Unusually, there was no Paul puzzle in Guardian last week, so here he is early on to compensate – maybe we’ll see him on Saturday as well.
I found this one a bit unsatisfactory, with a couple of rather weak clues, and what seems like a mistake at 2d, but with some fun as well; thanks to Paul. I couldn’t parse 12a, so over to you (now explained, thanks to Tom).
| Across | ||||||||
| 1. | WALRUS MOUSTACHE | Without love, beast has to hurt, so droop faced? (6,9) O in WALRUS MUST ACHE – rather weak clueing of the “walrus” part (though fortunately the expression is well known) and the definition doesn’t indicate a noun phrase |
||||||
| 9. | LOOFAHS | Dessert knocked over, drunk has dried fruit (7) FOOL< + ASH* – loofahs are made from the dried fibrous “skeleton” of a type of gourd |
||||||
| 10. | ADMIRER | Male ensnared by a more dreadful lover (7) M in A DIRER |
||||||
| 11. | SPA | Springboks not quite heard? (3) My last one in – it’s almost all of SPAR (to box – sounds like “boks”), with a lift-and-separate definition |
||||||
| 12. | A BIT OF ROUGH | Suggestion of a fit body, not half! Lady Chatterley’s Lover, possibly? (1,3,2,5) Lady C’s lover was Mellors, the gamekeeper, so he was her bit of rough, but I don’t understand the rest – A BIT OF = suggestion, ROUGH = half of “a fit body”? Thanks to Tom – A FIT BO[dy] is an anagram (“rough”) of A BIT OF |
||||||
| 13. | ADDRESSING | Dealing with commercial arrangement (10) AD + DRESSING |
||||||
| 15. | PERM | Combination locks, late ’70s style? (4) Double definition – short for “permutation” (which, at least to mathematicians, isn’t the same as a combination, bur not far off), and the hairstyle (not just from the late 70s, but perhaps particularly associated with footballers at the time) |
||||||
| 20. | LEAD PENCIL | Comic called in about exercise for writer (4,6) PE (exercise) in (CALLED IN)* |
||||||
| 23. | CUT AND PASTE | Dante acts up, spoiling writer’s moving technique (3,3,5) (DANTE ACTS UP)* – writers might use it to move text around |
||||||
| 25. | ALI | He fought a wild animal — that’s not on (3) A LI[on] – referring to the boxer Muhammad Ali, of course |
||||||
| 26. | PAK CHOI | Asian leaves house in mid-Sicily after Corleone initially quits mob (3,4) PACK (mob) less C[orleone) + HO in [Si]CI[ly] – Pake choi is also known as Chinese cabbage, hence “Asian leaves” |
||||||
| 27. | EASTERN | One Direction‘s festival season’s ending (7) EASTER + N |
||||||
| 28. | DON’T MAKE ME LAUGH | I must remain serious, you’re joking! (4,4,2,5) Somewhere between a crytpic and double definition – I wasn’t very impressed by this one |
||||||
| Down | ||||||||
| 1,18. | WALLS HAVE EARS | No one remaining hairy in sports? Be careful what you say! (5,4,4) ALL SHAVE in WEARS (sports, as in “sports a moustache”). I think of this as a WW2 slogan, but it goes back a long way, and (at least according to this) may have come into English via a Hebrew expression |
||||||
| 2. | LEOTARD | One of ten eaten up by fat cat (7) A mistake here, I think – the online solution gives LEOTARD here – reverse of TOE (one of ten) in LARD, but the definition surely must be of LEOPARD. Is there an editor in the house? |
||||||
| 3. | UNAWARES | Without knowing, white unicorn’s heading up to god (8) Reverse of WAN U[nicorn] + ARES (Greek god of war) |
||||||
| 4. | MASAI | Tongue a degree pronounced, cut (5) MA + SAI[D] |
||||||
| 5. | UNADORNED | A round end is round, plain and simple (9) (A ROUND END)* |
||||||
| 6. | TIMBRE | Tone with which doctor plugs drain (6) MB in TIRE (to drain) |
||||||
| 7. | CAROUSE | Party with two runners? (7) Two types of “runner”: CAR (as the the used-car salesman’s “good runner”) + [river] OUSE |
||||||
| 8. | EARTH | Our home is a hole in the ground (5) Double definition – planet and fox’s lair |
||||||
| 14. | SHEEP TICK | Sucker has wee in lift during comedy routine (5,4) Reverse of PEE (= wee) in SHTICK |
||||||
| 16. | MILLIONTH | One in twelve boxes unsatisfactory, one tiny part (9) ILL I in MONTH (one of 12) |
||||||
| 17. | REVERSAL | Minister and earls surprisingly backing movement (8) REV[erend] + EARLS* |
||||||
| 19. | RETAKEN | Queen binds princess up, then knight captured again (7) KATE [Middleton, Duchess of Cambridge] in ER, reversed + N (knight in chess) |
||||||
| 21. | CHATEAU | Similar drinks brought together with classy French wine (7) CHA + TEA (similar drinks) + U (classy) – simple, but I liked it |
||||||
| 22. | ANTHEM | Musical creation of Sullivan, The Mikado (6) Hidden in sullivAN, THE Mikado |
||||||
| 23. | CUPID | By which one might recognise a prize archer? (5) It’s the ID of a CUP, or CUP ID |
||||||
| 24. | STEAM | Power company after ultimate in riches (5) [riche]S + TEAM |
||||||
Thanks Paul and Andrew
I’m relieved that you were confused by LEOTARD too, Andrew. I put LEOPARD, and assumed there was some connection I didn’t know between POE and ADMIRER (the solution to clue 10). I was alerted by the Guardian site that this wasn’t the correct answer.
I didn’t really solve SPA – I had guessed and checked K and E for the middle letter before finding that it was P – but when the penny dropped on the parsing, it became my favourite clue.
I raised an eyebrow at “late ’70s style” for PERM too. Also, although named chateaux are often used to stand for the wines they produce, I don’t think CHATEAU by itself can possibly mean “wine”.
Thanks Andrew and Paul. I really struggled with this one, and was consoled to see you had some quibbles too.
I think 12A parses: (A FIT BO)* (half of body removed), with ‘suggestion’ indicating that we supply the anagrind.
Last one in: 11a. Far too elaborate for me, or maybe I’m just slow today.
Thanks Tom, I think that explains 12a.
My fault entirely re 2dn. A misfiring of the brain, evidently.
Do accept my apologies.
Have a great day.
All best,
John (Paul)
A good workout today – a few needed digging out but I really enjoyed it! I had to ‘reveal’ 11 which turned out to be a great clue. So thanks to Andrew for the blog and Paul for dropping by.
George (Ringo)
Many thanks to Andrew and Paul. Enjoyed the playtex clue at 11a.
Also experienced some confusion with 2d. But with a bit of googling I (almost) convinced myself that a cat is a type of leotard – as in a cat suit.
Kudos to Paul for acknowledging the mistake in 2d. However 15a doesn’t work for me. I don’t know any mathematician who talks about perm rather than permutation (they wouldn’t use either if they meant combination), and the hairstyle is much more of the 60’s in my recollection.
@poc
For PERM, I was taken back to the Zetters football pools coupon (perm any two from five)which dovetails quite nicely with the contemporary Kevin Keegan Barnet.
In 19d, I’m not really into Debrett’s but Kate’s a duchess I believe, not a princess
But it can mean a posh wine!
baerchen – I believe she is a princess by virtue of being the wife of a prince. She has the title “Her Royal Highness”.
@Andrew
I thought she is a Royal Duchess which beats a full house but I wouldn’t put my whole stash on it. Sorry to raise such a stultifyingly boring topic!
Royalty discussion aside, I found the first three quarters of this puzzle immensely enjoyable.
Then the NW totally flummoxed me.
I cannot blame the setter as I bunged in LEOPARD at 2d having seen “lard” for “fat” and a leopard is clearly a cat, so I thought, hang the rest of the parsing. So that meant I had some crossers. But I could not see LOOFAHS at 9a for the life of me. So naturally I missed 1d 18a WALLS HAVE EARS. Pity, as this was a fun clue. So naturally I did not get 18a SPA, the clue for which I really disliked once I saw the correct answer and explanation on the blog. But I think I was just grumpy at missing those last few!
Thanks to Paul, Andrew and other forum participants.
Today’s Britishism is actually Chinese. In America, we transliterate the vegetable as “bok choy.” I also don’t know PERM as short for “permutation,” so I’m assuming that’s a Britishism too.
I agree with many of the comments above. I cheated on SPA, and still didn’t understand it until I came here.
PS My Mum was definitely having her hair permed in the 60s by one of our neighbours, as I remember the smell of the perm solution and the rollers! So like poc@7, I also hesitated to fill this in as something to do with the late 70s. Could have handled “punk” and I also tried to remember if the “Afro” (also around in the 60s) lasted that long.
Thank you Paul and Andrew, and also Tom @2.
I enjoyed this crossword and, apart from SPA and A BIT OF ROUGH, had fun trying to parse LEOTARD – cats certainly are trapeze artists, here is a kitten training in her little marmalade body suit…
Thanks Paul; a crossword of two halves – I solved the bottom half but took much longer to figure out the top, especially the NW quadrant.
Thanks Andrew, especially for the parsing of SPA, which escaped me. I put in LEOPARD at first although it didn’t seem to parse; thanks to Paul for popping by and confessing.
Some rather strained surfaces but some good clues. I thought ANTHEM was well hidden, and I liked A BIT OF ROUGH and WALLS HAVE EARS.
Julie in Australia @14, permanent waving for women goes back to the beginning of the 20th century, but men used it in the ’70s, and since last year it seems to be making a comeback.
Thanks Paul and Andrew. I enjoyed this but overall it did feel somewhat scrappy. I don’t blame Paul, I blame the editor. Surely in such a role he should be making his presence felt online. If not here then at least on the paper’s own site.
Phew! A struggle today from start to finish and needed some assistance to get there. I always find Paul a challenge but I was definitely not on his wavelength this time.
I’m with those who rate SPA as a good clue – once it’s been explained. I didn’t get it – even after giving up and pressing ‘reveal’ on the web version. I thought UNAWARES, CAROUSE, UNADORNED and SHEEP TICK were all clever.
I did not like PERM which seems wrong twice over – our resident mathematicians have already pointed out the possible flaw in terminology and I think the 1970’s reference was decidedly misleading: afros, shags, wedges, feathering, Purdeys and even the punk styles would all have deserved the 70’s tag but I’m not so sure about perms. I also share the reservations already expressed above about CHATEAU. And – I’m being a bit of a moaner today – I only got WALRUS from the checkers and can’t see how I’d get there from the clue.
Thanks to Paul and Andrew for the explanations (and Tom for parsing 12 ac)
The fact that there are ten of both toes and Popes Leo added to my confusion, and perhaps Paul’s too.
I’m another who was fooled by 2d and failed to parse 11a. Like Robi @16 I found the southern half a lot easier than the northern one but with the two exceptions already mentioned I eventually prevailed. Thanks to Paul and Andrew
Julie in Oz @12 – I also struggled with the NW corner, and it took my Japanese wife to provide the WALRUS to add to the MOUSTACHE (her first ever crossword clue solution). But it was overall a great puzzle (leotard/leopard excepted); my favourites were PAK CHOI, ALI, CUPID and LOOFAHS. Many thanks to Paul and Andrew.
Spa defeated me and I could have stared all day at 9ac and wouldn’t have got it. Decent puzzle though.
I remember “curly perms” were all the rage in the late 70s and the expression “perms and coms” is a common enough expression for me not to worry about the distinction between them.
I always fail to parse back-to-front clues like 12, so thanks for the blog Andrew and thanks to Paul.
Thanks to Paul for the apology. Mostly quite enjoyable and it did get easier once a few crossers were in place, though a few of them were tricky to parse
Thanks to Paul and Andrew
Many thanks to Andrew and also to John for dropping in with his mea culpa re LEO(T/P)ARD.
I enjoyed this on the whole and SPA and CAROUSE in particular. Not wild about PERM for the reasons others have given but it did not spoil the puzzle in any way.
Thank you Pope John/Paul.
Nice week, all.
The earliest reference in the OED to ‘Walls have ears’ is to Thomas Shelton 1612-20. I think it unlikely therefore that it comes from a Hebrew source. Shakespeare has Queen Elizabeth in Rich III say the Duchess of York of the young Duke of York, ‘pitchers have ears’ meaning ‘Be careful what you say.’
A mixed bag today. I liked LOOFAHS (and, via Wiki, learned something too), A BIT OF ROUGH and CHATEAU best. Not keen on PERM, which I remember as more 60s than 70s, or WALRUS MOUSTACHE (loose definition).
With EARTH, I was desperately trying to understand why AR should be a hole as I misread “the ground” as an anagram of THE, thus completely missing the obvious. Shame about LEOTARD. I came here to find out why Edgar Allan Poe was “one of ten”!
Sasquach@20 Popes Leo XI, XII and XIII might be a little chagrined.
Thanks to Paul and Andrew. I had the same problems already mentioned with SPA and PERM, and I correctly parsed LEOTARD and assumed I was missing some connection to a cat (other than a Halloween costume supplied by Google). I needed help parsing several items (e.g., A BIT OF ROUGH), but enjoyed the process.
@ Phitonelly, 28. Mea maxima culpa, but that’s what they get for lack of originality. Some people’s gloria transits faster than others.
2d could be a refererence to cat suit ?
A bit of rough is a common phrase in our original neck of the woods. We just hung back until the crossers went in. My favourite was 1d while my wife’s was 23d. We always enjoy Paul and he rarely lets us down.
Thanks to everyone.
Got the idea about ‘one in ten/twelve’, but made the mistake of INCH for one in twelve rather than MONTH, which brought me to a halt.
winko @31
Paul popped in earlier to admit that he had just made a mistake.
The most common PERM (betting jargon) on the pools, for example, is perm 8 from 10 which is
10! / ((10 – 8)! x 8!) = 45
Mathematicians will immediately see that this is a combination C(10,8), not a permutation. Hence common usage once again corrupts and thereby confuses precise meanings, but it does mean that the clue works because, much as I hate it, common mistakes take precedence in crossword land.
The comment “not far off” should be seen as meaning the calculations are related, not that the answers are not far off, because P(10,8) is 1814400.
Thanks both,
I usually find Paul’s puzzles entertaining and testing but doable over a couple of sessions. This was no exception. Re 15ac, ‘perm’ is certainly a verb as in ‘perm any two from three’. In the football pools context what were referred to as permutations, were in fact combinations as the order of selection didn’t matter. My old Mum (GRHS) used to talk of ‘perms and combs’ so ‘perm’ also seems to be an acceptable abbreviation for permutation. Finally, in mathematics, a permutation is a special kind of combination. All in all, I’m with Paul on 15ac.
Paul is my favourite setter and I’m not usually disappointed by his puzzles, but this wasn’t up to scratch and I didn’t enjoy it much. I didn’t solve SPA,didn’t like CHATEAU or PERM and then there was LEOPARD/LEOTARD-I went for the former. I’m not saying that all of it was awful,of course,but I’ve become accustomed to better from Paul.
Maybe its because I don’t have time to spend all day on crosswords these days but I got impatient and annoyed with this because there were too many I couldn’t parse (some already mentioned by others) even after cheating.
I usually enjoy Paul’s offerings but not today I afraid..
I hadn’t associated “The walls have ears” with WWII particularly — that was the time for “loose lips sink ships.” But John Fielding @ 27 — what did Queen Elizabeth say?
A Prince or Princess can also be a duke or duchess and often is. Prince Philip is the Duke of Edinburgh.
I thought 2d had to be LEOPARD, and I just bunged it in and pressed on. That didn’t bother me, even though I suspected something was wrong, but I did find some clues disappointing (1a, 12a and 15a) in a crossword otherwise replete with some wonderful clueing.
I got 11a SPA eventually (given S–A!) and thought it one of the best.
Many thanks to Paul and Andrew.
I thought this was one of the toughest puzzles to come along in a while. I had to give up on 11a and didn’t understand the parsing of a few more until I came here (although 2d had been fixed by the time I got to the puzzle). On the other hand, for perhaps the first time in my life I managed to understand the “reverse clue” 12a, so I had a welcome moment of chuffedness.
I can confirm mrpenney’s statement: the leafy green is generally known as “bok choi” in the US. Presumably it’s the same Chinese transliteration issue that changed Peking to Beijing.
@phitonelly: I wrestled with the same conundrum at 8d.
As often with Paul, it seemed quite impenetrable at first, but gradually yielded.
Thanks to him and Andrew
[muffin @1, as regards CHATEAU, much more likely to be water from the water tower (château d’eau).]
Springboks not quite heard … boks not quite would be bok, which isn’t a homonym for box. I should think “Springboks heard” would work better.
A minor typo: in 9 across the anagram is of HAS of course, not ASH.
Always a pleasure to solve a Paul puzzle.
I do not comment very often to his efforts as his clueing is normally safe and sound.
However, today we had PERM defined by ‘Combination’.
Not ideal as others have said but perhaps OK.
Also, I think that just “Combination lock?” would have been a better clue.
It is always annoying to fail on just one clue, something that – for us – more applies to a Rufus puzzle than to a Paul.
Like many others we didn’t see SPA (11ac), together with ‘sea’ and ‘ska’ the only reasonable options.
Now that everything’s explained it is a good clue but with a device that’s not really part of Paul’s book of crosswords.
Paul going Philistine?
I wouldn’t have written this comment if Valentine @44 had not made a valid point.
At one point we just had ??A and thought there might be some springboks called NIA (homophone of ‘near’).
Yes, Valentine, I think you are right about the incorrect order of things here.
A late contribution, mainly because this took so long to solve. I echo the comments of Ted @41 and I found this very tough. I thought PERM and SPA were fair enough, but hard, and there were plenty of other difficult ones including CAROUSE and SHEEP TICK. I spent ages on PAK CHOI, which is known as ‘bok choi’ here as well. Pity about LEOPARD, but “it happens”, and thanks to Paul for taking the trouble to drop in and for admitting the boo-boo.
Thanks also to Andrew.
I was unable to parse 8d, 19d, 2d and I failed to solve 11a and 1/18.
My favourite was CUT AND PASTE.
Thanks Paul and Andrew
Somewhat surprised by the faintness of praise. For me, this was great fun (along with the recent Tramp two of the best of January’s offerings). The impossible-to-parse LEOPARD apart (and one never minds the odd mistake from a practitioner performing at the top of his game – that’s why we have editors, n’est ce pas?!) this was a joy from start to finish. In terms of both construction and surface creativity A BIT OF ROUGH and PAK CHOI were delightful (and, unlike others, SPA made me smile). This Halpern guy really is special…. Just like the recent Tramp this was not Paul at his very best but still so enjoyable that the puzzle, for me at any rate, shows why the Guardian crosswords can twinkle more brightly than others in the cruciverbal firmament!
Thanks again, Paul – and to Andrew for his continued generous, and excellent, commitment to fifteensquared’s great worth (along with our other bloggers – and Gaufrid, of course!).
That’s very odd, the LEOTARD clue. Especially as the POE could have been brought in upwards in some way, easily. It didn’t make any difference to the grid.
I failed dismally on the top half. 1a is one of those clues that, if you solve it, you say ” how clever” but if you don’t you say, as Andrew suggested, that a walrus moustache may be part of a droop (why not droopy?) face (or even a not droopy one, even Stalin must have smiled sometimes) “beast” has hundreds of possible solutions, there are lots of possible anagrams in the clue but none used. In short, not solvable without lots of crossers and the same applied in my case to 4d, 6d, 7d and 8d – too many possibilities for each part of the clue. I agree with valentine @44 and can’t understand why others praised it. Bottom half OK but not one of Paul’s best.
Thanks to Paul, who is normally a favourite, and to Andrew for an excellent blog.