Sunday Times Cryptic No. 4829, by Jeff Pearce — Fag ged about it

Author   Guy du SablePosted on Categories Weekend Cryptic
I suddenly remembered this morning that I had to do this by tonight, and I’ve lost my copy so had to work it again, and I had no notes. But this wasn’t a hard one. I was struck, on reworking, by the number of clues with merely connecting words, not part of the wordplay or the definition (I barely noticed the innocuous “and” in 10 and “including” in 13, but “to get” in 12 and “gets the” in 22 stood out), and a few times displacing the definition from a normal position at the beginning: “Having” in 8, “For the” in 15, “There’s” in 24.There was one like this in Thursday’s QC and in Friday’s 15×15. I’ll just say that this is not my favorite kind of clue.

I do (gramasan)* like this, and italicize anagrinds in the clue.

ACROSS

 1 Having a different view of earth, for one? (6,2,5)
CHANGE OF HEART — I found it hard to see “Having” as part of the definition. To make it clearly a gerund, I have to imagine it as “the having,” and in that case, seems it would need to be “of a different view.” (Or maybe I just need some sleep.) One CHANGE OF HEART is “earth.”
10 After end of Advent everyone’s in debt and putting on fat (9)
TALLOWING — Sounds about right, for the holiday season… [Adven]T + ALL + OWING. Pretty straightforward, but the answer may seem a bit obscure.
11 Neat place to get milk (5)
UDDER — Cryptic definition, “Neat” being another word for a bovine animal.
12 Tried really hard but not starting to get gold etc (5)
TROVE — [-s]TROVE
13 Reference work including the end of many old beasts (9)
THESAURUS — THE + SAURUS
14 Doing this, niggles England’s tailender rudely (8)
SLEDGING — (niggles + [Englan]d)* In America, we call it “sledding”… or we don’t, since—as Vinyl helpfully pointed out within minutes of my posting—there is a cricket reference here. And this is an &lit. I really thought we were missing a definition.
16 Note officer attached to poet (6)
MILTON — MI (“note”) + LT (lieutenant, “officer”) + ON (“attached to”)
19 Protection provided by pawn in gambit (6)
AWNING — (Hidden.)
20 Soldier, say, follows Russian NCO (8)
SERGEANT — SERGE being a common “Russian” name, with an ANT (“Soldier, say”) coming after.
22 Out of sorts opera star gets the bird! (3,6)
SEA PARROT — (opera star)*
24 Girl starts to slip under stool in eatery (5)
SUSIE — (“If you knew Susie like I knew Susie…”)
25 How Delia may describe the Spanish country? (5)
INDIA — “Delia” is said to “describe,” in the sense exclusive to cryptic crosswords, “the [in] Spanish,” “el,” IN DIA. Pretty clever.
26 Instrument hurt girl during broadcast (9)
HARMONICA — Sounds like (“during broadcast”) “harm Monica.”
27 Very sad when one’s late (5-8)
GRIEF-STRICKEN — Cryptic Definition.

DOWN
 2 Robust measure taken about blue movie with many cuts (9)
HALLOWEEN — HAL(LOW)E + EN (type “measure”). A slasher flick, not my cuppa meat.
 3 Famous prize briefly in possession of one proud mum (5)
NIOBE — N(I)OBE[-l]. Tearfully GRIEF-STRICKEN mother in Greek mythology.
 4 Issuing magazine about Tirpitz—initially in German (8)
EMITTING -TIME<— + T[irpitz] + IN + G
 5 Was a servant at Eton whacked? (6)
FAGGED — Today’s lone Double Definition. I knew the second sense given here, didn’t know the first. Wikipedia: “Fagging was a traditional practice in British boarding private schools (nearly all ‘public schools’ in the English sense) and also many other boarding schools, whereby younger pupils were required to act as personal servants to the most senior boys.… Under school rules, fagging might entail harsh discipline and corporal punishment when those were standard practices. Fagging was sometimes associated with sexual abuse by those older boys.”
 6 Giving knowledge training guidance and tuition primarily (9)
EDUCATING — (guidance + T[uition])*
 7 Going north and south girl breaks posh car’s tracking device (5)
RADAR — ADA is the gal who swings both ways, stylishly riding here in a R(olls) R(oyce)
 8 Having this wisdom, sets out what crew should do (13)
STATESMANSHIP — STATES is “sets out,” and the swabbies must MAN SHIP.
 9 A jolly smooth hunk introduces start of this play (4,3,3,3)
ARMS AND THE MAN — A RM (Royal Marine, or a “jolly”) + SAND (“smooth”) + “start of this,” T + HE MAN (“hunk”)
15 For the pub trendy old man gets clothed in good material (3,6)
GIN PALACE — G(IN PA)LACE
17 Come out, as printer arranged (9)
TRANSPIRE — (as printer)*
18 One might repair paintings on shop floor, finally (8)
RESTORER — RE (“on”) + STORE (“shop”) + [floo]R
21 Support the Queen’s composer (6)
BRAHMS — “Support” is BRA, unsurprisingly, with H(er) M(ajesty’)S
23 Steps left out for reptile (5)
ADDER — [l]ADDER
24 There’s a lot of tape around old patient (5)
STOIC — ST(O)IC[k]

33 comments on “Sunday Times Cryptic No. 4829, by Jeff Pearce — Fag ged about it”

  2. I can’t believe I forgot BRA and HMS. I biffed DAIRY at 11ac, which helped slow me down a bunch. ‘Going north and south’ struck me as superfluous. I think you could extend the underline to include ‘having’; the having of a different view (from one previously held) can be a change of heart. Not that it matters.
      1. If you “have” a baby, heart attack, bit of a moment, etc etc, that’s an event rather than long-term possession. Is it really impossible for this meaning to apply here?
        1. No, it’s certainly possible—and of course a gerund can be a noun—but my problem with “having” did have something to do with the absence of any implication of (personal) change. “Having a different view” could just as, or more, readily mean “dissenting”—from someone else’s view. I was just now trying to think of an alternative… “Adoption of a different view” (it can’t be “a new view,” to fit the wordplay)… but it’s way past my bedtime.

          A CHANGE OF HEART regarding earth is a little hard to contextualize. The most likely reference would be to our planet (though it could also mean “soil,” which would also be odd). Are we talking about an alien, some supervillain who was on the verge of destroying the third stone from the sun, or (more mundanely) perhaps someone who was recently suicidal?

          Edited at 2018-12-23 09:32 am (UTC)

          1. I didn’t intend to suggest that the clue is an &lit – the second part just says to me that “earth” is one of the possible anagrams of “heart”. So the surface meaning I thought of was about an astronaut or some other high flier.

            On the definition side, I’m thinking of a statement like “I thought this one was an &lit and then I had a different idea”, in which having the different idea is both the moment when that happens and the situation afterwards (unless you have another change of mind).

            Edited at 2018-12-23 11:57 am (UTC)

            1. Well, I didn’t think it was an &lit either, y’know! Ha. I’m not quite sure what you’re getting at with the further explanation. Seems to me that in “…and then I had a different idea,” the equivalent to CHANGE OF HEART is “a different idea.” But I’m going back to bed.

              Edited at 2018-12-23 12:43 pm (UTC)

              1. I hadn’t looked there before, but the Oxford Dictionary of English Idioms has, for “a change of heart”: “a move to a different opinion or attitude” [my italics]
                1. Of course, and “[a] move” is much clearer than “having”—which could also be part of an adjectival phrase…
  3. 20:52. Lots of lovely clues here. I liked the cricket &lit at 14a, the neatly hidden AWNING and the clever INDIA. I wondered who the composer ARCHER might be for 21d until I saw GRIEF STRICKEN and had to change it to to BRAHMS, my COD. Thanks Jeff and Guy.
  4. I can’t believe I failed to solve BRAHMS. With a degeree in music I couldn’t think of a composer to fit ?R?H?S and with over 10 years experience of blogging for TftT I didn’t spot support = BRA to help me on my way! Time to expect the men in white coats, I fear.

    To save others a lot of head-scratching might I point out there’s a misprint in today’s Christmas Cryptic clue at 45ac?

    Edited at 2018-12-23 06:09 am (UTC)

    1. Can you be more specific, without giving anything away? If there’s a misspelled word, a missing letter or something like that in the clue, you can tell us!
    2. I was going to comment on that in the forum and forgot; I assume Jack is referring to ‘goes’, which should be ‘does’. Rather important typo.
        1. I don’t think it’s a misprint. Goes works for me, but I won’t spoil things by giving an example here to prove my point. Will send personal message.

          Edited at 2018-12-23 08:40 am (UTC)

          1. Thankyou. I wondered whether the meaning of “go” involved could be British rather than American, but it’s in my iPad version of Merriam Webster, as well as the Concise Oxford. I’ve learned from editing experience that when you think there’s a misprint, it’s worth looking up that “wrong” word to make sure.
  5. Middle of the road puzzle at 31 minutes with TROVE followed by NIOBE bringing up the rear. COD to CHANGE OF HEART but I quite liked DELIA. If the tailender subject to sledging at 14a was Jimmy, I hope the stump mic was turned off. It was probably just his bosom pal Kohli giving him a few batting tips. Thank you and happy Christmas, Guy andJeff. Don’t tallow too much.
  6. 47:47 I found this a bit chewier than average and found it hard to get started. FOI 14ac. LOI 20ac. For some reason 8dn, 16ac and 20ac proved somewhat recalcitrant towards the end. At 20ac the only Serge I could think of was Gainsbourg so I associated it more with French than Russian. For the sake of consistency I make the same half-hearted observation regarding the homophone at 26ac that I did when ST 4805 was blogged here on the 7th of July 2018.
    1. I don’t know what your observation was, but I’m willing to accept, for cryptic puzzle purposes anyway, pairs like this, or nitrate/night rate, ice cream/I scream, true homophones though they do not be.
    2. I too thought Serge rather than Sergei was French, or at least Western rather than Russian (both Rachmaninov and Prokoviev seem to have switched to this spelling when they moved west). But the sense used in the clue is “Russian” as a noun. If you switch to “French”, that meaning becomes “Frenchman”, so “Russian”, which serves both purposes, had to stay.
      1. I wondered about “Serge,” too, but reminded myself that Gainsbourg’s (Jewish) parents fled to Paris from what is now Ukraine during the Russian Revolution.
      2. A quick Google says: The name Serge is a boy’s name of French, Russian origin meaning “servant”. So there are probably plenty of Russian Serges to pick from.
  7. This took me nearly 25 minutes but I was incredibly tired and fell asleep half-way through, so I’m not sure that reflects the difficulty. None of it seems hard now of course, and I have no problem with 1ac.
  8. Another DNF in 30 mins. Halloween, Trove, Awning and Milton were all found missing in action. Plus I used Dr Google to help me get Arms and the Man. Redguard and then Reagent as place holders for Sergeant didn’t help much either.

    My New Year resolution? An improvement re: solution.

  9. I seemed to make heavy weather of this one, as it took me 44:55, but quite a bit of that was working out parsings once I had an answer. With the prize puzzles I always like to be absolutely sure before submitting. INDIA held me up for a while, but I did eventually see it. I needed all the checkers for SEA PARROT. BRAHMS didn’t take too long, but it wasn’t a write in. A brief flirt with NAOMI ended when I remembered NIOBE, a lady I’ve only encountered in these crosswords, but at least she hasn’t fallen through the cracks in my brain. 1a didn’t cause any problems. Thanks Jeff and Guy, and Happy Christmas to all.
  10. I was struggling at first but managed to work my way through this in the end. FOI was Brahms. LOI was 1a so clearly I struggled to solve it but had no worries once done.
    I found Stoic difficult and could not parse India but I have grown used to a level of guesswork. Niobe unknown.
    Arms and The Man one of my first; it’s great when you know the required GK.
    Much to like in this; I shall look for opportunities to use the word Tallowing.
    David
  11. I wasn’t greatly exercised by it, the clue was perfectly solvable, it’s just that each part of the pair in this homophone needs the “m” (at least in my pronunciation) and there’s only one to go around. I can’t quite pronounce harmonica in a way that gives me harm Monica – I either get harm onica or har Monica. That is being hypercritical though for what I think is really a Christmas Crackery, dad-joke, type of a clue.
  12. As was the case with the Saturday puzzle, I managed to give myself a headache on this one by putting in a wrong answer that seemed perfectly plausible. In this case it was a SEA RAPTOR at 22a, which made BRAHMS even trickier than it needed to be…

    Luckily RESTORER couldn’t really be anything else, and in the end I sorted it all out, but I went well over the hour and split my work into a few different chunks, so I have no time to report other than “bloomin’ ages”!

    Thanks to setter and blogger. (And thanks to the Powers That Be that I managed this weekend’s puzzles without shooting myself in the foot.)

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