Daily Telegraph Cryptic No 25942 – Review
A full analysis by Peter Biddlecombe
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BD Rating – Difficulty *** – Enjoyment ****
An extra enjoyment star as I liked this more than most Saturday puzzles. The grid is sound with one small reservation – the NW and SE corners are a bit isolated, and swapping the lengths of 12 and 13 (and of course 22 and 23) would fix this. There are no placename answers, just a couple of islands in wordplay. There are still arbitrary people – three ladies (Anne, Crystal, Lizzie) and one gent (Gus). There are a few tricky answer words, including 6D and 11A, so their crossing might be a tricky area. Surface meanings are mostly good, and I only found four cases of “surface padding”. Curiously, all the 3-letter answers have a U in the middle, and none of them have to – I don’t know whether this is significant.
| Across | |
|---|---|
| 1 | Hard and fast about Indian (6) |
| APACHE = Indian – H=hard in APACE=fast. “and” is surface padding, strictly. | |
| 4 | Bit of a bloomer from station workers (6) |
| STAMEN – charade of STA.=Station.,MEN=workers. Bloomer=flower in the cryptic reading, not the mistake of the surface meaning. | |
| 8 | Silent member of the family (3) |
| MUM – 2 definitions | |
| 10 | Our coat camouflaged bird (7) |
| TOURACO – anag. of (our coat). The T(o)uraco is an African bird. | |
| 11 | Woman taking cover for worm (7) |
| ANNELID – a segmented worm. ANNE=woman,LID=cover. | |
| 12 | Carried to do some haymaking (5) |
| TOTED = carried. Subtle wordplay here: “to ted” is to dry (hay) in the sun | |
| 13 | Clamour from unit during the prying (9) |
| NOISINESS = clamour. Unit=1=I, inside NOSINESS = (the) prying. “during” is definitely surface padding, and “the {noun}” for {noun synonym} is a bit iffy | |
| 14 | Lady Georgia, with vitality forecasting (7-6) |
| CRYSTAL GAZING – Lady=Crystal,Georgia=GA,vitality=ZING. Worked out backwards from “must be something GAZING”, worked out in turn from checking letters. | |
| 17 | Small objects that have fragmented? (4,3,6) |
| BITS AND PIECES – gentle CD [thanks yet again, Falcon!] | |
| 22 | One litchi cultivated from the Stone Age (9) |
| NEOLITHIC = “from the Stone Age”, pretty obvious anagram of the (one litchi) that would be a bit mouldy by now. | |
| 23 | Sauce bottle (5) |
| NERVE – 2 defs. Probably an old chestnut, but a good one. | |
| 24 | His wail could have been in Bantu (7) |
| SWAHILI – anag. of (his wail). Swahili is a member of the Bantu language family so the meaning is clear, but the surface fails if you know too much – there’s no individual language with this name, so it reads like “His wail could have been in Indo-European”. | |
| 25 | Old coat I replaced with articles from abroad (7) |
| EXOTICA = things from abroad. EX- = old,anag. of “coat I”. | |
| 26 | Regularly insult crazy person (3) |
| NUT from iNsUlT | |
| 27 | Nude startling an unfortunate governess (6) |
| DUENNA – a governess and chaperone for a girl in a costume drama – Sophie in Der Rosenkavalier has one. Double anagram, of “nude” then “an”. Nicely done surface and novel wordplay – good work. | |
| 28 | One with foresight, Edward, to become very angry (3,3) |
| SEE RED = seer,Ed | |
| Down | |
| 1 | Canny having statue repaired (6) |
| ASTUTE – anag. of statue | |
| 2 | One fat neighbour (7) |
| ABUTTER = neighbour (in legal language), though easy to work out. A=one,BUTTER=fat. Nicely done. | |
| 3 | Tried drove, say (5) |
| HEARD = “herd” = drove (verb) | |
| 5 | Can diminutive female find old car? (3,6) |
| TIN LIZZIE = old car. Can=TIN,dimin. female = LIZZIE. | |
| 6 | One in Germany went to island first for plant (7) |
| MULLEIN – a plant. Charade of MULL=Island,EIN=One in Germany. “went to” is surface padding which spoils this one for me. | |
| 7 | Completely out of medicine when covered with swellings (6) |
| NODOSE = “covered with swellings” = “no dose”. | |
| 8 | Does it link the peaks? (8,5) |
| MOUNTAIN CHAIN – gentle CD | |
| 9 | Earning a lot of money shipbuilding? (6,1,6) |
| MAKING A PACKET – trickier CD needing you to remember packet as in the good old Isle of Man Steam Packet Company | |
| 14 | Island without a young animal (3) |
| CUB from Cub(a). | |
| 15 | Having this one would doubt another’s honesty (9) |
| SUSPICION – very very gentle CD – millimetres away from a plain def. | |
| 16 | Man only partly disgusted (3) |
| GUS – hidden word | |
| 18 | Is nothing after the usual time put into quarantine? (7) |
| ISOLATE – charade of “IS,O,LATE” – a slight variation on the usual “I SO LATE”. | |
| 19 | Comparatively near start of time (7) |
| EARLIER – another gentle CD | |
| 20 | Fresh mint (6) |
| UNUSED – 2 definitions – mint as in coins, stamps, etc. | |
| 21 | Hinder progress of Romeo, Greek character, on the road (6) |
| RETARD – R=Romeo,ETA=Greek character,RD=road (see ‘Phonetic Alphabets’ and ‘Greek Alphabet’ in the Mine) | |
| 23 | She cried, ‘New one on order!’ (5) |
| NIOBE – a lady in Greek myth who turned into tearful stone on the death of her daughters and sons. Wikipedia has the full story. A stock xwd character when they run out of clues for No-OnE and NoOsE. | |