Times Cryptic No 27402 – Saturday, 13 July 2019. Free at last.

25 comments on “Times Cryptic No 27402 – Saturday, 13 July 2019. Free at last.”

1. You’ve got a typo, Bruce, at 28ac.
2. No much of note here, although I did think 23d was QC material, and I liked RANSOM. The SECRETARY BIRD is an oddity among birds of prey:
   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQWIzS_zkrM
3. …and didn’t find it particularly difficult, but I can’t find my copy. The quality is quite high, and there are a lot of original ideas.

   Bruce, I am still looking at your problem with the blogging script. I can’t duplicate the problem, so debugging it is difficult.

   1. Thanks. No urgency. I’ll experiment more, but not for a week or two.
      1. I copy and paste the clues (from “print”) into notepad, tidy up, then transfer to Word where I formulate my responses. Copy and “paste as plain text” into LJ’s visual editor, and whack in the formatting there. Works for me.
         1. Interesting. That’s almost how I have been doing it, although I paste directly into Word, and do the tidying and formatting there. The problem with that is, when travelling I use an iPad, and there is a bug in Word which loses the formatting when I paste into LJ.
            1. Which is why I don’t format (bold, italics etc) until I have pasted the text into LJ’s visual editor. Never have been able to cope with HTML!
      2. I’ve dabbled with Mohn2’s code so I think I know how it works. If you would like to message me with your problem, Bruce, I’ll happily have a look… although I can’t guarantee to come up with an answer!

         Edited at 2019-07-20 07:56 pm (UTC)

         1. Hi John, thanks for the offer. I’m using FireFox, and the script worked when I first tried it a few weeks ago, but now when I try to run it, I get:

            TypeError: document.getElementById(…) is null

            1. This is a known problem. Will message you about to your livejournal email rather than clutter up the blog.
4. for a regulation Saturday puzzle.

   I set out with 11ac as PRIME MINISTER but changed to FIRST MINISTER fairly smartly.

   FOI 23dn INTER (MILAN not MILANO as it was originally a British Railwayman’s Club!)

   LOI 1ac REBECCA

   COD 22dn SECRETARY BIRD (Sagittarius serpentarius)

   WOD 19ac DOBERMAN (Bilko!!)

5. …and the San Siro have always been INTERlinked in my mind. 48 minutes on this with OPALESCENT a difficult anagram to crack. No other problems, I was just slow. COD to DOBERMAN. I too remember The SECRETARY BIRD via William Douglas Home, younger brother of the fourteenth Earl of Home, as Harold Wilson liked to call Sir Alec. William had a somewhat chequered war record as I recall, before becoming a playwright. Decent puzzle. I hope you’re suffering less from empty nest syndrome than I am, B. My youngest and last to leave moved in with his girlfriend a fortnight ago. He’d have laughed at the Gigg Lane joke. Thank you to you and setter.
   1. I notice that Bury have also entered a CVA, and will start the new season level with Bolton on minus 12 points. There seems to be a peculiar poignancy in thinking of their two derby games as “relegation six-pointers”.
      1. The way it’s going at the moment, there won’t be a next season for Wanderers.
         1. John, even as a die-hard Stretford Ender that is terrible news! It doesn’t seem possible.
            1. Sadly, it’s looking all too possible. There are two separate administrators, one for the hotel and the other for everything else including the stadium and the club. The first one isn’t working to start of season timescales, and the second one has selected a buyer who wants the hotel too. It will be a total failure of process if they don’t deliver. In the meantime, the few players left, still unpaid, remain on strike.
6. I got stuck on this one overnight with less than half completed but on resumption the next morning the remainder slotted into place in 13 minutes so I shall put my problems down to tiredness. MESH was my LOI.

   I knew SECRETARY BIRD as the title of a comedy by William Douglas Home, brother of the former PM, which played in the West End and on tour during the late 1960s and starred Kenneth More.

   Like our Shanghai correspondent, on seeing DOBERMAN my first thought was Duane of that name, played on ‘The Phil Silvers Show’ (aka ‘Sergeant Bilko’) by the actor Maurice Gosfield.

7. I enjoyed this puzzle and was sailing along. After only 37 minutes I had just one left(would have probably been a Saturday record). But I just couldn’t think of BODY BLOW which was a body blow.
   Not as bad as Rory McIlroy’s first shot in The Open.If you’re a golfer, you know the feeling.
   I put the puzzle down and on my return thought of it. Many clues I enjoyed. I looked up OPALESCENT afterwards. David
8. Various little glitches slowed me down on this one. Mr.Barker had me trying an anagram of Ronnie, I was in Horryd’s “Prime Minister Club”, wasn’t initially sure about OPALESCENT, and conducted a two minute alpha-trawl before finally accepting MESH.

   FOI SCAMP
   LOI MESH
   COD DOBERMAN
   TIME 14:08

9. I remembered Shot Silk from another puzzle, so OPALESCENT was a write in. ESTOP also remembered from crosswordland. SECRETARY BIRD was another that stuck in my memory as I saw a couple on a trip through Tsavo East National Park in the early 90s. Thanks to Kevin for the video clip. The rest of the puzzle fell into place quickly too. 23d was a confident biff. 22:36. Thanks setter and Bruce.
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11. 16:21. Another PRIME MINISTER here, fixed only when 2D gave some head scratching. The cheeky clue for INNKEEPER made me smile.
12. 40:47 enjoyable stuff.
13. 19 minutes, relieved that SANDPIPER was not clued with reference to Dick Van Dyke’s cockney. It has been known!
14. LOL INNKEEPER among some lovely clues. Nice workout for Saturday, many thanks setter and brnchn.

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