Well well, a Monk on theme Tuesday – more than a bit tricky I found. Bert and Joyce are off again today so I’m your occasional stand-in.
OK a lot more tricky, Monk usually is – it actually took me quite a while to see the links fully – I saw BARRY appear in the LH column but nothing to follow on until I saw CRYER in the RH. A very prolific comic and writer of jokes often for others who died recently, some lights are tributes to him, there’s almost certainly more I haven’t twigged although I suspect 10a and 25a are part.
B(ishop) & ILL (evil) inside RIANT – laughing
POKER with the P replaced, – a joker could be a card in a pack or a wit
A & CROSS (a mule say) & most of THE BOARD(s)
A wasted [GREEN]* & E(nergy) & RATE for speed. Not sure that renewed means regenerate rather than regenerated
A topless (h)ITCH
RAT for a grass inside STAIL – sounds like STALE – worn out
RAG – banter in TIC(k) moment shortly. Cryer’s death has certainly been described as tragic.
B(ook) inside YAHOO for a brute
AU for gold inside a ground [NEARED]*
Hidden in thESAUrus
INS short for insurance & URGENCY
EXTRA a walk on part & AIR for publicity inside [DE NIRO]* possibly
W(ife) & ITTY or babyish LITTLE
R(omeo) & ON – working – inside ACTEUR a French actor
As in going for a recce R(esistance) supported by ECCE meaning BEHOLD
Cryptic def
Initial letter missing from (t)ISSUE paper
Aztec language – [(camer)A HAUNT]* being fanned & L(ine)
O(ld) & CAR & I & initially N(amed) A(fter)
END (death) &a fluid [IN CORE]*
A(dult) & SENT – dispatched inside BEE for worker
A playful [DANISH ARE] – it’s a Jewish month apparently, Monk often seems to include this sort of clue.
GI US soldier in A LOCAL – pub
BLUE alternative for blew for squander & alternate letters of iT fIfTy
A & US – American in two ways & most of TRIA(l) – suffering.
BEY – an Ottoman governor inside AA a motoring organisation & NT the National Trust
Cryptic def & Def – A rhino might charge and old slang for money
COR for MY! (funnily enough the same cropped up yesterday) & F(ollowing) & U(nited)
Big fan of Barry Cryer’s work. As usual with a Monk, I had to consult Chambers on myriad occasions. Indeed, it confirmed that REGENERATE can be an adjective meaning “renewed”. Didn’t know the Jewish month, the old chancellor, the Aztec and “ecce”.
There are probably some other related answers which I haven’t recognised, but a nice tribute to BARRY CRYER, whose name I remember well. Overall, I found this less difficult than many of Monk’s offerings, but there were still some uncommon words/senses such as BLUE for ‘squander’, NAHUATL and ADAR SHENI.
At 11a, I think REGENERATE is in the adjectival sense, which can mean ‘renewed’.
Thanks to Monk and flashling
Sorry, Hovis, despite refreshing the page just before submitting, I still managed to cross.
A great cruciverbal tribute to a very funny man
Thanks to Monk and flashling
With a setter of Monk’s calibre, I wouldn’t expect to see such old crossword chestnuts as NAHUATL and ADAR SHENI pop up but there you go 😉 I did guess at a Jewish month for the second and looked them up but the first was beyond me. I wondered whether fans might be an anagrind but had no ideal what I was aiming for. I was also frustrated for some time by ALOGICAL, wanting to insert ‘ration’ for serving and thinking of the – too long – ‘irrational’. Amazing to discover that ‘blue’ means to squander: you have to scroll through a heck of a lot of phrases including ‘blue’ in the online Chambers before you finally get to the entirely separate second definition. And, to end the list of new words, RIANT for laughing may have appeared in crosswords I’ve yet to see but I’ve never encountered it anywhere else.
A cleverly worked and fitting tribute to a great comic mind with EXTRAORDINAIRE being my favourite and fittingly appropriate to the man, the theme, the puzzle and the setter (not forgetting our astute stand-in blogger)
The Nimrod IQ was well above my pension grade but this was a joy to solve on a fine morning with birds singing
BC is something of an unsung legend-apart from things like “I’m sorry I havent a clue” his writing credits go way way back
I saw a slight French connection here as in Extraordinaire, Riant and Raconteur
Great Puzzle
Thanks all
Thanks both. I really will have to tune into this Tuesday theme thingy.
Confidently used the reveal button for NAHUATL and ADAR SHENI (knew I wouldn’t know them). I thought the topless jerk was a twITCH but hey ho. No problem with REGENERATE which I cross-referred with ‘degenerate’. YAH-BOO I now only from its use by Billy Bunter and ‘up yours’ seems a quite crude translation. Is BLUE (TIT) intended as a homophone for ‘blew’ with ‘given’ as the indicator? Or is it (as PostMark seems to offer) a hitherto un-encountered synonym.
Cryer was indeed a great wit and the source of many chortles.
Alphalpha@7
‘Blue’ can’t stand for ‘blew’ in ‘BLUE TIT’, I guess, as it is ‘squander’, but not ‘squandered’.
Must be as PM says.
Alphalpha @ 7 and KVa @ 8: I think I was just reinforcing what flashling said in the blog. Although that note does refer to ‘blew’ which I don’t think plays any part in the clue. Chambers gives the entirely separate definition of ‘blue’ as:
blue 2 /bloo/ (informal)
transitive verb
To squander
ORIGIN: Prob for blow 1
blow 1, in turn, has definition
13. To squander (slang)
I did wonder about homophone (given ?) of ‘blew tit’ – as the indicator comes after the ‘tit’ – and it went in with a shrug. But uncomfortably for the reason given by KVa – ‘blew’ indicates past tense and ‘squander’ present. I only looked up blue out of curiosity towards the end of the puzzle.
KVa: That makes sense. (I will try not to blue this information.)
OK you got me, I was not really happy with blew/blue and or possible homophones and was just hoping to get away with it, you can only spend so long cogitating on things 🙂
I’m sure Billy Bunter would not have been impressed by 17 ac. He would have said YAH-BOO sucks, in fact. I, on the other hand, always like a Swiftian reference. I was pretty sure Konrad Adenauer was never known for his wit, then ESAU made me think of Alan Bennet, but missed the now obvious Barry Cryer
flashling@11: After extended consideration 🙂 I’ve decided to agree.
Difficult with all those obscure meanings but very good.
Curiously today’s Toughie was a bit of a mare for the time of week too, but also very good. It even has a compound anagram. Times, with generally unerring editorship, pitched it about right for me.