Perhaps it was just a wavelength thing, but I found this easy for a Saturday. Still, it had delightful clues: look at the reindeer, the tragedy, and particularly the craft centre! Thanks, setter. How did you all do?
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. With the luxury of a week to do the blog, I can expand on the wordplay:
-
- where explanations are necessary, wordplay fodder – synonyms and the like – appear in [square brackets]
- wordplay instructions appear thus
- anagram fodder is (THUS)*, with the anagram indicator in italics
- a ⁁ symbol indicates where text is to be inserted.
| Across | |
| 1 | Chum with ill balance thrown off this? (10,4) |
| MECHANICAL BULL – (CHUM ILL BALANCE)*, thrown off. | |
| 9 | Guarded piece of fishing gear around stern of ferry (5) |
| LEERY – REEL around + Y [stern of ferrY]. | |
| 10 | Performer rapping on stage to make use of reindeer? (3,6) |
| TAP DANCER – TAP [make use of] + DANCER [reindeer]. | |
| 11 | 50 per cent off rice and about 30 per cent off cottage cheese (7) |
| RICOTTA – RIce [50% off] + COTTAge [about 30% off] | |
| 12 | Two articles combined with skill essentially (2,5) |
| AT HEART – A + THE [articles] + ART. | |
| 13 | Husband abandoning pants and grabbing instrument (5) |
| TONGS – H abandoning THONGS. Terminology gap here!! In Australia, “thongs” are footwear. I know elsewhere they are a skimpy undergarment, but Aussies don’t call underpants “pants” either! Luckily, the answer is obvious. |
|
| 15 | Almost pass over garment for winter athlete (3,6) |
| SKI JUMPER – SKIP [almost pass over] + JUMPER [garment]. | |
| 18 | Brief pause for baseball player (9) |
| SHORTSTOP – with spacing, SHORT STOP. | |
| 19 | Banish swimmer admitting kiss by front of pool (5) |
| EXPEL – E⁁EL admitting (X + P). | |
| 21 | Sign of clumsy writing in book on king and biblical figure (7) |
| INKBLOT – IN + K + B + LOT [biblical figure]. | |
| 24 | Renounces key cuts (7) |
| ESCHEWS – ESC [computer key] + HEWS [cuts]. | |
| 26 | Wacky behaviour with slime — subtlety ultimately lacking (9) |
| GOOFINESS – GOO + FINESSE, ultimately lacking. | |
| 27 | Right next to Polish river (5) |
| RHONE – R + HONE. | |
| 28 | Jet monorail due to fail — it’s a tragedy (5,3,6) |
| ROMEO AND JULIET – (JET MONORAIL DUE)*, to fail. | |
| Down | |
| 1 | Spy sailor rearing rodent (4,3) |
| MOLE RAT – MOLE [spy] + TAR [sailor], rearing. | |
| 2 | Philosophy film segment briefly stops getting louder (9) |
| CRESCENDO – SCENE [film segment, briefly] stops CRE⁁DO. | |
| 3 | Sample of ecstasy ethical until now (2,3) |
| AS YET – hidden (sample of). | |
| 4 | Travelling home on time, managed to find parking place? (2,7) |
| IN TRANSIT – IN + T + RAN + SIT [“find yourself a parking place and sit yourself down”??] | |
| 5 | Mountain hotel supported by a dominant individual (5) |
| ALPHA – ALP [mountain] + H [hotel, in the phonetic alphabet] + A. | |
| 6 | Craft centre worried about shoe (9) |
| BOATHOUSE – (ABOUT SHOE)*, worried. That sort of craft! | |
| 7 | Fabric in frame of legendary bow from the south (5) |
| LYCRA – LY [frame of LegendarY] + CRA [ ARC, from the south in this down clue] | |
| 8 | Large hollow container on roof of rickshaw (6) |
| CRATER – CRATE on R [roof of Rickshaw]. | |
| 14 | One circling first-class giveaway featured in web page? (9) |
| SATELLITE – A [first-class] + TELL [give away] featured in S⁁ITE [web page]. | |
| 16 | Conscript’s statement created awe? (9) |
| IMPRESSED – I’M PRESSED [what a press gang used to do!] | |
| 17 | Go with Italian beer and spicy sausage (9) |
| PEPPERONI – PEP [go!] + PERONI [a beer – now Japanese owned!] | |
| 18 | Smart bakery finally careful with bread? (6) |
| STINGY – STING + Y [bakerY, finally]. | |
| 20 | Richest woman consumed by deadly sin (7) |
| LUSHEST – SHE consumed by LU⁁ST. | |
| 22 | Capital once took years to change (5) |
| KYOTO – (TOOK Y)*, to change. Next to JerryW’s brilliant coinage, “cruciword”, meaning a word only found in crosswords, perhaps we can add “crucifact”, meaning facts like the name of the former capital of Japan? |
|
| 23 | Greek character, though on vacation, fed up (5) |
| THETA – TH [ThougH, on vacation] + ETA [ATE, up]. | |
| 25 | Copper arresting composer after docking in island (5) |
| CORFU – C⁁U arresting ORFF [today’s composer, docked]. | |
16:01
Definitely easier than recent Saturdays. DNK the beer. Biffed CRESCENDO & IN TRANSIT, parsed post-submission. KYOTO was no problem for me, of course; but if we’re expected to know the former capital of Burma or Nigeria, why not Japan? COD to BOATHOUSE.
Peroni make a nice beer. If you are in France I recommend trying Pelforth Brun. But of course this is a matter of personal taste.
IMO more difficult to remember the PRESENT capital of Nigeria. Lagos was a doddle, Abuja isn’t.
As usual this Saturday cryptic was mostly more traditional and generally satisfying than many of the week day offerings. Not much to focus on really.
Thought 10ac EXPEL, 5d ALPHA and 17d PEPPERONI were cute.
Only MERs were 16d IMPRESSED and 20d LUSHEST for a ‘conscript’ being someone press-ganged and making that statement, and synonym for ‘richest’ respectively. Had to look up 25d composer to fit in the copper.
Thank you setter and branch (not Z this time).
I tackled this when I was very tired and nodded off more than once so I can’t say I enjoyed the solve. But on revisiting it today I realise this was entirely my own fault as I didn’t give myself a fair opportunity to do it justice.
This was, I think, my fastest ever solve at 21:40. Very much on a wavelength for this one. I particularly liked IMPRESSED and TONGS. Thanks setter and Branch.
A breeze after last week’s toughie – 27 minutes, with several of those spent on LOI TONGS. Thongs = pants is literally a stretch too far! COD SATELLITE.
Me too! As an Aussie (now) I could not make the relationship between pants and thongs – which are shoes (flip flops to you lot) over here.
I eventually got it after discarding the use of pants as a synonym for terrible or awful, and thinking of a type of regrettably common almost-knickers. Perhaps one of those Facebook posts contrasting UK and Australian English was lurking in the back of my mind.
Its a pity this easy puzzle sports on Good Friday, I’d have appreciated a longer time spent solving, now I’ll have to choose a book from the must read pile.
Not very tricky, although this one was done with Mr Ego, so much quicker than usual with two different minds and mindsets working on it. He was amazed that I knew SHORTSTOP and MOLE RAT(only from crosswords, naturally), whilst I would have taken a lot longer over LUSHEST. I particularly liked MECHANICAL BULL, TAP DANCER and ESCHEWS, which took me some time to post-parse!
12 minutes. Only issue was the ‘sit’ part of IN TRANSIT, but it had to be and the explanation makes sense.
Thanks branch and setter.
FOI Lycra
LOI Mechanical bull
COD Boathouse
7:34. My quickest for quite some time. Rather easy but still fun. COD to BOATHOUSE. Thanks Branch and setter.
Normal service resumed after last Saturday’s stinker.
12.04 WOE
LOI was MECHANICAL BALL. Never heard if it and now I know why!
Very gentle but nothing wrong with that
Thanks Bruce and setter
16:43. The w/e puzzles have been a bit of light relief recently. As most of my minimal baseball knowledge comes from Charlie Brown even SHORTSTOP was easy.
BOATHOUSE was indeed very good but enjoyable puzzle all round apart from the use of thongs. Thanks branch and setter.
So, what DO Aussies call underpants, if not pants? Enquiring minds want to know …
Enjoyed this one, not too hard … sympathy re Kyoto but could have been worse, could have been Edo 😉
Used to be ‘underdaks’ or ‘underpants’ or ‘knickers’ – just like some UK folk.
Apologies for timing of reply.
But most Oz would be familiar with both meanings of ‘thong’ I think.
I did not find this easy, and put it aside after about 30 minutes with 8 undone. As usual, when I came back the next day, the remaining answers were obvious.
Sometimes you just need to give your brain a good shake!
Time: 38:55
My thanks to branch and setter.
Yes, doable and fun
1a Mechanical bull, NHO, had to google it to know it was a thing. Added to Cheating Machine.
Stymied myself by confidently writing in MUSK RAT at 1d, (post MECHANICAL BULL), which threw me from 9a of course. Apart from that and two hesitations (TONGS and BOATHOUSE – oh, that craft!) it was plain sailing. ( A thong in Oz is not so much an undergarment as a shoe – worn almost exclusively by the bogans for all occasions).