Cyclops seems to have his finger on the pulse this fortnight, which is quite an achievement, as he must have set this at least a week or two in advance?…
The INSPIRATIONAL TOERAG who is CURRENTLY PM made a TIRED and self-FLAGELLANT APOLOGY, after initially trying to PLAY DUMB about a BLADDERED GATHERING by his SORRY LOT in the Downing Street garden. He said that with FORESIGHT he might have moved the party indoors. (It would still have been a party!) The MYSTERY over who did or did not attend was strange, given that the Met Police act as DOORKEEPER to No. 10… His STATURE continues to diminish, as he asks people to BEAR with him and wait for the enigmatic Sue Gray(FRIAR) to report back – the only PROBLEM is that she reports to him, and he gets to decide what to do about it…he might just hide her report under his PILLOW!
All good Cyclops-ean fun – my thanks to him, and I hope all is clear below.
(NB. I have written this up a week in advance – so I also hope events don’t move so fast that I have to re-write it before publication next week!)
| Across | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Clue No | Solution | Clue (definition underlined)
Logic/parsing |
||
| 8A | PILLOW | Possible contraceptive that hurts? Here’s something for your head (6)
PILL (possible contraceptive) + OW (that hurts!) |
||
| 9A | SORRY LOT | Wretched bunch of Tory lords, lost without Duke (5,3)
anag, i.e. lost, of TORY LOR( |
||
| 10A | LAYER | Deposit sexual partner on back (5)
LAY (sexual partner) + ER (re, on/regarding, back) |
||
| 11A | FORESIGHT | Anticipation of sore nuts being nursed by Barney (9)
F_IGHT (barney, argument) around (nursing) ORES (anag, i.e. nuts, of SORE) |
||
| 12A | GATHERING | Coming to a conclusion, Boris & Co’s party? (9)
double defn? – to GATHER can be to understand a situation, so maybe come to a conclusion?; and Boris & Co’s parties, sorry, work meetings with cheese and wine, were certainly GATHERINGs |
||
| 14A | POLAR | & 24 Beastly hunk, Pablo, messed around with rear (5,4)
anag, i.e. messed around, of PABLO with REAR |
||
| 15A | INSPIRATIONAL | Prat in liaison (dodgy) offering enlightenment (13)
anag, i.e. dodgy, of PRAT IN LIAISON |
||
| 19A | RECUR | About to get arsehole to take place again (5)
RE (about, regarding) + CUR (despicable person, arsehole) |
||
| 20A | CURRENTLY | How power might be delivered at present (9)
punning double defn.? Power could be said to be delivered ‘CURRENTLY’; and at present means CURRENTLY. |
||
| 21A | BLADDERED | Steps into sack being pissed (9)
B_ED (sack, slang for bed) around LADDER (steps) |
||
| 23A | TIBET | Tory grandee releasing book about the country (5)
Norman TEB( |
||
| 25A | EVERMORE | First Lady (Republican) wants encore, on and on without end (8)
EVE (First Lady, biblically) + R (Republican) + MORE (encore!) |
||
| 26A | UNFAIR | Kinky fun? Atmosphere not right (6)
UNF (anag, i.e. kinky, of FUN) + AIR (atmosphere) |
||
| Across | ||||
| Clue No | Solution | Clue (definition underlined)
Logic/parsing |
||
| 1D | APOLOGY | Game to enter gay movement: follow-up to a reckless tweet? (7)
A_GY (anag, i.e. movement, of GAY) around (entered by) POLO (game) |
||
| 2D | PLAY | & 22 Feign ignorance about ‘lady bump’ (4,4)
anag, i.e. about, of LADY BUMP |
||
| 3D | DOORKEEPER | Who stands at the entrance, issuing stupid order, OK, about piss-up (10)
DOORK_ER (anag, i.e. stupid, of ORDER OK) around EEP (pee, or piss, up) |
||
| 4D | TOERAG | One of ten with the Sun? Contemptible sort (6)
TOE (one of ten, for most Homo Sapiens!) + RAG (the Sun, tabloid) |
||
| 5D | ARMS | Taking top off, ups the temperature for members (4)
( |
||
| 6D | FLAGELLANT | Who’d selfishly use whip’s standard measure against presenter? (10)
FLAG (standard) + ELL (obsolete measure of cloth, not a printing measure – em, en – as I originally parsed it) + ANT (TV presenter, normally seen with Dec) |
||
| 7D | STATURE | Rank peer welcoming totally useless leaders (7)
STA_RE (peer) around (welcoming) TU (leading letters of Totally Useless) |
||
| 11D | FRIAR | Prior, or Cook, on the radio? (5)
homophone, i.e. on the radio – a FRYER (cook) can sound like a FRIAR (prior, head of a group of friars/monks) |
||
| 13D | TONIC WATER | Want erotic stimulation, something for one’s spirit maybe (5,5)
anag, i.e. stimulation(!), of WANT EROTIC |
||
| 14D | PROTESTANT | Religious type in favour of match with a heartless fanatic (10)
PRO (in favour of) + TEST (match, usually an international) + A + N( |
||
| 16D | TIRED | Ready for bed, went to bed – er, backed off (5)
( |
||
| 17D | PROBLEM | Right leaning leader involved with OBE is accepted by Boris – for a sum (7)
P_M (Prime Minister, currently Boris, as I write this) around (accepting) ROBLE (anag, i.e. involved, of OBE + R (right) + L (leading letter of Leaning) |
||
| 18D | MYSTERY | Cyclops’ rest disturbed, ending in Jimmy Riddle (7)
MY (Cyclops’) + STER (anag, i.e. disturbed, of REST) + Y (end letter of jimmY) |
||
| 20D | CARERS | They’re mindful of Brenda boarding coaches (6)
CAR_S (coaches, in a train sense) around (boarded by) ER (Elizabeth Regina, Brenda to the Eye) |
||
| 22D | DUMB | See 2dn. (4)
see 2D |
||
| 24D | BEAR | See 14ac. (4)
see 14a |
||
An ell (unlike an en and an em) is not a printing measure.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ell
Superb introduction mc! Thanks.
This was all good fun with nothing taking too much brain stretch. The party leader at 23a is probably not well known for those of us who live elsewhere but it was easy to get. That isn’t a criticism by the way, just an observation.
Thanks Cyclops.
An ell is an obsolete cloth measure.
I will echo Mystogre@2 , super blog and super puzzle , so topical and not overtaken by events yet. I suspect your ELL is a deliberate mistake, like the tilers of the Alhambra palace who made one error to show they were human and not divine.
PLAY DUMB was my favourite out of many fine clues.
Ell? Em? En? Oh, P***!
Apologies – that was more a senior moment than an Alhambran one (but thanks for defending my honour, Roz!) Duly updated. My fault for writing this up too early, as there was a lengthy discussion on ELLs in Eileen’s Grauniad blog on Saturday, so that might have helped me…
Thank you mc_rapper67, one Ell of a fine summary of a great puzzle, and I am happy to be back on the Cyclopean horse (some strange kind of centaur?) after what turned out to be a subscription malfunction just before Christmas. Concur with Roz’s choice plus honourable mentions for TONIC WATER and MYSTERY.
Thank you mc_rapper67 and Cyclops. I’m with the others on your summary -a real tour de force. I thought there were some really great clues in this puzzle. I’ve starred 4d, 11a and 21a on my copy but there were other gooduns.
Thanks for the various comments and feedback – much appreciated as usual.
Gazzh – glad to hear you are ‘back in the saddle’, but in case of future problems with the subscription, or delayed postal deliveries in my case, you can always access the latest crossword on the Eye website (https://www.private-eye.co.uk/sections.php?section_link=crossword) – it is usually updated by midday on the Friday after the Wednesday of publication. Not too easy to print off from there – maybe a screengrab pasted into Word, or you can download the ‘Across Lite’ version and print from that application.
(In fact, given that there is no paywall, you could just get it from here and not subscribe…but you’d miss out on so much else – including seeing your name in print, if/when your name gets picked out of the hat!…)
I remembered ells from being in the only textbook we had in primary school. it was thewre along with gills, fsathings and the rest. First Aid in English it was called. A huge font of all knowledge.
6dn, FLAGELLANT. I was going to mention your colleague who blithely informed us that an ELL was “45in., the distance from elbow to fingertips”.
13dn, TONIC WATER was a great anagram.
18dn, MYSTERY: I’m guessing many of us can relate to the surface …
Btw, we want to know the answers to the clues, not what letters go where in the grid, so for two-part answers, it’s best to give both parts with the clue and no need to even have an entry for the grid ref where part two goes, just a mention with the clue where the other part goes, perhaps. (Even that isn’t necessary, though)
[Roz, presumably there are at least two errors in Al Hambra if the human (and therefore error-prone) designers made one deliberately? It seems incredibly hubristic of them to assume that they had not in fact made any errors and quite contrary to their stated objective in introducing a deliberate one.]
[ Tony @11 the tiling at Al Hambra is rather special, when tiling the flat plane with regular polygons there are 17 unique regular patterns and only 17, the proof is quite interesting. All 17 are found at Al Hambra even though the maths came much later. When tiling regular patterns it is actually very hard to go wrong or you ruin the whole thing, hence each tiler making one deliberate error. ]
Thanks for the further comments…
Tony Collman – thanks for the feedback (who is this ‘we’ you speak for?!). I have an elaborate system based on copy/pasting the clues from the website into an Excel spreadsheet and then typing up my blog and then it spits out some HTML based on a number of formulae…and on the basis that ‘if it ain’t broke don’t fix it’, I am loth to try and buck my system… I also use the resulting answer list to submit my entry – no point typing them all out again…
I guess I could put the whole answer at the first clue, and the residual(s) at the subsequent slot(s)…that is, if I remember in a month’s time!…
Mc, the “we” I hoped I was speaking for was ‘your readers’. I appreciate you have a system which you find convenient for producing your posts, but I’m afraid I have to say I believe it qualifies as what linguist Geoffrey K. Pullum has dubbed ‘Nerdview’, something explained very well by himhere.