I enjoyed this. Thanks Tramp.
| ACROSS | ||
| 1 | SPARROW | Bird box has string (7) |
| SPAR (box) with ROW (string) | ||
| 5 | FIGHTER | Order her gift and ring worker (7) |
| anagram (order) of HER GIFT – worker in a boxing ring | ||
| 9 | POSTERIOR | Office anger around men at the back (9) |
| POST (office) IRE (anger) reversed (around) then OR (other ranks, men) | ||
| 10 | IAMBS | Bits of poetry from writer’s American rubbish (5) |
| I AM (the writer is) and BS (bullshit, rubbish – American) | ||
| 11 | DRAM | Director hurt when going over shot (4) |
| D (director) then MAR (hurt) reversed (when going over) | ||
| 12 | STRONGHOLD | Keep stiff and carry on (10) |
| STRONG (stiff) and HOLD (carry on) | ||
| 14 | ANNEXE | Pick up one old lover for bit on the side? (6) |
| sounds like (pick up) “an ex” (old lover) | ||
| 15 | REHEATS | Warms up again — run races to conserve energy (7) |
| R (run) HEATS (races) contains (to conserve) E (energy) | ||
| 16 | See 21 | |
| 18 | YEARLY | Peer into 27 annual (6) |
| EARL (peer) inside Y Y (27 Yankees, Y twice in phonetic alphabet) | ||
| 20 | ROUNDHOUSE | In ring take in swinging punch (10) |
| ROUND (ring) HOUSE (take in) | ||
| 21, 16 | MARY POPPINS | Banks employed her pimp: any pros let go (4,7) |
| anagram (let go) of PIMP ANY PROS – Mr Banks employed nanny Mary Poppins in the film | ||
| 24 | OPERA | Met in New York, perhaps old prince getting ‘date’ (5) |
| O (old) P (prince) with ERA (date) – the Metropolitan Opera | ||
| 25 | HAND GLASS | What’s limiting hairdressing? Girl’s small mirror (4,5) |
| H AND G are the outer letters (what is limiting) of HardressinG then LASS (girl) | ||
| 26 | EXCUSER | One pardoning former addict smuggling cocaine (7) |
| EX USER (former addict) contains (smuggling) C (cocaine) | ||
| 27 | YANKEES | Americans pull and make out when going back (7) |
| YANK (pull) then SEE (make out, on a date) reversed (when going back) | ||
| DOWN | ||
| 1 | SAPID | Tasty dish mostly ordered with a starter of pasta (5) |
| anagram (ordered) of DISh (mostly) with A and Pasta (first letter, starter of) | ||
| 2 | ABSTAIN | One blackbird’s heading over spot to sit on fence (7) |
| A (one) Blackbird (first letter, heading) then (over, in a down light) STAIN (spot) | ||
| 3 | REEK | Smoke half of joint, then kip (4) |
| REEfer (joint, half of) then K (kip, currency of Laos). I’m not sure about the currency bit. The abbreviation isn’t in Chambers and Wikipedia shows it abbreviated to a non-alphabetic character, like a K with a strike-through. | ||
| 4 | WHISTLER’S MOTHER | Strange how he let Mrs sit back on chair for painting (9,6) |
| anagram (strange) of HOW HE LET MRS SIT with chaiR (last letter, back of) – painting of a (married) woman sitting back on a chair. | ||
| 5 | FOR YOUR EYES ONLY | Bond that’s top secret (3,4,4,4) |
| double definition – Bond film and literal | ||
| 6 | GOING CHEAP | Setting out third piece in auction with a lot in the sale? (5,5) |
| GOING (setting out) then auCtion (third piece of) with HEAP (a lot) | ||
| 7 | TOMBOLA | Closed with maiden, cricketer we hear gets draw (7) |
| TO (closed) with M (maiden, cricket) then BOLA sounds like (we hear) “bowler” (cricketer) | ||
| 8 | RESIDES | Lives on borders (7) |
| RE (on) SIDES (borders) | ||
| 13 | BEHIND BARS | Inside after going to pubs (6,4) |
| BEHIND (after) with (going to) BARS (pubs) | ||
| 16 | PURPOSE | Penny, excited with love, grabbing partner’s bottom, having endless sex drive (7) |
| P (penny) UP (excited) with O contains (grabbing) partneR (bottom of) then Sex (endless) | ||
| 17 | POULENC | He wrote notes by page with cryptic clue on (7) |
| P (page) then anagram (cryptic) of CLUE ON | ||
| 19 | LEAFAGE | Greenery in meadow following season (7) |
| LEA (meadow) F (following) AGE (season) | ||
| 22 | YESES | More than one sure pharmacy’s closing: couple of tablets needed? (5) |
| pharmacY (closing letter) then ES (e’s, ecstasy) twice | ||
| 23 | AGIN | Local not for an alcoholic drink (4) |
| A GIN (an alcoholic drink) – against, dialect (local) | ||
Thanks Pee Dee. Another enjoyable session which required some lateral thinking and some synonyms that were out of the ordinary but with a leavening of fairly straight forward clues which got the ball rolling. A good share of clever surfaces, I liked 9a, 14a, 25a, 7dand 16d of course. Had to resort to Google to confirm POULENC and ES which I found is a sort of pill (?). I never did satisfy myself about the K in 3d, just thought it was an abbreviation, and am still not convinced.
IAMBS: I AM (writer’s) BS (American rubbish)
K = ‘kip’ is in Collins.
Somewhat like the Curate’s Egg for me; some too simple, some too obscure – I couldn’t parse five of the solutions and I failed to complete the N W corner (1dn and 11, in case you need to know) I still don’t understand the relationship between the letters “to” and the word “closed” despite which the answer was pretty obvious. But I laughed when I got 25 and I enjoyed the puzzle overall. So thank you Tramp and thank you PeeDee for the blog
Thanks to Puck and PeeDee. Easier than expected. I had trouble with TOMBOLA and the parsing of REEK.
I really liked this one, despite also being a bit puzzled by k/kip in 3d. I thought there were some great surfaces, particularly those for WHISTLER’S MOTHER and PURPOSE.
BTW a note on YANKEES, since I live in the US now. The clue (27a) defines it by “Americans”, which is indeed the meaning it has for “foreigners”, but in the US it refers exclusively to those from certain northern or northeastern states.
Sorry – thanks to Tramp, not Puck.
Jaydee @ 4. Think doors.
Thought I had completed this and would need to come here only for the parsing of one clue, so I was a bit chagrined to discover why I couldn’t parse GOING AHEAD at 6d: it was flat-out wrong!
To elaborate on what DrW @6 wrote about Yankees, people from outside the US (and Canada) often use the term to refer to all Americans, but people in the southern and especially southeastern US use it (often pejoratively) to refer to those who reside north of the Mason-Dixon line. Those people in turn sometimes narrow the usage to refer to New Englanders, and I’m told (but can’t verify) that people in the more southern New England states use the term exclusively for Maine residents.
Regarding “Yankees,” my in-laws from Connecticut and southeastern Massachusetts would certainly consider themselves Yankees, and growing up in western Massachusetts I certainly heard the term refer to locals, so I don’t think it’s restricted to people from Maine. We would complain about the baseball team of that name from New York appropriating our appellation, in fact.
Very good fun, thanks Tramp. Favourite MARY POPPINS.
Thamks PeeDee for the blog – in 27 I took ‘see’ to be simply as in “I can see/make out the pub from here”.
Jaydee @4 and Biggles A @ 8
Not just doors:
“Tehee! quod she, and clapte the wyndow to”
I fell into the same trap as DaveinNCarolina@9, and so sadly this was a DNF for me – I also wondered why I couldn’t parse 6d GOING AHEAD fully. Grrr! GOING CHEAP is so obvious now.
Favourite was 10a IAMBS. I enjoyed solving MARY POPPINS (my first one in) for the fun anagram. (Wondering if other solvers know that P.L.Travers was born in Queensland, my home state?)
17d POULENC was unfamiliar and, like BigglesA@1, required a google search to confirm. I had the same experience with 20a ROUNDHOUSE.
I did try to squeeze in PORSCHE to 16d, another funny clue – and it fitted the definition (if not the parsing of the rest) for “drive” – as in “my daily drive is a Porsche” – not! I did finally see PURPOSE when I fitted in OPERA at 24a. One of the reasons I tried PORSCHE was that originally I had SALLY for 24a. It also made sense – Remember “When Harry Met Sally” – they met in New York and began dating – and Harry is now an ex-prince (“old prince”) – well, it made sense to me. I wonder if Tramp saw that nice bit of misdirection. Even though I had to re-think and erase my solution a little begrudgingly, I still thought the way Tramp used “Met” in that clue was very neat.
Many thanks to Tramp for the challenge and to Pee Dee for the elucidations and explanations.
No margin notes on my copy, bar a ? for the k in kip (the currency does ring the faintest of bells), so no complaints. In 12a, not sure now about hold..as in endure I guess (not carry-on luggage). Sapid has appeared before, as has Whistler’s mum, but both a good while ago. 16d was a bit of fun. And I liked the Met in 24, as you did JinA. Like other composers, Poulenc is not a stranger to cws. Agin evokes an old saying, now a bit non-pc, about a certain kind of immigrant who said “Is there a guvment in this country…well I’m agin it!”. All good fun, ta Tramp and PeeDee.
Yes, Sil@3, my Collins has kina, kip and kopeck.
JinA – I share your grrr! for GOING AHEAD, and so a dnf for me. And I love your excellent parsing of the wrong answer SALLY for 24a – that is still a favourite movie. (Nevertheless, the correct 24a OPERA was one of my ticks, along with the lasciviously surfaced 16d PURPOSE – a belly laugh.)
Altogether another excellent workout from Tramp, for which much thanks – and to PeeDee for putting us straight on 6d GOING CHEAP.
I enjoyed this, a steady solve for me. Favs were Whistler’s Mother for the surface, likewise Mary Poppins. Also liked Iambs (LOI).
JinA – I never thought of When Harry Met Sally, but I am in admiration of you getting to that (albeit incorrect) answer.
Thanks to Tramp for the fun and Peedee for the blog.
I think we are used to accepting S for dollar and E for euro, even though they have a line through them, so K for kip seems all right to me, whether or not it is in dictionaries (though I was at a loss to parse it, so thanks PeeDee).
As to YANKEES, they are a type of Americans, so the definition looks fine, just as if the answer was ‘Texans’, or indeed ‘Iroquois’.
The old story about AGIN is of the Scottish church minister who delivered a long, tedious sermon. ‘What was it about?’ “Sin!” ‘What did he say about it?’ “He was agin it!” And similarly, what do we all think about COVID-19? I hope you are all well.
A fairly easy and lacklustre puzzle for the most part, no ticks but no real complaints either. I am another who originally had GOING AHEAD for 6 dn and wondered why I couldn’t parse it.
I was wondering if I had missed something – but clearly not.
Thanks nonetheless to Tramp and to PeeDee.
Really enjoyed this last week and another worth doing for one answer alone which was WHISTLER’S MOTHER. Superb anagram and seems rather &littish to me. Another favourite, already acknowledged was IAMBS which I parsed in the same way as DanGer @2. The word has stuck in the mind from English classes when I was 13 and we studied Alexander Pope’s Rape of the Lock which was all in iambic pentameter. POSTERIOR was clever and made me smile, as did MARY POPPINS – though I had no idea of her employer’s name. It just had to be. YEARLY employed a nice device and OPERA is so simple yet so clever.
All that being said, I have to confess to a DNF which I only realised this morning on reading PeeDee’s blog. I sort of parsed 1d but entered SIPID instead of SAPID. Assumed it was a new word to me (the opposite of insipid and therefore tasty) but didn’t check it out. Now I see, I both parsed and answered incorrectly. My own Grrr.
Many thanks to both Tramp (Gosh, nearly mistyped that as Trump which would have sent a strange message!) and PeeDee for setting me right with the blog
I can’t find my copy of this now but looking through the PeeDee’s blog and other’s comments I remember enjoying it as I usually do with Tramp. I think PURPOSE was the loi and took ages for it finally yield. I was pleased to recall SAPID from a puzzle not that long ago and fortunately CHEAP came to mind before AHEAD or I’d have been stuck as well. Thanks to Tramp and PeeDee.
I enjoyed this puzzle. I didn’t know
Mary Poppins’ employer but it was obvious from the clue. Also didn’t know about the currency kip.
I didn’t like the answer yeses which is a fairly horrible word. Being a musician Poulenc was one of the first in. Good fun
Thank you DanGer @2 for correcting my bungled explanation of IAMBS. As Eric Morecambe might have said- I did write all the right letters but not necessarily in the right order.
Lots to enjoy here, even if the long ones helped a bit much. Lovely images and anagrams and a lot of pleasure to be had from the clues before I even got round to solving them, so thanks Tramp!
One comment on “for your eyes only” – it is a Bond film, yes, but it is not a top secret classification. That’d be “eyes only” meaning for specific readers rather than certain ranks. e.g. “Cabinet office eyes only”. The Bond film title is a play on that usage not a term in itself, so the clue does not properly work.
Many thanks for the blog PeeDee
Boggles A @8 – nope, I still don’t get it. I get “closed to” as an expression but why I should make that connection on the word “to” alone I don’t get. I expect I’m just too dumb.
Very enjoyable solve; I particularly liked TOMBOLA and PURPOSE (did Tramp pinch that clue from Paul?)
It took me a while to think of the closed = to, but that was fine. I didn’t know the
kip but again as it’s in Collins I can’t see there can be any real objection.Thanks Tramp and PeeDee.
Jaydee @25; I pulled the door to/closed
Though without much to chew on (and so, sadly, a swift solve) I thought this was a delightful puzzle. I particularly enjoyed ANNEXE, MARY POPPINS and HAND GLASS. And a clue worth standing back to admire – WHISTLER’S MOTHER (agree with Mark @ 20 about its &littish descriptive nature).
Huge thanks to Tramp for a great crossword. And to PeeDee.
I thought that this was easier than Tramp usually is. This isn’t a complaint. Some entertaining clues as well.
3d. I don’t expect to be expected to know the currency of Laos but then I didn’t need to. One of those clues where it would not be difficult to come up with the solution without wordplay or crossers.
Congratulations to Tramp for finding an alternative to “Sounding like a bird in a Sale” @6d and thanks to him and PeeDee.
I had to check Chambers for SAPID, which makes this a dnf by my standards. Never heard of the word, and originally had SIPID, backformed from insipid. But this created problems with the anagram fodder, which could only be solved if accepting A=one=I. My conclusion was that the clue is unfair, because it is not possible to be certain of the answer from the word play.
sheffield hatter @30 Relieved to see I wasn’t the only one to end up with sipid. Which sounds like a word that should exist as the antonym to insipid.
Kip has been used a few times (and I think Arachne used it to indicate AT as well) but it is an interesting one. Ignoring the approximation of the symbol (like using S for dollar) K for Kip doesn’t seem to appear in real life individually, only as part of LAK – made me wonder if components of other initialisms would be acceptable abbreviations (e.g. using cruelty to clue c)?
Great crossword, I remember thinking “they definitely employed her, not sure she got paid!”
Thanks to Tramp and Peedee
Another too quickly entered unparsed GOING AHEAD here, but I seem to be in good company. Otherwise I particularly liked WHISTLERS MOTHER (as soon as I read the clue I could visualize the painting) and – though it was last in and took me ages – ANNEXE. Thanks to Tramp and to PeeDee.
Enjoyed this puzzle although I managed to complete it which probably means it was easy!
Just a note on the parsing of PURPOSE – the description above includes no E, which should also come from SEx; only the missing x makes it “endless”
I also had “sipid” and as far as I can see from many Google entries it does mean tasty. “One” often means “a” so I have no issue with “a” meaning “one” and “one” in crossword land is “i”. I therefore am entirely happy that I did successfully complete the crossword. It’s just that there are two possible correct answers to 1d. I’d still say that even if Tramp came on here and said the answer intended was sapid.
A DNF for me thanks to 11a DRAM. Just stuffed with porridge at that point I guess. Time to find a not-too-soft bed.
Thanks to Tramp and PeeDee.
Very enjoyable puzzle. I was greatly assisted by the two long, down clues.
My favourites were HAND GLASS, YEARLY, OPERA, PURPOSE.
Thank you, Tramp and PeeDee
The annotated solution confirms K=Kip, the Laotian currency but for IAMBS has I/AM(erican)/B(ull)S(hit).
Robi@27 – thank you. As I said, I got the reference (and the solution), I just didn’t think that simply putting “to” in the clue was sufficient. But, as I also said, I expect I’m just dumb. It must be said that I find the use of a word to indicate a single letter a bit idle and rather tiresome. But that’s just me.
Jaydee@39
It isn’t just you.
I thought the use of “to” to mean closed was inspired. Such a tiny word hidden away in the clue and so easily missed is brilliant. It’s why I love cryptic crosswords.
I’m glad to hear it Pino. Back to Paul this weekend. Relief.
27 YANKEES were originally inhabitan5s of Connecticut, according to
https://www.etymonline.com/word/Yankee#etymonline_v_4929 but the point is, in British parlance it’s any American
3d REEK I didn’t understand “kip” either. Thanks, Peedee
1d SAPID was a new word for me and I didnt even notice the connection with ‘insipid’. It seems all the sources give ‘sipid’ as obsolete, so it’s not really a candidate.
4d WHISTLER’S MOTHER semi&lit — brilliant
6d GOING CHEAP/AHEAD Oh, dear! Me too.