Saturday Times 24227 (May 16)

Author   linxitPosted on Categories Weekend Cryptic
Forgot to record a time for this one, but I think it was around 15 mins. Sorry it’s a bit brief, but I’m rushing to fit it in again.

Across
1 LIGAMENT – GAME in LINT
5 CHAIRS – C + HAIRS
9 PEA-GREEN – AGREE in PEN
10 BUNION – B + UNION
12 BILL OF RIGHTS – BILL + FRIGHT inside SO rev.
15 ICHOR – I + “core”
16 WOOD STOVE – (Vowed soot)*
18 ANTISERUM – (meat ruins)*
19 AVAIL – “A veil”
20 TORCHBEARERS – O.R. inside (Barchester)*
24 UNCORK – UNCO + R(is)K
25 SCHEDULE – “shed Yule”
26 HALTER – H + ALTER
27 ANGLESEY – ANGLE + YES rev.

Down
1 LAPP – LAP above P
2 GOAD – GO + AD
3 MARDI GRAS – RAM rev. + DIG + RoAdS
4 NEEDLEWORKER – NEED + (WORK in LEER)
6 HOURI – H(on)OUR + 1
7 IRISHWOMAN – (who is)* + M, all in IRAN
8 SINISTERLY – IN inside SISTERLY
11 AFRO-AMERICAN – A + F + ROAMER + 1 + CAN
13 MIDAS TOUCH – (said to)* in MUCH
14 RHETORICAL – (Hire actor)* + L
17 STAIRWELL – 1 in STAR + WELL
21 HORSE – “hoarse”
22 WUSS – first letters of Welcome Upon Stone Step
23 DEFY – Y + FED all reversed.

13 comments on “Saturday Times 24227 (May 16)”

  1. 23d Unknown agents rising to challenge. FED = agents? Not agent? Am I misinterpreting?
  2. Ditto the FED, which doesn’t seem right at all. I’m also struggling with “Space flight” as a definition for STARIWELL. Shurely “Space for flight” or “Flight space”?

    On the other hand, 6d HOURI is a cracker – that “lost on” is beautifully done. Likewise 1d LAPP – terrific clue.

    25a took me ages to get – living in N.America for a long time I’ve become a confirmed skeduler, which rather screws the pooch for the homophone here.

  3. FED – correct, my slip (a typo). Strange thing about keyboards – they lead to errors you wouldn’t make when writing by hand. I’ve lost count of the number of times “better than” appears as “better that”, or “email” becomes “emial”. Lack of experienced typist’s fingers, pure carelessness? Probably a combination of both, for which I apologise.

    Just to clarify STAIRWELL (like you sotira – I typed that first as STARIWELL, my fingers deciding to do their own thing) the def is “space flight takes”.

    1. Thank you. And yes, of course that’s the definition for 17d. When in doubt I usually suspect latent imbecility on my part and am proved right with gratifying, if alarming, frequency.

      But how clever of me to make your point by mistyping STAIRWELL! Sometimes I amaze myself.

  4. 43 minutes with one wrong at 5ac where I could only think of CHAINS. It was my last in and I should have paid more attention to the wordplay.

    PEA GREEN = Beautiful colour? The only explanation I can think of for this is in the context of The Owl and the Pussycat which seems a bit of a leap without something else in the clue to nudge one in that direction. But maybe I’m missing something?

    1. Thank you! I was puzzled about the beautiful but I am sure you are right.
  5. Another in a lengthening line of pleasant but essentially very easy Saturday puzzles. Yesterday’s is much the same. Surely it can’t be beyond the editor to have puzzles like this one during the week and puzzles like Friday’s appearing on Saturday?
    1. perhaps there is a reason for having easier saturday crosswords – the demographic of the readership, the increased number of new triers, who knows? I suspect there has been an amount of thought gone into it, but maybe i am wrong
      1. One loses track of time but I think about three months ago we had a number of cracking Saturday puzzles on the trot before entering the current doldrums. The present editor isn’t my favourite person for a variety of reasons, one of which is his apparent inability to manage this sort of thing. I assume he does the puzzles before passing them for publication in which case he surely can work out that Friday’s superb puzzle is going to cause great difficulty for those doing it on the train or bus without recourse to references to check obscure entries whilst today’s can be finished over toast and before finishing the coffee.
        1. And more importantly the editor didn’t pick up the Setter’s self-confessed typo before passing it for publication. There’s another one in today’s ST at 16d unless I’m very much mistaken. Different crossword editor, I know, but the same principle applies. If no-one is checking these things then it might not be long before we cease to have faith in the integrity of the clues.
        2. “Inability to manage” assumes that you know what he’s aiming at. I don’t think the current xwd editor aims for every Saturday puzzle to be difficult. I also didn’t think yesterday’s Saturday puzzle was particularly easy (13:45 here I think). Today’s ST puzzle is, as jackkt says, not under the same control.
  6. I did notice the typo at 23d where agents should have been agent. I also spotted the reference to the Beautiful Pea-Green Boat at 9a. I thought this was fun – yes maybe on the easy side. I’m not letting a small typo detract from an enjoyable puzzle. Having said it was enjoyable – there was one exception to that. My LOI was CHAINS at 5a which I could not parse. Not surprising as the correct answer is CHAIRS, where caught = C and fuzz = HAIRS. My own hair is now far to short or absent to be fuzzy. The definition “Prison killers” – the electric variety of course – is too gruesome a subject matter for my liking.

Comments are closed.