A musical offering from Qaos.
Qaos has managed to (almost) get five Andrew Lloyd Webber musicals into the puzzle this morning (SUNSET BOULEVARD, CATS, PHANTOM (of the) OPERA, and disappointingly ASPECT (rather than ASPECTS) (of) LOVE.
In order to do so, I feel that he has compromised a little in the accuracy of his clues (poor definition in 11 ac) and minor quibbles with the grammar of 24ac and 6dn).
On the other hand, I did give ticks to 12ac and 15dn.
Thanks Qaos.
| Across | ||
| 9 | BOULEVARD | Louvre — bad design, or the French way? (9) |
| *(louvre bad) | ||
| 10 | AUDIO | Sound of car 8 (5) |
| AUDI (“car”) + O (love, solution to “8” down) | ||
| 11 | PHANTOM | It’s said cool cat doesn’t exist (7) |
| Homophone of [it’s said] FAN (“cool”) + TOM (“cat”)
Not keen on the definition part of this clue (‘doesn’t exist” implies a verb rather than a noun or adjective) |
||
| 12 | ORIFICE | Opening hole on first round provided water — that’s hard (7) |
| O (“hole”) on [first] R(ound) + IF (“provided”) + ICE (“water that’s hard”) | ||
| 13 | OPERA | Work? Time for work (5) |
| OP (opus, so “work”) + ERA (“time”) | ||
| 14 | CHORISTER | One who sings Bach, or is terrific indoors (9) |
| Hidden in [indoors] “baCH OR IS TERrific” | ||
| 16 | EXTRAORDINARILY | Unusually minor actor playing laird with irony (15) |
| EXTRA (“minor actor”) + *(laird irony) | ||
| 19 | STARLIGHT | Sailor bitten by little rays (9) |
| TAR (“sailor”) bitten by SLIGHT (“little”) | ||
| 21 | SETAL | Smooth at first and the others are bristly (5) |
| S(mooth) [at first] + ET AL (“and the others”) | ||
| 22 | EXPRESS | Old newspapers, say (7) |
| EX (“old”, as in old girlfriend) + PRESS (“newspapers”) | ||
| 23 | CONTROL | Party time holding balloon in both hands? Check (7) |
| CON (conservative “party”) + T (time) + O (“balloon”) in R and L (right and left, so “both hands”) | ||
| 24 | ASCOT | Like Conservative to overturn place for meetings (5) |
| AS (“like”) + C (Conservative) + <=OT [overturn]
In my opinion, this clue is faulty, as the grammar doesn’t work (needs to be “to overturn” or “overturned”) |
||
| 25 | ACTRESSES | Players react badly with opponents on board (9) |
| *(react) [badly] with SE (South and East, “opponents” in bridge) in SS (in a steamship, so “on board”) | ||
| Down | ||
| 1 | IBUPROFENS | Cardinal-bishop, university professor and nurses supply drugs (10) |
| 1 (“cardinal”) + B (bishop) + U (university) + PROF (professor) + ENS ((enrolled) nurses) | ||
| 2 | SUBAGENT | Legal broker‘s underwater spy? (8) |
| An AGENT on a SUB could be an “underwater spy”) | ||
| 3 | BERTHA | Big German gun beginning to blast earth to pieces (6) |
| [beginning to] B(last) + *(earth) | ||
| 4 | PALM | Friend gets married … to a tree? (4) |
| PAL (“friend”) gets M (married) | ||
| 5 | IDEOLOGIST | Philosopher lies to God, I suspect (10) |
| *(lies to god i) | ||
| 6 | BASILICA | Herb I can mostly see in church (8) |
| BASIL (“herb”) + I CA(n) [mostly]
Grammar again (CAN is mostly “seen”, not see) |
||
| 7 | ADDICT | They can’t stop Dad dancing, not even in city (6) |
| *(dad) + I(n)C(i)T(y)
Assume “they” is being used as a gender neutral singular pronoun here? |
||
| 8 | LOVE | 50 + 0 + 5/2 = 0? (4) |
| L (“50”) + O + (fi)VE (half of “5”) | ||
| 14 | CARL GUSTAF | King’s vehicle: large, grand, posh, fast model (4,6) |
| CAR (“vehicle”) + L (large) + G (grand) + U (“posh”) + *fast) Carl Gustaf is the King od Sweden | ||
| 15 | ROYAL FLUSH | Best hand in the throne room? (5,5) |
| In poker, a Royal Flush is the best hand, and you would hear a toilet flush in the “throne room” (“throne” is a light-hearted term for toilet seat) | ||
| 17 | AILMENTS | Male’s nit problem causes complaints (8) |
| *(male nits) | ||
| 18 | INTEREST | Pursuit of profit (8) |
| Doubel definition | ||
| 20 | ASPECT | Appearance of muscle, in a way (6) |
| PEC (“muscle” ) in A ST (street, so “way”) | ||
| 21 | SUNSET | Students upset group, at the end of the day (6) |
| <=NUS (National Union of “Students”, upset) + SET (“group”) | ||
| 22 | EXAM | Revolting boy takes English test (4) |
| <=MAX (revolting “boy”) takes E | ||
| 23 | CATS | Fans of whips? (4) |
| Double definition | ||
*anagram
As usual, I agree with loonapick. I think that 7d is just plain wrong, but there are several very good clues to balance the questionable ones.
19a STARLIGHT 22a EXPRESS fits in to the theme as well.
The quibbles: I just filled in 11a PHANTOM to the clue to make it a whole sentence – “It’s said FAN TOM doesn’t exist” in order to get the solution to fit the sense of it. I also had a “question mark plural” against 7d ADDICT.
But otherwise I really enjoyed it all. Well done, Qaos, on a super theme that I reckon a 14a CHORISTER would love.
Was there a mini-theme of big weapons with 3D BERTHA and 14d CARL GUSTAF as well?
Thanks to Qaos and loonapick.
Can you have more than one Ibuprofen? (Picky, I know).
This was a DNF for me. My mind went blank on “old newspapers” and “appearance of muscle” so I failed to solve both 22a and 2d.
I failed to parse 8d – I was thinking of L+O+V /2 and could not see how to parse the E of LOVE 🙁
New for me was SETAL.
7d works fine if they = a gender neutral singular pronoun.
Thanks Qaos and loonapick.
Thanks both. Saw the theme, despite my loathing of the works of Lord ALW
A few chestnuts to start, op era and ex press, and it unwound steadily. Forgot they as neutral singular so went que? about addict, and then about the see in 6d; seen would have been better as you say Loonapick, bit I don’t get what it has to do with can. Dnk seta the bristle, and subagent is not a familiar term, just followed instructions. And I suppose a student of ideas, or ideologies, could pass as philosopher, but a bit hmm? And why are cats fans…hepcat? Hey ho, lots to like. Thanks Q and L.
Neat idea re 11, JinA, a sort of post-solve &lit; could be a new thing!
Thanks Qaos for an enjoyable solve.
I’m with HM@3, I’ve never seen Ibuprofen as a plural and I’d be very surprised if it has one.
thanks loonapick, in particular for 5/2.
I am afraid for me this was a great example of a theme spoiling an otherwise fun crossword, for a couple of reasons. The theme was readily apparent (all together now, “It’s Qaos, there’s always a theme” so “boulevard” set me looking for “sunset” and so forth). With the theme not quite working either (“aspect” not “aspects”) it was clearly a bit of a reach or a rush, and this was reflected in the grammatical and definitional weaknesses in a number of clues, as pointed out already by loonapick and other posters. I’d add “phantom” as weakly defined (lots of things don’t exist, including a decent ALW musical…), “slight” for “little” doesn’t really work (I cannot think of a place where they could swap – a slight chance is a slim or small chance, not a little chance for example, and a slight figure is slim not short, so again little is not quite right), and someone is going to have to explain to me why a cat is a fan please.
Having said all that there were some gems in here. I loved “throne room” leading to “royal flush” and thought “audio” and “love” worked well together. Great to see Qaos’s trademark numerical clues again, which always require a new way to look at the world, but make sense in the end.
I think ROYAL FLUSH is also a musical but not by ALW
We really enjoyed this.
Another one not sure about ASPECT and IBUPROFENS. Perhaps move the S one one to the other ho ho.
Thanks, loonapick.
Like JinA, I really enjoyed this and so can easily overlook what can be seen as quibbles – especially as I also like the theme!
I’m liking the way qaos is keeping up with his characteristic ‘mathematical’ clues – especially as this one fitted the theme.
Many thanks, qaos, for the fun.
[I’m not allowed ibuprofen, so I take a couple of paracetamols for a headache. 😉 ]
[i liked the “post-solve &lit” description, ginf@7. I wondered what name I could give it. JinA]
Thank you Qaos and loonapick.
Very enjoyable, even though, like Shirl @5, I cannot stand these musicals. I find no problem with 1d, IBUPROFEN is marketed under several names by different drug companies, e.g. Brufen, Nurofen.
24 ac ASCOT: I think we need to take overturn as an imperative. On plural ibuprofen – just about every word can have a plural if we consider a word to be just a series of letters. For example, how many “ibuprofens” can you count in this blog?
Thanks Qaos and loonapick
Thanks to Qaos and loonapick. I am another who enjoyed this and really did not worry too much about the minor “quibbles”. Last ones for me were Carl Gustaf and starlight, the latter of which was one of my favourites along with royal flush. Spotted the theme too late to help me much and thanks again to Qaos and loonapick.
An entertaining crossword, even when one doesn’t spot the theme! I liked ROYAL FLUSH very much – also LOVE and AUDIO. (Like michelle @4, I didn’t see VE as 5/2.)
As Howard @3 says, I doubt IBUPROFEN has a plural. I wondered about ‘They’ in 7d and was interested in what’s been said about the gender-neutral pronoun. The only other quibble I had was with ‘and the others’ in 21a. ‘Et al’ means ‘and others’ – a different meaning. (It also means ‘and elsewhere’, but that’s not relevant here.)
Thanks to Qaos and loonapick.
STARLIGHT EXPRESS too.
Qaos is among my favorite setters. I didn’t feel that this was one of his best for some of the reasons given above, but still enjoyable for the most part. A dnf for me as I forgot about the ‘whip’ meaning of CATS and like thezed@9, I still don’t know why cats = fans.
Thanks to Qaos and Loonapick.
For the life of me I cannot reconcile “they” in 7D with a singular noun solution.
I think we quite often have cat = [jazz] fan.
I really enjoyed this. Like Eileen I was pleased to see the mathematical one. I parsed PHANTOM as “If a limb is described as a phantom limb, it *doesn’t exist*”. So that definition worked fine for me. “They” as a gender-neutral pronoun is another misdirectional tool in the setter’s arsenal, it seems to me, which is also backed up by Chambers (online, at least) so I can’t see a problem there either.
Favourites BASILICA and ROYAL FLUSH.
Thanks to Qaos and Loonapick
Barobalti @19, I agree – I regard using ‘they’ as a gender-neutral singular as grammatically criminal, especially in this context, where either ‘He’ or ‘She’ would have worked perfectly well instead.
For 14d, I’d written in CARL GUSTAV without being able to parse the STAV. I’d thought it was correctly spelled with a V, but it seems I;m wrong!
Barobalti: if someone is an addict, they can’t stop! Seems fair enough to me.
Like many others, I enjoyed this puzzle despite the many small issues with it. I would add to the enumeration the use of “of” as a linking word (18 & 23d) – not every common short word works as well as “is” or “gives”.
Stepping back, we have a new kind of &lit. The puzzle is Qaos!
Thanks Qaos and loonapick
I had issues with some not mentioned yet (I think – I skim-read the comments). cat for “fan” @ 11a, fan for cat @23d? OP is short for OPUS, of which the plural is OPERA, so it is the same definition twice. 1 as “cardinal” – loose. MAX defined as “boy” – very loose. Opponents for SE in 25d again loose – it also doesn’t conform to the Guardian’s style-guide. I smiled at ROYAL FLUSH, but I don’t think it works – you just “flush” in the “throne room” in this sense, not royal flush!
I didn’t see the theme, of course.
All in all, not one of Qaos’s best.
Ignore first quibble – fan is the cool bit, not the cat bit.
We enjoyed this. We parsed ‘they’ as a he/she alternative without a second thought – I would think it has been in use for decades by now (?) Phantom also seemed fine – phantom pregnancy being non-existent for example. Thanks to setter and blogger for a fun puzzle and for explanation of the ‘e’ in love.
Thanks to Qaos and loonapick. I echo the issues already noted – and I did not parse the ve in LOVE.
LOVE had to be the answer but I don’t get VE as half of V. I’m rather glad I didn’t get the theme because one of the awful songs would have become an earworm earlier than PHANTOM of the OPERA did. I always mean to look for a theme in a QAOS puzzle but I always forget. CARL GUSTAF took me a while to get but I was amused when I did.
Thanks Qaos.
Peter @29 “V” is the Roman numeral for 5, which spelt out as a number word rather than a numeral is “FIVE”. Half of “FIVE” (ie /2, divide by 2) gives “VE”. It also gives “FI” but “LOFI” would not ” = 0″ for the definition part of the clue. Nor would it appear in Chambers!
Thanks to Loonapick and Qaos. Something odd going on this week, that’s the third day in a row I’ve actually finished. This seemed a bit un-Qaos-like; the theme felt like a little bit of an afterthought rather than an integral part, and some repetition crept in i.e. “cats”. Still, no complaints !
Ibuprofen may not have a plural, but I sometimes take more than one.
Thanks both,
I’d have finished this a lot quicker if I’d spelled ‘ibuprofens’ correctly. I’ve no quibble with the plural. Eg, Chemist’s Assistant, ‘Where shall I shall put this? Chemist: ‘Put it among the ibuprofens’.
We had a discussion last week about ‘remote’ = ‘small’, which I took exception to. ‘Slight’=’little’ seems OK to me, eg, ‘I have a slight/little problem’.
Thanks Qaos and loonapick
JohnB @ 31: talking with Qaos a couple of years ago, he said he *always* starts with the theme.
He may have changed in the interim, of course.
Being a bit of an oddball, I would have liked “works” rather than “work” at the end of “Work? Time for work” (13A). It would cause the clue to make less sense, but “opera” is the plural of “opus”. I’ve never googled to find out if anyone else uses “magna opera” as the plural of “magnum opus”, because I fear I’d be disappointed by the outcome.
I had the same niggles about plurals in 1 and 7, but I’ve been convinced of their legitimacy by the comments. I did the maths correctly for once to get LOVE. I particularly liked seeing 5/2 being used for VE. Half of X is almost always the first half of X, but there’s no logical reason why it shouldn’t be the second half (or indeed any half part thereof). I am not quite as comfortable with the indicators “overturn” and “see”, or, for that matter, the “first round” for R in 12.
I had to construct SETAL and CARL GUSTAF from the wordplay, not being familiar with the spikes or the royalty. So, my TILTS for the day.
Easy enough to spot the theme, and it helped with SUNSET.
Decent lunchtime entertainment. Thanks, Q and l.
Got all correct bar CARL GUSTAv.(v instead of f)
Thanks Qaos and loonapick. Thoroughly enjoyed this, possibly because it was a first genuine finish for a while!
btw, how often does the grid repeat exactly on two adjacent days?
Thanks to loonapick and Qaos
My only real complaint is 12a FIRST ROUND = R. This sort of thing is creeping in and it needs to be stopped.
There are, at least, two things that are typical of Qaos’s crosswords.
Firstly, there is always a (ghost) theme. Of course, today that theme made no effort to hide itself. That said, we only looked for it at the end. As to the theme as such we had no problems with ‘aspect’ instead of ‘aspects’. Just like ‘aspects’ the former is part of the name of the musical, a couple of others aren’t complete either.
The second thing about Qaos is that his clueing is not always technically flawless. However, one should remember that Qaos himself, a while ago at this place, made clear that this was not a priority and that he isn’t a Ximenean by any means. The grammar police better stay home.
Personally, I have a different take on crosswords and therefore 12ac (‘first round’ = R), 6d (‘see’) and 7d (‘they’) are not my cup of tea. As one or two others said ‘overturn’ in 24ac could just about work as an imperative. And, actually, I’d expected some solvers would complain about ‘Con’=’party’ (23ac).
While ‘cardinal’ for ‘1’ is a bit loose, it is all right. On the other hand, I think ‘are’ in 21ac is not.
But ultimately it is Qaos’s aim to entertain us, to give us a good time.
And that’s what we had!
I think (and my solving partner agrees, so that’s two) that his crosswords have a unique feel and that he fully deserves his place in the Guardian spotlight.
Many thanks to Loonapick for the blog [but be careful with what you say in the part of the preamble that’s visible] & Qaos.
Phil J, I don’t think you will ever see “magna opera” as the plural of “magnum opus”, because although it is in theory correct Latin, “opera” is also a separate feminine singular word meaning “exertion”. So “magna opera” (or more likely “opera magna”) would naturally be taken as singular, = “great exertion”. The plural of “opus” occurs more often in the oblique cases, where there is no ambiguity.
My SE corner did not go in readily and CATS was the key. SETAL new to me too. I’m not a fan of the uses of ‘for’ in the two clues in that quarter but maybe that’s a familiarity thing.
Apart from that some sound edits from bloggers and commentators.
I enjoyed the puzzle and echo ticks in line with many above.
Am I the only commentator here who is a fan of the super talented musician that is Andrew Lloyd Weber. Most open minded musicians that I know have great respect for his music even if some of them would not admit to it openly. I hope Qaos is with me having themed this offering with the theme.
Thanks a lot to you for setting and to loonapick for great blog.
Picaroon today/tomorrow. Enjoy all
I found this a straightforward solve and did enjoy the theme which I went looking for after I finished. Needed help to parse LOVE – as others did, got stuck on thinking about roman numerals and didn’t think about half of five; having seen the explanation, it is now one of my favs, along with ROYAL FLUSH, which made me chuckle.
Agree with the comments re pluralising a drug name, for both the reasons mentioned (tablet number, different trade names) although it does sound odd in isolation. Thanks for the fun Qaos and for the blog Loonapick.
For 23ac I thought that this may be a cryptic definition. A cat (o’nine tails) is a whip that fans out.
Sorry, 23 d obviously