Sunday Times 4968 by Robert Price

Author   keriothePosted on Categories Weekend Cryptic
14:41. Another excellent puzzle from Robert, with a few tricky bits and pieces but nothing overly taxing.

There are several clues in here that require you to remove either of a pair of the same letters from a word, a fact with absolutely no significance whatsoever.

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

Across
1 Find, perhaps, TV vets brainier somehow
TRANSITIVE VERB – (TV VETS BRAINER)*. An answer that gives a huge number of opportunities for a well-disguised definition by example!
10 Adult party including wine periodically
GROWN-UP – GRO(WiNe)UP.
11 Traveller turned fighter, nursing right cheek
PILGRIM – reversal of MI(R)G, LIP.
12 Tests restricting university to smaller lessons
TUTORIALS – T(U, TO)RIALS. Smaller than lectures.
13 Rubbish outing ending in Crewe
TRIPE – TRIP, crewE.
14 Lacking a purpose or a meaning
ADRIFT – A, DRIFT.
15 Asks how to order paper?
INQUIRES – or IN QUIRES. A quire is 24 or 25 sheets of paper, and a twentieth of a ream.
18 Female assumes restraint, taking male on holiday
HALF TERM – HAL(F)TER, M.
20 One found next to China (on northeast)
NEPALI – NE, PAL, I. I can’t quite say this is an &Lit because if the whole clue is the definition it’s wrong.
23 Bid from any, hearts, spades or clubs
IRONS – middle letters (hearts) of bId, fROm, aNy, S (spades). I put SUITS in here initially, thinking vaguely that a bid can be a suit. Very clever clue.
25 Old piece of fluff among fine tufts of wool
FLINTLOCK – F(LINT)LOCK. Flock is ‘very small tufts of wool applied to fabrics, wallpaper, etc, to give a raised pattern’. I vaguely knew this but when solving thought it was F for fine and then something to do with hair.
26 Soldier’s account holding nothing back
TROOPER – reversal of REPO(O)RT, or possibly REP(O)ORT.
27 Row about uniform with black beret originally and less trim
TUBBIER – T(U, B, Beret)IER.
28 Diversions go into ruins to skirt labourers
ENTERTAINMENTS – ENTER, TAIN(MEN)TS.
Down
2 Chicken and duck roll sandwiches
ROOSTER – RO(O)STER or R(O)OSTER.
3 Uncommercial name for mostly tinpot organisation
NON-PROFIT – (N, FOR, TINPOt).
4 Batting, have fun as a ball is being bowled
IN PLAY – IN (batting), PLAY (have fun). At the moment a ball is bowled in cricket it is IN PLAY. It starts to be such when the bowler starts his or her run-up, and becomes a dead ball when it is returned to the wicket keeper or bowler.
5 August, time to be disrobed and showing off
IMPOSING – tIMe, POSING.
6 Celebrity shown up by brutal censors
ECLAT – contained reversed in ‘brutal censors’. I was a bit surprised by this definition, since to me ECLAT means great success, rather than celebrity. The Lexico definition includes ‘social distinction’ in its definition, as does the OED, which is fairly close.
7 Foregoing a title that is meeting resistance
EARLIER – EARL, IE, R.
8 Jokey labels stuck behind a ship when keeping watch?
BUMPER STICKERS – BUM (behind), PER (a), S(TICKER)S.
9 A writer’s saga: thrice a hit novel
AGATHA CHRISTIE – (SAGA THRICE A HIT)*.
16 Not to be scoffed at, a French expert’s clothing
UNEATABLE – UNE(AT), ABLE.
17 Following the set way for meetings to keep minutes
PRO FORMA – PRO, FOR(M)A.
19 Sentry wrong to support King John at the front
LOOKOUT – LOO (John), K, OUT (wrong). Slightly odd wordplay here, with both vertical (support) and horizontal (at the front) positional indicators in close proximity.
21 Lover in love with Romeo, in a haze
AMORIST – A M(O, R)IST.
22 Silent comic making you pay attention
LISTEN – (SILENT)*.
24 Meal reduced by 1p. Great!
SUPER – SUPpER or SUpPER.

20 comments on “Sunday Times 4968 by Robert Price”

  1. Fairly gentle one from Robert, although I failed to see ‘comic’ as anagrind until after submitting. DNK FLOCK. No problem with ECLAT, as I took ‘celebrity’ to be the state not the person. CODs to BUMPER STICKERS (although they aren’t necessarily jokey) and IRONS. (My favorite bumper sticker, a response to the countless ‘I [heart](NY or whatever)’ was one that said ‘I [spade] my dog’.)
      1. Offhand, I’d say it’s because they’re stuck on bumpers, not fenders; is this another hood/bonnet type UK/US difference?
        1. Oh, sorry, i thought fender was the US term for what we call bumpers.
          So does Collins:
          “The fender of a car is a bar at the front or back that protects the car if it bumps into something.
          [US]regional note: in BRIT, use bumper”
          1. This definition is from COBUILD: somewhat confusingly these entries always come first on the online Collins site but they aren’t the dictionary proper: you have to scroll down to get those. In this case neither (English or American) has the ‘bumper’ meaning.
            1. COBUILD is a dictionary for non-native learners of English. I finally noticed that the first of the online entries was from COBUILD a couple of months ago, when the unnaturally un-dictionarylike easy-to-read phraseology of the definition struck me (see ‘fender’, in Jerry’s posting).
  2. Nice trick, and smooth meld with the surface.

    Edited at 2021-08-22 01:18 am (UTC)

  3. Done in 44 minutes. Geopolitics is not one of my strong points but looking it up, Tibet, which is an “autonomous region of China” according to the Chinese, is ‘on northeast’ of NEPAL and therefore one of its inhabitants a NEPALI, so you could maybe argue that 20a is an &lit/all-in-one. Many Tibetans and the “Free Tibet” movement though would obviously disagree for reasons which have nothing to do with the parsing of a crossword clue.

    I had the same experience with FLINTLOCK as our blogger and couldn’t parse it properly. I liked BUMPER STICKERS (and the example given by Kevin above). My favourite was the clever misdirection of the wordplay in IRONS.

    Thanks to setter and keriothe

  5. Good straightforward puzzle (42:55) but now with an unexpected complexity at 20ac. Why is it “wrong” as an &lit? It’s it the Tibet issue? I’m with bletchleyreject on that. Or something else? My first thought was that Nepal is Southwest, not northeast, but northeast is OK.
    My WOD is SPADE; thank you Kevin

    Edited at 2021-08-22 07:14 am (UTC)

    1. My point is that Nepal is south-west of China (leaving aside the geopolitical controversy). I guess the use of brackets is trying to make us read ‘on northeast’ as applying to China rather than the Nepali but for me it doesn’t quite work.
      1. Me too, I got the point, but wasn’t completely there for an &lit due to the grammar
  6. ….”PER”. As usual, a quality puzzle from Robert. I only parsed the very clever IRONS after the dust had settled.

    FOI GROWN-UP
    LOI PILGRIM
    COD INQUIRES
    TIME 12:36

  7. My thought processes for this puzzle have faded into the mists of time after a hectic week. I’ve also just packed for an overnight stay in Louth for our society’s annual golf weekend driver (Sun/Mon) so have just checked in to see how we all got on last Sunday and do today’s Concise before heading off and hoping the traffic is light. I finished this puzzle in 32:47. Liked PILGRIM and IRONS. Thanks Bob and K.
  8. Half an hour on this lovely puzzle with LOI LISTEN. Earlier, I’d biffed KEATON as the silent comic. and it was only the FLINTLOCK that made me go back and listen. We don’t seem to have BUMPER STICKERS much in the UK and that took some constructing. Some of the start-ups I worked with in the latter stages of my career were NON-PROFIT organisations, which was a bit of a shame for the investors. COD to ADRIFT. Thank you Robert and K.
  9. Managed to finish this but it took me a long time. I was another KEATON fan and FLINTLOCK was my LOI.
    Could not parse IRONS and now see how clever it is.
    My father used to say Tripe (meaning rubbish) a lot and his brother lived in Crewe.
    An enjoyable challenge for me.
    David
  10. A very enjoyable work-out with clever but completely fair clueing. My FOI 15ac INQUIRES made me smile. Having said that, LOI 23ac was a punt: could be IDOLS, ICONS, IRONS. I couldn’t figure out the wordplay but plumped for IRONS because at least that references “clubs”. And I wasn’t keen on UNEATABLE as a word. Thanks to blogger and setter.
  11. Odd one

    Finished all but PILGRIM and the first word of BUMPER STICKERS in 12 mins then gave up after failing to make progress after half an hour had elapsed.

    I wasn’t sure that the stickers were a thing and completely missed the clever “behind a” parsing. As for the traveller I wanted a reversed REP in there; did think of MIG but as we know once a period of brain freeze has passed it can be difficult to recover.

    I did parse IRONS which was very good (as was the puzzle as a whole)

    Thanks Keriothe and Robert

  12. the left half tumbled in for me — I saw a couple of the tricky ones right off — but the right side, especially Pilgrim for some reason — took a while. Thanks Robt & keriothe
  13. Thanks Bob and keriothe

    Was able to do this in a single session in just under the hour on a cold rainy Sunday down here. Starting off with GROWN-UP was able to finish off the NW corner quite quickly and then clockwise around the grid to finish in the SW with TROOPER, HALF-TERM and LOOKOUT the last few in. Didn’t parse TUTORIALS although it had to be.
    Actually thought that NEPALI was the clue of the day – and did have it as an &lit with a citizen living in the NE certainly found next to China.

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