Saturday Times 24209 (25 April)

Author   linxitPosted on Categories Weekend Cryptic
Solving time 13:04, another in an increasingly long string of fairly easy Saturday puzzles (today’s took a bit longer, but that was me being dim rather than puzzle being any tougher).
A fair bit of literary knowledge required to fully understand some of the wordplay, but I don’t think that not knowing the name of a character from Iolanthe, for example, made the puzzle any harder.

Across
1 BONDI BEACH – BOND + 1 + “beech”
6 PAIL – 1 in LAP reversed, &lit.
10 RETRO – RETRO(d)
11 ILL-WISHER – HER (that woman) after WILLIS with the W moved. Private Willis is a character in Gilbert & Sullivan’s Iolanthe.
12 TRISTRAM SHANDY – MS, HAND inside (artistry)*. 18th c. comic novel by Laurence Sterne.
14 OIL DRUM – I inside OLD RUM.
15 AUGUSTA – AUGUST + A. Lady Bracknell (Aunt Augusta to Ernest in the end) is the fearsome old woman in Oscar Wilde’s play The Importance of Being Earnest.
17 FLYOVER – double definition, one for the two-word phrase.
19 TWO-TIME – TWO-TIME(s). The two-times table is the simplest of all for nursery-school kids.
20 SECOND THOUGHTS – SECOND + THOUGH + T(actles)S
23 ANTIKNOCK – (tank I conk)*. Another &lit.
24 ASIDE – S(ection) inside AIDE.
25 ECHT – C(ounterfeit) inside THE reversed. I suppose this might have been tricky for those who don’t know any German, but with the wordplay and checking letters it can’t really be anything else.
26 GEOTHERMAL – (Gather mole)*

Down
1 BURN – (flou)R inside BUN.
2 NATURALLY – (aunt)* + RALLY
3 IGOR STRAVINSKY – (gravity risks no)*.
4 EPIGRAM – PI inside MARGE reversed. Makes a change from the usual clue for this involving English farm animals!
5 COLUMBA – COLUM(n) + B(ook) + A. St. Columba was a 6th century Irish missionary monk.
7 ASHEN – ASHE + N. Arthur Ashe won Wimbledon in 1975, just before Bjorn Borg’s run of victories.
8 LARDY CAKES – LA + R (The French Resistance), CA (about) inside DYKES (levees). Great clue for one of my favourite childhood treats.
9 WITH A GOOD GRACE – cryptic definition, but surrounding the actual meaning of the phrase (amiably).
13 CONFISCATE – CON (study) + (cafe, its)*
16 SHINTOISM – SH (peace, as in “Be quiet”) + INTO (fascinated by) + ISM.
18 RAT-HOLE – A(ler)T, H(ospital) inside ROLE.
19 TOOLKIT – L inside TOOK I.T. Doesn’t work for me, “computer equipment” for I.T., which as far as I know has never meant the actual items of hardware.
21 CATCH – double definition.
22 TEAL – (s)TEAL

21 comments on “Saturday Times 24209 (25 April)”

  1. It’s funny how these Saturday puzzles go in runs and we are in a sequence of rather bland affairs. As you say this one was unremarkable. I hadn’t realised that Arthur Ashe had died and thought for a time that we had another rule breaker.

    I agree with you on IT. I have always used it to describe the arcane art or the usually unhelpful corporate department that practised it. The equipment was always “hardware” or “kit”.

    1. Quick trawl of online definitions of toolkit agres with you both – seems to define software.
  2. Another tedious Saturday offering with the last in being Shintoism. Otherwise, I was pleased not to be taken-in by Marge Simpson as I have, in the past, been fooled by references to her and to her husband. My only quibble, as noted above, is that that “computer equipment” does not define IT.

    It’s good to see the ill-fated Arthur Ashe being remembered in crosswords. This is the second time I have come across him this week.

  3. 8:26.  Nothing to write home about.  23ac (ANTIKNOCK) is another botched partial &lit.  2dn (NATURALLY, defined without a question mark as “without medicine”) relies on borrowing the sense of “recover” from the wordplay.

    Clues of the Day: none.

    1. I’m not sure I agree on 2dn. To treat someone NATURALLY is to do so without medicine; it’s not obligatory that they recover.
      1. Yes, to treat someone naturally may be to do so without medicine.  But you’ve only gained the medical context here from the wordplay.  Forget about the rest of the clue, and consider whether “without medicine” works as a definition for NATURALLY without some kind of perhaps-indicator.
        1. It does for me – NATURALLY meaning, without artificial aids. It could apply equally well to any number of circumstances.
          1. Ah, OK – it seems we differ on the acceptability of false generalization.
            1. What false generalization? This is an exact replacement of one synonym for another.
              1. To do something NATURALLY is to do it without artifice, and vice versa, so that would be a case of synonymy.  But while to do something NATURALLY must be to do something without medicine, to do something without medicine is not necessarily to do something NATURALLY: doing something without medicine is one specific way of doing something NATURALLY.  In this respect, NATURALLY stands to “without medicine” roughly as TREE stands to “oak”.  So to define NATURALLY as “without medicine” is to indulge in false generalization.
                1. Is this supposed to make sense on your world? If it’s a synonym one way round, it is still a synonym the other way round.
                  1. I never said that NATURALLY and “without medicine” were synonymous either way round!

                    To punch someone is to be violent: you can’t punch someone without being violent.  Punching someone is one specific way of being violent.  But to be violent isn’t necessarily to punch someone: you can be violent without punching someone.  So “punch someone” and “be violent” aren’t synonyms.

                    You could clue PUNCH SOMEONE using the definition “be violent”, much as you can clue OAK using the definition “tree”.  But to clue BE VIOLENT using the definition “punch someone” would be to indulge in false generalization, much as to clue TREE using the definition “oak” would be.  In both cases, the false generalization would be avoided by adding a perhaps-indicator like “perhaps” or “?”.

  5. I managed to get GAIN for this. The NAG is a river in India. Reverse this and add “I”.

    I am only a novice, but this seems reasonable (except that it does not fit with the 8D clue)>

    1. The clue was “Take water back holding one?”

      So you’re saying that the definition is “take”, and the wordplay is “put I inside the reverse of an obscure Indian river that doesn’t even warrant a page of its own on Wikipedia”.

      There are a few problems with this:
      1. It’s an English puzzle, so the only Indian rivers likely to appear are major ones such as the Indus or Ganges – INDUS frequently appears in clues for INDUSTRY, for example.
      2. “water” would be a pretty loose definition even for a major river used in wordplay like this.
      3. Why the question mark at the end?
      4. As you said, it doesn’t fit with 8D!

      The main point though (and I’m guessing that this is what you did), is that if you think of an answer from the definition, but have to crowbar some very obscure wordplay in to justify it, you’re probably on the wrong track.

      1. Thank you, I appreciate your input. However, I am still not sure of the meaning of “Pail”. I thought it was a container? Is “Take” the direct definition?

        Literary?

        1. No, the whole clue is the definition. “&lit” is short for “and literally”, a type of cryptic clue which can be brilliant when it’s done well, or pretty lame if it’s not.

          A pail is a bucket, so you might well take water back holding one. For the wordplay you’ve also got LAP (take water, as in lap it up) reversed around I (one).

          1. Thank you, much appreciated. I was not aware of this type of clue (is it also termed a “cryptic” clue, or is that different)?
            1. I assume you’re thinking of a “cryptic definition” (all the clues are cryptic). No, that’s a different type of clue, where the clue has no wordplay and appears to be a straight definition of a word or phrase, but maybe not the one you’d initially think of.

              e.g. from Rufus in the Guardian on Monday, one clue was “The rest of the afternoon”, the answer being SIESTA. Another was “Equipment used in the services” for TENNIS RACKET. Those are cryptic definitions, relying on alternative meanings of the words “rest” and “services” to mislead.

              1. Yes, I did mean the “cryptic definition”, and thanks for the examples.

                I can see that I need to make sure I have a better appreciation of the many types of clue. I do have the recent book by Tim Moorey, and it is an excellent read.

                Indeed, for novices such as myself, the hidden clue is a welcome find!

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