Wiglaf fills the Tuesday spot this week – should be fun.
We struggled with this puzzle at first – we couldn’t seem to get onto Wiglaf’s wavelength, but after a slow start, the pace picked up. Finally, we twigged the theme – which, to be fair, was heavily hinted at by 29 across.
We are not familiar with the characters in 11 / 25ac, but having checked online, we realised that 29ac is a homophone of the character at 2d / 29ac, and that several other characters’ first names (2d, 5ac, 13d) and surnames (21ac, 24d and 29ac) appear in the grid.
This was quite an education for us, having to check 1ac, 12ac, 27ac and 7d. 28ac was new to Bert and 18d new to Joyce. Amazing what you can learn from crosswords.
GAL (girl) AP (apparently) GO (shot, as in ‘try’) round or ‘smuggling’ A
Hidden in or ‘guarded by’ titillatES THE Royal
COL (colonel) ‘participating’ in an anagram (‘waving’) of RIOT + R (Republican)
T (tense) ANGLE (settler – as in the Angles and Saxons)
BEAK (judge) round or ‘incarcerating’ L (Liberal)
An anagram (‘sick’) of RIFLEMEN round or ‘catching’ A
A reversal (‘retrospective’) of DEGAS round T (time)
A R (queen) DOUR (forbidding) S (son)
MERRY (happy) round or ‘including’ CU (copper)
BUCK (Buck Rogers – ‘space hero’) ET (alien)
A reversal (‘returned’) of ROTA (register) LUGER (gun)
HOSE (‘old fashioned leggings’) round or ‘worn by’ U (upper-class)
I (one) M (married) PAIR (couple)
CAN (may) AIL (take sick) LeavE with the middle letters omitted or ‘on vacation’ – a new word for us
Hidden (‘eaten by’) in beERY NGOs – a new word for Bert
A homophone (‘heard’ – 25D) of DEDLOCK – Leicester (2D) Dedlock is a character in the theme (11 25A)
A reversal (‘retired’) of STAG (speculator – in the Stock Exchange) + BY (close to)
ICE (rocks -diamonds) in or ‘during’ LES (‘the’ in French) + TERm (period) without the last letter or ‘mostly’
PL (Poland) OK (agreed) round or ‘importing’ N (new)
GO (work) OGLED (looked long and hard)
An anagram (‘gets involved’) of COP and SADISM
HO (house – 25A) + a reversal (‘erected’) of NAG (harry) – we had to check this – a log hut as built by the Navaho tribe
R (last or ‘ultimate’ letter of for) YE (old word for ‘the’) GR (grey) ASS (donkey)
A DA (district attorney – ‘lawyer’) – a reference to Ada Lovelace, daughter of Lord Byron, who worked on Charles Babbage’s mechanical computer in the mid-1800s
LING (fish) after GRUEL (dish with oatmeal)
UNE (‘a’ in French) QUArTO (book) with the ‘r’ (right) changing to L (left) or ‘changing hands’
An anagram (‘wreckage’) of TIMOR SEA
YETi (elusive creature) with the ‘i’ (one) omitted or ‘not seen’
RAG (guy, as in ‘make fun of’) with BARE (undressed) outside)
RE (about) BECK (Jeff Beck, member of the Yardbirds in the 1960s)
PP (very softly) in or ‘scoffed by’ GUY (cat, as the informal term for a man)
HE’D (the man had) round or ‘fixing’ AR (Alfa Romeo) – reference to Amber Heard, currently in a high profile court case against Johnny Depp
A DNF for me. Couldn’t get HOGAN or TANGLE. No chance with the theme but assumed it was Bleak House related and that 29a must be a homophone of a character. I did know AMORTISE – it crops up quite often on Countdown (along with its anagram, atomiser). LEAF MINER, GALAPAGO and CANAILLE were all new to me but all guessed from the clues. Enjoyed the challenge.
Wondering if the theme was related to BLEAK HOUSE was about as far as I got. Despite having seen the TV series from 2005, the only things I could remember were Gillian Anderson, but not the name of the character she played, Smallweed (not a nice man) and the name Jarndyce.
Failed in spotting the theme, but filled the grid correctly, with TANGLE and HOGAN giving me trouble too. CANAILLE rang a very distant bell. Never heard of ERYNGO or LEAF MINER and didn’t know REBEC(K) could be spelt with a K.
Thanks to Wiglaf for putting those synapses to work and to B&J
One of my favourites(did he ever write a bad one?)
So a pleasure to solve. Pedants might demand a hom indicator in 29 but as in diagram I just shaded in the relevant letters
Thanks Wiglaf and B&J
My favs: UNEQUAL TO and YETI
Thanks, Wiglaf and B&J!
I realised what the theme was but don’t know Dickens (especially Bleak House) well enough to pick out the participants. For this reason I couldn’t parse 29A. Despite this, I really enjoyed solving this puzzle so thanks Wiglaf and B&J.
copmus @3. There is a hom indicator for 29. It is “heard” (25D).
Hovis@6.Thank you kind sir.
Thanks both. Far too many unknowns for me to list, but like bertandjoyce I treated today therefore as an education piece – even including ADA which did feel unsatisfactory without any hint of a surname. At least my early concern that the girl and the tortoise at 1ac would become Michelle quickly disappeared
TFO. Although I take your point about ADA, it should be pointed out that ADA is also the name of a programming language (in Chambers), named after her, which makes the clue ok to me.
Thanks Hovis – another point of learning in my day. I operate under a three-letter pseudonym myself, so hopefully one I’ll remember
At times this seemed like the famous second paragraph of the theme. Fog everywhere, but it cleared eventually, slightly quicker than Jarndyce v Jarndyce. Thanks both
Great puzzle, thanks Wiglaf, and thanks for a lovely blog, B&J. Took a loooong time to break into, but all yielded eventually. Some tricky parsing and some obscure words, but all fairly clued and very satisfying to solve. I eventually spotted the theme once I cracked the linked solutions in 29 – one of the few Dickens books I’ve actually read!
Thanks B&J for the great blog and thanks to all who commented. There are a couple of other characters in the grid that no-one’s yet spotted.
I think you may have to help us out please Wiglaf – we have had another check on wiki and cannot find anything else.
This is a bit annoying. Bleak House is a favourite book of mine. Read it after the BBC version in the eighties (with Diana Rigg) and read it again just last year. But I couldn’t finish and didn’t spot the theme.
Apparently MERCURY is a footman and Mr TANGLE a lawyer.
Thanks to W, B and J
Thanks DuncT – took us a few goes to find further lists with extra characters than wiki had to confirm those two.