A mixture of easy clues and some tricky ones. Thank you Gozo.
The solutions to clues by Gozo normally have a theme of some sort. The grid contains quite a few obscure and archaic words, which suggests to me that this grid was not filled at random either. I can’t think of anything that connects them.
Grant @1 points out that every solution contains a double letter. In retrospect this seems harder to miss that to spot, but nevertheless I managed it.
| ACROSS | ||
| 1 | SALAAM |
Academic, regrettably, rebuffed peace gesture (6)
|
| MA (master of arts, an academic) ALAS (sadly) all reversed (rebuffed) | ||
| 4 | AFFRIC |
Day away from Cardiff, round Scottish glen and loch (6)
|
| anagram (round) of CARdIFF missing (…away from) D (day) | ||
| 8 | CONNECT |
Link with state I cut off (7)
|
| CONNECTicut (state) missing I CUT | ||
| 9 | ASSOILS |
Discharges from a ship carrying earth (7)
|
| A SS (steam ship) contains (carrying) SOIL (earth) | ||
| 11 | APPEARANCE |
Pretence coming on stage (10)
|
| double definition, and a contranym too | ||
| 12 | COOP |
Supermarket’s hen-run (4)
|
| CO-OP (a supermarket chain in the UK) | ||
| 13 | GENII |
Lowdown on the team’s spirits (5)
|
| GEN (lowdown) and II (eleven, a team, sports) | ||
| 14 | SUPPRESS |
Control reporters with drink (8)
|
| PRESS (reporters) following (with) SUP (drink) | ||
| 16 | SORBONNE |
Brothers turned back close to north- eastern university (8)
|
| BROS (brothers) reversed (turned back) ON (close to) and NE (north-eastern) | ||
| 18 | RATTY |
Mole’s companion is irritable (5)
|
| double definition – Mole and Ratty are characters from The Wind in the Willows | ||
| 20 | EGGS |
Easter gifts gratefully supplied as starters (4)
|
| first letters (as starters) of Easter Gifts Gratefully Supplied | ||
| 21 | JACKKNIVES |
Pilates exercises causing accidents with the rig (10)
|
| double definition – accidents with an articulated lorry (a rig). Which is the better answer: JACKKNIFES or JACKKNIVES? | ||
| 23 | STROPPY |
Argumentative pupil twice starts interrupting garbled story (7)
|
| P P (starting letter of Pupil, twice) inside (interrupting) anagram (garbled) of STORY | ||
| 24 | HEEDFUL |
Taking care of male newspaperman with terrible flu (7)
|
| HE (a male) ED (editor, newspaperman) with anagram (terrible) of FLU | ||
| 25 | ENNEAD |
Group of nine seen topless and drunk (6)
|
| anagram (drunk) of sEEN (topless) AND | ||
| 26 | ASSESS |
Evaluate Jenny? (6)
|
| an ASS-ESS might be a female ass (jenny) | ||
| DOWN | ||
| 1 | SLOOP |
Funds raised for vessels (5)
|
| POOLS (funds) reversed (raised) – I’m guessing vessels plural indicates a category of ship rather than a number of individual ships | ||
| 2 | LINNEAN |
Tailless songbird with a name from classification system (7)
|
| LINNEt (songbird) missing last letter (tailless) with A N (name) | ||
| 3 | ACCORDION |
Harmony at home about love for squeeze box (9)
|
| ACCORD (harmony) IN (at home) contains (about) O (love, zero score) | ||
| 5 | FESSE |
Ordinary part of chain cast in iron (5)
|
| ESS (a link in a chain) inside (cast in) FE (iron) – an ordinary is a simple geometric shape in heraldry | ||
| 6 | REOCCUR |
Love being in sports ground with dog — come again! (2-5)
|
| O (love) inside (being in) REC (sports ground) then CUR (dog) | ||
| 7 | CALLOUSLY |
Hard-heartedly ring up the Dark Blues with cunning (9)
|
| CALL (ring up) OU (Oxford University, name for the sports teams c.f. Cambridge light blues) then SLY (cunning) | ||
| 10 | IN ESSENCE |
Fashionable fragrance, fundamentally (2,7)
|
| IN (fashionable) ESSENCE (perfume) | ||
| 13 | GEORGETTE |
Cloth from pilot at pottery centre (9)
|
| GEORGE (nickname for an autopilot) then middle letters of poTTEry | ||
| 15 | PARAKEETS |
Airborne trooper spoke of poet to birds (9)
|
| PARA (airborne trooper) then KEETS sounds like (spoke of) “Keats” (poet) | ||
| 17 | BASSOON |
Donkey in favour? Blow that! (7)
|
| ASS (donkey) inside BOON (favour) | ||
| 19 | TWIDDLE |
Ornament wild Ted smashed (7)
|
| anagram (smashed) of WILD TED | ||
| 21 | JOPPA |
German agreement about work on the quiet in Edinburgh suburb (5)
|
| JA (agreement, in German) contains (about) OP (opus, work) and P (piano, quiet) | ||
| 22 | EQUUS |
1973 drama starts to examine questions under unusual security (5)
|
| first letters (starts to) of Examine Questions Under Unusual Security |
Every clue contains double letters, which helped enormously in researching – as I confess I did – some of the many (5 for me) obccurities.
An ingenious puzzle.Thanks to both.
You could have been an answer, PeeDee.
Btw: what’s the plural of ‘Jackknife’? I think both F or V are equally valid.
Thanks Grant. The double letters looks so obvious now you point them out!
Pops I think the answer to 5= FESSE. Ess = a chain link in Chambers. The ‘ordinary’ bit is as PeeDee explains, in heraldry.
Thanks again Grant, I’ve written a typo in the grid, and then started trying to explain the typo rather than the solution. I’d didn’t know either FUSEE or FESSE, I was just guessing at solutions and looking them up in Chambers, and then I’ve gone and written in the wrong one.
To PeeDee:
It’s FESSE not FESEE, I think. Doncha hate blogging?
OK, got there in the end! Blog updated now.
I liked the double letter theme which helped with a few answers, but ultimately couldn’t give me the correct answer to 5d; I put in ‘fusee’ which at least has something to do with a ‘chain’. I entered JACKKNIFES for 21a – F or V, I have no intention of finding out what the ‘Pilates exercises’ involve but it sounds as though they could do serious bodily harm, never mind the ‘accidents with the rig’!
Thanks to Gozo and PeeDee
Thanks for the blog, I usually miss themes but got this one almost straight away. By 9Ac we had two , nearly three unusual words so I had a look at them. We had a double letter theme fairly recently, wonder if it was Gozo ? I do think the obscure words were clued very fairly to save me looking things up later.
I always say JACKKNIFES but I can see the case for the alternative now.
I always thought “re-occur” was only uttered by people who were unfamiliar with “recur”. I was unaware that an autopilot was George. And what’s the connection between “twiddle” and “ornament”?
Always something clever going on with Gozo but I confess I didn’t spot the double letters till late in the solve!
I expect my 5 unknowns were the same as others’ but only ENNEAD foiled me.
My instinct is JACKKNIFES in the case of the rig (verb) but for the exercises (noun), there’s a case for JACKKNIVES.
I thought that classification system (2d) was LINNAEAN – is today’s version an alternative version?
Besides ASSESS which is fast becoming a chestnut, I did very much enjoyed this puzzle.
Thanks to Gozo and PeeDee.
To Geoff @ 11:
For musicians, a ‘twiddle’ is, informally, a grace-note (or notes) ornamenting the melody or – for jazzers – one’s variations thereupon.
Diane – I think jackknife for a lorry could be either a verb or a noun, “accidents with the rigs” seemed to me to point to a (plural) noun here rather than a verb. I have no idea which Gozo intended.
Geoff Down Under – what came into my mind for twiddle/ornament were grace notes in music, an appoggiatura for example.
Diane @12 , good point about JACKKNIVES , it makes a lot of sense, LINNEAN is an alternative in Chambers, not even US but I was surprised.
Geoff@11 not really sure about TWIDDLE = ORNAMENT but I think it is something to do with fancy writing.
Slow typing again. Thank you Grant and PeeDee for the musical lesson.
Thanks Gozo and PeeDee
Interesting theme which I was able to pick up quite early on and it was certainly a help with some of the tougher words late in the solve. ENNEAD was a known from many crosswords over the time but LINNEAN, Glen AFFRIC FESSE, GEORGETTE, ASSOILS, TWIDDLE (in the musical sense) and JOPPA were all new.
LINNEAN was a serendipitous answer – in a daily quiz that I do in the local Australian newspaper was a question about the ‘Father of Taxonomy’.
Finished up the top with CONNECT, that FESSE and ASSOILS the last few in.
Re the discussion of 21a, I think that, pertaining to Pilates, it would be a noun; while for a truck it is a verb. Thus, f would be correct.
Thanks Gozo and PeeDee
21ac: Let me cast my vote on the side that reads both parts of the clue as indicating nouns.
john – how do you pluralize a verb? “To jackknife” is a verb certainly. How do you make this plural but remain a verb?
Completely blind to the theme, despite thinking ‘oo, jackknifes has a double k in it’.
The arguments are strong for jackknives, but I think it sounds awful, so I’m virmly in the f camp.
In relation to lorries, Chambers has it only as a verb, and unsurprisingly not at all in relation to Pilates. I can explain the apparent nouniness of the second definition by Gozo’s occasional laxity in matching parts of speech in clue and solution.
I went for FUSEE at 5d and would disagree with Roz that this was clued very fairly. FESSE is a very unusual word given an extremely innocuous and therefore misleading definition in ‘ordinary’. Ess is also likely to be unknown as ‘part of chain’. Fusee is a (nearly) perfectly sensible answer, being the spindle through which a chain is wound, so possibly ‘ordinary part of chain’ with cast being use (e.g. I’m going to cast/use Olivier for that role).
My wife is a Scot and had never heard of JOPPA. Rather unfair to use such an obscure place and almost impossible for solvers from outside the British Isles. That said it was a delightful puzzle and great blog. Thanks to both parties.
Hi SM, I lived in Scotland for years, not far from Edinburgh, and I had never heard of JOPPA either. Unfair (or just difficult?) for Brits and non-Brits alike!
Had to look up ‘fesse’ to find it’s heraldic reference; its French definition (buttock!) was all that occurred to me.
Thank you so much PeeDee. I take your point and, having read Roz@10’s comments about the clear clues I withdraw my criticism. I did work out JOPPA but had to check with a gazetteer although.I failed with some other obscure words..
Having seen online how a jackknife sit-up is performed in the gym , I completely agree with WordPlodder @9. I will keep my fesses a little soft.
In one of those weird coincidences, I had never heard of JOPPA either but, after finishing the crossword, I was reading a graphic novel where it was mentioned. Of course, if I’d read it yesterday, I would have sworn blind that I’d never heard of it today.
I’ve never heard of Joppa, despite having been there!
James – your comment prompted me to look up on the map exactly where Joppa is. It is between Portobello and Musselburgh, so I have definitely driven through there, several times. And still can’t remember ever having seen it.
A bit of a challenge in places, with some rather obscure GK, such as FESSE, ASSOILS and JOPPA, although we did know the heraldic term and even though we’re in the English Midlands we had heard of the Edinburgh suburb. JACKKNIVES rather took us by surprise as we rather assumed that the second K had ‘fallen out’ in common usage – clearly not the case. And we thought at first the definition in 12ac was ‘supermarket’ – it’s only the enumeration that show’s it’s actually ‘hen-run’.
Plenty to like, though; favourite was SORBONNE although we were surprised Tees didn’t capitalise Northeastern University as a misdirection – googling turned up at least two institutions of that name in Canada and the USA.
Thanks, Tees and PeeDee.
Thanks to those who shone some light on the twiddle/ornament connection. I’m not sure whether I should mention that I’m a retired music teacher and have never come across it. Perhaps it’s a British thing?
allan_c @ 29
Tees?
It’s F, perversely
Simon S@31
Oops! Still thinking of the Indy which was by Tees. Apologies to Gozo.
I really liked the theme with double letters. JOPPA came easily to me as there is BBC gardening programme Beechgrove, based at 4 locations around Britain – including Joppa.
Commenting very late, but thank you for the blog and the comments, all very interesting. But, acknowledging first that I missed the theme myself, it would have been great to have seen “bookkeeper” in there.