I couldn’t scientifically or statistically tell you if this was a below/above average or completely typical Cyclops…but I know a man who could…(see below)
In fact I have to admit I solved and submitted this soon after publication/receipt, and have had to come back to it ‘cold’ to prepare the blog. I didn’t have any solving notes of any significant issues, or ‘wow’ moments, so maybe it was an ‘average’ puzzle after all…
There are some of the usual political figures in wordplay – Trump, Blair, Nigel/UKIP, the Conservatives generally – but hardly any of the usual skoolboy-ish rudery/smut (just 1A with ‘dotty Rees grabbing his genital area’…)
I enjoyed the surface reading of 27A, BAD OMEN, with the number of parliamentary women (Greening, Cooper, et al) trying to manoeuvre against the current leader and her BEREFT PROPOSALS…and 25A TERRORISM, with a ‘dictator’ using the term to describe the thinking/actions of anyone who doesn’t agree with their regime…who could Cyclops be thinking about?…also 15A, suggesting that good LABOUR RELATIONS are good for business – what a quaintly old-fashioned idea!
There also a fairly rare (?) 2-word clue at 26D – ultimately ‘just’ a double definition, but redolent with Victorian undercurrents of revulsion at the thought of undergarments!…
My only sticking point in terms of parsing was the BEACH of the Beach Boys, at 19A, but have just twigged while writing this that I should have been thinking verb (to beach, to ground, a boat), rather than noun (I was trying to work out if a ‘beach’ could be a ‘ground’…)
All good fun and an enjoyable solve as usual – thanks Cyclops.
Now, to return to the intro, and the ‘scientific’ analysis… I have often banged on about how many times Trump, or May, get mentioned in clues, as well as how much ‘smuttery’ there is. Well, one regular solver, Mark Clowes, has taken this speculation several steps further and done some fascinating analysis of an archive of 300+ Cyclops puzzles with over 6500 clues, as detailed in his blog here.
Mark’s ‘word crunching’ has produced a ‘word cloud’ of the most frequently used words in that set of Cyclops’ clues, which backs up some of my vague feelings on the subject:
Ignoring the technical/linking words like getting, get. and one, which figure largest, there are a lot of old regulars in there – Conservative, Labour, leader, party, Brenda,etc. The relative newcomer Trump beats Corbyn – couldn’t see him anywhere? – and a veritable smorgasbord of balls, arse, screwed, member, pissed, erection, sex, crap, etc… I’m sure you’ll find your own favourites in there somewhere…
In addition, Mark has done further analysis which has identified a number of examples of ‘duplicate’ clues over the years – maybe understandable given the sheer/prodigious volume of fortnightly output from Cyclops over the years, as well as running an algorithm over the complete set of words used in Cyclops clues to make up some imaginary Cyclops-ean clues – many of which read and sound like they could appear in a real Cyclops puzzle!
Some examples below, and there is even a ‘real-time’ pseudo-Cyclops clue generator here: https://mark.clow.es/cyclops-generator
Leader of Tories is implicated in email set fiasco – love the old lady – disgrace!
Laugh like a drug
Schmaltz rejected to get behind
Taking Boris’s lead, needed tip – what a disaster!
Pissed member before sex check
(You’ll have to supply your own solutions and enumerations…)
To reiterate, the full blog of this is here – https://mark.clow.es/?blog/2019/02/cyclops-crossword
(NB. This is an independent piece of work, not commissioned by or linked to the FifteenSquared site in any way, although Mark has kindly allowed us to use material from it here. If you have any questions on it, you should be able to contact him via his blog site. And I’m sure he will admit that maybe he needs to ‘get out more’, as the Eye would put it!…)
| Across | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Clue No | Solution | Clue | Definition (with occasional embellishments) / Logic/parsing |
|
| 6A | RELAPSE | Backsliding Dotty Rees grabs genital area (7) | backsliding / RE_SE (anag, i.e. dotty, of REES) around (grabbing) Lap (genital area) |
|
| 8A | APRICOT | Orange order pact with Rio (7) | orange (colour) / anag, i.e. order, of PACT with RIO |
|
| 10A | PRIMARIES | Rather formal group of stars will present future test for Trump (9) | (something that) will present future test for Trump / PRIM (rather formal) + ARIES (group of stars) |
|
| 11A | SALVO | Burst of criticism: “Short girl, five nothing” (5) | burst of (e.g.) criticism / SAL (short girl, Sally -> Sal?) + V (five, Roman numeral) +O (zero, nothing) |
|
| 12A | SONAR | The Sun almost managed to turn round a batty feature (5) | a batty feature ( a feature of bats) / SO( |
|
| 13A | MUNICIPAL | City-related, pathetic Ukip claim: “Nigel’s head for a thousand!” (9) | city-related / anag, i.e. pathetic, of U( |
|
| 15A | LABOUR RELATIONS | Opposition party’s going round story-telling? Must be good for a successful business (6,9) | (something that) must be good for a successful business / LABOUR_S (opposition party’s) around RELATION (story-telling) |
|
| 19A | BEACH BOYS | Group tossed yobs east side of ground (5,4) | (60s pop) group / BEACH (to beach a boat could also be to ground it) with BOYS (anag, i.e. tossed, of YOBS) to the right/’east’? |
|
| 21A | HASTE | Pure cocaine given up for speed (5) | speed / ( |
|
| 23A | REHAB | What did you say in boozer, being arse over tip? Maybe this will help (5) | maybe this will help (if you are regularly arse over tip in the boozer…) / R_AB (bar, boozer, arse-over-tip) around EH (interjection, what did you say?) |
|
| 25A | TERRORISM | “Blunder in obscure mist,” as a dictator characterizes protests against his regime? (9) | as a dictator characterises protests against his (or her) regime / T_ISM (anag, i.e. obscure, of MIST) around ERROR (blunder) |
|
| 26A | FOG LAMP | In short, historic county intercepts dude employed in murky circumstances (3,4) | (something) employed in murky circumstances / F_OP (dude, dandy) around (intercepting) GLAM (Glamorgan, former county, short) |
|
| 27A | BAD OMEN | Wicked females ousting leader, which doesn’t bode well (3,4) | (something) which doesn’t bode well / BAD (wicked) + ( |
|
| Down | ||||
| Clue No | Solution | Clue | Definition (with occasional embellishments) / Logic/parsing |
|
| 1D | PROPOSAL | Suggestion: support balls also (8) | suggestion / PROP (support) + OSAL (anag, i.e. balls, of ALSO) |
|
| 2D | ALBION | Blair? No, not right to transform Britain (6) | Britain / anag, i.e. transform, of BLAI( |
|
| 3D | MEDIUM | Channel One due to collapse in two minutes (6) | channel / M_M (two Ms, or minutes) around EDIU (anag, i.e. collapse, of I – one – and DUE) |
|
| 4D | ARMS | See 24dn. (4) | see 24D / see 24D |
|
| 5D | STROLL | Constitutional way to mug someone (6) | constitutional (walk) / ST (street, way) + ROLL (slang, to rob or to mug someone) |
|
| 7D | PLAY ROUGH | Get physical when criminal Ray opens till (4,5) | get physical / PL_OUGH (till) around AY_R (anag, i.e. criminal, of RAY) |
|
| 8D | ARSENAL | Bastard northern mobster’s side (7) | (football) side (team) / ARSE (bastard, cur, derogatory term) + N (northern) + AL (Al Capone, mobster) |
|
| 9D | CALYPSO | Song about leaving Cyclops with a mess (7) | song / anag, i.e. mess, of CY( |
|
| 14D | CATCH COLD | Corner Conservative veteran and become snotty-nosed? (5,4) | become snotty nosed? / CATCH (corner) + C (Conservative) + OLD (veteran) |
|
| 16D | BEAR HUG | Stomach three-quarters oversize? This’ll flatten it! (4,3) | this’ll flatten it (an oversize stomach!) / BEAR (stomach) + HUG( |
|
| 17D | ROOFTOP | House high point of crap, or of pot (7) | house, high point of / anag, i.e. crap, of OR OF POT |
|
| 18D | STEAMING | Pissed off with mugging (8) | double defn. / STEAMING can mean very angry, or pissed off; and STEAMING is also (another!) slang term for mugging, or stealing, usually in a crowd on the Underground) |
|
| 19D | BEREFT | Wanting beer brewed, a small measure (6) | wanting / BERE (anag, i.e. stewed, of BEER) + FT (foot, measure – abbreviated, or small) |
|
| 20D | SCRIBE | Plagiarism is at the heart of the Home Counties hack (6) | hack (journalist/writer) / S_E (South East, the English Home Counties) around CRIB (copy, plagiarise) |
|
| 22D | SHIMMY | Undergarment … shudder! (6) | double defn. / SHIMMY can be a form of chemise, or undergarment; and also to SHIMMY is to shake the body/hips, especially in a dance) |
|
| 24D | BEAR | & 4 Americans claim to have a right to display members (4,4) | Americans have a right to… / BEAR (display, heraldic) + ARMS (members) |
|
If Mark Clowes wished to go one step further in his analysis of crossword-setting data, he might consider taking a look at Brummie’s puzzles on the Guardian website (Brummie being Cyclops’s best-known mainstream alter ego). I have always been struck by the absence of overlap between the Cyclops output and the Brummie output. Maybe data analysis would reveal some points of similarity.
My first glance of this puzzle was with a friend, who immediately solved’ Bad omen’ but we then failed completely with surfaced reads of all others. I started in earnest some time later and took a long while to get going and then it all fell into place. There were a lot of Bs too that were at the ends of words and left me floundering for a while.
Failed to solve this one. I thought 24d/4d was a pun on ‘bare arms’ (display members), but not sure about the homophone indicator (“claim”?), which left me unsure which way the homphone went. Combined with a failure to see “ground” meant ‘beach’, this made a mess of the SW corner. Did you know there is a band called Earth Boys? That was made more difficult by taken the “short historic county” as GLA (Greater London Authority – did/does that actually exist?), left me puzzled about “dude”. Oh well, first failure since starting on this series a few months ago.
Thanks, mc, for the Mark Clowes material. Loved the word cloud.
Thanks also to John E for pointing out that Cyclops and Brummie are one.
Tony @3 — It was the Greater London Council (GLC) that replaced the London County Council in 1965. I was living in London at the time but used to visit Glamorgan regularly to see my Welsh grandparents. The administrative county of Glamorgan was abolished in 1974, but the county name lives on in many contexts, including first-class cricket.
The Greater London Authority is the current administrative set-up, dating from 2000 when the directly elected mayoralty was introduced.
Took me a while and, like Winsor, finally managed a late spurt from Sunday. Struggled with solving 12A because I completely missed the managed/ran connection. I was convinced there was an overlapping double definition of ‘turn round a batty’ because I could only see ‘Nora’!
Using ‘batty’ to mean bat-related is quite clever, because it’s a word that is more likely to turn up as an anagram indicator (e.g. in Cyclops 524 and 608).
John E, the county name lived on till recently as West, South and Mid-Glamorgan. I think unitary authorities put paid to it eventually. As for cricket, it is barely first-class these days, with the county languishing in the nether regions.
Winsor, I was trying to be diplomatic about the cricketing status. I was very young when my grandfather took me to Cardiff Arms Park in the 1950s and I got Wilf Wooller’s autograph.
@John E, thanks for the clarification re the GLA. Thought I’d heard of it somewhere. Had no idea Glamorgan wasn’t a county any more.