Saturday Times 25251 (25th August)

Author   linxitPosted on Categories Weekend Cryptic
Solving time 12:44, unusually (for me) solved in the paper rather than on a print-out, and even more unusually on the Saturday rather than on the Monday morning commute (Bank Holidays play havoc with my routine!)

Across
1 BESTOWED – “ideally not paid for” = “best owed”.
9 ISABELLA – (A label is)*. I’d never heard of the colour, but it was the first thing that jumped out from the anagram fodder, and went in once there were a couple of checkers in place. Possibly (Chambers are hedging their bets) named after Isabella of Castile, who didn’t change her clothes for three years.
10 QUARTS – sounds like quartz (glass).
11 TIDDLYWINK – TIDDLY (drunk) + WIN(e) (no end of alcohol) + (wrec)K.
12 VIAL – VITAL (essential) losing the T(emperature).
13 HOWARDS END – cryptic definition; Catherine Howard was Henry VIII’s fifth wife, beheaded in 1542. Howards End is a 1910 novel by E. M. Forster.
16 INFIELD – I + (A)NFIELD (head away from stadium).
17 BAG LADY – GLAD (pleased) inside BAY (alcove).
20 MINIMALISM – MINIM (note) around MALI’S (African country’s).
22 OKRA – O(ld) + ARK reversed.
23 NANOSECOND – AN (article) inside NOSECON(e) (front of rocket, nearly) + D(ied).
25 ROLL ON – double definition.
26 TUTELAGE – TUT (shame) + EAGE(r) (not wholly keen) around L(earner).
27 DAD’S ARMY – D.S. (detective) + ARM (gun) inside DAY (period). Brilliant comedy series about the WWII home guard.

Down
2 ERUPTION – I (one) inside NOT PURE (polluted) reversed.
3 TORTELLINI – (little iron)*. I suppose they’re sort of ring-shaped.
4 WESTPHALIA – assuming Anglicised pronunciation, sounds like “West failure”. Actually a number of treaties signed in 1648, bringing a couple of long dragged-out wars to an end.
5 DIE DOWN – DID OWN (used to have) around E(ast).
6 HAUL – HAL (computer, the one from 2001: A Space Odyssey) around U (for all to see, film classification).
7 PLAICE – PLA(n) (shortly propose) + ICE (what may keep it fresh).
8 LACKADAY – “lack a day”.
14 REAL MADRID – REAL (extremely ungrammatical) + MAD (angry) + RID (free).
15 SALMONELLA – (Alone, small)*
16 IMMUNITY – double definition, the first by example unless I’m missing some subtlety.
18 DARKROOM – DARK (night) + MOOR reversed (fell over).
19 BIGOTED – (dog-bite)*.
21 NINETY – N, E (points) inside (tiny)*.
24 ESAU – (inheritanc)E + “saw”. One of those nasty little clues you’d be unlikely to be able to cold solve.

5 comments on “Saturday Times 25251 (25th August)”

  1. I really liked HAUL. This was my LOI and my COD. It’s often those pesky 3- and 4-letter answers that hold you up isn’t it. On the other hand, while I know some don’t like the double-helix type of clue, I don’t like clues where “players” means the name of a team. I just think of it as a leap too far. Besides, for no real reason, I don’t like Ronaldo. Thanks for the blog, linxit!
  2. It’s utterly dispiriting and depressing to come here and find the only time recorded so far is under 13 minutes. It took me 13 minutes to find my second answer!

    94 minutes in total with some assistance from the dictionary once the hour had elapsed.

    Edited at 2012-09-01 12:13 pm (UTC)

  3. After 38′, I had 8 clues solved; decided to give it a rest, and when I came back, I finished the other 28 in 11:30, somehow. DK ROLL ON, ISABELLA. ‘Street-walker’ struck me as perhaps a bit infelicitous as a definition, even a jocular one. It was only when I came to this blog that I realized that my solution to 16ac was correct for the wrong reason: I deleted the initial E of ‘Enfield’, which I thought I had learned from an earlier cryptic; well, no harm, I suppose. I liked 23ac, 14d, 2d, and 18d, but I’ll join MartinP in giving my COD to 6d, which was my LOI, too.

    Edited at 2012-09-01 05:35 pm (UTC)

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