Steady as she goes. Nothing to put the hens off laying here.
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 | Explorer books taxi to the west (5) |
| CABOT – CAB to the west of OT [bible books]. | |
| 4 | Closest friend caging writer like an animal (9) |
| BESTIALLY –BEST ALLY caging I. | |
| 9 | CIA tangled with Castro in part of Central America (5,4) |
| COSTA RICA – anagram, tangled: (CIA CASTRO). | |
| 10 | Declared cockle kosher (5) |
| PUKKA – sounds like PUCKER [cockle]. This meaning of “cockle” was a surprise, but Chambers has this as its third definition: cockle3 noun: A pucker intransitive verb: To pucker transitive verb: To cause to pucker |
|
| 11 | Groupspeak of Love Island, beyond glib (6) |
| PATOIS – PAT [glib] + O [love, at tennis] + IS [island]. | |
| 12 | Strong muscles suffering reverse growth (8) |
| STALWART – STAL [LATS, suffering reverse] + WART [growth, of an unattractive kind]. | |
| 14 | Spooner’s model blooms for great artists (3,7) |
| OLD MASTERS – supposedly apply the Spooner treatment to MOULD ASTERS. It seems dubious to only move the start of one word to the other, without the other word reciprocating? |
|
| 16 | Tough day finally ending (4) |
| THUG – THU [Thursday] + G [from endinG]. | |
| 19 | Cry of unknown bird (4) |
| YOWL – Y [algebraic unknown] + OWL. | |
| 20 | Dull maiden aunt led astray (10) |
| UNANIMATED – anagram, led astray: (MAIDEN AUNT). | |
| 22 | Don’t arm a lunatic arbitrarily (2,6) |
| AT RANDOM – anagram, lunatic: (DONT ARM A). | |
| 23 | Mate rising extremely late (6) |
| COUPLE – COUP [rising] + LatE. | |
| 26 | Individuals lacking clothing and fire (5) |
| INGLE – sINGLEs. | |
| 27 | Anxious, some vacillate as expected (3,2,4) |
| ILL AT EASE – hidden (some). | |
| 28 | Mistakenly neuter cat, it’s said (9) |
| UTTERANCE – anagram, mistakenly: (NEUTER CAT). | |
| 29 | Film hen? (5) |
| LAYER – two meanings. A thin covering, or the chookpen. | |
| Down | |
| 1 | Company accountant’s heading fraudulent racket (9) |
| CACOPHONY – CA [accountant] + CO [company] + PHONY. | |
| 2 | Harry seen half-cut in punt (5) |
| BESET – SEen, half-cut, in BET. | |
| 3 | Sad short story enthralling guy in charge (8) |
| TRAGICAL – TALe, short, enthralling RAG [guy] + I/C. I got this from the wordplay. Odd-looking word, although “comical” is familiar enough. |
|
| 4 | Slight problem of male falling out of balloon (4) |
| BLIP – M falling out of BLImP. | |
| 5 | A little knowledge is ultimately of importance (10) |
| SMATTERING – iS, ultimately + MATTERING. | |
| 6 | Run through one’s plans, initially over beer (6) |
| IMPALE – I’M [one is] + P [Plans, initially] + ALE. | |
| 7 | Left furniture store, exhausted very quickly (4,1,4) |
| LIKE A SHOT – L [left] + IKEA + SHOT. | |
| 8 | Ferment cored apples in still (5) |
| YEAST – AS [cored AppleS] in YET [still] | |
| 13 | Ringing shortly before the hour, interrupting senior Scot (10) |
| STENTORIAN – TEN TO [shortly before the hour] interrupting SR [senior] + IAN [the canonical Scotsman]. | |
| 15 | Simply drink punch (9) |
| DOWNRIGHT – DOWN [drink] + RIGHT [punch, as in “a straight right”]. | |
| 17 | General Assembly greeted eccentric widget enthusiast? (9) |
| GADGETEER – G.A.+ anagram, eccentric: (GREETED). | |
| 18 | Wrong about time going on forever (8) |
| IMMORTAL – IMMORAL about T. | |
| 21 | Effectively performing King Lear without crowns (2,4) |
| IN GEAR – kING lEAR. I don’t recall seeeing this device before: “without crowns”. |
|
| 22 | See you pass on gold rings (5) |
| ADIEU – AU rings DIE [pass on]. | |
| 24 | Look happy at last after vegetable pasty (5) |
| PEAKY – PEA [vegetable] + looK + happY. | |
| 25 | Picked up late fruit (4) |
| SLOE – sounds like (picked up) SLOW. | |
26 minutes suggests that for me this was easier than usual for a Saturday prize puzzle. I didn’t know ‘cockle / pucker’ or ‘muscles / LATS’. I just realised I omitted to solve SLOE so my efforts are now reduced to a DNF.
37m 20s
As Jack intimates, this was easier than usual for a Saturday.
Thanks, Bruce, for STENTORIAN, DOWNRIGHT and SLOE. And like Jack, I didn’t know cockle/pucker.
Steady solve. The spoonerism was stretching things a bit, I thought.
Thanks, b.
7:16. Easy enough but I managed to type CACAPHONY in spite of understanding the wordplay and knowing perfectly well how to spell the word. I seem to be doing this a lot at the moment.
I don’t have a problem with ‘mould asters’ as a spoonerism for ‘old masters’. It doesn’t work as I pronounce the words (‘masters’ doesn’t rhyme with ‘asters’ in my accent) but it does for many (probably most in fact) native English speakers which makes it fine by me.
No major issues with this.
– Didn’t know cockle=pucker, but knew PUKKA
– Biffed OLD MASTERS without worrying too much about the Spoonerism
– Couldn’t have told you what STENTORIAN meant, but got it from wordplay
Thanks branch and setter.
COD Cacophony
Lost my copy. I think I finished OK. Probably misspelt CacAphony as I don’t spell well. Was surprised by cockle/pucker.
Never noticed the mis-Spoonerism of Old Masters, and I use a long A for the painters and a short one for the flowers but who cares? And my mould isn’t quite the same vowel as in old. Usually I find Spoonerisms a challenge but I’ve a strong feeling it went straight in.
NHO Lats=muscles but didn’t really notice. Probably cheated by looking up as I like to learn things, but clearly it was not successful as I still DNK Lats today.
COD 7d Like A Shot; loved the inclusion of our favourite furniture store, IKEA.
Thanks branch & setter.
This was fun and light-hearted but DNF. ‘Strong muscles suffering reverse’ was way too much instruction for 4 letters and had me running in all directions even if I had separated the ‘growth’ part to come up with WART. Touché setter. Otherwise the anagrams were kind, remembered STENTORIAN from somewhere, Monty Python(?) but had to come here to explain PUKKA. Liked IN GEAR, simple but clever.
Thanks both.
Agree with branch, the Spoonerism doesn’t work for me. The head letter of each word should swap, and the vowel sounds should match. Otherwise, all very fair, and surprised myself at 28 mins.
As above with the Spoonerism – not really kosher, but a generally accessible puzzle throughout, and no unknowns bar cockle meaning pucker. Didn’t parse STENTORIAN apart from the IAN bit. Thanks to Branch and setter.
One of the classic (“original”) Spoonerisms is:
A well-boiled icicle (a well-oiled bicycle)
…which I think is similar to 14ac, in just moving the consonant across to the other leading vowel, but nothing in return.
29ac. Had to look up chookpen! (Although can now file “couldn’t raffle a chook in a pub” alongside “wouldn’t shout in a shark attack”). Thought of film=layer as occurs in nature, on water etc.
24.29
Five minutes on STENTORIAN but finally managed to piece it together. Not sure I knew that meaning. Rather a good puzzle. Needed your wits about you but very solvable.
Thanks setter/branch
Enjoyable and not too hard, 42 minutes which would have been a bit shorter if I hadn’t needed an alphabet trawl to find SLOE. I have no problem with the Spoonerism, which sounds fine if you say it out loud. Perhaps, to satisfy the purists, one should consider words starting with a vowel to actually have an invisible silent consonant as their initial, and then you can exchange the starting letters without violating any rules real or imagined.
I thought the words at 3dn, 20ac were bad. Never seen them before although I suppose they make sense. What’s the difference between tragic and tragical (or for that matter between comic and comical)?
As I’m sure I’ve said before I think people are much too worried about homophones. Marster/masster, who cares? Yet some rhotic speakers always make a fuss.
26 minutes, no problems really.
What has layer to do with Hollywood rather a layer is a thin film.
Enjoyed the puzzle immensely agreed easier than the week before
Nothing, is the answer! Thanks – corrected.
Whipped through this like lightning, unit I realised I had no answer for 25d, on top of this I’d forgotten that SLOE was a fruit ( but late=slow?). Happy to nearly finish without cheating, and in a quick time – puzzle was fun.