Another fine puzzle from Paul, with perhaps more obscure words than usual.
There were four of us solving this puzzle; myself and Timon and our wives and we still didn’t quite finish in the hour we had available. As usual, there were some great surfaces and inventive wordplay. “Expecting agony” as a definition of LABOUR PAINS was particularly good, we thought. Some of the words were new to us, such as ARCANUM and SMACKEROONIES, but in both cases the wordplay was perfectly clear.
Unless somebody can come up with a better parsing, we feel that the clue for DEMONIAC contains an error, which perhaps the editor might have spotted; after all, Cain as a murderer is not that uncommon in cryptic crosswords.
But the puzzle as a whole was very entertaining; thanks to Paul.
| Across | ||
| 1 | LABOUR PAINS | Party leader in country going to the end, expecting agony? (6,5) |
| A charade of LABOUR (the party) and (S)PAIN (country with its leader at the end). | ||
| 9 | CRINGES | Quails caught, hoops snaring tail of one (7) |
| C, E in RINGS. | ||
| 10 | ARCANUM | Secret John introduced to Lily (7) |
| CAN (or john) in ARUM. | ||
| 11 | EX-HUSBAND | Taking seconds, shun bad sex exciting partner no longer (2-7) |
| *(SHUN BAD SEX) – S(econds). | ||
| 12 | ILIAC | Somewhat evil I accept — hippy, might you say? (5) |
| Hidden in “evil I accept”. | ||
| 13 | TROG | By all conclusions, subject far too challenging for Neanderthal (4) |
| Final letters in “subjecT faR toO challenginG”. | ||
| 14 | WEATHER EYE | Keen observer, each present in river (7,3) |
| EA THERE in (River) WYE. | ||
| 16 | LIBRETTIST | Rice, perhaps, in party, model passed round with starter of tempura (10) |
| LIB, SITTER(rev), T(empura). Sir Tim Rice is the lyricist in question. | ||
| 19 | UNDO | Don’t start to provide money for nothing — it’s free (4) |
| (F)UND O. A very nice surface, I thought. | ||
| 20 | GIZMO | Where the Sphinx is lacking a flash device (5) |
| GIZ(A) MO (a short time, or a flash). | ||
| 21 | PALANQUIN | One of five children behind friend with an old people carrier (9) |
| PAL AN QUIN. | ||
| 23 | SHAVIAN | Lover of playwright shut up like a canary? (7) |
| A charade of SH AVIAN. The word refers to admirers of the playwright George Bernard Shaw. “Like a bird” might have been easier – we were misled for a time into looking for similes referring to yellow things. | ||
| 24 | CURETTE | Surgical instrument, short knife that’s carried about (7) |
| RE (about) in CUTTE(R). | ||
| 25 | DOCUMENTARY | Plaid Cymru atoned for supposedly truthful programme (11) |
| *(CYMRU ATONED). | ||
| Down | ||
| 1 | LEIGHTON BUZZARD | English town flier supporting spy novelist, end ripped out (8,7) |
| L(EN D)EIGHTON BUZZARD. At first, given the crossers we had, and knowing that Paul lives there, we were looking for Brighton something. | ||
| 2 | BOGUS | Giving ground, America it’s assumed (5) |
| BOG (the ground that gives), US. | ||
| 3 | UPSTAGE | Trump, rampant rutter, close to irresistible (7) |
| UP STAG (irresistibl)E. | ||
| 4 | PLAUDIT | Weave binding unknotted fringes getting praise (7) |
| U(nknotte)D in PLAIT. | ||
| 5 | INCLINED | Popular head of community ruled, as willing (8) |
| IN C LINED. | ||
| 6 | SUNRISE INDUSTRY | It runs and runs? Yes, I’d developed a high-tech business (7,8) |
| *(IT RUNS RUNS YES ID). Not a very familiar phrase but once we had the crossers in place it became obvious. | ||
| 7 | SCIENTOLOGIST | Cruise, say, where colonists get transported around island (13) |
| I in *(COLONISTS GET). Also an anagram of INSECTOLOGIST. The reference of course is to the well-known Scientologist, the actor Tom Cruise. | ||
| 8 | SMACKEROONIES | Requiring a slap, Archer keeps working, that is, for money (13) |
| SMACK, ON IE in EROS (the archer). We weren’t familiar with this word, which isn’t in Chambers but which is well-attested on the internet. | ||
| 15 | DEMONIAC | Wicked trial on murder victim in lift (8) |
| DEMO (a trial of sorts), CAIN (rev). The clue would make more sense if it referred to a murderer rather than a victim: Cain killed Abel. Demoniac is both an adjective and a noun, so is fine as a definition. | ||
| 17 | TOPONYM | Name of a place where cat keeps horse (7) |
| PONY in TOM. | ||
| 18 | SILICON | Ground starved of oxygen, picture another element? (7) |
| S(O)IL, ICON. | ||
| 22 | NORMA | Not entirely conventional opera (5) |
| NORMA(L). The opera crops up fairly often in crosswords. | ||
*anagram
There was a correction to the clue for 15dn in the paper this week, changing murder victim to murderer. Also, naughtily, they published a letter that gave the answer to 8dn.
Thanks bridgesong. I had the same difficulty as you with 15d but now see the clue has been corrected. I didn’t help myself by spelling it wrong anyway which meant 23a was my LOI. There’s a typo in 16a where model = SITTER.
I spent a bit of time on 7d trying to find a synonym for CREWS and had heard of smackeroos but not the extended version.
Thank you for the blog, Bridgesong. I think you’ll find that 15ac has since been amended on The Guardian to read “first murderer”. I had a problem with 25ac – have never seen “plaid” as an anagrind before. Wondered if it should read “plait” (but then of course the clue wouldn’t make sense!).
Quibbles apart, liked this very much. Some really good clues, enjoyed 1ac particularly (the clue rather than the experience, I hasten to add!).
Many thanks, Paul.
Dormouse@1: sorry, we crossed!
Thanks to Paul and bridgesong. I had to look up Rice to confirm that he was a librettist and needed help parsing UPSTAGE but I remembered PALANQUIN and SMACKEROONIES. With LEIGHTON BUZZARD I got “buzzard” from the crossers and knew of Len Deighton so finally figured out the solution. Like others I was delayed by the CAIN-victim error until I saw the correction. All in all, a challenge and much fun.
I thought this was fairly easy for Paul, although unlike Bridgesong they always take me a few days, not an hour, to complete. My old Chambers describes Plaid as patterned cloth and I thought this a clever anagram indicator, and of course making it the first word gives it a capital letter, as does Cruise and Rice in the other clues.
I’d missed the correction during the week, so thanks to all who pointed it out.
Biggles @2, I’ve corrected the typo, thanks.
Hello all!
Just to say, really sorry about my hideous Cain and Abel error. It’s kind of funny how I knew perfectly well who the murderer was, but still messed up.
Sometimes it’s hard to trace back thinking patterns.
No excuses, but I hope it didn’t cause too much anguish.
Best wishes to you all, and apologies again.
John (Paul)
A very enjoyable puzzle. Thanks to Paul and bridgesong.
Happy to work out obscure words/unknowns like 10a ARCANUM, 21a PALANQUIN and 1d LEIGHTON BUZZARD.
Took me ages to see Tim Rice as the clue to 16a, LIBRETTIST, but knew enough about Tom Cruise to get 7d SCIENTOLOGIST quite quickly.
I agree with others that 1a LABOUR PAINS was very clever; other favourites were 11a EX-HUSBAND, 23a SHAVIAN, and 24a CURETTE.
LOI was 8d, SMACKEROONIES, which took forever but which I finally got, only because I thought of smackers as a synonym for money…
Appreciate the gracious apology concerning 15d DEMONIAC from Paul/John. I filled it in early without thinking, even though I had just deconstructed the story from Genesis 4 with my religion studies class just before these Spring holidays, in a preliminary discussion about the topic “Good and Evil”. So can’t say anything other than “to err is human”. This setter remains my favourite, perhaps reinforced even further by the slight slip and the concern for his solvers.
Finished this morning after a week of fiddling about. Very enjoyable but with some tough new words. Not too happy with ‘demoniac’ which is defined as a person possessed by a demon rather than wicked,and trog. Is that short for troglodyte, in which case it lacks subtlety, but then this is Paul. I had put in tool, which Neanderthals never quite mastered…..
I enjoyed Paul’s prize. Fun surfaces. I was really pleased to get LEIGHTON BUZZARD from wordplay and google.
I tend to agree with JuneG @ 3 about ‘plaid’ as an anagram indicator. But the fodder in 25 was such a wonderful discovery and the surface read beautifully, so I’m happy not to quibble … much.
Small amendment to solution for 21 PALANQUIN – full definition should be old people carrier.
Thanks for dropping in, Paul. I don’t know if you’ve seen the Steve Martin film “The Man with Two Brains,” which features Merv Griffin, the American TV host, playing himself as “the elevator killer” but it took me so long to get it out of my head that when I finally twigged the Cain allusion I didn’t even spot the lapsus. I recommend the film, by the way, if only for the difficult drunk-driving test.
Thank you Paul and bridgesong.
I had no real problem with 15d, with the word “trial” in the clue I assumed that CAIN was the victim of the murder he had committed since he could not bear his punishment. The clue I found the hardest was that for UNDO, my favourite after I managed to solve it. WEATHER EYE and SMACKEROONIES were both new to me.
A great puzzle except for the obvious error.
Unless somebody can come up with a better parsing, we feel that the clue for DEMONIAC contains an error, which perhaps the editor might have spotted; after all, Cain as a murderer is not that uncommon in cryptic crosswords.
Very ironic but no chance 😉
Managed all except 19 across by the end of the week. Even guessed smackeroonies correctly. Thanks Paul for setting an achievable puzzle.
Thanks to Paul and
I found this most enjoyable, though 17D TOPONYM and 23A SHAVIAN were beyond me.
I did not struggle with 15D DEMONIAC, obviously I have lower standards than most here !
Favourite probably 11A EX-HUSBAND, not necessarily hard to get or clever, but the surface reading + solution is basically be a synopsis of a novel (say Anna Karenina or Wuthering Heights) , so it is a kind of miniature work of art.
not quite sure what happened there
I put DEMONAIC in without a qualm originally;it was only later that I saw the error. I tried to rationalize the clue, rather like Cookie did,but I couldn’t convince myself. I did enjoy the puzzle though. SMACKEROONIES took me a while but SCIENTOLOGIST just leapt off the page. I think my favorite was SHAVIAN.
Thanks Paul.
I’m another who happily put in Demoniac having spotted Cain in there, except that I never gave it a thought until I came here. It’s nice to see that nobody’s perfect. I got SMACKEROONIES eventually, and was surprised to find it wasn’t in Chambers, since it’s certainly a word I know from somewhere. Thanks Paul, both for a puzzle at a level I felt comfortable with and for dropping in. And thanks Bridgesong, who did know Cain from Abel…
As others have said, very entertaining. I didn’t get to try it until after the correction to 15d, so I avoided that problem. I’m not sure whether I’d come across SMACKEROONIES before, but SMACK/SMACKERS seemed to fit both “slap” and “money” so I worked at it until the wordplay clicked. Favourites included LABOUR PAINS and UPSTAGE.
Thanks, Paul and bridgesong.
All very entertaining as we have come to expect from Paul. LEIGHTON BUZZARD was probably my favourite. SMACKEROONIES took me a while too but I enjoyed that one.
Thanks to Paul (particularly for admitting the mistake) and bridgesong