The puzzle may be found at https://www.theguardian.com/crosswords/cryptic/27051.
Not too difficult a puzzle, which was just as well as it came on top of a sumptuous Thanksgiving dinner. I was also happy to have help from someone who was new to cryptics, but very quick on the uptake.
| Across | ||
| 1 | STATESMANSHIP | Nicholas Serota’s on board, displaying quality desirable in 13 (13) |
| An envelope (‘on board’ for IN SHIP, with the IN giving the envelope) of TATE‘S MAN’S (‘Nicholas Serota’s’, director of the Tate Galleries) in SHIP. | ||
| 10 | INANIMATE | 1 dull 7 outside, devoid of life (9) |
| An envelope (‘outside’) of 1 (‘one’) plus MAT (or matt, ‘dull’) in INANE (answer to ‘7’ down). | ||
| 11 | AWAKE | Conscious of a send-off (5) |
| A charade of ‘a’ plus WAKE (‘send-off’ at a funeral). | ||
| 12 | HIKER | One grand received by female rambler (5) |
| An envelope (‘received by’) of i (‘one’) plus K (1000, ‘grand’) in HER (‘female’). | ||
| 13 | PRESIDENT | Leader‘s gift including driving licence, say (9) |
| An envelope of ID (‘driving licence, say’) in PRESENT (‘gift’). | ||
| 14 | STENCIL | Artist’s guide confused clients (7) |
| An anagram (‘confused’) of ‘clients’. | ||
| 16 | DATABLE | Of a certain age, but worth going out with? (7) |
| Double definition. | ||
| 18 | BUSKING | Go downhill, dividing illicit payment for performing illicitly (7) |
| An envelope (‘dividing’) of SKI (‘go downhill’) in BUNG (bribe, ‘illicit payment’). | ||
| 20 | PUCCINI | Composer turning up volume in Italy (7) |
| A charade of PU, a reversal (‘turning’) of ‘up’ plus CC (cubic centimetre, ‘volume’) plus ‘in’ plus I (‘Italy’). | ||
| 21 | DEPUTISED | Stood in, backing exercise in action (9) |
| An envelope (‘in’) if PUTIS, a reversal (‘backing’) of SIT UP (‘excercise’ – for once not PE) in DEED (‘action’). | ||
| 23 | SPROG | Maybe son gets Grand Old Party (Republican) revived (5) |
| It seems that ‘son’ is doing double duty: it looks to me like an anagram (‘revived’) of S (‘son’) plus GOP (‘Grand Old Party’) plus R (‘Republican’). | ||
| 24 | EAGLE | Bird decapitated dog (5) |
| A subtraction: [b]EAGLE (‘dog’) minus its first letter (‘decapitated’). | ||
| 25 | ALLOTROPE | Parcel out executioner’s equipment: it comes in various forms (9) |
| A charade of ALLOT (‘parcel out’) plus ROPE (‘executioner’s equipment’). | ||
| 26 | INSUBORDINATE | Disregarding instructions, excessive loan’s accepted (13) |
| An envelope (‘accepted’) of SUB (‘loan’) in INORDINATE (‘excessive’). | ||
| Down | ||
| 2 | THANKLESS | In sh*t, rolled joints, getting no appreciation (9) |
| An envelope (‘in) of ANKLES (‘joints’) in THS, an anagram (‘rolled’) of ‘sh*t’. | ||
| 3 | TRIER | She does her best in German city (5) |
| Double definition; Shed channeling Arachne? | ||
| 4 | SCALPEL | Places left in a mess by surgical instrument (7) |
| An anagram of ‘places’ plus L (‘left’). | ||
| 5 | AXE-HEAD | Old flame on the rebound splits leading part of weapon (3-4) |
| An envelope (‘splits’) of XE, a reversal (‘on the rebound’) of EX (‘old flame’) in AHEAD (‘leading’). | ||
| 6 | STATISTIC | Still maintaining first figure (9) |
| An envelope (‘maintaining’) of IST (‘first’) in STATIC (‘still’). | ||
| 7 | INANE | Some complain an examiner’s stupid (5) |
| Hidden answer (‘some’) in ‘complaIN AN Examiner’. | ||
| 8 | HIGHEST BIDDER | 8 hot brides died suspiciously — she gets the lot (7,6) |
| A anagram (‘suspiciously’) of EIGHT (‘8’) plus H (‘hot’) plus ‘brides’ plus D (‘died’). Pushing the boundaries of derived anagrams. | ||
| 9 | GET THE GIGGLES | Composing Thistle with Two Eggs, crack up (3,3,7) |
| An anagram (‘composing’) of ‘thistle’ plus ‘egg’ plus ‘egg’ (‘two eggs’). | ||
| 15 | COINTREAU | Drink, for little money, source of true river water in France (9) |
| A charade of COIN (‘little money’) plus T (‘source of True’) plus R (‘river’) plus EAU (‘water in France’). | ||
| 17 | BRIERROOT | Woody matter in cheese getting bishop unduly upset (5-4) |
| A charade of BRIE (‘cheese’) plus RR (Right Reverend, ‘bishop’) plus OOT, a reversal (‘upset’ in a down light) of TOO (‘unduly’). | ||
| 19 | GESTAPO | Leave, receiving directions to bug secret service (7) |
| An envelope (‘receiving’) of E S (‘directions’) plus TAP (‘bug’) in GO (‘leave’). | ||
| 20 | PEDDLED | After gym, theologian was first to get flogged (7) |
| A charade of PE (‘gym’) plus DD (‘theologian’) plus LED (‘was first’). | ||
| 22 | PAGAN | Heathen page once more dropping one (5) |
| A charade of P (‘page’) plus AGA[i]N (‘once more’) without the I (‘dropping one’). | ||
| 23 | SATIN | Staged demonstration in silk (5) |
| A charade of SAT IN (‘staged demonstration’). | ||
Happy Thanksgiving to you too. I missed the Thursday puzzle because I was too busy Thanksgiving-ing. But this was here once all the family stuff was over; I was happy it solved quickly.
This contained more answers that involved “put it in from the definition, then work out how the clue worked” than usual for me.
I can imagine the clue for SPROG eluding non-Americans a bit. I also liked how there were several uses of “she” for generic people (HIGHEST BIDDER, TRIER); as you say, very Arachne-like.
Liked it but thought 3d could have been “One does one’s best in German city?
And is busking illegal-and if so where?
Thanks Shed and PeterO
Quite quick. Favourites were PUCCINI and STATISTIC. I too raised an eyebrow at the “son” doing double duty in SPROG.
I think that Serota’s is TATE’S MAN’S rather than TATE MAN’S, or you are missing an S, PETER.
A very friendly and enjoyable Shed so thank you to him and to PeterO for the explanations
I particularly liked the references to ‘she’ – makes a nice change. I’m still waiting for a setter to recognise that we ladies can be campanologists too.
Brier is usually spelt briar
As so often, what crypticsue said. [I think two thirds of the campanologists at my church are female.]
Thank you, PeterO, and happy Thanksgiving to all our Cousins.
With STATESMANSHIP & PRESIDENT first ones in, I was sure we were in for more trumpery but we were spared.
Pretty sure Muffin’s right re the errant S at 1a and, although I admired the construction of the clue, I too raised an eyebrow at the illegality or otherwise of BUSKING. (I used to live near Wimbledon and my wife-to-be lived at Edgware – it would take me about an hour and a half to raise the fare money busking at the tube station, and I was frequently moved on by the authorities!).
Nearer the easy end of this setter’s spectrum I thought, but no less enjoyable for that.
Nice weekend, all.
Ha! This is a red-letter day for me – my first ever completed Guardian crossword with no electronic help (unless you count checking BRIER as an alternative to BRIAR. And the comments so far tell me it was an easy one! Presumably, that’s why I managed it but I’m chuffed at least.
Some very clever and elegant answers here: INANIMATE, PRESIDENT, COINTREAU and GESTAPO particularly appealed but COTD, for me, is shared between PUCCINI (I’m never certain about what constitutes an &lit but feel this probably does) and DEPUTISE with a beautiful use of ‘sit up’.
Not 100% sure I like the use of ‘mat’ instead of ‘matt’ for dull but that’s probably me being very English.
And I, too, liked the use of ‘she’ for the generic person. As a male, it makes me realise the unconscious bias in so many puzzles in that I found myself wondering if ‘she’ implied something in particular. Whereas why should it?
Thanks both,
Now I can get on with the day. Moi Aussi with Moi@6. I hadn’t consciously seen ‘brier’ for ‘briar’ before, but OED is happy with it and tells me it comes from the wood of a S European heather rather than a bramble.
Thanks Peter O and Shed. A google-free zone except for 1 across.
When will we ever have no comments when someone uses ‘she’ and not ‘he’?
Whether busking is illegal depends on where you live I suppose, but I did learn a meaning of bung which I didn’t know before.
No objections to 8D. Pretty standard cryptic clues for hot and died and not uncommon I thought to include in an anagram. Liked the anagrind and def.
Subbed out on DEPUTISED. Hung up on the (wrong) exercise backing, ie a reversal of PE, and couldn’t then parse the rest, although the def was pretty transparent. Great misdirection if it was intentional. Will give Shed credit for that.
Agree that son must be doing double duty in SPROG,but again, I don’t have any objections.
Don’t know about the surface in 9D. Thistle and Two Eggs? Got the fodder, but is there an allusion to something I’ve never heard of? Coat of arms? Recipe?
And does MAT = MATTE? correctly, or corruptly?
Congrats Mark@8! I did need google/wordgadget for 1A.
Echo some of your queries.
Well done Mark! When I said it was quite quick, I didn’t mean it was a doddle – several challenging clues here.
I stared at this for a bit, thinking it was rather tough, but saw GET THE GIGGLES fairly quickly and then it all worked out. Favourites were PUCCINI, HIGHEST BIDDER (I don’t really see why PeterO says it’s pushing the boundaries of derived anagrams – seems straightforward to me) and PEDDLED. Couldn’t parse DEPUTISED initially, thinking that the ‘exercise’ was PE rather than SITUP. Many thanks to Shed and PeterO.
Thanks paddymelon@11 and muffin@12.
paddymelon – your query re the surface in 9d made me smile. Recipe indeed? And then the curiosity got the better of me and I googled it. Believe it or not there’s a recipe from ancient Pompeii for thistles in egg sauce!!! But I cannot – just cannot – believe that was in Shed’s mind…..
Mark@14. I hadn’t looked up Thistle and Eggs, (probably the name of a pub) but now you’ve got me intrigued. I wouldn’t put it past Shed. One of his other jobs is transcribing some obscure and ancient stuff, only not as far back as Pompeii. Nothing wrong with Thistle and Eggs, all the vitamins you could want.
paddymelon@10 I’ve been pondering your other (unlikely) suggestion of a coat of arms. Presumably the motto would have to be ‘A Thorn Between Two Roes’?
Thank you Shed and PeterO.
Great fun since I was caught out with PEDDLED for flogged, the connection with “sell” did not come to my mind and I wanted the answer to be PADDLED, and I was also fooled for a while by SIT UP in DEPUTISED.
Mark @8
Congratulations! I will admit that I used electronic aids in a couple of places here – straight out of the gate, I had not come across Nicholas Serota.
BRIER may refer to either of two plants: the wild rose (more commonly BRIAR, I think), and a heath. A brier pipe is made from BRIERROOT in the latter sense; this I know from having confused the two on University Challenge.
The thistle recipe in 9D may not be as outlandish as it sounds – the globe artichoke is a kind of thistle.
In reference to 10A INANIMATE, Chambers lists MAT as the primary spelling, with matt and matte as variants.
I would describe 20A PUCCINI as a semi-&lit rather than an &lit (except that I generally sidestep the whole question by saying that the clue has an extended definition); ‘composer’ does not contribute to the wordplay. Incidentally, I first came up with PUCCINI here thinking that the ‘turning up volume’ was CUP reversed, which leaves the second C hanging.
muffin @3
Yes indeed it is TATE’S MAN’S in 1A STATESMANSHIP, now corrected. Blame it in the blueberry-apple pie and Doisy Daëne ’83.
All pretty straightforward but very neat and stylish.
Thanks to Shed and PeterO
Doisy-Daene, Peter? I’m jealous, though I suppose it’s a similar occasion to what is generally our only Sauternes of the year – after Christmas dinner.
Peter @8. I had the volume as C-Cup until I saw the blog. Just shows how my mind works. We don’t see She’d often enough these days. Thanks all.
Straightforward lunchtime fare.Brierroot was last in as we didn’t know there were alternative spellings. I get the distinct feeling that you can spell anything more or less any way and someone will find it somewhere. BTW my good lady Bev was a bellringer (campanologist is too long to write). Thanks to everyone.
With regards to the legality of busking, in many/most places it is regulated–certain locations forbidden for safety reasons, or you need a license, or some such–and thus it is often done illegally.
mrpenney @23, in Switzerland you have to pass an audition to get a licence to busk.
Thanks to Shed and PeterO. Very enjoyable. I got STATESMANSHIP after getting PRESIDENT without knowing N. Serota’s link to the Tate and got BUSKING (from signs in the tube) though I had had forgotten bung could mean bribe (I had encountered that in previous puzzles). BRIERROOT was new to me though decipherable from the clues.
Several references to campanology today. Pedantic curiosity: I was once advised – by a church bellringer – that campanologists and bellringers are not the same. There are clearly some formidable brains and linguistic experts contributing to this site: does anyone have a definitive opinion or is it a grey area!
I had to google Nicholas Serota too. Sometimes the name is just clue fodder, like Eden Hazard recently — I didn’t look him up and didn’t need to — and sometimes,as now, you actually have to know who the person is or what he does.
Cookie @17 — I tried to get PADDLED in too, until I thought about flog meaning sell (British only, I think).
I got about half of it done, most of the left until I was stuck and went to sleep. This morning HIGHEST BIDDER came into place, once I gave up on “hot” and just put in H and D for Died. From that, everything else slowly inched across the puzzle, and I filled in GET THE GIGGLES and INSUBORDINATE — LOI didn’t get in until I had every one of the checkers.
Mark@26 – I think that campanologists are simply bellringers with an all-round education.
. . . or bellringers with bells on, maybe?
A pleasant puzzle with much to appreciate in the clues – and not too difficult.
I liked 20a PUCCINI most of all, with the diversionary phrase ‘turning up the volume’. 8d GET THE GIGGLES was also good fun, in which the anagram, as PeterO says, pushes the boundaries. And 17d BRIER-ROOT was neat, with Bishop leading to ‘RR’ and not ‘B’ (which I had already).
Thanks to Shed and PeterO.
Mark @26
I thought ‘bellringers’ was the more general term, whereas ‘campanologists’ are bellringers who also perform change-ringing and suchlike. I may be making a similar point to drofle’s.
A nice puzzle for a Friday evening. It went in quite smoothly until the SE corner, which took a while. I’d never heard of BRIER ROOT, so that didn’t help.
I’d quibble with the definition of ALLOTROPE. An allotrope is one of the various forms, not something that comes in various forms, e.g. charcoal, graphite, and diamond are allotropes of carbon.
Thanks to Shed and PeterO.
(Re: ALLOTROPE, I actually think that “Parcel out executioner’s equipment in one of various forms” is actually a better surface, as well as being more correct.)
appino @31
Yes, I always had difficulty teaching students what “allotropy” and “allotrope” meant. Technically, though, charcoal is graphite, though not as well-formed crystals; the third allotrope of carbon is buckminsterfullerene (and its various relatives, such as C70).
I read 1 across as ‘Tate’s man’ in ss (for on board), displaying ‘hip’, a desirable quality, making ‘statesmanship’. Am I wrong?
spikegrain, I was thinking of that too.
The problem is, though, that the definition will then be only ’13’ i.e. ‘president’.
Something that is, I think, not adequate.
Therefore what others said above (but what the blog does not reflect (yet)) is actually what it is.
A very nice puzzle, though mostly easier than I expect from Shed. I did have trouble with STATESMANSHIP, getting TATE’S MAN but not twigging that “on board” meant put it with the apostrophe S inside S—HIP. Instead I had it inside SS (like spikegrain @34) and wondered what to do with the -HIP. I had PADDLED until I did Check All, then couldn’t understand why I hadn’t realised it had to be PEDDLED to use “gym”. SPROG seemed odd to me, but “son” had to be doing double duty.
Thanks, Shed and PeterO.
I used to give up with this compiler years ago but found this very gentle.
crypticsue @ 4 and Eileen @ 6: half our band of ringers are female.
At 35, I said:
“Therefore what others said above (but what the blog does not reflect (yet)) is actually what it is”
The blog, however, does exactly reflect what it is.
The capitalisation of IN (twice) was what confused me and sent me the wrong way.
Mea culpa & Apologies to PeterO.