It is the Eye’s 1,500th issue – nearly 6 decades of campaigning and satirical journalism making some little headway against the forces of fake news which any review of recent history shows it has been around as long as there have been media moguls to push it.
But we do not have a special crossword, but that’s just as well – I for one need more time to tackle the fiendish Private Eye history quiz by Adam McQueen within the issue – there’s still time to get your entry in for that!
So it was a gentle canter through a typically scatological and Trumpian set of clues.
I was on the verge of a first pass clearance till snookered by 4 in the bottom left corner, mainly due to not getting 18d without a couple of crossers – although in retrospect that was not a particularly hard clue. And even the last one in, 23a Dough, was clear enough when all crossing letters in place.
Still, an enjoyable half hour or so.
| Across | ||
|---|---|---|
| 1 | DAPHNE | Maybe Sandi Toksvig takes local name (6) PH (local, Public House) inside DANE. Sandi is famously Danish so this was a write-in for me and “First one in” |
| 4 | FAKE NEWS | Trump-like retort: “Forsaken, we cracked – no alternative!” (4,4) (FORSAKEN WE – OR )* AInd: cracked |
| 10 | CREAM | Ejaculate astronomically fast – many sheets needed (5) C (speed of light) REAM (many sheets). Initially considered Comet … |
| 11 | CHIMING IN | Intervening, agreeably, to smear him with icing, ending in colon (7,2) HIM inside (ICING)* AInd: Smear[ed], [colo]N |
| 12 | DESPERADO | Sad, sad peer’s in clutches of party thug (9) (SAD PEER)* AInd: sad, inside DO (party) |
| 13 | TRADE | Dare to differ after populist’s final exchange (5) [populis]T (DARE)* AInd: to differ |
| 14/7 | LITTLE ENGLANDER | Presumably a Brexiter‘s entangled, with ’tiller’ needing replacement? (6,9) (TILLER ENTANGLED)* AInd: needing replacement. Went down a route trying to anagram “A Brexiter + tiller” to no avail |
| 19 | CHANNEL | Ditch BBC1? (7) Double Definition |
| 21 | CASTRO | Military chief recruits crooked rats for dictator (6) CO (Commanding Officer) around (recruits) (RATS)* AInd: crooked |
| 23 | DOUGH | Democrat should take time off to make money (5) D[emocrat] OUGH[t] (should, with T for Time off) Last one in. |
| 25 | STRUCK OIL | Trump, no politician, in ‘slicko’ operation, got rich (6,3) TRU[mp] inside (SLICKO)* AInd: operation. |
| 27 | MEDIA BIAS | Aimed to change bent Farage’s perceived disadvantage? (5,4) (AIMED)* AInd: to change, BIAS (bent) |
| 28 | ALIGN | Insult leaderless ally (5) [m]ALIGN |
| 29 | CHEATING | Screwing is about getting warm (8) C (about) HEATING (getting warm) |
| 30 | TRANNY | LGBT representative‘s old radio (6) Double Definition |
| Down | ||
| 1 | DECADE | “Long period,” shipboard assistant said (6) Homophone “Deck Aide” |
| 2/16 | PRESS FREEDOM | Smooth liberal party with moderate leader, which Trump would like to curb? (5,7) PRESS (smooth) FREE (liberal) DO (party) M[oderate] |
| 3 | NUMBER TEN | Boris’s new situation, as an even less sensitive figure? (6,3) NUMBER (even less sensitive) TEN (figure) |
| 5 | A BIT OFF | Rather naff posh type is after one ‘swinging both ways’ (1,3,3) TOFF (posh type) after A BI (one swinging both ways) |
| 6 | EVICT | One’s back before court, cast out (5) I’VE< CT |
| 8 | SUN-BEAMS | They pierce the gloom of tabloid bars (3-5) SUN (tabloid) BEAMS (bars) |
| 9 | SCRAPE | Embarrassing predicament of taking shit in the Home Counties? (6) CRAP inside SE (South East, Home Counties) |
| 15 | IN A MUDDLE | Midlands almost negotiated with EU – chaotic! (2,1,6) (MIDLAND[s] EU)* AInd: negotiated |
| 17 | EASY CHAIR | Not taxing presiding officer’s furniture (4,5) EASY (not taxing) CHAIR (presiding officer) |
| 18 | ACADEMIC | Don‘s a bastard over brow-beaten mice? (8) A CAD (a bastard) (MICE)* AInd: brow-beaten |
| 20 | LESBIAN | Devious Blaine’s not a straight person (7) (BLAINES)* AInd: devious |
| 21 | CARESS | Tend to have the Nazi thugs touch (6) CARE (tend) SS (the Nazi thugs) |
| 22 | SLINKY | Tight broadcaster holding nothing back (6) NIL< inside SKY (broadcaster) |
| 24 | HEART | Media mogul ditches Sun for another organ (5) HEAR[s]T (Ref. Media Mogul Randolph Hearst) |
| 26 | ONION | Head? It might make you cry (5) Double Definition |
I mentioned to my 19 year old son that I was looking for a joke to end my blog and he told me the funniest thing he’d heard this week was about Chrysippus of Soli, an ancient Greek thought to be the earliest recorded case of someone dying of laughter – in this case at his own joke.
He was watching a donkey eat some figs and cried out:
“Now give the donkey a drink of pure wine to wash down the figs”,
whereupon he died in a fit of laughter.
I guess it was the way he told it.
(It is generally supposed he’d had a fair amount of that wine himself.)
This is not the first time that Sandi’s been seen around that pub:
http://www.fifteensquared.net/2011/08/03/cyclops-448/
Got a bit confused by 3d. Surely No.10 isn’t (yet) “Boris’s new situation”? I first assumed there must have been a turnaround in the polls I hadn’t heard about, relegating Boris to Number Two in the running. Should have realised Cyclops would have used a lavatorial ref for that answer I suppose.
Didn’t realize ‘slinky’ meant ‘tight’ but having built it from wordplay, realized I wasn’t at all sure what it meant at all.
“Negotiated” and “brow-beaten” seem like slightly iffy anagram indicators but obviously not impenetrable, as I got the answers.
Feel like I am finally getting somewhere with this one! Thanks to both beermagnet and cyclops.
Could someone explain the parsing on 6d?
One’s back before court, cast out (5)
Why does One’s translate to I’VE? Is it the royal one?
Thanks beermagnet
Re 3D, I also struggled with parsing this one as I had ‘number’ with the different meaning firmly lodged in my mind i.e with pronouncing the B. It was only when I saw your explanation that the penny finally dropped nice clueing Cyclops.
Elwood @3 I also thought about 6d. I think ‘One’s’ is a contraction of ‘one has’. For example one’s got a headache. As you say One in the sense used by Brenda from time to time in referring to ‘oneself’.
Not 100% on this. What do others think?
You got it Franko: One’s = one has = I have = I’ve
On holiday but still finished and entered. Might as well not have…blew it on two…….got ‘depend’ for ‘Daphne’….couldn’t parse but saw ‘pen’ as a name and was waiting for this to parse the rest. Got ‘grundy’ for ‘tranny’…….found that some guy called Grundy was biggish in the LGBT and did a loop from Grundig to Grundy for the radio.
Winsor, are you sure that was “some guy called Grundy” and not just (paradoxically, perhaps) a Grundy?
Maybe John Grundy?
I see that there are two readers’ letters in Eye 1501 complaining that the word TRANNY is considered to be offensive in LGBT circles. I see also (from a quick internet search) that some people are more offended than others:
http://www.vice.com/en_us/article/5gk5qk/is-tranny-a-derogatory-term
That’s the one! I googled LGBT and Grundy and up he came.
John E@9
In your link, the phrase “leading to the official recognition of a third sex” reminds me that in the late seventies when I was living in Cairo, Close Encounters Of The Third Kind came to town and showed to full houses for about a week, then zilch. The reason was that SciFi is not popular there but the word gens which translates ‘kind’ is also the word for ‘sex’, so in Arabic the title could also be understood as Close Encounters with the Third Sex.