Saturday Times 24634 (September 4th)

Solving time 22:18, so a bit tougher than most recent puzzles. It took me about 3 minutes at the end just to get 24D, as I couldn’t think of anything other than ALOFT, which didn’t quite fit the clue. In the end a trawl through the alphabet quickly brought the correct solution to mind. I also struggled with 14D (never heard the expression) and 9D (couldn’t see anything that fit for a while). As last week, I started looking for a pangram when X and Z went in quite early on, but this time it came up short of a J and a Q.

Across
1 HIBS – alternate letters of tHeIr BuS. Nickname of Scottish football team Hibernian.
3 EMERY PAPER – (prepare my E)*.
10 GLAMORGAN – GLAM ORGAN. The only Welsh team in cricket’s County Championship. Quite a strong cricket them to this puzzle, with two other related answers (5D and 19D).
11 EMPTY – cryptic definition.
12 WARSHIP – WASH 1P around R(oyal).
13 PEEKED – “peaked”.
15 YOU’VE GOT ME THERE – not really a double definition, more a definition with possible alternative interpretation.
18 ARCHIMEDES SCREW – M(inute) in ARCHIE + (cress)* in DEW. A device for raising water, often used for draining mines. Shame the surface reading is a bit nonsensical.
21 CONFAB – CON + FAB. Definition “jaw” as a verb.
23 SMETANA – MET (the Metropolitan Opera House in New York City) in SAN (hospital) + A. Bedrich Smetana (1824-84), Czech composer.
26 ARGUE – AGUE (fit) around (fo)R.
27 STROMBOLI – MO reversed inside (Bristol)*. Italian volcano that last erupted on April 13th 2009.
28 AIDE-DE-CAMP – (v)AI(n) + CEDED reversed + A M.P.
29 STAG – ST + A(nswer) + G(ood), &lit definition for a bridegroom-to-be, which doesn’t really fit the answer.

Down
1 HIGHWAYMAN – (W, H, I may hang)*, the W and H from W(ith) and H(orse).
2 BY AIR – first letters of Both Yachts Active In Regatta.
4 MEGAPHONE – MAP (chart) + HONE (tune) around E.G.
5 RUN-UP – RUN (series) + UP (in buoyant mood).
6 PRETEXT – RE (what comes before “Me” in the tonic sol-fa – Do-re-me etc.) inside P (quiet) TEXT (message). The definition is just “Excuse” as a noun.
7 PUPPETEER – PEER around UP + PET (i.e. a term of endearment like “Ducks”).
8 RAYS – “raise”. I like “out of one’s trap” as a homophone indicator.
9 SOPHIE – SOP (gift) + HIE (press on).
14 GET WEAVING – GET + (win gave)*. Same meaning as “get cracking”, not one I was familiar with though.
16 UNCLOGGED – N (knight in chess notation) inside UC (upper case, hence capitals) + LOGGED (entered).
17 MAELSTROM – MAESTRO around L(ake) + M(edium).
19 INFIELD – INFIDEL wit the D moved to the bottom.
20 STEAMY – TEA inside S(econds) + MY!
22 BASIC – B.C. around ASI(a).
24 AFOOT – A(rm) + FOOT. Seems obvious now, but it took ages to work out last week.
25 ZARA – Z + A R.A.

15 comments on “Saturday Times 24634 (September 4th)”

  1. I read 1A and groaned – surely not another easy one. I read 3A and thought either “spin” or “doctors” is padding. But it got better after that. In the end a reasonably testing puzzle, although helped in that regard I suspect by coming after a run of rather easy ones. Definitely a two cup of coffee puzzle so say 25 pleasurable minutes.
  2. I sruggled horribly with this, eventually finishing with ARCHIMEDES…. and AFOOT in about six hours, on and off!!

    COD to AFOOT, I think, as ALOFT was a definite possibility. Thank goodness today’s was less involved and much more manageable!

  3. Curiously, AFOOT was last in for me.. hard to see why, looking at it now.

    Please can folks not comment on today’s crossword, thanks.

  4. Unlike today’s, this one was very hard for me, with one wrong (‘aloft’ for AFOOT), one entered without much idea of the wordplay (WARSHIP) and a whopping eight (10 & 27 ac and 7, 9, 16, 17, 19 & 25 dn) requiring recourse to aids. This time the compulsory cricketing clues I managed to misfield were GLAMORGAN (very nice) and INFIELD.
  5. I thought this was a Baseball clue: baseball diamond and infield – I am blanking on a song about I’m ……the infield” Dont know enough about it to give you a proper explanation. Also ended with ALOFT
  6. 17:00, with two mistaken guesses: STEAMO for STEAMY (20dn), where I’d parsed the clue wrongly, and ALOFT for AFOOT (24dn).  Unknowns: HIBS (1ac), GET WEAVING (14dn).  Unfamiliar: ARCHIMEDES SCREW (18ac, not recognized by Chambers or the Concise), SMETANA (23ac).

    A gem-studded puzzle, this, which in combination with a relaxed attitude to cryptic grammar leads me to suspect Anax.

    Clues of the Day: 21ac (CONFAB), 8dn (RAYS), and 9dn (SOPHIE), plus a special mention for certain aspects of 27ac (STROMBOLI), 29ac (STAG), and 4dn (MEGAPHONE).

  7. I found this really difficult. It took me a few sessions on Saturday to get all but two and then I eventually gave up on Sunday and cheated to get SMETANA and AFOOT.
    In each case I was undone by a particular idée fixe: ENO for “opera” in 23ac (I’ve never heard of Smetana and Saenona seemed just as likely for a long time) and ALOFT for 24dn, which I just couldn’t get out of my head even though I knew it wasn’t right.
    A very good challenging puzzle.
    Been out and/or busy all day so now looking forward to a glass of wine and today’s.
    1. Once again I’m glad I’m not alone. I spent two hours on it and still had two unsolved (1dn, 11ac) so I cheated. Even after that I had five or six unexplained so I would have had extreme difficulty blogging the puzzle. This week’s took me a little over an hour, but at least I understood it all.
  8. I had this too and justified it (wrongly!) by thinking that if you bottom a ball when striking it (with foot, bat or club, say) you will loft it. Must be the new medication!
    1. Can’t remember a time for the puzzle, but I’m 99% sure I had ALOFT for the same reason.
  9. I found this fairly difficult and very satisfying, but discovered when looking up the solution that I had one mistake: ABOUT rather than AFOOT for 24, and this does seem to fit the wordplay (well, almost), as an &lit clue, with AB being “Head on a(rm), b(ottom)” and “in the air” serving double duty as the definition of OUT and ABOUT. But then I guess it would have had to be “heads” rather than “head”.
  10. I submit that, at least here in the States, Lara is a better answer for 25 than Zara. “Girl’s last letter” is “L’ followed by “ara” (a drawer). I’ve known girls named Lara, but never heard of a Zara. I also had “aloft” for 24, but I see that “afoot” is indeed a better answer. Finally, I missed 21 (I had hobnob instead of confab) – because I had no idea what 19 was supposed to be – I don’t think of the infield as being “close to” (near) the batsman in baseball, maybe so in cricket. In baseball, several other people and things are closer to the batter than the infield (the catcher, the umpire, home plate, the mound, the pitcher).
  11. Found this very hard, not helped by having DONATE for 9dn (it could be: gift as a verb, on in date, although it is arguably the wrong way round and anyway a date doesn’t have to be a girl. But with The Times’s attitude to d by e I reckoned it was possible).

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