Times Cryptic 29076 – Saturday, 16 November 2024. Thru a clue darkly.

There were two or three unknowns here but none that made the answer impossible. How did you find it?

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 Crane carrying copper hours before silver in a stone box (11)
SARCOPHAGUSSARUS (NHO: an Indian crane, I later confirmed) carrying COP + H + AG.
7 Shoot and what to root it in (3)
POT – definition + hint: a plant pot is where to root the shoot.
Who knows the book Eats, Shoots & Leaves? If not, read about it here.
At school the joke was “roots, shoots and leaves” – but then the Australian meaning of  “root” is different from the American.
9 Check constant wet weather (9)
CONSTRAINCONST. (a valid, if unwieldy, abbreviation) + RAIN.
10 Succeed? Make certain king has departed (5)
ENSUER (king) departs ENSUrE.
11 Steer clear of my bed, as some might say (7)
BOYCOTTBOY (my!) + sounds like (as some might say) COT.
12 Upright, having finish and manners (7)
ENDWAYSEND (finish) + WAYS (as in, he has his little ways).
“Endways” doesn’t really sound like “upright” to me; more like “on its side”.
13 Fine about European mum’s name for my cousin? (5)
NIECENICE about E.
15 Dying to get hard professional backing with popular pain blocker (9)
ENDORPHINEND (dying, as in “the dying of the light”) + ORPH (H + PRO, backing) + IN (popular).
17 What might cause boom to trade on bananas (9)
DETONATOR – anagram (bananas) {TO TRADE ON}.
19 Ring found during search in hollow (5)
COOMBO (ring) found during COMB.
20 Embarrassed after fish is burnt (7)
CHARREDCHAR (fish) + RED (embarrassed).
22 A feather in one’s cap? Nonsense, a hollow debacle (7)
COCKADECOCK(nonsense) + A + DE (hollow DebaclE).
24 Island of India with casual business area (5)
IBIZAI (India, in the phonetic alphabet) + BIZ (business, casually) + A (area).
25 Making gear to track seal (9)
TAILORINGTAIL (track) + O-RING (a plumber’s seal).
27 Girl at no time stripped (3)
EVEnEVEr, stripped.
28 Heraldic display of a feather in one’s cap (11)
ACHIEVEMENT – two definitions. I didn’t know the heraldic one – see more here.
Down
1 Bag search regularly omitted (3)
SACSeArCh, regularly omitted.
2 Media person out of place for 1215 signing far from set (5)
RUNNY – the Magna Carta was signed at Runnymede in 1215 – but you knew that! As you might guess, the inhabitants of the ancient land of Media were – drum roll, please – MEDEs. That I didn’t know. But clearly, you had to take the MEDE off RUNNYMEDE.
3 Unacceptable move here in consequence (7)
OUTCOMEOUT (unacceptable) + COME (move here).
4 Moment that a beer is drunk (9)
HEARTBEAT – anagram (drunk) {THAT A BEER}.
5 Spirit that can be released by rubber (5)
GENIE – cryptic definition.
6 Slight errors ultimately by building society? (7)
SLENDERS (errorS, ultimately) + LENDER (building society, for example – hence the question mark).
7 Feline’s caught in joint up one old tree (9)
PISTACHIOCAT’S caught in HIP, all backwards (up) + I + O.
8 Betraying monarch elates baron terribly (11)
TREASONABLE – anagram (terribly) {ELATES BARON}.
11 What can follow eggs in eastern liqueur? (11)
BENEDICTINEBENEDICT (what eggs can be ) + IN + E.
14 Run minutes into level match when winners may be decided (5,4)
EXTRA TIMEEXTRA (something thats scores a run at cricket) + M (minutes) into TIE (level match).
16 Instruction from dreadful court — a number beheaded (9)
DIRECTIVEDIRE (dreadful) + CT (court) + IVE (FIVE, beheaded).
18 Bliss of Hindus, those at the front welcomed by circulating rani (7)
NIRVANAVAN (those at the front) welcomed by NIRA  (an anagram, circulating, of RANI).
19 Long period interrupted by concerning depression (7)
CYCLONECYCLE (a long period) interrupted by ON.
21 Abandon desire to follow Democrat (5)
DITCHD + ITCH.
23 Out of the way location for resort, not the southeast (5)
ASIDESEASIDE.
26 Powerful boat goes up narrow channel (3)
GUTTUG (powerful boat, for sure) goes up.

19 comments on “Times Cryptic 29076 – Saturday, 16 November 2024. Thru a clue darkly.”

  1. 36 minutes. I had the same unknowns but this was much easier than recent Saturdays. Mostly done in 20 minutes. ACHIEVEMENT, GUT, TAILORING and IBIZA held me up at the end. Thanks branch.

  2. Twenty minutes for me so I found this easy. There were a few unknowns, such as the Indian crane, but nothing that held me up significantly. As usual, a week later I don’t really remember much about the puzzle. I know some people solve a week later so that they can check if they are all correct and then read the blog immediately.

  3. 28:37
    DNK SARUS, of course; I wonder who did. Couldn’t figure out EXTRA TIME, not knowing what an extra is, or anything else about cricket, for that matter. Isn’t NIRVANA bliss for the Buddhists?

    1. Yes, but from Wiki:
      “Nirvana (/nɪərˈvɑːnə/ neer-VAH-nə, /-ˈvænə/ -⁠VAN-ə, /nɜːr-/ nur-; Sanskrit: निर्वाण nirvāṇa [nɪrʋaːɳɐ]; Pali: nibbāna; Prakrit: ṇivvāṇa; literally, “blown out”, as in an oil lamp) is a concept in the Indian religions of Buddhism, Hinduism, Jainism, and Sikhism that refers to the extinguishing of the passions which is the ultimate state of salvational release and the liberation from duḥkha (‘suffering’) and saṃsāra, the cycle of birth and rebirth”

  4. 28 minutes,. so this counts as easy for a Saturday, at least for me. Of course I didn’t know SARUS making its debut at TfTT, nor the heraldic reference re ACHIEVEMENT.

  5. 1a Sarcophagus. Bifd. Sarus crane added to Cheating Machine.
    12a EndWays.
    “King John was not a good man, he had his little WAYS
    And sometimes no-one spoke to him for days and days and days
    And every year at Christmas the cards upon his shelf
    Which wished him lots of Christmas cheer
    And fortune in the coming year
    Were never from his near and dear
    But only from himself.” AA Milne, King John’s Christmas.
    28a Achievement, DNK that meaning either. Had a ? against it.
    2d Runny. I knew of the expression (as immutable as) the Laws of the Medes and Persians. Wasn’t 100% sure the country was called Media, thought it might be Mesopotamia.
    7d Pistachio. Stayed on the Island of Egina near Athens once. It has much more than its fair share of pistachio trees.

  6. At 13.16 my easiest of the week, not really needing to know that a SARUS was a crane, presumably of the avian variety.
    I don’t think it has ever registered before, but my 13.16 achieves only 117th place on the leaderboard, presumably with lots of neutrinos in the upper section. But, and here’s the weird bit, the average time was a whopping 48 minutes. I can only assume many solvers left the timer running while they took a leisurely lunch, or a late weekend break.

    1. I’m pretty sure that my timing, if I solved online, would be around 48 minutes for this. I never rush through it; I take time to solve the clues or at least check the bifs actually parse, and may well have a conversation or take a phone call whilst doing it, or top up my coffee. I think that doing a puzzle as fast as you can is stressful, which is the last thing I need in my life, and I enjoy a leisurely solve much more. I’m sure there are many of us in the same boat, which may account for the ‘whopping’ times you mention. 🙂

      1. 48 minutes is not, of course, a whopping time! To bring the average up to that, given the hundred or so who registered less than 10 minutes, there must have been many whose times were much higher. I fully agree the point is not simply to push for a quick time: I prefer to savour good crosswords and appreciate the skill that goes into the better clues. Listener crosswords can take days, but are in most cases extremely satisfying (except on numerical ones like this week’s!). I guess I’m fortunate enough that I can spend the time.

  7. Lots to like in this one – I loved the cryptic def in 5d – released by rubber! FOsI were 1d and 1a, which was bifd (as were quite a few others), but Sarus rang a faint bell. Liked the definition of 7d being ‘tree’ rather than the more obvious ‘nut’. I didn’t know the heraldic meaning of 28a, but fortunately the other one left no doubt.

  8. Enjoyed this one despite getting stuck on my last three (COCKADE, TAILORING, ACHIEVEMENT), all of which I should have seen. Everything else went in easily enough although needed the blog to parse RUNNY (of course!) and double-checked sarus was indeed a crane, although I think I knew that. Many thanks for the blog B.

  9. Didn’t keep a record of this, but I think I got all of it.

    – Didn’t know sarus but SARCOPHAGUS was clear enough with the checkers
    – Had to trust that a COOMB is a hollow
    – Wouldn’t have got COCKADE if I hadn’t recently listened to The Rest Is History’s excellent series on the French Revolution
    – Didn’t know about Medes, but RUNNY had to be

    Thanks branch and setter.

    COD Heartbeat

  10. Thanks for the blog. Lots of fun stuff.

    But, a couple of clues I wasn’t sure about:

    11ac BOYCOTT: “as some might say” as homophone indicator. I hadn’t seen this before. I know with an international audience, that some “sound-alike” clues don’t work for everyone, but I would’ve thought that across the Angloshphere that “cot” always sounds like the second syllable in “boycott”. So I wasn’t sure who “might not say” that.

    I did wonder whether this was something about “cott” being an obscure spelling of “cot” but-
    1) I don’t think this crossword involves trawling variants in Chambers
    2) Even if it did, “cott” vs “cot” isn’t a particularly interesting variation
    3) I am not sure that “some might say” would be the correct indicator. Something like “rarely”, or “unusually” or “formerly”, would be used in that case anyway.

    8d. TREASONABLE. I had a bit of trouble matching the definition/literal with the solution. TREASONABLE is an adjective. In the surface “Betraying monarch”, I think is a gerund, and reads smoothly. “Betraying” on its own can be an adjective, or participle, that can mean “treasonable”. But I couldn’t make “Betraying monarch” be a participle phrase that means “treasonable”.

  11. Had a fair bit of trouble with this one: not getting 1a didn’t help – I thought I was looking for another name for the crane (bird) starting with ST and then another word for box. Ah well. Lot of nice clues, with smooth surfaces. Took me a while, even though I had the occasional look up. Liked BENEDICTINE , GENIE, and RUNNY.

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