Sunday Times 5142 by Dean Mayer

7:06. Not a difficult puzzle, but an absolute delight. A succession of beautifully concise clues with flawless surface readings. 16ac is the highlight for me – just brilliant.

How did you get on?

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

Across
1 Hold up popular bird at Christmas
ROBIN – ROB, IN.
4 Translated from Arabic, one sort of exercise
ANAEROBIC – (ARABIC ONE)*.
9 Old man in mine, he can’t work after an hour
PITHECANTHROPUS – PIT, HE, CAN’T, HR, OPUS.
10 Volume changes, namely by finale in adapted score
CRESCENDOS – (SCORE)* containing SC (scilicet, namely), END.
11 Note short skirt
MINI – MINIm.
13 Blubber — from whales, obviously
SOB – contained in ‘whales obviously’
15 Who, say, follows what, say, magician?
WITCH DOCTOR – homophone of ‘which’, DOCTOR (Who, for example).
16 No Christmas crackers for fans of the royals
MONARCHISTS – (NO CHRISTMAS)*. Wonderful!
17 The old soldier’s first, of course
YES – YE, Soldiers. The Y in ‘ye’ is really the old thorn (þ), of course.
19 So good to escape gangsters
THUS – THUgS.
20 Tipsy concierge drinking Tango in vain
EGOCENTRIC – (CONCIERGE)* containing T.
23 1950s Britain saw this state funeral?
NATIONAL SERVICE – NATIONAL (state, as an adjective), SERVICE (funeral, the DBE indicated by the question mark).
24 Footballer backing county they never forget
ELEPHANTS – reversal of PELE, HANTS.
25 Capital letters dyslexic starts with
DANDY – D AND Y are the first letters of ‘dyslexic’.
DOWN
1 After frolic around Kansas, prepares to go home?
REPACKS – reversal of CAPER, KS.
2 Wash black articles
BATHE – B, A, THE.
3 Writer making one afraid of Christmas?
NOEL COWARD – a definition and a cryptic hint. Good one.
4 Hating cereal is out of character
AGAINST THE GRAIN – another definition and cryptic hint.
5 Scientists in stasis roused to accept award thus
ASTROPHYSICISTS – (STASIS)* containing TROPHY, SIC.
6 Very odd choice
RARE – DD.
7 Bishop, getting fit, is shot in part of church
BAPTISTRY – B, APT, IS, TRY.
8 Bank worker gets sack
CASHIER – DD.
12 One seeking water wings or odd flaps
DOWSING ROD – (WINGS OR ODD)*.
14 Much food and drink, but not a place to sit
BANQUETTE – BANQUET, TEa.
16 Can East in West show?
MATINEE – MA(TIN, E)E.
18 That entered after coming out
SOCIETY – ‘coming out’ was the introduction of debutantes to posh SOCIETY.
21 Power shower, you might say?
REIGN – sounds like ‘rain’.
22 Post-punk fan caught with heroin
GOTH – GOT, H.

14 comments on “Sunday Times 5142 by Dean Mayer”

  1. Nice puzzle. Around 40 minutes which is fast for me. COD definitely MONARCHISTS. Lovely surface. 9ac is a really nice charade clue with clever definition.
    Thanks Keriothe and setter Dean.

  2. 33 minutes. The unknown 9ac was my LOI only after I had all the checkers and I didn’t hang around to parse it. It has appeared a few times before and is used as an example of an IKEA / charade type of clue in our TfTT Glossary with the same components as in this puzzle:

    Example: Ancestor of mine: the fellow isn’t able to get personnel work (15): PIT + HE + CAN’T + HR + OPUS = Pithecanthropus (ancestor).

  3. I quailed a bit at the number of long clues, but this was one of Dean’s easier offerings and didn’t hold me up greatly until the end. Left with the SE corner, I got brain freeze over the last 2 or 3, which were actually easy by any standards – 18 and 21d and 25a. My favourite was PITHECANTHROPUS, which was familiar, as Vinyl says, from the Mingus album, although I didn’t remember that while solving. Whilst I hate ‘scientist’ clues, 5d gave me TROPHY from the T and H crossers so that was a rapid solve too. General rejoicing…

  4. 4a Anaerobic. I’ve heard of aerobic exercises, but not these which seem to involve holding the breath, or asphyxiating?
    9a Pithy thing. NHO or much more likely had forgotten about, so cheated. I guess I would have got it right if I’d waited for all the checkers.
    I really enjoyed this. Thanks Dean and Keriothe.

  5. 35 minutes, very easy for Dean, but delightful as always. How in the world does he see things like the TROPHY hiding in ASTROPHYSICIST (well, OK, perhaps just by staring at it, but still, his clues are consistently full of delights like that). And 18ac of course is the very best of the lot.

  6. Many thanks for the blog. Completed in several sittings all bar PITHECANTHROPUS which was new to me but won’t be forgotten easily! Didn’t know sack=cashier. Thought MONARCHISTS was very good.

  7. – Hadn’t heard of PITHECANTHROPUS but painstakingly constructed it from wordplay and thought it sounded plausible
    – Biffed CRESCENDOS
    – Couldn’t have told you what a DOWSING ROD is
    – Didn’t parse BANQUETTE

    No problems otherwise. Thanks keriothe and Dean.

    FOI Mini
    LOI Witch doctor
    COD National service

  8. Can someone explain how GIFT fits all of the clue for 23 down in Sunday times 5143? If we have time tomorrow we will try to post our reasoning for the whole puzzle, but this tiny 4 letter word we can’t really understand why it should fit!

  9. Thanks Dean and keriothe
    As with others, this was completed in just over the half-hour – but still with the usual wit and enjoyment that Dean provides in his puzzles. Did not know the ‘old man’ and whilst taking the easy option of a word-finder to get the answer, the construction of the charade was still fun. Was interesting to look up why the ROBIN is associated with Christmas (due to the postman’s uniform delivering the cards – didn’t know that).
    Many penny-drop moments – SOCIETY, DANDY, etc and finished up in the SE corner (usual spot) with MATINEE, BANQUETTE (a new term) and THUS (short but tricky) the last few in.

  10. Like brucew@aus above, I come here late to the Times crosswords, but what a delight! I didn’t quite get the old man ( a couple of letters out), but I knew what I was looking for in all the clues (which is unusual for me). All done and dusted well within the hour – with interruptions- with so many PDMs it’s hard to pick CODs, but NOEL COWARD and ASTROPHYSICIST perhaps. Oh and WITCH DOCTOR.

  11. Same as the compatriots above. This puzzle was exactly on my level.

    Thanks to all setters and bloggers from this year. Best wishes to cruciverbalists everywhere for a happy and more peaceful New Year.

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