Sunday Times 5148 by Dean Mayer

18:15. I’ve left it very late to blog this and I am a bit tired and emotional after a friend’s daughter’s christening today, so I will keep this brief. Quite a tricky puzzle I think, some really interesting stuff as we’ve come to expect from Dean. We are spoilt. How did you get on?

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

Across
1 Warning from victim pierced by arrow perhaps
PRECURSORY – PRE(CURSOR)Y. ‘Warning’ here is, strictly, a definition by example, since a precursor doesn’t necessarily indicate something bad. But the meanings are so close that I think only an extreme stickler could object.
6 Son with a black mop
SWAB – S, W, A, B.
10 Sound of American serving in bar
LOGICAL – LO(GI)CAL.
11 Financial people into crack
BANKING – BAN(KIN)G.
12 Peace slogan involving diligence, no less
SILENCE IS GOLDEN – (DILIGENCE NO LESS)*. ‘Ban the bomb’ didn’t fit!
13 Niche software, I’d say
APSE – sounds like ‘apps’.
14 Coffee cup taken back in the end
DEMITASSE – reversal of SAT (taken as in an exam) inside DEMISE.
16 Meadow — wide opening remains, however
LEASTWAYS – LEA, ST(W)AYS.
18 Former morning paper
EXAM – EX, AM.
21 Radical thought about poor weaver
FELLOW TRAVELLER – FEL(LOW)T, RAVELLER.
23 See departing aviatrix recklessly flying vehicle
AIR TAXI – (AvIATRIX)*. V = vide = see.
24 Rough, cold and in tatters
CRAGGED – C, RAGGED.
25 Still happening? Not quite
EVEN – EVENt.
26 & 20: One finds resistance better when a dog is barking
WHEATSTONE – (BETTER WHEN A DOG IS)*. The answer here being WHEATSTONE BRIDGE, a combination of this clue and 20dn. I had absolutely no idea about this one beyond anagram fodder and checking letters, but that was enough. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wheatstone_bridge
Down
1 Language used by Chopin buff
POLISH – DD. What’s the opposite of a Hungarian Dvorjak?
2 Drink for one girlfriend on edge
EGG-FLIP – EG, GF, LIP.
3 Gypsy wedding welcomes group of sisters most of all
UNCONVENTIONAL – UN(CONVENT)ION, ALl. Only Chambers seems to have the required definition here, which is a little off to me, but I am a metropolitan liberal woke snowflake.
4 Work out one divided by five
SOLVE – SOL(V)E.
5 Two bones carrying some RNA particles
RIBOSOMES – RIB, O(SOME)S. Have you ever been to Beaune? It’s a bit of a one os town.
7 Dams to protect the same odd fish
WEIRDOS – WEIR(DO)S. DO = ditto.
8 Novice’s secret desire to lead
BEGINNER – BEG, INNER.
9 Robin or Doris to be chosen in time
ONE OF THESE DAYS – the first part of the clue is a cryptic indication to pick either of Robin or Doris Day.
14 Was about to be sorted
DEALT WITH – the story was about/dealt with the life of Pierre Bezukhov.
15 Heartless lad splits from disabled ex
OLD FLAME – O(LaD)F, LAME.
17 Generally free
AT LARGE – DD.
19 Old car restricted by minimal leg room
ALLEGRO – contained in ‘minimal leg room’.
20 See 26
BRIDGE – see above.
22 Capital account, one without credit
ACCRA – AC(CR), A.

18 comments on “Sunday Times 5148 by Dean Mayer”

  1. 22:56
    I found this on the easy side for a Dean puzzle, with no clue I’d mark as COD. Couldn’t parse FELLOW TRAVELLER, though. DNK Robin Day, but assumed there was one (my E-J dictionary has 5 Days besides Robin and Doris). NHO WHEATSTONE or his BRIDGE; like Keriothe I solved from the anagrist and checkers. No problem with ‘Gypsy’=UNCONVENTIONAL; I’m pretty sure I’ve seen it so used.

  2. From memory the Wheatstone Bridge was covered in my high school Physics and university Physics I in Australia when I did it in 1956/57 It is simply an electrical circuit for measuring electrical resistance.

    1. Absolutely. I played with this as a kid when doing experiments in electricity. Standard part of the physics curriculum when Ohm’s law was being introduced. What I didn’t know was FELLOW TRAVELLER.

  3. Can anybody explain why my ST cryptic always seems to be a week ahead of the blog? My crossword today is 5149 by Robert Price and this blog is 5148 by Dean Mayer. Am I missing something?

    1. They are competition puzzles so the blog has to wait a week for the competition to close before publication.

  4. Not so easy for me, and I needed 58 minutes to fill the grid.

    I can’t remember any specific delays other than WHEATSTONE BRIDGE , although I did actually know the term from physics classes 60+ years ago for a device consisting of a wooden block about a yard long with electrical components attached. I have no idea what it was used for other than being something to do with resistance.

    Elsewhere I missed the wordplay of TAS reversed. SAT clued as ‘taken’ never occurred to me because I hadn’t spotted the need to lift and separate ‘taken back’.

    I thought ‘people / KIN’ was a bit loose (11ac) but if I’d thought of putting ‘my’ in front of them that would have satisfied my misgivings.

  5. 11a I agree Kin is a bit loose, but all is clear now.
    It was news to me that Gypsy implies 3d Unconventional. No reference to such a meaning in Wiktionary.

    1. “If I am fancy free, and care to wander, it’s just the gypsy in my soul”, or similar. A popular song from my youth, if memory serves…

  6. 49 minutes. About medium level of difficulty for Dean which means quite hard. Everything in but I missed the parsing of DEMITASSE and how ‘Was about’ could mean DEALT WITH. Like several others I remembered WHEATSTONE BRIDGE from school physics though in my mind I mixed it up with a Faraday cage.

    Favourite was ALLEGRO, one of the crowning achievements of the British automotive industry.

    Thanks to Dean and keriothe – I admit it, I had to look up who Pierre Bezukhov was

  7. I puzzled for ages over DEMITASSE, which, while obviously correct, I couldn’t parse. Whereas FELLOW TRAVELLER was parseable, but I couldn’t understand why it meant radical. Was hoping for an explanation. WHEATSTONE BRIDGE was completely unheard of – but my incomprehension of anything to do with physics meant I didn’t even take an O-level in it. Just as well it was an anagram. 5d was worked out, and RIBOSOMES rang a faint bell, though I couldn’t have told you they were RNA particles. Pretty hard, but fair.

    1. A FELLOW TRAVELLER is someone who sympathises with the aims of a political movement without being a member of it. It was most commonly applied to communist sympathisers in the West. What Lenin supposedly called ‘useful idiots’!

  8. 26:20
    WHEATSTONE BRIDGE was a write-in; one of the rare occasions where being a physicist is an advantage in crossword solving.
    COD to RIBOSOMES. If anyone wants to know more about ribosomes I would strongly recommend “Gene Machine” by Venki Ramakrishnan.

  9. Thanks for finding the dictionary evidence for UNCONVENTIONAL = gypsy. I’d missed that (although I had imagined that there was such a meaning).

    Also for explaining why “was about” = DEALT WITH. I think I was having trouble with alternate meanings for the two-word answers, because it had taken me a long time to see why generally = AT LARGE (“he was talking about the country at large”).

    I thought I was going to have to ask about the opposite of a Hungarian Dvorjak, until I remembered about the Chopin Liszt notepads you can buy.

  10. – WHEATSTONE BRIDGE was completely unknown to me, but with all the checkers I managed to figure out the anagram
    – Didn’t parse FELLOW TRAVELLER
    – Would definitely steer clear of using ‘gypsy’ as an adjective to mean UNCONVENTIONAL

    No major problems otherwise. Thanks keriothe and Dean.

    FOI Apse
    LOI Wheatstone bridge
    COD Old flame

  11. Thanks Dean and keriothe
    Was able to complete this in a single longish (75 minute) sitting with breakfast. Admit to using help to find DEMITASSE, WHEATSTONE BRIDGE and RIBOSOMES that were all new to me.
    Had a different take on the first part of the DEALT WITH clue – had ‘was about to’ = saw to – which directly means DEALT WITH. Think that either version is good.
    Couldn’t untangle FELLOW TRAVELLER and took a while to draw the ‘radical’ definition to it – just had no idea about the parsing. It was my last in.

  12. Very poor showing from me on this (rather scientific bent?) puzzle! First hurdle to fall was DEMITASSE, where I mistakenly did “lift and seperate” the coffee and the “cup taken back” – so I was looking for a type of coffee, with ‘puc’ in it, so it had to be cappuccino, didn’t it? Until it wasn’t. (Had BEGINNER in earlier, so had to fashion CAPPUCCINE…Oh dear. This left the bottom half of the grid harder to solve of course, along with NHO FELLOW TRAVELLER for radical, or whatever WHEATSTONE BRIDGE is ( nor do I really want to know). So I was a bit grumpy by then , and decided to cheat on a few of the answers. Happy to remember RIBOSOMES however, but the two Robins passed me by. Roll on next Sunday! 🫣

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