Eccles has provided a puzzle for the last Wednesday slot of 2021.
After some of the tougher cruciverbal challenges of the Christmas weekend, it was nice to have a more accessible, but nonetheless enjoyable, crossword to solve.
I think that I have managed to parse everything to my satisfaction today, which doesn’t happen very often.
My favourite clues today were 11 and 20, both for making me smirk; and 16, 21 and 28, all for surface reading.
Let me take this opportunity to wish all our setters, solvers, bloggers and webmaster a happy and healthy 2022. And my apologies to anyone who was inconvenienced last week when I posted my blog of the right puzzle on the wrong day.
*(…) indicates an anagram; definitions are italicised; // separates definitions in multiple-definition clues
| Across | ||
| 01 | KISSINGER | Nobel peace prize winner breaching royal protocol?
Anyone “kissing ER (=the Queen) is breaching royal protocol! The reference is to US diplomat and politician Henry Kissinger (1923-), who was awarded the Nobel peace prize in 1973 for negotiating a ceasefire in the Vietnam War |
| 08 | EATERIE | European visiting Great Lake’s restaurant?
E (=European) + AT (=visiting) + ERIE (=Great Lake) |
| 10 | THESEUS | Article uses works to portray mythical king
THE (=article, in grammar) + *(USES): “works” is anagram indicator |
| 11 | HARBINGER | Messenger baring her bum
*(BARING HER); “bum (=rubbish, wrong)” is anagram indicator |
| 12 | MALICE | Vindictiveness of male child at tea-party?
M (=male) + ALICE (=child at tea party, in Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland) |
| 15 | SCALENE | View capturing a lake with sides of different length
[A + L (=lake)] in SCENE (=view); a scalene triangle has sides of different length |
| 16 | NERVELESS | School second XI backed to restrict runs, being calm and collected
S (=school) + S (=second) + [R (=runs, on cricket scorecard) in ELEVEN (=XI)]; “backed” indicates reversal |
| 19 | BOOMERANG | Embargo on adapted missile
*(EMBARGO ON); “adapted” is anagram indicator |
| 20 | ALGERIA | Retiring billionaire Glaswegian suppresses nation
Reversed (“retiring”) and hidden (“suppresses”) in “billionAIRE GLAswegian” |
| 22 | GOVERN | Gabon divided by introduction of Nazi rule
G (=Gabon, in IVR) + OVER (=divided by, as in 6 over 3 is two) + N<azi> (“introduction of” means first letter only) |
| 23 | WATER DOWN | Dilute effect of harrowing story of rabbits abandoning ship
WATER<ship> DOWN (=harrowing story of rabbits, by Richard Adams); “abandoning ship” means letter “ship” are dropped |
| 25 | IMPAIRS | Hinders one million couples
I (=one) + M (=million) + PAIRS (=couples) |
| 27 | RESENTS | Is bitter about Conservatives abandoning representations of Islam?
<c>RES<c>ENTS (=representations of Islam); “Conservatives (2 x C) abandoning” means both letter “c”s are dropped |
| 28 | THEORISED | Speculated that half-cut lust, in retrospect, limits love
TH<at> (“half-cut” means 2 of 4 letters are dropped) + EORISED (O (=love, zero score) in DESIRE (=lust); “in retrospect” indicates reversal) |
| Down | ||
| 01 | KETAMINE | One in ten make blunders delivering anaesthetic
I (=one) in *(TEN MAKE); “blunders” is anagram indicator |
| 02 | SHE | That lady, Wimbledon champion in the 70s, is going topless
<a>SHE (=Wimbledon champion in the 70s, i.e. American Arthur Ashe); “is going topless” means first letter is dropped |
| 03 | ICE SCREW | Climbing equipment made by team of gelato sellers?
Cryptically, a “team of gelato sellers” could be described as an ices crew!; an ice screw is a threaded tubular screw used as an anchor by climbers |
| 04 | GOSH | My turn, be quiet
GO (=turn) + SH! (=be quiet) |
| 05 | REPRESSION | Subjugation of announcement about replacing former partner
EXPRESSION (=announcement); “about (=re) replacing former partner (=ex)” means letters “re” replace “ex” |
| 06 | ATTILA | Barbarian leader from part of Greece left for Carthage originally
ATTICA (=part of Greece); “left (=L) for Carthage originally (=first letter, i.e. C)” means letter “c” becomes letter “l”; the reference is to Attila the Hun |
| 07 | DEGREE | Extent of English desire for too much cycling
E (=English) + GREED (=desire for too much); “cycling” means last letter moves to front of word; cf. to a greater extent = to a greater degree |
| 09 | ROGUE STATE | Mostly estimate charges to go round North Korea?
GUES<s> (=estimate; “mostly” means last letter dropped) in ROTATE (=go round) |
| 13 | LARYNGITIS | I try and signal nasty swelling of organ
*(I TRY + SIGNAL); “nasty” is anagram indicator |
| 14 | MELBA TOAST | Amble around when feeding small child crispy bread
*(AMBLE) + [AS (=when, as conjunction) in TOT (=small child)]; “around” is anagram indicator |
| 17 | BELOW PAR | British rock band with uplifting musical style is not up to scratch
B (=British) + ELO (=rock band, i.e. Electric Light Orchestra) + W (=with) + PAR (RAP=musical style; “uplifting” indicates vertical reversal) |
| 18 | AGONISED | Working is stopping elderly being worried
[ON (=working) + IS] in AGED (=elderly) |
| 20 | AT WORK | A booty shake, say, in the office?
Homophone (“say”) of “a twerk (=a booty shake, e.g. by Judy Love on Strictly Come Dancing)” |
| 21 | RARING | Keen, raising energy to get wasted
R<e>ARING (=raising, bringing up); “energy (=E) to get wasted” means letter “e” is dropped |
| 24 | NILE | Zip code’s ending in river
NIL (=zip, zero) + <cod>E (“ending” means last letter only) |
| 26 | ITS | American released from islands belonging to the aforementioned
<a>ITS (=islands, in rivers); “American (=A) released” means letter “a” is dropped |
Unfortunately I cannot comment on today’s Eccles as the new version of the Indy crossword programme is completely unusable on my iPhone and when I try to print it goes to a blank page. Anyone else having problems?
@1 no, it looks different but printed ok. 2 pages, first one blank
Didn’t try it on an iPhone, but it worked fine on my iPad.
Strange issue with printing. On my iPad, if you select print with left or right hand it gives a blank second page (so just print page 1) but, if you change the orientation the puzzle disappears altogether and doesn’t return when you change back.
Thought this was one of Eccles’ best puzzles and thoroughly enjoyed it. Had to check G for Gabon and guessed that crescents must be representations of Islam.
@1 yes it’s horrid on iPhone. You have to scroll along clues with more than about six words. Doable but not a pleasure to use.
An enjoyable crossword from Mr Every Other Wednesday. The tea-party attendee seems to be popular with setters at the moment
Thanks to Eccles and RR
Good puzzle though.
Works fine on my iPhone. I actually quite like the format after an initial grumble yesterday. *ducks head below parapet
Enjoyed todays so cheers Eccles and RR
Yes, a good respite from some toughies over the festive season, including a couple elsewhere today. I hadn’t seen the EATERIE spelling before and wasn’t aware of the ‘booty shake’ for which I’m very grateful. I liked the gender misdirection of the ‘Wimbledon champion in the 70’s’ at 2d.
No problems with the doing the puzzle online in the new format in Edge on the laptop, or Safari on the iPad & iPhone. I couldn’t print though on the iPad/Phone, getting the blank page as described by gsolphotog @1 and Hovis @4. Let’s hope the printing problems can be overcome.
Thanks to Eccles and RR
I too had to find my way through the new format, which on my PC prints larger than the previous version. Not so neat, in my opinion, but I suppose we’ll get used to it. Oh, and the puzzle was excellent, well up to Eccles usual elegance, so thanks to him and RatkojaRiku.
Yet another superb puzzle from Eccles. 1a was a brilliant start and it carried on brilliantly from there right to the end.
Many thanks to Eccles and to RR.
My tenpennorth: on my laptop, the orange cursor square jumps to the next vacant box in the grid, rather than just to the next box. Meaning it hops over any letters already entered. Making filling in solutions with existing crossers or trying to overwrite any existing letters very ungainly. I guess I might get used to it but it’s counterintuitive and different from any other online format I’ve ever used. As Labradoodle pointed out yesterday, it’s not too difficult to get a message to Arkadium who support the software; we’ll see what they say.
As to the puzzle, whilst the software frustrated, the content didn’t. I smiled at both AT WORK and KISSINGER as well as the cheeky surfaces of HARBINGER and LARYNGITIS. Despite the inclusion of ELO in BELOW PAR, MALICE prompts me to include a real favourite earworm that, thanks to its inclusion in the new Matrix movie, has risen to prominence once again: White Rabbit.
Thanks Eccles and (the remarkably early) RR
Well, I managed this relatively easy offering from Eccles, but not sure I’ll be able to persevere scrolling through individual clues. A bizarre move in this “mobile first” age.
PM@12 – you can deselect “skip over filled squares” in the settings.
DuncT @14: I’ve just had an email back from Arkadium advising same so thanks for that. I can confirm Labradoodle’s comment of yesterday that they are very prompt at responding. I’ve suggested they should pop in here and see some of the issues that are being reported.
Found this rather more difficult than our blogger but very happy with the puzzle apart from that dreadful term EATERIE.
Tops for me were KISSINGER, MALICE & BOOMERANG.
Thanks to Eccles and to RR – a very happy New Year to you both.
Highly enjoyable today, our only cheat was on 26d where we sadly didn’t get to ‘its’ and couldn’t parse even when we had the answer.
For printing on the iPhone, the trick appears to be to hit print immediately before it defaults to a blank screen and to print in large mode. Unfortunately, Android Labradoodle received a message from arcadium confirming that the lack of print button on Android is currently intended with no plan to add it again. Sigh. I work in software, I don’t need this stuff in my free time!
Anyway thanks to Eccles and RatkojaRiku
Excellent crossword, as ever from Eccles. Favourites Kissinger, Harbinger and G-over-N. Didn’t know ait as an alternative spelling for eyot, but I do now. Tried to make below par feature the band Elbow, but failed, because it didn’t. Thanks to Eccles and RatkojaRiku.
No problem printing on desktop imac -and i dont see clues appearing three times. I dare say they’ll fix it for other machines.
Lovely puzzle as usual from Eccles but seeing Kissinger and Ketamine in the same puzzle brought to mind the limerick of the young lady from Bray as told by Bertie in one of the first episodes of The Crown
Keeble Bollege Oxford!
Update from Arkadium
“We’ve already figured out that something goes wrong after the message “Gathering printer information” and the printout turns blank. I hope this issue is easy to fix.”
Fingers crossed!
I would add WATER DOWN to the favourites listed by others. The software works a bit better on my tablet than on my Android phone, but, like PostMark I need to change the settings.
The “new format” treats an ipad-with-keyboard as a mobile device and insists on the user going to portrait orientation, which of course is unusable if you have a keyboard attached. As I don’t have a laptop, this is my kit, and as much as I love my daily cryptic, this may be the end of this otherwise delightful pastime for me. On a desktop browser it works in landscape orientation just fine, so clearly it’s doable. The unfailingly polite and quick-responding support staff at Arkadium acknowledges the issue but says that that’s what was intended. Ah well. Hopefully we’ll figure out a workaround. I was so looking forward to Eccles today and Phi tomorrow, two of my favorite setters.
Well, as we print off the crossword to solve on paper we didn’t have too many problems with the new format, but we can’t say we’re impressed with the print layout and the grid with all its black lines is ugly and distracting to the eye. Definitely a turn for the worse and why can’t these people ever learn that if it ain’t broke it don’t need fixing?
As for the puzzle itself, another fine offering from Eccles with plenty to enjoy such as HARBINGER and GOVERN.
Thanks, Eccles and RatkojaRiku.
I suspect this may be too late to reach most of the regular posters so will re-post in the morning but I’ve just copied some correspondence with Arkadia onto the General Discussion page. No promise of a solution but they do look at this blog for feedback which is good news, I hope.
Arkadium did answer promptly to say that they no longer support the Print function on android devices. Not much cheer there then.
@23 – we should have said that we print from a laptop and our browser is Firefox.
My biggest worry with the new interface is that you can no longer link directly to an archive puzzle if you want to recommend it to someone. Arkadium told me “I can’t say exactly whether the archive feature will be returned, but I hope so”. Arkadium seem pretty helpful so hopefully they will listen to feedback. (Despite their occasional errors, I think the Guardian is the model to follow for online cryptic crosswords: you can view all puzzles by a favourite setter, it never forgets what you’ve entered, and you can even link directly to a particular clue.)
The usual good stuff from Eccles, at least. Favourites were KISSINGER, WATER DOWN and ALGERIA. Thanks to him and RatkojaRiku.
I’ll add AITS to my lexicon – 26d was comfortably the LOI and I spent some time wondering if it was going to be one of those annoying Latin words. Gabon for G was a bit mean, especially when ‘initially’ would’ve worked perfectly well in the surface!
But good stuff. Thanks Eccles and RatkojaRiku
Enjoyed the puzzle, and getting a little more used to the new layout, though I still can’t see any reason for the changes.
A new disappointment – I’ve been doing puzzles from a few years ago when I wasn’t solving regularly but it looks like the new setup only holds one year’s worth of puzzles, maybe linked to Charlie’s comment @27.
Thanks RR, no thanks to Indy.
Couldn’t see even a ‘print’ command on Android phone with Chrome. Desktop mode shows the full puzzle and print sends it into a loop.
One is forced to watch the ad at entry. That is the price we pay, after that the puzzle should be accessible on any device/browser combination.
What is ironic is the rubric on the puzzle page refers to this site! for annotated solutions!! Hope Indy folks have the courtesy to listen to the views of us here.
Request, please restore the print option. Thanks,
@26 allan_c
I can’t even see the puzzle in my Ubuntu (Linux) laptop and Firefox browser. Any guidance is appreciated.
@26 allan_c
Please ignore my 31 above.
I disabled ad-block and other restrictions on Firefox, and I can now see and print the puzzle from my Linux laptop.
Unfortunately I have to wait until midnight where I live to access that day’s puzzle, as Indy takes your time of day for access.
That has always been the case. So, I used to use another cell phone set to GMT + x hrs to get around it. I don’t plan to mess with my desktop clock.
If Indy folks are listening, they might as well allow access to all who arrive from wherever in the world once the puzzle is uploaded! As Guardian and FT do.
Thanks to Gaufrid for tipping me off about the problems with the puzzle site. It’s obviously not sustainable in this form. But clearly it’s probably the worst time of the year to get anything done about it. Thanks to Labradoodle, Charlie and others for making Arkadium aware of the problem – obviously it’s in everyone’s interests to get this resolved sooner rather than later.
Thanks to RR. I hope everyone who wanted to do the puzzle managed to access it. I looked in mid-afternoon and saw 23 comments, so thought either error in puzzle or interface issues. Phew from my perspective, but a pity.
Great puzzle as always from Eccles.
As for the interface issues, I live in hope that one day the UK might finally embrace the .puz format. One day…!
Thanks Eccles for a well-crafted crossword. I occasionally visit the Indy when Serpent or Tees is the setter but I swung by here today because I find Io, today’s FT setter, to be an impossible nut to crack. Just as well because I enjoyed this puzzle a great deal. MALICE, GOSH, and BELOW PAR were my picks. Thanks RR for parsing.
I always print out the puzzle when I’m at home – which is most of the time these days – from my laptop. The only problem I had was that it wanted to print double-sided, even though the second page was blank, and I was downstairs and the printer was upstairs, and to print double sided required going upstairs and turning the page over. Tomorrow I must check both pages and get it to print out only the page with something on it.