Another BLuth to BLog.
No complaints from us as the last one we blogged was back in May although there were a few that we had to check in Chambers. As expected with Bluth, the surfaces are smooth and there is some inventive wordplay.
We had never heard of a TMESIS (21d) before and we are more familiar with a STEEL DRUM as opposed to PAN (17d). We were however (thankfully not ‘how-heinous-ever’) stumped by the parsing in 26ac. No doubt there is someone out there who had no difficulties and is prepared to share their parsing with the rest of us.
An anagram (‘harry’) of BELAFONTE and I around or ‘entertaining’ M (member of)
An anagram (‘about’) of ASK
GAG (joke) around or ‘about’ the first and last or ‘extreme’ letters of UnethicaL
CU (copper) LaMINATE (plate) missing one of the As (‘scratching an ace’)
A play on the fact than an anagram (‘MUSHY’) of ‘apes’ gives PEAS
BElieVE without or ‘cleared of’ LIE (deceit) + L (lecturer)
Alternate letters (‘occasionally dropping’) in oN oUr NaN nEaR mY
Double definition
T (time) bOMB missing first letter or ‘failed to open’
HI (greeting) and B (bishop) in EXIT (doorway)
Hidden (‘shackled by’) and reversed (‘flipping’) in extreME DOMinatrix
gREEk missing first and last letters or ‘discovered’ DUCAT (coin) E (initial letter or ‘start’ of excavation)
This was our LOI and we initially guessed it from the definition and crossing letters but couldn’t figure out the parsing. Any thoughts out there?
B (British) L (liberal) MP (politician) around or ’embracing’ I (international)
Hidden (‘in’) calypSO Style
An anagram (‘playing’) of sTEELPAN (17) and HUNG without S (first letter or’a bit of’ string)
parLIAMENT (legislative body) with only the letters or ‘elements’ under ‘par’ (‘sub-par’ as it is a down clue) around or ‘limiting’ G (government). We liked the use of sub-par here – we don’t think we have seen that device used before.
Alternate or ‘regular’ letters of LiKeS dOiN in or ‘ringed by’ FOG (smoke)
BOY (lad) around or ‘touring’ GulaG (9ac) – first and last letters only or ’emptied’
An anagram (‘crashing’) of CAR + HE (the man) RY (railway)
MILKS (exploits) OP (work)
An anagram (‘turned’) of IAN RUSH around or ‘taking in’ LB (initial letters of Left Back)
SToVE (cooker) replacing O (the middle or ‘heart’ of cow) with A R (recipe)
E (initial letter or ‘head’ of Entertainment) inside A GOLD (TV Channel)
E (drug) COMMERCE (trafficking). We weren’t sure about the synonym here but it is in Chambers.
An anagram (‘smash’) of AND GRAB I
TroupE (first and last letters only or ‘outsiders’) in or ‘visiting’ a reversal (‘on the way back’) of NAPLES (Italian city). Steel drums (steel pans) were used as accompaniment on Harry Belafonte’s calypsos.
Sounds like (‘on the radio’) BARK ODE which is how you might imagine a boxer (dog) would read an ODE (poem)
An anagram (‘off’) of WHY EASE
An anagram, (‘strange’) of TIMES S (son). Well, we sorted out the answer when we had some crossing letters as we had guessed the parsing correctly. It was only when we checked it in Chambers that we found that ABSO-BLOOMIN’-LUTELY was an example of splitting up a word by one or more intervening words. This one featured in Pygmalion along with fan-bloody-tastic. Shakespeare used it too in ‘how-heinous-ever’ splitting ‘however’ with the word ‘heinous’.
AD (contemporary) APT (apartment) S (second)
yoUR (half of ‘your’) and NAB (collar) reversed or ‘turned up’
Hi B&J there’s a song by Oasis called Champagne Supernova …
Beat me to it Flashling. If you don’t know the song, it does make the clue hard to figure out but it is one of their best known tracks so fair game, I guess.
Loved the play on “lines” in BARCODE and the nice use of Harry in 1a. I was familiar with TMESIS, so this went in straight away from the definition. I now await a setter clueing zeugma.
I needed several checks with my word list before completing this, particularly TMESIS., then the wordplay clicked. 12A had to be BEVEL but I couldn’t find the sense ‘bias’ in any of my dictionaries. Thanks Bluth and B&J.
I meant to ask whether a supernova is classed as a star or an ex-star.
My second Bluth and this time a finish with just one not parsed -thanks flashling for sorting out SUPERNOVA, like B&J that had me stumped.
Didn’t know TMESIS but worked it out and then checked with Google so an Eileen jorum moment for me there.
BARCODE was excellent and deserves a LOL.
Thanks Bluth and B&J.
Hovis@4
Roz over on the Guardian blog would quibble with star as definition for supernova (a similar question came up a few weeks ago).
IIRC she said it was the behaviour of a star rather than actually a star.
No hope in parsing SUPERNOVA either and also missed how LIGAMENT worked. The ‘sub-par’ device was new to me too.
The surface in 19d is very good, but as ‘on the radio’ is a homophone indicator, maybe “recite” or “read out” would work a bit better.
TMESIS was an educated guess. Hovis @2, have a look here and here and enjoy the Madeira while you’re at it.
Thanks to Bluth and B&J
Thanks WordPlodder. Should have guessed setters had already clued “zeugma”. I did both of those crosswords but think I already knew the term.
Thanks also to Blah @6. I rarely read the Guardian thread – not enough hours in the day. I would certainly talk of a star going supernova rather than being a supernova.
Supernova was very easy to guess from the crossers so if you could be bothered to Google Supernova champagne the Oasis song would be second in the search results. So what. Does that make it a super clue? I don’t think so.
Bluth has fast become a setter to watch out for in all his guises and he is very inventive and entertaining.
Barcode and mushy peas were super clues .
The references to Harry Belafonte were great fun without the need to know much about the singer ( ok it would have added to the pleasure of solving 17d but still not strictly necessary).
Every other clue in the puzzle would pass the test of time. Was there really no better way to clue Supernova without resorting to such an obscure reference?
Sorry in advance to all Oasis fans ready to shout me down !
LIGAMENT and BAR CODE were both excellent. Nice to re-learn TMESIS. I feel like I should have parsed SUPERNOVA. As people often complain about the dated nature of crossword references, I think we can forgive a 90s reference. Su-blooming-perb.
Always enjoy Bluth. Annoyed that we had to cheat by trying emists and imests before reluctantly trying tmesis (that sentence took a long time because spellchecker was determined to change each word!). I guess the Oasis reference is fair enough – just a black mark against Bluth for liking them (if he does).
I find this setter a bit like Jekyll and Hyde. Sometimes I really enjoy his puzzles but at other times, like today, they fall into the curate’s egg category.
There are some very good clues. I particularly liked NUNNERY, SOS, LIGAMENT, E-COMMERCE, BARCODE and others, but, although I knew the Oasis song, 26a seemed a bit dodgy to me. Yes, there were a lot of smooth surfaces, but also a smattering of ones which jarred slightly, notably 29a and 4d (you don’t go by railway, you go by train).
Probably my biggest niggle was the excessive number of single abbreviations. Having a few of them is fine, but we are into double figures here. And the pedant in me wonders what happened to the apostrophe in BLOOMIN’? 😉
Thanks to Bluth and to B&J
Another entertaining challenge from Bluth. My solving came with alternating periods of long head scratching and bursts of inspiration. When it finally clicked I liked the sub-par device of 1D, and I’m a sucker for a pun such as 19D.
Fortunately TMESIS was somewhere in the back of my mind but MUSHY PEAS is yet another for my list of reverse anagrams I didn’t recognise.
As gsolphotog @10 said, always inventive and entertaining.
Lovely crossword as usual from Bluth. I can’t hear the word TMESIS without thinking it’s what the Chuckle Brothers would say to their other sibling.
Nice one, DuncT.
Enjoyed this! Ended up by staring at the 4-letter 15A for a while. No hope of parsing Supernova, not knowing the song. A couple of these were really inventive: sub-par, bevel, especially. Tmesis a new word.
I agree with wordplodder, 19d needed recite, or read out, the setter may have intended reading aloud but it needs to be clarified, I read the clue as reading without speaking.
I like clues like ‘ape’s food’, though my preference would be for something along the lines of “food to give apes”
or “food that will make you apes”. I realise that’s implicit in the apostrophe.
I enjoy this setter. Many good ideas.
Good fun. Sub-par was very neat, and I liked STARVE & NUNNERY too among plenty of others.
There was a comment on the Guardian thread about reverse anagrams possibly becoming more common. Is it so common now that it needs no indication whatsoever? I also occasionally worry that the range of anagram indicators in the solutions is getting very broad, when perhaps it should be restricted to very specific shuffling words, seeing as it’s the solver who has to write the clue.
A couple of niggles; a nailbrush does not sweep and ‘bomb failed to open’ for omb seems a bit dodgy.
Thanks Bluth & B&J
Thanks for the blog B&J.
I intended a slightly different parsing for 6D. I didn’t use “turning” as an anagram indicator, just as a reversal. And it only applies to IAN. The RUSH needs no treatment and the LB is inserted. I don’t think I’d be happy with an anagram where so many of the letters stayed where they were or in such a long sequence etc, but as nobody else questioned it, your alternative parsing must seem satisfactory to most.
Hovis @4 (& others) regarding whether or not a SUPERNOVA is a star, I defer to Chambers which defines NOVA as “a star that suddenly increases in brightness for a number of days or years” and SUPERNOVA as “a very bright nova resulting…”
I appreciate that the clue for that requires general knowledge but in reply to gsolphotog’s question about resorting to an obscure reference… the answer is simply that this setter didn’t regard the reference as remotely obscure.
Dutch @18 – I’m afraid I laughed at the idea that you read the phrase “how a boxer might read poem on the radio” as meaning “reading without speaking”. That seems a bizarre interpretation of something that happens on radio!
Rabbit. You’re right that there are double figures for single letter abbreviations here. I count 10. I think the last time you commented on an Indy crossword was Kairos 4 days ago. There were more in that one and it didn’t trouble you at all. (And it obviously doesn’t trouble me!) I suspect sometimes when one’s not completely on song with a puzzle we look for reasons and think we’ve identified them but it’s not always that simple and it can be just a feeling or a sense that you and the setter are on different wavelengths. At which point you count the single letter abbreviations, say, and think, “ah ha… *that’s* what it is!”
I do disagree with your assertion that we “go by train” and not “by railway”. We can do either. If someone in conversation told you that they travelled by railway you would know exactly what they meant and to pretend not to do so or to correct them would be extremely odd. Here’s an article from the Independent in which Baroness Bennett of the Greens is quoted. “She … said universities should give staff more journey time to allow them to go by railway.”
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/universities-flights-climate-change-aviation-industry-b1777200.html
James @19 – the last time I used a nailbrush I passed it across my nails swiftly, forcibly and in a curve… which is pretty much definition 1 of sweeping according to Chambers. Several of the other definitions feel pretty accurate also.
Cheers all!
Thanks Bluth and B&J! I’m late to post because this took me ages to finish, but I think mostly because Bluth’s style is different in a way that takes my mind longer to click onto—in others a very inventive and fun puzzle!
I failed to parse SUPERNOVA but thought it was quite fair once explained.
I loved LIGAMENT particularly; ABRADING was another favorite.
*Oy, that was meant to be “in other words”, not “in others”.
Thanks Bluth. I’m relatively new to Indy crosswords but splendid clues like MUSHY PEAS, TOMB, and FOLK SONG will keep me alert for more in the future. I did have some difficulty but it was nothing I couldn’t overcome by cheating. I can’t believe I couldn’t parse SUPERNOVA because I actually own the song and saw Oasis perform it live. Thanks B&J for the blog.
Bluth, yes, ‘to move brushingly’ for example. But hands can move brushingly, and an axe head passes swiftly or forcibly, esp with a swinging movement or in a curve. Sweep would fit both of those movements fine, but you wouldn’t describe a hand or an axe as a sweeper. Some brushes sweep, and some brushes could be described as sweepers, but describing a nailbrush as a sweeper seemed to me a bad description selected for the sake of making a clue about football, and therefore a tiny bit irritating. That is an opinion.
Maybe you considered all that when writing the clue, and checked the definition of sweep and decided that yes, a nailbrush definitely sweeps. So you can disprove ‘a nailbrush doesn’t sweep’. Let me amend my comment to ‘Describing a nailbrush as a sweeper didn’t seem right to me, conveniently but inappropriately relying on the association between some types of brushes and sweeping to suit the footballing context of the clue’.
Lorem ipsum at #21 Yes. My feeling too about Bluth. I always like to tackle the puzzle when I see Bluth’s name because I know I will enjoy it.
There will be clues I can get pretty quickly, but there will also be clues that make me have to think in a different way from many of the setters, e.g. 19d Barcode.
Thanks to Bluth, and B&J for blog
James @24 that’s absolutely fair comment. You’re right that I’m relying on the nailbrush’s brushiness when I call it a little sweeper. And yes, in a crossword, I think that’s absolutely a fair amount of latitude to take. But I don’t just think “well, I know a nailbrush doesn’t really sweep like a broom, but I’ll get away with it” or “well… you do sort of use a sweeping motion, so technically it’s ok”… it’s more that, while, for most most people, ‘sweep’ might not be their first choice of verb for what-one-does-with-a-nailbrush, it is actually a part of its function – its bristles do sweep dirt away.
For example: https://www.malinandgoetz.co.uk/iris-nail-brush “Extra-soft bristles sweep away grime and debris without irritating or scratching skin”
That’s not a one-off – a-ha I found a nailbrush example, that’ll show him! According to the manufacturers of Oral B electric toothbrushes, “The specialised bristles sweep away plaque and the polishing cup whitens teeth starting from day one.*
Brushes sweep.
This just in: a man has found something on the internet to confirm his opinion.