Cyclops 722 – Reckless Hardliner

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Some typical Cyclops-ean fare this fortnight…cocking a snook at a variety of political (and other) targets, with a smidgeon of smuttery mixed in…

…and generally POKING FUN at all and sundry: a ‘dodgy peer’ at 1A;  a minister who has ‘ballsed up’ at 11A; a ‘loud Remoaner’ at 29A; lockdown rules assailing our sanity at 30A; a ‘Kabul fiasco’ at 17D; and a ‘No 10 gathering’ at 21D.

I don’t think we have seen Diana much recently, but she appears as an ‘ex-royal’ at 28A. I’m not sure if this should be taken literally, or whether it refers to the fact that she renounced/lost her royal status before her death? Given that that was nearly 25 years ago, I don’t think the clue should cause too much offence either way.

There is a bit of stereotyping with a reference to it being grim ‘oop north’ at 5D, but it feels a bit like levelling up down is working, in a way, in that it is pretty grim everywhere at the moment…

 

My thanks to Cyclops, and I hope all is clear below…

 

Across
Clue No Solution Clue (definition underlined)

Logic/parsing
1A RECIPE Dodgy peer protecting Conservative intel sources – what’s to be made from that? (6)

RE_PE (anag, i.e. dodgy, of PEER) around (protecting) CI (first letters, or sources, of ‘Conservative Intel’)

[‘that thing’ being a list of ingredients!]
4A RUN SHORT Diarrhoea intense around mid-March – become exhausted (3,5)

RUN_S (diarrhoea) + HO_T (intense) around R (middle letter of maRch)
10A CRACKDOWN Suppression of cocaine on the decrease (9)

CRACK (cocaine) + DOWN (on the decrease)
11A RISHI Minister ballsed-up his introduction to theological study (5)

R_I (Religious Instruction) around (introducing) ISH (anag, i.e. ballsed-up, of HIS)

[Rishi Sunak, UK Chancellor, and would-be-PM?…]
12A LATIN City plonker’s arse over tip? Language! (5)

LA (Los Angeles, city) + TIN (nit, or plonker, reversed, or arse over tip)
13A STRAPLESS Order made to an over-zealous disciplinarian for a type of dress? (9)

an over-zealous disciplinarian might be told to STRAP LESS!
14A SNUFF IT Turn up your toes, fiddling with stiff ‘un! (5,2)

anag, i.e. fiddling, of STIFF UN

[‘turn up your toes’ being a euphemism for dying]
16A HAWAII State of ‘a wife excellent’ covered by Hello! (6)

H_I (Hello!) around (covering) A + W (wife) + AI (A1 – excellent)

[US state]
19A GDANSK Port bottled by Bootleg Dan’s Kitchen (6)

hidden word, i.e. bottled by, in ‘bootleG DANS Kitchen’

[Polish port]
21A TALLY-HO “Mate with nuts hot on the outside” – cry of one on the hunt (5-2)

T_HO (anag, i.e. nuts, of HOT) around (on the outside of) ALLY (mate)
23A HARDLINER Tory rebel, say, having puzzling row with right? (9)

HARD (puzzling) + LINE (row) + R (right)

[I thought Tory rebels were usually ‘wets’ rather than hardliners?]
25A AUDIT Investigation when car hits terrorist leader (5)

AUDI (car) + T (leading letter of Terrorist)
27A TIE-IN Connection that is contracted in the can (3-2)

T_IN (can) around IE (id est, that is, contracted)
28A DISCOURSE Ex-royal’s vulgar broadcast speech (9)

DIS (Diana, ex-royal, plus possessive ‘s) + COURSE (homophone, i.e. broadcast – COURSE can sound like COARSE – vulgar)
29A FORENAME Loud Remoaner endlessly turning ‘start handle’ (8)

F (forte, music, strong, or loud) + ORENAME (anag, i.e. turning, of REMOANE(R), endlessly)

[the forename being the start of one’s name, or handle]
30A STAY IN Follow lockdown rules? That’s assailing sanity! (4,2)

anag, i.e. assailing, of SANITY!
Across
Clue No Solution Clue (definition underlined)

Logic/parsing
1D RECKLESS It’s rash to reduce the devastation after wife’s left (8)

if you reduce the devastation, you might WRECK LESS, and with W (wife) leaving, you would be left with RECKLESS
2D CHANT Melody’s talk about ‘The End of Biden’ (5)

CHA_T (talk) around N (end letter of bideN)
3D POKING FUN The joy of bonking – and piss-taking? (6,3)

Crudely put, the joy (FUN) of bonking (POKING) could be POKING FUN?
5D UP NORTH Grim location’s revolting direction? (2,5)

UP (revolting) + NORTH (direction)
6D SYRUP Your swift introduction to drink: a sweet medicine? (5)

S_UP (drink) around (introducing) YR (your, abbreviated, or swift)
7D OBSCENITY It’s depraving, old boy, since getting beaten – Blair gutted (9)

OB (old boy) + SCENI (anag, i.e. beaten, of SINCE) + TY (TonY Blair, gutted)
8D THIRST Turtle’s head put on artist, which calls for a drink (6)

T (head, or first letter, of Turtle) + HIRST (Damien, artist)
9D CORSET Escort’s devious means of restraining corporation (6)

anag, i.e. devious, of ESCORT
15D UNDERWEAR Lingerie put on less than is necessary? (9)

if you put on (WEAR) less than is necessary (UNDER), then you might ‘UNDER WEAR’?
17D WALKABOUT Bush-style ramble: “Kabul – wot a fiasco!” (9)

anag, i.e. fiasco, of KABUL WOT A
18D SOUTHERN Not from 5, The Sun or otherwise (8)

anag, i.e. otherwise, of THE SUN OR
20D KINGDOM “Making do means keeping hold of one’s country and people” (7)

hidden word, i.e. keeping hold of, in, ‘maKING DO Means’
21D THRASH Hancock’s first to get in to bad-mouth No.10 gathering? (6)

T_RASH (badmouth) around H (Hancock’s first letter)

[cheese and wine party, or work meeting?]
22D WHAT-IF ‘West has faith shattered’ speculation (4-2)

W (west) + HAT-IF (anag, i.e. shattered, of FAITH)
24D LINEN See 26dn. (5)

see 26D
26D DIRTY (LINEN) & 24 Its sleazy owners would want it washed but not aired? (5,5)

CD – those with metaphorical ‘dirty linen’ might not want it aired, but those with actual dirty linen might want it washed!?…

22 comments on “Cyclops 722 – Reckless Hardliner”

  1. Thanks for the blog, a lot of clever clues in this one.
    I think the HARDLINERS are against Covid restrictions, there was a large 100+ rebellion over plan B.
    I liked the hidden answers for this, very neatly concealed and the STRAPLESS clue, RECKLESS was in fact very similar and UNDERWEAR really.
    ( An S has escaped from your DISCOURSE ]

  2. Like Roz@1, enjoyed both GDANSK and especially KINGDOM hidden within the surface reading.
    LOI was THRASH, which was clear enough from the parsing once the crossers were there, but we’d not heard of that word used for a ‘party’ before.
    Thanks Cyclops and mc_rapper67

  3. O woe is me – I put CUT SHORT because it fitted and never went back to check the wordplay.
    I must remember when doing the puzzle using the online *.puz file it pops up saying “Well done you’ve completed the puzzle” even if you have entered something wrong.

    I made life hard for myself earlier in the solve too by writing in DIRTY MONEY instead of Linen, which I reckon is a fitting answer for the clue if not the puzzle. This made Forename and Hardliner harder than they should have been.

    I thought FORENAME had a lovely clue. But favourite here has got to be 3D POKING FUN with its reference to Alex Comfort’s famous 70s best seller “The Joy of Bonking” – that is what it was called wasn’t it?

  4. I’m still struggling with these after discovering the fun I was missing out a few months back despite being an eye reader for 20 years. I’m still too literal though: I got resit for 11a as its in minister and when you balls up your studies …, although it seemed somewhat weak.

    17a I thought particularly clever, with the nod to George “Walker” Bush which got me, er, on the right path.

    7d had me working around bloody and bodily and I only got there by elimination based on my (bad) cutshort for 4a.

    Thanks for doing this blog!

  5. Thanks mc_rapper67 and Cyclops. I marked 27a as my favourite. I did wonder about 2d CHANT =MELODY but I can see it now in the Chambers Crossword dictionary. I was also ‘puzzled’ about SWIFT in 6d and thought it might be superfluous but I can see from your blog that it’s an abbreviation indicator and makes perfect sense.
    On re-reading the clues that other posters liked, I’d also agree there some really neat clues in this edition.

  6. beermagnet @ 3 I think bonking was later than the 70s but the reference is still valid, it is totally out of fashion now, my students do not bat an eyelid if I call something bonkers, at one time I could never use that term.

  7. I was stuck for ages on Recipe since I had ‘making fun’ for a while.
    @Roz…surely bonking and bonkers have completely different meanings? Albeit, one can be bonkers and bonking at the same time.

  9. Winsor @7 bonkers can mean people who are bonking and students are very easily amused. The term seems to have completely died out now amongst the young.

  10. Thanks for all the comments and feedback.

    Roz at #1 – I have duly restored the S to DISCOURSE

    Dan at #4 – glad you are persevering – you were in good company with CUT SHORT, as my esteemed fellow blogger’s brave admission at #3 shows!

    WInsor and Roz – get a room, you two ( ; + > ). I think ‘bonking’ segued into ‘shagging’ in the 80s/90s (although not as often as I would have liked!) – not sure what the millennials and generation noughties call it these days…

  11. It is a bit like words for good – bad, sick , awesome , wicked , lush – bare seems to be in favour at the moment.

  12. 13ac, STRAPLESS was amusing, as was 14ac, SNUFF IT. “Start handle” was a clever cryptic def for 19ac, FORENAME (although wasn’t the device for starting a car called a ‘starting handle’?)

    15dn UNDERWEAR reminds me of my recent contribution to the game of Pedantle of the word “barer”, explained as meaning “having even less clothes on”. No one questioned it!

    Mc, at 28ac, DISCOURSE, you write “course can sound like coarse” (my emphasis). Is there another way of pronouncing it, or were you just laying the groundwork ready to deal with any homophone-related complaints?

    On the word ‘bonking’ I can confirm that it became current here in the 1980s to the best of my knowledge (is that ttbomk on the internet?). Also, it is not a usage known in the USA, even to older folks. I know this from following a bald eagle nestcam in Florida, where assaults between rival sibling nestlings are described as incidents of “bonking”. Amusingly (for me, anyway), the robot censor which patrols their Discord page for words not fit to be seen by youngsters and which won’t allow you to use the words ‘snatch’ or even ‘hole’ has no objections to mentions of ‘bonking’.

  13. Tony Collman at #12 – yes, I have had so many ‘homophone-related complaints’ over the years that I now always say ‘could’, to allow for the fact that in some accents or dialects the words might not be homophonic!

    (Hope you liked the full linked solution at 26D?!)

  14. Thanks, mc_rapper; enjoyed this though it felt a bit less barbed than some.

    Forgive me for asking here, but :
    I use the Crossword Solver program, downloaded from (as I think I recall) the Crossword Compiler site, to solve these Cyclops puzzles on my PC.
    It always irritates me that the entry software has a ‘skip filled cells’ function which means that I can’t just type in an answer into a row or column if there are crossers present; I have to omit the crossing letter. Usually my muscle-memory just types in all the letters and then I have to go back and rub them out afterwards and re-enter.
    There’s no setting/option I can see to prevent this. Is there any way I can avoid this issue? Apologies again for raising an OT question here – I’ll happily take it elsewhere.

  16. Mc, excellent to see the full answer with the clue. Thanks. It was so ‘right’ that I didn’t even notice it till you drew attention to it! Bracketing the second part is a good way of drawing attention to its status, too. If it was a three-part answer, would the second and third parts each be contained within a separate set of brackets?

    Jvector, your best bet would probably be to ask about this on 15²’s General Discussion page (seventh item on the drop-down menu, top left).

  17. Roz@11, I don’t have much to do with young people in general, but I thought ‘bare’ was an intensifier rather than a word for good?

  18. jvector @14 — if you download crosswords from the Eye’s website in the Across Lite format, one of the available solving options is “skip to next square always”.

  19. Thanks for the continuing comments…although it is now time to move on to Cyclops 723!

    jvector – sorry, I have very little experience of using Crossword Solver (or AcrossLite) so there will be others better placed to advise you – and maybe in General Discussion, as Tony Collman suggested. I have similar annoyances when swapping between the Grauniad/Telegraph online sites (which don’t ‘skip’) and the Times one (which does, by default, although you can turn it off)

  20. I saw Smackdown for 10ac and mixed my smack with my crack. Took me ages to sort out 1 down and correct my mistake. Thanks for the explanations. Now to go and sort out my drug knowledge …

  21. While I know we should not talk about current puzzles, those who use AcrossLite may wish to know that this version has a mistake in clue 26A….the final word is ‘bottles’ according to the web version of the mag.

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