Sunday Times Cryptic No 5141 by David McLean — Far-out!

21 comments on “Sunday Times Cryptic No 5141 by David McLean — Far-out!”

1. I’d had trouble with the whiskers in 5ac.
   I believe the UK spelling is mostly “moustache” with an “o”; “mustache” is more US.
   And the “needing bit off the top”, I thought would normally indicate removing just the first letter?
   So, I was thinking of the informal/slang short versions: “tash”, or “tache”. And then removing the first letter from the latter option.

   1. Removing just one letter sure sounds more like a “bit off.” I’ve put the British spelling in first—knew the word could be spelled that way, but that would mean that the answer removed more than half of it! Ha.

      Surface-wise, it was impossible to visualize taking “a bit off the top” of “long whiskers.”

      1. The reason I mentioned the UK vs US spellings was (although I thought it very unlikely), I briefly wondered if you were suggesting that “need(ing)” could be a synonym of “must”, and that was “bit(ten)” “off the top” of the (US spelling) “mustache”. Obviously you weren’t (and this is now completely hypothetical), but if a clue did involve some sort of subtraction like that, I don’t think it would be fair to use a non-British spelling.

         Anyway… Regarding the surface, I think of the 1954 absurdist-photographic book “Dali’s Mustache”(sic!) by Philippe Halsman. I first became aware of this when the Sunday Times Magazine had an extensive preview of the 1994 reprint. To quote the postface [US spellings]:

         ***
         THERE WERE TIMES when deeds were less important than whiskers. Remember Barbarossa? Everybody knows about his beard, but only historians know about his achievement. With the death of Kaiser Wilhelm, Hitler and Stalin, with Chaplin’s withdrawal from the screen, the era of great mustaches seemed to have come to end. A desolate, whiskerless vacuum followed.

         But when, last November, I saw that Dali’s mustache had suddenly reached his eyebrows, I realized that Dali had stepped into this vacuum. This great painter had become the great mustache of our times.
         ***

2. 41:49, definitely not my fastest time for Harry. What Peter W said re ACHE: tache minus t. (In the US, it’s stache.) I liked APOGEE.

   1. “Stache” is in Collins and not marked as American, and not in Merriam-Webster at all.

      1. ODE has ‘stash’ as ‘US’, ‘tash’ (also ‘tache’) unmarked, but all its corpora examples are from British English. I’ve never seen the word, in any form, only heard ‘stash’ (never heard ‘tash’).

         1. Whatever the dictionaries may say, “tache” is the usual informal shortening in the UK. As a representation of local usage, searches on the Times/ST website for tache get far more results that are clearly about moustaches.

3. In Chambers Thesaurus acme and apex have both crown and apogee as synonyms.
   I agree with Peter in relation to 5ac. Moustache is British English and mustache is US English. Both Collins and ODE indicate this. Taking T off tache is more in keeping with the clue wordplay. In earlier Times Cryptic Crosswords “a bit of” and “bit of” have been used to designate the first letter of a word, “last bit of” has been used to indicate the last letter and “has time for a bit of lunch” has been used to replace L with T.

   1. I’d be glad you approve, but I’m not sure when you loaded the page.

      1. I don’t understand the loaded the page reference. I have kept lists of indicators since I began doing the Times Cryptic in May 2024 in my larger lists.

         1. It just sounded like you were responding to my note on ACHE without seeing that I’d corrected it. It’s like our messages crossed.

            1. When I posted I was actually the second of 2 posts directly after PeterW. There were no replies posted and Kevin’s post wasn’t there. I have no idea how they have now appeared before me. My comment was at about 1.15am but it now appears as 2.45am.

               1. Must’ve been posted while you were writing and sending your comment.

4. I have start and finish times with 65 minutes separating them and a note to say I nodded off at some stage. I don’t remember this as being particularly easy.

5. Regarding DO (6d): neither Collins not Chambers acknowledge the vast number of meanings attached to DO in British English. One notable missing example if the usage DO = IF, prevalent in East Anglia. It’s an elliptic form of “If you do”. One hears this from time to time in dramas set on TV, but clearly not understood by most actors that take on the roll of native speakers from the East coast.

6. DECLINE took some considerable time as I didn’t understand line = note. But Guy rightly points out the context in which one might use either word. I obviously did this in more than one session as I have two different coloured inkings, but there were no NHOs. Surely most forms of angling involve more than just waiting? However, I liked the surface and also loved the old vegetarian, which fell into place once the D and N crossers suggested ODON as the ending.

7. 35 something but with an unexplainable EPOGEE. None of the anagrams came easily and needed to suss the reverse cryptic to finish the SW

   Thanks Guy and David

8. 1 hour exactly, although for a change I did not drop off. Much of it was surprisingly easy, but obviously not all of it. In fact, I took about half an hour for everything but MAN-MADE, ATOMIC and GRINDING (fortunately I didn’t succumb to the temptation of inventing DRINGING) in that order. And it took me another half hour of staring at empty squares before those pennies finally squeeked their way down.

9. Thanks David and Guy
   Started this in a noisy cafe and managed to only get the top part done in the first half hour – needed nearly the same time at home to finish off the bottom half.
   Had a couple parsed differently – at 6a had CAN DO as a phrase – so ‘is able to provide an action or a service’. At 18d, I had it as MAN – MAD – E with MANE being a shock (as of hair on a lion).
   Enjoyed the deceptive definitions throughout and some of the complex word play. Finished in the SE corner with that MAN-MADE, GRINDING (which took an age to work out the wordplay) and MANAGEMENT (oh, that ‘board!).

10. Hello Bruce (above): I think we know each other ‘peripherally’, when you helped me to get onto this site, so many thanks overdue!
    I too finished in the SW with GRINDING ( which I had trouble linking to “endlessly oppressive”) and MANAGEMENT ( not our usual entry for board). Quite a few PDMs : ENTRAILS, ACHE, APOGEE and CANDOUR – to name a few, finished off this engrossing crossword.

    1. Hi Jacaroo – all good, but too long ago for me to remember doing that 🙂 – glad that you enjoy the site and seasons greetings to you !

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