I made a slow start on this, and didn’t get much quicker as I eventually progressed. A few tricky parsings too, even when the answer was (reasonably) clear. There’s an obvious Houdini theme in the clues, which may or may not be relevant to some of the answers. A tough but satisfying challenge – thanks to Tramp.
| Across | ||||||||
| 9. | ESCAPE KEY | Houdini act — legend that will clear 22 down in 10 (6,3) ESCAPE (oudini act) + KEY (legend – the escape key on a computer keyboard can be used to clear a CELL in [Microsoft] EXCEL, at least while you’re typing in it |
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| 10. | EXCEL | Sounds like very big is better? (5) Homphone of XL (extra large, as on clothes) |
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| 12,21, 11,22d. | CHINESE WATER TORTURE CELL | Houdini’s act two recurrence — lethal ties loosened (7,5,7,4) Anagram of TWO RECURRENCE LETHAL TIES |
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| 13. | REINS | Stop! Time to get out without wearing straps (5) REST (stop) less T “without” (i.e. uotside of) IN (wearing) |
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| 14. | PIPE DREAM | Spot journalist and paper giving false hope (4,5) PIP (a spot) + ED + REAM (quantity of paper) |
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| 16. | UNSOPHISTICATED | Simple Harry Houdini act with steps (15) Anagram (indicated by “Harry”) of HOUDINI ACT STEPS |
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| 19. | HAPHAZARD | Irregular pressure: expression of surprise in danger (9) P[ressure] + HA (expression of surprise) in HAZARD |
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| 22. | CLIMBED | Reached top of cold water with arms at side (7) C (cold water, as on a tap) + LIMBED (i.e. with limbs); the surface might be a description of Houdini escaping from the Chinese Water Torture Cell |
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| 23. | DUNGEON | A long time after dropping cage (7) DUNG (dropping) + EON |
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| 24. | LARDY | Fat conjuror ultimately saws woman in half (5) [conjuro]R in LADY |
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| 25. | RELEASERS | They let out zebras regularly to chase on fields (9) RE (about, on) + LEAS (fields) + alternate letters of zEbRaS |
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| Down | ||||||||
| 1. | SEE-THROUGH | Clear to detect the lies (3-7) Double definition (without the hyphen for the second) |
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| 2. | SCURRIES | Scrambles signal, primarily reaching foreign dishes (8) S[ignal] + CURRIES |
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| 3. | SPOUTS | Rabbits run out of veg (6) SPROUTS less R – rabbits in the sense of talks |
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| 4. | SKYE | Air final part of Love Island (4) SKY + [lov]E |
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| 5. | SYNCOPATED | NYPD case to get resolved having been shortened (10) (NYPD CASE TO)*; syncopate is most commonly seen as a musical term, but it can also mean ” to omit a sound or a letter from a word” |
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| 6. | PERIODIC | Regular exercise — shaving seconds off an Olympic record? (8) PE (exercise) + RIO (2016 Olympics venue) + DISC less S |
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| 7. | SCHEME | First couple from Scotland seen on border with English map (6) SC[otland] + HEM + E |
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| 8. | BLUE | Tone down adult clues for this? (4) Triple definition – colour; down=sad; as in “blue movie” |
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| 14. | PHILANDERS | Plays around with free 20 hand (10) Anagram of PLIERS HAND |
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| 15. | MODERNESS | Mrs needs no foreign currency (10) (MRS NEEDS NO)* |
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| 17. | PLAYBOYS | Pleasure-seekers find love in parking spaces by the roadside (8) O in P + LAY-BYS |
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| 18. | TETHERED | Tied: one’s left in that place locked up? (8) THERE (in that place) in TIED less I (one), and I think it’s meant to be an &lit, though I’m not totally convinced |
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| 20. | PLIERS | Stud could come out with these stories about royal? Prince goes first (6) P + R in LIES |
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| 21. | WANT AD | Feature of magazine article with small piece making cover (4,2) AN (artice) in W (with) TAD (small piece) |
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| 23. | DALI | Artist buried alive, partially (4) Hidden in burieD ALIve |
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So that’s what 9a is all about! As I never use Excel it’s a bit too left field for me.
BLUE was good, though.
Thanks Andrew, there were a few I had not parsed or not completely. Agree, tough but satisfying. Certainly not an 16a puzzle but I did not want to hit 1a. Lots to like. Thanks to Tramp.
MODERNNESS for 15d which doesn’t look like it’s spelled correctly, but it is 🙂 An wrt the ESC key and Excel, even though I used to work at Microsoft, that clearly escaped me.
It took me until 15d MODERNNESS to get a toehold here, so like Andrew it was a while before I got going. At one stage I thought I was going to fail totally on this solve. But hope springs eternal in the human breast and all that, so I ploughed on. Along the way I liked 14a PIPE DREAM, 16a UNSOPHISTICATED and 3d SPOUTS (with that distracting possible anagrind “Scrambles” proving a real distraction for a while). 8d BLUE was my LOI and I gave it three ticks! I needed help with the parsing of 13a REINS which I only got from the definition.
Thanks to Tramp for a worthwhile challenge and the interesting Houdini theme, and to Andrew for the blog.
I enjoyed this, especially after yesterday’s offering. A steady solve for me, which I thought not too difficult.
Unusually with such long fodder, I used it to solve the CHINESE one.
I have been using XL for years, but learned something today.
Lovely puzzle as ever from Tramp. 16a is so clever given the theme. Using Harry as the anagram indicator has put a smile on my face for the rest of the day!
Looked blankly at this until dungeon, after which pottered along happily grid filling until 21d was all that remained. And it continued to remain, so a dnf, grr. Lots to like nonetheless, with the themic anagram at 16 the cotd. Limbed as ‘with arms at side’ was innovative, and I liked love in the layby. And yes, hard to locate a definition for 18d. Good challenge, Tramp, and thanks Andrew.
Many thanks, Andrew and Tramp.
A tough but satisfying challenge indeed – I loved the clever use of the [Harry] Houdini theme.
From an IT nerd and particular fan of Excel… as Andrew suggests, the Escape key doesn’t necessarily clear a cell, but it leaves it as it was when you started typing. So if you start to edit a cell but then think better of it, pressing Escape will take you out of edit mode and leave the cell as it was before you started typing. So it will only clear the cell if was empty when you started typing.
Cracking puzzle though. Thanks Tramp and Andrew.
So pleasant sitting by the pool on a lovely morning jiggling the anagram fodder with no scrabble tiles or laptop–[took longer but more enjoyable I also loved the short clues, the triple def heading the pack.
Tramp following Vlad brightens up the day
Thanks Andrew and Tramp.
Great stuff from Tramp – I’m another admirer of 16a in the context of the puzzle – very clever setting. BLUE got a triple tick from me too JinA. It was also a dnf as I had an unparsed WENT AS ((under) cover?) for 21d. REINS and TETHERED also remained unparsed so not a great day for me. Many thanks to Andrew for sorting things out for me, and to Tramp for bamboozling me.
Re 14d, I’m trying to remember who once clued PHILANDER as something like “Royal couple play around”: Phil and ER?
This was difficult! I am often not on Tramp’s wavelength, and today was no exception.
I needed help from wikipedia to solve the ‘Chinese water torture cell’ even though I had the fodder for an anagram. I solved/guessed but could not parse 13a, 22a ( saw C + LIMB but could not think what to to with the ED bit), 6d, 14d, 18d.
I gave up on solving WANT AD, EXCEL, BLUE.
Thanks, Tramp and Andrew.
Tied myself in knots by putting CRESTED in 22a but eventually escaped. Chapeau for UNSOPHISTICATED given the theme. Thanks A& V
Some contortions required for parsing here!
As others have said, 16a brilliant!
Beat me to it Bodycheetah!
At first glance this looked difficult, but in fact it solved smoothly and very rapidly. Got stuck for a few minutes on 10A, 8D (groan), but otherwise no problems, nor in parsing. I expected something more subtle of the Houdini theme. Favorite clue was 23A.
Nobody does this type of themed crossword better than tramp. As others have said, 16a was the cream of the crop. Brilliant!
The blog entry for 25a is missing, something I don’t recall happening before.
Also, the Guardian app version of the crossword is missing (yet again).
Well spotted, poc: I’m not sure why 25a went astray, but I’ll add it now.
Thought i was really flying after last week’s successes. Then vlad and now a trumpy totally shot me down. Having read Andrews fine blog i feel even worse because so many were workoutable. Do others go through similar bad patches I wonder!
Brilliant puzzle and marvellous use of the theme. Certainly seemed subtle enough to me.
blaise@12, yes phil and er definitely rings a bell; some while ago I’d guess.
Oh and didn’t know, or maybe didn’t remember, that non-musical sense of syncopate, so a sort the anagram then look up.
Thank you Tramp, I think (just seeing the name Houdini made me feel breathless), and Andrew.
Thanks Andrew. You missed an N in your answer to 19d.
Really tough for me. I had only five in after two passes through the clues, after which I went to Collins for help with several and still came up a few shy of completion. Too much of a slog to be very satisfying, although I did enjoy BLUE and TETHERED, which (I think) does work as an &lit. As Andrew says, some tricky wordplay, as in 6d, where one has to jump over ‘Rio’ to ‘shave seconds’ from ‘disc.’
Thanks to Tramp and Andrew.
Couldn’t parse fully 9a (and have now learnt something), 13a, 14d, got 20d wrong and failed on 21d which I found unsatisfactory. Liked 17d though!
Total fail on first pass through until the last clue. Then it picked up once I got a few by looking harder, but I failed on the last three, scurries, reins and want ad.
Would anybody care to inform me what a “Want Ad” is? I’ve never heard of that.
Also definition of “escape key” is wrong although the wordplay is obvious (in retrospect). The escape key won’t clear a cell in Excel, only the last change to it. “That *may* clear cell” would be better. And I’ve used Excel occasionally for many years without knowing it did that anyway!
blaise @12 and grantinfreo @23 – the clue with that exact wording was by Araucaria. [I remember solving it on a coach trip, so it must have been a Saturday Prize.] There have been several variations since.
After yesterday’s Vlad, this was even harder. Went in bit by bit though till the unheard of WANT AD was entered from the wordplay with fingers tightly crossed. Worked this time anyway. Top notch puzzle.
Thanks to Tramp and Andrew
Hard work, but got to the end. I don’t like the easy ones. Is it just me that doesn’t like the old-fashioned “without” meaning outside? It may be allowable nowadays in Scots, but always irks me.
I was proud of myself for getting there in the end, though the absurdly convoluted parsing of REINS eluded me. I’m still not sure how I was expected to figure that out.
I do quibble with things like describing CURRIES as “foreign dishes,” especially since (a) these crosswords have an obviously global audience by now (witness our many American and Australian regulars here), and (b) curry, of all things, has plenty of native British varieties by now anyway. (And American–curried chicken salad is a staple at summer cookouts here, and it would be unrecognizable to a native of the Subcontinent.) So the word “foreign” there just makes y’all look provincial.
mrpenney: I was going to mention REINS as an example of the ‘contortions’ (@15).
Regarding CURRIES, I think it fair enough since, although popular here, they are normally regarded as being of Eastern origin (in particular the spices therein). Begs the question whether PIZZAS can be regarded as foreign even though they are a staple diet of many Americans and UK ans :).
Thanks to Tramp and Andrew.
Haven’t time to go into it all, but there were too many impenetrables for comfort from my point of view: ESCAPE KEY, REINS, CLIMBED, TETHERED and WANT AD, for instance, all caused the eyebrows to gyre and gimble. No complaints but I could have been there for the day without finishing and glad I didn’t give it too much time. I usually enjoy a Tramp….
10 down refers, I think to XL meaning extra large (size)
copland smith @ 32
“There is a green hill far away
Without a city wall”
Really enjoyed this. Looked impenetrable at first glance, but turned out to be quite easy until REINS took me ages to parse!
Reminded me of what an amazing person Houdini was!
Thanks to Tramp and Andrew
Why is SKY “air”?
Thanks both – the blog really helped with some parsing and the theme was fun (even if I had to resort to wikipedia …). I’m not sure that ‘excel’ and ‘better’ are really synonyms – you can say ‘the class excelled at arithmetic’, which just means ‘they did very well at arithmetic’ or ‘they shone at arithmetic’. You can excel at something while being worse that others at doing it.
muffin@39. Maybe the immortal words of John Lennon’s Imagine provide your answer. ‘Above us only Sky’……
muffin @39, I, too, wondered about that – they are given as synonyms, perhaps “The balloon floated high up in the sky/air”?
apologies, dantheman, I forgot to refresh…
geoff @40: I took it as an individual – if you do better than previously you excel.
Thanks both. Your example is interesting, cookie. If words are interchangeable in a sentence, are they necessarily synonyms? 🙂
First Vlad then Tramp, both of whom are difficult for me..Still I did rather better than yesterday and managed to parse most of the answers- but not BLUE (LOI)I’m ashamed to say. I last encountered Houdini being portrayed by Tony Curtis in a film many years ago but I’d forgotten the CHiNESE WATER TORTURE CELL which suddenly leapt out at me. Liked HAPHAZARD.
Thanks Tramp.
Tough puzzle – got everything but SPOUTS (I had no idea that “rabbit” is a synonym for “talk” – must be a British thing I assume?) and BLUE (should have got that one…). And while I did fill in UNSOPHISTICATED I got the parsing and the “harry” context only after reading Andrew’s explanation. Thanks to Tramp and Andrew!
Nitsuj@21: yes I feel as though I do go through such patches although I think it is often about other factors too. How the wind is blowing or how occupied the brain as a whole is with other things unrelated to the latest crossword.
Thanks Tramp for the excellent crossword which I experienced in a similar way to fellow commenters here. On the multi word clue I was determined not to resort to Wkipedia as I was so sure of the anagram fodder and I was rewarded with it eventually when I saw Chinese in that fodder as well as the expected Water.
Some impeccable clueing and thanks to Andrew for a great blog and also for me the parsing for REINS.
muffin @45, the COED gives for sky “v. tr. 1 Cricket etc. hit (a ball) high into the air” which seems relevant to 4d.
Yes, ‘she hit the ball into the air/sky’ does make them synonyms I think in that meaning.
Perhaps Tramp was acknowledging the not-quiteness of ‘excel’ for ‘exceed’ (pace Milton) with the question mark in 10.
No-one has answered poor howard@29: a Want-ad is a classified advertisement for something you want, as in
“Wanted – Lion Tamer. Must have own lions.”
Thanks Tramp and Andrew.
Gonzo @50, I always thought it was Wanted Ads rather than Want Ads. The latter is certainly new to me.
Great puzzle, btw. Love the use of Harry in 16. Clever stuff as usual from Tramp. Thanks to him and Andrew for the parses I missed.
Good point Gonzo@50 re the question mark. Here’s what Samuel Johnson has to say.
If anyone is still interested, for air, Collins gives “the space above and around the earth; sky.” That’s where I got it from. A plane is up in the air/sky.
Thanks Tramp.
I loved the crossword. Ìt was another treasure. THANK YOU.