Guardian Cryptic 26,904 by Imogen

by

One for the Wodehouse fans among you.

Writing this blog on a mobile phone beside a pool in Gran Canaria, so limited a little by technology.

I’ve never read a Jeeves and Wooster book, but many of the clues and solutions are themed.  Obvious ones are BEETIE WOOSTER, JEEVES, AGATHA, GENTLEMAN etc, but there are probably more.

Across
9 ENTRECOTE Back in school cafe finally, really fancied horse meat (9)
Def: meat

<=CERT in ETON (caf)E
10 NIGER One African country or another loses excellent backing (5)
Def: one African country

NIGERIA without <=A1
11 SEE 3 See 3
12 ROLL-TOP Slattern moves head along desk (4-3)
Def: desk

TROLLOP with T (“head” ie first letter) “moved along”
13 TE-HEE Chuckle from man in shirt (2-3)
Def: chuckle

HE in TEE
14 BACK SLANG Yob, for one, supports Fritz (4,5)
Def: yob, for one

BACKS (Fritz) LANG

Fritz Lang was a German film director who moved to Hollywood and also made it big there.
16 INCIDENTAL MUSIC Bars not essential in the theatre? (10,5)
Cryptic definition
19, 25 GENTLEMAN OF THE ROAD Originally meant to hang, free old highwayman (9,2,3,4)
Def: highwayman

*(meant to hang free old)
21 JORUM Endless delight, alcohol in a big bowl (5)
Def: big bowl

JO(y) + RUM
22 FLOGGER Fine given by Recorder, who would prefer harsher punishment? (7)
Def: who would prefer harsher punishment

F + LOGGER
23 AMERICA From a kingdom of Anglo-Saxons, I moved to 6’s land (7)
Def: 6’s land

A MERCIA with “I moved”
24 NYLON Fibre is new, only just spun (5)
Def: fibre

N + *(only)
25 SEE 19 See 19
Down
1  BED-WETTING Going asleep (3-7)
2 STROPHIC “Killing cat”, a disastrous sort of ode (8)
Def: sort of ode

(cat a)STROPHIC
3, 11 BERTIE WOOSTER Drone, as it were, released inside stage of rocket (6,7)
Def: drone?

*(it were) inside BOOSTER

I’ve never read a Jeeves and Wooster book, so don’t know if Wooster was a drone? (See explanation in comments)
4 SEE 8 See 8
5 LEPRECHAUN Fairy liquid: pure, clean, capital for hands (10)
Def: fairy

*(pure clean h)
6 UNCLE SAM Typical statesman, one making advances to Cameron (5,3)
Def: typical statesman

UNCLE (pawnbroker = “one making advances”) + SAM (Cameron, David’s wife)
7 AGATHA Sort of saga which almost was related to 3 11 (6)
Def: was related to 3

AGA THA(t)
8, 4 TRAP DOOR Crosspiece put over hole in floor (8)
Def: hole in floor

<= ROOD (“cross”) + PART (“piece”)
14 BONE MARROW One in a billion, vegetable that produces blood cells (4,6)
Def:  that produces bone cells

ONE in B + MARROW
15 GO COMMANDO Order soldier to move unbriefed? (2,8)
Cryptic/double definition: “to move unbriefed”
17 DILIGENT Painstaking cover-up — it protects dope (8)
Def: painstaking

<=LID + IT “protects” GEN
18 SURVIVOR Oral exam headed by teacher one gets through (8)
Def: “one gets through”

Homophone of SIR VIVA, although not to me (I’m a Scot)
20 NOODLE One old tatty ribbon (6)
Def: ribbon

*(one old)
21 JEEVES 3 11’s 19’s 19 (6)
Bertie Wooster’s gentleman’s gentleman
22, 23 FONDANTS In Jane’s good books, offering sweets (8)
Def: sweets

(Jane) FONDA + NTs (“good books”)

NT is already “books” rather than a book, so would have liked to see the S indicated somehow.

See alternative parsing in the comments, which makes more sense!
23 SEE 22 See 22

*anagram

40 comments on “Guardian Cryptic 26,904 by Imogen”

  3. 1d is BED-WETTING, ‘going’ while asleep.
    16a should be INCIDENTAL MUSIC
    23a should be AMERICA
    I assume these are just typos because of using a phone keyboard, Imogen.

  5. Thank you, loonapick. Gran Canaria, eh? Nice work if you can get it.

    Some clever stuff here – really admired LEPRECHAUN for its surface, and GNOMON & ROLLTOP for their lovely construction.

    Less keen on AGATHA where there is an included word inside something one has to derive. Also, not sure what just is doing in the NYLON clue.

    Like our blogger, I bridled a little at the pluralised NT in FONDANTS. It’s perfectly soluble of course so perhaps that’s good enough.

    Someone will need to explain why BERTIE WOOSTER is a drone.

    New to me was STROPHIC, but I did know JORUM from a piece of music we once played called Pass Around The Jorum which is a drinking song with references to a pisspot.

  6. Thank you Imogen and loonapick.

    Great fun. I found some of the parsing rather difficult, but I always do!

    BERTIE WOOSTER belonged to the Drones Club in London.

  7. A very enjoyable solve -much fun & some lovely surfaces.. Liked 19, 25ac & 1ac particularly, but, for me at least, clue of the day (if not the week!) has to be 1d.

    Many thanks to Imogen & loonapick (for whom I feel really sorry, I must say!).

  10. Thank you very much, loonapick and Imogen. I couldn’t parse 9ac at all till I came here. As far as 22 and 23 go, is it NT in Fonda’s (from Jane’s), which gives you the S?

  13. Pat & John @10/11 That’s more like it. Perhaps it’s a case of too much Grand Marnier rather than Gran Canaria.

  15. Thanks, loonapick for the blog and Imogen for an enjoyable puzzle.

    Favourite clues: 16ac, 6dn and 5dn, where, like William, I particularly admired the surface: ‘Now hands that do dishes can feel soft as your face, with mild green Fairy liquid’, according to the long-running TV jingle.

    I remembered JORUM from a Puck alphabetical puzzle that I blogged last year [‘endless task, getting drink for a punchbowl’. I commented on the satisfaction I got from working out an unlikely-sounding unknown word from the wordplay and finding it did exist. Marienkaefer, remembering his/her mother, who shared such delight, said that s/he would in future think of such words as jorums – and so have I. 😉

  16. Eileen @15 Love the idea of such words being called jorums, I think I’ll adopt that.

    One of our kids use to call that process of waggling one’s little finger in the ear “puggling”, and we still call those little Q-tip things “pugglers”.

  18. GNOMON is mentioned here-its from another recent puzzle-cant remember which.
    Loved this puzzle- ah the Drones club-chinless wonders- hilariously told.

  19. The clue to 21D (JEEVES) was for me the key to this crossword. It gave me enough to build on elsewhere in the grid, starting with BERTIE WOOSTER. (But despite having read some PGW I didn’t recall the name of Bertie’s club!)

    It wasn’t quite plain sailing after that, but I enjoyed it, and there were some neat clues. My favourites were 12A (ROLL-TOP) and 14A (BACK SLANG). There were just a few clues that I thought didn’t quite make it, like 18D (SURVIVOR) and 24A (NYLON), as others have remarked.

    Thank you Imogen and Loonapick.

  20. Enjoyed this one a lot – quite tricky in places but once the theme became clear so did most of the rest. Annoyingly LEPRECHAUN was last in – should have seen that much earlier. Liked BED-WETTING, STROPHIC, UNCLE SAM and FOND ANTS

    Thanks to Imogen and loonapick

  21. I thought this rather good. Both witty and straightforward. JORUM was new to me, and I wasn’t familiar with STROPHIC but thought it an amusing clue when I finally realized what it was.
    FOI GENTLEMAN OF THE ROAD.
    Very entertaining.
    Thanks Imogen

  22. Thanks to Imogen and loonapick. BACK SLANG and JORUM were new to me (though accessible from the clues) and FONDANTS was last in (and I needed help understanding “drone”), but, as usual with this setter, great fun.

  23. With the exception of ENTRECOTE (a new word for me, obscurely clued–I take it a “cert” is a “horse that is really fancied,” right?), I got there in the end.

    JORUM was a jorum (to use Eileen’s term for it @15).

    When GENTLEMAN OF THE ROAD went in, JEEVES became obvious, which made BERTIE WOOSTER also obvious, though I did not know in what sense he was a drone. Thanks for the explanations.

  25. Thanks both. I enjoyed this as much as any since the Easter Prize. 12a was laugh out loud, but I failed on 22,23 by not examining the parsing too closely and putting in ‘fine arts’ on the hope that the publishers of glossy books such as ‘Jane’s Fighting Ships’ were also into paintings.

    ‘Strophic’ was new to me and required a wild card search of the OED. Google and other sources give the only kinds of odes as pindaric, horation and irregular.

  29. Lautus @27

    I don’t recognise your name, so, if you’re new to 15squared, welcome and, if you’re not, my apologies.

    Re Jorum: in my blog of the Puck puzzle, I cited Collins: ‘prob. after Jorum*, who brought vessels of silver, gold and brass to King David [II Samuel 8:10]’. [*The King James Version has Joram]. So the Latin neuter plural doesn’t apply in either case, does it?

  30. I got to this late today, and found it fairly straightforward until the NW slowed me to a crawl, even though JEEVES had already led me to BERTIE WOOSTER. STROPHIC was new to me. I still don’t understand why ENTRECOTE is clued as “horse meat” as it’s a word which seems to be applied mainly to cuts of beef – just to hint at the French origin of the word, or am I missing something?

    Lots of nice clues, too many to pick favourites.

    Thanks, Imogen and loonapick.

  31. Thanks Imogen and loonapick

    jennyk @ 30: yes, I’m afraid you are missing something. The definition is simply ‘meat’ , with TREC being a reversal of CERT, a ‘really fancied horse’, or a DEAD CERT (though they don’t always pan out that way).

    hth

  32. Simon S @31
    Thanks, Simon. For some inexplicable reason, I saw CERT as “really fancied” and still didn’t connect it with “horse”. 🙁

  33. Thanks to Imogen for the puzzle and loonapick for the blog – I can imagine that of all the many possible activities on a beach in Gran Canaria, doing a Guardian blog on a mobile phone is not the most fun!

    O tempora, o mores, there are speakers of English who have never read P G Wodehouse, or even seen the television versions apparently – that does make me feel like a dinosaur.

    Enjoyed the crossword, and almost got there, despite the switch from clues which needed relentless pursuit of the wordplay to others which were cryptic definitions.

    My main difficulty was with those that depended on finding the correct surname for the given first name – LANG came to me eventually, but FONDA didn’t.

  34. Trenodia @ 26:

    Sure, the Greek odes had strophes followed by antistrophes. But the adjective strophic is used a bit more generally. And English odes don’t tend to have antistrophes anyway.

  35. Hi Eileen – I’m what you might call a ‘lurker’ and have been following 15sqared (which I really appreciate!) for a while… I agree, as the word (possibly) comes from the biblical name Joram then maybe the plural might be jorumim – that’s about the limit of my Hebrew!

  36. Thank you loonapick and Imogen.

    Enjoyed this puzzle very much. JORUM was new to me, but easy from the wordplay.

    I haven’t read a Wodehouse book for many years, it is interesting to see how much I remember. Aunt Agatha and the Drone Club came straight to me. Now ask me where I was yesterday.

  38. Thanks Imogen and loonapick

    Did this one yesterday and was annoyed that I left my unparsed FINE ARTS come through to here and find out that I should have had a fully parsed FONDANTS instead !!! In fact there were a few that I hadn’t properly parsed or parsed at all – 6d had to be UNCLE SAM but I just didn’t get the pawnbroker bit nor knew the name of the British PM (forgivable from over here I reckon) and went with a cryptic type word play for BACK SLANG – should’ve known better, although Fritz LANG was a new person to me.

    Found this one quite hard but enjoyable for most part, humorous in a number of places and clever everywhere !! Am another who has never read a Wodehouse novel – but as soon as I saw Jeeves, it wasn’t all that hard to get BERTIE WOOSTER and eventually found Aunt AGATHA as my last one in. GENTLEMAN OF THE ROAD was another fallout of it – and another new term that I did not know. STROPHIC and JORUM were also new terms – no wonder I found it hard !

    GO COMMANDO did bring a chuckle !!

  39. Thanks loonapick and Imogen.

    Enjoyable as ever.

    I’m another who hasn’t read any Wodehouse but the stories are well enough known for me not to have any issues.

    JORUM and STROPHIC were ew words for me but elegantly clued so no issues there.

    1dn, 15dn and the make-up to 12ac all raised chuckles.

    On the subject of which is there a proper spelling for the onomatopoeic TE HEE at 13ac. As far as I can recall, I think that I’ve only ever seen it written in the Beano and such like when surely it was TEE HE.

    Plug might have called that a swiz!

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