Sunday Times Cryptic No 4913 by Dean Mayer — The Favorite Game

Author   Guy du SablePosted on Categories Weekend Cryptic
I’ve never read the Leonard Cohen novel that shares its name with this entry. (There, the title refers to a non-solitary activity. Sigh)
This was quite an enjoyable romp, and I became acquainted with a new fruit and a somewhat obscure usage for “bottom.”

Worked online, and I neglected to note my FOI or LOI. I’m sure it took me a while to get 1ac.

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

ACROSS
 1 Crikey, he’s left a flower (5)
AVENS — [-he]AVENS… Only in Crosswordland does anyone ever call a river “a flow-er.” However, this is the botanical kind.
 4 An ace in the hand? (3,6)
TOP BANANA — CD… a bunch of the fruit being called a “hand” (the number of “fingers” varies wildly)
 9 Gossip first to leave during scrap? (7)
TATTLER — TATT(L)ER
10 English PM accepting he’s “the Younger”, say (7)
EPITHET — E(nglish) + PIT(HE)T
11 One struggles to turn “fine fashion” into “bottom” (7,7)
FREEDOM FIGHTER — FRE(F + MODE<=)IGHTER… Did you know that “bottom” is another word for a cargo ship? I didn’t. One person’s FREEDOM FIGHTER is another’s “terrorist.”
13 Unite and disunite (6)
CLEAVE — DD
14 Cape Horn (8)
VUVUZELA — CD… because the raucous noisemaker is closely associated with football matches in Cape Town, South Africa
16 In state of emergency, merchant about to hide Louise’s skirts (3,5)
RED ALERT — TRADER<=“about” covering L[-ouis]E… Odd to have a definition-wordplay connector as the first word.
18 Do punks have second offer? (6)
MOHAWK — MO(ment), “second” + HAWK, “offer”
21 Lightweight carpeting (4,2,3,5)
SLAP ON THE WRIST — CD
23 South American church, one next to bank (7)
CHILEAN — CH(urch) + I, “one” beside LEAN, “bank”
24 Fruit essential while travelling west (7)
SATSUMA — A MUST + AS <=“traveling west” Hadn’t heard of this citrus fruit, but it’s not unlikely that I’ve eaten it. (It’s not a drupe.)
25 Now well off? (5,4)
RIGHT AWAY — RIGHT, “well” (as an intensifier) + AWAY, “off”
26 Is author heard in offices? (5)
RITES — “writes”

DOWN
 1 Fantastic as terrific craftsmen (10)
ARTIFICERS — (as terrific)*
 2 Great old actor, minute parts (7)
EXTREME — EX, “old” + TRE(M)E, the “actor” being Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree (17 December 1852—2 July 1917)
 3 PM’s love need left out personal growth (4-11)
SELF-DEVELOPMENT — (PM’s love need left)*
 4 Journalist abandoning the drums plays guitar (6)
THRUMS — TH[-ed]RUMS
 5 Very good to carry gun that criminal may have (8)
PREVIOUS — P(REV)IOUS
 6 Catch this misfit? (1,4,3,2,5)
A FISH OUT OF WATER — (It doesn’t seem like that would be very sporting.)
 7 Piece of spinach I eventually produce (7)
ACHIEVE — Hidden
 8 Modifying key ought to get fairly high vocal range (4)
ALTO — ALT, “Modifying key” + O, or zero, “ought” being an alternate spelling of “aught”
12 Sandy is into one game or another (10)
JACKSTRAWS — Well, I guess crosswords are games… JACK(STRAW)S, or pick-up sticks
15 Virgin with name hidden in plot (5-3)
BRAND-NEW — AND, “with” + N(ame) cached in BREW, “plot”
17 Lived rough—no good searching (7)
DELVING — (lived)* + N(o) G(ood)
19 “I am the greatest” for one missing last part? (7)
ALIQUOT — ALI QUOT[-e] I became familiar with this word when learning about just intonation, as the overtone series is produced by the division of, say, a vibrating string into ALIQUOT parts, or proper divisors, of the fundamental. The word can be a noun as well as an adjective.
20 At first we welcome the blue drink (6)
WHISKY — W[-e] + HI, “welcome” + SKY, “the blue” Unless the WHISKY is a single malt, I’d prefer whiskey.
22 Damage small vehicle (4)
SCAR — S + CAR

34 comments on “Sunday Times Cryptic No 4913 by Dean Mayer — The Favorite Game”

  1. I knew what was needed at 14ac, but I didn’t know how to spell it, and U U E A are not helpful checkers; and of course there was no way to get the answer if one didn’t know the horn. I never did work out FREEDOM FIGHTER, even though I knew ‘bottom’. DNK AVENS, of course, and barely remembered ALIQUOT. FOI RED ALERT, POI VUVUZELA, LOI JACKSTRAWS. COD MOHAWK, with RIGHT AWAY a close second. A bit disappointing to see Dean bringing in TREE.
  2. JACKSTRAWS took a while to fall, as BASKETBALL and RACKETBALL fitted the checkers until 26a forced a major rethink. Liked Vuvuzela from its brilliantly succinct clue.
    36’19”
    1. Typo at 14ac? 1ac is a flower not a flow-er (as far as I’m aware) so I didn’t know how to take the comment.

      Edited at 2020-08-02 03:25 am (UTC)

      1. Talkin’ to me? Ha. I did have one, in filling in the blanks again for the blog. Thanks.
      2. You could take my earlier comment as “incomplete.” I forgot the rest of what I was going to say between last Saturday and this.
  3. …floats like a bee. DNF, throwing in the towel after an hour, fed up of banging my head against a brick wall in the SE and using an aid for the unknown JACKSTRAWS. I had found the SE tricky by then, particularly MOHAWK and my COD ALIQUOT. I biffed AVENS from cryptic and crossers and couldn’t have told you if it was a river, several rivers, a plant, several plants, or the guy who opened Woodstock introduced by a Cockney. Tougher than normal. Thank you Guy and Dean.

    Edited at 2020-08-02 05:56 am (UTC)

  4. “Cape” in 14A effectively means “South African”, the former Cape Colony being the source of terms like “Cape doctor” and “Cape Dutch”.

    Maybe this is the last appearance of Tree, who was at least accompanied by “old”, though it didn’t apply to him in the cryptic reading.

    And just mentioning that one of the Pitts was the right PM for the sample epithet.

    1. Lexico, Collins, etc. online give “the Cape” as referring to the province but not to the whole country… as it surely must, though, in an expression like “Cape doctor” (which I’ve never come across).
    2. Collins: South Africa informal
      a strong fresh SE wind blowing in the vicinity of Cape Town, esp in the summer
      1. Well, ODE has the wind blowing all over the Western Cape Province. “Cape Dutch” is possibly more convincing for the whole nation, if you think it’s an old name for Afrikaans (Collins), rather than a name for a dialect that became Afrikaans (ODE). Which sounds a bit like the range of meanings attached to “sackbut” in relation to the trombone. Another point is that although the Cape province isn’t the whole country, I’m pretty sure it was the part best-known to Brits, so there could be the same kind of blurring as with Holland and the Netherlands.
        1. It’s funny; I knew that “doctor” is a name for a wind, but somehow honestly was thinking “Cape doctor” referred to a medical practitioner, until I got around to looking it up.
  5. Yes, apologies to corymbia for tacking on as a reply. I was using my tablet and touched the wrong link.
  7. ….and three biffs (FREEDOM FIGHTER, BRAND-NEW, and ALIQUOT) were all solved pretty quickly once the pen went down.

    So many COD contenders, and I tip my hat to MOHAWK, TOP BANANA, SLAP ON THE WRIST, EPITHET, and ALIQUOT. However remembering the only World Cup I’ve ever watched with the sound off clinched the award.

    FOI TATTLER
    LOI/COD VUVUZELA
    TIME 9:59

  8. 1ac AVENS took me until Monday night to solve but the penny did eventually drop.
    As Jack has pointed out AVENS is, in fact, a flower and not a flow-er.
    We recently had dictionary meaning #11 for a word (which I have forgotten). Now we have Meaning #8 in Collins Online for “bottom”. Lawdy, lawdy!
    And as Peter B has indicated, “Cape” means the whole of South Africa. In 2010 it wasn’t just in Cape Town where the awful VUVUZELAs were heard.
    5d: Is REV an acceptable reference for a gun?
    I’m also a bit dubious about plot = BREW in 15d
    I wonder if others had strums for THRUMS initially?
    My late wife was a scientist so used ALIQUOT from time to time.
    Co-COD to MOHAWK and AVENS.

    Edited at 2020-08-02 08:03 am (UTC)

    1. rev is indeed an acceptable reference for gun Martin, as in what you do to an engine with a throttle.
      For brew = plot, the OED has: “To concoct, contrive, prepare, bring about or cause evil, mischief, trouble, woe” .. also Chambers has “To contrive or plot.” But it is an old usage and I don’t find it too convincing either

      Edited at 2020-08-02 08:20 am (UTC)

    2. I’m not sure that the position of a meaning in a dictionary list is any reason to exclude it from a puzzle, but if it is consideration then I’d suggest context needs to be taken into account too. Today’s meaning of ‘bottom’ may be 8th in Collins, but it’s 8th in a list of 19 meanings which doesn’t seem extreme by any standards. Or are we saying setters must limit themselves to the top 2 or 3 meanings, or maybe the top 2 if there are only 3 meanings?
      1. Fair enough. I couldn’t decipher “bottom” but I solved the clue correctly so that’s what counts.
    3. I would probably feel more friendly to “the awful Vuvuzelas” if we’d played better.
  9. I managed to biff correctly where the knowledge was lacking(didn’t know bottom for freighter, AVENS as a flower, etc) but could only gues RACKSTRAWS at 12d, and looked it up to check before finding the right game. JACKS and JACKSTRAWS were unknown to me. A struggle at 65:15. Thanks Dean and Guy.
  10. This was too difficult for me. I failed to get a number of clues. 12d was my major problem; getting from Sandy to Straw is pretty tough. I thought it might be the man’s name; Sandy Lyle is Alexander. I also had a BALL ending in mind.
    Re 2d my first thought was TREE having learnt it recently from crosswords. Spare that tree!
    David
  11. 19:53 with last 7 minutes on my last 2, VUVUZUELA and JACKSTRAWS. I enjoyed the combination of 10A and 19D. my COD, but AVENS, TOP BANANA, PREVIOUS and SATSUMA all had ticks on my copy. Guy, I/m not sure you picked up on Jackkt’s comment – 1 across is a flower not a river – see here. Thanks Dean and Guy.
    1. I did look it up, so that must be what I found out at the time too.

      Edited at 2020-08-02 10:24 pm (UTC)

  12. 12:47. Fun puzzle: I particularly liked VUVUZELA and EPITHET.
    I didn’t know AVENS or this meaning of ‘bottom’. I don’t care how obscure words are (or how far down the list in Collins they come if you will) if the setter gives you a reasonable way of solving the clue with the other bits. You can finish the puzzle and you learn something.
    Very surprised to hear that you hadn’t heard of SATSUMAs, G. They are very common here, closely associated with Christmas for me.
    Glad to hear from Peter that Mr Tree will finally be retired, not before time (I’m taking his ‘maybe’ as a solemn promise).

    Edited at 2020-08-02 09:09 am (UTC)

    1. How does one get VUVUZELA from ‘Cape Horn’ if one hasn’t heard of a vuvuzela? (Had you heard of it before watching the World Cup?)
      1. One doesn’t. Admittedly this is a bit of a UK-centric clue but you’d have to have been hiding under a rock living in the UK during that World Cup not to know the word. I don’t follow football at all and it was perfectly familiar to me.
    2. Just never knew what they were called. I’m sure I’ve gulped down a bunch in my time.
      1. I’m sure this is a linguistic rather than a botanical thing. The ones we buy these days are just labelled as ‘easy peelers’.

        Edited at 2020-08-02 10:31 pm (UTC)

  13. 39:45. An enjoyable solve. Held up for a bit by epithet, previous and the unfamiliar jackstraws. Had no idea how freedom fighters worked so just chucked that one in from definition and checkers. Fingers crossed that avens was a flower. I liked top banana, vuvuzela and the ‘do punks have’ for mohawk.
  14. Thanks GdS. Same as most commentators regarding having to think before a couple were clear, but enjoyed them once they were. I think, but am not positive, that at Lloyd’s insured ships are still known as bottoms. Hard to choose a favourite I’d take the Top Banana
    1. Very likely about Lloyds. Bottomry is an old name for a form of naval insurance.
  15. It’s already tomorrow. But I came here to check on FREIGHTER which I couldn’t see relating to bottoms. Otherwise no problems in a lovely puzzle from my favourite setter. I was pleased to end up with the right spelling for that ghastly South African abomination. (The mute button on the TV proved very useful at the time). 31 minutes. Ann
  16. Thanks Dean and guy
    Tough assignment that pushed out over the 100min mark (although there were diversions along the way). Had to get to the bottom of the grid until I found CHILEAN and SCAR to get started.
    There were a number of clues where an answer surfaced from wordplay, such as AVENS and the definition needed to be checked and others where the answer was clear enough but components were not so such as FREEDOM FIGHTERS with the FREIGHTER / bottom. Others like VUVUZELA (which is remembered once it is there but can never be dragged out of memory beforehand) and JACKSTRAWS required word finders. The latter two were amongst the last in along with PREVIOUS (and that alternate meaning of ‘gun’).
    Thought that ALIQUOT was excellent and the clear cod.

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