A birthday tribute by Gaff
Cole Porter was born on this day 125 years ago, and Gaff has managed to get some of his song titles into the clues.
One of the clues has me beat, but since I’m on holiday in Gran Canaria, I’ll claim sunstroke and give up trying to parse NOTABLES, if that is even the answer. I’m sure one of my fellow solvers will have worked it out.
| Across | ||
| 1 | BEATIFIC | Unhappily citified beast forgetting It’s De-Lovely (8) |
| *(citif bea) (“citified beast” less “it’s de”) | ||
| 6 | See 23 down | |
| 9 | GUINEA | Old money of West Africa (6) |
| 21 shilliigs in old money and a country in Africa | ||
| 10 | AIRWOMEN | Pilots broadcast succeeded in fencing me in (8) |
| AIR + WON “fencing in” ME | ||
| 11 | TIGHT TURNS | Sharp manoeuvres avoiding buying Anything Goes (5,5) |
| TIGHT (mean = “avoiding buying anything”) + TURNS (“goes”) | ||
| 12 | STAY | Delay support (4) |
| Double definition | ||
| 13 | RIGHTO | Understood True Love (6) |
| RIGHT + 0 | ||
| 15 | DISINTER | Dig up Richard I’s interminable letters (8) |
| Letters from “richarD I’S INTERminable” | ||
| 18 | ENTRUSTS | Charges department with decay and loses heart (8) |
| ENT (“Ear Nose and Throat – a hospital “department”) + RUST + (lo)S(es) | ||
| 20 | INSTAL | Connect Stalin with two disturbed characters (6) |
| STALIN with two of its characters “disturbed” (ie moved) | ||
| 21 | BRAE | Incline to turn attention to following Begin The Beguine (4) |
| <=EAR + B(eguine) | ||
| 23 | HENCEFORTH | Hothead Cher often arranged From This Moment On (10) |
| H(ot) + *(cher often) | ||
| 25 | NOTABLES | Stars of Can-Can never left (8) |
| The parsing of this has me stumped!
ABLE ~ “can” but beoyind that…? |
||
| 26 | MAGNET | Bar that attracts certain elements (6) |
| Cryptic definition | ||
| 27 | OBERON | King’s robe on askew (6) |
| *(robe on)
OBERON was King of the Fairies in A Midsummer Night’s Dream |
||
| 28 | SON-IN-LAW | Relatively new title for groom (3-2-3) |
| Cryptic definition | ||
| Down | ||
| 2 | ERUDITION | Learning code in volume (9) |
| R.U. (A “code” of rugby) in EDITION | ||
| 3 | TENTH | Shelter on hill top tomorrow (5) |
| TENTH + H(ill)
Assuming you’res olving this on the day of publication, the 9th, then tomorrow is indeed the 10th. |
||
| 4 | FRACTIOUS | In France, Do I Love You’s ill- tempered (9) |
| Fr. + ACT + I + 0 + Us | ||
| 5 | CHARRED | Cleaner Ruby Black (7) |
| CHAR (“cleaner”) + RED | ||
| 6 | OGRES | Some progress for monsters (5) |
| Hidden in “prOGRESs” | ||
| 7 | THOUSANDS | So In Love? On the contrary with spiritual leader of many (9) |
| O in THUS (“so in love, on the contrary”) + AND + S(piritual) | ||
| 8 | OPERA | Overweight person expands ribcage and starts performance (5) |
| “starts” of “Overweight Person Expands Ribcage Ands” | ||
| 14 | HORSEHAIR | Stuffing ground rose into hyacinth borders on affectation (9) |
| *(rose) in H(yacint)H + AIR (“affectation”) | ||
| 16 | SPIDERMAN | Superhero at odds with I’ve Got [name] Under My Skin (9) |
| S.P. (starting price = “odds”) + I + N under DERMA | ||
| 17 | EXANTHEMA | Not including Just One Of Those Things? Answer: rash! (9) |
| EX (“not including) + AN (“one”) + THEM (“those things”) + A(nswer)
An exanthema is a skin rash caused by an infection. |
||
| 19 | SINUSES | Maybe gluttony treats cavities (7) |
| SIN (“maybe gluttony”, one of the Seven Deadly Sins) + USES (“treats”) | ||
| 22 | RHOMB | Form of mantra sung in Red, Hot and Blue (5) |
| OM (“mantra sung”) in R, H and B | ||
| 23, 6 across | HELEN OF TROY | Singer of I Love Paris maybe performed only for thee (5,2,4) |
| *(only for thee)
It’s not clear whether Helen loved Paris, according to my limited research, but she needed to for the clue to work, so we’ll say she did. |
||
| 24 | ORGAN | Lungs could be source of piped music (5) |
| Double definition | ||
*anagram
Thanks for the blog, loonapick.
I thoroughly enjoyed this puzzle – so very clever to get so many song titles into the clues and so meaningfully [a congenial theme, too]. I particularly liked EXANTHEMA and HELEN OF TROY [I think the ‘maybe’ leaves her affections ambiguous] – and I loved the allusion to ‘Don’t fence me in’ in 10ac.
Of the non-themed clues, 15ac was my favourite – such a pity Richard III wouldn’t fit. 😉
I had three gaps in the bottom left corner – couldn’t see further than LIST [= incline and turn attention] for 21ac, but of course it didn’t fit with 14dn, nor accommodate beginning the Beguine so didn’t get as far as getting an answer for 22dn, nor 25ac, let alone parse it. I hope someone else can.
Many thanks to Gaff for a most entertaining puzzle.
27d parsing – a try
can – able
Can can – ables
Never – not
Left – position ind
^ That’s it, I think. Nice one, Rishi.
Thanks, Rishi.
Could someone explain how can and able are synonymous,please? Just give me a phrase in which the two are interchangeable, if you would.
And when you’ve done, perhaps you’d do the same with not and never.
David@ 5
I never did = I did not.
David, the answer to your question is ‘it’s Gaff’.
Gaff [who I met a year ago or so] is a really nice person and someone who told me where he’s coming from.
Gaff and I have different views on crosswords.
He knows it, I know it – so, I do not comment to his puzzles anymore.
[today’s an exception unless I’ll have to blog one at some point]
But.
Especially 16 and 17 down are really poor, in my opinion.
Apart from the fact that the song is called “I’ve got you under my skin” [with no ‘name’ coming in],
“‘ve got” is bad cryptic grammar and “my” doesn’t play a role at all.
In 17 down the words ‘just’ and ‘of’ are there for no particular reason.
There were some nice clues, 23/6 (HELEN OF TROY) being one of them.
I was less taken by just ‘department’ for ENT.
And which dictionary tells me that B = blue? (22d)
RU = ‘code’ (2d)?
‘Begin The Beguine’ = B?
It’s Gaff.
He’s different.
Or he wants to be different.
Despite the fact that it is ‘clever’ to put so many Cole Porter references in the clues, the lack of precision puts me off.
We are all different, aren’t we?
Thank you, loonapick and Gaff [hope you’re not too offended by my comments – I know you want to entertain, especially on birthdays].
Rugby Union and Rugby League as separate codes of the same sport is pretty common knowledge, so code for RU is fine in my opinion. I agree that Gaff’s clues sometimes stretch the grey areas, which may irk the purist (and might get short shrift in The Times, say) but I always enjoy his themed puzzles.
^ Sorry for the italics slip, didn’t preview.
Excellent – as expected.
Gaff’s cluing is actually quite conventional – it’s the tedious word-substitution puzzles (totally lacking crypticness in any real sense) which are the exception.
Sadly they’ve become the norm for the time being because people have been conned into thinking that ximeneanism (and its various schisms) is the norm.
That’s one of the reasons I always look out for Gaff puzzles. One of the few (now we’ve lost Araucaria) keeping the flame burning – and – like Araucaria – subjected to a gauntlet of mendacious comments from people pretenting that if it’s not done according to their personal (Ximenes/Robins/Manley-derived) rulebook then it’s loose/sloppy/lazy etc – like Millwall supporters turning up at Twickenham.
27d did beat me. Thinks Rishi @#2 – I’ll buy that. “Can” obviously *suggests* “able” – but I had 22d wrong so I was already sunk. Didn’t detract from my enjoyment of the puzzle. I’m prepared to be beaten once in a while.
Worthy tribute BTW – CP – a genius within his genre.
Many thanks all involved.
@Michael #8
“irk the purist”
They’re not purists – they’re ignoramuses. To use your own analogy – anyone applying the rules of RU to League (or vice versa) has to be a bit short upstairs – or an intentional troublemaker – or completely ignorant of the fact that the two codes (and in the case of football generally several others) exist.
Sil@7
You’re far more forgiving than I am.
For a setter to use “it’s entertaining” as an excuse for clues that have very little to do with the answers is a cop-out at best.
A footballer might decide that deliberately scoring an own goal is entertaining, but it’s just not done.
It would have been very simple for the setter to have come up with a clue that had some relevance to the answer (using the fact that “not blase” is an anagram, for example – no doubt there are other ways). Lots of the other clues are naff – contrast the clueing of “thousands” with the way Orlando did it in Friday’s Guardian.
This just looks like immature exhibitionism on the part of the setter.
My favourite setter was always Araucaria, and while I do not for a moment believe that my skills approach his, his style has certainly influenced me. He was quoted on more than one occasion as saying something along the lines that ‘all a clue has to do is to lead unambiguously to the solution; apart from that there are no rules’.
So David@5 : who says that not/never, can/able have to be exact synonyms? (Not me, not/never in a month of Sundays!)
Sil @7: who wrote the rules on good/bad cryptic grammar and where can we all read them? And who says that every reference has to be in a dictionary? (I asked my 6 year old granddaughter what letter begins the beguine and she got it!)
And David@12: who says clues have to have relevance to the answer? They have to have a definition, in this case ‘stars’, but making the clue seem to refer to something else is misdirection, and is part of the game.
I write this not to defend my style – that is what it is. I write it because as a solver I manage to enjoy many different setters’ styles, and it seems a shame that Sil and David can not enjoy my puzzles because of some imagined set of rules. If my style is not to your taste, guys, then fine, but please don’t pretend there’s a rule book!
All the best
Gaff, if I were you I should stop digging. On the one hand you quote with approval that “a clue has … to lead unambiguously to the solution”; in the next breath you say “who says clues have to have relevance to the answer?” There’s more than a hint of inconsistency.
Are you really suggesting that the clue needn’t be relevant to the answer? That one simply slots in words at random without reference to the clues? Call me an old stick-in-the mud, but that wouldn’t be very entertaining to me.
My comment had no intention to ‘attack’ Gaff.
I am just not a great fan of some elements in his clueing style.
(a) I did not say that I did not enjoy solving this crossword
(b) I did not say that there is a rule book
It is actually Jolly Swagman who is convinced that there is no one set of rules, using this to justify a rant telling off everyone who he thinks disagrees with that.
In fact, I do agree with him in that sense (but he doesn’t understand that), in the last ten years I’ve found out what I like and what not.
Some things here are just not my cup of tea.
To me, just ‘department’ for ENT or just ‘code’ for RU are not enough.
B clued by ‘blue’ I just do not understand – please, do call me ‘ignoramus’.
Some years ago I said that Gaff’s clueing is Araucarian.
That is fine by me – again, I agree with Jolly Swagman.
At times, Gaff’s clueing is also Boatmanic which is not a compliment.
But it is all about how I experience it, not measured against any fixed set of rules.
“I’ve got” is perhaps OK [I withdraw my earlier objection].
But ‘my skin’ for DERMA is not OK for me.
I hope one sees that I wrote ‘for me’.
Don’t get me wrong, I am perfectly capable of stretching myself to see why Gaff could possibly justify this.
I just don’t like it.
‘Begin The Beguine’ has the word ‘The’ standing in the way.
I’m afraid it’s just too imprecise for me.
Can-Can for ABLES is a nice idea but it is just not right: can = ‘is able to’, not ‘able’
Just like what’s happening in 17d, for the reason given @7.
Meanwhile, I know, the world of crosswords is ever evolving.
Philistine (or Goliath, as he is called here) is another Araucaria adept who walks along the borders of what I like and what I dislike.
I am happy with the variety.
Six Bradmans a week (at this place) is indeed too much.
There should be space for a different setter like Gaff.
No problem for me at all – did you hear me, JS?
But I think I have the right to say what I think about Gaff’s puzzles.
And:
(a) I was not unfriendly at all
(b) I only wrote a comment [initially, I didn’t intend to do this] because David @5 asked a valid question
Hi Sil
“B clued by ‘blue’ I just do not understand – please, do call me ‘ignoramus’.”
No, I won’t call you that. I will instead just refer you to the components of a colour, RGB – red, green, blue.
@Sil “Some things here are just not my cup of tea.”
Fine – I think we gathered that – maybe some time ago.
The Guardian, FT and Indy all byline their puzzles – it is therefore perfectly easy to avoid subjecting oneself to puzzles written in a style one doesn’t like.
If you share your distaste for Gaff’s puzzles with us again expect to be gonged out for repetition.
Thanks Gaufrid, for your explanation of B = blue.
However, I am not sure whether we should lift and separate B[lue] from the RGB colour scheme.
For me, that is more or less similar to: UK (United Kingdom) leading to K for ‘kingdom’ (which it is not).
But if this is what Gaff meant, then it is at least clear why B = blue here.
JS #17:
“it is therefore perfectly easy to avoid subjecting oneself to puzzles written in a style one doesn’t like”
It is not up to you to decide which puzzles I should do and which ones not.
I solve about 20 crosswords a week, easy & hard, favourite & less favourite setters.
And I repeat, I did not say that I did not enjoy this crossword.
“If you share your distaste for Gaff’s puzzles with us again expect to be gonged out for repetition”
Distaste? Do not put that word in my mouth because I have no distaste for Gaff’s puzzles in general.
However, there are things in this puzzle that I simply don’t like very much. I also explained why that is.
If you disagree, no problem, even if you could be more specific about why you disagree.
And your last line as a whole? It says more about you than about me.
You may feel the need to write one more comment.
But then, I assume, Gaufrid will intervene with a simple ‘Enough!’.
[On a lighter note, I can warmly recommend the album ‘Red, Hot + Blue’, if you can still find it. It was released in 1990 as an AIDS relief compilation, featuring new renditions of many of the Cole Porter classics featured in this puzzle, performed by class acts such as Sinead O’Connor, Annie Lennox, k d lang, U2, Aztec Camera. Happy listening!]
[Yes, I remember – but only now you’ve mentioned it.
I had a copy of it on cassette (!!).
‘Miss Otis Regrets” performed by The Pogues and the much missed Kirsty MacColl, I remember best.
And one of my favourite bands of that era, Roddy Frame’s Aztec Camera.
Found out that the album was actually re-released ten years ago, with videos included.]
Thanks loonapick and Gaff.
And thanks too to Rishi for sorting out 25ac – I had wondered whether Gaff had used “S” for Sinistra (adopting the Latin) but that did seem too much of a stretch so what a relief.
All in all an enjoyable puzzle with some very straightforward clues and some fiendishly constructed.
Not great. Not bad. Not all difficult. Not all easy.
I think I’ve tied myself up in “nots” so I’ll stop there!
Thanks Gaff and loonapick
Actually did this one last week and just checked it off tonight ! Lucky that I was being careful as I found a few wrong ‘uns before coming to check – had OBESE (which I couldn’t fully parse) / STEM (which I could) at 8d / 12a and had RIGHT TURNS which I wasn’t 100% happy with (thankfully) before seeing TIGHT !
Have to disagree with the nay-sayers here ! I was able to complete the grid with the only unparsed answer being NOTABLES (although tough – very gettable in my book – well done Rishi). To be able to see where words were wrong from the clues, means that they pass any logical standard for me. The fact that he was able to weave so many tracks of his theme singer is just a pleasant bonus !