Tees seems to crop up on different days. It’s over a year since we blogged one of his puzzles.
As expected there was one word that we had never heard of (18d) – but otherwise it was pretty straightforward to solve. We were not that impressed by the cryptic definition in 26ac and have a slight concern over 5d. Having said that we had no complaints about the rest of the puzzle.
GANDER (butcher’s – as in Cockney rhyming slang) around or ‘wrapping’ O (duck) OS (outsize – huge)
MINA (flyer that talks) reversed or ‘about’ + A (advanced)
pOTTY (mad) replacing P (power) with D (Democrat)
ANON (soon) around or ‘brought about’ GAME (plucky) and M (last letter or ‘end’ of Priam)
TED (50s rocker) around or ‘pinching’ OR (golden) CH (chain)
PI and NU (two Greek characters from abroad) and P (initial letter of pursuing)
The only way we can describe this is a ‘clue as definition’ with two different word plays – POEtry (missing ‘try’ or ‘no-go’) or alternate (‘uneven’) letters in PrOsE. However, given how well regarded Poe is as an author, it’s probably a good thing that Tees has included a ? at the end.
RUT (mating frenzy) after or ‘on’ ST (street – ‘the way’)
An anagram of ACROSS LEFT HER (‘shaken’) – Charles Foster Kane (6 down) was the fictional character in Orson Welles’ 1941 film ‘Citizen Kane’
VERA (Vera Stanhope is the fictional detective in the novels by Ann Cleeves) in AGE (time)
SING (carol) around or ‘eating’ CHILL (cold) – bread being another word for money – the Schilling is the former currency of Austria
Cryptic definition – a DACHA is a Russian second home or ‘retreat’. We’re not great fans of this type of clue and did not think this was a particularly good example.
HARRY (trouble) EDWARD (King Edward 1 was known as Longshanks). Harry Edward Kane (6 down) is a footballer who plays for Tottenham Hotspur and captains the England team.
An anagram of MALE BEARS (‘toyed with’)
Hidden or ‘found in’ drainAGE Ditch
LA (note) and DYE (stain) L (left) ‘surrounding’ CHAP (crack)
EAT (having breakfast) in GRAPE (Chardonnay – a type of grape). However, we cannot think of a sentence where ‘EAT’ can be replaced with ‘having breakfast’. Can anyone help please?
An anagram of BLEAK AN END (‘novel’) around or ‘incorporating’ A (article). A novel by Jeffrey Archer (23d).
CINNA (a four-time Roman consul) BAR (watering-hole)
W (with) – DAN (martial artist) outside or ‘coming round’
OP (work) inside or ‘penned by’ TICk (mark) missing last letter or ‘remaining unfinished’
DUFf (useless) missing last letter or ‘mostly’ round or ‘about’ RODLESS (missing staff) reversed or ‘turning up’
Hidden in (‘some’) controLAT HEadingley
An anagram of AND THREE (‘bats’)
ILL (bad) inside or ‘stuck in’ PASTE (gum)
First letters or ‘heads’ of Army Units + GUST (air force). A neat misdirection here.
mARCHER (person walking) with M (miles) omitted or ‘leaving’
SO (very) H (hard) O (round)
pLAYS (much drama) with no P (quiet)
M (month) inside ACE (service)
For 5D think of breakfast as a verb: “Grape” has “eat” in(side).
Took me a while to get going but once I saw Kane and Abel everything fell into place.
I wondered if 24a could be SING swallowing C-over the HILL but I overthought
Never read a word of J Archer or heard of Kane and Abel.
And didnt know Harry’s middle name
Worked out Charles Foster but didnt connect him with anything
So thanks for blog and puzzle
But I do remember Orson’s cuckoo clock piece in the Third man
I had no problem with ‘dacha’ but am with B&J in ‘great ape’ and await an example from someone using ‘eat’ this way. Otherwise much enjoyed, so thanks Tees and B&J.
Indeed a classic copmus @3… quite a few Romans to choose from, so had to look up 7d… took till the very end to spot the simple anagram in 21ac… added to trying to work the clue as 6,7 rather than other way round.. sigh…apart from that…
Thanks Tees n Bertandjoyce
For 5d maybe ‘break fast’ as two words equates better to ‘eat’.
I had no idea about the KANE-related clues, which I thought might both be (unread by me) novels of Jeffrey ARCHER. I quite liked DACHA, though I see what you mean about cryptic definition clues – you don’t have two bites at the cherry and they can be frustrating if you don’t get them straight away.
I learnt a new bird in GOOSANDER – as usual interesting to look it up later – and the name of a Roman consul.
Thanks to Tees and B&J
Tatrasman @4. I think Hounddog did explain “breakfast” (which does indeed come from break fast) as in “I eat/breakfast at 6 am”.
Another great Tees crossword – I did like 9a but my top favourite was 19a
Thanks to him and B&J
Another interesting and enjoyable puzzle from Tees – I liked the KANE connections. (I hasten to add that I’ve never read an Archer novel but I’m aware of some of the titles.) I’d even heard of the footballer!
Other favourites were the amusing 9ac GOOSANDER, GREAT APE, which I parsed as Hounddog and passerby, the cleverly allusive 12ac AGAMEMNON and CINNABAR, for the surface.
Many thanks to Tees and B&J.
A polished puzzle as I now expect from Tees. Even though I know little about the footballer, I was able to spot the connections although the “6 across” misdirection had me scratching my head for a long while. LADY CHAPEL took almost as long but was a real joy to crack. I’d wondered about GOOSANDER long before I entered it, failing to spot gander for a while.
No problems with eat which I’ve encountered in similar devices before and DACHA worked for me, as it did for WordPlodder though I share the caveat. Ticks shared with Eileen for AGAMEMNON and CINNABAR (we have hordes of Cinnabar moths every year – their caterpillars are the one thing that dine out on the ragwort. They are stunning.)
Thanks Tees (I got it right today!) and Bertandjoyce
I think Archer has been LBW for 0 just to complete the picture
Thanks all. I was about to say that themes are a bit of a nightmare, even mini-ones, as (a) if people don’t know them, they’re in for a slog, and (b) if people know them, they’ll fill half the grid without doing any real solving. But I have today been rescued by people who have heard of a virtually anonymous writer and even his most unexceptional book, that insignificant little flick Citizen Kane and a dodgy footballer who couldn’t hit a cow’s arse with a banjo.
Anyway, we breakfast here at Tees Towers. And we lunch. But we don’t dinner. We could supper, according to Collins, but tend not to. Gawd these devious compilers toying with parts of speech! It shouldn’t be allowed.
Tees @13: I assume you only eat tea when in an anagrammatical mood.
A.e.t. usually.
A bit of a slog but once we got ARCHER things began to fall into place. We had to remind ourselves who was known as Longshanks, and whilst we thought of Citizen Kane we didn’t know the eponymous hero’s first names (one of us saw the film at school film club over 60 years ago, but can’t remember much about it) but we managed to unscramble the anagram – and we liked the supposed reference to a non-existent 6 across! 22ac took a few moments to crack; at first we could only think of a stanhope as a carriage.
There’s always a sense of satisfaction in completely solving a crossword but we particularly felt it today, possibly because it was a challenge but not one of the sort that drags on most of the day till one loses interest.
Thanks, Tees and B&J
Thanks to Tees and BertandJoyce. This was a two-cryptic day for me, as I had a 90-minute meeting this morning that I was trying desperately not to pay attention to.
I had heard of both Charles Foster and Harry Edward, amazingly. Jeffrey Archer’s literary career has come up in other puzzles, but I hadn’t recalled Kane and Ebel so had to Google. As a Chicagoan, I suppose I have to name-check our favorite Kane–Patrick the ice hockey player of the Chicago Blackhawks. (Which would be quite unfair in a British crossword, but he is on track to become statistically the best U.S.-born player of all time before he’s done.)
I needed help parsing DUSSELDORF–it’s what it had to be, so thanks for that. I’m used to seeing the chatty bird spelled as “myna,’ which caused me to delay putting in ANIMA for longer than I should have.