I’m a fan of Qaos’ puzzles and I was pleased to see his name today.
The added challenge is to spot the theme, because there always is one, and that makes me nervous when blogging because sometimes they’re based on bands, TV shows etc which I’ve never heard of. Today I was on firmer ground and I actually managed to work it out before I finished solving.
Scattered around the grid are titles of works by T S Eliot, with some slight adjustments from singular to plural. We have four poems: The HOLLOW MEN (from 21 dn – thanks, lord Jim) , The LOVE SONG (of J. Alfred Prufrock), The WASTE LAND [s] and FOUR QUARTETS and three plays: The COCKTAIL PARTY[ies] MURDER in the CATHEDRAL[s] and The ROCK. (There may be more.) At 11dn, we find (almost) the classic anagram of T S ELIOT – this time the change is from plural to singular.
I really enjoyed this puzzle. As well as the clever theme, there are some nicely constructed and ingenious clues, as always with Qaos. I’ll leave you to name favourites – I have too many.
Many thanks, Qaos, for the fun.
Definitions are underlined in the clues
Across
1 Events with food, involving skill (7)
PARTIES
PIES (food) round ART (skill)
5 Channel 50: see Doctor Who outside (6)
HOLLOW
An anagram (doctor) of WHO round L (50) LO (see)
9 Around freezing, I talk nonsense to snowball? (8)
COCKTAIL
C (around) + O C (nought degrees Celsius – freezing) + an anagram (nonsense) of I TALK: the question mark indicates a definition by example
10 Island the French shed tears over (6)
LESBOS
LES (one of the French words for ‘the’) + a reversal (over) of SOB (shed tears)
12 Play a trick on, as a chauffeur might do (4,3,1,4)
TAKE FOR A RIDE
Double definition
15 Halt! Sacred ground where many worship (10)
CATHEDRALS
An anagram (ground – I always enjoy this indicator) of HALT SACRED
17 Turkish commander‘s in range (3)
AGA
Double definition)
19 Relative travels around globe (3)
ORB
A reversal (travels around) of BRO[ther] (relative)
20 Taught in primary school to recall short father on the box (10)
INSTRUCTED
IN + S[chool] + a reversal (to recall) of CURT (short) + TED (Father on TV – the box)
22 Readers of stories? (3,9)
LIE DETECTORS
Cryptic definition
26 Old ship builder bites tip of tongue, having sworn )(2,4)
ON OATH
O (old) + NOAH (ship builder) round T[ongue]
27 Solve cryptic by working with Guardian’s first serenade (4,4)
LOVE SONG
An anagram (cryptic) of SOLVE + ON (working) + G[uardian]
28 Put half your money to begin with on red, returning to make a killing (6)
MURDER
M (money) + [yo]UR + a reversal (returning) of RED
29 Makes certain to blame son if cocaine goes missing (7)
ENSURES
[c]ENSURE (blame) minus c (cocaine) + S (son)
Down
1 Forwards? King’s better going backwards (4)
PACK
A reversal (going backwards) of K (king) + CAP (better) – forwards in a rugby team
2 Marciano to lose his footing and sway from side to side (4)
ROCK
ROCK[y] Marciano minus the last letter (footing)
3 Computer system at home managed to be overloaded with tweets, oddly (8)
INTRANET
IN (at home) + the odd letters of TwEeT round (overloading) RAN (managed)
4 Half of nuclear power plant includes electron capture (5)
SEIZE
Half of SIZE[well] (nuclear plant) round E (electron)
6 Conclusions of ball games being played (6)
OMEGAS
O (ball) + an anagram (being played) of GAMES
7 Oils (and even parts of flour) can fill us in the UK (10)
LUBRICANTS
Even parts of fLoUr + CAN in BRITS (us in the UK)
8 Temperature was rising for antelopes in desolate areas (10)
WASTELANDS
I can’t quite see how this works: we have WAS + T (temperature) + ELANDS (antelopes) but i don’t understand how ‘rising’ fits in
Please see comments 6 and 8
11 WC Grace finally caught by child — outstanding 150! (6)
TOILET
TOT (child) round (catching) [grac]E round (outstanding) I L, which we have to take as 150 – I think!
13 Pod fell over, perhaps set here? (10)
SCHOOLROOM
SCHOOL (pod) + a reversal (over) of MOOR (fell)
14 Fit into Dot’s building, otherwise it can stop the horses bolting (6,4)
STABLE DOOR
ABLE (fit) in an anagram (building) of DOT’S + OR (otherwise)
16 Tolkien’s half-elven lord cycles in verse (6)
RONDEL
The letters of RONDEL are all here in ELVEN LORD but I can’t see just how to ‘cycle’ them
Please see comments !, 3 and 4.
18 Groups of 4 or 2 pints best drunk without bottle-opener (8)
QUARTETS
QUART (two pints) + an anagram (drunk) of [b]EST minus the first letter (opener) of B[ottle]
21 One being advised when workers gain support (6)
MENTEE
Well, if a mentor advises, a MENTEE is the one advised – nothing wrong with that (unlike my attendee, standee horrors) but I’ve never actually seen it before
23 Somewhat controversial treasure (5)
TROVE
Contained in conTROVErsial
24 4 in favour of stealing uranium (4)
FOUR
FOR (in favour of) round U (uranium)
25 For a long time, salaries drop 20% (4)
AGES
80% of [w]AGES
Thanks Qaos and Eileen
The half-elf is ELROND – pretty difficult clue if you didn’t know that.
Fairly straightforward, though I didn’t parse INSTRUCTED. No theme for me, of course. Favourite LUBRICANTS.
Wouldn’t 19a be better as “Short relative…”?
Very satisfying solve and brava Eileen for teasing out the theme which eluded me.
So surprising that mentor is such a well known word but MENTEE is far less so.
Superb example of the setter’s art, many thanks, Qaos.
I believe the Lord of the Rings character is Elrond
16 down – cycle first part (half) of ‘Elrond’ = Tolkein’s elven lord
…btw, does anyone else find that one’s name and email have started to require entry each time? I tick the “Remember me” box but it doesn’t.
Thanks Qaos and eileen
In 8, I saw it as the clue giving T WAS, so to get WAS to the top in a down clue it has to rise.
[William Try clearing your cookies and starting again]
Ta for the blog.
No chance of this pleb spotting the theme, embarrassed to say that I have never read anything from TS Eliot, more your thing, I think.
RONDEL is a ref to ELROND from the LOTR.
Temperature was rising is TWAS-> WAST in a down clue, for the surface primarily I think, but valid IMO.
[ Sorry, crossed with all – desperate to get in first of the comments …. ]
Last one in was RONDEL, and thanks for the early comments on here for understanding the reason why. Wasn’t too sure about INTRANET, either. Thought the grid very helpful today and was generally on Qaos’s wavelength. Didn’t spot the theme as usual, though Tom (as Virginia Woolf referred to him) Eliot is a favourite of mine.
In my haste @3 I neglected to thank Qaos and Eileen. Lovely puzzle. I agree with Muffin@1 that an indication of the contraction of brother would have been useful (though I see it’s given in Chambers)
16d most likely an anagram of Elrond
muffin @7: I’ll try that, thanks.
It worked! You’re a genius, muffin.
And of course FOUR is the square root of SEIZE(FOUR QUARTETS) or am I getting carried away?
Lovely puzzle with not a cat in sight
Is it being pushy to ask for a Bloomsday theme tomorrow. Just a thought.
Wondered about an Eilot theme but insufficiently versed in his oeuvre, I’m afraid. WASTE LAND, FOUR QUARTETS and HOLLOW did jump out and I should have spotted LOVE SONG but the plays were all dnk.
Qaos does sometimes take some liberties and there were a few which might surface later in the comments but nothing that aggrieved me sufficiently to highlight. (I do share our blogger’s query about WASTE LANDS, though). Some big ticks for subtlety, misdirection, amusement including FOUR and SCHOOLROOM, TOILET (I was staring for ages at the initials of the famous cricketer thinking “something’s not right there”), ON OATH, LIE DETECTORS (lovely cd) and INSTRUCTED (always a pleasure and a sadness, both, to be reminded of Father Ted). COCKTAIL was close to being COTD but I give it to my first one in, HOLLOW, for the ingenuity of the construction. Lots to like.
Thanks Qaos and Eileen
Thanks, all, for the help with RONDEL – I’ve never read any Tolkien, Andy @8, nor watched the films, so we’re quits – and WASTELANDS.
Bob Gelsthorpe @12: That would be a derived anagram. I think I prefer Jack’s suggestion @4.
ELROND (16d) is called Elrond Half-Eleven at several places in Tolkien. Easy if you know it, otherwise not so much, but I could say the same about some of the cricketing arcana we get from time to time.
I couldn’t think of the nuclear plant, so DNF, but otherwise I enjoyed this, though I did wonder about the wording of 8d.
Nice to see that LOTR characters are now fair play for crosswords, but I felt (as I did yesterday) that this was an unfair example of double cluing in that you have to get Elrond before you can cycle it. Easy enough for me, but not for all.
Quicker than yesterday!
I was thinking that this could have been a Pangram but not quite – missing J, X and Y unless I’m mistaken…
Minor quibble with INTRANET – this would usually be a company-wide network for internal purposes, not a home network (which is usually just a ‘home network’). An Intranet would be built in a very similar manner to the general Internet – in technology terms there really is no difference between the two because the Internet is really only just a collection of networks; it doesn’t actually exist as a ‘thing’ at-all…
But that was a lot of fun and superbly clued throughout – thank you Qaos and Eileen!
[Glad it worked, William. I had the same problem last year, and Gaufrid led me through the solution.]
MaidenBartok @21 – the definition is “Computer System”, “at home” is part of the wordplay, indicating “in”
Maiden@8 – the “home” is part of the wordplay (with a relatively appealing surface reading), not the def, as per Eileen’s blog.
As usual with Qaos you don’t need to see the theme to finish the puzzle but it can help if you do. (The MEN for HOLLOW MEN is there in MENTEE.)
Like you Eileen I didn’t understand 8d WASTELANDS and I’m afraid I don’t quite follow Simon and Andy’s explanations @6 and 8. How does “Temperature was rising” mean WAS goes above T?
[As you say Eileen, the title of Eliot’s most famous poem is The Waste Land, not The Wasteland, as many people seem to think. (Different stress in pronunciation.) Just as there’s a lovely pub in York called the Blue Bell, which people insist on referring to as The Bluebell. There’s a picture of a blue bell on the inn sign for heaven’s sake!]
Many thanks Qaos and Eileen.
Lovely puzzle and great to see him back.
Perhaps this has been mentioned in previous blogs and I missed it.
Qaos appeared on average every third week for the past 50 odd weeks then disappeared for 10 weeks.
Does anyone know why? Is it rude to ask?
Thanks anyway to him and of course Eileen
I remember the Love Song of J Alfred… as the first poem of his I read at Uni although I did not get the theme until it was too late. I even noticed the anagram at 11dn Eileen. However, apart from RONDEL this was on the easy side but still lovely clues along the way.
Ta Qaos & Eileen.
Thanks, Lord Jim @25 – i knew I’d seen a MEN somewhere but, when it came to writing the blog, I couldn’t see the wood for the trees!
LordJim@25 – T+(“WAS”,rising) -> WAS+T? No more perverse than many clues IMO.
[Andy+Smith @24: Thanks! missed that completely!!!!]
[ Eileen@17 – Tolkien is like Marmite, provoking one of either strong liking or total meh; my better half can’t stand it. As a young geek aged 13 I absolutely devoured LOTR, reading voraciously, wide-eyed, till late at night with a torch – such a creative world in exquisite detail, backstory, new languages, classic good v evil, heroism, betrayal etc etc. And written before “fantasy” (other than rather turgid schlock horror Frankenstein, Dracula, Lovecraft etc) was a genre – Tolkien essentially invented the genre and has yet to be surpassed IMO.
Read the LOTR, you might become a Marmite lover. ]
Didn’t see that “temperature was rising” gives tsaw, or maybe sawt, not wast, just bunged it in. Had to use trial and check to get the o in rondel, so a dnf. And no idea of the TS E theme; otherwise smooth enough, thanks E and Q.
I’m finding the explanations for RONDEL more confusing than the clue! Jack @4: cycle first part (half) of ‘Elrond’ = Tolkein’s elven lord. (Moving the first *half* of Elrond to the end would give ONDELR.) Poc @19: ELROND (16d) is called Elrond Half-Eleven at several places in Tolkien. (Isn’t it meant to be “half-elven” rather than 11:30am?) I guess that what Qaos means is clear enough if you know both Elrond and RONDEL, but I wasn’t prepared to write the answer in until I had all three crossers.
We had some debate last week about why ‘standing’ in a down clue should cause the order of the letters to be reversed; here we had ‘rising’ *not* resulting in the letters of ‘was’ appearing as SAW, but in fact rising to the surface. And enough of us were fooled to count as a victory for Qaos.
Thanks to Qaos, Eileen and others.
Thank you Eileen, I just couldn’t see why SCHOOLROOM worked (I had ROOM for pod – horrible trendy office jargon – and no idea after that), and got to RONDEL by deciding it was something to do with a RONDO and realising from the crossers which LOTR character it must have been – agree muffin@1 that was a tough one and don’t think I have seen more than one character needing to be cycled before, I wonder if Qaos tried some subtraction and anagram of elven lord?
Andy+Smith@8 I am nearly as heathen as you but dimly recall a great unwritten Eliot work, “The Lubricants of Lesbos”, although I may be misattributing it. Wonderful to see Qaos back, and thank you.
thanks for the recommendation, Andy @31 – but not my genre at all, I’m afraid.
It may be the pedantic scientist in me, but we really must pay tribute to Celsius, the scale’s early inventor and also the official name, and not call it Centigrade!
Sorry, Andrew – I’ll amend it now!
As usual seeing Qaos’s name on the puzzle, I thought: (a) I’ll enjoy this and (b) I must remember to look out for a theme. As usual, I then promptly forgot about (b) until all was done and dusted. I’ll register a mild tut at RONDEL, the Tolkein character being on the obscure side, but all in all, a good chewy puzzle.
A much quicker solve than yesterday’s for me – no doubt in large part down to the much friendlier grid. Even having read part of Eileen’s intro and looking for the theme I came nowhere near seeing it so whilst I missed the icing I very much enjoyed the cake underneath. Thanks to Qaos and Eileen.
Must admit I ‘reverse parsed’ RONDEL as an anagram of (almost) half of elvEN + LORD
When I saw the theme I went looking for “proof” as a solution to complete “rock” – proofrock, geddit?
I’d mistakenly entered QUARTERS so was grateful for the theme which highlighted the error of my ways
I’m with Sheffield Hatter in finding the RONDEL explanations a bit unsatisfying. Maybe cycles is plural so first cycle the E to the end, then the L?
I’m also ashamed to admit that I sometimes use Four Quartets as dummy text on websites I’m building – makes a change from Lorem Ipsum
sheffield hatter@33: indeed, not eleven-thirty. Such a pity we can’t edit our comments.
bodycheetah@42 – a cyclic permutation involves visualising eg letters placed on a wheel, rotating it, and then re-extracting the letters in a new linear sequence. eg 67812345 is a cyclic perm of 12345678. “cycle” does not specify how many letters get cycled (IMO).
Fun. Got the theme, TSE is a fav of mine. [Studied Murder in the Cathedral at school, and saw a production in a church at the time of studying.] Struggled with RONDEL despite also loving Tolkein, but not recallling Elrond’s name. Lots of favs. Ta to Qaos and Eileen
A+S@44 yes – I couldn’t find the grasping at straws emoji 🙂
I knew I’d need to visit here to have the theme explained. I thought it must be to do with courtroom trials: murder, lie detectors, instructed, on oath, take for a ride, and seize all had a whiff of crime about them. Could not have been more wrong. Thanks for making that clear.
I enjoyed the puzzle greatly, except for 24d, which I thought was unbelievably lame.
Thanks Qaos and Eileen.
I found this all fell out more easily than usual for this setter. A few minor quibbles about constructions, as already mentioned, but nothing to spoil the fun.
I was amused by all the dark muttering about the ‘obscurity’ of a character from Tolkien. If you have never read his fantasy novels, fair enough, but they are well known to a large proportion of the reading population – LOTR was voted favourite novel in a large survey by the BBC some years ago. Much less obscure to most people than the works of TS Eliot (Cats apart!)
copmus@15: SEIZE as 4 down is perfect.
As for RONDEL (at 16 down!), ‘what we call the beginning is often the end’
verse cycles
Andy+Smith @44. Yes, that’s a useful visualisation. Or how about a necklace or bracelet with beads on it?
Sorry it’s late here in Australia and I haven’t got time to read anything other than Eileen’s Preamble. Apologies to others who have commented: I will read the blog more carefully tomorrow. Just wanted to say that I really appreciated the T.S. Eliot theme which took me back to my undergraduate studies of literature many many moons ago. It was actually no help at all to my solve though, as it wasn’t until I finished the puzzle and quoted my mantra “Qaos always has a theme!” that I had the breakthrough. I saw the possibility of “The Waste Land” in 8d WASTELANDS, matched it with 27a LOVE SONG – and the penny dropped regarding “The Love Song of J.A. Prufrock”, one of my favourite poems of all time. [Many times when I make a cup of coffee, I say to myself: “I have measured out my life in coffee spoons”, and I also think “Do I dare to eat a peach?” when stone fruit season presents itself at my greengrocer’s.] I had already ticked several of the references to poem titles on my way through without seeing a pattern, but non-themed favourites included 22a LIE DETECTORS and 21d MENTEE. So huge appreciation to Qaos and big thanks as well to Eileen for the blog.
Just to add a big thanks to Qaos and Eileen for brightening my Tuesday.
Also, is it too fanciful / bit of a stretch to see an anagram of Lie Detectors as a poet’s creed?
William @2 – possibly because Mentor was originally a proper name – it’s not “someone who ments” – so “mentee” is a bit of a weird back-formation from that. Not unreasonable, language evolves etc, but it’s a bit odd nonetheless, and not a word I much like as a result.
Re 20ac, I may just be being bitter because I didn’t parse it, but shouldn’t Father have a capital F? The Guardian style guide is job descriptions in lowercase, but titles with a capital, and Father seems like a title…
I didn’t see the theme, but enjoyed the crossword anyway.
I was also perplexed by RONDEL. I managed to slot in BRO at the beginning until the crossers changed it to ORB. I particularly liked PACK and SCHOOLROOM.
Thanks Qaos and Eileen.
Had a somewhat similar experience to Lesidees@41. Had ROCK in place at 2d and P – – – next door at 1d, and tried so hard to make the clue come out as PRUF, despite it not being a word. One of the few times I got the theme early, it actually worked against me.
Tom @53
Capitals were discussed here recently. The consensus was that it’s OK to capitalise a word that normally wouldn’t be, but not OK to put lower case for a word that should be capitalised; hence you’re right about Father (Ted). (I didn’t parse it either, so didn’t notice before.)
This may be a bit of a stretch, but there is also a theme connection to 10a LESBOS: As evidence, in 2011 the Independent had this article opening:
“Eliot revealed as defender of lesbian fiction
New exhibition shows the austere poet as a pioneering publisher and father figure to younger writers”
Tom @53: Excellent point, didn’t know that, but it makes sense now you state it.
I am sure that there are people who object to the word “mentee” since a mentor is not someone who ments but someone who plays a role like that of Mentor, the tutor of Telemachus in the Odyssey. I kind of like it, myself.
Haven’t read Tolkien in forty years nor seen the movies, so this was a dnf.
I knew there would be bowls about Elrond / RONDEL, but I think it’s fair game at this point. Most crossword solvers are geeky in the way that suggests that most of them also read fantasy/SF. Coincidentally, today’s New York Times xwd had a Harry Potter theme–and not one you could get away without knowing anything about, either!
TS Eliot was a favorite of mine from high-school days onward. I had a volume of his collected poems on my shelf even back then. So I appreciated the theme. [Anecdote: He was born in St. Louis. One time I was there, I went to their history museum; they had a display devoted to famous people from Missouri, and he was one of those featured. I thought that was a hoot, since he basically left as soon as he could and never went back. He may be the least Midwestern poet the Midwest has ever produced.]
I did not know the power plant, which is frankly a bit unfair on overseas solvers, but I figured it out: “the answer is SEIZE, and it looks like I need to put an I in “size” to get there; there must be a power plant called Sizemore or something.” Meh, whatever.
I can see the school= pod and the fell over=moor, but why should the whole be “perhaps set” in a SCHOOLROOM rather than any other random location? I’m probably being stupid, but the answrr won’t come.
Quicker than a Monday, but I saw the theme quickly. For reasons unknown I started in the SE corner and had FOUR QUARTETS and LOVE SONG so it clicked.
RONDEL was LOI as I have read only one page of Tolkien ever and that was enough. So I got it unparsed.
Thanks to Qaos and to Eileen
Tom @53 – sorry for the delay: I lost my internet connection.
:You are quite right, of course, and I have a red face. I did know Mentor from the Odyssey – friend of Odysseus, who oversaw Odysseus’ household while he was away in the Trojan War and acted as tutor and counsellor to Odysseus’ son, Telemachus. I was so eager to make my point (again) about my bêtes noires, ‘attendee’ et al, that I lost the plot!
Chambers does have ”mentee: a person under the direction of a mentor, esp in business’ but gives it as non-standard (a back-formation, as you say).
As for ‘father’, I think I must have read it, in the clue, as a generic term – a priest – which both Collins and Chambers give. It certainly didn’t leap out at me, as these things usually do! Of course, when we attach ‘Ted’, it becomes a title and needs a capital F. I think that, as the clue stands, it works for me.
Gladys @61: I think it’s set as in a group of children. Maths Set 1 etc. A schoolroom is where you would find one.
I find it interesting how many of the people that struggled with Elrond can’t spell Tolkien’s name.
gladys @61 – I missed your comment while I was typing mine. I read SCHOOLROOM as PostMark did – sorry, I didn’t explain it fully.
Enjoyed this, though Elrond escaped me. (I read the Lord of the Rings as a teenager, rather like Andy + Smith. I’ve had a long time since then to forget the details.)
Totally missed the theme, though I’ve now learned to look for one with Qaos. Thank you, Qaos for the puzzle and Eileen for the delightful blog.
Glad to see ” Burbank with a Baedeker : Bleistein with a Cigar ” was not in the theme.
Don’t mention the anti-Semitism.
Thanks PostMark and Eileen: they weren’t called sets in my day, so it passed me by completely.
Very enjoyable puzzle to solve.
Liked RONDEL, LIE DETECTORS, QUARTETS, OMEGAS (loi).
New: Sizewell nuclear power plant (thanks, google).
I missed the theme.
Thanks, both.
I wasted quite a while trying to fit half of Sellafield into 4d, but I did know Elrond Half-Elven (much less obscure to me than some of the scientists and mathematicians we are expected to remember, but obscure always = I’ve never heard of him).
I studied Murder In The Cathedral for A level, but didn’t see the theme until after I’d finished the crossword, and didn’t know all of them. Thanks Eileen for parsing INSTRUCTED which defeated me.
11d Who was WC Grace? A bog standard cricketer? Any relation to WG?
Thanks Qaos and Eileen
Thanks both,
Did Eliot write any rondels? I can’t spot any in his better known works.
11d works better if 150 is split into 1 and 50 – a numerical lift and separate!
Jay @11 I’m sure you’re down with the kids so you’ll know that ‘Bro’ is street-talk to address just about any male person and not just a relative of course.
‘Mentor’ was the title of a Latin primer at school and if memory serves the word translates as ‘teacher’, apart from being a character from Greek Myth.
Knowing Qaos, I was on the lookout for a theme and I saw it early on with WASTELANDS and a reverse look at TOILET. There were many nice surfaces such as LOVE SONG and LUBRICANTS; other clues that satisfied included COCKTAIL, LESBOS, INSTRUCTED, and OMEGAS. I missed several because I didn’t know PACK or Sizewell and couldn’t remember Elrond. I dislike the word MENTEE so I failed to see that one. Overall I thought this was an excellent crossword and blog. Thanks to both.
muffin@74 – that’s what I meant in the blog – sorry if I didn’t explain it very well.
Penfold @72 – yes but very LOOsely, better known as John’s bro. Liked a bowl, if you CAN believe it. I’ll give it a restroom now.
Gervase @48 – it’s not so much that Tolkien (I’ve spelt him right this time, ravenrider @65) is obscure: more that you have to remember/guess a character and then “cycle” the name to get the answer. It’s (IMO) a minor imperfection in an otherwise enjoyable crossword.
[wynsum @78: why stop now? You’re clearly on a roll…]
Why are readers of stories lie detectors? This escapes me.
I thought 24D was clever in that 4 possibly referred to 4D, which was talking about things nuclear.
Afternoon all. Many thanks to Eileen for the blog and for everyone’s comments – they’re always appreciated. It’s also good to be back. MS is like Forrest Gump’s box of chocolates – you never know what you’re going to get next.
Interesting that Elrond isn’t as well known as I was expecting. To me, it’s a name that’s become part of popular culture, like Spock or Yoda from other franchises. Hopefully there was enough hidden literary works today to compensate.
I’m also glad you figured the intended parsing of 8 dn. I imaged it as the letters of “WAS” rising up like bubbles.
Best wishes,
Qaos
Thanks, Eileen. I always enjoy your blogs. A superb puzzle. Murder is a noun often linked to Red Rum written backwards.
Lovely puzzle – did not get RONDEL and not knowing anything about Rugby I couldn’t figure out PACK. But so many clever clues! My favorites were LOVE SONG and QUARTETS.
Anne @81: A lie is a “story” and “read” can be interpreted as “figuring out” – so a lie detector is able to read a story?
Thanks, Jay @85. Perhaps read as in how you read a situation as in what you make of it. Decode or, as you say, figure out. It’s taking me a while to figure this one out!
JinA @51, those are the iconic lines I remember – will stay with me forever and ever 🙂
AlanC and JinA – me too.
Anne @81 and 86 and Jay @85 – I took the clue as a reference to the ‘readings’ that are taken from a myriad of devices (thermometers, barometers, tachometers, cardiographs – and polygraphs et al.
Thanks to everyone for comments and, especially, to Qaos for dropping in – ‘always appreciated’. Really good to see you back. 🙂
Thanks Qaos for the quirky puzzle and Eileen for the blog.
I had THE BORROWERS for 22 on first pass.
Penfold@72 makes a very good point about 11d. The cricketer was WG not WC. Or have I missed a subtlety?
Thanks to Qaos & Eileen
nametab @90 (and Penfold @72) – that completely passed me by this morning. I did know that – oh dear.
nametab @90
The cricketer is irrelevant in the clue – WC just looks a bit like WG.
Very enjoyable.
Did not like RONDEL. I knew the elf, but I always thought indirect anagrams were a no-no. If you didn’t know Elrond, you had no chance with the wordplay.
Thanks both.
HIYD
It’s not exactly an indirect anagram. The first letter of ELROND is “cycled” to the end, to give LRONDE, then the next letter is also “cycled” (there have been some objections that this isn’t indicated) to give RONDEL.
ELROND : Thanks muffin @ 94. I was with Hoofit and couldn’t understand why an indirect anagram was okay.
The mathematical explanations earlier puzzled me even more.
I’d never have got it, not knowing Tolkien and having been a relative failure at maths.
I think I now understand where Qaos is coming from, from Meet the Setter, Qaos: “I did an applied maths PhD on ice shelves and since then developed a Bayesian search engine for an IT company.”
Miffed at not seeing Elrond despite being LotR person. Also I’m in the group objecting to MENTEE .. a nonsense word.
However enjoyed puzzle very much and for once saw the theme, not that it helped at all.
Thanks to Qaos and Eileen
‘primary school’ = S?
Loved this though I missed the theme, despite being a great fan of TS Eliot. On RONDEL, once had stopped trying to make ARAGORN fit, I got it from the crossers and remembered Elrond. Cycling EL to the end after ROND seems fine to me. (Another mathematician here.) Many thanks to Qaos and Eileen!
The next day: Thanks to all contributors for an interesting range of comments. I now see that MENTEE was indeed a thematic clue – well done to those with eagle eyes who spotted the “MEN” part of “The HOLLOW MEN” hidden there! I didn’t object to the word and quite liked it: I have heard it in the context of descriptions of “the role of the mentor” and “the role of the mentee”.
I don’t know (or care) about the origin of MENTEE but it is common usage in professional bodies. The people who I mentor are called mentees. What else can you call them?
All I could think of for 16d was RANGER. RONDEL and ELROND were both DNKs.
Pedro@100: Well, the boat has clearly sailed and “mentee” is the widely used word. But I would have thought “mentoree” would be preferable. After all, for most -ee words, the root is the verb; an employee is employed, a trainee is trained. There are others that are a bit odd in that they are the subject of the verb rather than the object, like attendee, but they still use the verb. And a mentor mentors someone, they don’t ment them. So they’re a mentoree.
(There are a few -ee words that don’t use the full form of the verb as the root, but I _think_ they’re all -ate words from French, like amputee, and it’s not unusual to drop that part and use only the stem when forming a new word.)
What’s ‘for’ doing in 8D?
(other than helping the surface, I mean.)
My temperature was rising when I read the explanation/defence here.
So now ‘rising’, that has always, in my experience of crossword world, meant ‘read from bottom to top’, means , just bung it in earlier/higher in the word.
Not amused.
David @103, it is one of my pet hates (although, in general, I do like pets).
But mind you, Araucaria did it too, not once, not twice, ….
Eric @104, totally agree.
But in the Guardian world of crosswords you must be open to bending the rules every now and then.
Hence my comment @97, too.
Tom @ 102 (if you’re still around): thanks for that. Never thought of mentoree 🙂
I thought Ted referred to father ted .It says on the box.Can’t see where the S comes from ,though.This should make instrusted.
Know no Tse,so had no idea there even was a theme.