DNF. It was that sort of day: Is 12ac a word? What does the anagram at 26ac make? What on earth is 8dn?
How did you 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 | Perverse aristocrat picked up irreparably damaged car (5-3) |
| WRITE-OFF – sounds like (picked up) WRY TOFF. | |
| 6 | Stall China’s foreign correspondent? (3,3) |
| PEN PAL – PEN [animal stall] + PAL [“China”, in CRS]. | |
| 9 | Cards, one way or another? (6) |
| JOKERS – two types of cards: pasteboard, or witty. | |
| 10 | Singer, poor thing, mostly grates (8) |
| NIGHTJAR – NIGHT [anagram, poor, of (THING)] + JARs [grates, mostly]. | |
| 11 | Eastern prince is open in retrospect (4) |
| RAJA – AJAR [open], in retrospect. | |
| 12 | Note soldiers having again stepped back where monk would have gone (10) |
| REREDORTER – RE [note: do, re, mi, …] + R.E. [soldiers; Royal Engineers] + RETROD [again, stepped] back.
Easier to assemble the answer than to believe it is really a word. Apparently, it’s a latrine in a monastery. |
|
| 14 | Heavenly ale, there after cycling (8) |
| ETHEREAL – anagram, after cycling, of (ALE THERE). | |
| 16 | Useless short film assumes nothing (4) |
| VOID – VID assumes O. | |
| 18 | Legal document with brief’s about right (4) |
| WRIT – WIT about R.
Wit = brief?? Well, to quote Polonius: Therefore, since brevity is the soul of wit,
And tediousness the limbs and outward flourishes, I will be brief. On edit: as noted in the comments, we don’t need to refer to Polonius. More prosaically we can just take the H off WITh.
|
|
| 19 | Periodically cut out biccies and pick dessert (3,5) |
| ICE CREAM – ICE [bIcCiEs, periodically cut out] + CREAM [the pick of the crop]. | |
| 21 | Caught kid maybe going down (10) |
| DESCENDENT – sounds (caught) like DESCENDANT [kid]. | |
| 22 | Leave X-ray to be checked by electronic form of tech (4) |
| EXIT – E [electronic] + X [x-ray, in the phonetic alphabet] + IT [information technology]. | |
| 24 | Could it screen one who is lying? (8) |
| COVERLET – just a cryptic definition, I think. A bed cover. | |
| 26 | Lamb’s heart also complex, like a ruminant’s stomach (6) |
| OMASAL – anagram, complex: (AM ALSO). [AM = LAMB‘s heart]. I had no idea where to put the unchecked letters! |
|
| 27 | Retaliate about shifting grand city in Europe (6) |
| GENEVA – AVENGE [retaliate] backwards (about), shifting G to the front. | |
| 28 | Refrain in sea-shanties, odd half-hearted shout (8) |
| RUMBELOW – RUM + BELLOW (half-hearted). The dictionary told me this is a meaningless word, but “rum below” sounds far from meaningless for sailors, I reckon! |
|
| Down | |
| 2 | Curt chat after port wine (5) |
| RIOJA – RIO [port] + JA |
|
| 3 | One filling up catheter following treatment having beneficial effect (11) |
| THERAPEUTIC – anagram, following treatment: (I UP CATHETER). | |
| 4 | Where actors may often be working blind (2-6) |
| ON-SCREEN – ON [working] + SCREEN [blind – the sort that covers windows] | |
| 5 | One who’ll benefit from clients’ losses (7,8) |
| FUNERAL DIRECTOR – cryptic definition. | |
| 6 | Silver-lined set of seals perhaps on entrance to Asian temple (6) |
| PAGODA – AG lines POD [set of seals – the marine mammals] + A [entrance to Asian] | |
| 7 | Buff barrel from the bottom up (3) |
| NUT – TUN [barrel], from the bottom up.
An enthusiast. |
|
| 8 | Foul-smelling substance in raised opening under a metal box (9) |
| ASAFETIDA – A + SAFE [metal box] + ADIT raised [opening to a mine].
I looked this one up. |
|
| 13 | Echo and the Bunnymen, initially playing around Queen, once hosted by legendary US patriot (11) |
| REVERBERATE – double nesting: REVERE [legendary US patriot] hosts B [Bunnymen initially] + AT [playing – as in, what are you at?] which in turn is around ER [Queen once – not so long ago]. | |
| 15 | Small group of working mothers network operator blocks (9) |
| THREESOME – EE [a UK network operator – NHO] blocks an anagram, working, of (MOTHERS). | |
| 17 | In America, can all others prepare to ditch leader (4,4) |
| REST ROOM – REST + GROOM, to ditch leader. | |
| 20 | Ford in the past called perjurer, shunning Republicans (6) |
| ANGLIA – RANG [called] + LIAR, shunning R [Republican] at both ends. | |
| 23 | State bore recalled interrupting Nixon intermittently (5) |
| IDAHO – DAH [HAD, recalled] boring IO {nIxOn, intermittently]. | |
| 25 | Section of Weekend supplement (3) |
| EKE – hidden. | |
18ac. I wondered if “with brief” meant a brief version of the word WITH (i.e. final letter removed) = WIT
PeterW’s right on WIT. I thought 12ac might be some variant of ‘reredos’ and went to ODE, which didn’t have it, but my English-Japanese dictionary did. A word for Mephisto. Never did parse THREESOME. We had ‘omasum’ not that long ago, so OMASAL was no problem. JOKERS took some time, since I took ‘one way or another’ as indicating a palindrome.
Yes, pretty tough for me. NHO REREDORTER (like Kevin, I thought it may be related to “reredos” and as a monastery latrine it could be behind a screen) or RUMBELOW and I couldn’t parse ANGLIA or REVERBERATE. Watching too many TV programmes about vets helped with working out OMASAL. I did remember ASAFETIDA but would have spelt it with an O before the E.
I wonder if the word across the centre of the grid signifies a milestone for today’s setter. There were a few other oddities in the grid (eg NIGHTJAR followed by RAJA) but these may have occurred by chance.
Thanks to Bruce and thanks (and ?congrats) to setter
I too had to check the spelling ASAFETIDA and found there to be several variants listed in Chambers. Normally I’d spell it with an O. We use it regularly when making sag aloo. It’s known as heng in Indian cooking and also had the nickname of Devil’s Dung among pharmacists of my father’s generation. Apparently it’s good for the digestion.
Nice puzzle. Needed to look up REREDORTER.
Thanks for the blog.
53 minutes with two look-ups and one error. The error was misplacement of the unchecked anagrist for OMASAL, a word that has previously confined itself to appearing in Mephisto puzzles (3) and a Monthly Special. Will setters ever stop clueing obscure words as anagrams?
My look-ups were REREDORTER and ASAFETIDA, each making its first ever appearance here. Perhaps these were possible from wordplay but ADIT is a rather specific type of opening (an entrance to a mine) that could have been clued a little more generously.
Aside from a Mephisto, RUMBELOW appeared once before in a Saturday puzzle a couple of years ago. I hadn’t remembered its nautical associations but it was easy to assemble from the clue. The word is better known to me from RUMBELOWS an electrical retailer chain that had branches in almost every high street until they were bought out some 30 years ago and disappeared forever.
59m 59s
REREDORTER! ASAFETIDA! OMASAL! Good grief!
Thanks, Bruce, particularly for JOKERS, DESCENDENT, THERAPEUTIC and IDAHO but I still don’t get how DAH/HAD works in IDAHO.
At least I got a nice ear worm out of 10ac NIGHTJAR which makes an appearance in Elton John & Bernie Taupin’s lovely song, “Come down in time”.
I think IDAHO is HAD (‘bore’), as in “bore a child”/”had a child”, reversed (‘recalled’) contained in (‘interrupting’)
NIxOn(‘Nixon intermittently’).Ah! That’s it! Thanks!
– Got the unknown REREDORTER by trusting the wordplay and hoping
– Didn’t parse WRIT
– Was glad that the last E in DESCENDENT was made clear by the checker as I can never remember when to use A and when to use E
– Guessed the consonants for OMASAL and got lucky
– Like Jack above, only knew RUMBELOW as the company (in my case from sponsoring the League Cup for a couple of years in the early 90s)
– Didn’t parse REVERBERATE as I didn’t know Revere the patriot
– It had to be, but I’m still not completely sure how EKE means supplement
Thanks branch and setter.
FOI Nut
LOI Omasal
COD Write-off
I was puzzled by EKE too. Collins defines it as ‘to increase, enlarge, or lengthen’, which is kind of the same but not the way I understand the word. Chambers actually has it as a Scottish noun meaning ‘an addition or supplement’. ODE’s version is more familiar to me: ‘make an amount or supply of something last longer by using or consuming it frugally’. Apparently it derives ultimately from the Latin augere, to increase.
24.35
Bizarrely up my street this one; clearly my regular visits to Ikea helped assemble the NHO (REREDORTER) and the vaguely remembered (ASAFETIDA) whilst an (educated ie lucky) guess got me there with OMASAL.
ANGLIA LOI and raised a smile when I saw what was going on. Also liked the long cryptic which wasn’t hard but did put a big tick in the box marked “Cryptics that work”.
Thanks Setter/Bruce
No time – completed over a number of sessions on paper as usual.
FOI the WRY TOFF at 1a
LOI the hidden weEKEnd at 25d – I did not know the “supplement” meaning of EKE.
Unknowns were REREDORTER, OMASAL and RUMBELOW.
I do know ASAFETIDA, as ASAFOETIDA, as I use it to make Rogon Josh.
I suppose this is the American variant spelling?
I welcome new words in the crossword, when they are well clued, to increase the vocab, although Mrs NP_B gets cross if I use them in Scrabble.
Well done setter and thanks Bruce.
NHO 12a Reredorter. Not surprised to not find this in Cheating Machine, added. The more favoured word is Necessarium according to Wiki. Cheated of course.
NHO 26a Omasal, cheated. Added to CM.
NHO 28a Rumbelow ditto.
NHO 8d Asafetida ditto. Not a word I’ll try to remember.
13d Reverberate. Fortunately HHO Paul Revere. There’s a pretty poor poem about him that I try to forget.
Thanks setter and branch.
22:42. Tricky one. I knew OMASAL (fortunately, not a fair clue) and ASAFETIDA (but not this spelling) and RUMBELOW (but only as a shop), but not REREDORTER (obviously) or this meaning of EKE.
REREDORTER worked out, with the idea it was connected to reredos. Looked up the meaning (literally behind the sleeping area) afterwards. OMASAL seemed to be the most likely distribution of the letters, but was nonetheless irritating. ASAFETIDA, RUMBELOW, DNF, the former owing to the lack of consonants and the American spelling, the latter NHO, despite familiarity with quite a few sea shanties. As with others, confused by the NHO meaning of eke.
It took me an age to get a foothold in this puzzle with every clue seeming to need some thinking about. I was pleased to work out the unknown ASAFETIDA but annoyed to have been held up so long by PEN PAL earlier. I was sure the correspondent in a journalistic sense would be ‘our MAN’ in China. So was completely on the wrong track. I tried every combination of letters in 26a but even with crossers I had the wrong combination. Frustrating.
Thanks for persevering B
Way above my pay grade! A struggle throughout. Three NHOs of course and the chance placement of letters in the unknown OMASAL irritating. Why have we started to include Mephisto-style words in the daily TftT?