A brilliant challenge from WANDERER today, who is guilty of spoiling us by dishing out absolute treats every time he makes an appearance.
FF: 10 DD: 9
Multiple clues that I liked which made picking a favorite a challenge. A couple of parsings have the potential to be improved upon.
| ACROSS | ||
| 1, 5 | CAPITAL LETTERS |
WASHINGTON POST? It’s full of them (7,7)
|
| CAPITAL ( washington ) LETTERS ( post ) – interesting start to the puzzle, wapo itself is written in the clue thus | ||
| 9 | REALM |
Area in football club closing at end of first half (5)
|
| REAL Madrid ( football club, first half ) | ||
| 10 | BUTTERCUP |
Flower putting scent, say, into soft soap (9)
|
| C ( cent, sounds like scent ) in BUTTER UP ( soft soap ); i went down the wrong path by equating ‘utter’ with ‘say’ in the clue and trying to parse the remaining before i came back up for air | ||
| 11 | OVERTURNS |
Spills from open vessels (9)
|
| OVERT ( open ) URNS ( vessels ) | ||
| 12 | AMEER |
Prince of foreign 9 using euro, originally in place of pound (5)
|
| [ REAlM ( answer to 9a) ]* with E ( Euro ) replacing L ( pound ) | ||
| 13 | GRAPHICS TABLET |
Device for inputting chart? Small chart in ICT setting (8,6)
|
| 18 | OVER THE COUNTER |
Public house emptied out, to combat one way of obtaining drugs (4,3,7)
|
| OVERT ( public ) HE ( HousE, without inner characters ) COUNTER ( combat ) | ||
| 20 | OOMPH |
Appeal with some vigour when opener one short of a ton? (5)
|
| iOO ( ton, 100, without the initial 1/i ) MPH ( some vigour ) – excellent surface | ||
| 22 | ACETABULA |
Misplace tabulation partly showing depressions in hip area (9)
|
| hidden in “misplACE TABULAtion..” | ||
| 24 | ILL HUMOUR |
Bad mood caused by sick joke? (3,6)
|
| ILL ( sick ) HUMOUR ( joke ) | ||
| 25 | SHOAL |
Swimming group that’s also hard- working (5)
|
| [ ALSO H ( hard ) ]* | ||
| 26, 27 | EVENING PRAYERS |
Fiancée oddly no longer angry vespers cut out these? (7,7)
|
| [ fIaNcEe ( oddly out, without odd characters ) ANGRY VESPERs ( cut, without last letter ) ]* – vespers means the same thing but i am not sure whether i should mark that as the definition or ‘these’ given the typical syntax of the clues. what am i missing? | ||
| DOWN | ||
| 1, 17 | CARBON MONOXIDE |
Gas cooker not approved by the Queen (6,8)
|
| COoker ( without [ OK – approved, ER – queen ] ) , chemical symbol for the gas | ||
| 2 | PLANE TREE |
Leaves on this, having intention to be in Paris by start of evening (5,4)
|
| PLAN ( intention ) ETRE ( to be, in french ) E ( start of Evening ) | ||
| 3 | TEMPT |
Prove attractive to couple wanting top personal trainer (5)
|
| iTEM ( couple, without starting letter ) PT ( Personal Trainer ) | ||
| 4 | LIBERTINE |
Rakish French composer standing in queue? (9)
|
| IBERT ( french composer, jacques ) in LINE ( queue ) | ||
| 5 | LOTUS |
Fast car? Boorish males have an increasingly high time . . . . (5)
|
| LOUTS ( boorish males ) with T moving up ( ~ high time ) | ||
| 6 | THEN AGAIN |
. . . . on the other hand, hen night gets abandoned with one hour gone and AA brought in (4,5)
|
| [ HEN NIGhT (without H – hour ) AA ]* | ||
| 7 | EMCEE |
One using mic regularly? (5)
|
| &lit; expansion of MiC ( regularly ) | ||
| 8, 19 | SEPARATE TABLES |
Part which young children learn in school play (8,6)
|
| SEPARATE ( part ) TABLES ( which young children learn in school ) – play by terence rattigan; wiki here | ||
| 14 | PATCHOULI |
Chat-up line is one primarily about essential oil (9)
|
| [ CHAT UP LIO ( ‘..Line Is One..’, primarily ) ]* | ||
| 15 | STONECROP |
Plant produced from seed that’s hard to prune (9)
|
| STONE ( see that’s hard ) CROP ( prune ) | ||
| 16 | LAEVULOSE |
Sugar briefly loses value when cooked (9)
|
| [ LOSEs VALUE ]* – another name for fructose as i found out | ||
| 17 |
See 1
|
|
| 19 |
See 8
|
|
| 21 | MELEE |
Half-hearted 7, given revised opening fight (5)
|
| slightly tricky parse; answer to 7d is EMCEE. Half hearted means replacing C ( 100 ) with L ( 50 ). revised opening indicates switching E and M, to get MELEE. | ||
| 22 | AMONG |
In the middle of stewing mango (5)
|
| [ MANGO ]* | ||
| 23 | AT SEA |
Lost some of what’s earnings-related (2,3)
|
| hidden in “.. whAT’S EArning..” |
Absolutely loved this.
Parsed 13a as: “Device for inputting” (definition) with chart (graph) + s (small) + table (chart) in ICT.
Loved the innovative clueing of C for “scent, say” in 10a, together with the clueing for OOMPH & CARBON MONOXIDE & MELEE to name but three. Didn’t know 22a (but easy guess) and similarly 16d. Glad to recall PATCHOULI from previous crosswords.
Thanks Hovis. I should have done a better job with 13a, especially after noting that my parsing was iffy.
Regards,
TL
Edit: Hovis@1, just need to switch the def around .. should be GRAPH ( chart ) in your parse.
Well done Hovis , and well done Turbolegs for the rest of the blog, it is truly superb. I am always amazed that our bloggers make so few minor mistakes when the word play can be so complicated.
22AC and 16D are unusual words but it is bound to be hard to fill the grid sometimes. Also it is nice to learn things and both of these were clued very fairly.
I took a break during the Enigmatist puzzle to do this-I’d sussed how it worked but needed to look afresh so this was a splendid break.
Fave was SEPARATE TABLES
THANKS Puck(Im lazy) and Turbo
This ticked all my boxes. Clever clues, beautiful surfaces, even some humour. Thanks & well done to Wanderer, and to Turbolegs for help with a couple I couldn’t quite see.
Very good, even if the parsing of a few eluded me, eg the ‘scent’ in 10a and both parts of the wordplay for OOMPH which went in from the def alone. I agree with your parsing and def for EVENING PRAYERS, otherwise ‘vespers’ would be doing “double duty”.
My pick was the clever CARBON MONOXIDE which was very satisfying when I saw what was going on.
Thanks to Wanderer and Turbolegs
I had fun with this despite finishing shy of four which I simply didn’t know and couldn’t guess.
Still, there was much to admire: emcee/melee, realm/emeer, 1a, 1d and more.
I’m equally admiring of this blog as there was so much I guessed at.
Thanks both to Wanderer and Turbolegs.
Thanks Turbolegs and Wanderer.
I thought of OOMPH as a double defn. = sex appeal & vigour; and 100 mph is a ton.
Found myself approaching this much more tentatively than usual – found quite a lot of the parsing rather tough, in spite of a quick start with CAPITAL LETTERS and OVERTURNS, so some pencilling in, which I don’t usually do. Very satisfying when I got there, though, and a very enjoyable solve. Thanks to Wanderer for keeping up the usual high quality and to Turbolegs for the excellent parsing of things which I hadn’t analysed thoroughly enough, such as OOMPH and MELEE.
Slightly surprised to see “overt” cropping up twice, but no grumbles.
Quite a good crossword but some of the content was new to me — I only knew SHOAL as shallow water and didn’t know the play SEPARATE TABLES. I missed TEMPT and REALM as well because the parsing was too tricky for my current level of solving. Still, clues like OVERTURNS, OVER THE COUNTER, PLANE TREE, and LOTUS will always have me attempting offerings from Wanderer. Thanks to both.
scchua @8. I had the definition as “appeal with some vigour” with ton referring to 100mph. Obviously read the blog too quickly to notice the difference.
Wanderer at his Puckish best. The MELEE device @21d and the gas cooker @1,17d were clever. I liked the impish pairing of the stag party and the hen night at 5&6d, and the surface of 2d PLANE TREE was excellent. Thanks W&T for the fun, and scchua and Hovis for the extra oomph.
Thanks, Wanderer and Turbolegs. There were so many clever surfaces in this, but WASHINGTON POST, CARBON MONOXIDE and LIBERTINE were my favorites [I love Ibert’s music]. I finished this with a little Word Wizard help, but had to look up LOTUS and SEPARATE TABLES (last one in). Thanks for parsing CARBON MONOXIDE and OOMPH – forgot that “ton” means 100 in UK. Two clues using “overt,” so 11a came easily after getting 18a.
CAPITAL LETTERS, that is, for 1a. [Used to live near DC so WaPo really is the “letters of the capital”! Sort of an &lit or extra def included – multiple-layered clue.]
I couldn’t finish it under my own steam, so thanks very much for some explanations. A superb puzzle, now that I understand it, but I have a quibble about 4 – I took “standing” to mean that I had to fit in a French composer’s name running upwards, and with the R and the L in place with three blanks between I was trying hard to make Ravel fit. Ibert, a composer whose work I enjoy enormously, never even crossed my mind (but if I’d been quicker on the uptake with BUTTERCUP it might have been a different story!).
Thanks Wanderer and Turbolegs
A very late post again as I only got to this late last week. Got off to a quick start, immediately untangling AMONG at 22d but the rest of the solve took most of the rest of the day in a number of sittings to finish off.
Thought that there were some interesting constructions and particularly liked the CO derived definition at 1d and the linked 7d and 21d. Was pleased to remember the play, SEPARATE TABLES. STONECROP was a new term for me as was ACETABULA (3rd last in after seeing the hidden and needed to check what it meant), LAEVULOSE (which required a word finder) and GRAPHICS TABLET (the last in and another unknown).