Bluth provides the Thursday challenge this week.
Another great puzzle from Bluth with a lot to challenge the old grey matter. We have a couple of minor concerns over synonyms in 7d and 17d, but great admiration for the originality of many of the clues, particularly the ingenious use of well-known names in 8ac, 9ac, 21ac, 26/27ac and 4d.
An anagram (‘doctor’) of VEnTS OnES LUnG with the three ‘n’s (‘news’) replaced by three Ps (first letter or ‘introduction’ of programme)
H (hotel) ONO (Yoko Ono) + a homophone (‘reportedly’) of LOO (John – toilet) + L U (first or ‘initial’ letters of Lennon up)
SAFE (peter) R (last or ‘ultimate’ letter of Parker)
ESP (extra-sensory perception – ‘psychic powers’) in DOT (E in Morse code)
C (100) ABLe (competent) without the last letter or ‘not entirely’ + a reversal (‘backing’) of RACE (people)
E (east) + an anagram (‘requires work’) of END
An anagram (‘new’) of ORLEANs TAXI missing the ‘s’ (seconds)
WORD (Microsoft product) round or ‘broken by’ L (last or ‘final’ letter of Excel) + POWERpoint (another Microsoft product) without ‘point’ or ‘pointless’
H (heroin) after WIT (comedian)
PLAYs (performs at) missing the last letter or ‘mostly’ + SUIT (‘clubs potentially’ – as in cards)
An anagram (‘funny’) of E (last letter or ‘ending’ to Freddie) and STARR
B (bishop) + cARd missing the first and last letters or ‘discovered’ + GamE without the middle letters or ‘on vcation’
REINDEeR (Dancer was one of Santa Claus’ reindeer) round or ‘receiving’ M (marks) and missing the third ‘e’ (last letter or ‘conclusion’ of judge)
An anagram (‘about’) of SO ANGRY + a reversal (‘coming back’) of REP (agent) + R Y (last letters or ‘terms’ of another Harry)
Hidden (‘some’) and reversed (‘on the contrary’) in lEMON Grass
O (nothing) X (times) O (nothing) – ‘nothing squared’
An anagram (‘assembly’) of QUORATE
An anagram (‘injured’) of ROONEy missing the last letter or ‘dropping back’ and AT WORLD CUP
P (first or ‘principal’ letter of paper) O (over) ST (street) BOX (fight)
An anagram (‘arranged’) of LOWER FEE IF round T (time)
SP (knowledge?) READ-OUT (computer’s data retrieval) – we can’t find any dictionary reference to SP=knowledge – we can only assume that Bluth is thinking of ‘what’s the SP on that?’ as in ‘give me the lowdown’
PEN (writing) + an anagram (‘off’) of A YEAR after bAlLoT (alternate letters or ‘regularly consulting’)
DO (provide) O (disc) DEBUG (correct software problem) round or ‘without’ L (first letter or ‘lead’ to laptop)
U (universal) ‘trapped’ in PAPERS (ID). To us, paupers are poor people, but not necessarily ‘down-and-outs’.
AD (plug) in ROM (read-only memory) on A P (first or ‘original’ letter of phone)
Double definition
Hidden in (a ‘segment’ of) mandariN ORange
I assumed SP was horse racing knowledge. Great admiration indeed. PENALTY AREA and GLOVE PUPPETS my favourites. So much to enjoy. Thanks Bluth. Look forward to the next one. Thanks B&J.
I wonder how Bluth went about setting that anagram at 1 & 4.
Yes, plenty to keep the brain ticking over and that was without even trying to parse a few like GLOVE PUPPETS. Of those I did parse, I found HONOLULU, WORLD POWER and PENALTY AREA pretty tough. The EIFFEL TOWER definition was an original one. Never heard of the ‘Potter’ at 26/27 and didn’t know whether he made pots or was a snooker player, gardener or marksman.
OXO was the standout clue for me.
Thanks to Bluth and B&J
Collins gives:
” SP
in British English ABBREVIATION FOR
1. standard play: the standard recording speed on a VCR or DVD recorder
2. starting price
NOUN
3. British slang latest information”
and
“pauper
COUNTABLE NOUN
A pauper is a very poor person.
Synonyms: down-and-out, have-not, bankrupt, beggar”
My Goodness, Bluth. Another cracker. I had not fully read the rather pompous post in yesterday’s G-blog that suggested you would benefit from doing another 10,000 puzzles(!) All I can say is, if they are all going to be like this, I can’t wait for them š š š
Seriously, a lovely journey through your imagination with EIFFEL TOWER, PENALTY AREA, OXO, PAUPERS, WORLD POWER, EDEN and the succinct but delightful SAFER being amongst my favourites.
Thanks Bluth and B&J
Yes, it was a joy to solve, but then you had to do the hard work of parsing it.
24a REMINDER is brilliant: the surface suggests Judge Rinder on Strictly
…and if the clue didn’t include “third” it would work in that way!
GLOVE PUPPETS = Sooty & Sweep in yesterday’s Fed?
Loved the innovative ns to ps device.
12a alluding to the tory party leader selection process?
Bertandjoyce:
For 20a maybe “developing habit” should be the definition, rather than just “habit”?
My goodness that was challenging even by Bluth’s normal standards, but it all came together gradually in a very satisfying manner including penny drops aplenty.
With a Q and X appearing very early in proceedings, I did wonder if a pangram was on the cards, but it was not to be.
Many thanks to Bluth for the fun and to B&J.
P.S. Of the ten preceding comments as I write, six are from FrankieG. Is this a record?
Challenging and brilliant. My particular favourite was 26/27
Thanks to Bluth and B&J
1d: Suprised to see LEMON GRASS as two words, but that’s how Collins has it, with “(also LEMONGRASS)”. It’s also valid with a hyphen.
11d: Also alluding to the tory party leader selection process?
Rabbit Dave@11:
Well nobody else was here.
Well done Bertandjoyce for parsing all this so beautifully. It’s taken me over an hour to go through it, but I don’t mind when the puzzle is this good.
Do you get the puzzle early, or stay up late the night before? One small criticism, which I also had of the blog for yesterday’s Fed:
“Thereās always so much popular culture (aka GK) in these puzzles that I worry that some things need to be spelled out by the blogger.
For instance is everyone here aware of Sooty & Sweep? Is everyone old enough to remember them? Everyone outside Britain?”
Valentine hadn’t heard of them.
There’s always someone from somewhere who’s never heard of Pele or Return To Sender or Roy Lichtenstein or LS Lowry.
I’d never heard of Rod Liddle, but I’ll remember his name because it contains DILDO backwards.
And thanks Bluth for the brilliant puzzle.
The whole morning has gone, and I haven’t even started the Guardian. Hope it’s an easy one…
…It wasn’t. it’s also brilliant, as was the FT. Something of a golden age for crosswords.
Well, we got it all, but had absolutely no idea how to parse 1/4. Plenty to like, though, including WORLD POWER, OXO and EIFFEL TOWER.
We noticed that in a couple of clues, for CABLE CAR and PLAYSUIT, one element of the answer had its last letter removed, only for the same letter to appear as the first of the next element. Thatās not an unusual occurrence in a clue, but interesting to find it twice in one crossword.
Thanks, Bluth and B&J.
Jaw on the floor moment as I parsed every clue (apparently correctly), even if it did take me an hour and a half!
That’s an incedibly rare feat for me.
A few tricky ones which held me up, but persistence paid off.
Thanks to Bluth for the puzzle and B&J for the blog.
Only just finished this having had to take a couple of stabs at it, but I will echo everyone else in saying how delightful it was from beginning to end. And to echo lady gewgaw @2 in particular, I can only marvel at the creative mind behind some of the constructions. That said, it was the relatively simple 21a ARREST that gave me the biggest laugh. Brilliant. Thanks, Bluth.
And thanks of course for the blog, Bert and Joyce.
This was the most difficult crossword of the day for me but it was worth the effort because of clues like WORLD POWER, POSTBOX, and DOODLEBUG. Thanks to both.
I always really enjoy this setter’s puzzles and this was no exception, However I think there’s a tipping point when the clues become so convoluted that the solver simply obtains a fair proportion of the answers from having a stab at the definition and then working backwards to justify, rather than the wordplay being the primary driver towards the solutionā¦ and this puzzle was a tad too close to that point for me in places. No setter brings more “real life” into a puzzle though and I really like that.
On going over the puzzle to nail the parsings (thanks B&J for a couple of nudges in that respect) there’s no doubting the ingenuity of the constructions but the ones I liked best were the relatively concise HONOLULU, EDEN, WITH, ARREST (excellent), PENALTY BOX, BARGE, OXO and POSTBOX.
Many thanks to Bluth and the aforementioned reviewers.
Thanks B&J, thanks all.
Lady gewgaw @2 – i definitely didnāt start by thinking, āwell if I changed all of the Ps to an Nā¦ā
I had a different sort of clue there on my first pass – a charade of some kind but it was too long and unwieldy. (Even by my standards!) So I decided to give up on that and try an anagram.
Itās not a very friendly selection of letters – and sometimes, if I canāt find a pleasing surface with whatās available Iāll try adding one more letter to the mix. Essentially, speculatively looking for a clue like 3D here – where I can indicate the removal of all the Ss or whatever.
I must have tried adding a load of Ns and discovered I could make VENTS ONE LUNG but with three Ps to spare before having my own penny drop moment.
Wordplodder @3 for that definition, I confess to stealing the idea. Albeit from myself in May last year when I used a similar def for Statue of Liberty. You mentioned it then, too!
FrankieG @8 Sooty & Sweep yesterday and Glove Puppets today is just a coincidence. This puzzle was written 2 months before that one and with both, I had no idea when they would be published.
Cheers!