Saturday Times 24712 (4th Dec)

Author   linxitPosted on Categories Weekend Cryptic
Quite tricky, around 20 minutes I think, solved in a couple of sessions as I was interrupted half-way through. Three of the perimeter entries went in quickly, but 10D took longer as I thought the first word would end in -ING. Some tricky wordplay in places, but I think I’ve got all of it except for a question mark against one of the elements of 19D.

Across
1 WALLPAPERING – W(ith) + ALL (utterly) + PAP (worthless material) + E(mporium) + RING (surround).
8 RHOMBIC – M.B. inside (choir)*.
9 TAXICAB – XI (eleven, hence football or cricket team) + CA (circa, about), all inside TAB (bill).
11 ZIP CODE – C(hapter) inside ZIP (love) + ODE (poetry). I don’t think I’ve ever seen “on” used as an insertion indicator. I suppose it could mean “put C after ZIP, then add ODE”. Yeah, that works better.
12 LANOLIN – alternate letters of Learn Bodleian.
13 FORUM – F.O. (Foreign Office) + RUM. The FO was merged with the Commonwealth Office in 1968 to create the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, hence the “formerly” in the clue.
14 ST-QUENTIN – (ten quits N)*. Coincidentally Northern does double duty, as Saint-Quentin is in Northern France.
16 GOOBER PEA – (pogo, a beer)*. “Goodness how delicious, eating goober peas!” I knew this from the American folk song Goober Peas, which I used to sing and play on the piano when I was a kid. My dad had Alan Lomax’s Folk Songs of North America, and I knew them all.
19 JOHNS – JOINS with the I (one) switched to H (hard). Captain W. E. Johns wrote the Biggles books.
21 TABLEAU – TABU around LEA
23 ETHANOL – ETH (old character, a barred D, Ð or ð) + AN + LO (exhortation to peer) reversed.
24 ROTATED – DR reversed around O.T. (books) + ATE (worried).
25 GIVE OUT – double definition, “meters” as in “people who mete out”.
26 BRINKMANSHIP – (N Irish PM, bank)*

Down
1 WHOPPER – W. H. (Auden’s initials) + OP (work) + PER (a). “Perhaps” is there to support the W.H. OP bit, not (as I thought at first) to make PER as a lame abbreviation.
2 LOBWORM – LOB (sky, as a verb) + WORM (infectious program, similar to a computer virus). Another word for a lugworm, commonly used as bait.
3 PUCKERS UP – PUCK (mischievous fellow, e.g. in MND) + (purse)*
4 PETAL – P(ressure) + ET AL (rest, literally short for Latin et alii or alia, “and others”).
5 ROXANNE – RAN (managed) + N,E (opponents at bridge), around OX (neat). I see the opponents are correct and the game of bridge is specified here. The editor’s hand showing perhaps, after the ructions on Nov 30th?
6 NECKLET – NECK (sink, as in quaffing a beer) + LET (a hindrance, as in tennis).
7 PRIZEFIGHTER – P(iano) + RIGHTER (repairer) around ‘FEZ + I’ reversed.
10 BANANA SPLITS – SPLIT (leave) inside BANANAS (crackers).
15 QUAKER GUN – QUAKE (tremble) + RUN (flee) around G(rand). Never heard of this term for a dummy cannon, but it was easy to see from the wordplay and the context.
17 ORBITER – ARBITER with A(rea) switched to O(ld).
18 EVERTON – hidden reversed inside “cannot reveal”.
19 JEHOVAH – HAVE (own) + J(udge) around OH (has to be appeal, but I can’t think in what sense), all reversed.
20 HENCOOP – E(nglish) + N.C.O. (non-commissioned officer, e.g. a corporal) inside HOP (short journey).
22 UNDAM – UN (French for “a”) + DAM (sounds like “damn”).

7 comments on “Saturday Times 24712 (4th Dec)”

  1. I think OH for appeal is as in “Oh Father forgive me for I have sinned.” At least I can’t think of anything else.
    1. Thanks Paul, but that crossed my mind too, but the whole sentence is the appeal, not the first word, so I was hoping someone would think of a better explanation. If that’s all there is to it, I’ll be disappointed.
      1. The best I could think of was the ‘Oh please!’ usage, appealing to someone’s better sense. The problem is that the appeal is conveyed at least as much by the ‘please’ as by the ‘oh’.
        1. I agree that the “oh”=”appeal” device is unsatisfactory, unless there’s some other way to read the clue that we’re all missing. If so, I can’t see it.

          By the way, today’s Saturday Cryptic No 24718 was an absolutely cracker, I thought. I refer to the one that appeared in the printed version of The Times. The Crossword Club’s online version, bearing the same number, is a completely different puzzle. Anyone know which is the correct one?

  2. 2 hours and 20 minutes for this, with LOBWORM and QUAKER GUN unknown but gettable, and NECKLET last in, and more of a guess than it should have been, as I’ve seen neck for drink before but had forgotten. Thanks for clearing up WHOPPER, which went straight in but without FWU.

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