Sunday Times Cryptic 4961, by Dean Mayer — 4-CD Set! All Hits!

Author   Guy du SablePosted on Categories Weekend Cryptic

Wonderful puzzle! When I finally arrived at the “part of Botswana” at the end, I felt that I could have, should have, gotten it first, if I’d only taken the time; after all, it’s mainly an anagram… Oh, well. The other three longest ones had to wait for some crossers too, but those were all CDs, which are often the last I get, you know.

I’m writing this up just after working it, on Sunday morning—well, early afternoon—which must be a first.

I indicate (a granma’s)* like this, and italicize anagrinds in the clues.

ACROSS
 1 Part of sleeve or belt (4)
CUFF — DD
 3 Old piano parts newly arranged for Aida, perhaps (5,5)
GRAND OPERA — (arranged)* split by O(ld) P(iano)
10 Drawing of polar bears? (6,9)
ANIMAL MAGNETISM — CD. I laughed out loud! It’s “polar” that make this priceless. Opposites attract!
11 Baby, age about 1, back at home (9)
MINIATURE — M(I, “one”)(IN<=“back at home”)ATURE
12 Living beyond 100, show evidence of age? (5)
CRUST — C, “100” + RUST, “Living” in the sense of your earned daily bread
13 While sound returns, extremes of volume contained (4,2)
EVEN AS — SANE<=“returns” holding V[-olum]E
14 Running out of stock? (8)
STAMPEDE — CD… We had this answer two weeks ago, in the last one I blogged.
17 Feeling thrilled about new relationship (8)
SENTIENT — SE(N)(TIE)NT… SENT, “thrilled” surrounding TIE, “relationship” + N(ew)
19 Way to hold speed back — brake (6)
RETARD — R(RATE<=)D… “Way” being R(oa)D
22 Sort of knife that is found after surrender (5)
BOWIE — I(d) E(st) follows BOW, “surrender”
23 Set about penning short study on French values (9)
TREASURES — SET<=“about” corraling REA[-d] + SUR, French for “on”
24 Force used when lifting is a problem? (5,10)
STORE DETECTIVES — CD
25 Continued to protect air force (10)
CONSTRAINT — CON(STRAIN)T
26 Dessert left in cooler (4)
FLAN — F(L)AN

DOWN
 1 Dismal church members missing? (9)
CHARMLESS — Attendance is constantly falling… CH(urch) + ARMLESS
 2 Pottery cracking in wall (7)
FAIENCE — F(AI, “A-one”)ENCE… and suddenly I had Serge Gainsbourg singing in my head the lament of the ticket-puncher in the Métro: “Et sous mon ciel de faïence / Je ne vois briller que les correspondances…”
 4 A disturbance behind us (6)
RUMPUS — RUMP, “behind” + US
 5 Leaves broken leg caught in traps (8)
NEGLECTS — N (leg)* E(C)TS
 6 Not necessarily correct (14)
OVERCOMPENSATE — CD… to correct when it’s not necessary to—cryptic by force of tangled syntax
 7 Record one specific food lover (7)
EPICURE — EP, “record” + I, “one” + CURE, “specific”… Yes, the latter is also used as a noun in this context (in both US and UK parlance). There is still no specific for Covid-19.
 8 A private message? It’s welcome (5)
ADMIT — A + D(irect) M(essage) + IT
 9 Muddy lakes and earth around dry part of Botswana (8,6)
KALAHARI DESERT — (lakes + earth)* encompass ARID, “dry”—which, while not technically part of the definition, gives a nudge in the right direction (though I wasted time trying to fit TT in somehow).
15 Likely heir to endless suffering (6,3)
ELDEST SON — (to endless)* Anagrind of the Week!
16 Adult into country music? A curse (8)
ANATHEMA — AN(A)THEM + A… Something you abhor is ANATHEMA to you, but the word also means, as here, “a formal curse by a pope or a council of the Church, excommunicating a person or denouncing a doctrine.”
18 Force unit to cover wide urban development (3,4)
NEW TOWN — NEWTO(W)N… This has dictionary status—I had to check.
20 Newcomer runs into a challenger (7)
ARRIVAL — A R(R)IVAL
21 River always going in two directions (6)
SEVERN — (S)EVER(N)
22 Simple soul, thus (5)
BASIC — BA, the “soul” in Egyptian mythology + SIC, “thus”… We’ve seen BA here before, but I knew it already. To be precise, it’s the principal part of the multiplex Egyptian soul, the one personified as a bird, which will take flight after death… a lovely concept.

24 comments on “Sunday Times Cryptic 4961, by Dean Mayer — 4-CD Set! All Hits!”

  1. I biffed KALAHARI–‘part of Botswana’ left little room for doubt. Also biffed ELDEST SON, and didn’t get around to parsing it until after submitting. DNK DM, BA, or CRUST=living, though it seemed eminently sensible. “Tristram Shandy” includes a page-long example of an ANATHEMA, as I recall. When the church curses, it curses. It may have helped me get BOWIE that I had just read a book review of “Forget the Alamo!” COD to ANIMAL MAGNETISM, of course.
  2. I don’t remember any particular problem with this but my time is 5 hours, which doesn’t mean I sat there for 5 hours but I went away and came back later. I had no idea about that meaning of ANATHEMA, although it was totally plausible as a papal neg. When 1A went in immediately, I thought that would be one of Dean’s easy ones…yeah, they do exist…but not last Sunday.

    I didn’t even know the KALAHARI DESERT was in Botswana, but despite its enormous size, there are only a few places in the entire continent that are well-known enough to be in the Times Crossword (Mephisto has more, I know).

    Edited at 2021-07-04 01:07 am (UTC)

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  5. 29 minutes with LOI OVERCOMPENSATE. Nice puzzle. I didn’t know that BA was the soul, but the SIC ending made the answer pretty clear. I liked STORE DETECTIVES, although ‘force’ seems a bit on the heavy side as a collective noun for them. So COD to ANIMAL MAGNETISM. Have a good Independence Day in the US. Fittingly or not, it’s my wedding anniversary. Thank you Dean and Guy.
  6. ….was BA, and I was happy enough to accept it. The usual clever and enjoyable offering from Dean.

    FOI CUFF
    LOI CRUST
    COD STORE DETECTIVES
    TIME 15:31

  7. Did not know that meaning of (Epi)CURE.
    ANATHEMA was very good (“country music”) but COD by a mile, of course, to ANIMAL MAGNETISM. Classic Dean.
    Happy Fourth of July, Guy and to all Murcan crosswordistes!
  8. 11 done in a first session of about one hour; FOI CUFF.
    Then I worked away at it during the evening until about 9pm with LOI OVERCOMPENSATE, trying to link that word to the clue.
    Somehow I remembered BA so it must have been in a crossword. Late in were GRAND OPERA and COD STAMPEDE.
    This was enjoyable as it offered ways to keep going.
    David

  9. First pair in were CUFF and CHARMLESS. ANATHEMA and FAIENCE were last. I remembered FAIENCE from a previous puzzle having never heard of it otherwise. Liked ANIMAL MAGNETISM. Needed a few checkers for the desert as I was trying to find all the anagrist in the clue!. 30:53. Thanks Dean and Guy.
  10. 8:36. Quite easy, but very entertaining. BA rang a faint bell but with the checkers you don’t really need the wordplay.
  11. Very good as usual from Dean, but is it just me or are we getting rather too many CDs in the Sunday Times crosswords? I don’t like them at all and would rather we had none, but it seems that most people like them (as witness the number of times they are COD), so reluctantly accept their occasional appearance. But there were three in this crossword and I counted five the previous week.
    1. There are, as I noted, four here.
      Ranging from sensational to fine.

      Edited at 2021-07-04 01:03 pm (UTC)

    2. I think Dean has always been quite a heavy user of CDs, and David McLean also seems to like them. I like them a lot when they’re good, which they often are, but when they don’t quite come off they can be pretty groanworthy.
  12. 33.34. I found this very entertaining. Store detectives was a terrific pdm as was animal magnetism. I thought Kalahari Desert a really well worked clue. Specific to clue cure in epicure was (to me) obscure but I was pretty confident about the food lover. I ummmed and aaahed a lot at the end over LOI overcompensate where I couldn’t quite see what was going on but entered on the basis of checkers and it sort of fitting with correct.
  13. CD’s are great when you get the references but can be impossible if you don’t.
  14. FOI 1ac CUFF

    LOI 2dn FAIENCE but no surge!

    COD 10ac ANIMAL MAGNETISM – animal magic!

    WOD 7dn EPICURE

    Just a dozen takers – but none for The Club Monthly Special!
    I blame the football.

    Edited at 2021-07-04 04:39 pm (UTC)

  15. Bit late to the party. Family to stay= heaps of extra things to do …. Anyway, I enjoyed this. Took about an hour and I loved ANIMAL MAGNETISM, when I’d finally worked it out, of course. Never did quite get OVERCOMPENSATE so thanks Guy for that, and the rest.
  16. I suppose I’ll have to get used to CDs being prevalent in the ST, and stop looking for wordplay when there isn’t any. I still did this one, though it took some 21 minutes, so not that easy. Should have seen NEWTO(W)N quicker, but it puzzled me for a while trying to squeeze words for both force and unit into the clue.
  17. So busy reading this week’s Sunday papers almost forgot to comment on last week…
    Was this easier than your average Dean Mayer? He usually outwits me, but I finished in around 70 minutes. FOI 1st clue, CUFF at 1 ac. Last one in 2d FAIENCE which NHO but followed the clue. Greatest headscratch over 6d OVERCOMPENSATE; for too long I was trying to anagram “not necessarily” into a word that mean “correct”. (Well, he did it with KALAHARI DESERT!) A clanging PDM when I got what was going on. Clever clue among many such. 16d took a while, too, and it remained an unparsed BIFF until I read our expert blogger’s dissection of it, as did GRAND OPERA. Thanks, blogger.
  18. Thanks Dean and guy
    Got to this one on the day of publication down here on a cold day, made a little bit warmer with our first Wimbledon lady’s winner for a long long time.
    Found this one not quite as hard as his previous puzzle, but still it took a lot of work and a couple of word finder cheats to keep going. The main hold up was not getting the longer clues until quite late in the piece – but the wait was worth it when the penny dropped for both 10a (outstanding) and 24a. Had the gist of what was going on with 6d, but it took the blog to understand the cunning and wit of how it really worked.
    Needed help parsing SENTIENT and although had the DM in 8d, couldn’t find the reference to ‘direct message’ to really confirm it. That ADMIT was the penultimate entry with CRUST (misleading definition and that sense of RUST was not the first thing that came to mind for ‘evidence of age’).
        1. Is this not Kevin? My iPhone Gmail said this response was from my longtime LJ colleague Kevin Gregg. Really Anonymous?

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