A pleasant surprise for me to see a Qaos puzzle today: not too hard but not a walkover either.
And of course we have a theme, with some of the works of the BAROQUE composer George Frideric HANDEL, who is homophonically hiding in 8d. I can see MESSIAH, the oratorio SOLOMON, which includes the ARRIVAL of the QUEEN of SHEBA, the WATER MUSIC and the MUSIC for the ROYAL FIREWORKS. Thanks to Qaos for the ENTERTAINment.
| Across | ||||||||
| 1 | BAROQUE | Flamboyant bachelor’s game has no limits (7) BA (Bachelor of Arts) + [c]ROQUE[t] |
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| 5 | MESSIAH | Champion footballer I see (7) [Lionel] MESSI + AH (I see!) |
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| 9 | DECREED | Indeed, cornet’s not even ordered (7) Odd letters of CoRnEt “in DEED” |
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| 10 | SOLOMON | Single male working as wise guy (7) SOLO + M + ON (working) |
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| 11 | ECCENTRIC | Clapton covering 10cc? Strangely offbeat (9) (TEN CC)* in ERIC (Clapton, guitarist) |
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| 12 | MURAL | Flower completes Monet’s first artwork (5) M[onet] + URAL (river, flower) |
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| 13 | SHEBA | In Exodus, he battles biblical kingdom (5) Hidden in exoduS HE BAttles |
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| 15 | OVERVIEWS | Surveys struggles to capture wicket after six balls (9) OVER (six balls, in cricket) + W[icket] in VIES |
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| 17 | EXOPLANET | Old, old idea by alien to construct a distant Earth? (9) EX (old) + O[ld] + PLAN (idea) + ET (alien) |
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| 19 | WATER | One serving drinks spills one drink (5) WAITER less I |
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| 22 | ROYAL | Magnificent devoted leader changing sides (5) LOYAL (devoted) with its “leader” changed from L to R |
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| 23 | FIREWORKS | Sacks carrying trade explosives (9) WORK (trade) in FIRES |
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| 25 | IMPACTS | Politician’s function to stop terrorists’ influences (7) MP (politician) + ACT (function) in I[slamic] S[tate] |
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| 26 | ARRIVAL | Start with 1 + (2 x 22) + 4 + 1 + 50 (7) A (1) + R (royal, from 22 across) twice + IV + A (1 again) + L |
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| 27 | RESISTS | Fights against spoilt sisters (7) SISTERS* |
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| 28 | NUDISTS | Fanatical about dressing in some tops? Not these (7) First letters (tops) of Dressing In Some in NUTS |
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| Down | ||||||||
| 1 | BUDGETS | Provides the money to move Times? (7) BUDGE + T[imes]S |
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| 2 | RECYCLE | How to be green on bike (7) RE (about, on) + CYCLE |
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| 3 | QUEEN | Piece of card (5) Double definition – chess piece and face card |
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| 4 | EIDERDOWN | Feathers end up exciting wonder (5,4) Reverse of DIE + WONDER* |
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| 5 | MUSIC | Add up 1 + 100 to get score (5) Reverse of SUM (add) + I + C |
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| 6 | SOLEMN VOW | Very Liberal women labouring to secure victory promise (6,3) SO (very) + L[iberal] + V[ictory] in WOMEN* |
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| 7 | IMMERSE | Great number going for river plunge (7) IMMENSE (great) with N[umber] replaced by R[iver] |
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| 8 | HANDLES | Names on doors? (7) Double definition |
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| 14 | ALL BLACKS | Team having only clubs? (3,6) If you only have clubs in a game of cards then your hand is ALL BLACKS |
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| 16 | ENTERTAIN | Occupy harbour (9) Double definition |
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| 17 | EARLIER | Before retailer collapsed, Tesla quit (7) Anagram of RETAILER less T[esla] (SI unit) |
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| 18 | OLYMPUS | During Monopoly, MP usually makes a mountain (7) Hidden in monopOLY MP Usually |
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| 20 | THRIVES | Very extrovert principal wearing fancy shirt with flourishes (7) V + E[xtrovert] in SHIRT* |
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| 21 | RUSTLES | Makes noise like Brand and Bertrand, say? (7) Homophone of “Russells” (Russell Brand, comedian, and Bertrand Russell, philosopher) |
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| 23 | FUSES | Unites English in trouble (5) E in FUSS |
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| 24 | WIRED | Connected to the internet, tense with excitement (5) Double definition |
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Nice to have something a little more challenging but too much so for a Monday, (2 x 22) stumped me for a bit, I wondered if it should be (2 x 18) or if there was a Rolls Royce model 44, then a very large penny dropped a very long way.
Thanks Andrew and Qaos.
I thought ARRIVAL would be my favourite after sort of getting there, but the RR fails to satisfy. Chambers (2014) gives R as an abbreviation of King and Queen among many others but not royal.
Favourites ended up being EXOPLANET (great clue including the surface), MUSIC and ENTERTAIN.
Didn’t spot the theme. Normal service resumed!! I agree with Blah@1 that this was Monday+. Very enjoyable. Thanks Qaos and Andrew.
Very nice for a Monday. I always like Qaos’s arithmetic clues, so ARRIVAL was among my favourites, as well as EXOPLANET and BAROQUE. I hadn’t parsed NUDISTS (thanks Andrew – by the way, I think “Not” should be underlined) and didn’t see, or look for, the theme.
Thanks Andrew and Qaos.
Thanks, Andrew, for accurately unpicking ECCENTRIC – I’d worked out what it was doing in general terms but hadn’t managed to parse it completely.
Tim C@2, don’t we talk of “the Royals” (here not meaning the wrestling tag-team Bert and Vic of long ago), and aren’t the King (R) and Queen (R) two Royals?
Personal favourite was NUDISTS although there are a number with delightful surfaces;. RECYCLE, MUSIC, SOLEMN VOW, EARLIER among others. I think “Monday+” just about sums this one up.
Thanks to Qaos and Andrew.
ECCENTRIC (my FOI) was lovely, amongst others – many of them mentioned above. I’m another who couldn’t see where the RR came from – didn’t even think of the clue 22! I parsed IMPACTS a bit differently – 1 MP + (passing) ACTS, but I now realise that this leaves the terrorists unaccounted for. I did pick the theme about half way through but it was no help – I could recognise the Handel connections when I had them, but don’t know enough to remember others before solving. Thanks, Qaos and Andrew.
R for Royal follows from RAF, RAC, etc, no?
TimC@2 further to NeilH@5’s spirited defence. The online OED has R. for royal.
Blah@8, I wasn’t convinced by NeilH@5’s argument. You mentioned some “online” thing so I thought I’d better go and check the real version. The OED (full dead tree version) does indeed have R standing for Royal, so again I’ve been misled by Chambers’ omission. I’d understood the wordplay that 22 referred to 22 across but couldn’t convince myself about R with the single dictionary to hand.
Has Chambers failed me again? Someone tell Azed. Next thing you know I’ll have to look at Wiktionary, Merriam-Webster or Urban Dictionary.
What a lovely puzzle for a grim Monday! – right up my street. I saw SOLOMON, SHEBA and MESSIAH early on and chuckled when I got to HANDLES!
I had ticks for ECCENTRIC (a nice change from Morecambe), MURAL, NUDISTS, RECYCLE, SOLEMN VOW, EARLIER and THRIVES. Top favourite was MESSIAH.
Many thanks to Qaos and Andrew.
Very entertaining start to the week.
I was another thinking that 22 should have been 18, doh! R for royal comes up quite a lot in crosswords, and is in Collins as well as the OED. I think OLYMPUS is part of the theme because (from Wiki): “The Arrival of the Queen of Sheba”, which has become famous outside the context of the complete work, and was featured at the 2012 London Olympics opening ceremony.
I ticked BAROQUE, EXOPLANET and NUDISTS.
Thanks Qaos for a bright start to the week and Andrew for elucidating all.
Yes, a very nice puzzle. Never got round to working out the RR in ARRIVAL, and missed the theme of course but a good start to the week. Thanks to Q and A.
Good to have the theme not made obvious from the clues or a multi-referenced gateway clue (8d doesn’t really count) but to gradually reveal itself as the answers were entered. I didn’t have any problems with the R R at 26a, just assuming the R for ROYAL.
Not only did I like the surface for EXOPLANET but also learnt a new word.
Thanks to Qaos and Andrew
Thanks Qaos and Andrew
No theme for me, of course. I didn’t parse ARRIVAL, and also think that the definition is rather loose – I tried a partly parsed INITIAL at first.
QUEEN was a bit weak.
Favourite ECCENTRIC. The idea of Eric Clapton playing 10cc songs is intriguing!
Too many of the clues don’t parse properly (1 across for example, to start me off on the wrong foot) for my admittedly curmudgeonly liking. It feels strangely similar to yesterday’s Everyman, actually.
Anyway, there were a couple of nice ones chucked in, like 7 down, but it did feel like a bit of a lottery.
Lp@15 in what way does 1a not parse properly? Just curious
Thanks for the blog, very much liked the puzzle, not too hard, some pauses for thought, nice surfaces, not a write-in. A Mary Poppins of a puzzle
Andrew, I’m surprised that neither you nor any contributors so far have commented on the cluing of 4 down as (5,4). I’ve known what an eiderdown is and how it’s spelt for some sixty-five years, but I’ve never seen it written as two words!
vicktim @18. I didn’t read the clue as defining an eiderdown, but rather (“Feathers”) as cluing a certain type of feathers – the down from an Eider duck: two words.
Enjoyable but a DNF as I stupidly put fadists at 28A, despite it not quite fitting the clue and being a non-existent word. Then failed on 16D.
Tassie Tim@19: you’re absolutely right – if I’d thought harder, I’d have spotted that! I was in a bad mood because I had spent too long over 26ac and 24d, never having heard the word “wired” to mean “tense with excitement” and trying in vain to find alternatives.
I thought BAROQUE was a lovely clue but what would I know
This went down like a glass of Grande Année without the price tag
GFH ate for England and Germany whilst in England. Hungry lad!
Very enjoyable as Qaos usually is with my favourites being the ECCENTRIC NUDISTS.
One query: I keep re-reading the clue for MURAL and struggling with the word ‘completes’. I can see that URAL completes the word MURAL but I can’t get my head around the word order with ‘Monet’s first’ coming afterwards.
Thanks Qaos and Andrew
I did wonder what the ‘s was doing in 1ac, so have some sympathy for lp@15 – surely as constructed the clue would give BASROQUE? Unless you think of a BA degree as “a bachelor’s”, of course.
Liked the slightly extra difficulty for a Monday – it wasn’t too much!
Thanks Qaos and Andrew for the entertainment.
Thoroughly enjoyed this – many thanks to Qaos and Andrew.
Mr SR and I had no problems with either BAROQUE or ROYAL.
[copmus@22
Having read your comment about GFH’s prodigious appetite, I thought I’d try to improve my GK and find out more about this.
Having typed in “Handel appetite”, the first three suggestions were as follows:
classicfm.com:
“Handel’s appetite shocked William Boyce…”
classical-music.com:
“Handel’s comical hunger…”
then came the Daily Mail’s take:
“Fat, paralytic composer Handel was a binge-eater…”
He’s just lucky they didn’t include a portrait showing his muffin-top* in their “circle of shame”** column.
*No offence meant, muffin.
**Ahem. Mr SR must have told me about the C of S. I’d never look at such a thing…]
All good fun, a little thought involved which made a pleasant change for a Monday.
Favourite was SOLEMN VOW
Re MURAL, I took “completes” as “finishes” so the word order works I think
Thanks Qaos and Andrew
A super puzzle, I love baroque music. Thank you Qaos, and thank you Andrew for the blog.
Perhaps the opera The Fire of Olympus by Tim Benjamin about the story of Prometheus and Pandora might fit the theme since it re-imagines Handel’s operatic works?
Given that I have sung in choirs for many decades, it’s slightly ironic that my LOI was 5ac.
Thanks to Qaos for a lovely start to the week with lots of clever, sparkly surfaces. Wondered about the biblical clues as a potential theme but no; and didn’t get the actual theme in time. Not convinced of the parsing for ARRIVAL but many favourites including BAROQUE, ECCENTRIC SHEBA. Thx to Andrew for blog.
A very entertaining Monday puzzle.
DeepThought @24: cryptically the ‘s can be short for “has”, so it’s not necessarily superfluous. What I think tlp @15 is getting at is that the cryptic grammar would work better as “Flamboyant bachelor’s game with no limits” – ie “bachelor” = BA, has “game with no limits” = ROQUE. But it didn’t bother me when solving – as Handel himself said, if it ain’t baroque don’t fix it…
I really liked 21d, which reminded me of the cowboy who went into the saloon wearing a brown paper hat, brown paper shirt, brown paper trousers and brown paper boots. The sheriff of course arrested him for rustling.
Many thanks Qaos and Andrew.
Very nice to tackle a reined back Qaos on a Monday morning. With my first two in SOLOMON and SHEBA I thought there might be an Old Testament theme. Had been disabused of that long before loi NUDISTS, which I suppose could have referred to Adam and Eve. (I’m not being at all serious!) Enjoyed the images and sounds conjured up by the excellent ECCENTRIC. I wonder whether they ever jammed together, Slow Hand and the Young clan. A most enjoyable solve…
I had the R in ARRIVAL being a run in cricket with the 22 being the 22 yards of a pitch. Not that Iam cricket-obsessed at all!
Liked ECCENTRIC.
I did not parse 28ac, 10ac, 7d and I did not notice the HANDEL theme while solving but saw it after I finished.
Thanks, both.
Eileen @10 – like you probably, I can remember a time when ERIC was clued by ‘little by little’, which I believe was a reference to a book from the (nineteen) twenties. One of those things you were expected to know/pick up over time, like ‘jolly’ for a Royal Marine.
Thanks to setter and blogger.
I think Chambers and NeilH @5 are right about “royals” – I think it has to be “King (R) and Queen (R)=two Royals”. Is no one bothered about ’10cc’ being indirect anagram fodder for E(CCENT)RIC? (I’m pretty sure Roz will be. 🙂 ) I’m inclined to agree with Mark @23 that ‘completes’ is a little odd in 12a, and I prefer Lord Jim’s version of the clue for 1a (and thanks for the arrest of the brown paper rustler, Jim).
No one has yet said anything about a “gentle” start to the week, for which much thanks.
…and thanks to Qaos and Andrew, of course.
That was fun! Thanks to Qaos and Andrew – if anyone would like to hear a different take on the Queen of Sheba…
Pleasant easy Monday puzzle completed in bed! Missed theme as I frequently don’t look for one or remember which setter’s tend to have one. 20dn may be the hardest to parse after guessing the right answer. The cluing phrase is perhaps overly contrived as we sometimes see.
Thanks Qaos, I enjoyed this even if I didn’t spot the theme. Favourites were MESSIAH, MUSIC, and IMMERSE. Lots of clever surfaces are always a plus. Thanks Andrew for the blog.
Well my supporters — what!? — have beaten me to a response to Bodycheetah @ #16, sorry, was listening to Handel, not, but yes you’re in there. And since you ask….
First ‘bachelor’ for BA doesn’t really cut it for me. It’s one of the standard abbrevs for B in crossies as far as I know, but if Qaos was using it to mean BA, why couldn’t it just as well be BSC? Or BED? Or BMUS? It just seemed inaccurate, or maybe ‘loose’ is more polite. Then we have the apostrophe which would presumably be a substitute for IS or HAS, neither of which make any grammatical sense.
So that’s why I don’t like it, probs should’ve said. It’s a really easy fix too, which is a shame.
I knew it must be ARRIVAL a long time before I knew where the RR came from: very sneaky, whether or not you accept R(oyal) as an abbreviation (I’ve given up caring).
But this is Qaos after all (and a nice change for a Monday). Enjoyed ECCENTRIC, RECYCLE, and the small but perfectly formed WATER.
An eiderdown is made out of EIDER DOWN. Both are a thing.
Didn’t parse ARRIVAL, but it makes sense. Not wild about the abbreviation, but ah well. All went quite smoothly, except when I stuck in FIREARMSS for a bit. That slowed me down. Worked out there was a theme – even I’ve heard of HANDEL’S MESSIAH – but didn’t know the rest.
Thanks Qaos and Andrew.
Thanks for the blog , good puzzle with neat clues and a lot of variety. Totally missed the theme of course even though Handel’s Water Music was played straight after my SOLEMN VOW.
Sheffield Hatter@35 is quite correct, ECCENTRIC deserves a Paddington stare at the very least.
My favourites were EXOPLANET NUDISTS which is actually a film by Ed Wood.
Surely arrival is an end, not a start?
The first snow often heralds the arrival of winter . ( Although very rarely now actually )
LP@39 that makes a lot of sense – I had a slightly different take on the clue seeing BACHELOR as defining BA in the same way that “car” might define “Audi” and you’re right – it could equally well have been BSC etc but in this case it wasn’t. I’d assumed the apostrophe was just a whimsical BA CROQUET – like “monkey tennis” (copyright Alan Partridge)
All part of what makes this such a fascinating hobby. I can’t imagine you get this kind of variety of opinion in the sudoku forums 🙂
Yes, Bachelor=BA could equally be BSc or BEd or BMus or whatever – just as (to use examples I find irritating) Note=C could just as easily be A,B,D,E,F or G and Boy might be Tom, Sid or Sam. There are always alternatives.
Thanks for the parsing of NUDISTS, which eluded me. I usually put off looking for a theme in a Qaos puzzle until I am over halfway through. In thid case, that was just in time to say, “Guess there must be FIREWORKS somewhere,” and of course there they were. (By standards of a Qaos-style ghost theme, BAROQUE MESSIAH across the top row is pretty much a dead giveaway.)
[I am just back from a week’s vacation in Florida, St. Pete specifically. For once, we spent a full day in Tampa. To continue a discussion we had a couple weeks ago, I can confirm that while they’ve made efforts to draw more tourism to the city itself, which does have its charms, it is not in any way a resort in its own right. Tourists still mostly deplane there and go elsewhere.]
Never heard of Russell Brand, but Bertrand got me through.
I enjoyed the puzzle, got all of it last night (well, it is Monday), but totally missed the theme, even though I’ve learned to look for one when it’s Qaos.
Thanks to Qaos and Andrew.
Late to the party today but what a lovely gentle start to the week this was (sh @35 – 😉 ) – thanks for the fun, Qaos, and for the exemplary blog, Andrew.
I have a blind spot with numbers cross-referencing to other clues, so completely failed to get 2×22=RR, hence didn’t spend any time worrying whether it’s a valid abbreviation. Also managed my usual blind spot with the theme too – you’d think I’d have learnt by now when it’s Qaos.
Roz @42 – I really want to see EXOPLANET NUDISTS. It sounds awesome.
Thank you Qaos & Andrew for a fun musical banquet.
SHEBA is great, and DECREED SOLOMON is a nice pairing.
ECCENTRIC MURAL made me think of Belshazzar’s Feast but maybe the writing’s on the wall for me.
[widdersbel @50. I think Roz was having a bit of (dare I say “gentle”?) fun with us. All internet links for Exoplanet Nudists come back to this thread. 🙂
Ed Wood was a particularly useless film director and producer who has, for some reason, attracted a cult following. This is his worst/best film: Plan 9 from Outer Space.
But perhaps there’s a different Ed Wood? ]
There was Ed Wood Wood Wood.
It was a sequel to his masterpiece ” Gullible ” .
sh @52 – I believe the film Roz mentions is based on a Kilgore Trout novel of the same name. Highly recommended.
[Sorry if this is obvious, but wasn’t Kilgore Trout a fictional writer invented by Kurt Vonnegut? I may be missing the point!]
[It has just been announced that following Dudley, Eunice and Franklin, the next big Atlantic storm will be (drumroll and fanfare)… Gladys. I may have to change my name.]
[ You are correct muffin, his stories always had brilliant titles. ]
[ Fame at last Gladys, is there an actual new storm coming or is it just the next name that is ready if needed? We have clear skies for the first time in over a week ]
I didn’t get the RR and didn’t know WIRED meant “tense with excitement” – I wonder why.
Enjoyed the Handel
Thanks Qaos and Andrew
Truth be told there is much in this puzzle for which I don’t care:
BAROQUE: guess ‘croquet’ from ‘game’ and undress it;
MESSIAH=’champion’ (probably literally – who knows?) (also it reminded me of attending a performance of the same during which I wanted to stand up and shout “Enough!! – stop!” but was restrained);
10cc=TENCC (cf sh@35);
The ‘of’ in the clue for QUEEN;
The only SOLEMN VOW I’ve heard of was referenced in the film ‘Ghandi’ – are not all vows ‘solemn’ by their nature?
All of which is well out-weighed by the pleasure provided. So thanks Qaos and Andrew in particular for illuminating NUDISTS – I could see the DIS….
tim @60:
My feet are so tired
My brain is so wired
And the clouds are weepin’
(Bob Dylan, Love Sick)
The origin is probably drugs slang – under the influence of something and feeling full of nervous, electric-seeming energy.
I agree with Alphalpha about having to know the names of footballers. I also didn’t like SOLEMN VOW. However I thought BAROQUE was OK, and, as I said earlier, ECCENTRIC was favourite – what could 10 in a crossword be other than “ten”?
Hawa @32: I had the same idea about the length of a cricket pitch…until I *ran* into the objection that for one run to score, the 22 yards has to be run twice, once by each player, so a double “R” would have to be 4×22 instead
No cigar today after three days of success, but I found this harder than usual for a Monday. On reflection, nothing too difficult, though I am not very familiar with Qaos cluing style.
Everything parsed, though not familiar with EXOPLANET.
Thanks both.
Solemn vows are part of a marriage ceremony.
10 could be X or i and o or a moon of Jupiter. Whatever it is , the letters T and E and N are not in the clue for the anagram.
Addendum, even I could spot the theme, though my knowledge of GFH stretches to 5a, and 3d/13a, so no help.
I will be quids in when the theme is Championship Football Teams, or birds!
paul @53. I remember the tree men
Edwood
Edwood Wood
Edwood Woodwood
I think you are overthinking it, Roz. TEN is surely the most obvious.
Jack @68
Why does Edward Woodward have 4 Ds in his name?
Because he was fed up with being called Ewar Woowar!
Re TEN – it wasn’t obvious to me, in fact it was so un-obvious that I completely missed the fact it was an anagram, parsed CC as first C = C, second C = abbreviation for ‘cent’ (thus eliminating the need for either ‘10’ or ‘strangely’, which I failed to notice in my rush to write in the answer 🙁 )
Lovely stuff from Qaos, just the right level of challenge for a Monday, with an unobtrusive theme (it is Qaos so there has to be) plus a bit of algebra. I had more of a handle on the works of Handel than I realised, as I spotted them all.
If people aren’t aware of a footballer as prominent and brilliant as Messi, they are losing out: he is a genius who has illuminated the beautiful game for years, a Federer of football (Federer is a wonderful tennis player; google him if you haven’t heard of him either). I sometimes watch Messi play, and my eyes thank me for it. He is regarded as the greatest player ever by millions of people, and his name forms the first five letters of MESSIAH which is handy.
Many thanks to Q&A for posing questions and answering them, respectively.
muffin @69. It’s the thin end of the wedge. It’s one thing to have ’10’ in the clue become TEN in the answer, but to have it as anagram fodder is another step. I can see the temptation, with Clapton=ERIC and then 10CC, and after all it wasn’t difficult, as you say. But what next?
I tend not to agree with Roz when, as in last week’s prize, she complains that we had ‘one’=I included in anagram fodder in 8a, but this one is a step too far for me.
I could parse arrival but why is it start? I must be being dense though I’m encouraged that Muffin says it’s rather loose. Excellent fun otherwise.
For clarity my trouble with MESSIAH was purely with the definition: ‘champion’ seems to me a giant leap.
But who wants a write-in anyway.
Thanks roz@66 – I did not know that.
XJPotter @74: agreed. To arrive is to finish one’s journey not to begin it. To start is to depart
XJP @ 74 & AT @ 76
As others have already pointed out, the arrival of winter, or any other season, is not the finish of it.
The start of winter would not be its departure.
Xj and Andrew @74/76
Roz @44 pointed out that the first snow heralds the arrival/start of winter.
Also, Wiktionary has this quote:
a raw scraping in the back of his throat, which announced the arrival of a bad cold
(and a journey’s end can be a new beginning )
[Sorry, Simon S, we crossed]
Even if 10 = TEN is stretching it a bit, I happily forgive it for the wonderful image of Eric doing 10CC covers!
I don’t have a problem with indirect anagrams in principle. And I’m not sure Roz does either, but I may be misinterpreting her. She has said on occasion that the only rule is “the setter sets, and the solver solves”. By that I take her view to be “indirect anagrams are not wrong, I just don’t like them.”
An indirect anagram adds a layer of complexity to a clue. If it makes the clue too complex for most solvers, then it is perhaps unfair and should be avoided. But isn’t a certain amount of complexity the essence of “cryptic”? Lift and separate, and deceptive punctuation are two examples of extra layers of complexity that no one seems to object to. I don’t understand why this particular two-step dance is deemed to be ipso facto incorrect.
sheffield hatter@73 raises the thin edge of the wedge argument, but I don’t see why you should ban a device that is not inherently unfair just because it can be used in an unfair way.
11a ECCENTRIC was one of the first ones I figured out, and I am not a particularly skilled solver, so I fail to see how 10cc was unfair.
Point taken. My apologies to Roz @44 for my oversight
‘Arrival’ in ‘the arrival of winter’ is synonymous with ‘appearance, manifestation’, not with ‘start’, but this is a Qaos puzzle so looseness is part of the charm. Thanks both.
sh @73: well, almost anything could be the thin end of the wedge, couldn’t it? You could argue that allowing “river” to indicate PO opens the floodgates to allowing it to indicate ASA (apparently the name of rivers in Japan, Kazakhstan and Venezuela). It all depends how reasonable and gettable something is. I certainly had no problem with 10 = TEN, even as part of the anagram fodder. And it was a great surface.
Good argument, your lordship! “It all depends how reasonable and gettable something is.”
Like essexboy @71 I solved this clue largely from the definition and the crossers, so I guess my position is that the clue is very clever, and has a great surface as you say, but I still think it’s inherently just a little bit unfair. And no, cellomaniac, I’m not suggesting banning a device, as I don’t think any of us are in a position to do that.
I’m not saying I’ve been practising a Paddington stare or anything, and I apologise for the clichéd “thin end of the wedge”. This forum is a means of getting out there the information that some of us think there are boundaries that are maybe being stretched a little too far. (And also that some of us disagree!)
The (potential) trouble is that all this ultra-modern, post-Araucarian, 25th Century and beyond super-setting, with attendant futuristic device, might unfortunately not in general be propelling us forward into a new Golden Age of compileringness and crossworddom, but backwards, to a time before Ximenes, when Torquemada & Co produced clues that no-one understood, and couldn’t solve without just guessing. So whilst it’s good to be new and different, it isn’t good to resort to stuff that’s adding difficulty to puzzles through being abstruse (assuming the abstruseness is wilful, as I’m sometimes tempted to think it’s accidental).
I missed all this, I am a lark not an owl. Cellomaniac@81 gives my views correctly, an indirect anagram is not “wrong” or “unfair” I simply do not like it and it gets a frown or even a Paddington stare.
I simply like to see the letters of an anagram actually written on the page in the clue so that I can do the anagram in my head.
The setter sets and we try to solve, but we can grumble about certain clues.
Alphalpha@75- Handel’s Water Music is often used as the recessional after a wedding ( SOLEMN VOW) but I think that Mendelssohn is still the favourite.
cellomaniac @81 – nice summary of why indirect anagrams are “unfair”. For me, each case needs to be judged on its own merits. Clueing the letters TEN as 10 feels acceptable to me – it’s not the hugest of leaps of the imagination (though I admit I had to work backwards from the solution to break down the wordplay properly).
paul b @86 – I doubt many setters deliberately set out to make their clues unfair. Sometimes I suspect it’s a case of thinking a clue is too easy and they need to make it more difficult because “that’s what solvers like”. Breaking “the rules” while keeping the clue the right side of fairness is down to the skill and experience of the setter. Some are better at it than others – I would say Qaos is among those who are very good at it.
Roz @54 – I’m slightly miffed that people seem to think I was taken in by your (very good) gag – I was playing along with it!
And I still want to see the film.
I suspected you just liked the title. Sheffield Hatter did say he searched for it but he may have just been confirming it did not exist.
Enjoyable, with DECREED my favourite – not seen ‘indeed’ as ‘in DEED’ before.