By my reckoning I have blogged 114 of Cyclops’ Private Eye puzzles so far, roughly every other fortnight since 2016, but only two Saturday Prize Brummies – his Grauniad alter-ego…(all super-heroes have an alter-ego, don’t they?…)
Anyway, I have just had a very pleasant musical evening, listening to Billy Bragg and PD Heaton at the Westbirton Arboretum in Gloucestershire, hence the slight lateness in posting this blog – but I completely failed to see the ‘musical’ connections in this puzzle until right at the end!
With my head down in blinkered solving mode, I eventually had an almost full grid except for 2D ?I?E and 8D ?E?T. I was thinking maybe ZEST for ‘go’ at 8D, and ?ITE with T (the) inside ‘something’ at 2D. In fact I was just about to give up and ‘phone a friend’ when I had one last trawl through the grid. And I still didn’t see them…but I saw SLO-MO and YO-YO and CICER-O and HELL-O…was there an ‘ending in O’ theme-ette?
Then HELLO and DOLLY hit me square between the eyes, interspersed with HAIRSPRAY, and I realised that there might be some theatrically musical titles here! SIDE and STORY helped me get WEST at 8D, and then 2D had to be LINE to help make (A) CHORUS LINE.
HIGH SOCIETY, SWEET CHARITY, CATS and GODSPELL soon followed, dredged from the sump of my general cultural reservoir of retained knowledge, but not my specialist subject.
It took a bit of Wiki-oogling to persuade myself that A Streetcar Named Desire had never had a musical version called just ‘Streetcar’, but I did find a musical called ‘Madame Aphrodite’, which could be part of the theme, without the Madame…time will tell…
And there we have it – an awful lot of thematic material squeezed into the confines of the grid so artfully that your (admittedly culturally deserted) correspondent almost missed them. I am sure they were writ large and obviously for many other solvers…and I may have missed other musical theatre references.
My thanks to Brummie for the challenge – and my humble abasement to him for nearly missing his well-crafted theme…
| Across | ||
|---|---|---|
| Clue No | Solution / Entry | Clue (definition underlined)
Logic/parsing |
| 9A | ALIBI | Boxer with ‘non-straight’ defence (5)
ALI (Muhammad Ali, boxer) + BI (bi-sexual, non-straight) |
| 10A | APHRODITE | Deity’s harp turned round and tied up (9)
APHR (anag, i.e. turned, of HARP) + O (round letter) + DITE (anag, i.e. up, of TIED) [(Madame) Aphrodite – a musical?] |
| 11A | STREETCAR | Celeb going round Crete crashed vehicle (9)
ST_AR (celeb) around REETC (anag, i.e. crashed, of CRETE) [Not sure if A Streetcar Named Desire was ever made into a musical?] |
| 12A | SWEET | Darling, say ‘bulls-eye’ (5)
double defn. – your darling might be your SWEET (heart); and a bulls-eye is a kind of SWEET [Musical – Sweet Charity] |
| 13A | BLUNTED | Pointless Soviet spy’s meeting with journalist (7)
BLUNT (Anthony Blunt, Soviet spy) plus (meeting with) ED (editor, journalist) |
| 15A | SUMMONS | Order stars to entertain male doctor (7)
SU_NS (stars) around (entertaining) M (male) + MO (Medical Officer, doctor) |
| 17A | SPELL | Read out the letters – period (5)
double defn. – to SPELL out can be to read out the letters of a word; and a SPELL can be a period of time |
| 18A | GOD | Leave world finally for Mars? (3)
GO (leave) + D (final letter of worlD) [Musical – Godspell] |
| 20A | SLO-MO | Weaving looms, half-speed, reduced? (3-2)
anag, i.e. weaving, of LOOMS |
| 22A | CHARITY | Good work one put into Plan X’s successor (7)
CHAR_T (plan) around I (one), plus Y (the letter after X, alphabetically, so its successor) |
| 25A | SOCIETY | Association about to replace five in communist council, yes? (7)
SO( |
| 26A | HELLO | This is a surprise greeting (5)
double defn. – HELLO! Can be a surprised interjection; and HELLO is also a greeting! [Musical – Hello Dolly] |
| 27A | HAIRSPRAY | Make a plea after husband looks for lacquer (9)
H (husband) + AIRS (miens, looks) + PRAY (make a plea to whichever deity you might believe in) [Another musical, Hairspray] |
| 30A | GRACE NOTE | Kelly and Mark’s embellishment? (5,4)
GRACE (Grace Kelly) + NOTE (mark, heed) |
| 31A | DOLLY | Camera support that’s likely to be held onto (5)
double defn. – a DOLLY can be a camera support in film/TV making; and a DOLLY is likely to be held on to by a child… |
| Down | ||
| Clue No | Solution / Entry | Clue (definition underlined)
Logic/parsing |
| 1D | CATS | Old music fans’ whips (4)
another double defn. – CATS is a relatively dated term for jazz fans; and CATS are also whips, usually military, cat-o’-nine-tails [Cats, the musical] |
| 2D | VIN ROUGE | Casually given our drink (3,5)
anag, i.e. casually, of GIVEN OUR |
| 3D | LINE | Cover the inside approach (4)
yet another double defn. – to LINE can be to cover the inside of; and the LINE one takes on an issue is an approach |
| 4D | WATCHDOG | It should protect a hunter, follow? (8)
WATCH (a Hunter is a type of watch) + DOG (follow) |
| 5D | CHORUS | Refrain from criticizing head god (6)
C (first letter, or head, of Criticizing) + HORUS (Eqyptian god) [Musical – (A) Chorus Line] |
| 6D | HOUSE MUSIC | Restaurant management possibly bars a certain kind of pop (5,5)
HOUSE (e.g. on the house, term for restaurant management) + MUSIC (bars) |
| 7D | CICERO | Eloquent Roman cake decorator recruited by firm (6)
C_O (company, firm) around (recruiting) ICER (cake decorator) |
| 8D | WEST | Go before it gets to die (4)
CD – if you put ‘go’ before WEST it can mean to die [as opposed to the Village People song ‘Go West’! And Musical – West Side Story] |
| 13D | BASIC | Simple when entered in pen (5)
B_IC (make of biro, or pen) around (entered by) AS (when) |
| 14D | TALK IT OVER | Discuss time travel – OK, if prepared to include the author (4,2,4)
anag, i.e. prepared, of T (time) + TRAVEL OK + I (personal pronoun, often the author) |
| 16D | STORY | Politician must go after second lie (5)
S (second) + TORY (politician) [a novel concept – two lies and you are out…that would shorten a few political careers!] |
| 19D | DESTINED | Ed’s possibly given points – inevitable (8)
DES (anag, i.e. possibly, of EDS) + TINED (given points, as in the tines, or prongs, of a fork), or a stag’s antlers) |
| 21D | OVERRULE | Exceed one’s duty as a monarch set aside? (8)
punning double defn.(?) – if one exceeds one’s duty as a monarch, one might OVER RULE; and to OVERRULE can be to set aside, as in a previous decision |
| 23D | AFLOAT | One even gets a round in on a cruise? (6)
A (one) + FL_AT (even) around (getting in) O (a round letter) |
| 24D | YAHOOS | Louts literally speak about covering house with oxidised lead (6)
YA_S (speak, about) around (covering) HO (house) + O (lead letter of Oxide) [‘literally’ referring to the brutish/loutish Yahoos in Gulliver’s Travels…] |
| 26D | HIGH | Beginning to go off ham that’s pickled (4)
( [Musical – High Society] |
| 28D | SIDE | The right sort of arrogance? (4)
double defn. – the right is a SIDE; and SIDE can mean arrogance |
| 29D | YO-YO | Street greetings go up and down (2-2)
YO is a (mainly US) interjection calling for attention or indicating one’s presence, so a ‘street greeting’, maybe, and in plural YO YO can be to go up and down, like a…um, well, a YO-YO…! |
Our blogger wasn’t the only one suffering from false-theme-itis. My FOI was GOD in dead centre, so I thought right, there is a theme and that’s it. Half-way through the puzzle I hadn’t found any, then they started appearing (mostly goddesses, though, but not many, and not complete). GOD, APHRODITE, HORUS, the GRACEs, the DESTINies, the MUSes. Then the primary, i.e. intended, theme came through! Sigh of relief.
Some good clues here, fave was TALK IT OVER.
Thanks B&M
I didn’t spot the theme (even though I knew there was one and recognised HAIRSPRAY as a musical – sigh) and didn’t get the three short downs at the top.
Favourites were: SOCIETY (FOI), BASIC, ALIBI, CICERO, DESTINED, HAIRSPRAY
Thanks Brummie and mc_rapper67
I managed to spot the theme with a couple of clues left, and it helped to finish it. Streetcar was a musical, in the Simpsons — The Kindness of Strangers was brilliant, as was this puzzle!
Many thanks Brummie and mc_rapper67.
The theme was beyond me but I enjoyed the several lovely surfaces. 8d was LOI and it felt like looking into an empty bag of tasty chips and feeling disappointed that there are none left.
Thanks, Brummie and mc_rapper67
Thanks mc_rapper67. As usual I missed the theme entirely, didn’t even recognise there was a theme. Still enjoyed it though even if I overthought quite a few of the clues, as I guess I was supposed to do.
Another who missed the theme entirely. In a way that’s good as I now get to appreciate the puzzle all over again!
Thanks to Brummie and mc_rapper67.
Did anyone else put LAYS in 1d, with the parsing ‘old music= LAYS’, ‘f-LAYS = whips’ (because LAYS is the answer, or ‘ans’ as in ‘f-ans’)? Thought not.
My faves: SUMMONS, HAIRSPRAY, TALK IT OVER and HIGH.
SLO-MO
Reduced: To indicate that it’s a reduced form of slow motion (half-speed?), I think.
DOLLY
The blogger’s explanation seems perfect. I had a simple catch in cricket (DOLLY) in
mind.
Thanks mc and Brummie.
Is there any reason why 26ac cannot be HALLO?
Thanks for the blog and the grid , by some miracle I saw the theme very early , SPELL GOD adjacent then CHARITY soon after SWEET and then HAIRSPRAY .
I liked the CHART Y for CHARITY . A very typical Guardian crossword , see June 3rd 2022 .
As Charon ferries you across the Acheron you hand him your obol and he says – Welcome to Hades , here is your book of tickets ; you must attend a musical every night for the next three million years .
Jackkt @ 9, other than the musical is HELLO DOLLY, I couldn’t see one, but having spotted the theme early enough to help with WEST and LINE, I was convinced by that version.
Thank you to Brummie and mc_rapper.
It still remains a surprise to me that the abbreviation for Yes (Y) in SOCIETY is not in the dictionaries (at least Chambers, Collins, OED). Neither is N for No. They need to add them.
Also, CATS for jazz fans isn’t shown as old, just slang or informal.
Hugely enjoyable puzzle. I saw the theme early enough to help me get DOLLY and a few other key answers.
I particularly liked LINE, SPELL and SOCIETY.
I also grasped the theme only when I had 3d and 8d remaining, which permitted me to complete the grid. It was all very clever, but I was unhappy that some answers relied on the (undisclosed) theme being recognised. So 8D could not be solved on its own, having various solutions (‘over’ perhaps, or just a blank) until the crossings were in and the connection with SIDE and STORY were recognised.
As for HELLO, jackkt@9, there are a great many English words with two possible spellings, but this is one with three – hallo, hello, hullo. Again, the connection with DOLLY (thanks, Shanne@11) is needed to determine which one (The Guardian website confirms HELLO is right).
Nonetheless, congrats to Brummie for the clever puzzle, and thanks to mc_r for the analysis, which helped me with some unclear parsing.
Thanks for the comments so far – much appreciated, as usual… I forgot to mention that I will be out golfing and shopping most of the day, so I will monitor things here but may not get back online until later…I’m sure the usual organic answering of queries and quibbles will be managed amongst you throughout the day…
jackkt at #9 makes a fair point…given that the theme was not explicitly mentioned and there is no enumeration linking 26A and 31A then I guess the only way to decide would be to see the theme, as Shanne says at #11. Maybe one for the Editor or setter to respond to?…
Thanks, mc_r, you have made the same point as me simultaneously.
There’s also a musical called “Afloat” https://www.afloatmusical.com/ but its new and not well-known – maybe not even to Brummie…
Slo-mo Yoyo sounds like a great band name – I’m having that….
Fun theme, ta Brum and rapper [Well, me ‘n’ mrs ginf quite enjoyed Phantom and Les Mis our first together London trip, but yes Roz @10 … hellish prospect …]
Like Roz, I noticed the theme reasonably early with the reversed GOD and SPELL and HELLO DOLLY and it then became a matter of marrying up the possible connections. It helped with LINE and WEST which were my last entries. Top marks for this one.
Ta Brummie & mc_rapper.
This was a tour-de-force in setting to squeeze so many musicals in. As above, I noticed the theme towards the end to enable me to finish with LINE and WEST.
I liked the CHARIT Y, the good anagram for VIN ROUGE, and discussing time travel to get TALK IT OVER.
Thanks Brummie and mc_rapper67
I like KVa’s parsing for the second part of DOLLY.
My own was that of the blogger, but I think that the above’s better.
Thanks all.
Thanks Brummie and mc_rapper67
I had the child’s dolly explanation for the second definition in 31a and wasn’t very impressed by it, but I now also think that KVa’s parse is much better.
CHARITY my favourite too.
I was another with the cricket version of DOLLY.
CATS as used in the clue here dates from at least the 30s when it was just slang for a person, like guy – ‘the cats in the band.’ That’s the only way I’ve heard musicians use it, and not for many decades.
Enjoyed this, had to use check a little this morning, completely missed the theme.
Can somebody explain the cricket meaning of “dolly”?
Thanks, Brummie and mc_rapper67.
Valentine @24
A dolly in cricket is a catch that is so easy that it shouldn’t be possible to drop it – though it does happen!
AlanC@19 you always get the theme , very rare for me to even see it at the end but SWEET CHARITY was in a Brummie puzzle three years ago with a “musicals” theme and I have only just recovered .
KVa at 8, I have opposite feelings about dolly. I had the same explanation as the blogger but seeing yours I think it is definitely better. ‘likely to be held’ perfectly describes a simple catch in cricket
Jadeja dropped a DOLLY off Duckett this afternoon.
Zoot @23 I suppose the 70s was many decades ago, but I recall that Joni Mitchell’s lyrics for ‘The Dry Cleaner from Des Moines’ on the Mingus album uses ‘cat’ just to mean ‘guy’ – ‘I met this cat from Des Moines / He said he had a cleaning place / That cat was clanking with coin…’
In OFAH Rodney Trotter talks about a night out with the cats from his night-school and Grandad asks him if he is going ratting .
Balfour @ 29. That must be one of the last recorded usages. I can only remember musicians who came up in the 30s using the term. As usual the media only picked it up after the original users had dropped it. There was a TV show around 1960 called Kool for Kats which was anything but a jazz show.
The rare case where I figured out the theme in the middle and it helped me–though it also misled me as I had RENT bunged in for 8d, with no idea of the parsing, before I got SIDE and realized which musical was involved. Like Lord Jim@3 I thought of the Simpsons Streetcar!; probably too difficult to work in another Simpsons musical, Stop the Planet of the Apes, I Want To Get Off. I also had myself convinced that Mighty Aphrodite was thematic even though it’s not a musical (albeit the Greek chorus does a little dancing in the movie) and there’s no “mighty.”
Thanks Brummie and mc_rapper67!
Zoot @31 Of course, in Disney’s The Aristocats (1970), ‘cat’ was used in its jazz simultaneously with its zoological meaning, as the American cat arrives and challenges the aristocratic French culture of classical ‘scales and arpeggios’ with the new music from the new world, in a strange rewriting of an early Henry James novel in which the American arrives armed with money but utter cultural naivete only to be thwarted. I mention this because the central song, ‘Everybody Wants to Be a Cat’ is being used currently to promote a new car model named for a feline species, and the other day I was passing a dealership in which the new model in question was prominently displayed with a sign saying, ‘There’s a new cat in town’.
Wasn’t the expression for a fan actually “hepcat”? (No, I don’t know what it means either.)
Balfour @33 I haven’t seen that. It’s strange that the world seems to like everything about the idea of jazz, ( cars, perfume etc named after it – even a Getz car ) except the sound of the music.
muffin @34 The term dates from the Swing Era when big bands provided the popular music of the day, the only time when jazz was really popular. I suspect the term for the fans was used mainly by the media. If you were really cool you were hip.🙂
As usual, like some earlier bloggers, I missed the theme, but I enjoyed the puzzle nevertheless. Got all of it except WEST, so thanks to mc_r for ending my torment on that one. Clever clue, probably my favourite.
[Good point raised by jackkt @9. To me the detection of a theme shouldn’t be necessary for determining the correct light. Yo-yo string changing temperature? This is a surprise (5)]
It’s interesting that both The Jungle Book (1967) and The Aristocats (1970) didn’t use the popular music of their own time, but jazz, for their soundtracks. The music for both was great, and it makes you wonder why jazz in general couldn’t get more of an audience at that time.
Whenever someone says that they don’t like jazz, I play them this.
btw I got Google maps to show me where Ipanema was – it’s right next door to Copacabana.
“I’m so hip I have trouble seeing over my own pelvis” – a half-remembered line from HHTG
Did anyone else get stuck in the NE corner because LEAD was a mostly plausible answer in place of WEST? Lead goes in a die, and lead means “go before”
Like Fiona@2 I didn’t see the theme, and so I had wrong guesses for the same three short down answers at the top. Knowing the theme, the right answers are plain to see.
And I share Roz’s Dante-like vision of the dress circle of Hell. (@10)
Thanks Brummie for the clever crossword, and mc_r for the excellent blog.
Manage to complete without sussing the theme (how could i have missed it?!)
Thanks both.
Thanks to the Pet Shop Boys (and Village People I suppose) I associate ‘go west’ more with the US notion of exploration, so I convinced myself ‘BEAT’ was the answer to 8d (go, beat it). It didn’t help that I wasn’t certain about SIDE either.
“When it was hip to be hep I was hep”. Dave Frishberg – I’m Hip.
I still don’t get the parsing for HIGH if any late visitors to the blog can help. I get a definition could be ‘pickled’ or even ‘beginning to go off’ but where does ham come in? With or without its first letter?
Thanks to all
Doofs@46: Your thigh can be referred to as your ‘ham’ (cf. ‘hamstring’ which is what attaches your thigh to your backside). So removing the ‘beginning’ (T) gives you ‘high’ or ‘pickled’.
Our progression was similar to that of the lead blog, with a potential god-theme ‘dispelled’ when SPELL and CHARITY were added to GOD and CATS. However, we too had to wait to complete the grid until LINE and WEST were supported by the intended theme.
Thanks to B for a nice puzzle and the aptly named mc_rapper67 for its musical explanations!