LOI was 16ac. It was a boggler, although once 14dn gave me a full set of crossers, it had to be. I was amazed that it’s a north country word, not a Māori word from the South Pacific! As Tommy Steele sang, “What a mouth. What a North and South”.
All done in something over 35′. I came to a halt with about 3 left, and mulled those over while driving.
Note for newcomers: The Times offers prizes for Saturday Cryptic Crosswords. This blog is for last week’s puzzle, posted after the competition closes. So, please don’t comment here on this week’s Saturday Cryptic.
Definitions are in bold and underlined.
| Across | |
| 1 | Pop padding novel summary with many, many pages (5,4) |
| CREAM SODA – REAMS (many, many pages) padding CODA (novel summary).
Apart from the musical meaning, coda can also mean: – “the final or extra part of a speech, event, or piece of writing” [Cambridge Dictionary] – “a separate passage at the end of … a book or a speech that finishes it off” [Collins]. I’m not sure whether that is the same as a “novel summary”. Over to you. |
|
| 6 | Unearth little dog I had briefly rejected (3,2) |
| DIG UP – PUG I’D, all backwards (rejected). | |
| 9 | Before end of night, left wearing charmer’s ring (7) |
| CIRCLET – L wearing CIRCE (the mythical charmer) + T (end of nighT). | |
| 10 | Band member departs with stranger (7) |
| DRUMMER – D + RUMMER. | |
| 11 | Dig European bubbly, cracking processed toxin! (10) |
| EXCAVATION – E + CAVA (bubbly wine) cracking XTION (anagram, processed, of TOXIN). | |
| 12 | Greeting US soldier who can get into advanced positions (4) |
| YOGI – YO, G.I. Does “yo” count as a U.S. greeting, too? | |
| 14 | Abide with hollow surrounds (5) |
| DWELL – DELL (hollow) surrounds W (with). | |
| 15 | Old nan collects first impressions of Stieg Larsson, all this year’s titles (5,4) |
| GRAND SLAM – GRANDAM (old word for “nan”) collects SL (first letters, or selections, of Stieg Larsson, a Swedish author). | |
| 16 | Northern Counties Division fans at new peak (9) |
| WAPENTAKE – an anagram (fans): AT NEW PEAK. NHO this word, so I needed all the helpers to make a guess. |
|
| 18 | Voided O-level study from former times (5) |
| OLDEN – OL (from O-leveL, voided) + DEN. | |
| 20 | Mutt runs around carrying a pointy stick (4) |
| GOAD – GOD (DOG, around), carrying A. “Goad” perhaps comes up more often as a verb, but the thing you might use to do the goading is a pointy stick, called the same thing of course. |
|
| 21 | Jim, is Eric or Dave garnering support in the church? (10) |
| MISERICORD – who are Jim, Eric and Dave? Doesn’t matter! It’s a hidden answer. | |
| 25 | Pull a wagon back, laden with tons and tons (7) |
| ATTRACT – A + TRAC (CART, back), laden with T, then another T (tons and tons). | |
| 26 | Red-faced individual responsible for fake news? (7) |
| ASHAMED – A SHAM ED presumably edits the shams. | |
| 27 | Leave former partner, retiring in Scotland too (5) |
| EXEAT – EX + EAT (TAE, retiring). Chambers lists “tae” as a Scottish form of “to”, “too” or “toe”. |
|
| 28 | Possibly Villa, maybe Reading — English team knocked out regularly (9) |
| RESIDENCE – R (one ot the three R’s: Reading, wRiting and aRithmetic) + E + SIDE + NCE (alternate letters of kNoCkEd). | |
| Down | |
| 1 | 100 years — not half clever age (5) |
| CYCLE – C (100, as a Roman numeral) + Y (years) + CLE (clever, but not half!). | |
| 2 | Husband withdrawing from torment — no time for such pain! (7) |
| EARACHE – take H and T out of HEARTACHE. | |
| 3 | Spiteful mother fast to trap rodent (10) |
| MALEVOLENT – MA + LENT to trap VOLE. | |
| 4 | Group company backing New Year festival (5) |
| OCTET – OC (CO, backing) + TET (Vietnamese New Year). | |
| 5 | Saudis note paper made totally unrestricted recordings here (9) |
| AUDIOTAPE – sAUDIs nOTe pAPEr, without the outside letters (totally unrestricted) | |
| 6 | Crudely paint bishop, covered by diamonds and gold (4) |
| DAUB – B covered by D + AU. | |
| 7 | Creole stew almost evil — it stings my mouth (7) |
| GUMBOIL – GUMBO + ILL. | |
| 8 | A native fed Timmy peeled fruit (9) |
| PERSIMMON – PERSON fed IMM (Timmy, peeled). On edit, thanks Isla3: read PERSON as PER (A) + SON (native). |
|
| 13 | Censured commercial — gross hedonism! (10) |
| ADMONISHED – AD + MONISHED (anagram, gross, of HEDONISM). | |
| 14 | Denigrate quality of feathers? (9) |
| DOWNGRADE – DOWN GRADE. Ho ho. | |
| 15 | Good boy, Italy’s No 1 player, caught out fierce campaigner (9) |
| GLADIATOR – G + LAD + I (Italy’s No. 1) + AcTOR. | |
| 17 | After draining Pilsener, former PM cut short waffling speech (7) |
| PRATTLE – PR (PilseneR, drained) + ATTLEE (cut short). | |
| 19 | Random drunk clasping old security guard (7) |
| DOORMAN – anagram (drunk) of RANDOM, clasping O. | |
| 22 | Cut up manuscript papers (5) |
| EXAMS – EXA (AXE, up) + MS. | |
| 23 | Italian magistrate eating last bit of roasted duck (5) |
| DODGE – DOGE eating D (last of roasteD). | |
| 24 | Huge barrel containing sulphur (4) |
| VAST – VAT containing S. | |
I had the parsing of ATTRACT as A and TRAC (wagon back) around T then the last T at the end.
Always learning something new. Didn’t know GOAD as a stick with which to goad. Thought a CODA was only music related. And WAPENTAKE, yes, sounds like a Maori word. I think we’ve had MISERICORD recently but it was a hidden anyway. Really enjoyed this. COD to CREAM SODA.
Thanks B and setter.
Thanks. Updated.
All correct but I don’t remember much about it. Apparently the last square I filled in was the C in the middle of CYCLE, probably correcting a typo. Luckily, WAPENTAKE didn’t really allow anything else once the checkers were all in place, but I’ve never heard of it. 49 minutes it seems.
DNF I knew WAPENTAKE, but I forgot how to spell it; put in WEPANTAKE, thought that looked a bit odd, but did nothing about it. Never got CIRCLET. I liked AUDIOTAPE.
It comes as news to me too, but a definition of CODA in Collins includes summary at the end of a novel. I think it means a summary of how things have ended up and perhaps what happens going forwards rather than everything that’s gone before, but I may be wrong about that.
I found this hard and needed 67 minutes to complete the grid. Although I struggled with MISERICORD, at least when I eventually constructed it from wordplay I recognised it as an answer that had come up here very recently.
At 8dn, how does native – PERSON?
WAPNETAKE unknown.
Henry James famously described a novel’s (happy) ending as “a distribution at the last of prizes, pensions, husbands, wives, babies, millions, appended paragraphs, and cheerful remarks.”
Misericord. Hidden in Jim, is Eric or Dave.
I lifted and separated A = PER, and NATIVE =SON.
Thanks. Yes, that works for me.
Sorry! I took your ‘constructed it from wordplay’ as having missed the hidden for MISERICORD. I should have known better.
42.42 I found this about as difficult as last week’s. Challenging but not too ferocious. EXEAT, EXAMS and the NHO WAPENTAKE took twelve minutes at the end. Thanks branch.
Wapentake should be familiar from Sellar and Yeatman’s historical masterpiece:
Sing a song of Saxons
In the Wapentake of Rye
Four and twenty eaoldermen
Two eaold to die …
1a Cream soda unparsed, thanks branch.
12a Yogi, don’t we all remember Bush/Blair meeting starting with “Yo Blair”?
16a Wapentake, leapt out at me. Had met it in a murder mystery, can’t remember which. The book was set in Suffolk or Norfolk I think, a bit farther south than branch mentioned. I think it was a P D James with Adam Dalgliesh.
DNF, defeated by CIRCLET (I put ‘curslet’), YOGI (‘higi’), GUMBOIL (‘gumbill’) and WAPENTAKE (‘wapenkate’).
– NHO Circe the charmer for CIRCLET
– Didn’t know grandam as nan for GRAND SLAM
– Agree with isla3’s parsing of the person part of PERSIMMON
– Didn’t know (or had forgotten) gumbo stew as needed for the unfamiliar GUMBOIL
Thanks branch and setter
COD Doorman
DNF after 30 or so
Normal speed for most of this with third last in WAPENTAKE when a long past bell started tolling but totally breezeblocked on CIRCLET (knew CIRCE but not here, though maybe should have thought of something circular related) and EARACHE where I had the parsing but not sure I would have got even with another half an hour
Nice puzzle and blog
Stuck on CIRCLET and CYCLE (for no obvious reason!) – liked CREAM SODA ( but has anyone seen it since the 60s?) NHO WAPENTAKE and didn’t manage to construct, had forgotten TAE for too oop north. Otherwise enjoyable solve.