Times Saturday 23653 (July 14) – Times for The Times

Solving time 10:46

Not too much difficulty here for a Saturday puzzle, and I would have gone under 10 minutes but for spending a while trying to decide what the first letter of 21ac should be. Thankfully I got it right. Good surface readings throughout.

Across

1	DI(OGE)NES – “ego” rev – Greek philosopher who lived in a tub.
9	CHATEAU,BRI(“brie”),AND
10	AMI(E)N’S
13	FRI(CA(S)SE)ED – the setter did well to preserve the surface reading with such complicated wordplay.
18	A,S,PI,RATION
21	ROOTLE,S(hop)S – I was also tempted by BOOTLESS and FOOTLESS, both of which might also be applied to a tramp.
23	BRIGHTON BELLE – famous luxury train service that used to run from London to Brighton.
26	TEN,N(ot),YSON(nosy rev.) – 10 being a cardinal (number). I only worked out the wordplay to the first half of the answer while writing this.

Down

3	GRAVE(s),A.C.,CENT – A.C.=Appellation Contrôlée, guarantee of quality.
6	B(ART)ENDER – nice &lit. clue which I initially thought was just a slightly lame cryptic definition.
7	LEA – nice idea. 26ac’s The Charge of the Light Brigade starts: Half a league, half a league, Half a league onward, All in the valley of Death Rode the six hundred
12	PRACTICALLY – double def.
14	SPACESHIP (peas,chips)* – surface couldn’t be much further from the answer!
20	O.R.,V(I)ETO – OR (other ranks) for “men” is getting a lot more common lately.
22	ALBAN – hidden in “internationAL BANk”

One comment on “Times Saturday 23653 (July 14)”

You can add HOMELESS to the possibilities at 21a if you haven’t managed to unravel 3d – which I did not. I could not parse HOMELESS but it misled me to suspect the second word in 3d was SCHEME. For me – not as easy as our illustrious blogmeister is making out.

Anyway – I think I managed all the ones that aren’t in the blog:

6a Song and dance attracts notice (6)
BALL AD

11a (Flies apt)* to swarm about in such dingy places? (8)
FLEAPITS

15a Odd parts of AlGeRiAn city (4)
AGRA

16a High point of a mass held in church (4)
A C M E

22a A fellow at length finds sheltered spot (6)
A L COVE. Where L=length and COVE=chap.

2d (Once I’m)* resettled, (R)egistration is initiated? (7)
INCOME R. An &Lit with anagrist, anagrind and an initial with the whole being the definition?

4d Wants massages, so we hear (5)
NEEDS. SL kneads.

5d Rearrange deck dance (7)
SHUFFLE. It took me longer than I would like to see this DD.

8d He’ll check the accounts, one hears (7)
AUDITOR

17d Flog clothes (7)
CLOBBER. A DD with 1960s slang. I think of flog as in whip and clobber as in bash but the term to cover this sort of liberalism in these ‘ere parts appears to be “near enough for government work”.

19d Swoon as exam result is published (4,3)
PASS OUT

24d I plan to expel a troublemaker (3)
I M(a)P

Comments are closed.