This was a rather challenging, quirky puzzle. With many clues, I needed to look closely at the clue after I found the answer, to make sure I understood the definition, or the wordplay, or both! It took me rather longer than usual, but it was all solvable although there may be some slow times.
5ac was my favourite clue, among many candidates. My LOI was 10ac, but mainly because it took me longer than it should to apply the golden rule of I.T. support: when all else fails, read the instructions!
I think the hardest clue was actually 14ac, where the answer was unfamiliar to me, and the wordplay is in French. Thanks to the setter for a very enjoyable puzzle. Let’s take a look.
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 | Worst and best places to interrupt journey (3,5) |
| PIT STOPS – PITS=the worst, TOPS=the best. Lovely clue! | |
| 5 | A neighbour to a Queenslander, maybe, briefly making comeback (6) |
| ANSWER – New South Wales neighbours Queensland (although the border has been shut to stop the spread of the virus). So, we want A N.S.W.-ER. | |
| 10 | True value to dip (5) |
| SOUSE – SO=true, as in “Tis not! Tis so!” USE=value, as in “What’s the use of that?” | |
| 11 | China do it — then we start to trade differently (9) |
| TWENTIETH – anagram (differently) of IT THEN WE T(rade). An obscure definition: china is the traditional way to mark a twentieth wedding anniversary, with “do” meaning “party”. | |
| 12 | Very quietly coming up with advantage, initially telling (9) |
| APPRISING – A(dvantage), PP=very quietly, RISING=coming up. | |
| 13 | Having odd bits cut out spoiled that work of art (5) |
| PIETA – the even letters (odd bits cut out) of sPoIlEd ThAt. | |
| 14 | Establishment that dispenses, as the chef might say, with fruit, mostly (7) |
AUTOMAT – the chef might serve his spécialité AU TOMAT(e), non? I found this clue a bit mind-bending, both for the French wordplay, and because I didn’t know what an automat is. On further edit, thanks to  gypaetus44 for telling us that TOMATE is feminine, so the chef might say AUX TOMATES, and to others for going on to point out that we therefore need to separate the wordplay: the chef might say AU, as in ‘au gratin’, and the truncated fruit could just be a plain English TOMAT(o).
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| 16 | Put out drink for returning African runner (6) |
| REEBOK – KO=floor, BEER=drink, all ‘returning’. I tried for a while to turn Nile (African runner of a different kind) into ELIN, but to no avail. | |
| 18 | Her Majesty gets a grand to give ruffian (6) |
| TOERAG – TO: E.R. – A G(rand). | |
| 20 | Power source, along with others, put in expertly (3,4) |
| WET CELL – ETC in WELL. Easy, once you see it. Took me a while. | |
| 22 | From what we hear, girl could be this sort of radical (5) |
| ETHYL – sounds like Ethel. | |
| 23 | Minister’s request apt surely to be misconstrued (3,2,4) |
| LET US PRAY – anagram (misconstrued) of APT SURELY. | |
| 25 | Female taking leave in sort of cordial working arrangement (9) |
| FLEXITIME – F, then EXIT in LIME. | |
| 26 | Treacle to cook that’s fine! (4-1) |
| GOOD-O – GOO=treacle, DO=cook. | |
| 27 | Obvious inventor’s right (6) |
| PATENT – double definition. | |
| 28 | Sort of terror about to overwhelm model (2,2,4) |
| AS IT WERE – AWE=terror, RE=car, all ‘overwhelming’ SIT=model. | |
| Down | |
| 1 | Conference potentially inviting Nobel laureate in Asian city (8) |
| PESHAWAR – SHAW in PEAR. I saw ‘conference’ and immediately thought ‘pear’, although the only varieties of pear I know outside the Times crossword are Williams and Packham. I didn’t know whether G.B.Shaw had received a Nobel prize, but of course he had – in 1925. | |
| 2 | Batter in a sulk after he’s out (5) |
| THUMP – THE HUMP would be a sulk. Remove HE. Another clue it took me a while to see. | |
| 3 | All this, and more, in one large, rambling novel (3,12) |
| THE SILMARILLION – anagram (rambling) of ALL THIS MORE IN I(=one) L(=large). It’s by J.R.R.Tolkien, and I will now immediately forget that (again). | |
| 4 | Nationalist conveniently put on dazzling display (7) |
| PATRIOT – PAT=conveniently put, RIOT (of colours, for example). | |
| 6 | After polite refusal, rather a lot becoming ugly (3,1,6,5) |
| NOT A PRETTY SIGHT – maybe there’s more than one way to read this, but I’ll go with: NO, TA=polite refusal, PRETTY=rather (Chambers’ second definition for ‘pretty’ as an adverb), SIGHT=a lot (Chambers’ seventeenth(!) definition for ‘sight’ as a noun). | |
| 7 | Blue net, for example, I used to catch duck (9) |
| WOEBEGONE – WEB=net, E.G.=for example, ONE=I, all ‘catching’ O=duck, in the cricketing sense. Another I had trouble seeing. | |
| 8 | Warm up with run — then what to have for lunch? (6) |
| REHEAT – R=run, EH=what?, EAT=have for lunch. I couldn’t see the parsing, so I put the answer in and postponed that chore till now. | |
| 9 | Chap vicar can turn to? (6) |
| VERGER – REG=a random chap, REV=reverend=vicar; all ‘turned’. | |
| 15 | Such a grin, maybe, having got the most champers? (9) |
| TOOTHIEST – a cryptic definition playing with the idea that if ‘champ’ is ‘eat’, ‘champers’ could be ‘teeth’. | |
| 17 | Objective at heart? To do extra setting is mine! (8) |
| CLAYMORE – C=objeCtive ‘at heart’, LAY MORE=do extra (table) setting. | |
| 19 | Miss leading to defeat mainly for French (6) |
| GALLIC – GAL=miss, LIC(k)=defeat. | |
| 20 | Daft onlooker after leaving name has now left (7) |
| WITLESS – WIT(N)ESS loses N=name, gains L=left. | |
| 21 | Reinforce bad news from the butcher’s? (4,2) |
| BEEF UP – ho ho. | |
| 24 | River or bay — or at least sound (5) |
| RHONE – sounds like ROAN=a bay horse. | |
COD ANSWER (clever, I thought)
Brnchn, ” there may be some slow times” was something of an understatement. This took 1hr 34’18”, but I was happy to finish all correct.
ESTER seemed fitting for the radical girl, and it took a while to revise to her cousin ETHYL. I wondered whether the clever 2d should be THUMP or TRUMP. Both together would be good advice.
Edited at 2021-01-02 02:04 am (UTC)
My excuse was that I was still exhausted on the Sunday which is when I tackled this puzzle, having spent the Saturday at a boring Test Match between N.Z. and Pakistan, a day that involved a 4hr round trip by car.
AUTOMAT was a write-in for me as soon as I saw the word ‘dispenses’ in the clue and I am slightly surprised that it’s apparently unknown to some, a machine that dispenses goods or performs some other function when fed with coins. I parsed it more simply as AU (as the chef might say, with – as in ‘au gratin / au vin’ etc), then TOMAT{o} (fruit) [mostly].
I was delighted to work FLEXITIME for the last 31 years of my working life. In at 7 out at 3 whenever I could manage it, which was every day in the final years.
Edited at 2021-01-02 07:53 am (UTC)
Edited at 2021-01-02 12:34 pm (UTC)
I had VERNON ? at 9d;was confident about BUBBLIEST at 15d; and noted CLAYMORE in the margin but did not know the Mine meaning.
Oh well (I can’t help about the shape in), or should that be Oh expertly?
David
Edited at 2021-01-02 12:31 pm (UTC)
FOI 12ac APPRISING a coup de Twitter.
LOI 10ac SOUSE! SPUME! SAUCE! SHUTE! Whatever!
COD 11ac TWENTIETH – ‘er indoors and I went to Kyoto in 2019 to celebrate our 20th wedding anniversary’ We bought a piece of Ya-yoi Kusama Chinaware for the occasion. Smashing Pumpkins all round!
WOD 7dn WOE-BEGONE – Yes you. Donald!
I think that Kevin is beginning to realize that English and American are two different languages – as Oscar noted all those years ago. I listened to Newt Gingrich yesterday and understood not a word he said.
The NE also caused me huge problems, especially WOEBEGONE.