We normally blog Indy puzzles and so this is only our third Guardian blog after a weekday puzzle and a Quiptic. We were really pleased to have the opportunity to blog this offering from Boatman.
We saw that there were a number of references to the sea before we got stuck into the solve and it wasn’t long before the theme brought back memories of listening to the Shipping Forecast on the radio.
There was some great clueing here which kept us guessing and we would be still, if we hadn’t had some help from someone!
Thanks Boatman – we really enjoyed this one!
| Across | ||
| 1 | In Le Monde, Mrs Boatman follows article on cuckoo (6) | |
| MADAME | ME (Boatman) after or ‘following’ A (article) on MAD (cuckoo) | |
| 4 | Eat little fish caught here, in an area of the sea (7) | |
| FASTNET | FAST (eat little) + NET (fish caught here) | |
| 9 | Two areas of the sea in which to find fish (5,4) | |
| DOVER SOLE | DOVER and SOLE are both sea areas | |
| 10 | Uniform visual spread is lacking? It depends on the palate (5) | |
| UVULA | U (uniform) + anagram of V |
|
| 11 | Area of sea foam produced with small rotation (5) | |
| FORTH | FROTH with a slight change or ‘small rotation ‘ | |
| 12 | Overly large number in those mixed with taste (9) | |
| TOOTHSOME | TOO (overly) + M (large number) inside an anagram of THOSE (anagrind is ‘mixed’) | |
| 13 | Don’t do this to a boat entirely in the sea (7) | |
| ROCKALL | ROCK (don’t do this to a boat!) + ALL (entirely) | |
| 15 | Burden of tragic, boring speech (6) | |
| SADDLE | Sounds like or in ‘speech’ SAD (tragic) + DULL (boring) | |
| 17 | Rebuke solver twice, say, in sea area report! (3-3) | |
| TUT-TUT | We think this is U U (you as in solver when said) inside TTTT, which sounds like TEES (sea area). The only problem is that we couldn’t find a sea areas called TEES! At least that is what we thought until someone suggested counting the Ts and lo and behold you have FOUR TS which sounds like FORTIES (another sea area!) | |
| 19 | See 22 | |
| 22 | Where swirling sea breaks into coastline? Thud! Crash! (9,7) | |
| SOUTHEAST ICELAND | An anagram of SEA (anagrind is ‘swirling’) inside or ‘breaking into’ an anagram of COASTLINE THUD (anagrind is ‘crash’). ‘Where’ in this case gives you a hint that it is a sea area. | |
| 24 | Where liners originally entered the sea? (5) | |
| MALIN | L (first letter of Liners or ‘originally’) entering MAIN (the sea. ‘Where’ again gives you a clue that it is another sea area | |
| 26 | Airship loses skin, ending up in middle of sea (5) | |
| IRISH | ||
| 27 | Protective cover for Spooner’s style of hairlines? (9) | |
| SUNBONNET | A ‘lift and separate’ clue as well as a Spoonerism! BUN (style of hair) + SONNET (lines). We know a regular Guardian blogger who may like this one!! | |
| 28 | It’s wrong or right inside: not exactly mature (7) | |
| ERRATUM | R (right) inside an anagram of MATURE (anagrind is ‘not exactly’) | |
| 29 | See 5 | |
| Down | ||
| 1 | Destined to wander around and around, fed up (4,3) | |
| MADE FOR | ROAM (wander) reversed or ‘around’ around FED (reversed or ‘up’) | |
| 2 | Several pointless clues for one in the sea (5) | |
| DIVER | DIVER |
|
| 3 | Troop movement in April? (5,4) | |
| MARCH PAST | If MARCH is PAST or over then you may well be in April! | |
| 4 | Area of sea said to be modest source of fish (7) | |
| FAEROES | FAER (sounds like FAIR modest) + ROES (fish eggs as in source of fish). Many thanks Simon@1 for pointing out the error! | |
| 5 | Part of sea route is shut off (5,6) | |
| SOUTH UTSIRE | Anagram of ROUTE IS SHUT (anagrind is ‘off’) | |
| 6 | Regional variation about superior brain support (9) | |
| NEUROGLIA | Anagram of REGIONAL (anagrind is ‘variation’) about U (superior) | |
| 7 | It goes into the sea with a message inside (6) | |
| THAMES | Hidden within the clue wiTH A MESsage | |
| 8 | As a rib might carry one to get inshore (6) | |
| COSTAL | If you added A(one) to the answer you would get COASTAL (inshore) | |
| 14 | “Worth, perhaps, 1 euro” — curt fashion statement (9) | |
| COUTURIER | Anagram of I EURO CURT (anagrind is ‘fashion statement’). The answer refers to Charles Frederick Worth who some people think is the father of Haute couture. | |
| 16 | Good-looking sailor spends night here? (9) | |
| DREAMBOAT | A play on the fact that a sailor may well spend her nights dreaming about being on her ‘DREAM BOAT’! | |
| 18 | The boat’s back! Deliverance! The boat’s back! (7) | |
| TRANSOM | T (the last letter or ‘back’ of boaT) + RANSOM (deliverance) and a play on the fact that a transom |
|
| 19 | Fashionable tempo and a voice on one note (6) | |
| INTONE | IN (fashionable) + T (tempo) + ONE (a) | |
| 20 | Row over eccentric letters sent out from superior eating place (7) | |
| DINETTE | DIN (row) over |
|
| 21 | Time to try for scale (6) | |
| ASSIZE | We were totally lost here until someone suggested that we split the answer into two and then match each part to the clue. If you do this you get AS (for) + SIZE (scale). So easy when it was pointed out! Many thanks!! | |
| 23 | Drummer has one to bash about what’s inside (2-3) | |
| HI-HAT | HIT (bash) about |
|
| 25 | Sea area, say, for two days off across the Channel (5) | |
| LUNDI | Two days off from Saturday when this puzzle was first published would be Monday which in France is LUNDI! | |
Thanks Boatman and Bertandjoyce
Small point re 4D: the sea area is FAEROES, whereas it’s the FAROE islands.
hth
Simon ô¿ô
Thanks Bertandjoyce. This looked like a real challenge at first but became easier once the theme revealed itself. I particularly liked 17 which I had to puzzle over for some time.
I did find for 27 that sonnet is a type of wig which could have had something to do with hairlines.
I’m still not sure about 20 which was my last. I can’t find a definition of ECCENTRIC to suit.
Thanks to Simon for pointing out the error which Joyce takes full responsibility for! We had it entered correctly in the grid.
Bert didn’t have time to check the blog – so it’s his fault really isn’t it?!
Thanks to B&J – glad you enjoyed it!
I did expect to hear of a few burnt-out brain cells as a result of 17. No casualties so far, then … ?
BA – I’m using “eccentric” in a rather literal sense to mean “those parts furthest removed from the centre”, in this case referring to the least central letters of “BETTER”.
Boatman. Thank you, I am grateful for the personal explanation – even if I still have my doubts!
Thanks BertandJoyce and Boatman
An entertaining puzzle with some tricky clues.
I needed a bit of help to get Utsire and could not parse Lundi.
I ticked 1a, 12a, 17a (!!), 22,19, 27a, 28a, 3d (it took a time to get March Hare out of my head – the same with ‘bottle’ in 7d)) and 21d.
A difficult puzzle, I needed aids to get a couple, and I still got one wrong where I didn’t lift and separate properly at 21dn and guessed “aspire”. When I hit the check button this morning before I came here and I was left with AS?I?E I did a quick search on OneLook and immediately saw that ASSIZE fitted both the clue and the wordplay, although it didn’t occur to me at the time because I’m much more used to seeing the word in the plural. Maybe I should have checked OneLook on Monday evening when I was doing the puzzle but I was a bit brain-dead by the end of the solve.
I had to look for SOUTH UTSIRE online. When I was a boy and I used to listen to the shipping forecast on the radio neither it nor North Utsire were ever mentioned because back then they were, to the British at least, part of a much larger VIKING area. I also didn’t see the wordplay behind TUT-TUT (very clever) but the answer was obvious enough.
Has anyone managed to access today’s crossword online? I get an assortment of error messages on both Firefox and Internet Explorer.
Hi Ian SW3
Try: http://static.guim.co.uk/crosswords/pdfs/gdn.cryptic.20130907.pdf
Not being familiar with the BBC Shipping forecast, I needed help from Wikipedia to confirm most of the region names. (I have now heard a few samples of the Shipping Forecast on youtube). Other new words for me were UVULA, NEUROGLIA, COSTAL, TRANSOM.
I liked 26a, 11a, 1d, 2d, 18d and my favourites were 3d MARCH PAST & 1a MADAME.
I couldn’t parse 20d or 17a (only got as far as U in TT twice).
Thanks Boatman and Bertandjoyce.
Many thanks to the B&J team.
A really neat compilation from Boatman.
(BTW: A recent trend seems to be Spoonerisms).
Thanks, Boatman and Bertandjoyce – a lovely one for you to start with!
Great fun and I enjoyed looking for the sea areas.
Andy B @7; VIKING has a better ring and I miss HELIGOLAND, too!
A lovely mix of clues, I thought.
Giovanna xx
Great crossword that provided a number of smiles.
Thanks B&J; I particularly enjoyed the TUT-TUT.
I well remember Viking and Cromarty from the weather forecasts.
This really brought back all those lovely shipping forecasts about a hundred years ago. Loved lundi and the tuts. Thanks.
16D. A transom is not the backbone of a boat (which might be the keel) but the square aft end ie the back, typically of a rowing boat or modern freighter.
16D. A transom is not the backbone of a boat (which might be the keel) but a square aft end ie back, typically of rowing boats and modern freighters.
Thanks B&J
Enjoyed this a lot and found it less tricky than many Boatman puzzles, though I may just be getting used to his style. However, I did see the theme very early and this type of ‘closed set’ thematic often makes for quite a few write-ins once you have spotted the shtick.
A lot of clever clues but YOU x2 in ‘4 Ts’ was priceless.
Thanks roger@15 and 16 – We’ll make the necessary changes to the blog!
Even if we buy your wacky logic (i.e. situated away from the axis), Boatman, isn’t 20’s clue really for DINBR? That’s what it looked like, and walked like, but it didn’t quack!
There was stuff in here we couldn’t crack to be honest, like the Ts thing, like the ‘eccentric’ thing, but with the crossing letters, plus the much-needed coffees and full English, it fell to eventually.
Thanks setter, all.
Pedantic I know but 9, 14 and 16 down are misnumbered,
A very enjoyable solve and steady progress was made once I had identified the Weather Forecast areas theme.
I couldn’t parse a couple but as others have said the answers were plain enough.
I not know all the weather forecast areas. More specifically I don’t want to know them or the even more unimportant detail of their spellings! But it was easy to Google a list of them.
I don’t understand this idea that some some solvers have that one of the “rules” of crosswords is that you cant look things up. Please could I know where these elusive rules are enumerated?
As far As I know it’s simple. The setter fills in a grid with words. My job is to replicate the filled in grid he produced starting with an identical empty grid. THe setter also gives me some “cryptic” clues, one for each entry which are written in a formulaic way which has s grammar which not everyone agrees on.
That’s it. The rest is up to the individual solver. I personally would only consider illegal aids to be “anagram solvers” and “blogs of the answers”. However if someone wants to impose the “no look-up” rule on themselves that’s fine. But I fear this will mean that several Prize and even some Weeklies will then be “unsolvable” due to the inevitable lack of vocabulary in an esoteric area.
The problem is of course that this lack of rules also applies to the setter so she or he can choose any words she or he likes. (Normally we do expect them to be in a dictionary or be a generally accepted name or proper noun.
Anyway that’s my mini light-hearted rant over with.
Thanks to B&J and Boatman
Belated thanks to bertandjoyce for covering for me while I was away on a walking holiday. I thought LUNDI was particularly clever, but wasn’t entirely happy with the definition forASSIZE. “Place to try” might have been more accurate. Overall though a deep bow of respect to Boatman for including so many sea areas in such a variety of ways.
Thanks Biggles A @ 20 – blog hopefully now all correct!
This was quiter a clever puzzle construction-wise but there were too many dubious, woolly clues for it to be really enjoyable. Didn’t “float my boat” anyway. However my familiarity the shipping areas kept me going.
The TUT-TUT clue was a bit of a shocker really.
Fair play to Boatman for not going for the obvious “FAEROES” homophone (!) – even if, to me anyway, FAEROES doesn’t sound like FAIR ROES but “FAIR OWES”. I’m also wondering if anyone has ever pronounced “SADDLE” as “SAD DULL”
And I’d say that bootikins @19 is right about 20dn.
Thanks Boatman and bertandjoyce
I think that this was one of the hardest cryptics that I have done – maybe why the tattered printout has taken until now to finish :). The theme lightbulb did not light until my last two in – MALIN and LUNDY – didn’t know of the Shipping Forecast program – guess the state of these seas isn’t really all that newsworthy down here.
I found that each clue had to be prised out one by one with the clever and varied devices providing a good challenge. Particularly liked UVULA, the excellent TUT-TUT (after the penny dropped that it was 4 T’s and not just the one Tees!), LUNDI and DINETTE (after seeing the blog for the parsing and seeing the ‘not situated in the centre’ definition of eccentric – I had used the ETTE from letters and was trying to work out how the LRS had to go).
Lovely stuff and very satisfied to finally put it away !!!