An enjoyable puzzle with not too many holdups, though one clue has got its parts mixed up. Thanks to Brummie.
Brummie’s puzzles often have a ghost theme, but if there’s one here I can’t see it.
| Across | ||||||||
| 1 | BLOSSOM | On reflection, gang needs to accept bereavement to flourish (7) LOSS (bereavement) in reverse of MOB |
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| 5 | SUMATRA | Island‘s problem with American transport: no terminus (7) SUM (problem) + A[merican] + TRA[m] |
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| 9 | SALSA | A second city’s somersaulting dance (5) Reverse of A S LA’S |
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| 10 | DARTBOARD | Fly with management, a feature of which is doubles all round! (9) DART (to move quickly, fly) + BOARD |
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| 11 | CHANDELIER | Light composition of Rice, incorporating classical composer (10) HANDEL (actually a baroque composer, but “classical” in the looser sense) in RICE* |
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| 12 | TALC | Powder used by first alchemists (4) Hidden in firsT ALChemists |
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| 14 | BLACKCURRANT | Raven, dog and rodent eating new fruit (12) BLACK (raven) + CUR + N in RAT |
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| 18 | PRAISEWORTHY | Honourable dignitary’s after power lift (12) P + RAISE + WORTHY (a dignitary) |
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| 21 | RACY | Off-colour and about to enter shaft (4) C (circa, about) in RAY (shaft of light) |
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| 22 | PROFITABLE | Paying for fine inlaid top furniture item (10) PRO (for) + F[ine] + the “top” of I[nlaid] + TABLE |
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| 25 | HOSTILITY | Bad feeling of many against independence leader — one from Italy, maybe (9) HOST (many) + I + anagram of ITALY less A |
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| 26 | MOULD | Fungus shape (5) Double definition |
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| 27 | TRICKLE | Drop gets player finally into touch (7) [playe]R in TICKLE |
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| 28 | RECITAL | Playing clarinet and briefly leaving performance (7) Anagram of CLARINET less N (abbreviation of “and”, as in Fish ‘n’ Chips) |
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| Down | ||||||||
| 1 | BISECT | Cross bishop breathes irregularly etc (6) B + IS (breathes) + ETC* |
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| 2 | OILCAN | Painting has the power that a mechanic could make good use of (6) OIL (painting) + CAN (has the power) |
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| 3 | SCANDALISE | Shock — southern ladies running riot round prison! (10) S + CAN (prison) in LADIES* |
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| 4 | MEDAL | Decoration somehow made large (5) MADE* + L |
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| 5 | STREETCAR | Vehicle’s way over left side of carriageway, by a river (9) STREET (way) + C[arriageway] + A R |
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| 6 | MOBY DICK | Classic story: Short Time from the pen of Francis? (4,4) MO (moment, short time) + BY DICK (from the pen of Dick Francis, author). Herman Melville’s book is actually titled Moby-Dick, but in the text the eponymous whale is almost always unhyphenated. See here for a discussion of how this may have come about |
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| 7 | THATAWAY | Time’s against Shakespeare’s wife? Husband’s off in the direction indicated (8) T + [Anne] HATHAWAY less the second H[usband] |
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| 8 | AUDACITY | Recklessness of car almost hitting a centre of population (8) AUD[i] (car) + A CITY |
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| 13 | ARRHYTHMIC | Marry Hitch? Perhaps, but it’s not indicative of a steady heart (10) (MARRY HITCH)* |
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| 15 | COWARDICE | Old playwright having no bottle has eg a whisky accompaniment (9) [Noel] COWARD (playwright) + ICE (which may accompany whisky), but the elements of the clue are in the wrong order |
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| 16 | OPERA HAT | Work period top protection wear for the Met? (5,3) OP + ERA + HAT, the Met being the Metropolitan Opera in New York |
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| 17 | NARCISSI | Has life in Cairns destroyed flowers? (8) IS (has life – a similar trick to 1d) in CAIRNS* |
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| 19 | ABDUCT | Take criminally bad union leader before court (6) BAD* + U[nion] + CT |
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| 20 | FEUDAL | Strong Brussels youth raised in a medieval way (6) F (forte, strong) + EU (Brussels) + reverse of LAD |
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| 23 | FLYER | Bill‘s comparatively astute (5) Double definition |
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Agree about 15D. It’s a mess.
Hmm…I was hoping to come here for another explanation of COWARDICE. Very odd for such an experienced setter.
Also, how is RACY off-colour?
9a is obviously RUMBA – “Brum” = Birmingham. And from Brummie too!
Andrew, re 19d I think the definition is just ‘Take’ and ‘criminally’ is the anagrind for ‘bad’, (unless ‘criminally’ is doing double duty).
Very straightforward, especially if you don’t notice the issue with 15D. I would think that RACY normally means something a bit edgy?
Yes, 15d could easily be changed by putting ‘having no bottle’ first in the sentence, though the ‘eg’ remains a bit clumsy. I agree it’s odd that Brummie didn’t hone that clue to the standard of the rest of the puzzle. William@2, RACY can mean sexually titillating or smutty as can off-colour. Thanks A and B.
William@2 – off colour in the sense of indecent.
Thanks Russtoo @4 – I’ll correct the blog.
Chambers gives racy = risqué , and off-colour = slightly indecent.
Yep, thought that too, Russtoo.
Very much on Brummies wavelength today. Found it easy to spot the definition element of each clue and find synonyms that fitted the wordplay. Agree that 15D seems wrong.
Thanks Andrew and Brummie.
Me @ 3 – alright that gives MURBA not RUMBA.
I’ll get my coat.
I wondered if Brummie was deliberately setting himself the challenge of having a definition in the middle for 15 down? I think RACY and off-colour both mean slightly rude, blue or obscene.
I didn’t like this much. Yes, 15d is a mess, and in addition to the above, “having no bottle” would surely be “cowardly” (adjective), not “cowardice” (noun). I also am uncomfortable with racy/off-colour, and black/raven. In researching 6d I was presented with Dick Francis, English jockey, and Francis Dick, Indigenous Canadian artist. I’d heard of neither, but I guess it didn’t matter.
Not many smiles, and rather undistinguished wordplays often resulted in groans.
I did ho-hum a bit about 15d, but put the solution in anyway as the crossers made it obvious.
Agree with Russtoo@4 re parsing for ABDUCT.
Couple of (I think) original cluings for forms of the verb ”to be”. ”Has life” in NARCISSI and ”breathes” in BISECT.
Have looked many times at COWARDICE, and while there are some clues with the def in the middle, I don’t know if this works. Favourite DARTBOARD. (Used to be good at darts in my youth.) ABDUCT, FEUDAL, and FLYER nice surfaces.
Couple of fun culture crossings, Dick Francis to Melville, (Tim) Rice to Handel. Throw in a recital, a hint of Tennessee W, a bit of Noel Coward and a bit of opera … quite a brew. Thanks Brummie and Andrew.
GDU @13, … he suffers from having no bottle/cowardice
Annoyed with myself for giving up on RACY – having it explained, it makes perfect sense.
Somewhat annoyed with Brummie, and considerably more annoyed with the Grauniad’s crossword editor, for letting COWARDICE through.
Yes, “definition at the beginning or at the end” is an arbitrary rule, and, a bit like Ximenes’ famously tedious wittling about indirect anagrams, you can make cryptic crosswords work perfectly well while discarding the rule (I believe there is one crossword – is it the Wee Stinker in the Glasgow Herald? – that defiantly ignores the prohibition on indirect anagrams); but it is simply unfair to discard the rule without letting people know you are doing so. Even though, as here, the resulting mess is fairly easily solveable once you have the crossers.
There is no way that the editor of 1Across, for example, would have let that through. And there is no way the crossword editor of the Graun should have done so. Failing to do so is failing to support your setter, who has a difficult enough job after all.
I understand where Geoff @13 is coming from, but, like grantinfreo @17, I suppose “cowardice” – “[the state of] having no bottle”. That’s not the big problem with 15d.
Apart from that, while this puzzle didn’t set my pulse racing (13d refers), it’s a decent enough start to the day. Thanks to my fellow Brummie and to Andrew.
Spent a while trying to fit Dashboard instead of DARTBOARD into 10a and couldn’t work out what the doubles on a dashboard were.
Otherwise, no real problems apart from COWARDICE, although I like an attempt to have a definition not in the usual (first or last) place.
[Sorry, by the time I posted Andrew had already corrected ABDUCT.
And no way could life in Cairns destroy flowers, at the moment anyway. Tropical rainforest area in Far North Queensland, or as some say , Far Q. But could destroy humans (me) with high temperatures and high humidity.]
I don’t typically have high expectations of Brummie and this met them. I liked RECITAL for the sneaky subtraction
THATAWAY rang a bell – Philistine used it in a prize in March 2022
“Shakespeare’s wife leaving one hospital after a short time: where did she go? (8)”
Great minds etc.
Cheers B&A
Apart from the AUDACITY of COWARDICE, this was very enjoyable. I liked SUMATRA, THATAWAY, PRAISEWORTHY, DARTBOARD and the nice misdirection of OPERA HAT.
Ta Brummie & Andrew.
Why is it such a hard and fast rule that the definition must be at the beginning or end of a clue? Just wondering.
Hmm. N as an abbreviation for and is a new one on me (in crosswords, anyway) though I have no objection to it. So busy seeing ST=way in STREETCAR that I forgot it could also be STREET in full – ever felt daft? Also, daft for entering ARRHYTHMIA without checking the fodder properly.
But I did get COWARDICE without too much trouble, though I agree the clue is a muddle: is “having no bottle” the def of the answer, or part of the def for COWARD – and what’s “eg” doing?
Favourites THATAWAY (just for being a fun word), DARTBOARD (a real pdm) and BLACKCURRANT. Is raven-haired for black-haired common enough to give legitimacy to raven=black?
Chambers has “raven” as an adjective meaning “Shiny black (like a raven)”
In spite of 15dn, which, I agree, should never have happened, I enjoyed this.
Like Shirl @3, I immediately thought of BRUM for 9ac and, like bodycheetah @21, recognised THATAWAY, as I blogged Philistine’s puzzle – still enjoyed the clue. And the picture conjured up by SCANDALISE @3dn. I liked the surface of 28ac RECITAL, too.
Thanks to Brummie and to Andrew.
15 dn COWARDICE – ‘having no bottle’ was originally at the end but got moved in the editorial process (a bit rushed due to Guardian technical difficulties). My apologies for the oversight – but I stand by the definition as a noun.
The rule is not hard and fast Crossbar @23 and I’m sure there’s a few examples out there, but try writing one. It’s not easy. Here’s an example of clues for “Learned” courtesy of Crosswordunclued.com
Definition at the start:- Erudite King Edward (Times 23500)
Definition at the end:- Tragic King Edward is widely read (FT 13707 (Jason))
Definition in the middle:- Kelly becomes well-informed by following one who wrote nonsense (Guardian 24870 (Auster))
Note that the words “becomes” and “by following” are clear pointers to the definition.
Definitions in the middle of clues are more common with the composite anagram type of clue.
Thanks Brummie. It was pretty obvious what 15d was despite the technical difficulties.
Thanks to Brummie @27 for confirming what a lot of us suspected! Other than that mild wrinkle I found it an enjoyable puzzle. Liked SALSA, CHANDELIER and MOBY DICK. I had to reveal NARCISSI but flowers are something of a blind spot, vocab-wise.
Thanks Brummie and Andrew
I raised an eyebrow at 15d but solved it anyway. pace Eileen, I thought “and briefly leaving” to take the N out in 28a was very lazy. Also BISECT means “divide in two”, not “cross”.
The rest I enjoyed, with lots of favourites. Special mention for FOI CHANDELIER.
Liked SUMATRA, OPERA HAT, PROFITABLE.
I did not parse DICK in 6/24 (never heard of that writer).
Thanks, both.
Nice example, TimC @28. For me, your def in middle case is made acceptable by the neat word order in the cluing. However, today’s 15d doesn’t have that IMHO.
Many thanks to all who have pointed out that off-colour can also mean slightly rude. Never come across that before.
Came to say I also had trouble with 15dn, both the word order and definition, but thank you Brummie @27 for the explanation.
I’m guessing now the meaning as a noun is something like: ‘His having no bottle meant he wouldn’t ride the rollercoaster’ etc.
Otherwise, I enjoyed this. Very much at my comfort level for a fairly quick solve. Liked BLACKCURRANT and MOBY DICK, and took far too long to get CHANDELIER.
I wondered if the positioning of the def in 15d was deliberate until Brummie popped in- thanks. As others have said, it didn’t make the clue unsolvable anyway.
My minor quibble was with ‘recklessness’ for AUDACITY. I think of someone who is audacious as being bold, daring or even cheeky, but not reckless. Still, it will probably be in a dictionary somewhere with that sense listed.
Thanks again to Brummie and to Andrew
GDU@13, gladys@24 : “Raven hair and ruby lips …” is the opening of Eagles’ Witchy Woman and Don Henley ( writer ) is an English major – so that good enough for me ! Besides, dictionaries given “raven” as an adjective meaning “black”.
While writing “and” just above, was reminded that ” ‘n. ” is regularly “and” – fish ‘n chips, salt ‘n pepper, etc.
Absolutely loved THATAWAY, great clueing & even reminded me of a recent trip to Anne Hathaway’s cottage.
Thank you Brummie and Andrew.
[We always said Deep North, pdm@20, especially in the Joh era, but Far Q … love it!]
I’m another who convinced myself that 9ac simply had to be Rumba, especially as it was Brummie setting today. Saw it as the B somersaulting or head over heels to a position after the RUM, with Brum the second city as it is often referred to. Maybe this doesn’t quite work, perhaps it’s a deliberate red herring. But it meant I had a DNF today, as I had the wrong crossers in place to figure out BISECT and OILCAN. Took a while to solve OPERA HAT, too, cleverly misdirected by Met. Liked CHANDELIER…
michelle@32, Dick Francis turned to writing thrillers when he gave up being a jockey. I believe his son is now continuing in the same vein.
Just having the AUDACITY of putting each of my FLYERs in a TRICKLE, this morning.
Don’t want a MEDAL though; I’m no NARCISSIst.
Great puzzle, this morning.
Really enjoyable puzzle, and happy to know from Brummie @27 that the problem with 15d was another Grauniad typo. Order of the clue got mangled in the publishing process.
Favourite today was PROFITABLE my LOI.
Thanks Brummie and Andrew
{gif@37. You’ve been around. I ran away from Queensland (couldn’t stand the heat} and probably live on the same latitude as you do now , but still eat peanut butter sandwiches and pumpkin scones. 🙂 ]
TimC @28. There’s no danger of my trying to set any clues 🙂 I’ll just stick to trying to solve them. I suspect that if setters used this device more often it wouldn’t disconcert solvers quite so much. The Genius 229 by Karla in August used exactly this as its USP, and he/she commented thus “A strange one to set as our cryptic brains are so hard-wired into the definition being at one end or the other. I had wondered about mixing up the ‘middle definition’ clues with ‘standard’ clues but then decided to go for broke and do the lot. I might try the former approach next time to see if that presents more of a challenge“
Pleasant solve during a grey day for me.
I can’t say that I was held up by the definition of COWARDICE being in the middle; thanks to Brummie @27 for the explanation. Muffin @31, I think you could say: “A line bisects/crosses the circle”. I liked CHANDELIER for the ‘light composition of Rice’ [my elder brother sat next to him at school], and OPERA HAT for the misleading Met.
Thanks Brummie and Andrew.
Like Shirl@3, we were sure of RUMBA (Anna is a Brummie too) – our thinking was very like yours, Ronald @38. But the difficulty in solving the downs led us to reconsider. The SW corner gave us the most trouble. Thanks, Brummie and Andrew.
TassieTim@44, with the wrong crosser as an M for 2d, was was wondering for a while where Oompah (stick it up your jumper) had any mileage from the clue. Then I gave up and came on the blog for an explanation of the errors of my ways…
And yet one more Midlander looking to appropriate the RUMBA for the Second City …
I’m not sure I completely chimed with Brummie today but I completed the solve so nothing to complain about apart from the glitch. CHANDELIER and FEUDAL my favourites.
Thanks Brummie and Andrew
Thanks, Brummie & Andrew. I always enjoy a Brummie puzzle – a setter I never have wavelength problems with, and this was a typically fun solve.
15d did throw me slightly at first but I didn’t find it hard to unravel the intention. Those moaning about editorial standards should try working on a newspaper – it’s an increasingly tough gig, with resources and staffing being cut ever closer to the bone. Mistakes are unfortunately inevitable, and you can be sure everyone involved is suitably mortified when they happen. This is my world so I have a lot of sympathy for both setter and editor – BTDTGTTS, as they say.
Tim C @28 – thanks for that, a really nice example of definition in the middle.
Crossbar @23 – as others have said, it’s mostly down to that being a natural way for cryptic clues to work rather than a hard and fast rule. But occasionally it’s easier to make the clue read more naturally with the definition in the middle – I had one I was working on last week that I was wrestling with for ages, just couldn’t make it work until it occurred to me to shift the definition to the middle. If you get it right it can be very satisfying (for both setter and solver) – as in Tim C’s example.
Thanks Andrew and Brummie, I found this quite doable, with COWARDICE my LOI, but enough has been said about that.
I parsed 22 across, PROFITABLE slightly differently, as I took “inlaid” as inviting me to inlay the last letter of FIT (fine) with the first of TABLE
[pdm @41, did some weeding on a Kingaroy peanut farm (not Joh’s), $2.50 an hour; think it was ’71, bit hard to tell 😉 ]
Thanks Andrew and thanks Brummie for a fun puzzle and for popping in to explain the error (the most problematic part, for me, would be putting ice in a decent scotch!). Enjoyed DARTBOARD most when solving but am now delighted that I bothered to look up what an OPERA HAT actually is – previously thought that all top hats could do that, must have seen too many silent comedy films.
I don’t regard the positioning of the definition as a ‘rule’ but think it has to make sense in the cryptic reading. In most cases (e.g. my 15 dn today), the definition in the middle won’t work. It does work in the case of Tim C’s example @28 but that’s because the whole clue is a cryptic instruction/pointer to the solver – not a cryptic definition, but a ‘definitional cryptic’?
Robi @43
A line can cross a circle without bisecting it – the latter has a much more precise meaning.
I enjoyed this and hope 15d was a one-off otherwise solving will get much harder.
For the furniture I tried chiffonier first as is includes FOR FINE from clue…but led nowhere.
Thanks Brummie and Andrew
I got almost mothing on my first pass through in order, then a few things fell into place and then the dam broke. Noel Coward has come up in the recent past, I think, which helped. I had to reveal RACY.
Favorites: 11A, 14A, 7D (which left me struggling to fit “ANNE” in somehow until the crossers ruled it out).
Like others, RUMBA seemed like the obvious answer for 9A until the crossers forced a more careful look.
I persuaded myself that 15D was something like “Old playwright: having no bottle has eg a whisky accompaniment” so COWARD = COWARDICE – ICE. More worried by 13D, which seems to define a noun.
Thanks to Brummie for the puzzle and clarification, and Andrew for the blog.
Thanks for the blog, a lot of very good clues here and longish words clued very fluently. I think things like 15D are usually a late edit bungle, not the setters fault.
With something as intricate as cryptic clues it is quite surprising how few mistakes there are.
MrPostMark@ 46 , I thought that London was the second city but you can claim that Birmingham is if you want to.
Re 15D. Luckily the Editor is there to check and correct such errors….
I’m not getting the explanation of 5d as a carriageway. A streetcar is surely a vehicle, not a carriageway? And the explanation has carriageway as contributing the c. I think everyone’s been distracted by 15d’s production difficulties.
Thanks to Andrew and Brummie – especially for popping in to clarify.
monkeypuzzler @58 – I took that as a simple formatting error, the definition is surely ‘Vehicle’.
Thanks Brummie for a most enjoyable crossword. I found this on the easier end of the Brummie spectrum. I was intrigued with COWARDICE because the definition was in the middle but the awkward surface gave me second thoughts. I’m glad Brummie set the record straight. I ticked CHANDELIER, BLACKCURRANT, THATAWAY, and ABDUCT as favourites. Thanks Andrew for the blog.
I agree with Rob @59 , STREETCAR = vehicle. The underlining has jumped the rails. As well as clues it is very surprising , to me, how few glitches there are in the blogs. It is an awful lot to type.
Rob T and monkeypuzzler – yes Andrew has just accidentally underlined the wrong word for 5d, and the definition is “Vehicle” as the rest of his explanation makes clear.
Re 15d: as discussed on previous occasions, the definition being at the beginning or end of a clue is not a rule, or even really a convention, it’s just the way that most clues naturally work, because they’re usually in the form definition plus wordplay or wordplay plus definition. It is possible to get the definition in the middle but not easy to make it work. An example from Pasquale (Quiptic 1,159) is “Racing at Epsom — number of spectators squeezed in (4)” for GATE.
Many thanks Brummie for the puzzle and for dropping in to comment – always appreciated – and to Andrew for the blog.
Didn’t like ‘IS’ for ‘breathes’, even though it’s possibly OK for those that have seen it before.
But most of crossword solving ‘skill’ seems to rely on this kind of insider knowledge rather than clever word play, which is a shame, in my humble opinion.
Quite often I find, as in this case, that the first one I ‘reveal’ annoys me to the point where I just ignore the crossword altogether.
Nice to see Brummie here today to respond to the many criticisms of 15D as published. I’m afraid even so I disagree with his stance that ‘having no bottle’ (an adjectival phrase) is a satisfactory definition of COWARDICE (a noun). To get to the noun, we have to have ‘the condition of having no bottle’ surely, but that won’t fit the surface of the clue whatever the editor does to the word order. Other than this, I enjoyed the puzzle, though with a mild groan – not for the first time – at the suggestion that Brussels and the EU are somehow equivalent: they’re no more so than Whitehall and the UK are. It’s a pet gripe of mine, but I recognise that setters like it and accept that it is a fair tool for their armoury. Thanks to Brummie and our blogger, as usual.
Nice puzzle, most of my comments have been made.
As far as I know, “raven” as an adjective always has to modify “hair.” Has anybody run across a raven car or a raven shirt?
Thanks to Brummie and Andrew.
Quite doable today. PRAISEWORTHY and COWARDICE held out a bit. Thanks to Brummie for explaining the editorial snafu for 15. I thought the definition in this case would most naturally have sat at the beginning – “Having no bottle, old playwright… “.
Thanks, B and A.
BigNorm @64, I think “having no bottle” is a nounal phrase with “having” as a gerund. E.g. in the sentence “Having no bottle is a drawback in a fight”.
jennaralissima @63, I think it’s often the case that “insider knowledge” helps to pick the right synonym, but I have sympathy for setters. It’s tough to continually find fresh new synonyms/ideas in cluing. And when they do try (e.g. Enigmatist), people often complain that the puzzle is far too hard. But I would like to see a few new rivers besides the Po, Exe, Ure and Dee. Come on, people, what’s wrong with the Irtysh?? 😉 .
And can we have Strangeness for S , Azed used it once.
[Roz
I remember that you never click on links, but, even so, you might like this.]
Roz @ 67 – funnily enough I used ‘strangeness’ to indicate an S in an as-yet-unpublished amateur puzzle at the weekend, and I made a mental note to check whether I get any comments on it given that I’ve never actually seen it in the wild 🙂
Sounds good, ordinary English strangeness (4)
Thanks Muffin , but if I click on links I get stuck in an endless loop of adverts and videos.
Rob@69 very good , S is used all the time in particle physics , many single letter abbreviations hardly seem to have real use at all .
Camping equipment to make people laugh with strangeness ? (8) .
I don’t think cowardice is illegal. The convention of having a definition first or last is, after all, just a convention. But why? “No bottle for old playwright leaning on whisky accompaniment” or similar would do the trick, no?
[Roz @70: presumably, to find de sleeping bag inside de tent you need de lights? 😉 ]
Just saw earlier comments saying cowardice def was intended for the end – sorry, should have read the thread
Very good MrPostMark , if you really do not know the answer a similar clue was used last Friday without the strangeness.
Thanks both. I was entertained after I got going (it took a while).
Crossbar@23 et al: The ‘definition at beginning or end’ is just a useful tip for solvers: there is no hard and fast rule. I’ve offered before that it derives from the way English works: ‘this is that’, ‘that is this’ (when defining something). As a result the definition is shunted to either the fore or the rear. In German the verb is shunted to the rear and in Irish the verb will open its sentence so those languages are perhaps inimical to cryptic construction (someone will know better). From my (unwillingly extensive) study of Latin I am aware that verbal sequence is for all intents and purposes irrelevant.
(Speaking of “all intents” see Roz@70)
[Alphalpha @75
I was once covering a Latin lesson for an absent colleague, and I absentmindedly picked up their textbook. The first Latin sentence in the book was “Cerberus est canis”, which would have been marked wrong when I did Latin in the 60s!]
I am another who believes the definition for 5d is “Vehicle”. I have only commented as I see it is still there as carriageway.
Thanks both for the fun and elucidation.
Now I can settle for the day as the edge of ex-cyclone Hale washes over.
First time poster, long term lurker. Rox @ 67 and Rob T @ 69 strangeness for S makes sense to me — strangeness can be a property of quantum subatomic particles (primarily strange quarks!). It’s a physics thing so seem legit?
Like others enjoyed this but was left scratching my head about COWARDICE wondering whether it could be an unconventional definition in the middle of a clue. Thanks Brummie for clarifying!
Absolute mystery today, hardest one for weeks for me.
Thanks both.
bodycheetah@21 …looking in late (mainly because of my unfinished-cup-of-coffee feeling over 15dn which re-emerged unexpectedly at this hour!) and am moved, quite ardently but with some respect, as I’ve appreciated your comments for years, to protest vehemently against your first sentence. Not only do I disagree absolutely with your opinion but I am surprised you should wish to traduce our noble (talented, enchanting, diverting and oftimes coruscating – though doubtless tragically underpaid) Brummie so rudely, and publicly to boot. And in the usually placid backwater of fifteensquared! I dunno. I better just thank Brummie twice over to compensate….
…so thanks Brummie! Nice one
Although I agree with @14, it was good of Brummie @21 to explain. Nho of racy as off-colour.
@27
[C3H58@78 always good to see new people commenting. The strange quark has strangeness= -1 , blame Murray Gell-Mann, and gives the property of strangeness to hadrons . Famously the Omega-Minus particle was predicted with strangeness -3 and detected soon afterwards with all quantum properties exactly as predicted by the original quark model. Strangenes=S has made it into Chambers and is used by countless people every day in particle physics so is fair game for setters. ]
Sorry Roz @70, my first thought was that is two words, but, of course, it isn’t
An enjoyable solve for me, and perhaps a rare case where an American vocabulary was helpful? “The Met” had what for this New Yorker is its more familiar meaning, raven for black is normal to my ear if a bit poetic, and off-colour as in RACY is straightforward in US usage (apart from the u ;))—I had to look up its other meaning .
Thanks Brummie and Andrew.
The thing about the clue for 15d is not that it makes the answer hard to get (as several have commented) but that it reads strangely [or with strangeness?]. As has also been mentioned, this is less because having the definition at one end or other is a crossword convention, more a consequence of how English grammar works.
To the commenter above who gets annoyed after revealing an answer in the grid, I suggest that you do the crossword on paper. There’s no reveal button!
Late to the party but why is the comparitive of FLY FLYER and not FLIER? After all, RACY becomes RACIER and DRY DRIER. Had me stumped!
Lautus @88. Chambers has FLIER or FLYER!
@28 you can do as you please with the order, but still be able to parse each element.
Old playwright having (..) has eg a whisky accompaniment
Can we edit/delete comments?
Thankfully I’m very late to discussion.