Cue some memories of the hit song by Michael Nesmith, 1977; I didn’t think I had any snobbish preoccupations about South America (ref. 1ac) … but then again, I just might!
All done in 35’17”. How about you?
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 | In South America, you shouldn’t have time for snob’s preoccupation (6) |
| STATUS – We’ve seen this “South America” ruse often enough now to immediately think S + U.S. It remains to insert: TA (thanks … you shouldn’t have) + T (time). | |
| 5 | Good effort to limit publicity, say, about smartphones etc (8) |
| GADGETRY – G + TRY to limit AD + GE (E.G., about). | |
| 9 | Figure in Dickens novel shows game played on board (4,6) |
| DECK TENNIS – TEN in anagram (novel) of DICKENS. | |
| 10 | Yank from westerly Honolulu, a Hawaiian (4) |
| HAUL – hidden (from), backwards (westerly). | |
| 11 | Spice Girl greeting old king and wise man (8) |
| MELCHIOR – MEL C (“Sporty Spice”) + HI (greeting) + O + R. | |
| 12 | Once working detective’s case, turn to Morse? (6) |
| ENCODE – ENCO (anagram, working, of ONCE) + DE (case of DetectivE). I automatically think of “encode” as meaning “encrypt”, but of course it needn’t be so! Here it means to turn letters in dots and dashes, with no encryption involved. |
|
| 13 | Coerced worker saving energy, possibly a Pole (4) |
| SLAV – SLAVe. | |
| 15 | Con keeping tabs on parliament’s leader for David Cameron, say (4,4) |
| LIFE PEER – LIFER (con) keeping P + E.E. (Parliament’s leader + 2 x ecstasy tablets). | |
| 18 | Musical work closed with finale from tenor, which may be a plus (8) |
| OPERATOR – OPERA + TO (closed, like a door) + R (finale from tenoR). | |
| 19 | Quaint version of ancient, gold-embellished cups (4) |
| OLDE – hidden (cups). | |
| 21 | Aggressive kind of personality picked up Asian capital (6) |
| TAIPEI – sounds like (picked up): Type A. | |
| 23 | Specific about Shakespeare part getting bowdlerised (5-3) |
| CLEAR-CUT – C (about) + LEAR + CUT (bowdlerised). | |
| 25 | Legend in swimming area, cycling around (4) |
| IDOL – LIDO, with the L cycling to the back. | |
| 26 | Oscar tucked into proper lard I cooked in a kind of soup (10) |
| PRIMORDIAL – PRIM (proper) + ORDIAL (anagram, cooked, of LARD I O; the O is for Oscar, in the phonetic radio alphabet). | |
| 27 | Maintain this is when tennis players bounce the ball (8) |
| PRESERVE – a cryptic hint, about tennis players’ pre-serve routines. | |
| 28 | Mark possibly good spelling, ignoring half the words (6) |
| GOSPEL – GOod + SPELling, with half of each word lost. | |
| Down | |
| 2 | The writer behind article showing feature of some crosswords (5) |
| THEME – THE + ME. | |
| 3 | Perhaps avoid firing Charlie during merger (4,5) |
| TAKE COVER – C during TAKE OVER. | |
| 4 | Kind to give away one shilling in coins (6) |
| SPECIE – SPECIEs. “Species” are what Darwin studied the origins of. “Paying in specie” is when you pay in coins, or in kind. |
|
| 5 | Soldier on charge probed by a court dealing with minor complaints (7,8) |
| GENERAL PRACTICE – GENERAL + PRICE probed by A + CT. | |
| 6 | Offer a cartoonish view of revolutionary female desires to stop housework? (8) |
| DISNEYFY – SNEYF (revolutionary F+YENS=desires) to stop D.I.Y. (“housework!”). We’ve seen “Disneyfy” before, but it still looks odd to me! |
|
| 7 | Cite Rocky boxing face of heavyweight Creed (5) |
| ETHIC – ETIC (CITE rocky, i.e. backwards) surrounding (boxing) H (the face of Heavyweight). | |
| 8 | Drinks consumed, hosting European Parliament’s supporter (9) |
| ROUNDHEAD – ROUND HAD (drinks consumed) hosting E. | |
| 14 | Perhaps Santa has a place aboard space vehicle (9) |
| LAPLANDER – A PL aboard LANDER. (The Apollo Missions’ Lunar Landers, for example). I thought Santa was based at the North Pole, but the Lapps claim his home base is there! |
|
| 16 | Puritans holding rhubarb sticks out (9) |
| PROTRUDES – PRUDES holding ROT. | |
| 17 | Band held up by a person who loses their kit (8) |
| STRIPPER – STRIP (band) + PER (“a”, as in £3 per/a unit). | |
| 20 | Fit in extensive jacket of brocade, at first (6) |
| BELONG – BrocadE + LONG. | |
| 22 | Scrubbing hard, burnish copper from Ireland (5) |
| POLIS – POLISh. With 5 letters, I immediately thought “GARDA”, but no. |
|
| 24 | Times contributors are getting on in employment (5) |
| USAGE – US (Times contributors) + AGE. | |
43″ for me, it seems. DISNEYFY took a bit of work since it doesn’t seem like a “real” word, and the letters it seemed we were meant to work with seemed most unpromising. I’m not sure most GPs would be happy with being defined as only dealing with minor complaints. PRIMORDIAL was not the first type of soup to come to mind!
Beaten by DISNEYFY. Tried DECK QUOITS before seeing the light. Thought there was some nice misdirection with SOUP/PRIMORDIAL. In my mind, to YANK something is to give it a really good pull, as if to extract something caught or snagged, while HAUL would suggest to me simply pulling something along. Sure someone will set me straight. Nice puzzle all round.
Thank you for the reminder of the late, great Michael Nesmith. Had forgotten about RIO but now downloaded. Reminds me of Jimmy Buffet’s Margaritaville.
Thanks branch and setter
I agree about HAUL/yank. Hauling is continuous, yanking isn’t. (Compare ‘he’s hauling the sofa’ with ?’he’s yanking the tooth out’.)
Like Paul, I had something of a MER at the definition of GP. I was not pleased to find that I needed to know the names of Spice Girls.
I printed this one off on Friday night, but forgot to do it on Saturday – I found my printout yesterday. So of course I tackled it – a very fine puzzle. The literals sometimes fooled me – I wanted the answer for 5 to be general tribunal, but it didn’t fit the crossers. On the other hand, I suspected early what was going on in deck tennis and Roundhead. Clear cut was very tricky, and my key to finishing.
Time: 47:24
49 minutes over two sessions because I kept nodding off during the late night one. Same story with this week’s; I really should know better by now and wait for the morning.
I had an error because although I knew the name of the Asian capital at 21ac, I wasn’t sure of the spelling and went for TAIPAI.
I missed the drugs thing in the parsing of LIFE PEER. In my youth ‘tabs’ were cigarettes..
Luckily, I knew that in Taiwan “ai” rhymes with “buy” and “ei” rhymes with “say”!
DNF with four missing.
DECK TENNIS as I had an error in 5d with GE(R)ERAL and hadn’t spotted it even though I had written it correctly above the clue when parsing. It only happens in down clues.
TAIPEI I didn’t know Type A, IDOL which I should have got and POLIS NHO and I couldn’t get past GARDA.
NHO MELCHIOR but I trusted the wordplay.
I finished in exactly 50 minutes, and I remember googling the spelling of Taipei, so used aids. I thought it was pronounced type eye, but I have no idea either what either type A or type I personalities are so which letter makes no difference!
I also spent a long time getting LOI DISNEYFY don’t remember exactly but it must have been 5-10 minutes at the end.
Hard for a Saturday I thought.
46 minutes. I really enjoyed this. Challenging but not impossible, the level was just right for me. PRIMORDIAL was nice. Last few were MELCHIOR (I groaned), DECK TENNIS, DISNEYFY (slowly biffed and parsed), and OLDE. Thanks branch.
26.46, so clearly quite a challenge. I got MELCHIOR early without seeing that the specific Spice Girl was needed, and eventually took on trust what a type-A person was. Liked the soup., and the semi-good-spelling Mark.
Relied on wordplay for the unknown SPECIE and POLIS, otherwise this was relatively straightforward. Agree that DISNEYFY looks odd!
Thanks branch and setter.
FOI Haul
LOI Specie
COD Encode
21.35
Late entry. Oddly DISNEYFY didnt hold me up and generally seemed to have the GK (there be an awful lot of specie in the Aubrey/Maturin novels) though wanted BEHOVE before GOSPEL put me right on that
Always surprised to see so few comments for the weekend puzzles but I suspect I’m a rare ‘un who does them a week in arrears. Anyway thanks as always for the blog
40 minutes. Many very cleverly constructed clues which were lots of fun to decipher (but there were a few where I didn’t really manage that. DISNEYFY looks horrible, but my OED says it really is a word and Disney’s takeover of Winnie-the-Pooh would prompt me to say there should be a word for that (and not one with positive connotations).
To remark on Dvynys’ comment above: I too do the weekend puzzles a week in arrears, because I would never be winning a prize anyway and I want to check the answers right away. I can’t imagine waiting a week to see how well I did.
I’m surprised at your pessimism. I’ve been doing the weekend cryptics for around 8 years regularly, and submitting them if I complete before Wednesday and I remember to. I’ve won a book voucher on 2 occasions, which is a plus since it costs nothing to submit.
The usual number of ‘look-ups’ to get me going, then got stuck in to what was enjoyably quirky, even for a Saturday. (I had ????SAGE put in straight away for 11a, thinking the definition was going to be a spice – not expecting us to know the Spice Girls’ names, surely? – and just had to identify the particular unknown spice. That’s how wrong I can be…). I would never have gotten DISNEYFY from the clue – word doesn’t sit right; and for too long I had OPERETTA at 18a. All of which held me up, but I’m no clock-watcher nor speed-freak, so no matter. Liked PRIMORDIAL when it came, and LIFE PEER and the GOSPEL according to St. Mark.
PS: I’m currently reading an old book I found on my shelves, Hamlet’s Dresser, which is an enjoyable autobiographical account of one man’s lifelong association with the Bard by Bob Smith.