Saturday Times 25329 (24th Nov)

Author   linxitPosted on Categories Weekend Cryptic
Blimey, that was a tough one! About 45 minutes for me, hindered by carelessly sticking A GOGO in at 10ac early on, but got there in the end without resorting to the books. Luckily I know how to say goodbye in both French and Latin!

I’ve got a new word that a lot of solvers of this puzzle will relate to. We’ve got our own crossword bloggers’ argot, words like anagrind, anagrist, tichy (short for tongue-in-cheek, as coined – or at least introduced here – by Uncle Yap), lift-and-separate (that has nothing to do with ladies’ underwear)… Yesterday I found a new one on the Word Salad blog (link is also in the right-hand menu bar) – IGIBIDGI (pronounced idgy-bidgy), an acronym for I Got It But I Don’t Get It, which refers to clues where you get the answer from definition and crossing letters but have no idea how the wordplay works. Last Saturday when I filled in the last square there were plenty of idgy-bidgies, and looking at the forum I wasn’t alone. Unluckily for me I’ve got to blog it, so I had to squirrel away at it for another half hour before I was satisfied I had them all. Let’s hope I can still remember them all a week later…

As usual, clues can be seen by hovering the mouse pointer over the clue number.

Across
1 LEG BEFORE WICKET – WICKET (door) next to LEG (on, cricket term) + BEFORE (previously). The answer is one of the ways a batsman can be out in cricket.
9 HOME VIDEO – (HD, Old English movie)*
10 À DEUX – ADIEUX (lots of cheers) minus the I. French phrase meaning “for two”. “Cheers” can mean goodbye, so more than one goodbye has to be indicated by lots of cheers! Accurate clueing.
11 VALISE – IS (one’s) inside VALE (so long, Latin for goodbye).
12 ARMCHAIR – ARM (weapon) + CHAIR (to take charge of, e.g. a meeting). An armchair detective is one who solves the crime without visiting the scene, relying on pure logic.
13 EDWARD – WAR (campaigning) inside EDD(y) (endless spin).
15 PALPABLE – PAL (butty, dialect for a chum or comrade according to Chambers) + PALE (pasty) around B(lack).
18 DUTY-PAID – (Tidy up ad)*
19 PLAY AT – if you’ve got ROUBLE on the board you can PLAY A T to make TROUBLE! Ingenious clue.
21 GARRISON – NO + SIR (teacher) + RAG (kid), all reversed.
23 ANTHEA – hidden in “consultant hearing”, but it took me a while to spot her.
26 CHAMP – MP (Member) following CHA (cup that cheers). This description of tea is from William Cowper’s 1785 poem The Task:

And while the bubbling and loud-hissing urn
Throws up a steamy column, and the cups,
That cheer but not inebriate, wait on each,
So let us welcome peaceful evening in.
27 CAPE VERDE – CAP (eclipse) + EVER (at any time) + DE (from French).
28 MAKE GREAT PLAY OF – MAKE (turn to) + GREAT (high) + PLAY (drama, perhaps) + OF (causing).

Down
1 LE HAVRE – HE (chap) reversed inside LAV (ladies) + RE (touching). Ladies is a DBE, but I don’t have a problem with that.
2 GIMEL – GEL (set) around ‘IM (that fellow from the East End). The Hebrew alphabet starts Aleph, Beth, Gimel,…
3 EAVESDROP – LEAVES DROP (doesn’t quite drain glass) minus the first letter.
4 ODDS – cryptic indication for “no double-D’s” (think bra cup sizes). Price as in starting price, i.e. betting odds.
5 ECOFREAK – E(ssence) + (for cake)*
6 ISAAC – ISA (means to save, Individual Savings Account) + AC (electricity, alternating current). OT knowledge required here – he was Abraham’s son. God commanded Abraham to sacrifice him, but relented at the last moment and settled for a ram instead.
7 KEEP AT BAY – KEEP (fortification) AT BAY (coastal).
8 TAX-FREE – A (article) + X (by) + FR (priest), all inside TEE (letter).
14 WATERMARK – TERM (label) + ARK (box), underneath W(ith) A.
16 PULP NOVEL – PULL (yank) around [NOV (month) inside PE (gym)]. Great definition, “alternative to class work”.
17 DIVORCEE – (I, covered)*
18 DIGICAM – DIG (like) + I CAM(e) (start of Caesar’s campaign report, minus the last letter).
20 TEA-LEAF – double definition, “one pinching” = thief, the answer is rhyming slang; “a small part of one’s fortune” as in tasseography.
22 IN PIG – IN (home) + PIG (gorge). Chambers definition: (of a sow) pregnant.
24 HARRY – double definition, the second ref. Harry Potter (just Harry to his friends).
25 SPIT – another double definition to finish.

14 comments on “Saturday Times 25329 (24th Nov)”

  1. Brilliant puzzle, which kept me occupied for 2 hours longer than our blogger took! Last in ARMCHAIR – must learn my Hebrew alphabet so that I have at least one gimme (or GIMEL). Thanks to Andy for the Cowper poem and the parsing of 19ac.
  2. No idea how much time this took, but a lot. And IGIBIDGI comes in handy here, in spades. But a couple of them were just dimness on my part: I got ED,WAR, but couldn’t figure out where the final D came in; and I once again overlooked by=X. Since I don’t spend much time in the lingerie section, I’m afraid I still don’t get ODDS. I surprised myself by getting 1ac on the basis of the G and I (from the 2 easiest clues in the puzzle), justifying it only much later. 23ac was thrown in (LOI) in desperation; I only twigged on the train home. Best hidden I’ve seen (or didn’t see). The Isaac story has stuck in my mind largely because the text reads, “And Abraham rose, and saddled his ass, …” which used to break me up as a child. COD to 16d, although 11ac and 15ac were no slouches either.
      1. Thanks; actually, I was thinking of cup sizes when I wrote my comment, but I wasn’t familiar with the double-letter usage (I’ve only heard e.g. ‘D-cup’).
  3. A little under 90 minutes with some resort to aids. I hadn’t fathomed how ODDS worked or 1dn as it turned out, where I wrongly deduced that “ladies” accounted for ER (HMQ) and VAL despite not seeming very likely.

    Hard as it was, I enjoyed most of this.

    Shame I didn’t know about IGIBIDGI when I blogged Friday’s puzzle as I could have used it re 1dn.

  4. I did 90% of this crossword in good time, but took forever to finish it off. Anthea was hard to spot, and I only did so after having written it in anyway. Butty = pal was new to me. 4dn was another where the parsing was slow to come. Got there in the end however, half way through a plane trip..
  5. I don’t know how long I took because I had to stop and do other things after 40 minutes – at least an hour. Thanks for the masterly blog.

    I had absolutely no idea how 4d and 19a worked (idgy-bidgy). In 14d “tablets” refers to the 10 commandments stored in the box I think – another bit of OT stuff (or Indiana Jones if preferred). I had a spelling lapse and put “Verdi” on the end of 27a so I was completely stumped by “tea leaf” until that got fixed.

    Setter, if you read this – that was a beauty.

    Edited at 2012-12-01 11:12 am (UTC)

  6. I like IGIBIDGIT – is there also a term for getting the completely wrong word, but with absolutely perfect wordplay. For example, IN DAM (an ice dam is called a gorge in North America) doesn’t quite fit, because the definition isn’t perfect. Ditto, I think, for A GOGO. But COST (COrSeT) at 4d is another matter, and kept my NW from getting completed.

    Those around for the last Conservative leadership contest will remember David Davis’ somewhat risqué supporters: https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=david+davis+dd+photo&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&hl=en&client=safari#biv=i|1;d|5h-t2HEe5AXf3M:

    Thoughtful in London

  7. I’m a bit hit and miss on these saturday puzzles, not always finding time to do them. However, there was so much comment about this one that I had to have a go and was pleased that I did.

    If finishing the puzzle is defined as filling the grid it took me about 40 minutes. If one includes being able to parse all the clues, well it took me until the next day before the proverbial dropped at 19A. I don’t recall seeing this “scrabble” device before.

    Well done setter and Andy – at least you had a week to work on it. This would have been a complete nightmare if it had occurred on a weekday.

  8. Brilliant puzzle – what Saturdays were made for. My thanks to the setter (and linxit).

    Nearly an hour and then SPIT did for me – the light dawned just as I clicked ‘submit’ and after I had convinced myself that it was ‘spat’, my logic for which I won’t dwell on.

  9. Why is it that I found this puzzle straightforward, solving it in about half an hour, yet there have been occasions over the last month when I have been too ashamed to post a comment? Sometimes the puzzles that everyone else found easy took me so long I seriously considered giving up crossword solving for good.

    I was hoping to offer some insight into “the crossword mind”, but I suspect my relatively short solving time was due to some answers going in without much thought, possibly because they had personal significance or were expressions I use regularly, e.g. IN PIG and TEA LEAF.

    I knew “butty” as a particular sort of coal-miner, but guessed it might also mean “pal”.

  10. Thanks for the explanations of 4d & 18d, which were both IGIBIDGIs. 1a nearly came into this category, as I was convinced that LEG must be “a tall, narrow stage drape used to mask the wings on either side of the stage”. Legs may well form the sides of an imagined door on stage. Remarkably, this meaning is not in any of the standard dictionaries, although I am sure it is familiar to anyone who has been involved in the theatre, either professionally or as an amateur.
  11. Echo sentiments above, a tough and enjoyable challenge, managed all except ANTHEA (obvious now) and ARMCHAIR before time available expired, then never got round to re-visiting it. An hour at least.

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