A clever themed puzzle from Boatman, with some intricate wordplay and some ‘innovative’ anagram indicators, together with some, for me, rather loose definitions.
I think there may be some protests about obscurity or parochialism today. I must admit that when I first twigged the theme I was afraid it was going to be all about America, so my heart sank. As it turned out, since I’m familiar with England’s West Country, I didn’t have to google anything, except to provide links.
Thanks to Boatman for the puzzle.
Across
7 A western pie that’s good cooked (9)
SPAGHETTI
Anagram [cooked] of PIE THAT’S G[ood] – the first rather loose definition [by example]: perhaps the use of ‘a’, the indefinite article, is sufficient but I’d have preferred ‘a kind of Western’
8 West Country wench? (5)
WOMAN
W [west] + OMAN [country]
9 Solved a clue for part of the West Country (6,3)
SORTED OUT
A reverse anagram [OUT] of DORSET [a county in the West Country]
10 Drink, second as chaser, to West Country (5)
WALES
W [west] + ALE [drink] + S [second]
12 Where one would go to get food for native (6)
INBRED
‘a’ [one] would go IN BRE[a]D to get food
13 Going west and not really caring — OK? (8)
CROAKING
Anagram [not really?] of CARING OK
14 People who get together in cars around London’s West End (7)
COUPLES
L [‘West End’ of London] in COUPÉS [cars]
17 From Dakota unto Nevada, somewhere in the West Country (7)
TAUNTON
Hidden in dakoTA UNTO Nevada
20 West Country’s first to get noticed: mad about it (8)
OCCIDENT
Anagram [mad] of NOTICED round C [first letter of Country]
22 Carried too much from Calais, going west (6)
PORTED
Reversal [going west] of DE TROP [‘too much’ in French – from Calais] – my favourite clue
24 Whence dawn breaks in the West Country (5)
FROME
FROM E[ast] – whence dawn breaks
25 One lies dead, in a way perfected (9)
IDEALISED
I [one] + an anagram [in a way] of LIES DEAD
26 State in Midwest (5)
MAINE
IN in [nearly] the middle of MAE [West]
27 Many went to America — the Wild West — to find something to eat (5,4)
IRISH STEW
IRISH [many went to America] – another rather loose definition + an anagram [wild] of WEST
Down
1 Unfairly put upon to confess where an American lives (6)
UPTOWN
Anagram [unfairly?] of PUT + OWN [confess] – again, I’d prefer ‘where an American might live’ or ‘where some Americans live’
2 A contemptible person undermined by support for political activity (8)
AGITPROP
A GIT [a contemptible person] + [undermined by – surely the opposite?] PROP [support]
3 Looked after some of the West End edition (6)
TENDED
Hidden in wesT END EDition
4 Firm stem (7)
STAUNCH
Double definition – an old favourite
5 Return to fashion? Expert embraces first principles with a twist (2,4)
GO BACK
GOK [Wan – see here – fashion expert {cheeky!}] round [embraces] ABC [with a twist, first principles] – a rather devious clue but I liked it [Gok is one of our local lads]
6 Criticise nationwide absence of characters composing in style (4,4)
WADE INTO
Anagram [style] of NAT[i]O[n]WIDE minus ‘characters composing in’
11 Nixon, weak even in the Midwest? (4)
IOWA
Even letters of nIxOn WeAk
15 Western set in Oklahoma, product of miners hiding robbers’ ringleaders (2,6)
OK CORRAL
OK [Oklahoma] + COAL [product of miners] round RR [first letters] of Robbers’ Ring – I was going to say that I could find only ‘Gunfight at the O.K. Corral as a film but then realised that ‘set’ was part of the definition – very nifty
16 West Country project in part of Scandinavia (not the south-west) (4)
EDEN
[sw]EDEN [part of Scandinavia minus sw – the south west] – see here for the Eden Project
18 US drug cops capture one from Mexico — yes, with plants (8)
NARCISSI
NARCS [US drug cops] round I [one] + SI [‘yes’ in Mexico]
19 Across top of Tombstone, ride up and take bullet; finally bit the dust (3,4)
ATE DIRT
A [across] + T[ombstone] + a reversal [up] of RIDE + [bulle]T
21 Leader of thieves is out of time holding up miners, resisting attacks (6)
IMMUNE
[t]IME minus t [first letter – leader – of thieves] round a reversal [holding up] of NUM [National Union of Mineworkers]
22 Marshal Earp is given commendation (6)
PRAISE
An anagram [marshal] of EARP IS – a neat clue, with a neat reference to 15dn
23 What would you call Boatman, if he retired in the West Country? (6)
EXETER
You might call a retired Boatman an ex setter, which sounds a bit like EXETER [which reminds me What would you call Postman Pat if he retired? – sorry 😉 ]
My brother used to sing in a group called “OK Chorale”. This may have helped me!
Thank you Eileen, and thank you Boatman. Very entertaining puzzle.
Re 26 across, I thought of Mid as “amid, among” rather than strictly “in the middle of”, this way the wordplay didn’t bother me too much.
Thanks Boatman and Eileen.
What a great puzzle, and the interlinking of the West themes was very ingenious.
Eileen, in an unusual Homeric moment, you’ve omitted the ‘top of Tombstone’ T from the wordplay from 19.
The clue for INBRED is decidedly creaky.
Thanks, Simon @3 – sorted now. I know exactly how it happened but it’s too complicated to explain. [Gosh, I wish they were unusual. 🙁 ]
Jason – If only I’d known about the OK Chorale … Very good!
Eileen – Glad you enjoyed it. I had a lot of fun mining the West(ern US) and West (of England) memes, once I’d realised that they were there to be mined. I think it was OK CORRAL, which first appeared as a random filler, that put me onto it. I agree with you about 7 Ac – it was originally going to be “Type of western pie …” and I don’t remember why it was edited down …
Must confess my ignorance of the IT sense of 22a. Might I just add that “de” and “trop” are both as spoken in Calais? A small point, I know. Thank you for a fine blog,Eileen, so many intricate and varied clues to tackle. Thanks also to Boatman for a devilish puzzle.
Thanks Boatman and Eileen.
The West theme was fun, a most enjoyable solve.
I could not parse GO BACK – it was lucky Eileen got this puzzle, another blogger might have spent an age on finding Gok Wan.
PORTED was also my favourite clue.
Thanks Eileen and Boatman. Got to the end with no googling but five clues had ?? against them – 9 and12 A and 5,16 and 23D. All explained above, and that’s good. MAINE was my favourite.
Found this easier than Boatman often is, and very entertaining, though not without a couple of tricky parsings. Favourite was MAINE.
Thanks to Boatman and Eileen
Great puzzle with lots of really clever clues (e.g. MAINE, OK CORRAL, GO BACK). Wasn’t sure about INBRED but now Eileen has parsed it, it seems fine. Many thanks to B & E.
Thanks Boatman and Eileen, I really enjoyed it. 9a and 26a are definite favourites.
Thanks Boatman and Eileen.
Quite tricky in parts but enjoyable. I suppose to be picky in 26 shouldn’t it be MidWest?.. And I failed to parse it.
I too liked PORTED and the fashion expert.
Thanks to Boatman and Eileen. I needed help parsing GO BACK and SORTED OUT but otherwise did better than usual with this setter.
Fun puzzle today that raised plenty of smiles – thanks Eileen and Boatman!
I must admit I’m still lost on the parsing for INBRED… I can’t see the homophone indicator that would allow us to drop the A and I don’t think anyone would go “in bread”…
Thanks Boatman and Eileen
An unusual occurrence to do Boatman on the day that he was published – and what a pleasure it was. Really enjoyed taking apart all of the West Country clues and didn’t find it too parochial at all – although I think that I’m starting to know more about English geography, entertainment industry and politics then what I know of the local scene.
Started with IOWA and TAUNTON and progressed with effort to finish with the clever FROME and MAINE in the SW corner.
Had to twist the tongue to get the homophone out of EXETER.
Liked the mix of clues served up here, including the loose definitions and a couple of hours well spent.
Coxy – Don’t think homophone – think reverse clue. The wordplay tells you (if you read it in a sufficiently unhinged manner) that the solution can be read as an instruction, saying how to get a word signifying food of some sort: where would “one” go? Convert “one” into “A”, put it IN “BRED” and you have “BREAD”!
I have just spent ages looking at *A*ES without the penny dropping. Annoying when that happens isn’t it?
NE quadrant in general was last to fall – the others went in smoothly. It’s one of those annoying grids though with only two links (2d, 18d) between the two ‘halves’.
The IRISH bit that went with STEW was a bit dodgy, I thought. Pleased that I knew who Gok Wan was. Bet he’s surprised to be in a cryptic.
Most enjoyable. Several clues one would not like out of the context of a thematic…didn’t like Maine, then realised I was dim, so then I did 🙂
Anyone else slap in lotus stew? Being from the other side of the water I ought not to have done. Am now wondering what lotus stew might taste like – probably healthier than the mutton-based one.
I rarely fail to finish, but today I did, having completed the NW and SE corners, but with six clues still to solve. I had come across too much loose clueing, some of which has been reported already, and I admit I just lost enthusiasm.
I have three minor criticisms, which are all from a personal view and not on matters of fact – so others probably have contrary views.
(1) Too many clues today needed to be solved first and parsed afterwards – I’m not very good at guessing answers from definitions and wordplay that are not precise enough or can be interpreted in too many ways. I get infinitely more satisfaction from clues that I can work out at the same time as trying to think of the answer. (I think this is mostly down to experience, of which I probably have less than most of the regular contributors here.)
(2) The grid had too many words in which fewer than half the letters had crossers.
(3) The West theme was too pervasive and too contrived. I really liked some of Boatman’s tricks with ‘west’ (the ones I liked were the ones that I managed to ‘get’, of course!), but 26A (just one example) is going too far.
Having sounded forth in this way, I must close by saying how much I liked several of Boatman’s clues today. Strangely, I thought 8A (WOMAN) one of the best – one that I failed to get but certainly should have got. Other favourites were 14A (COUPLES), 27A (IRISH STEW), 2D (AGITPROP) and 6D (WADE INTO). I even liked 4D (STAUNCH), although DDs are not my favourite type of clue.
Thanks to Boatman, in spite of everything, and to Eileen for her good analysis and comments.
Alan Browne @ 21 – And I though 26a (MAINE) was the best clue! (You can’t please all the people all of the time.) It was pretty clear you had to think very laterally to solve the clue, and when I got there I was delighted.
Thanks Boatman and Eileen
This felt like pulling teeth, and I eventually gave up on WOMAN and WALES (too many options to sift through, though they were both rather clever clues).
Lots I didn’t like, I’m afraid. EX SETTER sounds like EXETER? – not even close when I say them, and I’m originally from Devon. I don’t see why INBRED = NATIVE. GOK who? 21d is far too convoluted a clue.
I did like the two I failed on, and MAINE, FROME and PORTED.
(btw Eileen, no-one so far seems to have said “Pat”, so I’ll do so!)
drofle @22
How right you are! Whether a clue goes down well or not is so subjective.
I may have given the impression that I like clues to progress logically, forwards, to a logical conclusion (I realised this after posting), but, in the main, the opposite is true. I like to think laterally – a way of thinking absolutely necessary with the best crosswords – and I love misdirections (there were some today!). But I also like precision.
Muffin – For INBRED, you have to do two things: (1) take the meaning of “inbred” as “rooted and ingrained in one’s nature” and (2) parse “native” as an adjective. On that basis, they’re pretty close synonyms. In the surface reading, “native” is a noun, an intentional misdirection which might give the not-at-all-intended suggestion that I was accusing natives of being inbred.
Thanks Boatman
I found 12a fine, I took “native” as an adjective and the first definition for INBRED in the COED
inbred adj. 1 inborn. 2 produced by inbreeding. inborn adj. existing from birth; implanted by nature.
All three words, native, inbred and inborn, are synonyms.
Didn’t get MAINE. Love it!
Enjoyed that. Favourite was “Go Back” as I love clues which use punctuation as misdirection – liked “Maine” for a similar reason of the missing space in “Midwest”. I guess spaces are as much part of English punctuation as !,.'”;: etc. if I think about it.
Thank you to Eileen and Boatman
Not a quick solve but a satisfying one. My favourite of the week so far. Witty and inventive to a fault even PORTED which I didn’t fully understand until coming here. I especially liked MAINE, FROME and EXETER. I haven’t always “got” Boatman in the past but this was fine.
Thanks Boatman.
Had a go at the crossword between getting ready for a trip to Devon tomorrow. For interest, I will ask for a return to Ex-setter at the station and see how far it gets me. Not very, I suspect.
Van Winkle @31
In Devon the second syllable would be pretty much swallowed, and the third stressed, so it would sound a bit like “EX’TURR”.
Hi Van Winkle @31 and muffin @32
I did say, ‘Sounds a bit like’. 😉
It’s always good to see setters drop in, so thanks are due to Boatman for expanding my blog re 12ac while I was out this afternoon.
It would have been good, though, to hear his observations on EXETER and my other reservations, re loose definitions, for instance, but the only one he addressed was re 1ac. Perhaps he didn’t read any further. My biggest query is re ‘Many went to America’ = IRISH – but no one else mentioned it so it must be just me.
And the ‘innovative’ anagram indicators …?
Anyway, as they say.
Bless you, muffin @23, for rising to the bait: we should both be too embarrassed – but it’s one of my grandchildren’s favourites. 😉
Van Winkle @ 31: I reckon that if you ask for a ticket to Ex-setter you’ll be fine – they’ll think you’re from the West Country. Anyway, I hope you have better luck than the poor Japanese woman who wanted to go to Turkey and ended up in Torquay.
Hi Eileen – Yes, isn’t it interesting to see what different people find acceptable or otherwise? I definitely wouldn’t have been happy with “many went to America” if it was the overall definition – I mean, if the solution was IRISH rather than IRISH STEW – but it seems more reasonable to be allusive in indicating just one element of the wordplay. In this case, as well, the allusion was subject to a strongly magnetic pull from the adjacent “wild west”, which would have been difficult to resist under any circumstances, and I’ll always allow myself a bit of latitude if I think there’ll be a payoff for the solver in charm or humour – not that that justifies any outrage, of course. The ultimate test is to ask whether it would be possible to solve the clue from the wordplay alone (without guessing the solution and working back) and I think in this case it’s ok: once you’ve realised that “wild” is an anagram indicator, it can’t be long before you have a suspicion that you’re dealing with a type of stew, and at this point irish stew should be one of the first things that come to mind: at least, it would be with me – but perhaps it wouldn’t with you, in which case you’d have a harder job, scanning a mental list of American immigrants and hoping that one might be synonymous with a type of stew … definitely not impossible, though. Interesting, and I’m not sure that I thought it through as analytically as that when I wrote the clue – it just felt right at the time.
Although this was a bit easier than a usual Boatman I thought it was superb.
I totally disagree with all the niggly criticisms on here. As a themed crossword this was a tour de force.
I won’t go into my usual rant against the “homophone obsessives” as 23D doesn’t claim to be a homophone. There are definitely people frim the West Country who would say “Exeter” to sound close to “Ex setter” so why try and deny it?
My final gripe is the criticism of 27A. It’s a genius clue. Read the whole clue and think of the potato famine, mass exodus etc and then weep!
Thanks to Eileen and more especially Boatman not only for his puzzle but for his patience and restrained responses on here.
P.S. to gaufrid. Why has the site stoppped remembering my name and email? (Should I refresh my cookies?)
Well said, Eileen (@33)
It is better when setters drop in – I’m sure they all read this blog, but not many are inclined to go any further. I’ve seen Boatman here before, so it was no surprise today.
I picked up on all your ‘reservations’ independently of you, including the vague (you said ‘loose’) reference to Irish in IRISH STEW, but I don’t think we are going to hear any more about any of them!
Boatman @35
I’m afraid I posted at 37 before I saw yours @35.
I really wasn’t expecting to hear any more about any of the points that sort of dropped out of the discussion without any resolution.
I’m humbled by your spirited defence of IRISH STEW. That wasn’t my biggest reservation anyway, and my thought processes in solving this clue went uncannily along the lines that you described (foretold?) so well. My reservation, such as it was, concerning the start of this clue (‘Many went to America’) arose purely because I would not have been brave enough to use this (vague!) phrase myself, but having seen your justification I take back my implied criticism and bow to your superior judgement.
Being now a regular, I do take pains to criticise clues (and whole crosswords) fairly and honestly – and always try to say if a clue (or a whole crossword) is particularly good. Thanks for all your contributions today.
There’s another parsing for 23 which almost works: if you’ve retired *to* the west country, then you could have RET(ired) EX E(ast). Trouble is, retired is then doing double duty. Plausible, nonetheless.
Thank you Boatman and Eileen. We’ve had a run of top-quality puzzles this week.
Brendan – Well, thank you! It means a lot to me to read a response like yours. Comedy is all the better if played in the shadow of tragedy, is it not?
And Alan B – All your comments are appreciated, and taken in good spirit. Thank you …
Brendan @36
Well said – you obviously enjoyed this one very much. It’s nice to read such a rounded view of the crossword as a whole, which I acknowledge was cleverly constructed around an amazingly pervasive theme. (I doubt if I could have done it.)
I was not so lucky because I tired of the theme too quickly and could not ignore the little niggles (provoking the ‘niggling criticisms’ you refer to) like you did. I tried to solve this puzzle without references/aids but fell short – I don’t know my West Country or anything much about American culture, geography or history. But that was my loss.
The only thing I would take you up on is your dismissal of one of the little niggles – the one at 23D (EXETER). You said “23D doesn’t claim to be a homophone”, but I think it does (with the word ‘call’), and I think it has to, as there seems to be no other way to solve the clue. For me, by the way, it doesn’t work as a homophone. Some call it a near-homophone, but I don’t know what that is, and it’s an argument that I will lose on this site, so I will stop right there.
It’s been quite a mixed week, and you and I might say so for rather different reasons! Chacun …!
Coming in very late to the comments but this sure was a hard crossword for me. Missed 9 answers and got a couple of others without understanding why, so my thanks to Eileen for the explanations. I thought it was a very clever crossword and I am in awe of Boatman’s genius in creating so many variations on the West/Wild West/West Country. As others have said, it is always great to have the voice of the setter participating in the discussion. Unlike my fellow Aussie brucew@aus I was very unfamiliar with the West Country so learned a lot using a map. Made me think how much I would like to see those places, explored often before through novels and now through the delights of this crossword! With gratitude to Boatman, Eileen and all bloggers for stretching my brain.
Aha, thanks Boatman! Makes perfect sense now I’ve got my brain pointing in the right direction…
Brendan (NTO) @36
“P.S. to gaufrid. Why has the site stoppped remembering my name and email? (Should I refresh my cookies?)”
It’s nothing to do with the site, it’s your browser. Try deleting your history, which will get rid of all cookies, and then start again.
Brevity is the soul of wit. Some of these clues were like paragraphs.
John @46
Yes, they were (like paragraphs). And recently we had a crossword praised for its economy of words.
However, to be fair to the setter, I don’t think he wasted any words: they all played their part. It was mainly seeing that theme crop up everywhere that didn’t go down so well with me.
Alan Browne @42
Thank you for your comments which I appreciate as they are always so restrained and considered. (Unlike mine sometimes 😉 )
Just one comment on the “homophone” issue over which I have commented at length in the past on many occasions.
I don’t deny that the clue requires some sound relation between Exeter and Ex Setter but I don’t believe a homophone is required. (Very clues specify this) A homophone is a very strict definition for identical sounds whereas most clues use indications like “heard”, “on the radio”, “sounds like” etc. This clue depend on the sound that is “heard” not the one that is actually produced as in a homophone so in my opinion indicate “sounds something like”. This particular clue uses the very broad “call … in the West Country” which a very broad range of dialect indeed.
Thanks Brendan (@48). All noted.
Don’t know if anyone will see this, but I think that if you call them puns rather than homophones you get away from the need for strict accuracy of sounds.
I finished this too late last night to post before I went to bed, so this may also not be read by anyone other than perhaps Eileen. I struggled with this, as usual with Boatman. That’s not a criticism – I just tend to find it hard to get on his wavelength. While I admire the number of themed clues he managed to pack into one puzzle, I also found it slightly irritating. There were too many clues I had to guess from definition and crossers, and then parse. However, I did think some of them were very good. MAINE is the one which has stuck in my memory – economic, elegant, and totally baffling until the penny dropped. Other favourites included PORTED, FROME and GO BACK.
I too initially thought that INBRED was being non-PC (and inaccurate) about indigenous peoples but then I remembered the other meanings of both words. More lasting niggles were the loose definition for UPTOWN and the use of “undermined” in the clue for 2d. EXETER doesn’t bother me. I’m in the B(NTO) camp on this – although in the blog and comments we tend to refer to them as “homophones”, the clues rarely suggest that precision is required. Given the wide range of accents even within the UK, and now with increasing overseas readership, they would never work as exact homophones for all of us anyway.
Thanks, Boatman and Eileen.
Simon (@50)
Nice bit of lateral thinking.
I can imagine Boatman retiring to Exeter (the harbour probably, being a boatman) and saying “I’m in Exeter.”
A pun, but I’ll stop now – it can only get worse.
jennyk @51
“There were too many clues I had to guess from definition and crossers, and then parse.”
Way back @21 I said (among other things):
“Too many clues today needed to be solved first and parsed afterwards – I’m not very good at guessing answers from definitions and wordplay that are not precise enough or can be interpreted in too many ways.”
You and I may not be quite on Boatman’s wavelength, but in this respect I think we are on each other’s!
Super crossword but didn’t manage to finish before today’s Guardian arrived. Now I see the answers and Eileen’s wonderful explanations, I could have got there. By the way, I had no quibble with Exeter; I thought the homophone was exiter – someone who leaves! Thanks to Boatman and Eileen.
Just coming back to confirm that I do see all the comments and to say that I’m glad, jennyk, that I wasn’t entirely alone in questioning the use of ‘undermine’ – another of my reservations that Boatman declined to address.
I can’t imagine that he’ll ever make my long list of favourite setters but I’m glad others enjoyed the puzzle.
I really like your ‘exiter’, Julia. 😉 It’s good to end on a cheerful note – and this is the end, as far as I’m concerned!
Alan Browne @53
It seems that we quite often are, where cryptics are concerned. 🙂
Thanks Eileen and Boatman.
Too late to the party to add much in the way of fresh commentary but wanted to say that I enjoyed this very much.
I personally had no difficulty with the various anagram indicators. Yes, it took a while to sort out the convoluted thinking – but that’s what a good puzzle should offer.
So thanks again.