Saturday Times 25101 (3rd March)

Author   linxitPosted on Categories Weekend Cryptic
A rather bemused 12:43 for this one, as reports on last week’s blog as well as on the Times forum suggested it was a stinker. It was a good puzzle though, with some excellent clues and possibly a few obscure words, but they were ones I knew and I was on the setter’s wavelength from the off.

Across
1 CATHAR – CHAR (tea) round AT. I found out all I needed to know about the persecution of the Cathars when I read Labyrinth by Kate Mosse a couple of years ago.
4 VANGUARD – kind of a dd / cd / semi-&lit type of clue…
10 LOOM LARGE – LOO (ladies) + MARGE (spread) around (hal)L.
11 REPEL – REEL (dance) around P(iano).
12 SUGAR PLUM FAIRY – (Ugly rump is a far)*. A character in Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker Suite.
14 IMPLY – (s)IMPLY
16 FORTY-FIVE – (over fifty)*. Brilliant anagram – first time I’ve seen that in over 30 years of solving, but can’t be a new one, surely!
18 NECKLACES – NECK (part of violin) + L(eft) + ACES (experts).
20 BANAL – N(ame) inside BAAL (an old Hebrew god).
21 CANTEEN CULTURE – CAN TEEN CULTURE…?
25 APACE – A (one) + PACE (step).
26 VERMILION – OIL (paint) reversed, inside VERMIN (rats, perhaps).
27 LIKENESS – I KEN (I know) inside LESS (not so much).
28 ENGELS – GELS (sets) next to E,N (opponents, e.g. in bridge).

Down
1 COLOSSIANS – COLOSSI (great people) + ANS(wer). I needed all the checkers to remember this one, not being the most assiduous of Bible scholars…
2 THONG – THO(ugh) + N(o) + G(ood).
3 ALLERGY – GR(king) reversed, inside ALLEY (marble). In my childhood, alleys were “old” marbles that were opaque, and worth more than the usual glass marbles we usually played with.
5 ABEAM – A + BEAM (ray).
6 GERMANY – GERM (what may be sneezed into the air) + ANY (some).
7 ASPERSION – A + S(econd) + (spire)* + ON.
8 DILL – (neede)D + ILL (badly). Great with fish, but I’ve had no success growing my own.
9 PROLIFIC – PRO LIF(e) (against abortion, shortly) + IC (in charge of).
13 REAL TENNIS – (a N(ew) Listener)*
15 PICKABACK – “PICK A BACK” = “start naming defence”. I used to know it as piggy-back – me and Michael Khan were undefeated champions of piggy-back fighting at Ludlow Road Middle School in Southampton, 1973-4 or so.
17 REST CURE – cryptic definition.
19 LETHEAN – ETHE(r) (no end of chemical) inside LAN (network). Last one in, and good job I know my Greek mythology!
20 BULLION – BULL (strong man) + I (one) + ON (working).
22 ELVIS – hidden inside “hotel, Viscount”.
23 UNITE – double definition – “UNIT E”.
24 GALL – sounds like “Gaul”.

8 comments on “Saturday Times 25101 (3rd March)”

  1. No, I’ve no idea what canteen culture is either! 24d – Gall – seemed to cause people in The Times forum some bother but I thought the position and use of “said” and “create” made it pretty clear. I remember I struggled with this but your blog, linxit, makes it pretty clear, thanks.I remember having some opaque marbles but had no idea they were called alleys until this puzzle. No real COD but I did like Engels.
  2. 56 minutes with most delays LH of the grid.

    DKs: CATHAR, the marble (or possibly I just forgot it), VERMILION with one L, LETHIAN although I knew Lethe so it wasn’t much of a stretch.

    I knew the term ‘canteen culture’ but not that it had a meaning as specific as to include group loyalty, however Collins defines it as such (with specific reference to racism in the police force) so that’s fair enough.

    Room for doubt arose over 24dn and this was discussed within the restrictions of the Forum prior to publication of the solution. I plumped for the right answer but I’m almost convinced if one reads the clue differently one could make a case for GAUL. What swung it for me is that I think this would rely on a variant meaning of ‘gall’ that is more to do with soreness or irritation rather than bitterness.

    Edited at 2012-03-10 08:42 am (UTC)

  3. I too did this because I read it was tough but found it to be no more than average. It never occurred to me that 24D could be anything but GALL – the use and positioning of the words “said” and “create” making it crystal clear for me.

    The first toy I can remember playing with was a collection of old stair rods that I used to make into tracks and some alleys that I ran along the tracks. Can’t imagine youngsters doing that today!

    Canteen Culture was surely used to describe the tribal instincts of the police when reporting the Stephen Lawrence debacle? I’ve since seen it used to describe various close knit groups and their internal culture

  4. A rather sluggish 14:15 for me – I seem to be having difficulty getting started at the moment.

    I found some of the definitions a bit unexpected. I’ve only ever come across LOOM LARGE with the meaning more or less as in Chambers: “to take over a major part of someone’s thoughts, life, etc”. Presumably ASPERSION is meant to correspond to “a consideration leading to discredit, censure or reproach”, but somehow they don’t feel quite the same. And I’m not entirely convinced about PICKABACK being “a game” (though PICKABACK FIGHTING would be).

    I was slow to get CATHAR, despite having read Kate Mosse’s book. (Is Labyrinth more or less piffle than The Da Vinci Code, or are they both equally daft? Debate.)

    I don’t recall coming across OVER FIFTY as an anagram of FORTY-FIVE either, but it could have been crowded out by the more memorable ONE + TWELVE and ELEVEN + TWO.

    Edited at 2012-03-10 02:31 pm (UTC)

  5. I’m impressed by the quoted times of the posters here. I couldn’t sleep last night so decided to tackle this at 3am. It took me well over an hour to complete and even then I had one mistake – came down on the wrong side in the GAUL/GALL debate. When I look at my time (71 minutes) I wonder if I dozed off in the middle of it! I had no reference books by the bed to check COLOSSIANS but thought it might have something to do with St Paul. Then I thought that maybe I had been confusing it with CORINTHIANS. Decided to bung it in anyway. Good call. In retrospect this was an interesting and very fair puzzle. I can’t really understand why it took me so long but my bedside alarm clock never lies!
  6. No idea how long this took because I did it in bits while trying to resuscitate the desktop. I just threw in GALL immediately which goes to show that it’s all too easy to overthink these things. It was Cathar that threw me because I’d only heard of them as Albigensians and kept trying to make Cathay = china tea, all the while knowing it was wrong. Didn’t know the book but if it’s anything like the DaVinci Code I didn’t miss anything – thanks for the tip Tony. Nice to see Elvis though.
  7. Haven’t read Labyrinth either but from the wiki entry for it I would not regard it as a useful source of history, to say the least!
    I love the Languedoc, and the Cathars are a large and tragic part of its history. Read this bit for example, under the heading Massacre
  8. I’m surprised we didn’t have complaints from Thomas Hardy country about the glaring D.by E. in 10ac: ladies is only an example of a loo. I thought The Times always had i = one and never a = one, but in 25ac it comes close to breaking this rule. And in 7dn is an aspersion really a reflection? Surely not.

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