BOBCAT kicks off the week…
A rather more challenging offering for a Monday morning than usual, but very enjoyable, and with the expected feline Nina, (a caracal being a desert lynx).
I have to thank my mate Nick for helping with the parsing of TAXICAB, ALSO-RAN and UNION JACK. It took me ages to parse SULTAN.
Thanks BOBCAT!
action of “son” = SUN (“broadcast”)
[con]SULT (to look up, CON (Tory) refused) + AN
… though see Rudolph’s comment for a more accurate parsing.
(A (American) LYNX IS)* (*wild) patrolling O[ah]U (extremely)
WAS (used to be) + P[hilanthropist]S (discontented)
(E (European) + C (clubs)) enter DAY (period of enlightenment)
(MAPLE [t]REE (lacking T (time)))* (*exotic) to pick up H (height)
RE (what’s taught in schools) bores LABOUR (party)
TWIN (one in two people) + GE[t] (abrupt)
OX (steer) + A LIS[t] (celebrities, away from T[oxic] (crown of))
DI (officer) arrests ISRAEL (Middle Eastern state)
“green gauge” = GREENGAGE (measure for unripeness, “sound”)
EVE (oldest woman) on PE (exercise)
JA[m] (block, partial) applied to RIO (port)
(EX[c]EPT[i]ONAL (lacking C (carbon) and I (iodine)))* (*could be)
[s]PEAK (express, having fired S (society)) + ED (news chief)
QU (question), (E (England) + ALLY (supporter)) tackles
(RANDOM GLANCES)* (*aroused)
TAB (cost for American) to take (XI (team) + CA (around))
IRON (robust) + [dr]Y (ultimately)
Cryptic definition
SHE (girl) trapping C[o]Y[o]T[e] (regularly)
“mourn lower” = LAWN MOWER (grieve for cow, “Spooner’s”)
(LSO (capital players, London Symphony Orchestra) + RAN (conducted)) by A
(STIFLED EVELYN)* (*criminal)
UN (country club) + ION (charge carrier) + JACK (to raise)
[re]TIRE SOME[where] (inherently)
TONE (sound quality) dogs ACE (expert)
(LANE)< (road, <to the North) bypasses ([stra]T[ford] and [chest]ER[field] (centres of))
F (foot) on AG (silver) + END (object)
([d]UA LIP[a] (in))< (<retrospective)
Yes some tricky ones, needed more than one visit. Liked ephemeral, scandalmonger, also ran. Wrote in a couple blindly to complete it – Union Jack, tiresome – and now I see why. D’oh! He’s gotta run out of cat names soon.
Landing CARACAL proved easier than landing some of the answers today including those mentioned by Teacow (thanks to you and your mate, Nick, for parsing them). Yes, the cats are likely to become ever more obscure!
I liked GREEN GAGE, GAS METER, LAWNMOWER and SCANDALMONGER.
Thanks, Bobcat.
Enjoyed this – top half went in quite quickly but got stuck on a few in the bottom half for a while.
Liked: PEEVE, WASPS, TWINGE, OXALIS and SCYTHE all of which I thought were very neat.
Thanks Bobcat and Teacow
I had a slightly different take on 5A SULTAN. I think “refused to” is acting as the deletion indicator (X refused to Y meaning Y minus X), and that CONSULT is clued by “look up”, rather than “to look up”.
Thanks Bobcat and Teacow.
Very good puzzle. Excellent blog.
Many faves. Liked SETTING, SULTAN, OXALIS, GREENGAGE, TAXICAB and FAG END.
Thanks Rudolph@4 … agreed, have amended the blog to reference your comment.
Thanks Bobcat for a suitably challenging crossword. I managed to crack all of it with the exception of parsing SULTAN. My favourites included TWINGE, OXALIS, PEEVE (liked oldest woman), ALSO-RAN, TIRESOME, ACETONE, and ETERNAL. Thanks Teacow for the blog.
I agree it was a difficult one to parse, and I must have entered a record number of answers today based on definition only, with the inevitable result that some were incorrect (OXALIC for OXALIS for example). I was defeated by DISRAELI and TIRESOME.
One reason I missed DISRAELI is that I lead a campaign to get people to refer to Israel, Syria, Lebanon etc as the Near East. If they are the Middle East, then which “eastern” countries are to the west of them? (I have long since accepted that this campaign is doomed to fail.)
A steady mental workout with no real problems, although we took ages to see the parsing of LABOURER although it was the obvious answer. PLenty to like including ANXIOUSLY, EPHEMERAL, EXOPLANET and the two long anagrams. We spotted the feline nina but we had to check it in the dictionary.
Thanks, Bobcat and Teacow.
James P @1: I also thought Bobcat may run out of cats eventually unless he branches out and includes names of TV & movie cats, slang words for cats, breeds of domestic cats, and the like.
Lot of decades since hearing them (Wigmore Hall, ’67), but still also ran shouldn’t have been just a biff. Taxicab was another, despite tab being common and XI being a chestnut. Laziness as much as anything. Enjoyable though, ta both.
Had a look at the caracal, quite a handsome creature.
This was hard for me to parse. So many of my answers were guesses. Many were correct but a few were not! I put in greenness which chambers a agrees can be a measure of unripeness. And so missed FAG END which I’m still not sure what that is! I got LABOURER but don’t know what RE is. Etc. but still I had fun tussling with this. Thank you all as ever.
Anil@12: FAG is a slang term for cigarette, hence a FAG END is the stub left after smoking one, but the term can also mean the last remains of anything. RE in 13ac stands for Religious Education.
Anil@12, RE was Religious Education back in my day. For my kids it was RI (never quite sure what the “I” meant (instruction?)), but they’re adults now so god knows what it is currently.
Teacow@14: RI is given as “religious instruction” in Collins 2023, which also has RS for “religious studies”: that is the one I would expect to see these days. I had to go to SOED 2007 to find RK for “religious knowledge”. In my secondary school, I was taught Scripture. Was “god knows” deliberate?
Did anyone else do the puzzle from the PDF and find a bunch of letters missing: mostly Xs and Qs? I was trying to find some significance in that but was unable to, and it seems that nobody here had that issue.