Prize puzzle from the Weekend FT of July 16, 2016
I found this a challenging puzzle with some mighty clever but always precise cluing. My joint clues of the week are the fiendish twins 19a (CALAMITY) and 25a (CAPABILITY). I also applaud 7d (PSEUDONYM). Thank you, Goliath!
| Across | ||
| 1 | CLODHOPPER | Hold out to spike policeman’s shoe (10) |
| Anagram of HOLD in COPPER (policeman) | ||
| 7, 26 | PACKAGED | Wolves matured in a box (8) |
| PACK (wolves) + AGED (matured) | ||
| 9, 15 | NICKNAME | Monica heard Nikki? (8) |
| Homphone (“moniker”) | ||
| 10 | EPICUREANS | Runs a piece about gourmets (10) |
| Anagram of RUNS A PIECE | ||
| 11 | RUBRIC | Polish and almost wealthy, getting a distinguished title (6) |
| RUB (polish) + RIC[h] (almost wealthy) | ||
| 12 | OPEN-DOOR | Unrestricted love to die penniless outside (4-4) |
| O (love) + END (die) in POOR (penniless) | ||
| 13 | LET ME SEE | Please remove my blindfold, hmmm? (3,2,3) |
| Double definition | ||
| 15 | See 9 | |
| 17 | ICON | Famous person tucking into chilli con carne (4) |
| Hidden word | ||
| 19 | CALAMITY | Jane Austen’s life, a memoir starts appearing in London, perhaps (8) |
| A[usten] L[ife] A M[emoir] in CITY (London, perhaps) | ||
| 22 | SWASTIKA | An outfit cuts retrogressive political symbol (8) |
| A KIT (an outfit) + SAWS (cuts) all backwards | ||
| 23 | ENTICE | Tempt conservative to shift right in full (6) |
| ENTIRE (full) with ‘R’ (right) replaced by ‘C’ (conservative) | ||
| 25 | CAPABILITY | Brown primarily chosen as PM after Blair’s invasion levelled Iraq twice? Yes! (10) |
| C[hosen] A[s] P[m] A[fter] B[lairs] I[nvasion] L[evelled] I[raq] T[wice] Y[es] | ||
| 26 | See 7 | |
| 27 | PSST | Hey, frames for pictures? Sweet! (4) |
| P[icture]S S[wee]T | ||
| 28 | GREEDINESS | Why poor Serge is stuffed with eats (10) |
| DINES (eats) in anagram of SERGE | ||
| Down | ||
| 2 | LEISURE | 23 admits initially entering into spirit of fun (7) |
| E[ntering] I[nto] S[pirit] in LURE (23, i.e. entice) | ||
| 3 | DAKAR | A dark, poor place in Africa (5) |
| Anagram of A DARK | ||
| 4, 21 | OPENCAST MINING | Isn’t MacDuff in a hole? There’s a source of material (8,6) |
| Anagram (duff!) of ISNT MAC in OPENING (a hole). Very clever wordplay! (And thanks to Peter G. for help figuring this out.) | ||
| 5 | POISONED CHALICE | Constabulary admits flipping coin: heads for evil in disguise (8,7) |
| Anagram (flipping) of COIN HEADS in POLICE (constabulary). This clue prompted me to look into the origins of the term ‘poisoned chalice’. For me, it brings memories of “The Court Jester”, one of my favourite movies, but I suspected that its history lay elsewhere. Some googling revealed that Shakespeare used it, in Macbeth, but it apparently predates even him. | ||
| 6 | ROUTER | Defeat royal device for data delivery (6) |
| ROUT (defeat) + ER (royal) | ||
| 7 | PSEUDONYM | As a contribution to a rising economy, no dues paid to Goliath, for one (9) |
| Reverse hidden word | ||
| 8 | CONFORM | Start off at 17, from having a change of heart to toe the line (7) |
| [i]CON (start off at 17) + FORM (from having a change of heart) | ||
| 14 | MINESHAFT | Network-covered home towards the back not a feature of 4, 21 (9) |
| IN (home) in MESH (network) + AFT (towards the back) | ||
| 16 | BLUE-EYED | Favourite able queen uncovered dye mixture (4-4) |
| [a]BL[e] [q]UEE[n] + anagram of DYE | ||
| 18 | COWPATS | Two PCs deployed to contain a Jersey product (7) |
| A (a) in anagram of TWO PCS | ||
| 20 | See 24 | |
| 21 | See 4 | |
| 24, 20 | TRAIN TICKETS | They’re needed to get on board with Kent artistic production (5,7) |
| Anagram of KENT ARTISTIC | ||
It happens maybe once a year but I was on fire for this one and it was my fastest solve of all the FTs this year. Clues that would normally have been unfathomable were brushed aside -calamity ? Jane just came straight into my head. Capability -why Brown of course.
Back to reality on the Monday and subsequently (sigh)
Thanks Pete and Goliath, and I’m thrilled for you Bamberger. It’s great when it all comes together.
This was enjoyable and, as you say Pete, precisely clued.
I also particularly liked COWPATS.
Good stuff.
Thanks Goliath and Pete
Time-wise this one didn’t take too long to fill in the grid – in a couple of shortish sessions. The disentanglement of some of the wordplay was a different story – there were two that didn’t get fully parsed before coming here – LEISURE (couldn’t get past the initial letter of ‘entering’, although saw the trick of multiple first letters elsewhere) and OPENCAST MINING (very clever lift and separate step to get the anagrind that was clearly above my pay grade).
A brilliant achievement to find a group of words that provided an acrostic solution for CAPABILITY with a cleverly misleading surface reading and well-disguised definition. Thought that BLUE-EYED was another excellent clue.
Love the inventiveness and twisted logic that this guy uses in putting together his crosswords – always crystal clear once its solved but quite tortuous to understand why it was so sometimes.