I count myself fortunate to have drawn a Puck puzzle to blog. There is some very inventive and whimsical cluing here, along with lovely story-telling surfaces, as usual with this setter, leading to lots of smiles and ‘ahas’ and a very entertaining and enjoyable solve.
When writing the blog, I seemed to be typing ‘anagram’ rather often but they’re all very clever ones [especially 14dn, one of my favourite clues, along with 1,23and 13ac]. Many thanks to Puck.
Across
1 Cat springs a bit higher — is robin alright? (7,8)
BRITISH LONGHAIR
Anagram [springs?]of H [‘a bit higher’] + IS ROBIN ALRIGHT – a very nice surface but I’m glad to see that Chambers gives ‘alright’ [one of my bugbears] as a ‘less acceptable’ spelling
9 Most piano stools start with toes sculpted round feet (7)
SOFTEST
S [start of Stools] plus an anagram [sculpted] of TOES round FT [feet]
10 One very happy about male form of sexual reproduction (7)
ISOGAMY
I [one] SO GAY [very happy] round M [male] for ‘the conjugation of two gametes of similar size and form’ [Chambers]
11,25 Glad to revel in the extremes of one’s senility (3,3)
OLD AGE
Anagram [to revel] of GLAD in O[n]E [extremes of one]
12 Flyer, after going astray, at last coming into port (7,4)
HERRING GULL
G [last letter of cominG] after ERRING [going astray] in HULL [port]
13 Stupid as either Wag or one-time unruly adolescent? (4-6)
HALF-WITTED
WIT [wag] and TED [one-time unruly adolescent] are the two halves of WITTED
15 Large number coming to grief over catty remark (4)
MEOW
M [large number] + reversal [over] of WOE [grief]
18 Bottom has drink at Puck’s initiation (4)
RUMP
RUM [drink] + P[uck] – allusions to AMND are not unusual in Puck puzzles!
20 Marketing gamble by Joe, with his big band role (4,6)
LOSS LEADER
Reference to band leader Joe Loss
23 Painting cricketer, sailor and philosopher (4,7)
JACK RUSSELL
JACK [sailor] + [Bertrand] RUSSELL [philosopher] [For a moment, I thought the feline theme was going to include dogs, especially considering the next clue: I remember a couple of clever puzzles a while back on the theme of ‘raining cats and dogs’].
26 Range covered by bad rainfalls (7)
NIAGARA
AGA [range] inside an anagram [bad] of RAIN
27 Very powerful novel, Attica, about a cat somehow lacking (7)
VIOLENT
Anagram [about] of NOVEL ATTICA lacking the letters of [somehow] A CAT
28 Complaint found in most cats’ homes (7,8)
STOMACH DISORDER
A reverse anagram: STOMACH in disorder gives CATS HOM[es] – not everyone will like this but I did
Down
1,23 Boob job has that woman singing Tom Cat About Town (9,5)
BUSTOPHER JONES
BUST OP [boob job!] + HER [that woman] + [singing Tom] JONES for the ‘Cat about town’ in T. S. Eliot’s Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats – a beautifully constructed clue, which really made me smile
2 Pagan with Manx feline, I’d suspect (7)
INFIDEL
Anagram [suspect] of [Manx – with no tail] FELIN[e] + I’D
3 Reserve puts on display for skating events (3,5)
ICE SHOWS
ICE [reserve] + SHOWS [puts on display] – a rather weak clue, for Puck, I think
4 Earth moved for lover? Anything but (5)
HATER
Anagram [moved] of EARTH
5 Agents involved in chemistry affecting Dixie Ross (9)
OXIDISERS
Anagram [affecting] of DIXIE ROSS
6 Dazed and unsteady Greek cat, not male (6)
GROGGY
GR [Greek] + [m]OGGY [cat minus m {male}]
7 Sport found in a town in Greater Manchester, usually (2,1,4)
AS A RULE
RU [sport] in A SALE [a town in Greater Manchester – which does have a Premiership Rugby Union team]
8,16 China cat? Sorry nothing left, we’re out (5,9)
ROYAL WORCESTER
Anagram [out] of CAT SORRY O [nothing] L [left] WE’RE
14 A she-cat put out, round about 10pm in Dublin (9)
TAOISEACH
Anagram [put out] of A SHE CAT round a reversal [about] of IO [ten] for the Irish Prime Minister – another brilliant clue: [even with all the crossers, I still had to look up to confirm how to spell it]
17 In the pink bustle? Certainly not in the red (4-2-2)
WELL-TO-DO
WELL [in the pink] + TO-DO [bustle]
19 Construction set in holy city, on roundabout (7)
MECCANO
MECCA [holy city] + A reversal [roundabout] of ON
21 A hideout in semi-wooded cul-de-sac (4,3)
DEAD END
A DEN [a hideout] in DED [half of {woo}DED]
22 Mistakes noted when raising a little cat? Arrest them! (6)
ERRATA
Hidden reversal [when raising] in cAT ARREst
24 Author’s last words, delivered with leaden voice (5)
ENVOI
Another hidden answer – in leadEN VOIce
Oh dear. I must be a bit of a misery. I didn’t share Eileen’s smiles and “ahas”
A couple of grimaces and some “hmms” instead.
Oh dear, indeed, tom – and with a name like yours, too. 🙂
Being a cat fancier myself, my only grumble with this puzzle is it didn’t enough clues with cats in them 😉
Nice puzzle, my favourite being HERRING GULL, not least because you don’t find many of them in Crossword country – nice to see one leave the landfill for a while. L liked 27a but 28a was another Arnhem clue for me.
Oh, Tom – a bit harsh, mate! I’ll go with the criticism of ICE SHOWS but there were some real goodies here, with ‘PM in Dublin’ a real…well, CORKer!
Of course it depends on one’s outlook. I am enjoying a few days off in a hotel in Suffolk so to complete this comfortably before ordering breakfast prior to a planned day with little time for crosswords was ideal.
Lovely puzzle, nice theme. I thought TAOISEACH was brilliant, and almost everything was well clued. Hadn’t heard of BUSTOPHER JONES. Many thanks to Puck and Eileen.
BRILLIANT. Many thanks, Eileen. Sorry, Tom, but as I’m recently back from the US…what’s not to like?!
As you say, Eileen, lovely ‘story-telling’ clues and a joy to solve.
Loved TAOISEACH although I wouldn’t have had a clue of it’s spelling without checking. SOFTEST for ‘most piano’ nicely wrapped into ‘stools’ deserves a mention, too.
Also liked the concealment of the def in NIAGARA.
The wicked little Puck delights again – more please.
Nice week, all.
Thanks Puck and Eileen
So, Robin Goodfellow has been at play. Really enjoyed this. Had to check the Irish PM and as for Bustopher Jones I had heard no news of him for over 60 years.
Liked HERRING GULL, SOFTEST and HALF-WITTED among many others.
Thanks, Eileen.
Another nice one from the púca.
Generally excellent clues, though 3d is weak, as has been mentioned, and 28a, though a great idea, doesn’t really work for me. And the word OXIDISER, though not actually wrong, is a bit clumsy: a chemist would normally refer to either an ‘oxidising agent’ or an ‘oxidant’.
However I really liked NIAGARA, BUSTOPHER JONES, HATER, WELL-TO-DO and especially TAIOSEACH.
Thanks Puck and Eileen.
Enjoyable puzzle with some really good clues. I don’t really understand the stools’ toes in 9. Does this mean anything?
I didn’t know BUSTOPHER JONES or the painting cricketer but both were well clued. I liked the STOMACH DISORDER, even if it’s found in Arnhem. I should know how to spell TAOISEACH as I’ve used it before in one of my crosswords, but still had to check it – I liked that clue. HERRING GULL was another favourite.
Quite an easy solve I thought but in some ways rather unsatisfying. The cricketing painter was new to me, I’d forgotten BUSTOPHER JONES- I seem to remember a restaurant with this name- and I had to guess BRITISH LONG HAIR. I’m not quite with Tom but I but I didn’t like the puzzle as much as some others.
Anyway, thanks Puck
Quite an easy solve I thought but in some ways rather unsatisfying. The cricketing painter was new to me, I’d forgotten BUSTOPHER JONES- I seem to remember a restaurant with this name- and I had to guess BRITISH LONG HAIR. I’m not quite with Tom but I but I didn’t like the puzzle as much as some others.
Anyway, thanks Puck.
P.S. I loved LOSS LEADER!
I started off thinking “Goldilocks” but revised that opinion when I encountered clues I couldn’t solve until I had the answers – and some not even then. Thank you Eileen for explaining the wordplay of 1a, 13a, and 28a, and the definitions of 1d and 23a.
Thanks, Eileen. Lovely puzzle with lots of clever clues.
I agree with you about ‘alright’ , which is one of my bugbears, too. We’re fighting a losing battle, though!
All I’ll say is that if compilers ignore good grammar, it becomes a lot easier to write ‘story-telling surfaces’.
A typical Guardian puzzle for me, with all the faults, plus many anagrams (too many really), but I can see why some are transfixed by the ‘bling’ – or showy surfaces.
As regards attacking ‘alright’, it is probably a losing battle, even though my spell check will not allow it. Look at alone, already, also, almost, always…
One of my pet hates was the sloppy use of an apostrophe, I’m, you’re, don’t, can’t, etc. Still ‘don’t’ use them when writing, only use them in speech, or when communicating like this. Nearly every post above uses this ‘convenience’, and in speech nowadays it would sound affected not to. A lost battle.
This was a struggle for me to finish after a fast start, largely because of a lack of cat knowledge – needed a bit of help from Google to confirm BUSTOPHER JONES (I think the only one of Eliot’s cats I would have remembered is Macavity) and BRITISH LONGHAIR. Last in was ROYAL WORCESTER which was also at best vaguely familiar (and not helped by thinking it was going to be another obscure cat). Liked INFIDEL and NIAGARA.
Thanks to Eileen and Puck
Enjoyed the surfaces but found the solving quite hard work. Had to Google BUSTOPHER JONES despite having all the crossers as I’d reckoned the first six letters were an anagram of ‘job has’ (signified by ‘boob’).
Several stand-outs though with TAOISEACH the favourite. Congratulations Puck.
Thanks, Eileen.
I, too, had to look up TAO IS EACH – perhaps I can remember that for the future!
Any one who wants a pleasant disagreement, please click on my name and then the Feedback link. It would be off piste here, alright?
Thanks Eileen, there were some nice clues in there.
It’s funny, because I don’t have the slightest objection to lifting and separating, but ‘reverse clueing’ as in STOMACH DISORDER always seems to me (as ulaca might say) very much more Arnhem than Goldilocks!
I suppose they might become more likeable with time, but I can’t imagine the cryptic portion of the clue ever being any use in arriving at the answer. The reverse clueing element just seems to be something to groan at after you have found the solution from the definition/crossers (i.e. solved it as a ‘quick crossword’ clue).
Anyway, I suppose you can’t begrudge one per crossword…and most of this was fun.
Thanks Puck and Eileen
Enjoyable. I particularly liked NIAGARA and TAOISEACH (once I had looked up how to spell it). I knew BUSTOPHER JONES as “Old Possum” was a common request of my daughter to be read to her when she was young.
I thought that the dog-breeding parson from Swimbridge might have got a mention in 23a!
I spent a lot of time trying to construct an anagram of Most Piano Stools starts (MPS) and TOES to give a poetic foot – (anaepest etc.).
The only clue I really didn’t like was 27a. To start with the construction was made more convoluted than necessary by the desire to work a cat into the clue; secondly I don’t think that “very powerful” is a good definition for “violent”.
muffin @ 22
I think ‘violent’ and and ‘very powerful’ can, in context, be synonymous.
Is there any real difference between a volcano having a violent eruption and a volcano having a very powerful eruption?
Simon @23
I see what you mean – I was thinking of people rather than natural events.
It’s still a bit of a mess of a clue though, isn’t it?
Does nobody else object to the equation old age = senility? (11/25 ac.) I’m trying to keep the two separate for a little while yet.
Senility implies old age, old age does not necessarily imply senility. The clue is written the correct way.
Put me down as one who didn’t like 28A – how are you supposed to know how much of “cat’s homes” you’re going to need until you know the answer? Surely the point of the clues is to be able to get the answer from them, not the other way round. No?
Hello, Grim and Dim
I don’t recognise your name[s], so a warm welcome to the site if you’re newcomers. [I suspect, though, that you may be adopting a nonce pseudonym. 😉 ]
In answer to your comment: so am I! In all fairness, though, I can’t fault the definition: by derivation, senility = old age. ‘Senile’ began life as a perfectly respectable epithet for an older person and then, because older people showed signs of weakness, it acquired a secondary [pejorative] meaning, as so often happens.
But – take heart! Exactly the same thing happened to ‘infantile’ = ‘pertaining to infants’ and ‘puerile’ = ‘pertaining to children’, didn’t it?
[Pure self-indulgence now, since it’s quite late in the day and it’s my blog, anyway: you’ve reminded me of the quotation from Cicero’s ‘De Senectute’ – ‘On Old Age’, that my Latin mistress wrote in a book that she gave me as I went off to University so many decades ago:
‘Ver enim tamquam adulescentia significat ostenditque fructus futuros’
‘For spring, like youth, gives signs and promises of fruits to come’…
…which continues, as I discovered later, and only now appreciate:
‘…reliqua autem tempora demetendis fructibus et percipiendis accommodata sunt.’
‘…while the other seasons are suited to their gatherings and enjoyment.’]
Alastair @27
I’ll take the [rare] opportunity you’ve given me of quoting one of my favourite lines:
‘Apart from that, Mrs Lincoln, how did you enjoy the play?’
As I said in the blog, I expected it to be a ‘Marmite’ clue – but I was thinking more of the indirect aspect of it.
Well we liked the OLD AGE clue- it even raised a smile.
However we weren’t that impressed with 28ac!
Thanks for the blog Eileen and thanks to Puck – it was better than alright!
I wasn’t going to comment on this as I finished it just before the footy started last night so I watched the “Dog and Duck” v Basel. 😉
When it was finished I looked on here but most things had already been said. However after a night’s rumination I thought I’d add my twopenneth!
I thought this was another superb puzzle from Puck and I thoroughly enjoyed it. I just wanted to mention the 28a controversy.
I think we’ve had something like this before but I think this construction brilliant. I can see nothing wrong with it at any level so I don’t understand the moans. (Some people just hate innovation!)
It’s OK in my opinion because:
1. The anagram isn’t indicated but as it’s a “reverse anagram” this doesn’t matter. (I would expect an indicator if this was a straightforward anag.)
2. The contained letters are consecutive. (In fact there are at one end of the phrase but could be in the middle somewhere.)
3. There is an indication that the fodder is only part of the phrase.
What’s not to like? What “rules” are being broken?
I love it.
All somebody has to do is come up with a name for this type now. 😉
Thanks to Eileen and Puck
Re 28a – I agree with Brendan. I did use the wordplay after guessing DISORDER from the crossers, which made me think “reverse clue” immediately. I should have included this one and TAOISEACH in my list of favourites.
Eileen – thanks for the quotations – you do make me feel like a philistine sometimes!
Thanks Puck and Eileen
Enjoyable puzzle from Puck as is normal from him … completed in two sessions – one on Tuesday and finished off on the train two days later.
Didn’t know Joe LOSS at 20a and didn’t parse HALF-WITTED apart from the TED at the end. Hadn’t heard of TAOISEACH previously, but what a cracking clue – can’t remember seeing the post meridian PM being used for the prime minister one before; full marks to the setter if that was a first. Also thought that BUSTOPHER JONES was very clever.
I’m doing this nearly 4 years later, working my way through the back-catalogue, dreading the day when I hit a crossword that isn’t available online (not sure when it all started). Any road up, a really good crossword that was easy enough for me to finish with my usual oodles of online help. Took me a long time to guess that 1,23 was going to be a character from ‘Cats’ but the fog did eventually lift. Thanks Puck