Perhaps the toughest Prize puzzle that we can remember.
This took us around twice as long as usual to solve, and it wasn’t until I came to write the blog that I fully understood how to parse all the answers. If there was a theme, it eluded us, although we did spot references to three Premier League clubs and one F1 driver. I suspect that your comments will help me understand a couple of clues (e.g. 9 and 10 across) where I don’t completely understand the wordplay, but I trust that everything else is clear. It wasn’t so much the vocabulary that made this puzzle complicated, rather the intricacy of the wordplay in many of the clues. Many thanks to Vlad.
| ACROSS | ||
| 1 | PLECTRA |
Guitar players, partly depleted, played round city (7)
|
| EC (City, as in the postcode for the City of London) inside *PARTL(y) (depleted). “Played” is the anagram indicator. | ||
| 5 | CHUNTER |
Grumble about predatory type (7)
|
| C(irca) (about) HUNTER (predatory type). | ||
| 9 | LANCE |
Stroll round track – crash initially blocking road (5)
|
| C(rash) inside LANE (road): I’m not sure what “round track” adds to the clue; perhaps I’m missing something. Lance Stroll is a Formula 1 driver. | ||
| 10 | DENATURED |
Gripped by Study in Scarlet you completely changed (9)
|
| AT U (by you?) inside DEN (study) and RED (scarlet). Possibly “completely” isn’t part of the definition, but is wordplay denoting the last letter of “you”. | ||
| 11 | CACK-HANDED |
See bachelor leaving like a shot – awkward! (4-6)
|
| C (see) (b)ACKHANDED (a tennis shot). | ||
| 12 | PSST |
I almost forgot the way over here (4)
|
| PS (I almost forgot) ST(reet) (the way). | ||
| 14 | KEIR STARMER |
‘Right, arrest Kemi!’ Unlikely he’d say that (4,7)
|
| *(R(ight) ARREST KEMI). I’m not sure that this is really an & lit clue, but if it’s not then the definition is just “he”. | ||
| 18 | JAM TOMORROW |
Carrot or stick in prospect? (3,8)
|
| JAM (stick) TOMORROW (in prospect). | ||
| 21 |
See 24 Down
|
|
| 22 | NEW ENGLAND |
Patriots here from different country (3,7)
|
| The New England Patriots are an American football team. I suppose this is a cryptic defintion. | ||
| 25 | UNDERFOOT |
On the ground after collapse cycling round junction (9)
|
| FOUNDER (collapse) (cycled, i.e. with the first two letters moved to the end), O (round) T (junction). | ||
| 26 | ISLET |
Scots inch closer to success with the French stopping Italy (5)
|
| (succes)S (closer, or last letter), LE (French for “the”) all inside IT(aly). | ||
| 27 | INDWELT |
Occupied by twisted sequence of hot, lewd nights (7)
|
| Hidden and reversed in “hot lewd nights”. | ||
| 28 | LIGHTER |
Barge smaller son away (7)
|
| (s)LIGHTER (smaller). | ||
| DOWN | ||
| 1 | PALACE |
China’s one Premier League team (6)
|
| PAL (china, or mate) ACE (one). Crystal Palace (commonly referred to as “Palace”) is the team in question. | ||
| 2 | EUNICE |
Named woman in disagreement with Farage? (6)
|
| EU NICE might be an expression with which Nigel Farage MP would disagree. | ||
| 3 | TIE THE KNOT |
Feeding bats to kitten – what about Wed? (3,3,4)
|
| EH (what, rev) jnside *(TO KITTEN). The capital letter on Wed is misleading, but that is an accepted convention (whereas failing to capitalise something that should be capitalised is not). | ||
| 4 | ARDEN |
Forest of Dean a bit different with Queen visiting (5)
|
| R(egina) inside *DEAN. | ||
| 5 | CONFESSOR |
As Edward and Don, maybe, changing allegiance (9)
|
| proFESSOR (don), substituting CON. | ||
| 6 | UP TO |
Not above United? There’s more on the other side (2,2)
|
| U(nited); PTO (indicates that there is more on the other side of the page). | ||
| 7 | TIRESOME |
Labour ‘Tories’ to Vlad annoying (8)
|
| *TORIES, ME (i.e. Vlad). “Labour” is the anagrind. | ||
| 8 | REDSTART |
Winger from Liverpool sharp (8)
|
| REDS (Liverpool football team) TART (sharp). | ||
| 13 | EARWIGGING |
Not sure about one getting time off for lecture (10)
|
| A (one) inside ER (I’m not sure); (t)WIGGING (getting). | ||
| 15 | IRONED OUT |
The same boring routine after excitement decreased? (6,3)
|
| DO (ditto, the same) inside *ROUTINE; “after excitement” denotes the anagram. I wasn’t entirely happy with the definition: Chambers has “to smooth, clear up”, which isn’t the same as “decrease”. But I suppose if you iron clothes, you literally de-crease them! | ||
| 16 | DJIBOUTI |
During day off sail to island country (8)
|
| JIB (sail) inside D(ay) OUT, I(sland). | ||
| 17 | IMPLODED |
Police breaking in half turned and collapsed (8)
|
| PLOD (slang term for police) inside DEMI (half, rev). I would have liked to see some indication that a slang term was being used. | ||
| 19 | GASLIT |
Young ladies, half rampant? It made one question one’s judgment! (6)
|
| GALS, with half (LS) rampant, i.e. going upwards; IT. | ||
| 20 | EDITOR |
One might cut fish up? Not quite right (6)
|
| IDE (fish, rev) TOR(y) (right). | ||
| 23 | EXTOL |
Old boyfriend gets group coming round (it’s big up!) (5)
|
| EX (old boyfriend) LOT(group, rev). | ||
| 24, 21 | TRUE BILL |
Indictment may follow Spooner’s order when to stop making beer (4,4)
|
| A Spoonerism of “brew till”; the phrase refers to the finding of a grand jury in response to an indictment. |
9A: Lance [whom one might see] [a]round [the] track = definition
10A: U (you) inside (gripped by) DEN (study) + AT (in) + RED (scarlet). In = at is in Chambers, after first semicolon
Thank you Vlad – a real challenge. Alas you defeated me, but thanks for the workout! And thank you Bridgesong for your solutions.
I agree this was very difficult, heavy on complex charades but also very cryptic definitions, some of which still make no sense to me. EXTOL = big up, ISLET = Scot’s inch are two examples. LANCE = stroll also perplexed me, but I now understand (assuming round track has no function).
I ticked CONFESSOR
Thanks Vlad and bridgesong
For NEW ENGLAND, it’s not a cryptic definition; it’s just NEW =different + ENGLAND = country. My only write-in in a very challenging puzzle that I actually abandoned incomplete last Saturday. (As a long-time fan of the Indanapolis Colts, I instinctively loathe the Patriots.) I actually came here, glanced at the blog, remembered I hadn’t finished the puzzle, and went back and finished. Thanks for PLECTRA, which was enough to unblock me in the NW, but I still had to reveal GASLIT.
I found this unusually difficult, so, very good job on the blog. I did not quite understand the clue for EUNICE, but I know about Farage versus EU, so that was the only woman’s name that fit.
For EDITOR, I had: IDE (fish) inverted (up) + TO (not quite) + R (right), with “not quite” in the sense of “towards” or “close against,” as in “filled to the brim”
This took several sessions, and along the way a word-search or two. Some of the constructions were either brilliant fabrications or brilliant finds (not being a setter, I don’t know how big a role luck plays).
Some, like GASLIT, EARWIGGING and especially LANCE, took a while to figure out even after mentally proposing. NEW ENGLAND, however, came easily because I used to live in Boston.
I was not really convinced by the Spoonerish part of TRUE BILL. “Brew till” is not a thing, and anyway to match the clue it would have to be “brew till some time/event”.
PSST was my fave, really well-formed and unexpected. JAM TOMORROW also good.
Thanks bridgesong. Well, I filled in all the squares but had to wait to come here to find out why for too many of them. Can’t say I enjoyed it, it was just too frustrating and abstruse.
You expect a bit of gnarl from Vlad, esp in a Prize. So, par-ish for him I thought, tho yes a few nhos like the F1 bloke, the US Patriots (faint bell) and the Scots inch (ditto). And nobody else is questioning htf carrot = jam tomorrow, so I’m probly being dim. Good challenge, ta Vlad and bridgesong and Timon.
Found it difficult, but quite enjoyable.
EDITOR
I had the same parse as the blog.
JAM TOMORROW
grantinfreo@8
Should we question the def?
Maybe we can read the clue as
carrot in prospect (?)
or stick in prospect (I have seen such clues before)?
Liked many. Particularly liked CACK-HANDED, UNDERFOOT, CONFESSOR and GASLIT.
Thanks Vlad and bridgesong
I love JT’s puzzles but was defeated by GASLIT-as I hadn’t heard of it
Re “Jam tomorrow”. It’s from Alice through the looking glass by Lewis Carroll.
Found this really tough, and certainly didn’t finish it. Thanks for the explanations, Bridgesong.
Thanks Andy Luke @11, I get it now.
I’m relieved others also found this very difficult and, at times, frustrating; many thanks for your much needed explanations bridgesong and well done for disentangling some complex constructions. 25A UNDERFOOT is an example of a clue where I felt we were entering unfair territory. We had to think of a synonym for collapse, and founder is not the first to come to mind, then cycle it and then add two quirky equivalences. The definition is also not immediately obvious. Still, it was a good workout even if I failed to finish it. Grantinfreo @8 carrot refers to the phrase ‘stick or carrot’ i.e. punishment or incentive. The promise of jam tomorrow might be an incentive for some, as might a carrot.
Pedantry Alert
It’s actually “Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There.”
“jam to-morrow and jam yesterday – but never jam to-day”
@Admin at #14 I stand corrected and humbled!
May I point out also that the main thing is that it is about promises promised but never delivered on – which you can deduce from the quote…
Definitely a dnf. Started by deciding 1d was Albion, a brand of chinaware and the name of the Brighton football team, then used the A to conclude 1a was the city of Algiers, almost *(guitar players) with ‘partly’ removed – thought the one wrong letter must be a mistake, though unlikely from Vlad. After that, it was downhill all the way!
Only completed a third of the puzzle, but liked KIER STARMER, with ‘Unlikely’ serving as both an anagrind and, one hopes, a tribute to his fairmindedness.
Thanks, bridgesong, for all the clarification.
Did anybody else play around with the depleted letters of guitar players and get the city of Perugia? It seemed a valid fit with both PALACE and ARDEN until the K of KNOT appeared.
Anyhow, that wasted a lot of time and JAM TOMORROW was beyond me. I read the source material several decades back but the phrase didn’t register at all.
A DNF, but not a shameful one it seems. Thanks bridgesong.
Many thanks, bridgesong, for putting me out of my misery – this was definitely above my pay grade and I came back this morning to find half a dozen still unfinished. NHO Lance Stroll, and the others missing in action were PALACE, TRUE BILL (a term I didn’t know, and “brew till” isn’t a real phrase), GASLIT, EUNICE and ISLET (which I stared at for ages last week, but this morning saw immediately that the “Scots inch” was inch=small island). I liked KEIR STARMER and CONFESSOR.
What a slog. I just wasn’t on the right wavelength and gave up with less then 50% completed.
Looking at the answers in the blog now, there are some that fall into the category of “I thought it could be that but I couldn’t see how that was possible, so left it blank.”
I’m with Andy Luke in that Jam Tomorrow isn’t much of a carrot as you never get anything.
I have been able to solve most of Vlad’s recent puzzles but this one ended up a dnf: the Spoonerism defeated me and the answer I see here means nothing to me. I never really quite understand what gaslighting is and did not spot the parse so that’s another I failed. I got LANCE but, having never heard of the driver, that was a bung and pray (wondering if it was something to do with Armstrong, the cyclist).
I did actually enjoy the rest but, yes, decidedly hard work.
Thanks both
Martin @18
Yes, I often play around for some time with the mistaken definition at the wrong end of a clue, and did here. You did well to get Perugia I’d say.
However, I did explore the other end too and twigged PLECTRA, which got me off to a good start. (Despite that, I didn’t properly parse EARWIGGING in the time I devoted to that clue.)
I found this to be about par for Vlad, and a steady, pretty tough, meaty solve.
Thanks all.
As far as PLECTRA goes, here is a guitar player that doesn’t use them. It never fails to give me goosebumps even though John is a bit too technical for me.
I survived the impaling, but goodness what a struggle! My first ever all-filled-in Vlad puzzle, albeit without having the faintest idea what the def was for LANCE (though the wordplay was indisputable) and with another entry requiring the use of external help.
I was stuck for the longest time with just a handful done, mostly in the top half. But over a whole week of repeated skirmishes I managed to get it all in, even though that meant unsticking myself part-way through for the eight-letter country ending in “i”. (I only knew Kiribati, which ironically the AI didn’t. Apparently there’s also Eswatini, the official new name of Swaziland. So I guess the AI and I learnt from each other.)
Loved the PDM in PLECTRA for the guitar players, the plethora of obliques in PSST, and the “Ahhh, tomorrow. Not (?)doughnut.” moment for JAM TOMORROW. My favourite was GASLIT.
LOI was TRUE BILL (of Indictment) which I thought was a little unfair since it, and indeed grand juries, turn out to be a thing in only three of the world’s countries; they haven’t existed in the UK for more than a century. Like many, I suspect, I had Spooner’s “brew” right from the start… but could I figure out what it went with?!
Thanks to Vlad for provoking me to defend so intensely, and to bridgesong for the blog.
I think the carrot suspended in front of the donkey is also something the poor animal never gets so JAM TOMORROW is about right. I am another who completed with the help of word searches and Google. I took LANCE to be some kind of oblique reference to Lance Armstrong.
I like Vlad, but I found this one a bit too obscurely clued and over complicated at times. Some of it was still very good and I had a fair old go at it with a few I couldn’t get and a few I couldn’t parse
Is it just me, but doesn’t EARWIGGING mean ‘eavesdropping’ not ‘lecturing’?
[Tim C#23 I am in awe of the virtuosity of classical guitarists without actually enjoying the sound. Lots of non classical guitarists don’t use a plectrum. There is a story that when Keith Richards heard Robert Johnson, he thought there were two guitarists on the recording because Johnson could play two lines at once, which classical guitarists do to a dizzying extent.]
Adrian, 27,
Yes that’s how I’d normally understand it too, and use “earbashing” for what was intended. But “Chambers”…(and other dictionaries tbf.)
[TimC @23: thank you for the John Williams’ Albeniz clip. Watching it cheered my morning immeasurably.]
Yes, I also use “earwigging” to mean eavesdropping.
I took the patriots in 22a to be the anti government revolutionaries of New England in the eighteenth century.
Must remind myself not to bother with Vlad crosswords. Obscure and even reading the blog, not at all rewarding
Peter O @32: the football team is named after those patriots, so you’re also right. (The team’s pre-1990s (and current alternate) helmet logo in fact depicts a person in 18th-century military garb anachronistically playing American football.)
This just seemed a sadistic exercise by a compiler with a big dictionary, a search engine, and too much time. I love discovering new words when a well-constructed clue leads to an inescapable solution, but this seemed too much of the reverse – having to know too many vanishingly obscure terms in order to make sense of an over-impenetrable clue.
Chatting with Vlad at the York get-together he mentioned that he had a Saturday puzzle in the next couple of weeks and muttered, almost under his breath, something like ‘…but you won’t thank me for it…’….and now I see why!
However, I will thank him for an admittedly fairly masochistically enjoyable challenge…got there in the end. I have to admit to offering up a silent prayer that it wasn’t my turn to blog though…thanks to bridgesong for taking one for the team…
Thanks for explaining LANCE, I had it in from the wordplay but had no idea why it was a stroll. That was a really hard challenge for me, but I really enjoyed it as it came together (last solution on Thursday).
Well it’s taken us all week and we guessed the last two to go in, but what fun. Like others we parsed LANCE from the wordplay but had no idea why it was a strole. Thanks Vlad and Bridgesong.
I was surprised that Chambers has EARWIGGING=lecture, albeit labelled inf. , ie wrong. Giving someone a wigging is telling them off (it’s in Brewery’s Dictionary of Phrase & Fable), while earwigging is listening to a conversation you’re not meant to be privy to. I had HARANGUING, which not only fits four out of five crossers but actually means a lecture. (Not fitting the wordplay seemed consonant with the majority of the answers.) Of course this meant that I had no chance at all with JAM TOMORROW, which seems either appropriate or ironic, depending on your outlook, and the rest of the SW remained blank, as the J would have led me to DJIBOUTI eventually.
Thanks Vlad – I hope you enjoyed it more than I did. And special thanks to Bridgesong and Timon for getting everything right.
Thanks Vlad and bridgesong
I’m obviously in the minority, but I thought this was tremendous.
Certainly not easy, but you don’t expect easy puzzles from JT, and as ever his wit and humour shine through.
I wouldn’t want a puzzle like this every week (cf John Henderson), but once a month or so it’s good to have a puzzle that stretches you.
I’ve re-read mine @39 (missed a spellchecker error: Brewery’s when I had typed Brewer’s) and thought it was a bit negative, so I’ll just mention that I was pleased to get PLECTRA, where the definition was amusing, and DENATURED, where I was able to make the wordplay work, the definition ‘completely changed’ was accurate and the use of Study in Scarlet very clever.
I hope Vlad doesn’t read this – don’t want to encourage him!
DJIBOUTI popped up again in today’s Weekend crossword.
Held on until today with the hope that I could get the last clue but GASLIT defeated me. I was stuck on ‘lasses’ & ignored the ‘gals’ as I don’t like the term. I also had 13D as HARANGUING until my co-solver came up with JAM TOMORROW. OK with football but not the american kind so 22A was a sort of guess & the F1 reference in 9A escaped me.
In the end, we were pleased to get what we did. Thanks Bridgesong for all the explanations.
Having read the blog and the comments so far, where do I start?
tough- definitely;
fair – probably;
too tough – no, but yes, since we were dnf;
worth a prize – absolutely;
any theme? – hope not!
A slow start with only 3, 4, 7, 8, 13, 14 and part 11 (in a forgotten order) written in the grid. Eventually, after a long struggle, all inserted but with seven question marks, with CONFESSOR and EAGLET never resolved, particularly since the latter was wrong! In defence, we have never really understood the term ‘gaslighting’ and were not familiar with the film. Thank you for the explanation of the former, which is very clever. Did anyone else research Don Giovanni or think that reversing Don gives nod, which is an allegiance?
I agree with Cineraria @1 for DENATURED, which requires the ‘completely’. We obtained TOMORROW from the crossers, followed by JAM and hence DJIBOUTI (see sh@39). I feel that the construction may have been a confluence of the two expressions ‘bread today and jam tomorrow’ & ‘carrot and stick’, rather than Lewis Carroll.
I’d run out of red ink to mark all the ticks, so thanks to V and b.
Late in, because I spent the day running a craft at a Christmas craft day.
I got everything but GASLIT, albeit with a lot of Googling and taking around twice as long as usual. I am now thoroughly irritated about said GASLIT: I know of the film, never watched and not sure I could, but know what gaslighting means – having seen it in action. It didn’t turn up in the wordsearch I did for the final three letters; if I’d seen the word the definition would have made sense, because I had the GALS in my head.
One such Google was to check if a LANCE Stroll existed, to find he did. The J gave me DJIBOUTI, JAM TOMORROW being one of those bits of idiolect meant that clue went in early on, along with a fair few others.
I really enjoyed this, but am glad I wasn’t blogging it. Thank you to bridgesong and Vlad.
Got everything but GASLIT, googled LANCE Stroll – sound familiar? 🙂 Happy to learn origin of JAM TOMORROW – familiar with term but always imagined it was from some stirring post-war political speech – e.g “we will plant the seeds now and there will be jam tomorrow!” If nothing else, this prepared me for the Sunday Gemelo – the horror, the horror…
This was tough, without being ridiculous, I thought. I had to Google Lance Stroll to get the parsing.
[It’s not surprising people are unsure what “gaslighting” means when so many use the term loosely to denote any kind of deceit or pulling the wool over. Strictly speaking it denotes a deception aimed at making the victim doubt the reliability of her own perceptions or thinking. Thus in the original film, the villain turns the (gas)lights down in the house to convince the heroine her eyesight is failing, & hence that she is suffering from a neurological disorder. In addition to this diabolical sort of ploy, you could class the crudest, most blatant lies as gaslighting as well, inasmuch as they seem to require the victim to disbelieve her “lying” eyes. Perhaps this is where the confusion comes from.]
I didn’t think LANCE was very fair. I do follow F1, so he was familiar, but he’s not exactly prominent in the field.
19d I complained that “”rampant” is an heraldic term for “standing upright”, specifically of an animal standing on its hind legs when Vlad used it earler this year. I accepted sheffield hatter’s argument that “rampant Rod” ws the opposite of a rod’s normal pendant posture so it was acceptable to use it to clue ELOP in ENVELOP but I don’t think it works here.
24/21 Shouldn’t ths have had an indication that it is an American usage?
Thanks to Vlad and bridgesong
Pino @49: “true bill” may now be an exclusively American expression, but it derives from the English common law tradition and would once have been a familiar term here.
Thanks to bridgesong for the blog (think you answered your own question about ‘on track’) and to others who commented.
Only about half completed, scattered around the grid. Yes, very tough. Many nho’s in clues and solutions
Well played, Vlad. A rare DNF for me, also defeated by GASLIT. Put in DOCTOR at first at 20d, which seemed like a fair answer and held things up for a while.
Thanks for explaining LANCE.
Got there in the end but very tough going. A few we couldn’t parse so thanks for the explanations @bridgesong.
Not sure about lecture for earwigging, we only thought about ‘listening in’, but It is in the dictionary, and in the end that was all that would fit.
Thanks Vlad and bridgesong. Defeated by a great crossword, bottom half virtually empty, not helped by spelling KEIR wrong. Relieved to find I am in good company re difficulty level.
I had DOCTOR instead of EDITOR for 20d as I’d never heard of Ide, so couldn’t get NEW ENGLAND and GASLIT defeated me. EARWIGGING only meaning overhearing was as far as I could find online. Is Chamber’s dictionary the one to use? Agree with many and relieved to know I wasn’t alone in struggling with this one!
CathB @57: yes, Chambers is the dictionary of choice for most crossword setters, although some Guardian setters also use Collins (which is available online free of charge).
Didn’t start until Tuesday. Managed to grind out the last few today with some help from a WORD FILLER, definitely needed for this puzzle as some clues were unfair. I needed help from bridgesong and other bloggers for some explanations. Don’t know anything about F1 or Grand Juries, although always interested in a challenge from warden Spooner. I got the most enjoyment reading comments from other bloggers, especially @7, @13, @24, @26, @33, @35 and @36. A shame really, as I quite liked some clues, but the enjoyment was lost in the final struggle.
Just read the blog, and I’m astonished. When I saw Vlad’s name, my heart sank, as we usually find him hard to impossible, but were pleasantly surprised.
I’m not saying it was a doddle, but I think we’d finished it by Saturday bed-time, which is by no means always the case. Chac’un and all that…
My late father was Polish ex-military, and survived the Battle Of Arnhem. He was a very kind and gentle father, but with an underlying sternness, and he instilled in me the understanding that most things in life that were worth doing would quite likely be difficult. I approach Vlad’s puzzles on that basis and I find them very rewarding.
Etu@61. Thank you for sharing. I agree with your – and your father’s – approach, and I can’t understand people who come here and say things like, “I will avoid (insert name of setter) in future”.
It’s a challenge! If it’s not a challenge, why bother? In this instance, I failed and did not enjoy it. Next time I will win!
Etu & sh I concur wholeheartedly with that approach.
To me there seem to be a lot of solvers who want puzzles to be well inside their comfort zone, rather than relishing the opportunity to extend their vocabulary.
And also a lot who nit-pick tendentiously over the minutiae of individual clues: it’s a puzzle, it’s a hobby, it’s an entertainment.
There’s more to life than a supposedly misplaced comma or apostrophe!
Thanks setter and blogger.
I enjoyed this. It was a several cups of tea crossword.
Araucaria used to say that setting a crossword isn’t about winning or losing, it is a challenge or riddle for the enjoyment of both setter and solver.
If it’s too hard for the solver then the setter has not won, he has failed.
If it is too easy for the solver then the solver hasn’t won, the setter has failed.
Somewhere between those two . . .
For the avoidance of doubt, I wasn’t implying criticism of people who approach crosswords differently. I just wanted to express my appreciation to Vlad.
Some people make them as hard as possible for themselves e.g. by insisting on solving clues in numerical order, and not entering them in the grid until all are done and parsed.
I don’t have any such rules, apart from not revealing the solution, although I usually solve on printed paper anyway. I don’t like to try to sleep with an incomplete grid however, and so I’ll sometimes do whatever’s needed to achieve that. The most satisfaction comes from using nothing more than a soft pencil and my own mind, as you’d expect.
Am I the only one who had EARWAGGING for 13D?
Wagging has the slang meaning ‘not going to school’.
I think we can all agree that EARWIGGING doesn’t mean lecture, whatever Chambers might say.
EARWAGGING is a close approximation though.