[If you’re attending York S&B please see comments 32&33] - here
This was another puzzle on the tough side for the Eye. I certainly made heavy weather of it.
It didn’t seem that way at the start. First clue solved, 12A, was after trying a few (only a handful, not unusual). Then I got all its crossing down lights, 4, 6, 7, 8 and 10 (at least I thought I did). Then, helped by many crossing letters, 5a and 10a that I had failed to cold solve earlier.
So, the top right corner all done, and the long down one, 10d. Slight snag. In my haste I wrote in Contractors. In truth this did not hold me up as long as it felt and I cannot blame it for the struggle with the rest of the puzzle.
Eventually, 13A sorted out the truth of 10 with its obvious correctness and clashing “U”, but by that time I had read through all the clues and got only one more, 25a Newborn. Probably the worst “first pass” for some years.
The M at 13 helped me get 3D near the start of the second pass, which definitely gave me the best fillip of the solve when I got it, so it gets my “top clue” badge. But I didn’t get many more on that pass.
There were still 12 to go after the second pass. Most of these were the the bottom half down clues, plus notably 24A Piqued (I do not solve homophone clues very easily), indeed I needed that crossing “Q” from 15D to get the hint. This is why the final clue solved was 18D – as usual on these occasions, it looks like a pretty soft clue for ‘last one solved’ and you wonder what all the fuss was about.
| Across | ||
|---|---|---|
| 1 | FROWSTY | Stuffy First Lady gutted, hosting worst balls-up (7) (WORST)* AInd: balls-up, inside F[irst lad]Y – Tricky. One of the last to fall. Stuck thinking it was L[ad]Y (Lady gutted) or even I[van]A |
| 5 | FREIGHT | A load of pisspoor, insecure right-wingers entering the fracas (7) [pisspoo]R [insecur]E inside FIGHT (fracas) |
| 9 | UPROAR | Under the influence of drugs, cry mayhem (6) UP (under the influence of drugs) ROAR (cry) |
| 10 | CUFF LINK | Bond’s after hit item of male jewellery (4,4) CUFF (hit) LINK (bond) |
| 12 | WINDSCREEN | Flatulence protection a motorist needs to face up to? (10) WIND (flatulence) SCREEN (protection) First one in. |
| 13 | MASTURBATION | Trump, having lost power, obtains a potty for self-gratification (12) (TRUMP-P +OBTAINS A)* AInd: potty |
| 17 | WASHINGTON DC | President on record (perversely) “I WANNA STAY HERE” (10,2) WASHINGTON (President) CD< Semi-&Lit? I may have underlined “Here”, but the whole clue can be taken as the definition |
| 19 | TRUCULENCE | Trump-style sullen aggression? ‘Crazy uncle’ to rest in peace (10) (UNCLE)* AInd: crazy, inside TRUCE (peace) |
| 22/11 | NAIL DOWN | Precisely identify part of member that may grow long and blue (4,4) NAIL (part of member that may grow long) DOWN (blue) |
| 23 | DAY-LEWIS | Actor Doris associated with Hamilton? (3-5) Ref Daniel Day-Lewis, via Doris Day and Lewis Hamilton |
| 24 | PIQUED | Orgasmed noisily – pissed off (6) Homophone “peaked” |
| 25 | NEWBORN | Be worn out with northern babe (7) (BE WORN N[orthern])* AInd: out |
| 26 | AL DENTE | Donald entertained to some extent (not too hard) (2,5) Hidden inside DonALD ENTErtained |
| Down | ||
| 2 | RAPTOR | Bird of prey hit balls after erection (6) RAP (hit) ROT< (balls, erected) |
| 3 | WOOD NYMPH | Hoy down cycling with PM? That’s the spirit! (4,5) (HOY DOWN PM)* AInd: cycling, top clue with reference to Chris Hoy and cycling, and a tricky anagram |
| 4 | THROW | Chuck‘s worth screwing (5) (WORTH)* AInd: screwing |
| 6 | REFUSE BIN | “Don’t accept Biden!” Donald eventually starts to go? Nothing of worth in that (6,3) REFUSE (don’t accept) BIDEN – D[onald] E[ventually] |
| 7 | IDLER | Deli trashed by Republican time-waster (5) (DELI)* AInd: trashed, R[epublican] |
| 8 | HANGER-ON | Suspend Brenda, in regard to being a parasite (6-2) HANG (suspend) ER (Brenda) ON (with regard to) |
| 10 | CONSULTANTS | Conservative working with Middle Eastern rulers ropes in Tory leader – they’re doing well out of Brexit and Coronavirus (11) C[onservatives] ON (working) SULTANS around T[ory] |
| 14 | SUNFLOWER | Bloomer made by tabloid, loud and inferior (9) SUN (tabloid) F (loud) LOWER (inferior) |
| 15 | TECHNIQUE | Method of arranging cheque in post at last (9) (CHEQUE IN [pos]T)* AInd: arranging |
| 16 | MARRIAGE | Andrew, possibly one with ‘mature’ marital relationship (8) [Andrew] MARR I (one) AGE (mature) |
| 18 | BISECT | Split second to stuff Chip (6) SEC[ond] inside BIT (chip) Last one in – The Chip/bit association seems strained – probably because I am associating both with computing terms meaning very different things |
| 20 | CELEB | Star judge abandons party (5) CELEB[rate] rate = judge. When first read I had the B from Newborn so tried quite hard to justify Deneb |
| 21 | EXPEL | ‘Boot out old Trump finally!’ The Mexican (5) EX (old) [trum]P EL (the, in Spanish / Mexican) |
Appropriate time to pull out a 30sec clip from “The Thick of It” (Malcolm is called a bully)
Thanks Beermagnet and Cyclops. 1a I vaguely remembered the word frowsty but needed to confirm its meaning. Don’t think I’ve ever heard it in speech. I starred 13a, 19a, 25a & 21d on my copy as good ones. For 10a, I think cufflink is generally one word
Thanks for the cliplink 🙂 very drole and timely as you say
18d was last in for me also. I considered ‘bisect’ but couldn’t reason the wordplay because I was treating ‘second’ as just the letter s not sec. In the end I wrote ‘divest’ reasoning that it is ‘s’ inside ‘divet’ . divet is an alternative spelling of ‘divot’ which I stretched to possibly being a ‘chip’ out of a lawn!
I found this one a quick solve (for me!) but had a bit of trouble getting started. I thought chip/bit was a stretch initially until i dropped the computer link and went for a chip off something is a bit of it. I luckily gave up on contractors very early because I couldn’t parse it any which way…..naturally!!! I thank you kindly for resolving my issues as to why ration equates to jiudge..it doesn’t and does not need to if you see party as celebrate and not celebration. LOI was ‘bisect’ mainly because i was trying to lever ‘disect’ into the parsing but could not see why ‘dit’ was ‘chip’ and also obviously did not know how to spell it!
My favourites were ‘sunflower’ and ‘windscreen’ but ‘consultants’ was enjoyed for the construction.
Thanks beermagnet, I agree that this required some thought and had many of the same stumbling blocks as you and the others, although I patiently waited for enough crossers to get CONSULTANTS first time. Maybe we all need the workout in the run up to the jumbo Christmas special?
Without the Q I probably would never have got PIQUED, I struggled for a long time with FREIGHT and my last one in was BISECT having tried parsing it all sorts of ways, commiserations to Tony@3 as that is a good alternative solution I think, although maybe with the alternative spelling required it is more likely to appear in a harder puzzle?
Is it wrong to say that I found MASTURBATION extremely satisfying when i finally figured it out? But it wasn’t the only one that I enjoyed eg AL DENTE was a good and surprising hidden inclusion.
Gazzh:
It gave me a laugh so it can’t be wrong to say that about 13A.
For some reason that reminded me of “Motorcycle Michael” from John Cooper Clarke’s “Psycle Sluts (part 2)”
I better not repeat it here. I will mention what I think is the best bit of that poem, the last couple of lines:
… or the burger joint around the bend where the meals thank Christ are skimpy
Maybe that’s how the world will end – not with a bang but a Wimpy
Thanks for the deciphering Beermagnet. I got as far as WINDSCREEN before so really started but it all came together eventually. I was a little put out by CUFFLINK as I thought it needed the plural – I am not sure I have ever seen just one on sale. I was another who tried to fit 1a into L*Y. Then there was 18d – also my last in as I kept trying just the S as the insertion. Still, all good fun and it did last more than a day. Thanks Cyclops.
@Mystogre— I have got many single cufflinks. Admittedly, I bought, or was given, two each time but they can exist singly. A bit like socks, I fear.
I found this very difficult. I got stuck with only about ten in and had to come back to it more than once before I got started again. I did finish eventually but I’m not sure if I did ever parse BISECT. I remember struggling to understand it and it may well have been my LOI.
In 3dn, “cycling” is an unusual anagram indicator, isn’t it. It more often these days seems to refer to shifting letters from the front to the rear of a word or vice versa. I was looking for that type of wordplay for a while, before deciding from crossers it might just be an anagram and then getting it.
Regarding whether cuff links exist as singles or in pairs, surely everyone’s heard of the Missing Link, as alluded to by Winsor?
I don’t think 24a was fair, but aside from that I didn’t feel too hard done by.
RAPTOR was my LOI. I think I resorted tio a word-finder for the first time this year, having become fixated solely on individual species names, with nothing at all firing in the supercategory part of my semantic map.
It’s always nice to see BISECT. It always raises in me the forlorn hope that it might get folk wondering why on earth they pronounce “dissect” with a long vowel, as most I think now do. And then, when we’ve won that one back, onward to the reclamation of “cervical”. 😉
Steven @10 — I see nothing unfair about 24a, given that ‘noisily’ is a fairly standard homophone indicator.
Lemming @11 — I was disappointed to hear the late Harold Evans mispronouncing ‘cervical’ the other day during a repeat broadcast of his Desert Island Discs. As a high-profile campaigner for the introduction of an NHS screening programme (when editor of the Sunday Times), maybe he was one of the original perpetrators of the mispronunciation.
My 1988 Chambers offers two possible pronunciations of ‘cervical’: the first with stress on the first syllable, the second with stress on the second syllable. I’m guessing the one first presented is considered the primary, or most-often used pronunciation, although the pronunciation guide doesn’t say whether there’s any significance to the order. I’ve heard both pronunciations in the wild. I wonder which one the commenters here regard as”correct”?
The point being argued here concerns the length of the vowel “i”, which is short in the noun (cervix) and ought to remain short in the adjective rather than being lengthened to rhyme with “aye”.
John@14, your view is opposed to what Chambers has (and had as far back as 1988, when my edition was published). Also Collins online, where there are audio files you can play:
https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/cervical
Both dictionaries present your preferred pronunciation first. (I assume no one thinks it should be stressed on the second syllable but with the ‘i’ pronounced short?)
Of course, dictionaries give actual established usage, so it’s possible the alternative pronunciation was a novelty during our lifetimes, which caught on and had become established by 1988.
Does anyone know what year Harold Evans’ DID was broadcast? When a journalist of his calibre uses a pronunciation, you can be fairly sure (but never certain, of course) that they are using an accepted version.
Perhaps you think we should all pronounce ‘symmetry’ as Blake did, so that it rhymed with ‘eye’? Or is it too late to “reclaim” that one?
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43687/the-tyger