Saturday Times 24430 (9th Jan)

Author   linxitPosted on Categories Weekend Cryptic
Solving time 12:19, so a few seconds slower than the previous week for a puzzle everybody else thought was a doddle. Oh well. Surprising, as there was quite a lot of literature in this puzzle, some of it a little bit obscure.

Across
1 ILL-USAGE – (1, seagull)*
5 SLACKS – S(on) + LACKS
10 CONSCIENCE MONEY – (innocence comes)* + (da)Y
11 STAGNATION – NATION after STAG. Pretty obvious split.
13 LIVY – L,I,V (numbers of Romans) + Y. Titus Livius, Roman historian. I vaguely remember having to translate some passages of his for Latin O-Level, although we mainly studied Tacitus and Virgil.
15 ROAD HOG – ROAD (way) + HO(me) + G(ood). Mr Toad nearly always puts in an appearance in clues to this word.
17 THOREAU – THO’ + (thi)R(sty) + EAU. Henry David Thoreau, American author of Walden, which was subtitled Life in the Woods.
18 GLEANER – (Dinin)G + LEANER.
19 CRESTED – double definition.
21 RAFT – R + AFT
22 BIMETALLIC – (limit cable)*
25 NATIONAL LOTTERY – OTTER inside NATIONALLY.
27 EMBLEM – M.B. inside MELE(e) reversed.
28 UTTEREST – double definition, the second as “thou utterest”

Down
1 INCISOR – “inn-sizer”. A bit contrived, but nothing wrong with the homophone.
2 LEN – (g)LEN or LEN(t), take your pick.
3 SECOND-HAND – double definition.
4 GUEST – GUST around E(uropean).
6 LIMP – I’M inside L.P.
7 CONTINENTAL – double definition, similar to that of 19A, where you’re given a word it can go in front of as an adjective as one of the definitions.
8 SAYS YOU – SAY (authority) + S(ketch)Y + O.U. (the Open University)
9 ACROSTIC – “a cross, tick”. The precursor of the crossword.
12 A TALE OF A TUB(e) – not as well known as Gulliver’s Travels, but apparently it’s another brilliant satire. I’ve got a copy, but haven’t got round to reading it yet.
14 FORECASTLE – FORECAST + L (pound) + E(vening).
16 GERMINAL – TERMINAL with the T swapped for a G. An 1885 novel by Émile Zola.
18 GIRONDE – (ignored)*. French department that Bordeaux is in.
20 DECRYPT – CRY inside DEPT.
23 ECLAT – alternate letters of “Herculean” + T(ask)”.
24 TOME – TO ME
26 EVE – EVE(r).

6 comments on “Saturday Times 24430 (9th Jan)”

  1. I was one who found this very easy. I had such success with the across clues (reading them and writing in the answer) that I tried for a consecutive solve (start at 1A and finish with 26D solving each clue in order) but failed at 28A – and kicked myself once I did get it from the checkers. Less than 15 minutes to solve and would have been faster if I hadn’t tried that stunt.

    I had to look the literary references up after the event but got them all from wordplay alone (THOREAU, who I vaguely knew of) or wordplay plus checkers for the others. There’s some real old chestnuts in this puzzle (Mr Toad, say)and most of it required no real hard analysis. It started a week of really rather mild offerings so we are due a toughie!!

  2. This went in very easily with only Utterest requiring much pause for thought. Linxit has a good point though about the amount of literature in this puzzle. I suppose, for the majority of solvers, literature GK comes to mind more easily than any other.
  3. This is the one from 9th Jan, yes?
    On further investigation (rooting through the recycling bin) I find I put steepest not utterest, for 28ac, bummer. The only upside of taking as long as I do to solve these crosswords is that I seldom get errors, which serves to make them all the more annoying when they do happen 🙂
  4. ‘Swift story (1,4,2,1,3)’ would make a pretty easy non-cryptic xword clue, which is how I solved it, without thinking about the wordplay following. Similarly, a few weeks ago there was ‘Byron work yatta yatta (3,4)’. Granted, there are those who don’t know of this work (I’ve never read it, mind), just as I can’t name the heavy metals. But if you can, and if there’s only one 6-letter heavy metal, wouldn’t you be disappointed with a clue that read ‘Heavy metal yatta yatta (6)’?
  5. I also had STEEPEST for 28ac, being unsure of the wordplay but eventually deciding it meant “Most” = STEEPEST (steep as in expensive), “extreme” = STEEP, and “you say” indicating the EST suffix, as in the old second person inflection. UTTEREST definitely a better fit!

    I’m not 100% sure on 8dn — my reading is that the definition is “Incredible!” (but this doesn’t really mean SAYS YOU, does it?), “Authority” is SAY (as in, to have a say in the matter), “extremely sketchy” = SY and “university” = OU. A friend of mine read it with “authority” being “SAY SO” but then it’s unclear how where putting the Y inside is clued.

    A TALE OF A TUB was easy for me even without knowing it was a work by Swift (in fact I got it from the wordplay even before I spotted that “Swift” indicated a person rather than being an adjective).

    10ac was a good anagram and

  6. Oops, didn’t finish the last sentence!

    10ac was a good anagram and I really liked the homophones at 1dn and 9dn.

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