Quite the workout today from Slormgorm . . .
. . . with some very clever cryptic goings-on, which I hope I have adequately explained. Suggested improvements are welcome, as always.
| ACROSS | ||
| 1 | SCHUBERT |
One famous for arranging butcher’s cut (8)
|
| Anagram of (cut) BUTCHER’S | ||
| 5 | ISLAND |
Southern state to the east of Italy and Sicily? (6)
|
| I (Italy) + S (Southern) + LAND (state), Sicily being an example | ||
| 10 | SPRAYER |
Petition started by small perfume salesman, say (7)
|
| S (small) + PRAYER (petition) | ||
| 11 | OARSMAN |
Chap pulling a blade and raising a ransom (7)
|
| Anagram of (raising) A RANSOM | ||
| 12 | PREMIERES |
Openings on boards you can see in houses? (9)
|
| Cryptic definition, with “on [the] boards” meaning “on stage” and “houses” meaning “theatres” | ||
| 13 | PORKY |
American prison guards start on rowdy heavy (5)
|
| POKY (American prison) around (guards) first letter of (start on) R[OWDY]. Usually in this sense I think “pokey” is the more common spelling, whereas “poky” just means “slow.” | ||
| 15 | UPEND |
Turn over page in Ulysses primarily with purpose (5)
|
| P (page) inside (in) [first letter of (“primarily”) U[LYSSES] + END (purpose)] | ||
| 16 | DROP-DEAD |
Surgery that doctor leads so breathtakingly (4-4)
|
| DR (doctor) + OP (surgery) + DEAD (so) | ||
| 19 | BLOW AWAY |
A habit seen next to black and blue top (4,4)
|
| B (black) + LOW (blue) + A + WAY (habit), with “top” being slang for “kill” | ||
| 20 | TIARA |
In absentia, raffle half-a-crown? (5)
|
| Hidden in (in) [ABSEN]TIA RA[FFLE], with a sort of cryptic definition | ||
| 21 | SYRAH |
One must leave country hotel to get plonk (5)
|
| SYR[I]A (country, minus [must leave] I [one]) + H (hotel) | ||
| 23 | PANORAMIC |
Wide-ranging broadcast Marconi sent by tannoy (9)
|
| PA (Tannoy, i.e. public address [system]) + anagram of (broadcast) MARCONI | ||
| 25 | TIE CLIP |
What a Windsor might overlook in dock after ‘relationship’ (3,4)
|
| TIE (relationship) + CLIP (dock), referring to a Windsor knot | ||
| 27 | PIERROT |
Clown that might get a Brighton landmark condemned? (7)
|
| Cryptic reference to PIER ROT | ||
| 28 | DOO-DOO |
Parties going on longer than usual can be crap (3-3)
|
| Reduplication of DO (party, thus “parties”), each extended by an extra O (“going on longer than usual”) | ||
| 29 | FLOTILLA |
All of it goes up with large load of lighters, say (8)
|
| Anagram of (goes up) [ALL OF IT + L (large)], a lighter being “a large open boat used in unloading and loading ships,” according to Chambers | ||
| DOWN | ||
| 1 | SISYPHUS |
Greek who had an up-and-down affair with Rolling Stone? (8)
|
| Cryptic definition | ||
| 2 | HORSE-DEALER |
I might push heroin or I might trade in Colts (5-6)
|
| Double definition | ||
| 3 | BAY WINDOW |
Howl with flatus that hurts, perhaps someone could look into it? (3,6)
|
| BAY (howl) + WIND (flatus) + OW! (that hurts) | ||
| 4 | RARER |
More bloody war … are Russians demonstrating? (5)
|
| Hidden in (demonstrating?) [WA]R ARE R[USSIANS] | ||
| 6 | STRAP |
Usual small drinks tenor served up for band (5)
|
| 7 | ARM |
What might play a large role in injury? (3)
|
| Cryptic definition(?) I am not quite sure what Slormgorm is getting at here. I think “arm” in the sense of “weapon” is intended, as well as perhaps wordplay of: Most of (what might play a large role in) [H]ARM (injury) | ||
| 8 | DANDY |
Crusoe’s creator, so his pal says, is a fop (5)
|
| I suppose a pal of Daniel Defoe ([Robinson] Crusoe’s creator) might have called him “Dan D,” a homophone (“says”) for DANDY | ||
| 9 | DOGSBODY |
One likely to go and fetch an Afghan’s trunk? (8)
|
| DOG’S (Afghan’s) + BODY (trunk) | ||
| 14 | REAR ADMIRAL |
Officer, engineer, ram-raider, gangster! (4,7)
|
| Anagram of (engineer) RAM-RAIDER + AL (gangster, i.e., Capone) | ||
| 16 | DOWNPIPE |
Sad star on ecstasy one’s seen in the gutter (8)
|
| DOWN (sad) + PIP (star) + E (ecstasy) | ||
| 17 | DETERGENT |
Cleaner pants regent puts on detective (9)
|
| DET. (detective) + anagram of (pants) REGENT | ||
| 18 | CALCUTTA |
Dieter possibly heard on radio in an Indian city (8)
|
| Homophone of (heard on radio) CAL[ORIE] CUTTER (dieter possibly), aka Kolkata | ||
| 21 | SATED |
It ultimately got my boss fed up, you might say (5)
|
| SA (it, i.e., sex appeal) + last letter of (“ultimately”) [GO]T + ED (my boss, i.e., Slormgorm’s editor) | ||
| 22 | HELLO |
Is anyone here suffering getting old? (5)
|
| HELL (suffering) + O (old), i.e., “Is anyone here?” | ||
| 24 | NEPAL |
Nurse knocking back Bud in an Asian place (5)
|
| EN ([enrolled] nurse) reversed (knocking back) + PAL (bud) | ||
| 26 | EGO |
I like oxygen (3)
|
| E.G. (like) + O (oxygen) |
Thanks, Slomgorm and Cineraria!
STRAP
My take
PAR-Usual
S-small
T-tenor
PARS drinks T=PARTS
PARTS served up
ARM
Instead of hARM, could it be ARMy?
On second thoughts, hARM seems right.
ARM plays a large role in hARM, as you say.
&lit
If Schubert “arranged” all that music, who composed it?
I had hARM as my parsing. But I couldn’t parse STRAP or DANDY, and found this a slow solve, corner by corner, ending up in the SE, with CALCUTTA, thinking that’s Kolkata.
Thank you to Slormgorm and Cineraria.
Why is “pants” an anagrind?
GDU@6
Please consider the verb ‘pant/pants’. It should make sense.
I see. Another one for the weird world of cryptics.
GDU@6 & KVa@7: I thought it was in the sense of UK slang “pants” meaning “nonsense” or “rubbish.”
Oh! Thanks, Cineraria.
Apologies GDU. I almost succeeded in misleading you. 🙂
Ah. Some might say I need to get out more, but I can say with a good deal of confidence that that use of the word has not reached the Antipodes.
Incidentally, I began this puzzle and got about half way through, but it was slow going, and I wasn’t enjoying it much. Probably just not on the right wavelength today.
17D I appreciate that a slang meaning of “pants” is “rubbish”, but that is in a nounal sense only, according to the dictionaries I’ve consulted (Chambers and the online Oxford). I don’t see how, in the cryptic reading, “pants regent” can properly provide for an anagram of “regent” without significantly distorting the grammar.
Rudolf@14: Collins online also gives “pants” as an adjective meaning “inferior.” I am certain that I have seen UK TV shows using an expression along the lines of “that [situation] is pants,” apparently meaning “that is bad/confused/worthless.”
For ‘pants’, the current Chambers app has
singular noun (slang)
1. Nonsense
2. Rubbish
3. Anything considered worthless
One of the most difficult puzzles from Slormgorm that I can remember doing. I had the same trouble as Cineraria with STRAP and couldn’t parse DANDY. I also took a while to get PORKY and SYRAH and especially my last in PREMIERES which I thought was a very tough cryptic def.
Favourite was poor old SISYPHUS; rock and roll without the show biz glitz.
Thanks to Slormgorm and to Cineraria – hope you’re feeling a bit better and are enjoying doing crosswords again
WordPlodder@17
‘rock and roll without the show biz glitz’-I like it!
Cineraria@15 Thanks for pointing out the Collins adjectival meaning of “pants”. I have never seen “inferior” used as an anagram indicator, and I don’t see any dictionary justification for its use as such – “inferior” means “lower/poorer in quality”. I think the intention is that the nounal meaning of “pants” as “nonsense” or “rubbish” is what is required to suggest some form of disarray of the letters in “regent”, but the grammar used in the clue does not suffice to provide for “a nonsense of regent”.
WordPlodder@17: Thank you for your kind words. I enjoyed this puzzle, even though it was in some ways a head-scratcher.
Rudolf@19: I take “pants” as essentially equivalent to “bad,” which would be a normal anagram indicator.
Thanks for the blog, a bit trickier than normal for this setter but still very entertaining with many fine clues .
Pants – the trouble with slang is that the dictionaries are often slow to catch up with the various ways the slang is used. For a few years my students used it a lot and typically to mean awful or terrible , in this sense the anagram is fine. I never hear it used these days.
Pants as an anagram indicator often appears in crosswords. Nimrod used it as far back as 9 years ago:
fifteensquared.net/2014/06/19/independent-8636-nimrod/
and Buccaneer 4 days ago:
fifteensquared.net/2023/05/19/financial-times-17419-by-buccaneer/
As Cineraria says, it just means bad.
Thanks S&C
Rudolf is probably moaning about the prepositional adjective. Can pants regent mean anagram of regent? He should have gone on to moan about something being ‘on’ in that sense in a down clue, I guess. I thought that one was a bit iffy.
Unfortunately many anagram indicators used these days are ‘pants’. Often a synonym is chosen for a proper anagrind that simply does not work, and ‘pants’ is surely one of them, especially where ‘rubbish’ (unless used as an infinitive, and even then) isn’t exactly great itself. It’s this ‘modern’ approach to setting though, isn’t it.
I must say I agree with copmus at 4.
Composed and arranged by … seems a common enough expression to me.
Thanks Slormgorm. This was slow going but I got there in the end except for DOGSBODY, a new term for me. I couldn’t parse DANDY and was a bit bewildered by “demonstrating” as a hidden answer indicator in RARER. I liked SYRAH, DOO-DOO, REAR ADMIRAL, and HELLO. Thanks Cineraria for the blog.
I’m with GDU.
I, too, began this puzzle and got about half way through, but it was slow going. Gave up.
Too late for anyone to see but I must respond to Petert@25. Copmus@4 is right. Composing and arranging are not the same thing, and the common expression you cite does not contradict that. An arranger takes an already-composed piece (usually by someone else, but sometimes by themself) and arranges it for different instrumentation, vocals etc.
SCHUBERT actually did arrange some of his own music (e.g., some songs arranged for violin or cello and piano) but that is not what he is famous for. The clue@1a is simply incorrect. Mind you, the surface would not have been as good with the correct word, and yes, I did like this clue as written.