Imogen gives your blogger a fairly tough workout with this Prize-slot puzzle – which it seems is also my first chance to blog an Imogen…
…and it took a few returns, with the first pass just after midnight publication last Saturday; the second some time in the night, when my ‘older man’s bladder‘ woke me up, and then a couple of re-visits the following morning before things fell into place.
There doesn’t seem to be any theme or Nina that I can divine, but it just took me a while to get on the wavelength of this one, with 12A HAZARD LIGHTS and 6A BROW among the last to fall, and 16D LUCRATIVE the LOP (last one parsed).
I enjoyed the COLERIDGE anagram (El Greco I’d) at 19A, the sporting misdirection of 11D SIGHT-READING, and 10A JUNO/d’you know…which reminded me of that other homophone, ‘D’you know, the capital of Alaska’… 22D KOAN needed a dictionary check, just to be sure, and 23D -ISMS reminded me, tangentially, of the Maureen Lipman BT advert where she proudly announced that her grandson had got ‘an -ology’ in his O-level (GCSE?) results…
So, in the absence of any ‘ta da!‘ revelation below of a theme-ette or Nina that I have missed, that seems to be that – a relatively tough challenge that was (IMHO) worthy of a prize spot.
My thanks to Imogen (looking forward to locking horns again) and I trust all is clear below.
[I would like to add one small anecdote: When I first entered the Times Championships, many years ago – 2012/2013? – when it was held in conjunction with the Cheltenham Literary Festival, my parents happened to be staying with us at the time. My father, a lifelong Grauniad solver, offered to drive me there and provide moral support. Richard Browne – for Imogen is he – was involved with the organisation (as a former Times Crossword Editor at that point?) and was hovering around the entrance pointing people in the right direction, etc. Anyway, once we had all sat down and started solving, my father ended up chatting with Richard for a while, on the periphery of the action, about matters cruciverbal. And to this day, whenever I mention the latest Times Champs that I have jousted and come up short at, he never fails to remind me of the trip to Cheltenham and what a lovely chat he had with ‘that nice man’ who had no idea who he was (and vice versa) but was just so friendly and kind to spend some time with a complete stranger talking about this thing that we all love (and spend/waste so much time!) doing.]
| Across | ||
|---|---|---|
| Clue No | Solution | Clue (definition underlined)
Logic/parsing |
| 1A | METABOLISM | Satisfied, virtually cancel mass chemical processes (10)
MET (satisfied) + ABOLIS( |
| 6A | BROW | Poet Robert missing half the summit (4)
half of poet Robert BROW( |
| 9A | CROP CIRCLE | Cut round field pattern (4,6)
CROP (cut) + CIRCLE (round) |
| 10A | JUNO | Are you aware of speaking badly of goddess? (4)
homophone, i.e. speaking badly – ‘D’YOU KNOW?’, or ‘are you aware…?’, could sound like JUNO! |
| 12A | HAZARD LIGHTS | Take a chance on answers here: two blinking indicators (6,6)
HAZARD (take a chance) + LIGHTS (entries in a crossword, so answers here!) |
| 15A | ARMADILLO | On branch, notice sick old animal (9)
ARM (branch, limb) + AD (advert, notice) + ILL (sick) + O (old) |
| 17A | HORSE | Heard husky in bay perhaps (5)
homophone, i.e. heard – HOARSE (husky) can sound like HORSE (bay, perhaps) |
| 18A | INTRO | Opening passage, repaint Roman walls (5)
hidden word in, i.e. walled by, ‘repaINT ROman’ |
| 19A | COLERIDGE | El Greco I’d mistaken for a poet (9)
anag, i.e. mistaken, of EL GRECO ID |
| 20A | COURT MARTIAL | Proceeding in field to woo maiden, not complete? No pressure! (5,7)
COURT (woo) + M (maiden, cricket notation) + ( |
| 24A | RAIN | Bucket needing great physical effort? No way (4)
( |
| 25A | MIGRAINOUS | Creature of the harvest endlessly eating one crop, such a headache (10)
M_OUS( |
| 26A | ECHO | Another chance to hear letter on the radio (4)
double defn. – an ECHO can be another chance to hear something; and ECHO is used in the phonetic alphabet, so maybe on the radio, for E |
| 27A | BELONGINGS | Show keenness to break into people’s stuff (10)
BE_INGS (people) around (broken into by) LONG (show keenness) |
| Down | ||
| Clue No | Solution | Clue (definition underlined)
Logic/parsing |
| 1D | MACE | One way to control rioting staff (4)
double defn. – MACE, a type of tear gas, can be used to quell rioting; and a MACE can be a ceremonial staff |
| 2D | THOU | So briefly, there’s nothing in that for you (4)
TH_U( |
| 3D | BACK AND FORTH | Not hard for stroke on river, the way the oar moves (4,3,5)
BACK_( |
| 4D | LARVA | Grub is hot stuff, with a pinch of rosemary in (5)
LA_VA (hot stuff!) around R (first letter, or a pinch, of Rosemary) |
| 5D | SALAD BOWL | Sorry to engage a pupil to deliver cold meal here (5,4)
S_AD (sorry) around (engaging) A + L (learner driver, student) + BOWL (deliver, the ball, in cricket) |
| 7D | ROUGH TRADE | Violent partners rule over trembling daughter (5,5)
R (rule) + O (over, cricket notation) + UGH_TRADE (anag, i.e. trembling, of DAUGHTER) |
| 8D | WHOMSOEVER | All those that somehow managed to upset priest (10)
WHOMSOE (anag, i.e. managed, of SOMEHOW) + VER (Rev, reverend or priest, upset) |
| 11D | SIGHT-READING | Playing without knowing the score? (5-7)
CD – to SIGHT-READ is to play music from a score that one has never seen before |
| 13D | MARIE CURIE | As chemist I must twice intervene in equine therapy (5,5)
MAR_E (horse, equine) + CUR_E (therapy), both ‘intervened’ in by I, so twice |
| 14D | AMATEURISH | Some friend you are, I would say, sort of sloppy (10)
A (some) + MATE (friend) + UR (homophone/text speak – you are/UR) + ISH (sort of) |
| 16D | LUCRATIVE | Rewarding to be touring capitals, rapidly attracting trade from the beginning (9)
L_IVE (to be) around (touring) UC (upper case, capitals) + RAT (beginning letters of ‘Rapidly Attracting Trade’) |
| 21D | TURBO | Regularly burn out defective power source in car (5)
anag, i.e. defective, of B( |
| 22D | KOAN | Riddle to floor a number (4)
KO (knock out, floor, e.g. in boxing) + A + N (number) |
| 23D | ISMS | Doctrines compressed into one text (4)
I (one) + SMS (text message) |
Imogen is another setter I have difficulty with but although it took several attempts I managed to complete all but one (22d – never heard of KOAN) and parse all but one of those I solved (Why are LIGHTS crossword answers?).
I am not a huge fan of homophones but I did like this one; JUNO. Also liked: THOU, MARIE CURIE, ARMADILLO, COURT MARTIAL, ECHO
Thanks Imogen and mc_rapper67
Thanks both.
THOU (should have got) and KOAN (nho but it was clear enough) defeated me. UC in LUCRATIVE was impressive. Altogether an enjoyable puzzle, not unusual for Imogen.
Fiona@1: ‘Lights’ are (I think) the blank squares on the grid into which we enter our crossword answers; the dark one are called ‘unches’ (something like that anyway).
Thanks Imogen for an enjoyable crossword and mc_rapper67 for the blog – great story. I couldn’t account for the U in LUCRATIVE and didn’t understand the letter on the radio – thanks for the explanations. My favourites were JUNO, ARMADILLO and MARIE CURIE (I tried to figure out whether she had anything to do with arsenic – apparently not). I raised eyebrows over “two”in HAZARD LIGHTS – there’s definitely more; the driver behind only sees two though
I enjoyed this as I tend to with the Prizes as I’m ununable to cheat with the check button which seems to make me better at solving (eventuallly). Can’t remember if or how much I resorted to wildcard word-searching but I don’t think it was much.
I guessed BACK AND FORTH but didn’t enter for a long time as I couldn’t parse it, seeing ‘Not hard for’ as potential anagram fodder. I don’t think I parsed 16d LUCRATIVE at all so thanks for that.
I was a bit surprised about ROUGH TRADE – I know the London record label/shops but didn’t know that particular definition(!)
Alphalpha @2 – I think unches refers to unchecked/uncrossed letters in words in the grid – considered bad or unfair if they make up a majority of the word’s letters.
Thanks Imogen & mc_rapper67.
I thought this was a worthy Prize, which had me coming back for several mini-sittings during the week. I can only nod in agreement withe the comments so far, as I too failed on the nho KOAN (alas KO as K.O. didnt occur to me as I quickly ran through possibilities for -OAN), couldn’t account for the U in LUCRATIVE (good one), and took a while to justify the first half of BACK AND FORTH. I also shared the faves mentioned.
CROP CIRCLE took me a while, which was funny because it was the first image that occurred to me when I tried to make sense of the surface (which I always aim to do before tackling the parse, and usually enjoy the images they provide), but I immediately decided that the definition would be just “pattern” and that the parse would be an envelope, so it didn’t occur to me that crop circle would be the actual solution! When it became obvious from the checkers, there was a moment of confusion immediately followed by a facepalm.
Thanks both
Thanks mc_rapper67. Like you and others this took several sessions and I had to come here to account for LIGHTS and LUCRATIVE. As I understand it ‘sight reading’ is to play from a score without having seen it before so you are actually reading it directly.
My faves: JUNO, HAZARD LIGHTS, BACK AND FORTH, SIGHT-READING and LUCRATIVE.
HAZARD LIGHTS
take a risk on=HAZARD (I think)
LIGHT
From previous discussions on this forum, I recall this:
A light could be any of the following in the crossword parlance:
a. a blank white square
b. a filled white square
c. a clue
d. the solution to a clue
Thanks Imogen & mc_rapper67.
I’m another who had to return to this several times, but in the end I did manage to work out all the parsings – in the case of LUCRATIVE quite some time after finishing the puzzle. HAZARD LIGHTS was my LOI, and I don’t see why it took me so long, KOAN was new to me too. A number of good clues in there – I liked the El Greco anagram, ISMS because I don’t really think of it as a word, MACE just for the image it conjoured up in the context of my old workplace, COURT MARTIAL for the definition. Thanks, mc, the blog a good read as always, and to Imogen.
KiethS@, was your workplace the Commons or the Riot Squad? 😉
Thank you M C.
I found ROUGH TRADE, both the term and the surface very disturbing.
Layman @3. Another here to tried to see if Marie Curie had anything to do with arsenic.
KOAN known to me. Koans are enigmas and would appeal to cryptic solvers. It’s worth looking them up. The one most well known in the ‘west’ (depending on your perspective), is the sound of one hand clapping. This one appeals to me:
Two monks were arguing about the temple flag waving in the wind.
One said, “The flag moves.”
The other said, “The wind moves.”
They argued back and forth but could not agree.
Hui-neng, the sixth patriarch, said: “Gentlemen! It is not the flag that moves. It is not the wind that moves. It is your mind that moves.”
The two monks were struck with awe.
Took a few passes, but completed in one sitting. Last two, 13d MARIE CURIE, and 24a RAIN (after trying to justify PAIL) were two favourites. Others were 10a JUNO (d’you know), 15a ARMADILLO (nice construction and surface, fun to assemble), 18a INTRO (“walls” as container), 26a ECHO (“another chance to hear”)
6a I had trouble equating BROW with “summit”. Chambers just has “the edge of a hill”
11d SIGHT-READING, as a musician I just saw this as a definition. mc-rapper, Biggles A @6 is right, a better description would be “play music from a score without having seen it before”, or something like that
16d LUCRATIVE, what, no reference to Evita??
Thanks mc-rapper67 for a fine blog and heart-warming anecdote! And, of course, Imogen for another great puzzle
*mc_rapper67 (sorry for the typos)
Thanks for the blog , I liked the missing H in BACK AND FORTH and LUCRATIVE was very neat , seen the UC a few times in Azed . Overall a bit of a Spock puzzle , maybe I was on form .
ROUGH TRADE a new meaning for me but Chambers is clear in support . Like Simon@4 I thought of the shop/label and it was actually the 50th anniversary the day before the puzzle .
[ A good chance to see Mercury tonight and tomorrow if the clouds relent , other planets are available . ]
Thanks.
Just the parsing of LUCRATIVE defeated me. I have not seen the use of UC before.
An enjoyable prize.
I had to leave ten clues until the end of the week as, by Monday, I had really hit a wall I imagined I wouldn’t penetrate.
Surprisingly I managed to get all the remaining answers in a 15 minute blitz last night, and smiled at a number of very neat charades.
Thanks for the excellent blog too.
Beautiful, prize-worthy Prize. And thank you mc for the blog and the lovely story.
One small typo, you have left out the second I in MIGRAINOUS.
My first in were, happily, the poets, COLERIDGE and BROW(ning).
Favourites were:
MARIE CURIE, the unexpected leap from equine therapy making me laugh;
LUCRATIVE for the UC (not capital cities for once);
BACK AND FORTH (neat switch of sports);
COURT MARTIAL which took me ages to see; and
HAZARD LIGHTS for the crossword reference.
Thanks both.
A good challenge, thanks to Imogen and mc_rapper67.
Took several days to work out the UC in LUCRATIVE, I’d been assuming that the C was one of the ‘beginnings’.
Interested to read our blogger’s tale of the Times Championships ‘many years ago’. I’m now feeling very old, having been in the London finals in 1977…
Meaning of lights, new to me but had to be that – so thanks for explanation. I was somewhat put off by the initial ‘As’ in the clue for Madame Curie. My understanding was that the clue for the whole thing was on the far left or right of the whole clue. So there are exceptions to this ?
But there are always four HAZARD LIGHTS, no?
It took a while, this one. For me a mix of obvious fill-ins and intractable tangles. My FOI was 19, which came to me as I was reading it, and being a musician rather than a sports person, 11 down was almost Quick Crossover stuff. On the other hand, it took me several sittings to solve the rest. A nice workout, for which thank you Imogen, and mc_rapper67
AP@9 – no, just the thought that my work would have been enlivened by the occasional riot.
Mr Womble @18 , the definition is nearly always the first or last word(s) but that is just how most clues work , I have seen definitions in the middle .
Like Layman@3 my first thought for As was arsenic , a common trick . Arsenic is the most crosswordy answer of all due to its nucleus .
I got through this before the end of the week, helped by a long delay in a hospital waiting room. Hard enough, I thought, but enjoyable overall. I had similar difficulties to earlier bloggers. ROUGH TRADE fitted the gaps, but seemed an unlikely answer until a web tool suggested another meaning which I didn’t want to explore further. I also didn’t understand the U in LUCRATIVE, but it seems quite clever now that mc_r has explained it to me. Likewise, LIGHT. I am pleased that others didn’t know that it can mean a crossword answer. Plenty of ticks, MARIE CURIE (I’m a chemist, but this is an inadequate definition for the lady), METABOLISM, COURT MARTIAL, AMATEURISH, ISMS. I thought that a KOAN was someone from Kos, but that’s Coan. A systematic check through the word filler list showed it to be a riddle. I should have got it directly as I had already figured that floor meant knock down. Interesting anecdote about mc_r’s dad and Imogen, but I’ll probably forget that she is a he.
I enjoyed this. My favourite koan goes:
The student asked the master “what is the meaning of life?”. The master handed him an apple. The student said “I don’t understand”. The master replied “You want me to eat it too?”
Thanks Imogen and mc. Delayed by an unparsed WHATSOEVER for a couple of days. And couldn’t find the missing U in LUCRATIVE until today! KOAN was last one in.
From the old Unix fortune cookie app.
If you have ice cream I will give it to you.
If you have no ice cream I will take it from you.
That is an ice cream koan.
(Apologies.)
[Roz@22; “Arsenic is the most crosswordy answer of all due to its nucleus“. Ha! That took me a couple of passes to work out. One of radium’s isotopes would also do: not only in RAM, but also, pretty much, in half-life.]
I would echo Fiona @1’s question regarding LIGHTS. I’ve long accepted that they are the white spaces in a grid, because that’s crossword-speak, but have never really known exactly why. Granted white is lighter than black, but we don’t call the black squares “darks”. Maybe when we work out (or guess) an answer, we see the LIGHT?
Anyway thanks to Imogen for a typically enjoyable puzzle. LUCRATIVE was my favourite – for capitals being UC – and KOAN was a guess then a Google, and (if I remember it in future) it will be added to the long list of things crosswords have taught me. ROUGH TRADE was clever but a bit unsavoury.
Thanks to mc_rapper for shedding LIGHT, and for a lovely story about that nice man!
[ DerekTheSheep@ , arsenic-75 is the only stable nucleus with 225 fundamental particles , there are no stable atoms with 225 , copper-65 is the closest . Radium-225 has far too many quarks . ]
I knew KOAN thanks to Paul last summer and Pangakupu in 2023. There was a famous one in the early Simpsons episode “Dead Putting Society” when Lisa is helping Bart clear his mind before a mini golf showdown. I don’t recall if the term is used.
I knew ROUGH TRADE as a record label. Learning the actual meaning raised an eyebrow!
I liked MARIE CURIE once I’d worked it out. I saw something similarly clever in a grid today.
Thanks Imogen and mc_rapper67
When I started reading the blog I realized that (for some reason) I had never done the puzzle! So I tackled it in a hurry, and found that I made more progress more quickly than I normally do with Imogen – even his weekday puzzles. Can’t explain.
I’m wondering if “All those that” should be WHOSOEVER. Even if you make the phrase the object of a verb, e.g. “I gave the award to all those that deserved it” you’d still say whosoever, not WHOMSOEVER, wouldn’t you? Maybe there is a better example.
Enjoyed LUCRATIVE and all the KOAN talk.
Time spent doing a good crossword, or drinking a fine pint, is never wasted, mc. And it’s possible to do both at the same time 🙂
Thanks to all.
Etu@32: Yes, but with a pint you have a reasonable chance of getting one down – not always so with cryptics.
Re MIGRAINOUS. As a sufferer on and off, currently on, for 60 plus years, I’ve never used the word, or heard it from any medic treating me.
Re COURT MARTIAL, I’m not sure many take place in the field. I believe a minimum number of officers above a certain rank are needed. There’s a story of a wounded private addressing the person reviving him as ‘Sarge’.
‘I’m a colonel.’
‘Good God! Am I that far back?’
Alphalpha 33,
👏🏻
I’ve just been doing a bit of research on “lights” as a crossword term (as in 12a). It seems that the word in this sense dates back before the invention of crosswords as we know them, and was originally applied to acrostic puzzles which were very popular with the Victorians. In this context it meant the individual words to be guessed, which then provided, via their initial letters, the final answer. (The SOED gives this usage as 1894.) This use of the word seems to have come from the idea of “light” as something providing mental elucidation – a suggestion or hint.
From there I suppose it would naturally have gone on to be applied to the individual answers to be entered in a crossword. Chambers gives for “light”: “In a crossword, the word (or sometimes an individual letter in the word) to be entered on the diagram that is the answer to a clue”.
The trouble is that it’s not really an obvious term for this meaning, and as KVa says @7, people seem to have come up with other ideas as to what it might mean in a crossword setting. In any case, what’s wrong with “answers” or “entries”?
This was one of those puzzles that I find very satisfying; I only had three and a half lights (the half was the hazardless lights at 12a) on the first run through, but everything gradually came together with the help of the crossers as I went along.
I had lots of ticked clues, including the chemical horse treatment at 13d MARIE CURIE.
But my favourite, not surprisingly, was 11d SIGHT-READING, even though the definition is not exactly correct. The score is all the parts together. Especially in orchestral music (although you shouldn’t do this), you can know your part, and therefore not be sight-reading, without knowing or having read the score.
Thanks Imogen for the excellent puzzle, and mc_rapper for the great blog and story.
Lord Jim @36, I remember a previous discussion about “lights” where it was pointed out that when you enter a solution in the grid, it is, at the same time, a clue for words that cross (eg, “the third letter is a K” is a clue). In that sense they do provide elucidation
Loved OUTRO,ZEBRA,PIERRE CURIE,PROFESSIONAL and DIGITAL DELAY
Ta.
Mc_rapper67: your explanation of 11D is the wrong way round. When sight-reading, you ARE reading the score as you play. I think Cellomaniac@37 is being generous when he calls this “not exactly correct”.
As I understand it, the term most often means playing a piece of music that you have not seen before, so you are forced to read as you play. (A bit like reading out loud from an unfamiliar text.)
As CM indicates, players in a professional orchestra will normally be following the sheet music (the score) as they play, even for a piece that they know well. Although I have occasionally seen concerts advertised as “played from memory”. Soloists (especially pianists?) seem more likely to play without a score. And of course pop/rock bands almost never have a score to play from.
Thanks for all the comments and feedback – much appreciated, as usual…
Nothing really getting people exercised too much – interesting background on why ‘lights’ are called lights; and examples of KOANs.
I have corrected the spelling of MIGRAINOUS as per SueM at #16; and I have changed the parsing of SIGHT-READ as per various comments above – apologies from a tone deaf maths/physics nerd whose musical playing experience didn’t go much beyond the recorder and Grade 2 cello…(;+>)
mc_rapper67 – I’m sorry I don’t recognise your pseudonym, but thank you for that lovely reminiscence. You’ve made my day!
I’m gradually getting better at the Prizes but found this one very hard – I think the several uses of cricket notation and terminology didn’t help, that’s a definite blind spot for me, and I hadn’t heard LIGHTS for answers before so that confused me – I’ll have to keep it in mind for future crosswords. MIGRAINOUS I’ve only ever used in real life as a deliberately silly word (as in, describing myself as feeling migrainous) so I had to double-check after writing it in that it is a real term!
Imogen@43 Lovely!
Imogen at #43 – thanks for popping by, and glad you enjoyed the anecdote!
(I blogged your recent ‘Fieldfare’ Spectator 1736, and will look out for you at the next Times Champs, assuming I am invited back!…)
Carolina at #44 – glad to hear you are improving – practice and repetition are the keys, as well as gradual osmosis of all the setters’ devious tricks!…