Saturday Times 24066 (Nov 8th)

Author   linxitPosted on Categories Weekend Cryptic
Another very good Saturday puzzle, in the category of “tough but fair”. I didn’t note down my time for some reason, but remember it being around 17 mins or so.

Across
1 UPSHOT – cryptic definition.
5 POWER NAP – A inside (pep worn)*, excellent &lit clue. Actually, thinking about it, this probably counts as that most impressive of clue types, the compound anagram.
9 ATHLETIC – H(e)L(p)E(r) inside ATTIC.
10 ISSUER – 1’S + RE(b)US reversed.
11 HOTCHPOTCH – HOT + (POT inside CH twice). CH is Companion of Honour, makes a change from church.
13 RATE – double definition.
14 PLOT – P + LOT. Presumably because “parking lot” is an American term. We’d just say “car park”.
15 EXPERIMENT – 1 M(ark) + EN (in French), inside EXPERT.
18 PROPERTIED – PROPER + TIED
20 TARS – first letters of They Are Regular Seafarers.
21 ABEL – hidden reversed in “skiffLE BAnd”.
23 ARABESQUES – ABE (Lincoln) inside (squares)*
25 MAKING – KIN inside MAG.
26 PARSIFAL – PAR (good score, although Tiger Woods would probably disagree!) + (fails)*. This is an opera by Richard Wagner.
28 PORRIDGE – double definition, the second one is another Brit slang word for a prison sentence.
29 BRANDO – B(ritish) RAN DO.
Down
2 PATROLLER – PAT + ROLLER. I can’t find that exact definition for PAT in the dictionary – the closest is “with or ready for fluent or glib repetition”, which more or less amounts to the same thing.
3 HELLCAT – Cerberus being a hell-dog!
4 TOT – O,T after T.
5 PICOT – PIC + O.T.
6 WEIGHBRIDGE – sounds like Weybridge, a town in Surrey. I lived there for a while when working in Woking a few years ago.
7 ROSTRUM – (Truro’s)* + M
8 AGENT – (get,an)*, with definition “instrument”. Thanks to “crosswordunclued” for that – originally I had ADEPT, with a reprimand to the setter about a poor cryptic definition. Sorry.
12 PREARRANGED – P(lant) + REAR + (garden)*.
16 PSI – i.e. the last words of a letter might be “PS I love you”.
17 NURSEMAID – RUN reversed + SEM(i) + AID. very tricky wordplay, neatly handled.
19 PALLIER – ALL inside PIER.
20 TEQUILA – QUIL(l) inside TEA.
22 BEANO – “BE A NO”
24 APPLE – P(i)P inside ALE.
27 ROB – which is another man’s name that is a synonym for “to steal”.

17 comments on “Saturday Times 24066 (Nov 8th)”

  1. 49 minutes here. I wondered about PAR being a good score and even more about TEA being an evening meal. Is that a North/South thing?
    1. I’m from Southampton, and down there we always had tea (usually sandwiches, cake etc) in the evening, and dinner at lunchtime.
    2. I too would question PAR=good score. It’s the expected score for a scratch golfer. A pro (like Tiger) would regard a birdie on a par 4 or an eagle on a par 5 as a good score. A club golfer might or might not see par as a good score depending upon his/her handicap.

      I grew up in London thinking TEA was just a drink (we had lunch and dinner). It wasn’t until I went to the grammar school I discovered people eat cakes and cucumber sandwiches with a cup of tea at around 4pm

      1. I’ve just checked and found that Collins defines TEA (4c) as the main evening meal in Britain, Australia and N.Z. This is news to me with reference to Britain in general though I’ve a feeling it may be correct in Scotland and/or Northern England.
        1. In Australia TEA is very common for the evening meal. My parents insist on using it when they visit the United States to the chagrin of any waiters they encounter.
  3. I enjoyed this puzzle and agree with “tough but fair”. Today’s 24072 is interesting. It’s a pity these blogs of the weekend puzzles don’t draw a bigger audience.
  4. 8dn: I filled this in as AGENT – anagram of get+an, with “instrument” as the definition.
    1. That makes sense, I’ll change it above. I’m surprised it took so long for someone to come up with a better explanation – I had a feeling my take on it was wrong, but didn’t spot that.
  5. Does anyone familiar with LiveJournal know why a huge gap has suddenly appeared between the Across and Down sections? There’s no such gap in my HTML code. It was OK before, and all I’ve done is edit my answer to 8D.
    1. I’m not familiar with LiveJournal but know some HTML. The page source shows that something went wrong with the code after the answer for 8D. The formatting is awry beyond that point and there are superfluous <br /> characters that introduce blank lines.

      If you rid of all the <br /> characters after 8D, the gap will go away. If you can edit the HTML directly great, else try copying and pasting the text in your blog editor again.

      – Shuchi

    2. I’ve had annoying huge gaps from time to time – from memory, the last one (about a week ago) was solved by putting back a missing </td> (end of table cell) back into the source HTML as entered into LJ’s editing page.
  6. I thought this was easy for a Saturday but a very nice puzzle. Had an advantage by knowing PARSIFAL and ARABESQUE. The romantic in me liked 16d, but then the realist in me realised I’d be better off with 20d.
  7. A very good puzzle I thought with some inventive clueing. 3 and 16 in particular. No idea of time but my note says “not quick but a steady plod”, so no special difficulty. “Picot” was the only new word (embroidery’s not really my thing).

  8. I did not find this particularly tough but it was highly entertaining. 26a PARSIFAL turned up the next day in the “up-to-date” crossword in about 10 years time. Here he is clued as an Opera (Wagner) as his literal and in 10 years he will be a Knight. He always was a knight of course.
    My LOI was 8d AGENT = INSTRUMENT quite an obscure literal but the anagrind and anagrist are quite clear:

    8d Get cracking with an instrument (5)
    AGENT. Anagram of (GET AN).

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