It isn’t giving anything away to the casual reader of this blog to say that all the across clues are of two words. I found it rather hard to get started on this, but from the blogger’s point of view the task is easier because there are so few clues to explain. By the end of it I was wondering why I’d had so much trouble, because as usual everything is efficient and quite transparent (except perhaps for 2dn).
| Across | |
|---|---|
| 9/10 | ANIMAL RIGHTS — (I’m alright) in ans — informally because it’s really ‘all right’, but although nobody who knew would do this it is written (informally, I suppose) as ‘alright’. All the result of that television programme. But language changes, and probably in due course there will be no need for the ‘informally’. |
| 11/12 | PLATINUM DISC — a platinum disc is a disc awarded to sellers of a certain number of records — very clever clue because there is a lead towards ‘turnover’ — it’s PTO in various cases, i.e. Pt o, where Pt is the chemical symbol for platinum |
| 13/14 | ELECTRONIC MAILBOX — elect r on 1 (lamb I)* in cox |
| 17/20 | AC COUNT EXECUT(IV)ES |
| 23/24 | HUNT SABOTEUR — ({rider}s the runabout)* — nice &lit. |
| 25/26 | RADIUS VECTOR — (or it’s a curved)*, the anagram indicated by ‘scrawl’ — yes, it really does exist |
| 27/8 | AB SO LUTE MAJOR IT {ver}Y |
| Down | |
| 1 | B (A) SILICA |
| 2 | GOTHIC — I think that it’s in some way say = go, and then thic{k}, although I’m not sure at all and thick = heavy also seems a bit doubtful — I look forward to being corrected here |
| 3 | TISSUE — ‘is suet’ with the t moved to the top |
| 4 | NYMPHET — NY (them)* around p |
| 5 | GALACTIC — gala (it)rev. in CC |
| 6 | MINI MOTO — my first one in, rather a guess since I’d never heard of a mini moto — Wikipedia also seem to have some trouble with it since they don’t seem to like this very much and it’s unusually low on the list of Google hits |
| 7 | K A B UK 1 — ‘this country’ for most readers of the Indy, not for Phi |
| 15 | LOCK(OUT)S — def ‘responses to strike action’ |
| 16 | OUTWEARS — (us two)* round ear |
| 18 | NON-QUOTA — no. (not a) round qu |
| 21 | X R(AYE)D |
| 22 | {DI}STRESS |
| 23 | H {m}UDDLE |
Thanks John and Phi. Good puzzle – needed your help to parse 11/12. COD, now I understand it. Incidentally, according to my download (and your comment on 7d) this is a Phi, not a Dac.
Re 11/12:
Isn’t the O just the disc? Or is that what you mean?
I especially liked 11/12 and TISSUE.
Thanks for the blog, John and to my local setter for the puzzle.
Thanks MikeC, don’t know why I said it was a Dac, correct now. Yes Muffyword in PTO the o is the disc.
I found this to be a rather serious puzzle which failed to make me chuckle or even smile once. I suppose that I would describe it as “clever” rather than “fun”.
My favourites were 17/20, 21d, 13/14 & 23/24.
I was unable to parse 22d, 16d, 11/12.
New words for me were ‘non-quota’ & ‘radius vector’.
Thanks for the blog, John. Sorry, I still don’t get 11/12 apart from the definition (yes, I solved it but I couldn’t parse it). ‘O’ = ‘disc’?
Thanks, John.
I enjoyed this Phi puzzle, but there has to be something going on that no-one’s seen yet. All the acrosses are two-letter words? Phi is up to something, but I’m not the most likely person to spot something.
I found this fairly hard going with one or two “bits and pieces” type clues like 4 and 18 holding me up. These tend to rely heavily on single letter abbreviations, which I’m not hugely keen on. I’m still struggling a bit to see why “in various cases” tells you to break PTO into PT and O, although the idea is a very good one. Also not sure about “so” for provided in 27/8. All told, probably a puzzle I found interesting rather than hugley enjoyable.
On mini-motos, these were briefly a fad a few years ago but thankfully for all of us who like to keep footpaths and cycle tracks clear of overgrown idiots on noisy toy motorbikes, they seem to have gone out of fashion.
Maybe’John’ just really wanted it tobe a Dac!!
Can’t see a\nythign else in this either, but very good puzzle, good tight cluesa nd just a little treay in the across answers.
Cheers
Rowly.
Maybe nothing, then …
I missed your comment about ALRIGHT and ALL RIGHT, John. I’d always write the latter, but despite being a grumpy old language pedant, I don’t really have a problem with the former. If we have ALTOGETHER and ALWAYS, then I think you’re right: sooner or later, it will become an accepted form (if it hasn’t already).
While Phi can have very subtle themes, I felt with this one (tho happy to be proved wrong I am) that all of the across clues being paired entries (which cannot be easy to do) was the theme today.
I also found it hard to get properly under way, and I thought it was a little more difficult than most Phi puzzles, but I persevered and got there in the end without recourse to aids. I really needed to nail down the wordplay for a lot of the clues before I entered their answers, and to me that is the sign of a well-crafted puzzle.
Well if there was more than the double across clues I’d be amazed, be hard enough to achieve as is it is, thanks John and Phi, see some of you tomorrow.
michelle@4 and NealH@6:
My reading of 11/12 is that you take the letters PTO and put them variously into upper and lower case – P is upper, t is lower and o doesn’t really matter. This gives you Pt = platinum and o, which looks like a circle or disc. The definition is then “measure of sales”. I am not convinced there is anything else intended to do with the abbreviation of T for turnover, but I may be missing something that John has spotted in the blog.
Well constructed puzzle – a real achievement to pair all the across clues up without needing to introduce unusual words. Well done Phi.
It was tricky getting started but once we had some of the down answers, things began to fall into place.
Thanks John for the blog.
This arose from a challenge to myself to see whether it could be done – it’s not quite the same as having several long across answers, because you’re adding the requirement that the phrases used are symmetrical in lengths. It wasn’t as difficult as anticipated, but it wasn’t something I set out to add anything to. Rather surprised how close to a pangram it got, though.