Saturday Times 24102 (Dec 20th) – Times for The Times

12:59 for this, but then it wasn’t as hard as most Saturday offerings. It also felt a bit disjointed and unedited. How else can you explain the appearance of 7 double definitions, when the usual limit is 2 or 3 at most? After the previous week’s pangram, I thought we were in for two on the trot, but in the end this was just a J lipogram.

Across
1	PUB CRAWL – UP rev, C in BRAWL.
5	ICE BAG – ICE (decorate, e.g. a cake) + BAG (presumably from “a person’s particular interest or speciality”, as Chambers puts it).
9	BEANFEAST – AN, FE (iron, an essential mineral) inside BEAST.
11	IMAGO – I’M + AGO. The adult stage of an insect.
12	IRELAND – ref. John Ireland, the English composer.
13	NINEPIN – N(ew) + IN (batting) + EP + IN.
14	FUNNY BUSINESS – double def, the second one cryptic.
16	LOUIS QUATORZE – R (king) inside (ouzo, tequilas)*.
20	HOME RUN – cryptic definition.
21	IN VITRO – V1 inside INTRO. I wouldn’t have thought of IVF as particularly rare these days, though.
23	NIXON – NIX ON.
24	WATERFALL – (after)* inside WALL.
25	SODDEN – SOD + DEN
26	GREENERY – (Graham) GREENE + RY (railway).

Down
1	PUBLIC – CUP reversed, around alternate letters of BaLtIc.
2	BRACE – double definition.
3	REFRAIN – another double definition.
4	WHAT DO YOU KNOW – and another! (although the first here is more of a paraphrase than a definition).
6	CHIANTI – CHI + ANTI
7	BLASPHEME – P in SHE, all inside BLAME.
8	GOODNESS – yet another double def, and strongly related to 4D. I wonder why they didn’t refer to each other in some way?
10	TONGUE TWISTER – TONGUE (e.g. French) + TWISTER.
14	FLUMMOXED – LUMMOX inside FED.
15	OLD HANDS – (h)OLD HANDS.
17	STRANGE – ST + RANGE.
18	REVERSE – S in REVERE.
19	WOOLLY – double definition.
22	TRACE – and again, which makes 6 in 14 down clues, and 7 altogether in the puzzle if you count 14A.

4 comments on “Saturday Times 24102 (Dec 20th)”

I really struggled to get going with this one. I took 10 minutes to find the first answer and another 30 over the next 6. But then I solved 10d and it all fell into place within the next 12 minutes, making 52 minutes in total. I guess I just took a long time to find the setter’s wavelength.

Agree about the surfeit of double definitions. One is plenty for any puzzle.

A fairly routine solve. BLASPHEME was the one that really held me up.

I agree, not terribly difficult for a Saturday puzzle.

The definition for 20 is not very good. A player who hits a home run watches the ball soar over the outfield wall, tosses his bat aside, and makes a leisurely trot around the bases. There’s no ‘rush’ involved.

I never knew Louis XIV was so into shots.

I did not really notice so many DDs – they are often my downfall – but, somehow, I managed to see through them all.

Thanks to setter for such a Beanfeast of Funny Business and to Linxit for the blog.

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