Saturday Times 25011 (Nov 19) – not easy!

Author   linxitPosted on Categories Weekend Cryptic
Solving time – off the scale! Wow, how hard was this one?! I haven’t got an accurate time, but it must have been nearly an hour. Setter, you’re a nasty piece o’ work but your puzzle is a masterpiece! After 10 minutes all I had to show for it were 8D and 20D. Admittedly I was a bit tired and should probably have got a few more on the first pass, but I doubt if there was a single gimme in the whole thing. Very succinct or cryptic definitions were mainly to blame. Here we go…

Across
1 HOME MOVIE – VIE (jockey), next to H(orse) + O(ld) + MEMO (note).
6 PACER – RECAP (run over) reversed.
9 ROVER – (sette)R + OVER (about), a common name for a dog.
10 BOTANY BAY – ANY (no matter what) inside (to baby)*.
11 CANTATA – CAN(e) (rod cut) + TA-TA (so long).
12 NETTLED – NETT (after tax) + LE(a)D (guide without A (article)).
13 PUT OUT TO TENDER – PUT OUT (wounded) + TOT (child) + ENDER (closer). I though “put out” for “wounded” was a bit of a stretch, but maybe it’s as in to offend or to knock out.
17 BLUE SUEDE SHOES – (she sees double, U)*, the U being from U(nfortunately). I figured out the correct anagram fodder first time, but it’s a very unlikely-looking collection of letters and it took me a while to get it.
21 CROWBAR – BAR (stop) next to CROW (22=”boast”).
23 MAFIOSO – MA (mum) + O’S (rings) + O (round), all around IF reversed.
25 ODD MAN OUT – a wordplay-in-the-answer clue – “amount” = (man out)*.
26 UNDID – UND (German for “and” = joiner from Munich) + ID (papers).
27 SPRAT – ref. the nursery rhyme: “Jack Sprat could eat no fat / His wife could eat no lean / And so between the two of them / They licked the platter clean.”
28 SORCERESS – SO (real) + SS (saints), around R(oman) C(atholic) + ERE (before).

Down
1 HARD COPY – HARDY (novelist Thomas) around COP (busy – Scottish slang).
2 MAVEN – hidden reversed in “one vamp”. Buff meaning expert.
3 MARMADUKE – RAM (stuff) reversed + MADE (manufactured) around UK.
4 VIBRANT – V1 (WW2 bomb) + BRAN (shells found in mill) + T(ime).
5 EXTINCT – EX (sometime) + T(ow)N around I + CT (court).
6 PINOT – O (gassy element) around PINT (beer). A grape used in both red and white wines (although I prefer the red).
7 CABALLERO – CABAL (league) + LEO (sign) around R(ight).
8 RIYADH – alternate letters of “brainy daddy – he”.
14 TALL ORDER – TALL (preposterous, as in story) + ORDER (sort).
15 NOSE-FLUTE – (of tuneless)* minus one of the S’s (one small failing).
16 AS GOOD AS – ASS (idiot) around GOOD (right) + A(nswer).
18 UPROOTS – U (posh) + PRO (hooker) + ‘OTS (sexual desire for Cockney).
19 DEMETER – “DE-METER” = destroy poetic rhythm (American spelling).
20 ACROSS – double definition, the first as two words, A CROSS.
22 BOAST – B(low), i.e. BLOW without LOW (mean) + OAST (drier).
24 OLDIE – (s)OLDIE(r).

30 comments on “Saturday Times 25011 (Nov 19) – not easy!”

  1. Yes, this took me an hour or thereabouts as well.. when I had finished I tried to find something to complain about but I couldn’t.. it is tightly clued and a very good effort indeed. As good as a Club Monthly, and there is no higher praise than that
  2. Thanks and congratulations, linxit. I fell so far short on this one that for once I kept a Saturday crossword in order to check the blog. I can now see that it was perfectly fair and excellently constructed: but that didn’t stop it being way too tough for me!
  3. With only four answers in 15 minutes before bedtime I realised what we were in for and set the puzzle aside until the following morning. Another 85 minutes were needed to complete the grid and the best part of another 20 to go back and work out all the wordplay.

    I liked HOME MOVIE, UNDID and SPRAT (definition ‘catch’) in particular.

    I wouldn’t have liked to blog this so well done, Andy!

  5. I did this puzzle only after the rave reviews/gripes that appeared on this blog – and I’m glad that I did. It’s a masterpiece. Congratulations to the setter and well done Andy.

    The key to solving it is to work with the cryptics to derive a solution which can then be confirmed against the often very clever definition. It makes reverse engineering from a guessed solution back to the cryptic difficult and that puts it in the same league as the Club Monthly and the bar crosswords. So I would expect solvers you regularly do those puzzles to solve this one, but not in a lightening time. I took about an hour.

    The converse is that if you solved this puzzle and enjoyed the experience why not branch out into Club Monthly and Mephisto land? The blogs here will help you to develop the necessary skills.

  6. I’d read the comments on this so was expecting a toughie. I saved it for this morning. Definately a two-cup-of-tea puzzle. Although I finished it (65 minutes) there was a lot I didn’t understand until coming here. Thanks for the excellent and very helpful blog.
  7. Thanks for the blog and congratulations to all who did this within the hour. Took me an hour and a half but very pleased with self for finishing correctly. It was a nice change to settle in for a long solve rather than trying to beat the clock. Must do that more often so I will try Mephisto. Dont’seem to have the knack for the Monthly.
    1. Don’t be dispirited if you find it difficult to start. There’s a technique and a mind set that has to be acquired.

      It’s important that you try the puzzle before reading the blog but then use the blog to really study the clues and solutions. Don’t hesitate to ask questions.

      If you have time you can make faster progress by getting older puzzles from the Club Website and then using the blogs that already exist. It might be sensible to start with one that the blogger rated as “easy”

  8. 192 minutes but at least I finished with only two unparsed, SPRAT and DEMETER. Super puzzle. But I have to disagree with Jim – this puzzle is more like a tough regular puzzle than a barred one, humorous and quirky rather than replete with technical wizardy, arcane and annnoying abbreviations and obscure vocabulary. What did the Editor of The Times crossword say, ‘He didn’t get barred puzzles’? I understand what he was saying. Horses for courses, I suppose.
    1. I didn’t say this puzzle was like a barred crossword. I said that the solving technique needed was similar to that used in solving a bar crossword
  9. It’s unsatisfying to have a puzzle that you can knock off in 5 minutes without feeling tested, or one which takes an hour purely because it’s wilfully obscure, but occasionally there are the opposite: straightforward puzzles which are still witty and entertaining, or ones which have to be wrestled into submission, but remain perfectly fair and above all, don’t waste a word.

    This was obviously one of the latter, and a struggle which I much enjoyed. I know that setters and the editor generally refrain from joining comments here, but I hope they at least read these, and know that this puzzle was highly appreciated. As ever in these cases, a shame that convention dictates we can’t know the identity of the setter responsible, but to him / her, I tip my hat.

  10. Reopening the grid on the Club site I see a time of 42:11, but as I recall the actual solving time was about 23 hours. I’m another who started this late at night and had to admit defeat and come back to it the following day.

    I’m not sure the comparisons with the Club Monthly are quite right. With the Monthly, I always have to use dictionaries to check at least a few of the words (there’s usually a Maori word for vegetable broth or something of that order). This by contrast was all about incredibly devious ways of arriving at familiar words and phrases.

    A near perfect Saturday puzzle. The one time I’d really be interested to know is how long it took the setter to put this together. I hope they were being paid by the hour!

    1. I do understand where you’re coming from Sotira with the club monthly comparison; but the point I so often labour to make is that if you read the clue right it will give you the answer, and *it doesn’t matter* if you have not met the word before. So very frequently, people claim in these comments that they didn’t know a particular word – or even, could not reasonably be expected to know a word – as if that somehow excuses them from being unable to solve the clue. It’s the crossword’s fault!
      Being familiar with the solution word is *not* a prerequisite to solving the clue and anyone who believes it is will never be as good at solving crosswords as they could be!
      By all means use a dictionary to confirm the solution is real – I do too. But please all, never expect to know every word in every crossword because you won’t.
      Sorry about that, I’ll go and lie down for a minute or two now 🙂
      1. You seem to be replying to something somebody else said some other time. My only point was that this puzzle was of a different character to a typical Club Monthly. Which it is.

        Nor do I make any of the assumptions you complain about or any of the protests. On the contrary, I’ve regularly sung the praises of what I once termed ‘Q.I.’ puzzles – ones that stretch the knowledge, and just last week I ended a comment with an irony-free “You learn something every day”. I enjoy learning new words from puzzles and have often said so. I’ve been a regular solver of the Club Monthly since its inception.

        You’re preaching to the choir (even if I think you’re being rather reductive in some of what you say).

        1. I was responding to the suggestion – and not to you personally, don’t take it personally – that there is a fundamental difference between clues the answer to which is a maori word for broth, as opposed to 2familiar words and phrases.” I don’t believe there is. But each to their own
          1. You’re right: there isn’t a fundamental difference between the clues. Where did I suggest there was? Perhaps you should read my comment again.

            The only difference I refer to is not having to check answers in a dictionary after solving. But if that implies that this was a different kind of challenge, I would certainly support that contention.

            Clues aren’t solved in isolation. They’re solved as part of a grid. Checking letters (perhaps a misnomer) become elements of informational input into subsequent clues, especially when the word is familiar. Even our peerless Times champion describes his approach as something like “Get a foothold and work from there”, suggesting that he makes significant use of checking letters and the recognition of words from skeletal patterns. Highly skilled solvers frequently ‘reverse engineer’ a clue and there’s not a thing wrong with that. That approach is more productive in puzzles like this one with a lot of familiar vocabulary, less so in a typical Club Monthly.

            There IS a difference between the challenges presented by crosswords with a measure of unusual vocabulary and ones like this Saturday puzzle. Which is what I said and all I said.

            I do take it personally because you chose to include all this in a ‘reply’ to a comment under my name. How else would I take it? But you’ve entirely misunderstood what I said and seem determined to continue doing so. And I take it personally because I don’t feel I’m in any way deserving of being associated with the attitudes you complain of. In fact, I feel quite insulted (not to mention a bit patronised).

            By the way, your precept “if you read the clue right it will give you the answer, and *it doesn’t matter* if you have not met the word before” doesn’t always hold. With some clues it’s just plain wrong. How would it work with a double definition if you didn’t know the target word? You could read the clue any way you like, you still wouldn’t get the answer. The precept holds only for clues built on wordplay (and not always then – homophones, for instance, can only be mechanistically solved if you know the target word(s) or if they’re susceptible to some degree of morphological and orthographic hypothesizing).

            I agree with some of what you’ve said, but dislike your using my fairly uncontentious comment as an occasion for saying it. It gives the impression that I hold to attitudes which I patently do not.

  11. One of the best puzzles I have done in long time. I ruined things by being unable to type properly!!!!
  12. Re 23a: I’m not clear on how that FI gets inside, unless “rings” encompasses both O’S and O, and “round” is the container indicator.
    1. Your parsing of ‘rings’ is what I had too and I think it just about works as an alternative if you apply the reversal indicator ‘coming over’ to IF alone and then have ’round’ as a containment indicator.

      But if you apply ‘coming over’ to OS (rings) + O (round) + IF then you don’t need a containment indicator. My way got me to the answer but the version in the blog is more elegant and I’m sure it’s what the setter must have had in mind.

    2. It’s taken me this long to do it… (atsrted 4 days ago in Australia).

      MA then [OS=rings O=round IF] all coming over=the whole lot being reversed. So I’d disagree with the blog as written – there’s no containment, rings and round are the two Os.

      Original clue if you’ve thrown it out already:
      Family member’s mum rings round if coming over (7)

      Merry Christmas
      Rob

    1. I don’t have the clue in front of me but as I recall it was (a) a reference to the fish being a catch and (b) a reference to the fact that Jack Sprat didn’t eat fat but rather gave it to his wife (Dutch(ess of Fife))=wife, rhyming slang). Hope that helps.
      1. Also the saying “a sprat to catch a mackerel” might nudge the brains of those that know it in the direction of the right answer.
  15. Thank you for the kind comments on this puzzle, and to Andy for the blog of course.
    As a lively debate has ensued about the differences beween the Times Daily and Club Monthly puzzles, speaking as the setter both of this puzzle and Club Monthly 20134 blogged below, I can say that they offer two very different setting experiences: the latter takes me much longer to set, for a start!

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