Sunday Times Cryptic No 4917 by Robert Price — divine language, classic novel

Author   Guy du SablePosted on Categories Weekend Cryptic
…leading horses nick vehicle…

Some firm and full “lift and separate” (and even squeeze back together) clues here. I learned a Scottish word I’m not likely to forget, as well as what “SS” in nautical nomenclature originally meant.

Fun to work, and to comment on too.

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

ACROSS
 1 High-speed craft succeeded in catching sailors (8)
STARSHIP — S(ucceeded) + HIP, “in” hemming in TARS, “sailors”
 5 When to hold court, leading horses around (4,2)
ACTS UP — AS, “when” gripping CT, “court” = A(CT)S + UP, “leading”
 9 Weaponry law not keeping current (8)
ORDNANCE — ORD[-i]NANCE (i = “current”)
10 Animal that’s swallowed completely raw (6)
CALLOW — C(ALL)OW
12 Taking too long snack breaks? (4-9)
TIME-CONSUMING — Says who? I’m glad I don’t work at a place like that… DD, one of them a CD, but then you have to mentally drop the hyphen
14 First bit to grab on ladder (4)
RUNG — RUN, “ladder” (as in nylons) + G[-rab] This gem of an &lit is my COD.
15 Nick vehicle from girl behind bar (5,5)
BLACK MARIA — “Nick” as in arrest, and this is a sort of paddy wagon, of which I’d heard. MARIA is the “girl” coming after BLACK, which apparently has meant “bar” at some time over there; courtesy of Lexico: “British dated Refuse to handle (goods), undertake (work), or have dealings with (a person or business) as a way of taking industrial action.”
17 Run corrupt trade importing cars (10)
ADMINISTER — (trade)* taking in MINIS, “cars”
19 My word for one accompanying a duke (4)
EGAD — EG, “for one” + A, “a” + D(uke)
22 Chess icon playing with hobo as there’s no alternative (7,6)
HOBSONS CHOICE — A game is a game. (chess icon + hobo)* Wikipedia: “The phrase is said to have originated with Thomas Hobson (1544–1631), a livery stable owner in Cambridge, England, who offered customers the choice of either taking the horse in his stall nearest to the door or taking none at all.”
24 Divine language includes an extra tense (6)
INTUIT — IN(T)UIT My LOI, though now it seems obvious (ironically enough). We don’t often see T abbreviating “tense,” but it’s in Collins…
25 Peak time badly needs a flat fare (8)
TORTILLA — TOR, “peak” + T(ime) + ILL, “badly” + A, “a” (John Steinbeck turns over briefly, goes back to sleep…)
26 Sort of hats we put bands around (6)
SWATHE — (hats we)*
27 Fish eaten by steamship captains (8)
SKIPPERS — S(KIPPER)S Wikipedia: ‘Steamships usually use the prefix designations of “PS” for paddle steamer or “SS” for screw steamer (using a propeller or screw). As paddle steamers became less common, “SS” is [sic] assumed by many to stand for “steamship.” Ships powered by internal combustion engines use a prefix such as “MV” for motor vessel, so it is not correct to use “SS” for most modern vessels.’

DOWN
 1 Biscuit tin that’s sharp on top (10)
SHORTBREAD — SHORT, “sharp” (in the sense of brusque, curt) over BREAD, “tin” (in the sense of money)
 2 Corporation’s bid voided after a warning (7)
ABDOMEN — B[-i]D + OMEN, “warning” following A, “a”
 3 Meeting medium forecasts should raise spirits (6)
SEANCE — A pallid CD you can see right through immediately. Boo!
 4 Councils forced into home working finally (2,10)
IN CONCLUSION — IN, “home” + ON, “working” have (Councils)* inside
 6 Appeal from one’s mother daily to come over (8)
CHARISMA — For heaven’s sake, pay a visit to the poor old girl! I[’]S, “one’s” + MA, “mother” below the “daily” (cleaningwoman), CHAR.
 7 Classic novel gets to cover the French Resistance (2,5)
ST LEGER — (gets)* with LE, “the[, in] French” + R(esistance)… I didn’t know the book (ha). Actually, this “classic” is a horse race. (The surface is a bit odd: How can we conceive of a novel “get[ting] to” do anything?)
 8 Which dogs walk on and stop being picked up? (4)
PAWS — “pause”
11 Look less sissy and agitated (8,4)
BUTCHERS HOOK — Honestly, I’m trying! BUTCHER, “less sissy” + SHOOK, “agitated,” and the answer is CRS, of course.
13 Part of cycle a composer reportedly excludes (10)
HANDLEBARS — “Handel bars,” har de har
16 Toffee-nosed society, VIP joined by mistake (8)
SNOBBISH — S(ociety) + NOB, “VIP” + BISH, “mistake”
18 Mother holding mitre for one holy leader (7)
MAHATMA — MA(HAT)MA
20 Scots guide that is with group leader fell over (7)
GHILLIE — G[-roup] + HILL, “fell” above IE, “that is” My POI, and the only word, it seems, that can possibly fill the checkers. It took me a while to remember that “fell” can mean HILL. Google informs me that “Gillie or ghillie is a Gaelic term for a man or a boy who acts as an attendant on a fishing, fly fishing, hunting, or deer stalking expedition, primarily in the Highlands or on a river such as the River Spey.” But y’all probably know all that—and even about the wild ghillie suit.
21 In prison close to Oxford (4,2)
SHUT UP — SHUT, “close” + UP, “to Oxford” (or any university), with the dialect sense of “to” as “at”
23 Like spades making burrows (4)
DIGS — DIG, “Like” + S, “spades” (could have been just “Likes burrows,” but that’s even easier)

27 comments on “Sunday Times Cryptic No 4917 by Robert Price — divine language, classic novel”

  1. I thought this was an absolute cracker with so many clever clues, deceptive definitions and beautifully-honed surfaces. TORTILLA and SWATHE are just two consecutive examples of those.
    I got held up by SHORTBREAD – I was convinced that “tin that’s sharp” was Sn + ow!, and spent too long looking for a Snow… biscuit.
    Wasn’t sure at first that “spades” would be S in DIGS as it’s Chambers only. I know this because I’ve been avoiding it (and H, C and D for other suits) in the ST clue writing competition!
    ~ Nila Palin
    1. Hi, Nila, nice to hear from you again. Peter B, writing as Crossword Editor, is on record as saying that all card suit abbreviations are permitted in Sunday Times puzzles, one of the considerations being that with a bridge column on the same page it would seem daft to disallow them. Also Y and N for ‘Yes’ and ‘No’.

      Edited at 2020-08-30 06:25 am (UTC)

      1. All true. But after several years of Y and N being allowed, I think the number of ST clues using the opportunity could be counted on the fingers of one finger.
      2. Thanks, Jackkt (and Peter). I’ll bear it in mind in the unlikely event of having to clue CHADS. (That A’s the ace in the hole!)
        – Nila Palin
  2. Lovely puzzle, with clues of Anaxian economy. BLACK MARIA isn’t particularly British; indeed ODE has it originating in Boston. POI INTUIT, LOI DIGS. Annoyingly, I actually thought of DIGS early on, couldn’t see how it worked, and moved on; if I’d had the initial I, INTUIT would have come sooner. (I thought the language of the Inuit was Inuktitut, which it is, at least in Inuktitut; but Inuit is perfectly OK too, as it turns out.) COD to ACTS UP.
    1. Thanks, Kevin. This is one I, overconfidently, didn’t look up. I’ve hastily deleted “UK” and added a link to the Wikipedia article, which finds the first known mention in a 1847 Boston Evening Traveller article but from which it also seems clear that there are various theories as to the origin of the phrase, and that it is still used in Britain—and, in translation, in Norway and elsewhere.

      “The Black Maria is also called ‘Mother’s Heart’ as it is said that there is always room for one more.”

      Edited at 2020-08-30 01:16 am (UTC)

  3. I have this down as “hard”.
    Thanks for explaining 1dn, 11d, 12ac and 14ac, Guy.
    My COD was BUTCHERS HOOK bu now that you’ve explained RUNG, that gets my vote.
  4. 21 minutes. COD to BUTCHER’S HOOK by a short head from RUNG. I never knewwhen travelling from Oxford to London if I was going up or down. An absolute delight of a puzzle. Thank you Robert and Guy.
  5. Although I can believe that PS has meant “paddle steamer”, I think that statement in the Wikipedia “steamship” article is extending a possible technical distinction to more everyday use where it does not apply. In particular, SS = steamship is in the full OED, which must be one of the most carefully researched books in history – it confirms the Hobson’s choice origin though it calls the man concerned “Tobias”. Back with SS, in that same article, there is, in a picture caption: “The side-wheel paddle steamer SS Great Western”.

    “gets to” was used in a mildly questionable way in the ST Leger clue as far as the surface is concerned, but as you indicate, it seems to have enough meaning in the right direction to assist the deceptive surface reading. [And there are so many meanings of “get” that comprehensive checking to confirm that none could fit would take a mighty long time, so I have to admit to a shade of laxity when the meaning of a word like “get” or the dreaded “set” only affects the surface reading.]

    1. One of my primary school teachers refused to let any of her class ever use the words got, get or lot, on the grounds that better alternatives always existed.
      Looking back, although I did get the message, I think that a lot of the time she was just trying to stretch our vocabularies a little. It certainly got us out of slovenly writing habits ..
      1. Ah, those strict schoolteachers. I couldn’t have answered them in this way at the time, but the search option on my Kindle confirms that those dreadful slackers Dickens, Hardy, and the combined Brontes all used “get” “999+” times in their complete works, and Jane Austen used it around 600 times. (699 hits but some must be in introductions written by others). Shakespeare scores 354. Top marks for avoidance in famous books seem to go to Mary Shelley for just three in Frankenstein, all in versions of “get well”.

        Edited at 2020-08-30 09:09 am (UTC)

    2. The cited Wiki passage allows that SS continues to be used for “steamship.” A pedant may point out that it originally meant “screw steamer,” but usage has the last word as to correctness (and crossword-appropriateness).
    3. Is there such a thing as ‘everyday usage’ for SS? It’s particular to the name of a specific ship and a piece of technical nomenclature that presumably follows a set of rules. I’ve no idea what those rules are but if a ship is called ‘PS Endeavour’ people aren’t going to ‘colloquially’ change it to ‘SS Endeavour’.
      1. Fair point, but if we’re using names of real ships as the standard, SS in the Brunel example cannot have meant “screw steamer”.
        1. Indeed so the PS/SS distinction can’t be a hard-and-fast one. I wonder if it just got dropped at a certain point as screw propellers became dominant.
  6. ….with ST.LEGER, and I marked it COD. The usual enjoyable puzzle from Bob, and after 10 minutes I was left with 2D. Looking at it now, I really don’t know why I spent so long alpha-trawling it before finishing in 12:45.
  7. I did not find this particularly easy but there was a lot to enjoy so I stuck with it. FOI HOBSONS CHOICE, a relatively easy entry point.Then I solved the bottom half with a doubt about INTUIT and after replacing Saddlebags with Handlebars.
    The NW remained blank for a long time but my last three were RUNG,CALLOW and finally at 10.15pm ST LEGER.
    Very good fun; COD to TORTILLA but several other candidates.
    David
  8. 18:23. A very entertaining puzzle, challenging with no obscurity (i.e. I knew all the words). My last in was 3dn where I suspected I might be missing something, but it seems not.
  9. 25:23 and lots of fun along the way with 8 ticks on my copy. A bit slow getting started – 19A was my first one in, but a fairly steady solve. Like David I tried SADDLEBAGS for 13D, but eventually found the answer via the composer. Out of many options, joint COD to BUTCHERS HOOK and INUIT. Great stuff. Thanks Robert and Guy.
  10. I liked it a lot – usual for a Sunday puzzle – and particularly Butchers Hook. It was nice to see a clue going from clear English to CRS rather than the more usual other way around. Thanks, Guy, Robt, and Peter
  12. Yes, delightful. 50 minutes, with GHILLIE as my LOI, after I finally decided I wasn’t going to make up a better Scots word and just risked it. I enjoy making up words, especially ones that turn out actually to exist. Many subtle clues in this puzzle.
  13. Thanks Bob and guy
    Had to get down to SKIPPERS at 27A to get a start. Found many of the clues had cleverly disguised definitions with equally cunning word play components. MAHATMA was a good example where it wasn’t the first word to think of as a ‘holy leader’ and having settled on it, to need MAMA and not just MA as mother before the parsing made sense. Had BREAD=’tin’ in a different sense, insofar as a tin is a rectangular loaf of bread – can remember eating my way through a good part of a high-tin loaf as a growing lad.
    Too many great clues to pick a favourite. Finished in the SW corner with the tricky INTUIT and DIGS as the last couple in.

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