As Dac gives us week after week a well-nigh perfect crossword. I think it might have been said before, but the surfaces are repeatedly excellent — simple and pithy and creating a nice appropriate little picture. Everything always seems to fit so neatly. After he has used some of the letters to make an anagram or whatever, there are always the right ones left over. Or so it seems …
| Across | |
|---|---|
| 1 | O BT USE — O = operator once [?? is it an old abbreviation?] |
| 4 | MINDLESS — to mind less is to have fewer concerns, although to heed less is much the same thing, and when I had _ _ _ D at the start this is what I thought it was, so I made a 9ac |
| 9 | {t}ERROR |
| 10 | SAILPLANE — ail in (Alps)rev. n E |
| 11 | CISTERCIAN — (in a sect)* admitting (RC 1) |
| 12 | FI(A)T |
| 14 | FOUNTAIN PENS — (funnies{t} panto)* |
| 17 | EAST GERMANIC — (cinema greats)* — old tongues as in old languages, but why wagging, apart from helping the surface? |
| 20 | HU(R)T |
| 21 | WAR MACHINE — we around (arm (China)*) |
| 23 | TEST(IF)IER |
| 24 | B(L)UFF — one of the meanings of bluff is ‘a high steep bank’ |
| 25 | STOPPAGE — I’m not 100% sure but it seems to be page = send for, with s [= school] top [= head] at the start — I can’t find s = school in Chambers but it seems pretty plausible and is surely somewhere |
| 26 | P(ENT)AD — a pentad is a set of five things |
| Down | |
| 1 | O(NEA{rly})CT |
| 2 | THRUSH — (h t)rev. rush |
| 3 | SURE ENOUGH — 2 defs |
| 5 | IF I HAD A HAMMER — as an ill-equipped auctioneer might say, also a song |
| 6 | D{r}O{o}P{i}E{r} — &lit. |
| 7 | EX(A MINE)E |
| 8 | S WEE TEST |
| 10 | SE CON DREADING |
| 13 | INVINCIBLE — in [= among] (Lib)* in Vince |
| 15 | PET(HAT)E’S — Pete Townshend |
| 16 | ESPRESSO — (reposes)* around s — the anagram indicated by ‘Cook’ |
| 18 | PIQUE {contes}T — Nelson Piquet |
| 19 | BEE FED |
| 22 | PupiL IS Perhaps |
1a – yes, on the old rotary dial phones, ‘O’ got you the operator. (He says, showing his age)
John, I parsed STOPPAGE the same as you with the same assumption about the “s”. I agree that “wagging” in 17ac is probably just there to help the surface reading, and that clue was my LOI. Another good Dac as we have come to expect.
Yes, s = school is in Collins.
17A I took “wagging” as a sort of (delayed) anagrind in conjunction with could.
Thanks Dac for an enjoyable crossword of the usual high standard and John for the blog.
17ac: I think “wagging” is a necessary part of the anagram indication.
gwep @4: Normally when it has taken me a while to type a comment, I check to see if anyone else has already made the same point, but I neglected to do so on this occasion.
To me It just means ‘cinema greats’ could set ‘the answer’ wagging . That is okay, it is ‘the other way around’!!
I like Mr Dac’s very neat puzzles and this isa nother one.
Cheers
Rowly .
Thanks, John. You’re right – neat, simple and pithy sums it up. I always look forward to his Wednesday puzzles (although I do enjoy Crosophile too on Dac’s day off).
I too took ‘wagging’ to be the anagrind, whichever way you look at it. And S for ‘school’? Just think LSE.
K’s Dad @8: There is a difference between using a letter that is acknowledged as an abbreviation in its own right, and taking a single letter from a set of initials. Personally, I prefer not to go down the latter route, but, as always, I have no quarrel with those whose preferences differ from mine.
Thanks for the blog, John. I don’t quite understand your comments/parsing of 1a. Perhaps the parsing was too abbreviated for beginners like me. Is it O (operator once) + BT (British Telcom) + USE (given employment) = not very bright = stupid? (as in yes, I am stupid on this clue).
17a I agree that “wagging” is the anagram indicator.
Re 25a, I agree with your parsing, no problem there.
I liked 1d, 10d, 13d, 26a, 14a, 8d, 7d and my favourites were 5d IF I HAD A HAMMER & 15D PET HATES, 19D BEEFED.
I know what you mean, Pelham. I’m relaxed about these things as long as the setter points me in the right direction. A while ago, N was used as an abbreviation for Navy on the basis that RN meant Royal Navy. Worked for me, but some other folk weren’t so happy. And of course if a setter used I for ‘identification’ on the basis that PIN meant ‘personal identification number’, then nobody would be happy. Grey areas, for sure.
n = navy appears in dicts in its own right. I think any abbreviation used in a crossword, whether one letter or several, would have to appear as a specific entry in a relevant dict. There will be wider usage in the advanced, themed, crosswords – for the daily ones, it would be fairly common well-known ones, I’d say.
But is there a definitive list, nms? I don’t have any of the specifically ‘crossword’ dictionaries, just Collins and the SOED, and I guess some will be in one and not the other. And indeed, which is the ‘relevant’ dictionary?
I don’t think it’s a huge area of contention for most daily cryptic solvers, but I’d still describe it in some cases as a grey area. No big deal though. As I said, if the setter points me in the right direction (and frankly, an abbreviation is usually only going to give you one letter), then I’m a happy bunny.
Sorry – I didn’t even try this one because I couldn’t read the clues. Can you please pass on to the Independent that some of us are not as young as we were and cannot read tiny fonts all squashed together.
The only list I have jheard of, is one which has been mentioned in Times blogs, and that is for the single-letters only. I have not seen it thoufgh! I agree with Pelham that the indicator sjoould have its own entry and not be part of another entry, because that w ould be unfair.
Rowls.
Rumour has it that Times setters are given a confidential list of abbrevs that can use. I’d say Collins and the Concise OED are the main sources for the daily cryptic puzzles with their everyday vocab. Chambers more for the “advanced” puzzles where wider vocab is permitted.
Further to the opinion that “wagging” is the anagram indicator at 17ac, I took “could set” to be the anagram indicator. For me “wagging” is in the wrong place for it to be used that way.
Andy B@17 re 17ac: The standard mechanism in an anagram clue effectively says “rearrange these letters and you will get the answer”. The way I read 17ac, it is saying “rearrange the answer and you will get CINEMA GREATS”. Of course, in practice, the effect is exactly the same. I think Rowland @7 is suggesting the same as my reading.
Superb stuff again from Dac, on a solver-friendly grid with lots of well-known words. Oh, it’s easy when you know how … and he does!
Re Pelham, Rowly etc, absolutely: it’s just another way (and a really nice one) of doing the time-honoured thing, and as Dac has seen there’s no possible technical argument against.
Re single- and even multiple-letter indicators, each should have its own entry in the dictionary the publication concerned aligns itself with. Otherwise bargepole job.
Great puzzle!