Sunday Times Cryptic 4871, 6 X 2019, by David McLean — In good form

Author   Guy du SablePosted on Categories Weekend Cryptic
Me, I’ve had a cold since last Saturday, but this puzzle is hale and hearty, and its wit could’ve cheered you up if you’d caught a chill with the onset of the season mentioned in 15. Today in Brooklyn promises to be sunny and to warm up a bit, so I want to schedule this soon and get some fresh air.

I worked this at my usual unhurried, deliberative Saturday evening pace, and was pleased to see everything quite clearly, until my LOI, 9. The answer was obvious, but a key part of the parsing wasn’t. Only others in the non-UK contingent, I imagine, will have had the same experience.

I am happy that my “namesake” Guy Joao has been cleared by the Scottish police, who eventually realized (well after the contrary was broadcast by French and international media) that he isn’t the one with a “criminal past” whom the French police have sought for eight years now.

I do (nasargam)* like this, and italicize anagrinds in the clues.

ACROSS
 1 Car, say, one with plenty of gas? (10)
MOTORMOUTH — MOTOR, “Car” + MOUTH, “say”
 7 It is one reactionary English publication (4)
GAME — E + MAG <=
 9 Does a criminal past lead to strife? (8)
PERFORMS — PER, “a” + FORM, “criminal past” + S[-trife]  I finally found the relevant definition, in Collins, of FORM as “a criminal record” (strictly British!), but in my perplexity I had sent a message to our esteemed editor, Peter Biddlecombe, who offered this interesting background information: “OED seems to confirm my impression that ‘form’ as ‘criminal past’ comes from sport, especially horse racing, in which form is a horse’s level of performance, and a ‘form guide’ shows records of past performances. The sporting version goes back more than 200 years, but the criminal version only about 60, from the citations.” My Googling “form” and “criminal past,” before I found the definition, turned up references to employers’ background checks. Though I’d heard of racing forms, I was just assuming that one’s past encounters with the law would be shown on some official form. For Word Reference Forum, FORM has a wider scope, as it “can mean record or reputation. If a person ‘has form‘ it means the person has a well-founded reputation for being or doing something. He has form as a long-time critic and did not miss this opportunity.” But someone queried the forum about the phrase ”he’s got form for,” citing this example from a convo between two cops: “He’s got form for assault, theft, a couple of other armed robs.” Apparently this sense of the term is not uncommonly heard in British police procedurals. I also found a citation from a book called Frozen, by one Lindsay Jayne Ashford: “I mean, if he’s got form for living off immoral earnings, he’s going to be on file anyway.” (I’m sure this isn’t news to most of you! Sorry to be a 1a!)
10 A table on a train (6)
ABOARD — A table, a board
11 Good man repelled by constant affairs (6)
EVENTS — EVEN, “constant” + ST<=
13 Liqueur a popular retired crossword compiler doesn’t finish (8)
ANISETTE — A + IN, “popular”<=, SETTE[-r]
14 Often reflect on turning slightly red? (4-2-6)
LEFT-OF-CENTRE — (Often reflect on)*  Hey, no red-baiting allowed! I’m pretty far left, so don’t consider such a locution an insult—which nullifies its usually intended effect.
17 One tip: pool is fantastic—a great place to start (4,8)
POLE POSITION — (One tip: pool is)*  I’d heard this phrase, but only used figuratively, as I didn’t know that (Wikipedia) “in motorsport the pole position is the position at the inside of the front row at the start of a racing event.” It goes to the driver who does best in the preceding trials. Give the best driver an advantage? Guess he earned it…
20 State protocol or a document containing it (8)
COLORADO — Hidden
21 Young minister announcing NHS statistics, perhaps (6)
CURATE — “Cure rate.”  Not at all sure a CURATE must be young, though one definition is an assistant to a priest. He might have started later in life (which reminds me of the argument of those who supported Proust for the Goncourt Prize in 1919 that the foundation’s charter stipulated that it was to reward “young talent”—not necessarily a young person).
22 Shock a maiden with essentially adult paintings from the East (6)
TRAUMA — A + M(aiden) + [-ad]U[-lt] + “paintings,” ART <=
23 Limb caught in a register, I’d be worried by that (8)
ALARMIST — A L(ARM)IST  Me, I’d know better.
25 European visiting a hospital after hostel is very well (4)
YEAH — E(uropean) comes to A H(ospital) after Y, “hostel” (YMCA, or YWCA)
26 DD is one goliath bust! (10)
THEOLOGIAN — (one goliath)* Doctor of Divinity (not a hard science). Collins says “goliath” can be uncapped, but I really wouldn’t advise it.

DOWN
 2 Ever vow to change? (first of inquiries in survey) (8)
OVERVIEW — (Ever vow + I)*
 3 High? Not at work! (3)
OFF — Shh, don’t tell the boss! DD
 4 Extra small habits (5)
MORES — MORE, “Extra” + S(mall)
 5 Clue spa differently for Tatler’s readers, perhaps (7)
UPSCALE — (Clue spa)*
 6 Stuff cash in thy bloomers (9)
HYACINTHS — To foil muggers? (cash in thy)*
 7 Work? I really must achieve something more! (2,3,6)
GO ONE BETTER — ”Work,” GO + ONE BETTER, “I really must”
 8 Mass revolutionary anger that Boris ultimately deserves (6)
MERITS — Tell me about it! M(ass) + IRE<= + [-tha]T [-Bori]S
12 Pretty poor in bed? Feel without mojo initially (3,2,2,4)
NOT UP TO MUCH — NOT UP, “in bed” + TO(M)UCH
15 Save for a season in America, go to pieces (4,5)
FALL APART — Autumn aside…
16 Noble Italian crook returned item of value (8)
CONTESSA — CON, “crook” + ASSET<=  (an Italian noble, rather)
18 Irreverent supporters seen on end of terrace (7)
PROFANE — PRO + FAN + [-terrac]E
19 Broadcast programme of inferior quality (6)
COARSE — “Course”
21 Conservative liberal drinking bitter in drag (5)
CRAWL — C(RAW)L
24 Face flipping Magnus Carlsen? You must be drunk! (3)
MUG — G(rand)M(aster) swallowing U, for “You”

47 comments on “Sunday Times Cryptic 4871, 6 X 2019, by David McLean — In good form”

  1. The 7:39 part being devoted to PERFORMS. I tried to make ‘does’=’deer’, and of course had no idea about FORM, but at long last the checkers led me to the solution. No idea who Magnus Carlsen was, thus forced to biff MUG. Also didn’t get YEAH. I was not pleased to see BETTER for ‘had better’; I suppose soon the Times will be writing ‘could of’. Liked PROFANE.
    1. Both Merriam-Webster and Collins (for both American and British) give “had better” as one definition of “better”—marked as “Informal,” certainly. But “could of” is simply wrong, not merely informal.

      Edited at 2019-10-13 01:31 am (UTC)

  2. 38 minutes but without understand what was going on in the wordplay for MUG. Y for ‘hostel’ came up once before when it was completely new to me, but fortunately I remembered it this time. Off to tackle Robert Price now.
  3. I was going to mention that Proust (48) won the Prix Goncourt by a vote of 6-4 over 34-year-old Roland Dorgelès, who later became president of the Goncourt Academy. I’d never heard of Dorgelès, but his anti-war ‘Les croix de bois’ was evidently a major critical and popular success.
    1. Oui, je le sais ! My current rereading of À la recherche… was sparked by a very interesting—and amusing—book that was hot off the presses when I was in Paris in May, Proust, Prix Goncourt, by Thierry Laget. It is, after all, the hundredth anniversary of the only time the academy got it right.

      Dorgelès’s publisher was taken to court for advertising his book with the words PRIZ GONCOURT, and, in much smaller letters, “4 votes out of 10”! He did win, as a sort of consolation prize, an award from a feminist publishing collective. And his book outsold Proust’s… for a while.

      Edited at 2019-10-13 03:40 am (UTC)

      1. The French take spelling more seriously than we do, I suppose, but going to court?
        I’m actually reading ‘In search…’, in English and for the first time, and finding it slow going. It’s bedtime reading, for one thing, which means I’m dropping off as I’m reading; but also–dare I say it?–I find it hard to get up much interest in the narrator, or Swann, or Odette, or any of them.
        1. Thanks for the typo alert. Maybe you could send me a private message next time so I could correct it before you reply.

          The advertisement said, of course, PRIX GONCOURT, and yes, going to court, because the advertising was brazenly deceptive, and the books were in competition.

          I could never get into the translation myself, but maybe Proust just isn’t for you.

  4. I think there’s still confusion about “form”. It simply means “criminal past” (usually for a specific kind of crime) not any document about it. In “form guide”, it’s “guide” that tells you it’s a document, and if one criminal knew that another had committed undetected and therefore undocumented crimes, I think he’d still call those crimes “form”.
    1. Well, the only dictionary definition I’ve seen (from Collins) was “a criminal record,” but it’s evident from your OED input, the Word Reference Forum, and cop-show idioms that the term has taken wider applications, in various contexts, the cop shows being most relevant here. “A criminal reputation” (which Collins doesn’t exactly say) could of course exist in the absence of any concrete record, via word of mouth, word on the street.

      Edited at 2019-10-13 06:17 am (UTC)

      1. “criminal record” doesn’t just mean one or more documents. It also means the past crime involved.
        1. I don’t, honestly, want to split hairs. I deleted a sentence above that may have given you offense. A “record” in the sense you evoke implies a summation, an evaluation, of past actions. There’s no record if no one knows it, or thinks they know it, whether it’s written, etched into stone, or whispered from ear to ear.
    2. ….I await one of our setters using “form = previous” on this basis !

      NHO Magnus Carlsen, having no interest in chess, but biffed MUG, and also YEAH which I simply couldn’t parse. After 15 minutes (it was Friday evening before I got to this) I gave up and used aids to solve PERFORM which I was then able to parse.

      COD MOTORMOUTH (I once lived with her daughter)

    3. That’s the horse-racing definition. Related to Word Reference Forum’s, referenced above. Neither of those have anything specific to do with criminality.
      1. The layout of the OED definitions suggested very strongly to me that the criminal version of “form” was derived from the (older) horse racing version.
        1. May be. I’d just like to read the OED definition that counts here. Damn, I don’t have one.
          In any case, the form of each horse listed in the guide is a summation, an evaluation of past performances, so an implicit record.

          Edited at 2019-10-13 06:55 am (UTC)

  5. 31 minutes in a steady solve. COD to GO ONE BETTER. I liked HYACINTHS too. I tend to think of the Youth Hostel Association (YHA) when I see ‘hostel’, so I couldn’t quite make an anagram work for YEAH, but I biffed it anyway. LOI was MUG, also somewhat of a biff, but as a result I know the name of the chess grand master. I use FORM to mean past record frequently. In fact, last week, discussing Boris’s possible liaison with Jennifer Arcuri, I could be heard to observe, “ Well, he does have form.” In childhood, we called the GAME of It either Tig or Tiggy, depending on whether I was north or south of the Ribble, and I believe it was Tag in many other places, including Famous Five Land. Similar rules applied everywhere. A pleasant puzzle. Thank you Guy and David.

    Edited at 2019-10-13 06:43 am (UTC)

      1. I was only referring to the possible discussions the two parties may have had on Ugandan affairs!
  6. I was in Cornwall Sunday to Wednesday for golf and took this puzzle with me.After an initial session I had lots of gaps which I kept returning to and in a last session I just wrote in the words that fitted the best.
    LOI was PERFORMS almost entirely unparsed and assuming the definition was Does.For a time I thought 24d might be OMG (expression of surprise -would that be allowed?). The chess world championships were held in London only about a year ago and got lots of publicity; and Magnus Carlsen is the current superstar so GM occurred to me quickly.It took me a while to crack the excellent DD clue and then get MUG. CONTESSA,GO ONE BETTER and NOT UP TO MUCH all went in with varying degrees of hope. But I did properly parse YEAH as I have heard Y being used for hostel. A fun holiday puzzle. David
    1. I would happily allow OMG – it’s in Collins and Oxford D of E, and would be a pleasing change from some of the ancient bits of language used in xwds.
  7. No problems with this one, form and pole position were easy for British F1 fans but couldn’t parse MUG.. 20 minutes with YEAH last.
  8. All complete and correct, but I failed to parse YEAH as, like boltonwanderer, I never thought of just Y for hostel. I didn’t see “ONE BETTER” either. I liked NOT UP TO MUCH and the topical surface for MERITS. 23:00.
  9. All correct in 45:29, but another who biffed MUG, not knowing the chess reference. I was also unaware that just Y could be an abbreviation for the YHA or YMCA, but muttered YEAH and moved on. Took a while to see the parsing of PERFORMS, but got there with no reservations. Liked MOTORMOUTH(and giggled at Phil’s comment). As Pip mentions, anyone who watches F1 will have no problem with POLE POSITION. UPSCALE had me baffled until I had some crossers. A tricky and enjoyable puzzle. Thanks Harry and Guy.
  10. No problems with this apart from parsing YEAH as never heard of Y = YMCA … slightly bemused by the fuss over form, which I use in that sense often. I agree the “a” might be felt to be doing double duty but it seemed OK at the time
      1. Ha, good spot, and I commented twice that day, Jack .. I have always thought that my memory was good, but it let me down then. At the end of the day, it is what it is and we hang on, as best we can 🙂

        1. Yes but ‘that sense’ (the sense used in the clue) relates specifically to a criminal past. That’s the whole point of the discussion!
  11. 22:47. I found this pretty hard, for reasons I can’t now remember. I had all the required knowledge.
    This meaning of FORM is just a very specific example of the broader meaning referring to any pattern of behaviour. The meanings overlap significantly so even if a copper is using the word it doesn’t necessarily refer specifically to a an actual criminal record.
    I used to do a lot of business in Scandinavia, and a couple of years ago I was invited by some Norwegians to a client entertainment event in London in which the guests got to play against Magnus Carlsen. All the guests, that is, simultaneously. I’m clueless about chess so I declined the invitation, but it must have been great for people who play at all seriously.
    1. If you open up today’s paper, David Howell’s chess column is right next to the crossword. Magnus Carlsen is mentioned between 5a and 10a.
  12. 48:20 but two typos aMisette and peTforms. Bah! I fear I have some fat fingered form on that front though. Happy with form for criminal past. The actual document recording previous convictions (well previous court appearances at least) used in the criminal justice system, a print out from the police national computer, is usually called a person’s antecedents, at least in England and Wales. I was a bit hesitant over yeah where I wasn’t familiar with Y on its own for hostel. I also didn’t know the publication at 7ac, googling only brings up computer game magazines, that can’t be what it’s referring to can it? A fun puzzle with 14ac, 17ac, 26ac and 6dn my highlights.
    1. I think boltonwanderer is right in saying (above) that ‘it’ is also known as ‘tag’. And I also think it’s the same game called ‘he’ as played at my Prep school when the person doing the chasing was ‘it’ or sometimes ‘on’.

      Edited at 2019-10-13 11:46 am (UTC)

      1. I see now that a note of explication that was in my original draft somehow fell by the wayside, Of course that is the game more commonly (I think) known as “tag.”
        1. The name for this game is very region-specific. It was always ‘it’ where I lived as a kid.
      2. Thanks Jackkt I see it now, don’t know what I was thinking, that is how I knew it when we played it at school. Apologies to BW too. I do read the comments before posting but must have been distracted by the Japan v Scotland game which I was watching at the time.
      3. I see now that a note of explication that was in my original draft somehow fell by the wayside, Of course that is the game more commonly (I think) known as “tag.”
  13. Absolutely no problems with this so am at a bit of a loss with the debates above. Thanks all.
  14. I had thought it a crossword convention that you only got clued if you were dead. Apart from that, having to know that the clued MC was a GM into which one had to insert U and then reverse it was a step too far even for a Sunday cryptic. I also cannot parse 24ac : since when, in the UK at least, is “Y” comprehensible as a hostel? Nicky
    1. The convention applies to the Times but this is the Sunday Times where it definitely does not. I’m not sure at this moment whether in the Times it applies both to clues and answers or only answers – perhaps someone else could confirm?

      Y is listed in both Collins and Chambers dictionaries as an abbreviation for YMCA / YWCA without qualification. The Oxfords have it too, only they add that its usage is ‘chiefly North American’. There’s no obligation for setters to specify overseas usage in a clue although they often do if they wish to be helpful.

      As mentioned above, I was unable to parse MUG because I didn’t know the chess guy so I have some sympathy with your POV but the answer was easy enough for most to biff it I’d have thought.

      Edited at 2019-10-13 08:37 pm (UTC)

      1. It’s not guaranteed to be the current version, but the 2016 copy of the Times guide for setters indicates that living people other than ER/Queen are not allowed as answers or clue content.

        As Jack says, not all of the rules for The Times crosswords are also required for Sunday Times ones. My advice to solvers would always be to put far more trust in logic than any idea about special rules used in a particular paper. Two reasons are:
        * the plain fact that the setters/editors sometimes forget their local rules – there was once a Times championship puzzle with two plain hidden words.
        * if a crossword editor changes their mind about their local rules, this is not stated. When Brian Greer finally killed off the “missing word in a quote” clues in The Times crosswords, I’m 99% sure that nothing was said about it in the paper.

  15. I had no problem with Y for hostel. All Ys had hostel accommodation back in the day, wonder if they still do. I arrived in Nottingham on the first day of the England/Australia Test in 1972 to find that there wasn’t a bed to be had in the city. Someone suggested the Y. An Atheist of conviction I still tried it despite my fear that they would they ask me questions to prove I was a Christian. This fear was the afterglow of bigoted Irish Catholic indoctrination. They were full but directed me to another backpackers hostel.
  16. Thanks David and guy
    Found this one tough taking nearly an hour and a half accumulated across a number of sittings. A few new learnings – don’t know if I’d seen UPSCALE in this sense, certainly not the chess player nor that Y was the name of a YMCA hostel.
    FORM was well-known in it’s criminal record sense though.
    Finished with GAME (wasting a lot of time looking for a magazine of that name and then twigging to the children’s game of ‘it’), COARSE (not understanding why in retrospect) and YEAH (tricky definition and hard word play if the Y part was unknown).

Comments are closed.