This is only Methuselah’s second offering for the Independent. The first one was published in April and had a ‘Line of Duty’ theme.
It was fairly obvious that the theme today was NOVEL but sometimes the word was used as an anagrind or as part of the clue as in 10ac where alternate letters were removed and 28ac – where the first and last letters were deleted.
The blogger of the first puzzle said that he filled the grid quickly but the parsing took longer. We found the parsings of some of these quite tricky too as in 28ac and 9ac. However we have to put the puzzle down as a DNF as we had to cheat on 17ac where we had _ OME_ as we thought that ‘himself’ was ME. We also struggled with 26ac even when we guessed ORLANDO and had all the crossing letters.
One interesting point – when we were checking that R = Royal in Chambers, we noticed it had “the three R’s” whereas Collins had “the three Rs”. Discuss.
CARD (as in playing card – ‘perhaps King’) reversed or ‘rejected’ + the even letters of pUlLmAn – the ‘likewise’ is included as you are also asked to reject the odd letters
An anagram (‘dancing’) of SALACIOus without or ‘leaving out’ US
OB (old boy) and alternate letters (‘regularly trimmed’) of nOvEl
PART I (first section of novel) CU (copper) and initial letters of Labelled As Rather
SCAM (defraud) PI (character shipwrecked in novel – ‘The life of Pi’ by Yann Martel’)
I (independent) MP (parliamentarian) TO (reversed or ‘back’) ENT (hospital department as in Ear Nose and Throat)
H (hotel as used in the phonetic alphabet) AIR (to show) BUSH (former president) around or ’embracing’ R (Reading as used in the three Rs). The shock it goes into is hair obviously.
An anagram (‘abandoned’) of HE HIT TWEET – The novel was written by Zadie Smith.
MY (Methuselah’s) about ONE (himself). The novel was written by Martin Amis.
DOC (informal term for academic) U (university) MEN (fellows) T (time) S (special)
An anagram (‘possibly’) of BE ARTFUL
First letters or ‘leaders’ of Young Affirming Their Truth Enrages Right-wing
Sounds like (‘heard’) IN PATIENCE (the card game) hence ‘where suits might be’
EllA (as in Ella Fitzgerald – the jazz singer) with two Ms (money) replacing the two middle letters or ‘insiders’
C (first letter or ‘debut’ in Comedian) nOVEl (middle letters only or ‘leaving the fringe’) RED (sounds like or ‘read aloud’).
A S (second) and an anagram (‘novel’) of PLATH
ER (Queen) reversed or ‘turned’ + a homophone (‘by dictation’) of BECKER (Boris Becker the tennis player). The novel was written by Daphne Du Maurier
A clue as definition – E (last or ‘ultimate’ letter of substancE) inside or ‘covered by’ CRAM (jam). People in Cornwall may be horrified by this clue as they put their clotted cream on top of the jam. It”s only in Devon that you would see the cream covered by jam. It’s perhaps why Methuselah has included the ? at the end.
Hidden in (‘a little’) papercLIP PIERcing
KIM (novel by Rudyard Kipling) inside or ‘acquired by’ SPY (agent)
CURT (short) and SHE (novel by H Rider Haggard) each word around or ‘describing’ O (love) – hence the use of ‘repeatedly’
AG (first and last letters or ‘sides’ in Armstrong) STAIN ( disgrace – moving the first two letters to the back or ‘cycling’)
An anagram (‘pathetic’) of PRoTAGONIST without or ‘losing’ one ‘O’ (ring) around or ‘winning’ TIN (old cash) – the novel is by Irvine Welsh. We were not that happy about ‘pathetic’ as an anagrind. However, Chambers Thesaurus has ‘moving’ as a synonym. We don’t think of tin as a word to describe ‘old money’ – just a slang word for ‘money’ which is how Chambers lists it.
gREEDy dUCk (both missing first and last letters or ‘endlessly’) + a homophone (‘caught’) of EIGHT (rowing team)
Double definition – the novel is by Virginia Woolf and the Bloom refers to the actor Orlando Bloom. We have to admit that we guessed the answer when we had all the crossing letters, being only vaguely aware of the name of the actor – showing our age!.
An anagram (‘doctor’) of SEUSS + first and last or ‘extreme’ letters in LoopY – the novel is by James Joyce
R (royal) MAL (first letters or ‘starts to’ Moan About Libel) after THE (article). Chambers does not list R as an abbreviation of royal but our old dead tree version of Collins does.
V (very) E (European) NICE (city on the coast) – the ‘deadly location’ features in Thomas Mann’s novel Death in Venice.
What a pleasure to encounter a bit of a challenge from Methuselah after the relatively ‘lite’ fair I’ve experienced over the last couple of days. I do recall the last appearance – as a non LOD watcher, I struggled to make the connections. Here, I was on safer ground – although defeated by both MONEY and, to my annoyance, TRAINSPOTTING. I knew roughly how to get there but didn’t think of TIN and couldn’t get my head around the anagram and crossers – you suddenly realise how much you need a paper and pencil at times!
A PARTICULAR joy was the cunning use of the short novel titles – KIM in SKIMPY and SHE in COURT SHOE – together with the PI in SCAMPI. (I guess we should be grateful to Yann Martel for introducing an alternative clueing option for PI). Other pleasures included the assemblies of both DOCUMENTS and HAIRBRUSH and the anagrams leading to ASPHALT and ULYSSES. No-one seems confident these days in pronouncing something to be &lit but I thought CREAM might be. But just as happy with the softer ‘cad’ and it’s a clever construction.
Thanks Methuselah and B&J
As PostMark says, it was nice to have a bit of a challenge – I too was defeated by MONEY
My favourites were 26a and 3d which I thought was an &Lit, and I did like the ? to indicate that it depends where you are as to where the jam goes!
Thanks to Methuselah and B&J
PS: I think it should be the 3Rs
Failed on a few of these but no complaints. I also think of TIN as just slang for “money” so the “old” in 9d was a bit odd. Additionally, I wouldn’t spell 26a without a hyphen so 2-8 not 10 for me. Failed on this and also on COVERED & MONEY.
Although not a fan on the franchise, I shall nevertheless wish everyone a happy Star Wars Day. May the Fourth be with you.
PostMark and crypticsue – some years ago we were having a mini S&B in Leicester. Four of us were bloggers and we started discussing the fact that &lit was not a helpful way of describing a clue, especially for new solvers. One of us suggested ‘clue as definition’ which we all agreed was more helpful and decided that we would use that phrase instead in our blogs.
Glad that we weren’t the only ones to fail on MONEY.
Thanks Methuselah and BnJ
I’m surprised that Chambers doesn’t give R = ROYAL, as it’s not exactly uncommon: HRH, RAF, RN, FRS, RSPCA (cont p94).
I’m not normally a fan of themed puzzles, but I did enjoy this one very much, and even I spotted the theme after solving only three clues.
I managed to fill the grid but was beaten by the parsing of 27a and 2d. Neither the specific Boris needed for 2d nor the Fitzgerald for 27a occurred to me. The latter was clever and extremely devious as the the “jazz age” had to refer to the Scott Fitzgerald book “Six Tales of the Jazz Age” in keeping with the theme, didn’t it? NO!
Many thanks to Methuselah and to B&J.
P.S. Chambers is wrong. It is definately (sic, for LOD fans!) 3Rs.
We agree it should be 3Rs which is why there is no apostrophe in the parsing for 14ac. Our dead tree version of Chambers as well as the app both include one though.
Bertandjoyce @5: thanks for that. TBH, I’ve often felt more confident describing such clues as cad and only ever advance the &lit descriptor with hesitation. Often to discover a similar sense on the part of the blogger.
It’s funny that, whilst 3Rs is correct, 3R’s actually looks better to me! Perhaps those greengrocer’s know something we don’t? 😉
B&J @5. “All-in-one” is often used as an acceptable alternative clue description, which I think is much clearer for new solvers than “&lit”.
I would probably write Rs rather than R’s, but I think either is fine with pluralised letters. I think most would be more likely to write mind your p’s and q’s than ps and qs.
Sadly, the founder of the Apostrophe Protection Society died very recently – obits in the Telegraph among others.
Goujeers @12: the APS gave up the fight in 2019. I hadn’t read about the passing of John Richards and I see it was within the last fortnight. Dare I say – with great respect – that, like so many of those apostrophes, he’ll be missed.
Have to say that I much preferred this setter’s previous theme of LOD but perhaps some of that is down to the fact that I’ve not heard of either WHITE TEETH or MONEY as novels.
EMMA was the one I failed to parse – isn’t the clue missing an instruction? – and I hesitated with ‘ove’ in 28a, couldn’t see the wood for trees!
Thanks to Methuselah and to B&J for the review.
PS What a relief that you’ve owned up, Rabbit Dave@7, I never did believe that Ian Buckles had what it takes!
Just to add my tuppenceworth to the R’s v Rs debate: there is no right or wrong, only a matter of style, either is acceptable. After all, who has the temerity or authority to say whether something like this is correct or not? Also, Chambers or any other dictionary can’t be “wrong” as it only exists to reflect language as it is used and not to dictate usage (Webster’s aside).
Personally, I’d say good riddance to apostrophes. Hardly ever do they aid understanding or avoid ambiguity (we don’t need them in speech after all).
I thought the misdirection for ORLANDO to make you thing of Ulysses was superb and I love the idea of Joyce and Dr. Seuss collaborating to produce Ulysses. Yet another defeated by MONEY. I got (and liked) EMMA but I agree with jane@14 that it seems to be missing something.
As one of the Leicester Gang of Four, I will drop in to say that cad, or clue as definition, seems to be gaining ground and acceptance as an alternative to &lit, which even the revered Ximenes said he wasn’t sure could be precisely defined. Hence &littish, semi &lit, partial &lit and generally tying oneself in knots. I think cad – or ‘all-in-one clue’ – covers all those bases, and in the end saves a lot of fruitless arguments.
As for Rs or R’s, I agree with Deezzaa that it’s a matter of style. Indeed, who is the ‘authority’ here? Has Rabbit Dave achieved this status? He seems very adamant about it. And if you don’t resort to capital letters, you’ll end up with sentences like this: There are three as in banana.
Fine puzzle, blog the same.
Just to clear up 27a: I can see that it might read as if there’s something missing, but the idea is that the inside letters of ELLA are ‘made’ M’s, with ‘made’ working in the same way it works in a phrase like ‘a prince made king’.
Thanks to everyone who’s left their thoughts – sorry for causing so many MONEY problems – and thanks Bertandjoyce for the blog.
It is rather late in the day but as we mentioned our East Midlands mini S&B in the blog, we feel it is only right that we remember one of the commenters who was also there. We were deeply saddened last week to hear about the unexpected death of Conrad, our dear friend. He was an avid crossword solver and often passed on ‘gems’ that we may have missed in other publications. Until recently he commented quite regularly. We miss him so much.
I too was very sorry to hear of Conrad Cork’s passing. He was of late an infrequent commenter on Fifteensquared, but very much a presence at our East Midlands mini-S&B events. And a great crossword enthusiast as well as – in his day – a serious saxophonist. He’ll be missed by his crossword and many other friends.
Peter
Oh didn’t know about Conrad’s passing. Very sad had many a conversation albeit on line. Think I only actually met him once in Derby.
Very sad to hear about Conrad – he was always kind about my puzzles as I recall. Hope is enjoying a nice whisky wherever he is. My condolences to the family.
As the fourth member (blogger on the Guardian side) of the East Midlands Gang of Four, I remember Conrad with huge affection and already miss him desperately, for the gems of wit and wisdom mentioned by B&J, passed on by email, since we haven’t been able to meet, as we regularly did..
I first met him, serendipitously, on Leicester railway station, in 2011, as we were on the way to the first ‘provincial’ S and B, in Derby, so he was the very first 15² contributor I ever met and, along with his wife, Ali, we have been firm friends ever since. Incredibly, it turned out that they had lived just round the corner from me for a number of years.
RIP, dear friend.
Very sad news about Conrad which I had not heard. Met him at some of those S&B events, and had occasional email correspondence, most recently, if memory serves, around the time of a special birthday of his last year.
Yes, sorry to hear about Conrad. I encounterd him at S&B events but I also remember his appreciative comment on a comment I had made here once. He will be missed.
Very sorry to hear about Conrad. I always appreciated his comments on this site. A genuine crossword fan
I’d like to add my regrets at the passing of Conrad Cork, which was news to me too. Always a big fan of the Indy crossword and by his liking and retweeting of some of my non-crossword tweets I had surmised that he was definitely on the side of the angels politically. I’ll raise a glass to him.