Saturday Times 24173 (Mar 14th)

Author   linxitPosted on Categories Weekend Cryptic
Solving time 15:14, so about par for the course again. 21D was the obscure vocabulary of the day, but it’s a regular in barred puzzles (and came up last week somewhere), so no problems there. I had a job working out the wordplay after the event on a couple, but I think I sorted them all out in the end (although 30A just seems wrong).

Across
1 MOBILE – the idea here is that Americans call it a cell.
4 SEA PERCH – S(ous-chef) next to (cheaper)*
10 KERRY BLUE – ERR (stray) inside KY, BLUE (waste). This is a meaning of blue that I only learnt from crosswords, but it’s one that comes up fairly regularly now.
11 MEDAL – (sounde)D in MEAL.
12 GET CRACKING – GET (make) + CRACKING (excellent).
14 SHE – hidden in poSH Establishment. The novel by H. Rider Haggard, and a bit of a crossword cliché.
15 ORCHARD – OR (golden) + CHARD (vegetable).
17 CHARGE – double definition.
19 PLAY UP – double definition again.
21 SWANSEA – A(rea) inside (news)*, all inside SA.
23 OHM – OH + M (James Bond’s boss). “Law man” as he has a law named after him. I’ll let Wikipedia explain if you’re interested.
24 OVER THE HILL – double definition, but is it accurate? When he “marched them down again” it says nothing about them turning around at the top.
26 CHINO – CH + 1 + NO.
27 OUTBACKER – C (about) inside (Korea but)*
29 WINE LAKE – IN (popular) inside WE, + LAKE (a red pigment)
30 MORNAY – MORN + AY I suppose, but maybe the clue should have read “Sauce for fish always served before noon?”

Down
1 MAKE GOOD – A KEG inside MOOD.
2 BERET – BERE(f)T
3 LAY – double definition.
5 ELEGIAC – E.G. (say) inside ELIA (writer) + C(entury). ELIA was the pen-name of the essayist Charles Lamb.
6 POMEGRANATE – P (soft) + (a mango tree)*.
7 REDESIGNS – ED inside RESIGNS.
8 HALTER – H(ard) + ALTER
9 PLACED – P(ressure), + C inside (deal)*
13 READY TO ROLL – READY (money) + TO ROLL (for circulation).
16 COLUMBIAN – BIA(s) inside COLUMN.
18 SAILORLY – (passenger)S + AIL + ORLY, “tarry” as in “like a tar”.
20 PRESOAK – PRES(s) + OAK.
21 SHTETL – HT inside SET, + L(ength).
22 MOO-COW – cryptic definition.
25 INK IN – 1 N(ote) + KIN.
28 ADO – alternate letters of OlD mAn, reversed.

11 comments on “Saturday Times 24173 (Mar 14th)”

  1. 30ac – I took it to mean “ay” = always, served after morn ie at noon..

    24ac – the village nearest to where I live in Kent, Coxheath, was once heathland used as military encampments. During the Napoleonic wars many thousands of soldiers were stationed here, for use in case of invasion. It is generally accepted hereabouts that this is where the incident referred to took place.. either on the present A229 or on Westerhill, where I live. If so, the clue is correct since it is a scarp slope 🙂 .. re-enactments have occasionally taken place

  2. I agree, a relatively straightforward par for the course crossword where doing Mephisto etc. helped with SHTETL.

    The Duke of York thing came up in a daily that I blogged about a year ago. There are I learned two candidates for the actual Duke of York separated by several hundred years. However, both dithered and neither went over the top of the hill so historically it’s accurate.

  3. It wasn’t so much SHTETL that held me up as SAILORLY, which I stared at in puzzlement for some time. I’ll add tarry to my list of words like appropriate, flower, row, etc whose meaning changes with pronunciation. I think that gets my COD, with GET CRACKING a close second. Can’t hear cracking now without thinking of this Mitchell & Webb sketch.

    I thought the idea at 1ac was that in Germany a mobile is ein handy and Mobile is an American port?

  4. Re Mobile:

    In German, Handy = mobile phone or mobile. I don’t know if handy = mobile in other European areas, such as the UK. On this side of The Pond, we can’t always keep up with what is going on ‘over there’.

  5. I interpreted the clue as ‘MOR(N=noon)AY’. The ‘always’ bothered me, but there was a ‘?’ at the end. In the New International Webster, there was always = anyhow, as in . Anyhow = in any way whatever; carelessly – thus an anagram operator? MORAY carelessly served at N = MORNAY?
  6. For some reason, some of my comment was not displayed. Following ‘as in’ should be ‘as a last resort one can always work’ (the example given in the New International Webster)
  7. I think the definition here is “sauce for fish”; “ay” = always; at the end of morn = at noon.
  8. This was an entertaining one with a couple of raised eyebrows at SHTETL at 21d – which at least was easily gettable from the cryptic – and SAILORLY at 18d. Is that really a word? How does one achieve an air of sailorlyness? I knew BLUE = waste at 10a from previous TdtT blogs. Trust the Irish to have a blue coloured dog? I did not know that a HANDY is a name for a mobile phone in Germany but I was familiar with Mobile Alabama despite never having been there. Another visit to the University of TftT.

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