Sunday Telegraph Cryptic No 2528 – Hints
Hints and tips by Big Dave
+ – + – + – + – + – + – + – +
Don’t forget that you can give your assessment of the puzzle. Five stars if you thought it was great, one if you hated it, four, three or two if it was somewhere in between.
As is usual for the weekend prize crosswords, I will select a few of the better clues and provide hints for them.
Peter Biddlecombe’s full review of this puzzle will be published at 12.00 on Friday, 26th March.
Across
1a Dish son removed from middle of dangerous location (6)
Betty’s speciality dish in Corrie is found by removing the S(on) from a dangerous location
10a Is lying, for crowned head, so difficult? (6)
King Henry – Henry The Fourth, Part II
Canst thou, O partial sleep, give thy repose
To the wet sea-boy in an hour so rude,
And in the calmest and most stillest night,
With all appliances and means to boot,
Deny it to a king? Then happy low, lie down!
______ lies the head that wears a crown.
13a It allows us to make capital transfers between banks (6,6)
From one bank of the Thames to the other!
25a Runs into a charlatan in religious community (6)
Put R(uns) into A charlatan, as in a fake or a fraud, to get a Hindu religious community (or a place of retreat for that community)
Down
1d Egghead’s excited, standing on summit (8)
This egghead is a charade of excited (on drugs, maybe) and the summit, or edge, of a hill
17d Keen to get insight, finally found in prophetic Eastern work (7)
A word meaning keen, as in eager or impatient, is created by putting the last letter of insighT inside an ancient Chinese text used to interpret a system of divination, consisting of a set of symbols, 8 trigrams and 64 hexagrams (a prophetic Eastern work)
21d What, when you analyse it, is central to bathhouse? (5)
You could not bathe in the bathhouse without it (and it’s not the pretty girls!)
If you need further help then please ask and I will see what I can do.
Please don’t put whole or partial answers in your comment, else they may be censored!
At first I thought I would not be able to do todays but did complete in a good time for me, a few tricky spots but didn’t use the blog at 20a i went to put in River Island only to fin it didn’t fit! made a few errors like that today, also thought 13a, ah bridging loan!! lots of water about today! I usually mistake flower for the petal variety so today decided they were all going to be the wet type, mistake!!!liked 7d & 9d, a few things I’d never heard of e.g. 25a, part of 17d, 10a
a fairly tough but doable, enjoyable puzzle I think, come on fellow CC you can do it
Although I got 21d straight away, I do not understand the word play, is it just straightforward and not cryptic?
mary
Take the 3 central letters of bathhouse and see what molecular structure you get.
It’s an interesting variation on HIJKLMNO
Oh yes. so clever, would you believe i wrote those letters down, with the molecular name next to it and still didn’t see it!! thanks Gazza, like the HIJKLMNO too Dave
Has anybody seen bathhouse used like this before (for the same answer)? Its a new one on me, and worth 5*’s in itself!
I haven’t, and I’ve been trying to think of other words which would serve the same purpose (withhold?). I agree it’s a 5* puzzle (the only pity is that we only get about about a quarter of the page views that we get for the Saturday puzzle).
A bit of experimentation turned up
fish hooks
washhouse
high horse
youth hostel
British Honduras
This is fun!
Growth hormone
withhold
French horn
and all their plurals
Guess who is sitting here writing a long a very tedious report?
How about the wonderful Kenneth Horne. positively my last offering – I have to get my report finished.
lunch hour
rush hour
heigh-ho!
Extra points awarded when the three letters are in the middle i.e. the same number of letters on each side!
Gazza,
Agreed. Sun, Tue, Fri are certainly the + days. 21d should become a classic.
17d I would not have got in a million dynasties, Chinese or otherwise so that is one to go in the memory bank.
10a I loved that little snippet from Hal4/2 I like to think of us CC members as ‘we few, we happy few, we band of brothers(and sisters) for he/she who finisheth this puzzle shall be my bro/sis and them that don’t shall deem themselves acursed they could not.
That’s enough Nubian, we get the drift.
Just had a nice long bike ride in the glorious sunshine. I found a bank where the wild thyme grows, were oxlip and nodding…oh don’t start me off again.
Didn’t think you were in the CC, Nubian. You usually finish them, and quite easily too is the impression I got, so I thought you were one of the elite! I still don’t even understand 17d …
Mary promised to keep a desk for me in the corner, I sneak in and out now and again. 17d remains a mystery for me too.
Very enjoyable puzzle this Sunday!
Good mix of anagrams, homophones but also some good clues on word play.
1a was no trouble for me as my late wife was a Lancashire Lass!
Many good ones e.g.: 10a, 11a, 13a, 21a, 23a & 25a. Then 6d, 17d 19d & 21d.
Greetigs to all on this equinoctial day – wonderful weather here in NL.
Don’t forget to put the clocks forward next Sunday!
managed to finish (i think!) but can someone explain how 2d works please? I’m assuming *-*-*. Thanks. Ian
Ian
2d Crossing river with adverse effect for fish.
I’ve edited your comment to remove the letters you gave (but they were correct!)
You want a word meaning to fish. It’s made by putting the abbreviation for river inside an adverse effect (something that takes a heavy ____).
Finished at last…But cannot understand how setter arrived at answer to 6d !
Ann
6d. Banquet taken by knight, say, one bite at a time (9)
The definition is one bite at a time, Put a synonym for banquet after a man (knight, for example) seen on a board.
Hi Ann – knight is a ***** on the chessboard gives you first half of answer, banquet is taken by knight i.e. word for banquet follows to give you something eaten or taken bit by bit, hope that helps?
ann, 2nd syllable of answer relates to 1st word of clue. 1st syllable of answer is the knight, say, when thinking of a certain board game. The whole means bit by bit. Ian
ta GAZZA. Hadn’t thought of that sense of adverse effect. Easy once you see it as always.
Came to this late due to a golfing away day.
Very enjoyable from Virgilius today.
I enjoyed 21d, 24a and 3d
thanks to BD for the review and illustrations!
I was particularly pleased to find an actual recipe for 1a.
Enjoyed this a lot.
Do we know who was the setter?
Sunday’s setter is Brian Greer aka Virgilius in the Independent and Brendan in the Guardian
Another fun puzzle – hadn’t come across “pronounced” as a homophone indicator before (5d). Shocked to find I had come across 25a. Many thanks for the hints.
Just got 21a unfilled – any help appreciated! I think I have 23a across right, but no idea why … !
21a is a football team who play at Upton Park…
21a London team at first briefly hit (4)
This is an abbreviation of a London football team
23a Run or short walk with dog (4,4)
The definition is the kind of running for which Italian troops are famous – it’s a charade of a short walk (around the block, maybe) and to dog or follow
Thanks. Now got 21a having googled Upton Park (as I have no idea which team plays there, sad isn’t it?). 23a was correct and now I know why!
Re 23a the definition is run, so another word for a walk with a dog could be….
just getting started on this one, please could someone explain 17d to me? I am utterly adrift.
carty
BD has given a hint to 17d above. Googling some of the terms in that hint could be advantageous!
Sorry Gazza – we must have been typing at the same time!
The Chinese use this to tell the future (two words) = “prophetic Eastern work”
Keen to get insight, finally = ignore the surface reading and the comma. ” Insight finally” is “T”. ” Keen to get” means you shove it into the answer to the part of the clue above.
Sorry I can’t help more.
Shrike said ‘I am utterly adrift’ on 17d, as am I. I assume it is why I scratch, but I have absolutely no idea about the trigrams.hexagrams or the ‘ a prophetic Eastern work’. Can I be enlightened please?
Geoff
It’s very difficult to give any more hints about the title of this eastern work without spelling out the actual name. Your scratching reference is correct, so put a space where the T is and look up what you now have on Google.
a little more thought and the answer appeared in my head! Thanks for the pointers. All finished now. Good set of clues that really had me thinking. My favorite being 14d.
Thanks Gazza. Done that and still none the wiser; will wait until Friday and hope PB explains it for me!
Geoff
Split your answer as (1,1,5) and drop the second letter (the T from insighT). This leaves (1,5) which is the “prophetic Eastern work” which you can now search for in google.
Chambers defines this as “an ancient Chinese system of divination, consisting of a set of symbols, 8 trigrams and 64 hexagrams, and the text used to interpret them”
A nice satisfying puzzle, mainly straightforward, but a few to think about. Monday, and Sunday done… now to try Saturday’s; hope it’s a good one!
This is my first ever attempt at the ST crossword and it has been hard going! Enjoying it immensley and your hints have been invaluable. But ….. can anybody give a little extra assistance with 5d please.
Hi Laura – welcome to the blog.
5d. Bound to believe pronouncement (7)
You want a word that means bound or tied up, which also sounds like (pronouncement) a verb meaning to believe or have confidence in.
Brilliant. Thank you for that. I have finished my first ever ST cryptic crossword and it has only taken me 5 days of hard slog. Completely worth it though.