Having spent about a week wrestling with a Hob reprint in the ‘i’ a couple of weeks ago, being drawn to blog this one seemed a little daunting.
Sure enough, I made a slow start, to say the least. Finally a few answers trickled through, and a theme became apparent. Not something about which I know a great deal, and at least a couple of the clues did appear to require knowledge of the subject.
In the end I had to cheat shamelessly to finish things off and get a post together, but here it is.
The theme is the glam rock band T. Rex and their singer Marc Bolan, who died 40 years ago today.
| Across | ||
| 1 | HIGH FASHION | Off to make top hats? (4,7) |
| HIGH + FASHION. | ||
| 9 | EXTRA | Former leader of 8 32 has a walk-on part (5) |
| EX + T[yrannosaurus] + R + A. | ||
| 10 | RAM | Memory? It’ll be right in the morning (3) |
| R + AM. | ||
| 11 | FUNKY | Georgia’s evil-smelling jelly, after horseplay (5) |
| FUN + KY Jelly. The “Georgia” indicates this is typically an American term. | ||
| 12/13 | FELDSPAR | Fear LSD trip finally unhinged rock band? (8) |
| Anagram of (FEAR LSD [tri]P). | ||
| 14 | RASTA | One religiously following, from afar, a star (5) |
| Hidden in [afa]R A STA[r]. | ||
| 15 | DIED | Finally went and acted after taking tablet (4) |
| E in DID. | ||
| 21 | ALDERMANIC | Like former council member in tree, frantically busy (10) |
| ALDER + MANIC. | ||
| 24 | HOPS | Dances if Hot Love plays, wanting sexual partner (4) |
| H + 0 + P[lay]S. | ||
| 27/17 | RIDE A WHITE SWAN | Hit by thought, with answer falling out (4,1,5,4) |
| IDEA in (WITH ANSWER)*. | ||
| 28 | GURU | Teacher in wig, retired by university (4) |
| RUG< + U. T. Rex’s guru was metal, of course. | ||
| 33 | ADIEU | Farewell notice that is for all to see (5) |
| AD + IE + U. | ||
| 34 | CLEVER DICKS | Suddenly becomes clear about always beginning to distrust know-it-alls (6,5) |
| (EVER + D[istrust]) in CLICKS. | ||
| Down | ||
| 1 | HOTEL | In a word, what Debora appears to lack (5) |
| Hotel = H in the phonetic alphabet, while the girl’s name is more usually Deborah. Hands up who else wrote in “aitch” fairly confidently. | ||
| 2/31 | GLAMORGAN | Cricket side happy to drop last limited overs captain (9) |
| GLA[d] + MORGAN. I’m told that the reference is to somebody named Eoin Morgan. | ||
| 3 | FOREPAW | Beastly bit of recording in first half of Frowning Atahuallpa‘s intro, sadly (7) |
| EP (FROW[ning] A[tahuallpa])*. | ||
| 4 | SAMURAI | Lily as climbing flower? That’s Electric Warrior (7) |
| (ARUM AS)< + I. I think the “flower that’s electric” gives us the I, as in electrical current, which is rather nice. | ||
| 5 | INFORMER | Singer getting home late (8) |
| IN + FORMER. | ||
| 6 | NINES | Figures writer must be out of range (5) |
| [pen]NINES. | ||
| 7 | PERFIDE ALBION | A fellow setter had a point: 25 must be upset about about current view of Britain from Barnier’s people (7,6) |
| PER + F + I‘D + E + (I in BOLAN*). A new term for me, at least in this French-influenced spelling. Barnier is this chap, though if the term has any particular relevance to him beyond his nationality I’m afraid it’s lost on me. “I” as in current again? | ||
| 8/32 | TYRANNOSAURUS REX | Younger female sailor fed to bull by king? That was monstrous! (13,3) |
| ((YR + ANN + OS) in TAURUS) + REX. The original name of the band T. Rex. | ||
| 16 | END | Finish letter to daughter (3) |
| EN + D. | ||
| 18 | HEN | A layer of the netherworld (3) |
| Hidden in [t]HE N[etherworld]. | ||
| 19 | WOO | Setter’s comment: “It won’t finish in court” (3) |
| WOO[f]. I liked this one. | ||
| 20 | ORDNANCE | Arms whirling on dancer (8) |
| Anagram of (ON DANCER). | ||
| 22 | AURORAE | Gold earring turns up by the end of four dawns (7) |
| Au + [fou]R + (EAR O)<. You had to mentally separate the “ear” and the “ring” to get the O. | ||
| 23 | INDEXED | Like some books about Kiss? For sure (7) |
| X in INDEED. | ||
| 26 | LOGIC | By the sound of it, would I see reason? (5) |
| LOG + I + C. The log comes from “wood”, a homophone of “would”. | ||
| 29 | UNITS | Detachments from hand and foot, say (5) |
| Two definitions. “Hand” and “foot” being units of measurement. | ||
| 30/25 | MARC BOLAN | Rocker found in crashed car – no blame, no drug involved (4,5) |
| Anagram of (CAR + NO BLAM[e]). Reference to the singer’s death in a car accident in Barnes, London. | ||
* = anagram; < = reversed; [] = removed; underlined = definition; Hover to expand abbreviations
One glance at the clues made it clear that it was all about Marc Bolan today.
First thing I did was looking for (4,5) and found it at the very end (30/25).
Bingo.
Then I thought what were the songs that I really liked in those days of old and the first one that came up was Ride A White Swan.
27/17 (4,1,5,4) – bingo, again.
Apart from this, I couldn’t finish the puzzle because of (three) problems in the NE.
With hindsight, especially 5d (INFORMER) is really good.
My best friend Peter thinks Marc Bolan was a ‘wanker’ but after a I saw a DVD I bought years ago, I think the man had a lot in common with David Bowie.
For some, this may be blasphemy but Bolan had a similar kind of career.
He might have become a Superstar but we will never know.
Because of what Hob told us at 30/25: wonderful clue.
Quite sure that 2d’s GLAM was there for a reason.
And we also had Telegram Sam without Telegram (in 4d).
I like this kind of crossword but not everyone does, I assume.
Thanks Simon.
Hob makes Boatman seem logical! But I was reminded of John Simm warning Marc Bolan about driving home in “Life on Mars”.
At least a yellow card for the Georgia clue.
I parsed the second half of 7d but it was a pretty obscure clue overall.
Otherwise it had its moments. I liked INFORMER.
Sympathies with SH for getting the short straw and I guess thanks to Hob.
Solving the clues was slightly harder than navigating the app’s across/down combos but as with Sil@1, finding the giveaway ‘Marc Bolan’ revealed a lot.
Funky lost me completely.
Mr Morgan is mildly topical as there is some knockabout cricket today.
Thanks to S&B.
I always enjoy Hob’s puzzles, and we are spoiled today since it’s not that often that a 15×15 cryptic has a 34 across.
I was 13 when Ride a White Swan was released and didn’t quite fall in love with it, I’m afraid.
@Sil
I thought about you when I saw the word play for AURORAE…..Golden Earring? Been drivin’ all night, my hand’s wet on the wheel..
Thanks to Hob and Simon
Once the theme became apparent, I managed to finish except for the first part of 7d. ALDERMANIC was a new word for me but easy to get. Wasn’t aware that meaning for FUNKY was American but was straightforward to guess once I had the F and Y. Didn’t know who MORGAN was in 2/31 but don’t really care. Lots of nice clues such as those for EXTRA and WOO. Thanks to Hob and to Simon.
My curries are funky but they smell OK to me.Funky drummer yes.
Like Simon, we made a slow start, to say the least. Finally a few answers trickled through but then, being unfamiliar with who MB was, we failed to spot the theme. Nevertheless we finished unaided apart from occasionally checking our guesses in Chambers. The only thing that puzzled us was RIDE A WHITE SWAN – only after completing the puzzle did we look at the clue again and realise ‘hit’ referred to a song. So we googled it and then everything dropped into place! A real epiphany moment. But it just goes to prove that ghost-themed crosswords can be solved (eventually) without any knowledge of the theme.
Having seen the theme, though, we have to admire Hob’s genius in constructing the puzzle, and specifically the &lit nature of 30/25. But our CoD is not related to the theme: WOO – brilliant!
Our only grumble has nothing to do with the puzzle; it’s about the awful software the Indy uses that simply can’t handle linked clues. It took ages to sort out our printout, eliminating the duplications and getting things in the right order before we even stated solving.
But Thank you to Hob and Simon.
baerchen, off topic
[I thought of Golden Earring too. That said, Radar Love was indeed their international breakthrough but one that left me cold. The band had a string of hits in the 60s and early 70s in their (and my) home country. Poppy, yes, but some were terrific like That Day [1966] or Just A Little Bit Of Peace In My Heart [1969] both of which take me back to my schooldays. After they dropped the s at the end of ‘Earrings’, they became a different band with 1970’s Golden Earring (by some called Wall of Dolls, because of the album sleeve) and 1982’s Cut (with their only US No 1 Twilight Zone) the major highlights. For me, that is.]
Whenever I see reverential references to David Bowie I think of The Laughing Gnome.
I enjoyed this crossword, though; especially woo