Eccles fills the mid-week slot again this week.
We’re not sure if it’s the heat, but we didn’t enjoy this one as much as we expect of an Eccles. It was still an excellent puzzle with good surfaces, but we missed the smiles we usually experience when tackling an Eccles.
We cannot quite understand the parsing of 9ac – it seems to be the wrong way round – can anyone out there see how the wordplay can work in the manner intended?
An anagram (‘with training’) of YOU OR I BELONG
A D (director) + IN in or ‘nursing'(?) HOME + M. We really think this is wrong – IN should be ‘nursed by’ HOME for the wordplay to work, not the other way round.
gO MAD (become crazy) with N (nationalist) instead of the ‘g’ (good)
lACROSSe (game) without the first and last letters or ‘extremely deficient’
VENT (let off steam) round E (European) HEM (border)
AS (when) + R (river) ‘filtering into’ TAY (another river)
I (India in the phonetic alphabet) in or ‘probing’ SUPPLE (pliant) + R (rupee)
sHAPe (figure) without the first and last letters or ‘naked’ + NONE (not at all) P (quietly) reversed or ‘somersaulting’
A homophone (‘say’) of FORCE IT (‘the best way to release something that’s stuck’)
Half of each of CREams Or SOap TEst
I’M (I am) + TRAP (sting) reversed or ‘making a comeback’
L (first letter of loan) EVE (the day before) E (last letter or ‘termination’ of venture)
A (American) FOR (in favour of) I (first or ‘initial’ letter of insurrection) round or ‘claiming’ an anagram (‘disgraceful’) of RIOT
A reversal of CAFE PUTS + alternate or ‘regular’ letters of fIvE uNiTs – a new word for us
Hidden (‘absorbed’) and reversed (‘counter’) in knitweAR AGAINst
lUTHER (middle name of ‘King of Georgia’ – Martin Luther King) without the ‘l’ (left)
ON (supported by) MESS (state, as in a ‘bit of a state’) AGE (maturity)
I (one) ON (running) A
LIMB (leg, perhaps) + PURE (clean) reversed or ‘back’
GEN (information) RE (about)
AM (in the morning) + an anagram (‘cook’) of IN CASE
Hidden in or ‘overwhelmed by’ greED I TORmented
An anagram (‘corrected’) of HAVE TYPO
AGM (shareholder’s meeting) in or ‘welcomed by’ PRAT (idiot) IC (in charge)
BOOT (footwear) CAMP (affected)
A homophone (‘we hear’) of HECK (a milder form of hell as a swear word) ‘LL (will)
TIT (breast) hOIST (lift) without or ‘wanting’ the ‘h’ (husband)
ST (street – ‘way’) round or ‘securing’ WEE (‘number one’ – slang for urine)
BODy (torso) without the last letter or ‘cut’ in A and E (hospital department)
WOO (court) F (female)
It’s cold here and I enjoyed this.
I wonder if 9a is A D + ‘in’ (= HOME) ‘nursing home’ (‘nursing’ as a containment indicator for ‘home’ = IN) + ‘male’ (= M). Switching around the meanings of IN for HOME and vice versa.
Done in the end by the ‘extremely deficient game’ which was probably easier than the uncommon words STUPEFACIENT (wordplay helped) or TITOIST.
ON MESSAGE is not exactly my favourite piece of jargon, but I liked WOOF.
Thanks to Eccles and B&J
I think we’ve certainly had more fun with Eccles Wednesday than I did today. Perhaps it was all those words from the Book of Obscure Words for Crossword Setters?? Anyone else stuck with an ear worm after solving 26a?
thanks to Eccles and B&J
I’m with WordPlodder re 9A. I struggled at first but switching the two meanings is very clever. Also with WP in being defeated by ACROSS even though I knew what I was trying to do. The game just wouldn’t come to mind and neither did I spot the definition I needed. Doh. Some quite cheeky clueing in here but very enjoyable, witty and well crafted. The anagram for NEUROBIOLOGY was clever and the creation of UTHER just glorious. King of Georgia indeed!
Thanks Eccles and B&J. Good to see the celebratory bubbly has worn off in time for the blog.
A lot of fun as usual from Eccles, although there seemed to be an overdose of Americanisms with SPIGOT, FAUCET, BOOT CAMP and ON MESSAGE even though the last two of these appear to be creeping in to our vocabulary. I suppose you could argue that SPIGOT defining FAUCET was an implied Americanism!
A few obscure answers made the solve rather challenging. Luckily one of the commentators on Big Dave’s blog used the phrase AD HOMINEM a couple of days ago otherwise I wouldn’t have know that. I parsed that clue as WordPlodder did, and thought that the juxtaposition of IN and HOME was brilliant.
I had loads of ticks with UTHER the cream of the crop for me.
Many thanks to Eccles and to B&J.
crypticsue @2: we posted at exactly the same time so I hadn’t noticed yours until just popping back. There isn’t much of a tradition of recognising earworms on the Indy page but, if one is going to be mentioned, I think you’ve pointed us at the best. Yup, thought of that as I solved and it’s been with me since!
So, is this ear worm that of Led Zeppelin or Don McLean? Or have I now brought up 2 new ear worms?
Hovis @6 Definitely Don McLean
Oh how funny. Definitely Zeppelin for me!
Zeppelin for Bonzo’s mighty drum sound-in the corridor with 2 mics(I like to think with one of the Johns bros in charge of recording.)
Very good puzzle as usual from Eccles and not exactly easy
A good puzzle day.
Thanks all, however have read the offered explanations for 9, but don’t follow or agree with them
TFO @10: the key words are “in nursing home”. “A Director” and “male” just provide the AD and M casing. If “in” can mean ‘home’ then “home” can mean ‘in’, then “in nursing home” can be HOME nursing (containing) IN. HOM(IN)E. Which, inserted into the casing, gives the solution
Well after an initial query I parsed 9 exactly as wordplodder at 1 and can see no objection to it.
If IN=HOME (which it does in crosswordland frequently) then HOME=IN and the clue works fine using the equivalences of the clue in the answer.
Thought the ‘King of Georgia’ was briliant when I eventually saw it (after an interesting trawl through Georgian history!).
Thanks to Eccles and B&J
PostMark @11 our postings crossed but yours is clearer than mine!
reddevil @13: 😀
WordPlodder @1 How enviably clever of you to be somewhere cold. And how extremely clever of you (and others) to have sorted 9 across. Excellent stuff. Really enjoyed this. Loved the faucet, the nomad (great surface), the King of Georgia and the deficient game. Many thanks to Eccles and to Bertandjoyce – hope you’re not suffering too much in this awful heat.
Definitely had us head scratching on the last few, but enjoyable overall. Had to cheat on 1d after thinking we ‘definitely don’t know this word’ only to then be embarrassed that it was a reverse hidden! Thanks Eccles and Bertandjoyce!
Learnt a couple of new things from this one – that CREOSOTE is an antiseptic (not about to put that to the test!) and that there is such a word as STUPEFACIENT.
Top three for me were FAUCET, PRAGMATIC & BOOT CAMP.
Thanks to Eccles and to B&J for the review.
jane @ 17: you wouldn’t be able to test creosote’s antiseptic powers as it’s been banned for domestic use in the UK since 2003, due to attendant health risks.
Jane @17. Creosote is a generic name for a variety of phenol-based compounds made by distillation of fossil fuel or wood. The wood preservative is made from coal tar and the antiseptic from wood tar, so although similar, they are chemically different. Both types are pretty nasty toxicologically.
UTHER was brilliant. [As for the earworm, surely you would want the levee to be dry, or there would be a flood?]
Rather late in the day, as we’ve been out and about since posting the blog, we have to offer our humble apologies to Eccles and thanks to Wordplodder and PostMark for spotting the brilliant use of IN and HOME in 9ac – how could we imagine that Eccles would have got it so wrong? And how did we not spot it? Must be the heat!!
Thanks to B&J for the review, and to all who commented. Congratulations too, B&J, on your recent wedding anniversary. Sorry the puzzle didn’t quite tickle you today. You weren’t the first to question 9A, though!
I’d have enjoyed 2d like the rest of you if I’d ever heard of Uther before or known that Martin Luther King came from Georgia. A little ignorance goes a long way….