[New comment layout] - details here
A bit of head-scratching today and not a nit in sight!
There are still a few where we have the odd itch, but – we may be missing something. We hope that someone else can put us straight!
| Across | ||
| 1 | Tips on code hacking – marks in rings in encrypted Morse : this could be X or Y | |
| CHROMOSOME | CH (first letters or ‘tips’ of Code Hacking) + M (marks) in OO (rings) inside an anagram of MORSE (anagrind is ‘encrypted’) | |
| 7 | Rebecca or Emma maybe show Kelvin disapproval | |
| BOOK | BOO (show disapproval) + K (Kelvin) | |
| 9 | Unknown quantity say (not a Y) – it’s added on | |
| ANNEXE | Sounds like AN X (x being an unknown quantity in mathematics) | |
| 10 | My reaction to horror film is heard – interval treat required? | |
| ICE CREAM | Sounds like I SCREAM – something you may do when watching a horror film | |
| 11 | No less than a collection of maps comprising Eastern Time | |
| AT LEAST | ATLAS (collection of maps) around or ‘comprising’ |
|
| 12 | Spy keeping mum? On the contrary, this might be ink | |
| MAGENTA | MA (mum) around or ‘keeping’ AGENT (spy) | |
| 14 | Knowing unknown factors say | |
| WISE | Sounds like Ys (unknown factors – again y is used as an unknown factor in mathematics) | |
| 16 | I composed second letter at that time about love, see? | |
| BEETHOVEN | BEE (second letter) + THEN (at that time) around O (love) + V (see) | |
| 18 | This might be A Font Used by Vampires | |
| BLOOD TYPE | A play on the fact that vampires may well use a typeface (‘font’) written in blood! Why are the initial letters in capitals though? | |
| 20 | Cart rolled over a few feet | |
| YARD | Reversal of DRAY (cart) or ‘rolled over’ | |
| 22 | Dress figure taking odd bits off dummies | |
| COSTUME | COST (figure) + UME (odd letters in dUmMiEs) | |
| 24 | Americans pull over to view | |
| YANKEES | YANK (pull) + SEE (to view) reversed or ‘over’ | |
| 27 | Shiner is like hole in the sky, I heard | |
| BLACK EYE | BLACK (like hole in the sky as in black hole) + EYE (sounds like I) | |
| 28 | Uncooked dessert’s passed back round table | |
| DRAW UP | PUD (dessert) reversed or ‘passed back’ around RAW (uncooked). We’re not sure that ‘table’ can stand for ‘draw up’ though. Chambers defines it as ‘put forward’ whereas ‘draw up’ is defined as ‘to compose or put into shape’. You could feasibly ‘draw up’ something without ‘putting it on the table’! | |
| 29 | Boom box | |
| SPAR | Double definition | |
| 30 | Contracts as ten merge after organisation | |
| AGREEMENTS | Anagram of AS TEN MERGE (anagrind is ‘after organisation’) | |
| Down | ||
| 2 | Henry has new wet load tumbling in drier | |
| HANDTOWEL | H (Henry) + an anagram of N (new) WET LOAD (anagrind is ‘tumbling’) | |
| 3 | An honour by society – ultimately true or porky? | |
| OBESE | OBE (an honour) + S (society) + E (last letter of truE or ‘ultimately’) | |
| 4 | Edible fungi, take a thousand and die in the end – this is a warning | |
| OR ELSE | ||
| 5 | Miss is heading off to be sick | |
| OMIT | ||
| 6 | Smart animal that’s good for pulling hansoms primarily | |
| ELEGANT | ELE |
|
| 7 | Maybe hermit returns alone, bewildered in city | |
| BARCELONA | CRAB (as in hermit crab) reversed or ‘returning’ + anagram of ALONE (anagrind is ‘bewildered’) | |
| 8 | Zip component in movement? | |
| OP ART | O (zip) + PART (component) | |
| 13 | Little pony’s not on – it’s sentimental | |
| WEEPY | WEE (little) + P |
|
| 15 | Lotus perhaps is left with a blemish | |
| SPORTS CAR | S (short for is) + PORT (left) + SCAR (blemish) | |
| 17 | I’ll skip interludes in flat spin to get dénouement | |
| END RESULT | Anagram of INTERLUDES without or ‘skipping’ I (anagrind is ‘in a flat spin’) | |
| 19 | A wax put over paint | |
| TEMPERA | TEMPER (wax) on top of or ‘put over’ A. This one took a lot of head scratching before we finally cracked it! In Chambers ‘wax’ as a noun can be ‘a fit of anger’. | |
| 21 | NCO cut short dropping bomb has yen to become gangster | |
| YARDIE | ||
| 23 | Neat gall in flower | |
| OXLIP | OX (neat) + LIP (gall) | |
| 25 | Part of church for hearing a sinner | |
| KNAVE | Sounds like NAVE (part of church) | |
| 26 | One of the axes cut head off unmannerly peasant in 1381 say | |
| YEAR | Y (one of the axes when drawing graphs in mathematics) + |
|
I liked 15d, 20a, 8d, 7a, 4d and my favourite was 18a BLOOD TYPE, 7d BARCELONA & 6d ELEGANT.
New word for me was YARDIE.
Thanks for the blog, Bertandjoyce. I needed your help to parse 16a BEETHOVEN (I still don’t understand why V = ‘see’), 26d & 21d.
For 18a, I thought that the setter decided to use capitals for (blood type) A and the 4 words after it because otherwise the capital A would have stood out too much capitalised on its own.
For 28a, I thought of it more along the lines of “draw up plans” and “table the minutes of a meeting”. It’s more like “draw up” = “put in table form”, I think.
I think I understand 16a now: V = vide = see. [I did not study Latin, but I did study Italian.]
Michelle – v = vide which is Latin for see. Joyce is constantly reminded about links to Latin in clues when she doesn’t understand something! She studied German at school not Latin.
You are probably correct about the use of capitals. Thanks.
We crossed!
Hi Bertandjoyce. 11A I think is ATL[E]AS +T, that is the second “T” represents Time.
I also had trouble with 26D, knew Wat Tyler, but after figuring “y” is one of the axes, it had to be year, though I wouldn’t have got the “bear” part, which has a similar definition in my 1912 Chambers to yours (except “ill-bred” instead of “ill-mannered”).
Thought the same thing as you about 21D yardie (my last in) and 28A draw up.
An interesting and fairly challenging crossword, I was slow to get going, thanks to Crosophile and Bertandjoyce.
Thanks gwep – blog corrected!
Thanks, both.
A lot tougher than your average Crosophile, I thought, or maybe it’s just my midweek brain lethargy. The grid didn’t help (he said, going on about it for the zillionth time …)
BARCELONA was my favourite this morning.
There is something going on that we haven’t seen though – to do with the letter Y, I fancy. I suspected this while solving, but as usual couldn’t spot anything. However, the completion message in the online version of the puzzle hinted at something along those lines.
Well done, Crosophile.
@K’D there are quite a few Y’s including WISE and there is a Y mad out of Ys in the SE side of the grid.
Made even gah!
Like flashing, I noted the Ys forming a Y. Couldn’t find anything further. Maybe the first clue about code hacking – either X or Y is an indication that the hidden theme is the Y, as I couldn’t find anything for X.
YEAR and YARDIE were my last two in from the definitions only, so thanks for parsing them.
Joyce holds her head in shame and has now corrected the blog!! Suffice to say that it included an apostrophe in the wrong place which we both missed!
Very ‘y-ly’ puzzle. Nice to see CHROMOSOME and BLOOD TYPE in there.
Thanks Bertandjoyce; I found this a bit more straightforward than the Guardian Paul. After ANNEXE it would have been good to see AN-Y, although of course it should be a ‘y.’ 😉
I particularly liked the ‘smart animal’ in 6.
Thanks for the blog.
I find it hard to spot the games when I don’t have a hard copy. I clocked the Ys (wise) and an X (annexe) and I noticed the odd-shaped Ys in the grid. Year, Yankees, Yard and agreements (Y/N) are all signalled by Ys, of course, I couldn’t get it any cleaner than that. I may have to get a print done and look at it on paper – there’s obviously something going on with Xs and Ys and chromosomes but I can’t quite see it yet.
You should all be detectives. Impressive nina-spotting teamwork and thanks for the enjoyable comments. Don’t hit me if I tell you it’s all just because today is ‘the end of July’.
Thanks for the blog, Bertandjoyce. And by the way, Michelle’s right about the capitalisation in 18a [or 18A 🙂 ]
Ee, eh?
(That’s how Crosophile ends.)
🙂
Thank you Crosophile for both a splendid crossword and the brilliant comment @15.
Thanks to B&J too – I must be the same school era as J – I too did German instead of Latin.
A very odd happenstance–yesterday I’m daydreaming of being a setter and wondering if there’s a statute of limitations on clues and the ethics of using a previously published clue in my own puzzle. In my daydream, the specific clue in question was an instant favorite when I came across it way back when, sometime I’m guessing in the mid-nineties in either Harper’s or The Nation. Later yesterday evening I went online to the Independent cryptic for the first time (I’ve been doing the Guardian puzzles now for a few years) and there it was at 29 across, Boom Box = Spar. This is so bizarre that it deserves punctuation that I never use, the exclamation point(!) and possibly a comment from the setter, that hopefully is innocent enough, along the lines of the Borges story of a man writing, word for word, a previously published book, not as a copy but truly as his own creation.
Henry, it’s not difficult for two people to have exactly the same idea when it involves writing a two word clue. Hardly the same as a novel!
I solved this, but didn’t follow the nuances of 18 – just thought it was a CD with just the cryptic part and no proper definition, but now I can see it’s much cleverer than that (should have noticed the capitalization). It was quite a challenging puzzle – I’d thought the theme was more along the lines of X and Y usages.
Hi, Henry@18. How embarrassing! I vaguely remember being pretty pleased with boom box for SPAR (I fear my clues are often too wordy). Definitely unintentional but it’s possible I might have seen this clue somewhere, who knows? I mostly don’t even recognise my own clues a couple of months on!
And hi, NealH@19. Yes, there do seem to be quite a few X allusions [chromosome, axes, ‘annexe’]. Strangely, I don’t think this was deliberate.
I find that when doing Crosophile’s puzzles I really struggle to get going but once a few are in the pace picks up nicely. I finished this ok but have neede to come here to sort out four of them ; having got A_T for elegant I thought the animal must be an ant. Apart from finding bear for peasant a bit dodgy I thought this was a really enjoyable crossword and a happy replacement for our good friend Dac on his Wednesday off
I think BEAR was not a ‘peasant’ but an ‘unmannerly peasant’. Because of the use of 1381 in the clue I think the setter used ‘peasant’ where ‘fellow’ or something like that would have normally fit.
Lots of pleasure in this one. It feels like sharing witticisms with the setter. Thanks, Crosophile!