Good fun and a mental workout at the same time. Thanks Paul.
I like the way this puzzle wanders through history, art, science and literature and various other topics without becoming either too serious or too frivolous.
| Across | ||
| 1 | EXTRAMARITAL | Adulterous cavalier lax with two redheads at a time (12) |
| anagram (cavalier) of LAX R R (red head, twice) and AT A TIME | ||
| 9 | ASSAM | Since it needs milk, sort leaves for tea (5) |
| AS (since) SA (sex appeal, it) and Milk missing ILK (sort) | ||
| 10 | GRAVITATE | Move towards Virginia holding that thing in jar (9) |
| VA (Virginia) contains IT (that thing) in GRATE (jar) | ||
| 11 | See 25 | |
| 12 | See 18 down | |
| 13 | BLACKBOARD | Old focus of a student’s attention, daughter’s after filthy swine (10) |
| D (daughter) follows BLACK (filthy) BOAR (swine) | ||
| 15, 18 | FACE CARD | Ace in hearts, possibly, a king (diamonds) — and queen, perhaps? (4,4) |
| ACE in FC (football club, Hearts possibly) then A R (rex, king) D (diamonds) | ||
| 18 | See 15 | |
| 19 | STRAIGHT UP | Hand in the air, it’s true! (8,2) |
| STRAIGHT (hand, of Poker) and UP (in the air) | ||
| 22 | URANIUM | Metal content of mug or cup, perhaps? (7) |
| chemical symbol U, centre of mUg or cUp | ||
| 24 | KNOW-ALL | Wise guy, king with open access? (4-3) |
| K (king) with NO WALL (so open access) | ||
| 25, 11 | BADMINTON RACKETS | They’re taken to court (commercial name in China)? (9,7) |
| AD (commercial) MINTON (Thomas Minton ceramics manufacturer, name in China) IN BRACKETS | ||
| 26 | AMISS | Author, possibly K or M — S is wrong (5) |
| AMIS (author, Kingsley or Martin Amis) then S | ||
| 27 | BOUNCY CASTLE | Exuberant man jumped on plaything (6,6) |
| BOUNCY (exuberant) and CASTLE (man, on chessboard) | ||
| Down | ||
| 1 | EASY CHAIR | Hollow story in every song that’s designed for relaxation (4,5) |
| StorY (hollow) in EACH (every) then AIR (song) | ||
| 2 | TIM PEAKE | Top features in magazine for British high-flyer (3,5) |
| PEAK (top) features in TIME (magazine) – British astronaut | ||
| 3 | ARGUS | A real giant for starters, the Guardian … (5) |
| first letters (for starters) of A Real Giant then US (The Guardian) – in Greek mythology Argus was both “a giant” and “a guardian” | ||
| 4 | ARAUCARIA | … Guardian giant, artist, utterly charming, initially breaking into a song (9) |
| RA (Royal Academician, artist) and initial letters of Utterly Charming in ARIA (a song) – pseudo name of Reverend John Graham, a giant in the field of cryptic crosswords who used to set puzzles for The Guardian | ||
| 5 | IRISES | One stands up as a Van Gogh painting (6) |
| I (one) RISES (stands up) | ||
| 6 | ABACK | A second taken by surprise (5) |
| A BACK (second) | ||
| 7 | ZAGREB | Orb nicked from the famous Greek composer raised in European capital (6) |
| ZorbA (the famous Greek) missing (nicked from) ORB then BERG (Alban Berg, composer) reversed (raised) | ||
| 8 | DECREE | Last of twelve, always standing in order (6) |
| DEC (December, last of twelve months) then E’ER (ever, always) reversed (standing) | ||
| 14 | OPTOMETRY | Essay under workbook for healthcare profession (9) |
| TRY (essay) following (under) OP (opus, work) and TOME (book) | ||
| 16 | ACTUALISE | Engineer casual with tie loose (9) |
| anagram (loose) of CASUAL with TIE | ||
| 17 | IGNORANT | Knight abducted by prince, soldier unaware (8) |
| N (knight, on chessboard) inside (abducted by) IGOR (Prince Igor) then NT (soldier ant) | ||
| 18, 12 | CHUBBY CHECKER | Old singer-songwriter caught private detective hired by wife? (6,7) |
| C (caught) by HUBBY CHECKER (private detective hired by wife possibly) | ||
| 20 | POLISH | European resembling pond life, if a tad over the top? (6) |
| POLISH would be tadpolish (resembling pond life) with TAD on the top | ||
| 21 | SIMIAN | Is man one, perhaps? (6) |
| anagram (perhaps) of IS MAN and I (one) | ||
| 23 | AUDIO | Sound car going over circuit (5) |
| AUDI (car) on (going over) O (circuit, a circle) | ||
| 24 | KINDA | Sort of dark, in darkest passage (5) |
| found inside (a passage from) darK IN DArkest | ||
definitions are underlined
I write these posts to help people get started with cryptic crosswords. If there is something here you do not understand ask a question; there are probably others wondering the same thing.
…one clue a tad over the top me thinks.
Thanks PeeDee. Just finished within the lunch-hour, though without understanding the sam/milk in 9A and the charming bit of 4D. Thanks for the elucidations. Lots to like, including the parentheses in 25,11 and the general jollity beginning with the first clue.
Thank you Paul, and PeeDee particularly for parsing Assam and Badminton rackets which eluded me. As you suggest it was a colourful puzzle but I do have concerns about it being set for a target group of solvers. Having only recently started to draw my old age pension I may be younger than the typical cryptic crossword fan, but having references to a 1960’s film, a pop singer who as I remember had a one hit wonder pre-Beatles and a sadly deceased compiler, is not going to attract any younger people. Will we still have these puzzles to do in 20 years time?
Re 1 across: ‘adulterous’ is a hyponym not a synonym of ‘extramarital’. All adulterous relations are extramarital but not all extramarital relations are adulterous. The clues for ‘Assam’ and ‘badminton rackets’ were darned clever.
Thanks Paul and PeeDee (particularly for parsing ASSAM). Great stuff
Thanks Paul and PeeDee
One of the easier Prizes, I thought. The clue for URANIUM was a bit feeble, and is the missing capital for Hearts entirely fair?
C HUBBY CHECKER made my day, though!
For some reason I can’t quite verbalise, 22 URANIUM still leaves me feeling something’s missing. It’s as if there should be a reference to the RANIUM part of the word. Help, please!
That was fun. A real chuckle from the hubby-checking private eye, and I liked the way the bracketed clue worked, once I finally spotted how it parsed (even if that was some time after finishing the crossword). I had to come here for the parsing of ASSAM – I saw the AS and the M but failed to make the IT=SA connection. Thanks for clearing that up, PeeDee, and thanks to Paul, of course.
mirandamoon @6
The clue just gives the chemical symbol for uranium, as PeeDee said – as I said, a bit feeble!
Thank you, muffin. I saw your comment @5 after I’d posted, which was reassuring. I’d wrestled with RANIUM in vain!
And I clearly can’t count either….
Excellent fun. I actually shed a tear on solving 4d. Too many good clues to comment on individually. Thanks.
Some very strange comments on here already.
No “feeble” or “over the top” clues in my opinion. Just a pleasant well written puzzle which was just a little too easy for a Prize in my opinion.
God forbid that puzzles are dumbed down for the “snowflake generation”. There’ll probably be no decent cryptics about in thirty tears anyway as they require effort and an attention span of more than 30 seconds 😉
Thank you Paul and PeeDee.
I went hopelessly wrong, but enjoyed the fun – had DRAINBOARD at 13a, did not associate BLACK with ‘filthy’, having studied science subjects the sink and its board often held nasty things (‘that thing in a jar’, 10a, probably brought the lab to my mind), this led to MILAN at 1d, unparseable of course and 2d was unsolved, never heard of TIM PEAKE.
My favourite clues were those for ASSAM and BADMINTON RACKETS.
brownphel @3 – I think cryptic crosswords will still be alive and kicking in 20 years time, there will be no shortage of older people to do them. From my experience crosswords have always included plenty of “old” references and it hasn’t done them any harm so far. I have two teenage daughters and along with modern pop they both like old music, films and all sorts of stuff. So do many of their friends. I think there is no need to worry about the future at the moment (or not about cryptic crosswords at least).
On the hearts/Hearts thing, is it more acceptable to omit a necessary capital (as here) or use a spurious one when it’s not required?
(My point being that there is a Football Club known as “Hearts” – Heart of Midlothian – but not, as far as I know, one known as “hearts”.)
I found this harder than the previous prize Paul. Nonetheless, it was for the most part very entertaining with several excellent and original clues – BADMINTON RACKETS, CHUBBY CHECKER and POLISH, to name but three. That said, for me at least, the overall impression was spoilt by the grossly unfair decapitalisation in the FACE CARD clue. Here one can’t even claim in mitigation that it leads to an excellent surface reading – not that this would be a valid defence anyway.
Thanks to Paul and PeeDee.
I don’t think the uncapticalised hearts was unfair. It was clever. Any change of punctuation or even spacing (lift and split) is fair game. It is a cryptic puzzle!
muffin @16:
Ximenes is quite clear on this: adding a technically unnecessary capital letter mid-sentence is okay because there are certain contexts in which such usage may occur. On the other hand, abolishing a capital where the grammar requires it is not acceptable because then “you aren’t saying what you mean.”
One of Paul’s easier puzzles, I thought,but quite good fun. I wouldn’t describe CHUBBY CHECKER as “singer/songwriter. The erstwhile Ernie Evans,ex professional chicken plucked, never wrote anything as far as I remember. His first big hit-and he had quite a lot-was written and originally recorded by Hank Ballard. The term singer/songwriter is usually applied to people like Bob Dylan or Joni Mitchell! But I digress—-.
Thanks Paul.
I thought CHUBBY CHECKER was a great clue.
Peter @20: I think we’ve had the discussion about “singer-songwriter” on here before. Chubby did in fact write songs. For example, according to Wikipedia, he wrote all the songs on his 1971 album originally entitled “Chequered!”.
The fact that the term “singer-songwriter” is usually associated with a particular genre surely doesn’t matter in the context of a cryptic crossword, where it can mean anyone who sings and writes songs.
I rather liked Face Card. We had all the letters, slow wittedly tried to recall the term face card, and then it took a few seconds to gloss. Didn’t seem unfair to me.
I’m not sure whether Ximenes would have thought it unfair, or if he would why that should bother people. It’s more a matter of judgment that black and white rules
Thanks to Paul and PeeDee. I had no trouble with ASSAM (I knew SA from previous puzzles) or FACE CARD but the Bouncy part of BOUNCY CASTLE defeated me. I need help parsing URANIUM and did not know Thomas Minton for BADMINTON RACKETS. Great fun.
Just realised, I did not associate BLACK with ‘filthy’, see @14, because, having lived in Uganda and Egypt, it signifies for me milk pots etc. sterilised by smoking.
Enjoyable puzzle, though the Salome one was more fun. But I’m a sucker for a good theme.
I didn’t know that FC stood for football club or that Hearts was one. I’d never heard of Tim Peake, though I looked him up after I’d assembled his name. Never heard of Minton and I missed the b/rackets, though I do know that that’s what they’re called in the UK. That just made learning all those bits more entertaining.
addendum @24, Morbier cheese is made where I live, the curdle from the evening milking is dusted with a light layer of soot to protect it from spoiling while waiting for the curdle from the morning milking, hence the black line running through the cheese.
Thanks all
I agree with JimS at 21 and enjoyed 18,12…
I thought the number of complaints above was larger than usual and more ridiculous!
Enjoyed doing this one. Great feeling when the penny dropped on B…RACKETS, and HUBBY CHECKER was most amusing.
I think it’s generally accepted that the Guardian’s editorial policy, unlike that of some other publications, is “liberal” rather than strictly Ximenean, so one one must be ready to encounter such alleged deviancies as the uncapitalised hearts. Maybe Valentine@25, who (e.g. not having heard of Tim Peake) is clearly not British, has better grounds for complaint, as the Guardian is a worldwide publication.
… though Valentine does not in fact complain, of course
Cookie @26
[I’m grateful for that enlightening comment about Morbier cheese. I’m partial to that particular cheese and I often buy it. I’ve always wondered about the black line running through it!]
OK I am over 50 now so not exactly young (except perhaps in crossword circles), but I had no problems with C HUBBY CHECKER, which I thought was brilliant. BOUNCY CASTLE made me laugh too. Thanks for parsing BADMINTON RACKETS – must admit that was so obvious from the definition and crossers that I didn’t worry about it.
Thanks to Paul and PeeDee
When I started solving crosswords (in my 20s) they were full of references to classical literature, classical music, poets, Latin and other things which made me think the target audience was public achiolboysvof a certain age – but I learnt much I would not otherwise have taken an interest in. Consequently I am not going to complain 40+ years later now that many of the compilers have frames of reference for which I no longer require an encyclopaedia ! Perhaps in another 20 years time we will require a knowledge of the 80s and 90s, if we are still vertical of course….
Schoolboys, not achiolboys!