A gentle but fun return to solving after a few weeks’ holiday.
Edits thanks to Lanson and Eileen.
| Across | ||
|---|---|---|
| 8 | DECANTER | DETER=”put off” around CAN=”tin” |
| 9 | LEECH | rev(HEEL) around C for cold. |
| 10 | LIMB | LIMBO minus the O |
| 11 | MOTORMOUTH | (hour tom-tom)* |
| 12 | GEORGE | GORGE around E[lephant] |
| 14 | SAN MARCO | St Mark’s square in Venice. SA were the Nazi brownshirts, NCO for non-commanding officer around MAR=”spoil” |
| 15 | PICCOLO | (broccoli pie)* minus the BRIE |
| 17 | FELSPAR | FEAR around L[ivres]=pounds, S[hillings] and P[ence] |
| 20 | COMPADRE | COMPARE around D[eutschland] |
| 22 | SALMON | PSALM ON without the P[iano]. Not really sure where the ON comes from. ON=performing, and [p]SALM is put previously |
| 23 | SCHOOLROOM | Half of CHOO-CHOO (train) + L[earner] in rev(MOORS) |
| 24 | BATH | BAT = “be in”, H[ot] |
| 25 | SHANK | part of the leg, S[econd] + HANK = coil => handful |
| 26 | BARNSLEY | N and S are bridge partners, in the middle of BARLEY=grass. |
| Down | ||
| 1 | BERIBERI | BERBER takes in I=one, followed by I[taly] |
| 2 | LAMB | LAM + B[ack] |
| 3 | STYMIE | STY + MI + E[uropean]. |
| 4 | PROTEST | PRO + TEST |
| 5 | FLORENCE | FL[oruit]=active + ONCE around R[oyal] E[ngineers] |
| 6 | MENOPAUSAL | ME + NO + PAUL around S[ex] A[ppeal. |
| 7 | RHOTIC | (choir)* around T[enor]. Rhotic accents will differentiate “fort” and “fought” |
| 13 | RECIPROCAL | R[ight] followed by (police car)* |
| 16 | LADYLIKE | LAD + (Kylie)* |
| 18 | APOSTLES | POST in ALES |
| 19 | REDOUBT | =stronghold. Punning on “re-doubt”. |
| 21 | ONCOST | hidden in “bronco stabling” |
| 22 | SOMBRE | MB in SORE |
| 24 | BASS | double def. |
Thanks manehi
27a I think performing is “on” with (p)salm previously
Yes of course.. for some reason I thought “previously” referred to the P being taken off the front, but it’s pretty unambiguous with your reading.
Thanks for the blog, Manehi.
7dn: Hurrah!
You’ve omitted 5dn: FLORENCE FL[oruit][was active] + RE [troops] in ONCE.
I really loved 6dn!
Eileen –
5dn: oops, paying too much attention to the cricket. Putting it in now.
Totally agree on 6 & 7.
Thanks, Manehi.
re 7dn: is dialect synonymous with accent?
What a great puzzle! Welcome back (again) Shed. Eileen, I thought of you when I got 7dn, and 6dn is wonderful too, with an appropriately cheeky surface linked with the reference to Paul.
Yeah, I know, its a cryptic, anything goes, and I’m showing my age, but I still hated LSP in 17.
So, ON COST is a single word now is it? Another abomination receives validation, sigh. And it even looks ugly too.
I really enjoyed it even though I had never heard of RHOTIC.
Thanks Everyone
Bryan
This south Devonian was also delighted with 7d. Does anyone know the term for an accent (or dialect) which leaves Rs unsaid, apart from ‘peculiar’?
5d couldn’t have been anything else but i’d never heard of ‘floruit’, let alone ‘FL’ as an abbreviation for it. Both Chambers and Collins have it though. Now that I do know, perhaps it’ll come in handy worked into the conversation down the pub.
7dn RHOTIC: a new word for me. Scottish english pronounces the R in IRON, as one example
Neil #9: the straight answer to your query is ‘non-rhotic’
See: http://www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhotic_and_non-rhotic_accents
Neil, scratching my head, it’s a long time ago, and it was Latin which I never did, but I have a feeling floruit was part of the school motto at Ilkley Grammar. I can’t check it, the school web site has a new motto (is nothing sacred?). But it needed the blog to remind me.
And a bit more research finds “Floruit Floret Floreat” and the information that it was used elsewhere too.
Thanks, Manehi. For the same reasons as others have pointed out, I didn’t understand the wordplay for FLORENCE, but didn’t see what else it could be. Also knew I would kick myself when I found out what 26ac was, and did.
My favourite was MENOPAUSAL and I really liked RHOTIC, too.
Hi Neil
You’ve probably found this out from your dictionaries, in which case, forgive me, but you usually see ‘fl.’ in entries about artists, writers, etc whose birth/death dates are uncertain but who are known to have produced works [‘floruit’ is Latin for ‘flourished’]during a particular period.
Sorry, Derek, I’m not familiar with your motto.
To explain my remark at comment 3 and Andrew’s response at comment 6, for the benefit of relative newcomers, I have been known in the past [I gave up long ago :-)] to take up cudgels on behalf of my late Scottish husband, who objected to crossword ‘homophones’ like ‘fort/ fought’. It was Andrew who introduced me to ‘rhotic’.
Hi Derek
Thanks to Google, I’ve found that your motto is also a house motto at Clifton College, Bristol. It means ‘It has flourished, it is flourishing, may it flourish’.
“So, ON COST is a single word now is it?”
Since about 1429 Mr Lazenby.
Sorry to go on about this but I’ve just looked in the archive and, amazingly, the homophone in question on andrew’s blog on 27th April actually was ‘fort/fought’ – but there have been lots of others in between!
Thank you, manehi. I missed 26ac due (once again) to a lack of familiarity with bridge.
Like others, I thought 6dn was lovely.
By the way, for quite some time I had the wrong answer at 7dn because of a bizarre coincidence: according to Google, in India in 1567 there was a battle over a Hindu fort called Chitor. The combination of “fought for fort” and the fact that CHITOR is an anagram of CHOIR + T was too much to resist. Even after I changed it to RHOTIC I still wondered if Shed was making a subtle reference to Chitor by means of the question mark…
Dagnabit — I am familiar enough with bridge to have played it a few times (badly) but for some reason I still get caught out by the use of ‘partners’ or ‘partnership’ to indicate N,S or E,W.
1429? Dang. But it still looks ugly. Don’t know why, it just does.
Hi, liz, I know what you mean – even after much evidence to the contrary, I am still primed to think that most instances of those letters in an answer are going to come from references to the compass rather than a card game!
Re my comment #7. Am I the only one that was fond of predecimilisation and the correct abbreviations?
Thanks again to everyone and I’m glad most of you liked it.
Eileen might like to know that her frequent comments on this subject were a direct inspiration for 7 dn. NeilW (#5): dialect certainly isn’t synonymous with accent, but Chambers says ‘rhotic’ can be applied to either and Collins says it denotes ‘a type of dialect in which postvocalic r is pronounced’ and doesn’t say anything about accents, so I went for that option.
Dagnabit (#19): Chitor (or ‘Chitaw’ as non-rhoticists like me would say) was news to me.
Derek (23),
Yes, maybe you are.
The abbreviations used in the clue are all correct, though they don’t tally with each each other; it doesn’t matter. it’s a crossword.
As for pre-decimalisation; ask anyone under 40 to instantly work out the change needed from a tenner for something that costs seven pounds, thirteen shillings and thruppence ha’penny…
And thanks, Shed, for turning up, and for the puzzle. Nice one.
Derek: I’m under no delusion that there is or ever was any such currency as LSP, but are you saying that L is not a valid abbreviation for libra (pounds – not livres, by the way, Manehi), S for shillings and P for pence? This is crypticland.
Re comment 24: Congratulations, Eileen, you’ve made the papers!
Shed, thank you for your comment on Chitor (and the pronunciation).
I’m totally overwhelmed [probably a tautology]. Thank you, Shed, for that. My husband would be very proud – like me, he was a huge admirer of your puzzles. He particularly liked your pseudonym – he loved his shed, whither he would retire whenever Scotland lost a rugby match.
As a member of a choral society, I loved the picture of the tenor in a drunken choir!
Thank you for another great puzzle. We don’t see you often enough.
Eileen – I agree, more Shed !!!!
Eileen – congratulations!
Shed – thanks for the puzzle, and also the correction: I’ve always, for no reason I can think of now, associated lb with libra but l (and hence £) only with livres (being the french abbreviation and word for pound as a measurement of mass)
Thank you Shed — and congratulations Eileen!
Shed and others. Please re-read #7. I already said I appreciate in a cryptic anything goes. I was just saddened that whilst the individual abbreviations were correct, they would never ever be used together. L and P yes, but L S D when used together.
Ian, under 40’s may struggle but that was because they were never taught. But it was all simple stuff, many who swore they were no good at “sums” could be found in betting shops working out complex bets, costs and returns in the blink of an eye. The idea that it was hard was promulgated by people who never had to do division. Share a modern £ equally between 3. Simple task, can’t be done. Nor can it by 6, 8, 12, 15, 16, 24, 30, 40, 60, and any others I’ve missed. But the unthinking lied about addition and subtraction being difficult. What they meant was they were too idle to make the effort. If the under educated betting shop habituees could hack it, then no one else had a valid objection.
Oh is that the time? Going to jam session, then I’ll be watching Torchwood when I get back. But any queries will get a response eventually…..
And the fun thing about 5dn is: Florence (Nightingale) was a long time ago ‘active’
as a nurse, ‘entertaining’ the British troops in the Crimean War.
Do I smell something of an &lit ?
Taking them in the order they appear, above:
Muck @10 &11: we pronounce the R in ‘iron’ too – “uyurn” we say!. And ‘apron’ is “aypern”, though the accent has changed substantially amongst our youngsters since I wuz a lad (sadly). Things evolve! Thanks for that link. Fascinating! I shall return to it to take more time. Add in Scotland and Ireland and the non-rhotics look well out-numbered in the British Isles (in area anyway).
Derek @ 12 & 13: thanks! The motto at Kingsbridge Grammar School was “Floreat Regis Pontis Schola”, which I suspect Eileen will be able to tell us is terrible dog-Latin. It was dropped when the School went Comprehensive; probably the best thing that happened to it (in both ways) since its foundation in 1670.
Eileen @ 15, 16 & 18: this is embarrassing. I’ve made most of my living out of art and writing (sometimes both at the same time) but failed with ‘FL’, except with dictionary help. Excuse: of ALL the hundreds of teachers I’ve ever watched at work, my Latin master (long gone) was the most incompetent by far. It wasn’t his fault. He was a good man. You also may have noticed, I’m entirely in accord with your late Scottish husband about inappropriate homophones.
Dagnabit @ 19: loved ‘Chitor’; never heard of it but what a bonus! Thanks.
Betimes I’ve posted this (unless I’ll have blogged it; I dunno), there will have been many comments interposed I suspect. I write this after reading #21. Please don’t say we’re off-topic (even if we are). This has been a most rewarding discussion. Thanks everybody. Off to the Pub quiz-night now. Will come back to this when I return and would be wise (in those circumstances), to make no further comment, tonight.
Neil
I wish I could have been the one to teach you Latin! [and yes, I had noticed. :-)]
Derek,
Hope you enjoyed your jam session and Torchwood.
The point I was making was simply that “working out money” is a lot easier now, and rightly so.
If you need to divide a quid into three, one person may miss out on a fraction of a penny, using common sense (something on which I thought Yorkshiremen prided themselves – and before you start, both my parents were brought up in Dewsbury, though I now consider myself a Londoner).
Are you suggesting we go back to the “old ways” to make life better for the betting fraternity? Can they not find it even easier to work out, say, the tax required, using a decimal system?
Try going to your local Ladbrokes now, and ask them to try it.
And why should those under 40 have to learn an archaic system just because we had to? (It actually changed on my 12th Birthday).
No other country had to do this, it seems.
PS Neil
Sorry, I somehow missed your first paragraph:
‘May the school at the bridge of the king flourish!’ is fine by me. I’ve been asked a couple of times recently to come up with Latin tags and I’ve had been quite pleased with this one.
I agree with Derek. Lsd is standard for pounds shillings and pence, for those who lived before decimalisation. There is no such thing as Lsp. d stands for denarius.
I mean I’d have, of course – I really must get used to using the preview facility!
Also – Lysergic acid di-ethyl-a-mide in other alternative wording… LSD.
gerardus@39
Yes, we’re all agreed there’s no such thing as lsp, but as Shed says, this is crypticland.
re 17ac. The clever thing about this clue that it tricks you into thinking it should be LSD because the phrase seems to suggest that you read it as a whole. But individually L, S and P are correct abbreviations for pounds, shillings and pence, as Shed pointed out. Dare I say, once the penny dropped, it made me smile. (I do predate decimailisation, but as a relatively new arrival in this country in the late 60s, had an awful time working out money sums. Much easier with dollars and cents.)
Also re: 17ac, it’s too bad Shed couldn’t have found room for the more common spelling, “feldspar”–that way, he could have satisfied both camps!
Yeah, good night out thanks.
People keep missing that my original post said I know anything goes. I didn’t say LSP was wrong, just that it’s sad that it’s no longer automatically LSD.
Common sense can have many flavours. All I was trying to say is that decimal is only easier in some respects, in many others it isn’t. And what you lose in addition and subtraction simplicity is NOT the big deal the supporters would have you believe. It isn’t. Generations found LSD a piece of wee. The arguments against are thus over stated.
Interestingly, since we dropped Roman numerals, 10 isn’t related to having 10 digits. If you assign one physical digit per numeric digit, having 10 fingers leads to counting in base 11, not base 10. You close your hands for zero carry one on 11.
Derek, you’re priceless.
Don’t go changing…
Back from the pub quiz. We won, again. I last commented @ 35 and there, vowed not to comment further until the morrow (or later). It’s so very tempting, but thank you all and G’night for now.