Things are back to normal – we have Eccles on a Wednesday.
There was lots as usual to enjoy here, especially the smooth surfaces. 25ac brought back memories of being glued to a TV as a child as well as a memories of a neighbour’s dog that adopted my brother and me called Lassie.
It was another of those puzzles where two heads were better than one. Last week was my turn with DINNERS and it was Bert this week who came to the rescue with parsing CHAMBERS.
A (American) MP (politician) inside or ‘introduced to’ PER (a)
CU (copper) UMBER (brown) around or ‘adding’ C (a bit of celery)
AS (when) P (quietly) IRATE (furious)
BURP (belch) with the middle two letters changing places or ‘after a heart transplant’ in AshgabaT (first and last letters only or ‘the outskirts’)
TROTTER (Perhaps Del Boy in ‘Only Fools and Horses’) around or ‘touring’ a ‘cycling’ of SPAIN (the S and P moving to the end)
MAYOr (Government official) missing last letter or ‘briefly’
SCRAP (get rid of) E (drug) IN (at home)
An anagram (‘upset’) of WAS and H (hard) after RICK (a diminutive or ‘little’ form of Richard)
I BE (live) X (ten)
An anagram (‘excited’) of MUST BECOME around IT
MARLEy (Bob Marley – ‘icon from Jamaica’) missing last letter or ‘cut’ around or ‘jamming’ B (bass)
DAL (puréed pulses) after or ‘alongside’ TRIPE (cooked stomachs of animals)
S (small) LASSIE (rescue dog) round or ‘biting’ E (last letter or ‘backside’ of Japanese). Apparently Lassie was a fictional dog in a short story written by Elizabeth Gaskell who rescued the younger of two half brothers. The original Lassie according to Wiki saved the life of a sailor in WW1. Joyce had to research this as her only memory was of one of her favourite childhood TV series where Lassie always seemed to ‘come to the rescue’.
Hidden (‘restricted’) in EmbasSY’S TEMporarily
lAPSE (make a mistake) missing first letter or ‘going topless’
PORK (meat) round or ‘packaging’ AINT (isn’t) W (wide)
RE (concerning) AGAiN (once more) missing or ‘conceding’ I
An anagram (surprisingly’) of HAIL NEWCASTLE AS
C (cocaine) HAMPERS (gets in the way of)
ME (setter) R (runs) IT
An anagram (‘deviant’) of VILE SEX and TEmP without or ‘leaving’ M (miles)
An anagram (‘to cook’) of PUT A MEAL IN
PRESS (various newspapers) around or ‘covering’ ICE (frozen water) and L (lake)
You have to imaging the p in CHAMPERS (6) standing on it’s head and becoming a b. This only works in lower case obviously – hence the ‘one case’. I am glad that Bert was able to sort this one out.
STARS (big names) around or ‘catching’ I (international)
CO (firm) BRA (support)
BARgE (rudely push) without G
Thought it interesting how BARgE and NUDgE relate to each other.
Superb! CHAMPERS was my favourite.
Many thanks to Eccles and to B&J.
16D had to be CHAMBERS but like Joyce I needed Bert’s help to parse it – obvious really! Eccles is surely the Indie’s most elegant setter. Thanks all.
Smooth, elegant and lots of fun. Found this a little easier than some other recent Eccles offerings – except CHAMBERS, which I guessed at correctly but… thanks for unravelling it, Bert.
Great puzzle!
Lucky Joyce to have a Bert to help with CHAMBERS! The rest parsed beautifully, with lovely surfaces, raising several smiles. My particular favourites were ABRUPT, SUBCOMMITTEE, MARBLE, CLEAN AS A WHISTLE, EXPLETIVES and MANIPULATE.
I did spend a minute or two trying to parse ASS as backside (which always irritates me) in LASSIE, so was very relieved to realise my mistake. Thank you for the lovely story.
Thanks to Eccles for a great start to the day and B&J for a lovely blog.
I seem to have overworked ‘lovely’ in the above – must have been the mention of Del Boy. 😉
Eileen – putting the arse in parse… 😉
Widdersbel – lovely!
I found this fun – and didn’t have a problem with Champers to Chambers (too many dyslexic children in my world who mix and any and all of b, d, p and q regularly, plus 6 and 9, 2 and 5, because they are the same, just changing directions).
Thank you to Eccles and Bertandjoyce.
Hovis@1 – Yes, I momentarily thought there might be a typo at 22d and the solution was being given away. And 12a could have the definition at either end.
I got the CHAMpERS trick (but not the D IN NERS = NERDS from last time. Well done Joyce for parsing that).
Thanks E & B&J
A particularly enjoyable puzzle from our setter with no obscurities to trip me up along the way. The CHAMPERS/CHAMBERS combo took the prize here.
Thanks to Eccles and to B&J for the review.
Great fun and not as tricky as Eccles can be – and has recently been! I worked out what was going on with CHAMBERS though it’s a tad cheeky: I cannot recall the last time I wrote a small case P or B in a crossword. My only real problem was MAYO – I had inadvertently transposed two letters in PAINTWORK so was looking for a Irish county -A-W which, not surprisingly, was beating me until the error was noted. Eileen has done a splendid job in identifying all my favourites bar TRAINSPOTTER and IBEX may not be difficult but did make me laugh.
Thanks Eccles and B&J
Haile enjoyable
Is the case in 16d actually referring to upper/lower cases? I thought it meant that b is only one possibility when P does a headstand. d is perhaps a more likely candidate (thus requiring the qualification), as the headstand would then be executed within the plane of the page, which after all is the flatland the letters inhabit. The P doesn’t need to be made lower case for the clue to work.
Good stuff, enjoyed the Newcastle one and the bass jams particularly.
Thanks S&B
Thanks both. So what’s not to like about a puzzle referencing Lassie and Bob Marley and cluing a TRAINSPOTTER as an anorak?
Petert@13 – 😉 – Haile SELASSIE regarded as the Messiah in Rastafarianism, so a link to Bob MARbLE[y]
‘Bunter whines tarts with JA[m]M IN are twopence…’