i Cryptic Crossword 4145 Shabbo
May 20, 2024
Difficulty rating (out of five): ⏳⏳
Welcome to Shabbo, and thank you to our new setter for a very enjoyable debut. I for one will be looking forward to future contributions.
Once I had tuned in to our setter’s wavelength, I fairly rattled through this, with lots of smiles on the way, and finding no knotty problems in the parsing requiring fiddly unpicking. The surface readings are nicely plausible, and there is plenty of wit and humour on display. I considered rating this as a ⏳ puzzle, but the tuning-in thing can vary so much and makes a big difference to a solver’s experience, so I erred on the side of caution and headlined it as a ⏳⏳.
From among many contenders, my nomination for Clue of the Day goes to 17d. We have humour, misdirection, precise word-play, and it provided a splendid penny-drop moment. “Unusual foresight – avoid an oral examination here (4,5)”
Here’s the link for the answers and explanations: https://www.fifteensquared.net/2020/06/01/independent-10494-by-shabbo/
Borodin
batarde
Saboteur
Denzo
flashling
jonofwales
Cornick
sprouthater
uiytjhgmj
willow1235
idothei 
Completed in between one and two eggtimers, and endorse Saboreur’s comments about the puzzle and its setter. His COD was also a PDM for me but another favourite was 22a, where, misdirected by the cunning PEDANT, it wasn’t until all crossers were in that I realised the correct meaning of DOGGED.
1a provided two PDMs, firstly the location when I saw first the ISLAND from crossers then the CHICKEN which google confirmed, both having emerged from my subconscious.
I had a weird experience on completing the puzzle, being told by the app that “something’s not quite right” and found I needed o change the I in 22a to a W to get the OK. This neither made sense nor agreed with 225. Was I unique?
Interesting… 🤔
I’m a dead-tree solver. I had 22ac as a fairly obvious T plus RAILED. I don’t see how it parses at all if it’s meant to be TRAWLED. I assume therefore it is a glitch.
The T in pedant was indeed obvious, but I was misdirected by the fact that the PEDANT was DOGGED (pronounced as two syllables) so didn’t see RAILED (and, simultaneously, DOGGED with one syllable!) until I had all crossers. Strangely, on my version of Collins online dictionary, you have to scroll down a long way to find even a hint that DOGGED could also be the past participle of a verb.
Misdirection, eh? That’s just not fair in a cryptic, is it? 🙂
😁
Nice debut, enjoyed – finished comfortably within the one egg-timer. I didn’t know 1ac, but it could be little else with checking letters in place, and couldn’t parse ACTOR, but the rest went in with little ado. Hopefully this is the first of many!
I too had to change trailed to trawled, typo from the web posting I guess.
Very enjoyable solve, loved the gift horse 🙂
A typo seems a possible explanation, but begs the question of who changed it and why, as someone would have commented on 225 if it was there when the puzzle was first published in the Indy.
My guess is that an early version of the crossword had TRAWLED (with a clue that at least worked) but that for some reason, during the editorial process, TRAILED was substituted, with the present clue. I dare say that all that has happened is that the earlier version of the grid was picked up by mistake, with the revised clue (as you point out, on 225 four years ago, it was TRAILED). Other theories are possible…
As long as we all agree the answer is “trailed” all is well with crucuberbiverse. ( I just made that word up but I like it!) We managed to find a slot late today and decided to try out the new kid on the block. Thankfully, as we are not doing this regularly at present, we were presented with a fairly straightforward puzzle with some fun moments. We agree with all the comments made here including COD which certainly made us smile. We thought the parsing for 20a very clever when we unpicked it. Welcome Shabbo, please call again!
⌛ to maybe ⌛½ here.
Dead-tree solving so didn’t witness the 22a issue.
I think that deserves a ‘wow’ for a pretty stunning debut. Such very accomplished clues, and consistently so. Not over too quick because I only started at bedtime (had to get my daily fix) and was glad for a very speedy solve – by my standards that is of course 🙂
Another DTV solver so I got TRAILED without any difficulty. But, curiouser and curiouser, the solution printed in today’s paper has ‘trawled’.
A great crossword, though. Just right for a Monday.
Interesting! This lends support to Saboreur’s suggestion. Perhaps the origimal clue was “Dragged plug into thug”. Probably not, Shabbo would have done better.
Agree with a lot of the comments. Not the ones getting bogged down in the wonders of the Internet, although they have my sympathies. I enjoyed 27ac for the golfing reference and 15dn for the drinking. Just in case anyone’s uncertain about my other hobbies I’ll throw in 28ac which I may have seen before but was PDM for me. More please Shabbo (and Ed.)
massive, huge improvement on the last two dull, humourless and abstruse puzzles. More please.