An enjoyable puzzle – I particularly liked 8ac, 13ac, 15/20ac, 1dn, 3dn, and 4dn. Many thanks to Brummie.
…there are [at least] some linked grid entries – FORD MADOX FORD wrote [The] GOOD SOLDIER [wiki]; his grandfather FORD MADOX BROWN painted THE LAST [of] ENGLAND [wiki]
| ACROSS | ||
| 7 | SOLDIER | Regular join should include one? (7) |
| SOLDER=”join”, around I=”one” | ||
| 8 | CARRION | ‘Rotting food swindle’ admits épicier, finally, in the middle of Paris (7) |
| CON=”swindle”, around [épicie]R inside the middle letters of [P]ARI[s] | ||
| 9 | EDGE | Advantage of wife leaving club (4) |
| [w]EDGE=golf “club”, minus w (wife) | ||
| 10 | ARTHROPOD | Legendary ruler giving away universal ring case for scarab, say (9) |
| King ARTH[u]R=”Legendary ruler”, minus u (universal); plus O=circle=”ring” + POD=”case” | ||
| 12 | MOIST | Como is too wet in the middle! (5) |
| hidden in the middle of [Co]MO IS T[oo] Como is a lake in Italy |
||
| 13 | MISMATCH | Conflict causes female to lose stone at first, getting lighter (8) |
| MIS[s]=”female” minus s[tone]; plus MATCH=”lighter” i.e. something used to light fires | ||
| 15, 20 | IDLE HANDS | They have nothing to do with Eric introducing elements of a deal? (4,5) |
| Eric IDLE the comedian [wiki]; plus HANDS of playing cards given out by a dealer | ||
| 16 | BROWN | Ex-PM, having been given a roasting? (5) |
| ex-Prime Minister Gordon Brown [wiki]; and a second definition/indication referring to browning food through cooking | ||
| 17 | See 24 | |
| 18 | EX GRATIA | Free entry of one into Grexit arrangement has advantage, initially (2,6) |
| =given voluntarily |
||
| 20 | See 15 | |
| 21 | DESTROYER | No builder‘s storeyed construction should be by river (9) |
| (storeyed)* plus R (river) | ||
| 22 | See 6 | |
| 24, 17 | THE LAST WORD | A consummate example — end of argument! (3,4,4) |
| double definition | ||
| 25 | ENGLAND | No good entering antelope country (7) |
| NG (no good, e.g. describing a filmed scene that gets cut); inside ELAND=”antelope” | ||
| DOWN | ||
| 1 | GOOD | Suitable travel make-up (4) |
| GO=”travel”; plus DO=”make” reversed/”up” | ||
| 2 | ADHESIVE | Publicity she wrongly associated with Brummie’s sticker (8) |
| AD=”Publicity” + (she)* + I’VE=”Brummie [has]” | ||
| 3 | SECANT | ‘Ratio of a right angle bearing’ — jargon! (6) |
| definition: in trigonometry, the ratio of the length of a right-angled triangle’s hypotenuse over the length of the adjacent side SE (South East, “bearing”) + CANT=”jargon” |
||
| 4 | GARRISON | Tabloid turned up with: ‘Ron is terribly camp‘ (8) |
| RAG=”Tabloid” reversed/”turned up”; plus (Ron is)* | ||
| 5 | GRAPPA | ‘King George’, a soft old man’s tipple (6) |
| GR (George Rex, King George) + A + P (piano, soft) + PA=”old man” | ||
| 6, 12 down, 22 | FORD MADOX FORD | English writer makes US president (silly cow!) cross (4,5,4) |
| definition: an English writer and poet [wiki] Gerald FORD=”US president” + MAD=”silly” + OX=”cow” + FORD=”cross” as in crossing a river |
||
| 11 | TEMPORARY | Fleeting romp turned into weeping (9) |
| 12 | See 6 | |
| 14 | CERES | Large asteroid sequence broadcast (5) |
| Ceres [wiki] is the largest of the asteroids homophone/”broadcast” of ‘series’=”sequence” |
||
| 16 | BUTTRESS | Support (very Parisian) inserted in wobbly bust (8) |
| TRES=très=”very” in French; inside (bust)* | ||
| 17 | WINDFALL | You wouldn’t expect this bend on trip (8) |
| WIND as in a winding river=”bend” + FALL=”trip” | ||
| 19 | RESULT | Dwelling briefly on final answer (6) |
| RES (residence, Dwelling) + ULT (ultimate, final) | ||
| 20 | HERONS | Worn inside the woman’s waders (6) |
| ON=”Worn” (referring to clothes); inside HERS=”the woman’s” | ||
| 21 | DAHL | Writer‘s pulse (4) |
| Roald Dahl the writer [wiki]; DAHL also refers to pulses such as lentils | ||
| 23 | RIND | Peel, elected after resistance, died (4) |
| IN=”elected” after R (resistance); plus D (died) | ||
Thanks manehi and Brummie.
Didn’t see theme,thanks.
‘Dal’ and ‘Dhal’are more common spellings in India for lentils; a homophone idicator would have worked better than double definition.
Well that took a while but was fun. The author rang only the faintest of bells once all crossers were in. Thought ‘Arthur’ as soon as the t was in 10ac but was too thick to click, loi in fact, a bit embarrassing. Eric Idle’s been getting a bit of a run lately. Agree with ilippu about lentils being dhal not dahl, but given it’s a phonetic approximation the spelling’s probably fluid. Remember the term secant from school trig, but not which ratio it is, hey ho. All good, thanks Brummie and Manehi.
[This is certainly going to sound absolutely mad, but SECANT was my favourite trigonometric ratio in school. (Something to do with my synaesthesia, I suppose)]
As for the puzzle, loved it. Have no idea if last week’s appearance of BUTTRESS helped subconsciously.
All solved and parsed, though with an assist from google to find the English writer and to confirm EX GRATIA. (Manehi, ‘one’ in the clue needs to give A, not I, for the anagram to work.) Liked ARTHROPOD among others. Thanks to setter and blogger.
Meant to add that the mathematician in me cringed at the definition of SECANT (a ratio of side lengths in a right triangle, but certainly not a ratio of a right angle), but I suppose it’s close enough for crosswordland.
Slightly more difficult than yesterday’s write-in, but only just. Could comment on several clues, but better not …..
A satisfying solve even though I had to reveal a few — enjoyed ENGLAND, GRAPPA, HERONS, and RIND among others. Thanks to Brummie and to Manehi for parsing.
I was a bit concerned after my first pass through the across clues yielded not a single answer but got a bunch of the down clues and the rest fell in steadily from there. Agree with DaveinNCarolina regarding Secant (a single thing can’t have a ratio). For some reason Garrison took forever even after I’d worked out it had to end with rison.
I was another who was not keen on the definition of SECANT (and also could not parse the SE bit, so thanks to Manehi for that). In TEMPORARY, ‘romp’ is an anagram, not reversed which would yield TEPMORARY. Liked FORD MADOX FORD, though I am ashamed to say that I thought he was an American writer, and knew neither his work nor his grandfather’s. Altogether I found this quire tricky but that is probably because it is still only 6 am here and I should still be asleep. Thank you to Manehi and Brummie.
Actually, in India, it is always “dal” and never “dhal” or “dahl”.
Well I’m no mathematician so not only did I not fret about the correct definition of SECANT, I didn’t have the word at all so this was a dnf this morning. I agree with rodshaw @6 – it was Brummie at the easier end of the scale which made for a straightforward solve but still enjoyable to complete. Tony S @7 has noted three of my favourites – the pithy RIND, the smooth HERONS and, despite it featuring the wrong kind of deer, ENGLAND. TEMPORARY worked well with a nice surface.
I continue to find coincidence fascinating: as grantinfreo noted, Eric Idle is fast becoming the Python equivalent of the elk with several appearances of late, here and in other publications. [Whereas I haven’t seen an ‘essen’ in a long time].
Thanks Brummie and manehi
gif @2 and PostMark @11 It’s getting so that any mention of Eric or python is a bit of a nudge nudge, wink wink, we know who you mean.
[Dr. WhatsOn @3 Yes, having a favourite trigonometric function could be a sine of madness.
But can a chap have more than one favourite trigonometric function? Cosecant!]
Penfold @12: enough! Say no more.
Great fun. LOI was RESULT, which had me foxed for a bit. I liked MISMATCH and TEMPORARY in particular. Many thanks to Brummie and manehi.
An enjoyable solve, a team effort for cobro and I. LOI was SECANT. Favourites were ARTHROPOD, SOLDIER and TEMPORARY
Thanks Brummie and manehi!
Thanks, manehi. A fun puzzle all in all, but I agree with others that “Ratio of a right angle” doesn’t work.
A small correction: at 18a you have ‘I=”one” entering into (Grexit)*; plus A[dvantage].’ That should be ‘A = “one”‘ etc.
Thanks manehi, and Brummie , I completed it but was missing several tricks of the trade until I looked here.
As a bridge player for many years, I was disappointed to miss the point in 20a, and 14a made no sense at all, compounded by missing the “match” part of the clue in 13a.
I liked mismatch , one of the few that made me smile, one I was enlightened!
DocWhat @3: Love the fact that you had a favourite trig ratio! Is it still, or have you moved on?
“Regular join should include one” doesn’t make a lot of sense to me but was perfectly getable.
Blundered in with seres instead of CERES so that complicated life for a while until MISMATCH came to the rescue.
Many thanks, both.
Having narrowly escaped the firing squad last night (see General Discussion) I’m in a mood to celebrate and not quibble over details.
So I won’t mention that spelling dhal DAHL is one of my pet hates (the ‘dh’ reflects the Hindi pronunciation, where there is a slight expression of breath along with the ‘d’ – similarly to how some Irish speakers pronounce ‘th’, but voiced).
Nor will I complain that “ratio of a right angle” is meaningless (as already noted), or that an answer is not quite the same thing as a RESULT.
I’ll just say thank you to Brummie for the fun (I did like the idea of Lake Como being too wet!) and to manehi for a great blog.
DaveinCarolina@5 – I think the right angle refers to the angle between the directions S (south) and E (east). Not an indication I’ve come across before, but I heartily approve.
Goujeers @20 – I’m not sure that was the intention – but if the reference is to the ratio between the S and the E sides, surely that could only give us opposite over adjacent, or adjacent over opposite, i.e. tangent or cotangent, not secant?
Well that was fun. Started very slowly but once the south started to fill in things sped up. NW was last to give-up – found myself shouting “no! at 3d (I’m with DaveinNCarolina @5) but it is a crossword, not Maths O-Level so hey-ho.
But I did enjoy this immensely and thanks are due to Brummie and manhei. Off to find a nice warming bowl of Roald, H or not…
14a reminded me of an essay by Isaac Asimov, a notorious lover of puns, who wrote it purely so that he could use the title The World Ceres.
14d of course, not 14a. Errare uHmanum Est, so to speak.
I only knew of FORD MADOX BROWN and had never heard of FORD MADOX FORD (so good they named him twice) so any themers were beyond me.
Was the word triangle accidentally omitted from 3D I wonder?
My only other quibble is 2D where “Brummie’s” = “Brummie has” => I’VE. To me, Brummie, being a third person, BRUMMIE’S = HIS or HER.
A very enjoyable puzzle. Well done manehi for spotting the links, which I failed to see despite being familiar with both the book and the painting. (Apparently FMF was named after his grandfather – the symmetry of the resulting name must have appealed to his parents too!)
Chambers has dal, daal, dahl or dhal, and I’m sure I’ve seen it spelt dahl in Indian restaurants, so I thought 21d was fine.
Re 12a MOIST, Como is of course the town as well as the lake, and having been there on one occasion when there was an epic downpour I can agree with the sentiment.
Many thanks Brummie and manehi.
[I should have read Wikipedia a bit more carefully before commenting @26. It seems the writer’s original name was Joseph Leopold Ford Hermann Madox Hueffer, and in 1919 he adopted the name Ford Madox Ford because he felt Hueffer sounded too German.]
[essexboy & sheffield hatter: final contribution from me to our conversation over on GD]
[so typical of penfold @12 to go off on a tangent]
Lord Jim @27: just the Hueffer? As things turned out his parents did him no favours with the Leopold and the Hermann either!
Liked ARTHROPOD and MISMATCH. Agree with iluppu a “we hear” would have made the dal palatable.
Man, I struggled today. Don’t think it’s Brummie’s fault – just couldn’t get my head into a crossword place. I even said ‘SERIES’ out loud at 14d and didn’t clock it.
HERONS was cutely put together and I liked the simple definition of DESTROYER, too.
I’ve never built anything but does that make me a DESTROYER? This felt like a non sequitur but that did get me wondering if anyone’s ever been devious enough to clue “non sequitur” as an answer that doesn’t follow from it’s definition e.g. “No runs unfortunately and quite upset …”. Needless to say I won’t be giving up the day job 🙂
I couldn’t do trigonometry for toffee, but I do remember SECANT. I wondered if THE LAST … ENGLAND was significant as I knew there was a picture of that name, but failed to make the connection.
i didnt mind DAHL but not entirely happy with OX/COW- close but non cohibas.
Otherwise fun
Thanks manehi and Brum
Enjoyable, but I agree with Dave of North Carolina about SECANT’s dodgy definition and didn’t like that spelling of dhal (though it’s in Chambers) and HERONS are, of course, not waders, but they do wade – but waders was needed to make the clue read well.
I find it hard to agree with those who said this was fun. Struggled to even get a foothold in the grid – my first one in was CERES, which I got after giving up and going to put the kettle on, but had forgotten by the time I got back to the newspaper.
I won’t go through a long list of the criticisms raised already with which I concur, but I will say that I thought that the clue for GOOD was typical of why I can’t get on with Brummie. Not only was the definition vague, but the two bits of wordplay were also hazy, so that even when I wrote the answer in I was still somewhat doubtful that it was correct.
DESTROYER was my favourite – I thought ‘no builder’ was perfect as definition. And BROWN raised a fraction of a smile. But I didn’t much like ‘Conflict causes female to lose…’ in 13a. ‘Conflict results when female loses…’ would have worked better for me.
I had WISE HEADS as a possible for 15, 20. ‘nothing to do with Eric (Morecambe)’= (Ernie) WISE, and ‘elements of a deal’=HEADS (analogous to heads of damage in insurance claims?), but I couldn’t make an &lit out of it, so reverted to the other Eric. I got stuck on WED for join in 7a, and never managed to get unstuck; what is ‘should’ doing in this clue? So a dnf for me, but I was closer to finishing than I could have imagined when I went to put that kettle on.
I found this one rather straightforward, especially for a Brummie, but it’s nicely clued and I’m not complaining. Spotted the theme too, such as it is, and as I know next to nothing about either FMF or FMB it prompted me to look, which can’t be a bad thing. But there should be a book / painting called ‘Carrion Windfall’ or similar to make the theme really sing.
I have the same moans as everyone else, esp SECANT and DAHL, but let’s hear it too for clever little clues like GOOD and RIND. And though it’s a rather nasty grid, none of the seven-letter three-crosser entries were too impenetrable.
Regarding SECANT again, I agree the definition is a bit off, but I took the use of “jargon” to add a flavour of “I might not fully understand what I’m talking about”.
[And to William@18, the hyperbolics are better because the H adds a splash of green]
Re SECANT. I’m with Goujeers@20. The definition is simply ‘RATIO’. ‘A right angle bearing’ is pure wordplay, referring to the angle between bearings south and east. The clue is perfectly valid.
goujeers @20 and greensward @37: Nice try, but I remain unconvinced. Both S and E are bearings, and they are at right angles to each other, but that doesn’t make SE a ‘right angle bearing.’
DaveinNCarolina @41. Agreed, if you take the implied ‘Southeast’ as the bearing (which could be any angle, depending on your reference point), but taken separately (perfectly acceptable in crosswordland), if you travel due south, then bear due east, you turn through a right angle.
greensward @42 …but then it’s not ‘a bearing’ – it’s two successive journeys on two different ‘bearings’.
Also, by the same principle, couldn’t any bearing (unless you’re going precisely north, south, east or west) be described as ‘a right angle bearing’, since any point could be arrived at by turning through a right angle, or a succession of right angles?
[This discussion of bearings reminds me of this puzzle:
AA hunter gets out of his tent one morning and walks 1 mile due south. He then walks 1 mile due east and shhots a bear. Then he walks 1 mile due north and gets back to his tent.
What colour was the bar?]
[muffin @44 – white, or whitish depending on age and cleanliness 😉 ]
[…but which cheese is best for enticing a bear out of a cave?]
[essexboy @45
camembert?
We had better stop now!]
Interesting that peopke found this easy – despite writing in quite a few, including FMF, the top half was tough and I ground to a halt in the NW corner. Despite reading the comments on the Grauniad website that there was a theme, I couldn’t see it, partly because the last two in, which I eventually had to give up on and come on here to find what that mysterious theme was, were “Good” and “Soldier”.
One last point from me regarding 6d (and going against my earlier arguments.) One of the many meanings of the word ‘of’, is ‘associated with’. I think this could justify ‘ratio of a right angle’, as the definition, and leave ‘bearing’ to give ‘SE’. I will now retire, and hope I don’t have that horrible exam nightmare. Revision? What revision?
greensward – agreed, I think that’s the best way of making the clue work (notwithstanding my earlier nit-pickery 🙂 )
The crossie was good, no idea about the themes.
[I just wanted to say how much I’m enjoying the convention for putting the tangential chat in square brackets. It enables you to skim through the comments on the crossword and just follow the other thread. 🙂 Laughed out loud today]
[That’s a delightful observation paddymelon. And bang on topic as far as I’m concerned. ]
Thought this was going to be a sinh, until SOLDIER and CARRION had me under the cosh for a while.
Thanks Brummie and manehi [and Penfold].
Writer’s pulse heard would have been a much better clue accommodating all variants (even though the unaspirated 3 letter is the most common spelling used in India)