Prize puzzle from the Weekend FT of January 21, 2017
I completed this puzzle in one fairly short sitting but without fully interpreting all of the clues — that took some extra time and even a little outside help. And I enjoyed it. My favourite clues are 11d (CROSS-EXAMINE) and 23d (BRAE).
| Across | ||
| 1 | ACCOMPLICE | Sidekick managed church instead of shed (10) |
| ACCOMPLISHED (managed) with SHED (shed) replacing CE (church) | ||
| 6 | TANG | Fly over and trace old Chinese house (4) |
| GNAT (fly) backwards (over)…with two definitions | ||
| 9 | GRANDUNCLE | Impressive cryptic clue about northern relative (10) |
| GRAND (impressive) + N (northern) in anagram (cryptic) of CLUE | ||
| 10 | ECHO | “The Nymph”, late Chopin piece, forerunner of foxtrot (4) |
| Hidden word (piece) and forerunner of FOXTROT in phonetic alphabets | ||
| 12 | IMPONDERABLE | Hard to assess one MP on breadline, sadly not elected (12) |
| I (one) + MP (MP) + ON (on) + anagram (sadly) of BREADL[in]E | ||
| 15 | MARDI GRAS | Dancing girl nearly stops exotic Madras carnival (5,4) |
| Anagram (dancing) of GIR[l] in anagram (exotic) of MADRAS | ||
| 17 | SISAL | Miss coming back to control international plant (5) |
| I (international) in LASS (miss) backwards | ||
| 18 | LAPSE | Slip and fall, knocking out officer (5) |
| COLLAPSE (fall) with COL (officer) removed | ||
| 19 | LECHEROUS | Libertine breaks 10 rules (9) |
| Anagram (breaks) of ECHO (10 across) RULES | ||
| 20 | PENALTY AREAS | Spot boxes where divers hope not to get spotted (7,5) |
| Cryptic definition referring to penalty boxes on football pitches. I am not a sports fan so barely understand what the clue is about but I solved it easily enough because I have seen clues for penalty areas before. | ||
| 24 | IRIS | Flag of Ireland Hungary banned (4) |
| IRISH (of Ireland) with the ‘H’ (Hungary) removed (banned) | ||
| 25 | BABY-MINDER | Many bribed corrupt person responsible for tots (4-6) |
| Anagram (corrupt) of MANY BRIBED | ||
| 26 | TOGA | Classic garment in Friendly Islands (bar November) (4) |
| TONGA (Friendly Islands) with N (November) removed (bar). I do not recall seeing ‘N’ as an abbreviation of November before. Is this indeed how it works? | ||
| 27 | DEGENERATE | Study English judge jailing, say, reprobate (10) |
| EG (say) in DEN (study) E (English) RATE (judge) | ||
| Down | ||
| 1 | ARGO | Old ship formerly carrying rare freight out of Cuba (4) |
| R (rare) in AGO (formerly) -and- [c]ARGO (freight out of Cuba) | ||
| 2 | CHAT | Tea-time talk (4) |
| CHA (tea) + T (time) | ||
| 3 | MADEMOISELLE | Nice girl produced wine, I gathered (12) |
| MADE (produced) + I in (gathered) MOSELLE (wine). In my original posting, I had a wrong interpretation of this clue. My thanks to Pelham Barton for correcting me (see comment #1 below). I got it wrong because I was thinking of the German spelling ‘Mosel’ instead of the British-French spelling ‘Moselle’. | ||
| 4 | LENTO | Fast Othello finale? On the contrary (5) |
| LENT (fast) + [othell]O | ||
| 5 | CULS-DE-SAC | Couples regularly surveyed back roads going nowhere (4-2-3) |
| C[o]U[p]L[e]S + CASED (surveyed) backwards | ||
| 7 | ARCHBISHOP | See boss teasing man on board (10) |
| ARCH (teasing) + BISHOP (man on board — i.e. a chess board). I guessed the answer easily but did not know that ‘arch’ could mean ‘teasing’. | ||
| 8 | GOOSEFLESH | Reaction to cold in Gander? (10) |
| Cryptic definition with ‘Gander’ referring, presumably to the town in Newfoundland (where there is also a town called Goose). I am not convinced that this strictly qualifies as a cryptic definition and am more inclined to view it as just a very clever definition. | ||
| 11 | CROSS-EXAMINE | Question: is romance ruined when it is boring? (5-7) |
| SEX (it) in (when it is boring) anagram (ruined) of IS ROMANCE | ||
| 13 | SMALL PRINT | Dash round shopping centre for contract details? (5,5) |
| MALL (shopping centre) in SPRINT (dash) | ||
| 14 | TREPANNING | Top surgeon’s job in theatre blocking UV treatment (10) |
| REP (theatre) in TANNING (UV treatment) | ||
| 16 | RELAY RACE | Contest concerning amateur people (5,4) |
| RE (concerning) + LAY (amateur) + RACE (people) | ||
| 21 | RHYME | What Box and Cox do about hosting Carol no end (5) |
| HYM[n] (carol no end) in RE (about) | ||
| 22 | IDEA | Assistant’s first to finish almost perfect plan (4) |
| There are two sets of wordplay here: AIDE (assistant) with the ‘A’ moved to the end and IDEA[l] (alm0st perfect). Thank you to Pelham Barton for pointing this out. I originally read the clue as having one set of wordplay with IDEAL (perfect) terminated at the ‘A’ (assistant’s first) but that would leave ‘almost’ doing nothing so must be wrong. | ||
| 23 | BRAE | Bank in Edinburgh daring to sack 5 (4) |
| BRAVE (daring) with V (5) removed | ||
Thanks Redshank and Pete.
15ac: I am sure you meant to say anagram of GIR in anagram of MADRAS, with “nearly” indicating the omission of the L.
3dn: I think the wine is MOSELLE, and “I gathered” simply indicates an insertion.
Well I liked this one, and will pass it on to my friend’s ailing mom. I don’t do sports either and might have guessed PENALTY BREAK, or TREAT, or any number of shots in the dark. And would’ve guv myself a mulligan had I done so.
5d: you meant CASED backwards, not CASES. Of course.
22a: I thought the first part of the clue (“assistant’s first to finish”) was superfluous and muddled the effect, but that’s just me. Maybe.
Thanks Pete Maclean and Redshank.
Like you I had a “why” near 20a…maybe someone will explain.
23d, LOI brought a smile.
11d I think you mean sex (it) not sex (romance)
Peter @2 re 22dn (your 22a must be a typo):
I think it should be clarified that, like 10ac, this is a three-part clue with two lots of wordplay: AIDE moving the first letter to the end, then IDEAL losing the last letter.
26a: November represents N in the NATO phonetic alphabet.
I found this hard work and after my usual week still had 3 unsolved, and two wrong, even with the help of a crossword book (which I only use when I have run out of steam.)
Thanks Pete for explaining many of them that even when I solved I could not understand.
20ac. Now you have solved it I can get it. The penalty area is in football the box (marked on the ground with a penalty spot in it) from which a penalty is taken. The penalty is awarded for a foul (usually a bad tackle) in the penalty box. Nowadays footballers who are tackled in the penalty box often go to ground, or “dive” even though the tackle is fair in the hope of the Referee awarding a penalty, and the Referee not spotting that the tackled player has “dived`.
I guess I follow football too much.
Thank you Pelham and Peter for those corrections. Two were just typos but I had the MADEMOISELLE clue completely wrong!
Is there some sort of a NATO alphabet theme here? There’s foxtrot in 10ac, November in 26ac, Cuba in 1dn. Perhaps just a coincidence?
Thanks Redshank and Pete
Did have a post prepared for this last week when my phone battery died, so most of my content has already been discussed. Would just add to 20a where the rules of soccer have been changed so that the players who are found to have dived are now subject to a yellow card (a warning) or subsequent match suspension if they are caught doing it. Australia was put out of the finals of the 2006 World Cup when an Italian player did it in the final minutes of the match to give them a 1-0 victory ! Memorable because we usually don’t get all that far in the competition.
With 8d, I assume that the surface reading would be referencing the place in Newfoundland. I had the wordplay as almost a double definition – the first being the skin reaction to cold or fear and the second being a ‘wink of the eye’ definition of gander = flesh of a male goose. I had originally entered GOOSEBUMPS which caused a bit of trouble at the end until getting LECHEROUS and SISAL. CROSS EXAMINE was my last one in which I also thought a very good clue when I worked it out.