Themed Eurofun from Julius.
Apologies for late blog: on-the-road computer issues with which I will not weary you. (They’ve wearied me, but they needn’t weary you.) Not the day for a tougher-than-usual Tuesday FT, which I think this was.
Enough self pity: this was a cracking themed puzzle with some ingenious wordplay, a lot of head-scratchingly interlinked clues and I’m pleased and proud to have finished it. Thanks, Julius.
| Across | ||
| 8 | BETTER OUT THAN IN | Boris’s view on wind generation? (6,3,4,2) |
| Themed fun. The traditional remark after a bit of audible flatulence and also Boris Johnson’s view on our place in Europe. | ||
| 9, 10 | TRADE AGREEMENT | Traffic licence requiring – arguably – years to pass (5,9) |
| Themic charade, with traffic = TRADE & licence = AGREREMENT | ||
| 11, 12 | BORDER CONTROL | Dutch farmer’s road block a key concern of Ukip (6,7) |
| BOER (Dutch faremer) includes RD (road), then block = CON TROL for another themed answer. | ||
| 14 | FARM SUBSIDIES | IMF disburses a corrupt series of growth-related payments (4,9) |
| And again. This time, the answer in an anag. of IMF, DISBURSES and A. | ||
| 19, 23 | PROJECT FEAR | RAF pilot’s first ejector failed, sending out a negative message! (7,4) |
| Anagram (‘failed’) of RAF, first letter of P(ilot) and EJECT | ||
| 21 | VESPER | Waspish delivery of service at 17? (6) |
| 17d being EVENTIDE, VESPER gives us the (unusually singular) service of Divine Office held originally at sunset. VESPA is also a wasp, and VESPER its homophone (i.e. heard in spoken ‘delivery’). | ||
| 24 | HOSEPIPE | See hippos frolicking in their stream! (9) |
| Anag. of SEE HIPPOS, who might enjoy a frolic with your hosepipe. I wouldn’t chance it myself. | ||
| 26 | NITRE | 1 in 3 regularly provides saltpetre (5) |
| Here, we have to spell out ONE IN THREE and ‘regularly’, i.e. at fixed, even intervals, select the letters of NITRE. Neat clue. | ||
| 27 | LITTLE ENGLANDER | Strangely tall 2 26? He’s desperate to get out! (6,9) |
| Then we take NITRE (26, above), LEGEND (at 2d) & the TALL of this clue and thematically anagramatise the lot to give us one pejorative term for a ‘Brexiteer’. | ||
| Down | ||
| 1 | STEATOMA | Some Tetley’s tea to maintain growth? (8) |
| Inclusion in tetleyS TEA TO MAintain. | ||
| 2 | LEGEND | Foot’s “donkey jacket” story? (6) |
| A foot is a LEG END, if you like. The story of Labour leader Michael Foot wearing a donkey jacket to a Cenotaph memorial service is also a ‘legend’, in that it was an ordinary overcoat, although somewhat in the ‘duffel’ style. | ||
| 3 | MOHAIR | “It gets my goat?” au contraire! (6) |
| Wool from the Angora goat. Can’t see how to parse this other than as a vague charade on ‘my goat gets it’. Suggestions welcome! | ||
| 4 | ATTRACTS | Is on the pull, turning up in dustcart, tattooed (8) |
| Inclusion in dustCART TAttooed, reversed (‘turning up’ in a Down clue). | ||
| 5 | GHEE | Clarified product of 8 down, with some hesitation (4) |
| 8d is BUTT, to which we add ER (‘some hesitation’) to get BUTTER, of which GHEE is a clarified form. | ||
| 6 | ENDEAR | Charm of Mark Antony’s stripped-down appeal? (6) |
| Mark Anthony famously asked his chums to ‘(L)END EAR(S)’, but I’d remark that that represents an awful lot of ‘stripping down’ of W.S.’s original. Hope I’m right. | ||
| 7 | IN STYLE | This month, see about showing some panache (2,5) |
| INST (old-ashioned business-letter-speak for ‘this month’) followed by a reversal of the bishopric (‘see’: please don’t tell me they’re not the same thing) of the city of ELY. | ||
| 8 | BUTT | Bottom of the barrel (4) |
| Double definition. | ||
| 13 | See 15 | |
| 15, 13 | MAENAD | Julius entertains a Ms. Dorries (a mad woman) (6) |
| Julius, our setter, is therefore ME, which includes (‘entertains’) that ‘A’, then an abbreviation of Nadine (Dorries, MP). ‘Maenad’ was new to me, and the splitting of the clue into two pretty much non-words didn’t help. It’s dogged as does it. | ||
| 16 | UNTIPPED | Not fancied, being plain (8) |
| Double definition from the sinful worlds of gambling and smoking. | ||
| 17 | EVENTIDE | European disarray evident at the end of the day (8) |
| Lovely word, given by E (for Europe, hello again) and an anagram (‘disarray’) of EVIDENT. | ||
| 18 | SPYHOLE | Used by Peeping Tom, 25, shy, perverted (7) |
| Anag. (‘perverted’) of POLE (25d) and SHY. | ||
| 20 | ON SITE | Government statisticians, I note, are working on construction (2,4) |
| Office of National Statistics then ‘I’ then TE, 7th note of the Sol-fa scale. | ||
| 21 | VISAGE | 6 wise face (6) |
| VI (Roman numeral for 6), then SAGE. | ||
| 22 | SINBAD | Sailor at home tossing flat fish around (6) |
| IN (‘at home’) with DABS (small flat fish, very nice eating) reversed around it. | ||
| 23 | See 19 | |
| 25 | POLE | Rod used to catch perch (4) |
| I’ve put this as a whole clue def., but it’s equally a 3-parter. Rod, pole and perch are all old words for the same linear measure of about 5-and-a-half yards, and a fishing pole may also be used to catch e.g. a perch. | ||
*anagram
Thought it was a great puzzle-not done by a rookie but I need him unmasked.The MAE is fine but NAD? they made some good amps!
But thats my only niggle and a very minor one. Who is he? Will he make an appearance here?
Thyanks GB and Julius.
copmus
See the Setters page. 😉
11, 12 across – I think ‘a key’ is the CONTROL key on a computer.
Gaufrid@2- I need more than that-havent found anything so far but I’ll get my antennae tuned and find who the perpetrator of this very
entertaining puzzle is. I have the odd suspect lined up.
I did guess that Julius was probably a setter known for his topically-themed puzzles and I wasn’t wrong.
It took me a while to sort it all out but I did enjoy myself.
Thanks to setter and blogger
copmus @4
If you visit the Setter’s page you will see that I updated it this morning to add Julius and to show the other pseudonym he uses for puzzles in the Indy. There is also a link to Michael Curl’s Who’s Who site which has more information.
Gaufrid@6-thanks.
Preumably not the same Julius who used to set very good, if rather easy, puzzles for the Guardian in the 1970s.
@passerby:
You’re right about ‘control’ = key. Can’t currently amend blog, but will do. Well spotted.
An impressive FT debut – quite a tough one to get started on – took me a long time to make any inroads into the top half, but it was well worth persevering and full of the humour and clever devices we are used to seeing from his alter ego.
Thanks to Julius and Grant
Quite a bit harder than the stuff under his other secret identity, I thought. Great puzzle.
Thanks for the blog Grant and thanks for the comments; I’m tickled, er, pink to have a puzzle published in the FT.
@Meic
Nope, that’s not me. A bit of knowledge of Swiss private banks is needed to explain the dumpynose
Nice stuff – I thought I recognised the likely culprit.
Next stop the Guardian maybe – or do you have to marry into the family.
My favourite (and LOI) was 2d – off-theme but within the broad realm of politics.
Actually it was the shortness, rather than the duffle-coatiness, of the jacket (it was a car coat – quite an expensive one) that caused him the problem. According to the Telegraph (his primary daily read) the Queen Mother complimented him on it.
If he had given it any thought at all he would probably have been trying to strike a note of modernity. In the event the right-wing tabloid press used it against him.
A Boris would have turned it to his advantage. Poor old Foot didn’t have that much nous – it remained an albatross around his neck – to the extent that we even remember it today – and it is certainly well enough known to be fair game for a crossword clue.
I meant to mention that although STEATOMA was new to me, it did jump out at me thanks to Julian Barnes – in his brilliant comic novel Talking it Over, one of the characters refers to another several times as “the steatopygous Stuart” and that was just such a lovely word I had to remember it.
Thanks Julius and Grant
Great debut puzzle that spilled over until lunch time today to finish off. Not surprisingly, I struggled mostly with the themed clues, but enjoyed toughing this one out. Particularly enjoyed unravelling the long anagrams and then seeing the themed connection.
Eventually worked it all out – apart from a couple of parsing misses with the ‘untipped cigarettes’ and the CONTROL key.
PROJECT FEAR which I had to Google was the last one in and now look forward to his next one!
Thanks Grant for the blog and Julius for a fine debut puzzle.
I was beaten by MAENAD and did find the style overall a bit testing – to the point that I thought this might be a collaboration rather than a single setter – I see that I was wrong.
9, 10 did seem a bit weak to me but that was more than made up for by the very witty 8ac and the fresh UNTIPPED.
I had wondered whether the pseudonym had anything to do with the great Groucho Marx but I see the banking connection.
Looking forward to seeing a regular slot.