Solving time: 24 minutes.
One I tackled while in hospital. Although it wasn’t the most satisfying of puzzles, it held me while I worked out whether each of the homophone double answers could be worse than the previous one. The preamble called them “exact or cheeky”; I could think of alternative names for them, most would be unprintable here.
The Guardian suffers from a problem with the Genius in that if it’s too hard, people complain, so finding “easier” advanced puzzles must be difficult. For me, this just didn’t work, although there were one or two nice clues.
THEMED ANSWERS
5,8 HARASS + TOTAL (ARISTOTLE) Presumably “cheeky”
9,29 SYLLABUB + LACK (CILLA BLACK) Presumably “cheeky” – I just don’t get this clue. B -Bubbly Liverpool Lass is the definition. If it was supposed to be a stammer that would make it C-CILLA B-BLACK To be without = Lack Is “syllabub” a “milk punch”?
23,1 KAPPA CEILIDH (CAPERCAILLIE) “Exact” homophone This works OK
32,26 ANGLE EIDER (HANG GLIDER) “Cheeky” Clue doesn’t really read.
33,16 BACKER GNARL (BACCHANAL) “Exact”
3,10 IDLE EYES (IDOLISE) “Cheeky”
24,20 AUSTERE PATH (OSTEOPATH) “Cheeky”
ACROSS
11 ILLS (H)ILLS
12 SNACK N inside SACK – What say you of this? “Bagged” to mean put inside sack.
13 SPEY P inside SEY Not sure how SEY = large part of eg Galloway
18 ANTIPODES Anagram of DESPERATION minue ER (Queen)
20 PROCREATE Anagram of PRATE inside CORE
25 TORC O inside the odd letters of T h R a C e – liked this clue.
27 IBIS I + BIS (twice in music)
31 SPRAINED RAIN inside SPED
34 EN MASSE Anagram of MAN inside ESSE
DOWN
1 CUTTING Two defs.
2 INTEL Anagram of NET inside IT
3 HOSANNA SO reversed inside HANNA(H)
5 HELLCAT . Presume it’s LL (Lines) inside HECAT (a witch from MacBeth) – not keen on the container indicator.
6 RYAL Hidden answer
7 STUMPED UP MP inside anagram of SUET PUD
14 CLARY R inside CLAY
15 SPOKE P inside SOKE – an old name for part of Peterborough
17 APOCRYPHA Anagram of PAPARCHY (not a word in Chambers!) plus O (half of OT) Nice clue.
19 NUT The N.U.T. is the Teachers’ Union.
21 ALIENOR Purists might find the “in” surplus to requirements
22 EPERDUE anagram of PRUDE inside E E – clever
28 BOGUS GO rev inside BUS
30 BARM BAR + M
Well done, Dave, for suppressing the cringe response long enough to write this blog. I solved this OK, but was mainly unimpressed (though the editor’s column on the Guardian site implies that even the setter thought some of these were pushing it a bit).
Chambers defines syllabub as ‘a dish of cream curdled (e.g. with wine), flavoured and frothed up; anything frothy or insubstantial’. So I suppose ‘milk punch’ is on the margins of acceptability.
According to the , SEY is “the part of a carcase of beef extending from the shoulder to the loin”. I’m pretty sure it’s in Chambers, but I don’t have a copy available at the moment.
Yes, it is in Chambers: ‘part of a carcase of beef incl the sirloin’.
Funnily enough I knew about the meaning of SEY (see the splendid Listener Crossword “Frankly Mr Shankly ___________ by Meursault) but hadn’t made the link to Galloway.
D’oh!