I started this one over supper. The better half of the BRANCH household demonstrated an impressive talent for looking at the grid and saying, “that one looks like X”. And, of course, being right! How easy is it when the answers come like that?
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. With the luxury of a week to do the blog, I can expand on how the wordplay works, so instructions copied from the clues to show how to get the answer appear thus. Anagram material is (THUS)*. A ^ symbol indicates where text is to be inserted.
| Across | |
| 1 | City beset by division, creating fear (5) |
| ALARM – L.A. beset by A^RM [division, for example of a company]. | |
| 4 | Challenge half-cut Tory going after comic (5,2,2) |
| STAND UP TO – TORY going after STAND UP [type of comedian]. | |
| 9 | Feature Abramovich is familiar with, they say (5,4) |
| ROMAN NOSE – sounds (they say) like “Roman knows”. A reference to this person. |
|
| 10 | Nothing removed from curriculum? Damn (5) |
| CURSE – O [nothing] removed from COURSE. | |
| 11 | Foolishly forbid entry for migrant (4,2,7) |
| BIRD OF PASSAGE – BIRD OF [anagram, foolishly: FORBID] + PASSAGE [entry]. | |
| 14 | Soviet assets putting the squeeze on news agency (4) |
| TASS – hidden (putting the squeeze on!). | |
| 15 | Conclusion of Hamlet perhaps (10) |
| SETTLEMENT – two meanings. | |
| 18 | Liner owned by its hands, reportedly (6,4) |
| CRUISE SHIP – sounds (reportedly) like CREW’S SHIP. | |
| 19 | Feeble colonel losing head (4) |
| LIMP – BLIMP. Colonel Blimp was a cartoon character – see here. | |
| 21 | Students don’t easily understand Marxist concept (5,8) |
| CLASS STRUGGLE – a crytic hint. | |
| 24 | Terrible, just abandoning pound (5) |
| AWFUL – LAWFUL, abandoning L. | |
| 25 | Dramatist unfortunately clashes with you, just outside (9) |
| AESCHYLUS – anagram (unfortunately): (CLASHES YU)*. The O from YOU is ignored; just the outside. The usual problem with a foreign word as an anagram … where do the unchecked letters go? Fortunately, since he was a Greek, it was easy to guess that his name started with “AE”. |
|
| 27 | Traditional steps to take? (4,5) |
| FOLK DANCE – cryptic definition. | |
| 28 | Creator of works barely crumbling away (5) |
| RODIN – ERODING, barely. | |
| Down | |
| 1 | Bishop in Costa Rica clumsily tumbling (10) |
| ACROBATICS – anagram (clumsily): (B COSTA RICA)* | |
| 2 | Intend to acquire weapons after change of heart (3) |
| AIM – ARM [to acquire weapons], after change of heart. | |
| 3 | Mary Quant creation worn by flunkey (6) |
| MINION – MINI [Mary Quant creation] + ON [worn by]. | |
| 4 | The latest worry about work permit’s introduction (4,5) |
| STOP PRESS – ST^RESS [worry] about OP + P [work + Permit’s introduction]. | |
| 5 | Product trials? Moving head of analytics helps (5) |
| ABETS – BETAS [product trials], moving the A. | |
| 6 | Claimed Conservative and Liberal are for the most part bound by act (8) |
| DECLARED – C [Conservative] + L [Liberal] + ARE, bound by DE^ED. | |
| 7 | Agent upset, cutting off patient (11) |
| PERSEVERING – PER [REP, upset] + SEVERING. | |
| 8 | Defer to old Turkish governor (4) |
| OBEY – O + BEY. “Bey” has a wide of meanings in Türkiye, apparently. See here. |
|
| 12 | Ingenious clue for “sure”? Possibly (11) |
| RESOURCEFUL – anagram (possibly): (CLUE FOR SURE)* | |
| 13 | Rocket Man’s writer on the radio (10) |
| STEPHENSON – sounds (on the radio) like STEVENSON. George Stephenson invented the railway engine called the Rocket, that could reach 30 MPH. Robert Louis Stevenson wrote Treasure Island, and other works. |
|
| 16 | Abandoned streets capturing island’s melancholy mood (9) |
| TRISTESSE – anagram (abandoned): (STREETS IS)* | |
| 17 | Criticised when society grew weak (8) |
| ASSAILED – AS + S + AILED. | |
| 20 | Dealer quietly accompanying court official (6) |
| PUSHER – P + USHER. | |
| 22 | Young lover in Washington possessed by lust? (5) |
| SWAIN – WA possessed by S^IN. | |
| 23 | Bit of a bother following two females around America (4) |
| FAFF – F [following] + A [America] + FF [two females]. | |
| 26 | Piloted precursor to Zeppelin? (3) |
| LED – no explanation required? | |
25:53
with the last 5′ spent on STOP PRESS & SETTLEMENT. NHO Abramovich.
29 minutes. All parsed except ABETS which came soon after finishing when I looked up BETA in Chambers. An enjoyable, well-crafted puzzle. COD RODIN – also admired SETTLEMENT, STEPHENSON … and LED, of course.
Midrange this one, not hard but not Monday either.
Loved the Rocket Man! A sneaky Elton John reference as well as the writer and the engineer..
23 mins. Borderline Monday, only the NHO TRISTESSE taken on trust.
Steppenwolf would dispute the Dealer = Pusher synonym but it does the job here.
BTW, have not heard any other guitarist produce the sound of the one in Steppenwolf – not even Hendrix !
15 minutes with no real issues, though I didn’t know that a SWAIN is a lover so I had to trust the wordplay and I’d only heard of ROMAN NOSE thanks to Bigmouth Strikes Again by The Smiths (“As the flames rose to her Roman nose…”).
Thanks branch and setter.
FOI Acrobatics
LOI Settlement
COD Stephenson
Never comfortable when bloggers complain that a puzzle is ‘easy’ – it just encourages setters to scale up the difficulty and after a three day run of extremely difficult ones Wed- Fri, with the latter having one of the highest snitches recorded, I could do with something a bit gentler.
As it happens this one wasn’t the most difficult ever, but it certainly wasn’t easy.
My thanks to branch and setter.
Not too hard, but I dozily forgot to change 2d Aim from ARM, bother.
Amusing surfaces, I liked the flunkey prancing around in a mini.
Glad to have crosser help with AESCHYLUS. Liked PERSEVERING and the Rocket Man. Not too difficult overall, though I did get caught out by ‘Hamlet’ again, my POI. LOI BETAS, which I thought was not great… In 11a I spent too long trying to think of an actual bird. Generally enjoyable.
Relatively easy but that’s nice for a change! I did fail to get STOP PRESS and BIRD OF PASSAGE without resorting to aids though IIRC.
Late and brief comment on this one – other time demands. It had enough challenge but had entertainment and charm.
Particularly liked 18ac CRUISE SHIP. 21ac CLASS STRUGGLE helped by Monty Python quiz sketch.
Thank U setter and branch.
Last three were hard, SETTLEMENT (still don’t see that), PERSEVERING (needed a lookup), and STEPHENSON which I got by guessing an ending of MENT crossing. I guess one of them is spelt slightly different.
With lots of enumerated multi word clues this should have been easier, but NHO BIRD OF PASSAGE so that third word took ages. And I thought FOLK DANCE was a bit of a weak cryptic. For TRISTESSE I didn’t understand “abandoned” as an anagram indicator, I though it was just SS, and with 27 sounding plural and the tough AESCHYLUS not yet in things ground to a halt.
COD MINION
In SETTLEMENT, ‘Hamlet’ does not refer to the Bard’s play but rather to something smaller than a village. The SETTLEMENT of an argument, for example, could be regarded as its conclusion. The link word ‘of’ (between the two meanings) is not, perhaps, ideal.
13.18
No problems. Liked SETTLEMENT.
Thanks setter/Bruce.
A smile accompanied LOI Stephenson/Rodin crossers.
I biffed abets, had to look up beta trials.
If I’d been eligible I’d have sent in an entry…rather a big if, as the Australian printed this on Friday 29 December.