Saturday, 23 February 2019 – Times Cryptic No 27282. Quick, it’s Saturday!

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This seemed like the easiest Saturday puzzle it’s ever been my task to google. All clues are well constructed, but few if any would be out of place in a Quick Cryptic. Perhaps using the latin rather than the anglicised plural at 26ac would cross that line. How did you all find it?

Clues are in blue, with definitions underlined. Answers are in BOLD CAPS, then wordplay. (ABC*) means ‘anagram of ABC’. Deletions are in [square brackets].

Across
1 After Bill, my French is hard to criticise (8)
ADMONISH: AD=bill, MON=my (in French), IS, H=hard.

9 Covers remaining fabrications (8)
OVERLIES: OVER=remaining, LIES=fabrications.

10 Quakers banishing leader of religious fanatics (6)
FIENDS: Quakers are the Society of FRIENDS. Remove R=leader of “religious”. I did have to pause to remember what the Quakers are called.

11 Reckless current married couple ford river (10)
IMMODERATE: ODER=the river. Cover it with I=(electrical) current, M=married, MATE=couple.

12 Pretty short message: “Time flies” (4)
TWEE: TWEE[t]=short message, but the final T=time flies away.

13 Henry and I ship sewer’s output perhaps (10)
HANDICRAFT: H=Henry, AND, I, CRAFT=ship.

16 Mark wise, so to speak, to embrace brief hard puzzle? (7)
MYSTIFY: M=mark, YY=two y’s, sounding like “wise”. All of that “embraces” STIF[f]=hard, briefly.

17 Remarkably frosty when accepting new briefs (1-6)
Y-FRONTS: anagram (“remarkably”) of (FROSTY*), “accepting” N=new. Easy now if you remember it from 5 weeks earlier, on that occasion clued as a homophone.

20 Present brand new napkins etc. (5,5)
TABLE LINEN: TABLE=present, LINE=brand, N=new.

22 Departing, having forfeited one award (4)
GONG: GO[i]NG=departing, “forfeiting” I=one.

23 Posted again across the Atlantic, he defends suit (10)
RESPONDENT: RESENT=posted again, “across” POND=the Atlantic.

25 Bring on cool drink for the audience (6)
INDUCE: IN=cool, then DUCE sounds more or less like “juice”. I don’t think I personally pronounce D’s like J’s, but near enough I suppose. Certainly it features in some varieties of Australian accent.

26 Word founts possibly a hit with user (8)
THESAURI: anagram (“possibly”) of (A HIT USER*).

27 Purgative lists boring this Parisian Republican (8)
CLEANSER: LEANS=lists, placed inside (i.e. “boring”) CE=this in French, R=Republican.

Down
2 Repulse without first of all making approach (8)
DRIVEWAY: DRIVE [a]WAY=repulse, losing A=first of A[ll].

3 Fancy somebody with books entering exam! (10)
ORNAMENTAL: NAME=somebody (important), NT=a collection of books. All inside (“entering”) ORAL=exam.

4 Sunlight, if split up, can be penetrating (10)
INSIGHTFUL: anagram (“split up”) of (SUNLIGHT IF*).

5 It stimulates hard men with endless cash (7)
HORMONE: H=hard, OR=men, MONE[y]=”endless” cash.

6 Some people adore the first name in lights? (4)
LEAD: hidden answer.

7 Flier spies treacherous guy breaking in (6)
CICADA: CIA=spies, with CAD=treacherous guy “breaking in”.

8 I might end up lagging, like worst cartographers (8)
ASBESTOS: AS=like, BEST=worst (as in, I BESTED/WORSTED him), OS=Ordnance Survey=cartographers.

14 Four crammed in unlimited term in grammar (10)
INFINITIVE: IV=four, in INFINITE.

15 Garner food supply that’s grown at highest level (4,6)
ROOF GARDEN: an anagram of (GARNER FOOD*) “supplies” the answer. I think if you take “garden” as a verb, the whole clue is an &lit type of definition.

16 Full development of article in molten yttrium (8)
MATURITY: AN=article, in anagram (“molten”) of (YTTRIUM*).

18 Old Spanish wine buff acquires large organ (8)
TENTACLE: TENT=old Spanish wine, ACE=buff, “acquiring” L.

19 Weak academic not available for computer-aided design (7)
ANAEMIC: A[cad]ADEMIC, losing CAD=computer aided design, and replacing it by NA=not available.

21 Book addict hugs King’s Head player in street (6)
BUSKER: B=book, USER=addict “hugging” K=king.

24 Part of speech from woman in order to secure Oscar (4)
NOUN: NUN=woman in order, “securing” O=Oscar in phonetic alphabet.

15 comments on “Saturday, 23 February 2019 – Times Cryptic No 27282. Quick, it’s Saturday!”

  1. After an easy solve I was left with 7dn, spotted CIA (spies) giving me CI(?A?)A but failed to think of anything to fit the definition ‘flier’ nor ?A? meaning ‘treacherous guy’. A tougher workout might have made me more likely to persevere with it but I swiftly lost patience and looked it up. I’m not overly convinced by ‘treacherous’ anyway as a cad is ungentlemanly, to use a similarly old-fashioned expression.

    Edited at 2019-03-02 06:14 am (UTC)

  2. Definitely the easiest Saturday for me, anyway. I agree with Jack about ‘cad’; and ‘flier’ seems less than felicitous a definition. Cicadas can fly, of course, but so can cockroaches; but mainly they find a tree and make noise. 11ac took me longer than it should have because I took ‘married couple’ to be MM (which it is, I believe, in another cryptic). Does TWEE mean ‘pretty’ *tout court*? “What a twee baby!”? And is duce/juice a homophone in RP? I can’t say I’ve ever heard that pronunciation from other than non-RP speakers.
    1. I also had misgivings about TWEE / pretty, now that you have reminded me. If defining it as ‘pretty’ it needs to be qualified to suggest excessively so, pretentious or affected. In other words it’s intended to be at least mildy derogatory and not in any sense complimentary.
  3. 17 minutes, so definitely easy for a Saturday. LOI was MYSTIFY, not that it was difficult. COD to ASBESTOS if only because of the BEST = WORST equivalence always amusing me. The first shall be last. TABLE LINEN, IMMODERATE and Y-FRONTS had pleasant surfaces. The INDUCE homophone has had me attempting to measure the movement of my tongue. I definitely move it between the teeth a fraction in DUCE but not at all in JUICE, making the former a slightly harder noise. Thank you B and setter.

    Edited at 2019-03-02 07:10 am (UTC)

  4. I thought pretty might somehow be CUTE @ 12ac but was TWEE
    which is NQR IMHO. My LOI once 2dn DRIVEWAY was laid.

    FOI 210ac TABLE LINEN

    COD 5dn HORMONE

    WOD 26ac THESAURI

    All done in no time!

  5. I was travelling to Cambridge last Saturday and so had a couple of shortish train journeys to look at this puzzle. I did not find it that easy and it would have been a very tough QC.
    However I did finish it eventually and thought it was a very enjoyable challenge.
    The bottom half went in more easily for me. My LOI was FIENDS after long stares at the clues for DRIVEWAY and ORNAMENTAL. OVERLIES, IMMODERATE and ASBESTOS also held me up. Oder for river -there seems to be a lot of German in the clues at the moment. My mind was still on Robert Pflanz last Saturday.
    David
  6. 12:44. I didn’t find this particularly easy at all. The top half in particular was quite chewy I thought.
    I’m not sure about the INDUCE/JUICE homophone. I think I generally pronounce the D in INDUCE distinctly but I suspect that distinction would get lost sometimes when I’m speaking quickly.
  7. A steady solve for me.

    One typo. HORMONY. Which brings to mind Maggie’s rhetorical question when first elected to Number 10. “Where there’s a disco, may we bring Harmony?” I think that’s right.

    LOI: ANAEMIC. COD: DRIVEWAY.

  8. ….round the old oak TWEE – a word I thought defined that song reasonably accurately.

    Same misgivings as Jack on the definition of “cad”.

    Didn’t find it particularly easy, but no biffing was required.

    FOI ADMONISH
    LOI & COD ASBESTOS
    TIME 12:01

  9. For those of you with access, do look at today’s Review (p.14) where there is an interview with John Grimshaw.
  10. I didn’t find this easy at all, coming in at a personal NITCH of over 120. I’m not sure why, in retrospect, it took me so long, but putting in a perfectly reasonable MYSTERY for 16A (with STERn for hard) didn’t help with 4d, my LOI… nor did my failure to recognise “split up” as an anagrind… it doesn’t suggest doing any letter-wrangling to me. TABLE LINEN held me up a while too, I think. I liked DRIVEWAY, HORMONE and ASBESTOS, but COD to Y-FRONTS. 28:26
  11. I did this in 31:33, so not too difficult. Took me a while to see DRIVEWAY, I thought TWEE an unusual definition. I pronounce DUCE exactly the same as JUICE. Liked infinitive. Thanks setter and Bruce.
  12. 29:12 probably on the quicker side for me for a Saturday solve but it took an age to get going with Y-fronts the first to fall. LOI fiends, I couldn’t remember that Quakers were the society of friends. I also had trouble with 8dn. Hesitated to enter tentacle at 18dn which I thought more akin to a limb than an organ. COD 4dn.
  13. Thanks setter and brnchn
    More straightforward than normal for your Saturday puzzle that is our Thursday one that was able to get done in a couple of sessions taking around the 40 minutes. ADMONISH was first in which was quite easily built from the word play. TWEE was my last and needed the W from DRIVEWAY to get away from the unparse-able CUTE that was dominating most of the early thinking.
    LAGGING as the insulating material was the only new term for me.
  14. Treacherous guy had to be a rat, no? Thus giving the extinct cirata – our unknown bird at 7D.
    31 minutes with this error.
    COD 2D driveway

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