Guardian Cryptic N° 26,222 by Brendan

by

The puzzle may be found at http://www.theguardian.com/crosswords/cryptic/26222.

I had to cast about for an entry point to this puzzle, and eventually (with a little bit of luck) solved it from the bottom up, ending with the thematic 1D.

 

Across
5. Plant left inside shelter (6)
CLOVER An envelope (‘inside’) of L (‘left’) in COVER (‘shelter’).
6. Male with tie on that’s reckoned to bring luck (6)
MASCOT A charade of M (‘male’) plus ASCOT (‘tie’).
9. Kind of luck that we discover, finally, in charming schoolboy (6)
POTTER A charade of POT (‘kind of luck’) plus TER, last letters (‘finally’) of ‘thaT wE discoveR‘, with a cryptic reference to Harry Potter.
10. Supposedly lucky people seen in part of eye hospital (3,5)
THE IRISH A charade of THE IRIS (‘part of the eye’) plus H (‘hospital’).
11. Wrong about good omen (4)
SIGN An envelope (‘about’) of G (‘good’) in SIN (‘wrong’).
12. Some of our leave disallowed, as 5 across occasionally is (4-6)
FOUR-LEAVED A hidden answer (‘some’) in ‘oF OUR LEAVE Disallowed’.
13,17. Fortuitously, in accordance with so-called lady’s wishes (2,4,5,4,2)
AS LUCK WOULD HAVE IT A cryptic reference to Lady Luck.
18. A post, possibly, that you’ll be lucky to get out of (1,5,4)
A TIGHT SPOT A clue with the wordplay in the answer: ‘a’ plus an anagram (‘tight’ as drunk) of ‘post’.
21. No-win situation, something that’s decided by luck (4)
DRAW Double definition.
22. Chef initially discovers the truth about sweet dishes (8)
CRUMBLES A charade of C (‘Chef initially’) plus RUMBLES (‘discovers the truth’).
23. High score with dice, within maximum for Romans (6)
ELEVEN Brendan is evidently shooting with a pair of dice; in Roman numerals, 11 is ‘within maXImum‘.
24. Pirate providing what fortune-teller requires in hand (6)
SILVER Double definition: Long John, and cross my palm.
25. As part of genteel destiny, most like to succeed (6)
ELDEST A hidden answer in ‘genteEL DESTiny’.

Down
1. Chance outcomes with respect to numbers (8)
FORTUNES A charade of FOR (‘with respect to’) plus TUNES (‘numbers’).
2. Get to know about male meeting places set up (4,2)
HEAR OF A charade of HE (‘male’) plus AROF, a reversal (‘set up’ in a down light) of FORA (‘meeting places’).
3. Major defeat later rectified in court (8)
WATERLOO An envelope (‘in’) of ATERL, an anagram (‘rectified’) of ‘later’ in WOO (‘court’).
4. Volcanic stuff found in southern Cairo, oddly (6)
SCORIA An anagram (‘oddly’) of S (‘southern’) plus ‘Cairo’.
5. It may contain your fortune — what eventuates is how this 22 (6)
COOKIE A double definition, both with an American twang (though I assume they have crossed the pond) – the fortune cookie of Chinese takeouts, and a reference to the expression “That’s the way the cookie crumbles”.
7. Money-raising actions offering 50/50 chances of success (6)
TOSSES Cryptic definition.
8. Adopted a stance in court — speaks out of order (6,1,4)
STRUCK A POSE An anagram (‘out of order’) of ‘court speaks’.
14. Not cultivated prior to being guided (8)
UNTILLED A charade of UNTIL (‘prior to’) plus LED (‘being guided’).
15. Ran edition in unlucky position? (8)
LADDERED ED (‘edition’) under a LADDER (‘in an unlucky position’).
16. Begins with supposed sources of luck — about time! (6)
STARTS An envelope (‘about’) of T (‘time’) in STARS (‘supposed source of luck’).
17. See 13
– See 13
19. Rely on luck being good on promenade (6)
GAMBLE A charade of G (‘good’) plus AMBLE (‘promenade’).
20. A long shot for a better singer (6)
TREBLE Double definition.

41 comments on “Guardian Cryptic N° 26,222 by Brendan”

  2. Thanks PeterO and Brendan.

    I found this quite easy, 13, 17 being the first in – the enumeration gave it away. I was looking for a theme in the answers for a while, but soon decided it was just about luck, generally.

    It took me some time to realise the RAN in 15d refers to stockings, I guess.

  3. Thanks, PeterO.

    When I saw it was Brendan, I was expecting a “poisson d’avril” theme. Got off to a roaring start and, after the first few, thought the theme was going to be that every answer contained a single letter insertion, abbreviation or whatever. (There do seem to be a lot!)

    13,17.. the joke was on me!

  4. Hadn’t heard of Ascot being a tie or scoria as anything but other than that, with FOI being 13, 17, it was pretty much a stroll in the park.

    And I like strolls in parks so thanks Brendan and PeterO.

  5. Thanks Brendan and PeterO
    On the whole I don’t like “themed” crosswords, though this was less offensive than most. One of the problems was exemplified here – I “solved” two of the clues from different clues (I got CLOVER from 12a and CRUMBLES from 5d).
    Favourite was WATERLOO.
    (Could a classical scholar please explain why the plural of FORUM is FORA rather than FORI? I did very little Latin, but I do remember “bellum, bellum, belli”.)

  7. Berny @ 6
    You need to throw a 6 and a 5 with a pair of dice – not the highest, though (my least favourite clue in this puzzle!)

  9. It was a long time ago for me too, muffin, but the plural of -us is -i and that of -um is -a. (Well, that’s what I remember!) 😉

  10. Muffin @5, “i” is a second declension masculine (generally) nominative plural ending. Forum is neuter, as is the noun bellum (war), and their nominative plurals are fora and bella. Belli is from the adjective bellus/bella/bellum (beautiful), and as an adjective it takes on the gender and number of the noun it modifies — so puer bellus, puella bella. pueri belli, etc. Sorry you asked?

  11. Very enjoyable puzzle. I had the same gaps in my knowledge as Tom @4, but the solutions were easy to deduce. After last week’s run of errors on my part, I also appreciated a comparative stroll in the park.

  12. Thanks, NeilW and Ian SW3 – it was a very long time ago, but it is a little disheartening to discover that my memory has played me false!

  13. Got lucky with SCORIA being my first guess at 4d. Thanks PeterO for parsing POTTER for me; I had assumed it was a dd, and potters were lucky people, just like the Irish. After all, I hadn’t heard of Ascot = tie, so why not?

  15. muffin @5 etc

    I think what surfaced from you memory is that belli is also the genitive singular of bellum, of war (eg casus belli).

  17. Thanks Brendan & PeterO.

    AS LUCK WOULD HAVE IT I solved this one early on but it did not lead to a quick resolution. Got a bit stuck in the NW corner with POTTER and FORTUNES the last in.

    I got a little distracted by TREBLE being an anagram of BETTER with one ‘t’ changed to ‘l’ [long.] I liked the clue for ELEVEN – the ‘within maximum’ might also indicate less than 12.

  18. You sort of know when you see Brendan’s name above the crossword on a significant date that there will be a theme in there somewhere. Thanks to him for an enjoyable solve and to Peter for the explanations.

  19. Thanks, PeterO @15. You’re quite right about belli. I was trying to keep my Latin grammar lesson short by skipping other cases. Mea culpa.

    I’m surprised so many people haven’t heard of an Ascot tie. It is a memorable term and occasional sight from my childhood, though you don’t see them much any more, except perhaps on Nicholas Parsons.

  20. Found this fairly east – helped by starting with AS LUCK WOULD HAVE IT from definition and enumeration, so the theme wasn’t much of a surprise. SCORIA was the only unfamiliar word. Last in was POTTER…

    Thanks to Brendan and PeterO

  22. Thanks to PeterO for the blog. I had POTTER as the answer but could not see the explanation. I came here and saw ‘pot luck’ and thought of course 🙁

    I thought 12 was good – possibly because I saw the included words.

    My way in was that I solved 5a pretty quickly then looked at 5d. I guessed that then immediately saw 22 and off I went. 13,17 came from the numeration. Then it was pretty much, as others have said, a stroll in the park.

  23. Impressive that nearly every clue involved the theme.

    My favourite clues are for THE IRISH, DRAW and SIGN which has a nice surface.

    Why are TOSSES ‘money-raising actions’? Wait I’ve just worked that out while typing!

  24. A very enjoyable way to spend a few minutes – thanks B and PeterO.

    I liked the misdirection-pairs of “eye hospital” and “better singer”.

    Isn’t 25 meant to be “..most likely to succeed” though?

  25. Given the theme, I wasn’t happy about ‘fortuitously’ at 13,17: as far too people seem to know, it means ‘at random’ and NOT ‘fortunately’. It does work as a definition, though I fear the ignorant won’t appreciate the fact.

  26. On the dice thing (Berny @6 et al.) In the game of craps (the most common dice game for gamblers–and hey, this is a puzzle about luck, so that makes sense), 12 is a crap (and thus a losing throw), while 11 is a (in fact the highest) winning throw.

  27. …and for that reason, eleven is considered a lucky throw, even in contexts other than craps–thus a good choice for this puzzle.

  29. PeterM @25

    The meanings of words and phrases often change over time. Almost daily, Susie Dent on Countdown gives examples. 13,17 is most often used in the fortuitous sense, making this clue perfectly valid.

  30. Thanks PeterO and Brendan

    Relatively straightforward but enjoyable none the less. I particularly liked 9a, 24a, and 15d.

  31. Another enjoyable puzzle from Brendan that I found to be towards the easier end of his spectrum. However, I confess that AS LUCK WOULD HAVE IT went in from the enumeration and the theme once a few checkers were in place. I was held up at the end by three clues in the NW. It took me a while before I saw the reversed “fora” that finally led me to HEAR OF, after that I finally parsed the clue for POTTER, and then, like PeterO, FORTUNES was my LOI.

  32. As usual a perfectly clued cryptic crossword from Brendan.

    It was a tad easy though. Surely this was designed for the “Rufus” spot where Brendan occasionally deputises. 😉

    I have fond memories of bellum which was the standard example of a second declension neuter noun in our “Primer” (I think)

    A certain way to get a Jesuit to hurl the board duster across the classroom was to intone ” Blum, blum, blum. bli, blo, blo. Bla, bla, bla, blorum, blis blis” 🙂

    I don’t suppose GBH is allowed in the classroom nowadays.

    Thanks to PeterO and Brendan

  35. ………..our primer was entitled “An approach to Latin”, but no extant copy read like that on the cover (it was too easy to change “Latin” into “Eating”).

    I am also reminded of the poem:
    Latin’s a dead language
    As dead as dead can be,
    It killed off all the Romans,
    And now it’s killing me!

    (found in most Latin textbooks)

    Actually, statistically, it was my best subject at school for the two years that I studied it – but then I was given the choice between Latin and Chemistry……

  36. Thanks all
    I started this late evening and seeing Brendan expected an all-nighter.
    The bottom half went in very easily and I ignored the possibility of a theme!
    The top half then followed except for 1 down (apparently the key theme clue) which took me a long time because I was sold on ?o?tings.
    I seemed to solve too many clues by making a wild guess at the definition and then being surprised to find it fitted the cryptic.

  37. PeterO, Brendan didn’t need to qualify ‘dice’ in 23A to tell us there was more than one. Just one is a die, as in alea jacta est (the die is cast).. Pedantic, moi?

  38. Thanks Brendan and PeterO

    A gentle, but fun offering from the ‘themester’ with this. Started off with 11a and next in was 13,17 and still took a couple more for the luck / lucky focus to sink in.

    Ended up in the NW with HEAR OF, POTTER and FORTUNES the last few in.

  39. muffin@35

    The schoolboyish pleasure in altering sober wording has remained with me to this day, and I keep a lookout. There’s a signpost on the A17 to a place called Penny Hill, which now reads ‘Benny Hill”, and there was a road name in Stockport, EAST RD, which simply read ‘BASTARD” last time I looked.

    We had a maths teacher nicknamed Taff at school, and he used to nip out for a cigarette in the STAFF TOILET. Someone removed the pinned-on initial letter of the first word and moved it to the end, which he seemed to find heartwarming.

    Thanks all

  40. Martin P @39
    I agree, though my favourites tend to be unintentional – for instance there is a a layby eatery near us that advertises “Sit-in or takeaway toilets”.

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