Very much a puzzle of two halves for me, with the left side taking much longer than the right. Neatly clued as always, apart from one definitional inaccuracy. Thanks to Picaroon.
| Across | ||||||||
| 8. | SPLIT OFF | Cigarette covering to break away (5,3) TO in SPLIFF |
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| 9. | ARRIVE | Come from a stream back-to-front (6) A + RIVER with the last R moved to the front |
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| 10. | RECESS | About to get tax break (6) RE (about) + CESS (tax – related to “assess” and “excise”) |
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| 11. | ANNEXING | Seizing queen with kiss, her partner loses face (8) ANNE (queen) + X (kiss) + [K]ING |
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| 12. | EDNA | Female characters in the United Nations (4) Hidden “characters” in unitED NAtions |
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| 13. | AIRLIFTING | Flying in Hackney’s hair-raising? (10) HAIR with a Cockney dropped H + LIFTING, and a nicely accurate definition |
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| 15. | SNUGGLE | Twirling arms and moving leg to show affection (7) Reverse of GUNS (arms) + LEG* |
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| 16. | ADVERSE | Inauspicious literary work by Bill (7) AD (advert, bill) + VERSE (literary work) |
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| 18. | ASSUMPTION | Biblical event which is thought to be true (10) Double definition; however the Assumption of Mary, which was adopted as a Catholic doctrine in 1950, is not described in the bible, except by some rather tortured exegesis |
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| 19. | REAR | On which to sit, or stand nearly upright (4) Double definition: as a noun and then a verb (e.g. a rearing horse) |
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| 20. | GIFT SHOP | Soldier’s bound to store paper in present place (4,4) FT (Financial Times) in GI’S HOP. A gift shop is a place to buy presents |
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| 22. | UNTIDY | DIY nut working without order (6) (DIY NUT)* |
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| 23. | AGARIC | Smelly plant leaves large on a fungus (6) A + GARLIC less L[arge] |
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| 24. | SHEARERS | Beginning to solicit, these people pick up farm workers (8) S[olicit] + HEARERS (people who “pick up”) |
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| Down | ||||||||
| 1. | SPREAD ONE’S WINGS | Spear thrown over rocks to try new activities (6,4,5) SPEAR* + DONE (over) + SWINGS (rocks). Not, as I suspected at first, an anagram of SPEAR THROWN OVER |
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| 2. | LIKE GANGBUSTERS | Vigorously approve of crooks kidnapping French drunk (4,11) LIKE (approve of) + BU (French for “drunk” – past participle of “boire”, as in j’ai bu du vin). Although I was familiar with this expression, I didn’t know that it came from an American radio programme that ran from 1936 to 1957. |
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| 3. | CODSWALLOP | Rubbish records about love by Wham! (10) O (love) in CDS + WALLOP (to “wham”) |
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| 4. | AFFAIRS | Flings with a couple of fellows affected behaviour (7) |
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| 5. | FAWN | Women clad in cooler colour (4) W in FAN |
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| 6. | BREXIT SECRETARY | Politician Brits execrate violently online (6,9) (BRITS EXECRATE)* + RY (line), with an &littish surface. The least said about the holders of this office (officially Her Majesty’s Principal Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union) the better, if you ask me. |
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| 7. | EVENING STANDARD | Paper that’s still popular and good quality (7,8) EVEN (still) + IN (popular) + G[ood] + STANDARD (quality). The Standard is a London evening paper, now given out free at stations etc, and edited by former Chancellor George Osborne |
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| 14. | INDENTURES | Agreements to work wearing prostheses (10) If you have prosthetic teeth you could be said to be IN DENTURES |
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| 17. | WIMPISH | Feeble desire to capture little monkey (7) IMP (mischievous child, little monkey) in WISH |
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| 21. | HOCK | A white pawn (4) Double definition; a white wine, and to pawn (as in pawnbroker). A very neat one to finish. |
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An enjoyable puzzle that helped me through some early hours of insomnia. 18 across brought to mind the paining by El Greco: The Assumption over Toledo. Clearly, the Assumption of the Virgin was very much in the minds of Catholic painters long before it become official doctrine of the Roman Church. Many thanks to Picaroon and to Andrew.
Andrew, 4d is A FF plus airs.
An enjoyable crossword which brought many smiles. A pity about the inaccurate 18A which could have easily been worded differently e.g, starting with ‘Papal declaration’ or something similar.
I didn’t like 2D which seems to be a rather obscure phrase [N.b. The parsing above omits the gangsters part of the solution].
Many thanks Picaroon and Andrew.
Even being theologically ignorant I knew about the Assumption, but not of course the finer point about its not actually being in the Bible. An enjoyable stroll from the pirate today, with nary a quibblet. A couple of long ones rattled in, ie 1 and 7, which helped. Slow, though, to get gangbusters, codswallop and indentures, not sure why now. Ditto hock for white and pawn, 2nd loi, which is a chestnut but produced a teatray today, yielding agaric as loi. Good fun in all, thanks Picaroon and Andrew.
Perhaps there was a confusion between the Ascension of Jesus and the ASSUMPTION of Mary in 18a.
I ticked 1d SPREAD ONE’s WINGS but my favourite was 14d INDENTURES.
We have had this discussion before, but I always find cluing of female and male names when there are so many, in this case for 12a EDNA, a tad annoying.
Overall, I liked this puzzle mainly because I set myself the personal challenge of using no reference sources. With thanks to Picaroon and Andrew.
… bu in gangsters was a chuckle
Thanks Picaroon and Andrew
Very slow start – for some time I had only UNTIDY, WIMPISH and then GIFT SHOP. By a process of guessing and checking I got some more, and started to enjoy it more. I used a wordsearch for 2d, a phrase I’ve never heard and a solution I wasn’t able to parse, not knowing where the BU came from.
Once a few were in, the rest went surprisingly quickly. Favourite was BREXIT SECRETARY.
Thanks for parsing ofAGARIC.
Jazz cigarette?
Thanks Picaroon and Andrew-great stuff.
Rather easy fare from Picaroon today I thought – even though I’ve been learning English for only a couple of months, and my wife was passing me through the clues through the medium of interpretive dance.
Let’s hope for something ‘chewier’ tomorrow.
I forgot to add, Thanks Picaroon and Andrew
A slow steady solve today, but a DNF nevertheless courtesy of LIKE GANGBUSTERS which was an expression I’d never heard of before, as was AGARIC, although I did manage to get it from the wordplay. I’m sure nobody will be posting to say they’ve never heard of BREXIT before though!
Thanks to Picaroon & Andrew.
Thanks both. Like many, I’d never heard of LIKE GANGBUSTERS, which seems to be of American origin. Is this fair in a UK puzzle?
[I was going to mention the possible origin of CODSWALLOP as poor beer (wallop) in Hiram Codd’s patent bottles with a glass ball in the neck (one of which, found in our garden, stands proudly behind the sink). However when I researched a link through Google I found that this story is rather doubtful.]
A number of really enjoyable clues here – “hock” was lovely, “annexing” witty, and “recess” also smoothly done – luckily “cess” came back to me from previous puzzles. Also enjoyed “codswallop” and “evening standard” which always puts me in mind of the Morecombe and Wise sketch “Morny Stannit”.
I had never heard the term “like gangbusters” and did not think it particularly well clued for something obscure. Are we to know the perfect form of many irregular verbs in a variety of European languages from now on? “airlifting” didn’t work for me either – “air” from “hair” is too much in the clue, and I am not sure the modern denizens of Hackney drop their aitches, or even litter these days. ‘Ackney maybe?
A couple of gripes, but an awful lot to enjoy here so many thanks Picaroon, and Andrew for the blog.
A slow though steady solve for me, taxing the brain cells a little (only 3 in first run through); all fairly clued however. Cess was a TILT. INDENTURES was my favourite, but I did also enjoy hock, annexing and split off. The latter only came to me with the ‘f’ crosser – I was trying to work with fag. Spliffs bring to mind joints rather than cigarettes (ie tobacco) for me. Thanks to Picaroon and Andrew.
Thanks both. I think I first heard ‘gangbusters’ on a John Harvey Jones programme in the seventies or eighties, so it’s been around for a while.
A good challenge for me, needed this august place for help with 2d, even with all the crossers. Not sure If I’d have ever got there having never heard that expression used in that sense.
Surprised no-one else has mentioned RETIRE for 10a which seems to parse perfectly acceptably and had me lost with the affected downs for some time.
Thanks Picaroon and Andrew
It is a good day in Crosswordland today
Thanks to Picaroon for the crossword and Andrew for the blog
My favourites were 4d, 21d, 6d.
New for me were cess, agaric and like gangbusters (loi).
I could not parse the ‘stand nearly upright’ bit of 19a it is obvious now.
Thanks Picaroon and Andrew.
Must be US cultural colonisation, but ‘going gangbusters’ for, eg, a new production doing very well, is familiar in Oz, though maybe only if one is d’un certain age.
Thanks to setter and blogger. Did no one else struggle with records=CDs? I’ve got records and tapes and CDs in my recordings collection. If I said record collection I’d be referring just to the vinyl.
Thanks to Picaroon and Andrew. Hey ho a DNF for me courtesy of like gangbusters. Most of this unpacked quite readily until 2d. I spent half an hour staring at it before giving up. Having seen the answer I think if I had looked at a week I still would not have got it, because I have never heard the expression before. Nevertheless still an enjoyable challenge with a couple of new words (all been mentioned) and I did like split off, indentures and gift shop. Thanks again to Picaroon and Andrew.
Doofs @17 I had retire too, though I was never certain of it. I also tried rebate first which kind of works if you make some words do double duty.
“Like gangbusters” was a bit obscure for my taste especially with wordplay that felt a bit strained to me.
I didn’t parse agaric, though I did discover something called algaric which is another fungus (so not a plant) and not smelly.
Lots to like here, including 8a, 11a, and 6d. I appreciated the inventive cluing in 1d, where the wordplay requires reading the answer as SPREA DONE SWINGS. LIKE GANGBUSTERS is much better known over here, but not knowing any French, I couldn’t parse it before coming here. Requiring solvers to know ‘bu’ = ‘drunk’ seems borderline unfair.
I’m with JinA@5 in disliking clues that equate any of hundreds of female names with ‘girl,’ and ‘Max’ for ‘boy’ in yesterday’s puzzle bothered me. EDNA wasn’t so bad because ‘characters in’ was a clear hidden word indicator.
Quibbles aside, it was a pleasant way to spend a couple of hours. Thanks to Picaroon and Andrew.
I understand the concerns raised about male and female names, but I’m wondering how many of each are actually used in practice over time. For the most part, these names are selected because they are made up of a particularly convenient collection of letters, so some are just more useful than others. So as a solving aid, rather than mentally enumerating all that you can think of, try just thinking of those that you remember seeing in former puzzles.
Agree that the left side was harder than the right, but for the most part I found this easier than some Picaroons, with three of the four long ones going in quite early. LIKE GANGBUSTERS needed to be teased out from wordplay and crossers – not an expression I have ever come across, so that was last in. Another fine crossword.
Thanks to Picaroon and Andrew
Speaking of memory, I don’t remember a time when there was quite so much grumbling about foreign (including American) words and phrases. Ironic that this is a day when BREXIT made an appearance in the grid.
Thanks to Picaroon and Andrew. Like DaveNCarolina [I’m located in Chapel Hill] I got LIKE GANGBUSTERS from the crossers but not the bu for parsing and needed help with AGARIC, my LOI.
Thank you Picaroon and Andrew
This took me a while, and like others I spent a long time working out 2dn. But an enjoyable tussle.
The reference to Hackney in 13ac made me smile. My sister lives there (well, in nearby Dalston) and the accents there nowadays are distinctly posher. The letter most likely to be dropped is a “t” not an “h”.
Eric @ 21 – the BBC Radio 3 review programme is called “Record Review”, having previously been called “CD Review”, on the grounds that the recordings are in a range of formats. The original title was “Record Review” meaning vinyl. So I think the setter is fair.
I don’t mind names in clues. I thought the convention was that if the clue references boy or girl, the name is a shortened one, like Max yesterday.
I did know LIKE GANGBUSTERS but I didn’t bother to parse it but,seeing how it works I don’t think I’d have been able to. RECESS was a bung because I didn’t know CESS. The rest of this was pretty straightforward and extremely enjoyable. ASSUMPTION was FOI and I didn’t know there was an error in the clue – it worked perfectly for me though. I liked BREXIT SECRETARY and INDENTURES.
Thanks Picaroon.
Strange, but I found the right side somewhat tougher. DNG 2d, never knew the expression and neither did my missing letter solver! My schoolboy French never went to drunkenness.
Of late many younger people have started referring to CDs as records, not sure why, but usage is what creeps into a language.
Liked hock and fawn. Generally an enjoyable crossword. Thanks setter and bloggers.
[Marienkaefer you were an alternative in one of the questions on BBC1’s Impossible, today]
Maybe not as impeccable as usual from Picaroon but still a superb puzzle for me. My favourites have been mentioned along with my quiblets (although ASSUMPTION didn’t trouble me at all) and I want to highlight Picaroon’s cleverness in making things look like anagrams when they’re not – 15a and 1d being the examples here. Excellent stuff – thanks Picaroon and Andrew.
Roberto @ 31: there’s no implication of drunkenness in BU. It’s the past participle of BOIRE, so it’s ‘drunk’ in the sense of ‘they had drunk a pot of coffee’.
Andrew, you are not the only one to waste time chasing an anagram of SPEAR THROWN OVER for 1d – as I suspect we were meant to.
Haven’t seen cess=tax in a while.
Belated thanks to setter,solver and DaveNCarolina for sharing his solution time, which made mine a bit more respectable.
I m not a bot but I am in a hospital bed and maybe woozier than I realise .so pls forget it Robin Harland
Marienk I don’t understand the defence of records=CDs. The Radio 3 programme name is bizarre. My dictionary states that a record is a vinyl disc. I have a friend who runs a second hand record shop: go in there and ask for a CD….but only if you are brave!
Andrew – I’m sorry I didn’t read your blog thoroughly before posting otherwise I’d have acknowledged your comment about the misleading anagram fodder in 1d.
Bizarre that some people on here moan about words they should know such as “bu”.(Did they not go to school?)
However they think the lazy setting by Pasquale of super esoteric words is fine!
Re “records” = “cds” which was fine for me the OED has
“b. A piece or collection of music issued on record, cassette, CD, etc.”
A slow solve but got there in the end. Like many others, I hesitated for a long time before writing in ASSUMPTION (my wife and I are still pen-and-paper solvers) because of the inaccurate definition – surely Picaroon knows it’s not in the Bible? Never heard of CESS as a tax (only as a mild Irish curse, “bad cess to you”). And pleased with myself for getting LIKE GANGBUSTERS, which I too had never heard of, after staring at the lower part with all the crossers for a long time and finding GANGBUSTERS as the only word that seemed to fit (confirmed via Google and Urban Dictionary). Though I still couldn’t parse it completely, taking GANGS as crooks and wondering if BUSTER/French drunk was a reference to some old Buster Keaton film.
Enjoyed 14d, 3d (no quibbles about CDs), 6d, 15a and 19a. Thanks Picaroon and Andrew.
I assumed Loonapick’s mention of an inaccurate definition in preamble would refer to SPLIFF rather than ASSUMPTION, the latter being a quibble (and not of great concern to me personally) but the former being an out and out error – and a jarring one to boot. A spliff is no more a cigarette (nor a cigarette a spliff) than a cup of tea is a cup of water. Unusually inaccurate(/lazy?) clueing in my opinion. Most surprised that people here were more concerned by 18ac (in spite of the huge number of paintings so entitled thus justifying any confusion in the mind of setter or solver) than by the definite error in 8ac (where I’ve never met any confusion in meaning).
Disappointing, as I can recall no more blatant an error (of definition) in a broad sheet cryptic. Yet only two of our number questioned it! Strange….perhaps fifteensquared is frequented by less erudite, or more conservative/sheltered visitors than I’d assumed!
I thought GIFT SHOP rather nice.
Many thanks, both and all.
William F P @42
According to my references, there is nothing wrong with Picaroon using ‘cigarette’ to give SPLIFF. Under ‘spliff’ they have:
Chambers: a marijuana cigarette
Collins: a cannabis cigarette
ODE: a cannabis cigarette
Well Gaufrid – you would seem to be correct. Though I might comment when I disagree with others’ quibbles, I rarely, if ever, find fault with setters’ definitions. This struck me, forcibly, as incorrect but I did take the trouble to first check my Chambers definition of “cigarette” which is:
“finely cut TOBACCO rolled in thin paper”
This is as far as I checked and it confirmed my view but, now I’ve seen the other definitions you cite, they seem to contradict this. I concede that sweet tea, for example, is still tea. So you are right and I am wrong. However, were I to ask the first thousand people on the street who actually knew what a ‘spliff’ was whether they’d call it a ‘cigarette’ I doubt if even one of them would! Whereas everyone would agree that sweet(ened) tea can be described as ‘tea’. I cannot gainsay your argument (you present a logically sound case) but I remain firm in my view, being that a spliff is a joint, reefer, doobie, duchie, blunt etc…… but (dictionaries apart) not a cigarette!
….and I’m more than happy to raise my hands to their loftiest in noticing one mistake for which I’ve no explanation; I wrongly named Loonapick for Andrew to whom my thanks (and apologies, to both) are due.