It was a surprise to see Brockwell (aka Grecian from the Independent) as today’s setter so soon after his appearance in Saturday’s Prize puzzle. No complaints from me though: an enjoyable solve, mostly straightforward, though a few tricky clues slowed me down a little at the end. Thanks to Brockwell.
Added: I was so impressed at myself for spotting the pangram that I missed the many cheeses in the grid. Thanks to Alistair and other commenters for pointing them out.
| Across | ||||||||
| 7 | PURITAN | Moralist turning up in front of train wreck (7) Reverse of UP + TRAIN* |
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| 8 | CHEDDAR | Singer’s entertaining dad dancing in Somerset village (7) DAD* in CHER (always a likely option when a singer is mentioned in a clue) |
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| 9 | SAGE | Start of silly season for Rishi? (4) S[illy] + AGE. The name Rishi is a Sanskrit word meaning “an accomplished and enlightened person”. I will avoid discussing whether this description applies to any famous people with the name. |
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| 10 | SABOTAGED | Wrecked boat at sea captured by revolutionary French artist (9) BOAT in reverse of (Edgar) DEGAS |
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| 12 | BRAWN | Might some garden warblers return? (5) Hidden in reverse of gardeN WARBlers |
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| 13 | IRONSIDE | No.7 in club team (8) IRON (golf club) + SIDE – Ironside is a name for a Puritan (sometimes specifically Oliver Cromwell). I thought the definition was going to mean “No puritan”, but the “No.” is just “number” after all |
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| 15 | QUIP | Supplies side-splitting joke (4) EQUIPS (supplies) with its sides having left or “split” |
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| 16 | DOFFS | Fellows invested in Spanish couple’s tips (5) F F In DOS (Spanish for 2) |
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| 17 | WIRE | One Republican in US showing a bit of flex (4) 1 R in WE (“us” in dialect or careless speech) |
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| 18 | CREAM TEA | Mike goes inside to make a meal for PM (5,3) M[ike] in CREATE A – a cream tea is a meal for the afternoon |
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| 20 | COLEY | Spooner’s subdued fish (5) Spoonerism of “low-key” |
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| 21 | TETE-A-TETE | Four contrary aliens welcoming a conversation (4-1-4) A in four reversed ETs |
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| 22 | OKAY | OXO rejected fine (4) OXO can be split as OX O, or YAK O, which is then reversed |
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| 24 | TAFFETA | What Jack Sprat’s wife did on counter holding fine cloth (7) F[ine] in reverse of ATE FAT (“Jack Sprat would eat no fat, his wife would eat no lean…”) |
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| 25 | ASTERIX | Staggering tax rise for comic character (7) (TAX RISE)* |
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| Down | ||||||||
| 1 | JURA | Department of Justice usually recruits awful leaders (4) First letters of Justice Usually Recruits Awful. Jura is one of the départements of France, named after the Jura mountain range |
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| 2 | FIREDAMP | Discharged current of gas (8) FIRED (sacked, discharged) + AMP (unit of electric current) |
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| 3 | SAMSON | Masons arranged for someone to do the heavy lifting (6) MASONS* |
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| 4 | PHOTO OPS | American Dad! winning animated Oscar generates media events (5,3) HOT (excited, animated) O[scar] in POPS (mostly American name for a father) |
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| 5 | ADAGES | Proverbs in modern times? (6) Modeen times could be A.D. (Anno Domini) AGES |
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| 6,20 | HARD CHEESE | He crashed out before the end of race – that’s bad luck! (4,6) (HE CRASHED)* + [rac]E |
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| 11 | BRIEFCASE | Maybe attaché provides a clue for B.O.? (9) BO is a truncated BOX, or BRIEF CASE |
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| 12 | BLUER | Group accepting the ending of Parklife is more offensive (5) [parklif]E in BLUR |
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| 14 | DERBY | The German boy exhausted in race (5) DER (German “the”) + B[o]Y |
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| 16 | DETRACTS | Test card broadcast from Mars? (8) (TEST CARD)* |
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| 17 | WALLOPER | Rules written up claiming pole dancing is PC in Australia (8) POLE* in reverse of R[ule] LAW. Chambers says this is old Australian slang for a policeman |
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| 19 | ANTIFA | Soldier provided that answer for political movement (6) ANT (soldier) + IF (provided that) + A[nswer] |
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| 21 | TZAR | Jack embracing Zulu king (4) Z in TAR (sailor), Chambers describes this unusual spelling of Tsar/Czar as rare; as TSAR would have fitted just as well, this answer tipped me off to the fact that the puzzle is a pangram (all the letters of the alphabet appear in the answers) |
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| 23 | AVID | Greedy singer turns up (4) Reverse of DIVA |
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Thanks Brockwell and Andrew!
(a pangram)
COTD: COLEY
Other faves: QUIP, PHOTO OPS, BRIEFCASE and WALLOPER.
A bit of a cheesy crossword…
Didn’t parse BRIEFCASE, so thanks for the explanation Andrew. Only alerted to the pangram by other comments on the Guardian page after completing the puzzle. Should have realised after TZAR, QUIP and JURA. Agree with Andrew that this was fairly straightforward, but the Spoonerism held me up a bit (I don’t pronounce COLEY as ‘co-lee’, perhaps I’m wrong). Liked FIREDAMP and IRONSIDE. Thanks to Andrew and Brockwell.
That the puzzle is a pangram is mentioned by Andrew in the blog (see TZAR). Sorry for repeating it.
Didn’t know FIREDAMP and had to reveal and couldn’t parse BRIEFCASE although it was fairly obviously from the crossers.
Spent ages trying to parse OKAY and then groaned when it finally clicked!
Thanks Andrew and Brockwell
15A Shouldn’t it be sides-splitting rather than side-splitting.
Thanks Brockwell and Andrew
Brockwell is a bit cavalier in false capitalisation – there are several examples!
I didn’t see where the last R came from in 17d, and am not convinced that R can stand for “rule”.
I still don’t see the definition for IRONSIDE – what’s the “No.” doing?
Never heard of ANTIFA.
Favourite SABOTAGED.
btw FIREDAMP is the miners’ name for explosive methane found in coal mines.
As well as the obvious cheese references in the answers I’ve seen Brie in Briefcase, Edam in Firedamp, and Feta in Taffeta. I’m sure the are others. Thanks to Brockwell and Andrew.
I suspected it was a pangram quite early on and, for once, it helped – for 15A QUIP especially. Like muffin@6, I could not see where the R came from in 17D and am less than impressed now that I know. I agree with Alistair@2 that there is a theme centred around cheese. Well- spotted Niltac@7 for the hidden ones. Andrew – in 10A you need to indicate the anagram for (BOAT)* Thanks Brockwell for a fun puzzle and Andrew for the blog.
Apart from the obvious – BRAWN is aka Head (of which there are two in TETE-A-TETE) Cheese…
WALLOPER was new, and I see from the Guardian comments that it wasn’t known to all of the Australian solvers. Clearly clued though so I got it.
Lots of nice penny drops today, and appreciative groans for TETE A TETE, OKAY, COLEY and BRIEF CASE. Not as tough as Saturday’s, but I gave up on PHOTO OPS.
Yes, very cheesy. Micro-quibble: is it OK to spell a French departement without its second E?
Thanks Alistair@2
HARD CHEESE! I did look at a couple of them while solving but forgot to look
for more after completing the puzzle.
SAMSON CREAM CHEESE is a thing?
BRIEF-CASE has a BRIEF BRIEf!
CHEDDAR, SAGE DERBY, BLUE(r).
I find that BRAWN is the same as Head CHEESE (but not a dairy product)!!!
There must be more.
Edit: I took a lot of time to type.
Thanks Niltac@7 and FrankieG@9.
…SAMSØ[n]…
Mostly pretty good. BRIEFCASE took a while to work out. Last one for me was OKAY – I thought the term ‘ox’ was applicable only to cattle, but I learn that it can also be a yak (which is of course a related animal). I’ve said before that I don’t mind approximate homophones, so I can’t object to COLEY, but I’d never have solved the clue without crossers. Couldn’t care less if a crossword is a pangram, but if it makes the compiler happy, that’s OK; also missed the cheeses.
Favourites included ANTIFA, SAGE, ASTERIX.
Thanks Brockwell and Andrew.
A few degrees harder than yesterday’s. I didn’t understand why IRONSIDE was no. 7, I’ve only the word as the name of the fictitious legal bloke. I enjoyed this and smiled a lot . Thanks both.
Micro-quibble no.2: if someone tips his hat, he doesn’t take it off. If he DOFFS it, he does.
(and JURA is a cheese)
Is (sabot)AGED CHEDDAR a thing?
Favourites for me were TETE-A-TETE and TAFFETA for the clever Jack Sprat reference (Jack is also an American cheese).
This was one of those that started feeling rather Quiptic but then had a few tricky ones to puncture the hubris. Couldn’t (and still can’t exactly) see where the R of WALLOPER comes from, though it had to be that. Was stuck with 15a at the end until I scrolled down to the blog and saw ilippu’s clue /spoiler that it’s a pangram (“no H this time”) and the penny dropped. Thanks Brockwell and Andrew.
For completeness, it’s worth mentioning that “Parklife” was a successful song by Blur.
GC@15: I think it is short for Rule, so R +law =Rules.
…Alex James of Blur sells Goat cheeses called Little and Hadleigh WALLOP[ER] – as well as a CHEDDAR called BLUE[R] Monday, but that’s by New Order…
After CHEDDAR (later followed by CHEESE) and SAGE (I still laugh every time I see this clued by ‘Rishi’) early on, I was on the look-out for DERBY, which duly turned up @ 14dn. Then, like Niltac @7, I spotted BRIE , EDAM and FETA – and also BLUE (but no Danish, as far as I can see) and I wonder if we can include JURA
https://bucketlistjourney.net/comte-cheese-fromage-in-france/
As usual, ‘pangram’ never occurred to me.
(I realise I will have been overtaken while typing. Apologies.)
I’ve Googled ANTIFA, and perhaps I should have heard of them.
TimC@16:I certainly is, I t gets tastier and sharper and eventually you get crystals in it.
George @15 and others, C2016 has “r or r. abbrev :radius; recipe (L), take; right; rule (law).”
muffin@22: Perhaps that’s because they don’t really exist!
gladys@10 and @16 – I share both your quibbles. And I don’t think I’d ever heard of WALLOPER nor IRONSIDE with the meanings as defined (but that’s just my ignorance).
muffin@18. I was also going to comment about Parklife in BLUER. Not that I knew that it was their third album. In reference to your comment@6 on capitalisation, at least Brockwell used this one legitimately. That’s what made me look it up. My reading of the surface otherwise was some sort of a group that was happy to see the end of deer, or some such creature.
PS: Thanks to Brockwell and Andrew!
Well spotted Niltac @7, I was pleased to see the pangram early, but missed the theme. One of the early bloggers on the G thread pointed to one. Larry @8: I also noticed that my favourite SABOTAGED, needs ‘at sea’ as the anagram indicator. muffin @6: ANTIFA, sometimes known as the black bloc is the violent end of anti-fascism, who I had the displeasure of dealing with, when I was a London WALLOPER. I also enjoyed TETE-A-TETE.
Ta Brockwell & Andrew.
Blur’s Parklife (1994 – celebrating a 30th (Pearl) anniversary)
Yep it’s a while since I heard walloper in the wild. And Cromwell’s moniker rang only the faintest of bells, while firedamp, once written in, rang a louder one. Have a sneaking feeling of seeing OXO before, possibly in a different context (Southbank, maybe, or tic-tac’toe …?). Enjoyed it, cheers B&A.
…Here‘s the title track, sung by Phil Daniels…
AlanC@29. Was WALLOPER commonly used for police in London? I understand it originated in Ireland. I knew it here in Oz, possibly from my Irish heritage.
…Thanks B+A who are NOT celebrating their 50th (Golden) anniversary, apparently.
paddymelon @33: Alas no. I worked with an Inspector, who was nicknamed donkey WALLOPER, which is British Army slang for a Cavalryman.
muffin @6: I just noticed your ‘cavalier’, a subtle reference to IRONSIDE perhaps?
I did enjoy this, really, but I have a few quibbles that I feel I should mention.
As soon as I saw “Spanish couple” I thought DOS, but then I realized that isn’t right. In English, a valid substitute for “two” would be “a couple” or “a couple of”, depending on context.
In a similar vein, “mars” means “DETRACTS from”, doesn’t it? I don’t think the question-mark is powerful enough to swallow the “from”. (I know, somebody is going to tell me Chambers thinks otherwise)
I’m wondering if BLUE means offensive, exactly. Sure, some blue material might be offensive to some of those towards the right of the accepting-to-prudish spectrum, but that’s not quite a justification, I don’t think. In other words, I think one can judge something as being risqué, say, without being personally offended by it. Again, Chambers-which-I-don’t-have probably disagrees!
I did like SAGE and CREAM TEA.
Say CHEESE!
https://parade.com/1193518/marynliles/cheese-puns/
Never heard of a WALLOPER.
AlanC @35
🙂
There’s a site on a fell near us called Walloper Well. I don’t know if there’s any connection.
For the first time ever I spotted the pangram early enough for it to help 😉. I also spotted the theme, so a good solve for me… Thank you Andrew for your help with parsing BRIEFCASE, I would never have thought of B.O. = short box. So BRIEFCASE went from baffling to amusing 😎. Thanks also to Brockwell for a clever challenge.
Gladys @15, I agree about doff V tip.
Tough puzzle. Failed to solve 2d and 15ac.
13ac – I could parse the IRON+SIDE but I needed to do some research to see why No.7=Ironside/Puritan (answer to 7ac).
I also could not parse 11d, 16d.
New for me: COLEY fish; WALLOPER = policeman in Australia. I am Australian and I never heard this used.
Thanks, both.
Some learnings today – FIREDAMP and SAGE as a synonym for Rishi – but otherwise straightforward and very enjoyable. WALLOPER came to mind with the crossers, but I don’t know why. Perhaps a couple of Aussie crime shows that I have seen recently on Netflix. Couldn’t parse BRIEFCASE, and I see that I am not alone. Thanks Andrew (though I am not sure how tsar would fit the clue with Zulu) and Brockwell.
BLUER and DETRACTS
Dr. WhatsOn@36
BLUE
I could find indecent, risqué and obscene in some dictionaries but not offensive. It may still be found in some dictionaries.
DETRACT is given as a transitive verb (as well) in the sense of ‘to diminish the importance of’. How to use ‘mar’ and ‘DETRACT’ interchangeably in a sentence will be explained by someone…
me @42 – oh I see. Would have fitted the grid just as well, not the clue.
KVa@44 I think they are both examples of “close but no cigar”.
Thought I was doing OK at first, pleased that I had got the rather sneaky OKAY, and admired how TETE A TETE had cleverly been out together. Struggled thereafter and sadly had to hit the reveal button. Would never have got the WALLOPER, with R and Law both representing rules as a backwards envelope (what?), nor ANTIFA. Nor could I parse BRIEFCASE, or one or two others. Found this extremely challenging, unlike this setter’s Saturday Prize offering. Had heard of Coney as a fish, but not COLEY, but that was a pretty neat, concise Spoonerism, I have to say. Beaten but not too downcast this morning…
Dr. WhatsOn @36, you shouldn’t disparage dictionaries so much. They just reflect the language that people use. In the case of BLUER, I had the same thoughts as you, that offence is in the eye of the beholder/listener. Chambers has blue as “… indecent or obscene (inf)” and doesn’t mention offence as far as I can see.
I remember COLEY as the cheap white fish which my neighbour used to boil up daily to feed her cat. Disgusting smell.
(How do you say coley if you don’t say koh-lee? I’m not bothered, just curious)
Clues were at a nice level for me which has left me hungry for more – but maybe that’s just from thinking so much about cheese! Favourite today was the chatty aliens but that had me falling for the misdirection on mars as a planet so grateful for the parsing here. Thanks Brockwell and Andrew.
I ‘solved’ IRONSIDE but still can’t see the definition. Perhaps someone could explain?
WALLOPER was very obscure and I had to reveal it. The Irish meaning is for a shillelagh, not a policeman.
Thanks for the blog Andrew, as there were so many I couldn’t parse. Heavy work today for me at times.
Pleasant solve, although I missed both the pangram and the cheeses!
I liked the wordplays of QUIP, CREAM TEA and TAFFETA, and the good anagram for HARD CHEESE. A few quibbles; I was waiting for muffin to say that amp is not a current but a unit of current. We is not us, as I have been told before; maybe US subjectively could have been used? Winning in 4 should have been capitalised after the exclamation mark. Maybe, I’m being too pedantic. I had heard of ANTIFA – more can be found here.
Thanks Brockwell and Andrew (especially for the B.O., no offence intended).
Green’s Dictionary of Slang has ‘WALLOPER …8. (Aus.) a police officer…’ with three citations from Robert G. Barrett.
Thanks Brockwell & Andrew, that was fun and thanks also to
Niltac@7 for the hidden cheese, and to
FrankieG@20 for the Blur /WALLOP cheese connection.
Favourite maybe ‘he crashed out’
poc @51, IRONSIDEs was the name given to Parliamentarian troops in the English Civil War (see here), named after Oliver Cromwell who was nicknamed Old Ironsides. Cromwell and his troops were predominately 7 acrosses.
A few tricky clues for me. I was helped to find QUIP and OKAY by the reference in the Guardian comments to a pangram. Then I didn’t spot the theme despite noting some cheesy answers. FIREDAMP was new and as an Australian, I didn’t know that meaning of WALLOPER.
I needed this blog to explain the parsing of BRIEFCASE, IRONSIDE and OKAY.
Many likes – SABOTAGED, CREAM TEA (nice misdirection), COLEY, TETE-A-TETE, TAFFETA, PHOTO OPS, ANTIFA.
Thanks Brockwell and Andrew.
The Lancashire Wallopers are prize winning clog dancers
Robi @53: re amp is not current… Thank you for saying that. It is a pet peeve of mine having spent 20 years trying to get students to appreciate the difference between a quantity such as current, its symbol (I), the unit and its abbreviation (A). Units and quantities and not interchangable. Had the clue required 1 amp to be inserted then this would be an example of a current but just amp alone does not work.
Thanks for the blog, some neat clues here , clever wordplay at times which was nice to think through . I am not sure if I care less about pangrams or ninas , it is close. A bit like cricket and diveball .
I thought spotting the pangram absolved me from finding a theme but I remember Alex James going to Colombia to trace the evil trail of production of a former recreational pursuit of his and ,as I remember leaving the government with a sample of his own produce from the Cotswolds.
Brilliant rendition by Mr Daniels
Brockwell rocks!
I am quite happy with Amp=current for a crossword although my students need to be more careful.
I am sure I would be fine in a crossword with metre=length , kilogram=mass , second=time .
As Andrew commented, I found this mostly straightforward but with a few trickier bits. I rarely spot themes, but I did realise that there was something cheesy about this puzzle (though I couldn’t be bothered looking for them all). On the other hand, for some reason I usually register pangrams. But not this time, and together with my invariably forgetting that U can be preceded by Q, QUIP was my LOI. The weird spelling of TZAR should have alerted me (: .
Lots of good constructions, albeit with some imperfections in the grammar of the wordplay – DrWhatsOn @37 list a few, and I would add the clue for BRAWN, though it gives a good surface.
I particularly liked COLEY (five-letter Spooner clues are a rarity), SAGE, CREAM TEA and HARD CHEESE. And I was pleased to see the collier’s enemy, though ‘current’ is hardly a synonym of AMP despite the semantic link.
Thanks to Brockwell and Andrew
Poc@51 I do not think anyone has explained . IRONSIDE a nick-name for a PURITAN 7 Ac, especially in Cromwell’s time.
I’m certainly not complaining at encountering another Brockwell and, for once, the nicely-worked theme became apparent early on with the combo of SAGE and DERBY. Plenty to like, most of which has been highlighted already so I shall content myself with a podium of TETE-A-TETE, SAMSON and HARD CHEESE. One small grumble – it’s a personal thing but I’m not so keen on the ‘wordplay of definition’ construction that appears to be in use for FIREDAMP. Unless the ‘of’ is somehow linked to ‘current’, though I can’t see how that would work).
Thanks Brockwell and Andrew
Good fun. Lots of ticks. Saw some cheese-related solutions but not all. Missed the pangram. Loved the reminder of Robert G. Barrett, FrankieG@54 (liked the novels but not terrible translation into television series). I was held up finishing by that tricksy little OKAY at 22a, my LOI. Thanks to Brockwell who has rapidly become a favourite setter (in two incarnations). I really enjoyed the blog too, Andrew – gratitude. Thanks also to contributors for interesting posts.
Roz @61; the usual test for synonyms is whether one can replace the other in a sentence. I can’t think of a sentence where amp can be substituted for current or vice versa. The category of current might include alternating, direct etc but I don’t see that it would encompass amp. Any further comments? 🙂
Amp=Coulomb per second , that is a current. If I insisted on scientific rigour for crosswords my keyboard would wear out.
My main gripe with Amp(ere) is that ir is still a base SI unit even after the last revision.
Ros @59, I generally don’t get the theme and never the pangram, so in broad terms I concur. However, today (for the first time ever) both helped and help is always appreciated by me. I concur on cricket and probably would on dive ball if I knew what it was.
To all, many thanks for a really interesting blog. Thanks again B and A.
[pdm, I don’t know if WALLOPER was a name for Irish copper, or for a British copper sent to Ireland back in the day, quite possibly the latter. There is a band called the Mary Wallopers…]
Pauline@68 AlanC is our resident expert on diveball .
Themes I generally miss and I do not mind them now and then but the Guardian has far too many . Ninas and pangrams I always miss because I am just trying to solve the clues.
For the theme hunters, dairy reference also in 21A? Really liked the side-splitting thing, and the well disguised Mars.
Generally fun, except for 22A which even with Andrew’s explanation I find exceptionally opaque. Apparently many others did not. Several ticks including 10A, 18A and 5D
I also don’t understand where the final R is coming from in 17D. If “Rules written up” is WAL (reverse of LAW), how can “Rule” also be supplying the initial R? Or is “Rules” supposed to indicate more than one rule, one for LAW and one for R (which I still feel is a questionable abbreviation, pace Chambers).
And as usual I missed both the pangram and the theme, although as Andrew points out the rare spelling of TZAR should have been a strong hint (and the construction was perfectly fairly clued).
Thanks Brockwell & Andrew
Cannot understand why OXO rejected is OKAY. Where does YAK come from?
The equivalence of ‘sage’ and ‘rishi’ has come up before, most recently (I think) in Cryptic 29,383 where Vlad had “Political sage? (5)”, answer RISHI. It’s worth keeping in mind – at least for the next three weeks, anyway.
EF@72 OXO is a Playtex clue, split OXO into O and OX , leave the O alone, OX=YAK , this is rejected so KAY .
Diveball-you slay me Roz 🤩
Nobody’s mentioned that the best thing to cut the cheese with is a cheese WIRE.
Brilliant! WALLOPER is new to me but I am looking forward to an occasion to use it; mind you the NYPD can be a bit tetchy!
Thoroughly enjoyed this. Especially BRIEFCASE for playing fast and loose with both punctuation and capitalisation in the space of four characters
Roz I’m happy to call it a draw for pangrams and ninas with both getting “nul points” from me. Each to their own
Cheers A&B
gladys@49, I don’t remember you living next door. Although my cat only got coley once a week, not daily.
Thanks Brockwell and thanks Andrew for explaining BRIEFCASE.
Another one who enjoyed it: good balance of accessible and tough clues. RISHI=SAGE (or similar variant) has made two or three appearances lately: for that reason, it was one of the easier ones to fill in.
‘Walloper’ is rather out-of-date Aussie slang as far as I know.
My vote on July 4th will be sage – a contribution to stuffing Rishi.
Thanks Brockwell and Andrew
The OED has citations for walloper (in the sense used here) from 1945 to 1981, which suggests it’s a relatively recent usage and also quite short-lived (probably the fate of many slang expressions).
I found this puzzle quite difficult and in the end had to cheat on about three clues.
Unlike fellow physicist Roz, I did find my hackles raised a bit by current = AMP, although I confess that I’m not terribly consistent about this sort of thing, and on another day I probably wouldn’t have cared.
There was a lot to like in this puzzle, despite my frustration. I particularly enjoyed “side-splitting” in 15ac and the clever Jack Sprat construction of 24ac.
Re CREAM TEA as someting eaten in the afternoon. In a well known tea shop in York, you will usually see international tourists, and British ones as well probably, tucking into a ceam tea at 9 a.m. The queues are a lot shorter at that time.
Roz @62. But how do you feel about kilogram = weight?
[Really, JinA @65? I thought the series, with Wenham, Rebel Wilson et al was a hoot, and pretty slick for an Oz production
But then I’ve never read, or even heard of, RG Barrett, so I can’t compare]
Many thanks to Andrew for the great blog and to everyone else for taking the time to solve and comment on my puzzle. All of the criticisms are fair, especially about AMP. I actually used to teach physics, but mainly because we couldn’t recruit any proper physics teachers. However, A is fairly often used for current in crosswords, so I thought it was fair game. I’ll think twice in future. Obviously, there are no Canadians on here to notice OKA, which I think was the only cheese not spotted. Hope to see you all again soon. B
24a TAFFETA was my favourite among many ticked clues. I failed miserably at 15a QUIP, as I couldn’t get past trying to fit an L or R into a three-letter joke.
1d came to me quickly but I was thinking Scotland rather than France, perhaps because of the single malt from there that I was sipping at the time.
I’m with Roz@59 re cricket and dive ball (love the accurate name), although I would add rugby to the list. Re cricket, my better-cellist-half occasionally uses ‘silly mid-off’ as an epithet when I do something particularly stupid.
I agree with Roz (again) @ 62 about amp, metre, etc. It’s about context, and we’re doing a crossword, not attending a science class.
Thanks Brockwell for the engaging challenge, and Andrew for the help with some very tricky parsings.
Crispy@87 , that horse has bolted a long time ago , mass / weight is everyday usage and the dictionaries support this so setters have cover.
The only thing I object to is misuse of science terms that have not come from or passed into everyday usage , usually modern specialised terms . The setters should try and get these right if they use them. Chambers is particularly bad for terms from modern physics.
Brockwell/Grecian@89, I did spot OKA (just down the road from me in Ottawa) once the theme came to me after solving, but I didn’t notice that no one else had spotted it. Smoked OKA is a one of my favourite cheeses. It goes very nicely with the 12-year-old JURA.
Quite the challenge for me so good to have completed with no complaints at all – good stuff from Brockwell. NHO Walloper for Australian cop. LOI was taffeta – very clever and brought a smile, my COTD. I echo Roz@60 re pangrams – never seen them and of little significance. Well done to those who spotted all the cheeses though – didn’t see them. Oh l thought 16 down was very good – nice misdirection. Oh and thanks Roz for explaining Ironside – l just didn’t see connection to clue number 7. Thanks Brockwell and Andrew
Grecian, you beat me to it! I was planning to mention OKA when I got to the end of the comments — I remember having it decades ago and liking it.
Eileen, thank you for the cheese tour . (Have you done it?) I remember when I was living in France in the ’80’s making Welsh rarebit with conte (sorry, no accent) and it was wonderful! Even better than with cheddar, I thought.
No way would I ever have thought of a short case as a BO(x).
Thanks, Brockwell and Andrew.
Thanks Cellomaniac @92 and Valentine @94. I love cheese, but have never tried OKA. Must give it a go.
[I have a favourite cheese story. When the Lancashire folk quartet The four pennies were on tour, they shared two rooms in the hotels they stayed at. In Nottingham, one bought some Limburger cheese. His room mate wouldn’t have it in the room, and insisted it was put on the windowsill. When they left the next morning, it was forgotten.
When they were again in Nottingham the following year, the hotel had been demolished….
Driving back from Italy one year, we passed through Munster in Alsace. I was forbidden from buying some of the local cheese to bring home in the car!]
Ronald@47, a “coney” is a rabbit not a fish, mostly a 17th-century usage, particularly in the combination, “coney-catcher” which means a confidence trickster.
I got the anagram for 16d but did not see how it fits the clue. Thanks D Watson for explaining, still dont like it
EF@73 I find Roz’s explanation @ 75 a little confusing. How about:
OXO = (OX)O = (YAK)O
(YAK)O rejected = O(KAY) = OKAY
(feels a bit like proving (-1)(-1) = 1)
(I was cut off in my prime – I was still editing 99 when the edit ended automatically and the system reverted to the old version – could this not be changed so that once an edit is started we can complete it?)
I was going to add Roz’s explanation gives KAYO as the answer.
No idea what a Playtex clue is. They used to be living bras, so does it refer to the two OO needing support?
Dave @100
“Lift and separate”
Dave — Playtex clues are ones where you have to “lift and separate” words or parts of words in order to solve. Though I like your guess. 🙂
Thanks to Brockwell for a lovely crossword.
I enjoyed FIREDAMP, a word I learnt of in Émile Zola’s mining book Germinal, which is well worth a read, even if it does not feature much cheese.
Late to comment as I forgot I hadn’t finished and Tuesday night is letter writing night. Nothing new to add: Jura is not just a scotch (news to me); firedamp also new; liked okay eventually and completely missed pangram and cheese. Thank you for the puzzle, blog and comments which are always worth checking even at this late hour.
Pianoman @104: letter writing night? I do like the sound of that. Admittedly, I’m imagining low lighting (candles, possibly), a wooden table/desk and fountain pen, regardless of how that relates to the reality. Allow me that, if you will.
Doubloon @ 103
I remember a clue with “petrifying novelist” (9)as the wordplay and GORGONZOLA as the answer.
Noticing the pangram helped solve OKAY. But noticing the cheese theme made me waste time trying to work out how 3D could be DAMSON not SAMSON 🙁. And seeing that 8A was clued as a Somerset village and that the answer to 7A was nearly a Somerset village (Puriton) wasted even longer thinking that this might be a puzzle where a definition referred to the previous clue, like the Two Ronnies Mastermind sketch
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QRhyc56aVb0&pp=ygUWdHdvIHJvbm5pZXMgbWFzdGVybWluZA%3D%3D
Pino @106
That’s magnificent!
What Mars got to do with distracts?
Kirsty @109
To detract (from) is to spoil or mar something. So DETRACTS = mars. Commenters above have wondered whether it is entirely fair to capitalise Mars (muffin @7) and to ignore the “from” (Dr W @37).
“whether it is entirely fair to capitalise Mars” – I thought the rule of thumb was that capitalising a word that doesn’t normally take a capital was ok, but de-capitalising a proper noun is not fair game. In reality of course there are no rules.
In this case, I thought there was a nice penny drop moment when I realised the answer to 16d was nothing to do with the planets, so the entry fee was worth it for that capital M alone.
Belated thanks to Brockwell/Grecian and Andrew.
I’m in Australia and never heard of a walloper, but then interestingly the word was used on the ABC in an article by Annabel Crabbe. Strange how that happens
I haven’t seen anyone point out that there is another cheese in OKAY, though I may have missed it in 112 responses. OKA cheese is made in Oka, Quebec, I think by the Oka first nation. It is one of the few very well known Canadian cheeses and is very good (somewhat like a Belgian Maredsous).