Sunday Times 4908 by Robert Price – back to school

Author   keriothePosted on Categories Weekend Cryptic
DNF. I found this very tricky, and had spent a little over 20 minutes on it when I came to 18ac. I have somehow never come across the Roman name for Ireland (if anything I would have associated it with Scotland, but it turns out the football team was founded by Edinburgh’s Irish community), and I couldn’t make any sense of (or indeed identify) the wordplay. So a fail for me this week as a result of a pretty embarrassing gap in my general knowledge.

The quality of the puzzle was, fortunately, far superior to the quality of the solver. Lots of cunning clues in this one, and some interesting vocab. 16dn combines both features in a particularly brilliant &Lit.

Definitions are underlined, anagrams indicated like (TIHS)*, anagram indicators are in italics.

Across
1 Young lover’s house leased by top university
CAPULET – CAP (top), U, LET. Juliet’s house, sworn enemies of Romeo’s Montagues.
5 Joints provided in some prosthetic limbs feel stiff at first
SPLIFFS – first letters of ‘some prosthetic limbs feel stiff’ containing IF (provided).
9 Song, mostly fiction
LIE – LIEd.
10 Parties entertaining northern banker throws
DISCONCERTS – DISCO(N, CERT)S.
11 Men’s linen about to be arranged in drawers
UNMENTIONABLES – (MENS LINEN ABOUT)*.
13 Rent small room someone vacated for free
LET LOOSE – LET, LOO, SomeonE.
15 Pound of meat, paltry end cut
HAMMER – HAM, MERe.
17 One may hold coffee and walk nonchalantly, on a mobile
SACHET – sounds like ‘sashay’. This seems to be a reference to instant so ‘coffee’ should really be in inverted commas.
18 Ireland’s rupture brought about in Belfast originally
HIBERNIA – H(In, Belfast)ERNIA. My downfall.
20 Understanding 60 per cent of these irritate, act decisively
GRASP THE NETTLE – GRASP (understanding), THEse, NETTLE.
23 Governance by one on hand to give guidance
RULE OF THUMB – or, um, RULE (governance) OF (by) THUMB (one on hand).
24 Top firm? Not really
LID – soLID.
25 Bagpipe songs to be played amid silence
MUSETTE – SET (songs to be played) inside MUTE (silence, as a verb). ‘A type of bagpipe with a bellows popular in France during the 17th and 18th centuries.’ New to me but the wordplay was clear enough.
26 Look around and be curious, dear fellow
OLD BEAN – reversal of LO, (AND BE)*.

Down
1 Dreary company? Don’t scowl so much!
COLOURLESS – CO, LOUR LESS.
2 Heavy tools misspelt in a crumpled list
PNEUMATIC DRILLS – (IN A CRUMPLED LIST)*.
3 Like a full ship that’s left port
LADEN – L, ADEN.
4 Most palatable wine is covered by tax
TASTIEST – T(ASTI)EST.
5 Spies turning up in old clubs
SPOONS – reversal of SNOOPS. SPOON is an old word for a golf club. See also mashie, niblick, mashie-niblick, jigger.
6 Large copper in uniform heading for bogus judge’s study at night
LUCUBRATE – L, U(CU), Bogus, RATE. A word I didn’t know but the assembly instructions were clear.
7 Tone of Tory supporting one’s plea to be recalled
FORGET-ME-NOT BLUE – not a colour I knew, but again the instructions were clear once I had a few checkers.
8 Band’s big hit millions ignored
SASH – SmASH.
12 A jolly old fellow’s battle against evil
ARMAGEDDON – A, RM (‘jolly’ is a term for a Royal Marine), AGED, DON.
14 Disposed to shove or go too far
OVERSHOOT – (TO SHOVE OR)*.
16 Possible order for trio to hold melody back
RITENUTO – (TRIO)* containing TUNE reversed. This is a musical instruction to ‘hold back momentarily’ so the clue is a very clever &Lit.
19 Figure seen in posh country houses
STATUE – STAT(U)E.
21 Set off with no rescue boat and sink
EMBED – EMBarkED.
22 Spruce border, cut back
TRIM – triple definition.

23 comments on “Sunday Times 4908 by Robert Price – back to school”

  1. Similarly to Keriothe, MUSETTE was unknown to me, but I was reasonably confident I was right because of the wordplay. I knew RITENUTO but I needed my memory jogged after a lengthy tussle with it. That was the stand-out clue for me too, very clever.
    I think the setter used the same anagram for UNMENTIONABLES in the ST clue writing contest a few years ago, but with a different clue. (Useless information is my speciality.)

    – Bopeechee

  2. Slow and steady, if I recall. LOI SACHET; I hadn’t thought of coffee as something put in one. Biffed FORGET-ME-NOT from the enumeration; I think the BLUE required a checker. DNK banker=CERT, but inferred it. I sort of knew MUSETTE, but I think what I knew was the backpack sense. COD maybe to RITENUTO.
  3. SPOONS would surely have been used by PG Wodehouse.
    41’45″(a solver in whom desire outruns performance).
  4. Found this Robert harder than normal, taking 57 minutes but it was time well spent. I learnt a new word for night study while composing some music for the bagpipes. I just hope I’m not around to hear it. SACHET does work as a homophone for me, and was well worth the groan with which it was received. The subtlety of RITENUTO was wasted on me though but I did at least know the term. I liked COLOURLESS, but COD to UNMENTIONABLES. We have a few clumps of forget-me-nots in the garden that come back every year. Before this crossword, I’d have described their colour as Manchester City blue. Thank you Robert and K.
  5. 30 minutes for all but 6dn where after a tussle with the wordplay I gave up and used aids to arrive at the unknown LUCUBRATE. Knew MUSETTE vaguely by association with French street music where its sound is often imitated by the accordion which in turn is used in recordings by Piaf etc.

    Edited at 2020-06-28 05:54 am (UTC)

  6. There were no clues I had questions against, just two words I didn’t know, MUSETTE and LUCUBRATE. As you say, though, keriothe, they were eminently gettable.
    HIBERNIA was very good but like you, I really enjoyed 16d RITENUTO. That was my COD.
    PNEUMATIC DRILLS reminded me of a favourite TV advert from the 70s. It was for a new American-style beer called Colt 45. The ad showed a little old lady walking along a noisy sidewalk in New York when she comes across a road repair crew- all hard hats and jackhammers. “Excuse me” she says to one of them in her little old lady voice. “How do you get to Carnegie Hall”
    “Lady, you gotta practice”!
  7. ….the RULE OF THUMB when one has to GRASP THE NETTLE is to wear gloves. I biffed LID, EMBED, and RITENUTO.

    LUCUBRATE rang a very distant bell ; one of those words I’d encountered in a past life without knowing what it meant (sorry Miss Waterhouse, I forgot to look it up like you told me 60 years ago !)

    The clue for ARMAGEDDON was almost identical to one I produced myself some years ago when I aspired to be a setter myself. Alas being able to write 12 decent clues in a 30 word puzzle doesn’t cut the mustard.

    FOI SPLIFFS
    LOI SPOONS
    COD SACHET
    TIME 12:19

  8. This was a most enjoyable tussle which took me a good deal longer than Bob’s puzzles usually take me. I started off with LADEN and CAPULET, which made me smile. As with others, MUSETTE and LUCUBRATE were vaguely familiar words whose actual meanings were not something I could’ve come up with. Loved RITENUTO. UNMENTIONABLES took me a while to fathom, and like many of you it seems, HIBERNIA was my LOI after much mental exertion. 37:51. Thanks Bob and Keriothe.
  9. 26:55. “Tricky!”, it says at the top of my copy. But very enjoyable. LUCUBRATE was a new word for me and the wordplay for several took me while to untangle, but I worked them out in the end. RITENUTO was a favourite, but I liked ARMAGEDDON, LID and the triple TRIM too. Thanks Robert and K.
  10. I enjoy Robert’s tight cluing very much and he is a setter I trust. This is important to me as there were 3 words new to me and this is really my limit. COD to UNMENTIONABLES.
  11. I can’t remember a harder puzzle from Robert than this although I enjoyed the struggle. I managed to construct MUSETTE and LUCUBRATE (a word I thought I knew, but not with that meaning).I was defeated by several including DISCONCERTS where the Throws definition was too tricky for me. I tried TRIENUTO at 16d which stopped me going to Hibernia, a word I was fully familiar with.
    Like Phil, SACHET was my COD. David
  12. Similar comments to others with HIBERNIA LOI

    Didn’t know the term RITENUTO so the &lit was a bit lost on me but the w/p was pretty clear. Ditto LUCUBRATE. MUSETTE vaguely known

    However, even if it isn’t brand new I thought UNMENTIONABLES was great. Quite made my Sunday morning (as well as one of the clues in today’s offering)

    Very enjoyable puzzle and blog as always – thanks

  13. I print the weekend puzzles and solve off and on during the week. I’m pleased it is classed as tricky as I managed to struggle through it – looking up capulet, lucubrate, ritenuto amd musette. I couldn’t work one out – I was sure 21dn was ebbed but couldn’t see how it worked. I now realise that I ended up DNF with embed not only a better answer but also backed up by the word play. Thanks.
    1. I don’t think so anon. ‘Not really’ is not a clear enough instruction to do something so precise in the wordplay, and besides LTD (as opposed to ‘limited company’) is not a synonym of ‘firm’.
  15. 46:42 I found this quite tough with some real meat on the bones. Someone asked me not so long ago if I knew what lucubrations were. I did not know at the time but have done since then so lucubrate was not too hard. Musette the only unknown. COD unmentionables.
  16. I was a DNF, but with more than one uncompleted. I couldn’t assemble either Lucubrate or Musette, the latter not helped by my thinking there was enough overlap between some meanings of spruce and of arch to justify (m)arch. And I’m irate at myself for having written down all the gutta percha era Golf clubs, then taking yonks to see Snoops. I liked Old Bean. Thanks keriothe, Robt, and Peter
  17. I knew there was a word for studying at night and that it was going to be the answer. It still took a while to construct LUCUBRATE from the cryptic. Apart from that there were no vocab problems. MUSETTE was one of my first in simply because I couldn’t think of any other word for bagpipe. I always thought UNMENTIONABLES were skin tight trousers rather than drawers but maybe I’ve been reading too much Georgette Heyer. 38 minutes. Ann

    Edited at 2020-06-28 06:44 pm (UTC)

  18. That headline in the newsroom episode of Ulysses may have been my first exposure to this term for the Emerald Isle.

    And, ah, how I love the sound of a musette. Francophile that I am.

    Loved this puzzle.
    Greetings from Montague Street in Brooklyn.

    Edited at 2020-06-28 09:31 pm (UTC)

  19. Thanks Bob and keriothe

    Needed referential help but managed to get this finished and fully parsed in a bit over the hour. Can’t think of too many, if any, gimme clues with each one needed to be prised out. LUCUBRATE was the only new term – most of the others, including MUSETTE, had been met before in other puzzles.
    Took some time to see EMB[ARK]ED and missed the triple definition – going with an unsatisfactory RIM + T which was around the wrong way. Enjoyed getting the long answers and thought that the RITENUTO &lit was superb.
    Finished in the NE corner with SPLIFFS (which I hadn’t seen the word for years and the real thing for even longer), that LUCUBRATE and DISCONCERTS as the last few in.

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