Happy New Year! I found this a par Saturday crossword, very suitable for the holiday season. The musical theme at 3ac is a delight! 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 | Token function for auditors (4) |
| SIGN – sounds (for auditors) like SINE [trig function]. | |
| 3 | Ravel said, “Brahms and Liszt are dry and chaotic” (10) |
| DISARRAYED – DISA [(SAID)*, ravelled] + RRAYED [(ARE DRY)*, “Brahms and Liszt”]
The setter has used a tricky combination of two anagrams, with musical indicators! Ravel is obvious; Brahms and Liszt is CRS for “drunk” (pissed). So, another anagram indicator. |
|
| 9 | An intricate network under discussion (2,5) |
| AT ISSUE – A TISSUE, with the spacing adjusted. | |
| 11 | Half-cut, become noisy and dull (7) |
| BECLOUD – BECOME [half cut] + LOUD [noisy]. | |
| 12 | Critic of French treatise in favour of removing introduction (9) |
| DETRACTOR – DE [“of”, in French] + TRACT [treatise] + FOR [in favour, removing introduction]. | |
| 13 | Idea that is holding school back (5) |
| IMAGE – I^E [that is] holding MAG [GAM=school of whales, back]. | |
| 14 | Shankar flies around India with American fiddle (12) |
| STRADIVARIUS – STRADIVAR [RAVI DARTS, around] + I [India, in the phonetic alphabet] + US [American].
Ravi Shankar was a sitar virtuoso. He became the world’s best-known exponent of Indian classical music in the second half of the 20th century. [Wikipedia]. |
|
| 18 | Spartan feeling unwell after second piece of cake (5,7) |
| PLAIN SAILING – PLAIN [Spartan] + S [second] + AILING. | |
| 21 | Setter had flipped over state of potatoes (5) |
| IDAHO – I [the setter] + DAH [HAD, flipped] + O [over] | |
| 22 | Outgoing texts exposed right being infiltrated by left (9) |
| EXTROVERT – EXT [TEXTS, exposed] + R^T [right] being infiltrated by OVER [left]. It seems that the derivation of EXTRAVERT would lead to spelling it with an A, but EXTROVERT has become the preferred spelling for consistency with INTROVERT. |
|
| 24 | Poem rejecting first and fourth of Ten Commandments (7) |
| ECLOGUE – the DECALOGUE loses the specified letters. An eclogue is a poem in a classical style on a pastoral subject. |
|
| 25 | Head of Sanitation probing abandoned septic sump (7) |
| CESSPIT – S [head of Sanitation] probing CES^PIT [abandoned (SEPTIC)*]. | |
| 26 | Rocky substrate’s most difficult to penetrate (10) |
| ABSTRUSEST – rocky (SUBSTRATES)* | |
| 27 | Prime elements of consul’s responsibility (4) |
| ONUS – 2,3, 5 and 7 are prime numbers. Take those letters from cONsUlS. | |
| Down | |
| 1 | Careless Californian cops frame nurses (8) |
| SLAPDASH – S^ASH [frame] nurses LAPD. | |
| 2 | Scintillating chap with baby animals for you (8) |
| GLITTERY – GUY [chap] with LITTER for U. | |
| 4 | Bungling miner opts to discard clothes (5) |
| INEPT – MINER OPTS to discard clothes. | |
| 5 | Doctor bears grim intestinal secretion (9) |
| AMBERGRIS – doctor (BEARS GRIM)* | |
| 6 | I consider Tutu fantastically upright, morally (13) |
| RECTITUDINOUS – fantastically (I CONSIDER TUTU)* | |
| 7 | Vacuous Yorkshire lady leaving with guard (6) |
| YEOMAN – YE [vacuous YorkshirE] + WOMAN [lady, leaving W=with]. | |
| 8 | Stranger following lead of Dennis Potter (6) |
| DODDER – D [lead of Dennis] + ODDER [stranger]. | |
| 10 | Shoe seller inspiring constant gossip (13) |
| SCANDALMONGER – S^ANDAL MONGER inspiring C. | |
| 15 | Unspoken love admitted by innocent (9) |
| VOICELESS – O admitted by V^ICELESS. | |
| 16 | Agreed Shakespeare’s original wordplay is over-subtle (8) |
| FINESPUN – FINE [agreed] + S + PUN. | |
| 17 | Languid traitress regularly dismissed worries (8) |
| AGITATES – every second letter (regularly) of lAnGuId TrAiTrEsS. | |
| 19 | Part of medicine man’s art (6) |
| CINEMA – hidden. | |
| 20 | Reporter’s insensitive coverage of individual caused by friction? (6) |
| CALLUS – sounds (to reporter) like CALLOUS. | |
| 23 | Cycling, Rick zigzags (5) |
| TACKS – STACK, cycling the first letter to the back. | |
22:52
LOI DISARRAYED, which I gave up on and biffed; I knew Brahms & Liszt, but still couldn’t figure it out. I liked SLAPDASH, GLITTERY, & PLAIN SAILING.
Greetings Earthlings.
Unfortunately, missed this one to a period of ill health.
Will have a go at today’s and be back to annoy you all next week.
Thank you branch et al.
Managed to assemble all but one answer over several days – but 24a was a brute
Quite a tricky one, I thought, but not at all impossible, with some fun clues. I did manage to parse DISARRAYED, but never managed to parse ECLOGUE, though, as LOI along with CALLUS, it had to be. While I was aware of what an ECLOGUE was, I did not know Decalogue, so it was a complete mystery to me. I also didn’t know IDAHO was a potato state. Thought GLITTERY was clever, once I’d parsed it. I also failed to parse EXTROVERT, so thanks to Branch for the enlightenment and to the setter for a good workout.
21.33
Yes, tricky with the CALLUS/ECLOGUE crosser holding out even though I knew what I was looking for poem-wise.
Rather liked the DISARRAYED clue.
Thanks Bruce/setter
43 minutes. Just did this one today so I can honestly say the most enjoyable one I’ve done this year. DISARRAYED was a real beauty, but I also liked some of the less common words scattered around the grid including ABSTRUSEST, BECLOUD and especially RECTITUDINOUS. Missed the parsing of ECLOGUE, getting the def wrong despite having heard of the answer.
Interesting that the def for STRADIVARIUS today was ‘fiddle’ whereas in Times Cryptic 29401 from last month (01/12/2025) blogged by ulaca, NO STRAD (as part of NOSTRADAMUS) was clued by ‘Fiddle, perhaps,’. (It also appeared on the same day in the Club Monthly blog, with ‘Shankar’ as part of the wordplay). As commented upon in the TfTT Cryptic blog discussion, seems it can be either so one more to add to the list of crossword contronyms.
Thanks to branch and setter
53 minutes and very enjoyable, perhaps because I did manage to work out even the obscurest clues in it. I got ECLOGUE from the wordplay and a bit of reverse engineering (I had the two Es and the G and ECLOGUE seemed a reasonable enough term for a kind of poem, and the position of the letters I knew suggested the wordplay might involve a highfalutin name for the Ten Commandments). Having managed that, I would call it my COD. But I liked RAVI DARTing and of course the musical clue as well, among several others.
Two goes needed.
– Don’t think I parsed STRADIVARIUS, only getting it once I had enough checkers
– Happy to trust that IDAHO is known for potatoes
– Biffed ECLOGUE from the checkers, as I never knew that the Ten Commandments are also known as the Decalogue
– Had heard of AMBERGRIS without knowing that it’s an intestinal secretion
Thanks branch and setter.
FOI Sign
LOI Finespun
COD Disarrayed
8:55. No problems. Like ChrisLutton I biffed ECLOGUE, not knowing the ten commandments thing. I first encountered the verse form in Spenser’s The Shepheardes Calender at university. There were things I enjoyed more on my course.