Saturday Times 24556 (June 5th)

Author   linxitPosted on Categories Weekend Cryptic
Solving time 17:12, but would have been 5 minutes faster if I hadn’t got stuck on 1A/1D for ages (with no good reason really – they seemed rather obvious once I’d got them but for a while I was stumped). Unusual grid, with the Down clues all of either 7 or 9 letters.

Across
1 WYCLIFFE – CLIFF in WYE. John Wycliffe (1324-84), English religious reformer.
5 STURDY – (answe)R in STUDY.
8 ALL FIRED UP – ALL FIRED (no one’s keeping job) + UP (in revolution).
9 BAPS – B(akery) + SPA reversed.
10 NOISE POLLUTION – NO 1 (top man) + LOPES rev. + (so)LUTION. Very tricky, got the answer from the definition but probably wouldn’t have seen how it worked if I hadn’t had to blog it.
11 TRESSES – DISTRESSES, removing Di’s.
13 GLENCOE – NCO inside GLEE. Scene of the massacre of the MacDonald clan in 1692, hence Death Valley.
15 CAST OFF – double definition.
18 AT WORST – A + TWO + R(e)ST
21 PRINCE CHARMING – P(eople’s) + CHAR (daily) + MING (China), around RICE (food) with N(ote) inside it. More tortuous wordplay that I wouldn’t normally have bothered to work out so precisely.
22 WREN – hidden reversed inside “Crooner wanted”.
23 UNDERSCORE – UNDER SCORE, i.e. less than 20.
24 PLURAL – (Rook up all)*
25 HELPLESS – HELP LESS

Down
1 WHATNOT – double definition.
2 CALLIPERS – CAPERS around I’LL reversed.
3 ICINESS – 1’S around (since)*
4 FAEROES – “fare rose”, a pretty shaky homophone but OK if you say it quickly.
5 SEPTUPLET – SEPT (clan) + UP (at university) + LET. The wordplay’s given in the wrong order to help the surface reading here, so it doesn’t work for me.
6 UMBRIAN – UM + BRAN (refuse) around 1.
7 DIP INTO – D.I. + PINTO
12 EFFECTUAL – (fact feel Useless)*
14 CORTISONE – (is not)* inside CORE
16 APPAREL – APPAL around R.E.
17 THINNER – TH(e) + INNER
18 ACHIEVE – I.E. + V(ery), inside ACHE
19 WORKSOP – WORK (labour) + SOP (concession).
20 TIGRESS – TIRES S(on) around G(allons).

14 comments on “Saturday Times 24556 (June 5th)”

  1. One of the best Saturdays of the year so far. There was a sense of satisfaction in getting just about every answer — with the possible exception of 5dn.
  2. This took me ages. 10ac was the one I mentioned last week which had me stumped at the end, and where I couldn’t see the wordplay for a while even after I’d got the answer. I’m glad to see I wasn’t alone. Brilliant clue. Good puzzle.
  3. Almost exactly the same time as for the previous one – and indeed today’s excellent test – 108 minutes. No aids for the last two, happily.

    Got NOISE POLLUTION quite quickly from the definition (the presence of an unsmooth surface put me on the scent), but stumbled at 11, where I was suckered into DISTRESS for a time, and also 18ac, where I put AT WORSE at firse! Obviously the brain was bubbling over at that point.

    Last in APPAREL and PRINCE CHARMING.

  4. I think the parsing of 5D SEPTUPLET is allowed=LET; to stay=to support (down clue); at university=UP

    A reasonable puzzle of medium difficulty. Like others I got the long across clues from definitions and checkers rather than unravelling the word play. Nothing really stood out – a workman like offering.

  5. I thought that this was pretty average for a Saturday: 45 minutes to solve. I guessed that keriothe’s problem was 10a: it was mine as well, because I had entered WHATSIT at 1d!

    At least WORKSOP is well known to vinyl and kevin! COD to 6d UMBRIAN.

  6. 45 minutes with no aids. Didn’t know SEPT = clan but solved the clue without a problem. Jimbo’s parsing of this one fits with mine, but I don’t really understand 25ac.
    1. To shirk chores is to help less.
      I got Worksop, but only because it had shown up recently enough to have remained in memory; I’d never heard of the place (unlike Glencoe, which I knew of, but not why I knew of it).
      Some time ago I asked about a clue that included “X’s” where I thought “X” would have sufficed, and someone, I forget who, gave me the convincing explanation that reading ‘s as ‘is’ led to a smoother-scanning clue. But does that work here? I would have thought that the s would have to go with sop=concession,hence that “Labour’S” was otiose, hence that “Labour concession…” was necessary. Or am I missing something yet once again?
      1. Re: helpless and Worksop
        Thanks, Kevin. When I looked at this yesterday I overlooked the question mark which makes the difference.

        On WORKSOP, if you take the apostrophe S to mean “has” instead of “is” it makes sense.

        1. In other words, alas, yes, I’m missing something yet again. Thanks for the explanation; may the day come soon when I stop asking dumb questions.
  7. 17:05 for me – my only excuse being that it was the last of the week’s six puzzles done in a batch and exhaustion was setting in.

    My personal view is that anyone who regards GLENCOE or WYCLIFFE as at all obscure is a sad case (but then I expect they’d probably have the same view of me :-).

  8. I got the answer, but I question the clue. ‘Bran’ is not ‘refuse’ in the dictionaries I’ve checked. It is in fact edible, and not generally discarded.

    John in USA.

    1. Good point – I didn’t even check before your comment. Tastes like sawdust to me so I thought it was fair comment!

      The setter obviously uses Chambers, as that meaning doesn’t appear in Collins. Chambers has “the husks of grain sifted from the flour; the coarsest part of the ground husks, formerly prescribed medically, now eaten generally as a health food; the coarser part or refuse of anything.”

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