Apologies for the lateness of this blog – which I think is the last of the many York S&B puzzles – hope it was worth waiting for! (If you haven’t tried it, you should be able to access it here.)
(It has taken a while for the York fug to clear from my brain, and I came home to a house full of visiting relatives demanding my attention…)
BertandJoyce did an excellent job of soliciting puzzles and allocating bloggers for them, and it was lovely to catch up with them and all the other attendees – regulars and newbies – in York over the two days.
But before I went, I had this piece of homework to do! And I have to say, I found it quite a stiff test – taking a few passes and a couple of returns to get it all worked out. Maybe because it was a new setter to me; maybe I was a bit solved-out from the Times shindig the week before…I’ll take any excuse I can get!
As I often do, I had a quick scan through the clues and then started at the bottom right – working on my theory that there are usually some shorter words down there, and the setter may have run out of steam or time by the time they get there, so the clueing may be a bit easier. I teased out TEUTON at 24D and immediately guessed that this might be a setter-themed puzzle, as Robert TEUTON is a regular Mephisto setter, among many other strings to his bow. I also wondered whether those unches at the top and bottom might be used to reveal some sort of SnB Nina…
These theories gradually fell by the wayside, as I worked through the rest of the clues and started filling the grid – with no other obvious names or Nina jumping out.
I particularly enjoyed the image of a bare-chested medallion-less (M)AURIC(E) Gibb at 11A; the PHASERS used by Star Trekkers at 19D as they boldly went; the electrified doorbell of the BORDELLO at 17D – surely that would scare potential customers away?!; and the ‘Hackney knacker’ with his homophonic ‘orse truck at 26A AWESTRUCK. The conversion of CONGER to LONGER at 1D by halving the first letter, Roman-numeral stylee, was very clever. And I’m not sure what PostMark is confessing to in the surface read of 15D!
But I struggled with some of the shorter entries – I put BITES at 16A (BIT_S – sections – around E – ecstasy tablet, pill?), which slowed me down a bite. And I took a while to see the (well) hidden ORAL at 14A; the church room – vestry – minus the saint at 18A VERY; and my LOI, with associated face-palm, was LOOPS at 6A.
Looking back, I’m not sure why I found those last few particularly hard, but I got there in the end!
I had a few interesting conversations with PostMark over the weekend – both about this puzzle, his setting style in general, and life, the universe, and everything. I know he will be keen to get feedback, so I will say thanks to him for this challenge, and turn this over to the comments below…
| Across | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Clue No | Solution | Clue (definition underlined)
Logic/parsing |
||
| 6A | LOOPS | Turns left, that’s a mistake (5)
L (left) + OOPS (that’s a mistake!) |
||
| 8A | PLAINTIFF | Modest retiring tech fellows party in suits (9)
PLAIN (modest) + TI (IT, technology, backwards, or retiring) + FF (fellows) [a plaintiff is a party in a legal suit] |
||
| 10A | NIGHTFALL | Eve once going topless, Man’s original sin? (9)
( |
||
| 11A | AURIC | A Bee Gee stripped of gold? (5)
( |
||
| 12A | ENROL | Register flood range regularly taken aback (5)
regular letters, reversed, from ‘fLoOd RaNgE’ |
||
| 13A | INCOGNITO | Criminal noticing nothing’s unmarked (9)
INCOGNIT (anag, i.e. criminal, of NOTICING) + O (nothing, zero) |
||
| 14A | ORAL | What’s said on board for a laugh (4)
hidden word, i.e. on board, in ‘fOR A Laugh’ |
||
| 16A | STABS | Tries pill in sections (5)
S_S (section, plural) around TAB (tablet, pill) |
||
| 18A | VERY | Quite pious chap wanting room in church (4)
VE( |
||
| 21A | PURCHASER | One buying straight short with something to wash it down (9)
PUR( |
||
| 23A | OUTDO | Best antipasto menu not offered to those arriving last (5)
last letters, i.e. those arriving last, of ‘antipastO menU noT offereD tO’ |
||
| 25A | RASPS | Files charges implicating son (5)
RA_PS (criminal charges) around (implicating) S (son) |
||
| 26A | AWESTRUCK | Knocked out van for Hackney knacker? (9)
dialectic homophone – a knacker, or horse slaughterer, from ‘Ackney, East London, might call their HORSE TRUCK an ‘ORSE TRUCK, which can sound like AWESTRUCK! |
||
| 27A | LIVERPOOL | City dweller’s watering hole (9)
LIVER (dweller) + POOL (watering hole) |
||
| 28A | WOOER | Women love old English Romeo; he’s solicitous (5)
W (women) + O (zero, or love) + O (old) + E (English) + R (Romeo, phonetic alphabet) |
||
| Down | ||||
| Clue No | Solution | Clue (definition underlined)
Logic/parsing |
||
| 1D | LONGER | She wants eel head halved (6)
A CONGER eel, with C (100, Roman numerals) halved to L (50) = LONGER! |
||
| 2D | APIARIST | One hoping to see Queen unfortunately missing out on aspiration? (8)
subtractive anagram, i.e. unfortunately, of ASPIRATI( [an apiarist would look out for the Queen bee] |
||
| 3D | GARLIC | A college girl’s new chef crushes it in kitchen (6)
anag, i.e. new, of A + C (college) + GIRL |
||
| 4D | ENLARGE | Swell city in space run with support from General Electric (7)
EN (space, printing) + LA (Los Angeles, city) + R (run, cricket scoring) + GE (General Electric) |
||
| 5D | MIGRAINE | Note corn, perhaps, on one’s foot; it’s a pain (8)
MI (note, from do-re-mi) + GRAIN (corn, perhaps) + E (foot, or bottom letter – in a Down clue – of onE) |
||
| 6D | LANCE CORPORAL | Road material restricting opening to cab rank (5,8)
LAN_E (road) around (restricting) C (opening letter of Cab) + CORPORAL (material) |
||
| 7D | SETTLE | Clear witness adopts dry line (6)
SE_E (witness) around (adopting) TT (teetotal, dry) + L (line) |
||
| 9D | FACTORY WORKER | Strong player, given bowler’s delivery, defending with hand (7,6)
F (forte, strong, music) + ACTOR (player) + Y_ORKER (bowler’s delivery, in cricket) around (defending) W (with) |
||
| 15D | ABRASIVE | Adult lingerie setter’s wearing (8)
A (adult) + BRAS (lingerie, underwear) + IVE (I’ve, from the setter’s point of view) |
||
| 17D | BORDELLO | Doorbell’s electrified here, hostess’s entertaining trick? (8)
anag, i.e. electrified, of DOORBELL |
||
| 19D | PHASERS | Boldly go for a shot with these stunners! (7)
&lit-ish/CD? In Star Trek, where the characters ‘boldly go’, they have PHASERS which are used to stun people – the inspiration for Tasers?… |
||
| 20D | KOWTOW | Grovel lower in speech to wife (6)
KOW (homophone, i.e. in speech – KOW can sound like COW, lower, one that lows) + TO + W (wife) |
||
| 22D | SHADOW | Dog show is all about promotion (6)
SH_OW around AD (advert, promotion) |
||
| 24D | TEUTON | German went out exercising to lose weight (6)
subtractive anagram, i.e. exercising, of ( |
||
Thanks, PostMark and mc_rapper67!
A lovely puzzle and a detailed neat blog!
PHASERS
‘Phasers on Kill’ by ‘Boldly Go’ (a Star Trek Punk Band)—PM alluded to this?
I haven’t listened to the song. Just found it online.
PM’s annotated solutions say ‘cryptic definition’. What the blog explains should be what PM intended.
Thanks mc for a great and comprehensive blog, and PM for a puzzle which I very much enjoyed.
Favourites were probably AURIC (amusing surface) and LANCE CORPORAL (cleverly hidden definition), but I had plenty of ticks, too many to mention. I couldn’t quite see the parsing of APIARIST but it’s obvious when explained.
It was good to see you both at the weekend.
I thoroughly enjoyed solving this in York – very tricky in places, but in a satisfying rather than irritating way. Several clues went in a smile and an “Oh you *git*”, not least APIARIST, which I spent forever looking at before the penny dropped. It possibly didn’t help that I was sat with the setter, which adds a bit of pressure…
As we were organising bloggers for the S&B puzzles, we received them all before the celebrations. We solved them all before the day and blogged quite a few too! We solved and blogged so many that it is difficult to remember all the details (anything to do with age as well, we hear you say?).
However we do know that we enjoyed PostMark’s puzzle. What was quite interesting too, apart from the smooth surfaces was finding out that DOORBELL and BORDELLO were anagrams of each other. We thought it was a possible anagram but had to check it on our Chambers’ app.
We liked LANCE CORPORAL too – the definition was well hidden as were some of the others. Maybe it was that fact that made it a tricky solve.
Thanks to PostMark and MC – good to see you both in York.
Thanks PM, top stuff Favourites include AURIC, ORAL, AWESTRUCK, ABRASIVE and TEUTON amongst plenty of contenders in a very enjoyable solve. Thanks again!
Thanks PostMark and mc_rapper67.
Although I couldn’t make it to the event, I decided to make time to solve five of the puzzles submitted – this being my fifth!
I very much appreciated the quality of the clues in this puzzle: effort and ingenuity evidently went into constructions and surfaces alike. I liked PLAINTIFF, AURIC, APIARIST, MIGRAINE, TEUTON and KOWTOW especially.
I failed to solve ORAL, but ‘hiddens’ are my Achilles’ heel (for which I haven’t yet found have a cure!).
Setter dropping in to thank MC for a splendid blog and those who have commented for doing so. MC – that’s a superbly precise parsing of the clues and I enjoyed reading your topping and tailing. Likewise, good to meet you in York and I am pleased the delay in the blog was not occasioned by anything I might have said during the curry in the evening!
KVa @2: firstly, thanks for your support and, secondly, I’d imagine there are few setters who would complain if a solver sees something &littish in a clue. It was not my intention – PHASER is not in Chambers so I wanted a cryptic surface that would make the solution as clear as possible and the most famous split infinitive of all time is indelibly associated with the series.
Minor pedantry alert!
Down clues are labelled as Across
Thanks for all the comments so far – much appreciated as usual – and especially to PostMark for dropping in.
Looks like it was enjoyed by all and sundry – and Amoeba’s experience of solving a puzzle while sitting in a pub with the setter must be fairly rare – but at least they are on hand to be called a ‘g1t’, if the occasion arises!
Nice research by KVa at #1 – my musical memory led me to The Firm and ‘Star Trekkin’ in 1987…which went something like:
‘There’s pedants on the starboard bow, starboard bow, starboard bow; there’s pedants on the starboard bow, starboard bow, Admin!‘
I would beg to differ with KVa at #2 – I was sent PM’s annotated solutions with the puzzle (which may have been the first time in 450-odd blogs) but I chose to not look at them. I see the blog as the blogger’s experience of the puzzle, with the comments section available for other solvers – and occasionally the setters – to give their opinions/experiences, and point out any errors above.
(I accept it isn’t an &lit, because there is no wordplay, but I am not an expert in clue-type classification – I tend to move on too quickly to the next clue – so ‘&lit-ish/CD?’ is my cop-out way of saying I can’t quite classify this one…’punning CD’ might be closer…)
mc_rapper67@10
I think my comment@2 didn’t come out well. It was not my intention to say that you wrote the blog based on PM’s annotated solutions. I meant something else.
When PM said it was a cryptic def, it had to be that because that’s how he set the clue.
When what you said in your blog matched with the setter’s intended logic, I concluded that my logic must have been wrong.
Have I clarified my point or have I added more confusion? 🙂
Thanks for the blog and the LINK , I managed to brave the IT office to get this printed .
Very neat set of clues and surprising confession at 15D , but people are very tolerant these days.
I agree with mc@10 , I would never read the annotations and I never look at blogs until I have finished the puzzle. It leads to a more interesting range of views.
For what it is worth I take the classical view for &LIt – The WHOLE clue is the definition , the WHOLE clue gives the wordplay . They are quite rare.
Just got round to tackling this one, and certainly quite a humdinger! I didn’t quite parse NIGHTFALL (I should have) nor VERY – the ‘vestry’ passed me by altogether. But no matter, much to like here: LANCE CORPORAL, APIARIST (I vaguely remember using ‘Queen’ in that sense myself once, but I still struggled with it); FACTORY WORKER (sympathy for non-cricket-oriented solvers!), LIVERPOOL (why did that one take me so long?); PURCHASER; and ABRASIVE for the misdirection (no I very much doubt that’s PM’s fetish, so stop it!), and PLAINTIFF (more super misdirection).
But that’s not to say the other clues weren’t just as good too.
LONGER I’m a bit doubtful about: excellent wordplay but I think the definition is a bit weak.
AURIC probably took me longer than most solvers, because pop culture GK always leaves me stranded – even that as famous and historic as the BGs – but I got there without resorting to Wiki! I did try toying with H[or]SE (‘gee’ – geddit?) but of course that didn’t work.
Thanks to PM and Mc_R: good to meet you both at York. Now – anyone want to have a bash at Yours Truly’s? 🙂