After the heady excitement of Cyclops’ 800th puzzle milestone last time out, he is ‘back to the day job’ of producing high quality puzzles satirising the high-and-mighty and playing fast-and-loose with the Venn diagram of cryptic puzzle convention and irreverence…
Kemi Badenoch gets her third outing, I think, in a Cyclops puzzle. Here it is for her first letter, B, in the wordplay of 7A; another was for her last letter, H; and the third was as an entry, with the wordplay pointing out the (un)fortunate concatenation of BAD and ENOCH in her surname…
On the other side of the House we have REEVES as a ‘minister’ at 23A.
Thankfully there is only one reference to Ronald T Dump, as RINGLEADER of the SORDID tariff SCAM that has unleashed MERRY HELL, UNREST and HARD LUCK around the PLANET. I suspect he is a ‘blustered’ flush, after he threatened to ESCALATE and then ONLY JUST backed down at the last minute when, as with Liz Truss, the bond markets proved to be the tail that wagged the dog… I can only hope he eventually faces a COMMISSION and is SHUT UP in the end…
Away from politics, there is a wonderful anagram/surface for NEWTON – as a mathematician who ‘went on screwing’! (I must have been doing something wrong in my days as an A-Level and undergrad mathematician?…)
Right on the money, as usual – so my thanks to Cyclops, as he strolls on into his 800s…
| Across | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Clue No | Solution | Clue (definition underlined)
Logic/parsing |
||
| 7A | BLACK EYE | “Badenoch’s main deficiency”: magazine reveals result of fight? (5,3)
B (main, or first, letter of Badenoch) + LACK (deficiency) + EYE (this magazine!) |
||
| 8A | LECHER | Act shocked about catching church sexual predator (6)
LE_ER (reel, or ack shocked, about) around (catching) CH (church) |
||
| 10A | COMMISSION | Conservative member initially falling into disregard gets percentage (10)
C (Conservative) + OM_ISSION (disregard) around (fallen in to by) M (initial letter of Member) |
||
| 11A | GOOF | Idiot fellow in pursuit of muck (4)
GOO (muck) followed (pursued) by F (fellow) |
||
| 12A | YES MAN | Old band crew’s lackey (3-3)
YES (old rock band) + MAN (crew) |
||
| 14A | LITERACY | Turned on by the ultimately risqué state of being educated (8)
LIT (turned on, as in a light bulb) + E (thE, ultimately) + RACY (risqué) |
||
| 15A | SORDID | Sleazy way one’s grabbed by bastard (6)
SO_D (bastard) around (grabbing) RD (road, way) + I (one) |
||
| 16A | SHUT UP | Hold your tongue in prison? (4,2)
double defn. – to hold ones tongue is to SHUT UP; and if one is in prison one is SHUT UP! |
||
| 20A | ONLY JUST | Barely performing, young Jack, initially (swamped by desire) (4,4)
ON (performing, on stage) + L_UST (desire) around (swamping) Y_J (Young Jack, initially) |
||
| 23A | REEVES | Ever prepared before last two instalments of Yes Minister? (6)
REVE (anag, i.e. prepared, of EVER) + ES (last two characters of yES) |
||
| 24A | TWEE | Start to take piss – “cutesy!” (4)
T (start of Take) + WEE (piss) |
||
| 25A | RINGLEADER | Chief troublemaker puts halo on Trump? (10)
RING (halo) + LEADER (Trump) |
||
| 27A | OODLES | Lots of twits wanting tip from Elon (6)
( |
||
| 28A | ESCALATE | Key agency head dead – refer to a higher-up (8)
ESC (escape key, on computer keyboard) + A (head, or first letter, of Agency) + LATE (dead) |
||
| Down | ||||
| Clue No | Solution | Clue (definition underlined)
Logic/parsing |
||
| 1D | BLOOMERS | Underwear gaffes (8)
double def. – BLOOMERS can be knickers, or underwear; and BLOOMERS can be blunders, or gaffes |
||
| 2D | SCAM | Was Cameron covering up fraud? (4)
hidden word in, i.e. covered by, ‘waS CAMeron’ |
||
| 3D | HELSINKI | Likes playing with name in greeting capital (8)
H_I (hi, hello, greeting) around ELSINK (anag, i.e. playing, of LIKES + N, name) |
||
| 4D | LEGIBLE | Member, dithering Lib – ultimately Conservative, that’s plain (7)
LEG (bodily member) + IBL (anag, i.e. dithering, of LIB) + E (ultimate letter of conservativE) |
||
| 5D | PLANET | Mars Bush’s grasp of English? (6)
PLAN_T (bush) around (grasping) E (English) |
||
| 6D | HEROIC | Bold creep abandons heroin chic (6)
HERO( |
||
| 9D | CIGARETTE | Clubs get irate about cancer risk (9)
C (clubs, cards) + IGARETTE (anag, i.e. about, of GET IRATE) |
||
| 13D | MERRY HELL | Pissed over lower regions (played for maximum disturbance) (5,4)
MERRY (pissed, drunk) + HELL (lower regions, depending on your belief system) [‘play merry hell’] |
||
| 17D | HARD LUCK | Got an erection by chance? That’s inopportune (4,4)
HARD (erect) + LUCK (chance) |
||
| 18D | PRESENTS | I’d missed, say, Putin’s awards (8)
PRES( |
||
| 19D | STUNNER | Very attractive sort of headbanger? (7)
double def. – a STUNNER can be a very attractive person; and someone who bangs their own, or others’, head could be a STUNNER |
||
| 21D | NEWTON | Mathematician went on screwing (6)
anag, i.e. screwing, of WENT ON |
||
| 22D | UNREST | Sun restrained? Just a bit, so protest! (6)
hidden word in, i.e. just a bit of, ‘sUN RESTrained’ |
||
| 26D | ALLY | Clot dumps wife for colleague (4)
( |
||
Thanks for the blog , I agree with your fourth paragraph although I am not as optimistic , strange times when we have to rely on the bond markets to rstrain the idiots .
Very good set of clues , HEROIC a neat spot and MERRY HELL a great definition .
My only quibble for NEWTON , a physicist of course . Fortunately in his time crosswords had not been invented so during his tea-break he would help out his maths friends with their little hobby .
In Cyclops’ defence, my eCollins describes Newton as an ‘English mathematician, physicist, astronomer, and philosopher‘, and in his list of works gives ‘Principia Mathematica‘ first…so to the lay person/casual dictionary browser it might seem that Physics was just a side hustle (;+>)…
If my students ever quote e sources to me they get sent to bio-sciences to do some colouring-in .
Although I was (am) an old rocker it took several days to remember ‘yes’
What is it, that breathes fire into the equations, and gives them a universe to describe?
@Roz, 3
Was it Matisse who said “If my students ever quote Newton on optics, then I don’t need to send them anywhere, because they’re already back the two centuries where they belong”?
Etu@6 I suspect that even the fleas on Diamond knew more about optics than Matisse .
Roz, you may well be right, but that wasn’t the point, and I suspect that you know it.
I understand that you lecture in particle physics?
Tsk. Jobs eh?
I used to have them once.
15A – I couldn’t see anything other than ST (way) RA-I-T (one’s grabbed by bastard). But why was STRAIT, sleazy? Ah well, £100 next time…
Nige B @ 9
With you all the way on 15A .
Nige B and Stambridge – luckily I went the right ‘way’ (RD) first – but once you realised that ‘strait’ ‘sleazy’ wouldn’t work you should have seen the error of your ‘way’ (ST)
Anyway, no £100 for anyone here this fortnight, unless your name is ‘Rob Falconer’…next time, indeed…
In fact, no £150! They seem to have increased the prize by 50%…which will increase my disappointment by 50% each fortnight when I don’t win…
Really enjoyed this one
Enjoyed this one. Still in the early stages of getting to grips with cryptics and didn’t solve this fully, so thanks for filling in the blanks.
I can usually understand the ones I didn’t get.
But why do twits = noodles ? (27A)
@Mike Lots of twits (NOODLES) wanting tip (as in lacking tip) (N) from Elon
Yeah I know…!
Thanks for the continuing comments – I thought this one was dead and buried!
Mike at #14 – the second definition of NOODLE in Chambers is a ‘simpleton’, or ‘blockhead’, hence a twit…
(If you are just starting out, then good luck with the journey…probably worth investing in a copy of Chambers – £45-ish for a paper one, or about £5 for the Android or IOS app version…)