This one took me 19:36, about 4 minutes over my average time. There are a couple of clues that are very devious (I’m looking at you, 15d and 22d). For the second day in a row, knowledge of rare-ish horse colours was useful.
As often happens, my COD award goes to the one that was also my LOI. ACUMEN, step forward!
On another note, many thanks to sawbill for the name check in his weekend quick cryptic last weekend. Fame at last. 😉
Definitions underlined, synonyms in round brackets, wordplay in square brackets and deletions in strikethrough. Anagram indicators italicised in the clue, (THIS)* indicates that the included letters are anagrammed.
| Across | |
|---|---|
| 1 | Travelled through water to plot delta’s quaggy terrain (9) |
| SWAMPLAND – SWAM (travelled through water), PLAN (to plot) D (delta in the phonetic alphabet).
“Quaggy” is a fantastic word. I’d never seen it before, but I immediately knew what it meant. |
|
| 6 | Blue sofa empty by day (3) |
| SAD – “Empty” S |
|
| 8 | Snake, one preying on rodents eats 50 (7) |
| RATTLER – RATTER (one preying on rodents), contains [eats] L (50 in Roman numerals). | |
| 9 | Push dusky horse around and get snubbed (5) |
| NUDGE – DUN (a color of horse) and GE I had to look up “sorrel” yesterday, and I confess that if you showed me 10 pictures of horses and asked me to choose the “dun” one, I’d be completely lost. “Dusky” is another word that I know means something related to colour, but only ever applied to “maiden” in Mills and Boon books, as far as I’m aware. Fortunately, just recognizing that “dun” and “dusky” could have a tenuous connection was enough, although I needed most of the crossers. |
|
| 10 | Someone you know seen in almanac, quaint ancestor (12) |
| ACQUAINTANCE – Hidden in almanAC QUAINT ANCEstor.
Bravo. |
|
| 12 | Group of animals caught in auditorium (4) |
| HERD – “Heard”, when heard [caught, in auditorium], sounds like “herd” (group of animals). | |
| 13 | Formerly working, exec gutted to retire (4) |
| ONCE – ON (working, as in “is this thing on?”). Then take away the middle letters of EXEC [gutted], leaving EC and reverse it [to retire]. | |
| 17 | Company looking good after months making concessions (12) |
| COMPROMISING – CO (company) and then PROMISING (looking good) after M for months, as in the previously-mentioned form instructions. | |
| 20 | Name of girl beginning to mangle operatic song (5) |
| MARIA – First letter of [beginning to] M |
|
| 21 | Belch essentially uncool — is husband uncouth? (7) |
| LOUTISH – L (middle letter of beLch) [essentially] + OUT (uncool) + IS, plus H (husband).
I can’t remember seeing a good explanation for why “X essentially” can be used to mean “the middle letter of X”. Can anyone provide one? |
|
| 23 | Nothing new file exposed (3) |
| NIL – N for new, + |
|
| 24 | Wriggly beast destroyed the marrow (9) |
| EARTHWORM – (THE MARROW)*. | |
| Down | |
|---|---|
| 1 | Address for king and queen is recalled (4) |
| SIRE – ER (queen) + IS, all reversed [recalled].
Historically, kings were addressed as “sire”. Which is actually a bit creepy when you think about it (or perhaps only when you think about it too much, as I have just done). |
|
| 2 | Newspaper item is little piece initially overlooked (7) |
| ARTICLE – |
|
| 3 | Drink up, mate (3) |
| PAL – LAP (drink, as a dog does from a bowl), reversed [up]. | |
| 4 | Fearful regularly using gaffer’s charity (6) |
| AFRAID – alternate letters [regularly using] of |
|
| 5 | Duo disheartened with people’s gifts (9) |
| DONATIONS – D |
|
| 6 | Large American car in esplanade suddenly reversed (5) |
| SEDAN – hidden [in] Here I have to disagree with Juji’s definition: a sedan is not necessarily a large car. There is a whole sector of the car market referred to as “compact sedans”. “Sedan” is the US equivalent of the UK’s “saloon”: a three-box layout: bonnet, body and boot, (US: hood, body and trunk), as opposed to an estate (US: station wagon). After about 30 years in both the UK and the US, I am reasonably bilingual. I’ve no argument with “American car”, even though there are sedans made all over the world: that’s just a clue that we’re looking for an American term as the answer. |
|
| 7 | German fellow is one trying to shed weight (6) |
| DIETER – Double definition, the first a German man’s name, the second someone restricting what they eat.
The word for words that are spelled the same but pronounced differently is “heteronym”. Congratulations if you can find a way to work that into an actual conversation without getting some very strange looks. |
|
| 11 | Embark on tanker due at sea (9) |
| UNDERTAKE – (TANKER DUE)* | |
| 14 | Foreign money and income managed to acquire Tesla (7) |
| CENTIMO – (INCOME)* includes [acquires] T (the symbol for the SI unit Tesla, the unit that is used to measure the strength of magnetic fields).
I didn’t know this word, but constructed it from the wordplay and crossers, and it seemed feasible as an unknown relation of “centime” and “centavo”. And so it was. |
|
| 15 | Insight about dividing gold pieces (6) |
| ACUMEN – C (about, as in “in c 2400 BCE, something happened somewhere”) in the middle of [dividing] AU (chemical symbol for gold), then MEN (pieces, as on a chessboard).
Needs a classic lift & separate operation on “gold pieces”: it’s nothing to do with money. |
|
| 16 | Walker’s alert to show caution around lake (6) |
| AMBLER – AMBER (caution) containing [around] L for lake. | |
| 18 | Good human being giving up time (5) |
| MORAL – MOR |
|
| 19 | Fancy top of wool on that man (4) |
| WHIM – first letter [top] of W |
|
| 22 | That’s not nice enough having turned one away (3) |
| UGH – from ENOUGH, ONE reversed [turned] is removed [away].
Very sneaky. |
|
All but 8 clues solved in 20 mins! – Better than yesterday but still bobbing around the baseline!
Entirely agree that a lot comes down to rhythm as I was the exact opposite yesterday, which satisfied but never felt fluent.
Finished here in a very enjoyable 10:58, which might have been sub-10 but for missing the gerund at 17a, which slowed things up. Once again newly educated in horses & currency!
Also, COD to ACUMEN. Thanks to Juji and Doofers for a very entertaining blog!
Great puzzle. I am somewhat daunted whenever I see Juji as the setter but got started with 6a and kept going pretty quickly.
FOI 6a Sad
LOI 22d Ugh
COD 15d Acumen
Keep ‘em coming just like this!
Point of note: here in the States, SEDAN refers to a four-door car (the three-box kind only; I like that new-to-me term) while a two-door one is a coupe.