The puzzle may be found at https://www.theguardian.com/crosswords/cryptic/28330.
The theme is worn on the sleeve: ‘champions’ appears in several clues, and is fairly clearly soccer-related. It turns out that the reference is to UEFA Champions League champions (but by no means all the usual suspects). I started off well enough with 1D providing a good anchor, but the last few took some work, ending up with 22A, which has a surprising wordplay and a definition that is at best questionable. In all, a good workout.
| ACROSS | ||
| 9 | LIVERPOOL | Champions can win without a back (9) |
| A reversal (‘back’) of LOO (‘can’, toilet) plus PREV[a]IL (‘win’) minus the A (‘without a’). | ||
| 10 | ERATO | Inspiration for writing part of plot, a reprobate in hindsight (5) |
| A hidden (‘part of’) reversed (‘in hindsight’) answer in ‘plOT A REprobate’, for the muse of love poetry. | ||
| 11 | UPRIGHT | Post over on one side (7) |
| A charade of UP (‘over’) plus RIGHT (‘one side’). | ||
| 12 | CHELSEA | Champions from west side of capital cutting ace, surprisingly (7) |
| An envelope (‘cutting’) of HELS[inki] (‘capital’, not otherwise relevant), left half only (‘west side’) in CEA, an anagram (‘surprisingly’) of ‘ace’. | ||
| 13 | See 21 | |
| 14 | SURE-FOOTED | Jerk refused, too confident (4-6) |
| An anagram (‘jerk’) of ‘refused too’. | ||
| 16 | COSTARD | Apple ending in mud behind second player? (7) |
| A charade of CO-STAR (‘second player?’) plus D (‘ending in muD‘). | ||
| 17 | BURRITO | Wrap sticker and ring around it (7) |
| An envelope (‘around’) of ‘it’ in BURR (‘sticker’, a plant seed with hooks that attaches itself to clothing or hair) plus O (‘ring’). | ||
| 19 | OVERSUPPLY | Work and work to guard against endless excess (10) |
| An envelope (‘to guard’) of VERSU[s] (‘against’) minus its last letter (‘endless’) in OP PLY (‘work and work’). | ||
| 22 | JAIN | Old Hindu in a jiffy? (4) |
| Ouch! The wordplay is an anagram (-‘iffy’) of ‘in a j’-, with a (well-justified) question mark. But then Hinduism and Jainism, although both primarily Indian, are distinct religions, and I do not think the question mark covers that. There is the possible get-out that ‘old Hindu’ refers to the archaic meaning of any inhabitant of India. | ||
| 24 | LEGGIER | Classic saint securing soldier with longer pins (7) |
| An envelope (‘securing’) of GI (‘soldier’) in LEGER (St Leger Stakes, horse race, ‘classic saint’). | ||
| 25, 17 down | RED STAR BELGRADE | Champions rise up, status inspiring hero after header from defender (3,4,8) |
| An envelope (‘inspiring’) of D (‘header from Defender’) plus STAR (‘hero’ of a film, say) in REBEL (‘rise up’) plus GRADE (‘status’). | ||
| 26 | NATAL | Birth needing attention then after labour, primarily (5) |
| Paul as Everyman? First letters (‘primarily’) of ‘Needing Attention Then After Labour’. ‘Birth’ as an adjective. | ||
| 27 | ORDER FORM | Cryptically create from document sent to vendor (5,4) |
| Wordplay in the answer: an anagram (ORDER) of FORM is ‘from’. | ||
| DOWN | ||
| 1 | CLOUD-CUCKOO-LAND | Home of the silly brash parasite in family, daughter (5-6-4) |
| An envelope (‘in’) of LOUD (‘brash’) plus CUCKOO (‘parasite’) in CLAN (‘family’) plus D (‘daughter’). | ||
| 2 | OVERALLS | Garment a minister pulled up in open-topped car (8) |
| An envelope (‘in’) of VERA, a reversal (‘pulled up’ in a down light) of ‘a’ plus REV (‘minister’), in [r]OLLS (‘car’) minus its first letter (‘open-topped’). | ||
| 3 | DREGS | Every other bit extracted, darker gas remains (5) |
| Alternate letters (‘every other bit extracted’) of ‘DaRkEr GaS‘. | ||
| 4 | DORTMUND | Leader of men stepped up with German champions (8) |
| A charade of DORTM, a reversal (‘up’ in a down light) of M (‘leader of Men’) plus TROD (‘stepped’); plus UND (‘with German’ – but it needs the replacement of ‘with’ by AND before translation, unless there is similar usage in German). | ||
| 5 | CLICHE | Champions not needing extra time, man — game of two halves, perhaps? (6) |
| This one does not have the ‘champions’ as definition – indeed, they are thoroughly buried in the wordplay, A charade of C[e]L[t]IC (‘champions’) minus (‘not needing’) E (‘extra’ – a cricket reference for good measure) and T (‘time’) plus HE (‘man’), with an indication by example (‘perhaps’) for “definition”. | ||
| 6 | FEYENOORD | Champions stuffed, striker choked up (9) |
| An envelope (‘choked’) of YENOOR, a reversal (‘up’ in a down light) of ROONEY (Wayne, ‘striker’) in FED (‘stuffed’). | ||
| 7 | BASSET | Risk chaining animal, dog (6) |
| An envelope (‘chaining’) of ASS (‘animal’) in BET (‘risk’). | ||
| 8 | DONALD JOHN TRUMP | Outgoing leader old and new on throne better (6,4,5) |
| A charade of DONALD, an anagram (‘new’) of ‘old and’ plus JOHN (‘throne’, toilet) plus TRUMP (‘better’). | ||
| 15 | MARSEILLE | Champions behind, tale-teller almost nets (9) |
| An envelope (‘nets’) of ARSE (‘behind’) in MILLE[r] (‘tale-teller’ in The Canterbury Tales). | ||
| 17 | See 25 | |
| 18 | INACTION | Rest privy to captivating opening scenes (8) |
| An envelope (‘captivating’) of ACT I (i.e. ACT 1, opening scenes’) in IN ON (‘privy to’). | ||
| 20 | EIGHTY | Number serious, though first ignored (6) |
| A subtraction: [w]EIGHTY (‘serious’) minus its first letter (‘though first ignored’). | ||
| 21, 13 | PORT OF CALL | Where one might stop champions, club and everything? (4,2,4) |
| A charade of PORTO (‘champions’) plus FC (‘club’, as we are talking soccer; perhaps the intent is to treat PORTO FC as a unit, but FC should go first) plus ALL (‘everything’). | ||
| 23 | ADORN | Dress a start in audition? (5) |
| Sounds like (‘in audition’) A DAWN (‘a start’). | ||
No fun at all. As a soccer enthusiast I can imagine a great puzzle on this theme, but this was not it. Tortured clues, and poorly-defined UEFA teams made this a slog throughout – with very few laughs (COASTARD, LEGGIER, INACTION being among the exceptions). I came close to walking away from it when half-way through, but the stubborn side of me overcame the rational, and in a way I was pleased to have persevered, since as a LIVERPOOL fan it was nice to see CHELSEA drop into the grid dead-last. Sorry Frank Lampard …
Whoops .. sorry, that should have read COSTARD.
I only solved two on my first pass but that helped me get going. Was a bit turned off by my fear that all those ‘champions’ might be soccer teams and I would have to google a lot for the answers. It ended up being a fair bit of guess/solve and parse later.
New: St Leger Stakes, the oldest of Britain’s five Classics; COSTARD apple
Also guessed that MARSEILLES might be soccer champions, then parsed the solution to see if it worked with the clue. Ditto LIVERPOOL, CHELSEA, and Belgrade red star
Guessed CLICHE, but did not understand it – and even now I still do not see why the def is ‘a game of two halves’?
Saw the def but did not parse JAIN, ADORN, belgrade red star.
Liked ORDER FORM, INACTION.
Failed FEYENOORD – never heard of them, and could not even parse it when I revealed the solution online. Nevre would have gotten this in a million years. Rooney and Geyenoord? Ugh!
In summary, not very enjoyable for me, but I am sure many others will love it.
Thanks P+P
Well I was one who liked the theme since I knew all the teams (finding Rooney in Feyenoord was a surprise), but I thought too many of the clues were too tortured to make it a pleasant experience. In particular CLICHE and RED STAR BELGRADE.
We’ll probably hear that some folks don’t like ADORN/a dawn. I think on the one hand we should accept approximate homophones since they’re not going away, but on the other hand this clue needed more than a single question-mark.
[So here’s a question for you all. If a setter had clued 8d as simply “Bad loser (6,4,5)”, would that have been a good clue, a bad clue, a double definition, a triple definition, an &lit. or what?]
Bit the same here, not a lot of fun. Got some of the easier ones.. Liverpool, Chelsea, Dortmund…and I do remember Rooney (bi’ erv a bovver boy as well, wasn’t he?), but would I have thought of and then inverted him in fed to get a nho Dutch team? Doubt it, didn’t try. So, bit of check button and a couple of reveals to get it over with, then back to the cricket! Cheers both.
Team names occurred to me before I had figured out the wordplay — completely failed to parse CHELSEA since I was convinced definition was “Champions from west side of capital” which is also true — so a nice piece of misdirection.
22a is a very Philistine clue. Technically speaking Vedic Hinduism predates Jainism and a lot of early adherents were Brahmins who converted so I suppose in that sense Old Hindu works but weakly.
I didn’t really enjoy this much, but as my knowledge of football is rudimentary I can’t complain. I had heard of the teams but they didn’t immediately come to mind and I ended up missing out on quite a few.
Michele @3, though I didn’t see it at the time, I think ‘game of two halves’ is just an example of a sporting commentators’ CLICHE, hence the def with ‘perhaps’ and question mark added, as explained in the blog.
Thanks to Paul and PeterO
At first I thought I had no chance because of the theme, but I managed to parse enough letters to get all of the answers except FEYENOORD. Luckily cobro is a football expert so he helped out with that one.
A few that we did not fully parse so thanks to PeterO for the explanations, and thanks to Paul for an enjoyable challenge!
It would have been been better imo if the CHAMPION word was used more widely(as in championing a cause etc)
After the other John H yesterday this felt very laboured.
He can do better-and has.
But I doubt if he reads this thread
Ugh! I look forward to the return of the Paul I know and love.
I’m sorry, Paul, but this is a classic example of an unsatisfactory theme puzzle. If you know the theme you can enjoy the puzzle. If you don’t, the puzzle is no fun even if you can figure it out. I am not a soccer fan, and our media in Canada are not inundated with soccer reportage, so the only way I could solve this was to consult a list of UEFC champions league winners, and transcribe the team names into the grid with the aid of a few crossers. Doable, but with no sense of achievement or play. I mean, Feyenoord? Really?
There was a puzzle here several weeks ago (long enough ago that I don’t think I’ll spoil anything for VW et al) where you needed to know the name of a musical group and the name of one of their works in order to identify the theme, and then the answers made no sense whatsoever outside of the works of the group. The puzzle was undoable for anyone without knowledge of the theme. The group was well-known, so many people enjoyed the puzzle, but for the rest of us it was a write-off.
Don’t get me wrong, I like themed puzzles generally, but only if they can be solved without specialized knowledge of the theme (or if I happen to have that specialized knowledge). It’s fine if the theme helps with the solving, but not if it is required for the solving. Qaos and Brendan among others are masters at this. You can enjoy the puzzle for itself and learn something new at the same time. And Vlad had a puzzle last week that required no knowledge of the theme, but the theme added hilarity to several solutions.
There’s my rant for today, thanks for listening. And thanks, PeterO for the excellent and much needed blog.
[ Dr. WhatsOn@4, my answer to your question is “all of the above” (using “bad” in its current colloquial sense). But consider this – he would have been an even worse winner. ]
I like the challenge of a Paul puzzle, but not this.
Thanks Peter for bringing light to where all was dark.
WordPlodder @8
thanks
I never heard that phrase before, but I do not follow soccer/football.
*shrugs*
UGH! Horrible. I hate, hate hate football with a passion (actually, make that all “team” sports; no make that all sports…) and this was a huge DNF. Even worse, with the grid filled-in, I still don’t “get” half of it because I just don’t have the knowledge. Ho hum.
But, given that it is the time of year that many football matches are played it does seem an “appropriate” theme so no blame apportioned – just an area of GK that I know not.
[copmus @10: yes, he does and often responds…]
Thanks to Paul and PeterO.
Amazed at all the negativity displayed here today. As one who does not follow football, but has a vague awareness of the subject, I found the crossword fun and doable. FEYENOORD was last in, just after JAIN. Very proud to have parsed both.
Perhaps 2020 has taken its toll on crossword solvers, along with the rest of the world! In which case I wish you all a happier 2021.
Thanks to Paul and PeterO
I managed to solve this without aids, but failed on the parsing of ‘cliche.’
I used to enjoy Paul’s puzzles very much, but now find his ‘trademark’ lavatorial clues and senseless surfaces extremely tedious. Still, as long as the editor keeps accepting them and paying up he will continue to produce them.
Best wishes to everyone for a happier and healthy year in 2021.
As a big soccer fan, I loved this but I can appreciate that it will be a game of two halves as far as comments go. I thought CHELSEA was particularly good (ILAN CARON@6) although as a QPR season ticket holder, there is only one team in West London! I was also surprised to see Rooney in FEYENOORD (Dr. WhatsOn@4) and bizarrely just after I solved it, he came on Sky news mumbling about the well-overdue MBE given to Jimmy Greaves in the Honours List. Other favourites were JAIN, PORT OF CALL and LIVERPOOL and I suppose Man U got a look in via Rooney. I thought Dave BASSET(T) might have been a very tenuous link as they were FA Cup champions in 1988, having beaten the mighty LIVERPOOL, but he left the year before. Thanks PeterO for parsing MARSEILLES and INACTION and Paul for a tough 90 minutes.
Thanks to Paul (I think!) and certainly to PeterO.
Tough going, but I like my sport, do I enjoyed seeing the St Leger in with all the footie teams. There’s no cricket involved in 5D, it’s just ET for extra time in football.
Thought 6D was a damn rotter, until Wazza jumped out to give FEYENOORD making it a cracking clue.
RED STAR BELGRADE’ gives us an excuse to listen to Billy Bragg’s ‘Sexuality’ featuring the much missed Kirsty MacCol.
https://youtu.be/liNnCKPeEv0
[MacColl. Sorry Kirsty.]
I’m another for whom this did not strike the back of the net. Football isn’t my game and, whilst I acknowledge these are all teams of which I’ve heard at some point, few were ever going to come to mind. LIVERPOOL and CHELSEA, yes, and I spotted PORTO after I’d solved PORT OF CALL. I didn’t come up with MARSEILLES, even though, it being Paul, I suspected arse would appear in it somewhere! FEYENOORD might as well be double Dutch.
That said, I’m probably half way between the lovers and the haters today. Granted, the word ‘tortuous’ already used by some posters is a fair adjective to apply but the majority of the clues do lead to the solutions when looked at in hindsight. And there were a number of non-theme clues that stood up very well: OVERSUPPLY is lovely, LEGGIER is delightful, I had ticks for UPRIGHT, BURRITO and I have a – slightly grudging – admiration for the two long clues at 1 & 8, especially the surface/reference in the first. So, at the risk of another CLICHE, very much a curate’s egg for me today.
Thanks Paul and PeterO
[Cynicure@16. Wish I had one, a sinecure that is. Working past retirement age, too old to go out on the town tonight, even if covid would let me. Was so looking forward to a bit of crossie fun. Love it that as a non soccer fan you found it so. And a happier 2021 to you as well.]
Another thumbs down from me. Paul used to be one of my favourite setters but haven’t cared for a few of his recent efforts. Fortunately, the independent and FT cryptics today more than made up for my disappointment here.
When the usual suspects turn out in force to give a puzzle a good kicking, my sympathies are with the setter. I thought there was a lot to enjoy. Rooney in FEYENOORD was a good spot. The broad hint to CHELSEA in the wordplay (West of Capital) was appreciated. I also like a clue where THE RULES are bent. So full marks for JAIN. For me definitely a PAUL 5 GRUMPIES ON 15 SQ 0.
Don’t want to be accused of negativity so I’ll simply say this wasn’t my cup of tea.
CLOUD CUCKOO LAND is fecund with possibilities for the setter but “Home of the silly brash parasite in family, daughter” is just nonsense.
On a lighter note, with 8d in mind, a chum in the US told me that at the height of the bonkersness of the election campaign, an interviewer asked the then president what the middle J in his name stood for. The great man replied, “Genius”.
Hmm. If a theme is an acceptable even enjoyable option within a cryptic crossword, don’t we have to accept that some themes we will know a lot about and some we won’t? Not being well versed in a theme doesn’t IMHO make the crossword poor. As ever with Paul, I found this tough but therefore all the more enjoyable as the blanks started to fill in. With our new Tier 4 status and the snow tumbling down, this was a great way to spend the first couple of hours of a sad NYE.
[ Call me silly but mAnSfIeLd fits the same crossers as mArSeIlLe. Although they never made the Europa League Mansfield Town F.C. were the champions of the Football League Trophy in 1986–87 and the National League in 2012-2013. And wouldn’t they go well with JAIN? ]
[Phil @24: I’ve only been to solve cryptics since the start of this pandemic so quite honestly to have one out of the many hundreds which doesn’t cater to my GK is really immaterial.
One can still appreciate the work and skill that goes into building the puzzle and therefore I am truly grateful to Paul and all the other setters who have (and this is NOT hyperbole) kept me sane these past 9 long months.
Anyway, I’ve learnt where FEYENOORD is which I can add to my pub banter next time I’m allowed back in such a place…]
My football fan husband spotted the cliche right away, having heard about games of two halves all his life. He also knew all the other teams and players mentioned or required. So it was really a bit of a cheat for me! But it meant I rather enjoyed it so thank you Paul and thank you Andrew for the parsing.
I completely agree with you, JerryG@26. I always feel v pleased, surprised and rewarded when I solve themed clues when I do not know the subject – and it is such a tribute to the skill of the setter that such a thing can be done. ( I should add I do not like having to resort to tools such as WordWizard or OneLook and always feel defeated when that happens – but it was only the latter that helped me solve 5d today.) Like Copmus@10 I would have admired this crossie even more if there had been other uses of “champions” and I admit I was braced for that throughout and therefore took a little longer than might otherwise have been the case. As for your Mansfield joke blaise@27 – I think you should take an early bath… Thanks as always to the brilliant John H and to our blogger today.
Couldn’t finish this one, and put off by having to include both Liverpool and Chelsea as champions. I might have been cheered up by finding the ROONEY in FEYENOORD, but that eluded me. However, I blame myself, the Glazers and Woodward for this unsatisfactory experience rather than Paul.
With regard to JAIN, it seems a common occurrence for a very clever clue to be the one that is not quite right in the definition element.
As a non-UK solver, I am fine with themes on topics completely obscure to me, and I don’t even mind themes where you have to know something about it to get either the definition or the wordplay. But having both definition *and* wordplay require theme knowledge, as in FEYENOORD and CLICHE, seems excessive.
Tried my best with this, with the early lightbulb moment of Champions referring to The Champions League football thanks to LIVERPOOL being presented as the first clue to be read, but just couldn’t get the obscure JAIN, and therefore not INACTION, and so strictly a DNF. Couldn’t for the life of me parse CLICHE, nor FEYENOORD. Can understand the negative comments above. But there were still some enjoyable moments with the solving, here and there…
Brilliant Peter O !
I parsed so few of these and if all crosswords parsed like some of these I’d go back to Sudoko because this was too obscure for me. For the first, and last time this year, ever I got the theme.
FOI was CHELSEA because I thought of West London as my city, could not parse it beyond there of course so checked it immediately and then associated Champions (which irritated me in so many clues) with football.
I wrote in LIVERPOOL for 6d!
When nothing matched up with it I checked all! Luckily, for me, the OO remained and as a football fan in the days players played for real money FEYENOORD sprang to mind and I tentatively tried it which confirmed the theme. MARSEILLE took a while because I wrote in BARCELONA until a further check was deemed necessary!
I got there which was quite an achievement because the literal clues were not that obvious in many cases.
But I don’t want another as tricky as this until next December :O)
Thanks to Paul, and to PeterO for the much-needed parsing, since I am not a football fan. But I did like the mirroring of CLOUD CUCKOO LAND and DONALD JOHN TRUMP.
I thought this would raise some hackles! On first pass I had absolutely nothing, then got BASSET and TRUMP and slowly worked my way through. Although I’m not a football fan, I got FEYENOORD and eventually dredged RED STAR BELGRADE out of the memory bank. I sympathise with those who feel that football club names are too recondite, but on the other hand, could they be considered part of general knowledge? Thanks to Paul and PeterO.
Thanks, PeterO.
A bit of a slog for me, as I don’t follow football. Now I know how some of you felt when the theme was ABBA songs. 😉
An extra little neatness in 15d M/ARSE/ILLE[r]: an arse, or rather “ers”, plays a prominent role in The Miller’s Tale.
Happy New Year to all.
Well that ended the year on a downer.
I echo the sentiments expressed by cellomaniac@12 and George Clements@17. Paul was once my favourite setter, but of late his clueing has become increasingly convoluted and less enjoyable. The theme clues here were largely “guess name of football club and try to justify it by parsing the wordplay”. To my mind this is the reverse of what solving a crossword should be about.
I also rolled my eyes at the “nonaphone” in 23d. At least this time it was gettable, unlike some.
How strange reading many of the comments so far, I loved much of this puzzle! Right from the off, I had to read 9a’s clue several times to see if it was actually cryptic and not an elaborate bluff. Those following Liverpool’s injury woes and the lack of the Premier League’s best defender (Van Dijk) for most of this season will know what I mean. Then, alongside it at 4d was the team where Jurgen Klopp (a leader of men, and now of course at Liverpool) really showed his ability in creating championship-winning teams. A perfect pair of clues for Klopp fans everywhere! Plus, as Miche, says above, there is perhaps a lot more in these clues than might first meet the eye 😉 Thank you Paul and PeterO.
Usually love Paul – his Christmas Eve Cryptic was great. I worked out the theme for this but my football knowledge is sketchy, so that didn’t help really. Like Cellomaniac @12 I had to google EUFA Champions League winners, which felt like cheating. So much so, that I just stuck them in without bothering to parse. Hate to sound like a moaner on New Year’s Eve, so will end by thanking PeterO for doing the hard work for me, and wishing everyone a very Happy New Year from Tier 4 Brum…
Thanks to Paul and Peter O. I enjoyed this very much. (Esp. FEYENOORD.) Whilst I sympathise with those who know little and care less about football, I must say that, given its (national and global) popularity, I’ve always thought it odd that the sport features so infrequently in cryptic crosswords. Sporting references are almost invariably from cricket, tennis or golf (and generally seem to go unremarked). Perhaps Paul was just trying to redress the balance?
After two passes I’d only got two answers and the clunky, contrived clues (which have become a Paul feature) were irritating me. I was tempted to give up at that stage. But I stuck with it and finished in two sessions without any aids. I needed to come here for the parsing of MARSEILLE though.
I did like ORDER FORM, but on the whole it was a rather joyless slog.
Thanks to PeterO and Paul.
Knowing nothing about football and having suffered two appalling matches, this was not my finest performance.
I failed to get CLICHE and SURE-FOOTED. I only got the rest by huge amounts of googling football clubs.
Knew CLOUD CUCKOO LAND from Aristophanes’ comedy, of course. Had to read it for A-level and again at university. It was the only clue that I was really confident about!
The two matches I have attended. One was in the DDR, Stahl Eisenhüttenstadt, right at the start of the season and I don’t think the players had woken up from their summer holidays. 90 minutes of sheer tedium. The other match was in the Bundesrepublik, Bremen, and the distinguishing feature was that the fans standing at the top of terraces were relieving themselves in waves and the resulting waterfall cascaded downwards drenching the shoes of all of us lower down.
Football – no thanks. What a way to end the year. But it has been an execrable one!
I ADORN football but this was possibly the least fun puzzle I’ve done in recent weeks, months even.
I’m no fan of football either, but I still managed to get LIVERPOOL, CHELSEA, MARSEILLE, DORTMUND, and even RED STAR BELGRADE having only the most rudimentary knowledge of the subject. It was, of course, the cryptic part of the clue that helped. However I must protest the clue for FEYENOORD, which is really just a string of random letters for anyone who’s never heard of them. It would’ve still been gettable had the clue been fair, but now we have to know the name of a footballer in order to get there? Talk about your vicious circles.
Thanks anyway Paul. I still know I’m in for a treat whenever your name pops up.
Oh, I guess I also figured 5 had to be CLICHE, after finding CELTIC in a list of championship teams, but couldn’t find a single reference to EXTRA for E.
I didn’t mind the theme, although I wouldn’t get on to Mastermind with my knowledge of football. But I thought the double leap required by 5d – first think of a football team, then delete two letters from it – a step too far, even by Paul’s relaxed standards.
Looks like Paul’s taken a mauling over this one but let’s remember that he’s set literally thousands of crosswords and given much enjoyment ok over the many years he’s been at it.
Happy New Year, John.
[FEYENOORD won the European Cup in 1970, beating Celtic 2-1, after extra time, in the final. The team they had beaten in the semi final was LEGGIER Warsaw.]
I thought given the theme that COSTA(RD) must be a reference to erstwhile Chelsea villain Diego Costa but couldn’t account for the R. The penny eventually dropped!
As always with Paul there was a fair bit of hypothesise (ok guess) and parse involved. HNY to you all – I shall selflessly raise a glass or three in your honour 🙂
Cheers
Well, we slogged through it, albiet with several unparsed, but really? Take any one of a thousand football teams / strikers & fiddle with the name to get an answer which is “one of several thousand football teams” ?
Well I’m in the I Loved It camp. Many thanks Paul and PeterO.
In case anyone’s interested, and hasn’t been keeping score, by my tally our daily setters this year have appeared thus:
25 VULCAN
24 QAOS
23 NUTMEG
21 PAUL
18 BRUMMIE
17 PICAROON
13 VLAD
12 CRUCIBLE, IMOGEN, PHILISTINE, TRAMP
11 PAN, PASQUALE
8 BRENDAN
7 BOATMAN, PUCK
6 CHIFONIE
5 ANTO
4 CARPATHIAN, MATILDA
3 SHED
2 MASKERADE
1 ENIGMATIST, HECTENCE
A thousand thanks to all, setters and bloggers alike, for enlivening a remarkable year that might well be long in the rear view mirror this time next year.
Jain (22A) feels really irritating. I thought of Jain, looked it up, decided it could not be used to mean an old Hindu, and passed on. I think the “jiffy” device is brilliant, and I would never have parsed it, and salute Paul accordingly. But it feels a pity that the definition is so needlessly ambiguous (at best) – “old Hindu” could just as easily read “ascetic” or “Buddhist” without affecting the clever bit of the clue at all. Frustrating, because I loved the puzzle in general – and thanks to Peter O for the blog.
Poor Paul getting a bit of a mauling. I thought his 6d was brilliant. Perhaps Mr H like me is suffering over our local team’s miserable performance!
I struggled for a long time thinking champions meant fighters or fighting for good causes. Was so disappointed to have to give up because I know nothing about men kicking balls.
I know a lot about football, but this was torture.
Football managers are full of wit. Paul isn’t.
Late to this today. FOI was 1dn, just from the enumeration. Most of the rest went in fairly smoothly, apart from FEYENOORD, for which I had to find a list of appropriate champions. Clever clue but very tricky – I did know of the team and might have got it had the initial letter been a crosser.
RED STAR BELGRADE also went in from a few letters and the enumeration; I didn’t stop to parse it. These days the team is usually referred to by its Serbian name: Crvena Zvezda. Now how would Paul have clued that?….
I’m another non-fan of football, to a degree that the Site Policy forbids me from expressing. Once I’d confirmed that one “champions” clue (PORT OF CALL) was about footie, I sighed and consulted a list – and eventually had to Reveal 6 and 25 anyway. Parsing the wordplay after reaching the answer is still rewarding, so I was just minimizing the time spent dealing with trivia that I don’t want in my head.
Well, this one seems to have gathered more thumbs down than I expected, even though the use of the theme is not such that one can be blissfully aware of it, and still enjoy the puzzle.
akaRebornBeginner @34
Thank you for the comment, and congratulations on being the first to spell MARSEILLE correctly!
William @25
1D “Nonsense”? Are you talking about the surface? Consider its long companion 8D (paired long answers – Paul as Everyman again; I suspect this might be deliberate). The wordplay for 1D is not simple, but not, I think, unduly convoluted – and made easier by the common ‘in’ as envelope indicator, even though it sits less comfortably in the surface.
I am irked by the negativity on here. I have no great interest in football, support no team, and when, very recently, I tried to watch a game on Amazon Prime as I subscribe to it, I lasted about 20 minutes before being driven to watch old episodes of Peppa Pig. But I see no virtue in being stubbornly ignorant of something which matters immensely to a huge number of my fellow-humans, so I try to keep up by occasionally reading results or match reports, or looking at league tables. Ditto with pop music, although my preferred medium is jazz. I had an uncle who self-congratulatorily spectated at himself listening to Radio 3 all day and prided himself on knowing and caring nothing about any other kind of music. I actually came to the conclusion that he did not care a toss about what he heard on Radio 3, but it was a medal to sport on the breast of his snobbery. I had no issue with Paul on this, missing only the admirable deviousness of ‘Cliche’ (despite having grown up in Glasgow).
Well, sorry you lot – I enjoyed this very much, except for the overly-convoluted Celtic CLICHÉ. And the first def in Chambers for Hindu is “A member of any of the races of Hindustan or India.” “Archaic”, hence Old. perfectly fair and the (j)iffy anagrind is fun.
[Penfold @50: Groan.
Hilt @57: I think that’s little unfair “Football managers are full of wit. Paul isn’t.”
I’ve had some absolute laugh-out-loud moments with Paul clues this year and let’s face it, this year has been massively short on laughs… For example the biscuit-theme of 28,267 was delight – this one’s just a bit …cookie… Red Star Penfold 1: Dynamo MaidenBartok 1. Extra Time?]
I’m anther who doesn’t understand the negativity being thrown at this. I’m not much of a soccer fan, but even I have heard of all of these clubs. Yes, even Feyenoord. And football fandom is a big enough thing in Britain that the theme seems fair to me. Bear in mind that the setters do not get paid a living wage–this is basically a hobby for all but the most prolific of them.
The theme meant that I could throw in a couple of these without parsing, so I don’t think I can claim to have come away unscathed.
The only thing that bores me more than football is a football themed crossword.After realising the theme, I looked up the answers.Happy New Year.
I think Grizzlebeard@42 put it quite well in that mild admonition of the negativity.
I have occasionally wondered what the demographics were of cryptics lovers, and also of commentators here, which may or may not be the same. Whatever it is, it appears not to align too well with football fans.
Let me finally take this opportunity to wish everybody here a Happy New Year!
MaidenBartok @ 63 Yes. Give me Paul over Jose Mourinho even on an off day. I think the D.Day landings puzzle was my favourite of this year.
I find the complaints about this puzzle really distasteful, going beyond fair criticism to personal attacks. There are few areas of life in which it is so true that if you don’t have anything nice to say you would do best to say nothing. In my opinion quite a few posters would do well to have a look at themselves and reflect.
It’s true that this is an example of how football brings out unreasoning hatred in those who don’t follow the game in a way that, say, Abba songs don’t, but that’s no excuse.
Personally I thought this was a brilliant crossword with many really clever clues. ‘Old Hindu’ was pretty daft, I agree.
[Radixnephew @68: I’m looking forward to a combined cricket, football and ABBA crossword with associated brickbats in 2021 – could be an innings of two-halves, Fernando.
Petert @67: 28,153? Yes, that was fabulous and completely beyond me…]
I struggled with this a lot, and missed a couple – Cliche and Jain (which I really like with hindsight, regardless of the definition). But over all I really enjoyed it too.
I’m a lapsed fan of football, so knew all the teams which helped, obviously. But whilst I don’t follow the game now I think it’s great to have it as a theme in a puzzle. It makes a refreshing change from much of the GK that features time and again in crosswords. It does seem that a lot of the people who didn’t like this seem to have utterly closed their minds to the subject of football on principle (almost like ignorance of the topic is a badge of honour). If I did that with subjects that don’t appeal to me I’d be stuffed trying to do cryptics. I have no interest whatsoever in opera, poetry, religion (and many other regularly occurring subjects), but I’m willing to learn about them. Heck, I detest musicals with a passion, but I could have a decent stab at a crossword themed about them.
Simply put, this was out of my league.
I agree with Penfold @19. I’m not aware of E being an abbreviation for extra in cricket, but ET for ‘extra time’ in football is pretty much standard. [There’s even a song with the title ‘0-0 a.e.t.’]
I’d spotted 5d for a possible place where CELTIC might be the basis for an answer, but it took me an awful long time to get it, despite ‘game of two halves’ being the champion cliché. And FEYENOORD was my last one in, having finally dredged it from my choked up memory, and then immediately spotted the Derby County manager doing a hand-stand.
Couldn’t see the parsing of OVERSUPPLY, so many thanks to Peter O for that one. Loved the jiffy device in JAIN and didn’t know enough about the religion to query the definition. I also got BURRITO from the wordplay, so it wasn’t all guess-the-football-team-and parse-later.
On the Guardian crossword comments there was a similar 90% aversion to football, so I wasn’t surprised at the howls of protest here.
[I may be the only commenter here with a football-related moniker, but the closest that Luton Town came to a European competition was in a dream I had about 25 years ago where we played at AC Milan and beat them 2-0.]
MB @69: well done on identifying the Venn diagram intersect between cricket, football and ABBA. Rather than go on and on and on, I shall thank you for the music and say Happy New Year, so long and hasta manana.]
I knew this wouldn’t be popular!
Cliche is over-complicated, but otherwise my only complaint is being unable to rely on my poor memory of CL winners. I only know my team has won it six times….
Yes, ET = extra time seems to be an accepted football abbreviation, see: https://www.footballhistory.org/abbreviations.html#:~:text=E.T.%20%E2%80%93%20Extra%20time.
I found this difficult but I was sleepy after lunch. I made liberal use of word searches and finished it eventually (although I didn’t parse the ‘extra time’!)
I thought it was not one of Paul’s best but was OK. It’s always difficult with themes to please all of the punters. It was pleasing to see TRUMP paired with CLOUD CUCKOO LAND. That, by itself, was enough to make the solve satisfying.
Thanks Paul and PeterO (especially for the ‘Celtic’.)
My partner who knows little of football, got all of the theme related clues.
PeterO @60: Thanks for the comeback. Yes, accepted, I was aware of the connection between the two long down lights; it was the surface itself that I found nonsensical. What on earth could a “brash parasite” be?
I didn’t want to make too much of this, being a fan of this setter on most occasions, but lately I’ve found that he pays less attention than previously to the reading of the surface of some of his clues. Comparisons are odious, of course, but only this week we have seen how enjoyable clues with smooth surfaces are to solve.
Found this reminiscent of early-pandemic experiences w/this setter… felt arbitrary and convoluted in places and w/out much joy in solving (personal view, not “statement of fact”… glad some could enjoy). Still, testament to Guardian/225 upping my game, managed to grind out most of it sans refs (-6.5 XOO), despite knowing almost nothing of UK/European sports.
Needed Wikipedia for MARSEILLE (thought of earlier, but couldn’t parse, stuck on behind=ass), and for FEYENOORD (thought/tried fed variously, but never going to get Rooney). Despite Wikipedia, defeated by CLICHE… both defn/wplay relied on (for me) specialized sports refs, and then the indirect wplay was convoluted to boot (altogether, seemed a bit much).
DNK CLOUD CUCKOO LAND, but eventually sussed via crossers; knew the other long one far too well (counting the days like molasses, but we’re getting there).
Disappointed by JAIN; wplay fine, but defn seems unnecessary. Perhaps explicable via Chambers but then comes across as “cute”, and to me being cute w/cultures or belief systems is a rather tricky business. Think editor should’ve flagged/returned for alternate defn.
On the plus side, liked OVERSUPPLY, INACTION… though now reading together, brings to mind our vaccine rollout “program” over here, which gets back to that long answer I’m so tired of… grrrr.
Props to setter, blogger, and commenters. Best wishes to all for brighter days in the year ahead!
Loved this.Just failed on 18 down.But lovely to see football,specifically those great European teams so redolent of my 1970s boyhood as the GK.
Sorry Frank Lampard … That’s what they thought about Ole Solskjær…
Totally agree with MarkN above.
Paul’s crosswords are no fun any more. It took me a long time to get four clues, even with the help of a football enthusiast. He was once regarded as the natural heir of Araucaria, but he no longer deserves this credit.
Paul is my favourite setter but I sometimes find his crosswords really tough going, and today was a case in point. For a long time I had about four or five clues solved.
But I like crosswords which slowly yield if you keep at it (I remember long ago spending the whole of a Bank Holiday long weekend managing for the first time to complete a Bunthorne puzzle) and that’s what happened here. I thought FEYENOORD was very clever, and frankly I think both the name of the club and Wayne R are general knowledge these days. It took me a while to work out CLICHE, but it was entertaining when I had done so.
Okay, copland smith @62, “Old Hindu” is legitimate in 22ac, but the wordplay was so brilliant it was a pity to muddy it with a possibly dodgy definition.
I sympathise with those who dislike the surface of 1dn – the wordplay is quite clever but the clue really ought to make some sort of sense. However, William @77, after the antics of one Alexander de Pfeffel and chums this week, are you really wondering what a brash parasite might be…?
Nefyn Rich@53
Enigmatist just 1, that doesn’t seem right. No Arachne in 2020?
Don’t recall Hectence, either, but I may have missed that setter…
Best wishes to all setters, bloggers and solvers for a less stressful, healthier, happier days in 2021.
I hope it’s not too late to recommend Morph’s brilliant puzzle in today’s Indy
https://puzzles.independent.co.uk/games/cryptic-crossword-independent?puzzleDate=20201231#!202012
Even if you don’t have time / inclination to solve the puzzle, I beg you to at least read B&J’s equally brilliant blog http://www.fifteensquared.net/2020/12/31/independent-10676-by-morph/#comments.
Sheer genius, as I said in my comment.
Re 5, I remember a football manager who’s team (Crystal Palace IIRC) often didn’t score until after the interval saying he wanted the second half of their matches played first.
Got a few like 20d (very nice), 10ac, 7d, and 12ac–one of the clubs I’ve heard of–then started revealing and checking the parses here, and this is just not for me. “West side of capital” for “HELS”? “CLICHE” defined indirectly with “game of two halves” and that absolutely convoluted wordplay? Perhaps if you’re expecting an audience that can rattle off the name of every football club, it’s necessary to obscure the clues in this way, but when so many of the answers are effectively locked out for me without getting most of the crossers, it means that I have to get almost everything else from scratch, and without any trust that the rationale won’t be something completely incomprehensible to me it makes it harder to get the ones that should be comprehensible. 1d, for instance, is fair to me, but hard to get from scratch, and 9ac is quite clever but one that I needed to guess the name and work backward to the parse, and that just wasn’t plausible without getting the first and last letters, which both came from ones I couldn’t reveal. Unfortunately this happens too often with Paul’s puzzles for me.
Oh, and I also got 8d, but I am sorry, I would very much like to stop hearing about that person!
Having done a bit more, seething a bit at “und” for “with German.” Turning “with” into “and” is fine, turning a word into its German translation is fine, doing both is a bridge too far.
Dreadful experience and agreed re the “tortured” clues… Paul sometimes needs to have a word with himself…
[Eileen @85: Hear, very much, hear. It may be a bit late to undertake it on New Years Eve but I’d urge solvers to make some time over the next few days. Well worth it.]
Sheffield hatter @72
2008-9 and not many people are aware of this – Luton’s Under-11s team were crowed European champions after beating Bayern Munich in the final of the Aarau Masters, a televised five-a-side tournament in Switzerland played in front of 3,000 spectators.
[Cliveinfrance @91. Well, of course I was aware of that, and I think it’s about time Paul set a crossword based on the names of the players (one of whom is now playing for Leicester City in the Premiership) and their coach. Thanks for the reminder, though!]
[Eileen @85 & Mark @90. I’ve done the Independent, which took me a small fraction of the time I spent on Paul earlier today! Very good entertainment – a little slow to start with, but once I’d got a few crossers and onto Morph’s wavelength it all went swimmingly, apart from a recalcitrant bunch in the NE. Thanks for the suggestion, Eileen.]
Wonderful! Discovering that ROONEY is hidden backwards in FEYENOORD is worth the price of admission alone. And some of the clues that weren’t Champions were delightfully thematic, like CLICHE and UPRIGHT. Viva Paul, and thank you PeterO.
The usual negativity on here when, God forbid, something as common as football appears. I’ve never been to an opera in my life but I know a fair bit about Wagner from doing crosswords. Just because it’s not high-brow doesn’t mean it’s not educational. I enjoyed this and am grateful that it’s provided free of charge on the Guardian site to get me through an otherwise tedious day. Thanks to Paul, as ever.
Gervase @58: “RED STAR BELGRADE also went in from a few letters and the enumeration; I didn’t stop to parse it. These days the team is usually referred to by its Serbian name: Crvena Zvezda. Now how would Paul have clued that?….”
How about: “Champions moved craven Dave with a topless rock band?” (6,6)
I loved this.The theme is a welcome change from the classic/musical/literary fare so beloved of cryptic crossword compilers. I appreciate that it does not suit everyone but it does suit crossword addicts like myself with more plebeian tastes. I can assure those who struggled with the theme that it was equally difficult for those, like myself, who pride themselves on their knowledge of the beautiful game. I managed to get 6d without even spotting Rooney!
Last in were 23d and 22a. I agree with others that these were ‘Iffy’and I’m puzzled how the exploits of Cheltenham Town in the 2015/16 season seems to have been missed in this impressive pantheon of champions! Nonetheless a great crossword.
Subject matter fine as far as I’m concerned.
Parsing a different matter for which I congratulate PeterO.
To quote poc @39 ‘… but of late his clueing has become increasingly convoluted and less enjoyable. The theme clues here were largely “guess name of football club and try to justify it by parsing the wordplay”. To my mind this is the reverse of what solving a crossword should be about.’
At the risk of flogging a dead horse, let me say that my poor opinion of this puzzle is not because I dislike football. I’m not a big fan but know more about it than about cricket, knowledge of which seems to be de rigueur for cryptic solvers. However the clues are not actually about football, they’re about enumerating some football teams by means of very convoluted clues. I stand by my objection.
Taking radixnephew’s advice I’m not going to comment on the crossword. I just wondered if anyone knew when Marseilles became Marseille in French, and why we still use the former spelling? I’ve Googled, but found no clear answer.
Well, I enjoyed it. Particuarly pleasing to spot the FED up ROONEY in FEYENOORD. And congrats to Penfold @19 for the joke of the day – calling 6 a Damn Rotter clue! :o)
Thanks, Paul and PeterO for a tasty marmite puzzle.
drofle @96
Excellent effort, but is “ZZ (top)” a bit ghostlike? It would be fine if the Zs were contiguous, though.
muffin @102 – Yeah, I agree but I was rather pleased when I thought of ZZ Top. And the ‘topless’ added a Paul-like frisson.
I (@12) seem to have started a war here, for which I apologize. In my defence I should like to clarify a few points, which several people seem to have missed in my original “rant”:
1. I like themed puzzles, and, although I know little about football and less about cricket, I have enjoyed football and cricket-themed puzzles in the past. We have all solved themed puzzles where we didn’t spot the theme, and finding out about the theme afterwards only adds to the appreciation of the cleverness of the cluing.
2. My problem with this particular puzzle, as with the ABBA one, is that specialized knowledge of the theme subject is not just an aid, but a necessary condition for solving and enjoying the puzzle. So it disenfranchises all those who lack that thematic knowledge. It’s not the theme, but the treatment of it, that made for an unsatisfying experience.
2(a). If Paul had crafted a puzzle with FEUERMAN, DOTZAUER, PIATTI, WELLERSTEIN, POPPER, PARISOT, KRAFT and KLENGEL as solutions, I might find it easy but I think many would consider it unfair, or at least no fun to solve.
3. I generally like Paul’s puzzles. I find them difficult, but there is lots of humour and imagination in his cluing, so I appreciate them even when I can’t complete them.
4. Finally, there is so much pleasure to be had from cryptic crosswords, that the odd one that is unfair to a subset of solvers is hardly a major problem. We can set it aside, and look forward to the next puzzle.
Cheers, everyone, especially Paul and PeterO.
Plenty of criticism of the football references here, but I never hear any criticisms of all the cricket references that regularly appear in these crosswords. By the way, not all these clubs are past Champions League winners. Feyenoord won the old European Cup in 1970.
Phil Smith @105: UEFA list the winners of the European Cup and the Champions League in one list, without distinction: https://www.uefa.com/uefachampionsleague/history/winners/. I believe the newer competition started at the same time as the English Premier League, so for example Celtic and Belgrade were also winners of the earlier competition.
cellomaniac @104. Thank you for your very reasonable explanation of your objection to the way this crossword was set. I made a similar point on the General Discussion sub-forum (#115) a couple of weeks ago.
When the thematic material is as abstruse as most people found this, and so necessary to get anywhere near completing the puzzle, the cluing needs to be precise and friendly. My football knowledge is pretty good, but it took me a long time to remember Feyenoord (they won the trophy when I was 15, which was not exactly last week), and it was only then that I recognised Rooney backwards. Very clever! But the clue ‘striker’ does not immediately get people thinking of Wayne Rooney, and even solvers who thought of FED for ‘stuffed’ did not get anywhere near the answer.
Similarly, in the clue for CHELSEA, the setter has misled us with ‘Champions from west side of capital’ in the clue. I immediately thought of Chelsea, which is a club in an area in the western part of the centre of London; but what was the wordplay? It wasn’t until I got a couple of crossers that I saw how the clue works. Without football knowledge, the subtlety of this clue is lost and there is little pleasure to be found in discovering how it works.
Some of the vitriol that has appeared here and on the Guardian has been way over the top though. (I don’t include you, cellomaniac – I think your “rant” @12 was reasonable and well argued.) Some of us struggle with operas, musicals, Greek and Roman myths, but we expect to have to acquire a certain amount of GK in these fields when we tackle crosswords; when the boot is on the other foot, not so much.
It appears to me that a lot of the rancour, the irritation and the downright hostility by some on this thread stems from the fact that the puzzle in question in some way violates their own self-imposed rules of engagement. For me personally, I am not usually upset if from time to time I am obliged to consult the eminent Prof W Pedia or any of his cybernautic confrères. From time to time. I actually welcome trawling through lists – be they of clubs, writers, politicians, artists, gods or whatever the theme de jour may happen to be. Please bear with my pretentiousness when I say: Chacun à son gout.
(PS: I’d be willing to bet that if you asked any non-football-supporting citizen of the UK to name a striker off the top of their head, they’d come up with Wayne Rooney.)
Back of the onion bag Paul, you must be chuckling at all the naysayers. Beautiful game
No mention so far that it was an appropriate day to celebrate things European?
I’m quite glad I left the field early in the game. I’m very impressed by PeterO and others who managed to parse everything, I don’t object to having to look up a list, as with the Abba puzzle, but there were too many convoluted parsings for me, in contrast with the previous Paul, which I enjoyed. The “opposition” was just too strong, the equivalent of a 5-1 defeat. All the more satisfying if I had persevered? Hmmm, maybe.
Gert Bycee @108
Harry Kane, Gary Lineker.
@Pino @ 112 – Yeah, fair enough, them too probably. Still, ….
Favourite setter
Favourite sport
Terrible crossword
I hope Paul isn’t too influenced by the negative comments here.
It is simply untrue that you needed specialist knowledge to solve this, and repeating it as nauseam won’t make it any truer.
It is challenging, not impossible, to arrive at an unfamiliar solution.
I’m only one mediocre solver, but for what it’s worth I know just about as little about European football as an English man can. I could have probably named one European cup winner with any confidence before doing this – Liverpool. Two of these teams rang only the very faintest of bells (& I certainly had no idea how to spell Feyenoord). I didn’t know what competition was being referenced until I came here anyway. None of this made the puzzle impossible, unfair, or tempted me to ruin it for myself by googling football teams.
Above all I hope setters appreciate that comments here, whether positive or negative, are not necessarily representative of solvers in general. For what it’s worth though, I thought this was tough but great fun.
Doable and parsable. But I echo previous comments in asking what happened to the Paul of old? Until about a year ago he was my favourite setter, then he transformed overnight. Is he actually the same person?
Typical challenge from Paul.
As an American who is mostly clueless about soccer in Europe I still managed most of them, but FEYENOORD was totally out of the question for me. And I’d never heard of St. Leger, so parsing 24 ac. was impossible for me.
Also, despite being of Indian extraction, I didn’t get JAIN. The brilliant parsing makes complete sense as explained by PeterO. And I think Manoj @7 has the best explanation – the original Jains were all once Hindus; agree it’s a bit weak though.
And DJT was of course, my favorite!
Thanks Paul and PeterO
As always a late comment from me, but what a set of miserable posts I have just slogged through.
I thought this was characteristically Paul: forbidding at first but immensely satisfying as the pennies dropped.
It seems to have been simply ghastly for those who hate football but you can’t please everyone. I chose a football related username so it was more my sort of thing.
I’m not a big fan of “book” constantly referring to bits of the bible (as an atheist). Tough luck for me.
Thanks to Paul and keep up the brilliant setting. Thanks to PeterO and all the great bloggers on here.
Very late to the party, but as another pair of solvers with a football moniker, ( @ 72 Sheffield hatter – never occurred to me you were a Luton fan). it’s nice to get a theme that doesn’t need us to know about cricket, opera, golf or Greek mythology – we just have to operate with a working knowledge of Lots of topics that are not our top pick! Really liked 9a – and really helped remembering Red Star Belgrade though took ages to parse it. And we liked the “extra” football-related clues – upright & sure-footed. Thanks Paul and Peter O – and as it’s now 1515 on. Saturday, I’ll need to go and see how are COVID- reduced team are getting on…
I got ERATO, DREGS and NATAL on the first pass, typically slim picking for a Paul, and noted with mounting dread the many references to champions, as I know Paul is a fan of football. However, the sport’s so pervasive in British culture that I reckoned I’d probably be familiar with the names of the teams. CLOUD CUCKOO LAND opened up the puzzle and LIVERPOOL, CHELSEA and PORT OF CALL all fell into place very nicely. To my amazement I also got DORTMUND and MARSEILLE.
I guessed RED STAR (probably had heard it somewhere) and found the third word with the help of google. But the final two defeated me: FEYENOORD and CLICHE. I have to say that CLICHE in particular seems most unfair, so hats off to those who parsed it, perhaps I should have got it from the crossers but the wordplay was far too difficult.
Not one of Paul’s best efforts, but there was still plenty of entertainment to be had.
Well it was engaging enough to prompt 120 comments!
I enjoyed it – many thanks, Paul. And PeterO.
No problem with the theme but have to agree with some that there has been a definite change of style from Paul over the past 12 months