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Back to a milder puzzle compared to the last issue…
… and whereas we had Vaccination at the heart of that puzzle we have been infested by a row of crazy Anti-Vaxxers in the middle of this one. That 17A might have been the toughest clue in the puzzle for many. It is a relatively new coinage which I would have dismissed as slang except that, unhappily, it has been used so much recently.
It was the previous across clue 14A that tripped me up. I saw the BRA/underwear part then jumped to thinking about particular geniuses and wrote in BRAHMS without worrying too much about the rest of the wordplay as I was on a roll (I thought).
Indeed, I rocked through most of the puzzle in about 20 minutes. (That’s what I call rock’n’roll.)
Of course, I then had trouble solving 15D with an initial H.
Still, my solving stats look good – 4 to go after the first pass, all done in 26 mins.
| Across | ||
|---|---|---|
| 9 | TICKED OFF | Parasite journalist Dicky given a bollocking (6,3) TICK (parasite) ED[itor] OFF (dicky) |
| 10 | UDDER | Kissinger’s other milk producer? (5) Homophone. The way Henry says “other” I suppose like a New Yorker might – I never noticed that he had much of an accent |
| 11 | MOOCH | Low church bum (5) MOO (low) CH[urch] |
| 12 | LOSE MONEY | Awful lonesome, with you just starting to head towards bankruptcy? (4,5) (LONESOME Y[ou])* AInd: Awful |
| 13 | CENTRIST | Not an extreme politician, but breaking cistern over Tory’s head (8) (CISTERN)* AInd: breaking, T[ory] Who says you can’t be an extreme centrist? |
| 14 | BRAINS | Underwear with brief cover – genius! (6) BRA (underwear) INS[urance] (cover, brief). Last in one after correcting the BRAHMS I wrote in earlier. It took a while to spot how to get to INS from Cover. |
| 17 | ANTIVAXXERS | Two unknowns start to evolve in rampant variants – a real hindrance in fighting coronavirus (11) (XX (two unknowns) E[volve] VARIANTS )* AInd: rampant |
| 21 | RETURN | Brenda rejected Act? Hit back! (6) ER< (Brenda, the Queen, rejected) TURN (act). Return in the Tennis sense |
| 22 | PRISONER | Timeserver wanting publicity, volatile noise on right (8) PR (Public Relations, wanting publicity), (NOISE)* AInd: volatile, R[ight] |
| 25 | SHORTENED | Subjected to snip operation, tenor writhes in outbuilding (9) (TENOR)* AInd: writhes, inside SHED (outbuilding) |
| 27/24/26/3 | AT THE END OF ONES TETHER | Desperate, unable to make progress in a ropey attachment? (2,3,3,2,4,6) Definition plus cryptic def., a jokey reference to a tether |
| 28 | DWELL | House members do when Biden’s focus is on Spring (5) [Bi]D[en] (Biden’s focus) WELL (spring) |
| 29 | ON THE TROT | It’s not hotter to get screwed continuously (2,3,4) (NOT HOTTER)* AInd: to get screwed. |
| Down | ||
| 1 | STOMACH | Guts involved in manifesto machinations (7) Hidden inside manifeSTO MACHinations |
| 2 | ACCOUNTANT | A cold aristocrat mounts TV presenter – he’ll no doubt make a double entry (10) A C[old] COUNT (aristocrat) ANT (TV presenter) |
| 4 | COLLUSIVE | Like (in dealings with the far right) the Republican party‘s conservative evil soul, perhaps (9) (C[onservative] EVIL SOUL)* AInd: perhaps. |
| 5 | OF USE | Sod all on Unite that’s helpful (2,3) O (Sod all) FUSE (unite) |
| 6 | SUBMERGE | Newspaper assistant, Cyclops and Reg about to go under (8) SUB (newspaper assistant), ME (Cyclops), (REG)* AInd: about. |
| 7 | EDEN | PM forced to quit – heaven! (4) Double Def. |
| 8 | GREYISH | Shady, in the manner of a 19th-century PM (7) Double Def. referencing the Right Hon Earl Grey |
| 15 | INSANITARY | Unhealthy agenda – Labour ends in folly (10) [agend]A [labou]R in INSANITY (folly). Penultimate clue solved |
| 16 | EXTRADITE | Tiered tax reform? Get rid of foreign element (9) (TIERED TAX)* AInd: reform |
| 18 | THROTTLE | Strangle a regulator (8) Double Def |
| 19 | PRESIDE | What Trump was supposed to do over USA, before going to the edge (7) PRE (before) SIDE (the edge) |
| 20 | CRUELTY | Filthy lucre today is empty – it’s not tender (7) (LUCRE)* AInd: filthy, T[oda]Y |
| 23 | SCALES | Self-contained beers – they might show weight gain (6) S[elf-] C[ontained] ALES (beers) |
No silly joke this time – just this piece of astonishment in case you missed it:
Autotomy (self-decaptitation) in Sacoglossan Sea Slugs (Guardian article/video)
Sometimes we find the world is weirder than we can imagine
I had ‘retort’ for 21A – it fits the word play, but not as well as ‘return’ does.
P.S. I find the World is always coming up with ways to be weirder than I can imagine. If it’s only sometimes, I realise I’m not paying enough attention.
I’ve always wanted to learn to solve cryptic crosswords, but they’ve always seemed impenetrable (plus never actually been a regular newspaper buyer). I then started getting Private Eye about a year ago and realised I had 2 weeks to attempt each one. That, combined with posts such as yours @beermagnet, which do a great job of actually explaining the derivations, have now helped me to be able to solve (albeit still with a little bit of internet help) these over the course of a few days. Admittedly not fast, but satisfying none-the-less, and I now am a lot better at tuning into Cyclops’ style (note sure if that’s a good or bad thing).
Thanks to all on these forums who help out us relative newbies.
And ‘Antivaxxers’ got me for a long time, mainly because I didn’t realise it had 2 xx’s in it and not 2 cc’s.
Columbo78: And thank you for your comment. It is always a pleasure to get some recognition
I too struggled with INS= Cover……i tried lids and all sorts!!!
I was absolutely delighted with MOOCH. My fave for sure. DWELL was good but way behind the short and misleading low bit to come up wiht the answer.
Thanks to all.
@Columbo78………I envy you the chance to stretch out these puzzles. Looking back, my early years with Cyclops were a wonderful mixture of frustration and light-bulb moments, over the full two weeks to get only half the clues sorted. Now, I still very much enjoy the challenges posed but sadly it does not last as long……like many other things, I suppose. (when it takes all night to do, what I used to do all night!!!)
Thanks Cyclops – that was fun.
Of interest 8d works here in NZ as well because we had a Sir George Grey as PM in the 1870s!
Thanks for the explanations Beermagnet – they are always appreciated. For once I managed not to invent new words to fill gaps.
Like Columbo78, I was new to cryptics and Cyclops’ style, and used to take the full 2 weeks to solve them sometimes, but now unfortunately only taking a couple of days. Strangely, ANTIVAXXERS was my first one in, because I am unfortunate enough to have an antivaxxer in our family, so it’s constantly on my mind.
Beermagnet, congratulations on the speed of your solve, but did you know it’s a foundational principle of 15² that (in contrast to ‘times for the Times’) we never discuss times here?
10ac ” I suppose like a New Yorker might – I never noticed that he had much of an accent”.
Ahem! Vot you tokking about?
“Although Kissinger assimilated quickly into American culture, he never lost his pronounced German accent, due to childhood shyness that made him hesitant to speak.”
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Kissinger
I thought the clue for ANTI-VAXXERS was brilliant, helped, of course, by the gift to setters that is ‘variant’.
Thanks beermagnet and Cyclops. A few really good clues and like Winsor @5 I enjoyed 11a MOOCH. 22a , 28a, 18a and in particular 15a were also faves. It took me a while to parse 15a and see INSANITY (so to speak), but it made me appreciate the clue all the more. This site got me on the path to regularly solving the Private Eye crossword thanks to beermagnet, jetdoc and mc_rapper67 as well as the regular contributors. Cheers!
Thanks beermagnet, I had the same difficulty with BRAINS (but I don’t have enough to have thought up BRAHMS as a possible alternative) and had to guess that Kissinger might say UDDER in a NYC way – if he really sounds German surely it would be more like UZZER? I now see there are a few of his speeches online so on a very rainy day I may sit through them to find out (unless you have already, Tony Collman?), after I have exhausted all the outstanding DIY jobs around the house and rearranged my book and record collections and cut the lawn with nail scissors… Anyway a failure here as I am another RETORTer so no prize this time, but congratulations to those who got it all right especially the newcomers, better to take 2 weeks to get it all correct than 1 hour and make a mistake, I should have been more patient – oh well, maybe next time! ANTIVAXXERS a great clue and my favourite.
Gazzh, I don’t need to sit through any recordings to know how Kissinger speaks: I’ve heard him. Native German speakers don’t have a single uniform way of mispronouncing the sounds which don’t occur in their first language. Kissinger pronounces voiced and unvoiced ‘th’ sounds as d and t respectively, und dot iss de vay many Chermans spik English.