Sunday Times Cryptic No 4911 by Robert Price — DIVERSIONARY tactics

Author   Guy du SablePosted on Categories Weekend Cryptic
Nothing very exotic here, though I wasn’t sure when working this that I’d ever seen, let alone eaten, a DRUPE (turns out this is a kind of fruit, not a specific variety). Some of the clues, deliciously, look rather opaque AT FIRST SIGHT, but everything became clear soon enough.

I did have to look up the football position OUTSIDE-RIGHT, but it wasn’t my LOI. That was, oddly enough, REEFER, which, besides being the closest thing to a chestnut in this collection, also refers to my favorite psychoactive substance. What was I smo—, er, vaping? (Guess!) Anyway, it often seems to help… seriously!

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

ACROSS
 1 Woodpiles making energy amid tombs (8)
PYRAMIDS — ”Pyres,” with E(nergy) replaced by AMID. It seems that most of the famous pyramids of Egypt were indeed mausoleums.
 5 “Like a Virgin” followed on the radio (6)
CHASTE — ”chased”
 9 Dramatic decline in air travel? (4,4)
NOSE DIVE — No doubt because it’s too hard to maintain social distancing on a plane. CD
10 Fiend who first killed a maiden from the east (6)
MANIAC — CAIN, “who first killed” + A + M(aiden) <=all “from the east”
12 Daily temperature graph (5)
CHART — CHAR, “daily” (housecleaner) + T (emperature)
13 Song and dance about university backtracking (9)
ROUNDELAY — ROUND, “about” + YALE<=“university backtracking”
14 Exchanging art gifts: this is how love can be (2,5,5)
AT FIRST SIGHT — How sweet! (art gifts is)* When love arrives this suddenly in France, one may speak of a coup de foudre (lightning strike).
18 Vinaigrette to go with miserable rocket (8,4)
DRESSING DOWN — DRESSING, “Vinaigrette” (an unflagged DBE, which Peter & Co. have begun to make a habit of) + DOWN, “miserable,” with “to go with” being just connective tissue. You’ll find “rocket” as a DRESSING-DOWN in Lexico (if nowhere else); I must have seen it before here. The fact that “rocket” also means arugula, which you might feel like DRESSING with some vinaigrette, seems intended to confuse, but it didn’t hold me up very long.
21 Regularly clean less than the queen’s cleaner (9)
LAUNDERER — Alternate letters in “clean,” LA + UNDER + ER
23 Opera originally forbidding perfume (5)
ODOUR — O[-pera] + DOUR
24 Part of the service treated acute pain primarily (6)
TEACUP — (acute)* + P[-ain]
25 Type of paint covering applied in layers (8)
EGGSHELL — DD, the second a CD, as the egg is produced inside the hen who will eventually lay it
26 A sailor might be seen in this sort of joint (6)
REEFER — DD
27 Books room full of old equipment for a medical exam (8)
OTOSCOPE — OT, “books” (Old Testament) + SCOPE, “room,” with O(ld) inside

DOWN
 1 A little disc in a plane, lifting flaps (6)
PANICS — Reverse hidden.
 2 Once more, close in on marine predator (6)
RESEAL — RE, “on” + SEAL, “marine predator”
 3 Thinks China’s embracing change? (9)
MEDITATES — M(EDIT)ATES
 4 Account that Daily Record admits is misleading (12)
DIVERSIONARY — DI(VERSION)ARY
 6 Reportedly, lots of people stockpile (5)
HOARD — …toilet paper? “horde”
 7 Overflow from small sack (8)
SPILLAGE — S(mall) + PILLAGE, “sack”
 8 In French, “catacombs” translates into “secret passages” (8)
ENCRYPTS — EN, which is French for “in” + “catacombs,” CRYPTS
11 Team inspired by complete winger (7-5)
OUTSIDE-RIGHT — OUT(SIDE)RIGHT
15 Cuts may be supported by these dated hacks (9)
SAWHORSES — SAW, “dated” + HORSES, “hacks”
16 Huge admirer of what the groom said afterwards (8)
IDOLATER — I DO LATER I was afraid “said” was doing double duty here, because I didn’t even dream there was a alternate spelling (to me, it’s “idolator”), until Keriothe alerted me, below.
17 Appropriate risk when short of capital (8)
PECULATE — [-s]PECULATE
19 Driver’s warning shot makes you surrender (6)
FOREGO — FORE, “driver’s warning” + GO, “shot”… I will forgo [sic] further comment.
20 Toast with last bit of cheese after grating (6)
GRILLE — GRILL + [-chees]E
22 It’s right that fool contains fruit (5)
DRUPE — D(R)UPE This surface seemed nonsensical, but then I remembered that a “fool” is a dessert (over there) that, indeed, contains fruit.

39 comments on “Sunday Times Cryptic No 4911 by Robert Price — DIVERSIONARY tactics”

  1. Ha. Obviously, I didn’t know that I’d been eating DRUPEs all my life. I just vaguely remembered it as fruit-related.
    I’ve amended the blog about IDOLATER too.

    Edited at 2020-07-19 12:39 am (UTC)

  2. Put in IDOLATER without a qualm; looked and looks right to me (unlike, say, BAPTIZING), and I see ODE gives only that spelling. I had a ? by ROUNDELAY, but only because I didn’t realize that it was also a dance. COD to PYRAMIDS.
    1. I am amazed to see IDOLATER come up when I try to get “idolator” from Merriam-Webster (it’s given as a variant).
      Well, I’ll be damned.
      Speaking of which, I must have gotten that spelling from the King James Bible (raised a Baptist).

      Edited at 2020-07-19 12:46 am (UTC)

  3. had ROUNDOLAY for 1 pink square. It parsed well, with the dance being RONDO and song being LAY around U, backtracking by having the dance before the song. Thought it must be an alternative spelling for ROUNDELAY. Thanks Guy for the reel song and dance. 32.59
    1. I only knew “rondo” as a musical form. Since you wrote, I have found out that it is also a choreographic form. Merci !
  4. 10:14. No real problems with this, but I had FREE FALL for a while at 9ac which delayed me a little.
    Never seen or eaten a DRUPE, G? Never seen or eaten a peach, plum, cherry, apricot, mango, olive… I could go on.
    I went through a similar thought process to you at 16dn and concluded (correctly as it turned out) that IDOLATER was the only way to make sense of the wordplay. Not the way I’d have spelled it but the dictionaries seem (on the whole) to think it’s fine. Collins has it as an American usage.
  5. 2down seems to have a superfluous preposition in ‘in’, leading to perhaps deliberate ambiguity. I read it initially as ‘close in on’ meaning to narrow the distance to a target which does not give ‘reseal’.
    1. In most broadsheet cryptics, “in” is counted as an acceptable link between definition and wordplay (in either order).
          1. I’m sure when The ST goes tabloid (soon, perhaps) it will suffer little diminution in quality, although no doubt posing new challenges for puzzles editors.
  6. “rocket” is defined as “a severe reprimand” in Collins and Chambers.

    In every UK-published dictionary I would look at for ST xwd purposes, “ronde” is a dance and “rondo” is not.

    “idolater” seems to be the dominant version in British English, including the King James bible – an online search of it found no use of “idolator”. Unless it’s lurking in some very small print, the big fat Webster’s 3rd New International has no “idolator”.

    I know “vinaigrette” has another meaning, but I can’t imagine many people hearing it and thinking of a container rather than a dressing, so like “alsatian” indicating “dog”, adding another use of “perhaps” seems unnecessary.

    1. I didn’t see the relevant sense of “rocket” in Collins online, only in Lexico, but now I see it’s there. As I’ve said, I don’t have Chambers.

      Collins online has “idolator” as the British spelling. Go figure. Since it’s not the spelling in the KJV, I don’t know why it was engraved in my brain.

      “Dog” in a clue can define ALSATIAN. The other way round, it’s a DBE. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. But how many meanings “vinaigrette” might have is beside the point.

      Edited at 2020-07-19 08:30 am (UTC)

      1. The reason for my long-lasting choice of alsatian as an example is that there are plenty of 8-letter dogs, but only one common meaning of “alsatian”. It just seems odd to me that many cryptic crossword folk insist on “assistance” going one way but not the other. Likewise (even more so) for “(US) state” and “Rhode Island”, for example.

        Latest print version of Collins just has “idolater or idolator” as a noun under idol, which makes rather more sense to me than the online content.

        Edited at 2020-07-19 10:32 am (UTC)

        1. Well, y’know, “Alsatian” can also mean a person from the Alsace region of (now, again) France, or their dialect. It’s no less “common” than any other such noun. Isn’t the word capped in reference to the canine breed as well?

          I find this précision in Wikipedia remarkably precise:
          German Shepherd, a breed of dog known as an Alsatian in the United Kingdom from 1919 to 1977
          Was a law passed, or what? Ha.

          1. We have a right-wing quasi-militaristic body here in England called the “Kennel Club.” They organise canine affairs and do indeed pass laws, or at least issue edicts that amount to much the same thing… they also so arrange matters that the genetic makeup of various inoffensive breeds of dog are interfered with for cosmetic purposes. I am not a fan, as you might gather. I imagine the US has something very similar
            1. Yeah, I figured it was something like that. There is indeed an American Kennel Club too.
              I imagine, though, that many people continued to call their German shepherds alsatians, whatever fine they might risk incurring! ;-D

              The Kennel Club was the name of a punk rock club in Philly during my days there in the early ’80s, a name I couldn’t quite remember the other day.

              Edited at 2020-07-19 07:31 pm (UTC)

          2. My capitalisation must mean I’m obeying the Times Style Guide, which decapitalises many things including bordeaux, burgundy and champagne as grape varieties, and dalmatian, alsatian and labrador dogs.

            As for the common meaning, if you have a digital sub you can search the two newspapers for uses of “alsatian” and see for yourself that if our uses are a fair sample, the dog is the dominant meaning in British English.

            1. …which shows the limits of the Kennel Club’s overweening authority!
  7. …with one pink square because I typed in ROUNDALAY. No wonder I couldn’t make sense of the parsing.
    Thank you, Guy, for explaining PYRAMIDS, the other clue I was unable to parse at the time.
    I enjoyed the fact that 12ac and 4d both had “daily” but there was only one CHAR. And 21ac had “cleaner” but it wasn’t a char!
    Like last week when I knew that mention of “throne” meant something to do with toilets, so this week, in 25ac, “applied in layers” had to refer to chooks.
    I only solved my first clue after 5 minutes, and after 10 I had only solved3 but it was a good test.
    Joint COD to IDOLATER and DRUPE.
  8. I gave up after 15 minutes, and resorted to aids for the PYRAMID/RESEAL intersection. An ****-kicking session duly followed. That pesky “in” didn’t help, but I’ve no real excuse.

    COD NOSE DIVE – quite apt really.

  9. I found this a bit tougher than I usually do with Robert, taking 43 minutes, partly because I’d put AMASS for HOARD until the song and dance put me right. I wondered if it was a ROUNDELAY that Blondel sang at Durnstein Castle, having visited last year, so I put ‘Blondel at Durnstein’ into Google. I was immediately asked, “Do you mean Blondie at Durnstein?”
    I also struggled on SAWHORSES being rubbish at Woodwork at school, until the cryptic dawned on me. COD to EGGSHELL, not that I’m much better at painting and decorating. I didn’t give the spelling of IDOLATER a second glance, but then the King James Bible will have been my first introduction to the word. Another fine puzzle. Thank you Robert and Guy.
  10. This was a major struggle for me, possibly Robert’s hardest puzzle to date. FOI was CHART, not difficult. Then AT FIRST SIGHT got me going; at least I thought it would. Found TEACUP, a nice clue. Then ground to a halt.
    Further sessions got me to a final five: 2d, 15d, 17d, 22d and 26a.I decided to just use my best guesses: REEFER unparsed; DRUPE (NHO);PECULATE I’d seen before; RESEAL very clever,missed it for too long; and LOI SAWHORSES could that really be correct? It was.
    Unfortunately I’d made a monster mash of 8d and put EXCERPTS; ironic to miss CRYPT in a cryptic crossword.
    And I had constructed ROUNDELER to fit.
    Some good stuff in here but very difficult in places. David
  11. 14:26. Lots of fun. The nice reverse hidden PICNICS was my LOI. I particularly enjoyed the interment clues of PYRAMIDS and ENCRYPTS. No problem with IDOLATER which also made me smile. Thanks Robert and Guy.
      1. Oops. I don’t know what happened there! Yes I meant PANICS. I maybe had yesterday’s Jumbo on my mind.
  12. 41:59 I found this quite a stiff test. I struggled at the end with the parsing of pyramids and roundelay which I knew as a song but not as a dance.
  13. I found this slightly more difficult than usual, but still managed to finish in 33:57. However, I had a pink square due to biffing ROUNDALAY with only a brief nod towards the parsing, which saw RONDO and LAY as bits of the wordplay, incorrectly of course. Didn’t think twice about IDOLATER. Liked EGGSHELL. Thanks Bob and Guy.
  14. Like k, I also confidently put in FREE FALL and stared at AMID in the clue thinking it cannot be that easy. I therefore did not make a great start. Got there in the end.
  15. Came in just under the hour with PECULATE LOI. I Struggled IN THE SE corner for ages. I knew SAWHORSES though as, unlike bw I was quite good at woodwork at school, probably because the master, « Woodie » Way would throw lumps of wood at our heads if we weren’t ! Rondo was a great track by the Nice, a sort of rock cross between Ravel’s Bolero and Sabre Dance. I was lucky enough to see them live several times in the late 60’s and Rondo was one of the highlights. Great band. Thank you Guy and setter.
  16. First time for a ST cryptic…managed to finish….
    liked the deviously clued EGGSHELL.

  17. It’s tomorrow but I came here nevertheless to see the parsing of 1a. I couldn’t see the instruction for omitting the E. Of course, it’s obvious in retrospect. Very enjoyable. 28 minutes. Ann
  19. Thanks Robert and guy
    Just under the hour in two short opening sittings and a 40 minute finisher.
    I actually had parsed 13a with the definition only as ‘song’ and the wordplay as ROUND (a dance where the dancers move in a circle, as per Collins online – definition 33) + the reversed YALE.
    IDOLATER went straight in like that, based on the word play – always thought of it as IDOLATOR too, .
    Finished in the NW corner with the cleverly reverse hidden PANICS, PYRAMIDS (had it in this Thursday’s FT puzzle, but think that this was a much better clue for it) and RESEAL (taking an age to see how it all worked, especially around that tricky ‘on’ bit).

    [always have a wry smile when you reference your penchant for the ‘smoke’ and wonder what I perceive as the typical British cohort that do these puzzles would be thinking !]

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