Grecian has provided this week’s Tuesday puzzle.
I found this to be an enjoyable puzzle to both solve and blog, with lots to get one’s teeth into, since there is a higher than average number of clues in a 15 x 15 grid owing to all the short entries.
I think that I have parsed everything to my satisfaction, and I trust that other solvers will chip in if I haven’t.
I haven’t spotted a theme as such, but there is a device which is used a lot by Grecian in this puzzle: he takes a proper noun, here a well-known person’s name, and then either splits it between the wordplay part of the clue and the definition, such as at 1A, 1D, 4 or 27, or uses it as wordplay fodder, such as at 13 or 29. I really enjoyed teasing these out, and I remember that Grecian used a similar device involving numerals in a puzzle that I solved and blogged in August.
My favourite clues today are 1D, for the misdirection around “Martin Luther King”; 02/32, for the ingenious use of “Twin Peaks”; 22, for sheer sauciness; and 28, for the misleading allusions to cricket.
*(…) indicates an anagram; definitions are italicised; // separates definitions in double-definition clues
| Across | ||
| 01 | RUBY | Game Boy not opening for Oliver Stone
RU (=game, i.e. rugby union) + B<o>Y (“not opening (=first letter) for Oliver”) means letter “o” is dropped; a ruby is a precious stone |
| 03 | BALL | Bass provides introduction for Everybody Dance
B (=bass, in music) + ALL (=everybody) |
| 06 | BRAIN | Husky remains guarding one big bundle of nerves
I (=one) in BRAN (=husky remains) |
| 10 | FANCY-FREE | Uncommitted lover on the loose around Cyprus
CY (=Cyprus) in [FAN (=lover, enthusiast) + FREE (=on the loose, of a criminal)] |
| 11 | EVADE | Duck in English Channel going west
E (=English) + DAVE (=channel, on TV); “going west” indicates reversal; to duck is to dodge, evade |
| 12 | RAY-BANS | Is that Illingworth with Boycott’s glasses?
RAY (=Illingworth, i.e. Yorkshire and England cricketer) + BAN’S (=boycott’s, bar’s) |
| 13 | SITUATE | Titus Oates oddly missing dreadful place
*(TITUS + <o>A<t>E<s>); “oddly missing” means odd letters are dropped from anagram, indicated by “dreadful” |
| 14 | IOTA | Jot // letter to Grecian
Double definition: an iota is a small amount of, a jot of AND iota is a letter of the Greek alphabet |
| 16 | DIBBLE | Slaver not using right tool
D<r>IBBLE (=slaver, salivate); “not using right (=R)” means letter “r” is dropped; a dibble is a pointed tool for making holes for seeds or plants |
| 21/18 | TOP CAT | Leader of the gang to get cheap stuff for Spooner
Spoonerism (“for Spooner) of “cop (=get, acquire) + TAT (=cheap stuff, junk)” |
| 22 | HOEING | Prostitute with uninitiated person performing task in bed
HO (=prostitute) + <b>EING (=person; “uninitiated” means first letter is dropped); hoeing is performed in a flower bed! |
| 23 | BERG | Mountain bird briefly returns
GREB<e> (=bird); “briefly” means last letter is dropped; “returns” indicates reversal; a berg is a mountain or hill in South Africa |
| 25 | SEND OFF | Dismiss from // post
To send off/away is to dismiss, dispatch AND to send a letter off is to post it |
| 27 | OFFICER | Turner ultimately following John Constable?
OFFICE (=john, i.e. lavatory) + <turne>R (“ultimately” means last letter only); a constable is a police officer |
| 29 | OPRAH | Chat show featuring comeback of silent star
HARPO (=silent star, one of the Marx Brothers); “comeback” indicates reversal |
| 30 | ON AVERAGE | Typically badly peeled navel orange
*(<n>AVE<l> + ORANGE); “peeled” means first and last letters are dropped from anagram, indicated by “badly” |
| 31 | KENDO | Comedian missing two days in combat
KEN DO<dd> (=comedian, from Knotty Ash); “missing two days” means 2 x letter “d” are dropped |
| 33 | SCAM | Mischievous child endlessly making racket
SCAM<p> (=mischievous child, imp); “endlessly” means last letter is dropped; a scam is a fraud, dodge, hence “scam” |
| Down | ||
| 01 | REFORMIST | Maybe Martin Luther King in favour of cracking Times cryptic
R (=king, i.e. rex) + [FOR (=in favour of) in *(TIMES)]; “cryptic” is anagram indicator; the German theologian Martin Luther (1483-1546) was a key figure in the Protestant Reformation |
| 02/32 | BENNY HILL | Comedian in New York absorbed by Twin Peaks
NY (=New York) in [BEN (=peak) + HILL (=peak)]; the reference is to the saucy English comedian Benny Hill (1924-92) |
| 04 | ARRESTIVE | Nick Cave finally accepting this number is tending to grab attention
IV (=this number, i.e. clue at 4) in [ARREST (=nick, cop) + <cav>E (“finally” means last letter only)]; arrestive means striking, attention-grabbing |
| 05 | LEEDS | City has energy-saving lights
E (=energy) in LEDS (=lights, i.e. light-emitting diodes) |
| 06 | BREATHER | Swimmer closing in on rest
RE (=on, i.e. regarding) in BATHER (=swimmer); a breather is a break, rest |
| 07 | AVALANCHE | Flood in a toilet rising over belly of cowboy
A + VAL (LAV=toilet, loo; “rising” indicates vertical reversal) + <r>ANCHE<r> (=cowboy; “belly of” means middle letters only are used) |
| 08 | NIECE | Relative majority of Greece in flip-fops
<gre>ECE IN; “majority of” means most of letters are used, i.e. here 5 of 8; “flip-flops” indicates reversal |
| 09 | MYNAH | Picked up juvenile bird
Homophone (“picked up”) of “minor (=juvenile)” |
| 15 | TIP-AND-RUN | Puritan upset about new date for cricket game
[N (=new) + D (=date)] in *(PURITAN); “upset” is anagram indicator |
| 17 | BINGO HALL | … is Dancing Queen here?
The clue number here is 17, and “Dancing Queen” is used to refer to number 17 on a bingo card, from the reference to (age) 17 in the ABBA song Dancing Queen |
| 19 | TIGER TEAM | Meta deployed under 18 security experts
TIGER (=cat, i.e. entry at 18) + *(META); “deployed” is anagram indicator; in the US, a tiger team is a group of counter-intelligence agents who test the security of military bases |
| 20 | CHOO-CHOO | Train dog with ducks for weeks
CHOW-CHOW (=(breed of) dog); “with ducks (=O, i.e. zero score in cricket) for weeks (=W)” means each letter “w” is replaced by letter “o” |
| 24 | OFFER | Unlimited funds for present
<c>OFFER<s> (=funds, as in State coffers); “unlimited” means first and last letters are dropped; to present is to offer |
| 25 | SPOOK | James Bond perhaps talked abruptly about love
O (=love, i.e. zero score in tennis) in SPOK<e> (=talked; “abruptly” means last letter is dropped); a spook is a spy, undercover agent, such as James Bond |
| 26 | FROTH | Something frivolous from female Pulitzer prize winner
F (=female) + ROTH (=Pulitzer prize winner, i.e. US novelist Philip Roth, who won the Pulitzer prize in 1998 for American Pastoral); in Chambers, froth is something frivolous or trivial |
| 28 | CRAIC | King pair essentially the end of Dominic Cork’s fun?
CR (=king, i.e. Charles Rex) + <p>AI<r> (“essentially” means middle letters only) + <domini>C (“end of” means last letter only); in Irish English, a craic is fun, an enjoyable activity |
21/18 is the theme.
Thanks, Andrew.
I’m still recovering from my disappointment at the theme not being Trumpton, after entering DIBBLE early on. – wrong programme!
The BBC cartoon series for kids which the BBC constantly advertised as BOSS CAT to ( sanctimoniously ) avoid mentioning a then cat food as a freebie advertisement. There are lots of T C characters in the answers particularly OFFICER DIBBLE -TC’s nemesis.
A great effort by Grecian to include all of TC’s gang as well as his nemesis. I also enjoyed the number of references to famous people, 1 down being my favourite. Such a reference is welcome “providing it’s with dignity”.
Right, I’ve recovered now (In the meantime, I’ve consoled myself with this
What an amazing set of clues – all with lovely surfaces! There really isn’t one I couldn’t have ticked. I always enjoy ‘lift and separate’ clues and there are some great ones here, pointed out by RR in his preamble and, like him, I’m always impressed when the setter uses the name of real people. The only one I didn’t know was Dominic Cork but I loved the definition – CRAIC was a word I enjoyed learning when I lived in Northern Ireland.
Linking Illingworth and Boycott was very clever, too – and nice reminders of contemporaries Benny Hill and Ken Dodd.
Thanks, RR, for the parsing of BINGO HALL – not one of my haunts, so I didn’t know the terminology – and I hadn’t heard of TIGER TEAM, either but it had to be that. I liked the way CAT and TIGER were helpfully linked in the grid.
Huge thanks to Grecian for a whole lot of fun and to (lucky) RR for a super blog.
A quirky but quite enthralling crossword. Really good fun and with some excellent – if slightly off-beat – cluing. The use of, and distraction by use of proper nouns was brilliant.
Thanks Grecian and RatkojaRiku
I found this tough but highly rewarding. It felt like a different wavelength to other Indie puzzles, and I was a bit dismayed to have only entered two and a half answers after the first run though. But it slowly gave way from the SE corner and I enjoyed pretty much every clue after a fair fight at each turn.
Lots of favourites, particularly RAY-BANS and CRAIC, and a proper LOL at CHOO CHOO. I’d run of out time and energy to get KENDO (nho) and MYNAH (I’d been barking up the wrong tree all along) so a dnf for me, but I’m happy to have got so far anyway.
The only one that I found a bit strange was FANCY-FREE because a fancy is a lover and so the Cyprus bit wasn’t really needed. I also thought (no doubt incorrectly) that the spooks were the folks back at base not the ones out in the field, so I spent ages struggling with the James Bond one!
Thanks to Grecian for stretching me! And of course to RR.
I didn’t spot the theme but should have… perhaps someone can provide the full list later on!
[Just the other day in the Indie, John Rentoul in his regular Mea Culpa column shared the fun fact that Oprah was actually born Orpah, “named after a widely unknown biblical figure, but everyone in her family pronounced it Oprah, so that is what her name became.”
]
Thanks both. Really enjoyed what was quite a difficult challenge, and spotting the theme at least enabled me to confirm one or two answers. Highlights were CRAIC RAY-BANS and BENNY HILL. A potentially useless piece of learning is a new word for toilet contained in OFFICER, which my dictionaries don’t acknowledge, and I remain unsure about the construction of LEEDS specifically the use of ‘saving’ as some sort of insertion indicator.
As usual I missed the theme, even though I did note that younger solvers might not be familiar with TOP CAT, or indeed BENNY HILL. I even looked up DIBBLE in the dictionary, as I’d have called the tool a dibber, but apparently both terms are used.
But the major characters in the cartoon are all there. Apart from TOP CAT, there’s BENNY the BALL, CHOO CHOO, BRAIN, SPOOK, half of FANCY-FANCY, and of course OFFICER DIBBLE. Excellent stuff.
Lovely puzzle, great fun. Got the theme quite early, having been very much a fan of the show in my youth (never did understand why it was listed as Boss Cat though – thanks for the explanation, Flea). BINGO HALL was my LOI and a bit of a stab in the dark, being the only thing I could think of that would fit with the crossing letters – I put that down to spending too much time doing crosswords and not enough time playing bingo.
Thanks, Grecian and RR!
Thanks Grecian, that was great. Even though I never missed TOP CAT when I was a kid, I missed the theme today. (It might have struck me had I looked!) Anyway there was much to like including FANCY-FREE, OPRAH, SCAM, REFORMIST, MYNAH, CHOO-CHOO, and OFFER. The clues read very well; I agree with Eileen @ 5 — ‘all with lovely surfaces’. I couldn’t parse BINGO HALL (I initially bunged in ‘disco ball’) or BREATHER; thanks RR for explaining things.
One of our occasional forays into Indy territory and what a delight it turned out to be. We fairly rattled through most of it, only the NE corner holding us up for a bit. It being Tuesday we expected a theme and spotted it early on even though we didn’t remember all the characters till Google refreshed our memory. Of the non-themed answers REFORMIST was our favourite.
Thanks, Grecian and RR
Many thanks to RatkojaRiku for the excellent blog and to everybody else for the lovely comments. I’m so glad that you all seemed to enjoy the puzzle and the memories of TC. It was a classic cartoon, to be fair. Hope to see you all here soon. G
One of those days. Couldn’t get into this and got barely half of it before giving up.
Excellent as usual from this setter.
I saw the word LOINERon a crossword the other day and Id never heard that about LEEDS
Thanks all.