Filbert is now established as a regular Saturday setter and must’ve claimed today in advance with a desire to come up a puzzle like this.
It has a theme suitable for today’s main event …
Tonight Liverpool (11) play Spurs (4/7) in the final of the UEFA Cup in Madrid.
This puzzle must’ve been crafted soon after the results of the semi-finals were known.
And what a couple of stonking linked clues 11 and 4/7 are for the two team names.
In 11 I’ve underlined “one?” as the definition but as this refers to one of the “Four English sides” in this clue, it is really a magnificent &Lit. The “four English sides” are Chelsea and Arsenal, and Liverpool and Spurs in today’s final.
Chelsea beat Arsenal 4-1 in the Europa League Cup final played on Wed 29-May in Baku. Will there be as many goals tonight?
In 4/7 there is a surprising anagram involving Porto who were knocked out at the quarter final stage by Liverpool, and plenty more football references throughout the answers and the clues which have some fine surface readings.
Very good.
| Across | ||
|---|---|---|
| 1 | SING | A minority of fans in general behave like noisy tits (4) Hidden in fanS IN General. First one solved, straight out the blocks. I was pleased to spot a hidden answer early on for a change. |
| 4/7 | TOTTENHAM HOTSPUR | Final hurdle for 11 men that shut Porto out (9,7) (MEN THAT SHUT PORTO)* AInd: out. Liverpool (11) are the “final hurdle” for Spurs |
| 9 | DEFEATED | Did cream tea feed 500 fans? (8) Def. Did cream. (TEA FEED D (500))* AInd: fans |
| 10 | UPTIME | Computing period at school getting Berners-Lee online? (6) UP (at school) TIM (Berners Lee) E (online). Unix command showing how long since last reboot is uptime (check) |
| 11 | LIVERPOOL | Four English sides bag last places in cup, two to prevail; one? (9) (IV (Four), E[nglish] ) inside LR (Left, Right – Sides), [cu]P [tw]O [t]O [pervai]L. &Lit. |
| 12 | PARK | A thousand chant occasionally offensive lyrics around the pitch (4) K (thousand) RAP (chant occasionally offensive lyrics) all reversed (around) |
| 13 | ICE SKATE | Boot that is sheltering cold small shrew (3,5) C[old] inside I.E. (that is), S[mall] KATE (Shrew, as in “Taming of the …“) |
| 16 | STROBE | Flasher sat with nothing inside cloak (6) S[a]T, ROBE (cloak) |
| 17 | TREBLE | Millions escaping from quake, a very large one (6) TRE[m]BLE. E.g. a treble gin. |
| 19 | TURNOVER | Go through all your receipts (8) TURN (go) OVER (through). one for all you accountants. Weirdly, in retrospect, this was my Last One In |
| 21/25 | GOAL SCORER | Coors lager drunk in a 28, or 3? (4,6) (COORS LAGER)* AInd: drunk. Jimmy Greaves (3) and Ian Rush (28) are well-known goal scorers. |
| 22 | PENALTIES | Couples on quiet road sent back with parking fines (9) TIES (couples) after LANE< (quiet road, sent back), P[arking] |
| 26 | GENTILES | Ham farmer visited by ten itinerant ham eaters? (8) (TEN)* AInd: itinerant inside GILES (farmer) |
| 27 | ESCALATOR | Cycling, climb a hill the easy way up (9) SCALE (climb, “cycling” to make ESCAL), A TOR (a hill) |
| 28 | RUSH | High speed (4) Double Def. and another goal scorer like Greavesy. I couldn’t get this despite having both crossing letters till after getting 21/25 |
| Down | ||
| 2 | IDEAL | Negotiator’s claim to be getting the job done? In her dreams (5) Homophone of “I deal” |
| 3 | GREAVES | Shin guards save Reg being kicked around (7) (SAVE REG)* AInd: being kicked around. A greave is the shin guard part of a suit of armour. |
| 4 | TATER | Murphy volunteers, wanting sentence reduced (5) TA (volunteers, Territorial Army) TER[m] (sentence, reduced) |
| 5 | TADPOLE | Develop data about swallows being hatched in a puddle? (7) Hidden reversed in devELOP DATa. |
| 6 | EQUALISER | 21 before 22? (9) Cryptic Def. The Goal (21) before Penalties (6) (what about matches that are still 0-0 after extra time? – That why the “?” is in the clue I suppose) |
| 8 | MEMORABLE | Catchy number one put bishop in good spirits (9) ME (number one, colloquially), B[ishop] inside MORALE (good spirits) |
| 14 | CARTOUCHE | Vehicle moved, stopping short of Dutch border (9) CAR (vehicle) TOUCHED (moved, emotionally) up to the D (stopping short of D[utch]) |
| 15 | ATEMPORAL | Had politician spoken without considering the time? (9) ATE (had) MP (politician) ORAL (spoken) |
| 18 | BALDRIC | Strapping swordsman carried tonsured papist around Italy (7) BALD (tonsured) I[taly] inside RC (papist) |
| 19 | TONIGHT | Scarce nurses working later (7) ON (working) inside TIGHT (scarce) |
| 20 | OLIVIER | Great player in the middle, solid competitor (7) [s]OLI[d], VIER (competitor) |
| 23 | LINER | Maybe Queen Elizabeth left at home by herself (5) L[eft] IN (at home) ER (herself) |
| 24 | SEEDS | What could make say, Rose and Son favourites for the trophy? (5) SEED (What could make say, Rose), S[on]. And at the end there is a tennis term to usher in June. (Rose seems an odd choice to illustrate something grown from seed.) |
Thanks to Filbert for a fine puzzle & to beermagnet for the blog. Ahem…Champions League final; not the (obsolete) UEFA cup.
In 24 SEEDS, the two Spurs players (Danny) ROSE and (Heung Min) SON explain the surface.
In addition to the hon mensh for the clues for the two finalists, I must add my praise for RUSH…the two-word DD is often an Achilles heel of mine and this one was very, very good.
I took 26a to be a reference to “Farmer Giles of Ham” by Tolkien.
Couldn’t make up my mind on how to parse PENALTIES. Either as in blog or with “parking fines” as definition and P for quiet followed by >LANE etc.
Liked the use of “number one” for ME in 8d. 23d was a nice surface. Favourite clue was BALDRIC.
Thanks to Filbert and beermagnet.
9A is not the definition “did” with cream as the anagrind for (tea feed D)*?
Hang on, I think I jumped in there and beermagnet is right.
My favourites clues are …..all of them.
What a brilliant setter Filbert is.
Thanks all.
The theme was fairly obvious from the start and certainly helped even for us as non-fans of the round ball game. Nevertheless we ground to a halt in the SE quadrant with only a couple of letters in most of the words so a wordfinder offering hundreds of possibilities wasn’t much help; in desperation we resorted to revealing the letter at 19, which got us going again – and evoked several exclamations of ‘Doh!’ in the process. Favourite was GENTILES.
Thanks, Filbert and beermagnet.
I knew there was a football game on today, but I had no idea who was playing. Still managed to get the names of the two teams. Couldn’t parse 5dn, so thanks for the explanation. I’m surprised I couldn’t spot that hidden reverse.
I’m just off to a Stockhausen concert in London tonight, which is much more to my taste, although I do have the cricket on at the moment.
Thanks to beermagnet and everyone else, also Eimi for fitting it in at short notice.
One solution I regret not being able to include was this entry in Chambers I came across while looking for Liverpool/Spurs players to include (I’m still not sure it’s not a joke):
hoddle vi (scot) to waddle
Filbert, how can it be that you posted your comment at 8:35pm, at a time the first half wasn’t even finished? You should have been in front of the telly, with or without BT. Was it so boring [yes, it was, IMHO]?
But, true, this was a terrific crossword for which many thanks.
Beermagnet, glad you liked it too – I mean the puzzle.
A few months behind I know, and my first comment, but couldn’t let this one pass. 6 down is surely 2-1 before the equaliser to make the score 2-2!