It’s never a chore to draw a Hoskins on blogging day.
Great stuff here as expected, and there’s very little I can add. Paced exactly right for a Sunday, with a handful of chuckles thrown in. What’s not to like.
Thanks to Hoskins.
Addendum: I owe an apology to readers and a word of thanks to Gaufrid for my no-show last time I was scheduled to cover the IoS. A few readers will know I haven’t been in the best of health recently, and unfortunately it got the better of me that day. But I’m still here, still loving the work of these talented setters and still enjoying writing argumentative, disagreeable words on the internet. This post is a little terse, but I promise to make the next one more voluble, argumentative and disagreeable 🙂
| Across | ||
| 1 | PLANT POT | Factory fund for housing for young climbers? (5,3) |
| PLANT + POT. | ||
| 5 | HIATUS | Break America after success touring Austria (6) |
| (US after HIT) around A. | ||
| 10 | ABIGAIL | An epic fail going topless with this woman (7) |
| A + BIG + [f]AIL. | ||
| 11 | AT SPEED | Quickly polish off 70% of sweetmeats, then go Dutch (2,5) |
| [sweetme]ATS + PEE + D. | ||
| 12 | DONNE | Old linesman is finished, so the radio said (5) |
| Homophone of “done”. John of that ilk, though in all honesty I mainly know him via Van Morrison and the fact that my best pals used to live in a street named after him. | ||
| 13 | DISPENSER | Depression not over, off to see pharmacist? (9) |
| Anagram of DEPRESSI[o]N. | ||
| 14 | PEDAL BOAT | Training a bad lot to change is a craft (5,4) |
| PE + anagram of (A BAD LOT). | ||
| 16 | CONGA | Conservative lass missing the last line dance (5) |
| CON + GA[l]. | ||
| 17 | SOLAR | Very liberal artist with backing of The Sun (5) |
| SO + L + RA<. | ||
| 19 | THEM AND US | Tense Afghan province left by large American division? (4,3,2) |
| T + HE[l]MAND + US. | ||
| 21 | IN CONCERT | Where people might catch a live bass together? (2,7) |
| Two definitions. Think of “bass” as in music. | ||
| 24 | TOFFS | Nobs and heartless tycoons? Rotten to the core! (5) |
| OFF inserted into T[ycoon]S. | ||
| 26 | GENERAL | Dope time with Latin woman in uniform? (7) |
| GEN + ERA + L. | ||
| 27 | RESHAPE | Some fresh aperitifs in fashion again? (7) |
| Hidden in [f]RESH APE[ritifs]. | ||
| 28 | NEEDED | Wanted: new editors to cover Spain (6) |
| N + (E in (ED + ED)). | ||
| 29 | WINDLESS | Free of flatulence? Not so much after turn (8) |
| LESS after WIND. | ||
| Down | ||
| 1 | PLAID | Cloth cap on posh boy has head of idiot inside (5) |
| (P[osh] + LAD) with I[diot] inside. | ||
| 2 | ALIGNED | Indy setter upset Celtic hooligan set straight in a row? (7) |
| GILA< + NED. Reference to our very own Fifteensquared colleague Ali, there. | ||
| 3 | TRAVELLER | Bank clerk bringing in vans to recover any VW Polo? (9) |
| TELLER containing R[ecover] + A[ny] + V[w]. Reference to Marco, of course. | ||
| 4 | OILED | Worked hard, having no time to get lubricated (5) |
| [t]OILED. | ||
| 6 | ISSUE | One Direction to institute legal proceedings against kids (5) |
| I + S + SUE. | ||
| 7 | TREASON | Very concerning to come across a betrayal (7) |
| TRES + (A in ON). | ||
| 8 | SIDE ROADS | Adore cast being entertained by Sid’s little ways? (4,5) |
| ADORE* in SIDS. | ||
| 9 | CASSETTE | Tape bag up, then most of Hoskins? (8) |
| SAC< + SETTE[r]. | ||
| 14 | PASSING ON | Dying fire fed by the last two bits of kindling (7,2) |
| PASSION containing [kindli]NG. | ||
| 15 | ON THE SLY | Honestly, Dicky, in a way that’s quite sneaky (2,3,3) |
| Anagram of HONESTLY*. | ||
| 16 | CHASTISED | Had a go at new crash diets, but not runs (9) |
| Anagram of (C[r]ASH DIETS). | ||
| 18 | LICENCE | Permit nits to go on top of Norman church (7) |
| LICE + N[orman] + CE. | ||
| 20 | DEFLATE | Let down recently (after making love Ed turned over) (7) |
| OF LATE, making O become ED<. | ||
| 22 | NURSE | Tend to hold on to a pint, but not neck it (5) |
| Two definitions. | ||
| 23 | TARSI | Sailor on island with son breaking bones (5) |
| (TAR on I) with S inside. | ||
| 25 | SHEDS | Places one might find rakes in Slough society (5) |
| SHED + S. | ||
* = anagram; < = reversed; [] = removed; underlined = definition; Hover to expand abbreviations
Good way to spend an hour or so of a pleasant Sunday afternoon. I particularly liked the misdirection of the ‘VW Polo’ and the surface for 24a.
For Australians of a certain age, the wordplay for ABIGAIL will bring back memories of a racy soap opera (for the 1970’s) called Number 96. If you’re interested, here’s Abigail’s page on IMDb.
Thanks to Simon – best wishes for your continued recovery – and to Hoskins.
Huge fun.I particularly like the “Carry On” image evoked by the lovely clue for SIDE ROADS
Thanks to Hoskins and SimonH; go well
Well, Harry, what have you done! Suggested to a friend that he should try this one, saying ‘you won’t believe what this guy gets away with in his puzzles’, only to discover that it would probably have even been given the green light by the editor of the DT back-pager! I did enjoy it and would suspect that Mrs J also thought it was far more respectable.
Thanks to Simon for the parsing of 20d – I’ve got so used to Hoskins’ ways that I thought he was using a single letter for an offensive description of ‘making love’! Just a couple of queries – isn’t the setter referred to in 2d called Gila and shouldn’t the last two words be underlined as the definition of 16a?
Very mild, korma like for Harry. @Jane Ali G aka Gila used to be a blogger here. Thanks Simon, good to see you back and Harry who seems to have the knack of writing excellent and easy to solve crosswords.
Always enjoyable to tackle a Hoskins puzzle over a beer on a Sunday afternoon.My Afghan geography was lacking but the answer couldnt be otherwise.And I am familiar with Gila but who the hell is Ned?
Thanks all.
Best wishes to Simon Harding, perhaps a few strong porters and stouts are called for.
Def in 4D is lubricated.
Thanks to Hoskin and SH.
We liked this and solved it pretty quickly in two passes. Couldn’t parse TREASON as we didn’t think of ‘tres’.
Our only quibble is with 2dn. Firstly, it’s a point that’s been raised on Fifteensquared before, that it’s not fair to expect possible newbie solvers to know setter’s pseudonyms. And secondly, as copmus puts it, ‘who the hell is Ned?’ – our guess is that the hooligan element among Glasgow Celtic fans are known as ‘neds’; a bit of googling came up with a news item that referred to ‘pyro neds’ throwing flares onto the pitch.
No real favourites, but IN CONCERT and DEFLATE deserve honourable mentions.
Thanks, and get well soon, Simon. Thanks, too, to Hoskins.
allan_c @7
The ‘Celtic’ is only in the clue for 2dn to indicate that NED is a word predominantly used in Scotland:
Chambers
ned (chiefly Scot; slang)
noun
1. A young hooligan, a disruptive adolescent
2. A member of a teenage gang
ODE
ned
noun Scottish informal a hooligan or petty criminal.
@allan_c
One of Hoskins’ hats is “Ned” which is the nom de guerre he uses for setting his GK puzzles in the Scottish Sunday Herald
Thanks, Gaufrid @8
… and thanks, baerchen @9
… and perhaps one should point out that the vast majority of Celtic supporters are NOT neds. We found ourselves in Luxembourg a few years ago when Celtic were playing there, and a more good-humoured crowd of fans you couldn’t wish to meet.
Great puzzle as always from The Hosk. I particularly enjoyed 16D and 22D.
And 2D was pretty good too! 😉
Many thanks to S&B
I didn’t know Ned. I don’t think I want to meet him.
I ticked a whole 9 clues and can’t be bothered to go through them properly to decide on a favourite, but a quick look through those for surface amusement picks out NURSE ABIGAIL.
With reference to Jane’s post above, I do like that you never know quite what Hoskins is going to serve up is his crosswords, but that you can be sure it will be tasty. Thanks to him for today’s special.
Thanks also to Simon. I hope the sun shines brighter for you soon. (Also I hope that eating part of an ostrich for your tea lived up to the excitement! 🙂 )
Many thanks to SH for the usual great blog and to all who solved and especially those who commented.
On reflection, I think it was a mistake of mine to include a setter, the lesser known NED and a misdirective def in the same clue in 2d for an easier-end puzzle. Having said that, I do stand by its constituent parts.
For me, a setter’s name is fair game for solvers old and new: the former should have an awareness of the setters’ names and the latter will be learning abbreviations and all the crossworld stuff so will take it all in. More importantly, if you don’t know the setters’ names, then you are likely to Google them and find FifteenSquared which will be a great help in future learning and bolster the community here.
With regard NED, yup, ’tis my setter name in The Herald, but I used it not for that, but because I was safe in the knowledge it had been used before in the Indy and so would not be unknown to solvers (of course, ‘not unknown’ to learnt, known and forgotten is a different thing entirely).
Still, as I said, all three of these in one clue was an error in an easier end puzzle, so apologies.
And now, if I may, some specific replies:
@SH – sorry to hear you’ve been up against it and wishing you a speedy recovery so you can keep us entertained with the blogs and keep the newer crossword folk informed and learning the dark arts of the cryptic. All the best to you.
Jane @3 – well, you set your friend up for the naughties and I’ve gone all straight-laced on you! What can I say? Perhaps I’ve finally seen the light and have gone legit … Either or anyways, glad you are getting others to try the Indy out – a stable-full of great setters here and well-deserving of wider recognition and more solvers if you ask me.
Mr C @7 & 11 – I very much hope the clue didn’t paint all Celtic fans as hooligans – I only had in mind one, and I don’t think it too far-fetched to say they’ll be one hooligan at all major football matches at all times. Also glad to hear that Celtic fans are not hooligans for the most part as I wouldn’t want to run into them and not get beaten up.
Kitty @14 – ‘never quite know what Hoskins is going to serve up’ made me very happy as although there is always some Hoskins in a Hoskins puzzle, I’m glad they are varied enough to keep things interesting for you guys.
Well now, with all business taken care of and tucked away like a drag Queen’s John Thomas, I think it sensible we move on to the much more important continuing tales of Mrs Jalopy of the Fabled FifteenSquared drinks trolley.
As it happens, Mrs J did have an adventure in the period between my last Indy outing and this, but SH’s lawyers forbade me from discussing it and so we’ll just have say what happens on a 5K run stays on a 5K run and settle for the time Mrs Jalopy worked for Manley Air, a little known, but impeccably run, airline operating out of Bosey, Illinois.
At this time in the late 70s, the Fabled Fifteen Squared trolley was, of course, just another of the hostess trolleys used by the Manley Air cabin crew. But it would be a lie to say there was not something special about it even in its youth.
Yes, it was certainly something the 23 year old Mrs Jalopy – decked in the tasteful bright purple and lime green uniform of the company on her second day of stewarding – could not fail to notice on her first trip between Skegness and Walthamstow when the flight had a particularly thirsty passenger in seat B, row 5.
“It’s intolerable,’ said the passenger, whose face seemed to suggest a strange mixture general annoyance and avuncular charm. “Intolerable, I say! Three stewardesses, three trolleys and yet my Babycham has been dry for some thirty seconds. I demand service!”
Mrs Jalopy sped into action immediately after she had applied her blue lipstick, checked her hair, read the last chapter of War and Peace, and written a short treatise on the impossibility of a donut-shaped universe and then she and her trolley – the trolley – were there by the side of the disgruntled customer.
“What’s it you fancy,” she said, curling a long puce-painted fingernail round her recently permed hairdo; something she had been told made her look both attractive, interested, and not a little bit like the top film star of the day, Jane Crampton.
“Fancy?” replied the man, “I fancy some booze – some booze in the shape of Babycham to be specific. Been drier than a Hoskinsian glass for at least a minute and a half and I don’t expect that sort of thing on the renowned Manley airlines.”
Checking the trolley, Mrs Jalopy saw all sorts of quality liquor there from advocaat to Baileys and Tia Maria and back again, but Babycham there was not.
“Well?” The passenger’s face had lost its avuncular charm, there was only a squished kind of countenance that one might see in high numbers at a Young Conservatives conference. “What’s the hold up, sweetie?”
Mrs Jalopy reddened beneath the three layers of concealer it took her forty five minutes apply with her special trowel-applicator each day. ‘Sweetie?’ she thought. ‘Sweetie, eh? Not a sweetie, dear – I have a mirror and check myself in the Franklyn way daily. Sweetie? Not a sweetie. No, not a sweetie and definitely not your sweetie, indeed.’
However, Mrs Jalopy, strong minded as she was even at the tender age of 23, thought of her hungry dog – Mr Toodles – at home in her flat with the mould up the walls and the boiler that needed fixing and said: “Oh, you kidder! One Babycham coming right up.”
Underneath her make-up, the flush of anger turned to a flush of fear. Rule one of Manley Air was the customer is always right – unless, of course, the customer is a Hoskins, in which case the customer is no customer, but likely a stowaway and should be ejected somewhere over Slough sans parachute. The passenger in seat B, row 5 didn’t look like a Hoskins what with his attractive, if angry continental look, and so, having promised a Babycham a Babycham there must be.
With eyes darting around like a flight of Eric Bristow’s, Mrs Jalopy searched the trolley once more. ‘Perhaps,’ she thought, ‘just perhaps I missed a bottle of it?’ and she reached deep inside the innocuous-looking trolley and then there it was!
Her eyes widened at the sight of it and she, like a kid who’s just come across the stash of naughties her mother never intended her to find, checked left and right to see if anyone else had seen it too.
The passenger in seat 5 had not, his eyes were wild in anger at being kept waiting for a full three minutes now. The other passengers – a collection of crossword solvers on their way to a crossword-do – were deep in thought, sucking the end of their pens and occasionally laughing, groaning or tutting at the clues before them.
No one had seen it. No one save her.
“Just one moment, sir” she said, and was pleased the way she’s made the ‘sir’ sound like fart-face. “I shall return forthwith with the special Babycham for you. Vintage 1972 from, as a connoisseur such as yourself will know is the finest manufacturer of, the house of Bognor Regis.”
And with that she was gone, a spring in her step, pushing the trolley – the trolley – up the aisle as fast as her bad leg could carry her until she reached the galley, pulled closed the curtain behind her and opened up the trolley doors to get a good look at what she’d found.
The urn itself was unremarkable but for two things: the size of it and its inscription. The size was too small for a commercial urn; as if someone had made a toy for a kiddy as it was barely bigger than small thermos flask. But it was the inscription which captivated her. There on the side of it, in what she would later describe as ‘fancy-pants writing of the squiggly style’ was written:
‘I am but an urn in search of one who needs me and, for one who needs me and is pure of heart there shall be Babycham – endless Babycham – the like of which Cleethorpes has never seen.’
Mrs Jalopy read the words three times over and then three times over again. Could it be true? She wiped her eyes, removing two layers of concealer and three hours worth of heavily applied mascara in the process, but it didn’t matter as there was more written there. Beneath the first sentence was writ:
‘To they who take me in and are chosen, I shall grow in stature and become an urn worthy of being pushed by a queen and serving the thirstiest idiots of all the world’
And below that, in writing Mrs Jalopy squinted to see:
‘But heed this, I must never – NEVER – be separated from the trolley in which I am found.’
And then below that in writing Mrs Jalopy was glad to see written in more sensibly sized writing was:
‘Apologies for the caps in that previous statement, but seriously, never separate me from the trolley or, like, really bad stuff will happen, m’kay.’
And with that, Mrs Jalopy gave the urn a little thumb on its side like she’d do to the cheek of a mischievous kid and that was when it happened, well, that was when two things happened at the very same time.
First of all her the touch of the urn it began to grow. It grew quickly, without sound, but within a few seconds it had grown to a size of a tea trolley urn and it was cold to her touch. With trembling hand, she grabbed a glass and turned the urn’s tap. The golden fizz came out in a beautiful stream and at once she knew it was the nectar of the gods – Babycham of the Bognor Regis estate vintage 1972!
Second, there was the cry from the passenger in Seat 5. row B of: “WheresmyflippingdrinkforgoodnesssakeIdontpaygoodmoneytobeupintheairandwithoutabevvyandIhatebeingthisangraybecauseitisnotwhatimlikeatallandafterallonehastotakeabreathatsomepointdoesntone!”
Mrs Jalopy smiled. She knew something special had happened and she knew she could pacify the passenger at seat 5 – a Mr Dutch, the manifest said – and more than that, she knew she had to somehow get the trolley and its special cargo off the plane and away from Manley Air and into her possession for good.
Fairly dancing up the aisle to the Mr Dutch in seat 5, the world of possibilities presented itself in her mind’s eye: a business, a business of her very own! A vocation and a calling and a life dedicated to libation of idiots of the first order!
And with that, she poured the first of twenty three Babychams for Mr Dutch who, it turns out, was only afeared of flying and the avuncular niceness of his face was the true one and the anger was only bred of a fear of the plane landing in a heap rather than on a runway.
‘What a day,’ Mrs Jalopy thought as the plane taxied into Walthamstow. ‘What a day indeed!’ And she began to think of how to hand in her notice to Manley Air and liberate both the trolley – her trolley now – and its urn from its former masters. But, she couldn’t help remember the warning as she disembarked that day.
‘Never separate the urn form the trolley’ rang around her mind as she made her way doen the plane’s steps and vowed she vowed it would never happen on her watch, but not before realising, with a gasp, that she had forgotten to sign off on the passenger manifest – something she’d never failed to do on her watch before …
Phew! Looks like I managed to keep it pretty brief this time around. In fact, I’m so pleased with meself for my succinctness I reckons its drinks from the trolley all round for setters and solvers alike – so do dig in, or you might risk the wrath of Mrs J herself.
Just remains for me to say many thanks to all who visited today and I look forward to seeing you again next time around. That should be Tuesday the 24th with a, perhaps bar one clue, korma puzzle for the excellent thematic Indy Tuesday spot. However, more likely I’ll see you on the morrow where there’s the usual nice puzzle from your friend and mine, Silvanus, to kick off our Indy week.
Cheers and chin chin to all. 🙂
Apologies for the late comment but we have only just finished the puzzle. No, it hasn’t taken ages to complete it – we only found time to start it late this evening!
We could not believe it was Hoskins – speed and pot appear in the grid without a single drug reference in the parsing!
Hoskins – great fun as usual.
Simon – we hope you are improving fast.
Thanks to both.