Bluebird provides the Saturday work-out this week.
This was an enjoyable puzzle with some great surfaces, a few crafty definitions and several smiley moments.
We noticed quite a few references to food and drink in the clues and on examining the completed grid realised that there are a lot of entries that are connected with food and drink, including implements used for eating and places to store or eat food. It is a very wide-ranging theme (assuming it is intended as such) and we wondered whether we should also have shaded 23d and may be even 21d, given the mixture of digestables on the menu!
CO (company – ‘firm’) G (last letter or ‘end’ of fig)
EX (old) + an anagram (‘bananas’) of RIPE + an anagram (‘nuts’) of DECENt missing the last letter or ‘chopped’
A homophone (‘delivering’) of LADAS (Russian cars)
HEAD (‘some lettuce’) OFF (not ‘on’)
RA MEN might be male members of the Royal Academy – ‘artists’
An anagram (‘fails’) of TOASTER round or ‘broken by’ D (last or ‘ultimate’ letter of bread) + S (special)
Spaghetti is usually eaten with a FORK, which one LIFTS to the mouth
CHI (Greek letter) + PS (post-script – ‘I forgot to write’)
We had to check this one – it seems to be CHAD (American guy) round or ‘crossing’ R (river) – we had always thought that Mr Chad (the ‘wot no’….cartoon character from WW11) was British, but apparently he might have been brought over from America by GIs.
A Spoonerism of TOIL (work) ANCHOR (a brand of butter)
TA (Territorial Army – ‘former volunteers’) + a reversal (‘retired’) of IN + CAL (California) after or ‘chasing’ BO (body odour – ‘a whiff’)
TAT (junk) IE (id est – ‘that is’)
ICE (cold water) + an anagram (‘excitedly’) of DATE
COCO (clown) NUT (enthusiast)
NOSE (‘passages’) in or ‘coated by’ TOFFEE (‘brown sticky stuff’) + D (first letter or ‘beginning’ to dry)
O (penultimate letter in Marillion) with CD (album) outside
An anagram (‘stoked’) of COAL + a reversal (‘turning’) of I (one) FIRe missing the last letter or ‘almost’ + C (cold)
GAR (fish) UM
An anagram (‘in a frenzy’) of R (first or ‘initial’ letter of roulade) and EATEN + L (left)
POShER (more sophisticated) ‘rejecting’ the ‘h’ (last letter or ‘bit’ of sandwich)
HEARS (judges) in or ‘drunk’ by RE (about) A (one) L (fifty)
Hidden (a ‘portion’ of) in thE LAST ICe-cream
CHOPS (pork) TICK (yes)
DUFF (mess up) S (first letter or ‘topping’ of summer)
ROAST (have a go at) BEEF (complain)
Iceland is a CHAIN of FOOD shops
SURF (seafood, as in ‘surf and turf’) E (last or ‘final’ letter of the) + an anagram (‘abandoned’) of DIET
NET (catch) in an anagram (‘high’) of TIDE
ANT (soldier) ACID (LSD)
I (one) L (litre) in or ‘bottled by’) BUT (bar, as in ‘all bar one’)
Double definition
TON (weight) I C (first letter or ‘top’ of cement)
Thanks Bluebird and BertandJoyce
I really liked this crossword. Took me a while to fill the grid and longer to parse – but all very enjoyable.
I don’t like Surfeited as a word but with the huge amount of food and drink in the puzzle it makes a lot of sense
I think you could also shade a few more 1d etc. Good theme which didn’t interrupt solving or create a poor grid
Every clue or solution seems to be thematic. Not that I spotted them while solving the puzzle…
Enjoyed the yummy treat.
Thanks both.
GARUM
looks like a CAD.
I was amused by the idea of endless roulade but took ages to see which letters to reverse in BOTANICAL. Missed the theme as usual. Thanks all.
I’d suggest a few other solutions have at least a tangential bearing on the subject of food in general: CALORIFIC, GARUM and SURFEITED are candidates to join LICKS and ANTACID at a pinch. A real pleasure to encounter this setter for the second time in a week with another fizzy puzzle of misdirection and delightful definitions. Too many favourites to list them all: restricting myself to a podium of three, I’d highlight FORK LIFTS and COCONUT for the definitions and the nho GARUM which is a nice extended definition/CAD as KVa has observed.
Thanks Bluebird and B&J
More difficult to find clues NOT involving food! Didn’t interfere with solving, which I always prefer, as I rarely spot themes. Good clear clues which always helps… many laughs, probably ROAD TESTS was my favourite when I finally spotted which “ultimately” Bluebird was talking about, I had R n S broken by “bread” for quite a while.. I think we can add BOTANICAL and all of FOOD CHAIN to an ever-growing list.. SURFEIT n 1d get my vote also..
Thanks Bluebird and Bertandjoyce
The theme leapt out at me from the start – as KVa@2 says, it covers every single clue, in either the surface or entry, surely? – and a good job it did, since I found this enjoyable but pretty chewy, having to go round and round filling in bits here and there, often having lots of incomplete answers tentatively in place until I had further checkers or brainwaves for the remaining parsing.
Thanks to the theme, larders, chard and roast beef were immediate once a checker or two went in. The puzzle was a good showcase of why it helps me, as a relative newcomer to cryptics, to pencil in letters or portions of words, to give potential checkers for crossing entries that will then hopefully confirm or refute ideas; S, ED, or ING at ends of words, based on verb tense or plurals, for example. And in this particular puzzle I had lots of other chunks such as TAT (but will it be tatie or tater?), OFF (but will it be the unlikely TIME, RUSH or, as it transpired, HEAD?), CAL (twice), and so on.
Another tip for those at my stage: pencilling in the anagram fodder in jumbled order into the lights really helps my brain to make sense of it; it works much better for me than jotting it down as a bundle on paper, which is what I used to do when I dabbled with cryptics years ago in hard-copy newspapers.
Favourites were OIL TANKER and SURFEITED. Like Petert@3 I took ages to tease out BOTANICAL despite the ideas being fairly clear.
Thanks both!
The only surface I had quibbles with is that for ELASTIC, since I don’t really see the equivalence to “(is) bigger, potentially”. This entry was my LOI. I’m pretty sure I’d have twigged much earlier if the surface had said something like “could be bigger”.
Thanks both. I also found this very enjoyable, with FOOD CHAIN a favourite, though I had to check a couple of answers as my culinary knowledge isn’t great. First thought for DUFFS was ‘cakes’ taking the ‘mess up’ from a different perspective. I regarded CHARD as a little weak, as my understanding is the origin of the name is not American, and in any event any name clued as ‘guy’ is usually unilluminating until you’ve already worked out the answer.
Another enjoyable puzzle from Bluebird. Despite the impressive density of theme, I noticed nothing! The definition for COCONUT made me smile.
To me, and I presume to our setter, Chad is a very stereotypical US name, usually for a jock, so no complaints there – comparable to IAN for a Scotsman and so on. I’d not heard of Mr Chad, although I have seen versions of the cartoon.
Thanks both.
McDonald’s to take one order for consumers, naturally? (4,5) – not so long ago, July 25th, Tramp, Guardian.