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DT 30629 (Hints)

by crypticsue  

Daily Telegraph Cryptic No 30629 (Hints)

The Saturday Crossword Club (hosted by crypticsue)

+ – + – + – + – + – + – + – +

The first day of meteorological summer is one of those cloudy grey days requiring extra layers of clothing and the turning back on of the central heating.  A good day for staying indoors and solving crosswords.  You will have to wait and see my full review of this Saturday Prize Puzzle to see exactly what I thought about it; I await with interest the comments from some of our regulars!

Most of the terms used in these hints are explained in the Glossary and examples are available by clicking on the entry under “See also”. Where the hint describes a construct as “usual” this means that more help can be found in The Usual Suspects, which gives a number of the elements commonly used in the wordplay. Another useful page is Wolves in Sheep’s Clothing, which features words with meanings that are not always immediately obvious.

A full review of this puzzle will be published after the closing date for submissions.

Across

10a/1a Enjoyably nostalgic experience: eruption of Vesuvius? (5,4,3,4)
This expression referring to an enjoyably nostalgic experience could describe the eruption of Vesuvius in AD 79

14a         Spend penny – allowed to go in river? (7)
The abbreviation for Penny and a synonym for allowed inserted into a river popular with crossword setters

15a         Worried singer Jones grabbing weapon (7)
The forename of a Welsh singer ‘grabbing’ a weapon

18a         Plain in Peru oddly blowy do they say? (7)
The odd letters of PeRu and a homophone (do they say) of a synonym for blowy

20a         One’s seen in Modi’s land, an Asian nation (9)
ONES (from the clue) inserted into the land where Modi is the Prime Minister

21a/24a Instrument transformed satellite upgrade (5,5,6)
An instrument I’d never heard of is an anagram (transformed) of SATELLITE UPGRADE

Down

1d           Film enemy keeping old gun elevated (7)
An enemy into which is inserted (keeping) the abbreviation for Old and a reversed (elevated) (chiefly American) slang word for a type of gun

7d           Force that pulls in giant boost rocked downhill racer (11)
The symbol for the force  that attracts (pulls) a body to the centre of the earth inserted into an anagram (rocked) of GIANT BOOST

9d           Tousled beauty had fun avoiding Romeo (11)
An informal attractive or good-looking person (beauty) and made merry in a noisy manner (had fun) without (avoiding) the letter represented by Romeo in the NATO Phonetic Alphabet

13d         Something from poissonnier, no Moselle ordered (5,4)
If you know that a French person would go to a poissonnier for a piece of fish, the anagram (ordered) of NO MOSELLE should resolve itself fairly easily

17d         Fibbed about keeping small Post Office sack (7)
Sack in the sense of plunder – a reversal (about) of a synonym for fibbed ‘keeping’ the abbreviations for Small and the Post Office

21d         Suggest one opens the letters (5)
The Roman numeral for one ‘opens’ a delivery of letters 

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The Quick Crossword pun:    CRITTER + SIGHS    = CRITICISE

 

70 comments on “DT 30629 (Hints)”

  1. Solid if unexceptional Saturday fare, not overly demanding despite the irritating grid-scatter-gun approach of 1a/10a & 21a/24a; the odd familiar friend but a decent variety of clue types. COTD 9d with runner-up 4d. Many thanks to the setter and Sue.

    1.5* / 3*

  2. I imagine Curates Egg is a phrase that will be used a lot today, I have been battling a head cold so I had several goes at this during the night, between bouts of coughing and sneezing The 21/24a combo amused me the most I am surprised you hadn’t heard of this Sue David Gilmour is a dab hand

    PS your slip is showing in the Quickie Pun

  3. 2*/3.5*. This was a pleasant SPP which was an interesting mixture of cryptic clues and GK.

    Many thanks to the setter and to CS.

  4. A bit of a mixed bag for me.
    A few strange surfaces, and as Mustafa says above, the 1/10 and 21/24 linked clues were irritating.
    I must admit I had to google Modi, and I couldn’t be bothered to work out the correct spelling of 5d.
    I did like 21d though.
    Thanks to the setter and to CS.

  5. A tale of the two combo clues for me. Normally they make for a tougher solve, but the 10/1a clue was disappointingly easy and the first thing I banged in. But as I worked my way through I could not work out the 21/24a combo, which was last in. Like Sue I’d never heard of it and had to google it to convince myself of the answer. Otherwise a straightforward one cuppa for me. 4d and 14a were my favourite clues.
    Thanks to Sue for the blog and the setter for cheering up a miserable Saturday 😓

  6. Enjoyable and generally straightforward puzzle but I’m still struggling to parse 4d. I know what it must be but can’t quite understand how the first 2 words of the clue work?
    Thanks to the setter and Cryptic Sue!!

    1. If you have the correct answer to 4d, try and split it into 2 words. Then see how that might relate to the first word/letter of the clue.

      1. Hmm… yes I thought maybe that was it, but felt a bit weak. Anyway thanks for clarifying!! 👍

            1. Hi Sue!
              I’ve never really thought about rating crosswords before (unless it has had very annoying clues lol).
              I generally liked it: – I liked the volcano clue but had never heard the first word of 21/24a so did a Google for that.
              The only one that seemed off was 4d, so obviously I came to this blog. Not in the hints, but a nice corroborating comment from Heather made me feel better (despite it also being listed as someone else’s favourite clue).
              Thanks for hosting!

      2. Thank you. It was driving me nuts. The last one for me. The obvious answer, but WHY??? Now I see.

  7. For me a super puzzle that was just about within my capabilities with some v clever clues such as 4d and 7/1a. Lots of lovely anagrams to get one started and no need to know any ancient history.
    Thx to all
    ****/******

  8. Spot on for a Saturday: some nice anagrams, a few multi-worders (I don’t understand why people get irritated with ones that go across a couple of clues) and plenty of nice surfaces.

    I too have never heard of the instrument.

    My podium is the outstanding 7d (LOI), 9d and 17d.

    Many thanks to the setter and CS.

    2*/4*

    1. Hi Tom
      I can’t speak for others, but my personal dislike of linked clues is that they are almost always never next to each other in the grid. The 1a/10a combo was actually 10a/1a… I had to write the enumeration 5,4,3,4 on a separate sheet of paper and then fill in the blanks… I always think of sudoku when I see such clues.

      1. Interesting.

        I actually quite like them, even if it’s the higher number first (10a/1a), because, more often than not, they are monster anagrams which are a hoot. I normally put 10 in an outer circle and the remaining in an inner one.

        Solving these bad boys is such a huge mental challenge that multi-worders splattered all over the grid is the least of my worries.

        1. For anagrams I always put the consonants above the vowels, but I’ve never heard of anyone else doing that.

          1. I do that, though sometimes I use the circle method if it’s a very long anagram. I write my consonants in a line, vowels under, then look for prefixes and suffixes.

          2. I take the letters and jumble them up, but not in a circle. Otherwise I just keep seeing the given word(s). Sometimes this results in instant recognition.

          3. The ‘consonants over vowels’ approach is intriguing. I must try it.

            I’ve just started a competition, for the rest of the year, with my 20 something daughter where we have a maximum of 20 secs to spot the nine letter circular anagram in the puzzle section.

            It’s 3 all at the moment.

            We usually get it in a couple of seconds but some take a bit longer.

            I think she’s naturally better but my knowledge of words keeps me in the game. Recent ones include leviathan and bioweapon were out of her reach.

            Great fun.

            1. Interesting. I’m always amazed that the Countdown conundrum (a 9-letter anagram, for those who haven’t seen it) is so often solved within a couple of seconds. How do you spot these things so quickly?!

              I’ve only ever managed to solve the conundrum twice, in watching a few thousand episodes — and one of those was age 16, spotting ‘prejudice’ when watching that day’s Countdown straight after school, where our final lesson of the day had been RE, studying prejudice.

              2. Funnily enough, prejudice was one of this week’s answers.

                It is amazing how the mind works: very often, I see it immediately.

                If I don’t, I then look for endings, eg ent, ant, ing, ed, cial, tial, ic, ally etc

                Then I look for compound words.

                It does explain why you hate anagrams in crosswords so much.

                1. I don’t hate anagrams — many of them are very witty (and I try not to hate anything). I just find them difficult, so generally only solve them near the end once there’s plenty of crossing letters.

                  So I’m very happy for crosswords to contain anagrams; my objection is merely to crosswords being described as easy because they are anagram-heavy, as though it’s some kind of universal truth that anagrams are the easiest types of clues for every solver.

                  A 9-letter anagram has over 300,000 ways of arranging its 9 letters. For you to pick the correct arrangement straight away is indeed amazing!

                  (I don’t remember ‘prejudice’ cropping up again in a recently, though, and nor does it seem to be in this list of episodes. The most recent ‘prejudice’ I can find is Episode 7270 from 2020; the episode I remember from my childhood turns out to be number 1208, when I was actually 14.)

                  1. Hi Smylers

                    Prejudice was the answer to one of The Telegraph’s panagrams this week (apologies for the confusion).

                    Replace ‘hate’ with ‘difficult’.

                    1. Ah, that makes sense. Maybe I would’ve got that one then … and I missed it!

          4. I just write the letters in a line if the answer doesn’t leap out at me. I then put dashes beneath the letters corresponding to the answer. I then enter the letters I know and work the rest out mentally.

            1. Marvellous.

              There are many ways to skin a cat and all that caper.

  9. I thought this was fairly straightforward for a SPP and my remained relatively unscratched. Seemed to be a couple of themes going on – music and flatlands/wetlands. COTD for me was 7a, possibly because of the juxtaposition of the Bolshie leader with Rupert Murdoch’s erstwhile company. Unlikely bedfellows!

  10. An nice Saturday morning fun run was hijacked in the SE by the 21/24a combination which held out till last – never heard of one although I gather it’s even used by the Salvation Army! The 1d gun is also a new one on me. Fav 4d with 19a running up otherwise plenty of crafty clues to enjoy. Thank you setter for the fun and CS for hinting.

  11. Tricky in places, I thought but it came together in the end. No COTD – just happy to finish and have another stab at The Mythical.

    Thank you, setter for the guzzle. Many thanks, CS for the hints.

    Happy Birthday, Shropshire Lad!

  12. For some reason, I made quite heavy weather of this one. With hindsight, I can’t really see why – it was only the instrument that I didn’t know. Biggest smiles came from the nostalgic experience, the fitting room drama and the expert.

    Thanks to our setter – NYDK? and to CS for the hints. Sorry, I think we’ve poached your nice weather today!

  13. I found this very amenable, with plenty of well-written clues. The winner in the across for me is 23, whilst for the downs I’ll plump for 9. Of the two, 9D gets the laurels. I’d like to comment on the grid too, which seems very fair to me, having no ‘unches’ either at the start or end of words, which I’d imagine makes things a lot easier for solvers.

    As for the split entries, again these for me provide an opportunity rather than a distraction, as they open up disparate areas of the grid. Doesn’t that also make solving easier? There is an opposite camp of course, and I note from my other solverly outings that The Times does not allow such artifice!

    So, for me a fine puzzle. Thanks to CS for her usual excellent hints.

  14. Like Jane, for some reason I made this seem harder than it was, probably looking for things that weren’t there. In retrospect, there was nothing obscure or untoward, so I will put it down to experience. Vesuvius was my favourite.

    Thanks to our Saturday setter and Sue.

  15. I will ‘pick up’ on SJB’s ‘imagination’ – yes, a curate’s egg which gave me a few problems but I don’t think I was firing on all cylinders.

    Candidates for favourite – 10a/1a (I prefer compound clues that are not anagrams), 9d, and 21d – and the winner is 9d.

    I consider that I am reckless enough to put my Toonie on this being a NYDK production so thanks to him, or whomsoever if it is not he, and thanks to CS.

    1. I certainly wasn’t firing all cylinders – how can a nose that is running like a tap be permanently blocked?
      I match your toonie with half a crown NYDK is a good bet

      1. Try Oil of Olbas – clears the tubes immediately! Don’t get it near your eyes though. A drop on the pillow or handkerchief will help you through the night / if you are not asleep already!

        1. I wish but I have just finished tomorrow’s toughie so I have some Olbas oil and will do as instructed and be raring to go in the morning to write the blog

  16. Happily, being a long time pal of BJ Cole, one of the clues that seemed to give much trouble to others this morning chimed like a 21a and 24a to me. However, I did struggle over to the east where 4d and 9d in particular caused me much brain swirling.
    It was an enjoyable guzzle to solve, though.
    Not having anything to complain about I think I will write a strongly worded letter to Mr Lancaster in advance of the next matter that irks me, so that he may refer to it, when the time comes. I shall, as ever, copy in the Archbishop Of Canterbury, Mr Sunak, and Taylor Swift.
    As always, I shall write in block capitals, using the finest green ink. For addressing the envelope I use letters and numbers cut out from the Daily Star newspaper.

    Thanks to the setter and Super Sue

  17. Difficult to get started with the split clues but eventually got there; thank you setter and CS

  18. For me, I found this trickier than a normal Saturday puzzle offering this week. NE took almost as long as the rest of the grid.

    2.5*/3.5*

    Favourites 10/1a, 11a, 12a, 3d & 13d — with winner 10/1a with 11a close runner up.
    Smiles from 22a, 3d & 12a

    Thanks to setter & CS for blog/hints

  19. I made heavy weather of this with some answers such as 22a and 21/24a needing e confirmation. Maybe it’s me and my mood today, but I felt this lacked some sparkle. No real favourite today but thanks to compiler and CS for the hints.

  20. A tricky guzzle, with the additional difficulty of two multi word clues, but immensely satisfying to work out and complete. Honours are divided for me between the cryptic geological clue at 10a/1a and tge instrument at 21a/24, unknown to me but gettable fromthe delightful anagram. 7d was another good anaagram. Thanks to the setter (NYD?) for a most enjoyable tuasle and to CS for tge hints

  21. I’m waaay too stooopid to be doing these crosswords! I’m ashamed to admit what I did; I was trying to fit the 1a/10a clue by putting the 1a first, ergo, nothing fit with all the down clues which I’d solved. I was so frustrated, having solved it all except for that. Halfwit doesn’t begin to describe it. Apart from that, enjoyable with some rather strange synonyms. I wonder what happened to the Welsh singer? Must google. I still have his CDs which I bought in Lampeter, “voice of an angel” the shopkeeper assured me!
    Thank you setter, you deserve better than I for a solver! Thank you CS, for your hints and tips.

    2. As you have doubtless discovered Merusa the Welsh Singer is still very much around and doing things Like BBC TV Songs of Praise and a Classic FM programme.

  22. Found this tough in places, I knew the instrument in 21/24a but not with the first word, although it was obvious what it was. With 14a I had toilets in mind so confused myself for a while. Thanks to all.

  23. I’m in the Curate’s Egg club today, definitely a mixed bag of friendly and tricky clues. And I too could not be bothered with spelling 5d. Did figure out the instrument with Peter’s help. COTD 15a simply because I like his singing and used to enjoy watching him on Escape to the Country. Thanks to setter and CS.

  24. This has taken me a long time but it doesn’t matter.
    I always find clues difficult when they’re all over the place – not sure how much I enjoyed this one.
    I liked 11 and 15a ( once I’d realised I’d got the right Welsh singer) and 3 and 4d.
    With thanks to today’s setter for the crossword and specially with the effort taken from CS.
    Lovely to see Jim and Happy birthday to him from me! :smile:

  25. Hi all. It was an NYDK job today. I hope you had some fun with it. Thanks for yr comments, and Sue for the hints.

    Cheers
    vaN DYcK

    1. Oops my half crown was too late

      vaN DYcK! – a new nickname or are you sporting a goatee?

    4. Very late today having been to Cambridge. Tried to fit the guzzle into getting dinner etc and struggled a bit but got there in the end. Some nice anagrams, thanks for the workout. I’ve just realised you could be Not Your Daughters Knickers instead of Jeans – but perhaps thats a bit rude. 🤭

  26. Personally do not like
    Split clues.
    Thought 10 and 1a a
    Bit off.
    Otherwise, enjoyably
    Difficult for a SPP.
    Many thanks NYDK
    And CS

      1. Very late today having been to Cambridge. Tried to fit the guzzle into getting dinner etc and struggled a bit but got there in the end. Some nice anagrams, thanks for the workout. I’ve just realised you could be Not Your Daughters Knickers instead of Jeans – but perhaps thats a bit rude. 🤭

        1. And that comment should be under NYDJ’s note. It’s too late I should be in bed!

  28. A good challenge today after a busy few days so wasn’t sure the brain cells were firing on all cylinders! With help on 3 clues – thank you – got there in the end. COD 10/1 across – made me laugh. 19D was my bete noir.

  29. Too busy today to do this justice and made a couple of spelling errors. Lots of great clues and I particularly enjoyed the multi word ones and the anagrams. I still don’t know if the answer I have for 4d is correct.

    Many thanks to NYDK and to CS for the hints

  30. Thanks Sue for the clues – I didn’t know the instrument but worked it out. I thought it was quite tricky for a SPP but satisfying to complete.

  31. Very slow start – just a few random words after several minutes. Then went out to dinner with the missus and had a glass of wine – came back and basically wrote in all the remaining clues! Strange how my mind works (or more frequently these days, doesn’t!). Thanks to NYDK for the mental workout and to CS for the mercifully unneeded clues.

  32. Thank you to NYDK for an enjoyable puzzle, and to early commenters who identified it as being NYDK’s, which inspired me to want to solve it, putting up with slow and flaky train wi-fi on our journey home from the Hay Festival, then finishing it once the children were in bed and the first load of washing was in the machine.

    My favourites were 4d (‘E’) and 6d (‘Trial’). I didn’t know the 17d answer word, and had (again) forgotten that meaning of ‘sack’ — but the wordplay clearly led to the answer and it seems like a word. Or maybe I did know it, but thought it meant something different; it sounds like it should be the opposite of something!

  34. Bit late coming to this but it fairly rattled in. Only problem, not able to submit it from the DT app. Oh well…

  35. 4d…… Aaaaarghh!!

    The rest was a very pleasant challenge and gave me an extended excuse for not doing what I should 😊

    1. You’ve used your full name rather than just your forename. Both will work from now on

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