Financial Times 17,103 by CHALMIE

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A super puzzle that I enjoyed very much. Nothing fancy, just good interesting clues. Thank you Chalmie.

ACROSS
1 DEBORAH
Woman dressed to the left, I see (7)
ROBED (dressed) reversed (to the left) then AH (I see)
5, 8 CARNAL KNOWLEDGE
Having sex, possibly Rover breaks dog-kennel law (6,9)
CAR (a Rover possibly) then anagram (breaks) of DOG KENNEL LAW
9 MAGIC
Heads off marauding antelopes grazing in cloudy spells (5)
first letters (heads) of Marauding Antelopes Grazing In Cloudy
11 EDIFY
Enlighten chess administrators about unknown (5)
FIDE (chess administrators) reversed (about) then Y (an unknown)
12 PYROMANIA
Urge to light up extremely pretty country (9)
outer letters (extremely) PrettY then ROMANIA (a country)
13 LISKEARD
Risked being stripped and covered in fat in Cornish town (8)
rISKEd missing outer letters (being stripped) inside LARD (fat)
15 CEREAL
Rice possibly contaminated initially with aluminium before being eaten (6)
first letter (initially) of Contaminated and AL (Aluminium) containing (…being eaten) ERE (before)
17 NAMELY
Viz article backed by millions, see? (6)
AN (indefinite article) reversed (backed) then M (millions) and ELY (see, a cathedral city)
19 PROSTATE
Organ for government (8)
PRO (for) STATE (government)
22 TEST MATCH
Event at Old Trafford that MC arranged after setback (4,5)
anagram (arranged) of THAT MC following SET reversed (back)
23 TORSI
One’s rubbish put back in trunks (5)
I’S (one’s) with ROT (rubbish) reversed (put back)
24 NOTTS
County ties broadcast (5)
sounds like (broadcast) “knots” (ties) – a contraction of Nottinghamshire
25, 26 SCREAMING AB-DABS
Panic as Cambridge bans rioting (9,2-4)
anagram (rioting) of AS CAMBRIDGE BANS
27 SAYINGS
Quotes for one popular grammar school (7)
say (for one, for example) IN (popular) GS (Grammar School)
DOWN
1 DUKE ELLINGTON
Loose tongue killed northern pianist (4,9)
anagram (loose) of TONGUE KILLED then N (northern)
2 BOOKIES
Reserve current clothes for elders and betters (7)
BOOK (reserve) I (current, electrical symbol) then outer letters (clothes for) ElderS
3 RELAY
Pass on early mistakes (5)
anagram (mistakes, mistaken for, read wrongly) of EARLY
4 HYDE PARK
London landmark said to conceal sub-normal king (4,4)
HYDE sounds like (said) “to conceal” the K (king) following (sub, underneath) PAR (normal)
5 CHERRY
Weep about woman’s virginity (6)
CRY (weep) contains (about) HER (the woman’s)
6 REMEMBERS
Army unit decoration Rishi Sunak initially brings back (9)
REME (Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers, army unit) MBE (decoration) first letters (initially) of Rishi Sunak
7 ARGONNE
French forest needing inert gases (7)
two inert gasses ARGON and NE (Ne, Neon)
10 CHARLIE MINGUS
Chalmie ensuring unhappy nurse leaves bass player (7,6)
anagram (unhappy) of CHALMIE ENSURING missing (leaves) EN (Enrolled Nurse)
14 ECLAMPSIA
City lights initially in awful condition for women (9)
EC (City, the London financial district, from postcode) LAMPS then first letter (initially) of In
16 ORCHARDS
Difficult to stop Sauron’s minions with trees here (8)
HARD (difficult) inside (to stop, like a cork) ORCS (Sauron’s minions, from Tolkien)
18 MASH-TUB
Twiddling thumbs, a brewer’s mixer (4-3)
anagram (twiddling) of THUMBS A
20 ARRAIGN
Announce the monarch has one to bring before the courts (7)
sounds like (announce) “a reign” (a monarch has one)
21 PTOSIS
Instruct family member to read on with eyelid drooping (6)
PTO (please turn over, read on) SIS (sister)
23 TOADY
On this date, American is promoted to sycophant (5)
TODAY (this date) with A (American) moved up one place (promoted)

33 comments on “Financial Times 17,103 by CHALMIE”

  2. Thanks, Chalmie and PeeDee!

    DEBORAH: I see it as ROBED reversal +AH (rather than HA reversal). PeeDee must have meant the same thing.

    Enjoyed the puzzle and the blog.

  3. I am a man as broad-minded as the next one, but isn’t 5D a little bit denigrating to women? I am familiar with many words relating to this part of a woman’s body and I don’t believe that they belong in a newspaper of this stature.

    I had never heard of the expression in 25/26 across.

    Thanks PeeDee for the blog.

  4. Though I was two shy of completing this grid, I certainly enjoyed it with its plentiful musical references; artists, albums and rock venues alike. Favourites were the jazz greats and the splendid 25/26 across ? a wonderful expression.
    Thanks to Chalmie and PeeDee for helping to 11a.

  9. Peter @3 – I took “cherry” just to mean “virginity” in general. The clue didn’t specify anything about body parts.

  10. PeeDee – re 5D – use a search engine for “losing her cherry” and I’m sure that you’ll find a reference to a woman’s first sexual experience and a mention of “hymen”. Maybe I am too sensitive as Diane didn’t take offence.

  11. Bugger MASH TUB and CHERRY
    There is no drummer to go with the Duke and Charlie
    It should be Max Roach or Art Blakey-either down the centre column or at least in a nina

  12. Hi Peter, I looked up “cherry” in Chambers dictionary and the first definition was “virginity”. It doesn’t surprise me in the least that a Google search brings up a whole raft of non-PC stuff!

    I think “woman’s virginity” is in the clue as a mischievous misdirection, to impishly set solver’s minds of in a certain direction. The definition is actually just “virginity”, no particular gender specified.

  13. I gave up on this. Too many words with which I was unfamiliar and my knowledge of all the Britishisms fell short. (I did manage Liskeard, but that was a fluke!)

  15. Okay PeeDee, let’s agree to disagree. I still think that the clue is inappropriate but if the women in this forum are not offended, then I shall accept the consensus. But I have never heard of a man “losing his cherry” as a euphemism for losing his virginity. When a man first has sex, nothing is lost or changes; whereas a girl does actually lose something – her “cherry”.

  16. I agree with PeeDee’s summary. Clear wordplay helped in a few I didn’t know, namely LISKEARD and ARGONNE and EDIFY has edified me about FIDE.

    The second time SCREAMING AB-DABS has been observed in crossword land in the last month or so; maybe it’s time for a comeback in the real world too.

    Thanks to Chalmie and PeeDee

  17. Thanks for the blog, I really liked the clues for both musicians, nice not to see Wellington being used for once. SCREAMING AB -DABS is a great phrase and a very neat anagram.
    A very minor typo – for ECLAMPSIA , awful gives the A , not part of the definition.

  18. Thanks Chalmie and PeeDee
    Some minor corrections to the parsing. In 6dn the decoration is MBE, not just MB. In 10dn, the removal is of EN (enrolled nurse), not the whole of NURSE. In 16dn, the minions are ORCS (with no A).

  19. Peter @15 – just out of interest, did you try searching for “boy loses his cherry” etc on Google, as per you suggestion @5 for searching for a woman “losing her cherry”? The results may be informative! Sadly a slow internet connection prevent me form researching any of this myself… 🙂

  21. At the risk of boring you all, but I was curious about the origins of cherry so I looked it up in the OED.

    It was first slang for “a young girl” 1889-1926:

    [1889 A. Barrère & C. G. Leland Dict. Slang I. 241/1 Cherry (thieves), a young girl.
    1926 W. Faulkner Soldiers’ Pay viii. 288 ‘If that’s the only way you got to get a wife you’d better pick out another one’… ‘Atalanta’, she suggested… ‘Try an apple next time’… ‘Or a cherry’..said Jones viciously.]

    and then slang for virginity in general, where the first usages were actually about men 1928-1935:

    1928 J. B. Wharton Squad iv. 132 I told him he wuz too young to lose his cherry.
    1935 J. Hargan Gloss. Prison Lang. 2 Cherry, virgin.

    Subsequent references are mostly about women, but the first example of use as slang for hymen does not appear until the 1960’s:

    1964 Amer. Speech 39 117 Associated with the growing heterosexual awareness of high-school students are such words as cherry, which in appropriate contexts takes on the familiar slang meaning ‘hymen’, while a cherry-buster, logically, is ‘a professional deflowerer’.

  22. I enjoyed this one with many favourites. Never heard of Charlie Mingus and thought abdabs was habdabs but see that both are okay.

    Cherry = virginity is a well-known expression. Thank you for the history lesson above.

  23. Goodness, this has blog has certainly ventured off down the rabbit hole!
    Thanks, PeeDee, for your extra legwork re ‘cherry’.
    Peter@10, I was aware, like you, that ‘cherry’ could mean ‘hymen’ and as, such, it is more likely to be associated with women.
    However, I’ve heard the phrase used by men and women alike… and not just in a sexual sense but, even more loosely, like ‘break one’s duck’, meaning to do something for the first time. This is how I thought of it, I suppose, and so took no offence.
    There were other things that raised an eyebrow but, as PeeDee says, I think it was just a little mischief.
    Tact is always appreciated, though. There are occasionally some puerile old clues worthy of Viz but these generally just prompt a roll of the eyes. Crosswordland seems relatively harmless; it’s the real world that’s a minefield.
    Still on Cherry – Copmus @11 laments there is no drummer, but perhaps we could include (trumpeter) Don Cherry.
    Like Roz, I loved the ‘Screaming Ab-dabs’. It’s a bit before my time but isn’t that the name the Floyd went by once upon a time?

  24. Thanks to Duke Ellington, I saw that 24a was, in fact, NOTTS and not LINCS (‘links’ = ‘ties’).

  26. Not knowing anything about “chESS Administrators unknown (Y)”, I rejected “edify” on favor of “essay” which led me to BlouSES for the “clothes” BS and ES are explicable as ends of “elders” and “betters”, but could not explain LOU for the life of me! “Oh what a web we weave”

  28. Thanks all.

    No, I do not set puzzles for the Daily Telegraph.

    As to CHERRY, the clue was too neat not to use.

    Once I’d put Mingus and Ellington in (and thanks for noticing that I didn’t use Arthur Wellesley for the Duke), I was going to put some more musicians of similar stripe but discovered that just about no-one I’d heard of had a name which could be defined as something other than “jazz musician”, which threatened to make the whole thing tedious for non-jazz fans, so I decided to do the 15-letter entries at top and bottom to give the thing some kind of structure.

  29. Thanks Chalmie for the enjoyable challenge. I missed NOTTS and BOOKIES and needed a look-up for SCREAMING AB-DABS (great sounding expression, I’ll have to research it). I couldn’t parse EDIFY or ECLAMPSIA — thanks PeeDee for the help. Now that my failures are out of the way I must say this was one of the better crosswords lately — CARNAL KNOWLEDGE, CHERRY, PYROMANIA, CEREAL, PROSTATE, and NAMELY were all top notch in my book.

  30. Thanks Chalmie and PeeDee

    I enjoyed ‘Cambridge’ being part of the anagram for SCREAMING AB-DABS, as that was the earlier name of Pink Floyd, who (mostly) came from there.

  31. Ptosis, twice in the same month (17,087)? At least the second time it was easier! On another point, I’ve never heard Mingus called “Charlie”, always Charles – unlike his close associate, Bird, of course.

  32. Thanks Chalmie and PeeDee
    Did this one on the day but it had slipped down the pile and only able to be checked off today. Great puzzle as so often from this setter and although only a partial theme rather than his usual full one. It was a nice touch to put CHERRY ORCHARDS together though. A few new terms – the Cornish town, one of the musicians, the ORC breeder (Sauron) and the phrase SCREAMING AB DABS. PTOSIS remembered from that previous puzzle.
    Finished mostly in the SE corner with those SCREAMING ABDABS (after looking it up), ARRAIGN and PROSTATE (neatly clued).

  33. For a little added fun, Hyde Park is a song by Duke Ellington.

    Thanks to Chalmie and PeeDee.

    Great fun.

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