Saturday Times 24807 (26th March)

Author   linxitPosted on Categories Weekend Cryptic
Solving time 14:13. Interesting puzzle, with a few unusual slang words perfectly clued so that anyone who didn’t know them could still solve them. The rest was fairly straightforward, but I have no complaints. Shame about the apparent error in 7D, although I certainly wouldn’t have noticed if I hadn’t been writing it up for the blog.

Across
1 COARSEST – R(o)SE inside COAST. I suspect this one would be clued differently in Private Eye!
5 MESS UP – ME + PUSS reversed.
9 SUNBATHE – N(orthern) + BATH, inside SUE.
10 CANNON – sounds like “canon”.
12 LOLLAPALOOZA – LO + (A ZOO LAP ALL reversed). Great word, but I wouldn’t been sure of the spelling without such precise instructions in the clue.
15 ELOPE – E(ast) + POLE, all reversed.
16 RURALISED – (ruler said)*
18 LIKE A SHOT – LIKE (dig) + O(u)T (out hollow) next to ASH (tree).
19 ADIEU – E.U. (27 states) after AD (bill) + I (one), leaving “left, making this?” as the definition. I think.
20 ARMOUR-PLATED – A + (a murder plot)*
24 RUMPUS – RUMP (behind) + US
25 DINOSAUR – (is around)*.
26 DEEPLY – PLY next to DEE.
27 STUD FARM – ST (way) + (fraud)* + M(afia).

Down
1 CASE – double definition.
2 AUNT – hidden in “sagA, UNTold.”
3 SOAP OPERA – SOAR around POPE, + A.
4 SCHOLARSHIPS – (cleaner)S + (chars polish)*
6 EMAIL – LIME around A, reversed.
7 SINK OR SWIM – two definitions, nice concept. Unfortunately, the word for “to sink” is actually FOUNDER. Had me fooled too – I only looked it up to see if the etymology was the same. According to Chambers, to FLOUNDER means “to struggle with violent and awkward movements; to stumble helplessly in thinking or speaking.”
8 PANJANDRUM – PAN (God) + JAN (month) + DRUM (beat). A title invented in 1754 by Samuel Foote, in this little bit of nonsense:
So she went into the garden to cut a cabbage-leaf to make an apple-pie; and at the same time a great she-bear, coming up the street, pops its head into the shop. “What! No soap?” So he died, and she very imprudently married the barber; and there were present the Picninnies, and the Joblillies, and the Garyulies, and the Grand Panjandrum himself, with the little round button at top, and they all fell to playing the game of catch-as-catch-can till the gunpowder ran out at the heels of their boots.
11 SPIRITUALIST – S(mall) + [RITUAL IS inside PIT].
13 REAL MADRID – REAL MAD (American’s very angry) + RID (free).
14 COCKAMAMIE – COCK + A.M. twice + I.E. (that is). US slang meaning “ridiculous”. I looked it up to check the etymology, just out of interest. Chambers doesn’t have it as a headword, so I had a look in the Shorter OED. Apparently it’s “a picture or design left on the skin as a transfer, a corruption of decalcomania.” Now that sounds cockamamie!
17 LEASEHOLD – (mortgag)E inside LEASH + OLD.
21 USUAL – middle letters of “sUSs oUt cALm”.
22 LAVA – LAVA(tory).
23 CRAM – R(iver) inside CAM (a river which runs through Cambridge).

11 comments on “Saturday Times 24807 (26th March)”

  1. 36’45”, fast for me. I’m glad you looked up ‘cockamamie’; I’d always unthinkingly assumed it was yet another Yiddishism. But the ‘decalcomania’ explanation doesn’t convince. Interesting to find both ‘cockamamie’ and ‘lollapalooza’ in the same puzzle; words I’d associate with, say, Jimmy Durante, but in any case no one alive.
  2. An hour with some use of aids for the silly unknowns.

    I had no trouble solving 19ac but must have wasted an additional 30 minutes after completing the grid trying to discover how the clue worked before giving up and putting the puzzle aside until this morning. I don’t like the wordplay (who keeps count?) or the lack of a proper definition.

  3. Having safely negoiated the Scylla of “Lollapalooza” and the Charybdis of “cockamamie”, I foundered in the Bab el Mandeb Straits (I only know of them from my old school song) of “coarsest” by putting “crassest”. I couldn’t parse the latter word adequately but it felt right and I was anxious to post a decent (for me) time. This week, same thing; rushing to get in under the hour mark for the first time on a Saturday I misspelt the first word in 1ac. In the old days it might have taken me hours or even days to get there, but if I did complete the grid it was generally correct. The curse of the competitive urge!
    1. I know what you mean!
      I never used to think about how long these things took me until I discovered this blog. Now I’m obsessed with it. Many people quite sensibly prefer to take their time and savour each clue, but I’m afraid I can’t resist the urge to try to get faster. On the whole I think I enjoy the puzzles more now that I am testing myself and comparing my times with others on a daily basis. I’ve also got marginally – but noticeably – better at it.
      1. I agree with you, keriothe. By pushing myself, I feel I’ve improved in my ability to understand clues. I know my times have improved markedly…despite egregious errors!
  4. What a strange puzzle. Two really odd words that I’d never come across before but as you say easily gettable from wordplay + Chambers. A definition I still don’t really understand at 19A “left making this” eh? And thank you for explaining 7D – should have seen that but kept trying to make sense of the first “flounder” to mean “sink”. The rest was straightforward for a standard fare puzzle.
    1. I think the idea is that, having left, one has made one’s adieu so there’s a sort of clue in the surface reading as to what the answer might be. But it’s all a bit unconventional and somewhat dodgy cluing in my opinion.
  5. I coped with COCKAMAMIE and PANJANDRUM, both of which I knew, but foundered on LOLLAPALOOZA which I had to get entirely from the cryptic. I could see it was going to be a fandabidozy sort of word. I read a lot of American popular fiction but this was a new one for me. It felt like over an hour but turned out to be 44 minutes of hard slog.
  6. I did this in about 20 minutes, but with an error: the submitted version of my puzzle has DRUM for 23dn. I may be going mad but I’m pretty darned certain I didn’t write that. It also happens to be the end of the clue above (8dn). Has anyone else ever experienced this sort of thing?
    I must say I liked seeing LOLLAPALOOZA, COCKAMAMIE and PANJANDRUM in here, particularly as the wordplay made the spelling very clear. I’ve heard all these words before: I know LOLLAPALOOZA as the name of a music festival. I’m not sure what kind of music: loud, presumably.
  7. 9:24 for me. LOLLAPALOOZA should be familiar to the Musical Mafia as it’s the title of a piece by John Adams, but that’s the only context I’ve come across it in.

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