Saturday Times 24897 (9th July)

Author   linxitPosted on Categories Weekend Cryptic
Just under the half-hour for this one – 29:13, mainly due to a couple of early mistakes which will be owned up to below, and 1D which added 5 minutes to the time at the end and turned out to be a lucky 50-50 guess. A fun puzzle to solve, but there were a few liberties taken with some of the definitions.

Across
1 EQUIP – E(uropean) + QUIP (crack).
4 GOOD LOOKS – LOOK (butcher’s (hook), Cockney rhyming slang) inside GOODS (merchandise).
9 YEAR-ROUND – YEAR(n) (endlessly long) + ROUND (set of cup ties). My first thought was that it was a lame-ish cryptic definition, in that a round that lasted a year would have to begin again endlessly!
10 MOTTO – (b)OTTOM reversed. I thought the definition was a bit dubious though, and I think Chambers supports my point of view:
saw3 n a saying; a proverb; a decree (Spenser).
motto n a short sentence or phrase adopted as representative of a person, family, etc, or accompanying a coat of arms; a passage prefixed to a book or chapter anticipating its subject; a scrap of verse or prose enclosed in a cracker or sweet wrapper; a recurring phrase (music).
11 ALEPPO – A + LEO (sign) around P(o)P(e). The largest city in Syria.
12 TAKE FIVE – (feta, kiev)*. Also a jazz classic from the Dave Brubeck Quartet. Here’s the obligatory YouTube link.
14 TORPEDOED – P(age) inside TORE (ripped) + D (back of tattereD) + OED (dictionary).
16 HOGAN – HOG (appropriate) + AN (article). Ben Hogan, US golfer who won just about everything in the late 40’s to early 50’s. Jimbo can probably remember his exploits better than me – a bit before my time 🙂
17 INPUT – hidden reversed in heaT UP NIghtly.
19 HISTOGRAM – HIT (success) around S(inger) + MARGO reversed. Definition is “chart”, which you have to lift-and-separate from “success” for the clue to work, even though you don’t have to for the wordplay.
21 NOISETTE – The NO. 1 SETTE(r) at Crufts might well deserve a noisette of lamb or beef as a treat. A foodie clue which would have had Tony struggling!
22 AFFAIR – F.A. inside A FIR.
25 OTAGO – alternate letters reversed of “tOuGh AcTiOn”.
26 CRESCENDO – (concedes R)*.
27 RAT-POISON – (part)* + O(ver) + 1’S + ON (leg-side in cricket). O for over is also a cricket abbreviation, if anyone was wondering.
28 SILAS – “sighless”. No comment!

Down
1 ERYMANTHIAN BOAR – (aberration many H)*. Couldn’t make head or tail of this at first, even though I worked out the correct anagram fodder straight away. I couldn’t think of anything that started E?Y?A, but eventually when all the checkers were in I twigged it was one of the Labours of Hercules, but still had to choose between EMYRANTHIAN or ERYMANTHIAN, both of which looked possible. Luckily chose the right one.
2 USAGE – U (for everyone, film classification) + SAGE.
3 PORK PIE – Tamworth is well-known for its pigs, especially when they escape. More Cockney rhyming slang – PORK PIE = lie.
4 GLUM – GUM (stick) around L (pupil). Too much indirection? L = Learner is OK, but L = pupil doesn’t follow in my book. [Edit: as the setter has explained below, L is for “pupil on the way”, i.e. a learner driver. I’ve got no problem with that at all. ]
5 OLD-MAIDISH – OLD (getting on) + 1’S H(orse), around M(onsieur) + AID, definition “particular”. I tried OLD-MAIDAGE and OLD-MAIDERY at first, thinking the definition was “getting on” and not worrying too much about the wordplay at that stage. 19A eventually put me straight, but it slowed me down considerably.
6 LAMBETH – “Thy ewe doth lamb. She lambeth.” Also a London borough. Corny, but good!
7 OUTRIGGER – OU (French “where”) + TRIGGER (fire).
8 SMOKE AND MIRRORS – DNA (person’s make-up) reversed inside SMOKE (cigarette) + MIRROR’S (paper’s, i.e. The Daily Mirror).
13 POOHSTICKS – HOOP reversed + STICKS. A game where players drop twigs into a river from a bridge, then run to the other side to see whose emerges first. As played by Winnie the Pooh in the books by A. A. Milne.
15 REPLICANT – RE (touching) + P(etro)L + [CAN inside IT]. Another careless mistake – for some reason I bunged in APPLICANT with no justification other than that it fit, which torpedoed my chance of a fast time completely, as I still hadn’t worked out the wordplay of 14A. Me a science fiction fan too, having read most of Philip K. Dick’s books and having seen Blade Runner several times!
18 TIEPOLO – A TIE under a POLO neck? Not in this club you don’t, Giovanni!
20 OFFICES – OFF(a) + ICES (tops, i.e. kills); “off” seems to be padding, as you don’t “top off” someone. (tops off, e.g. a cake). Thanks to kevingregg for the correction.
23 ANNAL – tips, in the this case the final letters of “seA captaiN iN MalagA brotheL“.
24 VEIN – “vain”.

21 comments on “Saturday Times 24897 (9th July)”

  1. 52 minutes, but I stupidly put in ‘glue’ instead of GLUM at 4d, even though I couldn’t make sense of the clue, other than ‘stick’.As all too often, I lacked the patience to think of other possible words. 17ac: ‘turning’ indicates reversal, I assume, but shouldn’t something suggest the hiddenness? 20d: I thought ‘tops off’=ICES, as a cake, not a troublesome mafioso. COD to 21ac.
    1. You’re right about “tops off” and I now remember seeing that when I solved it, but last night it was late, I was tired and just wanted to finish off the last couple of clues. I really should make notes while solving but I never do, so I end up having to try to remember the thought processes of a week earlier.
  2. 45 minutes for this, which I found enjoyably tricky. A good puzzle for a Saturday. ERYMANTHIAN BOAR was new to me, but generally it was knotty wordplay that held me up I think.
    In sharp contrast I whizzed through this week’s and was top of the leaderboard on submission. Woo hoo! I should get home extremely late but stone cold sober on a Friday night more often. Actually…
  3. A 90 minute struggle for me using aids once along the way (HISTOGRAM) to kick-start after a complete lack of progress in the SE, and once at the very end (ERYMANTHIAN BOAR) because my brain was hurting by then.

    AND = DNA reversed seems an obvious idea so I’m surprised it is not widely used and this is the first time I can remember meeting it.

    I have no problem with saw/motto. The usual dictionaries don’t quite match the two words but thesaurus.com has them under each other and my Collins thesaurus lists six alternatives they have in common: adage, byword, gnome, maxim, proverb and saying.

      1. This is why I never use a thesaurus. (Well, I have, once or twice, when desperately trying to solve a clue, or when trying to remember the word I actually want to use.) The fact remains that a saw is not a motto, nor a motto a saw (adage, aphorism, dictum, precept, epigram, truism, …).
  4. L for pupil just about.
    H. for hard? Or for Horse?
    And Motto is in no way a saw or adage. (Jeeves would be horrified)
    1. H for hard is OK, as in pencil gradings. H for horse is also OK, as they’re both slang terms for heroin.

      I agree with you on your other points.

      1. This came up earlier in the week. It’s in COED so there’s no need to go the heroin route unless one prefers to do so.
  5. I remember being vaguely irritated by this puzzle for the reasons that linxit pinpoints. Most of it seemed very good but saw/motto, learner/pupil and of course the just awful SILAS rather grated.

    I rather hoped that SILAS was a literary reference that I didn’t know rather like the …BOAR. I derived the answer and then looked it up before entering in the grid.

    Even I don’t remember HOGAN but good to see him in the Times.

  6. I gave up on this after 58 minutes with 1d and the SW corner incomplete. A cup of tea revived the brain cells enough for me to get all except the BOAR but by then I was tired of life and came here to get linxit’s admirable solution. I had heard of it (the Herculean task) but just didn’t see the cryptic “labour target”. I need a new brain ( 13/6 from Curry’s or maybe I need the Einstein model!)
  7. Just realised that Curry’s doesn’t do an Einstein brain. I meant the Bertrand Russell special!
  8. 13:53 for me. I wasn’t too worried about MOTTO, but was less keen on SILAS.

    NOISETTE has come up often enough for me to know it by now. I may even have seen it on a menu, or perhaps mentioned in one of Giles Coren’s Eating Out pieces, my main source for unusual – to me – foodie words.

  9. …After we had returned from 5 days in a country cottage without internet but with a printed copy of this puzzle. I agree totally with linxit about SILAS: “No comment” indeed! I think that “sounds like” would be rejected in a game of charades. It took me till Friday to think of the Herculean Labours in 1d. I even asked my wife, who used to be a nurse and now lectures on science to nursing students, if there might be some childbirth connection. Like Kevin, I’m GLUM because I put GLUE.
  10. Thanks for the comments. My original clue for ERYMANTHIAN BOAR was not, as I recall, a pure anagram, but had wordplay specifically designed to enable solvers to “guess” the answer. However it was deemed too complicated.
    I hereby defend motto=saw, and I would never clue “L” as pupil. The definition was “pupil on the way/road” or similar, as I recall.
    I also defend SIGHLESS/SILAS 🙂
    1. My apologies over 4D and I retract my criticism of the clue entirely. I see from here and the Times forum that not many people got it and a lot gave up and stuck in GLUE.

      As for saw/motto we seem to be about 50/50 for and against here. I’m still with the cons but it’s just an opinion. Having thought again I don’t see a problem with the SILAS/SIGHLESS homophone – it’s not exact but close enough for a crossword and not as accent-dependent as some we see.

      Thanks for taking the time to reply.

      1. No problem. I should have thanked you for the blog also. I actually thought the objections to the SILAS/SIGHLESS homophone related to the “to speak of” indicator. I am genuinely astounded that people think it is contentious from a “sounds like” angle. Just shows how controversial these clue types can be.
        1. I first flagged this clue because I thought of ‘sigh less’ rather than ‘sighless’, then twigged; there’s a good deal of difference in the two pronunciations, but in any case the one-word solution seems fine to me.
  11. Enjoyed this puzzle so much that I made a mental note to commnet when I returned from my Open Championship break. Hogan was the Padraig Harrington of his day, if I remember correctly – last off the practice range, a real grinder.

    Walking around together with my teenage daughter following Tom Watson in a force 7 gale on Saturday, we could only marvel at the skill and the temperament of the man. His 72 was worth a 66 on a normal day.

    I have been to all four days of the Championship four times now: Watson won in 82 and 83, and all but won in 2009. If he had, I was going to write to him and ask him to give someone else a chance – it was getting boring!

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