Dashed hard work for a Tuesday morning including one answer I’ve had to invent. But a fine anniversary puzzle from Gaff. Thanks to him.
A much-trumpeted centenary today, and a tough challenge to celebrate it. Only an enlightened guess at 14, followed by some obstinate parsing thereof, got me going at all. 3d was my last in by a long way and remains a pure guess. All help welcome. I’m off for a little lie down.
| Across | ||
| 1 | BACKBIT | Slurred with second mouthpiece (7) |
| BACK (to ‘second’) + BIT (horse’s ‘mouthpiece’). PT of ‘backbite’, but not a word I’ve heard. | ||
| 5 | WILDING | Apple swallowed by 18 (7) |
| A ‘wilding’ is an uncultivated apple, I learn, and also Emily Davison’s middle (or compound) name. | ||
| 9 | DERBY | Midlands’ bowler (5) |
| The hat, the Midlands town, and, thematically, the horse-race. | ||
| 10, 2 | TATTENHAM CORNER | Rough anchor treatment produced bend, of course (9,6) |
| Anagram (‘rough’) of ANCHOR TREATMENT for the bend on the Epsom course where Davison ran under the king’s horse. | ||
| 11 | GREYFRIARS | Brothers follow old school (10) |
| GREY (‘old’) + FRIARS (‘brothers’), for Billy Bunter’s alma mater. | ||
| 12 | EBON | After returning honour, name is black (4) |
| OBE (‘honour’), reversed + N[ame]. | ||
| 14 | SUFFRAGETTES | Lacking energy, brave time to return home to badger protestors (12) |
| To SUFFeR (to ‘brave’) without E[nergy] + AGE (‘time’) + SETT (‘home to badger’), reversed. Guessed from today’s date but still a tricksy parse. | ||
| 18 | EMILY DAVISON | One of 14 carelessly mislaid envoy (5,7) |
| Anagram of MISLAID ENVOY, to give the martyr of today’s theme. | ||
| 21 | RAGE | 14’s rant (4) |
| Inclusion in ‘suffRAGEtte’ at 14. | ||
| 22 | JET EXHAUST | From Paris, I send message about German building vapour trail (3,7) |
| JE (‘I’ in French) + TEXT (‘send message’) around HAUS (‘German building’). | ||
| 25 | PANKHURST | Family of 14 spark hunt sabotage (9) |
| Anagram (‘sabotage’) of SPARK HUNT. Emmeline & her daughters Christabel, Sylvia and Adela were the leading lights of the movement. | ||
| 26 | BAGS I | Is talk reverting to childish claim? (4,1) |
| IS + GAB (‘talk’) all reversed. | ||
| 27 | TALLISH | Hard-to-follow composer is fairly elevated (7) |
| H[ard], as in pencils, follows (Thomas) TALLIS. | ||
| 28 | PRAIRIE | Publicity preceded song, that’s plain (7) |
| PR (‘publicity’) + AIR (‘song’) + IE (that is, ‘that’s). | ||
| Down | ||
| 1 | BAD EGG | Black sheep that may float (3,3) |
| Double definition. A bad egg will float in water; fresh ones sink. | ||
| 2 | See 10 | |
| 3 | BAY OF QUOYS | Sound of Hoy youths keeping you confused with frequently asked questions (3,2,5) |
| I have completely made this up. Hoy is Orcadian, as are Quoy and Quoys. I can find no Bay of Quoys in maps or on line. My hopeful parse goes: BOYS (‘youths’) surround an anagram (‘confused’) of YOU + FAQ (‘frequently asked questions’). No doubt someone will enlighten me or, joy, confirm my guess. | ||
| 4 | TUTTI | All criticism aired before half time (5) |
| TUT (vocal ‘criticism’) + half of TIme. | ||
| 5 | WATER TAXI | Spooner’s drawn a polished ferry (5,4) |
| As the Reverend Doctor might have said, in a bizarre set of circumstances, TAUT (‘drawn’) A WAXY (‘polished’). Spoonerisms aren’t my favourite clues and this one’s a stinker. | ||
| 6 | LIED | Told story in song (4) |
| Double def. | ||
| 7 | INHABITS | Lives how monks live (8) |
| Monks dress ‘in habits’, of course. Do your own puns. | ||
| 8 | GAMINESS | Messing about with a high meat quality (8) |
| Anagram (‘about’) of MESSING + A, plus cryptic def. | ||
| 13 | XENOPHOBIA | Alarm set off by strangers (10) |
| Whole-clue C.D. | ||
| 15 | FLAT EARTH | Out-of-date belief of late arthouse characters (4,5) |
| Neat inclusion in ‘oF LATE ARTHouse’. | ||
| 16 | DECREPIT | Feeble Roundhead and Parliamentarian’s first appearing individually in fraud (8) |
| R (head of ‘Round’) and P (ditto ‘Parliamentarian’) are separately included in DECEIT (‘fraud’). | ||
| 17 | DIAGONAL | Pet abandoned by poorly painted goal line between corners (8) |
| Anagram (‘poorly’) of ‘pAINteD GOAL, minus letters of PET. | ||
| 19, 20 | HUNGER-STRIKE | Suspended former right of president to refuse intake (6-6) |
| HUNG (‘suspended’) + ERST (‘former’, although ‘formerly’ is more correct, I think) + R[ight] + IKE (Eisenhower, former US president). | ||
| 23 | ESTOP | Prevent schemes to plagiarise extract (5) |
| Inclusion (‘extract’) in ‘schemES TO Plagiarise’. | ||
| 24 | THAI | Asian association announced (4) |
| Homophone (‘announced’) of ‘tie’ (‘association’). | ||
*anagram
Thanks Grant. There is a Bay of Quoys in Hoy: Google maps link
The anniversary is specifically of the Representation of the People Act 1918 , which extended suffrage to women over 30 (as well as some men who were previously excluded), which was given the Royal Assent on 6 February 1918.
Bay of Quoys is an inlet to the north east of Hoy. As the clue says, Sound (an inlet or deep bay of the sea) of Hoy (island of Orkney).
Thanks for a great blog, Grant – especially 3dn [and Andrew for his input]. I’d never heard of the bay, of course. Gaff is a sailor – he’s sailed round the world – so he’s probably been there.
A lovely tribute puzzle – I particularly liked the precise elegance of 14ac and the EMILY DAVISON anagram was pretty neat, too. [But I totally agree about the Spoonerism – sorry, Gaff. 😉 ]
Many thanks to Gaff for an enjoyable puzzle.
A friend helped me finish this one off. Guessed 1a and 3d but both new to me. The floating bad egg was also new to me, but makes sense. Also guessed 10,2 from the anagrist. My mate got the Spoonerism – a bit of a 1d that one. Didn’t know 18a or 5a. Bit too tough for me without help but perfectly fair. A bit heavy on the GK perhaps, but anniversary puzzles like this tend to be of this nature so no complaints. Thanks to S&B.
What Eileen said – especially the dreaded Spoonerism – and anyway I thought the point of them was that they had to make sense either way ‘taut a waxy’ definitely doesn’t for me
Thanks to Gaff and Grant
Didn’t have any idea about WILDING but managed to finish the rest with a combination of guesswork and bunging in unparsed from the definition. 3d was very tricky and took ages and others such as the apparently innocuous 1a ended up being harder than they looked.
Interesting theme which did end up helping with some answers. Favourite clue for the day was the surface for the non-theme BAD EGG. As for the Spoonerism, I’ll go in to bat for Gaff. Very er… imaginative.
Thanks to Gaff and Grant.
This puzzle is too well-constructed to make too much of a handful of technical deficiencies (in my book of crosswords, that is). I will mention one though: 19,20 contains the word ‘of’ which is completely out of place. Some may say it is just a link word but link words do not belong in the middle of the construction (as is the case here).
I got the theme rightaway with 14ac, my FOI – full parsed too, helped by knowing that badgers live in setts. But I realised only afterwards that there was more going on than Gaff just mentioning the names Pankhurst and Emily Davison, especially around the latter’s death.
LOI was WILDING (5ac) which was clear after reading more about Ms Davison. Never heard of the apple though, a wild one apparently.
Like others I got 3d (BAY OF QUOYS) purely from the construction, sounded plausible enough to me.
Not very taken by the Spoonerism but a clue like 7d (INHABITS) was rather neat.
A pity that the clue at 27ac contains ‘is’, also present in the answer (the ‘is’ of Tallis). The clue could have done without it, easily.
But I promised not to be grumpy and I indeed enjoyed solving this cleverly constructed Gaff puzzle. He is clearly the Master of the Anniversary.
Many thanks to setter & Grant.
Thanks to Gaff and GB. Too tough for me. I did get most of the SUFFRAGETTES (though not WILDING and TATTENHAM CORNER) but BAY OF QUOYS and the NW corner defeated me.
Thanks Gaff and Grant
Excellent and informative blog of a very enjoyable, albeit tough, puzzle. It took all of lunch, the train ride home and then some more to get it out! Like others BAY OF QUOYS was the last one in, derived from the word play and then taking a lot more time to google the confirmation of it.
Going against the majority with the WATER TAXI clue – it took me a while to construct the spoonerism but like many of the good ones, I found it quite humorous through its sheer nonsensical-ness when it was worked out.
Thanks for the blog, Grant.
This was too tough for me to enjoy. I failed to get BACKBIT, WILDING, BAY OF QUOYS, and WATER TAXI.