Eff-ing inventive! Pardon my fanners but that’s feant to be high praise. The clues may not have been difficult, but the enjoyment was in deciphering the key clue. So in addition to all the eff-words in the grid, it’s also eff for fun. There are also a few other clues/answers associated with the first part of the 13 across answer. Thanks to Philistine. Definitions are underlined in the clues. [[The pictures at the bottom have unidentified links to the puzzle. Please enclose any comments on them in double brackets. Thank you.]]
Before 13 = before sex change = before substituting “f” for “m”. This is indicated by * in the explanations below.
Across
1 Criminals had fruit before 13 (6)
FELONS : “melons”(fruits) *.
4 Chap relaxed before 13 (6)
FELLOW : “mellow”(relaxed) *.
9 Kitty‘s game (4)
POOL : Double defn: 1st: The total of stake to be won in a game/lottery; and 2nd: A game similar to snooker, but a smaller table, bigger balls and pockets.
10 The cocoa’s final end products (10)
CHOCOLATES : Anagram of(… products) [THE COCOA’S + last letter of(… end) “final “. A WIWD (wordplay intertwined with defn.) clue.
11 Europeans reporting money orders (6)
CZECHS : Homophone of(reporting) “cheques”(money orders, or checks in the USA).
12 Spring elevation before 13 (8)
FOUNTAIN : “mountain”(an elevation) *.
13 F-form s-swap? (3,6)
SEX CHANGE : The clue is to be read as “f” for “m”s swap, ie. [abbrev. for “female”] replacing [abbrev. for “male”], ie. a SEX CHANGE. Best clue I’ve seen for a long time. By coincidence, all but one of the changes are in the initial letter of the answer, so I got the “CHANGE” bit early, but thought it was something to do with changing the initial letters. Only after the last one (22 across) did the light bulb go on. Doh!
15 Canine in a fit of anger (4)
FANG : Hidden in(in a) “of anger “.
16 Confront staff before 13 (4)
FACE : “mace”(a staff;a baton, as a symbol of office/authority) *.
17 Officer‘s ship given a rough ride (9)
BRIGADIER : BRIG(a two-masted sailing ship) plus(given) A + anagram of(rough) “ride “.
21 Possibly next Open champion (8)
EXPONENT : Anagram of(Possibly) NEXT OPEN.
Defn: A champion;a supporter of a cause, an idea, etc. Not to do with an Open competition.
22 Disagree with switch before 13 (6)
DIFFER : “dimmer”(a switch that will dim your lights) *.
24 Do E-numbers turn heavy? (10)
BURDENSOME : Anagram of(turn) DO E-NUMBERS.
25 Pick up entitlement at the ceremony (4)
RITE : Homophone of(Pick up, as in “to hear”) “right”(an entitlement).
26 Death to river bear (6)
ENDURE : END(death;the ultimate end) plus(to) URE(the river in N. Yorkshire)
27 Essential grandmother has a change of heart to become an African (6)
KENYAN : “key nan”(essential;critical + a child’s term for “grandmother”) with its 2 central letters switching places(has a change of heart).
Down
1 Female to sleep around the flipping place with all sorts of creatures (7)
FLOOZIE : F(abbrev. for “female”) + LIE(to sleep;to be in bed) containing(around) reversal of(flipping) ZOO(the place will all sorts of creatures).
Answer: A loose;promiscuous female. But to sleep around with all sorts of creatures? That’s another story. Another splendid WIWD clue.
2 Bush in a relapse of critical illness (5)
LILAC : Hidden in(in) reversal of(relapse) “critical illness “.
3 Capital report on underwear drawer? (7)
NICOSIA : Homophone of(report on) “knickers here” (“here” is the drawer where you keep your underwear, female that is).
Answer: Capital city of Cyprus.
5 Crazy duo in kinky sex book (6)
EXODUS : Anagram of(Crazy) DUO contained in(in) anagram of(kinky) SEX. The surface suggests a book written by 1 down.
Answer: A book of the Old Testament.
6 Prerequisite to quick fix as details hammered out (5,4)
LEAST SAID : Anagram of(hammered out) AS DETAILS.
Defn: Reference to the phrase “least said, soonest amended”, ie. before one can mend;fix;forget a bad situation in the quickest time, one needs to say as little about it as possible.
7 Small half-game greeting for the Scots (7)
WEEPING : WEE(small;little) + PING(first half of “ping pong”, the game aka table-tennis – apparently the former term is copyrighted).
Defn: The word which “greeting” stands for in Scottish.
8 Layout of Agincourt in conflict (13)
CONFIGURATION : Anagram of(conflict) OF AGINCOURT IN. A challenging anagram.
14 Betrayed at heart, wicked love caught in illicit cuddle (9)
CUCKOLDED : { The 2 innermost letters of(at heart) “wicked ” + O(the letter that looks like 0;love in tennis scores) } contained in(caught in) anagram of(illicit) “cuddle “. Another WIWD clue.
16 Fitting blend before 13 (7)
FIXTURE : “mixture”(a blend) *.
18 Examines setter, coming up with spiritual yarn (4,3)
GOD’S EYE : Reversal of(coming up) { EYES(examines;looks at) DOG(an animal, an example of which is the setter – not the crossword compiler) }.
Answer: A religious object made from woven yarn and wood, the making of which is an ancient contemplative and spiritual practice for many indigenous people in the Americas.
19 Team heavyweight’s always first (7)
EVERTON : TON(a heavy weight) placed below(… first,in a down clue) EVER(always, as in “forever and ever”).
Answer: That other football team from Liverpool (sorry, fans).
20 Hear the pitch of this note (6)
TENNER : Homophone of(Hear) “tenor”(the range of pitch for the tenor, the highest range for the male voice in music).
Answer: Nickname for the £10 note.
23 Ship was happy before 13 (5)
FERRY : “merry”(happy) *.
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For answer to pic1 and pic5 (via pic1) please click here.
Thanks scchua and Philistine
Relatively straightforward for a Philistine puzzle once I’d seen the ‘theme’ very early on.
Some amusing clues, e.g. 3d, and one or two which puzzled for a time, e.g. 11a which needed 1d before I dared enter it and 7d which had me daftly wondering if Scots (like Sioux – sometimes one knows too much :)) were said to weep in greeting, before the penny dropped.
I had to check 18d before being absolutely sure of it.
Perhaps wrongly, I read 13a as F or M s(ex) swap. I did not see scchua’s very plausible suggestion but note that it involves a shift of number.
My favourite clue was 6d.
Great puzzle – very clever. Thanks to Philistine & scchua. I particularly liked CUCKOLDED and NICOSIA.
I think there’s a bit more going on in 13ac.
“F – for m” is one thing “S exchange(ie swap) another.
Brilliant clue – excellent, enjoyable crossword – reminded me of Brendan at his best(there can be no higher praise from me.)
Thanks Philistine & scchua.
Thanks Philistine and Sschua. I predict that there will be those who will say that the theme made an already relatively undemanding puzzle even easier. For myself, I thought 13 was very good and I enjoyed attacking the themed clues. Very nice puzzle.
PGreen@3, yes, that makes the clue even better!
PGreen @3
You are quite right re s-exchange, and I just ran upstairs to try to amend my own entry to that effect only to find you had beaten me to it.
Thanks, scchua
I found this much easier than your average Philistine (I solved it in less time than this week’s Rufus and Gordius puzzles), but very entertaining. 1a was impenetrable to start with, so I went for the down clues; 1d and 2d went straight in, which gave me FELONS and I guessed SEX CHANGE, so the rest was relatively plain sailing, particularly since most of the themed Fs were initial letters. Last in was CZECHS (with much self-kicking).
GODS EYE was unfamiliar, but the wordplay was clear.
I liked the allusive clues and the cleverly constructed anagrams: 10a, 21a, 8d especially.
I was completely bamboozled at the start!
I looked at 13 first, and put in TOP CHANGE, thinking the start of the word would alter… That led me to lots of (correct) answers, but had me completely baffled on 1d (F?O?Z?O) and 22a, which needed the middle changed.
Still great enjoyment, and nearly made it!
Thanks Philistine and scchua.
Loved this. Not hard, but I twigged what was going on with the central conceit very late, and had even (unconvincedly) written in “mellow” at 4 and “mixture” at 16d before seeing my mistake. My favourite was the excellent LEAST SAID.
[[So, I’ve got Gene Wilder and a very dashing looking Roald Dahl – CHOCOLATES, and is Dahl wearing a BRIGADIER’s hat?. Robbie Coltrane in Cracker – the character name was Fitz – but I can’t spot a link. Malcolm McDowell as Alex in A Clockwork Orange – apart from FLOOZIE being the kind of word he might have used I can’t see anything there either!]]
Pedants corner: The Inquisition would quibble at the clue for 18d. The ‘rules’ state that a class noun can stand as the definition for a member of that class, but if a member of a class is used as the definition for the class noun it must be qualified by e.g., perhaps, or a question mark. Thus, ‘dog’ can define ‘setter’ but ‘dog’ has to be defined by ‘setter?’, or something similar. (NB I’m only pointing this out to show that I understand the rules, not that I actually care about them…)
Thanks, scchua. Well it’s a fun week so far with nothing too tough, just amusing. Like Brendan yesterday, there was some very neat clueing going on here, though.
Tramp last month:
Well, peak with sex change? (8)
Spooky, eh? 😉
This was a fun puzzle with its “sex change” clues & answers. I was lucky to work out what was going on via FELONS/melons. I also liked 9a, 5d, 10a & 27a (last in)
New word for me was GODS EYE.
I could not parse 3d & 25a, and I don’t understand the definition of 7d (although I could parse it!) – how is “weeping” a greeting?
Thanks for the blog, scchua.
HI Michelle
As I noted @1, it isn’t. Greet is an old northern word for weep. My comment re Sioux relates to the fact that Sioux used weeping as a way of greeting friendly groups. There is a story that Huron Indians mistook this on first encounter as a weakness, and were sorely disabused of their mistake when they attacked the Sioux.
Nicely themed puzzle, although I got a few ‘key’ answers before settling on SEX CHANGE.
Thanks scchua & PGreen @3 for the full parsing of 13.
I particularly enjoyed CUCKOLDED and FLOOZIE.
[[#1 is Anthony Burgess who wrote ‘A Clockwork Orange’ with #5 Malcolm McDowell starring in the film. Not sure of the connection – could be the CUCKOLDED husband in the notorious rape scene? Or his mate DIM(mer)?
#2 is Leon Uris who wrote EXODUS with SAL MINEO (#7) playing a Jewish emigrant in the film
#3 is Robbie Coltrane (as above) but I can’t see the link
#4 is Gene Wilder who played Willy Wonka in ‘Willy Wonka & the CHOCOLATE Factory’ with author Roald Dahl #6 (as above)
#8 is Phyllis Diller, whose ‘husband’ was called FANG]]
I saw weeping as “WEE PING” a small (wee) greeting (ping -a unilateral greeting on the Blackberry Messenger network). Maybe Philistine may confirm.
Thanks to scchua for the blog.
Several people have said this was a pretty easy puzzle. This just goes to show that one man’s meat is another’s poison. I found it had going, not helped by the fact that I was late to spot 13 🙁
[[I am not a visual person. Pic4 has a man whose face I recognise but the name escapes me.]]
I think the secx change thing is a bit weak, to keep on doing it one way of aniother. And i didn’t like the gateway clue for it reaslly, doesn’t work in the cryptic for me! It is a ‘try too hard’ one, but in Guardian somethimes this excites people!! Yesterday’s wa much more my thing.
If so I am happy to be ‘Rowly in the monority’ .
Cheers
Rowly.
tupu@13
thanks, I get it now. I should have looked in Collins earlier for Scottish “greet” = “weep” (never heard of that before).
[[Robi @14,
Impressed at you identifying all of the pictures. Doesn’t Burgess look a lot like Orson Welles?!
So basically we are left wanting links from the puzzle to A Clockwork Orange and Robbie Coltrane or Cracker. Anyone?]]
[[Mitz @ 19
I believe A Clockwork Orange was set in Nicosia and starred a Kenyan floozie who was a bit of a cracker.
But I may be wrong.]]
I was disappointed to see that in 22 across the M to F change is in the middle of the word. In all the other instances the change is the first letter. I felt this let the crossword down.
Robbie Coltrane is Scottish?
Or Mitz becomes Fitz
kenj @21.
Why? Where is the rule book for Guardian cryptic crossword 26,009, and which paragraph therein states that “all solutions that reference the solution to 13 across must take the first (and only the first) letter of that which is indicated by the cryptic part of the clue and substitute it for its opposite gender counterpart to find the solution indicated by the definition.”
I’ll admit that 22 was the last of the themed solutions to go in for me, but only because I had erroneously assumed that as all of the others changed the first letter the same would be the case for this one as well. Any disappointment when I saw the light (Ha! – d’you see what I did there?) was with myself for thinking too rigidly, and certainly not with the setter.
As severally said, all jolly fine fun.
Just one thing though. In 16d, fixture does not equate to fitting. The former is, well er, fixed, but the latter is moveable. Estate Agents are not many people’s favourites, and their jargon is even less loved, so it would be nice to poke fun at “fixtures and fittings” as being a tautology (as impled by the clue), but it isn’t, the two are distinctly different.
Bruce @23,
That did happen for a while, from about 1999 to 2004, but I’ve put it behind me now…
[[Mitz and Robi, well done. Hints: #5 is linked via #1 (not the other way round), and #1 is not (directly) linked to any answer in the puzzle. #3 is linked, not via Cracker, but via another Coltrane role.]]
[[Ahh! Fang was Hagrid’s dog.]]
Thanks scchua and Philistine
Very enjoyable. I too was delayed on 22ac by expecting the first letter to be changed, though, as others have said, there is no reason for me to have expected that.
{{It doesn’t help me make a connection, but pic#4 is a clip from “Silver Streak”, I think.]]
Very nice idea.
Well worked out and therefore hugely enjoyable.
But it was over all too soon.
We found this one of the easiest crosswords in recent (Guardian) times.
One cup of capucchino at Sainsbury’s.
Is that a pity? Perhaps.
We didn’t think of having the F/M changes at the beginning of each word, so DIFFER (22ac) wasn’t a problem as such.
The only objection one might have (well, I had) that it is a double sex change which should perhaps have been indicated.
That said, lovely little puzzle for which many thanks to Philistine.
[and many thanks to you too, scchua]
It took me longer than it should have done to see the theme, but once I did the themed answers went in quickly. I had no problem at all with the construction of 22ac even though it was my final themed entry. I agree with Mitz@9 that the clue for LEAST SAID was excellent. GOD’S EYE was my LOI after I decided to trust the wordplay.
Thanks all beautiful puzzle; great blog!!
[{Robbie Coltrane played the villain in Goldeneye}]
But not in God’s Eye!!!!!
Entertaining crossword as ever from Philistine although much easier than usual.
Rowland @17
If you don’t think the “gateway” clue works cryptically then I should read it again!
DL @25
Funny that the SOED is wrong (again 😉 )
fitting ?f?t?? ? noun. e17.
1 The action of fit verb1; spec. (a) the action or an act of fitting a garment to the wearer by a tailor or dressmaker;(b) the assembling and adjusting of machine parts. e17.
2 Something fitted; a piece of apparatus or furniture, a fixture. Usu. in pl. e19.
Thanks to Schhua and Philistine
Doesn’t surprise me. What do you think? Do you think fixed and moveable are synonyms? Can you make your own mind up without refering to somebody else, who, being human, is, by definition, just as incapable of perfection as any of us?
Re Gervase @ 10, you’re saying that ‘setter’ = DBE? Agreed!
[[And that leaves only Burgess, which answer is in the link I’ve added under the pics.]]
Enjoyed 6dn, which also serendipitously summarises my thoughts about the puzzle’s central device.
DL @35
I had made my mind up.
Just pointing out that there was no problem with the clue.
No two words are ever exactly synonymous and always have different shades of meaning. Dictionaries are just commentaries on that ever changing thing, language. Usage changes things.
Although you seem to believe that fixture and fitting have distinct meanings it is apparent that a fitting can be described as a fixture.
DL @35
I see that Chambers and Collins make the same mistake as the SOED, and Brendan and the setter and me even.
Thanks all
Sil at 30 sveas me struggling with this uncooperatve key board.
Great to hear from you RCW!! How are you doing??
Lovely puzzle.
Nice to see RCW drop back in, I hope we hear more from him soon.