A puzzle with some brilliance but with one answer which is not to be found in most dictionaries.
Timon and I polished this off in about half an hour, except for 20 across, which defeated us, although I subsequently found it on the internet. TATTARRATTAT is in the OED, which describes it as a nonce-word and has just the one citation from Ulysses.
The other feature of the puzzle is that there are no fewer than four answers which can be classified as & lit: i.e. clues where the definition and wordplay are one and the same. It’s quite an achievement to craft one such clue, so I take my hat off to Paul for managing to do four.
As a postscript, I should add that I shall be at a funeral on the morning of the day this blog is published, so will be unavailable to respond to comments for much of the day.
| Across | ||
| 1 | STEPPE | Land in Siberia, part of journey being discussed (6) |
| Sounds like “step”. | ||
| 5 | BOAT RACE | Supporter covering grass for sporting occasion (4,4) |
| OAT (grass) in BRACE. | ||
| 9 | BULLETIN | Announcement: target has been hit? (8) |
| A simple and obvious homophone. | ||
| 10 | NIMROD | Hunter put game on stick (6) |
| A charade of NIM (a game) and ROD. | ||
| 11 | CONVERSATION | In which babbling voices rant on? (12) |
| * (VOICES RANT ON) & lit. Also an anagram of CONSERVATION, but that wouldn’t work so well. | ||
| 13 | See 23 | |
| 14 | MAILSHOT | Round of leaflets ending in porch and I almost exploded! (8) |
| *((porc)H I ALMOST). | ||
| 17 | PEA GREEN | Colour to match in gaol (3,5) |
| AGREE in PEN. We were tempted by SEA GREEN, but couldn’t make it work. | ||
| 18 | AXIS | A figure turns — on this? (4) |
| A SIX (rev). Another & lit clue. | ||
| 20 | TATTARRATTAT | Knock back and forth (12) |
| RAT-TAT backwards and forwards. Unsurprisingly, this was our last one in, given that it doesn’t appear in either Chambers or The Oxford Dictionary of English. It’s an onomatopoeic word invented by James Joyce and is to be found in Ulysses (and nowhere else, I suspect). It was pretty clear from the clue that the answer was likely to be a palindrome and the crossers suggested that this was the answer, but I needed the internet to verify it. | ||
| 23, 13 | ENOUGH SAID | Scrabble has no guide, no further explanation required (6,4) |
| *(HAS NO GUIDE). | ||
| 24 | IMPRISON | Lock up the little devil, having rejected classroom show of dissent? (8) |
| IMP, NO SIR (rev). | ||
| 25 | PROPERTY | Possessions for forward delivery, ultimately (8) |
| PRO PERT (forward) (deliver)Y. | ||
| 26 | DIGEST | Summary, like one this short, ends (6) |
| DIG (like) (on)E (thi)S (shor)T. | ||
| Down | ||
| 2 | THUG | Thunderstorm’s beginning, cling to hood (4) |
| T(hunderstorm) HUG. | ||
| 3 | POLICE DOG | Officer’s faithful colleague decorated in unlimited expression of remorse (6,3) |
| ICED in (a)POLOG(y). | ||
| 4 | EXTENT | Range that’s 20 in film (6) |
| X and TEN in ET. Not a cross-reference, as we first assumed. | ||
| 5 | BUNKER MENTALITY | Defensive attitude that may once have got Tiger Woods out of trouble? (6,9) |
| Cryptic definition. | ||
| 6 | AGNOSTIC | One doubts a jerk will keep number up (8) |
| SONG (rev) (a number) in A TIC. | ||
| 7 | REMIT | Brief stop (5) |
| Double definition. | ||
| 8 | CHOCOHOLIC | In fitful pain, wine not finished: I’m surprised! One’s always at the bar! (10) |
| HOC(k) OH (expression of surprise) in COLIC (fitful pain). We were misled by the bar, although I should have remembered it, as Paul used the same device in puzzle 27,214 (in June last year) which I also blogged. The clue in that puzzle was: “One hooked on bars?”. | ||
| 12 | WAGE EARNER | Partner of footballer always tackling scorer, one has a job (4,6) |
| WAG (acronym of “Wives And Girlfriends”), ARNE (composer, hence scorer) in E’ER. | ||
| 15 | STARTLING | Remarkable bird circling peak in Tibet (9) |
| T(ibet) in STARLING. | ||
| 16 | SEARCHER | Chaser possibly? I’m not sure one’s a hunter (8) |
| *CHASER, ER (I’m not sure). A third & lit clue. | ||
| 19 | STUPID | Thick sauce and pieces of meat, but no starter served up (6) |
| DIP (sauce) (c)UTS (pieces of meat) (all rev). | ||
| 21 | THUMP | Strike head of teddy bear (5) |
| T(eddy) HUMP (bear). | ||
| 22 | MONS | Battle in Belgium on Sunday (4) |
| Hidden in “Belgium on Sunday”; but in fact a fourth & lit clue, since (according to Wikipedia, anyway) the main action in the Battle of Mons (which is, of course, in Belgium) happened on Sunday 23 August 1914. | ||
*anagram
Thanks. Nice puzzle but shot myself in the foot with maildrop, which I couldn’t justify either way but hey go.
Thanks bridgesong. I don’t feel wiser or better for knowing that 20A can be found in one place in the world, but I’m glad you resolved it. Grumpiness at the very end of a fair-to-middling Paul puzzle also with 12D which I bunged in, misdirected, onvinced Wagner was the scorer.
Thanks to Paul and bridgesong. After several tries I got everything except 20 across so I put the puzzle aside and only came back to it today (Friday), confronted it as a palindrome, and found the answer (and the Joyce coinage) via Google.
Thanks bridgesong. Like you and the others I found 20a my LOI which I had to confirm with Google. I completely missed the significance of ‘back and forth’. A lot of the answers just wrote themselves in and I must have spent as much time on 8, 12 and 20 as I did on all the rest.
I found that pretty tough. managed to get about half of it, but I went a bit astray after pencilling in Shangrila for 15d. I didn’t have “digest” or the Joyce anagram, and it kind of fit with the clue and the other crossers.
TATTARRATTAT! Last one, not in. Well, at least I don’t feel bad about not getting that. (It didn’t help that I couldn’t parse STUPID, so wasn’t even certain I had the crossers right.) Is something a word just because Joyce uses it? I suppose one defers to the OED on that. Thanks, bridgesong.
This all went in disappointingly quickly for a Saturday puzzle. I like to have a few clues left over for Sunday, when we don’t bother with a paper. But apart from that very enjoyable.
TATTARRATTAT was LOI as with other commenters above. I just assumed it was right without troubling Google.
I liked most of the clues, but STARTLING was my favourite, not quite sure why. We don’t seem to see starlings much any more. Maybe it’s because they’ve all gone to Tibet.
Thank you Paul and Bridgesong.
Thanks to Paul and Bridgesong. Could anyone get 20 without having all the crossers? STARTLING is an interesting word – you can keep taking letters away, from “starling” to “staring”, “string”, “sting”, “sing”, “sin”, “in” all the way to “I”.
Disappointingly much easier than any of the recent Paul prize puzzles.
I was only held up by the absurdly long palindrome. Although the clue clearly indicated a palindrome it did seem unlikely.
When I finally had all the rest of the puzzle in place I constructed the palindrome and was amazed to find it the OED! I have tried on about 4 separate occassions to read Ulysses but always give up about an eighth of the way in as it literally make me have nightmares! I didn’t remember TATTARRATTAT though (not surprisingly as I just checked my Kindle version of Ulysses and it’s 94% into the book)
This was obviously one of PeeDee’s “2) make it easier so everyone can have a go at entering the raffle and get their name in the paper”
Well I certainly don’t want my name in any paper and even more certainly don’t wan’t the absurd prizes that the miserly Guardian offers.
So a very poor choice for a weekend puzzle for me.
Like Crossbar we also like the prize to linger longer – and I also like being able to finish a puzzle in one session which we did with this one. As with everyone else 20 was LOI and it was only when Mrs W came up with the palindrome idea – which is clearly indicated – that we worked it out and googled confirmation. It’s fair enough to me and in passing we discovered detartated as the Guinness book of records holder for the longest palindrome. CHOCOHOLIC was my favourite and I don’t recall Paul’s previous version. I didn’t parse STUPID either – I was working on BUT without its starter.
Thanks to Paul for an enjoyable puzzle and to team Bridgesong for the excellent blog and pointing out the &lit count.
Well spotted DuncT@8 – I wonder what other words have this property?
I’m surprised the oed allows entries with a single citation. On that basis almost anything could be a word.
Not much to add really but I enjoyed this more than some others seem to have done. Yes 20ac was my LOI too and I only got the Joyce connection via Google. I had something similar in- beginning with RAT but than I realised I hadn’t got a palindrome,hence my search.
A good way to while away part of a Saturday afternoon.
Thanks Paul.
Thanks to Paul and Bridgesong. My experience much like everyone else. Most of this went in quite readily, but not 20a. This was probably the only time I have spent more time on one clue than the rest of the puzzle put together. Eventually got the answer having dismissed the possibility of a palindrome at least twice, before realising it was. Even though it was clearly indicated I thought it was a bit long for a palindrome. Nonetheless still enjoyable and thanks again to Paul and Bridgesong. After two good weeks I guess I am due for an impaling.
DuncT@8 love your STARLTING comment.
lurkio@9 It’s not for the prizes. It’s for the glory! 😉
Oops.I meant STARTLING of course.
Held up by filling in PRÉCIS at 26a on the first pass. Sometimes it is hard to shake off the idea that a solution that went in quickly and nicely could be wrong.
Really, for me, 20a was a combination of random letters (my LOI), though I knew it was something to do with “Rat-a-tat-tat” (knock) but couldn’t make anything fit, and as others have said I suspected it must be a palindrome. So while it didn’t make sense to me, I guessed it with the help of the crossers. (I was supposed to study Joyce in one of my literature units in undergrad Arts; I recall that I read some of “The Dubliners” and then gave up and resorted to secondary sources for commentaries on that text and “Ulysses”.) [WK@10, what on earth does “detartated” mean?]
In a similar way, I needed the crossers for 14a MAILSHOT, an unfamiliar word.
I liked the use of “Scrabble” as an anagrind in 23,13a.
Favourites were 5a BOAT RACE and 17a PEA GREEN.
Thanks to Paul and bridgesong.
Condolences to bridgesong for your loss and thus having to attend a funeral today.
[PS, WK@20, is it a palindrome? Backwards DETARTATED is not a palindrome. Should it be DETARTRATED??? Even then, no idea what it means. JinA]
JinA – thanks for commenting and yes it’s my typo and should be DETARTRATED and it means having the tartrates (salts of tartaric acid) taken out – chemistry stuff.
JinA – I’ve just done a search on 225 for DETARTRATED and nothing came up. I look forward to it appearing in a puzzle sometime and hope I remember it :-).
Perhaps enough said already about TATTARRATTAT! Some of the longer, more – er – ‘sensible’ palindromes in English are ROTATOR, DEIFIED, REDIVIDER, RACECAR, and DETARTRATED (as quoted – correctly – by JinA). Some of these are disputed words.
And the most famous single-word palindrome of all – in Finnish (possibly the only Finnish word that most Anglophones know!) – is “saippuakivikauppias”. Given its meaning, I should imagine that very few Finns ever have occasion to utter this word…
Anyway, I wrote it in and then Googled it – guessing that it was a ‘constructed’ word. Which proved right! I suppose Paul being Paul can get away with it! 🙂
Haven’t we had a debate recently as to whether AGNOSTIC means ‘one who doubts’? I’m an agnostic. I don’t ‘doubt’, I disbelieve. Perhaps the problem is that some people call themselves agnostics, others with similar views call themselves atheists.
The rest was fine – a good Prize, not too tough but enough to occupy me for a large part of the Saturday. Thanks to Paul and bridgesong.
An unusual amount of unanimity in the comments today, so nothing of substance for me to respond to, but thank you Julie @17 for your condolences (although the deceased was not a close relative, she was a family friend of my wife, who organised the funeral). And thanks to DuncT @8 for pointing out the remarkable properties of STARTLING.
Speaking of prizes, I was fortunate enough to win one in a recent Inquisitor competition (by common consent, it was the easiest one for quite some time) and the prize was a delicious (and expensive) box of chocolates.
I didn’t see BULLETIN as a homophone clue, more of a definition – announcement – and literal interpretation (not sure which blogger coined this, but thanks) – BULLET is IN, therefore target has been hit.
I don’t remember finding this puzzle overly easy and like everyone else, struggled with 20 (I simply couldn’t believe it was a word). I enjoyed CHOCOHOLIC, SEARCHER, CONVERSATION and POLICE DOG.
Crossbar@7, re: starlings. Not Tibet, more like America – the clouds of starlings around here (SE Pennsylvania) in autumn are enormous.
Thanks, Paul and bridgesong.
phitonelly@23 Very occasionally we see clouds of starlings here too, UK south coast, but not so often as before. Quite startling 🙂 I haven’t seen any in the garden for many years.
Thank you Paul and bridgesong.
This was hard going for me, needless to say TATTARRATTAT was the last in. The clue for MONS was my favourite.
The other three clues labelled as &lit seem to be semi &lit according to Hoskins, each has a word, or words, that are not part of the word play. Usually I would not be so fussy, but am trying to write one of these at the moment.
Cookie @25: you may be right – for my part I always find it hard to decide if a clue truly deserves to be labelled as an & lit or just a semi & lit. I decided to give Paul the benefit of the doubt! Having said that, the definition in the clue for CONVERSATION was pretty weak; you can have a conversation without a rant!
Bridgesong @26, me, too, that is why I posted late. I guess most CONVERSATIONs are “empty turgid talk”, one of the definitions in the COED…
I thought this was brilliant and didn’t find it quite as easy as some seem to have. 11a, CONVERSATION was probably mmy favourite. Could Paul have had this blog in mind? As Cookie says, it’s a semi&lit and Hoskins explanation is very clear. (Thanks for the link, Cookie. I’ve never explored Hoskins’ site properly and will be spending some time browsing there.) I think you were a bit harsh, Bridgesong in being so picky about the definition.
My LOI was also 20a, TATTARRATTAT. I think it was very fair, since its palindromic nature was clearly indicated, so you could construct it from the crossers and google it (as I did, eventually), finding many hits including those that point out that it’s the longest palindromic word in the OED. @Howard March: I imagine the single citation makes it to the OED because it’s a word by Joyce, recognised by many as one of the greatest writers in the English language. Having said that, of course I haven’t read Ulysses either, but I will one day — just as soon as I’ve finished doing all the crosswords.
I had a problem with 9a, BULLETIN, but only because I marked it up on the grid as (4,4) for some reason.
I was considering BRAZEN MENDACITY for 5d at one point. Would that have avoided TW’s marital problems? Or was it partly the cause of them?
Really loved the surface of 26a, DIGEST, too.
Wow! Did everyone end on 20A? That was my LOI too! Even with all the down clues taken care of, I still wasn’t sure about that one, so I had to look it up as well. My other unfamiliar answers were BUNKERMENTALITY, MAILSHOT, and MONS. The first one made so much sense with the clue mentioning Tiger Woods, of course, and the last one was so undoubtedly a hidden clue, but I still figured I must confirm it. Funny how that battle actually began on a Sunday. That or Saturday, you’ve got a great hidden clue as well as &lit. I also love the interesting properties DuncT pointed out about STARTLING. As for the anagram for CONVERSATION, I’ve seen that one before in a list of “apt anagrams”, so IMHO, it didn’t even need the “babbling” part for me to solve it. Kudos to Paul for using “Scrabble” as an anagram indicator, BTW. I also got a kick out of the clever choice of words in the straight part of the clue for CHOCOHOLIC, it wasn’t the first time I’d seen the wordplay in PEAGREEN(SEA GREEN also warrants the same thing, but the clue has to involve a senator most likely), I almost put TRUMP instead of THUMP(easy mistake), and whereas most people think NIMROD is a euphemism for “idiot”, Paul used the word correctly to mean “hunter”. The most memorable and almost appropriate use of NIMROD appeared in a Bugs Bunny cartoon in which he referred to Yosemite Sam as such. Clearly this is the reason so many have misused the word. In fact, Bugs may have even misspoke himself, as I personally would consider Elmer Fudd more of a NIMROD than Yosemite Sam. Finally, I too thought Wagner was the composer in WAGEEARNER. Quite misleading, Paul, but I still solved it. Another great Prize Puzzle! Keep ’em comin’!
Not having read Ulysses I put in RATTARTATTAT on the grounds that it was a double palindrome which just might be an alternative spelling of a more familiar ward. So I was wrong. But I have to say I ain’t ashamed. I guess there’s a difference between Joyce making up a word and any old Tom, Dick or Harry doing it.
Er, that’s familiar word, not familiar ward. Tsk.
Am I the only one? THUMP was my LOI.
I constructed the palindromic TAT_ARRA_TAT, guessed double Ts and consulted OED.
Hump=bear was not obvious to me.
I’ve been trying to find a word of decent length with the properties of STARLING for years, so my thanks to DuncT@8.
Thanks also to setter and blogger.
Well, I was defeated – and very annoyed – by 20Ac.
It was clearly going to be a palindrome, but the answer suggested by the wordplay would have been ‘Rattatattat’, which is not a palindrome. The solution was, therefore, very obviously going to be an extremely recondite word, one not in common usage, and one that was presumably invented and used only in a very obscure/unique context.
So, last Saturday evening (after I had scrawled some VERY naughty nastyrudesailorwords over the clue in the paper) I made a mental note to come here today to find out what Paul had put in the grid.
I cannot say that I was surprised to find that the ‘correct’ solution is a word that was in fact used only the once, and in Joyce’s ‘Ulysses’ at that!
That book is, undoubtedly, a masterpiece. It demonstrates its author’s ability to write in almost every literary milieu, and also encodes within its text *every* thing that Joyce ever learned at the fee-charging schools and exclusive university that he attended in the late nineteenth century.
I have an ‘academic’/‘critical’ edition of the text, in which the footnotes, along with the two *mutually-contradictory* diagrammatic ‘schemes’ of it that Joyce sent to friends after publication to clarify its structure, take up almost as many pages as the text of ‘Ulysses’ itself.
But; ‘a novel’ it is NOT!
Rather, it is the twentieth century’s most famous piece of ostentatious public onanism.
Joyce himself claimed that he had put enough stuff in it to keep the professors of literature discussing it for a century.
It is because this raison d’être absolutely screams its tawdry presence from every passage of the prose that I am among the myriad ranks who have started in several times, and yet have never finished it. I can only ever get about five chapters in before my mind screams ‘Basta!’, and I discard it in a fit of pique and muttering.
I have no interest in watching yer man Joyce ‘showing off’; I find it to have no entertainment value, and instead to only be intensely irksome.
Still; I must – now that I have my Rant out of my system – add that the crossword puzzle WAS the week’s prize cryptic, so it was NOT unreasonable to be required to demonstrate a familiarity with one of our culture’s ‘modern literary classics’ in order to be able to solve all of it 🙂
I ought, probably, to apologise for the anti-Joycean Jeremiad, but; as I feel no “agenbite of inwit” for my vituperative ejaculation, I shall take up my inner Blue Pencil, write ‘stet’ against it, and hope that you, dear Reader, were not as offended by it as I invariably am by the text of ‘Ulysses’!
Sláinte,
Gem 😉
I hope you feel better now, Gem@33. 🙂
@Gem
Heh! Heh! You’ve put me right off reading it now.
https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/joyce
Shame that no one will read this now.
But Ulysses is my favourite book. I have read it 3 times. And hope to again. Its beautiful prose and changing styles have given much pleasure and something new is revealed each time.
On the other hand I have never got past page 4 of Finnegan’s Wake
Sorry i have come to this blog so late but just thought I should mention that quark is another Joycean word that is now in widespread use, albeit in theoretical and particle physics. The quote – from Finnegan’s Wake – is “three quarks for Muster (sic) Mark”.
It does give a little more validity to 20A, in my humble.
Another poor Paul effort. Sloppy and imprecise means it is only accessible to die hard regulars. Not a recipe for garnering new cluers and the survival of the paper.