Saturday Times 24867 (4th June) – Times for The Times

Solving time 15:55, about average for me. A few literary references and absolutely no science, but a very good puzzle nevertheless. 4D was my last in as I’d never heard of the term, but with the crossing letters it couldn’t really be anything else. I also had to look up the Wordsworth poem for the blog, but that was easy enough to get from the wordplay.

Across
1	DEFIANT – NAIF (innocent) inside TED (rowdy youth), all reversed.
5	OCTOPUS – O.C. (commander) + TOP (best) + US (our side). Great definition, “one well-armed”.
9	SALVATION – SALIVATION without one of the I’s. Ivan Pavlov and his conditioned reflexes.
10	BROIL – R inside BOIL.
11	GUISE – sounds like “guys”.
12	WALK ABOUT – A.B. (sailor) inside WALKOUT (strike).
14	FIRE WORSHIPPER – FIREWOR(k) + SHIPPER. I don’t think Zoroastrians actually worship fire, do they? It just forms an important part of their rites.
17	EUROSCEPTICISM – (imprecise so cut)*.
21	FLAGSTONE – FLAG (standard) + STONE (weight).
23	HEAVE – double definition, the second with TO meaning to stop a ship.
24	RAINY – RAY around IN.
25	BILLOWING – BILL OWING.
26	RIG VEDA – I and D inserted into (grave)*. Ancient Hindu scriptures said to be one of the oldest religious texts still in use.
27	TO SCALE – TOSCA (opera) + L(icenc)E.

Down
1	DESIGN – double definition, the first as a whimsical DE-SIGN.
2	FELLINI – FELL (dangerous) + IN + I. Federico Fellini, (1920-93), Italian film director.
3	AWARENESS – AWA (away from Scotland) + RENE’S + S(ucceeded).
4	THIS WOODEN O – If you made an O out of stilts, I suppose it would be wooden! Shakespeare’s term for the Globe Theatre, as in the prologue to Henry V: “Pardon, gentles all, the flat unraised spirits that hath dared On this unworthy scaffold to bring forth so great an object. Can this cockpit hold the vasty fields of France? Or may we cram Within this wooden O the very casques that did affright the air at Agincourt?”
5	OWN – (g)OWN
6	TABLA – BAT reversed + L (pound) + A. A small Indian hand-drum.
7	PHOTO OP – POOP (stern of a ship rather than Stern, the German magazine) around HOT (attractive).
8	SOLITARY – SO LITERARY (very fond of books), without ER (hesitation). The clue refers to Wordsworth’s The Solitary Reaper.
13	LOSE THE PLOT – double definition.
15	IN CAHOOTS – INCA (Indian) + HOOTS (gives warning).
16	SEAFARER – S(on) + E’ER (always) around AFAR (at a distance).
18	READING – I inside (garden)*, &lit that probably needs a ‘?’ at the end.
19	STAMINA – S(hackleton) + T.A. (volunteers) around A MIN (a short time). The definition was the name of Shackleton’s ship on his 1914 Antarctic expedition, so a good and completely misleading surface.
20	MEAGRE – AG (silver) inside MERE (pond).
22	STYLE – sounds like “stile”.
25	BOA – A.O.B. (any other business) reversed. A native American snake, that is.

5 comments on “Saturday Times 24867 (4th June)”

I knew all the literary references (Did Henry V for O Level and had to learn that speech. Ditto the Solitary Reaper.) Nevertheless I found this to be a bit of a struggle – partly because I had BOA the wrong way round. I wasn’t sure from the cryptic so settled for AOB. That messed up BILLOWING and RIG VEDA, both of which were obvious once the snake was the right way up! An enjoyable 32 minutes.

38 minutes, fairly speedy for a Saturday. 25d was my LOI, because I had no idea what AOB meant, or if it did. 4d struck me as rather TLSish, as did 8d, but were easily enough got with checkers (I had no idea what Wordsworth poem it was, but the Romantics were always solitary).Liked 19d, 15d, 27ac

Came to grief with this one quite early on with only half a dozen answers in so I resorted to aids. It still took me 70 minutes. 4dn, 14ac and 17ac were amongst the last in so the puzzle never really opened up for me.

We seem to have the same setter, or a like-minded one, who equates Teddy boys with hooliganism and rowdiness.

20 minutes for this. I thought 4dn was a touch iffy but it’s pretty gettable once all the checkers are in place even if, like me, you studied Henry V at both school and university but have managed to forget the reference. I took “stilted” to mean “wooden” as in Kevin Costner’s acting rather than the things you put on your feet.

…but my copy is completed correctly. I think ‘boa’ was my last in, I didn’t really get the cryptic, having never heard of A.O.B.

Both literary clues were a little difficult for me, I knew them but couldn’t bring them to mind straight off. After a few crossing letters, though, I was able to put them in.

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