Private Eye (Cyclops / 709) Realistic Fanatics

8 comments on “Private Eye (Cyclops / 709) Realistic Fanatics”

1. Thank for the exercise Cyclops. This got done over a few days as time permitted.
   Not knowing Barnier, I decided it described a person who was engaged in a barney who could be negotiating, so was a made up word, hence the question mark.
   I was amused to find “thing good” (18a) used today in another crossword, but with a different answer.
   Otherwise everything fell into place nicely.
   Thanks for putting me right beermagnet.

2. Thanks for the blog , a bit less political this one and a lot more schoolboy sexual innuendo but par for the course I suppose.
   I agree that 8AC NOT and 6D AID are a bit unusual in that we have just a 3 letter anagram that makes them reverse in practice.
   I do not think ORCHID quite works, a nice idea to swap L for R then move it but the wording not precise enough.
   BLOW for cannabis is neat, so many slang words possible here but this is the one from my distant youth.

3. I put in CHAIN for 11A and got stuck for a long time in that corner – everything else went in quite quickly for a change

4. Thanks beermagnet, relieved to see “CRUEL BLOW” as I didn’t particularly like cruel=raw but couldn’t think of anythign else. Roz@2 the other equivalence is also what I recall from my youth, disappointing to hear it confirmed as “distant” by a third party.
   I struggled to think of Damien Hirst as a sculptor as I thought the dead shark was more of an installation but maybe the jewelled skull counts and then I found this: (If that doesn’t work it is just some sculptures etc of his, being exhibited in St Moritz.)
   Audacity award goes to Fan = “Blow job machine”, wonder if Cyclops was thinking of mechanical fans or rock star groupies, or both?

5. Thanks beermagnet and Cyclops. I liked the ABK link. 10a was my fav.. Like GAZZH @, I didnt know of raw= cruel. “I enjoyed the cruel carrot which was rather crunchy”. I found 709 a tough one but enjoyable all the same.

6. We (in Stevenage, SE England) used to call cannabis BLOW as well, but in America it means cocaine, apparently. Also ‘puff’ is well-known slang for cannabis, although apparently it is also now used for crack cocaine, which is how Amy Winehouse might have been using it in her chart-busting hit, Back to Black, according to a correspondent on Stack Exchange.

   Either way, it strikes me that ‘Puff and blow? (5)’ could be a nice cd for DRUGS

   The reversal of a word is an element in the set of anagrams of that word. I think it’s ok to clue a three-letter reversal as an anagram if it gives you a good surface, but “foreign” (6dn) is maybe not the best anagram indicator? I attended Paul’s Zoom meeting on Friday, where Brian Greer (Brendan at the Guardian) was guest of honour. Talking about his days as Times crossword editor, he mentioned that he is more particular than some other setters about anagram indicators. I can’t remember his exact words on the subject, so I won’t risk misquoting him but the session was recorded, so there’s a possibility his words might be made publicly available later.

   20dn the parsing for ORCHID could also be represented as:

   O + *CHI(R/l)D

   where R/l means substitute R for l.

   In 16dn, surely ‘red’ is the colour that describes SUNBURNT, while ‘brown’ is sun-tanned?

   Mystogre has never heard of Michel Barnier (or Michel Bar-mitzvahs, as my spell-checker has it)? I think we can safely deduce that they’re not British!

   I don’t get the joke or even understand what “prepping a song” is.

7. “Prepping a song” Preparing a song. In this case:
   Ding-dong, the witch is dead!
   Which old witch? The wicked witch
   Ding-dong, the wicked witch is dead

8. Ah, ok, so a wicked witch was killed by a falling house in the Wizard of Oz, then? I think I did see it about 60 years ago, but didn’t remember the details. Thanks for explaining. I suppose I would have laughed if I’d known that …

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