Another solid puzzle in the Eye style.
I solved this in the normal manner having forgotten it was my turn to blog and particularly enjoyed it.
It doesn’t take very long to subsequently re-work the thinking and build the blog so I think I will do that in future rather than trying to blog as I solve which is mostly what I have done for the last N years.
I ticked off 11 clues as done on the first pass – less than half – less than my norm – but it wasn’t more difficult than usual.
The only one that kept me scratching my head for any length of time was 24d, my last one in.
| Across | ||
|---|---|---|
| 8 | APRES-SKI | Having gone downhill, it’s fun getting pear-shaped, smarmy kiss (5-3) (PEAR)* AInd: shaped, then (KISS)* AInd: Smarmy. Hearty laugh when I saw the wordplay here – I got hung up think the kiss would be a final X … |
| 9 | LUREX | Ensnare with a kiss and glamrock wear? (5) LURE (ensnare) X ( a kiss) … like here. I should have realised there wouldn’t be 2 clues next to each other using that mechanism |
| 10/25/20 | URSULA VON DER LEYEN | One reversal unduly mismanaged – poor handler of vaccine acquisition (6,3,3,5) (ONE REVERSAL UNDULY)* AInd: mismanaged. I was glad this was an anagram because I would not have spelled her name correctly without guidance from the anagram fodder (wiki for Ursula_von_der_Leyen). There has been deserved criticism of the EU’s vaccine rollout – it seems they didn’t get their orders in to the pharma companies early enough and compounded the failure by badmouthing AstraZeneca |
| 11/13 | KANGAROO COURT | Joey to make love? It won’t do anyone justice (8,5) KANAGROO (Joey) COURT (to make love) First one in. |
| 12 | GLADNESS | Joy‘s end wobbled aboard schooner? (8) (END)* AInd: wobbled, inside GLASS (schooner). |
| 15 | WRINKLY | Old person looking like a scrotum (7) Double Def. Reminds me of Viv Stanshall’s Sir Henry at Rawlinson End where the butler character was “Old Scrotum, the wrinkled retainer” |
| 17 | BLUBBER | Cry “too much fat!” (7) Double Def |
| 21 | RESOLUTE | Euro’s let off, that’s decided (8) (EURO’S LET)* AInd: off |
| 23 | BACKLASH | Withdraw whip as a violent consequence (8) BACK (withdraw) LASH (whip) |
| 26 | LIMBO | Oblivion is attained by putting ring on member (5) O (ring) on LIMB (member) |
| 27 | VIGNETTE | Vetting foreign and English character sketch (8) (VETTING)* AInd: foreign, then E[nglish] |
| Down | ||
| 1 | SPARKLER | Diamond? You won’t get a bang from it (8) Double Def. |
| 2 | REDUNDANCY | Right canny dude hit the sack (10) R[ight] (CANNY DUDE)* AInd: hit |
| 3 | ESTATE | All that’s left of European political community (6) E[uropean] STATE (political community). Definition references what one leaves in one’s will |
| 4 | KICK-ASS | Buzz, getting behind, becomes aggressive (4-3) KICK (buzz) ASS (behind) |
| 5 | CLINICAL | Unemotional Clinton not turned away by one state (8) CLIN[ton] (NOT< Rev. Ind: turned, removed, away), I CAL (one state, California) Well constructed clue |
| 6 | ORCA | Ohio Republican bill taken up – it’s a killer (4) O[hio] R[epublican] AC< (bill, up) |
| 7 | EXHORT | Press‘s other version involving “X” (6) (OTHER + X)* AInd: version |
| 14 | UNBALANCED | International body with cash remaining – Germany’s disturbed (10) UN (International body) BALANCE (cash remaining) D (Germany) |
| 16 | LAND AHOY | “Only had a potty!” as the sailor cried (4,4) (ONLY HAD A)* AInd: potty |
| 18 | ENTREATY | A plea to “put away” during penetration (8) EAT (to put away) inside (during) ENTRY (penetration) |
| 19 | ARCHIVE | Public record shows reluctant prince’s son claiming victory (7) ARCHIE (reluctant prince’s son, even I know Megan and “reluctant prince” Harry’s son is called Archie) around (claiming) V[ictory] |
| 20 | LIABLE | ‘Flaky liberal’ Starmer ultimately absent and bearing responsibility (6) (LIBERAL – [starme]R)* AInd: flaky |
| 22 | SAVAGE | Herb holds one against Lily (6) SAGE (herb) around (holds) A V (one against). Not a flower but a former drag queen whose persona has been left in the past and now known as Paul O’Grady |
| 24 | KAMA | Love god‘s fate: king’s out (4) KARMA (fate) – R (king) Last one in. Stuck with K-M- thinking Kismet for fate wondering whatever to do with it. This Hindu god is best known by the prurient amongst us, like me, for the Kama Sutra |
For those of you who remember cartoons from the 80s (I expect that’s all of you) you will be pleased to hear that 25 years after he retired, Gary Larson has finally found a home on the world-wide-web.
https://www.thefarside.com/ opens with a handful of classic Far Side cartoons different every day, so for the last few weeks it is one of the first things I turn to when I sit down at the keyboard. I think some of them are absolute crackers. (Worth reading through the rest of the site too)
Since no-one else has commented I’ll say I liked this especially SPARKLER
Re 15a there’s variously attributed quote (Peter Cook?) on seeing a picture of W H Auden: if that’s his face what must his scrotum look like?
Thanks beermagnet, especially for your sensitive choice of clues in the blog headline – a LUREX LIMBO may have been too much to deal with on a Monday! And thanks for the FarSide link which I will add to Dilbert, Matt, Alex and more on my daily distractions from work list.
I thought this was a vg mix of smut (eg LIMBO), topical references (ARCHIVE, LIABLE – but is he?) with many amusingly misleading definitions and surfaces even in the ‘standard’ clues (REDUNDANCY, ESTATE). But my favourite was APRES SKI despite a question mark over “smarmy” as anagram indicator (I would propose “sloppy” in its place).
I spent some time thinking 3 down was remain, especially as it fits with Ursula.
Slightly disappointed it wasn’t, as I think it works well.
Thank you, as usual, to everyone. I too had REMAIN for some time and that of course buggered up that corner for a while. I didn’t hugely agree with kick ass…..firstly coz it’s kick arse but also because I don’t see kick ass as aggressive as an adjective, which I feel is the intent. Being aggressive is kicking arse.
My last one in was ESTATE but i’m not sure why now!!!
I spent some time trying to get a US state out of Clinton for 5D until finally realised the clue was “unemotional”. Managed this one almost in one go, got SPARKLER and KANGAROO COURT early which helped, though APRES-SKI had me stumped for a while.
Thanks beermagnet for the FarSide link, though think it may dent my productivity for the rest of the day somewhat…
I feel incredibly stupid. I misspelled VON DER LEYEN as VAN DER LEYEN in my answer. I was so confident when I finished that I emailed it off. Like that. Cyclops will forever think me a fool. There’s no coming back. I might as well sell everything and move to Serbia.
Phil@4, Winsor@5 yes REMAIN was the first thing that came into my head for 3D too but I thought it was a bit weak for a cd so held on for some crossers, luckily. and Winsor I have seen “KICK-ASS” used as an adjective in a similar fashion to “aggressive” although only colloquially I think, but it is online in some respectable dictionaries (US as you would expect with that spelling).
[Barry Purcell@7: Cyclops and everyone else on here may think you’re a fool, but our neighbour who seems to move in slightly opaque financial circles reckons that Serbia might be the next big ‘offshore’ financial centre, so moving there could be the best thing you ever do. Let us know how it goes!]
I forgot to say, there seemed to be a lot of K’s in this puzzle.
Also, I lived for 6 months in Belgrade….wonderful time. Favourite quote…..”Winsor, we eat lots of meat…and preferably young meat!!!!!” closely followed by “What are doing, wasting our time here…nothing to eat or drink!”
This is the first one I’ve failed to finish since I started doing them a couple of years (?) ago. I had 3dn and 24dn to do and left it on one side till it was too late.
Coming back to it, I sussed KAMA, having earlier been thinking, like beermagnet, of kismet, although I had to look the love god up to confirm it. (Failed to make the connection with the Kama Sutra.)
I waited for the blog to find out what 3dn was, only to realise my difficulty was I’d filled in some wrong letters in crossing words (no idea how, as I’d solved them correctly), so I was trying to solve the clue with two out of the three check letters wrong!
I wasn’t too sure about “withdraw” for BACK. I couldn’t come up with a substitution example, but thought it had to be right.
Copmus @1, I very much liked SPARKLER, too.
Offspinner @2, the internet mostly seems to think David Hockney said that. E.g. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3014561/
Beermagnet, you’re slow off the mark with the Far Side; I’ve been following since it started and that was over a year ago now, I’m pretty sure. Good job you’re on to it now; so many laughs every day!
I also thought of that Viv Stanshall character when I went for WRINKLY at 15ac, but I’m now wondering whether I didn’t fall into a deliberate trap by so doing. It seems that the word CRINKLY can also be used to mock the elderly (although it is a more recent coinage and not one I have ever come across outside dictionaries), and that is the word that appears as the official solution to this clue. Does the Eye have a new policy of muddying the waters with clues for which good alternative solutions exist? (See also the comments about Cyclops 700.)
I’m with Barry Purcell at #7 in feeling incredibly stupid – but for going with WRINKLY rather than CRINKLY. It seems ‘Jeff Masters’ (this puzzle’s winner) was cleverer than some of us here!
John E at #11 – You make a good point – Chambers has CRINKLY as a noun as ‘slang’ for an ‘old person’, and WRINKLY as ‘derogative, informal, especially in plural’ for, erm, ‘old person’. It also gives the main definition of the adjective CRINKLY as…well…’wrinkly’. Muddied waters indeed…I’m glad that didn’t waste me the price of a stamp.
(Last time I checked, I’d say mine was definitely more wrinkly than crinkly…but maybe that’s just the effects of time…or failing eyesight…or was I looking in a mirror?…)
I’m shocked to learn that CRINKLY is also a (more recent?) slang term for an oldie. However, I like to think that if prize-winner Jeff Masters in fact wrote WRINKLY like me (all of us?), those awarding prizes would have had the good sense to accept it as a valid answer.
Latest issue (1548) arrived today,. Letters page has Cyclops addressing the wrinkly vs crinkly debate.
He concedes either is acceptable, but I’m assuming the chosen winner entered ‘crinkly’.
Pajodr, why are you assuming that? Is there any evidence in the correspondence that that’s the case?
Mere supposition – but the winner would have been picked before the matter was bought to Ctyclop’s attention by the letter writer.
The prize must have gone to an entrant who gave the official solution published next to their name. Otherwise the whole judging process is a meaningless sham.