Saturday Times 24879 (18th June)

Author   linxitPosted on Categories Weekend Cryptic
Solving time 17:26 – should’ve been a bit faster, but I got stuck for a while in the top left corner. In fact I think 1ac/1dn were my last two in. A couple of quibbles, but generally a high quality puzzle that had me laughing out loud in places. No sign of any science or literature, which is very unusual.

Across
1 BROOCH – sounds like “broach”, e.g. a subject. Definition “what has a catch” is a bit loose and had me stumped for ages.
4 SEARCH ME – double definition, the first of which is highly unlikely!
10 BELLIGERENT – LIGER (cross) + E,N (game opponents, i.e. bridge) inside (packing) BELT (punch). My third last in. I couldn’t make anything of this until it occurred to me that a cross could be an animal. LIGER was the first one I thought of, and I managed to construct the rest of the answer around it!
11 LAC – LAC(k).
12 SOPRANI – RANI (queen) after SOP (bribe).
14 TRUSSED – sounds like “trust”.
15 KARAOKE MACHINE – (China, Korea make)*. Great anagram and a great definition – “Japanese instrument of torture”. Yesterday lunchtime they had karaoke on the grass outside the BBC TV Centre at White City. Some bloke was torturing “Under Pressure” by Queen & David Bowie at the top of his off-key voice. There ought to be a law against it!
17 A FLEA IN ONE’S EAR – double definition, but we ought to have a name for this type of clue. The first is a definition of the phrase, the second is a definition of the literal meaning of the metaphor. 4ac is another example, although not as clear-cut. Any suggestions?
21 SHIATSU – (this as)* + U (a film anyone can see). An &lit with a lot of padding in the surface.
22 POUSSIN – 0 inside PUSS + IN. We had pheasant inside duck inside turkey from Waitrose for Christmas dinner last year. I doubt if this variation will catch on!
23 LOO – double definition. Toilet or card game.
24 BOVVER BOOTS – (so to rob be + vv)*. Another name for Dr. Martens, the footwear of choice for skinheads and football hooligans.
26 MULBERRY – MERRY (happy) around (b)ULB (onion without the first letter).
27 TENDON – “don’t stop caring” = TEND ON.

Down
1 BABUSHKA – BAK(e) (cook not entirely) around BUSH (source of gooseberries, say) + A. Russian for a grandmother or old woman.
2 OWL – (f)OWL.
3 CHICAGO – HIC (Latin for “this”) inside CA (California) + GO (energy).
5 ELECTRA COMPLEX – (treacle)* is what the answer might be a cryptic indication for. It’s a psychological thing where a daughter is in love with her father, like a female version of an Oedipus complex.
6 RETOUCH – (or the)* around (m)UC(h).
7 HELLS ANGELS – not a cryptic definition really, more like the sort of clue that would have appeared 50 years ago.
8 ESCUDO – (used)* around C(ape) + O(ld). Portuguese currency before they abandoned it for the euro. Still used in Cape Verde though, which makes this clue a lot better than I thought. Could have done with some punctuation between “Cape” and the first “old” though to improve the surface reading.
9 DEMISEMIQUAVER – DEMISE (passing) + M1 (motorway) + QUAVER (tremble). Chambers isn’t very helpful here. It’s defined as half a semiquaver, which is half a quaver, which is half a crotchet, which is half a minim, which is two crotchets.
13 PARAFFIN OIL – hidden reversed in “battaLION IF FAR APart”.
16 GRANDSON – GR(eek) + AND SO (o)N (etc less O for love).
18 EATABLE – EA(ch) + TABLE (food), &lit.
19 EQUABLE – EQUAL (peer) around B(ook) + (scrib)E.
20 ASYLUM – A + Y(ear) inside SLUM.
25 ODD – double definition. “One is so” (an odd number) and “curious”.

15 comments on “Saturday Times 24879 (18th June)”

  1. 60 minutes, with 15ac and 1d my LOIs. I was wondering about the U in SHIATSU; I think the US equivalent to U is G, a rating I’m not sure even Disney films get. I was pleased to see (12ac) a queen other than She Who Needn’t Be Obeyed, Or Even Paid Much Attention To, But Who Is So Much More Tolerable Than Her Husband. In the UK, do you (mis)pronounce karaoke as grossly as in the US? i.e. ‘carry oaky’? I remember first coming across the term, 30+ years ago; I asked a colleague–a Japanese French prof–what karaoke was, and he replied that it was a kind of musical masturbation. At the time I was puzzled, but not for long.
    1. Yes, it’s “carry oaky” here too and always best avoided if you want to stay sane
  2. I thought I had read somewhere that this puzzle, which I was saving until today to solve, was difficult so I approached it with some trepidation, but I found it fairly straightforward. Perhaps that reference was to another puzzle. I took 40 minutes. A steady solve during which I was never stuck for ideas. Quite a few answers went in on definition alone and I didn’t bother to work out every detail of the wordplay: BELLIGERENT, ELECTRA COMPLEX, BOVVER BOOTS, for example.
  3. Being a ‘naturalised’ Hong Konger, I do karaoke a couple of times a year. Everyone does it in private rooms now, so the days of people taking it in turns to murder ‘My way’ in a lounge are long gone here.

    75 minutes for this, though I needed to check a dictionary to see whether my last in (‘shittsu’) was wrong – which of course it was, as I had completely missed the cryptic and was mixing up my Chinese dog with my Japanese manipulation. Also had ‘bedlam’ for a while for ASYLUM, confirmation that I must have been making up my own clues last week rather than attending to what was before me!

    Needed aids to finish today’s fine offering ‘n’ all.

    1. In the interest of full disclosure, perhaps I should confess that many years ago, when I was young and charming–and, more to the point, living in a provincial city and knowing little Japanese–I, too, practiced karaoke. It was a useful ice-breaker, and the clientele at the bars I frequented were actually good singers. I developed quite a reputation, in fact, especially for my rendition of ‘Subaru’; a song, I learned years later, that ranked No. 2 in a list of songs bar hostesses most hated to hear.
  4. Japanese instrument of torture is the best definition I’ve seen for ages. Well done setter.
  5. I’m another who discounted SHIATSU because I thought it was a dog! I thought the trembly bit at the end of 9d was going to be SHIVER so I spent ages looking for Jewish funeral (passing?) ceremonies. And all the time it was my old friend the DEMISEMIQUAVER. (Btw, for anyone dumbfounded by this word, it might be worth mentioning here that there is also a HEMIDEMISEMIQUAVER, which is obviously half the value of the other one, which I’m not going to spell again. Fortunately, you don’t see these often, in print or in music notation. I loved the definition of KARAOKE – a laugh out loud moment. Am now off to attend a civil partnership ceremony and have a horrible feeling that the Japanese instrument of torture will be much in evidence tonight! A nice puzzle – 45 minutes.
    1. There is also a SEMIHEMIDEMISEMIQUAVER which establishes a sequence that might theoretically continue ad infinitum.
  6. Very enjoyable puzzle, particularly the Japanese rack which had me spluttering coffee over my marmalade. Liked the use of “liger” which you don’t often see. I spent some time thinking round tau, rood and so on. About 25 minutes to solve.
  8. For some reason I found this one exceptionally easy for a Saturday: 12.33 on the club timer. Slightly disappointing, because I was enjoying it. This week’s was a bit knottier.
    I was helped by the fact that the potentially arcane stuff (not that there was much) was very familiar for a change: it does make a difference when the junk rattling around in one’s brain happens to be the right junk. LAC is one I knew from doing crosswords.
    Loved the Japanese torture device. As a clue, that is: we were at a party last night and left when they got one out.
    Failed to see the LIGER device, so thanks for that.
  9. 11:37 for me – perhaps slower than it might have been because I was expecting something more difficult. Nice puzzle though. SHIATSU and SHIH TZU are both on my list of difficult words, so no problem with 21ac.
  10. It’s true that many of these are not known or commonly used in the U.S., and this is always an added challenge for us Yanks, but still I have to hand it you, you are good!

    I’ve never heard “U” for a “film anyone can see.” Bridge references I can never get as I know nothing of the game! Still, I got “belligerent” anyway, more or less guessed.

    I very rarely complete a Times puzzle. Devilishly hard for me. Thanks!

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