Saturday Times 25693 (25th Jan)

Author   linxitPosted on Categories Weekend Cryptic
Quite a tricky one, this, especially (for me) the bottom left corner. Solved in about 20 minutes, with quite a few solved from the definition and crossing letters. I only sorted out the cryptic parsing of a few of them while typing up the blog, and I’m still not that sure of 21D.

Across
1 URANUS – U (for all to see – cinema classification) + RAN US (what Reagan did).
5 WALL GAME – LAW (rule) reversed + LAME (weak) around G(ood). As played at Eton.
9 RECEIVER – double definition, both quite subtle – the first as in a telephone, the second as in the “Official Receiver” in charge of winding-up a bankrupt company.
10 SKOPJE – E(nglish) + JP (Justice of the Peace, magistrate) + OKS (approves), all reversed. Capital of Macedonia, can’t have been the easiest word to clue!
11 FEUDAL – FEUD (quarrel) + AL(l) (not quite entirely).
12 TWO-SCORE – (W, scooter)*. Number of days in Lent.
14 WORLD WIDE WEB – WORD (promise) + WIDE (extra, in cricket) around L(arge), + WEB (netting).
17 YELLOW POPLAR – YELLOW (far from bold) + POPULAR (in demand) minus U (superior). Also known as the tulip tree. I wasted far too long thinking the first word was going to be WILLOW.
20 GOD’S GIFT – GI (US private) inside GODS (gallery) + FT (Financial Times, paper).
22 MUESLI – (use mil)*.
23 HAWAII – HI (greeting) + I (one), around AWA’ (off, Scottish).
25 MOBY DICK – MOCK (ridicule) around BY (past) + DI (detective). Novel by Herman Melville, who was indeed American. Strictly, the title should be hyphenated.
26 GRANTHAM – GRANT (allow) + HAM (joint to be smoked perhaps). Lincolnshire town, best known as the birthplace of Margaret Thatcher.
27 DERMOT – hidden in “under mother’s”.

Down
2 REEFER – REEF (metal lining, which I think is referring to an Australian word for a gold vein) + ER (monarch). [ allan_sidcup has a better explanation for this one – FE (iron=metal) inside RE(on), ER (monarch). ]
3 NE’ER-DO-WELLS – (wate)R inside NEED O WELLS (require no springs).
4 SAVILE ROW – VILE ROW (frightful racket) after AS reversed (when coming up). London street famous for its tailor shops.
5 WORSTED – double definition.
6 LASSO – (a)LSO (as well not to start) around A S(mall).
7 GOO – GOOD (benefit) minus the D for daughter.
8 MAJOR KEY – JAM (press) reversed + ORK(n)EY (scottish islands, minus the N for new).
13 CHEERLEADER – (career he led)*
15 ISLAMABAD – “Is lama bad?” Capital of Pakistan.
16 DEBONAIR – D(uke) + EBON (poet’s black) + AIR (look).
18 OPTIMUM – OPT (plump) + I (single) + MUM (parent).
19 ALECTO – A LECTO(r) (reader not allowed to finish). One of the Furies from Greek mythology. The other two are Megaera and Tisiphone.
21 IRISH – IR (infrared, a sort of red) + I + SH (hold it!). I’m really not sure of that explanation, so if anyone’s got any better ideas I’ll be glad to hear them!
24 AWN – SAWN (as deal is cut) minus the first letter.

17 comments on “Saturday Times 25693 (25th Jan)”

    1. Doesn’t that leave the “I hold it!” unexplained? I’m sure linxit is right, but I didn’t understand it at the time.
  2. I was so brain weary by the end of this (call it 36 minutes of struggle) that I didn’t check it and managed a PW of 4 typos.

    There was quite a bit I didn’t really understand in here, like the clue for IRISH (thanks, linxit) and whether ‘Perfect present’ is really a definition of GOD’S GIFT (still not sure).

    I see we’re having another game of “Is it us or is it them?” in the Club Forum for today’s puzzle. Do test solvers tackle the problem online or on paper? If only the latter, perhaps the former would be a good idea?

  3. I spent at least 40 minutes on this and stopped clock-watching after an interruption. Thank you linxit for explaining IRISH – I’m sure you’re right. I had Rotten Row in 4d which put the kibosh on that entire corner. It was only when I came back to it much later that it got sorted out. According to the Club Forum I wasn’t the only one.
    We’ve been having a bit of a time with the Club cryptic results lately. It’s starting to resemble the weekly gamble on the TLS rather too uncomfortably.

    Edited at 2014-02-01 03:00 pm (UTC)

  4. 25 mins. I started off like a train in the NW but then I slowed down considerably and found the rest of the puzzle a little on the tricky side.

    IRISH was my LOI unparsed after GOD’S GIFT. I thought DERMOT was nicely hidden.

  5. This took me 36 mins to sort out – I too had Rotten Row for a while until the crossing letters made me realise my mistake. Groan of the day had to be HAWAII.
    1. Same here – except I didn’t have any crossing letters (since I was sure Rotten Row was correct), so DNF.
      And away went my chances of a £20 gift voucher…
  6. I was thinking triple definition, with the ‘red’ referring to Irish Red Ale, and the ‘I hold it’ bit an Anglicism I didn’t know. I didn’t think of IR because technically IR isn’t really red at all, it is a whole range of wavelengths (colours) of light (EM radiation) which are longer than red. The human eye can’t see them, but if we could they would be different from red.
    I had Rotten Row too, and I’m thinking that Chas I (whose Martyr’s Day was this week) was mugged there once.

    Edited at 2014-02-01 03:04 pm (UTC)

    1. Good point about infrared, but there’s no such word as “rish” meaning “hold it”. However, I spent some time trying to work RI (Rhode Island) into the wordplay as a sort of red as well. I suppose infra is a sort of red in a crossword sense, which is not necessarily the same as the technical sense.
      1. I agree about the overly technical IR thoughts for which I apologize to the team – I thought pretty hard before I wrote them. Crosswords is crosswords, and crossword usage is crossword usage, ain’t it. I couldn’t get Ronald Reagan, who periodically ‘got his Irish up’, out of my head as a phrase whilst trying to make something similar out of the full ‘I hold it’. Hadn’t thought about the rooster.

        Edited at 2014-02-01 03:55 pm (UTC)

  7. I was Ok with this one and while I wrote in HAWAII without hesitation, I could not parse IRISH so thanks linxit for what I guess is the answer. Note to self – write on the crossword how long it took so that I remember a week later.

    Hiatus over todays one solved with impressive speed on the Club Forum by the incoming editor.

  8. I’ve no time to offer for this one as I gave up for the night after 40 minutes with about two-thirds completed and then forgot to record start and finish times on resumption the next day.

    This is yet another in a series of recent puzzles where there are too many clues (for my taste) that needed reverse engineering. 21dn is too clever by half but I did enjoy 15dn.

    Never heard of YELLOW POPLAR.

  9. Thanks Linxit for the parsing- found this one very tricky. Perhaps the metal lining in 2 down was FE(iron) lining the inside of RE-ER (on monarch)? Didn’t like 2d or 21d, but liked 9a, 15d and 10a.
  10. with 1ac my LOI; finally remembered cinema U. I had thought (hoped) that the IR in IRISH was for iridium, which is, alas, a whitish metal. But Googling turned up a heap of references to iridium red sunglasses, for what that’s worth.
  11. I think it’s ‘IR’ (infra-red) + ‘I’ + ‘SH’ (= ‘Please be quiet’ = ‘hold it’)
  12. The IR refers to infra red then I hold it surely refers back to tongue as in hold your tongue – SH

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