A classic Boatman puzzle this morning, with several of his trademark features …
… a theme exploiting the various meanings and uses of a single word, alternative uses of ‘Boatman’ – and a Spoonerism.
I rather liked 10ac CHAPERONE, 11ac BUGLE CALL, 12ac VIDEO, 15ac NUMERIC, 25ac PALATES, 30ac SCOUNDREL, 3dn AGATE and 19dn NUPTIALS.
Thanks to Boatman for an enjoyable challenge.
Definitions are underlined in the clues.
Across
9 Tip of tusk, just about trunk (5)
TORSO
T[usk] + OR SO (just about)
10 Guardian‘s problem with Openreach (9)
CHAPERONE
An anagram (problem) of OPENREACH
11 Perhaps retreat in blunder, losing knight and corps entirely (5,4)
BUGLE CALL
BU[n]GLE (blunder) minus n (knight, in chess notation) + C (corps) + ALL (entirely)
12 Moving record of old poet taking last of coterie cycling (5)
VIDEO
OVID (old poet) + [coteri]E, with the first letter moved to the end – ‘cycling’ – an amusing surface
13 Parts listed discovered for singer, perhaps (7)
ARTISTE
Inside letters (‘discovered’) of [p]ART[s] [l]ISTE[d]
15 Careless manicure, losing one of digits (7)
NUMERIC
An anagram (careless) of M[a]NICURE, minus a (one) – a gruesome picture, with a neat play on ‘digits’
17 Salmon oil, a regular early protection for young vertebrates (5)
AMNIA
Alternate (regular) letters of sAlMoN oIl A
18 Type of rock almost a joke (3)
PUN
PUN[k]
20 Reports of slate being quarried (5)
TALES
An anagram (quarried?) of SLATE
22 Prickly character criticised nationalist answer on energy (7)
ECHIDNA
E (energy) + CHID (criticised) + N (nationalist) + A (answer)
25 Tastes juice, returning to drink coffee — not a tea, say (7)
PALATES
A reversal (returning) of SAP (juice) round (to drink) LAT[t]E (coffee) minus t (tea, say)
26 Cladding of marble: ideally, even, it could be gold (5)
MEDAL
M[arbl]E + even letters of iDeAlLy
27 Hide rock, one that holds gold? (9)
SKINFLINT
SKIN (hide) + FLINT (rock)
30 Terrible person makes noise about Conservative freedom with no rest (9)
SCOUNDREL
SOUND (noise) round C (Conservative) + REL[ease] (freedom) minus ease (rest)
31 Society suffering, but they’re making record profits (5)
SHELL
S (society) + HELL (suffering) – a sobering reminder, if we needed one
Down
1 Stick of rock? Not one Boatman supports (4)
STAB
AB (Able Seaman – boatman) after ST[one] (rock)
Struggling with the definition, I found this
2 Running after light that may be seen through this rock (8)
BRIGHTON
ON (running) after BRIGHT (light that may be seen) – referring to the letters running through a stick of seaside rock
3 Make a hole in second rock that may hold gold (4)
BORE
B (second) + ORE (rock that may hold gold)
4 Pull together in Cuppers, otherwise one is sunk (6,2)
SCRAPE UP
An anagram (otherwise) of CUPPERS round (is sunk) A (one)
5 One swims in under rock (6)
MARLIN
IN after (under, in a down clue) MARL (rock)
6 Type of rock like lead? (5,5)
HEAVY METAL
Double definition
7 Having more weight applied to type of rock, say (6)
BOLDER
Sounds like (say) ‘boulder’
8 The Rock screens lead role (4)
HERO
Contained in tHE ROck
13 It’s found in rock — after support it gets to grow (5)
AGATE
If we add ‘prop’ (support) we get ‘propagate’ (grow)
14 Spooner’s rocky nation, you might say, is independent (5-5)
STAND-ALONE
Regular readers will know of my general dislike of Spoonerisms and I’m struggling to make sense of this one: the best I can do is ST AND ALONE (a homophone – you might say – of allone) to give Stallone (Rocky) – but it isn’t a Spoonerism, is it? Edit: please see Petert @2
16 Barrels of rock taken off vessel, leading to questions (5)
CASKS
I think this must be C[rock] (vessel) + ASKS (questions
19 Nobody initially excited over faltering A-list marriage (8)
NUPTIALS
N[obody] + UP (excited) + an anagram (faltering) of A-LIST – great surface
21 Heads learn it’s unusual (8)
LATRINES
An anagram (unusual) of LEARN IT’: I learned a long time ago – from crosswords – that ‘heads’ is a term for a ship’s toilet ( see here)
23 River Rock? (6)
HUDSON
Double definition, the second referring to the film star Rock Hudson
24 Road’s ruined: bumps initially accumulate on the surface (6)
ADSORB
An anagram (ruined) of ROAD’S + B[umps]
26 A salty thing, Boatman called ‘saint with heart of stone’ (4)
MISO
I stared at this for a while, before seeing the signifcance of ‘called’, indicating a homophone – MI – of ‘me’ (the usual self-referential ‘Boatman’) + S (saint) + the middle letter (heart) of stOne
28 Carved from tufa stone, immoveable (4)
FAST
Contained in tuFA STone
29 Rock from upper bits of tundra: igneous lava terrain (4)
TILT
Initial letters (upper bits) of Tundra Igneous Lava Terrain
I went along the same route as you for STAND ALONE then decided it was a spoonerism of LAND A STONE.
Hovis@1 Me too, but I thought maybe Land o’ Stone (land of stone)
14 D is it A LAND (nation) STONE (rocky)
Not wonderful but my best guess?
Not my favourite today. Thanks to Eileenfor parsing what I couldn’t.
Boatman was on my “bad” list but I gave it a try, and got most of it out with a fair number of smiles. The rock theme was fun. I can’t fathom STAB either. I spent quite some time trying unsuccesfully to equate heads with toilets. I wasn’t sure of 26d, as I tend to expect Saint to be St, not just S. Brighton rock? Um .. a Graham Greene novel?
Isn’t “to type” part of the definition rather than the word play in 7d?
You’re right, Saddler @5 – I did wonder about that. I’ll amend it now.
Agree with Petert@2’s interpretation of 14d.
To stick, as a verb, means to stab (Chambers definition 2).
I thought this was great fun and on the easier side for Boatman. Loved 31a.
Thanks E and B
Re 1d, I always remember that you “stick” a pig from Lord of the Flies.
Yes, “quarried” was a slightly odd anagram indicator in 20a. Is it that you are digging the answer out from the anagram fodder?
An enjoyable challenge. many thanks Boatman and Eileen.
Hovis @1: I also settled on Land Stone…having given up on Stallone and Sty. Though I’m really not sure. Anyway, a fun solve. I was stumped by 13D: AGATE, which now seems obvious. With thanks to both.
Thanks, Petert @2 – that makes sense (but it illustrates why I seldom like Spoonerisms: ‘Land o’ stone’ is not a meaningful phrase to me).
Failed 7d. Solved NW corner last.
I did not parse 11ac apart from ALL, 1d.
Liked NUMERIC, VIDEO, SHELL (very timely clue); HUDSON; ARTISTE.
New: HEAD = latrine on a ship; MARL = sedimentary rock.
Thanks, both.
Re stick/stab, viewers of Game of Thrones will be familiar with the line “Stick ‘em with the pointy end.”
I agree on Land o’ stone / LAND A STONE for 14d.
“Stick” is slang for “stab” according to my own memory and apparently the onlineslangdictionary.com.
Also made “Land a Stone” as the Spoonerism as well with “a” sounding like “of”.
Land o’ groan, but I had to laugh 😉 …
Thank you Eileen and Boatman..
For the Spoonerism I get the Stallone/Rocky thing.
And for the nation, you might say, I was thinking of NDA, which, would be a poor homophone of INDIA.
Thanks Boatman and Eileen
In 20, I wondered if ‘quarried’ as anagrind was linked to the fact that the leftovers when (eg) slate has been quarried are called the tailings.
Ah, M Courtney@12. I’ll pay that. Totally misdirected by Rocky/Stallone. I wonder if Boatman even thought of that.
Land o’ stone. Brilliant.
gif@13. 🙂
Firmly in the land o’ stone which worked for me. As did the rest of the puzzle. I felt very much on the wavelength for this one and fairly rattled through three-quarters of it. Very different from Boatman’s last with which I struggled. This kind of theme is his forte and I enjoyed the various types of rock – musical, sweet and solid. Though I did raise an eyebrow at MARL in 5d, having always understood marl to be clay. Is clay a rock? Not defined as such in Chambers but I could easily be persuaded that geologists consider it a rock – I just need one to tell me.
Favourites – I could have ticked lots – CHAPERONE – what a spot!, VIDEO, NUMERIC, PALATES, SHELL, STAB, BORE, CASKS, NUPTIALS and MISO.
Thanks Boatman and Eileen
Not particularly rocky from Boatman today, but enjoyable.
For ‘Land of Stone’ I found this, and also, apparently, a place in ‘Eroninja’ : ‘the Land of Stone is one of the minor countries of the Elemental Nations’.
I liked SKINFLINT for the definition, STAB, MISO and AGATE for the wordplays (although I didn’t think the ‘It’s found in’ in the clue for the latter was really necessary).
Thanks for the fun, Boatman, and for the good explanations, Eileen, where I failed to parse ‘(c)ROCK’.
Land a stone, Land o’ stone, A Land Stone, Stone a land….. whatever are not strictly Spoonerisms, either consonantal or vocalic. Maybe that’s why Boatman inserts the phrase “”you might say” in the clue.
I came to the same conclusion as you Eileen about C(rock) in CASKS. You seem a bit unsure in the blog but it came across as pretty certain to me.
Favourite was SKINFLINT.
Thanks, Eileen and all – Glad to see that enjoyment is being had …
Petert @2 and Grantinfreo @13- Indeed. The groan was expected, but that’s part of the fun of spoonerisms, from my point of view.
PM @ 18 – MARL is borderline as a type of rock, I accept, but there is “marlstone”, which made me feel more or less comfortable that the two, if not identical, could at least be excusably confused.
V. enjoyable. I never thought before that FAST was one of those auto-antonyms (like CLEAVE) that have two diametrically opposed meanings.
… and Tim C @ 20 – Yes, that’s exactly why “you might say” is there!
Robi @19 – I didn’t have “it’s found in” in the clue for AGATE at first, but my checker pointed out that agate is a form of quartz that’s found as an inclusion in rock, rather than a type of rock itself – a subtle distinction that I’d have been tempted to ignore, if it hadn’t been so easy to fix.
Blaise @22 – Indeed! FAST = “loose, not loose” as I was once very pleased to write.
Nicely accessible for Boatman, especially on a busy day!
Indeed stick is a (rather unpleasant) verb meaning to stab (usually a human being) with a pointed object (usually a knife) but unlike much slang, urban or otherwise, does not seem to be restricted to a particular time or culture. (I wonder whether the dictionary to which Eileen’s link refers us may have its underwear in somewhat of a twist?!)
Nice puzzle. Many thanks, both and all
Cleave unite, cleave split; fast immovable, fast … loose? Hmm.
Agree with Lord Jim @8 re ‘stick a pig’ though it is decades since I read Lord of the Flies. Powerful first impressions.
First Boatman I’ve tried and I very much enjoyed the many and varied permutations on this theme.
There were many I liked included NUMERIC (a Mafia manicure perhaps, Eileen?), SKINFLINT, NUPTIALS and LATRINES.
Thanks for the fun, Boatman, and a great blog from Eileen.
Spoonerism on 14 down works for me – tho’ 2 leters inmstead of one
A Land Stone + Stand alone
Failed with 1 down (where I tried a totally unparsed STOB) and 26 down, which I’ve used in cooking but didn’t consider particularly salty. I’ve never heard of AMNIA, but, still, thanks for the enjoyment Boatman, and congratulations on the blog, Eileen, which explained the clue I couldn’t parse (the c in CASKS).
Diane @27 & Lord Jim @8. It is considerably more than half a century since I read Lord of the Flies, so I was never going to recall that particular instance of ‘sticking’ a pig. However, the expression, ‘bleeding like a stuck pig’ is surely commonplace enough to remind us of the usage and the practice.
Chemist@28 et al. I think the difficulty some are facing here is due to the fact that Spooner himself had a practice, not a definition, and there are different ways to codify the practice into a rule, depending on how much you want to generalize. In fact, Collins online has all of initial consonants, initial consonant clusters, initial sounds and even “initial or other sounds” in its various sections. So there you go!
What I learned today was that Boatman has a checker (@23), and I was glad to hear . I had thought years ago that all compilers used at least one, but apparently that’s not so.
Thanks all for full explanation of the Spooner
As for LATRINES it was the only anagrind that fit the crossers but not a word about it in St Chambers
Thought that BORE was a bit stretchy
but otherwise fine-I think however I think Boatman might slip in the off Cromarty(wind fair to moderate) etc
Oh. I see Boatman’s just been on, so I guess this isn’t relevant now.
But … for the Spoonerism clue, I thought a ‘rocky nation’ was a ‘stony land’. Which could be Spoonerised to ‘standy lone’. Which you might say as ‘stand alone’. Well, it worked for me at the time.
Thanks to Boatman and thanks to Eileen.
Thanks Boatman & Eileen. An enjoyable challenge indeed – I made a reasonably good start but it took a looooong time to finish. Agree the surface for NUPTIALS is particularly good, and the clue for SHELL rather pointed. I rather liked the Spoonerism too.
Thought there were quite a few fairly rocky but gettable clues today, including those for MESO, AMNIA, STAND ALONE, ARTISTE and loi STAB. Lightbulb moment with BRIGHTON towards the end (was chewing/sucking on one of those quite recently) after a trip there beside the sea, beside the sea…
Thanks Boatman and Eileen
I don’t like the looseness of Boatman’s clueing – MISO as “a salty thing”, for example.
Does no-one else remember Willie Rushton’s book “Pigsticking”?
Thanks Boatman and Eileen. I trudged through this rather than skipped. Must be having another bad day
I must say that what slightly irritates me at times is that “one” in the clueing these days can be represented either by a or i. As in the anagram fodder for both SCRAPE UP and NUMERIC…
Thanks Eileen as I hadn’t fathomed the C(rock) thinking that it might be a C(oracle) as for some reason I thought that the O at D was a magic rock rather than a priestess! Made harder today by my own errors, STEM initially for 1d until the self-referential 26d forced a rethink, and a daft SPRUCE UP for 4d which was just lazy (and I am not so familiar with the actual answer having that meaning). Yes maybe some woolliness but I thought a lot of invention went into the clues and possible meanings of the key word, and plenty of humour too so thanks Boatman.
Ark Lark @37. Relieved it wasn’t just me, then.
Tough today, real grind to get to the end. A few dodgy definitions I thought, e.g. one that no-one seems to have highlighted here is “pull together” = “scrape up”? I sort of get it (I think), but struggle to think of a sentence where one could be substituted for the other.
Sorry, but this for me was an unpleasant solve waiting to see which liberty the compiler would take next, together with a tiresome ‘theme’.
Like yesterday, at the outer limits of my ability as a solver, but all the more satisfying for getting to the end, and enough ‘penny drops’ moments to make it enjoyable along the way. I’ll get a couple of gripes out of the way first – ‘quarries’ as an anagrind struck me as odd. And my dislike of using a word to indicate a letter (I am reviving this now that I know – thanks to Essexboy I think – that a substantial minority of solvers think the same way) was piqued by ECHIDNA having two examples in a row for the N and the A. But lots of fun, with particular favourites being HUDSON (imaginative use of the theme plus I love movies old and new), MISO (not at all ‘loose clueing’ in my view), BRIGHTON (Eileen seems less sure about this clue. I read it as a bright light is one that can be seen, as opposed to a dim light which might not be visible), and AMNIA (my FOI even though I didn’t know the word, only amniotic). Thanks Eileen for parsing STAB, PALATES, MARLIN and CASKS, which were all guesses for me. Thanks Boatman for the fun.
Thanks, Paul @43
I hadn’t taken into account ‘that may be seen’ – Doh!
I’ll amend the blog.
Ok Latrine got me rushing for lower deck.. still not mad about it!
Thanks Boatman (with reservations to follow) and Eileen.
I did this with several groans. LOI STAB, stick=stab is OK but for me a rock is NOT a stone. I know crowds now always throw “rocks” (stones are apparently testicles in the US) so it follows “roosters” and “goads” in replacing unusable words in the KJB. Though given Guardian setters’ often scatological habits it seems we live in odd times.
Is it not BRIGHTON that “may be seen through this rock”?
Thanks, Eileen and Boatman
Why does everything I post ask me to re-input my name, in spite of my ticking “remember”?
Keith Thomas @48 – see under FAQ at the top of this page.
I have deleted the last four comments – please see Site Policy at the top of this page.
Ian@41 I struggled with that too and could only think of them both being ways to somehow gather up a sufficient amount of something from a meagre supply, eg scrape up an XI for Saturday from blokes still in the pub at Friday closing.
Thanks again Eileen@50!
Quite fun, but I failed on BORE (tried an unparsed GORE) and I wasn’t sure about S = saint in the MISO clue. SS = saints is OK, but in the singular too?
Another question: why does TILT = rock?
SHELL and SKINFLINT were very good.
Thanks, B and E.
Thanks Boatman for some very satisfying entertainment. I needed several attempts to solve this and nearly quit a few times. “Easy” answers like HERO, ARTISTE, and TALES took me forever to see. I liked the groan-inducing Spoonerism as well as PUN, NUPTIALS, and the very clever HUDSON. Thanks Eileen for the blog.
Another beyond me, on a bad run at the moment.
Thanks for the hints.
Eileen @50: Thanks for doing what I hoped you would do.
Phitonelly@52 think of a rocking chair or cradle tilting back and forth OR the “tilt” light that comes on if you shove a pinball table too hard!
[Also thanks from me, Eileen – I didn’t know who to alert.]
Boatman often stumps me and delights me and today was a perfect example. Thanks B for the puzzle and for dropping by to mix with us in this blog.
I, like Gazzh @39, went for spruce up without checking the anagrist carefully. My bad.
For 18a I had PET (a vaguely cryptic clue as pet rocks are almost a joke) but then enjoyed PUN(k) when the crossers forced a rethink.
muffin@36: I remember Pigsticking – joyous stuff.
muffin @57 and others.
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[Thanks kenmac]
Gazzh @56,
Thanks for that. I’m not quite convinced by tilting back and forth, since the phrase back and forth is needed in addition to tilt to imply the motion which rock encompasses. However, I like the tilting/rocking of pinball machines idea. Done it myself on many an occasion 🙂 .
It’s a long time since I had a go on a pinball machine, but I think that they used to have warning signs that flashed up if you attempted to tilt them?
Started this dangerously late after some fizz and a g&t and surprised myself by finishing it in a single sitting. My conclusion is that either I was perfectly on Boatman’s wavelength today, or that I should regularly leave my solving until this time of night!
Many thanks Boatman and Eileen for an enjoyable puzzle and informative blog.
[From Noel Coward’s salute to the public school boors who ran the Raj “I Wonder What Happened To Him…”
…they had him chucked out of the club in Bombay
For, apart from his mess bill exceeding his pay
He took to pig-sticking in quite the wrong way…]
A fence stab is a fence post (in Scotland) and a post is a stick, so I was happy with stab=stick even without thinking of them as verbs.
This was an enjoyable puzzle for me despite a slight looseness. Some lateral thinking required for some of the definitions, and some pleasantly humorous moments.
I don’t see Land of Stone as a spoonerism : “and Stallone” would have been better.
Bit too much rock for me early but like most it gave way in the end. N A for “nationalist answer” does nothing for me.
Thanks Boatie and Eileen
… oh anyone who has seen Full Metal Jacket film will know HEAD is US military for toilets.
I had quite a few in without parsing, although I did manage to get STAND ALONE -> LAND A (of) STONE unaided. I’m not fond of the device used on multiple occasions here where one has to take away a substantial synonym from another one to get the answer.
Don’t know whether anyone will read this, as it’s so late. I love a good Spoonerism but this wasn’t one. I’m not at all sure you can have a Spoonerism when one word starts with a vowel…?
Aunt Ruth @70 – good to hear from you! It’s never too late, as bloggers receive emails of comments on their blogs.
As I said in the blog, , I couldn’t even work out what the ‘Spoonerism’ was – precisely because of the point you’re making. (I have no objections to ‘a good Spoonerism’ – but they’re very few and far between. 😉 )
Well I suppose it’s a matter of opinion but I liked 14d! Spooner didn’t invent a game with rules, he had an idiosyncrasy of speech which broadly involved transposing sounds. One example attributed to him – “a well-boiled icicle” for “a well-oiled bicycle” did have one word starting with a vowel. But this case is a bit different – you have to switch the initial consonant sounds of STAND-A and LONE. I think it’s the sort of thing the Reverend himself might have said.
Lord Jim @72 (& @70, @71) — I liked it too, and have a similar flexibility of interpretation of Spoonerisms… I got told off once for including the following in an amateur puzzle, as one part starts with a vowel not a consonant:-
Full-on Spooner praises Huckleberry (2,4,4)
… and I wish I’d known the “well-boiled icicle” / “well-oiled bicycle” example as a retort at the time!
Just want to apologise for my crude comments yesterday- it appears, from what Eileen said, that they generated some unpleasantness. A propos Spoonerisms I too found STAND ALONE a bridge too far. .A and O don’t sound the same to me though vowels are flexible nationally and internationally- Mr GARBACHOV’s death proves the point.
Keith@74. It’s the sound of an unaccented syllable.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schwa
paddymelon @75: yes it’s like “kinda” for “kind of”. (By the way have you done today’s Tramp yet?)
Rob T @73: I give up, what’s the answer? (Or maybe give us some crossing letters?)
Yes, Lord Jim@76, did Tramp bright and early, midnight UK time but I was so afraid of being done for spoiling, that on this day, when I would so much liked to have fun, I couldn’t play on the Guardian site. 🙁 Waiting for it to come up here.
PDM@77 I was so pleased you got a mention in the puzzle , I will not comment on the Tramp blog today , Have been getting increasingly annoyed all week.