Times Saturday 24520 (April 24th) – best this year?

Author   linxitPosted on Categories Weekend Cryptic
Solving time – irrelevant. This was one to be savoured like a fine wine rather than gulped down in a couple of swallows. Very tricky and hardly any giveaway clues – I had about three answers in after the first 5 minutes, so I stopped the clock and went off for a coffee, thinking it was just me. Suitably caffeined up I returned to the fray and battled it into submission maybe half an hour later, then spent a further 10 minutes working out all the wordplay intricacies (knowing I’d have to blog the thing). Congratulations to the setter.

Across
1 PROGNOSIS – hidden reversed in “FarSI SONG OR Poem”.
6 MAMBO – MAMBA with O on the end. A bit forced perhaps to make the clue almost identical to 27A, but still one of the easier ones so I’m not going to quibble.
9 ETERNAL – LAN (Local Area Network, a computing term) + RETE (a network of e.g. blood vessels or nerves), reversed.
10 OFFENCE – OF FENCE, the apostrophe indicating the possessive case rather than the missing “i” required by the surface reading.
11 DOWEL – DO WEL(l)
12 NITPICKER – TIN(y) reversed + PICK (plump for) + E.R.
13 OBELI – OB (he died, short for Latin obiit) + E(nglish) + LI (a Chinese unit of distance, about a third of a mile – probably familiar to Scrabble players). The definition refers to the printing characters used to indicate footnotes – † (a dagger) or ‡ (a double dagger).
14 ECHOLALIA – (0 all 1 each)*. I found it very hard to work out exactly what the anagram fodder was, and an unfamiliar word to boot. One of the last ones I got.
17 WOMANISER – RE (on) + SIN (immorality) + A MO (a flash) + W(estern), all reversed. Lothario was originally a seductive character in the 1703 play The Fair Penitent by Nicholas Rowe, which was apparently a popular success for much of the 18th century.
18 NANNY – double definition (butter = goat).
19 LUXURIOUS – L (pound) + USURIOUS (as loan shark), with one of the S’s replaced with X.
22 AISLE – “I’ll”
24 INNYARD – IN N.Y. A RD, a very abbreviated description! I put this in from the definition, and only saw the wordplay after finishing.
25 OPALINE – PAL inside (j)OINE(d). One of the first ones I got, believe it or not. A type of white or opalescent glass.
26 NINTH – double definition. The last hole on the outward part of a round of golf, and a musical interval of an octave and a second.
27 NAKEDNESS – (ends snake)*, a clue that works much better than its almost-twin 6A.

Down
1 PSEUD – S.E. (crossword-blogger shorthand for the bottom right of the grid!) inside PUD.
2 OVERWHELM – HELM (steer) “dogs”, i.e. follows, OVER (past) + W(ide). I had to check that there is indeed a verb “to helm”, but this is a brilliantly misleading clue.
3 NONILLION – NON-ILL (healthy) + 1 + ON (performing). Usually represented as 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 or 1030.
4 SILENCE IS GOLDEN – 1 inside SILENCES (gags) + GOLDEN (or).
5 SHORT SHARP SHOCK – SHORTS + HARP + SHOCK
6 MUFTI – MUF(f) + IT reversed. I only knew the other meaning of civilian dress for someone out of uniform, so this went in just from the wordplay.
7 MINSK – S inside MINK. I thought it was just a Russian city, but since independence in 1991 it’s been the capital of Belarus.
8 OVEN-READY – A.D. inside (everyon(e))*
13 ORWELLIAN – O.R. (ranks) + (A ILL inside NEW, all reversed). Referring to George Orwell’s 1984, which is probably the only one of his books that the adjective is ever applied to.
15 LEND A HAND – END + AHA (I’m surprised) inside LAND. Definition is “Muck in”, which I mention as it’s possibly Brit-only slang.
16 LANDSLIDE – double definition, the first slightly cryptic.
20 XENON – NONE + X reversed. One of the noble or inert gases, although it can form compounds with fluorine and/or oxygen (very dangerous and explosive compounds).
21 ROACH – (rep)ROACH.
23 EVENS – (el)EVEN’S.

17 comments on “Times Saturday 24520 (April 24th) – best this year?”

  1. No question about it as far as I’m concerned. This puzzle is a real tour de force with a collection of absolutely superb clues.

    I must have read 1A half a dozen times before I saw the hidden word. The brilliant construction of 2D with its use of “dogs”. The use of “or” for “golden” at 4D. I could go on and on. It took me three sessions to complete it but I completely agree with Linxit – time is irrelevant

    I think this puzzle should be added to our list of memorable ones. Many thanks setter for a real cracker.

  2. How I did enjoy this even if I had to use what I believe are called “aids” to get echolalia. I agree time not relevant to the pleasure – it was one session of about 40 m then the hunt for 14a. Before that last in were 24 and 3.
  3. I liked this one too, though I wouldn’t know if it’s good enough to enter the hall of fame or not.. I was not too keen on 6ac, feeling that a snake with nothing on the end would be mambao in the absence of any indication of swap or loss of the a. Also the surface is dodgy at best. Otherwise, a fine effort I agree.
    1. Picked it up and put it down several times during the day while hacking at other things about the house. Must now pass on condolences on the passing of Grumpy. It’s always so hard when they go. We’ve had a scare today with Smudge
      (pictured here as a kitten) and had him at the emergency vet’s after he swallowed
      a sewing needle and thread. Too late for endoscopy but there may be some surgery Sunday. Smudge and his brother Lester ( Maine Coon cats) also send their
      condolences.

      Bob in Toronto

  4. This was hugely enjoyable but, surprisingly for me given other comments, of only average difficulty. Fortunately I knew echolalia. My first guess at 3 was gazillion but a few checking letters quickly gave me the correct answer. The hardest, for me, was innyard where it was difficult to make any feasible word from the checked letter pattern.

    I suppose many solvers will have had the same initial experience as me at 6A, getting the hidden word Naked and wondering where the containment indicator was. As Linxit suggests, the correct answer is a bit unsatisfactory since there is no “take away the a and replace it with o” wordplay. Oh, I see that Jerry has just said the same thing.

  5. Agree with all the praise for this puzzle.

    Very hard indeed, 76 mins. Some less common words. For a long time, had not progressed much beyond the SE corner. But I got there in the end.

    Favourite clue PSEUD, also esp liked PROGNOSIS (v well hidden), WOMANISER, NONILLION, SILENCE IS GOLDEN.

  6. I quite agree that this was a great puzzle – very challenging for me and I didn’t finish until well into Sunday, but finishing at all was good enough for me. Thanks to the setter.
    I have often seen comments on this blog about how the puzzle often contains words people have come across, sometimes for the first time, very recently. Well I can go one better because having failed to finish this during the day I was struggling intermittently with it on Saturday evening while watching a recorded episode of QI on the TV which contained this segment. Spooky!
  7. I thought that this was a brilliant crossword: certainly the best this year. I agree with Jimbo: definitely a contender for “Memories”.

    It took me, on and off, nine hours, but finished aidless so very pleased. OVERWHELM and NONILLION superb. Well done setter.

    JamesM

  8. Memories addition done – it was a great puzzle and I don’t think I got it done in “a couple of swallows”. Further comment if I can locate my copy ….
    1. Copy found – no great insights to add – 22:19 to solve, with much more than the usual amount of scribble next to clues, and even letters written on black squares in the grid showing possible answers – something I did routinely in my early days of solving but rarely use now. Didn’t properly understand the golfing part of 26A until reading this, and had “not/illion” scribbled by clue to 3D as my first go.
  9. 22:29 for me. I tackled it as the last of the week’s six puzzles (done in a batch), which turned out to be a bad idea as by the time 15 minutes were up I had fewer than half the answers in place. However, I suddenly found the setter’s wavelength, and the rest came out slowly but more surely.

    I agree with everyone else – an exceptionally fine puzzle, crammed with original and ingenious clues.

  10. 90 minutes with aids employed after 60 and no time left to work out all of the clues. I think 1a was my last in, only solved when all the checkers had been deployed and then deduced from the definition. An absolutely brilliant hidden reversal which almost makes me think of giving up but I know I shall keep coming back for more.
  11. A lovely puzzle indeed. Last in ETERNAL, held up by having NOTILLION (which is another extremely large number) at 3dn .
  12. Agreed a superb puzzle. The looseness at 6ac is more than made up for by its clever link to 27ac.

    Paul S.

  13. I’m no setter, but I wonder if “Having nothing for end of snake dance” would work better for MAMBO.

    I wrote The Beast at the top of this one, which I enjoyed but in the way I enjoyed getting to the end of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason some years ago. (In English.) Finished in several stints, using aids for some after the initial half or so were in. ECHOLALIA in realtively quickly by analogy with glossolalia.

    Particularly liked the two consecutive “musical” clues, which took me back to stuff I once had on vinyl: SILENCE IS GOLDEN and SHORT SHARP SHOCK, spoken by one of the fellows on Dark Side of the Moon.

  14. I don’t think MAMBO is a snake dance. It’s a Cuban dance rhythm, but the snake is MAMBA. The two are sometimes confused, though.

    John in USA

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