Saturday Times 24251 (Jun 13)

Author   linxitPosted on Categories Weekend Cryptic
Solving time 14:38 – back to normal fare again after the brilliant D-Day puzzle. Nothing too striking about this one at all, and going through it again now I can’t see why it took me so long.

Across
1 MAKE TRACKS – double definition
6 INCA – IN + C(olumbi)A.
8 RECREANT – R.E. (Religious Education) inside RECANT. Not a meaning I was familiar with.
9 OSCARS – O + SCAR + S(tar).
10 HEED – HE(lp)ED
11 AMALGAMATE – MATE next to (Malaga)*.
12 ASSAULTER – (as a result)*.
14 HOVER – (matc)H + OVER
17 TIE UP – E.U. inside TIP
19 FORAGE CAP – RAGE,CA inside FOP.
22 FOR EXAMPLE – EL PROF reversed around EXAM. Sneaky to have a common bit of wordplay as the definition. Good clue.
23 FLUE – sounds like “flu”.
24 DIVEST – S(how’s) + T(acky) next to DIVE.
25 TOILSOME – OILS inside TOME.
26 BEAT – BET around A.
27 ALL THE BEST – double definition.

Down
1 MARCH PAST – ARCH PA’S inside MT.
2 KICKERS – K(n)ICKERS.
3 READABLE – RE ALE around DAB.
4 COTTAGE HOSPITAL – (A, glitc, osteopath)*.
5 SPONGE – double definition, the first as a slang word for a heavy drinker.
6 INCOMMODE – INCOM(e) + MODE.
7 CURETTE – (cut tree)*. A spoon-shaped instrument for scraping away diseased tissue. Not a word I’d come across before.
13 AMUSEMENT – AM, MEN around USE, + T(ime).
15 REPRESENT – R(egina) + E(nglish) + PRESENT.
16 MADE DISH – (D + IDE rev) inside MASH. Chambers defines this as “a dish composed of various ingredients, often recooked”. I’d never heard of the phrase before, and was only convinced when I’d worked out the wordplay. Last one to go in.
18 IDOLISE – (doilies)*.
20 CALZONE – CAL(ifornia) ZONE. A folded over pizza.
21 MANTRA – hidden in “GerMAN TRAnslation”.

10 comments on “Saturday Times 24251 (Jun 13)”

  1. I had a very similar experience. CURETTE, MADE DISH and CALZONE were new words to me but all easily solvable from the clues. One really good clue at 22A FOR EXAMPLE. It would have been expecting too much for this to match the previous week but I found it disappointing. Now today they put up a puzzle we did a few days ago (thought I was going barmy when I started to read it on screen). I suppose I’ll have to go and buy the paper.
    1. Well worth doing so. It took me longer than the previous week’s today, although I did sit down in a noisy pub to solve it.
  2. This would have been my first Times puzzle 100% solved solo, but I got MADE DISH wrong. I put SATE DISH for some reason
    oh well , back to drawing board.
  3. This is the sort of puzzle I simply dread in the Championship, with one clue (20D) which I was uncertain about – I’m very weak on “foodie” words generally. As dorsetjimbo says, the answer was easy to guess, but if you’re not completely sure of it and you follow the rule “don’t put in words you haven’t heard of except as an absolute last resort”, then you worry that you may be missing something obvious.

    In the end I stopped the clock between 29 and 30 minutes with no better guess than CALZONE, but it brought back horrible memories of other competitors finishing (and, in the old days, walking out) while I was still struggling.

    In retrospect, I’m pretty sure I must have come across the word before but forgotten all about it.

  4. the answer to 8 across i think is recusant,one who recants on his teachings
    1. You weren’t the only one to fall into that trap, but there are two problems with your theory:

      1. The clue – “Apostate’s to renounce former belief about religious teaching” – would require “religious teaching” to indicate US. Also, apostate and recusant aren’t really synonymous. One’s abandoned his religion, the other is refusing to have a new one thrust upon him.

      2. The solution as given in the Times was indeed RECREANT.

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