Saturday Times 25550 (10th Aug)

Posted on Categories Weekend Cryptic
First day of the premiership season, so I’m sat in a Sky “Event Centre” being paid to watch the football. Nice job if you can get it, but I’d rather be watching the Twenty20 finals! Mind you, as I type Hampshire have just lost their 3rd wicket 🙁

I actually started typing this up at 6 this morning, but ran out of time – just got a few minutes now before 3pm to get it posted. Sorry it’s a bit brief. Solving time was around 16 minutes I think.

Across
1 COCAINE – C.O. (officer) + “cane”.
5 FASTS – FEASTS (big meals) without the E.
9 ENROL – hidden reversed in “medieval or newer”.
10 PHOTOCALL – P(aparazzo) + HOT (trendy) + (local)*
11 TRAGEDY – TRY (hear) around AGED (ancient).
12 EMPTIED – E(uropean) + MP (politician) + TIED (bound).
13 WHERE IT’S AT – (Whit, Easter)*
15 SNAP – double definition.
18 RELY – REALLY (certainly) with A and L (a pound) removed.
20 TIMES ROMAN – I’M + MORSE (detective) reversed, all inside TAN (function).
23 COMBINE – COMB (groom) + FINE (very thin) minus the F for female.
24 DONNISH – alternate letters of jOiNiNg inside DISH (course).
25 ADAPTABLE – A + PAD (flat) reversed + TABLE (piece of furniture).
26 ALL-IN – LL (learners) inside A1 (class) + N(oon).
27 STAND – ST (saint, good man) + AND (with).
28 GARMENT – (assistin)G + A + [ M(aiden) inside RENT (torn) ].

Down
1 CARCASE – RAC (drivers) reversed + CASE (action).
2 COLLEGES – (O-Level/GCSE)* after removing E(nglish), V(erse).
3 IMPLY – I’M (this setter’s) + PLY (work).
4 EXONERATE – EX-ONE (person no longer) + RATE (charge).
5 FLOPPY – FLY (flit) around [ P (quietly) after OP(eration) ].
6 SHAVIAN – SH (not to speak) + AVIAN (of the Seagull?). Candida and Heartbreak House are both plays by George Bernard Shaw.
7 SALAD – D(aughter) + ALAS (unfortunately), all reversed.
8 BESTOWER – “BEST OWER”.
14 TOILET BAG – I (one) + LET (allowed), inside TOBAG(o) (Caribbean island briefly).
16 PINCHING – N(ew) + CH (companion) + IN (home) all inside PIG (Tamworth, a breed of them).
17 IRONWARE – (in a row)* + R.E. (engineers).
19 LAMBADA – LAMA (priest) around BAD (wicked).
21 MAILLOT – MAIL LOT.
22 LIFTED – FT (paper) inside (deli)*.
23 CRASS – ASS (fool) after CR(edit).
24 DREAR – DREAMER (fantasist) with ME removed.

21 comments on “Saturday Times 25550 (10th Aug)”

  1. 25 minutes but mucked up thanks to some serious stupidity. I had written in ‘chip’ for 15a, which seemed fair enough, but then decided SHAWISH must be an acceptable alternative to Shavian, despite there being no justification for it in the wordplay. It never occurred to me to rethink ‘chip’.

    To anon: no problem. Besides, crosswords without agony would be no fun at all!

  2. Well over the hour for this one but I think much of that was spent on a couple of sticky clues. I had TRAVEL BAG for ages at 14dn which hampered 20ac. I read complaints somewhere about 6dn, something about Shaw being an obscure playwright. Unbelievable!
  3. A half-hour online, then I don’t know how much longer, but I finished it; I’m starting to have doubts if I’ll be as lucky today. DNK 10ac–in the US it’s a ‘photo opportunity’ or just ‘photo op’. Also DNK the pig, or for that matter TOILET BAG; I’d say ‘toiletry’. Like Jack, I stalled on ‘travel bag’ for a long time. I was waiting for the explication of RELY; having got ‘certainly’=’surely’ into my head, I was stumped as to how one deleted the SU.
    Complaining about the obscurity of Shaw does seem a bit much, but it might not seem so to a younger generation. Does anyone read him these days? More importantly, does anyone put on his plays?
  4. Thought this was quite tough, with the NE corner causing a lot of trouble, admittedly partly self-inflicted as I lobbed in DIETS (for FASTS) and DROOPY (for FLOPPY) without reconciling them with the wordplay. Even with those fixed, the SHAVIAN/SNAP crossing gave me a significant delay at the end, and it’s only as I’m writing this that the penny has dropped that the “shot” part of the clue for SNAP was referring to photography.
  5. This one took me about 20 mins.

    BESTOWER made me laugh, I got MAILLOT from the wordplay, and SHAVIAN was my LOI. Thankfully I thought of SNAP without even considering “chip”.

  6. About 20 minutes, I think, but with a total blank on 6dn. As I’ve already commented, by the time I was educated the literary reputation of GBS was, well, I don’t really know, but in three years of an English Literature degree I don’t think I ever heard him mentioned. So like most people the only play of his I’ve heard of is My Fair Lady. (This is only half a joke).
    Never mind that, though: I love filling gaps in my knowledge from these puzzles, but how do you get “sh” from “not to speak”? Have I missed something obvious?

    Edited at 2013-08-18 05:22 am (UTC)

    1. “Sh” is just a shortened version of “shush”, and is often used in crosswords as an alternative to “p” for quiet.
      1. Well yes, I realise that, but “not to speak” doesn’t mean the same thing at all. “Don’t speak” would have worked.

        Edited at 2013-08-18 01:36 pm (UTC)

        1. I felt it was close enough in the context to be not worth quibbling about, given that The Seagull is also a well-known play by Anton Chekhov.
          1. The one play in the clue I had heard of!
            I don’t think it’s close at all: sour grapes no doubt…
        2. I didn’t want to make the assumption that you had a quibble with the syntax of the clue. It was close enough for me, although maybe I’ve just become immune to such wordplay thanks to doing the Guardian and Indy puzzles on a regular basis.
          1. Don’t worry Andy, no offence taken! I suspect it was close enough for you because you got the answer, and emphatically not close enough for me because I didn’t. 😉
    2. My (maths) degree gave me plenty of time to spend on my college bar’s quiz machine, on which I made the acquaintance of several of Shaw’s plays including Major Barbara, Man and Superman, and St Joan, so it was somewhat disappointing that a clue that might have made use of that scant knowledge didn’t.
  7. Did this on and off last Saturday at friends’ chalet on Anglesey and, unusually for me, on the ‘paper’ paper not the printed-out crossword.
    Two missing (Fast & Shavian) and one error at 5dn where I think (no longer have the newspaper to hand) I put Droopy. Certainly I had a starting D which meant I was toying with Diets at 5ac. Thanks for putting me right there Andy.
    Thought Cocaine, Maillot and particularly Bestower were the pick of the clues. The number (= something that numbs) meaning of Cocaine was new to me and I was slow to solve that one.
  8. Enjoyed this one; I thought 20ac very clever.
    The maillot took me longer to find than it should have done, given the avidity with which I follow the Maillot Jaune in the tour de France every year..
  9. I was completely foxed by this clue, doping the same as sotira and going for CHIP for “Crack shot” and SPANISH for the the other, as to my shame I had a mental block about Candida etc.
    But it’s a perfectly sound – indeed brilliant – clue: “to not speak” is exactly the same as “to sh” or “to shush”

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