Sunday Times 4964 by Dean Mayer – filibustered

Author   keriothePosted on Categories Weekend Cryptic
19:51. I found this one tricky, with lots of creative clues as we’ve come to expect from this setter, and more importantly a few things for us to debate: is this a ridiculous obscurity, is that a completely off-the-wall definition. The sort of thing that keeps us nerds entertained on a Sunday.

Given how tricky I found it I found this one remarkably quick to write up: with a few exceptions the clues are very simple. Either this is a fine example of the setter’s art or I was just being a bit dim last week. Be sure to let me know which it was.

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

Across
1 Weapon not used at the front?
SIDEARM – CD.
5 Being tight, your dresses split
THRIFTY – TH(RIFT)Y.
9 Maybe touch is awkward for anyone single
LAY ONES FINGER ON – (FOR ANYONE SINGLE)*. I’m not sure what the word ‘maybe’ is doing here.
10 Sold grass, keeping in shadow
RETAILED – RE(TAIL)ED.
11 Moral code set out for gathering here in Rome
ETHICS – HIC (here in Latin) contained in (SET)*.
13 Staff of American Express
CANE – contained in ‘American Express’.
14 Name a performer in band (singer)
TINA TURNER – TI(N, A, TURN)ER.
17 Authorities push for utility increase
POWER SURGE – POWERS, URGE.
18 Blood? Good Lord
KING – KIN, G.
20 Hard skin? Please get in touch
CALLUS – CALL US.
21 Certified waste parts for old chemical company
OFFICIAL – OFFAL (waste) parts (is split) for (in order to let in) ICI (old chemical company).
23 Catch a misfit
A FISH OUT OF WATER – two definitions, one of which is more literal but not a recognisable idiom.
24 Plan made by soldier among other soldiers
REGIMEN – RE(GI), MEN.
25 Take another line after Mike cuts back
REMARRY – RE(M)AR, RY (railway, line).
Down
1 Top US sporting figure
SALARY CAP – CD. Some US sports (and Rugby League in the UK) have a system of salary caps, which restricts the total amount clubs can pay their players, thereby ensuring a greater share of the economic pie for the owners.
2 A rural speciality — baked waffle?
DRY STONE WALLING – DRY (baked), STONEWALLING. To me STONEWALLING means saying nothing: waffling to the same effect is filibustering. Similar ideas though.
3 A loose relative
AUNTIE – A, UNTIE.
4 I’ll be critical about time needed for cryptic
MYSTERIOUS – MY, S(T)ERIOUS. I’ll be = blimey = my.
5 Cotton on small piece of wood
TWIG – DD.
6 Just horrible, not fine
RIGHTFUL – fRIGHTFUL.
7 One MP’s interfering, so I’m off
FOREIGN MINISTER – (INTERFERING SO IM)*. Not necessarily: Alec Douglas-Home and Peter Carrington, for instance, served in this role from the Lords. A more recent innovation has been to award the position to certifiable half-wits.
8 That is the female version of lingams
YONIS – YON, IS. In Hinduism YONI are the female genetalia, the male counterpart being lingam. I didn’t know that, so had to rely on the wordplay and cross my fingers.
12 Go to Scotland, leaving our radical group
GANG OF FOUR – GANG (go in Scotland), OFF (leaving), OUR. The definition suggests the Chinese revolutionary communists rather than the founders of the SDP.
15 As one appears in lounges, often?
REGULARLY – ONE appears as every other letter (REGULARLY) in ‘lounges’.
16 Old car cleaner, you might say
BROUGHAM – sounds like ‘broom’, allegedly. A name for a horse-drawn carriage but also an obsolete term for ‘a large car with an open compartment at the front for the driver’ (Collins).
19 A shelter’s removable locks crop up
WIGWAM – WIG (removable locks), reversal of MAW (crop).
20 See a musical’s MC
CHAIR – C (see), HAIR.
22 Damage ladder one’s carried
RUIN – RU(I)N.

21 comments on “Sunday Times 4964 by Dean Mayer – filibustered”

  1. I didn’t parse the “waffle” part for DRY STONE WALL, and forgot to investigate further. Found 15 a nice trick. Maybe I’ll have more to say when someone proffers a bone of contention, of which I have none. I knew YONI, but then I used to know a couple who called themselves Vajra and Padme. (It was the New Age in Mount Airy, Philadelphia.)

    Edited at 2021-07-25 03:47 pm (UTC)

    1. G. D. Vajra is a very long-standing, traditional and excellent producer of Barolo, but I assume your friend was referring to something else 😉
      1. Indeed. To be explicit… Vajra means both thunderbolt (or god-wielded weapon) and diamond, and Padme is “lotus blossom,” as in the chant “Om Mani Padme Hum”: “the jewel is in the lotus.”
  2. Dimness played its part for me, anyway, with my LOI being CANE. No problem with STONE WALLING; for me, it can be evasiveness as well as saying nothing. YONIS was something of a gimme (as well as a surprise), given the definition, and, of course, given knowledge of the words. Rather an odd definition, though; never thought of the one as a version of the other. Liked REMARRY, THRIFTY, RETAILED inter alia.
  3. 35 minutes for all but 1dn which I looked up as I assumed (not unreasonably) that it would be be some term from US sport that I would not know. I can’t say for sure now whether I got as far as top = CAP, but probably did. Not sure I’d claim it as an unfair clue but it certainly wasn’t a helpful one. You’ll either know of the answer or not, and if you don’t there’s nowhere much to go with it.
  4. Only finished after 55 minutes of head scratching. I didn’t see the anagram on 9a , which I guessed quite late from crossers, or parse REGULARLY. I looked up the unknown YONIS and then realised how it worked. SALARY CAP is perhaps more in use in US franchise leagues than here, but I had no problem with that. One applies in the Leagues 1 and 2 of the English Football League. I usually enjoy Dean’s puzzles. so the fault must be mine. Thank you to him and K.

    Edited at 2021-07-25 06:41 am (UTC)

  5. ….YONIS, didn’t associate “waffle” with STONEWALLING (“filibustering” describes it better but is not common in the Yorkshire Dales), and wasn’t on Dean’s wavelength for quite a number of clues really. Maybe it isn’t just you BW !

    FOI THRIFTY
    LOI TWIG (I didn’t cotton on !)
    COD BROUGHAM
    TIME 15:52 but with one aid)

  6. “Maybe” in 9A was an editorial addition, as the meaning of “lay one’s finger on” in the dictionaries is “identify or locate”, and phrases with “touch” as a recorded meaning involve a whole hand.
    1. Thanks Peter, that makes sense. There’s also ‘lay a finger on’, which has another completely different meaning!

      Edited at 2021-07-25 09:43 am (UTC)

    2. Far be it from me to question your editorial judgement, Peter, but to me it seems odd that you are so incredibly careful over the lay one’s finger on definition, whereas Dean’s crosswords always contain definitions and things in the wordplay where the connection is no greater than this. For example we have MC = chair; regimen = plan; lord = king; moral code = ethics; dresses as an inclusion indicator; of as a hidden indicator; and no doubt more. I expect many of these can be justified, but slight stretching of things seems to be part of the deal with Dean.

      Edited at 2021-07-26 09:42 am (UTC)

  7. I didn’t think this was one of Dean’s best. It left me with seven queries, only two of which keriothe has cleared up here. All those queries came in the down clues. I can now see SALARY CAP and REGULARLY but the others persist:
    2d: To stonewall is not to waffle.
    4d: I’ll be = blimey = my?? That is too far fetched for me.
    12d: I don’t see how OUR fits in.
    16d: Lexico says brougham is pronounced brew-em. Too far fetched to say it sounds like broom, for me.
    Unsurprisingly my two CODs come from the across clues:
    REMARRY and CALLUS.
    1. 4d: can’t see the problem. “I’ll be” (often “well I’ll be”) is an expression of surprise that’s perfectly familiar to me.
      12d: OUR indicates… OUR.
      16d: Collins gives two pronunciations, one of which is brew-em, the other broom.

      Edited at 2021-07-25 09:49 am (UTC)

  8. I had to work at this one. I confess to checking YONIS and BROUGHAM after deriving them from wordplay. The latter was my LOI. I did enjoy the battle in a masochistic sort of way. 47:18. Thanks Dean and K.
  9. To answer our blogger’s question, it’s hard to put your finger on whether this is a very good puzzle or not. I would never write “Lay one’s finger on” but I did in the answer to 9a.
    I found this puzzle very tough; just 6 solved in my first hour. But I was enjoying it enough to keep going and finally finished in a burst on Monday morning.
    LOI REGIMEN after CALLUS. Liked BROUGHAM. Guessed YONIS from the clue.
    And all correct in the end so a satisfying result. No ridiculous obscurities (because they were indicated by the cryptic); the odd eyebrow raise.
    David
  10. Oh, this one was sneaky! Could visualise Dean Mayer’s glee as he composed each clue. Clever. However, completed in two sessions totalling 90 minutes. Hardly speedy but at least I made it. FOI 12d GANG OF FOUR. LOI 14ac TINA TURNER. Thoroughly enjoyable, and almost everything made sense, though didn’t quite work out the how of REGULARLY….Thanks, blogger.
  11. My last two days have been turned upside down by typhoon In-Fa.
    A feng-shui festival.

    FOI 3dn AUNTIE

    LOI 1dn SALARY CAP

    OMG 20dn CHAIR

    COD 2dn DRY STONE WALLING which I attempted last week!

    WOD 14ac TINA TURNER steamy windows!

    Edited at 2021-07-25 06:25 pm (UTC)

  12. I laboured long over this one, the intersecting CDs at 1 causing most stress, as sometimes happens when there’s no confirming wordplay. Salary capping surely goes on outside sport in general, not just American sport.
    And while I couldn’t put my finger on quite why, LAY felt more like something you did with the whole hand. Still, never mind.
  13. Thanks Dean and keriothe
    Was indeed a toughie taking over the hour and a half to get done across several sittings and over a couple of days.
    Got off to a good start and then immediately didn’t help things by writing in an unparsed OVERARM at 1a, which didn’t get corrected until very near the end. Was surprised to see SALARY CAP marked as a US term – it is widely used here, especially in the football world. YONIS / lignams were new terms.
    Finished up in the NW corner – fixing up SIDEARM, that SALARY CAP and DRY STONE WALLING the last few in.

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