Saturday Times 25759 (12th April)

Posted on Categories Weekend Cryptic
Struggled with this one in 21:05, but I don’t know why. Looking at the times of some others in the Stats it should have been much easier than that. Maybe I’m just getting run down after over a month of 7-day weeks at work (with probably another month’s-worth to follow!). In fact this blog would have been up several hours ago if work hadn’t intervened. But it’s here now…

Across
1 GEOSTATIONARY – (negotiator say)*. Def: apparently not moving.
8 RAKE – BRAKE (slower) without the first letter. Def: one making progress in series of pictures, which refers to a series of 8 paintings by William Hogarth depicting the downfall of one Tom Rakewell.
9 REVIEW COPY – RE (about) + VIE (compete) + W(ith) + COPY (journalist’s material). Def: free book.
10 JEWELLER – JE (abroad I) + WELLER (Sam Weller, a character in Charles Dickens’ The Pickwick Papers). Def: He may give me a ring.
11 ARREST – REST (breather) after A + R(un). Def: stop.
13 PILGRIMAGE – LIP (edge) reversed, + GRIM (hard) + AGE (time). Def: journey.
16 VILE – VILLE (French town), minus the middle letter. Def: shameful.
17 FAZE – sounds like phase (stage). Def: put off.
18 GENIUS LOCI – (use logic in)*. Def. spirit in the neighbourhood (the Latin phrase literally means “spirit of the place”).
20 SEANCE – SEE (observe) around ANC (African National Congress, Nelson Mandela’s party). Def: spirited meeting.
22 REPOSING – RE-POSING (taking another position). Def: lying.
24 SHROVETIDE – (shivered to)*. Def: period that’s usual in Februrary.
26 OCHE – sounds like ‘ockey (game commonly said). Def: one throws here (the line behind which darts players stand when throwing).
28 RUN A TIGHT SHIP – cryptic definition.

Down
1 GRAVEN IMAGE – GRAVE (serious) + (enigma)*. Def: idol.
2 OBESE – OBE’S (honours) + (availabl)E. Def: very substantial.
3 THRILLING – HR (hour) inside TILLING (fieldwork). Def: engrossing.
4 TAVERNA – ANT reversed (worker rising) around AVER (state). Def: restaurant.
5 OMEGA – double definition: the Greek letter omega (Ω) is also used as the symbol for the ohm, a measure of resistance in physics.
6 ARCHRIVAL – R(egular) inside ARCHIVAL (of records). Def: great competitor.
7 YAP – PAY (give money) reversed. Def: complain shrilly.
12 SILICON CHIP – I inside (posh clinic)*. Def: transistor? Lots here.
14 GREENHORN – HORN (instrument) next to GREEN (village centre). Def: one learning.
15 EQUIPMENT – QUIP (retort) inside (c)EMENT (binder, minus the first letter).
19 NURSING – double definition. Strangely my ex-wife (who didn’t have a degree at the time) used to teach graduate student nurses on work placement.
21 EXERT – X (by) inside TREE (box perhaps) reversed. Def: work strenuously.
23 SOOTH – (sooth)*. Def: truth once.
25 HER – HERO (ideal man) minus the O (unloved?). Def: woman’s.

17 comments on “Saturday Times 25759 (12th April)”

  1. I thought this was the easiest Saturday puzzle this year, so you’re definitely suffering from overwork! Hope you’re getting paid by the hour, anyway. COD to GEOSTATIONARY, for the surface and for “say” making a rare appearance in the anagram fodder.
  2. We usually solve in about the same time so I would suggest tiredness did play a part as I finished in 14:40.
  3. 18 mins so not my fastest Saturday time of the year, and there have definitely been easier ones IMHO. REVIEW COPY was my LOI after ARCHRIVAL.
  4. Just at the hour, except for faze, which I never saw in spit of running the alphabet, and jeweller, where my weak Dickens knowledge hurt.
  5. 39 minutes – last in FAZE. Paul, if you’re interested in reading Dickens, Pickwick Papers (picaresque rather in the manner of Don Quixote), Great Expectations (possibly his best book) and Bleak House (possibly his greatest novel) are recommended.
    1. Taken under advisement,Ulaca, and thanks. Dickens and Trollope are holes in my reading.
      1. I wouldn’t recommend them myself.. tried twice to read Pickwick Papers and failed to finish both times. I found it laboured, unfunny, turgid and dull. And don’t get me started on Hardy. Trollope is much better..

        1. I have always thought that the key to understanding Dickens’s style is to remember that he was paid by the page.
      2. Trollope (who incidentally, while working as a civil servant, wrote 2,500 words before breakfast each day – come what may; no ‘staring at the wall’ for him) and Dickens are very different animals. In a nutshell, while Trollope wrote to entertain, Dickens wrote for both profit (of the reader!) and pleasure. I had a similar experience to Jerry when first encountering the works of George(s) Meredith and Eliot, returning both The Egoist and Middlemarch to the library after reading just one page of each! However, I persevered, and appreciate why the latter in particular is regarded as one of the great English novels.

        Eliot’s autobiographical Mill on the Floss is an easier read, by turn, sitcom, soap opera, melodrama and drama. If anyone really wants to push the boat out – both figuratively and literally; those Victorians loved their flood scenes – they should try George MacDonald’s ‘Sir Gibbie’ (available as an e-text). If one has a love for nature (and more specifically, Scotland) and is willing to overlook the occasional preachments, it’s a rollicking and moving tale, if only a ‘mediocre’ novel.

        1. And revealing in his autobiography that he wrote 2500 words daily before breakfast destroyed his reputation among critics as a ‘serious’ novelist; it took a long time to deal with the damage.
          1. It’s difficult to take critics seriously when one with such a reputation as Leavis did a volte-face on Dickens. In fact, in the jointly-authored book of Dickens’ criticism penned with his wife, it is Queenie’s contributions that stand out.
  6. 46 minutes for me, with the last 6 spent enumerating _A_E possibilities before spotting FAZE, so definitely on the easy side for a weekend puzzle. Linxit, I think your header should read 25759. 25765 is today’s (quite a bit harder) puzzle.
  7. Well I’m with Andy on this one as I found it quite hard, though it took me something around an hour.

    According to the usual sources that include it 6dn should be (4-5) but Collins Online sanctions (9) along with a lot of very dubious stuff!

    “Must” in 10ac seems to be superfluous and the second definition at 19dn is utterly feeble.

    I don’t think anyone has mentioned it’s a pangram.

  8. 13:10 here, which suggests an easier ride than I found it. I panicked a bit at the end over FAZE – the kind of clue that can have me stuck for ages – but then saw it quite quickly, luckily.
    GEOSTATIONARY satellites always remind me of physics at school. There was a question that came up very regularly in our final bac exams that required you to show (with workings) how far from the earth a satellite has to be to be geostationary. Everyone just learned the answer by rote, so if it came up (as it did for me) it was an easy and very quick four marks.
  9. I can’t believe that I actually was faster than Andy; in fact, I just went back to the club leaderboard to verify the time, but of course I’m not on it–with all the neutrinos, Magoo is ranked 50. I remember being slowed down at 13ac because the only ‘edge’s I could think of were ‘rim’ and ‘hem’. Agree with Jack about 19d.LOI FAZE. Agree with Jerry about Pickwick, but with Ulaca on ‘Great Expectations’ and ‘Bleak House’, and I’d throw in ‘Our Mutual Friend’.
  10. … with FAZE last in. But it had to be that because, by that stage, an F and a Z were needed for the pangram.

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