Found this very slow going, and had to come back to it twice in the end. Lovely cluing throughout, my favourites were 14ac and 22dn.
Thanks for the comments re: 9dn, and (especially NeilW) pointing out the theme.
| Across | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | OSTRICH | =”bird” | O=”ring” + ST[one] + RICH=”wealthy” |
| 5 | SCISSOR | =”Cut” | [Jonathan] ROSS=”TV host”, + I[rritating] C[hat] S[how], all “returning” i.e. reversed |
| 10 | FLAW | =”weakness” | F[amous] L[ast] W[ords] around “A” |
| 11 | OBEDIENTLY | =”in a well-trained fashion” | [W]O[m]B[l]E [a]D[v]I[c]E [o]N[e] T[e]L[l]Y, with the odd letters discarded |
| 12 | AMULET | =”Charm” | A MUL[l]ET=”an 80’s hairdo”, with only one L[ength] |
| 13 | FRIESIAN | =”Milk deliverer” | (fas[t] Erni[e])* around I=”one” |
| 14 | INKSTANDS | =”keep writing stuff” | IN + [boo]K + STANDS=”stations” |
| 16 | CRIME | =”Vice” | CR.=”Councillor” + I.E.=”that is” around M[iami] |
| 17,26 | UPPER ATMOSPHERE | =”almost out of this world” | (Hope Supertramp [agre]e)* |
| 19 | BREAKFAST | =”Meal” | KF[c] inside (“coating…? On the contrary”) BREAST=”finest piece of chicken” |
| 23 | BARMAIDS | =”ones that pull in pub” | (as a bird)* around M[arried] |
| 24 | UPMOST | =”Highest” | UT[ah]=”State” + P[iano]=”quiet” + MOS=”moments” |
| 27 | LAID | =”Put” | rev(dial)=”clock” |
| 28 | BROTHER | =”Friar” | R[uns] “Tuck”ed inside BOTHER=”trouble” |
| 29 | STANCES | =”Points of view” | S[omething] T[hings] N[ever] C[hange] E[verybody] S[peaks], around A[merica] |
| Down | |||
| 2 | SOLOMON | =”wise man” | SLO MO=”Slow motion” around O=”circle” + N[ewton] |
| 3 | ROWEL | “wheel” in a horserider’s spur | hidden reversed in [Stab]LE WOR[khorse] |
| 4 | CROATIA | =”country” | CIA around RAT=”informer” around O=”nothing” |
| 6 | CRISIS | =”crunch” | CR[edit] + IS=”lives” x2 |
| 7 | SANS SERIF | =”type” | (S[econd] FRIES[i]AN’S)*, with an I=”one” missing from 13 |
| 8 | OIL PALM | =”tree” | O=”hole” + L[eft] + PALM[er]=”golfer, without hesitation”, all around I=”one” |
| 9 | SELF ADDRESSED | “when picked up, will return” | (False)* + DD=”big cups” + [p]RESSED=”topless, squeezed”. Not sure what “this male” does here. |
| 15 | STEAMBOAT | =”vessel” | STET=”instruction” to ignore a previous edit, around A M[ale] BOA=”snake” |
| 18 | PLASTER | “might be from Paris?” | rev(LP)=”Record recalled” + ASTER=”flower” |
| 20 | ACUTEST | =”Most sharp” | CU=”copper” inside A TEST=”a trial” |
| 21 | SISTINE | relating to any of Popes Sixtus I to V | (tie sins)* |
| 22 | HIPPIE | =”One advocates love” | HIP=”with it” + PIE=”tart” |
| 25 | MILAN | =”City” | L[ost] after I[nternational], both inside MAN |
Supertramp!
Thanks for the blog, manehi.
I found this quite tough in places, but well worth the effort! Needed your help to make sense of some of the wordplay.
re 9dn ‘this male’ is a homophone ‘when picked up’ of ‘this mail’. Great clue.
Thanks, Tramp!
Excellent puzzle and blog.
Thank-you Tramp and manehi.
Excellent Tramping although 11a’s surface is more bum than tramp.
In 9, ‘male’ could be ‘mail’ when picked up, i.e. heard.
Thanks, manehi. Great puzzle as usual. Almost every Supertramp album gets a mention; here’s the list of their albums from wiki:
Supertramp (1970)
Indelibly Stamped (1971)
Crime of the Century (1974)
Crisis? What Crisis? (1975)
Even in the Quietest Moments… (1977)
Breakfast in America (1979)
…Famous Last Words… (1982)
Brother Where You Bound (1985)
Free as a Bird (1987)
Some Things Never Change (1997)
Slow Motion (2002)
Thanks for the blog, Manehi.
In 9dn ‘picked up’ is a ‘sounnds like’ indicator for [self-addressed] mail.
Lots to enjoy here, as ever. I loved the reference to Benny Hill’s Ernie, ‘The fastest milkman in the West’ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=19wAAyxZhUo in 13ac and lots more.
Knowing that Tramp always has a theme, and knowing his predilection for Supertramp, bells started ringing for me at 17,26. So far, I have found half a dozen or so references but won’t spell them out at this point. I’m sure there are lots more.
Many thanks, Tramp, as ever, for an excellent puzzle.
Beaten to it, as so often, by NeilW! 😉
By the way, for anyone confused by the online clue for MILAN having a hyphen in international, this was just a direct copy of the printed version which had a line break not present in the online version.
That’s what I meant.
There is also “Paris” (live album), maybe more.
I can’t find Indelibly Stamped.
Thanks manehi and Tramp
A very enjoyable puzzle though the theme passed me by completely, even after I’d had a quick look for one. I’m glad in a way, because a detailed knowledge of the works involved might well have detracted from the solving, while a simple recognition of the theme without such knowledge might have been frustrating. It speaks well of the clues, and of the puzzle as a whole, that they were readily solvable and parsible without such information.
My favourite clues were 14a, 23a and 9d.
Hi Muffyword. I thought that you might have been but that, equally, you might just have been laughing at the fact that this is a second outing for Supertramp and their namesake.
I assumed that 9dn was the closest he could get to Indelibly Stamped…
Hi NeilW,
I was too oblique. I also wondered about 9 dn in that context.
Excellent crossword
Thanks to manehi for the excellent blog and to everyone for the comments.
[NeilW beat me to it with the list of works but I prepared this last night so I’m going to use it anyway]
I wrote this puzzle at the end of 2011 as a tribute to my favourite band, Supertramp. My twin brother and I used to save up our dinner money and sneak into Wigan and buy Supertramp cassettes from Our Price (that’s why we were five stone throughout our school days). All but two* of the band’s albums are referred to either in the solutions or the clues — some titles use the convention where artists refer to works by one or two words (Stairway, Dark Side, Sgt Pepper etc)
SUPERTRAMP (1970)
CRIME of the Century (1974)
CRISIS? What Crisis? (1975)
Even in the QUIETest MOMENTS (1977)
BREAKFAST in America (1979)
PARIS (1980)
… FAMOUS LAST WORDS … (1982)
BROTHER where you bound? (1985)
FREE AS A BIRD (1987)
SOME THINGS NEVER CHANGE (1997)
SLOW MOTION (2002)
Some of you might recall that John Helliwell, Supertramp’s sax player, contacted me via 225 a while ago and invited me to one of his gigs but I couldn’t make it due to a clash with a previously arranged crossword meeting. Anyway, I went to see him play at the Royal Northern College of Music last month and he bought me Breakfast in Grange a couple of weeks ago, where we had a brilliant chat about life, music and crosswords. He’s a top bloke and he does the Guardian crossword (and others) every morning.
I had to rewrite about seven clues whilst on holiday last week (much to the chagrin of my missus, Emma). Some of these were slight adjustments but INKSTANDS, CROATIA and MILAN were complete rewrites and these are the clues with which I’m most happy (thanks to Emma for letting me spend hours at the laptop when I should have been doing jigsaws with my daughters: I still maintain that the laptop was a godsend!) Also, thanks to Hugh for putting up with my late clue-tinkering last week. Looking at it again, I think I would have preferred “to return” in 5a and I think “state” = UT is a little esoteric in 24a but on the whole I’m pleased with it.
Thanks again
Neil
*Indelibly Stamped (1972) and It Was the Best of Times (1998)
It is good because you do not need to know the theme, and I didn’y know it!!
Thanks all
Rowly.
Thanks for the explanations here everyone and Tramp the theme really was extremely well-woven (in a not too obvious way for the unfamiliar) into this gem of a puzzle.
I completed about half with breakfast and have just solve the rest over lunch. There were plenty of clues to chew over!
Self-addressed indeed.
I really enjoyed the well-constructed clues in this puzzle as well as the humour. [However, I must admit that I did not pick up on the ‘Supertramp’ theme].
I particularly liked 17/26, 18d, 24a, 15d, 14a and my favourites were 22d HIPPIE, 9d SELF-ADDRESSED & 12a AMULET.
New words for me were ‘Womble’ (I suppose I should watch more TV?) & ROWEL.
Thanks Tramp and manehi.
Thanks manehi and Tramp. This was quite tricky. The theme completely escaped me as the only Supertramp I’d heard of was W H Davies whose autobiography I was forced to read at school.
Not a crossword that would feature meaty chunks of word, this one – lots of smaller bits, though – but quite likeable all the same. I only remember ‘Dreamer’ of this band’s output, so not really a fan, but as has been pointed out already, you weren’t going to need to know all that to solve the thing. I used my super-glue to join the pieces up.
Outside chance I know, but could the ‘self-addressed’ thing be a pointer to the setter being a ‘super’ Tramp? Can he say that?
Thanks, manehi.
If I can’t solve a puzzle in one go, generally I won’t come back to it (partly time and partly enthusiasm) but I’ve enjoyed the vast majority of Tramp’s puzzles so I did have a second crack at it and just about managed to get over the line.
The theme was completely over my head, but since I finished in the end then it didn’t matter. I particularly liked UPPER ATMOSPHERE and FRIESIAN, and Tramp’s recollection of the day that John Helliwell came on the blog to comment brought a smile to my face as well. Although a slight pang of guilt too, since it was the Derby S&B that I’d organised that meant that Tramp couldn’t take up the invitation.
Super puzzle and some very interesting comments. Like many others, I hadn’t a clue about the theme (apologies to both Tramp and Supertramp!)but the clues were such a lot of fun, difficult but in the end accessible. INKSTANDS had me foxed for a while!
Thanks to Manehi for the blog and Tramp for the puzzle & for popping in for tea.
I tied myself in knots in the SE corner by putting in MALTA for 25d – M for male & ALTA as an abbreviation for Alberta, thinking it a city (I now realise it’s a province!). I thought “lost following international break” referred to it’s gaining independence from the UK in 1964. Amazing what you can convince yourself about, given enough ignorance.
I also thought “Sharpest copper…” rather than “Most sharp copper…” in 20d would have been a slightly smoother surface, but hey, everyone’s a critic!
A real cracker even if, like me, you know nothing about Supertramp – a generation thing I think. Took me a long while to complete, but I did not need to resort to any aids as all the clues were totally fair and did not require esoteric knowledge. Just the kind of crossword I love tackling.
Monkeypuzzler@23: I take your point but “sharpest” is similar to “acutest” (same ending) which is why I used “most sharp”.
Despite not picking up on the theme I found this easier than some of Tramp’s other puzzles. HIPPIE and BROTHER were my last two in, the former because I thought the definition was well-disguised, the latter because I was looking for a word that began FR?T?E? (Fr can be an abbreviation for Friar) and meant “trouble” before the penny dropped.
Like some others, I took rather a long time to crack this Tramp and managed to reach the end oblivious of any theme. Wasted a fair bit of effort struggling to remember Womble names! I hope it doesn’t reflect too badly on me that I enjoyed 9d so much… Thoroughly enjoyable throughout.
Were they prog? I could never quite decide, but I remember liking a fair number of their tunes, and they had many hits. So, on second thoughts, that must indeed decide it: with so many hits, they couldn’t possibly have been prog. They used to be called Daddy, by the way, but went on to take inspiration from a certain William Henry Davies for their long-term moniker.
Thanks Tramp, this was indeed super.
A great crossword from Tramp again. I found this very difficult but got there in the end. (Long may it continue)
I totally failed to see the theme of course.
I remember seeing Supertramp before they were well known at the Amethyst Club in Preston (Thursdays in the Hibernia Club)
It must have been 1969. The gig was interrupted as the saxophonist’s habit of playing two saxes at once combined with the packed house, small area and zero ventilation made him almost pass out.
If I remember correctly they continued after a “breather” outside. However one sax at a time! A great night.
Thanks to manehi and Tramp
Very enjoyable despite knowing little about the theme. Great clueing as always.
This entire page is SO enlightening – bits, pieces, The Theme, above all- I’d’ve missed tricks and treats if I hadn’t dropped in. Thank you, everyone.
Absolutely brilliant! Saw this lot many times about 100 years ago. Thanks very much.
Some lovely, tough construction here requiring a certain amount of lateral thinking. Some excellent clues – too many to mention.
I think male becomes mail by virtue of being “picked up” which, with a degree of latitude might mean “heard” – i.e. sounds like.
We started this at lunch yesterday and then had no time to finish it until just now.
If it hadn’t been a Tramp puzzle we may have left it but we’re glad that we came back. The theme went totally over our heads but maybe we were just pleased to finish it so didn’t bother to check before coming to 225.
Thanks to Tamp and manehi!
Another enjoyable puzzle with a cracking theme (17,26 surely a setter editorial needing resounding endorsement ) Struggled with top right section a bit. Appreciated the cheeky wit of 9d too!
Super, Tramp 😉
Great puzzle made even greater by the theme, which I also missed. Needed onelook for the cattle and the inkstand.
9D has to be a gauntlet thrown down to Paul!
Great puzzle, Tramp, and it’s so nice when the setters drop in. Thanks for the blog, Manehi, and all the rest of you.
Almost the identical clue for CRISIS appeared in the Telegraph “Toughie” yesterday (14th). Morphic resonance?