Sunday Times 5136 by Dean Mayer

13:00, but with an error at 18ac due to a lack of the requisite knowledge. No complaints from me though, hard to argue that a city of 4m people which is the capital of its country is not fair game. The usual fun stuff from Dean here.

How did you get on?

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

Across
1 Who’s put out about a boxer?
SOUTHPAW – (WHOS PUT)* containing A.
6 Laugh producing hot air? Shame
GUFFAW – GUFF, AW{wwwww}!
9 No soldiers as standard
NORM – NO, RM.
10 Wash petticoat, then burn
SLIPSTREAM – SLIP, STREAM.
11 Met person with the other paper round
WEATHER PROPHET – W, (THE OTHER PAPER)*. I’ve never heard this term, and it’s not in Collins or ODE. Chambers has it but defined as ‘someone who foretells the weather’. I’m not sure that’s how the Met Office would describe their work!
12 Lechers, years later, didn’t play
SATYRS – SAT, YRS. I’m not sure if there’s anything more specific to this than the fact that if you’re sitting you are not, in many cases, playing. Doesn’t really apply to chess, for instance.
14 Cook over fire, almost tough
RIGOROUS – RIG, O, ROUSe
16 One island, rocky, but not a dangerous place
LIONS DEN – (ONE ISLaND)*.
18 Capital hoax, a stunning blow
BAMAKO – BAM, A KO. I’d never heard of either BAM or the city, so the best I could do was BUMAKO.
20 To a poet’s side?
MASHED POTATOES – a reverse cryptic where POTATOES ‘mashed’ gives TO A POET’S.
23 Wanting, during contest, to cross line
INCOMPLETE – IN, COMP(L)ETE.
24 Put down hospital food
DISH – DIS, H.
25 Somewhat dry quarry walls
PRETTY – PRE(TT)Y.
26 Disorder offended tramp, it’s said
SYNDROME – sounds like ‘sinned roam’.
DOWN
2 Region of oxygen gas
OZONE – O ZONE.
3 Growing up, miss your old man?
TIMOTHY – reversal (growing up) of OMIT, THY.
4 Had to be mad
POSSESSED – DD.
5 Cheeky kids steal a fish
WHIPPERSNAPPERS – WHIP, PER, SNAPPERS.
6 Energy making one blow one’s top
GUSTO – GUST, One.
7 More aid
FURTHER – DD.
8 It’s easy killing one immobile deer
A FAST BUCK – A, FAST, DEER.
13 Where Turkey is while I’m visiting Oregon
ASIA MINOR – AS, I AM IN OR. One day I will find the time to visit the Willamette Valley.
15 One we get to deploy around start of brawl?
GO-BETWEEN – (ONE WE GET)* containing Brawl. &Lit.
17 Discover how to subtly get in the way?
NOSE OUT – two definitions, one mildly cryptic referring to nudging your way into slow-moving traffic.
19 Gypsy hiding facts about killer
MATADOR – reversal of RO(DATA)M.
21 Held in contempt, yet free
EMPTY – contained in ‘contempt yet’.
22 Course of training upset a few but not all
EPSOM – reversal of PE, SOMe.

27 comments on “Sunday Times 5136 by Dean Mayer”

  1. I knew BAMAKO, which was a good thing, as I certainly didn’t know BAM. NHO WEATHER PROPHET. DNK WHIP. I especially liked MASHED POTATOES & LOI TIMOTHY.

  2. I think “weather prophet” is an old phrase, but a Google search for it suggests that it still has some life. My first memory of it is from an old LP called Beecham in Rehearsal, which is on Youtube, in a spell when the sound of rain on a roof was delaying a recording. It’s at about 22 minutes in.

  3. Very enjoyable puzzle and the usual head scratchers that Dean usually serves up. NHO GUFF in GUFFAW, but with the checkers it was gettable for laugh. WEATHER PROPHET took some time. NHO BAMAKO or BAM for hoax, but once I had AKO and the other checkers it was a one-in-five chance. Loved MASHED POTATOES, and still do! Very clever. Like the misdirection in A FAST BUCK using immobile to indicate fast. Liked THY for ‘your old’ in TIMOTHY.

  4. 1 hour. I had one error, the same as our blogger’s at 18ac, an answer that has never appeared in a puzzle in the TfTT era clued with an obscurity in the wordplay.

    I had no idea what the wordplay was supposed to be in SATYR – didn’t play = SAT? Really?

    WEATHER PROPHET was new to me too, but I think equating weather forecasting with the Met Office is fair enough as that’s how most people first become aware of their activities.

    1. I’m curious as to how many of us will have known BAM. Collins dates it back to the 18th century, but so far none of us has come across it. I knew the name, so it was a gimme for me; but otherwise BEM-, BIM-, BOM-, BUM- would seem just as likely.
      I didn’t give SAT a thought at the time–I may have thought of ‘sat out’–but it seems less and less satisfactory as I think about it: plenty of soccer/football/volleyball/ baseball players stand when not playing, card players sit while playing, baseball players not at bat may well sit. And I don’t think one would say, e.g. Smith sat (for) the 2d quarter/inning.

      1. Georgette Heyer readers will know bam as a verb. “Are you bamming me” etc. Probably the origine of Bamboozle.

        1. Great fan of Georgette Heyer – read them all – but as it was over sixty years ago, ‘bam’ seems to have been lost – perhaps time for a refresh? She remains my source for all sorts of horse-drawn transport.
          Of course I knew Bamako from ‘Taxi Bamako’ by the great Amadou and Mariam (why doesn’t everyone?) – ‘On y va! Je suis le plus rapide!’ – so entered it with equanimity.

      1. Having read the Wiktionary entry posted by Andyf below, I see that the definition of WEATHER PROPHET is more precise than I had thought, in which case I now understand why the Met Office might not like being described in such terms. I imagined it was just a slang, possibly humorous term for weather forecasters in general. A question mark at the end of the clue might have made a difference.

    2. Common usage in sports – “George irritated the manager, so he sat for a couple games.”

  5. I enjoyed this. No complaints with the puzzle, but one major one with my typing as it entered FURHHER into the online submission. Made a similar blunder with last Saturday’s.

    MASHED POTATOES was fun.

  6. DNF, defeated by the unknown BAMAKO (like keriothe I put ‘Bumako’) and SATYR.

    Despite not getting the latter, I’ve no problem with sat=didn’t play – it’s common in US sports. In the NFL, a quarterback who has just been drafted might ‘sit’ for a year or more, i.e. watch and hopefully learn from a team’s established quarterback, before they get their chance to play (Aaron Rogers did it at the start of his career, for example).

    – Slightly surprised to learn the term WEATHER PROPHET actually exists
    – Not familiar with NOSE OUT
    – Didn’t know whip=steal for WHIPPERSNAPPERS

    Thanks keriothe and Dean.

    COD Lions den

  7. 45 DNF

    Absolutely hated MASHED POTATOES until I finally got it when it revealed itself as a cracker!

    Tough going here. Finally ran out of steam failing to think of SATYRS and not knowing what to do with “didn’t play”. That also meant TIMOTHY was ungettable for me as a proper name didn’t occur. Rather a good clue that. Also had BUMAKO.

    Thanks Dean and Keriothe

  8. I’m not going to submit on a Sunday without checking whether my attempt at a obscure place name obscurely clued is correct, so if that’s regarded as cheating I’ll pay more attention to the priest’s absolution this morning than usual! In a guessing game, I would have settled on BUMAKO being a) more likely sounding and b) more embarrassing for the inhabitants. I was already struggling, because this one took me over the 30 minute mark.
    I couldn’t even, as is my wont when hearing of unfamiliar places, take a virtual stroll through Bamako: Google’s little camera car hasn’t been there yet!

  9. Like others, I had problems with 18a. As soon as I saw that it would end with AKO, I knew that it must be Bamako – because, to place-drop, I have been there. I took the train from Dakar to Bamako, and when I got there I found that there were no hotel rooms available, so I slept on the station platform. This was in 1969, so I was at the age when one does that sort of thing. But I couldn’t understand BAM, and had to take it on faith, as there could surely be no other capital which would fit.

    1. Wow, I’m impressed. I don’t recall Michael Portillo or Chris Tarrant showing that trip for their TV programmes.

  10. Just finished this and after a very long time a fail with the same mistake at 18a as a few others. I didn’t know the ‘Capital’ city or BAM for ‘hoax’ so it was never going to be more than a guess.

    I liked WEATHER PROPHET, after finally twigging it was that sort of ‘Met’ and nothing to do with the police or the world of opera, and the reverse anagram MASHED POTATOES.

  11. I thought 11a was green paint. It isn’t, see Wiktionary below, but def not the Met Office, so a MER.
    “Noun…. weather-prophet (plural weather-prophets)
    1) A person who foretells the weather, especially without modern meteorological aids or knowledge.
    2) An animal whose behaviour is an indication of coming weather, especially change of season.”
    12a SatYrs, I think it is sat as in sat out the game because given a bye, say.
    18a Bamako. NHO Bam in that sense. Wiktionary has
    “Etymology 3
    Perhaps from bamboozle.
    Noun…. bam (plural bams)
    (slang, archaic) An imposition; a cheat; a hoax.”
    So another MER as it is archaic as well as obscure. I cheated knowing the Cheating Machine has all current and some past capitals in it.
    17d Thought Nose Out was green paint, but it’s in Wiktionary, so OK then.

  12. I managed to solve 7 clues before giving up, realising it would be too hard for me.
    One of those was BAMAKO which I knew as a capital. I did not know that meaning of BAM.
    David

  13. I googled Bamako
    Other than that I thought it was on the gentler side by Sunday standards taking 34 minutes
    Mashed potatoes was clever I thought

  14. I see that in 2007 a Danish website described Piers Corbyn (and his “Weather Action” prediction company) as a WEATHER PROPHET.

    In Chapter 26 of The Mayor of Casterbridge the title character visits a Mr Fall ( “a man of curious repute as a forecaster or weather-prophet”), in an attempt to predict the harvest, and therefore speculate on grain prices and bankrupt his rival. Given the author it’s no surprise how that scheme tuns out.

    Hardy also refers to Mr Fall as a “weather-caster”, a man who claims additionally to “charm away warts” and “cure the evil”. By contrast, the skills of the modern “Met person” include modelling for Attitude magazine, or reaching Week 7 of Strictly Come Dancing partnered with Pasha.

  15. I found this to be an enjoyable challenge. Took a while but repaid the effort. 50 minutes

  16. I liked it – but that’s not news since I like most of Dean’s puzzles. Another person who must have fallen asleep in Geography class on the Bamako day. As above, “sat” for didn’t play is common usage in sports.

  17. A superb puzzle, which took me an hour and a quarter, and I didn’t really mind my (or our communal) mistake, BUMAKO of course. The little map which opened on the page when I looked up which country Bamako is the capital of shows lots of places with much more hard-to-spell names, so let us be thankful nonetheless. MASHED POTATOES was indeed very good, but so was everything else, and nothing but the wham-bam unheard-of city gave me any real complaints. By the way, my Oxford Premium online dictionary mentions a different kind of “capital” meaning for BAM, namely the Bosnia and Herzegovina convertible marka, plus the onomatopoeic one, but not the hoax.

  18. Too clever for the likes of me, but I managed a few before I started to cheat. POSSESSED FOI, followed not-too-quickly by LIONS DEN (my COD), then a yawning gap where I could find nothing to help. NHO a few, including the term WEATHER PROPHET, BAMAKO, NOSE OUT, GUFF. But WHIPPERSNAPPER showed itself after a while ( a term I like and often use, to my shame). After that I ne ended some help, as the clues seemed to get more obscure – mashed POTATOES indeed!!

  19. Thanks Dean and keriothe
    Done over a cafe brekkie that took a tick under the hour to complete without aids until the final two – BAMAKO (knew that this it would be an African city somewhere, but it wouldn’t drop – and hadn’t heard of that meaning of BAM) and RIGOROUS (basically because I’d run out of steam and coffee by this stage).
    Lots of great clues with MASHED POTATO and SATYRS the standouts – had used the card game Black Jack as where a player ‘sits’ on his cards instead of playing another one as the logic for that word play. A very nice start to the weekend in what was going to be our first summery day – ended up getting to 35.

  20. Googling LION’S END (which I really shouldn’t disclose) did not foretell mental alertness, but I did OK after that, though Googled BAMAKO. My favourite was MASHED POTATOES, which made me feel clever again, with the added benefit of evoking mashed potatoes!

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