Some fairly standard Cyclops-ean fare this fortnight – an enjoyable, if not too taxing solve…
My solving copy doesn’t have any particular notes – I think I made fairly steady progress, although writing the blog nearly 10 days after solving means that there have been many other puzzles solved – and beers consumed – in the meantime, to cloud the memory!
In a week when the US Senate have chosen to DISREGARD any WITNESSes, we should see a BURNISHED Ronald T Dump ANCHORed in OFFICE for the foreseeable, presumably showing no PIETY and continuing to spout HORSESHIT…
(I enjoyed the clue for that last one – brief and to the point!)
I had initial mental quibbles with RABBIT as a ‘crappy player’, and BOOMERANG as ‘recoil’. My understanding of a sporting ‘rabbit’ is usually a cricketing tail-ender – who may be a poor batsman, but usually has skills in the bowling or wicket-keeping department. And my experience of boomerangs is that they loop gracefully around, rather than ‘recoiling’/bouncing off something. However, Chambers has ‘rabbit’ as ‘an inferior player, in e.g. golf and cricket’, and the definition of boomerang specifically mentions ‘recoil’ at least twice – so I will mentally retract those two…
Thanks, as ever, to Cyclops, and hopefully all is clear below.
| Across | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Clue No | Solution | Clue | Definition (with occasional embellishments) / Logic/parsing |
|
| 1A | EXCEPT | Save end of finger removed from passage (6) | save / EXCE( |
|
| 4A | MOMENTUM | Instant character rejection that has helped scupper Labour? (8) | (faction) that has scuppered Labour / MOMENT (instant) + UM (MU, Greek character, rejected) |
|
| 10A | PLAINTIFF | Suitor of unlovely Barney (9) | suitor / PLAIN (unlovely) + TIFF (barney, argument) |
|
| 11A | OUT OF | & 19 No longer wearing suit, being ‘indisposed’ (3,2,6) | being indisposed / OUT OF (no longer wearing) + ACTION (suit, legal case) |
|
| 12A | SLUMS | Bad housing problems involving landlords mainly (5) | bad housing / S_UMS (problems) around (involving) L (main, or first, letter of Landlords) |
|
| 13A | NOCTURNAL | Batty, you might say, count ran off with Labour’s leader (9) | batty (like a bat!) you might say / NOCTURNA (anag, i.e. off, of COUNT RAN) + L (leading letter of Labour) |
|
| 14A | LAMBAST | Read the riot act – get through about 1Mb (7) | read the riot act / L_AST (get through) around A + MB (a, one, plus MB) |
|
| 16A | ANCHOR | News presenter, a primarily nasty piece of work, gets end away (6) | news presenter / A + N (primary letter of Nasty) + CHOR( |
|
| 19A | ACTION | See 11ac. (6) | see 11A / See 11A |
|
| 20A | BONE-DRY | Desiccated or bendy balls (4-3) | desiccated / anag, i.e. balls, of OR BENDY |
|
| 23A | DISREGARD | Being in command, is Reg ardently put aside? (9) | put aside / hidden word, i.e. being in, in ‘commanD IS REG ARDently’ |
|
| 25A | PIETY | One gets caught in fit of temper, initially, your Holiness? (5) | holiness / P_ET (fit of temper) around (catching) I (one), plus Y (Your, initially) |
|
| 26A | TIARA | Fancy topping covering Cyclops is so long (5) | fancy topping (headgear) / T_ARA (so long!), around I (Cyclops) |
|
| 27A | BURNISHED | Given hellish treatment (crushing his nuts) then brightened up (9) | brightened up / BURN_ED (given hellish treatment) around (crushing) ISH (anag, i.e. nuts, of HIS) |
|
| 28A | RELEGATE | Sportingly move down on member before tea break (8) | sportingly move down (a league) / RE (about) + LEG (member) + ATE (anag, i.e. break, of TEA) |
|
| 29A | STATUS | Rank, shabby goods imported by South America (6) | rank / S_US (S – South – plus US – America) around (importing) TAT (shabby goods) |
|
| Down | ||||
| Clue No | Solution | Clue | Definition (with occasional embellishments) / Logic/parsing |
|
| 1D | EXPOSE | Model overcome by Late Show (6) | show / EX (late) + POSE (model) |
|
| 2D | COAGULANT | Clot producer clung to AA formula (9) | clot producer / anag, i.e. formula, of CLUNG TO AA |
|
| 3D | PANTS | Rubbish boxers? (5) | double defn. / two different meanings of PANTS! |
|
| 5D | OFFICE | Disillusioned with methamphetamine situation (6) | situation / if one is disillusioned (OFF) methamphetamine (ICE) then you might me OFF ICE! |
|
| 6D | ELOQUENCE | Queen and ELO mad about Conservative’s gift of the gab (9) | gift of the gab / ELOQUEN_E (anag, i.e. mad, of QUEEN + ELO) around C (Conservative) |
|
| 7D | TITAN | Insecure Corbynite starts jumping ship – god! (5) | god! / TITAN( |
|
| 8D | MUFFLER | Neckwear made by two females stuffing shot lemur (7) | neckwear / MU_LER (anag, i.e. shot, of LEMUR) around FF (two females) |
|
| 9D | WITNESS | See joker getting head (7) | see / WIT (joker) + NESS (head, promontory) |
|
| 15D | BOOMERANG | Recoil when Roger Moore gets excited on the inside (9) | recoil / B_ANG (roger, have sex with) around OOMER (anag, i.e. excited, of MOORE) |
|
| 17D | HORSESHIT | Balls mounts … success! (9) | balls / HORSES (mounts) + HIT (success) |
|
| 18D | DODDERY | Rum stimulant imbibed by non-alcoholic? Staggering! (7) | staggering / D_RY (non-alcoholic) around (imbibing) ODD (rum) + E (Ecstasy, stimulant) |
|
| 19D | AUDITOR | Accountant ‘s car – “Crap going North!” (7) | accountant / AUDI (car) + TOR (rot, or crap, going north) |
|
| 21D | RABBIT | Gas crappy player? (6) | double defn. / to RABBIT can be to talk emptily, or gas; and a RABBIT can be a tail-end batsman in cricket – hence ‘crappy player’ – although they are usually good bowlers! |
|
| 22D | HYADES | Starry group appearing in Givenchy ad, essentially (6) | starry group / hidden word, i.e. appearing in, in ‘givencHY AD ESsentially’ |
|
| 24D | SMALL | & 25 Run round shopping centre (go through it carefully, to be on the safe side) (5,5) | (you should) go through it carefully, to be on the safe side! / S_PRINT (run) around MALL (shopping centre) |
|
| 25D | See 24d. (5) | see 24D / see 24D |
||
Brilliant crossword, as always. I have a very pedantic point, and I’m not complaining, just finding out, so correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t one of the “rules” of crossword clues that you can’t capitalise a word if it’s not a proper name in the reading of the clue? So if the cluer wants to mislead the solvers into thinking “barney” in 10A refers to Barney the purple T Rex or some other Barney, rather than the true reading of “tiff”, they have to find a way to put the name at the beginning of the clue. So for example, 10A could be “Barney after unlovely suitor”.
I found this a real tough one. Re 21d, I hadn’t heard of a tail-ender being a rabbit, but I don’t really follow cricket. I’d slotted in RABBIT and was musing whether it meant randy as in “a player”. Extremely deluded! Enjoyed 24d/25d. Thanks again mc_rapper67
I found this a bit more difficult than usual for some reason.
I only learnt of ‘rabbit’ as an inferior player recently from its use in another crossword.
I don’t remember seeing ‘mainly’ used for first letter indication before and I’m not quite sure of the basis for that.
I think ‘boomerang’ and ‘recoil’ can mean the same thing when used figuratively about a situation or course of action.
Mike @1, it’s the other way round, if anything. A convention that’s widely observed is that you don’t deceive by changing a capital to lower case. So, if you want to refer to, say, Clinton using ‘Bill’, you shouldn’t write ‘bill’. The reverse is considered fair, for reasons more historical than logical.
In cricketing terms, virtually every bowler has his rabbit…..someone he regularly can get out. But that does not make the rabbit a poor player against everyone else……I loved ‘horseshit’ and ‘nocturnal’ for how they were constructed and ended up frustrated with myself for not picking ‘disregard’. But ‘boomerang’ was my absolute gem……so wonderfully put together and diverting attention away from the answer. I spent ages trying to fit ‘saint’ or some other character around an anagram of ‘gets’.
Thanks for the comments/feedback – and apologies for my tardy reply…
Mike M at #1 – I’m not so familiar with the deeper/unwritten rules, so you may have a point (although Tony Collman at #3 thinks otherwise). I’m not sure Cyclops is too much of a follower of convention – I’m sure Ximenes must occasionally spin at some of the Cyclops-ean excesses!
Franko – your ‘randy rabbit’ cricket player – IT Botham, in his pomp?!
Tony Collman – Chambers has ‘principally’ as part of the definition of mainly, so the leading, or principal character? Bit of a stretch!
NB. I’m not sure if anyone else is suffering from late delivery of their subscription copies? I rang the Eye, and they tell me there was an unexploded WWII bomb found near their print works this week, which delayed the production run and dispatch. It should be in the post ‘shortly’…
@mc
Ah, but the ‘rules’ (as they are regarded by Ximeneans) are not unwritten. They are verbally codified, not as a set of statutes but as dicta in the ‘case law’ of judgements in the Ximenes and Azed Slips, which are commentaries upon entries to the cluing competition in the Observer, started by the one of those august setters and continued by the other, and can be found in full on the andlit.org.uk website.
Without bothering to track down Ximenes original pronouncement, here is Azed’s recapitulation and endorsement of the same, from Azed Slip No. 1190:
“I have always maintained – and here again I follow the Ximenean line – that it is permissible to give a capital initial to a non-proper noun anywhere in a clue if it suits one’s purpose (e.g. to make it appear as if it were a name), but that it is not permissible to reduce a normal initial capital letter to lower case for similar reasons. The former seems to me (just) fair; the latter strikes me as unfairly misleading.”
Although that’s only ‘law’ to some, it is in fact a principle followed by many who do not otherwise feel bound by the dicta of the slips, including myself and, quite possibly, Cyclops.
Others take a more liberal view, such as Alan Connor, crossword blogger at the Guardian in this post and notorious anti-Ximenean commentator Jolly Swagman in the comments thereto.
Regarding “mainly”, I think ‘principally’ only defines it when it is being used in the sense of ‘first in a ranking of importance or frequency etc.’ I can’t think of any case where “mainly” is used to indicate the beginning of something in general.
Sunday Times crossword editor and cluewriting competition judge Peter Biddlecombe is not strictly Ximenean but follows the same principle, as he shows in a comment on the most recently reported Sunday Times Cluewriting Competition for BROWSE:
‘What you do on safari shoots
This has a very good surface, and “shoots” is close enough to the “plant material eaten” meaning. But this is an example of unfair “downcasing” — you have to read “safari” as meaning Safari, the web browser that’s part of Apple operating systems, and a proper noun like this would always be capitalised. We allow deceptive “upcasing” such as “Edge” meaning a border, because practically any word can sometimes have a capital letter in text.’
I seem to have started a bit of a debate here. I will have to defer to the judges and the codifications, that deceptive upcasing is allowed.
I’ll get my coat too!
mc_rapper67 @ 6 — My subscription copy of the last issue was delivered on Wednesday 5 February (i.e. the normal day).
My subscription copy came yesterday, along with a note about old bombs etc. That is a little later than usual for me. Living abroad has it’s consequences!
Thanks for the logistical updates – John E and Winsor…my copy hasn’t reached deepest darkest ‘Ampshire yet, so I resorted to downloading the ‘Across Lite’ version of crossword 670 from the website and then printing it off to send in…fingers crossed…
I will probably drop in to the WHSmith at Waterloo and have a scan through the cartoons later!…
mc, I haven’t had a functioning printer for a while now, so what I do is create a copy of the grid (from the website) in Crossword Compiler (CC) and fill it in using the clues on the website. I can overlay the CC grid on the webpage so that’s fairly convenient. Then when I’ve solved it all, I export the solution with clue numbers from CC to pdf and email that to P-E. This is actually a lot easier and less error-prone than solving on paper then typing all the answers into an email as I used to, although it means I have to sit at a screen to solve, which I don’t like as much as solving on paper wherever I am.
I don’t know whether you can produce a pdf from Across Lite, but if you solve it on screen, you could email in a screen shot, I suppose?
Here’s the story about the bomb:
https://www.pressgazette.co.uk/private-eye-blitz-spirit-unexploded-ww2-bomb-threatens-print-deadline/
I got clobbered by 21 down. I’ve similarly never heard of Rabbit as a crappy player.
Instead I took crappy as an anagram indicator and confidently put in PARLEY, as talk/gas.