Many thanks to Gaufrid for covering for me last week, Paul presents a bit of a “marmite” puzzle I expect.
Football haters will not be impressed by all the football grounds spread around the grid but the gateway clue seemed easy enough.
| Across | ||
| 8 | IMMATURE | As a baby, Victor introduces himself? (8) |
| Victor Mature might say I’M MATURE | ||
| 9 | ON AIR | Boy meeting love on the rebound ending in affair, going out now (2,3) |
| O (love) & IAN rev & (affai)R | ||
| 10 | FRET | Worry one on board? (4) |
| Double definition second for raised strip a bit iffy | ||
| 11 | WEAR MAKE-UP | After horseplay, wake up with mare — cover your face! (4,4-2) |
| [WAKE UP MARE]* | ||
| 12 | STURDY | Articles removed from one of 7 that’s solid (6) |
| Nearly thrown by this 7, it’s one of seven days – S(a)TURD(a)Y | ||
| 14 | SERENADE | Look to entertain European king, after backing vocals in the moonlight? (8) |
| (DANE & R(ex)) rev in SEE | ||
| 15 | ISOBARS | One zooms around Belgian capital, seeing lines on a map (7) |
| 1 & B(elgium) in SOARS | ||
| 17 | EYELASH | Hairy thing faced extinction initially, certainly around US city, ending in death (7) |
| E(xtinction) & L.A. in YES & (deat)H although the def might be hairy thing faced | ||
| 20 | ROBINSON | Birds on Jack, they say, in an instant? (8) |
| ROBINS & ON | ||
| 22 | EITHER | Number including unity, one or the other (6) |
| 1 in ETHER | ||
| 23 | RICHARD III | Man recently dug up right vegetable consumed by four-eyes, we hear? (7,3) |
| R(ight) & CHARD in IIII (four eyes say) | ||
| 25,2,24 | WHITE HART LANE | If Spurs primarily not there, getting confused with the Arsenal 7? (5,4,4) |
| S(purs) removed from [WITH THE AR(s)ENAL]* | ||
| 26 | LEAPFROG | A golfer’s round including first of putts to get ahead (8) |
| P(utts) in [A GOLFER]* | ||
| Down | ||
| 1 | EMIRATES | 7 meets air after a storm (8) |
| [MEETS AIR]* | ||
| 3 | RUNWAY | Disheartened, one fleeing landing strip (6) |
| RUN(a)WAY | ||
| 4 | RELAPSE | ’E’s looking more sickly after an upset, in return of illness (7) |
| E’S PALER rev | ||
| 5 | FORMERLY | Insect eating mollusc, once (8) |
| ORMER (type of abalone) in FLY | ||
| 6 | PARKING LOT | Grave in which a sovereign, 23 found buried? (7,3) |
| (A R(sovereign) & KING (23)) in PLOT (grave) where in Leicester 23 was found, | ||
| 7 | GROUND | Cryptically go for the sod? (6) |
| G & ROUND for G O | ||
| 13 | RUBBISH BIN | Given failure to trap a number of bees heard circling his potty, its contents discarded (7,3) |
| BBB (some Bees) around HIS* (potty) in RUIN | ||
| 16 | RESERVED | Wait to invest in wine, being cautious (8) |
| SERVE in RED | ||
| 18 | STEENBOK | Way has been wild, fine for antelope (8) |
| ST & BEEN* & OK | ||
| 19 | ANFIELD | 7 — a pitch impressing Liverpudlian, ultimately (7) |
| (liverpudlia)N in A FIELD | ||
| 21 | OJIBWA | Brave old giant not quite standing to punch shattered jaw (6) |
| O(ld) & BI(g) rev in JAW* | ||
| 22 | ETIHAD | 7 welcomed by Man United, a hit evidently? On the contrary (6) |
| Hidden reversed | ||
| 24 | LIFE | Long sentence somewhat ungrammatical, if effortless (4) |
| Hidden | ||
Thanks flashling. Despite not being a football fan I really enjoyed this, and was pleased to be able complete it without aids – even OJIBWA.
22d – the ETIHAD stadium is Manchester City’s ground, so there’s a bit of &littery going on there, and there are similar references in some of the other GROUND clues. Only EMIRATES (a familiar sight to travellers to Kings Cross) seems to have a “plain” clue.
I the definition in 17a is definitely “Hairy thing faced”.
Oops – last line should read “I think the definition..”
One more – I thought the DD in 10a was fine, referring to the fretboard of a guitar.
Thanks, flashling, for the blog.
I’m not a football fan but I thought the clues for the grounds were very clever. [I didn’t know 22dn, though.]
Naturally, I was more interested in the mini-mini-theme of our local hero, Richard III and really liked the associated clues. [‘The King in the car park’ made a great title for the TV programme but, in fact, it was a school playground for much longer. My friend’s art room overlooked it, which she now finds rather spooky.]
I didn’t know OJIBWA but it was easily gettable from the wordplay.
Thanks, Paul, for an enjoyable puzzle.
Thought Paul’s two previous puzzles brilliant, two of the best ever. Regrettable to see the tiresome football disease intruding; obviously not just an Indy specialty. What has today’s Premier League, in particular, got to do with England, or English players or English managers these days?
Er, well, gwep, that’d be the English Premier League, based in England? Players and managers, I grant you, may be from all parts of the globe, but we don’t want to be too little England about this, do we? We’re a nation of mongrels, after all, which is what makes the English language so fascinating.
Anyway, enough of that – not my favourite Paul ever either, but once I’d got the gateway clue, it fell out pretty well. Liked RICHARD III (and was awaiting Eileen’s comment …) and IMMATURE once I’d worked out what was going on (the fact that VICTOR is the phonetic alphabet word for V didn’t help my thinking).
Thanks to Paul and to flashling for the blog.
Thanks flashling and Paul
A very enjoyable puzzle with Paul’s clever cluing, though rather a lot of sound-like letters and the odd bit of clunkiness..
I liked the change of direction in 12a.
I did not know Etihad and had to check it after getting it from the wordplay. I suspected it might be City’s ground, but I saw my first football match at Maine Rd, when City and Man U were both still playing there after Old Trafford was bombed, and have regrettably not moved on much further since then.
Thanks flashling. 12a was very neat, as was Arachne’s rendering of it on April 19 – “24 hours without a sound.”. Got 24 etc early and so the theme: though ANFIELD was last in, we have the Gulf grounds down under, so it was all gettable, within the lunch hour. Excellent again, Paul.
I enjoyed this Paul. Despite having a Fantasy League football team (not doing very well this season) I have not been to any of the grounds included. Like Tupu I have watched some matches at Maine Road, but only seen the Etihad from the outside. Both Etihad and Emirates are of course airlines based in Dubai.
Thanks Flashling for the blog because as usual I was stuck on the parsing of a couple.
Thanks, flashling.
Rather a disappointing puzzle from Paul, I felt, in that many clues, though cleverly worded, are rather transparent if you know your way around the subject, and there are some very clunky ones (11a especially). EMIRATES popped out for me immediately, which gave me GROUND and the stadia as write-ins, helped enormously by their ingenious &littishness. The King in the Car Park took me a little longer as I didn’t notice the enumeration of 6d at first (to be pedantic, one would only find a PARKING LOT in North America, not in Leicester!).
However, I did like many of the unlinked clues: 8a, 9a, 22a, 26a, 4d were enjoyable, though not particularly misdirecting.
gwep @5: English professional football always used to include a lot of players and managers from Scotland, Wales and Ireland (both polities) – all as ‘foreign’ in FIFA terms as those from Croatia or Uruguay.
K’sD@6 & Gervase@11. Delete England/English, insert UK, acknowledge common sin of referring to England in disregard of other countries in the UK. Not a football-hater (thought there are a number in UK who contribute to fifteensquared comments). My last personal experience 1963. Still keep up with all results here in Adelaide 50 years on. Didn’t a Premier league team in the last couple of years field a team, none of whose players was eligible to play for England (Arsenal?)?
Anyway, no intention to offend the sensibilities of the devoted, this is all off-topic, I suppose, and probably my last comment about football, except to suggest that a comparison of players/officials in 1963 and 2013 would doubtless illuminate my point. Perhaps the situation in world football is similar in most countries these days to that in the UK.
No the problem is that English players do not get enuogh of a ‘look-in’, with foreign players taking uop the whole team in some caes. That means the national team is weakened. That is the proble. Abroad it is better — all their players come ober here!
Don’t like footblall puzzles much, and this was nop exception. I think Paul is much better than this usually,.
Thanks flashling
I didn’t enjoy this at all. I have no interest in football (though I had heard of the grounds), so immediately I took against it.
I would echo Gervase @ 10 about “parking lot” – I don’t think there is one in Leicester.
I grudgingly liked FORMERLY.
Thanks to flashling, and to Paul for a wonderful puzzle – and lots of misdirection as usual. Richard III clues were very entertaining. I’m not really a football fan but got WHITE HART LANE and realised what was going on.
Entertaining enough puzzle – I got GROUND early on and was waiting for it to be used as an anagrind.
Thanks flashling; I think it is somewhat churlish to worry about PARKING LOT being chiefly [as it says in my O.D.E] N.American. In case you haven’t heard it, there is the great Joni Mitchell line in ‘Big Yellow Taxi’ that goes: “They paved paradise to put up a parking lot.”
I liked the misleading ‘golfer’s round’ for LEAPFROG. Nice to see me getting a namecheck in 20a! I didn’t mind much about the football theme and I thought the clue for ETIHAD was great, although I thought it was a reverse envelope at the beginning.
Not one of my favourite puzzles.
Again, I emphasise that the opinions are personal, and I understand fully that other solvers will take a different view, but I was not impressed with 8a, which seemed more like a clue from a different newspaper, disliked the linked clues concerning Richard the Third for different reasons (I do not like regnal numbers clued as letters, and grimace at the use of ‘parking lot’), found that I just couldn’t be bothered with parsing solutions such as 17a, which had too many ‘bitty’ components which make solving the construction of the clue more of a challenge than solving the grid.
By the way, even the smell of Marmite makes me feel sick.
I don’t suppose that any of my children will have heard of Victor Mature, whose last film as far as I can see was made in 1971 two years after the oldest was born. I take it that the cultural mindset is designed to discourage young people from taking up crossword solving.
Tom I agree it’s not like Paul is old, think clues like that should be retired. As a Leicester lad I did wonder what Eileen would say or whether t’ Yorkies would demand the body back.
As a football fan I’m embarrassed to admit that it took me a while to see the gateway clue and the themed answers, and it was ANFIELD that opened them up for me. I also liked the other two related clues, and I have no problem with PARKING LOT. STURDY was my LOI after I finally saw the misdirection.
I have yet to hear a satisfactory explanation from Little Englanders as to why forcing Premiership teams to include English players who are not currently good enough to play at that level would magically improve the results of the national team.
I’m sure I don’t know what 19th Century anti-colonialists have to do with it, but it is a fact that where once England produced teams that were good enough to get beaten in the semi-final, we can now only muster chaps good enough to get ousted in the quarter-final. Or the first knock-out game. And, to be honest, I am now bored with seeing Slovanius Polvoski playing at centre-half where good old Ted Clobber used to suffice.
The alternative is to get Andy B and the lads out there colonising, and convert all the native talent to the right religion, English footie, and make them all honorary Brits. That is to say, exactly the sort of thing our cricket team has been doing for years.
Hi flashling @19 😉
I wasn’t going to mention any controversy and I certainly don’t want to open any can of worms but, since you’ve mentioned it, if you haven’t been keeping up, some ‘Yorkies’ have, indeed – see here http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/row-over-burial-site-for-king-richard-iiiparliamentary-petition-calling-for-debate-on-final-resting-place-misses-target-8838547.html
[[I, of course, couldn’t possibly comment – here, at least. 😉 ]]
An enjoyable puzzle but perhaps just a little disappointing for Paul. (Perhaps it’s because it came after Picaroon’s offering of yesterday)
I didn’t get OJIBWA as I had never heard of this “indian”. Unlike Eileen I didn’t think it was easy enough from the word play. I had discounted BIG for GIANT as big is normal but large and giant is abnormally large. (My opinion of course!) So I was looking for a 3 letter mythological giant second letter I.
Anyway thanks to Flashling and Paul
Perhaps, it’s football that divides us once more.
I got WHITE HART LANE right away, my PinC had never heard of it …..
When I told her that were some football things going on here, she was close to the point of throwing in the towel.
However, she also said at some point “Paul’s on form today”.
Yes, I think he was.
On very good form.
The fodder for WHITE HART LANE also works for WHITE HART LENA. Knowing nothing of UK football stadia, I went that direction first. A quick internet search using the latter three terms did indeed yield interesting results. Lena seems to be quite a nice young football fan. Maybe I will take a greater interest in football in the future.
I found this pretty easy (at least it felt that way after just having blogged Monk in the FT).
I got stuck at 23ac, I guessed as far as RICHARD I_I but couldn’t think of anything for the missing letter! I assumed CHARD was a wrong guess as I was fixated on looking for some ancient character with an unpronounceable name.
Having read the solution I just can’t believe how dumb that was of me. I guessed PARKING LOT but did not know who or what had been discovered in one.
Thanks flashling.
What do you call parking lots in UK? Please explain Robinson.
In the UK we call them “car parks”, there’s a phrase “before you could say “Jack Robinson”” which basically means in an instant, I’ve referenced a wiki article as a link in the blog.
Thanks Flashling.
I came in very late in the day (or day after!) to parse 21D OJIBWA. I guessed that “brave” might refer to a “red indian”, now referred to as a “native American”, which is quite common in crosswords, but I have never heard of Ojibwa. I wish the posting bloggers would offer more explanation in such cases. I agree with Brendan @ 23 re “big” for “giant”.
Being a “Gooner” (Arsenal supporter), I had no problem with the football stadia, but I sympathise with those who aren’t football fans. I could have done without the lengthy, irrelevant discussion re English players, etc on this blog.
At 71, I am mature enough to remember Victor, but again I sympathise with those who are not!
Roland @ 13. Have you heard of Stanley Unwin? You could do with a proof reader!