There was a distinct wine-flavoured theme to this week’s puzzle.
Timon and I found this relatively easy as prize puzzles go, although we went wrong at 19 across, until it clashed with 5 down and we saw our error. The theme was introduced seamlessly and without unnecessary contrivance. As always with Paul, the surfaces were excellent. We particularly enjoyed BIJOU (when the penny dropped) and CAVA.
| Across | ||
| 1 | GANGPLANK | Boarder’s entrance examination’s ending in silence, physicist heard (9) |
| (examinatio)N in GAG, PLANK (sounds like Max Planck). Nicely misleading surface, we thought. | ||
| 6 | CAVA | Wine — how’s it going down the Champs Elysées? No comment! (4) |
| The French phrase “Ça va” (literally translated as “it goes”) can be interpreted as an answer to the question: “how’s it going?”. |
||
| 8 | CUMMINGS | He wrote something spicy about Mikado’s principal (Gilbert & Sullivan) (8) |
| M(ikado) in CUMIN, G & S. I assume the reference is to the American poet e e cummings. | ||
| 9 | NUANCE | Subtlety is absent in pest (6) |
| NU(is)ANCE. | ||
| 10 | CARTEL | Political bloc spilling claret (6) |
| *CLARET. | ||
| 11, 25 | ABSOLUTE MAJORITY | Tom, try Beaujolais nouveau, reason for party celebration? (8,8) |
| *(TOM TRY BEAUJOLAIS). | ||
| 12 | BRIGHT | Barolo’s capital, just brilliant! (6) |
| B(arolo) RIGHT. | ||
| 15 | ENVISION | Ecstasy and sin with vino in motion picture (8) |
| *(E SIN VINO). A simple anagram, but you have to admire the disguised definition: I was looking for a noun. | ||
| 16 | MARTINET | Cunning popular in force as authoritarian (8) |
| ART IN in MET. | ||
| 19 | LOCUST | Termite’s heading beyond place for an insect (6) |
| LOCUS T(ermite). We confidently entered TSETSE which parses as SET (place) in T SE (a compass bearing or heading). I suppose it doesn’t really explain “beyond place”. | ||
| 21 | ITS A FACT | One wine knocked back, then another oddly? That’s the reality! (3,1,4) |
| ASTI (rev), FrAsCaTi (odd letters). | ||
| 22 | See 3 | |
| 24 | See 26 | |
| 25 | See 11 | |
| 26, 24 | OBOE DAMORE | Instrument lout stuffed with cheese, filling hollow one (4,6) |
| EDAM in BOOR in O(n)E. Strangely enough, I came across this term (Oboe d’amore) for the first time only last week, noting it on the door of a music shop in Chiltern Street, Marylebone. | ||
| 27 | NOCTURNAL | No revolution in US state is darkly active (9) |
| NO (TURN in CAL). | ||
| Down | ||
| 1 | GOUDA | Being worshipped around Utrecht primarily, a cheese (5) |
| U(trecht) in GOD, A. | ||
| 2 | NAME TAG | Label the Guardian revolutionary (4,3) |
| GATEMAN (rev). | ||
| 3, 22 across | PANEL BEATER | Cheese round new table for garage worker (5,6) |
| *TABLE in PANEER. | ||
| 4 | ASSUAGE | Calm, outstanding union leader, equally wise (7) |
| U(nion) in AS SAGE. | ||
| 5 | KINGS EVIL | Man is up for scrofula (5,4) |
| KING (a man in the sense of a chess piece, perhaps) LIVES (rev). | ||
| 6 | CHABLIS | Drink with endless joy, a wine (7) |
| CHA BLIS(s). | ||
| 7 | VACATIONS | Those charged in Richmond, say, for holidays (9) |
| VA (Virginia, where there is another Richmond), CATIONS (positively charged ions). | ||
| 13 | ROAST LAMB | Possible Sunday lunch, as whisky served up in mug (5,4) |
| AS MALT(rev) in ROB. | ||
| 14 | TONKA BEAN | Bird climbing a mountain to circle a tropical tree (5,4) |
| A KNOT (rev) (it’s a small shore bird), A in BEN. | ||
| 17 | TEA ROSE | Drink wine that’s fragrant (3,4) |
| A simple charade, but I don’t think that all hybrid tea roses are necessarily fragrant; some are grown for their appearance. | ||
| 18 | TOTEMIC | Greatly revered in epic, I met Othello on the rise (7) |
| Hidden and reversed (“on the rise”) in “epic I met Othello”. | ||
| 20 | CHAGRIN | Upset feeling, as series about King Arthur ends (7) |
| (Kin)G (Arthu)R in CHAIN. | ||
| 22 | BIJOU | Small and tasteful, insect-flavoured gravy, might you say? (5) |
| Sounds like “bee jus”! | ||
| 23 | EXTOL | Praise old airline to the sky (5) |
| EX = old, LOT turns out to be a Polish airline, reversed (“to the sky”). | ||
*anagram
Defeated by tonka bean! Unusually tiresome for a Paul. Many thanks bridgesong for putting me out of my misery.
Thanks, bridgesong. The complete phrase is, “Comment ça va?” – often shortened to “Ça va?”
Thanks Paul, and bridgesong for many parsings – even though I had managed to crunch through.
Liked NUANCE, thought FrAsCaTi was a bit too much of a stretch.
I thought that was going to be the fastest I ever completed a prize crossword. I sailed through it (by my standards) and then stopped dead on 14 down. And stopped. And finally fell back on looking things up. And I looked up birds and I looked up tropical trees and then I gave up. What on earth is a Tonka Bean? (Ok, I’ve just looked it up, and am wiser now.) Thanks bridgesong, I too needed to be put out of my misery – or at least, my bewilderment.
Thanks bridgesong. Like KeithS I didn’t take long to fill the grid in but I had to think for some time about VACATIONS and ROAST LAMB. For some reason or other I was able to dredge TONKA BEAN out of the recesses of my memory.
As NeilW has pointed out ‘no comment’ in 6 refers to the absence of the word in the abbreviation.
Thanks to Paul and bridgesong. Lots of items here were new to me (e.g., PANEL BEATER, TONKA BEAN) and I could not parse BIJOU (I missed the jou-jus) and EXTOL (I did not know the Polish airline). The result was a liberal use of Google, but I enjoyed the process.
Thanks bridgesong and Paul. I inserted ‘sea rose’ for 17d, which I think is a valid interpretation of ‘drink’, although I can’t comment on the respective fragrance of sea and tea roses. So, I could only fit Massenet in 16a, who may or may not have been authoritarian. Anyway, it didn’t parse, so I shouldn’t have left it to hope at that point…
Thank you Bridgesong – that’s cleared up a couple of nagging questions. With 3, 22a I was convinced that ‘cheese round’ was ‘wheel’, which meant that 22 had to be ‘bracer’ or some such, which was hardly satisfying. It also meant that 8a was impossible to solve.
I also had ‘cave’ for 6a, which I was able to parse after a fashion: ‘cave’ from the Latin was schoolboy slang for ‘keep quiet’ and ‘cave’ is also French for wine cellar. I far prefer “comment ça va”, but I wonder if anyone else came up with the same answer as I did?
Thanks both
Yes, a relatively easy Prize. I agree with Alphalpha about FrAsCaTi, though – a wine popular enough in the 70s to have been fair(ish) as a clue, but I can’t remember when I last saw it.
Neil W @2 and Biggles A@5: thanks for pointing out the significance of “no comment” in the clue to CAVA. I’ve amended the blog.
We enjoyed it, being confirmed Paul fans.
But I did think 21a a bit naughty. Indirect anagrams are – as I understand it – frowned on as being unfair, and this was an indirect drop-alternate-letters indicator. It was still eminently getable in this instance but I wouldn’t like to think this was starting a trend.
Thanks Paul and bridgesong.
Most enjoyable, except for the poor cheese selection to go with wine, no wonder bridgesong did not mention it in his heading – hope the folks in York did better last night on the pub crawl, and have a lovely time today.
Great puzzle and blog thanks both!!
My much loved Grandfather used to take snuff (he was a printer and smoking was banned as a fire hazard in the foundry). He always kept a Tonka bean in his snuff box, (although he referred to it as a tonkin bean), as it has a vanilla like flavour. Later when I went to work in the Essential Oils section at the Tropical Products Institute I was fascinated to find Tonka Beans in the reference collection. Great nostalgia.
I agree about Franscati but feel the situation is ameliorated somewhat by the fact that both Asti and Frascati are Italian and ubiquitous and might come to mind together. Well they did for me!!
Quite an easy Paul but most enjoyable. No problem with TONKA BEAN. I liked
NUANCE although I didn’t parse it until way after the event.
Thanks Paul.
A lot of easy ones here, even if beautifully constructed in typical Pauline fashion.I didn’t know of the TONKA BEAN, but worked it out from check letters and wordplay and confirmed it by googling. I just accepted there must be an old airline called LOT (never heard of it) and a wine called F*A*C*T(*) (which, of course, I have — doh!), so I did complete the grid but am grateful to Bridgesong for explaining exactly why it was correct.
7d VA = “in Richmond”? But it’s the other way around!
Valentine @16
Cations in Richmond would be “Virginia cations”, just as potatoes from Ormskirk are “British potatoes”.
Valentine @16: I don’t see the problem. Virginia cations (assuming they could be so labelled) might be found in Richmond, Virginia.
I see. I was thinking of “those charged” as CATIONS plus “in Richmond” as VA — I was dividing the clue wrong. And just think, I came home just yesterday with a carton of Connecticut cations! (Wouldn’t have any other kind!)
Valentine @19
I hope you had some anions too, to counteract the positive charges – explosive mixture otherwise 🙂
Of course. How else could you make anion soup?
🙂
I keep the cations for the cat. She likes to contribute random bits of punctuation to my blog contributions by leaping over the keyboard to her napping spot and not quite clearing the last row.
Good thing there aren’t any dogions or we’d really have an explosion!
i have to type entirely in lower case when my cat is sitting on me – i can’t press the shift key
I wish my cat sat on me. She doesn’t like to sit on people, unlike my last one. He loved sitting on me or curling up next to my nose in bed more than anything else — but no more than I loved it when he did!
I should clarify. We have two cats – supposedly siblings from the same litter, though possibly with different fathers (this is possible in cats). “My” cat – the male – loves me, but the other – the female – looks like she thinks I’m going to kick her at any moment (totally not justified!)
Mine just looks as if she’s afraid I’m going to snuggle her, which she considers overly familiar. When Zoe comes and puts her paws on my knee it means “maybe I want you to scratch my cheeks and maybe I’ll pull away.” When Pie did that, he meant, “It’s time for another snuggle, you can please pick me up now.”
Valentine & muffin
OK, enough off-topic comments, please desist.
Alcohol the previous week, wine for this one – have pity on us poor non-drinkers! I hadn’t heard of frascati so I didn’t parse the last part of IT’S A FACT, and it seems I forgot to parse NOCTURNAL. OBOE D’AMORE was also new to me, but I got that parsing from the wordplay.
Thanks, Paul and bridgesong.
Much of what I would have written has been said.
Just to add I quite liked the “wine and cheese” theme.
Missed 26,24a OBOE D’AMORE and 14d TONKA BEAN. Failed to parse several, including (like some other contributors) 21a IT’S A FACT and 23d EXTOL. Have also never heard of CATIONS, so 7d VACATIONS made no sense to me.
Overall, grateful to Paul for some fun and to bridgesong for the explanations.
Thanks for the CATIONS (my scientific ignorance is profound) and TONKA BEAN – frankly after staring at it for all that time I no longer cared if it was a something TERN or a something BEAN, and gave up.
Paul has been on top form recently and this was no exception.
Thanks to Paul and bridgesong
Anyone else think oboe d’amore is three words (4,1,5)?