Saturday Times 24616 (14th August)

Author   linxitPosted on Categories Weekend Cryptic
Solving time 8:55, another very easy Saturday puzzle that had a lot of multi-word answers that went in as soon as reading them. Having said that, there was nothing much wrong with the puzzle. The surface readings were mostly OK, and 1D was a great anagram, but overall there was not enough misdirection to make it much of a challenge to an experienced solver. However, there were quite a few English idioms used, so overseas solvers may have found it a bit trickier.

Across
1 AUGEAN STABLES – AU (gold) + GEANS (trees, another name for the European wild cherry) around STABLE (fixed). Cleaning out the Augean Stables in one day was one of the Labours of Hercules. They were the largest in existence and hadn’t been cleaned for 30 years, but he diverted a couple of rivers through them to complete the task.
9 TRITE – T(ime) inside TRIE(s).
10 ASSURANCE – double definition, one literal and the other by association.
11 END OF STORY – another double definition, the first a slang term.
12 WALL – LAW reversed (about) + L(unch).
14 REGALLY – LAG reversed inside RELY.
16 ARRAIGN – G.I. reversed inside ARRAN (a large island in the Firth of Clyde, not to be confused with the Irish Aran Islands).
17 WINE BAR – WIN (secure) + EAR (attention), around B(ritish).
19 PAVLOVA – PAVLOV + A. Ivan Pavlov was a Russian physiologist who was famous for his research into conditioned reflexes. The meringue, however, is named after the Russian ballet dancer Anna Pavlova.
20 LOOP – LOP around O.
21 ACCUSTOMED – ACCUSED around TO M(ass).
24 EPITOMISE – (I pose time)*
25 AT SEA – double definition, one from the old saying “worse things happen at sea.”
26 REMOTE CONTROL – REMOTE (unapproachable) + CONTROL (sort of freak). Nice clue.

Down
1 AS THE CROW FLIES – (Welsh factories)*. Brilliant anagram.
2 GUILD – (footbal)L inside GUID (e.g. Robert Burns’ spelling of “good”. Funnily enough, Chambers just points you to the entry for gude, another Scottish spelling of the word.
3 ACE OF CLUBS – another double definition, both of them cryptic this time.
4 SWARTHY – SHY around WART.
5 ASSYRIA – AS + S(mall) + AIRY reversed.
6 LARK – double definition, the second again based on an old saying, “to get up with the lark” meaning to rise very early in the morning.
7 SAN MARINO – SO around AN + MARIN(e). A small enclave completely surrounded by Italy, hence no coast.
8 DECLINE AND FALL – LINE (course) after DEC (end of year) + AND (with) + FALL (US name for autumn, hence some earlier months abroad). Evelyn Waugh’s first novel, published in 1928.
13 GRAVY TRAIN – GRAVY (one stock option) + TRAIN (exercise).
15 GONDOLIER – (ignore old)*
18 RECEIPT – R(ar)E + “seat”.
19 POULENC – (couple,N)*. Francis Poulenc (1899-1963), French composer.
22 MISER – MISTER (spelt out in full), without the first letter of Tenderness. Sneaky one.
23 ROAM – RAM around O.

7 comments on “Saturday Times 24616 (14th August)”

  2. Around 45 minutes for me. Not a patch on today’s, a worthy successor to yesterday’s delight. Liked the pair of anagrams at 1, and there was a high nostalgia factor in this one for me, with PAVLOVA, of which my Kiwi mother is the world’s greatest exponent, and POULENC, the third movement of whose double piano concerto my brother gave a memorable rendition of more than 35 years ago.
  3. I only got round to this today. It took me an inexplicably long time: nothing difficult, and it didn’t seem so even as I solved it but everything just took ages. Slow brain obviously. From ulaca’s comment maybe I should leave today’s until tomorrow.
    I wasn’t helped by trying at first to do it online, without the usual aid of a bit of paper to write anagram letters out in a circle: I’d have got 1dn a lot quicker without this handicap.
  4. 35 minutes, so quite easy for me for a Saturday puzzle. Today’s took me 11 minutes to write in my first answer.

Comments are closed.