This puzzle was a bit of a stinker, in both senses.
There is a lot of untreated effluent floating around these days released by the piss-poor privatised water companies that have dished out £57 billion in dividends over the last 11 years which could have / should have gone towards fixing the creaking Victorian infrastructure. Some of it appears to have washed up into this crossword.
Also, I found it one of the toughest Eye crosswords for quite a while.
I found it particularly hard to get started. By the time I had attempted all the Across clues I only had 2 answers in place, 11 and 29. It was that final across answer that helped turn the tide and I got all its crossing down clues then gradually fought my way up the grid from that bottom right corner. Real life got in the way as I was called to do some kitchen chores I’d promised to do, completely forgotten, and were now urgent else no Sunday lunch. When I restarted the solve I tackled the remaining down clues from the top just to get all clues attempted. I winced when I read 7d like anyone who’d ever suffered a mangled gusset. It shows how much I rely on crossing letters that by that time – the end of the “first pass” there were only 12 unanswered.
These included
23A – a frankly, scatological but excellent clue crying out for use as the blog title.
10A – Cyclops being up to date with the latest Johnson sleaze where he has a yet another nice holiday curtesy of his mate who has just been given a peerage.
13A – I do not understand how this one resisted so long.
14D – Superb cryptic Def: “Barely perceptible hand gesture”
And finally the crossing couple: 18D & 28A both of these clues misled me to misidentify the definition part, and neither of which, in the cold light of day, can I justify classifying as particularly hard.
| Across | ||
|---|---|---|
| 1 | OBSTRUCT | Boris’s upset with cut – “time to replace one’s hamper” (8) (BORIS CUT – I + T)* AInd: upset. T[ime] replacing I (one) in the anagram fodder |
| 6 | PAGODA | Building a party space back-to-front (6) A DO (a party) GAP (space) all reversed |
| 9 | BARTOK | Time right after strip for a noted man (6) BAR (strip) T[ime] OK (right) |
| 10 | MARBELLA | Boris’s retreat upset Drive magazine (8) RAM< (drive, upset) BELLA (magazine). Ref. One of Johnson’s many holidays he was “gifted” in the usual back-scratching manner |
| 11 | IDLE GOSSIP | Loose talk not working? Go and piss off! (4,6) IDLE (not working) (GO PISS)* AInd: off. |
| 13 | IMPOUND | Seize one’s money (7) I’M (one’s) POUND (money) |
| 15 | STAGING | Blokes only popular with money, putting on a show (7) STAG (Blokes only) IN (popular) G[rand] (money) |
| 17 | SCREW-UP | Finished after sexual partner’s disaster (5-2) SCREW (sexual partner) UP (Finished) |
| 19 | STINKER | Second fiddle – arsehole (7) S[econd] TINKER (fiddle) |
| 21/12 | HOLY SHIT | Revered silence before sex that’s amazing (4,4) HOLY (Revered) SH (silence) IT (sex) |
| 23 | EVACUATION | A good clear-out gone awry – caution, have to remove top (10) (CAUTION [h]AVE)* AInd: gone awry. |
| 26 | MAJESTIC | Like Brenda‘s one joke captured by sound device (8) A JEST (one joke) inside MIC (sound device) |
| 27 | HOLD IT | Hang on – have in one’s power one Tory leader! (4,2) HOLD (have in one’s power) I (one) T[ory] |
| 28 | DEADEN | Blunt‘s deed, an abomination (6) (DEED AN)* AInd: abomination. Last one in. This clue had me thinking of synonyms for spying/treachery etc. but what really held me up was thinking it was the past tense of a verb and ended in ___ED. Which also affected 18D |
| 29 | TOP TABLE | Summit on board, where important consumers gather (3,5) TOP (Summit) TABLE (board) |
| Down | ||
| 2 | BOARD | The management‘s pissed off broadcast (5) Homophone: “bored” HInd: broadcast |
| 3 | TITLE ROLE | Such as Billy Elliot‘s nasty e-troll in neckwear (5,4) (E-TROLL)* AInd: nasty, inside TIE (neckwear). I found this tricky, especially the definition by example |
| 4 | UNKNOWN | New in this country, present name ‘alien’ (7) N[ew] inside UK (this country), then NOW (present) N[ame]. Another clue that fooled me for ages |
| 5 | TIMES | X might represent this organ (5) Double Def: Mathematical operator and (till Murdoch bought it out) august daily. |
| 6 | PARAPET | Split pea inserted in member is a barrier (7) (PEA)* AInd: split, inside PART (member) |
| 7 | GUESS | Gusset mangled – time to go for work out (5) (GUSSE[t])* AInd: mangled. This clue made me wince |
| 8 | DALLIANCE | Democrat coalition dawdling (9) D[emocrat] ALLIANCE (coalition) |
| 14 | MICROWAVE | Barely perceptible hand gesture, but it should heat things up (9) Lovely cryptic def for MICRO WAVE |
| 16 | GENITALIA | Again I let out member and companions? (9) (AGAIN I LET)* AInd: out. The final question mark allows for the possibility that your genitals may vary |
| 18 | UNEATEN | Never a loser, bishop escapes – not put away (7) UN[b]EATEN Second to last in. See 28A above |
| 20 | TOUCH UP | Try a bit of sexual stimulation to improve the picture? (5,2) Double Def. |
| 22 | YIELD | Tory ultimately lied about supply (5) [tor]Y (LIED)* AInd: about. Definition is in the sense of a crop yield, rather than a knight yielding |
| 24 | ASCOT | Where you’ll find racy types like bed (5) AS (like) COT (bed) |
| 25 | ORIEL | It stands out quite transparently: Boris is extremely lacking, with negative, evil ends (5) [b]ORI[s] E[vi]L An oriel window juts out from the roof. I am not sure what “with negative” is doing in the clue? Edit: #1 Roz points out the intended wordplay is [b]ORI[s] [negativ]E [evi]L |
Last weekend I got banned from B&Q …
… bloke comes up to me says “You look like you need decking”
I reacted quickly and got the first punch in
Thanks for the blog and the joke. A lot of good, clever clues here, especially MARBELLA.
For ORIEL I think Cyclops means the ends of negativE eviL .
For STAGING I think money = G is a bit loose but just a minor quibble.
Thank you for the solve. I agree, there was some very good mis direction and I only completed 10a as it is topical.
Clues 4 and 14 are my favourites, and I concur with Roz on 25.
Your joke reminded me of the time someone threw a Snow Globe at me, I was OK, just badly shaken.
Thanks beermagnet. This was the first Eye crossword I’ve done in a loooong time and I really enjoyed it. My experience was similar to yours – I found some clues held my up for ages but once the penny dropped, I had no idea why I’d found them so difficult (IDLE GOSSIP being the one that really perplexed me, no idea why). I’m with you on the highlights – MICROWAVE was lovely, STINKER and MARBELLA were neatly done.
Agree with Roz on the parsing of ORIEL, though as per your parsing, it would have worked just as well (possibly better) without ‘negative’.
[Not sure why I don’t do the Eye regularly – think I had the idea in my head, based on distant past experience, that it just wasn’t very good. And I only learned fairly recently that Cyclops is an alter ego of Brummie, who is among my favourite Guardian setters – and his work here is of much the same standard, albeit with certain obvious stylistic differences! Anyway, the good news is that I have a big stack of old Private Eyes with crosswords to work my way through. That should keep me busy for a while.]
Thanks Roz, I thought I must be missing something about “negative” in 25D.
And I agree “money”=G is a bit iffy, I nearly said something about that myself but let it go.
Irish – what joke was that?
widdersbel: If you want to tackle old Eye crosswords the last several years *.puz files are accessible here
https://www.private-eye.co.uk/pictures/crossword/download/
I presume this is not intended for public use so I recommend we don’t mention it on any online crossword forums or anything like that 😉
First one I’ve not finished for a long time. It didn’t help that I misspelt ROLE and so was trying to fit all sorts into the crossers!!!! Best I could come up with was BALLS-UP but that messed up MICROWAVE!!!!
Thanks beermagnet – and don’t worry, I won’t tell anyone about the link! 😉
(I’ve got all of this year’s issues to work through as I was given a gift sub last Christmas and I’ve not thrown any of them away yet. I’d forgotten how much I enjoy Private Eye, although the Profits of Doom special in the last issue was seriously depressing… at least the crossword is some light relief.)
Thanks beermagnet for a great blog and to Cyclops of course. It was a tough but enjoyable crossword. My favourites were 18d and 20d.
20d in particular, because at solve time I thought the solution was BRUSH UP. This had me chuckling no end as I thought surely Cyclops wouldn’t push things that far (if you pardon the expression). Fortunately, the 19a crossing letter came to my rescue so that ‘solution’ no longer worked.
My GENITALIA was obstructed by TOP SHELF for 29A (shelf = board?), which seemed reasonable since the important consumers of Private Eye might have to reach there to grab their organs…
Thanks beermagnet, excellent blog. I thought this was tougher than usual too, luckily have kept up with enough current affairs that my unfamiliarity with “Bella” didn’t matter (being more of a “Take a Break” man myself). As well as the possibly extraneous “negative” (maybe Cyclops doesn’t like words having ends at the beginning?) I thought that “pissed off” in 2D could be done away with – it doesn’t really mean bored, at least not to me, and then a lift+separate on broad+cast gives a very simple anagram for the answer. But this is all idle speculation, enjoyed all those mentioned and more, PARAPET was another that had me grimacing, and I was thinking of the criminal records perpetrated by a different Blunt which misled me in 28A.
This morning I unsystematically selected about a dozen Cyclops clues containing “end”, from the 30% or so of his puzzles that contain one, to check my own feeling that he uses it just for the last letter of a word. Not proof of course, but all my sample were consistent with that, so you and I Gazzh might be right. I’ve also seen him using “extremes” and “limits”, for first and last letters together.
I’m used to G for a grand here, so that one didn’t bother me. 2D isn’t a homophone in my own RP, and I agree that pissed-off \== bored, though I can imagine someone describing themself in a situation as both. Probably close enough anyway, to have not much effect on solvability for an habitué/old lag.
Lemming @10 I agree that pissed off bored. However being ‘board’ I checked the IPA for both words online and the the same symbols were shown for both words i.e b??d
They seem to be homophones, innit? Mind you my knowledge of pronunciation is solely reliant on Mr Google.
Thanks for the diligent research lemming@10 (I have mostly forgotten my old stats lectures on sample size and credibility!) – I remember one or more Grauniad setters using “end” or “ends” to include the start of a word, but don’t think it was Cyclops’ alter ego. First time it got me very annoyed but of course am now (hopefully) accustomed to the trick.
Oh dear, while reading Franko@7 I almost splurted out my mouthful of tea. And then I read sjorford @8 ..
Comments here, in the same style as Cyclops, being both filthy and funny. Keep it up.
Thank you beermagnet. Like you and others, I found this one more of a challenge than usual.
TimC @13 funnily enough after posting I remembered that Bill Tidy at the Private Eye created a hilarious cartoon on these lines. Set in a washroom/toilets with a sign ‘Wash and Brush Up’ on the wall. It must have been buried deep in my subconscious (if not elsewhere).
The Bill Tidy cartoon is here (click on ‘See item details’ then click on image).
https://www.the-saleroom.com/en-gb/auction-catalogues/burstow-and-hewett/catalogue-id-srburs10079/lot-b7406ba8-eb72-435c-96ff-a53200ec143b
John E @15 thanks for your fantastic research (I was going to write ‘great stuff’, but noticed another possible double meaning). I had found this site a day or so ago but couldn’t get a clear view of the cartoon as I hadn’t worked out the links.
Following Franko @11 I’ve found for myself the overwhelming evidence of the same IPA transcription being used for both BORED and BOARD, including OED, and of their appearance together in countless web homophone lists. Page https://public.oed.com/how-to-use-the-oed/key-to-pronunciation/pronunciation-model-british-english/ does suggest a need for circumspection: (a) an OED audio sample “demonstrates just one feasible way of realizing the string of phonemes”; and (b) it mentions that “CLOTH entries are losing their more traditional /??/ transcriptions as words such as cross and soft are now typically /?/ for the vast majority of RP speakers.”
Meanwhile , even knowing of the clear emprical evidence of the effect of context and priming on word audition, I’m happily and resolutely continuing to assert that they’re not true homophones in British RPish English. Ideally I’d devise an online experiment, but no round tuit yet. In the meantime you could try, for example, saying “I’m board with my card bored box” and see how it sounds to yourself. A listener might hear, and would almost certainly understand, the sentence as if the two word utterances were transposed. Whether they truly sound the same is, though, another matter.