Sunday Times Cryptic 4885, 12 I 2020, by David McLean — Needling Boris

Author   Guy du SablePosted on Categories Weekend Cryptic
Hey, I had a McLean puzzle last go-round! Well, Biddlecombe has explained what happened there… This was great fun, despite the absence of any really unusual vocabulary, nothing previously unknown to work out strictly via wordplay (except, slightly, 17). I have a quibble about 18, but I’m not getting too worked up about it.

Seeing 14 next to SING SING (and ICE), I couldn’t help but think of Carlos Ghosn’s brilliant EXIT STRATEGY, for which he should get some kind of AWARD. Was it in a TROMBONE case that he made his escape? (We have TRUMPETS this week too, and some other people “with brass.”)

I indicate (rangasam)* like this, and italicize anagrinds in the clues.

ACROSS
 1 We reckon most satire isn’t right (10)
ESTIMATORS — (most satire)*
 7 Socialist cutting line for hotel lift (4)
HEFT — ”Left,” for “socialist,” replaces its L with an H. One of the last I saw.
 9 Conservative no longer worried by Times reports? (8)
COVERAGE — C(onservative) + OVER, “no longer worried by” + AGE, “Times”
10 Fruit left in the sun, growing without end (6)
RAISIN — RAISIN[-g]
11 Foreign and domestic articles editor listed (6)
LEANED — LE + AN + ED
13 Declare one’s guilt repeatedly to get here? (4,4)
SING SING — CD and &lit?, next to which I wrote “Ha!” But the very next one was even funnier.
14 Amazingly sexy tiger tat? Bojo claims he has one (4,8)
EXIT STRATEGY — (sexy tiger tat)* My COD, obviously.
17 Proper idiots playing chicken (4-8)
POOR-SPIRITED — Is this another Brexit reference? (Proper idiots)* The precise expression was new to me.
20 Consumed a British dessert cut by duke (8)
ABSORBED — A + B(ritish) + SORBE[-t] +D(uke)
21 The foot is part of the human body (6)
BOTTOM — Do tell! DD
22 Something one might read in The Post? (6)
COLUMN — &lit, with the wordplay being a CD
23 Music producers bow out of Loose Women (8)
TRUMPETS — [-s]TRUMPETS There is a disputed theory about the origin of the letter S connecting it to a compound bow, as I found when returning to this and not immediately remembering the solution I arrived at last week. But “bow” must simply refer to the “front” of the word, as in the front of a ship. Maybe I should make more notes while solving.
25 Old lady tucked in by a hospital nurse (4)
AMAH — A(MA)H Standard crossword fare, which means the most exotic word here isn’t at all, for most of us.
26 Furniture panel seen in banks (10)
SIDEBOARDS — SIDE(BOARD)S Meh. Could have clued for the muttonchop def.

DOWN
 2 Small, quality guitar tool (early model) (5,3)
STONE AXE — S(mall) + TONE, “quality” + AXE, “guitar”
 3 Reserve of diamonds (3)
ICE — DD
 4 Grant for arts, originally one supported by Guardian (5)
AWARD — A, “arts, originally” + WARD, “one supported by [g]uardian”
 5 Deliveries heading for English area abroad (7)
OVERSEA — OVERS, “deliveries” (cricket) + E(nglish) + A(rea) Over here, we’re more likely to say “overseas.”
 6 Tiger seen roaming around vast tract of land (9)
SERENGETI — (Tiger seen)*
 7 One of the people dealing with cuts or treating shock? (11)
HAIRSTYLIST — CD, rather amusing
 8 Republican admitted to bad spirit in China (6)
FRIEND — F(R)IEND
12 In bed feel full of phlegm ultimately, but ok (3,2,2,4)
NOT UP TO MUCH — NOT UP, “in bed” + TO([-phleg]M)UCH Just OK.
15 Those with the brass to rob men’s pants (9)
TROMBONES — The nerve! (to rob men’s)*
16 After swimming, red otter came back quickly (8)
RETORTED — (red otter)*
18 She regularly went out and used drugs (7)
SEDATED — S[-h]E + DATED Hmm. If you sedated a patient or a wild animal, you would be using drugs on that person or tiger or whatever. If you drugged yourself, could you say you “sedated,” sans a pronominal object? Not legally, as it’s not an intransitive verb.
19 A Pole that criminal finally breaks out (6)
ABLOOM — A B([-crimina]L)OOM That’s “boom” as in the pole that holds a microphone.
21 Promotional material for obscure book (5)
BLURB — BLUR, “obscure” + B(ook)
24 Plant fruit tree after pruning its base (3)
PEA — PEA[-r]

31 comments on “Sunday Times Cryptic 4885, 12 I 2020, by David McLean — Needling Boris”

  1. 18: I don’t think there is any need for the def to match the meaning implied by the surface reading. One version of “use drugs” is to sedate (someone) , and that’s all there is to it. When we use “flower”as a def for a river, a properly challenging clue will make it look like a plant., and usually, no-one will complain. Both differences in meaning are surely just fair deception.
    1. Well, the meaning of the definition in the surface reading is often different from the decrypted meaning. That doesn’t quite express the issue here, which is the old “substitution” test many like to apply after the cryptic meaning has been found. Of course some aspects of the two have to match (e.g., singularity or plurality). But I’ll accept that your rules are to some degree different from the ones I try to follow as a crossword editor.

      Edited at 2020-01-19 03:23 am (UTC)

      1. I think I may have exaggerated the importance of the substitution test in the past. I’d say that passing it is sufficient for a def to be legit, but not necessary. Try it for 1A, for example. I doubt that you can think of any sentence in which “we reckon” could replace “estimators”.
        1. Good point. Though some types of clues seem to beg for such testing, with others it’s obviously not an issue.
      2. ‘I had to treat five patients in pain this morning. I sedated in three cases, but told the other two just to suck it up’.
        1. Bravo. An implied object (“them”), OK!
          If I were in pain, though, I’d want an analgesic, rather than a calmative.
  2. Thanks, Guy. I liked Sing Sing too. I had always thought that was slang for Ossning (for John Bull, the town where the prison is), but it turns out the two are separate anglicisations of slightly different Native American names for the place. At least the bit where it is up the river is unambiguously gangsterese.

    Edited at 2020-01-19 01:00 am (UTC)

    1. I found out about the different derivations when my sculptor friend David Stoltz was this close to getting a commission for a piece for new restaurant up that way last year.
  3. A lot harder for me than Harry’s recent puzzles; my FOI was AMAH, a word that used to appear every other Thursday in the NYT. POI 7d, where I confidently put in HAIRDRESSER early on, which did not help matters; I think seeing how 14ac worked finally clued me. LOI 8d, where I was fixated on PAL. COD to COVERAGE, maybe.
  4. 32 minutes. NHO POOR-SPIRITED as expression, never mind meaning ‘cowardly’, so until I looked it up and found it in a dictionary I thought it rather a weak clue, but of course I accept it now.

  5. ….the SERENGETI would certainly puzzle Sir David Attenborough !

    This was an enjoyable workout, where I merely had a MER at HAIRSTYLIST as a single entity, but then so is “hairdresser” which I suppose justifies it.

    COVERAGE was parsed post-solve, but I was quickly over it !

    FOI ESTIMATORS
    LOI POOR-SPIRITED (I’m fairly sure that’s appeared quite recently, and was the cause of some discussion on here at the time !)
    COD STONE AXE
    TIME 14:40

  6. 35 minutes. LOI was STONE AXE, not knowing that term for a guitar. I had a MER at 12d, clever clue that it was. If I say NOT UP TO MUCH of someone, for instance the Bolton Wanderers left back, I’m implying that a replacement is required and that all is not OK. My COD was to HAIRSTYLIST. I have a constant battle with mine, a practitioner of the old school who puts a pudding bowl on my head and cuts round it. He says that SIDEBOARDS make me look old and shaves them off. I’d change barber’s but he’s a football fan too. A pleasant puzzle. Thank you Guy and David.
    1. Why single out the left back ? Mind you, most of Altrincham’s XI fitted the description on Saturday. Not good when I’d trekked all the way to Gateshead !
      1. I must have been comparing him with Tommy Banks, an all-time Wanderers great from that wonderful, homegrown 1958 team and still with us. What’s happening now is pretty hard to take.
        1. Tommy finished his career at Altrincham, as did John Higgins. They’d be lucky not to get sent off every week in the current climate !
          1. Tommy was hard but went for the ball. John Higgins got there as soon as he could. The dirtiest was our right back, Roy Hartle, nicknamed Chopper long before Ron Harris. Having already been warned for several GBH tackles against Brian Pilkington in the Burnley game at Burnden, he kicked
            poor Brian into the invalid cars, which was quite a fall. He still didn’t get sent off. Pilkington wised up and joined us a few weeks later.
  7. An enjoyable puzzle from DM I thought. 14a seemed to have leapt out of a Private Eye crossword but as I now try to solve that puzzle regularly, I was not fazed by it. POOR SPIRITED was new to me like other commentators, but the anagram became obvious.
    My last four were STONE AXE, COVERAGE, ABLOOM and finally COLUMN. I really must learn all the options for POST/POLE; this puzzle definitely helped in that direction.
    I have a note that I solved most of this before lunch;that’s quick for me on a Sunday.
    David
  8. I did this in 16 minutes, all-correct. I think that is about the fastest I’ve ever done a Sunday puzzle.

    It is true that a BOOM holds the microphone but it is also the bottom of the mainsail on a boat, which was the meaning that I immediately caught on to.

  9. Unfortunately, my 35 minutes was marred somewhat by somehow managing to submit FRIAND rather than FRIEND for 8d. Maybe I had cakes on the brain!
  10. 12:35. No dramas. I didn’t recognise this meaning of POOR-SPIRITED but with a few checkers it was reasonably obvious. I liked SING SING too.
    Like a couple of others I had HAIRDRESSER initially, but one of the across clues put paid to that reasonably quickly.
    I played in a band at university and used to refer to my guitar regularly as an AXE, albeit ironically.
    1. The xwd ed also had to fix HAIRDRESSER, and the initial “one of” rather than “one” or “someone” was intended to be a hint that there might be more than one answer fitting the cryptic def., which I was reluctant to just replace. I wonder if anyone noticed …

      Edited at 2020-01-19 02:49 pm (UTC)

      1. I didn’t notice, and I didn’t think of HAIRDRESSER, because I had too many of the crossers at that point.
  11. I wasn’t tempted by HAIRDRESSER as I already had an EXIT STRATEGY, but was surprised by POOR SPIRITED which I haven’t encountered before. No other particular issues. 21:40. Thanks Harry and Guy.
    1. No one seems to have thought of the Sermon on the Mount: ‘Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.’ Rather different meaning, of course, but.
  12. 33:09. For some reason i couldn’t see the relatively straightforward 7ac & 8dn crossers for a very long time. I also entered coverage without full confidence. I had over as just no longer and wondered how worried by times fitted in.
  13. 16:33. I liked having both TRUMPETS and TROMBONES top go with the guitar at 2D.Of course it’s lions rather than tigers you find in the SERENGETI, but maybe the one referred to in the clue was on its holidays. LOI POOR SPIRITED. Only hold-up generated by putting LETTERS for 22A, but NOT UP TO MUCH put paid to that. Thanks David and Guy.
  14. Thanks David and guy
    An interesting puzzle that took a few sittings over a couple of days and just under an hour of work to get through. Was another HAIRDRESSER that had to be re-styled.
    Thought that EXIT STRATEGY was quite clever and the construction of NOT UP TO MUCH was good as well.
    Started with the gifted AMAH and finished on the other bottom side with TRUMPET and the talked about SEDATED as the last couple in.

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