Times Saturday 24,299 (Aug. 8th 2009)

Author   sotiraPosted on Categories Weekend Cryptic
21:08 – this wasn’t especially hard, with some helpful checking letters rendering a good deal of the wordplay less than critical. But pretty entertaining stuff, with a couple of very interesting clues.

I can’t fully explain UNCLE, which I’d “solved” before learning I was blogging this one (dammit, that’ll teach me to volunteer). Explanations, as always, welcomed.

Across
1 RISK CAPITAL
7 NIT – a nit being the egg or young of a head louse. Yuk.
9 (NO-B)RAINER – Rainer Maria Rilke, German poet: “Truly to sing, that is a different breath.”
10 G(EC,K)O – Terrific clue, the surface bringing to mind Gordon “Lunch is for wimps” Gekko in Oliver Stone’s Wall Street. The City is ‘EC’, postal area of the financial City of London, and the ‘k’ is the last letter of “bank”.
11 SEE,KING – boom, boom!
12 TI TA,NI,A – my last in. ‘Busy’ is AT IT reversed. The province is Northern Ireland.
13 UNCLE – this has to be the solution, but I can’t really explain the “Pop in here”. Maybe a pawnbroker reference. Offers, anyone? Thanks to all below for explaining that to pop can mean to pawn.
15 RELIEF MAP – slightly tortured reference to the Relief of Mafeking.
17 SPAR,TAC,US – the ‘on’ is a bit of a liberty
19 SUS,HI
20 CUTI(C,L)E
22 SPAR,KLE – elk+raps reversed
25 M(ORATOR)IA – aim reversed around the speaker
27 TAY – I’m assuming this is Oirish ‘tea’. Purists, the politically correct, and sensitive souls from the Emerald Isle may want to throw things. I’ll quietly admit I found it rather funny.
28 S,CREW,D(R)IVER

Down
2 SA(B)LE
3 CYAN,IDE
4 PANEGYRI,C – (Repaying)* + the first letter of ‘collected’
5 T(A)ROT
6 LEG,A,TEE
7 NICKNAMES – (I,snack,men)*
8 THOMAS PAINE – (to name a ship)*
14 CH(ANT)ILLY
18 TAC(I)T,US – the US being unserviceable
19 SHATTER – took me a very long time to see the simple anagram of ‘threats’
21 EMMER – Triticum turgidum dicoccon, a forage crop found in ‘SeEM MERcenery’
23 KIR,OV – kir, an aperitif which, when consumed in sufficient quantities, can make a seventeen year old thoroughly unwell (you may recognise the voice of experience here). Wikipedia has a whole section of “Things named after Sergey Kirov”. Some are more equal than others…
26 A,YR

13 comments on “Times Saturday 24,299 (Aug. 8th 2009)”

  1. 13 Ac most definitely UNCLE, perhaps the neatest clue in the puzzle. You are right of course about the pawnproker. You go into uncle to pop something, and pop’s brother is the other alternative. Agree with everything you say about an enjoyable puzzle.
    1. 10:46 for me.

      It could be that I’m missing something obvious but I find 13ac (Pop in here? No, his brother = UNCLE) unsatisfactory. Surely you pop something in uncle’s, not in uncle!? I don’t buy meat in the butcher (or go into the butcher to buy meat), I buy it in the butcher’s (or go into the butcher’s).

  2. 13: Yes, pop=pawn (vb.), though I saw it from “pop shop”=pawn shop, and uncle = pawnbroker. 27: you guessed right about tay

  3. 18 mins. Great blog BTW.
    My reading of 13 is exactly as rosselliot has is. “To pop” = “to pawn” at the pawnshop, run by one who pawns (an “uncle”). Reminds of the Carry On line: “Come with me to the pawnbrokers and kiss me under …”.
    The only obscure bit was EMMER. COD to 28. One good turn deserves another!
  4. For some reason I romped through this and broke 10 minutes for the first time since I stopped giving much consideration to time some 15 years ago. I enjoyed the puzzle but obviously had no problems or hold ups.

    TAY is a proper word from Irish dialect which has cropped up in Mephisto/Azed.

    The pawnbroker as uncle and popping=pawning is preserved in an old song:

    Up and down the City Road
    In and out the Eagle (a pub)
    That’s where all the money goes
    Pop goes the weasel (old word for an iron)

    1. Blog post now annotated re ‘pop’. Thanks to all.

      Jimbo, that rhyme now joins the long list of things I “knew” without understanding in the slightest. Thank you.

    2. Congratulations. I see that Peter B. isn’t owning up to how long he took, but you certainly beat me, and I wasn’t too disappointed with my time (10:46) for an interesting puzzle.
  5. Thanks for taking over for me today, Sotira. I’m hard at work rebuilding the iPlayer storage for the BBC today instead of blogging, but I thought I’d stop by and have a look. I can’t remember my exact time, about 16 minutes I think. A very entertaining puzzle though, which I found pretty tricky in parts. Never heard of EMMER, but the hidden meant it couldn’t be anything else.
    1. You’re welcome. Now I just have to persuade you to build in a back door to get me round the “unavailable overseas due to rights restrictions” thing. Pint and a bag of crisps do it?
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