Saturday Times 24215 (2nd May)

Author   linxitPosted on Categories Weekend Cryptic
Solving time 19:30. I don’t think it was really any harder than the previous week’s, so the extra five minutes or so on the time will have to go down to sluggish thinking on my part. I almost had to ask someone to explain how 16D worked, but figured it out for myself as I was writing.

Across
1 HARDTOP – TOP after HARD. A car with a rigid roof, so most cars then.
5 STEPSON – STEPS ON
9 BOSSA NOVA – BOSS + A + NOVA
10 QUIET – QUIT around (jun)E
11 INK-JET PRINTER – (rip in tent jerk)*
13 CREOSOTE – (h)O(u)S(t)O(n) inside CRETE.
15 PICNIC – “pick” (cream) + “nick” (jug, slang for prison).
17 WEBCAM – W(omen’s) + B(ritish) inside MACE reversed. Two bits of computer equipment in one puzzle, should have been right up my street, but this was the last one to go in. For ages I wanted it to be the name of a film director.
19 THRESHER – SH (ref 10A, QUIET) inside THREE (two’s company, three’s a crowd) + R(un).
22 RAG-AND-BONE MEN – (brand name g one)*
25 ICING – “I sing”
26 APHRODITE – 1 in (the Prado)*. Shame they don’t have a statue of Aphrodite there, that would have made it a brilliant clue!
27 RE-ENTRY – RE + ENTRY
28 NOSEGAY – Y(ou) + AGE + SON all reversed.

Down
1 HOBO – hidden in “wHO BOrrows”.
2 RESPITE – R.E. (Royal Engineers) + SPITE.
3 TRACK – THE RACK minus HE
4 PROPERTY – double definition
5 SNAPPY – NAP inside SPY. Good surface reference to The Wind in the Willows.
6 EXQUISITE – QUI (Parisian who) inside EX-SITE (place no longer).
7 SMITTEN – TIM in NETS (a cricket practice session), all reversed.
8 NATURE CURE – (care untrue)*
12 ECO-WARRIOR – (race row)* + 1 + O.R.
14 STAG NIGHT – cryptic definition.
16 CHIN-CHIN – CHIN(a) twice, Cockney rhyming slang, china plate = mate.
18 BIG-TIME – EMIT GIB (the Rock of Gibraltar) reversed.
20 HANGING – double definition, the second a definition by example, hence the ‘?’
21 ABBACY – (a cabby)*
23 MOONS – O(ctober) inside MONS (a WW1 battle in 1914)
24 SEXY – EX inside S(auc)Y

8 comments on “Saturday Times 24215 (2nd May)”

  1. Another rather bland Saturday puzzle with some missed opportunities for rather better clues.

    For example RAG AND BONE MEN are “totters” so surely scope for something misleading. But “junk men” in 3-3-4,3? Hardly difficult. Getting INK JET PRINTER into the grid – good. Cluing as “peripheral” plus a meaningless phrase containing “j” and “k” followed by “clumsy”, yawn, yawn.

    The Times deliberately separates out its Saturday Prize Puzzle but seems to make little effort to then produce a produce a puzzle worthy of the accolade.

    1. I wonder if this crop of Saturday makeweights is the ones not quite good enough as qualifiers or for Cheltenham?
      1. Although this is probably the longest run of average crosswords to appear on a Saturday (today’s continued the streak too) since I started blogging them a couple of years ago, I’d also say that I’ve been lucky enough to get to write about some real classics over that time too – a few of them at least as good as last Monday’s for example. I don’t know what’s going on lately – maybe somebody complained that the prize puzzles were getting too hard? I certainly hope not.

        Looking back at the Memories page, I see last November I was talking about the latest in a long series of brilliant Saturday puzzles. The one on 4th April was also right up there, but since then they’ve been pretty humdrum.

  2. During the week I usually struggle to get more than about 10 clues out but I managed to finish this starting at around 10 and finishing at around 4 with large gaps doing over things -probably around 90 minutes actually working. I know that is slow but I’m a novice. What has occured to me-and I suppose it is obvious-time is the enemy and, more importantly, the hard bit is getting started. Once I got about 3/4 of the way through, it became easier as I had so many checking letters. Usually I’m struggling because I only have one or none.
  3. 20:39, with the last 5 minutes spent on 17ac (WEBCAM), which I too was expecting to be a director.

    Shouldn’t “rock” have a capital if it’s to refer to Gibraltar (18dn BIG-TIME)?  The clue could easily have started with “Rock climbing”.

    Clues of the Day: 1dn (HOBO), 5dn (SNAPPY).

    1. I guess the rock should really have been capitalised, but as “The Rock” uses a standard meaning of “rock”, this is surely not as bad as using “mark” when you mean the name “Mark”.
  4. All pretty straightforward except for my completely wrong LOI at 17a. I just could not think of a WEBCAM being a film-maker so I invented my very own Eastern European one: WIBBAT. Women’s club = WI BAT and British B is inserted. It doesn’t take in to account “about” AND “to admit” – either one could be containment indicators – but the presence of both had to mean a reversal too. I withdraw my case.

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