Saturday Times 25203 (30th June)

Author   linxitPosted on Categories Weekend Cryptic
No time recorded, as I solved it in a number of 5-minute snatches over a busy weekend. Probably just over 20 minutes, but it would have been a lot quicker if I hadn’t thrown in SEES THROUGH at 13D! Took me ages to sort out 12 and 15ac after that. Apart from that, this had quite a high General Knowledge quotient, although my only two unknowns didn’t fall into that category – CANDLE-ENDS is fairly obvious, but I didn’t know it was a dictionary word; STEEPLE HAT was worked out from the wordplay but still put in tentatively.

Across
1 ITEM – MET (got together) reversed, next to I(sland).
4 WIDOW’S PEAK – WIDOW (remaining Dutch) + S(ide) + PEAK (top). Definition is Barnet v, for the shape of this hairstyle. This clue probably needs more explanation though. On the surface reading, Barnet is a district of North London with a football team in League Two, so the surface is all football, albeit an unlikely scenario. Barnet is also Cockney rhyming slang for hair or hairstyle (Barnet Fair). Dutch for wife is also Cockney slang, but not rhyming according to this page.
9 CANDLE-ENDS – cryptic definition. Worked it out when all the crossing letters were there, but I’d never come across the term before.
10 STAB – BATS (Barking) reversed. I think this is acceptable, whereas if the setter was using “barking” to refer to the London suburb it would not be.
11 PSMITH – (this MP)*. I’ve read most of the Jeeves and Wooster books but never got round to these. Worth reading?
12 MEMBRANE – RAN (managed) inside MEMBE(r) (short leg). One of my last in due to the error at 13D.
14 STAT – first letters of “skater’s triple axel tackled”.
15 MAKE NO ODDS – ODDS (prices) next to MAKE (brand) + NO (number). Took me ages to get this, although when I used to work for Ladbrokes, the words “odds” and “prices” were pretty much interchangeable. The 13D error claims its second victim!
17 HIERONYMUS – (your men, his)*. I’d never heard of a “Saint Hieronymus”, but a search through Wikipedia found him as Saint Jerome, real name Eusebius Sophronius Hieronymus.
20 EATS – (b)EATS, with a very long-winded instruction to remove the B from BEATS.
21 HAREBELL – hidden in “which a rebel leader”.
23 CURARE – CU (copper, metal) + RARE (not commonly found).
24 YANK – double definition.
25 FOUR-BY-FOUR – 4 x 4 = 16, or seize in French! I didn’t work this one out until this morning, having put it in from the definition and crossing letters with no idea how it worked.
26 STEEPLE HAT – STEEP (very high) + LAT(itude), around EH (what). Unsurprisingly, it’s a high conical hat, but I’d never heard of it.
27 SOHO – sounds like “sow, hoe”.

Down
2 TRANSIT VISA – (as trains)* minus the I (one’s left), around ITV1 (a TV station). Corrected after the setter’s explanation below.
3 MIDWINTER – W(ith) + DIM (dark) reversed, + INTER (place underground). Definition refers to the poem by Christina Rossetti.
4 WREXHAM – RE (on) + X (by) inside W. HAM (West Ham, a London football club). More unlikely football in the surface reading, with Conference side Wrexham beating Premiership West Ham.
5 DON’T MAKE ME LAUGH – cryptic definition.
6 WISE MEN – (New semi)*. One definition given in Chambers is “wizard, magician”.
7 EXTRA – EX (old spouse) + ART (pictures) reversed.
8 KEBLE – alternate letter of breaks reversed, + LE(nt). One of the colleges making up Oxford University.
13 NODS THROUGH – double definition, neither of which is justified in Chambers, which just has it as passing a bill through parliament without any discussion. Sour grapes, I’m sure…
16 OVERRUFFS – OVER (above) + R(iver) + US (America) around FF (very strong). A term from the card game bridge.
18 NEEDFUL – NEEDLEFUL (a length of thread, whimsically) minus L(ac)E.
19 SACKBUT – SACK (wine) + BUT (bar). An old instrument similar to a trombone.
21 HAYES – sounds like “haze”. Rutherford B. Hayes, 19th president of the USA.
22 RANGE – RANG (called) + (Deirdr)E. For the uninitiated, Ken and Deirdre Barlow are two of the longest-running characters in Coronation Street. In fact, Ken (played by William Roache) appeared in the very first episode in 1960 and is still there to this day.

12 comments on “Saturday Times 25203 (30th June)”

  1. Thanks for putting me out of my misery on 25ac. I didn’t have a clue. It’s very good.
    34m. I found this quite tough, and was stuck for ages at the end on OVERRUFFS. I’ve never heard of it, and “very strong” for FF is a teeny bit oblique. Got there eventually.
  2. Thought FOUR BY FOUR a real cracker, though I initially thought it was something to do with The Bold Gendarmes. Also liked WREXHAM and EXTRA.

    Delayed by putting in SERPENT instead of SACKBUT – well, I don’t know what strange apparatus you might find in a wine bar, do I?

    Can’t say I fully understood CANDLE-ENDS: I thought it was something to do with the line in Proverbs: For there shall be no reward to the evil man; the candle of the wicked shall be put out. To be honest, I’ve only just seen the pun now as I write this: definitely a case of too much mental clutter!

    Apart from that, a thoroughly enjoyable puzzle, though I didn’t make a note of how long it took me. So thanks to setter and, of course, to the blogger.

    By the way, linxit, I’ve read all Wodehouse’s Blandings books and PSMITH appears in the second one, Leave it to Psmith, which certainly made me laugh. Psmith is one of those erudite, witty, resourceful young men you find in the writing of the period (Saki’s Clovis, for example) and I can heartily recommend him to you.

    The explanation I heard of Dutch meaning wife is much ruder than the one given in the link, so we’ll not go there.

    Edited at 2012-07-07 11:35 am (UTC)

  3. Very heavy-going. Got there in 79 minutes with some use of aids once the hour was up. Didn’t understand 25ac. Never heard of STEEPLE HAT or CANDLE-ENDS but knew PSMITH and WISE MEN as magicians via The Magi (in the bible) and The Magus (a novel by John Fowles).

    Edited at 2012-07-07 01:24 pm (UTC)

  4. SOED says dutch is diminutive of Duchess, one of the definitions of which is “a costermonger’s wife”, from that I deduce the cockney usage for wife (whether husband is a coster monger or not.)
    I would like to help Tina Oneill but she doesn’t seem to have a clue!
  5. Unusually, I kept my copy of this crossword because until now, I could not understand 25ac at all, so thanks Andy!

    Dutch is well understood to be simply a slang shortening of duchess, often used by cockneys if not coined by them. A compliment to your wife, from the far-off days when duchesses were thought to be superior in fact, as well as in manner.

  6. I was all but done in 29′, but ground to a halt at 26ac, at which I stared and stared and played with the alphabet, and actually came up with STEEPLE HAT finally, but–not finding it in the dictionary, and not able to parse it–didn’t have the confidence to put in. Totally clueless as to 4ac and 25ac, getting the former from checkers and the latter from the enumeration. Thanks to linxit for the explanations; now I can see that 25 is a beautiful clue.
  7. 12:24 for me, which felt a bit slow at the time. Lot’s of clever stuff here, particularly 4ac and 25ac.

    However, I’m not too keen on “one’s left” in the clue to 1dn. If it’s supposed to mean “that’s the result” (with “as” doing double duty?), then it doesn’t seem quite right. Or am I missing something obvious?

    And I wasn’t entirely convinced by the supposed double definition in 13dn either.

    1. I confess I didn’t even notice the problem with “one’s left” in 1dn, but it does seem a bit awkward.
      I had the same query about 13dn but I think if you read “OK” as a verb it’s, er, OK.
  8. I forgot to mention: in the days when Times crossword solvers were assumed to have a thorough knowledge of The Hunting of the Snark, no-one would have dreamed of confessing to ignorance of the word CANDLE-ENDS!
  9. Same query as Tony about ‘one’s left’. Liked this puzzle a lot, falling short at SACKBUT, where I had the BUT but couldn’t complete. Have never read a word of Wodehouse, but he was my Dad’s favourite author, so PSMITH (which I always thought a dreadfully twee name) was no problem.
  10. I had to revisit this one in my mind when I saw the comments, but the clue actually parses as follows:
    AS TRA(I)NS* about ITV I – the station being ITV1. I remember thinking at the time that it would, strictly, be incorrect to clue ITV on its own as “station” as there is no longer a TV station of that name (depending on how loosely one defines station).
    1. Ah, thanks. I didn’t consider that option – and it looks like neither did Tony! I’ve corrected the blog entry.

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