Times Cryptic 29262 – Sat, 21 June 2025. Old salts never die?

Author   branchPosted on Categories Weekend Cryptic

There was some tricky wordplay and a few elliptic definitions here, I thought. 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 thus. Anagram material (THUS)*.

Across
1 Disorderly, hungover husband leaves nick with half-cut male (12)
UNGOVERNABLE – HUNGOVER [Husband leaves] + NAB +  MALE [MALE, half-cut].
I got this from the helpers and resolved the wordplay from there.
8 Vast abuse of cocaine (7)
OCEANIC – anagram (abuse of) (COCAINE)*
A surprising juxtaposition!
9 Onset of breathlessness after clown inhales Senior Service and pipe (7)
CORNCOB – B [onset of Breathlessness] after COCO inhales R.N. [Royal Navy, known as the Senior Service].
11 Insectivorous African gannets regularly breed (7)
ANTBEAR – GANNETS,  regularly + BEAR [breed=bear children, for example].
In the U.S. (but apparently not Africa) also known as the aardvark.
12 Nursed a mercurial ballerina’s partner (7)
DANSEUR – anagram (mercurial) of (NURSED A)*
It feels like a danseur should be the partner of a danseuse. Is that a synonym for ballerina?
13 Charlie is popular name in New York (5)
NINNY – IN [popular] + N [name] in NY.
14 Fraternity member felt endlessly glum after rum (9)
ODDFELLOW – FELT + LOW after ODD.
16 Profits from one’s times abroad (9)
MONETISES – anagram (abroad) of (ONES TIMES)*
19 Beer is forbidden on street (5)
STOUT – OUT [forbidden] on ST.
21 Calls in during supper (5,2)
RINGS UP – hidden as above (in).
23 Duck — extremely succulent and fatty bird (7)
OSTRICH – O + ST [extremely SucculenT] + RICH [fatty].
24 Old salt shed light on hostility (7)
LITHATE – LIT + HATE.
Wikipedia says: (obsolete, chemistry) Any salt of lithic acid (uric acid); an urate.
So, the old salt is not an Ancient Mariner!
25 Hand eggs one cracks to Head of Nutrition (7)
OVATION – OVA [eggs] + I cracks TO + N [head of Nutrition]
Neatly misdirective definition.
26 Initially handed one shilling, penurious dons translated The Go-Between (6,6)
HONEST BROKER – H [initially Handed] + ONE + S  + BROKE dons  TR [translated].
Down
1 Tremulous at heart, groom left after meal (7)
UNEATEN – U [tremUlous, at heart] + NEATEN.
2 Chap concealing new note about revolutionary weapons (7)
GUNNERY – GUY concealing N [new] + N [note] + ER [RE=about, revolutionary].   
3 Second-hand vehicle covered by six promissory notes (9)
VICARIOUS – CAR covered by VI + IOUS.
4 Cadre beaten up and shot (5)
RACED – anagram (beaten up) of (CADRE)*
5 Settle on Scottish island, coming home at last (7)
ARRANGE – ARRAN + last letters (at last) of cominG homE.
6 Starts to learn all about colour of milk (7)
LACTEAL – first letters (starts to) Learn All + C [about] + TEAL [colour].
7 I for one desperately mourn real man (5,7)
ROMAN NUMERAL – anagram (desperately) of (MOURN REAL MAN)*
How quickly did you spot the definition?
10 Spooner’s take on his characteristic hobby (12)
BIRDWATCHING – whimsically, a modern-day Spooner might describe his shtick as WORD BOTCHING.
15 Dirty dancing with dirty look (9)
DISCOLOUR – DISCO + LOUR.
17 Not very musical group fronting Oscars (4,3)
NONE TOO – NONET + OO [OSCARs, in the phonetic alphabet].
18 Extra digit inhibiting Pole (2,5)
TO SPARE – TOE inhibiting SPAR.
19 Prepare champion for disappointment (7)
SETBACK – SET [prepare] + BACK [to champion].
20 Celebrity chef hosting current English actor (7)
OLIVIER – {Jamie} OLIVER hosting I [symbol for electrical current].
22 Quiet sound of sheep (not black) in fold (5)
PLEAT – P [quiet] + BLEAT [sound of sheep, not B]

30 comments on “Times Cryptic 29262 – Sat, 21 June 2025. Old salts never die?”

  1. Mid morning here . . . very early some places.
    An overall enjoyable puzzle with a few wrinkles (as usual).
    Rather liked 3d and 7d as being clean but interesting clues. ‘What did the Romans ever do for us . . . well there’s the roads, the sewers . . .’.
    For once a Spoonerism that we can all (?) admire in 10d. Find the hobby that delivers!
    Am advised danseur is the generic male and danseuse the female dancer. I presume this was a rhetorical question though, as one of these has appeared recently here.
    Not sure about TR short for ‘translated’ in 26ac and RE short for ‘revolutionary’ in 2d – even if Chambers says so.
    Will have another go this Saturday.
    Thank you setter and branch.

    1. Agree with your comment about dubious abbreviations- the use of these can appear at times to be a bit random and setters do push their luck However, in the case of 2d ‘re’ is not an abbreviation as ‘revolutionary ‘ is an instruction to reverse ‘re’ =about.

      1. Thank you for that.
        Yes, I have read that incorrectly. Mind you, ‘revolutionary’ is a bit creative for inversion.

  2. DNF
    I thought of LITHATE in the course of an alphabet trawl, but it’s not in ODE and I didn’t pursue it further. DNK senior service, but RN made sense (although ‘clown inhales Senior Service’ doesn’t).

      1. Well like the Ardaths my aunt and uncle smoked, pretty sure they only had cork tips / no filters as well.

  3. Those foreigners all speak the same, you know. An Italian ballerina would dance with a ballerino – common enough word. Maybe they imported a French danseur?
    “I for one” screamed “personal pronoun” as the answer, but it didn’t fit.
    L3I were the last three acrosses, pleasantly tricky and well-crafted.

    1. Oops . . . apologies for any offence by omitting other dancer options – particularly Italy where I understand ballet originated.

    2. “I for one” screamed IODINE and ” periodic element” for me, but when I thought about it was there really any such thing?

  4. Very enjoyable puzzle. Particularly liked 1a, 7d, 17d. A similar device for Roman Numeral has appeared in the Sunday Times cryptic. NHO Lithate but pretty easy to deduce. In chemistry salts end in ATE so not many options left.

  5. 37 minutes with LITHATE as my LOI from wordplay only. Why ‘old’?

    The other delay was CORNCOB which I don’t recall meeting as a pipe before. RN and B were easy enough but COCO as ‘clown’ needed dredging up from the distant part.

    3. I wondered if it was a fossilised salt, i.e. turned to stone. Wrongly but it worked for me at the time.

  6. No time, but not exactly speedy, with the NHO LITHATE holding me up at the end. I couldn’t parse HONEST BROKER either (can’t remember seeing TR for ‘translated’ before) and ANTBEAR took some working out. I agree the Spoonerism was a good one.

    Thanks to branch, setter and to General MacArthur for reminding me of the CORNCOB ‘pipe’.

  7. DNF in about 25

    Another excellent Saturday offering but just could not complete LIT_A_E. Should have tried harder. Also struggled with the parsing for the BROKER.

    Thanks Branch/setter

  8. Would have been sub-30 mins but held up by LOI 24a – which doesn’t work for me because I can’t see ‘shed light on’ being properly synonymous with ‘lit’. Otherwise a very enjoyable puzzle, with COD a toss-up between the excellent Spoonerism of 10d and the neat elegance of 15d.

    1. We normally use ‘shed light on’ metaphorically, but if you lit something, you shed light on it, no?

      1. Agreed, it appears so when put simply like that, but I struggle to come up with a meaningful sentence in which the two are interchangeable. It’s a small point, and it doesn’t make the clue unsolvable.

  9. 43:20 with one maddening typo.

    Liked BIRD WATCHING. NHO LITHATE but it went in.

    COD OCEANIC/COCAINE, top anagram.

  10. I don’t usually finish a weekend puzzle in one sitting so this one must have been up my street. 50 minutes, only two word circles and no question marks to check in the blog.

  11. Can someone please confirm (or deny) that the “on” in 19a means that “out” is after st? Or is it just that the 2 parts of the word can always appear in any order?

    1. Yes, the convention (rule?) in Times crosswords is that ‘A on B’ = ‘BA’ in Across clues. In Down clues it means ‘on top of’, so ‘AB’.

  12. About 25 minutes.

    – Had to trust that a CORNCOB is a pipe
    – Relied on the wordplay for ODDFELLOW and LITHATE
    – To answer branch’s question re ROMAN NUMERAL: I took ages to spot it, partly because “I for one” made me think of ‘personal pronoun’ before anything else, even though that obviously didn’t fit

    Thanks branch and setter.

    FOI Stout
    LOI Lithate
    COD Ovation

  13. Well the setter stumped me on my last two. I had ‘dishonour’ for DISCOLOUR which fitted the definition so nicely I ignored the parsing, foolishly it transpired. ‘Litrage’ on the other hand could have been a thing except it wasn’t. Properly beaten.

    The Spoonerism I reluctantly admit worked well.

    Thanks both.

  14. I wasn’t going very well until I had to quickly glance at the clue for 7d and go and answer the ‘call of nature’; as I cogitated, the answer flew into my brain. Loved it. Helped confirm my FOI NINNY and OCEANIC- another neat clue. Held up by CORNCOB, DNK the pipe, and stupidly divided 10d into 5/7 and wasted a lot of time trying to find a word B?R?W – which there isn’t. (Note to self: give yourself time to wake up first, before attempting crossword!). Did quite well overall, considering it was a tricky one.

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