Saturday Times 25735 (15th March)

Posted on Categories Weekend Cryptic
No time recorded for this one as I just picked at it during odd moments while I was working from home on Monday. Pretty tough puzzle though, so doubt if I’d have come much under 20 minutes if I’d sat down to solve it properly. There were a couple of obscure words and a few examples of very convoluted wordplay in this one, but nothing unfair. Good puzzle in fact.

NB, I’ll be away from a computer for the rest of the day so won’t be able to respond to any questions or comments until late tonight.

Across
1 SPAM – MAPS (plans) reversed to become inbox-filling rubbish.
4 POWER POINT – OW (it hurt) inside PER (a), + POINT (stage).
9 LAWN TENNIS – LAW (ruling) in front of SIN (crime) reversed, which is next to N TEN (London N10 presumably being the Muswell Hill area).
10 QUAY – sounds like KEY (vital).
11 ELISHA – put a B in front of his name and he becomes a Belisha Beacon, one of those orange globe lights at the sides of zebra crossings.
12 CROCKETT – ROCKET (carpeting, as in a telling-off) inside CT (court). Davy, Davy Crockett, King of the Wild Frontier.
14 UGLI – sounds like UGLY (threatening). A cross between a grapefruit, a tangerine and an orange. They’re not pretty.
15 EPIGLOTTIS – SITE reversed (westbound station) around PILOT (airman), with G(ood) inside. Definition “stop for a breather”, which seems ok to me although it drew some criticism on the Club forum.
17 ETON COLLAR – (later on)* around COL (a mountain pass).
20 IBEX – I BE (e.g. Cornish dialect for I am) + X (times).
21 ISABELLA – hidden reversed in “farfalle basil”. Dingy yellowish grey or drab. This has come up before, supposedly named after a Spanish princess who didn’t change her clothes for three years.
23 SALARY – SAY (for one) around [A(rea) inside L,R (both sides)]. That’s the second “Russian doll” clue of the day.
24 LYON – FLY (take a plane), minus the 1st letter + ON (over).
25 NOTE TO SELF – (of steel)* after NO + T(ime).
26 MAIN COURSE – cryptic definition, where a galley might be a ship or a ship’s kitchen.
27 CASE – C, E (last letters of MCC and committee) around AS (playing, e.g. “starring Dame Judi Dench as M” (see 2dn)). Tricky one that, could’ve been worse if we’d only had ?A?E though!

Down
2 PEARLY GATES – (gay prelates)*
3 MINUS SIGN – M (top spy) + (issuing N)*.
4 PEERAGE – E.G. (say), ARE reversed after P.E. (games).
5 WIND-CHILL FACTOR – (fill in catchword)*. Great clue which my eyes were drawn to as soon as I’d printed off the puzzle. Took a while to unravel so I would have been wiser to wait for a few crossing letters.
6 ROSE OIL – OR (yellow) reversed (“revolting” can mean “up”) + SOIL (earth) around (vil)E.
7 IN USE – middle letters of SINUSES (cavities in head).
8 TRYST – TEST (trial) with RY (line) replacing the E for European.
13 TOILET ROLLS – ELIOT (poet) reversed + TROLLS (mischief-makers). Brilliant definition, “can revolvers”.
16 TRIPLE SEC – RIPPLES (repercussions), minus the middle letter, inside TEC (detective, PI).
18 ORLANDO – ORAN (an Algerian port on the Med) around L(arge), + DO (see the sights of).
19 ROSETTE – SET (fixed) inside ROTE (repetition).
21 ISLAM – IS + LAM (hit hard).
22 AIOLI – AIL (suffer) + I(ndigestion), around O (duck).

21 comments on “Saturday Times 25735 (15th March)”

  1. 31 mins and I agree it was on the tricky side, but as you said the cluing was fair and I seem to remember I enjoyed the challenge. CASE was my LOI after IBEX and TRIPLE SEC.
  2. I took 21 mins so I think your estimate of 20 mins would have been correct had you timed it. My clue of the day was the brilliant ‘can revolvers’.

    Now off to find out what today has to offer for cryptic entertainment.

  3. 79 minutes for this tough but thoroughly enjoyable puzzle.

    I never heard of ISABELLA as a colour before; apparently it can refer specifically to horses.

    11ac probably merits a reference to the inter-war Transport Minister, Leslie Hore-Belisha, whose name was given to the lamps that identify zebra crossings in the UK to this day: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belisha_beacon.

    I remember when the Disney film came out in the 50’s the following joke did the rounds:

    Q: How many ears has Davy Crockett got?
    A: Three. His left ear, his right ear and his wild front-ear.

    I didn’t notice it at the time but following yesterday’s discussion (Times 25740) I wonder what the contributors would make of 3dn where in the on-line version the two parts of the clue are separated by – – (although somewhat more closely spaced than LJ permits). One a dash, the other a MINUS SIGN as part of the definition maybe? If so, yesterday’s clue doesn’t seem so original now. Certainly neither is intended as a hyphen in this case. Perhaps it’s simply a misprint.

    Edited at 2014-03-22 09:23 am (UTC)

    1. At school during the ’70’s there was a Star Trek based joke doing the rounds of the three eared Capt. Kirk with his “final front-ear”.

      And we thought it was hilariously original. Ah well.

  4. Yes, tough puzzle, and I didn’t have a clue about 27ac and bunged in CAST. Beaten fair and square.
  5. Yes, 27a needed a very long look. I thought that was it but thanks for the confirmation. I think I took around 35 minutes but there are 6 pages of neutrinos before you get to Magoo on the club board so I’ve fallen off the deep end.
    1. I do wonder if there oughtn’t to be a 24-hour limit for leaderboard entry, with a Telegraph-style “You have (n) errors” instant result for anyone submitting afterwards or submitting without the leaderboard.
  6. Most of this went quickly for me, and with enthusiasm due to getting the cod TOILET ROLLS and the clever PEARLY GATES early, and wanting more. I got ISABELLA from wordplay and crossers, but learnt its meaning from the OED afterwards. I also learnt that, today at least, DNF w/o aids is spelt EPIGLOTTIS.
  7. This was almost a DNF. Two in the NE and three in the SE effectively took me until Wednesday on-and-off but I am pleased to see that I got it right in the end. Today’s seems the exact opposite.
  8. Some lovely clues.

    I was another victim of 27a. About 23 minutes for the rest then I ended up tossing a mental coin over CASE/CASH. I thought there might be a sly dig at the priorities of the modern cricketer in there so plumped for CASH.

    It’s not the first time I’ve been done in by “finally” or similar referring to two words rather the the usual one.

  9. This was a good learning experience for me. Thanks very much to linxit for explaining the ones I could not get (five of the so and so’s – including 27a which seems to have been widely regarded as tricky).

    Particularly enjoyed ETON COLLAR, MINUS SIGN and WIND-CHILL FACTOR. Felt quite exhilarated when I got these.

    Edited at 2014-03-22 12:05 pm (UTC)

  10. I’ve been struggling to finish some of the puzzles recently, so was pleased to get this one done in about 35 minutes. I too had a chuckle at 13.

    Davy Crockett was a hero for youngster in the 1950s because of the Disney film and the song; that probably explains why 12 went in immediately from the definition.

    If you search Google for another wartime kiss image you will find a picture of a young woman in a three-quarter length fur coat with padded shoulders. Those coats were very popular during the War, and I imagine hers, like thousands of others, ended up being lovingly recycled into raccoon-skin hats for her children.

  11. Oh the coonskin hat! Thank you for the reminder John. Haven’t seen you lately by the way. My next sister got the Davy Crockett set for Christmas and the hat smelt soooo bad. There was also a toy gun – well it was different then. We didn’t actually have a tv so how I knew all the words to the song (and still do) beats me. You should just hear my killer Tennessee accent.
      1. Heavens. You are so right Jack. These little fairy stories we tell ourselves….
  12. Muswell Hill – We don’t know where and we don’t much care…Could I just point out that if you print the crosswords so don’t have Google to hand, and don’t know every last London suburb, this is a tad specialised? Especially if you don’t put in answers unless you can parse them satisfactorily
    1. I’d put this down as allowable quirkiness, given that a) the solution is obvious from the enumeration and the checkers and b) the other parts of the clue are fairly easily deducible, leaving the solver with NTEN to apply the grey cells to, if (s)he so wishes.
  13. Tough but fair, I plumped after my hour and a half for CASE at 27 on the basis of ‘condition’. Clueless otherwise….

    Edited at 2014-03-22 03:09 pm (UTC)

  14. No idea how long this took; I went offline after an unproductive 20′, but did manage to finish, although with several questions unanswered until coming here. Oddly enough, 5d and 16d both came to me suddenly and without justification based on a couple of checkers each; it was only much later that I could parse them. Definitely COD to TOILET ROLLS. DNK ISABELLA, went with CASE pretty much because ‘cash’ made less sense to me.
    I rather wish no one had brought up Davy Crockett here: my one memory of that show, and that song, is the time I spent in the hospital with pneumonia, sharing a ward with a 3-year-old girl who screamed without pause for her mother, and a 3-year-old boy who provided counterpoint by singing, at the top of his lungs, “DaVEEEE, Davy Crockett,” the only part of the song that he knew. Doctors were amazed at my rapid recovery. If I get an ear worm, some of you have a lot to answer for.
  15. 9ac rang an immediate bell for me, as an ancestor of mine, George Atkin, was shot by a burglar in Muswell Hill in 1889. Apparently it is still a burglary hotspot.
    1. It also has the smallest, worst, least helpful branch of BOOTS in the world, maybe they’ve been burgled too often to care. But the fish and chip shop is excellent.

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