Guardian 28,431 – Puck

by

I see this is my 800th blog for Fifteensquared, and Puck has provided a tough challenge for me to celebrate it. There’s a sporty theme running through the clues, but fortunately for me they mostly don’t call for too much knowledge of the subject. Many thanks to Puck.

(I don’t know if it’s significant that BERWICK RANGERS appears in row 14. There’s also a Joe IRONSIDE who plays for Cambridge United, so there may be more to the theme than I’m seeing. Yes there is – see comments.)

 
Across
7 LEGATOS Smooth passages of play set goal in motion (7)
(SET GOAL)*, with “passages of play” referring to music
8 SERVICE After losing first point, nervously receives this? (7)
Anagram of RECEIVES, less the first E, the first of four compass points in the word (E E E S); the surface refers to tennis
9 INGE 17 across, a wide man neither side wanted (4)
WINGER (a “wide” player in football etc) less its outer letters.Dean Inge used to be a familiar figure in crosswords, but is probably much more of an obscurity now
10 EXPLETIVE Former PL team’s left wing back dives, missing header and second 12 across? (9)
EX + PL (presumably standing for Premier League) + reverse of the “left wing” of Team + DIVES less its first letter and S. “Balls” (12a) is an expletive
12 BALLS Rubbish dances by Strictly star (5)
Three definitions – the former Shadow Chancellor Ed Balls was famously an incompetent but popular contestant on Strictly Come Dancing
13 IRONSIDE Detective suffering derision from press team (8)
Another “triple” clue – DERISION*, and IRON (press) + SIDE (team). Ironside was a TV police series of the 60s and 70s, which my late mother always called “Perry Mason in a wheelchair”, as Raymond Burr played both characters
15 GALA A delay put back festivity … (4)
Reverse of A LAG
16 FAIRY … the 25th one, perhaps, for Puck? (5)
The 25th gala might be “FAIR Y” (after FAIR A, FAIR B, etc). Puck is a fairy in A Midsummer Night’s Dream
17 DEAN Academic official content to provide answers (4)
Hidden in proviDE ANswers
18 PRESERVE Can perhaps shoot game here? (8)
Double definition – canning is a way to preserve food, and game can be shot (fortunately more likely with cameras than rifles these days) in a [p]reserve. As noted in the comments, I got my reserves and preserves a bit mixed up here
20 CIVIL Retiring Bengali vicar’s well-mannered (5)
Hidden in reverse of bengaLI VICar – the hiding is indicated by the ‘s
21 STROLLERS Streetcars, buggies or slow-moving 3? (9)
Another triple clue – ST + ROLLERS (Rolls Royces) plus two definitions
22 INFO Some Penguin ‘Football Facts‘ (4)
Hidden in penguIN FOotball
24 BERWICK Sadly bicker about who’s first to give name for an Antarctic glacier (7)
First letter of Who in BICKER* – the Berwick Glacier flows into the much larger Beardmore Glacier, a name familiar from the story of Captain Scott’s ill-fated expedition
25 RANGERS Roy’s header really annoys 3 (7)
R[oy] + ANGERS
Down
1 MEAN 17 across having doubled lead, end result is tight (4)
DEAN with the D (500) doubled to become M (1000)
2 CAMELLIA Bloomer showed up, leading to one-all game (8)
CAME (showed up) +anagram of I ALL
3 ROVERS Briefly run some cricket team (6)
R[un] + OVERS (some cricket)
4 CEREMONY Stand on this, maybe, and see more? Yes, now encroaching heads shifted (8)
C (see) + anagram of (MORE + first letters of Yes Now Encroaching) – rather a devious construction, but the definition is clear (when you see it)
5 AVOIDS Originally all versions of it described sitting ducks (6)
First letters of All Versions Of It Described Sitting
6 ACRE A team lacking women in some area (4)
A CREW less W
11 PRIVILEGE Cooked pig liver, edible starter? That’s right (9)
(PIG LIVER)* + E[dible]
12 BY AIR Times article on current ‘right’ way to travel (2,3)
BY (times, as in “2 by 2”) + A (article) + I (electric current) + R[ight]
14 DRAWL Slow-paced, lazy speech after tie lost (5)
DRAW (tie) + L[ost]
16 FORELOCK Warning forward respectfully, this may be tugged (8)
FORE (warning in golf) + LOCK (rugby player)
17 DEVLINGS Little mischief-makers, half of Devon’s swimmers (8)
The first half of DEVon’s + LINGS (fish) – a new word to me, but a reasonably obvious diminutive of “devils”
19 SCREWS Second team’s inside men in charge (6)
S CREW’S – screws is slang for prison officers, hence “inside”
20 CASUAL Laid-back Corinthian’s teammate? (6)
Double definition – the second is presumably a reference to Corinthian-Casuals Football Club
21 SEEN Watched part of play broadcast (4)
Homophone of “scene”
23 FARE Conveying charge from governing body, with rule essentially being ignored (4)
FA (ruling body of football) + R[ul]E

84 comments on “Guardian 28,431 – Puck”

  1. There is also a local team for me, Civil Service Strollers, from Edinburgh, and of course Gala Fairydean, from Galashiels, across the middle of the grid.

  2. An enjoyable puzzle but sadly DNF. Never heard of Dean Inge and failed on 23dn too. Hopefully the sports theme was sufficiently loose to not draw any complaints. Thanks Puck and Andrew. ( Is ‘inge expletive’ a team? Or a band?)

  3. Congratulations on your achievement, Andrew. That’s some milestone.

    Yes, the sporty/soccer theme is evident through much of the clueing but, like our blogger and first poster, I don’t see a lot in the solutions – ROVERS, RANGERS and the oddities already highlighted.

    I loved the various triples (Ed BALLS – the gift that keeps on giving), the doubling of D leading to MEAN, the recollection of IRONSIDE (similar vintage to Dick Emery?), and, for once, I saw the FAIR-Y device which is one that nearly always eludes me.

    I raised an eyebrow at the straight equation or PRIVILEGE with right; I thought there were various quotations out there distinguishing between the two. Generally I understood rights to be inherent but privileges earned, bestowed, granted…

    Thanks Puck and Andrew

  4. Thanks for blog Andrew, and congratulations on #800! I’m not clear on how the wordplay delivers the ‘p’ in Preserve at 18ac…

  5. An enjoyable challenge with some beautiful clues, though I thought that the construction of 4d was a little too tortuous.

  6. At 18a, ‘game preserve’ is an alternative term for the more commonly used ‘game reserve.’

  7. Pretty tricky, but got there in the end. Plenty to enjoy along the way, including IRONSIDE, STROLLERS and FARE. Many thanks to Puck for the workout, and congrats to Andrew: 800 – phew!

  8. Thanks Puck and Andrew (congratulations!)
    A lot of GK needed here, I thought. I needed a wordsearch for INGE. I had never heard of DEVLINGS either, and crawled towards the solution through checks! For once I spotted the FAIR Y trick.
    What does “end result” contribute to the otherwise neat 1d?
    I spotted 17a was a hidden, but tried COFF (slang for “give information on”!
    I wondered about the P in PRESERVE too. If it’s a “game preserve”, George @6, then surely no shooting (except with camers) would be permissable? I suppose that’s true of a reserve as well.

  9. A NHO Dean INGE for me too, so ended up as a DNF. I didn’t know many of the Scottish football references either, but NNI @1’s mention of GALA FAIRYDEAN (well spotted) prompted me to look up the history of the club and some of the other teams in the Scottish Lowland Football League – all very interesting, with some more familiar sounding names such as East Kilbride and of course BERWICK RANGERS.

    Favourite was the reminder of IRONSIDE (liked your mother’s description), which I used to watch in my youth.

    Thanks to Puck and Andrew

  10. Like JerryG@2 I don’t recall ever knowing of Dean INGE, though I like to think I’ve a reasonable background knowledge of 20th/21st Century culture. Wikipedia says he was nominated 3 times for the Nobel prize in literature, but it seems he would be considered exceedingly un-PC today. Anyway, it’s always good to learn something new. I think I’d have guessed the answer from wordplay if I hadn’t failed to get MEAN, which now seems one of the best clues.
    Other than that, it was fairly straightforward, though I share PostMark’s doubt about PRIVILEGE=right.
    Thanks (and congratulations!) Andrew, and Puck.

  12. Andrew and NNI@1

    My foi was 15, followed by 16. Then, without looking at the clue, I wrote in DEAN. (I was born many moons ago in the Scottish Borders.) On looking at the Scottish Lowland League to see whether Civil Service Strollers were still in existence I learned that ‘the fairies’ are now known as Gala Fairydean Rovers.

    I was disappointed that Hawick Royal Albert did not appear.

  13. [I looked up Dean Inge on Wiki. He had extreme views. Take this, for example:
    He disapproved of democracy, which he called “an absurdity” and compared it to “the famous occasion when the voice of the people cried, Crucify Him!”[7] He wrote “Human beings are born unequal, and the only persons who have a right to govern their neighbours are those who are competent to do so.”[8] He advanced various arguments why women should have fewer voting rights than men, if any.[9]]
    This is the link.

  14. Mark (the other one), George, muffin above: I shared your query – even wondering if ‘p’ was being used as an abbreviation for perhaps! Wikipedia points out that game reserves are often also known as wildlife preserves which rings slightly more comfortably with me than the unfamiliar game preserve.

  15. GALA FAIRYDEAN ROVERS, BERWICK RANGERS and CIVIL SERVICE STROLLERS are all, it turns out, members of the Scottish Lowland League.

    This was definitely one for the esoteric knowledge: an ideal crossword for a Scottish Lowland Football fiend who also watched both IRONSIDE and Ed BALLS on Strictly, is an expert on Antarctic geography and is old enough to remember Dean INGE being a crossword cliché.

    I had to look up BERWICK to make sure it was a glacier, and DEVLINGS was a new word. Didn’t spot all the triples, failed to parse more than I care to list, like the MEAN/DEAN trick.

  16. Great, but weird. Loved all the triple definitions, know just about enough about Scottish football to make sense of it all. BALLS was perhaps the most apposite clue I’ve seen all year.

    The MEAN/INGE corner failed me with its unhelpful crossers (and no idea who Dean Inge is), but there was more than adequate compensation elsewhere – CEREMONY and FAIRY were lots of fun to puzzle out.

    Congratulations on your anniversary, Andrew.

  17. Oh bugger, of course it was double d to get m… wake up boy! Few other dnps as well: the illiberal Dean Inge; the detective series which either didn’t antipodise or I missed it, and the p in preserve as per others above. Plus one nho jorum, devlings, and then the biblical football club…obvs it was casual but absy no idea about why. All good fun though, better than being bored. Thanks both.

  19. Thank Puck, who is rightly remunerated for this fine work, but double thanks to our long-serving blogger, who I suppose gets no more than satisfaction and our gratitude for his sterling efforts. We’ll done Andrew!

  21. I found the PL in both the clue and answer of 10a rather odd – I wonder if Puck originally had “Premier League” in his clue and it was too long? [I thought it funny that the Premier League made such a fuss about the proposed ESL when they did something rather similar in 1992!]

  22. I gave up on where the letters et came from in 10ac so thank you very much, Andrew, for your explanation. “Team’s left wing back” is a fiendish bit of wordplay. The whole crossword is an odd mix of fiendish wordplay and fairly common devices but on the whole I found it thrillingly challenging. It’s a great one for your 800th blog, Andrew. Many congratulations. You are always gracious and, unlike some bloggers, never bounce back defensively when someone offers an alternative point of view. Grateful thanks.

  23. Yesterday I commented on the irony of Pasquale’s ‘very exciting Scottish team’ and here they are in all their splendour 🙂

    Very tough but I really enjoyed the challenge and knowledge of football was not really necessary. I guessed INGE and BERWICK, but both fair. Thanks to the other contributions on INGE, he sounds thoroughly odious. I was pleased to get FAIRY as well as others from the 25th letter and I think there might be a reference to the vintage comic book character, Roy of the ROVERS in the linked clue, RANGERS.

    Ta Puck and congrats Andrew on your wonderful achievement. I’m in awe of the courage you all display above the parapet.

  24. Postmark and Beaulieu (nice place?) at 3 and 10 – courtesy of the invariably accurate Terry Pratchett (haven’t bothered to look it up) “privilege” derives from “private law” – rights of the ruling classes… (did you know that “fornication” originally meant the stonemasonry associated with arches and vaults?).

    Ta for the blog and helpful parsing for some that I didn’t understand. Gave up on INGE wtf. Curates egg for me.

  25. Tough puzzle. Did not understand the DEAN references, so failed to solve 1d and 9ac. MEAN is a clever one. No idea about INGE – never heard heard of him and could not parse it. (Haha, yes, it must be very obscure now).

    Did not parse 10ac EXPLETIVE apart from EX PL, FARE (never thought of FA as a governing body), CASUAL (never would have parsed this in a million years).

    New: DEVLINGS, IRONSIDE (TV show from 1960s).
    Needed Google for Ed Balls/Strictly star.

  26. Exactly as Michelle @25 except knew the BALLS twerp.

    Lovely puzzle but a dnf.

    Many thanks, Puck, and huge thanks to Andrew…800 blogs, gosh, there ought to be a name for it…is this your octoblog, perhaps?

  27. Yep Boffo @16, agree, weird. Take the aforesaid Inge… pro nudism and animal rights while thinking democracy “an absurdity”.. that’s expletive weird.

  28. I enjoyed seeing GALA FAIRYDEAN emerge on the middle row. I’d rather the Lowland League be in the spotlight than the European Greed League.

    Well played Andrew, that’s as many blogs as Muttiah Muralitharan has Test wickets.

    Thanks Puck and Andrew

  29. Havent seen LEGATOS plural before (or GELATOS for that matter)
    I fell for the doubling trick in 1 ,not having seen it for a while
    and without both crossers didnt have a hope with 9 (an adjective like gloomy or morose would have helped but no excuses ) It wouldnt be Puck without those fiendish 4 letter words
    Ole Andrew and thanks Puck

  30. Well, the most surprising thing for me this morning was to come on here and realise that I had successfully navigated all of the twists and turns of this typically Puckish puzzle. Though wasn’t at all clear about my parsing of so many – EXPLETIVE, CEREMONY for two, and hadn’t come across those mischief makers before. Wasn’t really sure of PRESERVE, either. Fortunately Corinthian CASUALs, and IRONSIDE were somewhere stored in my grey matter. INGE more familiar to me as a Danish forename. This may sound like a litany of complaints, but overall I enjoyed the workout…

  31. Minor quibble with 17d. The plural of ling is ling, just as the plural of cod is cod, so presumably swimmers is intended to be interpreted as swimmer-s?

  32. One of my local football teams in SW London is called Battersea IRONSIDE(s) but I doubt that they’ve ever been drawn against a Scottish team.

  34. Well done Andrew, 9a had me fooled.
    Could not see how Danny Ings (with s out and e in) worked with Dean :O(

    I’d found the football link so was obsessed with 7a being football related by then – so missed an otherwise simple anagram.

    Good start to the day. Thank you Puck.

  35. @TonyG#33
    I prefer to go by Chambers – I’ve caught many ling, cod and pollock and have never heard any fisherman refer to them as lings, cods or pollocks!

  36. Lyssian@31&35 – I agree that a fisherman would refer to long, not lings – but a zoologist would perhaps refer to the lings as a family (Lotidae) which contains several different related species of fish.

  38. I don’t think the 18A definition has anything to do with a “reserve”. A “preserve” is defined in Chambers as an area of land or stretch of water where game or fish are reared for private shooting or fishing, which is pretty unambiguous. I fear it is wishful thinking to imagine that Puck is referring to shooting the game with a camera rather than a rifle. The idea of “preserves” goes back centuries in England, but they are still very much there, usually for pheasants, which would be much less common without them (which would be an excellent outcome, but that’s a wider debate).

    Thanks to gladys@15 for elucidating the theme of the Scottish Lowland League. There is a hint of a separate theme around class – Privilege, Casual Drawl, Preserves, Balls, Gala, Ceremony, Acre(s), Service, tugging the Forelock, and – perhaps as commentary – Expletive, Mean, Screws and Avoids Fare. Puck, true to his name, seems very playful today.

    Many thanks to setter and blogger.

  39. Well, what do you know? GALA FAIRYDEAN ROVERS; it must have been fun for the setter. I thought perhaps he’d started with BERWICK RANGERS, and then failed to incorporate Bristol, Blackburn or Doncaster etc for the Rovers.

    Quite enjoyable, but a few quibbles. I can see the attraction of using winger as part of the theme to give INGE, but there are plenty of other, better (IMHO) words that could have been used for ?N?E? I agree that the clue for CEREMONY was unnecessarily convoluted. The use of ‘s to indicate ‘has’ for a hidden indicator means that the clue reads ‘ … vicar has well-mannered’.

    I enjoyed SERVICE and STROLLERS.

    Thanks for the Puckish fun, and congratulations to Andrew for an awesome, octocentenary blog.

  40. Sagittarius @38: how very interesting. TILT. It does make sense – more so than our earlier attempts, mine included, and rings just the vaguest of bells but they clearly weren’t chiming well enough earlier. Thanks for that.

  41. Thanks for the blog and well done for 800, some nice clues and nice ideas but a few issues as well.
    Dean Inge does not deserve the privilege of being in a Guardian Crossword.
    20 ac is not well clued, the s does not really save it.
    In 2 d one-all should not really lead to an anagram of i a l l .
    Devlings is new to me but I like new words and the clue was fine.

  42. This rubbed me up the wrong way in so many ways, I’m sorry to say. No hidden indicator in CIVIL (despite our heroic blogger’s assertion that the ‘s performs this function). The non-word DEVILINGS; a PRIVILEGE is not a ‘right’; the naff plural ‘lings’; the confusion of reserve/preserve; PL bunged into the clue in the vain hope that it might have some established and recognised meaning as an initialism; the arcane theme; the obscure INGE; the execrable surfaces (10a and 4d are salient examples); the mangled definition for SERVICE; … well, that’s enough to be going on with. I suppose it could be considered a skilfully and ingeniously constructed puzzle — but not my cup of tea.

  43. Although I noticed the presence of a lot of general names for teams, I didn’t look to see if there were any specific others than Berwick
    Like gladys@15 I remembered DEAN INGE from crosswords long ago – inevitably as “the gloomy dean”, though don’t know why which of his views promoted that sobriquet. Thanks Andrew for resolving parsing of several clues where I could only biff an answer, and to Puck

  44. Perhaps deliberately in terms of this puzzle being published, I notice that Twitter is today celebrating Ed BALLS day – it made that clue a lot easier to get than it probably would have been otherwise! If Dick Emery was an aged reference yesterday, Dean INGE is surely well out today…

    Congratulations on the 800th, Andrew.

  46. Congratulations, Andrew.

    As for the puzzle, I’m going to follow the advice that if you can’t say anything nice about someone/thing …

  47. Sagittarius@48: Yes, 18th and 19th century gentlemen used to “preserve” their game, with fences, gamekeepers, No Trespassers signs and probably man traps too.

    Robi@39: it doesn’t have to read “vicar has” in the surface: the parsing of cryptic clues (annoyingly to me) doesnt have to match the apparent grammar of the surface, so vicar’s can mean “vicar is” in the surface but “vicar has” in the parsing.

    (I didn’t know all that about Scottish football, but when NNI@1 spotted the other teams, I wondered if they might have something in common with BERWICK and looked it up – et voila!)

    Andrew: I omitted to congratulate you on your 800! Many thanks for a real labour of love.

  48. Congratulations Andrew on your 800th blog. I hope you get a big pay raise! In any event I found this crossword to be a bit tedious with too much reliance needed on facts I just didn’t know. I much preferred Hob’s crossword in yesterday’s Indy, a great example of this setter’s genius.

  50. gladys @47; I understand what you’re saying, but please see this from Alberich about the use of ‘s (this is a Ximenean view):
    Gangster’s weapon creates panic (5) is a more punchy sentence, but the clue doesn’t work on the cryptic level. On the surface, the apostrophe-S signifies the possessive, and that’s fine, but at the cryptic level there is a clash of verbs. If we expand the apostrophe-S of the cryptic reading, we get
    Gangster has weapon creates panic (5)
    and this clearly doesn’t make logical sense.

  52. On further thought, perhaps ‘Retiring Bengali vicar’s well-mannered is OK if read as (The phrase) ‘Retiring Bengali vicar’ has/possesses well-mannered (CIVIL).

    I’ll get me coat …

  53. I don’t have time to read the whole blog and comments before I leave so I apologize if I repeat somebody. I’ve tried to avoid that by using search for key words.

    Enjoyed the puzzle and needed PeterO’s help for some clues — thanks to both and congratulations to Peter!.

    Peter, you’ve left out the A (article) in the parsing of BY AIR.

    Couldn’t parse FAIR Y.

    “Crew” for “team” is used in two clues, 6d and 19d. Seems like a weakness.

  54. Mostly okay but CASUAL had a smarty pants smugness about it that didn’t sit well. I had a dentist and neighbour called INGE in the 70s who wore brick red suits and drove a VW beach buggy – sadly I failed to find a dean connection. Chapeau on the octocentenary!

  55. The William Inge I’ve heard of is the American playwright who wrote “Picnic” and “Bus Stop,” but he didn’t fit the rest of the clue and isn’t all that well known. A novelty for me is to see “winger” in the blog not being a poor synonym for “bird.”

  56. Sorry if I’m late to the party, but has anyone commented that today, April 28, is also known as Ed BALLS Day?

  58. Wow – late to the party today and with a zero sports knowledge this was hard work.

    Ed Balls about sums it up for me…

    Thanks Puck and Andrew (congrats on DCCC)

  59. Congratulations on the 800, Andrew!

    A DNF today with lots of help from the autocomplete. Ed Balls as Strictly star, Dean Inge, Corinthian-Casuals (though I did get that one), FA for ruling body, LOCK for “forward,” all failed to cross the Atlantic for me. And then I’m just having a fuzzy-headed day as it took me forever to get 5d among others. Well, if I do British crosswords I must expect British references.

    I would protest on behalf of my former Texan neighbors that drawls aren’t necessarily lazy, but I suppose “lazy drawl” is a saying.

    Nice to see some outside-the-box clues like 1d!

  60. Having worked out Inge as the answer to 9 across and then rejected it on the basis that the world-famous Inge Dean had hitherto escaped my attention, it was a relief to discover that 24 across featured one of the better known Antarctic glaciers.

  62. Far from easy, but it kept my interest. I’m kicking myself that I didn’t get 16a from its position between 15a and 17a, but as soon as I entered FAIRY the quaintly named football club was obvious.

  64. It’s always worth tuning in to the results on Scottish Cup first round day just to hear all the quaint names read out. A pity Puck couldn’t have worked in Inverurie Locos but they’re up in the north so wouldn’t be in the Lowland League.

  66. Really interesting that in my formative years of cryptic solving, the ‘gloomy dean’ always signified INGE and was a bit of a chestnut, yet from today’s comments it’s completely unknown to most. I’m only 51 though so not sure how it went from chestnut to obscurity so swiftly.

  67. Congratulations on the 800th, Andrew! Fine blog as usual.
    I failed on INGE and FARE, but should have got both in fareness. I invariably enjoy Puck’s puzzles and this was no exception. Pleased to have spotted the letter doubling trick which gifted me MEAN and DEAN. I’ve not heard of Dean Inge either.
    Robi and Gladys, I don’t see the need to expand the ‘s in 20a to “has” or “is”. For my money the genitive form, Retiring Bengali vicar’s, indicates the hidden answer is part of Bengali vicar, retiring.
    Great fun theme, but way, way over my head, though I wondered why Berwick Rangers were across the bottom. I once stayed in a B&B in Berwick. All I remember about the room was a pennant on the wall with the goalie on it and the caption “Big Tam – Ready!” Not sure he was ready enough, given Berwick Rangers current league standing 🙂 .

  73. Roz @71: sorry Roz but I can’t agree with you on this one. One and ‘i’ have been accepted substitutes for a long time so “one-all game” with the last word as anagram indicator can certainly be interpreted as a combination of ‘i’ and ‘all’ to give the required ‘llia” in my book.

  74. Congratulations on number 800 Andrew. Your analysis is appreciated.
    I failed with INGE and had an unparsed ANNE – a hidden name in the clue. I did look sideways at two hidden words one above the other, DEAN and CIVIL.
    I also smiled at the Roy of the ROVERS connection.
    Thanks for the workout Puck – enjoyable as ever.

  76. Congratulations Andrew.
    Oh dear, I’m old enough to remember a time when Dean Inge made an appearance in crossword land seemingly every week, if not more often. Still have never read him, and probably never will.

  77. HAPPY ED BALLS DAY EVERYONE!

    Loved that clue. Got all answers but 2 because I am NOT a sports person, and neither were my co-solvers. Pretty proud of that, and well done Puck for putting in so many sports references.

    I’m getting a sort of feel for all the different setters, and it seems Puck’s trademark is sneaking in an extra definition or wordplay wherever they feel like it. How mischievous, much like Puck the sprite.

  79. Andrew – 1.25 thanks per blog.
    Puck – you beat me all ends up. How bad.

    I recall reading an article – perhaps an interview with Araucaria – where it was reported that some (female?) crossword editor had insisted on the mothballing of the, then ubiquitous, “gloomy Dean”. Prior to reading the article I had never encountered him and I’d stopped waiting for him to make an appearance but here he is. (And I missed him – unforgivable.)

  80. PostMark@73, it is the old argument. Many things can always be substituted for other things, in my view an anagram is a mixture of letters that are already present, otherwise it is what is known as twice-removed and can become ridiculous. I grant you that i for one is the simplest case of this but it is still the end of the wedge.

  82. This was great. As soon as I noticed a wee football theme I was right into it. Just missed out on MEAN so pretty chuffed with that. Learnt a few new words while doin it tae.

    The ‘DEAN’ clue was good. Almost a double definition, with Howard Dean being a football referee who’s known for his overzealous adherence to the rules.

    BALLS made me chuckle. Took me ages to get tho as I don’t get Strictly on the telly over here.

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