Sunday Times 5174 by David McLean

Author   keriothePosted on Categories Weekend Cryptic

13:47. A nicely chewy one from Harry this week, which I managed to stuff up with a silly typo. Grr.

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

Across
1 Region of Split
PART – DD.
3 I file release order, maybe
EMERY BOARD – (ORDER MAYBE)*.
10 Cot whiffs? To change or to go to sleep?
SWITCH OFF – (COT WHIFFS)*.
11 Wind up in French town, missing last of stops
ANGER – remove stopS from ANGERS (a French town beloved of crossword setters, see also Nice and Nancy).
12 Famous player in eatery close to Dubai
MESSI – MESS, dubaI.
13 Brilliant bandaging saves lancer at front
BLINDING – B(Lancer)INDING.
15 Everyone in, say, Love Island is superficial
SHALLOW – SH(ALL)OW. I have never watched the show in question so I can’t vouch for the veracity of the statement here.
17 One opens present with a refreshment
GRANITA – GRAN(I)T, A.
19 Old act with foremost of dancers on show
EXPOSED – EX, POSE, Dancers
21 Do you despise leaving husband for trip?
ACTUATE – ACT, U, hATE.
22 Good relative allowed one to take knight’s hand
GAUNTLET – G, AUNT, LET.
24 White knight or pawn finally put in a set
ANGEL – A(pawN), GEL.
27 Not all ridicule a showy neckline, might I say
LEASH – contained in ‘ridicule a showy’. A line on a neck.
28 Sleeping without dreams ultimately is ponderous
LUMBERING – remove dreamS from SLUMBERING.
29 They send up the Stones set and butcher playing
TREBUCHETS – (SET BUTCHER)*.
30 Depressed gaining pound, needing to shed pounds?
FLAT – F(L)AT.
Down
1 Pole in office turning on Letterman?
POSTMASTER – POST (office), reversal of RE (on) containing MAST (pole).
2 Trouble in extremely rambunctious bars
RAILS – RambunctiouS containing AIL.
4 Flash atop front of liner in 1am light show?
MOONBOW – MO, ON, BOW. Not MOOOBOW as I somehow managed to type. Not a term I’ve come across before. The question mark indicates a definition by example, since presumably these things can happen at other times of the night.
5 Start working late as messing about on river?
RAFTING – gRAFTING.
6 Beastly type with Dutch Vandyke?
BEARD – BEAR, D. D as an abbreviation for Dutch is in Collins.
7 King to stop intermediary visiting a state
ARGENTINA – A(R)GENT, IN, A.
8 Awful father making son start to despair
DIRE – SIRE with S (son) switched for Despair.
9 World-class fighter who wasn’t well-heeled?
ACHILLES – CD.
14 Steal fine lamp and head for the hills
TAKE FLIGHT – TAKE, F, LIGHT.
16 A line actor put in post for leading man
ALPHA MALE – A, L, P(HAM)ALE. The word ‘pale’ here applies both to an upright post and a fence made from such posts, and is most often encountered in the phrase ‘beyond the pale’.
18 Wildly entreat a killer of soldiers?
ANTEATER – (ENTREAT A)*.
20 Biblical figure revolutionary greeted without zeal ultimately
DELILAH – reversal of HA(zeaL)ILED
21 One did agency work in hearing for trial
ATTEMPT – A, homophone of ‘temped’.
23 What game is overlooked by New Statesman
NEHRU – N on top of (‘overlooking’) EH, RU. Topical for me at the moment because I’m reading the excellent Indian Summer by Alex von Tunzelmann.
25 Cook right to take breather? Au contraire!
GRILL – R contained in GILL, rather than the other way round.
26 Lump of dope
CLOT – DD.

26 comments on “Sunday Times 5174 by David McLean”

  1. I had “flash” as “moon” but can see mo/on works too! Thanks setter and blogger!

    2. Ooh yes, that could be right! To me ‘flash’ and ‘moon’ are not quite the same thing in this context (one specifically frontal, the other specifically not) but they’re probably close enough. It works either way but I’d be interested to know which was intended.

      1. I think I solved it as MOON+BOW, but setter’s notes say MO+ON+BOW. As “flash” has a “show suddenly and briefly” meaning for which “moon” would be a specific example, we’ve arguably got one of those situations where two wordplay readings work.

        1. Hi Peter. Off topic here but on the main page of the Crossword Club today’s puzzle is showing as ‘Mepisto’.

      2. I can’t remember how I parsed it, and I’m happy with either parsing, but for what it’s worth, ‘flash’ as the word suggests, is a quick exposure, while ‘moon’ is a good deal more leisurely. (The only mooning I’ve ever seen–in Death on the Nile–was.)

  2. I knew the term Moon Rainbow due to a family connection to Hawaii, where waterfalls can produce enough mist to create one. I liked Trebuchets.

  3. Was fairly confident we had this one but needed to come here for some parsing and change of impression.
    For example 8d had to be DIRE and, while the substitution was not obvious, this is a much better clue than first thought.
    Also 20d DELILAH with the other meaning for ‘without’ is a clever clue.
    Really liked 29ac TREBUCHET once I avoided Mick and Co.
    Also 4d MOONBOW was cleverly clued with a check to see it was a real thing.
    Slight ER with ANGEL for ‘white knight’ in 24ac but it finally GELled.
    Also in 16d PALE for ‘post’ is a stretch and HAM is usually a poor actor.
    These Saturdays and Sundays are generally more our style than the dailies.
    Thank you setter and keriothe.

    1. PALE for post is extremely literal! Not the most common meaning of the word but still.

    2. FWIW, the Saturday cryptics have the same editor and possible setters as the weekday ones, except that the Saturday Jumbo cryptics are edited by Colin Thomas, the recently added Times assistant crossword editor. I don’t think that’s an exception that should matter – I’d expect Colin to be matching any detailed rules that Jason Crampton uses. Although Jason and I will inevitably have slightly different approaches, the main reason for noticing a difference should be the different group of setters for ST cryptics.

  4. 54 minutes. Tough but enjoyable.

    I was going to say NHO LEASH as ‘neckline’ but the blog made sense of it. Very clever!

    I think Peter explained his policy on single letter abbreviations some years ago and how these needed to be limited rather allowing setters to exploit every possibility listed in the remote corners of Chambers Dictionary. D for Dutch is one I’ve certainly never come across before, but it sits well with the surface of 6dn so I guess it was irresistible.

    1. Just to confirm, the choice of abbreviations is generally wider in ST puzzles. I don’t allow abbreviations that are only found in Chambers. My intended policy is to allow any that are known to be OK in Times cryptics, and any listed in Collins English Dictionary or the Oxford Dictionary of English. (For single letter ones in particular, there’s a list for Times cryptic setters, including a few in none of those dictionaries). Final detail: I’ve stated before that I also allow “no” and “yes” to indicate their first letters, based on real-life observation.

      1. Thanks, Peter, I remember the Y/N exception and isn’t there one of the suits in playing cards that the dictionaries don’t have covered, but The Times uses it every day in the Bridge puzzle?

        I’m interested that you mention the Oxford Dictionary of English as one of the ST sources (and I think you have before) because in his newsletter (29/3/25) Mick H referred to the Concise Oxford as the Oxford source for the daily puzzles. I wonder if that was an oversight or is there actually a divergence of policy?

        My information suggests that both are probably well out of date by now as the most recent edition of the Concise Oxford was published in 2011 and the Oxford Dictionary of English was last printed in 2010. I’d have expected setters to be using the on-line version based on the content of both seemingly known as the Premium Oxford (English) Dictionary which is updated annually. This is the one used by Susie Dent on Countdown.

        I’d be grateful for clarification and am happy to be corrected if I’ve got any of the above wrong.

        1. The Concise / bigger difference is intended, though there’s an expectation that setters will not seek out the obscure corners of any dictionary for blocked grid puzzles.

          Latest versions, though there have been times when the Collins website used the newest but one. And yes, abbreviations commonly seen in newspaper copy are some of the “outliers” on the Times list.

  5. Defeated in the NE corner where the use of the personal pronoun in 3a ( if that is what the ‘I’ is) threw me. Is it acceptable to personalise inanimate objects as I don’t think I’ve seen this before?
    Agree with the concern about the use of D for Dutch- if this device gets too lax, it will cause (me) problems.

    1. I allow “I” at the beginning of a clue, as part of the definition, reflecting a usage sometimes used in quiz questions, though probably more often in the past. “I am a sea captain who discovered …” for Captain Cook, for example. Like some other things, it’s stretched a bit further for cryptic clue usage.

      1. It’s what I sometimes refer to in my blogs as a ‘riddle clue’ or ‘riddle definition’ in which the solution is treated as if it were a person. You get this sort of thing in riddles that begin e.g. ‘My first is in a but not in b’ etc. The last line of the riddle is usually ‘What (or who) am I?’

        1. Thanks..Rather quaint I think – reminds me from my childhood of the verse ‘ I’m a little teapot ….’ .Here’s hoping not to see it too often in the future.

    2. Did you see you were quoted by Mick Hodgkin in his Saturday Puzzle Letter, with reference to the difficulty of ‘mere mortals’ being able to tackle the most fiendish crosswords?

  6. Defeated this week by the NW corner of the grid, where I couldn’t get a foothold at all. 4 – 8D unsolved and 3, 11, 13 and 17A. Had I managed just one of these I might have been able to proceed, but it wasn’t to be.

  7. DNF

    Passed the 30 minute mark and just couldn’t see/work out ACTUATE. Quite clever now I understand it. Otherwise particularly liked TREBUCHETS.

    Thanks Keriothe/setter

  8. 53 minutes. Just finished. Quite hard work, not helped by MOONBOW being an unknown (I couldn’t shift MOONGLOW even though it had too many letters) and GRANITA not occurring to me until I had all the crossers. There was some difficult parsing which held me up as well, particularly ALPHA MALE which I ended up just biffing.

    I liked the not ‘well-heeled’ ACHILLES.

  9. 6d, “beastly type”: BOAR, “Dutch”: D, “Vandyke”: “BOARD”?? Drat!
    The awful thing is I knew a Vandyke was a type of beard. Double drat!

  10. About half an hour

    – Having watched one episode, I can confirm that everyone on Love Island is extremely SHALLOW
    – Couldn’t have told you what a GRANITA is
    – Parsed MOONBOW like the first couple of commenters
    – Didn’t know Vandyke as a type of BEARD but guessed correctly that it was E rather than O

    Thanks keriothe and David.

    FOI Messi
    LOI Beard
    COD Dire

  11. Did quite well – until I didnt! Some of the anagrams were quite helpful in creating crossers to work on: SWITCH OFF with ACHILLES and POSTMASTER. Have not heard of the Van Dyke BEARD ( but am guessing it’s similar to a goatee) and my answer of CLOD instead of CLOT led to a lot of head-scratching for 29a. Altogether a fun puzzle, that I should have taken the time to do with more focus than I gave it. Thanks both

  12. Thanks David and keriothe
    Took over the hour and a half to get this one done in two sessions late yesterday – still had to go over it again to sort out some of the parsing today – still missed on ATTEMPT though. Took a while to sort out the word play of RAFTING as well.
    Was in the MOON + BOW camp and have always like the word TREBUCHET for some reason. Lots of other interesting clues.
    Finished in the NE with ACTUATE (another tricky parse), GRANITA (more SE) and that RAFTING as the last one in.

Comments are closed.