I found this easier than some Saturdays. Biffers may have had a good time. Thank you, setter. How did you all 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 the wordplay:
-
- synonyms and the like appear in [square brackets]
- wordplay instructions appear thus
- anagram fodder is (THUS)*, with the anagram indicator in italics
- a ⁁ symbol indicates where text is to be inserted.
| Across | |
| 1 | Break the French ram (3-2) |
| LET UP – LE [“the”, French] + TUP [ram]. | |
| 4 | Tossing Crime and Punishment, not working hard (9) |
| MERCILESS – MERCI [(CRIME)*, tossing] + LESSON [punishment, as in “let that be a lesson to you”, without the “ON” (not working)]. You have to “lift and separate” the title of the novel. |
|
| 9 | Fruit and honey seen in High Noon, eg (4,5) |
| OGEN MELON – MEL [honey] seen in OGEN⁁ON [(NOON EG)*, high]. | |
| 10 | Reject relish from a development stage (5) |
| PUPAL – LAP UP [relish], rejected. | |
| 11 | Disconnected state after Jamaican music (6) |
| ALASKA – À LA [after the style of] + SKA. | |
| 12 | Butler in fiction, not quite 17, disregarding duke’s bombast (8) |
| RHETORIC – RHETT [Clark Gable, in Gone with the Wind] + DORIC [17 across, without the D]. | |
| 14 | Puts off securing vessel or vessels (9) |
| DECANTERS – DE⁁TERS securing CAN. | |
| 16 | Non-human intelligence on transgressions against God, here? (5) |
| SINAI – A.I. on SIN. Mount Sinai is where Moses received the Ten Commandments from God, so you could read the whole clue as definition, perhaps. |
|
| 17 | Ancient dialect of US capital taking over Rhode Island (5) |
| DORIC – D⁁C taking O + R.I. I knew this as an architectural style, but I now know it was also a dialect of ancient Greek. |
|
| 19 | Declines ice cream cake (4,5) |
| DROP SCONE – DROPS + CONE. | |
| 21 | Noble verse that’s followed by “lives matter” (8) |
| VISCOUNT – V + IS + COUNT. | |
| 22 | Stick with announcement from someone who’s 23 (6) |
| IMPALE – I’M PALE, as the ashen one at 23d might say. | |
| 25 | Spirit that’s invalid and regularly ignored (5) |
| NAIAD – every second letter of INVALID AND. | |
| 26 | Fashion designer – male, unknown in Scotland – choosing to leave shop (5,4) |
| JIMMY CHOO – JIMMY [Scottish address for a man you don’t know] + CHOOSING, leaving the SING [shop]. This fashion house. | |
| 27 | Unimportant artist entering base (9) |
| IGNORABLE – RA entering IGNO⁁BLE. | |
| 28 | Beau Bridges acted — and yet … (5) |
| DANDY – hidden answer (bridges). Another case where you need to “lift and separate“. | |
| Down | |
| 1 | Renaissance man playing odd arcane violin (8,2,5) |
| LEONARDO DA VINCI – (ODD ARCANE VIOLIN)*, playing. | |
| 2 | Opponents of US with American motif (5) |
| THEMA – bridge scorers have two columns: “we” and “they”. So, THEM [not us] + A. | |
| 3 | Supply large amount of blood for Halloween staple (7) |
| PUMPKIN – PUMP [supply large amount] + KIN [blood]. | |
| 4 | Hybrid shoe (4) |
| MULE – two meanings. | |
| 5 | Weak creature, he’s to what extent to be in charge? (3,3,4) |
| RUN THE SHOW – RUNT + HE’S + HOW. | |
| 6 | Goad that is pressing fairly soft part of elephant briefly (7) |
| IMPETUS – I⁁E pressing MP + TUSK, briefly. | |
| 7 | Best opera wants you observing each part’s body language (9) |
| ESPERANTO – each part’s body: bESt oPERa wANTs yOu. | |
| 8 | Receive me, mostly exercising ability to forget inconvenient things (9,6) |
| SELECTIVE MEMORY – (RECEIVE ME MOSTLY)*, exercising | |
| 13 | Dull radio presenter on outside broadcast where promotion will be missed (4-3,3) |
| DEAD END JOB – DEADEN [to dull (a sound)] + DJ + OB [outside broadcast]. | |
| 15 | Irish can’t reform Catholic? (9) |
| CHRISTIAN – (IRISH CANT)*, reform. | |
| 18 | Dish of food left on the counter (7) |
| CHOWDER – CHOW + RED [leftie] on the counter. | |
| 20 | Maybe Pet Sounds’ first poster includes Mike Love predominantly, yes? (7) |
| SAMOYED – S [first letter of Sounds] + A⁁D [poster] including M + O + YES. | |
| 23 | Grey arsenic in that case, unopened (5) |
| ASHEN – AS [chemical symbol for arsenic] + THEN [in that case, unopened]. | |
| 24 | Nancy’s friend Oliver perhaps avoiding leader (4) |
| AMIE – JAMIE, unopened. Jamie Oliver is the chef. Nancy, the town, is in France. | |
67 minutes is more than double my target solving time but I can’t recall now why it took me so long. My printout shows very few workings and I had no queries other than a reminder to check MEL as a honey, which if I ever knew, I had forgotten, but I was in no doubt as to the validity of OGEN MELON.
35:22
NHO JIMMY CHOO, and DNK JIMMY, so I could only biff for my LOI. Luckily remembered OGEN MELON.
Disagree that this was easier than usual for a Saturday and found some of the clues quite tricky. Did appreciate the reference to Pet Sounds and Mike Love, but God Only Knows, what the breed of dog is.
Gave up on Nancy’s friend after 30 minutes. Usually twig the French thing but not here. Also thought it was quite tricky. Liked most of it but two cross references. It’s the only stylistic thing I really don’t like because the clue just reads oddly. Maybe just me.
Thanks setter and Branch.
39 minutes. Middling level difficulty for me with the two never seen before words – PUPAL (I think the def might be ‘from a developmental stage’) and IGNORABLE (not a word that exactly trips off the tongue) – derived from common words and easy enough to get. JIMMY CHOO only known from Sex and the City.
I liked SELECTIVE MEMORY – speaking from experience, advancing years give a plausible an excuse for it!
Thanks to branch and setter
22 mins. Good fun but then I rely quite heavily on my biffing.
LOI, COD and a good groan for ALASKA with Rhett and Jamie close behind.
Thanks both.
My thanks to branch and setter.
9a Ogen melon. I didn’t know they were called that until a previous crossword brought them to my attention. My spellchecker doesn’t like “Ogen” so it must be a bit abstruse.
I don’t recognise all the answers, it is possible I DNF.
2d Thema; not sure I know this word. It wasn’t in Cheating Machine which implies I didn’t get it. Oddly CM has themas and themata, whilst CM much more often is missing the plurals.
6d Impetus. I NHO MP as fairly soft. Obv I did know P(iano) as soft.
24d Amie. Why is Nancy’s friend female? A bit tricky I would say because Oliver is male sounding, Olivia is a common female equivalent, but that wouldn’t work with the chef.
This was on the easy side, with no unknowns, except the rather clunky ‘IGNORABLE’. I haven’t got the printout to hand, but I remember having a lot of trouble with AMIE, since I was fixated on Oliver Twist rather than the chef, and couldn’t work out why AMIE, the obvious answer, was correct. I also had a lot of trouble remembering and parsing the shoe salesman, though it was familiar to me, as was the dog. Enjoyable, though…
Solved this morning, just the thing for a slightly sore head: excellent stuff, with lots of fun and really well-crafted clues, and the various lift-and-separates worked particularly well. Similar to Thursday, I found it trickier than the high-80s on the snitch would suggest, but all ultimately gettable, coming home in 24:51. I think the butler was the only real unknown, although I always want to spell the melon OGAN for some reason. Thanks setter and branch.
Just under half an hour.
– Only vaguely remembered the OGEN MELON and needed the checkers to get it
– Never heard of a DROP SCONE
– Like others, missed the French indication in 24d and was fixated on Nancy being from Oliver Twist, so I just assumed there was a character called AMIE who I’d forgotten
Thanks branch and setter.
FOI Let up
LOI Amie
COD Dandy
Jimmy Choo heard of; Mike Love a Beach Boy! … whonose? Nancie/amie totally missed – assumed it was a NHO literary reference, vaguely remember a famous Nancy. Not speaking French is a definite advantage in life, except for these pesky Times clues. Otherwise all parsed and really enjoyed, great crossword.
40 minutes. Enjoyed this a lot. 18d had to be CHOWDER, but ‘left on the counter’ remained a mental block until PDM next morning. Too many good clues to mention, but COD by a country mile to ESPERANTO – I wonder how long that was in gestation.
11:40, so yes I’m with our blogger in finding it easier than average. But WOE as I over-confidently put SAMOYAD in for 20D without checking the wordplay in full. Drat! And I didn’t know the butler in 12A, but JEEVES didn’t fit. Thanks Bruce and setter.
Enjoyed this, good fun though not the slickest set of surface readings.
Thought it must be PUPIL, but it wasn’t .. no difficulties otherwise.
I’m trying to submit yesterday’s cryptic 29556, as I have many times in the past, but nothing happens when I click on “submit”. Any hints please? NB I am scrupulously not making any comment about the puzzle’s content, just this tech problem.
Sorry – I’m not able to help. I submitted via the Club site just now, all OK, but you may be using another site. Maybe one of our experts will have a suggestion. Good luck.
Another option is to try the Times “Contact Us” page.
Enjoyable half hour Saturday solve. DORIC is also the name given to a distinctive dialect of Scots, spoken in the North-east. I once stayed with a college friend whose family were farming folk from rural Aberdeenshire; when they were speaking to me there was no problem, but when neighbours came to call they naturally reverted to the Doric, of which I could grasp very little.