Sunday Times Cryptic 4969 by David McLean — A man’s a man for a’ that

I didn’t work this in one go. Finished sometime Sunday (yesterday [last week]). It was striking that “man” or “men” was used in a few (clues or answers) and every time in a different sense (including the most prosaic), but not in the one synonymous with 17, whose clue refers to the game evoked by the surface of 14 and which is itself synonymous with 19men.

Some fine stuff here. Two &lits, a bit of junkie argot, two homophones that will (for a change) encounter no objection, one cross-reference between clues that under the circumstances seems entirely excusable…

I indicate (ragas, man!)* like this, and italicize anagrinds in the clues.

ACROSS
 1 Event in Met and NHS departments (8)
INCIDENT — IN, “in” + CID (Criminal Investigation Department), part of yer “Met” (Metropolitan Police) + ENT (Ear, Nose, Throat), part of yer “NHS” (National Health Service)
 5 Horse around in sarong on vacation (4)
SCAG — S(CA)G “Horse” here means heroin.
 8 Mountain housing a wind generator (4)
BEAN — BE(A)N Har har
 9 Bet better than badly bloated mug (10)
OUTGAMBLED — (bloated mug)* (Rather an odd surface.)
11 Pound of tea and coffee picked up? (6)
BRUISE — “brews”
13 Possibly neat drink swallowed by worker (8)
RUMINANT — RUM IN ANT Lexico says the sense of “neat” as “a bovine animal” is archaic… but you wouldn’t know it by working cryptics—or, for that matter, from Merriam-Webster. Collins calls it archaic in British but not in American.
14 Black’s Tal? Ignore opening and just castle! (8)
BALMORAL — B(lack) + [-t]AL + MORAL, “just”… This excellent surface—Surface of the Day!—clueing a word that has nothing to do with chess, refers, of course, to the great Mikhail Tal (1936–1992).
16 No, don’t start helping people (6)
…you’ll only make matters worse?
NATION — N(o) + [-r]ATION
17 Musical compositions from Kings? (6)
PIECES — DD, second a DBE
19 Game plans you’ve eavesdropped on (8)
DRAUGHTS — “drafts”
21 Treat angina in religious Bow man (8)
PAGANINI — P (angina)* I… PI for “pious” (sarcastic, usually). The violinist with a “deal with the devil” story predating Robert Johnson’s.
22 Waits on others as becomes a man! (6)
SERVES — CD, playing with the sense of “a man” as “a male servant” or “a valet”—though I, with the image in my head of the forces arrayed on opposite sides of a chessboard, at first thought it might refer to a (non-officer) member of one of a country’s armed services… and, OK, why not that too…
23 Description of 20 shirts can be so (4-6)
HIGH-NECKED — CD, referring to clue 20
24 Bit of dope? (4)
FACT — CD
26 One sought by the cops about electronic tag (4)
NAME — MAN<=“about” + E(lectronic)… We’re all familiar with the saying that the Royal Canadian Mounted Police “always get their man” (because women criminals can be more elusive?). And Lexico, at least, has this sense as a definition: “A male pursued or sought by another, especially in connection with a crime.”
27 New parents close to font here? (8)
TRANSEPT — (parents)* + [-fon]T, &lit… because, I suppose, this part of a church is close to where baptisms are performed.

DOWN
 1 Fish that’s stuffed with diamonds (3)
IDE — I(D)E
 2 Verify clubs working with company (7)
CONFIRM — C, “clubs” + ON, “working” + FIRM, “company”
 3 One of the Queen’s dedicated lovers? (5)
DRONE — apiarian CD
 4 Common brown climbing flower (7)
NATURAL — TAN<=“climbing” + URAL, “flow-er”
 6 I can’t be shifting display case (7)
CABINET — (I can’t be)*
 7 Insect, one of ten on the wall? (11)
GREENBOTTLE — I didn’t know the children’s song “Ten Green Bottles Hanging on the Wall.” Couldn’t make “grasshopper” parse but eventually thought of the drinking song “100 Bottles of Beer on the Wall” and figured there might be a more moderate British variant. Beer bottles are often green!
10 Country song about male lovers (7)
…the genre is expanding.
ARMENIA — AR(MEN)IA
12 Understanding a relation is tricky (11)
REALISATION — (a relation is)*
15 See trip abroad as this? (7)
RESPITE — (See trip)*, &lit
18 Cold actor picks up cap in military town (7)
CHATHAM — C (HAT) HAM
19 Sponge, gutted darter and octopus? (7)
DRINKER — D[-arte]R + INKER, “octopus?”
20 Accommodation housing one rare English animal (7)
GIRAFFE — G(I)(R)AFF(E)… GAFF is, according to Collins, archaic British slang (I’ve come across it here before) for “a person’s home, esp a flat.” R is an abbreviation for “rare”—probably most used by lexicographers.
22 Chair in an American saloon (5)
SEDAN — DD The second definition refers to a type of car; SEDAN is the American term for what Brits call a “saloon”—it took me a minute to sort this out. But the first definition is more interesting. “Filthy streets littered with mud, refuse and excrement were not only a health hazard in 16th and 17th century Europe, but also made travel difficult and impractical. Until the introduction of the sedan chair, that is. In 1634 Sir Saunders Duncombe introduced the sedan chair for hire in London.… Named after the town of Sedan in France where it was first used, the sedan chair consisted of a seat inside a cabin with a detachable roof, mounted on two poles and carried by two men known as ‘chairmen’, one at the front and one at the rear.… Sedan chairs soon became popular amongst the gentry.” From “The Sedan Chair” at the site Historic UK.
25 Animal whip (3)
CAT — DD… Short for “cat o’ nine tails.”

24 comments on “Sunday Times Cryptic 4969 by David McLean — A man’s a man for a’ that”

  1. Nice to see that PAGANINI wasn’t a Cockney. And thanks to Guy for parsing SCAG for me (my lack of drug experience let me down again). Held up by LOI NAME, as I was trying to shoehorn NEMO in, thinking the definition might be ‘one sought’ as in the movie, but finally got my man.
    27:31
    1. Nemo crossed my mind, too.
      But there was something fishy about that…
      (I’ll get my coat.)
  2. Half-an-hour but I had given up on 11ac as I would never have thought of pound = BRUISE and I was unable to get to it via wordplay.
  3. ….the poorest ST puzzle in a very long time. Too many clues were clunky and weak. Apart from “pound = BRUISE”, and “common = NATURAL”, why are “men” classed as “male lovers” specifically ?

    “Black’s Tal” ? I don’t play chess, but now Guy has identified the unknown champion, I’d have expected “Tal’s Black”.

    CAT had escaped from a QC, and the chestnut harvest yielded “religious = pi”. The mysterious IDE swims only in Crossword Land

    It’s the Mounties who always get their man, so 26A simply doesn’t work for me.

    FACT and SERVES seemed very weak, and the surface for DRINKER was remarkably contrived.

    HIGH-NECKED shirts ? New one on me !

    Luckily it was put to bed quickly enough not to spoil my Sunday morning completely.

    FOI/COD BEAN
    LOI DRONE
    TIME 12:01

    1. Fair thought about “Tal’s black” or “Black’s Tal” but you could happily say either, the latter particularly if you were looking at a position with someone and they asked who was playing which colour.
    2. I was surprised by HIGH-NECKED shirt too but Collins appears to endorse it. I might understand it relating to a dress (as opposed to having a plunging neckline) but I’d have thought shirts were pretty standard at the neck although they might have ‘high collars’.
    3. “Man” for “male lover” is a dictionary definition—e.g., Lexico: “ 1.3 A person’s husband, boyfriend, or male lover.”

      Lexico also defines “man” as used on the clue for NAME… as I explained.

      That’s NATURAL defined as (Collins) “in conformity with the ordinary course of nature; not unusual or exceptional”—i.e., not uncommon.

      For BRUISE, Lexico has “Crush or pound (food)” and Collins “to crush (food, etc) by pounding or pressing.”

      Edited at 2021-08-29 08:20 am (UTC)

      1. I accept all that you say Guy, but it doesn’t do anything for my dislike of the puzzle.
    4. I agree too .. I didn’t like it at all. Perhaps it is the old wavelength thing again but it all felt a bit forced or contrived to me.
  4. Over an hour. SERVES and NAME went in with a shrug and I’d forgotten the ‘accommodation’ sense of GAFF which we’ve had somewhere before. The surface for BALMORAL was lost on me, never having heard of the Latvian Grandmaster; Fischer, Spassky and Kasparov are about the only ones I know. After SCAG, I was fooled by ‘Bit of dope?’ which I think was my LOI.

    I liked the ‘wind generator’ def for BEAN – memories of “Blazing Saddles”.

    Thanks to setter and Guy

      1. Thanks. I bow to your superior chess knowledge and have seen your subsequent post about having met Misha Tal. Karpov rings a bell, but NHO Capablanca whom I see was a (pre-Castro) Cuban. Now I come to think of it I have also heard of Nigel Short who’s probably quite a celeb. in the UK.
  5. 50 minutes. I found this quite tough, still being less than convinced about SERVES and BRUISE as I finished, but neither could be anything else. My COD was RUMINANT. Thank you Guy and David
  6. As one who has spent far too much time at racecourses, when in the pub afterwards comparing notes, I can safely say that noone has ever said “Well done, I’ve lost £50 today so you winning £100 means you can buy the drinks as you’ve outgambled me.”.
    1. This made me laugh. But on the other hand if likelihood of using a word was a precondition of it being selected for clueing we’d presumably have a lot fewer words to choose from 🙂
  7. Got most of this done in under half an hour but struggled with BRUISES and NAME at the end. Also put in SERVER which was a bit careless

    Quite liked it and as a chessplayer loved the Tal clue (though ignoring the opening might not be ideal against the Latvian magician…)

  8. If I recall correctly, my first 2 in were IDE, then INCIDENT. As Guy says, har har for wind generator. I seemed to be more or less on the wavelength and found myself puzzling over SERVE and LOI, BRUISE fairly soon. 21:14. Thanks Harry and Guy.
  9. 18:27, but I somehow managed to type NUTURAL and fail to notice it when checking. Drat.
    I thought this was a bit of a mixed bag, with some good stuff (wind generator, arf) and a couple of rather weak ones (SERVES). However some of the things I wasn’t keen on (pound = BRUISE, MAN) turn out to be perfectly valid definitions I just wasn’t aware of, which strikes me as perfectly fair and indeed welcome.

    Edited at 2021-08-29 09:15 am (UTC)

  10. Agree with K, bit of a mixed bag and personally not keen, overall.

    Misha Tal was a great hero of mine, once upon a time .. I met him once in the ’70s when he came to the Hastings tournament, which he won; needless to say we were never going to meet over the board.

    1. Yes Tal was a wonderful player. He drank and smoked like there was no tomorrow, and he had dreadful kidney problems. Goodness knows which caused which, but he died at 55 and didn’t really make the mark on chess that he might have done, although he did become World Champion.
      1. In the era of Botvinnik, Smyslov and Petrosian, he was such a breath of fresh air. For a youngster like me he was a real hero. He died early for the reasons stated 🙂 but he did make a mark,on me at least

  11. Thanks Guy, especially for the history of the sedan chair. I found a lot of words where I didnt connect a particular usage to the required word first off — pounds/bruises, man — but I saw the connections as soon as I’d worked in from either crossers or whichever half of wordplay or definition I didn’t have. For me, all were clear enough and unambiguous, so I didn’t get irked.
  12. I don’t remember doing this but I see I still had BRUISE left, so obviously I intended to come back to it but never did until now. So DNF for me. I’m not sure I’d have got BRUISE even if I had come back!

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