Records seem to indicate that I—and others—have had a bit of a hard time with Hob puzzles in the past.
This one didn’t seem quite as difficult as some I remember, but initial progress was slowed by a fair bit of interlinking between clues, of the sort that can add to the challenge of really getting into a puzzle until the ball starts rolling.
To be honest, I wrote quite a few of these in without understanding the wordplay at all. Which is fine…unless you’re expected to blog ’em! Hopefully I’ve figured them all out now though.
As is often the case with Hob, there’s a theme here. There are basically a lot of numbers sprinkled among the answers, and fed back into the clues. Plus you’ve got TREBLE TWENTY spelt out in the unchecked squares along the top and bottom of the grid.
That’s quite a lot of thematic stuff squeezed in. Whether or not there’s any particular significance to all of it, perhaps only Hob can tell us!
| Across | ||
| 7 | VALERIE | Female taking John around Great Lake (7) |
| LAV< + Lake ERIE. | ||
| 8 | VIKINGS | Seafaring pirates having sex with men (7) |
| VI + KINGS. “Sex” as in Latin six, and “men” and in chessmen. | ||
| 9 | FOUR | Quartet that’s after 12D 16As for an ageing Beatles number? (4) |
| [Sixty-]FOUR. Three scores gives you sixty, so this is a reference to the well-known song When I’m 64. | ||
| 10 | HAMADRYAD | Hardy novel about a crazed nymph (9) |
| (A MAD) in HARDY*. I liked “Hardy novel” here, though I can’t believe it hasn’t beeen done before. “Hamadryad” unfamiliar to your blogger, though knowledge of “dryad” plus the clear wordplay prevented any problems here. | ||
| 12 | TOMMY | Setter’s after a prostitute? That’s private! (5) |
| TOM (slang for “prostitute”, apparently) + MY. | ||
| 13 | UNIONIST | One might support DUP forging alliance with one’s Tory leader (8) |
| UNION + I‘S + T[ory]. | ||
| 15 | GRID | Some crossword, initially given free (4) |
| G[iven] + RID. | ||
| 17 | FOXY | Cunning switching of axes (4) |
| OF< + X + Y. | ||
| 18 | DECREASE | Make even lower (8) |
| Two meanings. | ||
| 20 | DUMMY | Mannequin‘s exposed hand (5) |
| Two meanings, the latter from at least a couple of card games. | ||
| 21 | ODD-JOBMAN | Bond villain, servant who occasionally does house repairs (3-6) |
ODDJOB + MAN. Oddjob is a henchman to the villain Auric Goldfinger in the 1959 James Bond novel Goldfinger and its 1964 film adaptation…played by…Harold Sakata. |
||
| 22 | NINE | Number of old centre forwards missing 12D 16As from scoring position? (4) |
| [Sixty-]NINE. Bit racy. In my day watching matches at Bramall Lane centre forwards did wear number 9, the one substitute wore 12, and the goalkeeper wore green. Also all the players had perms, and were overweight, in their 40s and smoked. | ||
| 24 | PICASSO | Painting or photo with great appeal, on reflection (7) |
| PIC + (OS + SA)<. | ||
| 25 | PASSIVE | Not reacting, seeing 9 wearing old hat (7) |
| IV in PASSÉ. Took me a minute to figure out the 9 is actually 4, if you see what I mean. | ||
| Down | ||
| 1 | TACO | Start to toss a firm pancake (4) |
| T[oss] + A + CO. | ||
| 2 | REFRAMED | As 24 might have been, put another way (8) |
| Two meanings. | ||
| 3 | EIGHTY | Over 14, 16A again? It’s important, after wife leaves (6) |
| [w]EIGHTY. Another 20 added to 40. | ||
| 4 | BIRD-LIFE | Two sentences for flyers, collectively (4-4) |
| BIRD + LIFE. Two “terms” (see what I did there?) for prison sentences. | ||
| 5 | LIBYAN | Fifty times Scotsman’s hugged African (6) |
| L + (BY in IAN). | ||
| 6 | EGAD | Saw head off? Flipping heck, that’s archaic! (4) |
| [a]DAGE<. | ||
| 11 | MAUSOLEUM | Tomb of old woman, lined with gold only (9) |
| (Au + SOLE) in MUM. | ||
| 12/16A | THREESCORE | Chester outing takes round about 14 (10) |
| CHESTER* + O + RE. | ||
| 14 | SIXTY | Number from Rome using Los Angeles airport after vacation (5) |
| Los Angeles airport has the IATA code LAX. If you vacate/empty it you get L[a]X, therefore 60. | ||
| 16 | SEA HORSE | Main morphine derivative in the hippocampus (3,5) |
| SEA + HORSE. | ||
| 17 | FEMINIST | Duke seducing Young British Artist in Chicago? (8) |
| Tracey EMIN in FIST. Apparently there’s someone called Judy Chicago. | ||
| 19 | REDRAW | Once more represent retiring prison officer (6) |
| WARDER<. | ||
| 20 | DUNCAN | Scottish king has horse at half pace (6) |
| DUN + CAN[ter]. | ||
| 21 | OBIT | Out of bounds sex? Short notice, one just passed on it (4) |
| OB + IT. | ||
| 23 | NAVY | Labourer‘s only one against Kind of Blue? (4) |
| NA[v]VY. | ||
* = anagram; < = reversed; [] = removed; underlined = definition; Hover to expand abbreviations; BOLD = letters forming part of entries.
Thanks to Hob for quite a tough puzzle which took a while to unfold. Thanks Simon for explaining the parsing for SIXTY…I got the LAX reference but couldn’t make the final step.
[UTB…in my Bramall Lane days the no.9 shirt was worn by Mick Jones, then Billy Dearden and later by Deano]
Thoroughly enjoyed this. Managed to complete in less than an hour, which is good for me doing a Hob (that sounded a bit like a euphemism). Got FEMINIST but didn’t understand the Chicago definition.
Thanks to Hob and Simon.
I’d given up commenting, but I’ll make an exception. Superb! Does Hob set anywhere else?
A lot of spark about this puzzle. Most welcome.Thanks all.
To answer Herb‘s question @3, I have reasons to think Hob also writes for The Guardian.
It might be wrong, though.
Ow! Our brains hurt. We needed a wordfinder for VIKINGS and DECREASE (despite the latter being a bit of an old chestnut) but parsed them once we got them. The only ones we couldn’t parse in the end were EGAD and SIXTY. Perhaps we should have known the airport code, but ‘Chicago’ in 17dn was surely specialist rather than general knowledge.
Sorry, Hob, not a very satisfying solve, but thanks, Simon, for the explanations.
I really enjoyed this, as usual with Hob, so many thanks to him and to Simon for the blog.
Re 17dn: I was congratulating myself on remembering [from crosswords] that duke = fist but, having constructed the answer, I couldn’t make sense of the definition, so special thanks for that, Simon. Having looked up Judy Chicago, I feel I ought to have heard of her. 🙁
Despite spotting the message the ‘numbers’ clues still caused me grief. Really enjoyed the workout so thanks Hob and Simon. Sadly I knew Tom @12ac. I blame the Sweeney.
(UTB indeed Baerchen@1. Jones and Sherman up front, the Birch. Happy days)
Showing your age there Paul! Keith Edwards was number 9 in my day. Morris 7, Stancliffe 5, Tomlinson 1. A six year old Simon ran out as mascot with those blokes against Charlton one time. Back when they had one mascot, not 38 like now etc.
Started this before going out this afternoon and took the printout with me to look at later. Finished whilst waiting for my food to be delivered in a restaurant, so not too difficult if I was able to complete without aids.
But it was only after I got home and was about to come here that I spotted the Nina.