Saturday Times 25035 (Dec 17th)

Author   linxitPosted on Categories Weekend Cryptic
Well, here it is at last! I forgot to note down my time when solving it over two weeks ago, but I remember it being on the tricky side. An unknown poet and two abbreviations might have added to the difficulty, and I know from the forum that a few people struggled with the fish at 8dn.

Across
1 ROCKING HORSE – ROCK (stone) + IN + GORSE (prickly shrub) around H(ard).
9 NURSE – double definition.
10 BUCCANEER – “Buchan” + E’ER (always). The thriller writer in the homophone is John Buchan, best known for The Thirty-Nine Steps.
11 WHISTLER – another double definition. The artist is James Whistler, best known for painting his mother. The rest is about the sailors’ superstition that whistling on board ship can cause bad winds to blow up.
12 STROLL – ST (way) + ROLL (how a sailor walks), so an &lit.
13 LOATHING – “LO, A THING!” as one might call attention to an object.
15 CRABBE – CRABBE(d) (endlessly surly). The poet is George Crabbe (1754-1832), best known for his poem The Village. Could have been a TLS clue, that!
17 BOW-WOW – BOW (courteous gesture) + WOW (that’s impressive).
18 SARDONIC – (Conrad is)*
20 BILLET – I’ve got BET (course of action) about ILL (unacceptable), but coming back to it now I don’t like it. Hopefully someone’s got a better alternative.
21 COMMONER – COMMON ERA (these days), without the A(nswer).
24 OVERDRIVE – OVER (across) + DRIVE (private road). I don’t like the definition “state of frantic activity”, as the nounal meaning is only used for extra high gear in a car engine.
25 BODGE – E.G. (say) + D.O.B. (date of birth = the day one appeared), all reversed.
26 AMAZING GRACE – AMAZING (remarkable) + GRACE (words heard before meal).

Down
1 RENEWAL – RENAL (of an organ) around WE reversed.
2 CARDINAL WOLSEY – (Clown is already)*. He appears in Shakespeare’s play Henry VIII, so it’s OK if a somewhat surprising definition.
3 ID EST – (w)IDEST (the most unreachable delivery without the W). Cue Kevin Pieteresen!
4 GABLE END – GEN (news) around ABLE (clever) + D(umpty).
5 OUCH – (c)OUCH.
6 SCATTERED – (deters cat)*.
7 RECOMBINANT DNA – “And could be this artificial” indicating wordplay for AND in the answer. Brilliant clue, my COD by a mile.
8 GRILSE – GRILL (cooker) with one of the L’s replaced with an S, + E(uropean). One of the many words for a young salmon.
14 HOOVER DAM – HOOVER (J. Edgar, FBI chief) + D.A. (prosecutor) + M(use).
16 NAPOLEON – NON (refusal for this French emperor) around A POLE (one of earth’s extremes).
17 BABOON – B(ishop) + A BOON (a great help).
19 CORTEGE – COR (my) + TEG (sheep) + (graz)E.
22 MR BIG – MIG (fighter) around R(obbing) + B(anks). Luckily I had all the checkers in when I looked at this one, and it couldn’t really be anything else.
23 FIZZ – “Phiz” was Dickens’ illustrator.

7 comments on “Saturday Times 25035 (Dec 17th)”

  1. DNF, needing aids for CRABBE (close, but no cigar with ‘crabby’) and no idea for the fish. Agreed the wordplay for ‘and’ is very good, but sadly wasted on me, as I was unfamiliar with the scientific term.

    You’re right re BILLET Andy – it’s ‘bet’ as in ‘best bet’.

  2. Hmm, I got one of these wrong, having put “recombining dna.” Admittedly recombinant dna is a more common term, but google says both exist and are used, so how am I to know which to put? Not my COD!
    1. Relying on google surely has to be several times worse than relying on wikipedia, Jerry. (RECOMBINENT DNA also scores several hits!) I wouldn’t make the clue my COD, but I’m not disposed to complain when they chuck a bit of science at us once in a while.
  3. 81 minutes with one cheat at 7dn where I had worked out DNA but failed to come up with the word to precede it.

    I wasn’t sure about the whistling thing at 11ac because I thought whistling was the traditional way of welcoming someone on board a ship (it was even mentioned in Treasure Island on TV last night!). I only knew it as bad luck in a theatre.

    Not sure I understand the misgivings about OVERDRIVE as it’s not used solely with reference to car engines these days and the official sources both support the definition in the clue.

  4. 11:36 for me, with the last minute or two spent agonising over RECOMBINANT DNA. I thought of this more or less immediately, but then wondered firstly if the answer might not be RECOMBINING DNA (which seemed to fit the wordplay marginally better), and then secondly (with brain starting to seize up) whether it shouldn’t be spelled RECOMBINENT! Eventually sanity was restored and I went with my original version.

    Nice puzzle.

    Edited at 2012-01-02 11:38 pm (UTC)

  5. By a quirk of fate, I did this one yesterday, so it is still fresh in my mind. I had question marks beside WHISTLER (knew the painter but not the superstition), CRABBE (knew the poet but not what letter was missing from surly), BILLET (same misgivings as linxit) and FIZZ (?!) and I couldn’t tell a GRILSE from a GRISLE. All these now resolved, I think, although I’ve never come across crabbed. Some nicely constructed clues in this one, like CORTEGE and NAPOLEON but the DNA gets my vote for COD (fortunately I’ve only ever heard it described as recombinant).

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