Judging by my time, this continues a trend of gradually increasing difficulty for the qualifier puzzles, though I was fairly slow on a couple of points. Mainly 14 where I lost time by failing to mark the word break in the grid, or when writing _ L _ S _ I _ _ _ R _ E N next to a jumble of ‘salon pictures, G’ and deleting the letters already used.
| Across | |
|---|---|
| 1 | DELILAH – L in hailed rev. “General Ignorance” question: who cut Samson’s hair? A: a servant who Delilah told to do it. |
| 5 | HACK,SAW – a new gag mined from the rich Observer/Spectator field |
| 9 | GO,BANANAS – GO is that complex Japanese game of territory occupation, and bananas come in hands. |
| 10 | P,INTO – a horse with white patches |
| 11 | T,OR SO – my first across answer. Even when it’s competitively irrelevant, just the appearance of the word “Championship” in the title of a puzzle seems to guarantee that I won’t solve the first few clues I look at. |
| 12 | WORLD VIEW – cryptic def. |
| 14 | PLASTIC SURGEON = (salon pictures, G)* |
| 17 | OR,CHEST(RATION)S – “arrangements of golden boxes” should be enough for old hands to see this word – a handy one for setters as it carves up in several nice ways for wordplay and is all “friendly letters” except for one C. |
| 21 | HE,S(I)TANCE – ref. “he who hesitates is lost” |
| 23 | PATCH – 2 defs – the “beauty spot” one wasn’t familiar, so a sporting or trader’s PITCH may mislead some into a wrong answer. |
| 24 | “O KING” |
| 25 | PTEROSAUR = (use raptor)* |
| 26 | HONESTY – hidden word |
| 27 | TAF=fat rev.,FETA – took a while to see that feta = just cheese, not ‘rich cheese’, and until that penny dropped, thought I needed to justify put=fat. |
| Down | |
| 1 | DIG(IT)S – if you’re “in digs”, you’re living somewhere or are “lodged”. |
| 2 | LIBE(R.A.)L |
| 3 | LAN(G,OUST=put out)E |
| 4 | HANDWRITTEN = (trend in what)* – ‘style’ can mean a writing implement |
| 5 | HI’S |
| 6 | C.(UP)I.D. – armed with a bow and arrow |
| 7 | SUNRISE = (insures). Needing to think of the sun as a star often used to fox me. Now it’s almost instinctive. |
| 8 | WOOD,WIND – ref. Sir Henry Wood, founder of the Proms. |
| 13 | R.E.,STATEMENT=testament*. The presence of NT as a ‘testament’ made the right wordplay annoyingly hard to see. |
| 15 | R.A.,IN,P,ROOF – slightly surprised to see the painter again after 2D. |
| 16 | POOH-POOH – an old chestnut and instant write-in |
| 18 | CUSHION – 2 defs, one based on Snooker |
| 19 | NUTCASE – 2 defs, one slightly whimsical |
| 20 | S(HER)PA |
| 22 | TOGAS – I guess “boasting, so to speak” = “to gas”, but with T?G?S and old robes, let’s not hang about. Post-comment: I think the point is that to gas is to speak in a boastful way, which makes it more convincing though not quite completely so for me. |
| 25 | P,AY=”poet’s always” |
| Category | Score | Clues |
|---|---|---|
| Religion | 1 | 1A Delilah |
| Literature | ||
| Music | ||
| Visual Arts | ||
| Popular Culture | ||
| Sport & Games | 1 | (9) go, (18) cushion |
| Natural World | 1 | (11) pinto, (25) pterosaur |
| Science & Tech | ||
| Geography | ||
| History | ||
| Other | 0.5 | (3) langouste (Food & Drink) |
| Total | 3.5 |
If I had just a little more experience, I could have completed it quite quickly, the the SW corner hung me up. ‘Pooh-pooh’ was not something I had seen before – if I had got that one from previous solving, everything would have clicked.
Of course, I didn’t recognize the cricket clue, but I am beginning to ogle cricket….for a Yank.
Are the qualifying puzzles always this easy?
Of course, I didn’t recognize the snooker clue, but I am beginning to ogle cricket….for a Yank.
efforts in the cryptic realm. I had a great time with No. 3 hoist however, by having put
HANDWRITING instead of HANDWRITTEN thus skewering myself for ORCHESTRATIONS and
CUSHION. Also I’d always thought it was OKAYING. Time was about 40 minutes. Then add about 3 days until the answers came out. Not bad for a colonial what? Speaking of time I hadn’t noticed how long it took Peter.
Newspapers here in Toronto publish cryptics daily and at the weekend. They are of
UK origin.
I believe the Saturday puzzles in the Globe and Mail are by Fraser Simpson, who is Canadian. I’d like to see more puzzles set by locals in countries outside the UK, and use of local culture – I believe solvers of one of the ‘UK origin’ puzzles recently needed to know about the actress Thora Hird, who with all respect to her is hardly an international figure.