The puzzle may be found at https://www.theguardian.com/crosswords/cryptic/28137.
The keystone clue is 17A RHINO, used in other clues in the slang sense of money. At times, the puzzle seemed to be an exercise in envelopes – there is a generous supply of them, with varied indication. 1A was actually my last in, but the abbreviation in 7D gave me the most trouble – although it is in Chambers. Altogether an enjoyable puzzle.
| ACROSS | ||
| 1 | SUBSIDY | Reserve yen covering reduced squad’s grant (7) |
| An envelope (‘covering’) of SID[e] (‘squad’) minus the last letter (‘reduced’) in SUB (substitute player in eg soccer, ‘reserve’) plus Y (Japanese currency, ‘yen’). | ||
| 5 | OFF FORM | Removed from bench for not playing well (3,4) |
| Definition and literal interpretation. | ||
| 10 | PESO | Small piece of eight initially forged, 17 (4) |
| An anagram (‘forged’) of SPOE (‘Small Piece Of Eight initially) | ||
| 11 | PLUTOCRACY | Dog collars primarily blue in state run by the 8 (10) |
| A charade of PLUTO (‘dog’, Disney character) plus C (‘Collars primarily’) plus RACY (‘blue’, sexually explicit). | ||
| 12 | ACCESS | Idiot guards Catholic church entrance (6) |
| An envelope (‘guards’) of C (‘Catholic ‘) plus CE (‘church’) in ASS (‘idiot’). | ||
| 13 | IRISHMEN | Flag male amongst female Gaels, perhaps (8) |
| A charade of IRIS (‘flag’) plus HMEN, an envelope (‘amongst’) of M (‘male’) in HEN (‘female’). | ||
| 14 | PRIME TIME | When most watch proper sci-fi film on writer’s tablet (5,4) |
| A charade of PRIM (‘proper’) plus ET (‘sci-fi film’) plus I’M (‘writer’s’) plus E (‘tablet’ of the drug). | ||
| 16 | UNITS | American preserves tiny egg parts (5) |
| An envelope (‘preserves’) of NIT (‘tiny egg’) in US (‘American’). | ||
| 17 | RHINO | It’s known to charge money (5) |
| Double definition. | ||
| 19 | AT PRESENT | These days journalists mostly fill a marquee (2,7) |
| An envelope (‘fill’) of PRES[s] (‘journalists’) minus the last letter (‘mostly’) in A TENT (‘a marquee’). | ||
| 23 | PLAYBALL | Cooperate in dance drama first (8) |
| A charade of PLAY (‘drama’) plus BALL (‘dance’). Surely the enumeration should be (4,4). | ||
| 24 | BRASSY | Raucous artist’s son immersed in Times (6) |
| An envelope (‘immersed in’) of RA’S (‘artist’s’) plus S (‘son’) in BY (‘times’, multiplication, with misleading capital). | ||
| 26 | SOVEREIGNS | Flighty governess entertains current 17 (10) |
| An envelope (‘entertains’) of I (physics symbol, ‘current’) in SOVEREGNS, an anagram (‘flighty’) of ‘governess’. | ||
| 27 | SUED | Took action that fitted the bill without it (4) |
| A subtraction: SU[it]ED (‘fitted the bill’) minus IT (‘without it’). | ||
| 28 | STATERS | Republican avoids beginners, 17 in Athens of old (7) |
| A subtraction: STA[r]TERS (‘beginners’) minus the R (‘Republican avoids’) | ||
| 29 | ON STAGE | Ring agents about acting (2,5) |
| A charade of O (‘ring’) plus NSTAGE, an anagram (‘about’) of ‘agents’. | ||
| DOWN | ||
| 2 | USED CAR | Leaving outskirts, caused carnage driving this? (4,3) |
| A hidden answer (‘leaving outskirts’) in ‘caUSED CARnage | ||
| 3 | STOLE | Pinched vestment (5) |
| Double definition. | ||
| 4 | DEPOSIT | Security is raised in warehouse (7) |
| An envelope (‘in’) of SI, a reversal (‘raised’ in a down light) of ‘is’ in DEPOT (‘warehouse’). | ||
| 6 | FLORIN | Fellow cut across river for 10p once (6) |
| An envelope (‘across’) of R (‘river’) in F (‘fellow’) plus LOIN (‘cut’ of meat). | ||
| 7 | FARTHINGS | Get your bins out to find old 17? (9) |
| ‘Bins’ here is short for binoculars, and the clue gives instructions for finding FAR THINGS (like comet SWAN). | ||
| 8 | RICHEST | Superlatively flush in Berlin, I fitted in holiday (7) |
| An envelope (‘in’ – the second one) of ICH (‘in Berlin, I’) in REST (‘holiday’). | ||
| 9 | NUMISMATOLOGY | Miners’ group is to register in spring, collecting 17 (13) |
| A charade of NUM (National Union of Mineworkers, ‘miners’ group’) plus ‘is’ plus MATOLOGY, an envelope (‘in’) of ‘to’ plus LOG (‘register’) in MAY (‘spring’, when the darling buds appear) | ||
| 15 | MONEY BELT | Personal cash store where the 8 live? (5,4) |
| Defininition and literal interpretation. | ||
| 18 | HOLD OUT | Last offer (4,3) |
| Double definition. | ||
| 20 | ROBESON | US singer‘s instruction to peers before procession? (7) |
| ROBES ON. | ||
| 21 | NEST EGG | Reserve receives breaking news from the south (4,3) |
| A reversal (‘from the south’ in a down light) of an envelope (‘breaking’) of GETS (‘receives’) in GEN (‘news’). | ||
| 22 | CAREER | Nurse retains European CV (6) |
| An envelope (‘retains’) of E (‘European’) in CARER (‘nurse’). | ||
| 25 | ASSET | Hound bishop off property (5) |
| A subtraction: [b]ASSET (‘hound’) minus the B (‘bishop off’). | ||
Fun puzzle.
My favourite were FARTHINGS, and MONEY BELT which made me laugh, comparing it to green belt, for example.
New for me were FLORIN = 10 pence, and BINS – binoculars.
Thanks Peter and Crucible for a nice start to my day.
I agree with michelle’s description of the puzzle and with her favourite clues as well. Couldn’t parse FARTHING, but it’s really clever. I think I’ve seen RHINO as money before, but it just rang the faintest of bells, and I didn’t know either form = bench or marquee = tent (marquees are something altogether different over here). Got there in the end, though, with a few things learned on the way, so all good. Thanks to Crucible and PeterO.
Not easy, no write-ins, just a steady slog. Got a laugh out of ROBESON. I too frowned at the enumeration for PLAYBALL.
I like interconnected clues, as long as there aren’t so many that it’s difficult to gain traction. I think it makes puzzles a bit more interesting.
My only quibble with this one was the enumeration problem already pointed out by PeterO and rodshaw@3 – it didn’t hold up progress, but just provoked a confused Why?
Yes, agree with Michelle, fun. RHINO LOI, took me ages to think of a charging animal that was also slang for money; it’s not slang that I have ever used. Nho STATERS and, at least according to the webpage I read, they were not minted in Athens but in other parts of ancient Greece, eg Macedonia. Could not parse FARTHINGS, again not slang that is used here, but at least I have heard of it. Now that it is parsed, I like it. Agree MONEY BELT worth a chuckle. Thanks to Crucible and to PeterO for the blog.
Gorgeous sunny autumn veranda day here, brain dreamy, refused to crank up. Rhino has appeared several times around cw-land and, coupled with ‘known to charge’, should’ve been a gimme..nope.. margin note ‘v slow’. Ditto ‘sued’, needed an alpha trawl, yawn. Didn’t parse farthings, cunning clue. Robes on was cute. We’ve had staters before too, and the clue was easy really, but nothing swam to the surface so a dnf. Good workout that I was too lazy to do justice to, but thanks Crucible, and ta PeterO.
..oh yes playball as one word was a ‘what the?, then shrug and bung.
Took all day but almost got there. Very enjoyable. Enjoyed the misleading ‘flighty governess’ (Poppins?) and mistakenly thought Republican avoids beginners was going to be Republican minus ABC. So a few wrong trees barked up. Thank you Crucible and PeterO.
First time I’ve ever completed a crossword apart from the key clue (to RHINO).
Thanks Crucible and Peter O
“Bins” was commonly used as slang for glasses (spectacles) by my old man.
Like Wiggers@10, I thought of glasses for 7d. Never heard ‘bins’ used for binoculars, but have for glasses. Got to the same place in deciphering the clue, though I agree that binoculars would definitely be used to see ‘far things’, whereas glasses would only apply for myopeia. I found this crossword tricky to get into, with just a few answers spread across the grid initially, but slowly it filled up. I was very slow to see PESO at 10a which was my last one in.
RHINO was FOI and when I saw it was a gateway I wondered if it was right.One of those you see or dont..-maybe you have to be over a certain age to remember that silly use of the word. I preferred the arty theme in his Radian but the puzzle was just as good here.
LOI was PESO but I’ve only just discovered- i hastily wrote UBER CAR without parsing.
Thanks Crucible and Peter
I didn’t find this easy – partly because RHINO was LOI and the references to 17 had me head-scratching throughout. I had spotted the theme for once and, with an ‘N’ as my fourth letter, desperately wanted it to be ‘Coins’ and then HOLD OUT knocked that theory for six. USED CAR seemed straightforward though I was looking for symmetry – the same number of letters removed from each side, given how I read the clue.
TILT: that nit can be the egg as well as the insect. And I wasn’t aware of the physics symbol ‘I’ for current. I’d lazily assumed it was as in the ubiquitous I-Phone, Pad etc. Needed some help from PeterO for the parsing of FARTHINGS and agree with michelle @1 and DaveinNCarolina @2 that COTD is a toss up between that and MONEY BELT. Also enjoyed the construction of NUMISMATOLOGY and PLUTOCRACY. At the shorter end of the scale, SUIT and PESO were nice.
Thanks for the puzzle, Crucible, and the blog PeterO
Robeson was my last one in. Does anybody know who he is?
I don’t think I would ever have parsed Farthings.
A nice level of difficulty for me. Thanks Crucible and PeterO
Not my cup of camomile today. Not sure exactly why but I find Crucible excruciatingly irritating. But is just this confirmation bias in action?
Thanks Crucible and PeterO
I thought the money theme a bit silly – I don’t think if you asked any numismatist what he collected he would say “rhino”. “Rhino” implies money to spend; in fact I wrote in COINS after getting 9d, unparsed, of course.
We always call our binoculars “bins”, so FARTHING was no problem – a favourite, along with PLUTOCRACY.
howard – Paul Robeson. You will probably have heard his recording of Old man river.
Another puzzle that I enjoyed today. In terms of difficulty, right in the Goldilocks zone.
Thanks Crucible and PeterO.
Hadn’t heard of RHINO as slang for cash. Hence like Mark@11 it was my LOI. The theme was pretty obvious without it though.
My problem with 1A is that, to my mind, squad does not equal side. A squad is a larger group of players from which you select a side.
howard @ 14 – the great Paul Robeson, as muffin says. Wonderful voice, wonderful man who stood up for himself and his fellows in a very difficult time. Well worth searching out more about him. Most of my potential comments have been made. I had all but 1a filled in before I cracked RHINO, so I knew I was looking for some kind of money (and COINS wouldn’t fit – anyway, it was plural but the clue singular). Just goes to show that you don’t always need the key clue to solve others – but why make the key such an obscure, unknown term?
Penfold @19 I think you make a fair distinction. That said, when I grew up (my game is rugby), a side tended to be the 15 players plus a couple of reserves in case of injury – which was the only allowable reason for substitution. The reserves often failed to get on the pitch, Nowadays, the match squad of, generally, 22 all expect to get onto the pitch at some point. So the squad and the side are essentially the same.
Rhino wasn’t last in but went in after most of the clues referencing 17. Quite a feat for Crucible to defeat some of the excellent solvers here on the key clue for so long.
Lovely puzzle – right up my street.
LOI PESO cleverly concealed.
Penfold’s quiblet @19 is technically correct but plenty close enough for crosswordland.
Muffin @16: Thanks for that but, growing up, my dad used to sing this and it’s still my favourite.
Having said that, tried for ages to cram in ORBISON instead of ROBESON.
Many thanks, both.
Howard @14: Paul Robeson – big star of the 1930s, despite the colour of his skin. One of the voices of the century, imho. Put practically under house arrest in the USA after the war because of his activism and politics.
Paul Robeson – if you are in the UK and can get Freeview, he stars in “The Proud Valley” at 12 noon today on the Talking Pictures channel.
Great fun. As a naturalist who often uses binoculars, my first interpretation of BINS was the optical sort, rather than rubbish cans. It’s standard birders’ slang. (8) must be a misprint, surely for PLAY BALL. It’s a pity that the key word is an almost unknown slang word for money – one I’ve only ever come across in crosswords.
[Which is the richest animal in Africa?
The rhinoceros has piles of money
(You need to abuse the pronunciation of “ceros” to explain the “piles”!)]
Thanks for the blog, PeterO.
I knew RHINO from crosswords but it was still my last one in [I was stuck on COINS, too] and I’d never heard of the bins abbreviation, so technically a dnf for me today.
Like others, I liked NUMISMATOLOGY, PLUTOCRACY and SOVEREIGNS.
William @23 [thank you for the music] – I agree that PESO was very well clued. I discovered it was even cleverer: a PESO was a ‘piece of eight’, worth eight reals.
Many thanks to Crucible for another great puzzle.
Eileen @28: Really? I wonder if he intended it…do hope so.
Thank you Crucible, and thanks PeterO for coming to the rescue with FARTHINGS. The only explanation I could think of was that ‘hings’ and ‘bins’ were both slang for intestinal gases.
No-one will convince me that the clue to FARTHINGS is anything other than unfair as it is currently worded. It needs ‘these’ between ‘see’ and ‘old’. ‘Get your bins out to see’ on its own does not logically lead to ‘far things’. It needs an indicator.
I read Jennings and Darbishire (Anthony Buckeridge) as a boy and thus RHINO was FOI.
The teatray has a large dent in it this morning: LOI was USED CAR. Those “easy” hidden ones still fool me!
Thanks to Crucible and PeterO.
Personally I found STATERS a bit obscure and the wordplay not strong enough to direct me to it.
I’ve never encountered “bins” to mean glasses.
Grantinfreo @7 hits the nail on the head about 23ac. Sloppy and mildly irritating.
muffin @16 Reflecting, whilst walking the dogs, I think your criticism of the theme is a tad harsh. I grant you, the key word deserves the criticism it’s received, including your particular point. And the theme wasn’t exactly hidden. That said, apart from numismatology, there appear to me to be five named coins amongst the answers, another eleven solutions broadly pertaining to wealth plus six references in the clues. We’ve had themes with far fewer than that and, in itself, I’m not sure money is any less valid than planets, archbishops or Blakes 7?
Bingybing @31 I think you make a fair point. I confess to getting FARTHINGS from the crossers and having realised that 17 was something to do with money. The setter’s intention was clear and I suspect I mentally inserted a ‘these’ into the clue.
Eileen @28 Thank you so much for the extra layer of meaning in PESO. I realised, when I read the clue, that I didn’t know what pieces of eight actually were and mentally filed away an intention to look it up. Which I then forgot. Very clever.
That nether thought crossed my mind too essexboy
Was it Long John Silver’s parrot who used to squark “Pieces of eight”?
GinF
Yes. It was called “Captain Flint”, which became the nickname the Amazon pirates gave their Uncle Jim in “Swallows and Amazons”.
William Smith-Haddon @23 A quiblet is exactly what it was. It didn’t prevent me from getting the answer and enjoying the crossie. I should remember to thank Crucible and PeterO.
Ah yes, ta muffin
grantinfreo @38 An alternative rendering of Pieces of Eight is here. Not the one you had in mind, I’d guess. I once saw these chaps perform outside a pub in Cornwall and the phrase has had a musical lilt to it ever since.
Mark @36 – I have intended from childhood, when I first heard of the parrot, to look up ‘pieces of eight’. I finally got round to it this morning and was thrilled to find the extra bit in Collins!
The enumeration for PLAYBALL annoyingly meant that the SW corner was the last portion to be solved. Though I felt that simply had to be the correct solution for 23ac, I only had it tentatively written in pencil.
According to Chambers, RHINO is archaic slang. Confined to crosswords and the works of Anthony Buckeridge, then. I’m glad it was first one in for someone here; it held me up for as long as it took to complete two killer sudokus. Never heard of STATERS either. I liked PESO and FARTHINGS though.
Thanks for that Mark. (And their next one, Nova Scotia, definitely osha, reminded me of the phonetic debate :))
Much as it pains me to say anything positive about Crucible, I thought FARTHINGS was fine and one of the better clues
gif @46 Hopefully they didn’t do one called Wales. Or is that Whales? Or wails?
In one of Robeson’s roles as a miner his colour was referred to with a response that we are all black down here Saw him at Brighton Dome in his last years. A big man with a big voice that did not need a mike. After the show he was kindness personified. I still have his signed programme.Lovely to see him turn up in a Grauni crossword.
A very entertaining crossword. I liked the very neat STOLE at 3d and the peers getting their ROBES ON at 20d.
RHINO as slang for money goes back at least to the 17th century (first recorded 1688 according to the SOED), and seems to precede the abbreviation for the animal (1884). The origin of the slang term is apparently unknown.
PLUTOCRACY and related words come from Greek ploutos (wealth). Is there any connection with the god of the underworld Pluto (Plouton, -onos according to Chambers)? Or were they just similar sounding words?
Many thanks Crucible and PeterO.
Goldilocks zone for me as well. Annoyed at not parsing FARTHING as the device has been used before. (binoculars are only ever called ‘bins’ around here).
Bingybing @31
I read 7D as having an extended wordplay: that is, the “these” which you demand is ‘old 17’, in the form of the answer with a lift and separate. Unusual certainly, but, in my opinion, none the worse for that.
Hi Lord Jim @50 – Pluto was god of wealth, as well as the Underworld, and that is the derivation of his name – see here
An enjoyable puzzle. Far things made me laugh, and I did wonder about 23a. Thanks to PeterO for explaining 10a.
Well, that was pleasingly Goldilocks for me, as well as some earlier commentators. Likewise, 17ac was last in, despite the fact that it was clear what we were to look for.
It seems the derivation of Rhino is obscure. I only know the schoolboy joke definition that Muffin has already quoted.
Thanks to setter and blogger.
Lord Jim @50
Wikipedia, under Pluto (mythology) goes into this. It seems that Pluto started out as a euphemism for the fearsome Hades, emphasising the wealth of underground minerals, and crops grown from buried seed.
Eileen @53
You beat me to is (as indeed you should). At least we gave different sources, which concur.
I gave up on this, not knowing the ‘archaic slang.’ STATERS was not known either in this neck of the woods.
Surely, CV is not CAREER (?) I thought it was what you wrote when you changed career.
Horses for courses, and it’s good that some really enjoyed this.
Thanks Crucible for the effort and PeterO for making sense of it.
Thanks Eileen @53 and PeterO @56. This is a bit more complicated than I thought! Eileen’s source states that Pluto was the Roman god of the underworld and “the counterpart to the Greek god Hades”, which on reflection is how I think I understood it. However Chambers has for Pluto, “the Greek god of the underworld”. The Wikipedia article suggests that Ploutos was possibly at first a separate Greek god who later became conflated with Plouton, a euphemistic name for Hades.
Robi @ 58. CV=Curriculum Vitae, which literally means something like the course of one’s life, so CAREER is reasonable, I think.
Robi @58 I suspect others will beat me to this but CV is the abbreviation for ‘curriculum vitae’ which actually translates from the Latin for ‘course of my life’ which doesn’t seem that loose a definition of career. Particularly if one careered through it! Some CV’s, regrettably, really are life stories: I’ve read far too many overlong examples in my time.
There you go. Told you that would happen!
Mark @62. I reckon if you hadn’t typed “I suspect others will beat me to this but… ” you’d probably have beaten me to it!
Agree with Michelle @1 to favourite clues. 23 as one word was new but was confirmed quickly. Mark@13. Never heard of the use of nit other than as the egg of the head louse.
Bizarre to do a themed crossword and have the theme word last in.
sheffield hatter @63 Yup! And if I hadn’t ignored my own criticism of overlong CV’s and written more than was necessary. I clearly didn’t have the time to write something pithy…
Scorpio11 @64. The only reference I have found to PLAYBALL (all one word) is here: Wiktionary, but this is not in the sense of cooperate, which is always two words, in my experience.
me @ 67: link failed (again). https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/playball
Scorpio11 @64 I’ve managed to get through my own and my brother’s childhoods and then raised two sons to teenagehood without actually encountering said varmints. Luck or good hygiene, I wouldn’t want to say. So I’m guilty of yet another lifelong assumption, simply through never querying it. Always thought the ‘nit nurse’ was looking for the lice and anything else she discovered was incidental. TILT. Though the dictionaries suggest nit is both the egg and its youthful form.
[This may be too much infomation, but the young ones cling tightly to adjacent hairs; combing with a “nit comb” breaks their legs and kills them.]
Confused by money belt definition, cant find the definition for where the rich live?
Also never heard of a CV career? Can anyone help?
George @71
It’s a jokey definition, by analogy with “Bible belt” etc.
See 60 and 61 re: CV
Ah okay thanks, so not proper definitions, I stopped doing the puzzle after those clues… I really wish setters wouldn’t do that!
Sheffield hatter@67. Playball was confirmed as being the correct answer due to other posters querying the validity of the answer on the comments page. Mark@69. You have never lived. Lol.
Like many, I’ve encountered RHINO only in puzzles — only in this one, in fact. Like many, I had COINS until HOLD OUT stopped that. At that point, did anyone else try “Chink”?
Thanks Eileen @53. Now that I know that Pluto was Father of the Gods/Dis Pater (why isn’t it Deorum?) and that that name led to the underworld, does that account for “Dis” being the name (I think) for both the place and the deity?
Anybody else try résumé for CV?
George @75 Some of these types of clue are of the “cryptic definition” (CD) type – you see more of those on Mondays and a lot of people find them annoying because they are so vague. In the case of “money belt” here the setter has used a question mark which is typically there to clue you to the idea that the clue is “by example” (e.g. “ford” standing for “car”) or that something weird is going on. In the case of 15 down I got “money” straight away but then stared and stared until “belt” came to me at which point the clue moved from “totally frustrating – how is anyone meant to get this?” to “I am so dumb, that is really funny” in about a microsecond. A money belt is properly defined in the first part of the clue so the second part is actually the wordplay, and it sure is a play on words.
A good puzzle has a variety of clue types – some setters are anagram heavy, some like their envelopes/charades (like this one) but the odd weird clue is always fair and interesting to my mind. It’s one of the joys of this paper, that they allow a bit of craziness. As a consequence some not-so-correct things slip through (I was not sold on “career” either as it is a specific part of the CV, not covering education, skills, training) but the variety keeps it interesting for me.
Lord Jim @59
Taking a closer look at the link given by Eileen, I do see that it claims that Pluto was Roman. I do not know how the author Prof. Geller would defend that, but the Wikipedia article specifically refutes it, and gives examples, in the Dramatis Personae of Aristophanes The Frogs, and in Plato, which would put him in the Greek camp.
muffin @73
Indeed, and “stockbroker belt” would be even closer.
Thanks to Crucible and PeterO.
Lumpy porridge for me, not helped by the effects of last night’s on-line roistering with some musical friends. FARTHINGS was great as were many others (MONEY BELT) but some (RHINO, STATERS, PLAYBALL and, for me, ROBESON) just didn’t cut it. Paul Robeson cannot be plucked from the air on the basis of “US singer” as a definition – he retired in the early 1960s and while I remember him it’s only just about and I am reasonably antique. I seem constantly to find myself re-visiting the theme of clues being more appropriate to the golden days of my youth – which means they are more than obscure for any prospective new crop of crossword advocates. In fairness I thought the clue was great once I got it but anyone under, say, 55 must have felt they had (once again?) wandered into pre-history.
I’m not sure these Monday soirees are a good idea – turning me into a Tuesday grump.
Ah okay fair enough! I might grow to like those weird definitions eventually then!
Scorpio11. Thanks. I never go btl on the crossword page so didn’t see that. Several on there (as here) have queried it, and it seems only one poster on there has written “…having googled it I see it is ok as 8.” However, there is no source given, and I would guess, having Googled it myself, that it’s the one I linked to @68. Playball is a ball that is played with; play ball means cooperate. Of course, the clue was still easy to solve, but I’ll bet I wasn’t the only one to look at it more times than would have been the case if it had been correctly enumerated.
Valentine @77. Yes, I thought of CHINK for 17a, as it’s the sound made by money, etc rattling together, but I couldn’t get the rest of the clue to play ball.
Hi Valentine @77
You’re quite right: of course ‘Father of the gods’ would be, in Latin, ‘Pater deorum’ but there’s a mistranslation in the link i gave, which I’m afraid I missed. Hades was not father of the gods. Dis – ditis [more usually dives – divitis] means ‘rich’, therefore Dis Pater means ‘rich father’ – QED. As you say, Dis is used as both the name of the god of the Underworld and the Underworld itself – and quite often crops up as such in crosswords.
I think I first came across RHINO in the “Jennings” books some of which were dramatized on the radio in Children’s Hour-I’m probably losing the room here!
What an excellent puzzle. The most enjoyable for some time and there’s been some tough competition recently. Too many favourites to list. I do wonder what Paul would have done with FARTHING?
Thanks Crucible.
Sheffield hatter@82. Google “play ball as one word” Wictionary. Voila.
Sorry Playball.
Scorpio11 @86
OK, I just tried that. Every hit on the first page had corrected it to “play ball”. Even putting it in quotes gave:
No results found for “play ball as one word”.
Results for play ball as one word (without quotes):
(I’m not going to go any further!)
It’s just a Grauniadism.
Same results for “playball”. I don’t think it can be justified.
Thanks to PeterO and of course to Crucible. A very enjoyable crossword, just the right level of difficulty for the old approach of “Solve a few, put it down, do something else for 15 minutes, come back to it.” I slightly mis-parsed a couple of clues but no matter, it made no difference. I am another who read “bins” as spectacles but agsin it made no real difference to the meaning – so yes I did parse FARTHINGS ! Strangely I solved a number of the cross-references to 17ac before “RHINO” itself came to mind. That took a fair bit of thought. I actually knew that meaning of RHINO but only from the old bawdy song “The WIld West Show” – about which the less said the better !!
Scorpio11 @86. Did you read the definition in Wiktionary? Playball (all one word) does not mean cooperate, as I pointed out in my response @67 above. It has a very limited meaning that is not compatible with the clue. (I’m not sure we should be accepting Wiktionary in preference for Chambers, Collins, Websters, OED, etc anyway.) The enumeration was wrong.
George @81 – perhaps! I think that, after homophones that only work for non-rhotic speakers, jokey definitions are the most divisive clues out there. I tend to find them very hard without the odd crosser, but then that’s how crosswords work – you get some clues which lead in to others.
Another one finished – perhaps I’m getting better. LOI was RHINO – I didn’t know the sense of ‘money’; COINS was there a long time until HOLD OUT scuppered it. Couldn’t parse NEST EGG, PESO or UNITS (all my life I’d imagined nits in hair were little creatures, not eggs). Always something to learn. Thanks Peter and Crucible.
I well remember the difficulty in getting rid of my daughter’s head lice when she was young. The eggs of head lice are nits.
Thanks to Crucible for a challenging crossword for me, and to PeterO for the blog.
I remember hearing rhino as a slang expression during my misspent youth, in Keynsham. But I think it meant something else…
blaise @95
“Keynsham” to me always suggests Horace Batula……
Well I never. Everyone was remarking on RHINO, which is standard crosswordese – but I had never seen bins in that sense. Glad to get the belated education.
Yes, Radio Luxembourg, at about 7.30 pm muffin? I remember the jingle. What a foreign country the past is. But I think you are slavonicising the surname, no?
Being not very good at crosswords and not knowing 17a made this a bit of a non-starter
Not really my cup of tea, over all, I’m afraid. Too much fiddly word snipping and patching ( e.g. 1ac ) and some quite clunky surfaces. However we all have our different tastes, which this site demonstrates so well, and long may that last!
@ 72 – George, I’ve never heard of CV meaning “career” either. A CV is surely a document that summarises one’s previous career experience so far, along with various other information (e.g. name, contact details, education and qualifications, interests etc). Not a “career”.
Pretty good puzzle that I managed to butcher. I spent time at 1 trying out BURSARY to no avail and bizarrely put in ROSIEST at 8 without properly parsing it, until forced to change it. I also missed PESO completely. Funnily, I had no problem with RHINO, which went straight in.
The PLAY BALL numbering must be a Graun botch job. However, if we go with one word, how about:
Bouncer left Tinseltown via mountain to the west (8)
muffin@96 Horace Batchelor in Keynsham spelt . . . Haven’t heard that for a long time!
drofle @1o3
I never realised it was “Batchelor” rather than “Batula”. When I was an A level chemsitry student, we always called a spatula a “horace”!
muffin@104 Haha! Apparently Horace made millions for his clients. Just looked him up on Wikipedia.
Everything bar the Rhino for me…very enjoyable puzzle, well pitched mix of clues … I’ve never heard that slang for money before (unlike bins as short for binoculars which I thought was common-ish? I’m no twitcher etc and I’ve heard of it?) … everyday’s a school day as the youth would say …
Late to this and, as for many others, RHINO was LOI, after HOLD OUT, which had been held off by an unparsed but apparently required COINS. The rhino took an awfully long time coming, and reminded me of a time standing with a tree expert beside a lake in Zimbabwe, intently examining some leaves, and turning around to find a rhino right behind us, bemused that we stood between it and the water. The rhino in this case similarly crept up unexpectedly and must have emerged from a distant memory of Jennings and Derbyshire. Best clue for me was ROBESON, which made me laugh, as did the MONEY BELT. I’m surprised that Robeson is not well known to some people here. He is generally acknowledged as one of the great figures of the twentieth century and was recently the subject of a whole week of programmes on BBC Radio 4.
This reminded me of the schoolboy joke, which is the richest animal in the world? The rhinoceros, because its name comes from rhino, meaning money, and sore ass, meaning piles, hence piles of money. I’ll get my coat.
One perceives a notable absence of fans of the gorgeous Timothy Spall as Lord Emsworth in “Blandings” (based on PG Wodehouse novels). A wonderful riotous romp with frequent allusions to “rhino” from Emsworth’s son Freddy (delightfully played by Jack Farthing) who frequently needs to touch the guvner for the necessary rhino after assorted antics at the Pink Pussy….
Not quite FOI but very nearly in this house!