For consecutive blogs – a tussle with Nimrod for me!
An for consecutive blogs a tribute to a recently departed comic actor. Again the clues and grid are littered with references to the man visible in the 4th row (do remember to drop the King!). the late great George Cole.
24ac from the 8ac series of films being a famous role of his.
11ac from 21ac and the 1st 2 letters of 22ac where he had a 14ac and a sidekick 12 ac (sold 16dn) and regularly drank a gin and tonic at the 4dn 25ac.
Plenty of clues with references too:
- 6ac – The barman from Minder
- 17ac Comrade Dad a sitcom from the 80’s
- 18ac A nice little earner
- 21ac Chisholm – the office of the law in Minder
- 25ac Blott on the Landscape – A T series of Tom Sharpe’s novel
- 3dn Scrooge and the actor he co-starred with
- 23dn A reference to dennis Waterman his co-star in Minder
I’m sure there are more – One clue had me thinking though –
The wife’s endless deceit (4)
Why not “‘Er indoors’ endless deceit(4)” in deference to his “invisible” wife?
Though she is visible in the 2nd column (Thanks Phil R)
Many thanks Nimrod – lots of space in the grid but lots of thematic material to counter it.
RIP George Cole- thanks for many a laughing moment.
ACROSS
6 Good spirit in “home-made” VAT Dave’s mixed (4)
Hidden home-maDE VAt and (Dae)* = DEVA
8 Here there’s instant suffering involving tormented Sir (2, 8)
(instant + Sir)* = ST TRINIANS
9 Chase stock car, finally stopping self-drive on Westway?
Kin (stock) + R (car, finally) in EGO (self) EGG (drive on) reversed (Westway) = KING GEORGE (Horse race) Thanks Gaufrid
10 An item that’s cutting up cabbage (4)
Couple (an item) – up = COLE
11 Old King Henry the Fifth of England right to advance on old city (6)
A (fifth of England) + rt (right) + h (Henry) + Ur (old city) = ARTHUR
12 Shakespearean actress makes effort to take in bestower of OBEs (5)
Try (effort) around ER (Bestower of OBEs) = TERRY
14 Secures with Penny, country 10 nearly backed (4, 2)
Rev. (P (penny) + uk (country) + Col(10 across nearly) = LOCK UP
15 Mini’s label initially switched after pound sign (6)
L (pound sign) + title(label) switching initials = LITTLE
17 Line crossed by Comrade Dad centrally following “Advance” order (5)
RA (Comade Dad centrally) in ry (line) after a (advance) = ARRAY
18 He’s paid attention in the end to departing expert (6)
ear (attention) + oner (expert) – o (end of to) = EARNER
21 Sanity of Chisholm in doubt (4)
Hidden ChisholM IN Doubt = MIND
22 They look like workers getting busy to arrange set (10)
(arrange set)* = ERGATANERS
24 Spiv young holding whip hand? Half right (5, 5)
Fry (young) around Lash (whip) + ha (half hand) + r (right) = FLASH HARRY
25 Throw into confusion the seeds of campaign (Lynchwood underestimating Blott!) (4)
Initials campaign (Lynchwood underestimating Blott ) = CLUB
DOWN
1 11A’s tip on National horse going around band of miscreants (4)
A (11As tip – Arthur) + n (national) in GG (horse) = GANG
2 Support helping jockey to move radius fully (7)
Stir (move) + r (radius) + up (fully) = STIRRUP
3 Scrooge, latest part for Alastair Sim, incorporating 10 finally growing up? (5)
Rev. (r (latest part for Alasair) + e (10 (Cole) finally) + Sim) = MISER
4 Arm 6’s women residents? (10)
W (women) in Chester (Deva) = WINCHESTER
5 Not being watchful, model Renault left on back of lorry(9)
(Reanult + y(back of lorry))* = UNALERTLY
7 The World that was St Patrick’s Lobster, innovatively serialised? (4)
Hidden lobstER INnovatively = ERIN
8 Got clean carried away (5,2)
DD SWEPT UP
11 Extended action with smasher after a week’s a bit hard to deal with (10)
War (extended action) + Dish (smasher) after a + wk(week) = AWKWARDISH
13 New wives carried over them, making Bliss drool horribly (bachelor no more!) (4-5)
(Bliss drool – b)* = DOOR-SILLS
15 It’s not brief handling hot crook gently (7)
(gently + h)* = LENGTHY
16 Stock-in-trade of used-car salesman causing fireworks (7)
DD BANGERS
19 The Bill on the case of his undrinkable spirits (5)
Met (The Bill) + hs (case of his) = METHS
20 The wife’s endless deceit (4)
Fraud (deceit) – d (endless) = FRAU
23 One tip or the other from Waterman: “I could be so good for you” (4)
watermaN I Could bE (onhe tip or the other) = NICE
I very rarely do the Indy Saturday prize crossword, given the inquisitor tends to absorb all my free solving time. However, yesterday I found myself on the ferry from Islay with a couple of hours to kill and pulled out last Saturday’s paper from the bottom of my bag. So glad I did as this was a lovely puzzle, bringing back memories of 1980s television
Some lovely references inside the finished grid which twencelas has mentioned, a couple of extra ones I noticed :
23D, 15A, 18A which Arthur was fond of.
7D and the first 5 letters of 13D whom he may have been slightly less fond of!
A great puzzle which raised many smiles. Thanks for the blog twencelas and bravo for another corker from Nimrod
I also struggled to parse 9A…
Very enjoyable.
9ac: The bit after KIN goes something like GGE (=EGG rev, slang for car) + R (car finally) in (“stopping”) EGO (= self drive) reversed (Westway).
Spent ages trying to work out why 23D should be NICO. Didn’t recall her being in the series at all.
Or even better (!) self = EGO + drive = EGG.
Thanks twencelas
9ac is KIN (stock) plus [ca]R (car, finally) in EGO (self) EGG (drive on) reversed (Westway)
Don’t forget that Cole played 24ac in 8ac. (Alastair Sim was in that, too, and seems to have been almost an adoptive father to him.)
I did this during the Gorecki concerts at the Barbican last Saturday but needed to wait to when I got home to check 6ac and exactly what the word was at 22ac. I was unsure about 25ac as I was unfamiliar with that meaning of CLUB but I see it’s in Chambers.
I didn’t quite finish the puzzle but I loved all the references to Mr Cole. Shame there wasn’t room for ‘er indoors!
Thanks to Nimrod and twencelas too
I’m surprised no-one else seems to be mentioning how incredibly hard this was! Was that just me? Nimrod seemed to be pushing the boundaries of reasonable cluing here, with convoluted and obscure constructions I’d expect to see more of in the Inquisitor than the standard puzzle. I largely missed out on ’80s television, so though it was fairly obvious there was a theme I didn’t know what it was.
In the end I think I was satisfied with all of the parsings (although I parsed 17A differently, as R and A around RAY and then all advanced one, so the A cycled round to the front – maybe this unnecessary complication on my part added to my impression of the difficulty), but it took me a number of visits over the week before I was convinced I had it all.
In retrospect, a wonderful puzzle. But I have to admit that at the time I was a little grumpy about it – the standard puzzle is supposed to be my Saturday morning wind-down, before the Sunday morning hit of the Inquisitor.
crypticsue@6
As Phil R @1 points out, ERIN DOORS is honoured by 7d/13d.
crypticsue @6, see Phil R’s comment @1.
OP@7 I expect the Saturday puzzle to be harder than the general weekday puzzle, but found this easier than several weekday puzzles recently. As I said, I mainly solved this unaided in between going to concerts.
Incidentally, I’ve noticed at 7dn that “The world’s your lobster” is an Arthur Daley-ism.
OPatrick@7 I do agree with you on the difficulty of this puzzle – took me a while to get going – spotting the theme did help a lot.
Continuing the Minder theme, isn’t the RAY in ARRAY a nod to Ray Daley, the character played by Gary Webster after Denis Waterman left the show? I found the NW and SE quadrants harder than the other two, and it was only after I twigged the theme that I was able to complete the puzzle. Congrats to Nimrod for fitting so much thematic material in either the clues or the answers, even if it did mean a word like ERGATANERS having to be used.
Hugely enjoyable puzzle, even if I didn’t notice the theme at the time, got 17a wrong and couldn’t parse 23d. Did anyone spot MIND ER(ganters) in 21a/22a?
Thanks Nimrod and twencelas.
@13 – yes. Twencelas mentioned it in the fourth paragraph of his blog which is why I think anyone else who saw the theme didn’t bother to.