Puckish fun for a frosty Tuesday morning.
There seems to be a bit of a theme of superlatives, with George BEST, the SUPREMES, TOP, PARAMOUNT, PRIME and MAESTRO, with RACIEST as a grammatical superlative. Is there any more to it than that? Thanks to Puck.
| Across | ||||||||
| 1. | PULL ONE’S SOCKS UP | Try harder to draw nose broken by punches before winning (4,4,5,2) PULL (draw) + NOSE* + SOCKS (punches) + UP (winning) |
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| 9. | RACIEST | Most smutty erotica’s sadly loveless (7) EROTICAS* less O (love) |
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| 10. | A PRIORI | Article by monk, one deduced (1,6) A + PRIOR + I |
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| 11. | MET | Encountered some turbulent air (3) This is hidden in soME Turbulent, but I can’t see an indication, unless “some” is doing double duty, in which case “air” is redundant |
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| 12. | APPRECIABLE | Paper round gets Puck into Telegraph? That’s significant (11) PAPER* + I in CABLE |
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| 13. | UNDULATION | Wave excessively, shortly before getting it on with a fresher (10) UNDUL[Y] + (IT ON A)* |
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| 15. | EZRA | Book, the last written in a long time (4) Z (“the last written”) in ERA |
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| 18. | TOME | Model to order online in great volume (4) T (Ford Model T) + OM + E (prefix often meaning “online”) |
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| 20. | GEORGE BEST | Pilot, one who ran over time getting to airport (6,4) GEORGE (nickname for autopilot – see 16d) + reverse of SEB[astian Coe] + T[ime], giving the name of Belfast City airport |
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| 23. | THE SUPREMES | He sees Trump bad for women as a group (3,8) (HE SEES TRUMP)* |
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| 25. | TOP | Bring to an end, removing the head! (3) STOP (bring to an end) minus its “head”, and it’s an &lit, with the whole clue describing execution by beheading |
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| 26. | RATTLES | A 19’s baby’s toys (7) [Conductor Sir Simon] RATTLE’S |
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| 27. | LINGUAL | Line gut with ale, missing last bits of speech (7) LIN[e] GU[t] AL[e] |
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| 28. | STOCKBROKER BELT | Farm animals changed direction, with rain starting to hit area just south of London (11,4) STOCK (farm animals) BROKE (changed direction) + R[ain] + BELT (hit) – the Stockbroker Belt particularly refers to parts of Surrey, SW of London |
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| Down | ||||||||
| 1. | PARAMOUNT | Group filming soldier coming down hill (9) PARA (“soldier coming down”) + MOUNT |
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| 2. | LOCATED | Found cold tea horrible (7) (COLD TEA)* |
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| 3. | OVERALLS | Female, first of two ladies in extra large clothing (8) VERA (female) + L[ady] twice in OS |
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| 4. | EAT UP | Finish your meal with some Costa espressos (3,2) EAT UP is TAE, which is hidden in cosTA Espressos |
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| 5. | STAGE DOOR | Actor’s way-out and eccentric, so great when holding party (5,4) DO in (SO GREAT)* |
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| 6. | CORGIS | “My soldiers, my companions” (The Queen) (6) COR (my!) + GIS, giving the Queen’s pets |
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| 7. | SHOWBIZ | “Who is Zoë Ball?” starts reverberating where she works (7) Anagram of WHO IS Z[oe] B[all] |
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| 8. | PRIME | Like 3, 13 and 17, in first of poems by Frost (5) P + RIME (frost) – 3, 13 and 17 are prime numbers |
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| 14. | THEORISER | Male who’s on the up as a speculator (9) THEO + RISER |
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| 16. | AUTOPILOT | Air traffic controller that’s first leaving 20? (9) Cryptic/double definition referring to GEORGE in 20a |
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| 17. | SEASONER | Springer? He might add some spice (8) Spring is a season, so springer might be SEASONER |
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| 19. | MAESTRO | An excellent conductor of energy in a storm, perhaps (7) E in (A STORM)* |
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| 21. | EXTRUDE | Former prime minister’s missing a head of uniformed force out (7) EX + TRUDEAU less A U[niformed] |
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| 22. | MUKLUK | Boot the filth found by chance, we hear (6) Homophone of “muck luck” – this type of boot |
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| 23. | TARPS | Covers fish up (5) Reverse of SPRAT |
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| 24. | MALIK | Short version of the greatest piece for former boy band member (5) M[uhammad] ALI (the greatest) + K (King, chess piece). Even I have heard of Zayn Malik, who famously left the boy band One Direction in 2015 |
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Thanks Puck and Andrew
I usually like Puck, and some of this I enjoyed – GEORGE BEST, CORGIS, PRIME and MAESTRO in particular, but there was a surprising number I had a problem with.
11 AIR has no function apart from surface, and SOME is doing double duty as inclusion indicator as well. (Written before I read the blog – I see you agree, Andrew)
25 is an odd clue – how would you classify it? (You’ve said &lit; I don’t think it quite works as one)
14 “Male” for THEO is very loose – one wouldn’t solve this by saying “Male – that’ll be Theo, then”
24 We had “the greatest” for M ALI very recently – did Hugh miss this?
I hadn’t heard of MUKLUK, so it was a happy guess.
Thanks, Andrew. For the theme, I wondered about “coverings/clothes”: SOCKS, TOP, BELT, OVERALLS, MUKLUK, TARPS. There’s also RUG in the 4th across line and HAT in the 2nd down line.
I find it very difficult to get onto Puck’s wavelength these days. I completed, but 22d and 24d were fortunate guesses. Not being of the boy band generation, at 24d a Rufusian CD ‘Art of acting’ would have led me to a more confident entry. I agree with the reservations about 11a.
A fair bit of this puzzle was way over my head but I enjoyed the ones that I could solve and parse.
I failed to solve 18a (did not know that OM = order of merit), 6d (clever!), 20a (would never have solved this in a million years as I do not live in UK and I have never heard of George Best the airport or the person – was he a singer in the 1950s?, 21d (very clever!) and could not fully parse 4d, 26a (never heard of Simon Rattle), 24d (I have heard of Zayn Malik and guessed the answer), 16d, 17d (ugh).
I still do not really get why an autopilot is an air traffic controller?
New words for me were STOCKBROKER BELT, MUKLUK.
My favourites were 5d, 8d, 1d, 23a.
Thanks Puck and blogger.
Hadn’t heard of MUKLUK or MALIK; loved CORGIS, RACIEST, SHOWBIZ and UNDULATION. Lots of fun. Many thanks to Puck and Andrew.
michelle @4
George Best had pop-star status, but he was actually a Northern Irish footballer who played for Manchester United.
Thanks Puck & Andrew
Re the 16/20 cross reference: in order to isolate “George”, shouldn’t the clue have been …LAST leaving 20, or …first IN/OF 20? It also seems a bit odd to me that ‘George’ is used to indicate both ‘pilot’ and ‘autopilot’.
Other than that, a fine puzzle, with some great clueing, particularly in the vertical mode.
Thanks for the blog and the parsings of 20,24. I would have given “a priori” as an antonym rather than a synonym for “deduction” – referring to something that it is self-evidently true needing no justification or a previously established truth. Chambers seems to agree with that. Good puzzle; I found the bottom half much harder than the top.
michelle @4
When the flight of an aircraft is under the control of the autopilot, then the autopilot can be regarded as an air traffic controller.
Thanks, Andrew.
muffin @1 re THEO = male: you don’t make the same objection re VERA = female [3dn] – I have no problem with either of them: we see this kind of clue all the time.
Lots of lovely clues – I hadn’t heard of the boot but it couldn’t be anything else. I liked 12 and 13ac and 6dn – all great surfaces but top spot has to go to 23ac!
Nice one, George @3 – that’s pretty much up there with Rufus’ ‘bar of soap’. 😉
Many thanks to Puck for the fun.
I guess you are all thinking “encountered some turbulence” would be better but I’m a fan of misdirection.
I liked this so thanks Puck and Andrew.
Eileen @10 I thought “bar of soap” was Rufus but I have a feeling it was Anax whilst under Rufus’s tutelage. But dont quote me.Classic clue anyway.
Eileen @10
Good point. I think I didn’t object to VERA as the solution to the clue was more obvious.
We’ve discussed this sort of thing before – I still think that the best clues could be solvable bottom-up and top-down, while these random names ones make top-down the only feasible route.
copmus @11
That does away with the redundant “air”, so is an improvement, but you still have “some” doing double-duty (unless someone can ingeniously come up with a way in which “air” could be an inclusion indicator…)
Eileen & muffin: I’m with muffin here on Vera and Theo.
Its usually man or woman rather than male or female and they are usually common names. I think its a bit much asking us to think of obscurer names even if the answers were gettable without knowing them.
Having said that I enjoyed this (and solved) much more than most of Puck’s offerings.
Hi copmus @12 – see here: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/7652591/Meet-the-Telegraphs-cryptic-crossword-maestro.html – sorry, I couldn’t find it a guardian article. 😉
‘…find it in a Guardian article.’
Thanks Puck, Andrew
Super puzzle, as usual.
I had no problem with air meaning display/show. It’s in the plural – the two words display it, rather like house is sometimes used rather than houses.
Wasn’t ‘bar of soap’ Colin Dexter?
In 11a I think “air” is the hidden indicator (in the sense of “expose” or “make public”).
Thanks to setter and blogger.
James @19 from the link that I gave @16:
“When I ask for the favourite among his clues, Roger replies, “Well, Colin Dexter – you know, the inventor of Inspector Morse, another crossword solver – said he very much liked ‘Bar of soap’ (3,6,6).””
Thanks, Eileen. Yes, I just checked what I thought was my source, and found it wasn’t.
With reference fo autopilot- “first leaving 20” does that mean remove the “best” part of 20 ac? To leave george..
Well done to James and gofirstmate for explaining “air”!
@andysmith
a priori is used also to indicate knowledge acquired by deduction and not by empirical evidence
With deference to the autopilot nickname, we call the lady honour satnav Georgina
…on our… Sorry
Thanks Puck and Andrew.
I made rather slow progress with this but got there in the end. I think the explanation of ‘air’ as the hidden indicator by james @18 and gofirstmate @20 is fine.
Another stonking Trump clue giving THE SUPREMES. I was wondering for 28 what started with SWOC …
Enjoyable crossword as far as I went. Missed that “bit of a theme” about superlatives, and also the other one (coverings/clothes) suggested by NeilW@2.
Failed in the dying moments to get 20a GEORGE BEST (I might have heard of the soccer player but not the airport, but missed the whole word play anyway) and 28a STOCKBROKER BELT.
To make up for the DNF, I really liked solving 23a THE SUPREMES.
Thanks to Puck and Andrew.
Sorry to say I didn’t understand some of the discussion on this forum regarding the “bar of soap”.
[30 degrees in Australia. Sorry to hear of so much snow, ice and disruption, especially in Wales but in other parts as well.]
hectorprotector @23
Thanks, and well spotted, hadn’t occurred to me at all. I’m sure that was the setter’s intention.
Hi Julie in Australia @29 – if you’ve followed the link that I gave, you may well still be puzzled. 😉
‘Bar of soap’ = ‘The Rover’s return’, the pub in the very long-running British soap, ‘Coronation Street’.
Puck’s always fun, and this was too. So many things going on … MAESTRO crossing RATTLES, and GEORGE the AUTOPILOT, as well of the superlatives, of which I was dimly aware, though not so much as I could say I spotted a theme. And CORGIS, last in but worth the sweat!
Googled ‘mudluk’ at 22d and MUKLUK showed up. Well, it’s a bit like checking the dictionary and then the eye wanders across, so I don’t count that a fail.
I disagree that “airs” works as an indicator of a hidden word. “SOME TURBULENT” does the opposite of displaying/showing “MET”, the whole point of the clue being that it covers it up.
Enjoyable as always from Puck, and quite challenging in places too. Not 100% sure I parsed everything.
Thanks to Puck and Andrew
Start to finish took 20 minutes. As soon as I filled in MUKLUK I knew I’d cracked it. Used to live in Canada.
One thing I particularly liked was the mixture of old and new references – for example the Model T Ford (a great crossword tradition) in 18a, and Zayn MALIK in 24d.
Re MUKLUK, I always enjoy working something out from the wordplay, thinking “Can there be such a word?”, looking it up and there it is.
Yes we did have “the greatest” for M ALI recently. Some people regard such repetitions (either in the same crossword or different ones) as a fault, but I have no objections. In fact I usually think that such echoes add something to the solving experience.
Thanks to Puck and Andrew. I did not parse TOME or the Best in GEORGE BEST, missed the Trudeau in EXTRUDE, and did not know MALIK or STOCKBROKER BELT. A mixed bag for me.
I enjoyed this as usual with Puck. I wasted a bit of time by instantaneously bunging in a confident MUCLUC at 22; I knew the word and have seen it thus spelled in other crosswords, which snookered 28 somewhat until the mist cleared.
Thanks to S&B
Thanks, Andrew. YOU may have heard of Zayn Malik but I most certainly haven’t. I got the solution from the clue and the crossers, but the reason I came here today was to find out why in the heck this was the right answer. 🙂
As Zayn Malik’s most popular songs have each been streamed more than 500 million times on Spotify, he can hardly be claimed to be obscure. The fault in the clue is that he goes by Zayn, not Malik.
AIR means ‘show’ in that case. So it isn’t redundant. One can still dislike it, I suppose, and I probably do because I don’t really like the plural usage it requires. 25 I almost like, as it is &lit: the only thing is that STOP is quite close to TOP in meaning. Anyway, a typical Guardian curate’s egg, this one.
I really don’t care how many times MALIK’S songs have been streamed,I’ve never heard of him. The answer came from the, fairly obvious, MALI + the crosser. Anyway, I thought this was pretty good. I particularly liked SHOWBIZ and CORGIS (LOI).
As one of the very few people who took an ‘A’ Level in Logic,A PRIORI took me back to those dim an distant days!
Thanks Puck.
I found the top half quite straightforward but the bottom much trickier. This was not helped by putting MALIN in 24. Unfortunately, I found Malin Berggren of Ace of Base on Wiki and looked no further. Meant that I took a ridiculously long time to get STOCKBROKER BELT. I needed to google to confirm MUKLUK (rather than MUCLUK or MUDLUK).
The use of “pilot” in 20 and then as part of the answer for 16 seems sloppy to me, but is becoming an increasingly common device in the Graun for some reason.
Another to add to the clothing theme: PULLOVER (1 & 3).
Thanks, Puck, Andrew and other commenters for further enlightenment.
Lovely puzzle – I liked the look of the Zoe Ball clue as soon as I saw it, and the solution confirmed it as my favourite.
Copmus@12 and Eileen@16 etc – Here’s the source of confusion over Bar of Soap (probably what Copmus had in the back of his mind), an interview with Anax in which he says it is actually his: http://www.crosswordunclued.com/2011/07/interview-anax.html (scroll about halfway down).
Coincidentally, anyone who did Anax’s Sunday Times cryptic a couple of days ago will know that in it he kind of inverted the clue. (Can’t say more, it’s a prize puzzle.)
Typical Guardian puzzle really. I found it slightly up itself!
Hi Nina Palin @44 – thanks for the reminder of that interview.
I’m only half sorry to have introduced the seemingly irrelevant ‘bar of soap’ comment, because it gives me a chance to comment yet again on the extraordinary generosity towards each other displayed by most of our setters – certainly those I’ve met at S and B gatherings – as evidenced in the article, which I urge all to read.
I remember Anax saying on several occasions that clues are ‘discovered’, rather than ‘invented’ – the same derivation, of course, but I know what he means. 😉
Plenty of guesswork here – not the best crossword from Puck, sorry.
Both the pilot-related ones were write-ins from the crossers (a bit unfair to have them intersecting, wasn’t it?) Yes I figured out that GEORGE BEST was the only airport name that fitted – though to me the name’s more familiar as a footballer. And where on earth does “GEORGE” come up as an autopilot? Was it in Garry Halliday (that takes me back some years!)?
As to AUTOPILOT itself, well once again it was the only word I could think of to fit an aviation-related definition.
Incidentally, there was an early computer operating system called GEORGE that ran on old ICL mainframes. I spent years working with that system in my student days. Does it still exist I wonder. If I’d been clueing up the word GEORGE, I might have used that idea – and that would really have set solvers scratching their heads…..
As to MALIK – never heard of him. Am I supposed to have? I looked up in Wiki and turned up the following list:
Take your pick 🙂
Re “bar of soap” – yes I vaguely recall seeing or hearing about this clue – but surely other ‘soaps’ have had pubs in them? Like a ‘Queen Victoria’ or something? (You can tell I’m not terribly soap-savvy, can’t you! 🙂 )
Of course the enumeration would have sorted them out.
Another George the Thirder here
And another! About TOP – I believe the word is criminal slang for ‘kill’ – by any means, not just decapitation! To ‘top oneself’ means to commit suicide.
“As to MALIK – never heard of him. Am I supposed to have?”
He’s one of the most famous pop stars in the UK, and the only Malik in your Wiki list who is described as a former boy band member. It surprises me sometimes that this kind of thing is quibbled about, when e.g. “model” = “T” is unremarkable despite the unlikelihood of anyone alive today having seen one in the wild.
I thought the theme was bands, lots of them in there. Yes, even stockbroker belt.
Very late, very enjoyable. Didn’t get SEASONER, but should have. I like references to more contemporary GK – I’m with brauschel. Favourites were as others with 6&7d topping the tree for me today.
Thanks to Puck for the invention (air) and to Andrew for your blog.
Hi Eileen. I’m with you @46 on setters’ esprit de corps. One might often think ‘I wish I’d thought of that’, but it’s with open-mouthed admiration and joy in the potential of language. Unless it involves pants as an anagram indicator, obviously. 😉
FirmlyDirac @47: you forgot Malik Ulponi, the Bangladeshi toymaker.
I will make no value judgement on whether anyone should have heard of Zayn Malik, but it is certainly the case that if you haven’t heard of him it is not the setter’s problem.
Theme problem. Solvers either know it or they don’t. That’s why they don’t do overt themes in The Times. Even if a word is a little obscure, they sometimes cry foul.
Van Winkle @55
A small point, perhaps: it is the setter’s problem. Many people have not heard of Zayn – me, for example – and it is the setter’s job to make the clue accessible via the wordplay and not put an obscurity there or make it too difficult to deconstruct. The setter achieved that – hence no complaints at all from me, and I got MALIK without difficulty.
Alan B – I might agree with you about the balance of accessibility if Zayn Malik wasn’t as spectacularly famous as he is, and not just in the ranks of former boy band members. The particular clue would also be wholly inaccessible if you didn’t know of Muhammad Ali, who I would guess is as unknown to as many people these days as Zayn.
Van Winkle @58
[Sorry – I’ve been out and have only just seen your reply.]
I made my comment believing that M. Ali was was not only very famous but also famous as “The Greatest”. I could have had no idea that Zayn Malik was spectacularly famous – I don’t know the name Zayn or even which boy band he was part of.
Interestingly, brauchsel compared, or contrasted, Zayn Malik with the Model T Ford, in the context of what is or is not famous. I would say Henry Ford is a historical figure and as famous as his creation, the Model T.
On who or what is ‘famous’ or not, I think we must be left to our subjective opinions!
I can’t say that I enjoyed this and not just because I DNF. In addition to Muffin’s VERA and THEO I would add SEB for runner at 20a and TRUD for Prime Minister at 21d. 16d GEORGE may control one piece of traffic but to me that doesn’t make it an ATC. 28a to me BROKE only means changed direction if it is combined with a direction as in “broke left”. I had better stop.
I took “air” to mean “to have something about it” eg it had an air of mystery.
“Met” therefore has something about it, so…urbulence.