Saturday Times 25598 (5th Oct)

Author   linxitPosted on Categories Weekend Cryptic
I finally got around to solving this on the train on the way home on Wednesday night, having already seen from a few comments that it was a tough one. 44:02, so it was right up there! But there was nothing unfair, and only one obscure word really (which I knew anyway), so all the difficulty came from the extreme craftiness of the definitions and wordplay, of which there are too many examples to list. Brilliant puzzle!

Across
1 DART – hidden reversed in “extremist radio”
3 DROP A BRICK – OP (surgery) + AB (muscle) + RICK (strain), all after DR (doctor).
10 SOFT TOP – SO (it follows) + FT (newspaper) + TOP (chief).
11 WARLIKE – WAKE (aftermath) around R,L (opposite sides) + I (one).
12 SILENCE IS GOLDEN – (GIs license)* + OLDEN (ancient).
13 DISMAL – DIAL (face) around SM (sergeant major = warrant officer).
14 POWER CUT – POUT (sullen expression) around CREW reversed (men on reflection).
17 SLAM DUNK – LAD (youth) around M(arks), inside SUNK (doomed).
18 SCIPIO – SCIP (sounds like “skip” (pass over)) + IO (a moon of Jupiter). Roman general who defeated Hannibal.
21 YOU NEVER CAN TELL – “YOU NEVER CAN, TELL!” ref. William Tell, who is forced to shoot an apple from his son’s head.
23 HOME RUN – HOME (British PM Sir Alec Douglas HOME) + RUN (managed).
24 PRETEEN – PREEN (groom) around E.T. (visitor from afar).
25 NATURALIST – (Australian)* inside NT.
26 STIR – double definition.

Down
1 DISUSED – D(aughter) + I (one) + SUSSED (grasped) minus one of the middle letters.
2 RAFFLESIA – RAFFLE (fund-raising event) + IS reversed + A. A Malaysian plant known for having the largest single bloom in the world, up to a metre across.
4 RAPPER – sounds like “wrapper”.
5 PAWNSHOP – PAWNS (security men) + HOP (dance).
6 BAR-CODE SCANNER – (record bean cans)*
7 IVIED – I (one) + VIED (struggled).
8 KEEPNET – TEN (a number) + PEEK (secretly look), all reversed.
9 STANDARD-BEARER – BEAR (yield) inside (red star and)*.
15 CO-PRESENT – COP (policeman) + R.E. (soldiers) + SENT (dispatched).
16 INFERNAL – INFER (reason) + first letters of Nuns Are Loudly.
17 SAY WHEN – cryptic definition, ref. pouring tea.
19 ONLINER – ONE-LINER (joke), without the first E (drug).
20 SCOPES – COPE (cloak) inside S,S (seconds).
22 UNMET – “U.N. MET”, Manhattan being the UN headquarters.

9 comments on “Saturday Times 25598 (5th Oct)”

  1. Some very clever wordplay here. I’m chuffed to have got more than half of it. Hopefully (without conviction) reading Dave’s blog will help with future offerings from the same source.
    16d sums it up nicely!

    Edited at 2013-10-12 07:28 am (UTC)

  2. I think the definition at 5dn is “Get ready here, leaving security” and PAWNS is clued simply by “men”.

    Yes, a really chewy puzzle and very rewarding to solve correctly. I didn’t know the plant or the RAPPER/MC association (having an aversion to “music” of that type).

    Edited at 2013-10-12 06:25 am (UTC)

  4. I didn’t time it exactly because I got side-tracked for a while, but somewhere between 45 mins and an hour.

    There aren’t many puzzles in which I haven’t solved a single clue after my first read-through. I’m a big fan of US sports so I’m a bit annoyed that it took me so long to see SLAM DUNK and HOME RUN. RAPPER was my LOI after SCIPIO and STIR. As Andy said in his blog, the difficulty for those not on the setter’s wavelength was because of the crafty definitions and wordplay. Excellent puzzle.

  5. Top stuff – add ‘keepnet’ to Jack’s list of unknowns to get mine. COD to Pawnshop for the super definition. Thanks blogger and setter.

    Interestingly, like most Latin words starting sc-, Scipio can also be pronounced Seepio.

  6. I looked at this on and off all last Saturday and only achieved just over half of it before I resorted to aids. If the aim was to convince people that they really shouldn’t have listened to those who said they should enter the championships, they certainly succeeded!

    Luckily today’s puzzle has cheered me up no end.

  7. Not sure who prints the parse for these but I feel the clue at 5d is wrongly represented so it can’t be the clue composer who writes this. I think it would be fair to say the Def and the Wordplay have been split at the wrong point in the parse above and I would like to offer the following. The Def is the first 5 words (Not just the first 3) and the wordplay starts at ‘men’ as follows. THE CLUE: Got ready here, leaving security men to descend on dance. / Got ready (Money) here leaving security (valuable items) – men (pawns) + dance (hop) – [descending in the down clue)- I would agree that ‘Pawns’ could be deemed as ‘security men’ however, there is no indication to this, if there was, there would be an indication to it being a part &lit. From Les L
    1. Thank you for your contribution, however if you read the comments above you would have seen that I made your point already (at 6:20AM). I would also mention that the clue starts “Get ready” rather than “Got ready” which I assume is not a typo as you have written it more than once.

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