Like Sesame Street – this crossword is brought to you by the letter W. Whatever … I felt it was a mainstream Saturday exercise. 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 | Male warmonger carrying a fighting-axe (8) |
| TOMAHAWK –Â TOM (male) +Â A (in the clue) +Â HAWK (warmonger). | |
| 5 | Parisian gangster quickly seizing hostage at the outset (6) |
| APACHE – APACE seizing H (Hostage, at the outset). | |
| 9 | Scot’s weird longing to follow presbyter, not English (8) |
| ELDRITCH – ITCH to follow ELDeR (presbyter, not E for English). | |
| 10 | Archer’s old wife meeting maiden in bar (6) |
| BOWMAN – O + W + M in BAN (bar). | |
| 12 | Hear a pal in rap, changing bits and pieces (13) |
| PARAPHERNALIA – anagram (changing) [HEAR A PAL IN RAP]. Yes, that really is how to spell it! |
|
| 15 | Fellow hiding current shame (5) |
| STAIN – STAN hiding I (electrical current). | |
| 16 | Like Tom, confused about measure of distance (9) |
| KILOMETRE – anagram (confused) [LIKE TOM] +Â RE (about). | |
| 17 | Aim of Bill’s deed followed by chaps in hospital department (9) |
| ENACTMENT – ACT + MEN in E.N.T. Ear, Nose and Throat – one of the setter’s favourable hospital departments. |
|
| 19 | Glorify Good Queen providing accommodation for fifty (5) |
| BLESS – BESS (ER I, a.k.a. “Good Queen Bess”) providing accommodation for L (the Roman numeral for fifty). | |
| 20 | Dam river in Kent perhaps, the place of one’s birth (6,7) |
| MOTHER COUNTRY – MOTHER (dam, in the horsy sense) + R in COUNTY. I was blocked for a while, assuming “Kent” was, like other references to the Home Counties, indicating south-east (or SE). |
|
| 22 | Increasingly accepting nearly everyone’s state of mind (6) |
| MORALE – MORE (increasingly) accepting AL (nearly ALL). | |
| 23 | Obstruction demanded to protect part of canal (8) |
| BLOCKADE – BADE (poetic past tense of “bid”) to protect LOCK. | |
| 25 | Income, sad to say, taken back by railway (6) |
| SALARY – SALA (ALAS, taken back) + RY. | |
| 26 | Poet’s mature relationship with nature, for example (3,5) |
| EYE RHYME – cryptic hint. “Mature” and “nature” look like they rhyme, but they don’t. | |
| Down | |
| 1 | Intruder very dated in French resistance (10) |
| TRESPASSER – TRES + PASSÉ (very + dated, both in French) + R. | |
| 2 | Bad name for a soft earthy substance (3) |
| MUD – not sure whether to say this is two definitions, or a definition and a hint. Obviously, if I get that wrong, my name will be MUD. | |
| 3 | Musical security device protecting the locks? (7) |
| HAIRPIN –Â HAIR (1960s musical) +Â P.I.N. (security) | |
| 4 | Player on pitch, one hanging on to gate (12) |
| WICKETKEEPER – wry hint about wicket gates. For any non-cricketers, the pitch is the playing area in the centre of the cricket field. To quibble, the wicketkeeper doesn’t actually stand on the pitch except when he’s batting! |
|
| 6 | Sound out head of maths about ultimately equivocal sum? (7) |
| PROBLEM – PROBE (sound out) + M (head of Maths) about L (ultimately, equivocaL). As always, I wonder why setters think sums are problems! Haven’t they heard of spreadsheets? |
|
| 7 | Observation about trick over small storage area (11) |
| COMPARTMENT – COMMENT about PART (TRAP, over). | |
| 8 | Predatory type seen in Inverness (4) |
| ERNE – hidden. | |
| 11 | Clinically carving up Italy, visit in any case (12) |
| ANALYTICALLY – ALYTI (anagram, carving up, ITALY) +Â CALL (visit)Â in ANY. | |
| 13 | Naval officer adapted drama, initially recasting Ariel (4,7) |
| REAR ADMIRAL – anagram (adapted) [DRAMA R ARIEL]. The R is initially “Recasting“. | |
| 14 | Woollen cloth Irish plunged in Kentucky lake (10) |
| KERSEYMERE – ERSE (Irish) plunged in KY + MERE. I didn’t know the cloth and started looking for something related to Jersey. |
|
| 18 | Former PM endlessly surrounded by regularly stark gossip (7) |
| TATTLER – ATTLEE surrounded by TR (sTaRk, regularly). | |
| 19 | Club employee, a lively, energetic individual! (7) |
| BOUNCER – definition and hint, or perhaps two definitions. | |
| 21 | Birds Greek character captured in French art (4) |
| EMUS – MU (Greek letter) in ES (“tu es”, French for “thou art”). | |
| 24 | Some article — extremely newsy! (3) |
| ANY –Â AÂ +Â NY (extremely NewsY). | |
11:15 but with a typo.
This was awfully easy, as my time suggests. DNK the cloth..
When I saw the blog was out I realized I hadn’t done the puzzle due to a busy weekend. So I pulled my copy out and solved it – not too difficult, but with a couple of tricks. I was a bit unsure of kerseymere, but all the crossing letters worked. The eye rhyme has foxed me before, but this time I picked it right up. I also nearly put blockage, until I saw that bage did not mean demanded, or anything else for that matter.
Time: 17:51
With TOMAHAWK and APACHE in the first row I wondered if a theme might develop, but apart from perhaps BOWMAN in the third row it didn’t seem to go anywhere. The first two are types of missile in addition to having native American connotations.
I was fooled by EYE RHYME as I am so often when it hasn’t appeared for a while. I needed aids for that one.
NHO KERSEYMERE but got to it via wordplay and checkers.
46m 34s
I had NHO ELDRITCH nor APACHE in that sense and had to use aids.
Thanks, Bruce especially for ANALYTICALLY and also for MOTHER COUNTRY. In the latter case I was tempted with the River ROTHER which is partially in Kent.
I remember seeing ‘apache’ (French pronunciation) dancers in the 50s: the man in a horizontal striped shirt throwing his partner around.
on edit: evidently it goes back to the early 20th century.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z_uBf7b1tuo
That’s quite something!
Now THAT is what I call dancing …
đź‘Ť
Don’t normally do Saturday puzzles, but Storm Bert kept us indoors. I had to get the dictionary out for Kerseymere and didn’t know the French meaning of APACHE. EYE RHYME was another unknown.
The weather was so awful last weekend, I even did Mephisto!
Thanks Bruce. Did complete. But not heard of the cloth or the eye rhyme although it makes perfect sense. Joint effort with my husband this week which is fun as I am teaching him cryptic but he is sometimes better than me. We didn’t time but definitely easier than some weeks.
44 minutes. Mostly quick. Held up by the NHO KERSEYMERE and breeze-blocked by EYE RHYME. I struggled to come up with the most common three letter word in (written) English with a Y in the middle.
That reminded me of a clue I liked from ages ago:
Keats and Yeats did but don’t (5)
Nice clue!
DNF
97% complete after half an hour, then completely stymied by EYE RHYME. I assumed I was looking for an obscure poet, and considered guessing a name like JYM ROYLE or NYE ROYCE.
Thanks for the blog B. Initially had SOD (bad name!) for MUD until TOMAHAWK came along. Didn’t know LOI KERSEYMERE and double-checked ELDRITCH was actually a thing. VHO APACHE. Pleased to almost finish, albeit with a few biffs here and there and liberal use of the blog after the fact! Thanks all.
I never thought of glorify meaning BLESS. The worshippers glorify their deity while the deity blesses his creation.
Enjoyed this, though I didn’t find it as easy as Kevin and Vinyl. However, it was the sort that gives good PDMs, so entertaining. LOI was PROBLEM, which took some time to parse, preceded by APACHE, where I didn’t know that meaning of the word. Like most, KERSEYMERE was NHO, but worked out. EYE-RHYME was eventually bifd and post-parsed – I only learned about eye-rhymes a few years back from doing crosswords. Luckily PARAPHERNALIA was an anagram – otherwise I’d have misspelt it.
Fairly straightforward.
– Didn’t know that meaning of APACHE
– Relied on the wordplay for the unknown KERSEYMERE
– Remembered the word ELDRITCH without recalling what it meant
– Got EYE RHYME this time, having been foiled by it before
Thanks branch and setter.
FOI Paraphernalia
LOI Analytically
COD Kilometre
Fun puzzle, 50 minutes for me, with EYE RHYME as my LOI, once I realized the crossers were never going to give me a poet’s name. Like just about everyone else, I did not the woolen cloth, but the wordplay was very kind.
Got through this in the end but a couple of parsings eluded me. Thanks for explanations of mother=dam and how analytically worked.
17.07. a PB for me (by 4 minutes), so I think it must have been very easy indeed. But it was a fun puzzle, with nice surfaces and still some tricky vocabulary (KERSEYMERE anyone?)
thanks both!