Saturday Times 25029 (Dec 10th) – Times for The Times

17:34 for this one – mostly not too hard but I got into difficulties with 17D/29A, as I had 17 ending in D which left 29 as an unlikely-looking set of checking letters ?D?N?N?E?E. Worked them out from wordplay in the end, but it cost me 5 minutes or so.

Across
1	ANCESTRESS – N(orth) inside ACE (one) + STRESS (accent).
6	MESS – double definition.
9	TIME-LAG – EMIT (broadcast) reversed + LAG (jailbird).
10	ACQUIRE – A QUIRE (set of papers) around C(lip).
12	PALESTRINA – PALE (inferior) + STRIN(g) (short sequence) + A, for Renaissance composer Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina.
13	RAT – alternate letter of ReAcTs.
15	POTATO – POT (dish) + AT(e) (mostly consumed) + O (nothing).
16	IRRIGATE – IRATE (annoyed) around RIG (costume).
18	SPRINTED – S(econd) + PRINT (copy) + ED(itor).
20	KIPPER – double definition.
23	DAW – DAW(n).
24	UNEDUCATED – (dunce)* inside U(niversity + (f)ATED (destined without the first letter).
26	CHINDIT – HINDI (foreign language) inside CT (court). An Indian regiment in WW2.
27	CLIMATE – C(old) + LIMA (capital city) + T(emperatur)E.
28	LASS – L(ook) + ASS (silly). Ass can’t be an adjective, but silly can be a noun, so it’s OK.
29	GRANDNIECE – (dinner)* inside GRACE (prayer at the start of it).

Down
1	ANTI – NT (National Trust, a conservationist group) inside A1 (trunk road).
2	COMPACT – double definition.
3	SILVER-TONGUED – (devil got nurse)*
4	RIGHTS – “writes”.
5	SPANIARD – DRAINS (pipes) reversed around PA(y).
7	ERITREA – A + ER (royal) + TIRE (flag), all reversed.
8	SWEETHEART – W(ife) inside SEE THE ART (view gallery’s display). What a great clue!
11	QUALIFICATION – double definition.
14	EPISODICAL – I DO (I act) reversed inside (special)*.
17	BEGETTER – EG (say) inside BETTER (cap).
19	ROWDIES – ROW (din) + DIES (fades), semi &lit.
21	PRELATE – RELATE (couple) under P(ressure).
22	TUSCAN – TU (French for you) + SCAN (study).
25	FETE – hidden in caFETEria.

7 comments on “Saturday Times 25029 (Dec 10th)”

42 minutes with most trouble caused by failing to get 1ac until late in the proceedings and I couldn’t swear I’ve ever met ANCESTRESS before. Reviewing 25dn today I now realise why 4ac in 25034 seemed so familiar yesterday.

I find that when I try to print the grey grid all I get is the numbers, both with IE and Firefox. Print black works as normal. Am I the only one having this problem?

jackkt says:

17 December 2011 at 4:18 PM

I haven’t had that problem but still when printing grey in Firefox I have to Print grey/Cancel then Print grey again for it to have any effect.

…I put ‘periodical’ instead of ‘episodical’. Some day I will learn to count out the letters in anagrams.

Once that was corrected, the ones I couldn’t get were quite obvious.

Today’s is quite meaty, still studying it.

9:53 for me – all reasonably straightforward.

I think the puzzle number should be 25029.

… needed for my capybara. 38 minutes, but had ‘archive’ and ‘certification’ for ACQUIRE (the unknown ‘quire’ is my excuse) and QUALIFICATION – which was so easy that it defies excuses. The penny finally dropped in the car long after I’d stopped the clock.

I enjoyed 7 down: “A royal flag raised in African country (7)”. I thought of irises and a mythical country, possibly called something like Assiria. Also enjoyed the diametrically opposite ANCESTRESS and GRANDNIECE. At one stage I thought that 16 across could be DRAINAGE, in which case we would have two DRAINs crossing – in DRAINAGE and SPANIARD. Above the crossword is a black and white photo – “Crowds wait quietly for news outside Buckingham Palace on December 10, 1936, the day King Edward VIII announced his abdication”.

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