It’s Phiday again and we’re back from our travels – many thanks to flashing for standing in for us while we were away.
We found this to be a fairly straightforward solve, with no need to resort to electronic assistance. We always expect a theme in Phi’s puzzles and we began to wonder about Gilbert and Sullivan operas as we worked through the clues – PINAFORE and PIRATES gave the game away.
As regular visitors to 225 will know, we are not well up on Classical Music, but G&S are at the popular end of the classical spectrum (some buffs would probably not consider them to be ‘classical’ at all). We had to use some electronic assistance to check the complete list of G&S titles and found references to eight of them in the grid:
TRIAL by Jury, HMS PINAFORE, PRINCESS Ida, The SORCERER, UTOPIA Limited, The YEOMEN of the Guard, The GRAND DUKE and PIRATES of Penzance.
Thanks Phi for the Friday fun.
Not one of Phi’s best clues to start this puzzle – we think the parsing must be: HATFUL (defined in Chambers as ‘as much as will fill a hat’ – that might be (‘as it were’) a ‘head’) round E (middle letter of wen)
PICS (images) round or ‘enthralling’ A S (singular) + O (old)
An anagram (‘crashed’) of bAIKAL without the first letter or ‘head’ – a reference to the Russian ‘space dog’ that was the first animal to orbit the earth in 1957
CON (study) COURSE (syllabus)
TA (cheers – ‘thank you’) LiES (stories) without the ‘i’ (independent)
An anagram (‘loose’) of F Y (first and last letters or ‘edges’ of frilly) PANTIES
S (Society) COOL (indifferent) round H (hospital)
PRESS (journalists) round INC (including)
SORER (more unhappy) round CE (church) R (right)
U T (first and last letters or ‘extremes’ of urgent) OP (work) I A (advanced)
GRAND (£1000) DUE (outstanding) with K (king) inside or ‘called in’
PI (Private Investigator) QUitE (actually) with ‘it’ omitted or ‘overlooked’
An anagram (‘on the move’) of OMITS CARS
PRIM (formal) E (basis of logarithms)
SET (arranged) A RIP (disturbed stretch of water) all reversed or ‘on return’
An anagram (‘playing’) of OVER in a reversal (‘on reflection’) of SUN (hot weather)
An anagram (‘unfortunately’) of HIS IS A LOT
TRAIL (route) with A1 (main road) reversed
FLAGS (particularly marks) TONE (way of speaking)
LOCUS (delineated path) T (first letter or ‘top’ of trench)
A FORE (warning cry) after or ‘linked to’ PIN (golf target)
CR (credit) OFT (frequently)
SCRAPE (difficulty) AP (apparently) round H (height)
ECO (Umberto Eco – Italian writer) reversed or ‘picked up’ + AN (article)
HE (that man) RAFTER (beam) round E (last letter or ‘end’ of scheme)
NO + EP (record) in or ‘consumed by’ TAPER (candle)
S (son) HAPLESS (unfortunate) round or ‘injected with’ E (energy)
USE (purpose) reversed or ‘elevated’ in V (volume) V (5) + IS round or ‘engaging’ U (Unionist)
YEN (desire) round or ‘securing’ ‘OME (house, as might be said in part of East London, renowned for dropping ‘h’s)
GO UP (climb) round or ‘carrying’ R (first letter or ‘start’ of rope)
DAFT (not sound) round R (river)
QU (question) IT (computer experts) O (over)
Untypically gentle for Phi, I’d finished by my second slice of toast. I’m ashamed of myself for not spotting the theme, but enjoyed the puzzle nonetheless. It’s not only Londoners who drop their aitches, most dialects are guilty of that – give us a break! Thanks Phi and B&J.
An explosive morning, today, with Vesuvius featuring in both the G & I! I’d agree with Tatrasman @1 that this was quite approachable for Phi and a modest theme hiding behind it. Which is not a criticism. Far from it. Oddly enough, YEOMEN was the one to beat me today – I am not good at spotting the regional accent clues and house>home>ome did not occur. Had I had the Y, of course …
Thanks Phi and B&J
I enjoyed this, thank you Phi. Enough of a challenge to be interesting and fun. Missed the theme, as usual. LOI bizarrely, was 15A. Thanks to B&J for the parsings I missed.
Unlike B&J, 1a was my favourite. Takes all sorts, eh? Thanks Phi & B&J.
I saw PINAFORE, PIRATES and YEOMEN but not the other G&S related answers so I had it as only a mini-theme at best. As it turned out, I should have recognised TRIAL but didn’t know the other thematic references.
Enjoyable and not too difficult puzzle for Good Friday. My only slight quibble was SHAPELESS for ‘Lumpy’; I wondered if “lumpen” might be better, but it doesn’t have this sense, at least according to Chambers and “A shapeless mass” is given as the first sense for “lump”, so I’ll wave the white flag.
Thanks to Phi and B&J
A Phi theme that we spotted for once. After PRINCESS went in and then SORCERER we didn’t immediately make the connection but when we got GRAND DUKE we thought ‘Aha, something is going on here’ and we were on the lookout for other G&S titles. Despite that we took a while for the penny to drop about ‘More’ to give us UTOPIA. An enjoyable solve – nothing 1ac about it (and we liked that clue, too).
Thanks, Phi and B&J
Nice to see SCHOOL, so often in the supporting role of wordplay, featuring as the answer, but sad to see it defined as training establishment.
It’s hard not to think of G & S when PINAFORE is in the grid but I wasn’t looking for a theme so I left it at that. I found this enjoyable and on the easier end of the Phi spectrum. Favourites included HATEFUL, UTOPIA, PIQUE, and YEOMEN. Thanks to all.
My favourite fact in the intersection of G&S and wordplay is that HMS PINAFORE is an anagram of NAME FOR SHIP.
Trail and TRIAL – now I see it. D’oh!
And YEOMEN – very good. Also climb=go up – not ‘goup’
On the other hand the parsing of SCRAPHEAP was and will remain beyond me. But I really enjoyed PICASSO and SAFETY PIN. Good fun so much thanks to Phi and Bertandjoyce.