Lots of clues struck me as having a novel flavour, and 24ac is superb. Anyway, it was great fun! 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 | Titanic’s crew finally jumping (8) |
| WHOPPING – creW, HOPPING. | |
| 6 | Self-confident lad scoffs endless meal (6) |
| BOUNCY – BOY scoffs LUNCH. | |
| 9 | Cell phone drivers corrupted games, essentially (4) |
| OVUM – middle (essential) letters of phOne driVers corrUpted gaMes. “Cute”, I wrote in the margin. The first of many! |
|
| 10 | Cleaner burdens grandpa, for one? (6,4) |
| SADDLE SOAP – SADDLES, O.A.P. | |
| 11 | American dove, JFK, nicked with a shot (10) |
| JACKKNIFED – anagram (shot) of JFK NICKED A. Cute, again: not a bird! Deceptively, “dove” with a long O is the past tense of “dive” in America. |
|
| 13 | Detach coreless operating system (4) |
| UNIX – UNFIX. Unix can be traced back to Bell Labs, in 1969. |
|
| 14 | Trouble concerning leg when going over tree (8) |
| MAGNOLIA – AIL ON GAM, all backwards (going over). | |
| 16 | Unknown helper wearing firm round belt (6) |
| ZODIAC – Z (unknown), then AID wearing CO backwards (round). | |
| 18 | Little boy cuddles that woman’s sweet child (6) |
| CHERUB – CUB cuddles HER. | |
| 20 | Annoying girl fills in old Tax Office books (8) |
| IRRITANT – RITA fills in IR (Inland Revenue, pre 2005) + N.T. (books of the bible). | |
| 22 | After losing son, chap’s empty (4) |
| BAIL – BASIL. | |
| 24 | Two strokes dropped by leader on 8th hole? Employ course guide (10) |
| LIGHTHOUSE – E is the first letter (leader) of EIGHT. If you lose two of the horizontals (two strokes dropped!) on that letter E, it turns into an L! So: L E IGHTH + O (hole) + USE. | |
| 26 | Labour’s successful outcome in the 1950s? (4,6) |
| BABY BOOMER – cryptic definition. | |
| 28 | Just a scrap of lunch — skipping starter, £25 should cover it (4) |
| ONLY – ONY (PONY, skipping starter) should cover L (a “scrap” of Lunch). | |
| 29 | Bother about one’s deceptively spacious transport? (6) |
| TARDIS – TARD (“DRAT”, about) + I’S. | |
| 30 | Yank’s never accepting notice, presently (8) |
| NOWADAYS – NOWAYS (American for “no way”) accepting AD. | |
| Down | |
| 2 | Attempt to keep French down with heroin (4,1,4) |
| HAVE A BASH – HAVE (keep) + À BAS (French for “down [with]”) + H. | |
| 3 | Grill family’s fruit (7) |
| PUMPKIN – PUMP + KIN. | |
| 4 | Writer is disturbed by book being oddly ignored (5) |
| IBSEN – IS disturbed by B (book) + EN (“bEiNg”, oddly ignored). | |
| 5 | Follow up idol (3) |
| GOD – DOG (follow), up. | |
| 6 | Tractor shifted boulder containing separate traces of lead and zinc (9) |
| BULLDOZER – anagram (shifted) of (BOULDER + L + Z). L and Z are the first letters (traces) of Lead and Zinc. |
|
| 7 | Dodgy report, arguably lacking introduction (7) |
| UNSOUND – the “report” appears to be a “gUN SOUND“, lacking its first letter. | |
| 8 | Covering head of injured animal (5) |
| COATI – COAT + Injured. | |
| 12 | Anxious about anger if excited (7) |
| FEARING – anagram (excited) of (ANGER IF) | |
| 15 | Defamatory Aussie demand for classification possibly picked up (9) |
| LIBELLOUS – “aural wordplay”: the implication is that to an English ear, an Aussie saying LABEL US would sound the A as an I. I can confirm that would be true to an American ear! |
|
| 17 | Teases topless partner, an easy target (4,5) |
| AUNT SALLY – tAUNTS (topless) + ALLY. Are Aunt Sallies *easy* targets? Dunno. |
|
| 19 | Relative indeed died, or passed on (7) |
| RELAYED – REL + AYE + D. | |
| 21 | Twice ordered around vicious canine without using line (7) |
| TWOFOLD – TOLD (ordered) around WOLF. | |
| 23 | City quartermaster and brigadier initially infiltrating battery (5) |
| AQABA – the battery is size AAA. Q + B infiltrate. Aqaba is in Jordan. |
|
| 25 | Tory’s opening dispute involves hospital project (5) |
| THROW – Tory + H + ROW. | |
| 27 | Individual marks heralding a third in Linguistics (3) |
| MAN – M + A + liNguistics. | |
Lighthouse had me totally wondering what was going on, but now I see the parsing it makes sense. Not sure I like ‘hole’ for ‘o’ but learning all the time.
I only knew of Jackknifed in the sense of a truck accident so had to look it up to make sure. Aqaba went in straight away being a fan of T. E. Lawrence. Aunt Sally another NHO.
COD to Zodiac/Belt.
Thanks setter and blogger.
I biffed OVUM, had to come here for the parsing. And even then I had trouble seeing ‘essentially’ as indicating the middle letter, until I thought of ‘at heart’. Cute, but what does the clue mean? I also never parsed LIGHTHOUSE, and now I see why; can’t say I care for the clue. I’ve never seen “Dr. Who”, so I don’t know what the TARDIS looks like. (I’m not sure what it does, for that matter; time machine?) I’ve never heard ‘No ways’. ‘Dove’ is A past tense of ‘dive’ in the US, not THE. ‘JFK, nicked with a shot’ was in poor taste.
Especially considering what happened to Donald Trump.
DNF. All done in half an hour except MAGNOLIA, where I drew a blank. I haven’t heard “gams” in years. LIGHTHOUSE took a while to parse. Thanks branch.
56 minutes over 2 sessions and even then I didn’t finish because I’d had enough of it and used aids to find BAIL and COATI. I missed the ‘two strokes’ thing re LIGHTHOUSE.
I’ve known horoscope stuff forever but ZODIAC as a belt came as news to me. I’ve no idea what I thought it was.
I think LIBELLOUS works in Cockerney too.
Wasn’t at all sure what a Zodiac was apart from a Ford car, so I learnt something.
Never seen a coati, but I now know that it is aka coatimundi from Mexico, and GD1 (granddaughter 1) has one, a stuffed facsimile actually, bought at huge expense by her great aunt.
I gather the T.A.R.D.I.S. is an acronym, you can find out what the expansion is from Wiki.
I like Dove as past tense. Pass the soap and make it slippy.
Was really keen to go to Aqaba until I got there and found it rather tatty. You can see it from Eilat and when I was there on honeymoon a long time ago it looked an interesting place we could not go to. I’m sure T E Lawrence had different feelings.
Very enjoyable – libellous, jackknifed and lighthouse stood out. Thanks.
19.40 but put in UNIT and didn’t go back. LIGHTHOUSE from checkers but liked it now I understand it
Thanks Bruce
Forgot to keep a record of this one, so posting from memory.
Didn’t get the unknown UNIX, bunging in ‘unit’ instead; had no idea how OVUM worked; had to trust the wordplay for the unfamiliar SADDLE SOAP; didn’t see the clever trick for LIGHTHOUSE; and didn’t get AQABA.
Thanks branch and setter.
COD Baby boomer
Would never have parsed lighthouse so thank you for that. As a (retired) 37 year IT man UNIX was a write in for me but i thought it would cause ructions as its hardly in everyday use like android or iOS. The lack of complaints suggests it’s more widely known than I thought.
Thanks branch and setter
A late comment to thank you for the blog and agree with your opening remarks – lots of fun wordplay, particularly the “two strokes dropped” in LIGHTHOUSE!
I parsed AQABA slightly differently – an AA battery containing initial letters of Quartermaster And Brigadier. I think both work.
As an aside, it’s always struck me as slightly odd that AA batteries are larger than AAA.
Had more trouble with this than I should’ve: started with 5d GOD, 1a W????ING, and the “easy” CHERUB. Then things got difficult. BABY BOOMER went straight in (once I got the enumeration correct!), and I liked the Aussie accent in LIBELLOUS. Parsing of LIGHTHOUSE far too clever for me, but SADDLE SOAP and COATI straight in. Always forget the US past tense of dive, so fooled there, looking for a JACKDAW alike bird. Fun crossword, but a bit above my pay grade.