Phi has provided today’s cruciverbal challenge from his usual Friday home.
I found this to be the toughest Phi crossword that I have solved in many a month. I think that I have managed to complete the grid and parse the solutions successfully, but this was not without googling the names of the two Zimbabwean politicians. Perhaps it was Robert Mugabe’s departure that prompted Phi to devote a couple of clues to Zimbabwean politics? In any case, he has laid bare yet another gap in my general knowledge.
There is even more unusual vocabulary at 14, 21 and in the wordplay at 22 (“talk at table”). I have spotted no other theme in this puzzle than the fact that six rows of the completed grid contain the words ON and OFF, which surely could not have happened by chance.
My favourite clues today were 15, for ingenuity, and 25, for smoothness of surface.
*(…) indicates an anagram; definitions are italicised; // separates definitions in multiple-definition clues
| Across | ||
| 01 | COFFER | Source of cash in company’s first bid
C<ompany> (“first” means first letter only) + OFFER (=bid) |
| 05 | HEDONISM | Arrangement of Sondheim being purely for pleasure
*(SONDHEIM); “arrangement of” is anagram indicator |
| 09 | ICON | Influential figure I note controlling senior officer
CO (=senior officer, i.e. Commanding Officer) in [I + N (=note, as in nota bene)] |
| 10 | ACT OF FAITH | Religious observance: 20 accepted it in a church
[TOFF (=entry at 20) + A (=accepted) + IT] in [A + CH (=church)] |
| 11 | BULLY OFF | Expert not entirely accepting representation of folly in how game starts
*(FOLLY) in BUF<f> (=expert; “not entirely” means last letter dropped); “representation” is anagram indicator |
| 12 | RECKON | Believe Welsh town will accommodate king after ditching baron
K (=king, in cards) in <b>RECON (=Welsh town; “after ditching baron (=B)” means letter “b” is dropped) |
| 13 | MERC | Car – recalled the best sort after one disembarks
CRE<a>M (=the best sort); “after one (=A) disembarks” means letter “a” is dropped; “recalled” indicates reversal |
| 15 | ILL-NATURED | Red tuna apparently like a crab
“red tuna” is an anagram (“ill”) of “natured”; to be crabby (“like a crab”) is to be irritable, ill-natured |
| 17 | STRONGHOLD | Strain hard to encircle outside of tower (historic fortress)
{T<owe>R (“outside of” means first and last letters only) in [SONG (=strain, air) + H (=hard, as in HB pencils)} + OLD (=historic) |
| 20 | TOFF | Noble part of family (but only part)
Hidden (“only part”) in “parT OF Family” |
| 22 | BANANA | Contemporary of 8 to sanction talk at table
BAN (=sanction) + ANA (=talk at table, i.e. literary anecdotes); the reference is to Canaan Banana (1936-2003), the first President of Zimbabwe from 1980-87 who was a contemporary of Ndabaningi Sithole (=entry at 8) |
| 24 | TARRAGON | Plant in river in the past blocking lake
[R (=river) + AGO (=in the past)] in TARN (=lake) |
| 26 | PHONOGRAPH | One showcased recordings of gas circulating in pubs
[O’ (=of) + NOGRA (ARGON=gas; “circulating” indicates reversal)] in [PH + PH (=pubs, i.e. 2 x PH (=public house)] |
| 27 | OFFA | Meat product more than enough for this old ruler
OFFA<l> (=meat product; “more than enough” means the last letter can be dropped); the reference is to Offa, the Anglo-Saxon king of Mercia from AD757 to AD796, famous for Offa’s Dyke |
| 28 | IRONCLAD | It’s a ship // guaranteed
Double definition: an IRONCLAD is a ship covered with iron plates AND an e.g. iron-clad contract or case against someone is extremely secure, hence “guaranteed” |
| 29 | TOFFEE | Half-heartedly fund, returning charge? That’s sweet
TOF (FO<o>T=fund, as in to foot the bill; “half-heartedly” means one of the two central o’s is dropped; “returning” indicates reversal) + FEE (=charge) |
| Down | ||
| 02 | OCCLUDE | Block rise of company with hint about Director
OC (CO=company; “rise of” indicates vertical reversal) + [D (=director) in CLUE (=hint)] |
| 03 | FINAL | Force – considering everything – to be curtailed as a last resort
F (=force, in physics) + IN AL<l> (=considering everything; “to be curtailed” means last letter is dropped) |
| 04 | REASONING | Ignore half of answer, showing error in deduction
*(IGNORE + ANS<wer>); “half of” means 3 of 6 letters only are used; “showing error” is anagram indicator |
| 05 | HATEFUL | Detestable expression of surprise applied to flute playing
HA (=expression of surprise) + *(FLUTE); “playing” is anagram indicator |
| 06 | DEFER | Put off fellow stabbing game animals
F (=fellow) in DEER (=game animals) |
| 07 | NO-ACCOUNT | Negligible reason not to honour cheque?
Cryptically, someone having “no (bank) account” would be a reason not to honour a cheque; in US slang, no-account” means insignificant, trifling |
| 08 | SITHOLE | Former African politician having difficulty supporting position
SIT (=position, as verb, place) + HOLE (=difficulty, scrape); the reference is to Ndabaningi Sithole (1920-2000), a Zimbabwean politician and founder of ZANU |
| 14 | CRO-MAGNON | Conservative city-dweller receiving Government refusal as “from the Stone Age”
C (=Conservative) + {[G (=government) + NO (=refusal)] in ROMAN (=city-dweller)}; Cro-Magnon is an early type of homo sapiens of late Palaeolithic times |
| 16 | ALDERSHOT | Mistakenly heading off that soldier I ignored in military town
*(<t>HAT SOLD<i>ER); “heading off” means first letter dropped; “I ignored” means letter “i” is dropped from anagram, indicated by “mistakenly” |
| 18 | TEACHER | Worker associated with whisky (drink much loved in France)
TEA (=drink) + CHER (=much loved in French, i.e. the French word for dear); the reference is to Teacher’s whisky, which owes its name to its first seller William Teacher, not to any schoolteacher! |
| 19 | OUTWARD | Superficial American author not popular in our day
TWA<in> (=American author, i.e. Mark Twain; “not popular (=in)” means letters “in” are dropped) in [OUR + D (=day, on calendar)] |
| 21 | FEOFFEE | Landholder‘s female rival put up charge
F (=female) + EOF (FOE=rival; “put up” indicates vertical reversal) + FEE (=charge); in the feudal system, a feoffee is a trustee who holds a fief |
| 23 | ANGEL | Article set to deliver financial sponsor
AN (=article, in grammar) + GEL (=set, i.e. harden) |
| 25 | ALOOF | Remote facilities – in a field, initially
LOO (=facilities) in [A + F<ield> (“initially” means first letter only)] |
Thanks RatkojaRiku with help parsing one or two clues that I part-solved from the definition alone.
Thanks also to Phi, especially for the nostalgia trip occasioned by SITHOLE and BANANA. Their names caused much mirth when I was at school (Sithole because of its proximity to naughtiness, Banana just because); and I also recall Jan Leeming making quite a meal of trying to sound generically ‘African’ when pronouncing them on the BBC’s Nine O’Clock News. Indeed Pamela Stephenson did a wonderfully wicked impersonation of Leeming doing exactly that on Not the Nine O’Clock News.
Gave in with not much more than half completed. Strangely, I got FEOFFEE from the cryptic part but never even checked it existed feeling it obviously didn’t. So Africa was once a Sithole country – Trump was so close to saying something right. Thanks to Phi for the challenge, even if I did fall well short and thanks to RR for the blog.
Well Brian, it was a game of two halves-most of the top half was a doddle then it got nasty-lulled into a false sense of security.
Thought BANANA was ridiculous and as someone kindly reminded me 11 was how a game used to start.
Tough yes but enjoyable?” I’ll get back to you on that s i was watching cricket and then tennis.
Hovis@2 spot on!
Curiously, after a very slow start, I personally didn’t find this as hard as other Phi offerings. I did wonder whether the ‘ON/‘OFF’ thing might be binary, but the sequence 0110011.. etc gives decimal 26,326 (I think) which means nothing to me.
Fun puzzle anyway, thanks to both.
Yes, quite tough, and we needed a bit of help to get IRONCLAD which then confirmed 19dn as OUTWARD. Couldn’t parse OUTWARD, though – our first idea (correct, as it turned out) was that ‘not popular’ indicated omission of ‘in’ but we abandoned that in favour it meaning ‘out’; also, we thought ‘our day’ meant ‘AD’ (anno Domini) but couldn’t see how it fitted. We (well, one of us) did know of the two Zimbabweans, though, but we weren’t sure till we googled them that they were contemporaries – for some reason we thought NS was of a generation earlier than CB.
We didn’t spot the on/off device, but the profusion of double-f’s led us to see there were double letters in each across row (LL in 15ac and RR in 24ac to complete the set).
Plenty to like, including RECKON, MERC (took ages to see that), ILL-NATURED, TARRAGON and PHONOGRAPH.
Thanks, Phi and RatkojaRiku
thanks, Phi, RatkojaRiku
Normally slow with Phi, but fairly smooth today. BANANA and SITHOLE were both guesses, though with faint bells ringing. I liked the pubs in phonograph. FEOFFEE went straight in, for some reason, I suppose I like it as a word.
Favourites were TEACHER and loi IRONCLAD
Needed help with the politicians, but otherwise struggled through to completion. FEOFFEE from wordplay only. Didn’t manage to parse OUTWARD. A tough challenge. Thanks Phi and RR.
The aim was to have an ON and an OFF in every row, bar one which would have only an ON, leaving the puzzle switched on, as it were. In the end (all those Fs) one row escaped entirely though the imbalance remains. There are a couple of ONs and an OFF in the Down entries – a bit difficult to avoid.
Somewhere out Somerset way is a village green with a sign outlining permitted activities authorised by the feoffees of the village – not a word you forget once seen. And the names of Rev Canaan Banana and N Sithole were relatively common on the news before the recently ended hegemony – again not readily forgotten.
I didn’t notice the ON/OFFing, only that there were two FEEs intersecting in TOFFEE/FEOFFEE, both clued by “charge.”
This took a few reveals and I still came here for a couple of bits of wp, so not my finest hour.
Phi – thanks for explaining the nina (as well as for the crossword of course). Personally, I’d find it more energy-efficient to switch the crossword OFF before leaving the building!
Thanks to RatkojaRiku too for the bits I missed (BANANA and OUTWARD) as well as the rest.
When a crossword is really difficult, as this was, one is sometimes happy if the clues are particularly nice and you end up saying “how did I miss that”. But I’m afraid I didn’t do that much here. Feoffee was quite beyond me and I shrugged when an electronic thing revealed the answer. I didn’t like ana = talk at table; and the clueing of the words at the bottom right, each of which contained FEE — they were both part-clued by ‘charge’ — struck me as inelegant.
Yes, very tough. Got about a third of it done (slowly) by the time I was going out for the evening. Finally finished it when I got back, but I needed help with 28ac.