Sunday Times Cryptic 4899, by Robert Price — On the (short)wavelength

Author   guy_du_sablePosted on Categories Weekend Cryptic
Has it already been two weeks since I last blogged? Seems like only yesterday… Although the time before mid-March seems long ago and far away. Hope you’re all well and staying safe. I’m writing this up at the eleventh hour before it goes live, the last one I’ve had to work online, as I am happily in possession of a brand-new printer. But I don’t have any notes about my solving experience to look back on. My LOI might very well have been 1, though there’s nothing really hard about it.

The clue referred to in my headline is one of a few here with somewhat unusual anagrinds, and the clue after it uses one of my favorite cryptic ploys.

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

ACROSS
 1 What a shopper might do to grab stuff and dash (10)
SMATTERING — S(MATTER)ING, “shop” as in the sense of ratting out one’s partners in crime
 7 Team’s heading off court (4)
QUAD — [-s]QUAD
 9 Cheeses said to give you wind (6)
BREEZE — No proof that this is a Covid-19 risk! “bries”
10 Horse for one desperate to depart (8)
TETRAPOD — (to depart)*
11 Dance judge that is introducing a Latin number (4)
JIVE — JI(V)E
12 Special way to enter competition, used by seeds (4,6)
OPEN SESAME — OPEN, “competition” + SESAME, “seeds”
14 How Soviet radar’s been broadcast (9,5)
SHORTWAVE RADIO — (How Soviet radar)* Pretty neat &lit; radar does indeed employ shortwave frequencies.
16 Clashing statements harm poets, perhaps? (5,9)
MIXED METAPHORS — (harm poets)* for METAPHORS, which means MIXED METAPHORS is “harm poets”
19 Edification intended in speech by gambler (10)
BETTERMENT — “better” “meant”
21 Urgent command to clear court (4)
DIRE — Bomb threat? DIRE[-ct]
22 After party, ruffian wanting a rumpus (8)
BALLYHOO — BALL, “party” + Y[-a]HOO
24 Fret about the wings in navigating part of an airfield (6)
HANGAR — HA(N[-avigatin]G]AR Took a minute before the proper sense of “fret” came back to me, for HAAR, cold sea fog
25 Show tolerance (4)
PLAY — DD That’s “tolerance” as PLAY in the sense of (Collins) “freedom of or scope or space for movement,” as for a mechanism or a rope.
26 Cleaners put off by toilets (10)
DETERGENTS — DETER + “GENTS”

DOWN
 2 Two fish cut by small pointed tool (11)
MARLINSPIKE — MARLIN + S(mall) + PIKE A new word for me.
 3 As a result of whistle-blower, the mineral deposit’s protected (9)
THEREFORE — THE and ORE (“mineral deposit”) guarding REF (“whistleblower”)
 4 Level of experience around old university (4,3)
EVEN OUT — EVEN(O)(U)T
 5 If all else fails, the grand tour will end here (2,3,4,6)
IN THE LAST RESORT — A CD accompanies the straight def. I was reluctant to write—er, type—this in at first because I know the expression as “as a last resort.”
 6 Degenerate daughter is excluded from visit (2,2,3)
GO TO SEE — GO TO SEE[-d]
 7 Where ships are docked and legends recounted (5)
QUAYS — “Keys” in the telling (by many folks, at least), “legends” in the sense of guides to symbols on a map
 8 Fleece tucked under a bustle (3)
ADO — A over DO, “Fleece” in the sense of “con”
13 Domestic visa term and when it’s renewed (11)
MAIDSERVANT — (visa term and)*
15 Chap who’s desperate to get in air after a ducking (9)
AVOIDANCE — A + “after” it, VOI(DAN)CE, VOICE for “air” encasing Desperate Dan. I must’ve heard this hombre’s name somewhere, though I’ve certainly never seen the British comic where he appeared, The Dandy.
17 Demonstrated how empty hand cream could be recycled (7)
MARCHED — Not enough sanitizer to go round? (h[-an]d cream)* The anagrind straddles the anagrist! Have we ever seen that before?
18 Sort of pot one throws (7)
PITCHER — DD
20 Hard to believe, City finally score! (5)
TALLY — TALL, “hard to believe” + [-cit]Y Is “City” supposed to be read as a plural, in the surface? Sounds ungrammatical.
23 Utterly boring device one holds to the ear (3)
ALL — “awl”

33 comments on “Sunday Times Cryptic 4899, by Robert Price — On the (short)wavelength”

  1. 24A – missing word in explanation? My understanding is that fret and haar are both cold sea fog

    3D If you transfer “the” from “whistleblower” to “the mineral deposit” (= THE, ORE), that is outside and hence “protecting” REF.

    15D I would guess that you have seen the “desperate man” indication in a previous UK cryptic

    17D Similar guess – I doubt that this is the first time an anagrind like “how … could be receycled” has been used

    20D In a UK sporting context, teams like “City” (as a shortened name) are counted as plural entities, just like their possible rivals “Rovers” or “Wanderers”.

    Edited at 2020-04-25 11:36 pm (UTC)

    1. Of course, I’m sure I typed “fog,” Pete, and I have no idea where it disappeared to! (I don’t know why many people phrase helpful comments like yours so disingenuously.)

      I may have parsed 3D correctly a week ago, but there’s no way to prove it now! Ha.

      Yes, here would obviously be the first place I’d think of where I might have come across Desperate Dan (he’s always desperate? That must be a strain).

      I wasn’t complaining about the other clues, just thinking out loud. (Here, of course, we’d say “Knicks score”—if that would ever happen. Ha).

      Edited at 2020-04-26 12:11 am (UTC)

    2. It’s not just sports teams, is it? I was under the impression that it’s more general: the board have decided …, Waitrose are offering a discount …
      1. Yes, but in my work I always make “the board,” “the company,” etc., take a singular verb. For “faculty” and “staff,” though, I do find that the plural is sometimes appropriate.
        1. I meant general in UK English. I think US practice is generally singular: the faculty is divided on the issue, the staff is not going to … etc.
          1. But it’s common usage here to refer to members of the staff, without “the,” with a plural.
            Patients and staff are equally concerned… Students and faculty are all out on strike…
            It all depends.

            Edited at 2020-04-26 01:00 am (UTC)

            1. Well, ‘X and Y is…’ isn’t going to work on either side of the pond. But I take your point on ‘the’-less nouns.
              1. Yes, I was going to amend that, but you had already replied, Quickdraw!
                1. I was taught to use the singular with collective nouns and then the BBC suddenly decided to make them plural. They did NOT ask for my approval, and they don’t get it!
                  Andyf
                  1. I am constantly being caught out about this at work. I will write something like “General Motors are planning a new electric vehicle” which is how I would say it in English English. But in American English it is “General Motors is planning…”
  2. I forgot to submit this until a few minutes ago, but it took me about 7 minutes after going offline to get the last four, AVOIDANCE, DIRE, POI MARLINSPIKE, and LOI JIVE. Those last 2 were last because I’d written in MARLONSPIKE. Biffed OPEN SESAME, parsed post-submission. COD to SMATTERING.
  3. 39 minutes, so not bad for me on a relaxing Sunday. FOI 7a QUAD, LOI 4d EVEN OUT, not for any particular reason I can recall. Enjoyed 16a MIXED METAPHORS the most; WOD 22a BALLYHOO.

    I caught an episode of BBC One’s The Repair Shop recently, and while it wasn’t my cup of tea, they did repair someone’s grandad’s old nautical tool-belt, one of the tools being a MARLINSPIKE, so that probably helped me out with 2d.

  4. I struggled a bit with this. My notes say I got 5 clues in my first session. Having just read “The Old Man and the Sea” the first fish I thought of was a marlin. That was a big help to get the unknown 2d. And a recent appearance by TALLY was a huge help at 20d.
    It came down to the 7a and 7d which despite alphabet trawls I could not get; and 15d. I was pretty confident that 21a was FORE (an urgent command minus the court of forecourt). I did consider other options but never saw the ducking definition. Despite reading both Beano and Dandy as a boy, Dan didn’t occur to me. David
  5. I had this done and dusted in 25:03, but it was all in vain as I’d misinterpreted 23d and put AWL. Careless! Thanks Bob and Guy.
    1. Aaah. Me an AWL. I don’t always go back and check the weekend ones if I’m confident I’ve got them all right, but your post rang a bell. And so I did check. There was a pink square. Dash it.
  6. ….Free Moscow”. 14A left me with this particular earworm from Jethro Tull’s “Lap of Luxury” album. Some really good songs on the album (do check out “Tundra” if you’ve never heard it) but it was during the Ian Anderson/Peter Vettese collaboration, and a drum machine was used. Anderson intimated in an interview some years ago that he’d like to re-record it with a proper drummer, but I suspect the time for that has passed.

    The puzzle was the usual excellent offering from Bob, and my only hold up was a two minute alpha-trawl at the end, which stopped when I reached Q.

    FOI BREEZE
    LOI QUAD
    COD SMATTERING
    TIME 14:49

  7. I was just under 50 minutes on this, so slower than my usual comparators were.I never could JIVE so perhaps that’s why I was slow to get on the dance floor. The only unknown was LOI MARLINSPIKE but the fish and crossers made that clear enough. COD was MIXED METAPHORS. Another very pleasant puzzle from Robert.Thank you to him and to Guy.
  8. 21:22. Neat and amusing as ever from Robert. I liked JIVE, BALLYHOO and MIXED METAPHORS, but COD to OPEN SESAME.
  9. 13:48. No problems with this, another very fine puzzle from Bob. I was a bit puzzled by 3dn because THEREFORE doesn’t mean ‘as a result of’ but of course that isn’t the definition.
  10. 42:47. I found this quite tricky. I dithered a bit at the end over play, I did think of the slack in a line of rope sort of sense but wasn’t 100% confident that it meant tolerance. I liked smattering, shortwave radio, maidservant and mixed metaphors.
  11. The discussion mode of the blog shows that some guys’ inabilities to understand English English is a hinderance to the rest of us.

    Ref. Riddlecombe has had to step in to clear up five points. Then Brothers Guy and Kev. have a verbal tennis match – an eight stroke rally which we Brits don’t wish to spectate due to cultural separation. It is 21ac. We all know who Desperate Dan is!

    From then on only 8 others join in and we reach a new low point in involvement – even when we’re mostly locked-down.

    1. True but if you were to ask why a Yank, who doesn’t know his Desperate Dan from his Alf Tupper, is blogging you would only be challenged to do it yourself and better.
    2. Why don’t you go play in traffic?
      Why in hell would our discussion about nouns that can take both plural and singular verbs be a “hinderance” (sic) to anyone?
      Besides, with others joining in as the sun rose higher over Old Blighty, Kev’s and my comments will have collapsed in the queue—an event whose mysterious occurrence has also aroused from you comical cries of indignation.

      Edited at 2020-04-26 01:56 pm (UTC)

      1. Guy, in the UK the expression is ‘play with the traffic’, but I do understand. The ‘hinderance’ is – that we studied all that at school – and ‘X and Y’!

        You are, Sir, a very decent bogger and solver, but please don’t get dragged into the Osaka Conundrums; adopt a more Brysonesque, self-deprecating tone. As Alan Bennett once noted, Americans in small, visiting groups, often sound like seagulls fighting over a fish head.

        As Mr. Alexi Sayle rightly points out I would indeed be challenged!

        1. So you will understand.

          You are the absolutely last person here I would consult about policing my “tone.”

          No idea what Osaka has to do with anything. That’s all right, you needn’t explain.

          I assure you, Mr. Horry, that when I decide to insult you, I shall not take the indirect and decidedly low road of resorting to stereotypes about your nationality. (Any word yet as to when you will be allowed back in the UK?)

          1. I will not be be back to London until this time next year at the earliest. I was due to fly back on 1 May via Berlin (an old English tradition) but I shall now most certainly have to rely on FaceTime to watch my great grandchildren grow-up. In all honesty, I don’t go in much for racial stereotyping, but sweet Alan Bennett has me over!
            Kevin will explain Osaka for you – it’s a Kevin thing.

            Edited at 2020-04-26 05:14 pm (UTC)

  12. When I was 10 I had the Ashley Book of Knots, a collection of some 1500 knots for all variety of nautical uses from pre-steam sailing, so I knew my Marlinspike. I did think Bob missed an opportunity by not reversing 23d from All to Awl so as to have it underneath the Marlinspike. I mostly liked Play for its compactness, and Jive for the nice surface. Well blogged, Guy; well set Bob; well edited Peter
    1. As a dyspraxic who finds even shoelaces a challenge, I think I may have to lie down in a darkened room…

      Edited at 2020-04-26 12:42 pm (UTC)

        1. Certainly a very big book. My parents had it (not sure why), and I’d probably bought it out of nostalgia it it had been a bit cheaper. 3854 numbered entries, says Wikipedia.

          Edited at 2020-04-26 04:52 pm (UTC)

          1. I got mine from an uncle, and still have it. Periodically I see it on the shelf and get it out. I spent many rainy day hours with it and a bit of rope.
  13. And that’s an improvement!
    Being from an ex-colony, I did read Beano so knew about Desperate Dan. However, Marlinspike is where Captain Haddock lives 🙂
    Thanks to all here for help parsing some I biffed.
    Cheers.
  14. Thanks Robert and guy
    Another excellent puzzle by this setter which was in this weekend’s Australian – so as close as we can get to ‘real time’. By not seeing the W in 14a, assumed that I needed one at 23d and before looking up ‘utteringly’, erroneously went with that.
    Did notice more than the usual amount of subtraction letters in the word play – at 7a, 21a, 6d and 17d. Had not come across either terms for the sea fog at 24 and although was confident that HANGAR was correct, it took a while to track down HAAR and ‘fret’ to confirm it.
    Finished with SMATTERING at the top before writing in the ill-fated AWL at the bottom.

Comments are closed.