Private Eye (Cyclops/743) – Max Headroom Writes

23 comments on “Private Eye (Cyclops/743) – Max Headroom Writes”

1. Thanks for the blog and Happy New Year, although actually perihelion is January 4th.
   I too find these a bit of a chore just from the sheer number of clues, I did not bother with the perimeter . The clues were pretty good, a lot of anagrams and a bit tamer than usual I think . RESURRECTION my favourite
   BLOWER thanks for the extra information , did not know the origin, I still use the term for our 1950s green bakelite GPO phone that actually rings.
   Speaker=AMP hmmm I won’t even start.

2. I didn’t get my copy of the mag until 31st December, which also happened to be the closing date for entries for the crossword. Chiz. Will have to come back to finish this one later, but just popping in to register thanks to Cyclops for this and all his puzzles throughout the year, and of course to beermagnet for all the splendid blogs.

3. The “Keir Starmer writes” extract comes from Eye 1578.

4. I mostly enjoyed this but I’m beginning to think you can have too much of a good thing with these giant festive puzzles.

   I hesitated a while before entering AMP but in the end it couldn’t be anything else. Definitely a raised eyebrow but in a puzzle with so many clues, this is to be expected.

   Thanks Cyclops and beer magnet.

5. To Roz’s favourite,
   I’ll add EYELESS, GNOMIC, SHADOWY, BLOWER and THRUSH.
   First time I’ve tried the Eye’s jumbo Christmas puzzle so I enjoyed the novelty of it over a few short, sharp sallies.
   The perimeter message fell into place more quickly than the contents but then, as has been observed, the grid was not lacking in clues!
   Most were accessible and fair in the parsing. HEAPS was the one which held out on me the longest, only finally making sense when I had the ‘h’ of the somewhat elusive THRUSH.
   Thanks to Cyclops for the considerable energy poured into crafting this and to Beermagnet for the stamina required to blog it.

6. 69ac Are crossword clues actionable in libel? I’m no fan of the royals, but surely, it’s wrong to describe the Duchess of Cambridge like this?

   77ac I guessed ALGARVE, but had trouble parsing it as I thought the seaweed must be AGAR at first and didn’t know RV (recreational vehicle?)

   20dn Blunt confessed in 1964, ffs! Is he still infamous enough to be the definition of a traitor? Happily, I’m old enough to remember.

   28dn Off-topic, but I’m reminded of what must be one of the best clues of 2022, from Maskarade: “X-rays girders (10)“.

   63dn Cruel

7. Nice work – thanks, beermagnet (and Cyclops) – back to the normal size ones now, for another year! I had a similar faux pas with hastily writing in POLITICS at the end of the perimeter, and I also lazily bunged in UNAUTHENTIC instead of INAUTHENTIC. These meant a fairly painstaking check through the extra letters until the errors of my ways were revealed!

   Widdersbel at #2 – if your paper copy is late, you can always download the latest puzzle at
   https://www.private-eye.co.uk/sections.php?section_link=crossword
   It is usually updated on the Friday morning after Wednesday publication, and can be downloaded to use in AcrossLite, or I sometimes copy/paste the grid and clues into a Word doc, and then print it off once it all fits on a page…

8. Happy New Year! Thanks beermagnet for this and all your blogs during the year. Thanks also to Cyclops and mc-rapper67.
   I liked the cheekiness of 15a. I also marked 27d and 39d as favourites.
   On my copy, I had written “Roger =R?”, an abbreviation I hadn’t come across. Is it to do with ‘Roger over and out’ and so on?
   I always keep the current year’s copies of Private Eye until Christmas so I can deal with the perimeter.
   By coincidence, mc_rapper67 had given a list of synonyms for pedantic in the blog for 742 and purist stuck in my mind, which proved very useful for 40a.

9. Franko@7, haha! Yes, those synonyms were aimed at me and ‘purist’ was the one I liked best!

   (Still waiting for Ken to clear my original comment here, which is on hold due to the number of embedded links.)

10. Frank@7, re Roger, yes, I think it is a double jump: ‘Roger’ in radio comms stands for ‘received’ and R can be an abbreviation for that word … although not that well attested: it’s in two of the lists of American abbreviations in Collins online.

11. Tony@8 & @9. Thanks Tony re ‘Roger’. It’s probably not possible to solve Cyclops’s puzzles without being at least a bit of a purist.

12. Tony! I found I could approve your comment that was on hold, after validating all the links 😉
    It has come in as #6 above
    I don’t remember having that capability before but I suppose it’s because it is a blog wot I wrote.

    Is one of the Royal Family called Kate? Who knew?

13. Thanks, beermagnet. I always thought it was Admin that cleared linky comments, but maybe it’s been part of the blogger’s duties all along? Anyway, hoping Ken is well.

    Franko@11, purists will generally be very happy with Cyclops’ work, although you have highlighted a clue where there could be misgivings from some, due to the ‘double jump’ of Roger to r. to ‘received’ (especially as the abbreviation is not universally acknowledged). In fact I didn’t notice it at the time, or I might have lived up to the label stuck on me and mentioned it in comments.

14. Franko, I am wrong and have done Cyclops an injustice. ‘Roger’ is used to mean ‘received’ in radio comms because in an American phonetic alphabet of the past, Roger stood for R. So, no double jump.

    https://www.theguardian.com/notesandqueries/query/0,,-189587,00.html

15. Hmm … try this.

16. The Able, baker, charlie, dog alphabet, in which the R is Roger was first used by US forces in 1941 and adopted by UK forces soon after. It was still in use, I think, when I was in the school cadet force, but might have had an indicator of its age for younger solvers?
    This is my first attempt at a Cyclops and it’s probably unfair to judge him on a Jumbo, though I’m familiar with his alter ego, Brummie.. I agree with Roz that Jumbos are a bit of a chore, see esp this year’s Guardian puzzle.

17. Hello everybody. First time here. I was pleasantly surprised to compete this as I’m an amateur.

    I couldn’t for the life of me parse PACIFC from ‘the main. The main ocean ?

    And I don’t like ARE = LIVE.

    Some of the clues don’t really scan at all but all good fun, and many thanks to the blogger !

    Cheers

18. @Nicos: ‘main’ is an antiquated word for any sea or ocean and is a regular staple of Cyclops puzzles, so as soon as I see it I think the answer is likely to be the name of a body of water.

19. Nicos@17, IS = EXISTS = LIVES. Of course, not everything that IS, LIVES (inanimate objects, concepts), but everything that LIVES, IS!

    Which clues did you think don’t ‘scan’? And what do you mean by that, exactly?

20. Thanks for an instructive blog….. I wouldn’t consider myself too much of a hifi techie but I have to insist that an amp is certainly not a speaker (62 ac.) The clue is incorrect, but the answer is obvious.

21. Thanks Tony @18

22. Thanks for the blog! I really enjoyed this crossword over Christmas – plenty to keep coming back to for a slow solver like me.
    I got TRAITOR and EXPOSURE from the clue/crossers but had to look up BLUNT and URE to verify – never heard of either.
    I’m still confused on shock=TRESSES. I presume this is “shock of hair”? But I’ve never seen shock=hair on its own (ie without the “… of hair” bit also).
    Agree with others that an AMP is not a speaker but it was clearly the reflected answer.

23. Regarding the ‘purists’ who point out that an AMP is not a speaker, try googling ‘guitar amp’ you will find a lot of links to devices to which you can send a signal which will be amplified and then broadcast from a built-in speaker. These devices are also often referred to as ‘speakers’, as in “don’t stand to close to the speakers or you’ll damage your hearing”. See https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guitar_amplifier for full details of these devices.

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