It’s a while since a Hoskins puzzle came up on my watch. Always a fun solve.
Abbreviations
cd cryptic definition
dd double definition
cad clue as definition
(xxxx)* anagram
anagrind = anagram indicator
[x] letter(s) removed
definitions are underlined
Across
1 Business bureau Tory pal ruined
BEAUTY PARLOUR
(BUREAU TORY PAL)*
8 Rubbish taking E? Take acid!
TRIP
TRIP[E]
9 Show broadcast mid-spring around 1st of April
RISING DAMP
An insertion of A for the first letter of ‘April’ in (MID SPRING)* The reference is to the 1970s’ sitcom starring Leonard Rossiter.
10 Hat or hood imported from US to UK
BONNET
Hoskins is referring to the fact that what Brits call the BONNET of a car is called the ‘hood’ in the USA.
11 Arcane secret I spread around Ohio
ESOTERIC
An insertion of O in (SECRET I)*
12 Conservative with inclination for housework?
CLEANING
A charade of C and LEANING.
14 Scottish man in French article
LES
A dd. I suppose LESLIE is a common enough Scottish name and it gives IAN a chance for a lie-in this morning.
16 Coach player on the bench knocked over
BUS
A reversal of SUB.
17 Low clerk must change to become major US artist
ROCKWELL
(LOW CLERK)* Referring to Norman ROCKWELL, the American painter and illustrator. No, I hadn’t either.
20 Statesman and duke seen with Benjamin Netanyahu?
DISRAELI
A charade of D and ISRAELI.
21 A French young man going around about naked
UNCLAD
An insertion of c for circa or ‘about’ in UN and LAD.
23 Evil, manly and physically aggressive? Not I!
MALEVOLENT
A charade of MALE and V[I]OLENT.
24 Sex with Hoskins repelled couple
ITEM
A charade of IT and ME reversed.
25 Do many bets annoy? No way!
NOT BY ANY MEANS
(MANY BETS ANNOY)* with ‘do’ as the anagrind.
Down
1 Vessel fitted with a royal navy hooter
BARN OWL
An insertion of RN in BOWL and an opportunity for the obligatory Pierre bird link. Its distinctive heart-shaped face makes it easily recognisable, and its range is wide, both in the UK and elsewhere in the world. Shrews, voles and mice beware.
2 A writer describing small ski resort
ASPEN
An insertion of S in A PEN. The resort in Colorado, on the same line of latitude as Lisbon. That’s the Gulf Stream for you.
3 Performer having time trouble in ‘Beat It‘?
TURN TAIL
A charade of TURN (‘Who’s the turn tonight?’), T and AIL.
4 High-flyer once seen going with papers for shredding
PASSENGER PIGEON
(SEEN GOING PAPERS)* ‘Once’ is there because the species has been extinct since the very early years of the 20th century. Endemic to North America, its population may have been as high as five billion. Its decline is essentially due to human influence: it was hunted to near extinction and destruction of its habitat didn’t help much either. The last surviving bird was named Martha. She died in Cincincatti, at 1pm local time, on 1 September 1914 and the obligatory Pierre bird link takes you to her own Wiki page so you can read a bit more about her, if you are interested.
5 Price demanded to remove top of fanlight in America
RANSOM
[T]RANSOM
6 Member of secret fraternity is unusual bloke
ODDFELLOW
A charade of ODD and FELLOW.
7 What is left of engineers sat on electric supply?
REMAINS
A charade of RE and MAINS.
13 Spongy dessert knight tucks into after a drop of brandy
ABSORBENT
A charade of A, B for the initial letter of ‘brandy’ and N for the chess ‘knight’ inserted into SORBET.
15 Get used to a convention in conversation
ACCUSTOM
A homophone of A CUSTOM.
16 Boffin that relations must visit in the country
BRITAIN
Another use of ‘it’ for sex. You need to insert it into BRAIN to get your solution.
18 People who laze around in casual footwear
LOAFERS
A dd.
19 Look in Iron City for serious American crime
FELONY
An insertion of LO in FE and NY.
22 Country friend you might hear of in Bow
CHINA
If you were in Bow, a ‘friend’ might be referred to as a CHINA, referencing the cockney rhyming slang ‘china plate’.
Many thanks to Hoskins for the Sunday morning coffee accompaniment.
Enjoyed this morning (after really struggling yesterday) BONNET my favourite and ITEM made me laugh for the surface never heard of ROCKWELL or PASSENGER PIDGEON but worked them out from the crossers eventually!
Thanks to Hoskins for the fun and Pierre for the explanations (and of course the O-B-Ls)
A lot of fun as usual from Hoskins. In spite of Pierre’s explanation, I am not sure what makes LES specifically Scottish. ROCKWELL may have been major but he was a new one on me.
My joint favourites were ITEM and BARN OWL.
Many thanks to Hoskins and to Pierre.
You may not have heard of Norman Rockwell, but have a look at some of his pictures and you will certainly recognize his work. His was the defining image of the USA in the mid 20th Century.
Deezzaa @3: I’m happy to confess ignorance insofar as it’s an interesting reflection on the spread of culture. I consider myself reasonably literate in the arts and, with an artist mother, I have been exposed to many painters. But, not only have I not heard of Norman Rockwell but, having spent a few minutes perusing the Images section of Google, I can’t say I’m aware of having ever seen his work. Which, given the articles that clearly acknowledge his importance, is surprising.
Both birds were well clued (and illustrated) and I thought TURN TAIL very clever. Other ticks for the nicely constructed ABSORBENT and MALEVOLENT, the lovely anagram for BEAUTY PARLOUR, BONNET as mentioned by Tombsy and RISING DAMP which brought back memories. [Don Warrington is one of those actors who, in a way, seems hardly to change. You can absolutely see and, more importantly, hear, in Philip of Rising Damp, the Commissioner of Police in Death in Paradise that he was to play some 35 years later.]
I agree with RD on LES. I’ve never been a huge fan of Scot=IAN but understand why it’s there and live with it. Hamish, Donny, Angus, Willie etc would generate no quibbles at all but LES? Not sure I’d be chuffed if CHRIS or AL were clued as Englishman.
Thanks Hoskins and Pierre
Thanks both. A little surprised that the clue for 7 has sat instead of sitting, but perhaps someone will defend it?
Good fun, as Pierre says.
My favourites today were the clever anagrams and MALEVOLENT and ABSORBENT for their construction.
From Wikipedia: ‘Leslie is a surname and given name, derived from the name of Clan Leslie. The name derives from a placename in Aberdeenshire,[1] perhaps an anglicisation of an originally Gaelic leas celyn “holly-garden”.’
TFO @5 – both Collins and Chambers give ‘sat’ as the past participle, as well as the past tense of ‘sit’. I’ve always thought of it as informal:’ I was sat there for ages’.
Thanks for an entertaining puzzle and blog.
Careful users of English would always write ‘sitting’, TFO, but in everyday speech ‘sat’ is frequently heard. I can’t get too excited about it myself, and for the surface of a crossword, as a colloqualism, I think it’s fine. Just in case you’re wondering, there are lots of other examples of misuse that I do get very excited about.
When my first two down answers turned out to be ‘barn owl’ and ‘passenger pigeon’ I was thinking ‘bird theme’ but no. The Rockwell I found online was the stage name of one Kennedy William Gordy, a musician – no me neither – and maybe it should then properly have been ‘artiste’, but good enough for me. A nice, relaxing Sunday solve, so thanks Hoskins and Pierre.
It’s always interesting and quite surprising too to find out what general knowledge people do and don’t have. 17a is definitely Norman Rockwell, major US artist, no e required, but I had no idea what a transom was, so thanks to Pierre for that and the lovely barn owl. And thanks to Hoskins for the fun.
Smiled when I realised that Pierre was in the hot seat today and had two opportunities to include bird links – lovely photo of the Barn Owl by the way.
I had the same hesitation as others over LES and also confess to not knowing ROCKWELL.
Picks of the bunch for me were BARN OWL and REMAINS.
Thanks to Hoskins for the fun solve and to Pierre for the review.
Here in the US, Rockwell is very well known, but generally thought of as an illustrator rather than a “major artist,” as his work was mostly in magazines. I came here hoping someone would explain the “major artist” bit, and I guess my answer is that it’s precisely because the “illustrator” label hasn’t been stuck to him over there.
Tatrasman and jane have mentioned a possible bird theme and the fact I was blogging. Harry Hoskins and I have history with this, and the blog of the puzzle in question is here.
There is a Norman Rockwell museum in Stockbridge, Massachusetts (where the artist/illustrator used to live) that is well worth a visit. It’s near Tanglewood, the summer home of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, if we can ever go to concerts again. Or museums, come to that. A fun puzzle.
This is a great site. I really enjoy reading through the annotations of the answers. When I said that ‘we do it better’ in North America, I was referring to this. British puzzle books do not have any explanation of how the answers derive from the clues. In NA, we (I’m a setter) include an explanation of every clue. Our clues are also much, much easier. You have many decades more experience with cryptics than we do. By providing help and making the clues a little easier, we are trying to get more people involved in what I think is a great pastime. This current puzzle has many fine clues but also many that only someone who has lived in Britain most of their life might know. I suppose our (NA) puzzles will have American- or Canadianisms that you might not know. BTW, I had never seen TURN as PERFORMER before. I know TURN as in DOING A TURN ie. performing.
A nice Sunday solve especially given, like Tombsy, I lost my mojo with yesterday’s.
I jumped the gun a bit on 4d and had written in MESSENGER PIGEON (because they carry papers, right – albeit very small ones). That stymied BEAUTY PARLOUR which was clearly an anagram, so I faffed about there for a while. Was also a bit thrown on Ohio just being O instead of OH today.
Today I have learned of two famous Rockwells (let’s not even mention the hardness scale) and the fact that Americans know fanlights as transoms, which I only knew as the horizontal bar in windows (and which I often confuse with mullions).
You’re dead right, Postmark @4, Don Warrington hasn’t aged a bit!
Many thanks Hoskins & Pierre.
An enjoyable Sunday solve. Nothing we didn’t know or manage to deduce; we thought we hadn’t heard of Rockwell as an artist until reminded by seeing his first name in the blog. Otherwise we could only think of the two Rockwells who devised the hardness tester (one of us had occasion to use hardness measurements in the course of work).
BONNET, BARN OWL (the third owl in crosswords in recent days) and ABSORBENT were our favourites.
Thanks, Hoskins and Pierre.
After yesterday, today was an improvement. Not only did I nearly finish this (guessed wrongly on clue) but I think I’ve completed Azed.
[Some Rockwell trivia: the cover of the album, The Live Adventures of Mike Bloomfield and Al Kooper (1969), was a painting of the two musicians by him]