It’s been a while since I did one of Tramp’s puzzles, so it’s nice to have one come up in the rota. I enjoyed this a lot – thanks, Tramp!
Across
1. Nicks and cuts around surgical procedures (3,5)
COP SHOPS
CHOPS = “cuts” around OPS = “surgical procedures”
Definition: “Nicks”
5. Escort hugging Bill in darkness (6)
SHADOW
SHOW = “Escort” (this seems a bit weak to me, but I guess it’s as in “to show/escort someone around somewhere”) around AD = “Bill”
Definition: “darkness”
9. A long time by checkout, prepared spaces for food (8)
TILLAGES
AGES = “A long time” beside TILL = “checkout”
Definition: “prepared spaces for food”
10. Home party is private (6)
INSIDE
IN = “Home” + SIDE = “party” (e.g. in a lawsuit, I suppose?)
Definition: “private”
12. One removes presence of army before raid in Germany (11)
GHOSTBUSTER
HOST = “army” + BUST = “raid” (a “bust” is slang for a police raid) in GER = “Germany”
Definition: “One removes presence” – I like this one for the definition and the reference to the film
15. Part of software licence that’s old (5)
RELIC
Hidden in [softwa]RE LIC[ence]
Definition: “that’s old”
17. Went with member — anger regularly taken out with roulette bet (9)
PARTNERED
PART = “member” + [a]N[g]E[r] = “anger regularly taken out” + RED = “roulette bet”
Definition: “Went with”
19. Reduce large tripod (5)
EASEL
EASE = “Reduce” + L = “large”
Definition: “tripod”
20. One from the back training until team is knocked out (11)
PENULTIMATE
PE (Physical Education) = “training” + (UNTIL TEAM)*
Definition: “One from the back”
24. Empty sauce bottles smell cleaner (6)
SPONGE
S[auc]E around PONG = “smell”
Definition: “cleaner”
25. Film lover can see it when released (8)
CINEASTE
(CAN SEE IT)*
Definition: “Film lover”
26. Broadcaster getting in hot water (6)
SHOWER
SOWER = “Broadcaster” around H = “hot”
Definition: “water”
27. For example, love to sit back with velvet cushions, ultimately puffed-up ones (8)
EGOTISTS
EG = “For example” + O = “love” + SIT reversed (“sit back”) + [velve]T [cushion]S = “velvet cushions, ultimately”
Definition: “puffed-up ones”
Down
1. Group mostly provide services with kinky orgies (10)
CATEGORISE
CATE[r] = “mostly” “provide services” + (ORGIES)*
Definition: “Group”
2. Line at bottom of pad: brilliant material (6,4)
PILLOW LACE
L = “Line” below PILLOW = “pad” + ACE = “brilliant”
Definition:
3. That man with talent to make love (5)
HEART
HE = “That man” + ART = “talent”
Definition: “love”
4. Prince going over acts of carrying on; they’re taken for granted (12)
PRESUMPTIONS
P = “Prince” above RESUMPTIONS = “acts of carrying on”
Definition: “they’re taken for granted”
6. Handicap stakes around noon: placed at the back, having led (9)
HINDRANCE
RACE = “stakes” with “HIND” = “placed at the back” first (“having led”). One definition of “stakes” in Chambers is “a race for money staked or contributed”, and one of the definitions of HIND is “placed in the rear”
Definition: “Handicap”
7. Wet duck crossing river (4)
DRIP
DIP = “duck” around R = “river”
Definition: “Wet” (as in “he’s a wet/drip”)
8. Insignificant duke’s a weakling (4)
WEED
WEE = “Insignificant” + D = “duke”
Definition: “weakling”
11. Succeeded, Conservative with effective lying (12)
STORYTELLING
S = “Succeeded” + TORY = “Conservative” + TELLING = “effective”
Definition: “lying”
13. Short hair on balls goes astray (10)
TRESPASSES
TRES[s] = “Short hair” + PASSES = “balls” (e.g. as in “a long ball” in football)
Definition: “goes astray”
14. Cheats read result out (10)
ADULTERERS
(READ RESULT)*
Definition: “Cheats”
16, 18. Left one with money in last casino game? Chip lost (9,9)
CHAMPAGNE SOCIALIST
(LAST CASINO GAME CHIP)*
Definition: “Left one with money”
21. One hollow logo on the box (5)
IDENT
I = “One” + DENT = “hollow”
Definition: “logo on the box”
22. Draws on American king-size cigarettes at last (4)
USES
US = “American” + [king-siz]E [cigarette]S = “king-size cigarettes at last”
Definition: “Draws on”
23. Strippers primarily round there? (4)
SOHO
S[trippers] = “Strippers primarily” + O = “round” + HO = “there” (Chambers has one definition of “ho” as an interjection as “A call […] to announce destination or direction […]”)
Definition: The whole clue (it’s an &lit.)
An excellent puzzle that I got stuck on after solving only six clues! Not for long, though – a couple of days later I decided that I needed to solve 16d/18a (CHAMPAGNE SOCIALIST) given only the initial C and the final T), and that would open up a whole region and hopefully the whole crossword. It was a good clue, and, with the anagram fodder spaced out, written in bigger letters, and the printed clue in front of me, it yielded before long and duly opened up a region nearly as large as the grid. I got temporarily stuck on the two ‘small corners’ at NE and SW, whch I didn’t enjoy quite so much as the rest of the puzzle, but they also yielded in the end. The hardest clue to solve was SOHO.
There were many really good clues, of which I would highlight those for COP SHOPS, PENULTIMATE, SPONGE, CINEASTE, EGOTISTS and DRIP.
Thanks to Tramp for an enjoyable puzzle and to mhl for the clear blog.
Sadly it was a DNF for me as I didnt get 23d SOHO which required local knowledge! The possible letter combo for that one made me doubt myself in terms of my solutions to both 24a SPONGE and 26a SHOWER. Otherwise I found this an enjoyable and suitably challenging offering from Tramp with a tick for 13d TRESPASSES and (as already mentioned by Alan B@1) 16d18a CHAMPAGNE SOCIALIST (the latter phrase always brings up a lovely visual image for me). I was unfamiliar with the solution to 25a, CINEASTE, but it was gettable from the word play. Many thanks to Tramp and mhl.
Nice puzzle – I particularly liked GHOSTBUSTER.
13d reminded me of something I encountered in university (and never since), the Hairy Ball Theorem. If I remember rightly it says that you can’t comb a hairy ball without some hairs crossing or pointing up.
To my surprise, I completed this within a day, but found it hard going in places. Some nice definitions for CHAMPAGNE SOCIALIST, PENULTIMATE, GHOSTBUSTER.
Thanks for the blog, my favourite puzzle so far this year by far. Agree with CHAMPAGNE SOCIALIST and GHOSTBUSTER and will add SPONGE out of many favourites.
Your definition for 2D has dematerialised.
Thanks mhl. Last in GHOSTBUSTER nicely directed thought to some place in Germany and ‘muster’ seemed to fit with ‘army presence.’ TRESPASSES baffled in the parsing: what were the balls? Just as well the 9,9 anagram went in early with just the G from SPONGE as a crosser. Good work, Tramp.
Took me a while to work through this one. Is TILLAGE actually a count noun? It seems to either to the practice of tilling, or a mass noun for the area under tilling.
Thanks to Tramp and mhl!
JohnH – [hold your last point made for today’s]
I was chuffed to get SOHO from the parsing as mhl has it. Also IDENT which I didn’t know, but do now.
CHAMPAGNE SOCIALIST my pick, and also Monkey’s other two @4
I’m reminded of a riddle, what’s green on the outside and red in the middle?
molonglo@8, naughty.
Thanks, mhl – I did manage to finish this, but needed some of those explanations, even so! This was one where I found I had a lot of answers pencilled in really quite lightly – the equivalent of your ‘I suppose’ comment about ‘side’ and ‘party’. ‘Show’ and ‘escort’ and ‘passes’ and ‘balls’, all felt a bit like that, but I think maybe that’s just me. SOHO just felt right as an answer, but I coulldn’t see that parsing at all. But there were some really enjoyable clues too – others have already picked out most of these, and it was an enjoyable challenge – thanks, Tramp.
An excellent prize but not one I would have won because I missed SOHO and SHOWER; all else fell into place with GHOSTBUSTER, PENULTIMATE, EGOTISTS, and TRESPASSES being favourites, the latter for its witty surface. Thanks to both.
Enjoyed this though didn’t get (didn’t know) IDENT and didn’t parse PENULTIMATE.
Like others my favourites were COP SHOPS (FOI), GHOSTBUSTER, CHAMPAGNE SOCIALIST (description made me smile). Also liked CATEGORISE.
Thanks Tramp and mhl
I enjoyed this too. I solved SOHO from the wordplay, aided by being very familiar with the district in Hong Kong (SOuth of HOllywood Road). But in order to be &lit, the UK version must be less salubrious than the one in HK. Thanks Tramp and mhl.
Yes. I agree. This was very satisfying. No gimmicks, just clever and concise clueing. My sort of crossword.
Thanks to Tramp and Mel.
As a Londoner, I thought of SOHO very quickly, though was puzzled by the parsing, so thanks, mhl.
Interesting question, JohnH@7. An online search suggests there are different types of tillage, so I suppose each type is a tillage and together they must be TILLAGES.
IDENT is completely new to me – perhaps a sign of my age. It’s not in my 1999 Collins, but is in more recent dictionaries.
Quite a hard puzzle, but I got there in the end, and felt Tramp had done well.
Even though I had completed the bottom half on the day, shamefully as an ex-detective, I bunged in an unparsed Cat Snips for COP SHOPS and Soak for DRIP (S African river Sak around o, so I was never going to win, even though I knew it had to be INSIDE. However, I really enjoyed the rest, with the outstanding CHAMPAGNE SOCIALIST and SOHO.
Ta Tramp & mhl
Thanks for the blog mhl, and thanks for the superb crossword, Tramp – I second Roz @5, best of the year so far. A nice challenge that was very satisfying to unravel, with lots of lovely PDMs.
HINDRANCE was the one that gave me most trouble with parsing, but I deciphered it the same way as our esteemed blogger, so that’s good.
KLColin @13 – the London Soho used to have a reputation for being very seedy but the clue is perhaps a tad out of date in that respect – the area is quite gentrified these days.
AlanC@16 I thought of you immediately at 1AC and thought you would have a head start on me for this one.
[Sounds of the 70s BBC4 Fri 7pm – Slade and others. ]
I shared our blogger’s pleasure with this one which all resolved satisfactorily with the exception of an unparsed SOHO. It had to be that, given crossers and surface but the HO reference was unknown to me.
CHAMPAGNE SOCIALIST is, rightly, earning plenty of praise and, with GHOSTBUSTER and the cunningly defined PENULTIMATE, it topped my tick pile. I also thought the gloriously simple construction of PRESUMPTIONS was top notch and admired the political jibe in STORYTELLING – though I am getting heartily sick and tired of the morally discredited SHOWER running the country at the moment so I should find such clues depressing rather than amusing.
No probs for me with show=escort: my immediate image was being shown/escorted to my seat by an usher/usherette in a cinema.
Thanks Tramp and mhl
Surprised to find that my very tentative parsing of SHADOW turned out to be correct, but it was the little knot in the SW corner that gave me the most trouble, not helped by having a wrong but parsable AGES (“draws on=American kinG-sizE cigaretteS) instead of USES, until the light dawned on SPONGE. Never did parse SOHO, but it had to be that.
CHAMPAGNE SOCIALIST was lovely.
I’m with PostMark@20, with regard to show/escort, thinking of being escorted to a seat in the cinema, theatre or concert. I’d never heard of CHAMPAGNE SOCIALIST or IDENT, but they were gettable. Thanks, Tramp, for the enjoyable puzzle and thanks, mhl, for so clearly confirming my parsing.
[Roz @19: appreciate the thought on both counts. Hoping for enlightenment today!]
Re SOHO, I assumed this is the same Ho! that I’m familiar with from Westward Ho! – though I’ve not looked it up to confirm.
Escort=usher seems unimpeachable to me.
Very enjoyable Prize solve.
I ticked PENULTIMATE (one from the back was not obvious initially), COP SHOPS (good picture of surgical procedures) and STORYTELLING (a nice commentary on the current political climate in the UK).
Thanks Tramp and mhl.
widdersbel@24
That western came into my mind too once I guessed it was SOHO.
widdersbel and Fiona Anne I think it is more just one from Chambers really. Apparently people may point their finger at something and shout HO ( or THERE ). Is it a hunting term ???? any offers ? .
[AlanC@23, perseverance is the best asset for a solver, I am as stubborn as a pack of mules. Taking a break is also often very productive ]
Liked STORYTELLING.
New for me: CHAMPAGNE SOCIALIST.
Failed 21d.
Thanks, both.
Roz – “Tally ho!” also occurred to me, which is a hunting cry. I think “Ho!” is just one of those undefinable, general-purpose exclamatory words with no specific meaning – but “there” seems as good a definition as any.
Police constables in PG Wodehouse stories like saying “Ho!” a lot, usually when they’ve rumbled yet another attempt to steal Lord Emsworth’s pig.
Thanks Tramp and mhl. Didn’t get IDENT. Had INSET to start with. A couple others unparsed but otherwise completed without too much cheating.
Lots of fun, but I had to use the check button a good deal this morning. Thanks to Tramp and mhl.
I never have an opinion about the best of the year or even the week. They’re hard or easy or in between, and enjoy them all.
I also didn’t parse SOHO, failing to get HO = there, but put it in based on the whole-clue definition. I think Widdersbel@27 mit be right about the present character of Soho, W1 being less associated with strippers these days. Of course there’s also a Soho in NYC (SouthHouston, is it), not associated with strippers, afaik.
Roz@27, are you thinking of ‘tally-ho’ (huntsman’s cry)? The ‘ho’ seems not to have any meaning in itself; it is thought to come from its French equivalent, taïllaut.
There were a couple of clues I liked a lot, which had surfaces that seemed very natural but don’t really stand up to closer examination. Do full bottles of sauce smell dirty? Can a duck get wet, even crossing a river?
Maybe CHAMPAGNE SOCIALIST fell to me relatively easily because Barbara Follet, the very definition of one, used to be my MP? We’ve got a working-class Tory now, but at least he went to school round here …
Wasn’t familiar with PILLOW LACE, but it was easy enough.
11dn immediately suggests: ‘Failed, Conservative with ineffective lying’
Tony Collman@32 The NYC neighborhood is “South of Houston.” Since Houston is an East-West street, the first one below the numbered grid of streets going north from there, it hasn’t got a southern part, unless you mean the whole southern side. It’s pronounced “How-ston,” not “Hew-ston” like the Texas city.
widdersbel and Tony – not really thinking of fox hunting and tally-ho. More like people walking with guns and dogs , seeing something , shouting HO and pointing, maybe for the dogs ?? Not even sure where I have got this idea from.
Struggled with this until found I had two incorrect answers.
“Prince going over acts of carrying on; they’re taken for granted “ PROPOSITIONS
PRince Over + Positions (acts of carrying on ie sex)
and “Draws on American king-size cigarettes at last” AGES
When I saw these were wrong then quickly finished.
Thanks both.
“Land Ho!” anyone? (shouted from a shIp)
Never got SOHO because I didn’t think of this. The best I came up with was SOLO, for a stripper’s performance, but LO is more “behold” than “there” so it never parsed well. Also, like gladys, I had AGES, but unlike her and others, I never came off it. Tough slog for me, took all week to end up with a DNF.
Thanks mhl for the blog and thanks to posters for the comments.
On reflection, I think ho = there is quite hard. Land ho!
I was thinking show/escort you to your seat.
I used to know the proof of the Hairy Ball Theorem (and the Ham Sandwich Theorem). They never came up in the topology exam.
Neil
Land Ho of course. Well done yehudi@36
[Valentine@33, ah, yes, thanks. I have actually been there once but it was a very long time ago. Nice point about the pronunciation. Didn’t know that. Now you’ve got me wondering about Whitney …]
Quite a workout for me. But much enjoyed. Parsed most things. I think an ISIRTA pun of “What ho/hoe, Grimbling?” lodged in the cranium helped me with SOHO. Couldn’t parse the blog around @8 and @9 but Paddymelon’s riddle looks like watermelon to me.
Thanks Tramp and mhl
I was another AGES, FOI in fact – perfectly valid answer.
I found this a real challenge. Like KeithS@10, I abandoned the pen and went with the light pencil for a host of clues. The tricky definitions led me to consider other obscure definitions that proved to be wrong. For instance, I got 26a SHOWER, but parsed it as a double definition, shower = broadcaster, and also getting in hot water – obviously wrong, now I see the correct parsing, but it worked for me at the time, and it gave me the right answer. Because of my uncertainty, I used the check button a lot, but surprisingly it did not contradict any of my guesses.
Favourites were the fantastic anagram and definition for 16d,18 CHAMPAGNE SOCIALIST, and the equally clever 20a PENULTIMATE. 1a COP SHOPS was another chuckle producer.
Thanks Tramp for the strenuous workout, and mhl for the lucid and much needed blog.
A couple of posters have referred to using the Check button. Isn’t that disabled for Prize puzzles?
muffin @ 43: it’s enabled after the closing time for entries
Very enjoyable puzzle from Tramp. All has been said.
muffin @43 The online (web) version has the Check button now available. I assume after the competition closes, the button is enabled. For my Android app, the check button is not visible, even now the competition has closed.
Some beautifully disguised definitons in this (left one with money, one removes presence notably) and smooth surfaces (for SPONGE, CINEASTE).
SHOWER was interesting in that it almost works in 2 ways – H in SOWER (as mhl in the blog) and as a dd with broadcaster and hot water as the pair. If it had been “Broadcaster to get in hot water (6)” it could certainly be a dd as “Broadcaster” and “to get in hot water”.
Very nicely crafted with the apposite STORYTELLING probably my absolute favourite among many.
Thanks, Tramp and mhl.
Thank you mhl, a failure for me as I unaccountably alighted on GHOSTHUNTER thinking hunt for raid is a bit loose, and querying if said folk actually despatch the spectres they find, but sadly was in so much trouble elsewhere that I did not come back to it. Great clue (and not the only one).
I thought of What Ho or Tally Ho as justifications so thank you Tony Collman@32 for the etymology of the latter and yehudi@36 for winkling the true meaning out.
Dr Whatson@3, Tramp@37 I am fairly sure I saw the hairy ball theorem or something like it described in a school maths mag as the Fur Mat Conjecture.
Thanks Tramp, I thoroughly enjoyed being beaten, like many in Soho down the years!
Very good. IDENT was a new word for me too and TILLAGES was barely heard of. My favourites were GHOSTBUSTER and CHAMPAGNE SOCIALIST for their very nice defs.
[molonglo @8 and paddymelon @9 (liked your watermelon riddle too), I’ve finally cottoned on to what you’re talking about].
Thanks to Tramp and mhl
Gazzh@47, wow! You must be really old! The Theorem was still just a conjecture when you were at school!