This took me 09:10 and so I would say is on the upper end of medium. But then again … I fell headfirst into the setter’s trap at 6d, so you may well have done better!
Definitions underlined in bold.
| Across | |
| 1 | Guy’s husband wearing baseball attire (4) |
| CHAP – CAP [baseball attire] is “wearing” (i.e. goes around) H [husband]. I toyed briefly with Mitt, being the only other piece of baseball attire in my ken. | |
| 3 | Corn periodically safe to eat and easy to swallow? (8) |
| CREDIBLE – CR [corn periodically] + EDIBLE [safe to eat]. A CREDIBLE story is one which is “easy to swallow”. | |
| 8 | Specimen is no longer enough (7) |
| EXAMPLE – EX [is no longer] + AMPLE [enough]. Very good. | |
| 10 | European head travelling west somewhere in Germany (5) |
| ESSEN – E [European] + NESS [head] going from right to left [travelling west]. | |
| 11 | Huge site is renovated to house British street paper (3,3,5) |
| THE BIG ISSUE – anagram [renovated] of “huge site is” + B for “British”. This may hold up some of our non-UK solvers, though I now learn from wiki that THE BIG ISSUE is sold on many non-UK streets, so maybe not. | |
| 13 | Fly from Athens, possibly (6) |
| HASTEN – anagram [possibly] of “Athens”. Ah, not an insect then. | |
| 15 | Be in control of bad credit (6) |
| DIRECT -anagram [bad] of “credit”. Lovely, smooth clue. | |
| 17 | Mark’s clever, in a manner of speaking (5,6) |
| ACUTE ACCENT – “mark” as in a punctuation mark, which catches me out every time. ACUTE [clever] + ACCENT [in a manner of speaking]. On edit – as Quadrophenia points out below, a better parsing is CUTE [clever] inside [in] A [a] + ACCENT [manner of speaking]. | |
| 20 | In France, LeBron is a big star (5) |
| CELEB – hidden inside “France, LeBron”. Celebrity and stardom do not always go together. | |
| 21 | Expert teams deployed (or recalled) (7) |
| MAESTRO -anagram [deployed] of “teams” + RO [or recalled, i.e. OR going backwards]. | |
| 22 | Very tall wife breaks piece of foot jewellery (8) |
| TOWERING – W [wife] inside [breaks] TOE-RING [piece of foot jewellery, apparently; no, me neither]. | |
| 23 | Phone purchases are priced pretty stupidly to begin with (4) |
| APPS – first letters [to begin with] of “are priced pretty stupidly”. Some apps are free, of course. | |
| Down | |
| 1 | They run fast and they play dirty, we’re told (8) |
| CHEETAHS – sounds like [we’re told] “cheaters”. | |
| 2 | Wow, a puzzle that has dead ends? (5) |
| AMAZE – the verb here, “to wow/to AMAZE”. A + MAZE. | |
| 4 | Once again cut grass with it (2-4) |
| RE-EDIT – editing does not necessarily involve cutting – sometimes the editing process might involve expanding a document. But I quibble. REED [grass} with IT. | |
| 5 | Maybe shift round to get seats offering a good view? (5,6) |
| DRESS CIRCLE – DRESS [maybe shift] + CIRCLE [round]. | |
| 6 | Surround bees flying around island, say (7) |
| BESIEGE – anagram [flying] of “bees”, going “around” I [island] + EG [say]. My LOI and added a chunk of time; I thought that “island, say” meant that I was looking for a homophone of an island. Middle stump, well bowled Jalna. | |
| 7 | Female from Reading regularly heading for Andover (4) |
| EDNA – EDN is “Reading regularly” + A. In his Monday blog Jack announced the forthcoming demise of random Christian names; can’t forthcome soon enough for me. | |
| 9 | Two or three prepare anaesthetic (5,6) |
| PRIME NUMBER – PRIME for “prepare” (that thing you can’t be bothered to do when painting) + NUMBER for “anaesthetic” (it makes you “numb”, ho ho). | |
| 12 | Don’t change that boy’s hats (8) |
| STETSONS – STET [“don’t change that” – stet is Latin for “let it stand”, used in publishing to indicate that no change should be made] + SON’S [boy’s; the apostrophe is silent]. The hats are named after their inventor John B. Stetson | |
| 14 | Extremely snobbish sanction having little depth (7) |
| SHALLOW – SH for each end [extremely] of “snobbish” + ALLOW for “sanction”. | |
| 16 | Small creatures found in silver mines (6) |
| VERMIN – hidden [found in] in “silver mines”. | |
| 18 | Thoroughly enjoy each place when climbing (3,2) |
| EAT UP – EA for “each” + “put” [place, as in “put/place the sofa over there please Charlie“] going upwards [when climbing]. | |
| 19 | Mary Somerville, for one, appears in first couple of science books (4) |
| SCOT – Somerville was a SCOT and a great C19 scientist, so the surface is excellent and gets my COD. A truly remarkable woman: among many other distinctions she has an Oxford college named after her, and was the first signature on John Stuart Mill’s petition for female suffrage. Her face currently adorns the Scottish ten pound note (widely rejected all over the rest of the UK). The wordplay is SC [first couple of science] + OT [books, as in Old Testament]. | |
Surprisingly for me at this time of night, I rattled through this at just about as fast as I can go at first, only not getting ACUTE ACCENT and MAESTRO out of the acrosses. With that many checkers, the downs mostly went in too with just STETSONS and LOI BESIEGE holding me up. Stopped my watch on 11:43. Thanks Jalna and Templar.
20 minutes.
Yet again in the SCC. I should be so much better than this by now. I am so far behind the competition! Why can’t I see what’s in front of me?
So depressing when I see what other solvers of a similar vintage can now achieve.
78 minutes for the week. I need 21 minutes or better tomorrow to make my new target. Can’t see it happening given the way I’m struggling with the straightforward QCs we’ve had this week. I suspect tomorrow will be a tough one.
Hello. I’m new (and confused). It the puzzle online for the Times #2899 the clue for 6d is “Surround bees flying around end of hive, say(7)” The answer appears to still be “BESIEGE” but I can’t work out how it makes any sense. There is no mention of “island” in my puzzle. (I feel like I’m nuts, and need to take a screen shot or something, but I cut and pasted the text, above!) What’s up, do you know?
The clue as published on the day and currently in The Times archive is: Surround bees flying around island, say.
You won’t be able to paste a screen shot here, but please post a reply to this message and include the URL address of The Times page you are seeing the other clue on and I shall look into it. Clues do sometimes change after publication if there has been an error but I can see no evidence that has happened in this case, especially as the clue as quoted by you doesn’t work.
Thank you so much for your response! I access the puzzle through the Daily Cryptic Crossword in the Globe and Mail (Canada)”brought to you by the Times of London” and here is the URL: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/puzzles-and-crosswords/cryptic-crossword/
I also looked up the clue on Crossword Genius and they had the ‘island’ version, but not the ‘hive’ version, so I’m thinking it was an error. Perhaps an editing issue at G&M? Every other clue is exactly the same!
Thanks. I’d suggest The Times sent The Globe a version some time before publication here and in the meantime an error was spotted and the clue was amended but the revision was not passed on.
This puzzle was published in my Canadian newspaper in March 2025. The clue for 6D I had was “Surround bees flying around end of hive, say” – no mention of island which was in the clue that everyone else had. Impossible to parse BESIEGE without it! Not sure where this discrepancy arose and I hope it doesn’t happen often.