A bit of an American theme, and quite a few container type clues from Paul this week. Not as tricky as Paul can be, but a couple of clues held me up for a while and I’m still unsure about one.
| Across | |
|---|---|
| 9 | DEWEY – YE WED reversed |
| 10 | LEFT – I wrongly put this for the last Paul’s 10ac double def, but am pretty sure it’s right this time. |
| 11 | COL,LECTION – COL is the ever popular mountain pass, LECTION is guessable enough as an old word for (a?) reading. |
| 12 | DAMS,ON – really liked this. |
| 14 | BUDDHIST – Zola BUDD, Olympic athlete, and (this)* |
| 15 | G(IR)AFFE |
| 17 | EMERSON – (p)ERSON around ME |
| 20 | EST(IM)ATE – ESTATE being the sum of assets LEFT to one’s heirs. |
| 23 | KING,FISHER |
| 25 | PEANO ? – not sure about this. Logician, sounds like “piano”, but he’s Italian as far as I know. Mick H suggests PLATO ~ “play dough”, which sounds reasonable. |
| 26 | P(HARM)ACY |
| Down | |
| 1 | L,ITERATI(on) |
| 2,24 | BE(AT TIM)E – took me ages to see “six-footer” = BEE |
| 4 | WALL(AB)Y |
| 5 | AD,DEN,DUM(b) |
| 6 | SWITCHEROO – (erotic show)* |
| 7 | NYLONS – N and S are partners in bridge, “inspiring” in the sense of inhaling i.e. taking in (only)* |
| 13 | S(EALING, W)AX |
| 16 | FLA(TIRO)N – a TIRO is a beginner, or “starter”. More used to seeing it with a y instead of an i, but Chambers has both. |
| 18 | ON,E-T,RACK |
| 19 | PER,HAPS(burg) |
| 21 | S(KIM)PY – KIM by Kipling – had to Wiki “fifth columnist” afterwards, it seems to refer to subversive elements within an organisation, hence SPY. |
| 22 | CARNAP – CARP around AN reversed. |
I think 25 ac is PLATO – with a US pronunciation, it might sound like play-dough!
Carnap and Dewey are new to me, I must admit – perhaps we tend to overlook American philosophers in favour of Continental thinkers. And I took a while to get BUDDHIST, because Zola brought to mind a French author and Italian footballer, but I’d forgotten all about the barefoot South African (of past Olympic controversy).
23. Please explain the wordplay for kingfisher. I accept ‘king’ as ‘man'(chess piece), but am puzzled by the rest of the clue.
Plato ~”playdough” sounds possible.. I certainly thought of him before Peano, faced with those checking letters, but couldn’t think of a homophone.
Barbara, FISHER is simply a “shipping forecast area” – see here
Plato is surely the correct answer for 25, in keeping with the philosopher theme.
In the US, Plato is pronounced ‘playto’ or ‘playdo’. Am I correct in assuming that it is pronounced ‘platto’ in the UK?
Most British people would pronounce it Play-Toe.
While I have heard a couple of people pronounce it as “plah-to” here in the UK, for the most part I think we use “play-to”.
No it’s just that we generally prounounce our ‘t’s properly 🙂
25a: the online answer is PIANO
Barbara, “playtow” is the UK pronunciation rather than “playdough”.
Having checked the online solution it must surely be wrong. I can’t see how PIANO fits at all. PLATO with the specific US pronunciation at least fits the clue.
re the online answer for 25: so would an American pronounce Peano as “piano”, and more so than the British do?
but agree that Plato sounds more likely, given the first part of the clue.
25a: surely it must be PLATO? It’s a Pauline tease: we’re expecting another American philosopher, but this time “American” goes with “said”, and the def. is “philosopher”.
I was well chuffed to complete this crossword (along with trusty sidekick Stuart). Had to guess CARNAP. I’m pretty sure it must be PLATO – the online crossword often has been unreliable recently (I am still pissed off about trying to the prize crossword on april 5th and there being no instructions).
If someone could explain the fifth columnist thing that would be good.
Re: Fifth Column
General Mola, during the Spanish Civil War, had four columns surrounding Madrid and remarked that there was a “fifth column” inside the city — meaning an army of spies.
Since then, the term “fifth column” meaning spies has become accepted as a standard figure of speech.
I emailed Hugh Stephenson a few weeks ago about discrepancies between the online and paper versions, though this was related to different clues between the two rather than wrong answers. He stated that two databases were involved and sometimes changes to one were not replicated in the other (my words not his.) I wonder is PIANO v PLATO was a case of the word and the clue being changed late in the day with the online puzzle suffering from the word not being changed?
Perhaps someone with access to tomorrow’s paper could report back here on the printed solution?
2, 24 – very clever clue indeed, with highly misleading surface meanings of ‘scoffing’ and ‘conduct’. i recognised ‘six-footer’ = insect immediately but this was still the last one I cracked.
American pronunciation of intervocalic ‘t’ technically described as a ‘flap’ – hence PLATO sounding like ‘play-dough’.
One little quibble: ‘Backward solver married’ is clearly YE WED reversed (9ac). But YE is archaic ‘you plural’ (‘you singular’ would be THOU). So clue should read ‘Backward solvers married’.
what about 24 across? An easy dessert (4) t_r_ Is it turn? tart? neither clearly emerges from the clue
the fifth column clue could have been even better if he had played on ‘kim’ as not only a novel but also the name of a well-known spy – Kim Philby…
42 across i think it’s because a tart is an easy lay
whoops! 24 across
I have emailed Hugh Stephenson too, about discrepancies between the online and paper versions, but have had no reply.
The following appears in the Corrections and Clarifications column of today’s Guardian.
There was a mistake in the answers to Cryptic Crossword No 24,364 (page 37, April 17). The clue given for 25 across was “Children manipulate this, said an American philosopher”. The answer was Plato, not piano. It did not affect the solutions to the other clues.