The puzle may be found at https://www.theguardian.com/crosswords/cryptic/28098.
A tough end to the week’s Guardians, with two &lits, both rather tortured (as &lits tend to be), and a couple of definitions which look doubtful to me. In all, definitely a challenge, but with, for me, enough dodgyness to take the edge off the triumph of completion, despite the plentiful good clues.
| ACROSS | ||
| 8 | COCKSURE | Arrogant male turning us on (8) |
| A charade of COCK (‘male’) plus SU (‘turning us’) plus RE (‘on’). | ||
| 9 | NOOSE | Ring through snout for end of rope, maybe (5) |
| An envelope (‘through’) of O (‘ring’) in NOSE (‘snout’). | ||
| 10 | YAWN | Boring person with new style, in retrospect (4) |
| A reversal (‘in retrospect’) of N (‘new’) plus WAY (‘style’). | ||
| 11 | SHOPAHOLIC | Ooh! I love purchasing, initially getting cash out (10) |
| An anagram (‘out’) of ‘ooh I’ plus LP (‘Love Purchasing initially’) plus ‘cash’., with an &lit definition. | ||
| 12 | BIRDIE | One under empty bar drinking single to pass out (6) |
| A charade of BIR, an envelope (‘drinking’) of I (‘single’) in BR (’empty BaR‘); plus DIE (‘pass out’). | ||
| 14 | SCRAMMED | Son packed and went off (8) |
| A charade of S (‘son’) plus CRAMMED (‘packed’). | ||
| 15 | INQUEST | Hearing Italian on vacation before adventure (7) |
| A charade of IN (‘ItaliaN on vacation’) plus QUEST (‘adventure’). | ||
| 17 | ADJUNCT | Accessory with evening dress: one must get into function (7) |
| An envelope (‘must get into’) of DJ (dinner jacket, ‘evening dress’) plus UN (‘one’, dialect) in ACT (‘function’). | ||
| 20 | GOAL LINE | Side on pitch try, tired at end of game (4,4) |
| A charade of GO (‘try’) plus ALL IN (‘tired’) plus E (‘end of gamE‘). | ||
| 22 | ADHERE | Stick plug in this space (6) |
| A charade of AD (advertisement, ‘plug’) plus HERE (‘in this space’). | ||
| 23 | CLOCK TOWER | See one pulling faces with hands up on this? (5,5) |
| A charade of CLOCK (‘see’) plus TOWER (‘one pulling’). | ||
| 24 | BLUE | Adult butterfly (4) |
| Double definition. | ||
| 25 | ASIAN | Like getting home to eat a Chinese? (5) |
| An envelope (‘to eat’) of ‘a’ in AS (‘like’) plus IN (‘home’), withn the question mark justifying the indication by example. | ||
| 26 | RECORDER | Instrument in song by Queen (8) |
| A charade of RECORD (‘song’; not an ideal definition, I think) plus ER (‘Queen’). | ||
| DOWN | ||
| 1 | DONATION | Party people getting present (8) |
| A charade of DO (‘party’) plus NATION (‘people’), | ||
| 2 | SKIN | Middle part of classic family film (4) |
| A charade of S (‘middle part of claSsic’) plus KIN (‘family’). | ||
| 3 | PURSUE | Go after money you picked up for investment (6) |
| Sounds like (‘picked up’) PURSE YOU (‘money you’).
As Beobachterin @4 was the first to point out, the instructions in the clue ask for an envelope (‘for investment’ – excellent fit to the surface). |
||
| 4 | REMORSE | Deep regret as vibrations not leading to ecstasy (7) |
| A charade of [t]REMORS (‘vibrations’) minus the first letter (‘not leading’) plus E (‘ecstasy’). | ||
| 5 | UNMARRED | Perfect single knocking off Number 1 (8) |
| UNMARR[i]ED (‘single’) minus the I (‘knocking off Number !’). | ||
| 6 | MOTORMOUTH | One likes to chat old male up with right opening (10) |
| A charade of MOTO, a reversal (‘up’ in a down light) of O (‘old’) plus TOM (‘male’), plus R (‘right’) plus MOUTH (‘opening’). | ||
| 7 | PETITE | Small bird in water (6) |
| An envelope (‘in’) of TIT (‘bird’) in PEE (‘water’). | ||
| 13 | DOUBLE CHIN | Could be unfit: primarily heavy with it? (6,4) |
| A charade of DOUBLEC, an anagram (‘unfit’) of ‘could be’ plus H (‘primarily Heavy’) plus IN (‘with it?’), with an &lit definition. | ||
| 16 | SHIFTING | Separating without husband moving (8) |
| An envelope (‘without’) of H (‘husband’) in SIFTING (‘separating’). | ||
| 18 | CAROUSEL | Song’s good within musical (8) |
| An envelope (‘within’) of USE (‘good’ – for a long time, that seemed to me a dubious equation, but finally I thought of Carousel and “What’s the use/good of wond’rin’?”) in CAROL (‘song’), | ||
| 19 | KEY WORD | Type date, line going over part of index (3,4) |
| A charade of KEY (‘type’) plus WORD, a reversal (‘going over’) of D (‘date’) plus ROW (‘line’). | ||
| 21 | OILMAN | Train overcrowded at the start: main line to occupy platform worker? (6) |
| An envelope (‘to occupy’) of L (‘line’) in OIMAN, an anagram (‘train’) of O (‘Overcrowded at the start’) plus ‘main’. Tortured, but that is the nearest that I can get | ||
| 22 | ARRACK | Topless bar: stand to get strong drink (6) |
| A charade of ‘[b]ar’ minus the first letter (‘topless’) plus RACK (‘stand’). | ||
| 24 | BARK | British vessel in bay (4) |
| A charade of B (‘British’) plus ARK (‘vessel’). I would have said that BARK and ‘bay’ were different sounds made by canines, but Chambers gives “bark or howl” as a definition of bay. | ||
What a pleasure it is to have such a challenging puzzle, following a week of mainly write-ins. At the first several passes I still only had ADHERE, and was about to admit being beaten. But then one or two more trickled in, and suddenly …. ‘the deluge’. Ironically LOI was YAWN, the only thing that was ‘boring’ about this commendable puzzle. May puzzles of this class be encouraged, and enjoyed by fellow-bloggers. It feels like the old days.
Largely agree with Peter, two valid &lits, but didn’t find SHOPAHOLIC nearly as iffy as DOUBLE CHIN – or ADJUNCT for that matter. All in all, was a bit of a struggle to finish.
Very pleased to have nearly completed this crossword — missed BLUE and still don’t see how it defines “butterfly.” Anyhow, I particularly liked the &lits as well as MOTORMOUTH, INQUEST, and UNMARRED. Agree that OILMAN was tortured; ADJUNCT was beyond my patience to parse. Thanks Tramp and PeterO.
A Blue is a kind of butterfly, Tony. I had PURSUE as PURSE (money) with U (for ‘you’) invested in it. This uses the whole clue, which I thought desirable. Thank you for the explanation of USE in CAROUSEL, which I was very puzzled by. Overall, this was definitely a case of work out what the answers are and then try to parse them for me this morning. Thank you both!
On my laptop now instead of the phone so can post links, and here is a Common BLUE butterfly: https://butterfly-conservation.org/butterflies/common-blue.
Hard going, but repaid a bit of persistence. The SE corner held out longest with ADJUNCT and CAROUSEL – USE for ‘good’ the only bit of the puzzle I couldn’t parse either – my last two in. I had ticks against the &lits and CLOCK TOWER.
Definitely worth the effort.
Thanks to Tramp and PeterO
Definitely more of a challenge this morning and I never enjoy guessing the definition then trying (and often failing) to parse afterwards as much as the other way round.
Did like SHOPAHOLIC but less so DOUBLE CHIN.
Thanks Tramp and PeterO for today and everyone else for an interesting week in Crosswordland.
At least the Prize will tell me it is Saturday with no other markers in the week.
I liked it but was a DNF, so well done to Tramp for the win on this occasion. Couldn’t for the life of me see 20a GOAL LINE even though I sat with it for a very long time. I really appreciated 1a COCKSURE (which I certainly wasn’t), 22a ADHERE, 23a CLOCK TOWER, 6d MOTORMOUTH and 7d PETITE. Thanks to Tramp and PererO.
I completely agree with rodshaw@1: great to have a really tough puzzle. I don’t mind if I don’t finish (I had UNPAIRED instead of UNMARRED) provided I’ve had a good tussle along the way. Loved SHOPAHOLIC in particular. Many thanks to Tramp and PeterO.
What’s an &lit please?
TimonthyB@10 – an &lit is where the whole clue, including the wordplay, is also the definition (as in 11a). I got there in the end today, but found it very challenging. On the whole the answers didn’t jump out, even with all the crossers in place. I liked SHOPAHOLIC when I finally saw it.
After failing to get a single across clue, I was encouraged to continue by the gift of 1d and then gradually ground my way towards the SW corner. Parsing more difficult than solving. Agree with PeterO’s summary. Thanks to him and to Tramp.
I don’t suppose BIG RUMP is a deliberate nina.
Why is BLUE ‘adult’?
Remembered ‘is that any good/use’ but forgot un, as in good ‘un, for one, so adjunct had a ? next to it. Took hours over this, staring numbly at the SW until go all-in e finally fell, and came here without seeing the one pulling in clock tower…thick! Agree though that chewy is good in lockdown times. Oilman does work ok, and we’ve had bark for bay before..still don’t like it ntwst what the dictionaries say. Hey ho, all good, thanks Tramp and PeterO.
I got COCKSURE and NOOSE immediately, so I relaxed, happy that I was awake and switched on. By the end of the first quick pass of the across clues I had… cocksure and noose, plus CLOCK TOWER. Hmm, this is looking like a challenge. And so it proved. A combination tricky of &lits, nice misdirections, and some very tough parsing, resulted in me taking as long over today’s puzzle as the rest of the week’s cryptics combined. I appreciate the desire to attract new solvers, and I’m quite happy to see a variety of difficulties throughout the week, but today was a lot of good challenging fun. Thanks to Tramp for the awkward entertainment. Favourite was probably BIRDIE, which I probably should have got earlier (I guessed the empty bar device, but I’d convinced myself that “pass out” would be the def)
Nice work for PeterO, you had your work cut out today.
Like others, I found this a challenge but a very worthwhile and rewarding one. It’s always a satisfaction for me when I manage to complete a tough crossword correctly without resorting to aids. It’s even better if I can manage to parse everything myself, but I owe a debt to PeterO for the explanation of ‘adjunct’; I only got as far as A DJ + a series of consecutive letters from ‘function’.
Best wishes to everyone, and I hope that you are keeping safe.
Sometimes I enjoy the “solve first, parse later” approach but I felt some of the clues here (such as “oilman” and “adjunct”) so much of a struggle to justify that it rather took the edge off the pleasure for me. I was not sold on “die” for “pass out” either – one is rather more final than the other surely? For some reason I did not particularly jump with joy at either near &lit either. Maybe I’m just in a grumpy mood this morning! Those few gripes aside there was much to enjoy here and it certainly lasted a good chunk of the morning, between a few chores, so thank you Tramp, and PeterO for several explanations I had missed.
I was wondering if there was a theme of “near-miss music” – we had motormouth, not motorhead, “the wichita oilman” and “all along the clock tower” before I decided that was far too silly.
John Wells @14 as in a “blue movie”, a XXX rated or “adult” film
Personally I thought the &lits were awful – the kind of thing that Everyman gets pilloried for – but beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Nor am I a fan of difficulty that stems from spraying anagram fodder around the wordplay with initials thrown in to the mix. It was great to have a stiffer challenge but overall this one just didn’t hit the sweet spot for me. Btw Chambers has USE as a synonym for GOOD. Maybe cabin fever is making me grumpier than usual?
Definitely up a notch today compared to earlier offerings this week. All hunky dory by me, favourite was SHOPAHOLIC, though it’s mostly an online thing at the moment…
Dnf this but laughed at SCRAMMED. I had a cousin called Scrammy. Apparently my parents had had to babysit him when they were ‘courting’ and often told him to scram. It was many years before I learned that his real name was George. Thanks to Tramp and PeterO.
Thanks for the blog, PeterO and thanks to Tramp for an enjoyable challenge.
I’ve nothing really to add to the comments. My favourites today were SHOPAHOLIC and INQUEST [for the surface].
For anyone looking for a further challenge, I heartily recommend Wanderer, one of my favourite setters, in the FT.
https://www.ft.com/content/4dda5df2-56ae-11ea-a528-dd0f971febbc
I’m glad I managed to eep up my 100% streak this week with what, for me, was a hard puzzle, but ine I really enjoyed.
The only one i couldn’t parse was ADJUNCT as I didn’t link UN with one (unless there’s a French indication).
For PURSUE – I parsed it the same way as Beobachterin @4
Thanks Tramp & PeterO
Slow to get going but got there in the end. I couldn’t parse ADJUNCT as I failed on the one = UN, and missed, yet again, one pulling = TOWER, doh!
I liked SHOPAHOLIC, MOTORMOUTH, PETITE and UNMARR(i)ED.
I also parsed PURSUE as Beobachterin @4.
Thanks Tramp and PeterO.
[Alan B –
Julie in A –
Please see mine @93(!) in reply to yours in yesterday’s comments]
I haven’t looked at today’s Tramp – but just seeing the name has cheered me up. The big question, for me, is whether I’ve the self-discipline to save it to savour with a Saturday or Sunday morning coffee – when it would be most enjoyed. And I’m hoping it’s a bracing ramble rather than a walk in the park! Those reading this will already know….so I’m off before I see anything here!
A mixed bag for me, and a dnf as I missed PETITE and BARK (couldn’t get “burn” out of my head, even though it clearly didn’t work). I agree with some of the niggles mentioned above, but I did like SHOPAHOLIC and CLOCK TOWER (had to come here to parse the latter; thanks PeterO for that and a few others). There were also a few, including BIRDIE and GOAL LINE, that were satisfying to enter after a successful struggle to parse them. Thanks to Tramp for keeping me occupied for a couple of hours.
Another vote for PURSUE per Beobachterin’s @4 parsing. Tough going and the grid made it into 4 more or less separate puzzles, with the SW and then the NW corners taking a while to unravel.
I started off well, with NOOSE, PETITE and COCKSURE going in swiftly and pleasingly. Then I hit a brick wall. Clearly I’m not on Tramp’s wavelength – but be that as it may, “die” is not synonymous with “pass out”: “pass on”, yes, and I’ve also heard American friends saying “passed” – but never “pass out”.
My sports-mad partner has been harrumphing ever since GOAL LINE emerged from the gloop: the goal-line is in front of the goal and is not the whole side of a pitch, he says. OILMAN ADJUNCT were tortuous, CLOCK TOWER was clunky.
Then again, it’s struggles like this that make other puzzles such fun – so thank to Tramp for the challenge and thanks to PeterO for explaining the bits I could only part-parse.
Didn’t get much of this finished last night, had to resort to check, letter by letter, a lot. Thanks for the puzzle, Tramp, and thanks PeterO for saving my sanity.
I’m also with beobachterin on PURSUE, that’s how I put it together.
There is a butterfly that I’m sure Tramp wasn’t thinking of called the Mission Blue that’s endemic to the San Francisco Bay area and is endangered. I used to live there but don’t recall ever seeing one.
A great puzzle, much more challenging than anything else this week.
Thanks to Tramp and PeterO
For me, considerably harder than the others this week mainly because I am poor at what I think are called &lit clues. Also I struggled with the 4 letter clues. For instance, I genuinely could not see blue as adult or bark as bay. I did get there in the end but it took longer than it should and I came away unsure if I had got everything correct. Favourites were CLOCK TOWER, lovely misdirection of pulling, ADJUNCT and SKIN. Many thanks Tramp and Peter O!
Hedgehog@7. I fear it won’t literally be a prize crossword tomorrow in these locked down times but hopefully it will have the challenge of our usual Saturday fare. Stay safe, everyone.
Wellbeck@29: I think goal line is fine. From the Football Association’s Laws of the Game and FA Rules: “Only the lines indicated in Law 1 are to be marked on the field of play … the two longer boundary lines are touchlines. The two shorter lines are goal-lines.”
But man that was tough!
Definitely more of a challenge at the end of the week. DNF, Mrs Lippi had to mop up the last three – 3d, 12a and 21d. Thanks to setter and blogger, and once again everyone stay safe.
Thanks to Tramp and PeterO
Just outside my comfort zone thanks to GOAL LINE and BIRDIE (see comments above). Plenty to enjoy nonetheless in the time available and I enjoyed SHOPAHOLIC, MOTORMOUTH, the hypnotic YAWN (well I stared at it for far too long) and the scatological PETITE.
But the chuckle of the day came from TheZed’s@18 “near-miss music”.
[Eileen@23: Thanks for the link which I will keep in the back pocket; I am off to enjoy an archived Arachne (No 26,784). On that, I seem to recall at one point being able to draw up all the offerings from a given setter from the archive, but I can’t seem to do it now – has the brain regressed or has something changed? At one point I was ploughing merrily through volumes of Araucaria…]
I found the 4-letter words tricky, particularly the WAY/style, vessel/ARK, BLUE/butterfly synonyms (and type/KEY for that matter). I agree that pass out for DIE and with it for IN are a bit of a stretch. I’m more ambivalent about song for RECORD. They’re not the same, but people often use them synonymously, e.g. I love that song/record. This all made for a tough puzzle today. But we wanted that, right? SHOPAHOLIC, CLOCK TOWER and OILMAN were my picks.
Auriga@13, I reckon the nina’s a coincidence. There was one yesterday that I wondered about too: MAYO (since Puck’s in Ireland). That too was probably a coincidence. Maybe the setters can enlighten us.
Thanks, Tramp for the tester I needed and PeterO for the blog.
I’ve one teeny-weeny bone to pick with Julie in A. As a dilettante setter, I’d never see a DNF as a win. Having despaired of ever getting published, I circulate my efforts among family and friends, and I see a real struggle plus completion as a victory and a DNF as a failure on MY part as setter !
Many thanks to Tramp for keeping me out of mischief and sterling work PeterO.
Hello Judas Escargot (great handle, btw!)
I know next-to-nothing about football (I’m guessing this is football – or what Americans call soccer) so I ran your comment past my partner, who’s still harrumphing but doesn’t want to get dragged into a squabble about it. So I bow gracefully to your superior sporting expertise!
Alphalpha @36
To get all(?) of Arachne’s puzzles (or any other setter with a change to the end of the URL) try:
https://www.theguardian.com/profile/arachne
Yes, more difficult than the previous few but I suspect this wasn’t difficult by Tramp’s standards..I almost always have trouble with him and this seemed more straightforward, but perhaps I was prepared to invest more time than usual. Anyway, I was only stuck on BIRDIE and GOAL LINE. The latter was rather a good clue once I saw it. Didn’t think much of DOUBLE CHIN but I did like SHOPAHOLIC. RECORD = song? I don’t really think so but it was one of my FOI.
Stay safe all!
Thanks Tramp.
Hello Wellbeck.
I think your harrumphing partner is thinking of the goal area. This is a rectangle in front of the goal, 6 yards from the goal line, aka the six yard box.
Regards, The Stanchion [metal net support behind the goal]
This is my first Tramp for a while (I’m doing more of these crosswords now!). It was an excellent puzzle, and an enjoyable one largely because I solved a high proportion of clues from the wordplay before confirming the answer. My favourites from those clues were COCKSURE (my first in), DONATION, BIRDIE, GOAL LINE and ARRACK. The last of these was a new word to me.
Thanks to Tramp and PeterO.
Hi Alan B @43
I nearly mentioned earlier that I labelled ARRACK as one of my favourite kinds of clue, which, a few years ago, I called a JORUM*, when blogging a Puck alphabetical puzzle containing that hitherto unknown word and have referred to several times since: *’an unlikely-sounding answer obtained by building the word from its component parts, with the help of crossers, with a sigh of surprised satisfaction on finding that the word does exist. Of course, it relies on impeccable cluing, which is what we have here: just follow the directions on the tin.’
I got about 3/4 through this and was stuck. I then went out (safely) and when I came back MrsW had finished it. Neither of us could parse ADJUNCT nor could we equate USE with GOOD so thanks for those explanations PeterO. SHOPAHOLIC and CLOCK TOWER were my favourites and I enjoyed the increased challenge today, for which thanks to Tramp.
For anyone interested I picked up a 3kg bag of bread flour yesterday so we’re good for a few more weeks. One up for the local shop over the big supermarkets.
Despite loads of electronic help I couldn’t complete the SW corner, but was relieved to see that others found it tough. Huge thanks to Alphalpha and Gaufried for the information on archives. That could just save my sanity!
Eileen @44 On more than one of these clues (“motormouth” is the one I remember most clearly) I found myself filling it in letter by letter, from the middle outwards almost, using the crossers and the wordplay. ie Doing what the clue told me to, until I could see enough to write in the answer. There is a certain satisfaction when that works.
Eileen @44
How interesting that we connected on that strange word!
With this puzzle I was impressed first at my own sharpness in constructing so many of my answers in such a satisfying way, but I ended up being more impressed with Tramp’s skill in making clues that were amenable to that ‘ideal’ approach – not many were what I would call easy, but they all came out and did exactly what it said on the tin!
TheZed @47
Your description of how you solved MOTORMOUTH matched my own experience of solving that clue. I’ve forgotten how many crossers I had for it – just two, I think. As we are saying, it is satisfying to solve clues from the wordplay like that.
Thanks for the blog.
I lost my temper with this crossword, ripped it up and threw it in the bin.
This just got worse the farther you went with it. The bottom half was horrible, utterly, hopelessly, unforgivably horrible.
I finished this today, Saturday, at 6pm. By the end of yesterday I had done ADHERE, ARRACK and CLOCKTOWER. I picked it up again at lunchtime today and got going at last. I had FULL TIME at 20a until nearly the end (it wasn’t the only one I couldn’t fully parse) so OILMAN was the last one in. I have a pile of uncompleted crosswords which I save for rainy days. Thank goodness fifteensquared goes back a very long time. If Tramp and PeterO see this comment, a belated thanks for the challenge and parsing.
Gaufri@40: Thanks so much for that.