Saturday Times 25161 (12th May)

Author   linxitPosted on Categories Weekend Cryptic
Solving time 16:15, so about average, although I was hoping for a quicker time when I got the four long answers in the first couple of minutes. However, 1ac held me up for ages as I wanted to put in RUDD even though I couldn’t make sense of it, and I also had to think for a while over 22dn. Having finally worked everything out I then made a typo when submitting online. Stupid keyboard!

Across
1 RIDE – R(iver) + IDE (fish).
3 HALL OF FAME – ALL OFF (nothing on) + AM (before noon), all inside HE (His Excellency, the Ambassador).
10 STUDENT – STUNT (trick) around D(ens)E.
11 BOOKISH – OK (very good) + I (one), inside BOSH (rot).
12 MASS OBSERVATION – MASS (what may be celebrated) + OBSERVATION (following).
13 SPOONS – SNOOPS (private investigators) reversed. A spoon is an old name for the three wood in golf.
14 ETHERISE – THE (article) by E(uropean), + RISE (rebel).
17 CLERIHEW – (where I)* next to CL(assical). A humorous verse form named after its inventor, Edmund Clerihew Bentley.
18 ADEPTS – DEPT (government branch) inside AS.
21 WHAT’S YOUR POISON – (Why pa’s notorious)*.
23 LEARNER – L, R (sides) around E(nglish) ARNE (composer). Nice use of two earlier clues in the definition.
24 JESSICA – JES(t) (short joke) + IS reversed + CA (about).
25 PRETENDING – PRE (before) + T(erm) + ENDING (resolution).
26 FETE – sounds like “fate”.

Down
1 RESUMES – RE (about) + E(nergy) inside SUMS (monetary figures).
2 DRUGSTORE – (sort urged)*
4 ATTEST – T.A. (soldiers) reversed + TEST (ordeal).
5 LIBERATE – BERATE (carpet) after LI(e) (short rest).
6 FLOG A DEAD HORSE – Spoonerism: “Dog a fled horse”
7 AMICI – hidden reversed in “forensic images. From the legal Latin term amicus curiae, literally “friend of the court”. A term I was familiar with from following a court case a few years ago online, when Caldera Systems changed their name to SCO Group and then sued IBM and anyone else with money who’d ever used Linux saying they owned it and wanted paying. They filed for bankruptcy three years later 🙂
8 ENHANCE – (m)EN (c)HANCE.
9 RECONNAISSANCE – RENAISSANCE (revival) around CON (sharp practice).
15 IMPASSIVE – P(owever) inside I (one), MASSIVE (giant).
16 DEVOURED – (overdue)* + D(ay-trippers).
17 COWSLIP – COW (one in stock) + SLIP (a bloomer).
19 SANTA FE – SAFE (without risk) around ANT (worker).
20 TRAJAN – RAJA (king) inside T(ow)N. Roman emperor 98-117 AD.
22 APACE – ACE (mean) around PA (old man). Strange how words take on their opposite meaning in slang. Chambers’ definition for mean2 sums it up:
adj low in rank or birth; base; sordid; low in worth or estimation; of little value or importance; poor, humble; low; inconsiderable; despicable; shabby; paltry; small-minded; ungenerous; stingy; malicious, bad-tempered; out of sorts, uncomfortable (US); skilful, excellent (sl).

10 comments on “Saturday Times 25161 (12th May)”

  1. Still two missing when I ran out of solving time after 45 minutes so I cheated to complete the grid. These were ETHERISE, not a word I’m familiar with but should have been gettable, and FETE where I had no stamina left to tackle the endless possibilities of ?E?E. My real unknowns deduced from wordplay were TRAJAN and AMICI. Not sure I have met ADEPT as a noun before and certainly didn’t know ACE = ‘mean’. I really liked the Spoonerism.

    Edit: Actually on checking Chambers word wizard there are only 68 possibilities for ?E?E so maybe I should not have surrendered so readily.

    Edited at 2012-05-19 08:41 am (UTC)

    1. I don’t have a Chambers: does it give example sentences? The only use of ‘mean’ I can think of is, say, “He throws a mean curveball/plays a mean game of golf”; which I suppose is good enough for the setter’s purposes. I just now checked my SOED, and it gives
      9 Remarkably clever or adroit; excellent; formidable. slang (orig.[sic] US). E20
      with an example: Many of the women … play a mean game of golf
  2. Also defeated by FETE. Otherwise, done online, no notes and largely forgotten.

    Cracking puzzle today.

  3. Completed this am. After 45 minutes went to aids for NE corner. I was slow to get 3a and was stuck for ages on ETHERISE. I think T S Eliot has a “patient etherised upon a table” somewhere in his oeuvre – but it’s not a word in my working vocabulary. APACE was a guess – I’d never have got the required meaning of “ace”. Special thanks for the blog. I needed the explanations today!
  4. DNF, thanks to FETE–which I pronounce ‘fet’. Eliot’s ‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock’ contains
    When the evening is spread out against the sky
    Like a patient etherised upon a table
    1. CS Lewis, no fan of Eliot’s verse but quite the fan of the man himself after they worked together on a revised version of the Prayer Book in the early sixties(?), had a poem of this title published in ‘Punch’ in 1954 in which he quotes these two lines of Eliot’s. His response:

      ‘I am so coarse, the things the poets see
      Are obstinately invisible to me.
      For twenty years I’ve stared my level best
      To see if evening – any evening – would suggest
      A patient etherized upon a table;
      In vain. I simply wasn’t able.

      …

      I’m like that odd man Wordsworth knew, to whom
      A primrose was a yellow primrose, one whose doom
      Keeps him forever in the list of dunces,
      Compelled to live on stock responses,
      Making the poor best that I can
      Of dull things . . . peacocks, honey, the Great Wall, Aldebaran,
      Silver weirs, new­cut grass, wave on the beach, hard gem,
      The shapes of horse and woman, Athens, Troy, Jerusalem.’

      1. Thanks. I hadn’t come across that contribution by C. S. Lewis before, but I’m very much in sympathy with him as I’ve never “got” those two lines of Eliot’s either.
        1. Wordsworth’s yellow primrose (A primrose by the river’s brim/ A yellow primrose was to him/ And it was nothing more), produced the natural response from I forget who: Well, what else COULD it be?
  5. 21:28 for me – tired and having difficulty getting my head round the wordplay in 12ac (MASS OBSERVATION) and 22dn (APACE) and … (probably others as well). Some clever stuff.

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