It’s a Vlad Saturday Prize puzzle, and the first word of the first clue is ‘Impale…’! Did anyone get skewered by this puzzle?…
Whilst I wasn’t necessarily skewered, I certainly found myself challenged by a puzzle worthy of the prize slot, and it took a couple of returns to the scene of the action to polish things off.
I didn’t help myself by lazily putting in MEPHISTOPHELEAN at 1A – without properly checking the anagram fodder. (This spelling is a valid alternative in Chambers, as I later discovered, when my check also suggested the correct – here at least – version…). Those two long anagrams across the top and bottom gave a lot of starting/ending letters, but they didn’t turn out to be as helpful as I hoped on getting them in fairly early on.
I couldn’t see any particular theme(ette) or Nina, just a wide-ish range of subject material – with a few GK requirements that hopefully weren’t too stretching for my fellow solvers… DUDLEY MOORE as a ‘comedy practitioner’ should be known to all but the most ‘millennial’ amongst you? LEG BEFORE should be familiar to even those with negligible interest in cricket? And EPSOM as a racecourse to those with little interest in equine pursuits. But maybe the LIV of deLIVer, referring to the current Kerry Packers of the golf world, had some of you hacking around in the rough?
There was a little topicality, with the ephemeral Liz Truss referred to tangentially at 23D as a PM who (ironically, given her robotic and repetitive use of the word) did NOT deliver. We can give Vlad some credit for that, even if the gap between setting and publishing has already consigned her to the trapdoor of history, but our setters will probably have to chuck away all those other Truss-ian clues they have been honing…
I enjoyed the ‘copper’ introducing themselves in ‘I’M PLOD(E)’ at 7D, and the misdirection with ‘mother’s ruin’ at 26A actually leading to MARTINI…and the surface read of 15A was pretty topical as well, but my COD (and next-to-LOI) was EXAM at 18A – short and sweet and mind-twisting!
LOI was TUNESMITH – I had all the crossers but assumed it was going to be some obscure eastern European composer, before I eventually realised the answer was more generic…
My thanks to Vlad for a testing challenge, and I hope all is clear below…
| Across | ||
|---|---|---|
| Clue No | Solution | Clue (definition underlined)
Logic/parsing |
| 1A | MEPHISTOPHELIAN | Impale this one drunk outside pub — wicked! (15)
MEPHISTO_ELIAN (anag, i.e. drunk, of IMPALE THIS ONE) around (outside) PH (Public House) |
| 9A | DELIVER | Could be some bucks around rebel golf tour — make it happen (7)
DE_ER (some bucks) around LIV (current rebel golf tour) [slightly specialised GK here, for non-golf fans? But LIV has been on the front and back pages a lot recently…] |
| 10A | ESCAPED | Took flight, like Batman on drugs (7)
ES (Es, ecstasy tablets, so drugs) + CAPED (like Batman, the Caped Crusader!) |
| 11A | LOT | Left switch to chance (3)
L (left) + OT (to, switched round) |
| 12A | DUDLEY MOORE | Not working — line about entertaining low comedy practitioner (6,5)
DUD (not working) + LEY (line) + MOO (low, mooing sound) + RE (regarding, about) [the late, great, Sir Dudley of Moore – partner-in-crime of the equally late and great Peter Cook] |
| 13A | IMPERATIVE | I’m working, love, not in the mood (10)
IM + ( |
| 15A | HEAL | Prince Harry defending wife finally put right (4)
H_AL (Shakespeare, Prince Harry in various plays) around (defending) E (final letter of wifE) |
| 18A | EXAM | One sat with former PM’s counterpart (4)
EX (former) + AM (a.m., counterpart of p.m.!) |
| 20A | UNEDIFYING | Not pleasant but feuding is settled without force (10)
UNEDIF_G (anag, i.e. is settled, of FEUDING) around (outwith!) YIN (life force, with yang) |
| 23A | MISE EN SCENE | Setting by Vlad in essence awfully boring (4,2,5)
M_E (Vlad) around (being bored by) ISE EN SCEN (anag, i.e. awfully, of IN ESSENCE) |
| 25A | AVE | Greeting woman’s ignored for another (3)
( [I guess the definition could be ‘greeting’, with ‘another’ referring to ‘wave’?] |
| 26A | MARTINI | Drink mother’s ruin occasionally out of can (7)
MA (mother) + R_I (occasional letters of RuIn) around (out-side of) TIN (can) [clever misdirection, as ‘mother’s ruin’ is usually gin!] |
| 27A | SHAMPOO | Very much affected, banker accepted drink in celebration (7)
S_O (very much) around (accepting) HAM (affected) + PO (Italian river, Po – a banker!) [the type of people who drink Champagne regularly are also the type who would call it ‘shampoo’ rather than ‘champers’!] |
| 28A | SPANISH OMELETTE | Homeless patient cooking food (7,8)
anag, i.e. cooking, of HOMELESS PATIENT |
| Down | ||
| Clue No | Solution | Clue (definition underlined)
Logic/parsing |
| 1D | MADELEINE | Male singer popular with English girl (9)
M (male) + ADELE (singer) + IN (popular) + E (English) |
| 2D | PALMTOP | Mike with best friend’s first computer (7)
PAL (friend) + M (mike, phonetic alphabet) + TOP (best) [does anyone use palmtops anymore – or is that what the larger smart-phones are these days?…] |
| 3D | INVADERS | Unwelcome visitors wearing big boots (women out for violence, initially) (8)
If you wear waders, big boots, you might be IN WADERS, then swap W (women) out for V (first letter of Violence) to get INVADERS! |
| 4D | TIRED | Attempted to pull one up, knackered (5)
TRIED – attempted – pulling the I (one) up (for a Down clue) can give TIRED |
| 5D | PRESERVED | Maintained parking’s booked (9)
P (parking) + RESERVED (booked) |
| 6D | ENCAMP | With no money, people affected set up temporary quarters (6)
( |
| 7D | IMPLODE | Copper’s introduction to syndicate ultimately causing collapse (7)
PC Plod is slang for a policeman, or copper, so a copper might introduce themselves as I’M PLOD (!), plus E (ultimate letter of syndicatE) |
| 8D | NUDGE | Reminder for one horse to be mounted (5)
Dun (horse) + EG (for example, for one) – all mounted, or reversed to give NUDGE! |
| 14D | TUNESMITH | French address for 1960s’ US band member and composer (9)
TU (French form of address, singular, you) + NESMITH (1960s US band member, Mike Nesmith, of the Monkees) |
| 16D | LEG BEFORE | Support until now a reason for dismissal (3,6)
LEG (support) + BEFORE (until now) [cricketing term for a method of dismissal] |
| 17D | AFTER ALL | Ultimately, one fellow leaves when winter comes in Aspen? (5,3)
AFTER ( |
| 19D | AUSTRIA | Chambers describing one country and another (7)
A_TRIA (chambers, e.g. of the heart) around (describing) US (one country) |
| 21D | IN A SPOT | Having problem cooking, son admitted? (2,1,4)
IN A _POT (cooking) admitting S (sone) |
| 22D | GEMINI | Joe hiding artist’s sign (6)
G_I (US, soldier, often GI Joe) around (hiding) EMIN (Tracey Emin, UK artist) [sign in the Zodiacal sense] |
| 23D | MUMPS | Complaint raised problem about Liz previously, who didn’t 9 (5)
S_UM (problem) around PM (Liz Truss, recently and briefly, who promised to 9 – deliver, but didn’t really), all raised to give MUMPS [the complaint being a medical one – the mumps] |
| 24D | EPSOM | Be unhappy about eating second course (5)
EP_OM (mope, be unhappy, about) around (eating) S (second) [Epsom being a UK race course] |
Thanks mc-rapper67. Got there slowly but steadily enough and enjoyed the challenge. The two long anagrams went in early and helped me but the SW corner held out to the last partly because MISE EN SCENE was new to me and partly because I just took too long to explain AUSTRIA – after flirting with Assyria. The crossers made SHAMPOO the only possibility and I could see the constituents but again took too long to recognize the idiom. This clue was rather a long stretch altogether I thought.
This was hard – quite appropriate for a prize puzzle – but for me not enough smiles to make up for the slog. Quite a few took a lot of puzzling out post-entry; I never figured UNEDIFYING out even though thanks to the crossers it was the only word that fit. I don’t even think it means not pleasant.
Don’t know if it was intentional, but DUDLEY MOORE was held up because the more obvious substitutions for “line”, namely “l” and “ry” were in the mix but didn’t work. Took a while to remember “ley”.
Liked IMPLODE, EXAM. Tx.
I started off with a completely wrong OFFICE CLOWN at 12a (‘not working’=OFF, and the letters around the LOW of CLOWN looked promising for a while), and on second thoughts there are probably any number of such amateur entertainers who’d have been a lot funnier than DUDLEY MOORE if they’d had an agent instead of an employer…
EXAM was my favourite too – in retrospect it’s so obvious, and I gave it a tick, as I was sure I would forget before the blog appeared what an enjoyable penny-drop-moment it provided. MISE EN SCENE was nicely constructed, I thought. I always struggle to equate ‘artist’ with EMIN, and it was only the rather obvious definition that made me see the light. It was good to see AUSTRIA clued without reference to AUSTR(AL)IA.
Thanks to Vlad and mc.
Dr W @2. UNEDIFYING is sometimes used to describe behaviour that is ‘not pleasant’ to see or to experience. Chambers has “not instructing or uplifting either morally or aesthetically”, which seems to cover quite a lot of bases, but by extracting “not…uplifting…aesthetically” and rearranging I think we can get to not pleasant without too much trouble.
Thanks Vlad and mc for the entertaining blog.
I missed YIN and didn’t parse SHAMPOO!
Can I ask again about the posting numbers being not visible to my iPhone and the other style changes. And coffee cup. Is it just me?
Sh@4 Well, if that’s how people use it, then fine. Somewhat like “not bad” being used to mean “rather good”, even though that’s also not what it says, it seems.
Tim the toffee, it isn’t just you, and I’m on an android phone. The layout has changed completely. Given how commenters respond and interact, we do need comments to be numbered.
Same etiolated (?) look on an iPad.
Pleasantly tough puzzle, toyed with CIRCUS CLOWN for the entertainer. Thanks both.
Thank you, mc_rapper67, for such a comprehensive blog. I did feel a few flesh wounds while competing this but fortunately I wasn’t mortally impaled. Top half went in easier for me than bottom half. I liked 14d TUNESMITH a lot as remain a fan of The Monkees and thought they were much undervalued as musicians. MEPISTOPHELIAN (what a mouthful!) at 1a was a great clue too, and I also enjoyed 1d MADELEINE.
The golf reference in 9a DELIVER went right over my head, and even though I have had a few glasses of bubbles in my time, I have never heard champagne referred to as 27a “SHAMPOO” before, so for these and other explanations I needed the blog.
In sum, accolades to Vlad for a brain bender that delivered a great deal of satisfaction in the end.
[I am also a bit flummoxed by the style changes on the blog – no “shampoo” involved, I assure you. I wanted to reference once or two previous comments but thought it would be a bit confusing without the numbering system. Lots of white space around the comments on my screen.]
To converse, we’ll now have to use, eg, “JinA @2:22”, bit of a bore both to read then type and for recipients to look back and find. Hey ho.
Thanks to Vlad for a fun challenge and to mc_rapper67 for a lovely clear blog.
I was determined to do this Vlad puzzle without aids but ended up having to check the spelling of Mephistophelian having blithely entered its alternative and then getting stuck on e-p-o-e. Ah well, next time.
Good fun and a nice sense of achievement when I’d finished.
I’m sure the style changes will improve if we give them time. It can’t be easy keeping the site up-to-date and keeping the users happy. Thanks, kenmac (and any helpers you may have) for your efforts.
Pub in 2 letters has to be ph, which made that nice long word for wicked a cert, a good start. Never sussed out my cases from my moods, but knew that imperative was one or t’other so in it went. If you said The Monkees I’d go I’m a Believer, but that’s about it, so ditto rapper re tunesmith, racking brain for ‘T’ composers other than Tchaikovsky, but more crossers fixed it. Good value weekender, thanks V ‘n’ mc.
I’ve just noticed that the style changes have been retrofitted to past puzzles. I’m guessing it’s just a bug in a macro or something like that.
I don’t much like the layout changes, with all the acres of white space, but I can live with most of them. However, is the disappearance of comment numbers accidental or deliberate? When I first found this site my phone screen refused to show them, which meant I couldn’t use the standard “name@number” way of replying to earlier comments. I thought those bad old days were over, but they seem to be back. (Android phone, Samsung internet browser).
Anyway, an enjoyable puzzle from Vlad (though I fell into the AUSTRIA/ASSYRIA trap, and had to Google the “rebel golf tour”). A slight retro feeling with PALMTOP, DUDLEY MOORE and Mike NESMITH (Check out his solo work, it’s good).
17D the on-line clue had “New York” rather than “Aspen”.
Thanks for the blog, this seemed just perfect for a Saturday right from the brilliant 1AC. EXAM was very neat with the novel AM/PM.
I had vaguely heard of LIV while trying to avoid golf, it is something to do with Saudi Arabia.
I was hoping that yang would turn up opposite to YIN somewhere, then I could discuss Yangian super-symmetry that everyone is dying to hear about.
I really hope the layout changes back, it seems like a glitch and is the same on this Chromebook , I really do not want to go the IT office on Monday.
Is the PALMTOP definition “first computer”, given that they were a very early manifestation? I remember liking this, especially as I got the first long anagram pretty quickly – very unusual for me. SH @3 (lucky it is an early comment), I was another OFFICE CLOWN, I have to say, though I was dubious about it so I was on the lookout that its crossers might be unreliable (as they were).
I’m not a fan of the new look, especially the lack of numbers, but would like the comments closer too. Should be easy to fix, I hope.
Thanks, Vlad and mc_rapper.
Thanks, mc_rapper. Quite a hard puzzle, so I am grateful for some of the parsing being explained. For AUSTRIA, I had concluded it must be Australia (one country) with AL (Chambers, a US baseball player) written out (de-scribed) – but that did seem a fairly obscure reference, so ‘atria’ is a much better approach.
Overthewater@?, the actual Guardian paper gave New York at 17d, but it does not matter much.
I cannot get numbering for the comments on either my iPad or laptop (as I usually blog only for Saturday prizes this is the first time I have seen the new layout), but I note Admin has posted something about this in the last few minutes, so I hope that will get sorted.
Much enjoyed. Especially good to see DUDLEY MOORE and (TU)NESMITH appear. Both brilliant clues and (fortunately) within my GK. [I was fractionally too young to be a Dud+Pete fan but the manufactured Monkees had elements that (for me) no other group then matched. Maybe the clarity of sound or the US/GB blend?]
Many thanks to Vlad for a great puzzle and to mc_rapper67 for parsing ENCAMP + SHAMPOO. It was the S…O bit that I’d missed but the definition was also new to me. Cheers.
Thanks Vlad and mc_rapper
I spent some time trying to justify EXPLODE ar 7d before correcting the spelling of 1a.
Thanks for the blog – with a few aids I finally managed to fill the grid yesterday, but with a few unparsed. Never heard of shampoo for champagne. A search for “pga rival” turned up LIV, which seems fair enough even though I hadn’t heard of it.
FOI and favourite clue was MEPHISTOPHELIAN, what a wonderful word! EXAM and MARTINI also in the running, mostly for misdirecting me for so long with PM and thoughts of gin respectively. Thanks vlad for a challenging puzzle.
I posted about the numbering change in the “Site Feedback” thread as I thought that would come to the attention of the admin more than saying something in a blog thread. They’re looking into it.
There were a few I didn’t parse in this, although it didn’t help that I couldn’t spell MEPHISTOPHELIAN (like muffin @20 – …. yes I counted from the beginning) so I had Income for ENCAMP and Explode instead of IMPLODE. No wonder I couldn’t parse them. 🙂
One that I did like very much was EXAM for the PM’s counterpart.
IMPLODE, EXAM and MEPHISTOPHELIAN were my favourites among a great set of clues. I couldn’t think of any girl’s names for 1 down, but then I had a piece of cake dipped in tea and the memories came flooding back.
Thanks for the numerous (and unfortunately numberless!) comments so far – the numbering issue is site-wide and I believe kenmac is on the case…
In the meantime, as Grantinfreo at 2.48am suggests, we could use the time-stamps as approximate reference points…bit of a PITA, but needs must…
Re. UNEDIFYING (various) – the Chambers definition mentions aesthetics, so the unpleasant in the definition could be ‘not visually pleasing’? But Chambers also has ‘morally degrading or degraded’, which could also lead to an unpleasant person or action?
Tassie Tim at 7.10am – I took the ‘first’ as meaning PAL, the friend at the end of the wordplay, comes first in the result, so more of a link word/instruction than part of the definition.
Julie in Australia at 2.22am – re. LIV – it is an Aussie (Greg Norman) who is one of the main driving forces behind this…I just hope he has a fake passport and a safehouse for when he eventually loses favour with his current paymasters…they can be a tad vindictive when crossed…
And muffin and Tim C – (-2 and -4 from here) – I also considered EXPLODE, but couldn’t really justify it as ‘collapse’, and it would have had to be ‘former policeman…’? Anyway, I should have said that ‘PC Plod’ was a Noddy character, rather than just slang…I wonder which came first…
I’m always pleased when I finish a Vlad, and I managed it this time, although with a few incompletely parsed and NUDGE completely unparsed – I thought the G was the horse and it seemed to be mounted by a NUDE (shades of Lady Godiva).but none of that fitted the wordplay at all. Thanks for clearing that up, mc_rapper, and for the rest of the blog. I also thought the affected part of SHAMPOO was the sham so couldn’t see where the last O came from. Like others, I liked the neat simplicity of EXAM. PALMTOP seems so last century now – the ones listed in Wikipedia are all from the 1990s. Thanks, Vlad.
Like Tim @5 I failed to parse SHAMPOO, likewise TUNESMITH (because I didn’t know NESMITH). But this was an excellent puzzle, quite tough in places. I got both clues involving long anagrams quite early on, and naturally they helped a lot.
Thanks to Vlad for the puzzle, mc_rapper67 for the blog and to contributors without number for their comments.
DrW @ 1:18am would this be a case of “litotes”? Also great fodder for porridge-related homophone clue 🙂
Initially thought “low” was a reference to Dudley Moore’s height which seemed a bit mean
Cheers MC&V
I completed this without paraing EDIFYING as I didn’t think of yin, duh. Unfortunately, I know SHAMPOO for champagne but didn’t put immediately it in as it took ages to parse.
Thank you to Vlad and mc_rapper667.
[Valentine, I answered your query about TT on that puzzle.]
A super puzzle but ultimately failed on UNEDIFYING and TUNESMITH after self-congrats for foi 1ac. Liked EXAM, SHAMPOO, IMPERATIVE and DUDLEY MOORE.
Ta Vlad & mc.
Quite tough but very enjoyable.
Liked GEMINI, AUSTRIA, EXAM, MEPHISTOPHELIAN, TUNESMITH (when I finally recalled the Monkees); AFTER ALL.
I did not parse 9ac apart from LIV (did not know what this is) in DEER; 27ac; 8d.
New for me: PALMTOP (In the past I owned a Palm PDA device but had not heard of PALMTOP before).
Thanks, both.
Good Prize puzzle. I did like the clue for DUDLEY MOORE with the intricate wordplay. I also liked IMPERATIVE for the surface, MARTINI for the mother’s ruin, SPANISH OMELETTE as a neat anagram, IMPLODE for the copper’s introduction, and AFTER ALL with the misleading ‘ultimately’ as definition. Thanks Vlad and mcr [no carriage returns to prevent more white spaces]
N U M B E R L E S S W H I T E S P A C E
PS There’s a site funding icon at the top of the page, buy Ken a doughnut!
An utter fail for me with almost all the Southern half still blank when I came here to be edified.
Some pretty great leaps required to solve, let alone parse some clues. ‘without force’ —> *YIN* ? 1960s US band member = Nesmith ? Liz previously who didn’t deliver = PM ?
At the same time a bunch of other clues were almost quiptic so the whole felt rather uneven.
Thanks mc_rapper67 for the edification and Vlad for the diverting, if humbling challenge.
Quite a hard puzzle for me, but I had the time to stick at it and it was all just about doable. I confess that I used an anagram solver a few times. I suppose that I would have got 1ac eventually, but I had fixated on ending with ‘ish’. Some enjoyable solutions, especially EXAM and MADELEINE, but I had to wait for the published solution and this blog to explain a few. I figured that 23ac was a Latin or French phrase from the 2-letter word ‘E-‘, and then used the anagram solver again as I did not know the expression, so a well-constructed clue but only just about fair. I could not explain 27ac SHAMPOO but it had to be the solution. I was annoyed to read the Guardian’s explanation yesterday that SHAMO is an expression of emotion. What rubbish, I thought. I was glad to read mc_rapper67’s explanation above. So it was a good clue after all. What is The Grauniad playing at?
Is ‘first computer’ meant to be a definition for Palmtop? If so it is absurd. The Palmtop is closer to us today than it is to the first computers in the 1940s. It is not even a very early personal computer.
I got SHAMPOO by working it out and because of the crossers, but absolutely detest what passes for the definition. The clue would have worked just as well with something less offensive.
Had heard of the controversial golf tour, but not its name. Very transitory GK I hope.
Croc @36 no. The parsing is explained in the blog
And a warm welcome back to the old layout 🙂
Thanks mc_rapper67 and Vlad. This was just about the perfect level for Prize puzzle – challenging, but willing to yield to a little work without being so tedious as to encourage one to give up. MEPHISTOPHALIAN was definitely an early favourite, especially after recognising PH straight away – all that time spent poring over OS maps had to bear fruit one day !
Thanks mc_rapper, for explaining 27a (I had SHAM for vm affected and no idea about the final O) and confirmation of LIV, I was aware of some golfing ruction but not the details. Enjoyed looking up Palmtop (though wikipedia’s claim that they could fit in a shirt pocket looks optimistic), I would prefer one to a smartphone (the old Psion organiser would have been ideal) but am destined to be disappointed. SW corner held out longest and Dr Whatson@2 if you had seen me scoot into the spare room in my pants on Monday morning when twigging which of the 19d options had to be right you would have no problem with the definition of 20a! Still, great minds… Really enjoyable puzzle with gradual enlightenment and humour well spread around, thanks Vlad.
[Gazzh @41
When the Sony Walkman was introduced, one of the selling points was that it would fit into a shirt breast pocket. However it didn’t quite, so Sony commisioned shirts with slightly larger breast pockets for its sales reps…]
We thoroughly enjoyed wrangling with this, thank you Vlad, and thanks also mc_rapper for your, as always, edifying blog.
poc@37 I don’t understand why the definition of “SHAMPOO” as “champagne” is “offensive”.
I get that it’s a bit of a silly and frivolous way of referring to it but I can’t see any reason to take actual offence.
Worried that I’m missing an opportunity to purse my lips and hitch up my bosom. And I’d hate to miss one of those! 🙂
[thanks muffin, reminds me of the possibly true rumour that furniture in show homes is always a bit smaller than real stuff from ikea etc. I suppose if they kept their shirts those salesmen walked into jobs at Hewlett Packard etc a few years later]
This was tough but doable. I had never heard of NESMITH (or any other individual Monkees for that matter), so TUNESMITH went in last for me. Between him and Dudley Moore (whom I know mainly from “10”), this seemed pitched at solvers of a certain age…
Also new to me was SHAMPOO for champagne. And the PALMTOP took a while too, as it’s one of the many devices made obsolete by the smartphone. (Which reminds me of a semi-recent New York Times puzzle built around that theme: entries like “alarm clock,” “road atlas,” and so on went into the theme slots, and you wondered what they all had in common until you got to the clue “Device that has made all of the starred entries obsolete.”)
Re several commenters above I saw “first computer,” and thought, “ENIAC? Abacus? Nah–the “first” bit has got to be something else.”
In 14d, I had no trouble recalling the name Nesmith – for the rather sad reason of having seen his obituary when he died last year. Only one Monkee is still alive – Micky Dolenz. Time takes its toll…
TUNESMITH is the name of a character in Larry Niven’s Ringworld series of SciFi novels. I don’t think I’ve come across the word anywhere else, but it’ll do.
Thanks to Vlad – a great puzzle – and to mc_rapper for de-impaling…
Bodycheetah@27
Not only was Dudley Moore a low (5’2″) comedy entertainer but also a purveyor of low comedy entertainment, especially in Derek and Clive.
In addition to the other likes and dislikes that I shared I liked the topical misdirection in 15a.
Thanks to Vlad and mc_rapper67
Great puzzle with almost every clue offering something interesting ,funny, topical or inventive. Managed to complete apart from SHAMPOO which I would never have reached. Favourites were EXAM, MUMPS, LEG BEFORE, IMPERATIVE, EPSOM and ,of course MEPHISTOPHELIAN.
Glad to see reference to Dudley Moore with whom I had a memorable night on the town in New York in 1963. Much missed.
Thanks to Vlad and mc
Thanks to mc for an excellent blog and to others for their comments.
poc@37. Eh?
StoneRose@43 and Vlad@49: Perhaps “offensive” is a bit strong. I can only say that I’ve never come across that meaning, hope never to do so again, and find it a teeth-gratingly, nails-on-a-blackboard assault on the ear. It’s also not in Chambers. I solved the clue with no inkling of how to parse it.
poc @50, Wiki gives this meaning of SHAMPOO as ‘humorous slang’.
It is used in some very bad 70s and 80s films, people drinking champagne in night clubs .
Bodycheetah: the parsing explains ‘best’, ‘friend’ and ‘Mike’, but doesn’t seem to say anything about first
Perhaps it means that the friend, PAL, comes first. So the chronological misdirection is fine
Robi@51: Indeed. However Collins doesn’t have it, nor Merriam-Webster, nor, as I say, Chambers. I don’t have access to the OED to check.
Oh help — is LIV a person or an event or what?
No hope of parsing UNEDIFYING — never thought of YIN. Thanks, mc_rapper.
I’ve never heard or heard of anyone calling champagne “shampoo.” Do they really do that?
The coffee cup is no longer on my screen. Is it on others? I still have numbers, though. Where is the funding icon?
I never lost numbers, so I’m a bit out of touch with the recent problem. I gather it’s been fixed now, and everybody has clue numbers?
Thanks, Vlad and mc.
Shanne@9:50 0r 28 I replied to you, but very late, so you’ve probably missed it. Thanks for TT.
Valentine@55 I know very little about golf but it has been all over the news here. I think LIV is called a tour, a series of events for people who have signed up. Funded by Saudi Arabia, a new term known as sports-washing. Similar to Qatar and the cup for the muddied oafs.
The numbers are back now, it was a short term glitch I am glad to say.
Wow – this is the puzzle that keeps on giving!…and we have the numbering back…or was it all just a bad dream…
– on SHAMPOO, poc is correct that it doesn’t appear in Chambers or Collins, so maybe a little unfair – but in the ‘right’ circles it obviously isn’t too great a leap from ‘champers’ to ‘shampoo’…rah, rah!
– Valentine at #55 – ‘LIV golf’ is a ‘rival golf tour’ (to the PGA). funded by the Saudis, which has hoovered up half the PGA tour by giving them life-changing amounts of money to play in non-competitive events – life-changing even for top golfers who already earn what would be life-changing to us mere mortals…basically sports-washing Saudi money – think Kerry Packer and cricket in the 70s/80s?…I’m not sure what LIV actually stands for, but a quick go-ogle should teach you all you need to know.
– re. PALMTOP, I didn’t fully explain ‘first’ in the parsing, but I explained it in more detail at #24 above…’first’ is not part of the definition.
– re. shirt pockets – those who keep their mobile in their shirt pockets should beware the fate of Moss’s phone in the IT Crowd…
– lenmasterman at # 48 – you tease – that sounds like a story and a half!…
It’s called LIV because tournaments are played over 54 holes as opposed to the more normal 72.
Thanks, Vlad, I’d never have guessed that.
Valentine at # 59 – nor me – although it makes sense now!
Apologies to Roz – our replies at 56 and 57 crossed as you nipped in while I was carefully crafting my reply!
And I forgot to thank Vlad for stopping by, so consider that duly done…
I parsed PALMTOP as PAL (best friend) + M (Mike) +TOP (first), as in “He is top of the class”.
Mc, re 7dn, as you later say, Pc Plod was the policeman in Enid Blyton’s Noddy books. I would guess that’s a reference to walking the beat in heavy boots? It’s just ‘Plod’ that is slang for ‘(the) Police’ or ‘policeman’, almost certainly derived from the Blyton character (I’m guessing), so “I’m Plod” would mean ‘I’m Police’. Unlikely you’d hear that said, as it’s somewhat disparaging, so more likely irl to appear as ‘he’s Plod’. Attested since 1975, according to Jonathon Green.
Fun fact: Mike Nesmith’s mum invented correcting fluid (Liquid Paper, Tippex, etc)
I somehow imagined that SHAMPOO was derived from the celebratory act of pouring the bottle of victory champagne over the winner’s head (or winners’ heads) — as in Formula 1, or Michael Vaughan’s England after the Oval Test of the 2005 Ashes. Alas, a quick Google did not turn up any support for the idea.