For the second Thursday in a row, we have to work out what a letter means in the clues to solve the puzzle. Last week’s offering from Wanderer was a great example of how a themed puzzle should work. Unfortunately, I am not so keen on today’s.
The preamble to the puzzle states: “An anniversary puzzle: D has the same meaning throughout”.
Once you work out that D is Disney, some of the answers become obvious as they are movies made by Disney studios and their associates (Walt Disney himself died 50 years ago today).
I didn’t like many of the clues, as the wordplay was loose or at least questionable, but I may just be in a bad mood today. Clues that gave me such pause included 24ac, 9dn, 16dn and 20dn.
However, I really liked 11ac.
Thanks, Hamilton, for a puzzle which was a real challenge to parse, although not too difficult to solve.
| Across | ||
| 1 | FANTASIA | D made note of mainland conservationists first (8) |
| FA (“note”) + ASIA (“mainland”) with NT (National Trust, so “conservationists” first) | ||
| 5 | BEAT IT | Exhortation – or warning – to a percussionist? (4,2) |
| Double meaning | ||
| 10 | OWNER | One has removed foreign body from boy wonder (5) |
| *(boy wonder) without the letters of BODY | ||
| 11 | STIR-CRAZY | Has sir got time to be mad? (4-5) |
| S(T)IR + CRAZY | ||
| 12 | EYEBRIGHT | Said “yes” to vivid plant (9) |
| Homophone of AYE + BRIGHT (“vivid”) | ||
| 13 | DEPOT | Shortly, stand-in will take books to station (5) |
| DEP(uty) = O.T. (Old Testament, hence “books”) | ||
| 14 | ASPECT | Feature on a group covers page 1 (6) |
| A SECT “covers” P(age) | ||
| 15 | END-USER | The last link in the chain? (3,4) |
| Not terribly cryptic | ||
| 18 | TANGLED | D made Gladstone confused? Not so (7) |
| *(gladstone) minus the letters in SO
Tangled was Disney Studio’s version of the Rapunzel fairy tale. |
||
| 21 | READER | More expensive doctor to be exchanged for lecturer (6) |
| DEARER with the letter D and R (Dr. = “doctor”) switched (“exchanged”) | ||
| 24 | DUMBO | D made him say nothing twice (5) |
| DUMB + O
The wordplay here is very loose, although you can get to the answer from it. |
||
| 26 | IPSO FACTO | Spoof act I find fault with, therefore (4,5) |
| *(spoof act I) | ||
| 27 | UNSHIPPED | Offloaded peacekeepers and hurried to get “with it” (9) |
| U.N. (“peacekeepers”) + SPED (“hurried”) “to get” HIP (“with it”) | ||
| 28 | BAMBI | D made it black on both sides (5) |
| B(lack) + AMBI (“on both sides”)
A 1942 offering from DIsney |
||
| 29 | SURGED | Rose had compulsion to enter empty outhouse (6) |
| URGE “to enter” S(he)D
Is this a fair clue? It’s a bit like an indirect anagram in my view. “Empty shed” would work, but there’s two steps required to get to SD from “empty outhouse” |
||
| 30 | PETER PAN | D made the boy move around (5,3) |
| PETER (“boy”) + PAN (“move around”, as in a camera)
Refers to Disney’s 1953 animated version of JM Barrie’s tale. |
||
| Down | ||
| 1 | FROZEN | D made fellow take partial pathway to religion (6) |
| F(ellow) + RO(ad) + ZEN (“religion”)
Don’t like “partial pathway” and ZEN is not universally seen as a religion, as many see it as a philosophy rather than a religion. |
||
| 2 | NON-PERSON | Disgraced MP would be suffering refusal in Paris through relative (3-6) |
| NON (“refusal in Paris”) + PER (“through”) + SON (“relative”) | ||
| 3 | AURORAE | Phenomena seen over our area (7) |
| *(our area) | ||
| 4 | INSIGHT | Awareness of trendy appearance (7) |
| IN + SIGHT | ||
| 6 | ENCODED | Disguised one’s words when no longer holding firm (7) |
| ENDED (“no longer”) “holding” CO (“firm”) | ||
| 7 | TRAMP | According to D, woman goes before March (5) |
| Refers to The Lady and the Tramp | ||
| 8 | TOY STORY | Trivial romance made by D (3,5) |
| TOY (“trivial”) + STORY (“romance”) | ||
| 9 | LITTLE | D’s mythical creature was insignificant (6) |
| I assume that the compiler is referring to the LITTLE Mermaid | ||
| 16 | SKETCH MAP | Plan girl’s trip around boat (6,3) |
| <=PAM’S “around” KETCH (“boat”)
I think “trip around” is doing double duty here, indicating both the reversal of PAM’S and indicating that it has to go around KETCH |
||
| 17 | STADIUMS | Admits us equivocally to all grounds, say (8) |
| *(admits us) | ||
| 19 | LEONINE | Like D’s pride, Marxist finds love in Spain (7) |
| LENIN with O (“love”) in + E (“Spain”)
Refers to The Lion King Thanks to Steven (see comment 1 below) for correcting my parsing. |
||
| 20 | DRIPPY | Would a slow leak be silly? (6) |
| DOuble definition, although I’m not convinced that DRIPPY means SILLY. The dictionaries I have access to here both have DRIPPY defined as “weak” or “boring” | ||
| 21 | RESIDUE | Net worth of estate Euripides calculated (without using pi) (7) |
| *(euripides) minus PI | ||
| 22 | AFFABLE | Pleasant story following the daft at heart (7) |
| FABLE “following” (d)AF(t) | ||
| 23 | LOTION | Look to Spanish uncle to finish carton of cream (6) |
| LO + TIO (Spanish for “uncle”) + N | ||
| 25 | MISER | Pessimist has no end of money; that’s how he is! (5) |
| MISER(y)
Not sure exactly what part of the clue is the definition |
||
*anagram
It took me a while to work out the Walt connection, but after I had done so the answers flowed quite freely.
I parsed 19d as Lenin (Marxist) finds love (o) in, plus (e) for Spain.
Thanks to Hamilton for a fun challenge and Loonapick for the exegesis.
Steven@1 – that makes more sense!
Thanks Hamilton and Loonapick.
I quite enjoyed this one, despite thinking that I wouldn’t remember enough film titles.
I think 16D is OK: PAM’S + TRIP = fall over, ie reverse, + AROUND to indicate inclusion.
25d MISER, Chambers gives MISERY (noun) as “A doleful person (informal)”. So a PESSIMIST is a MISERY – with no end of moneY, he’s a MISER. Chambers also gives MISER as an adjective meaning “like a miser”. So the “that’s how he is” bit, which suggests an adjective as the answer, also works. Still a bit of a stretch
I think the S(he)D is fine. I consider that you can’t have two imprecise steps, so a synonym is imprecise, and an anagram is imprecise. However, an instruction to take the outer letters is a very precise cryptic description, so once you have the right synonym the letters to use are clear.
In the same way, an instruction to reverse is precise – hence we can have a synonym reversed.
There are grades of fairness, though – the use of ‘regular’ letters in anagram fodder may be an example of a semi-precise step.
This does make it seem that you could use the odd (oddly) letters of a synonym, but I am not sure if this has ever been done, and would probably get complaints.
I was certain 9d was STITCH (‘Disney’s mythical creature’ from Lilo and Stitch) with ‘was’ = S and ‘insignificant’ = TITCH! Oops! Not that ‘was’ can really be written as ‘s’, but I wish that it had been. This was a lovely theme overall with Disney movies old and new, but I did not like the otiose article in 22d. Thanks, Hamilton and Loonapick.
This was a day that I, as a solver, experienced as somewhat strange.
The Guardian’s Brummie I found a crossword full of ‘ugly’ clues.
And Hamilton’s cluing I found quite ‘weird’ at times.
[so, the Indy’s Crosophile is today’s winner – for me]
Using ’empty outhouse’ for S[he]D is in my Book of Crosswords quite outrageous.
I am with loonapick here (and not with Eccles).
Some very weak clues like 15ac or 9d.
Also some, let’s say, ‘original’ anagram indicators: ‘find fault with’ [behind the fodder!], ‘equivocally (to all?)’, ‘calculated’.
‘Page 1’ = P?
And, as loonapick says, some very loose wordplay in 24ac (and in 7d and (perhaps to a lesser extent) in 25d).
How does the wordplay in OWNER (10ac) precisely work?
Where I differ from loonapick, is in 11ac (STIR-CRAZY).
He liked it, I can’t see why this is so good.
A puzzle in which I had no problem to find the solutions [and D was cracked very quickly] but also one – that may be clear – that was not tight enough for me.
I do quite a lot of crosswords but this was possibly my first Hamilton.
Next time I will have a go again, I promise.
But if again I do not really like the setter’s style, I’m afraid I let it pass me by from that moment onward.
That’s always nicer than to keep on nitpicking, innit?
Thanks Hamilton and loonapick
Sil @ 7: I understand, but don’t necessarily agree with, your questions about some of the clues. However, with 10A, I think it works fine. If you remove the jumbled (foreign / strange) letters of body from BOY WONDER you are left with bOy WoNdER, which is linear. Fine by me.
Yep, Simon, you’re right.
Still two choices to pick the O.
Perhaps, that’s what I mean by ‘not tight enough’.
I just didn’t like it very much today – sorry.
Thanks Hamilton and loonapick
This setter can have some contentious clues from time to time and I can see while some folk mightn’t like them but I quite enjoyed the puzzle myself. The only holdup that I had was with the parsing of LEONINE, being fixated with IN E being ‘in Spain’ and couldn’t for the life of me make sense of LEN = ‘Marxist’.
Took a while for the D = Disney theme to fall – till I got to PETER PAN and BAMBI and then most of the others fell out quite quickly. Still LITTLE (MERMAID) was my last clue into the grid.
Unlike Sil, I was impressed with how OWNER was in the correct order after subtracting the ‘foreign body’ out of ‘Boy Wonder’.