A diamond of a puzzle; brilliant, and very hard.
Heart sank a little when I saw Io on the strapline – he beat me last time out – but I thoroughly enjoyed this. There’s novelty, wit and cleverness in practically every clue. Well worth the (considerable) effort. Thanks Io, and that’s it for Thursdays for me. See you here next Tuesday.
STOP PRESS: 6d has been amended. Thanks to Simon and Hovis. Io wins again!
| Across | ||
| 7 | CICADA | Chirpy fellow, not a gentleman to be impressed by intelligence (6) |
| CIA (‘intelligence’) with CAD (‘not a gentleman’) inserted, and cryptic definition. | ||
| 8 | CLASSICS | Latin Derby and Greek Oaks? (8) |
| Multiple definitions, the Derby and the Oaks being ‘classic’ horse-races. | ||
| 9 | CHOPIN | A composer, pianist and contralto: let me take you for a 21! (6) |
| C[ontralto] + HOP IN, an invitation to go for a ‘drive’ (= solution to 21). | ||
| 10 | OPERATOR | Say, Bocelli’s concerts on road out of Uruguay? He brings people together (8) |
| Tenor Andrea Bocelli’s itinerary might be an OPERA TOuR, which here lacks (is ‘out of’) U[raguay]. | ||
| 11 | THRASH | Sort of loud music with elements of punk and heavy metal beat (6) |
| Ludicrously complicated and deceitful double definition. Excellent. | ||
| 13 | DELI | Intentional, not to give rocket to food shop (4) |
| DELIberate (‘intentional’), without BERATE (‘to give rocket to’). | ||
| 16 | CULTURE | Civilisation divided, decoy blurring boundaries (7) |
| CUT (‘divide’) and LURE (‘decoy’), with, respectively their last & first letters overlapping (‘blurring boundaries’). | ||
| 17 | CLUED-UP | Fully informed about sweet after suggestion touch of laburnum’s got in (5-2) |
| PUD (‘sweet’) is reversed (‘got up’) after CUE (‘suggestion’) with a bit of L(aburnum) inserted. | ||
| 19 | CLUB | Maybe Arsenal’s big striker? (4) |
| Double def. | ||
| 20 | SPIGOT | Toper impersonating Tom, Tom and Peg? (6) |
| SOT is your ‘toper’. Its letters do as Tom the piper’s son did: they steal and eat a PIG. | ||
| 23 | SATURDAY | Well-built pair of adults admitted separately for 1 at the 28? (8) |
| STURDY (‘well-built’) with 2 A[dults] inserted. Who cares what picture you see? | ||
| 26 | FORMAL | Essential FM introduces halves of eg German exam (6) |
| F & M intertwine with the two ‘halves’, OR & AL, of ‘oral’, a language test. | ||
| 27 | REQUESTS | Not, ultimately, “Wacky” Squeers collecting favours (8) |
| Anagram (‘wacky’) of SQUEERS & ‘noT’ (last letter, ‘ultimately’) | ||
| 28 | MOVIES | This is what Oscars are about, and Flash is a contender (6) |
| MO (short moment, a ‘flash’) + VIES (‘is a contender’). | ||
| Down | ||
| 1 | NIGHT | Youth gingering up only a little time for a little music? (5) |
| Reversed inclusion (‘up, only a little’) in ‘youTH GINgering’ for Eine Kleine Musikzeit. | ||
| 2, 13 | CARPE DIEM | Found fault with Viz mag’s Top Tip about now (5,4) |
| CARPED (‘found fault with’) + IE (‘viz’, = ‘that is’) + M (‘top’ of ‘Mag’), giving advice to ‘live in the moment’ as ’twere. Ingenious. | ||
| 3 | DAWN CHORUS | Initially, what intrudes upon rest at start of day? Us! (4,6) |
| Well, it’s an &lit alright but where to start? W[hat] is inserted in ANCHOR (‘rest’) after D (start of ‘Day’), then US. That’s the construction, with the whole clue doing double duty as definition, the birdies speaking in first person. Go, Io. | ||
| 4 | DATE | Very small amount raised ahead of European rendezvous (4) |
| TAD (‘v. small amount’), reversed, + E[uropean]. Good grief, a normal clue. | ||
| 5 | ASIA | Exemplified by India and area? (4) |
| AS (‘exemplified by’) + I[ndia] + A[rea], and another whole-clue def. | ||
| 6 | SCHOOL RUN | Grossly unmoral ma’s neglected so collecting children on this? (6,3) |
| I can see CH[ildren] in SO to give SCHO, and I’ve messed around with SUBNORMAL, but nope, can’t see it. All help welcome. STOP PRESS: ignore the above, from when I thought it was SCHOOL BUS. See Simon & Hovis’s posts for parsing. Rueful respect to Io, once more. |
||
| 8 | CHORAL | Rhythmic and harmonious church voices are this (6) |
| CH[urch] + ORAL (which voices certainly are). | ||
| 12 | HALL OF FAME | Everyone here is celebrated – but he’s included nothing from the PM! (4,2,4) |
| H,E are first & last letters and include ‘ALL OF AM’, i.e., none of p.m. Neat. | ||
| 13 | See 2 | |
| 14 | PULL FACES | As Spooner says, giant steps show disdain (4,5) |
| FULL PACES, or ‘giant steps’ according to the Reverend Doctor. | ||
| 15 | STAB | Turn round the bend, and go (4) |
| BATS (’round the bend’, reversed). ‘Go’ as in ‘attempt, shot, try’ &c. | ||
| 18 | VINYLS | Yesteryear’s records once represented insolvency (6) |
| Anagram (‘represented’) of ‘INSoLVencY’, minus the letters of ONCE, though quite how their deletion is indicated eludes me… | ||
| 21 | DRIVE | Egg, finally cracked, split (5) |
| D (last letter of ‘crackeD’) + RIVE (to ‘split’, usually only seen in p.p. ‘riven’). | ||
| 22 | LAYER | A course for making early toast? (5) |
| Anagram (‘making toast’ of) EARLY. A course of bricks, for example. | ||
| 24 | UH-UH | Repeatedly and regularly such a negative response (2-2) |
| Alternate letters (‘regularly’) of ‘sUcH’, repeated. | ||
| 25 | DISC | Something DJ’s played, when this camp’s damp (4) |
| In other words, when ‘D IS C’ | ||
*anagram
I think 6 down is school run
6d is definitely SCHOOL RUN. It is an anagram of UNMORAL – MA after SO containing CH. I wonder if 12d is a mistake. I parsed as you did but there is an extra F. Thanks GB for the wonderful blog. I failed to get half a dozen answers. Thanks to IO.
Messing with 6d, SCHOOL BUS, I think you “un-moral” SUBNORMAL, i.e. Subtract an anagram (‘grossly’) of MORAL therefrom, then proceed with the SCHO on top as described above. Very tricksy if so: that’s the best I can do. (Sorry if I’ve crossed with anyone).
Yup, thanks Simon and Hovis, Quite right. One of many idees fixes that held me up today. Great puzzle.
I had SCHOOL BUS unparsed-thanks Hovis for the explanation.
Absolute hoot of a puzzle. After much head scratching I got CLUB and STAB and thought-“why didnt I see that before”-the art of the surface
9a had me howling with laughter, so did the construction of CARPE DIEM.
20 also brought to mind Spiggy Topes of Private Eye fame.
Having two JH puzzles in the same day was not quite like two buses coming at once as I could board both of them
Wow!And thanks for blog.
A splendid treat of a crossword – I did wonder whether there might be a Nina as there is ‘in the other place’ but I’m hopeless at spotting them so who knows
Thanks to IO for the great crossword and Grant for the blog
I’m so glad you got this to blog rather than me! I had a few guesses in here that I could not explain. Super puzzle from Io.
I think in 18 down is an anagram: VINYLS (the solution) ONCE is an anagram (representation of) INSOLVENCY
Very pleased to have finished this. Thanks for the blog. Favourite was CARPE DIEM
BTW, Saturday Night at the Movies is a Classic FM program, as is Culture Club, and no doubt there’s more. Double whammy!
Thanks PeeDee @7.
Yup, classic reverse anagram. Another miss. Still, I’m quite proud and relieved to have got this one more-or-less out.
And – l’esprit d’escalier – in 26a I should just have said “F & M intertwine in ORAL. Ooh, Matron”.
Well, there’s also Hall of Fame, Requests, and Drive. The Dawn Chorus is a choral piece played early in the morning on Sam Pittis’s show. Also Smooth Classics could be represented by [smooth] Operator Classics.
And back to Hovis @2,
Re. The extra ‘F’ in HALL OF FAME’…
Well spotted and Mea Culpa for not reading your post thoroughly.
I agree but might it work if the ‘F’ is an abbreviation of ‘From… ?’ Nah. But does “ALL OFF AM” work? Not sure but I agree it could be an error and IO may not be superhuman, gasp, which tilts the world upon its axis.
Will JH jump in?
If all the items are ALL OFF AM then none of it is off pm, nothing from the pm program included. Works for me.
In 17 across the ‘about’ is the indication to reverse PUD, not part of the definition. Haven’t seen the original but as printed here the clue doesn’t include ‘got up’ (which would be inappropriate for an across clue anyway).
To KeithD @13
Yup, slip of the mouse. Not really a parsing error, I’ve had enough of those today, thanks for saying.
Wickedly ingenious ..
PeeDee@12. You may be right. I tried to make sense of it that way but none of it is off pm seems to me to mean all of it is on/in pm.
Hovis, in a restaurant you order an item off the menu. Paradoxically it must have also been on the menu for that to happen.
18 dn Not so much a deletion – more of an addition. Vinyls plus once gives you insolvency.
PeeDee@17. Thanks. I was trying and failing to think of just such a paradoxical meaning for ‘off’.
Far too late, but just had to de-brief to the ether. In my ignorance, didn’t know Io = Enigmatist, who I did know = Nimrod. Had I known this I probably would have been scared off, but I plunged in naively and re-emerged several hours later, surprisingly still alive. In the end only missed with the SCHOOL BUS mistake, but there were so many unparsed I’ve lost count.
I thought I’d done pretty well with the Enigmatist yesterday, but I now know my place.
Thanks to Io, Grant for explaining 95% of the parsing and the clever people above who chimed in with the other 5%.
Thanks Io and Grant
Well what a brilliant stinker !!! Started this on Thursday evening and only managed to get the last 4 in tonight (Sunday).
Life was made much, much harder than it needed to be by writing my third answer in as NA-DA (was very smug for seeing aNd AnD – ‘repeatedly and regularly’ – along with A …. to give negative response) – that by itself added a day and a half to the elapsed time !!
Had also initially written in SCHOOL BUS at 6d – but after not being able to parse it … and having all of this extra time … did manage to go back and sort out the ‘unmoral ma’s neglected’ bit to arrive at SCHOOL RUN (with another nod of approval to the setter for some clever word play).
Finished with SATURDAY (after conceding that NA-DA must not be right), then that UH-UH, REQUESTS (after the D was taken out of the equation) and the very clever DISC as the last one in.
This was certainly not a puzzle for the faint-hearted … every clue had to be read – have the surface forgotten about – look for the devious trap(s) that were laid … and finally see the light … dip the hat to the setter … and march on to the next mini-battle.
Was seriously pleased to eventually get to the end of it and manage to get it correct and fully parsed … battle-scarred for sure, behind with the rest of the puzzles … and keenly looking forward to his next one !!!
Great blog Grant … to manage to get anything out at all on the day was an amazing feat in itself !!