So here I am wondering what to say in the first paragraph so I don’t anything give away about this puzzle on the homepage.
I will say …
This was brilliant.!
I laughed at loud at a certain point. If you haven’t tried it yet, go and do it and come back.
Is that enough wittering to get off the front page, I hope so.
It’s the Olympics!
Many, many hours of sports commentary. People who are very knowledgeable about sport using terms like “double axel” and “two and a half pike” assuming we all know what they mean, and with a remit to keep talking no matter what. And they do. Anything that comes into their heads. I’m sure it’s all good stuff but sometimes it comes out a little bit garbled and the results can be hilarious.
This is the basis of the long-running item in Private Eye called “Colemanballs” (Wiki page for Colemanballs) and this puzzle is an homage to that.
The late David Coleman is the archetypal exponent of the genre, and his name was co-opted by the Eye, so he was always getting the credit (blame?) for other commentators’ examples. Even down to the most famous of all when the Cuban, Juantorena, was striking out down the back stright in the final of the 800m Montreal 1976: “He opens his legs and shows his class”.
(See the Wiki page to find out the result, I mean who really said it.)
I am a long time Private Eye fan but I wasn’t expecting this in an Indy puzzle.
In fact, when solving, I got the bottom half answers early on and suspected there was a message in the unches around the perimeter. From the part I had, I thought it was heading for a early Beatles theme because I had
… I SAW HER S.A…
Those bottom-half down clues proved quite easy after getting a lot of crossers from the across lights such as 28/22, 32 and 33
But then I got 22 NAAN and dismissed the idea
… I SAW HER SNA…
What could that be?
At this point I saw (most of) the Nina in the circumference, which really helped me finish the puzzle.
One of the last clues solved was 13/11 COLEMANBALLS itself. Which may have been tricky if not familiar with Private Eye. I can’t tell. I very familiar with it myself. Maybe the sub-sections within the mag aren’t as niche as I suppose.
To spell it out, the circumference says:
I SAW HER SNATCH AND IT WAS AMAZING
which the internet tells me was said by Pat Glenn, the weightlifting commentator, at the Sydney 2000 Olympics about a weightlifter, Gregoriava, from Bulgaria. (However, I’m failing to find any trace of said athlete on the Olympics sites.)
Top notch stuff, Tyrus. Thanks very much.
| Across | ||
|---|---|---|
| 8 | AUTOMATE | Replace labour in America and turn to China (8) A[merica] U (turn) TO MATE (china, CRS friend) |
| 9 | UTOPIA | Finest urinal (oddly) around – it’s a great place (6) TOP (finest) surrounded by U[r]I[n]A[l] |
| 10 | HESS | Deluded wartime flier about to miss game (4) [c]HESS Ref. Rudolf_Hess (Wiki link) |
| 12 | ITEM | Couple‘s thing (4) DD |
| 13/11 | COLEMANBALLS | Balances Moll’s broadcast 21s (12) (BALANCES MOLLS)* AInd: broadcast. Good job I’m a Private Eye specialist |
| 16 | MONTANA | State in short empty, might you say? (7) “MT” homophone “empty” is the abbrev. for this state |
| 19 | TARSIER | Primate‘s rear – it’s revolting (7) (REAR IT’S)* AInd: revolting. First one in. Weirdly. |
| 20 | LEIBNIZ | German mathematician, being endlessly awkward, interrupts old queen (7) (BEIN[g])* AInd: awkward, inside LIZ (old queen) |
| 24 | SAMURAI | Weird like retreating top-class warriors (7) Edit: RUM (weird) AS (like) all reversed, then AI (top-class, A-one) [Thanks FrankieG at comment 4 ] |
| 26 | NAAN | Darling dog partly rejected Indian food (4) NANA (the dog of the Darling family in Peter Pan) with part turned (rejected) |
| 28/22 | CLEAN AND JERK | Lift from Al can end badly – not a nice bloke (5,3,4) (AL CAN END)* AInd: badly, JERK (not a nice bloke) |
| 30 | DARN | Repair service lawyer fronts (4) DA (lawyer) RN (service, Royal Navy) |
| 32 | SERIES | Run round Ireland in shorts on vacation (6) EIRE< inside S[hort]S |
| 33 | ENDURING | Gunner I’d shot is suffering (8) (GUNNER I’D)* AInd: shot. |
| Down | ||
| 1 | NUDE | Mounted horse and finally rode like Lady Godiva? (4) DUN< [rod]E |
| 2 | DOSSIERS | Reports one disturbing rough sleepers (8) I in DOSSERS Last one in. Not sure why I found that so difficult to see. |
| 3 | IAMB | Foot bill initially after confirmation from setter (4) I AM B[ill] |
| 4 | TESLA | When cycling, fiercely criticise electric car (5) SLATE (fiercely criticise) ‘cycled’ around so the TE moves to the front |
| 5 | WUSS | West country skinhead is wimp (4) W[est] US (country) S[kinhead] |
| 6 | AORIST | Ratios wrong in past (6) (RATIOS)* AInd: wrong. I have read most of this Wiki page, I still don’t understand this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aorist_(Ancient_Greek) |
| 7 | SIDE | Groaned when heard line-up (4) Homophone “sighed” = groaned |
| 14 | OWAIN | How Aintree welcomes Welshman (5) hidden in hOW AINtree |
| 15 | AMEER | A heartless measure for Islamic ruler (5) A ME[t]ER (measure, heartless) |
| 17 | OMEGA | End of series is nothing great (5) O (nothing) MEGA (great) |
| 18 | NAIRA | Currency of Iran? Wrong answer (5) (IRAN)* AInd: wrong, A[nswer]. Naira is the currency of Nigeria |
| 21 | BLUNDERS | Misjudgements end Blur’s career (8) (END BLUR’S)* AInd: career. |
| 23 | JUNKIE | Nut in boat, one heading for Eastbourne (6) JUNK (boat) I (one) E[astbourne] |
| 25 | RENEW | Start again with Frenchman on top (5) RENE (Frenchman) W[ith] |
| 27 | AVER | Hesitate banning women’s claim (4) [w]AVER (hesitate, without W[omen]) |
| 28 | COSH | Function Henry’s supporting is hit (4) COS (Function) H[enry] |
| 29 | NADA | Sportsman left out for love in his own field (4) NADAL – L[eft] Love is nothing in tennis, and Nada is nothing in Spanish |
| 31 | RANI | Queen managed to reach island (4) RAN (managed) I[sland] |
I didn’t see theme. I never do. And I was clearly in a different wavelength to Tyrus and beermagnet as this puzzle left me a bit cold.
With the theme elucidated the hmms and huhs can be explained.
Thanks to Tyrus and beermagnet
By the by – my favourite commentator unintended gaffe was by Brain Johnston of the TMS team England v West Indies. “the bowler’s Holding the batsman’s Wiley”. Ok it’s puerile but the repeated attempts to get back to commentary and stop corpsing make it a classic
This was excellent. The nina helped with some of the slightly more obscure answers, but I needed the blog for the parsing of MONTANA (which is even more annoying now that I see it’s a homophone that actually works for me).
Thanks to Tyrus and beermagnet.
Very funny! – 😀 – Didn’t quite manage to ignore the Nina while solving, so the AMAZING SNATCH helped with 20a LEIBNIZ and 10a HESS. It felt like cheating.
[For 24a SAMURAI, the AI doesn’t need reversing: (RUM+AS)< + AI]
Thanks T&BM
Thanks Tyrus and beermagnet
I thought this was tremendous, JT on absolutely sparkling form. Expecting a nina from the grid and starting to construct it during the solve certainly helped.
MN @ 2 that remark is widely held to be apocryphal – no one from the TMS has said that they heard it, and there is no audio evidence, unlike his comment about Botham failing to get his leg over.
Thank you, beermagnet, for thoughtfully ensuring that nothing showed in the preamble as I did see it before beginning the puzzle. As it was, and knowing the setter, I was prepared for a beast and actually it wasn’t too bad. Only beaten by the unknown AORIST.
The truly weird thing is, prompted by some Olympic commentary yesterday, I was introducing one of my sons to the concept of Colemanballs only last night. And listening to the famous Johnners/Aggers corpsing over the Botham dismissal. So this theme was remarkably timely. I did spot the nina towards the end to give me the A for AUTOMATE and the T for TESLA which completed the grid. It’s not a Colemanball with which I am familiar so it was somewhat of a surprise but then the pennies dropped.
I enjoyed this a lot and even managed to make sense of the Darling dog so many thanks to Tyrus for the fun and beermagnet for the helpful blog.
I started very well on this, before it became the workout I expected from this setter. I was prepared to be defeated – TARSIER or RAISTER? An anagram of RATIOS, or SIN inside ‘past’? What on earth was going on with 16A?
In desperation I started to scan the perimeter, at which point I grinned and confirmed TARSIER and the first letter of 6D, which in turn let me pencil in AORIST as the most likely assemblage of letters. At that point, the state I hadn’t thought of swam into view, although the parse took another few moments.
I really enjoyed the difficult-but-satisfying penny-drops for NAAN, NADA, and HESS in particular.
Thanks both.
Read the question, Pete! Stuffed by the centrepiece because I was looking for BALLS-O-E-A-. Not that I’ve ever read Private Eye or look for ninas!
Lots to like, for example AUTOMATE, but completely defeated by the homophones today and by AORIST.
Probably at a tangent, but the commentary that always made me cringe was the late, great Muddy Talker using pluperfect as a superlative.
Thanks both.
Thanks both. The very inclusion of COLEMAN justifies the admission money alone – I have struggled to find his Spitting Image moments lately, but they are immortal. To achieve the Nina I guess some contrivances were to be expected, e.g. the never heard of TARSIER and the unlikely AORIST, let alone Herr LEIBNIZ who I haven’t missed greatly in the 308 years since he died, with MONTANA particularly tricky to parse, as I arguably emphasise the ‘p’ sound more than any other, but at least it was inventive. Who thought weightlifting could provide such entertainment, including the moderately obscure-sounding CLEAN AND JERK though I’ve not been tempted to watch since the days of Precious McKenzie.
@Simon. It’s funny how memory can be fooled. I would have sworn I heard it (as huge numbers of people online have done and some continue to argue), but I think it’s a conflation of the Botham Legover and an urban myth.
Reading the blog (the intro especially) was as enjoyable as solving the puzzle.
Thanks to Tyrus and beermagnet.
NINA-spotting: The last activity (no big surprise).
AORIST
Should the def be just ‘past’ (adjective) instead of ‘in past’?
No. No. I didn’t know the word. Learnt it today and will promptly forget it in a
couple of days.
Wow! I thought the word AORIST was known by just about everybody and it seems not. I certainly first met it learning ancient Greek at school but have seen it many times since then. Have to admit, I didn’t meet the word PRETERITE until I started to learn Spanish relatively recently. Spanish has far too many tenses – makes my head spin.
Many thanks to beermagnet for a lovely preamble and blog and to all others who commented.
Hovis@12: I raise your “wow”. At my state grammar school in the sixties, I don’t thing there was anyone to teach ancient Greek, let alone anyone learning it. There was a Latin master but I remember one day walking past a classroom where a Latin lesson was going on and there were all of two pupils.