Sunday Times 5134 by Robert Price

Author   keriothePosted on Categories Weekend Cryptic

6:59. A gentle one from Robert this week, but none the less enjoyable for that, and a couple of amusingly naughty references to liven things up a bit.

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

Across
1 Increasingly enthusiastic Xbox fan?
GAMER – DD.
4 Overcomes trick question, not finishing second
CONQUERS – CON, QUERy, S.
10 Unveils rump beef, topped in liquor
MOONSHINE – MOONS (unveils rump), cHINE. Tee hee! Edit: or rather wHINE. See comments.
11 Chuck out refuse right away
EJECT – rEJECT.
12 Detectives limiting corruption on a vessel
CAROTID – C(A, ROT)ID.
14 Tinier moves by a sloth
INERTIA – (TINIER)*, A.
15 Muppet series holds place for a movie star
CHARLIE CHAPLIN – CHARLIE (muppet), CHA(PL)IN.
18 Theatre worker’s final photo captures Rush performing
PLASTIC SURGEON – P(LAST)IC, SURGE, ON. There’s an implied ‘which’ between ‘final’ and ‘photo’.
20 A draw stopped by Bath’s third try
ATTEMPT – A, T(baTh)EMPT.
22 Area by A&E bandaging diseased body parts
AXILLAE – A (area), X(ILL), AE. X here indicated by ‘by’. The armpits.
23 Change something for PM to succeed
AMEND – PM succeeds (follows) the end of AM.
24 Bumpy land due to rocks
NODULATED – (LAND DUE TO)*.
26 Bury journalist covers hotel going bust?
IN THE RED – INT(H)ER, ED.
27 Cardigan’s show of indifference
SHRUG – DD.
Down
1 Trained fighter’s school tip to conserve energy
GAMECOCK – GAM(E), COCK.
2 Low humour scraping the bottom
MOO – MOOd.
3 On foot, start to search for homes elsewhere
RESETTLES – RE (on), SETTLE (foot as in pay), Search.
5 Two from three bedside tables, the other not repeated
ONE-NIGHT STANDS – ONE (two from three), NIGHT STANDS. Cheeky!
6 Audibly signal waiters, one after the other
QUEUE – sounds like ‘cue’.
7 Fish chosen with a side dish by the Spanish
ELECTRIC EEL – ELECT, RICE, EL.
8 Driving instructor put vehicle in reverse
SATNAV – SAT, reversal of VAN.
9 Sort of race Le Mans did, cited in translation
MIDDLE DISTANCE – (LE MANS DID CITED)*.
13 Army corps plot to cultivate rationing again
REALLOTMENT – RE (army corps), ALLOTMENT.
16 Bits regularly itch inside plaster cast
PARTICLES – ItCh contained in (PLASTER)*.
17 One unlikely to win less than Harry
UNDERDOG – UNDER (less than), DOG (harry).
19 Expedition is turning round a long way off
SAFARI – IS reversed and containing AFAR.
21 Wingless little insect
MIDGE – sMIDGEn.
25 Salt flat around harbours (3)
TAR – contained in ‘flat around’.

23 comments on “Sunday Times 5134 by Robert Price”

  1. 10ac. Could “beef” be “whine” as in complain(t), grumble? I believe if the animal is not specified, “chine” is taken to be pig/pork, as in “Lincolnshire stuffed chine” etc.

    2. No reference to species in the Collins definition. First, it’s any backbone, and then it’s “the backbone of an animal with adjoining meat, cut for cooking.” But Chambers has, parenthetically, “esp of a pig.” Then again, a glossary of terms in The Diary of Samuel Pepys—
      https://www.pepysdiary.com/encyclopedia/1705/
      —defines the word as « The so called “chine bone” of a cow, as understood by a modern butcher, is the backbone in general, or the large half-round section of bone at the edge of a T-bone steak. Even more specifically “chine bone” is used to refer to excess backbone, which can be rather large and is usually trimmed from a loin. »

    3. Thanks Peter and others, I think you’re probably right. I didn’t think twice about it when solving but ‘chine’ is an unindicated definition by example, whereas ‘whine’ isn’t.

  2. I had (have) some trouble with SAT for “put,” rather than SET. FWIW, the latter is listed as a “strongest match” for PUT at Thesaurus.com but “sit” doesn’t appear there at all.

    1. How about, say, ‘The artist sat/put the model at the table, holding a pear’? where ‘sit’ is a causative?

      1. Sure. And that did occur to me, come to think of it. It would seem odd to me if someone said they “sat” the pear there.

  3. 15:29
    Probably as fast as I’ve ever done one of Robert’s. I couldn’t parse CHARLIE CHAPLIN, not knowing that muppet=Charlie. Also DNK SHRUG, but didn’t have to. Loved the naughty clues, especially MOONSHINE & ONE-NIGHT STANDS.

  4. 37 minutes. I parsed ‘beef’ as ‘chine’ at 10ac because I knew it as a cut of meat and assumed it was beef, but if ‘whine’ had occurred to me I suspect I would have gone for that simply because it’s a common word whereas ‘chine’ is less so. Having now read the comments and researched definitions of chine I think that ‘whine’ is a better fit by far.

  5. chine/whine: I also solved from “chine”, and convinced myself that “chine of beef” was more common than other choices, before looking at Robert’s notes and seeing “whine”

    sat and put: the Collins online thesaurus content says
    “to cause (someone) to rest in such a position” before listing “sit” synonyms, but then has this example: She found her chair and sat it in the usual spot

    1. I also didn’t think twice about sat/put. To sit an object on top of another, or amongst others, etc, just seemed like a perfectly common and natural construction.

      1. A search of Google Books for “sat it on the” finds numerous examples involving objects rather than people, many from books too old to have been written by bots.

        1. I wasn’t saying the example was written by a bot(!), only that the example for that definition, which includes the parenthetical “someone,” does not match it—a discrepancy I see often in lists of examples in online dictionaries (which are upfront about how these examples are collected).

  6. As usual quite lovely, although in this one I had two very mild criticisms: GAME appears in both 1ac and 1dn, which I thought was unworthy of Bob’s usual elegance. And to call rice a side dish (7dn) seems a bit odd. Isn’t a side dish normally something separate from the main dish, like a side salad? I thought ONE-NIGHT STANDS was magnificent.

    1. I would call the rice that you have with a curry a side dish, and so does my local takeaway!

  7. Really enjoyed this one, especially the “game of conkers” on the top line! FWIW I parsed 10ac as whine – never thought of chine.

  8. It’s Sunday again, and so the puzzle is superb, as Robert’s and David’s always are. I took 31 minutes today, so it was somewhat easier than usual, but still with wonderfully misleading clues. Of course ONE-NIGHT STANDS was one of the particularly good ones, but I also liked SATNAV as a driving instructor (and many more).

  9. Did marginally better than usual for a Sunday, and was happy to get two of the longer ones right away: ONE-NIGHT STANDS and MIDDLE DISTANCE, but was unhappy to miss CHARLIE CHAPLIN, as I was looking for a Muppet with a double name, like “Chappie-chappie” or somesuch that I’d not heard of (due to the crossers I had)! Among many others, I also liked PLASTIC SURGEON and SATNAV and CAROTID (I’m now more aware of “vessel” often being a vein or artery). Not aware of having seen CHINE before, and I didn’t solve that clue, but it was a goodun. So a good workout for me.

  10. Thanks Robert and keriothe
    A single sitting solve across 52 minutes to get this one out with the only hiccup was initially writing UNDULATED in at 25a after not looking at the anagram fodder closely enough – quickly fixed with the MIDDLE DISTANCE race soon afterwards.
    Like others, I thought the ONE-NIGHT STAND was a classic and plenty of other very good clues as well. Finished in the NW corner with MOONSHINE (grinned at the wordplay), GAMECOCK (another clever clue) and CAROTID the last one in.

  11. Got a slow start on this one, then really gathered pace once critical mass had been reached. AXILLAE and CAROTID were tricky, as was ONE-NIGHT STANDS. Guessed a CHARLIE must be a MUPPET. Excellent puzzle – thanks to Robert and Keriothe.

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