Saturday Times 25394 (9th Feb)

Author   linxitPosted on Categories Weekend Cryptic
Solving time not noted, think it was about 20 minutes. After a hectic week I didn’t get to this until Wednesday or Thursday on the train, and I remember struggling a bit on the top half.

Across
1 REVISIT – REVIS(e) (swot briefly) + I.T. (computerised facilities).
5 DESPAIR – PA (the old man) inside DESIRE (lust) minus E for energy.
9 FACTORIAL – cryptic definition, “!” being the symbol for a factorial in mathematics.
10 AFOOT – A (one) + FOOT (part of a yard).
11 MORNING PRAYER – (Person marrying)*, without the S for second.
13 OVERSEAS – O(ld) + VERSES (poem maybe) around A(pril).
15 HAREEM – hidden inside “posh are embarassed”.
17 SPRING – SPARING (frugal), minus the A.
19 TALESMEN – TALES (lies) + MEN (fellows). New word for me, and my last one in.
22 RIGHT-THINKING – double definition, the second a bit chestnutty.
25 IDLER – I’D (I had) + ER (hesitation) around L(earner).
26 INVIOLATE – IN (at home) + VIOL (old musical instrument) + ATE (had).
27 GERMANE – GERMAN (speaker of foreign language) + E(nglish).
28 LUSHEST – LUST (passion) around SHE (novel by H. Rider Haggard), i.e. passion full of novel, the opposite of the wordplay in the clue.

Down
1 RAFT – CRAFT (creative activity) without the C.
2 VICOMTE – VICE (wickedness) around OMIT (miss), without the I.
3 STOUR – TOUR (trip) with S(chool) in front.
4 TRINIDAD – TRAD (jazz) around I (one) + DIN (awful noise) reversed.
5 DELUGE – GULL (bird) minus the last letter, reversed inside DEE (river).
6 STAIRCASE – A1 (excellent) inside (actress)*.
7 ANODYNE – ANNE (woman) around BODY (organisation) without the first letter.
8 RETIREMENT – (Re-enter MIT)*
12 CONSERVING – CON (criminal) + SERVING (in a menial role).
14 SANATORIA – SATORI (enlightenment in Buddhism) around AN, plus A (article).
16 CARNIVAL – I (one) + V(ery) inside CARNAL (sexual).
18 REGULAR – double definition.
20 MAGNATE – A G(ood) N(ame) inside MATE (chum).
21 SHRINE – R (rex or regina) inside SHINE (glitter).
23 IRONS – double definition.
24 NEWT – NET (snare) around W(ith).

7 comments on “Saturday Times 25394 (9th Feb)”

  1. Finished under the hour but resorted to aids for the last couple (9ac and 2dn) as I was going nowhere with them and becoming bored and frustrated. I really should have got 2dn but without the C checker it wasn’t going to come. I didn’t know FACTORIAL although now I come to think of it I have met ! on spreadsheets and I assume that’s something to do with it.

    Didn’t know TALESMEN or the Buddhist term necessary to understand the parsing at 14dn.

    Edited at 2013-02-16 09:04 am (UTC)

  2. I found this really tough: it took me just under an hour in a couple of sessions.
    I’m not very keen on 14dn, which requires knowledge of a rather obscure term to pick the correct spelling.
  3. Spent the last 3 or 4 minutes of this on TALESMEN, as I’d not heard of the word and the checking letters didn’t make an alphabet run-through particularly easy. Hadn’t heard of SATORI either but got the answer from the definition and the checkers, thus brushing that problem under the carpet. Couldn’t categorically state that I’d come across VICOMTE or that spelling of HAREEM before, but they passed the eye test and fitted the wordplay.
  4. I found this to be a bit of a slog. Several answers from definition alone with cryptics that I couldn’t work out because I didn’t understand the references – like “satori” and the question mark at 9a. 46 minutes. LOI was OVERSEAS. I was vainly looking for anagram fodder and missed the “Home Thoughts from Abroad” reference. Stupid, because it’s one of the poems I can remember by heart from my schooldays. Ann
  5. 31:44, quite fast for me for a Saturday, but I spoiled that by typing in ‘sanitoria’. The Zen idea of ‘satori’ didn’t strike me as terribly obscure, but then I lived in Berkeley in the 60s and 70s. DNK TALESMEN. Didn’t we have a punctuation-dependent clue recently? If so, I should have been quicker to twig to the ! of 9ac; it gets my COD.
    1. I don’t know if satori is terribly obscure, but I was surprised to find it required knowledge. SANITARIA is an accepted version of SANATORIA (even if it’s “sham Latin” according to Chambers – quelle horreur!), so if you don’t know your Zen enlightenment (which as far as I was concerned could easily have been SITARI) you can’t get the answer without cheating. I cheated.

      Edited at 2013-02-17 10:40 pm (UTC)

  6. Another typesetter’s prank for me. My clue read “River tripled by head of school.” I could come up with nothing for a tripled river except PO+R+R. It would have helped, if I’d ever heard of a river called either STOUR or SPORR!

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