Knut provides our Wednesday entertainment today.
There are one or two less common words here, especially 16d, but the wordplay is generally clear enough to make them guessable. I enjoyed the somewhat cynical surface of 11a, the cryptic definition of 13a (I don’t always like this clue type, but good ones can be very good), and the well-constructed surfaces of 4d and 22d. 6a was my last one in, but I laughed when I finally saw what the “boom” indicated.
There’s a culinary reference across the middle row too. I’m told that soft-shell crabs are rather tasty; sadly my digestive system doesn’t tolerate such things so I can’t speak from experience.
Thanks Knut for a fun puzzle.
Definitions are underlined; BOLD UPPERCASE indicates letters used in the wordplay; square brackets [ ] indicate omitted letters.
| ACROSS | ||
| 6 | MACHINE |
Boom created by this new electronic device (7)
|
| MACH I (Mach 1 = the speed of sound; an object exceeding this speed creates a sonic boom) + N (new) + E (prefix meaning electronic). | ||
| 7 | HANDS |
Crew playing cards (5)
|
| Double definition. As in the command to a ship’s crew, “all hands on deck”; or hand = the set of cards held by an individual player in a game. | ||
| 9 | BLUR |
Obscure Britpop band (4)
|
| Double definition. Obscure, as a verb = blur = deliberately make unclear; or the band known for their rivalry with Oasis in the 90s. | ||
| 10 | HONESTY BAR |
Resort by North Sea where drinkers need to be upright (7,3)
|
| Anagram (re-sort) of BY NORTH SEA.
Cryptic definition: upright in the moral sense. Honesty bar = a hotel bar where guests can help themselves, and are trusted to record and pay for what they take. |
||
| 11 | HYPNOSIS |
Terribly phony sibling’s alternative therapy (8)
|
| Anagram (terribly) of PHONY, then SIS (sibling). | ||
| 13 | CHEESE |
Final word before one gets shot? (6)
|
| Cryptic definition: photographers traditionally call out “say cheese” to a group of people to make them smile before taking a photograph (shot). At first I was thinking about saying CHEERS before a “shot” of spirits, but then the crossers put me right. | ||
| 15 | SOFT |
Simple fellow getting drunk outside (4)
|
| F (abbreviation for fellow) with SOT (a drunk) outside it.
Simple = soft = easy. |
||
| 17 | SHELL |
That lady will shortly launch an attack (5)
|
| SHE’LL (short for “that lady will”).
Shell, as a verb = attack with explosive devices. |
||
| 18 | CRAB |
Conservative Minister lacking some guts – he’ll be moving sideways (4)
|
| C (Conservative) + RA[a]B (Dominic Raab, Deputy PM and Secretary of State for Justice) with one of the middle letters (guts) lacking.
Creature known for walking sideways – although not all of them do. |
||
| 19 | POINTS |
Indicates number of imperial units (about zero) (6)
|
| PINTS (imperial units, with “number of” presumably there to give us the plural form) around O (zero). | ||
| 20 | FOR KEEPS |
Father guarding old castles on a permanent basis (3,5)
|
| FR (abbreviation for “Father” as a title for a priest) containing O (old), then KEEPS (castles). Strictly a keep is a fortified tower within the main castle grounds, used as a last line of defence if the outer wall is breached.
For keeps = slang phrase meaning “for ever”. |
||
| 23 | PERSIAN CAT |
Pet ate in RSPCA compound (7,3)
|
| Anagram (compound) of ATE IN RSPCA. For overseas solvers, it stands for Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals; among other things they provide shelters for stray or rescued animals. | ||
| 26 | COWL |
Top of chimney pot caught bird of prey (4)
|
| C (caught, in cricket scoring) + OWL (bird of prey).
A device at the top of a chimney to prevent smoke being blown back down by the wind. |
||
| 27 | YEARN |
Long story: ear needs boxing (5)
|
| Hidden answer (. . . boxing) in [stor]Y EAR N[eeds].
Long, as a verb = yearn. |
||
| 28 | LINEKER |
Gary, Indiana football player missing taxi back (7)
|
| LINE[bac]KER (a position in American football, so for example in the US state of Indiana), without CAB (taxi) reversed (back). For the surface, there is indeed a city called Gary in Indiana.
The former footballer, now TV presenter, Gary Lineker. |
||
| DOWN | ||
| 1 | ACCRINGTON |
Where to see Stanley wince endlessly when visiting Acton (10)
|
| CRING[e] (wince), without its last letter (endlessly), inserted into ACTON.
Lancashire town whose football club is called Accrington Stanley FC. |
||
| 2 | LIGHTS |
Head leaves, disparages answers to crossword clues (6)
|
| [s]LIGHTS (disparages), with the first letter (head) leaving.
I don’t know why they’re called “lights”, but they are. Perhaps something to do with the light and dark squares in the grid? |
||
| 3 | DEAN |
Desperate character kidnapping English churchman (4)
|
| DAN (the comic-strip character Desperate Dan), containing E (English). | ||
| 4 | PHYSICAL |
Wicked Caliphs incarcerate Yankee corporal (8)
|
| Anagram (wicked) of CALIPHS, containing Y (Yankee in the radio alphabet).
Corporal = physical = relating to the body. |
||
| 5 | ENVY |
Experience uncharitable emotion when taking over from diplomat (4)
|
| ENV[o]Y (diplomat), taking away the O (over, in cricket scoring). | ||
| 6 | MILKY |
Like a latte? Kind Knut’s round! (5)
|
| ILK (which is generally used to mean kind = sort = type, though the original Scots word meant “same”), with MY (Knut’s = the crossword setter’s) around it. | ||
| 8 | SWANSEA |
Sickly-looking sons touring each city in Wales (7)
|
| WAN (sickly-looking), with SS (two S = son) around it (touring), then EA (short for each). | ||
| 12 | SHEAF |
Small hotel, eastern France, pocketing a bundle (5)
|
| S (small) + H (Hotel in the radio alphabet) + E (Eastern) + F (France), containing A. | ||
| 14 | ECCLES CAKE |
Beccy (bless!) unwrapped cracknel – oddly a Lancs speciality (6,4)
|
| [b]ECC[y] [b]LES[s] (unwrapped = outer letters removed), then odd-numbered letters from C[r]A[c]K[n]E[l].
Flaky pastry filled with currants, originally from Eccles in Lancashire. |
||
| 16 | OROGENY |
Oscar and Roger (not Romeo in the end) covering New York’s peak creative event (7)
|
| O (Oscar in the radio alphabet) + ROGE[r] (missing the final R, which is Romeo in the radio alphabet), then NY (New York). “Covering” is there because OROGE is “above” NY in a down clue.
The formation of mountain ranges (peaks) by geological activity. Not a familiar word, but the helpful wordplay made it guessable. |
||
| 17 | SUSTAINS |
Props up Marx reportedly propping up leaders of Soviet Union (8)
|
| STAINS (marks, which is a homophone (reportedly) of MARX), after (below, in a down clue = propping up) the leading letters of S[oviet] U[nion]. | ||
| 21 | RETINA |
One helps to observe sulphur being removed from resinous wine (6)
|
| RET[s]INA (Greek resin-flavoured wine – love it or hate it), with the S (chemical symbol for sulphur) removed.
Part of the eye, so something that helps us to observe. |
||
| 22 | POWER |
Might wartime captive start to escape with support from Resistance? (5)
|
| POW (PoW = Prisoner of War) + start of E[scape] + R (scientific symbol for electrical resistance). “Support from” (in a down clue) puts the R at the end, “holding up” the rest of the wordplay. | ||
| 24 | SOAP |
With which to clean top of orange juice cans (4)
|
| First letter (top) of O[range], contained in (. . . cans) SAP (juice). | ||
| 25 | CELL |
Battery where bird is served? (4)
|
| Definition and cryptic definition. A source of electrical power; or “bird” is slang for time served in a prison cell. |
Latté superb
Enjoyed this. HONESTY BAR & OROGENY we’re the obligatory unknowns for me. I particularly liked MACHINE and the use of “taking over from” in 5d.
Not as brilliant as his last outing but very satisfying and enjoyable, Mach one was very clever and I liked soap for its surface and simplicity. COTD has to be Accrington though, just for bringing this to mind.
Thanks Knut and Quirister
Another treat from Knut – so much to enjoy – 13a and 1d, to mention just two
Thanks to Knut for the fun and Quirister for the blog
Dnf, missing the hardly hard 19a. Once the idea had occurred to me that ‘indicates number of’ must be COUNTS, it was difficult to think of anything else (‘Rebel scum’ – ‘Imperial ____’ didn’t make the final cut).
CHEESE held out to the end, so that was favourite. MILKY just shows setters will compromise any principle when it suits.
Are there perhaps more SOFTs? You can have soft hands, soap, cheese
Thanks Knut, Quirister
From the Encyclopedia of Mathematics:
Examples of soft sheaves are: the sheaf of germs of discontinuous sections of an arbitrary sheaf of sets on X; any flabby sheaf F on a paracompact space X; and any fine sheaf F of Abelian groups on a paracompact space X.
Who knew?
Thanks for the blog, dear Quirister.
James, you’re not the first person today to suggest that I’m trolling myself with the clue for MILKY…fwiw, my objection has always been to latte=coffee but I should probably have stuck with my original clue which had caffe in front of latte. You get a Spotter’s Badge for seeing the other items in a bit of a ghost theme though.
Best wishes to all, Rob/Knut
Well spotted James@5&6, another would be Soft Cell of Tainted Love fame.
James @6. Mathematicians just love their technobabble. I remember from my undergrad days such gems as: The bifurcation set of the hyperbolic umbilic is a parabolic, tricuspic hypercycloid and every continuous, symmetric, coercive, bilinear form is lower semi-continuous in the weak topology. I have only the vaguest of memories as to what either of them mean but I’m sure everyone will delight in this extra knowledge.
It might not have been very hard, but I became stuck on ‘counts’ for 19a too, before I finally saw PINTS as the ‘imperial units’. Even so, it was my last in. I had no idea what OROGENY was and of course missed the theme.
I’m firmly in the “don’t like” camp for RETSINA. Who knows, maybe it is the S that makes it taste so bad. I liked, in a perverse way, your mathematical gobbledegook James @6 & Hovis @9. Did you really remember that stuff?
Thanks to Knut and Quirister
ILK. My 1905 Chambers’s Twentieth Century Dictionary, gives the definition of ‘of that ilk’ as “of that same, used in connection with a man whose name is the same as that of his ancestral estate – often used erroneously for ‘of that kind'”; and it is apparent that the erroneous use is now almost universal even amongst otherwise literate people.
Think McDonald of that ilk ie McDonald of McDonald.
I hear people shouting “language is a growing, living thing” (or words of that ilk).
Marvellous crossword though. Thanks to Knut and Quirister
I’ll add the 60s prog rock band Soft Machine to the theme. Loved the milky latte. Hate the drink – coffee for people who don’t like coffee.
Thanks to Knut for a fine crossword and to Quirister for the equally fine blog.
Jayjay, you beat me to it (with the pioneering Soft Machine) but there’s also ‘soft power’.
Agree that MILKY (6dn) raised the biggest smile, knowing Knut’s thoughts on latte.
Very enjoyable. You can have soft power too and, to add to the bands’ sub-theme Accrington Stanley play at the Wham stadium.
We worked steadily through this and solved everything without a thought as to any seafood or ghost themes. OROGENY was easily got from wordplay and confirmed in Chambers. 7
MACHINE, one of our last ones in, was one of those clues where crossing letters suggest an answer that seems unlikely – and then you suddenly realise it is the answer. Definitely our CoD
ILK for type or sort does tend to evoke a ‘grrr!’ response from us, but we see that’s now the first definition in Chambers (13th ed, 2014).
Thanks, Knut and Quirister.
I always enjoy a latté made by a good barista and enjoyed that excellent clue in an enjoyable puzzle. Well done to those who spotted the theme, I very rarely do. Thank you Rob and Quirister.
Well, I did know OROGENY. Read too many popular science books and articles. 🙂 Didn’t know HONEST BAR, though.
Didn’t spot the theme but I do recall the outcry when SOFT MACHINE played at the Proms about fifty years ago.
Extremely late today but couldn’t let Knut’s impressive and smooth surfaces go uncomplimented. Another lovely outing and a theme that was so soft it certainly escaped my attention until now. Congratulations to all who spotted it. I’d suggest soft lights could be added and, believe it or not, there would appear to be a frisbee called a soft envy but I think that’s a coincidental outlier.
Thanks Knut and Quirister
PostMark beat me to it with soft lights, but I do have a feeling that ‘soft blur’ exists in the talk universe of those with lots of expensive camera bits.
Thank you Knut; I have been reading the headlines the last few days thinking ‘this is begging for a Knut to come and put the boot in’ but will have to wait.
Lovely puzzle. Needed a couple of letter reveals in the NW to complete & failed to parse a couple. MILKY & CHEESE my top two.
Thanks to K&Q