Saturday Times 25496 (8th June)

Author   linxitPosted on Categories Weekend Cryptic
Over 45 minutes to solve, but I don’t think that reflects the difficulty of the puzzle. The four perimeter answers went in pretty quickly and I thought it was going to be another Saturday doddle, but 6D and 15A had me stumped for ages. With 6D I thought of CROW for bird and MAVE(n) for “expert almost” at different times but didn’t put them together! However, when I was a bachelor I was never a fan of ready meals and either ate out or cooked for myself (OK, there was the odd takeaway, but I never owned a microwave). So the definition didn’t click. As for 15A, great clue – I wanted to put in the right answer straight away, but couldn’t see the wordplay. Only figured it out much later.

Across
1 WALTER DE LA MARE – (alarmed, we)* around ALTER (change).
9 IGUANODON – I + GUANO (waste) + D (old money) + ON.
10 CATCH – triple definition I think, slthough I’m wondering whether the second word should be contact.
10 EIGHT – FIGHT (struggle), with the first letter moving one place back down the alphabet.
12 CYCLOPEAN – CYCLON(e) (storm virtually) around PEA (tiny seed).
13 HARDSHIP – (granda)D inside HARSH (grim) + IP (internet protocol).
15 MANTLE – NT (not, only the lining (outside letters)) inside MALE (bloke).
17 CLARET – CLARE (college) + (studen)T.
19 TIRELESS – you can’t drive without tyres, which are spelt differently over the pond.
22 LIBERTINE – LIB (party) + (entire)*.
23 QUITO – QUIT (depart) + O(mani). Capital of Ecuador.
24 TORSO – OR SO (approximately), after (elephan)T.
25 SCORECARD – SC (short for scilicet, namely), + (a record)*.
26 PADDINGTON BEAR – ADDING (putting on) + TON (weight) + B(ite), all inside PEAR (fruit).

Down
1 WHITE CHOCOLATE – WHIT (a bit) + LATE (delayed), around ECHO (nymph) + CO(mpany).
2 LOUNGER – U(pholsterer) inside LONGER (stretched).
3 ERNST – hidden in “modERN STyle”.
4 DIDACTIC – first letters of I(nitiatives) C(reating), after DID (accomplished) + ACT (performance).
5 LUNACY – UN (little French number) inside LACY (sexy?).
6 MICROWAVE – MAVE(n) (expert almost) around I (single), CROW (bird).
7 RETREAT – RE-TREAT.
8 CHINLESS WONDER – (denser clownish)*
14 SWEAR WORD – SWORD (possible killer) around WEAR (put on).
16 LIFEBOAT – (albeit of)*
18 ALBERTA – ALERT (careful) around B(ritish) + A.
20 EPILATE – I(odine) inside E(astern) PLATE (china).
21 GIBSON – BIG (great) reversed + SON (kid). Guy Gibson, who led the Dambusters mission.
23 QUEEN – double definition: a female cat, or a chess piece (man).

5 comments on “Saturday Times 25496 (8th June)”

  1. Didn’t find this difficult, managing to start by getting the four long outsiders in place; but I did get one wrong, a careless Saurian misspelling of iguanodon..
  2. 10ac: Contract/catch as one might a disease such as flu.

    A similar tale here. The four long ones went in early (didn’t even read past “Marmalade lover” at 26) but there was much to chew on elsewhere and several answers such as IGUANODON and CYCLOPEAN that either I didn’t know or were at the very fringes of my knowledge. A couple of others were helped by having come up very recently: GIBSON and ERNST.

    Edited at 2013-06-15 06:58 am (UTC)

  3. This felt slightly harder than average but the 4 long answers opened up the whole grid. I thought “lining” was a little ambiguous in 15A as it’s also defined in Chambers as “contents”. An interesting variety of words in this one.
  5. Picking up on whst mohn2 writes, I would wager that most people these days understand ‘every cloud has a silver lining’ to refer to a kind of tinted rim or border on its outside, when the reference is to its ‘stuffing’. The idea was first used by Milton in Comus:

    ‘Was I deceiv’d, or did a sable cloud
    Turn forth her silver lining on the night?’

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