Great fun! Thank you Paul.
| Across | ||
| 1 | DOCTOR WHO | Show individual and organisation, both concerned with public health (6,3) |
| DOCTOR (individual) and WHO (organizational) public health concerns | ||
| 6 | BUSH | Eighth vehicle in the outback? (4) |
| BUS H (eighth vehicle) – bus A, bus B, bus C… | ||
| 8 | See 6 | |
| 9 | See 17 | |
| 10 | STOLEN | Temperature in fish ending in oven, hot (6) |
| T (temperature) in SOLE (fish) then oveN (ending letter of) | ||
| 11 | ABERDEEN | Daughter wearing Lincoln green, no good for the city (8) |
| D (daughter) inside (wearing) ABE (Abraham Lincoln) gREEN missing G (good) | ||
| 12 | DIM SUM | Small parcels dark, all together (3,3) |
| DIM (dark) and SUM (all together). I can’t think of an example sentence where I could replace “sum” with “all” or “all together”. | ||
| 15 | LEAP YEAR | Keeping healthy ultimately, fruit on field for a longer time? (4,4) |
| healthY (ultimately, last letter) inside (keeping…is…) PEAR (fruit) all following (on) LEA (field) – a longer year than usual | ||
| 16 | MALAYSIA | I’m always missing wife, travelling round a country (8) |
| anagram (travelling) of I’M ALwAYS missing W (wife) containing (round) A | ||
| 19 | HOICKS | Wearing whites, one pulls hard (6) |
| I (one) inside (wearing…is…) HOCKS (whites, wines) | ||
| 21 | COURTIER | Messenger bagging last of post for royal attendant (8) |
| COURIER (messenger) contains (is bagging) posT (last letter of) | ||
| 22 | ORANGE | Fifth primate in the shade? (6) |
| ORANG E (fifth primate) – orang A, orang B, orang C… | ||
| 24 | See 26 | |
| 25 | HYDROGEN | One on the table, perhaps in the middle? (8) |
| element number one in the Periodic Table, sometimes shown in the middle of the table in a group of its own. H is also the middle letter of perHaps, well done to all who spotted that. Perhaps it is the H in the middle of tHe too. | ||
| 26, 24 | ROSE GARDEN | In which gorgeous trailer in red and 22 across hybridised? (4,6) |
| anagram (hybridised) of gorgeouS (trailing letter) with RED and ORANGE – definition to be read as “In which you might find…” | ||
| 27 | CAMBRIDGE | Black coat on the counter, top edge a kind of blue? (9) |
| B (black) MAC (coat) reversed (on the counter) then RIDGE (top edge) | ||
| Down | ||
| 1 | DEPOT | Storehouse where drunk turned up (5) |
| TOPED (drunk) reversed (turned up) | ||
| 2 | CHARLES | Prince having to do his own cleaning, for the most part? (7) |
| CHARLESs (having no cleaning worker) unfinished (for the most part) | ||
| 3 | ONION | Tear-jerker doubly touching, I assumed (5) |
| ON ON (touching, twice) containing (assumed by) I (one) | ||
| 4 | WAGTAIL | Bird narrating story of Footballers’ Wives? (7) |
| WAG TAIL sounds like “wag tale” (story of Footballers’ Wives) – WAGs are footballers’ partners, derived from “wives and girlfriends” | ||
| 5 | See 22 | |
| 6, 8 | BROADLY SPEAKING | Phrase initially described by “by and large” is OK, loosely (7,8) |
| Phrase (initially, first letter of) inside (described by) inside anagram (loosely) of BY AND LARGE IS OK | ||
| 7 | SPACEWALK | Cerium injected into hand, virologist admits, an experience requiring a lifeline? (9) |
| CE (Cerium) inside (injected into) PAW (hand) all inside (admitted by) SALK (Jonas Salk, virologist) – sticklers for detail may wish to discuss whether a lifeline is actually required for a spacewalk | ||
| 13 | INAMORATO | Lover upended in chariot, a Roman imperialist (9) |
| found reversed (upended) in chariOT A ROMAN Imperialist | ||
| 14 | MESSIANIC | Passionate, a miss with nice pants (9) |
| anagram (pants, in a bad way) of A MISS with NICE | ||
| 17, 9 | A BRIDGE TOO FAR | War film cut excessively? (1,6,3,3) |
| ABRIDGE (cut) TOO FAR (excessively) | ||
| 18 | ABRAHAM | Support of women cut under a patriarch (7) |
| BRA (support of women) HAM (cut, of meat) all following (under) A | ||
| 20 | IN A MOOD | Cross old country from the south, taking passport, say, around? (2,1,4) |
| O (old) OMAN (country) reversed (from the south, upwards on a map) inside (taking…around) ID (passport say) | ||
| 22, 5 | ORDER OF THE BATH | “Wash behind your ears?” It’s an honour! (5,2,3,4) |
| definition and cryptic definition | ||
| 23 | GREBE | Bird in 24, bees every second buzzing off (5) |
| every other letter omitted (buzzing off) in GaRdEn BeEs | ||
definitions are underlined
I write these posts to help people get started with cryptic crosswords. If there is something here you do not understand ask a question; there are probably others wondering the same thing.
Thanks PeeDee. I agree, a lot of fun without being too taxing. In 25a I saw H as the middle letter of perhaps.
Agree with you Biggles A but, at the same time, it’s a bit naughty of Paul. Hydrogen is H and not h.
Thanks to Paul and PeeDee. HOICKS was new to me (though I could parse it) as were the wag in WAGTAIL and the ORDER OF THE BATH. Still, I got through and much enjoyed the process.
Thanks PeeDee. Hydrohen was brilliant, when I got it near the very end (20D and HOICKS to follow). All very nice.
WAGs, eh. A rather high-maintenance bunch, I’ll bet. What are the odds of Mr Vardy sustaining an unspecified pre-competition injury if both his wife and his girlfriend turned up at the team hotel? Surely it should be Wives OR girlfriends — although that’s no acronym for bandying about freely.
I can’t think of an example sentence where I could replace “sum” with “all” or “all together”.
Maybe as in “That was the sum of his knowledge”
Yesterday’s Qaos forum mentioned that the device that gave ALE D had been used recently, and yes it was in this Prize puzzle. However with Paul’ s, my parsing of 6a was BUS with the eighth letter of the alphabet added to create BUSH, and similarly the addition of E, the fifth letter of the alphabet added to ORANG led to ORANGE at 22a I circled both at the time as I didn’t like the device, and I still don’t, despite PeeDee’s take on it.
I did enjoy the puzzle though and thought 1a DOCTOR WHO and 2d ONION were a lot of fun. 19a HOICKS was tough but fair. LOI was DIM SUM which provided a satisfied aha! moment.
I can’t see what the problem is with recent criticisms of the alphabetical device used in 6 and 22A. It’s been around for ages and is totally sound.
Just imagine the “COUNTLESS” quiz show “head to head” round with 26 rather than the usual 5 items. “We’ll show you pictures of 26 buses. Can you identify them?Bus A, Bus B, Bus C, Bus D ……. etc
What’s not to like? I’m sure even Mr Macnutt would have no complaints.
Anyway it appears that several of our experienced setters and our Ed are quite happy with this so that’s good enough for me. 😉
A nice prize puzzle but quite straightforward.
Much happier with bus H and orang E than we were when we thought it was just bus and the eighth letter of the alphabet – not sure why it seems better but I like the picture of them all standing in a line.
Loved rose garden and Order of the Bath.
For once we could remember all the clues from last week so it must have been a good one!
Thanks, Paul and PeeDee.
Thanks Paul and PeeDee
In sum, there were ten people there / In all, there were ten people there
(Sorry, Bodge @ 6, but in your example ‘all’ is replaced by ‘the sum’, so it doesn’t quite work.)
I agree with JulieinA@7. Sil@2: since when has capitalisation of letters been de rigueur in crosswordland? Many thanks to Paul and PeeDee – an enjoyable solve but again I wasn’t picked as one of the winners.
Thanks to Paul and PeeDee. As others have said an enjoyable and steady solve. A puzzle of two halves for me left first then right. Last ones hoicks and hydrogen. Like Hedgehog@9 my favourites rose garden and Order of the Bath. Thanks again to Paul and PeeDee.
P.S. Apologies for this tardy “Thank you” to Paul and PeeDee.
I like the Bus H type of clue, but it has maybe been overused recently. Will we see another setter clueing himself as the twentieth snake and fourteenth mother?
Thanks to Paul and PeeDee
Thank you very much Paul for a pleasurable puzzle, and to PeeDee for explaining it so well.
I do agree with Biigles @1 regarding the wordplay – clever, and eluded me. HYDROGEN was LOI for me and actually provided by my (scientist) wife, without any messing around with wordplay.
Liked the hint of colours (orange, blue, green) making a kind of mini-theme, and the (crested esp) GREBE is a favourite bird.
HOCK as a white wine was extremely popular in late Victorian England, I think (though without sources) it may have been the single most consumed variety. The name, according to my Oxford Companion to Wine, is from a contraction of hockamore, which is an anglicisation of Hochheimer, meaning wine from the region around the town Hochheim.
Thanks Paul and PeeDee. I thought this was good. ORDER OF THE BATH was new to me but gettable. Only one I didn’t get was 19a and even after then cheating I ended up with an unparsed HAICKS!
I still don’t understand ROSE GARDEN = in which (you might find…) – can someone elaborate?
Thank you Paul and PeeDee.
DIM SUM had me confused, but on googling found it is a Chinese dish of stuffed dumplings.
As Epee Sharkey @15 points out there is a mini-theme of colours, as well as orange, blue and green, there are rose, white and black.
Thank you, nobby @16. I thought I was the only one who had HAICKS at 19a – a haick is a white garment worn in North African countries, so I thought it fit a definition (“Wearing whites”), but that was the wrong definition and I couldn’t parse it anyway.
I can’t think of an example where “all together” can be replaced by “sum”. Plenty of examples where it can be replaced by “in sum”, including those given already.
Oh, and nobby @16 again – a rose can be a trailer (or a climber, or a bush…)
Thanks to Paul for an enjoyable puzzle (except for 19a) and PeeDee for finishing it correctly for me.
Nice puzzle. I did wonder about the colour theme but I suspect there isn’t one. I liked WAGTAIL and HOICKS
Thanks Paul.
nobby @16 – the definition in a sort of &lit. The wordplay is a collection of rose-related items (a trailer being a rambling rose rather than a bush), so you may find all of them in a ROSE GARDEN.
7 plus 9 plus 10, that SUM comes to 26, that “all together” comes to 26
I really enjoyed this. Favourites were DOCTOR WHO, ABERDEEN, WAGTAIL and A BRIDGE TOO FAR.
As I said yesterday, I like the device used in 6a and 22a, and think it’s perfectly sound. Like lurkio @8, I don’t really see why some people object to it. The fact that Paul used it twice helped in getting the second one (ORANGE in my case).
AdamH @5: I liked your speculation about Jamie Vardy’s possible predicament! But to address your slightly more serious point, surely “wives and girlfriends” is correct. If you refer to a group of boys and girls, you’re not suggesting that each member of that group is both a boy and a girl, are you?
PS, I hope it does, getting out of practice now the captcha has gone …
Thanks Trismegistus and PeeDee – knew that wouldn’t take long! Much appreciated (and noted for future reference!)
I thought this was a bright and breezy puzzle with some sparkling clues. The &lit BROADLY SPEAKING was very good but the prize goes to HYDROGEN for me. In contrast to PeeDee, I spotted the H in perhaps (the non-capitalisation doesn’t bother me at all), but not the significance of “one on the table” – I simply read this as meaning any element. A really fine clue, now that the parsing is fully revealed. Other goodies were CHARLES, A BRIDGE TOO FAR and ABERDEEN. I wonder if the surface in the latter also refers to the fact that Lincoln City’s home strip is not green, so wearing it would be “no good”.
Lots of fun although not too stiff a challenge.
Thanks Paul and PeeDee
To be fair to Julie @7 she doesn’t say she objects to the device or that it shouldn’t be in the paper. She just says she didn’t like it which seems fair to me.
You can not like a book despite the words using correct grammar, or not like a song despite all the notes and chords being in the correct key. You can not like sprouts despite them being an officially recognised and frequently used vegetable.
Thanks to both for an entertaining afternoon and it’s explanations.
Unlike most of the others I parsed HYDROGEN as the H in “the” from “perhaps in tHe middle”.
The rest? The usual mixture of enjoyment, frustration and penny drop. Out here we haven’t seen a Hock on the bottle store shelves for some time as the local varietals – Sauvignon Blanc, Pinot Gris, Chardonnay and Pinot Noir dominate – so I had to reach a long way back for that one.
My favourites were 1a, 7d, 20d
I could not parse 27a or 25a HYDROGEN
New word for me was HOICKS
Thank you Paul and blogger
Order of the bath – not perhaps very difficult but very clever. thank you Paul, a fun solve as ever.
Great puzzle. Didn’t know Salk’s name, but deduced his existence from wordplay. Didn’t even notice the ‘h/H’ issue till Sil brought it up, though I understood “perhaps in the middle” as indicating ‘h’. I don’t think false decapitalisation is much of an issue in the Guardian, is it?
How Do Astronauts Stay Safe During Spacewalks?
When on a spacewalk, astronauts use safety tethers to stay close to their spacecraft. Tethers are like ropes. One end is hooked to the spacewalker. The other end is connected to the vehicle. The safety tethers keep astronauts from floating away into space. Astronauts also use tethers to keep tools from floating away. They tether their tools to their spacesuits.”
https://www.nasa.gov/audience/forstudents/k-4/stories/nasa-knows/what-is-a-spacewalk-k4.html