Sunday Times Cryptic 4943, by Dean Mayer — No major hurdles…

Author   guy_du_sablePosted on Categories Weekend Cryptic

and I am sure I could’ve cracked the fifteen-letter 5 first of all, if Saturday Night Live had not just come on and if the first thing I saw when glancing at the newly printed puzzle hadn’t been the instantly solved three-letter “Fabled bird” at 23, which prompted me to start by nibbling at the edges: the three-letter clues, then the four-letter clues, then the six-letter clues… achieving, in a slow-mo flash, my standard leisurely time, and with no questions lingering about the parsing. Pretty easy one, if you ask me—there are even two hiddens (albeit one reversed)—and no &lit (or even an &lit wannabe).

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

ACROSS
 1 Accept fresh cup of tea (4,2,2)
FACE UP TO — (cup of tea)*
 6 Master having overnight cases (6)
GOVERN — Hidden
 9 Around Nevada, join rally (10)
CONVALESCE — Rather vague directions to this event… CO(NV)ALESCE
10 Down-and-out ex-pupil in house (4)
HOBO — O(ld) B(oy) in HO(use) “Down-and-out” here is a noun.
11 Story teller in trouble over reading? (4)
LIAR — AIL<=“over” + R, the solitary non-facetious member of the Three “R”s
12 Things that should be worn in style (6,4)
SHABBY CHIC — CD I knew the phrase “shabby genteel”…
13 It grows light from the East (7,7)
CHINESE LANTERN — DD 
15 Do get an agreement of mutual benefit (6,8)
SOCIAL CONTRACT — Social, ”do,” as a party, a  + CONTRACT, “get”—“an agreement” presumably because there are other kinds
18 Doing things for an author? (5,5)
AGENT NOUNS — CD + DBE… My LOI. Wikipedia explains, “In linguistics, an agent noun is a word that is derived from another word denoting an action, and that identifies an entity that does that action,” giving the example of driver, from drive. Now, an author doesn’t auth, nor is someone who authors an authorer. “Author,” however, ultimately comes to us—via Middle Fench as relayed from Old French—from the Latin noun auctor, which is composed of auct-, the past passive participle stem of augēre (“to increase”) + –or, the agent noun suffix.
20 Timid type drops small grimace (4)
MOUE — MOU[-s]E
21 Magazine content from magazine about bags (4)
AMMO — Reversed hidden
22 Getting on top, on horseback (10)
BESTRIDING — BEST, “top” + RIDING, “on horseback”
24 Red route from Leeds? Arrive on outskirts (6)
COMMIE — COM(MI)E… This is an offensive pejorative term, AFAIC.
25 Dry — just about dead as well (8)
SECONDLY — SEC, “dry” + ON(D)LY

DOWN
 2 Axes I throw back into remains of fire (9)
ABOLISHES — A(I LOB<=“back”)SHES
 3 Measure very heavy metal ring (7)
ENVIRON — As a verb; EN, “Measure” + V(ery) + IRON, “heavy metal”
 4 Old man / lover won’t get over friend (3)
PAL — PA, “old man” + L[-over]
 5 Worried less about soccer training grounds (8,7)
OBSTACLE COURSES — (less about soccer)*
 6 Sees red cracks on parts of hand (4,7)
GOES BANANAS — Goes, “cracks” (as in turns, attempts) + BANANAS, “parts of hand,” “hand” being a term for a bunch of bananas
 7 Against hybrid lichee as jam ingredient? (7)
VEHICLE — V, versus, “Against” or versus + (lichee)*, defined cryptically This clue seemed to have won my (rare) Dubious Anagrind of the Year Award, on the grounds that I thought a “hybrid” must be a combination of two things (from Latin hybrida, variant of ibrida “mongrel,” specifically “offspring of a tame sow and a wild boar”); how the word can signal mere jumbling of elements was beyond my ken—though the fact that the word is also applied to a kind of automobile is amusing in this context. The first commenter prompted me to look again, and lo, there in Collins online (as American English) is (2.) “anything of mixed origin, unlike parts, etc.” Good enough for crosswords! (It’s not a mixture of the letters of more than one word, though… Hmmph)
 8 Religious scholar gets talk cut short (5)
RABBI — We just couldn’t take any more! RABBI[-t] Sometimes, you just feel like having a chestnut.
12 Green dye put into blue as ordered (11)
SUSTAINABLE — STAIN, “dye” inside (blue as)*
14 Caught in no-go area, left by night (9)
NOCTURNAL — NO(C)TURN + A(rea) + L(eft)
16 See fit to follow (7)
CONFORM — CON, “See” + FORM, “fit”
17 Religious festival managed to include a cross (7)
RAMADAN — R(A)(MAD, “cross”)AN
19 Thick soup paste and black olive starter (5)
GUMBO — GUM,“paste” + B(lack) + O(live)
23 Fabled bird seen in stone, it’s said (3)
ROC — Two bits of wordplay (inextricably fused) for a three-letter word! ROC[-k], “rock”

26 comments on “Sunday Times Cryptic 4943, by Dean Mayer — No major hurdles…”

  1. I found this quite impenetrable at my first sitting, and it didn’t help that having only the G from GUMBO I wasted ages convinced that ‘author’ in 18a was going to be NGAIO MARSH!
    Tried again later and suddenly I was on Dean’s wavelength.

    I like VEHICLE. I take the point about ‘hybrid’ deriving from two, but dictionaries seem to support it being synonymous with e.g. mixture, variety, without that condition, and it’s in standard anagram indicator lists.

    D for dead is Chambers only, I think, but probably wouldn’t have caused anyone any trouble. I’m still not sure what real life application it has, unlike D for died.

    Thanks to blogger and setter. – Twmbarlwm

    1. Thanks! I was going to plead lack of access to the most extensive dictionaries, bu then I found it online after all…
    2. Given the G and the 5,5, NGAIO MARSH was a write in, and blur (or b****r) the wordplay! Until, of course, it wasn’t.
  2. I gave up on this, and only went back to it just now before coming here. Somehow, suddenly SUSTAINABLE, SOCIAL CONTRACT (had the CONTRACT early on, just couldn’t think of the first word), and AGENT NOUNS came to me. I had a MER at D=dead, but should have known that Chambers would have it, Chambers being Chambers. Was not pleased to see COMMIE. And was shocked–shocked–to see ‘Fabled bird’; well, even Homer nods, I suppose.
  3. 36 mins for me, so not bad for a Dean. Sometimes I get really stuff. I don’t remember anything especially remarkable.
  4. I was surprised to see some really easy clues such as PAL, HOBO, RABBI and ROC. I don’t expect those in an Anax puzzle. Mind you, I did like clues such as SHABBY CHIC, GOES BANANAS, and VEHICLE. I don’t have a problem with ‘hybrid’ as an anagrind, Guy.
    Thanks, Guy, for LIAR. I failed to spot the origin of the R.
    FOI: FACE UP TO. LOI: CONFORM/COMMIE.
    COD: AGENT NOUNS.
    I think Dean is courting trouble by putting a cross in Ramadan in 17d!
    Meanwhile, there’s a nice Carpenters “Jambalay” ear worm with GUMBO!
      1. Thanks for the information. I only know The Carpenters version. I would have been only a little’n when Hank Williams wrote it, I guess.
  5. COMMIE must be another of those UK/US things. In the UK it’s used humorously, but even if considered derogatory it’d be only very mildly so, especially when compared with the gross political insults that are hurled around willy-nilly these days, most of them emanating from that quarter of the political spectrum it has to be said.
    1. Whereas we had McCarthy, the Red Scares and blacklists, lives ruined by persecution, J. Edgar Hoover somewhat agnostic about the mere existence of the Mob but searching every nook and cranny for imaginary subversives, to the point where RFK reckoned the largest contingent of the US Communist Party was that of the FBI informants.

      (This is no longer “politics”—it’s history.)

      Edited at 2021-02-28 08:16 am (UTC)

  6. 24 minutes, with LIAR LOI. Many good clues, my favourites being SHABBY CHIC and GOES BANANAS. I had OVERRIDING at first but fortunately OBSTACLE COURSES soon got in the way of that. Also late to fall were the AGENT NOUNS which, if I knew, I’d forgotten. But another great puzzle. Thank you Dean and Guy.
  7. Enjoyed this, though definitely at the easier end of Dean’s range.
    Commie is marked in all the UK dictionaries as derogatory, but not offensive. We must work harder to ensure it is offensive, eg by adding bar stewards afterwards ..
    Don’t think I’ve ever had gumbo but I love its Pyrenean equivalent, Garbure.
    1. “Bar stewards” must be another local reference that goes right over my head.

      A pejorative term is at least always offensive to the person to whom it is applied.

      Edited at 2021-02-28 08:18 am (UTC)

  8. Bar stewards is a semi-homophone that gets round the LJ embargo on the common term for referees and other people born out of wedlock.
  9. This one took me a a steady 20 minutes (with time off for feeling smug). Neither the hybrid anagram indicator nor the COMMIE insult worried me at all. I wonder if the use of offensive (to the hearer) terms is somehow rendered permissible by having it in a crossword, where, after all, it’s just a collection of letters that fits?
    I’m old enough to remember the Social Contract espoused by the Wilson government, and though I’m aware that it has a much longer history, that’s the version that comes to mind.
  10. 9:11. I found this pretty straightforward.
    I’m slightly surprised by the negative reaction to COMMIE from our US contingent. I would have thought it was like being accused of being a ‘remainer’ – only an insult in the mind of the accuser – but I guess the historical context lends the word a particular pejorative power.
    D is in Collins as an American English abbreviation for ‘dead’.

    Edited at 2021-02-28 09:47 am (UTC)

  11. I had OVERRIDING until SUSTAINABLE put me right. AGENT NOUNS was my LOI. Liked SHABBY CHIC. VEHICLE made me laugh. 29:36. Thanks Dean and Guy.
  12. 1a FACE UP TO was FOI, always a confidence booster. But I was another OVERRIDING; and SUSCEPTIBLE at 12d was a partial cure only. Found CONFORM hard to parse.
    In the end I managed to correct everything .
    Last three were SUSTAINABLE,SOCIAL CONTRACT and the unknown AGENT NOUNS.
    Two longish sessions; enjoyable. Favourite was SHABBY CHIC.
    David
  13. ….a plant called ‘morning sunbeam’. In its absence, I invented it, and all manner of hold-ups subsequently ensued.

    Thanks to Guy for reminding me of the three R’s, as I was beginning to think that ‘r = reading’ was possibly church shorthand.

    FOI GOVERN
    LOI SECONDLY
    COD SHABBY CHIC (also liked FACE UP TO)
    TIME 16:52

    1. There really is a delphinium called “morning sunrise” and, as you so succinctly put it, all manner of hold-ups subsequently ensued. Jeffrey
  14. Rather struggled with this but an excellent crossword. Liked VEHICLE. Completely failed to spot that OBSTACLE COURSES was an anagram.

    I’ll blame it trying to do this after a Sunday luncheon that included Jam Roly Poly…

    Thanks all

  16. 17.04. I found this to be at the easier end of the spectrum. I took it on trust that a Chinese lantern was a plant as well as a light. I struggled to see con for see in conform but the checkers left little doubt. Shabby chic was my favourite.
  17. Thanks Dean and guy
    A mix of the easy and the not so easy which took almost the hour to get it all out. Started of with one of the other 3-letter words in PAL which led to the top of the puzzle being the first part to be filled.
    The only new term for me was MOUE. Was surprised to see RAMADAN defined as a festival – understood it to be the period of only being able to eat after sunset / before sunrise, with Hari Raya / Eid al-Fitr being the festival to celebrate the end of the fasting.
    Finished in the SW corner GUMBO (where initially was thinking of ADOBO, the Filipino dish after getting the BO bit), COMMIE (from which I took no offence) and AMMO (which stayed hidden for longer than it should have).

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