Saturday Times 24502 (April 3rd)

Author   linxitPosted on Categories Weekend Cryptic
Solving time 14:48. I thought they might have chosen a tougher one for Easter weekend, but no matter. There were some great clues in there, with 23A being the pick of them. The other three 15-letter entries fell quickly though and helped me with some of the trickier clues with their crossing letters. Very smooth surfaces throughout. Going through them again today, I’m surprised I solved it so quickly. I got quite a few from the definition though, only seeing later how the clue worked.

Across
1 JACARANDA – CA in JAR + AND (with) + A
6 DUCAL – C inside DUAL.
9 APPEARANCE MONEY – cracking cryptic definition.
10 SUBITO – SO around U (“you”) and BIT. I remembered enough schoolboy Latin to put this straight in.
11 LINGERIE – LINGER + (t)IE
13 MILEOMETER – M1 (motorway) + MET (police) around LEO (sign) + RE (on) reversed. Excellent surface reading, good clue all round.
14 STUD – double definition, a boss also being a knob or stud in a door.
16 NUTS – STUN reversed.
17 TALETELLER – ETEL (alternate letters of “see they’ll”) inside TALLER (more outlandish).
19 FABULOUS – (usual fob)*
20 SORTED – SOD around RTE (Raidió Teilifís Éireann). I think the “Job done!” meaning might be British-only slang, and it’s not even in the latest Chambers, nor in Collins.
23 STOP ME AND BUY ONE – (pound notes maybe)*. Traditionally shouted by ice-cream sellers or painted on their vans. Brilliantly well hidden anagram. COD for me.
24 OUNCE – (b)OUNCE.
25 TRAVERSAL – RAVE (party) + R(un) inside LAST reversed. I found this one very hard to parse.

Down
1 JEANS – double definition, bit of a giveaway though.
2 CAPABILITY BROWN – (no wily rabbit)* under CAP. Lancelot Brown, 18th century landscape architect, nicknamed “Capability” because he used to tell his clients that their land had great capability for improvement.
3 REACTION – RN (service, i.e. Royal Navy) around EA (each) plus first letters of “Call To Its Operator”. Another one very difficult to parse.
4 NOAH – ON reversed (upset “dealing with”) + A + H(orse). I’ve never questioned this before, but where is horse abbreviated to H? It’s not in Chambers, which offers several other possibilities, although none that would fit the clue’s surface. If it’s the H of HP in horsepower, that’s cheating!
5 ARCHIMEDES – A RES(t) around CHIMED (agreed). Yet another with difficult wordplay, although I got it from the definition and worked it out later.
6 DAMAGE – DAM + AGE
7 CONGRATULATIONS – CON (prisoner) + (to trial as gun)*. I noticed that both down 15-letter entries are “3-letter word” + “anagram of the rest”.
8 LAY READER – READ (take measurement) inside LAYER (table). Great definition, “cloth cover”.
12 DENATURANT – DEN AT U(niversity) + RANT.
13 MANIFESTO – MAN + 1 + (set of)*
15 RESOLUTE – R(eluctantly) + LOSE (stop having) reversed + UTE (Aussie pickup truck). Another great clue.
18 FLAMBÉ – LAMB (food!) inside F(u)E(l). Last time I flambéd something at home I set fire to the kitchen. The flames shot straight up the extractor fan and melted it, so we had molten plastic and soot from the filter falling down onto the other food on the hob. Won’t try that again!
21 DWELL – W(ith) inside DELL (hollow).
22 IDEA – 1 + DEA(d)

15 comments on “Saturday Times 24502 (April 3rd)”

    1. You’re right – I didn’t think of that. In that case we should also see c (colt), f (filly) and g (gelding), but we never do, and none of them are listed in dictionaries.

      However, horse is also slang for heroin, and that is in the abbreviation list for H.

      1. Because drug dealing is illegal there are more than 50 strange slang words and abbreviations for the commonest drugs, particularly cannabis but also cocaine and heroin. To call heroin horse and hence H goes back a long way.
  2. I thought this was a bit more difficult than some Saturday offerings. It came after a number of quite tough puzzles as I recall and didn’t suffer badly in comparison. I never remember to time myself doing these but I think about 30 minutes. There are some excellent surface readings and some tricky parsing. Thank you setter.
  3. Not a Britishism, in fact I think coined in the States but am told used in Britain too. It is a fairly recent business term: such and such job sorted, means completed.
  4. V. helpful blog, as I wasn’t able to parse 3/4 of the clues. Took me a long time, but battled through after getting held up in the SW after putting in portfolio instead of manifesto. LAY READER is very good.
    1. As stated above, h=horse is not in COED or Collins so it’s not the reason for horse => H in Times crosswords. I promise you that you wil never see ‘grey=>G’ or your other examples in the Times puzzle.
      (And you’ll also never see ‘partial abbreviations’ like ‘automobile => A’ from AA=Automobile Association.

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