Sunday Times Cryptic No 4879, 1 XII 2019, by Dean Mayer — Whelp,…

Author   guy_du_sablePosted on Categories Weekend Cryptic
A fine puzzle, and what a neat grid, with two little knots of four letters cross-referenced both ways! That may have made this one of Dean’s easier ones, though it’s hard for me to say, as I don’t even compete with myself, time-wise. And then some things surely hold me up longer than they would a UK resident, and as I was so wrong in my last blog in estimating that GOSH as an acronym would come readily to mind for many of my colleagues over the pond, I’m eager to hear how y’all received the definition in the clue to 24.

I do (granasam)* like this, and italicize anagrinds in the clues.

ACROSS
1 Properly equipped lad fixed up, you might say (4-8)
WELL-PREPARED — Sounds like “whelp repaired”
8 The harmful part of killing (3)
ILL — Hidden
9 Try to hold love down, likely to fail (11)
FLOUNDERING — FL(O)(UNDER)ING
10 Domestic fowl keeping or returning waterfowl (5)
HERON — HE(OR<=”returning”)N
11 Tramp and sailor about to get lower tax (4-3)
RATE-CAP — PACE + TAR <=“about” I didn’t realize at first that “rate-cap” at least “formerly in Britain” was and maybe still is a verb (thanks to the hyphen).
13 Look after guys in judo area preparing to fight again (10)
REARMAMENT — “Look after,” REAR (as in taking care of children) + MA(MEN)T.
15 With old Asian doctor is new analytical method (4,11)
WORD ASSOCIATION — (W[“with”] + O[“old”] + ASIAN DOCTOR IS)* Suspecting an anagram, one might also wrongly suspect “doctor” to be the anagrind (as in 16 here)—sneaky!
18 Playwright’s gift to people at party (3,7)
BEN TRAVERS — BENT RAVERS I had heard of the fellow, but that’s about it.
21 Just this Roman, and others around (7)
ETHICAL — ET(HIC)AL
22 Like wife, I’m floating (5)
ASWIM — AS, “Like” + W(ife) + IM
23 Rodents or pigs I read about (7,4)
PRAIRIE DOGS — (pigs I read)*
24 Shell-like article held by monarch (3)
EAR — E(A)R I put this one in very near the last because I didn’t realize that in informal Britspeak “shell-like” can be a noun. So I was hoping EAR wasn’t the answer, because then I would have to complain that “article” was doing double duty—and, on top of that, that it’s rather odd to call a part of the body an “article.” So just imagine my relief!
25 Pervert’s son in trouble here (12)
MISREPRESENT — Guess the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree… MI(S)RE + PRESENT, “here”

DOWN
1 In combat, everyone loves a jumper (8)
WALLAROO — W(ALL)AR + OO (00), “loves”—kanagROOs having nothing to do with it
2 A river between two lakes forming bay (6)
LAUREL — L(AURE)L
3 One pushing and one riding a bike, we hear (6)
PEDLAR — Sounds like “pedaler”
4 Skin split by broken arm, I cry for first aid (7,4)
PRIMARY CARE — P(arm I cry)*ARE
5 Immaculate dress, as Spooner might say now (5,4)
RIGHT AWAY — ”White array”
6 LOCO DERAILS—1 PM (8)
DISRAELI — (DERAILS 1)* I wonder if “locomotive” has ever been truncated thus in a newspaper headline. Maybe in the narrow columns of the New York Post (where “slay” is a noun).
7 King opens shop cooking sea food (8)
PLANKTON — PLAN(K)T + ON, “cooking”
12 Return much worried, after a divorce? (11)
PERSEVERATE — PER, “a” + SEVER, “divorce” + ATE, “worried”
14 Owns houses right behind hotel, sounds unhappy (9)
HARRUMPHS — HA(R+RUMP+H)S
15 Google finds money to acquire English oil company (3,5)
WEB PAGES — Richer than Croesus! W(E)(BP)AGES, with “finds” as a noun
16 Doctor wrong to lance lip infection (8)
RINGWORM — RI (WRONG)* M
17 Shot, not great but accurate (2,6)
ON TARGET — So what’s wrong with it!? (not great)*
19 The end of Oasis, rubbish band (6)
STRIPE — That happened in 2009. I’m not familiar with their work. [-Oasi]S + TRIPE
20 Do two days on board train (6)
FIDDLE — FI(DD)LE Collins has as one of the myriad definitions of “do” the informal sense of “to cheat; swindle”; for FIDDLE, in American slang, “to swindle in a petty way,” and in informal British, “to falsify (accounts, etc); swindle.”

31 comments on “Sunday Times Cryptic No 4879, 1 XII 2019, by Dean Mayer — Whelp,…”

  1. This took some time, with PERSEVERATE my LOI (and I only got the PER=a post-submission); I had trouble with the definition, since perseveration is continuing not returning–although I suppose repeating a reaction can be taken as returning to it. NHO BEN TRAVERS. 1ac was also slow in coming, since the two phrases aren’t actually pronounced the same: the P in ‘whelp’ isn’t aspirated, while the initial P in ‘prepared’ is. (Like, say, ‘night rate’/’nitrate’.) (And no, I’m not objecting.) No problem with EAR. I liked WORD ASSOCIATION (Guy, I think you meant to italicize ‘new’, no?) and HARRUMPHS, but COD to PRIMARY CARE, with its beautiful surface.

    Edited at 2019-12-08 01:01 am (UTC)

  3. Usual high quality with interesting devices and believable surfaces.

    It was great to meet so many of you in London yesterday and to attach faces to names.

  4. Quite a smooth run until the last two in, the interlocking PERSEVERATE / MISREPRESENT. NHO the former.

    Good to know that Ben Travers is not forgotten. He wrote 9 of the 12 Aldwych farces staged at that theatre 1923-1933.

  5. Sorry, just noticed: You inadvertently included PM in the anagrist of 6d.
  6. As a boy in the West Riding, the verb which we commonly used in our innocence, would now be regarded as anti-semitic.
      1. My father worked for Standard Oil during the war, and for a while they lived in a small oil town in southern California. My (Jewish) mother, being a Mrs. Gregg in an all-WASP community, had plenty of opportunities to hear the verb used. It was never innocent.
          1. I may have misunderstood gilems’s allusion; I assumed he meant ‘Jew’ as a verb. (And I assumed that Guy was making the same assumption.)
            1. Oh right, I see, I’m just being thick. Gilem’s allusion was a bit subtle for me in my slightly impaired state (it was a fun evening at the George).
              No doubt kids would have used it without understanding its implication but there surely can’t ever have been a time such a usage wouldn’t have been considered anti-semitic.
  7. 49 leisurely Sunday minutes. I like a bit of spoonering, so COD to RIGHT AWAY. Second choice was BEN TRAVERS with its neat surface. I guess DISRAELI had to be capitalised for the I PM usage, which had me scratching my head. WOD to HARRUMPHS. LOI was WEB PAGES which just wouldn’t load. Thank you Guy and Dean, and congrats to Verlaine and Keriothe for their performances yesterday.
      1. Magoo the winner with John McCabe second and Helen Ougham 3rd. Verlaine 5th, Keriothe a prize winner is the message I received.
  8. ….FLOUNDERING at various points on this one, and thanks are due to Guy for parsing WELL-PREPARED and RINGWORM. I had “word dislocation” in for some time, and that held me up with HARRUMPHS, which was quite apt in the circumstances !

    FOI ILL
    LOI RATE-CAP
    COD BEN TRAVERS
    TIME 23:45

  9. I normally struggle with Dean’s puzzles and this was no exception. FOI was EAR and long after that ON TARGET. In fact I think they were the only two I got on Sunday. But I persevered; the key was having a real go at the anagram at 23a and not assuming RATS. So after PRAIRIE DOGS I made some progress and then in a flurry on Wednesday managed to finish it. LOI was the unknown PERSEVERATE. Unparsed were WELL PREPARED and MISREPRESENT I had heard of Ben Travers but couldn’t say which century he was from. COD to HARRUMPHS, a great word.
    So a great feeling of satisfaction on finishing this and similar warm feelings (although it did get cold standing outside) about being at The George yesterday, much more fun than Loftus Road would have been. Very good to meet up with so many and congrats to the finalists aloft in The News Building. David
  10. I thought this was tough but fair. I was helped out by recalling davidivad1 discussing “perseverate” outside The George yesterday.

    In yesterday’s first heat jonhinterred and I both managed to complete all 3 puzzles in less than an hour in the first heat – for the first time ever. So we were both very chuffed with ourselves! That got us into the semifinals where we were both lost in action.

    I also got an honourable mention in the clue writing competition for my clue

    Player’s steady holding note (8)

    but missed out on the prize of a bottle of champagne which went to Topical Tim’s mate.

    Great fun meeting some of the regulars from here and also others yesterday. See you next year all being well for the 50th Times Crossword Championship event.

  11. 25:55. I found this tough, but fun as always.
    I thought the definition of 11ac RATE CAP was a bit dodgy: by definition a cap doesn’t act to lower something. I suppose the idea is that taxes are lower than they might otherwise have been but it doesn’t quite work for me.
    BEN TRAVERS rang a vague bell, probably because he’s appeared in these puzzles before. I’m pretty sure I’ve never come across him elsewhere.
    The homophone in 1ac is absolutely shockingly awful. I love it!
    Nice to see those I saw yesterday, and sorry to have missed the earlier crowd in the George. The new format does rather interfere with the social aspect of things, but on the whole I thought it worked well. I promise this is not just because I won £200 (2nd place in the B semi-final).
  12. 53 minutes here, and I have “bottom half at least twice as hard as top!” written on my sheet. It probably didn’t help that I’d never heard of BEN TRAVERS, but at least I grew up hearing “shell-like” used in real life almost as much as it was used in episodes of Minder…

    Apparently I was baffled by the parsing of a few, so thanks for untangling everything for us!

  13. I don’t see anyone else mentioning this but I took the anagram indicator “loco” in 6D to mean “crazy” (as in Spanglish) rather than “locomotive” for short. Or maybe estoy loco. I don’t have a time for this because I was interrupted but I recall finding it quite easy for a Dean Mayer.
    1. I figured it had to be that to function as an anagram indicator. And you certainly aren’t loco; loca, perhaps (or, being a New Yorker, meshugge), although I very much doubt it.
      1. Kevin, what Spanish I know comes from watching Sesame Street with my children eons ago and eavesdropping on the girls at the supermarket check-out, so it’s pretty basic NYC Puerto Rican Spanglish. No wonder I missed the loco/loca nuance…
    2. It means “locomotive” for the surface meaning. I italicized it as the anagrind, so assumed explaining that in that capacity it means “crazy” would be superfluous.
  14. I battled through this in 38:14. FOI LAUREL and LOI PLANKTON. Feeling a bit delicate today after yesterday’s festivities in Durham, so I hope today’s puzzles aren’t too taxing. Congrats to all those who took part in the Championship yesterday.
  15. 39:29 I found this a very enjoyable DM puzzle of moderate difficulty. Loved whelp repaired. NHO Ben Travers but liked the wp. For the record, for this UK based solver, ear was an automatic, reflex response to shell-like in 24ac.
  16. Thanks Dean and guy
    Did this one whilst on holidays in Inverloch on our south coast in amongst Christmas / New Year carry on. Found it an enjoyable solve as per usual from this setter, starting off in the SW corner with STRIPE and FIDDLE.
    A lot of great clues with my favourites being LAUREL and WEB PAGES. Also thought that the Spoonerism was quite amusing. Never heard of the playwright or the slang word for ear but both quite gettable from the wordplay.
    Finished on the left hand side with PERSEVERATE (also a new term), RATE CAP (cleverly disguised) and HARRUMPHS (which raised a smile).

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