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I got a couple of clues early on but it took me ages to get really going. I managed to finish it, eventually, but this was the toughest I have tackled for a while; at least, I found it tough.

I had SCIPIO for the "Old general" but I must be having a blind spot as I can't understand the subsidiary indication. And I am not totally comfortable with STIR but never mind.

My one objection to the Saturday Times is that it often uses what I could would call "obscure" words as solutions, such as ONLINER, which I have no doubt is an acceptable word (took me a while to fathom this one) and IVIED which is a word I doubt I have ever used. Still, I guess that is all part and parcel of crossword puzzles. I certainly prefer a challenge to one that is easy.

Stir also called the cooler = prison
also stir means to beat

Skip= pass over
Sounds like skip
+ IO. ( one of the moons)

Correction. Scip sounds like skp

Fat fingers causing problems here

Thanks for trying to clarify for me, jazzgirl.

I had made the prison connection but wasn't totally convinced. I think of "stir" in the prison context as being a synonym for "porridge" and that in turn is a synonym for "serving time in prison" (i.e. doing porridge) as opposed to a noun meaning a prison. I know that the cooler is a prison (I remember Steve McQueen's character in the Great Escape was Hilts, the Cooler King as he was always been confined in solitary with his baseball glove and ball) but was struggling to accept that "cooler" was a synonym for "stir" in the strictest sense. Probably just me as I am not getting much right today.

I still don't get the "over the moon" part in Scipio, though. I must be slow today.

I' ll have another go

Scip io

Skip (pass over) heard as scip
Io. (Moon)

Also from Webster's online dictionary:


Definition of STIR

slang
: prison

IO
One of the Galilean moons of Jupiter

Thanks, Jazzgirl. I didn't realise that IO was one of the moons of Jupiter.