing. A pleasant solve. I wondered at the use of alive as an anagrind in the clue for blasphemed but Chambers has lively or animated which covers it. I thought flamingo would be pink rather than reddish-orange but the dictionary has pink or bright red. NHO ledger line but was pretty confident from anagrist and checkers.
  12. Well, a rapid 12 minute solve, but with a confidently entered ASHTAR for the goddess. I was slightly concerned about one’s giving AS rather than IS, but there are so many variations on ASHTAR floating around middle eastern mythologies it felt ok. It won’t happen, but I’d quite like my pink square revoked.
    1. I’m with you: let’s storm the Times offices and demand recognition for ASHTAR and the TITHAWK!
  13. Thanks David and keriothe
    Got a start with LIP and OPEN down the bottom and was able to steadily progress through the grid. Had heard of ISHTAR, so she presented no issues. LEDGER LINE was the only one that had to be looked up – not a fisherman.
    Thought that both SET FIRE TO and BUST UP were the best of a pretty good lot of clues.
    Finished back down in that SW corner with ATTACHMENT, that LEDGER LINE and ETHANOL the last few in.

Comments are closed.