Thank you, Eileen for playing locum tenens so ably last Tuesday when I was climbing the 999 steps to the TienMenSan (Door to Heaven) near ZhangJiaJie in Hunan, the province that gave China an illustrious son, Mao Zedong. Coupled with the Hash run hosted by the Guangzhou Hash, it made for a most refreshing break.
Today’s puzzle is by our indefatigable Don celebrating half a century of bemusing solvers around the world. In my early solving days, I bought a book by a Don Manly (sic) and that was my guiding light. Later I found out that it was a pirated copy and they even got the name wrong. Thank you, Don for giving the world so much pleasure with your meticulous craftsmanship. I wish I were there to help you celebrate last night in Oxford. Perhaps, on my next trip to Blighty, we can finally meet.
| Across | ||
| 1 | DIRHAM | See one replacing university money in Africa (6) |
| Substitution of I (one) for U (university) in DURHAM (see, city hosting Durham Cathedral) for a unit of currency in Morocco and UAE | ||
| 5 | GRUBBY | Dirty and gross, the man in the family ’ome? (6) |
| GR (gross) |
||
| 8 | EXPLAIN | Give an account of old flame, no oil painting? (7) |
| Cha of EX (old flame) PLAIN (no oil painting) | ||
| 9 | LOGICAL | Sound made by soldier entering hostelry (7) |
| Ins of GI (soldier) in LOCAL (inn, pub, hostelry) | ||
| 11 | WHITECHAPEL ROAD | Hear a low-pitched buzz around capital’s thoroughfare (11,4) |
| *(HEAR A LOW PITCHED) for a road in London made famous by the Monopoly game. This clue got me worried for a moment, thinking it might be yet another of the dreaded homophone clues. | ||
| 12 | REIN | Restriction no good for monarchy? (4) |
| REIGN minus G (no good) | ||
| 13 | BRASS TACKS | Items sold by M&S, piles — fundamental things for discussion (5,5) |
| BRAS (brassieres, items sold in Marks & Spencer) + STACKS (piles) | ||
| 17 | HAGIOLATRY | Witch I behold spinning — an attempt to end worship of saints (10) |
| HAG (witch) I OL (rev of LO, behold) A TRY (an attempt) for a new word to me … meaning worship of saints | ||
| 18 | MIRA | An edge around star (4) |
| Rev of A RIM (an edge) | ||
| 20 | ALBEMARLE STREET | A master let rebel loose somewhere off Piccadilly (9,6) |
| *(A MASTER LET REBEL) for a street in Mayfair in central London, off Piccadilly. It has historic associations with Lord Byron, whose publisher John Murray was based here, and Oscar Wilde, a member of the Albemarle Club, where an insult he received led to his suing for libel and to his eventual imprisonment. | ||
| 23 | HOODLUM | Thug in appropriate head covering? Slow-witted type mostly (7) |
| HOOD (head covering) + LUM |
||
| 24 | OVERAWE | Old woman we put down as “cow” (7) |
| Cha of O (old) VERA (woman) WE for a word meaning to intimidate or cow | ||
| 25 | TENNIS | Group outside pub coming back for game (6) |
| Rev of the ins of INN (pub) in SET (group) | ||
| 26 | TINKER | Mess around with stone to start with (6) |
| dd to tinker is to mess around. As explained by the Don@5, “Tinker Tailor” is a counting game, nursery rhyme and fortune telling song traditionally played in England, that can be used to count cherry stones, buttons, daisy petals and other items … and it always starts with TINKER | ||
| Down | ||
| 2 | IMPAIRING | Damaging confession from politician making arrangement with opposition? (9) |
| I’M PAIRING (politician making arrangement with opposition) | ||
| 3 | HEAVEN | Ecstasy? It’s smuggled into harbour (6) |
| Ins of E (Ecstasy) in HAVEN (harbour) | ||
| 4 | MANCHURIA | Places of worship not half gripped by enthusiasm in Asian region (9) |
| Ins of CHUR |
||
| 5 | GALOP | Girl requires a piece of music for dance (5) |
| GAL (girl) + OP (opus, a piece of music) for a lively dance or dance tune in double time; | ||
| 6 | UNGULATE | Sort of animal with others, superior beast standing on head (8) |
| Rev of ET AL (et alia, in Latin, and others) U (superior) GNU (beast) for a term applied to several groups of superficially similar hoofed animals which are not necessarily closely related taxonomically, eg horses, cows, deer, tapirs. Thanks to the ever-vigilant Neilw@1 for spotting today’s deliberate error 🙂 | ||
| 7 | BUCKO | Young man’s all right, cheeky youngster on the up (5) |
| Rev of OK (all right) CUB (cheeky youngster) for Irish slang for a young man | ||
| 8 | EDWARD HEATH | Enforcer of energy saving — what about day room needing warmth? (6,5) |
| Ins of D (day) WARD (room in hospital) + HEAT (warmth) in EH (WHAT, interjection expressing inquiry, failure to hear or slight surprise) | ||
| 10 | LADYS MANTLE | Plant that a woman passes on to another? (5,6) |
| cf alluding to the expression passing the mantle meaning passing the power/authority/responsibility attached to an office | ||
| 14 | SORTED OUT | Cleared up Dorset, we may surmise? (6,3) |
| A reverse clue where the answer SORTED OUT is like an anagram clue for DORSET | ||
| 15 | CRIME WAVE | View contrived with camera endlessly revealing matter of concern to police (5,4) |
| *(VIEW CAMER |
||
| 16 | FORMALIN | Disinfectant for sea area (8) |
| FOR MALIN (one of the sea areas used in UK Shipping Forecasts) | ||
| 19 | STREWN | Like china after the bull, shop being gutted when he’s gone (6) |
| ST |
||
| 21 | BROKE | City trader almost unable to do further business? (5) |
| BROKER (city trader) minus R | ||
| 22 | ROMPS | Frolics in Albert Hall concerts when the piano gets moved (5) |
| PROMS (a series of promenade concerts held annually in Albert Hall, London) with letter P (piano) moved | ||
Key to abbreviations
dd = double definition
dud = duplicate definition
tichy = tongue-in-cheek type
cd = cryptic definition
rev = reversed or reversal
ins = insertion
cha = charade
ha = hidden answer
*(FODDER) = anagram
yfyap88 at gmail.com = in case anyone wants to contact me in private about some typo
Thanks, UY. Can’t say I enjoyed this very much, I’m afraid, as a little long on hard work and short on laughs… BRASS TACKS and UNGULATE were the best for me – by the way, you’ve got the latter a bit mixed up: it’s ET AL U GNU all reversed.
Many thanks UY and P and best wishes to the latter.
I think 26a is T INKER.
Ie an inker being a printer’s stone and T being To start.
Same parsing as JollySwagman, but I reckon inker (a term for a comic book artist) may refer to Chic Stone of Fantastic Four fame.
@ulaca #3 – you’ve got me wondering now.
The only other use of the term inker I can think of is here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SnJjNtGkfLc
but I can’t link Garson Hampfield to “stone”.
Thanks all, esp. UY. Let me put you out of your TINKER misery. Old nursery rhyme with plum or cherry stones (let someone else google it and explain fully): Tinker, tailor, soldier, sailor, … ( and four more). Clue is a simple double definition. Nice table of drinkers in Oxford last night — up early for my wife’s trip to work.
Thanks Pasquale and Uncle Yap
Found this hard work and gave up on STREWN. Lots to enjoy. I confess that I didn’t see the anagram for WHITECHAPEL ROAD even after I had entered the answer (as the only thoroughfare that would fit).
DIRHAM only came after Googling – more like an AZED clue, really, unless you have visited either of the countries.
EDWARD HEATH wouldn’t have occurred to anyone younger than me, I expect!
I agree with NeilW @1 that this puzzle was more like hard work than fun. I failed to solve 18a MIRA and there were a few I could not parse: 26, 8a, 2d, 6d.
My favourites were 14d, 13a, 22d, 17a, 9a.
New words for me were HAGIOLATRY, Malin sea area, UNGULATE, BUCKO & LADY’S MANTLE.
Thanks for the blog, Uncle Yap.
Many thanks Pasquale and UY.
Surely the ‘et al.’ in 6d s “et alia” (or alii/ae) — ‘and others.’ ‘Et alibi’ means ‘and elsewhere.’ Not recognizing this phrase, I thought it was a simple mistake, but I see that ‘et alibi’ is indeed used in some scientific contexts. Nonetheless, ‘others’ in the clue must be ‘et alia.’
Good morning everybody, and thanks Nuncle.
Don @5 many thanks for dropping in and for putting me out of my particular misery. Like many, I suspect, I wrote in TINKER but couldn’t parse it. Fair clue but you are truly wicked!
Loved the WHITECHAPEL ROAD anagram – very neat.
More please.
Back again to thank the Don for the parsing of TINKER – hilarious – if this had been a Rufus clue it would have been obvious immediately but, coming at the tail end of so much deviousness, it had everyone flummoxed! [Well, I certainly was.] 🙂
Many thanks UY & Pasquale
Fortunately, my elder daughter is at present spending a few days in Morocco or otherwise 1a would have defeated me.
A bit of a struggle but nonetheless enjoyable.
I found this a bit of a struggle. I know the Don likes to introduce us to new words, but too many for me – DIRHAM, HAGIOLATRY, GALOP, BUCKO, LADY’S MANTLE. 🙁
Thanks UY; I was another not recognising that WHITECHAPEL ROAD was an anagram, (doh!) although ‘buzz around’ is a bit unusual for an anagrind [if I understand it properly]
I started with ‘impacting’ for 2 (sort of made sense to me.) ‘Items sold by M&S’ for BRAS was slightly odd, although it made a change from the usual ‘supporters.’ 24 was quite funny, I thought.
Thanks to the setter for the explanation and also for a very good puzzle. Dirham set the bar high and it was never lowered,
Robi @12 IMPACTING – me too, sadly. It complicated the hell out of the WHITECHAPEL ROAD anagram for a while!
Thanks, Uncle Yap. Got going on this one, but ran out of ability and time before I could finish it. There was some tricky stuff in there, but I should have done better.
Just wanted to drop in to say congratulations to Don on the 50th anniversary.
Peter
Thanks and congrats to Pasquale and thanks to UY
I found this quite testing but very satisfying to finish and work out the parsing from the characteristically accurate cluing. Like others I thought ‘impacting’ was a clever answer at first but became more and more convinced by ‘whitechapel road’ and had to rethink it. Even then the fact it was an anagram escaped me for some time. 15d was also an unlikely anagram.
I additionally ticked 6d and 8d (this last also took some seeing long after the answer was clear.
Thanks Pasquale (and hearty congratulations) and thanks to Uncle Yap for the blog.
One of those puzzles that had me um-ing and ah-ing for an age, making gradual progress, a few little steps forward at a time, the occasional rush followed by another grind to a halt and a succession of gnawed pencils. Then at the end I looked back and wondered why it had been so much trouble. Not a single answer was incorrectly entered and the cluing is so meticulously fair (I hope even Rowland agrees) that once each individual penny dropped there was no doubt. Of the London thoroughfares I got ALBEMARLE STREET straight away, but I spent a ridiculous amount of time over WHITECHAPEL ROAD – still don’t know why. TINKER was last in, and immediately promoted to favourite.
Enforcer of energy saving as a definition of Edward Heath in a crossword in 2013 seems to me to exemplify something that is wrong with the mindset of many current Guardian setters. It is meaningless and outdated. You can say it doesn’t matter as you can work out the answer from the cryptic element but I say meaningless and outdated clues should not appear. May I add that I lived through the Heath era and would have many other less meaningless definitions for him.
I thought this was a very good puzzle, although I agree that solvers under a certain age might have struggled with the definition of EDWARD HEATH as ‘enforcer of energy saving’.
Like a lot of you I wasn’t able to fully parse TINKER so thanks to Don for the explanation. Post-solve I had to check that MIRA was a star as PILA also fits the wordplay but sounded far less likely.
I don’t agree that DIRHAM is overly difficult. ‘See’ as a diocese is standard crossword fare and with all the checkers in place Durham should have been fairly obvious, and the i/u replacement instruction in the clue was clear enough.
Many congratulations to Pasquale, and with thanks for decades of enjoyment.
Although I readily solved ‘Edward Heath’, and smugly biked past motorists queuing for petrol during the 3-day week, I agree with Tom Hutton that the definition was unduly obscure for today.
Solved ‘tinker’ but couldn’t parse it.
Thanks to UY.
For what it’s worth I thought the TED HEATH clue excellent. And I’m happy to say I’m too young to remember him being PM.
Thanks and congratulations, Pasquale and thanks to Uncle Yap, too.
I enjoyed the puzzle, which was full of good childhood memories: LADY’S MANTLE was a favourite spring flower, TINKER was fun (Not recommended with prune stones. 5 was the optimum number of stones in order to marry a rich man this year with silver and go to the wedding in a coach.)I also liked HAGIOLATRY, which I have seen used in a derogatory sense for over-praise of the current ‘favourite’ personality.
Like other, I didn’t spot the WHITECHAPEL ROAD anagram but worked it out anyway.
Enjoy your special time.
Giovanna x
I also thought EDWARD HEATH was very witty.
We thought this was a hard but very satisfying crossword.
One we could finish without external resources, too.
I just wonder why Gordius is always “my least favourite setter”, Arachne always creates crosswords that “I love” and Don Manley (especially as Pasquale) always has “a certain lack of humour”.
I cannot disagree more with the latter.
Apart from the fact that his puzzles are sublimely clued, most surfaces are wonderful (today eg 13ac, 24ac, 2d, 4d, 8d, 19d, 22d) and, I think, just as ‘storytelling’ as Arachne’s.
But apparently for some Pasquale’s bras cannot match Paul’s.
To be honest, a quality setter as Paul is, at times I prefer Don Manley’s so-called ‘dignity’ to the former’s ‘laddishness’.
After 50 years of compiling today’s setter doesn’t need me to defend him, but I already have been thinking for a while to say something about it.
Quixote, Bradman and Pasquale – they deliver some of the most consistent puzzles around.
Worth a drink, indeed.
Cheers, Don!
Despite the late hour, I just wanted to say that I have finally solved 11across. The street which fronts the London Hospital, in which my children were born.
Well what a start to the week! My two least favourite setters in a row.
What others see as devious/sublime cluing I see as sloppy and unfair.
I did finish but with little pleasure.
Here are my most disliked clues.
13a items sold by M&S!!!! ,10a never heard of it and why should I have, 26a too obscure, 7d BUCKO !!!! , 10d still doesn’t parse for me(where’s the other woman?), 19d shop to store before the gutting!!! unfair.
I’m afraid I don’t find this type of crossword devious or clever. It’s just made difficult by using obscure high vocabulary words and slightly dodgy cluing. IMHO of course.
Thanks to UY.
The construction of these clues were smongst thr finest possible. Don’t know where to begin. Vrry very good and pretty tough.
Finished without aids today. Loved the ‘tinker tailor’ clue and pleased to discover two unfamiliar London streets although living up North. At one stage thought 8d could be Edwina Curry before crossing letters ruled it out. Thanks to Pasquale and Uncle Yap for an enjoyable crossword.
I am sorry that one esteemed solver is unaware that Marks and Spencer sells bras. Perhaps he should be grateful that a lady has not yet made him aware of that and trailed him around a store. Clearly such ignorance may help to explain the poor results reported by M&S this morning.
Is that Pasquale being disingenuous?
Of course M&S sell bras. I think the point is that they are not particularly noted for this and they also sell several other thousand items.
So the clue can be equally clued:
Items one can buy, piles — fundamental things for discussion (5,5)
Just as good/bad?
Oh, come off it Brendan (nto) – everyone knows that St Michael is the patron saint of underwear. It’s you that is being disingenuous.
Mitz @31
I assure you that “everyone” doesn’t know that St Michael is the patron saint of underwear 😉
Even if they did I believe it’s still a poor clue.
I’m not being disingenuous but merely expressing my honest opinion. Obviously I’m in a minority regarding Pasquale and Rufus but why should that bother me?
Their popularity genuinely surprises me but trying to understand the tastes of the masses is notoriously tricky.
I’ll let their future puzzles do the talking but I assume that the majority will always don their rose coloured crossword specs whenever they see the words Rufus or Pasquale.
Good luck to them both and “Vive la difference.”
The fundamental things that M&S used to be associated with were knickers.
I was defeated, I must admit. Never solved the NE corner as wasn’t confident enough to put in Lady’s Mantle, and failed to get TINKER, or WHITECHAPEL ROAD, in part because I’m also one who put in IMPACTING. It felt uncomfortable, and now I know why – I had the answer wrong!
Congratulations to the Don on a splendid milestone. I’ve no complaints about the puzzle and was beaten fairly.
I solved this late yesterday evening and have just got round to checking the blog now. Quite surprised at the mixed feelings expressed. I thought this was excellent, covering a great range of subjects with some very cleverly disguised definitions. OK – the M&S part of 13ac is a bit unspecific – but it’s only a part of the clue – the rest made the solution clear and unambiguous.
Very many thanks to Pasquale and Uncle Yap.
Thanks Pasquale and UY
I come down on the side of “It was a good ‘un”.
Finished filling it in early yesterday morning (out time) and the final parsing sweep last night. To me it was like a good wine – it did seem like a hard slog with little humour when filling the grid – but taking the time to fully understand the clue construction, revisit the surface readings and still pick up further interpretation from you guys here (two days on) means that there must have been some body in it.
Thankfully didn’t go down the wrong path with IMPAIRING – but it took ages to get that the clue was only dangerous.
The only parsing that was a little tenuous for me was T (to start) and INKER (Chic Stone – one of Jack Kirby’s Silver Age inkers) – and although it stands up – the Don’s real Tinker, tailor … version is watertight !!
The standout feature for me was the different paths that I actually derived the answer to clues. In some the answer became clear early and then there was work to understand why it was (ROMPS – clearly frolics – but took a little research to find about the proms that occur at Albert Hall. WHITECHAPEL ROAD obviously the answer but some looking to find the well hidden anagram).
Others where the answer could be constructed from the clue – then you had to figure out why the answer was right (EDWARD HEATH was reasonably easily built – but took an age to link him back to the Three Day Week episode – almost Araucarian)
And others where the meaning and the construct arrived together (STREWN – where the answer just had to mean a mess of some kind and when the penny dropped with taking the o from store and the he from when – aha moment!)
Big rich Shiraz … methinks!
This was a puzzle for locals and Londoners. It did not translate well. I did check 9 and 24 (though I got it wrong, never doubling up on the meanings of “cow”).
Thanks, Uncle Yap, for the blog, and Pasquale, for trying. Ugly Tuesday fare, too much obscurity and strangeness for me.