Times Cryptic No 28038 – Saturday, 24 July 2021.

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An enjoyable puzzle, without much comment from me. Thanks to the setter for a very enjoyable puzzle. How did you all get on?

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.

[Read more …]Clues are blue, with definitions underlined. Deletions and commentary are (in brackets).


Across
1 Delicious liquid in surprisingly hot mug taken round (5-8)
MOUTH-WATERING – WATER IN, inside a (surprising) anagram of HOT MUG.
8 Meat sandwich sent back — not on for nosh? (4)
GRUB – BURG(er), backwards.
9 Loathsome sailor almost exhausted entertaining love bird (10)
ABOMINABLE – AB + BLE(d)=exhausted, ‘entertaining’ O + MINA.
10 Brilliant band showing class in Sinatra number (5,3)
MILKY WAY – ILK in MY WAY.
11 Judge soldiers retreating, bronze-clad, as enemy within (6)
TROJAN – J + OR retreating, in TAN.
13 Reassembled fleet with haste set out at night (5,5)
FALSE TEETH – (reassembled) anagram of FLEET + HASTE.
16 Saint with primate seen around church area (4)
APSE – APE around S=saint.
17 Metal having variable edge — not hard (4)
ZINC – Z=algebraic variable, INC(h) = edge, as in ‘edge forward’.
18 Smoothly sonorous dance music in location with turntable (10)
ROUNDHOUSE – ROUND=sonorous, HOUSE = house music (who knew?). It’s where they turn the railway engines round at the end of the line.
20 Theatre character in shape (6)
REPAIR – REP, AIR. In good shape/repair.
22 One missed in rolling stock, hole for rivet (8)
TRANSFIX – TRA(i)Nm FIX=hole, as in ‘in a hole’.
24 Preserving reputation — which wastrel never can do? (4-6)
FACE-SAVING – definition, plus a cryptic hint.
26 Value reflected in welcoming a wronged brother (4)
ESAU – USE welcoming A, reflected.
27 Turf war? (7,6)
PITCHED BATTLE – ho ho.

Down
1 Push to the edge girl troubled with amnesia (11)
MARGINALISE – (troubled) anagram of GIRL + AMNESIA.
2 Tashkent native and Zulu to remain in Great Britain? (5)
UZBEK – Z + BE in UK.
3 Notice wife plunging into warmer stream (9)
HEADWATER – AD=notice + W=wife in HEATER.
4 Assistant wants line put into a flirtatious note (7)
ACOLYTE – L in A + COY + TE.
5 Italian monk leaving mountain makes proclamation (5)
EDICT – (ben)EDICT.
6 Lover soon having despicable person round (9)
INAMORATO – IN A MO(ment), RAT, O=love.
7 Set on being taken over (3)
GEL – LEG=on side in cricket, overturned.
12 Ice as encountered by elite regiment in entering gorge (11)
ASSASSINATE – AS, SAS, IN in SATE.
14 Close to Meteora, crowd entering in ecstasy for religious ceremony (9)
SACRAMENT – (meteor)A + CRAM in SENT.
15 Bush ranger skinned and eaten by Lernaean monster (9)
HYDRANGEA – (r)ANGE(r) in HYDRA.
19 Intrude clumsily being inexperienced (7)
UNTRIED – (clumsy) anagram of INTRUDE.
21 Bring up boys initially wanting fish (5)
ROACH – (b)ROACH.
23 Away from wind in street in unpleasant weather (5)
SLEET – LEE in ST.
25 Poisonous type without delay to drop second article (3)
ASP – AS(a)P.

27 comments on “Times Cryptic No 28038 – Saturday, 24 July 2021.”

  1. LOI REPAIR. I hesitated to put this one in, as it doesn’t quite work for me. To repair is to shape? Or is it to be in good shape is to be in good repair? Liked Milky Way a lot. Thanks to setter and Brnchn.22:33

    Edited at 2021-07-31 02:16 am (UTC)

  3. …you know the rest. 42 minutes, so I found this a bit tricky. Seeing ESAU on the seesaw took a while, I also had TINY instead of ZINC for some time although I knew it was wrong. I only parsed EDICT well after the event. But ROUNDHOUSE presented no problems to this proud former aficionado of trainspotting from the days of steam. I was really disappointed when I went to watch the film that purported to cover the same subject. COD to FALSE TEETH. Thank you B and setter.
    1. “One more cup of coffee ‘fore I go, to the valley below.”
      No, I didn’t know it, and wrongly guessed His Bobship. The joke must be so old it pre-dates me.
      1. “Seen a shooting star tonight, slip away.” No, I don’t think his Bobship contributed to the Bumper Fun Book circa 1955 when my penchant for terrible puns was established. That was probably next on the shelf to my Ian Allen Combined Volume trainspotting book. A record rack and then Freewheelin’ came a few years later.
        1. I too was an avid train spotter (Blinkers,Streaks et al!) Those were the days, until Steve Goodwin dropped his Ian Allen Compendium (10/6) into the River Slea. OMG! We gave up after that – sad (Sad!? we were all well over thirty!)
          What I never realised is that Allen’s wonderful books only started in 1942. I always imagined that boys of the Victorian, Edwardian and Georgian(V) eras were spotters too,
          but perhaps philately, bird’s eggs and fag cards (sorry guys!) were then all the rage. Gawd! We even collected car number plates!
  4. Straightforward, but no worse for that, some pleasingly humorous clues and answers. Couldn’t parse edict putting it in, and I see I forgot to go back to figure it out. No other problems, except unknown (and unnecessary to know) Meteora and Lernaean. Liked mouth-watering and face-saving the most.
    1. Chambers has:

      send /send/
      transitive verb (pat and pap sent; nautical sendˈed)

      …

      (orig of jazz) to rouse (someone) to ecstasy

  5. I needed 49 minutes for this one but it wasn’t particularly difficult. ROUNDHOUSE should be more familiar to the home audience, particularly those who live in the south-east, as the one in Chalk Farm behind Euston Station has been preserved and was turned into a major performing arts and concert venue in the mid-1960’s, called THE ROUNDHOUSE.
  6. ….ROUNDHOUSE in the UK is at Barrow Hill, Staveley (not far from Chesterfield). CAMRA usually have a beer festival there, and there’s the added attraction of steam locos. It’s on my “must do in ’22” list.

    SACRAMENT took a while to sort out, but I had few problems otherwise.

    FOI ABOMINABLE
    LOI ZINC (immediately after SACRAMENT !)
    COD FALSE TEETH
    TIME 11:58

  7. 27:32, but didn’t understand 24a and went with NAME SAVING. Doh! Thanks setter and Bruce.
  8. Sorry, but I don’t understand how you get from ‘character’ to AIR in 20ac.
    Like boltonwanderer I remembered ROUNDHOUSE from my trainspottingdays.
    13ac “set out at night” made me laugh. Aussies, particularly, may well be familiar with “Still the Twelfth Man” by Billy Birmingham who mimics various TV cricketing personalities. In this one, from circa 1992/3, Richie (I think) is having a name pronunciation session of members of the visiting Pakistan team with the rest of the commentary team. One is Akeeb Mateef Inajarbesidethebed.
    Thanks, Bruce. My favourites were MILKY WAY, PITCHED BATTLE and FALSE TEETH of course.

    Edited at 2021-07-31 07:39 am (UTC)

    1. Interesting. Chambers has: character noun. … Personal appearance (obsolete)

      That accounts for “air”, but if I didn’t know it was an obsolete usage, what does that say about me?

      Regardless, obsolete usages are regular features in this place.

      Edited at 2021-07-31 07:49 am (UTC)

      1. Thanks, Bruce. I feel obsolete a lot of the time. I don’t know if you get “The Repair Shop” wherever you are but I feel like handing myself in there and saying “fix that if you can!”
      2. My printed Chambers doesn’t say it’s obsolete in this sense, and I wouldn’t accept it if it did!

        Edited at 2021-07-31 01:04 pm (UTC)

  9. I was on the train to Preston last Saturday with the paper. Looked at the crossword, read a few clues only managing to get GEL. Then discovered I didn’t have a pen. So I passed the time reading instead.
    On the way home, with a pen, I managed to solve most of this successfully.
    But I rejected REPAIR and went for BELAIR for some reason. And despite passing the Roundhouse on the train (and I have been there a number of times) I still failed to get 18a. I invented ROUNDVALSE -because I had INAMORATA. Quite a tough puzzle I thought.
    Good to be back in the NW briefly but some things never change. Return train from Scotland delayed by 1 hour 22 minutes because of “trespassers on the line”.
    David
    1. “Trespassers on the line”? Makes a change from “leaves on the lines’!
  10. My usual Saturday performance, ie took ages and several read-throughs to make a start, but once the first penny dropped… Slow but steady progress until all complete in 45 minutes. FOI 3d HEADWATER, LOI ACOLYTE at 4d. Did enjoy FALSE TEETH! A fun mental work-out. Thanks, setter and blogger.
  11. A TROJAN is an asteroid
    By Jupiter it floats in the void
    And I liked MILKY WAY
    To the setter I’d say
    These “space words” were hugely enjoyed
  12. For the false teeth, some setters would have stopped at the excellent definition and we’d have had a CD, but this one gave some wordplay as well, something I approve of.
  13. Water! The only drink you can get your teeth into! (Les Dawson 2:30)

    FOI 19dn UNTRIED – Oops! Clumsy!

    LOI 20ac REP-AIR

    COD 13ac FALSE TEETH

    WOD 15dn HYDERANGEA floral fun

    Time – an almost respectable 34 mins

    Edited at 2021-07-31 12:12 pm (UTC)

  14. to the North Norfolk coast reminds me a bit of the wilderness parts of the Carolinas. I’ve missed a load of crosswords but did manage last Saturday’s, my last newspaper for a while. When I got back I discovered that edmacbain had become ‘a friend’. Wow! Cheers man! This really was gentle for the weekend – COD 18ac ROUNDHOUSE. Time 18:20

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