Saturday Times 25095 (25th Feb)

Author   linxitPosted on Categories Weekend Cryptic
Solving time 17:50. I started with the four crossing 12-letter entries and got three of them straight away, so thought I’d be in for a quick time. However, I lost my way a bit in the middle and didn’t enter anything for 5 minutes, then suddenly they were all obvious again and the last few went in pretty quickly.

Across
1 GIGANTIC – GIG (concert) + ANTIC (absurd performance).
5 CALLUS – CALL US!
9 EVICTION – (notice)* around VI (six).
10 BOGOTA – BOOT (kick) around G(uyanese), + A. Capital of Colombia.
12 DOLCE – CLOD (berk) reversed + (reveng)E.
13 HIT PARADE – (apart)* inside HIDE (leather).
14 HAIR OF THE DOG – (I forgot head H)*, the H from H(urts).
18 LETTER-OPENER – double definition.
21 TAKE SIDES – K(ing) inside SEA (the main) reversed, all inside TIDES (ups and downs).
23 AGATE – A GATE (bodies in the e.g. football ground…)
24 ISOLDE – IS OLD (has a bus pass) + E(xpiry). Nice idea, but if any clue needed a ? at the end, this is it. The opera in question is Tristan und Isolde by Richard Wagner.
25 SINISTER – IN (at home) inside SISTER (nurse).
26 GUTTER – G(ood) + UTTER (total).
27 STREAKER – cryptic definition.

Down
1 GREEDY – (ho)G + REEDY (shrill).
2 GRISLY – sounds like “grizzly”.
3 NOTRE DAME – NAME (title) around [OT (religious text) + RED (coloured)].
4 IN OTHER WORDS – (horrid news to)*
6 AROMA – O (duck) inside ARM (wing) + A.
7 LEONARDO – LARDO(n) (bacon not quite) around EON (age).
8 SPACE-AGE – PACE (patrol) inside SAGE (a shade of green).
11 STUFFED SHIRT – STUFFED (beaten) + SHIRT (Garibaldi, say). According to Chambers a Garibaldi is “a woman’s loose blouse, an imitation of the red shirts worn by followers of Garibaldi”.
15 HAEMATITE – (the item a a)* (“A” doubly). A valuable iron ore, according to Chambers, Fe2O3.
16 CLOTHING – THIN (description of superwaif) inside CLOG (shoe).
17 STAKE OUT – S(uspects) + TAKE OUT (kill).
19 BARTOK – BART (man of musicals) + OK (passable). Lionel Bart is most famous in my mind for Oliver!, probably because my parents had the soundtrack album when I was a kid.
20 TERROR – T(ree) + ERROR (mistake). The definition is in the sense “naughty child”.
22 SIDLE – L(ine) inside SIDE (margin).

17 comments on “Saturday Times 25095 (25th Feb)”

  1. 34 minutes but I note I abandoned it overnight after 15 and resumed in the morning so I think maybe I hit a similar brick wall to the blogger. Nothing much of consequence here, but I didn’t know HAEMATITE or the Garibaldi shirt (Collins has the blouse but also, separately, the shirt itself). The word ‘superwaif’ seems to have passed me by but having looked it up I guess I don’t read the newspapers and magazines where such things are discussed. If I’m to be a bit picky (surely not?) lots of people who are not old have bus passes, I even had one as a schoolboy, and plenty who are old don’t have them.

    Edited at 2012-03-03 09:32 am (UTC)

  2. Don’t normally do Saturday’s puzzle- too busy earning ‘wife miles’, but Mrs K had no jobs for me.
    Nice puzzle, garibaldi unfamiliar, Otherwise vocab ok.
    BW
    Andrew K
  3. No problems with this, except getting one wrong! Stupidly I put minister instead of sinister at 25ac… probably a Freudian slip: being left handed myself, I instinctively shy away from pejorative terms like sinister, gauche etc 🙂
  4. I had my usual leisurely plod through this without too much trouble. The only ones I had trouble parsing were LEONARDO as I’d never heard of LARDON, (I’ve looked it up now and it’s a small cube of pork, usually subcutaneous fat used for flavouring other dishes. I had some of that in my slow cooker last week without knowing its name) and AGATE, where I didn’t quite see gate as bodies. Perfectly obvious once it’s pointed out: thanks linxit. Garibaldi must have been a busy chap, having given his name to bicuits and shirts.
  5. 20 minutes for this, so about par for the course. I found this week’s incredibly difficult.
    Am I the only person who was shocked by “berk” in 12ac? Surely far too rude for the Times!

    Edited at 2012-03-03 11:26 am (UTC)

      1. I had no idea of the derivation of ‘berk’ until seeing these comments and looking it up myself, despite having used the word all my life for a fool or clumsy oaf. Perhaps the setter and the editor are the same, or I’m sure they’d have shied away from it!
    2. In the 70s’ TV series Porridge, ‘nerk’ was used instead of ‘berk’ because of the latter’s heritage. Of course, English has ‘Earl and Countess’ to avoid the dreaded C word, and the common term for rabbit (‘coney’ – rhyming with honey) had to be replaced by a word originally meaning a young coney (‘rabbit’), after unsuccessful attempts to change the pronunciation of coney to rhyme with ‘boney’. The populace would still insist on tittering, it seems.
  6. An undistiguished puzzle of no more than average difficulty.

    The use of “has a bus pass” = “is old” should be actionable. It’s a disgrace. Also surprised by the appearance of the well known Home Counties Hunt at 12A

    1. Either you’re thinking of a different hunt from the one I’m thinking of (as here in wikipedia), or living in Dorset has seriously expanded your concept of the Home Counties!
      2. Tony, I doubt that the inventors of this particular piece of slang even knew where gloucester was. They would know Berkshire however, being so close to London.
  7. 56 minutes – the expression at 11 is obviously not well known to some, as I had ‘stuffed chair’ at first. Phil Squod in Bleak House is literature’s most famous silder.

    As Keriothe says, this week’s is very chewy, especially the No. 1s.

  8. 9:27 here for a nice straightforward puzzle – though (like others) I wasn’t too taken with “has a bus pass” = IS OLD in 24ac.

    I had a triple take with 20dn, thinking (over 5 or 10 seconds): 1) T + ERROR = TERROR; then 2) HOWLER = mistake = monkey; then 3) back to TERROR again.

  9. 27 minutes with no serious problems but one wrong – carelessly put GRIZLY instead of GRISLY. Never knew origin of “berk” but have managed to work it out from the cryptic comments above. Much too rude for my delicate feminine sensibilities! Embarrassing to think that all the time I’ve been using this word…(It reminds me of the need to be careful when introducing yourself in foreign parts. A friend caused mild hysteria in Germany when she said “Hello, I’m Vicky”. I also heard that Sean Connery’s name had to be airbrushed for the French. There’s also the story of the editor of a book of clean, family limericks who didn’t get the double entendre and printed the famous ditty:

    “There was a young fellow from Ryde
    Who fell down a privy and died.
    His unfortunate brother
    Then fell down another
    And now they’re interred side by side”

    Enough of this frivolous digression!)

  10. 28′. Now I have to look up ‘berk’, I suppose. I wondered about ISOLDE, assumed that it parsed as in fact it does; but surely there are other kinds of bus passes? Never heard of Bart, and wondered briefly if the Simpsons had been made into a musical. COD to 23ac.

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