A themed challenge from Pabus today but not an entirely fair one, imho.
Apologies for late blog, network broblems, grr, which hasn’t improved my mood but… I thought this, my first Pabus, curiously unsatisfying. It was hard but we don’t mind hard if the setter plays fair. There were many clues today which, while not downright illegal, I found very stretchy indeed. A theme joins all the across clues, for which much thanks, it cheered me up a bit, but on the whole I found this one a bit of a grind. One or two good moments, so perhaps I’m just having a grumpy day. What do others think?
| Across | ||
| 7 | POLO | Escapologist’s distraction (4) |
| Inclusion in ‘escaPOLOgist’, the apostrophe in the clue presumably indicating some ‘of escapologist’. | ||
| 8 | ISIS | Lives on income support on river (4) |
| IS (exists, ‘lives’) + I[ncome] S[upport]. | ||
| 9 | ROBIN | One comes to gardens endlessly researching (5) |
| Both ends removed (‘endlessly’) from pROBINg (‘researching’). | ||
| 11 | PRINCESS | Royals seeking special noble (8) |
| PRINCES (‘royals’) + S[pecial]. If this is correct, what we have here is frankly awful clue. | ||
| 12 | LANCER | Cleaner lacking some energy becomes soldier (6) |
| Anagram (‘becomes’) of CLEANeR, lacking one of its E-for-Energies. | ||
| 13 | YETI | Mountain dweller you expect to introduce first (4) |
| First letters of You Expect To Introduce. | ||
| 14 | DAFFODIL | Irish house admitting salute, in turn, for Welsh symbol (8) |
| DAIL (‘Irish House’ of Parliament) includes DOFF (‘salute’) reversed. | ||
| 17 | KESTREL | Twisting, unending street in Kabul’s outskirts, home to bird of prey (7) |
| Anagram (‘twisting’) of STREEt (minus its end) in ’outskirts’ of KabuL. ‘Home to’ is there for surface, presumably, but it looks uncomfortable. | ||
| 19 | PHANTOM | Cat lover, so it’s said, first to describe spirit (7) |
| TOM (‘cat’) preceded by homophone of FAN (‘lover’). | ||
| 22 | CAMARGUE | Row on river in the south of France (8) |
| ARGUE (’row’) follows CAM (a ‘river’). Part of the South of France, anyway. | ||
| 24 | IDEA | Impression of middleman ignores anything odd (4) |
| Even-numbered letters of ‘mIdDlEmAn’. | ||
| 27 | HERALD | Messenger finds boy among crowd (6) |
| AL (a ‘boy’) in HERD (‘crowd’). | ||
| 29 | SCIROCCO | Ric’s cocoa, without a question, produces wind (8) |
| Anagram (‘question’. Really?) of RICS COCOa without its A. | ||
| 30 | PANDA | Power and acceleration found in the animal kingdom (5) |
| P[ower] AND A[cceleration]. The definition is wide, to say the least. | ||
| 31 | ELAN | Confidence in introducing economics lesson after nine (4) |
| First letters (‘introducing’) of last 4 words. | ||
| 32 | GOLF | Peddle backwards to distraction (4) |
| FLOG (‘peddle’) reversed. Eye-popping identical use of rather thin definition (see 1a). | ||
| Down | ||
| 1 | COBRA | Government committee and department overseeing underwear (5) |
| CO = department, apparently, tho’ I can’t find the abb anywhere unless it’s C[rown] O[ffice]. Anyway, it sits over BRA (‘underwear’). | ||
| 2 | BONNIE | Scottish well (6) |
| Not-so-cryptic definition. | ||
| 3 | SIDELINE | Subsidiary operation on railway branch (8) |
| Double definition. | ||
| 4 | AIRSIDE | Where past customs are on the way out (7) |
| Cryptic def., although that ‘are’ feels very strained. | ||
| 5 | DOWNTOWN | Shopping area for daughter’s private time to enjoy (8) |
| D[aughter] + OWN (adj., ‘private’) + T[ime] + OWN (verb, to ‘enjoy’, though Chambers doesn’t give it except in the reverse sense of ‘enjoy’ = 4. ‘To have the use or benefit of’. So, a bit thin, again). | ||
| 6, 15 | NINE IRON | Rein in on recycled 32 equipment (4,4) |
| Anagram (‘recycled’) of REIN IN ON. 32d = ‘golf’, of course. | ||
| 10 | OLAF | Norwegian returns note; look! (4) |
| FA (4th ‘note’ in sol-fa scale) + LO (‘look!’), all reversed. | ||
| 15 | See 6 | |
| 16 | ZETA | Spooner’s conundrum; Greek’s 6th, or 7th after English final? (4) |
| To make my day, a Spoonerism of ‘teaser’ (a ‘conundrum’), plus – here we go – ‘zeta’ is 5th in Gr. alphabet, ‘Z’ is last letter of English ditto, and is followed by ETA, 7th in the Greek once more. Not helped by the wilfully misplaced definition. | ||
| 18 | TEA CADDY | Leaves in place meal for 6, 15 carrier (3,5) |
| TEA (‘meal’) + CADDY (person who carries, inter alia, nine-irons around a golf course). Woeful definition, though. | ||
| 20 | HAITIANS | One dons headgear for Scotsman’s island race (8) |
| 1 in HAT + IAN’S (‘Scotsman’s). | ||
| 21 | WEASELS | See laws broken by treasonous people (7) |
| Anagram (‘broken’) of SEE LAWS. | ||
| 23 | GODS | They may be looked up to in the cheap seats (4) |
| Double def. Seats high up – ‘in the gods’ – at back of a theatre are sold cheaply. Or cheaper. | ||
| 25 | ENOUGH | Six of the children ought to be sufficient (6) |
| 6 of the letters of ‘chidrEN OUGHt’. | ||
| 26 | SCALE | Go up to reach the hierarchy (5) |
| Double def, both strained. | ||
| 28 | EXAM | Pabus is up about 10 with a quiz (4) |
| ME (Pabus, today’s setter), reversed (‘up’) around X (10) + A. | ||
*anagram
They didn’t really occur to me at the time, but I can see what you mean about some of the clues. I’m not too bothered about most, but I didn’t approve of the def. being in the middle of the clue in 16d, which I otherwise quite liked. By the way, I’m far from being an expert, and probably just a typo, but I believe ‘zeta’ is the 6th letter of the Greek alphabet (as the def. states), rather than the 5th letter as you’ve written in your discussion.
Whatever the failings, the theme made this all more than worthwhile. It might have been a dodgy clue, but I loved 11a, reminding me as it did of such a magnificent example of British engineering at its best.
Thanks to Pabus and Grant.
Didn’t really like this at all. Decided to pack it in with most of the top half unsolved. I had pencilled in PRINCESS for 11a but was hoping I was wrong. Oddly enough, my favourites were ZETA and ENOUGH.
Never seen sirocco spelt like that. Not in my Collins but is in my Chambers. The theme is lost on me. I’m assuming it is car names, a few of which I recognise.
Thanks Grant – actually this is not your first Pabus puzzle…
I agree with most of your criticisms (especially on the dreadful 11a), but I think having the definition of 16d in the middle, between two different bits of wordplay, was fine. I also didn’t mind the two distractions too much.
I didn’t know some of the acrosses as cars (Idea and Yeti for example) but it was pretty clear they had to be, and Pabus has form as a setter of transport-related puzzles.
I learned to drive (and passed my test) in a 1965 Triumph 17a.
I think “in” is part of the definition in 22.
I got all the car models except “idea”. Can’t find any reference to that, anyone know where it comes from?
Thanks Pabus, Grant
Some pretty weird stuff going on here, but no need to add to Grant’s frank appraisal, except that I put in OSLO for OLAF (SO< being the note, then LO) thinking that Norwegian as a definition was just about par for the course.
I also didn’t mind the repeated distractions, as it helped with the POLO, and quite liked DOWNTOWN, AIRSIDE and CAMARGUE. CotD definitely PRINCESS.
It’s simply not all that well-written, which makes the ideas unnecessarily hard to fathom.
To Wordplodder @1: yup, typo, 5th for 6th. Thanks, damn.
To Andrew @3: Well spotted, I’d forgotten. Had some reservations then, I recall, but nothing as irritating as today’s offereing.
To Coby @4: (re: ‘in’). You’re right but I still don’t like it much. Just a grumpy day, I guess.
To James @6: Nope. ‘Princess’ is simply horrible.
Well, what can I say?
Not my cup of tea at all. Forgot about Pabus as a transport setter so missed the theme. Thought it was about golf ….
There are 4 areas in the world of cluing techniques that can decide whether a setter will be in my Top 20 or not. One of those is the use of ‘for’ meaning ‘+’. Setters who don’t object to this, like Pabus in 20d, cannot enter that list, unfortunately.
I quite liked 16d (ZETA) but I had a different view at it. The 7th one in the Greek alphabet is indeed ‘eta’ which – in capitals – is written as H. And that’s the final letter of English, indeed! Another layer to this clue?
Thanks Grant [happy not be the blogger], & Pabus for the effort.
Thanks to Pabus and GB. No joy for me here. I did not get PRINCESS, ZETA, COBRA, AIRSIDE, and CAMARGUE.
Dave @ 5
Fiat 2004-2007.
Thanks Pabus and Grant
Can see where the angst comes for many here, but don’t mind a bit of quirkiness every so often – took about 3 times longer than normal for an FT solve because of it – mainly caused by the wrong initial entry of OSLO for OLAF, APSE for GODS (well it was early on in the piece and it was included in cheAP SEats) and SIRROCCO as my first attempt of the variation of SIROCCO (instead of SCIROCCO, and yes it didn’t work with the anagram fodder!). Anyway, eventually got back on track and filled the grid correctly.
Completely missed the theme and not knowing a good number of what are obviously British models that I can’t remember out here, don’t think that I would ever have got it. Who would drive a DAFFODIL ?
There were a number of words, apart from the car models, that I didn’t know previously – CAMARGUE, COBRA (committee), DAFFODIL (as the Welsh national flower) and AIRSIDE (my last one in)