The puzzle may be found at http://www.theguardian.com/crosswords/cryptic/26342.
This started off well enough, with 1A BRAGGADOCIO and 2D ALLYL uncommon words clearly clued, but Puck put in so many twists and turns to keep me busy for a time well above average for the Guardian. Many thanks to Puck for the workout.
| Across | ||
| 1 | BRAGGADOCIO | Boasting about a corgi dog that’s cut out barking (11) |
| An anagram (‘barking’) of ‘abo[ut] a [c]orgi dog’ with ‘cut’ removed (‘out’). Actually it is [out] ‘cut, not [cut] ‘out’: see rhotician @1, to whom thanks. | ||
| 9 | DIDDLER | Took action against trader after outing each cheat (7) |
| A charade of DID (‘took action’) plus D[ea]LER (‘trader’) minus EA (‘after outing each’). ‘against’ just confirms the order of the particles. | ||
| 10 | A TRIFLE | Tension in an arm? Slightly (1,6) |
| An envelope (‘in’) of T (‘tension’) in A RIFLE (‘an arm’). | ||
| 11 | PANELLIST | Game show guest detailed elephant’s place in history (9) |
| An envelope (‘place in’) of NELLI[e] (‘elephant’) minus its (her) last letter (‘detailed’) in PAST (‘history’). Nelllie the Elephant was a children’s song of a date which fixes it in my memory. The Wikipedia link includes the snippet that the song is often used to give the right rhythm for CPR. | ||
| 12 | FACED | Stood up to knock drink back (5) |
| A reversal (‘back’) of DECAF (‘drink’). | ||
| 13 | SOBS | Appeal for help when catching baby’s first cries (4) |
| An envelope (‘when catching’) of B (‘Baby’s first’) in SOS (‘appeal for help’). | ||
| 14 | CHICKEN RUN | Film Coward directed (7,3) |
| A charade of CHICKEN (‘coward’) plus RUN (‘directed’). No Truth in Capitals here; the animated film was directed by Peter Lord and Nick Park. | ||
| 16 | TREEHOPPER | Changed here, into smart hat and small jumper (10) |
| An envelope (‘into’) of REEH, an anagram (‘changed’) of ‘here’ in TOPPER (‘smart hat’). | ||
| 19 | BARB | Fish served by second pub on list? (4) |
| A charade of BAR B (‘second pub on list’). | ||
| 20 | SAKTI | Regularly spanks this Hindu goddess (5) |
| Alternate letters (‘regularly’) of ‘SpAnKs ThIs’. | ||
| 21 | UNTIDIEST | Extremely sluttish nude — one with tits wobbling (9) |
| An anagram (‘wobbling’) of ‘nude plus I (‘one’) plus ‘tits’. Puck channeling Cyclops? | ||
| 23 | UNAWARE | A conflict in a foreign quarter in the dark (7) |
| An envelope (‘in’) of A WAR (‘a conflict’) in UN (‘a foreigh’) plus E (east, ‘quarter’). | ||
| 24 | ILL WILL | Bad blood in Israel, involving central character of Old Testament (3,4) |
| An envelope (that’s what the clue says, ‘involving’) of L (‘central character of oLd’) in IL (‘Israel’, IVR or internet suffix) plus WILL (‘testament’). | ||
| 25 | TREACLE WELL | Claret drunk somewhere in Surrey, where the dormouse’s sisters lived (7,4) |
| A charade of TREACL, an anagram (‘drunk’) of ‘claret’ plus EWELL (‘somewhere in Surrey’). The reference is to Alice in Wonderland, and the dormouse’s tale of three girls, probably sisters to each other, not the dormouse. | ||
| Down | ||
| 1 | BED AND BREAKFAST | Lay eggs, perhaps some husband buys (3,3,9) |
| No real definition here: BED (‘lay’) and BREAKFAST (‘eggs, possibly’) is as close as you get; and hidden in (‘some’) ‘husB AND Buys’. | ||
| 2 | ALLYL | Ballylickey’s resident radical (5) |
| A hiddel answer (‘resident’) in ‘BALLYLickey’. An allyl is a radical in organic chemitry. | ||
| 3 | GARNISH | Decorate with husband, after dressing in rags (7) |
| An anagram (‘dressing’) of ‘in rags’ plus H (‘husband’). | ||
| 4 | DRASTIC | Radical starts to drink red wine cold (7) |
| A charade of DR (‘starts to Drink Red’ plus ASTI (‘wine’ – is there any other?) plus C (‘cold’). | ||
| 5 | CAREFREE | Like Herm and Sark, keeping people ultimately untroubled (8) |
| An envelope (‘keeping’) of E (the first one, ‘peoplE ultimately’ in CAR-FREE (‘like Herm and Sark’, two of the smaller Channel Islands in the English Channel, where cars are not allowed). | ||
| 6 | OFFICER MATERIAL | Possibly sergeants (not social workers) going after major promotion prospect? (7,8) |
| A charade of OFFICER (‘major’) plus MATERIAL (‘possibly serge[ants]’ without ANTS {‘social workers}). | ||
| 7 | ADIPOSE TISSUE | Princess turns up with model — backup model, female, carrying some fat (7,6) |
| A charade of ADI, a reversal (‘turns up’, in a down light) of IDA (‘Princess’, comic opera by Gilbert and Sullivan) plus POSE (‘model’) plud TIS, a reversal (‘backup’) of SIT (‘model’) plu SUE (‘female’).The ‘princess’ is not DI, and neither ‘model’ is T. | ||
| 8 | FEEDING BOTTLE | Begin to feel extremely tired, working out what baby might want (7,6) |
| An anagram (‘working out’) of ‘begin to feel’ plus TD (‘extremely TireD‘). | ||
| 15 | SHIITAKE | Mushroom soup starter with fish, eating one before the other (8) |
| A charade of S (‘Soup starter’) plus an envelope (‘eating’) of I (‘one’) plus IT (‘the other’, both references to sex) in HAKE (‘fish’). | ||
| 17 | POULENC | Composer of number in The Odd Couple (7) |
| An envelope (‘in’) of N (‘number’) in POULEC, an anagram (‘odd’) of ‘couple’. | ||
| 18 | ESTOILE | Star hiding in Ladies’ toilets (7) |
| An answer ‘hiding in’ ‘LadiES TOILEts’. A heraldic star with wavy points. | ||
| 22 | DOLCE | Presidential candidate eats cold sweet (5) |
| An envelope (‘eats’) of C (‘cold’) in DOLE (‘presidential candidate’). | ||
1ac is actually an anagram of ‘ab[out] a corgi dog’ with ‘out’ removed (‘cut’). Took me ages to parse.
Thanks Peter. Including for the BandB in 1D which I got with three crossing letters and knew was right; often I don’t have the stamina of rhotician #1. I liked some of the spanking and wobbly surfaces, and failed to get your Cyclops ref. Much enjoyed the puzzle, so thanks Puck.
A rollercoaster ride today, with one half going in easily and the other half taking ages. Thanks to Puck for a good time, and to PeterO for the blog! I wasn’t sure why MATERIAL showed up in 6d – in retrospect, the parsing seems so obvious.
Thanks Peter. This all went in very quickly, except in the NE corner where I got myself into trouble by entering the highly-plausible CARELESS for 5d. As well as lacking a definition, 1d reads rather strangely, so I wonder if part of it has got lost: “..perhaps some husband buys [something?]”
I was obviously on the ‘wavelength’ as this enjoyable puzzle didn’t take me long to solve with lots of smiles along the way. Thanks to Puck and Peter.
I found this a bit tricky in places doing it after midnight, but it went smoothly enough this morning. Some quite convoluted clues took a bit of working out. Like 7d which I am desperately trying to reduce around my hips! Took ages to see 1d even though I’d got the eggs for breakfast early on. Tried to make ithe first two words ALL DAY using LAY.
Thanks, PeterO, for the blog and Puck for another highly entertaining puzzle.
I’m with Andrew in thinking there might be something missing in 1dn, which doesn’t quite work for me and doesn’t really feel like Puck’s cluing.
I didn’t know ALLYL, but it couldn’t be anything else, or ESTOILE but I guessed it from the French.
Lovely clues and surfaces throughout – favourites PANELLIST, CHICKEN RUN, ILL WILL and CAREFREE.
[And the mushroom was spelt correctly. 😉 ]
An early start for me, and one of those days when everything seemed to flow in with barely a pause. But there were a few I couldn’t parse, including 1d (like everyone else, pretty much), 24a and 7d, where I’d forgotten Princess Ida and tried to force in the habitual Di, which of course doesn’t quite work – thanks PeterO for the elucidation.
Enjoyed the attempted misdirection of ‘red wine’ in DRASTIC, and congratulations Puck for fair clues to unfamiliar solutions such as TREACLE WELL and ESTOILE.
Thanks, PeterO.
Very entertaining puzzle from Puck, with some clever clues and misdirecting definitions.
Like others, I am mystified by 1d – I failed to spot the hidden B & B, which I presume is intended to be the definition, but although ‘lay’ = BED and ‘eggs, perhaps’ = BREAKFAST this isn’t quite enough to include the ‘AND’ in the solution. Fortunately, the crossing letter K helped, as SAKTI seemed obvious for 20a, though the deity was unfamiliar to me, so these answers confirmed each other.
I parsed 1a in the same way as rhotician @1.
Heraldic terms are all medieval French: ESTOILE is the older spelling for what is now ‘étoile’. (From the Latin ‘stella’, with the epenthetic ‘e’ which always creeps in front of the ‘S+consonant’ cluster).
Nice to see SHIITAKE spelt ‘properly’ this time – this was one of my favourites, together with TREEHOPPER, BARB and OFFICER MATERIAL. LOI for me was CAREFREE: having the initial C, I was fixated on Channel Islands appearing in the charade.
@Gervase. ‘Epenthetic’ – nice word!
I interpreted 1d as referring to the practice of selling and buying back shares, termed in the UK “bed and breakfasting” – somebody who does this could be considered to be husbanding their buys?
Thanks to Puck and PeterO.
Thanks PeterO and Puck
A most enjoyable puzzle with lots of cleverly amusing clues. I liked 9a, 16a, 21a, 25a and several others.
Re 1d,I missed the inset BandB. Like MikeH I decided it must have something to do with the investment practice of ‘bed and breakfasting’.
Lovely puzzle, it required plenty of effort but without leaving me stuck. I’m glad that SAKTI, ALLYL and ESTOILE were clued so clearly.
Thanks Puck for a good challenge.
Thanks PeterO for elucidating B&B, which I missed. I don’t really understand run=directed, I thought it should be ‘ran,’ but no doubt I am missing some other interpretation of run.
PANELLIST certainly provoked a smile and, like Gervase, I tried to put CI in 5 to no avail.
……….. OK, I suppose it is ‘the company was run by…………’
I agree with others (not Mike H) about the B&B clue, which can’t really be solved as it stands unless you guess it, which isn’t the idea! You should be able to deduce it for sure. Also I found some of the answers a bit obscure.
Thanks PeterO and Puck
Easy enough to finish, quite a different matter to parse everything. SAKTI was new to me, but clearly indicated.
I too initially had CARELESS for 5d – nearly, but not quite, as good as the correct answer. Incidentally I have been to Sark and Herm. Herm is lovely and walkable, but Sark is rather larger, so we hired bikes. What no-one tells you in advance is that, although there is only one car on the island, every other b****** drives a tractor – the dust on the unsealed tracks was appalling.
MikeH @11
An interesting idea, but for me it is too much of a stretch – and I do not think that Puck would reference such a specialized meaning so obliquely. The idea of Andrew @4 that there is something missing from the clue strikes me as more plausible, but, without further guidance, it seems to me most likely that the clue is intended to be read as two wordplays and no definition – other setters have toyed with this idea before now. And, hedgehoggy @16, I do not think that this makes the clue inherently less solvable than any other, beyond cutting across expectations.
Perhaps I was personally rather miffed then Peter!
Sometimes the compilers grab for an idea, especially in The Guardian, and don’t quite reach far enough. The hidden B AND B is probably one of those.
I found this very difficult. Took 10 minutes before I had anything at all, though once the first couple were in most of the rest became at least guessable. I was unfamiliar with ALLYL, SAKTI and ESTOILE (all clearly clued so OK) – also felt that having to know that Herm and Sark were car-free was pretty obscure general knowledge though guessable from the definition and the crossers. Last in was BARB. Liked CHICKEN RUN and PANELLIST.
Thanks to Puck and PeterO
This was quite a mixture with some being quite easy and others,er,not so much. I’d forgotten TREACLE MILL,had to guess ESTOILE,DOLCE and ALLYL,and it took me ages to get OFFICER MATERIAL.
Still,nice puzzle
I have total respect to all of you who completed this. It has taken me all day and then gave up and I’m not a novice. I tend not to use dictionaries etc but did today. So many strange and words that I’d never heard of perhaps it’s because I’m Welsh but that’s a feeble excuse . Still don’t see bed and breakfast . Thank you Peter and of course Puck – total respect
I saw BRAGGADOCIO straight away, didn’t bother to unravel the clue, and its helpful checkers meant I was able to make inroads into the top half of the puzzle immediately. I was held up towards the end in the SE corner and UNTIDIEST was my LOI.
Count me as another who got BED AND BREAKFAST from the checkers, and I was grateful for the clear wordplay for ALLYL, ESTOILE, SAKTI and TREACLE WELL. I enjoyed the solve.
Thanks, Peter.
ezzie@22 sympathy. I, too, found it quite frustrating as I had several answers but wasn’t convinced they were correct, as I couldn’t parse them (BARB, FEEDING BOTTLE, ADIPOSE TISSUE); I had to resort to the on line version to check they were correct. I put TREACLE MINE (and couldn’t parse that, of course), so the BR corner took a while.
I thought it lacked sparkle today, despite what others say.
I found it a pretty difficult puzzle yet got there, without aids, in two sessions. I failed to parse CAREFREE and I’m with Eileen @7 and several others in feeling that BED AND BREAKFAST doesn’t quite work. Nevertheless it was a satisfying and enjoyable experience.
Thanks to Puck for a good workout and to PeterO and everyone else for the discussion.
Wasted a lot of time trying to make 1d an anagram of some husband buys until crossers ruled it out.
Mostly too convoluted and too obscure for me, but I did like 5d.
Another enjoyable puzzle from Puck.
Very little in after the first pass so I thought this was going to be a struggle.
After 20 more minutes still not much progress and then a miracle. CHICKEN RUN and BRAGGADOCIO became apparent and then the whole puzzle collapsed and was completed in 10 minutes.
I parsed everything except for the strange 1d but this was obvious with the lay and eggs!
Thanks to PeterO and Puck
I absolutely loved this one. I’ve a suspicion that Mike H may be correct about 1dn – after all, Puck is clearly as well-informed as he is brilliant when setting his puzzles.
Whether one enjoys the sauciness or not (and I do!), one can’t argue against the surface of 21dn being thoroughly wonderful.
I counted no fewer than 15 separate double letters. I feel this is far too many to be pure chance…..?
So a heartfelt thank you to Puck. And thanks to PeterO (for me, your blog’s presentations are exemplary)
…..or rather “…your blogs’ presentations are…” or even “…your blogs’ presentation is…”. If I’d only tapped “…your blog’s presentation is…” I’d have saved a great deal of my life (and anyone else’s reading this?!)
At least it proves my compliment is genuine! Was it Confucius who stated that if a man says the same thing three times he must be telling the truth? (Though that hardly applies to St Peter; maybe it’s only the case before the cock crows!)
I thought this was great. I tend to flinch at Puck’s puzzles, but I found this steady, satisfying and full of all sorts of interest, with no “brick wall” periods.
My favourite was OFFICER MATERIAL. It also started an associative process in my mind, taking me back many years, one of crosswords’ charming features. A young BBC recruit in the nineteen seventies was driving his ex-GPO linesman’s van around the Worcestershire countryside, trying to find its (not publicised) training and deferred facilities establishment. He stopped to ask a green-wellingtoned gentleman leaning on a five bar gate if he knew where it was. “I see. So you’re BBC material, are you?” he said, in landed-military tones, evidently concerned about the type of person who might now be considered acceptable. I’d never thought of myself as any kind of “material”, and so his words stuck in my mind. The answer to his question I can now say, should have been definitely “no” though I did stick at it, as a bit of a misfit, for thirty odd years.
Many thanks Puck, PeterO and posters.
William F P @28
I wondered for a while why the perimeter was so odd. Your observation about double letters explains it. And rang a bell.
26159 in Jan began with BIGGLESWADE, likewise odd, and ended up with even more than 15 doubles. Not by chance. By Puck of course.
I gave up on 2d, 11a and 19a, and I could not parse 1d, 5d, 6d, 7d, 8d.
My favourite was 1a.
Thanks Puck and PeterO.
Thank you to Puck and PeterO. Completed and enjoyed – though passed on some of the parsing.
Thanks Puck and PeterO
Finished this one quite late last night … and like most found it a pretty solid workout. Didn’t parse either of the 1 clues fully – had my BA unconvincingly from ‘barking’ and didn’t see the tricky B and B hidden in 1d. Also missed the double letter theme – even though I suspected that Puck would have one – he usually does!
Last in was A TRIFLE after initially messing up both 1a and 5d.
A number of new words but good fun all round.