A tricky pangram from Julius this morning.
This was a difficult puzzle to parse, and there’s one solution at 23ac that I’m unsure about, but I think I got there in the end. The puzzle is very nearly a double pangram, and this means that the setter has inevitably had to use some unusual words and references to achieve it.
This was an enjoyable challenge, so thanks Julius.
| Across | ||
| 1 | NOSE JOB | Theatre work for the head of |
| JOE’S NOB according to Spooner | ||
| 26 | JOSEPH | , according to Spooner (4,3) |
| In the Bible, Joseph, Mary’s husband, was a carpenter, but there was also a Joseph in the Book of Genesis. | ||
| 5 | JAZZ UP | Jack’s out of bed, after taking a nap to refresh (4,2) |
| J(ack) + UP (“out of bed”) “taking” A ZZ (“a nap”) | ||
| 8 | GOLD MEDAL | Yellow Sea aluminium forged most valuable pendant (4,5) |
| GOLD (“yellow”) + MED(iterranean “Sea”) + Al(uminium) | ||
| 9 | OX-BOW | Bend a neat collar? (2-3) |
| OX (“neat”) + BOW (“collar”)
NEAT is an old term for cattle |
||
| 11 | ESSAY | Paper declaimed Brownshirts (5) |
| Homophone of S.A. The Sturmabteilung (S.A. for short) were the paramilitary wing of the German Nazi party, and were also known as the Brownshirts. | ||
| 12 | SOPHOCLES | Ancient Greek hotel cesspool erupted (9) |
| *(h cesspool) where “h” = “hotel”
Sophocles was a Greek poet and dramatist. |
||
| 13 | TRACTION | Drive all round No.1 vehicle in motorsport competition (8) |
| <= No. 1 CAR in T.T.. so T(RAC)T.1.oN, where T.T. stands for Tourist Trophy (“motorsport competition”) | ||
| 15 | MISS US | Brief statement from homesick American housewife (6) |
| A homesick American may say “miss U.S.” | ||
| 17 | HECATE | Greek goddess composed each note (6) |
| *(each) + TE (musical “note”)
Hecate was the Greek goddess of fertility. |
||
| 19 | QUITE MAD | Walk out on Helen Mirren, honoured to return as Lady Macbeth? (5,3) |
| QUIT (“walk out on”) + <=DAME (“Helen Mirren, honoured”) | ||
| 22 | KINGMAKER | One influential in court, like Col. Tom Parker? (9) |
| Col. Tom Parker was the manager of Elvis Presley, so could be described as the maker of The King. | ||
| 23 | WARES | Retails sports goods (5) |
| Triple defintiion? | ||
| 24 | SERVO | Travelling west, go overseas regularly for machine requiring slave labour? (5) |
| Regular letters in “gO oVeRsEaS“, “travelling west” (ie from right to left)
I’m no mechanic, so don’t know anything about servos, but the wordplay workd and a quick Google search does bring up terms such as “servo slave” and “slave cylinders”. |
||
| 25 | THE MIKADO | Japanese theme on the menu at The Savoy? (3,6) |
| “The Mikado” is an opera by Gilbert & Sullivan, the most commonly performed Savoy opera, so named because it was originally staged at the Savoy Theatre. | ||
| 26 | An inspiration to The Carpenters (not to be confused with that bloke in Genesis) (6) | |
| 27 | TIFFANY | New York Times leader first to cover corrupt Fifa ring from here? (7) |
| T(imes) + N(ew) Y(ork) “to cover” *(Fifa)
Tiffany’s, of course, is the famous New York jewellery store. |
||
| Down | ||
| 1 | NO GREAT SHAKES | Paltry North Sea gas supply boosted by kinetic energy (2,5,6) |
| *(north sea gas ke) where ke = “Kinetic Energy” | ||
| 2 | SILESIA | Rains heavily on A1, heading north somewhere in Central Europe (7) |
| SILES (“rains heavily”) + <=A1 Hadn’t come across “sile” before, but apparently it’s a Northern English dialect word for “pour with rain”. Silesia is a region of Europe, mostly in Poland. | ||
| 3 | JEMMY | Prize Judi’s first TV award (5) |
| J(udi) + EMMY (“TV award”) | ||
| 4 | BODY SHOP | Report to police following overdose in confines of Betty Ford Clinic? (4,4) |
| SHOP (“report to police”) “following” OD (“overdose”) in BettY, so B(OD)Y SHOP A Ford with damaged bodywork would be taken to a body shop (a “Ford clinic”) | ||
| 5 | JALOPY | American sucker takes cut in old banger (6) |
| JAY (in America, a “sucker” or gullible person) “takes” LOP (“cut”) | ||
| 6 | ZOOLOGIST | Famously, Darwin (Australia) got upset over its logo being rubbished (9) |
| <=OZ (“australia”) + *(its logo) | ||
| 7 | UNBOLTS | Releases subaltern arrested by angry bosun (7) |
| Lt. (liutenant ~ “subaltern”) “arrested by” *(bosun) | ||
| 10 | WEST SIDE STORY | Show Conservative support for May’s broadcast on the 15th? (4,4,5) |
| TORY (“conservative”) “support for” WEST’S (indicated by “May’s broadcast” = homophone of “Mae’s”, as in Mae West) + IDES (the middle of the month, so “15th”), thus WEST’S + IDES + TORY | ||
| 14 | TOTEM POLE | It has various symbols; “ritenuto”, “tempo: lento” included (5,4) |
| Hidden in “ritenuTO TEMPO LEnto” | ||
| 16 | NUTRIENT | Food fanatic: “Nothing in Paris arrives on time” (8) |
| NUT (“fanatic”) + RIEN (French for “nothing”, so “nothing in Paris”) + T(ime) | ||
| 18 | CON BRIO | I break bucking bronco, hitting it forcefully (3,4) |
| I “break” *(bronco)
In music, “con brio”, means “with vigour”, so “forcefully” |
||
| 20 | MARSALA | Sadly, memory’s completely flipped; it’s the wine! (7) |
| <= ALAS (sadly) + RAM (Random Access Memory, in computing) | ||
| 21 | SKETCH | Outline plan of musket charge (6) |
| Hidden in “muSKET CHarge” | ||
| 23 | WHIFF | Smell smoke (5) |
| Double definition | ||
*anagram
A good workout. Didn’t know sile or meaning of jay in 5d. For me, 10d is the clue of the day.
19 and 22excellent.And new expression learnt-Nordic origin?
Very welcome on a day with little competition.
Thanks loonapick and Julius.
Hovis@1 thanks for reminding me to parse 10. Cracker.
I think ‘retails’ might be working as a homophone indicator and ‘sports’ = ‘wears’.
A bit of a struggle this morning, but worth it in the end. Liked 22ac & 10d particularly. Took ages to parse 26ac until I remembered that Joseph is the patron saint of carpenters.
Thank you Julius & loonapick.
Thanks to loonapick for the blog and to Julius for another super puzzle.
Favourites today were WEST SIDE STORY, QUITE MAD and TOTEM POLE. I think I shall have to stop saying I’m not keen on Spoonerisms: we’ve had three or four excellent ones very recently and I liked the tie-up here with JOSEPH.
I read 23ac as Dis @4 did.
Excellent puzzle. 10 and 19 are wonderful and 14 is the best embed I’ve seen in ages.
A rare day when I don’t agree with anything Eileen says @6, but I don’t agree with her when she reads ‘retails’ working as a homophone indicator.
Hi crypticsue @8
Collins: ‘retail – to relate [gossip, scandal, etc] in detail]
Chambers: ‘to put about, hand on by report’.
It works for me – in fact, I can’t make sense of the clue any other way.
I’m with Eileen @ 9 on 6d
Liked the pangram and the puzzle in general with some inventive clues including WEST SIDE STORY and QUITE MAD. Always good to have a few words to add to the vocab.; JAY and SILE were both new to me.
I parsed 23a as ‘Retails sports’ = rearranges the last 4 letters (tail) of the word ‘wears’ (for ‘sports’) = WARES.
Thanks to Julius and loonapick
Wordplodder @11, that should make the peace between cypticsue and Eileen, though I like Eileen’s parsing best.
Thank you Julius for a challenging puzzle which I did not quite manage to complete, and loonapick for a very helpful blog.
Thanks for parsing WEST SIDE STORY – I could see that had to be right. Inventive as ever from Julius, and pretty tough in places.
Thanks to Julius and loonapick
Not sure about the fairness and so solvability of some of this. That’s why it is harder I believe. It did seem in places ‘wilfully’ hard to me, like the ‘Boatman’ school of setters, which I dislike to be honest.
To give examples WEST SIDE STORY is poor in this respect, QUITE MAD too is much more complicated than it needs to be to get the exact same elements lined up. Proper grammar is here and there totally ignored, as in ‘I break’. The Guardian puzzle today is for me actually much better than this one, for all its ‘exciting’ word play.
Many thanks to loonapick for the blog and to those who have commented.
Just to confirm, the intended parsing for WARES is a homophone (indicated by “retails”) of WEARS= sports. I don’t think this homophone indicator is questionable, since it is supported by all the dictionaries (but my test-solver didn’t like it!)
@crimper
I agree that Chifonie’s puzzle is, as always, beautifully written and I regret that you found mine to be a bit contrived and grammatically unsound (although I don’t quite understand your reference to ‘exciting’ wordplay, since no-one had described it thus).
Regarding your comment about Boatman, I have attended one of his Masterclasses (and enjoyed it very much) but he doesn’t brainwash his attendees with his libertarian style; quite the opposite.
warmest regards,
Rob/Julius
I’m not sure who will know ‘retails’ as a hom ind though! Really, that’s terribly obscure.
I think the grammar angle is very important in crosswords, so that solvers know where they are, and I also had a tough time with this one.
I first thought that “retail” indicated a terminal letter replacement, but I’m happy with either usage. Nice one, Baer!
Everything seems fair enough to me – surely less familiar word uses are at the heart of crossword setting and solving. It’s one of the reasons I do them. I didn’t parse 10d and having a partially parsed (again!) and incorrect BIO rather than ZOO LOGIST in for 6d left me scratching my head as to what on earth JOBS UP meant! Will I ever learn – it seems not.
Thanks for the puzzle and blog contribution Julius and loonapick for the parsing.
And I forgot to say as a Lancastrian I was delighted to see “sile” (spell check doesn’t like it – even better). It’s nearly always used as “it’s fairly silin’ down out there”.
Excellent puzzle – witty and original cluing throughout.
It’s really a hallmark of ximtrolls (whether real or sockpuppet) to bang on about fairness and grammar when what they really mean is conformity with the arbitrary strictures by which ximeneanism differs from conventional cluing.
I use the term ximtroll to distinguish those people from the more intelligent ximeneans – the ones who whilst appreciating and possibly preferring setting done in that manner also realise that there are other valid approaches.
The “I break” approach used here depends on I being treated as I the word – not I the letter at the moment of insertion. Ximenes’s arbitrary denouncement of “I’m in the plan” for PLAIN (he didn’t mind the odd spare definite article) depends on the opposite assumption. Normal solvers will assume either to be possible.
Araucaria used the same approach as here quite often – so did (and do) many other well-established setters.
Many thanks for the fun – also to loonapick for the (quibble-free) blog
Tough but highly enjoyable. Thanks to both for the clues and the solution.
I learnt a couple of new words today.
Jolly Swagman, the correct format should really be ‘I breaks’ whether treated as the word or as the letter. Either way it isn’t a plural! That’s how I see it, anyway.
Your Ximenes is right to denounce ‘I’m in the plan’ for PLAIN as well, because ‘the letter ‘I’ am in the plan’ and also ‘the word ‘I’ am in the plan’ are simply wrong. That last example is like saying ‘Jolly Swagman am in the fifteen squared thread’, so you can very easily see it’s incorrect.
I think a lot of people including some setters get overtaken by the need to have a good surface, while forgetting the underlying mechanics of clues, which is a shame. All these things can be avoided or overcome easily.
JollySwagman@22
My blog was “quibble-free” but actually I agree with featherstonehaugh. The grammar of clues is actually very important and I din’t actually notice the I break issue while solving as I was trying to get the puzzle solved and the blog done before leaving for work.
On reflection, I would certainly have quibbled that clue. I had no complaints with the complexity of the clues, as that is where the fun of solving and parsing lies, but I do have problems with bad grammar, not only in puzzles, but in life generally, and “I break” in the context of breaking into, is just wrong.
My tuppence worth…
I had no problem with “I break bucking bronco”, it has nothing to do with “breaking into”, but with “breaking in” a horse, i.e. disciplining it to saddle and bridle.
And that, unfortunately, is where you and others are seduced.
Well, Julius has to sit on the horse to break it in…
featherstonehaugh, does your reasoning apply to this clue by Rufus in the Guardian today – Loincloth can make a number very warm, I conclude (5)
Hi Cookie
You are a one, aren’t you? But go on, I’ll bite!
Yes, it would I suppose. That would have to be something like ‘I concluding’ to work from where I’m sitting, but horses for courses, to go along with Julius and the horse.
There may be a way around it, as so often with these things, where if you consider that it’s HOT plus I (and not just the I) that are doing the concluding, but it’s a bit tenuous to say the least with only the D to add to.
And speaking of horses, weren’t there some chestnuts in that puzzle?
featherstonehaugh, thank you, I am still happy with both clues as they are – as for the chestnuts, I am fortunate to be a relatively new solver, so they do not bother me yet, but I am getting rather fed up with LA and DI.
Good for you Cookie, as long as you get why we pedants (assume that’s what JS means) don’t go for it.
Thanks Julius and loonapick
Did this one on the day but only got to do the final parsing run and check it off this week. Still missed the WEST and IDES part of the parsing of WEST SIDE STORY. Also didn’t think to look for the pangram.
SILESIA / SILES and the SA (Sturmabteillung) abbreviation of the Nazi Brownshirts were both new to me.
Enjoyable puzzle that finished in the SE corner with WARES and WHIFF.