Sunday Times 4962 by Robert Price – it’s coming home

Posted on Categories Weekend Cryptic
14:16. Another immensely enjoyable puzzle from Bob, which I found quite tricky. As usual the surfaces are wonderful. Just look at 16ac, for instance. A marvel of the setter’s art.

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

Across
1 Decorator’s coat is long past being mended
GLOSS PAINT – (IS LONG PAST)*.
8 On notice to adopt wild animals
ABOARD – A(BOAR)D.
9 Broadcaster’s novel dares rubbish the Queen
NEWSREADER – NEW, (DARES)*, ER.
10 Idea that’s not finished yet
THOUGH – THOUGHt.
12 Root of resistance to a recipe
RADISH – R, A, DISH (recipe).
14 Old American tanks housing university fish collection
OCEANARIUM – O, (AMERICAN)* containing U.
16 Standard heroes possess grit alongside guts
STARS AND STRIPES – STAR(SAND, TRIPE)S.
18 Drink trader left in charge of pound stores
OFF-LICENCE – OF, F(L, IC)ENCE. This seems a little loose to me: a pound is an area enclosed by a FENCE, not the FENCE itself. It didn’t cause me a problem though.
21 Port passed, offering bottles to the left
ODESSA – contained (bottled) reversed in ‘passed offering’.
23 Is prejudiced leader replaced at last?
EXISTS – SEXIST with the first letter moved to the back.
25 Fashion classification becoming less extreme
MODERATING – MODE, RATING.
26 Enlightenment leads to turning out in Eastern dress
SATORI – SA(Turning Out)RI. I vaguely knew this word, almost certainly from past puzzles.
27 Sort of rock song collection put together for radio
CRYSTAL SET – CRYSTAL, SET. A set is the list of songs a band plays at a concert. This definition could arguably have done with an archaism indicator.

Down
1 Kind of shop officers ran
GENERAL STORE – GENERALS TORE.
2 Bottomless vessel full of American food
SUSHI – S(US)HIp.
3 Through prayer, God provides abundance
PLETHORA – PLE(THOR)A.
4 Moving, deep and nice end to Yankee anniversary
INDEPENDENCE DAY – (DEEP AND NICE END)*, Y (Yankee).
5 Times article about a rare material
TARTAN – two Ts (time), A, R (rare) and AN (article). Assemble according to instructions.
6 Beginnings of love ought to stop grim poet’s misery
DOLOUR – DO(Love, Ought)UR. This word reminds me of Macbeth: ‘New widows howl, new orphans cry, new sorrows/ Strike heaven on the face, that it resounds/ As if it felt with Scotland and yelled out/ Like syllable of dolor’, which has always stuck in my mind because ‘like syllable of dolor’ is such a strange formulation.
7 Dress up and show off
BRAG – reversal of GARB.
11 Frank trailing in last part of the race
HOME STRAIGHT – HOME (in), STRAIGHT (frank). My first thought was HOME STRETCH and it took me a while to discard it. Sometimes a wrong answer can get into your head somehow and block the right one even when (as here) it’s obviously wrong.
13 Thief finally confronted over coffee
DECAFF – reversal of thieF, FACED.
15 Complex mix of simple forces
IMPELS – (SIMPLE)*.
17 High priest, maybe, that keeps rejoicers oddly suppressed
THEOCRAT – TH(rEjOiCeRs)AT.
19 How to sound lower class
LESSON – sounds like ‘lessen’.
20 Publication about someone originally from space
COSMIC – CO(Someone)MIC.
22 Praise almost imparted by husband once
EXTOL – EX (husband once), TOLd.
24 Period celebrated by mother and son
XMAS – X (by), MA, S.

22 comments on “Sunday Times 4962 by Robert Price – it’s coming home”

  1. A 4th of July Nina from Robert, with 4d and 16ac going in quickly. I biffed OCEANARIUM–finally parsing it just before coming here–and OFF-LICENCE. I remembered HOME STRAIGHT from an earlier cryptic, when it was new to me; I inferred that it’s a UK term while STRETCH is US. My problem was taking ‘Frank’ to be OPEN.
    1. Doh! Can’t believe I missed that. I do always miss ninas and similar references but this was particularly blatant.
      1. Whereas my problem was the opposite. I saw the American Nina, and was constantly looking for more related answers! Thanks for the parsing of OCEANARIUM, Keriothe. I missed that it was an American anagram!! Thanks to Myrtilus too, for a very enjoyable puzzle.
        23:47
  2. My first thought for FRANK was Skinner.

    Did you know that the best version of Rule Britannia was sung by an American?

    Is that an omen?

  3. but this was fun!
    Collins has the archaic definition for “pound” as “to confine in a pound,” which is as close as I’ve seen the word come to “fence.” Bothered me too. And this was probably my LOI.
    I got the long answers saluting my homeland first and figured I’d finish the rest off quickly, but it took longer than I expected.

  4. Lord Keriothe is already on the England First Bus! The Three Lions stand proud against the Azzurri! This is not the day for Americana – that was last week.

    FOI 4dn INDEPENDENCE DAY

    LOI 26ac SATORI

    COD 11dn HOME STRAIGHT

    WOD 27ac CRYSTAL SET

    I shall be watching k.o 3:00am!

  5. 22 minutes. This had a nice July 4 feel. I finished in SW, with EXISTS and then XMAS holding out for a couple of minutes. COD to the radio rock group. Thank you Robert and Guy.
  6. I was on the lookout for more July 4th references after STARS AND STRIPES and INDEPENDENCE DAY, but this turned out to be only a mini-theme rather than a full-blown one. Happy though to see a theme (or Nina) every now and then in The Times / ST.

    I hadn’t come across SATORI though it wasn’t difficult to guess with wordplay and crossers. I know what you mean about getting an answer into your head which blocks out other possibilities and had exactly the same problem with HOME STRAIGHT myself.

    CRYSTAL SET(s) may be “archaic” (as I must be too, as I remember them well!), but they’ve been making a few appearances in crossword land over the past few months along with another old term for a ‘radio’ in the G last week.

    Thanks to setter and blogger and good luck to the Poms (not really a term you associate with European football) tonight.

  7. As an overall comment I can only echo keriothe’s opening sentence. I found the SW corner the trickiest.
    I think my COD goes to OCEANARIUM which was a clever anagram. Plus points to: EXISTS, XMAS, LESSON and ABOARD. Fortunately I saw the 4th of July theme early on.
  8. Thanks to Guy for the pound=fence explanation.

    I didn’t notice it before, but I wonder whether the symmetrical pair of 1 and 11 down is part of the mini-theme. “General store” seems mainly US usage to me, with “village shop” a more likely term here, and “home straight” here is more definitely “home stretch” across the Atlantic.

  9. ….was the logic I used to justify pound at 18A. I think I’ve seen it as a verb before, but couldn’t tell you where.

    I was rattling along quite nicely, but was slowed down by three clues in the SW. When I eventually spotted LESSON (with a groan), EXISTS fell straight away. Obviously my LOI immediately followed — I’ve been tricked by “X = by” far too often. It’s clearly a case of “X marks the blind spot” !

    FOI GLOSS PAINT
    LOI XMAS
    COD STARS AND STRIPES
    TIME 18:14

  10. I enjoyed this puzzle. GLOSS PAINT went in first. DOLOUR was my LOI. XMAS wasn’t long before it, but EXISTS was a big help. OCEANARIUM was also a late answer. No problem with HOME STRAIGHT. 21:34. Thanks Bob and K.
  11. Yup, some clever stuff here indeed, with the usual smooth surfaces. PLETHORA good in that respect but many others. Quite a few where I got the wrong end of the stick to begin with but at least you get the pdm eg realising I had to lift and separate “On notice”; that there is something which is _MAS; that I was looking for a coffee not a thief etc

    Like others thought OCEANARIUM was excellent

    Thanks Keriothe and Robert

  12. But then shouldn’t the solution to 11d have been ‘home stretch’? And ‘general store’ isn’t used in the US anymore. In any case, neither clue relates to the 4th of July.
  13. July Four was hardly celebrated. ‘Fox & Friends’ did a lot better! Just the General Store and Fort 7dn to keep the theme. My COD to OCEANARIUM. I need a 12dn for the Big Night.
  14. Mostly quite doable, with a loss of momentum on the final few. FOI 1ac GLOSS PAINT, then, eventually, the final resistant two of ABOARD and LOI DOLOUR. Nice US 4th of July nods along the way. Overall about 70 minutes. Definitely still in the SCC.
  15. Thanks Bob and keriothe
    The two long crossing clues were first in here, and like others got slowed up getting through the rest. Didn’t properly parse GENERAL STORE, thinking that it was just an unsatisfactory cryptic definition – should have known better !
    Had similar issues with FENCE and ‘pound’ but found that they both me to enclose – still not sure whether they could be interchanged in a sentence. It was the penultimate entry with the clever DECAFF the last one in.
  16. [Apologies for the late comment; the Toronto Star waits 13 days to publish the Sunday Times cryptic.]

    Your parsing for 16a is STAR(SAND, TRIPE)S — but that leaves out the S between SAND and TRIPE. Maybe it should be STAR(SAND)S TRIPES?

    (But can tripe be plural? maybe if one cow produces one tripe, two cows can produce two tripes? Sounds a little odd.)

    Jim Clarke

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