Atrica will be getting fed up with being blogged by us – we have now blogged the last three.
There were some smooth surfaces today which we always appreciate. However, there were also a few definitions which seemed to jar. We are not sure that if we ate something with poppy seeds on the top that we would fail a drug test but who knows? Oxeye for a ‘beautiful thing in bed’ seems a bit vague and we cannot quite see that AITCH can be defined as ‘Arry’s dropped’ even if you include ‘that’ at the beginning. However, we could be missing something so no doubt someone will be able to help us out.
Atrica often has a hidden theme but we cannot see anything today apart from the fact that it is a pangram. With two Zs and two Qs leaping off the grid we did wonder whether it would be a DOUBLE (9ac) pangram – but it isn’t – there’s only one J, one K and one W.
Y (last or ‘final’ letter of happy) + hOUR (letters of ‘hour’ after the ‘h’ (hour))
Alternate letters (‘occasionally emptied’) in pItChEr
DEE (river) JAY (bird)
DOUBt (uncertainty) missing last letter or ‘endless’ + LEss (final couple leaving). We checked this in Chambers and think it must come from the phrase ‘double or quits’.
A homophone (‘reportedly’) of CUE (prompt) + DUP (party)
BEEf – replacing ‘f’ with T – the other end or ‘side’ of ‘fat’
F (fellow) crAZED (unhinged) without ‘cr’ or ‘with credit denied’
The last or ‘ultimate’ letters of makE AmericA greateR agaiN
A reversal (‘backward’) of ARE (A, as in the metric measure of area)
FEel seED without or ‘lacking’ ‘else’ (otherwise)
An anagram (‘wrestling’) of TEAM’S ABLE
POPPY (‘bloomer’) SEED (leading player)
A homophone (‘exclaiming’) of Oh Gee! – the way that an American may say ‘Oh goodness me!’
sEND (relay) without the first letter or ‘start’
oVEr hERe (both words missing first and last letters or ‘stripped’)
ON (operating) hAIR (locks) dropping the ‘h’ – as might be heard in Limehouse (East End of London)
Hidden (‘collected by’) in toOK A Year
An anagram (‘massaged’) of IN STAGES
E and T (first letters or ‘starts’ in Elon and Trump) missing from or ‘abandoned by’ DetROIT’S
TEE (peg with cupped top) PEE (leak)
W (with) HeresY (first and last letters only or ‘case’)
SOmeHOw missing ‘mew’ (seabird) in two separate places
O (circle) ZONE (sphere)
BERATED with ‘b’ (bishop) and ‘r’ (rook) changing places
FINE F (fine) with the first letter moving to the bottom or ‘top-to-toe’ + ABLY (well)
Hidden in (‘parts of’) picturESQue
DEAD (defunct) around or ‘dressing’ R (recipe)
ELEcT (chosen) with MEN (troops) replacing C (Cuba)
A (article) QUArRel (dispute) missing the middle letter or ‘disheartening’ + LE (French for ‘the’)
T (temperature) inside an anagram (‘damaged’) of AZORES
EX (once) P (quietly) LET (permit) I’VE (setter’s as in setter has). We had to check this as we were not aware that an ‘expletive’ can be a word included merely to fill a gap, or to fill up a sentence or line in verse.
An anagram (‘plays’) of ODDER and MANY
SNIP (cut) below PAR (average)
ODd (strange) missing last letter or ‘almost’ + humOROUS (funny) missing or ‘eliminating’ ‘hum’ (smell)
O (nothing) X (wrong) + YE (old version of ‘the’) with E (earl) above or ‘atop’
Mmmmmm! A bIT muCH (increasing the initial dropped letters from 0, 1 to 2). We’re not sure that we like ‘Arry’s dropped’ as a definition for AITCH
A reversal (‘set up’) of WAS (used to be)
I really liked this. Lots of inventive clueing made for a highly enjoyable solve right from the start with the beautiful ’hour after hour’. Didn’t have any issue with AITCH. ‘Arry has dropped H from Harry (‘Arry’s being ‘Arry has).
Re 9a – I think the reference is to DOUBLE in bridge where it can be used as a bid to double the points of the opponents making or going down in a contract – so ‘aggressive’ as in ‘I think we will beat your contract’. In fact DOUBLE as a bid is used in various ways/meanings but it is ‘aggressive’ in that particular usage.
Yep, doubtless double is a bridge reference. Some fun bits here, hour after hour is very sharp. I was ok wiyh oxeye in bed. Aitch and droits in the SE my losi. Thanks Atrica and BandJ.
Happy to finish… some seemed deceptivly simple like 3d but there was ample deviousness in 33ac… agree with shikasta@2, grantinfreo@3 that bridge was probably the base for aggression… I took “letters the ‘Arry’s dropped” to be the def.. which I suppose mean “letters” is doing double duty…
Thanks Atrica and Bertandjoyce
Undrell@4
AITCH
Harry has dropped just one letter. Will ‘letters that ‘Arry’s dropped’ work?
As B&J mentioned in the intro, ‘that ‘Arry’s dropped’ could be an alternative definition.
I was initially convinced the clue was okay. Now I feel uncertain.
Harry dropped AITCH to become ‘Arry. ‘Arry didn’t drop anything.
I must be missing something.
Thanks Atrica and Bertandjoyce
I still think it’s fine. If Harry drops H then ‘Arry has the H dropped.
Isn’t the def ‘that ‘Arry’s dropped’, as discounted in the blogger’s preamble: ‘the thing ‘Arry has dropped’.
Actually I think there is something going on. All the letters of the alphabet seem to be spelled out or hidden in the grid. OKAY[?], BEET, POPPY SEED, DEEJAY, FEE[?]D INEFFABLY, OGEE, AITCH, ICE, DEEJAY, OKAY, EL–EM–ENT, OKAY, TEEPEE, QUEUED UP, AQUARELLE, GIANTESS, TEEPEE, YOUR, VEER, DOUBLE / YOUR, EXPLETIVE, WHY and DAZED. Spotting this definitely helped me finish the grid. I thought the Z in ZOSTERA was the best Atrica had managed for the last letter then clocked it in DAZED. A triumph!
Agree that Gobbo must have H right. ‘That [which] Arry’s dropped’. AITCH/H is what has been dropped when someone pronounces Harry as Arry. Thanks B&J for the blog and Atrica for a tour de force of construction.
Wow! Well spotted Charlie. We thought there must be something going on given Atrica’s past puzzles.
Well done Attica – an unusual and amazing pangram.
Well spotted Charlie.
Thanks to Charlie for spotting what others (including me) missed. Well done to Atrica for the fun. I especially liked the clues for BASE METAL, GIANTESS and WHY.
I wonder if the AY for A comes from MODERN DAY rather than OKAY which is giving us the KAY for K?
There was a famous but possibly apocryphal case of a Pole who failed a drug test after eating poppy seed cake. US service personnel are advised not to consume poppy seeds to avoid adverse effects in a urine sample. Clever puzzle. Well spotted Charlie.
To answer the query in the blog: yes–those delicious lemon poppyseed muffins that were popular here about 20 years ago can in fact cause you to fail a drug test taken within the next half-day or so. Poppy seeds contain the same chemical, in small quantities, that the test screens for the byproducts of opiate consumption.
Oh, and I think the I is supposed to be in OXEYE.
I completed this, and thought, “that’s a really, really good puzzle”.
So many intricate letter manoeuvres and original wordplays, contained in a full house of outstanding surfaces.
My whylist was AQUARELLE and ZOSTERA; with a tiny quibble over the wild plant, OXEYE, being a bed[ding] plant…though it is a thing of beauty.
Scrap the last paragraph, and the description “really, really good”.
Thanks to Charlie@8; ( and PM @12); mine eyes have seen the glory. This puzzle is an exceptional piece of craftsmanship. Hats off to Charlie: if I were the setter, and the sheer skill had passed by unseen, I would be mortified.
Superb stuff, Atrica, thanks too BJ…but the drinks are on me, Charlie.
It was evident that something was going on here, given the unusual grid. I saw a pangram, but that seemed inadequate as an explanation and I’d never have spotted the phonetic alphabet. Thanks Charlie@8. It’s only once these things are pointed out that you realise quite how clever the puzzle is.
Applause and thanks to Atrica, and B&J
Thanks all (especially Charlie @8!) and to B&J, who can blog me any day of the week. I think you’ve found all the homophones although I originally used sOHo for the “O”. At first I wanted to use “what ‘Arry’s dropped”, as that’s probably what ‘Arry would say, but opted not to. From such small decisions derive the futures of whole parallel universes.