My first blog of a Brockwell puzzle: this is only his third appearance and the first two were in the Prize slot.
The previous puzzles were heavily themed: the first celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of a classic album and the second included an impressive list of Derby winners, going back to 1820. My heart sank, therefore, when I saw the first two clues: I recognised Hoylake from news bulletins as the venue for the recent golf competition and Real Betis turned out, as expected, to be a football team. There are other sporting references throughout the puzzle but I haven’t managed to make them cohere into a theme, though I have a nagging feeling that there is one. Over to you!
Apart from that, I enjoyed this puzzle: there’s a nice variety of clue types, with half a dozen or more ‘lift and separates’, which always go down well with me and several smiles along the way, too, notably at 25ac FIDGETY, 21ac CLEAR OFF and 5dn SEXPOT. Other favourites were 18ac SET, 27ac CHILD-FREE, 30ac OUTGOINGS, 6dn PRESCRIBED and 14dn TELEVISION. Just one niggle: it’s a pity about the practically identical anagram indicators in the first two clues.
I had two parsing problems – at 11ac, where I did a little research and discovered something new, and 7dn, which I haven’t managed to resolve. Thanks in advance for the help.
I shall be going out fairly soon for the day and so I shan’t be able to make alterations to the blog until this evening.
Many thanks to Brockwell for the puzzle.
Definitions are underlined in the clue
Across
9 This lot managed 18 around Hoylake on vacation (5)
THESE
An anagram (managed) of SET (18ac) round H[oylak]E
10 Management of Real Betis is most unfocused (9)
BLEARIEST
An anagram (management) of REAL BETIS
11 A peripheral role in return game (5,4)
MOUSE TRAP
MOUSE (I’ve discovered today that my computer mouse is a peripheral) + a reversal (return) of PART (role)
12 Scrap pile somewhere in London (5)
SHARD
Double definition – here’s the second
13 Topless experience in bar is heavily criticised (7)
ROASTED
[t]ASTE (experience) in ROD (bar)
15 Setter’s construction is most succinct (7)
TERSEST
An anagram (construction) of SETTERS
17 Nerve of pilot changing direction (5)
STEEL
STEEr (pilot) with L (left) replacing r (right) – nerve and steel both as verbs, as in to nerve / steel for the fight
18 Teachers’ paperback collection (3)
SET
A reversal (back) of Times Educational Supplement (teachers’ paper)
20 Bet24 sponsors (5)
BACKS
BACK (bet) + S (second – answer to 24dn)
22 Dozens of mischievous creatures chasing short couple (7)
TWELVES
TW[o] (short couple) + ELVES (mischievous creatures)
25 Restless Cooler King escapes totally exhausted (7)
FIDGETY
F[r]IDGE (cooler) minus r (king escapes) + T[otall]Y – The Cooler King is the part played by Steve McQueen in ‘The Great Escape’
26 Game of skill caught old Nazi (5)
CHESS
C (caught) + HESS (old Nazi)
27 Having no issue with Kid Rock initially in charge (5-4)
CHILD-FREE
CHILD (kid) + R[ock] in FEE (charge)
30 Expenditure of friendly society (9)
OUTGOINGS
OUTGOING (friendly) + S (society)
31 Threads to stitch contrary wrapping paper (5)
WEFTS
A reversal (contrary) of SEW (stitch) round FT (Financial Times – paper)
Down
1 New York squad turning up to make arrest (4)
STEM
A reversal (turning up) of METS (New York baseball team – squad)
2 Scoffed following retrospective gun control (8)
REGULATE
A reversal (retrospective) of LUGER (gun) + ATE (scoffed)
3 Black coffee ultimately providing spring (4)
JETÉ
JET (black) + [coffe]E – a leap in ballet
4 Pushes forward version of Bros duet (8)
OBTRUDES
An anagram (version) of BROS DUET
5 Fox‘s public display in road (6)
SEXPOT
EXPO (public display) in ST[reet] (road)
6 Quiet secretary tucking into wine that’s laid down (10)
PRESCRIBED
P (quiet) + SCRIBE (secretary) in RED (wine)
7 Speedway tie’s oddly unexciting (6)
SEDATE
I can’t see how this works: SEDA (speedway?) + T[i]E[s]
Edit – it’s all ‘oddly’, of course! Thanks to KVa
8 Endlessly peruse Playboy (4)
STUD
STUD[y] (peruse)
13 Son in row over another exam (5)
RESIT
S (son) in a reversal (over) of TIER (row)
14 Racket affected service returns — netting 6 in 18 (10)
TELEVISION
A reversal (returns) of NOISE (racket) + LET (affected service) round VI (6)
16 Short movie sent up Animal House (5)
TESTY
A reversal (sent up, in a down clue) of ET (movie) + STY (animal house)
19 Most posh wine shops getting into alcohol-free (8)
TOFFIEST
OFFIES (off-licences – wine shops) in TT (alcohol-free)
21 Run along banks of canal like Van Gogh? (5,3)
CLEAR OFF
C[ana]L + EAR OFF (like Van Gogh?)
23 Golfer upset over new tee for tournaments (6)
EVENTS
A reversal (upset) of SEVE (Ballesteros – golfer) round N (new) T (tee)
24 Instant mousse conditioner bottles (6)
SECOND
Hidden in mousSE CONDitioner
26 Dope left in bed (4)
CLOT
L (left) in COT (bed)
28 Blue swallow heading south (4)
DOWN
Triple definition
29 Sylvester Stallone’s hiding at first (4)
ERST
Hidden in sylvestER STallone
SEDATE
speedway-ties oddly
s e d a t e
Thanks, Brockwell and Eileen!
Enjoyed the puzzle and appreciated the blog!
Doh! – many thanks, KVa. I’ll amend forthwith.
7dn uses alternate letters of SPEEDWAY TIE
Thanks Brockwell and Eileen
Lots of fun. Favourites BACKS, FIDGETY, RESIT, and CLEAR OFF.
I may have been too influenced by LOTR, but “mischievous creatures” didn’t suggest ELVES to me; however I liked the clue despite this.
Only one I didn’t like was DOWN. The “heading south” isn’t needed, and is irritating. It only applies to maps, not actual directions; and even then not always – I was given a book of maps of Britain with south at the top (admittedly it is a bit disconcerting to try to use it!)
Many of the answers contain anagrams of “Set”, from 18A.
Eilleen, in addition to what you’ve discovered today, Mouse is a computer peripheral, trap is PART backwards. MOUSE TRAP is a game ( I think by Hasbro ) where you construct an amazing array of elevators, slides and trackway and try to get a ball into a cup in rapid time.
Thank you Brockwell and Eileen.
Flea @ 8 – thanks, but I’ve underlined game as the definition and indicated the reversal of PART in the blog.
Of course when I saw “golfer” my first thought was Els. Nice to remember Seve instead.
An enjoyable puzzle with some interestingly constructed clues. Three superlatives: most unfocused = BLEARIEST, most succinct = TERSEST and most posh = TOFFIEST (is there such a word?)
CLEAR OFF was very good.
Many thanks Brockwell and Eileen.
STUD made me laugh and I also particularly liked CLEAR OFF for the surface and TERSEST for the lovely anagram.
Thanks Brockwell and Eileen – I couldn’t parse MOUSE TRAP (thought it was a play not a game!).
And I had forgotten Samantha FOX.
I got ERST because a) it is clearly clued and b) I speak German, but I have never heard it used in English. Is it dialect? ERSTWHILE yes, but never ERST.
(Having looked at Wiktionary, it suggests alternatives of ARSTE and YERST, which I have tucked away in my brain as Azed-fodder.)
Not much chance on this side of the world of knowing the Shard or the Times Educational Supplement. Not knowing other obscurities such as Hoylake and Real Betis didn’t matter, as they were only part of the wordplay. But “offies”? (I worked it out eventually.) And wefts and jeté are new to my lexicon.
Thanks for the blog, Eileen.
Superb, I really like Brockwell’s style. Particularly enjoyed TOFFIEST. Thanks, Brockwell and Eileen.
The theme is revealed (albeit obliquely) by the SETter on twitter and identified by Sagittarius @7.
What struck me about this Brockwell puzzle was there were 29 clues and nearly 50% of them had ALL of the letters ( E S T ) within their answers including the master “SET” at the midpoint 18a. 9 collections were in the across clues and 10 were in the down clues. Trying to work out whether it was deliberate or a coincidence !
Apart from the copious use of the letters S, E and T in the answers. There are also Chess Set, Jet Set, Television Set, Setback, Set down, Second Set, Set hard and Clot.
Keep crossing with people this morning ! Will have to become a faster typist. Hope Tim comes on the blog later; he’ll be delighted to see TOFFIEST in there !
Another possible parsing for BACKS is that bet = back and second = back (as in second a motion) making backs plural.
Interesting thought, Hovis! I prefer Eileen’s parsing but that also works.
This hit the right spot for me. The south west held me up for a while. Lots of humour. I especially liked CLEAR OFF, TOFFIEST and SEXPOT. With thanks to Brockwell and Eileen.
Quite tough, with some tricky parsing but I enjoyed this puzzle.
Favourites: CLEAR OFF; jeté.
New for me: SEXPOT = fox; OFFIE = off-licence / shop selling alcohol.
Thanks, both.
It’s nice to see my Mets invoked, despite their wretched play.
A very strange journey I had with this. At first all my solutions seemed to be the superlatives – BLEARIEST, TERSEST, TOFFIEST – though I wasn’t feeling particularly that “superlative” referred to the puzzle in general. Then my appreciation picked up with the solving of excellent clues in FIDGETY, CHILD FREE, OUTGOINGS, WEFTS and CLEAR OFF. However, hit a bit of a brick wall then with the top of the grid, stymied by JETE and MOUSE TRAP and SEXPOT amongst several. A DNF therefore, but a great deal of fun was had this morning here along the way.
A very nice Tuesday stroll. It took me ages to get ELS out of my brain (like muffin @10) to end up with EVENTS and Seve. Nice for a change. My favourite was WEFTS for a great surface and the nice deception. The other favourite was CLEAR OFF for “like Van Gogh”.
No problems with SEDATE here.
GDU @14…. think Grog Shop
muffin @6… the classic map that confirms your case is The McArthur Projection
I enjoyed Brockwell’s previous appearances and this one was equally good. A very pleasant tussle with everything falling into place – except JETE: I am useless at even thinking of ballet moves, let alone naming them. Favourites included MOUSE TRAP, ROASTED, SET, TWELVES, PRESCRIBED and CLEAR OFF. Clever working of the theme.
Foxy SEXPOT: I am astounded to discover Samantha Fox is approaching 60.
Thanks Brockwell and Eileen (who keeps getting to parse BACK)
Robbo @23: with Mets and Jets within three clues, your cup (possibly) runneth over?
DOWN is a quadruple def – DOWN is the “heading” under which the DOWN clues appear.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mouse_Trap_(board_game)
…is celebrating its 60th birthday this year. Makes a change from 50-year-old albums.
PostMark@27: Wants only the Nets!
muffin@6
‘I may have been too influenced by ‘ The Elves and the Shoemaker, ‘but “mischievous creatures” didn’t suggest ELVES to me’ either.
(I like to think of it as the Latin plural of ELVIS)
Did anyone else have PLOT instead of CLOT? A different parsing but still works I think.
Apparently Brockwell is Grecian, and he said (Twitter or X): “I set today’s Guardian cryptic crossword, as Brockwell. The theme can be found in the previous sentence.” So, Sagittarius @7 seems to have cottoned on to it.
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/toffy
‘Adjective – TOFFY (comparative TOFFIER, superlative TOFFIEST) – (UK, Australia, New Zealand, derogatory) Posh, upper-class; snooty.
2007, Craig Sherborne, Muck, “As for that accent of his, his speaking in a TOFFY English way, it’s got TOFFIER since we’ve known him.”
2008 October 23, “The king of Corfu”, in The Economist: “Rather it lurks in the now-republished photos of Mr Osborne in the Fauntleroy outfit of the Bullingdon club, a TOFFY Oxford society of which he was a member at the same time as Mr Rothschild (and of which David Cameron, the Tory leader, is also an alumnus).”
2012, Paddy O’Reilly, The Fine Color of Rust,: “She heaves an exasperated sigh that would do a shop assistant in a TOFFY dress emporium proud.”‘
No citation for the superlative, though. We need to look here:
https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2009/oct/08/when-boris-met-dave
‘…TOFFIEST of all were the members of the Bullingdon, a dining club made up mainly of old Etonians who galloped around town on horses that weren’t there, braying and throwing pot plants through windows.’
But is using SET repeatedly in various ways really a theme? It reminds me of the sorts of thing another compiler, Boatman, is apt to deploy in his writings. Are the two related in some way?
I’m afraid I didn’t get on too well with this.
For 17ac STEEL if I had ‘Nerve of’ as the definition, but I like Eileen’s use of steel and nerve as verbs too.
This was a nicely accessible puzzle from Brockwell I thought, and of course the usual beautifully clear explanations from Eileen (I couldn’t see how Mouse was a peripheral). Thanks both!
Thanks, Robi @33 – no wonder I like Brockwell’s puzzles!
I am saddened, though not very surprised, to learn that anyone uses the appalling term Offie. Also Fox = Sexpot is rather like using Model to clue T.
Postmark @27. Interesting resonance between 1 and 3 down. With the second letter T from the crossers, my first thought for the New York squad was JETS (which I’d heard of), but I didn’t even bother to look up STEJ in Chambers. Then I vaguely remembered the METS. And then suddenly JET=black popped into my head for 3 down…
Entertaining crossword; Brockwell seems to have become one of the regular Guardian setters.
Mike B @38; fox is in all the main dictionaries as: An attractive young person, esp a woman (N American informal). I wondered why there were so many superlatives, doh! I had to reveal JETÉ in the end. I liked FIDGETY (anyone remember Steve McQueen’s Cooler King in the Great Escape?), TOFFIEST for the offies, CLEAR OFF for Van Gogh, and SECOND, which was nicely hidden.
Thanks Brockwell and Eileen.
https://greensdictofslang.com/entry/dwmjzgy
‘offie n. – also offy
[orig. a counter in a public house over which alcohol could be sold for consumption off the premises. The off-licence proper declined during the 1970s–80s but the term began to be used for wine merchants and similar stores]
an off-licence.
1977 [UK] Time Out: Not so much an offy… More a vintner.
1989 [UK] M. Amis London Fields: He went to get some [i.e. cigarettes], at the offie.
1999 [UK] Indep. on Sun. Real Life In the local offy he chose two bottles of rose wine.
2005 [Ire] P. Howard Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nightdress: He got tree year. Ram-raided the offy in a robbed Peugot.
2012 [Scot] I. Welsh Skagboys: On ay they Peroni’s Sick Boy bought fae the posh offy.
2014 [Scot] T. Black Artefacts of the Dead [ebook] Why’s he going to an offie?
2015 [Ire] L. McInerney Glorious Heresies: Duane had offered to do an offy run for the underagers.’
No [Aus] or [NZ} citations – which surprised me considering tinnies and barbies and dunnies…
Re 7dn – actually, seven is more than even – which is almost never reversed, though eventful!
?
Is 20a a regional thing? I would have said “BACK” = “bet on“. I just can’t come up with a plug-compatible usage with “bet” alone. Tx.
muffin@6 – actually, “heading south” has other meanings away from maps; who of us hasn’t seen at least one, or two, examples of such when we look in the mirror? And always down, sadly, no matter where the compass points!
I agree with others that this was most enjoyable; many thanks to Brockwell, and Eileen of course
A theme with a very visible panty-line for me, one of the most superlativiest ones I’ve seen.
TOFFY makes it into Chambers, so its -iest must also be valid despite objections as to elegance, while BET might be a goof.
Bit non-satis then, but all right.
PS OFFY also in the BRB.
FrankieG @ 41, if we had off licences in Australia, no doubt we’d call them offies, or maybe offoes. But we don’t, hence my confusion. Here they’re simply bottle shops, or bottle-o’s (apostrophe used reluctantly).
Nice to see Tim the Toffee get a mention. Everton supporters seem to be the most upper class?? I wondered if Brockwell was deliberately trying to make us think of the New York Knicks???
I was sure that old crossword favourite, TSETSE, would appear as the perfect clue in this one. So focused on that other chestnut, Els (and ET appears yet again), it took me ages to think of the wounderful SÈVE. CHILD FREE, SEXPOT and CLEAR OFF were my standouts.
Ta Brockwell and Eileen.
Inuisk @ 32, yes, I did too.
I hadn’t seen ERST without while attached and missed the parsing of TELEVISION… perhaps I forgot ..it was obviously = SET.
A very enjoyable romp with the sporting references but I’m not sure who could be TOFFIEST?
Thanks both
Robi @40 – re Steve McQueen : see the blog. 🙂
AlanC @ 50 lol.
Andy Doyle @17 rightly points out that not only is there liberal use of E, S and T but the solutions contain a number of SETs.
Very enjoyable. Thanks Brockwell and Eileen
Many thanks to Eileen, for the excellent blog. I’m really glad that it was you turn, as I always really value your feedback on my puzzles. Thank to everyone for the positive comments – it is much appreciated. This was a different style of puzzle to my usual and was my attempt to imitate (pay homage to) Brendan’s style. I’m continually amazed by his grid constructions. Someone on the Guardian blog actually described this puzzle as “Brendanesque”, which was particularly pleasing.
It’s been fun watching the theme being gradually unpicked here. In summary, all of the solutions relate to SET, through:
a) including the letters S, E and T, or
b) being a synonym of SET eg. CLOT, PRESCRIBED, STUD (as in set with jewels), or
c) including a word that can go before or after SET eg. JET-SET, SECOND SET, SET DOWN.
Of course, this did result in too many superlatives, which is a criticism I take squarely on the chin.
AlanC @50 – TSETSE was in there originally! I was hoping to link it with 18 and 24, but it fell by the wayside sadly.
Anyway, enough of my rambling. Huge thanks again to Eileen and commenters. B
Really enjoyed today’s puzzle, favourite was CLEAR OFF.
I also like it when setters come on hear to join the fun! Thanks Brockwell/Grecian. And thanks Eileen for the blog.
Can’t believe I spelled here as ‘hear’!
Another one for PLOT so failed on CHESS.
Amazed that anyone could be so snobbish to find offie offensive.
Due to the constant hunger for short, vowel-rich words, American-style crosswords are certainly no stranger to the JETÉ (almost always plainly clued as “ballet leap,” I guess because there’s not much room for cleverness with that one). Even so, that one was my last in.
[I solved this last night on my building’s garden terrace over a glass or two of wine; we had one of those perfect summer evenings that one desperately wants to bottle and save to uncork on some frigid bleak February day. This crossword went well with that. So thanks to Brockwell, and separately to Eileen for the blog.]
I once heard that the word SET has the record for the word with the largest number of distinct definitions, but I’m afraid I don’t have a source for that trivium, so it may be wrong.
Eileen @53; yes, sorry, forgot your comment.
STEEL = “nerve” doesn’t work for me.
Times Educational Supplement is new to me, as is the Mousetrap game, Kid Rock, Seve the golfer,
Never heard of “offies” either but guessed that from “off-license,” though I’ve never known what the license was,
Eileen, thanks for parsing WEFTS and ERST.
The Van Gogh clue is a little creepy.
WEFTS puzzles me. Can “weft” be a count noun? I think of ‘weft” as collectively all the threads woven crosswise across the warp.
Thanks to Brockwell and Eileen.
Thanks Brockwell for an excellent crossword and your comments on the blog. I had many favourites including FIDGETY, CHILD-FREE, SEXPOT, STUD, TOFFIEST, and CLEAR OFF. I couldn’t fully parse SET, MOUSE TRAP, or SEDATE so thanks Eileen (and KVa) for explaining.
[Gywn @58: I assumed it was autocorrect that caused the error.]
Valentine, think of STEEL=nerve with both as verbs. It’s not common, but people sometimes say they have to nerve themselves to do an unpleasant task.
Oh, and it’s probably a good thing you’ve never heard of Kid Rock, a talentless hack and an annoying person.
Mousetrap (which I think I mostly have seen as one word) is a fun game, which involves building a Rube Goldberg-style mousetrap (in a recent article in Games, I learned that his estate actually sued them). If there are kids in your life under the age of say 12, it’s worth seeking out.
Ragged @ 13
When lofty trees I see barren of leaves
Which erst from heat did canopy the herd
Shakespeare Sonnet 12.
Valentine @ 62 yes, weft can be a count noun. We were at an exhibition today which included some/loom weights which, according to the blurb, were used “to keep the wefts taut”.
Thanks Brockwell and Eileen.
[Simon S @67
That sounds odd. Surely it’s the warps that must be taut, so that the wefts can be woven (threaded) in between them?]
I think the play of the MOUSETRAP is in its 70th year now. I saw it as a teenager at The Ambassadors (?) theatre as a teenager in the early Sixties, and it seemed incredible even then that it had been running consecutively for over 10 years already….
muffin@66 You make a good point. You really couldn’t keep the weft(s) taut, because there’s a new weft strand being added at each stroke of the shuttle, and you could hardly add a weight to the next weft thread every time the shuttle went across. Surely the weights were for warp(?).
Inuitsk@33 yes I thought it was obviously Plot which works as well if not better
PLOT never occurred to me, but looking back I see that it really is just as good an answer as CLOT, if not better.
mrpenney @65
Heath Robinson, please. This is a British puzzle, after all 🙂 .
Very poor – one of the worst Guardian crosswords for some time.
Valentine@52 regardless of weights, if you had two looms side by side, it would be reasonable to talk about their wefts.
V@52 et al Chambers has an alternative definition for WEFT “The thread carried by the shuttle (also woof)”
Nice puzzle – everything I would have said has already been said so I’ll shut up and get back to work – the curse of the cruciverbal classes
Cheers B&E
Dick Miles @74
Could you be more specific? I thought it was very good!
Also Mr BROCKwell has own SET – thanks for the fun puzzle, and thank you Eileen for the helpful blog.
Is Mouse trap ONE word as a game? Otherwise really enjoyed this crossword
Paul Rock @79
No – it’s two words, as in the enumeration in the clue and in the blog. See here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mouse_Trap_(board_game)
Back home after my day away, with time to review the comments and kick myself for not identifying the ‘theme’. I had, in fact, noticed the several references to 18ac but still the penny didn’t drop.
I did know that, as Mr Penney points out @60, the word SET has the record for the word with the largest number of distinct definitions.
I’ve just done a count and roughly two thirds of the entries contain those three letters. What a clever puzzle, with so many layers. Many thanks to Brockwell / Grecian for dropping in and revealing them all.
I like to think that, had it been Brockwell’s third Prize puzzle, with more time to think about it, I might have eventually got there.
As a huge admirer of Brendan’s puzzles myself, I’d endorse the Brendanesque description. Huge thanks again, Brockwell.
[Eileen @81: With the exception of Arachnoid, Brendanesque is about the highest compliment one can make about a setter.]
Thumbs up to muffin@10 – nice to have a different golfer (whom I couldn’t see to parse!).
I enjoyed this but ran out of time and will have to read the blog on the morrow. Manana.
9a – how do you begin to know to use H & E from Hoylake? I had no idea what 18a was, so couldn’t get this clue (among many, many others)
11a – wow. If you don’t know MOUSE is peripheral, is there another way to solve this?
17a – I changed PILOT to PIVOT and screwed up everything connected to that.
25a – how do you know to take TY from “totally”?
I have too many questions about down clues!
Can a setter use any random initial from any word to make a clue work? There seems to be so much guesswork involved.
Hi Steffen @84
It’s a frustrating game, isn’t it? My best mate is currently trying to learn how to solve cryptics. He’s working his way through Chambers Crossword Manual by Don Manley and is finding it really helpful.
All the best, B
Thanks, Eileen. I missed SEDATE also because I dismissed the first word as too long for part of the oddness.
Thanks also Brockwell fora most enjoyable crossword.
Stefen@84 9a on vacation means remove all the interior letters of Hoylàke. 25a is similar but now exhausted replaces on vacation
Hi Steffen
9ac: ‘Hoylake on vacation’ = Hoylake ’emptied’, so just the first and last letters.
18ac: other people didn’t know of the TES – I was a teacher and so I did!
11ac – as I said, I didn’t know a mouse was a peripheral until this morning and nearly ended up with egg on my face. I googled ‘peripheral’ and found out!
17ac: you needed to find a different word for ‘pilot’.
25ac: same as 9ac: ‘totally exhausted’ means first and last letters.
I’m so impressed by your perseverance!
Apologies for the crossing, Dave E @86.
Stefen: I didn’t know MOUSE was a peripheral either but I had M-U-E plus TRAP so the answer became obvious. I’m often a better guesser than parser and I occasionally resort to using a word finder (onelook.com) if I’m stuck.
Steffen @84:
9a and 25a use variants of the same device, which you’ll get the hang of once you’ve seen it a few times. It’s the “remove the contents” trick.
“Hoylake on vacation” means HOYLAKE after it has been vacated, or emptied. To empty it, you remove the contents. This means you remove all the letters in the middle, leaving behind only the first and last letter. The metaphor here is that the two outer letters of a word can be thought of as a box “containing” the remaining letters.
“totally exhausted” means TOTALLY after it has been exhausted, in the sense of completely used up and emptied, like a fuel tank when the fuel has run dry. Again, we remove the contents and are left with the “container”, the letters T and Y.
After a while, the very small number of ways of indicating removal of contents will likely start to seem rather clichéd, and you will spot them a mile off. Look out for “discontented” as another common codeword for this. A good exercise is to spend a few minutes thinking of and writing down a few such codewords yourself (“hollowed”, “gutted”, etc). After doing so, you’ll surely become noticeably quicker at spotting the various forms that a setter might use, as well as appreciating when a setter has done it particularly artfully.
Words like “envelope” or “cover” give another way of indicating the outer two letters of a word. Instead of removing the internal letters, we instead point directly at the outer letters.
Good luck, and have fun with it!
Thanks for the fun, Brockwell, and thanks too, Eileen, for parsing those I bunged in without understanding: STEEL, BACKS and STEM.
For those who thought PLOT would do for CLOT, I can’t see how that would fit in with the theme, explained by the setter, that ALL the answers had a connection with SET.
Big ol’ DNF today, and I missed the theme too. I liked TWELVES and CHILD-FREE.
How do people not know that a MOUSE is a peripheral? It’s not like they haven’t been around for most of our lives. Anything attached to a computer is a peripheral – mouse, keyboard, monitor, light pen (remember those?), speakers …
I find Steffen’s contributions interesting. My heart is particularly gladdened when I see the generous responses such as from Eileen and Girabra; for me, 15² at its best…..
A delightful crossword from a seemingly delightful person….
Many thanks both and all
Maybe too late, but thank you, Brockwell, for ingenious setting (!), and for dropping by with enlightening comments. And thanks to Eileen for the blog.
And I fully concur with William F P @93; it’s heartening to read generous contributions like those from Eileen and Girabra in response to puzzled queries – 15² is terrific.
This being my first Cryptic, I parsed 1a as TEES + H.
This being my first comment, I should have said……I parsed 1a as an anagram of TEES + H….. 😉
Getting there ..