An interesting one this. I only solved one or two clues on my first pass and had no idea what the theme might be. As the grid started to fill up, I spotted that S was the only letter appearing in the right hand column, and eventually that G was the only letter appearing in the left hand column. This helped with filling the grid, but I still had no idea what the theme was! I eventually cottoned on to the Gilbert and Sullivan idea, by which time the thematic answers were pretty much all that was left. My G&S knowledge is unfortunately restricted to The Mikado (because we did it at school) and HMS Pinafore (from the Cape Fear episode of The Simpsons), so I needed Wikipedia’s help to polish it off.
Lovely clueing as ever from Mr. H, and my knowledge of light opera has increased ten-fold, so all good.
| Across | ||
|---|---|---|
| 1 | GOPHER – GOP (Grand Old Party) + HER | |
| 5 | REDHEADS – ED + H[-ailed] in READS | |
| 9 | GET RID OF – (TO FRIDGE)* | |
| 10 | YUCCAS – C + CU in SAY, all rev. | |
| 11 | GRUDGINGLY – (DRUG)* + GIN + G[-lad]LY | |
| 12 | TEES – SEE + T[-ide] rev. | |
| 13 | GAMESOME – Presumably GAME + SOME[-rset], though not sure of the GAME = HALT bit | |
| 15 | GABLES – B(orn) in GALES | |
| 16 | GENOME – GEN + OME[-n] | |
| 18 | DIALECTS – I’D rev. + (CASTLE)* | |
| 20 | GAGA – G + AGA – ‘Classic range’ is a very good def. for AGA | |
| 21 | CLOG DANCES – (CANCELS DOG)* | |
| 22 | GORIER – GO + RI[-d]ER | |
| 23 | ROUNDUPS – UP in ROUNDS – Tricky, as I would usually expect this to be enumerated (5-3) | |
| 24 | GREENERY – RE: in (ENERGY)* | |
| 25 | EGRESS – E.G + [-p]RESS | |
| Down | ||
| 2 | OLEARIA – (AREA + OIL)* | |
| 3 | HIRED – RE in H I’D | |
| 4 | RUDDIGORE – DIG OR in RUDE – The first of our G&S works | |
| 5 | REFUGEE – REFU[-nded] + GEE | |
| 6/22 | D’OYLY CARTE – DOYLY + CARTE – Only guessed this once all the checking letters were in place. | |
| 7 | EXCITABLE – 1 in X in EC + TABLE | |
| 8 | DEADEYE – DEAD + EYE – Character for HMS Pinafore | |
| 14 | EVOCATIVE – EVITA + COVE rev. | |
| 15 | GRAND DUKE – GRAND ($1000) + DUKE (J.Wayne) – The 2nd G&S work | |
| 17 | ENAMOUR – MANE rev. + OUR | |
| 18 | DOOBREY – (BEDROO[-m])* + Y | |
| 16 | THESPIS – P in THESIS – The 3rd G&S work | |
| 22 | NADIR – (AND)* + I(nland) R(evenue) | |
Hi Ali
Re 13ac: ‘game’ and ‘halt’ both mean ‘lame’.
Good puzzle, not too hard. I saw the G&S in the outermost columns only very late on – my knowledge of the works is fairly limited too, tho what I’ve heard I did like. Most of my knowledge about them coming from puzzles. Favourite clue, REDHEADS.
Glad to know I’m not the only G & S ignoramus. Even after getting D’Oyly Carte, Ruddigore, Deadeye and Grand Duke, I still didn’t know what the theme was.
Redheads was very clever. I didn’t know it meant red-headed, so I did spend some time looking through articles about Titian to see if he specialized in painting redheads.
Yes, the clue reminded me of Fergie, not the Man Utd one.
I think this was quite a bit tougher than most of Phi’s Friday puzzles – lots of lovely clues, of course, but I couldn’t finish it unaided (partly because of mistakenly putting in “glamour” (as in a fairy charm) instead of “enamour”…)
It’s nice to see a mention of gopher in the crossword, and to find out that Firefox can still browse gopher servers 🙂
So that’s how you spell ‘doobrey’! (18d) heard the word many times but never seen it in print/writing before.
I had a little difficulty finding this puzzle in the site. Puzzle number in header should be 7225, not 7725.
Thanks Michael. Error corrected.