The puzzle may be found at https://www.theguardian.com/crosswords/cryptic/27590.
All sorts of cross-references to complicate matters here, centered on 24A. When I found 9A BLUE, my first thought was of the rainbow, with BLUE as fifth of the seven colours, but, although the other references seemed to lead to colours, they were the wrong colours in the wrong sequence. Soon enough, the alternative explanation hit me: the values of balls in snooker. That gave me 24A SNOOKER by the back door, even though I was not familiar with the artist. Finally, I was left with a bunch of cross-references which I cannot disentangle in 19D SALMON. All suggestions welcome.
| Across | ||
| 7 | BRONZED | 12 across bread crusts about right, 11 in the boulangerie? (7) |
| An envelope (‘about’) of R (‘right’) plus ONZE ( French – ‘in the boulangerie’ – for ’11’) in B D (‘BreaD crusts’). | ||
| 8 | CAMERON | Country lacking nothing, cause of Brexit? (7) |
| CAMERO[o]N (‘country’) minus an O (‘lacking nothing’), for David Cameron, the former British Prime Minister, whose ill-judged referendum precipitated Brexit. | ||
| 9 | BLUE | Dirty five in 24 (4) |
| See preamble. | ||
| 10 | CASTELLAN | Keeper of fortification filling tin with lager (9) |
| An envelope (‘filling’) of STELLA (Artois, Belgian ‘lager’) in CAN (‘tin’). | ||
| 12 | BROWN | Coffee four in 24 (5) |
| Double definition. | ||
| 13 | IRONWARE | Metal objects in the raw, no rivets to knock about (8) |
| A hiddoen reversed (‘to knock about’) answer in ‘thE RAW NO RIvets’ | ||
| 15 | See 6 | |
| 16 | GREEN | Nauseous three in 24 (5) |
| See preamble. | ||
| 17 | COVE | Bay, position docked (4) |
| COVE[r] (‘position[ on the cricket field) minus its last letter (‘docked’). | ||
| 18 | SKI SLOPE | Like, possibly, not half enigmatic feature of Whistler, say? (3,5) |
| An anagram (‘enigmatic’) of ‘like’ plus ‘poss[ibly]’ minus its latter part (‘not half’); Whistler is a ski resort in British Columbia. | ||
| 20 | URBAN | City pontiff (5) |
| Double definition: ‘city’ as an adjective, and the taken name of several Popes, eight so far. | ||
| 21 | COLONISER | Settler close in or out (9) |
| An anagram (‘out’) of ‘close in or’. | ||
| 22 | LAPP | Drink picked up for Father Christmas, possibly? (4) |
| Sounds like (‘picked up’) LAP (‘drink’), for the sometime presumed home of Father Christmas and his reindeers. | ||
| 24 | SNOOKER | Thwart revolutionary American artist and sovereign (7) |
| A charade of SNOOK, a reversal (‘revolutionary’) of KOONS (Jeff, ‘American artist’) plus ER (‘sovereign’). | ||
| 25 | SPARING | Toll on Belgian town, economical (7) |
| A charade of SPA (‘Belgian town’, which has given its name to any place that touts healing waters) plus RING (‘toll’). | ||
| Down | ||
| 1 | ORAL | Top right by mouth (4) |
| [m]ORAL (‘right’) minus its first letter (‘top’, as a verb). | ||
| 2 | ANTE-POST | Betting choice patent and so unlikely (4-4) |
| An anagram (‘unlikely’) of ‘patent’ plus ‘so’. | ||
| 3 | BEACON | Light shade finally captured by artist (6) |
| AN envelope (‘captured by’) of E (‘shadE finally’) in BACON (‘artist’, most likely Francis). | ||
| 4 | CAPE TOWN | Better move to new African city (4,4) |
| A charade of CAP (‘better’ in the sense of “Whatever you can offer, I can cap/better it”) plus ETOWN, an anagram (‘move’) of ‘to new’. | ||
| 5 | YELLOW | Chicken two in 24 (6) |
| See preamble. | ||
| 6, 15 | DOWNCAST | 9 shed overlooked by hill (8) |
| A charade of DOWN (‘hill’) plus CAST (‘shed’). | ||
| 11 | SPINELESS | 5 like crabs, worms and insects, say? (9) |
| Double definition, | ||
| 12 | BLACK | Jet seven in 24 (5) |
| See preamble. | ||
| 14 | RAVEN | Heading off 5, 12 down (5) |
| [c]RAVEN (‘5’ YELLOW, cowardly). | ||
| 16 | GROUNDED | Good description of a corporation perhaps, firmly established (8) |
| A charade of G (‘good’) plus ROUNDED (‘description of a corporation, perhaps’, with ‘corporation’ in the sense of a generous belly). | ||
| 17 | COBBLERS | Moonshine drinks (8) |
| Double definition: I was familiar with the term as ‘moonshine’ in the sense of nonsense, but the drink (Chambers: “an iced drink made up with wine or spirits, sugar, lemon etc.”) was new to me. | ||
| 19 | SALMON | 23 or 5 fruit from 4? Not English (6) |
| The colour fits, but I cannot see the wordplay; so, over to you.
As 2 tanners promptly points out, this is SA (South Africa, ‘from 4’ L[e]MON (‘5 fruit’) minus the E (‘not English’). |
||
| 20 | UNRIPE | Pee in urine, worryingly 16 across (6) |
| An envelope (‘in’) of P (‘pee’) in UNRIE, an anagram (‘worryingly’) of ‘urine’. | ||
| 21 | CONE | Shape square for white bishop? (4) |
| In a chess game, one ‘white bishop’ starts on C1 (the other on F1). | ||
| 23 | PINK | Prick six in 24 (4) |
| See preamble. | ||
19d Is fruit (lemon) from South Africa (SA – Cape Town) without the E (English). i.e. SAL(E)MON But I was totally defeated by the crossword, which is why I’m here so early.
2 tanners @1
Thanks for putting me out of my misery so quickly.
I think the 19d wordplay is S[outh] A[frican] lemon (yellow fruit) minus the E (not English). I enjoyed the puzzle with the thematic colours being a big help once spotted. Thanks for the blog.
Apologies for duplicating the explanation by 2tanners. I’m not that swift at typing on a phone.
Like you, PeterO, I couldn’t.t see 19d. But having solved PINK at 23d, I thought immediately of SALMON pink, though I didn’t see the LEMON part at all, but it had to be that from the crossers. It was the same as 7a, where the solver needed 12a BROWN to get BRONZED (or at least this solver did!). So thank you to 2 tanners (BRONZED tanners?)@1 and wooden_tree@3 for the elucidation.
This Aussie appreciated the early blog, PeterO, as I have to go out for the rest of the day and evening, so I won’t get back to this blog. I needed help with some other parsing, so thanks for explaining 25a SPA the Belgian town in SPARING, 1d (m)ORAL and the anagram of “to new” in 4d CAPE TOWN (d’oh!).
I liked the interplay of colours in the puzzle, though I only knew that the black ball was 7 so had to google several of the other coloured balls from SNOOKER.
My favourite was 18a SKI SLOPE for Whistler (where my son found he was one of a huge population of Aussies on working holidays!).
A clever but tough puzzle from Paul; thanks to him and to you, PeterO.
Thanks Petero and Paul. I tried this just before I went to bed, and got nowhere, thinking it was going to be impossible. Finished it just now – what insomnia does for you!
The D of 16d was first in, followed by the N of 4d and then CAPE TOWN itself. This led to YELLOW, but not rainbow, and, like Peter, a while before the penny dropped. BRONZED last in.
I forgot to say the N of 4d was erroneously correct, as I thought it ended in “new”; however it did the trick.
[gladys, JohnB, BlueCanary, grantinfreo and Dave Mc, if you come on, I just posted a very late response to your comments at the end of yesterday’s Crucible blog.]
This was well worth persevering with. As so often with Paul, the theme wouldn’t yield for an age. It was rather poignant for me as I was at the funeral of a life-long billiards and snooker player/fan yesterday.
Bravo Paul and thank you PeterO.
Thanks for the “white bishop” solution (21ac).
Totally defeated by that and desperately reached for the bishop being a pine tree!
A fiendish bit of work this.
In fact, I had all the colours before I solved 24ac!
Hate to say it, but Paul missed a possible cross-ref. at 1dn:
“Top 23 by mouth” !!
Thanks to Paul for an interesting puzzle and to PeterO for parsings, especially 17d – I hadn’t heard that use of corporation before. Have never played snooker and didn’t get 24a till I had a couple of colours, so solving was a bit ‘backwards’.
I had all but PINK before I twigged what 24a was, having never heard of the artist. Couldn’t parse 19d and 21d. Couldn’t see the wood for the trees.
This was hard getting started, due to all the mutual dependencies. I first thought of the rainbow, which didn’t work at all. Then judo, which did work for the colours I had at the time, but ultimately failed. I then checked other martial arts, to no avail. It was only with pink that I twigged. On reflection a nicely put together puzzle, but I found it quite a slog.
Thanks Paul and PeterO
Sorry, but I found this rather unsatisfying. I got SNOOKER quite early on, so the rest of the colours were write-ins. I didn’t parse CONE (nice clue), SALMON or COBBLERS.
Another cross-reference missed – (D)URBAN with CAPE TOWN?
Favourite was BRONZED.
I don’t suppose it’s worth pointing out again that “cover” isn’t a fielding position in cricket (strictly speaking) – COVER POINT, EXTRA COVER etc. are collectively knwon as “the covers”.
We too tried rainbow and judo…after first considering the seven dwarfs.
Thanks for help with cone and Lapp – had no idea how these worked.
Loved onze in the bakery and the salmon lemon.
Enjoyed following all the cross references.
Thank you.
I was also defeated by SALMON and didn’t know the ski resort or cover as a fielding position – I prefer snooker to cricket so I got 24 fairly quickly. BRONZED and CAMERON are very clever and I didn’t get either of those, either. Not a good performance.
Julie in Australia: thanks for responding. Rock family trees are a fascinating tangle, and some English musicians and singers seemed to change bands twice a year all through the 60s and 70s. Lots of fine artists about: some were lucky and ended up in successful bands, some weren’t.
The usual excellent puzzle from Paul I thought. A dnf for me, as I had SKI POLES for 18a, therefore did not get SALMON. Also revealed BRONZED, which I should have got by myself (and which as others have commented, was IMO one of the the best clues).
Thanks Paul and PeterO.
No, Muffin @14 is wrong about COVER, which is a perfectly valid and common term for a fielding position. (As is SLIP, in addition to THE SLIPS, SECOND SLIP, etc.) I happen to be rereading a book about the great interwar England bowler Maurice Tate, by the great Gerald Brodribb, a meticulous cricket scholar if ever there was one [and there was] – and he notes that Tate’s preferred field placing for his opening overs included ‘three slips and a gully, a deep third man, cover, mid-off, short-leg and mid-on’. (I thought it was worth quoting this for the benefit of non-cricketing solvers who can store away some of the terms: ‘gully’ must come up from time to time?)
quenbarrow @18
Yes “cover” is frequently used, but it is really short for “cover point”.
Thanks for the CONE parse.
Really liked this. The misspent youth part didnt take long to tumble.Whistler provided the first and the K lead to BLACK
and that part all fell in OK.Then I slowed down. Didnt really know ANTE POST-the parse you gave would have helped.Had to fish for that.
8 was LOI. Well almost-I didnt properly check my parsing and i stupidly had IRONWORK
muffin @19: the word “really” raises some quite profound issues for lexicography and for crosswords! the derivation may be sound, but words can escape from their derivations. I rest my case.
Conceded, quenbarrow 🙂
thank you, muffin @22! (sorry, can’t work out to to insert a reciprocal smiley)
….how to insert…
Quenbarrow@18:
What Mr. Tate liked to “include” seems fairly exhaustive to me as, on my fingers, his list
only leaves the wicket=keeper, himself and the umpires. I would hazard a guess that he also
specified a point over the boundary rope where he wanted twelfth-man to hover !
They’re done with brackets after other symbols. The “smiley” is colon then close bracket.
With only two men on the leg side, did Mr. Tate bowl pacy out-swingers
by any chance?
Thanks, Paul – a bit hard going at times but ultimately very satisfying. In spite of the fact than when the theme was cracked there were 6 write-ins.
And thanks to PeterO – I couldn’t parse 21d because I was trying to shoehorn a bishop’s “mitre” (which is vaguely conical, and also a “square” joint in woodwork) into an explanation.
The only Whistler I knew of until today was the one who painted his mother, so grateful for the explanation to 18a – and the new knowledge!
Totally satisfying. For a while, I thought I was going to have to give up. 24 was my last in too. Superb. Thanks Paul. And thanks PeterO, I really needed your blog for the same reasons as other posters here. Would never have got 21d.
Thanks PeterO. A tricky one, as I’d deduced a colour theme with 24 but not actually twigged its exact nature until my penultimate answer.
But, as always with Paul, the torture is nearly always justified by the ingenuity and satisfaction upon completion. I do still marvel at how I can enjoy – and usually complete – cryptic puzzles daily, given my general idiocy, and near total ignorance of cricket, chess and bridge (along with nearly every other aspect of human knowledge).
Many thanks to Paul for a cracking solve and to PeterO for the blog. As another insomniac, I started this puzzle around 4am in the hope that it would send me back to sleep, but it had the opposite effect. Far too much fun. My way in was through PINK via GREEN and UNRIPE; also thought of rainbow, but pink ruled that out and led me to SNOOKER (about which I know nothing).
Great, great, puzzle Paul for which many thanks and a very comprehensive and early (as ever) blog, PeterO for which again many thanks. As an older man I have many interests, and among them are SNOOKER, Chess and cricket, so this was up my street. Got SNOOKER from the definition as FOI, and from then it was fairly plain sailing until CONE, which I stared at for some time before the light bulb suddenly lit up and I laughed out loud. Brilliant, how does Paul keep doing it? But my favourite clue by some margin was that for CAMERON who I blame totally for the tragic horror that is Brexit. Unlike muffin I never feel ‘unsatisfied’ when I get a few write-ins, all the better to have more time for snooker, chess or cricket: currently the CPL is keeping me from sleep, so a quick solve is a blessing. As to the fielding question, as a young man I played a lot of cricket and I well remember my Captain saying to two of us, Billy and David into the covers, Billy you go to extra cover and David to cover, I knew exactly where I had to go. I’d like to thank the G for another week of cracking crossies; let us see what tomorrow’s prize brings!
Pink = prick ??
Thanks to Paul and PeterO. I got SNOOKER early on (I knew Koons) so that most of the colors followed but still found this puzzle very difficult owing to items I either did not know (Whistler, ANTE-POST) or could not parse (CONE, SALMON) – and even with all the crossers CAMERON was my LOI (though in retrospect I don’t know why).
Having confidently entered SACK at 22ac, SE corner became unsolvable – ‘check’ button showed error, so then could find a colour to fit 23dn. Even then I didn’t get 24ac – I’d been trying to recall the RESISTOR colour codes (which I’d last used 70-odd years ago) – until Bradford gave me the required synonym for ‘thwart’, when all became obvious.
Very enjoyable as always, Paul. But just couldn’t fathom 7ac, 18ac, and 19d so defeated by these three in the end..
Thank you Paul and PeterO.
It took me an age to click on to the theme even though I played SNOOKER when a girl.
I failed to parse SKI SLOPE, Whistler is one of my favourite artists, I did not think to google – have just remembered, we had the daughter of Australian friends to stay a while back, and she had been on a working holiday there (see JinA @5).
Always having a chess game going on the computer was a help with 21d.
phil @ 33 – dictionary gives PINK as a verb meaning to stab
Having set a puzzle on a similar theme for Significance, I found this a fairly quick solve, except for SKI SLOPE, which I could not justify even though that had to be the anwer, never having heard of that Whistler.
Goujeers @ 39: I did wonder if either Whistler or his Mother had a ski-slope nose, but it doesn’t seem evident from their portraits….
Another day, another theme 😀
This dates me, but I couldn’t resist.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BliAPzEsao0
Sorry.
And leading on from that I was hoping that the “12across bread” in 7a was going to be rhyming slang, but I couldn’t shoehorn “dead”, or “deceased” or “RIP” in anywhere.
Otherwise, after the shock of all the cross references, it was a fairly mild solve.
Thanks Paul for the trip down memory lane, for me at least, and PeterO for the blog.
Crossbar @41: thanks for the link……..I think.
Crossbar, I now have an earworm.
Returning after a break and going back to earlier comments (14-27)
muffin@26: I can do the smiley that way in Word, but it doesn’t work here, for me, either direct or when pasted in from Word 🙂 Maybe it’s the same for some others 🙁
il principe @27, yes, Tate was a very accurate fast-medium bowler who focused on and around the off-stump. When the ball lost its initial zip he would evidently move one of his off-side fielders across to leg. As our Australian contributors are sure to know, he was one of the best-ever English bowlers over there (1924-25 and 1928-29). I suppose this was all too long ago for his name to be available for use in crosswords for ‘cricketer’, though it could fit in usefully for words like Levitate. But GRACE from further back is probably admissible (?), just as TREE still seems to be, occasionally, for ‘actor’. (Discuss – or not).
.. but now miraculously it shows up 🙂 so, thank you.
Found this one quite knotty even after getting the theme, and enjoyed the challenge. Can’t believe how long it took to see CAMERON who was last in.
Thanks to Paul and PeterO
Beery @46 CAMERON was my LOI too.
….. in fact I kept trying to put Camelot in.
Just a general comment. I now usually save my ageing brain for Sunday’s Azed but couldn’t resist having a go at all this week’s efforts. What a treat they all were. Scarcely a dodgy clue amongst them and some neat themes. Today’s tangled web took a little while- though 2 to 7 (and no 1) should have clicked sooner. Liked CAMERON clue a lot. As CAPE TOWN was last in SALMON took a while to sus.
!
Thanks for the entertaining cricket banter…you should all be radio commentating on the next test.
Fraid I must go against the flow here. For the first time ever I didn’t enjoy a Paul
Just too convoluted initially and then once I unsnookered myself it became a procession of potting the colours. Ho-hum
Did like bronzed though – how often do you get to use 11 in a foreign language? Cricket and football that’s it
Oh yeah and sod you Cameron you should be locked inside your shepherds but until you apologise to the nation!
Great Friday fun from Paul, despite the fact that I could not figure out the theme until I got my LOI: SNOOKER. Prior to today, I would have said that the only thing I know about snooker is that I remember that Andy Capp was always playing it in the comics [but mentioning that comic strip makes this obligatory]. Thanks to Crossbar @41 for providing the YouTube link to “Snooker Loopy”! I had not heard that Chas & Dave song previously, and the bonus for me is that between today’s puzzle and that video, my knowledge of snooker has just been increased about a hundredfold. A fine TILT (or many of them)! I loved the cross-referenced clues, which seems to be a Paul-ian specialty. Top clues for me included IRONWARE, BRONZED, CONE (the parsing of which was a guess for me, but happily correct, as I am no chess player either) and SALMON.
I enjoyed the discussion of Whistler and especially Whistler’s Mother, which summoned the fond recollection of one of my favorite long anagrams ever from the Guardian Cryptic, from 2 or so years ago I think.
Many thanks to Paul and PeterO and the other commenters. It’s been a great week of puzzles. Happy weekend to all.
Whistler is not a ski slope, it is a ski resort. It would be like saying the M1 is the motorway network.
Ruth D @54 — Yes, but a SKI SLOPE is a *feature of* a ski resort (whether Whistler or any other), isn’t it?
To Ruth@54, the definition in 18ac is ‘feature of Whistler,say’ and ski slope is a valid example. Thanks to Paul and PeterO.
Sorry DaveMc @ 55. You must type faster than me and we crossed!
I finished this hours ago but haven’t had time to comment until now. I thought this a quite brilliant puzzle. It was tough to solve but highly satisfying.I got all of the colours before getting SNOOKER and the theme was made clear although I missed some of the other references ie SKI SLOPE and the fiendish BRONZED which was LOI. I loved CAMERON- never thought I’d type that- and CASTELLAN.
Altogether excellent.
Thanks Paul.
Muffin.Yet again you insist that Cover isn’t a fielding position. Of course it is. It is not short for Cover Point which is a position somewhere between Cover and Point.
I did play cricket at a reasonable level for about 30 years so I think I’ve got the hang of it by now.
I assume your definition of “the covers” is a joke.
Even for Paul, this was chock full of obscurities.
Fred@59
I always understood that cover was short for cover point, a position further from the bat than point, and there to field the ball if point missed it or if a point had not been placed. In practice cover has come to mean a fielder placed more forward of square than point as well as further out.
Sorry but not enjoyable, even with having found the theme.