Sunday Times Cryptic No 5165 by David McLean — Thumbs up!

Author   Guy du SablePosted on Categories Weekend Cryptic

This ride, as any with Harry at the wheel, was not without twists and turns, but as always it covered some interesting terrain. And wasn’t scary.

How often do we get three &lits? (And none that I can quibble about, at that!) We also have a generous seven anagrams, like two weeks ago… I was slightly disappointed (my own fault!) to have gotten most of them (including the two 15-letter answers) from definitions and crossers rather than from working them out or by (the optimal case) simultaneously seeing the definition and unraveling the anagrist in a flash of enlightenment.

I indicate (Ars Magna)* like this, and words flagging such rearrangements are italicized in the clues.

ACROSS
 1 Car bullies nip to when out for spin (6,9)
PUBLIC RELATIONS    (Car bullies nip to)*
 
 9 Welsh wicked at home, having good game (7)
WILLING    W(elsh) + ILL, “wicked” + IN, “at home” + G(ood)
 
10 First of howitzers coming in alarms new officer (7)
MARSHAL    Howitzers inside (alarms)*
 
11 Spending grand on beef can be excessive (4)
The most expensive meat in the world, reportedly, is aged Wagyu beef, a steal at $3,200 a pound.
RIPE    GRIPE   Definition 9b in Collins, slang
 
12 A worm tends to go with the flow (10)
DOWNSTREAM    (A worm tends)*
 
13 Reportedly do this to slow nag or dog (7)
WHIPPET    “whip it”
 
15 Bright yellow ruined plush fur female binned (7)
SULPHUR    (plush fur)*
 
17 Thoughts and proposals lead to change for knight (7)
NOTIONS    Changing the first letter of MOTIONS, “proposals,” to N (“knight” in chess notation)
 
19 Small problem keeping Republican in nick (7)
SCRATCH    S(mall) + C(R)ATCH
 
20 Piano featuring in popular piece for tour? (10)
INSPECTION    IN (“popular”) S(P)ECTION
 
22 Second part of this appears in broadcast? (4)
SHOW    S(tHis)OW   Presumably the first part too!   &lit (with SOW functioning as part of the wordplay, although it could even stand alone as a definition)   …Had the answer but it was a long moment before I saw the parsing.
 
25 Old leader plus a fellow that soldier locks up (7)
GADDAFI   G(ADD)(A)(F)I   F is in Collins as an abbreviation for “Fellow.”   The wordplay makes clear which one of the possible transliterations is required.   …The Nation’s style Cheat Sheet has “Gadhafi, Moammar El-Gadhafi: Supposedly his preferred spelling.”
 
26 Wise man wrapping present (7)
KNOWING    K(NOW)ING   A “man” on a chessboard
 
27 Old winger seeing gap’s prone to move (9,6)
PASSENGER PIGEON    (seeing gap’s prone)*   “Old” because they are, alas, extinct
 
DOWN
 1 Quiet individual in red, say (5)
POWER    P (piano), “Quiet” + OWER, “individual in [the] red”   That’s “say” as “authority, esp to influence a decision” (Collins).
 
 2 Everyone has issue with British writer (9)
Ms. Rowling, perhaps?
BALLPOINT    B(ritish) + ALL, “Everyone” + POINT, “issue”
 
 3 Knight one recalled as a bit of a looker (4)
IRIS    SIR, “knight” +  I, “one”  <=“recalled”
 
 4 Cattle poisoner in paper with men to get time (7)
RAGWORT    RAG, “paper” + W(ith) + O(rdinary) R(anks), “men” + T(ime)
 
 5 Regrets fast times being over in the morning (7)
LAMENTS    L(A.M.)ENTS
 
 6 Extremely thuggish cur seizing larynx primarily? (9)
THROTTLER    ThuggisH + ROTT(Larynx)ER   &lit!
 
 7 Yellowy-orange line one mustn’t cross banking river (5)
OCHRE    OCH(R)E   OCHE from darts, of course
 
 8 Developing harms last low-lying wetland (4,5)
SALT MARSH    (harms last)*
 
13 Deliberately annoying ending (7-2)
WINDING-UP    DD
 
14 Meander around with other posers at front? (9)
PROMENADE    (Meander + Other Posers)*   &lit   The noun definition in Collins is “a public walk, esp at a seaside resort,” and the verb is what one does there.  We might assume a connotation of a place where people would expect to be seen and might dress up a bit—hence, “posers”—and indeed the transitive form of the verb means “to display or exhibit (someone or oneself) on or as if on a promenade.” And “front” can be “land along a seashore or large lake, esp a promenade” (Collins).   …I live two blocks from the Brooklyn Heights Promenade, built above the Brooklyn Queens Expressway and looking across the East River to the southern Manhattan skyline and, farther out and to the left, the Statue of Liberty. There, you usually see mainly folks who live or work in the nabe, reading, eating, getting some sun… The East River being an estuary, our Promenade is virtually “seaside”!
 
16 Thumb your way through Amsterdam? (9)
HITCHHIKE    CD   …In my early-1980s days of cross-country hitching, most rides were snagged in between, not within, cities—a notable exception being Los Angeles, where I spent a day, having started two days earlier from North Carolina, making my way to a cigarette-butt-strewn beach at Santa Monica, for my first view (oddly enough) of an ocean.
 
18 Going down is what I do when working (7)
SETTING    DD
 
19 In which one on the blue might want to sink? (7)
SNOOKER    CD   Here, “one” is someone with a cue and they “might [?… most definitely would!] want to sink” (pot) a (blue) ball if they were (working) “on” the blue balls at that point.   …With the object of the verb “sink” absent, I found the syntax very confusing.
 
21 Standpoints of parties (5)
SIDES    DD
 
23 Comic performing in part of train (5)
WAGON    WAG, “comic” + ON, “performing”
 
24 God is quietly unobtrusive, I hear (4)
LOKI    “low key”
 

 

27 comments on “Sunday Times Cryptic No 5165 by David McLean — Thumbs up!”

  1. 19D: I doubt you get much snooker coverage on TV, and don’t know whether pool commentary might include “on” meaning “very probably able to pot”. I think the absence of an object for “sink” is so that solvers have a better chance of thinking of a context other than snooker.

    1. It was clear what purpose was served by the omission of the object of the transitive verb. I mean, my first thought in reading the clue was of a submarine. On second glance, it seemed that”one” might mean the ball, thus endowed with volition. On third glance… hmm.
      I (obviously) took “on” to refer to being at a particular stage in the shooter’s progression through the colo(u)rs in order, which I had read about. I did do a search on the phrase. Last Sunday night, I showed this clue to a British temporary expat—and published novelist—who has been a regular at Humans Against Music karaoke, but Pete, not being a regular solver of cryptics, found it even more mystifying than I did. I also consulted keriothe.

  2. 229:52 WOE, a typing error.
    I enjoyed this a lot. 25ac took some time; I would have spelled the name with a Q., his preferences be damned. Didn’t understand HITCHHIKE; still don’t. Didn’t understand 19d, but assumed it alluded to snooker. I especially liked POWER & WILLING.

    1. Merriam-Webster, for THUMB:
      1: to turn over pages thumb through a book
      2: to travel by thumbing rides : hitchhike
      thumbed across the country

      1. Possibly like me, Kevin didn’t know Amsterdam as the title of a Booker Prize winning novel (by Ian McEwan) so that its presence in the clue remained a mystery. I only caught on to it this morning when I realised the use of italics might have some significance.

        1. I didn’t know that book (which may not be the only one with that title), but the italics could only mean a literary work on paper, with “thumb…through.”

        2. Oh that’s how it works. Thanks jackkt I could not see the relevance of Amsterdam.

        3. I didn’t know the book, and I’m not sure I noticed the italics. I of course knew both senses of ‘thumb’.

        4. Thanks for this. The answer was obvi9us (I used to hitch regularly from Swansea to London in the early ’60s) but I couldn’t see the Amsterdam reference.

          1. It never occurred to me that anyone could miss the surface meaning of the CD! But then I spend part of every work day italicizing publication names and the like.

  3. Norse mythology not being my strongpoint ,24D was always going to be the reason for a DNF. Even with the two crossers in, there are hundreds of possible combinations and god knows how many possible gods exist.
    As for 16D, it had to be hitchhike but what’s Amsterdam got to do with it?

    2. For Norse Gods, I think you would struggle to find any in cryptic crosswords other than the 8 (counting by names) in Wagner’s Ring, mostly with slightly different names :
      Odin/Wotan
      Frigg/Fricka (his wife)
      Freyja/Freia (her sister, linked with love rather than marriage)
      Freyr/Froh (their brother)
      Jörd/Erda
      Loki/Loge
      Thor/Donner
      the 3 Norns

      (minor exception: Aesir as a name for them collectively)

      1. Interested to know how many folks would be expected to get the God from a knowledge of The Ring. Despite having watched very few of them, Loki went straight in from my scant knowledge of the Marvel franchise. It was the only clue in this my kids would have had a chance of getting and they have certainly never listened to any Wagner!

  4. 40 minutes got me within one answer of completing the grid but I had to resort to aids for LOKI just as I see I did when it last appeared in May 2024 in an ST puzzle blogged by Guy.

    No problem with PROMENADE as I only had to think of the posers who dominate the front rows of the arena at the Albert Hall on the Last Night of the Proms.

  5. 13 Across
    Surely you whip the nag(horse) to go faster not slower

    2. I initially thought the same when test-solving, but then remembered that “slow” can be an adjective as well as a verb, and saved myself from embarrassment.

        1. Me neither. Struggled to make sense of this clue. Penny has finally dropped.

  6. DNF

    Really struggled with WILLING and POWER at the end possibly because they shouldn’t have been causing me as much difficulty as they did (was mainly looking for a different type of game, and say as the definition for 1D was vg). They did fall after 10 minutes but staring at P_O_E_A_E and failing to think of a word or understand the w/p did for me.

    Nice puzzle and thanks Guy

  7. Completed in several sittings. Slow but very enjoyable. Rare for me to be able to finish one of these. Didn’t really understand the second definition of SETTING and wasn’t sure about RIPE for excessive. Thought HITCHHIKE was really good – massive fan of Ian McEwan. Many thanks Guy.

  8. DNF. Had no idea Welsh could be indicated by W, and didn’t think of that definition of ‘game’, nor ‘say’, so 1d, 9a and 11a remained blank. Most of the rest completed after several visits, but not my kind of puzzle.

  9. “Amsterdam” was not in italics in The Australian newspaper. The answer was obvious, but I couldn’t parse it.

  10. Didn’t know the McKewan novel, but guessed the answer from the first definition, as I did many of the ones I “got”. Spelling GADAFFI like that also held me up ( how it should be spelled!), but now I’ve run out of excuses for the rest of it. Here in Oz I have no-one to consult on theses things, unfortunately, and I always try to finish the puzzle with my morning cuppa – but not today. Hey Ho, but enjoyed the ride.

  11. Thanks David and Guy
    Took a good hour and a half to complete the grid yesterday morning and left it until this morning to try and fully parse the few that were only biffed yesterday. Even so, couldn’t see all of the logic of SHOW – very clever once seen … and even knowing the Amsterdam novel, it was a first to have to fully understand the surface of a clue to appreciate it ! Did know of LOKI and now have learnt the pronunciation of this god.
    Lots of interesting challenges throughout the puzzle which I finished in the NW corner with WILLING (taking a while to match it with ‘game’), POWER (after twigging to the OWER bit) and RIPE (another tricky one to finish off with).

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