14:14. A tricky and enjoyable puzzle this week from Harry.
There were a couple of clues in here where the use of the past tense threw me, and I wasn’t quite comfortable with it. Conventionally the wordplay in crossword clues is expressed in the present: such and such a word is combined with another, another word has been mixed up. But in both 17ac and 2dn we have the sudden intrusion of the past. In the former, we have ‘can’t put off conservative’ where you would normally see ‘can’t has put off conservative, or ‘can’t with conservative put off’ or similar. In the latter we have ‘old people accepted topless bars’ where a more conventional wording (leaving aside the surface reading) would be ‘accept’, or ‘have accepted’. There’s a similar thing happening in 13ac although I didn’t notice it when solving.
I may well be the only person in the world who is bothered by this, but in the case of 2dn it prevented me from solving the clue for a couple of minutes at the end. What do you think? Is this just me?
Definitions are underlined, anagrams indicated like (TIHS)*, deletions like this, anagram indicators are in italics.
| Across | |
| 1 | Refined Europeans earl initially dismissed |
| POLISHED – POLISH, E, D |
|
| 6 | A rugby player touring Belgium and Britain |
| ALBION – A, L(B)ION. | |
| 9 | Ring Republican leader to get Dole out for trial |
| ORDEAL – O, R |
|
| 10 | Linesmen who lament get less upset, I admitted |
| ELEGISTS – (GET LESS)* containing I. | |
| 11 | Crooked master was first to give class detention |
| MALFORMED – MA, L(FORM)ED. | |
| 13 | Rake in pine shed close to conservatory |
| EARN – remove |
|
| 14 | Cozy and secure in arms of a revolutionary type |
| SNUG – reversal (of revolutionary type) of GUNS. | |
| 15 | Crushing economic crisis making Democrat run |
| REPRESSION – DEPRESSION with the D turned to R. | |
| 17 | Tory tax can’t put off conservative nominee |
| CONTESTANT – CON, TEST, |
|
| 19 | Club bringing off one up front finds advantage |
| EDGE – |
|
| 21 | Charge to cross Thailand’s frontier’s fair |
| FETE – FE(T |
|
| 22 | One who’ll have brush with poor ear doctor |
| DECORATOR – (EAR DOCTOR)*. | |
| 24 | Fish and game |
| SARDINES – DD. | |
| 25 | Dressed and ready to roll? |
| IN GEAR – a definition and a cryptic hint. Although in one sense at least being IN GEAR is supposed to prevent you from rolling! | |
| 27 | Bicycle caught in traffic? |
| PEDDLE – sounds like ‘pedal’. | |
| 28 | One runs Pinter plays in small rep at front |
| SPRINTER – S, (PINTER)*, R |
|
| Down | |
| 2 | Two in eight old people accepted topless bars |
| OARSMEN – O( |
|
| 3 | Diamonds? Spotty types have no need of them! |
| ICE – if DICE (spotty types) dispense with D (diamonds) you get ICE (also diamonds). | |
| 4 | Fresher dwelling (renovated) is clean and freehold |
| HALL OF RESIDENCE – (IS CLEAN FREEHOLD)*. | |
| 5 | Fancy Best missing header with Germany in lead |
| DREAM – D, |
|
| 6 | Breeder and trainer mad about one ultimately? |
| ABERDEEN TERRIER – (BREEDER TRAINER)* containing |
|
| 7 | Sucker I see with low debt in need of doing |
| BOILED SWEET – (I SEE LOW DEBT)*. | |
| 8 | Working with sailor, one heading to oxbow lake |
| ONTARIO – ON, TAR, I, O |
|
| 12 | Window bound to make you vertiginous |
| LIGHT-HEADED – LIGHT (window), HEADED (bound). | |
| 16 | Seed of hope, allegedly |
| PEA – contained in ‘hope allegedly’. | |
| 18 | Work from musical drama extremely tiresome |
| OPERATE – OPERA, T |
|
| 20 | Closely related, but different types of European |
| GERMANE – GERMAN, E. | |
| 23 | Suits and trunks |
| CASES – DD, the first legal. | |
| 26 | Trap in which a mother might find ruin? |
| GIN – a reference to ‘mother’s ruin’. | |
Check 9 across where ‘dole out’ = deal. Many thanks for the blog.
Doh! Thank you Nigel.
I didn’t know how to get ICE, but then I didn’t need to. NHO SARDINES.
I took ‘shed’ in 13ac and ‘put off’ in 17ac as imperatives.
Ah yes good point.
Using past tense this way in clues has always bothered me, and the topic came up among the test solvers for Joshua Kosman and Henri Picciotto last week. But the alternative required deciding between “feature” (for a plural noun) or “features” (for singular) to refer to either the phrase or the words the verb referred to, so maybe that’s why J&H didn’t change it.
This took some time. NHO BOILED SWEET (if memory serves). But my LOI was SARDINES—and the game is not in Collins, Dictionary.com or (even) Chambers.
It’s in ODE sv ‘sardine’.
I was sure it must be somewhere, as I found it via Google.
But that’s not taking into account one of the primary reference sources of Times / Sunday Times crosswords, the Oxford Dictionary of English which not only lists the game but describes how it’s played. It’s also in the COED and SOED. Wikipedia has it under ‘Sardine'(disambiguation) as ‘Children’s game’ which redirects to the Hide and Seek page.
Yeah, it can be found, as I said. But I can look only in dictionaries that I have access to.
Maybe worth investing in a copy, used if necessary. You could also look into subscribing online which I think is priced at around $19 p.a. although that also includes loads of bilingual dictionaries which may or may not be of use to you.
I’m interested SARDINES is not at dictionary.com as I’d have sworn when they took over Lexico (formerly Oxford Dictionary online) some years ago we were told that the dictionary contents were to be merged. I stopped using the site anyway because it became apparent early on that there was no indication as to which entries had come from which source (cf Collins and M-W at Collins online). Perhaps that was because the merging of contents never happened.
As someone who still drives a manual car I forgot to add re 25ac that my interpretation is that one puts the car IN GEAR (ready to roll – drive off) and then raises the clutch to engage the gearbox with the engine.
Yes my comment wasn’t meant as an objection.
I’m surprised you say that. It’s well enough known to the British so didn’t try to look it up. But you are correct. It’s in neither Chambers nor Collins. If I recall correctly, it was the title of one of the early Inside No 9 episodes.
Chambers does surprise me by its omissions, particularly in the Scots department as they no longer publish their Scots dictionary.
The very first episode in which they all had to hide in wardrobe.
Yes, that’s it.
I’m surprised SARDINES isn’t in Collins. I played it a lot as a kid. I wonder if it was once in, but then got dropped. Seems most odd for such a popular form of hide-and-seek.
I didn’t really notice the past tense thing, and can’t say I’m bothered by it. That something happened in the past doesn’t preclude it from happening now. Also, the use is quite seamless, in the sense that it doesn’t jolt the solver. Well, not this one!
47 minutes for this, finishing with CASES, which bamboozled me for no particular reason, apart from the fact I was thinking of swimming trunks for a time.
52 minutes, but I got there and actually enjoyed the ride. Unusually for a puzzle taking me so long I had no queries noted in the margins and only a single working, an anagram circle.
I wasn’t aware of any of the possible tense problems mentioned by the blogger. The clues seem to work perfectly when lifting and separating the various elements of wordplay and imagining one’s own punctuation if necessary to make things clearer. Like Kevin I took ‘shed’ and ‘put off’ as imperative instructions.
I have to ask: who is Harry? Every time keriothe blogs the setter is thus referred to.
David McLean is known as Harry. I think he told us this when he joined the Sunday roster a few years ago.
Yes, Nick_the_Novice introduced him as David (“prefer to be called Harry”) McLean when blogging his first puzzle (ST4675) in January 2016, but I have no idea how this preference came to be communicated to him.
Although David McLean is his real name, Crossword Who’s Who lists a number of aliases he uses, or has used, elsewhere:
As Hoskins he sets for The Independent and contributes to The Magpie, 1Across Magazine, The Cryptic Crossword Ace Android phone app and, formerly, The NADFAS review. As Talos he sets one in four literary-themed cryptic crosswords for The Times Literary Supplement. As Ned he sets giant general knowledge crosswords for Glasgow’s Sunday Herald.
Thanks. I’m a relative newcomer to these puzzles so not aware of the history.
Totally agree about 2dn, k. In 17ac, I wonder if we could read ‘put off’ as an imperative: ‘can’t: [now] put off conservative’.
Great blog; thanks 🙂
Yes Kevin suggested the same thing above, and I think you’re both right. This didn’t occur to me but interestingly 2dn was the only one that actually slowed me down.
Sorry, didn’t spot Kevin’s post!
No probs, great minds think alike 😉
39.22
Struggled with a few of these (BOILED SWEET, here’s looking at you), some for the reasons Keriothe mentions but a fine puzzle nonetheless.
Like keriothe, I thought there was an anagram in ORDEAL and wondered how the mistake could have happened, so thanks for the clarification. Straightforward enough otherwise.
Thanks keriothe and David.
FOI Gin
LOI Earn
COD Malformed
Why in 14ac do we have ‘cozy’? Surely the usual spelling is ‘cosy’. The only ‘cozy’ I have ever seen is the deliberately twee name of a cafe ‘Cozy Corner’. Or am I out of date?
Good point. I don’t know. The usual dictionaries are unanimous in saying that ‘cozy’ is a US spelling.
Liked it a lot (as usual for a Sunday) and fared better than usual, with only 2look-ups. (BOILED SWEET – had forgotten about them, and SARDINES (NHO as a game). Biffed HALL OF RESIDENCE; don’t understand what the D stands for in DREAM (German? Why?) Other than that, a fun ride, with IN GEAR and the clue for OARSMEN standouts.
D – (abbrev) Deutsch – the German word for German (the language).
Thanks David and keriothe
A good puzzle on a Monday for me – not getting a chance over the weekend to start it. Still it took just short of the hour and a half in two sittings to finish and never did see that ‘Dole’ = DEAL part and was waiting for the ‘editor’s error’ to be announced – should’ve known better.
Started with GIN and worked in no set pattern until I ended up in the NE corner with BOILED SWEET, EARN and ALBION the last few in.
In Ireland in the 50s we had Bull’s Eyes, hard liquorice flavoured boiled sweets. I presume the sugar was boiled.