Saturday Times 25562 (24th August)

Author   linxitPosted on Categories Weekend Cryptic
Solving time about half an hour, including a ten-minute kip with three left. I came up to blog this, wondering why I couldn’t remember anything about it. Looking through the pile, I soon discovered the reason – I hadn’t solved it yet! So there I was, a bit half-cut, past 11pm on Friday night trying to solve the Saturday puzzle. Lucky for me it was one of the easier ones, but it wasn’t all slain paling.

Across
1 BRITPOP – (trip)* inside BOP (dance).
5 MENTHOL – MEN (staff) + THO’ (however) + L(ively).
9 TIP-AND-RUN – TIP (suggestion) + AN + DRUN(k) (alcoholic won’t finish).
10 MOSES – M.O. (doctor) + SE(us)S (Seuss, no American).
11 TELEVANGELISM – LEG (limb) + NAVEL (belly-button), reversed inside (Times)*. First one I got, believe it or not.
13 PASTILLE – PAST ILL (recovery unlikely…) + E(cstasy).
15 GOVERN – hidden inside “jumping over nine”.
17 OSPREY – SO (thus) reversed + PREY (opposite of predator).
19 TAKE THAT – double definition.
22 EXTRAPOLATION – EXTRA (more) + (optional)*. I wasted a bit of time looking at “more optional” as the anagram fodder, until I realsed that was only 12 letters!
25 INERT – (l)INER (ship won’t start) + T(ug).
26 SPIDERMAN – DERMA (skin) inside SPIN (produce silk, perhaps).
27 MANX CAT – i.e. TOM without the tail. Ha bloody ha. Last one in, so sour grapes might be involved, but I didn’t like it.
28 ROMANCE – C(hapter) next to ROMAN (Julius Caesar, perhaps) + (Shakespear)E.

Down
1 BUTT – double definition – I’m sure Rufus has used this one in the Monday Guardian recently.
2 IMPETUS – (P)IUS (pope not beginning) around [ P(ower) inside MET (police). I was familiar with the pope, as my dad was from a catholic family who traditionally gave their first sons a 3rd Christian name the same as the current pope’s. I was lucky Pope Paul was on the throne when I was born!
3 PANEL – PAN (god) + (h)EL(l).
4 PORT VALE – PORT (left) + VALE (farewell, in Latin). A League One (i.e. 3rd division) football team – possibly a tricky one for non-UK solvers.
5 MANANA – MA + NANA (pairing of relations). Literally “tomorrow” in Spanish, but the implication is less specific than that.
6 NUMBER ONE – double definition, another one I’m sure I’ve seen from Rufus before.
7 HOSTILE – TI(p) (almost dump) inside HOLE (predicament), but I can’t explain the S. What am I missing? [ Edit: It’s STI(g) (almost dump resident) inside HOLE. How did I miss that? Stig of the Dump was one of my favourite books when I was a kid. ]
8 LAST-MINUTE – (sultan, time)*
12 SPOONERISM – …or “Save the Whales” as it should be. Great clue, down with anyone who moans about the definition by example! This setter’s a fart smeller! (sorry, couldn’t resist slipping in one of my favourites :-))
14 INELASTIC – (lance is it)*
16 CAVALIER – LIER (one recumbent) underneath CAVA (wine).
18 PATTERN – PATTER (talk) + N(onsense).
20 HANGMAN – cryptic definition.
21 CORSET – C(old) + OR + SET (hard). I wanted to put in CORPSE at first, but resisted the temptation.
23 ILEUM – LUM (dialect word for a chimney, hence smoker) around (smok)E, all underneath I (one).
24 ANTE – A NOTE (a fiver perhaps) minus the O (nothing to lose).

14 comments on “Saturday Times 25562 (24th August)”

  1. 28:47 .. I really got a kick out of this puzzle. My thanks to the setter.

    SPOONERISM and TAKE THAT both much enjoyed, but I loved the tailless cat (I saw it quickly which maybe helps!). Not many clues have provoked quite so much discussion in the Club forum. The verdict seemed to be Brilliant/Hated It in equal measure, which surely makes it a candidate for Clue of The year.

    Thank you, linxit, for going above and beyond and blogging while you should have been watching something mindless on late night TV.

    Edited at 2013-08-31 02:15 am (UTC)

  2. 27:44 on the club timer.
    I liked this puzzle a lot. When I got 12dn SPOONERISM and (particularly) 27ac MANX CAT I laughed and thought “you git”. In my book that’s as good as it gets. I can understand the objection to the cat clue: there’s a fine line between a laugh and a groan.
    I also enjoyed 19ac. The clue would work perfectly well without the inverted commas, but is so much better with them.
    1. It’s a reference to Stig of the Dump. Another reason I liked this puzzle: a literary reference for my generation. One of the things I love about these puzzles is the way they gradually teach me all this Latin and Greek stuff I was never taught at school, but it’s still nice to be thrown a bone once in a while.
      [So in the wordplay STI is “almost dump resident”]

      Edited at 2013-08-31 02:11 am (UTC)

      1. Oh, well done. I just edited my comment below (posted around the same time) which expressed bafflement.

        I’m quite annoyed at myself for not seeing it – Stig of the Dump was one of the first ‘real’ books I encountered in childhood, and still fondly remembered.

        1. Damn, me too! I thought of STI(g) but discounted him, thinking “resident in” was the insertion indicator!
  4. Stig of the Dump? Well, it’s always a comfort to learn that I couldn’t possibly have figured out the wordplay. Lovely puzzle, anyway. I’m definitely on the pro-MANX CAT side; COY as far as I’m concerned, but 11ac had much to offer, too. I’m still at a loss for TAKE THAT, though; and I think one might cavil a bit over extrapolation being guesswork.
  5. A few minutes over the hour which might also have included some zzz time due to tiredness and no reflection on the quality of this puzzle which was excellent in my view. 11 and 27 stood out for me and also the first-rate cryptic clue to HANGMAN.

    I have quite an extensive knowledge of names of obscure soccer teams (for reasons explained here in the past which have absolutely nothing to do with any interest in the game) but I’m afraid PORT VALE was not one that lodged itself unbidden into my memory.

    Stig of the Dump came too late for me so I would never have fully understood 7dn.

    I recognise neither ‘broken’ nor ‘(to be?) fixed’ as a definition of INELASTIC so I’m none the wiser as to which it is and which is the anagram indicator.

    Edited at 2013-08-31 06:55 am (UTC)

    1. ‘Fixed’ (inflexible) as a definition seems okay to me, with ‘to be’ as a nice link.
      1. Thanks. Of course! I also liked the cat clue, btw, but mentioned it only by clue number in my comment.
  6. No time because I dozed off mid-solve last Saturday post-lunch, and whenever I do that I know that leading up to the snooze I’ll have been staring at clues but thinking of something completely different.

    I didn’t know Stig of the Dump so couldn’t parse 7dn but the answer was obvious enough. I thought the “God slots” definition for TELEVANGELISM was good. I suppose that the inclusion of BRITPOP, TAKE THAT and NUMBER ONE is as close as we’re going to get to a themed puzzle in The Times. SPOONERISM was my next-to-last in after I finally saw what the clue was telling me, followed by MANX CAT, which I thought was very good.

    1. There’s been a few themed puzzles in the Times, most recently when some woman married a bloke (as Private Eye probably didn’t say), 24836. 23925 was Bond-themed, on what would have been Ian Fleming’s 100th birthday. 24597 was another marriage one, on the day setter John Henderson married Jetdoc.
      Rob
  7. Bang on the hour for me, with the Manx cat last in. Am I allowed to be contrarian and say I thought it was pretty good? PORT VALE was a write-in, as was TAKE THAT. My relationship with my daughter (now 17) has never been the same since I told her about Chambers’ quirky definitions. I lured her in with middle-aged and eclair before hitting her with boy band, defined, for anyone who doesn’t know, as ‘a pop group, targeting mainly the teenage market, composed of young males chosen because they look good and can dance and sometimes even sing’.

    Kevin, the five members of Take That average around 41, and to give Chambers it’s due only two of them can sing, while one of them … can’t even dance.

  8. Was my last in, needing all the checkers. Felt a bit too Guardian for a Times crossword, but “mild disapprobation” rather than “loathing” would be my feeling. I’d been theorising the second word might be CUT, and something when CUT would give TO – close, but no cigar.
    Rob

Comments are closed.