A quick trawl through my posts confirms this is the first time I have blogged a Fed puzzle…a.k.a. Bluth in the Indy and the comedian Dave Gorman in real life (not that crossword-setting isn’t real life!…)
And a rare Fed solve as well – given that I only usually solve the Saturday Prize Puzzles, and it seems this only his 2nd or 3rd outing in the slot.
Anyway, back to the puzzle in hand, or on the iPad in the hand…I seemed to get on Fed’s wavelength reasonably quickly, with the first four Across solutions going in one after the other, before I started my usual flitting around.
The two sets of entries down the left- and right-hand columns had me wondering about a theme-ette/Nina, but all I was left with was a Cyndi Lauper ‘Time after time‘ earworm, which lasted several days…and has just been triggered again while writing up the blog!
There were some nice surface reads – several potential newspaper headlines:
- Eco-friendly facts about drilling (12A)
- Bird’s thigh bone discovered (18A)
- Group left in trouble in retirement (3D)
…and 9A struck a melancholy chord, as my golfing scorecards never seem to feature ‘regular birdies’ or, even less likely, ‘occasional eagles’ (;+<)
I enjoyed the Spoonerism for YOLK SAC/SOAK YAK, and also the ‘powerless’ monkey leading to a circus lion TAMER.
All in all, a fairly gentle Prize puzzle I thought, but no less enjoyable for that – and my thanks to Fed for a pleasant diversion. And if I have missed anything more subtle in terms of theme/Nina, I am sure it will be expounded upon below.
(Actually, a further check of the archives reminds me that I did blog a couple of Bluths in 2022, when I was on the Indy Saturday roster – and revisiting those suggests that Bluths may generally be a bit harder than Feds, but maybe I am looking at too small a sample to be representative…)
[I will be out on my usual Saturday morning less than 9A IDEAL hack around the golf course tomorrow – will keep a watching brief on any comments, but may not be able to respond to anything until later in the day…feel free to talk amongst yourselves in the meantime!…]
| Across | ||
|---|---|---|
| Clue No | Solution | Clue (definition underlined)
Logic/parsing |
| 9A | IDEAL | Regularly birdie and occasionally eagle – perfect (5)
IDE (regular letters from bIrDiE) + Al (occasional letters from eAgLe) [if only my golf scorecard was like that!] |
| 10A | INDOLENCE | Laziness in Céline Dion cast – one is dropped (9)
subtractive anagram, i.e. cast, of CELINE D( |
| 11A | ESPERANTO | Language from mum, say, when A&E switch over tablets at the outset (9)
ES (Es, ecstasy tablets) + PERANT (parent, or mum, say, switching A and E) + O (over) |
| 12A | GREEN | Eco-friendly facts about drilling (5)
G_EN (information, facts) around (drilled into by) RE (about, regarding) |
| 13A | ARCHAIC | Antique sabre – every now and then American cuts with it (7)
AR (alternate letters, so every now and then, from sAbRe) + CH_IC (with it, stylish) around (cut by) A (American) |
| 15A | YOLK SAC | Spooner’s drunk talk – it could confirm pregnancy (4,3)
the Rev. Spooner might have said SOAK (drunk) + YAK (talk) instead of YOLK SAC |
| 17A | TASTE | Liking a street in middle of Cheltenham (5)
T_E (the middle two letters of chelTEnham) around A + ST (street) |
| 18A | EMU | Bird’s thigh bone discovered (3)
( |
| 20A | ADD TO | Trouble with Daily Telegraph’s leaders stopping supplement (3,2)
AD_O (trouble) around (stopped by) D_T (leading letters of Daily Telegraph) |
| 22A | RESCIND | Cancel theatre’s Cinderella following cuts (7)
hidden word in, or outer letters cut from, ‘theatRES CINDerella’ |
| 25A | SCENTED | Tense during drama initially directed like some soaps? (7)
SCEN_E (drama) around T (tense), plus D (initial letter of Directed) |
| 26A | TAMER | Powerless monkey – one seen in a circus? (5)
TAM( |
| 27A | ADULATION | Modern day translation of Latin essentially Your Worship (9)
AD (Anno Domini, modern day) + ULATION (anag, i.e. translation, of LATIN + (Y)OU(R) (the centre, or essence, of yOUr) |
| 30A | MILK TOOTH | Kind to insect assuming one might be found under a pillow? (4,5)
M_OTH (insect) around (assuming, taking in) ILK (kind) + TO |
| 31A | MOURN | Keen – having second go after wasting first (5)
MO (moment, second) + ( |
| Down | ||
| Clue No | Solution | Clue (definition underlined)
Logic/parsing |
| 1D | TIME (AFTER TIME) | /13/26 Repeatedly stretch point? (4,5,4)
a point (in TIME) AFTER a stretch (prison sentence, TIME) ?! |
| 2D | RESPECTS | When empty, rule 1 is to fill glasses for salutations (8)
RE (RulE, when empty of its inner letters) + SPEC_S (glasses) filled by T (time, answer to 1D) |
| 3D | BLUR | Group left in trouble in retirement (4)
RU_B (difficulty, trouble) around L (left), all retired to give BLUR |
| 4D | PINNACLE | News account breaking down summit (8)
PI_LE (fine hair, down) around (broken by) NN (new, plural) + AC (account) |
| 5D | IDIOCY | Folly of international firm returning self-assembly boxes (6)
I (international) + DI_Y (self-assembly) around (boxing) OC (co, company, firm, returning) |
| 6D | FLAGELLATE | Thrash a legal case for trial out – it’s iron-clad (10)
F_E (Fe, iron) around (cladding) LAGELLAT (anag, i.e. out, of A LEGAL + TL – case, or outer letters, of TriaL) |
| 7D | UNLESS | If not, French articles succeeded (6)
UN + LES (a and the, French, indefinite and definite articles) + S (succeeded – in genealogy?) |
| 8D | BE ON (CLOUD NINE) | /16/29 Model bounced online to experience ecstasy (2,2,5,4)
anag, i.e. model, of BOUNCED ONLINE |
| 13D | AFTER | See 1 (5)
see 1D |
| 14D | AMELIORATE | Better speak with a married priest first (10)
A + M (married, genealogy, again) + ELI (priest) + ORATE (speak) |
| 16D | CLOUD | See 8 (5)
see 8D |
| 19D | UNSOUGHT | Shout with gun going off – it’s not called for (8)
anag, i.e. going off, of SHOUT with GUN |
| 21D | DETRITUS | Remains when Oscar leaves largest city in Michigan, America (8)
DETR( |
| 23D | SAMPLE | Enough to support son, 17 (6)
S (son, genealogy again) supported by, in a Down clue, AMPLE (enough) [17A being TASTE] |
| 24D | DRAGON | Perhaps Deborah Meaden’s doctor detailed extreme suffering (6)
DR (doctor) + AGON( [referring to Deborah Meaden in her role on TV’s ‘Dragons’ Den’ – I’m sure she is perfectly nice in real life…] |
| 26D | TIME | See 1 (4)
see 1D |
| 28D | ALMS | Distributing small – not large – handouts (4)
subtractive anagram, i.e. distributing, of SMAL( |
| 29D | NINE | See 8 (4)
see 8D |
Got MILK TOOTH straight away from looking at the clue – but couldn’t parse it.
Favourites: ARCHAIC, SCENTED, PINNACLE, FLAGELLATE, UNLESS, DETRITUS
Thanks Fed and mc_rapper67
Nice and straightforward for a prize puzzle. Only TIME AFTER TIME is puzzling me how it quite parses. Repeatedly could be the definition, but a repeated stretch could be wordplay for TIME AFTER TIME. I can’ t see the point of the ‘point’. Any enlightenment?
Thanks for the challenge and the explanation.
Thanks mc_rapper67. Pleasant and enjoyable, yes, but I had to work at it and I wouldn’t call it fairly gentle. Never heard of the Blur group so that held me up and still not sure about ‘point’ in 1d unless it has something to do with pub closing hour!
I really enjoyed this. Favourites were 13ac 30ac and 4dn. They made me smile. Thank you Fed and thank you MC
Thanks Fed for a most satisfying prize with many favourites including GREEN, EMU, RESCIND, TAMER, MOURN, PINNACLE, IDIOCY, SAMPLE, and ALMS. In parsing TIME AFTER TIME, I simply saw ‘stretch’ and ‘point’ as two examples of time with the question mark indicating DBE. Thanks mc_rapper 67 for the blog.
Fed one of my favourite setters. I love his attention to meaningful, clever, funny surfaces (Thanks mc_rapper67, happy to have the surfaces highlighted in the blog!). Some favourites among many, 9a IDEAL (clever use of “birdie” and “eagle” golf terms — hope it inspires our esteemed blogger), 10a INDOLENCE (Canadian singer Céline Dion very useful for anagrams!), 12a GREEN (surface), 22a RESCIND (no, don’t cancel Cinderella!), 8/16/29 BE ON CLOUD NINE (great surface and anagram), 14d AMELIORATE (had to remember “priest” = ELI — haven’t seen that for a long time), 28d ALMS (“small – not large”)
I didn’t parse 1/13/26 TIME AFTER TIME — looks good in the blog — “stretch point” = TIME (point) AFTER TIME (stretch). For “point” Chambers includes “a moment of time” (As Tony Santucci @5)
Thank you both
Thanks, mc. You came to mind as soon as I saw the clue for IDEAL, so I’m glad you got to blog this. Very enjoyable, with no real stumbling blocks, although I’d not heard of Deborah Meaden and needed Google to help out there, and I failed to see where the ‘T’ came from in RESPECTS. But I liked MILK TOOTH (I had an unparsed ‘Baby Tooth’ holding me up for a while) and PINNACLE and TIME AFTER TIME and a number of others. Thanks, Fed.
Liked YOLK SAC (thought of ‘drunk’ as a verb first and couldn’t justify SOAK. Realised later that ‘drunk’ can be a ‘drunkard’ and so can SOAK be), MILK TOOTH, PINNACLE and DRAGON.
T A TIME
I agree with the blogger’s parsing.
Thanks Fed and mc.
Isn’t Repeatedly stretch point TIME AFTER TIME a stretch (prison sentence repeated) and point (in time) repeated. In other words, repeatedly applies to them both.
Thanks for the blog , very neat and concise clues , none at all on four lines or even three , I also appreciate the split entries being in clue order and continuous in the grid . Clever wordplay throughout , ESPERANTO a neat switch of letters , IDIOCY flows so naturally , many more ….
I agree with Tony@5 amd Mig@6 for T after T , we simply have – Definition time time – and not a wasted word .
I’m finding Fed a reliably enjoyable and satisfying setter these days.
I agree with all the positive comments.
There are so many to commend, but EMU had something simple-but-special for me.
Cheers one and all.
Some original and precise clues here, presented with wry humour.
Very enjoyable.
Thanks, Fed and mc_rapper67. Favourites were ESPERANTO and TAMER. My least favourite was MOURN, as keen is not quite the same thing. (Am I being too pedantic?) A fun crossword, however.
I enjoyed solving this last week: everything went in smoothly but with frequent smiles of appreciation. I do enjoy a well hidden answer in a plausible surface, so RESCIND was probably my favourite, with plaudits also for finding IDEAL in every other letter of the two golf shots. I was initially puzzled by TIME AFTER TIME, as I could see TIME times two, but not AFTER, until I realised it was there by implication – forehead duly smacked.
Nice work Fed, and thanks mc.
I’ve never heard of Deborah Meaden and I consider Googling that sort of thing a dnf, but fortunately the word play and crossers made it an easy solve.
I misled myself by thinking of the tamarind monkey, an obviously blind alley, rather than monkey as a verb, so never did parse TAMER.
A surprisingly easy puzzle from this setter, who I usually find much chewier. Thanks to Fed and mc.
SH @15: oddly, I don’t consider looking up things you don’t know cheating. At least not in cryptics. (American-style crosswords, where every letter is checked and where the clues are in large measure a test of your knowledge, are a different matter.) When a British celebrity turns up in a clue and I haven’t heard of them, I figure I’m entitled to know who they are so I can solve the clue. Just like how if a clue uses a word I don’t know or in a sense I don’t recognize, I look it up in the dictionary. How are those two things different?
The American version of Dragons’ Den is called Shark Tank, by the way. Apparently there are dozens of editions around the world, almost all using either dragons or sharks in the title. The original was the Japanese one, unsurprisingly.
Relatively straightforward for a Prize puzzle but very entertaining. I liked the concise GREEN, the ARCHAIC sabre used by American, the nicely hidden RESCIND, the news account reaching a PINNACLE, and the IDIOCY of DIY boxes.
Thanks Fed and mcr.
My favourite was ADULATION for the cleverly hidden definition, and the lovely surface, “Modern day translation of Latin essentially Your Worship”, which you can just imagine a lawyer saying in court.
It’s always good to see ELI, that popular crosswordland priest.
Many thanks Fed and mc_rapper67.
Pleasant enough solve. Needed Google for some GK and mc_rapper’s help for a few explanations. Replacing ‘un’ with ‘dis’ and ‘de’ in 18ac and 24d was new for me. Most reasonable in the end. Need to look up MOURN for Keen.
Thanks Fed and mc. PINNACLE was unparsed until I came here, and FLAGELLATE was my last one in because I couldn’t spell YOKE SAC!
MrP@16. Yes, it’s just a personal quirk of mine. I like to be able to enjoy a feeling of achievement when I solve a clue – looking things up doesn’t get me anywhere close to that. I don’t expect anyone else to agree with me!
In some ways I prefer the way Brockwell uses names in his clues – you can be fairly sure that looking them up will get you nowhere near to solving the clue… 😀
I can’t look things up , on the train (or at the beach at the weekend) just with my paper taking pity on all the mobile phone addicts . Occasionally I will check things in Chambers when I get home but only when the puzzle is finished .
I completed this this on an aeroplane, so, it was app based but Google free. Fed’s my favourite. I know I enjoyed it but I’ve been skiing for a week so I can’t remember the details. Not adding much am I? I’ll get my coat.
Lovely, entertaining puzzle with lots of variation and fun clues including Esperanto, yolk sac, milk tooth, respects, idiocy and alms. We started with ideal and finished with scented with all explained, but, as others have noted, reservations about time after time. We appreciate that time and point are given as synonyms in some sources, but I fail to think of a sentence in which the one word can replace the other and clearly convey the same meaning. Sorry!
As usual, many thanks to Fed and mcr.
I don’t mind looking things up (I’m not a genius and tapping into general knowledge is much more dependent on personal interests these days) but it is a last resort. I found DRAGON a clear solve from the wordplay so not knowing the name didn’t trouble me. Thanks for confirming in the blog!
I liked the puzzle but I prefer a harder one for the prize, my phone screenshot tells me I completed this on the website before getting out of bed (I usually scribble into the pdf at breakfast onwards).
When you can’t think of a sentence, at what point/time do you finally give up trying?
Another lovely puzzle, albeit perhaps insufficiently chewy for a Prize. I’m embarrassed to say I failed to parse MOURN, and I parse T A TIME as per our blogger, with the AFTER arising implicitly (hence the “?”) from the surface: “stretch point” is “(a word for) time after (another word for) time”.
ADD TO was one of my last ones in. I wanted the solution to be trouble (such as “set-to”) and the supplement to be something like TES, and I couldn’t unthink that for quite a while!
In addition to the surfaces highlighted by our blogger, I loved the technical cleverness of MILK TOOTH for “Kind to insect assuming” and IDIOCY for “self-assembly boxes”, this latter one having a brilliant overall surface to boot, making it my COTD. I also appreciated SAMPLE for the convincing use of the cross-reference number (it’s hard to disguise those or at least smooth them out).
I think the fact that we collectively highlighted such a wide range of favourites speaks volumes. Thanks both.
Marser@24: “At that point…” = “At that time…”
Thanks for all the comments so far – my golf scorecard yesterday was far from IDEAL – two pars, no sign of a birdie or, heaven forfend, an eagle (;+<)
Looks like this was fairly well received, with the main point of contention being the parsing of TIME AFTER TIME…I notice I left a (?!) in my attempt, so I obviously wasn't completely sure! And the UK-centric/entrepreneurial-TV-show GK for Deborah Meaden – who I knew, but several, quite understandably, didn't…
Martin at #23 – jealous of your skiing holiday – my son went off on his Uni skiing trip yesterday morning…
Mig at #6 – don't forget Britney Spears and the Presbyterians
Fed is always satisfying, amusing and unassumingly cleverly clued. Like Roz@10, I like it when setters bother to put split answers on consecutive entries. The absolute opposite of Ludwig’s splitting one word over two random entries which is a pet irritation of mine.
Mig@26 & Polecat@28: Thankyou so much for that satisfying final step in supplying a sentence. I had initially read the former answer as meaning that you could not find a sentence, but realised, after a prompt from Mrs M, that you had cleverly constructed an apposite sentence as a response! Hat’s off to you!
Martin 23,
Re your last words, I trust that you waited until the plane had landed?
Cheers (also Martin)
Marser@31 🙂
Still unclear about ‘mourn’ and ‘keen’ (31). Enjoyable puzzle.
Ian A at #34 and others – Chambers has a second definition for KEEN as a noun: ‘lamentation over the dead’ and verb: ‘to wail over the dead’, and a KEENER as a ‘professional mourner’. From the Irish word ‘caoine’.
So Fed on pretty firm ground there – in fact I think KEEN = MOURN is used quite a lot in crossword-land generally, and it came up in our pub quiz league recently – won me a bonus point as no one else knew it!
My first “full fat” cryptic after the training ground of the guardian quick cryptic. I get that it wasn’t the hardest, and I missed Adulation, but still pretty darn pleased with myself!
Finished most of this last week, topped it up this morning.
I couldn’t see how a group could be a blur until I thought that it (or practically anything else) could be a rock group. Sure ’nuff.
“Unless” doesn’t equal “if not.” I’ll use this if not you break it? “Unless you break it,” okay, but that’s not how you can set up the sentence.
Thanks to Fed and mc_rapper.
Way to go Scribbler@36
Yes well done Scribbler @36 , it was not exceptionally easy , it is just that Saturday is often a bit tricky . Usually a couple of puzzles in the week are fairly friendly .
Valentine@37 how about this?
If it’s not broken, don’t fix it
Unless it’s broken, don’t fix it
Even better:
The car, if not / unless broken, doesn’t need fixing
Re 10a, news today that Céline Dion’s making a comeback. She’s worked very hard for this