Another fun puzzle to start the day – we always know that we will have some great wordplay in an Eccles puzzle.
Eccles seems to be have been given a regular Wednesday slot and we are pleased that it seems to coincide with our blogging schedule.
Our last two in were 18d and 25ac. We couldn’t decide on AUSPICIOUS or SUSPICIOUS at first and it wasn’t until we saw the answer hidden in the clue for 18d that we worked out the correct parsing for the across clue. What fooled us was the ‘Anderson at first’ which gave us A but why not ‘Stokes at first’ too for S? The fact that Stokes and Anderson are two England cricketers was a great misdirection.
MARNER S (George Eliot’s weaver as in Silas Marner, both as they might be called in a posh school register) around or ‘protecting’ I (international)
Double definition
A reversal (‘over’) of GUT (spare tyre)
A inside or ‘boring’ an anagram of PRESIDENT – anagrind is ‘awfully’
BUTTERcUP (flower) without C (first letter or ‘a bit’ of ‘colour’)
O (love) RANGE (selection)
pecuLIAR (weird) missing the first 4 letters or ‘only half’
C (caught) LOCKER (person with key) around or ‘bounding’ TO W (work). Joyce solved this and Bert remembered that the tower which holds Big Ben is called the Elizabeth Tower or Clock Tower. However, we were both puzzled about the abbreviation for work until we checked it in our old (1979) paper copy of Collins dictionary which has W = Physics. work.
CO (commanding officer) RATION (helping) around or ‘guarding’ ON (working)
A D (date) with EG (for one) in front or ‘going ahead’
O I C sounds like (‘announced’) ‘Oh I see’ after or ‘chasing’ HER (that woman)
MEME (viral video) around or containing’ bORIS (PM) without the first letter or ‘scratching head’. There are some of though who dislike the Prime Minister, Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson being referred to without his surname! However, the image created by Eccles’ wordplay is such that we will let him off this time.
aUSPICIOUS (promising) with S (stokes) replacing A – the first letter of Anderson. I am sure you all are aware that Stokes is the CGS unit of kinematic viscosity named after the British physicist Sir G Stokes – Joyce didn’t, so she wondered why the clue only mentioned ‘Anderson at first’. Knowing that Stokes was a member of the England squad who won the Cricket World Cup this year, she guessed that Anderson was also a member of the England cricket team and thought the clue was referring to these two.
FAT (overweight) with F (female) moving to the right
YON (those) after or ‘following’ oRwElL (alternate letters only or ‘regularly’)
An anagram of I TWERK and AN – anagrind is ‘eccentric’
An anagram of CLAIM TO BE – anagrind is ‘confused’
coTTAGER (farm labourer) reversed or ‘upset’ missing or ‘lacking’ CO (company) over A
NE (North East or ‘Tyne and Wear region’) PHEW (that’s a relief)
A play on the fact that Ziggy Stardust, the character created by Davis Bowie had red hair in a hairstyle called a ‘mullet’
FLOCK (gather) around ET (first and last letters or ‘extremes’ of ‘elegant’)
cOITAL (relating to sexual intercourse) with G (good) replacing ‘c’ (Catholic) + ONE (single)
EU GENERation (‘manufacturing’) missing half the letters or ‘cut by 50%’, reversed or ‘in recession’. This was a bit of a puzzle at first. We solved it from the wordplay and guessed RENEGE from the definition but this was only 6 letters. After checking Chambers we found the two accepted spellings.
An anagram of LOUSY TRIO – anagrind is ‘performing’
C (Charlie as used in the phonetic alphabet) LOSE (miss) D (Germany) OWN (have)
RED sETTER (dog) with L (left) replacing ‘s’ (son)
Hidden or ‘trousered’ and reversed or ‘climbing’ in amputEE’S REVOlutionary
cAUTION without or ‘dropping’ C (conservative)
GRIM (terrible) ACE (serve as in tennis)
COS (lettuce) SET (plant)
Thanks for the blog, B and – it does seem that you have struck lucky in the rota!
I got off to a good start at 1ac, with the use of one of my favourite books at school. As you say, lots of fun and great wordplay here. I loved the substitution device in 25ac [I was with Joyce here – I thought it was clever but didn’t realise just how clever] and 6 [hilarious] and 16dn and the juggling of letters in 26ac and 19dn [not quite right in the blog – the C drops down]. I also liked the cleverly hidden 18dn and the construction of 15dn.
The surfaces were all great, too: I particularly liked the pictures conjured up in 28ac and 13dn.
Many thanks, Eccles – I loved it!
Great fun, thank you Eccles – my particular favourites were 12a, 14a, 23a and 4d
Thanks also to B&J
Chapeau for RED MULLET!
I really enjoyed this with lots of humour and great surfaces throughout.
Choosing a favourite from such a good selection is not easy but I’ll settle for 4d.
Many thanks to Eccles and also to B&J, particularly for explaining how the first five letters of RENEGUE were derived.
Smashing puzzle from Eccles. Again.
thanks all round
Until I got 6D I thought the second row was going to be all Es, so a theme perhaps, but no. Very good, thanks all.
All neatly tied up in a couple of passes, although we too were held up slightly by RENEGUE and had to check the alternative spelling.
Plenty to enjoy, particularly GO IT ALONE and RED MULLET. A mullet, incidentally, is defined in Chambers as a hairstyle that is short at the front, long at the back, and ridiculous all round.
Thanks, Eccles and B&J.
Hah! So it does. Well done Chambers.
Greetings from Myanmar, where it is 5 am and i am about to go on a sunrise hot air balloon trip. Cheers to b&j and all who commented.
Only just got round to this but twas great. 6d tee hee.