Gaff wakes up the Thursday morning grey cells.
I found this one a bit of a challenge and as usual didn't spot the theme until I had a full grid. The characters WALLACE and GROMIT (different spelling) appear in the grid as do WRONG TROUSERS (their second film) and FEATHERS McGRAW (their evil penguin lodger in the same film). There may be other allusions to the animated pair, but I don't see any obvious ones.
As to the puzzle itslef, it required a fair bit of general knowledge to complete (McGraw Hill, Wallace and cassia tora, e.g.), but I like a bit of general knowledge in my puzzles, so no complaints there.
I wasn't keen on "redheads" to indicate RE in 8dn, and thought the anagramn fodder for CASSIA TORA at 24 ac was confused by the superfluous 1 in the clue. Also, I don't think PERSECUTOR and FANATIC are synonymous.
Thanks Gaff.
| ACROSS | ||
| 1 | REMOTE |
Finally hear express in the distance (6)
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[finally] (hea)R + EMOTE ("express") |
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| 4 | STRAINER |
Leaves receptacle in small coach (8)
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S (small) + TRAINER ("coach") The leaves are of course tea leaves. |
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| 10 | WALLACE |
Defence supremo (7)
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WALL ("defence") + ACE ("supremo") and &lit. It is possible that, at the time of writing this puzzle, Ben WALLACE would have been the Secretary of State for Defence, although he was replaced by Grant Shapps three weeks ago. The setter may of course have been referring to William Wallace, the great Scots warrior, a memorial to whom is situated about 150 yards from where I am sitting now. |
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| 11 | OUTFLOW |
A figurehead leaves OFWAT struggling with foul discharge (7)
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*(owt foul) [anag:struggling], where OWT is A + F(igure)[head] leaving O(f)W(a)T |
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| 12 | ROBE |
Cloak and dagger to plumb loose ends (4)
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(dagge)R (t)O (plum)B (loos)E [ends] |
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| 13 | PERSECUTOR |
Plum quota of gold for fanatic (10)
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PERSE ("plum"-coloured) + CUT ("quota") + OR ("of gold", in heraldry) |
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| 16 | ENTRAP |
Catch criminal parent (6)
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*(parent) [anag:criminal] |
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| 17 | GROMMET |
Dirt covering French woman’s ring (7)
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GROT ("dirt") covering Mme. (Madame, so "French woman") |
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| 20 | PLAYBOY |
CAD magazine (7)
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Double definition, the first being a synonym of "cad", rather than Computer Aided Design (CAD) |
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| 21 | BLITHE |
Lightbulb lit, he’s content and happy (6)
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Hidden in [content] "lightbulB LIT HE's" |
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| 24 | CASSIA TORA |
Herb produced by AI at 1 across (6,4)
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*(ai at across) [anag:produced by] The 1 in 1 across appears to be superfluous and makes it difficult to easily identify the anagram fodder. |
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| 25 | RENT |
Split cost of housing (4)
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Double definition |
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| 27 | RISOTTO |
Stirred unfinished tortoise dish (7)
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*(tortois) [anag:stirred] where TORTOIS is [unfinished] TORTOIS(e) |
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| 29 | NOISOME |
Awful sound receives award (7)
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NOISE ("sound") receives OM (Order of Merit, so "award") |
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| 30 | WARDROBE |
Dress for action and title honour (8)
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WAR ("action") + Dr. (doctor, so "title") + OBE (Order of the British Empire, so "honour") |
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| 31 | ALARMS |
Starts half-term in woe (6)
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[half] (te)RM in ALAS ("woe") |
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| DOWN | ||
| 1 | REWARDED |
Paid to grass about charge (8)
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REED ("grass") about WARD ("charge") |
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| 2 | MILKBOTTLES |
Kind business leader covered in speckles provides doorstep deliveries (11)
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ILK ("kind") + B(usiness) [leader] covered in MOTTLES ("speckles") |
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| 3 | TO A T |
Perfectly topless ermine (2,1,1)
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[topless] (s)TOAT ("ermine") |
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| 5 | TROUSERS |
Customer caught in retrograde kind of arse-covering (8)
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USER ("customer") caught in [retrogade] <=SORT ("kind") |
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| 6 | ALTOCUMULI |
Clouds of talcum you finally mixed with oil (10)
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*(talcum u oil) [anag:mixed with] where U is (yo)U [finally] |
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| 7 | NIL |
Line-up reveals initial score (3)
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Hidden backwards in [up…reveals] in "LINe" |
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| 8 | REWIRE |
Jam ladies between redheads and engineers to make new connections (6)
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WI (Women's Institute, where "ladies" are famed for their "jam" (think Jam and Jerusalem)) between RE(d) [heads] and RE (Royal "engineers") |
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| 9 | JEWEL |
Could be jade, extremely well-cut (5)
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J(ad)E [extremely] + WEL(l) [cut] and &lit. |
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| 14 | THEATREGOER |
Surgeon often found in acting circles? (11)
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Cryptic definition |
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| 15 | BABYSITTER |
Endless void permeates hostile child- minder (10)
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[endless] ABYS(s) ("void") permeates BITTER ("hostile") |
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| 18 | CONTROL B |
Management born to make characters bold (7,1)
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CONTROL ("management") + B (born) On a PC keyboard, highlighting text and pressing CONTROL(or CTRL) and B at the same time will make the text bold. |
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| 19 | FEATHERS |
It’s down to woman’s underachievement (8)
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HERS ("women's") under FEAT ("achievement") |
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| 22/26 | MCGRAW HILL |
Book company to host a white hot barbecue outside (6,4)
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MC ("host") with GRILL ("barbecue") outside A + W (white) + H (hot) |
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| 23 | WRONG |
Treat badly-grown bananas (5)
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*(grown) [anag:bananas] |
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| 26 |
See 22
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| 28 | SIR |
Starts settling into residential address (3)
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[starts (of)] S(ettling) I(nto) R(esidential) |
Reading the plot of The Wrong Trousers there are many other allusions to the film too many to list .Anyway I have not seen it so the film was no help.I only spotted the theme when I had GROMMET towards the end of my solve. An amusing puzzle so many thanks to Gaff and Loonapick,who is lucky to live near Stirling, a part of the world I know well.
SM@2 – although I studied at Stirling Uni, so know the monument you are thinking of, I was referring to the Wallace monument in Robroyston, near Glasgow, which marks the spot where he was captured by the English.
https://media-cdn.tripadvisor.com/media/photo-p/0d/7b/68/a8/william-wallace-monument.jpg
200 yards further away is Wallace Well where he drew his water.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/53/Wallace%27s_Well_-_geograph.org.uk_-_1491912.jpg
Thanks Loonapick. My wife was born in Glasgow and I had my last meal as a bachelor in Stirling. My sister in law worked for a few years at Stirling Uni. All very nostalgic.
Jam ladies ?
That ? was supposed to be a smiley face!
As SM says, there are other allusions to the films in the puzzle (though I completely forgot about the existence of a theme until coming here). MILKBOTTLES, for example: https://iv1.lisimg.com/image/11883607/640full-feathers-mcgraw.jpg
I have never been able to do Gaff’s puzzles but he is popular so I thought I’d investigate.
(With Elgar, Monk, Tyrus and before with Araucaria) I usually find Chambers crossword dictionaryand the odd word search.
But they dont cut it with Gaff-maybe there should be a Gaff crossword dictionary
For example “express” does not list EMOTE in my Chambers, Fanatic does not list PERSECUTOR and Plum did not list PERSE
Action does not list WAR-Cassia Tory does not feature in list of herbs(Ive never heard of it)
GROT does appear foe Dirt so to be fair having got WALLACE there was a vague chance of getting GROMMET
And I had WRONG but the parsing of TROUSERS was obscure for me-shame as I loved the episodes/
So I’ll leave it to you Gaffologists
Never done a Gaff before – made plenty though
Is CASSIS TORA maybe A=artificial acting as the anagrind then the fodder is I+AT+A(1)+ACROSS
Cheers L&G
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wrong_Trousers
‘The WRONG TROUSERS(1993) … debuted in the UK on 26 December 1993 … won the Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film in 1994.
Plot
‘On GROM[ME->I]T’s birthday, WALLACE gives him … techno-trousers to take him on walks. … Wallace … does not have enough money to pay off debts, … lets (RENT) the spare bedroom to a penguin… The penguin … secretly REWIREs them for REMOTE CONTROL[B]. … the penguin is a wanted criminal, who disguises himself as a chicken, FEATHERS MCGRAW. … Gromit … discovers Feathers’ plans to steal a diamond (JEWEL) from the museum.
While Wallace sleeps, Feathers marches him to the museum and uses … a remotely operated crane claw, … accidentally triggers the ALARM[S]. As Wallace wakes up, Feathers marches him back to the house and [EN]TRAPs him and Gromit in a WARDROBE.
Gromit rewires the trousers to break open the wardrobe. He and Wallace pursue Feathers aboard their model train set. … After Feathers’ train collides with the trousers, Gromit captures him in an empty MILKBOTTLE[S]. … Wallace and Gromit pay their debts with the REWARD[ED] money.’
“Cracking TOA[s]T, Gromit!”
What copmus said. I couldn’t do this. I tried using word searches but no suggestion of CASSIA TORA, MCGRAW HILL, CONTROL B, so there was a whole quarter left uncompleted.
Last time you had to turn ‘toward sister’ into ‘ward sister’ to solve the clue. This time you have to pretend 1 across is just across. Why?
It’s available on the BBC iPlayer here:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b08nfjwt/wallace-and-gromit-the-wrong-trousers
At the end the trousers can be seen walking off into the sunset, disappearing over a HILL.
James @10 no pretending required for 1 if you use the parsing I suggested @8
Well done FrankieG . I must watch the film with my grandchildren.
Not great for me either. Very much The Wrong Gromit.
bodycheetah @12 using the A for artificial as anagram indicator is ingenious. If you’re right, it’s a shame the device is scuppered by there being another possible indicator, having a bunch of A’s in the solution to confuse matters, as well as requiring 1 to be turned into A, iffy in itself.
A great puzzle which we enjoyed (apart from reservations about redheads and fanatic, and checking cassia tora via Google). We’ll dig out the DVD of The Wrong Trousers later.
Thanks, Gaff and loonapick
Bodycheetah @8 and 12: it’s hard to know whether you are being serious 😀 A for artificial is certainly not in Chambers and even if it were, that would be a peculiarly evil and indirect way of indicating an anagram. For what it’s worth, about, acting and active can all be indicated by A and they are in Chambers and any of them could serve as an anagrind but I, for one, would consider that egregious in the extreme.
With you on that PostMark. Let’s use Occam’s Razor and simply say Gaff made a gaffe.
AI is pretty much unavoidable but for anyone unfamiliar it stands for Artificial Intelligence. I think the full anagrind is “produced by artificial”
Gaff doesn’t strike me as the kind of setter who would accidentally leave a 1 unaccounted for but I am unfamiliar with his/her work so who knows
Evil or ingenious? A matter of subjective opinion surely
Thanks for the blog, a theme I liked for once, the train track sequence at the end is my favourite peice of animation. I watch it with the sprogs every Christmas, they have grown out of it but I have not.
I also suspect that the extra A in the anagram was just a mistake.
I had THEATREGOER as a double definition .
I quit with four to go.
Got the theme when getting Wallace and remembering that it was the 25th anniversary recently.
That still didn’t help me with Persecutor, even though I had all the crosses and guessed it was ending Cutor – because I can’t see that fanatic means persecutor.
Also missed the herb, which I have never heard of, as well as the rather easy babysitter, and Playboy.
Hmmmmm
I sometimes try Gaff puzzles, occasionally finish them, but often grumble.
Thanks