Saturday Times 25789 (17th May)

Posted on Categories Weekend Cryptic
Solving time 14:10, with one error that probably accounted for a third of that! A good puzzle that was mainly pretty easy, but there were a few (in my case 10ac, 19ac, 18dn and 24dn) that were much harder, although 10 and 24 were the only two that slowed me down as the others were put in from the definition and the wordplay worked out later.

Across
1 Lead sheep in newly formed company (5-2)
START-UP – STAR (lead) + TUP (sheep).
5 Attack persistently dismal crowd in retreat (7)
BOMBARD – DRAB MOB (dismal crowd), reversed.
9 Delight in top bond, having tax covered (9)
CAPTIVATE – CAP (top) + TIE (bond), around VAT (tax).
10 Marks that are made round extracts in speech (5)
RINGS – sounds like “wrings” (extracts). Looks really simple but it was one of my last ones in (and judging by the comments on the forum, a lot of others’ too).
11 Choice of food returned by idiot breaking taboo without shame (13)
UNEMBARRASSED – MENU (choice of food) reversed + [ASS (idiot) inside BARRED (taboo)].
13 Bank wholly behind start of financial decline that’s unstoppable (4,4)
FREE FALL – REEF (bank) + ALL (wholly), after F(inancial).
15 Brief film, gripping western (6)
LAWYER – LAYER (film) around W(estern).
17 Might head of convent left inside meditate? (6)
MUSCLE – C(onvent) + L(eft) inside MUSE (meditate).
19 Firm with load of mineral around tip (8)
FORECAST – FAST (firm) around (with load of) ORE (mineral) + C (circa, around).
22 Urgent devil, so deviously persuasive (6-7)
SILVER-TONGUED – (urgent devil so)*.
25 Bouquet in course of drama romantically presented (5)
AROMA – hidden in “drama romantically”.
26 When guarding base, that is dutiful behaviour (9)
OBEDIENCE – ONCE (when) around BED (base) + IE (that is).
27 Variable element in religious group missing leader no longer around (7)
EXTINCT – X (variable) + TIN (element) inside (s)ECT (religious group missing leader).
28 Set nothing next to brown fruit (7)
TANGELO – GEL (set) + O (nothing), next to TAN (brown).

1 Article to cover extremity in strike (4)
SOCK – double definition.
2 Four internally occupying large capsule (7)
AMPOULE – (f)OU(r) inside AMPLE (large).
3 Rot in time fully developed (5)
TRIPE – T(ime) + RIPE (fully developed).
4 Place line about rising nation in advertisement for drama (8)
PLAYBILL – PL(ace) + L(ine) around LIBYA reversed (rising nation).
5 Poet in past lacking focused vision (6)
BLEARY – LEAR (poet) inside BY (past).
6 Preserve a medal thrown out after damage (9)
MARMALADE – (a medal)* after MAR (damage).
7 Expression of surprise about retreat after a suspension of law (7)
AMNESTY – MY (expression of surprise) around NEST (retreat), all after A.
8 Wanted things in agreement endlessly disrupted by party traitor (10)
DESIDERATA – DEA(l) (agreement endlessly) around [SIDE (party) + RAT (traitor)].
12 Fiasco admitted by king, for example, raised in conflict with official line (3-7)
OFF-MESSAGE – MESS (fiasco) inside OFFA (dyke-building Mercian king), + E.G. reversed (for example, raised).
14 Sporting body with change of law ends time of illusory promise (5,4)
FALSE DAWN – FA (sporting body) + (law ends)*.
16 Gloomy individual, embraced by dame, cheers up (8)
DOWNBEAT – OWN (individual) inside DBE (dame) + TA (cheers) reversed.
18 Sons quarrelled less following betrayal (4-3)
SELL-OUT – S(ons) + (f)ELL OUT (quarrelled, minus the F for following).
20 Climbing mountain, carrier of information about us moving slowly (7)
ANDANTE – ETNA (mountain) + DNA (carrier of information about us), all reversed.
21 Greatest mass taken in by touts in chaos (6)
UTMOST – M(ass) inside (touts)*.
22 President wanting vote to support acceptable alliance (5)
UNION – NI(x)ON (president, minus the X for a vote), underneath U (acceptable).
24 Width of character in complete illustration (4)
DEMO – EM (width of character, a printing term) inside DO (complete). I got this wrong at the first attempt, and knew it. After 5 minutes of staring at it I just stuck ZERO in without a clue as to how the clue worked. I looked at it again this morning and saw it instantly.

11 comments on “Saturday Times 25789 (17th May)”

  1. No time recorded for this one because I began to nod off shortly after starting the puzzle, tried to plough on, couldn’t concentrate, and decided to have a nap instead. RINGS was my LOI with a ? next to it, and I only went for that after deciding that I could justify “runes” even less. I also noted that it took me a long time to see FORECAST.
    1. Oh yes, I’d forgotten I pencilled in RUNES very lightly quite early on with a big question mark against it. I’m pretty sure this stayed right to the end when I returned to review it and spotted the sound-alike.
  2. Same as everyone, apparently.. not hard, but struggled with 10ac rather. And forgot to record a time!
    Also slow to parse 20dn, fancying some connection with the Andes for a while.. if a lot of them are called the Andes, could one of them be an Ande?!
  3. This was one of several recent puzzles where I ran out of steam, abandoned solving until later in the day and in the process lost track of time taken. From memory I relied more on wordplay and solved very few from definition alone. I had thought at one point I may need to resort to aids but it didn’t happen as things turned out there were no unknown words or references.
  4. Started off quickly on this one but got completely bogged down at the end. I didn’t want to put in FORECAST because I’d convinced myself that the ORE part was “load of mineral” rather than just “mineral” so the parsing didn’t seem to work. And then pondered RINGS/RUNES for a while, assuming it was a homophone but still unable to parse either alternative. It took me quite some time even after submitting to see why RINGS was correct.
  5. First time i’ve finished in ages. 1 week with aids, pretty quick for me. Guessed demo and union as i didn’t ,and still don’t, know why ‘u’ means acceptable and i’d never heard of of ’em’ as a printing term.
    1. Em and its half-brother En turn up occasionally in crosswordland. Chambers defines Em as “A unit of measurement (equal to the width of the lower-case letter ‘m’ in 12-point) used in spacing material and in estimating dimensions of pages (printing)”. En is half an em.
      U and non-U were basically invented by Nancy Mitford in Noblesse Oblige (1956), standing for Upper Class and Non-Upper Class. Mainly seen today in apparent language faux-pas (napkin v serviette etc)

      Edited at 2014-05-24 07:49 pm (UTC)

      1. Thanks bigtone. So upper class people are acceptable ,which implies that i’m not acceptable. Fair enough I suppose, I know my place.
  6. Thanks for the extra work recently in breaking down the clues. Even after 40 years
    of solving I still don’t understand how I got some of the solutions albeit they were correct. For example, 24d when I knew all along what an EM was. Downright devious, what? And a 4-letter word to boot.
  7. Very happy to have continued my run of managing to complete the Saturday offering, albeit taking more time than I can feasibly allocate to the weekday puzzles.

    Thanks for the blog: I had not been able to parse SELL OUT or UNION. EM was new to me and required validation once I’d decided it just had to be DEMO.

  8. Like others, some came right away, some didn’t. Didn’t know that sense of lawyer – though it’s clear enough once seen – but did know em. Opted for sold out, since I couldn’t parse it or the correct sell out. I have a question mark next to past = by, passed=by made more parsing! but less surface! sense. Thank you, linxit, for several good and needed explanations.

    Edited at 2014-05-25 01:29 pm (UTC)

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