My printout is starkly free of comments. How did you all do?
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 | Tree with multiple blood types? (6) |
| BAOBAB – B + A + O + B + AB, blood groups all. | |
| 5 | Garment first seen in Sunset Strip (8) |
| SUNDRESS – S (first seen in Sunset) + UNDRESS. | |
| 9 | Dad’s furry creature is OK (8) |
| PASSABLE – PA’S + SABLE. | |
| 10 | Person one’s relatives needle (6) |
| BODKIN – BOD (person) + KIN.
Apparently a bodkin can be a needle, although I’ve always assumed it was a dagger. Hamlet ruminated: For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
Th’oppressor’s wrong, the proud man’s contumely,
The pangs of dispriz’d love, the law’s delay,
The insolence of office, and the spurns
That patient merit of th’unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? |
|
| 11 | Case of champagne — genuine breakfast option (6) |
| CEREAL – CE (case of ChampagnE) + REAL. | |
| 12 | Climbing gear made by small man after diamonds (3,5) |
| ICE SCREW – ICE(diamonds) + S (small) + CREW (man). | |
| 14 | Bad toothache after drinking most of sweet drink and another (3,9) |
| HOT CHOCOLATE – anagram (bad) of TOOTHACHE containing (drinking) COL (most of COLA) Another “sweet drink”, that is. |
|
| 17 | Hits old man, muscular one for a change? (7,5) |
| POPULAR MUSIC – POP (old man) + anagram (for a change): MUSCULAR I. | |
| 20 | Car India developed offering shower — that’s far from basic! (4,4) |
| ACID RAIN – anagram (developed): CAR INDIA. In chemistry, “basic” and “acidic” are opposites. |
|
| 22 | English underground worker’s back-to-front fur coat (6) |
| ERMINE – E (English) + RMINE (MINER, with the final letter “back-to-front“). | |
| 23 | Fiery — what Pascal was, reportedly? (6) |
| ABLAZE – “aural wordplay”: Monsieur Pascal, the French mathematician, was A BLAISE. | |
| 25 | Out of shape and old, fight for Japanese packed lunch (5,3) |
| BENTO BOX – BENT + O + BOX. | |
| 26 | Advance payment had initially riled workers’ nemesis? (8) |
| ANTEATER – ANTE (an advance) + ATE (had) + R (initially Riled) | |
| 27 | Shake abacus, say? (6) |
| TOTTER – a cryptic hint, I think, rather than a second definition; an abacus can do more than just add. | |
| Down | |
| 2 | Come to a ship’s trail close to Devon (6) |
| AWAKEN – A + WAKE + N (close to devoN) | |
| 3 | Dog to leap around property — hotel (6,5) |
| BASSET HOUND – BOUND around ASSET + H. | |
| 4 | Drink, but be able to change (6,3) |
| BUBBLE TEA – anagram (to change): BUT BE ABLE. NHO Bubble Tea, but it doesn’t sound like the drink for me! |
|
| 5 | Fancy recruiting editor from Europe (7) |
| SWEDISH – SWISH recruiting ED. | |
| 6 | Aristocratic chemist with the French instead of the Spanish? (5) |
| NOBLE – NOBEL was the chemist, of course. Change EL to LE. | |
| 7 | Perhaps cardinal is one playing snooker (3) |
| RED – two meanings: the colour Catholic Cardinals wear; or the red ball in snooker, which scores one when a player sinks it. | |
| 8 | Dagger drunk raised during fight (8) |
| STILETTO – TIL (LIT=drunk, raised) during SET TO. | |
| 13 | What an ice pack may provide — scant consolation? (4,7) |
| COLD COMFORT – cryptic hint. | |
| 15 | Aunts chew strange snack item (6,3) |
| CASHEW NUT – anagram (strange): AUNTS CHEW. | |
| 16 | Enter password, say, allowing taxi to enter wooden building (3,5) |
| LOG CABIN – CAB to enter LOGIN. | |
| 18 | Brief note to prohibit feature of hotel room (7) |
| MINIBAR – MINIM (brief musical note) + BAR. | |
| 19 | Encrypt using R for D again (6) |
| ENCORE – ENCODE (encrypt), revised as described. | |
| 21 | One representing some stag entertainment (5) |
| AGENT – hidden. | |
| 24 | Head missing from light beer (3) |
| ALE – PALE. | |
This was the day where I noted that the QC was more difficult than this. The answers just went in one after the other. COD to BAOBAB.
Thanks branch and setter.
You don’t have anything to say because this was the easiest Saturday puzzle ever. Most of the clues have only two cryptic elements, and a straight definition. They’re not chestnuts, but they’re eminently crackable.
Time: 12 minutes
38 minutes. Not so easy for me as there were a number of NHOs which needed to be deduced by other means: BUBBLE TEA, ICE SCREW and BENTO BOX. I was pleased however to remember BAOBAB which is one of those words I know I have met before but usually have difficulty bringing it to mind.
RED was obvious at 7dn but I don’t see how ‘one playing snooker’ works as a definition in its own right.
I didn’t know Pascal’s name was Blaise.
I didn’t know ‘basic’ and ‘acidic’ were opposites, so that part of the definition at 20ac was lost on me.
It scores one point when potted, or ‘one point when playing snooker’.
Ah, of course! Should have thought of that. Thanks.
Thank you from me too.
I think because the “one [doing something]” form is so familiar in crosswords, this clue’s clever subversion of that outfoxed me.
So, I had to read your additional explanation – really spelling out what was going on – before I understood it!
19:52, I don’t know if this was the easiest ever but it was certainly very much on the easy side
I just looked at my QC time and it was 13:09 so hard for a QC but not harder than the main puzzle
I think this is my fastest-ever solving time for a Saturday biggie at approximately 39 minutes with only ABLAZE unparsed and I too didn’t know that ‘basic’ and ‘acidic’ were opposites.
FOI AWAKEN
LOI BENTO BOX
13.21 PB! Very straightforward. The QC took me 14.52. Thanks branch.
I thought the definitions for ACID RAIN and ANTEATER were fun. And interesting to encounter the less familiar mountaineering kit and Asian fare (25ac, 4d)
I had a bit of a pause at 19d, deciding between ENCODE and ENCORE as the fifth letter is unchecked. I wondered if the {using R for D} wordplay instruction could apply to {again} as well as {Encrypt}. It seems to me that you could put those three elements together in various permutations that might remove this ambiguity (at varying cost to the surface reading).
After reading the encouragement in the same day’s QC blog entry, I decided to have my first ever go at the grown-up puzzle. I was very pleased to be able to do almost all of it. Did not get Sundress, Bodkin, Ice Screw, Red and Stiletto, so all my difficulty was in the NE corner. I shall be looking out for future comments in future QC blogs so I can try again.
Keep having a go Z and most importantly read the blog to see how the clue works. Good luck.
My boiled egg would not have been ready if I were using this crossword to time it … I liked the “workers nemesis.”
6:45, but I was obviously in a hurry because I had AWAKED, a failure in cryptic parsing, reading comprehension and basic English grammar.
BAOBAB is a word I come across all the time these days because it appears regularly as an answer in the NYT Spelling Bee (to which I am also addicted).
BUBBLE TEA was new to me, but the BENTO BOX has become very familiar in the last decade or two.
Not the toughest, but still a few bits I wasn’t sure about.
– Not familiar with BENTO BOX but the wordplay made it clear
– Couldn’t have told you that a BODKIN is a needle, and again the wordplay helped
– ‘Advance payment’=’ante’ wasn’t immediately obvious to me, so ANTEATER was a long time coming
– Didn’t see how the ‘one playing snooker’ bit of 7d gave RED, so thanks for the explanation
– Hadn’t heard of an ICE SCREW
Thanks branch and setter.
FOI Awaken
LOI + COD Anteater