Saturday Times 24646 (September 18th)

Author   linxitPosted on Categories Weekend Cryptic
Solving time 29:09, and I felt pleased to get under the half hour. Is it just me, or was this a bit of a stinker? There was no unfamiliar vocabulary for me, but a lot of clever definitions and tricky wordplay, which made it tough to unravel in places. Nice one, setter!

Across
1 BREWPUB – (Web PR but)*. A pub with a brewery attached, like The Talbot at Knightwick for example, which also operates the Teme Valley Brewery. I stayed there for a few days a couple of years ago. The food’s pretty good too.
5 PALMTOP – PALM (date) + TOP (chief). Pointless thing – give me a 1600×1200 LCD screen every time!
9 STRAW POLL – P(ower) + WA reversed inside STROLL (constitutional).
10 BOOST – (hu)T next to BOOS (barracks).
11 OCHRE – last letters of sO dramatiC witH lunaR eclipsE.
12 TASMAN SEA – T(ank) + AS (in part of) + MANSE + A.
14 D’YE KEN JOHN PEEL – DYE (colour) + KEN (range) + JOHN (ladies, i.e. toilet) + PEEL (skin). A 19th century song about a real huntsman and farmer:

D’ye ken John Peel with his coat so gay*?
D’ye ken John Peel at the break o’ day?
D’ye ken John Peel when he’s far, far a-way.
With his hounds and his horn in the morning?

“D’ye ken” is dialect for “Do you know”.

17 BRING UP THE REAR – BRING UP and REAR (two versions of lift?) around THE. I can’t see how this works. BRING UP and REAR are synonyms for raise, which is in turn a synonym for lift, but you can’t lift a child for example (not in that sense anyway). Perhaps a subediting faux pas?
21 ABSCONDER – SC (short for scilicet, namely) inside A BONDER.
23 OCCUR – CO reversed + R.U.C. reversed (Royal Ulster Constabulary, Northern Irish police force until 2001).
24 IDYLL – His days + LL (lake repeating).
25 CRIME WAVE – (review MC)* around A
26 EQUERRY – R inside E-QUERY.
27 GO TO POT – GOT POT (i.e. belly – became plump) around O

Down
1 BOSTON – NOT SOB reversed, ref. the Boston Tea Party.
2 EARTHLY – ART + H(orse) inside ELY (see).
3 POWDER KEG – (keep word)* + (persuadin)G. For some reason I found this a very difficult anagram to work out, and needed most of the checking letters.
4 BLOTTING-PAD – BLOTT(o) + IN + GP + AD.
5 PAL – ALP with the P moved to the top.
6 LIBYA – AIL reversed around BY.
7 TOOTSIE – TOO + TIE around S(econd). Childish slang for a toe (or American pet name for a girl or sweetheart, so this one might cause confusion over the Pond).
8 PITFALLS – FALLS (sight of Victoria) beneath PIT (stone).
13 SHOEHORNING – SHOEING around HORN.
15 NARROWEST – (or wrens at)*
16 ABLATIVE – VITAL reversed inside ABE. One I learnt in O-Level Latin.
18 I ASK YOU – hidden in California sky outside.
19 ARC-LAMP – (c)AR CLAMP
20 PRIEST – pronounced pry-est.
22 OGLER – RE L(eft) GO, all reversed.
25 CAY – CA (circa) + (Orkne)Y.

16 comments on “Saturday Times 24646 (September 18th)”

  2. Needed aids to finish this for the down pair of PITFALLS and SHOEHORNING. Was close to the latter (‘shepherding’) but didn’t parse ‘catches’ as a noun correctly at the former. After my travails some months ago with laptop defined as a PC, I was prepared for something similar at 5ac. On this occasion my unfamiliarity with electronic devices in general (I am one of the few remaining mobile-free people in the western world) led to my downfall, even though my wife has an ancient machine called a PALM (some form of PDA). Flirted with ‘paladin’ for a while, influenced by my current reading of Orlando Furioso, before it fell. COD to EARTHLY. Thanks to both setter and blogger for excellent efforts.
  3. Overall I found this a good and quite tough puzzle requiring a concentrated 35 minute effort to solve. Very much what I like to see on a Saturday.

    I can’t let “sight of Victoria” pass without suggesting that a “perhaps” was needed in there. Lots of rivers besides the Victoria have falls and some are quite famous. And is “Local making best” really OK. It presumably means “best bitter” but as a brewery will also make stout etc it’s another definition by example.

    I thought the rest of it very good so thank you setter.

    1. As I’m just about to hop into a glass of Coopers Best Extra Stout, I think we can say that “best” can cover stout also, if not all beers.
  4. Can’t (or won’t) remember an exact time, but slower than both Andy and Jimbo I think – I got really badly stuck in the NE corner – 5A, 10, 6 and 7 were the problem, I think.
  5. Aargh! Am I glad they got SHOEHORNING out of the way before Cheltenham? I was feeling a bit exhausted as I’d just done the Monday to Friday puzzles in quick succession, but I struggled through the rest of the clues in 17-18 minutes. However, 13D (unlucky for some!) was still undone when my half-hour was up. I eventually thought of the answer after I’d returned to the puzzle later, but even then it took me some time to come up with HORN after I’d thought of SHOEING.
  6. I found this pretty tough. No time because I rarely get more than about 5 minutes at a time undisturbed at the weekend and it took a few goes. In the end I had to cheat to get 14ac because I’ve only ever heard of the other John Peel, whose Radio 4 show was the soundtrack to our Saturday mornings for quite a long time.
    Similar experience this week: quite tough and one I don’t understand at all, assuming I’ve got the right answer.
  8. I found this very tough and was looking forward to seeing the solution. I liked the deception of “catches sight of Victoria”. Catches preceding sight of misled me into permanently linking the three words as an indivisible phrase. I agree though that sight of Victoria probably needs a “say” after it.

    I’ve not come across ladies = John. I can see John = gents. But ladies?

    Talking of palmtops and mobile phones. Does anyone know if it’s possible to do the crossword on your mobile phone from the normal Times Crossword Club site? I know you can specifically subscribe for the mobile version of the crossword and I had this for a while. But I would prefer to access and do the crossword via the crossword club website. But it doesn’t allow me to enter letters onto the grid when I access by mobile. Am I doing something wrong or is not set up to do this when accessing from a mobile.

    1. Sorry, I don’t use the site from a mobile phone so can’t say anything helpful.
    2. “john” in US slang seems to just mean “toilet” – so if John = “gents”, there’s no logical reason why it can’t be “ladies” too.

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