It’s Paul coinciding with my monthly Saturday blogging slot again, on the day of the York S and B.
I took my paper with me to read on the train, not wanting to get too engrossed in the puzzle, in case there was anything controversial which might lead to discussion at the event, which I would have had to employ ‘Likely Lads’ tactics to avoid.
Of course, I couldn’t resist having a look! There turned out to be a theme, clearly set out in the numerous references to 6 across, which I didn’t get on my first run through but the helpfully enumerated SCREWDRIVER at 1,22, the first cocktail which springs to my mind (I don’t know many) led easily enough to the answer to 6ac and was immediately confirmed by GIMLET, then the rest was generally plain sailing. I didn’t find the theme particularly inspiring, to be honest – although I quite liked the couple of clues which used a second definition of 6ac – so I was happy to put it aside and read the paper for the rest of the journey.
My favourite clues were 21 and 25 across and 7dn, largely because they took a bit more working out than the rest, and 23dn, for not using the old toilet chestnut.
[I was finishing this off in the train on the way home and two young men sitting near me were interested in what I was doing (even more so when I explained that I’d spent the afternoon with quite a few other folk with the same interest, while they, on the other hand, had travelled a fair distance to watch men kicking a ball about) so, always on the look-out for converts, I explained the parsing of a couple of the entries and was rewarded with the ‘Aha!’ when the penny dropped. I promised them a mention, so, Piers and Leigh, if you remembered, Hello – it was nice to meet you. 😉 ]
Thanks to Paul for the puzzle.
Definitions are underlined in the clues.
Across
1 Take drink to 6 across merchants (9)
SUPPLIERS
SUP (take drink) + PLIERS (tool)
6 Put back the necessary file, for example (4)
TOOL
A reversal (put back) of LOOT (the necessary – both slang terms for money)
8 Kid evidently hungry as talented ballplayer? (8)
DRIBBLER
Double definition – I’ve never thought of a baby’s dribbling as a sign of hunger, particularly, but dribble is in the dictionaries as a synonym for slaver, which is such a sign
9 Cocktail 6 across (6)
GIMLET
Double definition
10 Description of coils 13 down, loosely speaking? (6)
TWIRLY
Double definition, the second being, ‘loosely speaking’, ‘too early’ (premature, 13 down) – in the UK, we elderly folk who hopefully proffer our bus passes before 9.30 am are known as Twirlies
11 Spooner’s task that’s all there for 6 across (8)
CHAINSAW
Spooner’s ‘sane chore’ (task that’s all there) – this is an example of those Spoonerisms I was talking about last week, which don’t give a recognisable or meaningful phrase
12 Done, 6 across picked up? (6)
SPAYED
Sounds like (picked up) spade (tool) – as in, ‘Has your cat been ‘done’?’
15 Paint two animals, first of sketches framed (8)
EMULSION
EMU and LION (two animals) round (framing) S[ketches]
16 Lovely work of art by Frida, originally (8)
FETCHING
F[rida] (Kahlo, perhaps?) + ETCHING (work of art)
19 Shot some thief for thievery (6)
EFFORT
Hidden in some thiEF FOR Thieving
21 Fit agent welcoming a swim on vacation (8)
PAROXYSM
PROXY (agent) round A + S[wi]M
24 6 across in which one may have a hand? (6)
PUPPET
Cryptic definition – and a different kind of TOOL (Chambers: a person, state etc under the control of another)
25 Bali without a leader of course, after Peru sacked country such as Indonesia (8)
REPUBLIC
An anagram (sacked) of PERU + B[a]LI minus a + C[ourse]
26 Too high a price to pay for love (4)
DEAR
Double definition – dear and love both as terms of endearment
27 Show on offer (9)
REPRESENT
RE (on) + PRESENT (offer)
Down
1,22 across Cocktail 6 across (11)
SCREWDRIVER
Double definition
2 Development of teenager by provocation initially true to form (7)
PUBERTY
An anagram (to form) of BY P[rovocation] TRUE
3 Sweetbread? (5)
LOLLY
We have to separate sweet and bread, to give a double definition: lolly and bread are both slang terms for money
4 Pain hard in each competition (7)
EARACHE
H (hard) in EA (each) RACE (competition)
5 Air gun set new mark (9)
SIGNATURE
An anagram (new) of AIR GUN SET
6 Leader on tour is saving 30 seconds, good for when events happening (7)
TIMINGS
T[our] + IS round half of MIN[ute] (30 seconds) G (good)
7 Old dragon essentially in contemporary music lover (5-4)
OPERA-GOER
O (old) + [d]RAGO]n in PEER (contemporary)
13 Impulsive revolutionary less wild in embrace of virgin (9)
PREMATURE
A reversal (revolutionary) of TAMER (less wild) in PURE (virgin)
14 Newspaper: one invested in art with lady’s boobs (5,4)
DAILY STAR
I (one) in an anagram (boobs) of ART and LADYS
17 Gas absorbed by metal 6 across (7)
CHOPPER
H (hydrogen – gas) in COPPER (metal)
18 Stick cut off sweet (7)
GUMDROP
GUM (stick) + DROP (cut off)
20 Plaything thrown away, is one busy at the end of the working week? (7)
FRISBEE
FR (Friday – the end of the working week) + IS, from the clue + BEE (one busy) – this would have taken less time if I’d thought to check whether FR is an abbreviation for Friday – I’m not keen on the ‘away’ but it’s needed for the surface
22 Twofold, learner’s cutting 6 across (5)
DUPLE
L (learner) in DUPE (tool) – Paul’s second use of ‘tool’ again: Collins gives ‘a person who unwittingly serves as the tool of another person or power’
23 Author with fine material written up (5)
ELIOT
A reversal (written up) of TOILE (fine material)
Thanks Eileen. A pleasant and not too taxing an interlude I thought with subtle variations on the theme. The SW corner was the last to yield and 10a had me choosing between TWIRLY and SWIRLY for a while. I know the noun ANIMAL is all encompassing these days for virtually any living organism on land, in water or in the air but I’m old fashioned enough to raise an eyebrow at EMU.
Yes this was easy for a prize, but lots of fun.
Thanks Paul …and Eileen but …first two paragraphs of blog ? ?
Oh yes Likely Lads…England F… but S and B?
For some daft reason, kept thinking ‘the necessary’ was toilet, hence loo, and wondering where the t came from [as Mrs ginf was wont to say, Doing those bleep things makes your brain more scrambled than it was already]. But anyway, I liked the crossover between tools and cocktails, it helped as, like Eileen, my ken of the latter is sparse. And the metaphoric projection from tool to dupe and puppet was neat too. Enjoyed it, ta Paul and Eileen.
Grant@4 maybe not so daft – according to Collins at least, the toilet (loo) is indeed one meaning of the necessary, and knowing it’s Paul …
Thanks Eileen. In my case the 6a theme word leapt out, clunky as it was. Paul had SPAYED on June 25. He also had FRISBEE two years ago, using the thrown ‘away’ that you didn’t like this time. The Spooner homophones okay down here but there will be grumbles elsewhere.
Thanks, Paul and Eileen!
10 A: I had SWIRLY (so early). TWIRLY is a better fit (of course, that’s the answer).
I don’t want to say SWIRLY is a misfit-to keep myself motivated 🙂
Found my way to the theme word by backtracking from 5d and 9ac GIMLET to solve 6d and then 6ac.
I solved the top half first, SW corner was hardest for me.
New: PAROXYSM.
I had guessed the parsing of 10ac TWIRLY might be “too early” but had not heard of Twirlies. Like Biggles, I was wondering about both SWIRLY and TWIRLY for a while,
Thanks, both.
tim@3+4
I don’t understand the reference to Likely Lads in the preamble, but I am aware there was a S+B (Setters and Bloggers) event in York last week as I had seen some threads about it here. I hope to be able to attend a S+B event in 2022 🙂
[Eileen, as I discovered this morning, you are now twirly before 9 a.m. not 9.30 (in London, anyway).]
Given that my first pass through the across clues ended with nothing written in at all, this ended up being finished relatively quickly (I had considered ‘tool’ for 6ac, but wasn’t convinced enough to pencil it in until I came to 1 down and SCREWDRIVER just fitted perfectly..) For a while I was sure the music lover in 7d must be an Opera Buff, with Puff the magic dragon fitting quite nicely, although I couldn’t force the rest of the parsing to work. I didn’t get the way TWIRLY and PREMATURE worked together, and wasn’t sure about the Spoonerism, but I did like the variety of tool references..
Thanks, Paul, thanks Eileen.
Like Eileen SCREWDRIVER sprang into my mind immediately for 1dn when I first scanned the clues and that, plus OPERA-GOER (also one of my favourites) lead me to TOOL.
My other favourites were PAROXYSM, SPAYED, PUPPET, FRISBEE
Thanks Paul and Eileen
Thanks for the blog, ( minor correction needed for DEAR I think , sorry )
I did enjoy this, fortunately I only know two cocktails and they both turned up.
Favourites were PREMATURE and PAROXYSM , nearly put in OPERA-BUFF with PUFF being the dragon but did not quite work .
Biggles @ 1 EMUs are definitely in Animalia Kingdom along with the other things you mention, if it is not a plant, fungus or certain single-celled organisms then it is an animal.
michelle @8 the LIKELY LADS , Bob and Terry were in a sit-com episode called No Hiding Place trying to avoid finding out the result of a Bulgaria v England football game so they could watch the highlights later.
Thanks Dr. Wh @5, I’m, er, relieved …
Thanks, Eileen, for the blog – and for the bus-pass meaning of TWIRLY, which is new to me, though I have been a twirly and had to wait for the next one to come. That’s only near my home in the Midlands – the London drivers never seem to mind (even before 9.00, I think, Gladys@9).
I too thought of GIMLET quickly, and then worked back to TOOL, so the theme (and entire puzzle) did not take too long. Like KeithS@10, I spent time believing OPERA was to be followed by ‘buff’, having parsed the dragon as Puff and trying in vain to see how ‘erab’ could fit in. Did Paul intend that as a red herring? Whether or not, many thanks, Paul.
It was good to see ELIOT feature without reference to ‘toilets’ or ‘litotes’.
Didn’t know FR for Friday, so opted for FRI’S BEE (Friday’s bee being one busy at the end of the week). I think it still works.
michelle @8 (and Roz @13): it’s not too difficult to find the episode in question. It actually appeared in 1973 in Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads, the follow up series to the Likely Lads (which originally showed in the 60’s). I was going to post the link but watched the first few minutes and, tbh, the humour is so dated and the tone just so politically incorrect, even I concluded it would be a bit rich for the G community! I did, however, get far enough to hear a line that hammers home what an utterly different world it was, “How are you going to avoid hearing the result – there’s the radio, the evening papers, the television news?”.
Given it was 50 years ago, there shouldn’t be a problem with a spoiler: they do manage to get through the day, narrowly avoiding hearing what happened on many occasions, and settle down with a beer to watch the match in the evening – which is when they discover the match was postponed and they are presented with figure skating instead. Oh, how we laughed…
I think I enjoyed Paul’s offering of yesterday to last week’s Prize so will leave it for others to comment – other than to say Eileen, I feel ‘Plaything thrown away’ is a not unreasonable definition of a FRISBEE (or possibly a boomerang or a paper plane).
Thanks Paul and Eileen
Much enjoyed! Knew the toilet as “the necessary” but had forgotten the money one. In 3, surely one def of LOLLY is just a sweet in candy sense. Like some others
I struggled in SW corner. Knew from TWIRLY that 13 meant too early and was trying to make PREDATING work.
Inherited a GIMLET from my dad decades ago. Great thanks, Paul, for teaching me its name. A lovely puzzle.
[Thank you MrPostMark@17 , we actually have them all on DVD , this episode has the great Brian Glover in as a bonus and the prejudices of Terry are nicely mocked by Bob. Early on Terry does say something about hating figure skating , especially when they have the nerve to put it on a sports show. ]
I was another with a reversed Yorkshire toilet for TOOL.
I had MUPPET.
I vaguely recall they were hand puppets.
And a ‘muppet’ is a ‘tool’.
Agree that FR is not a normal abbreviation for Friday so wonder if FRISBEE clue could be classed as a double definition with the second being a whimsical one (indicated by the ?) “Fri’s Bee”.
[As PM@17 mentions, seventies comedies are so un-PC it beggars belief. I recently tried to rewatch an episode of The Rise and Fall of Reggie Perrin – which I found hilarious in the day – and could not believe the level of inappropriateness of some
of the script]
Thanks Eileen for the blog. Agree not Paul’s finest ever but he certainly
churns out decent fodder for us all for which thanks again.
Without the answer to 6a (TOOL), I found this very hard going, but eventually SCREWDRIVER gave me that word, confirmed by GIMLET and CHAINSAW (neither of which I knew as a cocktail until now). It all became straightforward after that, and I didn’t mind the slight liberty taken with the definition of FRISBEE. And EMU and LION are certainly both animals!
Thanks to both Paul and Eileen.
Thanks, Roz @12 – amended now.
I didn’t consider SWIRLY or MUPPET. I’ve just looked for the annotated solution but it isn’t available yet.
[Ed @22: it’s a shame, isn’t it. We have warm nostalgic recollections and then we’re brought back to reality with a sharp slap in the face when we watch again. I looked at the first Rising Damp not that long ago and it simply wasn’t funny. Even back in the day, I was no fan of On The Buses, Love Thy Neighbour (?) or Alf Garnett but they are even more shudderingly awful!]
Luckily, I figured out TOOL fairly early on, so that was a great help. An enjoyable Saturday morning solve, not too taxing, I thought.
I thought the TWIRLY might have been ’twere early’ although maybe too early is better.
I thought that EFFORT was well-hidden, and I liked DAILY STAR (not literally!) and OPERA-GOER.
Thanks Paul and Eileen.
Good to see Anna @21 and of course MUPPET works both ways, did not think of that, will see the actual answer on Monday.
Eileen I am sure you are right with TWIRLY because or the PREMATURE , I frequently hear the bus drivers say it to people .
Thanks Paul and Eileen. I was pleasantly surprised when 6a came to me quite easily – I have a feeling I’ve seen ‘the necessary’ elsewhere very recently (meaning money, not toilet) – and looking at some of the cross-referenced clues quickly confirmed it (GIMLET being the first). So this was all pretty plain sailing – in an enjoyable way.
I also went with MUPPET for 24a – I originally put PUPPET but wasn’t satisfied with it. MUPPET felt like a stronger synonym for TOOL (in the useless person sense).
I also put SWIRLY in at first, but again wasn’t satisfied with that and eventually twigged that it had to be TWIRLY. Thought it was nice to see a dodgy homophone that’s justified on grounds of being in common use!
The only one I didn’t really like was the Spoonerism – mainly for the same reasons Eileen mentions, though it’s also a dodgy homophone.
Ed the Ball @17 – people here will know from my comments on various matters that I’m a fully paid-up member of the PC brigade, but I think Reggie Perrin stands up well, despite being very much ‘of its time’. It’s actually quite progressive in its outlook in some ways, as evidenced by the Reggie’s response to Jimmy’s Forces of Anarchy speech. And ‘slight cock-up on the catering front’ will never not be funny.
[ MrPostMark @25 , Rising Damp does get much better, four very good actors. Rigsby is of course racist but with no malice or hatred, still no excuse really. The star is Philip who is written as a successful , intelligent and sophisticated young man , admired and liked by the others, even Rigsby secretly. Quite ground-breaking at that time. ]
Entertaining and even I spotted the theme, which I rarely do. However 12a nearly made me throw the whole thing in the wastebasket. Not only is the surface meaningless, as Eileen pointed out, but even after realising (from crossers and Google) that the solution had to be CHAINSAW it took me several minutes understand how it was supposed to work.
This is precisely why some of us object to non-rhotic “homophones”, of which Paul is particularly fond.
widdersbel@28 I took TOOL=PUPPET in the sense of someone being manipulated, I do now think MUPPET works just as well.
For Spoonerisms I do not think the alleged sayings of the Reverend usually made sense in BOTH versions, so need for that today either.
Re P/MUPPET and S/TWIRLY, the check button says PUPPET and TWIRLY.
My experience with the ‘theme’ mirrored that of michelle @8 and I too was a Puff into Buff dupee as was KeithS @10.
Like several other solvers, I knew both the items which sit in the Venn diagram intersecting tools and cocktails, though unlike others I also know a lot of other cocktails.
Thanks Paul for a neat and enjoyable challenge and to Eileen for not only licid explanation but also fine outreach work. I too got into Guardian cryptics via an explanation from a more senior citizen while returning from a sporting event (in this case a cricket match in London …. in the early 1990s !).
Thank you, Petert – as I said, I didn’t even consider the alternatives. Now that I look, I see that both Collins and Chambers give simply ‘fool’ for muppet (and they weren’t all glove puppets, in any case).
Roz @31/Eileen @34 – re MUPPET/PUPPET – I’m probably guilty of second-guessing Paul – feels like you always have to be on the look-out for funny business with Paul, so in this case I was looking for a different meaning of tool… but sometimes he catches you out by playing a straight bat!
Re Spoonerisms, I believe the Rev himself only admitted to one – Kinquering Congs – which clearly makes no sense at all. But I think they still need to sound like something someone might actually say – whether deliberately for comic effect, or as a genuine slip of the tongue. ‘Sane chore’ just isn’t very convincing. But it works well enough that I was able to solve the clue, and that’s all I really care about ultimately.
[Roz @29: I completely agree that the series got a lot better. It’s why I sought out the initial showing – I think it might even have been a pilot – with a view to re-watching the series. It may have simply been a weak first episode and the cast got into their stride subsequently. But Rigsby is barely risible in that initial outing. I’m also in full agreement about Philip and have enjoyed Don Warrington in everything he’s done. But he always plays Philip! I suspect you may not follow Murder in Paradise – it’s very light and formulaic – but Warrington has been in it from the start and he is simply Philip Smith, 50 odd years on! ]
I parsed FRISBEE as FRI for Friday, then S for is, as in ‘it’s’ , plus busy BEE – wouldn’t that work? Also, was I the only one to put in RUBBER for 24ac? It’s a tool and ‘hand’ I thought referred to a game of bridge. Meant I couldn’t finish SW corner. Thanks to all for this very useful blog – my first posting btw.
Post Mark@36 Don W. was great as Willy Loman in Death of a Salesman at the Royal Exchange in Manchester a good King Lear too, so not always typecast.
Welcome, Kingfisher!
You have a point about 20dn: I don’t particularly like it – but then I don’t particularly like FR = Friday! It works, though.
I also see how you came up with RUBBER but, unlike T/SWIRLY and P/MUPPET, crossers rule it out.
Ditto Eileen @39 , I too thought of RUBBER because of the bridge connection, did not put it in and DAILY STAR and CHOPPER saved me ( never thought I would write that )
[widdersbel@35 I had a boyfriend at New College once and on the stairs up to his room there were caricatures of Rev Spooner , each with a saying. – You have tasted two whole worms. – Leave by the next town drain . – The Lord is a shoving leopard ….etc. They may not have been genuine of course. ]
Petert &38: re-reading my post, it might appear to be a criticism of DW. Which was, by no means, intended. I love that persona; it just happens to be the only one I’ve seen from him, to my recollection.
[ MrPostMark @36 do not think I have seen Don W in anything except for a brief cameo in Red Dwarf , always thought he was a stage actor which Petert @38 seems to confirm.
Agree with your examples @25 but you missed out the most dreadful of all . Mind Your Language was beyond the pale, I realised that even when I was about 9 ]
[Roz @42: Manchild is the other DW series I recalled. From 2002/3. I would post a link but know you’re not a fan so you’ll have to take my word that it was another – excellent – Philip Smith like role.]
As an expat, I can usually manage all UK GK via what I learned while growing up, what I see by keeping in touch online (PL, MTW etc) and the occasional return visit – but the bus pass meaning of TWIRLY eluded me completely, so thanks Eileen et al. for filling me in.
I filled three-quarters of this and had the lower left quarter completely blank. Had to use check for a few letters to let me in.
Eileen — have we had spoonerisms that make a proper phrase? Surely “sane chore” makes about as much sense as “shoving leopard.” I’m with Roz@21. I can easily picture Hercules staring at the Augean Stables and saying “This is supposed to be a sane chore?”
I got hung up for a while on EMULSION because I assumed that the S had to come between the two animals, not inside one of them.
Anyone else try DAILY MAIL? I’ve never heard of the Daily Star.
I’ve generally thought of British comedy as urbane and witty, but I’ve been brought down from that with a thump!
I’d heard of GIMLET and SCREW DRIVER as cocktails, but CHAINSAW is a new one!
Thanks Paul for an enjoyable puzzle and theme, and Eileen for the explanations and the delightful story of the train ride. Welcome to Leigh and Piers too if you should join us. I do the explanation too when the occasion arises, but have never had any converts, though my cousin’s daughter came close.
Do people think ‘Kid’ is needed in the clue for 8ac DRIBBLER?
Valentine @45 (and Alan B @23?) – CHAINSAW is clued as a 6ac (TOOL), not as a cocktail.
Liked this, having found myself on Paul’s wavelength for once – which is a shame as all his crosswords are beautifully put together, but sometimes I just can’t get going. The TOOL/LOOT manipulation jumped almost straight out at me,which made things somewhat easier (whereas a brief scan of today’s offering has produced precisely zilch so far.) I particularly liked FRISBEE although I can’t quite remember why a week later. Thanks to Eileen and Paul !
Thanks for the explanations Eileen.
As usual, I did as much as I easily could ignoring his references to another clue and then went seriously looking. Like others, my way in was SCREWDRIVER.
10a I eventually decided the right answer lay in one of those impenetrable British dialects where they said something like “it were early” which was then contracted to t’w’early or TWIRLY. Made sense from this distance.
Thanks for the exercise Paul.
Thanks to Paul and Eileen. I enjoyed this puzzle and its dual themes, and liked the little anecdote from Eileen’s train journey and learning about “Twirlies”. Otherwise it’s all been said.
Eileen @47)
Re CHAINSAW, my earlier comment was carelessly worded. I did indeed get TOOL from GIMLET, SCREWDRIVER and CHAINSAW but did not mean to imply that the last of these was a cocktail! I might have led Valentine up the garden path to the toolshed, where not all tools are cocktails, and for that I apologise.
Me @51
Oops, sorry – CHAINSAW is a cocktail! The point is that it was not clued as such. (My ignorance of cocktails knows no bounds.)
Perhaps I was lucky, because I got TOOL straight away. I was slightly hesitant about ‘loot’, but not for long as the other tools appeared.
I agree that Spoonerisms like that are not ideal, but I don’t agree with the moans of those with rhotic accents. Perhaps for historical reasons, the ‘voice’ of cryptic crosswords speaks in British RP (unless otherwise hindicated). Good British dictionaries give phonetics and online, you can press a button and hear the ‘correct’ pronunciation.
I’d heard of, but forgotten about bus-pass twirlies, but you don’t need to have to get it. It’s a well-indicated near-homophone (“loosely speaking”) with a clear definition. ‘So early’ for ‘swirly’ doesn’t really match PREMATURE in the way that ‘too early’ does, although in the currently ubiquitous (and to me and perhaps some of you, irritating) ‘so’ of ‘thank you so much for having me’, it’s close, perhaps.
‘Muppet’, otoh, works well with ‘tool’, slang for ‘penis’, being a well-known perjorative for a useless man, just like ‘prick’ or ‘dick’.
Can’t understand the condemnation of Alf Garnett as “inappropriate”; he wasn’t there as a figure for emulation but a guy to be mocked by his trendy son-in-law, who expressed all the views Guardian readers now find “appropriate” (to whatever).
Alan@52, double oops! Try again …
Oops! Sorry, Alan, did you find CHAINSAW is in fact a cocktail? I’d heard of the two in the puzzle, but not that one.
Thanks Eileen and good work spreading the word on your train trip! Good thinking Anna@23 for a very plausible alternative, it didn’t occur to me despite PUPPET being one of my last ones in and “Muppet” being one of my favourite mild insults (I had tried to work some sort of card game terminology in there, luckily didn’t think of Rubber or it would have foxed me royally in that quarter). With apologies for lowering the tone on Sunday, I am surprised there hasn’t been more made of CHOPPER=tool, but maybe you were all aware of the pebble cutters used in the Lower Palaeolithic age, I had assumed it was Pauline ribaldry at work until Wikipedia suggested the alternative – I wonder which was intended? Thanks Paul.
Tony @55
Yes, I looked it up in between my two consecutive comments above, still wondering whether it was one. I have to do that because more or less any unsuitable name for a cocktail can turn out to be one.
Thanks again Paul and Eileen. I had never heard of GIMLET and didn’t get GUMDROP for some reason. I also put SWIRLY and justified it as sounds like early in the SW corner of the grid. I remember thinking that there will be some complaints about that!
Gazzh, when I was a little lad, a while after the Lower Paleolithic, when we heated the house with a coal fire, we had a tool to chop wood for kindling that we called a CHOPPER, with a rectangular blade about 6-9″ long and 2-3″ wide (as I recall), with the cutting edge on one of the long sides and a tine to hold a handle projecting out from the other long side. I think the handle actually disintegrated and we just used the tine as the handle later.
In fact, here‘s one being sold on eBay, described in full as a “HEAVY DUTY KINDLING AXE STICK CHOPPER”.
Thanks for pointing that out Tony Collman, I had assumed that all wood splintering devices were just axes really, but that link shows otherwise and now I realise I have always equated choppers with machetes anyway, so should never have had my mind in the gutter in the first place.
Know nowt about tools have no practical ability whatsoever but pick up the theme quickly & delighted to complete. Thoroughly enjoyed it.
Thanks Paul & Eileen
Well, well, well – I don’t suppose anyone will see this but I have to add it for the sake of the archive.
It seems there is more to this puzzle than I had realised. I had absolutely no knowledge of the alternative meaning of CHOPPER and it never occurred to me to look it up: from the nursery rhyme ‘Oranges and lemons’, I’ve always known,
‘Here comes a candle to light you to bed
And here comes a chopper to chop off your head’
so a chopper is a tool – that chops.
On the other hand, as soon as I solved 6 across and saw that Paul had used two different meanings of TOOL, I waited for a third and, to be honest, was quite amazed not to find it – and even more amazed (and relieved) that none of the comments had picked up on it. And now, from the last handful of comments, it seems that, in a roundabout way, he did use it.
I’m pretty sure Paul meant it in the vulgar slang sense of the word 😉
According to the annotated solution in the Graun “puppet” is a software tool (not one I have used in my 30 years as a programmer) but I think the glove version works better to be honest.
Thought I’d check up on Saturday’s on my way to Monday’s. I hadn’t remembered the gruesome ending to Oranges and Lemons — what a way to scare children!
Eileen @62 “Oranges and Lemons ” was a themed puzzle fairly recently by Matilda, a rare theme I got because I knew the rhyme, we used to play a game in the playground , two people link arms and everyone walks under to the rhyme. The unlucky person gets “chopped” at the end.
Roz – I remember that Matilda puzzle from August and, of course, the playground game.
Valentine, @64, we used to take a gruesome delight in doing the chopping!
Re 11a CHAINSAW – If, when considering a possible homeophone clue, we test both the rhotic and non-rhotic pronunciations of the fodder, then whether we are rhotic or non-rhotic speakers should not be an impediment to solving the clue. Surely that is not too great a stretch for the supple minds of cryptic crossword buffs.
P.S. I am a rhotic speaker, so chaw = chore does not jump out at me, but that doesn’t make the clue unfair – in fact I quite liked it.