This is a very good puzzle indeed, but be warned! It is definitely not an easy one. Following usual approach of looking for anagrams and charades will get you so far, but after that some serious lateral thinking is required. Thank you Io.
| ACROSS | ||
| 7 | BOXER |
Source of howl, bark and jabber (5)
|
| a BOXER is a bred of dog, so may howl and bark – a boxer jabs at his/her opponent | ||
| 8 | ERGOMETER |
In Queens, shot missing the police force assessor? (9)
|
| ER ER (queen, twice) contains (in…is…) GO and THE MET (police, The Met) missing THE – a device used to measure energy, work done. An ergometer does not measure force, but I get the idea. | ||
| 10 | SEALYHAM |
Tee shot, two things found by St Anne’s dog (8)
|
| SEA and LYtHAM missing (with…shot) T (tee, name of letter). St Anne’s is a seaside town and next to (found by) Lytham and, of course, the sea. A Sealyham Terrier is a breed of dog. | ||
| 11 | QUINCE |
Stratford-on-Avon chippy: “A selection of preserves”? (6)
|
| Perter QUINCE is a carpenter (chippy) in A Midsummer Night’s Dream (as performed in Stratford) – quinces are commonly selected for use in preserves (up-market ones at least) | ||
| 12 | PUT PEN TO PAPER |
Write adaptation of Peter Pan up, securing first place (3,3,2,5)
|
| anagram (adaptation) of PETER PAN UP contains (securing) TOP (first place) | ||
| 14 | FROM LEFT TO RIGHT |
“Terror-stricken order: Quit Hill!”, as the answer goes (4,4,2,5)
|
| OM (Order of Merit) LEFT (quit) TOR (hill) inside FRIGHT (in fright, terror-stricken) | ||
| 16 | ROUND BRACKETS |
In which (hint) you will find a clue (5,8)
|
| (hint) is a clue in ROUND BRACKETS | ||
| 19 | TARDIS |
What transports a doctor back in time is . . . . (6)
|
| A then DR (doctor) reversed (back) inside T (time) IS – the TARDIS is the time-travelling machine in the long-running TV series Doctor Who. Read the definition as What transports the doctor back…etc | ||
| 20 | TEST TUBE |
Where reactions happen, conversely, in wine-butts etc (4,4)
|
| found reversed (conversely) inside winE-BUTTS ETc | ||
| 21 | COPATRIOT |
A threesome fixed by descendant of ancient Egyptian countryman (9)
|
| A TRIO (threesome) inside (fixed by) COPT (descendant of ancient Egyptian) – a variant of compatriot | ||
| 22 | CADIZ |
Port city’s first guidebook covers Day One (5)
|
| City (first letter of) A-Z (guidebook) contains (covers) D (day) I (one) | ||
| DOWN | ||
| 1 | HOME GUARD |
15 and his TV platoon roughed ma about? (4,5)
|
| anagram (about) of ROUGHED MA – also known as Dad’s Army (my old man and his platoon) | ||
| 2 | DEWLAP |
Why best man turned up dependent on the turkey? (6)
|
| PAL WED (why the best man turned up) reversed (turned up) – a flap of skin that hangs (is dependent) on a turkey. Turned up is used twice here. Can anyone make a better explanation? | ||
| 3 | FROM TOP TO BOTTOM |
Starting with spinner, finishing with weaver”, as the answer goes (4,3,2,6)
|
| FROM (starting with…) TOP (spinner) TO (…finishing with) BOTTOM (Nick Bottom, a weaver in A Midsummer Night’s Dream) | ||
| 4 | TORQUATO TASSO |
Poet bristling at quotas in trunk (8,5)
|
| anagram (bristling) of AT QUOTAS inside TORSO (trunk) | ||
| 5 | BERI-BERI |
Disease whose deficiency would leave Her Majesty repeating? (4-4)
|
| beri-beri is a thiamine deficiency (vitamin B1), so removing BI (B1) from bERi bERi would leave ER ER (her Majesty, repeated) | ||
| 6 | VETCH |
Double check climbing plant (5)
|
| VET (check, verify) CH (check, chess) | ||
| 9 | CHANCE ONE’S ARM |
“Kinky” romance – can she have a go? (6,4,3)
|
| anagram (kinky) of ROMANCE CAN SHE | ||
| 13 | WHITEBAIT |
Holiday: fancy a bite? This? (9)
|
| WHIT (holiday, 7th Sunday after Easter) then anagram (fancy) of A BITE – this (whitebait) is what you might snack on a seaside holiday | ||
| 15 | MY OLD MAN |
Raving mad – only tailgating motorway van driver! (2,3,3)
|
| anagram (raving) of MAD ONLY follows (tailgating) M (motorway) – from the old music hall song My old man said follow the van, And don’t dilly dally on the way… | ||
| 17 | KIT-CAT |
Club chocolate bar in radio ads (3-3)
|
| (sounds like, as on a radio ad) KitKat (chocolate bar) – The Kit-Cat club, 18th century literary club in London | ||
| 18 | JACOB |
His brother made a mess of his inheritance (5)
|
| Just a guess from a quick flip though Wikipedia’s biblical characters. Cryptic definition about Esau trading Jacob’s inheritance for a bowl of soup (a mess)? Maybe something about AARON and Moses? Help me out, I know nothing. See cryptic sue @1 below for a fuller explanation. |
As I walked towards the computer earlier this morning, I said to myself that an IO would be a nice treat to solve on this beautiful day. So much to enjoy, I’ve marked 10a, 2d, 15d and 18d for special favouritism although i could have added more to to this list. I also liked the Nina-ish middle horizontal and vertical rows
Thanks to IO and PeeDee
I always remember Esau and the mess of potage, not least because if you made the mistake of saying he saw (‘e saw), my mother would always say ‘Esau was a hairy man’!
A mess of pottage is something immediately attractive but of little value taken foolishly and carelessly in exchange for something more distant and perhaps less tangible but immensely more valuable. The phrase alludes to Esau ‘s sale of his birthright for a meal (” mess “) of lentil stew (” pottage “) in Genesis 25:29–34 and connotes shortsightedness and misplaced priorities.
The mess of pottage always reminds me of Alan Bennett’s sermon. “But my brother Esau is an hairy man, but I am a smooth man.”
Thanks Io and PeeDee
2dn (one of three which I failed to get): I think “Why best man” is enough for PAL WED, in terms of why he took the job. This leaves “turned up” used only as the reversal indicator.
17dn: Wikipedia gives us the choice of Kit-Cat Club or Kit Kat Club. I do not regard that as sufficient authority to say that the hyphen forces the C spelling, but the homophone indication is more substantial if the C spelling is meant to be the answer.
Further to 3 re 17dn: Looking at the revision history for the Wikipedia page, the hyphen was removed from “Kit-Kat” in July 2020 with the following explanation: “assume that the hyphen in the second bolded name ought to go out because otherwise it’s the same as the first one”. The person making that edit does not seem to have noticed the C/K issue. I do not feel that I know enough about the club to put the hyphen back.
Just beat me on 2d, PB.
Found this too hard and not entirely satisfactory. As mentioned in blog, the definition for 8a is wrong. Also, the definition for 15d doesn’t seem to work. Since my old man said follow the van, he wasn’t a van driver or even a driver come to that. Can’t really take “tailgating” as part of definition.
There’s a small error in blog for 19a (missing the A before DR<).
Thanks Io and PeeDee
I thought this was a great stretch. Getting Z and J early on made me wonder if it was going to be a pangram, and so it turned out.
Hovis, I thought the “old man” drove the van, but it was so full of furniture that his wife could not get in and had to walk. That was the point of the song. So “my old man” was a van driver.
Thanks all for the corrections, especially my mis-spelling of Kit-Cat. Blog is fixed now.
PeeDee @7. My apologies – I think you’re correct.
Re 17d: The Kit-Kat Club is also the name of the club in which much of the action in the musical Cabaret takes place.
Hi EdK – yes indeed. I got totally confused with my KitKats when writing the blog. There is (at least):
The Kit-Cat Club aka Kit Kat Club (London literary society)
The Kit Cat Klub (fictional night club in the musical Cabaret)
The KitKatClub (real-life nightclub in Berlin)
KitKat (a chocolate biscuit)
Thank you for the blog. not surprised you got confused with the KitKat clue, still not sure exactly what the entry should be.
Force is totally wrong for ergometer but I suppose it was used to run nicely with police.
It comes from erg the old cgs unit for work done and energy, now largely replaced by the Joule in the SI system.
Just remembered there was also a chit chat club. I saw it in a programme about M.R. James who wrote ghost stories.
Further on Jacob (my 30 something son’s middle name – also see today’s Guardian for the same solution of Jacob…
Esau is referenced in Yiddish (K-vetch time!) under the term “machte geschefte mit Feter Esev” which translates, roughly, as Doing business with Uncle Esau or a by-word for making a bad deal.
As a novice on the site, I hesitate to take issue with the experts, but I think 8a is fine if you make the definition just “assessor”: “met” is then “police force”, which was how I parsed it. A tougher than normal FT puzzle (I do the FT and the Guardian, usually, plus the Azed on Sundays) but I enjoyed the lateral thinking elements.
Since I found it a couple of months ago, I am also enjoying the site – thanks to all the bloggers and posters.
It is a nice idea but assessor would be an extremely weak definition for ergometer. I always do the Guardian and the Azed, My friend gives me her FT crossword when she thinks it is too hard.
Hi Perplexus – I like that idea. Assessor is a tenuous definition for ergometer, but at least it is an accurate one. I wonder which Io had in mind.
Too tough for my old brain today but thanks to IO.
Also thanks to PeeDee and other bloggers – there are quite a few I should have got.
Hey ho – tomorrow is another (fools) day.
Pretty tough but we almost finished. 3dn and 14ac we got from crossing letters and enumeration. We needed a wordfinder for WHITEBAIT after trying in vain to find an anagram of ‘a bite this’ to mean ‘holiday’. And we eventually decided 7ac had to be a dog but BOXER never occurred to us and we thought it might be the name ‘Rover’; we did find in Chambers one (obsolete) meaning of rover as a type of arrow – something you might jab someone with. Favourite was SEALYHAM.
Thanks, Io and PeeDee.
Perplexus @15 , I forgot to say none of us are experts ! We are just enthusiasts and always learning. Feel free to say whatever you think.
Just got round to this today. Failed to complete the NW corner. Had I not given up, I should have worked out that I needed a W and an X to complete the alphabet. Still not sure if I’d have finished it.
Very tough but enjoyable. Just missed out on an accurate completion by entering PEACH instead of VETCH: “as like as two peas”, so double; then CH for ‘check’ and a peach tree can be trained to climb against a wall. Ah well.
Also I think that KIT-CAT is very unfair when the clue is so loose. Knowing nothing of the variant spellings of the various clubs (thanks PeeDee @) and not being interested enough to look it/them up, I just bunged in KIT KAT without too much thought.
Earlier, I had been very pleased with myself for working out the unknown-to-me TORQUATO TASSO (with only three crossers at the time, too), though I wasn’t clever enough to parse SEALYHAM (although it was a breed of dog I have heard of, and it fit the crossers), so thanks again PeeDee.
I don’t have a problem with the double use of ‘turned up’ in 2d: isn’t that why there is a question mark at the end of the clue?
Io/Enigmatist is such a challenging setter that I don’t mind failing (just) – so much more enjoyable than some of the less imaginative setters!
Thanks Io and PeeDee
Seems that this fellow always targets the Wednesday time slot, so lucky for PeeDee to always be the blogger. 🙂
Terrifyingly impenetrable to begin with, but the two central long ones fell early enough to open up some opportunities. There were a couple of local knowledge issues that prevented the parsing of SEALYHAM and HOME GUARD and failed to twig to the pangram which may have helped get BOXER with a bit less hassle. It was the last one in and thought that it may have been a triple definition but couldn’t find a specific ‘howler’ variety.
Needed to resort to aids to get finished but thoroughly enjoyed seeing the ones that surfaced by themselves and untangling the word play of all of the rest.
Wed can also mean ‘dependent’ when used in phrases like “wed to the idea that…” or other such usages.