The puzzle may be found at https://www.theguardian.com/crosswords/cryptic/28054.
Double definitions abound, as do hairdos. An enjoyable puzzle from Brummie.
| ACROSS | ||
| 9 | ROUST | Drive away, restricting speed initially, then create a stir (5) |
| An envelope (‘restricting’) of S (‘Speed initially’) in ROUT (‘drive away’). ‘Then’ does not fit very comfortably. | ||
| 10 | MARCO POLO | Traveller‘s hurt before county game (5,4) |
| A charade of MAR (‘hurt’) plus CO (‘county’) plus POLO (‘game’). | ||
| 11 | PALANQUIN | Mate with an unusual sibling produces litter (9) |
| A charade of PAL (‘mate’) plus ‘an’ plus QUIN (‘unusual sibling’). | ||
| 12 | GUMMY | Adhesive teeth quite lacking? (5) |
| Double definition. | ||
| 13 | COW-EYED | US student crosses English river, looking amorous (3-4) |
| An envelope (‘crosses’) of WEY (‘English river’ – not one of the usual suspects; there are two, one in the south-east and one in Dorset) in CO-ED (US student’). | ||
| 15 | EMPANEL | Slippery customer takes months to track and select for jury duty (7) |
| An envelope (‘takes’) of M (‘months’) plus PAN (‘track’? – they are both cinema camera manoeuvres, but quite different) | ||
| 17 | ROYAL | Romeo and Oscar have sex over August (5) |
| A charade of R O (‘Romeo and Oscar’, radio alphabet) plus YAL, a reversal (‘over’) of LAY (‘have sex’). | ||
| 18 | RUB | Polish problem (3) |
| Ay, a double definition. | ||
| 20 | DREAD | Act like a student after bad mark horror (5) |
| A charade of D (‘bad mark’) plus READ (‘act like a student’). | ||
| 22 | SAMURAI | Military type knocked back drink when having one-on-one (7) |
| A charade of SAMUR, a reversal (‘knocked back’) of RUM (‘drink’) plus AS (‘when’);. plus A (‘one’) plus (‘on’) I (‘one’). | ||
| 25 | BEEHIVE | Hebe variety planted in front of one’s busy workplace (7) |
| A charade of BEEH, an anagram (‘variety’) of ‘hebe’ plus I’VE (‘one’s’, as one has). | ||
| 26 | TORAN | Indian archway not suitably constructed to frame ancient deity (5) |
| An envelope (‘to frame’) of RA (‘ancient deity’, the Egyptian sun-god) in TON, an anagram (‘suitable constructed’) of ‘not’. An obscure word, clearly clued. | ||
| 27 | RAIN CHECK | Invitation postponed when sewer inspection fails to start (4,5) |
| [d]RAIN CHECK (‘sewer inspection’) minus its first letter (‘fails to start’). Has the American expression crossed the pond? | ||
| 30 | IVY LEAGUE | Universities collectively taking climber the distance (3,6) |
| A charade of IVY (‘climber’) plus LEAGUE (‘the distance’). | ||
| 31 | LOCKS | Barnet seals? (5) |
| Double definition. | ||
| DOWN | ||
| 1 | CROP | Produce whip (4) |
| Double definition. | ||
| 2 | OUTLAWRY | Robin Hood’s situation: showing ring, truly desperate to take a wife (8) |
| A charade of O (‘ring’) plus UTLAWRY, an envelope (‘to take’) of ‘a’ plus W (‘wife’) in UTLRY, an anagram (‘desperate’) of ‘truly’. | ||
| 3 | ETON | Where some may learn of drug (speed) (4) |
| A charade of E (‘drug’) plus TON (‘speed’). | ||
| 4 | SMOULDER | Burn with very little smoke and turn to dust (8) |
| A charade of S (‘very little Smoke’) plus MOULDER (like John Brown’s body, ‘turn to dust’). | ||
| 5 | FRINGE | Surrey’s top feature, musically (6) |
| Cryptic definition, a reference to the song “The surrey with the fringe on top” from the musical Oklahoma. | ||
| 6 | HODGEPODGE | Device for carrying back, say, fatty mixture (10) |
| A charade of HOD (‘device for carrying’) plus GE, a reversal (‘back’) of EG (‘say’) plus PODGE (‘fatty’). | ||
| 7, 28 | COMMON COLD | Rather crude bitter? A familiar complaint (6,4) |
| A charade of COMMON (‘rather crude’) plus COLD (‘bitter’). | ||
| 8 | PONY | Horse sucks energy from flower (4) |
| A subtraction: P[e[ONY (‘flower’) minus the E (‘sucking energy from’). | ||
| 13 | CURLS | Kinks to play winter sport stadium at first (5) |
| A charade of CURL (‘play winter sport’ – ‘winter’ if it is played outdoors, I suppose) plus S (‘Stadium at first’). | ||
| 14 | YUL BRYNNER | Hollywood star who once shone at the top (3,7) |
| Cryptic definition, referring to the actor’s shaved head, originally adopted for his role in The King and I. | ||
| 16 | LODGE | Writer‘s place in the wilds? (5) |
| Double definition; The ‘writer’ could be one of several, with David Lodge being perhaps the best known. | ||
| 19 | BOBBINET | Fine material from Dylan: ‘Chuck the Alien’ (8) |
| A charade of BOB (‘Dylan’) plus BIN (‘chuck’) plus ET (‘the Alien’). | ||
| 21 | EXIGENCY | Led away from exceedingly awkward pressing need (8) |
| An anagram (‘awkward’) of ‘exce[ed]ing[l]y’ minus LED (‘led away’) | ||
| 23 | MARTYR | Oscar-winning film: King Sebastian (6) |
| A charade of MARTY (‘Oscar-winning film’ with Ernest Borgnine and Betsy Blair) plus R (‘Rex, ‘king’). | ||
| 24 | IN RAGS | Lives round New Badger, like Cinderella (2,4) |
| An envelope (’round’) of N (‘new’) plus RAG (‘badger’) in IS (‘lives’). | ||
| 26 | TAIL | Tip: it’s an inheritance limitation (4) |
| Double definition. | ||
| 28 | See 7 | |
| 29 | KISS | Plonker from Stanislavski’s school (4) |
| A hidden answer (‘from’) in ‘StanislavsKI’S School’. | ||
I failed to parse 4d, 14d, and 5d which I guessed was a reference to Surrey Fringe Festival.
New for me were TORAN.
Thanks, Brummie and Peter.
Two in a row! This was yet another challenging and well-clued puzzle, with many smiles along the way. It was a tough start, several times to the point of despair, but then everything gradually fell in place. As a movie-lover, favorite clue was 23D (saw that movie in 1955), but there were many other good ones, such as 2D. I must confess I had never heard of 11A, but it was solvable from the clue, and subsequently confirmed. May this quality-streak of puzzles continue.
I can’t say I liked this one that much, although I don’t really know why. Maybe it was the quantity of DDs, maybe just that a lot of the rest were a bit of a slog. Perhaps if I had been more coiffure-conscious I would have seen the theme which might have lightened things up a bit.
Given the theme, I wonder if the Yul Brynner mention was intentionally ironic or accidental.
A slow steady solve, with enough filled in on the first pass to make a few others guessable from the crossers and building from there. No quibbles except with pan = track in 15a as noted in the blog. Missed the theme of course, but my experience was none the worse for it. Thanks to Brummie and to PeterO for explaining my partially parsed SAMURAI.
Hey–this was a rare instance where I finished one of these in time to comment early rather than late–and whaddya know, I don’t have much to say about it. Needless to say, I did not see the haircut theme.
More U.S. cultural references than usual, from the Surrey With the Fringe on Top to Yul Brynner to the Ivy League. Not that I’m complaining. It’s nice to actually know the cultural references for a change.
It is worth pointing out that no one outside of crossword puzzles has called a female college student a coed since, like, 1975.
Toran was a guess (more likely than otran), not really helped by tail: it’s an essential, not a limitation, for critturs that have ’em. Or am I missing something? Good puzzle though, ta both.
ginf @6, for “tail,” Collins gives “the lmiitation of an estate or interest to a person and the heirs of his or her body.” I didn’t know it either.
Thanks Dave, I did think something legal but nho that sort of tail, so a shrug-and-bung.
A fee tail, now blessedly extinct, was a form of estate that basically made it difficult or impossible to leave property to anyone other than descendants.
This legal gadget is a plot point in the first couple seasons of Downton Abbey, for those who enjoyed the show.
I really like Brummie’s puzzles and this one served to reinforce that opinion. Yes it was tough in parts but oh so rewarding. I could say lovely words like 11a PALANQUIN and 6d HODGEPODGE all day just because they sound so good rolling off the tongue. Thanks to 5d “FRINGE”, I now have the songs from “Oklahoma” as earworms – pity, as I would much rather be listening to “Lola” by the Kinks who distracted me in the clueing for 13d. I got the theme once I cracked 25a BEEHIVE and 13d CURLS – though the latter was delayed because I started with the unparsed DOE-EYED at 13a. Lots of ticks on this puzzle, including 12a GUMMY, 17a ROYAL, 30a IVY LEAGUE and 14d YUL BRYNNER (LOL given the theme – intentional I reckon Dr. WO@3). Lot of smiles along the way including when I met the old stand-bys: WYE in 13a COW-EYED (British River of Crosswordland Number#) and good old ET for “Alien” in BOBBINET at 19d. The latter was unfamiliar but the wordplay was exact – I also hadn’t met 26a TORAN, the author David LODGE at 16d or that legal meaning of 25d TAIL either, but they were also gettable guesses.
Yes rodshaw@2, two goodies in a row: aren’t we lucky? Thanks to our Long Island friend PeterO for the colourful early blog and to our Birmingham Brummie for many worthwhile moments as I worked through this. [I said to someone recently how much I appreciate being part of this international community which makes the solitary pastime of solving so much more pleasurable.]
I found this difficult. Is ‘Sebastian’ a generic name for a martyr, or is it a definition by example? I spent a long time looking for a surname. And I missed the theme, though I’m old enough to remember beehives. Thanks to Brummie, and to PeterO for his usual clear expositions.
Tomsdad @11
Saint Sebastian (late 3rd century), Roman martyr. According to legend he was a soldier who was shot by archers on the orders of Diocletian, but who recovered, confronted the emperor, and was then clubbed to death. Feast day, 20 January.
31ac. Double definition, as stated, and ‘Barnet’ is ‘hair’, and therefore ‘locks’, because of Cockney rhyming slang. ‘Barnet Fair’ is an annual horse fair.
I agree that the river in 13ac was WEY, not WYE as Julie in Australia @ 10 says.
I can vaguely remember as a young lawyer learning how to bar an entail, but never had to attempt it.
I found MARTYR a bit of GK too far: a film I didn’t know plus a fairly unusual definition by example – both halves having too many possibilities to choose from.
BOBBINET and TORAN new to me but fairly clued. I knew doe-eyed, or making sheep’s eyes, but the cow is a new one.
By the way, aren’t definitions by example usually indicated by a question mark?
Thanks Brummie and PeterO
A bit GK heavy – OK if you’re fortunate enough to know it. “Marty”, for example, goes back a bit. LODGE for the author, even YUL BRYNNER (though if you had heard of him, you would know his most obvious characteristic). I’ll post my Yul Brynner joke separately 🙂
BOBBINET was another unknown word. The BOB and the ET were obvious enough, but “chuck” for BIN was too loose for a strange word – a word search needed.
I made a case for SOLDIER for 22a – it would work if the clue were “one-in-one” (SOL beer, then I in RED backwards).
I knew “entail” from Pride and Prejudice, but have never come across “tail” in that sense.
Favourites COW-EYED (Taffimai Metallumai in The Just-So Stories lived on the banks of the Wey), RAIN CHECK (yes, PeterO, in common use over here, though not generally in a sporting sense), and HODGEPODGE.
No theme for me, of course, though I did know “Barnet fair”.
[It’s a little-known fact that Liverpool FC tried to get Yul Brynner to advertise their own-brand aftershave, but he turned them down because Yul never wore cologne.]
Found this difficult but rewarding.
Pedant’s corner: there is no musical called ‘Oklahoma’. But there is one called ‘Oklahoma!’!
MARTYR jumped off the page for me, thanks to Marty making the news this week for being the last film before Parasite to follow up a Palme d’Or with an Oscar for Best Picture. I’d have struggled with this clue last week, as I’ve never seen Marty (or Parasite yet). I would have been trying to make something with Argo, Crash, or Rocky!
When I was young I would regularly hear the phrase “could you give me a Yul Brynner” as an request for a barber to shave it all off, so for me 14d pretty much works as part of the theme (which I didn’t spot until almost complete), rather than as an ironic reference to it. I guess you don’t hear the expression these days as a bald pate is so much more commonplace than it was in Yul’s day. “Give me a Bruce Willis” wouldn’t work so well.
TORAN was new to me, and I only had a very vague idea of BOBBINET, though both were well clued. I didn’t help myself with lazy unparsed answers for 2 and 13a, with Outlawed and Doe-Eyed respectively
In rags is also part of the theme: https://www.wikihow.com/Curl-Hair-with-Rags
Re. 15a. When I was a lad and only very expensive cameras had fast shutter speeds, one would attempt to capture moving subjects by ‘tracking’ their movement in the viewfinder. This was referred to as ‘panning’, and, therefore, does not relate only to cinema camera manoeuvres.
A bit esoteric, perhaps, but I think that Brummie is justified.
Dr Whats on @3 Yul has to be a themer-or anti-themer
Thought 9 was clumsy-I usually think of ROUT as a thorough tonking whereas DRIVE AWAY suggests either garlic or daylight to a vampire or “getting the hell out”
Why not “beheaded(French) author could create a stir(5)”
Thanks Brum and Peter O
Don’t quite know how I finished this, but I did. Too many iffy clues for my liking. Lots of wild guesses and checking to confirm. Thought OUTLAWRY clumsy, and LODGE and MARTYR rather obscure. Didn’t enjoy that much today, someone will probably tell me to keep my hair on now…
19dn: Used to have a bob.
Oxford: “a style in which the hair is cut short and evenly all round so that it hangs above the shoulders”.
Kept it fresh by weraing a net at night: BOB IN NET?
An early Jonathan Creek episode turned on the difference between a panning (camera stays still but rotates) and tracking (camera moves) shot.
26 TAIL – an inheritance limitation I thought it was somehow the initial letters of these three words (vaguely hinted at by TIP), but couldn’t fit the T in.
Looked for a theme but missed it entirely.
George@18 were you referring to muffin’s joke @17?
Thanks PeterO and Brummie
26d TAIL (which I failed to get) is also defined by the tips (edges) of iT An Inheritance Limitation. 26a seems suspiciously similar to the Japanese archway called a TORII.
Like Dr WhatsOn@2 I didn’t much enjoy this. I struggle with double definitions where there is no wordplay to help if the answer doesn’t come to mind. It’s why I often find easy Mondays hard. And as noted by PeterO and commenters there was some loose clueing. MrsW did spot the theme – but there was only the (obscure) MARTYR to get by then. Thanks to Brummie for the puzzle and adding several things to my GK, and PeterO for parsing those I didn’t bother to.
@copmus Yes, a Yul Brynner Haircut also existed. http://www.artnet.com/artists/carl-ronald-giles/a-beatnik-being-forced-into-a-barbers-by-his-nfOlzhqCz1NnyiuELV0p4Q2
Oh Muffin! As one of the faithful, I’m pinching that.
Agree with Dr Whatson re the puzzle. Some lovely stuff but couldn’t enjoy parts of it.
Thanks though, S & B
A DNF for me but got close and found it gratifying nontheless. Don’t like outlawry as a word but i suppose it’s better than the alternatives e.g. outlawism. I don’t feel i’m qualified yet to ‘quibble’, but shouldn’t fatty be podgy?
windy@30 Thanks for that.My dear old Ma and Pa used to get the Express and Giles and Beachcomber were the saving graces
(and Desmond Hacket for rhyming slang). I think I first encountered James Bond in the strip cartoon section along with the Gambols. But then rock n roll arrived.As K Richards once said before 1956 it was BC
And you need to watch Eastenders for 31a: https://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/eastenders/2012/07/sharon-share-the-hair.shtml
To mrpenney@5, I have to challenge your use by date for “coed” of 1975. I attended university in Australia in the early 70s when colleges/halls of residence/dormitories etc. were opened up to both sexes. Coed there referred to the residence or the floor or the bathrooms etc. As a male student Ai lived in a coed college. But I moved to San Diego in 1978 and was recruiting on Californian campuses in the early 80s and “coeds’ invariably meant a female student, causing me some confusion at first. I am pleased to hear that it is no longer used as such.
Oh, for the crossword – what Ronald@24 said.
Nitsuj @32: I’m afraid that in Crosswordland, it is necessary to question whether a word is being used as an adjective, noun or verb.
So re 6dn, “a fatty” would be “a podge”. I had a schoolfriend whose nickname was “podge”, but it had nothing to do with his body shape. More a corruption of his surname. Or possibly a little Anglo Saxon irony, in the same way that “Little John” was 6 feet tall…
I think my first exposure to the word Barnet in this context came via “Snooker Loopy”, an 1980s pop earworm from Cockney songsters Chas n Dave, featuring a host of Barry Hearn-aligned cuemen.
It seemed a bit like a Pasquale with quite a few strange words. Of course, he could have had Koran and knit to avoid the TORAN obscurity …
I didn’t clock the theme. What an ugly word is OUTLAWRY, try saying it aloud. Sherwood fitted in quite nicely at 2D, although obviously impossible to parse.
I liked Surrey’s top and muffin’s joke @17.
Thanks Brummie and PeterO.
Tough due to some slightly strained cluing combined with unusual words…David LODGE, EMPANEL, TORAN, PALANQUIN, BOBBINET etc. (Plus missing the theme, of course.)
Never come across OUTLAWRY, or PLONKER or TAIL in this context before, and had to look up St Sebastian to discover he was a MARTYR, and not helped by missing the film.
“Barnet seals” doesn’t make much sense to me and I can’t find COW-EYED in Chambers.
All in all, a bit of a struggle and straying marginally into the “somewhat unfair” zone for me.
Many thanks for the excellent blog, PeterO.
Nice week,all.
Tough but fun. There didn’t seem to be many anagrams, which I tend to look for as starting-points. Didn’t spot the theme.
11a is one of my favourite words. I also liked 21d a lot, as there were other more obvious words to fit that pattern (EVIDENCE, EMINENCE).
A lot to agree with in the comments above – I found this difficult not because of anything especially clever but because of obscure words (“outlawry”, “toran”) unnecessarily squeezed in, weak synonyms and a lack of pointers for things like definitions by example (“sebastian”…). It could’ve been fairer and better without being harder. At no point did I solve a clue and think “ah that’s clever” – it just seemed to grind on.
I got “fringe” from the theme but had no idea of the wordplay – in this instance you have to know a particular song from a particular musical. If you don’t there is no wordplay or definition to help you – hardly seems fair.
Muffin – thanks for the cringe-inducing pun. George @22 I have a friend who photographs racing cars and bikes – she often pans to track the subject as it gives a very pleasing blur to the background and a real feeling of speed.
Incidentally, an “ivy league” is also a haircut (also called a “princeton” – sides short, top leaves enough for a side parting).
Many thanks PeterO for several explanations.
[Sorry to muddle up WEY and WYE, Ian Weldon@13: I think I got confused because Wye River is a place in Victoria (Australia) on our Great Ocean Road.]
And huge apologies to John@19
John says:
February 12, 2020 at 9:02 am
Pedant’s corner: there is no musical called ‘Oklahoma’. But there is one called ‘Oklahoma!’!
Thank you Brummie for a fun puzzle and PeterO for a helpful blog.
Have SAMURAI hairstyles been mentioned?
Having just come back on here to read the subsequent discussion, and despite my earlier glowing endorsement of our international community, I am feeling disappointed. As I said earlier, I thought there was lots to like here. I have to say that I sometimes get annoyed with the critical, picky and pedantic voices. It must be dispiriting for our setters. I remain grateful for the ways in which I am challenged by these puzzles. There, I’ve said it, and it won’t make me popular, I know.
J in A @ 45,
Makes you very popular with me!! As I have said in the past, I can see no point in the persnickety comments unless those posting them can honestly say that the lack of absolute accuracy, meant that they could not get the answer. Usually I fancy they are merely showing off their obscure knowledge, and are perhaps being a tad pretentious.
Many thanks to Brummie and PeterO for the fine puzzle and the elucidation.
PS: muffin have I missed your joke or have you forgotten to post it?
SPanza @46
It’s @17, but it might need explaining!
JinA, where did that come from?
Brilliant muffin!! I had been looking for a link, read 17 and completely missed the punning. I will be dining out on that for a while. Although it might be a bit of a reach to translate it for my Spanish friends here.
Can’t claim credit – my daughter showed it to me on Facebook last week.
I’m firmly in the two-good-puzzles-in-a-row camp. I generally enjoy a Brummie and this was fun. True, I didn’t get BOBBINET or TORAN (or the theme for that matter) but everything else eventually fell into place. I loved PALANQUIN and thought BEEHIVE, RAIN CHECK, IVY LEAGUE and CURLS worthy of note. I was lucky with MARTYR – Sebastian rang a bell for the definition and it fitted the crossers. I didn’t parse it correctly. Only real complaint was LODGE where I felt the definition was too vague for me. And I think I’m in a real minority in rather liking the word OUTLAWRY which was my FOI. No one on the Grauniad site seemed to like it either.
Thanks to Brummie and PeterO (and muffin for the excellent joke)
As well as wondering about RAIN CHECK on your side of the pond, what about IVY LEAGUE? I should think the UK sort-of-equivalent would be “Oxbridge.”
I’d never heard of BOBBINET or TORAN or LODGE the writer either. And I’m with Mark about OUTLAWRY — I liked it too. It gave me a second or two of self-congratulation for knowing such a quaint word, which I’ve certainly never used but must have seen somewhere.
I got all last night except TAIL, which as muffin says in a plot point in Pride and Prejudice. That tail limits inheritance of the estate not only to direct heirs but to mail ones, which puts the Bennet family with its five daughters out of luck. If at least one of the girls doesn’t marry well before Father dies, they’ll all be the genteel equivalent of homeless. The running joke is that Mrs. Bennet never grasps that Mr. Bennet isn’t responsible for the entail.
Valentine @52
RAIN CHECK has entered English English in the phrase “I’ll take a rain check on that”, meaning “I might take you up on it later”. The rained-off sporting fixture meaning is non-existent over here. Do you use my former meaning as well?
I think most of us would be able to name at least 2 (!) Ivy League universities!
Me @53
I’ve just checked a list – I would have got 4 of the Ivy League, plus 1 incorrect one!
@Valentine #52
I think Oxbridge is not that comparable as it’s only 2 institutions (and neither likes being lumped in with the other). It could perhaps be the Russell Group, but that’s definitely more obscure than the Ivy League and somewhat wide-ranging (24 institutions).
Thanks for the blog, PeterO. I’ve been out all day and have nothing to add to comments about the crossword but just wanted to express my appreciation of your ‘aside’ in the blog re 18ac: I’m pretty sure that the only place I’ve met rub = problem, apart from quite often in crosswords, is in ‘Hamlet’. Thanks for that – it made me smile.
Thanks, Brummie, for the puzzle.
muffin@53 I use the expression the way you do. Since I never attend sporting events I wouldn’t know whether the original meaning still persists. I just tested myself — I got five of the eight plus two wrong ‘uns. I think all of them are or used to be exclusively men’s institutions. (Some had companion women’s colleges — Radcliffe at Harvard, Pembroke at Brown, Barnard at Columbia.) You might think that the University of Pennsylvania was a public institution, but it is private, founded in the eighteenth century by Benjamin Franklin.
And .. could you explain the Yul Brynner joke?
pfr@55 I don’t think Oxbridge is equivalent to Ivy League, just the nearest similar British expression. The Ivy League is eight schools, more than Oxbridge’s two but fewer than the 24 of the Russell Group, which I for one have never heard of.
Hi Valentine
The joke won’t travel well. Liverpool Football Club, years ago, adopted a song from Carousel as their club anthem…..
Did you include MIT mistakenly too?
Yeah, but Sebastian wasn’t the only martyr in history, so should have had a question mark.
Enjoyed this one, though.
For those unfamiliar with COW-EYED, was not Hera so described poetically? Eileen could confirm and give the proper Greek word no doubt. But that was ‘beautiful’ rather than ‘lovestruck’ I suppose.
We enjoyed this very much blissfully missing the theme, and then a lovely pedanty bonus here over pan/track.
many thanks to setter, blogger and especially muffin for that splendid joke.
Hi Irishman @60 – quite right: along with half a dozen other epithets, Hera was known as ?????? (Bo?pis) ‘Cow-Eyed’.
We Yanks don’t walk alone as much as you might think — now I do get the joke.
I wouldn’t have included MIT, it’s too techy to be in that snobbish group. My mistakes were Amherst and Williams, which are both undergraduate colleges but not universities. But so is Dartmouth, which is in the Ivy League, the only non-university one. (My father got his PhD from Columbia, you’d think I’d have remembered that one, but I missed that and Cornell.) You might notice that all eight are in the Northeast — the farthest south is Penn, the farthest West is Cornell in central NY state.
There is also a far less famous women’s equivalent group, the Seven Sisters, sort of a Ladies’ Auxiliary to the Ivy League. Only two of them are companion colleges to the Ivy League universities. All of them are undergraduate schools, needless to say. (Who ever heard of a women’s university?)
Hmm, as I thought, the Greek script didn’t work. The question mark in the word in brackets is an omega, so the nearest I can get is Boöpis.
muffin @17
Briilliant! Still laughing. Wonder if you could make a clue out of it?
I had Yale, Harvard, Princeton and Cornell, in fact (and MIT….)
[Sounds tuneful – reason why Brynner didn’t buy aftershave? (5,5,4,5)]
Liked this a lot. Got the theme quite early in the proceedings and trotted through the rest- with the exception of TORAN which I’ve never heard of. My enjoyment of this puzzle is quite a contrast to yesterday’s which I couldn’t get started on and abandoned with scarcely a mark on the paper.
Back to the plot: I liked MARTYR and I’m old enough to have seen the film so no complaint from me.
Thanks Brummie.
There is a version of muffin’s glorious joke, with a (much) longer setup, in a poem from a fair few years ago that was posted on the Football Poems website.
http://footballpoets.org/poems/the-ballad-of-hartlepool-fc/
Mark @51:
Same! so you’re in a minority of at least 2… Outlawry was my FOI too, I guessed it from the definition, bunged it in (while thinking it too obscure) and was amazed to find it parsed!
pfr @55, Valentine @57:
I think a better companion with Ivy League could be Red Brick universities, those established in major cities in the 19th century, of which there are nine. I always understood them to be second choice after Oxbridge.
Great puzzle today Brummie and many thanks to PeterO for parsing 4d and 21d for me.
[Another go at a clue:
Tune on the radio reason why Brynner doesn’t but perfume (5,5,4,5)]
scutter @68
Thanks for that. Just one question – who are Hartlepool? Was that where they hanged the monkey?
Hartlepool is a town on the north-east coast of England, south of Newcastle. Its football team, Hartlepool United, is currently operating in the fifth tier of English football. It is indeed the town commonly associated with the monkey hanging legend.
Tune on the radio is the reason why Brynner doesn’t buy perfume (5,5,4,5)]
Sorry to keep tweaking:
Tune on the radio is the reason why Brynner didn’t buy perfume (5,5,4,5)]
Last go!
Song on the radio is the reason why Brynner didn’t buy perfume (5,5,4,5)]
BOBbinet and IVY LEAGUE are both haircuts. Apologies if someone has already mentioned this
There’s also a very mini theme for land law students, since TAIL and HODGEPODGE are both ancient property terms. Shame MESNE didn’t make it in
I think we need tom be a little fairer. Brynner is a gift so –
Sporting anthem is the reason why the King and I star didn’t buy perfume in audition. (5.5.4,5)
Like it, Roy!
I agree that, strictly speaking, 23d (MARTYR) needs a definition-by-example indicator, but that rule seems to be less scrupulously followed than some others.
I was lucky that the GK required for this puzzle matched the stuff rattling around in my brain. Like some others, I only knew the word “entail”, but “tail” wasn’t a big leap from there.
Entailment comes up in quite a bit of older fiction. In addition to those that have been mentioned, it appears in Sayers’s Lord Peter Wimsey books and, more surprisingly, as a small plot point in To Kill a Mockingbird. (Atticus Finch helps one of the local farmers to break an entailment on his land.)
[re that discussion up there in the ’50s @muffin and Valentine: Incidentally, seven of the eight Ivies were founded before independence (in age order, if I recall correctly: Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Penn, Columbia, Dartmouth, and Brown, though with Princeton and Penn having a legitimate basis for arguing which of them is older–Penn was chartered first, but didn’t get around to actually admitting any students until after Princeton was up and running. Full disclosure: as a Princetonian, I’m biased). Cornell is much younger; meanwhile, the other two pre-independence universities in America, William & Mary and Rutgers, are not in the league. Nor is UVA, which was founded by Thomas Jefferson shortly after independence.]
FRINGE, GUMMY and especially dear old YUL made me giggle out loud and, although I’d never heard of it, BOBBINET was likeable.
I didn’t spot the hair-connections until long afterwards, thinking the theme was something to do with Hollywood.
I also didn’t get Muffin’s delicious football joke until long afterwards – but, like the barnets, I love it to bits. Ditto Scutter’s daft football poem, which put me in mind of the Ripping Yarns episode, “Golden Gordon”.
Many thanks to Brummie for the mental workout, and to PeterO for the ever-classy explanations. Having driven my partner spare with my tuneless rendition of Surrey With The Fringe On Top, I’m now going to soothe his north-country soul by digging out my Ripping Yarns boxset…
Enjoyed this, thanks PeterO and Brummie.
In the UK at least, Curling is played from September to April, and is a Winter Olympic sport.
Ω
Great it works! Eileen, Greek characters and more at
https://dev.w3.org/html5/html-author/charref
Eileen at 61 ?????? Hope this works – “borrowed” via copy and paste from wikipedia entry on Hera.
[What’s the minimum number of words I can borrow before it becomes plagiarism, I wonder; I have cited my source, however]
Nope, sorry, it didn’t work this time
Many thanks, Gonzo [I’ll file that away] and Dave Ellison [yes, that’s what I tried to do!]. I think we’re still on-topic, as we’re discussing as ‘cow-eyed’ – which I’ve never seen used in English and I can’t see it in Chambers. It doesn’t strike me as very complimentary!
Please delete second ‘as’ in second sentence above.
?????? ?
Nope didn’t work. Trying to be helpful, but obviously I haven’t got the hang of it
Thanks to PeterO and to Brummie. Well this was fun, it’s kept me occupied for a large part of the evening. It’s been thoroughly dissected so I can’t really add much. I was expecting complaints about the YUL BRYNNER clue from the more follically-challenged among us, so a pleasant surprise not to ?ee same. Doubtless ol’ bonce polish himself would have been amused !
Eileen passim. I remember English translations of Homer translating Hera’s epithet as “ox-eyed”. I looked up oxeye daisy to see if its botanical name had any bovine connotation but it’s leucanthemum vulgare as you might have known.
I am an Indian, and I did not get TORAN. Archway misdirected me (rightly) to bridges, and I remained lost there.
TORAN is basically a string of flowers/beads/etc. hung across a door at the top (aka – entry-door decoration) – indicating auspicious entry. Typically used only at festival times and taken out thereafter. Basically a rosary put on door-top in an arc form rather than in a loop.
– “who once shone at the top” took me to BALD-WIN – which led to a lot of corrections later on
– military type …. one-on-one had me convinced of hand-to-hand combat – did a lot of martial arts (mentally) – including thinking I had come quite close when I thought ‘harakiri’ – then reached ‘assegai’
Brummie lorded me over, easily.
No that note – can someone clue me in to how SPEED = TON? I reached KNOT, then gave up on it.
AKumar @92
Thanks for the info about TORAN. One meaning of a TON is a speed of 100mph.
Thanks PeterO @93