As Conrad helpfully says, at comment 4, “Anyone wishing to do this online should use the PDF not the print version. Apart from saying 166 where it means 16 it is fine.”
A bit of a mixture from Paul today: some clues, like 24ac and 2, 3, 7 and 18dn wouldn’t seem out of place in a Rufus puzzle, while others, like 14,13, 16ac, are unmistakably Paul. As always with Paul, some very clever clues, a couple of which were too clever for me today, I’m afraid.
A bit of a mix-up with the numbering of the clues, too, which was irritating. A quick visit to the Guardian website revealed that the problem online was far worse than in my paper, so I didn’t pursue it further! I’ve adjusted the numbering below.
I’m afraid that, with one thing or another, this puzzle left me feeling more exasperated than satisfied but thanks anyway, Paul – it wasn’t all your fault!
Across
1 Dot — ultimate character in EastEnders taking a regular drink (7)
STIPPLE
S last letter of eastenderS + TIPPLE [regular drink – Dot’s being ‘a small sweet sherry’]
5 Cave-dweller keeping second chap in or out? (7)
BATSMAN
BATMAN [cave-dweller] round S [second]
10 Catching cold, can 12? (4)
LOCO
LOO [can] round C [cold] = cuckoo [answer to 12]
11 Catching cold too, using a muff (10)
CONTAGIOUS
Anagram [muff] of C [cold] + TOO USING A
14,13,16 No rage? L! (9,8,5)
CHRISTMAS WRAPPING PAPER
NOEL [Christmas] round [wrapping] RAG [paper]: a clever construction, which made me laugh when I saw it, but, as there’s no definition, it’s more of a Dingbat than a crossword clue.
19 Is a member’s cast so sozzled? (9)
PLASTERED
A broken member – arm or leg – would be put in plaster
23 I must go behind boy, one wearing short yellow bloomers (8)
GLADIOLI
I after LAD [boy] + I [one] in [wearing] GOL[d] [short yellow]
24 Guillotine important figure (6)
EIGHTY
[w]EIGHTY [important, without its head]
26 Kind heart of Irish setter flourished (10)
BRANDISHED
BRAND [kind] + I [heart of irIsh] + SHED [setter] – we’ve had several instances of references to fellow-setters lately: I have no objection to it.
27 In Devon, a current company leader is business manager (4)
EXEC
EXE [Devon river] + C[ompany]
28 Apparently sweet thing in mother, even gentler (7)
REVENGE
Hidden in motheR EVEN GEntler – a reference to the saying ‘Revenge is sweet’, from Milton’s ‘Paradise Lost’:
‘Revenge, at first though sweet
Bitter ere long, back on itself recoils…’
Down
2 Feel restraining order is excessive (3,4)
TOO MUCH
OM [order – of merit] in TOUCH [feeling]
3 Dump the cheap drink (5)
PLONK
Double definition
4 Exclusion from place of work as rugby player dismissed (7)
LOCKOUT
LOCK [rugby player] + OUT [dismissed]
6 Mount frames in alabaster (amateur art) (6)
ARARAT
AR [frames in AlabasteR] then we have A [amateur] and ART but I can’t quite fit them together!
7 Sound transaction straightforward for aircraft (9)
SAILPLANE
Sounds like sale [transaction] + plain [straightforward]
8 Female graduates rewrite manual with masculine conclusion (7)
ALUMNAE
Anagram [rewrite] of MANUAL + [masculin]E
9 Missile attacks in this global warfare and nuclear fallout starts to spread (8,5)
SNOWBALL FIGHT
Over to you for this one! [I’m getting ready to kick myself.]
15 With investment of 500, possibly nice when twice the amount (9)
INCIDENCE
D [500] in two anagrams of NICE
18 In general free (2,5)
AT LARGE
Double definition
20 Taking drug (on drugs), put your foot down (5,2)
SPEED UP
SPEED [drug] + UP [on drugs]
21 Old lover, not-half 25 in the end (7)
EXTREME
EX [old lover] + half [or not half!] of TREME[ndous] [great – answer to 25dn] – I don’t know what the hyphen’s doing in the clue.
22,17 As is a tree in five-star sporting event? (6,5)
BOXING MATCH
I can’t see this one, either
25,29,12 Super double-dotty bird (5,7,6)
GREAT SPOTTED CUCKOO
GREAT [super] – and SPOTTED and CUCKOO can both mean dotty
22, 17 – fi (vesta) r – agree about the undefined clue. Pity this was messed up online. Thanks anyway for the blog, and to a very miffed Paul, I should imagine.
Thanks Eileen
Let me fill in the gaps for you.
6dn A[labaste]R A[mateu]R A[r]T
9dn an anagram (to spread) of THIS GLOBAL W[arfare] N[uclear] F[allout]
22,17 ‘five-star’ has fir (a tree) around (BOXING) vesta (MATCH)
… and I had 9a as an anagram of ‘this global’+ ‘w’ ‘n” f’ for the starts of the following words. I’m hoping it’s better than that.
Anyone wishing to do this online should use the PDF not the print version. Apart from saying 166 where it means 16 it is fine. Eileen, is it worth saying this in the preamble so that confused solvers can try again before consulting your blog?
Many thanks, all. I just might have got there in the end but the blog would have been considerably delayed. 🙁
Good thinking, Conrad – I’ll do that.
I thought this was Paul just being over-clever, so I gave up after about quarter of an hour when I couldn’t understand what he was getting at. Turns out it’s just another Grauniad balls-up, which is not even slightly funny. My commiserations to the setter and thank you to Eileen for what must have been a frustrating morning.
Thanks (as ever) Eileen and Paul.
I wondered for a while if the mess with the numbers was part of a loco/cuckoo theme. Probably just a happy co-incidence, but I didn’t mind the challenge of sorting it out.
6d – AlabasteR AmateuR ArT – all frames.
9d – I got as far as global warfare = snowballs, but then fell apart.
23a – you’re missing the ‘one’ after lad to give the first ‘i’ in gladioli.
I thought this was a superstar of a puzzle. 14.13,16 was one of the best clues I have seen, with the definition being the word play. So many were really clever. Made all the more interesting by having to sort out the messed up on line version. I was doing this after midnight and couldn’t stop until it was finished as one clever clue followed another. Took one and a half hours – 2or 3 times longer than usual but it kept my interest right to the end.
Thanks Paul and Eileen.
Thanks, Andrew – sorted now.
I did wonder about a cuckoo theme – and / or a drunken one, with tipple, PLONK and PLASTERED [not to mention the drugs!].
[I’m glad I wasn’t the only one hooked on SNOWBALL FIGHT = ‘global warfare’. I’m feeling like going back to bed.]
Hi almw3 @8 – I crossed with you.
“14.13,16 was one of the best clues I have seen, with the definition being the word play.” Yes, of course: I even missed that, too – definitely not my day!.
Just for those who are still wondering what all the fuss is about, the online version (yes, I know, I should get out and buy the paper) has transposed the numbering for the clues in the bottom half, which makes it impossible to solve.
The mistakes in the clue numbering were quite frustrating but luckily ID066279 gave his/her version of the correct cluing in the Guardian blog/comments so I followed that rather than the online version of the clues.
I found this puzzle quite difficult and I needed to use the check button quite a lot today. I failed to solve BOXING and EXEC.
My favourites were GREAT SPOTTED CUCKOO, LOCO & EIGHTY.
There were a few I could not parse, but now I can’t work out which ones they were as the numbering has changed on the online version and does not match up to how I solved it earlier today….
Thanks Eileen and Paul.
Thanks Eileen – I found this pretty hard, and didn’t envy you the task of blogging it, though I think I managed to parse all the clues in the end.
However, excuse me if I’m being thick, but how is “No rage? L!” a definition of CHRISTMAS WRAPPING PAPER?
(The online version is now fixed.)
I thought this was brilliant! Like others I first thought there was some reason for the strange numbering but after realising it was just an editing cockup the puzzle proved to be challenging but lots of fun – especially Christmas wrapping paper. Thanks to Paul, Eileen and those who have explained “Boxing match” (I had no idea.)
RAG wrapped in NOEL
Thanks for the blog, Eileen and sorry you had to solve/comment when the puzzle was so mixed up. My print-out of the PDF only has one mistake — 166 for 16 — so I was only held up by some of the clues, in particular 22,17, which I eventually got with being able to parse it.
I did see 14,13,16, which I thought was a fantastic clue! Thanks Paul.
Tried to solve the online version. Failed. Wasted a lot of time thinking that there was something clever I was missing. Completely hacked off. And I thought that the Times’ IT arrangements were shambolic!
9d. anagram of THIS GLOBAL W(arfare) N(uclear) F(allout)
This took ages – eventually noticed that enumerations indicated positions, so was able to complete puzzle, with repeated use of ‘check’ to verify positions.
Thanks for parsing several solutions – I’m with Andrew@13 in being unable to see how the clue can be the definition at 14,13,16, although the wordplay is OK, as per gladys@15.
(sorry Gaufrid – missed your post!)
I printed this out and was away from all the correspondence. I just thought it was Paul having a larff- and picked up on the misplacements.Not everyone loved the wrapping paper but I thought the whole thing was hilarious, mistakes or not.
Great fun – at first I thought it must be Paul intentionally doing weird things with the numbering! I also couldn’t parse CHRISTMAS WRAPPING PAPER and BOXING MATCH – the latter is really clever, but extremely tricky.
As usual a wonderful puzzle from Paul. Thanks to him and Eileen.
Fantastic puzzle – and it took me a long while to crack it.
I must say I can only see one side to CHRISTMAS WRAPPING PAPER – but so what!
BOXING MATCH has two sides and is equally clever – and tricky to solve.
It’s the Guardian – let a million flowers bloom.
I got as far as MATCH but cheated BOXING. Once it was in front of me I could see how it worked. I thought the ‘global’ war was part of the definition for the snowballs, and couldn’t work out the rather laborious clue.
22,17 BOX (tree) MATCH (sporting event) tree as a match in a matchbox
This was initially somehat baffling, but once I had a foothold from the more normal clues I found it very entertaining, especially SNOWBALL FIGHT, CHRISTMAS WRAPPING PAPER and BOXING MATCH, but I saw the latter as a typical Paul dingbats style clue and like others I still can’t see more than one way of reading it – I was also trying to find a connection to 6/ARARAT thanks to the misprint for a while. Last in was LOCO.
Thanks to Eileen and Paul.
Just in case anyone is confused by my previous comment @26, when I wrote “the latter” I was intending to rearrange the list but forgot to move CHRISTMAS WRAPPING PAPER to the end – sorry…
Fortunately I do the paper version! I finished, but with too much guessing and reverse engineering to feel pleased. I also raised an eyebrow at “incidence”. Does it really mean “amount” or does it refer to the distribution of an amount?
22,17 FIVE-STAR was a make of match in the last century, boxes now rare
Thanks Eileen (for struggling!) and Paul. I began with the online print version and became totally confused. After I bought the paper (is this a cunning Grauniad marketing ploy?), things became clearer – though still tricky enough 😉
For the first time in ages I gave this up through lack of interest rather than inspiration – I hated it. Yes, very clever, but irritating.
I actual saw “Christmas” (noel) wrapping “paper” (rag), but still don’t think that there is a satisfactory definition there.
Rather self-indulgent, I thought.
Hi beery hiker @26
As is quite evident, I’ve not been thinking straight today and, on second – or, rather, third – thoughts, I want to retract my response @10 to almw3’s comment at 8. I don’t know what I was thinking of. The fact that the wordplay is the definition is precisely what makes it a dingbat and, as you say, there is no other way of reading it. As I said in the blog, it’s a clever and amusing construction – but the surface doesn’t mean much to me!
Hi David Mop @28
I thought someone might mention that. I was intrigued by INCIDENCE, too, so looked it up. Collins gives: degree, extent or frequency of occurrence; amount: ‘a high incidence of death from pneumonia’ [but that example seems to me to imply frequency rather than amount].
The first word in BOXING MATCH was a guess and I needed the blog to tell me why – though I had parsed CHRISTMAS WRAPPING PAPER, and it’s essentially the same device. SNOWBALL FIGHT, also a parsing failure, at least was alternative-free.
I normally ‘get’ Paul much more quickly than this, and with a much warmer feeling at the end of it. Some very good clues here, but it’s as if he wanted to up the difficulty level with some wilful obscurities.
Eileen, thanks for that clarification. I wasn’t meaning to imply any criticism of the clue (or the blog) – I was just wondering what alternative way of reading the clue we might have been missing! In my view (and going back to Boatman’s comment a couple of weeks ago) it passes his “is the liberty justified by the entertainment value” test.
I thought stipple had something to do with wallpapering which left a dotted surface which I remember doing with my Dad many years ago. Chambers indicates word origin for stipple as “Dutch. stippelen, dim. of stippen, to dot”.
How about:
What’s needed for the present could make Nora gel?
for 14,13,16? At least it makes slightly more sense than the original…
Thanks, Andrew – that’ll do! 🙂
beery hiker, yours just happened to be the one to prompt me to make the comment I’ve been mulling over for hours!
Andrew @ 36
In contrast to the clue in the crossword, yours actually means something in English. A great improvement.
I’ve never done drugs but today’s experience indicates what it might be like. Today we had Don “breaking the rules” in the Times Quickie of all things, and this comedy of errors in the Guardian. And…despite all that, I enjoyed the experience, chuckling away in the cha chaan teng as I unwrapped my last one.
And for the record if “amount” is good enough for Collins, it’s good enough for me (“degree, extent, or frequency of occurrence; amount”).
Hi ulaca – I agree, which is why I gave the Collins definition @32. Collins is always my dictionary of choice, for several reasons – but I just didn’t think the example they gave here was the best.
Xim, as a clue for ‘the present holder’ (9,8,5)
I need locking up. It’s all Paul’s fault.
Oh, sorry – and I tried so hard to read all the comments today before wading in. It struck me as odd too at the time, but being a setter is hard enough if you can’t fall back on the dictionary!
On another note, I wouldn’t have been able to parse the match clue in a month of Sundays. Now *that* clue I found a bit tedious…once I’d got it. The crossword equivalent of a George Herbert poem in the shape of a cross, if you will.
Andrew @ 36
Surface not gibberish. Definition supplied. Good indication that this is a “reversal”.
That’s the way to do it. (BOXING MATCH is OK, though more convoluted.)
Recently, it seems, reverse anagrams have been popular with different setters and have all complied with the above.
Unlike, the possibly original and much acclaimed, ‘Gegs?'(8,4). I never liked that.
Andrew @36: “Nora Gel” does sound a lot more like Paul 🙂
Very much outwitted by Paul today, great work from him. I would question whether Batman actually dwells in his cave, but that’s being picky in the extreme. Nice idea even if he doesn’t.
rhotician @ 43 Doesn’t that clue work better as (9,4)?
Andrew’s clue is good but I think anax’s version is better. As for gegs it depends on the grid since scrambled and breaking both work (or don’t) equally well/badly. My favourite Paul non-clue was Min? (10,3)
The first time I came across GEGS was not in a crossword at all but in an episode of the great ‘Drop the dead donkey’, where one of the characters struggles to solve it throughout the episode. I googled it to try to find out more and found this discussion http://www.theguardian.com/crosswords/crossword-blog/2011/nov/14/crossword-roundup-eggs-chestnuts.
Hi anax
I missed your brilliant offering while doing my research. My dies horribilis is getting better by the minute – and the sun has come out for the first time today, too. 😉
ulaca – That’s how it first appeared. Think of my version as being in the spirit of today’s Grauniad cock-up.
rhotician @43
Please could you give a paraphrase of the surface for the contentious clue? It makes no sense to me.
(P.S. if you look back at the Tramp thread, you will see that I did apologise for the “osmosis” comment – you were correct about its metaphorical use.)
Whilst I agree there is no indicator in THAT clue, my crossword brain still says it’s not necessary as the meaning is inherent in the word play. I am obviously not a crossword purist!
The fact that most people seem to have cracked it, says to me that it is an excellent clue, dingbat though it might be. 😉
muffin – my remarks apply to Andrew’s clue, in contrast to Paul’s. Just as your comment @38 did.
Ah – approval, then.
anax’s was even better, I thought.
Aha, yes, I had meant to comment on the BATMAN clue and I am surprised no one has picked up on it yet (it’s obviously the shock of all the other malarkey). I originally read it as bat being the cave-dweller, s for second and chap for man at the end. Put it in the grid and thought no more about it. But now I realise it doesn’t really parse very accurately because a) the cave-dweller isn’t ‘keeping’ s or the chap and b) ‘in or out’ won’t do as the definition on its own.
But surely Batman lived in the Bat Cave – aha again, not quite: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Batcave
He lived in Wayne Manor, above. Of all the criticisms hurled at Paul today (which he just doesn’t deserve), surely this is the biggest sin!
A funny thing has happened; having worked out the baIIs-up, I completed the grid successfully on the online version on my iPad. Since then it has been corrected and it has moved my answers to where they were originally misdirected, resulting in gobbledygook. I thought the cookie made my entries autonomous within my device. Spooky.
Thank you friends, although my offering was a throwaway – the clue would never get past an editor.
It’s great that the internet has allowed so many solvers (especially) to become familiar with terms such as Lib and Xim, but I’d guess there are about 99% of solvers we never see and who would have no idea (why should they?) of the existence of our esoteric vocab. To them I imagine sticking ‘Xim’ in a clue like that would come across as rank laziness.
@55, anax , I am that solver . What does zim mean ?
Sergeant Xim is a character in Robert Heinlein’s “Starship troopers” (though I doubt that was what anax had in mind!)
…..wrong anyway – he WAS Zim, not Xim
grimalkin – Google “cryptic crossword wiki”, and settle down with a drink or two.
Anax is a first class setter, elsewhere, but alluding to Ximines here is making mischief.
Going to print this off before travelling to London, I was intrigued by the number of comments on the Guardian site that early in the morning. This meant I was able to print off the list of correct clues/order which enabled me to solve the puzzle in two sessions.
Thanks to that person, Paul and the not-as-lucky-as usual Eileen.
Luckily I solved this in the evening and the numbering fiasco had been corrected. I found this towards the harder end of Paul’s spectrum but I also thought it was an excellent puzzle. BOXING MATCH (my LOI) and SNOWBALL FIGHT both went in from checkers and perceived definition alone, so thanks for their parsing. It took me an age to see the answer to Paul’s dingbat clue, but he does like throwing one or two of them into a puzzle every now and again and I like the challenge.
This took a lonnnng time. I suspect it’s Paul’s revenge after the easy one on Saturday. The glitches rather spoiled it-but some of it was brilliant especially ‘Christmas wrapping paper’ and ‘snowball fight’.
Thanks Paul- still my favourite.
Thanks Eileen and Paul
I found this hard and was left with slightly grudging admiration rather than a feeling of fun. I sorted out most of the trickier ones but failed to parse 22,17 and parsed 9d as an anagram while missing the double entendre of ‘global warfare’.
Apologies for my naivete. Why do people keep describing the “Christmas Wrapping Paper” clue – which I thought was very funny and clever but way beyond my reach – as a dingbat? Is this some special cruciverbalist usage?
Jovis @64 – Dingbats is a board game in which the players have to solve such clues (and others that are more visual) against the clock. Dingbats clues are also commonly used as rounds in pub quizzes.
Jovis @ 64
It’s a type pf visual quiz c;ue (that I dislike)
Here’s an example@
N S
Answer “Poles apart”
The site deleted all the spacings that I put in!
Try:
N______________________S
It’s that device, isn’t it, which was the subject of a bit of a polemic between setters some days ago?
Well, the odd one thrown in now and then’s fine, even if we do have to work out the solution from crossings or guesswork. Then, having deduced how the clueing worked, commend the setter on his/her brilliance, but there were two in this.
I’d only suggest, that however satisfying it might be for setters to outfox contributors to this blog (I couldn’t parse BOXING MATCH), the wider Guardian solvership might perhaps just be left on the outside of the fun.
Many thanks all.
Martin @68 – there are others who are more familiar with Dingbats than crosswords for which this sort of thing comes naturally, but on balance I think I agree. In the CHRISTMAS WRAPPING PAPER case, I had to get most of the crossers first, spent a while thinking “where’s the definition” and only then saw how the wordplay worked, and for me one of these is just about acceptable as an occasional liberty. I thought the BOXING MATCH clue was cleverer, as it had a proper definition too, so although difficult it should have been less controversial.
I think I’ve said more than enough for one day now – thanks all for an entertaining debate…
Thanks Eileen for your blog and your view on this crossword which reflects much of what we thought of it.
BATSMAN (5ac) was our LOI but left us with a puzzle that was a mixture of the usual cleverness and some unusual simplicity – although, having said that, Paul is quite experienced in DD clues like 3d (PLONK) or 18d (AT LARGE) but normally saves them to fill FT grids (as Mudd).
The hyphen in not-half (21d) and the extra 6 in ‘that one’ aren’t really worth talking about – just ignore them.
We couldn’t explain 9d as we thought the definition was “Missile attacks in this”. However, we needed “this” for the anagram.
EXTREME (21d) was pretty clear but, alas, we didn’t see the ‘tremendous’ connection.
Leaves us of course with the main issue tonight.
As someone said above (so many posts, I can’t find the right one at the moment 🙂 ), 14,13,16 and 22,17 have the same construction.
But there is a huge difference. The reverse device in BOXING MATCH is perfectly well indicated and there is a question mark too. It’s in the same category as the now well-accepted reverse anagrams, well executed too.
CHRISTMAS WRAPPING PAPER is just one of those typical Paul gags.
It reminds me of a Tramp clue for ‘thinking outside the box’ from some time ago. Not sure whether that clue had at least a hint of a definition but Paul’s certainly hasn’t.
It’s the sort of clue that lets us believe that “Y (5,6)” is HAPPY ENDING without telling us why.
Paul has done these things perhaps more often in the Independent (as Punk) but always added some kind of definition.
The lack of it here plus the nonsense surface makes it indeed a kind of a dingbat, a visual gag.
As a crossword clue I don’t like it but it’s Paul and I know he likes it. As a one-off gag in a puzzle I am OK with it.
Recently, I was mildly critical about so-called Libertarian devices in a Boatman puzzle.
What happens here is not completely the same but in a way similar. However, where Boatman makes his liberties part of his style, Paul uses his liberties in a measured way and with a twinkle in his eye.
How important is that? Very!
All this with Philistine’s “Slipper itself (6)” somewhere in between.
All in all, I think, not too much to really complain about.
Not one of Paul’s very best though.
But, my God, if you’re so prolific it’s really an achievement to write a puzzle that still outshines many others, time after time.
So, thank you Paul, thank you Eileen.
Dear Sil
Thanks for that! Just as I’m thinking of going to bed, you send me off on a merry chase for the Tramp clue, which had rung a bell with me.
So, for the record: it was in Tramp’s second puzzle – and I blogged it!
http://www.fifteensquared.net/2011/06/17/guardian-25351-tramp/
It was before we started giving the clues: the clue was ‘Must’ve? (5,7,2,3,3)’ …
…and my blog was ‘THINK OUTSIDE OF THE BOX: MUSE [think] outside of TV [‘the box’]: this is what we have to do all the time, of course, when solving crosswords! This type of clue is anathema to some but the last time it was discussed here, I think the consensus was that it’s fine once in a while. I loved this one and I think it’s superior to GEGS [scrambled eggs] because the answer is a further clue – very clever! [My only quibble is the ‘of’ but tupu put me right last week when I complained about that.]’
I agree with Sil’s analysis of 14, 13, 16. It would be a great bit of wordplay in the right clue, but missing out the definition seems to add nothing and takes away a lot of the fun, as does the boringness of the surface. It must have been pretty easy to write too, which I know shouldn’t matter but I can’t help wishing he’d gone further with it. It was hard to solve though, at least until the crossers gave me “Christmas”; maybe that’s the point. Like Sil I thought “well ok now and again I suppose…”. It seems more of a prank than a joke.
One-off definitionless clues may be few and far between but they have plenty of form, the famous Geggs (9,4) for SCRAMBLED EGGS being an obvious example.
The very fact that 14,13,16 doesn’t have a sensible surface is an immediate hint to the solver that there’s some funny business going on which makes it fairer (easier) for the solver to decode.
If there is a rule at all associated with them it’s probably that the answer should be something fairly well-known which sort of takes you by surprise when you get it. Back in the day (not that day – the one before) the old clues explicitly indicated as anagrams (by {anag}) would generally have that sort of answer. Not sure how better define it but there’s PDM and you sort of say “Well. Who’d have thought?” – or something a bit stronger.
74 posts! Blimey! Is this a record?
Oops – Geggs (9,4) obviously S/B Gegs (9,4)
@MD – #74 one more – maybe it is now.
We’re all so different! I found this quite straightforward – and sublime. My first two in were the Christmas and snowball clues (I like to tackle the longer ones first) so my immediate thought was how odd to publish such a wintry puzzle in the dog days!
As for whoever suggested there was a definition inherent in the ‘dingbat’ clue, I could throttle (metaphorically of course) him/her. I immediately left the comments so I could work it out for myself. Just like Eileen (whom, yet again, I must praise for a lovely blog and fascinating links) I’ve needlessly wasted time – and brain cells!
Huge thanks to Paul – you are one of the delights of my life!
Thanks, Muffin and BH @ 65 & 66. “Poles apart” explains it well. I have noticed clues like this before and found their rather subversive nature good fun.
Well I caught up with this today and spent some time wondering whether14 13 16 was an anagram of noragequerylexclamation (23 letters)!
Was hard. Could not get some explanations. Some of the vocab and usage way beyond lesser mortals like me. But I am happy about the effort I was able to put in and getting as far as I did.