Saturday Times 26052 (March 21)

Author   oliviarhinebeckPosted on Categories Weekend Cryptic

Music, history, geography, literature and  Old Testament, giving rather a Times Lit. Supp. feel to this, so I was surprised not to be more en rapport with the setter. In fact, a bit of a tussle clocking in at 25.12. One clue – 18d – I can’t fully parse so any help will be welcome there.

Across
1  Practise piano in private, working out Verdi? (8)
GIUSEPPE – The composer of Rigoletto et al.  USE=practise P=piano contained in GI=private and PE=working out.
9  Secure line required for instrument with digital application (4,4)
NAIL FILE – NAIL=secure FILE=line.
10 Old woman borne by short strong African (6)
SOMALI – MA=old woman (I’m not crazy about this appellation) in SOLI[d]=strong.  First of the African clues.
11 Vehicle seen in bad weather currently parking in Berks town (10)
SNOWPLOUGH – NOW=currently contained in SLOUGH Berks.  Town well known from the Betjeman poem “Come friendly bombs and fall on Slough.  It isn’t fit for humans now.”  This clue fetched a grimace from me because last Saturday, as I solved this, outside our windows on the first day of sping in NYC we had snow – again.  Around here it’s spelled plow.
12 Sound happy for each individual to be heard (4)
PURR – As in PER.  First of the homophones.  Not dodgy.
13  Strangely uncaring, taking non-consecutive articles in Latin (10)
NICARAGUAN – Anagram of UNCARING and two A’s.  Latino (or Latina).
16  Cut grass and remove weeds?  It must be said I’m resigned to it! (5-2)
HEIGH-HO – Second of the non-dodgy homophones, as in HAY HOE.  Rather affected way to say too bad.
17  Key I cut out in holiday camp (7)
BIVOUAC – I love this word.  B=key plus I plus OU[t] in VAC=holiday.
20   Such a quiet room required by jury? (10)
SOUNDPROOF – Double definition. Well if you’re a juror you need sound proof.  I’ve been summoned a number of times but only served once – on the Manhattan homicide grand jury.  It’s said that a prosecutor can indict a ham sandwich if he wants to but I was rather proud of our group.  We refused to indict in one of the cases because of unsound proof.
22 Drop round bringing pudding (4)
SAGO – SAG=drop plus O.  Horrid stuff reminiscent of school lunches.  Not sure if it was this or tapioca we called frog spawn.
23  Successful marksman misses vital run, bagging nothing (10)
GOALSCORER – GALS=misses containing O, plus CORE=vital plus R[un].
25 Bang on front of shield, making demands (6)
EXACTS – EXACT=bang-on plus S[hields].
26 He survived being fired, but has sadly gone on lying (8)
ABEDNEGO – ABED=lying plus anagram of GONE.  Very nice clue.  There’s the version in the book of Daniel in which he and his friends Shadrak and Meshak get put in the furnace by Nebuchadnezzar.  Then there’s the Satchmo version.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6r1baNdgImo
27 Familiarity of film shows that have made English Society (8)
MATINESS – Substitute S (society) for the second E (English) in MATINEES.

Down
2  Our kind, eccentric, European leader of old (4,4)
IRON DUKE – as in Wellington.  Anagram of OUR KIND plus E (European).  200th anniversary of Waterloo looming in June.  Superb general but not anyone’s idea of a kind man, and a terrible P.M.  My grandparents had this fine (and enormous) coloured engraving in their dining room and now it’s in mine.  The old man looking pretty good for 82.  http://www.gac.culture.gov.uk/work.aspx?obj=26828.
3 Plant‘s shoot bore old nodules at the top (10)
SNAPDRAGON – SNAP=shoot (photo) DRAG=bore O[ld] N[odules].  A/k/a antirrhinum.  I misread this at first and thought BORE was drag on and couldn’t see what the old nodules were doing there.
4 Watery porridge served here? (6,4)
PRISON SHIP – PORRIDGE, slang for prison term.  Served on board ship, as in the hulks in the opening scenes of Great Expectations.
5  Pro enters thus, heading off to exercise (7).
ENFORCE – FOR=pro inside [h]ENCE=thus.
6  Floppy disc petty officer removed from river (4)
LIMP – Our next African/literary reference.  Kipling’s great grey-green and greasy Limpopo River.  Removing O=disc and PO=petty officer.
7 African tribe, needing tips in Uruguay, unpack ice-pick for climbing (6)
KIKUYU – Continuing the theme.  First and last letters (tips) in U[rugua]Y, U[npac]K and  I[ce-pic]K reversed (climbing).  Dredged this up from Elspeth Huxley’s Flame Trees of Thika.
8 Engineer possessed round mirror with no base (8)
MECHANIC – Possessed=MANIC surrounding ECH[o]=mirror.
14  Dope-smuggling most unusual in high growth area (10)
RAINFOREST – I tend to think of this as two words, but no matter.  INFO=dope smuggled inside RAREST=most unusual.
15  Trucks joined journey over gorge – with effort (5,5)
GOODS TRAIN – Journey=GO, OD=gorge, STRAIN=effort.
16 Is supplied with butter and pans (3,1,2,2)
HAS A GO AT – The butter is the goat.
18 Emperor, initially awfully unwilling to get up to meet us (8)
AUGUSTUS – This is the one I don’t get.  AU=A[wfully] U[unwilling] but why is GUST to get up?  I suppose when the wind gets up it’s a gust… Anyway, then it meets US.  Anyone?
19  Cupboard one used to sweep, keeping neat (7)
BOXROOM – BROOM=sweeper containing OX=neat.
21 Girl had a match not struck? (6)
UNAWED – A bit ho hum.  UNA=girl WED=had a match.
24  School got by after power cut (4)
COED – Got by= CO[p]ED with power cut.

16 comments on “Saturday Times 26052 (March 21)”

  1. I could only think of a play on GUSSIED up. Like Vinyl, I spent a few minutes a day on this all week cumulating to a very long time.

    On edit: and Vinyl is also right regarding my not finishing properly.

    Edited at 2015-03-28 02:37 am (UTC)

  2. Like Vinyl and Paul, I took a good deal of time on this one; unlike them, I came up short: couldn’t get MECHANIC until the next day or so. Oh, well, HEIGH-HO–which I think I would have pronounced (like Disney’s dwarfs) HI-HO, if ever I pronounced it. (I had a colleague years ago, a retired British Army Major suffering from delusions of adequacy, who actually did say ‘heigh-ho’, enlightening me as to the pronunciation 30 years before I had to deal with this cryptic. But I digress.) I’m repeatedly struck by the parallels between Olivia’s and my reading experiences: Elspeth Huxley, Ring Lardner, Eric Ambler,… I’m off to Amazon forthwith to buy some Georgette Heyer.
  3. Pleased to have completed this, albeit a marathon effort! Struggled to fully parse the mechanic and the goalscorer, and guessed KIKUYU from the wordplay. Thanks for the blog Olivia – I had the same GUST parsing as you (bit odd, I thought).

    COTD to ABEDNEGO – a gem. And HEIGH HO appealed to me as well.

    Edited at 2015-03-28 04:29 am (UTC)

  4. Thanks all for the back-up on ‘gust’. Hmmm. Kevin, if you’re really giving GH a shot try An Infamous Army, a first rate book on Waterloo. Although you may want to conceal the cover if reading it in public.
  5. Saturdays seem to be getting harder these days. This was yet another one I had to abandon overnight and return to in the morning. Thought there were several here that were much easier to solve than to parse, on the other hand I’d never have come up with KIKUYU but for the wordplay.

    Edited at 2015-03-28 09:50 am (UTC)

    1. I suppose you (certainly Nick and Olivia) were too young to remember Mau Mau, but most participants were Kikuyu, and they’ve dominated Kenyan politics ever since.

      Edited at 2015-03-28 11:14 pm (UTC)

  6. 39 mins. I really struggled with this one and I’m impressed with your time Olivia. Count me as another who is happy with “get up” as “gust”. Having said that, I wasn’t happy that it took me as long as it did to get SNAPDRAGON, which I only saw after I got PURR. I had the most trouble in the SW where I had been trying to justify “Eton” for 24dn before I had any checkers. It all fell into place when I finally saw GOALSCORER, which I should have been able to biff from G??????R?R, but I had been too fixated on a gun-related answer. Once I had it I was able to parse it with a tip of the hat to the setter, and then COED, ABEDNEGO and UNAWED were my last three in. I thought this puzzle had some top quality cluing all round.
  7. 67 minutes for this finishing in the NW. Lots of nice stuff.

    I took 2 hours dead on today’s, but at least finished in one sitting.

    1. It’s strange how we don’t always have the same experience with puzzles because I found today’s a little easier than this one, or at least that’s what my times suggest.
      1. I had just 5 in today after 45 minutes and was solving at home in ideal conditions!
  8. Thought this was the toughest Saturday puzzle for several months but I can’t say I particularly enjoyed it. The boxroom=cupboard equivalence was new to me and I hesitated over gorge=O.D. but the answers could hardly be anything else. LOI ABEDNEGO – looking at A?E??E?O I was pretty sure I didn’t know it, but once I’d followed the wordplay it looked vaguely familiar so was submitted with fingers crossed. SAGO was clued very similarly as “Drop round for pudding” in a Quicky a couple of weeks ago, but I think that was this puzzle’s only resemblance to a Quicky!
  9. I agree on GUST, Olivia, but that was one of a few clues that pushed me well over the hour mark. I also had difficulties setting up my BIVOUAC in that wind and my MECHANIC was slow to assist. Thanks for an entertaining and informative blog. I believe Betjeman later apologised to the good people of Slough. TST: 1hr-19m-53s.

    Edited at 2015-03-28 04:44 pm (UTC)

  10. Thank you Olivia for your first regular blog.
    Sorry to hear though that Betjeman apologised to Slough. From just down the road here in E Berkshire, everything he said was totally appropriate.
    My 24 yo son will never forget ABEDNEGO. When a preschool lad having his bedtime stories read to him, we talked about the first two and then, pointing at the letters around his wall (Annie Apple, Munching Mike etc) it was A, then the bed, then the knee, then the pointing Go. Cant recall why though! Probably traumatised him for life.

    Edited at 2015-03-28 08:52 pm (UTC)

  11. 16:28 for me, making rather heavier weather than I feel I should have done, given that there was nothing unfamiliar. Like Kevin, I’m old enough to remember when the KIKUYU and Mau Mau seemed constantly in the news.

    I remember a time when the Times crossword used to enumerate the answer to 26ac as (4-4) – ABED-NEGO – but they seem to have grown out of that, just as the paper has grown out of “Monna Lisa”.

    The first time I was called for jury service was at the Old Bailey in 1973. There weren’t enough cases on the first day, so the pool of potential jurors I was assigned to were shown one of the courts (with someone being sentenced to Broadmoor) and then sent home at lunchtime, though with the prospect of some juicy case the following day. Unfortunately the IRA must have already planted their car bomb by the time I left (I probably walked past the car) and it went off that afternoon, so we were reassigned to the Royal Courts of Justice in The Strand and I ended up with a fairly ordinary “glassing” in Plumstead (NFP – Normal For Plumstead: this wasn’t Plumstead Episcopi – though we duly found the accused innocent).

    An interesting and enjoyable puzzle – and blog, Olivia. Thanks. (I trust your arm is out of plaster by now, and that you’re well into physiotherapy.)

    1. Thanks Tony. Cast comes off Tuesday and I’m literally counting the minutes. Yes, it was a good puzzle. I found yesterday’s rather dry but I’m sure that’s subjective, having to do with the associations it sets off in the solver. Speaking of setting off – I’m extremely glad you weren’t around when the car bomb was triggered….

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