I just scraped in under the wire with this one solved in 10 minutes, my target time which I have not achieved since last Monday. I think most of the clue construction is straightforward and there are no tricky or unfamiliar words or definitions, however past experience has proved I’m not always a good judge of that as far as others are concerned so I look forward to reading your contributions.
As usual deletions are in curly brackets and indicators in square ones. Definitions are in bold italics.
|
Across |
|
|---|---|
| 1 | Limit on prison warder that could release something bottled up (5,3) |
| SCREW CAP – SCREW (prison warder – slang), CAP (limit) | |
| 6 | Think what an entertainer could do topless (4) |
| MUSE – {a}MUSE (what an entertainer could do) [topless] | |
| 8 | Slightly wet politician following leads of Disraeli and Asquith (4) |
| DAMP – D{israeli} + A{squith} [leads], MP (politician – Member of Parliament) | |
| 9 | Left bringing in an informal form of teaching (8) |
| LEARNING – L (left), EARNING (bringing in – e.g. money). ‘Learn’ for ‘teach’ is non-standard usage – hence ‘informal’ – but it’s in all the usual sources and survives in dialect in expressions such as “that’ll larn yer”. | |
| 10 | Time, perhaps, for a meaningful statement (8) |
| SENTENCE – Two meanings, the first with reference to time served in prison. | |
| 11 | Small sleep break (4) |
| SNAP – S (small), NAP(sleep) | |
| 13 | Something strengthening I’d found in sympathy (13) |
| CONSOLIDATION – I’D inside CONSOLATION (sympathy). | |
| 16 | Take a bit of time restoring lake (4) |
| MERE – Hidden [take a bit of] in {ti}ME RE{storing} | |
| 17 | Tower, military, which has two sides joined by rope (3,2,3) |
| TUG OF WAR – TUG (tower), OF WAR (military) – the definition is cryptic with reference to the sporting contest. We had fun with ‘tower’ meaning ‘something that tows’ only last week. | |
| 19 | Falls about: sailor to do something (8) |
| CATARACT – CA (about – circa), TAR (sailor), ACT (do something) | |
| 21 | Surprise attack like a mad dog with no heart (4) |
| RAID – RA{b}ID (like a mad dog – having rabies) [with no heart] | |
| 22 | Object on bishop’s crook (4) |
| BEND – B (bishop), END (object) | |
| 23 | A source of valuable metal mingled with oxygen, bizarrely (4,4) |
| GOLD MINE – Anagram [bizarrely] of MINGLED O (oxygen) | |
|
Down |
|
| 2 | Supervise tea for each individual (9) |
| CHAPERONE – CHA (tea), PER (for each), ONE (individual) | |
| 3 | Former partner very conveniently lives abroad (5) |
| EXPAT – EX (former partner), PAT (very conveniently). The definition doesn’t quite work grammatically and I think the clue would have been better as “Former partner very convenient for one who lives abroad”. | |
| 4 | Column containing single officer (7) |
| COLONEL – COL (column) containing LONE (single) | |
| 5 | Quietly delayed finding item of crockery (5) |
| PLATE – P (quiet – piano – music), LATE (delayed) | |
| 6 | Objects to alien way of thought (7) |
| MINDSET – MINDS (objects to), ET (alien – Extra Terrestrial) | |
| 7 | Serious error having son home (3) |
| SIN – S (son), IN (home) | |
| 12 | Commercial speech leads to high praise (9) |
| ADORATION – AD (commercial – advertisement), ORATION (speech) | |
| 14 | We sat about on road for event supervisor (7) |
| STEWARD – Anagram [about] of WE SAT, RD (road) | |
| 15 | It’s not analogue, but appreciate it almost entirely (7) |
| DIGITAL – DIG (appreciate), IT, AL{l} (entirely) [almost]. This definition reminds me of the Blackadder episode in which Baldrick is attempting to rewrite Dr Johnson’s dictionary and defines ‘cat’ as ‘not a dog’. | |
| 17 | When tops are plucked, tense wires are normally going — (5) |
| TWANG – First letters [tops are plucked] of T{ense} W{ires} A{re} N{ormally} G{oing}. It’s very unusual these days to have a blank in a Times Crossword clue indicating a missing word that’s the answer. It happened a lot in the past and more often than not the answer would be a word from a quotation or a title, but that’s not the case here. Also the missing word would be indicated by an underscore ( __ ) rather than an em dash ( — ) as printed in today’s puzzle, so I was confused for a moment before I realised what was going on. I’d say the definition is &lit, i.e. the whole clue leading up to the missing word. | |
| 18 | Foreign Office leading odd discussion meeting (5) |
| FORUM – FO (Foreign Office), RUM (odd) | |
| 20 | Excellent account by Bede, ultimately (3) |
| ACE – AC (account), {Bed}E [ultimately] | |
Edited at 2016-02-22 03:47 am (UTC)
There’s actually a dashed clue in last week’s Jumbo (1192) which was in fact quite brilliant.
A few seconds over my par time, so I rate this as a medium difficulty puzzle
I was very sure that Screw Top was right and so had the same problems as others. I was left with 10a and 4d. I just couldn’t see 10a so concentrated on an answer to 4d starting with T. Untroubled by Twang but took a long time to get 13a. And all done eventually. David
4d was recalcitrant since I’d also fallen for SCREW TOP, and that cost me a few minutes.