I thought this was the easiest Saturday puzzle in some time. Thanks to the 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. Instructions copied from the clues to explain the wordplay shown thus. Anagram material (THUS)*. A “~” symbol indicates where text is to be inserted.
| Across | |
| 1 | Cockatoo in group pursued by another (4-4) |
| GANG-GANG – self explanatory? Read about the bird here. | |
| 9 | Unintentionally catch bird on traps (8) |
| OVERHEAR – OVER [on] traps RHEA. And a different bird! | |
| 10 | Extent of special study (6) |
| SPREAD – SP [special] + READ. | |
| 11 | Is pyroxene manufactured as bonding component? (5,5) |
| EPOXY RESIN – anagram, manufactured: (IS PYROXENE)* Pyroxene is a mineral, unrelated to epoxy resin, I suspect. |
|
| 12 | Delay set back a big party (4) |
| GALA – A LAG set back. | |
| 13 | Cleared by a certain judge given journalist’s coverage (10) |
| EXONERATED – X [by] + ONE [a certain] + RATE [judge] given coverage of E~D [journalist]. The “~” indicates where text is inserted | |
| 16 | Property in France needing gas and water there? (7) |
| CHATEAU – CHAT [gas] + EAU [water there, in France]. | |
| 17 | American firm takes on middle section of seventeenth floor (7) |
| ASTOUND – A [American] + S~OUND [firm] takes on T [middle section of sevenTeenth]. | |
| 20 | MPs messed around with another tech device (10) |
| SMARTPHONE – anagram, messed around: (MPS ANOTHER)* | |
| 22 | Enormous hold close to foreshore (4) |
| HUGE – HUG [hold] + E [close to foreshorE]. | |
| 23 | Flat couple acquires is only triple-glazed at the front (10) |
| MAISONETTE – MA~TE acquires IS + ONE [only] + T [Triple-glazed, at the front]. | |
| 25 | Good ground to store a fuel for heating (3,3) |
| GAS OIL – G + SOIL to store A. “Gas oil” sounded like a contradiction in terms to me, but it’s in the dictionary. |
|
| 26 | Religious leader not about to speak at length (6,2) |
| RABBIT ON – RABBI + TON [NOT, about]. | |
| 27 | Horror story as star dies shockingly (8) |
| DISASTER – anagram, shockingly: (STAR DIES)* | |
| Down | |
| 2 | Tackle software bug (8) |
| APPROACH – APP + ROACH. | |
| 3 | Intelligence issue that’s pretty dull? (4,6) |
| GREY MATTER – GREY [dull] + MATTER [issue] | |
| 4 | Assistant’s terrible idea to do a runner (4-2-4) |
| AIDE-DE-CAMP – AIDE [anagram, terrible, of IDEA] + DECAMP [do a runner]. | |
| 5 | Deteriorate and try for break? (2,2,3) |
| GO TO POT – cryptic hint re billiards or snooker. | |
| 6 | Fed up with conclusion to University Challenge (4) |
| DEFY – DEF [FED, up] + universitY. | |
| 7 | Service essentially settles each part of tennis game (3,3) |
| TEA SET – T [essentially setTles] + EA [each] + SET [part of tennis game]. To be picky, a game is part of a set at tennis. A set is part of a match. |
|
| 8 | Secret society adopting new identity somewhere in the Caribbean (8) |
| TRINIDAD – TRI~AD adopting N + ID. | |
| 14 | Updated version of Grease gets bonus features (6,4) |
| EASTER EGGS – anagram, updated version: (GREASE GETS)* | |
| 15 | Perfect example of a humourless essay about love (10) |
| APOTHEOSIS – A + PO + THE~SIS about O. A word I might recognise, but would never use! |
|
| 16 | Expensive material requires money, nothing more (8) |
| CASHMERE – CASH + MERE. | |
| 18 | Type of image, say, taken by local (8) |
| NEGATIVE – EG taken by N~ATIVE. | |
| 19 | Continued aim is to struggle in opposition (7) |
| CONTEND – CONT [continued] + END. | |
| 21 | Somewhat weak, I’m bopping with hands on hips (6) |
| AKIMBO – hidden (somewhat). | |
| 24 | Register from school written up (4) |
| NOTE – ETON written up. | |
20:29 but
one typo (EGGG), two errors. NHO GANG-GANG, of course. PO=humorless? I knew ‘po-faced’, but just ‘po’?
“Po” sounded plausible, but I didn’t think to check. Chambers has it as “informal”. That covers a multitude of sins!
It gives the setter an out, anyway.
This was mostly cleanly clued and entertaining.
3d GREY MATTER was a chuckle. Liked 13ac EXONERATED and the nice hidden of 21d AKIMBO.
Slight ER at the Yoda speak in 9ac OVERHEAR, and the ONE for ‘only’ in 23ac MAISONETTE made it a little hard to parse.
Also, as a player, I am pretty sure one would not GO TO POT (or try) on a snooker break, maybe for billiards or eight-ball (pool in the US).
Special mention should be made here of the great billiards player Walter Lindrum – for whom the rules were changed on nursery cannons.
Good to see work happening to improve this site. Thank you to those responsible.
Thank you setter for the mental entertainment from last week and branch for today.
I lost track of time as I did this over two sessions, but I made a note that although much of it was easy I became bogged down for ages on the RH side with APOTHEOSIS and ASTOUND as the main culprits.
I’m feeling a bit dense because I don’t understand Mayfair’s remark about not GO{ing} TO POT when playing snooker.
Although I’m delighted that the QC and 15×15 printing formats had been sorted out by Friday , a new one has arisen today with bits of clues going missing at the RH margin in the Saturday prize puzzle and the Jumbo cryptic. I have reported this to Mick H.
Well not intentionally using skill from the break in snooker. One could smash them, but a pot of a red would be just dumb luck.
I did today’s on a tablet and had none of the problems that Jack had. But I did notice that the Check and Reveal buttons, which are normally there during the week but removed for Saturday because it is a prize puzzle with a closing date, were not removed today. So one could Submit after checking that all was well. Shurely shome mistake.
Wil, in today’s Puzzles newsletter Mick H has asked for problems to be reported to him.
“And if you see anything that doesn’t look right…just email [email protected] — but please say whether you are solving on the website, Live App, Classic App or Puzzles App as each has its own idiosyncrasies.”
Thanks Jack, have done so.
No complaints from me if the weekend puzzles are occasionally on the easier side- makes a welcome change.
This wasn’t all plain sailing though. I’d forgotten there was a bird called rhea and MAISONETTE held me up for quite a while.
49 mins. Had to check GANG-GANG (has Attenborough ever featured them?) and that meaning of EASTER EGGS. COD to MAISONETTE – wordplay and surface perfectly combined.
Easter eggs are more common usage term in the computing world in games and sometimes other software.
DNF. I couldn’t work out 7d and eventually put in an unparsed PER SET with ‘each part of tennis game’ as the def. Otherwise ASTOUND was the one that gave most trouble.
I liked seeing our psittacine friend the GANG-GANG cockatoo make a crossword appearance. Sadly they’re now listed as “Threatened” due to habitat destruction, including from the bushfires a few years ago, as the linked Wikipedia article describes. It would be a great pity if they were to disappear; I love their orange crest and their creaking call.
Many thanks for the blog. Glad to see this one wasn’t too testing.
If you didn’t know what a gang-gang was before solving this puzzle, I’m glad you now do. That entry is at 1 Across for a reason. Truly one of Canberra’s finest birds, and the competition is pretty fierce!
I liked this a lot, though haven’t got the grid with me, as I’m currently in Barcelona with no luggage allowance! NHO GANG-GANG, though easy enough to work out. Was worried about the tech device, but fortunately it was an anagram. Liked APOTHEOSIS and CHATEAU, but a bit of a MER at EASTER EGGS being ‘bonus features’.
I suppose the Nina is the crossword equivalent of an Easter egg hidden in software.
About 20 minutes. Hadn’t heard of the GANG-GANG, but no other issues.
Thanks branch and setter.
FOI Spread
LOI Gang-gang
COD Easter eggs
11.37 W00t! Nearly two minutes off my PB. I was busy last week and only attempted this today because I saw the summary saying it was easy. The NHO GANG-GANG went in nervously but the rest was fine. Oddly, the crossword club still isn’t showing the answers for this puzzle, but it does have a leaderboard. Thanks branch.
43:57. If I can do it in less than 1 hour, it must be easy.
NHO GANG-GANG, at first got confused with the pianist, but he is Lang Lang. Didn’t seem very likely, but there it is, and a fine bird it looks to be.
In OVERHEAR, I tried to get the inevitable ERNE in there, but this time it was Rhea.
I had good luck pencilling in partial answers, with APP (at 2d) and SP (at 10a) going in before the rest of the clue, This helped with checkers and things built up from there. I think I will adopt this strategy more going forward.
GAS=CHAT=RABBIT often appears in crosswords, but not so often IRL. RABBITON looks like HOBBITON.
MAISONETTE LOI. Didn’t see that Triple-glazed is one word, so the “at the front” device yields a T not a G. I think the setter could have chosen a non-hyphenated word to be fairer. (“…is only terraced at the front)
EASTER EGSS are what we call a Nina here.
APOTHEOSIS was a word with spelling just out of reach, but I know what it means.
COD ETON (not really)
Agree with Merlin (above) in my confusing the bird in 1a , but for me with the ex-president of Indonesia , inaccurately put in as BANG BANG (!). I too pencil in parts of answers I’m fairly sure of ( APP, GO TO, ?????PHONE) and it mostly seems to work; but it can also be a nuisance if you guess wrongly. I agree a nice easy one for a change of pace, and I only had 2 lookups.