Cyclops 780 – Ignorant Scaremongering

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Cyclops might have been caught a bit off guard by the announcement of the General Election, given setting lead times and the fortnightly publication cadence, but he seems to have hit one nail on the head…

…with the IGNORANT SCAREMONGERING going on in certain elements of the press – and certain elements of the candidacy!

Also a topical nod to the sewage dumping antics of our WATER COMPANIES – there really will be a sh!t-load of Augean stables to be cleaned out by whoever wins in three weeks’ time.

In a probably unintentional parody of some of the recent election debates, the leaders don’t get a look in, but the second echelon do – Angela Rayner, Mike Pence (OK, he’s American, and ex-VP) and Jacob Really-Smug (OK, he’s more third or fourth echelon these days) all getting mentions in the clues…and thankfully no Trump. (Who, by the way, is now a ‘Republican convict’, as I predicted in Cyclops 778.)

Otherwise, just a lot of Cyclops-ean fun and games with surface reads, definitions and a smattering of skoolboy smuttery – 9A being a case in point!

 

 

My thanks to Cyclops as usual, and maybe a suggestion: get all those Sunak clues, anagrinds, wordplays and definitions into the next puzzle, cos you might have to bin them otherwise!

 

Clue No Solution Clue (definition underlined)

Logic/parsing
1A WATER COMPANIES Sewage dumpers presenting basic element concerns (5,9)

WATER (basic element) + COMPANIES (concerns, businesses)

[sewage dumping isn’t actually part of the job description for a water company, it is more of a hobby/side hustle!]
8A HORRID Appalling hospital alternative (free) (6)

H (hospital) + OR (alternative) + RID (free)
9A TEAMWORK Two make out, holding end of plonker, pulling together (8)

TEAMWO_K (anag, i.e. out, of TWO MAKE) around (holding) R (end of plonkeR!)
10A IGNORANT Clueless, go in shift to rave (8)

IGNO (anag, i.e. shift, of GO IN) + RANT (rave)
12A TOFFEE Rees-Mogg type on drugs? Sweet! (6)

TOFF (posh person, i.e. Rees-Mogg type) + EE (E = ecstasy tablet, drug, plural)
13A GOBBY Travel book from the pen of … Angela Rayner according to her detractors? (5)

GO (travel) + B (book) + BY (from the pen of)
15A PERCHANCE Possibly old-fashioned ex-vice president drinks ‘right’ tea (9)

PE_NCE (Mike Pence, ex-VP of US) around (drinking) R (right) + CHA (tea)
18A TRAFALGAR Battle time: far right gala disrupted (9)

T (time) + RAFALGAR (anag, i.e. disrupted, FAR + R (right) + GALA)
19A WHITE(-OUT) & 4 It offers a poor view of WASP leader declared to be gay (5-3)

WHITE (leading word of ‘White Anglo-Saxon Protestant’, or WASP) + OUT (declared to be gay)
21A UPBEAT Finished with whip and cheerful (6)

UP (finished) + BEAT (whip)
23A YIELDING Flourishing, with new leader giving way (8)

(W)IELDING (flourishing) with a different first letter, or leader, could be YIELDING
25A KNOCK OFF Kill Roger and Nick (5,3)

KNOCK (roger, slang, have sex with) + OFF (steal, nick)

As per various comments, this is better parsed as a triple definition – to KNOCK OFF can be to kill; or to have sex with/roger; or to steal.
27A EMBODY Cyclops is about to get stiff – that’s manifest (6)

EM (me, i.e. Cyclops, about) + BODY (stiff, i.e. a dead body)
28A SCAREMONGERING Roger’s involved with menacing – a tabloid specialism (14)

anag, i.e. involved, of ROGERS + MENACING
Down
Clue No Solution Clue (definition underlined)

Logic/parsing
1D WRONGDOER Dog owner abandoned Rottweiler’s lead – criminal (9)

WRONGDOE (anag, i.e. abandoned, of DOG OWNER) + R (leading letter of Rottweiler)
2D TORSO Balls-up on standing order for body part (5)

TOR (interjection, rot!, or balls!, up) + SO (Standing Order)
3D RADIAL Republican puts on a face, heading away from the centre (6)

R (Republican) + A + DIAL (face)
4D OUT See 19ac. (3)

see 19A
5D PRACTICE Business incurs penalty (restricting legislation) (8)

PR_ICE (penalty) around (restricting) ACT (legislation)
6D NEWSFLASH Latest exposure of member’s programme intervention (9)

NEWS (latest) + FLASH (exposure of member!)
7D EERIE Pressure off Lords member? That is strange (5)

(P)EER (peer, or Lords member, without P – pressure off) + IE (id est, that is)
11D THERAPY Those people concealing criminal charge get treatment (7)

THE_Y (those people) around (concealing) RAP (criminal charge)
14D BUFFET CAR Polish alien, automatic meals on wheels provider? (6,3)

BUFF (polish) + ET (extra-terrestrial, alien) + CAR (automatic)
16D CAT-AND-DOG Very quarrelsome whip, Dan upset Harry (3-3-3)

CAT (whip) + AND (anag, i.e. upset, of DAN) + DOG (harry, pester)
17D PLATFORM Party’s declared policy that’s of use to an oil company? (8)

double defn. – a PLATFORM can be a political position or policy; and an oil rig PLATFORM can be of use to an oil company
20D SECEDE Conservative hack in spot – “Withdraw!” (6)

SE_E (spot) around C (Conservative) + ED (editor, journalist, hack)
22D PANIC 1000 escapes from state prison, causing alarm (5)

PA (Pennsylvania, US state) + NIC(K) (prison, without K, 1000 escaping!)
24D DUBAI What King Brian might do with controversial technology for the city (5)

DUB (King Charles, nicknamed Brian by the Eye, dubs people with a sword when conferring knighthoods) + AI (controversial technology)
26D FUN Kitty gets end away for entertainment (3)

FUN(D) – kitty, with end away!

11 comments on “Cyclops 780 – Ignorant Scaremongering”

  1. Thank you for the blog. I hadn’t appreciated what “dub” meant in 24D, and also hadn’t understood WHITE-OUT properly.

    But for 25A, I think KNOCK OFF is a triple definition. It can mean to kill, have sex with, or steal.

  2. Liked PERCHANCE, WHITE-OUT, EMBODY, NEWSFLASH and DUBAI.

    Thanks Cyclops and mc_rapper67!

    YIELDING
    W (with) as the new leader, ‘giving away’ will become ‘flourishing’?
    Just tried to see if it worked this way. It didn’t.
    A random new leader in wIELDING as the blog says. Guessable and
    no complaints.

    Edit: Agree with PeterW@1 on KNOCK OFF

  3. Thanks for the blog, typically good fun and I think you are right about it being written before the election was called. NEWSFLASH was very neat. WHITE-OUT a new term for me , I only got it from the wordplay, I wonder why it said King Brian ? Brian is usually enough in these puzzles.
    I agree with Peter@1 for knock off, Roger seems to be a favoured term for Cyclops. There is a Roger Plenty who writes letters to the Guardian on population control, I suspect it is a spoof.

  4. Thanks, mc_rapper67 and Cyclops, for another enjoyable crossword and blog.
    For 11d, I wondered if THOSE PEOPLE would really be THEM rather than THEY.

  5. Enjoyed this.
    13a GOBBY, had to google Angela Rayner to find out that she is indeed known as being “gobby”, rightly or wrongly. I don’t have any strong opinions about her but I do feel that the Chancellor of the Exchequer (if she gets there) should be like Caesar’s wife, beyond suspicion. But I’ll live with it; Mrs Rishi Sunak only recently relinquished non-dom status, voluntarily, just to look good I suppose. There is a difference; non-dom is legally OK; tax relief on domicile is more strictly defined. Not that there is much, if any, evidence that Ms Rayner was fraudulent.
    19a WHITE (OUT), this one biffed as could not find HITE anywhere.

  6. Andy@5 , prospective labour chancellor is Rachel Reeves who does seem beyond reproach and highly rated by everyone in finance. To put the Rayner allegations into context , allegedly a few thousand pounds, a recent tory chancellor Nadhim Zahawi has just been fined around £5 MILLION by HMRC for tax dodging. I do not recall endless Daily Mail campaigns on this issue. Then we have Michelle Mone , former PM Cameron who had thousands stashed away offshore plus paid millions by Greensill for government contacts, The list and scale of tory misbehaviour is endless.

  7. Thanks, mc_rapper67 and Cyclops. I enjoyed the topicality of 1a and 13a gobby Angela raised a chuckle. Roz@6 It’s a sad fact that far too many politicians are motivated by self-interest rather than the good of the country.

  8. Thanks, mc_rapper67 and Cyclops. Like others here, I didn’t know DUB, and I also struggled with KNOCK OFF – the third definition of Roger was what stumped me. Other than that there were a lot of enjoyable clues – my favourites were TEAMWORK, SCAREMONGERING and SECEDE.

  9. Thanks for the various comments and feedback so far – much appreciated as usual.

    Noted re. 25A as a triple defn… will update the parsing.

    Roz at #2 – a WHITE-OUT is when you can’t see where you are going in the snow – not pleasant when skiing!

    PeterW and Andy F – the WHITE of white-out is the first word of the phrase, not the first letter of the acronym – I will update the parsing here as well…

    Franko at #4 – ‘those people’ could be the subject of a sentence? ‘Those people (points to the group who turned left) turned left, those people (ditto, right) turned right’ for ‘They (points to the group who turned left) turned left, they (ditto, right) turned right’. A bit laboured as an example, sorry!

  10. Thanks mc_rapper67 I take your point that ‘those people’ could be the subject of a sentence, that’s also how I had thought about it, but virtually anything could be the subject of a sentence and therefore replaced by a subject pronoun. Anyway I don’t want to take anything away from the great man’s work or your analysis in the blog.

  11. Thanks, Franko at 10, and apologies for stating the obvious… (Refreshing to have a good old-fashioned discussion about pronouns in the grammatical sense…these days ‘they’ might not refer to a group of people…but I will stop here before I dig myself into a hole…!)

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