Well I can see that today is April Fool’s Day, a day on which there is not much point in reading the newspapers since all the writers will be vying with each other to find the most amusing non-story. …
… And lots of the pairs of answers are (5, 4), which makes APRIL FOOL something that one might slot in. And those answers are usually the answers to something else and the letters are changed.
But that’s all I can see. How in fact the letters are changed is a mystery to me. The swapping of letters is so far as I can see completely within the set {A, P, R, I, L, F, O}, but the fact that some of the thematic answers are a mystery to me and may have quite other answers means that this statement is perhaps false.
It can’t be that because it’s April Fool’s Day all the letters are just randomly jumbled. There must be more than that.
And this was extraordinarily difficult, not at all like the usual Friday Phi. Phi does set some harder crosswords for things like the Listener and this was more in line with one of those. To begin with it wasn’t at all clear what the pairs of answers were, so I never knew what the checkers really were and this made individual solution rather harder.
Sorry to be so useless today. I trust that somebody will explain.
| Across | ||
| 1 | SHIP | What’s special about greeting arrival at port? (4) |
| s(hi)p | ||
| 4 | APRIL | Nothing special about student’s skill (5) |
| Sorry, but I’m completely lost here. I can see no connection with the answer. | ||
| 7 | FOOL | Convenience and power returning for group (4) |
| This is really POOL, I think: (loo p)rev., and a pool as in a car pool | ||
| 9 | OPENER | Over: look with care to settle in new batsman (6) |
| o [= over] pe(n)er | ||
| 10 | VERBOTEN | Banned moving which would leave you bent over (8) |
| I’m not totally sure how this one works, but if (bent over) moves around you get verboten. I think it’s that if you start with ‘verboten’ and move this you are left with ‘bent over’ | ||
| 11 | SINGULAR | Wrong soldier dismissing soldiers? That’s unusual (8) |
| sin {RE}gular | ||
| 13 | ARCH | Demonstration spurning first entrance to city? (4) |
| {m}arch | ||
| 15 | HEIR | Woman’s retaining Independent for descendant (4) |
| he(i)r | ||
| 16 | FEET OF CLAY | Character flaws revealed by wager after payment to soccer team (4,2,4) |
| lay after fee to FC — FC = football club — if it’s not already a perfectly good abbreviation it comes in things like FC Porto | ||
| 18 | AFICIONADO | One who loves a timeless story and a party (10) |
| a fic{t}ion a do | ||
| 19 | RATE | Assess fifth dodgy boyfriend? (4) |
| rat E — the first dodgy boyfriend is rat A, the second one rat B, etc | ||
| 20 | CASH | Corps remains ready (4) |
| c ash | ||
| 22 | ENFILADE | Sequence of doors opening, and I feel excited (8) |
| (and I feel)* | ||
| 25 | TURGENEV | Russian writer Government engaged in unusual venture (8) |
| g in (venture)* | ||
| 26 | AGE-OLD | Historic end to race that’s brought in a winner’s award (3-3) |
| {rac}e in (a gold) | ||
| 28 | SLOT | Opening not taken, with second moving to first place (4) |
| lost [= not taken, but don’t put me on the spot and ask how] with s [= second] moved to the front | ||
| 29 | APRIL | Location initially adopted by overturned house’s top? (5) |
| Another of the thematic clues; when I had A-R-L and I had seen something of the theme I could see that this answer was fairly likely, but goodness knows what’s happening | ||
| 30 | FOOL | Bucket I imported into China (4) |
| Really PAIL: pa(I)l but it has been altered in some way to make this | ||
| Down | ||
| 2 | HOP | Dance whose practitioner has a mouth to feed? (3) |
| Not one of the impenetrable thematic answers this time, but although I had H_P and it is fairly obviously HOP I can’t see what this has to do with practitioners and feeding mouths: the wording suggests an unusual way of removing the first letter, but of what word? | ||
| 3 | PANEGYRIC | Review harshly, say? I cry out for praise (9) |
| pan eg (I cry)* | ||
| 4 | APRIL | US city blocking most of study of the high Arctic? (5) |
| Yet another of these, and yet again I’m completely lost | ||
| 5 | REVERSE TAKEOVER | Energy lines income seized by pirate in odd business transaction (7,8) |
| r(e verse take)over — verse = lines, take = income — I hadn’t heard of this but it’s there | ||
| 6 | LORD | Owner of ground and one end of land? (4) |
| Referring to Thomas Lord, the original owner of Lord’s, the cricket ground (although actually it was more complicated than that I think; however T L has given his name to the cricket ground) — one end of ‘land’ is l or d | ||
| 7 | FLOUR | A lot of anger about left-over meal (5) |
| f(l o)ur{y} — l = left, o = over — I can’t see in Chambers that l.o. = left-over | ||
| 8 | OPEN-HEARTED | Generous old writer to try contemporary series of talks? (4-7) |
| o pen hear TED — I had to look up TED, but it exists: Technology, Entertainment, Design talks | ||
| 12 | INEFFECTUAL | Incompetent? Fateful with nice fools around (11) |
| (fateful nice)*, ‘fools around’ the anagram indicator | ||
| 14 | POLO | Dessert: fine chilled, but not cold (4) |
| Really FOOL: f {c}ool, but it has been changed in some way | ||
| 16 | FOOL | Prevent operation of item seen in many kitchens? (4) |
| And this one really is FOOL, but what this has to do with the clue is beyond me | ||
| 17 | CORAL REEF | Swimming for clear heart of sea – to see this? (5,4) |
| (for clear {s}e{a})* | ||
| 21 | SIGHT | Deception obscuring the French attraction (5) |
| s{le}ight | ||
| 23 | FRAIL | Apparently stream will be curtailed for thirty days (5) |
| Really APRIL: ap ril{l}, and somehow this is changed | ||
| 24 | INCA | Old Peruvian favoured openings in Central America (4) |
| in [= favoured] CA | ||
| 27 | LEO | A selection of notable Oscar stars (3) |
| Hidden in notabLE Oscar | ||
*anagram
I think it’s meant to be about pairs of anagrams that give April fool, eg 4dn is POLAR (LA in Por(e)) and 16dn is FOIL (double definition); while 14dn and 23dn go the other way. 29ac is FLOOR (L in roof<) and 30ac PAIL pairing up to give April Fool; 4ac is FLAIR (L[earner] in fair) to pair with 7ac POOL.
I was as baffled as you by this. I think 4D started life as POLAR (“LA”) in POR(E). Was 16D STOP? (POTS backwards or something?) I suspect that if you collect together all the letters in the affected clues and rearrange them, you may end up with the completed grid, but I can’t be bothered to try.
Sorry to be a pain, but I was thinking of doing this one after the graun. Having gone to the 15^2 home page the first thing I saw was the long exposition which gave the game away.
Would it be possible for what’s on the home page to be more general, and any specific comments, especially about themes, to be contained within the blog?
Thanks!
Still struggling – could 2d be cHOPs, a mouth to feed?
Hi Simon S @3
Thanks for pointing this out. We do try to avoid spoilers on the home page but occasionally one slips through. The ‘read the rest of this entry’ tag is automatically inserted at the end of the first paragraph of a preamble but, as I am sure you are well aware, sometimes software gets things wrong. I have edited the post to remove the spoiler.
Thanks John
Regarding 2d, a practitioner at a HOP would be a hopper and a hopper is a device that has a mouth to feed.
Well, I have been an APRIL FOOL with cHOPs, Gaufrid @6 has the answer – but it was 12:15 am here in France when I posted…
Thanks Phi and John – and Jaguar.
This was a hard solve for me, and I needed help with some of the parsing. Many clues were fun, in particular VERBOTEN, SINGULAR, RATE and INEFFECTUAL!
Now we’ve passed midday there’s a note on the interactive version of the puzzle on the website. It’s something we might look to take advantage of in future. It’s taken a while but I think the web site is getting better. Still a way to go, but at least there’s a legible print version now available. And lots of cracking puzzles coming up, so stay with us.
I printed this puzzle off circa 10.00 am and there is no preamble with it, so I was quite pleased to come here and see why I found a lot of this unsolvable. A shame as I had been looking forward to it.
Keep this kind of stuff for the Listener and other complicated weekend puzzles, please. This is a daily cryptic; and I lost the will to continue after about 20 minutes hitting my head against a brick wall. If it’s a mystery to John, then it’s certainly going to be an even bigger mystery to me.
Good weekend to all.
What K’s D said, and it makes me very sad to say so. I don’t enjoy games like this.
I think this is simpler than many suggest, and that Jaguar @1 is correct on the play.
4, 7 Ac: FLAIR + POOL
29, 30 Ac: FLOOR + PAIL
4, 16 Dn: POLAR + FOIL
All visually simple anagrams of “April Fool”, and
23, 14 Dn: APRIL + FOOL ground to POLO + FRAIL.
A hint in one or more of the other clues would have been fun, but perhaps I missed it.
o.k. revisiting the site I see where it has “note”. As Eimi says, the site is improving and hopefully one day the note will simply print out with the puzzle for the benefit of people like me who missed it.
Well, I quite enjoyed the challenge, which was really to work out what was going on. It was obviously an April Fool, but my first thought was that some pairs of answers had simply got swapped around. For example from crossing letters 16dn could be FOOL (it is) and I thought it might have been swapped with 14dn except that I couldn’t make anything of O_O_ from the clue to 16dn. Eventually the penny dropped and it was almost plain sailing from then on.
Thanks, Phi. Sorry you had such a struggle, John.
I don’t often land on April 1 (about once every seven years or so, unless someone else bags it first) so I thought it worthwhile having a go at something a little different. I was a bit vexed by the constraints of symmetry – ideally I’d have liked all the entries affected to have been (5,4) and collinear but a (5,4) top right is a (4,5) bottom left. In the end I opted to retain symmetric placing. Not sure it would have made much difference. Glad some of you enjoyed it.
Hmm my print out had no rubric. Still i guessed what was going on to a very small extent and lost the will to carry on. I tried the on line puzzle from work and still it won’t load. Suspect it’s the adverts being blocked. Went back to an email gaufrid sent warning about the puzzle and did an anax puzzle so i could solve something. Grr. Puzzles like this are hopeless on line. Sorry phi.
Thanks again John, I don’t know about a HOP, but this was a POI FLORAL dance that Phi led us…
Can I ask how anyone knows who the setter is?
I have subscribed to the online paper, yet cannot find any identification of the setter, whether I look at the puzzle from Android or from iOS 🙁
The name of the setter is on the Independent website, but apparently not the apps. Fingers crossed it’s something they’ll sort out.
great list thanx a lot for info John