Saturday Times 24155 (21st Feb)

Author   linxitPosted on Categories Weekend Cryptic
Solving time 11:53, much easier than the previous couple of weeks! A few bits of general knowledge required, but it was all stuff I already knew so no problems there. I’ve got a bit of a quibble with 4D though – a cryptic definition to a phrase which doesn’t appear in either Chambers or Collins or even the Shorter OED isn’t fair, in my opinion.

Across
1 WORSHIPPER – (Prior’s pew, H)*
6 TOGA – TOG (measure of insulation in quilts) + A
8 IMPORTER – I’M PORTER. I’m not that familiar with the play, but Porter appears in the list of characters as the gatekeeper at Macbeth’s castle.
9 TOM-TOM – MOT reversed twice.
10 GOON – GO ON. Peter Sellers was a member of the Goons. Note the singular/plural ambiguity between the surface and cryptic readings.
11 MY FAIR LADY – M(a)YFAIR LADY. A Lerner and Loewe musical based on Shaw’s Pygmalion.
12 INFANTILE – NT (“good book”, hmph) + 1 inside (final, e)*.
14 IBSEN – NESBI(t) reversed. E. Nesbit is the children’s author (The Railway Children), Ibsen was a Norwegian playwright much beloved of crossword setters. Peer Gynt, Brand and A Doll’s House appear in the Times and elsewhere almost as often as Shakespeare’s plays!
17 GAOLS – O in GALS.
19 CORMORANT – CORM (a crocus “bulb”) OR ANT.
22 BRATISLAVA – BRAT IS LAVA
23 STAR – STAR(e)
24 BRUNEI – B(ritish) + RUN + I.E. reversed.
25 ENTANGLE – (p)ENTANGLE
26 TWEE – TWEE(d)
27 HEREDITARY – HERE + T in DIARY

Down
1 WHINGEING – HINGE inside WING
2 REPROOF – (poor ref)*
3 INTIMATE – AT inside IN TIME
4 PORTFOLIO CAREER – cryptic definition. Got it from the checking letters, but I’m not happy with it!
5 RETAIL – 1 inside LATER reversed.
6 TEMPLE BAR – TEMPLE + BAR. One of the entrances to the City of London, this one is in Paternoster Square, near St. Paul’s Cathedral.
7 GEORDIE – G(ruesom)E + (do) OR DIE.
13 ALL AT ONCE – (neat local)*. From the poem:

I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o’er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host of golden daffodils
15 NOTORIETY – (Torie(s))* inside (Tony)*
16 IMPACTED – IMP ACTED
18 AIRCREW – AIR + CREW (past tense of crow). “Busy flier” because an aircrew member has to work while flying.
20 ANTIGUA – ANTI + GUA(m)
21 ISAIAH – IS + A1 + AH

9 comments on “Saturday Times 24155 (21st Feb)”

  1. It’s in the latest COED as an example: 4[as modifier] denoting or engaged in an employment pattern which involves a succession of short-term contracts and part-time work: a portfolio career.
  2. The porter appears very early in Macbeth. But if you studied it for O-level, at least in my era, you never came across him since that scene was not on the syllabus and so not in the school versions of the play. He is very bawdy and most famous for the line about drink:

    “Lechery, sir, it provokes, and unprovokes;
    it provokes the desire, but it takes
    away the performance”

  3. Temple Bar in Paternoster Sq. is a new thing. When it functioned as a gate, it was in the Strand, at the boundary between the cities of London and Westminster, near the Law Courts. Position now marked by a turretty structure with dragon on top.
  4. My favorite thing about this crossword was two words I associate with Monty Python – CORMORANT from “Life of Brian” and Wordsworth’s Daffodils from the Michael Ellis episode of the last series of the show

    “And Percy Byssshe”
    “Shelly”
    “Just a small one… medium dry”

    It’s even on youtube (what isn’t)

  5. I agree with your comments linxit. Not a difficult puzzle but 4D was my last in and PORTFOLIO CAREER were the only two words I could think of but I had no idea what it was. It no doubt comes from the same school as “human resources”. This Saturday’s is a different kettle of fish!
    1. I hadn’t heard of portfolio career either, but the Concise Oxford knows about it under portfolio, and so does Google.
  6. PORTFOLIO CAREER stumped me too at first – not in Collins or Chambers and I eventually found it using an Internet search. It’s in COED, as Peter says, though in italics rather than bold.

    There were some excellent clues in the puzzle tho with good variety and misdirection. IMPORTER, GOON, ISAIAH and ALL AT ONCE gave the puzzle an old-fashioned feel, but those clues were all fair and you did not need the specialised knowledge to solve it, I found.

  7. An entertaining range of answers from Slovakia to Brunei and from Nesbit’s Railway Children to Ibsen’s Dolls House. A collection of nice straightforward clues except for the previously unknown PORTFOLIO CAREER at 4d. I learned that there is a PORTER in Macbeth and was happily reminded of Peter Sellers in the Goon Show.

Comments are closed.