Saturday Times 25179 (2nd June)

Author   linxitPosted on Categories Weekend Cryptic
No solving time this week as I could only get the odd 5 minutes here and there at it. Quite tricky though, and 17ac was unknown to me and had to wait for most of the checking letters.
Hard to pick a COD from a first-rate set of clues – I’d say it’s between 5D and 6D.

Across
1 JACKPOT – JACK (card) + TOP (high) reversed.
5 LEANDER – LENDER (banker – really?) around A. Ref. the Leander Rowing Club.
9 STEAM-DRIVEN – STRIVEN (worked hard) around (made)*.
10 RAN – RAN(k). Definition “took a single” is the ubiquitous cricket reference.
11 POSTAL – double definition, the second from American slang “to go postal”
12 CLADDING – CL(ass) + ADDING (doing simple task).
14 ABOVE ONE’S HEAD – double definition, probably the weakest clue in the puzzle unless I’m missing something.
17 LA SERENISSIMA – (airline masses)*, nickname of the city of Venice, from its former full name La Serenissima Repubblica di Venezia.
21 PUT ON ICE – PU(t)TO (cherub with the middle letter missing) + NICE (charming). I could be pedantic and argue that putti and cherubim are not the same thing at all, but they’re all naked winged toddlers that nobody would be allowed to paint these days, so that’s close enough for me!
23 FINGAL – FIN (bit of fish) + GAL (girl). Fingal’s Cave is on Staffa in the Inner Hebrides.
25 APE – A PE(t).
26 PROTAGONIST – PRO (for) + [AG (silver) inside TON (large amount)] + 1’S + T(ransmute).
27 THE ALPS – T(ime) HELPS (is useful) around A.
28 LITURGY – LURGY (some bug) around I.T. (modern equipment).

Down
1 JOSEPH – J(udge) + (hopes)*. This is Joseph from the Book of Genesis, who had prophetic dreams.
2 CHELSEA – ELSE (different) inside CHA (tea).
3 POMPADOUR – MOP (untidy hair) reversed + PAD (piece of material) + OUR.
4 TORI – I ROT, reversed.
5 LIVELINESS – LIVES (is) around LINES (shape).
6 ACNED – sounds like ‘ackneyed (trite, commonly).
7 DORMICE – DORM ICE (what makes boarders cold at night).
8 RENEGADE – hidden reversed in “advanced age, nervously”.
13 PERNICIOUS – (ruin I copes)*
15 SPIT IT OUT – SIT OUT (don’t participate) around PIT (depression).
16 FLIPPANT – FLIP (lose temper) + PANT (breathe hard).
18 SO THERE – SOT (drunkard) + HERE (in the vicinity).
19 ANGRIER – (earring)*
20 FLATTY – FATTY (big person) around L(arge). A woman’s shoe with no heel. Can’t accuse this setter of political correctness!
22 NEPAL – (plane)*
24 BAWL – sounds like ball (grand party).

9 comments on “Saturday Times 25179 (2nd June)”

  1. 54′, one error: 24d, where I put in ‘hail’ out of desperation, never for a second thinking of bawl/ball; ironically, since they are homomphones in my dialect, too. I ‘knew’ LA SERENISSIMA, but couldn’t remember what it referred to; but the checkers were enough. I finally remembered the dreaded lurgy, which I only knew from a (puzzling, at the time) reference in a linguistics paper. COD to 6d, although as linxit says, there were a number of fine clues; I liked 7d, 26ac, and 28ac especially.
  2. Toyed with ‘flatso’ at 20, which must make me less PC than the setter. Last in LITURGY, where I considered IT for ‘modern equipment’ but dismissed it too quickly. Enjoyed ACNED and DORMICE, which brought back memories of my 48-man dorm at boarding school. Fun puzzle.
  3. So many unknowns! But a puzzle I thoroughly enjoyed. Figuring out ACNED from the wordplay with no crossing letters, is why I love these puzzles.

    I was stuck on 2d and 3d, because I had SLAVE-DRIVEN (slaved + riven) for 9a. Another blog gave me CHELSEA, from which I could get STEAM-DRIVEN, and finally POMPADOUR.

    Is it a thing with Saturday puzzles that they tend to be easier, on the whole?

  4. 72 minutes, and after also battling through today’s puzzle (25185), I can’t subscribe to redgoriya’s theory above.

    Another who didn’t know what LA SERENISSIMA applied to although I have enough knowledge of Italian learned in connection music to be familiar with the expression itself.

    I dredged up “go postal” from the back of my mind on returning to the puzzle this morning but was unable to explain the second part of the clue whilst completing the grid. Incidentally this meaning is not in any of the usual sources although it’s in Brewer’s and Chamber’s Slang Dictionary.

    On 18dn, I think I grumbled about this or something similar on a previous occasion, but HERE does NOT mean ‘in the vicinity’.

    Edited at 2012-06-09 10:06 am (UTC)

  5. I did wonder if solvers living outside the UK would know of “the dreaded lurgy”, referred to in 28. It seems a peculiarly English term, which, I believe, came from Lurgi Strikes Britain, a 1954 Goon Show, and quickly passed into common usage to mean an ill-defined, flu-like disease similar to, but arguably more serious than, chincough.

    If I my memory isn’t playing tricks on me, I think the word Lurgi was already fairly well known in the 1950s because of the construction of coal gasification plants that used the Lurgi Process.

  6. That takes me back. A group called Rondo Veneziano recorded La Serenissima (yer basic classical strings riff on top of a disco beat with bass guitar) as the theme music for something or other in the early 80s.
    I only remembered it because I had an album on which it was featured along with other unforgettable classics such as the theme to Howards Way, Chi Mai by Ennio Morricone, theme to The Gentle Touch… and, er, Axel F.
    It was rubbish.
  7. 15:11 here, with BAWL and LITURGY holding me up for a few minutes at the end.

    Splendid puzzle. No problem with LA SERENISSIMA – of all the places I’ve been to, Venice is the one I’d most like to revisit. Heavenly!

  8. In NYC-speak a flatty is a policeman and low-heeled shoes are flats (and flats are apartments and so on). Rather good puzzle this. Also in NYC-speak, bawl and ball are homophones with the W pronounced (bawal). Leander club not so easy for non-UK solvers unless you are into rowing. No idea how long I took because my internet connection went down.

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