What a shame that Cyclops and other setters are soon going to have to find other ways of indicating Ps (‘Trump’s back end’) and Ts (‘Trump’s first…’). It is all going to be JBs and KHs from January onwards!
Cyclops has his finger on the zeitgeist here, albeit maybe the zeitgeist of a month or two ago, given the natural timelag of setting, editing and fortnightly publication……with BLACK LIVES MATTER and the RULE OF SIX providing the backbone to this puzzle.
I actually found it quite hard to get a foothold, with several passes through the clues before I got enough traction to push on through to the end.
There was a little dig at the government’s need of an ACTION PLAN to cope with Covid-19, and an indirect reference to Trump, via SUNTANNED NABOB who WHEEDLES being PUT PAID TO…
Favourite clue has to be for 9A RULE OF SIX, and LOI was WRAP UP, as I didn’t know it as an interjection to ‘be quiet!’.
Three place names – CUMBRIA, ASHFORD and SENEGAL make this a bit more geographical than usual, and an old face, OSBORNE, makes an appearance…
There was a strange blocked out shape in the middle of the grid that somehow made me think of the profile of a Star Wars X-wing fighter from above…my mind has been working in funny ways this week!
Thanks to Cyclops, and I hope is all clear below…
| Across | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Clue No | Solution | Clue | Definition (with occasional embellishments) / Logic/parsing |
|
| 9A | RULE OF SIX | According to which, it’s fine if you have one too many? (4,2,3) | CD? / according to the RULE OF SIX, if you have one too many (seven) present, you may get fined! |
|
| 10A | CINCH | Conservative creep is a pushover (5) | a pushover / C (Conservative ) + INCH (creep) |
|
| 11A | PUTIN | Leader gets to lay one on Johnson, finally (5) | (Russian) leader / PUT (lay) + I (one) + N (final letter of johnsoN) |
|
| 12A | FORTITUDE | Determination shown by pro with pain in the arse – due to be operated on (9) | determination / FOR (pro, in favour of) + TIT (pain in the a**e) + UDE (anag, i.e. operated on, of DUE) |
|
| 13A | PROSPER | Do very well to have sex in right surroundings (7) | do very well / PRO_PER (right) around (surrounding) S (sex, abbreviation, see previous blogs for discussion on whether the abbreviation works!?) ) |
|
| 15A | MENTHOL | It alleviates congestion in government holidays (7) | it alleviates congestion / hidden word in ‘governMENT HOLidays’ |
|
| 16A | BLACK | & 17 & 22 Conrad, possibly, is even more dull creating a social movement (5,5,6) | a social movement / BLACK (Conrad, former newpaper owner) + LIVES (is) + MATTER (even more dull, comparative form of matt, or matte) |
|
| 17A | LIVES | See 16ac. (5) | see 16A / see 16A |
|
| 21A | CUMBRIA | Brum, unlikely ‘guest’ of spy agency in north of England (7) | (somewhere) in north of England / C_IA (spy agency) around (hosting) UMBR (anag, i.e. unlikely, of BRUM) |
|
| 23A | SENEGAL | Engels played with a republic (7) | (African) republic / anag, i.e. played with, of ENGELS + A |
|
| 25A | PUT PAID TO | Get shot of top-up ad – it’s crap (3,4,2) | get shot of / anag, i.e. crap, of TOP-UP AD IT |
|
| 26A | NABOB | Rich, important type, an arse-over-tip jerk (5) | rich, important type / NA (an, reversed, or arse-over-tip) + BOB (jerk) |
|
| 27A | CREPE | Dacre perversely keeps material (5) | material / hidden word in, i.e. kept by, ‘daCRE PErversely’ |
|
| 28A | SUNTANNED | Tabloid and Net rubbished Brown (9) | brown / SUN (tabloid newspaper) + TANNED (anag, i.e. rubbished, of AND NET) |
|
| Down | ||||
| Clue No | Solution | Clue | Definition (with occasional embellishments) / |
|
| 1D | WRAP UP | Pipe down and take care of the present (4,2) | double defn? / WRAP UP can be an interjection to someone to be quiet, or pipe down; and if you take care of a present you might WRAP it UP! |
|
| 2D | PLETHORA | Moving to her lap leads to excess (8) | excess / anag, i.e. moving, of TO HER LAP |
|
| 3D | WORN | Shabby Republican cuts present up (4) | shabby / WO_N (now, the present, up) around (cut by) R (Republican) |
|
| 4D | ASHFORD | English town has gone off US president (7) | English town / ASH (anag, i.e. gone off, of HAS) + FORD (Gerald, American president) |
|
| 5D | EXTREME | Seen in context, remedy is bloody harsh (7) | bloody harsh / hidden word, i.e. seen in, in ‘contEXT REMEdy’ |
|
| 6D | ACTION PLAN | What the government badly needs? Exuberant clap involving nation (6,4) | what the government badly needs (for coronavirus?) / anag, i.e. exuberant, of CLAP and NATION? |
|
| 7D | ENOUGH | See 26dn. (6) | see 26D / see 26D |
|
| 8D | WHEEDLES | Sweet-talks – wife virtually oblivious (8) | sweet-talks / W (wife) + HEEDLES( |
|
| 14D | POKER-FACED | Bloke having shag passed with flying colours, after initially firing blank (5-5) | blank / POKER (bloke poking, or having a shag) + F (initial letter of Firing) + ACED (passed with flying colours) |
|
| 16D | BACKPACK | Champion stuff, hiking gear (8) | hiking gear / BACK (champion) + PACK (stuff) |
|
| 18D | VAGABOND | Bum against cooker, James? (8) | bum / V (versus, against) + AGA (cooker) + BOND (James Bond!) |
|
| 19D | SAWDUST | Was stud prepared to be laid on bar floor? (7) | (something) to be laid on bar floor / anag, i.e. prepared, of WAS STUD |
|
| 20D | OSBORNE | One leaves agitated Boris to be carried by single ex-minister (7) | ex-minister (George, former UK Chancellor of the Exchequer) / O_NE (single) around (carrying) SBOR (anag, i.e. agitated, of BOR |
|
| 22D | MATTER | See 16ac. (6) | See 16A / See 16A |
|
| 24D | LIBIDO | Sexual drive of old politician associated with international party (6) | sexual drive / LIB (Liberal, old politician) + I (international) + DO (party) |
|
| 26D | NEAR | & 7 New member stitched on Brian? Yuk, that’ll do! (4,6) | that’ll do! / N (new) + EAR (bodily organ, or member) + ENO (Brian Eno, musician) + UGH (interjection, yuk!) |
|
Great stuff, especially ACTION PLAN and RULE OF SIX. I always thought that PLETHORA just meant ‘a lot’, but Chambers tells me that’s loose talk and ‘excess’ is more accurate.
Without wanting to say too much, if you want zeitgeist, try Brendan’s brilliant Guardian ‘Prize’ this week (answers not to be revealed on this site till next Saturday).
thanks mc_rapper67, I somehow allowed my subscription to lapse and took a while to sort it out so have missed the last few and this was a great one to come back to in my opinion, with POKER-FACED, SUNTANNED and WHEEDLES in particular standing out. Took me a while to think of Conrad Black but at least the US politician needed this time was actually president during my lifetime.
My Loi was RULE OF SIX – living outside the UK I have not always kept up with your local rules of which there seem to have been a bewildering number, so I needed all the crossers there. I spent quite a long time wondering why I know the word NABOB – maybe from the Eye itself? And now like Tony Collman@1 I am corrected on plethora!
[By the way Tony Collman, thanks for the tip, I have less time for crosswords at the moment but always enjoy a Brendan so will print that one out.]
Usually, I like the clues that I solve later in the puzzle since they have, obviously, been more of a challenge. But my last one in was ‘Ashford’ which did not excite me, whereas ‘Ruel of six, Near Enough, Poker-faced, vagabond and wheedles were my favourites this time.
@gazzh, does Hurree Jamset Ram Singh, the Nabob of Bhanipur, ring any bells?
Thanks Mc_rapper67 & Cyclops. Same as Tony & gazzh for Plethora. Had heard of Nabob but had to look it up for exact meaning. I’ve got the vaguest recollection of greyfriars character lemming @4. My favourite was 3d.
[thanks for the suggestion lemming@4 but, despite reading plenty of biggles and Jennings handed on by my dad, I don’t have much depth of knowledge when it comes to the fat owl of the remove so that’s not it.]
Thanks for the various comments and feedback…
gazzh at #2 – you don’t need to be a subscriber to do the crossword – it is published on the Eye website, usually on the Friday, so two days later than publication: http://www.private-eye.co.uk/sections.php?section_link=crossword. I am a subscriber anyway, but I find this link useful to copy/paste the clues into my blog! On occasion, when my copy has been late, I have printed the puzzle from the site (or rather via the Across Lite software) and submitted it…I haven’t won in a plethora of fortnights, so I don’t know whether they accept entries from freeloaders!
winsor at #3 – I concur – ASHFORD is not too inspiring a place! Best known nowadays for being the stop before the Eurostar plunges into the Chunnel (and the first stop on the way back…)
lemming at #4 – in my formative years I was an avid reader of Bunter and his antics (and Biggles, and in fact just about any book I could lay my hands on!), but that name didn’t ring any bells that it should have done…too much beer has flowed under the bridge of my nose since then…I just knew NABOB and roughly what it means…
Thanks for the tip mc_rapper, i may well start printing them out as you suggest – despite not living very far abroad my copy sometimes arrives only a day or two before the deadline which can make it tricky if I have things on in the evening – which is admittedly not that often, especially these days. I have never won (only been entering regularly for a few years) and used to think that an email entry stood no chance, but now that postal ‘votes’ are banned maybe my turn will come.
Gazzh at #8 – hope that helps you get your regular ‘fix’ much earlier!
There has been discussion in the comments over the years about postal vs. e-mail entries. Many moons ago I used to type all the answers in a list in an e-mail and submit, whereas more recently I have scanned and e-mailed my completed grid, before putting it in an envelope and posting it.
The reason for doing both is that I once heard from someone that the Eye ‘adjudicator’ would toss a coin and then pick the winner either from the e-mails or the postbag – presumably to avoid the hassle of trying to combine the two into one virtual ‘hat’ for picking out of. So by e-mailing and posting I was hopefully in with a chance each fortnight…
The story may be apocryphal, and it sounds like postal entries don’t work with your location/timing anyway. My method doesn’t seem to have made much difference, as I haven’t won in yonks anyway!
@mc_rapper (I’ve just noticed how important the _ is in your user name!!!), I am also abroad and have been sending in my solution as an AcrossLite attachment. Do people think this is acceptable or have I been missing out on a chance all these years?
When I used to have a working printer, I would solve on paper but then save the postage by emailing a list of the answers.
Nowadays I use my Crossword Compiler to copy the grid and fill this in in one window while reading the clues from the website in another. Having filled the grid, it’s just a matter of pressing a few buttons to produce a pdf of the solution, which I then attach to an email.
I have never won, but I imagine quite a few people enter, so that doesn’t necessarily mean my entries are ignored.
Tony Collman @ 11 — surely it’s a lot simpler to use the Eye’s recommended file format (Across Lite .puz) and do it all in one window, preferably offline at your leisure.
John E
Hmm, yes, it probably would be. When I still used printouts, I did try Across Lite, but for some reason I can’t now remember, I preferred to use copy and paste to create my own printable version of the online puzzle. I think I might take up your suggestion and try it next time. I’m already most of the way through the current one in CC at the moment, so I won’t abandon the present system straight away.
mc_rapper67, your memory tallies with what Cyclops himself wrote on winner selection at <http://www.fifteensquared.net/2009/09/28/private-eyecyclops-400-16-years/> .
The initial goal of 50/50 selection by entry type worried me from the start. Even an email/snailmail proportion of 60/40 rather than 50/50 results in the snailmail posters beinging on average 50% more likely to win than the email ones. I’d be surprised if the imbalance now isn’t substantially greater than that, and trust that the coin toss is no longer being used.
I’m also worried by the ‘blind scanning’ mouse method of selecting from the email entrants. People aren’t at all good at either recognising or creating random choices or sequences. The selections may be unpredictable but they’ll almost certainly in the long run turn out to be prettty non-random, and so also unfair, in a systematic but undefined way.
Long ago I had the good idea of a protocol for doing the selection randomly, with minimal input required of any human operator. It still remains a good idea.
http://www.fifteensquared.net/2009/09/28/private-eyecyclops-400-16-years
Lemming, I agree with what you say about the methods used to make a supposedly random choice; they are extremely unlikely to be truly random. How to exploit that to increase one’s chance of winning is another question, though. It does seem to me, however, that sending two entries, one by email and one by post certainly amounts to cheating.
As there are still people coming here, apparently, allow me to repeat a coincidental joke I heard on Quote … Unquote this week (you’ll have to listen to know who it should be attributed to):
A man approached a widow at her late husband’s funeral and asked if he could go up and say a word, to which she agreed. He went to the front and said, “Plethora”, then returned to his seat. “Thank you so much”, the widow said, as he passed her, “that means a lot”.
Tony at #16 – ‘cheating’ is a bit harsh – I prefer to think of it as gaming the 50/50 system – and supporting our great British Post Office… If I could be reassured that they had reverted to picking the names out of a combined ‘hat’ each issue, I would save myself 65-odd pence and stick to just the e-mail entry.
Thanks everyone for the rest of the dicussion regarding entry methods and likelihood of success, especially lemming@15 for that link, what a memory you must have! As you say there are lots of random selection/generation methods available (I use them almost every day although for something very different) so I hope that something suitably equitable is in place at the Eye, as even using the methods suggested above I will almost certainly only ever enter electronically from now on.