Some very nice clues here. Thanks, setter! 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 | Very much dislike endless swearing (4) |
| OATH – LOATHE, endless – less both ends, that is. | |
| 3 | Son with short hair is totally chilled (10) |
| STRESSLESS – SON + TRESSLESS [with short hair]. On reflection, it’s fine that “tressless” isn’t necessrily equivalent to “baldness”. |
|
| 9 | Lamenting in English and Gaelic in translation (7) |
| ELEGIAC – E + anagram (in translation): (GAELIC)* | |
| 11 | Few reactions are produced by this remarkable talk (4,3) |
| RARE GAS – RARE [remarkable] + GAS [talk]. | |
| 12 | Film within country house, one at Bisley, perhaps? (8,5) |
| SHOOTING RANGE – SHOOT IN GRANGE! Is there a country house at Bisley? |
|
| 14 | Rise skywards bearing light, initially like the sun (5) |
| SOLAR – SOAR bearing L. | |
| 15 | Bellringer for the Sunday following Easter (9) |
| QUASIMODO – the Hunchback of Notre Dame. And, ecclesiastically, “Low Sunday,” the first Sunday after Easter, from the Latin quasi modo, the first words of the introit for the first Sunday after Easter. NHO for me. | |
| 17 | Small mammal tick gets treated always (5,4) |
| MOUSE DEER – MO [moment/tick] + USED [gets treated] + E’ER. | |
| 19 | Valuable metal obtained after mine is stripped (5) |
| INGOT – MINE {stripped} + GOT [obtained]. | |
| 21 | Show real stamina and support those people failing to complete programme? (4,3,6) |
| STAY THE COURSE – STAY [support] + THEM [those people, not completing] + COURSE [programme]. | |
| 24 | Moving ice with a lot of dazzling light around? (7) |
| GLACIER – CIE [ice, moving] with GLARE around. And, the whole clue is definition; an &lit. | |
| 25 | Like model operatic role — a recurring duo in La Belle Hélène? (2,5) |
| TO SCALE – TOSCA [the opera] + LE occurs twice in La Belle Hélène. | |
| 26 | Environmentalists protect ancient grassy area (10) |
| GREENSWARD – GREENS + WARD. | |
| 27 | Idiot sometimes seen being followed by chicken? (4) |
| JERK – apparently “Jamaican jerk chicken” is a thing. NHO. And, of course, LOI. And then, only because it seemed the only option! | |
| Down | |
| 1 | Old enclosures originally employed identical means of securing access (4,6) |
| OPEN SESAME – O [old] + PENS [enclosures] + EMPLOYER [originally] + SAME. | |
| 2 | Work including reference for plant (7) |
| TREFOIL – TOIL including REF. | |
| 4 | Method of cooking the quince (9) |
| TECHNIQUE – anagram (cooking): (THE QUINCE)* | |
| 5 | Half of Polperro is north of river? That’s not right (5) |
| ERROR – half of POLPERRO north of R. | |
| 6 | See disruption when travelling appearing quite by chance (13) |
| SERENDIPITOUS – anagram (when travelling): (SEE DISRUPTION)* | |
| 7 | Composer and novelist, but not a painter (2,5) |
| EL GRECO – ELGAR [not A] + ECO [Umberto]. | |
| 8 | Indifferent seamstress’s action reportedly needs repeating (2-2) |
| SO-SO – sounds (reportedly) like SEW-SEW. | |
| 10 | Bury story which correspondents have? (13) |
| INTERRELATION – INTER + RELATION. | |
| 13 | Narrow point’s not let fluid into stream (10) |
| BOTTLENECK – OTTLEN [anagram (fluid): NOT LET] into BECK. | |
| 16 | Strain with landlord and distant form of communication (3,6) |
| AIR LETTER – AIR [strain] + LETTER [landlord]. | |
| 18 | Eclipse increases thanks to gravitational constant energy (7) |
| UPSTAGE – UPS [increases] + TA + G [“big G”: the gravitational constant, used to calculate the force of attraction between two bodies] + E [energy]. | |
| 20 | Relevant language, close to legalese (7) |
| GERMANE – GERMAN + close to LEGALESE. | |
| 22 | Cover for furniture all the way over width (5) |
| THROW – THRO [through; all the way] over W [width]. | |
| 23 | On the edge of one’s seat since the beginning of Grease (4) |
| AGOG – AGO + the beginning of GREASE. | |
This was another conventional/traditional Saturday Times Cryptic. Not sure what is happening with the dailies. Having examined further, Friday’s may not be quite as bad as first thought – but not easy.
We flew through this Saturday one though, until slowed down by the last few.
A PB (TB? – but not the disease) of 1hr 39mins. Just thought I would give the speedsters a laugh. Am guessing there will be quite a few sub 10 mins.
Rather liked 16d AIR LETTER once we saw it, and 8d SO-SO was cute.
Only needed the ‘Q’ from 4d to guess and parse the famous bell-ringer.
Had to come here to get THRO as shortened ‘through’ for 22d. Presume ‘lot’ in 24ac is removing ‘E’ from GLARE, and WARD in 17ac from ‘ward off’.
Guessed EL GRECO 7D, and the modified ‘elgar’ but looked up to verify that ECO was a novelist. Looked up also to get the MOUSE DEER 17ac that fitted the parsing, particularly because the poetic form of ever (e’er) was used.
Still do not fully understand how 10d INTERRELATION works with correspondents.
Complements to both setter and branch.
INTERRELATION: I think the correspondents are just things that correspond, so have an interrelation with one another. Nothing to do with people who write letters etc.
Belated thank you, Wil.
Sort of makes sense!
24.52 This was mostly straightforward. I was stuck at the end on 27a where I was distracted by BERK and BEAK (which is followed by a chicken). JERK chicken is one of the very few Jamaican dishes I’ve eaten and the penny eventually dropped. Thanks branch.
I like your username; do you have any favourite examples of the chabuduo mentality from daily life?
Jerk chicken also very familiar from Notting Hill Carnival as a kid.
“Beak followed by chicken” is excellent logic. Expect a setter to pick that one up, along with “followed by duck” for Bill.
Cheers. The examples that spring to mind are British builders taking the mickey and nobody wants to read me moaning about that.
I don’t remember much about this (but looking at it again it is all green). No problem with JERK (chicken), there used to be a Caribbean restaurant half-a-block from my home in San Francisco. I don’t think I’ve heard of RARE GAS, but “inert gas” was close enough to trust the wordplay. Nice misleading surface for UPSTAGE.
26 minutes indicating I found this easy, especially for a Saturday puzzle.
No problem with JERK chicken but MOUSE DEER was taken on trust.
26ac needs ‘protect / WARD’ to work directly, so although ‘ward off’ helps to bring it to mind, it’s not a proper match. Dictionaries save the day however, because all the usual sources have ‘ward’ as ‘guard / protect’ listed as an archaic usage.
Noted with thanks.
Could stand Ur help with today’s . . . 😅
It’s more challenging – just a couple left.
A gentle canter, ideal during a heatwave – 28 mins, being slightly delayed by 27ac. COD between 1d – additive clue with very convincing surface – and 7d: there can’t be many clues that have managed to include a composer and a novelist and a painter, and so neatly.
Really nice clues this week. 25a and 7d stand out for me. 27a was my LOI. I thought that was a bit weak with chicken literally signalling chicken in Jerk Chicken, which is why I held back until I couldn’t think of anything better.
About 20 minutes
– Not familiar with QUASIMODO as the Sunday after Easter
– Had to trust the wordplay for the unknown MOUSE DEER
– Had no idea what OPEN SESAME is, so again relied on the wordplay
Thanks branch and setter.
FOI So-so
LOI Interrelation
COD Glacier
The penny may have dropped since, but OPEN SESAME is a reference to Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves!
Done in about 1 hour, couple of aids. Today’s, though (29281) is a real toughie.
Never heard RARE GAS. I Knew of “Low Sunday” but no idea how to get Quasi Modo from it. As choir boys, it’s just the kind of think we would have latched onto to. Collects have been in English for 100s of years in C of E, hence Stir-up Sunday (last Sunday before Advent)
COD JERK
12:22. No major dramas.
I don’t know about a country house but Bisley is the home of the National Shooting Centre so also to numerous 12acs.
DNF, 27a Jerk (chicken), NHO, I plumped for Berk. Why not? But beak would have been better.
6d Serendipitous. POI, when translated from Persian into Italian in 1557 The Three Princes of Serendip was entitled Peregrinaggio di tre giovani figliuoli del re di Serendippo. I’m sure you needed to know that. Its origins are much older than that though.
15a Quasimodo. DNK the Christian meaning so biffed.
Thanks branch and setter.
Thank you for the information about QUASIMODO. I just checked the dictionary, saw it had the required meaning for “Sunday after Easter”, but didn’t look at the word origin, or consider the link to Victor Hugo’s novel.
The Latin liturgy is “Quasi modo géniti infántes, allelúia: rationábile, sine dolo lac concupíscite…” In English “As newborn babes, alleluia: desire the rational milk without guile…”
And then, as Wikipedia tells us:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Sunday_of_Easter#In_popular_culture
Quasimodo, the fictional protagonist of Victor Hugo’s 1831 French novel Notre Dame de Paris (or The Hunchback of Notre Dame), was, in the novel, found abandoned on the doorsteps of Notre Dame Cathedral on the Sunday after Easter. In the words of the story: “He baptized his adopted child and called him Quasimodo, either because he wanted to indicate thereby the day on which he had found him, or because he wanted the name to typify just how incomplete and half-finished the poor little creature was.”
This all felt straightforward with just one or two putting on the brakes. I never quite saw how MOUSE DEER worked and didn’t follow the correct logic for INTERRELATION. So thank you all for that. I knew the bell ringer better than the church calendar so that wasn’t a problem. STAY wasn’t the first substitute for support that I would think of but the rest of the clue ameliorated that. Sadly I was another JERK.