Times 24864, 4th Qualifier, 1st June

Solving time: 49 minutes.

A more difficult puzzle than the previous three qualifiers I thought. Or maybe this was because I did it after the substitute puzzle from 1951 which had me in entirely the wrong frame of mind. A sudden onset of cryptic blindness caused by reading too many bizarre surfaces?

Across
1	SWEET FLAG. Anagram of ‘left wages’. Acorus calamus.
6	PI,LOT. Variation on an old theme with extra verbiage inserted to attempt solver-confusion. LOT: particular group; PI: brief religious. Def: ‘trial’.
9	E(RU)DITE. What sub did in short: EDITE{d}. Entertaining = including. RU: game.
10	ANTI,QUE. QUE: French for ‘that’ (‘from Orléans that’).
11	TO(A,S)T. TOT: add.
13	HEARTSICK. Anagram of ‘A trick she’.
14	C(A,PARIS)ON. Rich clothing … for a horse!
16	C,LAD.
18	ANON. Two definitions. This is the guy who wrote lots of poems in the anthologies.
19	IN THE KNOW. INK: material scribe needs; around THE (article); NOW.
22	T(AIL)-ENDER.
24	J,I,HAD.
25	CHAP,AT,I. Which may be taken in with Indian (meal).
26	COMES-TO. Two defs I guess, with the separator before ‘costs’. ‘It costs $5’ = ‘It comes to $5’.
28	E,VENT.
29	GREENBACK. Anagram of ‘eg banker’ and C (note).

Down
1	S(C)EPTIC. Is that which is septic necessarily inflamed because so-infected?
2	EMU. Initial letters.
3	TWITTER,Y.
4	LEE(C)H. C for circa inside a reversal of HEEL.
5	GO A(GAINS)T. Read this as GAINS inside GO AT (attack).
6	PET,ITE{m}.
7	LIQUID LUNCH. Jokey cryptic def.
8	T(WEAK)ED. I expect the usual complaints about Teds being tough youths.
12	APPROXIMATE. Anagram of ‘mix, appear to’. The def is ‘rough’ (adj.).
15	S(WIND)LING. Ah … the old gin and cherry brandy (yuk). And there was me looking for the more innocent ‘swig’.
17	BET,JE(M)AN.
18	ARTIC,LE.
20	WEDLOCK. Reversal of K{ing}, COLD and E&W (partners at bridge).
21	SECANT. “A straight line that cuts a curve in two or more parts”. Anagram of ‘ascent’. Why did this take me so long to see?
23	RECCE. Our light-inclusive for the day.
27	SEA. Odd letters in reversal of ‘ravers’.

5 comments on “Times 24864, 4th Qualifier, 1st June”

….and did it in about half an hour. I’m still not qualified, but at least I finished.

40 minutes. I suspect I could have made it 35, except that I wrote EMU–first one in, I think– with a U that looked more like a V, and when I came back to the NW later, I was dense enough to read it as such. 9ac — unsurprisingly, considering–was my LOI. It didn’t help that I never thought of the ‘editor’ sense of ‘sub’. Liked 15d.

I thought it was more difficult. It took me a good hour but at least I didn’t resort to aids.

Solving was not helped by having some clues on a second sheet. I wish they would use the same format for qualifiers as for the regular daily puzzles.

9:32 for me – not a total disaster, but this was pretty standard Times fare so I expect the fast brigade would have taken a good 2-3 minutes off me, and Magoo would have broken 5 minutes.

I thought this was a decidedly odd puzzle, with a host of awkwardly phrased clues, which I suspect goes a long way to explain comments like the blogger’s at 21 down,

Comments are closed.