Times Cryptic No 27720 – Saturday, 18 July 2020. Generous rewards for general knowledge.

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There was much here beyond my ken, but only 12dn eluded me completely. The rest was a medium difficulty solve, with some delightful touches from the likes of the batsman at 9ac and the boozer at 13ac. Thanks to the setter for a very enjoyable puzzle.

Notes for newcomers: The Times offers prizes for Saturday Cryptic Crosswords. This blog is posted a week later, after the competition closes. So, please don’t comment here on the current Saturday Cryptic.

Clues are blue, with definitions underlined. Deletions are in {curly brackets}.

Across
1 Closest friend holding a wee creature (7)
BEASTIE – “A” in BESTIE. I didn’t know beasties were necessarily small, but apparently they are. I did remember the Burns poem:
Wee, sleekit, cowrin, tim’rous beastie,
O, what a pannic’s in thy breastie!
5 Used to running around university, being obedient (7)
DUTEOUS – anagram (‘running’) of (USED TO U*); the final U is for university.
9 What a batsman might do: leave (3,3,3)
CUT AND RUN – amusing definition of the cricketing genre, then a straightforward definition. (For those not familiar, a cut is a cricket shot which might lead to scoring a run.)
10 Animal’s head removed from meat stew (5)
SALMI – “A” removed from SALAMI. I didn’t remember this word, although it’s appeared as recently as September last year – in the Quick Crossword, to boot! Apparently it’s a ragout.
11 Tools from bushwhackers according to Spooner (13)
SLEDGEHAMMERS – HEDGE SLAMMERS … not a clue to make anyone fall in love with the Spooner genre.
13 Ultimately, boozing in German city results in this? (8)
HANGOVER – G from {boozin}G in HANOVER. I chuckled.
15 Older bit of stationery lacks power (6)
STALER – take P out of STAPLER.
17 Nick‘s more fashionable (6)
COOLER – two straightforward definitions.
19 Tequilas, then I am hiding fatigue (8)
ASTHENIA – hidden answer. Not a familiar word, but obviously of Greek derivation.
22 Forbid literal translation: it’ll shock you (13)
DEFIBRILLATOR – anagram (‘translation’) of (FORBID LITERAL*).
25 An inclination to back Italian lady (5)
DONNA – AN, NOD all backwards.
26 Northern delicacy, to include a thing no-one wants (3,6)
HOT POTATO – HOT POT, TO; including A. At first reading I put in the obvious answer and thought, ‘I didn’t know hot potatoes were a northern delicacy’. Of course there was no suggestion of that!
27 Modest southern bank, perhaps (7)
SLENDER – S, LENDER.
28 Short song about an aromatic plant (7)
DITTANY – DITTY around AN.

Down
1 Oppose note from America (4)
BUCK – double definition. Does the US still have $1 notes, anyone?
2 Piano dropped by biased craftsman (7)
ARTISAN – {p}ARTISAN.
3 Note thrilling sensation when removing lingerie, primarily (5)
TINGE – TING{l}E. A note/tinge of red, for example.
4 Drink lager and rye cocktail (4,4)
EARL GREY – anagram (‘cocktail’) of (LAGER RYE*).
5 Rather dark around hospital boat (6)
DINGHY – DINGY around H.
6 Check light fixture (4,5)
TEST MATCH – TEST (check), LIGHT (match).
7 Boring instructions to stop something squeaking? (3,4)
OIL WELL – double definition. The dictionary supports ‘boring’ as a noun.
8 Wake drunk master after beer is turned over (10)
SLIPSTREAM – PILS ‘turned over’, then anagram (‘drunk’) of (MASTER*).
12 Crudely chide dusty Greek historian (10)
THUCYDIDES – anagram (‘crudely’) of (CHIDE DUSTY). I gave up trying to guess where to put the unchecked letters in this obscure foreign-language anagram, and looked him up. When I did, I realised I’ve seen mention of him before. (Not that that would have helped me spell his name!) There’s a modern school trying to draw analogies between his description of the war between Athens and Sparta in the fifth century BC, and the present-day rivalry between the US and China. I’m going to guess unique modern conditions carry more weight!
14 Too far into the water (9)
OVERBOARD – double definition.
16 One very happy to skip end of dance, being lonely (8)
ISOLATED – I, SO, ELATED, skipping the E from {danc}E.
18 Once holds top of five iron wrong (7)
OFFENCE – ONCE holding F{ive} and FE (chemical symbol for iron).
20 Rock group‘s vehicle caught in terrible rain (7)
NIRVANA – VAN in an anagram (‘terrible’) of (RAIN*).
21 Spot the lady’s instrument (6)
ZITHER – ZIT, HER. Famously played by Shirley Abicair.
23 Hawk grabs river fish (5)
TROUT – TOUT ‘grabs’ R. A chestnut.
24 After party, kiss Yankee’s ancient mistress (4)
DOXY – DO, X for kiss, Y for Yankee. ‘Orthodoxy’, said Bishop Warburton, ‘is my doxy. Heterodoxy is another man’s doxy’.

26 comments on “Times Cryptic No 27720 – Saturday, 18 July 2020. Generous rewards for general knowledge.”

  1. Pretty straightforward, although I didn’t know BESTIE, ‘fixture’, or the cricket sense of CUT AND RUN. I suppose I knew HOT POT, but didn’t know it was northern (or a delicacy). Biffed SALMI and THUCYDIDES. COD to ZITHER.
  2. …with two mistakes.
    Firstly, I opted for HIT AND RUN in 9ac. It’s what batsmen do and it fits the clue. I love cricket but CUT AND RUN never occurred to me. Therefore that made a complete mess of 1d which I, thus, could make no sense of.
    BESTIE!! Yes, I know language develops all the time but really?!
    And another gripe. I really do dislike the forced neologism in 11ac that gives us HEDGE SLAMMER to equate with BUSHWHACKER. That is just dreadful.
    On a more minor level I also object to NIRVANA being clued as a “rock group”. Grunge or Post Punk but not really “rock”.
    Finally, I would suggest that more famous than Shirley Abicair for playing the zither is Anton Karas who wrote and played the theme tune for “The Third Man”.
    No COD. Bah, humbug!

    Edited at 2020-07-25 03:21 am (UTC)

    1. Actually, according to the Shorter Oxford, it’s sailors who cut and run! The thing they cut is the anchor rope.

      In backyard cricket you might play tip-and-run.

      Hit-and-run is what a car driver might do.

      Edited at 2020-07-25 03:51 am (UTC)

      1. I remember tip-and-run! Also six-and-out! Didn’t know that about cut-and-run. Thanks.
  3. For such as moi, it’s all rock; I couldn’t distinguish grunge from emo or tell you what Nirvana did. I was glad enough to know that there was (is?) a group called Nirvana.
    1. Was.
      But, I guess, as Billy Joel sings “It’s Still Rock ‘N Roll To Me”.
  4. New personal best time on this one – 12:57. Obviously on the right wavelength.
  5. 31 minutes. BEASTIE reminded me of Burns too. I knew of THUCYDIDES too but not POI DITTANY nor LOI SALMI, needing the cryptic and crossers for both. I was baffled in the NW for quite some time as I also had HIT AND RUN. Just as when I played, I didn’t attempt a delicate CUT until I’d been in a while, and that didn’t happen too often! I didn’t know its naval derivation, so thanks Bruce. COD to SLEDGEHAMMERS, eminently sensible tools for cracking walnuts. Thank you Bruce and setter.
  6. I still had about 8 clues left in this, so I guess I got called away and never went back to it. No problem on the HOT POT being a Northern speciality since my mother was from Lancashire and regularly made it.

    We do have dollar notes still in the US. Also, dollar coins. But since they’ve never dared hint about making the switch like other countries, nobody ever uses them. The current version is the second attempt since I’ve been in the US, but the only time I’ve ever got any is buying stamps in the post office when the machine gives you change in dollar coins. Which you then have to either remember to change. I think some parking meters take them. Maybe other machines.

    1. I seem to remember that, back in 1978, on the only occasion I ever transited Las Vegas airport, I won a small amount on the “pokies”. The machine paid in dollar coins, from memory, and the ladies who went round changing notes for coins to play were very reluctant to change them back for notes before I boarded by onward flight.
      1. They use silver dollars as chips in Vegas. Those are the really big ones. They are officially legal tender but I’ve never seen them anywhere else and they are way too big for parking meters, phones (back when payphones were a thing)…slot machines will take them though!
  7. ….”stare that BEASTIE in the face, and really give him Hell”.

    I was briefly another “hit and run” (“CUT AND RUN” subsequently caused an Ultravox earworm). I’d be unlikely to suffer a NIRVANA earworm however, and initially considered “rock group” might be a geological formation.

    Did anybody have a Peter Gabriel earworm ?

    Finally juggled with “chide dusty” for a minute or so, then Googled THUCYDIDES to make sure I’d plumped correctly. A prime example of the dreaded “obscure word as an anagram, and it slightly spoiled an otherwise enjoyable puzzle.

    FOI BEASTIE
    LOI THUCYDIDES
    COD SLEDGEHAMMERS
    TIME 15:01

    1. Obscure? Thucydides? Well, sure, if you read him in the original, like Vinyl; but still, I would have thought that some K is still G.
  8. A familiar story here: did not look beyond HIT AND RUN and so 1d remained blank. Eventually I did consider a possible error but BUCK did not occur to me.
    Knew how to spell Thucydides but couldn’t have told you anything about him. The other unknowns emerged from the cryptics. David
  9. 40 mins but a technical DNF as I had no idea who 12 down was and, as brnchn, finally gave up. Shame because I enjoyed the rest of the crossword. Took a while checking and rechecking the spelling of 22ac though. COD HANGOVER. Thank you b and setter.
  10. A enjoyable puzzle, although I did the same as Phil and having guessed the way THUCIDIDES might be spelled, checked it and found I had it correct. Remembered DITTANY and ASTHENIA from previous puzzles. Like BW, I was familiar with Burns’ wee timorous BEASTIE. BUCK took a while to see, despite my plumping for CUT AND RUN from the off. Liked SLEDGEHAMMERS. 27:46. Thanks setter and Bruce.
  11. 16:48 but I had to look up the Greek historian. DNK DOXY or ASTHENIA either. I liked the 2 cricket and 1 golf reference. although I was another who intitially had HIT AND RUN. I’d never thought of hot pot a delicacy but maybe it is considered so in Lancashire.
  12. 9:33. I had heard of THUCYDIDES but was not sure about where to put the Y. I decided – correctly as it turned out – that IDES looked more like the end of a Greek name.
    I knew SALMI: there’s a recipe for one in Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s Meat, which is my favourite ever cookbook.
    It’s a bit strange to describe a HOTPOT as a ‘delicacy’, and that is not in any way meant as a criticism.
    I’m not generally a fan of Spoonerisms (just too obvious) but I thought bushwhacker -> SLEDGEHAMMER was a rather a good spot.

    Edited at 2020-07-25 12:29 pm (UTC)

    1. Spoonerisms and ‘hiddens’, for example, are wonderful but need to be used sparingly; at best wonderful, at worst tedious. This was good in my opinion.
      HOTPOT as a delicacy?
  13. 14:42 I found this a fun, straightforward solve. It obviously helped to have heard of Thucydides. I didn’t know Salmi but thought it might relate to salmagundi. Asthenia and dittany were unfamiliar but the wp was clear. Hesitated over quite how oil well worked but assumed that boring must be a noun.
  14. Snap on Hit and run. I knew it was wrong but I couldn’t think of anything else. So I also ended up 2 short.
  15. Liked EARL GREY and HANGOVER-not that one leads to the other

    Edited at 2020-07-25 04:34 pm (UTC)

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