Fantastic fun.
IO has set a much more doable puzzle than we know he is capable of, and as his previous one, there is a theme/common thread running through many of the clues.
CAKES* (*crumbled) and fed to JAY (crow)
NINE (square) + YARDS (gardens)
W (women) leaving LOT T[w]O (second item at auction)
Perhaps someone knows more than I do – ‘Housey-house’ is a bingo-like game in which winners shout ‘house!’ when they’ve won. I assume in Lotto, they shout ‘lotto!’?
SOOT[h]ING (allaying, H (hospital) advances)
(FROM A EWE)* (*supply)
For ‘supply’ think ‘in a supple way’
Double definition
MARY (Our Lady) with SON (child) in
SH (can it) + [b]E (basil’s top is blown) + BANG (violently strike)
[scrup]LES S[adly] (some)
(DO + O (nothing))< (<about) cutting CABLE (chain)
STRUM (musician’s rhythmic activity) keeps PEC (muscle)
Double definition
(DALI (surrealist) + H (hot); ACNE (spots) will hold)< (<back)
ALL OF (the whole, from clues 28 13); BA (bachelor) is concealing + X (kiss)
BA/bachelor in the academic sense
NT + OT (elements of the good book, New Testament, Old Testament); IO (you setter) accepts
SHE (woman) + RANG< (called, <about) kenneling
Dennis the Menace had a dog named Gnasher
(BOY CHUMS)* (*working)
D[a]R[k] A[r]T[s] (even characters spurning)
[ingeni]US ING[enious] (doubly, controls)
Double definition
TA (you shouldn’t have) + BOO (disapproval)
SEAN* (*awkwardly) over ALPHA (a)
Double definition
[tempt]S (finally) + ME in CHAR (daily)
RUM BAP (daiquiri-infused breakfast roll) for Spooner
UP + SET (members of the hunt?)
Referring to the upper class
CO + CO (businesses)
Referring to Coco the Clown
HEW (cut) through THOLE (peg)
All the words in the list combine with THE WHOLE … to form a phrase. ‘Counterintuitively’ because the phrase is incomplete here, not whole.
In this puzzle, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts…and the parts are pretty neat!
Loved this … in its entirety. There was so much going on that it was thoroughly absorbing with some interesting vocabulary to learn en route.
My favourite re the theme was 8/22. UP TO was clever, COCO cute and I liked the sneakily throwaway ‘a’ of ANAL PHASE (Freud’s icky pleasures of the potty).
Thanks to Io for a – like totally – ingenious puzzle and Oriel for the equally smart blog.
Thanks for the blog, IO toning it down a bit but still very good clues and I like the theme right at the end so not intrusive.
SHEBANG is a reference to Fawlty Towers – Gourmet Night .
LOTTO , a lot of terms for bingo in the UK , both the game and what you shout out.
Didn’t know ‘kit’ can mean a type of violin and assumed it referred to the name of a violin player. I took ‘up’ in 24d to refer to being on horseback.
Yes, Roz, I spotted that. Also the nice reference to Chubby Checker in 18d with a nice play on ‘checker’ in the definition.
Thanks to both. Definitely easier than normal for IO – especially once I got to the last clue & saw how the theme worked. I would quibble that there needs to be a DBE indicator in 11a since shooting is only a type of pain. & I parsed UP SET as ‘those riding horses’ therefore members of the hunt. (Edit: which I have just seen has been pointed out by Hovis)
Thanks Io and Oriel.
Top faves: LOTTO, MASONRY, SHEBANG, BALL OF WAX, DRAT, ANAL PHASE, BUM RAP.
COTD: THE WHOLE. The ‘counterintuitively needing’ bit is excellent.
Not as tough as an Io usually is. Still a good challenge.
A minor omission in the blog:
BALL OF WAX
W(week) left out
RESTRAIN
Is the first def whimsical or is the word used in that sense too?
Diane@1
In this puzzle, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts…and the parts are pretty neat!
Liked the comment.
KVa @6 I just had it as RE STRAIN , strain as in twist an ankle etc .
I agree with Hovis , the Checker is very good, even a hidden fake capital.
Roz@7
RESTRAIN
Thanks. I too took it as RE-STRAIN. I meant to say this:
If it is used (without a hyphen) in the sense of ‘twist again’, then it’s one of
the two defs.
Or else, it’s a whimsical def or WP.
Wow! Two days in a row where there are several words / meanings that I did not know.
Jack Easy = Indifferent. Really? The only reference that I could find was Jack Nicholson in Easy Rider.
Shebang = Vehicle. Not even an internet search gave me an example of this.
Shooting = Pain. Shooting is an adjective; pain is a noun. I have a shooting pain in my arm…
Ball of Wax = Affair. Isn’t a ball of the wax the same as the whole shebang? It must be a rather kinky affair.
Schmear – okay, I had never heard of it but an internet search did find a Jewish word for bribery, but why the Washington reference?
Anyway, thanks to the setter, Oriel and all contributors. I really do appreciate your efforts in helping me improve my English. Our German crosswords are not as challenging as those in the Financial Times.
What Diane said.
Friendlier than recent Io puzzles, although with him friendliness is relative, and a pleasure to solve from start to finish
Thanks to him and Oriel
24d UPSET: UP (riding) + SET (fraternity) – the people who ride to hounds, (not necessarily upper class).
7a/30a : In Wiktionary JACK-EASY – ‘(Ulster) very easy, no trouble’. (Also in Chambers without the hyphen). …
… and here in DSL – Dictionaries of the Scots Language – Dictionars o the Scots Leid:
‘… 6. … (4) JEck-easy, offhand, easy-going (Gen.Sc.), esp. in phr. to be jeck-easy, to be indifferent, not caring one way or the other (Id.).’
KVa@8 I just took it as wordplay , the hyphen or gaps or anything is irrelevant in wordplay , you just need to provide the right letters in the right order.
KVa@6&8: 18d RE-STRAIN ‘1840– transitive. To strain again (in various senses).’ – viz. tea; quicksilver, gold, and silver amalgam; oil; and …
‘2002 Gillespie re-strained his calf muscle. Times (Nexis) 9 November 43′
Thanks Io and Oriel
20dn: Collins 2023 p 1780 gives schmear marked US informal, hence the Washington reference.
Roz@14
Thanks for your response. I didn’t explain my point well. We can leave it here. Thanks again.
FrankieG@15
Thanks.
Frieda@9, oed.com has 19a SHEBANG: ‘
1.a. 1867– A hut, shed; one’s dwelling, quarters.
1.b. 1872– Applied to a vehicle.
1.c. 1901– A low drinking establishment, a tavern.’ and: ‘
2. 1869– … the whole shebang’
[I think all the quotations at 1.c. meant shebeen (a good !rish word).]
… and 20d SCHMEAR is ‘colloquial (originally and chiefly North American)’ .So “Washington’s” serves as a US indicator.
… Note that both are marked ‘North American’, rather than ‘US’ English, so both are valid in, and have appeared on Countdown.
Thank you, Frankie, I obviously did not search every possible source. I am just feeling a little inadequate with so many words that I do not know. I shall continue to improve.
May I ask? What is “Countdown”?
Frieda – SHOOTING here is a gerund, ie a verb functioning as a noun (used as an adjective it would be a gerundive).
Can’t say I found this especially easy by Io’s standards but cracking the theme certainly helped! Enjoyed the wit and invention as well as the challenge. Thanks, Io and Oriel
Frieda@21 I did not do the puzzle but I did read the blog. As a native English speaker (although not from the UK), let me reassure you that all of the unknown words you listed @9 are new to me too and the use of SHOOTING as a noun to mean pain is new also. Looking at the rest of the puzzle, there are a lot of words that are fun, but rarely used.
Frieda @21. Countdown is a words and numbers programme on Channel 4 here in the UK. You are allowed American words, e.g. sidewalk (pavement over here) but not American spellings, e.g. color (colour being the UK spelling).
Thank you Io and Oriel – I enjoyed this a lot, and as others have said it felt easier than many Ios. I, like many, had to hunt to find the ‘shebang = vehicle’ useage, and ‘schmear’ was new to me but it kind of ‘sounds right’. Same reservations as many regarding ‘shooting’, and I succumbed and revealed Jack Easy, which I could not parse either. Oh, and ‘thole’ was a NHO for me as well, which made 28/13 a late entry. Nonetheless, the overall experience was a lot of fun and I love the way so many idioms were included.
We sometimes find Io’s puzzles daunting but we spotted a few easy answers and thought this could be interesting. A sort of treasure hunt or detective work with a bit of googling here and there to confirm our suspicions and we stuck it out to the end to our great satisfaction.
Thanks, Io and Oriel.
This may be easy by Io’s standards but it’s very hard by mine!
Beak@27. You are not alone.
I would not call it easy by any standards but IO/Enigmatist can be a lot trickier than this sometimes.
Would somebody please explain this theme to me.
I just don’t understand it.
The blogger should explain it.
Moly@30
The theme is in 28/13
’28/13. Cut through peg, counterintuitively needing e.g. 9, 11 27, 19, 8 & 22, 25, 29, 1 or 20 for completeness (3,5)’ — replacing all the clue numbers with solutions:
THE WHOLE… …NINE YARDS, …SHOOTING MATCH, …SHEBANG, …KIT & CABOODLE, …SPECTRUM, …ENCHILADA, …BALL OF WAX or …SCHMEAR.
That’s ALL OF the theme IN TOTO, “entirely”, MORE or LESS.
[In Yorkshire “put t’wood i’ T’HOLE” is what you say to someone who’s left the door open – “put the wood in the hole” (or there’ll be “trouble at t’mill”)]
Thank you, Frankie.
Much appreciated. Obviously, i knew the theme was something to do with the final clue, but I couldn’t see what.
Sometimes I can do Io, but this one foxed me.
I’m with Freida@9, despite all follow up comments..
Usual stuff from IO, always a bumpy ride…
Thanks IO n Oriel
I live in New York and a schmear is most definitely a layer of cream cheese on a bagel. There is something a little odd about associating Washington and politicians as being Yiddish or Jewish which people in the US might find uncomfortable.
But had a lot of fun with the rest of it today and glad I could even manage most of an io puzzle.
20dn: Further to my earlier comment, I go this time to the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary (2007), which has the entry on p. 2693 for schmear noun. N. Amer. colloq., defined as “Bribery, corruption, flattery.” That seems to me to fit the definition “Washington’s corruption.” I do not expect setters to overrule standard dictionaries.
Sorry to be late, I saved this for today’s train journey, hoping Io would allow us to while away the whole journey. Sadly we’ve got more journey and no more crossword.
We enjoyed this, and found the keywords helped – surprising number of write ins for an Io (I don’t expect any).
Thank you to Io and Oriel.
Well I thought that was great fun, but I was defeated by the bizarre (to my mind) and unknown BALL OF WAX (which is not in my usual dictionaries). No wonder I couldn’t parse my answer FALL OF MAN! Thanks Oriel for the elucidation and IO for the entertaining crossword.
Doable? Doable? Are you joking?
This was the first time an FT cryptic has reduced me to tears of frustration.
Much as I would describe myself as an internationalist, I do prefer crosswords set in UK English rather than US English as the latter is unfamiliar to me.