The usual very nice crossword from Dac, although this one contained some words that I found a bit tricky, and two of the answers, although confirmed online, are not clear to me.
| Across | |
|---|---|
| 1 | EXPEDIENCE — die in ex-pence — I think the ‘perhaps’ refers to the ex-pence rather than the die, for ex-pence is a slightly fanciful term whereas it would seem unnecessarily pedantic to worry about definition by example with ‘die’, otherwise a crossword, which contains masses of near-synonyms, would be sprinkled with perhapses |
| 6 | SPAR{k} — at least that what it seems to be, although I’ve never heard of the term ‘spar’ meaning ‘close friend’; it may be a colloquialism for ‘sparring partner’ — ah, I see it’s in the COD although not in Chambers |
| 9 | churcH IN DUblin |
| 10/12 | THEATRE OF CRUELTY — (Actor felt eye hurt)* |
| 13 | I’M AG(IN)E |
| 14 | MANIFEST{o} |
| 15 | HEART H — the hotel is the second h and ‘close to’ doesn’t imply any particular order |
| 17 | TO B A GO — ‘a go’ with primarily [at the front] ‘to B'[ritish] |
| 19 | W ANNA BEE — busy bee |
| 22 | R(OBE)R TA |
| 23/24 | BROUGHT UP TO SPEED — 2 defs — I think the connection of speed and dope is a red herring: it’s simply that a boy racer is brought up with going fast as something big in his life |
| 25 | I DEAL — the I costs 20p — lovely surface here |
| 27 | HIYA — “higher” |
| 28 | STRAITENED — (artist)* (need)* |
| Down | |
| 1 | ThE THunderer |
| 2 | PENGUIN — sorry, please can someone explain this — is a penguin some sort of argot like a monkey or a pony for a certain sum of money? [Chocolate biscuit: pound and fourteen shillings, in the old days?] |
| 3 | DOUBLE FIGURES — 2 defs — I suppose it’s clear enough without painstakingly saying ‘and less than a hundred’, which would make it far too easy |
| 4 | EN TRY(1)ST |
| 5 | CR EDIT |
| 7 | P(RE M)IER |
| 8 | RE{gister} FRESHMEN T |
| 11 | TRADE UNIONIST — (tiniest around)* |
| 12 | COME THROUGH — (mother)* in cough |
| 16 | C(AM BOD)IA |
| 18 | BOBSTAY — (boat’s)* in b{a}y — a bobstay is, according to the COD, a rope used to hold down the bowsprit of a ship and keep it steady |
| 20 | BOGBEAN — B.O. [body odour] (began)* (but none of the (usual) dictionaries in which I looked mention the nasty smell) |
| 21 | CA VE(A)T |
| 26 | LAD — not sure here: it looks as if it’s la{n}d, where ‘France, say’ is ‘land’ and ‘born’ is ‘n’ (sort of ‘né’, but I can’t justify that from the dictionaries) [Boy not born in France, say] |
PENGUIN is PEN=(com)pound and GUIN is 4/6 of Guinea (21 shillings).
I also don’t understand LAD, and had the same thoughts as you about SPAR (which I see you have confirmed).
Thanks for the blog and to Dac!
2d Pen=pound, guin = 2/3s of a guinea (being twenty-one shillings)!
A Guinea is 21 shillings, 14 shillings is 2/3 of GUIN(ea)
Hello Ben
Jinx!
Thanks John
Regarding 26dn, Collins gives ‘n’ as an abbreviation for “natus [Latin: born]”.
I managed to solve this puzzle but I felt quite frustrated because there were so many clues that I could not parse: 1a, 15a, 19a, 25a, 2d, 21d & 26d. I guess I was not on Dac’s wavelength.
There were some new words for me today: ETH, PENGUIN biscuit, BOGBEAN, BOBSTAY, and SPAR = ‘close friend’.
My favourite clues were 10/12, 13a, 12d & 3d.
Thanks for the blog, John. I still don’t understand DIE (=’buy’?) in 1a, nor do I understand the parsing of 25a. Is 21 CA (circa) + VET with insert of A (area)? As I mentioned, I’m not on Dac’s wavelength today.
And, oh dear, I see the parsing of 2d was fiendishly difficult, too!
Thanks John and Dac, but my main complaint today was with the layout in the paper itself, with the crossword in a commuter unfriendly positon, where I could either read the clues or see the grid…
P-P-Pick up a puzzle by Dac and find it’s not quite what you expect if you’re a regular Indy solver. It’s all fair, but by Wednesday standards a bit tricky, imho. SPAR, BOGBEAN and BOBSTAY all new to me, and LAD I couldn’t understand either. EXPEDIENCE and WANNABEE were good though.
Just to confirm for those still confused: a PENGUIN is (was?) a chocolate biscuit.
Michelle, the DIE bit in 1ac comes from ‘buy it’, which is a slang term for ‘die’.
Eimi’s given Dac permission to be a bit more difficult today, so we’ll be having an easy Thursday affair tomorrow, then …
KsDad@8
thanks, I’d never heard of the slang ‘die’ = ‘buy it’.
According to my “research” today on PENGUIN biscuits, they were the inspiration for the very popular TIM TAM biscuits in Australia, produced by Arnott’s. Naturally (as an an antipodean) I know TIM TAMS but I had never heard of PENGUIN biscuits until today.
Smugness abounded as PENGUIN went in as my first answer, duly parsed (but then I do remember the biscuit, shillings and guineas………. oh dear.) Smugness evaporated as I struggled to finish, and had to resort to the cheat button. Had I lost it completely? This was a Dac, after all. So thanks for confirming that I wasn’t alone in my struggles, particularly with 6a which is one of those clues that leaves me with a bit of an unpleasant aftertaste, 26d and one or two others.
I certainly found this trickier than a normal Dac, but good fun of course.
Try this for 26d. “D” in french is pronounced (roughly) “de” or “day”, so the the “d” is spoken “le de” or “le day” which Dac might suppose a homophone for “lady”. Best I can do.
Nah, it’s just N for natus.
NATUS itself isn’t a word included in (my newish) Collins or (my oldish) Chambers, but, where compilers may allow themselves a certain amount of freedom in the selection of single-letter indicators, e.g. in The Independent Crossword, Dac’s craftsmanship cannot be called into question.
All in all, another splendid piece, I think!
I agree with those who found this more difficult than a usual Dac, and I was pleased to finish without resort to aids.
However, I didn’t understand the wordplay for LAD, so thanks to PaulB@12, and SPAR went in because the wordplay suggested SPAR(K), but I had never heard of SPAR meaning a close friend.
Can we first add our annoyance to flashing’s comment about the page layout in the dead tree version? We normally solve the Indy in bed but it is so awkwardly positioned that you have to solve it on a horizontal surface! Hopefully the BT Sport advert is not going to be a permanent feature!
Moaning over, this was a good Dac in our opinion but not one of his best. We didn’t like 6 ac, 26d, or 18d, although we did manage to solve them from the wordplay. However we liked 23/24ac, and as usual the clues were fair with good surfaces.
Thanks Dac!
Re 20dn, b.o (or B.O.) is in Chambers (1998), and BO in Collins (2006) as an abbreviation for ‘body odour’.
My CoD has to be PENGUIN – a real ‘aha’ moment when the penny dropped in parsing it. Cue for a very old joke: “Why don’t polar bears eat penguins? – Because they can’t get the silver paper off!” (OK, they have plastic wrappers now but it is a very old joke.)
Thanks, Dac and John
Sorry allan_c @15, my bad (as the young people say very sensibly): when doing the blog I was thinking that the definition was ‘Plant with nasty smell’, which was why I referred to the absence of a statement that the bogbean had a nasty smell; which was of course nonsense since the definition is simply ‘Plant’.
@B&J Glad I’m not the only one to buy the paper… But seriously Eimi, stop this happening please.
And just in case anyone notices, I sneakily changed the parsing of 21dn so that there wasn’t a space between the C and the A, which of course is correct (thanks Michelle@6). At first I thought I’d get away with it but I’ve got to be honest about it. It was indeed a mistake originally.
John@18
no need to thank me, I was just trying to understand an answer I couldn’t parse yesterday.
I still don’t understand 25a. Is “I” the Independent newspaper which costs 20p? I can’t access the puzzle or clue any more as I do it online.
The i is a British newspaper published by Independent Print, owned by Alexander Lebedev, which also publishes The Independent. The newspaper, which is aimed at “readers and lapsed readers” of all ages and commuters with limited time, costs 20 pence, and was launched on 26 October 2010.
The above was taken from a wiki article about the i.
There was a bit of controversy when they started using the same cryptic rather than recycling older ones as they had been doing. New readers complained that they were sometimes too hard whilst the loyal Indy readers including us, complained bitterly that they liked the variety especially when we were paying more!
Michelle – just a thought! We have an app on our ipad which enables us to download crosswords from a variety of sources, including the Independent. You can download previously published puzzles which as you say are not available normally, unlike on the Guardian website. We find it useful when we are abroad.
bertandjoyce@20&21
thanks so much, I understand now.
[How do I get the ipad app? I think you are able to contact me via email as you are bloggers and I post sometimes?]
Resurfaced in the i today, which – alas – no longer costs 20p. 25A was updated to “… newspaper costing 60p …”
It’s lad because France is a land and you take off the n (born)