Today is Mothering Sunday, and I need a cuddle from our mam after having to solve and parse this offering from Daedalus. More importantly, I need help from you kind folk to parse more clues than I’d normally ask for help with.
This, for me, was impenetrable and unenjoyable. I had to go further up the food chain of bloggers to get help to solve it. It’s maybe a puzzle where fellow setters will comment about what a great achievement it was to fit ‘mother’ or equivalent into all of the clues. But cryptics, in my opinion, should be about entertaining solvers, rather than impressing your fellow setters. You will tell me, as always, if you disagree.
Abbreviations
cd cryptic definition
dd double definition
(xxxx)* anagram
anagrind = anagram indicator
[x] letter(s) removed
definitions are underlined
Across
1 Animal feed made by ma if she chopped a bit of lettuce
FISHMEAL
(MA IF SHE)* plus L.
5 Mother who rhymes ‘sticky sludge’ with ’empty sludge’
GOOSE
I think that this is a charade of GOO for ‘sticky sludge’ and SE for ‘sludge’ emptied, in other words the outside letters. Mother GOOSE is a nursery ‘rhyme’.
9 Last seen in the public pool, mamma went for a splash
ECLAT
The last letters of thE publiC pooL mammA and wenT.
10 It’s not so nice to hear mother’s going round bend like this without us
HOME TRUTH
(MOTHER)* plus TH[US]
12 Jeer, did ‘e, about ‘moth-eaten’ ma?
DERIDE
This appears to be (DID E)* with ER inserted, but again, I have no real idea what is going on here. The French for ‘mother’ with the outside letters removed?
13 Mater almost sped off in panic
STAMPEDE
(MATE[R]SPED)*
15 Boring day with mother
DREAR
A charade of D with REAR, although of course both mothers and fathers REAR children.
16 As mummy’s home, party empties out and boy I spoil returns
PYRAMIDAL
A charade of PY for the outside letters of ‘party’ and a reversal of LAD I MAR.
18 Mother nips out, leaving old fish with me
SHRIMP NET
(M[O]THER NIPS)*
20 Timid at first, mom’s opened up since yesterday
MOUSY
The initial letters of the last five words of the clue.
21 Bring ma instructions showing wiring
RING MAIN
Hidden in bRING MA INstructions.
23 Hamburger mum made from beef
MUTTER
If a mum was from Hamburg, she’d be eine MUTTER, and since ‘beef’ means to complain, that could be synonymous with MUTTER. Or not. You tell me.
26 As a mother one doesn’t see and greet son crankily
ESTRANGED
(AND GREET S)*
27 Mummy might wipe these, you say, after upsets and rows
TIERS
A homophone of TEARS, but I can’t understand the cryptic grammar here: what is the homophone indicator doing in the middle of the clue?
28 Mater plays it cool to start with, then she’s off!
CHESS
I can see the solution, but again, I can’t parse it. Sorry.
Thanks to Gaufrid for correcting me. My fault for not transcribing the clue correctly.
29 Is riveting bit of story penned by writer’s foreign mother and son?
IMMERSES
An insertion of S for ‘bit of story’ in MERE for the French ‘mother’ in I’M for ‘writer’ and S for ‘son’. I think. But that would make ‘is riveting’ the definition, and I can’t make that work.
Down
1 Romeo’s got into a fight. Did he say it’s all about your mum?
FREUD
An insertion of R for the phonetic alphabet ‘Romeo’ in FEUD. Referring to the early 20th century psychologist.
2 Pay round for mother has no hint of a bonus? It’s time for a revolution!
SOLAR YEAR
Further apologies, because I don’t have a scooby.
3 I have beastly struggles with mom’s old model of car on winding road
MATADOR
MA has T for the model T Ford and (ROAD)*
4 Yup, mum’s inside looking pale
ASHY
An insertion of SH in AY for a dialect word for ‘yup’.
6 Choose Daedalus’s mother as the best!
OPTIMUM
A charade of OPT, I’M and MUM.
7 Essentially mum’s surrounded by stuff to cook
SAUTE
An insertion of U for the middle letter of ‘mum’ in SATE. I think.
8 Is it true mother’s e-mails lay unread periodically?
OH REALLY
The even letters of mOtHeRs EmAiLs LaY.
11 Ma gets you to replace mobile at last: it’s beginning to yellow with age
MATURITY
MATER with U replacing E followed by IT and Y.
14 A bit of unexpected waiting? It makes no difference to mum
SPINNING
Nope.
15 In which mother might give Tom, her son, instruction after day one
DISORDER
Apologies. The first bit is DI for ‘day one’, but the rest …
17 Intrepid mother’s sister perhaps in a spot of difficulty? Not so!
DAUNTLESS
I can see the AUNT inserted in the middle of the clue, but beyond that …
19 Mater’s left inside, being bats?
MAMMALS
I think that this is MA and L inside MAMS.
20 Ma almost gets free copper from Canada
MOUNTIE
MO[M] plus UNTIE.
22 Needless to say, enter zero for mama’s final score
NOTCH
A replacement of O for A for the last letter of ‘mama’ in NATCH.
24 Sample bistro’s espresso and get some for mum today
ROSES
Hidden in bistROS ESpresso.
25 A mother and father to us all?
ADAM
A dd.
Thanks to Daedalus for the puzzle.
5a seems fine as you have parse it. In 12a, er is formed by removing moth from mother (moth-eaten). I agree with 23a. For 29a, I think that if a story is riveting, it immerses? I agree with your parsing of 7d. 14d is a play on mum being a palindrome. 15d is tricky. It is di for day one, then s for son then order for instruction and a disorder (anagram) of mother gives Tom her. 17d is aunt inside d (spot of danger) + less (Not so). I parsed 19d as l inside mamma’s. I wouldn’t class 25d as a dd. The first part is a + dam (mother). 2d has me stumped for the moment.
Personally, I thought this was a brilliant crossword with lots of inventive cueing. Sorry it wasn’t to your taste.
Had another look at 2d. I think it is ‘salary’ (pay) with the ‘a’ changed to ‘o’ (round for a) then (b)ear with no hint of bonus, i.e. remove ‘b’. Mother bear seems a bit tenuous though.
19d is mammas with an l inside, I think. I agree with you – too clever by far! Didn’t enjoy this one bit.
Thanks, Mike, for filling in the gaps.
Thanks Pierre
You’ve missed out part of the clue for 28ac, after the ‘… start with’ there should be ‘then she’s off!’ so the parsing is:
C[ool] (cool to start with) plus an anagram (off) of SHE’S
In 27ac the def. is simply ‘rows’
Thanks Gaufrid @5 , I meant to comment on 28a. I liked the misdirection of mater to refer to somebody who mates.
I think that 14d is UPENDING rather than SPINNING, tho’ for the same palindromic parsing as Mike gives.
To parse 14 in full: U (‘a bit of Unexpected) + PENDING (‘waiting’). I’m sure that’s it.
Grant @7
You are right: U[nexpected] PENDING. During the last couple of weeks, and also before the server migration, I have spent a large amount of time watching that little circle rotate whilst a page loads so ‘spinning’ was the first thing that came into my mind.
I totally agree with you Pierre. No doubt all very clever, but as exemplified by 2D, too much for the peasantry. I managed less than three quarters of this before giving up to enjoy the sunshine.
Thanks for the blog.
My two penn’orth on the puzzle as a whole – since the general mood seems to be a bit shirty – is that it’s a corker.
I certainly struggled here & there but that’s the point, isn’t it? There was nothing unfair and some moments of bliss: I bet Daedalus was rubbing his hands when he thought of of ‘mater’ as a chess-player.
Rather a ‘pressure blog’ though; thanks again to Pierre.
Just to add to my comment @2, I stupidly didn’t think of mother and bear as verbs at the time. Thanks to Grant @7,8 for explaining 14, which makes much more sense.
I will add just one thing, because I have to go and attend to Sunday lunch (roast beef, YP, and all the trimmings, since you ask). I didn’t want to be shirty, Grant: it’s just that I couldn’t solve or parse it. But that happens sometimes, and I always welcome the help. We (or in particular I) are not super-solvers, and the reason that you’ll only see me blogging the IoS, the Quiptic, the Everyman and the Monday Indy is that they are the ‘easy’ ones. This one wasn’t easy. End of story/blog from me. Time for onion/red wine gravy in the Yorkshires.
To Gaufrid:
There’s an interesting partial anagram to be made of ‘server migration’ and ‘severe migraine’…
And to Pierre only…
(Since I don”t have yr email: hope you pick this up after you & yours have enjoyed Sunday lunch. What’s yr best YP recipe? Always interested.)
I’m with you, old thing. Quite properly, I’m only let loose as a blogger on the Tuesday FT, probably the easiest of the lot. Well, good days, anyway: recently I had a puzzle which completely defeated me and help had had to be called in so, believe me, been there, I know.
Fun though, innit?
Chipping in somewhat belatedy, I really enjoyed this. Understand why, and sorry that, Pierre may not have done, but I thought the variety of the clues while managing to sustain the theme was tremendous. It certainly wasn’t easy, but I’m lucky enough to be able to have the time to spend on this engrossing hobby. I wouldn’t want one like this every day, though!
Well I really enjoyed this. Generally I would agree with Pierre that having a word or its variants in every clue can be tiresome and make for a slog, but in this case the theme words were used in so many different and inventive ways that I found this a delight to solve. PYRIMIDAL, SOLAR YEAR and MUTTER were my favourites. A sterling effort and I hope Daedalus’s Mum appreciated it!
Grant, FWIW I find this Yorkie recipe infallible: http://goodfood.uktv.co.uk/recipe/roast-forerib-beef-with-yorkshire-pudding/
Best to used full milk, not semi-skimmed.
Adding MHO to what seems like a thread of bloggers,this is a very fine puzzle, even without the presence of a MOTHER synonym in all the clues. With this feature, it is formidably good.
Possibly today’s blogger has prejudged the crossword, as he has shown a marked lack of appreciation of this setter in the past. But like solvers, setters can reach MATURITY (11d) and I for one would welcome DAEDALUS any day of the week.
Bon appetit, PIERRE. Hope you have an easier solve next time.
Not my cup of tea, I’m afraid, and I gave up on it with more than half the grid still empty. I’ve never been a great fan of setters trying to force thematic references into every single clue since all too often this seems to result in highly esoteric cruciverbalese. This puzzle strikes me as a textbook example of that.
Thanks anyway to Pierre for valiantly sticking with it.
Enjoyed this puzzle and, as with Daedalus’s last, found it really engaging and quite tough. This time out I got more – around two thirds – before finally retiring and might’ve done more, but stupidly banged in ‘total/natch’ and ‘hard truth/home truth’ (whatever that is!) without parsing.
I’d like to offer my condolences to Pierre as signing up to blog the easier puzzles – I would do exactly the same if I blogged, BTW – and then getting a toughy with lots of elusive parsings, especially when there is a tasty roast to be done, must be a bit of a bugger and so well done to him for sticking with it. In defence of a harder puzzle on a traditionally easier day, I would say Mothering Sunday does come but once a year and it’s good to mix things up every now and again.
With regard setting themed puzzles to impress other setters, I don’t think this is the case at all. In my experience, setters are setting for solvers and themselves as solvers and so write themed stuff to keep things interesting and varied for the solver – other setters don’t come into it (unless it’s a puzzle themed on other setters, of course).
For me, Daedalus is quite different in style to most Indy setters, which adds to the difficulty of solve, and I think this variety is a good thing for the series. Long may he continue to produce interesting and engaging stuff that keeps me wanting to solve way past my normal stick-a-fork-in-me time. Thanks to him for a good puzzle and well-worked theme and also to Pierre for the blog and his sufferings (hope the Yorkshires were tasty).
Maysie at 18. I certainly did not prejudge this puzzle. I have said before that I am absolutely not on Daedalus’ wavelength, but I will solve and blog (where I understand it) anything that is put in front of me; but I would never show a lack of appreciation for a setter, because they work very hard to give us stuff for our harmless pastime. Saying that I didn’t like or understand the puzzle is another thing. There may be some blogging opportunities coming up soon on 225. Maybe sign up for one of them?
Thanks everyone! Glad some of you liked it, and apologies to Pierre for a tough blog. I’m afraid it was not practical to wait until Mothering Sunday fell on a Wednesday. Cruciverbophile@17, I’m happy to report that my mother Mrs Daedalus was delighted by it, though she is a Quick Crossword woman herself. She particularly liked 6d, but was less impressed for some reason by 19d.
Grant@11, it’s been a while since I wrote this so I cannot be sure, but there may possibly have been some hand-rubbing involved 🙂
As to Yorkshire puddings, I can confirm from experience that Nigella Lawson’s recipe is excellent and completely idiot-proof:
http://kitchenpantry.blogspot.com/2006/10/sunday-roast-4-yorkshire-pudding.html
Wasn’t doing Yorkshires today (roast lamb with rosemary, redcurrant jelly, mint sauce, etc) so had some time to worry at the puzzle and eventually got it out with a little e-help. But I’ll bring a few copies of my (actually a friend’s) YP recipe to the Notts S&B if anyone’s interested.
Yes, a bit tougher than some IoS puzzles but not impossible. And with ‘mater’ cropping up more than once I was looking for the possibility of it meaning ‘one who mates’ – though having said that I didn’t find it till getting CHESS as my LoI.
Thanks, Daedalus and, especially for your perseverance, Pierre.
We have only just finished the puzzle. Yes, it was a challenge and probably one of those puzzles when it helped having two brains rather than one.
There were numerous misdirections which held us up but we enjoyed the solve.
No Yorkshire Puddings for us yesterday but a very tasty pork tenderloin with apples and prunes!
Thanks to S&B.