Saturday Times 24335 (19 Sep)

linxit26th September 2009 at 11:07 AMWeekend Cryptic

Solving time 14:29. Some interesting vocab and general knowledge required in this one, one of those where what you either know or you don’t makes it easier or harder (e.g. 9A, 12A, 14D, 17D, 19A, 26A).

Across
1	TRANSEPT – RAN (organised) + SEPT (harvest festival time), after T(ime).
5	PARSEC – hidden reversed in “PaCES RAPidly”. Yes, I suppose 3.26 light-years is a fair distance. When I first put this in I was thinking of (paces)* round R, and wondering where the R was supposed to come from.
9	UXBRIDGE – U + (o)XBRIDGE. A West London town.
10	COLUMN – CON (do) around LUM (chimney).
12	COLONEL BOGEY – C(old) + O (round) + LONE + (BOG inside LEY (alt. spelling of lea, field)). A military march famous for the “Hitler Has Only Got One Ball” lyrics.
15	AMAIN – A(ce) + MAIN
16	HOLY GRAIL – “wholly” + G + RAIL
18	CIGARILLO – 1 + (A in GRILL), all inside CO.
19	LOESS – 0 in LESS. A “windblown loamy deposit found in river valleys”.
20	SLOW PUNCTURE – cryptic def.
24	INLAND – double definition, “revenue once” as Inland Revenue is now called Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs, and “from the seaside”, meaning “away from the seaside”.
25	AMBIENCE – (be + cinema)*
26	KVETCH – V(ery) inside KETCH. Jack Ketch was a 17th-century hangman under Charles II, whose name was also used for later hangmen to protect their identities. Kvetch is a Yiddish word meaning to complain.
27	IDAHOANS – (a dish on a )*

Down
1	THUD – last letters of “buT witH impromptU afterworD”.
2	AMBO – “AM BO”. An early Christian pulpit, from the Latin. Weakest clue in the puzzle, I reckon.
3	SHIP-OWNER – SHINER around PO (petty officer) + W(ith).
4	PIGEONHOLING – PIGEON (passenger, perhaps – although they became extinct in 1914) + HOLING (sinking, e.g. a putt).
6	A-BOMB – A.B. (sailor) + OB (died, short for Latin obiit) around M(inute).
7	SOUR GRAPES – SO + URGES around RAP
8	CANDYFLOSS – CAN (preserve) + D(ignit)Y + F(ollowing) + LOSS. Can be used to mean something insubstantial or ephemeral.
11	BELL-BOTTOMED – (lob bottle)* + MED
13	MATCHSTICK – double definition. As in a Lowry painting, or check out this one of Hogwarts!
14	KALGOORLIE – (I look regal)*. I’d heard of this place for some reason, maybe as the home of Kevin Bloody Wilson.
17	GALBRAITH – BLAG reversed + RAITH (Raith Rovers, from the Scottish 1st Division). John K. Galbraith, U.S. economist.
21	PANIC – A + N (knight in chess) in PIC hence snapped.
22	INCA – bIoNiC mAn without the odd letters.
23	MESS – double definition. A dog’s breakfast is “anything very untidy or badly done”.

8 comments on “Saturday Times 24335 (19 Sep)”

dorsetjimbo says:

26 September 2009 at 12:06 PM

I think you have a typo at 2D Linxit – should be “AM BO(Y)”? Agree a weakish clue.

The only piece of trivial pursuits knowledge that I lacked was the obscure Oz town so I guessed from checking letters + anagrist and verified result using Google. Got it right on second attempt!

Minor query – should the clue to 27A say “Americans” rather than the singular?

Decent enough puzzle that I enjoyed solving.
1. mctext says:
  
  26 September 2009 at 10:48 PM
  
  Obscure? Hardly. Since we had our discussion on various types of ore the other day, you should surely know this place as a leading source of gold. A very nice town as it happens and a lot more important to world history than, say, Pratt’s Bottom!
lennyco says:

26 September 2009 at 12:53 PM

Entertaining and moderately difficult. Thanks, Linxit for explaining the wordplay for kvetch.Having a Jewish mother-in-law, I had no problem with the definition. Amain was new to me but quite straightforward. I only got loess because it was in last week’s Mephisto. Last in was Ambo. It was the only vaguely familiar possibility from the A?B? combination. If the wordplay is Am bo(y) it is incredibly feeble.

Like Jimbo, I raised and eyebrow at 27 but I think the definition is “American set”.
vinyl1 says:

26 September 2009 at 4:08 PM

…having spent a lot of time last Saturday on it, although I did not wrap it up until Tuesday evening.

Some of the wordplay is very elaborate, and there is some obscure vocabulary as well.

I didn’t think ‘ambo’ was that bad, and ‘kvetch’ and ‘Idahoan’ were quite good. I got the ‘American set’ part of the clue early.

It seems I did not understand the Colonel Bogey clue correctly, and I didn’t follow ‘Galbraith’ at all, popping him in from the literal alone. ‘Matchstick’ was also not very clear to me.

My hobby as a boy was astronomy, so of course I saw ‘parsec’ right away, but I would imagine many solvers did not.
1. Anonymous says:
  
  27 September 2009 at 11:12 AM
  
  I fall squarely into this category and speak for the ones who don’t regularly complete it (Ive only completed 3 without aids this year), but enjoy doing it all the same.
  Had I decided to try the times crossword for the first time and was faced with this, I probably would never have attempted it again, a real beast.
  As an amateur’s amateur, if I am going to get stuff in on wordplay alone, I need a fair def to feel comfortable putting it in. Candyfloss from Worthless I feel is a little on the unfair side (but I understand that the veterans may think differently). Kalgoorlie I felt was a tad unfair (purely for the permutations, if you didnt know the town) because despite having all the checking letters and knowing the anagrist, due to it being an oz town I could have put the remainder in virtually any order and come up with something plausible. Philiososphy dept. of the university of Woolamaloo kept springing to mind. 22ac was brain-hurtingly devilish wordplay too. For 17ac I thought of just about every other scottish footy team bar raith before giving up on that one…galbpartickthistle anyone?
  Like linxit alludes to, knowing the specific general knowledge would decide how much of a nightmare it was. Ambo, lum, ley (alt spelling), pigeon (as passenger), loess, amain, kvetch, galbraith… all new to me and all required aids. This one made me feel like I need Peter’s dunces cap.
  Sorry for the long rant everyone, its just 7d 😉
eldesdichado says:

26 September 2009 at 6:07 PM

@Jimbo – isn’t the def part of 27a “American set” rather than American? so OK in singular. have binned it now, but that’s how I remember solving it.
I found it hard but enjoyable and actually finished it.

Strangely enough, I printed this out from the site this morning and did it as though it were today’s, so I must have been out last Sat and missed it.
Thanks to the thread below, I now realise I can print today’s real one and do that too. Goody!
mctext says:

26 September 2009 at 11:03 PM

Enjoyed this after the easier puzzle the week before. Got stuck on AMBO — the Australian word for a paramedic, BTW. And justified it as (I) AM BO(y), such that the “brief” indicator chops off both ends. But, on reflection, I guess it’s a bit lame. As one of the world’s few remaining smokers (we’re a dying race), I liked the double “smoke”s in 10ac and 18ac. COW to 11dn for the neatly misleading “flares”.
kevingregg says:

27 September 2009 at 4:05 AM

22d ‘Old person in race’–Are there no Incas today? Mexico certainly has quite a few Mayans.

Re ‘kvetch’: I’d be curious to know to what extent UK Yiddish usage differs from US usage. I remember the (young) Sydney concierge who hadn’t a clue what I meant by ‘schlep’ on the one hand, while on the other, we in the States don’t use ‘schtum’.

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