This was reasonably easy to solve, and very easy to write up! 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 | Short sibling, one backing Graeco-Cypriot union (6) |
| ENOSIS – SIS + ONE, reversed (backing). The answer seemed vaguely familiar at best. Read more here. |
|
| 5 | Half-hearted composer with male charm (8) |
| TALISMAN – TALLIS + MAN. | |
| 9 | Way a woman splits stake in newspaper (10) |
| BROADSHEET – ROAD + SHE splits BET. | |
| 10 | Algerian port managed by outstanding leader (4) |
| ORAN – O (leader of Outstanding) + RAN. It’s in the NW of Algeria. I couldn’t have named it. |
|
| 11 | Show disapproval of a bishop in lift at hotel (8) |
| HARRUMPH – A + RR (Right Reverend) in HUMP + H. A delightfully fusty word. |
|
| 12 | Delicious drink potentially engendering trance (6) |
| NECTAR – anagram (potentially engendering) TRANCE. | |
| 13 | Domed recess cathedral ultimately abandoned by mistake (4) |
| APSE – LAPSE. | |
| 15 | Settle in French café primarily tucking in to cake (8) |
| ENSCONCE – EN (“in”, in French) + C (“café”, primarily), tucking in to SCONE. | |
| 18 | One-eyed giants work in recurring phases (8) |
| CYCLOPES – OP in CYCLES. I didn’t know, but it was easy to guess: cyclopes is the plural of cyclops. Read about them here. |
|
| 19 | English priest of placid temperament (4) |
| EVEN – E (English), VEN. | |
| 21 | A wife in one African state or another (6) |
| MALAWI – A + W in MALI. | |
| 23 | Bird of old days once breaking into husk (8) |
| SHELDUCK – ELD in SHUCK. “Shuck” took a while to think of. I was trying to use “shell”. I didn’t know “eld” at all, of course. But “elder” lives on, so it seemed plausible. It’s in Chambers. ELD (archaic) definition 3: former times or antiquity. |
|
| 25 | Return of firearms for men only (4) |
| STAG – GATS (guns). | |
| 26 | Companionable chap, a Republican, promises to pay (10) |
| GREGARIOUS – GREG + A + R + IOUS. | |
| 27 | Star, a Catholic principally tracking aurochs (8) |
| ARCTURUS – A + R.C. + T (“tracking”, principally) + URUS (aurochs). We don’t see aurochs here often. Read about them here. |
|
| 28 | Possible inspiration of engineers in SW city (6) |
| BREATH – RE in BATH. The definition is “possible inspiration”, because a breath could also be an expiration. |
|
| Down | |
| 2 | Woman that’s not quite as she should be? (5) |
| NORMA – NORMAL, not quite. | |
| 3 | Look thoroughly for speakers where flights are fixed (9) |
| STAIRWELL – aural wordplay (for speakers): “STARE WELL”. | |
| 4 | Source of oil American uncle found in Ely, perhaps (6) |
| SESAME – [Uncle] SAM in SEE (Ely, perhaps). | |
| 5 | A weird bunch in Shakespeare play — or one by Chekhov? (3,5,7) |
| THE THREE SISTERS – an allusion to the three witches in Macbeth. | |
| 6 | Early music performer’s initially unexpected decade in catalogue (8) |
| LUTENIST – U + TEN in LIST. | |
| 7 | Phlegmatic type, good person originally often in charge (5) |
| STOIC – ST + O (“often”, originally) + I.C. | |
| 8 | A hanging drapery protecting husband in fall (9) |
| AVALANCHE – A VALANCE protecting H. | |
| 14 | Always stopping in the afternoon, plant official responsible for wages (9) |
| PAYMASTER – AY stopping PM + ASTER. Chambers says “ay” is dialect or archaic, but “ay/aye” meant “always”, as in “for ever and aye”. |
|
| 16 | Finished run in sleazy bar, needing very high gear (9) |
| OVERDRIVE – OVER (finished) + R in DIVE. | |
| 17 | Season extremely rewarding at first for a gundog (8) |
| SPRINGER – SPRING + E.R. (“Extremely Rewarding”, at first). | |
| 20 | Smear educationalist, a socially acceptable bachelor (6) |
| BEDAUB – B.ED. + A + U + B. | |
| 22 | Army doctor leaves surrounded by foreboding (5) |
| ANGST – MO leaves AMONGST. | |
| 24 | Curry favour with sovereign and his retinue (5) |
| COURT – two definitions: one verb, one noun. | |
Wot, no comments? Harrumph! A fairly easy puzzle, but with some entertaining wordplay. Thanks to the setter and to branch for a pleasant blog.
14:49
Easy, all right. Made easier by such sore-thumb definitions as ‘Graeco-Cypriot union’ and ‘one-eyed giants’. DNK URUS. Biffed ANGST; it took me forever to parse, after submitting. We’ve had this setter before; he likes initial/final letters: ultimately, primarily, principally, initially, originally, at first.
Yes, it’s easy if you’ve heard of enosis, talisman, Oran, cyclopes, shelduck, and Arcturus. We take a lot of our knowledge for granted. I suspect many solvers from the SCC would find these a bit on the hard side, but of course, they don’t attempt these puzzles.
Time: 17 minutes
Hey guys, I’m a kinda new and just wanted to ask, in general, how hard the Saturday Cryptic is compared to the rest of the week? I’ve never attempted one, and that site that gives the snitch doesn’t give one for Saturdays so I was just curious.
The answer is, it’s probably middle of the road! Easier than a typical Friday, harder than a typical Monday.
Unfortunately technical problems make it hard to calculate a SNITCH, because the data gets “washed away” during the five days before the solution comes out.
While it can be all over the place, I’d say it is usually harder than average, and can be very tough. There have been a couple of easy ones lately, but I’d say on average they’re around 110 on the SNITCH.
Easy? I certainly didn’t find it so although some clues may have been easier than usual on a Saturday.
26 minutes, but a technical DNF because I had forgotten ARCTURUS (if ever I knew it) and I NHO ‘auroch’ or ‘urus’. Two, if not three obscurities in a single clue was too much for this solver.
NHO ELD but I remembered SHUCK from a previous encounter and I knew SHELDUCK anyway, although I’d probably have spelt it with two Ls if the grid hadn’t made this impossible.
Finally, I never heard of CYCLOPES as the plural of Cyclops and it has not appeared here before.
Talk of ENOSIS was hard to avoid during my formative years because of the problems at the time in Cyprus.
Neither did I. I stared blankly at this on and off during Saturday. It was only after I finished Sunday’s xword that things started to flow. Then it was done and dusted within the hour. I wish I knew how to unlock the mind. I find that some mysterious switch needs to flip before I can start.
Didn’t know ENOSIS. but was easy enough to construct (once my brain had switched to xword mode).
45m 14s
Almost as soon as I had pressed ‘submit’ I knew that I had made a mistake. I put LUTANIST iso LUTENIST for 6d. Rats! In 25ac I started with SNUG on the basis that the snug bar might have been for men only…
The main point of interest for me was 1ac: ENOSIS. I wonder if our setter has/had some connection with Cyprus and was left dispossessed by the Turkish invasion almost exactly 50 years ago in 1974? It brought back memories of names such as Makarios, Grivas and EOKA. It also brought back a memory of one of the early terrorist bombs bringing down an aircraft. In 1967 a Comet aircraft belonging to British European Airways (BEA) enroute from Athens to Cyprus was blown up by a bomb. I was working for BEA as a General Apprentice in those days as was a good friend of mine. He was working in the BEA crewing department in the Queen’s Building at Heathrow at the time. One phone call he took was from the wife of the Captain. He quickly, and wisely, passed the call on to someone more senior.
All but two done in half an hour then SHELDUCK and ANGST took several days. ENOSIS, ORAN, CYCLOPES and “urus” were new to me. I never did make sense of ANGST. Thanks branch.
DNF – I didn’t find this easy at all.
– NHO ENOSIS, though I managed to get it from wordplay
– Stupidly put ‘cyclopic’ rather than CYCLOPES, not knowing that it’s the plural of cyclops
– Might have heard of SHELDUCK, but didn’t know shuck=husk and can’t recall seeing eld before
– Completely defeated by ARCTURUS – I share Jack’s thoughts on that
– Didn’t know THE THREE SISTERS, and had stymied myself anyway with ‘cyclopic’
Thanks branch and setter.
COD Harrumph
Quick with this one, though I guess a longish lifetime accumulation of useless knowledge helped.. the only holdup was parsing A(MO)NGST.
I remember Enosis and thinking, not for the first time, that it is those with most in common that seem to generate the bitterest enmity.
I took a while over this, 37 minutes, I can remember eventually googling ENOSIS and SHELDUCK, especially enosis seemed an unlikely word, but both turned out to be real.
A singular (and plural) puzzle
All done inside 34 minutes. I did not know CYCLOPES as the plural of CYCLOPS. The wordplay was very clear – OP INSIDE CYCLES – but it nearly failed the final test: has it produced something that might be a real word? I knew ARCTURUS and the wordplay gave me enough to write it in without knowing AUROCHS or URUS. Looking them up afterwards I saw that both must be singular in the clue, despite the confusing “s” on the end. One URUS is another name for one AUROCHS. The plural of AUROCHS can just be AUROCHS, or it can be AUROCHSEN, which I find quite pleasing
I hadn’t appreciated what the “possible” in 28ac was doing. Of course- we also breathe out as well as in!
I felt there was more difficult general knowledge and vocabulary in this one (but gentler wordplay).
Dictionaries seem to confirm my feeling that “shuck” (23ac) is more of US word -I’d only heard of it as the verb (as in shucking corn/oysters/clams). I see now that the noun meaning the (discarded) shell or husk, can therefore mean something valueless and hence the expression “aw shucks!”.
I had vaguely heard of the star but wasn’t sure how to spell it, and the wordplay was of no practical help. Harrumph.
16.17
DNK ENOSIS so had to trust to w/p on that but knew the rest of the GK (the star not the URUS).
Ok, there were a few initial letter thingies but who can’t like a crossword with HARRUMPH in it?
Thanks setter and Bruce
Took a couple of days to work through this one at my leisure. I’d never heard of ENOSIS, ORAN or SHELDUCK, knew the star but not urus/aurochs, and couldn’t parse ANGST. Otherwise I felt it was very do-able for someone now regularly trying the biggie. Really liked HARRUMPH although it did take me a while to figure it out. Many thanks for the blog.
1a Enosis reminded me of Archbish Makarios.
10a Oran reminded me of why the French Navy doesn’t like the Brits – the RN sank their fleet there when France fell and the Vichy Govt wouldn’t hand the fleet over intact.
WOD 11a Harrumph.
18a Cyclopes, wasn’t sure what the “e” was doing so looked it up, and am still not quite sure it is necessary, nor if it applies both to the little creatures and the mythic humanoids.
27a Arcturus, had to cheat to convince myself aurochs is/are urus.
22d A(MO)ngst, very clever. Got there eventually.
Not easy. Middling. Came here to check the parsing of EVEN, SHELDUCK and ANGST.
why do we not get given the names of setters in the daily crosswords?
why do we not get given the identity of setters on daily crosswords but do for the weekend cryptic
It’s not The Times policy.
By ‘weekend cryptic’ I assume you mean the Sunday puzzle. That’s in The Sunday Times under different editorship.
thanks for the explanation