Sunday Times 5124 by Dean Mayer

Author   keriothePosted on Categories Weekend Cryptic

19:03. I found this very hard, and got particularly badly stuck in the NE corner. My main problems were equating ‘put’ with TRANSLATE and ‘break down’ with DIE. This last held me up for ages as the answer looked unlikely and I was concerned there might be an alternative reading. Eventually, when I couldn’t think of one, I submitted with crossed fingers and was a little surprised not to see a pink square.

How did you get on?

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

Across
1 All new flag adopted by diocese
ENTIRELY – E(N, TIRE)LY.
5 Break down fences behind hyrax
DASSIE – D(ASS)IE. To DIE/break down as in an old piece of electrical equipment. A South African word for an animal I’ve never heard of.
10 Polar worker following pipe down underwater bank
SHELF – SH, ELF. A very neat and misleading surface reading.
11 Put one out of school schedule
TRANSLATE – TRAiN, SLATE. A rather loose definition. Edit: it’s not loose at all: TRANSLATE is one of the definitions of ‘put’ in Collins. See the discussion in the comments below.
12 Lecture on servant’s informal period of work
DRESS-DOWN FRIDAY – DRESS DOWN (lecture), (Man) FRIDAY. Now superseded by WFH Friday, for which the uniform is a smart shirt and pyjama bottoms.
13 Great Britain’s fancy clothing lines
BRILLIANT – (BRITAIN)* containing LL.
15 Duck about to eat wrong plant
LUPIN – reversal of NIL containing UP (as in ‘what’s up/wrong with him?’)
16 See non-clergy turning faithful
LOYAL – LO, reversal of LAY.
18 Material set on fire by husband
SACKCLOTH – SACK (fire), CLOT (set), H. Nicely misleading word-order scramble.
20 Liquid runs — it’s the worst consistency?
TRUSTWORTHINESS – (RUNS ITS THE WORST)*.
23 Working on a big new motorhome
WINNEBAGO – (ON A BIG NEW)*.
24 Small ice art
SKILL – S, KILL.
25 Henley activity, outstanding on river
ROWING – R, OWING.
26 Now then, previously
THE NONCE – THEN, ONCE.
Down
1 Relieved to have stopped short of a century
EASED – cEASED.
2 If bad, they would invoke something better
THE DEVIL YOU KNOW – (THEY WOULD INVOKE)*. Very neat anagram!
3 No trouble dropping base in concrete
REFUSAL – RE(FUSs)AL.
4 Latin name for German game
LOTTO – L, OTTO.
6 Southern state, but not Iowa
AUSTRAL – AUSTRALia. There’s a bit of overlap here because the Latin australis is the origin of the name of the country.
7 Rivers, eg, hold water and guide over channels?
STAND-UP COMEDIAN – STAND UP (hold water), CO(MEDIA)N. To ‘con’ means to steer. Not the first comic to come to mind, for me at least.
8 Totally all in?
EVERY INCH – EVERY (all) INCH (In).
9 Trapper in wonderful drawing
MAGNETIC – MAG(NET)IC.
13 One shouts about heading for The Belfry
BELL TOWER – BELL(The)OWER.
14 Once framed by Picasso on a shoestring
AS SOON AS – contained in ‘Picasso on a shoestring’.
17 Wiping memory of article in list
LETHEAN – LE(THE)AN.
19 Red skirts — rip off skirts
CRIMSON – C(RIMS)ON.
21 Sound horn on top of Harley chopper?
TOOTH – TOOT, Harley
22 Very stuck in one crack
SOLVE – SOL(V)E.

36 comments on “Sunday Times 5124 by Dean Mayer”

  1. Similar experience. I had to look up the word clueing DASSIE, which I didn’t know either. “Put” as translate struck me as rather a stretch.

  2. A tough one, even by this setter’s standards, but good fun. My top two were trustworthiness and tooth. ‘Put’ is in fact a primary synonym of translate, so no problem with that – very well disguised as a definition.

    1. I’d be interested to know what dictionary you’re using because ‘put’ isn’t given in any of the usual ones (Collins, ODE, Chambers). Chambers has ‘to put in plainer terms’, but that obviously doesn’t count.

          1. My Oxford Thesaurus of English sv ‘translate’ gives interpret, render, gloss, put, express, convert, change, construe, transcribe, transliterate. ‘translate the paragraph into English/put the paragraph into English’ is OK, I guess.

            1. Yes OK. This is new to me but the OED has specifically ‘to translate or render (speech or writing) in or into another language’, giving the citation (from 1991) ‘such an answer would not have been easy to put into Latin’.

        1. Released!
          Based on previous experience I don’t think Peter Biddlecombe (ST crossword editor) would accept inclusion in a thesaurus list like this as justification on its own.
          Hopefully we’ll hear from him, he often pops in. (He in fact started this blog!)

          2. You’re right – being on the same list in a thesaurus isn’t enough for me. My favourite thesaurus has a warning about this not always meaning that words are true synonyms. I had similar doubts until I thought of the meaning identified here for “put”, though without the aid of the OED, as my freebie library card access seems not to work any more.

            1. PS I’m also reluctant about justifying things with content from multi-volume dictionaries. Render/form/translate is a Collins definition for “put”.

              2. (On the multi-volume dictionaries thing I take your point but this was such a clear and direct equivalence that it would have been good enough for me even without Collins)

  3. I thought Polar worker=Elf was clever, when the PDM came. And Every Inch/ Totally the same. Motorhome was a write-in but put Winna instead of Winne which held me up. Dress-down Friday is usually known as Casual Friday down under but the answer was obvious from Lecture.
    Same thoughts re Dassie and Put for translate. NHO Lethean.
    Thanks setter and K.

  4. NHO DASSIE was my LOI. I knew ‘hyrax’–have a couple of photos of one, even–but couldn’t imagine they had another name. Couldn’t parse 7d; the only Rivers I could think of was Joan, and I assumed someone else was the relevant stand-up. I had “def?” written in at TRANSLATE. Was ‘but’ necessary at 6d? I liked SHELF (pipe down, polar worker), SACKCLOTH, THE DEVIL, inter alia.

    1. I knew dassie from a recent-ish Azed puzzle solution that led me down a youtube rabbit hole (appropriately enough) of videos devoted to them.

  5. After 56 minutes I was left with 5ac unsolved so I decided to look up the unknown ‘hyrax’ to find out what it is and give myself a better chance at it, but unfortunately the dictionary immediately presented me with the answer, DASSIE, so that was that.

    I was a little surprised to find that it came up once before in a standard puzzle, in 2016, when I also didn’t know it but was able to deduce it from friendlier wordplay. As has been mentioned DIE for ‘break down’ is not the first thing that comes to mind and the unsignalled euphemistic Americanese for ‘arse’ did not help either.

    Elsewhere I had missed the wordplay for UP in LUPIN, and CON in COMEDIAN.

    Aside from my failures I enjoyed the puzzle.

    1. Euphemistic? ‘Kiss my ___’ doesn’t strike me as euphemistic with either word inserted.

  6. NE corner completely impenetrable for me – pity as I was doing well up to then. Agree with all the comments about die..ass..con..put..Rivers.
    5a particularly galling- Give us a break!

  7. 38 minutes

    Some excellent anagrams, indeed. DASSIE also LOI.

    Thanks Dean and Keriothe

  8. I also found this very difficult, particularly the NE corner. I had heard of a rock hyrax, but had no idea of any other appellation. In the end I had to look the animal up and then found DASSIE, which, to be fair, I would never have got from the clueing, so a technical DNF. EVERY INCH and STAND-UP were also very hard. In fact, for most of the puzzle, the only word in that corner was AUSTRAL. However, there definitely was a sense of achievement in finally completeing the puzzle over a couple of days.

  9. Had to look up Iowa to be sure of the ia in Austral(ia).
    I was cross about the 5a Dassie, whch I had to look up so DNF.
    Loved Ms Rivers in 7d.
    26a The Nonce was a good answer.

  10. DASSIE: It seems that the ass/arse matter, about which I’m tiresomely pedantic, is moving towards an acceptance in British English that although the word is originally ‘arse’ and ‘ass’ ia an Americanism, we might be on the verge of allowing ‘ass’ for ‘arse’ in British English. Although Collins says ‘in BRIT use arse, …’ it also says that ‘cover one’s ass’ is slang, mainly US and Canadian; which doesn’t rule out British. Chambers is still sticking to its guns, though, and being quite traditionalist.

    My own wish is that setters would indicate the Americanism if using ‘ass’ for ‘arse’.

    1. I don’t feel strongly about the need to indicate it for very common usages like this, but I would definitely say that the UK/US distinction remains. British people simply do not, in my experience, say ‘ass’, and Americans obviously don’t say ‘arse’.

  11. It’s Sunday, it took me 70 minutes, and it was wonderful as always. DIE seemed to be the best choice for “break down”, so I did put in DASSIE (and not LASSIE, for example), despite knowing no more about what a hyrax might be than anyone else. Among the many clues I liked were THE DEVIL YOU KNOW, AUSTRAL, and of course the “polar worker following pipe down” in SHELF.

  12. Very interesting (and helpful) thread of discussion about dictionary definitions vs thesaurus lists.

    I often enjoy looking at the full OED online to see citations/examples of usage. However, I fear that one day I similarly will find that my local authority has stopped the subscription so my library card will no longer work. I’ve wondered whether I should thank my library/local councillor for this facility – but fear that may just alert them to something else they can cut!

  13. I remember doing a bit of googling for dassie and hyrax, it might as well have been snark and boojum as far as I was concerned!
    I can see my LOI was LUPIN, I remember that because I couldn’t see how UP or maybe PU could be “wrong”, thanks for the explanation.

  14. Trying to do this over my morning cuppa ( and while the littlies -kittens – were asleep) forced me to cheat on a few in order to complete it. My story, and I’m sticking to it. Obviously looked up the hyrax, didn’t ‘get’ the UP part of the LUPIN, and being an Aussie (now) I’ve not heard of DRESS DOWN FRIDAY! Thems my excuses. But still enjoyed getting the ones I got, especially THE DEVIL… , THE NONCE and BRILLIANT, and my COD SHELF

  15. Thanks Dean and keriothe
    A very tough assignment from this setter that took just under the 2 hours with much electronic help to fill the grid. Unfortunately it was not without error – AS SOON AS is the first hidden answer clue to have caused an error for me – I had gone with AS POOR AS (‘on a shoestring’) and after coming here to see why – found out that it wasn’t – sad thing was that PACKCLOTH was also a not fully parsed ‘material’.
    Didn’t see past the B (Britain) and the L’s (lines) for the parsing of BRILLIANT and missed the SLATE (‘schedule’) part of TRANSLATE (and not really understanding the ‘put’ definition of that either). Like others was gifted DASSIE when looking up to see what a ‘hyrax’ was.
    Overall, far from my best effort, but even more respect to the clueing gift that Dean has !

  16. Lupin? Feh! I like scaup which is a plant and a duck, with sup meaning to eat and ca meaning circa, about. Can’t see wrong equating to up by any stretch.

  17. That was a toughie I only just got to in my back-log of puzzles. I was trying to make COMEDIAN be COHESION because of water being held, and actually went to Google STAND-UP , when of course STAND-UP comedy came up before other references, and so STAND-UP COMEDIAN clicked, as it would have inevitably anyway after having got STAND-UP via LUPIN (which I was very pleased with). This was probably the hardest puzzle I’ve completed in months. I wish a SNITCH were available. Thanks setter and blogger! The Sunday Times cryptic might well be my favourite.

  18. I can’t be the only one who twigged the (veiled) reference to a notorious TV ‘personality’ at 26 – whose catchphrase was ‘now then, now then’ – surely no coincidence…

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