A colourful crossword from Cinephile today.
From what I can see Cinephile is missing only SABLE to complete the set of heraldic metals and colours (as defined by Wikipedia). Thank you Cinephile.
I can’t explain 4 down, any help appreciated.
Hold the mouse pointer over any clue number to read the clue.
| Across | ||
| 9 | ONE ACROSS | OCEAN* with the ROSS sea in Antarctica |
| 10 | AZURE | sounds like “has your” spoken commonly (lacking enunciation) |
| 11 | PURPURE | PURe (clean, nearly) and PURE (clean) |
| 12 | UNBOSOM | (MOB ON US)* |
| 13, 18, 23 | RUE THE DAY | (A DUTY HERE)* |
| 14 | IN RECESSION | IN RE (on the question of) CESSION (surrender) |
| 17 | AVERT | A VERT (heraldic colour) |
| 18 | See 13 | |
| 19 | GULES | GLUES (adhesives) with two letters transposed (slightly adjusted) |
| 21 | FRAUDULENCE | FRAU (woman, european) DUNCE (a fool) going about LE (the, european) |
| 23 | See 13 | |
| 25 | UPTIGHT | UP (elevated) TIGHT (drunk) |
| 27 | See 26 | |
| 28 | NORMA | opera by Bellini and Norma Major wife of former UK prime minister |
| 29 | ARGENTINA | ARGENT (heraldic metal) IN A |
| Down | ||
| 1 | TORPOR | T (tee, name of letter) and P (pee, name of letter) with OR (heraldic colour) on each |
| 2 | REPRIEVE | PRIE (pray, French) in REVE (dream, French) |
| 3 | ACQUAINTED | QUAINT (funny, old fashioned) at heart of ACED (defeated by serve at tennis) |
| 4 | LOVE | |
| 5 | ESCUTCHEON | CUT (don’t talk to) CHE (Guevara, revolutionary) in NOSE reversed |
| 6 | GARB | BRAG (boast) reversed |
| 7 | MUESLI | anagram of U (last letter of you) and SMILE |
| 8 | TERMINUS | TERM (school time) IN US (America) |
| 15 | RATTLETRAP | Simon RATTLE has PART (role) reversed (up) |
| 16 | SIGNET RING | (TIGGER’S INN)* |
| 17 | AFFLUENT | FLUE (an opening) N (the north) with A FT around it (in circumference) |
| 20 | LADYSHIP | giving (assigning) LADY (traditional gender) to SHIP (vessel) |
| 22 | ATTIRE | A TT ( a teetotaller) with (leading to) IRE (anger) |
| 24 | YEOMAN | YE (solvers) OMAN (sultantate) – the Yeoman of the Guard, ceremonially the Monarch’s bodyguard, is the oldest division of the British Armed Services |
| 26, 27 across | GRAN TURISMO | GRANT (permit) URI’S (belonging to Hebrew boy) MO (moment, short time) |
| 27 | TOGO | TO GO (leave) |
*anagram
Thought 4d might be love but not sure why.
I think LOVE is better than NONE. I’ll put it in, though its not a great clue if this is the answer!
Thanks, PeeDee, for the inventively colourful blog.
I was surprised that ‘sable’ wasn’t included, as it must be one of the easiest to fit in, as a suffix.
Like you, I went for NONE at 4dn, without a hope of justifying it. I wonder if it’s a reference to ‘Love is everything’ / ‘All you need is love’?
Re 24 dn: the saying ‘yeoman [‘significant sort of’] service’ rang a bell, so I looked it up in Chambers, which gives ‘powerful aid, such as came from the yeomen in the English armies of early times’.
[There’s a slight typo at 7dn in the spelling of MUESLI: you must have had it right in the grid. 😉 ]
Thank you to Cinephile and PeeDee. Knew all those GK crosswords would come in handy one day as I knew all the colours. I put NONE too but…???
Eileen @3 – I haven’t found a blogger yet who can type MUESLI, however they put it in the grid it always turns out wrong in the review. It’s one of those words.
Hi crypticsue
I know what you mean – I had to stare at it for a bit and look back to see if I’d spelt it right myself! [In case anyone thinks I’m completely mad, it’s been amended now. ;-)]
Thanks PeeDee and Cinephile for a puzzle I enjoyed very much.
I entered HOLE at 4d, without convincing myself. I saw it as a homophone of WHOLE (‘all’, perhaps justifying the question mark as a rudimentary homophone indicator…) and of course a hole could be an absence, or ‘nothing’. Like I say, I wasn’t happy with it but I couldn’t see anything else.
Thanks PeeDee and Cinephile – this was good fun, and easier than it seemed at first sight once I’d dredged the colours (which might appear on 5d) from my memory.
Another small typo – 12a should be UNBOSOM, not UMBOSOM.
The Chambers Word Wizard (http://www.chambers.co.uk/word-wizard.php?newword=?o?e ) gives 128 possibilities for ?O?E, so there are plenty more to choose from if you don’t like LOVE (I agree with Eileen’s suggestions for the “all” part) or HOLE (quite plausible as a
n AracuarianCinephilean liberty).Many thanks PeeDee although I understand that TAWNY is also missing as a heraldic colour.
Please note: Don’t believe everything that appears in the Wickedpedia.
Like everyone I agonised about 4d before finally getting the correct answer.
Well done, Cinephile and Many Thanks!
Hi Andrew
Chambers 12th Ed. has 141 matches (I went through them twice) so even more from which to choose.
Hi Bryan
The list of colours given in Brewer’s (probably more reliable than Wikipedia) doesn’t include tawny, quote: “….. azure (blue), gules (red), pupure (purple), sable (black) and vert (green). Argent (silver) and or (gold) are known as metals and the other ‘tinctures’ (the inclusive term for colours, patterns etc) are called furs (ermine, ermines, erminois, pean, potent and vair).”
Thanks PeeDee. I had a shortlist of three for 4dn and eventually picked LOVE. It will be interesting to see the solution tomorrow.
Hi Bryan, Wikipedia did list others including Murrey, Sanguine and Tenne (Tawny), but classes them as ‘heraldic stains’ rather than ‘heraldic colours’. Seemingly they are different.
Whether this is correct, and if Cinephine is deliberately avoiding them for that reason I really havn’t a clue as I know nothing about heraldry.
PS
The Heraldry Society in its list of colours has Tenne/Orange in addition to those given in Brewer’s. See:
http://www.theheraldrysociety.com/articles/blazoning/brief_multilingual_glossary_of_heraldic_terms.htm
OK, I’ll accept “love” for 4D, in the sense that “love is everything.” But it’s not a good clue, not up to the rest of this terrific puzzle. It would have been better if the clue had been “Hear all or nothing,” which would have given us “hole,” which is more fun.
Re 4d
When Auden said
“He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight…”,
I suppose he meant he was his love? I suppose there are a lot of cases of love being seen as a kind of plenitude – e.g. Plato’s Symposium – or as all-pervading. I think that’s what I was banking on anyway, when I filled it in – in ink but rather faintly. (Love as “all or nothing” might make poetic sense too, but then we’d be into “double duty”…)
When I saw the clue for 4d, I thought that must be a special one.
Unlike some others (Richard @13, for example) I liked it very much.
LOVE = “nothing” was clear enough, as was (for me) “LOVE Is All”:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oADfmYQWmW8
ONE ACROSS (9ac) was my first entry as I remembered a similar clue by Araucaria.
As others (perhaps) said, very enjoyable puzzle.
Thanks PeeDee, especially for the explanation of 17d.
Thanks Cinephile and PeeDee. Mostly enjoyable but 4d foxed me – those cursed 4-letter words! My attempt was “sole”, which touched the “all” aspect, but I couldn’t really make sense of it otherwise. These short clues and answers seem to work like tie-breakers – great if you know them (they jump out at you) but impossible otherwise.
Thanks both – very enjoyable.
Went with the LOVErs at 4d but only by focussing on “nothing” first. Lots of songs and poems hint at the rest but none all that specifically. I suppose it’s only like “time” being an “enemy” but not so good in such a short clue with nothing else to nail it down with. Prolly other candidates have equally valid arguments. Seen the soln now – turns out it’s right.
It’s frustrating to be denied surety. Thing with Araucaria is, much of the time, if you get it, you’re in. Bye bye otherwise, until the blog’s up.
PaulB – I have accidentally deleted your comment on this blog. Please re-submit if you are still reading this. My apologies, PeeDee.
PaulB
Re #19. No need to re-submit as I have recovered the original.