An interesting range of topics here. Should we take the sports car or the Harley down to the Italian restaurant? Anyway, all gettable. 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. Wordplay instructions copied from the clues are in italics.
| Across | |
| 1 | Charlatan after one’s gold rings (8) |
| IMPOSTOR – I’M [I am=one is] + OR [gold] rings POST [after]. | |
| 5 | Curse that fellow with dung in the van (6) |
| SCATHE – HE [that fellow] with SCAT [dung] in front of it (in the van). | |
| 9 | English bake after taking everything off, all over island (8) |
| TENERIFE – E [English] + FIRE [bake] + NET [after taking everything off, as for net income] all backwards (all over). I misled myself by assuming “all over” = “rife”. I finally saw its function in the cue was something else entirely. |
|
| 10 | Hellish underground before double-decker? (6) |
| EREBUS – ERE [before] + BUS [double-decker, for example]. | |
| 12 | Having conventional opinions is absolutely fine, man (5-8) |
| RIGHT-THINKING – RIGHT [absolutely] + THIN [fine] + KING [chessman]. | |
| 15 | Add space on page for emblem (5) |
| TOTEM – TOT [add] + EM [a typesetter’s space; bigger than an EN]. | |
| 16 | Grub tin Abigail emptied, the way to canine’s heart? (4,5) |
| ROOT CANAL – ROOT [grub] + CAN + AL [AbigaiL, emptied]. Canine teeth, obviously! |
|
| 17 | Sit and sketch rocky hinterland (3,6) |
| THE STICKS – anagram (rocky): (SIT SKETCH). | |
| 19 | Charlie and Heather remain in close contact (5) |
| CLING – C + LING [one of several synonyms for “heather”]. | |
| 20 | Sporting Porsche T-shirt, he gave lifts to one traveller at a time (2,11) |
| ST CHRISTOPHER – anagram (sporting): (PORSCHE T SHIRT). According to legend, he carried travellers across a river, one by one. |
|
| 22 | Evoke boundless happiness (6) |
| ELICIT – FELICITY, boundless. | |
| 23 | Star to write chapter in story (8) |
| PENTACLE – PEN + C in TALE. | |
| 25 | Eg queen with a bellyful had a bellyache (6) |
| BEEFED – BEE [e.g. queen] + FED [had a bellyful]. | |
| 26 | Excellent case of Sekt, Cockney’s charitable donation (8) |
| STANDOUT – ST [case of SekT] + HANDOUT. | |
| Down | |
| 1 | Not prepared to die crossing river between Iowa and Missouri, say (10) |
| INTERSTATE – INTESTATE crossing R. Having a will is, I suppose, “prepared to die” – in one sense. |
|
| 2 | While taking pictures, rotate roast (3) |
| PAN – two meanings. | |
| 3 | Short Italian cracks mathematical problem in bed (7) |
| STRATUM – TRAT [trattoria] cracks SUM. | |
| 4 | With newspaper and string wrap present unofficially (3,3,6) |
| OFF THE RECORD – OF [with] + FT {Financial Times] + CORD wraps HERE [present]. | |
| 6 | Eccentric ego exposed lack of heart (7) |
| CARDIAC – CARD [eccentric] + I [ego] + AC [LACK, exposed]. | |
| 7 | Hamlet’s first choice — fresh whiting for starters (2,5,4) |
| TO BEGIN WITH – TO BE [Hamlet’s first choice … “or not to be”] + anagram (fresh): (WHITING). | |
| 8 | America’s leader set out the way the world is going (4) |
| EAST – anagram (out): (A SET). The sun appears to move from east to west because the earth is rotating from west to east. Of course, you knew that! |
|
| 11 | Illogical arguments against lives having overarching purpose (12) |
| INCONSISTENT – CONS + IS having overarching INTENT. | |
| 13 | Ill-mannered child threatens to go out and pinch auntie’s bottom (11) |
| GUTTERSNIPE – GUTTERS [what a candle does, when threatening to go out] + NIP + E [auntiE’s bottom]. | |
| 14 | Xenophobe on TV dubiously flagrant about alien (3,7) |
| ALF GARNETT – anagram (dubiously): (FLAGRANT) about ET. He (dis)graced TV screens six decades ago. See here. |
|
| 18 | Jazz fan raised hat that’s felt (7) |
| TACTILE – TAC [CAT, raised] + TILE [hat, datedly; as in “where did you get that hat, where did you get that tile?”]. | |
| 19 | King asleep just after a piece of toast (7) |
| CROUTON – CR [the current king] + OUT + ON [just after, as in “on hearing that, they …” ]. | |
| 21 | One to be avoided by biker when cycling? (4) |
| KERB – take the I out of BIKER, and move (cycle) the B to the end. | |
| 24 | Softly murmur how lovely that is (3) |
| COO – two meanings. | |
Got this one all OK and entered comp. No doubt, one has to be very lucky to be drawn.
Thank you to ‘branch’ for certain parsing.
Not too many chuckles but admired 26ac and 8d.
Once seeing TENERIFE for 9ac, like the esteemed blogger got focussed on ‘rife’ and did not see ‘fire’ for ‘bake’ and the use of ‘all over’.
12ac: is a bit ‘thin’. In 17ac: maybe calling ‘hinterland’ ‘the sticks’ is more common in UK ?
Should have seen FT was Financial Times in 4d but understood the rest.
While 13d GUTTERSNIPE is closer to ‘ill-mannered child’ here, the suggestion in Thursday’s (29248) 13d that it fits a ‘poor child’ is a bit of a stretch.
28:15
NHO ALF GARNETT, but once I had the checkers there was no problem. ‘The sticks’ is common in the US. I liked IMPOSTOR, INCONSISTENT.
Ha! I failed to parse TENERIFE because I, too, was stuck on RIFE meaning “all over.”
To me, GUTTERSNIPE will always be how Eliza Doolittle started out in life.
I NHO of Alf Garnett, but you see a name like that and you just know. On the other hand, interstate comes very naturally over here. Now St Christopher wearing a Porsche T-shirt, that you don’t see very often!
Time: 42:18
Not suggesting that you should necessarily have remembered, but out of interest, Alf Garnett appeared in #28187 (13 Jan 2022) and the blogger mentioned you with reference to the clue in his intro.
I knew I’d encountered the bloke here before.
I also knew that I didn’t have to mention it, because Jack would show up with the date and puzzle number.
Strange that ‘guttersnipe’ should crop up twice in 3 days -it’s a very old fashioned description and agree that it’s a term of contempt for an ill mannered child rather than an impoverished one.
52m 47s
Thanks, Bruce, especially for TENERIFE, RIGHT THINKING, STRATUM and CROUTON.
I enjoyed ROOT CANAL, GUTTERSNIPE and 7D “Hamlet’s First Choice”
Sadly, EREBUS means something different here in NZ. In 1979 an Air NZ DC10 on a sightseeing flight over Antarctica crashed into the slopes of Mount Erebus in a white-out killing everyone on board.
DNF, in OWL Club with PREBUS rather than EREBUS, which I didn’t know. Well, it kind of works…
– Was glad the second O in IMPOSTOR was a checker and indicated by the wordplay, otherwise I might have spelled it IMPOSTER
– Didn’t know the legend of ST CHRISTOPHER
– Took ages to get KERB
Thanks branch and setter.
COD Scathe
14:45. Quite tricky.
The various dictionaries contain definitions of GUTTERSNIPE that refer to both poverty (Collins and Chambers both refer to a ‘slum area’) and poor behaviour. ODE combines them in one definition: ‘a scruffy and badly behaved child who spends most of their time on the street’.
I’m happy enough with GUTTERSNIPE, RIGHT-THINKING was the dodgy one – neither ‘Conservative thinking’ or ‘correct thinking’ are synonyms for ‘conventional thinking’ (though Conservative comes close)
The definition of RIGHT-THINKING in Collins is ‘possessing reasonable and generally acceptable opinions’. ‘Generally acceptable’ is close enough to ‘conventional’ for me. In my experience it usually means something like the opposite of ‘subversive’ or ‘radical’, so again ‘conventional’ seems appropriate.
A good job of attempting or convince me but I still don’t like the clue or that definition tbh.
I’m certainly not going to try and make you like it! I think though that where the dictionaries support a definition we have to give the setter the benefit of the doubt, if sometimes grudgingly.
55.55 RIGHT-THINKING was a write-in but I never managed to parse it. KERB, BEEFED, EREBUS, CARDIAC and SCATHE held me up for ages. After an overnight break they went in in under a minute. Thanks branch.
I thought this was a stinker – it took several visits and I still haven’t found a dictionary that lists SCATHE as either a noun or a verb, although I’m sure it will be in one of the authorised versions! It was LOI. I thought of TENERIFE early on, but didn’t put it in as I was unable to parse at the time, which might have helped a lot. 4d was very delayed, as I’d spelled IMPOSTeR on 1a – deeply embarrassing, as my spelling is normally very accurate. Another hold up was EREBUS. I knew what I was after, but couldn’t remember the word and knew PREBUS wasn’t right. 6d was exceptionally well disguised, I thought. So many clues had to be drawn out like teeth, but perhaps I just wasn’t on the wavelength.
Chambers has:
scathe /skādh/ (Scot scaith, skaith /skāth/; Spenser scath /skath/)
transitive verb
1. (often in neg) to injure
2. To blast
3. To scorch with invective
I suppose that’s near enough.
I enjoyed this, though it took nearly an hour. Many of the clues needed very careful reading to understand the wordplay and I especially had some trouble with the PENTACLE and CROUTON crossing, since I was sure the story in 23ac would be a LIE with CH in it, and then I saw that CHARLES would fit into 19dn. But not with ST CHRISTOPHER in place. Finally with OUT for “asleep” I did see the King reduced to CR and got CROUTON (so the story was not a lie, but a TALE after all). The clue I liked best, though, was 7dn, because of “Hamlet’s first choice”.
It took quite a while for the penny to drop on KERB. Also on this occasion I derived a lot of pleasure from ROOT CANAL. For me, those were the CODs.
Thanks branch for confirming the parsing of 9a and 3d.
To be a GUTTERSNIPE you have to meet two tests: bad behaviour and poverty. A child in more affluent circumstances who behaves badly is just a BRAT.