Times Cryptic No 28014 – Saturday, 26 June 2021. Plain sailing except for the sandbanks.

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A straightforward Saturday puzzle. Everything made sense on reflection (or on examining the typesetting with a microscope for 10ac!). Thanks to the setter for a very enjoyable puzzle. How did you all get on?

[Read more …]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 and commentary are (in brackets).

Across
1 Completely low voice good with number (10)
ALTOGETHER – ALTO=low voice, G=good, ETHER=anaesthetic=number. My rudimentary knowledge of Italian was a minor impediment. Alto obviously means high, but in musical terms it can apparently mean contralto – a low female voice.
6 Dubious where first item taken from second (4)
IFFY – (j)IFFY.
8 Contaminate spot surrounding golden plant (8)
MARJORAM – MAR=contaminate, JAM=spot, surrounding OR=golden.
9 Excursion that reveals orientation? (6)
OUTING – double definition. One a trip, the other a gender identity revalation.
10 Boat lower when stern disappears (4)
SCOW –  SCOW(L)=lower or glare, as a verb.

Drat … the formatting fooled me again. I read STERN as STEM, and thought we were dealing with a clue that somehow turned SCOW into (s)COW=lower. Now, having copied the solution into the blog, I can now confirm the clue says s-t-e-r-n. Grump. Why can’t the club fix this??

11 Epics remade with top stars: one conveys authority (10)
SPECIALIST – (remade) anagram of EPICS, then A-LIST.
12 Scots girl and two scholars died in city (9)
ISLAMABAD – ISLA is apparently Scottish, in the mind of the setter. I take their word for it. Then MA + BA + D.
14 Romeo having tempted woman left to take pleasure (5)
REVEL – R=Romeo, in the phonetic alphabet. EVE was the tempted woman. L=left.
17 One draped in black, reflective, her tears legendary (5)
NIOBE – EBON=black, poetically. Insert I, and reverse. Read about her tears here.
19 Copper back on a diet wobbles around for guidance (9)
EDUCATION – CU backwards inside a (wobbly) anagram of ON A DIET.
22 Returning home unwell after rich cake and pasta (10)
TORTELLINI – TORTE, then reverse IN+ILL.
23 Asian location covering half of the land (4)
AGRA – AGRA(rian)=of the land.
24 Make mistake accepting sentimentality: it’s worthless (2-4)
NO-GOOD – GOO in NOD. Even Homer nods, one of my high school teachers used to say.
25 Fantastic innings at an end (8)
KNOCKOUT – a batsman’s innings is a KNOCK. It ends if he gets OUT.
26 Where those in service eat dog’s dinner (4)
MESS – double definition. I’ve always wondered why they call the eating place a mess!
27 Old comic — publication seen as abrasive (5,5)
EMERY PAPER – I don’t remember anything about Dick EMERY, but at least the PAPER is obvious.

Down
1 Confession being task of Christian era? (9)
ADMISSION – AD=Christian era, MISSION=task. CE may be more neutral or inclusive than AD, but wouldn’t help the setter here!
2 Speaker’s expression, crude perhaps, bringing disorder (7)
TURMOIL – TURM sounds like TERM=expression (as the speaker says it). OIL might be crude.
3 Bizarrely true view of ancient civilisation (8)
ETRUSCAN – (bizarre) anagram of TRUE, then SCAN=view.
4 Excited children ask me round before noon to see Reds emblem (6,3,6)
HAMMER AND SICKLE – (excited) anagram of CHILDREN + ASK + ME + AM=before noon. So not Liverpool FC!
5 Eggs to include acceptable one — and one raw? (6)
ROOKIE – ROE to include OK + I=one.
6 Someone smart, allowed to rise, embraced by crooked client (9)
INTELLECT – LET ‘rising’ inside a (crooked) anagram of CLIENT.
7 Punish opponents at bridge having succeeded in this? (7)
FINESSE – FINE +S(outh) + E(ast), having S=succeeded inside. East and South are of course opponents at bridge, but how many of you knew what a finesse is?
13 Impressive bird one better than eagle (9)
ALBATROSS – double definition. Bird, or golf score. I’m sure the reference involving golf is much more familiar than the one in the previous clue: an albatross is a score on a hole one stroke lower than an eagle.
15 House and shed bordered by country road on river (9)
LANCASTER – CAST inside LANE + R. A royal house, not a country house.
16 A mate screening film occasionally shows resentment (8)
ACRIMONY – IM = ‘occasional’ letters of (f)I(l)M, in A CRONY.
18 Elementary form that is very best gathered inside (7)
ISOTOPE – IS TOP inside IE.
20 Exclusive set part of Greek publishing firm? (2-5)
IN-GROUP – IN=part of, GR=Greek, O.U.P. = the publishing firm.
21 Insult batsman Bob? (6)
SLEDGE – double definition. A verb, and a noun.

27 comments on “Times Cryptic No 28014 – Saturday, 26 June 2021. Plain sailing except for the sandbanks.”

  1. Mr. Browndog – ‘They’ never fix or explain anything!SCOW was my LOI for that very same reason. We need a “Crossword Ombudsman” to be appointed.

    FOI 1ac ALTOGETHER now! No mention of nudity!

    COD 27ac EMERY PAPER – Dick Emery toured Oz frequently – “Ooh! You are awful , but I like you!” Loved drag – a bit off the pace today.

    WOD 6ac IFFY – you know!? IFFY!

    4dn Hammer & Sickle – 100 years of this in Shanghai – all this week

    Time: not recorded.

    Edited at 2021-07-03 04:44 am (UTC)

  2. A rather ho-hum puzzle, with a number of instantly biffable clues, like MESS, NIOBE, ALBATROSS. I biffed HAMMER AND S, ACRIMONY, parsed post-submission. NHO Dick Emery, DNK KNOCK but assumed it was something crickety. LOI SLEDGE.
  3. Straightforward and speedy. I do know what a finesse is, even though not a card player, so that is certainly COD. Scow 2LOI, took a while to find even though I knew what I was looking for (and could read the clue OK). Rookie LOI fixated on U for acceptable for too long.
    As an Isla, not Scottish, but the name is. Also my dubious knowledge of Spanish is that it means “island”.
    Just a thought… you have some program that pre-formats the blog, I believe? Could you run it every day before solving, then swap to the font/size/kerning of your choice, and put it on the screen next to the puzzle window? Perfectly legible clues every day.
  4. Sledging is the on-field ‘verbals’ from the wicket-keeper and ‘slips’ fielders, who stand close behind the batsman awaiting a ‘snick’ or an outside edge. Sledging was invented by Rod Marsh and other heavily moustachioed Aussie bretheren, who are who are simply giving moral support to the likes of Thommo & Lilley who gave Hall & Griffiths (Black West Indian speed merchants) a run for their money, back in the day!

    None of these niceties are to be found in baseball, as no one, apart from the Umpire – who should be the other end or at square of leg, stands behind the stumps/wicket – call it what you will.

    I played my last cricket match at The Oval for The Denis Compton XI. Check him out!

    Edited at 2021-07-03 05:27 am (UTC)

    1. You are probably aware of a sledge that even the likes of Shane Warne found amusing, even though it was directed at a team mate: Mark Waugh was taunting an English bowler, Jimmy Ormond who had come out to bat. He only played a handful of Tests. Waugh taunted Ormond by saying he wasn’t good enough to play Test cricket. Ormond’s response was that at least he was the best cricketer in HIS family!
    2. That’s just oneupmanship, H. I played my last match for the viilage of Blewbury against the vicar’s select eleven.
  5. 36 minutes with a MER at low = ALTO. It may be lowER than something else but that doesn’t make it low. By contrast the first definition of ALTO in SOED is ‘the highest adult male singing voice’ so does that warrant it also being defined as ‘high’? The female singing voice covers the broadly same range which is actually right in the middle of the range of the human voice so it could also be defined as ‘middle’!

    There is a school of thought that solvers should generally ignore the surface readings of clues as they so often attempt to mislead, but surely there was an exception to be made at 10ac where even a cursory glance would made it clear that the word was ‘ster-n’? A boat doesn’t have a ste-m as far as I’m aware! Ref the first comment above, The Guardian puzzle suffers from this same type-face problem.

    Edited at 2021-07-03 05:31 am (UTC)

    1. What about ‘from stem to stern’?

      Edited at 2021-07-03 06:05 am (UTC)

    2. I typed “boat steM” into my search engine, and the first result was:

      The stem is the most forward part of a boat or ship’s bow and is an extension of the keel itself.

      QED?

      PS: wot Kevin said.

      Edited at 2021-07-03 06:03 am (UTC)

      1. Mea culpa! It’s one of those expressions I’ve never even thought about. Ste-m is less commonly used though except in that expression so I’d still have assumed ‘ster-n’ first.

        Edited at 2021-07-03 06:10 am (UTC)

  6. Hooray! This was the first straightforward puzzle for a while for me.
    Thanks for EDUCATION, Bruce.
    I saw my first ALBATROSS back in May down on Stewart Island in the Deep South of NZ (Next stop Antarctica)
  7. … the loyal toast in God’s own county. 21 minutes. COD to KNOCKOUT. Only hold up was 10a where I saw lower, thought cow, then SCOW and was then puzzled why the Stern was at the front of this boat. Not being a sailor, I didn’t allow this to detain me for long. A quite easy but enjoyable puzzle. Thank you B and setter.

    Edited at 2021-07-03 09:02 am (UTC)

  8. ….I would probably not have got my FOI, which was perfectly clear on good old paper !

    My first thought on SLOI IN-GROUP was the Dobie Grey-esque “In Crowd”. The required expression was unknown to me.

    Fairly straightforward, and I should have been quicker.

    FOI SCOW
    LOI AGRA
    COD SLEDGE
    TIME 9:49

    1. I was also in with the in crowd, and didn’t know the actual answer either.
  9. From the QC end of the spectrum, I found this decidedly tricky.
    I solve on paper and Stern is very clear; my first thought for Lower was COW; but I still failed to get the unknown SCOW and never saw that meaning of Lower.
    There were 7 which troubled me partly because I had joined the IN CROWD because it had to be, even though the parsing seemed odd. Like Phil, In Group is not a term I recognise.
    Less forgivably, as a cricket fan, I failed to get SLEDGE; a tough clue though.
    Combining Cow and Cricket, I wonder when a setter will put COW CORNER into a crossword. American friends beware.
    David

    1. l wonder when that was first used? “CC” wasn’t in use until the turn of the last century, or was it? Silly Mid-on/off, Jaffa, deep gully, ‘ Duke’ and white ball game and Gunn and Moore — bring ‘em all on! Meldrew.

      Edited at 2021-07-03 12:10 pm (UTC)

  11. 6:48. Straightforward.
    I’m perfectly familiar with the term IN-GROUP but the setter does seem to have perhaps confused it with ‘in crowd’. An IN-GROUP is a social group with a strong shared identity, but it isn’t necessarily exclusive, or at least that isn’t necessarily a defining characteristic. You hear the term a lot in discussions about the effects of social media, as it polarises people into IN-GROUPs and OUT-GROUPs along political lines. Anti-vaxxers would be an example of an IN-GROUP but it’s not an ‘exclusive set’. Provided you buy into the right set of opinions you will be welcome.

    Edited at 2021-07-03 09:30 am (UTC)

    1. While not disputing the detailed points above, I think I’d agree with the setter on this one in that IN-CROWD is more a “fashionable” set, whereas “exclusive” is used here. Agree this was an easy puzzle. Thanks to setter and blogger.
  12. 40 minutes start to finish. FOI 4d HAMMER AND SICKLE (does anyone else find down clues generally more accessible?). Longest headscratch and LOI 21d SLEDGE, which NHO but taking a punt from “Bob”. All in all very do-able and enjoyable. Thanks, setter and blogger.
  13. I don’t remember any problems with this, I see I was all correct. I don’t think I copied and pasted “stern” into Word this time, but I have resorted to that in the past when I can’t solve a clue and I’m not sure which word is in the clue. I remembered SLEDGE from a previous crossword, not being a word I’ve ever heard since I don’t watch or play cricket.
    1. Notepad loads much faster and uses courier or similar and is quite proof against rn = m.
      Andyf
      1. Well, as a writer I always have Word open even though I don’t use it that much. So I don’t care about load speed. I often use Notepad because Word tries so hard to override any website settings with whatever font etc you used, even though that is never what you want. Just get out of the way.

        Edited at 2021-07-04 12:55 am (UTC)

  14. Thanks for No Good, brnchn. My problem with Sledge was not the well-known (at least here) cricket gamesmanship, but rather that in the US a Sledge is only ever a heavy thing on a farm pulled by horses or a tractor. All the ones which people ride are Sleds or Sleighs, including especially Bob Sleds.

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