This setter has produced some cracking puzzles recently, and they seem to crop up on my watch, which is no hardship at all. Another well-crafted, accessible crossword in the Monday slot, which until recently always used to be the ‘straightforward’ one. Easier to solve than to parse in many instances. But many delightful surfaces, a good range of subject matter, and inventive cluing throughout.
Abbreviations
cd cryptic definition
dd double definition
(xxxx)* anagram
anagrind = anagram indicator
[x] letter(s) missing
definitions are underlined
Across
1 Hear of cooks teaching scientific principle
BOYLES LAW
A homophone of BOILS for ‘cooks’ and LAW for ‘teaching’. For a fixed amount of gas kept at a fixed temperature, pressure and volume are inversely proportional. PV = k, if you remember your chemistry. Named after Robert Boyle. And the law explains why, when the phlebotomist pulls back the plunger on the syringe, the precious red stuff makes its way into the chamber. Although if you’re like me, you are looking the other way when this procedure takes place.
6 Return deposit, say, for dress
GET UP
A reversal (‘return’) of PUT EG.
9 Song boasted about members of SAS?
AIRCREW
A charade of AIR for ‘song’ and CREW for the past tense of CROW, to ‘boast’. I suppose that members of the SAS could be AIRCREW; the question mark is keeping the setter out of trouble.
10 Food, mostly simple, carried by coaster – quite the reverse
BASMATI
An insertion of MAT in BASI[C].
11 Joiner mixes plaster
STAPLER
(PLASTER)*
12 Settle on Scottish island with Georgia
ARRANGE
A charade of ARRAN and GE. You need to think not the US state, Georgia, which would be GA, but the European state, whose internet domain abbreviation is GE.
13 Go ahead bachelor guys meet irregularly
BE MY GUEST
(B GUYS MEET)*
15 Publisher‘s toy dog
CORGI
Not a dd, but a td – a triple definition. It’s a publisher, a toy (model cars in particular, some of which are now really valuable) and Brenda’s canine of choice.
16 Barchester chaplain cycles and runs
LOPES
I’m not quite going to ask Kairos to confess his sins for this one, but it’s a bit obscure. You have to be familiar with Trollope’s Barchester Towers, in which there is a character called Obadiah SLOPE, who is the chaplain. If you ‘cycle’ that, you get LOPES. Did I have to look the character up on t’internet? Er, yes … Were you doing the puzzle on the commute with no access to the internet? Then I rest my case.
19 Parent organised river transport
ENRAPTURE
A charade of (PARENT)* and the River URE.
22 Hurt soldier is noble
GALLANT
Took me too long to see this. A charade of GALL and ANT. ‘His behaviour really galled me.’
23 Kuala Lumpur’s involved in free energy
SPARKLE
An insertion of KL in SPARE. More internet domain names, I fancy.
25 Tin with cobalt plating found on number one toy
MECCANO
There’s been some clever cluing in this puzzle. The ‘tin’ is CAN; Kairos is asking you to ‘coat’ it in CO, which is the chemical symbol for ‘cobalt’, and then put it behind ME, who is ‘number one’ in the sense of ‘looking after number one’. Nothing to do with wee.
26 South American trucker leaving strait in boat
STEAMER
TEAMSTER is an American English word for ‘truck driver’; take ST for ‘strait’ out of that and you’ve got TEAMER; put S for ‘south’ at the start of all that and you’ve got your answer.
27 Extremely silly fellow’s back in council
SYNOD
A charade of SY for the outside letters of ‘silly’ and DON reversed.
28 Quite cunning compiler inwardly follows protocol
ETIQUETTE
A charade of (QUITE)* and [S]ETTE[R]. Because Kairos is our SETTER and our ‘compiler’.
Down
1 Money made by old transport company on a ship
BRASS
A charade of BR for British Railways, which the Conservatives privatised and look at what’s happened since … and A SS.
2 Police force in Spar
YARDARM
A charade of YARD and ARM.
3 Arizona lawman has to carry silencer?
EARPLUG
I thought this was a great clue. A charade of EARP, for Wyatt EARP, and LUG for ‘carry’. Gunfight at the OK Corral, if you’ve watched enough Spaghetti Westerns.
4 Threaten subordinate
LOWER
A dd. The two words are pronounced differently.
5 American lexicographer secures graduate for on-line position
WEBMASTER
An insertion of MA in WEBSTER to give you what our very own Gaufrid is for Fifteensquared. Referring to Noah WEBSTER, who produced dictionaries and spelling books, and who is mainly responsible for Americans spelling words like color, theater and traveling the way they do.
6 Stomach what Le Pétomane did endlessly?
GASTRIC
This made me smile when I got it. I did know who Le Pétomane was: he was famous in the late 1800s as a flatulist, farting to play or accompany tunes. (Sorry if that’s not what you wanted to read on a Monday morning, but I didn’t write the clue.) So it’s GAS TRIC[K]. For those of you out there called Peter, I’m afraid that the French for ‘fart’ is péter, whence his name.
7 What King George VI presumably did for Sir Henry Cecil?
TRAINER
I’m not privy to what goes on in the House of Windsor, put ‘presumably’ George VI, Brenda’s father, did TRAIN ER, Elizabeth Regina. Sir Henry Cecil was a racehorse trainer, and the King George VI stakes is a horse race, apparently, so there’s an extra element to the clue.
8 Prepare retrospective broadcast for 19:31?
PRIME TIME
Another clue I especially liked. A charade of PRIME for ‘prepare’ and a reversal of EMIT for ‘broadcast’. And I guess programmes on the telly that start after 19:30 are PRIME TIME television.
13 Gangster involved in illegal gambles for football and rugby?
BALL GAMES
An insertion of AL Capone in (GAMBLES)*
14 Elite exhibition’s not finished for conductor
ELECTRODE
Another science clue, and nice misdirection. A charade of ELECT and RODE[O].
17 Bird in tree eating large insect’s head
PELICAN
Excellent. After an absence of several months, an opportunity for the obligatory Pierre bird link. Elegant it isn’t, but it’s one of evolution’s successes, as the Edward Lear limerick tells you:
A wonderful bird is the Pelican.
His beak can hold more than his belly can.
He can hold in his beak
Enough food for a week!
But I’ll be darned if I know how the hellican?
An insertion of L and I for the first letter of ‘insect’ in PECAN, btw.
18 A wader’s swimming downstream
SEAWARD
(A WADERS)*
20 Laminate gold into lady’s hat
PLATEAU
A charade of PLATE and AU for the chemical symbol for gold. It’s a type of hat that ladies wear. I so knew that.
21 Slobbish house member involved in topless spree
UNKEMPT
Not the kind of flatmate you’d want. It’s MP for ‘house member’ in [J]UNKET, and it’s one of those words that doesn’t have a ‘positive’ equivalent. You can be UNKEMPT, but you can’t be KEMPT. There are other examples, but I can’t remember any at the minute because parsing this crossword has frazzled what passes for my brain.
23 Food in South American state
SUSHI
A charade of S, US and HI. This time you do have to think the US state: HI is the zip code abbreviation for the state of Hawaii.
24 Look around King and Emperor’s mountain retreat
EYRIE
An insertion of Rex Imperator, RI, or King Emperor in EYE. RI is a throwback to the British Empire.
Enjoyed solving and blogging this one. Thanks to Kairos.
Thanks Pierre
I had a slightly different parsing for 1ac: a homophone of ‘boils lore’.
You are indubitably right, Gaufrid. Thank you.
I took SAS to mean the Swedish airline, who indeed have aircrew, and the question mark merely to indicate that SAS was one example out of many.
And Trollope is hardly obscure.
Thanks, Kairos and Pierre. A gentle and well-constucted start to the week.
You are indubitably right, Ian. Thank you.
One more of these and it’ll be three strikes and out, and a P45 from Gaufrid.
But I will dissent about Trollope: one man’s write-in is another man’s obscurity. Trollope the author, fine; a single character in one of his novels is a bigger ask, imho.
I haven’t read Trollope, but I remembered Mr Slope from the performance by Alan Rickman in the BBC adaptation, so that made 16 a bit easier to parse.
I got LOPES from the checking letters and the defintion. The Barchester reference was too obscure for me in much the same way as football or rock music references go over others’ heads. I don’t say that as a criticism, just an observation.
As for whether Trollope is obscure for the public at large maybe we should ask the producers of ‘Pointless’ to include it in one of their surveys.
If LOPES is acceptable could someone tell me how many names of characters from 19th century novels I have to memorise in order to do a crossword unaided? Who gets to decide which novels and which authors? I think Pierre’s sympathy for the man on the Clapham omnibus (or the 7.74 from Surbiton) is well placed.
Joining in the fun, I too have heard of Mr. Trollope, but have never read a word of his prose. And I don’t intend to start now. I got the answer as hounddog did. The puzzle was perfect for a Monday, even if I couldn’t always parse the answers eg 26A. I spent most time on 22A, trying to get a word beginning GI meaning noble. Doh! As Trollope said (not).
Good puzzle Kairos, top notch blog Pierre. Thanks to both.
At 8dn I think Kairos chose 19:31 because the numbers are PRIME.
Thanks Pierre.
That could be a very good call about the PRIME numbers, HKColin – well spotted.
My thanks as ever to Pierre for the blog and to all for the comments.
#1 – Gaufrid the homophone was of boils lore.
#3 – Ian spotted the deception that SAS was the airline.
#9 – HKColin – not only is 19:31 composed of two prime numbers, read together 1931 is also prime which made the choice of time ideal for the clue.
Dear old Obadiah Slope seems to have been divisive. I always think that Barchester Towers should be required reading for all clergy in training as it offers some lovely caricatures of clergy that are still all too contemporary.
Got held up on the right-hand side, but 16ac was a write-in for me despite never having read any Trollope. I too remember the Rickman performance, something of a break-out role for him.
Merci Pierre et Kairos.
The left hand side was filled in fairly quickly but the other half took much longer. We noticed the primes but hadn’t noticed that 1931 was also prime.
6d was fun, 7d was outside our field of knowledge and was our LOI so thanks for the parsing. It was too late to google.
If three strikes mean that we get our P45, Gaufrid will have to ask for new bloggers!
Gentle? Well yes perhaps it was, at least the left half I did with no trouble. But the right half was very tricky I thought. Had never heard of the publisher Corgi; or the fact that around 7:31 is prime time; or that a rodeo is an exhibition; or that a plateau is a lady’s hat.
Mr Slope in the television adaptation was quite magnificent (but then so he was in the original as well). That boy will go far, I said.
Though a swift and straightforward solve, some satisfyingly scintillating stuff…..super!
Though I’d noticed the ‘primacy’ of 19 and 31, I missed their fellow 1931. Klever old Kairos, to whom my thanks.
And to Pierre – a lovely blog.