Times Saturday 23982 (Aug 2)

Author   linxitPosted on Categories Weekend Cryptic
Solving time – not recorded but over 20 minutes. I got a bit bogged down with this one (which I only solved this morning, as I’ve been very busy at work and had a crossword-free week except for RTC), mainly because I refused to accept that what 4D looked like being could possibly be a word! I also had LOGARITHM in for 8A, although that only affected 1D.

Across
1 HABITAT – A BIT in HAT – Dolly Varden was a character in Barnaby Rudge by Dickens, but she also gave her name to a type of large flower-trimmed hat.
5 BANJAX – BAN + “Jacks”
8 ALGORITHM – (oral might)*. I’d never noticed that ALGORITHM and LOGARITHM were anagrams of each other – either would have fit the clue.
9 DATUM – hidden in “shouteD AT UMpire”.
11 HEAVE – ‘E in HAVE
12 ULSTERMAN – (must learn)*
13 OVERVIEW – OVER + VIE + W(ith)
15 SORT OF – SORT + O(ld) + F(rench)
17 I CHING – I(t)CHING – the Chinese “Book of Changes”, something to do with fortune-telling.
19 PERFORCE – PERFOR(m) + C.E.
22 SUNDOWNER – (col)D in SUN OWNER
23 LIVED – DEVIL reversed. “Unfortunate” should be taken as a noun for this to work, as in “poor devil”.
24 NEGEV – E.G. in NEV(ada). A desert region in Southern Israel.
25 ANDROMEDA – (dead Roman)*. In Greek mythology, she was chained to a rock as sacrifice to a sea monster, but was saved by Perseus.
26 ENERGY – alternate letters of “mEn NeEd RuGbY”
27 SKYLARK – KYL(e) inside SARK. Think the Kyle of Lochalsh in Scotland.
Down
1 HEATH ROBINSON – HE + ATHROB + IN + SON. The man famous for creating wild and wacky machines for doing simple tasks.
2 BIG GAME – double definition. Trophies as in stuffed heads on the wall.
3 TERCE – “terse”. The third of the seven canonical hours of the Christian liturgy, apparently.
4 TITTUPED – TT inside (tied up)*. How can that be a word?!
5 BEMUSE – SUM rev. inside BEE
6 NODDED OFF – ODD inside NED (Kelly, the outlaw), plus OFF = high.
7 ATTEMPT – T.A. (volunteers) rev. + TEMPT = “lead on”.
10 MANSFIELD PARK – MAN’S FIELD = “speciality of fellow” + (Mungo) PARK = explorer. The novel is by Jane Austen.
14 VANCOUVER – VAN + U inside COVER. I had no idea the Canadian city’s name was that of an English navigator.
16 HEBRIDES – B(ritish) inside EH rev. (what’s up) + RIDES
18 HANDGUN – AND (= with) inside hung*
20 RIVIERA – I in RIVER + A(rea)
21 SNEAKY – which is SNAKY without the E, and means the same thing.
23 LOOPY – LOO (a card game) + P(ott)Y

6 comments on “Times Saturday 23982 (Aug 2)”

  1. I noted TITTUPED as my COD, not that I knew it but I worked it out from the wordplay and was absolutely delighted to find it is in the books. Surely it’s onomatopoeic?
  2. Thanks for explaining 21d, which I couldn’t make sense of. Some surprising answers in this, but all seemed pretty fair. I made it difficult by putting ‘logarithm’ at first. As for ‘tittup’, it came to mind watching some Olympic dressage last night.
  3. An easy enough puzzle. I also put logarithm at first – it just comes to mind more readily than ALGORITHM I think. Luckily there aren’t many 13 letter cartoonists that I know of, so it soon got sorted out. TITTUPED is a lovely word and a candidate for some more interesting clueing.
  4. I had to look up Heath Robinson… I’ll be on the opposite camp, an algorithm is a rule or a set of rules, but a logarithm is the inverse exponential function, not a rule… they used to be used on a (slide) rule, but solved on the tables.

    Reminds me I still have a classroom slide rule…


  6. Count me in as an original LOGARITHM at 8a but I realised my mistake, not by reading the clue for 8a properly but by realising that H?L?H would not yield a name at 1d. I then remembered my copy of The Incredible Adventures of Professor Branestawm (1933) written by Norman (no – not bites yer legs) Hunter and illustrated by William Heath-Robinson. The answer at 8a was duly changed to ALGORITHM thus conforming to the definition of “rule” but completely un-noticed by me.

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