… and here we are at the end of the first week of live running on the brilliant new Times for the Times site. Congratulations again to everyone who made it happen.
Meanwhile, the puzzle: a cocktail, a light novel, a tropical island or Spanish dance. I definitely got the impression the setter might be thinking of a summer getaway. My LOI was 4A, which jumped out when I found the right French city. Overall, good fun! 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 this week’s Saturday Cryptic.
Clues are blue. Definitions are underlined in bold italics. (ABC)* indicates anagram of ABC, with the anagram indicator italicised.
| Across | |
| 1 | Rip off a piece of clothing (6) |
| FLEECE – double definition. | |
| 4 | Place made up of most of French city, I estimate (8) |
| LILLIPUT – LILL(e) + I + PUT. PUT=estimate, as in “I’d put the chances at about 50%”. Thanks to AlfWeard in his comment clarifying the definition here. | |
| 10 | Staff, reportedly after pay increase, cause a commotion (5,4) |
| RAISE CAIN – RAISE + CAIN=sounds like ‘cane’ (staff). | |
| 11 | State of friend from Sunderland? (5) |
| NEPAL – North-Eastern PAL. | |
| 12 | Hide a convicted criminal’s book (3,2,5,4) |
| THE DA VINCI CODE – (HIDE A CONVICTED)* | |
| 14 | Lines clothing to imitate part of jacket (5) |
| LAPEL – APE=imitate, in L+L=lines. | |
| 16 | One talks about triceps primarily being shredded (2,7) |
| IN TATTERS – I + NATTERS around T(riceps) | |
| 18 | Genesis, finally, are covering a group’s dance music (9) |
| SARABANDE – (genesi)S + ARE ‘covering’ A BAND. A word I didn’t remember, but it has come up every few years. It’s Spanish dance music. | |
| 20 | Fail spectacularly with English dessert (5) |
| BOMBE – BOMB + E. | |
| 21 | If in a quiz, order freshly chilled cocktail (6,8) |
| FROZEN DAIQUIRI – (IF IN A QUIZ ORDER)* There were more I’s than I expected in the second word! | |
| 25 | Religious people, heading off to see river (5) |
| INDUS – (h)INDUS. | |
| 26 | The politician gets boat rides here? (5,4) |
| THEME PARK – MEP in THE ARK. This came up only 4 days earlier in the daily crossword, clued similarly. | |
| 27 | Ability to choose generous offer from a lawyer? (4,4) |
| FREE WILL – cryptic hint. | |
| 28 | One of fifty diamonds, it’s said (6) |
| STATED – STATE=1 of 50 in the U.S. + D=diamonds | |
| Down | |
| 1 | Brilliant 9am lecture, perhaps (5-5) |
| FIRST-CLASS – cryptic hint. | |
| 2 | Best low-strength drug? (5) |
| ELITE – E=drug + LITE=low-strength. | |
| 3 | White House finally stops copper delivery (3,4) |
| CUE BALL – CU=copper + BALL=delivery. Put (hous)E in the middle. Cue balls in billiards, snooker and pool are white. | |
| 5 | Wryly amusing to ignore king from ancient Greece (5) |
| IONIC – I(r)ONIC. | |
| 6 | Stop filming next to queue for artwork (7) |
| LINECUT – LINE=queue + CUT!=stop filming. | |
| 7 | Pampered when travelling around island? That’s wishful thinking! (4,5) |
| PIPE DREAM – (PAMPERED)* around I. | |
| 8 | Rang on the phone and gave the game away (4) |
| TOLD – sounds like TOLLED (on the plone). | |
| 9 | Expression of surprise supressed by artist from Polynesia (8) |
| TAHITIAN – AH in TITIAN. | |
| 13 | Questioned about strange rites with a star sign? (10) |
| ASTERISKED – ASKED about (RITES)* | |
| 15 | Bird’s trick to ascend over mountain feature (9) |
| PARTRIDGE – TRAP=trick, ‘ascending’ + RIDGE. | |
| 17 | Green tea brewed for young person (8) |
| TEENAGER – (GREEN TEA)* | |
| 19 | Woody’s friend used to be spinning tool (4,3) |
| BUZZ SAW – BUZZ (Lightyear)=Woody’s friend. SAW=WAS ‘spinning’ | |
| 20 | Live on heroic expedition’s legacy (7) |
| BEQUEST – BE=LIVE + QUEST. | |
| 22 | Former African province of birth (5) |
| NATAL – double definition. | |
| 23 | Not appropriate to sleep in it (5) |
| INAPT – NAP in IT. | |
| 24 | Judge almost doubtful for a moment (4) |
| JIFF – J + IFF(y). | |
Thanks, Bruce. I agree that all involved have done a great job but I wish all our avatars could be bigger, we could ‘like’ other comments and that we could be notified of replies to our comments as per Live Journal but those are minor gripes. Oh, and I would like it to be easier to change avatars.
For me, this puzzle was very easy -22m22s. I wonder if anybody else started with LINOCUT instead of LINECUT. I’m more familiar with the former.
I think we may have seen THEME PARK recently.
COD: CUE BALL.
My question, though, is, who is Sara Bande? 🤔😀
Like!
👍
I know she doesn’t dance by the Rio Grande.
😀
I had the cocktail FROZEN DACQUIRI, but my learned friend has now informed me of its correct spelling. I should have checked the anagrist of course. It’s enough to drive one to drink! Spoiled an otherwise most enjoyable 18 minutes.
To infinity and beyond!
This must be the easiest Saturday puzzle ever, as I finished in 16 minutes. All the answers just seemed to come to me, and there were no unknown words or tricky clues. It was a good puzzle, but I had to go print off the Guardian Prize to fill the rest of the evening.
14:04
Vinyl may very well be right; it was easy, anyway. But I didn’t figure out CUE BALL. Biffed the book (which I actually read the first two pages of) from the C_D_ , got around to parsing it post-submission. I was puzzled for a bit by ‘Woody’; Allen? Guthrie?
Like Martin I’d always known them as linocuts, but after a double-take I followed the cryptic. Like vinyl and Kevin I thought this very easy, only Lilliput and told at the end didn’t go in almost immediately.
Unlike Kevin I read to the end of Da Vinci Code – not recommended.
COD Raise Cain, for the surface, but it had some competition.
Thanks setter, blogger, and site-builders.
I neglected to note my starting time but when I finished I estimated my solving time as less than 30 minutes.
The major hold-up along the way was at 19dn where the ‘Woody’ connection was unknown to me (of course it was!) but fortunately SAW had been obvious from the start and once the Z-checker was in I remembered BUZZ SAW from previous puzzles.
I was glad I had to construct 6dn from wordplay as I never heard of LINECUT but if the very familiar ‘linocut’ had come to mind I might well have biffed it.
SARABANDE was a dance of Spanish origin as mentioned by Bruce, and was originally lively and considered somewhat decadent so it was banned in Spain. But it then exported itself to Italy and France and by the 17th century had somehow mutated into a slow and stately court dance or music in that style. Many examples can be found in keyboard suites and other instrumental works by Handel, Bach and their contemporaries.
FROZEN DAIQUIRI alerted me to the possibility of a pangram but we are missing an X and a Y.
I could swear we’ve had LINECUT before, because I can’t imagine how else I’d know it; ‘linocut’ never occurred to me, as I did not know it.
In dictionaries, dances always seem to be either stately or lively; evidently the Sarabande was both.
79 minutes and for once all parsed although I parsed PIPE DREAM post solve.
I had the definition of LILLIPUT as ‘place made up’ NHO of RAISE CAIN got from wordplay also SARABANDE.
FOI: FLEECE.
LOI: JIFF
“Place made up”: that’s clearly correct, and answers my misgiving below. Sorry I missed it on my first read through the comments.
27 minutes with LOI LINECUT. There was no danger of any confusion with LINOCUT as I hadn’t heard of either. The enumeration of the Dan Brown book threw me for a while, and I’m not strong on cocktails, leading me to having a daiquari until I saw that was INAPT. My told and tolled sound somewhat different too with the Ls more pronounced in the latter, “tolling for the aching ones whose wounds cannot be nursed”. Decent puzzle. Thank you B and setter.
Super puzzle, enjoyed tremendously. Thanks setter and blogger. FOI ELITE; LOI LINECUT, I only knew LINOCUT, done at school, 70 years ago; COD HINDUS, chosen from so many excellent candidates, as with so many religions and rivers, there is a geographical connection between wordplay and definition which removes doubt. I parsed the definition of 26a as RIDES HERE?. I agree with Martin’s minor gripes above, but still prefer the new site, (including the Clikc to edit!).
35 mins So quick for me for a Saturday. Like Jack, didn’t know the Woody/Lightyear connection but once I got SAW it was easy. Some very enjoyable clues.
Thanks B and setter.
I was convinced LINECUT was an error for linocut, but put it in anyway. Chambers doesn’t know it. I also thought “place ” was a very skimpy definition for LILLIPUT, missing lots of opportunities: “small place” would have been amusing or even “travel destination”.
A steady 20.34, eventually working out the the spelling of Dackery.
Could have been worse; it could have been a Bananana Dakry.
Or do I mean “Could have been better?” 🙂
A fun puzzle. Started with RAISE CAIN. Liked CUE BALL. and BUZZ SAW. JIFF was LOI. Took a while to decode the book. Had the DAIQUIRI for a while before it got cooled. 16:14. BUT- Just found I had IONCC when I checked my solution. GLOOM! Thanks setter and Bruce.
I also thought it was LINOCUT and was an error, never heard of the right answer. But otherwise all very pleasant and straightforward, 34 mins.
Just under 50 minutes-lucky that BOMBE,SARABANDE,and LILLIPUT were vaguely remembered. Think I liked IN TATTERS most. Thanks ,Mr. brnchn,for helpful blog.
25 minutes, but drat, I also bunged in DACQUIRI without checking the anagrist and when I saw that I had a mistake, I was sure it was LINECUT (although I couldn’t see how to make LINOCUT work). Otherwise a fun Saturday puzzle. COD to ELITE.
14.41
Another late entry
Also found this on the easy side but no less enjoyable for that
Scraped away at some Bach Sarabandes from his Six Suites on my cello when at school. Beautiful pieces. Less said about the playing the better. My LOI
Thanks Bruce and setter