Guardian Cryptic 28,031 by Imogen

by

The puzzle may be found at https://www.theguardian.com/crosswords/cryptic/28031.

Not too difficult, with some amusing clues, but I do not know what to make of 22D JAMMY. Any suggestions welcome.

ACROSS
1 SUBATOMIC Very tiny boat with a man in charge (9)
A charade of SUB (‘boat’) plus ‘a’ plus TOM (‘man’) plus I/C (‘in charge’).
6 BADE Ordered Powell to stop short (4)
A subtraction: BADE[n] (Robert Baden-‘Powell’, founder of the Boy Scout Movement) minus the last letter (‘to stop short’).
8 BOB MINOR Haircut on kid is one way to ring the changes (3,5)
A charade of BOB (‘haircut’) plus MINOR (‘kid’).
9 RHEIMS City boundaries gas penetrates (6)
An envelope (‘penetrates’) of HE (chemical symbol, helium, ‘gas’) in RIMS (‘boundaries’).
10 FRISKY Lively end to working week, heaven (6)
A charade of FRI (day, ‘end to working week’) plus SKY (‘heaven’).
11 BOARDING Getting on at this school? (8)
Double definition.
12 CREDIT Believe journalist struck through review (6)
An envelope (‘through’ – or ‘struck through’, reflecting the editor’s function) of ED (‘journalist’; ‘struck’ could indicate the abbreviation) in CRIT (‘review’).
15 REDBRICK Right-wing, unreliable person not found at such a university? (8)
RED BRICK as a left-wing reliable person.
16 STUDENTS Dwarfs stay extremely desirable, they learn (8)
An envelope (‘stay’) of DE (‘extremely DesirablE‘) in STUNTS (‘dwarfs’).
19 RACING The turf green for this British activity (6)
The definition I have picked refers to horse racing, but British racing green was formerly the colour of motor racing.
21 DANNY BOY Ballad from north anybody plays (5,3)
An anagram (‘plays’) of N (‘north’) plus ‘anybody’.
22 JOULES Work units heard of in Holland (6)
Sounds like (‘heard of’) JOOLS (‘Holland’, musician and TV personality).
24 STRATA A pastry’s turned into layers (6)
A reversal (‘turned into’) of A TART’S (‘a pastry’s’).
25 HOME PAGE Google‘s house servant (4,4)
A charade of HOME (‘house’) plus PAGE (‘servant’). While Google would be very happy if you made it your home page, I bridle at the definition.
26 ARAK Strong drink some fear a killer (4)
A hidden answer (‘some’) in ‘feAR A Killer’, for the aniseed-flavoured spirit.
27 RUNNYMEDE Place for charter party not set: Imogen finally picked venue (9)
A charade of RUNNY (‘not set’) plus ME (‘Imogen’) plus DE (‘finally pickeD venuE‘). Magna Carta was agreed to at Runnymede.
DOWN
1 SPOOR Parking so men can get round track (5)
An envelope (‘can get round’) of P (‘parking’) in ‘so’ plus OR (Other Ranks, ‘men’).
2 BEMUSED Second-hand medal going first at a loss (7)
A charade of BEM (British Empire ‘Medal’) plus USED (‘second-hand’).
3 TINNY Beer down under is thin and metallic (5)
Double definition.
4 MARS BAR Where astronaut may one day get wine and chocolate? (4,3)
Double definition, the first perhaps fanciful.
5 CORIANDER Carried on to make flavouring (9)
An anagram (‘to make’) of ‘carried on’.
6 BLENDER Mixer (large) swallowed in drinking bout (7)
An envelope (‘swallowed in’) of L (‘large’) in BENDER (‘drinking bout’).
7 DOMINICAN Religious lecturer securing taxi to drop book off (9)
An envelope (‘securing’) of MINICA[b] (‘taxi’) minus the B (‘to drop book’) in DON (‘lecturer’, when not doing research). ‘Religious’ as a noun, a person in monastic orders.
13 RETRACTOR Perform in terror, twanging muscle (9)
An envelope (‘in’) of ACT (‘perform’) in RETROR, an anagram (the curious ‘twanging’) of ‘terror’.
14 TONY BLAIR In US, smart retreat by black political leader (4,5)
A charade of TONY (‘in US, smart’) plus B (‘black) plus LAIR (‘retreat’).
17 DON’T ASK Research for one that is not worth explaining (4,3)
DON TASK (‘research for one’).
18 SAY WHEN He yawns uncontrollably: should I stop? (3,4)
An anagram (‘uncontrollably’) of ‘he yawns’.
20 CRUMPLE Conservative barrister, not old, is to screw up (7)
A charade of C (‘Conservative’) plus RUMP[o]LE (of the Bailey, ‘barrister’ played by Leo McKern in the fondly remembered TV series) minus the O (‘not old’).
22 JAMMY Lucky to get stuck on yacht (5)
Search engines respond to “jammy yacht”, but, apart from a particular yacht called Jammy, do not seem to provide any reason for the association; so the definition is OK, but as for the rest…
23 EAGLE Birdie? Yes and no (5)
An EAGLE is a ‘bird(ie)’, but in golf the former is a score of two under par, while the latter is just one under.

 

image of grid

66 comments on “Guardian Cryptic 28,031 by Imogen”

  2. What a great puzzle after yesterday’s flop. Took me half-an-hour to get a first grid entry, but then it flowed gently, with many mirth-making clues.  My last-one-in was 17D, and that brought a raucous guffaw, having been in that pursuit myself.  I’d never heard of 8A but it was easily derivable.  20D was also memorable.  I could go on ….

  3. My favourites were HOME PAGE, RUNNYMEDE, CRUMPLE, and MARS BAR which made me chuckle 🙂

    I could not parse JAMMY or REDBRICK – the latter is very clever!

    New for me was BOB MINOR.

    Thanks Peter and Imogen.

  4. Can’t help with jammy, Peter, a total que?, but agrrree about home page. A dnf today, bunging in Tom for Bob (tried to remember The Nine Tailors–was Bob in it?–too long ago anyway). Dnk Holland, so joules was a biff/shrug. Taken many a minicab, but dn parse Dominican (ca in dominin, que?). 4d reminded me of the Star Wars bar scene, and 20d of Rumpole’s Wagner joke (… not as bad as he sounds), with which Mrs ginf used to tease my dad, a Wagner freak. So, good fun, thanks Imogen and PeterO.

  5. Thanks PeterO and Imogen.

     

    My heart usually sinks when I see Imogen, but this I found comparatively easy to complete, but not always easy to parse (TONY BLAIR, RACING RUNNYMEDE…).

    What a coincidence with 26ac (it surely wasn’t intentional was it?): I put in RAKI, which is well hidden there, too, but  was quickly disabused of this by the Reveal button –  I must stop using that.

    I didn’t like the Google one either.

  7. Btw arak is not aniseed flavoured. It is a local hooch from SE Asia made from coconut. It often contains methanol and is respinsible for 100s of deaths every year

  8. I’m another who was tripped up by RAKI, which works as well as ARAK (except for the crossers, of course). Doing a ‘check all’ when I’m more or less halfway done sometimes keeps me from chasing up a lot of blind alleys, but then gives me a dnf that I might have avoided … sigh.

    Thanks anyway to Imogen, and to PeterO for the parsing of DON’T ASK.

  10. Very cool puzzle. I sometimes wonder if they change French place names to fit puzzles.

    Its Reims Lyon and Marseille! Sacre bleu!

    Thanks Imogen and Pierre

  11. [Nitsuj@7, Arak in the Levant is most certainly anise-flavoured.  Other liquors called Arak or Arrack are also found throughout South and South East Asia and are made a from a variety of ingredients, mostly rice in Indonesia and coconut in Sri Lanka (the sap from coconut flowers not the nut). Methanol poisoning from moonshine Arak is a problem, but primarily in Indonesia for societal reasons. The term Arak is a general term for alcohol in Bahasa so even Glenfiddich is “arak” here.]

  12. I don’t always get on well with Imogen’s puzzles, but I thought that this one was very good indeed. The clue for ‘crumple’ appealed particularly, but might prove a bit of a poser for some overseas solvers. Likewise the parsing of ‘joules’, though the definition should allow the solution to be deduced readily enough.

    Many thanks to Imogen for a happy start to the day.

  13. Just to add to what Trovatore has posted @1, in case anyone has not come across the expression, in British slang, someone who is lucky, either on a particular occasion or persistently, is often referred to as ‘jammy’. The comment frequently takes the form of ‘he’s a jammy b*gger.’

  14. I too couldn’t parse 22D down, and wondered if the clue should have read “to get stuck endlessly on yacht.” However, Trovatore @1 may have the right of it.

  15. I’m surprised to read so much praise for this – I thought it quite a dodgy puzzle in toto. I liked “crumpole of the Bailey” and some of the anagrams but we had an impossible “raki” or “arak” which needed crossers to sort out, “don” appearing twice and I also thought both “in Holland” made no sense, nor Powell, given the name is Baden-Powell (hyphenated). Both of these clues needed something to indicate either the dodgy removal of the hyphen or a better way to indicate the name other than “in”. I got “racing” but still don’t understand the clue’s construction other than there is a sort of an allusion to racing green. I could not parse “tony blair” at all, so thank you PeterO for that – what in the clue indicates “B” goes in the middle though?

    Overall too many things I felt were solvable but unsatisfactory for my taste.

  16. I have never come across a “Tony” to mean a smart person. Is it standard usage in the US? Similar to a smart Alec ? Or am I on the wrong track entirely and it’s a different usage of “smart”? Thanks, anyway, to setter and blogger.

  19. I’m more in the TheZed camp in finding this less praiseworthy than other contributors – especially for an Imogen puzzle. I seem to remember the last Imogen was also easier than I’d come to expect from him. There were plenty of nice clues in this one, but for me it lacked teeth.
    I’m still at a loss on how to parse the second M in JAMMY as Trovatore@1’s suggestion is plausible it renders the clue very weak. And I’ve the same question as Sagittarius@16 about US Tony. I also initially had RAKI.
    Thanks to Imogen and PeterO for making sense of more than I could.

  20. An easy solve today with some elegant clues.

    I’m still in the dark about “Tony”, however.

    Thanks to Imogen and PeterO.

  22. Thanks Imogen and PeterO

    I was OK with JAMMY, but am also in the dark about TONY. Is it, as Shirl implies, TON-Y?

  24. Thank you Imogen for an enjoyable puzzle and PeterO for a helpful blog.

    The COED gives for tony adj. (tonier, toniest) US colloq. having ‘tone’; stylish, fashionable.

  25. Most enjoyable after yesterday’s meh.

    Wasn’t aware TONY BLAIR was still a political leader.  I thought crossword convention generally required an ‘ex’ or other such indicator of a previous rôle.

    TheZed @15:  Happily, didn’t spot the ARAK/RAKI mistake, as the straightforward RETRACTOR anagram was an early entry.

    Cookie @24:  Thanks for the tony reference – new to me.

    Favourites today included FRISKY and SAY WHEN.

    Many thanks, both, nice week, all.

  26. Overall an enjoyable romp for me although I was fortunate to spot ARAK first. I pulled a face at TWANGING and was less impressed by REDBRICK than some people. BTW, when I first started doing cryptics about 18 months ago, the indirect anagram was quite popular with some of the more “challenging” setters. Did the plug officially get pulled at some point?

  27. This was a pleasant solve. My bell-ringing knowledge doesn’t run to BOB MINOR but the charade provided the necessaries. Nor does my knowledge of global hooch varieties include ARAK — though I had vaguely heard of RAKI, so the latter was a write-in for me. Shame the setter missed it! I thought JAMMY was perfectly acceptable: MY for ‘motor yacht’ is very well established, I believe. I didn’t get the TONY BLAIR clue at all. Even if tony=’smart’ in US English, I agree with TheZed @15 that the clue gives no indication of the mid-placing of the B. And the RACING Green clue was a bit, erm… loose for my taste. The ‘stay’ for the envelope indicator in STUDENTS didn’t quite work for me.

    But there were some nice surfaces (SAY WHEN, REDBRICK, RUNNYMEDE, BOARDING inter alia) and the stretch of GK and vocabulary was just about right for me.

    Thanks to our blogger and to the setter.

  28. bodycheetah @26:  I think so although, as you know, Crosswordland has no King or even Secretariat so there’s no one to turn to for a ruling as such.  However, I believe most setters would consider a derived anagram to be somewhat infra dig and would steer clear.

  29. Chuckled at mars bar, don’t ask and crumple – Rumpole was a favourite of my parents – but like many others could not parse jammy (thanks Trovatore @1), was flummoxed by racing, and dnk tony but assumed it was an americanism. Didn’t think of Larry Page, so Google home page – I think not. So a puzzle of mixed parts but overall enjoyable (esp compared with yesterday’s). Thanks to PeterO and to Imogen.

  30. Copmus @ 10:

    I always assumed Rheims was spelt that way since I first heard of it at school in The Jackdaw of Rheims, which was years before I ever visited France. Funny how the younger you learn something the more it sticks!

  31. It’s wrong to have to possible answers to a clue but arak is a killer while raki is not. Thank you KLColin for you broader definition of arak. The stuff in indonesia, if it doesn’t kill you, often leads to permanent blindness.

  32. Well, I’m almost ashamed to admit that I did know “BOB MINOR” as we had a campanology-related clue not long back that sent me on a fascinating Google Hunt trying to determine the difference between “ring”, “chime” and “peal”.

    I still had to Google “Tony – smart” even after the “explanation” and it turns out that Tony Smart is a stunt actor noted for his work on “Captain America” (among other films), though that seems a tenuous link to “in US”, so I think I’ll go with the other explanations and say it is new to me.

    The intrusive M in “JAMMY” had me puzzling until I read Trovatore’s explanation @1, which seems to make sense.

    “RUNNYMEDE” brought to mind the old chestnut, “Q: where was the Magna Carta signed? A: At the bottom”, along with some other spoof quiz answers (“Q: What would you do with a wombat? A: Play wom with it!”

    Thanks to Imogen and PeterO

  33. Thanks PeterO; I wondered about the connection between jewels and Holland, and I couldn’t get Enoch to appear in 6A, doh! I was another ‘raki’ at the beginning. I usually shudder when I see the name of Imogen, but this time I managed to solve the bottom half first and worked upwards to completion.

    Enjoyable solve; I particularly liked FRISKY, MARS BAR, DOMINICAN and CRUMPLE; thanks Imogen.

     

  34. I’m afraid my mental list of Powells stopped short of Baden Powell (6a) and I didn’t twig Jools Holland (22a), despite having seen him perform live (highly recommended by the way). ‘Bob-minor’ was new to me and I wouldn’t have parsed Runnymede (27a) in a thousand years, so thanks, PeterO. I think ‘my’ for motor yacht  (22d) may date from the days when the assumption was that yachts had sails and so may be a slightly archaic usage, hence its apparent unfamiliarity here. Overall, I found the puzzle not as a fearsome as it first appeared and good fun so thanks Imogen.

  35. Yes, me too, AllyGally.  My dad introduced me to The Ingoldsby Legends and I’d assumed as a child that was how it was spelt until I went there – great cathedral … I’m often sad (now I do it many times a year) that nowadays one dashes through France on autoroutes rather than taking the time to visit cathedrals and stop at little wayside auberges.  Now that we have to say Mumbai and Beijiing, I don’t think we’re obliged to say Rance, are we?  Although Marsales and Lyons (tea shops) have disappeared, it’s still regarded as affected to say Paree in conversation, so I think Reems is still acceptable …

  36. I’ve actually rung Bob Minor many a time so didn’t have a problem with that one.   I thought this on the friendly side for an Imogen (apart from the RAKI/ARAK problem)

    Thanks to Imogen for the crossword and PeterO for the blog

  37. Interesting, the number of people who haven’t heard tony, as in ‘he lives in the tony Trump Hotel.’ I’m American, but it has always sounded like a Britishism to me.

  38. Thank you PeterO for the proper parsing of 15: I was taking the “un” from unreliable and using it separately, like when people used to say “not” separately after a statement to make it negative. Don’t think Imogen would be that outrageous. The methods detailed in The Nine Tailors are Kent Treble Bob Major, Stedman’s Triples, Grandsire Triples. Wonderful for its evocation of the Fens, to say nothing of the detective-story and social history elements. DLS lived at Christchurch, absolutely the kind of place described. My brother pointed out that it does contain one piece of unacknowledged “borrowing” (not to use a less agreeable term), which has always been a disappointment to me, especially in view of one of the themes of Gaudy Night. I still venerate her writing though, 46 years after discovering her.

  40. I enjoyed this mostly and I found it not as challenging as Imogen can be.

    I didn’t know TONY meaning smart (US), or ARAK, but I was pleased to read all about the latter from other commenters.

    I’ve met MY (motor yacht) before, albeit only in a crossword, and JAMMY was my first in.

    ‘Google’ defining HOME PAGE seemed wrong to me.  Picking up on Ilan Caron’s idea, I suppose PAGE HOME where Google co-founder Larry Page lives is getting close – but not close enough!

    Thanks to Imogen and PeterO.

  41. Thanks to Imogen and PeterO.

    MARS BAR brought back memories of a friend taking a bus to a public house named Mahers’. He was joined by a party who asked where he was off to – “I’m going to Mahers’ for a pint”.  He subsequently asked the party what were his holiday plans (obviously a strained conversation) – “We’re thinking of going to Venus this year”.

    Could I have the bill please…….

  43. pserve_p2, #27: the clue [for TONY BLAIR] gives no indication of the mid-placing of the B

    I think it’s fair – “retreat by black”. The LAIR is by (beside) the B. It doesn’t need to tell you in what order.

    Too many things I didn’t know in this one, including tony, bob minor, arak, runnymede (although for some reason I was able to remember the word existed well enough to write it in and then google it, so I must have been exposed to it at some point). HOME PAGE is a great clue but a dodgy definition – it could have been a perfectly good DBE though (“Google’s one house servant” or something). Thanks Imogen and PeterO.

  44. I completed this as if it were four separate puzzles, filling in all the NE corner then SE, SW and NW. Maybe it was the layout of the grid. I have certainly never done that before, I usually look all over the place if I don’t like the look of a clue. Must admit to a DNF because  I went for raki and then was dismayed by the check button. Good puzzle though, thanks to compiler and blogger.

  45. Much that needs to be said has been said already. Thanks to Trovatore @1 for promptly clearing up 22D JAMMY. Like polkaholic @37, tony sounds British to me, although I cannot come up with anything to back that up. I had the R in place when I came to 26A, so I was not bothered by the ambiguity, although raki is more familiar to me.

    TheZed @15 and pserve_p2 @27

    In 14D TONY BLAIR, I think it very reasonable to interpret ‘retreat by black’ as putting the ‘black’ first.

    muffin @22

    I would say more like TONE-Y (Chambers, under TONE, gives that as an alternative spelling – without the hyphen, of course)

    In 13D RETRACTOR, it occurs to me that tweaking, rather than ‘twanging’ would make more sense in the surface and the wordplay. I wonder if that was the original clue.

  46. This was most agreeable. More so than this setter’s usually are. I knew BOB MINOR- from a crossword I’m sure-,nearly fell for RAKI rather than ARAK and liked JAMMY- which was in common use on Merseyside where I grew up.The RAKI that I imbibed in Crete was rough as rats but the Turkish version was much more palatable.
    I liked a lot of this but I ticked RED BRICK and DONT ASK.
    Thanks Imogen.

  47. 22d didn’t faze me as I’ve been saying ‘you jammy bugger!’ for years to someone who wins unfairly or unexpectedly. Don’t remember where I picked it up though.

  48. Re 8, Please help me understand what an African American stuntman has to do with ringing in changes. It’s gone way over my head.

  49. Is this the Imogen who I used to dread in the past? IMO, he has dumbed down his puzzles. Enjoyed this nevertheless. Another RAKI here. My best was BOARDING.

  50. Mystarsngarters @48

    Many churches in England (Britain?) have sets of tuned bells. Unlike in other countries – France, for example – these aren’t used for ringing out tunes. Instead they are rung in complicated mathematical sequences designed to show each bell off to its best. These are called “changes”. There are lots of different ones – BOB MINOR being one of them.

    I can recommend (as others have done) Dorothy Sayers’s The Nine Tailors as being an entertaining murder mystery with bell-ringing as a theme.

  53. I am another whose faith in one’s solving skills was restored today after a more-or-less complete capitulation yesterday. I fall into the dnf camp more often than the “completed” camp, mostly because I am unable to unravel the wordplay and can’t intuit the answer from the definition alone (assuming the definition is obvious). And I frequently solve first and then parse, which seems to me to be perfectly acceptable, and take satisfaction from getting the right answer even when the parsing eludes me or the clue construction is less tight than it might be. All this is to say that I was not in the least bothered by some of points raised by others and enjoyed this puzzle a great deal, especially as a former bell-ringer and a UK national long resident in the US I am acquainted with both Bob and Tony.  Redbrick was the only one which left me scratching my head, so thanks to PeterO for the parsing. And to Imogen  for the rare thrill (most Monday’s excepted) of a completed puzzle.

  54. Thanks both,
    I initially had moon bar, which is a choccy bar with a lot of THC, for mars bar. And I had raki, despite this I rather enjoyed this and always see the setter’s handle with pleasure. I’m still struggling with yesterday’s.

  55. [It’s nice to see references to the art and tradition of bell-ringing – something that I never took up myself but have always enjoyed hearing and witnessing, even at close quarters.  My son (who incidentally shares Imogen’s real name!) is a bell-ringer, and I have on occasion stood in the ringing chamber watching him and others ringing a quarter-peal – an example of team-work if ever I saw one.]

  56. For a while I thought BONNY DAY might be a folk ballad for 21a.

    Je ne sais pas pourquoi, it just sounded like a good idea…

  57. Thanks Imogen and PeterO. Being Stateside “tony” was no problem but BOB MINOR and JAMMY were. Couldn’t crack the SE corner but overall a good showing for me. Loved FRISKY.

  58. I had to sleep on this one before finally getting there this morning. I feel like I must have been quite thick yesterday as some solutions were much more obvious this morning (Friday 7-8 a.m. Australian time). I liked lots of the clues but was another RAKI at 26a which held me up considerably in the SW. I guessed 8a BOB MINOR from the wordplay and had to check to confirm the link to bell-ringing. My favourite was my LOI, CRUMPLE at 20d, which made me smile at memories of dear old (!) “Rumpole of the Bailey”, so the puzzle was completed on a very pleasant note with that one.
    Thanks to Imogen and PeterO.
    (Sorry if any of this is repetitive of others’ posts as I haven’t had time to read the many preceding comments thoroughly.)
    (And P.S. I have enjoyed Jools Holland’s performances at my annual music festival so I liked it when I finally saw 22a JOULES – a fun PDM!)

  59. I’m enormously pleased I’m not the only one who had a miserable time with yesterday’s crossword and found today’s such a joy by comparison. I, too, had never encountered “tony”, and the only reason I didn’t fall into the raki trap was that I already had RETRACTOR. I smiled at BLENDER, RHEIMS and TINNY – and really enjoyed CRUMPLE. Thanks to PeterO and Imogen

  60. As I remarked when “tony” = smart last appeared not that long ago it reminds me of the English Edmund Clerihew Bentley who wrote, “Few Romans were as tony as the elegant Petronius. None who dressed snappier appeared on the Via Appia”. So “tony” = smart was known in England some time before 1956 when Bentley died. I don’t know why but I think of it as a Thirties usage, possibly Wodehouse. Maybe it was used in the US first.
    Thanks to Imogen and PeterO

  61. Finished this for once on a Thursday,but did so without understanding Bob minor,though guessing it must be campanology ref. So thank you Muffin for the clarity on that.I was another raki victim til I got retractor and looked again.Most enjoyable.Thanks to all.

  62. komornik@38: If you see this, could you direct me (as another DLS fan) to the “unattributed quotation” in the Nine Tailors?

    I too enjoyed this crossword, although I appear to be in the minority in having enjoyed yesterday’s Paul as well. Favourite chuckle-inducers were BOB MAJOR (of course), CRUMP(O)LE, and REDBRICK.

    Thanks Imogen and PeterO for the fun.

     

     

  63. I can’t believe that I’m the only one to remember — or maybe to invent — a relatively short-lived confectionery item (I imagine from the late 1970s or early ‘80s) called Star Bar. I wish I hadn’t now . . .

  65. cellomaniac @ 62: you seem to have moved from 6 bells to 8.

    Aphid @ 63: No invention, Star Bars were introduced in 1976. Must have been after my chocolate eating phase cos I cant think what they were like.

     

  66. I’m with theZed. I found this puzzle not too difficult to solve, but I either failed to parse or had questions about over half the clues. Many of those were due to my own ignorance — I didn’t know about the BEM, the Australian usage of TINNY, or Jools Holland, for instance. But there were quite a few dodgy clues, Baden-Powell and HOME PAGE being the most egregious examples in my opinion.

    I was fooled by ARAK/RAKI, but I don’t blame the setter for that: I’m in the camp of those who think it’s fine for a crossword clue to require crossers to remove ambiguity. And as an American, I do know about the word TONY, although I didn’t know it was specifically or predominantly a US usage. For what it’s worth, the word sounds somewhat old-fashioned to me.

     

     

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