Not terribly hard for a Saturday, although some of the definitions eluded me for a while. Thanks, setter. How did all you solvers get on with this one?
Note for newcomers: The Times offers prizes for Saturday Cryptic Crosswords. This blog is for last week’s puzzle, posted after the competition closes. So, please don’t comment here on this week’s Saturday Cryptic.
Definitions are in bold and underlined.
| Across | |
| 1 | See female cut in (6) |
| FATHOM – F (female), AT HOME (“in”, cut). | |
| 4 | Liberal suffering decline (8) |
| LANGUISH – L, ANGUISH. | |
| 10 | Judgement of international court on cases of Verlaine and Rimbaud (7) |
| VERDICT – VERD (cases of VerlainE, RimbauD), I.C.T. (International Criminal Court) | |
| 11 | Vitamin is first of many found in tahini spread (7) |
| THIAMIN – anagram, spread, of TAHINI + M (first of Many) | |
| 12 | Try drugs at last, I’m afraid (4) |
| SEEK – drugS + EEK. The definition is as in “trying/seeking to do something”. |
|
| 13 | Make uniform and legwear to clothe Imogen head to toe (10) |
| HOMOGENISE – HOSE to clothe MOGENI (Imogen, with the I moved to the end, “head to toe” ). | |
| 15 | Lush mountain enthralling mapmakers, you could say (2,2,5) |
| SO TO SPEAK – SOT(lush), O.S. (Ordnance Survey=mapmakers), PEAK. | |
| 16 | We gather catchword wears thin (5) |
| FRAYS – sound, we gather, like PHRASE. | |
| 18 | One giving Mafia boss gold (5) |
| DONOR – DON, OR. | |
| 19 | Helps presidents to lose ego (9) |
| CHARWOMEN – CHAIRWOMEN (presidents), losing I. | |
| 21 | Made record of 100 poor children possessing nothing (10) |
| CHRONICLED – C (100) + anagram, poor, of CHILDREN + O (nothing). | |
| 23 | Some exotic hummingbirds mate (4) |
| CHUM – hidden (some). | |
| 26 | Dread of stomach lurgy coming to the fore (7) |
| BUGBEAR – BUG (lurgy), BEAR (stomach). | |
| 27 | Students reviewed small mistakes (4-3) |
| SLIP-UPS – SLIPUP=PUPILS “reviewed” , S (small). | |
| 28 | Stable having horse withdrawn from quality equestrian sport (8) |
| EVENTING – EVEN (stable), ThING (quality, with “h” withdrawn). | |
| 29 | Charlatan in Post Office regrets returning (6) |
| POSEUR – P.O., SEUR=RUES, returning. | |
| Down | |
| 1 | Numbers game (5) |
| FIVES – two definitions. The game of fives is played in some English schools, I believe. |
|
| 2 | Take turns travelling in part of Central Asia (9) |
| TURKESTAN – anagram, travelling, of TAKE TURNS. | |
| 3 | Overlook skinned cats (4) |
| OMIT – I’m not confident, but I think “skinned” tells us to take the first letters off TOM and KIT. Other ideas welcome! Edit: thanks to Peter W for explaining “3d is using CAT as a verb, meaning “to vomit”. So “skinned cats” is the word “vomits” with its skin (the outer letters) removed, to give OMIT.” I had no idea! |
|
| 5 | Pictures of a couple surrounded by three kings (7) |
| ARTWORK – A TWO surrounded by R + R + K (three abbreviations for “king”). | |
| 6 | Old bread pursued by fine bird, relative of pheasant (6,4) |
| GUINEA FOWL – GUINEA (old “bread” i.e. money) + F + OWL. | |
| 7 | Feet — setter’s two to start with (5) |
| IAMBI – I AM (the setter is …), BI (two, as a prefix … “to start with“). | |
| 8 | Sycophants in hotel rile boy (7,2) |
| HANGERS ON – H, ANGER, SON. | |
| 9 | Lazy ideas lacking any new energy (6) |
| OTIOSE – take all the N’s (lacking any new) out of NOTIONS + E (energy). I wasn’t altogether sure what OTIOSE means, but Chambers has “indolent” as its third definition. |
|
| 14 | Acerbic criminal nattering about closure of banks (10) |
| ASTRINGENT – anagram, criminal, of NATTERING about S (closure of bankS) | |
| 15 | Open to being led astray — rumpled bed is clue (9) |
| SEDUCIBLE – anagram, rumpled, of BED IS CLUE. | |
| 17 | Poor accommodation of boy, timid little thing keeping quiet (9) |
| ALMSHOUSE – AL (a random boy) + MOUSE keeping SH. | |
| 19 | Heartless mentor managed rocker Eddie (7) |
| COCHRAN – COaCH + RAN. He had a hit with Summertime Blues in 1958. |
|
| 20 | Calm kid following lead of adventurer (2,4) |
| AT EASE – A, TEASE. | |
| 22 | Mischievous libertine pinching prig’s backside (5) |
| ROGUE – ROUE pinching G. | |
| 24 | Skinflint regularly emails heirs (5) |
| MISER – alternate letters of e-M-a-I-l-S h-E-i-R-s. | |
| 25 | Tragic queen made love (4) |
| DIDO – she DID (you guessed it) O. | |
Thank you for the blog – I needed help/confirmation for the parsing of several of those.
But, I think for 3d it is using the definition of “cat” as a verb, meaning “to vomit”. So “skinned cats” is the word “vomits” with its skin (the outer letters) removed, to give OMIT.
That’s exactly how I parsed 3d. Cat=Vomit has come up before.
I found this harder than the average Saturday. After 30 minutes I had all but four answers and 10 minutes later I cleared one of these. The other three I eventually gave up on and resorted to aids. The missing ones were OMIT, SEEK and OTIOSE.
Having looked it up I interpreted OMIT as Peter W did. I thought ‘try / SEEK’ a bit of a stretch. Collins has ‘lazy / OTIOSE’ as ‘rare’.
Finished this but with my usual proportion of non-comprehending biffs. Couldn’t see how 1ac FATHOM came about; a failing of mine is not breaking phrases down enough, so I was looking for something from “cut in”. Guessed at 1d FIVES tho NHO, and 3d OMIT was a total punt. NHO the “vomit” sense. Also couldn’t work out 9d OTIOSE. But, hey, stumbled across the finish line eventually. Thanks, all.
21.23
Hesitated mightily at the end over SEEK as couldn’t see the synonym but was pretty sure EEK was right. OTIOSE was tough whilst OMIT went in without too much worrying about the parsing (NHO that sense of cat, at least not recently).
Excellent puzzle
DNF at 28:04,
the last 10′ spent on fruitlessly trying to solve 1ac and 3d. Then a couple of days ago I noticed that I hadn’t finished this, had another look, and in about one minute I remembered ‘cat’ and saw how FATHOM worked. I had a MER at OTIOSE, since to me the word means ‘superfluous’ or ‘useless’, not ‘lazy’.
I didn’t find this easy at all, and completely failed to understand 9d. This turned out to be because I had ATROPE, which was the nearest I could come to lazy fitting the checkers, and thinking it had something to do with tropes as ideas. I hoped it might be an alternative spelling to ATROPY. I don’t think OTIOSE is much better, given that its use as lazy is identified as archaic but there is no hint of that in the clue. I also had a MER at see=try and quality=thing. However, I did remember the verbal form of cats, possibly because one of ours catted memorably on the bedroom carpet a few nights ago around dawn! I liked the definition of CHARWOMEN and HOMOGENISE – great clues – and FATHOM was a PDM.
My experience of cats catting up is that the mess made is never as bad as the noise would lead one to expect. Apologies to those eating breakfast!
Ha, this one wasn’t great and it also propelled us out of bed! Someone said that the most effective bedroom alarm tone to have would be the sound of a cat preparing to vomit…
67 minutes. I completed most of this in about half an hour but struggled with SEEK, OTIOSE, HOMOGENISE, IAMBI, FATHOM and OMIT. All parsed except for OMIT. I did like SEEK. Thanks branch.
I finished in 26 minutes but just discovered now I stupidly put CHARWOMAN in the singular.
I thought of OTIOSE for “lazy” right away, but probably had a couple checkers. No real problems with the rest, but there’s an exclamation mark next to SEEK, which was surely one of my last in.
DNF without aids. Resorted to looking things up for my last 3 after 17 minutes – FATHOM, OMIT and SEE, remembering belatedly the obscure meaning of CAT. I liked SO TO SPEAK. Thanks Bruce and setter.
Don’t remember too many issues with this, though I didn’t understand how OMIT worked, biffed HOMOGENISE and couldn’t have told you what OTIOSE means.
Thanks branch and setter.
FOI Chum
LOI Astringent
COD Fathom
Completed eventually in several sittings but found it hard to parse quite a few answers. Many thanks B for explaining the following: OMIT, OTIOSE, FATHOM And IAMBI. NHO cat=vomit but won’t forget it in a hurry after the discussion above! Thanks all.
I did have difficulty with the same few words as others: OTIOSE, OMIT (NHO the second meaning) and FATHOM (had decided earlier on that “cut in” had to be ‘etch’ making FETCH, but couldn’t make it fit, of course. (Didn’t see what the correlation with “see” was either. ). Lucky that Eddie COCHRAN rang a faint bell from the distant past, but don’t see a phrase as a catchword. SW corner went in smoothly, then the SE, but needed aids for LANGUISH, FRAYS, FATHOM and SEEK. So a toughie for me, but quite enjoyable.