Sunday Times Cryptic No 5169 by Dean Mayer — groovy thing

Author   Guy du SablePosted on Categories Weekend Cryptic

Solving this one required some neuronal plasticity (s t r e t c h), and I felt smarter when it was all worked out. I wasn’t thrilled by either of the CDs, but at least the grid-spanner I happily chose for my first solve gave me an ample number of crossers to start with. How often do we get two words with the same (minimal!) definition?

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

ACROSS
 1 Bowl over toilet? Not quite fun (6)
BOGGLE    BOG, “toilet” + GLEE
 
 4 Valve’s copper ring in inventory (8)
STOPCOCK    STO(PC)(O)CK   Police constable is the lowest rank of cop(per).
 
10 In a run, with two to go? (15)
ANTEPENULTIMATE    CD
 
11 Commands site with vampire bats (11)
IMPERATIVES    (site, vampire)*
 
12 Female prisoner heading west (3)
GAL   LAG<=“heading west”
 
13 Level score (5)
NOTCH    DD, noun and verb
 
15 Table service from daughter and close friends? (6,3)
DINNER SET    D(aughter) + INNER SET, “close friends”
 
17 May perhaps enter violently, chasing one with hammer (9)
THORNTREE    THOR, “one with hammer” + (enter)*
 
19 Letter returned by American soldiers (5)
SIGMA    AM(erican) GIS <=“returned”
 
21 A lot of old paper (3)
OFT    O(ld) + F(inancial) T(imes), “paper”
 
22 Spell “circumvent” — this should be a pushover (7,4)
SITTING DUCK    SITTING, “spell” + DUCK, “circumvent”
 
24 Medical experts swear by it (11,4)
HIPPOCRATIC OATH    CD   …My FOI. And I was thinking, “Is that all there is to it?”
 
25 Deep perception about storm’s gathering (8)
RESONANT    RANT, “storm” takes in (gathers) NOSE<=“about”   …I had to shake the notion that RENT was defined here, Mephisto-style, as a “perception.”
 
26 Kind of finch to circle endlessly (6)
TOWHEE    TO WHEEL   Collins says a TOWHEE is “any of various North American brownish-coloured sparrows of the genera Pipilo and Chlorura.” It gives a US and Canadian definition of “sparrow” as “any of various North American finches, such as the chipping sparrow (Spizella passerina), that have a dullish streaked plumage.” Dictionary.com’s American definition calls this bird a finch and its British definition calls it a sparrow.
 
DOWN
 1 Zulu in tribunal ordered fruit (6,3)
BRAZIL NUT    Z(ulu) lurks somewhere inside (tribunal)*.
 
 2 Saw work books deteriorate (2,2,3)
GO TO POT    GOT, “saw” + OP, “work” + OT, “books”
 
 3 Undesirable in Newcast{le per}haps (5)
LEPER    Hidden
 
 5 Preachers stage events I’ll broadcast (14)
TELEVANGELISTS    (stage events I’ll)*
 
 6 Temple woman: That is one way to feed crowd (9)
PRIESTESS    PR(IE)(ST)ESS
 
 7 Fruit variety with very large skin (7)
ORANGES    O(RANGE)S
 
 8 Ring from King Charles II’s lover (5)
KNELL    K + NELL   That’s the actress NELL Gwyne.
 
 9 Moravians interbreed and hunt excitedly (6,8)
UNITED BRETHREN    (interbreed, hunt)*    “The Moravian Church, or the Moravian Brethren…is one of the oldest Protestant denominations in Christianity, dating back to the Bohemian Reformation of the 15th century and the original Unity of the Brethren founded in the Kingdom of Bohemia, sixty years before Martin Luther’s Reformation.” (Wikipedia)    …If you didn’t know this, you were not alone.
 
14 Simply leaves (5,4)
HANDS DOWN    DD   None of the dictionaries at my disposal have the first definition, but “with utter ease” (Chambers) or “without effort; easily” (Collins) seem close enough for government work. Dictionary.com stands alone in having this only as an adjective (“easy,” “certain”).   …I can’t see all four of the definitions in the OED without paying.
 
16 Spiked thing in grooves on tiller (5,4)
TRACK SHOE    TRACKS, “grooves” + HOE, “tiller”
 
18 Sea being cold, to work outside (7)
OCTOPUS    O(C)(TO)PUS
 
20 Stew pan out with superior batter (7)
GOULASH    GO, “pan out” + U, “superior” + LASH, “batter”
 
21 More upset when leader leaves (5)
OTHER    BOTHER
 
23 Fine clubs, say, over climbing reptile (5)
GECKO    OK, “Fine” + C(lubs) + EG, “say” <=“over”   The little critters have sticky pads on their feet!
 

 

17 comments on “Sunday Times Cryptic No 5169 by Dean Mayer — groovy thing”

  1. Having never had the need to know how to spell HIPPOCRATIC OATH, I assumed wrongly that it started with ‘hypo’, probably thinking of ‘hypodermic’ even though it’s a different pronunciation. I thought this was a fun puzzle and don’t remember having any real problems. My thoughts on ‘simply/hands down’ were along the lines of ‘simply the best/hands down the best’ but I didn’t give it too much thought at the time. ANTEPENULTIMATE was a write-in as it came up quite recently in a 15×15. NHO the TOWHEE and had to look it up. TELEVANGELISTS leapt out at me from the anagrist. Liked the ‘grooves’ in TRACK SHOE. Had no idea about UNITED BRETHREN but the anagrist and checkers gave it. COD to STOPCOCK.
    Thanks Guy and setter.

  2. 37:18
    Slow going, with RESONANT my LOI, which I never parsed. DNK UNITED BRETHREN, which seems to be different from the Moravian Church (the Unity of the Brethren). DNK THORNTREE, but finally remembered that a may tree is a hawthorn. I liked HANDS DOWN.

    1. Hmm…
      Wikipedia: “The Church of the United Brethren in Christ is an evangelical Christian denomination with churches in 17 countries.…. It…is the first American denomination that was not transplanted from Europe. It emerged from United Brethren churches that were at first unorganized, and not all of which joined this church when it was formally organized in 1800.…
       “For the first several decades the Church of the United Brethren in Christ was loosely organized and known simply as the United Brethren Church. When it officially organized into a denomination, it adopted the name ‘Church of the United Brethren in Christ’ to avoid confusion with the Unitas Fratrum (Unity of the Brethren), or, as it more commonly was called in English, the United Brethren (also known as the Moravian Church).”

  3. OCTOPUS and RESONANT took some thinking about. Unfortunately ANTEPENULTIMATE, which was a write-in, was marred by silly slip.

  4. 45 minutes. TOWHEE and UNITED BRETHREN were my only unknowns and took come wrestling out. Others very slow to arrive were TELEVANGELISTS BOGGLE RESONANT. An enjoyable challenge.

  5. This was typical of a Dean puzzle where the answer goes in on the basis of ‘ it can’t be anything else’ but the parsing is impossible to work out. ‘sitting duck’ and ‘resonant’ are great examples.
    Thanks to Guy for all his hard work with the Sunday puzzles.

  6. Two goes needed.

    – Relied on wordplay for the unknown TOWHEE
    – Didn’t know about the UNITED BRETHREN but eventually managed to work out the anagram and assumed it was right
    – For 20a, spent far too long trying to make an anagram – ‘stew’, ‘out’ and potentially ‘batter’ could all have been an anagrind – until I finally figured out GOULASH

    Thanks Guy and Dean

    FOI Go to pot
    LOI Towhee
    COD Thorntree

  7. 22.04

    Liked it. No problem with easy cryptics as rather that than “err?” and a puzzled frown.

    Otherwise TOWHEE the only NHO but clear from the w/p.

    Thanks Guy/Dean

    1. So how does May Perhaps mean Thorntree – the other part of Thor + enter mixed is clear, but why does May perhaps mean thorntree

  8. 39 minutes, the last five or more of which were spent trying to convince myself that RESONANT was right despite having no idea of how to parse it. Actually an easier Dean puzzle despite things like the Moravians, but technically a DNF with a typo. No idea how the first E in TELEVANGELIST turned into a B, but I don’t really count it against myself.

  10. Damn, it seems I can’t spell ANTEPENULTIMATE. The thing is I can, I know perfectly well that before=ANTE but somehow I typed ANTI anyway.
    I found both the long CDs in this puzzle very odd. There is nothing cryptic about 24ac in particular, as far as I can see.

  11. Couldn’t parse Resonant – for the blog, doesn’t NOSE=’perception about’ rather than just ‘about’? Had a struggle in the NW where I was looking for a definition for fun and nearly convinced myself that it was a NHO BOGENT (Bowl B, Over O, Toilet not quite GENTs) but then I spotted the hidden in 3dn to sort it out. Thanks for the blog.

    1. My way of indicating reversals is to put after the word reversed the symbol <= with the word indicating reversal. The definition is implicit (or at least meant to be! ha) for the word in the clue that is turned “about”—here, “perception” for NOSE.

  12. Cheated and started this on Saturday, thinking that I’d need two days to finish it, but ‘Voila!’ all but finished in about 30 mins. Just went on instinct for SITTING DUCK (as I couldn’t parse) , and HIPPOCRATIC OATH was a gimme. Also entered TRACK SHOE on instinct, without parsing, and didn’t know TOWHEE ( or BOGGLE as a game, come to that). Very enjoyable stuff; CODs to KNELL and DINNER SET.

  14. Thanks Dean and Guy
    A good challenge done a week after publication down here. Took over the hour to complete the puzzle and a bit longer to go over it and work out some of the word play of what I’d missed along the way – still wasn’t able to unravel RESONANT at all.
    The long across clues were strange gimme ones which were only a slight advantage as the rest of them required some solid thinking. Had to look up both the ‘Moravians’ and the bird after putting them together from the word play. Thought TRACK SHOE was the clear word of the day.
    Finished down the bottom with that TOWHEE, HANDS DOWN (clever dd) and that RESONANT the last one in.

Comments are closed.