Saturday Times 24891 (2nd July) – placeholder

Author   linxitPosted on Categories Weekend Cryptic
Sorry, busy weekend, no time to write anything up yet. All I can say is I’ll get around to it eventually!

Better late than never I suppose. I thought this was quite tough in places due to tricky vocabulary and general knowledge required, but the wordplay was usually helpful. Solving time 19:41.

Across
1 HARDTOP – HARD TO + P(arking). As opposed to a soft-top or convertible, I suppose. Not a word you see very often for a car.
5 ANFIELD – AN + FIELD. Home of Liverpool FC.
9 WITHSTAND – WAND (stick) around [T(own) after (this)*].
10 VAGUE – V(ery) + AGUE (fit).
11 AWAY IN A MANGER – (a Wagnerian may)*. Straight in, helped by the enumeration.
13 GREAT AUK – GREAT + A UK
15 LINDEN – INDEN(t) next to L(ine).
17 TAB KEY – cryptic definition.
19 COVETOUS – C.O. + VETO + US. The 10th Commandment: “Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s house” etc.
22 HOUSEHOLD NAME – HOUSEHOLD (family) + NAME (title).
25 TARKA – T.A. (Territorial Army, volunteers) around ARK. Henry Williamson’s eponymous otter.
26 HAUT MONDE – (me hand-out)*. Tricky, as I never expect French words when looking at anagram fodder. Needed all the checking letters.
27 MEERKAT – sounds like “mere cat”.
28 SYNODAL – LADY’S reversed around NO.

Down
1 HEWN – WHEN with the W moving two letters down.
2 RAT RACE – R.A. (= Royal Artillery) + TRACE(r).
3 TESLA – A + L + SET all reversed. I don’t know if anyone’s bothered counting, but I bet Tesla has appeared more than any other scientist in crosswords, more thanks to his useful group of letters than his fame.
4 PLATINUM – (nuptial m)*
5 ANDEAN – A + N(ew) + DEAN
6 FIVE-A-SIDE – FIVE (famous group, from Enid Blyton’s Famous Five books) + ASIDE.
7 ENGAGED – double definition.
8 DREARINESS – DINES + S(on) around REAR.
12 I GOT RHYTHM – cryptic definition for this song by George and Ira Gershwin.
14 THEME PARK – THE MARK around E.P.
16 COLD CUTS – COLD (mild illness) + CUTS (reduces).
18 BOURREE – E’ER (always) + RUB (difficulty) reversed around O. Never heard of the dance, but got it from the wordplay. “A brisk dance in duple time, from the Auvergne or the Basque provinces”.
20 OCEANID – O(n)CE + AN ID. An ocean nymph in Greek mythology.
21 GO PHUT – GOP (Grand Old Party, the Republicans’ nickname) + HUT (mean house).
23 ADMIN – hidden in “reAD MINutes”.
24 PEAL – PE(d)AL

13 comments on “Saturday Times 24891 (2nd July) – placeholder”

      1. Thanks Jim. I’ll post the full blog tonight when I get in from work. It should appear sometime after 10pm.
  2. 60 minutes for all but two for which I needed aids. I kicked myself for not working out ANDEAN (especially having done well earlier to decipher OCEANID at 20dn)but I would never have got GO PHUT in a million years.
  3. 48:30, with a number of words I didn’t know or had only the faintest memory of: ANFIELD, TARKA, OCEANID, GO PHUT, FIVE-A-SIDE, BOURREE. I’m pretty sure ADMIN is non-US, as is ‘indent’ in the sense of ‘order’. I needed all the checkers for 19ac, which was my LOI. I’d give a COD to 8d. I just learned from the Sunday NY Times puzzle that one tesla=10,000 gauss; thought I’d pass that on.
  4. Rather late in the day (I’ve only just done the crossword) but what does ‘for breaking commandment’ in 19ac mean? OK if you are covetous you break a commandment, but covetous is an adjective so one would expect something adjectival in the clue, and I can’t see it. [‘Officer is to ban us for breaking commandment’ answer COVETOUS]
    1. There were some linking words to improve the surface (in square brackets below), but I don’t see a problem with it – CO (officer) [is to] VETO (ban) US [for] “breaking commandment” (the definition).

      “for” is regularly used in the sense of “the preceding wordplay leads to”, as it does in this case.

      1. Yes but that’s my point: ‘covetous’ is not equivalent to ‘breaking commandment’ (it is an adjective describing your state when you break a commandment, which is not the same thing). You say ‘breaking commandment’ is the definition. I don’t think it should be. If it is it’s pathetically loose.
        1. I AGREE

          The fourth participle form of ‘covetous’ is derived from the gerundive form of the old english equivalent of the Norman word for “fred”. Leading inexorably to the conclusion that to use such an adjective to describe yur state when you break a commandment, as an equivalent (or indeed any form of equivalence, howsoever defined) is just not cricket

  5. LOI was covetous, but liked it when we saw it. No problem with the clue, just with not seeing it sooner! Particular difficulty with the SE corner, didn’t see the haut-monde as an anagram until after biffing it. 47mins, so personal snitch of about 150.

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