Times Cryptic 28986 – Saturday, 3 August 2024.
Easier than last week, in my book. There seemed to be a lot of clues where I could see the answer from the definition, but laboured to see the wordplay. An exception was 18dn, my LOI, where the definition didn’t help me at all! 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 | Temporary servant in a month turning nit-picky about work (4,7) |
| MARY POPPINS – MAR (a month) + SNIPPY=nit-picky, turning » YPPINS, around OP. My first thought was TALL POPPIES, which didn’t go anywhere. |
|
| 7 | First of cold, wet months creating depression in Wales (3) |
| CWM – first letters of Cold Wet Month. Welsh, rather than French, for once! Not a word I knew, but friendly wordplay. |
|
| 9 | Dead tree damaged new leader’s address (6,3) |
| NUMBER TEN – NUMB (dead) + anagram (damaged) of TREE + N. | |
| 10 | Flowers for half-hearted socialists (5) |
| PINKS – two definitions. If communists are red, clearly the half-hearted ones are pink. Carnations etc. can be called Pinks. |
|
| 11 | Plumber’s triumphant call penetrates consciousness (5,2) |
| SINKS IN – “SINK’S IN” , they cry! | |
| 12 | Worked land badly inside broken gate (7) |
| TILLAGE – ILL (badly) inside anagram (broken) of GATE. | |
| 13 | Always available as retiree to tour part of Oz (2,3) |
| ON TAP – OAP to tour NT (Northern Territory). | |
| 15 | Hands regularly relax in extremely challenging situation (9) |
| ADVERSITY – AD (hAnDs, regularly) + SIT (relax) in VERY (extremely). | |
| 17 | Flying team ace, heartless menace in battle (2,7) |
| EL ALAMEIN – EL AL (El Al Airlines, whimically aka the Israeli “flying team”) + A (ace) + ME (heartless MenacE) + IN. | |
| 19 | Get bigger spades to the front of cathedral (5) |
| SWELL – WELLS (cathedral) with S to the front. | |
| 20 | Something to read, or reed (7) |
| PAPYRUS – double definition. They made it from reeds, then wrote on it. |
|
| 22 | A drugs officer avoiding conflict wary about heroin leading to disorder (7) |
| ANARCHY – A + NARC + warY (avoiding “conflict”) about H. | |
| 24 | Spout, round and long (5) |
| OPINE – O (a round letter) + PINE (long). | |
| 25 | The opposite of a moving picture? (5,4) |
| STILL LIFE – cryptic definition. | |
| 27 | Tedious task; one dragged on (3) |
| FAG – two definitions. The second is something you smoke. | |
| 28 | Entire band gathered round large board (6,5) |
| DINNER TABLE – anagram (gathered) of ENTIRE BAND round L (large). | |
| Down | |
| 1 | Soldier in theatre of war once briefly sent back (3) |
| MAN – Vietnam (“NAM”, briefly) sent back. | |
| 2 | Paunch of some games players (5) |
| RUMEN – R.U. (rugby union – a game) + MEN (players). |
|
| 3 | Exercise, or call the lift? (5-2) |
| PRESS-UP – cryptic hint. | |
| 4 | Great Khan perhaps to put head round old yurt (9) |
| POTENTATE – PATE (head) round O + TENT. | |
| 5 | Pub should have vermouth, wouldn’t you say? (5) |
| INNIT – INN + IT (vermouth). | |
| 6 | Provider, not one to offer more elastic (7) |
| SUPPLER – SUPPLiER (provider, not I). | |
| 7 | At Cambridge, one beginning to learn English singing style (9) |
| CANTABILE – CANTAB. (from the Latin name) + I + L + E. | |
| 8 | Mediaeval production that might baffle an audience today (7,4) |
| MYSTERY PLAY – cryptic hint. Mystery plays presented mediaeval Bible stories. |
|
| 11 | One disclosing strength of alcohol, able to resist a splash (11) |
| SHOWERPROOF – SHOWER (one disclosing) + PROOF. | |
| 14 | In trip, gas fails, so having weary walk (9) |
| TRAIPSING – anagram (fails) of IN TRIP GAS. | |
| 16 | Do this, and museum lies in ruins? (9) |
| VANDALISE – V AND A (The Victoria & Albert) + anagram (in ruins) of LIES. | |
| 18 | In military base help to guard one grounded (7) |
| AIRHEAD – AID to guard RHEA (flightless bird). This was one clue where I had no idea of the answer, since I had no idea that this word meant the RAF equivalent of a bridgehead. I was saved by the wordplay when R-E- suggested RHEA. |
|
| 19 | Sort of fever mark on body, half fatal (7) |
| SCARLET – SCAR + LEThal. | |
| 21 | Woman in America opening tin (5) |
| SUSAN – USA opening SN (chemical symbol for tin). Who else tried to find something to fit in CAN? |
|
| 23 | Crocodile’s front leg shows scale (5) |
| CLIMB – C (Crocodile’s front) + LIMB. | |
| 26 | Farm animal seen in the west (3) |
| EWE – hidden (seen) in thE WEst. | |
32:44
NHO AIRHEAD, which I put in reluctantly when I had RHEA. Didn’t get PINKS, not taking ‘half-hearted’ literally. I liked VANDALISE.
Shouldn’t that be 28986?
Ouch. I changed the number … or so I thought. Thanks.
I made a mistake with this puzzle. I am teaching a beginner, and I usually grab a Times Quickie for the lesson material. Instead, I took this puzzle, thinking it was the Quickie. Many of the clues are rather hard if you’re not an experienced solver, although with a few hints he did quite well. The basics of solving, such as picking out the clue type, identifying the literal, thinking how the cryptic might work were helpful to both me and my student – there is nothing like stating what you are doing out loud. After about 70 minutes we had 2/3 of it. He could only stay another 15 minutes, so he told me to solve the rest as fast as I could – which turned out not to be very fast, but solve it I did – Mary Poppins, number ten, sinks in, rumen, press up, and man went in, plus a few stragglers.
So I have no idea how long I would have taken solving it myself, probably about 45 minutes. It was a good puzzle with a lot of tricky clues. I did like the triumphant plumber!
93m 23s
17ac. In my view EL AL as ‘flying team’ is far too arbitrary.
40 minutes. I didn’t understand ‘flying team / EL AL’ but knew of the battle so was in no doubt as to the answer. If it’s an official nickname I haven’t been able to find it online. Most of my hits led me back to this puzzle.
I note we found another EWE!
22.50
Felt sluggish but maybe not. The TABLE was a nice semi anagram and liked VANDALISE. Ta all
78 minutes with breaks. This felt like it took longer than it should have. BUTTS IN spent a while at 11a. The military meaning of AIRHEAD was very dimly remembered after I’d figured it out. PINKS was LOI. Thanks branch.
I thought I’d managed this one pretty well. But thanks to reading your blog, I realise I hadn’t properly understood a couple of definitions:
2d. I’d thought of “paunch” as a rather informal word: “how to avoid the dad-bod paunch” etc. But I see from googling there are many serious farming/veterinary articles using paunch as another word for RUMEN.
18d. Having struggled with this one, I’d not appreciated what the “military base” meant. It seems that “bridgehead” as a physical fortification dates from the 18th century, then started being used as a military position at the turn of the 20th century. “Beachhead” and “AIRHEAD” were then coined in WW2 from bridgehead. “Airhead” as a foolish person comes a couple of decades later.
Not familiar with snippy=nit-picky but MARY POPPINS had to be; knew CWM from the great tune Cwm Rhondda; hadn’t heard of El Al airlines but knew EL ALAMEIN; and had to trust the wordplay for the unknown RUMEN.
Thanks branch and setter.
FOI Climb
LOI Pinks
COD Vandalise
DNF, 10a Pinks just didn’t come to me, ditto the clever 11a Sinks In. DOH, now we see it, it’s easy (as nearly always!)
POI; Dad was at El Alamein, and when I was a Customs Officer El Al was in our station, known at the time as the Gaza Strip for a mixed bag of nations. It included El Al, Aer Lingus, PIA (Pakistan) Air India and JAL (Japanese). Most stations had only one or two airlines, but BA had two stations to itself for a long time before they fully integrated BEA & BOAC.
In retrospect Gaza Strip doesn’t seem very apt….
12:03. No major hold-ups. MER at ‘flying team’, NHO this meaning of AIRHEAD.
Yes I got stuck on that AIRHEAD clue: a NHO definition. Also defeated by RUMEN (had tummy in there for a while!), CANTABILE ( only recognised after reading the blog), and SINKS IN ( which is a great clue, once it had sunk in). But happy to get all the rest, especially EL ALAMEIN, PAPYRUS, MARY POPPINS and VANDALISE, my COD. But some very clever cluing here.