I found this tough going from Julius. Thanks to setter for an extra-large serving of humble pie.
There is a theme around Sweeney Todd with multiple references in the grid (1ac, 27ac, 29ac, 8 dn etc). Thanks also to Geoff, for helping with the parsing where needed.
FF:9 DD:10
| Across | ||
| 1 | FLEET STREET | The quick way/express route? (5,6) |
| FLEET (quick) STREET (way) – works just as well for FLEET (express) STREET (route), so perhaps a double def | ||
| 7 | LOB | High Court strategy used by racketeer? (3) |
| cryptic clue | ||
| 9 | CABLE | Message Cuba to return island occupied by 7 down 8 (5) |
| C (cuba) ABLE (island = ELBA, reversed). The 7 down 8 part is to signify that the island can be found hidden in the answers for 7d and 8d (lionEL BArber, who incidentally was appointed editor of the FT in 2005) | ||
| 10 | FATAL HOUR | Killing time before appointment with Kismet? (5,4) |
| FATAL (killing) HOUR (time) | ||
| 11 | MARK TWAIN | Author took notice of Rooney in conversation (4,5) |
| sounds liked MARKED (took notice of) WAYNE (rooney) | ||
| 12 | OBESE | Getting round, honours even at first (5) |
| OBES (honours, plural of OBE) E (Even, at first) | ||
| 13,15 | SWEENEY TODD |
West End comedy left 1,100 barking “Murderer!” (7,4) |
| WEST END cOmEDY* (without MC – roman numerals for 1,100) | ||
| 18 | ONUS | We’ll get this burden (4) |
| cryptic clue; read as ON US | ||
| 20 | STRINGS | Turkey fesses up about conditions (7) |
| TR (turkey) in SINGS (fesses up) | ||
| 23 | AUDIT | Poet Laureate denied high praise in book review (5) |
| plAUDIT [high praise, without P (poet) L (Laureate) ] | ||
| 24 | HOI POLLOI | Election in Ohio I rigged for the rabble (3,6) |
| POLL (election) in [OHIO I]* | ||
| 26 | MAGNETRON | Dependable, mature lady engaged to reverse engineer microwave component (9) |
| GNE (reverse of ENG – engineer) in MATRON (dependable, mature lady) – Thanks Geoff, for the parsing! | ||
| 27 | DEMON | Wicked individual’s criminal pattern discovered in study (5) |
| MO (criminal pattern, modus operandi) in DEN (study) | ||
| 28 | GOO | Fluid, unknown departure from Maltese island (3) |
| GOzO (malteze island, without ‘Z’ – unknown) | ||
| 29 | HAIRDRESSER | Musical actor’s wardrobe assistant and stylist (11) |
| HAIR (musical) DRESSER (actor’s wardrobe assistant) | ||
| Down | ||
| 1 | FACE MASK | Midweek, same cafe, turns up wearing this? (4,4) |
| hidden reversed in “midweeK SAME CAFe..” | ||
| 2 | EMBARKED | Boarded vessel securely moored? (8) |
| ARK (vessel) in EMBED (securely?) | ||
| 3 | THEFT | This is robbery (5) |
| THE FT (this is, referring to this newspaper) | ||
| 4 | TIFFANY | Revolting, vulgar piercing? It upset Yankee jeweller (7) |
| reverse (revolting) of NAFF (vulgar) in [ TI (IT, upset) Y (yankee) ] | ||
| 5 | EXTINCT | Former model in Connecticut disappeared altogether (7) |
| EX (former) T (model, ford) IN CT (connecticut) | ||
| 6 | TALL ORDER | Band of Brothers extended quite a challenge (4,5) |
| cryptic clue; reference to brothers as in monks = ORDER, band of brothers extended therefore could be TALL ORDER | ||
| 7 | LIONEL | Blair upset McCluskey, a collector’s item! (6) |
| reverse of LEN (mccluskey) OIL (a collector’s item) | ||
| 8 | BARBER | He delivers cuts (except month end, late in the year) (6) |
| BAR (except) BER (end of any of octoBER, novemBER or decemBER, month that is late in the year) | ||
| 14 | NINETIETH | Celebrated by Her Majesty, breaking open the tinnie! (9) |
| THE TINNIE* (referring to the 90th birthday the queen celebrated) | ||
| 16 | INFLAMES | Makes more passionate seminal work featuring overture from Figaro (8) |
| SEMINAL* containing F (first letter of Figaro) | ||
| 17 | ASSIGNOR | One transferring a southern Italian chap (8) |
| A S (southern) SIGNOR (italian chap) | ||
| 19 | SCHERZI | Lively movements saved Chopin from schizophrenic turmoil (7) |
| [SCHIZophREnic]* (letters of CHOPIN removed from SCHIZOPHRENIC, anagram) | ||
| 20 | SHINNED | Slough pub packed, swarmed (7) |
| SHED (slough) containing INN (pub) | ||
| 21 | LAD MAG | Something smuggled in for Spooner’s stir-crazed inmate? (3,3) |
| spoonerism of MAD (stir-crazed) LAG (inmate) | ||
| 22 | ADAGIO | Slow-moving American soldier gets in trouble (6) |
| [A (american) GI (soldier) ] in ADO (trouble) | ||
| 25 | OLDIE | Veteran Boat Race participant lost a grand (5) |
| gOLDIE (boat race participant – second boat of the cambridge university boat club, without G for grand) | ||
*anagram
I enjoyed this one – tough but not obscure (though SHINNNED was new to me) and with some nice varied cluing. Thanks Julius and TL for further clarity.
I was surprised not to find more of a Financial Time theme – with Lionel Barber (and its cross reference), “The FT” and “Fleet Street” but then nothing more…
I took the theme to be BARBER (a HAIRDRESSER) with references to LIONEL BARBER, the FLEET STREET editor of THE FT, SWEENEY TODD the DEMON BARBER of FLEET STREET and Samuel BARBER, composer of the ADAGIO for STRINGS.
I really enjoyed this, most of it going in quite quickly until I had to mutter a bit at 20d. I saw the ‘barber’ theme quite early on but have to apologise to 7d/8d as I had to look him up to see who he was. I’ve marked quite a few clues with * but I think I’ll go for 12a with its nice ‘getting round’
Thanks Julius and Turbolegs
Thanks, Turbolegs.
I carelessly missed the ‘8’ in the clue for 9ac, so was trying in vain to locate ELBA in LIONEL.
I got the DEMON BARBER of FLEET STREET early on but embarrassingly failed to spot the ADAGIO for STRINGS – many thanks for that, passerby @2.
Like crypticsue, I muttered at SHINNED: I have never come across that meaning of ‘swarm’ – but ‘it’s in Chambers’.
A lot of nice clues – particulalarly LOB – but my double tick goes to the superb SCHERZI: there must be an enormous amount of satisfaction for a setter in a spot like that.
Many thanks to Julius for another very clever and enjoyable puzzle.
Thanks Julius & Turbolegs. I needed your help to solve several of the clues.
In 1 across I took “express” as a reference to the Daily Express which used to be based in Fleet Street.
And having now looked up Julius, I see that his interest in crosswords was stimulated by the Sunday Express!
I agree that this was pretty tough in places but very entertaining…
Now let me first say that Julius (aka Knut) has the X factor as a crossword setter.
I have met Rob (here and elsewhere aka baerchen) on a couple of occasions and he is a great guy.
Most of his puzzles are topical and the grid filling is often ingenious.
Today, I only spotted the Sweeney Todd thing but there was, as others said, more.
Unlike some of the commenters above (and certainly unlike Turbolegs) I did not find this puzzle very hard.
What I did find, though, was that some things were quite unsatisfying.
I like and appreciate Julius (as a setter and a person) and therefore I find it quite uncomfortable to express here what I do not like about his style.
Yet I will do that – in days that one who has a different opinion is called a traitor or at least undemocratic.
1ac: If Julius wants us to think of Express as a newspaper, then I do not like the decapitalisation.
The clue as such is really poor anyway, in my opinion.
10ac: Rufus would have stopped after ‘Killing time’ (which would have been a good cryptic definition). For me, the Kismet addition was superfluous.
13,15: Here we are in subtraction anagram territory. 1,100 = MC. MC should be deleted before the anagram, and therefore (in my book of crosswords) the order of the letters deleted is wrong. Others may (and surely will) disagree.
26ac (past tense?), 27ac, 6d and 14d all raised eyebrows but let’s go on with it [the UK’s favourite expression].
28ac: apart from the fact that the surface is nonsense, why using a nounal device? Why not say ‘departing’?
I have seen this thing (using nouns where it could be avoided) in previous puzzles from this setter, so he’s probably all right with it (as are the editors).
1d: the construction is perfect but the definition? There is hardly one, in my opinion.
2d: I can see what Julius does but can anyone tell me how it cryptically works?
All this looks like I am pretty negative, doesn’t it?
The thing is I would like to see this talented setter to focus more on precision and less on exciting grid filling.
As I started this comment, Julius really has the X factor.
But.
Thanks to turbolegs for the blog, and to those who have commented; particularly to Sil for taking the time to write such a constructive post.
Regarding 1a, the component “express route” is intended to refer to Fleet Street’s former role as hub of the UK press sector; “ex press route”- in other words using a (minor) lift-and-separate device which I know is not everyone’s cup of tea.
The introduction of “Kismet”= fate into the wordplay at 10a was, I thought, necessary; a two-word dd “Killing time” would have been insoluble, I think Sil, or at least very unfair.
The other points are (largely) accepted, and taken on board. I’m very keen to get better at this, and all comments on my puzzles are read assiduously!
warmest regards,
Rob
Thanks Julius and Turbolegs
Found this one nearly as hard to fill in the grid as the Tuesday Io puzzle – well at least the end bit of it up in the NE corner. Completely missed the theme – knew that SWEENEY TODD was a notorious murderer but forgot that he was a barber, knew of LIONEL BARBER as the editor of the FT from the days when the bank that I was working for used to get a hard copy of the FT delivered 3-4 days late in the 1990’s and was ignorant of Samuel BARBER and the ADAGIO for STRINGS. Clever ghost theme !!!
Three not completely parsed clues – the ‘ex-press’ trick at 1a, the embedded ELBA in LIONEL BARBER (not surprising as it was such a struggle to get 7d and 8d) and didn’t check off the anagram fodder properly with SWEENEY TODD.
As a ‘foreigner’, struggled immensely with LIONEL Blair and Len McCluskey and took different little spells over the weekend to finally nail them. Didn’t help myself by writing in BOWLER as the ‘one who delivered’, although I toyed with BATTER as ‘one who delivered cuts’ – until finally twigging to BARBER as the ‘one who really delivered cuts’ as my last one in.
A nice challenge to finish on a bitterly cold 14 degree day in the middle of our summer in Melbourne.