[If you’re attending York S&B please see comments 32&33] - here
A slow and challenging solve, with quite a few parsings puzzled out after the grid had been filled. Favourites were 6ac, 27ac, 1dn, and 18dn. Thanks to Paul.
| ACROSS | ||
| 1 | QUADRUPLE | As fruit divided by fifty, multiply by a smaller figure? (9) |
| QUA=”As” (from Latin) + DRUPE=”fruit” around L=”fifty” in Roman numerals | ||
| 6 | TOME | Where my letters are delivered in volume (4) |
| “my letters are delivered” TO ME | ||
| 8 | MOTORBUS | Small warship has rust: order reversed for large transporter (8) |
| SUB[marine]=”warship”, shortened/”Small”; plus ROT=”rust” + OM (Order of Merit); all reversed | ||
| 9 | REVERE | Paul, have some respect! (6) |
| referring to Paul Revere, the famous figure from the American Revolution [wiki] | ||
| 10 | CADDIS | Lovely girl briefly going after blackguard, immature creature (6) |
| definition: the larva of a caddis fly DIS[h]=”Lovely girl briefly”; after CAD=”blackguard” |
||
| 11 | MAHARAJA | Open a joint in retreat for prince (8) |
| AJAR=”Open” + A + HAM=”joint”; all reversed/”in retreat” | ||
| 12 | SATNAV | Day service detailed, guide on the way (6) |
| SAT[urday] + NAV[y]=”service detailed” | ||
| 15 | NEONATAL | After recent arrival, gas of any kind cut (8) |
| NEON=”gas” + AT AL[L]=”of any kind” cut short | ||
| 16 | CUBE ROOT | Two of eight, perhaps, heading for unrest in October after revolution (4,4) |
| definition: 2 is the cube root of 8 the heading of U[nrest] inside an anagram of (October)* |
||
| 19 | MUMBAI | Person feeding baby with endless maggots, say, in Asian city (6) |
| MUM=”Person feeding baby”; with endless BAI[t]=”maggots, say” | ||
| 21 | See 25 | |
| 22 | GREASY | Leaden pots equally oleaginous (6) |
| GREY=”Leaden”; going around/”pots” AS=”equally” | ||
| 24 | INSTIL | Cuckoo isn’t on middle of wild plant (6) |
| “Cuckoo” as in ‘crazy’ indicates anagram of (isn’t)*; plus middle letters of [w]IL[d] | ||
| 25, 2, 21 | I CANT GET A WORD IN EDGEWAYS | It’s impossible to communicate why Paul has across and down solutions, but not laterally? (1,4,3,1,4,2,8) |
| with a second, indirect/cryptic definition | ||
| 26 | MEAN | Bad average (4) |
| double definition | ||
| 27 | FORTY-FIVE | Single, over fifty: desperate (5-4) |
| definition: ‘Single’ as in a song released on a FORTY-FIVE gramophone record anagram of (over fifty)* |
||
| DOWN | ||
| 1 | QUOTA | Cut doctor out in session of enquiry? (5) |
| “doctor” indicates anagram of (out)*; inside Q&A=”session of enquiry” | ||
| 2 | See 25 | |
| 3 | REBUS | Puzzle solver (5) |
| =a type of visual puzzle; =Inspector Rebus from the Ian Rankin books [wiki] | ||
| 4 | POSTMAN | Early visitor to house after castle, say (7) |
| POST=”after”; MAN=chess piece=”castle,say” | ||
| 5 | EARTHWORM | Ticklish case in infectious air? One going underground (9) |
| outer letters/”case” of T[icklis]H; inside EARWORM=a catchy song=”infectious air” | ||
| 6 | TAVERNA | Article on wine container served up in restaurant (7) |
| AN=”Article” + RE=”on” + VAT=”wine container”; all reversed/”served up” | ||
| 7 | MARIJUANA | One Spaniard carrying another pot (9) |
| MARIA=”One Spaniard” carrying JUAN=”another” Spaniard | ||
| 13 | ABUNDANCE | Cornucopia, a pastry affair (9) |
| A BUN DANCE=”a pastry affair” | ||
| 14 | VIOLA CLEF | Nothing in game five, call for mark added to score? (5,4) |
| definition: “score” as in sheet music O=”Nothing”; inside anagram/”game” of (five call)* |
||
| 17 | EVERTON | Vertical part shown, cannot reveal side (7) |
| definition: as in the football team [wiki] Hidden in/”part” of [can]NOT REVE[al]; and reversed/”Vertical” |
||
| 18 | TASTIER | Extra juicy shocker about leaders of trade and industry (7) |
| TASER=”shocker” around leading letters of T[rade] and I[ndustry] | ||
| 20 | MAESTRI | Joiner turned up with three experts (7) |
| SEAM=”Joiner” reversed/”turned up”; plus TRI=”three” | ||
| 22 | GRAVY | Cash that goes by boat or train? (5) |
| as in “gravy boat” or “gravy train”=easy source of money | ||
| 23 | SUEDE | Kid was rocking, did you say? (5) |
| definition as in ‘kidskin’ or kid leather homophone of ‘swayed’=”was rocking” |
||
Quite a tough puzzle this morning.
I’m not too happy that ‘three’ gives TRI.
I vaguley recall our maths teacher talking about averages and means (and others – modes ? medians ?) and saying that they were all different.
Paul Revere may be famous, but I have still never heard of him.
But a nice puzzle.
Thanks to Paul and to manehi.
A toughie! Loved Revere and Forty-Five in particular. And Abundance, which reminded me of the old joke – What do you call a cornucopia made of pastry? A choux horn!
Many thanks to Paul for a challenging but fun puzzle, and to Manehi for the blog – we couldn’t parse motorbus! (and I won’t note that a sub is a boat, not a ship!)
Incredibly hard going today – two teas, a coffee and much help having started at about 6am! Many DNKs as is normal for a Paul but the 25a combination fell in quite quickly which helped.
Now, being that it took me so long I am going to be Mr. Grumpy and say that I take issue with 14d. The “Clef” used for the Viola is the C Clef so it doesn’t really belong to a particular voice/instrument. But that is just because I am in a cantankerous mood and it was a good clue so I suppose I’ll shut-up…
23d has another rock meaning – the band Suede who at one time were the next big BritPop thing until someone else became the next big BritPop thing.
Many COTDs – 22d was a hoot, 27a likewise. As per usual, plenty of laugh-out-loud moments with a Paul and another fab puzzle.
Thanks Paul and manehi!
Thanks Paul and manehi
Lots to like, but some irritating ones as well. Favourites were REVERE (have you never heard of Paul Revere’s ride and “the English are coming”, Anna?), ABUNDANCE, and SUEDE. I hadn’t parsed FORTY-FIVE, but I now add that to the list.
I didn’t like “immature” for CADDIS – caddis larvae are immature, but they turn into adult caddis flies (admittedly the larva lives for much longer than the adult does). Why “early” visitor for POSTMAN – our post very rarely comes before midday!
I have read a REBUS book (didn’t enjoy it), but REBUS would have been baffling for anyone who hadn’t heard of him.
…oh, and why is “extra juicy” TASTIER? It just means that there’s more juice.
Anna @1: Paul Revere is very famous on t’other side of the pond. It is he that is supposed to have ridden across Massachusetts to annouce “The British are Coming!” If you go to Boston, MA (and I suggest you do – it is a fabulous city with heaps of history and lovely people) everything but everything is Paul Revere…
muffin @ 4
No, I haven’t. But I am a bit of an ignoramus when it comes to things non-linguistic … !
Re the post. It hardly ever comes at all here. And when it does, it’s often in the evening.
[muffin @4: I offer you a Brimful of Asha https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lM7H0ooV_o8%5D
Slow, manehi? Tough, Anna, Canthusus, MB? I fairly whizzed through the questions this morning…. It’s amazing how rapidly you can do that when not distracted by either identifying solutions or writing them in!!! First pass delivered only GREASY and MEAN which are probably the easiest two in the grid. Thereafter, I found this fairly hard work, just like everyone else It’s an odd grid – almost like two crosswords in one: top right and bottom left linked by only MAESTRI and the long one which I wasn’t going to attempt until I had a lot more crossers.
I had ticks for REVERE which was a nice misdirect as I went looking for opportunities to use I or me, FORTY-FIVE resisted til late but is a nice anagram and clever surface, CUBE ROOT ditto. I loved QUOTA for its use of Q&A and MARIJUANA for its construction (and I think ‘pot’ was the naughtiest Paul got today). COTD split between GRAVY and INSTIL – short words but so cunningly clued.
Beaten by VIOLA CLEF which is a dnk and EVERTON. I still don’t completely get the wordplay for the latter though I see what Paul’s trying to do.
Thanks Paul and manehi
MaidenBartok @ 6
Thenks for that. I would love to go to Boston. Are there any schemes whereby you can stay with a local family? Wouldn’t want to stay in a hotel. You can’t learn the local language that way 🙂 🙂 🙂
27a FORTY FIVE was brilliant with the cleverly misleading definition. Also 9a REVERE was excellent.
Anna @1: Chambers has, for tri-, “denoting three, threefold”. And it has for mean, “intermediate, average” – maybe not correct mathematically but OK in everyday usage.
I know we’re going to get protests about MAN = castle in 4d but it was OK with me!
Many thanks Paul and manehi.
Anna @1. I read “tri” as “with three”, as in triangle, tripartite, trireme,… Thanks, Manehi for explaining QUOTA (which I got but couldn’t parse, although I should have) and REBUS, where I was lacking the UK GK..
[Anna: There several different ways of describing the “middle” of a distribution – you’ve mentioned some @1 – but “average” will be the MEAN. In Excel the formula for the mean of a range of numbers is actually =AVERAGE(range)]
I’m with muffin on this. Postman – early? Must be somewhere but not here. In addition to the quibbles mentioned, I don’t like “vertical” to denote “going up”. Vertical is just as much “going down” just as horizontal can be to the left or right. The definition at 1a seems week. Ok, 4 is indeed less than 50 but so are a lot of other numbers.
Lord Jim @11 [sorry we crossed on tri]. Mean is in fact the exact mathematical term for what most people call the average, as opposed to the median (middle value) and the mode (most frequent value). To make things even more completed, there’s three of them: arithmetic, geometric, and harmonic. Wikipedia has more, including the mid-range, which I’d forgotten about.
canthusus @2; Collins calls a sub a ship and Oxford says warship, so I think the setter is on safe ground.
On the first pass, I only got MEAN. Thereafter, I gradually filled the bottom half before extending upwards rather slowly, so difficult for me.
I ticked TOME, FORTY-FIVE, VIOLA CLEF, EVERTON & GRAVY.
Thanks Paul and manehi.
I meant to add that I was ok with CADDIS. Chambers distinguishes between this meaning the larval form and CADDIS FLY for the adult. Also, of course, I meant to type “weak” not “week” in my previous comment.
[Anna @1: When I was at school I only knew ‘average’. When i went back to teach maths I found that, as you say there are 3 versions, with the ‘mean’ being what we called the average.]
I found this quite a mix of great clues and some dodgy definitions such as the impossible 1a
[Earworm is a term I’ve only encountered in fairly recent times – mainly on this site. It brings to mind the short story, The Ultimate Melody, by Arthur C Clarke in which a composer attempts to produce a tune that synchronises precisely with the rhythms of electrical pulses in the brain on the basis it will be the ‘catchiest’ tune ever. With dire results. I can recommend the collection – Tales from the White Hart – in which it appears. Thirteen short stories that are also tall stories, most of them utilising a bit of flawed but plausible science to generate the twist. ]
Thanks to Paul and manehi for an enjoyable puzzle and helpful blog. I agree with those who liked 9a REVERE. Thank you also to previous posters for the interesting contributions.
Lord Jim @ 11 and blaise @ 12
Thanks for your input re TRI
Yes, my problem was exactly that, that TRI tends to mean ‘threefold’ rather than ‘three’. But I think that blaise’s suggestion that we read it as ‘with three’ is probably correct. Good. Sorted.
And thanks to everyone – Lord Jim, muffin, blaise, Pedro et al – for helping me out with means and averages …. I did learn something in maths classes, after all 🙂 I remember teacher saying that one of them ‘is the man in the middle’. Funny how you remember little things.
MaidenBartok @3 I started at the same time as you, but you finished before me. Had a break to listen to Hawkwind’s ‘Warrior On The Edge Of Time’, no connection to the crossword just needed a break. Then I had to play Dylan’s Highway 61 Revisited for Tombstone Blues and ‘The reincarnation of Paul Revere’s horse’. Enjoyed Brimful of Asha for the first time in ages, thanks.
Anyway, tough going, as expected, but loved ABUNDANCE, EARTHWORM and especially FORTY-FIVE.
Abundant thanks Paul and manehi.
ABUNDANCE – best clue for ages! I chortled audibly.
Found the parsing hard, so thanks to manehi and, of course, to Paul.
Toughest by far this week but worth it just for FORTY FIVE and REVERE, which were superb. I also ticked EARTHWORM but guessed VIOLA CLEF and QUADRUPLE as I have never heard of DRUPE. I’m sure DIS(H) in CADDIS will raise some PC eyebrows but it is Paul after all. Muffin@4, a shame you didn’t like REBUS as he is my favourite sleuth along with BOSCH across the pond. MaidenBartok@3, SUEDE would also have fitted in nicely with our list of Glam rock bands yesterday. I once met lead singer, Brett Anderson, outside a small concert in Islington and when I requested a pic with my wife, he was most ungracious but reluctantly acquiesced. Temperamental rock stars eh! Ta Manehi for the great blog and Paul for your undoubted genius. A brilliant week all round.
Oleaginous sounds like a top white Burgundy.
Whereas GREASY reminds me of Peter Cook doing a “Michelin” type tour of North circular Road transport cafes with Barry Humphries as the sauce waiter
Not dissing the clue but recommend googling the sketch.
And Scott Montcrief translated “DOUX” to OLEAGINOUS. at that time I was familiar with DOUX from a misspent youth.
[muffin @4 & AlanC @25: as another Rebus fan, I’d encourage you to give him another try. The series is worth reading from the beginning – Knots and Crosses – insofar as you get to see the development of characters, the overall storyline and the author’s craft. I’ll give you that Rebus has his full share of personal issues, in the way that is stereotypical with fictional coppers, but the plots are inventive and the milieu grittily realistic. And they’ve earned Ian Rankin a serious reputation in the genre.]
Re MaidenBartok’s quibble: VIOLA CLEF. It is of course a, but not the, C clef. It is specifically C3 (C on the 3rd and middle line). Often referred to as alto clef, in the orchestra it is mainly used by alto trombone and viola, hence the expression viola clef, since violas tend to be more frequently encountered than alto trombones. There are of course other C Clefs used by singers (soprano, mezzo soprano, tenor, i.e. C1, C2, C4) and by bassoon, trombone and cello (C4).
REVERE was a write-in, despite me not being American. I loved FORTY-FIVE, very clever. Not too convinced by AS=”equally” in 22a. It seems pretty loose to me. I also wouldn’t pronounce SUEDE the same as “swayed”, but better not go there.
Postmark@19: Tales From the White Hart was a favourite in my yoof, though I don’t recall that particular story. One I do remember fondly is The Fenton Silencer wherein a hen-pecked inventor creates a device to silence his wife (with of course, dire results). It seemed preposterous at the time, but Clarke’s description corresponds closely with how noise-cancelling headphones actually work.
[Penfold @23: Long time since I heard the Hawkwind! I was more of a “soulboy” in my yoof (Level 42, ABC, etc.) but have always liked a bit of the heavier stuff]
Blaise @15: Purple Math is good at explaining it https://www.purplemath.com/modules/meanmode.htm
Anna @10: You mean a system whereby people let out their house/flat similar to the one with the name related to “bed and breakfast” for people who fly but only for use by cruciverbalists? Good idea – we should call it “Rabbin.”
John @28: Thank you for the correction. It is “a” not “the.” As a bass-baritone I sometime encounter music in the C clef (I tend to refer to those as “tight trouser” moments) where the “C” mark is on the top line of the stave. But I still have a quibble because I would refer to the Viola line by stave, not clef. Just being a sore loser today…
[The viola is the butt of many orchestral jokes. My fave: “What’s the difference between a viola and a trampoline? – You take your shoes off to jump on a trampoline.”]
I’ve never seen horizontal used to denote read backwards, so not keen on vertical for Everton. (In reality – tablewise – they’re demonstrating that vertical very definitely also means up to down)
Pottered along slowly and quite happily, but without a lot of actual laughs. Didn’t do much US history, but remembered Revere and his horse from the Nobel laureate’s Tombstone Blues. The caddis fly was a nho, so just did what it said. Cube root was pretty neat, but I’d forgotten about Uncle Bob breeding maggots for bait, so Mumbai was a shrug. Forty-five for single was lovely, memories all the way back to the 50s, as was the gravy boat/train. All good, thanks both.
Found this one really tough and, although I finished it, failed to parse quite a few. Agree QUADRUPLE impossible. CUBE ROOT lovely…
[Penfold – My favourite Hawkwind track is Spirit of the Age, and I know have an earworm of it, but rather that than, say, the Birdy song…]
Thanks to Paul anf to Manehi for parsing the nigh on impossible. Happy weekend all…
Took a while to fathom out I CANT GET etc, so that held things up. Then slowed right down by the NW corner, with the cryptic element of QUADRUPLE defeating me for a while, as with MOTORBUS. Found this tough overall…though I really liked ABUNDANCE, made me smile.
Wow – tough stuff. Paul’s clueing is always a bit labyrinthine. Took me forever and a day, but loved it. Favourites were INSTIL, FORTY-FIVE and NEONATAL. Many thanks to Paul and manehi.
muffin@4 – I think TASTIER as in ‘extra juicy’ could be metaphorical usage, e.g. ‘a tasty revelation about . . . . ‘.
[PostMark @27
“milieu grittily realistic” puts your finger on why I didn’t like it. I prefer my detective stories “cosier”.
copmus @26
The was a young man of Calcutta*
Who coated his tonsils in butter
Which muted his snore, From a thunderous roar
To a soft oleaginous mutter
*no longer works, of course!]
A good challenge but the top left beat me. I might have got there if I had pencilled in postman when it came to mind, but I didn’t because I failed to parse it and couldn’t see why postman=early visitor. Still puzzled now.
If a leading criterion for a puzzle is the wish that it went on for ever, this gets my vote for the puzzle of the year, having also ticked every other desirable cryptic box. Stared at it blankly for several minutes before getting a grid entry with CUBE ROOT (perhaps the only ‘easy’ clue), then realizing it would be very much a two-halves/four segment puzzle, getting lucky (and in EDGEWAYS) with the seven-letter clue, and progressing more-or-less anticlockwise, with last-one-in QUOTA (lovely clue). That last little NW quadrant took twenty minutes of the forty-five overall. Almost every clue was memorable, but favorites included MARIJUANA, MUMBAI, SATNAV, GRAVY and REVERE. VIOLA CLEF was new to me, and needed checking later, but otherwise all dusted and parsed on completion. Many thanks setter, I REVERE you.
[Pauline in Brum @34 Excellent track to kick-off Quark, Strangeness and Charm. Great taste.
muffin @37 Kolkata/batter/chatter?]
Just wanted to memorialize that this was the first time the longest answer was my first one in.
[Having spent three years there, I would echo that Boston is a good place to visit–one of the American cities with the richest sense of history. It’s funny how REVERE became so famous as compared with others of that era with much bigger roles. Most people blame Longfellow (whose poem “Paul Revere’s Ride” was widely revered in the 19th century–how tastes in poetry have changed since then!)]
Re 13d, I found myself smiling too with the remembrance of Charlie Chaplin’s hilarious bun dance in The Gold Rush, though he actually created this comedy classic with a pair of rolls pronged on a couple of forks. Thanks for stirring the memory of that today, Paul…
[Penfold @40 & Pauline in Brum @34: I was tempted to quote the lyrics of the QS&C title track when Anto clued his excellent Einstein clue back in May. Not that many songs manage to include the line ‘time and space and relativity’. And Penfold earlier referenced Warrior at the Edge: the album tour in North America was the one that saw the demparture of Lemmy shortly after writing his last song for the band, Motorhead. Which is the only rock song I have ever heard that contains the word parallelogram!]
Paul at his usual best. Loved Revere and 45. Thanks for blog and Paul for a great xword.
I too have a quibble “Maharaja” is “king” not “prince”
Fifth great puzzle of the week but this one beat me in a couple of places. I just could not see ABUNDANCE, but now it is probable my COTD, although dance = affair did not chime, and MUMBAI. But this was a fabulous exercise in clever but never unfair deception. Many thanks Paul and my hat off to manehi for a very detailed blog!! Btw I entered EVERTON without knowing why!! How did I miss the hidden answer? Doh.
I’d like a puzzle like that every day of lockdown, please. It took a while, so used up time in a more interesting way then the alternative restricted activities. I worked out VIOLA CLEF but it’s not in Chambers. As a naturalist, I knew about CADDIS and DRUPE. I like the EARWORM/EARTHWORM trick. “Where my letters are delivered in volume” – simple but brilliant.
Even though I was defeated by CADDIS, SATNAV, and EVERTON I still count this as one of my favourite crosswords of the week. (Another was Monk’s gem in the Wednesday FT.) TOME, FORTY-FIVE, EARTHWORM, MARIJUANA, and ABUNDANCE all reminded me why I like Paul so much. Thanks Manehi for the blog.
Accurate but impenetrable cluing from Paul, as always. The long one was my fourth insertion in the grid, and after that everything ground to a halt. I had to go away and do other things several times in an attempt to unblock my thought processes, not always successfully. Plenty of penny drop moments (especially ‘infectious air’ – brilliant!) and bits of half-remembered GK (DRUPE was a proud moment) proving their use after all, and though I was not sure that kidskin and SUEDE were necessarily the same thing, the homophone swayed me for my last one in.
[I’m still one short of completing last Saturday’s prize, and not likely to find it before the blog is posted. If it turns out that Rodshaw did that one too in 45 minutes I shall scream.]
Sorry to make you scream, sheffield hatter, but I’m old-fashioned and sit down at a desk with a pencil and paper and give total concentration to a puzzle until complete. I’ve been doing cryptic puzzles for far too many decades to confess, and find that is the way to truly relish and enjoy them to the very core. By the way, I originate from Sheffield, and was always told that – as with all things in life – you have to get stuck in.
rodshaw – It’s not you that makes me want to scream, it’s my inability to get my brain to do the things I want it to do. I also sit down, with pen rather than pencil, and my copy of today’s Guardian, and get stuck in. But there comes a point when I have sucked whatever meaning I can out of the clues and I have to distract myself so that I can come back with fresh eyes to look at the clues again. Synonyms that won’t come to me, bits of GK that I just know that I know, bits of GK that I didn’t know that I knew, these things generally don’t happen unless I stop and start again. It seems there is such a thing as concentrating too hard!
Yes, Paul must be lucky it the postman is an early visitor. Ours usually comes at some undefined point in the late morning, if at all – they seem to save it up!
Can’t solve it. . . leave it. . do something else. . . come back to it. . . solve it straight away. Applies to Crosswords and Maths problems (and probably other puzzles as well). Thought it was a common phenomenon. Is it just me?
[Penfold and PostMark – always thought it ironic that Lemmy’s departure was supposedly due to taking too many drugs, until someone pointed out that it was just that he was taking the wrong sort.. and yes, QSAC one of my favourites.]
[A friend at uni was a great fan of Hawkwind, but QSAC was the only one he could persuade me to get.]
I’ve spent far too much time recently pondering happenings in the US of A, so FORTY FIVE made me think of the current President and his (surely) single term.
CUBE ROOT was nice, even though it took me a ridiculous amount of time to see it.
I’m not too bad at xwords. Finished all the rest this week in reasonable time ( not Rodshaw speed ) without needing reference works. But today!! Just could not get enough to even get the crossers to start the top half. So after about 2 hours of going through lists of synonyms I had struggled to about a third of the answers. So came here and started revealing. Shocking failure. Needless to say I hate Paul’s Fridays. I’m still nowhere with last Saturday’s too.
Bring back Araucaria, I say.
Thanks both,
Another gnarly solve. Paul seems to be getting more difficult of late, possibly forcing his fans to up their game. Satnav took far too long, thus delaying the solution ‘viola clef’. I took this to mean the character inserted on the stave rather than the stave itself. OED gives first meaning to clef as the character.
sheffield hatter@51 and Buddy@53 I am another go away and think about something else solver QUADRUPLE came to me while I had given up and started thinking about which tomatoes to grow next year. Is there any research about the psychology of crossword solving? It does seem to involve odd bits of the brain.
I had an experience at variance with the majority here. I got on the wavelength and it was finished over beans on toast. I did like FORTY FIVE, a classic of it’s type. CUBE ROOT, if not clued as it was, was a latent Spoonerism.
Ta to Manehi and Paul
Funny how different we are. “Quadruple” took many of us a long time, but was my FOI. But others’ FOIs were impenetrable to me until I started using the reveal button to semi-cheat.
I’d never heard of “viola clef,” but it turned out to be my old friend “alto clef.” A lot of Renaissance music is written in various clefs between treble and bass, so as an ensemble singer I got to know many of them. An additional clef not mentioned here is the one for the tenor voice, written in treble clef but sung an octave lower. Why don’t tenors have to sing from tenor clef, which would fit their voice range? You guessed it. That’s why that transposed clef is called “idiot clef.”
Listen, my children, and you shall hear/Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere./’Twas the eighteenth of April in ‘seventy-five/Scarcely a man is now alive/Who remembers the famous day and year. (Gaufrid, isn’t there a way to make carriage returns single-space? The one I used to use doesn’t work any more.)
I read somewhere years ago that Paul Revere was the right choice for his famous ride through “every Middlesex village and town” because he was a super-networker. It wouldn’t have been enough to holler “The British are coming!” as he galloped past; he actually knew many of the people in the communities he rode through and was what we now call a “trusted messenger.” So he’d tell one, and that one would start rousing his friends and relations while Paul galloped on to the next. There was another rider, William Dawes, on the same mission, who had almost no effect. (“Listen, my children, don’t bare your claws,/While I tell of the ride of William Dawes.” James Thurber)
I join poc@29 in questioning equating “as” with “equally.”
And thanks to Paul and manehi!
I enjoyed this. I thought the “after” in 16 was redundant for the surface but the rest was very nicely written. Favourites INSTIL, EARTHWORM and the sublime FORTY-FIVE.
Thanks to MaidenBartok @8 for the EARWORM. I liked this tune when it came out but had no idea what the lyrics meant until I heard an interview with the eponymous Asha on the World Service very early in the morning on NPR in the US a couple of years ago. Quite a lady!
Thanks, Paul and manehi.
poc @29, was this puzzle more difficult, less difficult or AS difficult compared to yesterday’s?
I tried to find the Peter Cook/Barry Humphries sketch on YouTube, but got a lot of interviews. Any suggestions?
If I were to comment, I would repeat TC @57.
[ I tried and failed to find a poem I remember from ages ago, that start:
What is this approaching us
Coul it be an omnibus?
Omniborum….
and the my Latin fails me.
Flanders and Swann, perhaps? Any offers?]
[phitonelly @63 – Have a read of this https://www.cornershop.com/2012/01/brimful-explained]
What is this that roareth thus?
Can it be a Motor Bus?
Yes, the smell and hideous hum
Indicat Motorem Bum!
Implet in the Corn and High
Terror me Motoris Bi:
Bo Motori clamitabo
Ne Motore caedar a Bo–
Dative be or Ablative
So thou only let us live:
Whither shall thy victims flee?
Spare us, spare us, Motor Be!
Thus I sang; and still anigh
Came in hordes Motores Bi,
Et complebat omne forum
Copia Motorum Borum.
How shall wretches live like usCincti Bis Motoribus?
Domine, defende nos
Contra hos Motores Bos!
Many thanks, valentine!
[With all this talk about music, why has no-one – as far as I can see, so I can be wrong – come up with Paul Revere & The Raiders? Quite a successful US band in the 60s and early 70s, still performing with Jamie, son of Paul (who sadly died in 2014 at the age of 76) in the current line-up]
While I agree with Hovis @14 about ‘vertical’ probably not merely meaning ‘upward’, the dictionaries (let alone the thesauri) are confusing when using alternatives like ‘upright’ or ‘erect’.
Challenging puzzle today in which we thought CUBE ROOT (16ac) was particularly neat (but not difficult), however not as tough as last Saturday’s very araucarian (rather than julian) alphabetical.
Manehy thanks to our blogger & Paul.
sh, Buddy, Petert @59 – me too.
[ Some fun facts for this evening:
(i) Re MEAN – one reason that CPI inflation always comes out lower than the old RPI measure is that it uses the geometric mean (multiply n numbers together, then take the nth root) rather than the arithmetic mean (add n numbers together, then divide by n). To take an easy example, the geometric mean of 2 and 8 is 4 (square root of (2 x 8)) while the arithmetic mean is 5 (half of (2 + 8)).
(ii) SUEDE’s bass player is Mat Osman, older brother of Pointless presenter Richard Osman.
(iii) ‘Earworm’ is a recent borrowing (actually a calque, or loan translation) from the German Ohrwurm, which in its literal sense means earwig. The words Ohrwurm, earwig, and the French perce-oreille are all associated with the old belief that earwigs could crawl into your head via the ear and take up residence inside. Hence why the Germans started using the term for a catchy tune that you ‘can’t get out of your head’.
(iv) Happy to be corrected by the phoneticians among us, but whenever I hear Indian people saying Kolkata, the first ‘a’ sounds very similar to how I used to say the ‘u’ in Calcutta – and not at all like the RP ‘a’ in ‘cat’. So for us southerners I think muffin’s limerick @37 still works fine. (Northerners may need to adopt Penfold’s adaptation @40; and for speakers of ‘rhotic’ varieties of English it never worked anyway!) ]
Many thanks Paul and manehi.
[essexboy @71
“earworm” we first heard from a German friend from Tubingen about 30 years ago; she taught English as a foreign language. (She was great at doing English accents.) I wondered if we had actually introduced it into England!]
[muffin: Evidently you were the worm’s point of entry 😉 ]
[essexboy – I would like to think hat we were!]
[Essexboy @71: Three of those facts are obvioulsy not useful to the modern world. (ii) is something that is going to make a differnce to the world… 🙂 ]
Valentine & poc
How about
“He’s as / equally good at tennis as he is at squash” ?
Simon S @76. Not sure they’re directly substitutable in the way you’ve done: “He’s equally good at tennis as he is at squash” doesn’t sound right to me. It sounds like a retired sportsman with minimal media training getting his sentence twisted and not realising he’s got it wrong. Sorry.
If you’re going to keep “as” in the second part of the sentence, you need it in the first part too.
“He’s just as good at tennis as he is at squash.”
“He’s equally good at tennis and squash”
“Good at squash? I’ll say, but he’s equally good at tennis.”
I tend to agree with poc @29 & Valentine @61 that this is a bit loose, but it didn’t delay my solve (which was pretty slow already).
sh @77: ‘Is he as good as Federer?’
‘I’d say he’s as good, or better.’
By whose definition is a postman an early visitor to house?
R@79… I’d say the postman comes early if they come while I’m still in bed, which mine often does… though that may say more about me than him. To be fair, at that time I am still often doing the morning’s crossword on my phone.
I found today’s tricky but great fun, thanks to both, and will put another hand to vote for Tales of the White Hart, where l learned one of my favourite words- defenestration ( The d. Of Ermintrude Inch)
A combination of strained parsings and more obscure words/GK than usual made this one a slog for me.
I was especially thrown by DISH being clued as “lovely girl” — most of the people I’ve heard called dish/dishy were men. The def for POSTMAN also doesn’t match my own experiences.
essexboy @78. Nice try, but “as Federer” is tacit in the response! Maybe “he’s equally good” works in that response, but it still sounds a bit stilted or artificial to me. But like I say, I wasn’t all that bothered about it anyway…
[MaidenBartok @67. Very interesting – thanks for that!]
I really enjoyed this, despite not being able to parse everything. My favorite was FORTY-FIVE. Many thanks to Paul for a great puzzle and to manehi for explaining the parsings, many of which I had not understood. (Did this yesterday, but life took over so only got to the blog just now.)
[ I can’t resist – my favourite viola joke:
The conductor took ill just before a concert, and the principal violist took the podium, with great success. The next evening, back in his usual chair, his stand partner said to him, “So where were you last night?” ]
By the way, we call it the alto clef, to distinguish it from the tenor clef, which are the two C clefs most used today. Cellists use the tenor clef a lot, but occasionally (in baroque music where their part is a gamba part) have to use the alto clef.
It must be rare for any puzzle to receive so many comments – an indication perhaps of the richness and variety of the clues. I can’t agree that QUADRUPLE was impossible, although I concur with those who object to vertical in 17 down – surely “inverted” would have done just as well? Still kicking myself for not getting CUBE ROOT immediately – got hung up on Henry VIII’s wives. Struggled through it, only just finished on Sunday morning.
[cellomaniac @85: HAHAHA! Agree on the Alto clef as being more correct. Being an old curmudgeon I even dislike people using the terms “treble clef” and “bass clef.” Yes, I really am that cranky.
RJS @86: Mark of a good puzzle that so many fabulous GK avenues are opened as a result of it. I have to say one of the (only) joys of lockdown for me has been learning so much from this forum – it is so refreshing to (virtually) meet such intelligent, witty and knowledgeable people. It would (once nicely vaxed) be wonderful to meet in real-life once this is all over…]
Late to the party again. I finally had a chance to finish the puzzle this evening. I had a hunch that drupe was involved, so QUADRUPLE came fairly easily to me, but I’m surprised no one took issue with the definition. If you quadruple 1, you aren’t multiplying it by a smaller number. I suppose, though, one can argue that 4 is a smaller number in comparison with the vast majority of other numbers out there, but I’m sure some mathematicians will argue otherwise?
Very difficult. Failed 16a 17d
Liked TOME, EARTHWORM
New CADDIS, VIOLA CLEF, DRUPE = fruit
DId not parse GREASY, MAHARAJA, MOTORBUS, QUOTA