One of those Eye puzzles that I found difficult to finish despite getting most of it early on.
In my notes I marked 16 as solved on first reading.
1d was a lovely start to the puzzle (after failing to cold solve the first couple of across clues) a classic Cyclops clue and my favourite in this puzzle.
With so many crossing letters many other clues soon fell but I was left with a bunch in the bottom left corner. It took a while to make any headway with them.
In retrospect I cannot see why these clues misled me so much. For instance the last one in, 21d SCARED is very straightforward when you see the answer.
So no speed prize in sight this time.
| Across | ||
|---|---|---|
| 1/10 | TABLOID INTRUSION | Crooked loan distribution claimed to be in the public interest? (7,9) (LOAN DISTRIBUTION)* AInd: crooked |
| 5 | HOTHEAD | Madcap uses piping with oral sex (7) HOT (piping) HEAD (oral sex) |
| 9/28 | STIFF DRINK | Neat whisky? Difficult by the sea (5,5) STIFF (difficult) DRINK (the sea) |
| 11 | INLAND SEA | Daniel’s troubled with an awfully large watery body (6,3) (DANIEL’S + AN)* AInd: troubled |
| 12/24 | BLOOD MONEY | Gore gets ready for shameful payment (5,5) BLOOD (Gore) MONEY (ready) Not Al Gore this time |
| 13 | LARKIN | Poet pissing about, giving away a lot of money (6) LARKIN[g] Larking from pissing about, G = Grand , a lot of money. |
| 15 | ST LUCIA | Member of West Indies cult is buggered by one (2,5) (CULT IS)* AInd: buggered, then A (one) |
| 19 | CHEERED | Iconic Leftie, before going on date, given encouragement (7) CHE (Iconic leftie) ERE (before) D[ate] |
| 20 | TWELVE | Latin vocalist’s entrance in schmaltzy number (6) L[atin] V[ocalist] inside TWEE (schmaltzy) – This time number is not as in song, or anaesthetic – this time it really is as in arithmetic |
| 23/3 | CHARM OFFENSIVE | Brown-noser’s strategy: Corbyn’s chief impairment – insulting (5,9) CHARM (Corbyn’s chief impairment) OFFENSIVE (insulting). The question is do you need to be charming if you’re simply honest? |
| 25 | UTTERANCE | Entire political party is against Pence’s final statement (9) UTTER (entire) ANC (political party) [penc]E |
| 27 | RESENTFUL | Bitter makes you relaxed, welcoming of vacuous election! (9) RESTFUL (makes you relaxed) around E[lectio]N |
| 29 | DELAYED | Unprofessional in action, just like the Brexit process (7) LAY (unprofessional) in DEED (action) |
| 30 | DRY-EYED | On the wagon, looked far from weepy (3-4) DRY (on the wagon) EYED (looked) |
| Down | ||
| 1 | TESTICLE | Jerk cuts into tempered steel nut? (8) TIC (jerk) inside (STEEL)* AInd: tempered. First one in. |
| 2 | BRILL | Boris pissed, so goes off with large double – “Fab!” (5) (BORIS – SO)* AInd: pissed, then LL (L[arge] double) |
| 4 | DRIEST | Tried desperately to squeeze end of penis? Most uninteresting (6) (TRIED)* AInd: desperately, around [peni]S |
| 5 | HOT PANTS | Lecherous bursts of breath? That’s sixties attire for you (3,5) HOT (lecherous) PANTS (bursts of breathe) |
| 6 | THUMB | Maybe Tom‘s in fact humbled (5) Ref. Tom Thumb. Hidden inside facT HUMBled |
| 7 | EDITORIAL | Groomed real idiot for a leader (9) (REAL IDIOT)* AInd: groomed |
| 8 | DENUDE | Pretend cowboy presses enrolled nurse to strip (6) EN (E[nrolled] N[urse]) inside DUDE (pretend cowboy) |
| 14 | REHEARSAL | Maybe Sarah Palin’s focus, er, is to store energy for a trial run (9) (SARAH [pa]L[in] + ER + E[nergy])* AInd: maybe |
| 16 | UNWORLDLY | Dolly run over outside entrance to Wetherspoon’s (no sophistication) (9) (DOLLY RUN)* AInd: over, around (outside) W[etherspoons] |
| 17 | REBUFFED | Balls underneath, about to touch bare skin – given the brush-off (8) ED (Balls, ref. Ed Balls the ex-politician), after (underneath) RE (about) BUFF (bare skin) |
| 18 | BEDECKED | Get knocked to the floor and covered with bloomers? (8) Double definition |
| 21 | SCARED | Given a bad mark, right away pissing your pants? (6) SCARRED -R[ight]. Last one in. |
| 22 | STYLED | Pen was a leader? Should be tagged (6) STY (pen) LED (was a leader) |
| 26 | NOISY | Blasting number one, Sally is gutted (5) NO I S[all]Y |
Why don’t people talk about slow ghosts?
Because they’re the last taboo.
23: I don’t think CHARM means Corbyn’s chief impairment. I think it is C: Corbyn’s chief + HARM: impairment
Thank you Mike that makes much more sense, and means the clue is more of a joke than a judgement
I got my knickers in a twist on this one and it took me four days to work out 4D as direst and not direst (which also works, I feel) and so finish off 10A. But isn’t it wonderful when the penny finally drops!!!!
Of course, I meant ‘driest’!!!!
In 11ac, it looks like the (unexplained) “awfully” is indicating an anagram of “an” to go with the troubled Daniel’s. Although ‘an’ appears inside the answer, there’s no containment indicator so it seems fair enough to represent it as a pair of scramblings.
Delighted to learn ‘real idiot’ is an anagram of ‘editorial’ (7dn).
16dn I’m not sure why “over” should indicate an anagram.
In 17d, I thought at first it was ‘pell’ for “skin”, giving REPELLED, which fitted the def, but left “bare” unexplained.
In 21d, I’d have been happier with ‘shitting your pants’, as “pissing your pants” to me means laughing extremely heartily.
Anyway, good fun despite the odd query. Certainly a little harder than some.
Thanks to beermagnet and Cyclops
In 11a I read “awfully” as part of the def i.e. as “very” – (that’s awfully kind of you).
Cyclops in good form.
@Dansar, yes, possibly he just needed a word starting with a vowel so he could use ‘an’ as the indefinite article. In that case, as you suggest, ‘awfully’ becomes part of the definition — which does probably need an intensifier, given the magnitude of a “sea”. So “Daniel’s” and “an” are troubled one ‘with’ the other, as in Beermagnet’s parsing.
Thanks beermagnet. I also enjoyed 1d as well as 20a (which I thought was really neat).
Winsor @3 If it’s any consolation, I made the same ´journey’ with 4d. I had a a similar feeling of the solve being all the sweeter when it arrived.
Tony @5 describing the extent of both fear and laughter ´goes through’ a scale of excreta from liquid to solid
@Franko, fascinated by the apparent suggestion that there may be human excreta intermediate to the two I’m familiar with 🙂
Seriously though, for me there’s “I pissed myself” (I laughed a lot) and “I shit/shat myself” (I experienced extreme fear). Neither, happily, has ever literally been realised.
For my own benefit as much as for anyone else’s, a reminder that the winner for #666 will be selected at an undefined time on TUESDAY 17th. I’m switching off all live media channels for the night at 10 o’clock and hope to get mine done then.
Isn’t it fortunate that our bodies largely run themselves and remember their settings automatically? No “Gosh, this is unbearably funny. Should I be pissing or shitting?” problems; even if we can’t remember.
Thanks for the tip-off, @lemming. Sent mine in already.
Mind you don’t have a ‘little accident’ looking at this:
http://johnfinnemore.blogspot.com/2019/12/24-things-or-not-but-maybe-thing-13.html
According to the website, the closing date for Cyclops 666 is December 20. I am still waiting for my copy of the latest Eye to arrive in the post.
I see that this issue is for a short period, 13-20 December, and that this happens fairly often before Christmas, depending on how the calendar crumbles that year: eg 12-19 Dec.2014, 11-18 Dec.2015, 15-22 Dec.2017. In each of these cases the puzzle prize date is the Tuesday in the middle of the period and the result appears in the following issue, so I don’t expect this year will be any different. I’ll email the Eye to point out the discrepancy on the web page.
And so it went. I was relieved to find the Christmas issue actually arrived today
@Tony, thanks for the John Finnemore pointer. I listen to his R4 stuff and have been enjoying this exploration.
I try Cyclops every issue from Sydney and find some clues less specific than in the uk dailies; but generally good value!