Saturday Times 25616 (26th Oct)

Author   linxitPosted on Categories Weekend Cryptic
Sorry about the delay getting this one up – my weekends are getting as busy as my weekdays lately! Anyway, a fairly steady solve in around 15 minutes. Getting the four 14-letter ones in early was helpful.

Across
1 TURTLE – hidden reversed in “felt ruthless”.
4 BAROUCHE – OUCH (I’m hurt) inside BARE (non-upholstered).
10 POMEGRANATE – sounds like “Pommy granite”.
11 GAG – double definition.
12 OUTPOST – OUST (drive away) around OPT (choose) reversed.
14 DISPOSE – ISP (one supplying broadband) inside DOSE (measured quantity).
15 CAT AND MOUSE ACT – double definition. Nickname of the Prisoners (Temporary Discharge for Ill Health) Act 1913, which allowed the authorities to release suffragettes on hunger strike, then re-arrest them as soon as they recovered.
17 SELF-IMPORTANCE – (free, complaints)*
21 BREADTH – BREATH (murmur) around D(aughter).
22 DEMOING – DOING (activity) around ME reversed.
23 COT – double definition, the first short for cotangent, a geometrical function.
24 LORD’S PRAYER – LORD (my, as in “Oh my!”) + SPRAYER (aerosol).
26 SHREDDER – SH (“I want peace”) + REDDER (more revolutionary).
27 BLOWSY – LOWS (depressions) inside BY (through).

Down
1 TOP-NOTCH – TOPKNOT (tuft of hair) minus the middle letter, + CH(eck).
2 RAM – double definition. RAM = Random Access Memory in computing.
3 LEGHORN – as a type of chicken, it has two LEGs and no HORN. More like a riddle than a cryptic clue, more like the sort of clue that used to appear 50 years ago. Having said that I quite liked it, just a little surprised.
5 A HANDFUL OF DUST – (had found faults)*. 1934 novel by Evelyn Waugh.
6 OVERSEE – (l)OVE(r) (admirer at heart) around ERSE (Gaelic).
7 COGNOSCENTI – C(old) + (congestion)*
8 EAGLET – GLE(n) (valley, almost) inside (h)EAT (warmth, minus the H).
9 PANTOMIME HORSE – PANT (long) + O(ver) + (him, me sore)*. Great definition, “Christmas double act”.
13 TO THE LETTER – double definition.
16 BEGGARLY – EGG (one maybe pickled) inside BAR (pub) + first letters of L(eave), Y(ou).
18 FIDDLED – cryptic definition, ref. Fiddler on the Roof, the 1964 musical.
19 TIMBREL – TIRE (weary) + L(ength) around MB (doctor). A type of tambourine.
20 ABACUS – A + CH(urch) missing from BACCHUS (God).
25 YAW – YAW(n).

11 comments on “Saturday Times 25616 (26th Oct)”

  1. Can’t remember much about last week’s I’m afraid, but today’s is top class.. very witty.
      1. I seem to have suffered some kind of brain freeze with yesterday’s puzzle: unlike everyone else I found it really difficult, and it took me half an hour. But I thought it was absolutely superb.
        [Edit] Oh yes, and this one: about 15 minutes, and no real problems. I remembered the CAT AND MOUSE ACT from a previous puzzle. I’ve read A HANDFUL OF DUST, but I can’t remember a single thing about it.

        Edited at 2013-11-03 09:58 pm (UTC)

        1. Isn’t that the one where the hero is trapped in the Amazon jungle by an illiterate who wants him to read Dickens to him?
          1. I don’t remember! But I see from Wiki that you’re right. You’d think I might remember something like that, but I have a remarkable talent for forgetting stuff.
  2. 30 mins so I must have found it tricky.

    From the notes I made at the time COT was my LOI because I couldn’t think of cotangent and the “new arrival” reference didn’t suggest the obvious, which seems bizarre in retrospect.

    I very rarely need to write down anagram fodder but I had to in order to solve the clue for A HANDFUL OF DUST. I was held up for a while with BEGGARLY and DISPOSE, the latter because I was looking at the wrong end of the clue for the definition. DEMOING also held me up, possibly because it is a strange looking word.

  3. All but four solved in 30 minutes but then I nodded off so I have no overall time to offer. Very enjoyable, though I didn’t fully understand how 20ac worked until I reviewed it this morning.
  4. Don’t know how long this took me; stopped counting after the statutory half-hour, but at least I finished it. Does anyone other than a stage Cockney pronounce ‘pomegranate’ like ‘pommy granite’? Had no idea about the Cat and Mouse Act; one learns lots coming here. Liked the anagram in 17ac.
    1. Sorry, but none of those sites gives that pronunciation. The two that provide phonetic symbols give [I] not [i]. (Actually, the vowel is more likely a so-called barred i or a schwa.) And no English word, including ‘pommy’, ends in [I].

      Edited at 2013-11-06 02:06 am (UTC)

  6. An hour for me. The way I say it – and read the IPA for the British English pronunciation – the fruit and the ‘British rock’ are homophonous.

Comments are closed.