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Puck at his mischievous best.
After a first run through, I had two solutions across and two of the long down solutions, so I thought I was in for a hard slog, but gradually the answers came to light. There were a few clever misdirections (for example the Sierra in 22 across had me looking for an extra S).
I didn’t spot the colourful mini-theme until I was finished.
If I were to be critical, I would say that the definition at 7dn may be too loose for those unaware of the film, and that it takes a bit of work to gather the anagram fodder at 14dn, but neither of these detracted from the fun. As a Scot, I don’t think REEKER and REKA are homophones, but they are to many people, so I’ll let that one slide.
On the other hand, I loved the clues for LACEWING, GREENHOUSE GASES, DISH, and (my favourite) OBTAINED, which is sublime in its simplicity and surface.
Thanks, Puck
| ACROSS | ||
| 8 | TEARDROP | Small show of joy perhaps, after rent reduction (8) |
| [after] TEAR (“rent”), DROP (“reduction”) | ||
| 9 | LEADER | No 1 from Adele, originally by Queen (6) |
| *(adele) [anag:originally] by R (Regina, so !queen”) | ||
| 10 | SWEEPS | Strokes, the first of which produces 8s (6) |
| S (the first of S(trokes) + WEEPS (“produces 8s” ie “teardrops”) | ||
| 11 | TENTACLE | Can’t foul in the box, one might be feeling (8) |
| *(cant) [anag:foul] in TELE(vision) (“the box”) | ||
| 12 | DISH | A little child is half-price fare (4) |
| Hidden in [a little] “chilD IS Half-price” | ||
| 13 | INTERVIEWS | Football team’s about to struggle with questions after final whistle? (10) |
| INTER’S (“football team’s”, as in Inter Milan) about VIE (“to struggle”) + W (with) | ||
| 15 | LED UP TO | Duel? Pot shot happened just before! (3,2,2) |
| *(duel pot) [anag:shot] | ||
| 16 | OPTIMUM | Best work is before setter’s filled stomach (7) |
| OP(us) (“work”) is before I’M (“setter’s”) filled TUM (“stomach”) | ||
| 18 | UNBECOMING | Tabloid outing 9? Pretty inappropriate (10) |
| (s)UN (“tabloid”, outing its leader (see 9ac)) + BECOMING (“pretty”) | ||
| 19 | YOMP | Trek round with openers from Middlesex, promptly after close of play (4) |
| O (“round”) with [openers from] M(iddlesex) P(romptly) after [close of] (pla)Y | ||
| 20 | OBTAINED | Got into bed with a novel (8) |
| *(into bed a) [anag:novel] | ||
| 22 | AIRERS | Those drying Sierra winds? (6) |
| *(sierra) [anag:winds] | ||
| 23 | EUREKA | ‘Aha!‘, said solver, ‘A stinker!’ (6) |
| Homophone [said] of (YOU (“solver”) + REEKER (“a stinker”)) | ||
| 24 | LACEWING | Delicate six-footer in league champion side (8) |
| L (league) + ACE (“champion”) + WING (“side”) | ||
| DOWN | ||
| 1 | RED WHITE AND BLUE | Standard of wine drunk with journalist, eating a new sort of cheese (3,5,3,4) |
| RED (“wine”) +*(with) [anag:drunk] + ED (“journalist”) eating A + N (new) + BLUE (“sort of cheese”) | ||
| 2 | GREENHOUSE GASES | Sees enough and rages about cause of climate change? (10,5) |
| *(sees enough rages) [anag:about] | ||
| 3 | PROSCIUTTO | Experts to include one into chopped ham (10) |
| PROS (“experts”) and TO include I (“one”) into CUT (“chopped”), so PROS-C(I)UT-TO | ||
| 4 | UPSTATE | Flying past in pick-up truck, towards Albany from New York? (7) |
| *(past) [anag:flying] in UTE (short for utility vehicle, so “pick-up truck”) | ||
| 5 | CLAN | Scottish group just started live set in prison (4) |
| [just started] L(ive) set in CAN (“prison”) | ||
| 6 | CAPABILITYBROWN | Limit on skill shown by ex-PM as a gardener (10,5) |
| CAP (“limit”) on ABILITY (“skill”) shown by (Gordon) BROWN (“ex-PM”) | ||
| 7 | YELLOWSUBMARINE | Chicken sandwich, US style? That’ll get one animated (6,9) |
| YELLOW (“chicken”) + SUBMARINE (“sandwich, US style”)
The (rather loose?) definition refers to the 1968 animated film, which starred the Beatles. |
||
| 14 | REPUGNANCE | Bad pun initially causes extreme anger or disgust (10) |
| *(pun c e anger) [anag:bad] where C and E are [initially] C(auses) E(xtreme) | ||
| 17 | BIRD FLU | Complaint, as Charlie Parker hurriedly withdrew broadcast (4,3) |
| BIRD (nickname of musician “Charlie Parker”) + homophone [broadcast] of FLEW (“hurriedly withdrew”) | ||
| 21 | NOAH | Shipbuilder dropping into Bath regularly (4) |
| (i)N(t)O(b)A(t)H [dropping regularly] | ||
Thanks Puck and loonapick
At first sight this looked pretty impossible. First two were YOMP and AIRERS, which allowed me to guess CAPABILITY BROWN, and it then all went steadily. Lots of clever clues. LACEWING favourite.
Only one tiny quibblet: BECOMING has more or less the same meaning as it does in (UN)BECOMING.
Started slow and didn’t speed up much, but an enjoyable amble. 10ac was quirky, 11ac nudge-ish, and loi 13ac clever, while Yomp was a ‘surely not..well I’ll be!’. The four long ‘uns were nice and gettable, but I still just pottered, enjoyably, thanks Puck and loonapick.
After yesterday’s dnf I was pleased to get my through this with reasonable speed. The four long ones initially looked impossible but once the last of these went in things moved smoothly. A groan for EUREKA, a stinker indeed. Loi was CLAN but I should have seen it a lot earlier. A lot of enjoyable clues including 16, 20, 24 etc
Thanks to Loonapick and Puck
The four long ones slid in easily-the first fwo of them colourful which suggested more of the same on the other two.
the rest also fitted in with a search for YOMP which I didnt know and a hiccup not seeing the embed in DISH.
Snooker fans would have searched in vain for PINK and BLACK
Good fun, Thanks
1d: hournalist?
Great fun.
I’m sure this is either common knowledge (or possibly apocryphal) but Yellow Submarine was the Queen Mother’s favourite film, which she would watch every Christmas!
(Funny old world).
Many thanks, both and all.
All those colours certainly helped; I thought I was heading for a clearance, but as copmus @4 suggested I was thwarted with two balls to go.
I liked the musical allusions, especially Adele meeting (the) Queen, and the sporting ones (there’s even PSG lurking in the corner, probably coincidentally). Also an American feel to quite a few clues/solutions – the RED WHITE AND BLUE, the SUB sandwich, UPSTATE New York, Charlie Parker as BIRD.
And when I finally finished it was a EUREKA moment – very enjoyable, thanks Puck and loonapick.
Thanks, loonapick, very pleasant solve.
Took an age to see why questions after final whistle led to INTERVIEWS but a suppose it’s a reference to sports on the telly.
Was going to question the need for just started in the CLAN cluing, thinking L was an acceptable abbreviation for live in the electrical sense, but perhaps it isn’t.
Puck seems invariably to give me a sense of foreboding with clues like LACEWING which apparently require me to know a league champion side. When it finally dawns that no such GK is required, the result is pure crossword satisfaction.
Wasn’t aware of the YELLOW SUBMARINE as a film, only Ringo’s offering but it went in easily enough.
Smashing to ‘meet’ our esteemed editor Professor Hugh last night on John Halpern’s Zoom meeting. Felt like a young teacher meeting the head!
Many thanks, both.
PS missed the colours, of course!
An intriguing grid and construction: only three down clues after the first seven along the top line, and all of the theme contained in the four long answers (nice snooker observation copmus @4). I have to confess to a dnf: EUREKA is definitely groan inducing, as already observed, and I didn’t remember the Charlie Parker nickname until I pressed Reveal and then kicked myself. (For a moment I was trying to see how peanuts fitted in and then remembered that’s Charlie Brown!)
We had ‘standard’ meaning flag quite recently so 1d raised immediate suspicions; as soon as I’d ruled out the stars and bars, the solution arrived. As others have already pointed out, the other long ones were straightforward though, as loonapick says in his opening comments, the 7d definition is a bit vague. Of the others, I enjoyed the interplay between TEARDROP and SWEEPS with the latter being especially clever; TENTACLE was a nice construction with ‘foul’ as an unusual anagram indicator and INTERVIEWS has a nice surface. Toss up for COTD between two candidates already submitted by our blogger and by muffin @1: LACEWING is lovely (once I’d stopped trying to insert the usual ANT somewhere) but OBTAINED probably does enough to take top spot: nicely misdirectional, a neat anagram and not a wasted word.
Thanks Puck and loonapick for blog and comments.
LOI was EUREKA. How apt. Theme-blind as usual!
My thanks to Puck and loonapick.
Thanks loonapick, especially for unpacking REPUGNANCE – I was lazy and it HAD to be that (definition clear and just from the crossing G and PUN somehow appearing around it) and INTERVIEWS which again had to be right (that penultimate W had me scratching my head and the relative obscurity of INTER as the chosen football team took me a while to arrive at) but I couldn’t fully reconcile it to the clue which you have done very clearly.
I agree with your favourite which misled me a few ways, also liked LACEWING and TENTACLE which reminded me of elderly aunts who always abbreviated it thus (always TV or telly for me!).
Thank goodness for the long ones, i think this would have been impossible for me without the 23A moments arriving from them. But overall this was, like yesterday, a slow but steady progression with a lot to admire. Thanks, Puck.
YOMP is a word I first heard in reports from the Falklands War. Enjoyed this – most of the left side fell pretty quickly but YELLOW SUBNARINE was one of the last few.
Thanks to Puck and loonapick
A very nicely constructed puzzle with the four long colourful down clues. My favourite was also 20a OBTAINED, loonapick – as you say, beautiful in its simplicity.
It took me a while to twig why TELE was “box” in 11a – I usually think of it spelt as “telly” (as indeed in William’s comment @8).
essexboy @7: RED WHITE AND BLUE isn’t just American! “Red white and blue, what does it mean to you?”, There’ll always be an England, Vera Lynn.
Many thanks Puck and loonapick.
Thanks for the blog, loonapick. I agree with your favourites (OBTAINED being the top one), with the addition of LEADER – also for its simplicity and surface.
Many thanks to Puck, as ever, for the fun.
Lovely puzzle but isn’t ute specifically Ozspeak?
I’ll join the chorus of praise for this crossword. I targeted the four long ones first and got three of them, and that helped me to get through the grid, the last sector to fall being the left ‘edge’ building on 1d. I agree with what you say about OBTAINED, loonapick, and there were other excellent clues.
Many thanks to Puck and loonapick.
For whatever reason, totally on Puck’s wavelength this morning, whooshed through this. But couldn’t for ages spot DISH hidden away at 12ac and therefore a EUREKA moment, being LOI.
beery hiker @13: the etymology of YOMP appears uncertain from the checking I was doing earlier. ‘Obscure military origin’ appears quite often with, yes, references to the Falklands War which is when I first encountered it too.
Two possible suggestions I’ve come across: it is an Anglicisation of an Irish gaelic phrase meaning carrying a heavy load (or pregnant!) which does fit with my recollection that it wasn’t so much the trekking long distances over difficult terrain that characterised yomping but the ability of the soldiers to do so at speed and carrying unfeasibly large loads of kit. The other is the suggestion that a Norwegian officer who had been training the British in arctic warfare pronounced ‘jump’ as ‘yomp’ so jumping forward, as in advancing to the next objective, became ‘yomping’!
Three super cryptic puzzles in a row, and this one perhaps the best … happy days are here again.
At first glance this looked a formidable challenge (in both clues and grid-structure) and I settled down for the evening. But to my surprise I was done in forty minutes, during which each minute had been great fun, and left me thirsting for more. Favorite clues included first-one-in – CAPABILITY BROWN (Chatsworth was a memorable haunt of my youth), BIRD FLU, UNBECOMING, YELLOW SUBMARINE – the list goes on. YOMP and LACEWING were unfamiliar, but easily deduced from their clues. And it’s always nice when everything is parsed-and-dusted as the last one goes in. Very well done, setter.
Thanks Lord Jim @14 (re red white and blue); to my shame I’d forgotten Vera Lynn! The song going round in my head was this one by Creedence Clearwater Revival.
My confidence restored after yesterday’s brick wall. Obtained, Interviews and Yellow Submarine were very neat. Ta loonapick & Puck
I enjoyed EUREKA a lot because, like Auriga @11, it was my LOI. Also liked OBTAINED for the smooth surface.
We had never heard of YOMP but managed to parse it out correctly. Also hadn’t heard of Charlie Parker, but with the crossers and FLU it was fairly obvious.
Thanks Puck and loonapick!
Pnin @16: yes, “ute” for pickup truck is Australian. But…(a) that’s kind of cheeky in a clue that’s otherwise so American, and (b) who cares? As I’ve said here before, you’re expected to know the language–all of it, whether Australian, American, Irish, Canadian, or Jamaican. A tag telling you which part of the Anglosphere the word is from is often helpful, sure, but not actually necessary.
As for the puzzle–I agree with the general praise. OBTAINED is the winner for COTD. I’m one of those who didn’t spot the theme, so the long answers were slower. I’ll add to the quibble that REPUGNANCE was one of those where there really was no choice but to put it in and only then reconstruct what exactly you were supposed to be anagramming.
rodshaw @20 – I nearly said at 15 that I’m always pleased to see Capability Brown appear in a crossword (and he does, perhaps surprisingly, quite often). I’m a great admirer of his and Chatsworth is one of my favourite places.
With his Hob hat on, Puck themed his whole Indy crossword last Saturday on Charlie Parker.
Nice puzzle, only quibble being the UTE bit of UPSTATE, which I had to take on trust as being something truck-related. Came here and found there was a theme! As ever.
OBTAINED was an absolute cracker. One often ignores little words like that, treating them as auxiliaries to the meat of the clue, but there’s the def, hiding in plain sight.
Myrvin@5 …wouldn’t be a loonapick blog without a typo (I have fat fingers, which is a redundant observation as I am generally rotund); now edited.
I didn’t spot the colours theme till I came here, but it didn’t spoil my pleasure. I’m another who found OBTAINED very impressive, also EUREKA, BIRD FLU and CAPABILITY BROWN (although I was depressingly slow on the uptake with that last one: there being quite a few past PMs with five letters, I was mentally running a host of horticultural possibilities through my mind…). Thanks to Loonapick for help completing the parsing on 14d, and thanks to Puck for the entertaining mischief
PS, I forgot to add: how deliciously archaic to have TV as “tele”! I’m not complaining, indeed, I’ve come to expect a panoply of archaisms amongst the synonyms and vocab-tastic offerings.
With luck, wireless, wax-cylinders and cats’ whiskers may soon appear…
I read 23 across as U REEK + A.
That was a slow solve this morning filled with trepidation at the sight of so many apparent sporting references but which turned out not to be sporting references. Puck – you are playing with me 🙂 FOI RED WHITE AND BLUE and then three cups of coffee later to the next one in… Definitely on a go-slow today. Thank you Puck and loonapick!
Wellbeck @29: bizarrely, wireless is, of course, state of the art these days!
I felt like the clue for 23a was aimed at me, for my semi-rant about Paul’s collection of obscurities yesterday, so it was perhaps appropriate that EUREKA! was my last one in. Managed to complete fairly easily without seeing that there was a colour theme. I haven’t come across this grid for quite a while (beery hiker will no doubt know exactly when) – it can be tricky, with four long ones leading to lots of crossers but absence of same if you’re struggling.
Thanks to Puck for being on a wavelength that I was able to tune into, and Loonapick for an impeccable blog, fat fingers notwithstanding.
The word YOMP was (probably ) exclusive to British infantry units until 1982 reporting of the Falklands War.
A bit like most of us had never heard of the S.A.S. until the 1980 Iranian Embassy siege after every which half the miiltary fantasists in the UK would insist they were “SAS but I can’t talk about it”
I
a
Here in the States, there seems to be a kind of obsession with the phrase “red white and blue”, it being synonymous with both the Stars and Stripes and patriotism itself. Although as you may have heard there are such things as Red States and Blue States, there is no formal or informal adoption of a colour (or color) by political parties, as there is in the UK, so every political ad, poster, bumper sticker etc. has to feature all three colors and only those three. Boring! You tell people that a large number of the countries of the world, including a lot of the major ones, have red, white and blue flags and they are quite surprised.
I finished in about half the time it took Puck to put a girdle round about the earth, but just 24 lights meant it felt like a sprint, especially after the quartet of colourful roof supports were in place.
I agree (Lord Jim @14) that ‘telly’ is how most people spell it. “The word is half Greek, half Latin – no good can come of it.”
LEADER and INTERVIEWS are neat, and OBTAINED nicely deceptive in that the definition isn’t obvious. I also liked BIRD FLU, which made me realise I can’t recall having seen any clues referencing the pandemic, maybe because it would be considered in bad taste while it’s still raging. Still, one day we might see something like “Horribly carnivorous killer (11)”.
2Scotcheggs @36 – yesterday’s FT puzzle by Dogberry (our Shed): “Irrational fear about returning sea causing widespread disease (8)”.
Thanks both,
Failed on 11a.
10a doesn’t work for me. Shouldn’t it be ‘Strokes, the first OFF which produces 8s’? Otherwise there is no indication that the S should be removed.
At 4dn, I first raised an eyebrow, then after more thought I raised both eyebrows together…
I thought it was a liitle unfair as it required some local knowledge which, not being American, I don’t possess. I don’t know if Albany is “upstate” of New York. Nor do I care. Is anywhere “downstate” of New York?
But after lunch, and in a better mood, I began to think, “Why not?” After all, anglophones from other countries are far more often flummoxed by Briticisms. Time to give them some encouragement with a clue that is perhaps not totally mysterious to some of them. But only occasionally, mind!
And as MrPenney@24 says, if I don’t know the whole language yet, I am happy to keep learning.
Thanks to Puck for a fun solve as is his wont, and loonapick for the usual informative blog.
For pick-up truck/UTE, I guessed that it came from picking up “ETU”, found something called an ETU on truck-related websites, and left it that. It wasn’t my only unparsed one, though, as I didn’t know either INTER or the full name of the sandwich found in Subways.
I can’t help but feel a bit short-changed at the wordplay for SWEEPS: the solver is meant to come up with the leading “S” because it’s… the first letter of the answer?
That question-mark after “cause of climate change” raised an eyebrow, too. Maybe just acknowledging the deviation from the Guardian style guide (which prefers “crisis”)?
A slow start and then a steady solve. Like many, COTD for me is OBTAINED. I thought of the tricolour with RED WHITE AND BLUE in part due to the french film trilogy many years ago “Three Colours” ( each film given one of the colours), rather than other flags with those 3 colours, including my own country’s. Never heard of YOMP nor did INTER really spring to mind re a football team, though I have heard of thethe blog example of Inter Milan.
Thanks to Puck and Loonapick.
@Tresmegistus: people who live in the state of New York, as I do, refer to “upstate” and “downstate,” with the latter meaning New York City and environs. When we upstaters (I live near Albany, definitely upstate( tell people from other places where we’re from, we say “upstate New York” (no “of”). People from downstate tend to say they’re from New York, with no qualifier. I know that’s far more than you wanted to know, but since this one was so close to home for me I couldn’t resist!
Tyngewick@38, BiglyNifty@40 – the grammar’s weird but I think you’re both probably coming at it slightly back to front hence why it’s not sitting right with you.
The S comes from the first letter of the word Strokes in the clue, rather than being taken from the first letter of the answer. The word “produces” is part of the definition of the word “weeps” (“produces teardrops” = weeps) rather than saying “doing this to the word produces a word for teardrops”. It’s actually just definition then wordplay but where the wordplay refers to the word used to define the answer.
Thanks Puck — this crossword was great fun and represents why I enjoy solving cryptics — it was the best antidote to my failures with yesterday’s Paul and Dogberry (FT). Favourites included YELLOW SUBMARINE, OPTIMUM, UPSTATE, and OBTAINED for its sublime surface. Thanks Loonapick for untangling UNBECOMING as well as DISH which I guessed and cannot believe I failed to see. YOMP was a new word but easy to parse.
Tyngewick@38 and Biglynifty@40 – in case no one else gets there first: I was also confused at first BUT i think the trick is to ignore the surface reading of the clue and just do what it says, as per loonapick in the blog – so you get the S from “Strokes, the first of which” and then concatenate this with a word meaning “produces teardrops”, assuming you have solved 8A, which could certainly be WEEPS eg “My eye weeps when i rub it after chopping chillies”. The experts on here can decide if this means Strokes is somehow doing double duty as both definition and part of wordplay.
I got myself similarly convoluted over the A in Eureka but again loonapick has settled this perfectly.
Hope i haven’t confused things further!
Thank you AC87@43 for a more succinct explanation than mine.
Gazzh @45. No double duty going on with SWEEPS. Strokes is the definition, and “the first of which”=S is the first part of the wordplay. I thought this was a well-constructed clue, with the second part of the wordplay referring to another answer, as a sort of counterpoint to the first part which is self-referential.
Eileen @25 – I’ve also seen CAPABILITY BROWN in other crosswords, but this was one of the best clues – I solved it by thinking of five-letter ex-PMs, and after rejecting Heath and Blair, the rest was easy – only one worthy gardener on the planet named Brown, and he happened to be one of my all-time favorite Brits, as influenced by many visits to Chatsworth –the latter and surrounding villages being a weekend ‘lung’ if you lived in the Sheffield area. Much later I discovered many of my ancestors were buried in Curbar churchyard.
sheffield hatter@47 – I see your point, but still don’t like the clue. To me, ‘of which’ refers to the answer not the definition. Possibilities for the answer based on the definition alone include ‘drives’, ‘glances’ ‘caresses’, ‘pulls’ inter alia, then I would have taken the ‘first of which’ to mean one of the letters d, g, c, or p, again inter alia. And as AC87@43 points out, the grammar is weird. This makes the answer indeterminate and self-referential, which in my mind, makes it a poor clue.
The colourful down clue also reminded me of Kieczlowski’s brilliant trilogy of blue,white and red. The movie order is different though to be part of the clue as is (would have been a nice counterpoint to yellow submarine movie in every way!). Sweeps to me seems like a failed &lit. I agree with Gazzh that it is a bit double duty. First of which is W not S unless you want to involve the meaning part (strokes) in the wordplay. I don’t pronounce reka and reeker the same way but I figured eventually some do. Thanks Puck and loonapick.
I am making my first cryptic xword in a long time (almost a decade) and while it is fun, I am realizing, it is hard to come up with a beautiful clue like 20a. So overall a class act from Puck and better than yesterday’s Paul IMO and it was a good Paul. So there.
Tyngewick @49. I fail to see how “of which” can be taken as a reference to the first letter of the answer. It *provides* the first letter of the answer, but it has to *refer* to something that is given, in this case the first letter of the definition. A reference to the first letter of the answer would be grossly unfair, and it would be invidious to suggest that Puck would do something of the sort.
Smashing to ‘meet’ our esteemed editor Professor Hugh last night on John Halpern’s Zoom meeting. Felt like a young teacher meeting the head!
!!!!!!!!
Many thanks for the hints, I got about half way then hit the wall, though there were a few I missed.
Very good puzzle. Not much to add, but I also loved OBTAINED. Lots of good surfaces today, particularly those for LEADER, TENTACLE, INTERVIEWS and AIRERS.
To add to the theme, PINK does appear as a Nina starting at the P in optimum and going southwest. Annoyingly, I still can’t find BLACK, but maybe there’s enough of that in the grid anyway 🙂 .
PS Thanks, Puck and loonapick!
Just want to add my voice to the chorus in praise of ‘got into bed with a novel’. An instant classic, IMO
Definitely a challenge today… though for some reason I’m usually more on Puck’s wavelength than Paul’s so enjoyed this more than yesterday’s.
Re 10a, I certainly wouldn’t call it a “failed” &lit (or cad, i.e. Clue As Definition, which is my preferred term). It might be a partial cad (in this case a full clue that is also in part the definition), but then we’ve seen that form before, and while not everyone’s cup of tea a partial cad is usually considered within-bounds.
Once accepting this as a partial cad (and thus putting “strokes” in play for wordplay), the construct of “<word>, the first of which” to get the first letter of <word> isn’t really different from “first of <word>” or “<word> first” (the latter is really the same form, just with the prepositional phrase implied rather than explicit). Seems fair enough to me.
But I also wonder if this might be a full-out cad related to rowing and we just haven’t teased it out? A stroke is a full cycle of an oar in rowing, but is also a term for the final rowing position in a rowing shell. An 8-seat shell is called, well, an “eight” (or perhaps in this case an “8”?), and that is also the number of the final rowing position in an eight… i.e. the stroke position. I haven’t teased out a meaningful rowing related sentence from the entire clue… but then I’m only vaguely familiar with the sport. Still, there does seem to be plenty of fodder there to possibly link it all together into a full blown cad?… albeit perhaps a contorted one, as is often the case to get the wordplay to work as well.
Tip of the hat to our setter and blogger… as always, much appreciated.
Lovely puzzle. Obtained was excellent. Thanks Puck and loonapick.
2Scotcheggs @36, re the half Greek, half Latin Television: I recently read a blog about English words which we don’t generally know are derived from Greek. Box was one, and idiot another. I’ve encountered the phrase “idiot box” for TV before, so it’s nice to know it’s fully Greek! 🙂
(Hang on, I’ll see if I can find that blog…)
Found it: https://talesoftimesforgotten.com/2020/06/19/common-english-words-you-probably-didnt-know-came-from-ancient-greek/
Mark @10 Just to be compulsive, the “stars and bars” refers to the Confederate flag; the flag of the USA is the “stars and stripes.”
Trismegistus @39 To answer your specific question, New York City is at the southern tip of New York State (that being where they put the ocean), so it’s as downstate as you can get. And as Iroquois says, upstate and downstate are regions, not directions — you aren’t upstate or downstate “of” somewhere else.
Thank you, loonapick and Puck!
What I wish I’d asked Professor Hugh last night: Who is the intended audience of the Weekend puzzle? It’s so full of obscure names of film characters and rock bands I can never fill it in without the Reveal button.
Valentine, the printed version of the Weekend crossword is in the glossy magazine section of the paper, and seems more aimed at a pub quiz crossover market than serious crossword solvers.
Valentine @62 – probably people who read the Weekend magazine that the puzzle is published in, for whom popular culture will not be obscure.
Bignifty@40 Ute is short for utility vehicle .
TheVoidTLMB @59/60, what a fascinating link! Thank you for posting – it gives an extra dimension to the debate about “parvenus” in the English language towards the end of Eileen’s blog on the Pan puzzle on Monday.
And all those comments ‘below the line’! – dealt with firmly but courteously – very much a model to follow.
Thanks to loonapick and Puck
10a Sweeps is doubling up as def and part of the wordplay. Does that matter? I was certainly irritated by being misled into looking for words starting “w”, but it didn’t last long.
3d Some would say that “prosto ” includes “cuit”
5d A rather long-winded way of saying “Group live in prison”, but a nice surface.
When did they move the Prize puzzle to the magazine ? I always got my Saturday paper free from Waitrose but haven’t been there for 6 months now and it never used to be in the magazine.
Anyway, how does “originally” indicate an anagram in 9ac ?
What is the point of the word “just” in 5ac ?
Also, not sure about the question mark at the end of 2d. I thought that argument had been won and there is no question that greenhouse gases cause climate change.
And my favourite Capability Brown is the Golden Valley, Ashridge – beautiful place