A quick search suggests that it’s over three years since I had a Tees to blog. I was engaged by this offering, so have gone on a bit. Apologies in advance to folk from Middlesbrough.
I really enjoyed this. Took a while to pin down, but it’s all there if you go looking for it (apart from 9ac, which I need help with, please). Good variety of devices and subject matter. And a bird. Life is good.
Abbreviations
cd cryptic definition
dd double definition
(xxxx)* anagram
anagrind = anagram indicator
[x] letter(s) missing
definitions are underlined
Across
1 Go to grab bottom or hip
TRENDY
An insertion of END in TRY.
4 Chance 22 had to cut stress
ACCIDENT
Took me a while to sort this one out. 22 is TEES, our esteemed setter; so ’22 had’ is TEES HAD or ‘I’D. Stick that in ACCENT for ‘stress’ and there you go.
9 Foreign Office having back to wall
BUREAU
This must be BUREAU, but I haven’t a scooby how it works.
10 Struggling to reveal what makes flight unnecessary
ELEVATOR
(TO REVEAL)* I like the way that Tees always makes sure you have a sprinkling of Easy Annies to get you going. ‘Flight’ as in stairs, of course.
11 Set to become one integrated with grim outcome?
GETTING MARRIED
(INTEGRATED GRIM)* with ‘outcome’ as the anagrind. Is this &littish? Depends on your view of the Holy Sacrament of marriage, I suppose. Good clue.
13 Animal wants limb free – end of foot caught here?
CATTLE GRID
A clue where the definition and the wordplay overlap somewhat (if I’ve parsed it correctly). An insertion of T for ‘end of foot’ in CAT, LEG and RID.
14 Wilder perhaps, catlike mammal loses tail
GENE
GENE[T]. This animal and this actor. In my opinion, the latter was a great comic performer (and other things as well, of course).
16 Leader in revolt liable to be transported
RAPT
A charade of R for the first letter of ‘revolt’ and APT. When I see even careful writers coming out with ‘she was wrapped in thought’ it makes me grumpy.
18 Reports government workers excavating this
STATEMENTS
Another one that took a bit of teasing out: Tees is asking you to make a charade of STATE MEN and T[HI]S, on the grounds that if you ‘excavate’ the last word of the clue, you’ll be left with the outside letters.
21 Deliberate with student group hostile towards Tories?
CLASS-CONSCIOUS
A charade of CLASS for ‘group’ and CONSCIOUS for ‘deliberate’; I think it’s just a suggestion that if you don’t like the Tories it’s because they’re for the most part Eton/Oxford-educated knobheads, but I could be missing something.
23 Pure tar substance dissolved
ABSOLUTE
A charade of AB for sailor or ‘tar’ and SOLUTE for the substance dissolved in the SOLVENT, which gives you the SOLUTION (although not this one).
24 Savage in Recife on the loose
FIERCE
(RECIFE)*
25 Risk illness caused by cold
EXPOSURE
A dd.
26 Early settlers take spades
ANGLES
What’s your take on this clue? A charade of ANGLE and S for the card suit. They were indeed early settlers (or invaders, take your pick) of what is now England, and are behind the country’s modern name, which comes from the Old English Engla land, ‘land of the Angles’.
Down
1 Play involving black fellow
TOBY
An insertion of B in TOY.
2 Sneer at forged art making money?
EARNEST
I always forget this trick. It’s (SNEER AT)* with ‘forged’ as the anagrind. The ‘art making money’ bit comes from Early Modern English where there was still a distinction between second person singular (thou/thee) and second person plural (ye/you). The singular of the verb to be was ‘thou art’ (irregular) but this form was normally inflected with the ‘-est’ ending: thou givest, thou takest, thou bringest. So ‘thou art making money’ could whimsically be ‘thou EARNEST’. Many modern European languages have kept this singular/plural distinction, but standard English very sensibly has defaulted to ‘you’ for both.
3 English crowd spoke up for expansion
DIASTOLE
A reversal (‘up’ since it’s a down clue) of E, LOT and SAID. A synonym for ‘expansion’ mainly heard when measuring blood pressure or talking about the cardiac cycle.
5 Slanders old boys in clubs at Kelso regularly
CALUMNIATES
How is your passive vocabulary this morning? Mine just about coped with this, mainly because of a Catholic upbringing which introduced me to the concepts of calumny and detraction (look it up, but it’s not that interesting/useful). An insertion of ALUMNI in C for the other black suit, AT and ES for the even letters of ‘Kelso’. Tees correct in his classics as always: it’s ALUMNI because it’s ‘old boys’; ‘old girls’ would be ALUMNAE.
6 Still penning verse to cause upset
INVERT
An insertion of V in INERT.
7 Ravel went bonkers in Tzigane at the end
ENTWINE
A charade of (WENT)*, IN and E for the last letter of Maurice Ravel’s rhapsody Tzigane. I learnt something from this clue: the name comes from ‘gypsy’, and is cognate with a female gypsy in French, une gitane (it’s also a make of bike, but don’t get confused).
8 One’s temperature raised with inflammation and fatigue
TIREDNESS
A charade of I and T reversed and REDNESS.
12 Dark strong beer for Max Aldorfer?
NIGHT PORTER
I did have to look him up, since you ask. Max Aldorfer is one of the protagonists in the film THE NIGHT PORTER (a role which he plays). Dirk Bogarde and Charlotte Rampling were the doomed lovers. So it’s a charade of NIGHT and PORTER.
13 Rail car riotous with sailors into drink
CORNCRAKE
It gets better: a bird. Embarrassingly, almost my LOI. My excuse is that there’s a bit of deception going on. It’s RN for Royal Navy or ‘sailors’ and (CAR)* in COKE. Here is the obligatory Pierre bird link. You could almost believe that birds were related to dinosaurs, couldn’t you? The CORNCRAKE is a member of the rail family.
15 Lambs bite lions? What’s in their hearts?
AMBITION
Clever. Another extended definition. The middle letters (‘hearts’) of lAMBs bITe lIONs.
17 What one does in polo gives trouble
PLAYS UP
A dd, relying on the fact that you are ‘up’ on a horse or pony when you are playing the posh folks’ game.
19 Ne plus ultra strangely unremarkable
NEUTRAL
Another one I especially liked. It’s (NE ULTRA)* with ‘strangely’ as the anagrind.
20 Sunday among trees for Songs of Praise
PSALMS
An insertion of S in PALMS.
22 Northern runner seen occasionally in St Helens
TEES
Our redoubtable compiler gives himself a name check in the last clue. The even letters of sT hElEnS. Referring to the river that rises in the North Pennines (which is an An Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty) and reaches the North Sea near Middlesborough (which is not). Does the nom de plume come from this? I think we should be told.
Many thanks to Tees for a fine start to the Indy week.
Well blogged, that man.
I found this hard work & didn’t parse the ‘art’ bit of EARNEST properly; an ‘earnest’ is of course an old-fashioned money deposit in its own right, which turned out to be irrelevant.
And I don’t get BUREAU either. I took it as a kind of overlapping DD, a bureau always having its back to a wall whereas a desk can stand free but I don’t like that much.
‘Course, you can’t blog well without a good puzzle. I’m reminded of the law professor who tells an examinee, “If you don’t mind my saying, Smith, that was fine answer of yours to the third question”, Smith’s reply being, “Well, if you don’t mind my saying, sir, it was a damn fine question.”
Jolly well played both.
I think BUREAU s a French word for office as in Bureau d’Exchange and a word for desk adopted into English Lang.Sort of DD.
Cute puzzle.Thanks Tees and Pierre.
Found this even harder than yesterday’s but really enjoyed it. Managed to solve it all without cheating but had to check CALUMNIATE, but familiar with the nounal form, and also CORNCRAKE, my LOI. I read BUREAU as GB@1 and don’t really have any problem with that. Lots of faves including CATTLE GRID, STATEMENTS, ABSOLUTE, ANGLES, EARNEST, AMBITION. I guess ‘unravel’ , like ‘uncouth’ is what people call ‘orphaned negatives’ but, apparently not cryptic setters. Least favourite was CLASS-CONSCIOUS. Thanks to all.
When I had my own office desks were nearly always placed so that sitting at it one could welcome visitors as they came through the door and generally you “had your back to the wall”.
Not completely convinced by the definition at 21A. I suppose it has some left-wing overtones, but presumably a Tory could be conscious of class too.
Damn fine puzzle. Tough for a Monday but a useful distraction, solving it in my dentist’s waiting room. Blog pretty good too: lovely bird link Pierre.
IMHO The Night Porter is one of the great love stories in the movies. (Not the usual view of course.)
Enjoyable and very tough. Defo a couple of gimmies, but I was fighting tooth and nail for the rest until I retired with 5 or 6 unsolved. Lots to like as ever with this setter so thanks to The Flower for the puzzle and to Pierre for the amusing blog and enlightenment.
Not as easy as some recent Monday puzzles, I had to do a search to get 13dn.
Both ACCIDENT and The NIGHT PORTER were films starring Dirk Bogarde, but I think two answers do not make a theme.
We found this a bit tough, too, but completed it without help (well, almost – seeing the name ‘Max Aldorfer’ in the clues we checked who he was before starting on the puzzle). A generally fine puzzle with some great surfaces and nice misdirections. ENTWINE and CORNCRAKE were among our favourites; but otoh we weren’t impressed by 9ac or 21ac which we only got because they couldn’t be anything else.
Thanks, though, to Tees and Pierre.
Had no idea on ‘bureau’ apart from it being French for office, but the Google example shows a sort of upright piano with a desk sticking out – and its back to a wall.
Ne plus ultra a wonderful clue, and also caught by Corncrake until I realised rail wasn’t part of the anagram fodder. Thank S&B
Think the class-conscious thing has a ? for a reason, as in theory Tories might also be proud about status. But generally it would be us plebs I suppose.
Pretty tough for a Monday but well good.
I’m tempted to lazily ditto Hovis @3. I found this hard but satisfying, managing to get there solo, just having to check out CALUMNIATES after working it out. I wasn’t sure about bureau at first, and thought long and hard before I was confident enough to put it all in. CORNCRAKE was last for me too, but am happy not in the end to have been beaten by a bird!
A stupid error meant I had a wrong checker in CLASS-CONSCIOUS until almost the very end. I too am not convinced by the definition there.
I really liked the grim outcome of GETTING MARRIED! And was also quite stuck on CATTLE GRID. Lots more to enjoy too. Many thanks to Tees for the teaser and to Pierre for the detangling.
Bravo Tees, smashing puzzle. Been out all day and a very pleasant way to round off the evening in the company of a cold one.
Many thanks to Pierre for the blog; quite a day you’ve had!
Thanks Pierre, I rather made hard work of this. Gracias Tees for a bit of a toughie. The obscurities on word play for a poor uneducated lad like myself were ott.
Thanks Pierre
I must say that Tees isn’t one of my favourite setters, but I really did think think this one pushed things too far, and I’m one who’s prepared to give setters a lot of leeway.
13: assuming no double duty (as I believe Tees is pretty much ximenean) – ‘animal’ = ‘cat’? ‘caught here’ as definition? If it’s an &lit, what’s ‘free’ doing?
12: ‘Max Aldorfer’ as definiton? If you don’t know (a) the film & (b) the character, it’s meaningless.
The unlamented Hedgehoggy woulkd have had a field day, I think.
13ac is CAT (animal) + LEG (limb) + RID (free, as a verb) with T (end – last letter – of ‘foot’) inserted (caught) after the T of ‘cat’. And I’d class it as a semi-&lit.
… I’d class it as semi-&lit because you could get the end of your foot caught in it if you walked across it instead of using the gate at the side.
Thanks Pierre for the blog. We forgot that we didn’t finish this last night and have only just completed it.
Quite a tricky Tees and we were glad that we were using a crossword app which warns you if you insert an incorrect letter.
We had no idea who Max Aldorfer was – never having seen the Night Porter – but we had all the crossing letters and the wordplay was quite straightforward.
Thanks Tees.