Saturday Times 24783 (Feb 26th)

Author   linxitPosted on Categories Weekend Cryptic
No time noted down, but I think it was around a quarter of an hour. A strange puzzle though, with some easy clues interspersed with others that I couldn’t parse – obvious from the definition, so didn’t slow me down much, but I hate it when I don’t understand how a clue works!

Across
1 SPLIT – double definition to start with, one of them the Croatian city that crops up in Crosswordland almost as regularly as NY or LA!
4 MASTODON – first one I couldn’t make sense of. Dead elephantine mammal in mother’s wardrobe? MA’S + TO DON for wardrobe, i.e. what to wear? That can’t be it, surely! Any other suggestions?
8 OFF ONE’S TROLLEY – double definition, straight in.
10 NORWEGIAN – (wearing no)*. I’ve seen that anagram before.
11 POLKA – POLA(r) around K(ing).
12 RABBIT – another double definition, but to my shame I didn’t see it until today when writing it up. A rabbit is a tail-ender in cricket, i.e. a hopeless batsman who’s one of the last to go in and usually gets out without troubling the scorer.
14 BEWILDER – BEER (wallop) around WILD (feral).
17 NEAR EAST – Eight letters of “niNE ARE ASTigmatic”. I don’t recall coming across that method of indicating a hidden answer before, but it’s neatly done.
18 COGNAC – CAN GO C(old) reversed. I’ll be opening a bottle myself later!
20 ELFIN – (p)ELF + IN (at home). Tricky clue, with an obscure word for money “defaced”, i.e. dropping the first letter.
22 TREADMILL – D(aughter) inside REAM (sheets (of paper)), all inside TILL (work).
24 PAVEMENT ARTIST – cryptic definition.
25 STEEPEST – STEE(d) + PEST.
26 OUTER – (r)OUTER. Easy one for me as an IT professional, but might have been a struggle for the technologically challenged. However, if you’re reading this you’ve probably got a wireless one at home connecting your PC to the Internet.
Down
1 SLOANE RANGER – S(ample) + LOANER ANGER. A term popularised in the 1980’s for an upper-class twit of either sex living in or near Sloane Square in Chelsea.
2 LIFER – LIER (one prone) around F(ine).
3 TENDERISE – (inserted)* + (needl)E.
4 MUSLIN – NIL SUM reversed.
5 SPRINGER – double definition, I presume. I can’t fit “rib” to it though, although I did find one of Chambers’ humorous definitions that I don’t think anyone’s mentioned before – “A kind of spaniel, useful in copses”.
6 OXLIP – OX (meat) + LIP (sauce).
7 OVERLADEN – E.R. + LAD in OVEN.
9 MATRICULATOR – (court martial)*
13 BEANFEAST – BEAST around AN FE (iron).
15 IN ORDER TO – (red or tin)* + O(range).
16 AS IT WERE – double definition, one of them humorous.
19 SEPTET – P.T. inside TEES reversed.
21 NIECE – alternate letters of eNtIrE aCnE.
23 IDIOT – I (upright character) + I (one) inside DOT.

16 comments on “Saturday Times 24783 (Feb 26th)”

  1. I agree that the use of rib in 5d is a bit dubious. I found this architectural reference in Wikipedia referring to a “voussoir” but it’s pushing it to call a springer a rib, I think.
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voussoir

    I voted for stringer as that is a strengthening beam in an airplane, but then couldn’t match it to dog.
    Not a good week; also put massif for muslin in 4d
    Thanks as ever from a relative neophyte for all the explanations.

  2. I can help with 4A Its MA’S TO DON ie Mother’s to put on ie it’s in her wardrobe. I have no idea what 5D is all about and just assumed SPRINGER from checking letters.

    As you say a strange feel to some of this. Not particularly difficult – indeed some of it is very easy – but odd things thrown in like “found in the tail” – a bit tough on those that don’t follow the dreaded cricket

    1. … and even for those who follow it religiously. The second part of the definition passed me by completely.
  3. According to my notes I had only eight answers after the first hour but somehow completed it with use of aids in the next 20 minutes albeit with MASSIF for MUSLIN (an appalling definition – something that’s ‘fine’) and I still didn’t understand about ten of the answers and I remember I was losing the will to live. Horrible puzzle.
  4. Found this definition of SPRINGER:

    The rib of a groined vault, as being the solid abutment for each section of vaulting. [1913 Webster]

    Some good clues in this puzzle; particularly liked NEAR EAST and COGNAC.

    1. Doing a completely different crossword I came across the word lierne in Chambers which in architecture means a branch-rib in a vaulted roof and I recalled that springer also had some architectural meaning. Following that up I learned that a springer is a column that splits into ribs to support a vaulted roof.

      If any of that, or your 1913 Webster entry is relevant, it will rank as one of the most obscure clues of all time!!

  5. 55 minutes, a hefty chunk of which was spent on 4d and 12. Got 12 right simply because I couldn’t think of a way to get it wrong; I had no idea, of course, that it’s a cricket term. I’m soooo glad I wasn’t alone in putting in ‘massif’ for 4d; it was only an hour or so after submitting that I figured it out, and I agree with jackkt that ‘that’s fine’ is a wretched definition for MUSLIN. I liked COGNAC and NORWEGIAN, though. The setter used the same device twice — ‘defaced’ and ‘detailed’ — which helped me get 25.
  6. 10:36 for me, a couple of minutes of it wasted trying to justify MASSIF (before finally coming up with MUSLIN).

    SPRINGER felt familiar enough, and it’s confirmed by my 1976 edition of the COD which includes “rib of groined roof or vault” among its definitions.

    On the other hand I don’t understand “historically ungrammatical” in 16dn: surely this is just a fairly obvious use of the subjunctive. Or am I missing something? (This could well be, as I can’t see what’s humorous about “a kind of spaniel, useful in copses” either.)

    1. My take was that, if used as a past tense expression (‘historically’), it’s ungrammatical, as it should be ‘as it was’.
    2. One of the definitions of spring given in Chambers is a copse; and a springer might be used in a copse to flush out or retrieve game. Not the sort of joke that would have them rolling in the aisles at the Glasgow Empire, but typical of the whimsical entries you sometimes find in Chambers.
      1. Thanks, John. Given the level of abstruseness, I’m not surprised that it’s not been mentioned before! It hardly measures up to “eclair” and “charity begins at home” and the like.
  7. While we are being esoteric. French hunters use spaniels in copses as retrievers, Breton ones. They usually kit them out with bells so they don’t shoot them as game. When we lived there and we saw the “Chasse en cours” signs by the side of the road we would go elsewhere to walk our poodles.
  8. Did this on the bus to and then during a break in rehearsal at the St David’s Society ball. The NE caused a lot of trouble and I was delighted when COGNAC finally went in. A splendid clue, I thought.
  9. I too fell for the massif uprising or mounting or whatever. Nil sum, eh, I wasn’t either!

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