Saturday Times 25568 (31st August)

Author   linxitPosted on Categories Weekend Cryptic
Solving time 14:44, a very enjoyable solve out of the paper for a change, in a pub garden on a sunny day with a pint of cider, while waiting for the missus to come out of the hairdressers. Why do they take so long? I also finished the Jumbo, the quick, the codeword and made inroads into the Listener as well (and a couple more pints of cider, obviously).

No real hiccups, apart from rashly putting in ENIGMA MACHINE in at 14ac without bothering to parse the clue, probably not the only one to do that – you see Bletchley, you see ENIGMA standing out from the obvious anagram fodder…then you see that 14dn has to begin with T…damn!

Across
1 CHARTIST – CH(urch) + ARTIST.
5 TISSUE – T(imes) + ISSUE (edition).
9 BOTTOM OUT – double definition, the first referring to the practice of showing your bum to passers by.
11 LILAC – CALL (label) reversed around I (one).
12 SACKBUT – BUT (objection) following SACK (dismissal).
13 LIGHT UP – double definition.
14 TURING MACHINE – C (middle letter of Bletchley) inside (remaining hut)*. Alan Turing’s 1936 theoretical mathematical model of a computing machine. We’ve come a long way since then.
16 PROFIT-SHARING – PRO(fessional) + FITS (agrees with) + HARING (running).
20 TRANCHE – TRANCE (dream) around H(ospital).
21 ON PAPER – double definition.
23 EDWIN – D(uke) inside (wine)*. I suppose it’s this Edwin, a 7th-century king of Northumbria.
24 TITLE PAGE – PAGE (servant) next to TITLE (call).
25 DARNEL – DARN (curse) + EL (“the” in Spanish). New word for me, but the cryptic indication was clear. A species of rye-grass.
26 OTOSCOPE – P(ower), E(cstasy), next to [TOSC(a) (short opera) inside O,O (discs)].

Down
1 CUBISM – (music)* around B(ritish).
2 ATTIC – A + (bailou)T + TIC (rapid contraction). Nicely topical surface reading.
3 TOOLBAR – TOOL (decorate) + BAR (room in a pub).
4 SHORT AND SWEET – SHORT (whisky, say) + AND (with) + SWEET (pudding).
6 ILLOGIC – I’LL + GO (turn) reversed + I + C(aught).
7 SPLIT RING – SPLIT (divided) + RING (set of bells).
8 ENCIPHER – (The Prince)* without the T (timeless).
10 TELL ME ABOUT IT – definition “I know that”, TELL ME ABOUT (I want to learn from you about), IT (computers and things).
14 TROJAN WAR – TROJAN (malicious programme) + RAW (very sensitive) reversed.
15 SPOT-WELD – SPOT (notice) + WELD (herb). My second unknown of the day was WELD as a herb. “A scentless species of mignonette, also known as dyer’s rocket”, according to Chambers.
17 INCENSE – double definition.
18 IMPRESS – “I’M PRESS”.
19 FRIEZE – sounds like “frees”.
22 PLATO – hidden reversed in “pivotal philosophers”.

8 comments on “Saturday Times 25568 (31st August)”

  1. 13 mins and definitely the easiest Prize puzzle for a while, for me at least.

    I had the same two unknowns as you Andy, not having having heard of the herb WELD before, and not having heard of the DARNEL species of rye-grass (my LOI), but as you said in the blog they were both obvious enough.

  2. 31 minutes including parsing and time lost trying to make more of 17dn than was warranted, following recent discussions re burning = in (or similar) and vision perhaps cluing sense for “cense”. I had the same unknowns as the two Andys.

    Anyway this was a welcome change following quite a difficult week, if I remember correctly.

    Edited at 2013-09-07 09:24 am (UTC)

  3. 28 minutes and a fe more unknowns for me – split ring (used them all my life without knowing the name), tool as in decorate a book cover, and sackbut, which sounds like the thing you used to sit on when you went down a helter-skelter.

    Today’s prize puzzle is a cracker and not too difficult to boot.

    Andy, is it time to remove the sticky? I think everyone that wants to go will know about it now, and there’s another 7 weeks before the event!

  5. Would also agree that this was on the easy side. Like Ulaca, I didn’t know this sense of split ring and put it in purely on the wordplay, assuming it was some unfathomable reference to split ring commutators.
  6. I think this was my fastest Saturday ever; 29:32 on the club timer, but I’d printed it out first, not thinking to do it online, so probably under 20′. DNK WELD, did know SACKBUT (probably in the band next to the hautboys), but not that it had a slide. Short whisky: what a concept.
  7. 16:50 on the club timer, but I managed to construct SPOT WEED from the wordplay. I’ve never heard of “weld” or “spot weld”, but I’m sure I’d have got it right if I’d thought about it a bit longer. Drat.

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