Times Cryptic No 28272 – Saturday, 23 April 2022. Right as a 6D.

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A fun exercise. Not too hard and not obscure, with two answers I didn’t know but could work out. 24A raised a smile. The parsing of 2D puzzled me but no doubt I’ll sort it out here. 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. Any hidden answers are in red.

Across
1 Applicant for role of jester around British court? (9)
JOBSEEKER – JOKER ‘around’ B + SEE,
6 Set subject to photograph (5)
TOPIC – TO + PIC.
9 Opportunist not unknown in court (7)
CHANCER – CHANCER(y)=court.
10 Flash singlet, belted (7)
GLISTEN – anagram (belted): SINGLET.
11 Bishop has not so much to call holy (5)
BLESS – B + LESS.
12 Pottery shop introducing contemporary note (9)
STONEWARE – STORE ‘introducing’ NEW + A.
13 Like florist’s goods — doing well, bringing in pounds (8)
BLOOMING – L in BOOMING.
14 Small child’s slide (4)
SKID – S + KID.
17 Man’s raised voice in loyal toast (4)
ALTO – hidden.
18 Calling son a donkey perhaps upset mother and pa (8)
METAPHOR – anagram (upset): MOTHER PA. Definition by example, which puzzled me for a while.
21 Pointer’s good in Scotland and English border (9)
GUIDELINE – GUID=good + E + LINE=border.
22 100 entering to praise returning noble (5)
DUCAL – C=100 ‘entering’ DUAL ‘returning’.
24 Walks over relative (7)
STEPSON – STEPS ON=walks over. Nice!
25 Shiny granite close-up is regularly — this? (7)
IGNEOUS – every third letter of shIny GraNitE clOse Up iS.
26 Attempt broadcast of a certain appeal? (5)
ESSAY – sounds like S.A.=sex appeal. For a while, I tried to justify ASSAY somehow, without success.
27 Sign with pen after practice (9)
WAYMARKER – WAY=practice + MARKER=pen.

Down
1 Company brought in to inoculate sheep (5)
JACOB – CO in JAB.
2 Squandered about a million once before your boss denied fellow culpability (15)
BLAMEWORTHINESS – BLEW=squandered, ‘about’ A + M, gives BLAMEW. Then add OR=before (archaic) + THINE=your (archaic), where ONCE indicates archaic, and finish off with (bo)SS, where BO appears to be the fellow in question. All rather odd, if that’s the explanation!
3 A measure of change? (6-2)
EXCUSE-ME – it’s a dance=measure where people change partners. Cryptic definition.
4 Oil treatment for sore knee (8)
KEROSENE – anagram (treatment): SORE KNEE.
5 District with central area and private central zone (6)
REGION – RE=(a)RE(a) + GI=private + ON=(z)ON(e). Is a G.I. necessarily a private?
6 Time to fix support for pot over fire (6)
TRIVET – T=time + RIVET=fix. My LOI. Not a word I knew!
7 Take retrograde step and create remit, perhaps? (3,4,3,5)
PUT BACK THE CLOCK – cryptic hint. As pointed out in the comments (thanks), REMIT is TIMER put backwards. Hence, the hint. I would say ‘turn back the clock’, so I needed the helpers to get the first word of the answer.
8 Conservative offer is one in opposition (9)
CONTENDER – CON + TENDER.
13 Book a very good act (4,5)
BEAU GESTE – double definition. I knew the book, but not the expression.
15 Harshness of truth coming after half of lies raised (8)
SEVERITY – (li)ES ‘raised, then VERITY.
16 Shrub needing fantastic drainage (8)
GARDENIA – anagram (fantastic): DRAINAGE.
19 Woolly breed of cattle (6)
JERSEY – double definition.
20 Pub getting in cut fish (6)
MINNOW – INN in MOW.
23 Failure further down when changing points (5)
LOSER – LOWER, changing West to South.

20 comments on “Times Cryptic No 28272 – Saturday, 23 April 2022. Right as a 6D.”

  1. Failed to get WAYMARKER which meant I also missed MINNOW. I think the latter would have been simple for
    me with the “w” there. Thanks for all the explanations- much needed. Do you think “create remit, perhaps?” means from the letters of remit you get a timer — which is also what you get when you put a clock back (together)?
  2. 28m 54s
    I found this straightforward but with some good clues, although I’m still puzzled by BLAMEWORTHINESS.
    On the other hand I liked ESSAY but my COD goes to PUT BACK THE CLOCK. I’ think I’m getting better at spotting that sort of reverse indicator
  3. I put in SET BACK instead of PUT BACK, which delayed TOPIC. I never figured out the SS in 2d, or the OR. It occurred to me after reading Bruce’s explanation that OR was a variant of ‘ere’, and Collins confrims that; an awfully Mephistophelean clue. DNK WAYMARKER, which took some time to get because I’d biffed FINNAN before finally thinking of MINNOW. Biffed REGION & IGNEOUS; I don’t recall an every-3d-letter clue.

    Edited at 2022-04-30 04:46 am (UTC)

  4. 48 minutes. Not too hard but some difficult parsing and a few unusual terms to keep us thinking. I’d never heard of ‘before’ as an archaic sense of OR, but this was the only way I could make sense of the parsing of 2d. The unusual BO for ‘fellow’ (though not perhaps so unusual for our US solvers) didn’t help. I knew EXCUSE-ME as a “dance”, but didn’t know the “dance” sense of ‘measure’ or that EXCUSE-ME involves changing partners, so couldn’t parse 3d.

    I liked the reverse indicator component of 7d. Identifying the extended def for METAPHOR held me up at the end, so happy to see no pink squares this morning.

  5. 30 minutes exactly. I’m not sure I parsed the SS in BLAMEWORTHINESS as I don’t remember considering BO as a name. The answer had come quite easily and I was solving quite quickly for me for a Saturday so think I saw most of the parsing and moved on.
  6. …for not parsing BLAMEWORTHINESS. I don’t even remember trying, after recognizing BLEW as “squandered.” Maybe I suspected that the rest could keep me awake a while.

    Edited at 2022-04-30 06:42 am (UTC)

  7. Martin got their first. I’ve just watched the News and escaping to Desolation Row seems the best, maybe the only, option at the moment. We called it PARAFFIN anyway. I was 39 minutes on this, taking an age to parse the ‘every third letter’ IGNEOUS. The ORTHINESS remained a mystery that I never solved. I did twig EXCUSE-ME and COD PUT THE CLOCK BACK. I also spent time after completion trying to find a metaphor where the son was called a donkey. The nearest I got was “the wild donkey of a man” Hagar in Genesis.I then decided that was too obscure and it was just a definition by example. A challenging puzzle.Thank you B and setter.
  8. It took me 79 minutes to complete this in one sitting.

    Needed the blog for help with the parsing of:
    CHANCER, IGNEOUS, ESSAY, BLAMEWORTHINESS, EXCUSE-ME, PUT BACK THE CLOCK and BEAU GESTE.

    I should have seen REMIT – TIMER. And with IGNEOUS I didn’t realise that ‘regularly’ could mean a jump of more than one letter.

    Was pleasing to finish and understand the rest though.

  9. I was on holiday on the South Coast last Saturday and this provided a pleasing challenge. FOI TOPIC.
    A few question marks- REGION, STONEWARE,WAYMARKER.
    It came down to 18a. I couldn’t see this so followed the parsing: S= Son; a donkey perhaps could be HORSE; mother and pa -not sure. I ended up with SEMAPHOR which nearly fits my definition in misspelt form but fails to include half the clue. So one error.
    COD to JOBSEEKER.
    David
  10. NICHE was my FOI, then I populated the NE. I had quite a few interruptions, but nevertheless completed in 31:41. Loved SERAGLIO, LAUDATORY and TH(e)ROUGH. My LOI was METAPHOR where I tried for ages to use RAM as the butter. Thanks setter and Bruce.
  11. 2D, which I initially misspelt with a Y, as I understood the clue to be as brnchn suggests, but with OR THY, followed by NESS in the sense of ‘head’ or ‘boss’. When forced to rethink as 21A came to me, I shrugged and changed the Y to I without attempting further analysis.
    BTW, john_dun, I think you have been looking at the wrong crossword. I definitely recognise all the answers, but they are not in April 23rd’s puzzle, except METAPHOR, which has a different clueing to the one to which you refer.
    1. Ah, that’s because I commented on the puzzle number in Bruce’s header, which is the 16th April! The 23rd is 28272.
      In which case….
      I did 28272 in 16:32, but I wasn’t sure about EXCUSE ME for 3d and BEAU GESTE for 13d. I also didn’t parse ORTHINESS. I was also puzzled by the plural point change in LOSER. Thanks setter and Bruce.

      Edited at 2022-04-30 07:09 pm (UTC)

  12. My habit on a weekend is to bring up the puzzle to see if I have any pink squares (or didn’t finish) before I read the blog. I don’t know which puzzle this is, the clues seem familiar, but it is not 28266.

    Update, I found it. It is 28272. And I solved it in 47 minutes.

    Edited at 2022-04-30 03:55 pm (UTC)

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