This was a par Saturday puzzle. It was all solvable, although not everything was smooth sailing. I really love 28ac, where the definition eluded me for ages! 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 | Surveillance device Yard caught hidden in junk mail (6) |
| SPYCAM – Y + C hidden in SP^AM. | |
| 5 | Issue surrounding commercial adventure (8) |
| ESCAPADE – ESCAP^E surrounding AD. Escape, as in “the steam issued/escaped from the vent”. |
|
| 9 | Energy producer from New Orleans welcoming old man and learner (5,5) |
| SOLAR PANEL – SOLAR^NE [anagram, new: ORLEANS] + L [learner], welcoming PA. | |
| 10 | Your duty is exhibiting Asian language (4) |
| URDU – hidden (exhibiting). | |
| 11 | Safe place for cycling break close to Paris (8) |
| FORTRESS – FOR [in the clue] + TRES [REST=break, cycling] + S [close to PariS]. | |
| 12 | Second from last, needing point for qualification (1,5) |
| A LEVEL – A [second from LAST] + LEVEL. [I read “level” as “flat”, since it doesn’t have any points]. |
|
| 13 | Fellows with university course list? (4) |
| MENU – MEN + U. Winner of the “gimme” award. |
|
| 15 | Spinach I shredded for Latin American (8) |
| HISPANIC – anagram, shredded: (SPINACH I)* | |
| 18 | Turn towards tree and express exasperation (8) |
| FACEPALM – as two words, FACE PALM {tree}.
I suspect “facepalm” is a relatively new word. It’s not in the usual dictionaries, but I found it in The Oxford Dictionary of English: facepalm /ˈfeɪspɑːm / informal ▸ noun [often as exclamation] a gesture in which the palm of one’s hand is brought to one’s face as an expression of dismay, exasperation, embarrassment, etc. ▸ verb [no object] bring the palm of one’s hand to one’s face as an expression of dismay, exasperation, embarrassment, etc. |
|
| 19 | Really reduced cattle as source of milk (4) |
| SOYA – SO [really] + YAK, reduced. | |
| 21 | King repeatedly pressing oil group for Russian money (6) |
| KOPECK – K+K outside (pressing) OPEC. | |
| 23 | Make official stay in bed? (8) |
| NOTARISE – as two words, NOT ARISE. | |
| 25 | Artist’s epic work heartlessly rejected (4) |
| DALI – ILIAD backwards (rejected) and minus the third letter (heartlessly). | |
| 26 | English writer raised nets at sea (10) |
| BEWILDERED – B^RED [raised] outside (nets) E + WILDE. | |
| 27 | Cut off place in Cambridgeshire very badly (8) |
| SEVERELY – SEVER + ELY. | |
| 28 | Like I sometimes do, Edward checks time (6) |
| DOTTED – DO [in the clue] + TED outside (checks) T.
There’s a convention that setters can disguise lower case by using upper case, but not the other way round. That ploy works beautifully here. Only lower case i’s are dotted. upper case I’s aren’t! |
|
| Down | |
| 2 | Expert on top of second piece of publicity (5) |
| PROMO – PRO + MO. | |
| 3 | Church put up money to employ nightclub singer (9) |
| CHANTEUSE – CH + ANTE + USE. | |
| 4 | Foolish type of cat almost upset dog, perhaps (6) |
| MUPPET – MUP [PUMA, almost, upset] + PET [dog, perhaps]. | |
| 5 | Novelist, with sneer, trashed a particular ancient Chinese method? (6,9) |
| ERNEST HEMINGWAY – ERNES [SNEER, trashed] + THE MING WAY. Reference to the Ming Dynasty, 1368-1644. |
|
| 6 | Old monarch carrying drinks to fall over (8) |
| COLLAPSE – COL^E [the old king, from the song] contains (carrying) LAPS. | |
| 7 | Serves drinks for audience in interval (5) |
| PAUSE – sounds (for audience) like POURS. | |
| 8 | Avoid football team in frontier town (5,4) |
| DODGE CITY – DODGE [avoid] + CITY [choose one of many football teams]. A frontier town in the time of Wyatt Earp, if not now. See here. |
|
| 14 | Fancy drink served up with salt (9) |
| ELABORATE – ELA [ALE served up] + BORATE [a salt – see here]. | |
| 16 | Bet barons abandoned sucking up a lot? (9) |
| ABSORBENT – anagram, abandoned: (BET BARONS)* | |
| 17 | Poor journalist on island to the north is insecure? (8) |
| HACKABLE – HACK + ABLE [ELBA, to the north]. | |
| 20 | Dot is opening for Lady Gaga with Poker Face? (6) |
| STOLID – anagram, gaga: (DOT IS L)* | |
| 22 | Make an outcast leave home finally around 11:50? (5) |
| EXILE – E^E [last letters (fnally) from leavE homE] around XI [eleven, in Roman numerals] + L [fifty, again in Roman numerals]. | |
| 24 | Scandinavian rock band swapping uniform for whiskey (5) |
| SWEDE – SUEDE, replacing U by W. If, like me, you’d NHO the rock band, see here. |
|
Quite a bit to like here, including 28ac DOTTED. With limited queries.
Rather fond of 23ac NOTARISE, 5d ERNEST HEMINGWAY, and 8d DODGE CITY. Thought 7d PAUSE cute as was 13ac MENU despite being gimme.
In the drinks department, at 6d COLLAPSE a bit of a synonym stretch, and 14d ELABORATE had to be guessed to get the fairly rare salt.
All in all, very doable and interesting.
Thank you setter and branch.
A nice crossword, fairly straightforward. As usual, a week later I don’t remembe anything special. For dotted, I don’t think it matters that the I is uppercase. that’s how I would write it if I was writing that phrase. “Like i sometimes is” just looks weird.
I struggled with this. It was my first time solving on paper in nearly 6 weeks, which should have been in my favour but didn’t seem to help.
Found this trickier than the usual Saturday fare. Not convinced that STOLID = poker face and the parsing for A LEVEL is a bit dubious.
Still, a welcome relief following a run of some tortuous Friday puzzles.
Facepalm is in at least one of the “usual dictionaries,” ie Collins:
https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/facepalm
Also in the OED, with the earliest reference being 1996.
For A Level I think it is level = point, as in level/point a gun at someone..
Or so-and-so is at level/point 3 on the pay scale, perhaps.
Happier with that..
Found this quite challenging after several easier Saturdays. 52 minutes all done and dusted – apparently. Parsing of FORTRESS and MUPPET took a while (aptly perhaps for the latter!). Also held up by NHOs in FACEPALM (that’s an age thing) and “NOTORISE”. Found FACEPALM in Collins Online, but couldn’t find “NOTORISE” anywhere. Eventually realised it had to be NOTARISE, also unfamiliar. COD DALI for excellent surface.
Solving this clue was a doddle for me as my master solicitor was also a notary public. As we live in a port city he really earned his fee, frequently being called out in the early hours to certify damage to ships or freight for insurance claims.
I found this puzzle more enjoyable than yesterday’s, fewer British centric clues.
Another gentle Saturday at 21 mins. Recommended it to OH, a QCer who also enjoyed it.
I remember FACEPALM was LOI and very apt. It was one of my favourite hidden Skype emojis, happy days. Whatsapp is much less fun. Still took ages to spot.
COD to STOLID for the Lady Gaga surface but there was plenty to choose from.
Thanks branch and setter.
Face palm is well known enough to have its own emoji. I was thinking of phrases like ‘at that point/level’ rather than flat surfaces for A LEVEL but I’m not really convinced. Overall a nice easy and fun Saturday crossword though.
Multiple goes needed.
– Didn’t see how A LEVEL worked
– Biffed ERNEST HEMINGWAY once I had enough checkers
– Failed to parse ELABORATE as I didn’t know / had forgotten borate=salt
Thanks branch and setter.
FOI Urdu
LOI Elaborate
COD Dotted
I have a question mark against A-LEVEL, so I couldn’t quite see how level meant point – but as Jerry mentions, you can level/point a gun at someone. No other comments or notes, though I remember being initially bewildered by SEVERELY, which I read as the nonsensical ‘severally’ until I realised the stress was on the second E! Liked CHANTEUSE, a word that sounds irremediably seedy to me. No problems with FACEPALM – it’s a well-known emoji…
PS I see no one now but Jerry has their avatar any more. I wonder who stole them?
Mostly they are back now .. it was to do with the site not communicating properly with other sites. Why my avatar stayed when the others went, I have no idea!
Got on fine until 19a. Just couldn’t find a reasonable answer. In the end I plumped for SKYR for no particular reason.
My thanks to branch for the explanation.
Couldn’t parse A level so thanks for that and I didn’t realise that cycling could mean moving 1 letter, so i’ve learned something there. All in all, a nice puzzle.
I found it initially a romp, then ( when other things were on my mind, and I didn’t undergo rigorous working out!) it became a lot tougher, strangely enough…A LEVEL thoroughly escaped me ( although it didn’t on the day, some 70 years ago now); and for some reason I was looking for a female novelist at 5d (Emily, Emelia?) and thereby had no help for the down crossers. All of the above looks like a litany of excuses, which of course it is: I should have done better on this, not too hard, crossword. Once explained, I really liked DOTTED, and of course ERNEST H.