Saturday Times 25747 (29th March)

Posted on Categories Weekend Cryptic
Solving time 16:15, so about average difficulty for a Saturday. No GK required really and no difficult vocab either. One clue I’m not sure I’ve parsed correctly (22d) and one with the becoming-too-frequent leftover editorial mark-up (21d). Is it me or do those slip-ups always appear in one of the last few down clues?

As always, clues can be viewed by hovering the mouse over the clue number. I was surprised last week when someone else used my template and it was thought of as an innovation, as I’ve been including the clues like this for the last two years at least. It pays to advertise I suppose!

Across
1 SOCKS – SMOCKS (dresses or blouses), without the M. Def. clothing items.
4 BACKBITER – BACK (second) + BITTER (beer) minus half the middle letters. Def. sniper (the sort without bullets).
9 GRENADIAN – (in a garden)*. Def. West Indian.
10 OWN UP – GOWN (academic garb) without the G for good, + UP (at university). Def. admit.
11 POLISH – double definition.
12 CINEASTE – IN (burning) inside C(annes) + EASTE(r) (festival shortly). def. the whole clue.
14 SECOND-RATE – SEC (dry wine) + ONE around DRAT (sugar!). Def. cheap.
16 LINO – hidden inside “usual in old”. Def. floor covering.
19 SERF – FRESH (reinvigorated) reversed, without the H for hospital. Def. worker bound.
20 DEMOLISHED – DELI (small shop, i.e. short for delicatessen) around MO (second) + SHED (outbuilding). Def. knocked down.
22 THESPIAN – HE’S (chap’s) + PI (really good), inside TAN (hit repeatedly). Def. actor.
23 GAMBIA – A1 (top) + B(ritish) + MAG (publication), all reversed. Smallest country in Africa, a strip of land either side of the Gambia River.
26 PLIER – LIE (position) inside PR (public relations). Def. worker.
27 KNOW-IT-ALL – (won’t kill a)*. Def. cocky American (in England he’d just be a know-all).
28 PAGEANTRY – GER(man) around ANT (worker), all inside PAY. Def. display.
29 TOKAY – (gourme)T + OKAY (fine). Def. wine.

Down
1 SIGNPOSTS – SIGN (write name) + S(mall) behind POST (letters). Def. guides, by the way.
2 CREEL – C(aught) + REEL (angling tackle). Def. container for fish.
3 SWANSONG – N(ew) + SON (kid) inside SWAG (Loot). Def. final appearance. Loot was a 1965 play by Joe Orton, if you’re wondering.
4 BAIT – first letters of boils? Aargh, it’s the. Def. plague.
5 CONVICTION – double definition (CPS is the Crown Prosecution Service).
6 BROKEN – KEN (knowledge) next to BRO (sibling). Def. faulty.
7 TUNESMITH – (he mustn’t)* around I(sland). Def. airman?
8 RUPEE – sounds like “rue p” (regret + little English cash). Def. foreign money.
13 FREE MARKET – FRET (worry) around [E(ast) + MARK (German currency once) + E (last letter of decline)]. Def. post-Communist economy (in East Germany, at least).
15 CAREERING – CAR (vehicle) + E.G. (say), around ERIN (Ireland). Def. speeding.
17 OLD BAILEY – (bold)* + AIL (worry) + last letters of (th)E (jur)Y. Def. here? Not sure I like “crooks” as an anagrind – a bit forced to help with the surface reading.
18 FINALIST – A LIST (failure to stand upright) after FIN(o) (endless sherry). Def. No more rounds for me!
21 SPARTA – T.A. (Territorial Army, reservists) next to SPAR (fight). Def. old city. I wonder what the original (3-3) was that got changed? Very strange enumeration (6! (3-3) that appears to be more left-over editorial mark-up.
22 TIP-UP – not sure about this one. TIP (indication) + UP (space near stage?). Def. like some seats. Maybe someone can think of a better explanation? [Edit: paul_in_london got there first – it’s a cryptic “indication of space near stage” to give PIT (i.e. orchestra pit).]
24 BLACK – B(illions) + LACK (deprivation). Def. desperate.
25 DORY – R(egularl)Y next to DO (cook). Def. fish.

22 comments on “Saturday Times 25747 (29th March)”

  1. I feel badly done to with a DNF due to the confusing (6(3-3)which you refer to above. As a six-letter word it would have been very simple.

  2. I too missed the 6! enumeration for Sparta, so spent over-long on it. Natch I didn’t like the use of slangy made-up Lino, but thought 18d was clever.

    Regarding tip up, I decided that it was a failed &lit, with pit = area near orchestra taken backwards/upwards – but that didn’t give any clear wordplay for the up part because the pit bit is already up.

    1. No, you’re right. PIT is TIP going UP, so the answer is a cryptic “indication of space near stage”. I’ll edit the post.
      1. I still don’t see where the ‘indication’ fits in exactly – it seemed a large and important word to just be a connector.
  3. 12 mins so I must have been on the setter’s wavelength, and I even parsed TIP-UP properly. I’m not sure why anyone would object to “LINO”. It’s a word I remember my parents using when I was small, and as far as I’m aware it has always been a valid short form of “linoleum” rather than a slang word. FINALIST was my LOI after GAMBIA, which I got after discounting ZAMBIA and SERBIA for their lack of parsability.
    1. I guess just that in the States I’d never heard it, we always used the full linoleum. Interestingly, due to a friend’s father writing for the paper, I did know it as an abbreviation for Linotype, back when type was set in hot lead.
      1. Linton Village Hall, which I help to run, definitely has lino. Never heard it referred to as linoleum, we are not so posh..
        1. I guess I’d better withdraw my dis-like. I doubt poshness counts in this, though Jerry (and there might be a contingent arguing that posh and American upbringing are definitely incompatible). Just local usage or non-usage.
  4. 16:35 .. and a steady solve. I barely saw the wrong enumeration for 21d. By the time the checkers were in, a glance at the clue left no real doubt.

    CINEASTE is one of those standards I routinely forget. I think it was my last in, and not for the first time.

    COD .. BACKBITER, for leading me up the garden path a good while.

  5. Another excellent puzzle very much in the same league as the one I blogged on Friday with little GK required and no obscurity of language. I wondered why “American” at 27 as I had never appreciated a difference between “know-all” and know-it-all”. 42 minutes.
  6. Good puzzle. I wonder if the new editor has a different “workflow” to the old one, as I don’t recall ever seeing an editor’s note until recent weeks.

    Didn’t mean to steal your thunder re the hovering functionality! I think regular visitors to this blog are so used to NOT having access to the clues in each post that repeated mentioning of it will be needed to increase awareness. It probably also doesn’t help that the Saturday posts only get a fraction of the readers that the weekday ones get.

    1. As I’m a committed pencil and paper solver I always have my print-out and solving notes to hand when I visit TftT so I can refer easily to clues if I need to.

      It’s only since the Quickie started that I realised how many people solve on-line and it would make sense for blogs to include the clues in some form if possible. I am planning to do this myself starting from Monday’s Quickie* and depending on how that goes and the extra time involved I may try to extend it to the main cryptic. Of course any decisions on the matter should be down to individual bloggers.

      *subject to availability of the puzzle on-line – if the recent shambles continues and I am unable to access it until the morning I shall blog the bare minimum.

      Edited at 2014-04-05 12:49 pm (UTC)

      1. I don’t know if you’re comfortable with compiling/running Java code, but I wrote a little routine to create a “skeleton” blog for the Quickie – from the page source for the Quickie, it creates the HTML for a blog containing the clues (in hoverable format) and the answers, leaving the blogger with only the clue parsing and additional comments to add. It’s a bit rough and ready (Java is not one of my preferred languages) but it takes away most of the donkey work. I haven’t tested it extensively, and only on a Mac running OSX, but I could put it up on my LiveJournal blog if you like.

        A positive in the deshamblesing (a word?) of the Quickie is that next week’s puzzles look as though they have the setter’s pseudonym included in the online version. But don’t get too excited – Monday’s says “The Times Quick Cryptic (Number 21) by by Tracy” (sic) …

        1. I use an excel spreadsheet for my blog, which a fellow blogger kindly gave me – I am only semi IT literate. Now we have lots of bloggers, many new, I wonder if we could commission from you, or Andy, a standard blog template that does some of the work for us? And so everyone can show the clues? I tend to blog at midnight, when every blogging minute saved is valuable!

          Edited at 2014-04-05 02:32 pm (UTC)

  7. 16m. We do seem to be getting a lot of these small errors these days.
    Andy I had absolutely no idea that you were including the clues like this, so yes it pays to advertise!
  8. I’ve seen your ‘hover’ notice before, Andy, but I can’t seem to make it work. Neither on Firefox nor on iPad. Is there a toggle I need to switch somewhere?
      1. Yeah – I guess I meant ‘tried to highlight’ on the iPad. But it doesn’t seem to work for my setup in Windows/Firefox either. Any ideas?
        1. Just to confirm it works for me on Firefox 28.0 though I have to be very precise when placing the pointer on the clue number. A micro-whatsit either way and the clue remains hidden or disappears.
  9. 50 minutes. I wrote “very pleasant” on my print-out. I was scratching my head about fine being brandy not sherry, so thanks for sorting that out.
  10. Please can someone explain why:-
    12 across: burning = in; and
    4 down: bait = plague

    Thank you

    1. a fire that is in is burning
      a person who is baited is being plagued
      .. just not-so-common meanings really

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