I do love an Anax puzzle, but goodness me, he does put us bloggers through the wringer on occasions! This one took me most of the week to complete, although it’s one of those ones where everything slots into place beautifully—once you know the answers.
There are some great surfaces in there as usual, and some beautifully obscured definitions, such as at 25 down, and 19 down which took ages to see but is vintage Anax.
One slight query from me at 13 down, where either I appear to be ignorant of one of the elements of the wordplay, or I’ve got it all completely wrong.
| Across | ||
| 1 | CRIB | Lift in urban dwelling (4) |
| Double definition. It’s “lift” in the sense of “to steal”, and what rappers etc. strereotypically call their house, cf. TV shows such as “MTV Cribs”. | ||
| 31 | PRISON CAMP | Boy about to wear dress in detention centre (6,4) |
| (SON + CA) in PRIMP | ||
| 10 | LIFE-OR-DEATH | Crucial shot to a fielder ending in catch (4-2-5) |
| (TO A FIELDER) + [catc]H | ||
| 11 | MAW | Might as well use their headings to reach gulf (3) |
| M[ight] A[s] W[ell] | ||
| 12 | BOREDOM | Fashion do about to generate no interest (7) |
| (MODE + ROB)< | ||
| 14 | IN RANGE | An easier target managed to stretch Anglican priest (2,5) |
| RAN in INGE. William Inge was unknown to me, but that wasn’t a huge obstacle here. In fact I just assumed “Inge” was a rank in, say, the Catholic church and looked it up later. | ||
| 15 | IRONS IN THE FIRE | Comment on 2 things to do? (5,2,3,4) |
| I think this is a double definition, with “Comment on inferno” being a little vague or whimsical. I don’t think it’s anything to do with West Ham Utd. being sent to the underworld, though after that Tevez fiasco… | ||
| 17 | APPRENTICESHIP | Training programme‘s right, and is tempting with it (14) |
| APP + R + ENTICES + HIP. Nice long charade clue. | ||
| 21 | HOTSPUR | Percy starts to tinkle, soaking porcelain in time (7) |
| (T[inkle] + S[oaking] + P[orcelain]) in HOUR. This guy. | ||
| 22 | EDIFICE | Horrified if I, celibate, will grab this erection (7) |
| [horrifi]ED IF I CE[libate] | ||
| 23 | RYE | Audibly scoffing cereal (3) |
| Homophone of “wry”. | ||
| 24 | IMPETIGENES | One spread pig semen – it causes skin infections (11) |
| I + (PIG SEMEN IN)*. I had to look this up, and it does seem quite rare. | ||
| 26 | BATON ROUGE | Area in Oregon, but wrong state capital (5,5) |
| A in (OREGON BUT)*. State capital of Louisiana, or course. | ||
| 27 | ETUI | Case ends in failure but you must have independence (4) |
| [failur]E + [bu]T + [yo]U + I | ||
| Down | ||
| 1 | CALABRIA | Romeo opens lips after beginning to caress Italian’s toe? (8) |
| CA[aress] + (R in LABIA). Not literally a toe, of course, but the pointy bit at the southern end of Italy. | ||
| 2 | INFERNO | Reason I refuse Hell (7) |
| INFER + NO | ||
| 4 | RID | Free travel passes on entry to Eurostar (3) |
| RID[e] | ||
| 5 | SPANISH WINE | One sleeps around with drunken pig after Rioja? (7,4) |
| (I + NAPS)< + SHWINE – how a drunk person might pronounce “swine”. | ||
| 6 | NO HARD FEELINGS | Offering to appease infernal gods, eh? Possibly (2,4,8) |
| (INFERNAL GODS EH)* | ||
| 7 | ALMONER | A pair of hands to carry most of cash one gave away? (7) |
| A + (MONE[y] in (L + R)) | ||
| 8 | POWDER | Sort of snow one found in 3 turned the colour of 12 (6) |
| POW + RED< | ||
| 9 | JOB DESCRIPTION | 18 duties assigned (3,11) |
| Double definition of “patience” and “duties assigned”, the former I assume being a reference to Job from the bible, known for being patient, or perhaps getting injured a lot. | ||
| 13 | MA NON TROPPO | Chap sitting on potty keeps reading, perhaps, but not too much (2,3,6) |
| I’m not sure here. This seems to parse as MAN + (TROP in ON PO), but I can’t find an explanation for TROP = “reading, perhaps”. | ||
| 16 | APRES SKI | Urge king to open fine event in Alpine bar? (5-3) |
| (PRESS + K) in A1 | ||
| 18 | PATIENT | Case is open, one is in it (7) |
| I in PATENT | ||
| 19 | HAIRNET | Rolling in earth a cause of static shock? (7) |
| (IN EARTH)*. Fantastic: “shock” as in “hair”, static as in “not moving”. | ||
| 20 | CHERUB | The woman has baby as guardian angel (6) |
| HER in CUB | ||
| 25 | TUG | Inverted empty water tower (3) |
| GUT<. Another well-hidden definition. Think of it as something that tows whilst on water. | ||
* = anagram; < = reversed; [] = removed; underlined = definition
Many thanks for the blog Simon, and before anyone jumps in to mention it can I just say “Aaaargh!”.
I’ve dished out an error in 1d CALABRIA. The clue was modified, originally ending with “…to caress a toe?”. This def at the end was considered a bit too wild so I added ‘Italian’ as a help, completely forgetting that the ‘a’ was part of the wordplay. So your parsing of CA[ress] is along the right lines but it should have been C[aress] + A.
My sincere apologies. It’s an error of mine which I’ve only noticed now that the blog has appeared.
Thanks Anax for an enjoyable challenge and for putting your hand up straight away about 1dn, and thanks Simon for the blog.
13dn: I took this as MAN + ON TOP + PO containing R.
Aha, I did wonder, and almost put a little query by that…though in the end I think it’s close enough to working anyway that I wonder how many noticed.
And thanks, PB, that makes a lot more sense. I really should have internalised that use of the three Rs in wordplay by now!
I should have commented on 24ac, for which I think there is a typo in the answer: it should end INES for the anagram to work (and that fits with the spelling in Chambers). With the checked letters and anagram fodder sorted, I think Anax can reasonably expect us to get IMPETIG(o) as the beginning of the word, and INES is much more plausible than ENIS for the rest of it.
Jumping in too quickly again on 24ac. The wordplay is I + (PIG SEMEN IT)*, and the definition is just “skin infections”, with “causes” as a perfectly acceptable link word from wordplay to definition.
I had a go on Saturday and got about 8 in half an hour (BATON ROUGE, MAW, LIFE OR DEATH amongst them. Frustrated I gave up… only to come back and finish in around 10 mins on the Sunday. Incremental crossing letters notwithstanding, “sleeping on it” is the only explanation I can give!
Good stuff as ever.
Simon – in 17ac I think you have underlined too much. “Training” is the definition and programme=app is part of the wordplay as you have pointed out.
I needed to check IMPETIGINES but I managed the rest of it without aids. I didn’t even notice the wordplay error in 1dn because I put the answer in from the definition. Another good challenge from Anax.
Thank you to setter (definitely passed the integrity test!) and blogger,
Overall not as fearsome as I’d been expecting after a few difficult ones in the last few days but v. enjoyable. I too had trouble with the precise parsing of 13. I had MAN + ON + TROPPO (=potty, mad) but couldn’t fit the “reading” in either, though ? part of the definition rather than the wordplay. 17 was a beauty and good to see an old friend at 27 getting a guernsey again.
The wordplay for 15Ac I think relates to the fact that the chemical symbol for iron (Fe) appears in the word inferno, hence “iron’s in the fire”.
Thanks to setter and blogger. Challenging and enjoyable, as expected from Anax. Got there, but didn’t really understand CRIB until I came here.
Good of Anax to take the rap for 1 Down, but I should have spotted that the resubmitted clue didn’t work. Apologies.
eimi@11: Good of you to offer to take the rap as well. I have only recently started solving the Saturday Independent crosswords, and was fairly happy with the clue as it was printed, assuming that for a prize crossword you were allowing “beginning to” as an indicator for more than one letter from the start of a word.
…and of course this is number 8512 not 8521 as it says in the title…
Thanks redddevil, duly corrected.
Thanks, both. -1 to self for attention to detail.